The Past Came Hunting (18 page)

In a few days Karen Crandall would arrive. Matt wanted them to be a family again.

He’s a walk away, Melanie
.

She squared her shoulders, banishing once again Simon’s constantly intruding words. Joe had risked his life to protect hers. She entered the master bedroom as he flipped off his cell.

“Did they get him?”

“Not yet, Mel. We will.”

She sat beside him on the bed and tried to pry the blood-soaked towel from his head. When he shook off her offer to help, she spoke to him as she would a child. “I need to see how bad it is. Don’t be a baby. Let’s go into the bathroom before you bleed on everything.”

“This wasn’t the way I envisioned getting you into my bedroom,” he said grimacing.

In spite of his surly behavior, she couldn’t resist. She met his lips. In that moment, the big bad Joe Crandall looked like a five year old, missing his teddy bear. But in the next second the look he returned was far from childlike.

Inhaling the scent of sandalwood, Mel followed him through the bathroom door. With no thought to her presence, he stripped off his shirt, sat on the toilet lid, reapplied the towel and waited for her help.

She’d patched up Carl numerous times, yet he’d never affected her like this. Even injured, Joe was miles ahead of ordinary. Admiring his tanned, bare-chested physique, a lump formed in her throat as she stood rooted to the floor.

He shot her a frown. “I need to get to the office. Could you hurry it up, please?”

Chagrined, Mel snapped out of her trance. A fleeing suspect obviously took precedence over his sex drive. She ran her hands under water, draped a clean towel around his neck, then stepped between his thighs. Lifting the formerly white towel from his hairline, she discovered an angry wet gap welled with blood.

Annoyed that her own libido wasn’t worried about the APB, she tossed the now crimson towel into the sink and inspected what looked like a one-inch gash. There was nothing sexy about a man bleeding in his bathroom, but she’d never been so close to such raw masculinity before. Just for a moment she fantasized about the bed in the outer room and ran a curious finger over Joe’s glistening skin. Then ordering restraint, she quashed her untimely thoughts, and pushed his hair away from the injury.

He stiffened and she yanked her hand back. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

“God, no.” Holding the clean towel to his head, his breathing grew ragged.

She made an effort to see where his preoccupation lay, and when she did, her face grew hot. She’d been cruising the same lustful road as he, but as her breasts tightened under his inspection, she lashed out, “I’m up here, Joe.”

He pulled his lecherous gaze away from her chest and his mouth formed a smile. “I know. But you should see the view from down here.”

That’s all it took to jerk her back to reality. She twisted the cap, covered his eyes and in a voice that belied her sincerity, said, “Brace yourself. This is going to sting.”

“Just get it over with.”

She poured the antiseptic, his smug smile disappeared and he clenched his teeth.

But as the blood continued to gush, her revenge was short-lived. “I gotta tell you, it’s quite a gash. You may need stitches.”

“No time. Do the best that you can.”

His issuance of orders like she was one of his staff didn’t set well, but then on top of the peroxide, the injury probably hurt like hell.

Glancing at her watch, she said, “The boys will be home any minute.”

“Good. That way you can tell Luke to pack a bag. You’re staying here tonight.”

His concern redeemed him somewhat, but she still had a parental obligation. “What? And how am I supposed to explain that to Luke?”

“Simple. We had a prowler. I have an alarm system. Luke can sleep with Matt in his room. You’ll take the guest room―break in my new furniture.”

She applied a new towel to the wound. “I don’t know, Joe.”

“I’m going downtown, and I can’t be worried about your safety―”

The house alarm beeped once, signaling that Matt had come home.

She went ramrod straight. “Luke. He’ll go home to an empty house. He’ll be worried.” Quickly, she draped three layers of gauze, then placed a bandage over Joe’s bleeding scalp.

“Dad, where are you?”

“Up here,” Joe shouted.

“Do you know where Mrs. Norris is? Her car’s out front and―”

Mel glanced up to find both boys in the doorway, looking in on what could only be construed as a provocative situation. As she met Luke’s gaze, his entire body tensed and his face flushed with anger. “
Mom
?”

