Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  Unlike most men, he had a natural talent for dealing with distraught women. Being big brother to two drama princesses had given him a good start, and his job had taught him the rest. He’d never been the sort of cop who stood by stoically while a victim or family member broke down and wished for a female officer to deal with them. He knew the value of a touch, a hug, a hand to hold and a few quiet words.

  The floor was hard and cold, and the air was still, carrying a hint of cooling apple pie. After a few minutes of rasping breaths, Martine grew quieter, but shudders racked through her. Somehow, the fact that he felt her sobs more than heard them made them that much worse, as if she couldn’t find the strength inside to give them voice.

  He couldn’t guess how long she cried. Long enough for his butt to go numb, for the muscles in his arms and legs to get stiff from the awkward position. Long enough to drain whatever energy she had, but nowhere near long enough to find any real comfort.

  When her body grew still and her tears subsided, he continued to stroke her hair. “I didn’t intend to tell you. It’s information the public doesn’t need to know, and I knew it would...” Break your heart, he’d been about to say. “It would be too much to hear about someone you loved. I’m sorry you found out, and I’m sorry you found out this way.”

  She lifted her head an inch or two so she could see him. Exhaustion and revulsion etched lines into her face. “Is there any good way—” a hiccup interrupted her “—to find out your friend’s heart was cut from her body after she died?”

  By sheer will, Jimmy kept his muscles from contracting. Don’t ask, don’t ask, please, God, don’t let her ask. He didn’t think he could tell her that Paulina hadn’t been dead when the killer started carving. She was too shaken. Learning that her friend didn’t die a relatively easy death from blunt force trauma to the head but instead was butchered alive was too much for her to take in at one time.

  Was there ever a good time?

  Her head sagged against his shoulder again. She shifted, wiping away dampness from her cheeks, then switched her focus again to breathing. The tremors slowly faded, and her muscles very slowly relaxed. For a long time, she was so quiet that he thought she might have fallen asleep. Her week had been as long and stressful as his, her evening as energetic and cathartic. Now all he had to figure out was how to get his feet under him and stand up without jarring her too much, then carry her to bed.

  Ten years ago, he could have done it without much effort. Tonight, just thinking about it made him consider the possibility of sleeping on the tile floor, uncomfortable as it was.

  Before he’d moved, she pressed her cheek harder against him. “When I asked you if Paulina’s death was related to Callie’s, you said yes. That the details of the cases matched. Does that mean Callie also...?”

  Her voice was soft and weary, and it fueled the rage deep inside him. He hated people so bitter, so angry with the world, that they thought they had the right to destroy other people’s lives. No parent or spouse or child should ever have to know that someone took their loved one’s life for any reason. If Irena Young or whoever the hell had committed these murders couldn’t bear to live as long as her victims did, then she should have damn well killed herself. Problem solved.

  “Yes.”

  “So this person who wants me dead...he intends to remove my heart, too.” She raised her hand protectively to her chest, as if she were saluting a flag. “Promise me you won’t let that happen. I’m very attached to this heart, and I really don’t think I could bear losing it. I know I’d be dead and wouldn’t know it, but please, Jimmy...” Her tone edging closer to hysterical with each word she spoke, she clamped her jaws shut, keeping any other plea inside.

  He laid his own hand over hers. “I won’t, Tine. I swear on my life.”

  She breathed, then nodded, but it was clear she didn’t entirely believe him. He couldn’t even take offense. He could promise her anything, and he could mean it with his heart and soul and even his life.

  But that didn’t mean he could force it to come true.

  He would do his damnedest, though. Or die trying.

  Chapter 9

  The rest of the night and Saturday morning passed in a blur for Martine. She woke to a dark gray sky, rolled over and went back to sleep, snuggling against Jimmy’s body. The next time she woke, the sky was light but still dreary and Jimmy was gone from the bed. She slid into the depression where he had lain, faintly warm and smelling of his cologne, and fell asleep again with her head on his pillow.

  The third time she woke, she felt thickheaded, as if she’d closed down a few Bourbon Street bars all on her own. Her body ached, and her stomach was so empty that it was distressing her brain. Her eyes were too puffy and sore to make out the numbers on the bedside clock, but she thought there were only three, so it was past noon, not yet night.

  She needed a shower. A toothbrushing. A delete button on her brain to clear out ugly memories she would never forget.

  Paulina, Callie, I’m so sorry. I never should have let things end the way they did.

  They walked away from you, her internal voice reminded her. They forgot you.

  Sliding to the edge of the bed, she rubbed her empty stomach and decided the one thing she needed most of all: Jimmy. She didn’t care that she looked like she’d tested her hair in hurricane-force winds or that yesterday’s makeup was smeared and clumped or wiped off completely. She just wanted to feel his presence. Just wanted to feel safe.

  Leaving his bedroom, she tiptoed around to the guest room for warm socks and fuzzy slippers. On impulse, she grabbed a pair of leggings and squirmed into them, then proceeded to the living room. The logs were ablaze again in the fireplace, and the central heat spread warmth to the spaces too far for its reach. But being this cold from the inside out, she wasn’t likely to warm up very fast.

