Witness (11 page)

“Hey, it wasn’t your fault,” Joe said kindly. When she didn’t respond, he added, “They’ve got a new information center in Belgrade now. It’s better than the old one.”

An involuntary chuckle shook her. “I don’t think I want to visit it, thank you.”

“Sorry.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Petra let the tears flow down her cheeks.

Joe’s warm fingers touched her hand and wrapped around it.

“I hate that you went through that.” His low voice cracked, and she flexed her fingers to squeeze his hand gently.

She wiped her cheek with the back of her free hand. “I was a big fool. There were warning signs all over the place, but I ignored them. I loved him. I trusted him. And I refused to believe anything bad about him until the proof stared me in the face. Ever since then…” She shook her head and sniffed.

Joe leaned forward. “There might be some Burger King napkins in the glove box.”

She tried to hold back a giggle. It came out a muffled burble. “Thank you. I’m all set.” She reached for her purse and dug out a packet of tissues.

Joe sat back while she tried to repair the damage to her face and blessed the darkness that would hide the worst of it.

“Does your fiancé’s family still live in the area?” he asked.

“Yes. Keilah told me his sister came into the gift shop yesterday. That’s something I’ve got to be ready for. If I take a job at one of the hospitals here, the day may come when I walk into a patient’s room and have to look his mother in the eye. She probably still blames me.”

“Why should she?”

“I’ve blamed myself for twelve years. Why shouldn’t she?”

“Oh, please. It’s your fault he got into drugs and decided to lead a bunch of cops on a chase? It’s your fault he lost control at ninety miles an hour and wrecked? You’re just lucky you weren’t in that truck.”

His sharp tone startled Petra, and she couldn’t frame a suitable reply. Her chest throbbed as she tried to breathe evenly without sobbing. A puff of air escaped in a spasm, and she turned her face to the window.

After a long moment Joe sighed. “I can see why you didn’t want to talk about this.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want to talk,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, well, you know what bothers me the most?”

“No.”

He reached over and touched her chin, turning her face gently until she looked him in the eye. “We’re so much alike. We both have things that keep us from going forward, even when we want to.”

She sat still for a second, then put her hand up to cover his. “I thought maybe it was my situation that bothered you.”

Joe smiled faintly. “I wish this murder was solved. I wish a lot of things. But it’s not just that. Nick would say I have cold feet. I’ve never quite been able to form a permanent relationship with a woman.” He sat back. “I saw a lot of pain in the past, and it’s hard for me to risk going through something like that.”

“Things you saw at work?” she asked.

“Oh yeah, that, and at home.” He looked out toward the river for a moment. “My folks had a messy breakup. The stuff they put each other through…I promised myself a long time ago that I would never do that to a woman.”

“That must have been hard for you as a child,” Petra said.

“Hard? It was impossible. When my father finally left, it was a relief. I hate to say that, but it’s true.”

Her heart filled with grief for him. “Joe, I don’t want to sound trite, but you’re not him. And you don’t have to be like him.”

“Yeah.” He inhaled deeply. “You asked me about my time with the P.D.”

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, maybe it’s better if I do. Nick and I were called for backup one night for a couple of officers who had responded to a robbery in progress. Nicky was driving, and we got there a minute too late. Both officers were killed.”

He sat in silence. Petra felt the regret and shame pour off him.

He looked up. “I couldn’t stop going over it in my mind. If I’d been driving…If we’d taken a different street…If we’d taken our supper break at point A instead of point B…”

“You couldn’t have gotten there faster than you did.”

“Yes, we could have. If I were convinced otherwise, I think I could have handled it. We had counseling. I decided I didn’t want to be responsible in a case like that ever again. So I turned in my badge.” He rubbed both sides of his face. “I should take you home. This conversation isn’t helping either of us.”

“Wait. I disagree.”

He cocked his head toward his shoulder and eyed her cautiously. “You do?”

“Yes. Why was Nick able to stay with the job and you weren’t? It was what you’d always wanted to do, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yeah. But Nick…he’s got a different temperament from me. He’s a good cop. A very good cop. And he can live with that.”

“With being a very good cop?”

“Yeah.”

“But you couldn’t.”

He didn’t answer, and Petra raised her chin.

“I see. You have to be the perfect cop. Nobody dies on your shift.”

“Something like that.”

“Did you get all A’s in school?”

“No.”

“Then what makes you think you have to be perfect at being a cop?”

“We’re talking lives here.”

