Darker Than Midnight (19 page)

“I don't know.”

Nodding slowly, Jax said, “I think we need to find out. Let's get home, huh? We still need to go through the rest of Frankie's tome, and it's already late.”

He nodded and they got back into her car, Rex making snowy pawprints on the back seat. Once inside, he shook himself, and droplets flew everywhere. In the front, River and Jax both ducked and laughed. They met each other's eyes for just a moment, and both fell silent as their smiles died. Jax pulled her seat belt around her, buckled it up and got the car underway. It was stupid, what she was feeling. She'd never
been one to deny her physical urges out of any sense of guilt or the silly notion that good girls didn't do those things. She enjoyed sex. And every once in a while, she had sex, and she never let it mean a damn thing.

The fact that she barely knew the man didn't bother her so much. She just felt a little guilty. He was still weak, and pretty messed up over all that had happened to him. He was vulnerable. A guy like that was liable to read more into casual sex than she would like. He was liable to get clingy. Needy. Romantic.

The notion made her stomach heave.

She really should just get the idea right out of her head.

But damn, she wanted to jump his bones before this was over.

They pulled into the driveway a half hour later. Jax looked around to be sure no one was in sight—of course no one was. Who would be lurking on a dark country road in the middle of a winter night? No one, that's who. She gave River a nod, and he got out, came around the car to where she stood with Rex, and the three of them walked up onto the porch.

Jax reached for the doorknob, keys in hand, then stopped short at Rex's low, menacing growl.

She looked from the dog to River. “What—?”

“Shh.” He put a finger to his lips and reached for the door himself. His hand covered the knob. He whispered, “It's unlocked.”

“Don't move a muscle,” she told him. Then she tiptoed down the steps, dashed to the car and snagged her spare piece from the glove compartment. It was another .45, identical to the one she carried. She hurried back to the porch and put it into his hand.

He looked surprised, but there was no time to be. Jax drew her handgun from its holster, held it barrel up, her back to the wall beside the door. She met River's eyes, nodded once.

He flung the door open, and the two of them entered, guns leading the way. He went high and to the right, she went low and to the left, both scanning the room, each alert for any threat to the other.

Rex raced past them, hurrying through the house, but not running. Just sniffing everything he came to. His growl had faded, and he wasn't barking.

When it seemed there was no one nearby, River hit the light switch. Jax looked around her house. The cushions were off the sofa, the screen away from the fireplace, ashes scattered as if someone had been digging for buried treasure. The throw rug had been yanked up and lay in a corner, folded over itself. In the kitchen every cupboard had been opened, and items yanked out. They lay all over the counter and floor, flour and rice spilled everywhere. The fridge was much the same.

She looked at the cellar door. Swallowed hard.

“Rex,” River said.

The dog bounded to his side instantly. “Let's see how much you remember, huh, pal?” Then he opened the cellar door. “Find the man!”

Rex woofed loudly and bounded down the stairs.

R
ex was gone only moments, before he returned to the top of the stairs and sat at River's feet. “Good boy,” River said, stroking the dog. He lowered the gun. “The house is clear.”

“I agree with you, but we probably ought to check upstairs, just to be sure.” Jax glanced at the dog. “You think he'd obey me?”

“I don't know. I was kind of surprised he remembered for me. But you can try.”

River walked with her into the living room, the dog lumbering between them, looking from one to the other, his entire posture expectant.

“It's like he knows we're going to tell him to do something,” Jax said.

River nodded. “It's his favorite game—though he prefers actually finding someone.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you don't mind, Rex, but I prefer you don't.” She stopped at the foot of the stairs. Rex stopped, too, sat obediently and looked to River.

Jax said, “Rex! Find the man, Rex. Find the man.” She pointed up the stairway, and the dog gave a happy yip and ran up the stairs. She followed, and watched him going down the hall, nose to the floor, then in the air. He entered each bedroom, and as he did, she saw the mess the intruder had left, and her heart sank.

“God, whoever it was, they trashed the place.”

“Whoever it was, they know you have a man staying with you,” River added. He nodded at the pile of clothing strewn about the bedroom floor. “This isn't good, Cassandra.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “Hey, I can always say I got hard up and brought home some local for a roll in the sheets.”

Rex returned and sat at her feet. “That's a good dog, Rex. Good boy.” She stroked and petted him, and he seemed to bask in the attention. “We should give him a treat.”

“Yeah. And clean up this mess. But I think the most important thing is to figure out who did this.” River sighed. “Maybe you should call Frankie.”

