Crawford didn’t keep liquor in the house. After Beth died, he’d started drinking to dull the pain. It had no effect, so he drank more. Getting the DUI had been a wake-up call. He’d seen how close he was to becoming like Conrad, and he was not going to be like him. Not in any respect. Now, when he drank at all, he limited himself to one and went out for it.
He sat at the bar of a popular watering hole, slowly sipping the straight bourbon while ignoring the clamor around him—half a dozen TVs all tuned in to the same baseball game, the clack of billiard balls, the drone of conversation, the wailing lament of a country song being piped through the sound system.
If his cell phone hadn’t been on vibrate, he would have missed the call. He checked the caller’s name and hesitated, but only for half a second before deciding in favor of answering. Keeping his tone bland, he said, “Hey, Neal. What’s up?”
“You bastard.”
“Excuse me?”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Something wrong? You sound plumb overwrought.”
“You leaked his name to the media, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“Whose name?”
“It’s on the ten o’clock news. I’m watching it. A ‘new person of interest’ in the courthouse shooting. Chuck Otterman.”
Crawford couldn’t help but smile over Neal’s distress. He signaled the barkeeper to switch one of the TVs over to a Tyler station. On the screen was a reporter doing a live standup in front of the Prentiss County Courthouse. The audio was muted, but Crawford could guess what he was saying, because he’d practically spoon-fed it to the guy.
Neal’s lame approach to the investigation and his kowtowing to Otterman had left Crawford feeling that a shake-up was in order. A Houston station would have had ten times the viewers, but Tyler was closer, and its audience more homegrown. Therefore interest was greater about the goings-on in rural Prentiss. Using the burner phone he kept handy in the glove compartment of his SUV, he’d placed an anonymous call to the station’s news hotline and asked to speak to a reporter.
Sticking to the facts, Crawford told him about Otterman’s coming forward and admitting to leaving the crime scene, about his being asked by the “team of investigators” to view the body of the man erroneously suspected of the shooting. He hadn’t answered any of the questions put to him by the reporter, who was hyperventilating by then. He’d been purposefully evasive and made himself sound nervous about leaking information, hoping the tactic would whet the reporter’s appetite and ensure a deeper probe. His pot-stirring obviously had worked.
Neal was still ranting. “You were his ‘unnamed source,’ weren’t you? You tipped them. I know it.”
“They wouldn’t broadcast an anonymous tip without having it corroborated.”
“The reporter called me to substantiate it two minutes before air time. Two minutes!”
“Then what are you yelling at me for, when it was you who confirmed Otterman’s involvement?”
“All I confirmed was that he’d done his—”
“Civic duty. He’s a model citizen, all right.”
“In fact, he is.”
“Then he’s got nothing to worry about, does he?”
“No, but you do. I’m going to have your ass over this. I’m going to have it mounted on the wall of my den.”
“Have you cleared that with the missus?”
“How am I going to explain this snafu to Mr. Otterman?”
“Jeez, Neal, I don’t know. But you’ve got, uhhh, ten hours and forty-eight, no forty-nine, minutes to figure that out. Wasn’t the convenient time for him nine o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“Fuck you.”
“See you at the morgue.”
Crawford clicked off, having succeeded in upsetting Neal and hopefully shaking Otterman’s equanimity. But it was a minor triumph that did little to cheer him. Rather than goose Neal into conducting a more aggressive investigation, the detective would more than likely become more stubbornly conservative.
Otterman was probably as solid a citizen as Neal believed him to be. Crawford couldn’t pinpoint why the guy had got under his skin, but his initial response had been dislike and mistrust. His gut instinct about people had been too reliable to start dismissing now. He would continue going with it until it was proven wrong about Otterman.
Before concluding that he was absolutely innocent, as Neal already had, he wanted to gauge Otterman’s reaction when he looked at Rodriguez’s corpse, and wait to see what, if anything, Smitty turned up on him and his unexplained meetings.
