“Back in a sec.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and Jo started on the food, tearing off pieces of the muffaletta to stuff in her mouth between slurps of thick soup. By the time he brought her a Coke and a plate, she’d made a good dent.
She wasn’t sure, at first, that she’d have much of an appetite. But once she got rolling, she didn’t stop until she was scraping the inside of the Styrofoam cup with her finger. She finished the can of Coke and set it down on the table with a rattle.
She leaned back into the cushions, and Adam settled beside her.
“I don’t think you have to worry about the hickey anymore,” he said. “You’ve got a whole new set of bruises to keep it company.”
Jo groaned.
“Are you all right?” He picked up her hands, her palms crisscrossed with scratches and scrapes. He held them so gently. “Tell me where it hurts.”
“Everywhere.”
Mind. Body. Soul.
He traced the line of her jaw with his fingertip, touched her neck where the vague purple bruise he’d made now blended with her new ones.
She willed herself to relax, to give in.
He slipped the bathrobe low on her shoulders, his hands soft as balm on her skin. “How’s that feel?”
“Good.” She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing in the smell of him, the lime of his aftershave, the maleness. He knew so well how to touch her, which buttons to push.
His hand probed her left shoulder, and she stiffened, detecting the change in his touch. It suddenly felt clinical, like an examination.
“You dislocate anything?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Did you let them take you to the hospital for X-rays?”
She blinked. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“How do you know that, Jo? You could have hairline fractures . . .”
Breathe.
“You could have suffered a concussion. Damn it,” he said softly, “you should’ve let them bring you in.”
Jo felt a pounding start at her temples.
“You need to be checked out thoroughly. None of this macho stuff, okay?”
“Please, stop,” she cut him off, felt the thread break. “Don’t treat me like some rookie who doesn’t know any better.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“I don’t need X-rays or MRIs. I’m alive. I’m okay. I’m not dead like Jenny.”
Not like Jenny. Not like Jenny.
“Hey,” Adam said and drew his hands away. “Now it’s my turn to say stop.” He looked at her long and hard, then quietly added, “I didn’t mean to tell you what to do. I never have. I’m just concerned. I love you, and I don’t like to see you hurting.”
“I’m fine,” she said, the same lie she’d told Terry.
“You’re not fine.” He waited, but when she didn’t speak, he said, “C’mon, talk to me, Goose.”
But Jo drew her knees up, hugged her arms around them, playing the roly-poly.
“I get it.” His sigh was filled with frustration.
She felt his weight shift beside her.
He caught his fingers beneath her chin, made her look at him. “You can shut me out all you want, but I’m not leaving. It won’t work, not this time.”
He let her go and got up, began clearing the litter off her coffee table. Without another word, he headed toward the galley kitchen with the remnants of her dinner.
The furnace kicked on, humming, breathing warmth into the room like it was any other chilly night and all was right with the world.
She thought of Patrick Dielman and wondered what kind of nightmares he’d be having tonight, if he could close his eyes at all.
When she finally went to bed, Adam was already there, glasses on the nightstand, head on the pillow. She took off her robe and crawled in beside him, slid close, pressed her bare thigh against his, settled her cheek against his shoulder. Gently, so as not to awaken him, she set her hand on his chest and felt the beat of his heart beneath her palm.
She wanted to clear her mind, to forget what had happened, to think of nothing.
Instead, she thought of Jenny and the son she’d tried so hard to protect. Had she died thinking she had failed him? Like Mama had failed her?
Her mind twisted it all into a nightmare.
She walked slowly down a long hallway. Everything painted white, doors on either side of her. So many of them she couldn’t count. She touched the walls with her palms, moving carefully, floating.
She was supposed to be at Mama’s helping Ronnie pack things up, but the house wasn’t right. As soon as she’d stepped inside, she’d realized nothing was as she’d remembered. There was no wallpaper peeling at the seams, no faded photographs, no plaid sofa or dust-covered lampshades. The walls were too tall, the space too large. She tried to get her bearings, but there was nothing familiar.
She didn’t know where she was.
She started walking, but the hallway had no end in sight.
Her room should have been the last one, the final door. She thought she could see it in the distance, but she never got closer, no matter how many steps she took.
Panic seized her, and she grabbed at brass knobs, throwing doors open to find the rooms bare. Some weren’t rooms at all, just dark spaces from which voices called. Some whispered her name. “Help us, Jo,” they said. “Help us.” But she could see no one. She could hear only the loud tattoo of her pulse.
She moved faster, frantic.
Where was Ronnie? Where were the boxes? Where was her room?
She pushed another door wide and stared through the portal, catching sight of something, of someone. A little boy sat with his back to her, shaking as he sobbed.
She went toward him, heart broken by the sound.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Where’s your mommy? Why are you all alone?”
She was nearly upon him when he turned his head.
His face was white as paper. Wide eyes bulged, terrified. Blood trickled from his head.
His pale hair was slick with it.
“Save me,” he whispered, tongue swollen and blue.
She backed away, tried to turn but couldn’t move.
She opened her mouth but made no sound.
Jo sobbed in her sleep, the nightmare so intense. But when she woke in the morning, the dream was forgotten.
