Shocking Pink (17 page)

R
aven and Julie sat up half the night talking. Julie let her friend baby and coddle her. She let her pour her a glass of wine and make her a bowl of soup. She let her hover over her like a mother hen, insisting she eat every bite, then when they went into the living room, she let Raven tuck an afghan around her.

Then Julie told her friend everything—about the endless parties, the booze and drugs. She told her about Rick’s bouts of violence and her yawning despair. She told her how she had begun turning to other men to ease her pain and how awful doing that had made her feel. Again.

Marriage number three was over. It had been a joke to begin with; she saw that now. Another of her many failures.

She was a failure at everything. A waste. A nothing.

“I even…I even tried to contact my mom. They’re in Mississippi, I knew, so I got the number and called.”

Raven narrowed her eyes. “So what’s new with the Good Reverend? He get kicked out of another church for being a twisted zealot with a God complex?”

“I don’t know.” Julie looked at her hands. “Mom answered the phone, but he took it away from her. He told me I was ‘dead to them’ and hung up.”

She looked in Raven’s eyes once more, her own brimming with tears. “So, I figured I should be dead. I’m nothing but a failure and an embarrassment, the marriage was over. I figured, why not?

“I almost did it, too,” she whispered, shredding her wet tissue, unable now to meet Raven’s eyes, afraid of what she would see in them. “I had the pills in my hand. I took the entire handful, all of them. Just opened my throat and swallowed them all.”

Raven made a choked sound. Julie dared a glance at her friend and saw she was as white as a sheet.

She looked quickly away. “Then I panicked. I stuck my finger down my throat and puked them all up.”

“Thank God.” Raven brought her hands to her face for a moment, then dropped them. “Why didn’t you call? Julie, honey, I would have been on the first plane out to L.A. Don’t you know I’d do anything for you?”

She would, too.
Julie’s eyes welled with tears.
What had she done to deserve such loyalty?
“I couldn’t face you. I thought…I thought you would hate me. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“So, you would rather be dead? You didn’t think that I—” Raven bit the words back. “Damn, I need a cigarette. Want one?”

When Julie nodded yes, Raven went in search of her pack. Raven had been a sometime smoker for years—she had a cigarette when she felt an urge or when it was convenient. But tobacco had never gotten the best of her.

Nothing ever got the best of Raven.

Hopelessness pressed in on her. Andie and Raven were both so strong and smart. She looked at their lives and saw one good choice after another, one success after another. And when she looked at her own, she saw weakness and failure.

“Found them.” Raven returned to the room, waving a pack of Virginia Slims. She took one look at Julie, and her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just…” Her throat closed over the words, and she swallowed hard, forcing them out. “Why do you even bother with me, Rave? I’m a total failure. I couldn’t even kill myself.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.” She crossed to Julie and knelt before her. She folded her hands around Julie’s. “Thank God, you didn’t succeed. Thank God. If I had lost you…I think I would have died myself. Don’t ever try that again. Do you hear me? If you do, I swear, I’ll knock you silly.”

Julie giggled, suddenly feeling better. “Kind of hard to do if I’m dead.”

Raven laughed, too. “I’ll follow you to the other side and do it. Don’t doubt it for a moment.”

“What about those cigarettes?”

Raven lit one and handed it to Julie, then lit one for herself. For a moment they smoked in silence. “You’re here now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Julie searched her friend’s gaze. “Is it? I’m so tired, Raven. I feel so…empty.”

“Yes, it is. You’re going to stay with me. As long as you need to, to get back on your feet. You can stay forever, if you want. I love you, kiddo. Andie loves you. We’re always here for you. Don’t ever forget that again.”

Julie closed her eyes a moment, making a sound of exhaustion and relief. “I was hoping, praying, you’d say that.” She opened her eyes and smiled weakly at her old friend. “I promised myself that if you and Andie forgave me, if you would have me back, I was going to stay this time. For good.”

“For good?” Raven repeated, doubt clear in her tone. “You’ve said that before and—”

“I mean it, Rave.” Julie sat up straighter, mustering all her resolve. “I’m cleaning up my act. I’m giving up the men, the parties. I want to come home. I want to feel good again, the way I used to, when we were all together.”

“You’ve made me so happy,” Raven murmured, laying her head on Julie’s lap. “We’re a family again. Together forever.”