Matt’s open-mouthed look of horror mirrored his friend’s displeasure. “What’s going on?”

Indicating the newly applied bandage, Mel said, “Your dad tried to stop a prowler. The guy nearly ran over him.”

“Are you okay?” Matt’s voiced rose in panic.

“I’m fine. Thanks for the assistance.” Joe’s manner was nonchalant as he eased back against the commode tank and Melanie returned to the sink.

But Luke was having none of their explanation. He glared between the two. “Yeah, right.” Turning, he stormed away.

Mel’s heart vaulted to her throat as she rushed after him. “Luke, just a minute.”

He’d already made it down the stairs.

“Luke Norris! Stop right now!”

In Joe’s entryway, the teen rounded on her. “I’m going home.”

“You can’t.”

“What?”

“Lt. Crandall wants us to stay here tonight.”

Luke glowered at her. “I don’t give a rip what he―”

“Luke!” Seeking an explanation that would make sense, she said, “The intruder was scoping our house. The Crandalls have an alarm. First thing tomorrow, I’ll have one installed.”

The boy tightened his hands into fists. “I don’t need an alarm, I have a baseball bat.” Luke glanced toward the top of the stairs. “Are you coming or staying with him?”

Mel blinked at the hostility she heard in Luke’s voice. “Sweetheart, nothing was going on. Besides, I thought you liked Lt. Crandall.”

“I did until he made it clear he has the hots for my mom. That’s just weird. Matt’s my best friend.” Luke lowered his voice. “And what about Dad?”

Her shoulders fell. “What about your dad? Baby, he’s gone.”

“Have you forgotten him already?” Misery mottled the kid’s handsome face.

Luke’s sorrow matched her own. She searched his eyes. “I think of him every day. How can I not when you could be his reflection?”

Seconds passed and some of the tension between them lessened. Using it as momentum, Mel said, “I’m sorry you misunderstood what you saw. But nothing happened. Understand something. You are my number one priority. But Lt. Crandall got hurt protecting me.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Luke said. “I want to go home.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

Doubtless confused, and angry as well, Matt had disappeared into his room. But Joe hovered at the top of the stairs. He’d exchanged bloody and torn clothes for a clean pullover top and jeans, and the bandage loomed white against his skin.

She ached at the expression she saw on his face. He’d probably overheard the majority of the conversation. Still, their budding relationship was a topic that was bound to come up sooner or later.

Placing her hand on the banister, she silently implored him with her gaze.
Luke doesn’t understand.
“We’re leaving,” she said.

“All right.” Joe descended the stairs. “I’ll station a unit outside your house.” He focused on Luke. “Your mom didn’t panic. You should be proud of her, Luke.”

Glaring, he maintained a stony silence.

Joe’s cell phone rang. He answered, “Crandall,” then narrowed his gaze. “Good work. Put him in B. I’m on my way.” He turned to Mel. “They got him.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “Thank, God.”

Joe reached for his coat in the entryway closet.

“Should you drive? Joe, your head.”

“I don’t have much choice.”

Luke studied the floor. “Maybe my mom should drive you. You could have a concussion. I’ll stay here with Matt.”

“You’re okay with that?” Joe asked.

Mel’s heart warmed, first for Luke in showing such grownup understanding, then for Joe in showing such compassion. Her next door neighbor was definitely a contradiction. Beastly one moment, thoughtful the next.

“I’m sure.” Luke glanced at her. “I had one once, remember?”

“I remember. You were in junior high.” She smiled.

Looking toward Joe, Luke rolled his eyes. “Every time I’d get to sleep she’d wake me up.”

Joe nodded. “Moms do that. It’s in a rule book somewhere.”

“You’ll be back soon?” The teenager’s voice reverted to suspicion.

“As soon as possible. I won’t let anything happen to your mom. Tell Matt to set the alarm. You boys call me if there’s a problem.”

