Buch lesen: «The Littlest Witness»

Chapter One

Thea Lockhart hated being out so late. Every big city had its dangers, but Chicago after dark seemed particularly perilous, perhaps because she didn’t yet feel at home there. Or perhaps because the weather was so cruel, even for November. The days were gray and dismal, spilling over into frigid nights that seemed to go on forever. Thea sometimes wondered if she would ever be warm again.

But the bone-deep chill came from neither the city nor the temperature. She could have gone anywhere—a southern city, a small town, even out of the country—and the demons would have followed, pursuing her to the ends of the earth if necessary.

Thea’s fate—and her daughter’s—had been sealed four months ago, when she’d fled Baltimore in the middle of the night, leaving behind her identity, her friends and family, and her ex-husband, dead on her bedroom floor.

Because of what she’d done, she and Nikki would be on the run for the rest of their lives. The Mancuso family, along with the rest of the Baltimore Police Department, would never stop looking for them. Thea had violated the Brotherhood, the Blue Wall, and for that she would pay dearly—if she was caught.

Shivering in her long wool coat, she hurried down Woodlawn Avenue, away from the university. The lake was only a few blocks away, and the icy wind whistled through the alleys, in sync for an eerie moment with an ambulance siren that built to a crescendo, then faded.

It was after midnight and the empty streets spooked her. A shiver of warning feathered up her backbone, but when she glanced over her shoulder, there was no one behind her.

Through a break in the buildings, she glimpsed the smokestacks from the power plant. They rose like dark guardians in the night sky, but if anything, the sight deepened Thea’s chill. She felt alone and vulnerable. Exposed.

Normally she would have been home long before now, but three of the five waitresses scheduled for the evening shift at the diner had come down with the flu, and Thea’s boss had pressed her into working a double.

As much as she hated not being home in time to bathe her daughter and put her to bed—an evening ritual that had become important to both of them—Thea couldn’t refuse. Zelda Vanripper, owner of Zelda’s Eatery in Hyde Park, had been good to her, putting her on the day shift so that she could be home with Nikki at night and asking few questions about her background.

So Thea had stayed and worked, and the extra tips would come in handy, as always. But after being on her feet since seven that morning, she couldn’t wait to get home to a hot bath.

Her apartment building was only a few blocks from the diner, but the last two blocks dragged on her frazzled nerves and weary muscles. Huddling in her coat as a frigid gust tore at her, she hurried her steps, more anxious than ever to be out of the cold and the darkness.

As she crossed East Fifty-fifth Street, her apartment building finally came into view, but the sigh of relief died on her lips. Blue lights from half-a-dozen police cars bounced off the sides of buildings and reflected in long wavering beams down the wet street, capturing Thea in a frail azure glow.

She stood frozen for the longest moment, a two-word prayer rambling over and over in her mind. Oh God oh God oh God.

They’d found her!

Her first instinct was to turn and flee, to disappear into the shadows before anyone noticed her. But her daughter was in that building, and nothing, not even her own freedom, could compel her to run. She would never let them take Nikki back to Baltimore, back to the Mancusos, who would raise her in the same corruption in which they’d raised their own son.

Don’t think about that now, Thea ordered herself, burying her trembling hands in her pockets. Don’t think about Rick or the gunshot or all that blood.

Now was definitely not the time to panic.

Head down, shoulders hunched against the wind, she hurried along the sidewalk. When she drew near her building, she could see the area was cordoned off with yellow tape. Several policemen, uniforms and plainclothes, clustered around something in the street, almost directly in front of the building’s entrance.

Thea’s heart rocketed against her ribcage. Bile rose in her throat as she strained to see through the wall of policemen. Please, God, she prayed desperately. Let Nikki be all right.

If anything ever happened to her daughter, Thea wasn’t sure how she would cope. Nikki was her whole life, a sweet damaged angel who had been put through hell because of her parents. Thea would do anything, anything to protect her.

But what if she was too late? What if Rick’s family had somehow found them, and Nikki had tried to get away and…

Almost running now, Thea saw one of the officers step out of the way, and for the first time, she glimpsed the body lying on the pavement. Relief rushed through her when she saw it was a woman and not a child who lay motionless at the officers’ feet. But in the next instant Thea realized with guilty compassion that the victim was someone’s daughter. Her next of kin would be getting that terrible phone call, probably within the hour.

Lenore Mancuso’s grief-stricken face flashed across Thea’s mind, but she quickly shoved it aside. She wouldn’t think about Rick’s mother now, either.

Slowing, Thea hung back from the policemen, hoping they hadn’t seen her. The cold air frosted their breath as they talked and laughed and went about their grisly business with the same disconnection Thea had always found so chilling in Rick.

Teeth chattering from the cold and from nerves, she walked past them, her head still bowed. But as she approached the stoop, one of the officers called out, “Hey, you!”

She hesitated and looked over her shoulder.

“Yeah, you. Come over here.”

Her heart still pounding, Thea turned and slowly descended the steps. The officer met her at the bottom. He was one of the uniforms, middle-aged and heavyset, his face puffy and lined beneath the bill of his rain cap. His poncho billowed in the wind as he lifted his flash-light in her direction.

