Partner-Protector

He patted the air with a placating hand, trying to calm her before she created any more of a scene. “Keep your money. It’s not a big deal. I’ll have the department reimburse me if that’ll make you feel better.”

If Kelsey had kept hold of her temper, she would have seen it coming. She could have protected herself.

“Take it.”

He grabbed her left hand, slapped the ten-dollar bill into her palm and curled her fingers down over it, holding her loose fist between his hands. Bare hands. Skin to skin contact.

Oh, hell.

The bombardment of sensations came fast and furious. The detective continued talking, apologizing, but she heard no words. It was nothing but a hum of noise in the background as her skin burned beneath his touch. Her chest constricted and a flood of images flashed through her mind like movie clips spinning faster and faster, flying off their reel.

Banning, lying broken on the ground. So much blood. So much pain.

A tiny blond woman at the altar in a wedding gown. Longing. Sadness. Regret.

The explosion of a gun, firing over and over at a shadowy target. Such anger. Such determination.

The musky scent of sweat. Exertion. Banning’s muscles straining, harder and harder. A determined mind pushing the body beyond its limits.

A little boy at a funeral, squeezing his mother’s hand. Confusion. Grief.

T. Merle Banning, typed on a document, and a pencil, scratching out the first name. Gouging out a memory. Erasing shame.

It was the shame that got to her. Washed over her like a bucket of icy water. The emotion inside her—her own emotion—woke her, breaking the spell.

She jerked her hand away. “Let go of me.”

Still disoriented, she saw broad shoulders and a forceful chin swim in front of her eyes. Years of rote training reminded her to reach into her pockets for her gloves and quickly pull them on.

“Ms. Ryan?” She forced herself to breathe, in through her nose, out through her mouth. “Are you all right?”

Firm, gentle hands closed around her shoulders. The twin spots of warmth shocked her back to reality. She lifted her gaze past the sensuous male line of Detective Banning’s mouth to read the concern etched beside his alert, assessing eyes. A frisson of energy that was neither psychic nor temper sparked along her nerve endings. He really was a good-looking man—in a buttoned-down, just-the-facts-ma’am kind of way.

This is wrong.

Kelsey wiggled her shoulders and shook herself free from his grasp, heeding the warning voice from her conscience. “Get your hands off me, T.”

Without his touch she felt cold. Even colder than she’d been before the psychic impression had fully left her.

The chill was nothing new to her. Nor was Detective Banning’s instant withdrawal. How many other people had she freaked out with her talent? How many others would scoff at her knowledge of things a normal person wouldn’t know? He spread his hands out to either side of her, in plain sight. “Did you just call me T?”

“Isn’t that your name? T-something Banning?” She set her bag on the tabletop so she could tie her scarf and button her coat with some degree of grace and then get out of there. “Merle’s your middle name.”

“The T’s for Thomas. But nobody calls me that. And I did not tell you that was my name.”

Kelsey simply turned her face and glared, daring him to put two and two together to come up with the right explanation for her knowledge of his secret. But that wasn’t a leap of faith he was willing to make.

“I don’t know where you did your snooping, lady. But this game isn’t funny anymore. I’ve done my duty.” He pulled another ten from his wallet and laid it with hers, leaving the waitress a huge tip. Then he was slipping into his long, camel-hair coat and limping toward the exit, robbing her of the glory of walking out on him. “Have a good day, Ms. Ryan. Drive safely.”

Kelsey stared at the worn-out box he’d left on the table behind him.

How had this gotten personal? How had she gone from ultracaution to trading barbs with T. Merle Banning and letting her emotions rule her? Lesson one in Grandma Lucy Belle’s book of down-home advice was keep your eyes focused on the goal. Kelsey’s goal had been to help that poor woman. To give a forgotten murder victim a chance to find justice.

This meeting wasn’t about her, or justifying her gift, or making sense of the tumble of emotions Detective Banning stirred inside her.

