Bluer Than Velvet

by Mary McBride

  “What a zoo,” Laura said.

  “Yep. Just the way Ed Harrelson likes it,” Sam snarled, pulling on the emergency brake. “The current sheriff has a tendency to confuse publicity with good law enforcement.”

  “What do you want me to do, Sam?” Laura asked, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from all the flashing lights.

  “I want you to stay right here,” he said. “I’ll leave the keys in the ignition. If anything happens…”

  Her eyes widened perceptibly and locked on his. “Don’t even say that.”

  “Hey.” He took her sweet, fearful face in both his hands. “Nothing’s going to happen. I promise. But you remember Charlie, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, just tell him your situation. He’s a good guy. He’ll know what to do.”

  “You’re a good guy,” she whispered. “I wish you didn’t…”

  “Shh. Me, too, babe.” He leaned forward and kissed her softly, wishing he never had to stop, hoping like hell he wasn’t kissing her goodbye.

  After she lost sight of Sam’s broad shoulders in the crowd, Laura moved over to the driver’s seat just to feel his warmth lingering in the leather upholstery.

  He’ll be fine, she kept telling herself. Janey wasn’t going to shoot him. She loved him, for heaven’s sake. But the thought that should have been such a comfort turned frightening when she remembered Artie’s angry proclamation. If I can’t have you, then by God nobody else will either.

  She reached to turn the key so she could lower her window, then craned her neck to catch one more glimpse of Sam.

  “Looking for Sam?”

  At the sound of the female voice, Laura jerked her head around and came face-to-face with a woman she recognized instantly, but no matter how hard she wracked her brain, she couldn’t attach a name to the pretty face framed by soft brown hair, the perfect teeth, the delicate indentation in the chin. Was she a customer from Nana’s Attic? No, not in that silk designer suit. Somebody who owned an antique store on Russell Boulevard? Who?

  “I’m sorry.” Laura felt like an idiot. “I know you, I’m sure I do, but I can’t…”

  The woman’s quick laughter cut her off. “That’s okay. I’m Linda Sturgis, Channel Five News. Don’t feel bad. Everybody knows the face, but the name usually doesn’t kick in for a few minutes.”

  “Oh, sure. I’m sorry it didn’t click at first.” Laura immediately envisioned the Sturgis woman behind the huge polished sweep of a television newsroom desk, sitting beside her male counterpart, What’s-his-name, the one whose face looked as if it had been sculpted out of Ivory soap.

  “I saw you drive up with Sam,” the woman said as she ran her perfectly shaped and painted fingertips along the edge of the window glass. “Let me guess. You’re the reason dear old Janey finally went off the rails.”

  Laura blinked. “Well, I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

  Dear old Janey? That didn’t strike Laura as an observation from a professional journalist, exactly. It sounded personal. Almost too personal. Those long fingernails tracing the window frame began to look more like claws.

  “Don’t worry,” Linda Sturgis said with a wave of one of those finely manicured hands. “This isn’t going on the ten o’clock news. Trust me. I’m just curious. I had a thing for Sam when he was sheriff here.” She laughed. “Me and half the reporters in town. Whenever anything newsworthy happened out here, my God, we’d nearly trample one another at the station to get the assignment.”

  “Oh.”

  It seemed a safe enough response. Far more genteel, Laura thought, than hitting the window switch and crushing the woman’s claws between the glass and the door frame. Right now the woman was studying Laura’s face as if it were under a microscope. “Well, I guess you’ve known Sam for a long time, then?” she asked, not knowing what else to say.

  “Never as well as I wanted to. Well, he was seriously involved with that prima donna pianist.” Linda Sturgis shrugged. “Funny. I always assumed Crazy Janey was hanging around Sam as her sister’s attack dog, sent to keep other interested females at bay.” She angled her head toward the house in the direction Sam had gone. “This little incident puts it all in a brand new light, I guess. Crazy Janey appears to have a mind of her own, psychotic as it is, not to mention a definite agenda of her own. Mind if I ask your name?”

