His Witness, Her Child

by Ann Voss Peterson

  But what if there wasn’t anything in the files?

  She looked back over her shoulder at Amanda. Her little girl hadn’t moved. She still stared at the television as if she were in a trance. The colors from the flickering screen reflected on her face, turning her complexion blue, green, red.

  Jacqueline clenched her fists. She had to do something to protect Amanda. She had to bring this ordeal to a close. Even if it meant her little girl would have to relive that horrible night.

  She turned back to Dillon and swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I’m going to let you talk to her.”

  Dillon’s eyes bored into Jacqueline for what seemed like hours. Probing. Assessing. Finally he tore his gaze from her and settled it on Amanda. “I’ll make my questions as easy on her as I can.”

  Jacqueline nodded. She knew he would. She could see the caring in his eyes when he looked at her daughter. He wouldn’t push her if she got upset. He wouldn’t badger her. He would be careful. As careful as he could be. “Let her get some sleep first, if she can. You can talk to her tomorrow.”

  Dillon reached out and took her hand in his. The pressure of his fingers was warm, reassuring. “We’ll get through this, Jacqueline. We’ll all get through this.”

  She gripped his hand and held on. She sure hoped he was right, because she couldn’t bear to think what would happen if he wasn’t.

  THE LATE-MORNING SUN glowed weakly through the heavy curtains, lending the motel room its heat if not its light. Inhaling a breath of the musty air, Dillon spread paper and crayons on the scarred table in front of Amanda.

  She automatically reached for the red crayon and began doodling a design. The tip of her pink little tongue peeked out between her lips in concentration.

  Dillon lowered himself into the chair opposite her. He avoided glancing at Jacqueline standing behind her little girl, but he could feel her eyes on him. He could feel her apprehension. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. He knew she did. She damn well wouldn’t be letting him talk to her little girl if she didn’t. But she understood how rough this interview would be on her daughter. Remembering could be rough. And he didn’t blame her for being scared for Amanda. Not one little bit.

  He honed his attention in on the little girl. “Darlin’, I want you to think back to the last night you were with your daddy. Do you remember that night?”

  Amanda looked up from her drawing. She twisted in her chair to see her mother, to ask with a glance for permission to answer.

  Jacqueline rested a reassuring hand on her little girl’s shoulder. “It’s all right, punkin. Remember? This morning we talked about how it was all right for you to tell Mr. Reese everything.” Her eyes rose and met his. “I trust him. Don’t you?”

  Dillon’s mouth went dry. He knew she trusted him. She wouldn’t be letting him talk to her little girl if she didn’t. But hearing her say the words was another story altogether. It made him want to wish for a different life. It made him want to hope for a future. A future with Jacqueline and Amanda in it. A future he knew damn well couldn’t be.

  He wrested his eyes from Jacqueline’s in time to see Amanda’s small nod. “I was at Daddy’s house watching Little Mermaid.” Her voice was no louder than the coo of a mourning dove.

  His mind snapped back to the present, back to the matter at hand. “Did your daddy get a phone call that night?” The caller ID installed in Mark Schettler’s house showed him receiving a call from a pay phone on State Street less than an hour before his murder. Chances were whoever had placed that call had lured Mark to his death.

  Unfortunately, Mylinski hadn’t had any luck in locating a witness who might have noticed who used the phone at that time. And the lab had struck out trying to identify fingerprints on the telephone and the change inside. His last hope in identifying the caller rested on Amanda’s memories. “Do you remember him getting a call, darlin’?”

  She nodded her head. “He gets lots of calls. He’s very important.”

  She was still using the present tense to describe her daddy. Poor kid. Even though she’d watched as he was killed, she couldn’t face the fact that he was dead. And who the hell could blame her? Not him. Not for a second. He only wished he didn’t have to make her remember. “Do you remember a call that night? Right before the two of you went to the brew pub?”

  Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t go to the brew pub. I watched Little Mermaid.”

  Obviously she didn’t want to remember. “How about after you watched Little Mermaid? Didn’t you go to the pub then?”

