If Looks Could Kill (23 page)

"You'd just stand by when a Christian woman jeopardizes her immortal soul by sinning before God and her brethren? 'If the eye offends,' Chris Jackson—"

"It's not that she's living with a man that bothers you," Chris snapped. "It's that she's living with a black man. So don't quote Scripture to me, you old hypocrite."

"Beware who you consort with, Chief," the minister warned, now a dusky color, his Bible quivering in his hands.

"With whom you consort," Chris interjected.

They both turned on her.

"Never end a sentence in a preposition, Harlan. It irritates the chief."

That did it. Harlan Sweetwater swept off the porch like the wrath of God, and Chris turned a suspiciously innocent smile on Mac.

"I'm doing more business on my day off than when I'm at the station," Mac complained agreeably, still not opening the door. "You want to file a complaint, too?"

"You
do
wear something besides a uniform," she observed with that same wry consideration. "I was beginning to wonder."

Mac took a cursory look down at the old police academy T-shirt and jeans he'd thrown on when the reverend had first laid on the doorbell. He was still in his bare feet. "I'm off duty," he informed her. "As in, I shouldn't have to be solving any problems."

She lifted the armload of books. "I brought you a present."

Mac made sure all the church members got off his lawn without incident and pushed open the screen door. "Too late. Sue was way ahead of you."

Chris accepted the invitation and stepped inside. "You already have Jacqueline's books?"

"I already read Jacqueline's books. And I have some questions."

Her grin was as bright as a child's. "Yes," she averred, "people
can
get into those positions without the aid of hydraulics."

Mac just scowled at her and turned to lead the way back into the kitchen where he'd been working. "What do you have against Sweetwater?" he asked over his shoulder. "Besides his being a general pain in the ass."

Chris surveyed the room without pretense. "He's a small-minded, petty, domineering, self-centered bigot who wants women back in the kitchen, blacks in another county, and children in the dark ages. Besides, that, I'm sure he's just a prince."

"You always that open-minded?"

Mac wasn't sure whether she realized how much her eyes gave away. There was real pain there. "Only since I had to spend more of my formative years on my knees than in school," she said. "It tends to give you a whole different perspective of the world."

Before he got a chance to follow up, though, she'd swung off in another direction completely, pulling to a sudden stop halfway across the floor.

"Well, hell, no wonder your grammar's so good."

Without so much as an apology or explanation, Chris walked up to the bookshelves that lined either side of the fireplace and began scanning titles.

"You actually
read
this stuff?"

Mac pulled a hand through his hair and rubbed instinctively at the scar. "I actually read that stuff."

She had her head tilted back, which would have brought her about to Balzac and Flaubert. "Why?"

"Sister Mary Ignatius Loyola," he allowed, not bothering to scan the titles that took up his shelves like old friends. When Chris turned on him for the rest of the explanation, he obliged with a grin. "We called her Sister Spike. She was about six feet, and had hands like Michael Jordan. And she figured that kids in detention shouldn't waste their time on four-hundred-word essays on why they should behave, since that wasn't going to make them behave any better anyway. She had us read the classics." He shrugged, a bit uncomfortable. "I guess it stuck."

Chris just shook her head. "These yours?"

She'd picked up the picture of the twins.

"Kevin and Kate. They live with their mother in Phoenix."

"Just can't find a good place within commuting distance of Chicago anymore, can you?"

"They'll be spending the summer with me."

Another nod, and she put the picture back down. "What did you think of the books?"

Mac felt the tension escape from his chest. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about his children. He still called them three nights a week, much to the delight of Ma Bell. They were looking forward to seeing him again, had flooded the hospital room with crayon-and glue-constructed cards. It wasn't enough, though. It hadn't been in Chicago when he'd seen them every other weekend. Having them in Phoenix was hell. So he did what he could do and looked forward to the end of school, and thanked Chris Jackson's perception for not prying.

He tried another run for the kitchen. This time she followed.

"They weren't what I expected," he admitted, opening the refrigerator. "Beer?"

"Almost anything but. Tea or soda?"

After a foray into the pantry, Mac came up with a single can of soda. With that and a beer for Mac, they eventually migrated toward the kitchen table where his cigarettes and the manila envelopes already waited.

"You don't drink?"

"Is that a problem?" Chris countered, making a turn around the room.

Popping the tab on his beer, Mac shook his head. "I just won't waste time asking in the future. Do you want to see the basement and garage while you're here?"

Chris grinned. "Insatiable curiosity. Bane of cats, teenage girls, and writers of all ilk. Just hit me with a rolled-up newspaper if I get out of hand... and no, I don't drink. I'm stupid enough sober. It doesn't bear thinking about drunk."

Explanation enough for Mac. He pulled over the ashtray, but put off lighting up for a bit. After a minute or two more, Chris folded those long legs beneath the chair across from him and popped the tab on her soda.

"Actually," she said with a brightness that suddenly seemed just a shade brittle, "I don't have any business going through your things. I spent all last evening slapping Lawson's hands for fondling everything in my house but the chandelier. She really is a pain in the ass, isn't she?"

Mac heard text and subtext, and deliberately eased his posture into listening mode. He didn't have to encourage her at all.

"Did she tell you that she would love for me to be the murderer?" Chris asked.

"It'd certainly make headlines up in her neck of the woods."

"I'm sure I'm also easier to find than the random nutcase with a library card, too. She's going home today?"

"Yeah."