He left his drink unfinished. Rather than lifting his spirits, it was only making him more depressed. In contrast to the air-conditioned bar, the atmosphere outside felt particularly sultry. He was clammy with sweat by the time he climbed into his SUV. He blamed the heat index for his lethargy—not the wounded look on Holly’s face when he’d left her with that harsh accusation vibrating between them.
Talking dirty to her one minute, lashing out at her the next. If she hadn’t known it before, she knew it now: Refined, he wasn’t.
Feeling bone-tired and dejected, he let himself into his house through the back door, draped his jacket over a kitchen chair, slid his necktie from around his neck, and, without even bothering to unbutton his shirt, pulled it off over his head as he made his way down the hall toward his bedroom.
As he passed the open door to Georgia’s room, he did a double-take.
Then he stood there, stupefied, his brain trying to register what his eyes were seeing. Blindly he felt for the wall switch and flipped on the light.
The bedroom had been turned inside out, upside down, destroyed. The mirror between the upright spindles of the dresser had been splintered into a million shards, the picture books ripped to shreds, the stuffed animals disemboweled, the princess doll dismembered and decapitated. The bed linens had been sliced to ribbons. Red paint, flung onto the pink walls, looked obscenely like blood spatters.
The violation made him sick. He forced down the gorge that surged into his throat.
He did a quick walk-through of the other rooms, but nothing else had been disturbed, which upset him more than if his entire house had been trashed. The offender knew him well, knew what he valued most, knew how to strike where it would hurt the worst, and scare the shit out of him.
Any attempted contact will be considered a violation, he remembered Holly saying. But he hadn’t been served yet, so with “screw that” haste, he called the Gilroys’ house. Grace answered.
“It’s me,” he said. “Is Georgia okay?”
“Crawford. Uh—”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, of course. She’s been asleep for hours.”
“Go check on her.”
“Crawford—”
“Just do it.” Reining in his impatience, he added, “Please, Grace.”
Fifteen seconds later, she returned. “She’s in her bed, fast asleep.”
He took his first steady breath since discovering the vandalism. “Is your house alarm set?”
“You know Joe.”
“Keep it set. Even during the day.”
“What’s the matter? Has something happened?”
An explanation would only support their argument that he was dangerous to be around. “A daddy thing,” he said, forcing himself to give a light laugh. “Moment of panic. You know how it is. Sorry I bothered you. Good night.”
He disconnected and, when he did, he became aware of a noise outside. Quickly but quietly, he went down the hall and into the living room. Slipping his pistol from the holster at the small of his back, he peeked through a front window and saw a shadowy form approaching the porch.
Crawford turned on the outside light and simultaneously flung open the door.
The man halted and shielded his eyes against the sudden glare. He blinked Crawford into focus. “Hey, Crawford.”
He was a professional server whom Crawford had used himself.
“I know it’s late, but I came around earlier and you weren’t here.” With apparent reluctance, he withdrew an envelope from the breast pocket of his jacket and extended it to Crawford. As he took it, the server said, “Sorry, man.”
Crawford didn’t thank him, but he shook his head to indicate that it was unnecessary for him to apologize. He was only doing his job.
The server touched his eyebrow in a quasi salute, then turned and walked back to his car parked at the curb.
Crawford closed his front door. Considered an immediate threat to Georgia, he’d been served with a temporary restraining order. He glanced in the direction of her despoiled bedroom.
The irony didn’t escape him.
As soon as her back hit the sofa, he flung open her robe, ruched up her t-shirt, and hooked his thumbs into the narrow band of her panties. They were off and flung to the floor within seconds.
She yanked his shirttail from his waistband and grappled with his belt buckle. More practiced at opening his fly, he pushed aside her clumsy hands and hastily undid the buttons. Together they shoved his jeans and underwear over his butt. A heartbeat later, he was inside her. Completely and solidly. Engrafted.
For five seconds—ten?—neither of them moved, not even to breathe, possibly because they couldn’t quite believe that they’d reached this point of no return without kissing or wooing or foreplay.
Then he braced himself above her by placing one hand on the edge of the seat cushion, the other on the arm of the sofa behind her head, and began pumping into her. The angle of each thrust was perfect, the friction electrifying. Yet, greedy for more, she dug her heels in and tilted her hips up to amplify the grinding motion of his.
