by Jane Graves
He looked like a man who’d just committed murder.
“Alex,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “What have you done?”
His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “Me? You think I did this?”
“Alex—”
“You actually think I strangled her?”
“I know it was probably an accident,” Val said quickly. “You probably didn’t mean for things to get out of hand, but—”
“Val!” he shouted. “Goddamn it, listen to me! I had nothing to do with this!”
How could he deny it? By saying he didn’t remember? No. That was impossible. The evidence was right there in front of her, all of it pointing to Alex.
She backed slowly off the bed until she was standing beside it, the most gut-wrenching feeling overtaking her.
He was lying.
Run. Get the hell out of here. You do not want to be in the middle of this.
She whipped around and headed toward the bedroom door.
“Val!”
Alex leaped off the bed, and in three strides he caught her wrist and spun her around to face him. He clamped his hands onto her upper arms and yanked her toward him, staring down at her with brutal intensity.
“You were outside. Did you see someone coming into or out of this house?”
“No! I didn’t see anybody!”
“Anything strange? Out of the ordinary?”
“No! I’m telling you, I didn’t see anything!”
“Val!” he shouted, giving her a hard shake. “You must have seen something! Think! Think!”
His fingers dug into her arms, his eyes wild with desperation, and she had the horrible feeling that he was on the verge of completely losing control. Could he be one of those frightening people who could fool the world? Straight as an arrow on the surface but twisted like a labyrinth underneath?
She had to get out of there. Now.
She thrashed against him and finally slid from his grasp. She lost her balance and almost fell, then came back to her feet and spun around to leave the bedroom.
And met the cops coming in.
Alex watched as the patrol cops came through the door, trying to get his bearings, trying to make some sense out of a situation that made no sense at all. Every move the officers made seemed hazy and exaggerated, every moment long and drawn out, like a slow-motion sequence in a movie. His pulse pounded in his head in sync with his heart, feeling like machine-gun fire.
Both officers had had their weapons drawn. They glanced at the body and knew the woman was dead. One of them went for Alex, the other for Val. They were shouting.
“Turn around!” one of them shouted at Alex. “Facedown on the ground!”
He felt hot and disoriented, unsteady on his feet. He stumbled to his knees, then lay facedown on the carpet. He knew this drill. Knew it by heart. But he’d never expected to be on the receiving end of it.
Oh, Christ. This can’t be happening.
The officer grabbed his left arm and snapped a cuff around his wrist, then pulled his other arm around and did the same, until his hands were bound behind his back.
The officer stood him back up. Alex wavered a little. The officer nudged his foot, moving his legs apart, then frisked him. He extracted his wallet from his pocket, then flipped it open.
“You’re a cop?”
Alex didn’t say a word.
He looked over to see that Val was receiving the same treatment, and when their gazes met, he’d never seen anger like he saw on her face right then.
Then the cop grabbed Alex by the arm, escorted him out of the house, and put him into the back of a police car. Swirling red lights from emergency vehicles fanned around the neighborhood, lending a surreal feel to the already bizarre situation. Alex put his hand to his head, feeling as if somebody were beating on it with a hammer. If only he could clear his mind and think.
He tried to remember what had happened in there. Something for them to go on. Something that would prove that they had the wrong man in custody.
He had a vague, dreamlike memory of the woman kissing him. Teasing him. He remembered pushing her away, telling her to stop, then trying to leave the room. He remembered being dizzy. Falling. Then … nothing. Until he’d woken up to a gruesome scene right out of a snuff film.
The moment he’d awakened, he’d stumbled over to the bed, fumbling for his pocketknife to slice through the scarves that bound her wrists. Then he pulled the belt from around her neck and felt for a pulse. He thought maybe he’d found one, a tiny glimmer of life, even though her skin was ashen and her eyes empty. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but her body had still been warm, and miracles did happen, so he’d done everything he could to bring her back.
But this time, no miracles. And all he could think was, Who killed this woman? And why don’t I remember any of it?
And then there was Val.
To look up and see Valerie Parker standing in that bedroom had practically knocked him unconscious all over again. Val, who undoubtedly still hated him with every breath she took. A wild, willful woman who’d been a thorn in his side from the day he’d met her.
Alex looked up to see them bringing her out of the house. She glanced at the car where he sat, and their gazes met. The expression she wore right now bore a striking resemblance to the way she’d looked as she stormed away from him that day five years ago. Confused. Hurt. Angry. Accusatory.
How could you have done this, Alex? How?
In her mind, he’d betrayed her back then, and he’d committed murder now. That left the odds of her wanting to help him at exactly zero. Yes, they were bringing her in, but they’d find out soon enough that instead of being a suspect, she was a hell of a good witness. All she could do was incriminate him, and after what had happened between them, she’d take great joy in doing it.
She was put into another patrol car at the same time an officer got into the driver’s seat of the car where Alex sat. Briefly, he glanced back at Alex, and in that moment, it didn’t matter that Alex was a cop. It didn’t matter that he’d had nothing to do with this. Alex knew that look. It wasn’t officer to officer.
It was officer to suspect.
