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She locked her purse in the bottom desk drawer, picked up her coffee cup and headed for the machine in the outer room. Once the cup was filled, she stopped at Stone Richardson’s desk. The detective was typing a report and grumbling under his breath. He sat back in his chair. “What can I do for you?”
“I talked to Martin Smith last night. He said you guys did a missing persons broadcast right after his accident.”
“Yeah. We got a couple of possible hits, but they didn’t pan out. You have an idea?”
“I’d like to do it again. Maybe, at that time, no one was aware that he was missing, but surely after ten months, someone has realized that something’s wrong.”
“Good idea. The file is in your office. Go to it.”
With a smile of thanks, she took the coffee back to her office, pulled the folder and pulled up the National Crime Information Center on her computer.
She was working on the required state certification as an NCIC terminal operator, along with her other duties, but she’d been granted access in the meantime. It was slow going, though. Ditzy Mariellen, whose desk sat right outside the door, could have the information typed in and the broadcast sent in the time it would take Juliet to thumb through the manual that would help her locate and fill out the proper form.
But she didn’t hand the file to Mariellen. She opened it and studied Stone’s notes. A John Doe white male, approximately forty years of age, six-three, blond and blue. Not much of a description for the best-looking man she’d come across in recent memory. There were notes on the scars—six in all, the last attributed to a burn—but no other identifying marks, no tattoos, no birthmarks. Of course, six scars were enough.
He feared he’d lived a violent life, and the evidence seemed to be on his side. Innocent people did become victims, but three times, possibly four?
She just couldn’t imagine him as a criminal. And why not? Because he was handsome? A quick look through the mug books would confirm that handsome men did, in fact, commit crimes. Because he seemed so lost? She couldn’t call any figures to mind at the moment, but she suspected that lost, lonely people were more likely to commit crimes than happy, well-adjusted people with everything going their way. Because she was attracted to him? Heavens, she’d been attracted to losers before. The last man in her life had been unethical and immoral. Criminal was just one short step down.
Still, she didn’t believe Martin Smith had been a criminal before his accident. Even if he had been, he was a different man now. People could change. Wasn’t waking up a new person one of her favorite fantasies? With his accident last summer, Martin had been given the perfect opportunity to start over new, with no name, no memories and no past to haunt him. He could be anyone he wanted to be, could correct old mistakes and make right bad choices. It could be a dream come true.
The questions were the only downside. To fully accept and enjoy his new life, he had to know about his old life. Were there parents who missed him, a wife who mourned him, children who were slowly forgetting him? Or had he been alone, with no one to care?
They would find out soon enough. A loving family surely would have turned to the police for help when he failed to return from his trip. Surely they would be searching for him, distributing flyers, setting up social networking pages, showing photographs, asking questions. Surely there would be a response to this broadcast she was about to send to every law enforcement agency in the country.
And if there wasn’t?
Then he was more than likely a free man, free to make a new life for himself. The odds of him including her in it, even temporarily, weren’t great, but she could always dream, couldn’t she?
Chapter Three
The Courthouse Deli was located across the street and down a block from the police department. It was busy from noon to one, but after that a diner looking for privacy couldn’t find a better place. Bringing along official-looking reading and choosing a table in the distant corner helped keep most people away…but Martin wasn’t most people.
He walked past two dozen empty tables to the back, stopping beside the empty chair. “Mind if I join you?”
Juliet looked surprised but didn’t say a word as he slid into the chair and folded his hands together on the table. “They told me over at the department that you usually eat lunch here.” A simple statement that wasn’t entirely true. One of the dispatchers had told him that—a week ago—and she’d said “always.” She always eats at the deli and sits in the back facing the wall to discourage anyone from noticing her. The only problem with that was that he wasn’t so easily discouraged and she was far from unnoticeable.
“That doesn’t look like light reading.”
She glanced down at the newsletter. “It’s about the new computer system. Once it’s up and running, it’ll offer better versions of everything—image processing, automated single fingerprint matching, new databases, linkage fields and automated statistical collection. With the equipment that will be available in the patrol cars, an officer in the field is able to take photographs and scan a single fingerprint, then send them to the bureau and have a response back so much faster. It will be—” She broke off abruptly and shrugged. “A big improvement. Grand Springs will finally catch up with the big cities.”
For a moment there she had been supremely confident, as she should be. The instant the thought had occurred to her, though, that she might be talking too much, the confidence had faded away with the words. Too bad.
“So part of your job is getting the Grand Springs PD up to speed for this new system.”
She nodded.
“It can’t be easy. Some of those guys hate change.”
