MacNamara's Woman

by Lisa Gardner

  The senator forced the gun into Patty’s hands. Her fingers wrapped around it.

  Tamara tried to get up. She tried to run. The senator backhanded her again and sent her flying. Her elbow cracked against the glass table. Her arm went numb; her vision swam. As if peering through a long tunnel, she saw Patty raising the gun.

  “He’s going to kill you!” Tamara cried desperately. “Don’t you see it, Patty? Once I’m dead, you’ll be the only other person who will know the truth. He can’t afford for anyone to know the truth.”

  “You should’ve stayed in New York,” Patty whispered. “I tried to get you to stay in New York. Why didn’t you listen? Why, after all these years, did you have to come back?”

  The gun was steady in her hand. Her pale face was composed.

  “My parents loved you. Patty, for God’s sake, they believed in you, like I did. If you’d just come forward, I would’ve forgiven you. I would’ve known you would never intentionally harm them any more than I would.”

  “I killed them.”

  “The senator killed them. . . .”

  “I . . .”

  “Enough!” the senator roared. “Shoot her. Shoot her!”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  The senator grabbed the gun from Patty’s hand. His face a mottled red, he turned on Tamara.

  She lashed out with her foot, catching him squarely in the kneecap and toppling him down. “Run, Patty, run!”

  Tamara scrambled to her feet, tripping over the coffee table and barely catching herself. Her arm felt invaded by an army of red ants. Her cheek was on fire. Behind her, she heard the senator’s roar as he launched himself up. “Dammit!”

  She dove behind the overstuffed leather sofa. The gun exploded, the bullet burying itself in the pillow. Patty cried hysterically.

  “Shut up! Shut up!” the senator yelled.

  Tamara scampered for the front door. Plaster exploded above her head, the dust stinging her eyes.

  She heard another cry. She turned to see Patty swipe at the senator with her Scotch-filled tumbler. He yelped as the whiskey burned his eyes, then pistol-whipped Patty hard. She fell back as her nose gave with a sickening crunch.

  “Patty!”

  The senator raised the gun, aimed it at Patty’s seated form and fired.

  “No!” Tamara screamed and the pillows turned red. She saw the haze of rage contort the senator’s face. She saw him turn, already aiming. She dove for the front door and bullets rained over her head.

  She slid behind the dividing wall, finding meager cover. She was trapped, pinned down. He was going to kill her. And from the living room, she heard Patty’s faint moans as the life drained out of her.

  No! No more waiting for someone else to save her while her friend and family died. She was sick of it. She’d had enough. She wanted to fight and she wanted to win.

  She rose with a cry. From far off, she saw the senator raise the gun. She lunged for the door, her finger curling around the knob, her hand twisting the handle. His finger squeezed the trigger.

  She flung open the door and leapt into the brilliant embrace of the sheriff’s headlights. Gunshots exploded around her. She was falling down, down, down. The crickets cried for her.

  C.J. yelled her name.

  The world went black.

  Epilogue

  Tamara didn’t wake up in the hospital. There were no nurses poking her with IV needles, no cops standing at the foot of her bed with somber faces, no doctors asking her if she could wiggle her toes. She opened her eyes to C.J.’s anxious face and the sound of sirens splitting the air. Red lights danced over his lean cheeks from the approaching ambulance. Men shouted in the distance, Over here, over here. Night washed over the scene thickly.

  “Don’t move,” C.J. ordered. His arms cradled her against his seated form. She couldn’t have gone anywhere if she tried.

  “The senator.”

  “Brody has him.”

  “Patty . . .”

  “The medics are here. Are you hurt? Can you move? Are you shot?” He relinquished his hold long enough for his hands to dance over her body. When he was convinced all body parts were accounted for, he scooped her up again. He was rocking her back and forth. It made her dizzy, but she didn’t feel like telling him to stop.

  His chest felt strong and warm.

