For Just Cause

by Kara Lennox

  Her mind made up, she stuck his phone in her purse, locked up her office—Kimmy had already gone home for the day—and headed for the parking garage. She should have been feeling dread over the coming meeting with Billy, which was sure to be awkward. But her steps practically floated over the concrete.

  Her relationship with Billy was over before it really started, yet she still felt giddy as a schoolgirl as she headed for her car. Preoccupied with thoughts of what she would say when she saw him, she didn’t realize someone had fallen in step behind her until he grabbed her from behind.

  A gloved hand was over her mouth before she could get a good scream out. His other hand had her by one arm, which he wrenched painfully behind her back. She had one free arm, and every survival instinct she possessed told her to grab, kick, struggle. Don’t let him get me into a car!

  Against the male’s sheer power, her struggles were pathetic and ineffective. He whisked her off her feet, hauled her a few steps, then abruptly dropped her and pushed her face into the hood of her own car, slamming her head into the steel hard enough that she heard bells ringing.

  Was he going to rape her?

  He leaned over her, one hand pushing her face into the car, the other pressing down on the small of her back. She tried kicking back but found only empty air. He slapped away her leg, avoiding her feeble strikes with contemptuous ease.

  “Stay away from the Torres family,” he growled into her ear, his face so close she could smell his stinking breath. “That bitch Mary-Francis is where she needs to be.”

  Claudia tried to get one hand free so she could press the button on her personal-safety alarm, but she was completely immobilized.

  Her assailant tossed her to the concrete garage floor as easily as he would a rag doll.

  The fall knocked the wind out of her. As she struggled to draw in a breath, pain radiated from her wrist. Even in her physical anguish, she tried to see her assailant, but he was running away. She heard what sounded like work boots thudding against concrete—two sets of footsteps—but she saw nothing, and in a few moments even the sound was gone.

  All that remained was the quickly fading scent from someone smoking a cigarette.

  She sat up, taking in sharp sips of air, and took stock of her injuries. Her wrist was blowing up like a balloon and hurt like a son of a bitch; she’d probably broken it. Her left hip hurt, too, and her shoulder, and her face. She didn’t realize her nose was bleeding until she saw bright red droplets landing on her skirt.

  Should she call the cops? Of course she should…but the Houston cops weren’t involved in the Torres case. They wouldn’t get the significance of the threat. She could call Hudson Vale, but Montgomery County was a long way away, and she wasn’t going to sit here on the parking garage floor forever.

  In the end she found her purse, which she’d dropped when her assailant had grabbed her, pulled out her phone and dialed 9-1-1. She stated her situation calmly, in as few words as possible, then hung up despite the operator’s plea that Claudia stay on the line. Next, she dialed Daniel’s number.

  “Daniel. Claudia Ellison. I need for you to get in touch with Billy. He’s without his cell phone—”

  “Hold on, Claudia. He’s right here.”

  Claudia’s heart pounded in her ears. She’d just survived a violent assault, but she trembled at the thought of talking to him again. After the way they’d left things, so…awkward.

  “Yo, Claudia. What’s up?”

  “Billy…” She crumbled. “Something h-happened. I was a-a-attacked—”

  He swore viciously. “Where are you?”

  She became aware of approaching sirens and knew she didn’t have much time to get her message across. Her stomach roiled with nausea, and she was too dizzy to stand or think very clearly. “I think I’m on my way to the hospital.”

  * * *

  BILLY HAD NEVER DRIVEN this fast on city streets before.

  “Slow down, you’re going to get us killed,” complained Jamie, Daniel’s wife, who had elected to go with Billy to the hospital. They didn’t know the extent of Claudia’s injuries, and no one had said out loud the word rape. Still, Daniel had insisted Claudia might want a woman present, and now Billy feared the worst. Jamie wasn’t a close friend of Claudia’s, but they at least knew each other.

  “The emergency entrance is one block down,” Jamie said. “I know, I’ve been to it twice in the past year.”

