The Man Behind the Cop

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  He kept going, enjoying the cool air and the way the scent of the lilacs was sharper after dark. He liked the night and the sense he had of being invisible. He could see people moving around inside their houses or the flicker of televisions through front windows, but by now not a single car passed him on the street.

  He reached his car, now sandwiched between an SUV and a VW Beetle. Not much room to maneuver. He’d be inching out.

  His key was in his hand, but he hadn’t yet inserted it in the door, when he heard the first terrified scream.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT HAPPENED SO FAST.

  The parking lot had emptied quickly. Only a van from one of the battered women’s shelters remained, the director half sitting on the bumper as she awaited her charge. Satisfied with how the evening had gone, Karin was walking back toward the front door of the clinic when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement under a streetlight. She turned to see a dark figure rush toward the lone woman halfway between the building and the van. Oh, God. It was Lenora Escobar. She’d just said good-night to Karin.

  “Roberto!”

  The distinctly uttered name struck terror in Karin.

  His arm lifted. He held a weapon of some kind. Lenora screamed.

  The weapon smashed down followed by an indescribably horrible sound. Like a pumpkin being dropped, squishing. Lenora gurgled, then crumpled.

  The arm rose and fell a second time, and then Roberto Escobar ran.

  During the whole event, Karin hadn’t managed two steps forward.

  As though time became real once more, Karin and Cecilia, the shelter director, converged on the fallen woman. Karin focused only on her, ignoring the squealing tires from the street.

  Should I have run after him? Tried to make out a license-plate number?

  But no. There could be no doubt that Lenora’s assailant—not her murderer, please not her murderer—was her husband. His vehicle and license-plate number would be on record.

  Thank God, Karin thought, dropping to her knees, that Lenora hadn’t brought her children tonight. He would have taken them if she had.

  Lenora’s head lay in a pool of blood. A few feet away was a tire iron. Karin’s stomach lurched. Fingerprints…Had Roberto worn gloves? No. He didn’t care who knew that he’d killed his wife for the sin of leaving him.

  “Cecilia, go back inside and call 911. Or do you have a cell phone?” She sounded almost calm. “Unless…wait.” She heard pounding footsteps and swiveled on her heels. “Detective Walker,” she said with profound relief—relief she felt not just because he was a cop and he was here, but because tonight this particular cop had managed to reassure and inspire a roomful of women who had every reason to be afraid of men.

  He was running across the parking lot, holding a cell phone in his hand. Then he was crouching beside her. He spoke urgently into the phone, giving numbers she guessed were code for Battered Wife Down.

  He touched Lenora’s neck and looked up. “She’s alive.”

  Karin sagged. “Can’t we do anything?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t want to move her. The ambulance is on its way.” His gaze, razor sharp, rested on Karin’s face. “Did you see what happened?”

  “Yes.” To Karin’s embarrassment, her voice squeaked. So much for calm. She cleared her throat. “It was her husband. She said the name Roberto. She just left him.”

  “She and her children are staying at the shelter,” Cecilia added. “She didn’t tell him she was leaving him. I don’t know how he found her.”

  “He had to have followed her tonight.” The detective was thinking aloud. “Where are the children? He didn’t get them?”

  Cecilia was a dumpy, endlessly comforting woman likely in her fifties. Detective Walker hadn’t even finished his question before she shook her head. “Lenora’s aunt picked them up and took them home for the night. She’s to bring them back in the morning.”

  Karin’s heart chilled at his expression. “You don’t think…?” Oh, God. If he had the aunt’s house staked out…

  She’d warned Lenora. “Stay away from friends and family,” she’d said.

  Focused on Cecilia, Detective Walker asked, “Do you know the woman’s name?”

  “Yes…um, Lopez. Señora Lopez.”

  Aunt…Karin groped in her memory. Aunt…“Julia.”

  “Yes.” Cecilia flashed her a grateful look. “Julia Lopez. I have her phone number back at the shelter.”

