The Perfect Husband

by Lisa Gardner

  He kept thinking he was supposed to ask for Merry Berry, then memory hit him hard.

  He struggled upright. He heard the smack of flesh hitting flesh. He hated that sound. Tess . . .

  Furious, he staggered to the shattered doorway, his left hand barely holding his ribs together. He grabbed the doorway for support, and wooden slivers drove into his palm.

  He used the pain to anchor him.

  The colonel had raised a son who could walk two miles on a broken ankle. That’s a man. Be a man. Fight like a man.

  He found the hunting knife strapped inside his cast and advanced for the stairs.

  Sirens wailed behind him. Men were still screaming. Someone was yelling about the front door.

  Let them all come. Let them all fucking come.

  BECKETT SAW SOMEONE out of the corner of his eye. He dropped Tess and reached for the shotgun. He didn’t see the knife hurtle through the air, until it drove through his shoulder.

  He stared at it without comprehension. J.T. had arrived on the landing.

  With a roar he charged.

  He caught Beckett around the middle, and they went down with a crash. Something warm filled J.T.’s mouth. He opened his lips, and blood spilled down his cheek. The rusty flavor made him angrier.

  Beckett fisted his hands and drove them into the small of J.T.’s back. J.T. got a fresh mouthful of bloody bile. He reared back and caught Beckett beneath the chin with his head. Then he reached up for the handle of his knife and gave it a twist.

  Beckett staggered back with a sharp cry of pain. Vaguely J.T. was aware of the thick shadows beneath the man’s eyes, the gaunt lines of his chin. Beckett had lost twenty pounds since his prison break, and he looked it.

  He didn’t feel it though. He felt only the heady thrum of adrenaline in his ears. The sirens, the screams, the noise. It fueled him.

  He grabbed the baton he’d strapped inside his arm and started swinging.

  J.T. leapt out of the way the first time. He rolled the second. The third swing cracked him on his already cracked ribs. The pain rocketed through him beyond description or color. He fell to his knees.

  Above him the baton rose again. He could hear the whistle. Feel the draft.

  He commanded his body to roll. One more time, closer to the stairs. His muscles took a long time responding.

  The baton whistled down.

  And the shotgun blast sent Beckett halfway across the second-story landing. Tess stood with the gun in her hands and the powder staining her cheeks. She pumped in another cartridge.

  A low, wet groan escaped Jim’s lips. As J.T. lay there, his eyes barely able to focus, he watched her walk over to him. There were no tears on her cheeks. No emotion in her eyes. Her face was pale, her face was calm. He thought of Marion as Tess pointed the shotgun at Jim’s fallen body and pulled the trigger.

  Through the haze of dissipating smoke, her brown eyes met his.

  “It’s over,” she whispered hoarsely, shotgun against her shoulder. “Massachusetts might not believe in the death penalty, but I do.”

  Jim didn’t move again. Tess let the gun slide to the floor. She cradled J.T.’s bloody head on her lap and waited for the police to make it up the stairs.

  JUST SOUTH OF Lenox, the cop turned his wailing car into a gas station. A backup patrol car came to a screaming halt behind him.

  The woman who was about to pay for her gas stared at them. The man who was unscrewing the gas cap of his Mercedes stopped. The two young kids who were out looking for a good time hunched down lower and wondered if they’d hidden the marijuana far enough beneath the seat.

  The cops searched for the pay phone.

  An older woman with a somber face and liver-spotted hands appeared from around the side. A little blond girl clung to her neck. She looked at the policemen somberly.

  “Edith?” one of the officers asked.

  She nodded and he approached the pair slowly, since the girl was obviously scared. The girl perfectly matched the posters all over the war room. He knew. For the last few nights, the officer had gone to bed so tense, he’d dreamed of that face.

  “I want my mommy,” she whispered in a tiny voice.

  “I know, sweetheart. You’re Samantha Beckett, aren’t you?”

  She nodded slowly, her grip still tight around Edith’s neck.

