Joan could still hear her last and favorite foster parents, Bob and Pam, pleading with her. Don’t go, Joan. You’re part of our family. Your life, your friends, your clients— they’re all here. And what’s Jack? A good-looking heartbreaker. You’ve known him for three months. He’s a waiter—not a ski instructor. Before waiting tables, he was a substitute gym teacher. So what sudden epiphany had him running for the closest ski valley? How stable is that?
But in the end, their pleas had fallen on her lovedeafened ears. Jack wasn’t the first man to say those words to her, but the results were always the same. Now Joan slumped in her chair, denouncing herself as a hopeless romantic. How hopeless? She’d bought a Mrs. Tea because Mr. Coffee looked lonely just sitting there all by himself on her counter. So she’d packed up and headed for Taos, looking to surprise Jack. Looking for romantic happiness.
And when she got there on that hot August day a month ago—with all her belongings crammed into her old Volkswagen—Jack had indeed been surprised. So had the girl living with him. The jerk. The jerkette. In less than one strained week, those two had cut for Colorado. Joan sincerely hoped they’d fallen off a mountain. So, there she’d been—stranded in Taos. But finally and forever wiser. Her eyes open. And too mortified to face Pam and Bob and listen to their well-meaning we-told-you-so lecture.
So, she’d started over in New Mexico. Less crime, Jack had said. You want crime? Try Mr. LoBianco. Okay, getting mixed up with him hadn’t been Jack’s fault. Mr. LoBianco had been a paycheck, a job. Well, it had started out that way. But soon, the question of family had come up. She’d spoken of foster homes. He’d seemed…well, happy about that. Now she knew why. He’d probably been thinking that if things went wrong and he had to kill her, who’d know? Or care?
Only he hadn’t killed her. Wasn’t irony great? Joan grimaced. This was not going to look good on her résumé which, with its Death Row postmark, would already have one strike against it. Last Job: Freelance accountant to the mob. Duration: One week. Reason for Leaving: Killed boss. Even worse, what had she been thinking, after the bloodshed, to run screaming back to Houston? Okay, she’d panicked, headed for “home.” Well, comfortable familiarity, if nothing else. But fleeing here certainly proved to be the ultimate headline for Duh! magazine.
Because where’s the first place little woodland creatures head when they’re being hunted? Their burrow. And who knows that? The big nasty carnivores chasing them—a.k.a., a very upset hit man. Close calls with him just inside Houston’s city limits had certainly shown her the error of her ways. Lucky for Pam and Bob and their kids, though, she hadn’t reached them before the bad guy reached out to her. With his car and his gun.
Her poor “parents,” to have such a stupid “kid” as her. She’d actually called them from a pay phone, but got their answering machine. And hung up without leaving a message when that big black car, just like in the movies, came screeching around the corner. Thinking back on it now, Joan asked herself what she’d been going to say to Pam and Bob. Hi! You were right—New Mexico was a disaster. But I’m back! By the way, I have a mob hit man trying to kill me. So, can you put me up for a few days? I’ll help you barricade your house.
Unbelievable. She would have led that sociopathic goon right to them. Maybe gotten them all killed. Just as she would’ve been, had she not jerked around the corner of that convenience store before the bad guy had seen her. And then, when she’d peeked out to see if the coast was clear, she’d instead caught sight of…herself. Could they find no other picture but the goofy one on her driver’s license? Because it had been plastered all over the front page of some newspapers stacked on a wooden stand.
The headlines had read that she was wanted for questioning in the LoBianco murder case. Yes! And that was, when? Four days ago, she’d turned herself in to the police and confessed. And those fun guys! Two detectives—Hale and Carter. Clearly amused with her story, the fatherly types had counseled her. Look, miss, maybe you got head problems, maybe need some medication, some kinda help? You don’t wanna do this. Let us call a sheriff friend out in Taos and tell him your story, see if we can cut you loose.
Joan recalled her desperation over that revolting development. So, to ensure her arrest, she’d lunged for an officer’s gun. And thereby won her all-expenses-paid trip to the safety of a jail cell.