She shook her head. “Then she'd have the boys out here snooping around. No, I think we'd better keep this to ourselves until we know what's going on.”

“You could be in danger,” he said. “If whoever was trying to kill me in the hospital has somehow tracked me down here—”

“We're two armed cops, River. Good ones.” Rex lifted a paw and pressed it to her thigh, probably because she'd stopped petting him, but it made her smile. “Sorry, Rex. Make that three. No one's gonna mess with us. They try and I'll be happy to rip out their liver.”

River sighed. “Hell. That orderly's uniform was in here. And the ID badge. If they found it—”

“They didn't.”

He looked at her, frowning. “How do you know?”

“I took it, River. Name badge, shoes, everything you were wearing that night. It's sealed in a plastic bag and stashed off-site. So's the knife by now.”

He held her gaze for a moment. “What about the case file?”

“Hell.” She ran downstairs and checked in the coat closet. Then lowered her head in defeat. She turned, saw him at the top of the stairs, waiting. “It's gone.”

“Dammit.”

“Doesn't matter. I'm working the case. My having copies of the file isn't all that shocking.”

“You
are
working the case,” he said as she moved back up the stairs. “You've been collecting evidence all along. The knife, the orderly's clothes…”

“Still am,” she said. “I may get busted for not turning you in immediately, but they won't get me for sloppy police work. Not ever.”

“I believe that.” He moved into the bedroom, began picking things up.

She joined him, secretly thanking the Fates she'd taken the additional files from Frankie's private investigation with them tonight. She'd hate to drag her friend into the trouble she might be creating for herself. It was bad enough someone knew she'd brought home copies of the official files.

When they'd finished restoring the upstairs to order, they moved below. Jax made sure every curtain was drawn and every door locked, though whoever had come in had made short work of the lock on the front door earlier tonight. She'd need new ones, good ones. She made a mental note.

When they'd finally finished, she brewed a pot of tea, and they sat in front of the fireplace, with Frankie's files spread out on the floor between them. Rex lay close enough to River that the dog's head touched his thigh. The big shepherd didn't like to get too far from his favorite guy. She didn't blame him, Jax thought.

She cleared her throat and averted her eyes when River caught them on his face. “You know, the D.A. didn't even insist on having a second opinion on your case before accepting your insanity plea?”

“I know.”

“Don't you find that unusual? In my sister's case the state put on three experts to counter Dunkirk's shrink. The defense put on five in his favor.” She shook her head. “Those five all believed his phony mental illness. Quacks.”

River sighed. “You don't like psychiatrists.”

“Don't trust 'em,” she said.

“In my case, I think it helped that Ethan was the chief of psychiatry at the state hospital. And it didn't hurt that he was a friend of the D.A. Not to mention the governor.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “He's that connected?”

“Victoria's family is one of the most prominent in the state. She sits on the board of directors at the state hospital.”

“Hmm, no wonder he's head shrink there, then.”

River nodded. “He married very well.”

She set her folder down, leaned back on her hands and stretched her legs out in front of her. “Tell me about you and Ethan. About your friendship. You were always close?”

“No, not always. I was a jock. He was…not.”

“Nerd?”

“Genius would be the more accurate term. But yeah, he had that bookish thing going on. Hated sports. I think he might have grown to like athletics in time if his father hadn't pushed so hard.”

“His father was a jock?”

“His father was my high school football coach. He was good, too. Played in college, was drafted by New England in his senior year, but he took a bad hit and blew out his knee his first time on the field. He couldn't play again after that.”

“That's heartbreaking. So he turned to coaching.”

River nodded. “He got himself qualified as a phys ed teacher and coached on the side. That's how I got to know him. I wasn't on his team yet, just played for my middle school team. But he took notice of me. My grades were bad, I was in danger of being ineligible to play. He hooked me up with a tutor. His son, Ethan.”

She nodded. “Doesn't sound like the beginning of a great friendship.”

“It wasn't at first. Hell, I think Ethan was a little jealous of me for a while.”

“Over his father?”

River nodded. “Not for long, though. We got close. Really close. We were like brothers. Even before my parents died and his family took me in.”

He pulled out a folder, looked at it briefly, then closed his eyes and set it on the floor. It was the autopsy report. Jax swallowed the dryness in her throat. She didn't want to look at the damn thing, but supposed they would have to sooner or later.

“How did your parents die, River?”

