Chasing Darkness (16 page)

“I’ll
say.” She smiled and felt her chest relax. “Reminds me how great you are.”

Aaron
lowered his arm and turned the chair toward the door. “Thanks,” he said,
grinning. “If you’re sure you don’t need me . . .”

She
waved him out. “Positive.”

Settling
back into her chair, she opened her drawer and pulled out her date book. There,
in the section most people used for addresses, she had an alphabetical index of
all her homicide cases. Each case had its own page, filled with her tiny block
handwriting, including the location of the scene, the police and detectives
working the case.

When
she’d worked homicide, she’d kept a detailed journal of her cases—it was the
closest she’d ever come to keeping a diary. Every day, she wrote the status of
the case, her impressions of the people she’d spoken with, any detail anyone
could recall that related to the case. There was nothing official about what
was written and she had never told anyone what she kept there.

Sometimes,
when a case wasn’t moving, she would curl up in bed and read the journal as
though it were a novel. The scene would draw itself in her mind, the images and
characters coming alive, as in any good book. She sometimes got her best ideas
that way. She wished she’d done the same with her abuse cases—but the numbers
had been too high, the volume of work too overwhelming, not to mention the
disruption in her life when the boys came.

Still,
she hadn’t scrapped the idea altogether. Now, instead of a detailed journal,
she kept her date book. In it she wrote appointments and a to-do list on the
left side and everything about whatever case she’d worked that day on the
right. The eight years’ worth of notes were in a labeled binder beside her
homicide one at the back of a bookshelf in her house. The notes went far beyond
the minimal reporting that was required in the job, but they’d never come close
to making her feel as though she gave each case her all.

She
flipped to the current week and scanned the names, dates, and clues about Sandi
Walters that she had entered the day before. She flipped back to the notes on
Sloan and stared at them again. Then, on a fresh sheet, she wrote the two cases
down side by side. She couldn’t find the common denominator. No, that wasn’t
true. She couldn’t find the common denominator other than herself. There had to
be something else she was missing. She focused on Molly Walters again,
searching for something new. Her old binders from the Sloan case were at home.
She would have to look through those, too.

Molly
Walters had been brought to her attention after a visit from her paternal
grandparents in the fall of ’98. The grandparents, who lived in Oregon, had
been concerned because the girl was rail-thin and bruised. It had been a
difficult case to try.

None
of them were easy—children rarely wanted to see their parents get in trouble.
And if it weren’t the irrational devotion to a parent, it was the threat of
later consequences. She thought back on her own parents.

No
one had ever questioned her father. She couldn’t imagine what she would have
told someone had they come to her. She remembered, even until the day she left,
how desperately she wanted him to look at her once and say he was proud. But he
couldn’t.

When
she got old enough to keep him away—by staying out late, sleeping in the same
room as Polly, or rigging ways to lock her door—he didn’t even look her in the
eye. She always blamed herself—worried that he didn’t look at her because he
was so disgusted with her. Only now, with nearly twenty years of hindsight, did
she realize that it wasn’t about her at all. He was only frustrated that she
had grown big enough to keep him away.

And
she wished she’d been able to keep Molly Walters away from her mother. The
judge had ruled in their favor, but the sentence was only a paltry eight weeks
of counseling for Sandi and Molly. It was a typical run through the courts,
especially for first-timers. It would have taken at least two, probably three,
appearances in court before Sandi Walters would have lost custody of her child.
Sam wondered how much better the grandmother, Wendy Mayes, would have been.

She
continued to make notes about each of the last few days, commenting in as much
detail as she could squeeze onto the compact page. Her mind drifted over the
bloodstained photo. She didn’t write that down. Although it seemed otherwise,
she reminded herself that this case wasn’t about her. It was about Sandi
Walters and maybe someone who had known Charlie Sloan.

But
there was no denying that someone was purposefully tying Sam to this case. The
question was why. Why kill the woman she had prosecuted for abuse? Why copy the
M.O. of the killer she had tracked and caught? She had no answers.

