The Marine Next Door

by Julie Miller

  She hoped he’d be home when she got there tonight. She wanted to be there when he went poking around the building to find some sign of last night’s intruder, or evidence of any of the building’s breakdowns being deliberate. Not just because she needed those answers to plan out the best strategy for keeping Travis safe, but because having a friend like John in her corner made her feel safe. He made her feel a few other things, too, but she wasn’t any more ready to acknowledge and explore those feelings than John claimed he was.

  When her attention came back to the task force meeting, Spencer was still voicing his concerns. “We’re under a microscope now. If we make mistakes, it’ll hurt our credibility.”

  Nick Fensom chimed in. “And if our leads are publicized, that allows the perp to stay a step ahead of us.”

  Dr. Kilpatrick jotted a note in her planner. “I’ll call Mr. Knight with an official statement, and explain the risks of giving the case too much coverage.”

  “He’ll plead the First Amendment, say the public has a right to know.” Nick scowled.

  “And I’ll argue victims’ rights,” Kate countered. “There’s a fine line we have to walk with the press. We want Kansas City to be aware of Rose Red, but we don’t want the city paralyzed by fear of more attacks. Nor do we want to hinder any victim’s recovery or jeopardize any future prosecution.”

  “You’re on Gabe Knight, then,” Spencer agreed. He sorted through the printouts in the notebook in front of him. Something among the meticulous records diverted his attention.

  Maggie typed in Dr. Kilpatrick’s assignment to talk to Gabriel Knight at the Journal. She was sitting with her fingers poised over the keyboard to input the team’s next directive when she realized Detective Montgomery was waiting for her to look up and make eye contact. Had she missed something? “What?”

  Was that Spencer Montgomery’s version of a smile? “I read your report of your interview with Bailey Austin. Impressive for a first-timer to get her to open up like that.”

  “Thank you,” she answered hesitantly. The lead detective would clean up in a poker game. She couldn’t tell if that was amusement or if she was in some kind of trouble for overstepping the bounds of a relative intern. “I think she just wanted somebody to listen to her.”

  “Possibly.” So no pat on the back after all. “But when Chief Taylor said our prime witness could identify her rapist by smell, I was hoping for something more useful than pickles.”

  Maggie set her laptop on the table. “That’s what she said the smell reminded her of—pickles.”

  Annie Hermann snapped her fingers and reached down to pick up the oversize bag she carried. She pulled out a bent file marked with the crime lab stamp. “Pickles would make sense with the preliminary results from the lab.”

  “How’s that?” Nick wadded up the paper cup from the coffee he’d been drinking and shot it into the trash can beside the door. “That our perp likes to snack on gherkins and dills?”

  “No, smart-ass.” Annie handed the wrinkled report off to Detective Montgomery. “Vinegar. The lab found traces of vinegar in the victim’s panties.”

  Dr. Kilpatrick sat forward in her chair. “That’s not good.”

  “Pickles have vinegar in them, don’t they?” Nick asked.

  “Yes.” Maggie already knew that Dr. Kilpatrick’s concern wasn’t about food. Maybe it was a good thing that Bailey Austin hadn’t remembered every detail of her attack. “Women used to use vinegar as a cleansing agent after sex. There was an old wives’ tale that it worked as a contraceptive.”

  “You think our perp is some old fart?” Nick asked. “How do you explain the physicality of the attacks, then?”

  The CSI across from him groaned. “Listen, Mr. Neanderthal, our guy doesn’t have to be old-school to use vinegar. Wives’ tale or not, it’s an effective way to clean up traces of DNA off the vic. That’s why we haven’t been able to find any kind of scientific ID on this guy. We can’t even tell you what kind of condom he uses because any trace we manage to pull has been compromised.”

  “He disinfected her? After…” Nick swore under his breath. “If that bastard comes after either one of my sisters—”

  “Relax, Nick.” Spencer cooled his partner’s outburst. “I think we’re all in agreement that we can’t get this guy off the streets soon enough.”