D
etective Nick Raphael and his partner exchanged knowing glances. No doubt that the piece-of-shit scumbag sitting across from them at the interrogation table had done the deed in question. So what that they only had a so-so witness? So what that the junkie proclaimed his innocence with the earnestness of an altar boy?

At eight fifty-seven the night before, the junkie had charged into the Gas ’N Sip, knocked the old lady manning the register senseless and emptied the cash drawer. He’d scored less than two hundred bucks and put the lady in the I.C.U. in a coma.

Nick had been at the job too long not to
know.
Call it a cop’s sixth sense, call it instinct, or just years of experience. He knew.

Judging by his partner’s expression, he did, too. And Detective Bobby J. O’Shea had been a cop just as long as Nick.

They were going to nail this piece of crap. Unfortunately, the mom-and-pop convenience store had not yet installed a security camera. Next week, the owner had said. He’d already bought the equipment. Too bad. If they had, Nick wouldn’t be here trying to work a confession out of this no-good slimeball.

He’d be trying to work one out of some other slimeball.

Nick glanced at the suspect. Still, it wasn’t going to be that hard, more of an annoyance, really. As far as IQ went, this guy hadn’t had much before the drugs fried his brain.

“You want to try that again, Jacko,” Nick said. “I’m having a hard time buying your alibi. You were home watching TV last night? Alone?”

“That’s right. It’s the truth. Every word, I swear.”

Nick made a sound of disgust. If only he had a nickel for every time a guilty-as-hell perp had said that to him. He’d be too rich to be working this job, that was for sure. “You swear? On your dear departed mother’s grave, right?”

“Yeah.” The guy reached for a cigarette. “That’s right.”

“Look, we’ve got a witness.” Nick laid the flat of his hands on the table and leaned toward the junkie. “This witness saw you leaving the scene. Running from the scene, actually.”

“So?” He dragged on the cigarette. “That ain’t a crime.”

Nick ignored him. “You needed a fix. You see the Gas ’N Sip. You see there’s nobody around but this one old lady. You grab a tire iron from the trunk of your piece-of-shit car, go into the store and knock the hell out of the woman. Then you empty the drawer.” He leaned closer, not stopping until they were all but nose-to-nose. “That’s what happened, isn’t it, Jacko?”

“Nobody saw nothin’.” The perp’s words slurred slightly. “I wasn’t there.”

“She’s in I.C.U.,” Bobby said. “In a coma. She dies, that’s first-degree.”

“I don’t know shit about that. It has nothin’ to do with me.”

Yeah, right.
“How long do you think a junkie like you’d last in the pen? No more score, Jacko. Cold turkey.”

“Yeah,” Bobby added. “Ever want to be somebody’s girlfriend before? Ever squealed like a pig?”

“An admission of guilt would show the courts you felt remorse.”

“Yeah.” Bobby inclined his head in agreement. “Could be the difference between a rehab facility and the state pen.”

“I mean, it wasn’t your fault, right? You were hurting, you needed a score. A good lawyer might even get you off.”

Nick pushed away from the table. He nodded at Bobby. His redheaded partner was as big and broad as a bear. His size alone had intimidated the weak into confessing. “I need some air.” He smiled at his partner. “You have my permission to beat the shit out of him while I’m gone.”

Bobby stood and stretched; the junkie’s eyes widened and he pressed back into his chair. Bobby grinned. “I’ll take that under consideration, partner. It’s been a dull day, I could use a little pick-me-up.”

Nick crossed to the door, then looked back at his friend and smiled. “Don’t leave any marks.”

“I never do, buddy-boy. That’s the sign of a real professional.”

Nick left the interrogation room and headed out front. Bobby O’Shea might look like King Kong, but he was one of the least aggressive cops on the force. In all the time Nick had worked with him, he had never seen Bobby use unnecessary force with a suspect. Nick chuckled to himself. Of course, he never had to. Most of their perps took one look at Bobby O’Shea and peed their pants.

Nick and Bobby had been working together for four years now, and they were well suited. For Nick, interrogation was about being clever, about reading your suspect and outsmarting him. It was about understanding human nature and playing to weakness, to ego, to fear. The threat of physical violence was a part of that; he used it often. But he had never resorted to striking a suspect.

“Hey, Raphael,” one of the other detectives called. “How’s it going in there?”

