Crime Of The Heart

by Allie Harrison

  Lee took a chance that Tom would be in and punched in the number. Then he sat down and propped up his leg.

  “Hello, Tommy boy,” Lee said once he had Tom on the phone.

  “Lee? Is that you, old man? How’ve you been? And when the hell are you coming back?” Tom asked in his friendly, familiar, fun-loving tone, a tone it seemed Lee missed more and more every day. “I figured you must have dropped off the face of the earth.”

  Lee smiled, feeling better than he had all day. “Not quite. Although sometimes this damned leg of mine hurts so bad I wish I could.”

  “I told you when you were lying on that table you should have let the doc cut it off.”

  Lee laughed. “I offered him a thousand dollars if he would, but he refused.”

  “Just a thousand? Hell, no wonder. Everyone knows that doctors won’t even look at you for a thousand bucks. You should have offered him at least fifty grand.”

  Lee laughed again, feeling even more relaxed. “Oh, right, as if I keep that much stashed under my bed.”

  Erin came back from the bathroom. Lee met her warm gaze, but didn’t pause in his conversation with Tom.

  “Well, I heard that the rich witness you were watching over paid you big bucks for taking the bullet that was meant for him,” Tom joked.

  “Oh, yeah, now I remember. He did,” Lee said, trying to keep from laughing. “But I didn’t want it, so I gave it to charity.”

  “Charity who?” Tom asked.

  “She didn’t tell me her last name. With all that money changing hands, who remembers to ask names?” Lee tried to sound serious, but found it was impossible. “Besides, she knew you. She said you were her best customer, visiting her every week. What’s that lovely wife of yours going to say when she hears about this?”

  Erin grinned ar the side of the conversation she was hearing before she moved to the stove to stir the nowboiling soup. Then she turned off the heat.

  “Don’t tell her. She’ll make me sleep on the sofa for a week,” Tom replied, trying to sound just as serious.

  “Hey, that’s a great sofa.”

  “Not anymore,” Tom said. “Victoria traded in that great sofa that you almost became permanently attached to for every Cubs game for some art deco furniture. It looks great, but you can’t sit on it. Torry won’t let you. And even if she did, it’s the most uncomfortable piece of work you’ve ever planted your backside on.” He paused. “So what’s up, my man? How are you, really? Still busy with therapy, because if you’re not, you know you’ve always got your desk just waiting here for you?”

  Lee didn’t reply for a long moment as he let Tom’s words cut through him. Talk of a desk job always hit a raw nerve. “Yeah, I’m still going to therapy, and I don’t know if I’m ready for a desk yet,” he muttered finally. “Listen, I need a favor, though.” Lee looked out the back door at the rain and not at Erin, who still stood by the stove. He could feel her looking at him.

  “If you want to borrow my wife, you can forget it,” Tom bantered lightly.

  It was enough to lighten the mood created by Tom’s job offer. Lee smiled, glad to have it. “Oh, damn, that’s what I needed, too. No, really, what I need is some information. Anything you might have on the art connoisseur, Forest Burke.”

  Tom didn’t reply right away, and Lee thought he heard an intake of breath coming across the line.

  “Are you sure about that, Lee? Are you sure that’s the guy you want?” Tom asked slowly, completely serious now.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Listen, why don’t you come by my office later this afternoon? I could serve tea or something.” Tom tried to joke, but it didn’t come off very well. “We could talk about old times and catch up on things. You game?” Tom offered.

  It took Lee only a second to realize that Tom didn’t want to talk about Forest Burke on the phone. “Sure,” Lee agreed quickly. “I was planning on coming by anyway. I’m going to need your help in protecting a witness.”

  “That’ll be great,” Tom agreed. “Can you keep this witness safe until then? Or are you having any problems?”

  “No problems. I think we’ll be all right,” said Lee.

  “I’d better go now, buddy. But listen, old man, you be careful out there. You’re not as young as you used to be.”

