The Littlest Witness

But Meredith Clark was no longer his concern, and Thea Lockhart was probably just the nervous type, someone who fell apart at the sight of blood. The only woman John had to worry about now was the Jane Doe lying mangled on the concrete.

“Where’s the building manager?” he asked the officer nearest him. “We’ll need to start knocking on doors ASAP.”

“He’s on the roof with Detective Cox,” the uniform told him. “Want me to radio up?”

“I’m headed that way.” John took another look at the victim. Had she jumped off the building of her own free will or had she been pushed? In spite of the note found in her pocket, John voted for the latter. His every instinct told him this was a homicide, and if his hunch panned out, the next forty-eight hours would be critical. After that, the trail would start getting cold. If a case wasn’t solved in the first two days, odds were good it would never be cleared. John knew that better than anyone.

“Hell of a night for a murder,” he muttered as the rain started coming down harder.

Chapter Two

The rain peppered John’s face as he stood on the roof, his presence as yet unnoticed. The wind was stronger up here, and he braced himself as he watched Cox’s flashlight beam moving about the area.

The roof was surrounded by a concrete safety ledge, about three feet high and six inches wide. Near the stairwell door and to the left, pallets of building materials and twenty-gallon drums had been stacked in preparation for resurfacing and waterproofing the deck, but the rest of the roof was clear and open. But even so, at this time of night and in this weather, the prospect of an eyewitness was pretty dim.

John’s gaze tracked his partner’s progression across the roof. Roy Cox was a fifteen-year veteran of the Detective Division. He and John had been working together for nearly four years now, and although they couldn’t have been less alike in temperament and investigative techniques, the partnership had worked out well. Whereas John was intense, almost obsessive about their cases, Roy was laid-back and soft-spoken, his west-Texas drawl as pronounced as it had been the day he’d left El Paso nearly thirty years ago.

He was a tall man, wiry and grizzled, with a handlebar mustache that might have looked more at home on a Texas range than it did on the streets of Chicago. A second man, the building manager, John guessed, dogged Cox’s steps, his gravelly voice muted by the rain and wind. John switched on his flashlight, catching the man in his beam. Wide-eyed and startled, he looked like a deer trapped in headlights.

Cox called out, “Hey, that you, Johnny boy? Glad you could finally make it. I reckon even you gung ho-types have trouble tearing yourselves away from a warm body on a night like this.”

John refrained from telling him that the only female in his bed lately was Cassandra, the temperamental Persian Meredith had left behind when she’d moved out. But Cox was his partner, and a nosy one at that; John suspected he already knew. “McGowan said you found a suicide note on the victim.”

“Damn straight we did.” Cox walked over and handed the bagged note to John. The words had been typed on a sheet of plain white bond paper.

“Short and sweet,” John muttered, training his light on the note.

“Just the way I like my women.” Cox grinned, his face pale in the cast-off glow from his flashlight. Water dripped from the brim of Cox’s cowboy hat, the battered one he always wore in inclement weather. “Looks like this is our lucky night, Johnny.”

“What do you mean?”

Cox held up a second plastic bag and aimed his flashlight beam on the contents—an expensive-looking beige handbag. “Found it on the deck over there by the wall. Victim must have dropped it just before she jumped. We’ve ID’d her from her driver’s license.”

“Who is she?”

“Name’s Gail Waters. She had a press pass…”

The name hit John like a physical blow. Stunned, he stared at his partner as a shock wave rolled through him. “Who did you say?”

Cox gave him a quizzical glance. “Gail Waters.”

Son of a bitch, John thought, trying to hide his surprise.

Cox rubbed the salt-and-pepper whiskers on his chin. “I’m getting some bad vibes here, Johnny-O. Are you trying to tell me you knew the victim?”

“I never saw her before in my life,” John answered truthfully. But he knew the sound of her voice. He’d talked to her on the phone less than forty-eight hours earlier, when she’d called the station wanting to interview him about his father’s disappearance seven years ago. It was a case that had not been solved to this day.

Gail Waters had been a reporter for and the managing editor of a small newspaper on the near north side of town. She specialized in stories involving disappearances and missing persons. Although she was a print journalist—and had taken pride in pointing out that fact to John—she had also been the co-producer of a cable show called Vanished!, which explored intriguing cases the police hadn’t been able to solve.