Ashamed that she’d let old wounds get the better of her, Kelsey took a deep breath, grabbed the doll box and hustled after Banning, beating him to the glassed-in lobby before he could open the outer door. She planted herself squarely in his path and pleaded her case one last time. “I don’t know who that woman was. I know she was naked. She was in some falling-down, ramshackle building. I know that man strangled her. She thought the scarf was payment. A gift. Maybe the doll, too.” She held it out. He didn’t take it. “I don’t know. Putting that all together makes me think she’s one of your hookers.”

He pulled back the front of his coat and jacket, propping his hands on his hips and exposing his gun and badge. “Your point?”

She got the message. But she refused to be put off.

“I have a degree in criminal justice studies, Detective. I know police procedure. You didn’t ask me any probative questions. You spent this entire interview trying to get me to admit I’m a fraud. You didn’t write down a damn thing I told you in that notebook of yours. And now you’re going back to your office to have a good laugh with your buddies at my expense.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“You’re not the first cop to think I’m crazy. In fact, you’re more close minded than most. If you want scientific facts, you find that building. You check out the store where I bought this doll. You interview the man who sold it to me. The doll’s the key if you want to use it.” She shoved the box into the middle of his chest and backed out the door into the icy winter chill. “Now we’re done.”

T? MERLE SAT at his desk—tie loose, collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked as if he’d been working all afternoon, but it was an illusion. That crazy fake redhead had gotten under his skin and disrupted his concentration by saying one stupid letter!

How did she know about his past? Who had she been talking to? Could she be the disgruntled relative of one of the investors his father had cheated and abandoned twenty years ago? If so, it had to be the cleverest way he’d come up against yet for one of his father’s victims to take a strip of retribution out of his hide.

Merle stared at the data on the computer screen, seeing nothing but the capital Ts jump out at him. “How the hell…?”

Thomas Banning was the name he’d given up years ago, when he was just a boy. He’d given it up because Thomas was his father’s name. His mother stopped using it and had taken to calling him by his middle name.

Thomas had been a curse at his house.

Merle wasn’t much better. Merle was an old man’s name. A nerd’s name. Sometimes even a girl’s name. It was a name that invited teasing on elementary playgrounds and in junior high locker rooms. It was a name that high-school girls giggled at and college professors mispronounced.

It never quite fit. Yet he’d been stuck with it.

The only time he tolerated Merle without a hint of resentment was on his mother’s lips or in his partner Ginny’s sweet, succinct voice.

Thomas Merle Banning, Jr.

That was his name.

But he couldn’t use it.

She’d come close. Too damn irritatingly close.

Merle tossed his pen onto the open file in front of him and sank back into his chair with a heavy sigh. He rubbed his fingers back and forth across his chin and jaw, and tried to sort out his thoughts. He wasn’t just feeling defensive or distracted here. He had a good dose of guilt working on him, too.

The fact that Kelsey Ryan had somehow uncovered his first initial bothered him almost as much as the fact she knew he’d only been humoring her by taking her to lunch and asking a few questions. Technically, he’d obeyed Captain Taylor’s request, but he hadn’t really done his job.

Flake or not, he should have listened to her story, thanked her, then sent her on her way. Not voiced his opinion of her dubious “vision,” get her pissed and then let her storm off without so much as a thank-you or apology.

But she’d pushed his buttons. Not just the this-feels-like-a-practical-joke button. The computer geek desk jockey wants to see some action? Let him interview the wacko. Sergeant Watkins and the other guys he’d met in the break room that morning seemed to find it terribly amusing that The Flake had been assigned to him.

She looked like an overdecorated Christmas tree, said one. Take her to a New Year’s Eve party and use that hair to light off fireworks, said another. Sergeant Watkins had been even more direct. “I’m surprised the doctors let that looney out.”

For some reason, though, Merle hadn’t felt like laughing. Their crude jokes and unapologetic stares had triggered the chivalric streak inside him. He outranked the blue suits and could shut them up with a command. And he’d earned enough respect from his fellow detectives for them to honor his request to let it drop.

