“Have you been to the Charlie Chaplin festival at the Pickford Theater?”
He blinked in surprise. “Er, no.”
“I’ve heard they’re showing the original, uncut edition of The Tramp.”
“Really?” His mouth relaxed into a smile. “I’ve always wanted to see that. Uh, maybe we could see it together sometime.”
“Maybe.”
He didn’t have Marsh’s keen gray eyes or lean, rangy build, but he’d do, Julia decided. For an hour or two of conversation and companionship, he’d do.
She couldn’t even manage a few hours. Her head began to throb a short while later. The heat and the noise pulsed with an almost palpable beat. With a mumbled good-bye to her new acquaintance, Julia grabbed her purse and her coat and shouldered her way to the door.
Outside, she leaned a hand against an iron lamppost. Dizzy and breathing hard, she pulled cold air into her lungs.
“You okay, lady?”
She squinted through blurry eyes at the tourist who’d stopped beside her. Even this late in the evening, he sported a camera around his neck and clutched a walking map of Old Town in his fist. His wife hovered at his shoulder, wary and concerned and pinch-faced from the cold.
Julia pushed herself upright. “I’m fine. The... The heat inside got to me, that’s all.”
He looked doubtful and relieved. “You sure?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
Blinking to clear her blurred vision, Julia walked to the corner, then turned off Duke Street onto Fairfax. Her boot heels slipped on the uneven cobblestones. Swaying and dizzy, she forced herself to count doorways in an effort to keep focused.
She had just passed the twelfth when a sense of being followed penetrated her woozy mind. She threw a quick look over her shoulder at the headlights slicing the night behind her. The vehicle crawled along Fairfax Street slowly. Too slowly.
Suddenly frightened, Julia searched the sidewalk ahead for someone to attach herself to. A couple strolled hand-in-hand not ten yards in front of her. Breathing hard, she propelled herself forward and joined the two men.
She felt a little foolish when the car behind her turned at the corner and headed north, but her escorts insisted on walking her to her townhouse. They waited patiently on the sidewalk while she mounted the stairs and unlocked her front door. Thanking them again, Julia went inside.
The moment she closed the heavy oak panel, the heat in the house brought on another wave of dizziness. She leaned against the door and waited for the swirling, light-headed sensation to pass.
Instead of passing, her dizziness grew worse. Clammy and disoriented, Julia groped for the stair railing. As she pulled herself up the short flight of stairs, her stomach lurched with the sickening realization that she’d been drugged.
Chapter Seventeen
Marsh rubbed the back of his neck. He was tired, hungry, and ready to call this Saturday night a total bust.
The deep silence of the deserted building dragged at him like a heavy weight. The computer screen still glowed green on his desk, waiting for him to fill in the final paragraphs of his report. If he had any sense, he’d unplug the damned thing and go home. He needed to grab a hot shower, a cold beer, and about ten hours of sleep so he could bring a fresh mind to the case tomorrow. Instead, a sense of time running out kept him at his desk.
He was missing something. He had to be. His gaze drifted to the photo taped to the wall. Julia stared back at him. Her face haunted his waking hours now, as well as his dreams.
Expelling a long, whistling breath, Marsh picked up Lassiter’s Pulitzer-prize winning piece. Of all the articles Julia had printed out for him, this one packed the most punch. It also put the three major players in his case together at DaNang. He read the piece again, searching for some understanding of the tenuous relationship between Julia, Hunter, and Lassiter.
Halfway through the story, Marsh realized that at least two additional participants in the drama had been present in DaNang. Minor participants, true, but players nevertheless. He was stretching, really stretching, but he jotted down the name of the young Air Force sergeant whose story Lassiter told in such compelling prose, then searched for the name of the Italian photographer.
Julia had mentioned him in one of their sessions, Marsh recalled. Remi or Reno or something like that. He shuffled through the stacks of files on his desk. One slipped off the edge and spilled its contents to the floor. He was on his knees reaching for an elusive sheet of paper when a shrill buzz shattered the quiet.
He jerked upright and whacked his head on the open center drawer. Red stars cartwheeled across his vision as he groped for the telephone receiver.
“Yeah?”
His snarl produced a moment of startled silence. Then a woman asked hesitantly, “Special Agent Marsh?”
“Yes?”
“This is Operator Seventy-Three at the Bolling Central Switchboard. I know we’re not supposed to put after-hours calls through to anyone except the OSI duty officer, but I’ve got a woman on the line who’s asking for you. She sounds pretty bad.”
“Put her through.”
After a short interval, the operator came on again. “Go ahead, ma’am. He’s on the line. Ma’am?”
A low moan came across the line. The sound lifted the hairs on the back of Marsh’s neck.
“Who is this?” he rapped out.
A few slurred syllables trailed off into nothingness.
Marsh gripped the receiver. “Who is this?”
“Juul...”
“Julia? Is that you? What’s the matter? Where are you?”
“Ho...me.”
“Christ, what’s the matter? Are you hurt? Do you need me to call 911?”
“I...need...you. Plzzz.”
A dozen different possibilities flashed through Marsh’s mind. She could be drunk. She could be high. She could be alone and frightened and as desperate as Lassiter had implied.
