Although TJ was eager to hear what the big scandal was that involved swingers, it was too early in the morning to call Larry back. He said it had happened a long time ago, but you never knew what could be important. Just as she returned her phone to her bag, it chimed.
“TJ?”
She didn’t recognize the voice. “Yeah?”
“It’s Gemma.”
The woman’s voice was barely recognizable. “What’s wrong?”
“The intruders broke in again. They stabbed Carter.”
Her ex? Stabbed? TJ didn’t even know what the guy was doing in the picture. Last she had heard about Carter from Gemma, she wasn’t interested in seeing him and had been avoiding him. “Is he alive?”
“He’s in surgery now, and the doctor would only tell me that his condition is critical.”
“You okay?”
“I got hit on the head. They say I have a mild concussion. I’m sorry to call you at this hour. I hope I didn’t wake your son up.”
“No problem. Which hospital are you at?”
“We’re at the medical complex in Wauwatosa.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Might take a while with this storm.”
“Thank you. Listen, I don’t know what to do about Clyde. I hate to leave him there alone.”
TJ didn’t like birds very much, and she had no idea how to transfer him somewhere else. She saw Jon approaching her, a questioning look on his face; she would pass the bird problem on to him.
TJ made it to Gemma’s room in the medical complex an hour later in spite of the outages and streets littered with tree branches. A man wearing a brown distressed-leather jacket, jeans, and sporting day-old stubble paced in front of Gemma’s room. He looked familiar. As TJ got closer, she realized it was Taylor Harcourt, the man she suspected was Gemma’s lover. He looked hot even in his casual clothes and in need of a shave. She saw why Gemma fell for the guy. She approached him as he walked by Gemma’s room.
“Have we met?” he asked, holding out his hand. “Taylor Harcourt.”
His handshake was firm and masculine. “TJ Peacock. I work for Gemma.” She handed him one of her cards.
“Right. She told me she hired you to find out about Norman Teschler’s house explosion. Are you going to be protecting her now?”
“Wasn’t planning on it. Should be a cop here.”
“I’ve been here quite a while. I haven’t seen any police yet.”
“Strange. I’ll check it out when I see the detective assigned to her case.” It had to be Haymaker, and TJ was surprised not to see him there. He should have had a uniform at the door, the asshole. Shit, now she was even swearing in her thoughts.
“You goin’ in to see her?” TJ asked.
“Ah, no. I’ll just wait here until you get a cop assigned.”
TJ started for the door to Gemma’s room. Harcourt stopped her, his hand on her arm. “Do you mind not telling her I’m out here?”
What’s going on with these two? “Sorry, no promises.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Fine. I’ll be out here.”
She entered the room. Gemma lay in the bed sleeping, her auburn hair tousled, her features at rest. There were no visible bruises or bandages on her face or her head. TJ slipped back out and opened her phone to call Haymaker.
“Haymaker here.”
“How come you aren’t at the hospital?” TJ asked.
“I assume that’s where you’re calling from, Ms. Peacock?”
“Should be a uniform at Rosenthal’s door.”
“There isn’t?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Nope. Just got here, and I’m it. Heard there hasn’t been anyone here either.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“Did you get the guy who stabbed the ex?”
“We have someone in custody, yes.” Having someone in custody and having the person who did the deed could be two different things. He must not be certain that he had the right perp.
“Don’t s’pose you’d share if it’s Lucian Krause?”
“It’s not Lucian Krause.” He hung up, leaving TJ with her mouth open to ask who it was.
When she stepped back into the room, Gemma stirred and opened her eyes. “Did they tell you anything about Carter?”
“Nah. Didn’t see anybody around to ask. They need to have a cop guardin’ your room. Haymaker said he’d get someone on it right away.”
“They think I’m still in danger?”
“It wasn’t your ex they were after. You’re lucky the cops got there so fast or you could have ended up like him. Or worse. Probably sending you a message to back off.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The police are investigating too, so why come after me?”
“Good question. My guess? Your friend Norman’s murder is at the heart of all this. We find out who made the house blow up, we find out everything.”
“I suppose that’s a small comfort. At least this will convince the police that Norman was murdered.”
Yeah, in a perfect world, TJ thought.
Gemma asked TJ to pour her a glass of water from a pitcher next to the bed. When she reached for it, she noticed a gorgeous arrangement of fall flowers decorated the nightstand. TJ handed Gemma the water and then poked through the flowers for a card. “Nice. Didn’t know they delivered in the middle of the night.” Harcourt, of course, would have been able to make it happen. “No card.”
Gemma turned to look at the flowers. “I hadn’t noticed them. You’re right, that’s strange.”
TJ didn’t owe Harcourt any favors. “There’s a guy outside, says he’s worried about you. Name’s Harcourt, probably from him.”
Gemma grimaced. “He promised to stay away.”
Stay away? “Pretty hot guy. I wouldn’t turn him away.”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it sometime when I’m not so tired.”
Good, TJ thought. They had more important things to discuss. “Why was your ex in the house?”