“Once they realize how much easier the system makes their job, they’ll love it.” She fell silent while the waitress came to take his order, then said, “I sent out another missing persons broadcast this morning. Maybe we’ll get somewhere this time.”
“How long will that take?”
“I don’t know. I’m still pretty new at this.”
Stone had told him the last time that a positive response was difficult to predict. It could take a few hours or, if a department was really swamped, a few months. If there was no missing persons report out there that matched his description, there would be no response at all. That had been hard enough to face ten months ago. It would be even harder now, finding out that he’d been the kind of person who could simply disappear from the face of the earth and no one cared.
The suspicion that he’d been exactly that kind of person made him uneasy. Deliberately he changed the subject. “Did you work in law enforcement in Dallas?”
“No. I worked for a large corporation that had its fingers in a little bit of everything. I set up their systems, wrote programs specific to their needs and kept everything running. When this position came up, I applied and was hired. The library job seemed okay, but the police department job sounded ex—interesting.”
Exciting. To a computer genius who spent more time with machines than people, even the fringes of police work probably did sound exciting. “Is it interesting?”
“It beats cataloguing library books.” She said it with a smile, too light and sweet for the likes of him. He stared at her until it faded, until her blue gaze dropped away from his and familiar discomfort came into her manner.
The waitress served their meal. After scraping the lettuce from her sandwich, Juliet asked, “Did you get some sleep this morning?”
Such an innocent question to spark such intimate images linked one to another: sleep, bed, Juliet, naked, hot, needy, desperate. Fumbling for his glass, he took a drink, swallowed hard and blinked to clear his vision. “Yes.” He had spent half the night pacing his apartment and the other half roaming the streets. He’d had a glass of milk at the all-night diner—the cook’s remedy for insomnia—and walked until he was exhausted. He’d needed the ride she’d given him—had been half asleep before it was over—and had slept the sleep of the dead the rest of the morning.
All because last night he had dreamed the dreams of the dead.
“Have you had insomnia since the accident?”
His throat was still tight, his voice still husky. “I don’t have insomnia.”
“But this morning you said you couldn’t sleep.”
And she had assumed, as everyone else did, that by couldn’t, he meant physically unable to. That was what he wanted them to think, wasn’t it? “I wouldn’t let myself fall asleep last night.” His tone was halting, his gaze fixed on his hands. They were familiar, yet strange. Long fingers, callused skin, strong grip, capable of all the things hands were designed for and maybe more. Capable, maybe, of inflicting great pain, of stealing someone else’s very life. “Sometimes I have dreams….”
She leaned forward, and her voice brightened, as if the subject had suddenly become ex—interesting. “About your past?”
“I think so. I don’t know. Maybe not.” Please, God, no.
“What kind of dreams?”
“Just dreams.”
“You don’t remember them?”
His silence let her believe one answer, but the truth was completely different. He remembered too much. Not enough.
“Are you in these dreams?”
“Look, I’d rather not—”
“But they may be important. Maybe the key to your memory is in these dreams, Martin.”
It was the first time she’d said his name. Such a plain, simple name, serviceable but nothing special. But it sounded special in her voice. “Look, they’re just dreams, nothing more. They don’t mean anything. They’re not important.”
“But they disturb you.”
He scowled, wishing he’d let her believe, like everyone else, that he was an insomniac. Since it was too late for that, he chose instead to turn the conversation in a direction that was sure to make her forget his sleep problems. “Not as much as you do.”
She stared at him, her face turning as red as the cloth on the table. “I didn’t…” She fidgeted, then straightened and sat primly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No, Juliet, I’m sure you don’t,” he agreed quietly, then lightened up. “When you were in school, did the kids tease you about your name?”
Her look was wary, her tone cautious. “Of course. How could they resist?”
“‘What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!’”
“My mother was a fan of Shakespeare. What can I say?”
“There are worse things in the world to be named after.”
“Like a soap opera hunk?”
He nodded.
“I did some reading about amnesia last night.”
“You keep medical books around the house?”
“On the Internet.”
He’d left last night so she could go to bed. If he’d known she was going to stay up late, he would have hung around until she’d shoved him out the door. He would have delayed going home and to bed himself, would have delayed the nightmares. “Learn anything interesting?”
“Lots, but nothing that might help.”
“I don’t think I was computer-friendly. All this online stuff seems like a whole new world to me.”
“It’s the way everything is done now. It can offer some pretty vast possibilities.”
“It can also isolate you. It offers so many possibilities that you lose the need for real people in your life.”
“But if you don’t have real people in your life, it’s a decent substitute.”
He wondered about that. Maybe standing on the sidelines watching life go by via a computer monitor was okay for her, but he suspected it would make him just that much hungrier for human contact.
He was already pretty damn hungry for contact with her.
