Revelations

Just as he had to shut off this protective streak. If she were a male partner, he wouldn’t have been watching her during the damn funeral, worried about her fragile emotional state. He’d have given her the credit of assuming she could handle renewed grief.

So why couldn’t he let it go where Caldwell was concerned?

Diaz scowled at the red light holding him up.

Because she was a woman, he concluded. And his gut instinct told him she was emotionally fragile, despite her kick-ass persona.

He didn’t want to worry about someone else. He could hardly deal with his own problems.

Ask for a change of partner, he thought, but knew he wouldn’t. If she found out he’d put in a request, he’d wound her, and he never wanted to do that. Besides, they worked well together now that they’d straightened out a few kinks.

He was exasperated to realize he’d worry about her even if they weren’t working together. Maybe especially if they weren’t. She was bullheaded sometimes. She needed him to moderate her tendency to charge ahead.

Uh-huh, his inner voice taunted. She needs you to protect her.

He swore out loud just as he pulled to the curb in front of her apartment complex. The piece of grit irritating his instep felt like a jagged chunk of gravel right now.

Caldwell stirred up something…brotherly in him. Yeah, that was it.

He was just damn grateful she was as plain as the cream-colored facade of her building, and that his flashes of awareness were few and far between.

Brotherly. Okay, he could be brotherly, even though he didn’t need another sister.

Diaz leaned on the horn.

CHAPTER TWO

“I’VE BEEN THINKING.” Seat-belted in, Ann took a cautious sip of the hot coffee she’d poured into an insulated cup just before she left the house.

After a glance to check for traffic, her partner accelerated away from the curb. “Yeah, me, too. I’m thinking we’ll find the slug who went berserk with the bowie knife holed up at his mama’s house. Hell, she’s probably doing his laundry, wondering why the water is running red.”

“Come on. He must have been soaked with blood. She isn’t wondering anything. If she’s doing his laundry, she knows she’s washing evidence.” Ann took another, more confident swallow of coffee. “But that’s not what I was thinking about.”

“No?” Diaz gave her an odd look before returning his attention to the road ahead.

She frowned, hoping she wouldn’t sound wacko. No, part of her wanted him to tell her she was just that. Convince her to drop the whole, creepy line of speculation.

“What I’m thinking,” she said, “is that two cops have died in really stupid accidents.”

“Two?” Another surprised, then speculative, glance. “Your father?”

“You don’t think not wearing a seat belt was stupid?”

“Yeah, I think it was stupid. Just…”

“Normal stupid? Instead of unbelievably stupid?”

“Right.” He slowed as a light turned yellow ahead. “Wiring two aluminum ladders together and then climbing damn near to the top of them, especially when you aren’t a lightweight… That’s unbelievably stupid.”

“Okay. Yeah. I agree.” She continued to frown. “Still…”

“Still, two cops have died in stupid accidents. Which took place six months apart.”

“That’s true. But do you remember a few months ago, when Reggie Roarke told everybody who’d listen about how someone tried to kill him?”

Diaz snorted. “Because he was on his back under a car raised by two flimsy jacks?”

“Uh-huh. Doing something stupid.”

Braked at the stoplight, he was silent. When she stole a glance, she saw that her partner was frowning, too.

“Something,” Ann added, “between normal stupid and unbelievably stupid.”

“Damn stupid,” Diaz supplied, but automatically, as if he was thinking hard.

Ann waited.

The light turned, and he started forward with the other cars. She wondered where they were going. No, she knew: the berserk biker’s mama’s house. At least this murder, hideous as it was, held no mystery. Half a dozen witnesses had seen the assault. Two, to their credit, had tried to stop it, and had gotten their hands and forearms sliced viciously for their efforts.

“He was high,” one of them said, shaking his head. “Crazy high.”

“On?” Ann had asked.

“Crack. But he might’ve had some other stuff, too.”

Unbelievably stupid seemed to be going around.

Now, still frowning, Diaz asked, “What was it Roarke claimed? That the car rocked, like someone was pushing it?”

“He said he heard footsteps. Thought it was his wife and started talking to her. Then the car rocked and he told her to knock it off. But it rocked harder, and he started scooting out. Didn’t make it before the first jack collapsed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Diaz said thoughtfully. “I remember his face.”

