by Lisa Gardner
I recognized Sheriff Wayne from the back. It wasn’t how he looked; it was how he moved. The solid roll of his legs across the pathway as he corralled bouncing grandkids, herding them steadily back to the family fold.
Sheriff Wayne noticed me standing a ways off, staring at him. He turned back to the women on either side of him, then it must’ve hit him. The nagging sense of familiarity clicked and he whirled around, taking me in squarely.
“Danielle,” he said, and the sound of his voice again, after all these years of living in my dreams, the lone whisper of safety amidst so many images of blood and violence, finally released me. I took a step forward. Then another.
His wife and daughter had noticed by then. His daughter was confused by my approach. His wife—Sheila was her name—must have remembered me. She held very still, and I could see the quiet sympathy in her eyes.
Sheriff Wayne took over. Shook my hand, made the introductions between myself, his wife, daughter, and grandkids. He smoothed it over, in the way a man who broke up bar fights would know how to do. I might have been the daughter of an old friend, reacquainted after all these years. We made small talk of the sunny day and the beautiful park. He told me of his other child, a grown son who lived in New York. We marveled over his granddaughter, who hid behind her mother’s legs, and his grandson, who loved chasing squirrels.
I mentioned I would be starting college in the fall. Sheriff Wayne shook my hand again, all quiet approval. Look at me and how I had turned out.
Look at me, the lone survivor.
They continued with their day, following the curving path down to the Swan Boats. I studied the empty space where they used to stand.
And I knew, in that instant, I had to see Sheriff Wayne again.
I had to have him.
I called the next day. It had been nice to see him in the park. His daughter was lovely, his grandkids adorable. Listen, I had some questions. I didn’t want to put him on the spot, but maybe we could get together. Have dinner. Just once.
I could hear his reluctance. But he was a decent man, so his decency won out, brought him to me.
I gave him the address of the studio apartment I had moved into that fall, a baby step in my preparations for college. I implied he would pick me up and we’d go out to dinner. I already knew otherwise.
I folded up my futon bed. Pulled out the card table and topped it with my favorite floral print. I set a nice table, coordinating red and yellow stoneware plates set against a rich backdrop. A shock of purple flowers in the middle. Two long white tapered candles in the crystal candlestick holders my mother had once received as a wedding gift and probably opened with a sense of joy and optimism.
She couldn’t have known. I told myself that all the time. She couldn’t have known.
I wore low-rider jeans and a white buttoned top. I left my dark hair down. I liked how it looked, a jolt of dark against the light.
Beneath, I wore the world’s tiniest champagne-colored demi-bra and a lace thong. I’m not the world’s biggest-built girl, but I know how to use what I have.
When Sheriff Wayne arrived, I could tell he was dismayed by the scene. The pretty table in the middle of a very small apartment. The scent of bubbling spaghetti sauce and cooking pasta.
I didn’t give him a chance to think about things.
Come in, come in, I said at once, all bright smiles and youthful exuberance. Sorry for the small space. It’s different living in the city. I took his coat before he had a chance to blink, hung it on the coatrack as I prattled away. I know we’d talked about going out, but I was a little nervous about having our conversation in public, so if he didn’t mind, I’d decided to throw together a little pasta and gravy. Not the best cook, still learning, yada yada yada.
What could the poor man say? What could the poor man do?
He assured me my apartment was very nice. The sauce smelled good. Of course we could eat in. Whatever made me more comfortable.
I sat him at the table, poured him a liberal glass of red wine. Nothing for myself; that would’ve been inappropriate. I added some music. He didn’t strike me as a Nine Inch Nails kind of guy, so I went with light jazz.
We started with dinner salad. He sat stiffly, not touching his wine, keeping his eyes on his plate. He had aged well. Squarely built, solid but not fat. Gray hair on top of a broad, mustached face. He moved concisely, with an economy of motion that appealed to me.
He asked about my aunt, my schooling, my plans for the future. I painted for him a light overview of my new and improved life. It was what he needed to hear; once, he’d carried me through my father’s house, his arms tight around my bony shoulders, his voice a warm whisper in my ear. “Don’t look honey. You’re safe now, you’re safe.”
I dished up penne pasta. Covered it in red sauce.
Then I got serious.
I didn’t ask about my father. Instead, I dredged from Sheriff Wayne’s memory all the bright, shining moments of my mother’s laugh and Johnny’s mischievous ways and Natalie’s compassion for animals. Turns out, my sister had once adopted a wild bunny she’d found struck by a car and nursed it back to health. She wanted to work with animals. I learned that from Sheriff Wayne. And my brother liked to climb to the tops of trees, then call for my mother to come see, so she could raise her hands and shriek in mock horror.
The memories got to him, of course. Hurt him even more than me, because these people remained real in his mind, whereas they’d long ago become ghosts to me.
The wine went quickly. Who could blame him?
He offered to clear the dishes. I watched him move around in my tiny kitchenette, gestures less steady after two hours of intense emotions, plus a full bottle of Chianti. He stacked the dishes in the sink. Rinsed each one. Placed them in a pile to soak. Then the pans. Then his wineglass. Then my water glass. Two forks. Two spoons. Two knives.
