by Beverly Long
* * *
WHEN RAOUL UNLOCKED the apartment door, he could smell the sauce. Something else, too. Something chocolate.
“Raoul,” his sister greeted him. She pinched his cheek as he walked past. “How was band practice?”
“Okay,” Raoul said, leaning his trombone case up against the counter. “Some girl who plays the flute had a meltdown. We had to stay late to make up the time.”
“No problem. I’m running behind, too.”
“Something smells good,” he said. He started to reach for the brownie pan.
She stuck out her wooden spoon and tapped his hand. “You have to wait. It’s for dessert.”
“You never make dessert.”
She shrugged. “We’re having company.”
They never had company. Well, almost never. Sometimes Old Lady Curtiss from down the hall ate with them. She smelled like lilacs and cough medicine.
“An acquaintance I met through work,” Carmen said.
“Who?”
She turned her back to him and stirred the sauce. “His name is Robert Hanson.”
A man? The only man at OCM was Jamison, his sister’s boss. “What does he do there?”
“He’s a police officer. A detective. You might remember him from Liz and Sawyer’s wedding. He was the best man.”
“Oh, yeah. He gave a funny speech at the reception.”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Why is a cop coming for dinner?” He walked around to the other side of the stove so that he could see her face.
“Because I asked him to. He’s been helpful with a situation at work and I thought it would be nice if I fixed him dinner.” She looked at her watch, then at the clock on the wall. “Shoot. I’ve got to get dressed. He’ll be here any minute.” She thrust the spoon in his hand. “Keep stirring.”
She left the room as Raoul dropped the spoon in the sauce and watched it sink to the bottom.
* * *
ROBERT JUGGLED WINE, bread and a bouquet of fresh flowers as he walked up the apartment stairs. He stood outside the door and tried to remember that he’d probably gone to dinner at some woman’s house at least a hundred times before.
But Carmen wasn’t just some woman. She was Liz Montgomery’s best friend, for one thing. She was totally hot for another. And when she smiled, it seemed as if the world suddenly became a better place.
Damn. He should take up writing greeting cards.
He’d worried that he might be late. His mother had called just as he’d walked into the florist. He’d stepped outside the small shop and stood in the cold so that he could have some privacy. It had been a short conversation. She’d apologized for bothering him, he assured her it was no bother, and then she’d dropped what might have been a zinger if he hadn’t been waiting for the call for some time. Normie is leaving.
He’d promised to stop over the following night. That had seemed to make her happy. It was a pattern of behavior they’d perfected over the years.
He’d hung up, bought his flowers and here he was. He glanced at his watch. One minute early.
He kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of his shoe, then stepped back so that he could be seen through the peephole. He smiled and held up the loot. The door opened. A young Hispanic boy, dark and fine-boned like his sister, stood there. He was holding a fat orange cat.
“I’m Robert,” he said. “You must be Raoul.”
The boy didn’t say yes or no. He simply stepped aside and motioned him in. “Carmen’s changing her clothes.”
“No problem. Where should I put this?”
Raoul pointed to the counter. The cat squirmed in his arms and he immediately bent down and placed her gently on the floor.
Robert bent down to scratch her head but she skirted away. Okay. The cat and the kid had the same sort of attitude.
Robert watched the boy walk over to the stove, immediately noting the limp, as though his right leg might be just a bit shorter than his left.
“I hear you play the trombone.” Robert leaned against the counter.
“That’s right,” Raoul said. The kid took tongs and dug a spoon out of the sauce.
“Where do you go to school?”
“Mahoney High.”
“Really? That’s pretty far from here. How come you don’t go to a neighborhood school?”
“Because I won’t let him.”
Robert whirled around. Carmen stood in the doorway. She wore a white sweater and a black skirt. It wasn’t short, but tight enough to be very interesting. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a haphazard sort of fashion.
He was struck again by how small she was. She couldn’t have been more than five-three and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. Not his type at all.
Why was his heart pounding as if he was at the end of a 5K?
“Mahoney High School,” she said, as she walked over to the stove and sniffed the sauce, “graduates more than eighty percent of the students who start there as freshman. That’s almost twice as good as some of the neighborhood schools.”
“Did you go there?” Robert asked, handing her the wine.
She shook her head. “No. I did the neighborhood thing.”
“Looks like you turned out okay.”
She shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving.”
He started to make some quip about liking bad girls, but in deference to Raoul, he kept it to himself. “Should I slice the bread?” he asked.
She nodded, handed him a knife and pointed toward a wooden cutting board on the counter. “The flowers are beautiful,” she said. “Thank you.”
Her tone was almost wary, and he wondered if he’d gone too far. “It’s January,” he said. “We should grasp on to every sign of spring we can.”
She smiled. “You’re right. At lunch today, Liz and I sneaked out and bought spring soap. We put some in every bathroom at OCM.”
“Spring soap?” he repeated. He put the bread that he’d sliced into the basket that she passed to him.
