LOVING HER SOUL MATE (31 page)

They sat at her small kitchen table.
 
The silence in the room made even their least
movement sound loud.

“Are you sure about this, Shay?”
 
John asked her, his blue eyes so troubled
they were troubling Shay.

“I’m positive,” she said.
 
“My parents have been asking me to come ever
since that night.
 
They’ve been begging
me to come.
 
But I kept telling them
no.
 
I kept telling them that I was
fine.
 
But I’m not fine, John.
 
I still feel as terrified as I did the night
it happened.
 
I need some time away.”

He reached for her hand and placed it in his.
 
Only his hand was shaking.
 
“When will I see you again?”

“We can still see each other,” she said with great hope.
 
“I’m only moving to Philadelphia, not out of
the country.
 
Of course we’ll still see
each other.”

“But are you sure you can’t just go for a few days
and come back?” John asked her.
 

“Yes, John,” she said.
 
“I’m certain.
 
I’ll be back, I promise you,
I’ll
come
back.
 
But right now it’s all still too
raw, it’s still too painful.
 
Remember
when your son died and you had to get out of Baton Rouge?
 
How you said you could feel the pain in the
air itself?
 
That’s how I feel.
 
I’ve got to leave.
 
At least until the rawness of it wears
off.”
 

If it
ever wears off
, John thought sadly.
  
Then he looked into Shay’s big, bright
eyes.
 
Tears began to well up in
his.
 
“I’m going to miss you so much,” he
said, and Shay quickly jumped from her seat and hurried to his.
 
He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped her
into his strong, muscular arms.
 
He
squeezed his eyes shut as he held her.

They sat there, hating the position life had put
them in, but understanding there was no other way.
 
She had to leave, to regroup now, while she
still could.
 
John understood that.
 
Then he garnered the strength to lean back
and
look
her in her eyes again.

“Do you want me to go with you?” he asked her.

Shay smiled and placed her small hand on the side
of his face.
 
“Yeah, I can see you staying
at my parents’ home with me like some teenager.
 
No, babe,” she said.
 
“That’ll
only make it worse.
 
The people of this
town need you on the job.
 
And you need
your job.
 
And I need to know that you’ll
be okay.”

“But I can’t bear knowing that you’ll be alone in
some strange city---”

“It’s not a strange city.
 
It’s my parents’ home.
 
And I won’t be alone.
 
I’ll be fine, John.
 
I just need time to exhale, that’s all.
 
And soon the sting won’t sting anymore, for
both of us, and I’ll come back.”

John smiled too, revealing, Shay thought sadly,
every second of his thirty-seven years.
 
He reached over and kissed her long and sweet and desperately on her
lips.
 
Then, when their lips parted, he
nodded his head.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“You’ll go to Philly, spend some time with
your parents, and then you’ll come back to me.”

It sounded like a definite plan, a good plan, but
it wasn’t a plan at all.
 
Just hollow words.
 
Just words to make it through the moment.
 
And somehow, in that deep recess of their
hearts that they weren’t able to even acknowledge right now, they both knew it.

They kissed again, and held each other again, as if
they were still determined, despite the odds, despite those hollow words, to
keep their love alive.

THIRTEEN

Two Years Later

“Sure you don’t want cheese in
those grits?” Faylene asked John Malone as she poured fresh coffee in his
coffee cup and marveled at the man who ate his breakfast, same time every
morning, same spot at the counter, inside her popular diner.
 
It was a scorching day already in Brady and
his suit coat was in his car.
 
But even
in his long-sleeved, pristine-pressed white dress shirt Faylene could still see
the stark definition of his ripped abs and those mighty biceps she always
dreamed of squeezing.
 
And even after he
turned down her offer of cheese, and continued to eat his breakfast, she
lingered behind the counter anyway.
 
Before Blair died she used to envy that woman so much.
 
She had herself a real man and didn’t seem to
appreciate it.
 
Now that Blair was long
gone Faylene was determined to take her spot.
 
But she knew, with John Malone, she had to tread lightly.

“I heard y’all found another girl
last night over on Hash Street,” she said, her light blue eyes staring into his
dark blue ones.
 
“Please tell me it ain’t
true.”

John chomped down the last of his
bacon and sipped from his freshly brewed coffee, inwardly warmed by the smooth,
clean taste.
 
He could always count on
Faylene to give him great coffee and good conversation every time he stepped
foot into her establishment.
 
He could
also count on her to flirt with him.

“You know I don’t discuss my
cases,” he said, glancing down at her breasts, her implants like massive mounds
bunched together and jutting from the top tip of her white blouse, threatening
to break free.
 
Faylene was a beauty, a
woman considered a blonde bombshell around these parts, but her appearance,
with the big hair and the big breasts and the overt flirtatiousness, was a tad
too much for John’s taste.
 
