Conviction of the Heart (26 page)

Pacing to release some of the murderous energy circulating inside him, he calmed enough to think like a detective. “Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll get it documented the right way, so we can nail him. Let me talk to the girls before the police get here, to see what else might be important to let them know.”

The two went up to Hope's room, where the girls had composed themselves and were in what appeared to be careless attitudes across Hope’s twin bed with its lilac chenille spread. Their frightened eyes, however, betrayed them as they looked immediately at Nick's right hand to see if he were carrying his weapon.

“I put it up,” he said, hands in the air to show they were empty, as if he were in a police action movie. “Sorry I scared you. When your mom called, I thought the worst.”

“Exactly how bad is it, Mom?” Hope asked. Her tone suggested she thought her mother had previously withheld information from them.

“It’s Joss’s dad, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know, Riv. Maybe.”

Nick interrupted. “If it is, this just shows how dangerous he is. He’s injured his own wife and children, and clearly he won’t hesitate to hurt you if he felt it would get him what he wants.” When Suzanne bristled, he cut her off. “I’m not bound by your rules of confidentiality, Suz. I need to know. Hope, can you describe the man for me? The one who gave you the letter?”

“He looked pretty normal. Taller than me. He had a long coat, like a raincoat, and it was…” Her face scrunched up as she tried to remember. “Black, or gray or something. I couldn’t see his hair—he had a black pull-on hat. He wore boots. And his eyes were blue.”

“Did he look familiar?” Suzanne asked.

She thought a moment. “I might have seen him before. But I have no idea where, or who he was.”

“Wait,” Riviera said, seeing a silver lining in the making. “Does this mean we don’t have to go to school anymore?”

Suzanne hardly missed a beat. “Um, let me think about that. NO.”

“I can pick you up and drive you,” Nick volunteered. His general duty to protect and serve the public could be fulfilled on a small scale. After all, in his eyes, this family was a particularly important segment of the public. No matter what his predicament, he didn’t intend to let them down.

Suzanne said, “You don't have to do that.”

“Of course I do. I’m not letting my girls deal with this alone.” There. He’d said it. She could protest all she liked about how Hope and Riviera were her responsibility and she could take care of them, but when the worst had happened, she’d called him. He was ready. “Besides, it gives me something to do.”

Her eyes widened in understanding, and she nodded.

“So, valet service,” Hope murmured, eyes narrowed. He could almost see her weighing the benefits and disadvantages.

“Police escort,” Riviera added. “Like that reality-show family with an undercover identity from the FBI.”

“You won't do anything embarrassing like turn on the siren, will you?” Hope asked.

“Not unless you deserve it,” Nick replied. They were taking this much better than he’d hoped.
Which probably meant they weren’t scared enough yet.
He thought about what Suzanne had said, the bruises on this young girl’s face and arms, and rage bounced around inside him like a silver ball in a pinball machine. This had to stop. It
would
stop. One way. Or another.

Suzanne still looked nervous. “But make sure if you're home before me, that you keep the doors locked, and call me or Nick with any suspicious thing that happens, okay?”

“Of course, Mom. We’re not idiots.” Riviera rolled her eyes.

Just then, the doorbell rang. Suzanne stiffened. Nick crossed to the window. A police cruiser had parked in the driveway behind his car. “Come on down and talk to the officer,” he said.

Suzanne opened the door, and let in a young, sandy-haired officer in a Pennsylvania State Police uniform. He smiled when he saw her and introduced himself as Tim Jennings. When he saw Nick in the foyer behind his complainant, his brow furrowed in surprise.

“Lieutenant, I didn't know you were on this case.” It seemed like the young man’s voice climbed half an octave.

Nick remembered this kid—well, not such a kid anymore. He’d served his first six months under Nick’s command on the city’s force, then when an opening presented itself, had transferred to the State Police. Jennings had started out fresh-faced and a little gullible, but some time on the streets had polished him well, if what Nick saw before him was any indication.

Nick smiled to reassure the young man. “I'm not, Jennings. I just happened to be here. This is my good friend, Suzanne Taylor. Let me catch you up on the situation.”

