Avenging Angel

by Justine Dare

  "Trimming again?" she asked.

  Mitch smiled at her. "These things will go crazy if you let them. Did you know there's one farther in­land that's twenty feet high and fifteen feet across?"

  "I had no idea," Regan said, eyeing the plant cautiously. "It's worth it for the flowers, though," she added, gesturing at the unique orange and blue blooms shaped like a bird's head, giving the plant its name.

  "I put some in your office. I know you like them," Mitch told her. "My mother doesn't. She's more of a traditionalist, roses, carnations, that kind of thing."

  "Good thing she's got you to keep her supplied," Regan said with a smile, leaning over to look at one of the exotic blooms. Then she went on up the steps, Alex on her heels.

  "Since I missed the root beer float this time," he said, "mind if I get some water? I'm out of soda, and I need something after devouring half your cookies."

  "Of course not."

  Then she nearly jumped as the door she was reaching for opened in front of her. Mr. Pilson was on the other side, and nearly jumped himself.

  "Oh! My, I'm sorry, I didn't see you," he said, sounding flustered.

  "That's all right," she assured him. "Did you need something?"

  "No, no, I was just checking to see if anyone here needed anything. I'm about to run to the store."

  "I don't think so, but thanks for thinking of us."

  "I never forget you," he said.

  Regan started to go in, but stopped when Alex didn't move, and instead stood there watching Mr.

  Pilson go down the steps and hurry through the hedge toward his house, being careful not to step on Mitch's handiwork.

  "Does he come and go like that all the time?"

  Regan looked at him sharply. "You and Detective Garrison. She called me today, and had me half convinced he's the Avenger."

  "Did she?" Alex asked, and he looked oddly sat­isfied.

  "Of course it's silly," Regan said as she pulled open the door, "but I know she has to check out everyone."

  Regan stepped inside, spotted Donna on the tele­phone, and gestured to Alex to go ahead.

  "I need to talk to her," she told him.

  "About what you were talking about in the of­fice?"

  She nodded. Alex glanced at the woman, then headed for the kitchen and the icemaker.

  Donna hung up the phone and turned to Regan, a look of glittering excitement on her face.

  "That was my attorney. He's pretty sure I'm going to win!"

  "You're going to court?"

  "Tomorrow. I don't want Richard near Ricky."

  "If you go to court, he could end up with visita­tion rights. Is that what you want right now? To have to face him on a regular basis?"

  "He won't get visitation."

  "You can't be sure of that. I've seen abusers get visitation before."

  Donna's happy expression vanished. "God, do you always have to be so negative about every­thing?"

  "Realistic," Regan stated, irritated by the woman's attitude. "Yeah, yeah."

  "Fine. We'll talk about it later. Right now I wanted to ask you if you ever remembered what officer took your report."

  "I told you before, I can't remember his name." She grimaced dramatically. "I was upset, all right?"

  "They can't find any paperwork."

  "I can't help that."

  "Do you have any idea why they can't even find a record of the phone call?"

  "How should I know?" She waved off the query as if it were negligible. "Maybe I was wrong about the date. I was pretty shaken up, after all." She glared at Regan. "What's up with the third degree? This is supposed to be a shelter, right?" Her voice was rising.

  "Rachel's House is a shelter," Regan agreed. "But it's not a free ride."

  "Look, I'll tell you again, just like I told Mr. Pilson. He beat me up." Donna's volume went up again. "And he hit Ricky, too! Hit him all the time. He doesn't deserve to be his father!"

  The shouted words seemed to echo in the room. Only then did Regan realize Alex was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching warily, stand­ing by in case she needed help.

  As if realizing she'd gone too far, Donna whirled and ran upstairs. Alex waited until she was out of sight, then headed toward Regan as she walked to­ward her office.

  "Something wrong?"

  "I don't know," Regan said.

  She turned to look at the eternal bouquet. The bird-of-paradise flowers were there, just as Mitch had promised, looking striking amid the more com­mon flowers and greenery. But all she could think about was Donna and her story.

