Close Encounters

by Kitt, Sandra

  There was no jump in his heartbeat. Lee was numb. Bewildered. “Probably. Any chance—?”

  “We ran everything twice, Lieutenant, just to make sure.”

  Lee clenched his jaw. “Right. Listen, I appreciate the call.”

  “Sure thing.”

  He put the phone away and stared at the floor indicator over the elevator door.

  “Are you okay?”

  Lee shifted his gaze to Karen’s face. He wanted to be able to tell her. He wanted someone to listen and understand. But he couldn’t take the chance. And that’s not what he got from Karen anyway.

  “I’m fine,” Lee finally responded.

  “You know, if you have to leave…”

  “I can drop you off. But I think I’ll pass on dinner.”

  Karen nodded, accepting his sudden reversal of plans without question. “Maybe it’s just as well.”

  He watched her artfully pull loose some of the hair from her twisted hairdo into tendrils around her neck and ears, her attention diverted to the evening ahead.

  “Maybe it is.”

  Barbara drove around the block twice before she finally slipped into a parking space and turned off the engine. She sat staring out at the street, watching who came and went.

  It seemed a perfectly normal residential block off White Plains Road in the Bronx, made up of elderly Italians and Jews, middle-aged couples who couldn’t afford the suburbs, and genXers who weren’t paranoid about who they lived next to. This neighborhood was way out of her jurisdiction, and Barbara was always careful never to use the same route twice when she came here. She knew she was playing a dangerous game, but she knew how to take care of herself.

  It was getting cold in the car. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. She checked the time. She would wait another five minutes and no more.

  She squinted again at her watch. “Fuck,” she said under her breath.

  When she looked up again, a familiar tall figure was casually approaching the building to her left. She watched for some sort of signal. He glanced around and, with an inclination of his head in her direction, quickly stepped into the lobby of the building. Barbara got out of her car, locked it, and crossed the street to follow.

  The man had just opened the inner door when Barbara caught up with him. They entered together and headed for the elevator, Barbara just a little behind him. Their silence continued on the ascent, as if they were strangers. He stared indifferently at the door, his face obscured by the bill of his baseball cap. Barbara stood against an adjacent wall and stared at him. The elevator stopped and he stepped off, turning sharply to the right. She followed him. He opened the door of one of three apartments at this end of the hallway. He held the door open for her, finally acknowledging her presence. She went in.

  Barbara felt a rush of excitement, tinged with fear. She waited by the door as he entered the room to his left and switched on a light. He turned to face her, and a slow smile spread over his handsome features. The sexy quirk of his mouth, the challenge in his eyes flooded Barbara with unadulterated desire. Mario was definitely the wrong man for her, except in one way. But too many bad experiences had shown Barbara that there simply weren’t enough of the right kind to go around.

  “Whose place is this?” Barbara asked, carefully keeping her emotions in check.

  He took off his hat and began to work on his coat, staring at her all the while. Using just his fingertips, he pulled a gun from beneath his sweater and held it out for her to see. With a slight motion Mario released the cartridge clip and dropped it onto a chair.

  “Friend of a friend. She’s cool. Better yet”—his grin widened—“she ain’t here. Somebody died and she went home to the Dominican Republic. We’re home alone.” He laughed.

  Barbara accepted the explanation and began to ease out of her own coat. She let Mario see that she was strapped, too, but she had no intention of unloading.

  Boldly Mario began to undress right there. Barbara’s mouth went dry, and her heart fluttered. She was wet between her legs. She stared unabashed and unblinking until he stood there naked, with a full erection.

  Mario clearly enjoyed her reaction to what he had to offer. Barbara could no longer hide her need to have him bury himself deep inside her.

  But she couldn’t get undressed holding her weapon. Seeing her dilemma, Mario chuckled seductively. “Don’t worry. The only gun I’m gonna use to shoot with is this.” He shook his penis at her.

  Barbara set her gun on a table, out of his reach. She took off her clothes. Finally they both stood naked. Barbara’s chest rose and fell with her breathing, her breasts quivered, her nipples were tender and distended. Mario’s gaze became slumberous with lust.

  “Que chula tu es, mami,” Mario growled at her, continuing a guttural recital in Spanish of what he wanted to do to her. They came together with a physical heat that was more combative than it was loving. Their mouths locked in carnal need.

  Barbara let her hands slide over Mario’s firm, well-proportioned body. She enjoyed the taut male sinew in his back, his shoulders, his buttocks. He flicked his hips against her, making his ultimate intention obvious. In contrast, his kiss was almost tender, achingly slow. His hands spread over her back, cupping her butt and holding her still while he did a steady, slow grind against her.

  Barbara felt like she was suffocating. Burning up. Moisture gathered on their skin where their bodies pressed together. She finally pulled her mouth free and gasped, so dizzy with craving that a whimper rose in the back of her throat.

  “Aiyeee, goñyo,” she hissed urgently.

  “Quidado, mami,” Mario whispered against her neck, continuing to rotate his hips. He gave a snort of amusement. “See… you thought I tried to fuck you over, right? I’m here, ain’t I? You could arrest me right now if you wanted to…”

  “Shut up, Mario,” Barbara snapped in a burst of anger even as she let him maneuver her backward toward the sofa. Just as quickly, her annoyance was gone. “Just do it… do it,” she urged.