  “Call.” He held out his cell phone. “We need to send a unit over there. She should know about her niece, anyway.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Cecilia fumbled with the phone but finally dialed.

  Karin didn’t listen. She stared helplessly at Lenora, who had been so triumphant Friday afternoon because she’d successfully made her getaway. “He never guessed anything,” she’d told Karin in amazement. “He gave me money Thursday after he deposited his check. He was even in a good mood.”

  Now, gazing at Lenora’s slack face and blood-matted hair, Karin could only say, “He followed her aunt to the shelter tonight, didn’t he?”

  At the first wail of a siren, Karin’s head came up. She prayed fervently, Let it be the ambulance for Lenora.

  A second siren played a chorus. Two vehicles arrived in a rush. A Seattle PD car first, flying into the parking lot, then the ambulance, coming from the opposite direction.

  The EMTs took over. As Karin stood and backed away to give them room to work, her legs trembled as though she’d run a marathon. And not just her legs. She was shaking all over, she realized. For all the stories she’d heard from brutalized women, she’d never witnessed a rape scene or murder or beating. The experience was quite different in real life.

  Cecilia came to her and they hugged, then clung. Karin realized her face was wet with tears.

  Bruce Walker was busy issuing orders to two uniformed officers. Their voices were low and urgent; beyond them, in the squad car, the radio crackled.

  “We should wait inside,” Karin said at last. She needed to sit. “He’ll probably want to ask us both some more questions.”

  Cecilia drew a shuddering breath. “Yes. You’re right.”

  Karin glanced back, to find that Detective Walker was watching them. He gave her a nod, which she interpreted as approval. His air of command was enormously comforting.

  Thank God he’d still been within earshot. Imagine how much harder this would be had she been dealing with strangers now, instead.

  The gurney vanished into the guts of the aid car, one of the EMTs with it. The other EMT slammed the back doors and raced to the driver’s side of the vehicle. They were moving so fast, not wasting a motion. Then once again the siren wailed, and the ambulance roared down the street.

  She couldn’t stop herself from looking again at the blood slick, dark under the streetlight, and at the tire iron, flung like some obscene kind of cross on the pavement. Then the two women walked into the building, still holding hands.

  HE CAME IN sooner than she expected, thank goodness.

  Through the glass doors, both women were aware of the blinding white flashes as a photographer worked, a counterpoint to the blue-and-white lights from the squad car. Why don’t they turn them off? Karin wondered, anger sparking. What good did they do?

  Once inside, the detective walked straight to them and sank into a chair beside Karin. Turning his body so that he was facing them, he was so close to Karin his knee bumped hers and she could see the bristles on his jaw. Like most dark-haired men, he must need to shave twice a day to keep a smooth jaw. But then, this day had been longer than he could ever have anticipated.

  Karin gave her head a shake. Did it matter how well groomed he was? No. Yet she couldn’t seem to discipline her thoughts. She wanted to think about something, anything, but that awful smash-squish and the sight of Lenora collapsing. Karin had never seen anyone fall like that, with no attempt to regain footing or fling out arms to break the impact. As if Lenora had already been dead, and
it didn’t matter how she hit.

  Detective Walker pulled a small notebook and pen from a pocket inside his leather jacket. With a few succinct questions, he extracted a bald description of events from Cecilia, then Karin.

  “Thank the Lord the other women had gone,” Cecilia said with a sigh.

  “Amen,” Karin breathed. Imagine if Olivia, recently raped and still emotionally fragile, had witnessed the brutal assault.

  The shelter director asked, “Have you heard anything about the aunt?”

  “Not yet.”

  Was he worried? Karin scrutinized his face. She couldn’t be sure—she didn’t know him—but thought she saw tiny signs of tension beside his eyes, in muscles bunched in his jaw, in the way he reached up and squeezed his neck, grimacing.

  “This was a bad idea,” Karin exclaimed. “To bring all these women here like…like sitting ducks! What was I thinking?”

