Her Lawman on Call Read online

  There was a warning note in his voice, a warning that told her if she continued to cross the line he’d drawn in the sand, there would be consequences to pay.

  Instead of retreating, she flashed a smile. The first she’d felt capable of mustering since she’d seen Angela lying on the ground, dead. “You couldn’t be. I’m an OB-GYN. You’re the wrong gender.”

  “First time anyone’s ever said that to me,” he quipped.

  Sasha glanced at Santini’s rugged profile as he signaled for another turn. That, she thought, she could well believe.

  Sasha sighed as she let herself into her small three-bedroom apartment. It was just a few minutes after one o’clock in the morning and she was beyond exhausted at this point. A second wind had come and gone and so had a third. At the moment, her energy was totally depleted, leaving her feeling barely human and incredibly sad.

  The handsome detective with the permanent scowl on his face had wound up asking her more questions on their way down to the precinct than he actually did once he was at his desk and typing out her responses. In reality, there wasn’t all that much more she could tell Santini beyond what she’d already said. What that amounted to was that as far as she knew, Angela Rico had no known enemies. Yet someone had deliberately killed her. Executed her, she thought, numbed by the thought.

  Dutifully, she had given the detective the name and address of Angela’s mother. Selena Cruz watched Rita, Angela’s three-year-old, while Angela worked at the hospital. She assumed that Angela’s mother might be able to give the detective information about Angela’s ex, although she still didn’t think Alex Rico could have killed his wife. If he had, he would have killed himself as well, because he maintained that he couldn’t live without Angela.

  Walking across the threshold, Sasha closed the door behind her. The single twenty-five-watt bulb they always left on for one another in the hallway cast dim pools of light on the floor beneath it. She yawned and sighed, debating just falling on her face on the sofa. Her bedroom seemed to be too far away.

  A click vaguely registered in the back of her mind and suddenly, the apartment was flooded with light.

  Sasha covered her eyes, blinking several times until she got them acclimated to the brightness. “You’re blinding me,” she accused whichever sister had turned the light on.

  “My God, are you operating in the middle of the night now?” Natalya wanted to know.

  Dropping her hand, Sasha saw Natalya coming into the living room, frowning at her. She and Natalya, eleven months her junior, shared high cheekbones and a passion for healing. Beyond that, they were as different as night and day. Natalya was shorter, with more curves and medium-brown hair that brushed against her shoulders. Her sister’s eyes were brown, not blue, and right now, they were fixed on Sasha’s clothing and filled with confusion and concern.

  “Sasha, you’re covered in blood,” she cried. “What happened?”

  She’d forgotten about that, Sasha thought. But before she could answer, another light went on, this time from the bedroom on the right. Leokadia, barefoot, her eyes half closed, stumbled into the room. The oversized T-shirt she had on indicated that of the three, she’d been the only one who had actually made it to bed tonight.

  She didn’t look any the more cheerful for it. “You two want to hold it down? Some of us are actually trying to get some sleep around here. You do remember sleep, don’t you?” Kady looked accusingly at her sisters. “It’s—oh my God, what happened?” Her mouth dropped open as she stared at her oldest sister. “Are you all right?” she cried, rushing toward Sasha. “Are you hurt? Whose blood is that? Sash, sit down,” the petite blonde ordered, pointing to the sofa. “Can I get you something? Do you want—?”

  In an effort to get her own word in edgewise, Natalya put her hand over her younger sister’s mouth. She looked at Sasha, who everyone else had always regarded as the rock of the family. “Whose blood is that, Sasha?”

  “Angela’s. Angela Rico’s.”

  Pressing her lips together, Sasha paused for a moment, struggling with her emotions as the reality of the situation finally sank in. The next moment, she offered her sisters a halfhearted smile of apology. At times it was hard to remember that although they all worked at the same hospital, Patience Memorial, or PM as everyone who worked there affectionately referred to it, they all had different areas of expertise. That meant that their spheres didn’t always cross, which, in turn, meant that they didn’t always know the same people.

