by C. J. Lyons
He pulled the courthouse door open for her. Together they walked toward the attorneys’ parking lot. The sun was already setting, casting a sliver of gold and red beneath the steel-gray clouds that pushed it down into the horizon.
“I was thinking, this was a rough case for everyone. Maybe I should come by tonight?” Unlike his usual careful cadence, his words emerged in the anxiety-driven rush of a schoolboy asking for a prom date. But that didn’t stop him. “It’s been a while.” He brushed her arm with his.
“Not tonight, Jacob.” Probably not ever again, her tone implied. “I have plans.”
“Hmmm. I heard rumors about you and Manny.” Jacob had never approved of Manny Cruz. He found the prosecutor’s principles conveniently self-serving. Hah. Like he was one to talk. A rapist would soon be free because of him.
“God, no. The man despises me. Ever since I forced him into taking this case to trial. He wanted to drop it even before Tymara was killed.”
“Then who?”
“What makes you think there’s anyone?”
He chuckled. “I know you, Angie. You might not be able to live with a man for the long term, but you can’t live without one, either.”
“What happened to the court stenographer you were seeing? I thought you two were getting serious.”
“So did I. Guess I was wrong.” He stopped, leveled a gaze at her. “Again.”
Once or twice a year, usually when the nights grew cold and long, he and Angie would reunite. More than casual sex, less than total commitment—on her side, at least. He hoped this time might be different. Last year they’d managed to make it until the day after Christmas. Angie hated the holidays, hated being alone even more.
This past Thanksgiving he’d thought, maybe…but that was the night they’d both almost died while saving Devon’s little girl. The night Matthew Ryder had saved Angie from a serial killer and gotten shot. Surely not she and Ryder? No, Ryder wasn’t her type.
At least he hoped not.
“Maybe I’ll just take a cab,” she said as the silence grew awkward. How strange. Used to be silence didn’t bother either of them. Now it was as if they barely knew each other. At least she hadn’t filled the time by talking about the weather.
“No. We’re here.” He keyed the remote, and the lights of his silver Volvo flicked on. He opened her door for her, handed over the bag once she was seated. “Where to?”
He was surprised by her hesitation. Angie always knew where she was going, what she was doing, what happened next. She could see the ending of a movie in the opening credits and be right every time. One of many things that once irritated the hell out of him.
“Home, I guess.”
Soon they were heading toward her uncle’s bar. After a lengthy silence, he dared to try to breach her defenses. Damn it, someone had to. Look after her. No matter how much she despised it. “Are you all right?”
“Just because I don’t want to see you tonight—”
“No. Not that. I mean really. Something seems off. Has been for a while now.”
“Off, how?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
Silence.
“It’s not a crime to ask for help, Angie. To need someone. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing going on. Everything’s fine.”
“But quitting the ER…Is it true this was your last case for the Advocacy Center?”
“I may have found a better opportunity.”
“You’re moving? Where? When?” It was difficult to force the words past his tightened vocal cords.
She squeezed her bag to her chest and answered, “Not sure. Yet.”
He slanted a suspicious glance her way. “Sounds like—” He paused, unable to say the ugly words. Drugs. Alcohol. Addiction. It was a worry in her family, he knew. “This sabbatical—is it to rehab?”
“Rehab?” She sounded surprised. Or she was faking. At one time in his life, Jacob would have staked everything on Angie’s honesty. Now he wasn’t sure. That knowledge rattled him more than he cared to admit.
“Evie asked me. She was wondering if maybe something was going on. Something that made you quit the ER.”
“Damn Evie. My little sister never did understand the concept of privacy.”
“So is there?” He pressed. “Something wrong, I mean.”
She refused to look at him, staring fixedly out her window. Which meant he’d hit a sore spot. “You know you can trust me,” he tried again. “Or,” he added when she knifed him a glare, “if you need a place to stay—”
“Can you just give it a rest? Please? I’m so damn tired.”
