Mary's Child Read online

  “You’re not keeping my daughter from me, Hallie,” he told her fiercely. “Whatever it takes, I won’t let you. And I won’t leave here without her.”

  Completely still, she regarded him in the deepening darkness, face shadowed and unreadable. Headlights came toward them down the street, turned into a driveway four houses away.

  “Hallie?” a nervous voice called from her porch. “Is everything all right? Is that man still out there?”

  Hallie turned her head toward the house. “Everything’s fine, Nadie. It’s just an old...partner of mine, come to say hello. Joe Martinez. You remember him. Used to live a couple streets over.”

  “The one whose wife was killed?”

  Joe’s hand squeezed unintentionally hard around Hallie’s arm. God. What an unforgivable way to be remembered. It had never before occurred to him to question how people recollected things. Especially in front of the families of the victims.

  “Yes, that’s him,” he heard Hallie say before she muttered, “Let go of my arm, Joe. You’re hurting me.”

  He loosened his grip, but didn’t release her. “Are we going to talk?”

  Behind them, Nadie unknowingly concurred with him. “That poor young man. Hallie, aren’t you going to bring him in?”

  There was no way out of it. She knew Joe when he got like this, and Nadie Kresnak’s suggestion was no help.

  With a silent prayer that she was doing the right thing, Hallie not-quite-graciously told Joe to park his truck in her drive to forestall further Citizen Watch calls and invited him inside. She was pretty sure she’d have eventually gotten around to inviting him in on her own, but she hated the sensation of being coerced into the decision. Joe got way too smug when he felt he had her at a disadvantage.

  And she was at a disadvantage. When she’d gone upstairs to look in on the once-again-sleeping Maura, it had been impossible not to see Joe in the infant’s face, not to feel something...everything for the man who’d helped give this child life. Not to care...

  Index finger hovering above Maura’s face, she’d sketched Joe’s features in the air where they matched.

  There around the baby’s eyes, her brows, the promise in the curve of her jaw and chin—all were instant reminders of everything Hallie had ever felt for, or about, Joe.

  It didn’t matter whether or not she wanted to recall these things, she recalled them. Every moment of laughter, fear, companionship, friendship, love, anger, sorrow and each emotion in, around and between were reflected in Maura’s finally peaceful face; forced Hallie to recognize that she couldn’t leave Joe out of his daughter’s life—at least in some limited capacity. So she would have gone down and called him in, she was pretty sure, but Nadie had phoned about the strange truck first.

  And now he was there, his bulk wedged into one of the captain’s chairs at the dining-room table, looking more than a little uncomfortable. And she was here in the kitchen, dishing them both up some chili, feeling more than a little uncomfortable herself.

  She was also afraid. Of Joe—for herself, for Ben and Sam, for Maura. Because she really wasn’t sure exactly what legal or moral right she had to stop him from marching upstairs whenever he chose and simply taking his daughter away from them.

  She’d been advised at the time she’d decided to carry Maura despite Mary’s death and Joe’s desertion, that a case could probably be made in her favor; that by leaving, Joe had voided the contract Hallie had signed stating that the child she carried belonged to him and his wife alone. But for reasons she couldn’t name at the time, she’d been unwilling to go that route—and still didn’t want to. She wanted Maura, loved her, heart and soul; delighted in having a daughter to fuss over, dress differently than she had her boys. Still, it also seemed wrong to deny Maura her genetic heritage—although there was fat chance of that, the way Joe’s and Mary’s huge families doted on granddaughter and niece...

  Oh, God. She was so damned confused. So freaking, hormonally mixed-up.

  So glad to see Joe alive and intact, even if he wasn’t quite himself.

  And so damn blasted angry with him for running off without her.

  For wanting to come between her and her—no, his, damn it; she was going to have to start remembering that—daughter.

