Lute sighed. “I know, but I wanted to check on Mrs. Sander’s baby again.”
Surprised at the detective’s caring, she stepped aside.
He ducked a tad and crossed the threshold, immediately filling the space.
“Did you ever play basketball?” she asked.
“Still do on occasion.” His eyes settled on the quilt where Charlie and Jimmy lay napping. “Bet you’ve forgotten what it feels like not to hold a baby.”
Despite herself, Teagan grinned. The man was nothing like the serious detective he tried to be. “I’m only watching Levi until his mother gets home from work. Do you have children?”
“Twins. My wife and I had our hands full. They are in college now and we like the empty nest.”
Lute helped himself to the chair he’d used before and covered his knees with long hands. “Some cases have lots of puzzle pieces, and it’s just a matter of finding out how they fit together. Pai Sanders checks out to be a simple housewife married to a sailor. Nothing in her past indicates trouble, yet I believe someone was stalking her.”
Teagan put Levi on the blanket beside Charlie. “Pai thought so too, but didn’t know who or why.”
“Let’s talk. Maybe something will jog in your memory.”
Teagan sat down on the couch. “I’ve told you all I can think of. Pai talked about seeing a dragon.”
“Asians don’t think of dragons like we do.”
“Well, evil then. Something from her childhood. I think she felt terrorized by someone in a black Blazer.”
Lute stiffened like a dog listening to a noise. “Why is this the first time I’ve heard about a vehicle?”
“One followed me on the same morning Pai died.” Teagan told him about the SUV following her when she drove to the market. “Scared the heck out of me. Charlie was with me.”
“You and Pai met at the Swanberg Clinic. Right?”
Teagan nodded. “And Doretta. The three of us became good friends.”
“That’s a huge clinic.”
“It’s a never-ending cycle of women. Go in one hall, see the doctor and come out another. Hundreds of women must pass through each week. You think there might be a link to Pai’s murderer and the clinic?”
“It’s a starting place. Get to know anyone else?”
“Erica. She’s a police officer.”
Lute’s brows rose for a brief moment. “Erica Thorburn?”
“Do you know her?” Teagan waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t, she added, “It’s too bad about her losing her son.”
“Anyone else?”
After a moment’s hesitation at his lack of sympathy, she asked, “Anyone else what?”
“Who took care of Pai?”
“Tracy is the gal in reception. Pai went to Dr. Klassen, so him and his nurse. That’s all the names I recall, except my doctor.”
Lute pulled a business card from inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to Teagan. He stood. “We don’t know who murdered your friend or why. Until we do, you need to be careful. Call me if something doesn’t seem right.”
Teagan walked him to the door.
“By the way,” Lute said. “Erica Thorburn is a good officer. In fact, she helped me solve my first murder case.” He ducked a tad and left.
Teagan locked the door behind him and slipped his card into her hip pocket. Her mind whirled. The warning rang over and over. Be careful. Be careful. Erica lost her baby, Pai murdered, the police at her door, and now, a warning? “What the hell did that mean?” she muttered and crossed to the window again. Suddenly, she spun. The door was bolted. She turned on the hall light and every lamp before looking out the window again.
Detective Lute walked to the last row of the visitors’ lot, got into his car and backed up. His headlights swept on the black Mercedes still parked at the far corner. After the lights flashed away and he drove from the lot, a figure appeared in the fancy car’s window. Had he ducked to avoid the detective? Teagan shook her head. “Sheesh I am paranoid.”
Another car parked. Relief surged in Teagan’s heart when Doretta climbed out of the Toyota and walked toward the building. The door of the Mercedes opened at the same time, and a woman stepped out. Teagan leaned on the glass, straining to see the stark, stiffly erect figure in the lamplight.
Hair short, almost a crew cut? The woman called to Doretta, then stared up at Teagan framed by the light. Through the window, through the night, and through the glow of the street lamp, Teagan and Erica’s eyes met.
Teagan’s mind flashed with the image of Erica staring at the babies in the hospital. Ownership! That’s what she’d seen. And Erica’s forbidding icy eyes outside the Public Safety Building. Submission, they had demanded. The babies! Erica wants our babies!