  Her ears rang from too many gunshots. Her ribs hurt from the force of her landing. Her mind remembered what Patty had said—what Patty had done—and she suspected she’d sustained some injuries much deeper down, in the dark places where she still mourned her parents and now had to add the loss of her best friend. She would get to deal with those wounds later and over time. Maybe she’d haul out C.J.’s punching bag for the occasion.

  “Patty shot Spider,” she said simply now, “because he overheard her confessing to her mother’s grave.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I went to the senator’s house. I found a letter Patty had mailed to him just a few days ago saying she couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted to confess everything. It appears the senator caught the first flight here after receiving it.”

  “She was my best friend.”

  “I know,” he whispered with genuine feeling.

  “C.J., don’t let me go.”

  “I won’t.”

  He kept his word, too, until the paramedics finally arrived and took her away.

  • • •

  At the hospital, they treated Tamara for shock and exhaustion, monitored her for a possible concussion and bound her bruised ribs. Patty wasn’t so lucky. The bullet had rattled around inside her ribs, doing a great deal of internal damage before finally lodging in her spine. She was listed in critical condition and the doctors didn’t expect her to make it. Two hours later she slid away, her father holding her hand.

  The senator took a bullet to the shoulder. The injuries were not serious, but the publicity was. In a matter of hours, Sheriff Brody held a news conference announcing a full investigation into the senator’s role in a ten-year-old auto accident, while C.J. leaked a copy of Patty’s letter to the press.

  The next day, a private investigator came forward under pressure from the D.A. He stated he’d been hired ten years ago by the senator to watch Tamara Allistair. The senator had never told him anything more or anything less. For the first nine and a half years, the P.I. had simply issued reports every six months and collected his cash. Then she’d come to Sedona and his surveillance had stepped up to minute-by-minute monitoring with nightly briefings to the senator.

  But he just watched, the man swore. That’s all the senator asked.

  The real testimony came from Patty’s letter and tragic death. The D.A. swore to pursue the senator on charges of Murder One.

  C.J. and Tamara left that for the bureaucrats to work out. They understood enough. They’d been through enough. It was time to heal.

  A little before five, they released Tamara from the hospital. An orderly wheeled her downstairs, where she found C.J. waiting for her. He leaned against the wall with his hip jutting out and his arms akimbo. His hands were stabbed deeply in his back pockets, and his hair waved over his forehead. He saw Tamara and his face split into a grin, crinkling the corners of his blue eyes.

  “Oh, my,” sighed the female orderly with clear reverence.

  Tamara agreed wholeheartedly. She held out her hands wordlessly, and C.J. took her home.

  For one week, they shut out the world. They slept together, ate together, made love together. They told silly jokes and stayed up late with rented movies and fresh popcorn. They invited Sheila and Gus over for dinner. They played house.

  C.J. never pushed, never probed, never alluded to the future. But sometimes Tamara caught him watching her from across the room, his blue eyes intent, his face somber. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night and discovered him propped up on one arm, watching her sleep.

  He didn’t ask, but the question hovered in the subtext of everything they said, everything they did: Would she s
tay in Sedona or return to New York? Would she love him forever?

  She didn’t know the answer. Until the night she found herself up on one arm watching him sleep. The afternoon she caught herself gazing at him from across the room. The moment when she leaned over and kissed him simply because she had to.

  Monday, before he was due at the bar, she handed him his coat and picked up his car keys. Wordlessly, she drove him to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. And for the first time in ten years, she stepped inside a house of God.

  They sat at the front pew. Through the arching window, the sky was the color of bone. The sun didn’t come out today. The rock monuments remained a muted amber. Not even Arizona was beautiful every day of the week.

  After a bit, she rested her head against C.J.’s shoulder. The silence settled over them.

  She’d come to this church as a child. She’d sat with her parents, risen with her parents, prayed with her parents. In the misty shadows, she could almost see her mother singing, “Hallelujah,” while her father mouthed the words. In her mind, they turned toward her and smiled.

