“Shut up, Marti,” he said. “If you keep on with what you're doing, other people might start asking the same questions about the robbery and the gun that your cop friend just came up with. You'll end up getting Tony and me into trouble.”
Marti had her mouth open to answer, when Karen put a restraining hand on her arm. “You're right about a lackof court-admissible evidence,” Karen said to Charlie. “But Marti had some legitimate questions, and we're looking for the answers.”
“You can't bring Barry back. Why don't you just let it alone?”
“If we can't come up with answers within a reasonable length of time, we'll have to,” Karen said. She beckoned to Marti. “Come on. I'll give you a ride home.”
Marti ran to catch up with Karen as she strode down the walk. “I can walk home,” she said. “I live just around the corner on the next block.”
“I'd like to check your house too,” Karen said.
“I can give you the answer right now,” Marti answered. “No dead bolts.” She looked puzzled. “I could tell that you want extra protection for Charlie and Tony, but why do you think my family would need them?”
Karen glanced at her sharply, then said, “Everybody needs them. Crimes take place in small towns as well as in large cities.”
As she opened the door on the passenger side of the car, Marti said, “Karen, what you told Charlie about your investigation—there's more, isn't there? I mean, you agree with me that Barry was murdered, don't you?”
“As I said, there are questions that need answers.” She paused. “Marti, I don't like the loose ends in this situation. I'm inclined to think that you may be right.”
With a sense of relief, Marti settled on the front seat of the small sedan and watched Karen turn on the ignition and drive away from the curb. “You're not on duty? No uniform, no cop car.”
Karen smiled. “Free time right now. I'm subbing for another officer and taking his shift later tonight.”
Marti looked at her curiously. “Who answered your phone last night? He has a nice voice.”
“Yes, he does. He's a nice person.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“My former partner at HPD.”
“Why did you leave the Houston Police Department?”
Karen shrugged. “I guess I wanted to try life in the slow lane,”
“Was there that much crime? Were you afraid of being killed?”
“You're dramatizing it, Marti. Being a police officer is a job, and it's a job I like. Afraid? No. Alert? Yes.”
“When you said the slow lane, did that mean you wanted to get away from your partner?”
For an instant Karen twisted to look at her sharply. “This is pretty far off the subject, isn't it?”
“I've been watching you,” Marti said, “Sometimes you're all business, but sometimes you relax arid you're a … well, a regular person, I was kind of hoping that now you'd want to be a person again.”
“A person or a cop.” Karen was silent for a few moments, then turned to Marti with a shrug and an attempted smile. “Okay. I'll try to be a person for a while.”
“I didn't mean to be rude,” Marti said.
“You weren't. In your own way you gave me the same kind of message I've been getting from someone else.”
“Your former partner?”
Karen smiled again and raised one eyebrow. “What's all this interest in my partner?”
“I haven't got a right to pry,” Marti said. “I just sort of wondered if you and your partner were like Barry and me.
“You said you weren't in love with Barry.” Karen suddenly made a funny sound in the back of her throat, and her cheeks grew pink.
Marti looked away, trying to help Karen cover her embarrassment. “I think maybe I wasin love with Barry,” she said. “I trusted him. I believed in him. I was happy when I was with him. Is that what love is?”
Karen was silent for a moment before she answered. “I suppose.”
As they came around the curve on Castle Lake Drive, Marti suddenly spotted a light gray car ahead of them. It wasn't parked. It was moving, and it turned off onto the next street.
“What's the matter?” Karen asked her, and Marti realized that she was sitting upright, clutching the door handle.
“It was that car,” she said. “The gray car. A few days ago I thought that someone in a car like that followed me home. Then I saw a light gray car parked down the street from the church when I went to talk to Dr. Emery.”
“Did it follow you?”
“No. I went out the back door to the street behind the church.”
“Was it the same car?”
“I don't know.”
“Did you see who was in the car on either occasion?”
Karen parked in front of Marti's house, and Marti leaned back against the seat. She opened the door on her side of the car. “No,” she said.
“There are lots of light gray cars,” Karen told her. “HoWe'ver, I'll check out your house, just to make sure everything is all right.”
Marti unlocked the front door and waited in the entry hall while Karen went through all the rooms. “Everything looks all right,” she said when she returned in a few minutes. “All the doors and windows are locked.”
“Since this is your dinnertime, would you like something to eat?” Marti asked. “I'm making frozen dinners tonight, and I can put one vcithe microwave for you right now. It will take just a couple of minutes.”
“Well …” Karen hesitated.
“Come back to the kitchen with me,” Marti told her. “Do you like braised beef tips in red wine sauce?”
“Sounds great.”
Marti dropped her books on the table, washed her hands, and pulled one of the frozen dinner packages out of the freezer. “Sit down,” she said, waving a hand toward the chairs at the kitchen table. “Iced tea okay to drink? We've got lots of milk too.”
“Iced tea will be fine” Karen said.
Within a few minutes Marti served Karen a steaming hot dinner, an iceberg lettuce-and-tomato salad, and a glass of tea.
