Jack Murray, Sheriff

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Meg’s love had died that day. Jack and she were friendly enough now, for Will’s sake, but she had no reason to forgive him, and he knew deep inside that she didn’t respect him as a man, even if she did as a cop and her boss. Nothing he ever did, ever became, could—or should—change how she felt.

  The trouble was, he ached to be loved all the way through. For better or worse. He didn’t give a damn about Meg Patton anymore. But he’d learned something from her. He needed a woman to love not just Jack Murray, sheriff, but Johnny Murray, the confused kid whose dreams had died as a sacrifice to his cowardice.

  He wanted Beth to hear him, and to say, “I love you anyway.”

  Or maybe he was terrified she’d hear him and not be able to love the boy he’d been or the man he’d become. Maybe that was why he was tiptoeing around her.

  Jack bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. God. He should be hoping she could bear being a cop’s wife, not fantasizing that she would have loved him twenty years ago when he was still a gutless little wonder.

  Hell, he should just hope she ever said, “I love you.” Forget the “anyway.” The “no matter what.”

  A minute later, his secretary brought him the phone number. With her quietly closing the door behind her, he dialed Janet Hansen’s work number even as he rehearsed the words to warn her that her husband was out of a job and potentially suicidal.

  Maybe it was just as well he wasn’t seeing Beth and her children tonight. He might be in one of those moods.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BETH FINGERED the thick, strong texture of a butter-yellow quilt that was old enough to have frayed in places. The bits of fabric were pieced to look like pinwheels, golden yellow and green muted by time to seafoam.

  “Isn’t this beautiful?” she asked Jack.

  He came to her side in the antique store. “How much?”

  “Um.” She unfolded the quilt, looking for stains and the tiny tag that she found safety-pinned to the binding. “Ugh. Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “That’s not bad for one in good shape.”

  “Those fabrics look 1930s to me. Stephanie would love it.”

  “You going to buy it?”

  “Are you kidding?” She let the corner drop. “I’ve spent enough on Christmas.”

  “Then—” his dark eyes held hers “—I think I’ll buy it. For…one of my upstairs bedrooms. Seems to me it might go just right.”

  Her heart did a tap dance. One of those upstairs bedrooms might be Stephanie’s someday. He was buying it on promise. She was an incredibly lucky woman.

  Antique shopping had been his suggestion. Both had all their Christmas gifts purchased already. Since buying a turn-of-the century house, he had been slowly furnishing it, learning as he went. Keeping him company had sounded like fun.

  When she asked what he was looking for, Jack had shrugged.

  “Something that jumps out at me. And doesn’t cost the earth. Most of the bedrooms are still empty.”

  They’d first visited a false-fronted building on the main street, sandwiched between the bookstore and a vegetarian restaurant.

  A two-block stroll had given them time to admire the Christmas lights again. No snow had yet fallen in Elk Springs this winter, although the mountains were white and the streets clogged with cars and SUVs topped with ski racks. ’Twas the season.

  Now Jack and she were at an old Carnegie-style building with lions guarding the granite steps. Both lions sported Santa hats and wooden elves sat on the steps.

  “Used to be the police station,” Jack had told her as they came in.

  An antique mall had taken over the building when the Elk Springs Police Department moved to a modern brick public-safety building. What had been squad room and even jail held the offerings of individual antique shops. This particular shop in a corner room offered lace and vintage clothes, quilts and wonderful hats like those Beth’s great-grandmother had worn. Hangers displayed World War II–era dresses; the quilts and afghans and matelassé coverlets were draped over racks. Hankies and delicate doilies spilled from baskets.

  Jack looked around with a peculiarly bemused expression. “This was the police chief’s office once upon a time. Ed Patton’s.”

  “Meg’s father?” She’d asked old-time Elk Springs residents about Meg Patton and heard plenty of stories about Chief Patton and his three daughters.

  He grunted, and she saw the way his face darkened as though his memories were disturbing.