He hadn’t laughed because Kelsey Ryan had gotten to something deeper inside him. Maybe he saw a little of that skinny, four-eyed kid he used to be in her. The kid whose daddy had stuck a gun in his mouth and killed himself because he couldn’t repay the funds he’d embezzled or face the consequences of his actions. He’d been the kid who hid behind books and rebuilt computers so he couldn’t hear the teasing.

He’d outgrown the skinny phase, graduated valedictorian and had his pick of colleges. He and his mother, Moira, had worked for years to rebuild the estate that had been decimated by his father’s debt, so he had a little money to his name. He’d become a cop after earning the first of two degrees, and had made detective on his first application. He’d made his share of mistakes along the way, but he’d solved crimes. He’d taken bullets and killed men in the line of duty.

Thomas Merle Banning, Jr. wasn’t anybody’s victim anymore.

But he’d never forget what it felt like.

And he’d never fail to recognize it in someone else.

Kelsey Ryan had been hurt somewhere along the way in her life. Now she dyed her hair and lost her temper and put on airs because she didn’t want anyone to see how much she hurt.

Merle nudged the beat-up shoe box sitting on the corner of his desk. He might not believe her story about the doll triggering visions of murder. But he should have believed her intentions. A woman like that wouldn’t knowingly set herself up to be ridiculed. She wouldn’t take that risk unless she believed what she was saying.

It wasn’t all that long ago that he’d worked his tail off to get someone to listen to his ideas, to take him seriously. To give him a chance to prove his worth to the world.

Mitch Taylor had given him that chance.

He’d be a hypocrite if he didn’t offer Kelsey Ryan that same chance.

Merle pulled the box closer and read the name of the defunct local shoe company imprinted in faded green letters on the box. Clearly, the doll wasn’t in its original packaging. Flipping over the lid of the box, Merle poked at the multicolored afghan wrapped around the doll inside and wondered who had knitted it. Probably Kelsey herself, judging by the rainbow palette of colors. He pulled out the bundle and unwrapped it on his desk.

He had to believe she really thought there was some kind of answer here.

Merle peeled back a layer of worn newsprint, taking a moment to check the faded date. December 24, 1994.

“The day before Christmas.”

He frowned as the encyclopedia of random facts he carried around inside his head tried to tell him something. Slipping on his wire-frame glasses, he scrolled through the data on the computer screen until he found the first victim in the file—a Jane Doe prostitute the original investigators had dubbed Jezebel.

He scanned the information, then rechecked the wadded paper around the doll. He checked the computer again. “Gotta be a coincidence.”

Jezebel’s strangled, nude body had been discovered in an alley the day after Christmas.

1994.

Merle sat straighter in his chair, pulled a pair of plastic gloves from the bottom drawer and put them on.

Most coincidences could be explained away by facts.

Beneath the old newsprint he found a layer of tissue paper wrapped around the doll. The doll itself looked like some sort of collectible, with a face and body crafted of wire and silk and stuffing. It had feathery golden hair and wore an embroidered gown trimmed in beads of glass and mother-of-pearl. Pretty nice handiwork.

Pretty nice gift for someone back in 1994.

Probably given to someone the very same day Jezebel was murdered. His brain hovered around the information, absorbing what he read on the screen and saw in the box, trying to make a plausible connection.

“Taking up a new hobby?”

Merle glanced up at the deep, laughter-filled voice, and watched the Odd Couple of the Fourth Precinct—Josh Taylor and A. J. Rodriguez—stroll past to the pair of desks beside his.

“Right. I’m into playing with dolls now.” Pulling off his glasses, Merle shook his head. “I’m trying to figure out if this is evidence or just a bad joke.”

Josh—a big, blond goofball who was always into everybody’s business—dumped his coat in his chair and propped his hip on the corner of his desk. “I heard you got the honor of dealing with The Flake this morning. Does that have anything to do with her?”

“She brought it in. Said she had a vision—” he held up his hand and corrected himself the way she’d corrected him “—excuse me, a psychic impression, of one of the Holiday Hooker murders. She said this doll was the key to interpreting that impression.”