“Yeah, you know. There are winter soaps, like cranberry-apple or peppermint-spice. Spring soaps are totally different. When you wash your hands, you can almost image that you’re somewhere tropical.”
“I never gave that much thought before,” he said.
She laughed. “Perhaps you could buy some for the police station?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I want to be known as the spring soap guy.”
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. She drained the pasta and motioned for Raoul to set the table.
“I didn’t know you had a cat,” he said.
“Lucy is low-energy but high-strung,” Carmen explained. “We got her from a shelter. She spends a lot of time hiding under the bed.” She set a big bowl of spaghetti on the table. “Let’s eat.”
“Food’s great,” he said ten minutes later, meaning every word of it.
“Spaghetti is easy,” Carmen said, pulling at the neckline of her sweater.
She was cute when she blushed. Robert smiled at her and then shifted his attention to Raoul. “So band keeps you pretty busy?”
“I guess.”
“Your friends play instruments, too?”
“My best friend, Jacob, plays the drums.”
Robert took another bite and took his time chewing. “Mahoney’s got a good football team. They went to state tournaments last year.”
“Yeah,” Raoul said. For the first time, Robert heard the bitterness. “If you’re an athlete, you’ve got it made.”
“No special treatment for the band?”
That just got him a look. Didn’t mean anything, but Robert filed the information away. “What’s the gang situation like there?”
Raoul shrugged. “I’m sort
of busy with my classes. I wouldn’t know.”
“I was just curious. I know they mix it up every once in a while in that neighborhood. I suppose drugs are a problem?”
“Not for me.”
“Have you ever had anyone try to sell you something?” Carmen asked.
Raoul shook his head. “Trombone players don’t get a lot of attention from the drug dealers.” He stood up. “I’ve got a lot of homework.” He carried his plate over to the sink and rinsed it.
“How are your classes going?” Carmen said.
“Fine.” Raoul grabbed his backpack off the kitchen counter and walked out of the kitchen. Seconds later, a door at the back of the apartment slammed.
Carmen sat at the table and put her head in her hands. Robert scooted his chair closer. He reached a hand out and with one finger, gently stroked the back of her hand.
Carmen lifted her face. “He’s lying to me. He’s never done that before. Something is wrong. Very wrong.” There were tears in her eyes.
“Kids lie,” he said. “It doesn’t mean he’s in trouble. Maybe he’s embarrassed about his grades and intends to bring them up.”
She shook her head.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We have cops in all the high schools. I’ll talk to the ones who are at Mahoney High School. I’ll see if they recognize his name. Okay?”
“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”
Her face was close. Close enough that he could see the tears that still clung to her long lashes. Her skin was a lovely mocha and her lips were pink and inviting. He leaned forward. She stilled.
He bent his head and kissed her. She tasted like spaghetti sauce and red wine, sweet with just a hint of sharpness. And when she pulled back quickly, he had to force himself to let her go, to not demand more.
Her dark eyes were big.
“I hadn’t planned on that,” he said, proving that adult men lied, too. Maybe he hadn’t exactly planned it, but for months he’d been thinking about kissing Carmen.
She didn’t answer. She just looked as shaken as he felt. A few more strands of her silky hair had fallen down and her lips were trembling.
“Look,” he said, “I—”
“I know you were just comforting me,” she said.
He started to protest but realized that she was rationalizing the action. In her own way, she was as skittish as her cat. If she thought that he was romantically interested in her, her first instinct might be to run and hide, too. Carmen Jimenez might be twenty-nine, but he suspected she hadn’t had the experiences of other twenty-nine-year-old women. She’d been too busy raising her brother.
For the first time, he felt better about what had happened at Liz and Sawyer’s wedding. Maybe it hadn’t been him that Carmen had objected to? Maybe it had just been her lack of experience and her generally shy demeanor that had sent her scurrying into the ladies’ room.
This was going to require very careful handling.
If it made her happy to think the kiss had been about comfort, so be it. “Did it work?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really, I just needed a minute.”
“No problem. I’ll call you tomorrow once I’ve talked to the cops at Raoul’s school.” He got up, gave her a little wave and opened the door. “Thanks again for dinner. It was great.”
When he got to his car, he didn’t even turn on the heat. He was plenty hot enough. One kiss and he’d been about to implode.
Very careful handling indeed.
Chapter Five
Friday
As Robert walked past Tasha’s desk, she extended a long arm. Her fingernails were bright purple. “I found the name of the cop who is pulling regular duty at Mahoney High School. Horton Davis.”
He took the pink message slip from her. “Thanks,” Robert said. After leaving Carmen’s last night, he’d left a message for Tasha, hoping that she’d work on it first thing in the morning. He pulled his cell phone off his belt.
He got the man’s voice mail and he left a brief message, asking for a return call. He hoped that Raoul wasn’t involved in something bad at school. He sure as hell didn’t want to break that kind of news to Carmen.
