Framed

by Karen Leabo

  He did. He had no gun because he’d left it at the rental house. But he did have a nightstick under the seat. That would have to do. Jess was in trouble.

  As he drove like a maniac toward the lake, he listened to the rapid-fire conversations overlapping each other on the scanner. It appeared the 911 dispatcher couldn’t elaborate on the nature of the call she’d received. She said only that there’d been a request for police assistance.

  Had the request come from Jess? he wondered. Or had Jess broken in on an innocent party, and they were the ones who’d called for help, mistaking her for a burglar?

  He didn’t bother with caution as he approached the Gilpatricks’ house. It was all or nothing now. He roared up into the driveway, apparently the first police to arrive. Without much thought to his own safety, he flew out of his car, clutching the nightstick, and sprinted to the front door. Everything looked quiet from the outside.

  He banged on the door with his fist, then stepped to the side. “Police. Open the door!” Nothing. He repeated his announcement. Nothing again. Then he thought he heard something, a female voice, thin and thready.

  “Kyle?”

  That was all it took. He broke down the door with two karate kicks and a well-placed shoulder. A window might have been easier, he reflected as his shoulder exploded in pain, but he hadn’t had time to debate it beforehand.

  “Jess?” he called out as he broke through the splintered wood.

  “In here,” she responded from what he guessed was the kitchen. “Please, help...”

  He was too frightened for her to pay much attention to police procedure. Instead of entering with caution or waiting for backup, he stormed into the kitchen like an avenging knight, the nightstick raised above his head. He would tackle a grizzly bear with a submachine gun if he had to.

  When he reached the kitchen, all he could do for a moment was stare in shock. Jess didn’t appear to be the one who needed help. She was sitting on top of a guy Kyle had never seen before, a knife at his throat. “Jess?”

  “I caught him!” she said triumphantly.

  “Caught...who?” he replied as he slowly lowered the nightstick, keeping his words calm and even.

  “Who do you think?” she said impatiently, almost hysterically. “Terry!”

  Kyle stepped slowly closer, peering at the man on the floor. “You’re Terry Rodin?”

  “My name’s Howard Ghetty,” the man said, obviously scared half out of his wits. “Are you police? Please, get this crazy woman away from me.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Jess cried. “It’s Terry. He’s dyed his hair and grown a mustache, but I’m telling you it’s him.” She looked up at Kyle, pleading for him to believe her.

  He didn’t know why he should. If the stranger she was holding captive really was Terry, he was doing a good job of impersonating someone else. But, oddly, Kyle did believe Jess. She might conceal something from her past, but she wouldn’t out-and-out lie to him. He had to believe that.

  “Put down the knife, Jess,” he said, still calm, “and ease off him. You,” he said, pointing to the man, “don’t move until I tell you.”

  “Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong—” the man started to object, but Kyle silenced him with a quelling look.

  “Don’t you worry, we’ll straighten everything out,” Kyle said.

  Jess seemed only too happy to drop the knife on the floor and back away. She inched over to a kitchen chair and raised herself onto it. She was shaking violently, looking more frightened than her victim. Her face was oatmeal pale. In the background Kyle could hear a police siren.

  “I have a driver’s license,” the man said, “that proves I’m Howard Ghetty—”

  “And probably several other fake identities, as well,” Jess broke in, her voice gaining strength. “No wonder the police had such a hard time looking into your background. Terry Rodin didn’t exist until you invented him four years ago.”

  Kyle turned his attention toward Jess, intending to tell her to please leave the interrogation to the police. But in the split second he took his eyes off the other man, the man made a break for it. He was out the back door in a half second flat.

  “Oh, hell, I’m too old for this,” Kyle muttered as he took off after Rodin—and it had to be Rodin, he realized, or why would he have split?

  Terry had several years less mileage on his body than Kyle, and judging from the way he was running, he didn’t have a bum knee to contend with. But Kyle managed to stay only a few paces behind. Terry ran down the driveway of a neighbor’s house and over a fence.

