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She came to sitting on the wet grass, Harlan’s hand pressing her head between her knees. Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
“Ah, you did know her then?” His fingers were firm around the column of her neck.
“Yes.” Letting her head rest on her knee, Molly wiped the tears, the rain, whatever, away from her face. “She was my friend. My maid. Had been my maid for two years. I fired her three months ago.” She pressed her face against the frayed denim at her knees, drying the hot tears burning her eyes, her mouth, her soul.
“I see.” He hunkered at her side, the fabric of his slacks tight against his muscular thighs.
“No! You don’t!” With Camina lying on the ground in front of her, her frizzy blond hair splashed against the black plastic, Molly was suddenly filled with explosive rage. Using John Harlan’s arm, she pulled herself upright, and he rose with her in a graceful unwinding of muscle. “Someone killed my friend!”
“Simple cops that we are, we were able to figure that much out, Ms. Harris. I know our reputation is occasionally less than what we’d like, but, trust me, we had no trouble identifying this as murder.” His laugh was rough-edged. He stepped close to her, but he didn’t let his wide shoulders block her view of Camina.
He was standing knee-to-knee with her, his palms flat and hot at her waist. Such heat in his broad hands. Rain glittered in his hair, spotted his black jacket, the gleam of his black shirt. She could smell the heat of him rising to her in the rain, clean, fresh. This close to him, she realized for the first time that he wasn’t as tall as she’d thought. He’d seemed enormous, terrifying, as he’d stood on her front porch. In fact, he was under six feet.
Only a man.
Then Molly looked into his face and realized that John Harlan was every bit as terrifying as she’d believed.
Nothing merciful in his golden brown eyes, no amusement in the mouth curling in a smile, nothing but steel in the grip of his hands. Implacable.
And he was hunting her.
Acknowledging the understanding between them, he tipped his head. “There’s something else I want you to take a look at.” Marching her in front of him like a captive, he kept his hands tight around her waist. The toe of his shoe bumped the bag. He nodded to one of the technicians, who unzipped the plastic farther down.
“I can’t. I can’t.” Sobs bent Molly in two. She saw the dark, rain-wet blood on Camina’s blouse. That was enough. Covering her mouth, she pleaded, “No more, please. I want to go home.”
“In a minute.” Harlan was impatient as he stepped around Camina, leading Molly to the dock. “She was found there.” He indicated the body on the ground and then pointed to a trail of blood leading from it to the pier. “But she was killed here. On the dock. Why was your maid—your friend, I think you said—waiting on your boat dock last night, Ms. Harris? Who was she waiting for?”
There were muddy footprints at the edge of the dock. A smudged pattern danced from one end of the dock to the other, the outline of Camina’s footprints washing away with the drizzle.
And then, of course, the blood. Couldn’t forget that. There was always the blood.
“Why was your maid on this dock last night, Ms. Harris?” Harlan’s voice was relentless. “Tell me. I know you’re hiding something, Ms. Harris. I just haven’t figured out what. But I will, you know. Sooner or later, I’ll find out. I always do.” Like water plinking into a sink, driving a person crazy, his words fell around her. “You know you want to get out from under the burden of what you’re keeping to yourself, whatever you’re hiding behind that cool little mask.” He touched her face. “Think what a relief it will be to tell me everything, Ms. Harris, to get rid of all those secrets you’re guarding so earnestly.” He paused and lifted her hand, traced the wound.
“I don’t have anything to say. I’m not hiding anything.” Molly looked him straight in the face.
“No secrets? Ah.” He paused. “Well, we all have them, you know. Believe me—” he curled her fingers over the gash in her palm “—there’s nothing you can say that I haven’t heard before, Ms. Harris. There’s nothing you can’t say to me.”
His voice caressed her, seducing her with its false gentleness, until Molly wanted to tell him everything. But she couldn’t. She anchored herself with that knowledge even as his words continued to curl around her.
“Tell me, Ms. Harris. It won’t be hard. And you’ll be glad when you don’t have to hide anymore. You won’t have to lie. Won’t have to worry about what you’ve said or not said. Everything finally out in the open. Secrets will destroy you, you know. Why don’t you tell me? Everything. And then you can sleep.” And, though he wasn’t touching her, his hand seemed to brush over her cold face, warming it. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you? And you’re tired.”
Even though she’d insisted that she’d slept all through the night, he’d known somehow she hadn’t.
