“No.”
Across the table, Tyree sent him a questioning look.
Phan Dai studied both of them. But he said only, “I see.”
In a fast series of words, he reported back to Hoang and continued his questions. With a small exhalation, he concluded. Rubbing his forehead, he said, “This woman was alone. She had no relatives in this country. She had a sister in Texas. This sister died. Le Duc Nhu had nothing except her job at the orange juice bottling factory, no one except her baby. Mrs. Thoa is very concerned about this baby, a girl. She wants to know who’s taking care of her?”
Again Judah didn’t answer. Directing his question to the translator, he said, “Find out where our victim lived. Did she live here with Mrs. Thoa?”
No, no, Hoang Lan Thoa waved her hands, rose from her chair and pointed out the kitchen window, her meaning clear.
They left her sitting at the kitchen table, her face tight with worry.
They went to the house she had shown them. Smaller than most of the houses on the block, it shared part of the back yard with Mrs. Thoa’s house. Looking back, Judah could see that Mrs. Thoa wouldn’t have seen anything that happened once the three boys had left the sidewalks of the block. A large hedge ran down the lot line. A huge magnolia tree in full leaf further obscured the view. She would have heard the noise of the three boys in the street. She would have been shaking with fear.
But she couldn’t have seen or heard anything that might have happened in the house.
In the late-afternoon stillness, a chill danced along his skin. Pushing through the bushes, he and Tyree came upon a clothesline. A wooden pole supported one end of the rope. The other end, torn from the branch of an avocado tree, lay on the ground. Diapers trailed on the still-wet grass, mute and muddy testimony.
The back door was wide open, the screen door hanging drunkenly on one hinge.
“Oh, boy.” Tyree took a deep breath and brought his Sig 9 to his side.
“Nobody’s here.”
“Huh. You sure about that?”
“Not positive. Pretty sure.” Judah lifted his head, sniffing the air. “We’re the garbage men, now, Tyree. Cleaning up the mess.”
Tyree kept his pistol at his side. “You understand? Not that I don’t exactly trust your judgment—”
“But you don’t. And you’re careful. So keep your weapon at the ready.”
They edged up to the house, listening. “No.” He motioned Tyree behind him. “I’ll go first.” Taking a deep breath, Judah entered the house and went into the kitchen.
It was bad.
The walls were sprayed with graffiti. A container of flour had been upended on the kitchen floor, flour tracked across the hall to the living room. The refrigerator door hung open. Jars of baby food were lined up neatly on one shelf.
On the wall, framed photos of a baby hung crookedly. On a table that rose higher than the other furniture in the living room a collection of other pictures were grouped on a gold silk cloth. In one, a laughing woman in a pink filmy dress held a chubby baby up to the camera.
He recognized the smooth, young face of the woman.
An immense sadness welled up in him before he could catch his breath, the weight of it pushing against him.
Drawn by the joy shining in the woman’s face, he almost picked up the picture. Keeping his hands at his side, he didn’t touch it.
All that joy, that love smiling at the camera.
Gone.
Tyree joined him, saw the picture. “Oh, man. I hate this job.”
“I love it,” Judah said, walking past the black-and-red spray-painted walls to the bedroom closest to the kitchen.
Like a capital letter I, the house was laid out with the kitchen at the back, two bedrooms separated by a bathroom off a hall, a large room on the other side of the hall, and then the living room at the front. The front door was partially open.
“How you figuring this?” Tyree stood in the hall. “They came in the back?”
Looking at the flour tracks, Judah nodded. “They must have busted down the back door, come through here, then into the living room.” He stooped down to look at the two sets of tracks. “Something’s odd, though. What do you think, Tyree?”
“Didn’t our witness say there were three guys? I see two sets of footprints in the flour, least it looks like two different sizes.”
“That’s what I see, too.” Judah stood. Every bone in his body ached. “Let’s finish up the walk-through and call it in. Let the lab boys do their thing.”
“But where’s the third guy?” Hands on his hips, Tyree scowled at him. “Where’s that damned third guy, Judah?”
An empty crib stood against one of the walls in the front bedroom. A mobile hung crookedly from its support at the head. A stuffed pink bunny was jammed head first through the crib slats.
There was no baby. Not in the closet, not under the heap of baby clothes strewn about the room.
No baby anywhere.
Judah inhaled.
“Make the call, Tyree.”
Tyree stomped out to the front porch and pulled out his cell phone.
Judah turned in a circle, absorbing the destruction and the mess. Taking in the desecration of what had been cheerful orderliness.
He leaned his forehead against the doorjamb, the only graffiti-free spot in the room, and waited.
There was no small body waiting for him.
He took another deep breath.
There was that, at least.
He wanted to feel relief, to feel grateful.
But around him he felt only the rushing of a dark and terrible wind.
Chapter 8
Sophie stroked out with one leg. Her roller blades hissed against the asphalt. Working for speed now and half bent forward, she zipped past the low cement bunker toward the far end of the parking lot. This shady, deserted end of the hospital parking lot was her favorite cool-down area.