“Cool.” Josh, Captain Taylor’s youngest cousin, was nothing if not direct. “You buy what she said?”

“Claiming she was inside the victim’s skin, feeling her pain and terror as she was being murdered? No.” He smoothed the newsprint between his plastic-gloved fingers. “But the date on this packaging matches the time frame of the first death. It’s as good as anything else I have to go on. Which isn’t much.”

“Might be worth checking out.” A. J. never said much. But then, the dark-haired, compactly built detective didn’t have to. Merle had quickly learned that with his instincts and street smarts, and an eerie patience that allowed him to sit back and let the other guy show his hand first, A. J. didn’t need to waste time with idle words. He waited until he had something to say. And then smart people listened.

If he thought this was a lead worth pursuing…

Merle had already made his decision. But it was nice to know he had some backup on his opinion. “If you gents will excuse me?”

He flipped through the pages of his notebook, reluctantly accepting that his dealings with Kelsey Ryan hadn’t ended. Locating the cell number she’d given him, he punched it in. As he waited through several rings, he worked to adjust his attitude. This wasn’t just another crazy trip into la-la land; it was an opportunity to make amends and ease his conscience. An opportunity to do the job Captain Taylor expected of him. Maybe he could find a few answers along the way, as well.

“Hello?” The soft, almost timid voice at the other end of the line surprised him. But Merle recognized the subtle hint of a southern Missouri twang from their lunchtime conversation.

“Ms. Ryan? This is Detective Banning at the Fourth Precinct.”

He could hear her bristling up, donning that huffy, self-protective shield she wore. He could also hear the honks and hums of traffic moving in the background. “Detective.”

So much for conversational pleasantries. He didn’t suppose he’d earned any friendly overtures, so he kept his tone as businesslike and impersonal as hers. “I was calling to ask for the name of the shop where you bought the doll. Looks like there might be some loose ends I can follow up on, after all.”

“Too late, Banning. I’m a step ahead of you. I already talked to Mr. Meisner at the Westport Antique Mall where I bought it, and he said he purchased the doll from The Underground. That’s a pawnshop over on 10th Street off of Broadway. I’m on my way there right now to find out where they got it.”

“You what?” Every muscle in Merle’s body clenched.

Broadway and 10th was smack in the middle of no-man’s land, nestled between the new construction around the Bartle Convention Center and the reclamation of downtown. Merle checked his watch and wished he could look out a window. By four-thirty this late in December, the sun would already be fading. Legitimate businesses would be closing soon and, despite the winter chill, less legitimate entrepreneurs would be crawling out of their cubbyholes to open shop. The people who actually lived in the neighborhood didn’t always welcome strangers, especially ones who asked a lot of questions. And he had a feeling she wouldn’t be shy about asking.

Merle was already buttoning his collar and rolling down his sleeves. “You cannot go into that neighborhood by yourself. Especially after dark.”

“It’s okay, Detective Banning. The danger’s all in my imagination. Remember?”

Click.

She hung up on him?

He was trying to protect her butt and she hung up on him?

Merle shot to his feet. Unfamiliar frissons of anger mixed with a chilling pulse beat of concern. He grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and shoved things into his pockets.

“Problem?” asked Josh, looking up from his desk. He had A. J.’s attention, too.

“Yeah.” His problem was about five and a half feet of mouthy redhead who thought she could goad him into working with her. “This temporary partner thing isn’t working out.”

“You’ve got a new partner?”

“I’ve got a departmental consultant who doesn’t know when to quit.” He jerked the knot of his tie up to his collar. “If I don’t show up for work tomorrow, tell the captain I gave my all for a little good press.”

Josh and A. J. laughed as he shrugged into his coat and dashed to the elevators. Kelsey Ryan might know the how-to’s on following up leads, but she didn’t know squat about surviving out on the streets.

He intended to get her home, safe and sound, and then get her out of his hair.

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