Denim Detective

by Adrianne Lee

  Nerves filled her throat each time the car slowed or came to a standstill at a stoplight or intersection. Suddenly everyone was suspect. She cast sidelong glances at each vehicle, at each motorist—old men, teenage boys, young mothers, and middle-aged matrons.

  If not Mann, then who? Who would pull out a gun and fire at them?

  THE AIR in the Butte cop shop felt electric. They’d caught the lowest of the low. Let the celebration begin. Beau was surprised he didn’t share the elation.

  After ushering Deedra into the cubicle behind the one-way mirror, Beau stood outside the interview room with Captain Parker. He clenched and unclenched his hands, unaware of the reflexive action.

  “I know you’d like five minutes alone with him, Shanahan.” Parker eyed his fisted hands. “We all would.”

  “He didn’t shoot your deputy,” Beau growled, narrowing his gaze.

  “No. But he’s my collar.” Parker had rough-hewn features that had always called to mind those bears carved from logs with chain saws. For all his coarse exterior, Parker spoke with the dulcet tones of a ballad singer. Something that made him sound deceptively harmless. “If you lay one finger on him, I’ll yank your ass out of there. Understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I mean it, Shanahan. We need this conviction clean. No lawyers crying police brutality.”

  “The verdict is a foregone conclusion.”

  Parker’s expression darkened. “Not necessarily. He could have the sympathy of some jurors. We’re being pressured from all sides about the kind of pursuit that killed his pregnant wife.”

  Beau winced, hating that he shared the pain of losing a child with a scumbag like Mann, hating that in some small part of his soul he held a modicum of sympathy for him. The former white supremacist had murdered one of Beau’s best deputies, Doug Mallory. Killed him in cold blood.

  Doug Mallory had kids, too.

  His face tightened.

  Parker scowled. “If the only reason you’re here is to vent your spleen, I won’t let you see him.”

  Once, he’d wanted Mann dead. As dead as Mallory. As dead as his daughter.

  Beau shook himself. How the tables had turned. Last time he’d faced Mann, he’d expected the cop killer would put an end to his misery. Beau hadn’t even tried to protect himself. He hadn’t pulled his trigger. He’d just wanted to die.

  It had all changed twice more since then.

  A week ago, yesterday, even this morning, Beau would have gladly smashed Mann’s face. For Deedra. For Callie. For his lower leg. But Mann hadn’t murdered Deedra, hadn’t been trying to. Probably had had nothing to do with Callie. And his leg injury was his own damned fault.

  Parker slapped a hand on his shoulder. “What do you say? Can you control that famous Irish temper?”

  Beau stared into the other cop’s eyes and felt a sudden sense of being rudderless. He’d been heading one direction, full speed ahead, then without warning the wind had left his sails and the gas had drained from his tank. He’d come to a standstill with no idea how to start again or in which direction to set out.

  He had only enough sense to realize violence wouldn’t get his motors revved, but he did need confirmation and to lay to rest any lingering doubts in Deedra’s mind that Mann had had anything to do with her terror, with losing Callie. “I won’t touch a pore on his bald head. I just want to ask him a few questions.”

  DEEDRA’S STOMACH BURNED as she stared through the one-way mirror at the spook who’d haunted her days and nights for far too long. Floyd Mann. Built like an ogre in a fairy tale, he hunched in a metal chair across the table from Beau. Defiance rose off him like a bad odor.

  He’d shaved his helmet-size head, preferring swastika tattoos in place of hair, the blue ink black against his buttermilk-pale skin. The letters K-I-L-L-C-O-P-S etched the flesh above his knuckles. His ankles wore shackles, his face a sneer.

  “How’s the leg, Shanahan?” he asked on a mocking laugh. Then, as though sensing they were not alone, he raised his gaze to the mirror, watery blue eyes sweeping over its surface. He grinned. Cocky. A man who used attitude in the face of authority. In the face of fear? Would such an unlawful man tell Beau, a cop, the truth?

  Deedra clutched her hands in her lap. What was the truth? Had Mann ever tried to kill her? Did he even know anything about Callie?