  Something inside her loosened, broke free, let the memories in, the good, the bad. Her family was in this church, in the values they’d shared, in the traditions they’d taught her. If she closed her eyes, she could reach out her hand and touch them.

  She kept her hand on her lap and replayed the memories, instead. It felt right. The images filled in the hollow places, offering a soothing balm for her wounds. You never realized how far you had journeyed, until you returned home.

  After a while, she raised her head.

  “I could open a public relations office here.”

  “Yeah?” C.J. stretched out his legs. “That would be nice,” he said noncommittally. “Otherwise, I was going to spend a fortune flying to New York.”

  She stared at the Arizona skyline. “I’m going to marry you.”

  “Well, it’s about time someone made an honest man out of me.”

  “Can I use your punching bag?”

  “Whenever you like.”

  “Can I wear your clothes?”

  “When I’m not hell-bent on getting you naked.”

  “Will you read the books you bought with me? Will you come with me to a survivors’ group?”

  “I think I should.”

  She slipped her arms around his waist. Her mother was smiling. She could feel it in the softness of twilight.

  “I love you, C.J.” she whispered.

  “I love you, too.”

  #1 New York Times bestselling author

  Lisa Gardner

  is back with another thriller.

  Read on for a preview of

  FEAR NOTHING

  Available in hardcover from Dutton

  in January 2014

  everywhere books and e-books are sold.

  Rock-a-bye, baby, on the treetop. . . .

  The body was gone, but not the smell. As Boston homicide detective D. D. Warren knew from experience, this kind of scene could hold the stench of blood for weeks, even months to come. The crime scene techs had removed the mattress, but still, blood had a life of its own. Seeping into dry wall. Slipping behind wooden trim. Pooling between floorboards. Twenty-eightyearold Tara Blythe used to have approximately 4.7 liters of blood pumping through her veins. Now most of it stained this grim gray space.

  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. . . .

  The call had come in shortly after nine a.m. Good friend Midge Roberts had grown concerned when Tara hadn’t answered the knocks on her front door or the texts to her cell phone. Tara was the responsible kind. Didn’t oversleep, didn’t run off with a cute bartender, didn’t come down with the flu without providing a heads-up to her best bud, who picked her up promptly at seven thirty each weekday morning for their joint commute to a local accounting firm.

  Midge had contacted a few more friends. All agreed no one had heard from Tara since dinner the night before. Midge gave in to instinct and summoned the landlord, who finally agreed to open the door.

  Then vomited all over the upstairs hall upon making the find.

  Midge hadn’t come up the stairs. Midge had stood in the foyer of the narrow duplex, and, as she’d reported to D.D.’s squadmate Phil, she’d known. Just known. Probably, even from that distance, she’d caught the first unmistakable whiff of drying blood

  Rock-abye, baby . . .

  Upon arrival, the scene had immediately struck D.D. with its marked contrasts. The young female victim, sprawled spreadeagle on her own bed, staring up at the ceiling with sightless blue eyes. Pretty features appearing nearly peaceful as her shoulderlength brown hair pooled softly upon a stark white pillow.

  Except then, from the neck down . . .

  Skin peeled off in thin, curling ribbons. D.D. had heard of such things. At eleven this morning, she had gotten to see them firsthand. A young woman flayed in her own bed. With a bottle of champagne on her nightstand and a single red rose placed across her bloody abdomen.

  Next to the bottle of champagne, Phil had discovered a pair of handcuffs. The kind purchased in high-end sex shops and fur-lined for comfort. Taking in the cuffs, the sparkling wine, the red rose . . .

  Lovers’ tryst gone awry, Phil had theorized. Or, given the level of violence, a jilted boyfriend’s final act of vengeance. Tara had broken up with some sorry sucker, and last night, sorry sucker had returned to prove once and for all who was in charge.

  But D.D. wasn’t on board. Yes, there were handcuffs, but not on the victim’s wrists. Yes, there was uncorked champagne, but none poured into waiting flutes for drinking. Finally, sure, there was the rose, but not in a florist’s wrap for gifting.

