Silent Night (13 page)

T
UCKER STOPPED IN
front of his house and killed the engine. His bone-weary sigh echoed through the squad car’s cabin. Miranda knew she should excuse herself. She was just as tired, nearly frozen, and covered in muck. However, instead of making a quiet escape, she sat quietly, watching Tucker.

His eyes were closed. Dirt smudged the shadowed stubble along his jaw. The slow, steady rise and fall of his chest made her wonder if he’d fallen asleep. He looked so at peace. The deep grooves on his forehead were gone. As were the lines around his eyes. The ever-present tic that had taken up residence along his jaw since he learned who she was no longer pulsed.

Today had been horrible. She’d been so wet and cold and dirty. Despite that, she’d enjoyed every minute of it because Tucker had allowed her to work by his side. To help with the case, all legal-like. They didn’t have any answers, and other than the medallion she’d found, they’d come up empty, but it was something, and she felt damned good about it—even if Tucker kept trying to tamp down on her excitement by reminding her that it might not belong to the killer.

The cold seeped into the interior of the cruiser. She reached out to shake him awake. Before her hand could connect with his shoulder, his head turned and she found herself lost in those soulful eyes.

“What?”

She dropped her hand. “I, um, thought you’d . . . Thanks for letting me help today.”

A tiny smile pulled at his lips, disappearing as quickly as it appeared. “Did I have a choice?”

Miranda grinned. “You could have locked me in a cell.”

That made him laugh. “Not sure it would have been enough to keep you contained. You do have a habit of screwing up my crime scenes.”

“Hey.” She held up her hands. “Didn’t touch a single thing this time.”

“This time,” he repeated, but she liked the smile she heard in his voice even if she couldn’t see it. “Let’s get you inside. I think you look worse than I feel.”

“Such flattery won’t get you invited in for coffee.”

“I think I’m going to hit something a little stronger.” When he looked at her again, a deep sadness filled his eyes. “Sometimes I really hate this job.”

“If you hate it so much, why did you become a cop?”

“I don’t hate being a cop.”

“But you said . . .”

“That I hate the job. Days like today when we’re looking for evidence remind me why I became a cop in the first place. And with it always comes memories I’d much rather not visit again.”

She waited for him to continue. His brow furrowed, the deep grooves returning. She was sorry she’d asked the question now. Sorry to be the reason he was remembering whatever he was remembering.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

He shrugged. “It’s not a secret. My sister Olivia went missing when I was fifteen. It took three days of combing the woods and vacant houses before we found her. Doing the grid search today reminds me of that night. I couldn’t do anything to prevent what happened to Olivia, but I knew that I could help others.”

“She was . . . Was she de—”

“Dead? Yeah.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “My dad buried himself in work, and my mother gave her grief to her pursuit of social climbing. Me and Gloria . . . we were left to deal the best way we could. She got married, had kids. I joined the force.”

“Gloria is your sister also?”

He nodded. “Two years younger than me and a hell of a lot stronger. They don’t like what I do. A civil servant in the family doesn’t compute. Gloria finally accepted it, though.”

Miranda’s throat went dry and she felt the burn of tears behind her eyes. She’d thought Bobby sitting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit was horrible. What Tucker had gone through was a million times worse. At least her brother was still alive, still had a chance at freedom.

She reached across the console and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”

When she tried to pull her hand back, he gripped it tighter. His fingers were ice-cold.

She didn’t know how long they stayed that way, but when his hand finally moved, it felt a bit warmer.

“So,” he said, sounding a bit awkward. “I have whiskey waiting for me.”

He stared at her so intently, she thought for a moment that he might kiss her. When he leaned in, she licked her lips, uncertain whether she wanted to move in to meet him more quickly or run for her life. His hand reached across her belly, and pushed her door open.

No kiss. Disappointment cleared up her confused feelings. She’d wanted him to kiss her. Damn it.

“Good night, Miranda.”

