When No One Is Watching

by Natalie Charles - When No One Is Watching

  None of this made sense. This damn case... He’d caught the serial killer and saved at least one woman’s life, and none of that made any impact in Mia’s life. He wanted to fix her problems and help her to heal. He wanted her to feel safe for a change, wanted to try to fix all that anxiety that made her wake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t tell him about her nightmares, but he knew they were about Lena or her attacker, and he couldn’t close either file. He couldn’t fix her.

  “It’s difficult to not have answers.” He saw from the shift in her eyes that he was entering dangerous territory, but he proceeded nevertheless. “Sometimes cases remain unsolved for a long time despite our best efforts, until one day there’s a break—”

  “I can’t wait for ‘one day,’” Mia said. “I want to know what happened to my sister, and I want to know what happened to me, and I thought you did, too.”

  “Now, wait a minute. You know damn well that I’m working hard to find answers for you, Mia—”

  “But here I’m dropping something into your lap, and I don’t think you’re even going to follow through to investigate, are you?” She crossed her arms across her chest and looked at him with wide hurt eyes. “Are you going to talk to D’Augostino?”

  They locked gazes, and Gray bristled at the challenge in her eyes. “This is my file now. I call the shots, and I decide who gets investigated.”

  She flinched, wounded, and picked up the papers that were scattered across the bed. Gray instantly regretted snapping at her. He reached for one of her wrists to still her movement, holding her as if she might break. “You really think there’s something to this?”

  She was still, her eyes fixed on the bedspread. “I always had the sense that he was in love with Lena. Lots of men were, so I didn’t think too much of it. But now that I suspect he had a key to her apartment, and that he was the lead on the investigation...” She looked up at him. “I’m not crazy, Gray.”

  No, she wasn’t. He sighed and ran his thumb gently along the underside of her wrist. “I’m trying. I promise you.”

  “She was pregnant.” Her voice cracked. “It’s not in the file. Mark told me, and I can’t stop thinking about that. She was so vulnerable, and someone hurt her.”

  Damn, did that rip through him. “Let me do some investigating, okay? I’ll look into it.”

  She seemed dissatisfied with the answer, and she didn’t smile. After a moment, however, she nodded grudgingly. “Okay.”

  The next morning, he arrived at the station early in the hopes of confronting D’Augostino first thing. He’d barely slept. The images came darting through his mind like comets. D’Augostino hadn’t killed Lena. Gray could have gone through the cops in the department and selected the bad eggs—the cops who had big heads and confident swaggers, the ones who firmly believed that the ends justified the means and who lied routinely on the stand and in their paperwork because fiction was cleaner than fact. If Mia had cast suspicion on any of those cops, Gray wouldn’t have flinched. Sometimes people didn’t surprise you. But D’Augostino?

  They’d started together. When his wife left, D’Augostino had taken him out for beer. Not just once but anytime he needed to talk. Hadn’t Gray returned the favor when the woman D’Augostino had been pursuing had rejected him?

  Realization washed over Gray, cold as ice. They’d always gotten along, except for a period of time last spring when D’Augostino had told him about a woman he was crazy over.

  “I’m in love with her,” he’d said one night at the bar, swiping his hand across his face as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “She’s funny, she’s smart and she’s the hottest woman I’ve ever seen, and I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  Gray had finished his first beer and ordered another. He remembered how he’d once felt the same way about his wife, and look how that turned out. “So? You’re in love with the most perfect person ever. I don’t see the problem with that.”

  D’Augostino had his elbows propped up on the bar, his head in his hands. The bartender set another beer in front of Gray, and he took a generous gulp. “Seriously, what’s the problem, Joe? Does she think you’re a creep or something?”

  “No.” He’d brought his head up then. “Thing is, I think she has feelings for me, too.”

  “Even better.” The words turned sour in Gray’s mouth, and he realized how much he resented other people’s happiness and luck in love. “So what are you doing here with me, other than trying to wring a few free sympathy beers? By the way, if I determine that you’re BS’ing me about all of this, you’re picking up the tab, buddy.” D’Augostino was quiet for a long enough stretch that Gray quipped, “What, was she born a man or something? Because, look, I don’t care—”

  “She’s engaged.”

  D’Augostino said it so softly that at first Gray wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly over the loud din of the bar. “Did you say engaged? As in, she’s going to marry someone else?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’re not in love with her.” Gray took another generous gulp of his beer and set the glass down a little too firmly. “That’s not cool, Joe. To go after another man’s fiancée like that.”

  “Gray—”

  “You want me to help you justify it? To give you excuses for why your love for her means more than his does?” He jabbed his index finger in D’Augostino’s chest. “Man, that’s dirty. Real dirty. And if she’s in love with you while she’s engaged to someone else, then she’s playing dirty, too.”

  “I know you’re bitter about what happened with Annie—”

  “Damn right, I’m bitter.”

  “But this is different. She doesn’t love him, and she’s going to call off the wedding—”

  “Know what, Joe? I’ll bet Annie told her beau the same thing, that she didn’t love me anymore, so it’s okay to fool around. Maybe she told him I was a scumbag workaholic, too. Hell, maybe she lied and said I liked to push her around and that leaving me was just a formality. And you know what? It’s not. That’s bull. If she’s not in love with this fiancé of hers, then tell her to call off the wedding and do this the honest way.”

