Her Lawman On Call

Chapter 2

T he frown on Tony’s lips deepened. He turned his head slightly in Sasha’s direction so that his voice would carry to her.

“I thought you said that she was a nurse.”

“She was.”

Was.

The single word vibrated in her brain. God, it felt so strange, using the past tense about a person who, only two hours ago, still had a future ahead of her. Angela had told her that she wanted to make something more of herself, to continue up the ladder, so that her daughter would be proud of her. Now, she wouldn’t have the opportunity. And, at three, her daughter was too young even to have any decent memories of Angela. It just wasn’t fair.

Tony continued looking at the note he held with his tweezers. Something didn’t add up. “Then it looks as if our killer’s confused. Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but isn’t this the first line of the Hippocratic Oath?”

Sasha looked over his shoulder at the paper the detective held up. Her knees bumped against his back, and something self-conscious shimmied through her. She took half a step back. “It is.”

“Then why would the killer shove that into her hand?” Tony thought out loud.

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was something Angela shoved at the killer before he shot her.” Sasha thought it over for a second. It made about as much sense as anything, she supposed. “Maybe that’s why he killed her.”

Tony rose slowly to his feet and turned around to look at the woman who’d been standing behind him with interest. “Do you know something, Doctor?”

She could almost feel his eyes penetrating her skin. As if he was expecting some sort of a confession.

She met his gaze head-on, refusing to give in to the urge to look away. “I know a lot of things. But nothing that’ll do any good here.” And that made her feel frustrated and helpless.

She had guts, he’d give her that. Most people looked away when he looked at them. “Maybe I should be the judge of that,” he told her.

He glanced over to where the other detective was standing. The man had over twenty years on him, but the Captain had placed Henderson under him, a situation anyone else but Henderson would have been annoyed at. Not very much ever bothered Henderson. The older detective was talking to the hospital staff members who were clustered over to one side. Henderson didn’t have much use for the crime scene investigators—said all the lab work got in the way of his gut instincts.

“You okay here, Henderson?” Tony asked.

Watery green eyes looked at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. “Haven’t I always been?”

Sasha half turned her body so that the other detective couldn’t see her lips. “He doesn’t sound as if he likes you very much,” she observed.

Turning the paper over to one of the forensic technicians for evaluation, Tony indicated to the doctor where his car was parked.

“Nobody does,” he said as she fell into step beside him.

Sasha looked at the unsmiling detective, wondering if Santini was putting her on or if he was serious. His expression made her lean toward the latter, but she found it hard to believe that he would be so unaffected by what he’d just volunteered.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, grateful to turn her attention to something other than Angela’s body on the garage floor.

“No.” Sparing her a glance, he raised one eyebrow in silent query. “Should it?”

On second thought, he didn’t seem like the type to stay up nights losing sleep because he thought someone disliked him. “Most people like being liked,” she pointed out.

“Most people need to be liked,” he corrected. “It’s an overt manifestation of insecurity.”

“And you’re not insecure.” It wasn’t really a question so much as an observation on her part. The man was the picture of confidence, and yet, there was no conceit evident. She would have said that was hard to pull off—until she’d met Santini.

“Nope.” He opened the passenger-side door for her. “Watch your head,” he instructed.

The words made her smile. It was something she knew that policemen said to the suspects they ushered into the back of their vehicles. Her father must have said the same phrase hundreds of times.

“Force of habit?” she asked.

He realized what she was referring to and shook his head. “Small car.”

She was surprised that the department let him drive this little sports car. She waited for Santini to get in behind the wheel. “Regular car in the shop?” she guessed.

Starting the engine, Tony glanced at her waist, to see if she had buckled the seatbelt. Annie had never liked using it. Always said it wrinkled her clothes. In the end, it was her undoing. The first officer on the scene had told him if she’d used her seatbelt, there was a good chance she would have survived the crash.

God, but he wished he could see her just one more time, clothes wrinkled all to hell.

