Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

by Kathleen Creighton

  “I was very young when my grandmother brought me to this country. It was a huge change, and I didn’t even know the language. I was lost and scared. She used to sit with me and hold me and we wouldn’t talk, just watch old Western movies together. I think John Wayne was our favorite.” She paused, expecting questions, but he only watched her and waited in that intent way he had, and after a moment she went on, but with more confidence now, maybe because he was such a good listener.

  “I’m, um…half Vietnamese. My mother left Vietnam with her family after Saigon fell-they were among the ‘boat people’-you probably heard of them. They were some of the lucky ones, because a U.S. Navy ship picked them up and took them to the Philippines. That’s where my mother met my father. His name was Sean Malone, and he was stationed there. He was in…I guess you call them ‘special ops’ now, but anyway, he was killed there, somewhere in Southeast Asia-Cambodia, I think-when I was just a baby. Then my mother died when I was about two, and her family didn’t want a half-breed child, so they put me in an orphanage. And…that’s where I was when my grandmother found me. It took her two years, but she was finally able to bring me to America to live with her. She lived in Hollywood. Her name was Elizabeth.” Her throat had closed up, the way it always did when she spoke of her grandmother, even after all this time, and she could only whisper her name.

  “Was?” J.J. prompted softly, in a way that made her try to go on.

  She kept her eyes fixed on her slumbering baby’s face, and drew a steadying breath. “She died three years ago. It was right before I met Nicky. In fact…”

  He finished the thought for her. “Maybe you were looking for someone to fill a gap?”

  She let another breath go in a soft hiss. “Yes. Maybe. I’ve wondered…lately. I know I was very angry at the time. Because it was cancer that killed my grandmother, and maybe I felt medical science had failed her and I didn’t want to be a part of it.” She looked up at him and said with soft vehemence, “Cancer makes me angry. It’s just so…wrong. You know?”

  He nodded, and his smile was both sympathetic and wry. “I know what you mean. But cancer doesn’t make me angry. Cancer is what it is, it doesn’t make a conscious decision to ruin someone’s life.” He paused, then added in a hardened voice, “What does it for me is predators.”

  “Predators?”

  “Yeah, the two-legged kind.”

  “Like…” Like Carlos, she thought. But not Nicky. At least he wasn’t like that.

  “People who prey on the weak and innocent.” The glint in his eyes reminded her of The Duke again. It also made a strange shiver run through her body. She wondered if he noticed it, because he immediately lightened his voice and his face softened with a smile. “I mentioned I used to be a homicide detective. Guess that’s why.”

  “Used to be?” she asked with maybe too much eagerness, glad to have the conversation turned away from her own past. “What happened, did you burn out?”

  “No-” He stopped, thinking about it, then made a dismissive gesture. “Hell, I don’t know, I suppose that could have had something to do with it. Maybe. Anyway, it’s too long a story to get into now. Right now, what we need to do is get you to a safe place.”

  Safe. She felt a lurching sensation in her stomach, and a clammy chill flooded her skin. She’d actually forgotten, for those few moments, talking with Sheriff Jethro Fox who reminded her somehow of John Wayne. Forgotten that Carlos’s men had come to kill her, and very nearly succeeded. It came back to her now, that awful sensation of fighting for breath and finding none…of hearing her baby’s bassinet crash to the floor…of knowing she was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to save herself, or her son. Horror seized her. She felt as if she was falling, falling, tumbling from a great height.

  “Please,” she gasped, and felt someone-J.J.-lifting her baby from her arms. She relinquished him-no, thrust him from her-in desperate panic.

  Then she was struggling to get out of bed, under a powerful compulsion to run, to flee, and strong arms were holding her again, holding her tightly while she shivered and shivered. And this time there was such a sense of familiarity about being in that place, in those arms, that she stopped shivering almost immediately. And the thought shown warm in her mind like a welcome-home lamp: Here I am safe.