Doretta disappeared into the entrance.
Erica ran across the asphalt.
“Dear God. Doretta!” Teagan dashed for the door. No, call the cops! She grabbed the phone and punched 911 with her thumb. Recording? No time!
In mid step, Teagan froze, eyes peeled on the babies. They couldn’t be left. Indecision cleared. Protect the boys. She grabbed the infant sling from the floor by the couch and pulled it over her head and around her shoulder. She stuffed Charlie inside it and centered him against her bosom. Levi grunted when she hooked him in the crook of her left arm and hoisted Jimmy into her right. She bolted for the door, juggled the babies, and managed to turn the knob.
Pickup keys? Still in her pocket. Wallet still in the sling. Cell phone on her belt. She dashed into the hallway and skidded to a stop.
Elevator or stairs? Elevator or stairs?
Charlie whimpered.
“Don’t cry, baby.”
Teagan raced to the stairwell. A janitor’s closet was on the next level. She ran down the stairs and burst onto the second floor. The closet was to the right. She balanced Levi against her hip and tried to turn the knob.
It wouldn’t budge. She jostled the babies to a different angle. With better leverage, she wrenched harder.
It opened into a small windowless space.
Teagan’s knees turned to jelly. It’s just a closet! She stepped inside and closed the door. Instant blackness. No air. She gasped, trying to breathe. Sweat beaded and ran down her face. Her stomach turned and she gagged. Her knees wobbled and she fell back against the door, sliding downward.
No! Lolita can’t slip-click the lock.
Teagan pushed up with her legs until she straightened. The sharp odor of pine cleaner stung her nose, making it easier to breathe in the tight space. Something next to her? She touched it with her elbow. Upright vacuum cleaner. Not daring to move, she leaned against the door, weighted down by three babies.
Levi suddenly squalled.
Instantly, Teagan stuck her finger in his mouth. “Shh.”
Something crawled on her cheek. She brushed at her skin with her shoulder. “How long do we wait?” Her words sounded weak and unsure. Was it safe to run for the pickup? She could call 911 as soon as the boys were in their car seats.
Teagan strained to hear. Voices? Arguing? Unable to tell, she leaned her ear against the door. The sounds were too muffled to decipher. Doretta was strong. But how could she fight a trained officer? I’m sorry, Doretta, I’m sorry.
Jimmy and Charlie fussed. She jiggled up and down, humming ever so softly, praying neither baby would erupt. “Shh,” she whispered. “I know you’re scared. I am too.” Her ragged words boomed in the airless dark. She pressed her lips together and counted silently.
At three hundred, she cracked the door. Gulping in air, she peered out.
An empty hall stretched ahead of her, and she dashed for the stairwell.
Levi whimpered, and then wailed at the top of his lungs. “Hush, hush, hush,” Teagan coaxed as she scrambled down the stairs. She barely kept her balance and skidded on the landing between floors. She bumped up against the wall, gasping air. On the first step of the next landing, she froze.
Doretta sprawled across the
steps. A river of blood flowed from a gaping neck wound, down her chest and onto the stairs.
Oh God – oh God. Is she dead? She is.
Mercifully, Doretta’s eyes were closed.
Breathing raggedly, Teagan carefully stepped between Doretta’s outstretched legs. She wobbled and her right foot came down in the blood. Her slipper slid. She skidded, banged the wall, raced downward, through the entrance, and ran across the street.
The babies howled.
She stumbled on the rough surface of the boulevard, staggered, but managed to step across the curb at the edge of the parking lot.
She dashed to the side of her pickup, carefully laid Levi and Jimmy onto the bed, and jabbed the key into the keyhole. She twisted it, flung the door open, eased Charlie into one of the infant seats that lined the back seat, and snatched up Jimmy and Levi. They screamed. She glanced at the building.
Erica bolted from the entrance.
Teagan stuffed the babies into their car seats and dove behind the wheel. She fired the engine, jammed the gearshift into reverse, and wheeled hard to the left. Whack! A rock hit the cab?