Tony banked down the ache and shoved it away into the darkness. He couldn’t let himself think about Annie.

“This was my wife’s car.” She’d used his car that day, because hers was in the shop. He’d caught a ride to work from his partner. He should have insisted he needed the car and made her stay home.

Married. The man was married. Sasha tried to picture that and couldn’t. Couldn’t envision the man sharing himself with anyone. And, obviously, since he’d used the past tense, he was no longer doing it.

“Let me guess, you got this in the settlement.” The moment the words were out, she regretted them.

A muscle twitched just above his jawline. “I got this at the funeral.”

She’d never heard a tone so devoid of emotion. Or sound so incredibly empty. Beneath that emptiness, she had a feeling there was an endless abyss filled with pain. Guilt tightened her stomach.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to sound so flippant.” Sasha spread her hands, feeling restless. “I do that when I get nervous.”

She saw him slant a glance at her and it took everything she had not to shift in her seat. “Do I make you nervous?”

Sasha knew he was asking not as a man, but as a cop. She supposed he had to rule out everyone.

“No. But seeing Angela like that did. Does,” she amended, since she was still fidgeting inwardly. “Everybody loved Angela.”

“Obviously not everybody,” he pointed out. “Someone killed her.”

She couldn’t bring herself to believe it was on purpose. Angela had never hurt anyone. But her purse was still beside her body, so robbery hadn’t been a motive. If the killer had stolen Angela’s purse, Sasha thought, he would have found very little in it. A single mother who doted on her daughter, Angela was always struggling to make ends meet. That was why she was hoping to become a nurse practitioner.

Sasha pressed her lips together as they emerged out of the structure. There was no moon out tonight, but the streetlights made up for it. “Maybe it was just an accident.”

There was something in her voice that caught his attention. “You do know something, don’t you?” He looked at her as he turned right at the end of the next block. “Was there an ex-boyfriend in the picture?”

“An ex-husband,” Sasha corrected. Alex was his name. Angela didn’t have time for a boyfriend. Her daughter and the hospital took up all her time. And then, because she knew the detective would find out, she added, “Angela had a restraining order against him.”

“Why?” He fired the question at her before she was even finished.

Angela had confided in her and telling the detective felt as if she was breaking a trust. But death had changed the guidelines.

“Because he couldn’t see his way clear to letting her leave him, even after the divorce papers went through. But he’d never hurt her,” she added quickly. “Not like that.” If you loved someone, you couldn’t just put a bullet in the center of their forehead, she argued silently.

The light turned red. Tony looked at her, his voice steely. “What way would he hurt her?”

She remembered the black eye, the bruises that Angela had tried to pass off as clumsiness until she’d finally been convinced that she was setting a bad example for her daughter by remaining. “He hit her a couple of times. That’s why she left him.”

Tony nodded, doing a little math in his head. “Doesn’t take much for abuse to escalate into something lethal.”

Something in his voice sent a chill down her spine. “You speaking from experience?” she heard herself asking even though it was none of her business. She fully expected him to say as much.

He didn’t.

“Yes.” And then he looked at her as they came to another red light. “I’m supposed to be the one asking questions,” he informed her mildly. “Not you.”

She couldn’t help herself. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she had always pushed the envelope a little further than it was supposed to go, always wanted to know everything about everything. And to help if she could. It was in her nature. In her genes. Nothing had changed with age.

“Who did you abuse, Detective?”

“I didn’t,” he told her tersely.

And he never would. Not after growing up in a house where abuse was as regular as the seasons. Not after having his father beat his mother. He’d jumped to her defense, hitting his father over the head with a frying pan, then calling 911.

After his mother’s death a few days later from the severity of the abuse, he and his brothers were propelled into the quagmire that was the state’s foster-care system, moved around from house to house like unwanted pieces of furniture until his mother’s Aunt Tess came forward to take them in.

“Your father—?” Sasha guessed, only to have him cut her off. More with his expression than with anything he actually said.