He looked from the folder to her face. “Car wreck. On their way home from celebrating their twentieth anniversary.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head. “Skid marks showed another car met them head-on. They went off the road and rolled over. The other car never stopped. They figured it was a drunk driver, but they never got him.” He lowered his head. “That's when I decided to become a cop. So I could put people like that away. And I don't know—maybe I thought someday I'd get the bastard who killed them.”

“How old were you?”

“I was twelve.”

He met her eyes, and she saw in them a perfect reflection of her own childhood grief. Her own tragic loss. The pain that never went away. “At least I still had my parents,” she said softly.

He turned his hand in hers, and held it. “No you didn't,” he said. “Not really. But I had Ethan. And Ellen and Joe, his parents. But mostly, Ethan. I don't know what the hell I'd have done without him.”

She nodded. “So there was no more jealousy, no competition between you, after that?”

A little of the grief faded from his eyes. “There was always that. But it was good-natured, you know? Like him daring me with the canoe in the rapids.”

“That was a dare that almost got you killed, River,” she said softly.

He nodded. “Yeah, but he couldn't have known that. You should have seen him. He was more scared than I was. No, our rivalry was more like a running joke. We both knew he had it all over me in every way that mattered.”

“Did he?”

River nodded. “Oh, hell yes. He won all the awards, got all the scholarships, graduated valedictorian of our class, and went on to Harvard. Married into one of the most prominent families in the Northeast.” He smiled. “I was just a cop.”

She nodded. “Do you still stay in touch with his family?”

River's grip on her hand tightened. “Not since…” He licked his lips, cleared his throat. “They were as fond of Steph as they were of me. I haven't heard from any of them since her death. I don't blame them. They believe I killed her. It's…”

“I don't believe you killed her,” Jax said softly.

“You don't want to believe it. You want me to be your chance to right an old wrong. But you know saving me isn't going to bring Dunkirk back from the dead, or undo what your father did.”

“You think that's all this is about? Some kind of third-party act of contrition?”

He took his hand away from hers. “That's all it can be about.”

“You don't know me very well if you believe that.”

“And you don't know me at all. Cassandra, I can't…there can't be anything between us.”

The fire snapped, warming her face. She probed his eyes and saw everything she was feeling reflected back at her from their depths. And instead of acknowledging it, she said, “Oh, come on with the melodramatic bullshit. There already is something between us, River. Physical attraction. Nothing scary. Nothing earth-shattering. Just that.”

He closed his eyes. “I can't…”

“Yeah, well. I'm liable to wear you down, you stick around long enough. I can be a real pain in the ass that way.”

He smiled, letting her teasing humor break the tension. She was pretty sure he knew she was only half-kidding. Then he looked at the file folder again, and his smile died. “Let's get this over with, huh? We both need some sleep.”

“Okay.” She moved closer to him on the floor, the better to see inside the folder.

He braced himself visibly and flipped it open. Autopsy photos. White flesh. Closed eyes. Singed hair. Burns in places, but not to any great extent. Not to the extent that the fire had killed her. The smoke probably got to her first, and Jax thought that was fortunate.

River was frozen, staring at the photos. Not blinking. Jax reached for them, gathered them up and took them away. She set them facedown on the floor beside her. “River? You okay?”

He was so still she thought he might have slipped into another blackout. But he drew a sudden breath, nodded once, firmly. “I'm okay.”

She nodded, too, and then leaned over the folder. They read together in silence. The pages described the condition of Stephanie Corbett's remains in excruciating detail. Third degree burns to the arms and back and face. A blunt trauma injury to the head, more likely from a blow than a fall. Cause of death had been smoke inhalation, but the means of death was listed as homicide.

Then came the part about the child she'd been carrying. Approximately twelve weeks gestation. Normal weight and size, apparently healthy, and male.

River rocked backward, pressing his hands to his head. “It was a boy. They never told me.”

“I'm so sorry,” she whispered.

“I couldn't have done this. I couldn't have killed my own baby.”

“You didn't.”

“We don't know that.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I'm sorry, River, but I'm afraid we do. Look at this.”

He lowered his hands from his face, and she glimpsed the unshed tears shimmering in his eyes. Blinking them away, he leaned over the paper and read the lines that began near the tip of her finger.

Then he blinked up at her, looking more confused than she'd ever seen anyone look. “That can't be right.”

“I imagine it was double-checked. They wouldn't put something like that in here without being sure. The child your wife was carrying wasn't yours, River.”

Something smashed, and they both jumped to their feet. But it was only a coffee mug someone had left on the windowsill on the constantly cold side of the room. It must have fallen to the floor and broken.