Her Lawman on Call Read online

  Drawing on his rather limited supply of patience, Tony asked, “How’s that?”

  Scrubbing a hand over his stubbled chin, Stevens rendered his confession. “I usually make my rounds earlier. If I’d been here five, ten minutes sooner, who knows? The nurse might still be alive.” He looked down at the prone figure. “I might have been able to stop whoever did this.”

  Moved, Sasha placed her arm around the man’s shoulders. At five-seven, she was approximately an inch taller than he was. “You don’t know that,” she said in a comforting tone. “Whoever it was might have shot you, too.”

  One of those, Tony thought, scrutinizing the woman again. A perpetual spreader of sunshine. Someone who felt called upon to lift burdens and cheer people up.

  They had their place, he supposed, but preferably not in his investigations. Frowning, Tony focused on what was important.

  “Why were you late in making your rounds?” The question was sharply asked, pinning the security guard to the proverbial wall.

  If the attack had actually been planned, someone would have gone to a lot of trouble learning the guard’s rounds and when he passed areas of the complex. For the nurse to have been slain when she was, it had to have been an unexpected attack, without any previous knowledge of the security guard’s route. Maybe this was just a crime of opportunity and the young nurse had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or someone could have followed her without giving the guard any thought at all, which meant that he or she was unfamiliar with the hospital’s policy.

  There were a great many things to consider before they could feel that they were on the right path to solving the crime.

  He looked at the guard expectantly.

  “Something I ate,” Stevens told him, pressing his wide hand to his less-than-flat midsection. “Been to the men’s room three, four times so far tonight.” He offered a sheepish smile. “Throws off my timing.”

  “I’ll bet.” Tony cut him off before the man could get more graphic. He glanced toward the doctor. “I didn’t get your name, Doctor.”

  “Sasha Pulaski.”

  “Sasha,” he repeated. “Is that Russian?”

  “Polish,” she corrected. “My parents are Polish.”

  He noticed, even though she still looked shaken, that there was a touch of pride in her voice. He wondered what that was like, to be proud of who you were, where you came from.

  His eyes swept over the doctor and the guard. “I’d like to take you both down to the precinct for a formal statement.”

  Stevens looked a little uncertain about the turn of events. “If I go, there’s no one down here to cover for me,” he protested, concerned. “I’ll lose my job and I can’t afford to have that happen. I have bills—”

  The guard sounded as if he was just getting wound up. Tony put his hand up to stop the flow of words before they started.

  “Henderson,” he called over to his partner. The older man was consulting with one of the forensic investigators. “See if we can get one of the patrolmen to fill in for the security guard here until I get him back from the precinct.”

  “Why don’t you just take a statement from Mr. Stevens right here for the time being? It might save you both a lot of time and effort,” Sasha quietly suggested.

  That caught him off guard. Tony thought about the solution she’d offered, or pretended to. He didn’t like having anyone poke around in his investigation unless he asked them to, but the truth of it was, she was right. The patrolman could be put to better use canvassing the immediate area instead of taking the guard’s place. And unless the guard had something significant to offer, such as having seen someone fleeing the scene just before the body was discovered, taking him down to the precinct would be a waste of time.

  Mainly a waste of his time. In his experience, most security guards with night beats were not overly observant and spent most of their working hours just struggling to stay awake.

  “Does that go for you, too, Doctor?” Tony asked, shifting his attention to her. “Do you want to just give your statement here and then go?”

  There was something abrasive and off-putting about the detective, Sasha thought. And he was doing it on purpose. Why? she wondered. Was he trying to create distance between himself and the people he considered suspects, or was he just trying to keep everyone at arms’ length, in which case, again, why?

  Had he seen too many dead bodies and had that hardened him, or had he started out that way?

  She thought of her father. All the years that Josef Pulaski had been on the job, he never once allowed it to affect him, to influence him once he was home. She knew that her father had made a conscious decision to draw a line between what he did in order to put food on the table and the time he spent with the family he did it for. When he walked across that threshold and into their house, it was as if that other world where he spent so much time each day didn’t even exist.

  She supposed not all policemen could be like her father. And that, she knew, was a real pity because her father was a great cop and an even greater father, the kind who sacrificed his own comforts for his children.

  “That’s up to you,” she told the detective, her eyes meeting his. She sensed that Detective Anthony Santini had no respect for the people he could successfully intimidate. “If you want to question me about what I saw just now, you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of a very short interview because I didn’t see anyone or anything—until I came up to Angela’s car.”

  She’d set up an obvious question and he obliged her by asking it. “And why did you come up to the victim’s car?”

  “Because mine is parked right over there.” Sasha pointed toward the light-blue vintage Toyota.

  He nodded. There was more and she’d left it unsaid. “And what would make for a longer interview?” he wanted to know.

  “If you want to ask me what I know about Angela.”

