by Linda Howard
“Especially then.” His fingers danced over her hip, sending a new shiver of desire racing through her. “Want to try for a two-fer?”
“That never happens.”
He eased her onto her back and kissed his way down the front of her. “Baby, I love a challenge.”
*
Sam skipped through her morning routine with far more energy than she should have had. Multiple orgasms had multiple benefits. Who knew? With one last glance at Nick sleeping on his belly, she went downstairs in desperate need of a soda. As the first blessed mouthful cruised through her system, she realized she had no way to get to HQ.
Laughing softly, she called Freddie and asked him to pick her up. Since her dad wasn’t up yet, she decided to wait for Freddie on the front porch. She surveyed the quiet street, wondering if Peter was out there somewhere watching her and waiting for his next opportunity. They would’ve called her if they’d found him, so she knew it was possible he was watching her.
“Come and get me, you bastard. You won’t catch me off guard a second time.”
As she took another long drink of soda, Freddie’s battered Mustang came around the corner with a loud backfire.
“Gonna wake up the whole freaking neighborhood,” she grumbled.
He pulled up to the house and leaned over to unlock the passenger door.
“Do I need a tetanus shot before I ride in this thing?”
“What’s that they say about beggars and choosers?”
She battled with the seatbelt. “I’ve got to requisition a new ride.”
“I’ll take care of that for you, boss.” He offered her one of the powdered donuts from the package on his lap.
With a scowl, she took one and turned so she could see him. “You’ve done some good work on this case, Cruz. Damn good.”
His face lit up with pleasure. “Thanks. So after I got home last night, I was kinda wired and couldn’t sleep, ya know?”
“Uh-huh.” Her face flushed when she thought of how she’d worked off her own tension.
“I got to thinking that maybe there’s some sort of connection besides the sexual kind between O’Connor and one of our people of interest.”
“What kind of connection?”
“A domestic—cook, caterer, cleaning lady, gardener.”
“Possible. Where you going with it?”
“I know this is way out there, but what if one of the domestics found out about the kid, Thomas, and told someone who’d be infuriated by it?”
“Worth looking into.”
“You think?”
“When are you going to start having some faith in yourself and your instincts?”
“I don’t know. Soon. I hope.”
“So do I, because you’re starting to piss me off.”
“You know what pisses me off?” He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her. “Your scumbag ex-husband. He pisses me off.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Me, too.”
“It’s all over the papers.”
“I knew it would be.”
“I have it there. In the backseat if you wanted to…”
Her stomach twisted in protest. “That’s all right. Thanks.”
“He had pictures of you all over his place. It was totally creepy. There were shots of you from a distance working crime scenes, and he even had a police scanner.”
Sam’s stomach took a dive at that news. “I should’ve known he wouldn’t just give up and go away. I should’ve known that.”
“This isn’t your fault,” he said fiercely.
“So Natalie Jordan paid us a visit last night,” Sam said, anxious to change the subject. She relayed what Natalie told them and went over their visit with Noel. “I don’t think he did it, but I want to get him on a polygraph today. Will you set that up?”
“Sure thing. I don’t see Noel for it, either. Nothing about him screamed ‘murderer’ to me. Natalie, on the other hand, she’s a cool customer.”
“Nick said she’s lying about Noel, but he’s never liked her.”
“He’s got good instincts, though,” Freddie said.
“Do me a favor when we get in, ask Gonzo and Arnold to check out this address.” She gave him the slip of paper with Natalie’s parents’ address. “And have them go by Noel Jordan’s house in Belle Haven. Get me a couple of hours of surveillance on him before you bring him in.”
“Got it. Will do.” As they pulled up to the last intersection before the public safety building, he said, “Shit.” He pointed at the street leading to HQ, lined with TV trucks bearing satellite dishes.
“Goddamn it.”
He scowled at her choice of words. “Let’s go in through the morgue.”
“Good plan.”
They parked on the far side of the building, entered through the basement door and took a circuitous route to the detectives’ pit where Gonzo and Arnold waited for them.
“We’ve got Terry O’Connor in lockup. He’s lawyering up.”
“Figured.”
“They filmed us bringing him in,” Arnold said. “It’ll be the lead story this morning.”
Captain Malone burst through the door. “The chief just got off the phone with a very angry Senator O’Connor. He’s threatening to call the president.”
“He can call anyone he wants,” Sam said. “His son had motive, a key and can’t produce his supposed alibi. If he was anyone else, we would’ve had him in here days ago, and you know it. I need to rule him out.”
They stared each other down for a long moment before Malone blinked. “Get him into interview and either charge him or let him go. And do it quickly.”
“Yes, sir.” To Gonzo, she added, “Bring him up.”
CHAPTER 29
When Sam and Freddie entered the small interrogation room, Terry O’Connor leaped to his feet. “I didn’t kill my brother! How many times do I have to tell you that?”
She pretended to gaze intently into the file she had carried into the room with her. “The reason you’re here is you failed to attend the safe driving course the judge ordered after your DUI.”
