Authors: Beverly Bird
back onto the bridge blindly, her eyes burning, her teeth set into a feral snarl. And she wondered who had done this to him. Who would be cruel enough, petty enough, to break a child’s heart?
Rick.
"No," she whispered aloud. Nausea and her hamburger tried to push back up in her throat. "That’s ridiculous."
She was halfway to the police station before she knew she was going there. She drove blindly, like an animal in pain, seeking out a safe place to hide. She had stopped in front of city hall before she knew she could not go in there.
She could not run to Joe Gallen. The cops couldn’t do anything. The island would talk about how she’d come apart at the seams over a kitten. She pressed her hands to her temples, her teeth snicking together with her shivering. She was cold, damp, furious, uncertain.
If it was Rick, then it made all the sense in the world for her to go inside, to find Joe. Rick hated cats. She remembered how the first one had disappeared, all those years ago.
But Angus hadn’t liked No-Name either. Claws.
Gina Gallen. While you were sniffing around Maddie...
Cassie Diehl. Look what the cat dragged in . . .
Maddie made a small, moaning sound.
Then she realized, stricken, that it wasn’t just her voice that filled the car. She looked over at Josh wildly. His mouth was open and a thin, keening noise came from his throat. She followed his horrified gaze and saw a cop car come out of the parking lot. As it passed them, the lights and sirens came on. Josh screamed.
Shouldn’t have brought him here, stupid, stupid. . .
Before she could make the conscious choice to put the car in gear and drive off again, her door was wrenched open. She yelped instinctively as a strong
hand grabbed her arm, dragging her out, and she fought it without sense, turning into the big, hard body, lashing out at it before she realized that it wasn’t Rick. Strong arms closed around her with the comfort she had known she would find there.
"What’s going on?" Joe growled. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
In some still-rational part of her mind, Maddie thought that no one could accuse him of having good manners.
Icy rain pelted them, and she clawed her fingers into his flannel shirt, in the opened front of his jacket. She stopped fighting him, but Joe was still shaken by her reaction. Carefully and warily, he eased his hold on her.
A power line had gone down on the south end, and MP&E was sending a chopper over to set things right again. In the meantime, there was a live wire dancing and throwing sparks all over the pavement on Thirty-sixth Street. He’d seen Maddie’s car as soon as he’d come outside to drive down there, then he’d realized that the boy was howling. That was when his heart had hit triple time.
"What is it?" he demanded again, fighting the urge to shake her to make her say something.
Maddie couldn’t tell him. She knew better than to try.
If she opened her mouth, nothing sensible would come out. She was too upset, too furious, too stricken by her own stupidity in bringing Josh to the police station. She knew she’d utter nothing but a stammering, staccato beat of consonants, and she didn’t want to do that in front of him. Sensible or not, wrong or right, she couldn’t bear to have him see her struggle like that.
She gasped in the rain and his fingers tightened on her arms as he grew impatient. Breathe . . . in, out, okay, okay. She managed one word. "J-Josh."
|oe let go of her. "Let’s get him inside."
"No!"
He had already started for the passenger door. He looked back at her, his eyes angry enough that she could feel their heat through the sheeting rain. He was willing to help, but he didn't like not understanding what was going on.
"N-Not in there," she tried desperately. "It was b-b-because of a c-c-op that he stopped t-talking." Please, she thought, let him accept that much, and I’ll explain the rest later.
Joe finally nodded. "All right. Then I’ll follow you back to The Wick." The live wire could do without him, he decided.
He watched her take a few shaky steps around the car, toward him again. The rain had flattened her golden hair, turning it dark. Water clung to her lashes, slicked over her skin. Absurdly, he thought that she had beautiful skin.
"You have to g-get there first," she managed. "I’ll follow you."
He scowled. "Why?"
"Because No-Name is st-t-tuck to my front door, and I don’t want J-Josh to see him. I n-need you to d-d-d—" She wasn’t going to be able to get it out, she realized helplessly.
"No-Name?" The cat.
"Someone stuck him to the door? Dispose of him?" he finished for her.
Maddie nodded spasmodically.
"Give me five minutes. And give me your house key, so I don’t have to break the door down. I hate doing that shit."
He was rewarded when she almost smiled, when she understood that that sort of thing had never been necessary on Candle.
At least not in his tenure, Joe thought. Dave
Bramnick had once broken through her door, that same door. That sobered him.
Maddie went back to the driver’s seat and fumbled her keys out of the ignition, working the one for the house off the ring. He followed her, and she handed it to him.
"Sit tight," he said again. "Five minutes. I’ll take care of it."
Maddie closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure when she had heard sweeter words.
Chapter 10
She had been right, Joe thought, cleaning up the mess. The kitten had been nailed to the door. But he wasn’t sure that that had killed it.
Someone had slit its throat.
The blood had drained downward, pooling on the porch, enough that even the rain had a hard time washing it away. The hose on the side of the house wasn’t working. Joe found a bucket in the Pathfinder and trooped across the street to fill it with seawater. He came back to dash it across the planks.
He went inside. Nothing appeared to be disturbed, but one of the kitchen windows was open, and rain had poured through onto the old linoleum floor. He slapped through it and closed the pane, touching it as little as possible.
He was soaked to the skin. He found the bathroom and got a towel, drying his hair. By the time he was finished, he heard Maddie’s steps on the deck outside.
Joe stood where he was, staring down at the towel in his hands. She wasn’t this freaked out about a cat, he thought. There was something else at play.
He stepped into the hallway just as she came down it, carrying Josh.