Why she’d suddenly decided to investigate Sean Gallagher’s disappearance, John had no idea. But her death had to be a coincidence. It couldn’t have anything to do with his father.

But even so, names from John’s past flashed like a strobe through his head: Ashley Dallas, the young woman whose murder Sean had been investigating at the time of his disappearance; Daniel O’Roarke, the man convicted of Ashley’s brutal murder, who now sat on death row; and John’s own brother Tony, who had been in love with Ashley at the time of her murder.

For some reason Gail Waters had wanted to dig up that old tragedy, expose secrets that had been buried for more than seven years.

And now she was dead.

A coincidence, John told himself again. But a cold finger of dread traced up his backbone as he stood in the icy rain.

“You want to notify the old man or should I?” Cox was asking.

The “old man” Cox was referring to was John’s uncle and their commanding officer. Liam Gallagher kept himself apprised of every investigation the detectives conducted under his watch. His knowledge of all the uncleared cases in his jurisdiction was nothing short of phenomenal, and John had always held his uncle in the highest esteem.

But now a tiny doubt began to niggle at him. Liam had worked on the Ashley Dallas case, too. Had Gail Waters talked to him about John’s father’s strange disappearance?

“Let’s hold off on that.” John stared at the note for a moment longer, then handed it back to Cox. “A type-written suicide note always worries me. I’d like to do a little more digging before we call in.”

Cox groaned. “I don’t like the sound of that. You’re going to get a hard-on about this one, aren’t you? You’ve got that look.”

“I’m going to do my job,” John said grimly. “And so are you. Until we get the coroner’s report, we’re going to treat this as a homicide investigation.”

Cox muttered an oath as his radio crackled. He pulled it from his belt and walked a few feet away to respond. John used the opportunity to examine the wall and floor of the roof at the spot from where he judged the victim had fallen. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he knelt and scoured the area with his flashlight, knowing all the while the rain had probably washed away whatever trace evidence, including fingerprints, that might have been left.

“Meat wagon’s here,” Cox called from the stairwell door. “You coming?”

“I’ll be there in a minute.” John stood and gazed over the side of the building. Down on the street, a handful of bystanders had gathered at the fringes of the yellow tape.

As if sensing John’s gaze, one of them, a man wearing a black parka, a stocking cap and a muffler covering the lower part of his face, glanced up at the roof. Even five stories away, John felt a tug of recognition.

He knew the man only as Fischer, an informant he’d used successfully in the past. John had no idea about the man’s real identity, but he seemed to have an uncanny knack for showing up at crime scenes, particularly the ones John was called out on. He suspected Fischer not only had a police scanner, but an inside line into the department. Whatever his connection, his information had proved invaluable in the past.

As John watched, Fischer turned and headed down the street, his shoulders hunched against the sharp blast of wind from the lake.

John rubbed the back of his neck where the hair had suddenly stood on end. Fischer always gave him a case of the jitters, although he couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe because there were elements of danger and distrust involved with all informants.

The door to the stairwell slammed shut in the wind and Cox disappeared. John saw that the building manager remained and had started across the roof toward him.

He was a short squat man, somewhere in his forties, who breathed in sharp, almost gasping puffs of air. In the dim light he looked eager and excited, his small dark eyes greedily taking in every last detail of the search.

“Detective, if I may be so bold…” Rain glistened in the fringe of brown hair that circled the man’s bald pate like a dingy halo.

“What is it?” John asked, annoyed at having his concentration broken.

“It’s something I, er, mentioned to Detective Cox, but he, er, didn’t seem to take much notice.” The man stuttered and stumbled over his words, as if extremely nervous. He wiped moisture from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s over there.” He pointed to the stack of building materials near the stairwell door.

“What is?”

“I’m, er, not sure. Evidence maybe.”

John said sharply, “What are you talking about, Mr.—”

“Dalrimple. Morris Dalrimple. My friends call me Dal.”

“Why don’t you show me what you’re talking about, Mr. Dalrimple?”

