by Julie Miller
“I’m in my grandson’s room now. I’m sure he’s a fine boy. He needs a man to raise him, you know. Where is he, Madeline? I want to see him.” She heard furniture breaking. The heirloom rocker? More glass shattered beneath his hands. “Do you hear me?”
“Joe, please.”
But no, those were just things. Things could be replaced. People couldn’t. She had to put Joe back in prison before he hurt anyone else. Keeping him on the line until she could notify the police was a start, even though it meant listening to him destroy precious memories and hard work.
“Joe, please,” he mimicked. “Where’s my grandson?” he bellowed.
Under the sound of the next crash, Maddie lifted the cordless receiver off Dwight’s phone and dialed Cooper’s cell.
Please answer. She mouthed the request and prayed that Joe was working himself up into such a rage that he wouldn’t hear the detective pick up on the other line.
“Detective Bellamy.” His easy, friendly voice was a marked contrast to the vile things she was listening to.
“It’s Maddie,” she whispered.
“I can barely hear you,” Cooper answered in a normal tone that sounded way too loud under the circumstances. “Can you speak up?”
“Having a boy is the first thing Katie’s ever gotten right. You can’t keep him from me, you bitch!”
Even with her cellphone at arm’s length, Cooper had no trouble hearing Joe’s ranting. “Ms. McCallister? Are you all right?”
She could envision Cooper sitting bolt upright behind the wheel of his truck. The bald, young detective would be instantly on alert.
Maddie whispered into Dwight’s receiver. “Joe Rinaldi is at my house. Right now. He may have done something to the cop inside the van.”
Joe ranted on about taking a knife from her kitchen and knowing the best place to stick it if she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.
Cooper swore. “He’s saying that crap to you?”
“He says it to every woman.”
“I’m going to hang up so I can get backup to your place ASAP.” She heard his truck door open and close. “Can you unlock Mr. Powers’s security grid so I can get into the house without tripping the alarms?”
“I think so.”
“Do it.”
Maddie cringed as Joe shouted in her ear. “Who are you talking to, bitch?”
She stood. “The police are coming. They’re already on their way.”
“Ratted me out again, did ya?”
“Joe, you need help.” She had to keep him on the line. Had to keep him at the house. “If you surrender yourself—”
“I ain’t givin’ up nothin’!” She could hear his heavy, booted feet running down the stairs. “Don’t think I’m done with you, Madeline. I will find you. I’ll find my grandson.”
“Joe!” An ominous click of silence echoed in her ear.
Maddie tucked her cellphone into the pocket of her jeans and ran downstairs to punch in the security code Dwight had given her. Seconds later, Cooper Bellamy charged in, still giving directions on his cell as she bolted the door behind him and reset the grid.
“He’s running,” she warned him. “He hung up. I couldn’t keep him on the line.”
Cooper flashed her an okay sign and reported in. “Our fugitive is on the run again. What’s your ETA? Damn.”
Damn didn’t seem promising.
“Well, get someone there faster,” Cooper ordered. “And notify Commissioner Cartwright’s office. She wants to be briefed on any new developments.” He rubbed the top of his head and grimaced. “No, I’m not brownnosing. I’m doing my job. Now go do yours.”
He folded up his phone and clipped it onto his belt beside his badge. “A black-and-white is on the way.”
“An ambulance, too?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t raise anyone in the surveillance van, so I notified dispatch that we might have an officer down.” He pointed to the phone in her pocket. “You’d better call Mr. Powers.”
“Why?”
“Let him know what’s goin’ on. He worries about you.”
Maddie scoffed. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Word’s out about the way he rode to the rescue last night when the authorities announced Rinaldi’s escape. Officer Jackson is still catching grief this morning over the way he tried to step between you and Powers. He won’t make that mistake again.”