As the officer took notes, Nick gave him a condensed version of the story, withholding Greg Morgan’s name, as they had no proof of his guilt.
Yet.
Nick took the letter from Suzanne. The officer slipped it into a plastic bag as evidence. When Nick had finished, Jennings asked Suzanne a series of questions about her practice, about any potential persons who might have done this.

She tiptoed around many of the confidential issues, which irritated Nick. He did his best to pull back. So damn frustrating that he couldn’t just handle the matter himself. He couldn’t even go after Morgan, if that’s who it was, as a private citizen. While he was being investigated, any actions he took would be examined under a microscope. The most he could do was orchestrate others’ interventions. This galled him to his depths.

Jennings also interviewed the girls, who handled the situation with a little wide-eyed caution and a bit of flirtation on Hope’s part. When Jennings finished, he put his notebook away. “Now the computer intrusions—”

Nick spoke up. “I’ve got that under control, Jennings. An expert’s ready to look over the computers and tell us what we need to know. If we find something of note, I’ll be sure to forward you a copy of the report. But the sooner we get a definite ID on the letter, the better. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.” The officer replaced his broad-brimmed hat and returned to his car. “Expert?” Suzanne asked.

Nick nodded. “I’ve got a friend who’s the best at this kind of investigation. We’ll get the computer analyzed. Maybe all of the computers in the house, just to be safe, since they have the same line in.”

“All the computers? I never opened any suspicious emails!”

“It may not matter. If they’ve infected one of the girls’ computers with some sort of Trojan horse, they might be able to tap into any other computer on the network.”

Suzanne’s face froze. “Oh, my God.”

“Just the sort of thing that our prime suspect would be aiming for.”

Hope frowned. “That’s outrageous. Will your expert be able to find out who sent the mail?”

Riviera chimed in, “How do they do that?”

“Well, they’ll look at the email headers for the sender’s address, and the message ID generated by the email client that sent the message. The server chain shows the return path of sender to receiver, and the last bit will give us the IP address—the exact Internet point from which the email was sent. Then we should be able to get a warrant to find out from the company that provides Internet service exactly what computer it came from.”

Suzanne sighed. “So you have to take our computers to the lab?”

“Not at all. Charley can come download the messages, or make a copy of the hard drive so he can analyze it more thoroughly back at the lab. But we’ll leave them untouched till then.” He read all the furrowed brows around him and put an easy smile on his face. No use in upsetting them more than they were already. “It won’t be hard on you at all. I’ll have Charley do a full overhaul when he comes out.”

“All right.” Suzanne included all of them in her relieved expression. “So we’ll leave that to the experts.”

“Mom, when’s dinner?” Riviera asked.

“Oh, any time, I guess. The rice should be long done by now.” She turned toward the kitchen, then turned back, looking fetchingly over her shoulder. “Nick, you'll stay?”

When he hesitated, the girls started in on him. “Come on, Nick, please! You haven't been over for so long! We missed you!” They each grabbed a hand and pulled him into the kitchen.

“I guess I'll stay,” he said wryly.

While the girls set the table, Nick couldn’t help but notice how often Suzanne’s gaze stole up to the window, suspiciously probing the shadows. He didn’t have to worry about her being sufficiently aware of the danger. She’d dealt with enough lunatics to know what they were capable of. The real question was how well did she know Greg Morgan?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dinner was a remarkably cheerful and bubbly occasion, despite the afternoon’s events. Each of them seemed determined to put their worries aside. The girls scarcely stopped talking, filling Nick in on all the new twists and turns of their lives. Hope roundly reminded the detective that her beloved Steelers were headed for the playoffs, and Riviera rambled on about her role in the community theatre show. Suzanne was grateful she didn’t have to say much. Her mind was occupied in solving the mysteries.

Could they absolutely blame Morgan for the letter?

The author could be a dozen people she could think of. Any of the mothers or fathers in one of her cases could be upset enough to lash out at her. But something about the malice in the words, even the tortured penmanship, told her it was Morgan.