  Gray sat fuming, staring at his half-empty glass of beer and thinking that there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to numb his rage. “You know what I’ve been through,” he said. “And you thought I would be the person you could talk to about this? That I’d make you feel better about it?”

  “It’s not like that, Gray.” D’Augostino searched for the right words. “We haven’t done anything wrong. It’s more like I have these feelings, and I don’t know what to do—”

  “Here’s what you do—you forget about your feelings and you act like a real man.” Gray reached into his pocket to remove his billfold, peeling off bills and throwing them on the bar. “If she has a problem with that, then she’s not serious. If you have a problem with that, then don’t call me when the fiancé comes knocking on your door.”

  “I was just looking for some advice—”

  “That’s my advice. You want some more? People don’t like being cheated on. It makes them angry enough to do some crazy things.” He stood. “I still bought your drinks, so stay and enjoy them. I’ve had enough.”

  Gray and D’Augostino often worked closely, so he couldn’t ignore him, but after that exchange, things between them had been strictly business for a while. Then one day, D’Augostino had pulled Gray aside in the locker room and said simply, “That thing I told you about? You were right. It’s all over.”

  Gray had studied him, waiting for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, he’d nodded and said, “Good.” That had been the end of it.

  He was thinking about this exchange as he stood in front of D’Augostino’s office door. The pieces were falling into place. D’Augostino had met Lena in a coffee shop. They’d formed a friendship and he’d developed romantic feelings for her, even though she was engaged. She’d liked him enough to give her the key to her apartment...or maybe D’Au
gostino had taken that key himself.

  Gray closed his eyes. His job was to deal with the worst of humanity, and nothing should surprise him anymore, but sometimes he wished he still believed that some people were reliably good at the core.

  He rapped on D’Augostino’s office door, then stepped back and waited. Inside he heard a shuffle and the closing of a desk drawer. Then the fall of footsteps and a shadow across the frosted glass, and the door opened. “Hey, Lieutenant,” D’Augostino said. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Come in.”

  Gray stepped inside and immediately closed the door behind him. “Joe, I need to see your keys.”

  D’Augostino smiled, narrowing his eyes slightly as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard Gray correctly. “I’m sorry. You want to see my keys?”

  “That’s right.”

  He shrugged and walked toward his desk to open the top drawer and fish out a key ring. “Not the station keys,” Gray said, recognizing the Boston Police Department shield on the key chain. “I need your personal keys.”

  He detected some nervousness now as D’Augostino reached deeper into the drawer. “I should make you get a warrant,” he quipped as he extracted a smaller set of keys. He tossed the set to Gray. “You gonna tell me what you’re looking for?”

  But Gray barely registered the question. He saw it right away. Mia was right.

  “What’s this unlock, Joe?” He dangled the ring by the leopard-print key. “And I know the answer already. I’m only asking because I want to hear you say it, so if you lie to me, so help me—”

  The man’s face went ashen, but he maintained eye contact. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Lieutenant.”

  “It’s just Gray right now. This is personal. Answer the damn question.”

  “It’s a key to Lena’s apartment.”

  Gray had seen eyes like that growing up in the woods of Maine. They were the wild, frightened eyes of an animal confused by an approaching vehicle, not sure whether to stay put or run. “You know what my next question is, Joe.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “I know how this looks. I do. But I forgot I even had it. She gave it to me a long time ago.”

  “Was she the one you were in love with?”

  His eyes widened. “The one— No. Oh, no, that’s not the way it was at all.”

  “Then enlighten me.”

  D’Augostino sat on the edge of his desk. “Lena gave me that key because she was going to be out of town for a long weekend. She was going away with Mark. She wanted me to feed her cat and get her mail.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know.... They were going skiing in Vermont, so it must have been sometime in the winter last year. Maybe January.”

  Gray narrowed his gaze, pausing long enough to watch D’Augostino squirm under the scrutiny. “January, huh? And then you decided to keep the key?”

  “She told me to! She said it was a spare and that I could keep it just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what she said. I think it was just a figure of speech.”

  Gray didn’t know what to call the emotion that overcame him. Rage, maybe stemming from a sense of betrayal, or frustration at the way his investigation had been thwarted by someone he trusted. He came at D’Augostino and pushed him up against the wall, pinning him in place with his fists. “I don’t believe a damn word you’re saying right now.” Their faces were inches apart, D’Augostino’s frightened breath bouncing off Gray’s cheek.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” he gasped. Thumbtacks on the corkboard behind him sprinkled to the floor.

  “You’re going to come clean. I want to know everything. Do you understand?”

  D’Augostino’s glare was nearly strong enough to pierce flesh. “Understood. Sir.”

  Gray dropped him as if he was something filthy. Right now he was. He took out his cell phone and began to dial, keeping one eye fixed on D’Augostino, who was smoothing his fist-crumpled shirtfront. “I hope you don’t have anywhere to go,” Gray said.