The building manager touched his fingertips to his chin, then dropped his hand to his side. “I think I saw something. If you would, er, just shine your flashlight over there…a little more to your right…yes, that’s it. Right there. And then if you would, er, kneel, like you did earlier…”

John complied, although there was something about Dalrimple that was a little unsettling. To be honest, the man gave him the creeps.

John focused his light on the stacks of building materials. From where he knelt he could make out narrow channels running through the crowded pallets of drums. He didn’t see anything at first, but then he moved the beam back, playing it along one of the channels.

“Yes, there it is!” Dalrimple cried excitedly. He almost jumped up and down with glee. “I thought I saw something in there earlier, although Detective Cox couldn’t spot it. But if I may be so bold…tall people, er, tend to overlook a lot of things. You don’t concern yourself with places that accommodate only little people—like myself, for instance. I thought right off the space between the pallets might be a good place for someone to, er, hide, but Detective Cox was certain no one could fit in there. I must admit, since I, er, put on a little weight, it might be a bit of a squeeze—”

Dalrimple broke off in midsentence as John stood and strode to the pallets. He bent and angled his light into the long channel between the stacks of drums. Something was lying on the floor several feet inside. Lifeless eyes gleamed in the crisp beam from John’s flashlight.

John knelt and felt inside the channel. Using the flashlight as an extension, he dragged whatever was on the floor toward him, until he could reach it with his hand. His fingers closed around a scrap of fabric, and a tinny voice intoned, “Ma-ma” as he pulled a doll from its hiding place.

“Well, I’ll be!” Dalrimple exclaimed, gazing down at the toy in John’s hand. “How do you suppose that got in there?” He started to touch the doll’s mop of dark hair, but John jerked it away. Dalrimple looked crushed.

“There could be prints,” John felt obliged to explain. “You understand.”

“Oh, of course. I know all about, er, police procedure. Mama and I never miss an episode of ‘Cops.’ So what do you think about the doll, Detective? Is it evidence?”

“Possibly.” Walking back across the roof, he stood at the edge where Gail Waters had gone over and fixed his light on the stack of pallets. The channel between was tight, but as Dalrimple had suggested, a small adult could manage to squeeze inside. A child could do so quite easily. And if she had been hiding in the space earlier, she could have seen what happened without being detected.

It was possible he might have himself a witness, after all. And if Gail had been murdered, it was imperative that he find the owner of the doll as quickly as possible.

He turned to Dalrimple. “I’m going to need your help…Dal. This is very important.”

The little man almost glowed. “Well, er, of course. Whatever I can do to be of, er, assistance.”

“I’ll need a list of all the tenants in the building, and I’ll need you to flag the ones who have children. We’ll start with the families who have little girls under the age of, say, ten.”

Dalrimple’s brow furrowed. “That could, er, take a while. I’m not so good on the computer, and Mama doesn’t like to be disturbed once she’s gone to bed.”

John grasped the man’s arm. “The problem is, I don’t have a while. I need it now. Five minutes ago. You can help me out, can’t you, Dal?”

The man seemed torn for a minute, some internal conflict—no doubt involving his mother—causing myriad expressions to flash across his face. Then he nodded, resolved. “You can count on me, Detective. I’ll do whatever I can to assist you.”

“Good,” John said. “I’ll be sure to note your cooperation in my report.”

Dalrimple said solemnly, “Mama will be so pleased.”

ZELDA’S EATERY was closed on Sundays, and normally Thea loved to sleep in. She’d never been an early riser on weekends, but in spite of her late hours the night before, she was up by seven, tiptoeing around the apartment so that she wouldn’t awaken Nikki.

Mrs. Lewellyn was gone, having gotten up sometime after Thea went to bed and let herself out of the apartment. She’d been sleeping on the couch when Thea got home, and Thea hadn’t had the heart to disturb her. She made a mental note to call the older woman later and thank her for coming over the evening before on such short notice. Nikki’s regular baby-sitter had already made plans when Thea had called from the diner about working a double shift, but Mrs. Lewellyn had been more than willing to step in.

