“I repeat—unless you’re trained in martial arts, you couldn’t have done anything but get hurt.”
Her shoulders sagged and the napkin dropped to her lap. “Do you think…Is there any way…?”
“She’ll survive?”
Karin bit her lip and nodded.
“Of course it’s possible.” Why not? People had huge malignant tumors vanish between one ultrasound and the next. They woke from comas after twenty years. Miracles happened. “From what I’ve read, the brain has amazing recuperative properties. Other parts step in when one section is damaged. Right now, I’m guessing the swelling is what’s keeping her in the coma.”
Those big brown eyes were fixed on his face as if she were drinking in every word. She nodded. “That’s what the doctor said.”
“It takes time.” He glanced up. “Ah. Here’s our food.”
They both ate, initially in a silence filled with under-currents. He studied her surreptitiously, and caught her scrutinizing him, as well. He knew why she interested him so much. The question of the day: Did she see him only as a cop, or had it occurred to her to be intrigued by the man?
He cleared his throat. “I hope you weren’t alone last night. Uh…this morning.”
“Alone? No, Cecilia did sit with me for a while, and then Lenora’s sister came…” Comprehension dawned.
“Oh. You mean at home.”
Bruce nodded.
“I live alone. I mean, I’m not married, or…”
Was that a blush, or was he imagining things?
“I fell into bed without even brushing my teeth. I was past coherent conversation.”
He understood that. “I, ah, live alone, too.”
“Oh.” Definitely color in her cheeks, and her normally direct look skittered from his.
Well. They’d settled that. It was a start. Although to what he wasn’t sure. He kept his relationships with women superficial, and somehow he didn’t picture Karin Jorgensen being content with cheap wine when she could have full-bodied.
Great analogy; he was cheap.
No, not cheap—just not a keeper.
Somehow that didn’t sound any better.
“The clinic’s receptionist said you had questions for me.”
He swallowed the bite of food in his mouth. Clear your head, idiot. “I want to know every scrap you can remember about Roberto Escobar. I’m hitting dead ends everywhere else I turn. No one liked him. I have a handful of names of men who might have been friends of his, although most people I’ve interviewed doubt he actually had any friends. If he really doesn’t, if he’s on his own with two little kids, we’ll find him. If he has help, that’s going to be tougher.”
She set down her fork. “What do you think he’ll do if he is on his own?”
“Rent a cheap motel room. Two hundred bucks a week. That kind.”
Karin nibbled on her lower lip. “That sounds…bleak.”
“It is bleak. Especially since I doubt he’s ever done child care for more than a few hours at a time.” He hadn’t thought to ask anyone. “Is Enrico still in diapers?”
She shook her head. “Lenora was really happy to get him potty trained just…I don’t know, six weeks or so ago. Although that isn’t very long. Under stress, kids tend to regress.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. Under enough stress, they regressed by years sometimes. He’d seen a twelve-year-old curling up tightly and sucking her thumb. Having your mother brutally bludgeoned right in front of you…Yeah, that would be cause to lose bladder control.
“He’d be mad,” Bruce noted.
“Oh, he’d be mad at them no matter what. Enrico is two. You know what two-year-olds are like.”
He didn’t, except by reputation.
“And Anna is only four. Well, almost five. They need routine, they need naps, they’ll want their favorite toys—” She stopped. “Did he take the time to collect any of their stuff from their aunt and uncle’s?”
“After killing Aunt Julia, you mean?” he said dryly.
“We assume they had a bag packed for the night, and if so, yes. It’s not there. But the ragged, stuffed bunny Uncle Mateo says Anna is passionately attached to was left on the sofa, along with Enrico’s blankie. Uncle Mateo predicts major tears.”
“Stupid,” she pronounced.
“He panicked. Wouldn’t you, under the circumstances?”