  The scene felt too . . . deliberate to her. Not a crime of passion or a fallingout between consenting adults. But a carefully staged production that involved months, years, perhaps even a lifetime of careful planning and consideration.

  In D.D.’s opinion, they weren’t just looking at a crime scene. They were looking at a killer’s deepest, darkest fantasy.

  And while this might be the first scene they were investigating, a homicide this heavily ritualized was probably not the last.

  When the wind blows . . .

  D.D.’s squad, the crime scene techs, the ME’s office, not to mention a plethora of other investigators had spent six hours working the space. They’d documented, dusted, diagrammed, and discussed until the sun had set, the dinner commute was on, and tempers were flaring. As lead detective, D.D. had finally sent everyone home with orders to refresh, then regroup. Tomorrow was another day, when they could search federal databases for other murders matching this description, while building the profiles of their victim and killer. Plenty to do, many angles to investigate. Now get some rest.

  Everyone had listened. Except, of course, D.D.

  It was nearly ten o’clock now. She should be returning home. Kissing her husband hello. Checking in on her threeyearold son, already tucked into bed at this late hour. Working on her own good night’s sleep, versus hanging out at a darkened crime scene with her toddler’s current favorite nursery rhyme running through her head.

  But she couldn’t do it. Some instinct—insight?—had driven her back to this too quiet duplex. For most of the day, she and her fellow detectives had stood here and debated what they saw. Now she stood with the lights out, in the middle of a blood-scented room, and waited for what she could feel.

  Rock-a-bye, baby . . .

  Tara Blythe had already been dead before the killer had made his first cut. That much they could tell from the lack of anguish stamped onto her pale face. The victim had died relatively easily. Then, most likely as her heart emitted a final few pumps, the killer had delivered his first downward slash across her right flank.

  Meaning the murder hadn’t been about the victim’s pain, but about . . .

  Presentation? Staging? The ritual itself? A killer with a compulsion to skin. Maybe as a kid, he’d started with small animals or family pets. Then, when the fantasy had
refused to abate . . .

  The ME would check for hesitation marks, if determining jagged edges was even possible given the mounds of thin, curling skin, as well as test for evidence of sexual assault.

  But once again, D.D. suffered a nagging sense of discomfort. Those elements were the things a criminal investigator could see. And deep inside, D.D. already suspected that was the wrong track. Indulging, in fact, in exactly what the killer wanted them to focus on.

  Why stage things just so, if not to manipulate your audience into seeing exactly what you wanted them to see?

  Then it came to her. The thought she’d had in the back of her head. The first and foremost question worth pursuing and the reason she now stood in the dark, her vision deliberately obscured: Why set a scene?

  A sound. In the distance. The duplex’s front door, easing carefully open? A creak of the stair riser as a heavy foot found the first step? The groan of a floorboard just down the hall?

  A sound. Once distant now closer, and that quickly, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren realized something she should’ve figured out fifteen minutes ago. Jack’s favorite lullaby, the children’s song she’d been humming under her breath . . . That tune wasn’t coming from solely inside her head.

  Someone else was singing it too. Softly. Outside the bedroom. From elsewhere in the dead woman’s apartment.

  Rocka-bye, baby, on the treetop. . . .

  D.D.’s hand shot to her sidearm, unsnapping the shoulder holster, drawing her SIG Sauer. She whirled, dropping into a crouch as her gaze scanned the corners for signs of an intruder. No shifts in the blackness, no shadows settling into the shape of a human form.

  But then she heard it. A creaking floorboard elsewhere in the apartment.

  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. . . .

  Quickly, she crept from the bedroom into the darkened hall, leading with her weapon. The narrow corridor didn’t offer any overhead lights. Just more shadows caused by the glow of neighbors’ apartments casting through the duplex’s uncovered windows. A wash of lighter and darker shades of gray dancing across the hardwood floor.