With a bulbous nose, thick jowls and a bull-like neck, Big Reggie Roarke wasn’t a candidate for a calendar of hot law enforcement guys at the best of times. With a black eye, plaster across his nose and a cheekbone blossoming purple and puce, he’d probably scared his own grandkids.

She gave a quiet grunt of amusement. Yeah, okay. He probably scared them without the added beauty treatment. When she was a kid, he’d scared her when he came to the house.

“He was lucky,” Diaz ruminated. “Damn near got his skull crushed.”

Ann waited some more.

“You’re saying…what? That someone pushed the car off the jacks? That he wasn’t making it up to hide how damn careless he’d been?”

Trying not to sound tentative, she said, “Maybe.”

“And that your father and Leroy Pearce’s ‘accidents’ weren’t.”

“A little shove would have taken care of Leroy.”

Diaz made a sound of disgust. “A belch would have catapulted the idiot into space.”

“But what if you were watching, waiting for them to do something stupid? How much easier could murder get?”

He was shaking his head before she finished. “You’re reaching. What if we looked county-wide at accidental deaths in the past six months. You know what we’d find.”

She knew. “Amazing idiocy.”

“People who let their kids ride a dirt bike down a rocky, forty-five degree slope with no helmets on. I guarantee we’d come up with at least one mother who killed her baby because she was holding it on her lap in the car instead of using an infant seat. She thought she could hold on to him. How many times have we heard that?”

Too many.

“Remember the five-year-old killed because his dad tied his plastic saucer to the back of his truck when the roads were black ice? The truck went into a spin and slid right over him?”

“Who could forget?”

He was on a roll. “Oh, yeah. There were the sixteen-year-old jocks playing chicken on an empty road, both with too much testosterone to lose.”

They’d hit head-on, neither, apparently, having braked or turned the wheel.

“Okay, okay,” she conceded.

Diaz’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Your dad. What are you suggesting? Somebody cut the brake lines?”

“No, the truck was checked over. I’m thinking he was forced off the road. Or tricked somehow—35th makes that sharp bend there.”

“Any dents on the side of the truck?”

“One long, deep scrape. But the cab crumpled, so it was hard to tell. Anyway, we all just figured someone had hit his truck in a parking lot.”

“He’d have bitched loud and long if something like that had happened.”

Yeah, he would have. He’d have ranted and raved. Thinking aloud, Ann said, “I don’t know if they checked for paint flakes in it or not.”

“We can find out,” her partner suggested.

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

His grin was wry. “Probably. I shouldn’t encourage you. But…hell. We can ask a few questions.”

“Damn it,” Ann muttered. “I was hoping you’d say I was wacko. Then I could forget the whole idea.”

“You’re wacko,” he obliged. “Let’s forget it.”

“Now it’s too late.” She scowled. “Speaking of too late, do you suppose they looked for footprints at Leroy’s? Ground was soft.”

“I can’t imagine. By the time his wife and half a dozen neighbors rushed over, and the EMTs trampled the hillside bringing him up, what were the chances?”

Resigned, she made a face. “None. Of course.”

“Still, we could talk to neighbors. Maybe one of them saw somebody go around back, figured it was a friend, didn’t think anything of it.”

“And no one ever asked them.”

“Happens.” His tone was utterly expressionless.

Ann glanced at him, knowing darn well what he meant. Her father hadn’t asked some questions when he was investigating the disappearance of Julie Lofgren. If he’d asked them, he would have found her and saved her husband and kids an excruciating year and a half.

“Okay,” she agreed, then realized they were stopped.

The neighborhood on the fringes of Puyallup was run-down: paint peeling, lawns ragged, driveways filled with cinder-blocked wrecks. She’d been on domestic disturbance calls here when she was a patrol officer.

“Which house?”

“Two blocks down.”

“Do we want backup?” she asked.

“We’re waiting for it.”

“My, aren’t we efficient.”

He gave her another crooked grin, and Ann had one of those moments she hated, when something turned over in her chest and she had to admit he was an attractive man.

His dark hair and eyes went with the Hispanic name. He was half a head taller than she was: six foot one or two, she guessed. She’d found out he was eight years older than she was, which put him at thirty-six. Rumor said he’d been a state champion hurdler in college, which she could believe after seeing him run down a suspect.

