Authors: Beverly Bird
Except you took off. You went out before he could get in here, when any sensible woman would stay home because of the goddamned storm."
"Stop swearing at me, Joe." Maddie stiffened, but her heart was lurching again.
"So whoever it was killed the cat out of anger and frustration because it
was here and you weren’t, because you slid through his or her fingers like so much sand."
"I don’t—" she began.
"And that’s not Gina. It’s not Cassie. It’s not Angus." Maddie blanched. "But I haven’t been here long enough for Rick to find me again!"
"Again?"
"He was stalking me," she whispered. "In Fort Lauderdale."
Stalking? He realized that she had mentioned that a moment ago, but he had been too preoccupied to latch on to it. As for Fort Lauderdale, well, Joe thought, that answered one more question.
"I never moved before," she went on, "so it wasn’t like he was following me around the country, but he would kind of... lurk ... wherever I went."
"Lurk," Joe repeated grimly. "Oh, that’s just goddamned beautiful."
Maddie shrugged helplessly.
"Wait here."
He went into the kitchen. When he came back, he had his coat. "Where you going?" she cried, alarmed.
"Outside to look at the phone line." He wrenched open the front door.
"You’re barefoot!"
"So?"
"So it’s cold and it’s raining!"
His blue eyes widened. She wasn’t sure if he looked bemused or amazed. "I’m a big boy. I can handle it."
Her throat closed. "I. .. noticed that, actually."
His face went surprised, then something in his eyes heated. "Good," he said quietly.
He went outside, and she thought that he had said that single word much differently than he had last night, when he’d declared himself pleased that she didn’t think he was sniffing.
Maddie followed him out the door. She stayed close to the house, but the rain still dashed at her. He disappeared around the comer of the deck, getting swallowed in the darkness.
Her heart skipped and nervousness took over its beat. She waited for him to return, hugging herself, then she went back inside to check on Josh. He was still sleeping soundly.
It could be Gina, she thought. Jealousy was a powerful thing. And Leslie had said the woman still needed help, presumably for her drinking, which had been thoroughly obvious during the short time Maddie had spent with her last night. Jealousy and liquor, she thought. A lethal combination. Certainly it could lead to a kitten’s demise.
She almost jumped clear out of her skin when Joe came back. He threw the door open hard enough to make it crack back against the wall.
"It’s cut," he said flatly.
Maddie moved back to the sofa and sat down unsteadily. "So," she whispered. Terror gripped her, making her shake, along with a feeling of nausea. Even she had to admit that it didn’t sound like the work of a jealous ex-wife.
Joe sat beside her. He rubbed his hands over his face. She thought that he needed a shave. It made him look more rough, more chiseled, more dangerous than usual.
She was suddenly glad that he was on her side.
"I just can’t see Gina running around cutting phone lines," he said finally, echoing her thoughts. It was too subtle, he thought, too . . . anonymous. Gina almost always left some sort of calling card.
"Then Rick knows I’m here," she said hollowly.
Well, Joe thought, there was one other scenario, but he wasn't quite ready to address it yet, not until he eliminated a few other possibilities. He got up and went to the kitchen to collect his shoes and socks.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
He glowered at her. "For what? I didn’t do anything yet."
"You took care of No-Name."
"Oh." He thought about that, nodded, and finished tying his shoes. He went to the door.
"Where ... where is he?"
"The cat? In a shallow grave about ten feet off the right comer of the back deck. I’ll stop by tomorrow when the storm’s past and fix it so that the gulls can’t get to him. They’re scavengers."
She shuddered. She hadn’t thought of that.
"Maddie ..." he began. She looked up at him, doeeyed and trusting.
Don’t trust me, Jesus Christ, don’t trust me like that. He thought of Lucy, who had definitely trusted him, who had worshiped the ground he walked on, and something slammed into him with impossible force. He forgot what he had been about to say, and then he said the wrong thing.
"Maybe you ought to give some thought to leaving here."
"Leaving?"
She looked at him blankly. "What good would that do? If it’s Rick, if he’s found me here, then he’ll find me wherever I go!" Her eyes filled with that hunted-animal look again. "Is that what you want?" she demanded suddenly. "If he finds us, okay, just as long as he doesn’t do it on your island?"
"I didn’t mean—"
"Leslie said you didn’t want trouble here!" She was being unreasonable, and she knew it, but she couldn’t help herself.
So that was how his name had come up, Joe thought. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. And he couldn’t tell her what he had meant, he realized, not without opening a whole new can of worms, and he just wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.
"I’m going to check on Gina," he said flatly. "Then I’ve got a live wire down at the south end to look in on. Then I’m going to call the phone company, but I don’t think they’ll be able to get out here and fix you up until Monday. In the meantime, lock your doors."
"No kidding, Sherlock," she muttered.
He was stung, then surprised. A hoarse, aborted chuckle rumbled from his throat. "You know what I mean. Just be careful. I’m going to leave some flares here, too. If there’s trouble, or if anything suspicious happens, then start shooting them off the back deck." "What good will that do?"
"The island’s only four and a half miles long, including The Wick. In lieu of a phone call, it’ll get me back up here in a hurry."
Her heart started moving with fear again. But there was no help for it. He could hardly stay there all night, she reasoned. Every night. Until this was settled.
In the end, she was still, as always, on her own. "Hector’s about as useless as tits on a bull," he went on, almost muttering to himself, "and he’s on shift until midnight. But then Kenny Halverson comes in. One way or another, we’ll keep an eye on you, keep you covered." "Thank you."
"It’s what I get paid for." And he wished to God that it felt as simple as that.