Back in Baltimore, Thea had never had to worry about child care. Nikki had been enrolled in a wonderful preschool, and when Thea was kept late at work, her stepmother, Mona, who was employed in the same office, was usually available to pick up Nikki. And on the rare occasions when Mona couldn’t do it, Kate Ramano, Thea’s best friend since high school, had readily stepped in.

Thea wondered what Kate and Mona thought of her now. She’d left Baltimore without a phone call to either of them. They had no idea where she and Nikki were, or the real story behind Rick’s death, although Thea knew they’d both have their suspicions. They knew what her life had been like after the divorce—the midnight phone calls, the threats, the stalking.

Rick had made her life a living hell, and both Mona and Kate had been wonderful friends through it all. But they were human. They’d have to wonder, at times, if Rick’s shooting had been self-defense or premeditated. Hadn’t they heard her say, more than once, how much she wanted him dead?

Shivering, Thea poured herself a cup of coffee, then clicked on the TV, leaving the volume on mute as she surfed through the cable stations, trying to find a local news broadcast. She’d seen no sign of reporters on the scene last night, thank goodness, but she could never be too careful. The last thing she needed was to have her face splashed across newspapers. What if the Mancusos saw her picture?

For a while last night, she’d worried that Detective Gallagher might have recognized her from a wanted poster or police blotter or even a newspaper. Rick’s murder, along with the disappearance of his ex-wife and daughter, was bound to have made front page in Baltimore. She couldn’t be certain the story hadn’t been picked up by one of the wire services and carried nationally, as well, even though she’d seen no mention of it in the past four months.

When she and Nikki had first arrived in Chicago, she’d scoured the papers and listened to news broadcasts daily, but the Windy City had its own headlines, its own problems with domestic violence.

And by the time Thea had had the nerve to venture out of their motel room and look for a newsstand carrying the Baltimore Sun, the whole grisly affair had been knocked from the pages by a bribery scandal involving high-ranking city officials. There’d been no mention of Rick’s murder, no mention of the police corruption Thea had suspected for months.

She’d been left to imagine what the headlines must have been: VINDICTIVE EX-WIFE MURDERS DECORATED POLICE OFFICER. COP KILLER FLEES BALTIMORE WITH FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER. STATEWIDE MANHUNT FOR COLD-BLOODED MURDERER.

Thea sometimes still had a hard time believing how much her life had changed. She’d been a business major in college and had gone to work at her father’s private-investigation firm right after graduation. She hadn’t been interested in field work, but she had been interested in numbers. She’d run the office efficiently, cutting costs and increasing profits with her innovative ideas. Now she worked as a waitress in a diner. She’d once been a respected member of the chamber of commerce. Now she was a wanted criminal.

Deep in thought, she started violently when the doorbell sounded. Her heart skidded against her chest as her head swiveled toward the door. Who in the world would be coming to see her at this hour on a Sunday morning?

Telling herself it was probably Mrs. Lewellyn wanting to chat for a few minutes, Thea hurried to the door. But when she glanced through the peephole, she gasped in dismay.

Detective Gallagher stood in the hallway, his blue eyes so piercing she could have sworn he had the ability to look directly through the door, straight at her.

Frantically she glanced around. Was there anything incriminating in the apartment? Should she hide? Pretend she wasn’t home? Grab Nikki and make a run for it?

Smoothing her hands down the sides of her chenille robe, Thea tried to get her nerves under control. There was no reason to panic. Detective Gallagher was conducting a police investigation that she had inadvertently become a part of. All she had to do was convince him that she had seen nothing last night. She had no connection to the dead woman.

But suddenly the woman’s picture flashed on the TV screen, and for a moment, the smiling attractive face triggered something in Thea. Not recognition exactly, but a feeling that at sometime, somewhere, she and the dead woman’s paths had crossed.

The doorbell sounded again, and casting a glance toward Nikki’s bedroom, Thea patted down her tangled dark hair and pulled open the door.

Detective John Gallagher was even taller than she remembered, and more formal looking than she would have expected for a Sunday morning, unless of course, he was on his way to church. But somehow Thea doubted that. He had the appearance of a man who lived and breathed his investigations. Police work would be his religion. She knew the type all too well.