A key scraped into the metal door’s lock. Joan snapped back to the present, sat up straighter. The door began inching open, the conversation in the hallway became louder. Apparently, whoever this was, he was still talking to someone outside as he entered. So he was a sheriff, huh? Would he be like the bad one of Nottingham? she wondered. Or one of the good ones, like from the Wild West cowboy movies?
As if it mattered. Because, more to the point, whoever this sheriff was, he held her life in his hands.
STILL FACING THE PRISON hallway and gripping the doorknob of Interview Room 3, Dan spied the ambling approach of Detectives Hale and Carter. He felt the years fall away as he called out to the middle-aged men. “There you are—the men of the hour. It’s about time. I was just about to go in.”
“So go in,” Jack Carter called out, gesturing with his thick bearlike hands. “Just because you haven’t seen us in five years doesn’t mean we’ve got to hug and cry. One phone call to you doesn’t make you family, you know.”
Dan chuckled. “I sure as hell hope not” Then he roughly embraced the two older men—the light and the bane of his long-ago rookie existence in Houston. “How the heck are you two guys?”
Ed Hale pulled back with his partner and darted self-conscious looks up and down the hallway, as if making certain no one had seen their male bonding. “I’m good. Carter here had some heart trouble, though.”
Concern edging his eyes, Dan focused on Jack. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Jack replied, shaking his head. “That’s his new joke. He means I don’t have a heart, that they couldn’t find one. I haven’t had any problems. How about you, kid? You doing okay?”
The sudden tightening in Dan’s throat caught him off guard. Jack alluded, he knew, to Marilyn’s death five years ago. “Yeah. You know me.” Then he deflected the emotion with, “So, what’s the real reason you guys sucked me into this extradition?”
Ed shrugged his sloping shoulders and scratched his graying crewcut. “Nobody sucked. We just called your boss and asked. You always this cheerful with your old friends?”
“Only those who want me to sacrifice my career.”
“Aw, come on, kid, it’s not that bad.” Hale looked Dan up and down. “You’ve aged. So, you still a crusader for justice?”
Just as he’d suspected. Dan stepped back out into the hallway. The use of that old nickname, given him by them, could not be good news. Closing the solid door behind him, he said angrily, “All right, what gives here?” A file folder in one hand, he crossed his arms over his chest and glared from Hale to Carter. “Is my being here an elaborate scheme to collect on that old bet?”
The veteran detectives exchanged a look fraught with innocence, but then Carter gave them away. “You always said if we found an innocent suspect, we should call you and you’d buy us steak dinners. We did, and we did. And now you are.”
“Found one. Called you. And you’re buying,” Hale clarified.
Dan looked from one detective to the other, and tried his best not to grin back at them. They hadn’t changed a bit. Just gained a few more years, lines, and pounds. “I’m buying? Go to hell.”
“Jack’s Bar and Grill will do. A bet’s a bet, kid. Miss O’Leary has motive and opportunity. A prosecutor’s dream. Only she’s innocent,” Carter assured him, cuffing Dan’s shoulder. “Make mine a Texas T-bone. Seventy-two ounces.”
“Seventy-two ounces?” Dan repeated, suddenly feeling like a lone wrestler caught in a tag-team tourney. “And how can you be so sure—of her innocence, I mean?”
“We know, don’t we, Carter?” Hale turned to his partner, but jerked a thumb in Dan’s direction. “The ki
d here said crime was cut-and-dried, black-and-white. No gray areas. If there’s enough evidence to arrest a guy, he’s guilty. No such thing as a smoking gun in an innocent person’s hand. Or circumstantial evidence. The boy was cocky, had all the answers. Remember how he was?”
Leaving Dan out of the discussion, Carter answered his partner. “I sure do. We’ve been holding on to that bet all these years, too. And now…we got him.” Finally, he turned to the topic of their exchange and asked, “You still that young idealist, Dan? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck—”
“And quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck,” Dan finished for him. “I just love hearing my words come out of your mouth, Carter. Let’s just say I was older and wiser back then, more sure of the world. Now I’m not so sure of anything.”