  Beau said, “If I were you, Mann, I’d be more concerned about my own hide. Look where you’ve landed.”

  “Mallory deserved to die.” The cockiness fled from Mann’s face and sorrow trembled through his voice. “He killed Merry Sue and our unborn kid.”

  “It was an accident.” Beau spoke so low she barely caught the words.

  “T’was a car chase after a two-bit felon. Mallory shoulda let the guy go for another day. He cost me my family and all he had to offer was apologies. Like that excused what he done. Like that could bring back my Merry Sue.”

  Beau lowered his head. He looked shaken when he lifted it again, as though he understood this man’s pain. “Is that why you came after my wife and my baby?”

  Deedra leaned to the edge of her chair, heart racing.

  Mann shook his head. “What you talkin’ about? I never went after yer missus or yer kid. I wouldn’t take no other man’s family the way mine was took from me.”

  “No. You just came after me. The Jeep you rigged to hurt me caused the accident my wife and daughter had. We lost our child just as though you’d snatched her away.”

  “I never come after you, Shanahan. Never. I swear it on my sweet Merry Sue’s grave.”

  “But the Jeep?”

  “Not my doin’.” Mann shook his head.

  Beau tapped his wounded leg. “You tried to kill me.”

  “Hell, I did. I woulda never shot you, ’cept you was ’bout to shoot me. I didn’t kill ya. But I coulda if I’d wanted. Hell, I can down a coon outta a tree top by hittin’ him dead in the left eyeball. If’n I wanted you dead, Shanahan, I’d a blowed yer pretty face clean away. Why you think I aimed for your leg?” He shook his head. “Uh, uh. I ain’t the one after you.”

  Mann lifted his watery gaze to the mirror again, his stare intent as though he could see Deedra, as though he were talking to Deedra. “Not me.”

  DEEDRA SAT in the cubicle behind the one-way mirror long after the others left, long after Mann was taken away. She felt as empty as the room she faced. Alone. Shaken. No longer grasping at a single shred of hope that the hell in her life could be resolved with Mann’s capture.

  Tears for all she’d lost stung her eyes. She swiped at them. Furious that her hands came away damp. Crying was for weak females, like her mother. She was nothing like her mother. She didn’t let men abuse her. She didn’t cry and wish things were different. She acted. She caused change.

  She’d done it at sixteen. She’d done it two months ago. She’d do it now.

  She shoved her hand into her pocket for a hankie. She found paper, but not a tissue. The envelope from beneath the seat in Beau’s car. She stared at the flowery feminine scrawl, sniffing back the residue of tears. She shouldn’t open this, shouldn’t read it. Deedra laughed at the ridiculous thought. When had what she shouldn’t do ever stopped her? She pulled the sheet of paper from its sheath.

  The note was written in the same frothy penmanship as the envelope.

  Beau, darling,

  Just the thought of last

  night, of you in my bed,

  has me hot and anxious

  for tonight. Don’t be

  late, lover. I have a

  naughty new treat for you.

  Love, me

  It was decorated with tiny hearts and a lipstick smudge like a kiss.

  Deedra’s stomach pitched, and nausea rose up her throat. For all that was wrong with their marriage, she had never suspected Beau of infidelity. Had she been a fool? Had she, who prided herself on street smarts, on cynicism, actually been gullible in this one area?

  It would sure explain why he’d stayed out
of their bed the months before she’d gone underground.

  She gripped the note with white knuckles, choking on a sharp, searing fury. Damn it, Beau. He hadn’t been there when she’d needed him most. Was it because he’d been getting what he needed from some other woman?

  Beau opened the door, startling her. “We’d better go.”

  “Sure.” Deedra crammed the note and envelope into her pocket, struggling to still the tremors racking her insides. She squelched the urge to confront him here and now as she’d squelched the urge to cry. This was not the place for either. But as much as she thought herself in control, she found her legs wobbly, her movements jerky. Her lower back ached with renewed agony.