“We had dinner together last night because he brought me Norman’s work computer. Carter was concerned about me being alone and offered to stay the night. He was sleeping in the guest room when they broke in. He must have heard them. They forced one of the patio doors open.”
“Haymaker said they had someone in custody. Did he tell you who it is?” TJ asked.
“I haven’t talked to him since the paramedics brought me here from the house. Would you please find out if Carter’s going to be all right?”
She answered, “Sure,” and left the room, thinking it would be unusual for hospital personnel to give her any information. Harcourt still lingered in the hallway. As she expected, they only told her that Carter was still in surgery. When TJ returned and saw that Gemma had fallen asleep, she nodded to Harcourt again on her way out and left for the cafeteria.
With a cup of coffee in hand, she dialed Richard and told him what had happened. “Have you heard anything? Haymaker said they have a guy in custody, but wouldn’t tell me who it is.”
“We’re pretty busy, but I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks. I have to go back to the other hospital and see how Bill Denison is doing.”
“You should go home and get some sleep.”
“I should do a lotta things. Stay safe.”
Chapter 39
I awakened early, with the sun just starting to brighten the dim hospital room. I took a shower in the tiny bathroom off my room, then dressed quickly in an old set of scrubs a nurse had given me. The police had taken my bloodstained clothes away in evidence bags. I checked the hallway and saw a policeman stationed outside my room, but I didn’t see Taylor. Had I imagined him? No, TJ had been here and told me he was outside the door. The flowers he sent were still by the side of the bed, fi
lling the room with a lovely scent, but they lacked the magic to mask the ugliness of the previous evening. Before I could buzz for a nurse to ask about Carter, a woman entered my room.
She acted like she was here in some official capacity. She wore a pair of neatly tapered slacks with a matching jacket over a pair of sensible black shoes. African American, her complexion was as dark as a moonless night. She wore her reddish hair in a smooth bob, no doubt the result of a lot of time spent with a flat iron. She flipped open her ID. “Ms. Rosenthal, I’m Detective Tasha Wade. I work with Detective Haymaker. Are you getting ready to go home?”
Haymaker’s partner. TJ had mentioned her and seemed to think she would be more forthcoming than Haymaker. “Yes. I’m going to leave as soon as I find out more about my ex-husband. Have you heard anything?”
“Yeah, they said he made it through the surgery. The knife missed his heart, but they said he has a collapsed lung. He’s in the ICU.”
A heavy weight left my stomach. Carter was alive. If it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t be fighting for his life in a hospital bed. I stopped myself; taking the blame resolved nothing. And I couldn’t credit the apparitions I had seen while in sleep paralysis for saving our lives—I knew what Lisa would have to say about that—it was the noises that had caused the visions. I had to get out of this hospital, talk to TJ, and help her to find a way to put these murderers behind bars.
“I want to show you something.” The detective took a phone out of her pocket, ran a finger over the screen until satisfied and then held it out to me. “Do you know this man?”
Why was she showing me a picture of Jorge? “Sure, I know him.”
“From where, and when did you see him last?”
“I know him from a support group I’m in for people who have sleep dysfunctions. His name is Jorge.”
“His full name is Jorge Paredes. We picked him up last night outside your house,” she said. “He claims he called 9-1-1 because he saw three people break into your house, but there’s no record of the call.”
Jorge, outside my house? I called him earlier in the day, but had never heard back from him. This made no sense. I had no idea how he even knew where I lived. But his call might explain how the police had gotten to my house so quickly.
“Wait,” I said, “you don’t think he was the one who stabbed Carter?”
“It looks like it, yeah.”
“But there was more than one person who broke in. I saw two of them for sure. At least I saw their silhouettes as they ran out.” A slight exaggeration since I had heard, rather than seen, more than one person exit through the patio doors. I didn’t dare tell her I had seen three of them coming in while in the throes of sleep paralysis.
“So? He’s one of them. The others got away.”
“He can’t be.” Jorge was an odd character, yes, but part of this? We had met after Norman’s death. Jorge had no control over meeting me; it was purely coincidental that we met in the sleep group. But the police didn’t believe the house explosion had anything to do with the other things that had happened.
Wade shrugged. “He’s in custody now, but he hasn’t been arrested yet.”
I tried to put the pieces together. They didn’t add up. “Was he covered in blood? The killer would have been; he stabbed Carter, then he used blood to write on the wall.”
She didn’t answer my question, but asked, “Were you expecting him to come to your house last night?”
I hadn’t been. “No, but I did try to call him yesterday afternoon. Can I go over to the police station and talk to him?”
She ignored my request. “Did you get a look at the person who stabbed your ex-husband?”
It took me a minute to reconstruct the events of last night in my mind and sort out what was real from what I’d seen in my sleep paralysis vision. “No. I heard noises from downstairs. One of them was loud.” I felt guilty again. I should have listened to all the advice I had gotten and checked into a hotel.
“I walked downstairs with my gun, and I heard them leaving through the patio door. Carter was bleeding and needed help. I didn’t see anyone still in the house. I closed the patio doors because the rain was coming in by the gallon. I started to put pressure on Carter’s wound when something hit me on the head and I blacked out. The next thing I remember was Detective Haymaker talking to me as he was taking care of Carter. I told him all this.”