Did the whole precinct think she and Dwight were an item? Couldn’t they tell a driven man with a sense of duty from a man who truly cared for her? Last night she’d made a humiliating mistake by confusing the two. Men didn’t fall in love with Maddie McCallister. They weren’t her champion unless there was something else at stake besides her. The men she knew fell into three categories: casual acquaintances who barely noticed she was a woman, good buddies who didn’t care whether or not she was a woman, and big mistakes like Joe Rinaldi who made her wish she’d never been born a woman.
There was no knight-in-shining-armor category. She wasn’t anything more than an obligation to Dwight Powers—despite the gossip down at the Fourth Precinct.
“Dwight’s in court. I can’t interrupt him.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind if you’re the one doing the interrupting.”
She made a valiant effort to change the subject. “Shouldn’t we get to my house, too? I want to see how much damage Joe’s done. I can report anything that’s been stolen. He said he was taking a picture of my sister. If he’s taken a recent photograph of Katie, he could use it to find her. Maybe he left a clue, something that could help us track him.”
“Us?” Cooper planted his feet in front of the door. “Mr. Powers would have my hide if I let you and the baby leave. He’s the man who makes KCPD’s cases stick. I don’t want to get on his bad side. I promise I’ll check out the house as soon as I get a replacement here.”
“The sooner we move on this, the better, right? It’s my home that’s been violated. My family that’s in danger.”
“Ma’am, I—”
Maddie spun away and pulled out her phone to search for a number. “Roberta Hays, please.”
As soon as she was connected to the DFS caseworker, Maddie headed up to Tyler’s room, leaving the befuddled detective standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Roberta had already made arrangements to take Tyler to the doctor that afternoon for blood work and DNA tests. She’d said that the state would require the objectivity of a physician and lab of their choice in order to prove a familial relationship and grant legal custody. Leaving out any information about Tyler’s grandfather escaping prison and demanding his grandson, Maddie explained that she had to check her house and report to the police about a break-in. Roberta agreed to let Maddie drop Tyler off early at the DFS office. “Thanks, Roberta. I’ll be right there.”
With Tyler’s carrier hooked over one arm, Maddie descended the stairs and shoved the diaper bag into Cooper’s arms.
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked, already suspecting the answer and not liking it.
“We’re driving Tyler to the family services office downtown.” She gestured to Cooper. “Under police escort.” She opened the door and walked straight to his truck, then pulled the passenger seat forward to secure Tyler in the back. “The sooner we do something about Joe, the sooner I can quit jumping every time my phone rings and the sooner you can get back to finding Katie. She’s the one in real danger, not me.”
The detective locked the house and hurried after her. But when he climbed in behind the wheel across from Maddie, he just sat there. “I don’t know that Mr. Powers sees it that way. I’m not going anywhere until you call him.”
Maddie huffed in frustration and pulled out her phone. “Fine.” The instant she heard Dwight’s deep, authoritative voice, she started talking. “Dwight? It’s Maddie. Joe Rinaldi…”
“…name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon…”
Her impatience fizzled—or maybe that was disappointment kic
king in—when she realized she couldn’t talk to the man himself. When the recording ended, she left a simple message. “Hey, Dwight. It’s Maddie. I heard from Joe again. Call me when you can.”
She hung up and looked at Cooper. “Voice mail. Just as well. Shall we?”
Cooper reached across the seat to squeeze her hand, thinking she needed comfort. “Don’t give Mr. Powers too much grief for being such a hardhead, ma’am. Since his first family was murdered, you can’t blame him for being a little overprotective of the people he cares about.”
“But he doesn’t care…”
Murdered? Oh, damn. Maddie groaned as she remembered the news clippings from six years ago. She’d worried then about how he’d fare in a domestic-violence case. Could he prosecute the killer of another murdered wife without losing his cool? But Dwight Powers was all about cool in the courtroom. His coldhearted detachment had robbed Joe and his attorney of any emotional sway with the jury.
Katie had seen him as an unbeatable hero back then. And, to be honest, so had Maddie. Especially after Joe’s threats on that last day of sentencing.