  "Something," she muttered. "Something."

  Lynne leaned wearily against the desk behind her as she watched the interview through the two-way mirror. She had the sound on the intercom turned off. She wasn't here officially and didn't want to end up a witness. She wasn't sure why she was here at all when it wasn't her case, it was Nick's. Especially after the sleepless night she'd had; it wasn't even noon and she was exhausted.

  Maybe it was disbelief, she thought. Disbelief that Nick could have done what those reports showed he had done, condemn woman after woman to continuing her life of despair and brutal­ity, talking her out of any attempt at escape by using the age-old arguments of the batterers them­selves: no one will believe you, you can't make it on your own, you'll be humiliated when your friends find out, you'll lose your children...

  Why? It made no sense. Nick Kelso, division Romeo and department flirt, always so charming to every woman around. If it was all a front, then what was behind that charming facade? What was he thinking—

  "You spent some time on Koslow."

  Lynne hadn't even heard Drew come into the ob­servation room. She thought he was still down in the jail, where she'd spent an hour hammering at the man who'd taken the Rachel's House worker hostage at knife point.

  "I had to eliminate him as a suspect," she said, staring through the mirror as if she'd been paying attention all along instead of dwelling on Nick Kelso's perfidy.

  "Sounds like he wants to kill the women, not the batterers."

  "I'm dealing with a serial killer. They don't think like the rest of us. Who knows what kind of glitch might have shifted his focus."

  "I know."

  Lynne flushed slightly. Most of what she knew about murderers in general, and serial killers in par­ticular, had been taught to her by this man. She'd lived with him for nearly three years, after all.

  "I've got another possible working, though," she said. "A neighbor of Rachel's House, who's worked his way into their confidence there. Apparently he's got the run of the place."

  "A man? Unusual."

  "Yes. And he fits the profile, right down the line. Regan Keller admits he comes and goes a lot at Rachel's House, and might have been able to get ac­cess to the files. I'm going to dig deeper on him. He works varied hours, so I'm having them pull his time cards to match them up to the times on the cases."

  Drew nodded, then looked back at the interview in progress. "He's working her pretty hard," he said, and she sensed rather than saw his gesture to­ward the two-way mirror.

  "Yes," she said, glad of the change of subject. He was right, Nick was going at the wife of the non-Avenger victim pretty hard. "He's convinced she either did it or had it done."

  "You're not?"

  She didn't want to get into explaining that it was Nick's early settling on the woman as the only sus­pect that had her withholding agreement. Her gut had her thinking the woman wasn't the cool, calcu­lated society ice princess Nick was painting. There was something about her, something in the way she held herself, in the way she watched Nick's every move ...

  "It's Kelso's case, not mine," she said.

  She could feel Drew looking at her. "What's up, Lynne? If it's not your case, why are you here, and giving Kelso that look?"

  "What look?" She still refused to meet his gaze.

  "The one that says 'If I was less civilized, I'd rip your tongue out.'"

  Her head
snapped around. "What?"

  He nodded toward Kelso. "You were looking at him like this glass was the only thing between you and a particularly despised species of snake. He giving you trouble?"

  Frustration swamped her. Here she was, face-to-face with one man she knew for certain would un­derstand, and she couldn't tell him. Once, she would have spilled it all, and he would have helped her work through it, decide what to do. But he wasn't that man anymore. And she didn't dare spill to him anyway. She could never be that vul­nerable to him again.

  "If he was, I'd handle it." Her tone was a little sharp, but Drew's expression never changed.

  "You always did," he said.

  "I was thinking about something else," she said, and turned back to the interview scene.

  "You've got enough to think about," he agreed mildly. "I've been through all the files again, gone through the data added since I did the profile."

  She watched as Nick leaned forward, using his considerable bulk to force the woman back in her seat without touching her. Lynne frowned, but only said to Drew, without looking at him, "And?"

