Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (34 page)

I do apologize for springing this on you. I can imagine the fixed, shocked look you've probably got. Or is it anger? And soon, I know, you'll pull your cop's face down over it like a shutter, and go on with whatever it is you're doing. I'm sorry. I AM sorry for letting you go so long without knowing. That's what you'll be mad at me for. For letting you make fifteen year's worth of choices about life and relationships, not knowing the truth about yourself. The truth always mattered, didn't it, Joe.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. God, how you must hate me for doing this. You, who like to be in control, who likes your own life to be orderly and without surprises.

He's a nice surprise, Joe. Really. I'm glad I had him and the thought of him wanting to leave hurts terribly. So please, please think about this. About at least meeting him.

Love, still

Maggie

There was a postscript to the letter, in a different hand. A scrawly, masculine hand that looked affected by age or infirmity.

Sergeant Burgess: I found this on Maggie's desk yesterday. She didn't date it, so I don't know when she wrote or even whether she intended to mail it. But I must tell you that she was killed in an accident last week. Repeat drunk driver went through a red light and slammed into her van. I can't pretend to know if you'll care—but they say she didn't suffer.

I thought you should have this letter.

He grabbed a pillow and held it against his face and cried like he hadn't ever cried before except for little Kristin Marks, the murdered child for whom he'd never gotten justice. He didn't know if he was crying for himself, for Maggie, for Reggie, or for a boy he'd never met. He cried until he was hollow and aching and the pillow was sodden with tears and snot. Then he went and stood in the shower, shirt, tie, shoes and all, to hell with practicality, and turned his hot, sore face up to the showerhead, drowning all sound and thought and feeling in an icy blast of water.

Chapter 26

He stayed until his trembling legs threatened collapse. When he came out, he saw from the mirror that his lips were blue. There was clean underwear on the closed toilet seat and his robe hanging on the back of the door. He hadn't heard Chris come in, but she was a competent nurse with a lot of experience moving around people without disturbing them, and in reading situations without having to be told. He wondered if she'd read the letter. He'd left it lying on the bed.

He was struggling to undo his tie and kick off his wet shoes when she opened the door, pinched little worry lines between her brows. "You want some help with that or do you want to be left alone?"

"Help," he said. "Please."

He felt monosyllabic. He felt a thousand years old, weary beyond speech, and as though all his joints had fused. Never had he been more in need of the Tin Man's oil can. The cold water had left him chilled to his core. Goose-fleshed skin shivered convulsively over his bones.

"Hold still," she said. Deftly, she undid his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and stripped them off, her warmth reaching him like heat from a fire. She undid his belt and bent to untie his shoes. He couldn't remember ever being so helpless, though she might disagree. She'd nursed him through some tough times. "Lift your foot. Other foot. Good." She pulled a t-shirt over his head, leaving him to thread in his arms while she stripped off his soggy pants and underwear. Like a mom helping a clumsy child, she got him into dry underwear and into his robe.

"I read the letter," she said. "You must be so shocked."

"I've got no words."

"I sent everyone home," she said. "Though I wanted to give Stan a good spanking first. You'd better keep an eye on him—"

She broke off. "Listen to me babble. Terry wanted to stay, but he had Michelle and the girls. Had to put the girls to bed. That poor man lives in fear of the court these days. So afraid they'll return the girls to Wanda. He'll come back if you want."

He already knew that. He and Terry knew each other's secrets like a couple fifty years married. There was a kind of intimacy between cops, between partners, few other jobs produced. It came from spending so much time in the crazy grip of testosterone and adrenaline surges, from knowing the fear of the unexpected and the constant vigilance it demanded, from having lived days that went from the horrendous—a child half-killed by its parents—to the ridiculous—a tipsy matron calling the police because she's dissatisfied with her ice cream cone—in the space of hours. From understanding how they each had lockboxes in their heads where they stored the bad stuff. Together, they could circle up, unlock the boxes, and let the demons out to play for a while. Share them like forbidden pictures. It took some of the pressure off.

"Thanks." He shuffled into the bedroom, his steps geriatric and unsteady, dropped heavily onto the bed, and picked up the picture.

"You want me to stay?"

He shook his head. "I'm not... I don't..."

"I could make you some tea," she said. "Something warm might be good. Unless you'd prefer a drink?" She shook her head, her voice dropping into a lower, more intimate register. The one that always reached him. "You want the drink, don't you."

He couldn't even muster a please, just a nod as he stared at the boy's face. Reread the letter. Betrayed. Betraying. The world's biggest jerk and biggest joke. Since his first sex at seventeen, he'd spent over three decades assiduously avoiding bringing a child into a world that was this fucked up, that constantly rolled over and showed him its filthy underbelly like a mangy dog wanting to be scratched. All that monkish abstention. All that caution and precaution. That grim and exhausting self-control. For almost half that time, it had been a lie. Life's big joke on him.