"Give me a minute," she said quietly.
Joe nodded.
She took the boy into his bedroom, and Joe went back to the kitchen. He peered into cupboards until he found the bottle of wine and one of vodka. He held them in each hand, studying them, and finally put the wine back.
He made them each a drink and took them to the living room, never once considering that he was settling in awfully comfortably. His boots were sodden, too, and he unlaced them, peeling out of his socks. He took everything to the heating vent in the kitchen in the halfhearted hope that it would dry them sometime soon.
As he passed the hallway again, he heard her singing.
"Dance, little baby, dance up high. Never mind, baby, your buddy is by. Crow and caper, caper and crow, there, little baby, there you go!"
Joe stopped, scowling. A nursery rhyme. He supposed that given the fright the kid had had, Josh wasn’t too old for it. Still. ..
She stopped before he could put his finger on what bothered him about the song. It was vaguely familiar to him. Vaguely. Neither of his parents had been the nursery-rhyme type. His father was a retired philosophy professor from the University of Maine, above such things. His mother was a transplanted island girl, living happily in Atlanta, and she was witty, lovable, vibrant. But motherhood had never especially been her forte. Ozzie and Harriet, he thought, they weren’t.
Still, he got the feeling that the words to that song weren’t quite right.
By the time Maddie came out of Josh’s bedroom, he had forgotten about it. He handed her the drink he had
made. It was watered down by then, but she took it anyway, and something in her eyes looked surprised, then they warmed over with gratitude.
It made the shifting sensation hurt inside him again for a moment.
"Thanks," she managed. She drank deeply, with her eyes closed.
"So who did it?" he asked bluntly.
She sat down on the sofa. He moved to take a seat as well, careful not to get too close.
Maddie felt him anyway. He was damp, barefoot, big, not quite relaxed. She cleared her throat.
"You tell me," she managed. "You’re the cop."
Joe thought about it. This was just too weird, he decided.
"Gina?" she suggested. "Is she ... I don’t know, jealous? Because she thinks you’re sniffing?" And then she realized that she was grasping at straws. She was hoping, praying, that it was someone else, anyone but Rick, that her suspicions were purely paranoia.
Joe shrugged, but she saw pain on his face. Maddie was surprised. "Is that a yes?" she demanded. "As in, Gina could have done it?"
"It’s possible," he said roughly, vaguely, sitting again.
Maddie swallowed carefully. "Or what about Cassie Diehl?" she asked, grasping for all she was worth.
Joe shook his head. "It’s not her style. She’s mean. She’s not cruel." And he let it go at that, because he knew this woman would understand the difference.
"Angus?" She whispered another suggestion, instinctually not believing it, not wanting
to believe it. She was relieved when Joe shook his head even harder.
"No. Angus is harmless."
"He didn’t like the kitten," she persisted anyway. "He seemed afraid of it."
His blue eyes pinned her, as she had almost known they would have to do sooner or later. "You don’t think it was any of them," he said finally, "or you wouldn’t have come unglued."
She looked away from him. "I came unglued because of what it will do to Josh."
"Bullshit."
She looked back at him, some temper finally sparking in her eyes. "No, it’s not. That’s what upset me the most."
"So what upset you second-most?" he demanded. "That maybe his father has found us."
Joe felt a kick in his chest. It didn’t escape him that she referred to the man as her boy’s father, not as her husband, or even her ex-husband. So there was very bad blood there, maybe even worse than between him and Gina.
"Let’s hear it," he said shortly. "Why would that occur to you? Give me the nitty-gritty details underneath all the rumors that Gina started last night."
Maddie told him quickly, her words lacking all inflection, giving him the most rudimentary details. She told him about the Marlins game in Atlanta, and how she had known something was wrong. She told him about the cop going down, and that Josh had seen it. Joe launched himself off the sofa.
"Ah, Jesus," he muttered after a moment. "Jesus Christ. Suffer the children, the innocents."
"I don’t believe he could have found us yet!" she burst out suddenly.
Joe looked at her sharply. "Yet? Yet? So he’s going to look? What—he’s going to come here and try to gun you down?"
Leslie had been right, and they both realized it in the same moment. He was an extremely unhappy lawman.
Maddie popped off the sofa. "Don’t yell at me."
He lowered his voice, but it was just as menacing. "So why exactly would this guy go from shooting cops to killing kittens?"
Maddie shrugged and paced halfheartedly. "Rick hated cats."
"So do I, but I don’t run around killing the goddamned things!"
"You don’t kill cops, either," she snapped. "And you don’t stalk Gina."
Gina, Joe thought. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and thought about her again for a minute. Then he thought of a worried killer wanting badly to scare Maddie into going home.
"He cut the phone line," she almost whispered. "What?" Joe looked at her, startled.
"My phone is out of order. I thought it was the storm, but..."
Joe’s blood went to jagged, crunching ice. "You didn’t open your door and find the cat there," he said slowly. "You went out someplace and came home and there it was."
Maddie felt the intensity in his voice. "I thought I mentioned that."
"No. Someone cut your phone line—"
"I don’t know
that," she protested. "The phone’s dead. Maybe it’s the storm."
"Or maybe somebody cut the goddamned thing!" "Maybe," she allowed shakily. "Don’t yell at me!"
"I’m a yelling type of guy when I’m upset," he bit out. "And under that scenario, assuming your phone’s not out because of the storm, then I’ve got to think that maybe somebody cut it so that you couldn’t call for help. Maybe somebody cut it with the goddamned idea that they were then going to come in here and hurt you.