“Yes,” Louis said. “He knows.”
Margi ran a hand under her nose. Louis didn’t have a handkerchief, and he looked to Joe. She found a Kleenex in her purse and gave it to Margi. When she wiped her eyes, he noticed most of the bright orange fingernails were broken.
The door to the courtroom opened, and someone called Amy’s name. Joe moved away to take her inside. Margi watched them go, sniffed again.
“I’m a little scared. I never been in court before, at least not for testifyin’.”
“I’m not sure they’ll need your testimony,” Louis said. “Don’t be too disappointed if they don’t, okay?”
“I won’t,” Margi said. She reached under her velvet hat to scratch her head, winced slightly as she touched the bandage, then with a sigh just dropped her hand. “I mostly wanted to be here just in case that judge decided to give that girl back to Owen.”
“Not a chance. He’s wanted for the attempted murder of a police officer.”
She looked down at the wadded Kleenex. “He’s going to go back to jail, ain’t he?”
“Yes.”
She sighed.
It was the strangest thing Louis had ever seen. This sad woman feeling sorry for a loser like Brandt.
“I suppose he’d be going back to jail, anyway, so I guess I oughta tell you this part,” Margi said.
“Tell me what?”
“Owen told me he killed his wife,” she said.
“He confessed to you?” Louis asked.
Margi hesitated, then gave a tight little nod. “He said he cut her up and stabbed her like a hundred times, right there in that kitchen. But he broke the knife, and when he left to go get an axe, she like just crawled away and disappeared.”
Louis was stunned. But it did match Amy’s strange account of what she’d seen. She saw her mother attacked and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Jean was gone.
“Did you tell this to Detective Bloom?” he asked.
“No, I… I guess I still wanted to protect him,” she said. “But I’m done doing that. I just can’t anymore.”
“Well, if you still want to testify,” Louis said, “they’ll want to hear this. Will you do it?’
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s the least I can do for Mr. Shockey.”
“He’d be proud of you for that, too.”
Margi’s eyes held his for a moment. Then she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked to the courtroom. He knew that even if they caught Brandt today, his trial was months away.
“What are you going to do now?” Louis asked. “You going back to Ohio?”
She tried a smile that came out a quiver. “Well, once you know the gypsy woman is wrong, you can do almost anything, can’t ya?” she said softly.
She limped off toward the courtroom. He started to follow but stopped when he saw another familiar figure come through the glass doors. It was Sergeant Channing.
Channing walked straight to him. Before he spoke, he took a second to study the lacerations that crisscrossed Louis’s face and hands.
“I heard about everything that happened. How you feeling, Kincaid?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Is everything okay with Lily? I’m sorry I haven’t called or-”
Channing cut him off with a raised palm. “Don’t worry about it, man, please.”
He pulled a blue envelope from his shirt pocket, louis printed across the front in block letters.
“Lily wanted me to give this to you,” Channing said.
Louis opened the envelope and pulled out a card. It showed a cartoon of a bandaged teddy bear and the text, PUT YOUR RIGHT HAND ON YOUR LEFT SHOULDER AND YOUR LEFT HAND ON YOUR RIGHT SHOULDER.
Louis opened the card.
AND GIVE YOURSELF A HEALTHY HUG!
She had signed it, in purple pen, in big letters: LOVE LILY.
“You told her I was injured?” Louis asked.
“Yeah,” Channing said. “Kyla and I talked about it and decided she might find out. She reads the papers, believe it or not. Plus, she’s going to see you again, and your face looks like you crawled through barbed wire. Kyla and me… we made a decision a long time ago that we had to be honest with her about this stuff.”
“Because of your job?”
Channing nodded. “A few years back, I ended up in the hospital for a week with a gunshot wound. We didn’t want Lily to worry or be scared for me all the time, so Kyla told her I went out of town.” He smiled. “Well, one morning, Lily didn’t show up for school and set the whole damn city in a panic. Turned out she overheard someone talking and walked three miles to the hospital to find me.”
“Three miles?”
“Yup,” he said. “Afterward, we had a long talk with her about my job and what could happen to me. It’s amazing what kids can digest sometimes.”
Louis looked down at the card. “Yeah, it is,” he said.
Channing was quiet for a moment. “You look beat, man.”
“I’m all right,” Louis said.
“We’re going to catch this fucker,” Channing said. “I know you’d like to be a part of it, but you need to get some rest.”
Louis looked away and nodded.
“When things calm down, give me a call at the station, and let me know your plans,” Channing said.
Louis nodded again. “I will, thanks.”
Channing started to leave, then turned back. “I almost forgot. I got a message for you from Kyla. She says don’t you dare go getting yourself killed now.”
Channing walked away. Louis folded the card and slipped it into his back pocket.
By the time he slid into a back-row seat inside the courtroom, Joe was standing in front of the judge, asking him to allow her to take Amy home with her to Echo Bay.
He looked over at Amy. She was staring at Joe, her eyes filled with love. And he thought it was amazing that with everything Amy had been through, not only was she still able to feel love, but she was also willing to give it to a woman she barely knew.
He pulled Lily’s card from his pocket and stared at the bandaged bear. He opened the card, read the two words printed in the loopy purple letters three times, then carefully tucked it away.
Later that afternoon, they changed hotels again, because Shockey hadn’t regained consciousness, and there was no way to know that he hadn’t told Brandt where they were. Louis checked them into the only place that had two available adjoining rooms, an outdated Red Roof Inn out near the freeway. The first thing Joe did was call her boss, Mike. He told her the trial for a hit-and-run case she had been working on for months had been moved up to next week. She was the investigating officer and the one who obtained a confession from the driver. The case would be dismissed without her testimony.
She told him she would be home in forty-eight hours.
The three of them spent the evening eating pizza and playing Yahtzee until Amy finally went to bed.
Joe and Louis shared a bottle of wine, but they had barely talked. Then, finally, Louis took her hand and led her to the bed. They made love, for the first time since taking custody of Amy. It was quiet and quick, both of them afraid Amy might knock on the door at any time.
Joe knew Louis’s body was still struggling for strength and that he felt guilty for what had happened to Shockey. But even with all that, she sensed that something was missing from his touch.
It was near four when she slipped quietly from the bed and pulled a robe over her goose-bumped skin. Through the darkness, she felt her way toward the bottle of wine she’d left on the small table. Her toe hit the edge of a suitcase.
“Damn,” she hissed.
Louis stirred and rolled over, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder.
Joe shook the sting from her foot and fumbled for the remote to turn on the TV. She muted the sound as the