But the Dwight Powers she’d gotten to know over the past few days wasn’t indestructible. He’d lost his wife and son, and had paid a heavy emotional price. She’d heard his nightmares. She’d witnessed his need. And his regret. What had Katie asked of him when she’d left him her child?
It was a miracle that he’d done anything at all to help her and Tyler. The baby, at least, must remind him of his own son. She made no claims to think she reminded him of his wife. “You’re right, of course.”
She blinked away fresh tears and looked down at Cooper’s grasp. It was a perfectly nice hand. But it wasn’t as strong, as rough, as seasoned by life as Dwight’s.
It wasn’t the hand she wanted to hold.
Chapter Six
Maddie knew that glare.
Thank goodness it was directed at Cooper Bellamy, not at her. Dwight ducked beneath the yellow crime-scene tape and made his way toward the detective and the crime-scene technicians speaking with him.
Before he spotted her, Maddie slipped into the gathering crowd of onlookers. She wasn’t up for butting heads just yet, not with all the blood she’d seen inside the listening van and on the pavement outside still weighing on her conscience.
She averted her gaze from the gurney that the ME was loading onto her van. Inside the body bag lay the slain surveillance officer. Maddie only had to see the numerous defensive wounds and slit throat to know that Joe Rinaldi was responsible. She’d seen the wounds from one of his knife attacks before.
Forty-one of them, to be exact.
Maddie tucked a loose strand of hair back into her ponytail and hugged her arms around her waist. She ignored the bump of people as her neighbors and a small herd of reporters moved past her for a closer look at the macabre scene. The thermometer at a bank said it was ninety-eight degrees. The humidity had to be higher than that. The afternoon sun beat down on her skin, exposed by the sleeves of her T-shirt, but she was still riddled with ice-cold goosebumps.
“Where is she?” Dwight’s tight-lipped question carried across the buzz of conversations and sent a shiver down her spine. “Whatever possessed you to bring Maddie here?”
“Have you ever tried to win an argument with her, sir?” Cooper Bellamy was outclassed if he thought he could bandy words with the master.
From the corner of her eye, Maddie saw Cooper’s hands go up in placating surrender.
“Of course, you have. Look, it was either bring her with me or wait for her to sneak out of the house on her own. I did make sure she called you. She said you wouldn’t want to be bothered in court, but I knew you’d want to hear about this.”
Maddie almost smiled at Cooper’s last-ditch effort to smooth things over with a man he truly respected—and was probably even a little intimidated by. She should go rescue him.
“You do realize she’s in danger here.” Dwight had a way of cutting through the niceties and the BS and getting straight to the point—no matter how painful it might be.
“There are at least twenty cops and state police here,” Cooper argued. “Rinaldi’s not going to get to her.”
“Right. So you know where she is right now, huh?”
Yep, she really ought to go save Cooper.
Maybe later, when she didn’t feel to blame for the death and destruction and distinctly unsettled feeling Joe had brought to the people around her. As neighbors and friends whispered about locking their doors, renewing gun permits and even moving, Maddie hunched her shoulders and stayed out of sight.
Maddie traded a sympathetic smile with one of her teenage neighbors, Trent Dixon. He paused and stood beside her to watch the ME van pull away. “Wow. Somebody murdered right on our street in the middle of the day. I thought that stuff only happened downtown.”
Right. Just like spousal abuse only happened in low-income families—not between professionals like a university accountant and his wife. Joe had bucked the stereotype with that one, too.
The teacher inside Maddie responded to her young friend’s shock. “Violence can happen anywhere—to anyone—if someone’s determined enough. We’re just not used to seeing it in our front yards. But the police are working very hard to find out who’s responsible. Just think about how protected we’ll be from here on.”
Trent shrugged. “I guess. Some of the girls I hang out with at school won’t even go out anymore. Or their folks won’t let them date. First, Whitney Chiles leaves, then Katie disappears, and now this. They’re afraid.”
