Johnston - Heartbeat (18 page)

She looked stricken. “Ten minutes,” she sobbed. “Ten minutes. It’s not enough.”

“Shh. Shh, Mrs. Mott,” he soothed her, feeling his heart pound and sweat dampen his armpits. “I won’t let them come in here until you want them in here. You have all the time you need.”

“He said ten minutes.”

Jack turned his head and shouted, “Mrs. Mott needs more time. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to come out!” He turned back to the woman—who looked much older than she did in the recent picture her husband had provided of the three of them—and said, “Is that better, Mrs. Matt?”

Her face was puffy from the booze, and her sunken eyes had dark circles beneath them and were red-rimmed and bloodshot from crying. New tears carried clumps of mascara farther down her face. She brushed at the streaks agitatedly, blackening her fingertips and cheeks. She swiped at her runny nose with the back of her hand, smearing mucus across her face.

“I have to do it,” she said, looking up at him, seeking understanding . . . and approbation.

Jack’s heart clutched. “No, you don’t,” he said, his voice harsher than he’d intended. “Think of Christina graduating from high school, Mrs. Matt. How proud you’ll be. Think of her walking down the aisle in her white wedding gown. Think of holding your first grandchild in your arms.”

She looked up at him, her eyes blurred with tears, her mouth open and contorted as though she were screaming.

No sound was coming out.

“Mrs. Matt,” he said, working to keep his voice calm, though he felt frantic, desperate, knowing he was running out of time. “Think about—”

“He won’t let me see her,” she babbled hysterically. “He says I’m an unfit mother. He says I’ll hurt her. I would never hurt my child.”

Jack felt the rage welling inside him, bubbling and hissing and spilling over like hot lava. He wanted to shake Lilly Matt until her teeth rattled, until she woke up and listened to herself.
I would never hurt my child.
Bullshit. She was about to
kill
her kid! Didn’t that count? There were lots of ways to hurt a child besides the physical ones. What about the shame and humiliation of having a drunken mother? Didn’t that count?

Jack felt the ledge he was perched on crumbling out from under him. Why had he come in here in the first place? Why hadn’t he waited outside and let someone else do this? Lilly Matt was his mother come back to life, and he hated her the way he’d hated his mother. If she weren’t pickled in alcohol, he could talk to her. It was the gin that had turned her so crazy. The goddamned stinking booze!

He could see Mrs. Matt was steeling herself to shoot, trying to find the nerve to end it all. He watched her finger squeezing the trigger. It was now or never.

Jack lunged for the gun.

Lilly Matt’s eyes widened until the whites showed all around, and her mouth formed a surprised O.

Jack cried out in despair the same instant the gunshot resounded in the small room. The horrendous noise reverberated in his head, making his ears ring and sending shock waves through his body.

Too late! Too damned late!

His hand was clenched around hers on the .38, but he didn’t bother wrenching the gun away. He stared frozen in horror at Christina as her body slumped and her eyes went blank and a trickle of blood streamed from the corner of her tiny cherub’s mouth.

Noooo! Noooo!
Jack screamed in his head. But the sound was real. Raw and aching, it filled the room, echoed from the walls, and carried outside to the blue sky and the green grass and the policemen waiting with guns ready.

A keening sound erupted from Lilly Mott’ s throat. She let the gun go and grabbed her daughter and rocked the limp, lifeless body of her child in her arms. The noise coming from her throat reminded Jack of the sounds his mother had made when she got the news his father had died. He recognized the hopeless lament. What followed after had torn his heart out and left a gaping hole in its place.

The motel door burst open, and Jack was surrounded by cops with guns in their hands. He sat on the bed beside the grieving woman and the dead child, his body shaking so hard he couldn’t move. “She killed the kid,” Jack said.

A tight-faced patrolman tore Mrs. Mott away from her child and another roughly cuffed her hands behind her. Two others were tender beyond words with the little girl, who couldn’t feel a thing.

A policeman tried to help Jack stand up, but when he realized Jack was in shock, ordered the nearest uniform, “Get a paramedic in here. Move your ass!”

It’s my fault. My goddamned fault that kid’s dead. I despised Lilly Matt because she reminded me of my mother. She must have seen the disgust in my eyes. She must have felt my loathing for her. She gave up hope because my eyes told her there wasn’t any.

