Secret Witness

by Jessica Andersen

  STEPHANIE WAS DREAMING of ringing phones and dark voices that wanted her to do things. Terrible things.

  Or I’ll send her back to you in pieces…in pieces…in pieces.

  Da-da-da-DUM! The shout of the phone catapulted her to wakefulness and she grabbed it and felt her heart gallop painfully.

  “H’lo?”

  There was a loud silence in the background, a hiss and crackle of radios and the murmur of voices. She repeated, “Hello?” while her stomach knotted in anticipation of the voice. The threats. She reached across the bed, needing to touch Jilly.

  Her hand met cool, empty sheets and she jolted upright as a someone said, “Is…um, is Peters there?”

  The voice wasn’t oily. It wasn’t evil.

  But it was familiar.

  “That for me?” The lazy drawl snapped her eyes to her grandmother’s rocking chair and the terror receded some when she saw her daughter there.

  Fast asleep on Peters’s bare chest.

  Oh my. Was it possible to go from terror to white-hot desire in half a heartbeat? Apparently so.

  He gestured toward the phone that had rung Beethoven and she watched the slide of muscle across his chest. “Want to give it to me, or would you prefer to take a message?”

  She handed it over, took the warm weight of her daughter from him and tried not to stare. The dawn-gilded dips and hollows of the most perfect chest she could ever have imagined were marred by a long thin scar and a small constellation of three round marks high on his shoulder. Cigarette burns, her mind supplied from the endless reels of true-crime TV, and she thought with dull horror that they looked old. Old enough to have been made when he was a boy.

  She wanted to press her lips to the marks and make them disappear. Make the hurt disappear. Wanted to trace the flat, dark bud of the nipple that drew up tightly as she watched it. Wanted to lose herself in the eyes that had turned to molten gold in the dawn.

  She handed him the phone. “I think it’s Detective Sturgeon.”

  The gold turned hard in an instant, and he nodded shortly, taking the phone and striding from the room, listening and grunting the occasional reply. Steph pressed a kiss to her sleeping child’s brow as she gazed at his naked back and the gun tucked into his waistband.

  Then she saw his bare shoulders tense. Heard him curse, low and violent, and knew something was very, very wrong. Again, she swung between terror and desire as though she was on a crazy carnival ride that wouldn’t slow down. Wouldn’t let her off.

  Something had happened.

  “I’ll be right there.” He snapped the phone shut so hard it sounded like a shot.

  His wrinkled shirt was draped haphazardly over the back of the rocking chair and he grabbed it and pulled it on as he strode for the door. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call Mortimer and have him keep an eye on this place. Take a cab to Boston General and I’ll meet you there later. We need to talk.”

  Steph all but chased him down the hall, carrying Jilly because she was afraid to put the little girl down. “Wait! What is it? What happened?”

  What if the voice had hurt someone from the lab? What if he’d known she and Jilly were being guarded and had taken his revenge on someone else?

  It would be her fault for not switching the results the day before. Her fault for letting Reid in the house. All her fault.

  He turned back halfway down the stairs, though he was clearly in a rush. “It’s a Chinatown call,” he said, as though that explained everything.

  The slam of the front door echoed through the house.

  A moment later, the phone on the hallway table rang and Steph picked it up automatically, her mind still jumbled with frantic possibilities. “Hello?”

  Maybe Reid was calling from the car to explain.

  But no. The silence had a dark, dead quality and the fear barreled through her and left her shaking. She let Jilly slide down to the floor, wanting her as far away from the voice as possible. She looked out the window and saw Peters get in an unremarkable sedan. He wasn’t on his cell phone. “Hello?”

  The slow, soulless inflection was as familiar as her own heartbeat, she’d thought of it so often in the last day. “Morning, bitch. I hope you enjoyed your night with the cop. Peters, isn’t it?” Stephanie shivered at the voice, at the menace and the knowledge. “Very cozy.”

