In His Protective Custody

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Did you know her?” he asked.

  Alyx shook her head. “Not very well.” She glanced toward Zane. “Just enough to know that she was being abused.”

  “But not enough to talk her into leaving,” Tony guessed. His tone was nonjudgmental.

  It didn’t matter. She still felt guilty that she hadn’t taken more of an active stand to help the woman. “I saw her in the elevator the other day, a fresh bruise on her arm. I told her she didn’t have to take it, that she had every right to stand up for herself.” Obviously, that hadn’t been enough. “Maybe I should have made her stay with me. She might still be alive if I had.”

  “There’s a reason they call it hindsight,” Tony told her. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he advised. “It’s not going to change anything anyway.” Tony looked over her head at the patrolman who seemed to be with her. “Officer—?”

  “Calloway,” Zane supplied. “And that’s Officer Lukkas. We’ve already called in the CSI unit to the hospital.”

  Tony nodded. “We’re going to need a second detail here. But, for a matter closer to home—Officer Calloway, could you see to it that my wife’s cousin isn’t alone right now?”

  Zane nodded as if he had just been given another routine assignment. “No problem, Detective.”

  “And see that she eats,” Tony requested as an afterthought. “The Pulaski women have a tendency not to eat when they’re stressed or upset. It drives their mother crazy,” he added, thinking of his mother-in-law. “It makes it doubly hard for Magda since she now runs a restaurant and either oversees or takes care of over eighty percent of the cooking for all the households.”

  With that, Tony turned on his heel and began to set about the business of making a case against Abby’s husband.

  “You heard the detective,” Zane said to Alyx, ushering her out of the neighbor’s apartment and to her own door. “We need to get you something to eat.”

  The last thing on her mind was food. “He just wants me out of the way,” she protested.

  “That, too.” Zane didn’t bother disputing it. “But he still had a point about eating.” The woman, he noted, had a knock-out figure, but it wouldn’t take much to get her to the skinny level. And that, he thought, would be a crying shame.

  She was too old to be force-fed, Alyx thought. “I’m not hungry.”

  He wasn’t about to accept any excuses. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Besides, I need to get my car,” she reminded him. “You made me leave the family car in the hospital parking structure.” The repairs on it, mercifully, had been minor and she’d picked the vehicle up at lunch time.

  He merely nodded. “There was a reason for that.”

  “Care to share?” she prodded, willing to sacrifice a little to gain what she was waiting for.

  But he wasn’t about to elaborate, at least not yet. “Don’t change the subject.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “All right, if you won’t let the food come to you, then I’ll take you to the food.” He paused to tell Ryan that he was leaving for the next forty-five minutes to an hour to get her car, but that he would be back.

  Ryan put his own interpretation to what his partner had just said.

  “You’re just trying to get out of canvassing the area,” Ryan complained. Canvassing required dedication, good shoe wear and a particularly hard skin because of all the insults and verbal abuse people would fling at him. He braced himself for the ordeal that lay ahead.

  “Hey, the detective gave me this assignment,” Zane said in defense of his actions. In response, Ryan just waved him on as he went to knock on his first door. “Maybe you should stay and help him,” Alyx said. “I can get a cab back to the hospital—or walk. It isn’t all that far.”

  “Lukkas likes to complain. If I help him, that means he won’t have anything to carry on about. It’s better this way, trust me. Besides, you look like you could use the company.”

  She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before responding. “I’ve never had anyone die in front of me like that before.”

  “But you’re a doctor,” he protested.

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I still never had anyone die in front of me.” She let out a shaky breath. “It’s pretty awful.”

  He could sympathize. One didn’t get used to death so easily, and maybe that was a good thing, otherwise, a certain jadedness took over.

  “There’s no real way to prepare for it,” he told her. “But once it happens, you just have to make yourself move on.”

  “Doesn’t seem right, me moving on. Abby can’t.”

  “Think of her being in a better place,” he advised. When she looked up at him, he could see the surprise in her eyes. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I just didn’t take you for the type to say something like that,” she told him honestly.

  He wasn’t aware that he was a “type.” He’d spent so many years walking to his own drummer, he thought that would have broken him out of any kind of mold.

  “Why?” Humor curved Zane’s mouth. “Because I carry around a pitchfork?” he deadpanned.

  “No, I just didn’t think you believed in anything you couldn’t see with your own eyes,” she said quietly.

  “I guess that makes me a complex person.”

  “I guess it does,” she agreed.

  The elevator arrived and she walked in first. Abby’s death was still as horrible as it had been a few moments ago, but she took solace in Zane’s presence. Though she couldn’t explain why or put it into coherent words, he made her feel…better.

  Chapter 9

  A lyx glanced at her rearview mirror.

  The black and white squad car, with Zane behind the wheel, was still there, following her.

  Was he planning to come all the way back to her apartment building? He’d dropped her off at the hospital parking structure, stopping right beside her vehicle, a hand-me-down she’d inherited from her cousins who’d all owned and driven the car at one time or another. Once she started up the car, she’d assumed that the policeman would return to the precinct.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, he followed her out of the structure and turned the squad car toward her building. Alyx didn’t know what to make of it until she remembered that his partner was probably still in her building, knocking on neighbors’ doors and trying to find out if anyone had seen or heard anything that might help them bring charges against Abby’s husband.