In a shockingly short time, she was gathering fistfuls of his shirt, then her hands moved up to his shoulders, where they held on, her fingers digging into the firm muscles. Her back arched and held in a silent plea for one more stroke…one more glide…one more… And she came.
The instant he felt her helpless clenching, he surrendered to his own climax. The intensity of it caused his arms to collapse. He settled heavily on top of her, pulsing inside her, his breath hot and damp against her neck as he groaned, “Christ, christ.”
The echo of Crawford’s grating voice jarred Holly out of the dream, which had been a startlingly lifelike reenactment, and her body had responded accordingly. Her heart was thudding. She was short-winded. Her sex was achy and wet and feverish.
Do you remember it like I do?
Throwing back the sheet, she got out of bed and went into her bathroom. She turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face. But it didn’t wash away the memory of Crawford sprawled on her chest, his own expanding like bellows while he took a few moments to catch his breath. Precious few moments, however. Then he abruptly raised his head and looked directly into her eyes from a distance of mere inches.
Her hands now trembling with the memory, she turned off the faucet and dried her face. As she lowered the towel and saw her image in the mirror above the sink, she realized that this is the way she must have looked to him in that moment: hair straggling over her face, eyes glazed and dilated, cheeks flushed, lips parted in bewilderment over what had just happened.
Then as now, her nipples had been so tight underneath her t-shirt, so sensitized, that the abrasion of the soft cloth had been enough to send tingles through her. If he had touched them in that moment, brushed his tongue across them, even fanned them with his breath, her heart might have burst from the pleasure.
But he hadn’t. He had broken that moment of shared wonderment by slipping out of her and levering himself off the sofa. That’s when she was struck with the enormity of what they’d done, the sheer calamity of it. Frantically, she’d pulled down her t-shirt and crammed the hem between her thighs. She rolled onto her side and drew herself into a ball. But there was no cause for modesty, because, by then, he was making his way out, his boot heels thudding against the hardwood floor.
Of all the factors relating to that event, the one that surprised her most was her own spontaneity. She hadn’t paused even long enough to ask herself Should I or shouldn’t I? She had simply acted on a propulsive desire without giving any thought to the wrongness or rightness of it.
Which was unlike her. Following her father’s abandonment, her mother had relinquished all major decision making to her. Bearing that much responsibility, she had carefully weighed every decision. She couldn’t afford to make one wrong turn, because her future, as well as her mother’s, had depended on correctness.
There had been no place in her life, ever, for caprice.
As she gazed at her reflection now, she realized that, despite the consequences that might arise from that one rash act, she didn’t regret it as much as she should. Had she been her careful and cautious self, she would have missed those thousands of incredible physical sensations. She would have missed those erotically charged moments measured by the cadence of their hard breathing. She would have missed the utter wildness of it, the untempered carnality. She would have missed…him.
Better to be remembering it now with a trace of regret than forever regretting that she had denied herself the experience.
But he would always be the man she had compromised ethics for. And to him she would always represent the system standing between him and his child. His parting words to her last night had cut to the quick, but they had summed up the hopelessness of their situation.
After showering and dressing, she went into the kitchen to find Marilyn already there, sitting at the dining table, which she’d turned into a temporary workspace for herself. They exchanged good mornings, and when Holly asked Marilyn how she’d slept, she guffawed. “Some bodyguard I am. I went out like a light. What time did you get home?”
“Around ten thirty. I had a police escort all the way to the back door, then they parked at the end of the drive.”
“They’re still there. Did you happen to watch the news last night?”
“No.”
“They’ve got another person of interest. His name is Chuck Otterman.”
Holly stopped in the act of pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Are you certain?”
“Heard it again this morning. I thought the name sounded familiar, and guess what?” She tapped a sheet of paper with a list of names on it. “He’s contributed to your campaign.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve met him.” She realized now why Crawford had asked her about the man, seemingly out of the blue. “What are they saying about him?”
