The Next Widow: A gripping crime thriller with unputdownable suspense (Jericho and Wright Thrillers Book 1)

by CJ Lyons

  “You really think grief is something you can schedule later like a dentist appointment? It’s not a timeline or appointment or even measurable stages. It’s a damn monster, a Hydra. And as soon as you chop one head off, two more attack you from behind. It will smother you, strangle you, if you don’t pay attention—and where would Emily be then?”

  Leah’s shoulders collapsed with her sigh. She was too damned tired to stand up straight, much less think clearly. “What can I do? I’m all she has left.”

  “My point exactly.” Jessica glanced out the window to Emily, who was on her knees chasing a robot toy. “We have a few minutes before Detective Jericho arrives. Let me try to help you.”

  “How?”

  “Sit down, close your eyes.”

  Leah was uncertain—she’d always failed miserably at meditation or any relaxation exercises. But Emily was safe… for now. And she could use any help she could get. She slumped into the chair the social worker had vacated and did as Jessica instructed, taking several deep breaths.

  “Now, picture Ian. He’s standing right in front of you. What would you say to him?”

  As if Jessica had woven a magical spell, Ian appeared before Leah—shaking his head as if disappointed in her, no trace of blood over his bright yellow Curious George pajamas, his body unharmed, his face whole. She sucked her breath in so fast her chest burned.

  “Go on,” Jessica urged, her tone low and hypnotic. “Tell him how you feel. It’s okay, you’re in a safe space. Nothing can hurt you or Ian, not here.”

  Suddenly that burning in Leah’s chest roared to life. “What the hell were you thinking?” She wanted to shout the words but instead they came out strangled, barely audible. “Fighting back? Getting yourself killed! What am I going to do now? I’m all alone. It’s so like you, leaving me to pick up the pieces!”

  She fell back in the chair, chest heaving as she gasped for air, hands curled into numb, frozen, useless fists. Her eyes popped open, banishing Ian’s ghost. “No, no, that’s not right. I don’t blame him—how can I? He saved Emily.”

  “But he left you. Abandoned you. And you don’t understand why,” Jessica said. “It’s perfectly normal. Anger, rage—at him, at yourself, at God. Terror at what comes next. It’s what everyone goes through.” She was silent a moment, giving Leah a chance to slow her breathing.

  Feeling eased back into her cramped hands and she stretched her fingers, grabbing hold of the chair’s arms as if they were lifelines.

  “So, you were unhappy?” Jessica asked.

  “No. God, no. Sure, I was always the practical one while he had his head in his work, but he was definitely the better parent. We have—had—a wonderful life, Ian and I.” Leah hesitated, but Jessica said nothing, simply stared at her with a piercing gaze that demanded honesty—the whole truth. “Sometimes… I worried our life was so good, it was more because of him than me. I gave him everything I could, but I think I always still held some part of me back. Tried to control things, protect myself by being who I thought he wanted me to be.”

  “I think that’s every intimate relationship, don’t you? We either lose ourselves in the other person or we hold back a bit to prevent that.”

  “Selfish, letting him do the heavy lifting—” She stopped; it was just too painful to put into words.

  “Leah, Ian loved you. He died to protect your family. So whatever you gave him in return, it was enough.”

  “No. No it wasn’t. He poured his heart and soul into our family, into Emily, while I—”

  “While you what? What do you pour your heart and soul into, Leah?”

  Leah swallowed hard. “Work. Not for the thrill of it, the adrenaline rush. Not because I don’t love my family just as much. I can’t explain it. It’s like I’m paying penance, trying to make up for something or prove myself. Like if I can help enough people, save enough lives, then maybe…” She knotted her hands together. This all sounded so stupid. She couldn’t believe she was even here talking about this when there was so much more she needed to do. Starting with getting Emily through her interview.

  “Maybe you’d be worthy of love? A good enough person to deserve Ian’s love?” Jessica suggested in a quiet tone. Leah nodded, her lips pressed tight as she blinked back tears. “Where do you think that comes from, Leah? Who taught you that you weren’t worthy of love?”