  Turning at the corner, Alyx pulled into the underground structure next to her building and parked the car in the spot that coincided with her apartment number. She noted that Zane parked the black and white in the loading and unloading zone reserved for deliveries and emergency vehicles.

  When she got out of her car, he was already crossing to her.

  “I guess you’re here to pick up your partner,” she speculated, searching for something to say as they got on the elevator together.

  Her words sounded stilted to her ear. She definitely wasn’t at her best, but that was because she still felt numb and completely disoriented. The ordeal in the Trauma Room had felt almost surreal to her. She’d lost her grasp on her bearings and it would take a bit of work to smooth things out in her head. She kept seeing Abby’s pain-filled eyes in her mind.

  “Lukkas is probably long gone by now,” Zane answered. “I doubt if he found all that many people in at this time of day and his shift ended a while back.”

  Something didn’t add up. “Don’t you have the same shift?”

  “Yes.” The elevator stopped on every floor, taking on passengers or dropping them off. It would have been faster to take the stairs, he thought. But one glance at her face told him that she was far too drained for such exertion.

  She connected the dots, albeit in slow motion. “So that means that you’re off duty, too.”

  He stepped closer to her as a woman with a fluffy dog—the only breed he knew for certain was a German shepherd and this wasn’t it—pressed to her ample che
st came in. “Yes.”

  He was in her space. And getting more so without moving an inch. She tried to keep her mind on the conversation and not the way her skin was heating.

  “I don’t understand. If you’re not picking up your partner, what are you doing here?”

  He thought it was easier to take shelter in the excuse he’d been handed. “Detective Santini told me to keep you company.” The woman and her dog got out on the next floor. Both Zane and Alyx breathed a sigh of relief. Zane moved back but not far enough to negate his presence. Alyx could still feel the impression of his body, even though there was now space between them.

  “Detective Santini is my cousin’s husband and he tends to worry. Worrying is the official family hobby, I’m told,” she informed him. “If that’s all that’s making you stay here, consider yourself unshackled. You’re free to go home, Officer Calloway,” she informed him.

  No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t any more free to do that than he was to turn a blind eye to transgressions of the law. Not even if he wanted to.

  “Maybe that’s not all that’s making me stay,” he told her as the elevator came to a slow, grinding halt on the fifth floor.

  “Oh?”

  Why had her mouth suddenly gone so dry? And why was she behaving like some kind of pubescent, inexperienced preteen? She was way past that. Especially after what had gone down today at the ER. Seeing death that close made a person grow up.

  Fast.

  What was wrong with her? Alyx scolded herself. But even as she did so, she heard herself asking Zane, “Then what else is making you stay?” A straight line. She was feeding him a straight line. In hopes of what? Something to flatter her ego? To reaffirm her worth after having her esteem all but flattened today?

  She had no answers. She waited to hear his.

  Zane took the keys out of her hand and unlocked her door. As he did so, she glanced over toward Abby’s apartment. The CSI unit had apparently cleared out, leaving the infamous yellow tape in their wake, warning everyone in the vicinity not to trespass past the makeshift barriers.

  Another salvo of guilt exploded within her.

  “You,” she heard Zane say.

  Blinking, her attention zeroed in on Zane as the temperature in the hallway rose by another ten degrees. It was as if someone had just shoved her into an oven.

  “You look like you need company,” he explained, twisting the knob on her door and opening it for her. He stepped back and let her enter her apartment first.

  He was right, she thought. She didn’t want to be alone right now, but her only alternative was to call up one of her cousins and she didn’t want to sound like some fresh, dewy-eyed innocent who needed babysitting. She admired them, wanted to be like them. The last thing she wanted was for them to think of her as some weak, clingy creature who needed pampering.

  Not to mention that her uncle was just searching for an excuse to have her come live at the house in Queens. Her aunt and uncle were lovely, lovely people and she adored them already. But they both had a tendency to be overly protective. She wasn’t used to that. Her mother wasn’t like that.

  Her mother was the exact opposite, taking marginal interest in her daughters unless it came to something that presented itself as a competition with Josef’s family. Then her mother was right there, in the thick of it. Pushing and advising.

  “Really, I’ll be all right,” she told Zane. “You probably have things you want to do.”

  He closed the door and his eyes met hers. “I do.”

  Breathe, Alyx, breathe! she ordered herself. “Well, then—”

  Zane paused to flip the lock on the door, then turned around to face her. “I’m doing it,” he informed her.

  “Babysitting the detective’s cousin-in-law?” she questioned. This was what he wanted to do?

  “Is that how you see yourself?” he asked. “‘The detective’s cousin-in-law’?” he echoed. “Because I don’t.”

  “Okay,” she said gamely. “How do you see me?” Did that just come out of her? Was that her playing coy?

  Since when?

