At Close Range

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “And I’m going to do the same,” she said with renewed conviction. It helped to know that the police were certain that her break-in was, indeed, a coincidence, and nothing more.

  “No, you aren’t.” William’s sternness was new to her. At least toward her. “You’re a woman, Hannah. You live alone, and—”

  “Will.” Her own tone was stern as she stopped him. “You are not my keeper simply because we had sex last night, nor am I suddenly a helpless woman. I am your equal. I’ll do my job just as you would. Get over it.”

  When he didn’t respond she added, “Don’t go all protective male on me, okay? No Neanderthal tactics?”

  “I’m coming on that strong, huh?” He didn’t quite chuckle, but almost.

  “Pretty close.”

  “Point taken. Do you need help cleaning up? Or is that too pushy?”

  “I’d love your help,” she said. “But I can’t touch anything until they’re done in there. It’ll probably be at least tomorrow. They need someone from the crime lab to come out and whoever’s on call is busy someplace else.”

  This was the real world, not television, where there were always forensic people free to run to the rescue as soon as the plot called for them.

  “Where are you going to sleep tonight?”

  “Right here. The doors still lock. Charles boarded up the window that they broke to get in. And the rest of the house is fine.”

  “You’re welcome to come over, if you’d like.”

  “Thanks.” Hannah wasn’t sure why she didn’t jump at that idea. No matter what she said, she wasn’t looking forward to a night alone in the home that no longer felt safe. “I might take you up on that if things get too creepy here after dark.”

  “My door’s open anytime. You know that.”

  Especially now that she’d be sleeping in his bed?

  Hannah didn’t know where the thought came from, but it shamed her.

  Brian’s first call went right to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.

  “Hannah’s either on the phone, or she’s turned it off,” he reported to his small family, the two members of which were sitting in the front and backseat of his Jag, one waiting expectantly.

  “The kitty’s crying.” Joseph’s voice, which could hardly be heard over the two pound animal’s howling, was a welcome sound. He’d shown more reaction to Sunday afternoon’s adventure, specifically, to the cat they’d purchased, than to anything Brian had seen so far.

  “She just doesn’t like being in that cage,” Cynthia said. “She wants to be out playing with you. Try calling again,” she urged Brian, her enthusiasm for their mission filling the car.

  “Maybe we should have gotten one for him, too,” Brian said, opening his phone.

  “Uh-uh.” Cynthia shook her head. “Not until we’re more settled. If anything…happened…and we had to leave, he wouldn’t be able to take it with him and that would be devastating.”

  “And you don’t think it’s going to be hard for him to give that cat away after the way it’s taken to him today?” Holding his phone, Brian spoke softly, hoping the boy couldn’t hear him.

  “Life is hard, Brian.” Cynthia’s reply was just as quiet. “And we told him from the beginning that the cat was for a friend who needs one. He knows it’s not his. If he learns how to handle little disappointments now, he’ll be better prepared to let them roll off him in the future.”

  She had a point. He hit Redial.

  “Besides, it’s good for him to see that he doesn’t get to have everything that everyone else gets.”

  Another valid point.

  He was wishing he had a hand free to hold Cynthia’s just as Hannah picked up on the other end.

  Hannah insisted that she wanted them to come over, regardless of the taped-off crime scene in her front room.

  Once Brian heard about the break-in, he had to see her, to assure himself that she was as fine as she claimed, knowing damn well she wasn’t. So he allowed her to talk him into continuing with his family adventure and delivering her surprise.

  He’d have liked to have gone by himself. To stay with her if she needed him.

  “We can always take the kitten back home with us if it’s too much for her tonight.” He tuned a Winnie-the-Pooh CD to the speakers in the backseat so he could warn Cynthia about the scene they were walking into at Hannah’s.

  “You’re sure she still wants us to come?”

  “Positive.”

  As if anything could keep him away. Not when Hannah was in trouble.

  Ready to meet her guests at the kitchen door as she’d prearranged, having just said goodbye to Deputy Charles and the detective he’d called in, promising not to touch anything in her living room, Hannah tried very hard to smile as she saw the young boy in Brian’s arms. Joseph looked right there.

  The sight hurt more than she’d expected.

  As did the sight of the woman behind him. Cynthia was carrying something—presumably the surprise Brian had mentioned—but all Hannah could do was stare at the picture her old friend presented.

  A dad with a young son.

  A boy who had the most solemn eyes she’d ever seen. She couldn’t look away.

  And then, when she did, couldn’t bear to look back.

  “Come in,” she said, stepping aside so Brian could enter and let Cynthia in behind him. He put the boy down and without another word went toward the living room.

  “I’m sorry your house got broke.”

  The barely perceptible voice stabbed her heart and she couldn’t find a word to say in reply. Would Carlos have sounded like that in another few years?

  “We brought you a kitten.”

  Cynthia stepped forward, along with the tiny ball of fur that was curled up in the palm of her hand.

  Accepting the tiny being, even while part of her protested its presence, Hannah snuggled it against her and used it to hide the tears she couldn’t contain.

