by Beverly Bird
“Like that other damn rope that’s conspicuously missing,” Gunner muttered. “Or maybe the weapon he used to coerce her with.”
“Exactly like that,” Gale agreed. “Something that will bring back a rush of memories, intimate memories of the moment his wife died.”
Tessa made a strangled sound. They both looked over at her sharply.
“That’s...sick,” she said quietly. “It’s evil.”
“You knew her, didn’t you?” Gale asked.
Tessa stiffened. Was the doctor going to try to make something of that? Part of her knew she was being paranoid—on today of all days—but another part of her decided to nip the possibility right in the bud.
“Vaguely,” she answered shortly. “We hadn’t had much contact since high school.”
Gale nodded, then she looked at Gunner again. “What else do you want to know?”
“For discussion’s sake, let’s just say he kept the weapon. A knife,” Gunner began. “Where would he be likely to keep it?”
“Probably not at his home,” Gale said promptly. “Or if he did, it would be in plain sight.”
Gunner finally looked at her. Tessa met his eyes, and knew they were thinking the same thing. Bingo.
“Am I missing something here?” Gale said suddenly, looking between them.
“Nope,” Gunner answered. “My partner and I are just thinking.” Together. With one mind. Ah, hell.
“Where else, if not at home?” Tessa persisted.
“Somewhere he’d have reasonable access to it. If he’s the type of personality that I think he is, then he’s of superior intelligence and cunning. I mean that literally: He probably has a very high IQ. He could be a genius at chess, at computer games, fantasy games, anything like that. That’s why I say any incriminating evidence may not be in his home. That’s too easy. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that he has it in a place where it would take an equally creative and cunning mind to find it. He’d treat it like a game.”
Tessa’s heart thumped. That fit pretty well with Gunner’s estimation of Benami’s behavior last night.
“Let’s say a creative and cunning mind found it,” Gunner said.
Tessa couldn’t help herself. She gave a little snort. He was certainly patting his own back over their break-in last night. She also knew he was talking about the knife now. She’d been thinking more along the lines of the missing rope.
“How would Benami be inclined to react to such a scenario?” Gunner asked.
“It would be part of the game.” Gale looked a little pale. “If I’m right about him, then this is a supremely dangerous man. If...a detective possessed such a thing, I think our killer would take it as upping the ante, so to speak. Increasing the stakes of the game. Anything would go.”
“I see,” Tessa said quietly.
Gale’s eyes flashed to her. “You’re prepared for this to get ugly?” she asked just as softly.
Tessa’s jaw hardened. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to see this monster behind bars.” God help her, but she couldn’t get that image of Daphne out of her mind... tied to the table leg, knowing, helpless and aware, unable to save herself, unable to do anything but think about what was going to happen to her when Christian came home. If it had happened that way—and she was sure that it had—then it was one of the most psychologically cruel murders she’d come across in her time in Homicide.
Gunner stood. He shook Gale’s hand again, thanking her with that crooked Gunner-like grin. Tessa got to her feet more slowly.
“You coming?” he asked her when he got back to the anteroom door and she didn’t follow.
“In a minute.” She looked at Gale again. It was, she decided, time to start laying some old demons to rest.. Her heart stuttered, then steadied. “I want to talk to Gale a moment,” she explained. “It’s... personal.”
Tessa thought he closed the door a little harder than he had to. She finally looked back at the doctor again.
“I’ve held this past year against you, you know.” There. It was out. Tessa felt immensely better already.
Gale smiled. “I know. Please believe me when I tell you I’d rather have you resent me than get hurt, or hurt someone else.”
Tessa acknowledged that with a brief nod.
“How long...” She trailed off. Don’t get into it with her! The voice of her self-preservation fairly howled at her to be cautious with this woman. She went on anyway. She badly needed to know.
“How long might a person be expected to...I don’t know, be haunted by the sort of memories of what happened that night with Matt?”
“You’re still grappling with it?” Gale asked sharply. “With the dreams?”
That provoked her into saying what she might not have said otherwise. “Just the opposite, as a matter of fact.” Especially these past few days. She remembered how, on Friday night, right after being paired with Gunner, she had stood in her bedroom and hadn’t even been able to conjure Matt’s face for a moment.
“I see.” Gale nodded. “Well, it could be just as simple as the fact that you finally have something to sink your teeth into again work-wise.”
“Then why didn’t you let me do that sooner?” Tessa demanded.
The doctor sighed. “I had nothing to do with how long you were reassigned, Tessa. I just thought you needed some time before you went back to Homicide. It was your captain and your chief inspector who determined that it ended up being—what? Nine months?”
Tessa sighed. She knew that, of course. “So what about my memories?” she asked again. “Or lack thereof, as the case might be?”
“Is this a recent development?” Gale asked.
Yes, since John Gunner.
No, she thought. That wasn’t entirely true. Of course it wasn’t. Her memories had been sketchy for the past month or so. It was just that now, lately, Matt was barely in her mind at all, unless she deliberately looked at his picture, unless she tried to remember him and called him there.
