by Sandra Brown
“It wouldn’t hurt to tell them that.”
“I’ll make it a priority.”
“It may be that Lozada has spotted them and they’re the only reason he hasn’t attempted something.”
“I thought of that too,” Wick said.
“One thing puzzles me.”
“Just one?”
“Why the phone calls? This isn’t Lozada’s MO. It seems out of character for him, almost careless. He’s never warned a victim before.”
Wick thought about it for a moment. “This time he isn’t doing it for the money. It’s not a job, it’s personal.”
Grace stuck her head through the door and looked at him inquisitively. He motioned her in. She sat near him on the sofa and laid her head on his shoulder. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. He died a little every time he thought of what Lozada could have done to her had he chosen to.
Into the phone he said, “Well, at least we know he’s in Galveston. An APB has already been issued.”
“I hope they’ve been warned to approach with caution. What will he be arrested for?”
“Since he made that call today and it was obscene, both you and Dr. Newton can testify to his stalking her. If we can find him, we can bring him in on that.”
“It’s a flimsy charge, Oren.”
“But it’s all we’ve got.”
“Okay, I’m gonna go smooth Peterson’s feathers now,” Wick said. “Over and out.”
After hanging up, Oren filled Grace in on the latest development.
“How’s Dr. Newton handling it?”
“He says she’s okay. Clean.”
“He likes her.”
“He likes her looks.”
“More than that. I think he might have really fallen this time.”
“In love?” he scoffed. “What else is new? Wick’s been in love with every woman he’s ever taken to bed. His love affairs begin with an erection and end with a climax.”
“And that makes him unique?” she said, laughing. “That speaks for most men.”
“Not me.”
“You’re not most men.”
He kissed her hand again. “I miss the girls.”
“Me too. I talked to them this afternoon. They’re having a great time. Mom’s keeping them entertained, but they miss their friends and are already asking how many more days until they can come home.”
“No time soon, Grace. If there’s a chance in hell that Lozada—”
“I know,” she said, patting his chest. “And I agree completely. I explained it to them.”
“Did they understand?”
“Maybe not completely, but when they’re parents they will. Now come to bed.”
“I can’t sleep now. I gotta go back to the office.”
She stood up and tugged on his hand. “Since when is sleep all we do in bed?”
“Sorry, hon. I’m too tired to be any good in that department.”
She leaned down and kissed him, saying sexily, “Leave everything to me.”
“The policewoman’s in the kitchen.”
“She and I had a heart-to-heart. We won’t be disturbed unless it’s an emergency.”
He was tempted, but he checked his wristwatch and frowned. “I promised to be back in half an hour.”
Grace smiled and reached for him. “Hmm, I do love a challenge.”
It was forty-five minutes before he returned to his desk at headquarters, and, although he hadn’t even napped, he felt considerably refreshed after thirty minutes in bed with Grace. God, he loved that woman.
He knew before asking that there had been no further word from Galveston. Had there been, he would have been called or paged. But he asked anyway. “Nothing,” another detective reported. “But there’s a guy been waiting here to see you.”
“What guy?”
“Over there.”
The unkempt, bespectacled individual sitting in the chair in the corner with his shoulders hunched was gnawing on his index finger cuticle as though it were going to be his last meal.
“What’s he want?” Oren asked.
“Wouldn’t say.”
“Why me?”
“Wouldn’t say that either. Insisted on talking to you and only you.”
Oren looked at the man again, but he was certain he’d never seen him before. Surely he would have remembered. “What’s his name?”
“Get this. Weenie Sawyer.”
Chapter 30
Rennie came up on one elbow. For the past half hour Wick had been standing at the bedroom window, looking out. Motionless, he stood with one arm propped just above his head on the window frame, the other hanging loosely at his side. In that hand he held his pistol. His weight was shifted to his left foot, favoring his right side. His shorts rode low on his hips. The bandage over his incision showed up very white in the dark room.
“Is something wrong?” she whispered.
He looked at her over his shoulder. “No. Sorry I disturbed you.”
“Did you hear—”
“No, nothing.” He walked back to the bed and set his pistol on the table. “Other than the periodic check-ins by the undercovers, it’s been quiet.”
“No word about Lozada?”
“No word. I wish the son of a bitch would show himself and get it over with. This waiting is driving me nuts.” He lay down beside her and stacked his hands behind his head.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Still an hour before sunrise. Were you able to sleep?”
“I dozed.”
“That was about it for me, too.”
For the sake of the microphone that hung loosely on his chest, he was lying, just as she was. They had lain side by side all night, silent and tense, each fully aware that the other was awake but, for their individual reasons, not daring to acknowledge it.
“You should get some sleep, Rennie.”
“I learned to live on very little my first year of internship. It scares me now to think of how many patients I treated while virtually asleep on my feet.”
“Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?”
“No. Actually it wasn’t until my second year in college that I decided to go pre-med.”
“Why then?”
“It sounds banal.”
“You wanted to help your fellow man?”