“You aren’t serious.”
Sam glanced at Freddie.
“She’s serious,” Freddie said.
“I meant to,” Terry stammered.
“Why don’t we talk about why we’re really here?” the attorney said.
“Give me a lie detector.”
Grabbing Terry’s shirt, the attorney yanked him into a chair. “Shut up, Terry.”
“Mr. O’Connor, have you been advised of your rights?” Sam asked.
“The cops you sent to haul me out of my parents’ house before dawn went through all that,” he spat back at her.
“Do we have your permission to record this interview?”
“At the advice of counsel,” the attorney drawled in a honeyed Southern accent, “Mr. O’Connor will cooperate with this farce—within reason.”
“Isn’t that good of him?” Sam asked Freddie.
“Real good,” Freddie agreed as he turned on the recorder and noted for the record who was in the room and why.
“It’s now been ninety-six hours since your brother’s body was discovered in his apartment,” Sam said. “You say you spent the night of the murder with a woman you met in a Loudoun County bar. Can you give me her name?”
“No,” Terry said, dejected.
“Have you found anyone who can confirm you left the establishment with this imaginary woman?”
“She wasn’t imaginary!” he cried, slapping his hand on the table.
“Witnesses?”
He slumped back into his chair. “No.”
“That kind of puts you in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it?” she asked as Nick’s words echoed through her mind—you’re barking up the wrong tree with Terry. She had to admit that the buzz she got from knowing she had a suspect’s nuts on the block and all she had to do was lower the boom was missing here.
“Is there a relevant question coming a
ny time soon?” the attorney drawled.
Sam hammered Terry hard for ninety minutes, reduced him to a whimpering, sniveling baby, but he never deviated from his original statement. Finally, needing to regroup, she asked for a word with Freddie in the hallway.
Malone waited for them outside the observation room door. “Spring him.”
Frustration pooled in her aching belly. She nodded to Freddie. “Tell him to stay local and to get that safe driving class done within thirty days.”
“Got it.”
When they were alone, she looked up at Malone. “I had to rule him out.”
“And you all but have.” He lowered his voice. “They brought Peter in thirty minutes ago.”
“He’s mine.”
“No one’s saying otherwise. But you know we can take care of him if you aren’t up to it—”
“I’m up to it—after he chills in the cooler for a little while longer.”
“As a courtesy, I let Skip know we had him.”
“Thanks.”
“The partial print off the ED on Cappuano’s car had similarities to Peter’s, but they couldn’t make a definitive ID.”
“I’ll get him to confirm the print is his,” she said, more to herself than to Malone.
“With what we found in his apartment, we’ve more or less already got him.” He handed her a rundown of what the warrant had yielded and a folder full of photos that made her sick.
“But he doesn’t know that,” she said.
“Nope.”
She looked up at the captain. “I think I’m going to enjoy this. Does that make me a bad cop?”
“No, it makes you human. Arlington will want him when we’re done with him.”
With a nod, she left him to go buy another soda and took it back to her office. Closing the door, she dropped into her chair suddenly exhausted and drained. She hadn’t seen Peter, except for in court, in almost two years. Their last explosive argument over the time she was spending with her newly paralyzed father had put the finishing touches on what had been a horrible four years for her. The next day, she’d moved her essentials into her father’s house and put the rest of her belongings in storage where they remained.
In the ensuing months, Peter had popped up with such annoying regularity that she’d been forced to get a restraining order to keep him from coming around while they hurled accusations back and forth. Since then she’d often had the sensation of being watched or followed, little pinpricks of awareness on the back of her neck that had never materialized into an actual confrontation. In fact, it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d still be so invested in her. She should’ve known better. What made her truly sick was that she had endangered Nick just by spending time with him.
Imagining Peter locked up in a cell in the basement, she smiled. “Let him sit there for a while longer wondering how much we know.” The idea infused her with joy as she drank her soda and returned her attention to the O’Connor case.
*
Nick woke up alone in Sam’s bed and shifted onto her pillow to breathe in the scent she’d left behind. He contemplated whether he should stay there until she got home or get up to face her father. Staying in bed all day was definitely the more appealing of the two options. But since he didn’t want her to think he was a total coward, he got up to take a shower.
He took his time getting dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved polo shirt. How ridiculous was it that he was afraid to go downstairs to face a man in a wheelchair?
“You’re being an ass,” he said to his bomb-battered reflection in the mirror. Still, he took another ten minutes to make the bed and straighten up the room while marveling that one woman could own so many shoes. When there was nothing left to do, he finally started down the stairs and almost groaned when he found Skip by himself in the kitchen. Couldn’t even Celia have been there to provide a buffer?
“Morning,” Nick said.
“Morning,” Skip muttered. “There’s coffee.”
“Thanks.” As Nick filled a mug that had been left by the pot, he felt the heat of the other man’s eyes on his back. “Sam got an early start.”
“I heard her leave about seven-thirty. Celia’s downstairs doing laundry, but she made bacon and eggs. Plates are up there in the cabinet.”
