Jack Murray, Sheriff

The sheriff looked at her freshly painted front porch, strewed with shattered clay pots, spilled dirt and shreds of bright petunias and lobelia, and shook his head again. “Be careful. Call if you’re even a little nervous.”

Beth was stubborn, but not an idiot. She didn’t tell him that she was afraid his showing up tonight had made things worse, not better. He thought she was insisting on being self-sufficient to the point of foolishness. Truth be told, she was scared. Ray wasn’t going to disappear from their lives. She had to find a way to make him see that the girls were what was really important. Carrying hostilities further than she already had would only get in the way of rapprochement.

She watched the police chief step carefully around the shards of pottery and down the front steps. She had forgotten that the lights on top of his cruiser were still revolving, a beacon in the midst of her quiet neighborhood. He reached inside and turned them off even before getting in. A moment later, the police car pulled away from the curb and started down the street.

Beth hugged herself against the cool night air. She made herself stand on the porch in defiance of a panicky desire to flee inside and lock up tight. The night was calm, Ray long gone. He was angry, not sly; it would never occur to him to park his car around the block and sneak back. When she saw a shadow move under the old lilac, her pulse took an uncomfortable jump, but, just to prove something to herself, Beth waited until first one cat, then a second, strolled out.

Only then did she go back into the house and lock the door behind her.

Time to kiss her daughters good-night, time to try to convince them that their world was a secure place.

THE LITTLE REDHEAD in the third row looked familiar. Jack Murray paused a moment in his presentation to the third-grade class.

Long red curls caught up in a bouncy ponytail on top of her head. Big blue eyes, freckled nose, a mouth that had no intention of smiling. She was watching him with unusual intensity, too, as though…what?

Like a slide projector, he clicked through recent pictures stored in his mind. It didn’t take long. She was the one whose father had been trying to smash down his ex-wife’s front door. The one huddled in the hallway with her older sister.

The one whose mom had blue eyes just as guarded, just as cool.

Aware of the concerted stare of twenty-four eight-year-olds, Jack continued, “Are any of you ever home alone?”

A scattering of hands went up.

“Do your moms or dads tell you what to do if the phone rings and you’re by yourself?”

At the same moment as a little girl piped up, “Don’t answer it,” a boy said, “Mom checks to make sure I’m home, so I have to answer the phone.”

Jack strolled toward the boy’s seat by the window. “What if the caller isn’t your mom?”

The boy, whose hair was crew-cut but for a tiny pigtail in back, shrugged. “It’s usually a friend or something.”

“Usually?”

“Mom says if they ask for Mrs. Patterson, it means they want to sell her something, so I just tell ’em we don’t want to buy anything and hang up.”

Jack stood just above the boy, letting his height and the uniform awe the kid just a little.

Then he raised a brow. “Do you think they ever guess that your mom isn’t home?”

The boy squirmed. “Naw…”

Jack looked around. “What do the rest of you think? Should he answer the telephone when he’s alone?”

All sorts of small, high voices chimed in with a variety of negatives. No way. Their parents said…

“But his mom wants to make sure he’s home safe. So she has to call, right? And he has to answer.”

It was the little redhead who said solemnly, “He could call her instead. I call my friends all the time.”

“Could you do that instead?”

The kid had lost his bravado. “She doesn’t really like me to call her at work.”

“Would she make an exception for one call every day?”

He hung his head and shrugged again.

Jack touched the boy’s shoulder and said, “Mrs. Stewart will hand out pamphlets for all of you to take home today and show your parents. Maybe that will make it easier for you to talk to them about things that scare you when you’re alone.”

A few minutes later, he strode out to his squad car. He so rarely wore a uniform these days, he felt conspicuous. But that was the whole point: he still liked to do some of these school talks to keep from becoming a remote political figure in Butte County, a politician quoted in the newspapers. He wanted kids to go home and talk at the dinner table about Sheriff Murray as a real guy. This was his first visit of the new school year; nights were growing cold, but leaves had already turned and the bright yellow school buses were flashing red lights on every narrow country road morning and afternoon.

