In His Protective Custody

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Who found her?” Zane asked grimly.

  “A friend from work got worried,” she recited, then her voice—and her patience—broke. “What does it matter who brought her in? What matters is that he did it.” She pressed her lips together to keep from crying. “I should have gone over there last night.”

  “Why?” he asked, instantly alert. “Did something happen last night after I left?”

  She supposed that there was a chance that this wasn’t connected to Abby’s murder—but she had her doubts. “I heard a crash, something being thrown against the wall. And then there was nothing.” She paused for a moment to bank down the sob scratching its way up her throat. “That crash I heard was probably her.”

  He made no comment on that. He needed to get to her. “Where are you now?”

  “At the hospital. But I’m on my way out. I’m going home,” she informed him.

  Zane filled in the parts she left unspoken. He was beginning to get a handle on the woman. Alyx wasn’t going home, she was going to confront her neighbor.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he ordered. “Stay at the hospital. I’ll take care of this.” But the line on the other end had gone dead. “Alyx? Alyx, do you hear me?” he shouted into the receiver.

  “Damn it!” Zane bit off a curse as he flung the receiver away from him. The cord all but yanked itself out of the unit. The receiver bounced once, then lay dormant on the floor beside Ryan’s feet.

  Doing a U-turn, Zane came a hair’s breadth away from getting into a nose-to-nose collision with an oncoming car. They both swerved and managed to get out of each other’s way enough at the last possible second to remain intact.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Ryan asked. He grabbed the side strap just above his head to keep from falling into Zane. He was making those turns again, the ones best suited to amusement park rides and that wreaked havoc on stomachs older than twelve. “Where are you going?”

  Zane rattled off Alyx’s address to his partner. He could all but see Ryan processing it. “Remember the doctor who sewed me up in the ER?”

  “Remember her?” Ryan repeated with an incredulous laugh. “That doc’s just in every dream I’ve had since then.”

  Speeding up, he blasted the siren even louder, anxious to be there. “She just called to tell me that she’s just pronounced her neighbor dead, the one whose husband she’d said kept using her as a punching bag. Abby something-or-other.” He needed to get that information before he met with Alyx again. He had a hunch his not remembering the woman’s last name would definitely rub Alyx the wrong way.

  “Shouldn’t we be heading to the hospital to take statements?” Ryan suggested.

  “She’s on her way to the building to confront the bastard,” he repeated, waiting for Ryan to catch on to what he was saying.

  Slowly it dawned on his partner. “And you’re afraid that this guy is going to wind up hurting her, too,” Ryan concluded.

  “No,” he bit off bluntly. “I’m afraid she’s going to shoot him,” Zane answered flatly. “And if she does, or gets hurt, it’ll be my fault.”

  Ryan felt lost again. He looked at his partner through squinting eyes, trying to focus not just his vision, but also his mind. “Just how do you figure that?”

  Zane was losing his patience. But it was himself he was irritated with, not Ryan. “Because I didn’t take the report seriously. I thought the wife was just saying that he abused her to get her husband in trouble. You know, her word against his, that kind of thing. But in these cases, the courts usually take the woman’s side.”

  “So you’ve decided that you’re going to be championing the underdog?” Ryan guessed.

  Before answering, Zane thought of his father. He recalled how broken and dispirited the man had been the last time he’d seen him. A week later, his father committed suicide.

  “Yeah,” he said, sealing in his emotions, “something like that.”

  “Very noble of you,” Ryan commented, then added under his breath, “If you don’t wind up killing us first.” Ryan held on to the strap with both hands.

  Chapter 8

  “I don’t think I can walk a straight line,” Ryan complained as he slid out of the passenger side of the squad car and rose shakily to his feet.

  For a moment, he braced his hand against the roof, trying to get his bearings and waiting for his knees to snap in. The twists and turns Zane had taken to get here had made him feel as if he was inside of a blender set on “high.”

  “Who the hell taught you how to drive? Some NASCAR wannabe?” he demanded, facing Zane. “A couple of turns back there, I’m not sure if all four wheels were even on the ground.”

  “I’ll let you drive next time,” Zane tossed over his shoulder.

  He didn’t bother to turn around to look at Ryan. Instead, he hurried over to the hospital’s ER entrance. He’d had a change in plans after calling the hospital and asking if Alyx had left yet. She hadn’t. Because he needed information about Abby’s condition upon arrival, getting to the hospital first made more sense. So he’d gotten to Patience Memorial in record time to head Alyx off before she had a chance to go home.

  They’d had to park one lot over and now Ryan was practically running to keep up. “You bet I’ll drive. We might get there five seconds later, but we’ll get there in one piece.”

  A couple of steps short of the entrance, Zane stopped and turned around. Holding out his arms he made a show of looking himself over. “Don’t see any loose pieces here.”

  “This time,” Ryan said grudgingly through gritted teeth.

  “Sorry, I’ve got too much going on to spend time worrying about what might happen the next time. That can be your job,” he told his partner.

  Walking into the ER, he strode past both the sign-in desk and the registration area. Ryan followed in his wake, flashing an apologetic smile at the woman sitting behind the registration desk.

