Revelations

He wouldn’t give up yet, but he wasn’t convinced.

“THIS POT ROAST is wonderful, Mary.” Ann sighed in pleasure. “I don’t do much real cooking.”

Mary Roarke, a comfortable, motherly woman, shook her head in disapproval. “You wouldn’t be so skinny if you did.”

Ann grinned at her. “Actually, considering my usual diet is Winchell’s for breakfast, McDonald’s for lunch and frozen meals I can microwave for dinner, my guess is I might actually lose weight if I started cooking good stuff.”

Mary shuddered. “My dear! I know you’re young, but you need to think about your health.”

“I was kidding.” Honesty compelled her to admit, “Partly. I eat more junk food than I should, but I actually start most mornings with a banana sliced on cereal, and I do have a vegetable with dinner.” Sometimes. Occasionally. “And I keep fruit around.”

“Are we going to have dessert or not?” her husband interrupted.

Mary stood as if invisible wires had lifted her. As cheerful as if her husband wasn’t glowering at her, she said, “Lemon meringue pie. Of course you’ll have a slice, Ann?”

“Couldn’t stop me,” Ann assured her. She waited until the plump woman in her fifties had disappeared into the kitchen before she said to her father’s old friend, “Reggie, I have something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Got to do with the job?”

“Uh…maybe. I don’t know,” she admitted.

Despite the couple of beers he’d downed, Reggie Roarke’s gaze sharpened. “Is this something we want to talk about in front of Mary?”

“I don’t know that, either. I was hoping you’d tell me more about your accident.”

His eyes bored into hers. “You got a reason?”

She hesitated. “I think I’d rather hear you tell me what happened first, if you don’t mind.”

He took a long swallow of beer from the can, his eyes never leaving hers. “All right. But let’s leave Mary out of it.”

His wife bustled back in with slabs of pie, dunes of meringue quivering above lemon filling. From the first bite, Ann forgot her purpose in being here. This pie was manna, the tart and sweet melting into a paean on her tongue.

Her husband ate his piece, grunted and pushed the empty plate aside. It was no wonder that Mary seemed so pleased at Ann’s heartfelt compliments.

“I made two. I’ll send you home with some. No, don’t argue,” she insisted, when Ann opened her mouth to make a polite if feeble protest.

“Ann’s here to talk business,” Reggie said brusquely. “We’ll take our coffee into the living room.”

Leaving Mary clearing off the table, Ann followed her dad’s partner to the front room, dominated by his and hers recliners and a big-screen television set. He sat in his recliner and waited while she took his wife’s. Ann found the effect rather strange. With both pointed at the TV, she had to turn her head to see him. She set her coffee cup to one side and saw that he’d brought a new can of beer instead.

“I remember hearing you talk about the accident once you were back at work,” she began. “But the details didn’t stick.”

Popping the top off the beer, he said, “I’ve got a ’71 ’Vette out in the garage. Been restoring it for a while.”

That day, he explained, he’d jacked it up so he could roll under it to perform some task that went right over Ann’s head. To her father’s disgust, she had never become fascinated by the workings of a combustion engine. Car talk, a staple of poker games with his friends, had bored her so completely she hadn’t even pretended to share his interest to please him.

“I was under the car when I heard footsteps coming into the garage.”

“From the street?” she interrupted.

“Right. Thought for a minute it was Mary and I wondered why she hadn’t come through the kitchen door, but she might have been out gossiping with a neighbor. I asked her what she wanted. Didn’t get an answer.”

“So this person was standing where your feet would have been sticking out from under the Corvette.”

He shook his head before she finished sketching the scene aloud. “No. See, that was a strange thing. Whoever it was went to the other side of the car. I tried to twist my head to see the feet, but I couldn’t. Whoever it was must have been behind the wheel. But I realized the footsteps hadn’t sounded like a woman’s. They were heavier than that. So then I started thinking, maybe it was Hank from two doors down. He likes to see how I’m coming. So I said, ‘Hank, that you?’”

She nodded, watching his face to judge whether he was telling the truth and nothing but. So far, she saw only outrage and residual fear.