“Plzzz,” she begged. “No one...else. Just...you.”
He knew her address. He knew more about Julia Endicott than her doctor, her lawyer, or anyone else in her life right now. He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
It took him thirty.
He’d underestimated the Saturday night traffic on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Even this late in the evening, cars had backed up on both I-95 and I-295 as they waited to feed together onto the bridge.
Cursing viciously at the logjam, Marsh grabbed his mobile phone and punched in Julia’s number. The phone rang endlessly at her end. His heart in his throat, he redialed. He’d just decided to punch in 911 when the ringing ceased. A loud clatter rattled his eardrum. She’d dropped the receiver.
“Julia? Julia, this is Ted. Talk to me.”
“Ted?” She sounded distant, tired, disinterested.
“I’m on my way. Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
“I think...something in my...drink. I feel so...sick.”
Christ! Something in her drink! What the hell had she taken? Alcohol and drugs could make a fatal combination when mixed.
“All right. It’s all right. Just keep talking to me, okay? Keep talking.”
He kept her on the line, murmuring encouragement when she stumbled and tripped over her words, demanding an answer when her voice drifted off. Sweat rolled down the side of his neck and soaked his shirt collar. His hand slicked on the plastic phone casing.
Lassiter’s caustic comment kept echoing in his head. She was a distraught woman, a desperate suspect facing a murder charge.
“Talk to me, Julia,” he ordered fiercely. “Tell me what you put in your drink.”
“I...didn’t. Someone...else.”
The cop in him grasped the significance in her mumbled words instantly. His mind leaped from the image of a drunken, desperate woman to a possible target. Fear closed his throat. He forced his response through.
“Talk to me, Julia. Who put something in your drink?”
/> “I want...to go to sleep and...never wake up.”
“No! Don’t kid yourself, Endicott. You’re too strong to give up. Talk to me, dammit!”
The traffic finally inched forward enough for him to wedge his Camaro onto the access lane. Ignoring angry honks and lifted fingers, he cut across five lanes of vehicles on the bridge and hit the High Occupancy Lane. Eyes narrowed, he squinted against the glare of headlights and watched for the exit to Alexandria.
He took the exit ramp on two wheels. The Camaro sped along the shoulder and passed a slow-moving truck. Marsh hadn’t spent all that much time in Old Town, but the grid-like layout helped him locate Julia’s street with just two wrong turns. Tires screeching, phone still plastered to his ear, he pulled up in front of a row of stately, restored townhouses.
“I’m right outside, Julia. Open the door.”
She mumbled a low, indistinct response.
He dropped the phone, shoved open the car door and took the short flight of stairs to her front door in a fast run. Leaning on the bell, he waited impatiently for her to answer. He had just measured the bow windows as a possible means of entry when the lock snicked open.
He shoved the door back and inadvertently knocked Julia sideways. She staggered a few steps and crumpled. Marsh caught her just before she hit the hardwood floor and scooped her into his arms. Kicking the door shut behind him, he carried her up a half flight of stairs to a dimly lit living room.
When he tried standing her on her feet, she collapsed against his arm, moaning. He took her chin in one hand and brought her face around to his. Her heavy-lidded eyes and slack jaw put a knot in his chest.
“Wake up, Julia. Come on. Tell me what happened.”
“I... Wine. I’m so...dizzy.”
“Wine? What else?”
Her lids lifted. “I...don’t...know.”
Her wide, unfocused gaze kicked Marsh in the gut. Her pupils had dilated until only a thin rim of green showed around the centers.
“All right.” Steadying her with an arm around her shoulders, he searched for a coat or blanket to keep her warm. “Let’s get you to an emergency room.”
She shook her head, as if trying to clear it, and clung to him with both hands. “I...can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Come on.”
“No! I can’t!” She sagged against his hold. “I can’t have this...on my...record, too! Please, Marsh. No!”
Her frantic pleading sent a shaft of relief through him. She wasn’t as stoned as he’d thought. She retained enough sense to realize that a drug incident would only add to the evidence against her.
Marsh hesitated, torn between her safety and the need to protect her from the damning case he himself had built. She clutched at his sheepskin jacket with both hands. Her eyes held confusion and panic, but for a moment at least they’d lost the vacant emptiness.
“I didn’t take anything. Only wine. Someone else... Help me. Please!”
He gentled his hold and his voice. “All right, let’s get you upstairs and into the shower.”
She could hardly make it to the stairs, much less up them. Marsh caught her in his arms again and fumbled for a light switch to illuminate the stairs and the hallway. Her head lolled on his shoulder as she mumbled slurred, disjointed phrases in his ear.
He located her bedroom by a short process of elimination. It was one of only two rooms on the top floor of the town house. The smaller obviously served as a combination office and guest room. The larger contained a huge bedroom, a dressing area, and the scraggliest cat Marsh had ever seen. Half orange, half mottled gray, and all ugly, it lay sprawled across the king-sized bed. At their entrance, it lifted its head and gave the intruders a sleepy assessment. Then it rolled to its feet and departed the scene. Marsh couldn’t blame the thing. What happened next wouldn’t be pretty or pleasant to watch.