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “She was a nurse on the maternity ward.”

  Natalya nodded. “I’ve heard you mention her.” Her voice was soft, gentle. It was unnerving for them to see Sasha like this. Except for when her fiancé had been mugged and fatally stabbed, it was generally believed that Sasha had nerves of steel.

  Coming up on her other side, Kady placed her hand on Sasha’s arm. “What happened to her, Sash?” she asked softly.

  “Someone killed her in the parking structure.”

  Very slowly, her hand now on Sasha’s wrist, Kady was drawing her over to the sofa. “Do the police have any idea who?”

  Numbly, Sasha shook her head. Her legs seemed to give out from beneath her just as she came to the sofa. “I was just at the precinct.”

  “Precinct?” Natalya echoed. “You? Why?” she wanted to know. She was quick to become defensive and protective of her family.

  “Because I found her,” Sasha answered, her voice hardly above a whisper. The entire time she’d spent with the detective, she’d done her best to be clear-headed, sharp. But here, with her sisters, she let herself grieve. And it felt awful. “Actually, the guard did. Walter Stevens,” she added. Neither of her two sisters probably knew who she was talking about. She was the one who always stopped to talk to people. “But he looked so upset and confused…” Sasha slid her tongue along her lips, but they continued to feel like two pieces of dry sandpaper. Just like her insides felt. “I tried giving Angela CPR, but…”

  Natalya took her hand. “You can’t save everyone, Sash,” she said compassionately. “Mama always says there’s a time for everything, remember? A time to be born and a time to die.”

  A semismile curved her lips. “You start singing, ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ and I’m leaving.”

  “I won’t sing,” Natalya promised. “Not tonight.”

  “You want me to draw you a hot bath?” Kady offered. When things got to her, she always sought refuge in a hot bath.

  Not waiting for an answer, Kady was on her feet and halfway across the room, heading toward the bathroom before Sasha could open her mouth.

  “Wait,” Sasha cried. “Stop. Stop.” Kady skidded to an impatient halt and turned around to look at her, waiting for further instructions. Sasha shook her head. “The way I feel right now, Kady, I’d probably drown in the tub. I’m too tired for a bath. I just want to get these clothes off and fall into bed.”

  “That can be arranged,” Natalya said as she took her sister’s hand and helped Sasha to her feet again.

  Sasha felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat. It was a welcome sensation, even though there was such a thing as too much help.

  “Thanks, but I can still undress myself, Nat. I’m not that out of it.” She sighed. “It’s just that…” Sasha’s voice trailed off as her sisters looked at her, waiting, not wanting to interrupt. She dragged her hand through her hair, loosening pins. A few rained down on the light-gray rug. “God, what a waste.”

  Her sisters both nodded, even though neither one of them had actually known the dead woman. But each had already seen death, been touched by death’s sharp talons, and knew instinctively what Sasha was going through right now.

  Or thought they did, Sasha amended silently.

  Right now she was just incredibly sad. And tomorrow, Sasha promised herself, or rather today, she amended, glancing at the digital clock on the coffee table, she was going to get up early and go to Angela’s mother. She should have gone tonight, with that detective, b
ut she couldn’t face the woman with Angela’s blood on her. But tomorrow, she was going to offer to do anything she could.

  As if that could somehow help, she thought sadly. She felt powerless, and hated that feeling. Hated being imprisoned by it.

  “If you need to talk, Sash,” Natalya was saying as she began to leave the room, “you know where to find me.”

  “Me, too,” Kady added.

  They both meant it. They were both willing to give up their night to sit up with her, holding her hand both physically and emotionally, until she no longer needed comforting. Until the shock had passed and the pain was manageable.

  Sasha could only think, not for the first time, how very grateful she was that she was not one of those poor souls who walked the earth alone. How grateful she was that she had her family to fall back on. Not just Nat and Kady, but Marja and Tatania as well.