“That’s when the car moved just a little. Scared the bejesus out of me, I can tell you!” His face flushed as he remembered. “‘Hey!’ I yelled. Something like that. Then I felt it rocking above me. I tried to shoot out from under there, but I didn’t want to use the under-carriage to move myself in case my push helped the bastard knock the ’Vette off the jacks. I was probably swearing.” He took a gulp of beer. The hand that set the can down might have had a tremor. “I didn’t make it. Turned out Mary was at the grocery store and I’d forgotten. She found me when she got home.”

Ann nodded. “You never did see feet, and the person didn’t say anything.”

“Not a word.” He shook his head. “Nobody believed that someone pushed the goddamn car off the blocks. They figured I was a dumb-ass who didn’t know how to jack up a car.” He glared at her as if she’d expressed that exact opinion. “But let me tell you, little girl, I’ve been working on cars since I was a kid. I know what happened.”

She wanted him to lay it out in blunt words. “What did happen?”

“Somebody tried to kill me.” His voice grated. “And they damn near succeeded.”

“Pretty unusual way to commit murder.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Somebody happening to wander by, seeing you in a vulnerable spot.”

He didn’t like doubt. “The scum watched for his chance, that’s all.”

“You have any ideas at all about who might want to kill you?”

He snorted at her naiveté. “I’ve been a cop for thirty-two years! I’ve put away my share of slugs. They’d probably all raise a glass if they heard I was dead.”

“Okay. Let me put it another way. Who would want you, Leroy Pearce and my dad all dead?”

He stared at her, a man who downed too many beers every night but was still a cop, could still draw a line from A to B to C. Reggie Roarke breathed a word as ugly as his nose.

“You’re thinking he murdered two of us and tried to kill me.”

Ann studied his expression of bafflement, anger, fear and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that interested her because it was secretive.

“And I’m thinking he might not be done. Someone else might be on his list. Depending on why he’s mad. Also…” Ann paused to be sure she had his full attention. “I’m thinking he failed to kill you, which means he’ll be back.”

Aluminum crackled and tore as he crushed his empty beer can in his meaty fist. In a hard voice, he said, “And I’m thinking I’m done talking until you tell me what you know.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“SO, WHAT DID you tell Roarke?” Diaz asked.

Today’s lunch consisted of burgers, fries and milk shakes. Deserted when the two cops came in, the burger joint had filled like magic at noon. Empty booths on each side of theirs were now occupied by a pair of mothers with whiny toddlers and a morose teenager dressed in black and wearing a spiked dog collar around his neck.

In answer, Ann said, “Not much.” She bit one end off a fry.

Her partner grunted in amusement. “In other words, you told him the truth.”

“I was a little evasive. As if I knew more than I was saying.”

Although he’d been about to slurp strawberry milk shake through a straw, Diaz lifted his head and frowned. “Was that smart?”

Surprised, she set down her fries. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Let me ask this—why weren’t you straight with Reggie?”

While she tried to find words to describe her unsettling feeling that her father’s old friend had been hiding something, Ann watched the teenage boy in the next booth unwrap his second bacon cheeseburger. His world-weariness appeared not to be inhibiting his appetite.

“I don’t know,” she said after a minute. “There was something about the way Reggie got suspicious. As if…”

When she didn’t finish, Diaz did. “As if he wondered whether you might be working with Internal Affairs.”

“Yeah. He gave me this once-over, and I knew he was looking for a wire.” She’d actually been afraid for a minute, until she remembered that Mary was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and wrapping pie in plastic for Ann to take home.

Diaz balled up a wrapper. “If you asked me a few questions about who might hate me, I wouldn’t get antsy. Because I’m not hiding anything.”

“You think Roarke is.”

He raised his brows. “Isn’t that why you went to talk to him?”

She narrowed her eyes, not liking where he was going. “Maybe.”

“If the two deaths weren’t accidents, if somebody tried to kill Roarke and all three of these incidents are linked, odds are these aren’t random attacks on cops.”

“They could be.” She scowled at him.

