Honor

by Janet Dailey

  Kenzie went back to her knitting. “The windows could use a wash.”

  She’d seen them unloading their van when she arrived. The window cleaners had been moving from building to building in the rehab complex.

  “Guess we’re last,” Christine said. She returned to her Facebook session.

  It was another hour before the cleaners set up outside their window. They sloshed detergent-laden water over the glass before they got to work.

  Christine looked on, absorbed in the rhythmic motions of the squeegees mounted on long, flexible poles. She still did fall into short trances now and then.

  Kenzie found herself doing almost the same thing. “It’s almost like being in a carwash.”

  Christine giggled. “I know what you mean. Hey, I just remembered something. Frank kissed me in a carwash once. He said he didn’t want anyone to see. It was a great kiss.”

  Kenzie dropped another stitch and didn’t bother to pick it up. Christine turned back to the laptop as the cleaners wiped off the dirty water with practiced strokes, leaving the window sparkling clean. They set down their gear and headed back for the van.

  “That was so nice of you and Mom to make that slide show for me,” Christine said. “Frank was in it, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” She steeled herself for the next question, putting down her knitting.

  Christine hummed as she scrolled through photos. Kenzie didn’t know if she was looking at the slide show or Facebook pages.

  “There’s Frank,” Christine said happily. “In his new bulletproof vest. He looks proud. Did you know I took that picture of him?”

  “No.” That particular photo was on Facebook. Kenzie dreaded what was next.

  Kenzie hadn’t touched a computer for months after Dan Fuller’s death in Afghanistan, not wanting to see his smile or read the kind tributes. His parents and his stateside friends hadn’t known who she was.

  It didn’t take Christine long to find the memorial page. Kenzie saw her eyes widen and fill with tears. “What?” The single word was a painful whisper. “Those are—his boots. And his rifle and his tags. That’s a battlefield cross.”

  Kenzie bit her lip as Christine pushed the laptop violently away. She rocked back and forth, hard. Her mouth opened but not a sound came out. When Kenzie rose to go to her, she waved her off.

  “Stay away from me.”

  “Christine—”

  “He’s dead. I didn’t know. No one told me.”

  “We couldn’t,” Kenzie whispered. “We just couldn’t.”

  Her friend curled into a ball around a pillow and hid her face, racked with grief. Kenzie stood there. There was nothing she could do.

  Outside the room, the ebb and flow of the center’s afternoon routine continued. Kenzie went to the door and closed it most of the way. If she’d shut it completely, someone on staff would have come in.

  It was dusk when Christine stopped crying. Kenzie sat on the edge of the bed and touched her shoulder. Christine didn’t shrug off her hand, reaching out instead to cover it with her own.

  “I know you couldn’t tell me,” she said softly. “I just wish—I never got a chance to say good-bye.”

  “No one did. It happened very suddenly.”

  “Tell me how,” Christine said in an almost inaudible voice. “Tell me everything.”

  Kenzie didn’t. But she told Christine what little she knew about the firefight and about his buddies risking their lives to try and save him. She told her about the medic who’d been with him at the end.

  “Where is he buried?”

  Kenzie told her that too. “There’s no tombstone yet. But his grave has a marker. I visited the cemetery when you were in the hospital. I told him that I was there for you and me—and that you would come soon.”

  “I want to go.” Christine’s voice was low and raw. She sat up.

  “We’ll go together,” Kenzie whispered.

  The two friends held each other until the sky outside the window darkened into night.

  CHAPTER 17

  Linc was waiting outside the rehab center in response to her text. Kenzie gave him a wan smile as she opened her door and slipped into the front seat.

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” he said.

  “Thanks. I had to tell the Corellis. They came right away.”

  “How’s Christine?”

  “Quiet. But she’s okay.”

  Linc didn’t ask any more questions, but drove through the streets. She seemed preoccupied, but that was to be expected.

  After a while she spoke again. “Just so you know,” she said, “it wasn’t like Christine and Frank were madly in love. But I think she had her hopes. His side of it—well, that was complicated.”

  “You told me that. It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”

  She looked out the window. “Turn left here.”

  He recognized the street. It had been a while since his mad dash to get to her apartment building that rainy night.

  “What is that?” She leaned over the dashboard to see better.

  “Looks like scaffolding.”

  Her building was half-concealed by metal bars that connected at every corner. Long planks were slung between them for walkways.

  “I didn’t know they were painting the exterior,” she said.

  “Looks like they’re just getting started.” Linc found a parking space a safe distance away. He was back in his regular car, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care if it got spattered with paint or dented by a falling bucket. Though it did look like the painters were done for the day.

  He went around to help her out after he’d switched off the ignition, but she was way ahead of him, reaching to open the front door of the building as she kicked aside a drop cloth. Linc clicked the key to activate the door locks and followed her.

  “So tell me why you wanted to come here,” he said, watching her unlock the door. She bent down to pick up the notice from the management about the painting.

  “Just because,” she answered.

