She crossed to the refrigerator. A half-dozen photos, held in place by magnets, graced its front.
Sadie, she realized. And Joe.
She studied the images, one by one. Sadie had been a beautiful little girl. Blond and blue-eyed, with an endearing smile that included dimples. Joe, also fair-haired, was a handsome man. Strongly built, like someone whose job kept him active. She saw where Sadie had gotten her dimples.
M.C. sipped the coffee. But it was the pictures of Kitt that surprised her most. She almost didn’t recognize her, she looked so young in the photographs. So lighthearted.
What must it feel like to lose your family?
She had lost her father, and it had been awful. But losing your child? Then your marriage? She couldn’t imagine the pain.
“I see you found the coffee.”
M.C. whirled around. Some of her coffee sloshed over the rim of her cup, onto her hand and the floor.
Kitt crossed the kitchen, ripped off a paper towel and handed it to her. “Sorry I startled you.”
M.C. mopped up the mess, then turned back to Kitt. The other woman’s gaze was on the photographs, the yearning in her expression painful to see.
“She was a beautiful little girl.”
A smile touched Kitt’s mouth. “Inside and out.”
“I’m really sorry. It’s got to be…horrible.”
Kitt didn’t respond, but crossed to the sink and rinsed her plate and cup, then stuck them in the dishwasher. “You said you weren’t asleep. Out with the guy?”
“Working. Going over the storage-unit inventory list.”
“Anything jump out?”
“No. It’s a major mishmash of crap. Clothing, books, old calendars, the dressmaker’s dummy, an aluminum Christmas tree, old record albums. And that’s just the beginning. It reads like the contents of someone’s attic.”
“But whose?”
“My fear is, it’s no one’s. That your anonymous friend went to Goodwill or a few garage sales and assembled a bunch of junk to throw you off.” M.C. crossed to the sink, dumped the remainder of her coffee and rinsed her cup. “Garbage in here?” she asked, opening the cabinet located under the sink.
“No! I’ll do-”
M.C. saw what Kitt was trying to hide. An empty vodka bottle. A bottom-of-the-barrel brand.
The kind a drunk would buy. M.C. stared at the bottle, realizing what it meant. This was what she had feared when they’d been assigned to work together. Kitt had sworn she was rehabilitated. She had been fool enough to believe her.
Was this a first offense? Or had it been happening all along?
Did that even matter?
M.C. tossed the soiled paper towel into the trash, then retrieved the bottle. She turned to Kitt and held it up, furious. “What is this?”
Kitt stared at the bottle, expression devastated.
“Dammit, Kitt! You’ve been drinking.”
“I can explain.”
“No, you can’t. You’re an alcoholic. You can’t drink. Not ever.”
“I know.” She took a step toward her, hand out. “Just listen. Please.”
“I’ve got to go to Sal with this.”
“It won’t happen again. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that. And I can’t allow you to jeopardize this investigation.”
“He’ll suspend me. And I don’t have…being a cop is all I have left.”
“You should have thought of that before you knocked back a fifth.”
“It wasn’t like that…It-”
“This partnership is over, Kitt.”
“Joe’s remarrying!” she cried. “The woman has a daughter. Sadie’s age. He…I found out tonight. They’re going to be a family. They’re going to have-”
She bit the words back, but M.C. imagined they went something like “They’re going to have everything I lost.”
A lump formed in M.C.’s throat as she struggled with the pity she felt for the other woman. It was okay to feel bad for her, but she couldn’t allow Kitt to put the investigation at risk. Her responsibility was to the force, to the trust the public-and her superior officers-had in her.
As she watched, Kitt crossed to the table and chairs. She sank onto one of the chairs and dropped her head into her hands.
“It broke my heart,” she whispered. “The thought that he could do this. Just replace Sadie that way. Replace…me.”
M.C. wavered in the doorway a moment more, then crossed to Kitt. She squatted down in front of her. “Tell me what happened,” she said softly. “I’m listening.”
“It’s a fund-raiser for pediatric leukemia. We go every year. I ran into Joe there, with his fiancee. Valerie. That’s when I learned-” She sucked in a deep breath. “When I learned about her daughter. Tami.
“We had words. I was so angry. Felt so…betrayed. I stopped at a store on the way home, bought the vodka and…proceeded to drink most of it.”
She swallowed hard, then looked up at M.C. “That’s what I did when Sadie died. I drank to fill up the empty place inside. To dull the pain. Dull the ache of missing her.
“Before that, I didn’t drink. Occasionally, socially. Drinking wasn’t a part of my life growing up. My paternal grandfather was an alcoholic and because of that my dad never drank.”
She squeezed her hands into fists; M.C. saw that her knuckles were white.
“Then he called. Tonight. So proud of himself. Smirking and so arrogant. He was there, at the leukemia event.”
“He told you?”
“Yes.”
“He gave me a pink balloon.” Kitt went on to explain about how, after her confrontation with Joe, a clown had approached her with a balloon. “On the phone, he asked if I liked the balloon he had given me.”
A clown. Is that how he chose his victims?
M.C. stood. “What else did he say?”
“He said there were other victims, ones the police never connected to him.”
“But nothing else about tonight?”
“No.” Kitt laced her fingers. “I was sober for a year, M.C. I screwed up tonight. I hate myself for it. But it won’t happen again.”
M.C. didn’t know a lot about alcoholism. Thankfully, no one in her family had succumbed to it. She knew it was a disease. That some people were “genetically” susceptible. That the alcoholic couldn’t be cured through willpower alone.
Should she give her another chance? Could she afford to?
Dammit, she hated being in this position!
“This once,” she found herself saying, “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But just this once. If you screw up again, I’m going to the chief.”
Even as the words passed her lips, M.C. wondered if she was making a big mistake. A mistake that would cost her dearly-more than a few rungs up the ladder.
Maybe even her life.
32