Marilyn filled her in and summed up with, “Frankly, I don’t think it amounts to much. He came forward of his own volition. A guilty person wouldn’t call attention to himself. And what could he possibly have against you?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“I think the media just got wind of his sneaking away from the courthouse and made more of it than is there.” Marilyn pointed at the chair across from her. “Sit. Let’s talk.”
Holly sat.
Marilyn clasped her hands together on the tabletop. “You shot down—maybe not the best turn of phrase—my idea of using the Texas Ranger somehow to—”
“I stand by that decision, Marilyn. He’s got enough on his plate.”
“Holly, he’s a poster boy.”
“For?”
“For long and lean, badass lawman. Your description ‘cop-like’ didn’t include the chiseled chin, the cheekbones, and the fact that he’s a hunk.”
“Honestly, Marilyn. How old are you?”
“Never too old to notice. I Googled him last night. Do you know his history?” Before Holly could reply, she began citing what she called Crawford’s “exploits,” including Halcon.
“And he’s not just a shoot-’em-up. Practically single-handedly, he busted up a kiddie porn ring run by a preacher and his wife from right here in Podunk, but they had customers all over the world. Even had the feds singing his praises.”
She sat forward, leaning into the table. “He’s smart. He’s tough. He was rude as hell to me, but I’ll forgive him that because he has this remarkable soft spot for his daughter. His orphaned child. He was in your courtroom fighting to regain custody of her, when…”
She paused for dramatic effect. “When he’s called upon to save the life of the judge who might very well have ruled against him.” Spreading her arms wide, she exclaimed, “It’s Hollywood. It’s chivalry and valor. People will eat it up. But we’ve got to serve it to them.”
“I’ve recused myself from his custody case.”
That blindsided Marilyn. “What? When? You did? Want to tell me why?”
“No.”
Holly’s succinct but firm reply left Marilyn with no wiggle room for argument. Tactfully backing off that, she picked up a pen and began using it to beat out a rapid tattoo on the table.
A full minute elapsed, then Marilyn tossed down the pen and smacked her hands together. “Actually this is even better. Yes! As the presiding judge, you were limited as to what you could say. Now that you won’t be hearing his case, you can be subjective. You’re free to talk about him in any terms you choose.”
Holly sighed. “Marilyn—”
“I know you don’t want to expose his daughter to the media. I get that. Besides, I doubt the grandfather would permit it. He wouldn’t even listen to my pitch. But what if we—”
“Wait. Back up. You tried to pitch this idea to Joe Gilroy?”
“About half an hour ago.”
Holly looked down at Marilyn’s cell phone lying on the table between them.
Marilyn said, “I Googled him, too, and had their home number in no time. Not that it did me any good to call. The instant I introduced myself and told him who I was, he hung up on me. But we can still cash in without using the little girl. We can—”
“Excuse me for just a moment.” Holly pushed back her chair and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Holly left Marilyn dictating notes into her cell phone. When she returned a few minutes later, Marilyn was still at it. She completed her thought, then clicked off the phone. “I’ve come up with some ideas just off the top of my head. We don’t have to implement all of them, but… What’s that?”
Holly sat Marilyn’s packed suitcase near the back door. “Don’t you recognize it?”
“You’re moving me out?”
“No, I’m firing you.”
Marilyn’s lips went slack.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done, Marilyn. You were worth every penny I’ve paid you up to this point. But the lengths to which you’ll go to win the election are repugnant to me.” When she saw that Marilyn was about to speak, she held up her hand. “Argument is futile. Our association ends now. Please clear the table before you go. Have a safe drive back to Dallas.”
Neal was waiting in the corridor outside the ME’s domain when Crawford arrived a few minutes before nine o’clock. Neither spoke. Crawford took up a position against the wall and just looked at the other man.
Finally Neal said, “The PD is all abuzz this morning.”
Crawford turned away to look down the long hallway, currently deserted. Neal didn’t take the hint. “Is it true you got served a TRO?”
“Yes.”
“Did you threaten your father-in-law?”
“No.”
“You’re capable of violence. I have firsthand experience.”
