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Cursing his luck, he made his way over, and as he moved next to Roy he saw the dark pool of blood blossom around the motionless arms and chest. A man’s life seeping into the filthy asphalt.
Then he saw a movement. One he hadn’t expected. Roy’s head tilted to the left, and Jack saw his eyes open, then close. Jack bent his good leg, holding on to the cane with all his might as he eased down to his knees. It hurt like hell, but Roy was alive. Trying to say something.
“Protect her…” he said, his voice as whispery as a ghost. “Get the money. Don’t…” He stopped, frozen in a seizure, then relaxing nearer to death. “The cops…Don’t…”
The last word was drowned in a sickening gurgle, and Roy was gone. Jack put his hand to Roy’s neck, checking the jugular for a pulse. Nothing. Stone-cold nothing.
Jack looked back at the apartment building. Several lights were on now, although no one had come outside. They all stayed behind their plywood doors, as if that could keep them safe. He heard a distant siren, which, he supposed, was all he had a right to expect.
If he hadn’t been caught so off guard, he never would have let Roy leave his kid behind. He’d never have let Roy leave at all, at least not until he understood what was going on. But he had been caught, and he had taken the kid and let the father go. So while everyone else in the building stayed inside, peeking through parted curtains, he was left with a kid, a body and one hell of a question. Why had the cops gunned down Roy Chandler in cold blood?
It took him a couple of awkward minutes to stand again. By that time, a patrol car, familiar blue, arrived. The car stopped a couple of hundred feet away, so the cops wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. The doors opened and Jack recognized Bill Haggart immediately, just from the way the man stood.
Haggart was an old-timer who’d never managed to pass the sergeant’s exam. He’d gotten Jack out of a scrape or two through the years, and while Jack didn’t consider him the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he was a good cop who understood the street.
“Bored, were you?” Haggart said as he gave Roy’s body a once-over.
“Yeah,” Jack said, wishing like hell he could sit down. “Finished all my crossword puzzles.”
Jack didn’t know the driver of the patrol car well. Fetzer was his name. Paul Fetzer. Young guy, Nordic-looking with his white-blond hair and pale skin. Jack had heard he was a hot dog, looking to get into homicide, but just like everyone else, he needed to do his time. Putting him with Haggart was probably good for both of them.
“What happened?” Paul asked, moving next to Haggart. “You know him?”
“He lives in the building,” Jack said. “I’ve seen him around.”
“You see who did this?” Haggart asked, his voice dramatically sharper now that Paul was listening.
Jack decided right then that he wasn’t going to tell them about the unmarked car. He wasn’t sure why, just a feeling. He’d learned to listen to his gut reactions. At least most of the time. The bullet in his hip was a good reminder of what happened when he didn’t. “I saw a car. It was too dark to make out anything much. It was a sedan, late model. They used a silencer. I heard two shots.”
“They?” Paul repeated. “There was more than one?”
Jack nodded. “Driver and passenger. Both males. I couldn’t see if they were Caucasians. The light hit the car wrong, and all I got were shadows. I couldn’t run after them to get the license plate.”
“Pardon me for being blunt,” Haggart said, “but you look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. The ambulance should be here any second. Maybe you should let the paramedics take a look at you.”
“I’m fine. You might as well call them off. Get someone from the medical examiner’s office down here.”
“Did you touch anything?” Paul asked as he moved closer to Roy and crouched down. He pulled out his flashlight, and focused the beam on Roy’s chest. It looked to Jack like it had been a large-caliber weapon. There was a hell of a lot of damage.
“I touched his neck for a pulse,” Jack said. “That’s it.”
“How’d you happen to see this?” Haggart asked.
“Insomnia,” Jack answered, not lying exactly. Just not telling the whole story.
“Out for a walk at this time of night?”
He shook his head. “I heard something. I came outside, saw the car, heard the shots. By the time I made it down the stairs, Roy here was dead and the car was long gone.”
“Roy what?”
“Chandler. I think he lived on the second floor. Around back.”
The ambulance came screaming into the parking lot, but the driver cut the siren immediately, filling the night with an echo of sadness. Jack shifted a bit, which was a mistake. He winced and sucked in a sharp breath.
Haggart moved closer to him, probably worried that he was goning to fall on his face. “Why don’t you go on up,” he said, his voice concerned. “We can take care of things down here. We know where to find you tomorrow.”
