Just One Look

by Mary McBride

  “Cooley’s,” she said. “At Ninth and Westbury.”

  “Okay. Cooley’s it is. Just let me get my shoes on.” Only then did Sara notice that he was shoeless. Sleepy-eyed, rumpled and shoeless, with socks that had holes in both big toes. When he turned to leave, she saw the threadbare heels, and her heart shifted a bit in her chest. Poor Decker. He needed somebody to take care of him better than he took care of himself.

  While he was retrieving his shoes, Sara decided to make a list. As long as he was going to Cooley’s, he might as well pick up another dozen eggs and maybe a nice red Bordeaux. By the time he returned, wearing his leather jacket and jingling his car keys, she had come up with six more necessities.

  “Okay. Let’s go,” he said. “Where’s your coat?”

  “What?”

  “Where’s your coat?”

  Sara stared at him. “I’m not going, Decker.”

  He stared back. “Well, I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “I’ll be fine. Cooley’s is only a few blocks away. It won’t take more than fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone for fifteen or twenty minutes. Now, come on.” He jingled the keys again. “Let’s go.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” He jammed the keys in his pocket and shrugged out of his coat.

  “But what about my Parmesan?”

  “Tough.”

  “Couldn’t you just—”

  “No,” he said, as decisively as she had uttered the word.

  Sara stood there fuming, torn between tagliatelle verdi con aglio and plain old spaghetti, stuck between Parmesan and a panic place. Her mouth was already going dry and her palms were getting damp at the thought of standing in the checkout line. A long checkout line. A dozen shoppers, all of them with fistfuls of cents-off coupons, in front of her and behind her. It would be hot in the store, and she wouldn’t be able to breathe, but she’d be trapped there with a shopping cart and wouldn’t be able to leave when she started getting dizzy and sick.

  Maybe, though, just maybe, if she stayed in the warm and cozy confines of the lieutenant’s little car. Maybe.

  “Oh, all right. Dammit. I’ll go with you.” She dragged in a deep breath. “But I’m staying in the car, Decker. I mean it. I’m not setting foot in the store. And that’s not negotiable.”

  “That’ll work,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t the least idea that Sara had just fought and lost World War Three. “As long as I can keep an eye on you.”

  Joe tried to make quick work of the ice on the rear window, afraid that Sara would lose her nerve and make a run for the house. She was standing at the edge of the driveway, bundled up, her hands tucked under her armpits, her teeth chattering, looking like she was on her way to the electric chair. He still couldn’t believe that she had agreed to go, and it pleased him that she trusted him enough to leave the house. Well, maybe not. Trust probably didn’t have anything to do with it. It was just that her need for Parmesan cheese had temporarily outweighed her fears.

  He opened the passenger door. “All set?” If she were going to bolt, he thought, this was as good a time as any. But she didn’t. After she slid into the seat, he closed the door as quietly as he could before trotting around to the driver’s side and sliding into his seat. He twisted the key in the ignition, and as soon as the engine came to life with a deep-throated purr, he put the transmission into Reverse and hit the gas. Too late now, pretty Sara, he thought.

  Remembering that she had hummed a golden oldie the day before, Joe turned the radio on and tuned in the local oldies station, catching the Beatles right in the middle of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” He wondered briefly if it would help if he held Sara’s hand, then decided against it. She’d probably panic, thinking he was coming on to her, especially after that unfortunate “take your breath away” remark.

  It took them all of three minutes to go the three blocks to the little corner market. The heater didn’t even have time to warm up before he pulled into the small parking lot. In fact, the car was so cold that Joe really didn’t want to leave her in it.

  “You sure you don’t want to come in with me?” he asked.

  “Nope.” It was so cold in the car that her answer came out like a puff of smoke.

  “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  “Did I give you the list?” she asked, beginning to rummage through her handbag.

  “What list? I thought you just wanted cheese.”

  “Here.”