  She shook her head.

  He looked down at the paper she had stopped coloring. He didn’t want to pressure her. Too much pressure and she might lock those memories away for good. He made his voice as gentle and casual as possible. “Remember? You called your mommy from the pub, and she came to get you. Didn’t she find you under the desk in your daddy’s office? That was a very smart place to hide.”

  Again she shook her head.

  Jacqueline rubbed her hand over her daughter’s shoulders. “You did a great job of hiding, sweetheart.”

  The little girl’s fingers found her hair, twisting a shank in a nervous mannerism that had become familiar to him in the past few days. Her forehead puckered. “Daddy got a phone call from that lady. But then I went to sleep.”

  “What lady, Amanda? What lady called your daddy?”

  “The lady on the TV.”

  His mind flashed to last night. Before they’d left his house, Amanda had said that Mark had talked to the blond news anchor, Jancy Brock. And that she wanted to talk to him again. “Was it the lady you showed us on television last night? The lady that interviewed your daddy?”

  She nodded. “She wants to talk to him on TV again. That’s what daddy said. Daddy is real important.”

  Dillon met Jacqueline’s eyes for a moment. The shock of discovery on her face matched the jolt that ran through him. Did Jancy Brock have some connection to Swain or a member of the task force? Did she lure Mark to the pub? Or did someone pretending to be the newswoman call Mark? “Is that why your daddy took you to the brew pub? To talk to the lady?”

  “He was going to, but I fell asleep.”

  Dillon gave Amanda a sympathetic smile. He knew why she was insisting she hadn’t gone to the brew pub. If she acknowledged that her memories weren’t a dream, she’d have to face that Mark’s murder was real, also.

  A pain sliced through his chest. He’d give anything to not have to pull that memory and the pain associated with it out into the open. But his case depended on her remembering. And more important, her very life depended on it.

  He’d worked on a case long ago where a young boy had insisted he remembered nothing about a crime. But when the child psychologist had asked him about a dream he’d had, the whole experience had rushed out.

  “Amanda, after you fell asleep that night, did you have a dream about going to the brew pub?”

  “Yes.”

  Bingo. Somehow he kept himself from leaning forward. “Can you tell me about your dream?”

  “I dreamed I went to the pub. Daddy said I could talk to the lady. He said she would put me on TV, too.”

  Next to Dillon, Jacqueline bristled. He knew what she was thinking. After the lengths she went to to protect her daughter, to keep her out of the limelight and the line of fire, Mark had been willing to throw away all her efforts the night before his testimony. All for a moment in the spotlight. Damn fool. “Did you see the lady at the pub?”

  “In my dream?”

  “Yes.”

  Amanda shook her head. “She wasn’t there. I was supposed to wait for her in daddy’s office, but she never came.”

  “Did your daddy wait in his office, too?”

  “No. He went down in the garden.”

  “The beer garden?”

  She nodded. “But the lady wasn’t down there, either.”

  “Was someone else down there?”

  Amanda stared at a spot just to the left of
Dillon, as if she was watching her memories play out on a movie screen. Her eyes grew wide. A slight whimper rose from her throat.

  Next to him, Jacqueline drew in a sharp breath.

  Dillon tensed. “Who was in the beer garden, Amanda?”

  “That man. That man was down there.”

  Dillon’s neck and shoulders began to throb. God forgive him, he had to make her say the words. “What man, Amanda?”

  Still staring past him, Amanda’s eyes widened with fear. “The man in the newspaper. The one daddy was gonna talk about in the court.”

  Hand shaking, Dillon withdrew a collection of photos from his briefcase and spread them over the tabletop. Six faces stared up at Amanda. Six mug shots. All of them in their thirties. All of them faces no little girl should ever have to see. “Is one of these men the one you saw in the beer garden with your daddy?”

  She lowered her gaze to the table. Her round blue eyes filled with tears. Big drops rolled down her cheeks. She extended her index finger and pointed to one of the photos.

  The photo of Buck Swain.