As relentless as an oncoming freight train, Diaz said, “If I’d been killed, and Pearce and…oh, hell, say, Dennis Fassett had been attacked, that might suggest random.” Fassett was a fresh-faced recruit who had puked at the sight of the bloodbath in front of the biker bar last week. “Random doesn’t hit three cops who’ve known each other and worked together for twenty-five years.”

She knew he was right, but she hated what he was suggesting. “Dad wasn’t dirty.”

“Didn’t say he was.”

One of the toddlers in the next booth lost patience and started to wail. Voice sharp, the kid’s mother tried to quiet him. When she didn’t succeed, the two women, still gossiping over the sobs, collected their garbage, bundled their children in parkas and gloves and hats with earflaps as if this was Juneau in January, and finally left. The kid’s face was turning purple as he screamed all the way to the door.

Ann muttered, “Talk about an argument for abstinence. They should borrow that kid as an object lesson for sex-ed classes at the high school.”

Diaz laughed, real amusement crinkling the skin beside his eyes. “I take it your biological clock isn’t ticking.”

She didn’t even know if she had one. She was still trying to figure out how girls got guys to ask them to the prom.

“Not if it means taking one of those home from the hospital.”

“They have their moments, you know.” His smile had changed, become tender.

Ann’s heart felt too big for her chest. Surreptitiously, she pressed her rib cage.

“Kids let you see the world fresh, through their eyes. When your baby smiles the first time, just for you, or you hear this giggle of pure glee, or you see understanding dawn on your little girl’s face…” He hunched his shoulders suddenly, as if embarrassed.

Damn it, her sinuses burned. She concentrated on her milk shake to hide emotions that embarrassed her.

Had her father felt that way about her, at least in the beginning? Had her first smile filled him with tenderness? Things had gone wrong, but she’d like to think he had loved her.

And Diaz… Why in heck did she turn to mush just because his eyes softened every time he mentioned his kids? Yeah, okay. It was a nice quality in a man. She was starting to think his ex-wife was an idiot. But she was not looking for a husband. Even if she had been, Juan Diaz wouldn’t be on her list. So she really, really needed to stop with the knees-buckling, heart-swelling thing.

“Yeah, maybe someday,” she mumbled.

He was looking at her in a way that made her shift on the hard plastic seat. “I’ll bet you were a tomboy. I can see you. Baseball cap turned backward, sneakers, knees ripped out on your jeans. Not taking any crap from the boys.”

He was right on, but she’d been like that because somehow, some way, she’d always known Daddy didn’t really want a little girl. He wanted a little boy.

Until she’d turned sixteen and suddenly in his eyes she was supposed to be a girl—she sure as hell was never going to measure up as a son. Why wasn’t she a beauty he could brag about to his friends? He’d have liked to make jokes about fighting off the boys, but it was painfully obvious to him and Ann both that no boys were interested. And she was still struggling to be that little girl in ripped jeans who didn’t take any crap from the boys.

“Got it in one.” She wadded up her garbage even though she hadn’t finished her fries. “Can we go?”

Something flickered in Diaz’s dark brown eyes, but he only nodded. “I’m done.”

They were on the way to the hospital to talk to a woman whose husband had beaten the crap out of her the night before. Or so said the neighbors who had called 911 after hearing an escalating fight, crashes and screams. The woman hadn’t been able to say anything; she’d lain unconscious on the floor, her face blood-smeared and distorted.

Ann and Diaz didn’t do the average domestic disturbance call anymore. This one wasn’t average. Gene Verger’s first wife had been viciously beaten to death. Police had never been able to prove he had killed her. He’d claimed he’d found her when he got home from work.

When a 911 call with his address came in, it was like little red cherries all lining up. People who’d seen Marianne Verger’s body had long memories.

His second wife looked grotesque. One eye was swollen shut; the other peered through a slit in purple flesh. One arm was in a cast, and the print of fingers was visible on her neck.

Ann took the lead. “Ms. Verger?”

The woman in the hospital bed gave the tiniest of nods, then winced. At least, Ann thought she had. With her face looking like a raw ribeye roast, reading expressions was a little difficult.

“We’re hoping you can give us a statement about last night.” Ann pulled up a chair.