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “We got along.” His tone was curt. “He was a bastard.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t quite know what to say. This wasn’t the first time she’d been in this spot.

  She’d been discovering how reluctant Jack seemed to be to talk about his past or the ugly parts of his job. She was terribly conscious sometimes of how one-sided their conversations could be. She brooded about her marriage, her upbringing by a strict father, her secret contempt for her mother. Jack was probably sick of hearing about her marriage to Ray, but he was polite enough, or curious enough, to ask her questions and get her going.

  When he became the topic, however, she felt the invisible wall, as solid as if it had been built of brick. At first she thought indulgently how typical it was of a man that he didn’t see any point in raking over the past. But within a few weeks, Beth realized something more was going on. He talked about his childhood and family readily. And Will—get Jack started about his son, and he would brag until the cows came home.

  But whatever had happened to drive Meg away was another story. And he was strangely reticent about his years as a police officer.

  Now she said only, “I wonder what your Chief Patton would think about his office now.”

  Jack gave a short, savage laugh. “He’s probably scrabbling at the earth even as we speak, trying to get out so he can throw every piece of lace on a bonfire. He might have rested in peace if his office held antique guns and knives.”

  Beth had never heard Jack sound like that.

  She should have probed, Beth thought unhappily, that evening after Jack dropped her at home and insisted on paying the baby-sitter. She was being a coward, not wanting to be forced to confront the violent nature of his job.

  Once the antique store closed, he’d taken her to a French restaurant, where over dinner he’d mentioned in passing a murder investigation that was in the news nightly. She had wondered whether he had seen the body, pulled from the Deschutes River. How did he feel when he saw the horrific things people did to each other? Had he ever worked homicide? Did ghastly waxen faces haunt his dreams? After he’d had to touch a bloody corpse, did he go home and wash his hands over and over, like Lady Macbeth unable to get the blood out?

  But she didn’t ask. She wasn’t even sure why. Because this was a date and that wasn’t the kind of thing you talked about? Because she didn’t want her macabre musings to take shape, so that she had to know what he had done and seen?

  Or because she didn’t know how he’d respond to her doubtless foolish questions?

  The other night, for example, she had sensed his irritation when he was telling her about the deputy with a drinking problem. What popped out of her mouth, but that he’d be at risk for a car accident.

  Of course that wasn’t what Jack was worried about! She knew that county deputies carried guns and even used them sometimes. Just a few days ago, a brawl at a tavern on the outskirts of town had led to a shooting. County deputies had broken up the fight and arrested two men. Even around here, that kind of thing happened.

  Who would know that better than she? Beth thought bitterly. Her ex-husband had stalked and then assaulted her. That wasn’t the kind of thing that was supposed to happen to someone like her, or in a town like this, but it had. It did to other women, too.

  She’d sounded stupid and…and naive. Which she wasn’t. But she didn’t like to think about Jack slamming suspects up against a wall, pulling his gun, maybe even shooting someone. She tried
not to let herself wonder if he had ever killed anyone. Every time she opened her mouth to ask questions about what it was like to be a police officer, she had a flash of memory: his lips drawn back from his teeth in an expression of ferocity she had taken for a savage grin. The swearing, the grunts, the thud of bodies and fists connecting, the metallic click of the handcuffs closing on Ray’s wrists…

  She shuddered, remembering.

  Beth had already slipped upstairs to be sure the girls were in bed, kissing both although they already slept, faces untroubled, soft with dreams she hoped were of triumphs and wonder. She should be doing something useful: ironing, so she wouldn’t have to in the morning, or unloading the dishwasher that Tiffany had loaded earlier. Maybe wrapping the gifts that were piling up in her closet.

  Instead she sat in the dining room with a cup of herb tea, and remembered every touch and sensation of making love with Jack tonight. He was so tender, so invariably gentle and unselfish, what woman wouldn’t glory in the recollections?

  Sex had never been that great with Ray. It had hurt so awfully the first time Ray made her his, on the bench seat of his pickup truck. Afterward he’d kissed away her tears and told her how great it would be the next time.