  He gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. We’re gonna take you to your mommy, Sam. We’re gonna take you home.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE NEW ARRIVAL caused a bit of a stir. She stood in the doorway of the Nogales bar with the long, slender lines of a beautiful woman. Male heads turned instantly, some ancient instinct coming alert. Cue sticks halted before cue balls. Beer mugs paused before parted lips. Predatory gazes cut through the thick miasma of cigarette smoke and lingered on the simple white cotton dress that brushed down her figure and flirted with the tops of her knees.

  She stepped into the bar.

  Her steps did not invite interruption. She had a target and headed straight for it. Observant gazes plotted the trajectory and ran ahead of her to see who the lucky man was. The minute they figured it out, the gazes quickly hurried away.

  If she could tame him, she was welcome to him. The rest of them had already learned to get out of his way—and they’d each learned that lesson the hard way.

  He was hunched over a tumbler of amber liquid. His blue cotton shirt was rumpled and hung over faded jeans. His black hair had gone a long time without being cut. His lean cheeks were thick with unshaved whiskers.

  Some of the women had found him handsome. He hadn’t appeared to find them to be anything at all.

  He came day in and day out. He drank. He played pool. Then he drank some more.

  Now the mystery woman arrived beside him. She slid onto the ripped vinyl stool. She gazed at him quietly. He didn’t look up.

  She said matter-of-factly, “I love you.”

  He raised bleary eyes. They were bloodshot and shadowed enough to indicate he hadn’t slept in weeks. It had been a month since she’d last seen him. The police had brought her Sam. Beckett had been carted off to the hospital and pronounced DOA. J.T. and Quincy had been hospitalized for broken ribs, and in J.T.’s case a punctured lung. She’d visited the hospital every day for a week. He’d lie there silently the whole time, not responding to her voice or her presence. He’d looked half dead, and at times she wondered if he wished that he were.

  Then one day she’d shown up and he was gone. He’d dressed himself in his bloody clothes and walked out the front door. There had been nothing the hospital staff could do to stop him, and nobody had seen him since.

  Difford’s body was recovered from the rooftop, where Jim had placed it as a decoy after he’d killed the sniper. A store mannequin’s head had been attached to Difford’s neck. Tess had attended the memorial service for the lieutenant and the sniper. Following Difford’s wishes, his body was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Atlanta Braves spring training field in Florida.

  Two days later Tess had attended Marion’s funeral, where Marion was laid to rest next to her father in Arlington. J.T. still hadn’t shown up. It was as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth. That’s when Tess had known he’d returned to Nogales.

  “What are you doing here?” His voice sounded hoarse, either from whiskey or tobacco or disuse. Maybe all three. His fingers picked up a cigarette case. He didn’t open it, he just twirled it between his fingers. It was the cigarette case that had belonged to Marion.

  “You shouldn’t be down here,” she said.

  His gaze slid down her body, then dismissed her. “Too virginal. I’m not interested.”

  “I’m not in the sinning business.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “Come home, J.T.” She touched his cheek lightly. His beard was so long, it was silky. She reacquainted herself with the line and feel of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. She ached for him. She looked at him and she hurt. “Tell me how to help you.”

>   “Go away.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Women are always trying to change a man. You think there’s something more inside us, and frankly it’s just not true. I am what I am.” He jerked his hand around the bar. “Honey, this is me.”

  “You are who you are. But this isn’t it. This is you drunk. I’ve seen you sober. I care for that man an awful lot. I think that man is one of the best men I know.”

  His gaze fell to the table and the tumbler full of amber liquid. Shame stained his cheeks.

  “I’m haunted,” he said abruptly. “Like an old house. I close my eyes and I see Rachel and Marion again and again. Sometimes they’re happy. Sometimes they’re sad. There’s nothing I can do about it. I reach out my hand to them and poof, they’re gone.” He opened his palm on the counter and flung the emptiness into the air.