  “This is getting to be a habit,” J.J. said gruffly to the air above Rachel’s head. The odd thing was, he didn’t mind, and even felt a sense of regret when she moved away from him, wiping her eyes. He suspected she’d keep moving farther away, the more she healed and got back to her normal self. Which was the way it should be.

  “Feel better now?”

  She nodded, but couldn’t seem to look straight at him. Her eyes darted here and there, like those of a cornered animal. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what-it all just sort of hit me again.”

  “That’s pretty normal,” he said easily, reassuring her. “Flashbacks. You’ll probably get them a few more times. It’s a pretty big shock to the system to have somebody try to kill you.”

  She gave a watery laugh. “I guess you’d know. You must run into this kind of thing a lot in your line of work.”

  “Not so much, considering most of the victims I run into-sorry, ran into-didn’t survive to have flashbacks. You’d be one of the lucky ones.”

  He could see her looking thoughtful. Then she nodded and released breath in a sigh. “You said, ‘someplace safe.’ I don’t even know where that is.”

  “Do you mind my asking-where were you going when you ran away from Carlos? You must have had some place in mind when you set out across a few hundred miles of California desert.”

  She gave her head an emphatic shake. “No-I was just running-” she tried to look him in the eye but couldn’t hold it more than a second or two “-to get as far away as I could, as fast as I could.”

  Okay, so she was maybe the world’s worst liar. And still doesn’t trust me all the way.

  It wasn’t the time to call her on it, so he let it go-for now. “Well,” he said, lapsing into the accent of his North Carolina roots, “we’ll figure that all out in a bit. Right now, I’m getting you out of this place. You can’t stay here, since Carlos knows where you are, and if he wants to kill you bad enough he’ll find a way to do it.”

  “Then where-”

  “For now,” J.J. drawled, “soon as they’ll let me, I’m taking you home. With me.”

  The next evening, driving through the desert with Rachel asleep in the seat beside him, her baby in the back in the car seat the hospital had made him go and buy before they’d let him take him, he kept running over it in his mind, asking himself if he was really doing the right thing-the best thing. For her. For him, sure, no question. But for Rachel and her baby, it wasn’t so clear. Was he just being a single-minded, selfish jackass?

  Well, probably. But in spite of that he kept coming back to the conclusion that taking Rachel into his protective custody was the only way he could keep her safe. Keep an eye on her. Yeah, his place wasn’t much, but the only people on the planet who knew the exact location of his trailer were Katie and Deputy Daryl. Katie, he’d trust with his life. Daryl, though…

  Well, hell. He scowled at the ribbon of blacktop stretching ahead of him while he went back and forth about Daryl in his mind, wondering just how far he could really trust his own deputy. Wondering if Rachel’s paranoia about her father-in-law’s reach into law enforcement might be contagious.

  Beside him, Rachel came awake with a guilty start, the way people do when they’ve fallen asleep in a moving vehicle. She looked over at him, then twisted around to check on her baby before she faced front again, pushing her hair away from her face with both hands. “Is it much farther?”

  “A ways,” he said, feeling guilty, now. The hospital hadn’t been happy about releasing her and her baby so soon, and it was probably only the fact that she’d almost been killed while in their facility that had made them give in to his request. More concern for the hospital’s liabil
ity than their patient, J.J. thought, but then, he was inclined to be cynical. “Are you-do you need to stop?”

  She shook her head and gave him a wry smile. “No-just wondering. A little sore, you know?”

  “To be honest, no, I don’t know,” he said, glancing at her. “So you’re gonna have to tell me if you need anything, okay?”

  “No kids?”

  “Nope.”

  “Married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ever been?”

  He glanced over at her again. “No, and I should probably warn you, my place isn’t much at its best, and when I left yesterday morning to check out a report of a woman-a nun-walking around all by herself in the desert, it was kind of in a hurry. I haven’t been home since, so…be prepared, okay?” He glared at the road ahead. “Anyway, it’s just temporary, until I figure out what I’m gonna do with you. At least it’s safe. Should be, anyway, since only a couple people even know how to find it, and the ones that do I’m pretty sure I can trust.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything, and after a moment he looked over at her again. “If you don’t mind my askin’, how’d you get mixed up with the Delacorte family in the first place?”