  “But we’re back to square one,” Nick argued.

  Maggie piped up shyly, even though she hadn’t been asked her opinion directly. “Miss Austin said she came to in an abandoned office building—either under construction, or being renovated or torn down. Could we start a search for properties like that in the area where she was abducted?”

  Pike Taylor nodded toward the dog at his feet. “Hans and I are game.”

  “There’s no evidence the assault took place in that area,” Spencer pointed out, “only the abduction.”

  Nick looked at his partner. “You got any other leads, Spence? We need to try something.”

  “Wheeler’s plan it is.” After a moment to consider their limited options, Spencer agreed, closing his notebook. “Let’s go pull construction and demolition orders for a six-block radius around the abduction site near that bridal shop. Pike, you’ll get a search team together? Remember, nothing too big—we don’t want to raise this guy’s suspicions.”

  “Will do.”

  Wheeler’s plan? Maggie dipped her head to hide her smile as a fledgling sense of pride and accomplishment swelled inside her. She could be a detective. She could help these victims.

  But there was little opportunity to savor the success of her idea. Without any official dismissal, the meeting seemed to be ending. Everyone at the table was getting up, gathering their things, moving with a purpose. It was business as usual at the Fourth Precinct, and Maggie was starting to feel less like the gatekeeper between KCPD and the public, and more like an integral part of the task force.

  Detective Montgomery opened the door. “Annie, see if your lab can at least identify what brand of vinegar it is and find out where our perp could have bought the stuff.”

  “Could be a long list.”

  “It’d be more than we’ve got now.”

  Kate Kilpatrick filed past the red-haired detective. “I’ll pull the files from ten years ago and start reading through them. See if there’s any mention of vinegar or empty buildings in the victim statements.”

  Maggie was the last one to reach the door. “What should I do?” she asked. “Besides copy details of the meeting to everyone.”

  Detective Montgomery thought for a moment, then closed the door behind them. “Get with the doc on those old files and line up some interviews with the previous victims. You got Bailey Austin to open up, maybe you can get one of them to remember something more, as well.”

  “Yes, sir.” Feeling more like the detective she aspired to be than she’d ever felt before, Maggie quickly crossed the floor back to her front desk station across from the third-floor elevators.

  She spent some time at her desk, copying the meeting notes into an email and sending them out to Chief Taylor and the task force members. She verified the duty log for the day, then agreed to cover the desk for Officer Allen’s fifteen-minute break so that he could manage the front on his own while she went upstairs to Dr. Kilpatrick’s office to work on the victim interviews with her.

  Maggie was giving a visitor directions when the elevator doors opened. Her training to be the precinct’s first line of defense as well as its first opportunity to welcome guests had her automatically turning to identify the elevator’s occupants.

  She never heard the woman’s thank-you or saw her walk away. Maggie’s pulse was thundering in her ears, and her vision had narrowed down to the shiny bald pate and deceptively handsome face of Daniel Gable Wheeler.

  He was coming this way, sauntering across the marble floor in his tan work coveralls. His laser-blue eyes locked onto hers, and he was smiling. He grinned that charming smile that had once knocked the teenage Maggie off he
r feet as though the abuse, the threats, the rape and that fire last night had never happened.

  Run. Scream. Fight. Do something.

  Danny rested his elbows on the counter and laced his tattooed fingers together. “Hey, baby. The guy downstairs said I needed to sign in here and get a visitor’s pass.”

  Any civilized greeting escaped her. “You can’t be here.”

  “Sure I can, Mags. Where do I sign?” The words carved into his knuckles—LOVE, HATE—were a mocking testament to their relationship, and gave graphic emphasis to the damage those powerful hands had done. “I volunteered to come in for questioning on the Rose Red Rapist case. I’m meeting with a Detective Fensom. I’m all about proving my innocence.”

  Fat chance. The sooner she got him away from her and out of the building, the better.