  Joe scanned the piece of paper she gave him. “You sure this is all now?” He grinned. “I mean, as long as I’m in there, I can get eggplant, tofu, more Swiss chard.”

  “That’s not funny, Decker.”

  “Okay. Lock up after I’m gone. And if you need me, just lay on the horn.”

  Sara scrunched down in the bucket seat as much to keep warm as to make herself invisible. She could peek over the dashboard into the big front window of the brightly lit store, and every once in a while she could see Joe skimming his shopping cart around the end of an aisle. When he rounded the soup and crackers corner, he came to the window and waved to her. She waved back, sighing out loud, wishing she hadn’t added one item after another to the list. They could have had the Parmesan and been home by now if she had used a little restraint.

  Rod Stewart started singing “Maggie May” on the radio. Sara thought a little wistfully about the concert she had gone to ten or twelve years ago, and wondered why she hadn’t panicked then in a jostling, shrieking crowd of thousands. The thought of doing that now made her almost nauseated. She turned the radio off and concentrated on the store’s window.

  Cooley’s wasn’t all that busy, but when Joe angled his cart into a checkout line there were two people ahead of him. He stood patiently, perusing the display of gum and mints, probably taking in the headlines of the National Enquirer and the Star, checking out the latest Cosmo girl perhaps. Then his eyes snapped toward the customer service booth, and his whole face changed.

  Sara sat up and leaned to her left, craning her neck to see whatever it was that Joe had seen, and when she did, her heart rocketed into her throat. There was a man waving a gun in the face of a terrified clerk.

  Chapter 6

  When Sara’s gaze cut back to Joe, his gun was in his right hand, and with his left he was motioning the customers and clerks to get down on the floor. Then he vaulted over the checkout counter and quickly disappeared from Sara’s view.

  She sat there, frozen with fear, in addition to the cold, staring wide-eyed while cereal boxes and magazines flew across the store window, a knit cap sailed through the air and red-and-white soup cans rolled crazily across the floor. While the melee was in progress, several men and woman escaped out the front door. They blocked Sara’s view momentarily, but when they moved, she saw the robber go sprawling facedown on the floor, immediately followed by the lieutenant, who lodged a knee in the man’s back and the muzzle of his gun in his neck. When the subdued robber brought his arms behind him, Joe handcuffed him in one swift, deft movement. Sara imagined the conclusive metal click.

  “Thank God,” she said, realizing she’d been holding her breath during most of the altercation.

  Tires screeched, and flashing lights strobed through the darkness when two black and white squad cars pulled into the parking lot. The uniformed cops raced into the store, preventing Sara from seeing anything but a solid wall of dark blue. But barely a moment later, the blue wall parted as Joe elbowed through. He pushed out the door, holstering his gun as he approached her side of the car. Sara rolled down the window as quickly as she could.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, bending to lean his arms on the door.

  “Am I okay!” There was blood on his face. His knuckles were scraped. There was a rip in the shoulder seam of his jacket. Anger still pulsed in the cords of his neck and pulled hard at the corners of his mouth. “Are you okay?”

  “Me? Oh, sure. That guy couldn’t quite figure out how to juggle a
gun and a sack of money and throw a punch at the same time. What an amateur.” He grinned. “Let me just go in and sign off on this.” His gray eyes searched her face intently. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Sara nodded, then watched him trot inside the store where he disappeared beyond a sea of blue uniforms. A few minutes later, he was back, unlocking the driver’s side door, sliding into the seat and plopping a plastic shopping bag onto her lap.

  “I think I got everything,” he said. “You might want to check, just in case.”

  She glanced in the bag. Parmesan. A red Bordeaux. A life-and-death struggle. Hey. No big deal. “Does this always happen when you go to the grocery store, Decker?” she asked a little breathlessly.

  “Not always.” He started the car, then put his arm on the back of her seat while he maneuvered out of the parking spot and threaded the narrow space between the two squad cars. Before he shifted into Drive, he brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. But it was the look that accompanied his touch that made Sara’s heart hold absolutely still.