“Do you like to cook?” Karen asked as she dug into the salad.
“I don't mind it. But I don't want to talk about cooking. Let's finish the conversation we were having.”
Karen looked up, surprised. “About what?”
“About men. About being in love.”
Karen smiled, but she shook her head. “I'm the wrong one to ask. Police officers should never fall in love.” Karen ate quickly, as though she were unused to enjoying a meal in leisure.
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the hours are terrible. When you're on a case you're away from your family, sometimes for days at a time. You live with a case; you sleep with it; you're with your partner more than you're with your husband or wife. It's too tough on a marriage.” She paused. “I'd guess that no other profession causes more broken marriages.”
“Maybe it's not the fault of the police officers. Maybe it's the fault of the people they marry,” Marti said.
Karen patted at her lips with her napkin. “Why do you say that?”
Marti shrugged. “Because a big part of love is trust, isn't it?”
Karen blinked a couple of times, and her cheeks grew pink again. She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “Thanks for the dinner,” she said. “I'd better report for duty.”
Marti walked with her to the door. She felt comfortable with Karen now. She liked her. “Any time,” she said. “I don't usually make microwave dinners.”
Karen tapped at the edge of the open door. “Dead bolts,” she said. She smiled and ran down the walk to her car.
Marti went back to the kitchen and flipped on the television set before she put the dishes Karen had used into the dish washer. She turned to one of the independent stations. They'd be showing an old situation comedy, something that could be watched without thinking.
“News brief on the hour,” the announcer was saying. “Attorneys for the rock group Flesh deny that ‘Su
dden Death,’ their popular recording, encourages teen suicide, specifically the triple suicides of teenagers from the Houston area, and vow to fight the church and civic groups that are organizing across the country to demand censorship of music deemed harmful to young people.
“Taking the opposing side, Dr. Jerome Emery claims he was inspired to lead his crusade against Flesh and other hard-rock and heavy-metal groups because he feels they were strongly involved in the tragic suicide of a young member of his congregation. Tonight, following the ten o'clock news, we'll host a panel discussion with Dr. Emery and visiting psychologist and best-selling author, Dr. Clement Granberry.
“Today in Moscow …”
Marti snapped off the set, held her head in her hands, and shouted, “No, no, no! You're not being fair to Barry!” She leaned against the refrigerator and tried to think. What could she do? She had tried to explain about Barry to Dr. Emery, but he was like all the other adults. He thought she didn't know what she was talking about.
There was only one thing that could change his mind. With Karen's help, she'd Have to keep trying to find Barry's murderer. It was the only way she could prove that Barry didn't: take his own life.
Mart! slowly walked upstairs and into her room. She stood at the window, looking across to the tightly closed blinds m Barry's bedroom window. She tried to remember the room as it had been when Barry had been alive, but all she could see in her mind was the horror of the room as it had been torn apart.
“Oh, Barry,” she whispered as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I miss you so much.”
Marti turned, rubbing at her eyes, and headed for her bed. She was tired—so terribly tired. Maybe, if she rested for just a few minutes …
As she reached the bed she stopped short. She clutched her throat, choking off a strangled scream. On her pillow lay Barry's baseball cap.
CHAPTER • 12
Someone had been in the house. He'd come to her room and laid the cap on her bed. The murderer. It couldn't be anyone else.
Marti's skin crawled as she felt the hatred that lingered behind him like slime from a snail. She could smell his sweat, his anger, the sickness that oozedfrom his fingertips as he touched Barry's cap and her bed.
Furious, she snatched up the cap, clutching it to her chest with one hand while, with the other, she ripped the spread from her bed and threw it to the floor. Someone had dared to touch something private and special that had belonged to Barry. He had dared to violate her bedroom.
Shuddering with disgust Marti huddled on the floor, her cheek against Barry's cap, and watted loudly, as a child would cry, until there were no more tears and dry, hiccuping sobs shook her body. She sat up and stroked the stained, battered cap, more determined than ever to discover the identity of the person who had killed Barry.
“Thad,” she said through clenched teeth, “was it you?”
By the time her parents arrived home, Marti was in command of herself. She'd made a big salad of mixed greens and arranged a small platter of thin breadsticks and toast thins, so that preparing dinner was simply a matter of heating the frozen dinners in the microwave.
Both her mother and father had office conversation to relate, but finally there was a moment of silence and Marti told her parents that the Farrington Park Police Department was recpmmending that dead bolts be installed on the doors.
“That's odd,” her mother said. “I've never felt the need for dead bolts. They seem to go with city problems, which is one reason we left Houston.”
“It's important,” Marti insisted.
“We'll certainly think about it,” her father reassured her. “It's no problem to have them installed.”
Marti's mother put down her fork, leaned back in her chair, and sighed happily. “I love Friday evenings,” she said. “No pressures, no alarm clock to set for tomorrow morning.” She looked toward her husband. “Why don't we do something tonight, Josh? Want to go to a movie?”
“I don't know,” her father said. “What's at the Six?”