  Jamie had been shot by a crazy French lady, the mother of Daniel’s private chef, when Daniel had involved her too closely in a mystery he was trying to solve. That was what happened when persons untrained in law enforcement got too near dangerous, desperate people.

  “Damn, I should have known she might be in danger,” Billy lamented as he whipped his truck into the E.R. driveway. He didn’t even find a proper parking space in the tiny visitor lot; he parked at the end of a row and called it good.

  “You’re gonna get a ticket,” Jamie said.

  “So, you’ll fix it for me.” Jamie had recently been elected as Houston district attorney.

  “Her injuries aren’t life threatening,” Jamie tried again. “The cops said she was just a little banged up.”

  “She lost consciousness while she was talking to me.” Billy was halfway to the large, sliding doors that led into the emergency room. Jamie struggled to keep up. “That’s more than ‘a little banged up.’”

  He didn’t stop until he reached the E.R. front desk. Before he grabbed the nurse there and shook her by the stethoscope around her neck, he took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. If he was hysterical, they wouldn’t tell him anything. He’d been around emergency rooms—as a cop, a patient and a civilian—enough to know that.

  “I’m here to see Claudia Ellison,” he said. “Where is she?”

  A uniformed cop was loitering around the double doors that led to the treatment rooms. When he heard Claudia’s name, his ears pricked and he sauntered over.

  “Can I see some ID, please?”

  “Billy, get a grip,” Jamie cautioned.

  “Oh,” the cop said. “You’re Billy? The one she’s been asking for?”

  “She’s asking for me?” Amazing how that knowledge made him feel good all of a sudden. If a woman was lying bleeding in the E.R. and she asked for you, that meant something.

  “If you’ll just show me an ID, you can go back and see… Ms. McNair?”

  “Damn straight,” Billy said. He had the freaking district attorney to vouch for him.

  The cop forgot about checking any ID. “Y’all can go back. She’s in Room 4.”

  “Power has its privileges,” Jamie said under her breath as they made their way back to the treatment rooms.

  He found number 4 and barged in, then skidded to a halt and almost lost his dinner.

  “Claudia. Holy shit.” He’d imagined bad, but the reality was much worse. Her face was puffy and bruised on the right side, that eye swelled almost shut. Any skin that wasn’t blue and purple was as pale as the sheet on which she lay.

  “Billy. I—I’m sorry I made you come out. I was a little panicked when—”

  “Don’t apologize.” He was at her bedside in two strides. Her left arm was wrapped in a bandage with an ice pack, resting across her waist, but he thought nothing of taking her right hand and pressing it gently between his palms. “You look awful. How badly are you hurt?”

  “Not as bad as it looks. I tore some ligaments in my wrist, but nothing’s broken.”

  “You must have a concussion, though. You went unconscious on me.”

  She smiled, looking embarrassed. “I fainted. There’s a difference. The doctor said the combination of adrenaline and fear and relief made me, um, I think the technical term is swoon… Oh, hi, Jamie.”

  Jamie hovered uncertainly near the door. “Daniel asked me to come,” she said. “To make sure you’re okay, that you have everything you need.”

  “They’re treating me like a princess. Come on in, sit down.”


  On one hand, Billy wanted to be alone with Claudia. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her close so nothing could hurt her ever again. The fierceness of his protective instincts shocked him.

  But he didn’t want to advertise to Jamie or anyone else that he and Claudia had become more than just colleagues—especially when he was so unsure of how it would turn out. This afternoon he’d been thinking No way. He might be all for physical intimacy, but not the sort of emotional closeness Claudia would expect in a relationship.

  Now, he didn’t know what he wanted. When he’d found out she’d been assaulted, he’d nearly come unglued. She meant something to him, and he couldn’t just walk away from that.

  Though he couldn’t be completely frank with Claudia while Jamie was here, the D.A.’s presence eased some of the awkwardness that might otherwise plague them.