Tender, filled with understanding, the flow of his voice surrounded her. “I know you’re hiding something, Ms. Harris. And I want to help you.” He brushed her hair away from her face. The wet ends clung to her cheek, and he lifted them free. “Let me help you. You need to tell me. And you will—like I said, sooner or later. So why not now?”
Weaving a seductive pattern around her, into her weary, frightened mind, John Harlan’s hypnotic voice went on and on, and she fought it, fought with every ounce of energy left in her.
But oh, yes, she wanted to tell him. She was so tired of being alone. And she wanted to sleep with no shadows hovering at the edge of her mind. To sleep…
The thought stirred in her sludge-thick mind and wouldn’t go away.
His was the voice of her demon lover, cajoling her, and she wanted to surrender to the velvety ease he promised. She could sleep if she were in jail, if she were safe behind metal bars hard as the steel she sensed in John Harlan. To yield to sleep, to let his cape wrap around her and to forget, if only for one night…. To sleep.
“I…” She shook her head. Raindrops scattered onto him from her swinging hair.
“Yes?” he encouraged. “Go ahead.” He led her closer to the disappearing trail of Camina’s footprints. “What happened, Ms. Harris? Did she come here last night to ask for her job back? Is that how it started?” He waited, his warmth in front of her, the rain cold on her back. “Did she come to tell you that you shouldn’t have fired her? Did you argue? And strike out? Not meaning to, I know,” he said reassuringly, betrayal lurking in the darkness of his voice.
For a long time Molly stood, head down, watching the bloodstains grow dimmer in the increasing rain while John Harlan’s voice drummed against her.
“What happened?” Endless patience now in the way he never moved, endless understanding in his low voice.
And none of it real.
“Did you come out here, Ms. Harris? Did you see Camina Milar standing here in the rain last night?” He pointed to the dock. “You could have seen her from upstairs in your house. From your living room. From any room with a view of the bayou.” He shrugged. “She was outside here…for a long time.” He pointed to a pile of lipstick-marked cigarette butts. “Think about her, all alone out here in the rain, waiting, hour after hour. What happened, Ms. Harris?”
She would tell him everything. She opened her mouth.
Something flickered in the grass at the edge of her vision, a motion of the tall grass as though a creature stole through it. Distracted, Molly was released from the spell of Harlan’s voice, and she lifted her head and looked at him.
“Nothing!” Moving very carefully—she had no wish to stir the power hiding inside him—she pulled his hands away from her waist and turned toward her house. Over her shoulder she threw back at him, “Aren’t you supposed to Mirandize me or something if I’m a suspect? Read me my rights?”
She was freezing—shock setting in. Too much had happened. She had to go inside. She would be safe there. Later, she would think about the vision he’d created of Camina standing outside, cupping her hands around her lit cigarette and smoking steadily while the rain fell around her in the dark.
And then she had died.
Stabbed.
That was how it had been.
Must have been.
Screams building inside her, Molly ran to the house, across the gallery and into her kitchen. Huddling in the corner, she sank once more to the floor and jammed her fist into her mouth to stop the screams.
If she started, she might not stop.
Ever again.
Harlan watched the slim, fragile figure of Molly Harris vanish into rain as silvery gray as her wide, innocent eyes. He’d seen eyes that innocent before, eyes that stared at him with all the innocence anyone could ever ask for. But those innocent eyes had been lying, lying all the way to the electric chair. Years ago that had been, but he’d never forgotten his brother’s innocent eyes pleading with him, his brother lying with his last breath.
And why should he forget? After all, his brother had been arrested with a gun in his hand, his bloodstained shirt casually tossed into the back seat of his convertible. A lovers’ quarrel. People lied all the time and looked back at you with shiny-eyed innocence.
Molly’s eyes had been circled with exhaustion. He’d known she was lying about having slept through the night. She hadn’t slept well for a long time, and the strain showed in the fine lines around her eyes, in the faint tremble of her soft mouth, in the constant quivers he’d felt every time he touched her. Nothing sexual in those shivers. Something else.
He’d liked the feel of her slim waist between his hands, though, he thought regretfully; had liked the feel of those shivers rippling against his fingers. Had thought about sex. Hard not to with her staring dazed at him, trembling, the rain misting in her pale brown hair.
Hot, wild sex, her tea-colored hair sliding across his chest, her eyes blurred with pleasure as she moved with him. Yeah. He’d thought about sex even as he’d looked into Molly Harris’s innocent face and wondered if she had, as he suspected, stabbed Camina Milar.