  Tess didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t an expert on how to heal. She did the best she could. She kissed him. And he didn’t taste of whiskey or cigarettes. He tasted suspiciously of apples.

  Her gaze went from him to his glass to him. He sat stiffly while she sniffed the contents.

  “Apple juice?”

  “Yeah.” Shame infused his cheeks again. “I tried whiskey. I truly, truly did. And every time I raised the glass, I just saw Marion shaking her head at me. Christ”—he hung his head—“I’m a teetotaler!”

  “It’s okay,” she assured him, stroking his hair. “It’ll get easier. It will.”

  He didn’t look convinced. Her fingers traced the beard on his cheeks, the purple puffiness beneath his eyes, the fullness of his lips. “J.T., I love you.”

  He groaned like a trapped beast. His eyes closed. “Why can’t you just go away? Why can’t you just leave me alone? You killed him, you survived, isn’t that enough for you?”

  “I don’t want to live in the past.”

  “I can’t escape it.”

  “You can, it’s just going to take a while.” She gave up sitting beside him and slid onto his lap. In this bar few people noticed. His thighs were hard and masculine beneath her, the denim of his jeans soft and worn. She kissed his lips, then his cheek, and then the scar on his chest.

  She rested her head against his shoulder, and after a heartbeat she felt his arms slide around her waist. He buried his face in her hair.

  And after a ponderous moment his broad shoulders began to shake.

  “Tell me,” she commanded softly.

  “I love you. Christ, I love you.”

  And he was dying and there was nothing for him anymore. No place he could go where he didn’t see Marion lying in the dirt, no room to sit in where he didn’t see Rachel waving to him and blowing a kiss as she got into her car, and Teddy’s little arm waving in the backseat. He wanted to find them each again. He wanted to hold them in his arms and whisper, Please, please be happy. I love you, I just wanted you to be happy. I love you.

  Remember me young, for both of us.

  He raised his head. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. He didn’t care anymore.

  “Make me whole. I want to be whole.”

  She pressed his face against her throat and stroked his hair. She smelled of roses. He inhaled deeply and felt the scent finally soothe his shattered senses.

  “Come on. It’s time to go home and meet my daughter.”

  He kissed her. He held her close.

  And he let her take him home.

  LATER, ALMOST TWELVE months after that bloody night, he had the dream for the first time. Marion and Rachel were in a field of wildflowers, wearing white dresses and whimsical summer hats. Teddy picked daisies at their feet, his chubby hand filled with the flowers. They were talking and laughing, enjoying the day.

  J.T. stood at the edge of the field, invisible to them and unable to touch. They spread out in the field and opened their arms to the sun.

  It was a ridiculous dream, he thought upon waking. But he held it in his mind anyway.

  He liked to remember them laughing, he liked to remember them happy. In the end maybe that was the most any of us can do—remember the ones we loved the way we loved them.

  He rolled over and curled his arm around his wife’s supple waist.

  “Bad dreams?” she murmured sleepily.

  “No.”

  “Okay. Stop hogging the covers.”

  She drifted back to sleep. He pulled the covers over her shoulders, then settled her against him. She whispered his name and even in her sleep returned his embrace.

  Read on for a preview from Lisa Gardner’s upcoming novel

  LOVE YOU MORE

  Available March 2011

  PROLOGUE

  Who do you love?

  It’s a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one’s days. Simple, elegant, encompassing.

  Who do you love?

  He asked the question, and I felt the answer in the weight of my duty belt, the constrictive confines of my armored vest, the tight brim of my trooper’s hat, pulled low over my brow. I reached down slowly, my fingers just brushing the top of my Sig Sauer, holstered at my hip.

  “Who do you love?” he cried again, louder now, more insistent.

  My fingers bypassed my state-issued weapon, finding the black leather keeper that held my duty belt to my waist. The Velcro rasped loudly as I unfastened the first band, then the second, third, fourth. I worked the metal buckle, then my twenty pound duty belt, complete with my sidearm, Taser, and collapsible steel baton released from my waist and dangled in the space between us.