When he returned to the table, I could see the effects of the evening in the haggard lines of his face. He tried to speak, but I wouldn’t let him.
“Shhh,” I said. “Shhh …”
As I undid the first button of my top, then the second, then the third, exposing, inch by inch, long lines of bare, bronzed skin, a lacy wisp of lingerie.
“Don’t,” he said. “You shouldn’t … not right—”
“Shhh …”
I straddled his lap. I let my shirt fall open, rocking my hips gently against his groin. He tried to protest again, his mouth forming faint words that I pretended not to hear. I feathered my hands through his buzz-cut hair. I touched the solid lines of his shoulders. And I felt his body start to respond as my white shirt drifted down to the floor, as I arched my back and offered myself to him.
“Danielle …” A last desperate plea.
“Shhh …”
I led his mouth to my breast. When I felt his lips finally close over my lace-covered nipple, the need that swept over me, the pure need, cut deeper than any grief ever had.
I took him, the man who’d once saved me, and for a brief moment, he was mine.
It was only years later, after completing my studies and embarking on a career in the psychiatric field, that I finally understood the damage I’d done to Sheriff Wayne that night. I’d hurt, and I’d branded him with that pain, forcing him to carry the scar of my wounds, a decent man who had to live out his days with his wife, his children, his grandchildren, knowing there was one night he didn’t measure up to his standards as a husband, father, protector of the community.
Afterward, when I slept at night, I could no longer hear his voice. I was alone with the blood and the cordite. No one carried me out of my father’s house anymore.
I suppose it was the least I deserved.
CHAPTER
FIVE
They wrapped the scene at 11:53 p.m. Not that they were done with it, but they were done for now. The detectives returned to HQ for a case conference. An entire unit can start a case, but an entire unit can’t end one. For that, they needed the point person, the
one detective’s head that would rest in the noose if the job didn’t get done.
D.D. won the honors; it wasn’t a big surprise, but she still felt compelled to offer a small acceptance speech:
“On behalf of myself and my entire squad, I graciously accept your faith in our efforts—”
Some hooting from the back of the room, a few tossed pieces of balled-up paper. She picked up the ammo that landed closest and lobbed it back.
“Of course, we fully expect to have this wrapped by morning—”
A fresh round of catcalls, then one wiseass’s observation that morning would be six minutes from now. D.D. retrieved a fresh ball of crumpled paper, and nailed that detective between the eyes.
“So you all can go back to protecting the fine citizens of Boston,” she concluded over the growing din. “We got this one covered.”
The deputy superintendent rolled his eyes when she sat down, but didn’t say a word. It had been a long night in a bad scene; the detectives were entitled to blow off some steam.
“Gotta do a press conference,” was all the boss had to say.
“First thing in the morning,” D.D. assured him.
“What’s the party line?”
“Don’t know.” She grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair, then gestured to her squadmate, Phil, that it was time to motor. “Ask me when we get back from the hospital.”
Patrick Harrington, former father of three, had been recovering from brain surgery for the past three hours when D.D. and Phil arrived at the hospital. According to the charge nurse, he was in no condition to talk.
“Let us be the judge of that,” D.D. informed the nurse as she and Phil flashed their credentials.
The nurse wasn’t impressed. “Sweetheart, the man is in a drug-induced coma with a manometer attached to his skull to measure intracranial pressure. I don’t care if you’re packing a pass to the Pearly Gates; man can’t talk yet, because the man can’t talk.”
That stole some of D.D.’s thunder. “When do you think he’ll come around?”
The nurse looked D.D. up and down. D.D. returned the scrutiny. Hospitals had policies concerning a patient’s right to privacy. For that matter, the legal system had scribbled a line or two on the subject. But take it from a detective—at the end of the day, the world remained a human system. Some head nurses were bulldogs when it came to protecting their patients. Others were willing to consider the big picture, if things were presented in the right manner.
The charge nurse picked up a chart, glanced at the notes. “In my professional opinion,” she offered up, “hell if I know.”
“How did the surgery go?” Phil interjected. The nurse glanced at him, noted the ketchup stain on his white shirt, and smiled a little.
“Surgeon removed the foreign body. That should help matters.”
D.D. leaned against the nurses’ station. Now that the nurse’s body language had relaxed slightly, it was time to press the advantage. She glanced at the woman’s name tag. “So, Terri, did you hear what Patrick did to his family?”
“Some kind of domestic incident.” Nurse Terri regarded them seriously. “Maybe he didn’t like his wife’s cooking. If you ask me, we see too much of that around here. More men need to start liking burnt food.”
“Ah, but there was a bit more to it than a spat with the missus. Kids were involved. Three kids. He got ‘em all.”
Nurse Terri hesitated, showed the first glimmer of interest. “He killed his own kids?”
“Nine, twelve, and fourteen. All dead.”