Chris sipped at her soda. "Good. She gives me the creeps."

"How?"

A shrug. A glance that skittered away. "I don't know. Like she knows more than I do and won't tell me. There were a couple of moments last night when I could have sworn she had me on a videotape of one of the murders."

"She's just hungry."

"I know that. I just wish she'd turn those cute little sharkey eyes in somebody else's direction."

"You didn't kill anybody, did you?"

It was a joke. A throwaway line. Mac could have sworn she stiffened.

"Not that I remember."

He wished he could say why that sounded so important. Frontal assaults weren't going to work today, though. It was time to start finessing a little.

"I'm glad you stopped by," he admitted. "I got hold of some stuff from Lawson, and it's gotten me to thinking."

The change was instantaneous. Minute, barely perceptible, but definite all the same. Chris pulled a rather doleful face. "And here I thought we were going to wax eloquent about the immense talent of Jacqueline Christ, and how her work has opened up new vistas for you."

Mac was caught with a hand already in the envelope. When he faced her accusation, he saw the challenge of humor and retreated.

"All right," he conceded. "Let's start there."

"With the romances?" she asked. "You don't think those have anything to do with it, do you? I went through my mail with a fine-tooth comb, and I couldn't find anything more aggressive than a lady who was upset that none of my heroines have been black-haired virgins."

"I'm not to the point of specifics yet. I'm just interested in some background. What do you consider your themes to be?"

That knocked her straight into silence. "Themes?" she finally countered. "What themes?"

"Why do you write?" he asked.

That brought her back up off the chair.

"You need another look at the dining room?" he asked dryly.

She glared at him. "There isn't another policeman in the world who would ask me what the hell my themes are."

"I'm just curious," he said diffidently, holding his place against her agitation, intrigued by it.

"I write romance," she stated baldly, daring him to contradict her, "because it's the closest thing to sex I get. Same for mysteries. You can't imagine how many times I've done away with Harlan, not to mention any number of Cooters."

Mac finally took a minute to light up, giving her the figurative room she seemed to need. "I've read all five mysteries," he acknowledged, dropping the match in the ashtray. "They're all pretty different, but there are certain... themes, images that run through all of them."

Chris was walking again, pacing off the corners and peering out the window. "I know that."

"Dreams, for instance. You and Hawthorne like that idea that reality is expressed in dreams a whole lot."

That brought her to a halt across the table, a small smile giving her away. "All that Jungian shit. Yeah, I know. I think it's an intriguing notion. Nothing like the subconscious for control and illumination."

Mac ostensibly turned his attention on the papers before him. "And there's the concept of evil. Lots of guilt and redemption, too."

She focused on her soda can. "Use what you know. First lesson in writing."

"All those Sundays on your knees, huh?"

"And Tuesdays and Fridays and whatever day I happened to transgress in between."

Mac lifted his attention back to her. "The sisters in the convent school?"

He caught that brief hesitation, that betrayal of something she didn't want him to know.

"Among others," was all she'd say.

Everybody lied, he couldn't help but think again.

"Why mysteries?" he asked, letting the deception go for now. "Why not fantasies or science fiction or an expose of the social service system?"

"Because murder is the ultimate decision," she said, slowing to a stop, her hands splayed across the back of the plastic-and-chrome chair, her nails sharp slashes of red against the dingy white. "The real showdown of all that good and evil, grace and instincts stuff... why."

"Why?"

Chris took off again, turning away while she talked. "Why do people murder."

Mac couldn't help a short bark of disbelief. "What do you mean, why do people murder? They murder for sport, for spare change, for a break from the monotony."

"I'm not talking about gangs or psychopaths. I'm talking about normal people, raised with all those good, solid values, lots of religion, middle-class America at its finest."

"And your theory?"

That took her a minute. Mac was happy to wait. She reached down to pick up her soda for another long drink and spent a second looking off into space, obviously consulting with some other voice, maybe C.J.'s, maybe one even older.

"I think," Chris admitted finally, her tone just a little too tight to be offhand, "that any one of us is perfectly capable of it. That we just need a good push in the right direction, and all that wonderful training goes right down the toilet. The better the people, the bigger the shove, that's all."

"And our friend?" Mac asked. "Why do you think he's killing?"

Finally she faced him, and Mac saw the truth in her eyes. Fear, loathing, anger. A big, deep hole right in the middle of all her confidence that most people had never seen. "I don't know," she said, and sounded lost.

The hair on the back of Mac's neck stirred. There were currents to Chris's discussion he hadn't even considered. Subtext that was completely foreign to him, and he had no idea how to get to it.

It was there, right in front of him, in her eyes. The darkness, the street eyes, wary, knowing, ultimately as bleak as death. For a moment unguarded. There for him to just pluck out if he just knew what to use.

"Why do you write romance?" he asked, not sure why.

She didn't even look at him. Again she was inside; again he got a peek at a place he wasn't sure many people saw. "Same reason."

"What? Why men and women get together?"

She shrugged, a vulnerable gesture that betrayed more than her words. "Why people love each other."

For a second Mac couldn't even breathe. He sat perfectly still, stunned at the desolation behind that bright facade of hers. Faintly ashamed at the rituals he'd carried out at kitchen tables like this one. He'd had the core eaten out of him over the years. He had the feeling Chris Jackson had never been allowed to grow one.

"And why do you think they do?" he asked finally, cautiously, a hunter approaching its prey.