Before she could respond, he was out of the car, gathering his gear from the trunk. She stepped into the icy wind. “Hey, Tuck? You would have given anything to save her.”

“Yes, I would have.”

“Then maybe you can understand why I’m doing this for Bobby. I’d do anything to save him, too.”

T
UCKER HANDED THE
evidence bag to Andy and watched the lieutenant leave with the same bubble of hope in his eyes that Tucker had seen in Miranda’s yesterday. In a few minutes, Andy would be on his way to the Knoxville crime lab to see if they could place the medallion they’d found. Hopefully, in a few days, he’d have something new to look into.

But as he’d told Miranda, anyone could have dropped the pendant. Just because it had been found in the pile of rocks where they’d collected blood samples didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The hope remained anyway.

He sat at his desk, sipping his coffee, opened the folder containing the copies he’d made of Miranda’s clippings, and dropped them. God, he’d almost kissed her last night. What the hell had he been thinking?

Her desperation to help with the search had really gotten to him. Her need to help someone she loved . . . She wasn’t a liar by nature. He knew that much. Any deception she might have taken part in had been done for what, in her eyes, had been a greater good.

He couldn’t completely fault her for that. If Olivia’s killer hadn’t been caught and convicted, he might have done the same thing.

And damn it, he liked Miranda.

A lot.

And what happened if she was right? If Anatole really was a murderer, he had to know. Political correctness wouldn’t get him very far if he remained tentative about stepping on the church’s toes.

If she wasn’t right, and he did accuse Anatole . . .

He was pretty sure he was developing an ulcer.

Opening the file again, he studied Miranda’s clippings of the three victims found in Dayton. Different hair color, similar builds, perhaps, but only in the sense that none of them was particularly overweight or too thin. And they were from different walks of life for sure—a janitor, an IT specialist, and a bank manager.

He pulled out his cell and called Sergeant Franks. “It’s Ambrose. Where are you?”

“Heading back to the station now. Had a tourist with a flat. Stopped to help. Talked to the local jewelry maker in town. Says that rosary is from an overstock Web site and very popular. He sells at least a hundred a week.”

“Get with the Levis. See if they remember what Michael was wearing the night he was killed and then head to the town dump to look for anything that matches their description.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

He hung up and dropped the phone back in his pocket as the door opened and Lisa stuck her head in. “Got a minute?” He nodded and she stepped inside holding a large cardboard box. “Think these are the files from Dayton you’ve been waiting on.”

Tucker relieved Lisa of her burden and placed the box in the corner by his desk. When she made no move to leave, he asked, “Everything okay?”

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Her face scrunched in that way he’d come to learn meant she had something to say that she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like.

“Out with it.”

She sighed. “Don’t be mad, but . . . how much do you know about that Miranda woman you picked up for the B and E?”

He tensed and raised a brow at her. “How much do
you
know?”

“Would be less than nothing if I hadn’t taken her to dinner the other ni—”

“You what?” The question exploded from Tucker’s throat so loud, Lisa jumped.

“Good Lord, I didn’t break any laws. I took the woman to dinner. What the hell is wrong with you?”

He inhaled, hoping to suck in a bit of patience along with the stale, office air. Miranda hadn’t mentioned any of this to him yesterday. Not that it was really his business or anything, but . . . he didn’t like Lisa nosing around his private life, and he couldn’t think of another reason that she’d reach out to someone she knew perfectly well had caused trouble for the department twice.

“Nothing. I just . . . why would you do that?”

“She was in line for Eddie’s nuts, that’s why. And because I’m curious. Let’s face it, Tuck. I haven’t seen you frown so much as I have since that girl came to town. I wanted to know why.”

If Miranda told Lisa her story before he’d had a chance to feel out every corner of it, he’d have the dispatcher breathing down his neck every damned moment of every damned day. Lisa was a girl’s girl, and if she took a liking to Miranda Harley, she was going to fight right alongside her if she thought even half of what Miranda said was true.

Tucker opened his mouth to respond, but she held up a hand to cut him off. “Hear me out before you blow another gasket.”

