Before I Sleep (8 page)

“Just when exactly did you become aware that there had been a murder, Mrs. Hatcher?” Gil asked pleasantly, as if he were having a casual conversation.

“When Maudeen Cleary started shrieking.” Mrs. Hatcher shook her head. “That woman didn't stop screaming for ten minutes.”

“She must have been very upset,” Gil said with concern.

“I suppose she was! We all were, and we didn't scream our heads off.”

“No, of course not,” Seamus said. “You weren't alone when you first saw the body.”

Mrs. Hatcher started to take umbrage, but Gil forestalled her. “Don't mind his rough edges, ma'am. He has a lot to learn. So the Cleary woman's screams were the first you knew of it?”

“Didn't I just say so?”

“Were you home all day?”

For the first time, Mrs. Hatcher hesitated. “Yes,” she said finally. “I believe so. At least that's what I told the other policeman, so it must have been true. But it's been three weeks …”

As if such details wouldn't now be engraved on her mind, Seamus thought. She certainly didn't strike him as having Alzheimer's.

“Of course,” Gil said encouragingly. “Things do get a little dim with time for all of us. Now about the gunshot …”

“I didn't hear a thing,” Mrs. Hatcher said firmly. “Not that I remember, anyway.”

“Really?” said Seamus. “But you heard the Cleary woman scream, and the gunshot must have been just as loud.”

The woman frowned. “I
didn't
hear a thing. I told you.” She averted her face and looked at Gil. “I already said everything I intend to.”

Seamus was relentless. “You noticed we were parked out there within a few minutes of us getting there. You must look out your windows quite a lot, Mrs. Hatcher. I notice you don't even keep your curtains drawn.”

She stiffened, and Gil intervened. “What my partner is trying to say in his unpolished way, is that we figure you for a good neighbor. It would be my guess that nobody in this neighborhood has to worry about a truck backing up to their house in broad daylight while thieves load it with all their possessions.”

“Well, I hope if I saw something like that that I wouldn't ignore it.”

“Of course not,” Gil said smoothly. She smiled.

“So,” said Seamus, “you expect us to believe that the better part of an entire day went by and you never once glanced out a window and saw that man lying there bleeding to death?”

Mrs. Hatcher backed up, her face paling. “I tell you, I didn't know a thing until Maudeen screamed.”

“Of course you didn't, Mrs. Hatcher,” Gil said pleasantly. “Thank you for your time. I hope we won't have to trouble you again.”

Mrs. Hatcher barely nodded before she slammed the door on them. Gil and Seamus walked back to their car, Rico on their heels.

Rico said, “You guys do good cop, bad cop really well.”

Seamus and Gil exchanged looks. “What's he talking about?” Seamus asked.

“Beats me.”

“You know,” Rico said. “The way you were talking to that lady. One of you being the heavy, the other one being the nice guy.”

“Oh,” said Gil, shrugging.

Seamus looked over his shoulder. “Hate to disappoint you, Rico, but that's just our normal personalities.”

Gil stifled a smile.

“Oh.” Rico thought about it. “What was that all about? The questions with Mrs. Hatcher. Why did you ask her again? She must have been questioned two or three times already.”

Not too swift, this guy, Seamus thought. “Just verifying the woman's story. Basic police work, Rico. You always go back to make sure they haven't remembered something new.”

“Always,” Gil agreed. “And she didn't remember anything new.”

“Not a thing,” Seamus echoed.

They stood by their car, watching as Rico drove away.

Seamus looked at Gil. “She knows something.”

Gil nodded.

“She also knows Rico's name. Seems kind of odd in a neighborhood that almost never needs the police.”

Gil nodded slowly. “Maybe she had a B and E at one time, and he responded.”

“Could be.”

Gil looked at Seamus.

Seamus looked back. “And cows fly,” he said finally.

“So I've heard.”

Together they walked toward the next house.

“Well, you were right,” Gil said late that afternoon as he and Seamus returned to the squad room and took their seats at the table. “There's a conspiracy of silence in that neighborhood.”