“Shoulda said so on the phone,” Hale retorted. “Could’ve saved yourself the trip. And the money. ‘Cause we’ve got an innocent kid right behind that door who’s been charged with Murder One. She’s going to earn us those steaks. And I got—” he fished around in a pocket of his wrinkled slacks and finally produced a wadded-up bill, which he unrolled and eyed “—five dollars that says you’ll be convinced of her innocence in less than thirty minutes and killing yourself to get her off. From the charges, I mean.”
“Wait,” Dan ordered, holding up a hand before they could solidify this new bet. “I’m not here to question her—just take her back.”
Carter grinned. The man never grinned. Now Dan was scared. “Oh, you’ll want to take the time to question her, all right,” he assured Dan, nodding all the while. “Wait until you see her.”
Dan’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah? Good-looking?”
“A knockout,” the detectives bleated together.
Dan eyed them, turned to eye the door behind him, and then focused again on the old guys who’d been the first to teach him how to stay alive in the police business. They were also the ones who’d spoken personally with Sheriff Halverson and convinced his boss that only he could pick up this prisoner. “You’re on,” he told them. “Wait here.”
The two exchanged, a grin laden with amusement. Shaking his head, Dan again opened the door to Interview Room 3 and stepped in. His gaze went immediately to his prisoner. Bam! The bare-knuckled fist of first impression conked him right between the eyes. Words and thoughts failed him. As did breathing. When he was able, he exhaled. Hale and Carter weren’t kidding. She was a knockout.
You’re staring, Hendricks. Say something. Dan nodded his head in introduction. “Morning, ma’am. I’m Dan Hendricks, deputy sheriff of Taos County. I’m here regarding your extradition to New Mexico to face the murder charges pending against you in the death of Tony LoBianco.”
Her only reaction was a widening of her eyes. Aware of the listening detectives behind him, Dan tried again. “Do you understand what that means…extradition? The crime was committed in New Mexico, so that’s where the case will be tried. Remember the papers you signed, stating you agreed to allow Texas to release you to go back? That’s extradition. And why I’m here. The taking-you-back part.”
The scared-looking, angel-faced innocent on the other side of the desk nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. And I understand you’ve waived your right to have an attorney present during questioning—now or at any other time?”
She puckered her mouth and averted her gaze to a wall, showing him a long, thick auburn ponytail. “Yes. I don’t need one. I did it.”
Startled to hear a suspect in a capital crime blurt her guilt, Dan jerked around and saw Hale’s and Carter’s smirking expressions. He told them, “Go get a cup of coffee. I’ll find you later,” then closed the door in their faces and turned back to his prisoner. “Ma’am, ‘I did it’ is the dictionary definition of when you need an attorney. So, are you going to plead guilty and forgo a trial?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”
Dan’s frown deepened. “It will come to that—and soon. The Houston P.D.’s dropped the charge against you for grabbing that officer’s gun. And you’ve signed the extradition papers. So now we’re out of here.”
“Then let’s go,” she said, sounding as if she’d just agreed to a date.
Completely insane. “You do understand that New Mexico has the death penalty? Lethal injection?”
Again she nodded. “Yes, I do. But it won’t come to that. I have faith in the legal system.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “Which is why you’re refusing legal representation, right? So, tell me, why are you doing this?”
Puzzlement lined her otherwise smooth forehead. “Doing what?”
Suddenly peeved with his old buddies for putting him in this position, much less this city, Dan ran a hand over his mouth and took a deep breath. “Look,” he began as he approached the table and pulled out the chair facing her. He sat down, flopped her case file onto the table between them, saw her gaze flit to it and then back to his face. “Did you see those two detectives out in the hallway just now?”
She chuckled without humor. “Oh, yes. They laughed, tried to talk me out of my confession.”
Dan nodded. “I heard. They’re friends of mine. We worked together when I was on the force here five years ago. And now they’re asking me to stick my neck out for you. To put it on a legal chopping block, so to speak.”
“Why would they do that? That’s not very nice.”
“Agreed.” Getting down to business, Dan shed his navy blue windbreaker and tossed it on the tabletop. He saw her mark his shoulder holster and then meet his gaze again. “So what are we going to do about it, Miss O’Leary?”