  It had been better. Not great, but better. But she had no real grounds for comparison. Her friends weren’t the kind of girls who talked about things like that, even if they were doing them. She could hardly ask her mother what sex should be like. And she’d been so crazy about Ray, so excited that he wanted her, Beth had loved the fact that she could please him so utterly. She was thrilled when he lost control. The feel of him jerking in climax inside of her gave her purely feminine pleasure. He needed her. What more could she want?

  Except that she had wanted something more, she just hadn’t known what. Eventually, she did have orgasms sometimes. Ray wasn’t an inconsiderate lover. She wasn’t sure he ever noticed when she did or didn’t climax, though. He was too engrossed in his own drive to satisfaction.

  In the early years, they’d cuddled afterward and talked, but the talk became scanter and the time came when Ray would just roll over and fall asleep with insulting speed. Once in a while he’d mutter something like, “You’d better have ironed my blue shirt,” before the first snore rasped out.

  Would that happen with Jack, too? Beth worried. Did the passage of years always erase the fascination with each other?

  But he made love so differently, that gave her hope. He always saw her. No matter what, he didn’t climax until she did. The iron control awed her. Sometimes, being a woman, she longed to shatter it. Not always—she loved the tender, patient way he aroused her and let her explore his body and what pleased him. But it would be nice to know that she could do it. That he wanted her enough to lose control.

  But, just as she trembled on the verge of asking questions that she wasn’t sure she wanted answers to, just as she never actually asked those questions, Beth never let herself be so wanton as to tempt him to treat her with less than gentle care. Maybe she was afraid she’d fail and look foolish.

  Or, more likely, she was afraid of the result. She’d seen him just once when his control had snapped, and he’d scared her as much as Ray did. She didn’t really believe Jack would hurt her, but what if he reminded her of Ray for a fleeting moment and she couldn’t hide her fear?

  She hated being afraid. Only recently had Beth come to realize that her father had set her up to be a timid, subservient wife. Ralph Nowell had never hit either his wife or daughter; he rarely even raised his voice. But his will was law, and no one defied him. There had been so many things her friends could do that Beth wasn’t allowed to join in. Her father hadn’t trusted her, she had finally understood, even though she was a good student and obedient daughter. But if she was allowed out from under his thumb, she would surely go wild, he clearly believed.

  To Beth, it had seemed natural when her husband wanted his way, when her opinion or desires were always secondary or even to be scoffed at. She should have stood up to Ray from the beginning, she knew now. Their marriage might have turned out differently. He wasn’t that bad a man, only living patterns he’d learned from his parents in turn. They could have forged new ones, if Beth hadn’t been conditioned to nod and agree although she rebelled inside.

  Too late, she thought for the thousandth time. She couldn’t go back. She’d remade herself, and she was raising her daughters to be strong women.

  So why did she still quail inside at the very thought of raised masculine voices? Why did she have to squeeze her hands together to hide their trembling every time she had to say “no” to Ray?

  Why was she so terrified not that Jack would become abusive but that she might someday be afraid of Jack?

  Impatiently she went to the kitchen and dumped the cool remnants of the herb tea.

  “Face it when it comes,” she said aloud to herself. A quote teased at the edge of her mind. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Roosevelt, she thought, had said that. It seemed apropos. That was her problem: she wasn’t afraid of Jack, but she feared that she might become so.

  Ridiculous. The day she’d gone back to college she had vowed to live boldly, to become the kind of strong woman she admired.

  Right now, she seemed to be halfway there. It was time to travel the rest of the way.

  She was starting up the stairs to get ready for bed when the phone rang. Once upon a time, a call at this time of night would have made her nervous. Somebody was sick; something was wrong.

  Now, her heart leaped. Jack, she thought, a smile irresistibly tugging at her mouth. He often called to wish her good-night, even when he’d kissed her on the front porch only an hour before.