  In all the excitement of running into Beau, being nearly shot and confronting Mann, she’d forgotten for a while her health problem. But like an ugly rumor, it would come back to haunt her until she put it right.

  It seemed she had several things to put right in her life.

  Beau sheltered her like a child until she was inside the car. My own personal bodyguard. Instead of reassuring her, his demeanor reawakened her fear of the shooter. She forgot all about the love note, about his possible infidelity, about crying, about the pain in her lower back, in lieu of staying alive.

  She shrank into her seat, wanting to disappear. Become invisible. Wanting Mann to be guilty. “Was Mann lying?”

  Beau shook his head. A lock of his black hair fell onto his forehead and in that moment he looked so like Callie her heart sputtered.

  He said, “Facts back up a couple of points of his story. He wasn’t shooting at us at the hunting lodge earlier today.”

  “And…?”

  Beau scowled. “He could have killed me instead of shooting me in the leg.”

  Deedra blinked in surprise. Beau was a crack shot. As good as Mann claimed to be. The former white supremacist couldn’t have outgunned Beau without Beau somehow permitting it, but her husband offered no enlightenment.

  Hell, what did it matter? She hugged herself. Mann hadn’t taken her little girl. He hadn’t done any of this. “If Mann didn’t cut the brake line on the Jeep, who did? Who wants me dead, Beau?”

  He frowned. “Those shots today could have been for either of us.”

  “No.” She cast a watchful eye for the sniper. “You’ve been here all along. You haven’t been hiding or taking any kind of precautions. If you were the target, whoever it is would have come after you before today.”

  He seemed to see her point. “And whoever it is did come after you in Washington.”

  “Exactly. Why me?” Why wasn’t it enough that Callie had been taken from them? Why did someone want her out of Beau’s life, too? She hugged herself tighter and recalled the note in her pocket. Who had written it? Did it have anything to do with all of this? Was some woman trying to kill her in order to have Beau to herself?

  “Who, Beau?” She pulled the note from her pocket and shook it at him. “Her?”

  Beau looked startled. His eyes turned dark, a green that was almost black. Even scowling, he had the kind of appeal that spoke to the basic core of a woman. She’d felt it the moment of their first encounter. She felt it now. He oozed confidence. Power. Danger. All things that touched her in some secret place. That tugged her toward him with a magnetic pull. Surely it touched other women, too.

  “What the hell is that?” Beau snatched the paper from her and scanned it. His face went thunderous. He cursed and crushed the love note. “Where did you get this?”

  “Under this seat. Pretty careless of you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hide it. This is from some deluded woman who thinks she and I are having an affair.”

  “What do you mean she thinks you’re having an affair? She sounds pretty damned sure about it to me.”

  “A complete fantasy. Her fantasy. Dee, I’ve never met this—this nutcase.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “No.” He caught her chin in his hand, his hold gentle but firm. He made her look at him. His eyes had lightened to jade. “I’ve done a lot of things wrong this past year, but that is one line I never crossed. I never cheated on you.”

  When he looked at her like this the ice melted from her heart. The hurt and the anger dissolved and floated off like excess air. Oh, how she wanted to believe him, wanted to fold herself against his chest, listen to his heart beat until it matched the rhythm of her own. Oh, how she wanted to trust him and let him keep her safe.

  But he hadn’t kept her safe. Couldn’t keep her safe.

  She pulled free from his grasp. Wounded at his denial. Offended. Indignant. Hurt as she’d never been by this man and that was saying a lot. “Most men deny infidelity when confronted with proof of it.”

  He growled low in his throat, started the car and stomped on the gas. Deedra snapped back against the seat. How many of their disagreements had ended exactly like this? She pitched a fit. He clammed up.

  Damn him. Someone—probably his mistress—wanted her dead, and all he cared about was keeping his infidelity a secret. She sank lower in the seat, fear squeezing her. Worse than before. Earlier she’d felt she had Beau on her side. Now she was truly alone. As alone as she’d been in Washington state.