“Yes, but he’ll be sorry.” Then she shook her head, visibly going into psychologist mode. “No, sorry isn’t in his vocabulary. Not if it means, Gee, I screwed up. Everything is someone else’s fault. The more he gets frustrated with the children, the more enraged he’ll be at Lenora. This is all her fault. What’s frightening is that without her to deflect him, he’ll start turning that rage on Anna and Enrico. That he would anyway is worrying. That’s what finally precipitated her decision to leave him. She knew that sooner or later he’d lose his temper with them, not just with her.”
The sandwich was settling heavily in Bruce’s stomach. He was hearing a professional opinion, professionally delivered. “How soon will that happen?”
“Soon. It probably already has. If he’d attacked just Lenora, I’d think there was a chance that he’d have a period of being…chilled. Justifying it in his own mind, but shaken by what he’d done, too. The fact that he attacked two women, with—what, fifteen minutes, half an hour in between?—suggests that he’s even more cold-blooded than I would have guessed. No, he’ll have very little patience. His own children are just…possessions to him. Evidence of his virility. Not living, breathing, squalling, traumatized kids. He literally has no ability to empathize.”
Bruce swore. He supposed he had hoped Escobar was a man made momentarily insane by what he perceived as his wife’s betrayal.
Ah, here we go again. Hamster wheel squeaking. What was true insanity—what was cultural and what was in the blood, a legacy from father to son?
Give me a straightforward murder for profit any day.
In this case, at least, Karin was telling him that Roberto Escobar wasn’t momentarily nuts. He was the real thing: a genuine sociopath. One who, unfortunately, was on the run with two preschoolers. Now, that was scary.
He mined Karin for every tidbit she could dredge from her memory about her client’s husband. His favorite color was red; Lenora had once mentioned looking for a shirt for his birthday. Did it say that the guy loved the color of blood?
“He’s five foot eight, not five-ten as it says on his driver’s license. Lenora said he lied.”
Bruce made a note.
“He snores. But he didn’t like it when she slipped out of bed to sleep on the couch or got in bed with one of the kids. So usually she didn’t, even if she couldn’t sleep.”
Snores, he wrote, for no good reason. Unless someone in a cheap motel complained to the manager about a guy who sawed wood on the other side of the wall?
He noted food likes and dislikes, Roberto’s opinion about people he worked with, his anger at what in his view was his mother’s betrayal.
“Guy wasn’t doing well where the women in his family were concerned,” Bruce commented.
“No, and Lenora admitted to being inspired by the way his mother just let his words wash over her—like rain running over a boulder, I think is what she said—and kept on with her plans to go home to Mexico. Possibly for the first time, she realized he could be defied.”
“I wonder if that was a good part of why he was so angry. Afraid his wife would see a chink in his supremacy?”
“Um…” She pursed her lips and thought about it.
“No, I doubt he reasoned it out that well. Or believed Lenora had it in her to defy him in turn. Mostly, he’d have been angry that his mother chose her other son. Although since he’s continued to call her, he may be channeling that anger onto his brother, who somehow lured their mother from her duty to her older son.”
“In other words, he has a massively egocentric view of the world.”
“Oh, entirely,” Karin
assured him.
They quibbled over the bill, with Bruce winning. He couldn’t help noticing how little she’d actually eaten. He suspected she’d picked up her fork from time to time more to be unobtrusive about not eating than out of actual hunger.
While they walked back to the clinic, he called the hospital for an update on Lenora. “No change,” he told Karin, pocketing his cell phone.
“I’ll sit with her this evening, if they’ll let me.”
“Don’t wear yourself out.”
There was a flash of humor in her eyes when she glanced sidelong at him. “And you’re not doing the same?”
“It’s my job.”
“Uh-huh. Don’t I remember you saying, ‘I’m taking this personally’?”
“It did piss me off that this bastard assaulted his wife damn near under my nose,” he admitted.
“Was he watching when you walked away?” she wondered aloud.
“And did he know I was a cop?” He shrugged. “Hard to say. It was certainly luck on his part that Lenora was one of the last out of the building.”
