Web of Smoke (24 page)

“I told her mother I wanted two hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “As soon as I get it, I’ll leave.”

“And do you honestly think she’ll have it? I checked her out. She doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”

“Your roots are showing, Mommy,” he said, getting some satisfaction from her angry flush. “She’ll get it. If not, I’ll dump the kid. I’m working on the house anyway.”

“The house? Are you insane or just too stupid to get it? You’re going to be in jail.”

“I’m not stupid and I’m not going to jail.”

“Did you know that your picture is in today’s paper?”

“Big deal. It’s on the news, too. I saw it. So did the three other people there with me. Nobody noticed. A picture’s nothing.”

“Get out while you can. Do something right for once. I’ll get you the money I promised. Take it and leave.”

DC opened another beer that he really didn’t want to drink and forced himself to take a swig. He wanted to take her offer. He knew she was right. But he’d cut his own throat before he’d admit it.

“Take your money and shove it. That’s not even pocket change.”

She shook her head, distaste on her face, disgust in her eyes. Snatching her purse off the table, she stomped to the door.

“You’re a fool, DC,” she called back.

“And you’re a bitch,
Mommy.”

The door slammed behind her. As the sound echoed through the deserted rooms, DC’s rage doubled back on him.

Who the fuck did she think she was?

He screamed his frustration and kicked the wall. The plaster chipped away, leaving a dent in the smooth surface. He pounded it again and again until the hole went through to the skeletal structure and his foot felt like a ball of fiery pain.

Why was this happening to him? How could it be that Mary Jane was dead? That her slut daughter owned his house? That he was stuck with a snot-nosed kid he couldn’t unload? And, once again, he was at the mercy of his mother’s whims?

He hollered to the ceiling, venting his anger at the walls.

He’d make them pay for this. All of them.

In his mind he pictured Mary Jane’s face. She had loved him. The one and only person in his life to care, and she was dead. The image of her smiling face faded into that of her daughter’s. From day one, Christie had looked at him like he was dirt. Worse. Like he was something to be scraped off the bottom of her shoes.

He slammed his fist, then his head, into the wall, aiming for her imagined face. He would even that score, too, before he left.

He would make them pay. All of them, starting with Christie McCoy.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Standing to the side, Mike waited for Kathy to quit fumbling with her keys. In then end, he took them from her and unlocked the door himself. In her quick glance he read appreciation and resentment. She was so proud. Too proud. It must have damn near killed her to have come to him in the first place. But then she’d come for Jessica, not herself. For Jessica, Kathy would do anything.

She tossed her purse on the low table just inside the door and stood hesitantly in her small living room, silent, as she’d been most of the day. Mike was still having trouble accepting this side of a woman who used to enjoy taunting and nagging him. Making him feel like a giant idiot.

She didn’t even seem like the same woman anymore.

She acted shy about having him in her house. He looked from the worn sofa to the scratched-up coffee table, remembering how it had looked when he’d first arrived on the scene. He’d been stunned to learn that the victims were Kathy and Jessica.

The carpet was stained near the kitchen, the spot a dark maroon that could only be blood. In the corner a big, plastic toy box overflowed with stuffed animals and plastic things molded in bright colors and strange shapes. A doll perched on top, looking lost without a little girl. He looked away, saddened by the sight.

Crime scenes had that effect on him. Seeing everything put back in place…a Teddy bear patiently waiting on a small bed, or a bicycle returned to the garage without its rider . . . the images swamped him with depression. To him, it said that no matter how normal things seem to be, crime and violence were always lurking around the corner. He wandered to Jessica’s bedroom, looking, searching, for the clue that must have been missed.

Where is Jessica?
he silently asked the fluffy stuffed cat curled in perpetual satisfaction on Jessica’s pillow. How could he even hope to find her? Where did he get off giving Kathy false hope?

He touched the pretty little-girl things that littered Jessica’s dresser. Miss Fancy perfume, nontoxic and even edible, caught his eye. He opened the lid and took a whiff, recognizing the scent that had sweetened Kathy’s skin today.