  Kenzie paused to read the notice. “We apologize for the inconvenience and assure all tenants that the painting crew does not commence work until eight in the morning. However, you are advised to keep shades down in the interests of your personal privacy.” She crumpled it up and stuck it in her bag. “Thanks for the heads-up, people.”

  She swung open the door and both of them saw that the place was as neat as they’d left it. She breathed a sigh of relief. The amber walls glowed in the light from the single lamp they’d left on. Low watts, long life. It hadn’t burned out.

  She walked into the kitchen, went in and came back out, lightly touching her hands to the walls as if she was reassuring herself that they were there, this was home, it belonged to her.

  “I missed it so much,” she said. “It’s good to be back.”

  Linc nodded, making a closer study of the place that had nothing to do with sentiment. He literally saw nothing amiss. The polished wood floors couldn’t reveal footprints like a carpet. Nothing had been moved.

  “I guess I should tell you,” she went on. “Christine and I talked about getting a place together. Or maybe two apartments in the same building. Not this one. Not hers.”

  “Could work,” Linc answered.

  The apartment was quiet. Almost eerily so, without the everyday clamor of the active gun range coming through the windows.

  But something was making the back of his neck prickle.

  Kenzie flopped down on the couch. She stretched her arms out along the back. “If all this craziness hadn’t happened, I would stay.”

  She smiled up at him.

  “But it did happen, Kenzie.”

  She moved forward and lifted herself up with her fists.

  “Oh, all right. Just thinking out loud. Let’s get what we came for and go.”

  “What was that again?”

  “My laptop.”

  He tried to remember where they’d stashed it. His mind went blank on that sub
ject as he tried to process what his senses were telling him.

  “Something the matter?” she asked.

  “Can’t put my finger on it.”

  She reached up and stroked his jaw. “Relax. For once.”

  Linc got distracted by that. But the tension didn’t leave him. He was right behind her when she pushed her bedroom door open all the way and switched on the overhead light.

  Kenzie stopped cold. He did too, looking over her shoulder. She’d made up the bed, but not with a coverlet. She’d used a blanket instead, one with a fine silky nap.

  It held the impression of a man’s body. A big man. He must have lain there for a while, spread out. Waiting for her to come home.

  Someone’s been sleeping in my bed.

  Linc could almost hear the words as she thought them.

  Kenzie stepped back and he put his arms around her.

  “I got you,” he said.

  Kenzie twisted in his protective embrace and broke free, running to the living room. She stopped there, breathing hard but otherwise silent.

  Linc pulled his gun from its concealed holster and slammed open the closet doors. No one. He found a broom and thrust it under the bed. Empty.

  He did the same thing throughout the apartment. “He’s gone.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” she begged. “How did he know that I was coming here?”

  Linc didn’t answer. He holstered the gun and took a small flashlight out of an inner pocket of his jacket.

  “What’s that for?”

  “It has a UV bulb.”

  “So?” She snapped out the single word.

  “New paint reflects UV light. Old paint absorbs it. So if we see a patch, then it’s likely there was a bug placed behind the wall.”

  He tapped lightly, listening for hollowness as he swept the small flashlight back and forth.

  “Crap construction. You can hide a body behind drywall if you want to. A bug is nothing.” The back-and-forth motion of the light suddenly stopped. “Got a glow.” He tapped on the wall again. “I need something small and sharp.”

  Kenzie went to the kitchen to scrabble in a drawer and came back, a small tool with a triangular blade in her hand.

  Linc used it to trace a large square in the wall, then carefully sawed around it. He used the blade’s tip to pry the square loose.

  “There it is.” He pointed to a black plastic device positioned in the space between two studs, held in place with taut wires on either side.

  He flicked a dangling wire. “This isn’t connected. Could have been left there for me to find. This guy likes to play mind games.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Remove the rest of the drywall. Or you can move out for good. Take your pick.”

  Kenzie looked at the black plastic circle. She turned away without saying a word and went to her closet, grabbing a duffel bag and filling it until he took it gently out of her hand.

  “I didn’t mean right now. Let’s just go.”

  “No. He wins if we do. I won’t let him scare me off.”

  Kenzie rested her hands on the window and pressed her forehead against the coolness of the glass.

  “Do you have a headache?”

  “Yes. Pounding like a machine gun.”

  “I’ll get you some water and a couple of pills.”

  She heard him leave and go into the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet over the sink.

  “Find some?” she called.

  “Yeah. Where are the paper cups?”

  “Next to the mouthwash.”

  “Got ’em,” Linc said, his voice fading slightly.

  She turned her head sideways, trying to take the heat out of her face by pressing each cheek against the cool glass in turn.

  Left. Then right. It helped a little. She stayed there and closed her eyes, her hands still resting where she’d placed them.

  “Dropped one.”

  She heard him curse and opened her eyes, looking absently toward her resting hand.

  There was another hand on the opposite side of the window. A man’s hand.

  Kenzie drew back in horror.

  Him. Dressed in black. A half mask—black too—covered his face from the bridge of his nose to his chin. There was an opening for his mouth.

  He smiled.

  There was only the glass between them.

  His breath marked the window as he spoke. Sickened, she had no idea if she heard him or read his lips.