  Jimmy had pulled three empty boxes over to form a table in front of the couch and was studying papers, notes, photographs and such from the files spread out. She was careful not to look at any of them. She didn’t want to see anything her brain wasn’t ready for.

  He sat back and watched her circle the boxes to join him. She would have sat at the opposite end, but when he extended his hand, she grasped it tightly and let him pull her down next to him. For a long time he just looked at her, then he gently combed his fingers through her hair, undoing some tangles. “You okay?”

  “I’ll survive.” It was the most hopeful answer she could give and had the added benefit of being true. She was going to survive this thing. She might never be the same person again, but she would, at least, be.

  Jimmy maneuvered them until he was leaning back against the sofa arm and she was tucked up close. She liked being so close.

  “The temperature is in the forties today, so the rest of the snow should be gone soon. Jack’s back in town and grumpy after spending so much time with his fugitive. I saved you a piece of apple pie, but first you’ve got to eat something. Breakfast, lunch, your choice.”

  Even though her first thought was to turn down food, her stomach growled so loudly, it would have been a refusal nobody believed. “How about toast?” She could keep dry white toast down, right?

  “How do you want your egg? Scrambled or fried? Over-medium or -hard? I’ll warn you, I don’t do over-easy. The goop on top is just gross.”

  “Toast will be fine.”

  “I’ll make it over-hard so the yolk doesn’t drip. What kind of cheese do you want? We have Swiss, cheddar, gruyere, pepper jack, provolone...” His expression was innocent, as if he wasn’t ignoring every word coming out of her mouth.

  Since he was sweet enough to care, and she would like to see if he could actually fry an egg properly, and she really was hungry, she relented. “You choose, and I’ll eat it.”

  He kissed her forehead, then brushed his mouth across hers before
standing. “While you wait, you might want to...” One hand circled in the general area of her face, which she took to mean Wash your face, brush your teeth, get your hair under control.

  Okay, so when she returned to the bathroom, she looked all ready for Halloween. She took a shower, scrubbed her face and brushed her teeth twice before dressing in the leggings again and a red sweater. Underneath she wore a matched set of violet lace lingerie.

  Wonderful aromas filled the air when she went back to the living room: fried eggs, melted cheese, artisanal bread and coffee. Jimmy was on the couch again, and he’d cleared a space on the boxes for her meal. She sat on the hearth instead, savoring the heat of the fire, the buttery warmth of the toasted egg-and-cheese sandwich and the sight of him, in disreputable jeans and another NOPD T-shirt. Even though he hadn’t shaved, even though his hair stood on end, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever known.

  The first bite of sandwich made her moan softly. “The man can cook,” she murmured to herself, but his grin showed he didn’t need to hear the words to understand the compliment. She polished off the sandwich far too quickly for good manners and drained half her coffee before wiping her hands on a napkin and gazing at him. He was sorting through papers, making notes in that cramped little style of his.

  After a moment, he looked up. “Are you ready for the apple pie?”

  “Not yet.” With her backside blazing warm, she shifted along the hearth, propping her feet on the stone so they could get warm, too. “Is there anything new you can tell me?”

  He put his ratty notebook down and raised his arms high above his head in a tension-relieving stretch. Lacing his fingers together, he rested both hands on the back of his head, propped his feet on the corner of a box and sighed. “Everything I’ve got on Irena Young is a dead end. If she’s worked since her mother’s death, it’s been under a different social security number or she’s gotten paid off the books. She still has the same cell phone, according to the provider, but hasn’t made a single call since the week after her mother’s death, and it’s rarely turned on. Those calls went to family back in Idaho, but they say they haven’t talked to her since and don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. She hasn’t updated the address on her Louisiana driver’s license, but she doesn’t have a license from any other state, either.”

  That was a sad way to live: having no contact with her family, no friends, apparently no one who mattered in her life beyond her mother. Martine loved her mom dearly, but even Bette, with her larger-than-life personality, wasn’t enough to fill up all that space. Where would she be without friends, coworkers, acquaintances and lovers?

  “Her father’s out of the picture, too. He moved down south—way south, like Panama or Colombia—when he retired and hasn’t been back to the States since. The Marquitta police can’t find anyone there who maintained contact with Irena or Katie Jo after the murder. There were no identifiable fingerprints on the letters or the pictures, no saliva from licking the envelopes, no spores or microbes or anything.” He loosed his hands and shrugged. “We’ve got a lot of nothing.”

  Warm enough at last, Martine left the hearth to curl up on the sofa. “What—” Nausea rose in her stomach, but she forced it down again and steadied her voice the best she could. “What will they do with—with Paulina’s—her—”

  Compassion and tenderness—two things she’d never thought the superficial Jimmy capable of—softened his gaze. “Her heart?”

  She nodded.

  “DNA will confirm that it’s hers. Then her husband will have the option of having the coroner’s office dispose of it, or it can be returned to her body for burial, or he can have it cremated. Her funeral is scheduled for the early part of next week, and the results probably won’t be back by then. I don’t know if he’ll delay it or have the heart placed later or what.”