  She wasn’t going to keep it. She couldn’t. She had no room left for love. And no trust in her ability to care for those who loved her.

  But when Brian finally gave up trying to convince her to come home with them, she let the kitten stay. Just for the night.

  10

  D etective Angelo was back at Brian’s office Monday morning. After hearing nothing all last week other than the medical examiner’s report that Sammie Blanchard’s death had been attributed to SIDS, Brian had assumed that the Phoenix police were focused on something more productive than chasing down unsubstantiated rumors.

  Like solving actual cases.

  Or tracking down real murderers.

  Seeing the police cruiser in the otherwise empty parking lot as he arrived an hour before his first appointment, Brian wanted to turn the Jag around and head right back out. Instead, he parked in his usual spot, grabbed his coat and briefcase, straightened his yellow-and-blue Donald Duck tie, and strode purposefully toward the waiting police officer.

  “Detective Angelo, what can I do for you?” he asked. Maybe the man was there to return the file he’d borrowed. Or to apologize for his attitude the week before.

  No such luck. “Can we talk inside?” The detective’s manner was impassive.

  Brian led the man back to his office—a practice he most definitely did not want to become habit.

  “You gave Sammie Blanchard a vaccine injection the week before he died,” Detective Angelo said as soon as they were seated, without offering so much as a good morning.

  “Yes.”

  “What exactly was in that shot, Dr. Hampton?”

  Brian sat stiffly in his chair as he recited the generic and brand names for the vaccination.

  “And you’re certain there was nothing else?”

  “I read the autopsy report, Detective,” Brian said, leaning forward. “There was nothing in it about medications, toxic or otherwise, in that baby’s system.”

  “And you know as well as I do that not everything shows up in a general autopsy, Doctor,” the m
an returned. “Certain drugs won’t present unless specific tests are done to look for them.”

  That was true. And irrelevant. Did they actually think he’d purposely and knowingly killed his own patient? Or anyone else? That he’d inject a child with something lethal…

  The idea made him sick.

  “Am I under suspicion?”

  “No.”

  He stood. “Then if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave. Your insinuations are insulting and I have patients to see.” He wasn’t about to sit here and be harassed—even if this detective was the law. Brian knew his rights.

  “We’d like to see the records of the other babies who’ve died this year.”

  “I already turned them over to the medical examiner—standard procedure at the time of death as you know.”

  “And they were returned to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now I’d like them.”

  “Then you’ll need a subpoena, Detective,” he said, one hand on the doorknob as he waved the officer out of the room.

  Good riddance, he thought as he watched the man climb back into his car and pull off the lot.

  “And don’t come back.”

  By Monday night Hannah’s living room had been returned to her. And the reports weren’t encouraging. The forensic team had been unable to lift any usable prints. Whoever had desecrated her space had at least been enough of a professional to wear gloves.

  And the fact that whoever had been there had targeted a localized area of her home, the fact that they hadn’t touched several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry in her bedroom, made the crime appear more like a warning than a burglary.

  “But then, your alarm system went off,” Deputy Charles told her when she returned his call on her way home from work. “The intruder was in and out pretty quickly.”

  “Yesterday you said you didn’t think this was connected to the Ivory Nation,” she said slowly, giving the few cars on the road more concentration than they required. “Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?”

  She could be cold in ninety-degree heat. She could look over her shoulder before walking alone, and check out her backseat before getting in her car. She could make sure her windows and doors were locked.

  She would not be afraid. She couldn’t allow that.

  “We don’t think so, Judge.” As the detective’s words registered, the panic attack she’d been barely avoiding dissipated. “The glass break was sloppy. Loud. Based on everything we know about them, the IN would only do that if breaking the glass was all they were going to do. And they’d shoot it out from a moving vehicle. They’re well trained. If they wanted to physically invade, they’d have disabled the alarm system—as part of the warning. To let you know that they could get past safety measures. Trashing your home is not the end goal to guys like them. The violence is only a pleasurable bonus.”

  With her stomach feeling jittery again, Hannah turned onto her street. The tension in her neck was becoming a constant companion. “Thanks,” she said, asking him about a mutual acquaintance—one of her ex-deputies who’d been put back out on street duty—before ringing off.

  She needed a glass of wine. A guard dog.

  Or at least a talented masseuse.

  Sitting in front of the computer screen in her home office at nine o’clock that night, with Taybee (since she hadn’t given the kitten back yet, she’d named it) curled into a tiny ball in her lap, Hannah considered the possibility of needing a new job. Briefly.

  And then, knowing that she wouldn’t really leave a career she loved, a life she loved, she considered a bodyguard. Except that her pay from the state of Arizona, not known for generous financial treatment of public officials, wouldn’t allow her that particular luxury. And without any formal threat against her, which would allow the state to step in, she was nothing more than an overemotional female buckling under the pressure of a tough job.

  Staring at the monitor in front of her, she zoomed in on the article she’d found, as though changing the font size would change what it said.

  The article in the Arizona Daily Sun archives had been published in Flagstaff, Arizona, two years earlier.