As Luke trudged up the stairs, all while watching Joe help Mel on with her coat, she whispered over her shoulder, “Is it Maxwell?”

“We’ll know soon enough. But who else could it be?”

With no answer to that, she simply remained silent.

“Let’s go.” Joe opened the door for her. “Time to get a bad guy off the streets and out of our lives.”

Chapter Twenty-two

The moment they arrived at the Police Operations Center, Joe went for an update and Mel fell into protective custody. Not the kind she experienced fifteen years earlier. This time a uniformed officer escorted her to Lieutenant Crandall’s office, treating her as though she were royalty, offering her magazines, coffee, tea or something else. She opted for hot chocolate. She’d heard Joe’s stories about cops who simply reheated a half-empty pot, and soon it had the consistency of sludge. Which might have explained why he liked her coffee so much.

“How long will he be gone?” Mel said to the officer in the doorway.

“I really can’t say, ma’am. But the L.T. generally gets straight to the point. If he has anything to say about it, the interview will go quickly and you’ll be out of here.”

“You call him L.T.?”

“Short for Lieutenant, and, yeah, most of us do. He’s a good guy.”

A good guy.
Fifteen years earlier, she would have vehemently argued the point. Now she found herself nodding in agreement.

Fifteen years. She gripped a mug so worn she could no longer read the letters and moved to Joe’s window. It overlooked Nevada, a thoroughfare that ran north and south. At one time, before the construction of I-25, it had been the city’s main corridor between Denver and Pueblo. Now it was a gateway to the interstate, to downtown businesses, Penrose Hospital and to myriad cross streets.

How she wished she was on Nevada right now driving away from this place.

Is it Maxwell? Who else could it be?

He’d seemed so nice, so ordinary when he’d picked her up on that lonely stretch of highway fifteen years ago. She’d learned firsthand that hitchhiking wasn’t the optimum mode of transportation that day. But with darkness approaching, and Mel bruised, limping and bleeding, he’d offered to help and she’d risked trusting him.

Drake Maxwell had been cute, he drove a Corvette, and at least he was younger than the last pervert who’d picked her up and tried to rape her. The pawing trucker, trying to kiss her, squeezing her breasts and going for her crotch, had left her frantic, and she’d left him possibly blind in one eye.

That scene, years afterward, would be only one of her nightmares. Mel sipped her hot chocolate and shuddered.

Fast forward past the robbery to the trial, when in exchange for a reduced sentence that would never go to trial, she’d agreed to testify against Drake. Her lawyer, a court-appointed public defender, had said, “Look him in the eye, Melanie. Maxwell’s lawyers have convinced the district attorney that you were complicit. This is your only chance to earn that judge and jury’s sympathy.”

And face Drake she had, with all the bravado she could muster. As she recounted what she recalled to the judge and the jury, he’d sat at the defense table sneering, tearing her from limb to limb with his gaze. Then she’d stepped down from the witness box, and he’d lunged for her. The only things that saved her from his attack had been the bolted-down table, Drake’s handcuffs and leg restraints, and the deputies rushing forward.

“You’re dead, bitch,” he’d roared. “You’re fucking dead!”

The crowd had become so shocked, so unsettled, the judge had cleared the courtroom. Heart in her throat, shaking uncontrollably, she’d been whisked back to the county jail.

Even now, Mel’s knees went weak at the memory. She clutched the warm cup with both hands. Would Joe make her face Maxwell again? Would she have to relive that terror? She stared down at the traffic coming and going. How she wished she was on Nevada right now, driving away from this place. How she wished she was driving toward home.

On the spare bed in his friend’s room,
Luke lay with his eyes closed. If he didn’t crash soon, tomorrow’s practice would kick his behind. He’d tried to count sheep, but with no luck so far, he opened them to stare at the digital clock on the dresser. Their folks had been gone for forty minutes now.

He’d noticed in recent days the way the cop looked at his mom, but hadn’t given it much thought. Although, after all that he’d witnessed tonight, he could no longer ignore it.