  And, of course, her parents.

  Her wonderful, loving parents who always gave and never took. What would she have done if they hadn’t been there for her when Adam had been slain eighteen months ago? She doubted very much if she would have been here today if not for them. They thought of her as the strong one, but they were her strength.

  She looked from one sister to the other. “It’s not that big an apartment. I’ll find you.”

  Chapter 3

  Tony leaned back in his chair. The frown on his lips deepened. Nothing. Granted, he’d expected as much, but he had still held out a smattering of hope.

  The trouble these days was that anyone with half a brain now knew how to cover up their trail, thanks to all the different forensic programs on the airwaves. With everything but an intense, flash-of-anger crime of passion, perpetrators knew how to make reasonably sure that their prints didn’t turn up on the things they’d handled while committing the crime.

  And even with crimes of passion, if the suspect took a moment to think about his actions telltale prints would be wiped off.

  Sighing, Tony stared at the crime lab report the tech had just delivered to him. The note extracted from Angela Rico’s hand had only Angela’s prints on it. To compound the disappointment, the note had come from a printer that had nothing remarkable about it to set it apart, no quirky imprint to separate it from the thousands of other printers he would find in the area if he were to look. The note had been produced by a standard color printer, not a laser, not the old dot matrix, which might have made things easier if the suspect had access to it.

  And that was another thing, Tony thought, his annoyance growing. Their only viable suspect in Angela Rico’s murder had an alibi. A substantiated alibi. At the time of his ex-wife’s murder, Alex Rico was in Atlantic City, hoping he would have better luck at the blackjack tables than he had in love.

  As it turned out, Angela’s ex was a loser in both but no longer a murder suspect.

  “Not unless he hired somebody to do it,” Henderson volunteered wearily, ending a discussion that had been halfheartedly under way between the two of them.

  They were the only ones in the immediate area. Everyone else, including Captain Holloway, had gone home for the night.

  Tony glanced in his partner’s direction. Together a little over two years, he and Henderson hadn’t hit it off all that well. But then, to be fair, he hadn’t hit it off with too many people. He preferred working alone.

  Preferred everything alone, actually. Alone, there was no one else to disappoint you but you, he thought.

  The notion brought a cynical half smile to his lips.

  “If he hired somebody, what’s the note about?” Tony asked.

  The note bothered him. A lot. He felt as if it was pointing to something, but to what, he hadn’t a clue.

  Henderson shrugged his wide shoulders haplessly, the unironed shirt moving stiffly with the gesture. Without thinking, he scratched his neck.

  “To throw us off?” he guessed.

  Tony’s half smile looked a bit sarcastic. “Alex Rico strike you as particularly clever?” Tony asked.

  It was a rhetorical question. Still, Henderson considered it. “No, just grief-stricken. And mad. Very mad.”

  Tony thought of the victim’s ex, and the rage that he’d viewed in the man’s eyes, just behind the grief. “If Rico’s innocent, we might have some trouble from him when we catch who did this.”

  “You meant if,” Henderson pointed out.

  “No, I mean when,” Tony repeated.

  Although he regarded the rest of his life with a jaded, negative eye, it never occurred to Tony that he wouldn’t catch his quarry. Otherwise, there was no point in going through the motions. He’d taken the job, the badge, to make a difference. You didn’t make a difference by not catching the bad guy.

  Henderson nodded, backing away from a confrontation. “Cross that bridge when we come to it.” With that, he switched off his computer and pushed his chair back. The legs scraped along the scarred vinyl floor that had long since needed replacing. The current budget couldn’t handle it. “I’m calling it a night,” he said needlessly. “Maybe something’ll turn up fresh in the morning.”

  “Maybe,” Tony murmured under his breath.

  He scrubbed his hand over his face and tried to recenter his thinking. The pretty doctor had been right. Everyone had loved the victim. At least, everyone he and Henderson had talked to in the last week.