Grooves bracketed his mouth, deepening when he was tired, adding puckish charm to his smiles. And damn it, his smiles were what got to her, with the glint in his eyes and the skin crinkling beside them. A face that was usually impassive became sexy.

He was probably a lady-killer. If she called him during off-hours, she often heard laughter and a feminine voice in the background. Unlike her, he apparently had an active social life.

He also had kids, she knew. A couple of times he’d offhandedly mentioned having them for a weekend. When she’d asked once what happened to his marriage, he’d only shrugged.

“I’m a cop.”

That couldn’t be the whole story. Plenty of cops did stay married, even seemed happy. But she had tried hard not to speculate; Diaz’s personal life wasn’t any of her business. They worked together. Period.

She just wished…oh, that he was fifty-five instead of thirty-six. Squat, or pudgy, or stringy, instead of lean and athletic. Maybe that he chewed tobacco, so his teeth were stained. Or…heck, she’d forget he was sexy-looking if he had a crude sense of humor and down-deep disdain for the pathetic excuses for humanity they often met in their jobs.

No such luck. As far as she could tell, Diaz was smart, occasionally funny, basically kind and dedicated to his job. She’d looked hard for faults and was irritated by how few she’d found.

He interrupted her reverie. “You’re thinking again.”

“What?” She knew she flushed. “I’m supposed to empty my mind while we sit here?”

He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Sitting’s over.”

A patrol car pulled in behind their unmarked blue sedan. The four police officers got out to hold a brief conference. The two uniforms nodded when told their role in the upcoming drama.

Minutes later, Diaz and Ann pulled up to the curb in front of a shabby white house. The squad car slammed to a stop in the driveway. The uniforms raced to the back of the house, while Ann followed Diaz to the front door.

She stood back while he took the lead, knocking hard and calling, “Police!”

The woman in the stained housecoat who came to the door tried to pretend she had no idea where her son was, but she was a lousy liar. Shouts in back told them their quarry had tried to make a break.

When the uniforms shoved him, handcuffed, unshaven, barefoot and screaming obscenities, around the house, she broke into tears.

“Don’t hurt Eddie! It’s not his fault. Those drugs, they got him by the throat and make him crazy! You gotta help him!” she begged, tears tracking a face aged by a life that couldn’t be any picnic.

“He’s in police custody. He won’t be hurt,” Diaz said, in a voice gentle enough to make her sag.

As the day unwound, damned if they didn’t find she was washing Eddie’s blood-soaked clothes. The vest, though, was black leather, and she hadn’t wanted to ruin it, or his good leather boots. It apparently hadn’t occurred to her that rusty streaks of dried blood on her pink plastic laundry basket might be hard to explain, too.

Dinner was sandwiches at Subway, with Diaz and Ann companionably sharing cookies and chips. She figured she’d gotten her daily vegetables in the lettuce, tomato and green pepper on the six-inch sub.

Their knees bumped under the small table. They talked in short bursts, until Diaz suddenly swore. “I was supposed to call Elena and Tony before eight.”

“Your kids.” She vaguely knew their names.

“Crap.” His shoulders slumped. “I’m always doing this.”

“They must understand.”

He gave a sharp, incredulous laugh. “They’re seven and nine. Of course they don’t understand.”

She bit her lip and said in a quiet voice, “I did at that age.”

“Your mother wasn’t telling you that your dad couldn’t be bothered with you.”

“My mother died when I was eight.” Her mother’s death was something she didn’t let herself think about, and mentioned only when it seemed unavoidable. Even then, she kept the statement matter-of-fact. No how or why; that was nobody’s business. Ann crumpled up her sandwich wrappings.

Mercifully, Diaz didn’t say, Oh, what happened to her? Instead he stared at her. “I didn’t know. Is that why…”

When he stopped, she said, “Why what?”

His big shoulders jerked. “I don’t know. Why you’re a cop.”

She heard the pause after “you’re.” He was thinking something else. Fill in the blank. “Like one of the guys.” When what he meant was, “Why you’re so unfeminine.”

The knowledge stung, as every such suggestion did. Especially lately.

“Yeah, Dad wasn’t much help at picking out a prom dress.” Flippancy seemed to be her best defense these days.