That he believed. She looked a wreck. More exhausted than he’d ever seen her during the two years they were married, and that had been during her emergency medicine residency.
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, cutting off further conversation. It was a relief when his cell phone rang. He snagged his Bluetooth ear bud. “Jacob Voorsanger.”
“It’s Ryder. Do you have any idea where Rossi is?” The detective’s voice was clipped, tight.
“She’s here with me.”
“Damn her, tell her to answer her cell. Where’s here?” Jacob winced as Ryder’s voice thundered through the earpiece. Angie straightened beside him, twisted in her seat, gestured for the phone. He ignored her.
“I’m driving her home. What happened?”
“Didn’t she tell you? Littleton threatened her. And your pal Gena Kravitz is getting him processed out tonight.”
“She’s no friend of mine.”
“I’m setting up surveillance on Littleton, see if he’ll led us to his friends, but—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay with her.” He hung up before the detective could protest or question his motives.
“What the hell was that all about?” she asked.
“You didn’t tell me Littleton threatened you. What was Ryder thinking, letting him anywhere near you?”
“It was the only way to get him to talk. Besides, it wasn’t really a threat—he was just trying to scare me. I can take care of myself.”
Of course she could. And wasn’t that the problem? Hadn’t it always been?
Chapter 16
I WASN’T TOO surprised when Jacob parked his car in one of the employee spots beside my uncle’s bar. Ever since we broke up and his father’s Alzheimer’s forced him into a care facility, Jacob spent most nights at Jimmy’s Place. He was lonely, and my family, once they got over their initial disapproval of our marriage outside the Church, had embraced him and his musical talents, rolling both effortlessly into the ceili band my father had founded years ago.
Together we picked our way through the alley behind the bar. I wasn’t about to go in through the front door and risk running into Jimmy for another uncomfortable chat. Usually, I avoided the alley. No matter how often Jimmy hosed it down, it always stank of stale beer, piss, and vomit. Plus, the past few days, a creepy homeless guy had been camped out there. But despite the shadows falling and the fact that Jimmy hadn’t turned the lights on yet—saving electricity and a few dollars—I wasn’t worried, not with Jacob at my side.
I opened the rear door and headed up the private staircase. To my surprise, Jacob followed. I stopped halfway up and turned to him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
He surprised me with a blush. He knew full well I invited no one to my apartment. Not Jacob, not Ryder, no one. After a lifetime of having every aspect of my life dissected and aired in public by my family—what has Angela done now?—I finally set some boundaries. Well, one boundary. Maybe just a flimsy lock on a flimsy door, but it was my lock on my door.
“I told Ryder I’d keep an eye on you,” he said. “Grab your fiddle. We’ll play a set together before it gets busy downstairs.”
An image flashed in my vision: a night last month, before everything that had happened at Thanksgiving. Jacob, beads of sweat dripping from his brow as his entire body wrestled his
bow against his violin. His eyes were shut, his foot tapping in time with the beat, his entire being absorbed by the music.
When he had something on his mind, he’d pick up his violin, sit and play it for hours until he had the problem worked out. Like me, music was his solace, his safe haven—the one place he’d been able to retreat to as a child, escaping his domineering father.
“You should’ve kept that one,” Jimmy had told me back then, setting a glass of ice water at my elbow. “Could’ve done a whole lot worse.”
It was the truth. But I’d learned during those years with Jacob that you could love someone and still not be able to live with them.
“Angie?” he asked now, still stopped on the steep, well-worn steps.
I shook off the memory—a regular memory, thank goodness, not a fugue—and continued up to the second floor. It was strange, the only people who had any clue that I was sick, other than Louise, were two men who’d just come into my life: Devon and Ryder. The thought brought with it a twinge of guilt. Along with the reminder that I needed to tell my sister so she could be tested.