  “You’re safe with me, you know,” he said softly. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Sara Campbell. You believe that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I think I do.”

  Joe rinsed the thick, soapy lather from his hands under a stream of steaming water that was just bearable until Sara turned the hot water faucet up a few searing degrees.

  “Ouch!” He pulled his hands away. “The scrapes aren’t all that bad, Campbell. Now it’s the second-degree burns that hurt.”

  “Don’t be such a weenie,” she said, wrapping a towel around both his hands.

  “Sadist,” he hissed.

  While Sara was laughing, Joe managed to maneuver the towel so that he was holding her two hands inside it. He squeezed gently. “Hey. How was it, really? Out in the big, bad world beyond the front door?”

  She looked up from the towel and met his gaze. “It was okay. I survived.”

  “No pitty pats? No sweaty palms?”

  “Just a little. Most of them while you were wrestling with that robber. I was so scared for you I didn’t have time to be scared for myself.”

  “That’s good, Campbell. We’re making some progress here.” He grinned, fighting the urge to kiss her serious, worried mouth. “Hang around with me long enough and you’ll never be scared for yourself again.”

  “I have the feeling that if I hang around you any longer, Decker, I’ll graduate from simple panic attacks to outright terror.” She laughed as she pulled her hands from his. “Let’s finish this so I can start cooking dinner.”

  They ate in the den in front of the fire, and the meal was delicious, Joe had to admit, once he got used to the green noodles. Edie, early on, had given up trying to make a gourmet out of a staunch meat-and-potatoes guy. Sara took his grumbling in stride, though, and smiled victoriously when he asked for seconds. He was tempted to ask for thirds because he didn’t want the meal to end, and he was afraid to think what might happen next. Or not happen.

  She came back from the kitchen with a tray on which she carried a small green coffeepot and two demitasse cups and saucers. Joe recognized it immediately as the Fiestaware he had eaten on when he was growing up.

  “Using some of your inventory?” he asked.

  She lowered the tray to the coffee table, then sat on the floor beside him. “That’s one of the drawbacks of being collector,” she said, lifting the pot and pouring dark espresso into one of the little cups. “Sometimes it’s almost impossible to part with certain pieces.” When she handed it to him, her hands were shaking just enough to make the cup chatter against its saucer.

  Joe gave her a quizzical look, which she proceeded to ignore. She filled her cup, dispensed with its saucer and stared into the fire while she sipped. Beside him again, but somehow far away.

  “Was it something I said?” he asked, only half in jest.

  “No. It’s nothing.” She shook her head. “It’s silly, really.”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “While I was waiting for the espresso to finish dripping, I started to feel as if I were ... as if we were ... well, on a date. And then I started getting this ridiculous case of nerves because it’s been a long time since I had one. A date, I mean. Which this isn’t.” She rolled her eyes. “See. I told you it was silly.”

  He smiled, nowhere near willing to admit to her that he was feeling the same silly way. Only in his case it was sappy. And he was wondering about those little foil packages in her bathroom drawer upstairs. “Well, maybe sometime we could...”

  “I know. Dinner and a movie. Thanks, anyway.” She took another sip of coffee. “I guess you go out a lot.” It wasn’t a question, but an assumption, offered in a small, insecure voice.

  “Not a lot.” He promptly cursed himself for his macho lie. “Never, actually. Hell, I don’t know,” he said almost gruffly. “I probably forgot how after being married for ten years.”

  She looked at him, her green eyes reflecting the firelight while the smallest of smiles perched on her lips. “You’re a nice man, Joe Decker.” She leaned forward and placed a tiny kiss on his cheek. “And now that our non-date is over, I’m going up to sleep. Good night.”

  “G’night, Sara,” he said, not knowing if his voice registered regret or relief or a sappy muddle of both.