“So loud it's almost deafening.”

Gil rubbed his ear with a knuckle and grinned. “Did you say something?”

Seamus's phone rang, and he reached for it. He hoped it might be one of the neighbors they'd spoken to that afternoon, claiming to have suddenly remembered something. After all, he and Gil had done their best to leave those people with the impression that they could expect to be questioned by the police every few days until they died unless something broke on the case.

“Seamus,” Carissa Stover said, “I've got to talk to you.”

His stomach lurched, leaving him feeling almost seasick. What, was the woman developing ESP now? Had she somehow realized that he'd decided he never wanted to hear her voice again, even on the radio? “I'm at work, Carey. Try me at home later.”
But I won't be there.
If he had to stay out all night to avoid her, he would.

Then he decided he was being a chickenshit about a woman he'd broken off with five years ago. It didn't matter anymore. Not at all. Right? Right.

“I'm at work, too,” she said, her voice tight. “But this
is
about work. About
your
work. I want to talk to you,
Detective.
”

He remembered that edge in her voice. In or out of the courtroom, it cowed most people. “About what? Is it urgent?” And then he realized she had just cowed
him.
He swore silently. He was making futile gasps of resistance. Christ!

“I need to talk to you. Privately. About police business. And face it, Seamus, you're the only
honest
cop I know.”

He wondered if her mouth had finally gotten her into serious trouble. Curiosity, of which he had always had entirely too much, reared its head. “Okay. When?” And there went number six or seven of his nine lives, he thought with resignation.

“Here, if you want. At the station. I don't go on the air for a couple of hours, but I've got some stuff to do.”

Neutral territory, he thought. She wanted to talk to him about as much as he wanted to talk to her. The realization didn't ease his queasiness any. Taking her home the other night when she was drunk had managed somehow to make five years ago seem like only yesterday. His body, he thought, craved hers the way addicts craved cocaine. That's all it was, a craving. A physical addiction. He didn't actually care about her anymore, he just wanted her.

And that was something he was sure he could deal with.

Feeling better suddenly, he said, “Sure. Give me thirty minutes. I've got some paperwork to take care of first.”

“Great. And Seamus … thanks.”

Thanks?
Carissa Stover didn't thank people for anything. She asked for it, then accepted it as her due. And for some reason he didn't like the idea that the years might have changed her. It renewed his uneasiness.

“Hot date?” Gil asked when he hung up.

“No. Business.” He was being short, but he didn't want to get into it.

“Was that Carey Stover? Didn't you used to date her?”

Seamus's eyes suddenly felt hot in his head, and he wondered if flames were leaping out of them as he looked stonily at his partner. “Ancient history.”

“Right,” said Gil. He let the subtext hang in the air between them.

The hell of working with Gil Garcia, Seamus thought as he started to write his report, was the way the guy could crawl into his head.

He wondered if it was too late to pull up the drawbridge, close the windows, and lock the doors.

He had the feeling it already was.

C
HAPTER
5

18 Days

C
arissa was holed up in an empty recording booth with papers scattered all around her, giving a damn good imitation of being deep in preparation for her show. She still had to figure out the thrust of another monologue on the Otis case to kick off with tonight, but she didn't have a foggy idea what tack she wanted to take. Right now, waiting for Seamus to arrive, she didn't seem to be able to think about anything at all except the reason she had called him.

The back of her neck was tingling, and hadn't stopped since she'd talked to Evan Sinclair at the Prosecutor's Office about a story Ed Ulrich had mentioned to her. The harder she had tried to shake the feeling, the more persistent it had become. Finally, she had called Seamus, even though she knew full well what he was going to say about this.

Finally the half hour was up, and she went out to the lobby to see if he was there. His car was just pulling into the parking lot under leaden skies. Gray, wispy fingers were reaching groundward from the rapidly moving clouds, almost touching the tops of the palm trees at the entrance to the parking lot. The palm fronds and the live oaks around the edge of the lot were being tossed by the strong wind looking silvery in the strange greenish light.