  "For what it's worth, I agree with you and Ben on this one." He jerked a thumb toward the inter­view room. "It's not the same killer."

  Lynne finally looked at him, knowing this was his due. No matter how she felt about the man, she still respected him as a cop. "It's worth a lot, coming from the premier homicide investigator in the county."

  He'd never been a man to give away much, but she thought she saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes. She knew she'd been right when he looked down at her left hand.

  "And coming from the man who put that ring on your finger?"

  A chill came over her. "It's worth," she said, "just what the vow that went with it was worth to you."

  She turned away again before she added the final word.

  "Nothing."

  CHAPTER 13

  "So there it is, out in the open. You still hate me."

  Lynne glanced at her ex-husband. "No. Hate is an active emotion that requires stoking."

  "And I'm not worth it?"

  "You said it, not me."

  He looked at her, his mouth quirking at one cor­ner. "I always said I didn't ever want to get on your bad side."

  "Too bad you didn't follow your own advice."

  This time the look was long and considering. "I'm never going to be able to convince you, am I?"

  She turned to face him then. "Convince me of what? That you never slept with her?"

  He shoved a hand through his hair. "I didn't. Not... technically."

  "Keep that line handy in case you get elected to office someday."

  "I was undercover, I had to keep up the front. It was my job, Lynnie—"

  "God, you just don't get it, do you?" she burst out, prodded by the nickname only he had ever used. "Whether you slept with her or not barely matters at all! What matters is that she became more important to you than your marriage, your wife, and that honor you were always so proud of."

  "She was in trouble. Scared. She had no one else."

  "And as it turned out, so was I."

  He winced visibly. "If I'd known—"

  "But you weren't around to know, were you? Do you have any idea what it felt like, to lose that baby alone, knowing my husband couldn't be bothered to even call?"

  "I would have been there if—"

  "If you could have torn yourself away from your drug-addicted hooker?"

  "She paid the price, Lynne. She died."

  "So did your son. Win one, lose one."

  "Win one?" he asked, sounding bewildered. "What did I win?"

  "What you wanted. You never wanted our baby, so presto, you got your wish."

  He gaped at her. "Never wanted— Where the hell did you get that idea?"

  "Where?" she asked sweetly. "Perhaps when you told your captain my timing sucked, and what a nuisance it was? As if I'd managed to get pregnant all by myself?"

  He paled. "You ... heard that?"

  "Amazing what you hear when you live in the same house."

  "I was just. . . God, Lynne, he was pissed be­cause we were so close to breaking that case. We'd put so much time in on that operation, I was just trying to placate him, go along with his griping."

  "Forget it," she said, suddenly weary. "This is old, tired ground, and I don't want to walk every inch of it again."

  She turned and headed for the door.

  "Lynne," he said.

  She paused without looking back. When he didn't say anything more, she kept going. She went to the lunchroom. Ate a vending machine sandwich she could barely taste, which was probably for the better.

  Her phone was ringing when she got back to her desk, but it had been nearly nonstop since the press release asking for help from the public had gone out, with her phone number on it. The detective secretary was tearing her hair out, so Lynne tried to catch as many as she could when she was in the office.

  That there was a connection to a specific women's shelter had been part of the release, al­though they'd still kept the name of Rachel's House out of it. Lynne had had to fight for that one. Finally her argument that they had no guarantee the killer would continue to limit himself to only Rachel's House abusers won out.

  She picked up the receiver. A timid voice, a child of indeterminate age or gender, asked if this was the detective in the newspaper.

  And me without my Officer Friendly hat, she sighed inwardly. But she believed in the "be nice to kids, you may be forming their attitude toward police forever" adage, so she gathered up what little pa­tience she had left and answered pleasantly.

  "I'm Detective Garrison, is that who you want?"

  "I think so. Was your number in the newspaper?"

  "Yes, it was. And my name. What's your name?"

  A pause. "Do I have to tell you?"