Jack didn’t take long to decide. He needed to sit down. Take a pill. Make sure the kid upstairs hadn’t fallen off the couch. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be around.”
A female paramedic Jack didn’t know circled the police car and knelt beside Roy. She put her kit next to her knee and gestured to Paul to back off. The young cop did as she asked, but he didn’t seem real happy to be brushed aside.
Jack didn’t give a damn. He had his own problems. He nodded to Haggart, then started the long voyage home. Walking across the parking lot was hard enough. The stairs were going to be murder.
THE KID WAS STILL SLEEPING when he got back. After three pain pills and about half an hour of sitting still on the lounger, Jack was able to stand again. He crossed to the girl, noticing for the first time that she had a doll clutched in her right hand. It wasn’t a very nice doll. The hair was all ratty, with big holes in the scalp where the strands had been tied. One eye was open, the other closed in a perpetual wink. There was a stain on the doll’s cheek that looked like blue ink.
What a damn mess. He didn’t like dirty cops, and he didn’t like cryptic deathbed messages, and he didn’t like the fact that the sun was going to rise any minute and he hadn’t slept. The kid was going to wake up eventually, and she’d want to know where her parents were, and she’d cry and carry on and…oh, hell. Jack made it back to the lounger and sank gratefully onto the cushion. The smart thing to do was call family services as soon as possible. Go to the captain and tell him what he heard and what he saw. End this thing before it went any further.
Even if there was a crime to be solved, he wasn’t the man to solve it. Not anymore. Not with this body. All he was good for was watching daytime television.
HE WOKE UP to a pair of blue eyes. Big round blue eyes, inches from his face. The kid was up and she’d climbed onto his lap, somehow avoiding his bad hip. One inch to the right, and he’d have been one sorry ex-cop.
“Where’s my daddy?”
The girl had her doll under one arm and her quilt under the other. She looked amazingly calm, as if she woke up in a stranger’s house all the time.
“I have to go potty.”
Perfect. She had to go potty. He had no idea what that entailed—well, except for the fundamentals, of course. Was he supposed to help her? Lead her to the bathroom and leave? Change her diaper?
She wasn’t wearing a diaper. He could see that from the way her Little Mermaid pajamas fit. “Climb down,” he said. “Carefully.”
She obeyed him, moving slowly and cautiously until she stood next to the chair, but she never took her eyes off him, not even for a second.
“Can you do it by yourself?”
“What?”
“Can you go potty by yourself?”
She nodded, the curls on her head waving with the movement.
Jack pointed to the hallway. “It’s right over there,” he said. “Just walk down the hall.”
She blinked at him, then turned, her quilt trailing behind her as she padded toward the bathroom. He focused on his own problem: getting up and making coffee. He swallowed another pill, then went to the kitchen for a water chaser. His leg felt stiffer than usual, but he expected that. The doctors had said the pain would be temporary, lasting just a few months. In his opinion, four was more than a few. So when was this miraculous recovery supposed to kick in?
At least he’d gotten his morning routine worked out. He’d set up the kitchen to require the fewest steps necessary. Coffee, filters, the machine, all next to the sink. After he finished pouring and counting, he checked his watch. Seven-thirty. He’d call family services at eight.
He heard a shuffle and looked in the living room. The girl stood by the hallway, staring at him. “Where’s my daddy?” she asked again.
He didn’t know what to say. How to say it. The kid was so young.
She blinked a few times, as if she was trying to get him into focus. “I want Hailey,” she said.
Hailey. Who the hell was—“You mean that woman down the hall? The blond lady?”
The girl nodded. “Hailey. She’s my baby-sitter.”
“Hailey,” he repeated, thinking about where he’d seen her. In the laundry room, that was it. A couple of months ago. With the kid. She’d helped him carry his clothes upstairs. “Let’s go see Hailey, okay?”
The kid nodded. “Is my daddy there?”
“We’ll see,” he said, chickening out. He started toward her, and she went to the door. She put her doll on the floor and grasped the doorknob. It took her a few tries, but she got the door open, and then she picked up her doll again. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look scared. She waited patiently for him to reach her side and then closed the door behind them.
Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know much about kids, but even he knew she ought to be scared out of her wits.
She led him down the walkway, past the five doors that separated his place from Hailey’s. Then she stopped. Shifted her doll under her arm and put her thumb in her mouth.