“I told you it sounded banal.”
“Only if you’re a beauty pageant contestant.”
She laughed softly.
“I don’t think it’s a trite explanation at all,” he continued. “That’s the reason I wanted to be a cop.”
“I would have thought you wanted to follow in your big brother’s footsteps.”
“That too.”
“It was a good career choice, Wick.”
“You think?”
“I can’t see you sitting behind a desk for eight hours a day. Eight minutes a day. I should have known you were lying when you tried to pass yourself off as a computer software salesman.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You had a job to do.”
“I still do.”
Which brought them around to the subject of Lozada again. She rolled onto her side to face him. “What do you think he’ll do?”
“Honestly?”
“Please.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“What about Detective Wesley?”
“Oren doesn’t know either. I’ve been studying Lozada for years, but the only thing I know with any certainty is that when he strikes, we won’t see it coming. It’ll be like the sting from one of his scorpions. We won’t see it coming.”
“Chilling thought.”
“Damn right it is. That’s what makes him so good.” They were quiet for a time, then he turned his head and looked across at her. “Did he sexually abuse you, Rennie?”
“He tore my shirt open to see if I was wearing a wire. He thought—”
“Not Lozada.” With a deliberate motion, he
switched off the mike. “T. Dan.”
“What? No! Never.”
“Anyone?”
“No. What made you think that?”
“Sometimes when girls turn promiscuous in their teens it’s because they’ve been abused as children.”
She smiled sadly. “Stop trying to find justification for my misdeeds, Wick. There is none.”
“I’m not trying to justify them, Rennie. Any more than I’d try to justify why I attempted to nail every girl I possibly could. And did.”
“The rules are different for boys.”
“They shouldn’t be.”
“No, but they are.”
“Not in my rule book. Believe me, I’m in no position to cast the first stone, or even to visit the rock pile.” He slid his hand from beneath his head and reached for one of hers. “What I’m having trouble understanding is why you’re punishing yourself for things you did twenty years ago.”
“What’s the statute of limitations on self-chastisement?”
“Pardon?”
“How long since Joe’s murder?”
He released her hand and bounded off the bed. “Not the same.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s relevant.”
He propped his hands on his hips. “Lozada sparked your curiosity. Is that it? He warned that before you… how was it you paraphrased? Before you become too enamored of me, you—”
“Before I take it up the ass. That’s what he said.”
He dropped the belligerent pose, sighed, and raked his fingers through his hair. He sat down on the edge of the mattress with his back to her and propped his forearms on his knees. Head lowered, he massaged his forehead. “I’m sorry, Rennie. You shouldn’t have had to listen to that.” He added quietly, “And I shouldn’t have made you repeat it.”
“Doesn’t matter. My reason for asking about Joe has nothing to do with Lozada.”
“I know.”
“What happened when he was killed?”
He took a deep breath, releasing it on a long, slow exhalation. “At first I was too stunned to think. I couldn’t take it in, you know? Joe was dead. My brother was gone. Forever. He’d been there all my life. And suddenly he was a body in the morgue with a tag on his toe. It seemed”—he spread his hands as though trying to grasp the right word—“unreal.”
He stood up and began pacing the length of the bed. “It didn’t really sink in until the funeral two days later. In the meantime, Oren was working around the clock, despite his own grief, trying to build a case against Lozada. He had the CSU turn over every pebble in that parking lot, look under every blade of grass in the adjacent lawn, in a search to find anything that could remotely be tied to Lozada. Before Oren could obtain a search warrant or have just cause even to bring him in for questioning, he needed something, a shred of evidence that would place Lozada at the scene.
“Then just before the funeral, Oren told me they’d finally found something. A silk thread. A single thread, maroon in color, no more than two inches long, had been found at the scene. The lab had already analyzed it and determined that it came from very expensive goods, the kind sold in this area only in the most exclusive stores. The kind Lozada wore. If they could find a garment made of that fabric in his wardrobe, they’d have him.
“The turnout for the funeral was incredible. Cops show up to honor fallen cops, you know. There wasn’t enough room in the church to accommodate the crowd. The church choir sang, and angels couldn’t have done it better. The eulogies were unbelievably moving. The minister’s message was comforting.
“But I didn’t hear a word of it. None of it. Not the songs, the eulogies, the message about eternal life. All I could think about was that incriminating silk thread.”
He had made his way back to the window and resumed his original pose, staring out toward the ocean. “I lasted through the grave-site service, the final prayer, the twenty-one-gun salute. Grace and Oren hosted the wake. More than a hundred people crowded into their house, so it wasn’t hard for me to slip out unnoticed. This was before Trinity Tower. Lozada lived in a house near the TCU campus. I busted in, even though he was there at the time.
“You can probably guess what happened. I tore his place to pieces. Ripped through his closet like a madman. Upended drawers. Ransacked the whole house. And you know what he was doing all that time? Laughing. Laughing his ass off because he knew I was destroying any chance we had of bringing him to trial for Joe’s murder.