She moved, almost robot-like, to clear the table after dinner, suggesting ice cream for dessert. Nick helped Riviera select bowls and set out nuts and syrup toppings. Suzanne passed, hovering by the stove awaiting the whistle of the teakettle while the others laughed and teased, scooping rocky road ice cream. Nick’s frequent stolen looks, though, told her he knew what preoccupied her. No doubt his mind was on the same thing.

After the girls went upstairs, as unhappy as she’d predicted at the computer prohibition, she and Nick took their steaming cups of tea to her office. She closed the door. “So?” she asked, sitting on one end of the loveseat.

He eyed the small sofa, then pulled a chair over close to it. “What are we going to do about Morgan? Why the hell didn’t you get a restraining order against him after what happened to Riviera?”

“When the police wouldn’t follow through, I didn’t see the point. It would just have given him the chance to grandstand, because I didn’t have concrete evidence.” She eyed him. “That’s what your expert’s going to get us, right?”

Nick nodded. “He’d better. Where are you on Maddie’s case? Did you finally win the restraining order?”

“That’s the odd thing. He gave in. He caved. I thought we were past the worst of it.” She held the cup close to her mouth, taking a moment to let the cinnamon scent clear her mind. “He did make a threat after the hearing.”

“I hope you called him on it. Maddie has the right to—”

“Not to Maddie. To me.”

His face hardened into rock. “You didn’t think it was important enough to mention? Or that I might care?”

She reached out to pat his knee. “I thought he was bluffing. Like I said, I thought he’d moved on. I’m not going to make excuses. You know what they say about hindsight.”

He sighed. “I know, love. I want to help. That’s all.” He fidgeted in silence for a moment. “What did he say?”

“He said he’d get me, and mine, for what I was doing.” She couldn’t help a flashback to that courtroom, how close he was to her, how threatened she’d actually felt. The heat of his hatred. She’d been so sure he was just spouting off, that someone in his public position wouldn’t dare lash out the way he had. “Guess he meant it after all.”

“See, that fits in with a theory of mine,” Nick said, pulling her back to the present. “I think it’s more than a coincidence that I’ve been accused and suspended right after Morgan became aware that we were together.”

Suzanne blinked. What? We’re together?”

“I—well. Yeah. I mean, aren’t we?” He suddenly looked very vulnerable.

Were they? They’d been off and on, asserting their independence at times and then coming together for warm comfort. She’d at least considered the possibility of long term. And she’d called him on purpose, to reinforce that connection. “I guess…I guess neither one of us has actually said it.” A little nervous laugh escaped her.

“Okay. Now I have.” He reached out to pat her knee possessively.

So now they were together and he was her…boyfriend? “Boyfriend” did seem like such a stupid term for a grown man. So what then? Going steady? Another ridiculous term.

“Yeah, okay.” The smile still on her face, she returned to the rest of what he’d said. “You were suspended after Morgan knew we were t—together.” She hated that she stumbled over the word. She cleared her throat and went on. “So you think the allegations have something to do with Morgan? And me?”

“Once Reickert made that appeal to me, to stay away from you, I knew something was seriously wrong in the department. Morgan holds too much sway there. He’s got quite the political influence, and not all of it above the table.” He leaned back in the hard wooden chair and took a drink from his cup.

“But I’d figured what’s happened to you trickled from Washington and the others.”

“That could be. Back to Morgan and Maddie. What’s next? What’s he stand to lose here?”

“The lawyers are negotiating the property division. Slowly. Very slowly.”

“So Morgan is under the gun.”

“Yes.” She sipped her tea, her mind ticking along in the background of their conversation. Would Morgan cave on the property as he had on the protection order? Now that he had stolen his son from Maddie? Maybe that would be enough for him. But she had to be fair. “We have to keep the possibility open that this particular threat isn’t him. People do crazy things when they’re going through a divorce. You learn to ignore them after awhile.”

“My gut says that this is just escalating menace, designed to throw you off. Get you off Maddie’s case. Based on that, I’d say Morgan isn’t the kind of guy who likes to be ignored.”

That theory made the most sense. No one had been so persistently aggressive before she’d taken this case. They knew for sure the Morgans were involved in the one incident. The likely choice was that he was involved in all of them. “So what do we do now?”