  Uh-oh. This one was already wary. "How about just your first name? That can't hurt."

  Another pause. "I guess. It's Tyler."

  "Okay, Tyler. How old are you?"

  "Seven. Today's my birthday."

  "Well, happy birthday," Lynne said, wondering what had the boy calling the police on his birthday. "What can I do for you?"

  "Is it true that 'venger guy is killing dads who hit?"

  Lynne got a sinking feeling in her stomach. "Where did you hear that, Tyler?"

  "I heard my friend's mom talking about it. Is it true?"

  Truth or lie? Lynne asked herself. Did you tell a child so young the truth, or try to protect them with a lie? A lie they might find out, and blame you—or the police in general—for?

  "Why do you need to know?"

  "I just do."

  She took in a breath. Truth, she decided. Even kids should have someplace to go where they knew they'd get the truth. "Some people have been killed, yes. And they were people who hit their wives or their children."

  "Oh."

  He sounded very much like a child who had hoped it was all a mistake. "Is there something you'd like to tell me, Tyler? Maybe I can help."

  "I don't know...."

  "That's what I'm here for, you know, to help." "Can you help my dad?"

  "Help him?"

  There was a sound that was suspiciously like a sniff. Then, abruptly, the dam broke. "I don't want him to die! He's mean sometimes, and he hits us, but I don't want him to die!"

  Oh, God. "I'm sure you don't, Tyler. Why don't you tell me where you are, and maybe I can help."

  "But he told my mom if she ever told and he got in trouble that he'd come back and make her sorry. That he'd take me away. I don't want to leave my mom. But I don't want him to die! I don't know what to do."

  The voice was so young to be dealing with such ugliness. Every once in a while, Lynne thought, you got one that broke through the armor you had to put on to survive.

  "Let me help," she urged. "I'll come get you, and your mom, so nobody can hurt you."

  "But what about my dad?"

  The fear in the child's voice
tightened that vise around her heart. Let him hang, she thought. "We'll protect him," she said instead.

  There was a long silence before the dreaded question came. "Can't you just make him not be mean anymore?"

  "If only I could," she said. Then she heard a noise in the background, another voice. "Are you at home, Tyler?" she asked quickly, afraid he'd hang up before she had enough information to track him down.

  "No, I'm at my friend's house," he said, and the voice in the background grew louder. "I gotta go."

  "Give me your phone number at least, so I can call and make sure you're all right?"

  "Can't. Bye." He hung up.

  She sat listening to the dial tone for a long time. There were ways, she knew they could eventually trace the call, but right now she couldn't bestir her­self to take the first necessary action. Finally, slowly, feeling as battered as the women of Rachel's House, she replaced the receiver.

  "My God, Lynne. What happened?" Again she hadn't heard Drew approach.

  "Nothing much," she said bitterly. "Just a scared little boy wanting to turn his dad in before the Avenger gets him. The dad who hits him and his mom and threatens to take him away if he gets caught, but he doesn't want him to die."

  "Jesus," Drew muttered.

  '"Can't you just make him not be mean any­more?' That's what he wanted."

  Drew crouched down before her, put his hands on her knees. She pulled away. No more. I just can't take it right now.

  She didn't say the words, but he seemed to have heard them anyway. He'd always been good at that. And reading her face. When he'd been around.

  She stood up abruptly. Called out to the secre­tary. "I'm going to Rachel's House. I'll be on pager or cell."

  A harried wave indicated the efficient but at the moment beleaguered woman had gotten the mes­sage.

  "Lynne."

  "Not now, Drew. Not now."

  He let her go. A small, frightened voice echoed in her mind. And for the first time in a very long time, she wished she'd gone into another line of work.

  "I see your roofer's found something else to do," Lynne said to Regan. Ah-hah, she said to herself when she caught the faint rise of color in the red­head's cheeks. I thought so.

  Now all she had to do was probe, tactfully. Which seemed downright simple next to every­thing else on her plate just now.