Who knew that one’s life could turn around in the blink of an eye? In the touch of a baby’s small hand?
Who’d-a thunk it? Laughing, she wiped the sweat from her forehead. From underneath the plastic helmet shell, sweat dripped down the back of her neck, down her nose. The late-afternoon sun had finally dried up most of the puddles and chased the chill from the air. She’d burned off a lot of confusion during an hour of steady blading. Still…
Swaying sideways, she made a wide loop.
Stroke and think. Stroke and think.
She’d hoped the hypnotic motion would free her mind so that she could figure out her strategy. She knew what she wanted. But not how to make it all happen.
It had all seemed so simple in the Peds ward.
Angel had fallen asleep as naturally as if she’d always slept in Sophie’s arms.
Nice. Perfect.
Reluctantly, Sophie had finally put her back in her crib.
How could she let this baby go into the system? All babies were precious, but Angel? To let her disappear into that vast bureaucracy with its current abysmal follow-up?
She had no power to prevent it.
But perhaps…
Ideas rose in her head like gaily colored balloons, one after another, their bright colors luring her.
Anything could happen when a woman knew her own mind. A determined woman had powers that could shake the world. If she wanted them to.
And, oh, how she wanted…everything!
She came to the curb of the hospital parking lot, bent her knees, and jumped the curb in a flashy, show-off motion. Laughing, she whirled, jumped it again just for the heck of it. Everything!
From the shade of the huge banyan tree came the sound of slow clapping. “Bravo.”
She stumbled. “Whoops!” Her legs lurching left, right, the rollers going out of her control, she crashed on her butt. Bracing her arms clumsily on the asphalt, she steadied herself and grimaced. “Finnegan. Like a bad penny, you keep showing up.”
“And you keep wiping out.” Strolling toward her, a scowl o
n his face, he leaned forward and held out a hand.
Ignoring his offer of help, she hunched forward on her knees and balanced herself on her hands.
“Oh, hell, Sophie.” Cupping her elbows in his palms, he yanked her straight off the ground into a standing position. He kept his hands, warm and rough, on her until she was balanced. With the tip of one finger he traced a line of sweat down her throat, down to the edge of her scooped T-shirt. Studying the cling of her shirt at her ribs, under her breasts, he sighed. “How come you’re always…wet when I run into you, Sophie?”
The heat roaring through her should have turned her desert-dry.
His fingers played at the neck of her shirt, tangled in the chain dangling there. His eyes were brooding, the blue filled with darkness.
“What do you want?”
“One of the nurses told me you were out here. We need to talk.” The chain slipped like a rosary through his fingers.
“That’s a line every woman loves to hear the morning after. Even though it’s more the afternoon after for us.” Wishing she weren’t so thrown by seeing him, she wiped her hands down the sides of her shorts. “Yet you keep harping on it, don’t you? I thought we’d settled this. We don’t have anything to talk about, Finnegan. You’re like a dog worrying a bone to bits.”
“But you like to talk, Sophie.”
“Not always.”
“Oh, you have to choose the topic and set the agenda, is that it? Or give orders? Action, movement. Sparkle. That’s you. But always on your terms. Under your control. You like being in control, I think. Ever really lost control, Sophie? Ever really wanted to?”
“It depends on the purpose.” Still sliding through his fingers, the chain drifted like the lick of cool snow flakes against her breasts. “And, Judah, once again I don’t know whether to be insulted or to say thanks.”
“Good.” Back and forth he moved the chain across her chest, shiny against her damp skin. “Because I’m not sure what I meant either.”
“Why am I not surprised?” She puffed her hair out of her eyes irritably and unclipped her helmet. She didn’t think she could go another round with him clarifying and discussing the aftermath of the morning’s madness. No, not madness. After all, she’d known what she was doing. She’d let that lovely, wonderful oblivion take her where it would. So while it wasn’t madness, she still didn’t quite know how to label what had happened.
Even more disturbing than trying to skirt the several issues that lay between them, though, was the need to muster the energy to deal with his presence. Like water dripping steadily on a stone, he could wear her down and make her say things she didn’t want to say, couldn’t admit. Wasn’t prepared to handle. His presence stole her certainty and made her doubt everything. She definitely didn’t need the agitation of Judah’s presence when she was trying to stay focused on this cloudy dream that seemed born of sea foam and shower steam. And now he was talking about losing control? Judah could fry a woman’s brain with a glance. Short out all the circuits. Turn her into a gibbering mass of wanting.
She’d learned that. And loved every minute of scorching to a crisp.
But not now.
The tip of his finger caught against the edge of her top.
“Stop that.” She batted his hand away from her neckline. She could hear the short, sharp sounds of her own breathing. My God, she thought, I’m panting. Two seconds around him, and he has me panting, for Pete’s sake. “Why are you always touching me?”
“I like touching you, Sophie. That’s why. Indulge me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because. That’s all.” His gaze held hers. “Just…because.”
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, not faced with the sadness in his eyes. She didn’t have it in her to move away at that moment from the lost, damned look in Judah Finnegan’s eyes. It was that glimpse into some dark corner of his soul that got her every blasted time.