  Was that a warning Lee heard in Tom’s voice? Yes, he thought so. Lee and Tom had been partners for years before the shooting. Lee always felt he knew Tom inside and out. He knew what Tom was thinking. And right now, even after weeks of no communication at all, Lee was able to pick up on Tom’s hidden message.

  “I will,” he promised.

  Tom’s next words stopped Lee in his tracks. “And take care of that pretty witness, too.”

  Lee was so shocked that Tom would know, he nearly blurted out Erin’s name in question.

  “You’re wondering how I knew,” Tom broke in before Lee could say a word. “Alex Kaffel at the FBI called me.”

  Lee let out a heavy sigh, keeping the oath he uttered under his breath. “Why would he call you on this?” he asked, closing his eyes for a brief moment.

  “It looks like the FBI is investigating something that ties in with your witness. So they’re watching her, too.”

  “Just what I need,” Lee muttered.

  “Hey,” Tom returned. “I know you and Kaffel have had your differences, but don’t you think it’s better to work together on this? Besides, isn’t our main objective keeping the witness safe?”

  “Yes,” Lee had to agree.

  “Yes is right and you well know it,” said Tom bluntly. “You can blame Kaffel all you want for causing you to almost lose a witness, but it was a long time ago and nothing you do now is going to change what happened. Now I’ve got to go. Torry’s dropping by to see me, said she’s got something important to tell me.”

  “Good luck,” Lee said, suddenly able to think no further than the fact that when Erin had told him she had something important to tell him, it was that she couldn’t handle the loneliness and the worry anymore. He hoped Torry wasn’t going to tell Tom anything quite so grim. He didn’t wish that on anyone.

  “You, too.” Tom took a deep breath that Lee could hear. “I’ll see you later. If you’re not here, I’ll figure you’re in big trouble, and I’ll send out a team to find and rescue you.”

  “We’ll both be there. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave my witness alone.”

  Lee hung up, his hand resting on the receiver for a long moment.

  The call was made. Finished. He’d done it. And it hadn’t even hurt. Not really. It hadn’t even been as scary as he thought it would be. Lee took a deep breath, realizing for the first time that he’d been holding it.

  So Tom already knew about Erin, probably knew about the break-in at her house if Kaffel had called him. Lee figured Tom had probably already tapped into his computer and learned about everything. That was fine, he thought. Then they wouldn’t have so much to explain once he and Erin got to the police station.

  Lee ran his fingers through his hair. Looking out at the rain, he sat perfectly still for a long moment. The room was filled with the tempting aroma of the soup. And with Erin. He could feel her presence and he wished he didn’t.

  This time yesterday, he’d been in the swimming pool working his leg at a physical therapy session. His therapist had admitted she was puzzled by the lack of progress in his treatment. Yesterday, she had even accused him of not wanting his leg to get better, saying the healing had to happen in his mind as well as his body. Lee had continued exercising and told her to go to hell. He was doing his best. But he was suddenly tired of all the hard work. He had to face the fact that his leg might never be as good as it was before.

  Lee kept watching the rain and thinking. The cleansing rain helped the flowers to bloom and the leaves to burst forth on the trees. It also made his leg ache more. But for some reason, he unexpectedly didn’t feel so bad. This was something he could handle.

  Feeling more optimist
ic, he rose from the chair to find Erin spooning out the soup.

  “Hungry now?” he asked, moving closer, but not too close.

  “Yes, now that I’ve smelled it.”

  “Good. Let’s eat, then we’ll go downtown to see Tom.”

  Erin helped him carry the bowls to the table. “You know,” she said, stirring her soup to cool it once they both were seated, “this is really strange, but ever since this all started, it’s as if I haven’t been able to think clearly. Since these things are happening directly to me, I can’t seem to see things with what I call my reporter’s eye. I keep thinking there should be a witness to the crime that I need to try to interview.”

  “But you’re the witness,” Lee returned.