“Luke, you awake,” Matt asked.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Do you think there’s something going on between your mom and my dad?”

Flipping onto his side, Luke moaned. So much for crashing. “How the heck would I know, Crandall? Go to sleep.”

“I think there’s something goin’ on, ya know?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“Hell, no,” Luke grumbled.

“Why? I like your mom. You got something against my dad?”

Luke hesitated. Lt. Crandall was okay. He was tough on Matt, but then his own dad had been strict with him on occasion. Luke’s throat constricted. He’d never known his real mom. And now, like the casket that had disappeared into the ground, his memory of his father was fading. Luke didn’t want that.
Not
e
ver
.

“Well, do you, Norris?”

“What?”

“Have something against my ol’ man?”

Luke sighed. Matt was his best friend. It was time to tread lightly. But no matter what, Luke couldn’t lie. How could a kid with two living parents understand what he was going through? “The only thing I have against your dad is he’s not my father.” Luke inhaled a shuddering breath. “No man ever will be.”

Before heading into Interrogation,
Joe met with Brooks Morris to pick up the pursuing officer’s arrest report. He found the white-haired, barrel-chested police officer hard at work, tongue slightly protruding as he scribbled the details.

“Wouldn’t your laptop be faster?” Joe asked.

“Might if I didn’t type with two fingers. Here ya go, Lieutenant.”

Joe took the clipboard, had already started walking, when he glanced down to decipher the officer’s scrawl. It was the suspect’s name that made Joe stop and pivot. “Who the hell is Stanley T. Givens?”

Brooks’s brows drew together. “The driver of the Taurus, sir.

Joe skimmed the rest of the report as the pounding in his head returned with a sledgehammer-like vengeance. He paused outside Interrogation to gather whatever was left of his wits. Inside were Detectives Jackson and Reese who’d been instructed to issue Miranda, ensuring not one civil right was violated.

As he reached the one-way mirror, Joe stared at the man seated between the two detectives, and his parched throat dried altogether. His last hope had been that Givens was an alias for Drake Maxwell. But this scrawny dude with his pock-marked face was too young to be Maxwell, and to be blunt, too damned ugly. The Drake Maxwell Joe remembered had been solidly built and decent looking, hence his ability to influence a young Melanie Daniels.

Who the hell was Givens? And why had he been sitting alone in a vehicle scoping out the neighborhood? More importantly, why had he risked turning Joe into road kill?

Joe’s insides churned. Had Maxwell paid someone to enact his revenge? Or was Joe losing his objectivity where Melanie was concerned? After all, he’d had little to go on when he read about the murder of the Cañon City corrections officer.

He tapped on the glass and Detective Jackson rose from the table and stepped into the hallway. “What’ve you got?” Joe asked.

“Not much, L.T. We’re running his prints now. Driver’s license identifies him as one Stanley T. Givens, Kansas City, Missouri. License matches his registration, and, FYI, he hates to be called Stanley.”

Joe smirked. “So what do we call him?”

The seasoned detective rolled his eyes. “My man’s name is Stan. He’s uncomfortable as hell. Chain smoker. Check out the nicotine stains on his fingers.”

At least something was going right. The lowlife had an addiction. Joe would use it against him. “Why’d he run?”

“Claims he never saw you. Says he got an emergency phone call, looked up, saw some guy in the street waving a gun and laid on the gas.”

Jackson scrubbed a jaw in need of a shave. “When we informed him you were a cop, that’s when he started crying for his lawyer.”

“You call a public defender yet?”

“No.”

“Hold off. When you get his priors, bring them to me. For now I’d like to see Mr. Givens alone.”

Jackson shrugged and tapped the glass. “You’re the boss.” A moment later Detective Reese joined them in the hallway outside Interrogation Room B.

Joe entered the closet-sized room containing a rectangular table and chairs and found Givens tapping his foot and shredding a Styrofoam container. Mason was right. The smell of tobacco clung to the suspect’s clothes. By now, their guest had to be experiencing severe nicotine withdrawal.