“If she hadn’t stopped to talk to me…”
“Damn it.” He gripped her elbow, stopping on the sidewalk in front of the clinic. “Don’t keep trying to blame yourself. Talking to you was important to her.”
They were facing each other, standing very close, staring into each other’s faces. Her thick, long lashes, dark tipped with gold, were the perfect frame for her warm brown eyes. Without conscious volition, his gaze lowered to her mouth, and to the tiny mole beside it. He couldn’t remember ever wanting to kiss a woman as desperately as he did this one. His head might have even dipped, before he saw again how worn and vulnerable she looked right now.
“God,” he muttered, let go of her elbow and stepped back.
Her eyes seemed dilated, before a jolt shuddered through her and she blinked. “Oh. Um…” She drew in a deep breath and regained some poise, although he was afraid she’d shatter if car brakes squealed a block away. “Thank you for lunch.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, voice rough. Will you have dinner with me? Come home with me afterward?
“Will you call me?” she asked.
For an instant, his hopes soared. Yes, she wanted to have dinner with him; she wanted…And then he crashed and burned. Not what she was asking. Not what she wanted.
Hiding his chagrin, he nodded. “I’ll keep you informed.”
“Okay.” She backed away. “Thank you. Um, goodbye.”
“I mean it. Take care of yourself. She may need you later. She doesn’t yet.”
Just before turning away, Karin said, “I think maybe I need her. Or at least to feel needed.”
Who was he to tell a psychologist what she really felt or ought to feel?
Resigned, he shrugged and repeated, “I’ll call,” then went to his car, watching until she disappeared into A Woman’s Hand before getting in and starting the engine.
Back to the hunt, before the trail he followed grew cold.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE REST OF THE DAY was more of the same. Bruce mostly left the Lopez house to the crime scene people. His driving interest was in finding Roberto. Clues to where he’d disappeared with the children wouldn’t be at the Lopez house.
Instead, Bruce returned to Escobar’s own house and walked through it again, trying to soak in details. The entire while he was conscious of the need to be there, but also felt unpleasantly like an intruder. Lenora wasn’t dead—not yet, at least. That made the house still a home in a sense, rather than a crime scene.
The place was spotless except for the messes Roberto had made over the weekend—unwashed dishes and the damage left by his fury. Did both Roberto and Lenora believe cleanliness was next to godliness? Or was Lenora such a scrupulous housekeeper because her husband insisted on it?
He’d have to ask Karin what she thought. Not that it probably mattered, except that a cop never knew what insight might later prove relevant.
No, use your own judgment. Karin isn’t here. He couldn’t be calling her incessantly.
Okay, then. The way soup cans were aligned in kitchen cupboards, shoes were in neat rows by pairs in the closets, unused possessions carefully boxed and labeled on shelves was not the mark of an unwilling housekeeper. Even the kids’ bedroom, shared, had to have been clean and well organized before Roberto had ripped clothes from drawers and hangers in impatience.
Bruce found a box of romance novels tucked in the linen closet behind stacks of sheets and pillowcases, where Roberto would likely never have seen it. They were fairly recent ones, with a stamp inside the cover from a nearby used bookstore. So Lenora was still able to dream, and not necessarily about her husband. Did Karin know she read these, or was Lenora secretly embarrassed about this escape? Bruce felt a savage wish that she’d have the chance to dream again.
The fourth or fifth time he speculated on what Karin would think about this habit or that room, he growled. What was wrong with him? He didn’t lose confidence in his judgment every time he worked with someone better educated than he was.
No, the problem was, he couldn’t get her out of his head. And because she was along for the ride, so to speak, he had this bizarre desire to talk to her. Better yet, for her to talk back.
The realization disturbed him. He was single-minded in the hours and days after a murder. He forgot to eat, or to taste the food if he did remember. He did not—repeat, did not—keep thinking about a woman.
As if in defiance, he found himself picturing her. She’d be nearing the end of her day, maybe in with her last client. He had no trouble seeing how she’d listen with grave interest, her attention wholly and flatteringly on the speaker. His inner eye lingered on the line of her throat, her golden-blond hair bundled heavy at her nape.