  The way she said it, Tony thought, indicated that the doctor knew something. Whether or not that “something” was what had gotten the nurse killed had yet to be discerned. But then, that was his job, separating the fool’s gold from the genuine article.

  “All right.” He looked at the security guard, making up his mind. “You can give me your statement here—for now,” he qualified, then turned to look at the tall, willowy physician. “As for you, I think you had better come down to the precinct with me for that longer statement.” The crime scene investigator stepped away, finally having gotten enough photographs of the dead woman. Tony immediately stepped forward. “But first I want to take a closer look at the body.”

  “Angela,” Sasha told him. There was tension vibrating in her voice as he turned to her. “Her name is—was,” she corrected herself, “Angela. Angela Rico.”

  Tony nodded, allowing the doctor her feelings even if he couldn’t allow himself to have any of his own. Not that in his present state he even thought that he was capable of having any of his own. They’d all been burnt out of him the day he had to view what was left of Annie’s mangled body.

  “Angela,” he repeated with a slight incline of his head.

  Squatting down beside the inert body, careful not to disturb the pool of already drying blood, Tony noted that the young nurse’s right hand was fisted. Had she been trying to punch her assailant when she’d been shot? It didn’t seem very likely.

  Tony narrowed his eyes, focusing. As he examined more closely, he saw that there was just the tiniest hint of some sort of piece of paper peeking out between the second and third knuckle of her hand.

  “Peter,” he beckoned to the investigator with the camera, “come here.”

  “Perry,” the man corrected as he came forward.

  Impatient, Tony ignored the correction. He tended not to remember names, only faces. “She’s got something in her hand. Take a picture,” he instructed.

  The investigator aimed his camera. The shutter clicked twice.

  Very carefully, using the tweezers he kept in his pocket, Tony ext
racted the paper from Angela’s hand. When he unfolded it, he found four words printed on it: First Do No Harm.

  Chapter 2

  The frown on Tony’s lips deepened. He turned his head slightly in Sasha’s direction so that his voice would carry to her.

  “I thought you said that she was a nurse.”

  “She was.”

  Was.

  The single word vibrated in her brain. God, it felt so strange, using the past tense about a person who, only two hours ago, still had a future ahead of her. Angela had told her that she wanted to make something more of herself, to continue up the ladder, so that her daughter would be proud of her. Now, she wouldn’t have the opportunity. And, at three, her daughter was too young even to have any decent memories of Angela. It just wasn’t fair.

  Tony continued looking at the note he held with his tweezers. Something didn’t add up. “Then it looks as if our killer’s confused. Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but isn’t this the first line of the Hippocratic Oath?”

  Sasha looked over his shoulder at the paper the detective held up. Her knees bumped against his back, and something self-conscious shimmied through her. She took half a step back. “It is.”

  “Then why would the killer shove that into her hand?” Tony thought out loud.

  “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was something Angela shoved at the killer before he shot her.” Sasha thought it over for a second. It made about as much sense as anything, she supposed. “Maybe that’s why he killed her.”

  Tony rose slowly to his feet and turned around to look at the woman who’d been standing behind him with interest. “Do you know something, Doctor?”

  She could almost feel his eyes penetrating her skin. As if he was expecting some sort of a confession.

  She met his gaze head-on, refusing to give in to the urge to look away. “I know a lot of things. But nothing that’ll do any good here.” And that made her feel frustrated and helpless.

  She had guts, he’d give her that. Most people looked away when he looked at them. “Maybe I should be the judge of that,” he told her.

  He glanced over to where the other detective was standing. The man had over twenty years on him, but the Captain had placed Henderson under him, a situation anyone else but Henderson would have been annoyed at. Not very much ever bothered Henderson. The older detective was talking to the hospital staff members who were clustered over to one side. Henderson didn’t have much use for the crime scene investigators—said all the lab work got in the way of his gut instincts.

  “You okay here, Henderson?” Tony asked.

  Watery green eyes looked at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. “Haven’t I always been?”

  Sasha half turned her body so that the other detective couldn’t see her lips. “He doesn’t sound as if he likes you very much,” she observed.

  Turning the paper over to one of the forensic technicians for evaluation, Tony indicated to the doctor where his car was parked.

  “Nobody does,” he said as she fell into step beside him.

  Sasha looked at the unsmiling detective, wondering if Santini was putting her on or if he was serious. His expression made her lean toward the latter, but she found it hard to believe that he would be so unaffected by what he’d just volunteered.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, grateful to turn her attention to something other than Angela’s body on the garage floor.

  “No.” Sparing her a glance, he raised one eyebrow in silent query. “Should it?”

  On second thought, he didn’t seem like the type to stay up nights losing sleep because he thought someone disliked him. “Most people like being liked,” she pointed out.

  “Most people need to be liked,” he corrected. “It’s an overt manifestation of insecurity.”

  “And you’re not insecure.” It wasn’t really a question so much as an observation on her part. The man was the picture of confidence, and yet, there was no conceit evident. She would have said that was hard to pull off—until she’d met Santini.