Jack knocked on Hailey’s door. Checked the kid, then knocked again, praying the woman was home. Then he heard the dead bolt slip and the door swung open.
She was still in her bathrobe. She looked at him with a question in her eyes, then she saw the girl. “Megan!”
“Is my daddy here?”
Hailey’s gaze moved back to Jack. “What’s going on?”
“Can we talk?”
Her brow furrowed with concern, but she didn’t press him. She picked Megan up, then held the door open for him. The second he walked inside, he knew he’d done the right thing. The kid would feel safe here. Hell, he felt safe here. And he hadn’t felt safe in about a hundred years.
Chapter Two
Hailey Bishop closed the door and turned to her guest. She recognized him, although she didn’t remember his name. John or Jack or something like that. She also knew he was a police officer, although she’d never seen him in a uniform.
He stood in the middle of her living room, leaning on his cane, favoring his left leg. She wondered if he’d been hurt on the job, but then Megan tightened her grip on her throat and Hailey forgot about the policeman’s problems. “What happened?” she asked him as she rubbed Megan’s back to calm her down.
He shook his head, and she realized he didn’t want to speak in front of the child. She didn’t like this. Her stomach clenched and the hairs on the back of her neck bristled. Even so, she smiled as she walked near the television and lowered Megan to the floor. Gently she took the girl’s quilt out of her hand and spread it on the carpet. “What kind of juice do you want?”
Megan thought a moment. “Apple.”
“Apple it is.” Hailey turned on the television, changing the channel until she found cartoons. Then she went to the kitchen and got one of the juice boxes she kept on hand. By the time she got back, the little girl was sitting cross-legged, her doll tucked safely into her lap. When Hailey handed her the juice, the girl smiled, then went back to watching Tom and Jerry.
Hailey turned to the policeman. He really didn’t look good. Aside from his obvious discomfort, his cheeks seemed hollow and his skin pale. He hadn’t shaved for a while and his dark stubble made him look gruff and hard. But his eyes told her something different. His gaze was on Megan, and the way he looked at her said worlds about the man. The little one was in some kind of trouble and he knew it. More than that, he was concerned about her.
As she signaled him to join her in the kitchen, she looked beyond the stubble and the brooding eyes. She’d thought he was handsome the first time she’d seen him, and that hadn’t changed. She wanted to know what had happened to him, whether someone was taking care of him. But that was for later.
He made it to her dining room and sat down heavily in the first chair he came to. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Standing must hurt.
“Coffee?” she asked.
He nodded. “That would be great.”
“How do you like it?”
“Black,” he said, watching her keenly as she went into the kitchen. “I’m Jack McCabe,” he said. “I’ve seen you around.”
“Yes, I recognized you, too. I didn’t know you knew Roy and Megan.”
“I don’t. I mean, I’ve seen him a few times, said hello, but that’s all.”
She poured the coffee into two mugs and brought them to the table. He took his with a grateful but worried smile. “So what happened?” she asked.
“Did you hear the sirens this morning?”
She nodded. “I didn’t realize they were at the complex. I’m so used to hearing them these days.”
“They were here, all right. Roy,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “was killed this morning.”
Hailey almost dropped her mug. She put it down on the table as she fought for breath. “Killed? Are you sure?”
Jack nodded. “I’m sure.”
“How?” she asked too loudly. Moving closer to Jack, she asked again, “How?”
“He was shot.”
“What? Were you there? Was Megan there?”
He shook his head. “Megan was safe. She didn’t see a thing. It wasn’t a random shooting. Whoever killed him did it on purpose.”
“Oh, my God,” Hailey said, more to herself than to Jack. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around this horrific piece of news. Roy, dead? It was too absurd to be true. “How did you get Megan?”
“I didn’t have much choice. Roy came to my door this morning. He shoved her at me, then ran off. He said he had to go to the hospital. That his wife was sick.”
“Wife? He’s not married. His wife died several years ago.”
Jack looked over at Megan, sitting so quietly. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that Roy had lied. “Does she have any other family?”
“I think so. But not here in Houston. There might be an aunt in Florida. What did the police say?”
“Not much. But I’m gonna go to the station this morning and find out all I can.”
“You want me to watch her?”
He nodded. “Until I can get social services out here.”