“That sounds good.” Wondering if he’d be able to eat under the watchful eyes of Sam’s dad, Nick brought the plate and coffee to the table. They sat in awkward silence for several minutes before Nick put down his fork and worked up the courage to look over at the older man. “I love her.”
“If I thought otherwise you wouldn’t have slept in her bed last night. I don’t care how old she is.”
Taken aback, Nick stared at him. “I wanted to go with her today.”
“She wouldn’t have let you.”
“Still, until this thing with Peter is cleared up…”
“They snagged him this morning at Union Station, buying a one-way ticket to New York.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“She’s gonna have a go at him. I don’t know about you, but I’d kind of like to see that.”
“How about I drive you?”
*
Sam took a series of deep breaths to calm her churning stomach before she picked up the folder of material gathered from Peter’s apartment, opened her office door, signaled to Freddie, and headed for the interrogation room where she’d asked the uniforms to put Peter. The quiet in the normally buzzing detectives’ cubicles told her she’d have a good-size audience watching in observation.
“He’s apt to come at me,” Sam said to Freddie before they went in. “Don’t stop him.”
“Are you out of your freaking mind?”
“Let me handle this my way, Cruz.”
“Fine, but if it appears he’s about to kill you, you’ll have to excuse me if I get in the way of that.”
“Deal.” With a small smile for Freddie, she stepped into the room. Peter had aged since she last saw him. His sandy hair was now shot through with silver, and the face she’d once found handsome was hard and lined with bitterness.
Nodding to release the officer guarding him, Sam stepped up to the table.
“I want someone else,” he said without looking at her.
“Tough.”
“This is a conflict of interest.”
“We’re not married anymore, so no it isn’t. Detective Cruz, please record this interview with Peter Gibson.”
Freddie clicked on the recorder and returned to his post by the door, sending the signal that this one belonged to Sam.
“You’ve been advised of your rights, including your right to an attorney?”
“Don’t need one. You’ve got nothing on me.” Peter raised his cuffed hands. “Is this really necessary?”
“Detective Cruz, please un-cuff Mr. Gibson.” When Freddie didn’t immediately comply, she said, “Detective.”
Freddie stalked past her and released the cuffs. Scowling at her, he returned to the door.
Peter rubbed his wrists. “Kind of a lot of drama over nothing, Sam,” he said in the patronizing tone he’d often used on her when they were together.
“Nothing?” She laid out each of the photos of her that had been found in his apartment, hearing the loud nuts-on-the-block buzz that had been missing with Terry O’Connor. “What do you call this?”
“Amateur photography. Is that a crime these days?”
“No, but stalking is.”
He shrugged. “A misdemeanor. So charge me.”
“Thanks, I will. Hanging around outside my house? Kind of pathetic, even for you.”
His genial blue eyes hardened. “I wasn’t outside your house.”
“Yes, you were. It’s sad that you’d rather stalk the woman who divorced you than find someone new to control. Pathetic, isn’t it, Cruz?”
“At the very least,” Freddie said. “I’d say it’s kind of sick and pathetic to be fixa
ted on your ex, especially when she’s made it crystal clear to the world that she wants nothing to do with you.”
If looks could kill, Freddie would’ve been a goner.
Sam moved around the table so she was behind Peter. “Pissed you off that I didn’t want you anymore, didn’t it?”
“I didn’t want you, either. You were a shitty wife and lousy in bed.” He looked up at the dark glass that masked the observation room. “You hear that?” he yelled. “She sucks in the sack!”
“Nick doesn’t think so.”
Peter tried to surge to his feet, but she shoved him back down.
“I guess you’ve figured out that we compared notes and discovered you didn’t give me his messages six years ago when you were pretending to be my friend.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“No, but it is pathetic. Must’ve pissed you off this week to see me with him.”
“Like I care.”
“Oh, I think you do.” She leaned in to speak close to his ear. “I think you care a whole lot.”
In a jerky motion, he shrugged her off. “Giving yourself a lot of credit, aren’t you?”
Returning to the other side of the table, she laid a photo of the bomb-making materials in front of him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
A bead of sweat appeared on his upper lip. “I have no idea.”
“I think you do.” Sam rested her hands on the table and leaned toward him. “You disappoint me, Peter. Four years of living with a cop and you didn’t learn a goddamned thing. If you’re going to try to kill your ex-wife and her boyfriend, you should know better than to leave fingerprints on the bombs.”
“I didn’t leave any prints!”
She smiled. Bingo.
His face went purple with rage. “You fucking cunt. Spreading your legs for that asshole ten minutes after you see him again.”
Sam leaned closer to him, her stomach burning. “That’s right. And guess what?” She lowered her voice so only Peter—and maybe Freddie—could hear her. “When I fuck him, I come every time—sometimes more than once. So it turns out that despite what you always tried to make me believe, you were the one who sucked in the sack.”
He lunged at her, grabbed her throat and squeezed so hard she saw stars in a matter of seconds.