2
DAN’S PRISONER SHRUGGED, gesturing narrowly with her handcuffed hands. “’We,’ sheriff? It’s your call, not mine. But what are they asking you to do—bust me out of here?”
Just picturing that great escape made him chuckle. “They would, if they thought you’d go. But they’re convinced you wouldn’t take off, even if we opened all the doors and turned our backs.” He waited. Her chin came up a notch; she had trouble meeting his gaze. Just as he’d been told to expect. So, he pressed his point. “Is that true?”
She shrugged and said, “It might be.” But then challenged him. “Look, your friends are nice family men. They told me about their daughters, about how they think I’m a nice kid. They just don’t want to believe I’d…do what I did. I think that’s sweet of them. But—and I’m sure you’ve realized this, too—they’re asking you to jeopardize your badge. Not theirs.”
“Amen.” Dan leaned back in his chair, just enough to lift its front two legs off the floor. He crossed his arms over his chest. “And there’s not a whole lot I’m willing to risk it for.”
“No one in this room is asking you to.”
Dan narrowed his eyes, considering the red-haired enigma in front of him. And decided to try something else. “Look, I personally don’t care if you’re innocent or guilty. It’s not my job to prove or disprove it. All I care about is A—you say you did it. And B—we need a viable suspect. So C—we’re happy to do business with you. But I do have one concern, Miss O’Leary.”
“And that is?”
“And that is the taxpayer money and man-hours I’ve spent processing you out of here. See, I don’t like Houston. I didn’t ever think I’d be back. And yet, here I am—on your account I’ve had to relearn Harris County’s courthouse floor plan to get you all signed and stamped. Definitely not a day at the beach. So don’t get to Taos and change your mind. I would not be a happy camper. Neither would Sheriff Halverson, my boss.”
She frowned, as if peeved. “Don’t worry. I won’t change my story and make you look bad. We can’t have that.”
Dan dropped his chair to all fours and leaned over the table, his arms resting atop it. “So I can trust you to continue to put your neck in a noose for me and that legal system you trust? I appreciate that, Miss O’Leary. Anything to avoid looking incompetent to the public.”
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nbsp; Her frown deepened until her bottom lip had no choice but to poke out stubbornly. “Is this the reverse-psychology part of the interview where you get me to change my story?”
Dan shook his head, jumping in with both barrels. “You’re not listening. I don’t want you to change your story. I’m making sure you understand you’re not to withdraw your confession, you’re not to make me and my department look like fools. Especially with the sheriffs reelection campaign in full swing right now and looking a little shaky because of this case.”
His prisoner’s delicate jaw set stubbornly. “Oh, I see—politics.” Her mouth worked, but then she said, “You don’t mean any of that. Or you wouldn’t even have brought up your friends’ doubts. Am I right?”
Dan allowed his expression to give nothing away. “Could be. Let’s say I do stick my neck out for you, it wouldn’t be as far as you’ve already stuck yours out. I’d probably lose my badge, my job. But you could lose your life. Can you tell me why you’re so willing to do that?”
That got her. Her expression slipped, casting fear at the edges of her mouth, around her eyes. She tried to raise her hands, but her cuffs prevented it. “It wasn’t like I had a choice, sheriff.”
“Deputy,” he corrected. “And why didn’t you?”
“Because—” She inhaled deeply, looked very troubled, tried again. “Because…I did it,” she said quickly on her exhaled breath.
Dan slouched back, drumming his fingers on the tabletop as he stared at her, wondering if she was protecting someone. If so, she was either extremely noble or incredibly stupid. And he’d already been in this room long enough to know she wasn’t stupid. Far from it. Then she was noble. How admirable. But what about himself? What was he thinking, sitting here trying to get her to change her story, to say she was innocent? Are you so concerned because she’s a looker? Or because she looks scared to death? And helpless? And innocent?
Great. A woman in jeopardy who needed his help. Dan didn’t require a department shrink to point out to him why he was reacting to that situation. He hadn’t been able to save his wife’s life five years ago, so he’d save this woman’s. Did Hale and Carter drag him here, force him into this situation, just to make him feel something again? To care?
The Great Escape Page 2