Harlan raked his hands through his own hair, dismissing the feel of Molly lingering still against his palms. He thought instead about the strain he recognized in her.
That strain showed in the way she started at every sound. Guilt? Fear? They were flip sides of each other sometimes. Fear of being caught? Fear of what she’d done when she’d stepped outside the boundaries of normal behavior? Possibly.
Watching her run recklessly to the safety of her house, he slicked back his wet hair and brushed off the knees of his grimy trousers. Looking at the mud stains and God only knew what else, he frowned. Hundred-and-fifty-dollar pants, and he’d be lucky if the cleaners ever got them clean. Well, hell, nobody’d ever promised him that a detective’s lot was an easy one. He slapped at an oily smear along the calf.
At the sharp crack of the screen door, he snapped his head in the direction of the house, staring at the door that had slammed behind Molly Harris as she fled into her curiously colorless house.
Her newly decorated house.
Rain ran in rivulets down the back of his neck as he regarded the graceful lines of the house. From the crushed-shell driveway leading up to the porte cochere and tall columns at the front entrance, to the long, low windows opening onto the gallery, the house was a superb example of old county architecture.
He’d recognized the address as soon as he’d seen it on the crime report. Before collecting his partner, Ross, and heading to the crime scene, on an impulse and out of curiosity, Harlan had pulled the files on the last murders at this lovely, idyllic house. While Ross drove the car, Harlan had skimmed the reports, reading for highlights while he refreshed his recollections of one of the most horrifying crimes in Palmasola County in the past fifty years.
With the prominence of the family involved and all that beautiful, beautiful money, the case had had all the earmarks, except sex, of a grocery-store scandal rag. Because of the money involved, the detectives on the case had followed the principle of cui bono, but the lovely daughter and charming son had had ironclad alibis. So did the lovely daughter’s ex-husband. Random home invasion. Murder as a result. And the homicide division had never solved the case. Reading over the files as Ross throttled the car down to a sedate fifty-five, Harlan wished he’d been one of the investigating detectives. The case had the feel of something pulpy and rotten at the core. His favorite kind.
Now, thoughtfully eyeing the lines of the gracious old mansion, he tilted his head. Too easy to know why Molly Harris had redone her kitchen and living room. Would have taken an idiot not to understand.
Her parents had been killed there. She’d found them shortly after midnight.
Molly Harris was edging along a mighty thin wire, and something had put her out there, something in addition to the unsolved year-old murder of her parents.
He’d give a good damn to know what was stringing her so tight right now. The more he thought about Molly Harris, the more he wished he’d been on that original case.
And wished he could have been one of the first officers to question her, because the scent of something rancid about the murders called to him in the darkest part of his soul. His mouth tight in derision, he smiled to himself. An alibi was only an alibi until it fell apart.
If Molly Harris with her innocent eyes had had secrets a year ago, he would have broken her. He clasped his hands and raised them skyward, stretching out the kinks. He’d have broken sweet Ms. Molly, broken her with immense pleasure.
Either way, though, she was hiding something now. He’d known that even before she answered her front door. Her voice quavering all over creation had been the first giveaway. He’d almost found out what she was protecting so fiercely, too. But he’d screwed up somehow this time. Next time he wouldn’t. He’d crack her like a sweet almond.
Tasting the rain on the edge of his mouth, he smiled. Before Ms. Harris saw the last of him, he’d know all her secrets, one way or the other.
He hadn’t Mirandized her. Hadn’t really thought he should yet. But if she’d blurted out a confession, Thomas would have been royally pissed off, and rightly so.
It would have been his final foul-up with the chief. If Molly Harris had confessed to him, Harlan would have been lucky if Thomas had kicked his rear to Mount Vesuvius and let it fry there.
That would have been the best-case scenario.
He didn’t want to think about the worst-case one.
Shrugging as he kicked at the tough saw grass and sandy clumps near the pilings of the pier, Harlan frowned. In the grainy light, something glinted underneath the dock, caught between the rough slats.
Stepping carefully onto the mucky, spongy ground, he looked up at the bottom of the pier. There. He could see it glittering. Gold.
Holding on to the top of the pier with one hand and straining with the other, he swung one-handed out over the dark water and reached, grabbed and swung back to the shore again, the thin gold bracelet dangling from his fingers.
