Darker Than Midnight

Mariah had even hit the bathrooms, filling them with stacks of towels and washcloths, new shower curtains and bath mats, curtains in the windows, toilet paper on the rollers. The woman was a wizard.

By the time her parents left, the house felt much more like a home, and as Jax settled down in the living room with a cup of hot coffee, and the bulging file folder full of photocopies she’d brought home from the Blackberry PD, she couldn’t help thinking about how the things from her old apartment back in Syracuse would look here. The wildlife prints on her walls, the entertainment center. Her own TV—wide-screen with surround sound. And her stereo system.

If she decided to stay.

She leaned back in the sofa with a contented sigh, listening to the quiet. Hell, who was she kidding? She was going to stay. She wanted this job.

And that thought brought another: the fact that she may have already blundered herself right out of this job, by giving refuge to a fugitive. Surely, the best thing she could have done this morning would have been to come clean, immediately. And yet…there was something wrong. Something off about this whole thing. She’d dealt with a lot of criminals, prided herself on her instinct. And that man last night hadn’t seemed like a criminal to her. Wounded, wary and probably under the influence of heavy chemicals. Now that she knew he had just escaped from a mental ward, she could understand that a little better. But criminals did not risk their lives to save the lives of strangers. Especially strangers who could turn around and blow the whistle on them the very next day. And he was a cop, on top of all that. A good one, Frankie had said.

If she’d learned nothing more in her life, Jax had learned to give the apparently guilty the benefit of the doubt.

God, how she’d learned that.

So she’d decided to give it one more night. Frankie had let her make copies of the files on the Corbett case, so she could take them home and read them. Get caught up on the facts of the case.

Frankie Parker, Jax discovered as she opened the bulging folder, was one thorough cop.

At the top of the pile were records of Michael Corbett’s service with the NYPD. Jax scanned page after page of them, noting several commendations, a nearly spotless record, until a shooting incident in which he had been injured, and which had been investigated by the Internal Affairs Division. Which meant nothing—anytime an officer fired his weapon in the line of duty, it had to be investigated.

She sipped her coffee, flipped a page and found one officer’s report on the shooting. She waded through the dry language of the account, knowing from experience she’d find no hint of emotion anywhere within its pages. “Just the facts, ma’am” was more than just a catchphrase. What it came down to was that Corbett and other officers had responded to numerous complaints about a crack house. Suspects in the house opened fire on the police officers almost as soon as they were out of their vehicles, and they returned it. One of the suspects’ bullets had hit Corbett in the head before the shooters fled the scene, evading officers who gave chase. Other officers remained with the wounded Corbett until paramedics arrived.

Jax scanned pages until she located the I.A.D.’s final report on the investigation, which cleared Corbett and his fellow officers of any wrongdoing. She frowned, wondering what any of this had to do with the investigation into the murder of Corbett’s wife. But then she found her answers. Corbett had been left with a bullet in his brain, and side effects that made it impossible for him to continue in his job. He’d been retired with a clean record and full pension.

Frankie had made her own notes, detailing Corbett’s health situation according to information she’d gleaned from interviews with his doctor. She wrote that he was prone to blackouts, periods during which he would lose time, and return to himself with no idea what had transpired. It was during one of those blackouts that his house had been torched, his wife killed.

Neither Frankie nor the state of Vermont were eager to prosecute him for murder, not with the testimony of his doctor likely to get him off on an insanity plea, anyway. The result would have been confinement in a mental hospital. And he’d been willing to take that sentence voluntarily, which saved the state the cost of a trial they might have lost. A hero cop, wounded in the line of duty, didn’t make for the easiest defendant.

Jax stared at the pages, but she wasn’t seeing the print. Instead, she was recalling the look in the man’s eyes last night. The desperate, haunted look about him. No wonder—if he’d killed his wife, and couldn’t even remember doing it—hell, that would be enough to haunt anyone. But why would he have risked prison by busting out of the state hospital?

By killing an orderly and then busting out, her inner voice reminded her.

There was more, reams more in the folder, and she turned to a new page and read, and read, until her eyes grew so weary that they drooped slowly closed, and her head fell to one side.

Then there was a sound—a soft sound, like weeping. A woman weeping—and then it changed, and became the gentle coo of a very young baby crying. That snuffly, congested newborn bleat. The smell of smoke touched her nostrils, and a strangled voice whispered….

Help me! Please!

She sat up fast, her eyes flying wide.

The living room was perfectly empty. There were no sounds. No whispers. No babies crying. No smell of smoke. She’d fallen asleep.

No such things as ghosts, she reminded herself, rubbing down the goose bumps that had risen on her arms. Hell, she was letting Kurt Parker’s spook stories get to her.

Jax stretched her arms, folded the file and got up from the sofa. She was letting her imagination take hold, and that was totally unlike her. Maybe she’d better call it a night. She turned for the stairs, but stopped in midmotion at a sound—a real one this time. It sounded like something dropping to the floor.

Frowning, she turned her head in the direction from which the sound had come, the kitchen. “Yeah. It’s probably a whole troop of ghosts,” she taunted herself. “Who you gonna call, Jax?” Sighing, she moved slowly. Because while she didn’t believe in spooks, despite her new colleague’s tales, she did believe in escaped mental patients. Her gun was hanging with her coat in the living room closet—not her choice of a permanent spot to keep it; just where she’d happened to hang it when she came home. Her mother hated seeing it on her. Jax supposed it was a reminder of how dangerous her job could be, and the thought of her only remaining daughter at risk was a little too much for her to handle.

Mariah was delicate. More so than she let on. There had been far more of her in Carrie than there had ever been in Jax.

Jax took the shoulder holster and pulled it on. She didn’t need to check the gun to know it was loaded with a full clip, but there was no bullet in the chamber and the safety was on. She knew her weapon as well as she knew her own body. She kept her hand on the butt as she moved through the house into the kitchen, where she flipped on the light and then stood still, watching, listening.

The room was spotless. The dishes done, leftovers put away, the white ceramic-tiled counters gleaming. The back door was closed and still locked, its new windowpane still in place. Nothing seemed unusual or alarming.

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