Maternal Instinct

“I didn’t look at who we’re interviewing,” Nell said. “What floor did we get assigned?”

Hugh showed her the map of the wing of offices on the fourth floor. “Gann’s last stops. We’re to interview everyone working along this hallway, and then the people upstairs where the last victim was, too, if we finish these in time.”

Nell nodded.

On the walk up to the front door, she paused to inhale the heavy fragrance of a huge, fiery red bloom.

The interior of the house was shadowy, but a tinny woman’s voice cried, “How could you? I trusted you!”

Over the ring of the doorbell, the man’s deeper murmur was indistinguishable. Music cued dramatically, followed by the familiar jingle of a television commercial.

A young woman came to the door immediately. She was pretty, no more than twenty-one or -two. A blonde who wore her hair in a ponytail, she wore shorts and a skimpy tank top that outlined high, full breasts.

“Officers. Please, come in.” Her smile wavered. “They said you’d be coming.”

“Thank you.” Narrow-eyed, Nell stole a glance at her partner. He’d damn well better not be checking out their interviewee, who reminded Nell uncomfortably of Kim.

But he only nodded courteously and gestured for Nell to go ahead. Ladies first. She had mixed feelings about his gentlemanly instincts. She was counting on him being chivalrous enough to keep his mouth shut. On the other hand, cops with old-fashioned attitudes generally didn’t like the idea of the little woman under gunfire. Frowning, Nell reminded herself that they’d functioned like a well-practiced team in the Joplin Building.

Watching the young woman turn off the television set, Nell rubbed her temple. A headache, and well deserved. Why in hell was she obsessing about Hugh McLean, she wondered irritably. They were stuck together temporarily. That was all. They could stand each other for a few months. Who cared what made him tick, or what he thought about her?

Stick to your real worries, she advised herself. The unprotected sex she’d had, and a teenage daughter with overactive hormones.

Like her mother’s, apparently.

Nell winced before realizing that Hugh was looking at her.

He raised his eyebrows.

She gave her head a small shake before smiling at the young woman. “You’re Carla Shaw?”

“Yes. I don’t know that I can tell you very much.” She swallowed and then squeezed her hands together. “Um, would you like to sit down?”

“Thank you.”

They chose opposite ends of the couch, facing the TV, while Ms. Shaw sat in an old upholstered rocker.

She rushed into speech, her voice tight with anxiety. “I didn’t actually see very much, you know.”

“That’s fine,” Hugh said, more gently than Nell would have guessed him capable. “We just want to know when you figured out someone was shooting, what you did, whether you saw him at all.”

“I…” She shivered, her face pinched. “I got a phone call from a friend downstairs. Becca is in Accounting. You know, down on the third floor? We’re roommates. Her bedroom is at the end of the hall.” She gestured vaguely. “Only she’s in the hospital. Doctors say she’ll live, but…” A shudder rolled through her body. “Excuse me, I think I’ll get a sweater. I thought it was going to be a hot day, but…” She jumped up and ran from the room.

“Should I follow her?” Nell whispered.

“I think she’ll be back.” Hugh shifted. “It’s already stifling in here.”

Nell nodded. Mid-July, she almost wished the police department had summer-weight uniforms, like the post office did. Except that an officer of the law wouldn’t garner much respect if a pair of shorts showed knobby knees.

Carla came back, looking small inside a baggy sweatshirt. “I’m sorry.”

Hugh’s smile warmed and softened his saturnine face. “Don’t be. You’re still in shock.”

“Maybe.” She bit her lip.

“So, your friend called,” he prompted.

Nell held her pencil poised to take notes.

Carla Shaw’s friend Becca had called and said she heard gunshots and screams and she didn’t know what was happening. She’d let Carla know more when she did. Carla had hurried to the nearest office to tell other people, but she stayed in earshot of her phone. Only Becca didn’t call back. Everybody discussed whether they should phone 911 or what, and finally one of the claims adjusters, a man, of course, had stood.

“Hell, I think I’ll go down there and check it out.”

“I tried to stop him,” Carla said, staring at them with big, haunted eyes. “But he wouldn’t listen. He had to be macho. He went down the stairs. And…um—” her mouth worked “—now he’s dead.”

Nell dropped her notebook and went to the young woman, not so much older than her daughter. Kneeling, she covered her hands with her own. “I’m sorry.”

Tears filled Carla’s eyes. “He was kind of a jerk. But mostly just a guy. You know?”

Nell nodded wordless agreement.

“Why would somebody shoot him?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

Carla freed one hand from Nell’s and wiped her wet cheeks. “We couldn’t really hear anything. Only then the elevator doors opened, and everybody stuck their heads out of the offices, because we thought it must be Kyle.” She was shivering uncontrollably now. “Only it wasn’t. It was that man. He was shooting as he walked out. I had just the one glimpse, and then I ran back in my office and locked the door and squeezed behind some filing cabinets. I don’t know how I was strong enough to move them.”

“Did he come into your office?”

“The glass insert in the door exploded, and I think maybe a spray of bullets hit the filing cabinet, because it jerked—really, almost jumped, like somebody had slammed into it. But I couldn’t see out, and later, when the police came, the door was still locked. So I guess he didn’t bother coming in, even though he could have just reached in and opened the door.”

Her eyes showed that she wondered why. Had she hidden so cleverly he thought no one was in there, or did he not want to bother hunting? Had her prayers to God been answered? Or had she just been lucky?

Nell remembered a story she’d heard once about a soldier in Vietnam who’d awakened one morning and discovered that his entire platoon lay dead around him. Every single man had had his throat slit during the night. Every one but him. He spent his life haunted by the question: why? Why him? Why not the friend who had slept beside him, or the guy he didn’t like, or the captain? Why was he chosen to survive? Did his life have some yet unknown purpose? Or had he been chosen at all?

Carla and all the others would live with some of the same questions.

Hugh did the note-taking. They got the names of the others she had clustered with, two of whom had died under the barrage of submachine-gun fire within seconds. Nell comforted as best she could once they had wrung everything Carla knew from her.

In the end, they left her staring at a soap opera on television, still huddled inside her sweatshirt as though the temperature was sixty instead of eighty inside the small house. Walking silently down the driveway under the hot sun beside a tall, grim Hugh, Nell smelled again the heavy scent of the roses.

They would hear this story again, and again, Nell realized. Today, tomorrow, perhaps for weeks. She knew from experience that by the end of the day, they might be able to hear it and minutes later climb into the car and crack a joke, or talk about dinner plans, or a movie one of them had seen last weekend. They might even think themselves inured, but the horror would be lurking deep in their psyches, the reminder of the sprawled bodies, the acrid scent of blood, the remembered terror on every face.

How would she get through this summer, working this horrific case, worrying about her daughter, worrying about herself? she wondered in a kind of daze. Partnered with a macho jerk who could smile like that?

A man who, insane though the very idea was, would be the father of the unborn child she might be carrying, if the fates chose to teach her a lesson.

CHAPTER FOUR