  Laura minded very much. The last thing she needed in her current situation was publicity. “I’d rather not say,” she replied.

  “That’s fine. It’s off-the-record, honest. I’m just curious. How long have you known Sam?”

  “About a week.”

  “Ooh. You do quick work,” the reporter said with an appreciative little leer. “So, then, I assume you didn’t know the other sister. La Grande Jenny.”

  Laura shook her head.

  “That’s too bad. I thought maybe you could clarify something I was really curious about.” She grinned, leaning closer to the window, lowering her voice. “I was always dying to know if she took her tiara off when she went to bed with him.”

  Not only did the remark strike Laura as offensive, but the idea of anybody else in Sam’s bed had her hands almost curling in fists. She turned away from the reporter to peer in the direction of the house, hoping for even a small glimpse of him. Where was he? What was happening?

  “Don’t worry,” Linda Sturgis said. “Even if he does go in, it’ll take a while to get everything in place.”

  “If he goes in?” Laura echoed.

  “Sure. That’s what Crazy Janey’s demanding. The kid comes out if Sam goes in. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. I didn’t.” The words came out as little more than breath.

  “So, anyway, are you and Sam…?”

  “Excuse me.” Laura opened the truck’s door so fast that it nearly knocked the reporter off her feet.

  “Yeah. Well. I guess that pretty much answers my question,” the woman called as Laura hurried away.

  “I’m calling the shots here, Sam, and you’re not going in there until I say you’re going in. Do you hear me?”

  Ed Harrelson stopped just short of poking his finger into the Kevlar vest that Sam was strapping on, and Sam was trying hard not to swat the wiry little rodent out of his way. No wonder just about every guy in the department had begged Sam to run for the job again. Ed wasn’t a sheriff. He was a goddamned master of ceremonies.

  “You need to get your men in place, Ed,” Sam said quietly, dredging up what little patience he could. “I’ll hand the little girl out the window on the south side of the house. There. The one with the missing shutter. Somebody’s got to be there to take her the minute I open the window.”

  Sam had just gotten off the phone with Janey whose grip on reality sounded tenuous at best. Jenny, she claimed, was ordering her to do this. Jenny was furious about the bimbo, the slut, the sleazy blonde that Sam had allowed into his house. Jenny was going to make Janey hurt Samantha in order for Sam to see the error of his ways. She wanted to see Sam. Alone. Now.

  “I’m not so sure about that particular window,” Ed said. “See, the lights are all set up out here in front. We’ve got at least a quarter of a million people… What time is it?” He shot his gold watch from the sleeve of his dress uniform. “Hell, by ten o’clock we could have half a million people sitting on the edge of their seats, holding their breath, wanting to see that the kid’s all right.”

  “Which window are we talking about, Sheriff Harrelson?” asked a guy with a mini cam balanced on his shoulder. “If it’s not in front, then we’re going to need a little extra time to move some of our lights.”

  “See,” Harrelson muttered to Sam.

  He wanted to jerk the little publicity hound up by his pressed lapels and tell him he was working for the county, dammit, not Channels Five, Six and Eight, and that if he didn’t do this right, the film at eleven was going to be a bloodbath instead of the smooth and efficient rescue of one little girl and the gentle taking into custody of
one very sick woman.

  Somebody stuck a microphone in Sam’s face, and he batted it away. Then somebody put a hand on his arm, and he turned, a curse on his lips, only to see Laura’s huge blue eyes in her pale, worried face.

  “Hey,” he said softly, turning so he stood between her and the house, just in case Janey took another potshot.

  “Somebody told me you’re going into the house,” she said, her gaze taking in the flak jacket then returning to his face. “Do you have to, Sam? Isn’t there some other way? Or somebody else?”

  “It’ll be okay. I’ve known Janey all her life. I can talk to her.”

  “And what if she won’t listen to you? Then what? My God, she’s got a gun.”

  “That’s what this is for.” He gestured to the vest.