  When it became clear that they weren’t stopping, she rose to her feet and called after them. “Officers! Officers, can I help you?”

  Zane was fairly confident that he could help himself and kept going. He went through the electronic doors that led to where the patients were treated. Scanning the vicinity, he came up empty. There were a lot of curtained beds and a smattering of rooms. Alyx could be in any one of them. He didn’t have time for this.

  Zane grabbed the first person in scrubs who crossed his path, a young, heavyset orderly who looked as if he would have no trouble picking up a fallen patient and carrying him or her back to their bed—with one hand.

  “Excuse me,” Zane said in response to the silent question on the younger man’s face. “I’m looking for Dr. Pulaski.”

  The orderly continued looking at him quizzically. “Which one?”

  “How many of them are there?” Ryan asked, coming up behind Zane.

  The orderly paused to do a mental count. “At last count, we had six. They tell me more are on the way. They’ve got enough to open up their own hospital,” the orderly said with a laugh.

  Six doctors in one family—it didn’t seem possible. He wondered who got to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving. “She works in the ER. Blond hair, blue eyes, stands about this tall.” He held his hand up to his shoulder. “Her name’s Alyx—”

  The orderly’s face lit up with recognition. “Oh, her. Yeah, she was here.” He looked quickly around the immediate area. “But I thought she went off duty.”

  Zane shook his head. “She just called me from the ER. It was about a patient of hers who died today.”

  The added information didn’t seem to ring a bell for the orderly. He apparently hadn’t been part of the team working with Alyx.

  “Okay, then maybe she’s still around here somewhere.” The orderly pointed toward a desk that looked like an island in a sea of beds. “They can tell you more at the nurses’ station.”

  “Thanks.” With a quick nod, Zane started toward the desk.

  “Zane!”

  He stopped d
ead when he heard her call his name. He would have recognized her voice anywhere, even in its present state. Pain and anger throbbed within every letter.

  Zane barely had time to turn toward her voice before she was all but in his face.

  “Come with me.” Alyx struggled to keep the tremor out of her voice. Abby’s death had affected her more than she’d thought it would. “Abby is still in the trauma room.”

  Leading the way, when she approached the doorway of the trauma room, Alyx hung back and allowed Zane and Ryan to enter the room first.

  “Oh my God,” Ryan whispered, appearing utterly sobered by the sight of just how badly the young woman lying on the hospital bed had been beaten.

  Alyx’s attention was focused entirely on Zane. She waited to see his reaction. Would he just shrug Abby’s death off, hardened by what he had to deal with on the streets, or would the plight of this poor young woman—hardly more than a girl—get to him?

  Zane gave no indication of what was going on in his head as he approached the body, saying nothing. She kept her eyes on his profile, which was how she saw the slight twitch of a muscle in his cheek.

  Abby’s death wasn’t just “business as usual” for the man, she thought, relieved that he apparently felt something, no matter how hard he tried to appear stoic.

  It made her feel a little closer to him, which was a good thing because right now, she needed to feel close to someone. She felt far too vulnerable to be by herself and she couldn’t quite see herself running to her aunt and uncle.

  “He killed her, Zane,” she said quietly, repeating what she’d told him earlier. “As surely as if he’d aimed a gun at her head. Except that it was more personal than a gun. He beat the life out of her with his fists—and he could literally feel it happening, could feel the life draining out of her.” Gritting her teeth, she ground out her declaration. “The man is an absolute monster.”

  He saw no point in disagreeing with Alyx. Turning away, he instructed, “Don’t let anyone touch her. The medical examiner’s going to want to perform a thorough autopsy.”

  “More indignities,” she murmured, looking down at Abby. A person’s body shouldn’t have to be cut up like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle after they’d died. There should be some kind of nobility maintained in death.

  But not for victims, she thought sadly.

  “I don’t think she’s in a position to mind,” Zane told her, his voice unusually kind. “Besides, we need more evidence than just proximity and say-so to nail the bastard who did this to her.” He’d been around the people in the information-gathering unit enough times to know how they worked. “The CSI unit is going to want to go over her—and the room where she was found.”

  Alyx struggled to hold on to the numbness at the center of her core. Once that was gone, this morning’s events would hit her. Hard. “Her friend said it was the kitchen.”

  Zane began to walk out of the room. Ryan paused for a moment longer to look at the shell that was left on the bed. He shook his head. Suddenly aware that he’d fallen behind and that Zane wasn’t the type to wait, Ryan hurried to catch up.

  Alyx was already out of the room and shadowing Zane’s steps.

  “Are you going to arrest him?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  He selected a place, an alcove, that was out of the way of the general foot traffic. He nodded toward Ryan, who took his cue and pulled out his phone to call CSI. Only then did he address Alyx’s question. “I’m going to bring him in for questioning.”

  “And then you’ll arrest him,” she concluded, unwilling to accept anything less than that.

  He’d learned not to make promises that weren’t up to him to keep. “That depends on what the detectives find. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?” He saw the way she fisted her hands at her sides. It wasn’t hard to interpret her body language. “It’s frustrating,” he agreed, “but that’s the way the system works. Most of the time it’s a pretty decent system.”