Diaz stood near the foot of the bed, his notebook out. When the situation called for it, he was good at presenting himself as bland. Next best thing to invisible. This was one of those times.

Rochelle Verger studied him with what Ann took for suspicion, then turned her head on the pillow to scrutinize Ann.

“You’re not wearing uniforms,” she whispered, voice as damaged as her face and throat.

“No. I’m Detective Caldwell and this is my partner, Detective Diaz.” Ann showed her badge.

She struggled to swallow before asking, in that hoarse whisper, “Why you?”

Ann chose honesty. “Because of your husband’s history.”

The woman didn’t move for a long time. Finally, a tear seeped from her open eye.

“He’s been arrested,” Ann assured her. “He’s behind bars.”

“He… I fell. I always say I fell.” More tears dribbled down her cheek even as her eye closed.

Ann touched Rochelle’s lax hand. “He almost killed you.”

She cried, her mouth opening as tears ran into it. Her hand turned in Ann’s and clutched it in a painful, clawlike grip.

Never comfortable with emotional displays, Ann cleared her throat. “Hey. You’re safe now. He won’t get near you again.” When that had no effect, she repeated, “You’re safe. It’s okay.” Letting her hand be mauled, she kept murmuring the same things over and over. As if that would do any good.

At length the battered woman’s grip loosened and the agonized contortion of her face relaxed. Ann reached for a tissue and said, “Um, do you want to blow your nose?”

The one eye peered at her again. The mouth twisted into what might have been a laugh. Rochelle Verger nodded and took the tissue.

She dabbed rather than blew, and even that must have been painful.

At last, in an exhausted, hoarse whisper, she said, “He killed her. He tells me he did every time he beats me. He says I’m lucky.”

“Will you testify in court?”

The single eye fastened with heartrending intensity on Ann. “Do you promise he won’t get off? That I’ll be safe?”

At the foot of the bed, Diaz stirred.

Ann wanted, very badly, to promise anything. She wanted to twist Gene Verger’s nuts until he screamed.

But that swollen, discolored face, tracked with tears, the desperate strength of the fingers that had probably bruised Ann’s hand, stopped her.

“You know I can’t promise. He should get several years for what he did to you. Whether he’s convicted for murder depends partly on what he’s told you.”

The young woman who looked and sounded old started to whisper. Ann had to lean close to hear.

“He liked to talk about it. He liked to scare me. He told me everything.”

Ann smiled at her. “Then you have the power to put him away for a lifetime. If you choose to use it.”

The mouth twisted again, and this time Ann knew it was into an answering smile. In that raw whisper, she said, “I choose.”

ANN HESITATED outside the bistro, then squared her shoulders and walked in. She bolstered herself with the thought that at least her eyebrows looked great.

“Ann!” Eva Pearce waved from a round table by the window. “Over here.”

The hostess who had been about to waylay Ann smiled and gestured her ahead. Conscious of her plain navy slacks and blazer and solid, practical shoes in a way she wasn’t usually, Ann crossed the small dining room, passing several tables of women who all seemed to have Eva Pearce’s natural style.

“Thank you for coming.” Eva smiled. “Gosh, I’ve been looking forward to this. We should have gotten together to commiserate years ago.”

Some of the tension left Ann’s shoulders. “You mean, to bitch?”

The blonde laughed. “Why didn’t we? I so hated my father when I was about sixteen.”

“I thought I loved mine then.” The surprising admission just came out. Ann’s mouth almost dropped open at the implication: that later, she hadn’t loved him.

Or, at least, that she didn’t want to love him.

Eva didn’t seem surprised. “I had my phases, too. We never want to give up, do we?”

“I didn’t want to even after Dad died,” Ann admitted. “Isn’t that pathetic?”

Eva blinked. “Okay, you have to explain that one.”

Over glasses of wine and salads, Ann told her about the investigation that had been her father’s obsession and which she’d taken over after his death. “I told myself I owed it to him. But really, I kept imagining myself standing at his grave telling him I’d arrested the son of a bitch.” She shook her head. “As if…I don’t know.”

“You’d feel a ghostly pat on your back?”