A prize. The catch was broken, snapped off. Only luck he’d seen the thing. He smiled. Luck.
“Hey, Ross?” Harlan beckoned the tall, red-haired, crime-scene technician over. “Look what I have.” Holding the shiny chain up, he continued, “Tell Tanner I’ll be through with Ms. Harris in about twenty minutes and we’ll head back to town. I’m goin’ to stroll up to the big house and ask one or two more questions,” he said, mockingly swinging the bracelet in front of Ross’s face. “Maybe I can hypnotize her into confessing, and we can all go home.”
“Sure, boss, but the guys aren’t anywhere near through down here. We baggied the victim’s hands, collected some evidence off the pier, but a lot of stuff has washed away with the rain. I don’t think we’ll find the murder weapon unless a blood match shows up on that knife you wanted us to get. We’re waiting for the search warrant on that. Should be here soon.”
“Good.” Harlan strode to the large white house glimmering ghostly in the rain and mist. In spite of everything that had happened, Molly Harris had chosen to stay in the family home. Interesting.
She was at the kitchen sink staring out at him as he approached. He heard the water running from the faucet, and thought of Lady Macbeth futilely washing her hands over and over again after the murder of the king.
Tapping on the screen door, he opened it without waiting for her invitation. “Ms. Harris?”
“Yes?” She cleared her throat.
A lovely throat it was, too, long and curving into her washed-out, winter-white sweatshirt with its gaping neckline. White was her color, all right. She looked like a pale nun, a streak of winter rain…He curbed his thoughts.
“I have three additional questions I need to ask you.” Stepping into the white-and-black kitchen, Harlan watched her nervous step back, forward. He liked the fact that she was nervous. She should be. Keeping her nervous suited him. “If you don’t mind?”
“Would it matter if I did? Should I call my lawyer?” That edgy animosity he’d caught earlier surfaced through her cool, husky voice. She was dragging herself together with an incredible effort, questions she should have asked him earlier now obviously coming to mind. Or maybe she’d decided how to play her role.
Either way, her struggle for control interested him. Under other circumstances, Molly Harris would be a woman with a certain sass and vinegar to her.
Sticking her hands under the water, never letting her gaze drift from his, she added, “I can, you know. I have a lawyer, and he can be here in thirty minutes. And I would still be considered a cooperative witness.”
He’d been right. Ms. Harris had a dash of cayenne under all that fragile sweetness. Well, it was going to be fascinating to find out what else she had hidden. He was beginning to like the idea of discovering Molly Harris’s secrets.
Coming closer, walking right up to the sink, he decided he liked, too, the way the washed-thin, rain-soaked sweatshirt clung to her small curves, skimming down her shoulders to mold her delicate breasts and outline their rain-chilled peaks. Where the sweatshirt rode up to her waist, caught there by the waistband, he could see the soaked and sandy rear end of her jeans, the ridged outline of her panties showing against the butter-soft denim.
He reached past her.
She shuddered but didn’t step away.
Ms. Harris had courage, too.
Pushing down the faucet lever, he turned off the relentless gush of water. “Conservation, Ms. Harris,” he murmured into her ear.
She leapt back, the toes of one bare foot tripping against the heel of the other. “What were your questions, Detective? I’ll decide if I should call my lawyer. Ask your damned questions and then,” she said, false civility riming her words, “please, get out of my house. Since you don’t have a search warrant.” One hand with its chewed nails crept toward her neckline until she realized what she was doing and jammed both hands into her pockets.
“Certainly,” he said, matching her politeness. “And no, we don’t have a search warrant. But it should arrive any minute.”
She flinched, the wings of her shoulders drawing together as if he’d struck her.
“My questions are simple, really—should be no trouble for you to answer.” He strolled around the room, looking, touching, knowing she was watching his every nonchalant move. He toed the dish of food on the floor. “You have a cat, hmm?”
“Is that one of the three questions?” The triangle of her face tightened, the skin around her full lips pinched with effort. Her wet hands dripped onto the black-and-white tiles.
Harlan moved.
She jumped.
Handing her a paper towel he’d torn off from the rack in back of her, he nodded. “Fair enough. All right. That’s question number one.”
Looking for a trick, she studied him. Her eyes changed to a clear no-color, only that lovely, translucent shimmer of innocence shining in them. “No. I don’t have a cat. I fed a stray this morning before you came.”