  “Nope.” He opened the passenger-side door for her. “Watch your head,” he instructed.

  The words made her smile. It was something she knew that policemen said to the suspects they ushered into the back of their vehicles. Her father must have said the same phrase hundreds of times.

  “Force of habit?” she asked.

  He realized what she was referring to and shook his head. “Small car.”

  She was surprised that the department let him drive this little sports car. She waited for Santini to get in behind the wheel. “Regular car in the shop?” she guessed.

  Starting the engine, Tony glanced at her waist, to see if she had buckled the seatbelt. Annie had never liked using it. Always said it wrinkled her clothes. In the end, it was her undoing. The first officer on the scene had told him if she’d used her seatbelt, there was a good chance she would have survived the crash.

  God, but he wished he could see her just one more time, clothes wrinkled all to hell.

  Tony banked down the ache and shoved it away into the darkness. He couldn’t let himself think about Annie.

  “This was my wife’s car.” She’d used his car that day, because hers was in the shop. He’d caught a ride to work from his partner. He should have insisted he needed the car and made her stay home.

  Married. The man was married. Sasha tried to picture that and couldn’t. Couldn’t envision the man sharing himself with anyone. And, obviously, since he’d used the past tense, he was no longer doing it.

  “Let me guess, you got this in the settlement.” The moment the words were out, she regretted them.

  A muscle twitched just above his jawline. “I got this at the funeral.”

  She’d never heard a tone so devoid of emotion. Or sound so incredibly empty. Beneath that emptiness, she had a feeling there was an endless abyss filled with pain. Guilt tightened her stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to sound so flippant.” Sasha spread her hands, feeling restless. “I do that when I get nervous.”

  She saw him slant a glance at her and it took everything she had not to shift in her seat. “Do I make you nervous?”

  Sasha knew he was asking not as a man, but as a cop. She supposed he had to rule out everyone.

  “No. But seeing Angela like that did. Does,” she amended, since she was still fidgeting inwardly. “Everybody loved Angela.”

  “Obviously not everybody,” he pointed out. “Someone killed her.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to believe it was on purpose. Angela had never hurt anyone. But her purse was still beside her body, so robbery hadn’t been a motive. If the killer had stolen Angela’s purse, Sasha thought, he would have found very little in it. A single mother who doted on her daughter, Angela was always struggling to make ends meet. That was why she was hoping to become a nurse practitioner.

  Sasha pressed her lips together as they emerged out of the structure. There was no moon out tonight, but the streetlights made up for it. “Maybe it was just an accident.”

  There was something in her voice that caught his attention. “You do know something, don’t you?” He looked at her as he turned right at the end of the next block. “Was there an ex-boyfriend in the picture?”

  “An ex-husband,” Sasha corrected. Alex was his name. Angela didn’t have time for a boyfriend. Her daughter and the hospital took up all her time. And then, because she knew the detective would find out, she added, “Angela had a restraining order against him.”

  “Why?” He fired the question at her before she was even finished.

  Angela had confided in her and telling the detective felt as if she was breaking a trust. But death had changed the guidelines.

  “Because he couldn’t see his way clear to letting her leave him, even after the divorce papers went through. But he’d never hurt her,” she added quickly. “Not like that.” If you loved someone, you couldn’t just put a bullet in the center of their forehead, s
he argued silently.

  The light turned red. Tony looked at her, his voice steely. “What way would he hurt her?”

  She remembered the black eye, the bruises that Angela had tried to pass off as clumsiness until she’d finally been convinced that she was setting a bad example for her daughter by remaining. “He hit her a couple of times. That’s why she left him.”

  Tony nodded, doing a little math in his head. “Doesn’t take much for abuse to escalate into something lethal.”

  Something in his voice sent a chill down her spine. “You speaking from experience?” she heard herself asking even though it was none of her business. She fully expected him to say as much.

  He didn’t.

  “Yes.” And then he looked at her as they came to another red light. “I’m supposed to be the one asking questions,” he informed her mildly. “Not you.”

  She couldn’t help herself. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she had always pushed the envelope a little further than it was supposed to go, always wanted to know everything about everything. And to help if she could. It was in her nature. In her genes. Nothing had changed with age.

  “Who did you abuse, Detective?”

  “I didn’t,” he told her tersely.

  And he never would. Not after growing up in a house where abuse was as regular as the seasons. Not after having his father beat his mother. He’d jumped to her defense, hitting his father over the head with a frying pan, then calling 911.

  After his mother’s death a few days later from the severity of the abuse, he and his brothers were propelled into the quagmire that was the state’s foster-care system, moved around from house to house like unwanted pieces of furniture until his mother’s Aunt Tess came forward to take them in.

  “Your father—?” Sasha guessed, only to have him cut her off. More with his expression than with anything he actually said.

  “I’m not one of your patients, Doc.”