“When I didn’t turn up the piece of clothing I had hoped to find, I went after him. That scar above his eye? Courtesy of me. He wears it proudly because it signifies his biggest victory. To me it represents my lowest point. I honestly believe I would have killed him if Oren hadn’t shown up and physically pulled me off him. I owe Oren my thanks—and my life—for that. And the only reason Lozada didn’t kill me and claim self-defense is because he knew the torture it was going to be for me to live with this.”
He came around slowly and his eyes connected with hers through the darkness. “You have me to thank for all the trouble Lozada’s caused you. If I hadn’t lost my temper along with my sanity, he would be on death row and you wouldn’t be in this mess.”
He chuckled softly and spread his arms to encompass the small room. “And I wouldn’t be in this one. I wouldn’t be living in a hovel, licking my wounds and wearing a rubber band around my wrist to ward off panic attacks like a—”
“Human being,” she said, interrupting. “You said it yourself, Wick. A lot of shit happened to you all at once. Everything you felt, everything you feel now, is human.”
“Well, sometimes I’m a little too human for my own good.” He gave her a weak smile and she returned it. Then he grimaced and swore softly. Reaching for the microphone, he switched it on. “Yes, I hear you. Jesus, do you think I’m deaf? What’s up?” He listened for a moment then said, “Nothing here either. I’m coming out to get some air. Don’t shoot me.”
He moved past her to retrieve his pistol and cell phone, then headed for the door. “I’ll be right outside. If you hear or see anything, holler.”
Sleep was out of the question, so she dressed and was in the kitchen making coffee when he came back in. He was moving quickly. His expression was purposeful.
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re leaving, Rennie. Now. Get dressed.” Then he saw that she was already dressed. “Get your things together. Hurry.”
“Where are we going? What’s happened?”
He kept moving, through the kitchen, through the living room and into the bedroom where he began stuffing discarded clothing back into his duffel. “Wick! Tell me. What’s going on? Has Lozada done something?”
“Yeah. But not in Galveston.”
* * *
He told her nothing more because he didn’t know anything more.
Oren had called him on his cell phone while he was outside breathing in sea air in an attempt to clear his head and his conscience. Telling Rennie about his fuckup had left him with a mixed bag of feelings.
On the one hand, it had been cathartic to talk about it. She was a damn good listener. On the other, talking about it had reminded him that he was the idiot who had secured Lozada’s freedom. He would carry the guilt of that until Lozada was behind bars. Or, better, dead.
Knowing that Lozada was out there mocking his futility made him feel incompetent. Oren’s call had left him feeling powerless.
“We don’t believe Lozada’s still in Galveston,” Oren had said.
“Why not?”
“We have good reason to believe he’s no longer there.”
“What’s with the prepared speech and double talk? This isn’t a press conference. What’s up?”
“Do you have access to Dr. Newton’s cell phone?”
“Why?”
“For the next few hours, it might be best if she didn’t receive any phone calls.”
“Why?”
“Let me sort this out and I’ll get back to you.”
“Sort what out?”
“I can’t tell you until I sort it out.”
“What do you mean you can’t tell me? Where are you?”
“Ever heard of a Weenie Sawyer?”
“Who the devil—”
“Ever heard of him?”
“No! Who is he?”
“Never mind that now. It can keep. You stay put. Keep the doctor occupied. Have a picnic on the beach or something. Peterson’s going to keep his people in place just in case we’re wrong. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll be in touch.”
“Oren—”
He had hung up and when Wick tried to dial him back, his line was busy. He called the Homicide Division and was told that Oren couldn’t be reached but he would be given a message.
He had deliberated for maybe ten full seconds before he returned to the house and alerted Rennie that they were leaving immediately. Picnic on the beach, my ass, he thought. If the FWPD was closing in on Lozada, he wanted to be in on the action, although he couldn’t blame Oren for wanting to keep him away until it was a done deal.
Maybe it wasn’t so smart to drag Rennie along, but what if Oren were wrong and Lozada was still in Galveston? It was possible that Lozada had duped them into thinking he’d left Galveston for just that purpose, to lure Wick back to Fort Worth and clear his way to Rennie. Wick didn’t have enough confidence in Peterson and his crew to protect her. He certainly wouldn’t entrust her to Thigpen. Which left him no alternative but to take her back with him.
Why had Oren suggested that he confiscate her cell phone? Knowing his partner must have a good reason for such a strange request, Wick had placed it in his duffel bag while she was in the bathroom. She didn’t miss it until they were on the far side of Houston and heading north up I-45.
“I think you had it with you in the kitchen,” he lied.
“I’m always so conscientious about keeping it with me. How could I have left it?”
“It’s too late now to go back for it.”
About every ten miles, she questioned him about the phone call that had prompted them to leave so abruptly. “Wesley didn’t tell you anything else?”
“Nothing else.”
“Only that he doesn’t think Lozada is still in Galveston.”