  The car wended through town, and she realized they weren’t headed to the outskirts of Butte, but rather to a seedy downtown area. She glanced at Beau. He still wore a scowl, but she doubted he felt more angry than she did. “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t look at her. “To find out who’s trying to kill you.”

  To his girlfriend’s? “We’re just going to show up and confront her?”

  “Her?” He made a face as though she’d said the sun was a hairy black ball. Then, realizing who she meant, he shook his head and swore. “There is no her. We’re going to track down your buddy, Freddie Carter. He sold you out. He knows who is trying to kill you.”

  Chapter Six

  “Freddie?” She started to argue, heard the protest in her voice, felt it along the hair on her neck. But she could no longer deny the validity of Beau’s suspicions. Damn it all. She did not want to believe he was right about her old friend, but Freddie was the only one who knew where she was going when she ran away. He’d helped her procure fake ID. Knew the name she’d been using. Knew where she had settled.

  How else could the killer have found her, if not through Freddie?

  Her heart ached at the thought.

  This had been some day. Within hours she’d discovered the only two men she’d ever trusted in her life had both betrayed her. She didn’t want to believe it of either of them.

  She used to not be naive.

  But then, Freddie used to hate drinking and drunks.

  “Where is he likely to be?”

  “Any one of a dozen places.” Deedra shrugged. “The best thing to do is ask his mother.”

  “His mother?” Beau glanced at her in surprise. “I thought he was another orphan of the streets. What did he do, reconnect with his family after he grew up?”

  “With his mother. Freddie moved out of the house at seventeen after beating his alcoholic father nearly to death. His old man died a year later of alcohol poisoning, and though Freddie didn’t move back in, he’s tight with Nell. He gives her money when he can and occasionally crashes there overnight, if he hasn’t got somewhere else to sleep. She could know what he’s doing this week, and if so, that will give me some idea where we might find him.”

  “Where does she live?”

  She rattled off the address. Nell Carter’s house was in an older neighborhood on the outskirts of Butte. Painted a sunny yellow with electric-blue trim, the trilevel sat on a corner lot, surrounded by fenced front and backyards. An array of gaily colored plastic toys littered the grass and walkway.

  “She runs a day care,” Deedra explained.

  “Oh, yeah? Where are the kids?” Beau pulled the car to the curb. “Place looks deserted—abandoned—as if everyone left in the middle of playing.”

  “Maybe it’s napt
ime.” She suggested, frowning as she regarded the house. “The curtains are all drawn.”

  “Kind of late for naps.” Beau opened his door. “This time of day parents ought to be arriving from work to pick up their kids.”

  “That is odd.” Deedra got out of the car.

  Beau said, “Maybe the city got smart and shut her down.”

  “Don’t tar Nell with the same brush you use on Freddie. She doesn’t drink, doesn’t allow Freddie here if he’s been drinking. She hates drunks as much as her son used to.”

  Beau grumbled something under his breath, but the only word she caught was “losers.”

  Deedra bristled. “Nell’s not a loser. She’s a great day-care provider.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  She shook her head, wanting to shake him. He hated her past, found every opportunity to put it down. As if she could change it. As if it hadn’t shaped her into the woman she’d become. A woman she thought he’d fallen in love with, warts and all. But maybe this was why they hadn’t been able to make it when the chips were down. Maybe their backgrounds were just too different, too much to surmount over the long haul.

  With that sad thought, she unlatched the gate. She stepped into the yard but pulled up short. Her gaze had locked on a tiny red wagon lying on its side, a stuffed bunny sprawled in the dirt beside it. In her mind’s eye, Deedra saw the police photographs of her accident.

  She didn’t recall the accident. Her doctor said the memory loss was likely caused by the blow she’d taken to the head. She’d been all but dead when they’d found her. Apparently she’d been using the shortcut through wooded acreage at the back of the ranch, a winding dirt road. The brakes had given out on a sharp curve. She’d rounded the corner on two wheels and slammed into a fallen tree. Her head impacted with the windshield, and a branch had stabbed her very near her heart. When she’d been discovered, dusk had fallen over the woods.