Alex had always liked the feel of interrogation rooms. They were simple places, with hard chairs, a bare table, empty walls. Not unlike a prison cell. There was nothing in any of them to distract from a detective’s task, which was to extract as much information from an individual as quickly as possible with a minimum of fuss. It was a place designed to be uncomfortable, solitary, and intimidating. How many times had he used this very room? A hundred? Two hundred? He had no idea.
The longer he sat there, though, the clearer his head became. The situation didn’t feel nearly as ominous as it had when he’d been standing at the scene of the crime. When he looked at things logically, he realized they were just going through the motions. Playing it by the book. When all of the evidence at the scene of a crime points to somebody standing right there looking guilty as hell, you bring him in. If he’d been those cops, he’d have dragged his ass down here, too. They had to, no matter how laughable it was that he could have committed murder. But all this would get straightened out soon enough.
The only thing that kept him from rationalizing everything away was Val.
A detective would be questioning her. Separately from him, of course, so they couldn’t share the same story in the event that the two of them had conspired to commit murder. But as soon as they figured out she’d had nothing to do with it, what would she be telling them? She was a loose cannon. A wild card. And just like five years ago, he couldn’t begin to predict what she’d do. She was the kind of hot-blooded, passionate, go-for-broke woman who could get a man in trouble just for thinking about her. The kind of “look but don’t touch” woman he avoided at all costs. He could intimidate the rest of the world to keep them at arm’s length, but he’d never been able to intimidate Val. She’d always been able to crawl right under his skin, to blast apart whatever barriers he threw up
in her way. And even though he knew now just how misguided he’d been five years ago, still the memory of that last night they’d spent together made him lie awake sometimes, wondering what might have been.
Stop it. You don’t need to be thinking about her. Not like that. Christ, hasn’t that gotten you into enough trouble?
He decided that no matter what happened here tonight, he was going to tell the truth, and he was going to do it so calmly and professionally that they’d see what a huge mistake they’d made in focusing on him when the real murderer was out there roaming free, possibly thinking about killing again.
He leaned back in his chair. Took a deep breath, then another. Calm and cool. That was what he needed to be.
Then he heard footsteps outside. As the door swung open, he sat up in his chair again, ready to answer any questions they wanted to throw at him. But when he saw who walked through the door, he knew this night had only begun to go downhill.
Ray Henderson.
Henderson was about fifty. Balding. He wore pants a size too small for the spare tire they were trying in vain to harness, and a tie that contained enough polyester to clothe an entire army of used-car salesmen. He was one of the dangerous ones, not because he was overtly negligent, as Botstein had been, but because he was insidiously so, and that attitude trickled into everything he did. Incomplete reports. Loose-ended investigations. He knew about the extra mile, but had no interest in going it. He was the kind of guy who got under Alex’s skin like no other—the kind who just didn’t give a damn whether he did things right, did them completely, or sometimes did them at all. Average. Adequate. Did enough on the job to draw a paycheck, but not enough to truly earn it.
Alex knew the man had always felt that disdain and didn’t like him. For the briefest of moments, fear trickled through him. He needed the truth here. Needed it desperately. And this was the man designated to search for it?
Henderson sat down in a chair across from Alex, displaying an overly nonchalant attitude that irritated the hell out of him. Then he read him his rights in a deadpan voice. Alex indicated that he understood, and that he waived the right to have an attorney present. He simply intended to tell the truth, and nothing but.
Henderson tossed the yellow pad he was carrying onto a nearby table, letting out a theatrical sigh. “Sorry that officer had to drag you down here like this, DeMarco. But it’s his job, you know? He busts into a murder scene, and there you are, looking guilty as sin. What else is he to do?”
Alex was silent. The bastard was loving this. Loving it.
“Now, I know you couldn’t possibly have murdered that woman, but I gotta tell you”—he sighed again—“it doesn’t look good for you.”
Alex leaned forward, slicing the man with a no-nonsense stare. “Look, Henderson. We can dance around this if you want to, or we can cut to the chase. You choose.”
Henderson’s lip curled into a subtle sneer. He sat back in his chair and tapped his pen against the table. “Well, by all means—let’s cut to the chase.”
“I never met that woman before tonight,” Alex said. “She told me she had a problem with her car and asked me to take her home from the Onion. When we got there, she told me she thought she had an intruder and wanted me to check out her house. Once we got to the bedroom, she came on to me. I told her to forget it. I turned to leave, got dizzy, and passed out. Somebody must have drugged me. When I came to, she was tied to the bed. The belt was around her neck. I called nine-one-one and tried CPR, but she was already dead. I have no idea who did it.”
Henderson gave him a deadpan look. “You’re kidding, right?”
Alex held his temper. Barely. “It’s the truth.”
“You’re saying this woman drugged you.”
“Somebody did. I want a drug test. Urine, blood, all of it.”
“Sure, DeMarco. I’ll have them suck out every bodily fluid you’ve got and run them through every test in the book. But in light of the physical evidence, it won’t make a damned bit of difference. Drugged or not, you were the one holding the smoking gun.”
“Somebody else was in that house. They had to have been.”