“You went?”

“Sure,” she lied. “Pretty in pink.”

He took a last swallow of soda, then rattled the ice cubes. “Pink isn’t your color. You should wear blue. To match your eyes.”

Rarely without a comeback, Ann didn’t have the slightest idea what to say. She couldn’t take offense at a casual observation. “Thank you” wasn’t called for. He hadn’t said, “You’d be beautiful in blue.”

He didn’t remark on her silence, only gathered up his wrappings and said, “Ready?”

In the car, she said, “Do you want to try calling your kids now?”

Diaz shook his head. “Cheri would just claim they’re asleep even if they’re not. I’m not in the mood for her digs.”

“I’m sorry,” Ann heard herself saying. “You’ve never said…”

“That my ex-wife hates my guts?” He made a sound in his throat. “That’s the way it is.”

Ann let the silence ride for a minute. She wasn’t real good at this interpersonal stuff. Would she seem uncaring if she didn’t ask questions? Nosy if she did? But she was curious, so finally she said, “You want to talk about it?”

His fingers tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened a couple of times on the wheel. He sighed, long and ragged. “Maybe another time, okay?”

She shrugged as if she didn’t care. “Sure.”

Conversation died there. When he dropped her in front of her complex, Ann said, “See you tomorrow.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

He waited at the curb, as he always did on the rare occasions when he took her home, until she let herself in the door of her ground-floor unit. Chivalry, she had wondered before, or a cop’s paranoid belief that creeps lurked in every dark corner?

Damn it, she thought, standing in the middle of her living room, why was she obsessing about stuff that would never have occurred to her a year ago?

She knew the answer, and was shamed by it.

A year ago, she’d been so focused on winning her father’s approval, she hadn’t had time to sit back and wonder whether she was happy with herself or her life.

Now she did. And she wasn’t.

She liked being a cop. She just wished she had something, someone, else. She wished she knew how to have fun, how to flirt, how to feel pretty. A hobby would be good. Maybe a sport, like tennis. She jogged regularly, to stay in shape, and it did relax her. But jogging wasn’t fun.

The trouble was, she had no idea where to start to make changes. Her apartment needed something, for example. Okay, a lot. It had no character. But…decorating. How did you do that? She’d bought stuff before. Some of the furniture was hers. But whatever she brought home just never melded. A print would look lost on the wall where she hung it. A throw pillow on one end of the couch, bought in a rash moment, looked like an orphan from some exotic species, kindly taken in by a plain Jane mom.

Ann wandered into her bedroom, stripping as she went. She felt lighter the minute she laid her shoulder harness and gun on her bedside table. Unbuttoning her shirt, she eyed with equal disfavor the contents of her closet. What if some day she had call to look elegant, or flirty and sexy, or even just like a woman?

Out of luck. Even she could see that almost everything hanging in there was ugly. She never wore any of it anyway, except the blazers, Oxford cloth shirts and slacks that were her plainclothes uniform. She ought to bundle the rest up and give it to the Salvation Army. If they’d take it.

Still brooding, Ann changed into flannel pajama bottoms and a sacky T-shirt.

She could afford a new wardrobe, and to refurbish her apartment. Or even to buy a house. She’d been thinking of doing that. With what she’d saved and what she’d inherited from her father, money wasn’t an issue. She just didn’t want to waste it—buy a bunch of stuff and be as dissatisfied with it as she was by what she already owned.

Maybe she should hire a decorator. Of course, then the place would have character; it just wouldn’t be hers.

Depression hit her in a wave. What difference did it make what her apartment looked like? She hardly ever had anyone over anyway. She kidded herself when she said she had friends. Her “friends” were people she met to see a movie. Acquaintances was probably closer to the truth.

What she needed was someone to decorate her. In the act of getting her toothbrush and toothpaste out of the medicine cabinet, she stopped. Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. You could get makeovers. Couldn’t you? And maybe go to some store like Nordstrom and find a friendly-looking clerk and say, “Help?”

She studied herself carefully in the mirror and wondered if she’d have the courage to appear in public wearing a short skirt or a tight top and with makeup on her face. What if she sauntered into work someday thinking she’d achieved chic, and everyone busted a gut laughing?

Ann made faces at herself in the mirror: bared her teeth, tried for a radiant smile, tilted her head this way and that to see herself at every angle.