He thought
about screwing her many times in the past, certain that she would be a more
than willing bedmate, but he always decided against it.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” she
asked.
 
“Y’all did find another one last
night?”

John sat his coffee on the
saucer.
 
“Yes,” he admitted.
 
“But it’s not the same m.o.
  
The thirteen women Willie Glazer’s soon to
go on trial for killing were duct taped, strangled, raped.
 
And they were all prostitutes from
Dodge.
 
That wasn’t the case with the
girl we found last night.”

“She wasn’t found in Dodge, but
over on Hash Street, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Was she strangled too?”

“No.
 
She was stabbed, but don’t you go blabbing
that around, Fay.”

“But some in this town already
declaring Glazer’s innocent, and the fact that there’s been another girl killed
only proves that Glazer didn’t do those other thirteen killings.
 
They gonna lump that new dead girl in with
the ones he’s about to go on trial for killing.”

“You just stay out of it,” John
said, pointing his fork.
 
“I don’t want you
talking it up with your customers all day long, Faylene, now I mean it.
 
The last thing I need is for these folks
around here to start believing we arrested the wrong man.”

“Some blacks already believe
it.
 
From what I hear they’re planning
some kind of protest march all the way to the courthouse when the trial
begins.”

John didn’t want to be reminded of
that headache.
 
The last thing this
powder keg of a town needed right now was some protest march, and he’d already
made that clear to the town’s black leadership.
 
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he said.
 
“You have too little information to be
gossiping about any of this right now.”

Faylene placed her hand on her
considerable hip and smiled.
 
“Do I look
like a gossiper to you?”

John quickly nodded his head.
“Yes,” he said with a smile of his own.
 

Faylene laughed that booming laugh
of hers and winked at John just as one of the younger waitresses walked up
beside her.

“Faylene,” the waitress said,
“what I’m supposed to do with this?”
 
She
was holding up a newspaper coupon.

“Don’t you see me and the chief
talking?”

“Yes, ma’am, but she won’t take no
for an answer.”

Faylene frowned.
 
“Who won’t take no for an
answer?”

“That lady
over there in the big hat.
 
I told her we ain’t running this special no
more but she says it was in today’s paper and it didn’t have
no
expiration date and she expects us to honor it.”

Faylene sighed.
 
“I’m not the boss, John,” she said as she
reluctantly took the coupon from the waitress’s hand.
 
“They don’t work for me.
 
I work for them.”

John snorted, drank more of his
coffee.
 
The waitress, some brown-eyed
young redhead with freckles out of this world and stacked high breasts to rival
Faylene’s, gave him one of those
yes, I’m
available
smiles he knew so well.
 
She was barely eighteen, young enough to be his daughter, but was flirty
as hell.
 
That was the problem in
Brady.
 
Far too many
unattached women, far too few unattached men.
 
And an unattached man like John Malone was
considered the top of the heap.

“I told Ray over at the Tribune
not to run this anymore,” Faylene said.
 
“But that douche bag does it anyway.”

 
“Can we honor it?” the waitress asked.

“We have no choice,” Faylene said,
handing the coupon back to her.
 
“I’ll
call the Trib later and give them a good cussing out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the waitress said
with a smile and left.
 
Everybody knew
what kind of potty mouth Faylene could have.
 

John’s cell phone began to buzz
just as the waitress left.
 
He pulled it
out, checked the Caller ID.

“But really, John,” Faylene said, “we’re
talking another dead girl here, even with Willie Glazer in jail.
 
Don’t you think it’s time for people to start
panicking?”

“No, I do not,” John said.
 
“This is Malone,” he said into his phone.

“There’s been a car wreck over on
Bainerd, sir,” the voice on the other end said.

John frowned.
 
“Who the hell is this?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir.
 
I’m Officer Malvaney, sir.”
 

Malvaney
?
John thought.
 
Who the hell is Malvaney
?
 

“I’m new,” Malvaney answered his
unasked question.

“And what is it again?” John asked
him.

“There’s been an accident over on
Bainerd.
 
I was told you’d want to know.”

“How many
casualties?”

“Casualties,
sir?
 
Oh, no, sir.
 
No casualties.
 
It wasn’t that kind of accident.
 
One car was pretty badly banged up, but it’s
basically a fender bender.”

John could hardly believe it.
 
His men knew better than to disturb him at
breakfast unless it was vital.
 
“Why
would I want to know about some fender bender, Malvaney?”

“Captain Yannick told me to phone
you.”

“Is Craig there?”

“No, sir.
 
I called the station and
he told me to phone you.”

“You still haven’t answered my
question.
 
Why are you interrupting my
breakfast over some
got
damn fender
bender?”

Faylene smiled.
 
John was a lot of things, but patient wasn’t
one of them.

The officer, however, didn’t skip
a beat.
 
“Because Shay Turner is
involved, sir,” he said.