  “Fine. When’s your appointment?” She lay the clipboard and a visitor’s pass on top of the counter and reached for the phone. While Danny signed the registry, she checked the duty log for Nick Fensom’s extension. “I’ll get you set up in an interview room and let him know you’re here.”

  The hand that said LOVE shot over the counter and grabbed her wrist. Maggie instantly tensed and tried to pull away. Her struggle was subtle and brief. What if someone else on the floor saw her unable to properly defend herself? What if she went ballistic and created an incident that shouldn’t have to happen? And why couldn’t she decide what to do? It wasn’t the offense of his unwanted touch that stunned her, but that the bruising strength still felt so familiar. Had she come such a short way in ten years that Danny’s touch could still make her brain and backbone shut down like this?

  “I’m being friendly here, Mags. And I don’t even get a hello? I thought I’d at least earn a little credit for helping KCPD with the biggest case they’ve had in years.” He leaned in for a more intimate whisper. “Actually, I could care less about anyone else here. I saw your name in the paper—read that this was your investigation. Now I understand why you sicced those uniformed officers on me at work to get an alibi for the last attack. You’re moving up in the world. I’m proud of you, baby. I’m here to help you.”

  If he’d showed her anything but that sincerity in his eyes, she might have cowered. But some out-of-practice instinct that warned her never to believe what those blue eyes said finally kicked in. She could do the hushed intensity thing, too. “Danny, let go of me now or I’ll throw you in a jail cell instead of an interview room. There are thirty cops working on this floor at any given time. If you try anything, all I have to do is say the word and they’ll be here to back me up. So let go.”

  With an arch of one dark eyebrow, he eased his grip and she pulled away. While Danny put his hands up and retreated a step, Maggie put the call in to Nick.

  A few minutes later, Maggie led Danny into an interview room and closed the door. “Detective Fensom is taking an important call right now. He’ll be here as soon as he can.” She knew standard procedure was to offer an uncuffed, voluntary interviewee a cup of coffee or glass of water, but she had no such niceties to offer her ex. It was all she could do to point to a chair. “Have a seat.”

  She waited until his butt was firmly planted in the chair before heading for the door. But escaping from Danny had never been easy.

  “I saw your new boyfriend at the ballpark.”

  Maggie halted with her hand on the doorknob. “So you were there watching my son.”

  “I was waiting for you.” He made his appearance sound like a romantic gesture. “I figured you’d come pick up the kid. Didn’t know you’d have a boy toy to come do it for you instead.”

  No argument about Travis being their son. No remorse about driving away and leaving a child all alone after dark. No indication that he even remembered the daughter he’d taken to keep Maggie from divorcing him, and then allowed to wander into traffic and be hit by that car.

  Angel’s death had been the incentive to plot her escape from their marriage. Danny had punished her within an inch of her life the night he’d caught her on the elevator leaving him. Keeping Travis safe gave her the incentive to turn the doorknob. Years of training and therapy and healing gave Maggie the strength to believe Danny could never punish her again unless she let him.

  “I’ll guard the door from the outside until Detective Fensom gets here.”

  “I can see how ol’ Peg Leg would make a good babysitter.”

  Maggie froze at the offhand comment. The logical decision to get away warred with the emotional need to put Danny in his place, to teach him a lesson, to best him somehow for saying something so crude about the man she was falling in love with.

  Before that revelation could fully register, Maggie pulled the door shut to hear Danny’s next snide comment.

  “But he ain’t all there, baby. He can’t give it to you the way I can.”

  She wasn’t the one who was going to be forced out of a room at her own workplace. Task force or not, Danny Wheeler had to go. Maggie stepped away from the door and faced him. “Get out. Unless you plan to confess to stalking me at my apartment and setting a fire in the basement, you need to leave.”

  “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, baby.” His blue eyes hooded with an expression she supposed was his version of longing and regret. “We were once so good together, Mags. That’s all I want. Like I said, I’m sober now. I’m holdin’ down a job.” He leaned across the table and reached out to her. “On our wedding day you promised you’d love me forever. I haven’t forgotten those vows. I want to get back to the way things were when everything was right between us.”