  “I didn’t—” Steph managed before her throat locked tight. Jilly was staring up, her eyes dark with fear and understanding beyond her years. “I didn’t tell him anything,” she said. “I told him he’d have to wait a few days for the results. I have to rerun the experiments to fix the results the way you want them.” She was almost begging now as she felt the dawn break over her as though she was burning up with the fear. “I need more time, you have to believe me. I haven’t told him anything. I swear!”

  A considering silence. Then, “No matter, bitch. He’s a part of this now, thanks to you. I left him a message. A present. I’m sure he’ll thank you for it.”

  “But please, I—”

  “No!” the voice practically roared. “It’s too late to switch the results, bitch. The cops know too much. Now you need to lose the DNA. Lose it all and the records, too. Do it today, or you’re dead. You, the kid, the old woman…maybe even the cop, too. Got it?” When she didn’t answer right away, the voice screamed, “Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Steph whispered after a moment. She looked down at her daughter and heard the buzzing in her ears that indicated that the line was dead.

  Jilly looked up warily, as if to say, What now? and Steph bit back a hysterical sob.

  What now?

  Chapter Five

  Sturgeon was waiting for Reid at the hotel, holding a fresh shirt and a candy cigar.

  Reid buttoned the shirt and scowled at the cigar. Since Sturgeon’s wife had insisted he trade cigarettes for mints, he had given out peppermint cigars for special occasions.

  “I didn’t get laid,” Reid snarled at his partner. “And even if I had, it hasn’t been so long that it rates a cigar.”

  Well, in truth, it had been a while—since last year, in fact, when Yvette had thrown him out and run his Italian leather jacket through the washing machine before she mailed it to him wrapped around a week-old salmon steak, but that still didn’t mean he appreciated his partner marking the end of his celibacy.

  Particularly when it hadn’t ended.

  “It’s not for that, though I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Reid glanced over as they were waved through the police line outside the China Gold motel, a seedy rent-by-the-hour dive three blocks from Boston General. “Then what’s it for?”

  Figuring it was almost the same as brushing his teeth, he bit off the end of the peppermint cigar.

  Sturgeon clapped him on the back. “Congratulations! You’re a daddy!” Of course, he yelled it loud enough for every uniform in the building to hear.

  Reid scowled, then grinned as he figured it out. “The kittens! How many? Is she okay? Are they?”

  As they followed the damp, swampy-smelling hallway into the bowels of the China Gold, Sturgeon grinned faintly. “Well, well, well. First you spend the night somewhere other than your place or your desk. Then a woman answers the phone—and don’t think I didn’t recognize the voice.” He paused. Reid bit off another piece of the cigar. “And then you’re worried about a cat you keep claiming you’re taking to the pound. She had two beautiful babies, by the way. One’s gray and white, the other looks just like its mama.” He patted Reid on the back. “Welcome to the human race, Peters. I’ll have you happily married yet.”

  “Kiss my ass, Sturgeon. Not going to happen.” But the words lacked venom. “Now, let’s get to work.”

  Following the sounds of muted police radios and the thickening iron tang of fresh blood, the two detectives strode into Room 214, and stopped dead.

  “Hell!” Sturgeon breathed loudly through his mouth for a moment. “I hate it when they look like this.”

  Reid jus
t stood and stared.

  Sturgeon rounded on the young uniform standing just inside the door. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  The kid was a delicate shade of yellow-green. He pointed toward the bathroom, where two other uniformed backs could be seen hunched over a bathtub that might’ve been white before the blood washed it red. “In there.”

  A flashbulb lit the scene in brilliant white for a nanosecond, making the dark blood gleam against blue-white flesh.

  Sturgeon nodded and stepped in that direction. “Peters? You coming?”

  The question snapped Reid from his trance. He yanked the squawking radio from the rookie’s belt. “Dispatch? Call Patriot and have them send someone to five Old North Road. Tell them to sit tight until I get there.”

  “Peters? Peters, damn it. What’s wrong?” Sturgeon’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, and Reid didn’t answer as he spun on his heel and sprinted for the door.