“A new Bruce Willis film,” she said. “It got good reviews in the Houston Chronicle.It's supposed to be very funny.” She turned to Marti. “Are you and Kim going anywhere tonight?”
“Kim's got a date,” Marti said.
Her mother's face brightened. “Then you can come with us,” she said. “How wonderful! For a change we'll do something together as a family. You're usually off and away with your own projects.” She reached across the table and took Marti's hand. “Please come, Marti.”
Her father, who'd been thumbing through the newspaper, looked up and said, “The next show goes on in thirty minutes. We can make it.”
“Marti?” her mother asked.
“I'm not very good company,” Marti said.
“You are to us.”
Her parents waited for her answer, looking at her with such an eager intentness that Marti nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I'll go with you.”
The movie was funny, she supposed. Now arid then the audience laughed, and her parents looked pleased as the lights came on and the audience began straggling out. Marti hadn't been able to keep her mind on the plot. If anyone had asked what the story was about, she woMdn't have been ablftto tell them.
“That was fun,” Marti's mother said. “Wasn't that fun?”
“Who wants ice cream?” her father asked.
Marti felt as though she'd been carried back in time, as though she were ten years old. A movie, with popcorn, and ice cream afterward. Is this what her parents did whenever they went out to a movie together? Was it a pattern that never changed? What about their jobs, their evenings? One day following another. Was each of them tifcie same? The ice cream, fragrant with crushed strawberries, numbed her tongue. She glanced toward her mother and father, studying them from under her lashes. They were different, older. It was almost as though they were strangers. She wondered what they really wanted to do with their lives, what wishes and yearnings they had, what they thought about.
“Are you having a good time, darling?” her mother asked.
“Sure,” Marti said.
Half an hour later, as they walked into the house, Marti looked at her watch. Ten-twenty.
“That new comic I like—I forget his name, but you know who I mean—is going to be a guest on the talk show tonight,” her father said. “He's good. Why don't we watch him?”
Marti eyed her books, which she'd moved to one of the kitchen counters. “I think I'll catch up on some homework,” she said. “I'll just work here at the kitchen table.”
“If you want anything,” her mother said, “we'll be in the den.”
Marti smiled. Her mother was trying to help her. It wasn't her fault that they couldn't seem to say the right tilings to each other. As her parents left the room Marti spread her books on the kitchen table, opening her textbook to the chapter assigned in history. Then she reached for the remote control, turning on the television, which was still set to the independent channel
For a few moments she actually read a few pages, but when the panel show began and the guests were announced, she closed the book and gave her full attention to the program.
Dillis Jansen, the well-dressed, dark-haired woman who hosted so many of the channel's locally produced programs, leaned forward in her upholstered chair and graciously introduced her two guests, who were seated on a sofa next to her. “And of course, Farrington Park is such a near neighbor that we consider it almost a part of Houston,”. Dillis said.
She turned from her guests to the camera. “After the interview with pur two special guests, who were so kind and so concerned about this problem of teen Suicide that they agreed on very short notice to appear on our program, we'll open the program to your-the audience —for telephoe calls. The number will appear on your screen. Remember, if you have any questions to ask either of these two gentlemen, or if you have my information or personal experiences you want to add, jot down the number and give us a call.”
Dillis Jansen gave a little wiggle o
f her shoulders as she settled toto her job of interviewing. “I'd like to ask your first, Dr. Granberry—and may that your latest book on family relationships is simply marvelous—why do—?”
“Actions and Reactions. Have to get that title in.” He chuckled.
“Of course. And I heartily recommend your book to everyone. Truly marvelous.” IMBs didn't miss a beat and went right in to her question. “Why do you think so many teenagers choose to commit suicide?”
Dr. Granberry shook his head. “There are a number of reasons. They find themselves in situations they can't cope with. Sometimes it's parental rejection or divorce. Sometimes It's pressures and demands from their peers or from parents and teachers. Sometimes it's an attempt to punish someone close to them. In all cases, it boils down to a total loss of hope. Suicide becomes a cry for help.”
“A cry for help? Then how can they feel that killing themselves is the answer?”
“Studies have shewn that many teenagers ate unable to fully comprehend the fact that death is final. To them suicide is an act of desperation in which they are crying out, ‘Listen to me! Help me!’ without realizing they will have removed themselves from any help that could be given.”
“But don't they ask for this help ahead of time? Aren't there signs that parents could look for?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Symptoms of depression, social or school problems, inability to sleep, talking about suicide, giving away possessions-—some potential suicide victims show very definite signs.”
“Don't they ever just talk to a parent? Don't they say, This is how I feel’?”
“If the family members are close, if children have parents who listen and try to help, they'll usually talk.” He shifted a little, as though the sofa were lumpy, and added, “HoWe'ver, today the close, intimate two-parent undivided family is becoming a rarity.”
Dillis's forehead puckered. “Why do these young people give up hope? Don't they know that each of them is a very special individual with the ability to rise above his or her problems? Lots of people have had terrible problems and have been able to solve them. Is it a matter of not knowing whom to turn to? Not knowing how?”
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