“I’m not one of your patients, Doc.”

There was a warning note in his voice, a warning that told her if she continued to cross the line he’d drawn in the sand, there would be consequences to pay.

Instead of retreating, she flashed a smile. The first she’d felt capable of mustering since she’d seen Angela lying on the ground, dead. “You couldn’t be. I’m an OB-GYN. You’re the wrong gender.”

“First time anyone’s ever said that to me,” he quipped.

Sasha glanced at Santini’s rugged profile as he signaled for another turn. That, she thought, she could well believe.

Sasha sighed as she let herself into her small three-bedroom apartment. It was just a few minutes after one o’clock in the morning and she was beyond exhausted at this point. A second wind had come and gone and so had a third. At the moment, her energy was totally depleted, leaving her feeling barely human and incredibly sad.

The handsome detective with the permanent scowl on his face had wound up asking her more questions on their way down to the precinct than he actually did once he was at his desk and typing out her responses. In reality, there wasn’t all that much more she could tell Santini beyond what she’d already said. What that amounted to was that as far as she knew, Angela Rico had no known enemies. Yet someone had deliberately killed her. Executed her, she thought, numbed by the thought.

Dutifully, she had given the detective the name and address of Angela’s mother. Selena Cruz watched Rita, Angela’s three-year-old, while Angela worked at the hospital. She assumed that Angela’s mother might be able to give the detective information about Angela’s ex, although she still didn’t think Alex Rico could have killed his wife. If he had, he would have killed himself as well, because he maintained that he couldn’t live without Angela.

Walking across the threshold, Sasha closed the door behind her. The single twenty-five-watt bulb they always left on for one another in the hallway cast dim pools of light on the floor beneath it. She yawned and sighed, debating just falling on her face on the sofa. Her bedroom seemed to be too far away.

A click vaguely registered in the back of her mind and suddenly, the apartment was flooded with light.

Sasha covered her eyes, blinking several times until she got them acclimated to the brightness. “You’re blinding me,” she accused whichever sister had turned the light on.

“My God, are you operating in the middle of the night now?” Natalya wanted to know.

Dropping her hand, Sasha saw Natalya coming into the living room, frowning at her. She and Natalya, eleven months her junior, shared high cheekbones and a passion for healing. Beyond that, they were as different as night and day. Natalya was shorter, with more curves and medium-brown hair that brushed against her shoulders. Her sister’s eyes were brown, not blue, and right now, they were fixed on Sasha’s clothing and filled with confusion and concern.

“Sasha, you’re covered in blood,” she cried. “What happened?”

She’d forgotten about that, Sasha thought. But before she could answer, another light went on, this time from the bedroom on the right. Leokadia, barefoot, her eyes half closed, stumbled into the room. The oversized T-shirt she had on indicated that of the three, she’d been the only one who had actually made it to bed tonight.

She didn’t look any the more cheerful for it. “You two want to hold it down? Some of us are actually trying to get some sleep around here. You do remember sleep, don’t you?” Kady looked accusingly at her sisters. “It’s—oh my God, what happened?” Her mouth dropped open as she stared at her oldest sister. “Are you all right?” she cried, rushing toward Sasha. “Are you hurt? Whose blood is that? Sash, sit down,” the petite blonde ordered, pointing to the sofa. “Can I get you something? Do you want—?”

In an effort to get her own word in edgewise, Natalya put her hand over her younger sister’s mouth. She looked at Sasha, who everyone else had always regarded as the rock of the family. “Whose blood is that, Sasha?”

“Angela’s. Angela Rico’s.”

Pressing her lips together, Sasha paused for a moment, struggling with her emotions as the reality of the situation finally sank in. The next moment, she offered her sisters a halfhearted smile of apology. At times it was hard to remember that although they all worked at the same hospital, Patience Memorial, or PM as everyone who worked there affectionately referred to it, they all had different areas of expertise. That meant that their spheres didn’t always cross, which, in turn, meant that they didn’t always know the same people.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “She was a nurse on the maternity ward.”