  He felt the dead hooker’s eyes following him from the center of the bed, where her decapitated head had been carefully placed next to a row of pistachios that spelled out Last Warning.

  Stephanie!

  WHEN THE FURIOUS knocking began, Steph wasn’t surprised. She had figured Peters would be back when he got the “message” the voice had threatened. What surprised her was the mix of anticipation and dread that shivered through her. Anticipation because she could share some of the burden. Dread because she’d have to take all of the blame. Own up to her lies.

  Blam, blam, blam! “Stephanie! Let me in right now.” She could hear him clearly through the heavy door, so he must be yelling at the top of his lungs.

  The tension coiled tighter and she went to open the door, wishing she’d let Jilly go when Mortimer had come for Maureen. But she had wanted a few more quiet minutes with her daughter, and Jilly had wanted to stay. The knocking resumed and she grimaced. So much for quiet.

  Jilly cooed and waved her hands. Though she usually hated strangers, she’d taken to child-wary Peters right away.

  Steph knew the feeling. She hoped he didn’t hate her after she confessed what she’d almost done with the DNA results. But that didn’t really matter, because he was sure to hate her after she asked him to lose the evidence. Permanently.

  “Stephanie? Open up, or I’m breaking the door down.”

  She wasn’t surprised by the cold, angry face that greeted her, but she was startled by the phalanx of cops at his back.

  Oh God, she thought. What’s happened now?

  “Inside,” Peters snapped at the others. “Check the place top to bottom, and if you miss anything I’ll kill you, then give you to your chief. Got it?”

  “But sir, we don’t have a—”

  “I don’t care. Do it.” His voice was cold. Clipped. Nothing like the sexy grumble she’d heard the night before, after they’d kissed. You can call me Reid.

  “Reid,” she began as a new spurt of terror wrapped itself around her heart. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  But the smell of blood and the feel of death hung about him like a shroud and told her that the prayers were useless. Someone had been hurt.

  A message.

  “In the kitchen,” he snapped. His fingers bit into her upper arm much as they had done the night before but with different intent. He half led, half dragged her into the kitchen and shoved her into a chair next to the one where Jilly was eating a banana.

  “Reid? Detective Peters! What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  He loomed over her. She’d known he topped her by almost a foot, but she hadn’t before grasped just how physically, elementally huge he was. His shoulders were incredibly broad, and she could see the muscles of his upper arms shift and slide beneath his shirt as he grabbed her again, holding her as though he was afraid she might escape.

  “Damn it, Stephanie!” Reid yelled, shaking her roughly. “What have you gotten yourself into?” His roar vibrated in the room, echoed by a quiet whimper from Jilly.

  He froze.

  Steph lurched to her feet and scooped Jilly up, hating the fear in her daughter’s eyes. Hating that she’d helped put it there. Hating that her own past misjudgments had taught the child what fear felt like. “Shh, baby. It’ll be okay.”

  She petted Jilly until the child’s lower lip stopped trembling, then turned to Peters.

  And was surprised to find him most of the way across the room. His face was blank. Cold. “Detective?”

  He opened his hands and flexed his fingers once, twice. Then he said, “Detective Sturgeon and I need to see you down at Chinatown Station. Leave the child with Mortimer.”

  He turned on his heel and left the Patriot cops rifling through her home, finding nothing.

  The iron-clad door slammed behind him.

  AN HOUR LATER, Reid leaned back against the clammy wall outside the interrogation room and closed his eyes while the anger battered at him, though gentler than it had been that morning. He didn’t want to go in there. Didn’t want to face the fact that he had acted like the one man he’d sworn never to emulate. And that he’d scared the hell out of Stephanie and Jilly both.

  He’d lost control of the rage in a way he’d sworn never to do. The way his father used to.

  The memory came clearly, though it was more than twenty-five years old.

  “Can’t a man come home after a long night shift and expect to find his breakfast ready?” Bronson Peters had slapped the mug of cooling coffee off the table and watched it explode against the cheap, scarred cabinet like a bomb. “And what is this crap?” A plate of eggs followed the mug down to the floor.