  He laid his hand over hers. “No, it was a good idea,” he reassured her quietly, those intense eyes refusing to let her look away from him. “Once Roberto knew where his wife was, it was a done deal.”

  “It’s true,” Cecilia assured her. “Don’t you remember? Just last year, Janine’s boyfriend was waiting outside the shelter for her. He shot her, then himself, right there on the sidewalk. It was—” She stopped, sinking her teeth into her lip. “This could just as easily have happened at the shelter. Lenora had to go out eventually.”

  Karin deliberately relaxed her hands, and he removed his. What was she doing, thinking about herself now? Her guilt could wait. Right now the children mattered; Lenora mattered. Karin was wasting this man’s time making him console her, when he should be doing something to catch Roberto.

  “Do you know which hospital they took Lenora to?” she asked.

  “Harborview. It’s tops for trauma.” His cell phone rang. “Excuse me.”

  He stood and walked away, but not outside. Although his back was to them, Karin heard his sharp expletive. Her hand groped Cecilia’s.

  Still talking, he faced them. His eyes sought out Karin’s, and she saw anger in them. It chilled her, and she gripped the director’s hand more tightly. He listened, talked and listened some more, never looking away from her.

  Finally he ended the call and came back to them. Karin wasn’t sure she’d even blinked. She couldn’t tear her gaze from this man’s.

  He dropped into the chair as if exhausted. “He’s already been there. The aunt’s dead. A neighbor says the uncle works a night shift. We’ll be tracking him down next. The kids are gone.”

  “Oh, no,” Karin breathed, although his expression had told her what happened before he’d said a word. Cecilia exclaimed, too.

  “I’m heading over there. I’m Homicide. This case—” his voice hardened “—I’m taking personally.”

  “The children…” Horror seized Karin by the throat.

  “Does that mean they were in the car? Did they see him attack their mother?”

  Detective Walker’s mouth twisted. “We don’t know yet. He had a headstart. He could have gotten there, killed the aunt and snatched the kids after leaving here.”

  She heard the doubt in his voice. “But…?”

  “The officers who found her haven’t found a weapon. She was battered in the head. She could be lying on it, or it might be tossed under a bush in the front yard.”

  Something very close to a sob escaped Karin. “But he might have used the same tire iron.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I pray they didn’t see,” Cecilia whispered. “Enrico and Anna are the nicest, best-behaved children. Their faces shone for their mother.”

  “Have…have you heard anything?” Karin asked.

  “About Lenora?”

  “Nothing.” His hand lifted, as if he intended to touch her again, and then his fingers curled into a fist and he stood. Expression heavy with pity, he said, “There’s no need for you to stay.”

  “I’m going to the hospital.” Karin rose to her feet, too, galvanized now by purpose, however little hovering in a hospital waiting room really served. She couldn’t save Lenora, but somebody should be there, and who else was there until family was located?

  Cecilia nodded, rising, as well. “I have to go back to the shelter first and talk to the residents. I don’t want them to hear about this from anyone else. I asked staff to wait. I’ll join you as soon as I can, Karin.”

  “Thank you.” Karin squeezed Cecilia’s hand one more time, then released it. She turned to the detective.

  “You’ll let us know?”

  He nodded. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  She told him her number and watched him write it down in his small, spiral notebook. And then he inclined his head, said, “Ladies,” and left.

  Neither woman moved for a minute, both watching through the glass as he crossed the parking lot, spoke to officers still out there, then disappeared into the darkness.

  “He’s…impressive,” Cecilia said at last.

  “Yes.” Thank goodness Cecilia had no way of knowing how attracted she’d been to him from the moment she’d let him into the clinic. Embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “I hope…” She didn’t finish the thought.

  Didn’t have to. Cecilia nodded and sighed. “What’s to become of those poor children?”

  “Lenora has a sister in this country. She has children, too. I’m not sure whether they’re in the Seattle area.” Once they talked to Lenora’s uncle, he’d make calls.