Natalya nodded. “I’ve heard you mention her.” Her voice was soft, gentle. It was unnerving for them to see Sasha like this. Except for when her fiancé had been mugged and fatally stabbed, it was generally believed that Sasha had nerves of steel.

Coming up on her other side, Kady placed her hand on Sasha’s arm. “What happened to her, Sash?” she asked softly.

“Someone killed her in the parking structure.”

Very slowly, her hand now on Sasha’s wrist, Kady was drawing her over to the sofa. “Do the police have any idea who?”

Numbly, Sasha shook her head. Her legs seemed to give out from beneath her just as she came to the sofa. “I was just at the precinct.”

“Precinct?” Natalya echoed. “You? Why?” she wanted to know. She was quick to become defensive and protective of her family.

“Because I found her,” Sasha answered, her voice hardly above a whisper. The entire time she’d spent with the detective, she’d done her best to be clear-headed, sharp. But here, with her sisters, she let herself grieve. And it felt awful. “Actually, the guard did. Walter Stevens,” she added. Neither of her two sisters probably knew who she was talking about. She was the one who always stopped to talk to people. “But he looked so upset and confused…” Sasha slid her tongue along her lips, but they continued to feel like two pieces of dry sandpaper. Just like her insides felt. “I tried giving Angela CPR, but…”

Natalya took her hand. “You can’t save everyone, Sash,” she said compassionately. “Mama always says there’s a time for everything, remember? A time to be born and a time to die.”

A semismile curved her lips. “You start singing, ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ and I’m leaving.”

“I won’t sing,” Natalya promised. “Not tonight.”

“You want me to draw you a hot bath?” Kady offered. When things got to her, she always sought refuge in a hot bath.

Not waiting for an answer, Kady was on her feet and halfway across the room, heading toward the bathroom before Sasha could open her mouth.

“Wait,” Sasha cried. “Stop. Stop.” Kady skidded to an impatient halt and turned around to look at her, waiting for further instructions. Sasha shook her head. “The way I feel right now, Kady, I’d probably drown in the tub. I’m too tired for a bath. I just want to get these clothes off and fall into bed.”

“That can be arranged,” Natalya said as she took her sister’s hand and helped Sasha to her feet again.

Sasha felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat. It was a welcome sensation, even though there was such a thing as too much help.

“Thanks, but I can still undress myself, Nat. I’m not that out of it.” She sighed. “It’s just that…” Sasha’s voice trailed off as her sisters looked at her, waiting, not wanting to interrupt. She dragged her hand through her hair, loosening pins. A few rained down on the light-gray rug. “God, what a waste.”

Her sisters both nodded, even though neither one of them had actually known the dead woman. But each had already seen death, been touched by death’s sharp talons, and knew instinctively what Sasha was going through right now.

Or thought they did, Sasha amended silently.

Right now she was just incredibly sad. And tomorrow, Sasha promised herself, or rather today, she amended, glancing at the digital clock on the coffee table, she was going to get up early and go to Angela’s mother. She should have gone tonight, with that detective, but she couldn’t face the woman with Angela’s blood on her. But tomorrow, she was going to offer to do anything she could.

As if that could somehow help, she thought sadly. She felt powerless, and hated that feeling. Hated being imprisoned by it.

“If you need to talk, Sash,” Natalya was saying as she began to leave the room, “you know where to find me.”

“Me, too,” Kady added.

They both meant it. They were both willing to give up their night to sit up with her, holding her hand both physically and emotionally, until she no longer needed comforting. Until the shock had passed and the pain was manageable.

Sasha could only think, not for the first time, how very grateful she was that she was not one of those poor souls who walked the earth alone. How grateful she was that she had her family to fall back on. Not just Nat and Kady, but Marja and Tatania as well.

And, of course, her parents.