  In memory, Reid felt his thin, ten-year-old body slide slowly from the kitchen chair and edge toward the door. His mother, who’d been singing along with the radio just minutes before, crouched down and began to clean up the mess while her husband towered over her.

  But his father had cop’s eyes. Quick eyes. The pale-blue lasers caught his son sneaking out of the room. “You there. Boy! Where do you think you’re going?”

  His hands were already on his heavy, black belt—the one with all the pouches and buckles that made it whistle through the air and sting like fire.

  “What’s this I hear about you breaking old man Sykes’s window?”

  It had happened three weeks before, and Reid had already bought a new pane of glass with his own money and helped their neighbor install it. Then he’d mowed Sykes’s lawn, the old man had returned Reid’s escaped baseball and they’d called it even. Not that any of that would matter to Reid’s father.

  His mother had stepped between them and laid a pale, narrow hand on her husband’s arm. “Bronson, please—”

  He tossed the belt aside and raised his hand. “How many times do I have to tell you not to interfere, woman?” He took another step toward her and she backed away, cowering down against the blows that always followed. “And look at this place, it’s a mess. Can’t you do anything right?”

  The words had echoed in the tiny kitchen as Reid’s bellows had done just that morning. And the small boy’s fear mirrored that of a dark-eyed child who had already seen too much.

  “Damn it!” Reid pushed away from the wall with a vicious shove, and almost caromed into his partner, who was carrying a pair of coffees from the shop down the street.

  Sturgeon held one out as though he was offering food to a starving animal and wasn’t sure whether he’d be mauled in thanks or not. “What’s up?”

  Reid took the cup and knocked half of it back before he answered, welcoming the pain of a scalded tongue. “Stephanie Alberts is in there,” he nodded at the closed door. “I want to know what she knows about the dead hooker, and I want to know if it has anything to do with Makepeace.”

  Reid had already told his partner everything. Well, everything except about how it had felt to hold Stephanie in his arms and slide his tongue along hers. How it had felt to touch her cheek in the darkness and fall asleep with her daughter in his lap.

  Those were things Sturgeon didn
’t need to know and Reid couldn’t afford to think of.

  “So why are you out here and not in there?” the other detective asked.

  “I was waiting for you. I want you to question her.”

  Sturgeon cocked his head. “Why?”

  “Because…” Because I scared the hell out of her and her daughter. Because I sounded like the old man. “Because I confronted Stephanie this morning and came on too strong. I think she’d rather talk to you.”

  Sturgeon wasn’t stupid. He offered Reid a peppermint. “What happened?”

  Reid stared at the candy. “I went straight to Stephanie’s house in Patriot after we saw the hooker.”

  “Honey Moreplease.” Sturgeon supplied the name. The two made it a point to use victims’ names as often as possible.

  “Yeah, and I’m sure that’s on her birth certificate, too,” Reid added, knowing that he’d heard the name before. He’d probably run her in when he’d been on patrol. It made the murder more personal somehow. “Anyway, I left the hotel—” with the stench of death in his nostrils and the fear in his heart that Stephanie, Jilly and Maureen were already dead “—and went to her house. I escorted Miss Alberts to the kitchen.” He could still feel how far his fingers had pressed into her flesh. She’d probably bruise. “And, well…let’s say I wasn’t very tactful. It brought back…memories that I’m not very proud of. Things I never wanted to be or do.”

  “Oh.” Sturgeon’s single word held a wealth of understanding. More than Reid really wanted. Sturgeon had been a rookie the year Bronson had died. “Peters, your old man was a tough cop in a time that demanded toughness.”

  Reid glanced over at the door and wished he’d gone in before his partner arrived. Sturgeon meant well, but he’d heard it too many times over the years already. Your father needs to be that way. He has an important job, his mother had told him time and again until he wasn’t sure which one of them she was trying to convince.

  “Yeah, I know. He was a good cop.” Reid reached for the interrogation-room door.

  “Perhaps,” Sturgeon said from behind him. “But you’re a better man.”