Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  “I’m going back to the car to wait.”

  By the time Martine’s words registered in his brain, she had a fifty-yard head start, enough that her pink-and-yellow slicker was starting to fade into the gloom. He jogged to catch up to her, wondering if anything he could say would take the edge off her emotions. Not likely, so instead he concentrated on ignoring the cold and damp that had seeped into his clothes and the fact that when he breathed out again in a sigh, his breath formed a little cloud. This crap wouldn’t be so bad if it would just get cold enough to snow. He liked snow, and New Orleans had had precious little of it in the city’s history.

  But as long as the wet stayed in liquid form, it was just damn dreary.

  Neither of them spoke until they were in the car, heater running on high, windshield wipers working rhythmically, and he was turning the car around to leave the neighborhood. His stomach grumbled, reminding him breakfast had been a long time ago. “You want to get something to eat?”

  “Not in this town.”

  “Okay.” There were plenty of places on the way back to the city, and he wasn’t particular. Though he wouldn’t have minded hitting that diner she’d looked so longingly at downtown. He had a fondness for diners, strong coffee and fried eggs. But New Orleans had plenty of places like that, and he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to spend any more time here than necessary.

  “You mind talking?” he asked after a while, once they’d left the city limits and were traveling along the highway.

  Though her head was turned so she could stare out the side window, he saw her lift one hand to rub her eyes before grimly asking, “Any chance it could be about anything in the world besides this case?”

  He grinned. “A couple of days ago, you wouldn’t have talked to me about anything in the world except a case.” A couple of days. Less than two days ago, he’d still thought of Martine primarily as the one he hadn’t been able to charm and she’d still looked at him as if she’d caught a whiff of something particularly nasty. He could have easily imagined spending this much time with her but for damn sure not in this way, and she would have been horrified by the idea of spending time with him, much less letting him into her apartment and her life.

  Big changes. And all it had taken was for Paulina to give up her life.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Feeling the need to draw her out of the funk she'd sunk into, he injected the smug note into his voice that had always driven her crazy. Better to have her crazy than so lowdown blue. “How about how much you regret not sleeping with me that night?”

  Slowly her head turned, and on her face was the scathing look he’d come to know so well. “Thank you for reminding me you’re a jerk.” That was better, that spark that flared in her eyes.

  “I’m a good cop,” he protested.

  “Who’s a jerk.”

  “But not on the job.”

  She opened her mouth as if to debate that, then closed it again. It was a source of pride to him that his reputation was for solving ugly cases while being relatively fair and courteous to everyone involved. Suspect, person of interest, family or witness—cooperating or not—he treated them the way people deserved to be treated. Granted, he didn’t have huge amounts of patience with people who lied to him, but that was one of his people qualities, not a cop quality.

  Though Martine’s dislike for him stemmed from the fact that she considered him a liar, because he had come on to her without telling her he was married. At the time, he’d defended himself by pointing out that he hadn’t said he wasn’t married; he just hadn’t said he was. It hadn’t been much of an excuse, not in her eyes, not even in his own. Of course he shouldn’t have been flirting with any woman other than Alia. Of course he shouldn’t have tried to seduce Martine. Of course being an unfaithful bastard had been wrong, and he didn’t blame her for holding it against him.

  But that was a long time ago. He’d learned since then. He’d changed.

  She moistened her lips. “You’re actually not as... You’re a better...detective...a better per-per—” With her cheeks flushed deep red and her inability to finish person, she rolled her eyes, shook her head and looked away again.

  Jimmy’s impulse was to make light of it. To tease that, along with New Orleans, hell must have frozen over because Martine Broussard was actually complimenting him. To grin his crap-eating grin and make another over-the-top, guaranteed-to-piss-her-off comment. But he didn’t. That was the stupid Jimmy from before. The Jimmy he was today didn’t even want to.

  Instead he swallowed hard and quietly, sincerely said, “Thank you, Martine. You don’t know how much I appreciate that.”

  Then stupid Jimmy just couldn’t resist it. His most obnoxious smile stretching across his face, he added, “Hell has officially frozen over.”

  * * *

  After burgers at a little hole-in-the-wall place just off the interstate and more rain, dear Lord, than Martine could bear, they were finally back in the French Quarter, driving slowly along Royal Street. Water rushed along the street, some diverted into the city’s overtaxed drainage system, the rest running where it could, puddling where it couldn’t. When her building came into view ahead, a great sense of relief flooded through her, easing the muscles cramping in her neck, her shoulders and her back. Funny, that after spending part of the day in her hometown, she felt as if she was finally home, but that was exactly the feeling warming and brightening her.

  They’d been gone not quite four and a half hours, but she felt as if she’d risen with the nonexistent sun and trekked the whole way on foot. All she wanted was to crawl into bed, turn the TV on to something frivolous and funny and not come out until morning to bright sunlight, fabulous early-spring weather and the last few days erased from her memory.

  Hey, if she was going to wish, she would wish big.

  Jimmy stopped in his usual spot. “You okay?”

  “I’m adapting.”