  She shook her head and he wasn’t sure she’d answer him. But then she leaned her head back against the seat and said, “It was at college-UCLA.” She cleared her throat and her voice grew firmer. “I was finishing medical school-my last term. Nicky was in my psych class.”

  He made a snorting sound; it seemed an unlikely major for a mobster’s son.

  She glanced at him, then hitched in a breath and plowed on. “Anyway…by the time I graduated, my grandmother had died and we were, uh, together. I started my internship, but-”

  “Did you give up on your medical career because you wanted to, or because he wanted you to?”

  She was silent for a moment, which he considered an answer, probably the true one no matter what she told him.

  He expected her to be defensive, so she surprised him when she drew a breath and said thoughtfully, “I don’t know, now. At the time it seemed…I felt like my relationship with Nicky was so consuming, it didn’t seem to leave any time or energy for anything else. So, when he suggested-”

  “Suggested?”

  The breath came out in a gust. “He didn’t understand why I felt I needed to work, when he was so…wealthy. And as I said, my grandmother had died and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a doctor anymore. So, when he brought it up, it seemed like the right thing to do. At the time. So…I dropped out.”

  Gave in, is what he thought. Caved. Knuckled under. He thought he was beginning to get a pretty clear picture of Spoiled Nicky the Mobster’s Son.

  “Everything happened so fast. The next thing I knew, I was married, and then I was pregnant…then Nicky got shot.” Her voice had thickened, and when J.J. looked over at her, he caught a glimpse of tears glistening on her cheek. “He didn’t have anything to do with his father’s business. He’d promised me…”

  “And you believed him? Nicholas Delacorte was the only son of the head of an organized crime syndicate roughly the size of New Jersey,” J.J. said roughly, angry all of a sudden without really knowing why. “You’re kidding yourself if you think he somehow managed to keep his hands squeaky clean. Didn’t you ever see The Godfather? If he wasn’t involved yet, trust me, it was only a matter of time.”

  There was a little silence, and then she opened her eyes and said without looking at him, “Have you ever been in love, Jethro?”

  “Many times,” he said dryly, and she surprised him with a watery-sounding laugh. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her brush the tears from her cheeks and sit up straighter.

  “Doesn’t seem like there would be that many opportunities, out here in the desert.”

  It was his turn to laugh without much humor in it. “No, there aren’t. Just another reason why I love it here so much.”

  He could feel her studying him. After a moment she asked, “If you don’t like it, why are you here?”

  “Long story.”

  “Well-” she held up both hands, gesturing at the barren landscape and the road stretching ahead of them as far as they could see “-looks like we’ve both got time.” He could feel her eyes on him again-those exotic, black-almond eyes. “Unless,” she added with a hint of a sly smile, “it’s something you’re terribly ashamed of.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he growled, “it’s definitely that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, and looked away, as if it embarrassed her to have stumbled upon his closet full of skeletons. Like a curious-or nosy-little girl, belatedly remembering her manners.

  What the hell, he thought. He wanted her to trust him, didn’t he? Maybe if he came clean with her it might inspire her to do the same.

  So he blew out a breath and scrubbed at his beard stubble, and finally said, “I told you how I feel about predators.” She nodded. “Okay, well, because of me, there’s one out there somewhere who should have been locked up. Put in a cage where he couldn’t hurt another innocent child.”

  Even through the growth of beard she could see the muscles bunch in his jaw, and knew he must be clenching his teeth-hard. After a moment she said in a low voice, “Okay, I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not that complicated. The guy was the worst kind of predator, the kind that preys on children-in particular, little girls.” His voice was tight…harsh. Rachel could feel her heart tap-tapping in her loose, quivery belly, and pressed her fist against it while she waited for him to go on. “I had him for the kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old girl. Had him in custody. And I let my personal feelings override my professional judgment. As a result-” He let out an explosive breath. “As a result, he was released on a technicality. Promptly lit out for parts unknown. Now he’s gone. Vanished. In the wind.”