  Laura shivered, rubbing her upper arms, and Sam was just about to reach out to do the same when it suddenly occurred to him that Janey, only a hundred or so yards away in her dark and battened down house, was watching all the commotion in her front yard, seeing everything on television. She’d told him that on the phone. My God. If she saw him standing next to Laura…

  Just then a microphone poked between them and a bank of bright lights flared. A woman’s voice urgently announced, “This is Linda Sturgis, live at the scene where the hostage drama continues to unfold. I’m speaking with former county sheriff, Sam Zachary. Sam, what’s happening?”

  Sam swore roughly, unmindful of the tens of thousands of viewers, but thinking of a single des perate and dangerous one, her wild eyes locked on an image of Laura mere inches away from him.

  Then a gun went off inside the house. Sam knew instantly that Janey had just blown her rival off the screen.

  He had to go in now.

  It had been two hours since Sam had thrust Laura at Officer Travis and told him to get her out of sight. Not too long after that, little Samantha had been safely passed through a window, greeted with cheers and applause, then carried to a patrol car and summarily whisked away. To Laura, those two hours felt more like two years.

  “It’s so damned quiet,” she said to Charlie whose head was tipped back against the driver’s seat of Sam’s Blazer.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the house a moment. “That’s probably a good sign,” he said. “Sam knows what he’s doing. A couple of years ago he talked a kid out of jumping from a sixth-floor window.”

  That didn’t really surprise Laura. She thought even if the kid had succeeded in jumping, Sam would have swooped down, cape flying, and carried him safely to the ground. He must have been a wonderfully competent sheriff.

  “Why did he quit, Charlie?” she asked, searching for a better answer than Sam’s terse I stopped being good at it.

  The officer did a bit of shifting and squirming, obviously not comfortable with the subject, before he said, “I can’t say for certain, mind you, but if I had to come up with a reason, I’d say Sam probably blamed himself for Jenny’s death. Janey’s sister. His fiancée. You know.”

  “I know.” An image of a tiara passed through her brain. Laura was quick to dismiss it. “But I thought Jenny was killed in a car accident. Alone. Sam wasn’t driving, was he?”

  “No. But he heard the call on his radio and was first on the scene. He couldn’t get her out. Man, that car was a mess. It took two hours and the Jaws of Life to finally open it up enough to get her body out.”

  “Poor Sam.”

  “Yeah. He was in pretty bad shape. He quit about two weeks after that, I think. Just couldn’t hack it. We were all pretty worried about what he might do.”

  Laura was wishing she had known Sam then, even though she knew he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. “He’s better now, don’t you think, Charlie? I mean, he seems to have a handle on his grief.”

  He nodded. “Seems fine to me. That’s why I keep pestering him to come back to work. There’s an election in two months, and everybody knows Sam would win over Harrelson hands down. It’d be a landslide. Hell, that’s probably why Harrelson didn’t throw a fit trying to keep him from going in there tonight. He’s probably hoping Sam won’t walk out.”

  Laura made a whimpering little sound, and the officer immediately apologized. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, ma’am. He’ll come out of there just fine. Probably any minute now. You just watch.”

  She watched like the proverbial hawk, one with its heart in its throat, all the while thinking about how quickly Sam had become a part of her life. An irreplaceable part. Of all the things she had lost this past week, nothing came even close to the possible loss of Sam. She wondered how that had happened when she’d sworn it never would. She wondered what she ought to do about it. Stay or run like hell?

  The scene around Janey’s small frame house had taken on the appearance of a siege. Somebody had even had the good sense to bring in a portable potty, Laura noticed, and a snack truck was doing a brisk business with cops and reporters and curious bystanders alike. It seemed more like an impromtu celebration than a potential deathwatch. Suddenly, in spite of all her anxieties, she didn’t think she could keep her eyes open another five minutes without the benefit of coffee.

  “How about some coffee, Charlie?” Laura tapped her pocket, still stuffed with the vending machine quarters she hadn’t had a chance to use back at the Havenrest. “I’m buying.”

  “Sounds good, but maybe you shouldn’t…”

  “It’s just over there. How do you take it? Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black’s fine. Thanks.”