  Huge windshield wipers slashed back and forth in front of her while people shrieked and moaned behind. Her mother and father, walking arm in arm beneath a huge umbrella, crossed the street in front of her, never once glancing in Sara’s direction. They didn’t hear her when she called out to them, so she decided to run after them, only she couldn’t get her car door open. The handle had disappeared. All she could find was a series of buttons that didn’t do anything, no matter how hard she pressed them.

  Then, after she had given up, the door opened on its own. The only problem then was that it was a long way down to the pavement, maybe six or seven feet.

  “What difference does it make?” she told herself. “Jump. It’s just a dream.”

  She jumped. It was more than seven feet, though. Closer to seven miles. And while she was falling, the pavement kept retreating beneath her. She was in free-fall, flailing, but then somebody caught her. She laughed, thinking those strong arms belonged to Joe, but when she looked up, it wasn’t Joe at all, but the Ripper. His eyes glowed red through the holes of his mask.

  She had to pull that mask off, but her arms felt heavy as dead, and the harder she tried to lift them, the heavier they became. She tried so hard, again and again. Then, all of a sudden, the Ripper lifted his own gloved hand and tore the mask away himself.

  Sara saw his face.

  After he heard Sara’s cry, Joe was upstairs in a matter of seconds. Racing down the hall, he saw the slice of light at the bottom of her closed bedroom door. He didn’t bother to knock.

  She was sitting in the middle of her bed, hugging a pillow to her chest, staring, rocking slightly. He glanced at the windows and then at every corner of the room. Nothing appeared amiss.

  “What?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “I saw him.”

  Joe went to the window, tested the lock, then looked at the untrodden snow on the ground below. “You saw the Ripper? Where?”

  “In a dream. Well, a nightmare.”

  He let out his breath in a soft little curse, then put the safety back on his gun and jammed it in the holster. “You scared me to death when you screamed.”

  “I scared myself to death,” she said, hugging the pillow closer. “I saw his face, Joe. The Ripper pulled off his mask and I saw his face. Only...”

  “Only what?”

  She gave a mournful little sigh. “Only I forgot it as soon as I woke up. I turned the light on and...” She snapped her fingers. “Poof! It was gone.” She put the pillow down and sank her fist into it. “Damn.”

  “Well, a face in a dream isn’t all that reliable, anyway.” And neither was his talent for guess
ing what a woman wore to bed, he thought. He’d pegged Sara as a flannel pajama type, but he was looking at a pale pink concoction right out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. He was inordinately grateful when she picked up the pillow and hugged it again.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said, conscious of the sudden thickness in his voice.

  She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “Too scared. What a wimp, huh?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You weren’t here. You were there.” She pointed in the general direction of the den downstairs. Then she shivered and rubbed her arms. “God. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”

  He didn’t like where this was heading. Not one bit. Because he knew when she turned those big green eyes to him and asked him to stay with her, here in her room, he’d say the dumbest, most dangerous thing he’d ever said. Yes.

  “Joe, would you...?” Her gaze, glistening with tears, flattened him.

  “Sure. Till you fall asleep, anyway.”

  He lifted his arm to consult the glowing face of his watch. Three-fifteen, and counting. Beside him, Sara had been asleep for a long time. He’d actually heard the precise moment when her breathing evened out. He’d almost been able to feel her muscles melt into relaxing sleep way over on her side of the big bed.

  Edie used to sleep like a Flying Wallenda, flipping over, flopping around, corkscrewing toward the left until she wound up with all of the sheet and nine-tenths of the blankets. Sara slept like a corpse, on her back with her hands delicately crossed over the neat covers. He’d leaned over once to make sure she was still alive, and her soft, warm, toothpaste-scented breath had reassured him and stirred him all at once.

  He shifted a few of the pillows that banked his shoulders and head, checked his watch again, then closed his eyes. It’s a job, Decker, he told himself, whether it’s horizontal or not. Don’t even think about kissing her. Later, maybe, when all this Ripper business was over...

  A loud, metallic crash in the vicinity of the garage brought him up fast from his nest of pillows. Sara, the corpse, shot straight up, too.