  “Yes, I know. I feel confused and I don’t know what direction to take. I never thought of myself as being such a coward, but I’d like just to get in my car and keep driving until there’s a thousand miles between me and the guy I saw kill Jenkins, if that’s what it takes to get through all of this with my life and my sanity.”

  Lee looked at her and offered her a quick smile. “It’s all right to feel that way. It’s just your way of reacting to a situation you’ve never really had to face before. It’s a lot like how I felt when I got shot. I knew my chances of getting out of there alive were slim, and suddenly that’s all I could think about—surviving. Only problem was, I couldn’t seem to remember which direction I needed to go to reach the door and escape. Nor could I remember just where the guy I was there to protect was, either.”

  For a long moment, all Erin could do was stare at him. In the past twenty seconds, he had just revealed more about himself than he had all day. And brief as it was, that smile, the first genuine one he’d given her since he opened his door to her that morning, seemed to wrap around her heart, making it hard for her to catch her breath.

  But just as quick, the smile was gone, and the door that led into Liam McGrey was closed again. He was back to business. He was once more a cop just doing his job.

  Lee dumped out the contents of the first envelope on the table and looked at the notes and photographs that lay scattered in front of his soup bowl. “So let’s see what you’ve got on Burke.”

  “I’ve gone over this for what seems like a million times. And I haven’t seen anything new. What exactly do we look for?” she asked.

  “Anything that links him to Jenkins, so we know for certain there’s a connection,” he replied, shuffling papers around.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here that can do that. Most of what I have are photographs—and nothing really personal, either. Lots of press photos from various magazine and newspaper articles, you know, all public relations stuff. I did manage to get the addresses of his many homes and offices.”

  “I didn’t think there would be any easy answers here,” Lee muttered. He was trying to examine the information before him, but the fact that he’d let slip that bit about his feelings when he was shot left him hot and dizzy. He’d never told anyone how his own confusion was what had terrified him the most. He purposely kept his gaze on the photos, even though he could clearly see that—apart from now knowing what Forest Burke looked like—there was little helpful information to be learned from them.

  He didn’t look at Erin. He absolutely couldn’t let her see into his eyes, the window to his empty soul, not after telling her about the shooting. He couldn’t let her see how empty he was, how much he needed her to fill that hollow place within him. That need to have her back in his life had become so strong, so powerful now that it just lay beneath the surface, waiting for her to uncover it.

  And he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he emptied out the second envelope and looked at even more useless information, searching for answers he knew weren’t there, but hoped would miraculously appear. He had to find those answers and he had to find them fast. Before Erin got the chance to look into the window of his soul.

  “What was on the disks?” he asked after sifting through a lot of paper that told him Burke was a very private man—rich, but private.

  “A list of people who work for him,” she replied.

  “Did you ever get a chance to check it out?” He still didn’t look at her, but he could feel again the heat of her gaze. He could feel the nearness of her presence. He could smell the sweet, alluring woman scent of her under the smell of soup.

  Picking up a magazine photograph of Burke, dressed in a tuxedo, Lee tried to concentrate on it.

  “No,” Erin replied softly. “And I was trying to dig up more information on Burke that I didn’t really read the list.”

  Her breath touched him. “What else was on the disks?” He forced himself to concentrate on the picture, but he saw nothing in it but a man in a black tuxedo. The woman beside Lee was what was real.

  “His itinerary for the past three months, except for the past two to three weeks,” she said.

  Now Lee couldn’t help but look up at her. He could very easily get caught up in looking, but her words were enough to help him keep his thoughts on the business at hand. “I hope you got a chance to look at it.”

  “I saw enough of it to safely tell you that after a show and an auction in Paris two months ago, he’s been here in the States, staying nearly the whole time at his house in Jamesbrook, a few hours south of Chicago,” she explained.

  Lee could see the way she was looking at him. She was trying to read him, trying to peer deeply into his eyes. He quickly avoided her gaze. “Jamesbrook?”