Tornado weather.

“Looks nasty out there,” Becky Hadlov remarked.

“I love this kind of weather.” It was a pleasant change from the burning sun and baking heat of this time of year, as long as she didn't have to drive in it.

“You would.”

Carey glanced over her shoulder. “Meaning?” She was careful to make the question pleasant.

“You like excitement.”

“True enough.” Why else would she have dragged Seamus Rourke, whom she would have been happy never to see again, all the way over here on a mere wisp of intuition?

She turned back to the windows and saw Seamus walking up with his usual, insouciant stride. That was the very first thing she had noticed about him, she remembered: that walk. That “I'm comfortable in my body and with my maleness” walk that had caused an instantaneous sexual reaction in her.

He still had the walk, and she still had the reaction. Great. Wonderful. Like she needed this?

He was wearing a lightweight dark blue suit, white shirt, and tie. She recognized the slight bulge at his hip that was his gun, and remembered watching him strap it on his belt in the mornings, an action that had always somehow left her feeling that they couldn't possibly be on the same side. She had carried a badge, too, back then, but not a gun. That gun had marked a major difference between them.

Or so she had thought. But what was the difference? she asked herself now.
He
could shoot a perp if necessary.
She
had sent one to the electric chair. Maybe it had been realizing that there really was no difference that had been the final straw for her.

He reached the door and pulled it open, letting in a gust of warm, moist air that was laden with the sound of the wind, clattering palm fronds, and passing traffic. He stepped through, and the door closed, shutting out the mixed sounds of nature and civilization.

“Hi,” he said.

“Come on back.” Carissa turned and led the way to the booth she'd commandeered. When she closed that door, no one would be able to hear what they were saying.

She pointed to a stool and he took it. Then she rounded the console and sat on the other side, facing the familiar array of buttons and slides. They grounded her somehow and, with Seamus this close, she needed to be grounded.

“So what's up?” he asked, unbuttoning his suit jacket and letting it fall open.

All of a sudden her intuition seemed flimsy, and she wished she had never called him. What did she have, after all, except a time proximity between two events that were probably totally unrelated?

“Carey?”

His tone was impatient. She recognized it from the days when she had been battling through an endless crisis of conscience, and he had started to get tired of her unending talk about the law, justice, and her job. He'd even called her a one-trick pony. Maybe she was. She was still talking about the same things on the radio.

“Carey?” This time there was no impatience, but instead genuine concern. She looked into his gray-green eyes but couldn't read them. He'd always had unreadable eyes— when he wanted to. “Did something happen to you? Did somebody threaten you?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. Sorry. I'm sorry. It's just—you're probably going to laugh at me.”

“Since when does that bother you?”

She wanted to tell him she didn't care what he thought about
her,
but even as she opened her mouth to say so, she realized that wasn't strictly true. “I just… well, I want you to give me a full hearing, okay? Somebody's life could depend on it.”

He sighed. “Otis.”

“Yes, Otis!” Her temper was close to snapping, and she had to force herself to remain calm. She was not ordinarily so close to the edge, but the whole idea of a man being executed in part because of things
she
had done was eating her alive—especially since she had always harbored a belief that he was probably innocent. “You're not going to tell me that you want this man to be executed if he's innocent?”

“He's not innocent. He was convicted of murder.”

“And for you it ends there?”

He nodded. “For me it ends when I make my testimony in court, counselor. It
has
to end there, whether the suspect is convicted or not. We've been over this a thousand times, Carey. Christ, maybe a million times. It sure felt like it.”

The reference to the last days of their relationship struck her as almost brutal, but she forced herself to ignore it. “Seamus—”

“Is that why you called me? To argue about this again? Jesus, Carey, there's nothing left to say that we both haven't said.”

“But there
is
something more. Maybe.”

She had to give him credit. His face didn't shutter, the way it had too many times in the past. He grew still, attentive, listening.

“The other night on my show I got a call from someone who said that John Otis didn't do it, and that he was going to prove it.”