She
wished she could stop her mind from returning to Nick, but her train of thought
had already taken her to the other night. She’d behaved terribly. No one would
blame him if he never wanted to see her again. And as much as she would have
liked to shut him out and turn away, a part of her longed to see him.

Why
hadn’t she just kissed him? Let him kiss her? She had wanted to. And yet, when
he was close, when his lips were on hers, she’d felt her chest tighten until
she couldn’t breathe. She’d lost control. She couldn’t lose control. For all
those years, she’d been warning herself not to lose control.

Nick
was the one thing in her life that had the potential to be wonderful at the
moment. Her job was going okay, but not great. The boys were tough right now.
And then there was this case.

Like
a child after too much sugar, she’d been antsy and excited ever since their
dinner, laughing over something he’d said, or listening to jazz on the car
radio, wanting to ask questions about one artist or another, wondering what
interesting facts Nick would offer about them. He had told her about Django,
the musician who invented Gypsy jazz, who had taught himself to play all over
again after being badly burned in a fire. Sam thought momentarily about Derek,
wishing he’d been able to teach himself to run again.

Laying
her hands flat against the desk, she pulled her chair in close until she was up
against the wood surface. She spread her files out and turned her attention to
work. The case, Rob’s recent escapades, her involvement with Nick—all of it had
thrown her work off track. She didn’t need to spend more time thinking about
things that wouldn’t be. She needed to work.

In
the quiet of the after-hours office, she returned phone calls, prepared her
paperwork to be filed by Aaron the following day, cleaned off her desk, and
even got through several of the reports put out by government agencies on crime
statistics in the state of California. She bundled up the charred space heater
to take it with her, then realized it was almost six-thirty and she hadn’t
heard from the boys.

They
knew she was working late and she’d left a note telling them to cook a frozen
pizza. Still, Derek normally called to check in. She glanced over the boys’
activity schedule she kept on her computer with Aaron’s help and then lifted
the receiver to dial.

The
line was dead. She clicked on the receiver. No dial tone.

Just
then, the lights in the hall went off.

Nick
was tired. His day had passed slowly and without any progress on the case.
Captain Cintrello had ordered the release of James Lugino for the homicide, and
he’d probably walk on the possession charge. Cintrello also told Nick that
someone was suing the state on behalf of Charlie Sloan. The D.A.’s office was
fighting it on the basis that this killer was a copycat and Sloan was the real
killer. Problem was, the copycat had access to inside information, and the D.A.
needed to know how the information had been obtained in order to argue against
the suit.

“You’d
better figure out who the hell did that shit and fast, Nick,” his captain had
warned. “If they gather enough evidence to prove that this department executed
the wrong man, we’re going to get slaughtered in the press.” Nick knew that in
a sheriff’s office, where everyone was elected, bad media attention even a year
from an election could cost the whole department their jobs—from sheriff right
on down.

It
was five-thirty now, and he decided to drop by Sam’s house, hoping to catch her
to talk. He rang the bell and Rob came racing to the door. “I’m glad you’re
here. Derek’s sick. He’s been lying on the couch, moaning. I don’t know what to
do.”

Nick
followed Rob through the kitchen into the living room.

Derek
lay across one couch, a blanket pulled to his chin.

“Sick?”

Derek’s
eyes fluttered open and he shifted slightly.

Nick
looked at Rob. “He go to school?”

Rob
nodded. “He just came home and collapsed. He looks pale, doesn’t he? Man, you
think it’s contagious?”

Nick
knelt beside Derek and pressed his hand to the boy’s forehead. “Derek?”

Derek’s
eyes opened.

“How
do you feel?”

“Lousy,”
he whispered.

“You’ve
got a fever. Tell me what hurts.”

Derek’s
Adam’s apple bobbed. “My throat mostly. I’m tired. Everything hurts.”

Nick
turned to Rob. “You have a thermometer?”

“I’m
sure Aunt Sam does, but I don’t know. I could check.”

“Show
me where she keeps the medical stuff.”