“Evenin’, Stanley,” Joe said, dropping into the plastic chair across from him. “I hope you enjoyed your visit with my men. I would have been here earlier, but I was outside enjoying a smoke.”

Ugly glanced up. With one look at Joe, the jerking of his leg intensified and his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

“You okay, Stanley? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Joe touched the bandage on his forehead. “Or is this darn thing bleeding again?” He stretched his sore legs in front of him and folded his arms. At any other time, Joe might’ve enjoyed grilling the guy. But with Mel anxious and waiting, he wanted to return to her as soon as possible. When Givens simply returned to his shredding, Joe’s patience snapped. “You recognize me, don’t you? I’m the police officer who ordered you to stop. Instead, you accelerated and kept on going.”

“The name’s Stan and that’s not what happened.” Givens glowered at Joe. “Like I told those two dicks before you, I want a lawyer.”

“No problem. The
detectives
are placing the call.” Joe shrugged. “But don’t blame me if the poor bastard doesn’t show.”

Givens, who’d thoroughly destroyed the first cup, picked up a second and crushed it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Lot of crazy drivers out there. Could be your attorney was the victim of a hit and run.”

Ugly shook his head. “I know what you people are trying to do and it’s not gonna work. Until my lawyer gets here, I have nothing to say.”

Joe resisted the impulse to grab Givens by the collar and extract the answers from his windpipe. All right. He didn’t want to talk? Joe would play this joker one step at a time. He stood and faced the one-way mirror. “You know what, Stanley? It’s good you don’t have anything to say. Leaves me with the floor.” Joe turned and zeroed in on the man’s cratered face. “From what the detectives tell me, you were simply an innocent bystander with a hearing problem. You had no idea a man was right in front of you shouting ‘Stop, police’. Is that correct?”

Givens folded his arms, leaned back and glared.

“Still, I gotta wonder why you were parked in a dark, secluded spot in the first place. I mean, who were you watching?”

“Am I getting a lawyer in this century?”

Planting his hands on the table, Joe said, “You bet you are, Stan. Any minute now. Along with the D.A. who’ll tell you what you’re facing. Could be anywhere from assault on a police officer to attempted murder. Depends on how generous I’m feeling.”

Givens returned Joe’s hostile stare, but a nerve twitched near his left eye.

“And to tell you the truth, Stan
ley
, the way my head’s coming unglued right now, and with your attitude, I’m not feeling too generous.”

Even Given’s Adam’s apple was ugly. Joe watched it bob up and down. “I thought you were a loon,” Givens said. “Somebody out to highjack my car. You can’t be too careful these days. You got nothing on me.”

An officer entered Interrogation with the suspect’s rap sheet, handed it to Joe, then left. Joe perused the report, and suddenly Given’s presence on Serendipity made sense.

“Says here, you’re a private dick,” Joe said, flipping through the pages. “Just barely. Trespassing, breaking and entering, assault on a woman. How’s a guy like you keep a license?”

Exposing dingy, crooked teeth, Givens quipped, “Maybe I know the right people.”

Keep your cool, Joe
. Blocking out Melanie’s image, he focused on nailing the asshole. “You like to watch women?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Do you know the woman whose house you’ve been watching?”

“Who says I was watching anybody? Like I told the detectives, I got lost, pulled over and made a phone call.”

This guy was an amateur. Anxious to get the piece of shit out of his sight, Joe said, “So you know the right people, huh? Somehow I doubt it. But you know what, Stanley,
I
do. And besides connections, I’m beginning to think this bump on my head screwed up my thinking.”

Given’s rheumy green eyes drew into slits. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think you missed me at all. I’m beginning to think you clipped my ass.”

Sweat beaded Given’s forehead. “I never touched you. You can’t lie.”

Joe glanced around. “Who’s here to stop me? I’m feeling worse by the second.” Joe returned to the chair. “So here’s what we’re going to do, Mr. Ace Private Eye. Get rid of the ‘I want a lawyer’ shit, answer my goddamn questions, and I make these charges go away.