  Karin shut off lights and locked up. Activity in the parking lot had slowed and the tire iron had apparently been bagged and removed, but a uniformed officer asked that they exit carefully, pulling out so as not to drive over the crime scene. Somebody, Karin saw, was vacuuming around the bloodstain. Trace evidence could make or break a case, she knew, but how would they be able to sift out anything meaningful from the normal debris?

  Following her gaze, Cecilia murmured, “What a terrible night,” and got into her van.

  Karin hit the locks once she was in her car, inserted the key and started the engine, then began to shake again. She was shocked at her reaction. She’d always tended to stay levelheaded in minor emergencies, whereas other people panicked. Minor, she thought wryly, was the operative word. Bruce Walker had been angry, but utterly controlled, while here she was, falling apart.

  She sat in the car for easily two minutes, until her hands were steady when she lifted them. Finally, she was able to back out, and followed the police officer’s gestures to reach the street.

  At a red light, she checked to make sure her cell phone was on and the battery not exhausted. How long, she wondered, until she heard from Detective Bruce Walker? And why did it seem so important that he not delegate that call?

  BRUCE HADN’T TOLD the women that what he most feared was finding Anna and Enrico Escobar dead at their father’s hand, next to his body.

  Bruce had gone straight to the Lopez home, but on the way he made the necessary calls to get a warrant to go into the Escobar house. If the son of a bitch had intended to take his whole family out, it seemed logical that he’d have gone home with the kids. He might have feared being stopped in the parking lot before he finished the job.

  God, Bruce hated domestic abuse cases. Every single one struck too close to home for him.

  The woman who now lay dead just inside the front door looked disquietingly like her niece—unfortunately, down to the depressed skull and blood-soaked black hair. Unlike her niece, she had tried to defend herself, though. Her forearm was clearly broken.

  Gazing down at her, he thought, So, Dad, what would you think of this? To keep order in his own house, does a man have the right to kill not just his wife, but her relatives, too?

  Not that his own mother was dead, although she seemed more ghostlike than real to Bruce.

  He had barely time for a quick evaluation of the Lopez murder scene before the warrant for a search of the Escobar house came through. Wishing Molly were with him, he snagged a uniform
ed officer to accompany him to the Escobars’.

  They turned off headlights and coasted to a stop at the curb in front of the small place, but the minute Bruce saw that it was dark he knew they’d find it empty. The front door, he discovered after one hard knock, wasn’t even locked. No, Escobar hadn’t worried about protecting his possessions.

  Walking through, Bruce tried to decide whether the place had an air of abandonment because Lenora had moved out with the kids, or Roberto Escobar, too, had departed with no intention of returning.

  Near the telephone in the kitchen, a fist-size hole was punched in the wall. Plaster dust littered the otherwise clean countertop. Had Lenora laid the note here, by the phone, telling her husband she’d left him? One of the kitchen chairs was also smashed, and lay in the corner behind the table. Roberto had read the note, thrown a temper tantrum and sworn he’d find his wife and punish her.

  It was hard to tell in the small master bedroom whether he’d packed. Lenora hadn’t taken all her clothes, and some of his hung in the closet, as well. But Bruce found no coats and, more tellingly, no shaving kit or toothbrush in the bathroom. The tiny bedroom the children had apparently shared looked as though a burglar had ransacked it. Maybe Escobar had been trying to find a few toys and clothes for his kids.

  Bruce poked into the single, detached garage and down in the dank, unfinished basement just in case, before finally sealing the property with tape. He’d come back tomorrow, in better light, to see what else he could learn. Right now, he was glad to have found the place deserted. That gave him hope that Escobar intended to run with the children, not murder them out of spite.

  But there was no guarantee they wouldn’t find the bodies in his car, parked in some alley, or…It was the “or” that stopped Bruce. He hated knowing so little. He couldn’t even speculate on where Escobar might go to hide or to commit suicide.

  Because he couldn’t resist the temptation, Bruce called to let Karin Jorgensen know they hadn’t located Escobar and to find out whether she’d gotten any word on the wife’s condition.