She watched him go to the Pathfinder, jogging through the pelting rain. Then he came back and handed her a handful of flares, made sure she had matches, and returned to the truck. She watched his taillights disappear.
It wasn’t until after he was gone, until she was alone, that the full enormity of the whole thing hit her. She curled up on the sofa, feeling helpless and overwhelmed.
Sweet God in heaven, Rick had found them.
No, she thought. No. She shook her head hard. She refused to succumb to that again ... the paranoia, the terror, seeing him in every shadow. She wouldn’t go through it again, not until she had proof.
Then she had another thought, a half-remembered quip that she’d read somewhere once and been amused by. It ain’t paranoia if the bastards really are watching.
Chapter 11
Joe didn’t bother to go down to the power line. As he left Gina’s condo he heard the MP&E chopper overhead. It was headed west, toward the mainland, so he figured everything was taken care of.
Gina hadn’t been playing pranks on Maddie Brogan.
He could be wrong, but he didn’t think so. His gut instinct told him that her denials were real. And Cassie probably hadn’t done it, either, because Gina would almost certainly have known if she had. His ex-wife’s surprise had been genuine—he got the feeling that she wished one of them
had
thought of trying to scare Maddie off the island.
He swung into the city lot and went inside the station. "Where’s Hector?" he demanded of Lou Paul, who was at the front desk.
"Driving around."
"Buzz in on him and tell him to run around The Wick every fifteen minutes or so."
"The Wick," Lou repeated blankly.
"Yeah. That goddamn lump of land just to the north of us." He started to slam his office door.
"Why?" Lou asked. "What’s he supposed to be looking for?"
"Anything that moves."
Joe wondered if he was overreacting. It was just a
cat.
Nah, he decided. Not when it was Madeline Brogan’s cat. Not under the circumstances, and there were most assuredly a lot of circumstances.
He sat down at his desk. He knew there was precious little he could do about any of this tonight. But nervous energy was singing through him, and going home, trying to sleep, would be a waste of time. He picked up the phone and called the emergency number of the telephone company. He got a recording and left a message.
Next he tried to raise someone in Fort Lauderdale. It was time to stop fumbling around with this situation like a small-town cop, he thought. Except, of course, he was a small-town cop, and he had only just found out how very much he had to worry about.
Process of elimination, he decided. He’d satisfied himself that it wasn’t Gina; next he would prove that it wasn’t Maddie’s ex-husband. And then he’d have one nasty mess on his hands, a case so old nobody was likely to find any answers.
He got a desk sergeant in Florida, who gave him to a lieutenant, who passed him on to the duty captain, a guy named Goldwell, who sounded like he possessed some semblance of authority. Joe identified himself.
"Listen, I’m trying to get some information on a situation you had down there a short time ago," he said finally, then he paused. He didn’t know the guy’s last name. Maddie was still using Brogan. Ah, well, this case wasn’t likely to be forgotten in a hurry.
"A guy killed one of your cops," he finished.
"Ronnie Sanchez," came the immediate reply.
"That’s the guy?" She’d said his name was Rick. He was sure of it.
"That’s the cop. The guy’s name is Graycie." There was a pause on that end of the line. "You got him? Where’d you say you were calling from?"
"Candle Island, Maine. And I might."
"You must have something going on. One of your guys just called me yesterday. You want to tell me what’s happening up there?"
"One of my
guys?" Joe was dumbfounded, then careful. "Yesterday?"
"Wait a minute. Let me call up the file." There was another short spell of quiet. "Steve Singleton."
Joe felt a headache starting. He didn’t have a Steve Singleton.
"Candle Island PD," Joe repeated carefully.
"Yeah."
He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again slowly. When in doubt, he thought, say nothing—or at least say as little as possible.
"What was he looking for?" he asked cautiously. "General info on what we got on Graycie."
Joe grunted and sat back in his chair. A little talk with his staff was definitely in order when everybody was in on Monday morning. Someone was a little too interested in Maddie Brogan and her cop-killing ex-husband.
His head was pounding. He didn’t need this. He’d successfully avoided this kind of crap for twelve years. Steve Singleton?
"You still there?" Goldwell asked.
"Yeah," Joe answered slowly. "I’m here."
"What is it you need to know?"
"The sort of thing this Graycie character pulled on Maddie Brogan before he blew away your Ronnie Sanchez. She said he was stalking her."
"Not documented."
"What?"
"She was in here six, maybe seven times trying to get a restraining order, but no dice. You and I both know they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on anyway. And he’d never struck her, had never threatened her or the kid, so there wasn’t anything to give her an order against.
I was on duty one time she came in, and my feeling then was, yeah, he’s after her, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. The time in question, the kid had a T-ball game, you know, where they whack the ball off a post instead of taking a pitch. Little kid stuff. And this guy showed up, the father. Can’t restrain him about that. But what got to me was that she insisted he didn’t come to watch the game. He sat in his truck, drinking a beer, staring at her instead of watching the kid. She had two witnesses said the same thing. Most I could have gotten him on was maybe a DUI, but by the time she got to us, he was home and the truck was parked. There’s no law against getting drunk in your own apartment, as long as you don’t hurt anybody."
|oe grunted, deep in thought. "What else?"
"Well, like I said, I only remember that because I was on duty that day. None of us wrote anything down when she came in, or at least we didn’t file it, because there wasn’t nothing we could do. It only just came back to our minds after the bastard hit Ronnie."
"Jesus," Joe said. The wheels of justice.
Slow, grinding, too often useless.
"We’ve been keeping a close watch on her house, thinking he might show up there to catch another glimpse of her, but he hasn’t."
All the more reason why he could be up in Maine, Joe thought. "Well, she’s here," he said aloud.
"We knew she took off. She wouldn’t say where."