  You can’t hide.

  He moved back, keeping himself in the shadow. She caught a dark gleam in his other hand. He held a shotgun. The double barrels were lethally short.

  Kenzie screamed. Mute terror took over as the man vanished into the night.

  Linc came running, catching Kenzie as she stumbled backward, away from the window.

  “He—he was there,” she gasped. “On the scaffolding.”

  Linc raced to the window, beginning to lift it when she screamed again.

  “Don’t look out! He has a gun!”

  She grabbed both his arms from behind and held on with all the wild strength she had. Linc didn’t fight her. She didn’t need another dead hero in her life.

  Linc returned to the apartment very early the next morning. He knew Kenzie would be holed up at Hamill’s for the day.

  Let in by Norm last night, she’d headed through the gate fast and gone straight upstairs, leaving him on the other side. She was as safe as she could be there.

  Linc had gone shopping. The coveralls and cap he had on looked too new even with his artistic splotches from a kid’s water-color set, but he figured on the tenants not being that awake.

  Per the notice, the painters hadn’t started yet. The scaffolding was empty.

  He walked under it, looking up. Kenzie’s apartment was on the third floor. A row of planks ran right under her bedroom window.

  Linc grabbed a bar and swung himself up to a connecting metal ladder. He got to the third floor quickly and walked along the planks. Someone had stashed a bucket and roller, both crusty, in a safe corner. He decided on the bucket for a prop, and picked it up by the handle.

  Making very little noise, he went on, stopping to the side of her closed window.

  The glass had no mark. She had said his hand was ungloved. Either the stalker hadn’t actually touched the window or he’d cleaned it afterward.

  He could easily have waited one floor above and watched them go. He was methodical, Linc would give him that.

  He stepped in front of the window, noticing that the inner floor was parallel to the planks he stood on. His reflection nearly filled the window.

  Linc did a little deduction. He knew where Kenzie came up to, standing against him. And she said she’d been eye to eye with the stalker. So the man wasn’t as tall as he was, but close.

  Kenzie’s bedroom looked the same. He’d let her grab the laptop from its hiding place and they’d retreated.

  The rising sun cast its light over the glass and made it hard to see the surface of the soft blanket. Linc set down the bucket and cupped his hands by the sides of his face, peering in.

  The blanket seemed the same. He moved away from the window and rested his hand on a supporting bar. Above it on another bar was a scrap of black cloth. Very small. Snagged on a piece of sharp metal.

  He examined it without touching it. If it had scratched skin, there could be DNA on it. That was for Mike.

  For Linc, the scrap was a signpost that pointed to the roof. He made his way there and looked around, not seeing anything that stood out. Still, there could be latent prints—finger, palm, shoe—on a lot of surfaces.

  Linc took out his cell phone and called the lieutenant at home.

  “Rise and shine, Mike.”

  He heard a groan. Then a curse.

  “Same to you,” Linc said pleasantly. “Listen, can you meet me at Kenzie’s building before eight?”

  “Call me back at ten. I might be awake by then. Might.”

  “Le
t’s shoot for seven-thirty.”

  “How about I just shoot you, Bannon? Not fatally. I’m thinking a graze.”

  Linc offered a very brief explanation of why he was there and what he needed from the police.

  There was a sound like a drawer opening and closing. A nightstand drawer. Just big enough for a pencil and small pad of paper.

  “Give me the address,” the lieutenant snarled.

  Linc did. Twice. Slowly.

  “See you,” Mike said.

  Linc leaned over the roof when he heard a car, the first to go down the street since he’d arrived himself. He could just see the lieutenant at the wheel, steering with one hand and holding a takeout cup of coffee with the other.

  The car was unmarked. Mike parked it at a yellow stretch of curb, tossing a PD placard on the dash.

  The door swung open and Linc pulled his head back. Ten minutes later, the door to the roof was pushed open. Mike was red in the face and breathing hard.

  “This better be good,” he warned.

  “Give me that.” Linc took the empty coffee cup from him and crunched it into one of the pockets of his coveralls.

  “What, do you think I’d contaminate a crime scene?”

  “No.”

  Mike walked out onto the roof, staying on a narrow board walkway over the asphalt. “Did you know that the security cams in the stairwell are kaput?”

  “I noticed that the first time I came here,” Linc said quickly.

  “Standard creep trick. Who would notice? This is a small building, they don’t have anyone looking at the feeds on a monitor. Those cams are up so building management is covered in case of a lawsuit.”

  “You could be right. The black paint on the lens didn’t look new either.”

  “Allow me to extrapolate.” Mike was warming up. “Creep did the artwork on the lenses, maybe came back to check it a few times, and figured no one knew what he looked like or suspected someone was hanging around.”

  “Well, now we have more to go on—or rather, Kenzie does. He was gone by the time I got into the bedroom. He had a mask on, but Kenzie saw him up close. I didn’t get into it with her. She was a mess last night, in shock—”

  “Linc. I saw her walk in to the station when I was leaving. Harry Cowles, our sketch guy, was waiting to meet her.”