Crawford brought his head back around and caught Neal swabbing his lower lip with his tongue. “But I don’t give advance warning of it,” Crawford said. “Sort of defeats the purpose.”
“You’re destructive,” Neal said, gathering angry momentum. “That little stunt you pulled last night with the TV station set this investigation back—”
“What investigation, Neal? You’re soft on the one thing we have going.”
“Otterman? The chief—”
“Awww. Did you get called into the principal’s office?”
“I got reamed.”
“For letting this case congeal on your tidy desk?”
“For your unsubstantiated allegations—”
“I didn’t allege a goddamn thing. True or false, Otterman came to us and admitted to talking a cop into letting him leave the courthouse. Huh? True. True or false, I asked him to take a look at Rodriguez, and he said okay. Also true. What did I allege?”
Neal remained silent but irate.
Crawford took a breath and assumed a more conciliatory tone. “Look, you want me to talk to the chief and take full responsibility for any backlash over Otterman, I’m happy to do that.”
“Hell. No. I don’t want you talking to anybody. Something about you just naturally pisses people off.”
“And here I was hoping to get elected homecoming king.”
“Who trashed your house?”
The flippancy of Neal’s question grated the part of him left raw and exposed by the vandalism. But he replied with a forced nonchalance. “The PD really was abuzz this morning, wasn’t it? Forget holding seminars on home security. Y’all ought to conduct them on gossiping effectively.”
“Wasn’t gossip. It’s a matter of record. You called the police to your house. Responders filed a report.”
Crawford knew the chances of catching the intruder were slim to none. Anyone committing a crime that specific, that targeted, knew what they were doing, and it was doubtful they’d left incriminating evidence behind. Even so, the room was being dusted for prints this morning.
The vandal had entered through a window in Georgia’s room, but a flashlight search of the area outside it hadn’t yielded much. One of the officers had theorized that the culprit had been looking to steal something that he could swiftly pawn for drug money. “When he found dolls instead of electronics or jewelry, he got mad and went a little crazy.”
Crawford didn’t agree with that theory, but he hadn’t argued. He’d called in the police only so there would be a record of the break-in if ever he should need it, say for an insurance claim.
“Any idea who did it?” Neal asked him now.
Crawford wouldn’t have answered anyway, but he was spared the need to. “Here’s Otterman.”
The man stepped off the elevator and strode toward them, looking as robust and arrogant as he had the day before. The only difference was that he was dressed in work clothes. The legs of his khakis were stuffed into boots that were caked with mud. He stopped a few feet from them, his eyes as hard as drill bits as he addressed Neal. “Are you so desperate for leads that you had to put my name out there?”
Neal quailed. “No one from our department referred to you as a person of interest, Mr. Otterman. That was the reporter’s inference. He’s since been corrected and promises to recant.”
“For all I care he can refer to me as Jack the Ripper. It doesn’t change the truth, which I told you yesterday. The only skin off my nose is that reporters are calling me for comment when I’ve got a tight schedule, a busted piece of equipment, and a crew standing around scratching their balls while I’m down here with you.” He checked his wristwatch. “Can we get on with this so I can get back to work?”
Crawford was standing near the large red button next to the double doors. He pressed it and they were buzzed in. He stood aside and let the other two go in ahead of him, Otterman looking straight ahead, continuing to pretend that he didn’t exist.
Neal had notified the staff that they were coming and asked them to be ready. Dr. Anderson was otherwise occupied, but one of his assistants was there beside the table. Once they were in place, he respectfully folded back the sheet.
Crawford kept his eyes on Otterman, who, in spite of his repeated denials of knowing Jorge Rodriguez, instantly gave himself away. Crawford saw the man’s gut quicken with a sharp indrawn breath. He blinked several times, then hastily looked away.
“Mr. Otterman?”
He recovered himself so rapidly and so well that if Crawford hadn’t been watching for signs, he would have missed them. When Otterman replied to Neal’s discreet prompting, it was as though he had dropped a welder’s mask over his face. His transformation was that sudden. His expression was closed, unforgiving, unrevealing.
He said, “I don’t know him.”