Spread-legged and two-handed, Erica fired her handgun.
Bullets! The babies! Teagan dropped into drive. Tires screeching, she gunned straight at Erica.
Erica dove to the right.
Whack! Whack! Teagan jerked the steering wheel side-to-side and floored the accelerator. Whack! Whack! “Oh God!” She played the wheel harder. The pickup rocked at high speed and the tires hit the curb, nearly jerking the steering wheel out of her hands. She skidded around a corner, straightened the wheel and accelerated again.
The babies squalled; their cries high-pitched with fear. The distressing sound racked Teagan. “Shut up! Just shut up!”
They screamed harder.
She braked hard, shot around another corner and checked the rearview mirror. No Mercedes. She wheeled into an alley and sped down it. At the end, she turned right, then right again at the next corner, and up a steep hill into a residential neighborhood. On a darkened side street, she stopped behind a parked car, punched the headlights off, and hunkered down. Several cars drove by, but no black Mercedes.
The poor little boys, dumped haphazardly in their infant seats, had cried themselves to sleep. No signs of blood on Charlie, none on Levi and Jimmy. She eased each of them into a comfortable position and secured the safety belts, then checked for pacifiers. They were still attached to the blankets. The diaper bags were on the floorboard. Thankfully, they had been left in the pickup.
Teagan spread her right arm across the babies to try and quell the intermittent tremors leftover from their hysterical crying. “Shh. Shh,” she whispered.
First Charlie quieted into a more natural sleep, then Jimmy, and then Levi.
Uncontrollable shaking hit Teagan. She stuffed her hands under her legs and leaned against the steering wheel, pressing her forehead to the cool hard surface. When the pressure hurt her face, she sat back, but her legs, arms, and belly shivered. She tried to deny the truth, but the blood flowing from Doretta stayed a vivid picture. How had she managed to step across her friend and escape? It seemed like someone else moved through the horror.
Erica had killed Doretta, leaving her in a pool of blood and shot at a pickup with babies inside!
“Charlie, what do I do?” she whispered to her tiny infant. Her first instinct was to go to the nearest police station, but they would believe Erica not her. Lute even said he owed his first conviction to her. They’d take the boys away, same as they did Jimmy. His screams as they carried him away still echoed in unguarded moments. Never again would he be carted away.
Charlie squirmed and she patted his belly. “I have to prove Erica did it, but how? I can’t with you guys.”
Think. Where to go? Mac? Pete? No. Erica would check the piers first, and she knows about the fish market. Her parents and other friends were quickly dismissed. Bryan popped into her mind. “Damn it. I need you!” For a moment, panic blocked any coherent thought. Fiona Winslow? Bryan’s grandmother. Yes. He might be gone, but Teagan was still welcome at her place. The boys would be safe in Montana. She would return to gather proof and make sure the danger was gone before giving Jimmy to his father and Levi to his grandmother. Just do this, like at the market, one crisis at a time.
Methodically, Teagan grasped the emerging plan as the only lifeline available from the ghastly scene in the condo stairwell.
Money!
She drove west to draw on her bank account at an ATM. Let Erica think she had headed west, then either north or south. Right after she stuffed the money deep inside Charlie’s diaper bag, other problems demanded attention. The cramped pickup could easily be traced and cell phones left footprints.
A pay phone hung on a steel post on the corner across from the ATM. She checked the area for a full minute, slipped from the pickup to the phone, and dug the change left in her pocket from the grocery store. Trying to lay the quarters and dimes on a ledge below the coin slot, she fumbled some and they rattled to the ground. She bent to pick them up and saw her slipper coated with blood.
She stared at it.
Her footprint was in the blood!
On the stairs!
Teagan pressed her fingers against her mouth, holding in her panic. “Deal with it later, you idiot!” She dropped coins into the slot.
Mac’s phone rang and rang. “Come on.” Teagan drummed the ledge with her fist. “Answer!” Finally, his voice, and she sagged. “I’m in terrible trouble and need your car.”
“Meet me at the piers.”
“Can’t. Go to the Arco Station at Northgate.”
“Thirty minutes.”