  Leah couldn’t meet Jessica’s eyes. Thankfully a knock on the door prevented Jessica from probing further into Leah’s psyche. Luka Jericho arriving for Emily’s interview.

  As Jessica greeted the detective, Leah stood, facing the observation window, hands fisted by her sides. She knew damn well where she’d learned that lesson—a lifetime of being abandoned. No matter how good she was, it was never enough to earn the love of the person who mattered most. Her own mother. Ruby.

  Seventeen

  After introducing himself to everyone, Luka settled in beside Leah at the window looking into the children’s interview room.

  The narrow, dark observation room had a few folding chairs leaning against the wall, but with the video equipment and desk where the social worker sat, headphones on as she monitored the interview, and two more adult-sized humans crammed into the tiny space, it was too crowded to make use of them. Besides, it felt wrong for Luka to sit in comfort while Leah stood.

  Parents usually weren’t allowed to observe—last thing you wanted was for a kid to disclose something and have the parent right there working on a rebuttal or worse, a plan to silence the kid—but it wasn’t as if anyone had consulted Luka on the matter. Leah Wright was allowing her daughter to be interviewed voluntarily, and Luka needed to hear what his only witness had to say. He resigned himself to make the best of the situation, using it as an opportunity to study her more closely.

  She was holding up well, he thought. Better than most. Exhaustion would set in soon, though, and her defenses would crumble. As a detective he needed to remain objective, but Luka couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  His phone pinged with a text. Krichek alerting him to more videos popping up on social media. All accusing Leah Wright of malpractice, racism, even sexual impropriety. Serious charges. Except that the videos Luka clicked through, leaving the audio off so Leah wouldn’t hear, were obviously fakes, edited clips of random people interspersed with text skewing their words, directing their accusations at Leah. He even recognized one shot from a recent police shooting across the country in Oakland. Damn trolls, already mobilized and out in force, feeding off the latest tragedy they could exploit.

  He glanced at Leah, who had one palm and her nose pressed against the glass as Dr. Kern began by leading her daughter through her day yesterday. Maybe Harper could act as family liaison—she’d hate the idea, think it was because she was a woman, and it was, but that didn’t change the fact that the family needed watching over and you never knew what they might let slip once they grew comfortable.

  He texted Harper, checking again on her progress in tracing their mystery motorcycle. No joy, she sent back.

  “Mrs. Wright,” he said in a low tone. With her headphones on, the social worker couldn’t hear him, but standing in the dark like this, at such close quarters, it felt appropriate to whisper. Like hushing your voice in church. “The man in the ER earlier. What can you tell me about him?”

  She said nothing, her gaze on her daughter, her entire body now leaning against the glass as if she wanted to claw her way through it.

  “Mrs. Wright?” He purposefully avoided her medical title, wanted her to answer as a wife and mother, not with the clinical detachment of a physician. “The man in the ER?”

  “What?” She frowned as she finally turned her face to him. “I have no idea. I don’t remember ever seeing him before. Why?”

  “His name is Jefferson Cochrane. He seemed rather… volatile. Said you were responsible for his wife’s death.” He let his words linger, waited as she refocused her full attention on the implications.

  “I don’t remember him.”
The words emerged slow and heavy, as if she didn’t realize she was repeating herself.

  “Maybe you never met him in person before? Do you ever make death notifications over the phone? Or to other family members if the husband isn’t available?”

  Her frown deepened. “I had a long-distance trucker die in a crash on the interstate. He was from Oklahoma, so I had to call his wife, tell her—after Maggie talked to the local authorities, made sure they sent someone out to be with her. Guess I didn’t even have to really do that, but I wanted to give her the chance to ask any questions. People, they always have questions and you don’t want them to feel like you’re ignoring them. It’s important to give them any answers you can.”

  “Do you have any malpractice suits brought against you? Maybe the wife didn’t die right away?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No. Only case I’ve been party to was when I was a resident and it was dismissed. And that patient was a man.”