Automatically Thea turned her face away, but before he could switch on the beam, another car drove up and someone shouted, “Gallagher’s here.”

The man beside her muttered, “About damn time.”

Thea hoped the newcomer would distract the officer so that she could slip away, but he turned to stare down at her in the rain. “You live in this building?”

Thea hesitated, then nodded.

“Out kind of late, aren’t you?”

“I was just coming home from work.” She bit her lip, trying to control the chattering of her teeth. “Wh-what happened?”

“Someone took a dive off the roof,” the officer told her dispassionately. Then, “What’s your name?”

“Thea Lockhart.”

He carefully noted the information in his book. “Where do you work?”

“Zelda’s Eatery. It’s on East Fifty-seventh, near the university.”

Thea expected more questions, but the officer seemed to lose interest as the lights on the unmarked car that had just driven up were killed. They both watched as a man—Gallagher, she presumed—got out. He was tall and his shoulders beneath the heavy overcoat looked enormous. In spite of the cold and the rain, he wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, and his coat flapped open in the wind, making him seem impervious to the brutal weather.

With grim deliberation, he surveyed the scene, his gaze raking the whole area—including Thea—before he walked toward the body. There was no mistaking who was in charge now. The crowd of officers parted for him, and Thea got a clearer view of the victim. She hadn’t expected so much blood. It reminded her of that night—

She staggered back a step and the policeman beside her caught her arm. “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine…”

But she wasn’t. Violence and death hit too close to home, and as ashamed as she was to admit it, her main concern was how to disentangle herself from the police. She couldn’t get involved. She felt sorry for the poor woman lying on the street, but she couldn’t afford to get caught up in a police investigation.

Trembling, she watched as Gallagher knelt and examined the body. He didn’t touch the victim, didn’t disturb the crime scene with so much as a stray glance, but for a long moment, he remained there, studying her face as if her last thoughts might be lingering somewhere on her frozen expression.

After several minutes he stood. “Who was the first officer?” His tone was deep, authoritative. Not cold exactly, but a voice belonging to a man Thea had no wish to confront.

“McGowan,” someone told him.

“Over here,” the man beside her called out.

Gallagher turned and started toward them. His features stood out starkly in the streetlight. Even the rain didn’t diminish the angles of his face, the broad nose, the full sensuous lips. His eyes were blue, which surprised Thea. She’d thought they would be dark, like his hair. The light color was particularly striking against his grave features.

He wore a suit beneath the overcoat, as if he’d taken the time to dress properly before coming out. But his cheeks were roughened with stubble, giving him a sinister appearance that made Thea’s stomach quiver in fear.

His gaze barely grazed her before he said to McGowan, “What happened?”

“Wait here,” McGowan told Thea. He and Gallagher took a few steps away from her, but the wind caught their voices and tossed them back at her. “Looks like a dry dive,” McGowan told him. “DCDS. Detective Cox found a suicide note in her coat pocket.”

“Any idea who she is?”

“Not yet. There’s no ID on her, but Cox has gone up to canvass the roof for a purse or wallet, anything she might have dropped before jumping.”

Almost inadvertently Thea’s gaze followed Gallagher’s to the roof of the building. She thought she could see someone up there now, and she shuddered as the shadow moved away from the edge.

“Who found the body?” Gallagher asked.

“The building manager. Claims he came outside just before midnight to walk his dog, and that’s when he saw the victim lying on the street. He checked for a pulse, didn’t find one and then went back inside to call 911.”

“Great,” Gallagher muttered. “Probably trampled all over anything resembling evidence.” He paused. “Just before midnight you say. How accurate do you figure he is on the time?”

“Fairly accurate,” McGowan told him. “He says he’d just finished watching an old episode of ‘Hill Street Blues,’ which comes on at eleven, but the closing credits hadn’t yet run. He lives with his elderly mother. He says she can corroborate his story.”

“How soon did you respond?”

“Torecelli and I were on the scene within ten minutes after we got the call from dispatch. We secured the area and radioed for backup.”

“The manager couldn’t identify her?”

McGowan shook his head. “Claims he never saw her before tonight. She’s not a tenant, and he doesn’t know how she got into the building, unless someone buzzed her in. The outside doors are always kept locked.”

That was true, Thea thought. But a policeman worth his salt knew how easy it was to obtain entrance to almost any unmonitored building. If someone wanted in badly enough, all he or she had to do was wait around until someone was either coming or going and slip through the unlocked door, usually unnoticed. Crooks did it all the time.

And so did murderers.

Thea shivered as she studied Detective Gallagher’s grim countenance. His gaze traced the angle of the building, studying the windows that faced the street. “What about eyewitnesses?”

“None so far. No defense wounds, either, that we could see. We bagged her hands in plastic because of the rain.” Thea knew that normally the police liked to use paper bags, because the lack of air with plastic could alter the evidence. But that was something she didn’t want them knowing she knew.

In fact, the less any of them knew about her the better, especially Gallagher. Thea had a bad feeling about him. A very bad feeling.

He turned and observed the street again, watching for a few minutes as the crime-scene unit finished taking pictures and then began scouring the ground around the body for trace evidence.