  Undaunted, Kyle followed, wincing as his knee protested the landing on the other side, but it didn’t give out. He chased Rodin through the yard, around a doghouse—Kyle could only hope the dog was absent—and over the fence on the opposite side. That’s where Terry ran into trouble. The hem of his jeans caught on the top of the chain-link fence, flipping him upside down. The harder he struggled, the more securely he got stuck.

  Kyle scaled the fence with an easy vault, landing gently on the other side. His prey hung upside down from the fence like a rabbit caught in a snare.

  Kyle grabbed him by the throat. “Did you suddenly feel the need for some fresh air, Rodin? Or some exercise, perhaps? Surely you weren’t running from the police.”

  “Get me down,” he grated out. His face was turning red.

  “Say the magic word.” Kyle said.

  “Please?”

  “I was thinking more like, ‘I really am Terry Rodin and I framed Jess Robinson for my own murder.’”

  “Yes, yes! Just get me down before my head explodes.”

  All right, so as a confession it lacked something, aside from the fact that it was obtained under duress and would be totally useless in court. Kyle wasn’t worried about that any longer. If Jess said this guy was her ex-boyfriend, the man she identified as Terry Rodin, then that’s who it was and the truth would come out. She was off the hook. She hadn’t killed anybody.

  Not that Kyle had ever truly believed she had, not after he’d gotten to know her. But he’d had fleeting moments of doubt. As it should be. Blind faith might be fine in theory, but in practice it could kill you. It had killed Buck. Whether Jess would agree with Kyle was another story, however.

  Two highway patrolmen careered around the corner in Keystone Kop fashion. “What in the holy hell is going on here?” one of them asked, his hand caressing his gun, though he kept it holstered.

  Easy, Clint Eastwood, Kyle thought, though thankfully he hadn’t said it out loud. “I’m Kyle Branson, Kansas City Police Department, off duty. This red-faced gentleman is Terry Rodin, who’s been missing for several weeks—”

  “Rodin? I thought he was dead,” one of the patrolmen said.

  “He sure don’t look like the picture in the paper,” the other observed skeptically.

  “Can we debate my identity later?” Rodin pleaded. “Just get me off of this fence!”

  “Whoever he is,” Kyle said, “he was running from the scene of a crime when I, er, apprehended him. Hold him for questioning. Do not let him go. When you get him loose, follow me.”

  Kyle left it to the other two officers to free the sputtering Rodin from the fence. Eventually they all ended up in the kitchen of the Gilpatricks’ house. Jess, looking drained but not quite so pale, was only too happy to tell her story to the amazed highway patrolmen. Rodin, handcuffed to a kitchen cabinet, offered nothing except a driver’s license, expired more than a year earlier, that did in fact identify him as Howard Ghetty. But in the picture he was blond with no facial hair, and quite obviously the same man who’d been passing himself off as Terry Rodin for the past several years.

  Kyle took great pleasure in notifying the Kansas City Police Department that he had Terry Rodin in custody. He spoke with Clewis personally, who grudgingly agreed to send a squad car out to pick up the “alleged” victim-turned-culprit. No one was sure what exactly he would be charged with, but Kyle was determined the man wouldn’t walk free
.

  Clewis, with his usual lack of professional courtesy, demanded the presence of the two highway patrolmen, too. They went willingly. It was a weird enough case that they were interested, and they also were lured by the prospect of seeing their names in the paper.

  And finally, Clewis wanted Kyle and Jess at the station without delay. He wanted them there so badly, in fact, that he insisted they ride in the patrol car that came to pick up Terry.

  Picturing the bloodletting that would take place if either he or Jess were forced into the same car with Rodin, Kyle just as adamantly insisted he would drive Jess to the station himself.

  If she would even get in the car with him. Judging from the looks she cast his way every so often, she might have preferred riding with Terry.