Finishing with her meal, she tucked the computer newsletter in her bag, picked up her tab and got to her feet. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“I’m heading that way. Mind if I walk with you?”
Her only response was a shake of her head.
The weather was springtime warm, which didn’t mean they were safe from a cold snap or even snow. After all, it was only late April. They could easily wake up any time in the next month and find themselves snowed in.
He knew where he hoped he would be in the event of such luck.
The block-long walk passed quickly. Too soon they were inside the police department, and Juliet was looking eager to gain the privacy of her office. He tried to think of something to say—some excuse to see her again, some courage to ask for another evening of her time—but the words didn’t come. With a faint smile and a murmured “See you around,” she went down the hall to her office. A moment later he saw her through the window, taking a seat at her desk, turning her attention immediately to the computer there.
“Look, Jack, a Peeping Tom right here in the department.”
He glanced over his shoulder to find Stone Richardson and Jack Stryker, another detective who was working the Olivia Stuart homicide, standing behind him.
“What’s so interesting?” Stryker looked, then shrugged. “Oh. The new records supervisor.” He said it as if Juliet were of no more interest than the grandmotherly administrative assistant sitting outside the chief’s office, as if she weren’t the prettiest woman to set foot in Grand Springs in a long time.
Come to think of it, Stone didn’t seem particularly impressed, either. Granted, both men had gotten married in the last year—Jack to Josie Reynolds, the town treasurer, and Stone to Jessica Hanson, the bookkeeper at the ski lodge—but did that mean they’d lost their ability to recognize beauty when they saw it?
To each his own, so the saying went, and apparently it was true. After all, while Martin liked what he knew of Josie and Jessica, he personally didn’t find either particularly attractive. It was clear, though, that their husbands thought differently.
“You looking for us?”
The two detectives were so far from the reason for Martin’s presence in the department that, for a moment, Stone’s question didn’t register. Finally, though, he offered a noncommittal shrug. “Any news?”
“On Olivia’s case?” The cop shook his head. “Still no sign of Springer.”
Dean Springer had lived in Grand Springs without attracting anyone’s attention for years. He’d been a nobody, a loner who kept a low profile and minded his own business. Somehow his business had come to include the mayor’s death. The woman who had actually carried out the murder had identified Springer as the man who’d hired her, but there was no question that he’d merely been the go-between. He was neither smart enough nor prosperous enough to arrange a murder-for-hire, and there was the little matter of lack of motive. No, he’d been working for someone else. If the police ever located him, maybe they would find out who.
What if it was Martin?
“Juliet sent out another broadcast on you today.”
Still troubled by his doubts, he gave Stone little attention. “Yeah, she told me. I’d better get going.” He had a job this afternoon, and for the next few days, over at Grace Tabernacle on Aspen Street. Reverend Murphy had hired him to help with a renovation project too small to hire out to professionals. Considering his luck with construction in the past, he hoped the preacher was more experienced with such work.
He wasn’t, he announced when Martin met him on the front steps of the church. “But I’m a great believer in miracles.”
“As long as you’re praying for one, ask for one for me,” Martin said dryly. He didn’t think he’d been a church-going man before the accident, and he hadn’t converted to one after, but he was sure he believed in God, both before and after. Sometimes in his dreams, he prayed—frantic, panicked pleas—and sometimes he could manage no more than the deity’s name—Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“I’ve been praying for you from the beginning,” the reverend said as he opened the door and led the way inside.
The glass doors led into a short, broad hallway. Straight ahead, up three steps and through another set of doors, was the sanctuary with pews on either side and a burgundy carpeted aisle down the center. The door on the left led to a kitchen, and a hallway at the back of the sanctuary led to Sunday school rooms and bathrooms. Martin knew all that even though he’d taken no more than five steps through the front door.
Reverend Murphy stopped at the second double doors and looked back. “Although the Lord would like to see you in one of his houses on Sundays, he’s not going to smite you for coming Wednesday afternoon instead.”
“I’ve been here before.”
“When? I don’t recall—” The reverend turned back from the doors and approached him. “You mean before the accident. What do you remember?”
The harder he tried, the less there was to remember. The déjà vu faded, taking with it the faint images of the rooms behind the closed doors. “Nothing,” he said flatly, disappointment almost too strong to bear. “I don’t remember anything.”
* * *
When she left the police department after putting in an extra hour, Juliet had nothing more on her mind than going home, putting on her nightgown and vegging out in front of the computer. When she saw Martin leaning against the fender of her little silver car, everything fled her mind, including all words more intelligent or complicated than “Hi.”
“Hey.” He straightened and shoved his hands in his hip pockets. “Working late?”