He glanced at Thea, then at McGowan. “Who’s she?”

“She lives in the building. Says she was just getting home from work.”

Gallagher nodded vaguely. “Might as well chalk the site when CSU finishes, although it won’t do much good if the rain doesn’t let up. I’m going up to the roof. Let me know when the coroner gets here. Establishing time of death is going to be a bitch in this weather.”

McGowan nodded and took off, leaving Thea standing alone to face Gallagher. She hoped he’d just go up to the roof and forget all about her, but when he turned and started toward her, she saw in his eyes that he had no intention of letting her get away so easily.

“I’m Detective Gallagher.” His gaze was direct, penetrating. If he noticed her trembling, Thea hoped he’d blame the cold. “And you are?”

“Thea Lockhart.”

“Officer McGowan said you live in the building, is that right?”

She nodded. “I was just coming home from work when he stopped me.”

“You work around here, Miss Lockhart?”

“It’s…Mrs. I’m a waitress at a diner near the university. I already gave this information to Officer McGowan.”

The detective’s piercing gaze met hers. “You weren’t home tonight?”

Thea shook her head, shoving her hands even deeper into her pockets. “I’ve been away since before seven o’clock this morning. I didn’t see anything.”

“No strangers lurking around the building lately? No loud arguments, anything like that?”

“No, nothing unusual.”

Gallagher nodded almost absently. “I wonder if you’d mind taking a look at the body. See if you can identify the victim.”

The request was courteous enough, allowing her to decline if she wanted to, but Thea knew she had no real choice. No matter how much she didn’t want to look at that poor dead woman, she mustn’t do or say anything that might make Detective Gallagher suspicious.

She nodded and followed him over to the victim. The woman was lying on her back, her face surprisingly unscathed from what must have been a horrendous fall. But as Thea looked more closely, she saw the cuts and the terrible bruising that gave the body an almost ghoulish appearance. Her arms and legs were at strange angles, too, the bones undoubtedly shattered.

“I’ve never seen her before.” But Thea had second thoughts almost at once. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but she couldn’t place her. Which was good. At least she didn’t have to tell an outright lie.

As if sensing her hesitation, Gallagher pressed, “You’re sure?”

She could feel his gaze on her and she tried to suppress a shudder. “I don’t remember seeing her around here before.” Thea paused, then couldn’t resist asking, “Do you really think she committed suicide?” Jumping from a building seemed like such a ghastly way to die, but then, so was a bullet to the heart. A sick feeling rose in Thea’s throat, but she swallowed it away as she glanced up at Detective Gallagher.

His gaze narrowed on her, and she thought for one heart-stopping moment he might have recognized her. Then he said, “Suicide’s a possibility. We’ll know more when we’ve done a thorough search of the area. Right now you’d better get in out of this rain. We’ll be in touch if we need you.”

Alarmed, Thea started to ask why he would need to contact her again, but then realized he and the other officers would begin almost immediately the grueling work of talking to everyone in the building, searching for potential witnesses. Goyakod, Rick had always called it. Get off your ass and knock on doors. He would have been a good cop if he hadn’t been dirty.

But Thea wouldn’t think about that now. She’d become an expert at compartmentalizing her emotions, and right now all she would allow herself to concentrate on was getting away from Detective Gallagher without arousing his suspicions. She was desperate to go inside and check on Nikki.

She took the card he handed her, trying to control the trembling in her hands. But he noticed and said softly, “It’s rough when you’re not used to it.”

If you only knew, Thea thought, but aloud she said, “I’m okay. I just need to be inside, out of the cold.”

He nodded. “If you think of anything that might help, call me at that number.”

Thea stuffed his card deep into the pocket of her coat, knowing all the while that Detective Gallagher would never get a call from her, no matter what. He was a cop, and that was all she needed to know about him. His badge made him one of the enemy.

SHE SEEMED AWFULLY NERVOUS for a bystander, John thought as he watched her at the front door of the building.

She dropped her keys on the stoop, and even from his position several yards away, he could see how badly her hands shook as she bent and picked them up. She started to insert her key into the lock, but then, realizing the door was already unlocked, she hurried inside. A pale blue scarf hid her hair while the oversize coat she wore wrapped her from neck to toe.

But even bundled up like that, John could tell she was a small woman. Petite, he supposed, would be the word. Her thin face was pale and translucent, her features—dark brown eyes, slightly crooked nose, full lips—almost fragile-looking.

There was something about her, apart from her obvious attractiveness, that intrigued him. She had the demeanor of a woman who had been badly frightened and was trying her damnedest to hide it. But if she didn’t recognize the victim, what did she have to be scared of?

His inherent distrust was working overtime tonight, he decided, scowling. A lot of people were nervous around the police. Maybe the real reason Thea Lockhart triggered his distrust was that she reminded him a little of his ex-wife.

Meredith hadn’t cared for cops, either. At least that was what she’d said the night she walked out. But then two months later, she’d married another one, leaving John to conclude that it was one cop in particular she hadn’t cared for. Even though they’d been divorced for nearly two years, her betrayal still rankled.

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.