  Seriously grumpy now, Hallie carried the tray of chili, corn bread and Mexican beer out to the dining room, thunked a bowl and a bottle in front of Joe. Settled a little too close to the edge of the table—an accident? if she were to be honest, probably not—hot chili slopped over the side of the bowl and into Joe’s lap. The bottle, too, wobbled and sloshed. He snatched it up before it could spill, leaped out of the tight-fitting chair, swearing and grabbing at the close-cut denim to pull it away from his skin when the not only hot-to-touch, but also peppery chili belatedly seeped through his jeans to burn his nether regions—twice.

  “Jeez, woman, I know you’re ticked, but you don’t have to frealang neuter me.”

  “Ah, c’mon, Joe. It’d take a lot more than some green chilies chili to geld you.” Trying hard not to laugh, Hallie put down her tray and snagged a napkin, soaked it in the available beer and tossed it to him. “You might want to get something cold on that, though. I hear if you don’t get the burn stopped fast, you can sting like hell for days.” She picked a bowl of cut lime from the tray, offered it to him with an innocent grin. “Here, try this. According to your mother, citrus is supposed to help neutralize the pepper.”

  “Go to hell, Thompson,” Joe snarled and headed for the bathroom and the hope of relief.

  Unable to restrain herself, Hallie put her ear to the bathroom door and listened to her nemesis curse and dance himself out of his pants. Inside her chest, laughter bubbled up and spurted out in tiny hiccuping explosions. She covered her mouth with her hands, trying to contain it.

  To no avail.

  It geysered into the open, spilled over in rib-racking, eyetearing guffaws, a release for all the day’s emotions. She leaned her back against the bathroom door, slid down it all the way to the floor when she could no longer stand, laid her face between her knees and let the catharsis come.

  Joe yanked the door open, dropping the chuckling Hallie onto the bathroom tiles.

  “I did not,” he said, as much on his dignity as it was possible to be while wrapping a big bath towel securely about his waist, “come back to Cuyahoga to entertain you.”

  “But you’re doing such a good job of it,” Hallie chortled, staring up at him. She pressed her lips together and studied him for a moment, trying to stifle laughter and collect her breath. When she had enough of it, she rolled upright and edged toward the door before musing aloud, “I wonder if Scotsmen wear the same thing under their kilts that Mexicans in bath towels do—”

  Loosing a rapid stream of disgusted Spanish, Joe lunged for her. She slid under his hand and danced away, grinning. Hampered by trying to keep the towel in place, he stalked her slowly.

  “Uh-uh-uh.” She shook a finger at him. “You know what your mother always said. No fair picking on someone who’s not your size.”

  “Don’t try that one with me, Thompson.” He eyed her grimly, warily, watching for weakness. The trouble with working out, bulking up and being not too small to begin with was that you sometimes paid a price in grace and speed in favor of strength. But the upside was, when he caught her, she wasn’t going anyplace anytime soon. “I know exactly what you’re capable of, so that size thing doesn’t cut it.”

  “Oh, now, Joey, Joey, Joey.”

  She knew he hated that name, equating him, as it were, with a kangaroo’s infant joey.

  She’d called him Joey a lot when they were kids.

  “Yes, Halleluia?” he asked mildly, calling her by her given name—a name she hated due to its history. Supposedly her mother’s labor with Hallie had been long and difficult, leading Hallie’s mother to exclaim to Hallie’s father when it was finally over, “Halleluia, Fred! She’s out!” Unable to agree to a name prior to her birth, the parents had looked at e
ach other over the squalling infant and christened her then and forever, Halleluia Anne.

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped now—and stopped backing away from him.

  He should have recognized the danger for what it was, but it was so long since he’d played this game with anyone that he didn’t.

  Instead, he advanced until he was within arm’s reach of her. The air around her was warm and spicy, inviting. Intoxicating.

  Beneath the towel, he felt it. Arousing. He shook his head, trying to focus.

  “Then don’t call me Joey,” he said. His voice sounded rusty.

  The words were childish; the rasp in his throat wasn’t.