“Valerie Parker says no. In fact, she had a lot of interesting things to say.”
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me all of them.”
“Just thought you might be interested.”
“You mean you just thought maybe you’d try to strong-arm me into a confession. You think I don’t know the drill?”
The smug look on Henderson’s face told Alex he’d hit the mark. This was the kind of recreation the bastard enjoyed above all else—being able to stick it to somebody who was bigger, smarter, and a whole lot more competent than he could ever hope to be.
“You can save your breath,” Alex said. “I don’t give a damn what Valerie Parker told you. It doesn’t change what I’m telling you.”
“Did you have sex with the victim?”
“I told you I gave her a ride home. That’s all.”
“How’d your shirt get torn?”
“She did it. I told you she came on to me.”
“But you didn’t have sex with her.”
“No. The autopsy will prove that.”
“Not if you used a condom.”
“Did you find a used condom in the house?”
“The investigation isn’t complete yet. But no. Not so far.”
“What does that tell you, then?”
“That you flushed it?”
Alex lurched forward, his voice low and full of fury. “Goddamn it, Henderson! I did not have sex with her!”
Henderson sneered. “Listen to me. You’re in deep shit here. You were found at the scene with your shirt practically ripped off. Her lipstick was all over you. A belt was found on the bed that looks as if it matches the bruises and laceration on her neck. You weren’t wearing one. And you’ve got no plausible explanation for how most of that happened. If you were me, what would you think? That maybe you had yourself a pretty good suspect?”
“I gave the victim CPR!”
“So Ms. Parker said.”
“If I murdered her, why was I doing that?”
“Killer’s remorse?”
“What?”
“Look, DeMarco,” Henderson said, assuming that hush-hush, buddy-buddy kind of voice that really pissed Alex off. “We both know what happened here. She was a really hot piece of ass. She wanted to get a little kinky, and of course you were going to go along with it. Give the lady what she wants, right?”
Alex couldn’t believe this. Anger shot through every nerve in his body.
“I’m not saying you meant to kill her,” Henderson went on. “That PI tells me she was really putting the moves on you. Maybe she was a little kinky, and you thought, Hey, why not, if it gets her off, and then you looked down and realized things had gone a little too far—”
“I did not murder that woman!”
“Don’t worry. I think we’re talking manslaughter here. I’m sure I can get the D.A. to take it easy on you. No problem.”
No problem?
Alex lurched forward, his voice low and threatening. “Listen to me, you son of a bitch. I had nothing to do with that woman’s death. Nothing!”
“And I’ve got a shitload of evidence that says you had everything to do with it!” Henderson’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. “You think I like this, DeMarco? You think I like seeing you get yourself into a mess like this?”
“Yeah, I do,” Alex said. “I think you like it a lot. I think every time a guy like me goes down, it makes you look like not quite so much of a fuckup. That’s what I think.”
Henderson’s lip curled with disdain. “You’re so goddamned self-righteous. You’ve always looked down on the rest of us, like you’re so perfect and we’re the scum of the earth. But you know what? You step out of line, you get slapped just like everybody else. And buddy, you’ve really stepped out of line this time.”
He stood up, giving Alex a look of total contempt.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Shannon Reichert.”
chapter four
What followed was Alex’s worst nightmare.
Mug shots were taken. Fingerprints. Samples were taken for urine, blood, and DNA tests. And the humiliation he felt was overwhelming. He was being dragged around like a common criminal, like some lowlife who would be dangerous if he were let out of restraints. And all of it happened with the officers and employees working long nights trying real hard to look the other way.
Alex knew the only way he could get through this was to make no eye contact. Say nothing. Pretend that nobody was witnessing his humiliation. Still, he could hear the buzz of gossip, undulating like a tidal undertow. And by tomorrow that whispered gossip would become a flurry of speculation, with everyone tossing in an opinion about whether he was guilty or not.
Finally he was returned to a holding cell, escorted by an officer who clearly wished he were doing anything else but incarcerating another officer. He looked the other way as he shut the cell door, never meeting Alex’s eyes. And that was fine with Alex.
He sat down on the bunk. The tiny room had walls of concrete blocks, with a solid metal door that had only a small window of unbreakable glass. The only allowance they’d made was to put him in a cell by himself, and for that he was thankful. The last thing he wanted to do was rub shoulders with the scum who really belonged in here.
He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head to his hands. His head still throbbed—whatever he’d been drugged with had been powerful stuff. He only hoped that whatever it was, it was still in his system and the drug tests he took would reveal it. He rubbed his hands over his face and let out a long, weary breath, wondering how in God’s name all of this had happened.
When they’d taken his badge away, they might as well have severed one of his limbs. Being a cop was in every nerve synapse in his body, every drop of blood, every speck of DNA. He’d been heading in that direction ever since his father took him down to the station when he was four years old, sat him up on the watch commander’s desk, and told everyone within earshot that he was a chip off the old block. And that meant that right now he was supposed to be on the outside of this cell looking in, not the other way around. It was as if somebody had played some kind of a weird cosmic joke on him, only he’d missed the punch line.