  Jamie pulled up a plastic chair and sat near the gurney, her eyes welled with compassion. Still in her work clothes—a red power suit, her dark hair pulled back in a no-nonsense twist—she radiated honest compassion, which was one of the reasons she’d won the election by a landslide. “Can you tell us what happened, Claudia?”

  “I was heading to my car in the garage. Not being as careful as I should have been—”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Billy interrupted.

  “Well, it’s true,” she said gruffly. “Normally I am hyperaware of my surroundings. Some of my patients are pretty disturbed, and, well, you never know when one of them will turn on you.”

  “So it was a patient?”

  Claudia shook her head, then seemed to think better of it as she winced with pain. “No. Not a patient. He grabbed me from behind and threw me facedown on the hood of my car.”

  The mental image her words gave him made him want to punch the wall in. Or better yet, someone’s face.

  Claudia must have seen something in Billy’s expression, because she squeezed his hand. “He wasn’t trying to rape me. His sole reason for being there was to scare me. He told me to stay away from the Torres family.”

  “Damn.” Billy let go of her hand because he needed to move, to release his anger and frustration somehow. But the room was tiny; there was no place to go. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was hoping this wasn’t connected to our investigation. I can’t believe I didn’t realize the danger. We’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

  “Someone doesn’t want Mary-Francis exonerated?” Jamie asked.

  Billy forced his brain to focus on something beyond his horror at Claudia’s injuries, which he could have prevented if he’d rubbed two brain cells together. Unfortunately all of his blood had been circulating elsewhere in his body.

  “I think it’s more likely that Eduardo Torres doesn’t want to be discovered alive. He was already facing a possible murder charge. If you add faking his own death, and possibly the assault to Theresa, the guy is in some pretty serious manure.”

  “There are also the coins,” Claudia reminded him. “What if Angie told her father we were nosing around?”

  “That’s how we’ll find Torres,” Billy said. “We’ll follow Angie, maybe tap her phone.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Claudia said. “Since the local cops aren’t interested, maybe we can get the feds involved if we—”

  “Whoa, whoa. There’s no ‘we.’ I misspoke. You are officially out of the sleuthing business. I’m going to ask Daniel if he’ll put a twenty-four-hour guard on you.”

  Claudia snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. We must be getting close, or Eduardo wouldn’t be taking such drastic action. I’m not backing down from this cowardly bastard.”

  “The hell you aren’t.”

  “You can’t order me—”

  Jamie halted the argument with one gesture of her hand. Though she was slender and not very tall, she had a commanding presence that everyone responded to.

  “Let’s focus on the assault for a moment. That’s our best lead right now. Claudia, did you get a good look at the man who attacked you?”

  “Unfortunately, no. He was behind me almost the entire time. But I can tell you a few things. He was big—taller than you, Billy, but strong and muscular like you. His body was hard—no fat around his middle. He was Hispanic—that much I could tell from his accent. And he had terrible breath—” She stopped short, looking as if she wanted to gag.

  Billy’s own gut churned at the thought of this animal getting close enough to Claudia that she could smell his breath or his clothing.

  “Anything else?” Jamie prompted.

  “There were two people there. I heard two sets of footsteps running away, and I smelled menthol cigarette smoke in the vicinity.”

  “Animals travel in packs,” Billy said in disgust. “Hijo de puta.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t remember more,” Claudia said.

  Jamie patted her hand. “You did good. Most assault victims don’t have the presence of mind to notice details.”

  “They were both wearing boots, I think. Shoes with a hard sole, anyway. I remember hearing those shoes clunking on the concrete as they ran off.”

  Jamie had a notebook on her knee, in which she jotted the information. “Did you tell all this to the police?”

  “Yes…well, most of it. I left out the threat. I let them believe it was a mugging gone bad, that I screamed and made such a fuss that I scared away my attacker. I didn’t want to muddy the waters, getting the Houston police involved in the Torres matter. I figure we can tell Hudson Vale.”