He capped the tiny bottle, giving the room another look. In his mind he could hear the laughter that he knew these walls had once contained. Over the imagined sound, he heard the screams that had scarred the small Jordan family and the violence that had separated them.

He had to find Jessica. He had to.

Returning to the living room, he found Kathy in the same place, quietly absorbing Jessica’s features from the framed pictures. She looked bewildered, her vacant gaze at odds with the determined angle of her chin. She stood, shoulders back, ready for battle, while soft, warm tears trickled over her lashes and careened down her cheeks. She cried quietly, her pain so great it seemed hollow, without sound.

Gradually, her gaze refocused on the room before her as she regained a consciousness of the present. Mike shuffled awkwardly, not sure what he should do. Not quite sure what was expected of him.

“Sometimes it’s just too much, Mike,” she murmured softly. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t even breathe. Like I don’t even want to try. To think of her out there, scared…hurt…who knows what….”

Another, more painful silence gripped them. He felt the need to say something positive, but his jaws felt like forged steel and his tongue like an oblong ice cube that refused to melt no matter how hot his face got.

“You did a good job today,” he offered, feeling ridiculous as soon as the words passed his lips.

She looked at him as if trying to determine what language he was speaking. “What?” she said with a frown.

“At Sissy Norman’s house. You kept quiet and didn’t crowd. We got a lead.”

“A lead? Is that what you call it?” She smiled without humor. “So what, Mike? It’s not going to matter. He’s probably not even in the country anymore. Who knows if Jessica’s even alive?”

“Hey, I can’t believe this,” he said. “You can’t give up.”

She stared at him a moment, as if considering his words. Her gaze drifted back to Jessica’s smiling face, peering from a golden-leafed tree. As she stared, the corners of her mouth tightened, her fists opened and closed. He watched as she collected her thoughts, storing her grief behind closed doors to be dealt with later. When she spoke her voice was low and strong.

“Give up? No way. I won’t ever give up.”

And I won’t either,
he swore to himself.

Their exchanged look sealed an unspoken pact, an unvoiced promise. Breaking the contact with a shaky smile, Kathy rubbed her arm with her hand. For the first time, he noticed her blouse was torn and blood speckled her sleeve.

“What happened to your arm?”

She shrugged. “Nothing.”

Moving closer, he pushed her hand out of the way to see the jagged scratch under the torn sleeve. It was an angry red and looked sore.

“When did this happen?”

“When I crawled through the window at Porter’s house,” she mumbled, looking down at her feet.

“What?
Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want you to make me wait in the car.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “Do you have something to clean this with? Hell, who knows what germs the rats brought in.”

The mention of rats turned her skin even paler and he cursed his big mouth. He always managed to say the wrong thing around her.

“There’s a first aid kit under the bathroom sink,” she said weakly. “I’ll get it.”

“I’ll get it,” he said standing. He gave his watch a quick glance. “Why don’t you turn on the TV? The news just started. Maybe we’ll hear something new.”

He returned with the kit, catching the tail end of the recount on Porter. The composite looked good. He gave Kathy an encouraging look just as the phone rang. Smiling, she answered.

An ominous silence told him something was wrong. She clutched the phone in a white-knuckled hand. Her face was pale and her eyes looked like huge, blue chips.

“Where is she?” she demanded of the caller, meeting Mike’s gaze across the room. She gestured to the police recorder set up on the counter. Mike hurried to switch it on. Cupping her hand over the receiver, she whispered, “It’s him!”

Mike listened to her voice, watching with a feeling of impotence as emotions of terror and anguish fought for control of her features. She begged to talk to Jessica; the plaintive plea was painful to hear. Mike watched helplessly, wanting nothing more than to jump down the phone line and shove his gun right up Porter’s ass. Instead he consoled himself with the knowledge that as long as DC Porter thought Kathy was alone, they had the advantage.

She hung up, shaken and pale, looking as if she’d just learned there would be no tomorrow. Mike replayed the tape, listening to the voice of DC Porter.