  Chapter 16

  “What in the world were you thinking?” were the first words out of Kyle’s mouth once he’d gotten Jess alone in his car. He’d intended to start on a much more conciliatory note, but once his adrenaline had receded and he knew Jess was safe, anger had taken its place.

  “I was thinking I wanted to save my hide,” Jess replied indignantly. “What innocent person in my position would have volunteered information about a previous stabbing?”

  “That’s not what I was asking,” Kyle said quietly when he realized they weren’t on the same track. “I understand about that. I want to know why you did something so stupid as to confront Terry Rodin on your own.”

  “It did the job, didn’t it?” she snapped. Then her voice changed. “You understand?”

  “I’ll admit I was mad as hell at first that you’d kept it back. I guess I thought that if you cared anything about me, if you trusted me, you should have told me everything. But...I wasn’t a hundred percent honest with you, either. Guess I was using a double standard.”

  “It wasn’t a lack of trust that kept me from telling you, believe me. Oh, won’t this car ever get warm?” Even with a down jacket on, she was shivering.

  Kyle cranked up the heater.

  “I trusted you, Kyle Branson, whether you deserved it or not. I believed you were a certain kind of man.”

  “Really? What kind?”

  “Dedicated and ethical. If I’d told you about my troubles back in Massachusetts, your sense of duty would have dictated that you turn that information over to Clewis. Even if you didn’t want to hurt me.”

  “And has your opinion of me changed?”

  She hesitated. “No. Obviously your duty as an officer of the law is more important than anything else.”

  His duty? Where had she gotten the idea that he was some paragon of ethics? Somewhere along the line, his feelings for Jess had stomped all over duty. He honestly wasn’t sure what he would have done if she’d told him about Phil Cattrone. He thought he would have brought the information to Clewis, but he still wasn’t sure.

  “So you kept your secrets for my sake?” he asked. “To save me from having to make a painful decision?”

  “Oh, all right. As long as I’m being totally honest here, I was scared to death to breathe a word of that story to anyone. The information was just too damaging, even if I’d willingly volunteered it.

  “But,” she continued, “I wanted to tell you. I almost did, several times. Like when you first said you knew I wasn’t capable of violence. I wanted to point out that anyone, under the right conditions, can be violent. A mother protecting her children, a woman protecting her...well, whatever.” She dropped her head and stared into her lap.

  “My God, Jess, is that what happened? The man was trying to rape you?” The thought nauseated Kyle. His source in Boston hadn’t mentioned rape.

  “He’d been stalking me for weeks,” she said, lifting her head to look directly at Kyle. “He’d never threatened violence, just kept promising this sick sort of eternal love and vague things like ‘I’ll make sure no other man ever loves you the way I do.’ The police wouldn’t do anything. They didn’t take it seriously.”

  “And so he came into your house?”

  “He forced his way in while I was carrying some groceries inside. Pushed me up against the kitchen counter. There was no doubt that he intended to rape me. He made that abundantly clear. And I might have stood that. I might have survived it. But I wasn’t altogether clear that he was going to let me live afterward. So I grabbed the first weapon I could lay my hands on, a knife in the dish drainer.”

  Her voice quavered, but she went on. “I didn’t threaten him or try to scare him, because I knew Phil, and I knew that wouldn’t work. So I stabbed. Viciously, and with intent to hurt him.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this, you know,” Kyle said.

  “Of course I do. I owe you this explanation, I think. I only wish I could have given it to you before you stormed out of the house.”

  “Point taken.” He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I’m sorry. My temper gets the better of me sometimes. I think you pointed that out recently. Fortunately, I cool down pretty fast.”

  “Does that mean you’re not mad anymore?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. In your position I might have done exactly the same thing. It was just such a shock finding out that you...”

  “That I’d stabbed someone. Even in self-defense. I know. People have a hard time believing a gently bred, middle-class, Midwestern lady can do something so bloody and unsavory.”