  “Vale is the Montgomery County detective investigating the assault on Theresa Esteve,” Billy explained to Jamie, who was frowning. She probably didn’t like leaving her city’s police force out of the loop. “He’s familiar with the supposed Eduardo Torres murder, too.”

  “I think the more law enforcement we have on our side, the better,” Jamie said.

  “You know what happens when cops get involved,” Billy argued. “They start closing ranks against us. They don’t like it that we get people out of prison, people who have been convicted based on their investigations. They’ll order us to stay out of it. Then they’ll make a mess of things, and if we try to help, they’ll threaten us with obstruction of justice.”

  Jamie smiled. “You have a pretty low opinion of cops, considering you used to be one.”

  “I’m okay with some cops. But I like to pick and choose who to work with.”

  Jamie nodded. “It’s your case. Since I’m not here in any official capacity, you can call the shots. But keep me informed, okay? As a courtesy?”

  “You bet, Jamie.”

  Jamie stood and stretched. “I’m going to get some air.” She gave them a knowing look, then left the room.

  “Does she know something?” Claudia asked. “About us?”

  “I promise you, I haven’t said a word to anyone. But she’s a pretty smart cookie.”

  Claudia sighed.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” He tried not to sound as hurt as he felt. “Why was your first call to Daniel?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because you lost your phone, jackass.”

  “What?” He reached for his pocket, found it empty.

  “I found it between the cushions of my office couch. It’s in my purse.” She pointed to a corner, where she’d stacked her personal belongings. Her white leather Coach bag sat atop a folded pile of clothes. “It’s tucked into the outside pocket.”

  Rather than dig around in her purse, something his first high-school girlfriend had dumped him for, he brought the purse to her and set it in her lap. She dipped her uninjured hand into the pocket and handed him his phone.

  “I wondered why no one had called me all afternoon.” He quickly scrolled through his missed calls. “Nothing urgent. Except…you did call me.” Several minutes before she was attacked.

  “Oh, right…that’s why I was distracted walking to my car. I thought of something while I was taking a shower.”

  Immediately he pictured her naked, under a water spra
y, her body slick with soap… Don’t go there.

  “You said something about going to confession,” Claudia continued, unaware of the turmoil her words and the image she’d painted caused in his body. “And that got me thinking. Mary-Francis trusts no one. If she hid some valuable coins in a statue, as an insurance policy in case Eduardo divorced her, perhaps, she didn’t tell anyone. I suspect not even her sister knew—she could have stashed the coins in the statue without Theresa seeing. And she certainly didn’t trust us with the information. But she might tell…”

  “Her priest.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “RIGHT.” CLAUDIA WAS RELIEVED Billy had caught on right away.

  “She was contemplating divorce. And she hid assets from Eduardo. Both of those would be considered serious sins.”

  “So she might have confessed to the priest, or gone to him for counseling.”

  “A definite possibility. But how does that help? We already have a strong suspicion she hid the coins in the statue. The statue was moved after Theresa was assaulted. After Mary-Francis was incarcerated. So anything she might have confessed to a priest would be out of date by now. Not to mention, confessions to a priest are legally protected. No way could we get him to—”

  “But the priest knew! He knew the coins were in a Virgin Mary statue. And when he came to Theresa’s house for the memorial service, he spotted the statue. That’s why he kept looking at the fireplace.”

  “You’re saying the priest stole the statue?” Billy shook his head. “He’s a priest, for cryin’ out loud.”

  “And priests are immune to temptation? He spotted the statue at the memorial service, checked it out—”

  “Then waited several months before actually removing it from the house. Remember, the statue wasn’t stolen until a couple of weeks ago.”

  She folded her arms and stared at him.

  “Claudia, this is pretty wild speculation.”

  “Not to me. I keep going back to what I saw on that video. Something was out of kilter with the priest’s demeanor. Something distracted him. His body language wasn’t congruent with his words or the situation.”