“Just checking. You never know if you might remember something new.”
“Can we go to the police station? I’d like to talk to Jorge,” I repeated. Although I hadn’t liked Jorge when I first met him, I felt responsible for getting him involved in all this. The least I could do was go in and tell Haymaker what I knew—that Jorge hadn’t even known me when all this started.
She eyed my hospital scrubs. “Are you sure you’re ready to be released?
You don’t want to mess with a head injury. Believe me, I’ve had my share of them. You need to follow your doctor’s orders.”
“They can’t hold me here, can they?”
Detective Haymaker took a call from his partner warning him that Gemma Rosenthal was on her way to the station to talk to Paredes. They didn’t really have anything to hold the guy on: he had no weapon, no blood on his clothing, and a solid alibi for the night Sondra Jackson was killed. He would have to release him before long.
The case had become top priority. Lukaszewski and his partner had rejoined them, much to Brian’s dismay. Uniforms had been assigned to do the legwork, canvassing the neighborhood, trying to turn up anyone who might have seen something the night before.
Tasha walked in carrying a bag of bagels from Panera’s. She plopped them on the desk. “Hope you made the coffee today and not that idiot at the desk.”
Brian peeked into the bag and pulled out a cinnamon bagel. “Thanks. I owe you a few. And, yeah, the coffee’s safe to drink. Is Rosenthal out of the hospital?”
“They wanted to keep her longer, but she refused. She had to sign some kind of waiver. Did you release Paredes yet?”
“No, but we’ll have to pretty soon. His alibi for Jackson checked out.” He paused to pour more coffee. “We’re missing something on this case. We need to go back to the beginning and look at it again with fresh eyes.”
“The beginning? You mean the cum case?”
Haymaker said, “When we were investigating the first break-ins, we bought into that whole creeper thing, but none of the kids we talked to gave it much credibility.”
“Yeah, I remember that one kid said, ‘creeping was so last year.’ And they were only trespassing cases because people left their doors unlocked. Guess you could stretch it and call it vandalism because of the dirty sheets.”
“While you were on maternity leave, Lukaszewski was with me for a couple weeks investigating the Madison Chapman death. We didn’t get anywhere with it, especially after it was ruled accidental. We still don’t have anything but conjecture to call it a homicide.” He waved his iPad. “I’ve been going through my notes.
“The Chapman girl and her friends spent time at a restaurant where a lot of other teenagers hung out. A guy we interviewed, one who the Chapman girl had a crush on, mentioned a weird guy that was there a lot. Said the guy always looked like he was keeping an eye on her. We should explore that, see if we can find him.”
Tasha’s eyes narrowed. “So now you’re thinking the girl had help falling down that staircase? If we’re going back to square one, how about Teschler? We gonna look at that, too?”
Haymaker put down the iPad and rubbed his face. “That one still feels accidental to me.”
“You sure?”
“No, but we’ll let Rosenthal’s PI figure that one out until we have more to go on. I talked to her yesterday. She’s still on it and convinced it’s related to the others.”
“And we’re ignoring it.”
“For
now. At least until we get something that solidifies a connection.” He noticed Tasha’s gaze stray to a spot behind him, and he turned to see Gemma Rosenthal approaching his desk. She was dressed in a worn set of hospital scrubs with a khaki windbreaker over them that appeared to be five sizes too big for her. Behind her was a tall man in his thirties who looked like he could easily fill out the jacket.
“I need to get into my house to get some things,” she said.
“Wouldn’t the uniforms let you in?”
“They gave Jon a hard time when he picked up Clyde, so I thought I should clear it with you ahead of time. And I’d like to see Jorge.”
Haymaker stood. “I’ll let them know you’ll be at the house.”
“I want to talk to Jorge,” Gemma repeated.
“No problem. We’re releasing him. I’ll bring him into an interview room for you while we get his paperwork done.” He raised his eyebrows, his glance aimed at the man with her.
“This is Jon Engel. A friend.”
The guy’s hand was soft. He didn’t look like an executive, but didn’t look like a laborer either. Mainly, he didn’t look like he would be Rosenthal’s boyfriend. He had met her ex, and if Carter Roche were any indication of her taste in men, this one fell short of what Haymaker imagined would be her standard.
I saw a different person when they led Jorge into the interview room. One night in jail had brought about an amazing transformation. He looked younger, vulnerable even. He brightened when he saw me waiting for him. “Gemma, did you bail me out?”
Hadn’t they told him anything? “I’m pretty sure you only need bail if you’ve been arrested.”
Jorge’s usually polished hair hung in heavy clumps, and his cocky demeanor had been replaced by a look of depression, although he was rebounding quickly. He exhaled loudly as he sat back in the chair. “Thank God. I don’t think I could take another night in a cage.”
“What were you doing at my house? It was awfully late for a visit, wasn’t it?” I asked. His being at my house had come as an unwelcome surprise. I wasn’t sure why I felt like I had to stick up for him. My first impression of him hadn’t been a positive one, but I have learned that first impressions can sometimes be deceiving.
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