  “He had a knife. He cut Daddy.” She paused, a sob racking her body. “He killed my daddy.”

  Jacqueline folded her daughter in her arms, her own tears mingling with the little girl’s.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dillon closed his aching eyes and stretched the muscles in his neck and shoulders. The day had passed, and night had slid into the motel room while he’d been studying the files.

  He glanced up at the bed. Jacqueline sat with her back against the bed’s headboard, her eyes closed. Her daughter curled under the covers next to her. Blessedly asleep. The little girl had spent most of the day crying in her mother’s arms, and her round little cheeks were chapped pink from her tears.

  Poor little darlin’. He’d hated making her relive her daddy’s death. Hated making her realize the whole thing wasn’t merely a bad dream. She didn’t deserve this. Any of this.

  And Jacqueline. The interview had shaken her, too. Shaken her to the core. What he’d seen in her eyes after Amanda had cried herself to sleep had worried him. Desperation. Despair. As if all her hope, all her fight had been washed away by her daughter’s tears. Even now, leaning against the headboard, eyes closed, her beautiful face looked ashen and drawn. What he wouldn’t give to erase the furrow of worry from her brow, to smooth the lines of tension framing her mouth.

  What he wouldn’t give…

  Amanda had handed him the evidence he needed to put Swain away for good. He should feel elated. But he couldn’t help worrying that the price was too high. Too high for the little girl. Too high for her mother.

  And what had he really accomplished? Sure, he could now prove that Swain had murdered Mark Schettler, but Swain hadn’t been arrested yet. He was still out there. Searching for them. Stalking them.

  Looking to kill Amanda.

  And Swain’s mole was still in the task force, feeding him information. But if Dillon was lucky, the mole wouldn’t be there for long.

  He looked down at the paper in his hand just to make sure what he’d found wasn’t merely the product of wishful thinking. The facts stared back at him, plain as fresh red paint on the broad side of a barn.

  A connection.

  He might not be able to erase Amanda’s horrible memories and Jacqueline’s worries, but at least he had two leads to pursue. And maybe a start toward setting things right.

  “Have you found anything?”

  Dillon started at the low whisper of Jacqueline’s voice.

  Pushing herself from the headboard, she sat straight in the bed. Her face was pale, her skin almost translucent. She looked unspeakably fragile, delicate, like a priceless porcelain doll.

  He met her gaze. A grin touched the corners of his lips. “I found a connection.”

  Her eyes grew wide. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “A connection? Between Swain and the newswoman Jancy Brock?”

  “Between Swain and Dex Harrington.” He allowed his face to break into a full-fledged grin. “Harrington prosecuted Swain’s foster brother fifteen years ago for armed robbery. He had more witnesses and evidence than Carter has liver pills, but for some reason, Harrington let the guy off with probation.”

  “So Swain used some kind of influence with Harrington to help his foster brother?” Her eyebrows arched in a question, then puckered. “Swain doesn’t strike me as the type who would help his own mother, let alone a foster brother.”

  “I suspect they were involved with one another in selling stolen goods. Nothing I can prove, unfortunately.”

  “So what exactly does this mean?”

  “If Harrington was doing favors for Swain fifteen years ago, maybe he’s doing the same now. Like giving him Mark’s and Val’s whereabouts.”

  She nodded, thinking it over. “Why? What’s in it for Dex Harrington?”

  “That’s what I need to find out.”

  He knew she was expecting more, but it was the best he could do. For now. “If I can find out how Swain convinced Harrington to agree to the lenient sentence, maybe I can bring them both down. Provided Harrington is Swain’s informant.”

  She stood and walked to the table. The scent of her hair reached him before she did. Shampoo, crisp air and a sweet hint of vanilla.

  He drew in a deep breath.

  She sat down next to him. The dim light of the table lamp gleamed off the red tones in her hair, which shimmered in loose waves about her shoulders. Shadows cupped her high cheekbones. What he wouldn’t give to be able to gather her in his arms, to kiss her again. He wouldn’t pull back this time, not until both of them lost their senses.