She wasn’t going to let this go until she’d said her piece. He shut his mouth.

“I wanted to know why she’d gotten under your skin so quickly. Sadly, that woman is as tight-lipped about her life as you are about her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like meddling people, either.”

She glared. “I bought her dinner and told her about myself first. Since you like her, I wanted to find out what her story was. If you spend half a minute talking to her, it’s obvious she’s hiding something. Something we might need to know.”

“What makes you think I like her?”

She rolled her eyes.

There were times when Lisa forgot that just because they were like family, it didn’t give her the right to pry into his business. Before he could growl out a lecture, she rambled on.

“Funny, but I couldn’t find any Miranda Harleys living in Ohio that matched our new tourist. But I did a Google search—I know, not a reliable source—but, look. That’s her. She had red hair, but that’s her.”

Tucker scanned the printed document and accompanying color photo. It was their Miranda, all right. Redheaded and dirty and surrounded by kids in a tropical location. The caption read,
American medical team Dr. Seamus Connor and his nurse, Miranda Harley, traveled all the way from California to administer free vaccinations to this small town in Bolivia.

Lisa pulled out some more papers. “So I followed links from there until I found her education information. I was able to trace all the way to her senior yearbook at Lowell High School in San Francisco.” She held up a black-and-white printout of Miranda slightly turned away from the camera, a bead of pearls around her neck above the scooped collar of her senior portrait gown. “Check out the next one. Look who’s standing beside her in the photography club.”

She traced her finger along the caption of the group photo.

Bottom left: Jeff Disick, Shane Smalley, Miranda Harley, Robert Harley.

Tucker rubbed his neck, feeling a well of guilt over Lisa’s obvious excitement over her discovery. When she found out he already knew, she was going to be the one who blew a gasket.

“Lisa—”

“No, listen. That’s not all. I did another search for any Harleys in Ohio since she told me she had a brother there and I found him. It was in all the papers a while back. He’s—”

He sighed. Time to come clean. “The Rosary Killer.”

“Right and—wait, what?” The pink flush of excitement drained from Lisa’s cheeks and her face fell. “You know?”

“Yeah, Miranda told me what he’s been accused of, but—”

“Not accused of.
Convicted
of. Big difference. Why—why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m trying to stay open-minded until I review all the evidence. Miranda thinks they convicted the wrong man, but she’s a desperate sister and I’m not naïve to that.”

“Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” Lisa braced herself against the desk to glare at him. “Her brother murdered three men. Three, Tuck. We haven’t had a murder in Christmas in . . . in . . . hell, even I don’t know when. She comes into town and suddenly we have a dead man. And not just any dead guy, but the mayor’s son. Did it occur to you that she could have something to do with it?”

Tucker raised his brows. “You’re the one who said she was too small to have killed a man like that.”

“That was before I found out who she was.” She crossed her arms. “You should’ve told us.”

“And I would have. Just as soon as I had something to share.”

“Fine. Share why she’s here.”

Tucker really didn’t want to get into the whys of Miranda Harley right now. However, since Lisa had already uncovered Miranda’s history, there wasn’t a need to keep the last of the details a secret. “She thinks her brother was framed.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “By someone in our town? Let me guess, she thinks it’s someone at the church and that’s why she was breaking in.”

He didn’t bother to answer. It only took a few seconds before Lisa put the pieces together. Her eyes widened and she looked toward the door to make sure it was closed before whispering, “She honestly thinks a priest or one of the deacons had something to do with setting her brother up? Don’t tell me you believe her? That’s just crazy.”

“Father Anatole, to be exact. And I don’t know what to believe since I don’t know the facts.” He gestured to the box she’d brought in. “I’m hoping that whatever’s in there will help me out with that.”

“Her brother is sitting in jail, tried and convicted of murder. That’s all the facts we need.”

“And what about Michael Levi? Some of the details about his murder match those of the men killed in Dayton. Don’t we owe it to Michael to look at every possibility, even the crazy ones?”