Especially today. Even today.
“The bottom line is that every case differs,” Gale said. “I know that probably doesn’t help much, but it’s true. Some people only begin to forget, to really forget, when they fall in love again. Provided that doesn’t happen immediately in a sort of rebound reflex, provided they have ample time to grieve first.”
Tessa paled.
“I take it that’s not what you wanted to hear,” Gale said quietly.
Tessa cursed the woman’s intuition. She wanted to shout that her lack of turmoil had nothing to do with Gunner. But who had actually said anything about Gunner? Nobody had even mentioned Gunner’s name.
She pressed her fingers to her temples. It was just that little devilish gremlin inside her, she realized, the gremlin that ached and trembled when Gunner touched her, when he picked her up in a fit of pique, when he pinned her to the bottom of a damn bathtub. And now it was in there warbling loud and clear in its mischievous gremlin voice and she didn’t like what it was saying at all.
She certainly did not love the man. That was ridiculous. She barely knew him. She just liked him a little more than she’d thought she would. If she could just avoid touching him again, she could probably avoid thinking about him too much at all.
He had nothing to do with the way she was forgetting Matt. Nothing.
She made a quick move for the door. “Thank you,” she managed to say. “You’ve helped.”
Gunner was waiting for her out in the hallway, pacing in that caged-animal way he had. Her stomach rolled over when she saw him.
“Everything okay?” he asked with more warmth than he’d demonstrated all morning.
“Great. Fine. Wonderful,” she growled and stalked past him. “Don’t touch me, Gunner. Just don’t...touch me...again.”
Chapter 10
Tessa went to the elevator and punched the Up button with enough force to knock out a heavyweight champion. Now what the hell was this all about? Gunner wondered.
Women. Oh, sure, he loved them, from hi
s crotchety old grandmother on down to his youngest niece, through the various women he had dated. Maybe he’d never met one he’d be lost without, but the bottom line was that he still appreciated them thoroughly. He liked their smells, their nuances, their softness. He thoroughly enjoyed the whole feminine mystique in all its many shapes and forms.
And if he lived to be ninety—probably a hundred now without the cigarettes, he thought—he knew that he would never understand them.
Women marched to their own drummers, he thought, hurrying to catch up with Tess too late. The elevator doors slid closed in his face. He turned and went to another, less-used one down an adjacent corridor.
Women got caught up in these obscure emotions, he thought, leaving the men of the world behind while they scooted up to some ozone layer only they could find. There was probably a sign up there, he thought darkly as he rode up to the Homicide floor again. No Men Allowed. No one sane, sensible, practical, minus hormones, may pass these portals.
Suddenly he was mad.
When he got out of the elevator, he jogged down the hall, around the corner, rushing to meet the one she had taken. Being in the center of the building, he figured that it had probably had to stop several more times than his own. He was right. When the doors opened, Tessa was inside.
He slammed a hand against the door to keep it open and blocked her way. He couldn’t have said if there was anyone else in the elevator. He never looked.
“What the hell was that about?” he demanded.
Tessa blushed to the roots of her hair.
She’d had just enough time on the ride up to become horrified by what she had said to him. She couldn’t believe she had said it. There he had been, stalking around in the hallway, and she had just talked to Gale, so she had opened her mouth and—out it had popped.
She was going to die of embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “It had nothing to do with you, actually.” It didn’t. Of course it didn’t.
“Well, where did it come from?” he asked, mystified. “I haven’t touched you all morning. I—” And then he broke off, giving some serious thought of his own to dying on the spot.
Last night, he thought. She must have told Gale Storm about last night. It was all that made sense.
“Ah, jeez, Tess, for God’s sake!”
Tessa backed up instinctively until her spine hit the rear of the elevator car. “Gunner, look—”
“You told her.”
Tessa looked at him blankly. “Told her what? What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I said to you downstairs. And I said I was sorry!” She was starting to get angry, too.
“Downstairs?” he repeated. His head was spinning. It was that ozone layer, he thought. He had definitely just been admitted to the ozone layer.
“What exactly were you talking to Gale about?” he asked slowly, carefully.
“I told you. It was personal.”
“What kind of personal?”
Yes, she was getting angry. Temper scooted through her. “By sheer definition, Gunner, personal implies that I’m not going to tell you about it.”
He took a deep breath. Take the bull by the horns, he thought. One way or another, they were going to have to settle this, because he couldn’t stand skittering around her the way he’d been all morning.
“Was it last night?” he demanded. “Were you talking about what happened last night? Because I’ve got to tell you, Tess, if you broadcast that I got hard in a bathtub hiding from a perp, there’s a strong chance it might be the last thing you say in this lifetime.”
Her eyes had widened slowly. Her jaw dropped. “You thought I told her that?”
“Well, what in the hell did you tell her?” he raged, frustrated.
“I was talking about Matt!”
“Matt?”
“Matt.”