  Instead of going upstairs, she hurried back down to the kitchen and answered the phone there.

  She almost answered with an eager “Jack?” Caution—what if it were Ray?—made her say a more conventional “Hello?”

  “Ms. Sommers?” The voice was male, familiar, but strained. “This is Will Patton. We met at my dad’s house.”

  “Will! I thought it might be your dad calling.”

  Her smile had died and her heart had taken up a hard, fast tempo. Somebody was sick; something was wrong.

  “No. I’m over at college. They just called me. I thought maybe you wouldn’t know.”

  Lights danced in front of her eyes. “Know what?”

  Suddenly the college student sounded like a little boy. “My dad. He’s been taken hostage.” He swallowed audibly. “No. Not taken. He volunteered, to save somebody else. It’s…it’s this cop Dad fired. He says he’s going to shoot his wife and Dad, too.”

  “WE CAN’T LEAVE that kid in there.” Jack stood behind the squad car and scowled over the roof at the brick-fronted ranch-style house, lit by brilliant floodlights. He’d gone to a barbecue once in that backyard, where two crab apple trees sheltered circular beds of pansies. Gary Hansen had worn a white apron over jeans and a polo shirt. He and his wife had flirted while he flipped burgers.

  Jack shook his head in disbelief.

  The lieutenant beside him loosed a blistering obscenity. “You’re not actually thinking about doing it?” he asked incredulously.

  With good reason. Standard department policy—universal police policy—was that you never traded a cop for a civilian in hostage situations.

  “The bastard has a grudge against you!” Ben Shea exclaimed. “You’re going to walk in there and let him shoot you?”

  “I don’t plan to let him shoot me.” Jack thumped his fist on top of the car. “Damn! Gary’s a cop. He’s not going to shoot anybody.”

  Shea grunted. “You willing to bet your life on it?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  The entire street had been blocked with barricades, the neighboring houses evacuated. Cops crouched in the dark shadows behind police cars. Bundled against the cold night, neighbors crowded the street beyond the yellow tape, their avid faces illuminated by a street lamp. Christmas lights tw
inkled along eaves and on trees and shrubs up and down the street, lending a weird, ironic feel to the grim scene.

  Sharpshooters were stationed on nearby rooftops. Jack had his doubts about how much good they could—or would—do. Who wanted to take down a fellow officer?

  Gary Hansen had his wife and a teenage baby-sitter in there. He’d let the kids go. It was the older one who’d called 911 from a neighbor’s house.

  Jack had heard the tape, rerun a dozen times.

  “Daddy says,” she’d gulped on a sob, “that he wants to talk to the sheriff. Just the sheriff.”

  On the drive here, Jack had beaten himself up over misreading Gary Hansen’s state of mind. Yeah, he was suicidal, all right. He just wanted to take some other people out with him.

  Jack couldn’t quit asking himself why the hell he hadn’t considered this possibility. Beth had pointed out the parallels between Hansen and her ex. Two men whose lives were going awry; two men who were taking refuge in a bottle and in anger. Depressed men might want to kill themselves; angry ones wanted to hurt somebody else.

  Jack had warned Janet Hansen, he reminded himself.

  Warned? No. He’d gently expressed concern about her husband’s state of mind. He’d remarked that Gary was depressed, asked if he had said anything to make her think he was suicidal. Suggested she lock up guns.

  He had not said bluntly, “I think he’s going to use one of those guns.” It had never crossed his mind to come right out with “He’s pretty angry at you. He might use one of them against you.”

  Gary Hansen was a cop. Jack had worn blinkers. Good cops didn’t crack. They hit rough patches, they worked out their problems. At worst, they turned in their badges and found a new career.

  They didn’t threaten to kill a sixteen-year-old girl.

  When Jack got here, he’d taken the phone from Shea and called Gary Hansen’s number.

  “You came.” Hansen didn’t sound surprised.

  “I’m here. Let’s talk.”

  “Oh, yeah. We can talk. But not over the phone. You’ve got to come in.”