Rob
led Nick down a hall past the boys’ rooms. It was as far as he’d ever been in
the house and he suddenly felt like he was trespassing. Rob opened the door to
Sam’s room and went in. Nick found himself pausing at the threshold and taking
stock of the room. It was white and simple.

Several
Guy Buffet prints, including the famous one with the Buena Vista restaurant at
the corner of Powell and Bay in San Francisco’s North Beach, decorated the
walls. The bed was queen-sized with a thick dark denim comforter, and he could
just see the tops of navy flannel sheets. He resisted the temptation to run his
fingers across them.

The
room could as easily have been a man’s room as a woman’s. But everything about
it spoke of comfort. A pile of books was stacked in perfect order on each of
the bedside tables. He walked by them and glanced at the titles.
Corelli’s
Mandolin, Snow Falling on Cedars, Under the Tuscan Sun.

Most
were titles he’d never heard of. One had fallen to the side of the bed. He
glanced down at it:
The Teenage Jungle: A Parent’s Guide to Survival.
He
imagined Sam in her sheets reading to try to understand her nephews. On the
floor beside the bed was a thick brown folder with pockets labeled A–Z. He saw
a coupon for Palmolive dish soap sticking out of the “D” pocket and smiled to
himself.

“I
found the medical supply kit, but there’s no thermometer.”

Nick
followed Rob into the small bathroom off Sam’s room. Rob had the medicine
cabinet open and had pulled down a red plastic kit with the Red Cross emblem on
it. He’d also emptied two small cosmetic bags, and the contents of all three were
piled on the floor.

“No
thermometer in here, and I don’t know where else it would be.”

Nick
nodded. “I’ll look up here.” He stood and ran his finger along each shelf. The
contents were perfectly lined, labels front. He couldn’t imagine anyone keeping
a medicine cabinet so neat, but the image of Sam lining up the bottles made him
smile.

There
wasn’t a single prescription drug, but she had every type of cold medicine from
children’s Dimetapp to Theraflu and Alka Seltzer. Most of the packages remained
unopened. In a canister on the second shelf, he found gauze scissors and two
thermometers. “Got it.”

He
pulled a thermometer from the hard plastic case, shaking the mercury down as he
carried it and the Tylenol back to Derek in the living room.

Rob
trailed behind, almost on Nick’s heels. The boy’s concern was evident in his
wide eyes and frazzled pace.

“Derek,
we’re going to take your temperature,” Nick said, sitting on the edge of the couch.
Slipping the thermometer under Derek’s tongue, he glanced at his watch.

“How
long does it take?” Rob asked.

“About
a minute.” He motioned to Sam’s room. “Why don’t you get the stuff in Sam’s
room put away. By the time you get back, he’ll be ready to go.”

Rob
nodded and headed back into Sam’s bedroom.

Nick
ran his hand through Derek’s hair, remembering being sick as a kid. His house
was always so full, there was hardly ever a quiet spot to go. He shared a
bedroom with two brothers until they both left home. But when someone was sick,
his mother always set up quarantine in the living room. Except when someone was
sick, the room was strictly for adults, its old door pulled closed to the
constant mess of six children.

Nick
read the mercury as 102 degrees. He passed the thermometer to Derek to let him
read it.

“One-oh-two.”

Derek
handed it to Rob, who twisted it back and forth in the light. “Wow, that’s
pretty high.”

Nick
nodded. “Not too bad, but we should call Sam.”

Rob
got up and found the phone.

“Are
you allergic to anything, Derek?”

He
shook his head.

“Do
you ever take Tylenol?”

He
nodded. “Sometimes.”

Nick
opened the bottle and shook out two tablets.

“The
Exile
on Main Street
album is great,” Derek said.

Nick
smiled. “I’m glad you like it. They recorded that one in France when Mick
Taylor was still in the band.”

Derek
nodded. “Yeah, they rented some château because they couldn’t go back to
England because of tax problems.”

Nick
was always amazed at how much Derek knew about music. “I’ll look forward to hearing
it again when you’re better,” he said.

“She’s
not answering,” Rob said, returning to the room with a glass of water. “I left
a message. She checks them pretty often, I think. Maybe she’s on her way home.”