  “Okay. Be back in a jiff.”

  In the dimness of Janey’s bedroom, lit only by the screen of a small black and white TV, Sam surreptitiously checked his watch. It had been two hours since he’d handed a sleepy, but terrified Samantha through the window, and almost an hour since he’d convinced Janey to take a tranquilizer. Her speech patterns and erratic movements had somewhat reverted to normal, and as best as he could determine, her eyelids seemed to be getting a bit heavy.

  She’d calmed down considerably since he’d first come in the house. She was no longer claiming she heard Jenny’s voice or that Jenny was making her do these things. But subdued or not, Janey was far from done.

  And she still had a fistful of Browning semi-automatic with a probable sixteen or seventeen shots left. One, he figured, had shattered his kitchen window. Another had blown out the screen of the TV in her living room. When this was over, Sam was going to find out what idiot sold the gun to her in her obvious agitated condition and see that the guy wound up selling fireworks in a stall out on Highway 9.

  “Jenny didn’t love you, Sam,” she said for the fiftieth time.

  “That’s what you said, Janey.”

  “And you still don’t believe me,” she shrieked.

  “It doesn’t make any difference whether I believe you or not. Jenny’s dead.”

  “Thank God for miracles, large and small and all those in between,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes and an agitated wave of the pistol. “She didn’t deserve you. I don’t know why you never understood that. Why you still don’t understand. Everybody knew. Everybody.”

  She turned her gaze to the little television screen where a camera was panning her front yard. “Those ghouls out there. Look at them. Why don’t they leave? You’re here now. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “They just want to make sure nobody gets hurt,” he said, narrowing his eyes on Harrelson, who was deep in conversation with a couple of the SWAT guys. Instinctively, Sam looked to make sure Janey’s curtains were drawn tightly closed, thus preventing any dramatic attempts at a head shot to end the standoff that the publicity-prone sheriff no doubt considered anti-climactic now that Samantha was safely out of the picture.

  The camera panned away from Harrelson, across the lawn, then zoomed in on lousy Louie’s snack wagon where business was booming. Sam could barely suppress an oath. When he’d been sheriff, he’d ordered Louie to keep a minimum of five hundred yards from any situation in progress, and
the first time Louie had disregarded that, Sam had personally flattened all the tires on his movable roach coach and then ticketed him for parking too long in a one-hour zone.

  By God, maybe he would run for sheriff again this autumn. If Laura objected to living so far out in the country, then he’d get a place in Colterville or Monroe, both well within the county limits. That thought, unbidden, out of the blue, startled him so much that Sam inhaled sharply.

  Janey aimed the pistol in his direction. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sam. I mean it. I haven’t decided yet just what I’m going to do about us.”

  Neither had Sam, but the threat brought him a bit closer to a decision. It was time to wrap this up, and it had been his intention from the beginning to allow Janey to preserve as much dignity as possible, for her own sake as well as Samantha’s. He had hoped that she’d simply get tired and hand over the weapon, then he’d spirit her out the back door and drive her to the hospital.

  That wasn’t going to happen now.

  Crazy Janey was still cruising the outer limits of reality, and he didn’t have the expertise to reel her safely in. Unfortunately, he was trained as a soldier, not as a shrink. He could have taken Janey by force the moment he’d walked in with only minimal danger to himself, but he hadn’t done it then and he wasn’t going to do it now. He wouldn’t put her in cuffs and wrestle her outside for half the state to see on their TV screens or for one of Harrelson’s snipers to squeeze off a nervous shot at.

  His only hope was to render Janey unconscious. And the only way he was going to get close enough to apply the proper choke hold was to kiss her, to draw her willingly into a semilethal embrace.

  “What’ll it be, miss?”

  The man with the grizzled gray hair and greasy T-shirt leaned out of the window at the rear of his truck and pointed his finger at Laura as if it were a gun. He seemed to be having much too good a time, she thought, considering the circumstances.

  “Two large coffees,” she said. “Both black.”

  “That’ll be three bucks,” he told her.