  “Anyone else make complaints against your care here in the ER? Someone who might not take their grievance to a lawyer, might make it personal?”

  Her gaze drifted past him to where Emily was talking about the dinner she and her father had cooked. Trees—broccoli, Luka interpreted—mac and cheese and ham. Classic. When he was a kid his mom used to set the broccoli upright in the mac and cheese, create a little forest. He wondered if Ian had done the same. Or maybe Emily was a picky eater, liked all her food separated and not touching. And the way she spoke, her vocabulary and grammar—definitely advanced for a six-year-old.

  Not that Luka knew much about kids. They made him nervous. When they finally deemed to glance up from their ubiquitous screens, they peered at him as if he were a specimen of some long extinct species. Give him old folks like Pops to deal with any day.

  Luka slid his hand into his pocket where his phone was, half-tempted to text Janine, see if Pops was okay. But the psychiatrist had gotten to the heart of the night, and Emily was describing waking to the sound of shouting and thuds that made the house shake. Luka listened to the little girl as he watched her mother. Kern had Emily so relaxed. At first. Then her voice drew tight, her words coming in halting gasps, barely above a whisper.

  Kern glanced at her tablet, then gave Leah a nod. Through the glass he could see that Kern was monitoring Emily’s brainwaves, which explained the weird cap she wore. Despite the psychiatrist’s reassurance, Leah’s palms against the window drew into fists. The muscles around her jaw clenched and her shoulders were rigid.

  Not for the first time, he was glad he’d never had any kids. His phone buzzed—Tanya waiting in the cafeteria, threatening to leave if he didn’t get there soon. As if whatever her problem was, it was somehow his fault. As if he was the one who’d chosen drugs over her family. He’d never understand that—would maybe never forgive either. Was meeting her now, losing traction in a homicide case, even for the few minutes it would take to read her the riot act, worth it?

  As Emily began describing crawling under her bed and how scared she’d been, Leah startled Luka by suddenly leaving, banging through the door leading to the hall. Luka started to follow but stopped when he saw her enter the second soundproofed interview room—the one designed for adults with its intimate arrangement of comfortable chairs. He couldn’t hear her, but through the glass that separated them he watched her slam the wall with her palm and throw her head back as she screamed so hard every muscle along her neck tightened into thin, taut ribbons.

  Luka couldn’t begin to imagine the mother’s pain of being forced to watch her daughter relive the trauma of seeing her father killed, helpless to erase Emily’s memories, powerless to intervene. He was torn between Leah’s pain and his duties—which did not include playing trauma counselor. In fact, Ray would argue that catching a suspect during an emotionally vulnerable time was a good way to get the truth from them.

  His phone buzzed again. Tanya. Again. He ignored it, glancing through the window. Emily finished telling her story—what the hell was a blackspaceman?

  The social worker looked up, gesturing to the computer screen where she had a close-up of what Emily was drawing. It was a human figure, not fat but with its torso and limbs bulked out like a comic book astronaut, drawn all in black. And where its head should have been was a circle, larger than life, out of proportion to the figure’s body. As he watched, Emily carefully filled the circle in until it was a solid, menacing chunk of black.

  Then she added a slash of yellow along the top of where the figure’s face should be. Curved. Like a reflection.

  Not a spaceman, Luka realized. A man in padded leathers, gloves, and a black tinted motorcycle helmet with its shield down.

  It made sense. If you didn’t want to contaminate a crime scene with your own DNA or fingerprints there was nothing better. Want to avoid easily observable victim’s blood? Check. Expecting your victim to fight back? Thick leather designed to protect against road rash after a spill was just as effective in protecting against someone’s efforts to defend themselves.

  Whoever their actor was, he knew exactly what he was doing.

  Eighteen

  Watching Emily fighting so hard to be brave, Leah wanted to hit something, someone, wanted to shout, yell, anything to unleash her rage.