Jack grunted with faint amusement, thinking what Ed Patton would have had to say about a sheriff spending an hour talking to eight-year-olds: a pansy-ass waste of time, is what the Elk Springs police chief would have said.

But then, Ed Patton had been a grade-A son of a bitch.

As he headed back to the station, Jack’s mind reverted to the redhead’s mother. Lord only knew how many domestic disturbance calls he’d been on. Hundreds. But he still remembered the first, when he’d been a rookie in Portland.

It was also the only time he’d ever had to shoot anyone. He and his partner had been called out to a nasty argument reported by a neighbor. Working-class neighborhood, a cluster of folks standing within earshot of a modest, neatly painted house from which crashes and vicious obscenities came. The siren brought a man in his undershirt to the door. His nose was bleeding and one eye was swelling shut. He wiped blood from his nose and told them to get the hell out of there.

Jack’s partner had been walking ahead of him up the cracked cement driveway. So fast it was still a blur in Jack’s memory, the man had a rifle in his hands and was shooting, just spraying bullets and screaming the whole time. The nosy neighbors dived to the ground and behind parked cars. Jack’s partner went down with a bullet to the chest and this look of shock on his face. Jack shot the man, didn’t even think about it, just shot. Then he had to listen to the wife calling him a murderer while he held his dying partner and listened to the faraway sound of sirens.

To this day, every time he went to a house where a husband and wife were arguing, he thought about that afternoon. He never went casually, never assumed anything. There was nothing deadlier than a man and woman who hated and loved each other at the same time.

But the faces of the women had run together in his memory. The eyes were all stricken, the bruises stark, the body language the same. In recent years, when he thought of an abused woman, he saw his high school girlfriend, Meg Patton, lying about her broken arm or the yellowing bruises.

So why hadn’t Beth Sommers joined the anonymous company? Why hadn’t she become another chink in the wall of guilt he’d built since he found out how badly he’d failed Meg?

Why did he keep thinking about this woman of all others? Why did her face keep coming back to him?

Okay, it was partly because she was pretty, tall and slender, with a long graceful neck, a mass of mahogany brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was the kind of woman who could wear capri pants and a tank top and still look as good as any fifteen-year-old. But that wasn’t all of it.

In some ways she was typical of the women he saw in the same situation. The jackass who threw the tantrum might be her ex, but she was still defending him, still insisting he didn’t really mean it. But the way she protected her children, the way she tried to let them keep some respect for their father, wasn’t typical at all. Divorce, especially from an abusive man, was an ugly thing. There weren’t too many women who were able to resist the temptation to use their kids as a battleground.

Beth Sommers was a gutsy woman who reminded him of Meg Patton in this way, too. Meg had put her son first, had done what was needed to protect him from her own father. Jack had learned to respect her for the hard choices she’d made, although those same choices had cheated him of seeing his son grow up.

Like Meg, Beth Sommers was determined to take care of herself and her children, too. He admired that, even if he did think it was stupid. She might be a successful businesswoman, but she was still vulnerable in a way a man wouldn’t be. Damn it, she was fragile! Jack didn’t like thinking about that. He didn’t want to see her with a bruised face and broken bones and defiant terror in her eyes.

He’d driven by her house several times himself. He had made a point of being there Sunday afternoon, but apparently that hadn’t been one of the girls’ weekends with their dad, because Jack saw the older one in the bay window, just sitting on the window seat with her arms wrapped around her knees, staring out. Her head turned when she saw the police car, but he was too far away to see her expression.

Jack remembered the relief on the little girl’s face when her mother said that their father was just throwing a temper tantrum. He didn’t think the older one—who was maybe eleven, twelve—had been convinced. He wondered what their visits to their father were like.

And he wondered about the mother. What did she do weekends, when her daughters were with their father? She’d been quick to tell him she had no brother or father to be there when she needed him. It had seemed a little too pushy to ask if she had someone else, a man who for other reasons would put himself on the line for her. Did she date?

Or was Beth Sommers so soured by her ex-husband, she wasn’t interested in men?

Jack hadn’t gotten any further than thinking about her. He hadn’t tried to find out yet. If he did, he wasn’t sure what he would do about the knowledge. It would be asking for trouble, dating a pretty woman whose ex-husband didn’t want to let go of her. Sommers wouldn’t like any man dating his ex-wife.