If Evie also had fatal insomnia, it would kill our mother. Patsy and I had never had a normal mother-daughter relationship after my father died and I came to live here with Jimmy’s family. But she and Evie were more than family. They were each other’s best friends as well.
Jacob and I reached the top of the steps. I hesitated outside my door, Jacob hovering uncomfortably close behind me. Before I could put my key into the lock, the door swung open, and I was staring into the faces of my family.
Could this day get any worse?
<<<>>>
AS MUCH AS he despised them, Ryder was good at stakeouts. It came from his years as a soldier, learning how to handle dragging hours of boredom, how to stalk the enemy, and learning how to develop the patience needed to wait and watch without losing focus. Right now, shivering in his car, eating a stale protein bar and washing it down with vintage water that had been stashed under the passenger seat for Lord only knew how long, he was stalking a stalker: Eugene Littleton.
So far, Littleton had led Ryder on a merry chase through the city streets. First, Gena Kravitz had driven him home. Curbside service. Only the best for her clients. Ryder wondered how the lawyer could stand being in the same vehicle as Littleton after seeing what he’d done to Tymara. Lawyers…If he’d had a partner, coming up with new adjectives or swapping bottom-dweller jokes would have chewed up a nice chunk of time, relieved the monotony.
But Ryder was alone. Sad thing was, he was actually starting to like it that way. Just as he had lost his patience with departmental politics, he’d also lost the knack for small talk. Guess that meant he was getting old. Or growing up. Some damn thing.
After being chauffeured home, Littleton left his lousy apartment building to stroll through the twilight shadows. Littleton lived a block north of the Tower, making it the second-worst neighborhood in the city. He’d gone to the corner grocery store, returning home with his arms filled with food. No side trip to the liquor store even. Ryder thought he might stay in after that, but no, Littleton surprised him, emerging a short while later, now dressed in a respectable-looking suit. Going out on the town? Picking up another “girlfriend” to terrorize? Or off to meet his partners in crime?
Littleton had hopped into a gypsy cab—real cabs didn’t come to this part of town—and away they went. To, of all places, an elementary school on Second.
Nothing in Littleton’s record indicated he had any ties to children. He had none of his own, had never been convicted of any crimes against children. Ryder pulled up the school’s website to see if there was some kind of evening event. There was. Nothing involving children. A Narcotics Anonymous meeting being held in the school cafeteria.
Trolling an NA meeting for his next victim? Seemed like the kind of vulnerable prey a guy like Littleton might gravitate toward. Except, he didn’t go inside. Instead, he waited in the cold and dark, conveniently standing beneath the spotlight over the front entrance so Ryder could see every move he made.
A bit too convenient for Ryder’s taste. He scratched the back of his neck, kept checking all his mirrors, wary of an ambush. This wasn’t right. A guy like Littleton, in county lockup for six months, spending his first night of freedom freezing his balls off in front of a school instead of picking up a hooker or going to a bar?
This was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Littleton seemed impervious to the cold, didn’t appear anxious or impatient as he waited. Instead, he was calm, relaxed. What the hell was going on here? Every instinct that had kept Ryder and his squad alive in Afghanistan was alerted, prepared for battle.
Despite the weathermen calling for snow later tonight, the sky was clear. The temperature was falling fast, leaving Ryder facing the classic cop’s stakeout dilemma. Sit in an unheated car until the windows fogged, leaving you blind? Or turn the engine on for a few minutes to thaw out and run the defogger?
Either way, you were bound to be noticed. So Ryder took the third option. He grabbed a ball cap from the back seat. People tended to fixate on details like hats, forget to notice the face below them. He wrapped his scarf up over the lower half of his face, as much for warmth as for disguise, and left the car. He had to keep his overcoat unbuttoned so he could reach his service weapon, the wind from the river pushing it open, and his gloves, thin enough to fire his weapon if need be, weren’t much use. But, between Littleton acting abnormally übernormal and the cold, he was at full alert.