  She sank onto the cushions, positioning her body to make it easy for him, watching as he stood above her, lewdly massaging himself. Barbara knew exactly what he wanted, but she wanted something from him first. She leaned back until her head rested on the back of the sofa, her butt on the edge. She slowly spread her legs.

  Mario went to his knees. He grabbed her thighs and held them open with his forearms. He bent toward her. Barbara sighed and closed her eyes, blood throbbing in her temples as she waited for the contact of his mouth. Her stomach muscles contracted when it came, and her hands combed through his hair as she felt herself succumbing to the absolute bliss of his darting tongue.

  She offered herself up willingly, totally forgetting her oath of duty, her pledge of loyalty… the threat of ruination. For the moment she and Mario were complicit and in sync. Their coupling was not pretty or romantic, but that wasn’t what they wanted from each other.

  And neither was disappointed.

  Chapter Four

  “SO, THEN, YOU’RE SAYING that you just happened to be on Tenth Street when the… ah… the incident happened?”

  “That’s right. I was out with my dog,” Carol said softly.

  She stared at the man sitting opposite her in the hospital’s visitors lounge. She didn’t like it that the three police officers were making her feel as if she was being held suspect.

  So far the questions had been very specific, and sometimes repetitive, as if the men were hoping she would trip up and forget an earlier answer. Both Matt and her father had urged her to have a lawyer present, but she still didn’t think she would need one. After all, she was the one who’d been shot. She had no intention of being difficult or evasive. She had nothing to hide. Besides, there was a lot about those few hours that she simply didn’t remember.

  “Do you always walk your dog at four-thirty, five o’clock in the morning?”

  Carol tried not to take offense. “I walk Max when he needs to be walked. When you gotta go, you gotta
go.”

  The officer returned her stare with blank acceptance.

  “What I’m trying to get at, Ms. Taggart, is whether it was usual for you to take your dog out at that hour.”

  “No, it wasn’t. But I woke up suddenly. I think Max took it as a signal.”

  The officer lifted his recorder from the side table to check on the amount of tape remaining. Carol glanced at the two other officers, who were standing like sentinels near the door.

  “Now, what can you tell us about the men that night?”

  “The men?” she asked blankly.

  “You said you were grabbed. By whom?”

  Carol remembered only one man that night … someone in blue. Bending over her while she lay on the ground. Telling her to stay still, that she was going to be okay. She frowned in concentration, trying to conjure up the rest of the men, the rest of the scene.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything about the men who grabbed me. I … never saw their faces.”

  “We have just a few more questions. Have you ever walked your dog in that block before?”

  “Sure. But I usually pretty much stayed within a two- or three-block radius from my apartment. My dog is … was old. I didn’t like making him walk far.”

  “I understand. Now about the two men you were seen with…”

  “What did they do with him? After he was taken to the ASPCA, I mean?” Carol asked, staring at the official.

  “Well, the body would have been disposed of, ma’am. You know, the dog was dead, so…”

  “So no one thought it mattered what happened then, is that it?”

  “Ms. Taggart, perhaps I can try and get some more information for you about that. Maybe you can be compensated.”

  “No, thank you,” Carol said, angered by the suggestion. “It’s not like replacing my leather parka because it had a bullet hole in it. You can’t make up for my dog. You can’t make this wound go away.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we understand that. I have a dog myself.” He stood up. “Why don’t we continue this later? The doctors say if all goes well they’ll send you home…”

  “Can I ask a question?” Carol interrupted again as the three men prepared to leave.

  “Certainly.”

  “Who shot me?”

  None of the officers answered as they straightened their jackets and put on identical trench coats. Carol stared at the one who had been questioning her and waited.

  “We’re trying to establish that, Ms. Taggart. The ballistics report hasn’t been completed yet—”

  “But it happened three days ago.”

  “Yes, but there’s a procedure that has to be followed before any official announcement can be made. Someone in the department will notify you when we’re ready with the findings.”

  One by one they filed out the door, the last one thanking Carol for her cooperation and, finally, wishing her well. Almost as an afterthought. She watched the empty doorway, puzzled by the interview. Certainly the police would want to clarify the events of that early morning, but they seemed to have so little understanding of what had actually happened. Or perhaps they just didn’t want her to know what they knew.

  Something else nagged at Carol. All the questions had been framed to suggest that the police were not responsible for what had happened to her. And yet the newspapers were beginning to suggest otherwise. There were unconfirmed reports that the bullet that had struck her came from a police-issue semiautomatic. The idea had not occurred to her before. What if it were true?

  Carol gnawed the inside of her cheek as she imagined the public outcry in a city where charges of police brutality and excessive force constantly stirred the pot of racial tensions. For the moment the reports were unsubstantiated.

  But what if they could be?

  Tired of lying in bed, she’d taken to spending much of her time here in the lounge. She was armed with a small sketch pad that Matt had brought her, and she entertained herself by doing covert studies of the staff, patients, and visitors. She had also attempted other sketches of people from memory. Vignettes from that night, although it had been too dark for details—except for the large, still body of Max. She would always remember exactly what he had looked like in death.