  Something in his tone arrested her attention, halted the game even as it began. The hand she’d been about to use to snatch his towel so she could run with it drifted in the air between them, unused. She saw him reach for her fingers, watched his curl away before they touched hers. She tilted her head back to look up at him, to see the charcoal gray of his eyes deepen to liquid black.

  She felt the look in his eyes clear to her toes, a pull like moon to tide: inevitable, unavoidable, potentially destructive. Her breath caught, hung heavy in her lungs.

  No, she thought wildly. I can’t. We can’t. It’s wrong. Not with Joe. Not ever. Not now.

  Not with Joe, what? the nagging demon who lived independently in her brain asked. Not ever, what? Not now, what? Not sex, not trust, not what? What is it you think would be wrong?

  “This,” she answered herself aloud. “All of this. Any of it.”

  “All of what?” Joe asked, sliding nearer. He wanted—he could hardly say what, only knew that he was so close he could almost taste what had been missing from his palate for too long. “Did I miss something?”

  “I—ah—wha—?” She spread the fingers of one hand across her forehead to massage her temples, backed two steps away from him.

  Concerned, Joe followed. “Hallie? Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” She held up a hand to ward him off. “Don’t you need to put some pants on?”

  “Yeah, but my duffel’s out in the truck.”

  A nonsensical answer and he knew it. He reached to graze her cheek with the edge of a forefinger. Checking for fever, he told himself.

  He lied.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked, brushing his finger across her other cheek. “You don’t look fine and you feel flushed.”

  She flinched beneath the caress, then leaned involuntarily into it, caught herself and jerked away. “I told you. I’m—” Her arm swept out for emphasis and dusted the corner of the counter. The brown envelope she’d picked up from the seat of Joe’s truck and inadvertently carried into the house slid off the Formica, opened and cascaded photographs onto the floor. She stooped impatiently to collect the pictures, then stopped, gaping, to stare at what she held as the final words tumbled out of her mouth: “I’m fine.”

  But she wasn’t.

  Not by a long shot.

  Numb, Hallie looked at Joe who’d squatted to retrieve pictures, too.

  “What are these?” she asked.

  She shuffled through the photos. There was a picture of Sam and Ben holding Maura on Santa’s lap at the mall the day after Thanksgiving. Three more of the photos were nearly identical, except for slight changes in the children’s expressions and positions. The film was color, but slightly grainy suggesting the photos had been created from videotape. Others were of the boys at school, taken at recess through the chain-link fence surrounding the school playground. There were long shots of them and close-ups. Also pictures of Hallie by herself in uniform and in civvies; putting Maura into her car seat after a trip to the nearby grocery; a shot of Hallie in her office at the department nursing Maura, and another of the same, shot through the filmy curtains at the turreted bay window of her bedroom upstairs.

  She viewed Joe with something akin to loathing. “Have you been... What have you been... How long have you...”

  Joe barely heard her, he was staring so hard at a pair of photographs of his own: two shots of him on Hallie’s front porch. One taken before she opened the door; the other after, where she and the bundle in her arms were indistinctly visible through the screen. Block-printed neatly across the bottom of the second was the legend: Welcome Home, Murderer.

  Chapter 5

  He breathed, trying to make the fear and disquiet settle in his gut. There’d been—what?—maybe forty-five minutes to a little over an hour between the time he’d first set foot on Hallie’s porch this afternoon and the time he’d returned to his truck. Whoever the photographer was, he was bold.

  Also pretty damned arrogant if he felt he could hang around and take instant pictures without someone from Citizen Watch noticing.

  Disquiet turned into the taste of nausea rising. Too close. Photos, even video, shot from a distance were disturbing enough, but ones of this clarity meant the shooter wasn’t worried about being discovered closing in.

  Meant that the shooter had, in fact, already closed in.

  Madre de Dios. What could he possibly have done for someone to hate him like this? To want to so obliquely threaten him with the lives he valued most above his own in all the world?