  “Don’t do this,” I whispered, one last shot at reason.

  He merely smiled. “Too little, too late.”

  “Where’s Sophie? What did you do?”

  “Belt. On the table. Now.”

  “No.”

  “GUN. On the table. NOW!”

  In response, I widened my stance, squaring off in the middle of the kitchen, duty belt still suspended from my left hand. Four years of my life, patrolling the highways of Massachusetts, swearing to defend and protect. I had training and experience on my side.

  I could go for my gun. Commit to the act, grab the Sig Sauer, and start shooting.

  Sig Sauer was holstered at an awkward angle that would cost me precious seconds. He was watching, waiting for any sudden movement. Failure would be firmly and terribly punished.

  Who do you love?

  He was right. That’s what it came down to in the end. Who did you love and how much would you risk for them?

  “GUN!” he boomed. “Now, dammit!”

  I thought of my six-year-old daughter, the scent of her hair, the feel of her skinny arms wrapped tight around my neck, the sound of her voice as I tucked her in bed each night. “Love you, Mommy,” she always whispered.

  Love you, more, baby. Love you, more.

  His arm moved, first tentative stretch for the suspended duty belt, my holstered weapon.

  One last chance …

  I looked my husband in the eye. A single heartbeat of time.

  Who do you love?

  I made my decision. I set down my trooper’s belt on the kitchen table.

  And he grabbed my Sig Sauer and opened fire.

  1

  Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren prided herself on her excellent investigative skills. Having served over a dozen years with the Boston PD, she believed working a homicide scene wasn’t simply a matter of walking the walk or talking the talk, but rather of total sensory immersion. She felt the smooth hole bored into Sheetrock by a hot spiraling twenty-two. She listened for the sound of neighbors gossiping on the other side of thin walls because if she could hear them, then they’d definitely heard the big bad that had just happened here. D.D. always noted how a body had fallen, whether it was forward or backward or slightly to one side. She tasted the air for the acrid flavor of gunpowder, which could linger for a good twenty to thirty minutes after the final shot. And, on more than one occasion, she had estimated time of de
ath based on the scent of blood—which, like fresh meat, started out relatively mild but took on heavier, earthier tones with each passing hour.

  Today, however, she wasn’t going to do any of those things. Today, she was spending a lazy Sunday morning dressed in gray sweats and Alex’s oversized red flannel shirt. She was camped at his kitchen table, clutching a thick clay coffee mug while counting slowly to twenty.

  She’d hit thirteen. Alex had finally made it to the front door. Now he paused to wind a deep blue scarf around his neck.

  She counted to fifteen.

  He finished with the scarf. Moved on to a black wool hat and lined leather gloves. The temperature outside had just crept above twenty. Eight inches of snow on the ground and six more forecasted to arrive by end of week. March didn’t mean spring in New England.

  Alex taught crime-scene analysis, among other things, at the Police Academy. Today was a full slate of classes. Tomorrow, they both had the day off, which didn’t happen much and warranted some kind of fun activity yet to be determined. Maybe ice skating in the Boston Commons. Or a trip to the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum. Or a lazy day where they snuggled on the sofa and watched old movies with a big bowl of buttered popcorn.

  D.D.’s hands spasmed on the coffee mug. Okay, no popcorn.

  D.D. counted to eighteen, nineteen, twent—

  Alex finished with his gloves, picked up his battered black leather tote, and crossed to her.

  “Don’t miss me too much,” he said.

  He kissed her on the forehead. D.D. closed her eyes, mentally recited the number twenty, then started counting back down to zero.

  “I’ll write you love letters all day, with little hearts over the ‘i’s,” she said.

  “In your high school binder?”

  “Something like that.”

  Alex stepped back. D.D. hit fourteen. Her mug trembled, but Alex didn’t seem to notice. She took a deep breath and soldiered on. Thirteen, twelve, eleven …