PART TWO
FOUND
CHAPTER TEN
THURSDAY
Jo jerked awake and reached across the bed for Adam, but he wasn’t there.
Slumping back into the pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut, wishing like hell she didn’t have to get up. A slim stripe of gray glowed between the drapes. She dared to peek at the red numbers on the alarm clock. It was barely six, too early still for the sun.
A few more minutes, she told herself, but her mind was already thinking about the day ahead, about Jenny.
She had a million questions running through her brain. She needed to get back to the Dielmans’ house, see if Patrick had found a suicide note, go through Jenny’s belongings, and try to locate the journal Dr. Patil had mentioned giving Jenny.
Jo wanted another shot at Jenny’s husband, too. What specifically, if anything, had prompted him to buy her the gun? If Jenny had been afraid, as he’d said, was it because she felt threatened? By whom? Her ex-husband? Kevin Harrison had insisted he’d had nothing to do with Jenny since their divorce.
Hank had set up an appointment to meet with Dr. Harrison at his home that evening, around seven. Her partner figured that Mr. Big-Shot Surgeon might be more helpful if he were dealing with a man, and Jo didn’t disagree. Harrison had agreed to see them, anyway. That was further than Jo had gotten.
Jo had arranged for them to talk to Lisa Barton again. There was that strange incident with the brick and Barton suggesting the culprit was Jenny—highly doubtful, considering Jenny was probably already dead. Had Jenny truly been suspicious of an affair between Lisa and Patrick? Dielman had d
enied cheating on his wife. But from what Jo had seen so far, Barton and Dielman sure seemed chummy.
Okay, okay. Enough thinking. She needed to get moving.
Gingerly, she shifted beneath the covers, disentangling herself and easing into a seated position, keenly aware that every fiber in her body ached to varying degrees. She tested her left shoulder, tried to raise her arm as high as she could; even with gritted teeth, she got no higher than her jaw.
So she couldn’t do cartwheels. If she could walk and talk, she’d be all right.
Planting her feet on the floor, she slid off the mattress, placing her full weight on her knees and ankles. Nothing collapsed, so she pressed on. Although when she reached the bathroom, flipped on the light, and took a hard look at herself in the mirror, she had second thoughts about the kind of shape she was in. She turned right and then left, assessing the damage.
The bruises had ripened overnight. Her skin was as colorful as an Amish quilt with patches of yellows and greens speckling her arms and legs, and darker shades of black and purple on the backs of her thighs, her buttocks, and her left shoulder. The small scratches on her face and hands were a dull red, starting to scab.
She looked like she’d gone a few rounds in the ring and lost big-time.
Her battered appearance had worried Adam. She’d seen it in his eyes when he’d gotten a good look at her last night. Had he imagined what it would be like to find her in the autopsy suite, toes-up on the table? Jo could hear his postmortem dictation. “The body is that of a thirty-five-year-old female measuring sixty-seven inches tall and weighing approximately one hundred twenty-five pounds with multiple superficial lacerations to the extremities and contusions to the upper and lower limbs. If only she’d stopped playing Superman long enough to go to the hospital for an MRI, perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this . . .”
Jo would have smiled at her own dark humor under different circumstances, but not now.
She struggled with her bra, clenching her teeth as she tried to use her left arm to help hook it. She finally gave up when she realized it wasn’t going to work. Instead, she found a stretchy camisole and tugged it up using her right hand alone. How could something so basic be so hard? She was sweating when she finished, but she’d done it.
She was struggling into a navy cotton turtleneck when the phone rang. She batted at the material, pushing her head through the opening and finally emerging, though the trilling had stopped by then.
A muffled voice drifted toward her through the parted bedroom door.
She pushed it wide and stepped out to find Adam with a phone at his ear, his back to her. The television was on, the sound muted so that the talking heads moved their lips in silence.
She picked up the remote and switched the set off. Then she stepped in front of Adam and listened to him murmur consent.
He smiled a weary smile.
She pantomimed, “Is it for me?”
He shook his head.
She shuffled into the kitchen to take a few more aspirin and down a Coke. Adam hadn’t made coffee, and she needed caffeine in the worst way.
When she returned with soda in hand, he was off the phone and pulling on his coat.
Her chest tightened. “You’re leaving already?”
“Duty calls.” He glanced up but kept zipping. “It’s not even rush hour, and we’ve got a four-car pileup on Central with fatalities.”
She set down her Coke and went over to him. “Probably inappropriate for me to tell you to have a nice day?”
“Depends on what your definition of nice is.”
His hair was mussed, and he wore the same clothes he’d had on last night. There was still the hint of sleep in his eyes and shadows of fatigue below. He didn’t look like he’d gotten any more rest than she.
“I asked about your girl,” he said. “The post is scheduled for later this afternoon.”
Jenny’s autopsy is today.
Jo found her voice to tell him, “Thanks.”
“You feeling better?”
“Better than I look.” She rubbed her left shoulder. “I’m just sore.”
He hesitated. “Maybe I’ll see you at the morgue?”