“Where am I going to get that kind of money?” she whispered, staring up at Mike.

He shook his head, not realizing that he intended to pull her into his protective embrace until he felt her fingers gripping his shoulder and her tears burning hot through his shirt. Her sobs rocked through her, her agony vibrating against him. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever felt so powerless as he did now, listening to her weep and knowing that if he’d had the support of the department, he might have been able to locate Jessica already. Then her mother wouldn’t have to endure this suffering.

She sniffled and pulled away from him. “I don’t have time to cry. My baby needs me, and I don’t care if I have to pound down every door in this city, I will find her.”

Her words triggered some switch in the back of his mind that started a tiny brain-buzzer humming. He was missing something, something of vital importance. What? He chased it around his head for a moment, but it eluded him, niggling, like an itch that couldn’t be reached.

Kathy went around the kitchen counter, whipping off a paper towel to wipe her nose. She ran some water over her fingers and pressed them to her eyes, splashing some more on her face.

“Let me take a look at your arm, Kathy,” he said, reluctantly backing off from the worrisome tick gnawing on his mind.

“There isn’t time,” she snapped. “I’ve got to get moving.”

“Moving isn’t going to do you any good if you drop dead from blood poisoning. It’s only going to take a second, then we’ll come up with a plan.”

“Plan? Plan? What the hell kind of plan?” Her voice rose with hysteria, her cheeks flushing from deathly white to heart-attack red. “What good is a plan going to do me?”

She hiccupped, staring at him with wild eyes. He waited her out, letting her hurl angry words his way until she ran out. By degrees, she recovered her composure, straightening her shoulders, raising her chin. She mumbled an apology, staring at him through eyes that gleamed a dull and troubled gray.

He gripped her shoulders lightly between his palms, startled again by his initiation of physical contact with her, but feeling that nothing less than touching would get through to her. She looked into his eyes.

“We’re going to find Jessica,” he said, holding her until she gave him an agreeing nod. “Now, let me look at your arm.”

She plopped into a chair and unbuttoned her blouse far enough to ease her arm out. Pretending an intense interest in the first aid kit, Mike tried to keep his gaze from the creamy skin of her shoulder and soft curves below.

The gash was deep and painful-looking, dried blood trailing from shoulder to elbow. It must have ached all day. He felt another spark of admiration gleam its way through his murky preconceptions about her. She could take it as well as any man.

He cleaned up the wound and crisscrossed bandages over it. The end result looked childishly inept, but it would do. When he finished, she turned her arm to see. A grin tugged at her lips and thawed her eyes a little.

“Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a moment longer, either too tired or too uncertain to move. His stomach growled loudly, the sound echoing in the quiet room.

“You’re hungry,” she said.

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I can’t eat. I can’t keep it down.”

“You should try. You can’t live on pain, Kathy, it’ll run you into the ground. Let’s stop on the way and get something.”

“On the way where?”

He shrugged. “If we’re going to pound on doors we gotta start somewhere. I’ll swing into a drive-thru—”

He froze, the nagging thought racing circles in his head stopped and became crystal clear.

“Better yet, let’s have pizza.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I’m hungry,” Sam said, dropping a kiss on Christie’s nose as he stood.

“We just ate.”

Grabbing his pants, he headed for the kitchen. “All that exercise worked up an appetite,” he said.

Wrapped in the warmth of lovemaking, Christie went upstairs to change into a pair of worn blue jeans and an oversized, cotton pullover that ended mid-thigh. When she came back downstairs, Sam was whistling. He looked up from the refrigerator with a sexy grin that left her feeling quivery.

The sight of him, barefoot, bare-chested, and rumpled, made her smile. In his hands he balanced a container of assorted deli meats and cheeses with a bottle of wine tucked under his arm. Plopping it all on the counter, he grabbed her around the waist and kissed her.

He turned away, reaching for a loaf of bread, but she grabbed him by the belt loops and pulled him back for another kiss. When she let him go, she felt lightheaded and totally pleased with herself.