  “I see you as somebody who shouldn’t be alone right now because you tend to overthink things.” Because he found himself wanting to touch her, to trace the contours of her face with his fingertips to reassure himself that she was here, and real, he took a step back.

  “They say it takes one to know one.” The words came slowly.

  What was he doing to her? Why was it suddenly so hard to function? Where was her spirit, damn it? Where was her anger? Both kept her safe and isolated. But she couldn’t seem to summon either.

  A glimmer of a smile curved Zane’s mouth. “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed, terminating the discussion.

  He crossed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and then the freezer. The latter appeared amply stocked, while the former was not.

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You eat anything else except ice cream?”

  She just hadn’t had time to go grocery shopping. Maybe on the weekend… “On occasion.”

  He reviewed what else was in the main section of the refrigerator. There was a carton of eggs with only one egg missing and a container of parmesan cheese. A quick glance into her pantry showed some oil, a package of flavored bread crumbs and a packet of cough drops.

  “Well,” he concluded, stepping away from the pantry, “I can make us a large omelet, or we can order out. Your choice.”

  She stared at him incredulously. “You cook?” she asked.

  “Why does that surprise you so much?” he asked. “Men cook.”

  “The only ones I know have their own cooking shows on cable channels.”

  There was no point in debating this. He cooked, end of story. He moved on. “You didn’t answer my first question. Do you want me to make us a couple of omelets, or do you want—”

  When she wasn’t at Aunt Magda’s, sampling the end results of her exquisite culinary skills, she was buying takeout. This would be a pleasant change—as long as it didn’t put Zane out too much. “Omelet sounds good,” she said, interrupting him.

  “Omelet it is,” he said with feeling.

  The next moment, he was opening up cabinets and drawers, looking for a frying pan, plates and utensils.

  Slipping in next to him, Alyx produced the items one at a time, then set them down on the counter before him and next to the stove.

  He took over like a pro. She watched him for a moment, then, curious, asked, “Your mother teach you how to cook?”

  He laughed shortly, mainly to himself. “By default. I guess you could say that.”

  Alyx shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what that means.”

  “My mother was too busy to cook for us.” Among other things, he thought. Had it not been for the money from his father’s life insurance policy, they would have all wound up on the street or living out of his mother’s old Ford station wagon. “Someone had to do it, so I did,” he concluded carelessly.

  She got the impression that his mother was some sort of a dedicated professional. Even so, how could a mother neglect her own children like that? “What was she so busy doing?”

  “Drinking.”

  The answer, fired like a bullet, startled her. For a second, she didn’t know how to react. She’d obviously stumbled blindly onto a very sensitive topic. He should have given her some kind of warning.

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” she apologized, feeling awkward as hell. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Yeah, she did, Zane thought, but he guessed he owed her one. Owed it because his take on the situation next door had kept him from, at the very least, taking the husband in for a cooling-off period. Maybe if he had, there wouldn’t be any yellow tape sealing off the door.

  “My mother drank to forget,” he said, half to himself, half to her as he took the carton of eggs out of the refrigerator and proceeded to break them, one by one, over a bowl.

  The words he’d uttered just seemed to hang in the air, waitin
g to be clarified.

  “Forget what?” Alyx finally asked in a hushed voice, her insatiable curiosity urging her on. However, that didn’t prevent her from feeling as if she treaded on a rickety bridge stretched out over a ravine. Her adrenaline raced madly.

  “To forget that she was the reason my father killed himself,” he answered as he poured the mixture into the preheated pan. A sizzling noise marked the meeting of eggs and oil.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she repeated, wishing she could say something more meaningful. “I didn’t realize—”

  He shrugged it away, curtailing her discomfort. “I know.” He put down the fork he used to beat the eggs together. “I didn’t push the investigation into your second-hand allegations about McBride beating his wife because I thought it was a ruse.”

  When he paused, Alyx didn’t press him with questions or take offense at what he’d said. She just waited for him to tell her the rest of it at his own pace.

  After a moment, her patience was rewarded.

  “That was the excuse my mother used to get back at my father. He stepped out on her—or so she thought—and she wanted to get back at him the only way she knew how. With his kids. So she made up this whole story, even had a friend hit her a few times so that there were bruises to photograph. She won custody of us easily.

  “What she hadn’t counted on,” he continued grimly, resuming cooking, “was that this was going to break my father. Being separated from his sons was more than he could take. He started drinking when he got home from work to fill the emptiness at night. He expanded the hours he drank until, eventually, he started showing up at work drunk. His superior told him he had to choose between work and the bottle. My father punched him out.”

  He glanced at her and saw that her eyes had widened with compassion. Without fully understanding why, he felt grateful to her.

  Taking the lid off the frying pan, he mixed in what little cheese and then breadcrumbs he had available to him, then returned the lid to the pan while lowering the temperature.

  “The next thing he knew, my father wasn’t a cop anymore. Being a cop and our dad was all he ever knew how to be,” he told her, struggling to hold his feelings in check. This had happened a long time ago. “Without that, my father thought he was nothing. So he sat down, wrote it all down in a letter for my mother to read, and then, just like that, he put the gun barrel into his mouth and blew his brains out.”