The mention of Whitney’s name sparked a curious chord inside Maddie. She’d been Katie’s friend since grade school, and the two had sung in choirs and participated in plays together. Whitney was one of the few peers Katie had trusted enough to talk about her father. “Say, Trent. Did you ever hear anything from Whitney before she transferred schools at the beginning of last semester?”
“She didn’t transfer, Ms. McCallister. She quit because she got knocked up.” His cheeks burned red with embarrassment. “Not by me.”
Maddie pursed her lips together as pieces of the puzzle tried to connect themselves. Pay it forward? The line from Katie’s good-bye note began to make a little more sense. If her friend had gotten pregnant, Katie might try to help her out somehow—like taking her shopping for maternity clothes or driving her to a doctor. But help in running away?
While Maddie made a mental note to locate a phone number for Whitney’s parents to ask about their daughter, she dredged up a reassuring smile for the young man. “I didn’t think you were responsible. I just didn’t realize Whitney had been pregnant, too.”
Relieved that any suspicion had been cast aside, Trent suddenly became very chatty. “Yeah. Her parents freaked. They had her all lined up to go to a performing-arts school in New York after graduation. From what I heard, Whitney went to live with her older sister or sister-in-law, something like that—I guess to keep the other kids from gossiping. I think her folks were gonna pull some strings to get the school to take her second semester—you know, after she got rid of the baby.”
Got rid of? Oh, Lord. “You mean an abortion?”
“I don’t know. I just heard that her parents didn’t want her to keep it. Maybe she put her baby up for adoption.”
Wait a minute. Maddie touched Trent’s arm. Had she heard right? “Did you say Whitney went to stay with her sister?”
“That’s what I heard.”
Like Katie, Whitney was an only child.
Detective Bellamy’s theory about an adoption clinic where young women checked in but rarely checked out was looking more and more like a dangerous possibility. But how would Katie and Whitney learn of such a place?
The chill of the grisly murder scene began to fade as the chance of getting one step closer to finding Katie filled her head. “One more thing, Trent.”
“Yeah?”
“Have you or your brother, Jeff, gotten a new car recently?”
“No.�
��
“Know anyone around here who has? Black or dark-gray. Just a plain old sedan. Big enough to have a V8 engine. Probably a little too big to be cool.”
Trent grinned. “You mean like a grandma car?”
Or a murderer’s. “I’ve seen one like that around the neighborhood over the past few days. I thought maybe someone had gone car shopping. Or that it belonged to one of the guys you hang out with?”
He shook his head. “Jeff and I keep a pretty tight eye on who’s driving what. There’s nothing new like that around here.”
“Would you mind keeping an eye out for it? Your mom has my cell number. You can call me if you see it.”
“Sure. You think it has something to do with Katie being gone?”
“Possibly.”
A large hand clamped over her shoulder and Maddie cried out.
“So now there’s a car watching the house and you didn’t report it?”
Her fingers flew to her mouth as the volume of her startled yelp registered. Trent’s eyes were wide with shock and half the crowd had turned her way. But Maddie recognized the timbre of the voice and the firmness of the grip. She shrugged off Dwight’s hand and whirled around. “You need to work on your finesse a little bit, Mr. Powers.”
“And you need to tone down the red hair if you don’t want anyone to spot you.” His coolly observant gaze darted from face to face in the crowd. “Where’s the kid?”
After her conversation with Detective Bellamy earlier, she had no doubt he was talking about Tyler. “With Roberta. He’s safe.”
He wrapped his hand around her upper arm and pulled her to his side. “Good, then let’s do the same for you and get you out of here.”
“You’re not getting me out of here,” she insisted, digging in her flip-flops as he dragged her along beside him. “I’m waiting for the crime-scene team to clear the house and then I’m going inside to see what kind of damage Joe did.”
He lifted the yellow tape and pulled her inside the official circle with him. “Your message was frustratingly vague, but Bellamy provided a few more details. He said Rinaldi threatened you. That’s reason enough to go back to my house, where you’ll be safe.”