LOVING HER SOUL MATE (35 page)

Yet, as she lay in John Malone’s bed and allowed
him to hold her, to comfort her, he was doing exactly that.
 
Taking care of her.
 
Being there for her.
 
Loving her.
 
But somehow, with John, she welcomed his
care.

The Brady Police Department was
abuzz with news of Shay Turner’s return.
 
Everybody who was there two years ago remembered the toll it had taken
on their chief and the pound of flesh the town had extracted out of Shay’s
reputation.
 
Not because she had done
anything wrong.
 
They knew the chief’s
marriage was in shambles long before he even met Shay.
 
But the fact that her reporting was
responsible for Chief McNamara’s dismissal, and the fact that she was in that
house the night John had to kill his own ex-wife, affected every one of them.
   

And that was why she would get no
sympathy from John’s men.
 
John Malone
stood by her, even when it was hurting him with the mayor, who could rescind
his appointment as chief at any time.
 
But he stood by her.
 
Even to this
day, his loyalty to an ambitious reporter like Shay Turner was inexplicable to
them.

“You should have seen how arrogant
she was,” Malvaney said to the officers standing around Captain Yannick’s
desk.
 
Yannick was there too, his burly
arms folded, as his disdain for Shay Turner grew with Malvaney’s every
word.
 
“You would have thought she was
Michelle Obama or somebody the way she was demanding that I let her go as if I
was detaining her for no reason.
 
She
even had on shades and was shaking her leg and she just turned my stomach.
 
But when the chief got there he set her straight.”

“John stood up for you?” Craig
Yannick asked.

“Yes, sir, he did.
 
She tried to act like I had no call stopping
her but Chief Malone told her to back up right there, that I was doing my
job.
 
You should have seen her face when
he disputed her that way.”

“Good,” Yannick said with
satisfaction.
 
“Maybe her aura has
finally worn off on him.”

“I never understood it myself,”
Detective Kincaid, a tall, tough-as-nails black woman, said.
 
“Shay Turner’s nothing to write home
about.
 
I mean she’s a nice looking
woman, but the way Chief seemed to be so smitten with her.”

“Well, you know what they say.”

“What they say, Cap?” Kincaid
asked with a smile on her face.
 
Everybody in the Brady Police Department just loved Captain Yannick’s
witticisms.
 

“The sweeter the berry, the
blacker the juice,” Yannick said and they all laughed.
 
Malvaney, however, frowned.

“I think it’s the other way
around, sir,” he said.

“He knows, son,” Kincaid
said.
 
“He knows.”

“And from what I heard,” Yannick
continued, “John Malone tapped that black juice so hard and so often that it
went from sweet to prune.”
 
They laughed
even harder.
 
“From wet
to dry.”
  
Even
more laughter.

“What the hell’s so funny?” John
Malone asked when he came up front from the interrogation room.
 
All of his officers, except for Yannick and
Kincaid, nervously and hastily dispersed.
 

“You know me,” Yannick said.
 
“Just joking around.
 
How did it go?”

John exhaled, and leaned against a
desk near Yannick’s.
 
“Terrible.
 
We’ve been back there nearly nine hours with
that fool and he still won’t confess.”

Kincaid smiled.
 
“Maybe he’s not such a fool after all.”

John looked at Kincaid with a
searing look.
 
Kincaid cleared her throat
and wiped that smile off of her face.
 

“But you’re certain the boyfriend
killed that girl?” Yannick asked.
 

“I’m as certain as I can get.
 
Every piece of evidence we have points to
him.”

“You know what those young
activists are saying,” Kincaid said.
 
“They’re saying that the fact that another girl was murdered while
Glazer’s been in jail only confirms his innocence; that he’s no more the Dodge
serial killer than they are.”

John shook his head.
 
“Nobody’s spewing that nonsense but those
so-called leaders who love to get their names in papers but don’t give a damn
about their community.
 
They know this
girl died on Hash Street, not in Dodge.
 
They also know Glazer’s guilty as sin for every one of those Dodge
killings.
 
And he’s going down for what
he did.”

“How’s Pamela reading all of
this?” Kincaid asked.
 
“She’s certain our
case against Glazer is strong?”

“Hell yeah,” John replied.
 
“She’s a good DA.
 
She agrees with me.”
 

Yannick smiled.
 
He knew how the chief and Pamela Ansley had a
pretty close friendship.
 

John continued.
 
“Glazer killed every one of those women he’s
on trial for killing, and boyfriend back there killed that woman we found last
night on Hash Street.
 
We’ve just got to
make sure he confesses.”
 

“Want me to have a go at him,
Chief?” Kincaid asked with a grin.

“No,” John said pointblank.
 
He knew what kind of “go” Kincaid meant.
 
“I want you to get him out of the
interrogation room and put him back in his cell.
 
I don’t want any black eyes or accidental
fallings or any of your bullshit, either, Kincaid, understand?
 
The eyes of this town are on us right now and
you’d better not fuck up.”

Kincaid smiled.
 
“Come on, John.
 
Do I ever fuck up?”

“Yes!” both John and Yannick
replied in unison.

“I’ll have another go at him in
the morning,” John continued, “but right now I’m going home.
 
I’m dead on my feet.
 