Her wonderful, loving parents who always gave and never took. What would she have done if they hadn’t been there for her when Adam had been slain eighteen months ago? She doubted very much if she would have been here today if not for them. They thought of her as the strong one, but they were her strength.

She looked from one sister to the other. “It’s not that big an apartment. I’ll find you.”

Chapter 3

T ony leaned back in his chair. The frown on his lips deepened. Nothing. Granted, he’d expected as much, but he had still held out a smattering of hope.

The trouble these days was that anyone with half a brain now knew how to cover up their trail, thanks to all the different forensic programs on the airwaves. With everything but an intense, flash-of-anger crime of passion, perpetrators knew how to make reasonably sure that their prints didn’t turn up on the things they’d handled while committing the crime.

And even with crimes of passion, if the suspect took a moment to think about his actions telltale prints would be wiped off.

Sighing, Tony stared at the crime lab report the tech had just delivered to him. The note extracted from Angela Rico’s hand had only Angela’s prints on it. To compound the disappointment, the note had come from a printer that had nothing remarkable about it to set it apart, no quirky imprint to separate it from the thousands of other printers he would find in the area if he were to look. The note had been produced by a standard color printer, not a laser, not the old dot matrix, which might have made things easier if the suspect had access to it.

And that was another thing, Tony thought, his annoyance growing. Their only viable suspect in Angela Rico’s murder had an alibi. A substantiated alibi. At the time of his ex-wife’s murder, Alex Rico was in Atlantic City, hoping he would have better luck at the blackjack tables than he had in love.

As it turned out, Angela’s ex was a loser in both but no longer a murder suspect.

“Not unless he hired somebody to do it,” Henderson volunteered wearily, ending a discussion that had been halfheartedly under way between the two of them.

They were the only ones in the immediate area. Everyone else, including Captain Holloway, had gone home for the night.

Tony glanced in his partner’s direction. Together a little over two years, he and Henderson hadn’t hit it off all that well. But then, to be fair, he hadn’t hit it off with too many people. He preferred working alone.

Preferred everything alone, actually. Alone, there was no one else to disappoint you but you, he thought.

The notion brought a cynical half smile to his lips.

“If he hired somebody, what’s the note about?” Tony asked.

The note bothered him. A lot. He felt as if it was pointing to something, but to what, he hadn’t a clue.

Henderson shrugged his wide shoulders haplessly, the unironed shirt moving stiffly with the gesture. Without thinking, he scratched his neck.

“To throw us off?” he guessed.

Tony’s half smile looked a bit sarcastic. “Alex Rico strike you as particularly clever?” Tony asked.

It was a rhetorical question. Still, Henderson considered it. “No, just grief-stricken. And mad. Very mad.”

Tony thought of the victim’s ex, and the rage that he’d viewed in the man’s eyes, just behind the grief. “If Rico’s innocent, we might have some trouble from him when we catch who did this.”

“You meant if,” Henderson pointed out.

“No, I mean when,” Tony repeated.

Although he regarded the rest of his life with a jaded, negative eye, it never occurred to Tony that he wouldn’t catch his quarry. Otherwise, there was no point in going through the motions. He’d taken the job, the badge, to make a difference. You didn’t make a difference by not catching the bad guy.

Henderson nodded, backing away from a confrontation. “Cross that bridge when we come to it.” With that, he switched off his computer and pushed his chair back. The legs scraped along the scarred vinyl floor that had long since needed replacing. The current budget couldn’t handle it. “I’m calling it a night,” he said needlessly. “Maybe something’ll turn up fresh in the morning.”

“Maybe,” Tony murmured under his breath.

He scrubbed his hand over his face and tried to recenter his thinking. The pretty doctor had been right. Everyone had loved the victim. At least, everyone he and Henderson had talked to in the last week.

Pushing back his own chair, he began to rise when the phone on his desk rang.

“Looks like it might not be a night yet,” he said to Henderson as he reached for the receiver.

Déjà vu.