“Oh Blessed Mary…”
“That’s what we think happened. It would be a good thing to know, however. I mean, there’s a little difference between four people slaughtered by a family member than, say, by a deranged maniac who’s possibly still wandering free. Really, it would be good to dot our ‘i’s and cross our ‘t’s here. As Patrick’s the lone survivor…”
Nurse Terri sighed heavily, seemed to finally relent. “Look, I can’t make the unconscious conscious, not even for Boston’s finest. I can see, however, if Dr. Poor is still around. He was the admitting doc in the ER. He might have something to offer.”
“Perfect.”
“Might as well make yourselves comfortable. Doctors answer only to God, not charge nurses, so this could take a while.”
“Somehow, I bet you have your ways of making a doctor hustle.”
“Honey, don’t I wish.”
D.D. and Phil grabbed coffee from the basement cafeteria and made themselves at home. The waiting room chairs were low slung, the kind that were tempting to position three across as a makeshift bed. D.D. focused on her coffee. She’d slept well last night. Apparently, that would be it for a while.
She thought briefly of Chip, felt a pang of longing for the great sex she still wasn’t going to have, then returned to the matters at hand.
“What did you think of Professor Alex?” she asked Phil.
“You mean my new shadow?” Phil shrugged. “Seems all right. Smart, keeps out of the way, speaks mostly when he has something useful to say. So far, that puts him ahead of half our unit.”
D.D. smiled. “Have you looked him up?”
“I’ll make some calls in the morning.”
“Okay.”
They lapsed into silence, Phil blowing experimentally on his coffee, D.D. already sipping hers.
“And your plans tonight?” Phil finally asked.
“Don’t ask.”
He grinned. “Hey, wasn’t tonight the big date with Charlie’s wife’s friend?”
“I’m telling you, don’t go there.”
“You went to dinner first, didn’t you? Come on, D.D., you should know better by now. You get a night off, you can’t be wasting time on fine dining. Cut straight to the chase before the pager finds you.”
“What? Drag a stranger through my door and bang his brains out? Hi, hello, the bedroom is down the hall.”
“Trust me, guys won’t complain.”
“Men are pigs.”
“Exactly.”
D.D. rolled her eyes. “You and Betsy have been married, what, ninety years now? What would you know of twenty-first-century dating?”
“Oh, but I hear things.”
D.D. was spared further heckling as a harried-looking doctor blasted through the double doors. His hair stood up in brown tufts, and he had both hands shoved deep in the pockets of his white lab coat.
“Detectives,” he called out.
“Dr. Poor.” D.D. and Phil stood up.
He waved at them to follow, so they fell in step as he dashed across the waiting room, through another set of double doors, then made his way through the maze of sterile hallways. “Gotta get some coffee. You need any more? It’s pretty good here. For a hospital and all.”
“We’re all set, thanks,” D.D. replied. She and Phil had to work to keep up with the doctor’s rapid strides. “So, Doctor, we have some questions regarding a patient who was admitted to the ER early this evening, a Patrick Harrington—”
“Injury?”
“What?”
“Injury. What was he admitted for? I don’t have time for names, just wounds.”
“Uh, small-caliber gunshot wound to the head.”
“Ah.” The doctor nodded vigorously, taking a left, then a right, then bursting down a flight of steps to the lower-level cafeteria. “GSW to the left temple, yes? No exit wound, so I’m guessing a twenty-two. Bullet mushroomed upon impact, lost too much velocity to blow out the back of the skull. You know, I saw two separate gunshot wounds last week caused by forty-fours. Blows the skull to smithereens. I think the drug dealers are watching too much Dirty Harry.”
They’d arrived at the basement cafeteria. Dr. Poor beelined for the java station. D.D. thought he might have had quite a bit of coffee already.
“We’re interested in Harrington,” she prodded.
The doctor nodded, poured heavy cream and four packets of sugar into his cup, stirred, then found a lid.
“Prognosis?” Phil spoke up.
Dr. Poor made a waffling gesture with his hand. “Three issues with head injuries. First, the bleeding. Second, the direct trauma. Third, the resulting swelling. So far, the patient has survived the bleeding and direct trauma. Swelling, however, remains a concern, as is risk of infection. And, for that matter, further bleeding. Even the best neurosurgeon can do only so much to repair the damage inflicted by a bullet to the brain. It’s like throwing a butter knife into a bowl of pudding. The pudding doesn’t stand a chance.”
“When will he regain consciousness?” D.D. asked.
“Haven’t a clue. I’d have to look at his chart. I’m guessing he’s heavily sedated, which is probably for the best.”
“But we need to ask him some questions,” she persisted impatiently.
Dr. Poor arched a brow. “Half the man’s brain has been turned into the Panama Canal. What do you think he could tell you at the moment?”
D.D. and Phil exchanged glances. It was hardly surprising news, but disappointing.
“Can you describe the entry wound?” Phil asked.
D.D. chewed her bottom lip. She knew what Phil was going for. From a detective’s perspective, it would’ve been better if their suspected shooter had died at the scene. In which case, the ME’s office would’ve bagged the man’s hands and preserved the contact wound on the left temple. Back in the morgue, the ME would then test the shooter’s hands for gunpowder residue while conducting a forensic examination of the entry wound. In twenty-four hours or less, they’d have scientific evidence that Patrick Harrington had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.