He was dressed in a dark gray suit, a starched white shirt and a silk tie that were obviously expensive—and made Thea immediately suspicious. She knew what cops made, what they had to do to afford clothing like his. A shudder of warning rippled through her.

“Good morning.” His tone was cordial, but he didn’t smile. His expression remained impersonal, his eyes very blue and very cold.

In spite of his grim demeanor, he was a strikingly handsome man, Thea realized. The kind of man who almost always spelled trouble.

He gazed past her shoulder into the apartment. “May I come in? I have a few questions I need to ask you.”

Dear God, what kind of questions? What in the world was he doing here? Thea frowned. “But I told you last night—I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t even home.”

One dark brow lifted slightly. “But your little girl was, right?”

His words were like a dagger through Thea’s chest. Her heart seemed to stop for a long painful moment, and she could almost feel the color draining from her face. “How did you—”

“May I come in? This won’t take long.”

He didn’t wait for her acquiescence this time, but strode by her into the apartment, turning to face her when she remained motionless at the open doorway. Left with no option, Thea closed the door and followed him.

“Sorry to interrupt your coffee.” He nodded toward the steaming mug on the cocktail table. “Smells good.”

Thea merely looked at him. She had no intention of offering him coffee or anything else. This wasn’t a social call, and the sooner she got rid of him, the better.

How in God’s name had he known about Nikki? The Mancusos had far-reaching contacts, but still…

Thea laced her fingers together, trying to stop the trembling. She couldn’t let him see how nervous she was. Couldn’t give herself away. For Nikki’s sake, she had to perform as she had never performed before.

“How did you know about my daughter?” She got to finish the question this time, amazed that her tone came out just right—part curiosity, part irritation at having her peaceful morning interrupted.

“We obtained a list of all the tenants in the building with children. Little girls, to be exact.”

“But why?” For the first time, Thea noticed the brown paper bag he carried in one hand. Fear crept up her backbone. She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Detective Gallagher, what’s this about?”

In answer, he turned toward the television. “I see you’ve been watching the news this morning. You probably already know that the woman who died here last night was Gail Waters. She was a reporter for a small newspaper called the Press.”

“A reporter?” What had a reporter been doing in this building? Who had she come to see? Had she somehow found out about her and Nikki?

“The paper is local, but some of her investigative pieces also ran on a cable news channel.”

Gail Waters had been on television? Was that why she’d looked familiar? Thea desperately wanted to believe that was the case. There was no reason to assume a reporter’s presence in this building had anything to do with her and Nikki. And yet…

Detective Gallagher was here in her apartment, asking questions about her daughter. Obviously he thought there was a connection.

Thea lifted her chin. “As I told you last night, I don’t recall having seen her before. I don’t understand why you’re here, Detective Gallagher.”

His gaze, intent and probing, fell on her once more. “As you can imagine, there’re still a lot of unanswered questions concerning her death.”

“But I thought her death was a suicide. The officer I spoke with last night said a note had been found on the body.”

“And as I said last night, suicide’s a possibility, but we’re not ruling out homicide. Not yet, at least.”

“Homicide? You think someone murdered her?” Thea felt momentarily faint. “Who would want to kill her?” she asked weakly.

He gave her a curious look. “Reporters are a lot like cops. People sometimes don’t like the questions we ask.”

Thea didn’t say anything to that, but she remembered the list of people Rick had claimed wanted him dead. And yet the last person he’d suspected was the one who finally did him in. Thea’s stomach churned in warning. “Whether it was suicide or murder, I don’t see what her death has to do with my daughter or me.”

“I’m coming to that.” He took something from the bag and held it up for her inspection. “Do you recognize this?”

Thea’s knees almost buckled when she saw the doll. The black curls, the brown eyes, the dimpled cheeks were very much like her daughter’s, which was exactly why she’d bought the doll for Nikki. It had been an extravagance they could ill afford these days, but her daughter had been so enchanted with the resemblance when they’d seen her in a shop window. Thea hadn’t been able to resist. Until then, Nikki had been largely unresponsive to just about everything. The doll, named Piper after a character in Nikki’s favorite book, had struck a chord deep inside the child that no one, including Thea, had been able to touch since that terrible night four months ago.