“Ah, that’ll be like déjà vu all over again,” she teased, trying to lighten things up.
He took her hand and drew it to his mouth, kissing her palm. Then he leaned toward her and took her lips in his gently. When he pulled away, he whispered, “Be good.”
“I’ll try.”
“Like hell.” He grinned.
Jo couldn’t help but smile, too.
He was half out the door before she thought of something else. She called his name, and he paused on her welcome mat, letting the chilly morning air inside. It probably wasn’t the best time to request a favor, but she had no choice.
“Could you track down a file for me?” she said.
“On who?”
“A boy named Finnegan Harrison. He was six when he died three years ago, the day after Thanksgiving. He reportedly fell from a tree. If I hunt it down myself, it’ll take ages. All that paperwork and red tape.”
Adam cocked his head, waiting.
Jo sighed. “He was Jenny Dielman’s son.”
“You think there’s something in the boy’s records that’ll help you understand Jenny’s death?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. How could she explain it to him when even she wasn’t sure what she was looking for? “I need to find out who she was, and it might help.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.”
He closed the door behind him.
Jo stood there for a moment, the cold he’d let in dissipating around her. She closed her eyes and weighed whether or not she would attend the postmortem examination. A part of her sorely wanted to be on hand to watch the ME’s every move, to see what he saw as he saw it, and hear his comments as he made them. The rest of her didn’t want to go anywhere near the autopsy suite. She’d never liked viewing cadavers being sliced up, less like humans than meat.
Jo picked up her can of Coke and went into the bedroom to finish dressing, adding her pancake holster because of the sore shoulder. Coat on, bag in hand, she took off.
The sun was rising as she drove to the station. Not a cloud in sight, which meant no rain.
Jo took that as an omen.
She was already at her desk when Hank appeared a little past seven. He grunted when she showed him the front page of the Dallas Morning News, which featured a one-column story headlined: “Missing Plainfield Woman Found Dead in Quarry.”
“Where the hell were the reporters when all that yarn got boosted from The Knitting Needle?” he said dryly, picking up the paper and tossing it in the trash.
Jo didn’t bother to retrieve it.
The only report they’d gotten from the county crime lab so far concerned ballistics. Tests proved the Jennings .22 was the lethal weapon. They had a verbal report from Emma Slater on fingerprints found inside and outside the Nissan. Not surprisingly, the victim’s latents were everywhere: on the steering wheel, the dash, the doors, the windows. The only footprints found around the parked vehicle belonged to the two hikers who’d stumbled upon the abandoned car.
There were impressions from leather gloves on the steering wheel, dash, and glove compartment. Though they hadn’t found a pair in the car or at the scene, they couldn’t rule out that those glove prints belonged to Jenny.
Jo and Hank checked in with the captain for their morning briefing.
“This is an ongoing investigation until we’ve got the ME’s conclusions and the evidence to close it up tight, you understand?” The gray beneath Cap’s eyes reminded Jo that he was under as much pressure as they were to wrap up this one. “Until then, I’ll liaison with the media. We’ve set up a separate 800 number for tips.”
Good. Someone might’ve seen something and not even realized it.
“Be safe,” he said when they’d wrapped up their powwow, words Jo had heard ever
y day at the end of roll call when she was a beat cop. For some reason, it always made her uneasy, like she should throw some salt over her shoulder.
She got back to her phone, putting in a call to Emma at the lab and to Ronnie about postponing her plans to help at Mama’s house on Saturday, though she had to leave messages both times.
Then she called the front desk at Dallas Metro Doctors, the multispecialty practice that Patrick Dielman managed, and she was put through to Dielman’s secretary, Carolann Brady. The woman noted that Patrick hadn’t come into work that morning and wouldn’t likely be back for a few days because of the horrible tragedy. Jo explained she actually needed to talk to Carolann, not Patrick, as part of their investigation.
“It’s routine,” Jo assured her before proceeding to ask a few questions. After initially hemming and hawing, Carolann confirmed that Jennifer Dielman had indeed called and spoken to her husband sometime before five o’clock on Monday night. Carolann had stayed at the office until six fifteen, which her time card would verify. She noted that Mr. Dielman was still at his desk when she took off, but because the lot was attended, perhaps building security could help pin down the precise time he left.
“If you’re thinking Mr. Dielman had anything to do with what happened to his wife, you’re wrong,” Carolann insisted before rattling off the extension for Security.
Jo took down the number and dialed but got a busy signal. She made a note to try again.
She watched the clock as she worked on reports and reread the statements of the two hikers who’d found Jenny’s car until she had the words burned into her brain. They had seen no one else, no other car. They might have contaminated the scene by looking inside the Nissan and popping the trunk, but Jo couldn’t fault their intentions. Besides, they were clean. Their prints had been run through the system, yielding zip. They were just a couple of unlucky college kids who’d stumbled onto a crime scene.
“Hey, Larsen?” her partner said. Jo glanced up to see him hanging up his phone. “Let’s hit the road. I just talked to Dielman, and he’s waiting on us.”
Hank grabbed his coat, and she did the same, though a little more slowly than usual. Just shoving her left arm through the sleeve made her grimace.
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