“Jack? Is that you?”

Jack awoke from the nightmare and found himself staring into Maggie Wainwright’s curious eyes. She had pulled her coupe up beside his truck on the wrong side of the road so she could lean out the window and talk to him. A glance at the church parking lot showed it was still mostly full, but the street around them was empty. He glanced at his watch and realized thirty minutes had passed.

“I saw the truck and couldn’t help looking to see if it might be yours,” Maggie said. “Sometimes cars from elsewhere in town find their way to this neighborhood,” she added with a smile.

Looking at her, he felt the same fierce attraction he always did—along with another feeling that always came with it, one he hadn’t recognized until this moment.
Fear.

He was getting more deeply involved with this woman—an alcoholic, like his mother—every time he saw her.

Get out while you can, Jack,
a voice warned.
It’s not too late.

Maggie’s brow furrowed as she stared at him. “I thought you were going home. How did you end up here?”

“I was worried about leaving you alone with all that booze. By the time I got turned around, you were leaving.” He shrugged. “I decided to follow you.”

“Because you thought I was headed for a bar?”

He nodded.

She pursed her lips, and he could see she was perturbed. “I suppose I ought to thank you,” she said. “But I have to fight my own demons, Jack.”

“I know that!” he snapped. “That doesn’t make it any easier for me to stand by and watch you struggle. What if you’d ended up in a bar, Maggie?”

“I suppose we’d both have hated me in the morning,” she said, with a wry twist of her mouth.

“That isn’t funny.”

“Did you come in and listen?” she asked.

“I heard you speak. I ended up with more questions than answers when you were done.”

Several more occurred to him.
Had Maggie been telling the truth about when she took her first drink? Had she perhaps been drunk when her family needed her? Was that why she blamed herself for what had happened to them?

Jack took a mental step back and looked at the woman in the car across from him. The last thing he wanted was to want her. Maggie’s fight with alcoholism would provide a constant reminder not only of his painful childhood but also his failure to save a child because he had let the past color his present. To make matters even worse, Maggie had her own ghosts to fight and might be exorcising them by killing other people’s children.

Jack knew he was playing with fire.

Yet he couldn’t walk away. Without her, he felt as empty inside as a gutted steer. He would find a way to deal with her situation. He had no choice. Because of all the women he had ever known, only Maggie had ever filled up the hollowness he felt inside.

If only she wasn’t a murderer, anything was possible.

“I’ll follow you home,” he said at last.

“It isn’t necessary,” she replied.

“I want to make sure you get home without—”

“Stopping for a drink?” she finished for him. “All right, Jack, you can follow me home. I imagine you’ll be more fun at the Hollanders’ picnic tomorrow if you don’t spend the night staring at the ceiling, wondering where I am.”

“I’m right behind you,” he said.

Even after he made sure Maggie got home, Jack didn’t sleep well. He spent the long night tossing and turning on a rumpled bed of unanswered questions.

Chapter 12

“Do you want a hamburger or a hot dog, Maggie?” Roman called out as he carried a platter of raw hamburgers and hot dogs out his kitchen door to the gas grill on the screened-in flagstone patio.

“Hamburger,” Maggie called back. “And in deference to
E. coli,
char it, please.” She was treading water while hanging onto the side of Roman’s backyard pool. She provided a second set of watchful eyes on three-year-old Amy, who was being pushed by her mother around the shallow end of the pool in a colorful, plastic duck-shaped float.

The Easter egg hunt, with Amy wearing a pair of paper bunny ears she and Lisa had made together, had been a painful reminder to Maggie of days gone by. She had forced her-self to smile and cheer on Jack and Tomas, who had followed Amy around pointing out eggs for her to find.

“Hot dogs for me and Amy,” Lisa said before Roman could ask.

“One hamburger, one hot dog,” Tomas volunteered from his seat on the springboard at the deep end of the pool. “Any way they come off the grill.”

“A hot dog sliced down the middle with American cheese melted on it,” Isabel instructed from a lounge chair near the diving board.

“Figures,” Roman said with a laugh. “You like everything American.”

“Si, señor,”
Isabel said with an exaggerated Spanish accent.
“Todo Americana.”

“Jack? What about you?” Roman inquired.