Ann made a face. “Or some all-enveloping wave of pride. Heck, maybe a disembodied voice saying, ‘You done good, girl.’”

Eva’s laugh wasn’t the expected ladylike tinkle. Instead, it was hearty and uninhibited. “Hey, you never know! Maybe death softened the old bastards up.”

Ann snorted. “What are the odds of that?”

The other woman became pensive. “Do you ever wonder which direction they went?”

It was Ann’s turn to give a startled laugh. “I actually hadn’t thought about it. I haven’t really gotten used to Dad being gone. I still have the sense he’s looking over my shoulder.”

“Why?” Eva shook her head. “Let me rephrase. What I mean is, do you feel like he’d want to linger? Are we really talking woo-woo here? Or do you have a hang-up?”

Ann heaved a sigh. “I have a hang-up.” She had a sudden absurd image of herself standing up in front of a roomful of sympathetic strangers. My name is Ann Caldwell and I have a problem.

A dainty manicured hand with coral nails patted Ann’s. “Tell Sister Eva all.”

“This is supposed to be mutual,” Ann protested.

“Oh, it will be. Believe me, I have hang-ups, too. But you first. You’re more interesting.”

Oh, yeah. That was her, Ann thought. Fascinating. Riveting.

“I seriously doubt it.” She took a bite while she debated how much she really did want to confide in another woman. Sure, she’d casually known Eva since they were in kindergarten. But they’d never had a thing in common except their fathers, and they didn’t now.

Too, she was only starting to understand what she’d felt for her father. Some people seemed to need to babble about their every passing twinge of guilt, lust, resentment or smugness. Ann had never had anybody to talk emotions out with. She knew, on some level, that she had to do some of that if she was going to have friends. But theoretical knowledge wasn’t the same thing as breaking down in real life and pouring out her heart to someone she hadn’t exchanged more than greetings with since they were in fifth grade.

But…she was here. Another woman had actually called her and suggested getting together. For once, Ann had looked forward to a day off, because she had plans that weren’t solitary.

Now, that was pathetic.

“You had a mother,” she said. “I didn’t. I mean, not after she died.”

Eva’s delicate face hardened. “How true. You didn’t have to watch your mother trembling with anxiety as she rushed to do your daddy’s bidding because she was scared to death of him. Count your blessings.”

“Scared?” Ann forgot her own preoccupation. “You mean…?”

“He hit her? Sure he did. Carefully,” the other woman said, with something approaching hatred icing every word. “He wouldn’t want anyone to see a bruise and ask questions.”

Remembering Rochelle Verger’s damaged face, Ann felt the grip of rage. “Did he hurt you, too?”

“Once. That was the only thing that stiffened Mom’s spine. She told him if he ever touched me again, she’d take me and leave. He scoffed, but I think he believed her, because he never did. We had horrendous fights when I got old enough to scream back at him, and a couple of times he lifted his hand, but he always thought better of it.”

“Wow.” Food forgotten, Ann stared at Eva. “I never knew.”

“I was ashamed.” Eva gazed with seeming blindness at her salad plate. “I never told anyone. My friends knew he and I fought, but I never told them that sometimes, when he got mad enough at me, he took it out on Mom.”

Shock whammed her like a steel door of which she hadn’t stepped clear. “Oh, no! Eva…”

This new friend offered a twisted smile. “Pretty sick, huh?”

“You’re making me glad he had plenty of time to know he was going to die.” Seeing Eva wince, Ann closed her eyes. “That’s a horrible thing to say about your father. I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t apologize. When I said I hated him most of the time, I meant it. Once I left home we worked out a civil relationship, but my teenage years were hell. I was so full of anger I couldn’t restrain myself, and then the next morning I’d see Mom moving stiffly and I’d know.” She shuddered. “I despised myself and him both. I was mad at her, too, for taking it. I will never understand…” Eva stopped. Let out a breath. “Mom won’t even talk about it.”

Ann bit her lip. “I almost envy you, being able to hate him like that. I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out why nothing I ever did made my dad proud. Even when he did give a compliment, it was embedded with an insult. This time I’d done okay, unlike my usual, was always implied. I don’t remember him ever, once, telling me I was great at something.”

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