  He balled his fists under the table and reined in his imagination. Who was he trying to kid? Nothing had changed between them. Kissing Jacqueline was still a promise. A promise he couldn’t make and couldn’t keep.

  But he wanted that kiss. And more. Much more. He wanted it so badly he ached.

  She tilted her head, peering at him under furrowed brows. “What about Swain? Can you have him arrested?”

  Dillon pulled his mind back to the matter at hand. He couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted. He had to focus. Jacqueline’s and Amanda’s lives were at stake. “Amanda’s identification of Swain’s picture gives me enough evidence to get an arrest warrant for him. Britt Alcott is setting that in motion for me. By tomorrow, every police officer in the state will be looking for Buck Swain.”

  “So what do we do next?”

  “We need to find out who Swain’s mole is in the task force.” He tore his gaze from her and looked down at the file folders strewn over the table. “We have two leads. Dex Harrington’s case against Swain’s foster brother and the call that Amanda told us about. The one Mark got from Jancy Brock the night he was killed.”

  “How do we go about following those leads?”

  “The plea arrangement Harrington made with Swain’s foster brother had to be agreed to by the district attorney. That would have been Bill Banks back then. He’s a judge now. He’d be the one to talk to.”

  She bit her bottom lip thoughtfully and nodded. “And Jancy Brock’s call?”

  “I pay Ms. Brock a visit. I’ll go tomorrow morning.”

  “What happened to we? I’m not just going to sit around and do nothing.”

  Dillon reached across the table and rested his hand on hers. Her skin was soft under his touch, soft and delicate and vulnerable. “You and Amanda need to stay here. Judge Banks’s chambers are just three floors down from the district attorney’s offices. And that means the task force offices, as well. No use walking into the snake pit if we can avoid it.”

  She said nothing, but he could see her acceptance in the tilt of her lips.

  “I’ll leave the Defender with you. I picked up more ammunition for it last night.” He wished he could do more to reassure her. More to alleviate her worries.

  Her gaze dropped to his open briefcase and locked on the silver barrel of the gun inside. She shuddered
slightly. Setting her chin, she returned her gaze to Dillon’s. Beneath the worry, a spark of determination and strength glowed in her eyes. “All right. Just don’t take too long.”

  “I’M SORRY, REESE. I just can’t remember back that far. A lot of water under the bridge since then.” Judge Bill Banks leaned back in his leather chair, his Buddha-like paunch sticking out in front of him like a beach ball.

  Dillon suppressed a groan. He’d been afraid of this. Bill Banks had a good memory, but fifteen years was a long time to recall a ordinary plea bargain. Especially with the number of cases the judge had dealt with since. His only alternative was to search for the written record, a search that could take a while. And the record wasn’t likely to give him the information he needed, anyway. Dillon stood and thrust out his hand. “Thanks, Bill. I knew it was a long shot.”

  Banks stood and gave Dillon’s hand a firm shake. “I don’t suppose you would want to share the reason you’re asking about a fifteen-year-old plea agreement.” He narrowed his eyes. “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with politics.”

  Dillon gave him a disarming smile. “Hell, Judge, you know me better than that. Politics are about as valuable to me as a pail of hot spit.”

  Banks smiled, his twinkling eyes almost getting lost in the folds of his cheeks. “You’re right. I do know you better than that. I don’t know a less political man than you. Guess I was getting you confused with your boss. Speaking of your boss, you could ask Fitz about that fifteen-year-old plea agreement of yours. He was around back then and has a memory like the proverbial elephant. Besides, he was probably sniping over Harrington’s shoulder. There’s a long history of bad blood between those two.”

  Dillon thanked the judge and left his chambers. Fitz. Why hadn’t he thought of Fitz before? Not only might Fitz be able to help with his recollections of the armed robbery case, he would be more than eager to throw his weight behind ferreting out Swain’s informant. If someone in his office was dirty, Fitz would want to cut out the dry rot as soon as possible. Dillon took the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down the hall to the D.A.’s offices.