Chris came back with a glass of ice and the bottle. She set them on the bedside table and backed up a few steps, her hands on her hips. Just as lovely and decent as yesterday and now he could barely look at her. He looked at the bedside clock. After nine. Dark out and the rain was back, wind slapping it against the windows. Silently, she studied him, a skilled nurse assessing her patient. Then she crossed to the closet and pulled out a suitcase.

"Chris," he said, "please. You don't—"

She held up a hand like a traffic cop. "I do. I know you, Joe," she said. "I'd like to be wrong, but I think I can almost write the script for this one, and I don't want to stick around and watch." As she spoke, she moved quickly around the room, gathering clothes, underwear, and shoes and tucking them neatly into the case. When she was done, she snapped it shut and straightened, lifting it off the bed.

"Listen to me, Joe. However bad it gets, you are NOT your father. You can heap anything you want on your head, God knows you are a master at taking blame for the state of the world, but all you did was have sex with a woman you lived with and cared about, who then decided not to give you a chance to step up when that relationship caused a pregnancy. You can't know, now, how you would have reacted
then
, what you might have done."

He started to protest, but she waved him off. "She thought she knew, and maybe she was right. But she might have been wrong. Maybe she was a nice woman, but doing this to you... doing it like this? It's unconscionable. She always had a choice. She had fifteen years to set things right and she chose not to. She judged you and condemned you and gave you no say in the matter and now, the news arriving this way—with a husband's scrawled note—you've still got no say. What can you do? Tell this heartbroken family you won't see your son?"

She grabbed her suitcase and headed for the door. "I don't care if this makes me sound hateful. I wish I'd had a chance to punch her in the nose. And what the heck's wrong with the guy who's raised him, that he does this with a scrawled note at the bottom of a letter? He wants to keep his own kids and get rid of this other one? How adult and responsible is that? Oh, right. They've never gotten along. Like the guy took against some brave and protective little toddler and never got over it? Give me a break."

Halfway through the door, she paused. "I'm not leaving you, Joe. I'm just giving you some space so you can get as crazy as you need to. But if you break anything that I love, I'm going to punch
you
in the nose. Remember that. You know where to find me. I'll be at Mom's."

"You're too—"

"If you were going to say 'understanding,' don't," she interrupted. "I don't know if I'm understanding. This is hard for me, too. It just complicates the hell out of everything. I'm the one who wants kids."

She swiped at a tear that had escaped her brimming blue eyes. The knuckles on the hand that gripped her suitcase were white. "Call me. No. Don't call me. Not for twenty-four hours at least. If you need someone, call Terry."

And she left.

Chapter 27

Even on a full stomach, the drink hit like a speeding train, knocking him back against the pillows and sending his brain reeling. He lay there, dizzy and slightly breathless, trying to summon the strength to sit up and pour another glass. It was the Burgess family way. The only viable and effective response to any major emotional stressor—and in his father's case, to the routines of daily life—was to pour a stiff one, wash it down with a stiffer one, then hold it down with a couple more.

Ugly as it was to take refuge in drink, and God knew he had a lifetime of experience showing that it was no refuge, sometimes nothing helped like putting that hot, sweet, layer of good bourbon between himself and the intolerable aches and wounds of his nasty life. Even now, his head too heavy to lift off the pillow, he was drawn by the siren song, the longed-for taste on his tongue. He wanted with an addict's desperation to dull the rage and muffle his confusion.

Finally, he got enough control over his shaking hand to reach toward the bottle, but as his hand moved into the pool of light on the bedside table, the purple, shaking appendage he saw reaching for the bourbon was his father's hand, not his. His father had been weak, a man who'd let the responsibilities of husband and father turn him from an amiable and handsome fellow into a violent and loathsome drunk, his mother bearing the brunt of that anger to protect her children.

He'd always lived in fear of becoming his father. Seeing it come this close stabbed in his gut like a knife. He stopped his hand six inches from the bottle, holding it there, its wobble and shake casting a wild black spider of shadow on the bottle, the glass, the nightstand, until his burning muscles gave up and it dropped heavily onto the bed beside him. He pulled it, icy and trembling, onto his chest, cradling it with his other hand as spasms wracked his body like a flu.

He was a cop. He'd been lied to and deceived for decades without letting those lies and deceptions drag him down to the level of the liars. Why should he let today be any different? Reggie was still dead. Reggie's murder still unsolved. A ton of work lay ahead. Burgess had a lifelong rule—when the personal and the professional collide, work wins. He played on the dead guy's team, and so far, he and his teammates, Kyle and Perry, hadn't laid a bat on the ball while the bad guys seemed to be stealing all the bases. They were fast becoming the strike-out kids. Falling into a self-centered snarl of despair wouldn't help even the score.

Pushing himself off the bed and turning his back on the bottle, Burgess lost the robe, pulled on corduroys and a warm wool sweater, and stuck his wallet and badge in his pockets. He went through the rituals of departure: Keys. Phone. Cuffs. Radio, pausing long enough to try and heave up the stabbing knife that was stuck his gut. It wouldn't budge.