  “I actually was supposed to be meeting—”

  “Cancel it.” He raised his cell phone to his ear. “You’re going to be preoccupied for a while.”

  * * *

  When she received Gray’s call, Mia had come directly from her office, where she’d been working on a research paper. She brushed her palms down her jeans and white tunic top, feeling underdressed. At least I’m not the one being questioned. This time, the interrogation room was Gray’s office, with Gray seated behind his desk and D’Augostino seated in front of it. Mia was invited to sit next to D’Augostino, and she accepted that seat even though her stomach quivered at the thought. She didn’t know what the next hour or so would reveal, but ever since she’d learned that he had a key to Lena’s apartment, she’d thought differently of him and wondered if he was the shadowy figure who walked with her to the river in her dreams.

  “We’ve established that you have a key to Lena’s apartment,” Gray started, his hands folded on his desk. “You claim that she gave you that key so you could feed her cat and collect her mail while she was skiing with her fiancé, Mark.”

  D’Augostino appeared nonplussed by the pointedness with which Gray addressed him. His legs were splayed, his forearms resting coolly on the arms of the chair. “That’s what I’ve said.”

  “I’m repeating it for Mia’s benefit,” Gray said, saying each word deliberately to underscore his impatience. He looked at her. “Does that make sense to you?”

  She darted a glance in D’Augostino’s direction and then said, “I suppose so. Lena had a cat, and I do remember her mentioning that Joe would be taking care of him while she was away once.”

  Gray nodded. “All right. Let’s say that’s the truth.” He leaned over the desk. “I want to know why, when you knew I was questioning everyone with a key to Lena’s apartment, you conveniently forgot to mention that you had a key.”

  “I forgot I even had it.” He sounded bored with the proceeding and slightly irritated. “She’s dead, Gray. Sorry to be so blunt, Mia, but let’s be honest. She told me to hold on to her key and I did, and then she died last year.”

  “She died,” said Gray, “and, what? You decided that you would keep the key?”

  “I didn’t even think about it at first,” he said with a raw edge to his voice, beginning to show the first signs that his cool facade was cracking. “She was dead, and not just that but murdered by someone who was looking more and more like a serial killer. I know you want to paint me as a bad guy here.” He turned to Mia. “I cared about your sister. She was great. Funny, bright. She had a great future. I was upset about her death, and what was I going to do with the key, anyway? Who was I supposed to give it to? It reminded me of her. She picked out that ridiculous design.”

  A faint smile crossed Mia’s lips. “She loved leopard print.”

  “I’m telling you, when she handed me that key, I thought it was only a matter of time before someone at the station saw it and gave me hell.”

  “This is all very interesting,” Gray said, “but Lena disappeared about a year ago, and you still have that key on your ring. Or maybe you put it back on recently, when you went into her apartment and sent that email to Mia.”

  Now it was D’Augostino’s turn to lean forward. “If I sent that email to Mia, do you think I’d be so stupid to put that key on my key chain? Or to leave it there, for that matter? Wouldn’t removing it be the first thing I’d do?”

  He had a point, but Mia didn’t know what to believe anymore. “You said that you cared about Lena,” she began, treading lightly on what she knew would be sensitive territory. “Was it more than a friendship?”

  He hesitated, looking at Mia and then at Gray and then back at Mia again. “I cared about Lena very much.”

  Mia’s pulse sparked at her wrists. She’d always had the sense that D’Augostino cared more for Lena than he’d let on, and now she saw it practically writte
n across his face in the way he’d darted her question. “Cared about her? You loved her, didn’t you?”

  He started and looked flustered, and for a moment Mia wondered if he was going to deny it. Then he looked at the floor and said, “Yes. I loved her.”

  Something about the sincerity of his confession twisted Mia’s heart in place. Lena was gone, and so was a world of possibilities. Mia hadn’t realized until recently that she’d had hopes for her sister’s future just as she had for her own. Joe D’Augostino must have spent the past year thinking about what could have been, if only...

  Mia frowned. “You loved her? You were the lead investigator on my sister’s file.”

  “I did everything I could to find her and to close that file.”

  “No, that’s not my point.” She shifted in her seat to face him fully. “You couldn’t have been effective. You weren’t impartial. Why didn’t you tell anyone about your relationship with her?”

  “It wasn’t...a relationship.”

  The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. What evidence had been lost because D’Augostino was grieving? What lines had he failed to connect, or what witnesses had he neglected to interview because he was too mired in his own sadness to think clearly? “You loved her?” she said, practically choking on the words. “You have no idea what you may have missed. You may have allowed her killer to go free.”

  “Mia.” Gray rose and rounded his desk. “Let me handle this.”

  “No. I need to ask some questions.” For the first time in as long as she could remember, Mia felt powerful. “I need to know why you would accept this file. Why would you investigate the disappearance of a woman you loved? How could you even think you would be objective?”

  “I should have said something,” he said softly. “I just... I can’t explain it other than to say that I wanted to be the one to find her. I wanted to save her.” He searched her with his dark eyes. “I tried, Mia. I swear to you. I did everything I possibly could.”