See you people tomorrow,” he said and headed
for the exit.

Kincaid shook her head.
 
“He nearly killed Ronnie Burk after Ronnie
attacked Shay, and he’s pointing a finger at me?
 
Why is he always so hard on me?” she asked
her captain.

“Because he knows your ass,”
Yannick said, and they both laughed.
 

Then Yannick thought about it. He
saw something distracting about John Malone today, something unsettling, as if
seeing Shay again had affected him far more than Malvaney could even begin to
understand.
 
Yannick didn’t understand it
either, but he thought he saw that same kind of wariness, that same kind of
intense concern, that only Shay Turner’s presence seemed able to elicit from
his boss.

Shay was in Aunt Rae’s kitchen
wiping down the cabinets and countertops when she saw a flash of light swerve
onto the driveway.
 
She left the tiny
kitchen, walked through the adjacent tiny living room, and looked out of the
bay window.
 
And there was John’s big
Chevy Silverado parked behind his Porsche.
 
He had given her the keys after he had held her in his arms, in his bed,
for nearly two hours.
 
He said for her to
drive it to her meeting with Ed Barrington, and that he’d get with her later
tonight.
 

She remembered how apprehensive
she felt.
 
The townspeople would know
,
she knew, that she was driving around in John Malone’s
Porsche again.
 
She had gotten into an
altercation with Blair Malone the last time that had happened.
 
And the talk would crank right back up.
 
But John didn’t give a damn.
 
He said people will talk even if there was
nothing to talk about.
 
And they, he had
told Shay, were just giving them something to talk about.
 
Shay laughed at the time, and said his logic
left a lot to be desired.
 
And they
kissed, long and passionately, as she accepted the keys.

Before she returned to Brady, she
would have never dreamed that their relationship would have moved back to such
an intense level this quickly, but she was glad he didn’t hesitate.
 
She wanted him.
 
She wanted his kindness and his friendship
and, yes, his love.
 
She wanted to be his
lover.
 
And although she wasn’t sure if
she could fully deal with the backlash such a relationship could produce, she
wasn’t about to give him up because of that.
 
After the way she was lied on and treated even when she and John were
playing it as safe as safe could get, she wasn’t allowing the people of this
town, or anybody else, to dictate who she choose to love.

John was still seated in his
truck, on the phone with someone.
 
But
just knowing he was coming to see her lifted her heart.
 
Her meeting at the Tribune with Ed Barrington
had been an unqualified disaster, with her former boss, a man she used to
respect so highly, all but calling her an unethical bitch who had no business
anywhere near journalism.
 
The idea of
such a person working for a prestigious newspaper like the Tribune, he
continued, was out of the question.
 
She
knew she needed a friend after that.
 
And not just any friend.
 
She needed John.

He got out of his truck and looked
at the little white house before him.
 
There
wasn’t much to it, really.
 
It was small
and rundown, in serious need of a paint job, a yard job, and even a roof from
what he could see of it this time of night.
 
It was a far cry from that cute house she used to rent on Bluestone
Road.
 
But this one fit right in with the
neighborhood.
 
To the right of her new
home was a hangout house, rundown too, with a group of shirtless young men
shooting dice and listening to loud rap music.
 
Across the street was an apartment complex that was always the center of
police raids and drug busts from way back.
 
And down the street, not a hundred yards from Shay’s new home, was where
they found two of the Dodge murder victims.
  
If her goal, in coming back and settling here, was to have him so
worried about her he could barely stomach it, she’d already succeeded beyond
her wildest imagination of success.

He walked up to her front porch,
all eyes in the vicinity, he knew, on him.
 

Shay opened the screened door as
soon as he stepped onto the porch.
 
“Hey,” she said with a smile.

“Hey,” he said as he opened the
door wider and stepped in beside her, kissing her on the lips as soon as he
walked in.
 

When she let him in, and he
crossed the threshold, his eyes immediately trailed down, to her short, thin
t-shirt, to her light blue Puma shorts, to her blemish-free, shapely legs
enticingly familiar to him.
 
But his eyes
trailed back up and found themselves resting on her chest, on her well-endowed,
braless chest.

When Shay realized why he was
staring in that area, she immediately began to move toward the sofa.

“I didn’t expect to see you
tonight,” she said as she walked.

“And why’s that?” he asked,
following her.
 
He could kick himself for
being so obvious. “You’re back in town.
 
I told you I’d be over.
 
Why wouldn’t
you expect to see me?”

She glanced back at him.
 
He was awfully defensive.
 
“It’s kind of late is what I meant.”

He lifted his head slightly, in
acknowledgment of what she meant, and watched as she sat on the sofa, placing
her feet underneath her butt.
 
She looked
so young to him, so vulnerable sitting there, with her hair now swept back in a
thick, French braid that revealed the beauty of her small, round face.
 
He wanted to sit next to her, so he did.

He crossed his legs and turned
toward her.
 
He now had on his suit coat
so his gun wasn’t visible, and she could tell he was taking pains to keep it
concealed as he kept his suit coat flapped well over his waist area.

“So this is the house,” he said,
looking past her.
 
The inside was in
remarkably better shape than the outside, but still, in his view, not good
enough for Shay.