“Hamburger. Rare,” Jack said from his spot half in, half out of the water on the stairs at the shallow end of the pool. “I like to live dangerously,” he said when Maggie opened her mouth to object.

“Be sure to put on another hamburger and hot dog for yourself, Roman,” Isabel said.

“Got ’em both right here.” The hot grill sizzled as the last of the meat went on. “I could use some help in the kitchen,” Roman said.

“I’ll be glad to help,” Isabel offered, already half out of the cushioned lounge chair.

“Don’t bother,” Lisa said quickly. “I’ll help Roman. I have some other things I need to do in the kitchen.”

Maggie cringed at the obvious friction between Lisa and Isabel. Lisa had told Maggie when she arrived that things were a little better between her and Roman, but the strain on Lisa’s face, and the dark looks she darted at

Isabel, left Maggie wondering just how much better things really were.

She let her gaze roam from Isabel to Roman and back again. As far as Maggie could tell, Roman only had eyes for his wife. She wasn’t as sure about what Isabel felt for Roman.

Lisa’s yearning look as she met Roman’s gaze told Maggie her friend was hoping for a few stolen kisses in the kitchen. Lisa obviously needed someone to take over with Amy while she was gone, but Maggie noticed Isabel wasn’t volunteering for that.

Maggie looked longingly at Amy, but she didn’t trust herself to be responsible for the dark-haired, dark-eyed pixie in the water.

“How about if I spell you?” Jack said to Lisa as he waded toward her.

“Amy doesn’t usually take to—”

“Hey there, kiddo,” Jack said, smiling broadly as he slipped an arm around Amy, duck float and all. Maggie noticed the little girl was entranced by Jack’s smile and didn’t see her mother slipping away toward the edge of the pool.

Lisa gave Jack a thumbs-up and mouthed, “Thanks, Jack.” She leaned back in the water to wet her hair, then braced her palms on the aqua tile and used her arms to push herself quietly up and out of the pool like some sleek water mammal. Lisa never took her eyes off of Roman as she reached up with both hands to squeeze the extra water out of her hair, leaving her exquisite body outlined for him.

Maggie saw the hungry look Lisa got from her husband and glanced away before she intercepted anything more embarrassing. She knew Tomas wouldn’t be interested, but she made a point of watching over Amy, certain Jack’s gaze would also be distracted by Lisa’s stunning white-bikini-clad figure. To her surprise, Jack’s attention remained totally focused on the child.

Jack moved Amy into deeper water, so he was face to face with her. “How about you and me and Donald here taking a swim together?” he said to Amy.

Amy patted the duck’s head and said, “Donald.”

Jack patted his own head and said, “Jack.”

Amy patted his head and said, “Jack,” whereupon Jack patted her head and said, “Amy.”

Amy laughed, delighted with the game. She patted the duck’s head again and said, “Look, Mommy. Donald.”

It was only then Amy noticed her mother was gone.

Her head swiveled as she searched her surroundings. When she couldn’t find her mother, Amy turned back to Jack with woeful eyes and a wobbly mouth and asked, “Where’ s Mommy?”

Jack turned the duck toward the patio, leaned close to Amy, and pointed to the grill. “See those hot dogs over there?”

“I like hot dogs.”

“Your mom and dad are in the house getting the catsup and mustard and pickles—”

Amy wrinkled her nose. “I hate pickles.”

“Me, too,” Jack agreed. “But I love ice cream.”

Amy and Jack began talking about foods they liked and didn’t like, and it was obvious that, for the moment, Amy had forgotten all about her mother’s disappearance.

Maggie couldn’t believe how good Jack was with the little girl. Amy seemed fascinated by him, and Maggie could easily understand why. She found Jack quite fascinating herself.

“You two look like you’re having fun,” Maggie said, unaware of the wistfulness in her voice.

“Come on over and join us,” Jack said with a grin, splashing water in her direction with the heel of his hand. “Amy and I could use some company.”

“Company,” Amy said, splashing her hands in the water in imitation of Jack’s gesture.

“The water’s too deep for me to stand up there,” Maggie protested. The last thing she wanted to do was get any closer to Jack’s practically naked body. Even from this distance, his magnetic attraction was doing strange things to the underwire in her swimsuit bra. Or maybe the damned thing was just rusty . . . like she was when it came to dealing with male advances.