People began to arrive for the meeting. Littleton, damn the man, greeted each and every one, shaking their hand and saying something to them as if he knew them. Which he couldn’t. There was nothing in his case file about him ever attending NA. He sure as hell hadn’t gone to any meetings held while he was in lockup. He didn’t even have any drug collars on his sheet. Instead, his record consisted of several criminal trespassing charges, gross sexual imposition, terroristic threats, and one stalking charge. He’d pleaded out and entered a diversion program, receiving shock probation and intensive counseling rather than serving any jail time.
What the hell was going on here? Was this all an act for Ryder’s sake? He sidled closer. Difficult to do, since the streets were empty except for the people straggling up Second to enter the school. He considered joining them. It’d be warm inside. Coffee and doughnuts as well.
He wasn’t going anywhere without Littleton. Ryder took a position in a storefront doorway, out of the wind. As he watched and waited, his feet tapped out a rhythm. Not just to keep the blood flowing. It was a tune Rossi had played last night. A fiddle-playing, dying doctor. Who could have seen that one coming? But somehow, when he watched her play, the way the music came to life—and brought her to life—he forgot about the “dying” part. Forgot about everything except the woman.
If he were honest with himself, he could pinpoint the exact moment when he’d fallen for her with no hope of recovery: Three weeks ago, right after he got out of the hospital, she’d been alone onstage, the bar almost empty, and she’d played a song. Not a real song, Jimmy had told him, but something improvised there on the spot. The music was rich, complex, filled with longing and despair, yet also joyful. Her entire body had surrendered to it: head flung back, hair flying wild, her hands never ceasing movement as they coaxed the notes from her fiddle.
By the time she’d finished, tears had wet his cheeks. Jimmy’s as well.
Rossi’s song returned to him now. It wasn’t as good as being with the woman herself, but somehow he didn’t feel as vulnerable or alone. That was the magic of Rossi. Unlike the victims Ryder served now, or his squad that he’d led back in the war, he didn’t feel as if he had to take care of her. Instead, each filled a void the other hadn’t even realized existed.
Ryder banished his fantasies of Rossi as one last woman approached Littleton before entering the school. They spoke for a few minutes. Longer than he had with anyone else. Littleton’s body language was also different. He clasped the wom
an’s hand in his while also grasping her elbow in his other hand as they bowed their heads together, talking earnestly.
Ryder shifted position to get a good look at the woman’s face. Then she vanished inside.
Littleton remained at his post outside, although now he seemed restless, casting looks at the door behind him, a little boy eager to open his Christmas presents—or at least shake them. He paced back and forth, then trailed around in a circle, obviously waiting. For what?
After almost fifteen minutes, Ryder’s hands about numb from the cold, his eyes burned dry by the frigid wind, he was ready to head back to the shelter of the car. A crack like a lightning strike slammed through the night. Ryder startled. A gunshot. From inside the school.
In the gleam of the spotlight, Littleton smiled. More than a smile, a smirk. Aimed directly at Ryder as Ryder raced across the street, his weapon drawn, his phone in his other hand.
“Shots fired,” he told Dispatch. “Second Avenue Elementary. Send back up.”
Chapter 17
THEY WERE ALL there. Waiting inside my apartment. Jimmy, my cousins, Evie. And the queen of the clan, my mother, sitting at the head of my table. Colorful mounds of pills and capsules were arranged before her, offerings to a goddess.
“Care to explain this, young lady?” she asked before I crossed the threshold.
Jimmy held the door open. Since my door had no peephole, he must have been listening, waiting to pounce when I arrived. My cousins slouched on my couch, poorly hidden smirks dancing across their face, Ozzie on the floor between them. The dog at least bothered to stand up at my arrival, his tail thumping the floor, one person happy to see me.
It was Evie I couldn’t face. She sat at my mother’s side, her manicured nails sparking in the light as she clasped her hands and somehow managed to appear both elegant and worried.