  Coconino County prosecutor Janet McNeil is safe tonight after a break-in at her home this morning in which a man was shot and killed. While investigators are not releasing any information a witness at the scene said that Ms. McNeil had been held at gunpoint and would have died if her neighbor Simon Green hadn’t arrived and shot the intruder.

  Earlier police reports show that Ms. McNeil, 33, has had other trouble in recent weeks, including garage vandalism, a broken windshield and mail threats.

  Ms. McNeil just finished a case involving a member of Arizona’s largest white supremacy organization, the Ivory Nation. The defendant was found guilty.

  Ms. McNeil, who lives alone, has allegedly petitioned to adopt a child she prosecuted while working for the state in juvenile court.

  Shaking, Hannah drew her sweater more firmly about the terry shorts and tank top—standard sleeping attire—she’d changed into after work, burying Taybee in the process. The kitten responded with a stretched-out paw, followed by a dig into an already faintly marked thigh.

  “For that you get the floor, wretch,” Hannah mumbled, making a mental note to get her new family member declawed.

  And then realized what she’d just thought. Realized that at some point in the past twenty-four hours she’d become a mother yet again.

  A mother to a cat. Not to a child.

  An image of Joseph reluctantly leaving the cat in her care the previous night flashed before her and Hannah closed her eyes against it. She could only handle one crisis at a time.

  Taybee scampered off, probably to hide under the wingback chair in the corner of the office, as she’d been doing a lot since she arrived, and Hannah fixed herself some hot chocolate. Turned down the air-conditioning. Thought about a hot bath, but didn’t want to be naked. She didn’t want to be that vulnerable. Not while it was dark outside.

  Back in her office, she checked under the chair, just to make sure the kitten was safe. And left again, avoiding even so much as a glance at the computer screen.

  She was not Janet McNeil.

  Mug in hand, she turned on the hall light. And the spare bedroom light as well. She tried the back door, and even, with a pounding heart, made it to the front door, keeping her back to the destruction in her once beautiful sunken living room.

  She was not Janet McNeil.

  Yeah, she lived alone. And she worked for the state. She’d recently been involved with a case against the Ivory Nation.

  She’d adopted a child.

  But there the resemblances ended. Carlos had nothing to do with the state of Arizona, white supremacy or her job. She’d flown to a poor province in southern Mexico to find her son. She’d wanted a baby and the waiting list in Arizona was years long. Especially for an older single woman.

  A tire iron was hidden between the molding and the door jamb by her front door. Her can of pepper spray was in her pocket.

  On her way back to her office, planning to call Brian to offer a begrudging thank-you for Taybee, and to ask him to assure Joseph that the kitten was happy, she stopped outside the room she never entered. She knew she’d have to someday. If for no other reason than to give all the baby things behind it to a church or women’s shelter.

  Someday, she planned to have a sewing room behind that door. Someday. When she was ready.

  Tonight, as she had every single night for the past year—except the couple of times deputies had been checking the place out—she moved on past. For now, until she was ready, she had to leave that door closed.

  So she’d open others.

  Hannah set her cup on the stone “believe” coaster on her desk. And risking limb, if not life, slid as far under the chair in the corner as she had to in order to retrieve her new housemate.

  “You can’t hide from everything,” she told the precious bundle.

&nb
sp; The kitten’s stare reminded Hannah of the little man who’d said far more with his eyes than with his mouth the night before.

  Life was hard. You lived anyway. Because there was no other choice.

  With Taybee in her arms, Hannah went to the phone.

  Ten minutes later she was counting rings, waiting for Janet Green, now married to the neighbor who’d saved her life, to pick up on the other end.

  Hannah hadn’t reached her position as one of the youngest female judges in the state without making a million contacts.

  She didn’t use them often. Which was why, when she did, she got results. Like a Flagstaff prosecutor’s unlisted phone number.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Janet Green?”

  “Who’s this, please?” The hesitation in the other woman’s tone was still apparent even two years after her ordeal, and Hannah recognized, in that instant, that her life was never going to be the same again. The fear that followed her tonight was going to be there, in some fashion, for the rest of her life.

  Just as the Ivory Nation intended.

  “Thank God.” With a grin so big his jaws hurt, Brian leaned back in his chair, phone at his ear, and let the relief filter over him. “Have you spoken with her parents yet?” he asked his friend and colleague, Jim Freeman.

  “I have an appointment with them this afternoon.”

  “You are a miracle worker, my man,” Brian said, his chicken sandwich forgotten.

  “Not this time,” Jim said, his voice equally light. This was what they didn’t tell you in med school. That the high you got from partying back then would eventually be replaced by an unmatchable and much longer-lasting euphoria—one that came from saving lives.

  “All I did was run tests and read results,” Jim continued. “And she’s not completely out of danger yet, but with any luck she will be by this time next year.”

  With an open invitation for Jim to bring his wife and daughter over for dinner, Brian rang off, still grinning.

  A miracle had happened. A diagnosis had proved false with further testing.