  She fled to the other interview room, thankful for its soundproofing, and gave voice to her grief and madness. Keeping the light off, she pounded the wall, screams of frustration tearing out of her, feeling like a tortured animal. The man she wanted to hurt wasn’t here and she didn’t know what to do with the awful awareness that he was out there somewhere. Her breath came in jagged gasps, until she collapsed against the wall, her weight pressed against her fists, her forehead bowed in surrender.

  She couldn’t do this. Not without Ian.

  The door opened behind her. She turned her face to look at the intruder silhouetted in the light coming from the hallway. Luka Jericho.

  “I have to go but thought maybe…” He left his sentence hanging. He did that a lot, leaving people to fill his silences with their own stories. It was the same technique she used in the ER when interviewing a patient. Except this time as the silence lengthened, he was the one who yielded. “I know you have resources, know the people to call, but if you want me to—I mean, I understand in our professions, it’s not easy. I can recommend someone to talk to. If you want.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she lied.

  “Dr. Kern, she seems pretty good, the way she’s working with your daughter. Maybe she could—”

  “What did the autopsy show?” she asked. “Were there defensive wounds? Did Ian fight back? Was that what set him off, the killer, why he got so violent?” Her voice rose. She didn’t blame Ian, of course not, but she’d seen his body, knew he’d not given in to the intruder, and could not help the anger churning through her, a fire in her veins even as her face and fingers grew numb and cold at the thought of him leaving her. Abandoning her.

  How could he do that to her? To Emily? By fighting back, he kept the killer in the house longer, putting Emily’s life in danger. Why would Ian do that, risk that? She spun away from Jericho, slapping the wall once again, her breaths coming so fast that she realized she was in danger of hyperventilating. Ian, what the hell were you thinking? “Why didn’t he give him what he wanted? Get him out of the house before he could get anywhere near—”

  “It wasn’t your husband’s fault.” Jericho’s voice was calm, the voice of reason. Yet these emotions scorching through Leah felt anything but reasonable.

  Through sheer force of will, Leah slowed her breathing, feeling pinpricks spread across her numb lips and fingers as life returned to them. “How long?”

  “Time of death was right before midnight. While you were still in the ER. You couldn’t have saved him if you had gotten home sooner—and might have ended up a victim yourself.”

  She hated how he knew exactly what she was asking and why. Hated that he’d done this so many times that it was second nature, these ugly,
desperate questions that had no place in anyone’s life. Hated that he could be so calm. Most of all, she hated that he was holding back, not telling her the truth. At least not all of it.

  “Don’t lie to me, Detective. No autopsy can put the time of death that accurately. And don’t you dare tell me he went quickly in the end—I saw his body, saw the damage. He suffered, damn it! He was in pain and he was fighting for his life and Emily’s and I wasn’t there for them. So don’t you dare tell me, don’t you dare—” Her logic unraveled and she clamped her lips tight.

  “You’re right,” he said, which infuriated her more. Maybe that was the idea—give her a target to vent her rage on? A victim, he was treating her like a victim. Helpless, emotional, malleable. “We didn’t narrow time of death from the PM—it came from witness statements.”

  She jerked her chin up at that. “Witness? What did they see? Did they recognize him? Do you know who he is?”

  “No. Not yet. We have surveillance video of a man in a black motorcycle helmet, his face covered, wearing black leathers. Just like your daughter saw.” He held out a sheet of drawing paper for her to see.

  She sagged against the wall in relief. “Emily never saw his face. And he must know that, know she can’t identify him.” Which meant the killer wouldn’t be coming after Emily; she was safe. “Why? Why us? Why pick a house where people were awake, lights on?”

  Jericho carefully folded Emily’s drawing and slid it into the inside pocket of his coat. “We’re working on that. Mrs. Wright, did your husband ever use drugs? Of any kind? Recreational? Prescribed?”

  Leah frowned at the abrupt change in topic. Drugs? Ian? Never. “Ian was a health nut—had to be, with a job staring at the computer all day. Exercise was his drug of choice. He hated taking medicine of any—” She stopped, staring at him, realization finally breaking through the fog smothering her brain. “Wait. Maggie said she found something. On the tox screen. What? What did you find?”