She wasn’t that bad-looking. At least, she didn’t think so. Her skin was good, if too pale. She couldn’t seem to tan, no matter what she did. Her teeth were white and straight—her father had seen to that, when one front tooth started trying to cut in front of the other. Braces were a hideous memory, but she was grateful for the result. Her forehead was high—maybe too high, especially with her hair pulled back the way it was. Blue eyes, check. Normal lips, not pouty but not thin, either. Wavy dark hair that tumbled well past her shoulders when she let it free.

Below the neck…well. She was too buxom for her short stature, giving her the look of a fireplug. Ever since she turned eleven and started to develop, she’d been trying to hide her breasts. Her hips were wider than she liked, too; the uniform had never fit her right. Why couldn’t she be tall and lean? She was pretty well on the other end of the spectrum from the ethereal models men and women alike seemed to admire these days. But she was no Playboy bunny, either. She was too…compact. Too strong, despite a build that didn’t match who she really was.

But maybe, with the right clothes—whatever they were—she could look curvy instead of squat. She’d settle for that. If she could figure out what the right clothes were.

She grimaced at herself and stuck the toothbrush in her mouth. Like she was going to go waste a bunch of money on clothes.

But maybe, she could spend a little money. Just…oh, go to Nordstrom and wander around. Maybe try some clothes on, just for fun.

She’d done that once, when other girls were shopping for prom dresses. Ann had pretended she was, too, trying on long dresses sewn with glittery sequins or simple satin slip dresses. But they hadn’t looked right on her, and she had suddenly, in the dressing room at the Bon, felt so inadequate she’d ripped off the slinky royal blue number and scrambled into her own clothes, rushing out of the store.

The memory almost made her jettison the plan, but she was beginning to think she had to do something instead of just feeling miserable.

She wasn’t sixteen anymore. So, okay, her idea of shopping was usually marching into the store and buying a new pair of the same pants she always bought. But she could browse.

Ann made one last face at herself in the mirror.

It wasn’t like she had a whole lot else to do on her days off.

“DO YOU USUALLY use bold colors, or soft ones?”

Ann sat on a tall stool at the cosmetics counter feeling as if she were at the dentist. The makeup consultant, or whatever she called herself, even reminded Ann of the dental technician who cleaned her teeth. Blond, perky, relentless.

“Uh… Surprise me,” she improvised. “I’m here because I want a change.”

“Oh, what fun!” chirped Britny.

Yeah, that was how her name was spelled, according to the tasteful tag she wore on her bright blue lapel. Ann had almost asked if someone had made a mistake, but decided poor Britny’s parents had just decided to be creative. Make her stand out from the crowd.

Preparing her tools, Britny assured Ann, “You were smart to come with your face bare. Most people don’t, and then we have to start by washing off the old makeup.”

Ann made a noncommittal sound and warily watched the hand approaching her face with pale goop on a cotton ball.

“You have fabulous skin!” Britny spread the cool liquid across Ann’s cheeks, chin, upper lip. Ann almost asked why she had to cover her skin, if it was so fabulous, but was afraid if she opened her mouth her tongue would get coated, too. “Alabaster is our palest shade of foundation. It’s blending in beautifully.”

She continued to chatter as she outlined Ann’s lips with a colored pencil—to “define them” she explained—then filled in with lipstick. “Your brows could use some shaping,” she suggested. “They have a lovely arch, but a more delicate line would bring out your eyes.” She tilted her head and studied Ann as if she were a half-done canvas. Nodding, she agreed with herself. “Definitely. Jeannie down at Salon Francine does a wonderful job. I know she takes drop-ins.”

Keeping her eyes open while that hand approached with a sharp implement was all Ann could do. Grimly she gripped the edge of the seat, stared straight ahead, and let Britny draw lines on her lids, then “accentuate” her lashes with mascara. Eye shadow was “blended” and blush applied to cheeks. At last, Britny caroled, “Let’s see how you like this look!”

She tilted a round mirror on the glass top of the counter until Ann could gape at herself.

“Ohmygod.”

Britny beamed.

Another doll stared back at her. One with huge, mysterious blue eyes, mysteriously enhanced cheekbones, a mouth that…well, almost was pouty.