Depositing Julia on the bed, he made a quick sweep of the dressing area. She claimed someone had slipped something into her drink. Marsh believed her, but he was too much an investigator not to search for hard evidence to either support or refute her claim.
His quick search turned up no pill bottles. No mirrors and powders. No syringes. He hadn’t seen any paraphernalia downstairs, either. He strode back to the bed, not sure whether he was more relieved or worried. If Julia hadn’t gotten herself stoned, who the hell had, and why? His mouth grim, he understood that those questions would have to wait until she was sober enough to answer them.
Peeling off her fuzzy blue sweater and slacks, he pulled her to her feet. She moaned a protest and dragged against his hold.
“Come on, Julia. Let’s get you into the shower. Then you’re going to walk until you crash.”
At times during the long, endless night, Marsh thought he’d crash before she did. More than once during their interviews he’d glimpsed the steel at this woman's core. He now saw evidence that even steel could bend and twist if enough pressure was applied. She clung to him like a person going under for the third time, sobbing at times, mumbling incoherently at others. Once, she giggled for no apparent reason, and the sound tore at Marsh’s heart.
He stripped her down to her white silk teddy, then pinned her against the shower wall with a splayed hand. Closing his ears to her shrieking protest, he held her under the cold stream. She fought him for a while, but her movements were too uncoordinated and jerky to have any effect. At last she slumped against the wall and slowly slid to the tiles.
When Marsh cut off the water and dragged her up, her nipples had puckered and peaked against the silk. She had small breasts, he noted, small and proud and as finely shaped as the rest of her slender body. Her tight, curved bottom lived up to every one of his late night fantasies, he admitted grimly as he toweled her down. Bundling her into the socks and baggy sweats he’d found on the floor of her closet, he began what became the pattern for the rest of the night.
“Hold on to me, Julia. That’s it. Now move, lady. Move.”
They walked the length of the long bedroom, turned, walked it again. He murmured encouragement to her. She responded at times, resisted him at others. When her strength faltered, he held her in his arms and rocked her and smoothed a palm over her wet hair until she was rested. Then he pulled her up and started the process again.
His voice grew hoarse. Hers gave out completely. Around three, he made her take another shower, not quite as frigid this time. Her lids drooped when he checked her pupils.
“Come on, Julia. Let’s get you walking again.”
She wanted to fight him. He could see the resistance in her shadowed eyes. But she gritted her teeth and put one foot in front of the other.
Two hours later, her pupils enlarged and contracted more normally in the light, and her mumbled words finally made a tired sort of sense. Marsh decided it was safe to let her sleep. When he tried to ease her down onto the bed, however, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, just...just hold me a little while longer.”
Marsh braced his arms on the bed, his muscles quivering. “I’ll be right here. I won’t leave you.”
“Yes, you will. You’ll have to. Just hold me until you do.”
She only wanted comfort, he told himself. Comfort and warmth.
That was all he intended to give...until she curled into his side and buried her face in his neck. Gradually, her breath warmed a damp patch just below his chin. Slowly, the heat inched down his neck. With every rise and fall of her chest, Marsh felt her confusion and fear ease.
Downstairs, a mantle clock bonged the hour. A faint wash of light hit the bedroom shutters as a car drove by. Julia moved in his arms. Just enough to straighten her bent knees, but it brought her body into intimate contact with his. A few moments more. That’s all he’d allow himself. Then he...
“Why do you have my picture in your office?”
The whisper drifted to him on the stillness. Marsh weighed a dozen different responses and could only find one that came close to the trut
h.
“I talk to you. Ask you questions.”
She was silent for so long he thought she might have eased into sleep.
“Do I answer?”
He curled a knuckle under her chin and raised her face. When he saw the need in her eyes, his instincts shouted at him to lie, or at least deny the truth. For once, he ignored his instincts.
“All the time.”
Her eyes were shadowed pools of green behind a fringe of dark lashes.
“I feel it, too,” she said softly. “A strange sort of bond. You’re the only one I can talk to.”
They stood at the rim of a precipice. One step would send them over the edge. Marsh sensed it with every nerve in his body. Julia showed it in her eyes. His common sense shouted at him to draw back. Now, before he went over and took her with him...or she took him.
“We’re bound together, aren’t we?” she asked. “For a while?”
“For a while," he agreed, easing her closer.
Julia woke to a sense of peace she hadn’t experienced in weeks. She lay unmoving for a few moments, trying to decide what had caused it.
The sunlight streaming through the shutters, probably. The sound of the TV downstairs that told her Marsh was still here, undoubtedly.
How strange. How incredibly ironic. The one person she should fear most in the world right now had given her the validation she’d needed so desperately. She knew now she was more than just a photo or the subject of an investigation to him. He’d acknowledged the shadowy tie that bound them...for a little while. He’d worked the awful, emptiness from her mind as well as the sickness from her body.
At the memory of her sickness, her sense of peace shattered. Disgust swept through her in slow, destructive waves. How could she have been so stupid! So damned stupid! Didn’t she ever learn?
Duty and Dishonor Page 20