  “Right.” She nodded, trying to find solace in the thought that Abby’s husband was going to be brought to justice, although she would have preferred to get ten minutes alone with him where she could do to his face what he had done to Abby’s.

  Behind her, she heard Zane’s partner on the phone with their precinct, notifying the homicide division about the body in Patience Memorial’s Trauma Room Three.

  She couldn’t stop the shiver that snaked its way down her spine.

  Taking her by the arm, Zane moved her aside, away from Ryan and everyone else. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

  She took a breath to steady her nerves, hating that she had to resort to that. She should be stronger.

  “I will be,” she said out loud. “The minute you throw that rotten scum into a holding cell.” Tears suddenly formed again and she blinked several times to drive them away. “I feel like I failed her.”

  If anyone had dropped the ball here, he thought, it had been him. Because of his preconceived notions about women accusing their husbands of abusing them. A good cop went with gut feelings, not agendas. The lesson he’d learned today shouldn’t have been at this young woman’s expense.

  “You can’t take care of everyone, Alyx. First and foremost, she failed herself.” He did believe that. Believed that everyone had it in them to be master of their own destiny. “Nobody told her she had to stay and be that guy’s punching bag.”

  Alyx had gotten to talk to Beth, Abby’s friend, while waiting for Zane to arrive. She’d managed to get a little information about Abby.

  “She had no one to turn to, Zane. The one time she tried to leave him—the woman who found her in her apartment let Abby stay with her—he threatened to kill them both. Her friend got scared. And so did Abby.”

  That still wasn’t an excuse. “A shelter for abused women would have taken her in.”

  That had such a depressing sound, she thought. “Maybe Abby wasn’t aware of that. Or maybe she was too ashamed to go to one. She was probably afraid that the bastard would find her and make a scene there as well. He’s a big man,” she recalled. “At least physically,” she added with no small contempt.

  Zane nodded. Looking over her head, he saw that Ryan had ended his call.

  “We’ll find the evidence to put him away,” Zane promised her. “I’ve got to get going.” He wasn’t needed here any longer. “I’ve got to get this bastard before he takes off.”

  Now he was talking. She nodded and fell into place beside him, forcing Ryan to trail behind slightly. “I’m coming with you.”

  He almost stopped dead, but he couldn’t afford to lose more time. “I don’t want you—”

  “I’m off duty and I live in the apartment next door. You can’t stop me from going home, Officer Calloway.”

  “Home” was not her destination and they both knew it. “All right, but I want you to stay out of the way. This could get ugly.”

  “It already is ugly,” she countered heatedly. “But don’t worry, I don’t intend to interfere with police procedure. I’ll be there to applaud it,” she told him.

  He had his doubts about that, but she was right. He couldn’t stop her from going home.

  Because he wanted to keep an eye on her, Zane took her to her building in the squad car. Ryan drove while he rode shotgun and Alyx sat in the back. She was eerily quiet. Ryan did most of the talking.

  Zane couldn’t remember a single thing that was said.

  The door to the apartment next door to hers was unlocked and ajar. After pushing open the door, Zane took a long, sweeping appraisal of the apartment. It resembled the aftermath of a raging storm where all contents had been trashed.

  He slanted a look at Alyx. “And you only heard that one crash?” It didn’t seem possible to achieve this level of destruction so quickly.

  She was as confused as he was. “Just that. Nothing else. My cousin spent the night. She didn’t mention hearing anything else either. You can ask Marja yourself.”

  They would get to tha
t in time. “I believe you,” he said. Leaving Ryan to process what he saw, Zane walked into the couple’s bedroom.

  More chaos there.

  The closet door was open all the way. Only Abby’s clothes remained. “Looks like this Harry character might have taken off.” He turned to look at Alyx. “Do you know where he works?”

  “I don’t even know if he works,” she answered. She knew very little about the man other than he gave her the creeps and that he beat his wife.

  They heard voices coming from the other room. Instantly alert, Zane waved her behind him as he drew out his service revolver. But she’d be damned if she would hang back the way he silently indicated. If that monster was back, she wanted to accuse him to his face, not cower in the shadows.

  It took restraint not to sprint ahead of Zane but to walk behind him.

  Walking into the living room, braced to confront Abby’s killer, Alyx was completely surprised to see a familiar face instead.

  “Tony,” she cried in surprise. Turning away from his partner, her oldest cousin’s husband appeared relieved to see her.

  When she threw her arms around his neck, he returned her embrace. There was a time when he wouldn’t have. When he would have stepped away from the greeting because it made him uncomfortable. But Sasha was slowly indoctrinating him in the ways of passionate Poles and—God help him—he was even beginning to like it.

  “I went numb when I saw the address,” he confessed. “I was trying to figure out how to tell the family that something had happened to you. Dispatch got the apartment number wrong,” he explained.

  “Hard to get good help these days,” Ryan commented as he joined the group.

  Alyx offered the homicide detective a grateful smile. “No, I’m okay.”

  Detective Anthony Santini looked down at this newest member of the family. A slight frown creased his lips. “You don’t look okay,” he observed.

  Maybe more of her feelings were showing than she thought. “The woman died on my watch.”