  “It’s not that, Jess,” he said, suddenly intense. “I have no problem believing a ‘nice’ woman can do violence. I’ve seen it.” Without warning he took the next exit.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We’re stopping for coffee. I have to tell you something.”

  “But Clewis—”

  “Clewis can wait. He’ll have enough to do for a while with Terry and the highway patrol guys. I could use some caffeine.”

  Kyle said nothing more until they’d pulled into a nondescript chain café and ordered their coffee. But Jess sensed there was something heavy on his mind. He tapped his spoon against the thick ceramic mug, biding his time, perhaps choosing his words just as she’d chosen hers.

  “A few years ago I had a partner named Buck Palladia,” he began. And as Jess listened to the tragic, unsavory tale of Melissa Palladia’s downward spiral into crack addiction, she began to understand a lot of things about Kyle Branson—about why he’d been so suspicious of her at the beginning. And why, when he’d wanted to believe in her innocence, he’d fought it.

  He hadn’t wanted to be naive, like Buck, who’d ended up with a bullet in his brain when his wife had finally gone over the edge.

  No wonder Kyle had reacted so strongly when he’d discovered Jess’s duplicity. He’d suddenly seen Buck’s situation all over again—a guy taken in by a pretty face, lulled into a false sense of security by sex and protestations of innocence.

  When Kyle’s story ran down and he fell silent, she shook her head. “It’s a wonder you didn’t give up on me,” she said, a trace of wonder coloring the statement. “Or did you just come back to Lake Weatherby because you heard the 911 call over the scanner?”

  “No, I was coming back, anyway. After thinking things through, I’d realized that no matter what, I still believed you didn’t kill Terry.”

  “And what did you think when you walked into the Gilpatricks’ house and saw me sitting on a strange man with a knife at his throat?” She managed a smile. What a picture that must have been.

  “I thought you were the most beautiful avenging angel I’d ever seen.”

  “Liar. You went white.”

  “Okay, the scene did give me a turn.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “But only for a moment. Because I’d realized something else when I was driving around. I realized I love you.”

  Jess’s heart beat double time, then stopped altogether for a moment. Had she heard him right? “You mean, like...”

  “I mean I love you. How else can I say it? And no matter how bad things looked, I had to give you the benefit of the doubt
. I’d already screwed up once by not doing that.”

  Amazing. She’d blown up at him, let him have it with both barrels...and nothing awful had happened. He hadn’t turned against her. He loved her. Her heart grew wings and threatened to burst out into the open. Then something else occurred to her. A small matter, really, but she had to mention it.

  “When I told you the guy on the floor was Terry, you didn’t believe me at first.” She softened the admonishment by rubbing her fingers across the back of his hand.

  “He didn’t look like Terry. It would have taken blind faith to believe you without question. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that kind of faith again, Jess. Not even with you.”

  At least he was honest. “I’m not sure blind faith is such a good thing, anyway,” she said, resigned. “It’s certainly gotten me into trouble a few times. I guess a bit of healthy skepticism is okay, as long as it’s combined with a good strong hunch that the person you love is decent and honest... That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  One corner of his mouth turned up. “It works for me.” He stared at her over the rim of his mug as he took a long sip. “So I just told you I love you. What are you going to do about it?”

  She hesitated. “Love you back?”

  “Aw, Jess. You don’t have to say it if it’s not true. Neither of us planned for this...” He shrugged helplessly.

  “Idiot. Maybe I haven’t always been completely honest with you, but you don’t think I’d lie about something like this, do you?”

  He answered her by leaning over the table and capturing her lips with his. Steam from their coffee mingled with their own self-generated steam, and only a disapproving throat-clearing from a passing waitress made them stop.

  “I could get used to that,” Kyle said, his voice husky.

  “Me too.”

  Abruptly his demeanor changed. He gulped down the rest of his coffee in a few swallows, then wiped his mouth with his napkin. “C’mon, drink up. I’m anxious to get back to the station and force Clewis to eat a big helping of crow.”