Jack figured he could handle Ray Sommers. He half wished Beth lived outside the city limits so her problems were his business. The scene he’d walked in on wasn’t the first between them, according to neighborhood gossip, and it wouldn’t be the last. One of these days, she’d be calling the cops. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be calling him.

Irritated at himself, Jack accelerated when a street-light turned green. Instead of daydreaming about being her personal hero, he ought to be worrying about her. Figuring out how to get her some help even if she didn’t believe she needed it.

Gut instinct told him somebody should intervene. Before the ex-husband who both hated and loved her tipped a little too far toward hate, and a hell of a lot more than a few plant pots were broken.

CHAPTER TWO

BEHIND THE BARTENDER, a mirror decorated with a beer slogan reflected a portion of the dimly lit room. Ray could see himself in it, though the reflection seemed a little fuzzy. Hell, it must be the mirror. Couldn’t be him. He hadn’t had that many.

He lifted his glass and downed some raw whiskey that burned his throat and brought warming anger in its wake.

“Bitch,” he said clearly, continuing a monologue. “That’s what she is. Don’t give a damn what you think.” He thumped his glass on the bar. “Gimme another one.”

The bartender frowned. “Ray, I think you’ve had enough. Why don’t you go on home now?”

Just like that, his anger spilled over. Ray picked up the heavy glass and flung it as hard as he could. It bounced off the padded wall beside the mirror and clunked out of sight onto the floor.

“You don’t want to hear what a bitch she is?” he snarled.

He was vaguely aware that somebody had stopped behind him. He didn’t give a damn who it was. They should all know what she was like.

A hand closed on his shoulder and turned him on the revolving stool. He wrenched himself free of the grip and blinked to bring the man’s face into focus. Who the hell?

Frank Eaton. Frank owned the pizza franchise over on Lewis Street. He was a chunky guy, going a little soft, liked his beer. Well, hell, Ray liked his beer, too.

“Damned bitch,” Ray said again, giving his head a shake to clear it. “Called the cops on me because I was a little late bringing the kids home. Doesn’t want to remember they’re my kids, too. Can you believe it?”

“Beth’s a nice lady,” Frank said, looking steely-eyed. “I don’t like to hear you talking about her this way.”

Ray squinted. “You think you know her? You don’t know shit. You buy forms from her. You’re a goddamned customer.” He spit the word out. “Maybe you’d be good enough to touch her. Not me. I wasn’t a customer.” He swayed, caught himself and straightened. “Maybe you did touch her. How about it? Is that why I wasn’t good enough anymore?”

Frank grabbed him and shoved him off the stool. Ray stumbled back into a table and chairs.

“Go home,” Frank said with disgust. “And stay there if you’re going to talk filth about Beth.”

Ray was suddenly so angry he was blind. His head felt like it might burst with the fury dammed up. He launched himself at the other man. It felt so good when his fists connected that he swung again and again. Frank fell backward and Ray went after him, swinging, swinging, feeling a nose crunch under his knuckles, the soft gut give like bread dough. His anger roared in his ears, drowning any other sounds.

Hands were yanking him off, and he fought them, still trying to make contact with his bloodied fist, needing to shatter, to hurt, to exhaust himself until that anger had dwindled like gas in his rig.

Next thing he knew, he was being sick outside in the rain, just before he was tossed in the back of a police car. Alone there he hunched in on himself, his stomach still heaving. Cops. Somebody had called the cops. If it was the same bastard…

Through the grille he couldn’t see who was in front. But he didn’t know either of the cops who hauled him out in the dark alley behind the public safety building. They shoved him through the door and propelled him down a hall. When he started to retch, they pushed him in a small bathroom, where he threw up again. Then they locked him in a cell.

Ray was past caring. He was drunk and angry and sick.

Bitch, he thought woozily. Thought she was too good for him. Called the cops on him. His own wife. Ex-wife. Had the whole damned town on her side.

Well, there was one way he could get to her, make her pay attention to him. One way he could feel strong again.