Teagan rustled through the tool box in the bed of the pickup for a pair of hiking boots. They had to still be there. Finally, she grabbed a lace, pulled them free, and stripped off the slippers. She held them as though they were the most precious thing she’d ever touched; her friend’s blood was dried and crusted on the blue velveteen. She tucked them under a tray inside the toolbox and hurried back to the safety of the cab.
Time blurred as she guided them through the night streets. Over and over, her eyes fell onto the helpless babies. She slapped the steering wheel. Mac can’t know about Erica. No one can know, not until the boys are safe.”
At last, she parked in the shadows at the station’s side entrance and left the engine idling. A parade of vehicles rolled up to the fuel island. Her hand gripped the gear shift, ready in case a black Mercedes showed. She noticed another phone booth. The monotony of watching cars roll up to the gas pumps, fill up and roll away rubbed against her agitation. How much longer? She needed to go now!
And the damned phone booth pulled like a magnet. Was a call to Detective Lute worth the risk? Charlie’s soft breathing answered. Not until her son was in a safe harbor.
Teagan slipped Lute’s card from her pocket. She remained sitting and carefully scanned everything beyond the windshield and side windows: a well-stuffed grandpa washed his windshield, a pair of teenagers paid attention only to each other, people inside the station cared only about a snack and paying. A second scan also revealed nothing threatening. She cracked the driver’s door.
Mac’s Buick LaSabre rolled to a stop beside her pickup. His headlights illuminated the inside of her pickup. She ducked her head from the blinding light, stuffed Lute’s card back into a pocket, slid from the cab, and hurried to his car.
At the sight of Mac’s grizzled face, Teagan blinked back tears.
“Now stop that, Sassy Lassie,” Mac said softly. “Or did you want me to bring the trawler to float in them tears of yours?”
“Doretta’s been murdered.”
Mac’s expression froze. “I heard about Pai, but Pete never said anything about Doretta.”
“She’s in the stairwell of my building. Blood all over.” Teagan shuddered remembering the gaping wound and the massive amount of blood when she’d stepped over Doretta’s long motionless legs. “I escaped with the babies.”
“I’ll take you to the police.”
“They’d put the boys in foster care where the killer can get at them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. A psycho wants those babies.” She held her breath while she waited for him to respond.
After a long moment, he muttered, “I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’ll take you where you’re going.”
“If you don’t show up at the piers tomorrow, everyone will want to know why, maybe turn in a missing person’s report. I can’t have any trace to where I’m going.”
“But you haven’t told me where.”
“Keeping that secret will protect us.”
Mac sighed. “This goes against everything I know, but I’ll help move the boys.” He tenderly lifted Charlie’s infant seat from Teagan’s pickup and secured him in the backseat of the Buick. He did the same for Jimmy and Levi.
Teagan handed her pickup keys to Mac. “Let Pete know?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his into her palm. “Tank’s full.”
“Mine’s empty.” Teagan closed the door, and then jumped back out. “I have to take the tool box. My slippers are in it. I stepped in Doretta’s blood. I drove in them.”
I’ll wash the pickup.” Mac grabbed the toolbox and slid it to the back. Together they hauled it to the trunk and put it inside.
Teagan glanced at Mac before driving from the station. He stood with his hands in his pockets and worry across his dear face – watching her.
She fled the security of her old friend.
Traveling on East I-90, she carefully stayed within the speed limit. A traffic officer would be curious about three babies, all the same age, all showing different heritage. Levi’s silky brown tone, Jimmy’s almond-shaped eyes, and Charlie’s titian hair would certainly stir up questions Teagan didn’t want to answer.
Fatigue nagged at her shoulders and shock numbed her mind. Could she make the ten-hour trip?
Split by her headlights, the night stretched ahead.
Chapter 22
Zoltan Lutavosky checked his watch. 11:58 P.M. He left the bubble light flashing on his dash and unwound from his car. A Medic One van crowded the entrance of Teagan’s condo complex, and a lonely reporter with her cameraman stood on the sidewalk beside it. No way, lady, Lute thought and walked by without comment.
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