  He nodded, apparently remembering her mother’s words about that. “I have an appointment at five with Mr. Bradley.”

  “Mister— Oh.” Paulina’s husband. “I don’t envy you.”

  “Yeah, if Jack were here, I’d be passing it on to him. Bradley got in about an hour ago. He has paperwork to take care of to transfer his wife’s body home for the funeral as soon as the coroner releases it.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, gazing past her. “Everything look okay?”

  She turned, saw nothing suspicious at her front door, then saw Ramona and Anise watching from behind a display of T-shirts. Ramona, as always, was smiling; Anise, as often enough, was glowering. Martine might have to clarify her comments to the girl about Jimmy so she didn’t try any new methods of keeping him out.

  “It looks the same. Except...” She’d just flitted a look over her car in the driveway, but now she studied it closer. Climbing out of Jimmy’s car, she crossed the sidewalk to walk inside the arch that covered her parking space. His footsteps sounded right behind her.

  A few pieces of trash had blown inside; she picked those up and dropped them into the can in the corner. As long as she was at the front of the car, next to the tall wrought iron gate that led into the courtyard, she rattled it to make sure it was secure. The chain jangled before uncoiling and landing on the bricks below, the still-closed padlock making a thunk.

  Jimmy took her hand from the gate and began pulling her backward. “Someone cut the chain instead of the padlock to make it less noticeable that they’d tampered with it. When was the last time you checked it?”

  Weariness made her eyes ache. “I don’t know. I always look when I get in my car, but as far as actually touching it...”

  Still holding on, he steered her back to the sidewalk and up the stoop. He found her keys in her jacket pocket, unlocked the door and ushered her inside. “I’ll call someone and have them check it out. I’ll get so
meone to replace it, too. Right now we’ll take a quick look at this, then go from there.”

  This was the reason she’d gone to the car in the first place; she’d just gotten totally distracted. It was the same kind of kraft envelope she’d received in the mail the day before, and it had been tucked under the windshield wiper on her car. It looked heavier than the other, and whatever was inside, she didn’t want to see.

  But how could she not look?

  On the way up the stairs, Jimmy called in and requested a patrol officer. Once he was off the phone, he seemed quite at home in her apartment. He turned her in the direction of her workroom, flipped on the lights and switched on the space heater. After pulling on a pair of thin gloves from his coat pocket—“I never leave home without ’em”—he took a seat and carefully cut open one end of the envelope.

  Inside was a piece of typing paper, folded in thirds, with photographs taped to it, the folds made to avoid bending the pictures. Martine stood behind him, looking over his shoulder, vaguely detailing things she shouldn’t be noticing, like the dark sheen to his damp hair, the scent of his cologne, the breadth of his shoulders. Other things, too: the silence in the apartment, the loud hollow whoosh of her breathing, the awareness that if someone had trespassed in her courtyard without her knowledge, they could have trespassed in her apartment, too. Maybe they were just that good, that there were no visible signs.

  Maybe she wasn’t so safe here, after all.

  Jimmy cautiously unfolded the paper, resting his gloved hands on either side to hold it flat. Across the top in thick black print, someone had written Actions have consequences.

  Underneath that was Callie’s senior picture, cut from the yearbook, the slashes careless and including portions of the pictures around her. A thick black X blocked most of her face. Beneath it was Paulina’s picture, again including portions of the nearby shots and another X. On the bottom row were pictures of Tallie, Robin and Martine. A question mark was scrawled onto the paper above each of them.

  “Actions have consequences.” Martine sank into the chair next to Jimmy. “Actions have... That was something Fletcher said all the time. He got a kick out of enforcing the rules. He was rigid about it. I think he just liked having the kids plead with him not to get them into trouble, plus it gave him a chance to get alone with the girls to discuss their infractions.”

  “So pretty much anyone in one of his classes would know he said that a lot.” Jimmy folded the paper again and slid it into the envelope. “Katie Jo and Irena would have known, too.”

  “But Katie Jo’s in prison—”

  “Maybe.”

  “And Irena... She was just a kid.”

  “You were all just kids then. If Paulina and Callie could be killed for what they did as kids, then the killer could be the kid they did it to, loosely speaking.”

  Martine recalled Irena’s image, a scared teenage girl trying too hard and having a tough time of it. Being a high school student wasn’t supposed to be so hard, but it was for so many, and they took it so very seriously.

  But she couldn’t imagine Irena, or anyone truthfully, resorting to violence twenty-four years later. That was a long time to nurse wounded feelings and letdowns, time where there had been so much more important stuff going on in life: college or a job, a career, falling in love, marrying, having children, travel.

  Unless the consequences of their actions had robbed her of all that.

  Martine stubbornly shook her head. “I’ve just got it in my mind that it’s a man. A man would find it so much easier to grab a woman off the street, to contain and control her, to bash her skull in and dump her body in a cemetery.”

  “But a woman doesn’t need physical strength. Typically, women aren’t seen as threatening, and people don’t expect them to be armed. A skinny little girl could walk into your store, chat you up when you’re alone, pull a gun and do whatever she wanted with you. Take you where she wanted. Dump you where she wanted.” He looked up at her, his expression grim. “Women are resourceful, Martine. Don’t ever underestimate them.”