  “What did you do?” Her voice was barely audible. “I can’t imagine-”

  “Oh, I got…physical. Rough with him. You know-slammed him up against a wall, I think.” He glanced at her briefly, but long enough for her to see the anger, guilt and anguish in his eyes. “He taunted me with what he’d done to that little girl-details. And I lost it. But that’s no excuse. Maybe the miserable freak was hoping I’d kill him-put him down like a mad dog, you know? But I shouldn’t have lost control. No excuses. Because of what I did that animal is out there somewhere, and sooner or later he’s going to do what he does, because that’s what they always do, and some other little girl is going to suffer and die and her entire family’s lives are going to be destroyed. And that’s on me. Innocent people will suffer for what I did.”

  “But,” Rachel said softly, “you are suffering, too. Aren’t you?”

  He gave a huff of painful laughter as he looked at the expanse of darkening desert all around them. “Every day,” he growled. “Every day.”

  “I don’t just mean because you’re out here in the desert, now, and you hate it-I’m assuming you being here has something to do with what happened?”

  “Yeah, something.”

  “But that’s not the worst part, is it?” He didn’t look at her, or reply. “I think you must think about it…live with it, every day. And at night you probably-”

  “Jeez, what are you now, my shrink?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, because she could see by the stiffness in his neck and shoulders that she’d gone too far.

  But I know you have nightmares, Jethro Fox. I know, because I have them, too. About Nicky, and what happened that night. I keep playing it over and over in my head, trying to make it come out differently. And I know you do, too.

  Chapter 6

  “It’s not much,” J.J. said, “but at least nobody bothers me out here. And like I said, the only ones who know where I live I’d trust with my life. You should be safe here. For tonight, anyway. We’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do after that, but right now, you can at least get some rest.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything.
He figured she had to be pretty near worn out, given the day she’d had yesterday, and the fact that nobody ever really gets to rest in a hospital. She’d fallen asleep again, once the talking stopped, until they’d had to stop a ways back when the baby woke up and started fussing so she could nurse him. It was an odd experience for J.J.-definitely a first for him-sitting in the darkness with only the sounds of the desert wind and the occasional yip of a coyote outside the car, and inside, the soft, wet sounds a hungry baby made, nursing at his mother’s breast.

  Now, though, she was sitting up straight and alert, staring ahead at the silhouette of his trailer, lonely against the slate-dark sky. A three-quarter moon hung high and bright, bright enough to cast shadows on the desert landscape.

  “Moonshine,” she said.

  He thought at first she was talking about the moonlight, but then he saw the dog sitting out in the road in front of the trailer, waiting for him. He gave a little laugh and said, “Yeah, and it’s actually her you can thank for saving your life.” He nodded at the baby, now sleeping again in the carrier in the backseat. “And your son’s. I probably wouldn’t have found you without her.”

  She nodded but didn’t reply. He pulled up in the bare place in front of the trailer and stopped, but when he started to open the door and get out, she hitched in a breath and said in a nervous, hurried kind of way, “Is she yours? Or, you know…a police dog?”

  “Canine Unit, you mean? Nah, she just wandered in here one day and parked herself, didn’t look like she was going to leave, so I let her stay. I call her Moonshine because she always looks like she’s a little bit drunk, which is pretty normal for a hound dog. Now and then she comes in handy, like she did today. Why?” he added, because there’d been that something in her voice. “You’re not afraid of dogs, are you?”

  “Not…afraid, just careful.” Her voice was without expression. It had a hollow sound in the dark car. He heard her take another breath. “Carlos has dogs. Dobermans. They have the run of the estate at night, and other times-whenever he wants to make sure nobody comes or goes without his knowledge and consent.”