He stared at her dumbly. He felt like a fool. Then he got mad again. “So what does he have to do with me not touching you? You specifically told me not to touch you. And the only time I really did that was last night.”
She blushed again. He decided he was on to something here.
“Let’s hear it, Tess,” he warned. “Spit it out!”
“No.”
“It had something to do with me, or you wouldn’t have come out of there blasting with both barrels.”
She finally managed to scoot past him. “I’m going to end this conversation, Gunner. Here. Now. Before it gets any more stupid. Any crazier! This has nothing to do with the bathtub!”
She started up the hall to their office, then she stopped dead. Oh, God.
Heads poked out of every single doorway, watching them, listening to them, staring. She realized how loud their voices must have gotten. She whipped back to look at him again.
“Gunner,” she said helplessly.
“Let me get that guest list,” he said hoarsely, “and we’re out of here.”
Tessa bolted back to the elevator. This time she pounded at the Down button again and again. She felt their eyes, hot and curious and probing, all over her back.
How much had they heard? She couldn’t believe this was happening to her neat, orderly, sane life!
Gunner reached their desk and snatched the remainder of the guest list off it. How much had they heard? He didn’t care for himself so much—hell, they talked about him all the time, and he guessed he could even weather the bathtub business if he had to. But Tessa was so ladylike, so classy, and depending on how much they’d heard, this was going to flay her reputation all to hell.
The elevator had just opened when he caught up with her again. They both moved inside at the same time. Tessa sagged against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“It’ll blow over.”
“Probably not.”
No, he thought. Probably not. They were two of the most talked about people in the unit. Him for his reported liaisons and exploding city cars, and her with her trust fund and law degree and pretty manners.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have started that...there. Should have waited for a better time.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Hey, don’t leave me standing here holding this guilt bag all by myself,” he snapped, his temper heating up all over again. “You’re not all that lily-white yourself.”
“I said I was sorry, Gunner,” she said miserably. “What do you want from me?”
He fell silent, leaving that one alone. He thought it had been pretty obvious last night.
Tessa broke the silence when they reached the parking annex. She couldn’t stand it anymore. “I can’t believe you thought that I’d tell her that.”
“Maybe it’s been on my mind,” he snapped, unlocking the car doors. “Maybe it’s been bugging me all damn morning.”
She slid into the car. Her heart hitched, partly with hope, partly with dread. “I thought you were just grumpy because of the nicotine withdrawal.”
“That’s getting better.” Sure, he thought angrily. Bang your thumb with a hammer, and your headache goes away.
“Why?”
He looked at her as he started the car and began making the descent to the street. “Why what?”
“Why has it been on your mind?”
He gaped at her. “Why do you think? For God’s sake, Tess, what do you think I am?”
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted honestly.
He swore colorfully and narrowly missed a parked car in his temper. “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m normal, human. Just your average, all-American, red-blooded male. And when a fine-looking woman who smells great goes wriggling around underneath me, then yeah, I react. So shoot me.”
Her heart stalled completely. A fine-looking woman who smells great? “I didn’t wriggle,” she retorted, her throat feeling strangled.
“Trust me, you wriggled.”
“I did not.”
“Oh, yeah, you damn well did.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do.”
Her heart finally started beating again. It went wild.
“So it was me?” she whispered almost to herself. “It was something about... me that...that set...that off?”
He looked at her disbelievingly. “Tess, you might have missed this, but there was nobody else in that tub.”
“But...it would have happened whoever I was,” she said helplessly.
He parked the car so suddenly, veering to the curb so sharply that she was thrown against the door. “Gunner, you’re acting like a madman!” she cried.
“Is that what you think?” he asked with lethal calm.
“Yes! What if somebody had been behind us in the right lane? You didn’t even check your mirrors!”
He had to clench his hands to keep himself from grabbing her and shaking her. Don’t touch me, Gunner, she had said. Just don’t touch me again.
Okay, he thought. Fine.
“It would not have happened whoever you were,” he said in measured tones. “Hell, given the circumstances—” He broke off. He couldn’t even think of where his mind had been while Benami had been in the bathroom, as opposed to where it ought to have been.
“Oh,” Tessa said in a very small voice.
“For the record, I’m not a—a raging bull,” he said furiously. “I know where to put it and when.”
She felt her skin flame. She didn’t want to let those images get into her head at all.
“And a killer’s bathtub is not ‘where,’” he argued, his voice a tight growl. “It is not ‘when.’ Got that?”
“Got it,” she whispered, and decided she was going to wait until she was alone to sort this out.
She was so inordinately glad. Glad and scared and amazed.
“Good,” he said shortly. “Can we forget it now?”
“Yes, please.” Not in a million years.
“And in the future, kindly keep your wriggling to a minimum.”
She blushed again and covered her face with her hands.
“Because I can handle this. I can handle these not-quite-impersonal lines you want just fine. I can be as cool as they come. If that’s what you want, then, honey, you’ve got yourself an ice-cold cucumber. No off-color jokes, no nothing.”