  To think that a woman, a girl they’d gone to school with, was capable of murder...

  A girl they’d gone to school with for an entire year and Martine had barely remembered. She must have had classes with Irena Young, must have passed her in the hall, must have seen her on an almost daily basis, and she’d completely forgotten her. Couldn’t recall a single conversation with her, not one friendly exchange.

  She pulled a chair to the heater, where she could absorb most of the warmth it put out, and sank down. Wishing her voice sounded more like a capable adult’s and not a frightened girl’s, she wistfully asked, “Do you really think it could be Irena? Blaming us for breaking up her family, getting even because we weren’t friendly enough?”

  Jimmy pulled a plastic shopping bag from the box on the shelf and put the envelope inside. He definitely felt at home there.

  The odd thing—as if that wasn’t odd enough—was that she didn’t mind. She had no desire to drag the table and chairs and sofa into the street, douse them with gasoline and burn the DiBiase cooties until not even ash remained. She didn’t want to do a cleansing ritual to rid the space of his germs and scents or to meditate the memory of him within these walls right out of her mind.

  “I have a list of suspects,” he said after tying the bag’s handles into a loose knot. “Katie Jo might have gotten an early release. Twenty-four years is a long time to think about the choices she made. Irena might have gone on with her life, or she might have spent those same twenty-four years wondering why the hell you and the others were so special that you got to be pretty and popular and have best friends and parents who loved you and normal lives while she was stuck with her nightmare.

  “Fletcher might have had a friend who shared his tastes—another teacher, a neighbor, someone at his church. Irena’s father might have resented Fletcher for taking his place in his daughter’s life, taking her away from him. Fletcher could have gone a lot further than just touching with some girl, who would resent everyone who knew what he was doing and didn’t tell, or that girl’s father could be playing the avenging angel. Or one of your friends could have told someone who felt compelled for whatever reason to punish whoever they could.”

  His smile was tight-lipped, not showing his teeth, and disappeared quickly. “There’s no shortage of people on my list, Martine. The only thing I’m sure of right now is that you’re not on it.”

  Relief seeped into her, thawing some of the ice that had settled in her stomach. And more: gratitude. A little bit of security. Comfort.

  And a little too much of the desire that had almost led her to break her number-one relationship rule and jump into bed with a married man.

  Who wasn’t married now and hadn’t been for a long time.

  He crouched in front of her. “I’ve got to drop this off for the lab guys and make a couple calls before I meet with Mr. Bradley. Don’t answer the door unless it’s someone from your life here.” He emphasized that with a tap of his fingers on the wooden arm of her chair. “Don’t go out. Don’t talk to any old friends or acquaintances. If you go to the shop, don’t stay there alone. When the others leave, you leave, too, and ask them to wait outside until you get yourself locked in here. Don’t open any windows, don’t unlock any doors. Just pretend you’re a bear and hibernate.”

  The obstinate part of her wanted to argue with him, even though she intended to do exactly as he said, but she didn’t have the energy. Instead she nodded mutely, then roused herself enough to say, “So when the officer comes to look at my gate?”

  “I’ll talk to him. Don’t open the door even to a cop unless it’s Jack or me.”

  Again she nodded.

  He pushed to his feet, reached for her hand as if it was the most natural thing in his world, and she let him take it as if it was the most natural thi
ng in hers. Together they walked down the stairs to the entry, where he squinted up at the light bulb, then gazed down at her. “We’ll get this guy.”

  “Or girl.”

  He acknowledged that with a grimace that she privately echoed. What did it matter whether it was a man or a woman? Dead was dead, no matter whose hand accomplished it.

  Shaking off the thought, she focused on Jimmy. “I can’t say it’s been a fun day, but...thank you, Jimmy.”

  The look that flashed across his face was...sweet. Not his sweet-talker look, either; that was always smug. No, this was just plain sweet, and it hurt her heart just a little. She’d spent a lot of time wishing she’d never met this man, and here he was now, trying to save her life. No matter what happened, she would always be grateful for that.

  Unless, of course, he failed. Then she would haunt him.

  Ah, there was the old Martine.

  And with his grin, the old Jimmy appeared in front of her. “Like I said, hell has officially frozen over. I’ll see you.”

  After locking the dead bolt behind him—and the chain lock—and shoving the concrete planter in the corner over to block the door—Martine headed back up the stairs. It wasn’t until she reached the top that she realized she was still smiling.

  Chapter 6

  Jimmy didn’t have an office, just a desk in a room shared with other desks, so he met Shawn Bradley in one of the interview rooms. The man was about his age, his skin sallow, his face hollowed, the last few months having worn hard on him. His tone varied from quavering to flat and blank, as if he just didn’t have the emotional reserves to keep up the inflection.

  Jimmy offered his condolences, asked about the transfer arrangements and if he needed anything while he was in town, then, hiding his reluctance, went straight to his main interest. “You filed a missing person report on your wife three months ago. What happened?”