“Same old bullshit.”

“Nail him, okay? That lady in I.C.U., she’s a neighbor of my mother’s.”

“You got it.” Nick nodded and stepped outside. That was the thing about Thistledown, every victim was somebody’s friend or neighbor. Crimes weren’t anonymous here, they touched people you knew, people you cared about. It made it all real. It made it frightening.

That was good. When people were aware of crime, they helped do something about it. It was one of the things that made Thistledown a good place to live.

Not that the city hadn’t changed in the past ten or so years. It had, growing by leaps and bounds because of its relative proximity to St. Louis, just an hour east. It had become a bedroom community for executives for whom the commute to and from the city was a trade-off for less crime, better schools and a slower pace of life for their families.

Problem was, they had brought some of the big-city filth with them, and Thistledown was no longer the quiet little burg it had been. Nick saw his job as not only cleaning up what was on the streets now, but trying to keep the encroaching muck at bay. He did that by making life in this little town unbelievably uncomfortable for criminals.

It was a balancing act. Sometimes he skated pretty close to fifth-and sixth-amendment violations. He tried not to step over the line; he believed in this country, in the Bill of Rights, in freedom. He also believed that the criminal-justice system favored the criminals and that crime was out of control because of it. A balancing act, he thought again. But if he had to favor one side over the other, the victims and the law-abiding citizens had it, hands down.

Nick tipped his face toward the sky and breathed deeply. The May day was perfect, sunny and warm with a mild breeze that stirred up the scent of flowers from the green space across from the station. He breathed deeply, wishing he was in the park with Mara, his six-year-old daughter.

He smiled to himself, thinking of her. Nearly seven years ago, Jenny had finally consented to have a child. She had already been pregnant at the time—an accident—but Nick hadn’t cared how it had happened, he was just thankful it had.

Weird, how things changed. At first, he and Jenny had both been eager to start a family. But they had decided to wait—until they had a house, until they were financially secure enough that Jenny could quit work to become a full-time mom. Then, when they’d reached that point, Jenny had hesitated. They had begun to fight. She resented his job, the time he spent away from her and home. Every time he’d brought up children, she had said the same thing: if he was hardly home now, why should she believe that would change with children?

Fate had intervened, thank God. He loved his daughter more than he had known it was possible to love.

He did this job for Mara. Whenever he became convinced that dirtbags like the one in the interrogation room with Bobby were winning, he thought of his daughter. Whenever he wondered what the hell he was doing working within a system that consistently failed, he thought of his daughter.

One less bad guy on the street—even if only for a matter of hours—made the streets safer for her.

Mara was the reason, too, that he and Jenny were still together. Their relationship was more a war than a love affair these days.

Love affair?
Nick shook his head. He found it difficult even to think of his marriage in that way. Once upon a time he and Jenny hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. He remembered rushing home at the end of the day, just needing to see her face. Touching her had been heaven on earth.

Funny, back then just being together had been enough. They hadn’t needed to be doing anything, not even talking. Just having her at his side had made him content.

Now, being together was the problem. They argued about everything. Jenny refused to understand him. He said white; she said black. She challenged his every thought, his every belief, his every dream.

She couldn’t see that what he did was more than a job. Because of him—of what he did or didn’t do—a killer or a rapist or a drug dealer could be free to walk the streets. The more he tried to explain, the wider the fission between them seemed to become.

What had happened to them? he wondered. How had they wandered so far from where they’d started?

He drew his eyebrows together in thought. It had begun with Mrs. X’s murder. He could look back and see it as clearly as if he had taken a snapshot. He had become obsessed with the murder, with catching Leah Robertson’s killer. He had begun putting his job before his marriage. He’d never stopped, he supposed.

Nick thought of his daughter again, and again a smile touched his mouth. He would fight to hang on, for Mara. Married people stayed together. They worked things out. He had been lazy; he had given in to the urge to ignore his and Jenny’s problems instead of confronting them head-on in an attempt to heal their relationship.

No more, Nick decided. Tonight he and Jenny would talk. They would begin working things out. They had been going through a rough patch. A bad cycle. All couples did occasionally.

Buoyed by his own resolve, he checked his watch. Bobby had had the perp all to himself for about twenty minutes. Time to give his partner a little backup, turn up the heat a bit.

Whistling under his breath, he headed into the station.