  Pushing back his own chair, he began to rise when the phone on his desk rang.

  “Looks like it might not be a night yet,” he said to Henderson as he reached for the receiver.

  Déjà vu.

  It had never been one of Sasha’s favorite words or sensations. As far as that went, it was way down on the list.

  At the very least, it encompassed a teasing sensation that tormented her until she could finally recall what, where and when she’d done “this” before, whatever “this” might be. Most of the time, the answers to the questions that occurred to her never materialized as she struggled to recall an elusive memory that would put things in perspective for her.

  This time, she didn’t have to try to recall. The memory that had sent the sensation rippling through her was still sickeningly fresh in her mind.

  Angela, lying in a pool of her own blood on the concrete floor beside her car.

  Since the discovery, Sasha hadn’t stopped parking in the structure. It was either that or resort to taking a cab or some mode of public transportation. Although the city had probably the best public transportation system in the world, Sasha was possessed of an independent streak that fairly demanded she be in charge of deciding how she came and went. Subways and buses left you depending on others.

  Besides, she loved that little ten-year-old Toyota. The vehicle had been her parents’ gift to her when she’d graduated medical school. They could hardly afford to splurge the way they did, even though they’d bought it used. And, since they did buy it for her, not to use it would be tantamount to insulting them.

  Entering the level where she’d parked this morning, Sasha realized she was holding her breath as she made her way down a deserted row.

  She was too old to be afraid of the dark, she scolded herself.

  It wasn’t so much the dark that frightened her, actually, as it was who might be hiding in that dark.

  Sasha glanced around to see if Walter Stevens was around somewhere. But if the security guard was on duty, he was making rounds on another level of the structure. There was no sound of anyone walking around here. No sound at all, really.

  And then she heard it.

  Every nerve ending in her body tightened as she listened.

  A moan? A gasp? She couldn’t make it out.

  Sasha looked over her shoulder toward the elevator doors. For a second, she thought about running back. And then she became annoyed with herself. There were still cars here. Probably just someone going home for the night. Or coming on for the night shift.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” Sasha called. But even as she asked, she was hurrying over toward where she�
��d parked her car this morning before making her rounds.

  There was a prickly sensation traveling along the back of her neck. It refused to go away, refused to be blocked.

  And then she saw it.

  Her breath caught in her throat, threatening to suffocate her. A scream escaped her, vibrating amid the trapped air. There was a figure on the ground, sprawled out like a mutilated doll. Like Angela, there was a pool of blood beneath her. Like Angela, there was a bullet hole in the center of her forehead. Her eyes were wide open, unseeing as they stared at the ceiling.

  This couldn’t be happening. Not twice. She was having some kind of hysterical hallucination, Sasha silently argued. Any second now, the figure would disappear.

  But it didn’t.

  Legs no longer made of lead, Sasha broke into a run. But it was too late. The figure on the ground was not moving. The gray-haired woman had surrendered to death the moment the bullet had found her.

  And then another sound came. The sound of screaming. Sasha did not immediately realize that it was coming from her.

  She was never going to get warm again.

  The iciness that surrounded her went clear down to her soul, despite the blanket that someone had draped over her shoulders.

  Sasha was sitting in her car, on the driver’s side, her feet planted outside the vehicle on the concrete floor as she faced the activity that was going on just a few feet away.

  What were the odds? she wondered. What were the odds of this kind of thing happening twice? Two women, nurses, both shot execution style. And both times her car was parked close enough to the scene of the crime to be touched by the killer.

  She shivered and took another long sip from the hot container of coffee the detective had shoved into her hands. It was half-consumed. Only belatedly did it register that he must have drunk out of it before he’d given it to her.

  Whether it was meant to warm her hands or her insides, she didn’t know. The no-frills coffee—black no sugar—failed to do either. But the jolt of super-strength caffeine did help her focus. Did help her hear his questions rather than just drift numbly away from the scene in a desperate act of self-preservation.