It wasn’t like he’d really hurt her. He didn’t have to. He just wanted to see fear in those blue eyes. Fear that told him he still had some power over her.

He passed out still thinking about her, the woman he loved.

WHEN THE PHONE rang a second time, only moments after Beth hung up the receiver, a twinge of uneasiness, even fear, made her hesitate to touch it. But she knew she had to answer.

Nothing. The response was the silence she had expected. She couldn’t even hear any breathing. It was almost creepier than an obscene phone call. Beth slammed the receiver back down and closed her eyes, breathing slowly to calm herself.

“Who was it?” Steph asked from right behind her.

Beth jumped, but managed a casual mien by the time she turned. “Hm? Oh, nobody. Wrong number.”

“How come there’re so many wrong numbers lately?”

“Heaven knows.” Beth forced a smile. “I think that’s a pun. When we first moved in here, the phone company gave us a number that used to belong to the Assembly of God Church. We got ten calls a day from people wanting the church. Maybe this is something like that.”

Stephanie nodded, satisfied. “What’s for dinner?”

“Meat loaf. Get your sister, and both of you wash your hands.”

Beth made a point of having a sit-down dinner as many evenings as possible. This was the one time they had together when nobody was distracted by the TV or homework or a friend. Working as many hours as Beth did, and with the girls’ nonstop activities, dinnertime sometimes seemed like a peaceful oasis in the middle of their lives.

But tonight she had a hard time concentrating on Stephanie’s complaints about the science teacher.

“Everybody’s afraid to ask him questions. If you do, he just gives you this look and says you weren’t paying attention. I mean, maybe you weren’t, but maybe you just didn’t get it the first time.”

Beth made appropriate noises of sympathy even as her thoughts went back to the troubling phone calls. They’d gone on for a week now, several a day, sometimes two or three in a row like tonight. She’d hurry to answer the phone, but there was never anybody on the other end. It was dumb, petty—but also unnerving.

Should she get Caller ID? She had always thought of it as a nuisance, when ninety percent of the calls were from the girls’ friends. Some of their parents undoubtedly had blocks on their phones, and it seemed so unfriendly to forbid those calls. Caller ID would certainly stop this silent stalker—but then what might he do instead?

She sighed unconsciously. What if she called the phone company and complained? Hadn’t she read there was another technology that allowed calls to be traced instantly? Would they be interested enough to bother, when the caller wasn’t obscene or threatening?

Beth wanted to believe some stranger was doing this to her and her family. Maybe even a teenager, who thought it was funny to scare somebody.

But underneath she couldn’t help remembering what the sheriff had said. If he got some satisfaction from scaring you…he’s going to do it again. Ray knew she didn’t have Caller ID. Had he discovered he liked scaring her? Only, why would he choose a method so juvenile? Did he just hope to unsettle her, eroding her basic sense of security?

What if she asked him outright? Would he let himself smile when he denied making the calls, just to make sure she knew?

Damn it, she could ignore the calls, Beth thought in frustration. They weren’t what really bothered her. It was the motive behind them. If the caller was older than fifteen, he had to be sick. No normal human being enjoyed scaring total strangers. And if it was Ray…

Automatically, Beth took another bite. The meat loaf was tasteless in her mouth.

Dear God, if Ray was the one calling…

Her mind wanted to balk. Not Ray. It couldn’t be Ray. She had loved him once, married him! How could she not have known what he was beneath the facade?

Again she heard, as though as a faint echo, Murray’s voice. How long will just scaring you be enough?

“Mom.”

Beth tuned in to find both girls looking reproachfully at her.

“Are you listening?” Stephanie asked.

“Yes, of course,” she lied. “But let’s hear about Lauren’s day now.”

Her younger daughter wrinkled her nose. “It was boring. But I forgot to tell you….” Strangely, she hesitated, darting a glance between her sister and her mother. “Well, last Tuesday…or maybe it was the day before…anyway,” she finished in a rush, “you know that man who came to our house when Daddy was so mad.”

Stephanie looked down at her plate. Beth nodded. “He’s the county sheriff.”

“Well, he came and talked to our class.”

Surprised and disturbed, Beth said, “About anything in particular?”

