“I mean it, Lindsay. We got you covered. You look like shit, anyway,” Jacobi said.
Suddenly I realized just how exhausted I was. It had been nine hours since the town house had blown. I was still in a sweatshirt and running gear. The grime of the blast was all over me.
“Hey, LT.” Cappy turned back. “Just one more thing. How did it go last night with Franklin Fratelli? Your big date?”
They were standing there, chewing on their grin like two oversize teenagers. “It didn’t,” I said. “Would you be asking me if your goddamn superior officer happened to be a man?”
“Damn right, I’d be asking’,” Cappy said. “And might I add, for my goddamn superior officer”—the big detective threw his bald head back—“you’re looking mighty fine here in those tights. That Fratelli brother, he must be quite a fool.”
“Noted.” I smiled. It had taken me a long time to feel in charge of these guys. Both of them had double my time on the force. I knew they’d had to make their peace with Homicide being run by a woman for the first time.
“Something you want to add to that, Warren?” I asked.
“Nope.” He rocked on his heels. “Only, we doin’ suits and ties tomorrow, or can I wear my tennis shorts and Nikes?”
I brushed past him, shaking my head. Then I heard my name one more time. “Lieutenant?”
I turned, piqued. “Warren?”
“You did good today.” He nodded. “The ones who matter know.”
Chapter 14
It was only a ten-minute drive out to Potrero, where I live in a two-bedroom walk-up. As I went through my door, Martha wagged up to me. One of the patrolmen at the scene had taken her home for me.
The message light was flashing. Jill’s voice: “Lindsay, I tried to call you at the office. I just heard.…” Fratelli: “Listen, Lindsay, if you’re free today …” I deleted it without even hearing what he had to say for himself.
I went into the bedroom and peeled off my tights and sweats. I didn’t want to talk to anyone tonight. I flicked on a CD. The Reverend Al Green. I stepped into the shower and took a swig of a beer I’d brought with me. I leaned back under the warming spray, the grit and soot and smell of ash chipping off my body, swirling at my feet. Something made me feel like crying. I felt so alone. I could’ve died today.
I wished I had someone’s arms to slide into.
Claire had Edmund to soothe her on a night like tonight, after she pieced three charred bodies together. Jill had Steve, whatever … Even Martha had someone—me!
I felt my thoughts drift to Chris for the first time in a while. It would be nice if he were here tonight. It had been eighteen months since he died. I was ready to put it behind me, to open myself to someone, if someone happened to be on the scene. No drum roll. No “Ladies and gentlemen, the envelope, please.…” Just this little voice in my heart, my voice, telling me it was time.
Then I drifted back to the scene at the Marina. I saw myself on the street, holding Martha. The beautiful, calm morning; the stucco town house. The redheaded kid spinning his Razor. The flash of orange light.
Over and over I ran the reel, and it kept ending at the same point.
There’s something you’re not seeing. Something I had edited out.
The woman turning the corner just before the flash. I had seen only a glimpse of her back. Blond, ponytail. Something in her arms. But that wasn’t what was bothering me.
It was that she never came back.
I hadn’t thought about it until now. After the blast …The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn’t among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back …Why?
Because the son of a bitch was running away.
That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Some
thing in her arms. She was running away. It was the au pair. And the bundle in her arms? That was the Lightowers’ baby!
Chapter 15
Her hair fell in thick, blond clumps onto the bathroom floor. She took the scissors and cut again. Everything had to start over now. Wendy was gone forever. A new face began to emerge in the mirror. She said good-bye to the au pair she had been for the past five months.
Cut away the past. Wendy was a name for Peter Pan, not the real world.
The baby was screaming in the bedroom. “Hush, Caitlin. Please, honey.”
She had to figure it out—what to do with her. All she knew was that she couldn’t let the baby die. She had listened to the news reports all afternoon. The whole world was looking for her. They were calling her a cold- blooded killer. A monster. But she couldn’t be such a monster, could she? Not if she had saved the baby.
“You don’t think I’m such a monster, do you, Caitlin?” she called to the bawling child.
Michelle lowered her head into the sink and dumped a bottle of L’Or?al Red Sunset dye all over her, massaging it into her cropped hair.
Wendy, the au pair, disappeared.
Any moment now, Malcolm would come by. They had agreed not to meet until they were sure she hadn’t been followed. But she needed him. Now that she’d proved what she was made of.
She heard the sound of the front door being rattled. Michelle’s heart jumped.
What if she’d been careless? What if someone had seen her coming back with the kid? What if they were kicking the door down now!
Then Malcolm stepped into the room. “You were expecting cops, weren’t you? I told you they’re stupid!” he said. Michelle ran over to him and jumped into his arms.
“Oh, Mal, we did it. We did it.” She kissed his face about a hundred times. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?” Michelle asked. “I mean, the TV is saying that whoever did this was a monster.”
“I told you, you have to be strong, Michelle.” Mal stroked her hair. “The TV, they’re bought and paid for, just like the rest. But look at you.… You look so different.”
Suddenly, there was a cry from the bedroom. Mal took a gun from his belt. “What the fuck was that?”
She was behind him as he ran into the bedroom. He stared, horrified, at Caitlin.
“Mal, we can keep her, just for a little while. I’ll care for her. She’s done nothing wrong.”
“You dumb twit,” he said, pushing her onto the bed. “Every cop in the city will be looking for this kid.”
She felt herself wheezing now. The way she always did when Mal’s voice got hard. She fumbled around her purse for her inhaler. It was always there. She never went anywhere without it. She’d had it just last night. Where the hell was it now?
“I cared for her, Malcolm,” Michelle said again. “I thought you’d understand.…”
Malcolm pushed her face in front of the child. “Yeah, well understand this… That kid is gone, tomorrow. You make it stop crying. Stick your tits in its mouth, put a fucking pillow over its head. In the morning, the baby’s gone.”
Chapter 16