  Carol flipped past the most recent sketch of Max she’d been working on and revealed beneath it a half-constructed face of a man. She remembered the eyes, the set of the mouth, the shape of the jaw. But when she tried to put the parts together the image didn’t quite mesh. It wasn’t a face she recognized. So where had the details come from?

  She sighed, frustrated. She really wanted to go home.

  As soon as the thought was formed, Carol realized that she didn’t mean home to her one-bedroom apartment, where she would be alone, but rather to the large wood-frame house in which she’d been raised, just north of Chicago. The evening before, her parents had urged her to come home for a visit as soon as she was able to travel.

  They’d brought her a new bathrobe, mail from her apartment, and a small bag of her favorite powdered-donut holes. The thought of going for a visit appealed to her. They would coddle and fuss over her… and maybe she would let them. Their love had been a sure and steady force all her life, though often she hadn’t fully appreciated it. Now she needed their unconditional love. Right now, it was the only thing she was absolutely sure of.

  Carol sat still and waited for the rise of anger, which she’d allowed to rule her emotions for much of her life. The sense of great injustice because she had been a hand-off, an afterthought, a remainder. She recognized that she had let the circumstances of her family define her whole life. Until that night a few days ago, when who and what she was hadn’t mattered.

  She’d almost been killed. She had survived, but everything had changed. Forever. She was still trying to figure out how. She only sensed that perhaps things had happened for a reason.

  Her father had suggested that God had other plans for her. But during the past few days Carol had begun thinking that maybe she had been given a second chance to make some new plans of her own.

  Lee hesitated outside the door. At first he imagined the worst, but there could be lots of reasons why Carol Taggart was not in her room. Maybe she’d been moved somewhere else. Maybe she’d already gone home.

  Lee suddenly realized that he was feeling ambivalent about the possibility that Carol was gone and he might not ever see her again. For him, she had ceased to be an anonymous black woman who’d been accidentally shot in a street altercation between known criminals and the police. It was impossible to go back to not knowing her.

  Despite what had happened, there was still one single overriding consideration. And one thing he knew for sure—he wanted to see Carol Taggart again.

  Several times Lee had considered calling Dr. Amos. Which was certainly an about-face from the first time, when he hadn’t felt the need to speak with the psychologist at all. Lee didn’t know if Dr. Amos could explain the terrible pressing sensation in the middle of his chest that at times threatened to suffocate him. Was it the weight of guilt? The fear of damnation?

  Lee was also conflicted about the internal triage being conducted by the department in an attempt to avoid accepting responsibility. The whole business made him uneasy. The department might not deliberately set out to distort the case, but he’d seen it happen. Twice in his career he had indirectly participated in what amounted to cover-ups. The difference was that no one’s life had hung in the balance, on a truth or a lie. And the results had seemed to justify the means so he hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

  But this time was different.

  This time he realized that what eventually happened would matter. To him as a police officer. And as a man.

  Lee was about to pass the visitors lounge when he glimpsed Carol Taggart sitting in a chair by the window.

  He stood stock-still in the corridor and watched her. For the first time he was seeing her not as a shooting victim or as a hospital patient but as a woman. She was very attract
ive, her skin the color of brown sugar, her body slender, her carriage regal—even dressed in a robe and slippers.

  She appeared to be sketching in a spiral pad, her head tilted in concentration, her thick hair making a soft cloud around her face. Lee told himself that he could still walk away. But he didn’t.

  He entered the room. An older woman sat in a corner, staring at the TV. Lee crossed to Carol. It wasn’t until he was standing right next to her that she became aware of his presence.

  She looked up, distracted. Her gaze cleared immediately upon recognition. And she slowly smiled.

  Lee found that he couldn’t return the greeting. If he did, he might completely lose the emotional distance between them. Neither of them said anything for several seconds, but it was enough for an unspoken shift to occur in their relationship.

  Lee could see that she was examining him again, taking in everything about him. This time he wasn’t uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

  Carol’s surprise was tempered by the sensation that she was seeing Lee Grafton for the very first time, even though he was not an absolute stranger. She was noticing things about him she hadn’t seen before. He was a tall man, casually dressed. He seemed fit and athletic without looking pumped and self-conscious. Years of experience were evident in the angles and lines of his face. His dark eyes were knowing and alert. His hair, brown with gray sprinkled throughout, was cropped very short. She liked it. It was masculine. Natural. Carol found herself facing someone who presented himself as simply a man, not a cop. So why had he come to see her again?

  “Another unofficial visit?” she questioned with a lift of her brows.

  “Do you mind?”

  Her expression was thoughtful. “I don’t know. I guess I’m curious. Why?”

  “Well, I’m curious, too,” Lee improvised. He looked around, found another chair and positioned it at her side, then sat down. He didn’t want to sit directly opposite her, already knowing he would stare too openly.

  Carol Taggart didn’t appear to be ill or incapacitated or in pain. The only evidence that she was a patient was the sling around her neck that held her left arm immobile against her chest.