  Maggie ignored the outstretched hand. “Nothing was ever right, Danny. I was just too afraid to realize I could have something better.”

  His fingers curled into a fist and he pushed to his feet. “And you think screwing old Sergeant Hopalong is better than being with me?”

  How had she ever thought Danny Wheeler was hero material? Shaking her head, she turned for the door. “Leave, Danny. Now. Or I’ll call your P.O. and tell him you violated your restraining order. I’ll tell Detective Fensom that you had to reschedule your meeting.”

  She never reached the doorknob. Danny grabbed her by the collar and swung her around to slam her up against the wall. “You uppity bitch. I tell you when we’re done talkin’.” His hand curled around her throat, and his hips butted up against hers, anchoring her in place with her toes barely touching the floor. But her hands were free. She clawed at his wrist but was rewarded with a tighter choke hold and his hot breath in her face. “I’m trying to be reasonable here. You won’t meet with me when I ask nicely, so we have to have this conversation any way I can.”

  Rage spiraled up and twisted with the instinctive need to free herself. Think. Take him down. Do it!

  Danny was the same person he’d been ten years ago. Maggie was not.

  Twisting her legs free and fighting for breath, Maggie thrust her palm up under his nose, hard enough to feel the pop inside. Danny instantly loosened his grip and grabbed his bloody nose. “You stupid, stupid—”

  Maggie sucked in a reviving gulp of air, pulled her gun and put it to his throat, backing him up until he hit the table and the steel legs screeched across the floor. “Keep. Your. Hands. Off. Me.”

  Just as quickly as the attack had come, Danny’s outburst subsided. His warm blood dripped on her fingers and he started to laugh. Holding one hand up in surrender, he ignored the threat of the gun pressing into his neck and pulled a bunch of tissues out of the box on the table to dab at his nose. “Man, how I love that Irish temper of yours. So much passion there. Nobody ever could control that fire but me.”

  Control her? “Oh, my God.”

  Stunned by how thoroughly she’d just lost it, horrified to think she’d sunk to the same gut-level violence that Danny thrived on, Maggie pulled her gun away from the imprint she’d left on his throat. She’d just earned a college degree that had trained her to outthink rather than just react to a suspect like this. And outthink him was
exactly what she intended to do.

  He was still laughing when she grabbed him by the front of his coveralls and put him facedown on the table. “Turn around, Danny. Hands behind your back. You have any weapons on you? Anything sharp or dangerous?” After patting down his pockets, she handcuffed his wrist to the table and pushed him back down into the chair. “You’re looking at assault on a police officer and violating a restraining order.”

  He grinned up at her. “You need my help to solve this case, Mags. I have friends on the street. I hear things.”

  “I don’t need anything from you.” She opened the door again, swung it wide so that any and everybody who walked down this hallway could see the man she’d handcuffed there. Not that she had any intention of staying. She met Danny’s smile with the sternest, strongest look she could manage. “Don’t you ever talk about John Murdock like that again. A woman would be lucky to have him love her. He’s more of a man than you’ll ever think about being.”

  “John, is it? And you’re defending him? So it is personal.”

  She shook her head, remembering how impossible it was to reason with him, and stepped out into the cleaner air of the hallway. “Goodbye, Danny.”

  Lawrence Boyle was strolling down the hallway, peeking into each open doorway he walked past. Maggie sidestepped him when he approached, but he moved with her, blocking her path. “Ma’am?” He greeted her with a smile, with his hands held up in front of him to show he meant her no harm. “I was looking for Danny? The guy at the front desk said he was back here.”

  “In there.”

  “Whoa, dude, your nose.” Deciding her personal desire to leave Danny as far behind as possible was secondary to leaving two former felons together and unguarded, Maggie reluctantly waited against the wall opposite the open door. Danny’s boss turned his thick neck to ask her about the handcuffs. “Is he under arrest?”