Hot, hot Carmen Jimenez. Some women worked hard at being sexy. They wore the right clothes, the right makeup, had the look. He’d dated women like that and had appreciated their efforts and the end result.
But Carmen didn’t seem to work at it at all. She just was.
Didn’t matter if she was wearing a turtleneck and a skirt that almost reached her knees. It was the way she moved. Her natural grace. The effortless way she tossed her long, dark hair when it got in her way.
She smelled sexy.
She laughed sexy.
Damn. He was in trouble. Had known it last night when he’d gotten to his car and had sat in the cold for five minutes, letting his body temperature return to normal. After one kiss.
He fingered the pink message slips on his desk, the ones Tasha had handed him the day before. Mandy and Janine. Hell, maybe he should give one of them a call. Get things back into perspective.
He didn’t pick up his phone.
Instead, he nodded at Sawyer, who was standing across the room, in conversation with Charlene Blaze.
In the morning report, there’d been the usual litany. Two gang shootings. A couple home invasions, one with injuries to the invader. Jewelry store robbery. A bank located in a grocery store had been held up. The feds were taking that one.
Just another day. More files for the desk. Especially now because, like most every detective in the city, he and Sawyer had been told to put their own cases on the back burner if possible and help Wasimole and Blaze on the serial killer case.
Their neighborhood search had turned up nothing yesterday. Nobody had seen anything. It had been cold, frustrating work, all the more so because everybody knew the clock was ticking. Another Wednesday was just around the corner. And with that came the good probability of another dead kid.
It had kept them moving even when they could no longer feel their toes and their faces were chapped from the brisk wind. They’d covered a six-block radius and had talked to countless people.
He saw that Sawyer had finished his conversation with Blaze. “What’s the plan?” Robert asked when his partner approached.
“Friends and family detail,” Sawyer said.
Robert had figured as much. As each of the dead boys had been discovered, Blaze and Wasimole had interviewed family and friends at great length, trying to find some thread that might tie the deceased together. But they hadn’t come up with anything. Lieutenant Fischer had suggested that another team of detectives do the same, thinking that now that a few weeks had gone by for some of the distressed families, their heads might be a little clearer and they would remember something that would be helpful.
It was possible that there was nothing that connected the boys. That the serial killer was picking random victims. That certainly had been the case before. But given that the age range was so tight, the cops weren’t discounting the fact that they’d missed the thread that tied all the victims together and maybe even to the killer.
“I guess we drew the short straw,” Robert said.
“It’s indoor work. At least mostly,” Sawyer said.
Yeah, but it would be brutal, nevertheless. It was never fun talking to people who were torn up about losing their child, their nephew, their best friend. The list went on. They’d answer a few questions and then start down a tangent, recalling a special time or place that had meant something to the young victim.
He and Sawyer would listen and try to sort through the memories to try to find something that made some sense out of what seemed to be a senseless crime.
“Okay, let’s get going,” Robert said. “Where do yo
u want to start?”
“Victim one. Johnnie Whitmore.”
* * *
BEFORE ARRIVING AT the Whitmores’ home, Robert and Sawyer reviewed the notes they had on Johnnie Whitmore. At age thirteen, he was the youngest of all the victims. Eighth-grader at Thornton Middle School. B student. Had been in Boy Scouts up until last year. Lutheran, but the family weren’t regular churchgoers. On the basketball team but mostly warmed the bench. Played the clarinet. Lactose intolerant. One sister, age seven. Two-parent family. Biological mom, Michelle. Stepfather, Tom.
Their lives had been going pretty well until their son had been found by a night security guard near the entrance of a factory on Boughten Avenue.
The Whitmore family lived in a white house with green shutters. Their sidewalks were clear with snow piled two feet high on each side.
Some of that snow had fallen before Johnnie Whitmore had died. Robert wondered if the young man had shoveled the walk; maybe he’d even had a snowball fight with his younger sister.
On the porch, they could hear piano music. Sawyer cocked his head. “We had that song in our wedding,” he said. “I don’t know the name of it,” he added. “Liz would.”
Yeah, that kind of stuff was important to women. He’d dated a tax attorney the previous year and she’d spent valuable time over several years planning her wedding and documenting it on some online social networking site. Music. Dress. Everything down to the bacon-wrapped asparagus she was having for appetizers. When she’d started looking at him, sizing him up for a tux, he’d run like hell.
That was one family tradition that didn’t need to be carried on.
They knocked. Michelle and Tom were expecting them. Blaze had set up the appointment the night before. Both he and Sawyer showed their badges and settled down on the leather couch in the small living room. The Whitmores sat on the love seat. There was one empty chair, a flat screen on the wall and a big, shiny piano that took up most of the far wall.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Robert said. “I know that you’ve spoken at length to Detectives Blaze and Wasimole but given the circumstances, we wanted to have one more conversation. I know this is difficult for you.”