  It had been almost two months since he’d found the last envelope, placed like this one, on the seat of his truck. The contents of that one had been about what he’d gotten used to with the five prior deliveries, the same old torturous, horrifying scenes: stills from a video someone unknown—the murderer’s accomplice?—had shot of Mary’s murder.

  Of course, none of the frames revealed even the shadow of the killer, but the detail was there. A bit grainy from being shot at dusk, stop-framed and blown up for the stills, but clear enough all the same. Mary with a bag of groceries opening the Blazer door. Setting the groceries inside. Turning in surprise to greet someone from behind. Smiling a little the way she did because she’d decided that part of her job in life was to always make every person who crossed her path feel just a little bit welcome. Smile drooping, eyes widened with what could only be fear at the point when the killer must have produced the gun. Falling back against the side of the Blazer with the impact of the first bullet.

  Jaw tight, he stiffened the muscles in his throat, swallowed against rising bile. God. Oh, God, oh God. He couldn’t do this again.

  He concentrated on the pictures, trying to focus on the similarities between the ones he held now, and the selection in the pocket of his jacket.

  To be sure, each new bit of that collection went further than the last, showed a little more of the final moments of Mary’s life. But there was something almost desultory, even perfunctory about them—the sense of a lack of imagination at odds with the photographer’s apparently insidious intent.

  In fact, in retrospect, the deliveries seemed almost more as though they’d been made by someone purchasing time—every packet with its obligatory and cryptic note pointed him first in one direction, then another; drove him to chase leads and a suspect he’d begun to think didn’t exist.

  But now here was this collection, so similar to the initial envelope, the one he hadn’t seen until after Mary’s death. Addressed to him in block print, he’d found that one in the damnable shoe box now buried under pillows, blankets, maps and whatever other debris he could toss on top of it behind the seat in his truck.

  The box itself he’d originally discovered at the bottom of Mary’s closet, secreted in plain sight among the other shoe boxes she’d kept in case Sam and Ben needed something in which to build diorama projects for school. The back of the closet was stacked with shoe boxes, empty and full.

  Next to her desire to have her own infant at any cost, Mary’s greatest vice had been her shoes.

  He wouldn’t even have found this particular box then if he hadn’t, at Hallie’s insistence, been looking for a specific pair of shoes to go with the suit nobody had seen on Mary at the funeral anyway because of the closed coffin. But Hallie had been adamant that Mary would want to b
e as neat and coordinated in death as she’d been in life.

  He’d been too numb to think, let alone do, but Hallie had shoved so he’d looked. In looking, he’d found. Things he’d never wanted to know. Things he couldn’t reconcile with the woman who’d shared eleven years of his life. Things he didn’t think he’d ever be able to bring himself to tell even Hallie.

  It was always a bad idea to go rooting around in the privacy of a loved one’s life unless you knew in advance what you’d find.

  Among Joe’s intolerable discoveries had been the snapshots that reminded him of the ones he now held. Pictures of Mary entering and exiting buildings, grocery shopping, getting into the Blazer, lunching with Hallie, with him, with friends from work, at department barbecues. In short, everyday pictures, innocent shots that no one without an agenda would bother to take.

  Stalker pictures.

  Someone had followed Mary around, shooting videos of her apparently for days, maybe even for weeks or months before her death. Which meant, of course, that the envelope had been left someplace for him, but where Mary had found it first, then hidden it from him for some unknown reason.

  It also meant the carjacking was never a carjacking in the first place.

  And now he was kneeling here in a towel on Hallie’s kitchen floor picking up pictures taken by some anonymous person, and the implications behind the scenario and the note scared him to death.

  Apparently they did nothing for Hallie, either.

  She shoved the photographs she held into his face like someone who’d had enough of trying to get his attention and was now out to simply take it.

  “I said,” she bit out in the voice no fugitive within hearing, deputy who needed dressing down, or misbehaving kid on the playground would be able to ignore, “where did these come from and what the hell is going on here, Joe? You been following me around and taking pictures of my kids? What the—”