“Just what to do when you’re home alone. Stuff like that. He was really nice.”

Nice. If you didn’t mind being treated like a helpless woman who ought to be grateful for “protection.”

No, that wasn’t fair, Beth admitted reluctantly. He was nice. He’d stopped when he didn’t have to get involved, listened patiently, offered sound advice and never given her the feeling that he considered her to blame in any way.

“I’m glad you thought so,” she said neutrally. She tried to make her voice casual, the new subject not an obvious extension of the last one. “Listen, guys, have either of you talked to your dad this week?”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Stephanie duck her head again. Stick-straight brown hair brushed her cheek, and thick dark lashes shielded her eyes. She crumbled her garlic bread without actually eating any of it.

But Lauren said, “He called last night.”

“Did he have anything special to say?”

A small frown furrowed her brow. “I don’t think so.”

“Did he tell you what time he’ll pick you up Saturday?”

“I don’t remember.”

Without looking up, Stephanie mumbled, “The usual time.”

“Is he taking you anywhere?”

“He said maybe to a movie. Mom—” Stephanie stopped abruptly. “Never mind.”

“Come on.” Beth reached over and brushed her daughter’s hair back from her face. “You can’t start and not finish.”

Stephanie shrugged, looking almost sullen for a moment. “It’s not any big deal. It’s just… He’s always promising to do something with us, and then he doesn’t. I mean, I’d like it if he’d take us to a movie or Art In The Park or someplace, but he never does. I wish he wouldn’t promise something when he doesn’t mean it.”

“Oh, honey.” Beth reached over to lift her daughter’s chin. She struggled to hide her own sadness. “Have you talked to him about this?”

There Steph went again, hunching her shoulders and refusing to meet her mother’s eyes, as she had increasingly often lately. “No,” she mumbled.

“You know, he isn’t a mind reader. Maybe he’s just been tired, maybe having you at home with him makes your dad feel more like you’re a real family. Try talking to him.”

For what good it would do, Beth thought grimly. There had been a time when Ray listened. Now, it seemed as if he was too self-absorbed to think about anyone else’s feelings. Or was she just being negative, projecting her own anger?

Stephanie shrugged and made an unhappy face. “But if I say something, it sounds…oh, I don’t know, like I’m saying he lied! And it’s not that. It’s just that it’s kind of boring at his apartment, and I wish he wouldn’t tell us he’s going to take us somewhere and get us excited and stuff, and then not do it. You know?”

“Sure I do.” Beth stood long enough to give her daughter a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. “But I still say you need to talk to him. If you don’t tell him differently, he may think you’d rather not go anyplace special.”

Another twitch of the shoulders and an unenthusiastic “Yeah, I guess.”

Lauren had been listening without comment, but now she said, “I’ll talk to him. I don’t mind.”

“No!” Stephanie said with quick alarm. “You’ll tell Dad I think he breaks his promises. I don’t want him to know that.”

“I won’t…”

“Yes, you will! Don’t you dare say anything to Dad!”

Lauren stuck out her tongue. “Well, then you do it.”

They were off and running with the kind of bickering calculated to fray any parent’s patience. As she dealt with them, Beth reminded herself of how well they usually got along. And at least the quarrel was reassuringly normal. The day when neither wanted to talk about their father at all was the day when she really had to worry.

As if she wasn’t worrying now.

BETH ADDED PAPER to the copying machine, snapped the tray back into place and smiled at the customer. “All set.”

“Thanks.” The woman, a volunteer at the local animal shelter, went back to copying fliers about a free spay/neuter day.

Hearing her name, Beth turned. Maria Bernal, a friend who owned a women’s clothing store half a block away, was hurrying down the aisle between printer cartridges and pens. Hispanic, a little plump and very pretty, Maria took Beth’s arm and steered her into the back room. “Well, did he bring the kids home on time this weekend?”

“More or less.” Beth automatically gathered up the remains of an employee’s sack lunch left on the one table and tossed it in the garbage. “He was only an hour late.” Her dry tone didn’t reveal how torturous that hour had been to Beth, who had come to dread every one of the girls’ visits to their dad.