Still holding her gaze, he played with the necklace, his fingers tightening around the chain. “What is this?”
“An heirloom. My great-grandmother’s cross.” Late-afternoon sun and birdsong cocooned her in a hazy stillness. If she backed up, she’d break the chain. She wished Judah would take one step back. One step would give her room to breathe.
“Doesn’t look like any cross I ever saw.” He lifted the pendant for a closer look. The backs of his knuckles skimmed her skin.
Heat, pleasure in the brief touch.
She wished he’d move his hand lower, dip underneath the satin-bound edge of her shirt.
“Russian Orthodox,” she managed to say, her belly going liquid with want.
He frowned. “I don’t understand.” Blue enamel winked at the edge of her view as he twisted the cross, studying it.
“Slanted footrest, extra bar at the top. Different from the usual Christian crosses.”
“Okay.” He coiled the thin chain loosely around his thumb, drawing her closer. “Let’s chat about your grandmother, then. Can we agree on that topic?”
She realized she was leaning in toward him and jerked back. The cross slipped out of his fingers and fell hot against her skin, all its snowflake coolness gone. She flattened her hand over the emblem. “Bushka brought it with her when she left Russia at fifteen. She’s all I have left to call family now. The rest are…gone. But this cross? Not worth anything.”
He let one hand stray to her shoulder, his fingers moving restlessly against her damp skin. “But you wear it?”
“Call me sentimental.”
“Are you sentimental, Sophie? Soft-hearted, you tough little cookie, you? One more surprise.”
“She gave it to me when I was twenty-one. She put it into my hands, cupped them around it, and told me the story of her mother, an illiterate Russian peasant, who’d escaped untold horrors. I wear it. For them. For me. To remind me.”
“Of what?” Frowning, he stepped forward. “Explain. Please,” he added as she sent him a look.
She closed her hand around the emblem. “To remind me that I come from a long line of strong women. To remind me that even when I think I can’t take one more step, I always can.” She tucked the cross safely under the edge of her shirt. “It reminds me that life is good. Not easy, but good.”
“You think?” Brooding, he stared at her. “That life is good?”
She raised her shoulder, letting it push against his hand. “I do.”
“In spite of what you see every day?”
“What I see is good nurses and doctors working their butts off to take care of people. I see people giving up vacation days to help when we’re short-staffed. And, yes, I see the broken people, Judah. I see the pain, the suffering. Death. I don’t understand why you keep coming back to this. But I told you this morning, I’m not a fool. I’m not blind.”
“I think you are.”
“As you’ve said already. Numerous times. Every time we talk about anything personal, Judah, we go around in circles, getting nowhere. That’s not my style.”
She knew why they did their little waltz. All the easy teasing, the sense of something growing between them had been stunted, like a bonsai tree, not allowed to grow and bloom naturally. In these last two days, all the chopped off feelings and emotions were sprouting every which way, like Kudzu along the highway, taking strange and frustrating directions. And she didn’t have a clue how to regain her balance, to recover her self, that old, direct, supremely confident self.
His head bent toward her. His lost, dark-blue eyes looked into hers. “You’re so blind, Sophie. You don’t see what I see in the world.”
She shook her head. “You remind me of the little kindergarten boy who colored all his pictures black. When his worried parents and teacher asked him about it, he said all he had was a black crayon. You need more crayons, Judah.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Handing out free psychological advice with your medical treatment?”
“When it’s needed.” She skated past him, swirled and retur
ned to where he stood, half in sunlight, half in the shadows of the trees. “Is this part of the cop thing, Judah? This coming back again and again to a subject? Is this how you break down a suspect?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Arms folded, he leaned against a live oak tree.
Sophie tripped over a bump in the asphalt, wobbled, waved her hands and steadied herself. “I don’t understand you, Judah. You make me feel as if you’re trying to make me confess to some unnamed, unknowable crime.” Her stomach clenched as the words slipped out. She wondered if he’d use her carelessly spoken words to open up the topic of George’s death. She hoped he would. Talking about George would lance the wound, let out the poison. Then, perhaps, they could stop their endless circling around each other.
Because they had never been able to air out what had happened with his partner, that poison had seeped into everything between them.
Except sex.
Sex between them was something else. Pure, clean. Glorious. Direct.
When the silence dragged on miserably and he hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, she gave a mental shrug. Evidently they were going to keep diverting the real topic onto her life view, a subject he couldn’t seem to leave alone. “I hope you’ve noticed that although you say you want to talk, you keep returning to one topic, my so-called blindness. I don’t see any place for this kind of conversation to go with us. Once, you weren’t quite this negative. At least, that’s not how I remember you.” She gave him the opening, left the door cracked, but he ignored it. “Do you think you’re going to wear me down until I agree with you? That I’m going to change my version? This isn’t a story, Judah. It’s who I am. You can’t keep hounding me about this because it is what it is. It won’t change. You can’t keep picking at how I look at the world, hoping I’ll trip up and reveal some inconsistency. There isn’t any inconsistency. What you see is what you get.”
Dead Calm Page 11