What is it with her neck, anyway? Okay, I’ll think about her lips, instead. Or her eyes, the color of melted chocolate. No, her lips. Or…both.
“Crap!” Scowling, he stalked out of the house, less than happy to have thoughts of a woman riding him quite so hard. Yeah, it had been a while since he’d been in a relationship, so it wasn’t surprising he was so hot for this one. But the combination—wanting her and wanting to discuss with her everything that passed through his mind—that made him uneasy.
His brooding was interrupted by a call letting him know that the blood on the tire iron did in fact come from two separate individuals, confirmed to be Lenora Escobar and Julia Lopez. Time of death on the aunt further corroborated that she’d died first. So the kids presumably were in the car at the time of their mother’s assault. Appalled, Bruce hoped they’d been clutching each other in the back seat, not even watching when their daddy got out. Wouldn’t they have screamed or called out if they’d seen their mother?
Maybe they had and no one heard them.
Whether they could see out the window depended on whether they’d been in their car seats and therefore sat tall enough. Bruce shook his head. He’d forgotten to check on where the kids’ car seats were. He made a note now.
Neither woman who witnessed the crime had observed the car. Bruce would like to think that meant it wasn’t in sight. From previous experience, however, he suspected that their gazes had been riveted on Lenora.
Damn it, he wanted confirmation that Escobar had been driving his own vehicle. Yeah, it was missing; yeah, both Cecilia and Karin had identified Lenora’s assailant as Roberto from a family photo Mateo Lopez had supplied. But at this point, finding him depended on finding his car. If he’d switched—borrowed a different one, stolen one—God, owned a second one that hadn’t yet been registered?—then escape became more possible.
To clear his head, Bruce called Molly, and learned that her new niece was enchanting, adorable and had lungs the size and power of an opera singer’s.
“Murder sounds good,” she said a little wistfully.
“But I promised to stay until Thursday, when Mom is flying in. I told her Fiona was the size of a house and I thought the b
aby would come sooner than next week, but who listens to me?”
The question was clearly rhetorical, so Bruce didn’t comment. Molly’s mother had found a second career leading groups on tours and was currently in the Ozarks. Since it was a one-woman business, she couldn’t abandon her group.
“This is an ugly one,” Bruce said, instead. “The bastard was willing to kill two women out of pride. He couldn’t let his wife leave him and take his children.”
“Hmm. And he grabbed the kids first, you say? Did he go intending to kill the aunt? Or was he just thinking he had the right to take his children and she’d stand aside?”
“Kill.” Bruce didn’t have much doubt. “I guess it’s conceivable he went to the door first and they argued, but then you’d think the aunt would have locked up in the time it took him to go back to his car, pop the trunk and grab the tire iron. He didn’t have to break in, and it’s hard to imagine she’d have opened the door to him a second time. The family wasn’t fond of Roberto.”
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered. “Maybe Fiona can find a friend who’d stay with her tomorrow.”
“No. Enjoy your niece. Catch up on your sleep. I’ve pulled in plenty of help.”
She snorted. “Catch up on my sleep. Yeah. Right. You should hear this kid.”
“And someday you, too, will have one of your own,” he told her, grinning. “Or two or three…Hey, five or six, you being Catholic and all.”
She said something rude that left him laughing as he ended the call.
It was getting on to the dinner hour, perfect for catching people at home, so he tried the addresses for two of the names he’d been given as potential friends of Escobar’s. No answer when Bruce knocked at the first, an apartment. At the second, he talked to Ramiro Payeda against the din of half a dozen children squabbling at the table while his wife tried to keep them focused on eating their dinner.
“Amigos?” Payeda said doubtfully. Well, he knew Escobar, sure. They had worked together previously. He explained that they’d both moonlighted from their regular jobs with a weekend roofing crew. Roberto had gotten a raise at the lumberyard and quit the second job. Payeda hadn’t seen him in at least a year.
The Man Behind the Cop Page 5