  Logically, Martine knew Paulina was beyond caring that her heart was gone. Emotionally, she couldn’t imagine her friend’s spirit feeling anything but distress. How could she rest in peace without her heart?

  Wrapping her arms around her knees, she contained the tiny shivers passing through her before they could grow in intensity. Forcing her thoughts away from that one terrible point, she quietly said, “I can’t go, can I?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “A lot of killers attend their victims’ services. The local police will be there. They’ll photograph everyone at the church and the cemetery. You’ll have to look at the pictures to see if you recognize anyone.”

  Her smile was sad. “I barely recognized Paulina herself. Tallie, of course, will look a lot like Callie. Robin... Irena... Only as long as they haven’t changed very much.”

  Or they could be looking for someone else. Someone she would never expect to find in the photos. Someone she’d forgotten or hardly known, someone she might not have known at all. If she had known him, he couldn’t possibly be the same. Surely whatever led him to such horrific actions against girls he’d known would have left some sort of mark on his spirit and his soul, if not his face. And if she didn’t know him, she would be worse than useless to Jimmy.

  It was a good thing he wanted more than just information from her.

  She hoped he wanted everything she had to give.

  * * *

  It was shortly after three when the doorman called up to announce a visitor. Jimmy cleared him, and a few minutes later, Jack rang the bell. Proving the meteorologists right, his only jacket was a hoodie, and he carried a stack of files and a folding chair, kept handy in his vehicle for cookouts and the kids’ soccer games.

  “Look, he hasn’t even seen the place and he brings along his own chair,” Martine teased.

  Jack snorted. “He hasn’t had enough furniture since that time we were moving him when two patrol officers tried to stack the armchairs and make it down the steps in one trip, and they dropped them from the third-floor landing.”

  “Would it have killed them to climb the stairs twice?” Jimmy asked.

  “In that neighborhood, quite possibly.” Jack tossed the files on the table, unfolded the chair nearby, then bent to hug Martine. “You haven’t hurt him yet. I’m proud of your restraint. How are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, with a sort of woefulness to it, but Jimmy knew Jack would accept it as the best they could expect. Being an intended victim wasn’t easy. Jimmy was proud of her for managing that much.

  “I’ll get some coffee—”

  Martine interrupted. “I’ll do that. You guys do all your ugly-part discussion while I’m out of the room.” She rose, squeezed his hand as she passed as casually as if Jack’s presence didn’t change anything. Being just one more of Jimmy’s girlfriends, especially in front of his cop friends, wasn’t always easy, either. Expectations for them were usually pretty low.

  Jack made only one dry comment. “You know, if you hurt her, you’re going to have my wife to answer to.”

  “I’m not afraid of your wife.”

  “You should be.”

  Reclaiming his seat on the couch, Jimmy glanced at Martine, her back to them in the kitchen, lowered his voice and caught Jack up on everything they’d learned—or not learned—during his absence.

  Jack hadn’t been idle, either. Snowed in in Nebraska, he’d had plenty of time for phone calls, internet searches and records requests, and he’d taken on Jimmy’s least favorite task: investigating the subjects’ financial backgrounds. He had a lot of printouts, but nothing that grabbed for attention. They might still miss information that would make sense of it all. They might have it and just not got the pieces together properly. Or they might never get it all.

  That was an outcome Jimmy couldn’t accept.

  “I kept trying to get hold of Callie Winchester’s parents, and their lawyer finally called last night,” Jack started. “The Winchesters are grieving
the loss of their daughter. They have nothing to tell us that could possibly help in our investigation, and the subject of their daughter Tallie is strictly off-limits, for her own protection. She’s somewhere safe. On what continent, he wouldn’t say. He has no clue whether her parents have been in contact with any of the other parents, and he has no intention of asking them.”

  That seemed about right for the people who’d lived in the pretentious house at the end of the Broussards’ street. “I’ve never understood families who won’t do everything they possibly can to find their child’s murderer.”

  “If everyone did things the way a reasonable person expects, we’d be out of a job, James. Unlike you, most of us need it.”

  “I need it,” Jimmy protested. “If I was phased out, I’d have to move back home, where they’d probably make me handyman and security guard for the house. The kids would make me a badge from cardboard covered with aluminum foil, and my parents would drive me stark-raving mad urging me to get married, have kids and carry on the family name.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for marriage and kids.”

  Jimmy resisted the urge to look in Martine’s direction or give any hint that he was even vaguely interested in how their future looked. It was a long-standing joke at work that certain words had never been in his vocabulary, like forever. Commitment. Monogamy. Fidelity. When he and Alia had gotten married, his fellow officers had started a pool on how long it would last, and not one of them had given it more than a year.

  He regretted that he’d been so immature and easy to read.

  “Is it safe to come back?” Martine asked from the kitchen.

  “Sure.” Jimmy murmured, “She’s a little squeamish about the heart.”

  “Who the hell isn’t?”

  Martine carried a sterling tray, ornately decorated and heavy enough to give a fifteen-year-old boy a concussion, as Dani and Becca had found out in a practical joke gone wrong. Jimmy had been the one injured, and also the one punished since the joke had been his. He’d never again sneaked up on the girls late at night when there was metalware within reach.