  “It’s his hometown. He was born there. His parents are buried there. It was the first house he had built after acquiring a bit of wealth. He gave it to his parents. But they’re both dead now.”

  “Is he still there?” Lee asked.

  “I don’t know. He could have gone anywhere in the past week.”

  Lee looked at the information scattered about the table. So much and yet so little, he thought. “Maybe Tom will have something to link all this to Jenkins’s murder.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Erin asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied slowly, still without looking at her. “We’ll worry about that if and when we get to it.”

  A short time later, when Lee and Erin stepped out of the elevator on their way to Tom Weatherby’s office, he fought to push aside his other worries, as well.

  God, he thought, the precinct smelled the same. The carpet had been replaced, but nothing else seemed to have changed. He felt a welcome familiarity. They stepped off the elevator into the inviting brightness of a large open area. The outside walls were glass, letting in the afternoon sun. It was a busy place with the sound of phones ringing, uniformed officers going about their duty and the distant hum of conversations. Two men in suits passed by, one of them stopping short and greeting Lee. “Hey, Lee, welcome back. Are you finally coming back to work or is this just a visit?”

  “Good to see you, too, Henshaw. A little of both, I guess,” Lee admitted through a tight throat.

  “How’s the leg?” Henshaw asked absently.

  “Couldn’t be better,” Lee lied, wishing he hadn’t been reminded of it just now. He never slowed his pace, striding across the room while trying not to focus on anything specific. There were just so many little things about this place that he didn’t want to admit he missed. And he had to move past it all in order to reach the Specialists Division where he knew he would find Tom.

  Headquarters had been something of a home away from home to him. And if he allowed the memories to flood in, they’d be bombarding him now just as they had earlier when Erin stood outside his door. And right at this moment, he didn’t think he could handle it. There was a strange pounding in his head, and it took him a long moment to realize it was the sound of his own heartbeat thudding in his ears.

  “Nervous?” Erin asked quietly beside him.

  “I haven’t been here since the shooting,” he muttered without thinking.

  “But you still see Tom, don’t you?” she asked.

  She rea
ched out and took his hand reassuringly. That action caused him to pause in his steps. It was just a slight movement on her part, hardly more than a touch of her fingers and palm. Still, she could very well have taken his heart in her hand just then. He glanced at her, wondering if there was ever anything he was going to be able to keep from her. Probably not, which was all the more reason to clear this mess up and get her out of his life for good.

  “Occasionally, but we don’t meet here. Usually it’s for lunch somewhere. Or he comes over to the house. I’ve been to his place a few times, too,” Lee replied. “But it’s been a number of weeks since I’ve seen him.” Erin didn’t let go of his hand.

  They followed the hallway to the Specialists Division, where trained officers specialized in different areas of the law—hostage situations, crimes involving children and witness protection, which was Lee’s area of expertise. When they stopped at the doorway to Tom’s office, he came toward them, a genuine smile on his face. Tom Weatherby was just the opposite of Lee. Where Lee could be dark and brooding and just a bit intimidating, Tom was cheerful, sunny and outgoing. His emotions were clearly written on his face. His sandy hair was cropped short, his gray eyes sparkling. His dark suit was beautifully tailored and fitted him perfectly, accenting his muscular body in all the right places.

  Even though they had worked closely together as partners, Lee could never wear a suit like Tom and look sosharp. He almost always wore jeans and his leather jacket, just as he was now. Lee let go of Erin to grasp Tom’s extended hand.

  “Hey, Lee,” Tom said, in the happy voice Lee remembered so well, “you look great. I’m glad you’re here. And you, too, Erin. It’s good to see you again,” he added, turning his attention to her.

  Erin smiled at him and offered her own hand. But Tom wasn’t satisfied with that. Standing just outside his open door, he drew Erin into a big bear hug. The action drew a chuckle from Erin and an unfamiliar wave of something akin to jealousy in Lee.