She studied his face. “So you went off on your own to work by yourself. No one telling you you’re not good enough or fast enough or smart enough. No more life-and-death crises. A guy like you can help people without feeling guilty. But, Joe, a very good cop, even though he’s not perfect, can do so much good.”

“I didn’t claim it was logical.” He started the car.

During the ten-minute ride to the house, Petra almost spoke several times. Was he feeling that he couldn’t be a perfect husband or father, either, and so he had avoided marriage all these years? She kept her silence. Anything she could say, she knew Joe had probably told himself thousands of times already.

Lights shone from the living room, kitchen and one upstairs bedroom of the big house. When Joe opened her door, Petra got out.

“It’s a great house,” he said.

She nodded. “They gave me the tower room.”

“They must want you bad to bribe you like that.”

She smiled. “It’s good to be with them. I missed…love.”

He walked her to the porch. “Petra, you shouldn’t hang around with guys like me.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll feed your melancholy. We should be asking ourselves how God fits into all this and what He would want us to do.”

A lock of his hair had fallen down across his forehead, and she smoothed it back. “You’re right. I’ve sort of started over with God recently, and I’m sure He doesn’t want me worrying over this. He promises peace.”

Joe nodded. “I’ve prayed about my situation a lot over the years, but I keep fretting over it. I need to let it go.”

“And go back to being a cop?”

“No. My agency is finally taking off, and I like it.”

“Then you should keep doing it.” She hesitated. “Maybe we could help each other. I’ll pray for you, and you pray for me.”

“Yeah. Go to church with me tomorrow?”

“I’d love to.”

“Good. Your sisters can tag along if they want.”

He stooped toward her, and Petra caught her breath. His lips met hers and she stood still, except for her pounding heart. He slowly enfolded her in his arms, and she slipped into a dreamy haze of content.

Suddenly, Mason barked inside the house and light flooded the porch.

Joe pulled back and eyed the closed door. “Next thing we know, your father will yank that door open and say, ‘What are your intentions, young man?’”

She laughed. “If we’d met in high school…”

“Yeah, well, we’ve met now.”

He stepped back, and Petra reached for the doorknob.

“Thank you, Joe. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She went inside thinking not about the bleak past, but about the future’s possibilities.

N
ick’s call late Monday afternoon caught Joe by surprise. He had been on the go since early morning and had the satisfaction of wrapping up a missing persons case. Returning to the office after three o’clock, he gathered messages from Keilah and set up appointments with several potential clients. Word was getting around the upper-crust of Waterville. If you had a sticky problem that needed discretion, call Tarleton Detective Agency.

“Joe, I just wanted to check with you on Petra Wilson’s case. Anything new?” Nick asked.

“Nothing except that her extra key ring is missing. I’m afraid the person who poisoned her dog took it. I told her to change the locks pronto. The dog has recovered, though.”

Nick sighed. “Okay. I’m sorry you couldn’t find anything that would get us a warrant when you went over her house. Well, I’ve got to run over to the airport and check out an abandoned car.”

“Since when is the hot-shot detective squad investigating dumped cars?”

“The airport manager’s antsy. They had a bomb scare last month, remember? Now they’ve had a car left in the short-term parking for two weeks. The officers on duty at the airport are trying to trace the owner, but it’s a Canadian license plate, and it may take a while to make contact.”

“That’s a job for airport security and the patrolman they have out there.”

“What can I tell you? The airport manager called the chief, and the chief is sending me. They want it taken care of today, and no publicity if it’s a non-story. The public has a long memory for things like 911.”

“How long did you say it’s been sitting there?” Joe asked.

“Couple of weeks. Look, I gotta get moving. But it sounds to me like it’s time for you to deep-six that bogus murder case.”

Joe’s mind reached back for an elusive piece of information, but was distracted by Nick’s last remark. “Hey! There is nothing bogus about Petra’s case.”

“Okay, okay. I’ve got to go, although it’s probably a case of someone parking in short-term when they should have left it in long-term. Still, you get a car with Nova Scotia plates and—”

“Hold on!”

“What? I really need to hustle.”

“What day was the car left at the airport?”

“Does it matter?” Nick asked.

“It might.”

“Uh…the eighteenth.”

“That’s it!” Joe leaped up from his chair and flipped back the pages of his notebook.

“What’s what?”

“Nicky, Nicky. Remember our little stroll through Rex Harwood’s neighborhood last week?”

“Yeah.”

“The Nova Scotia car, remember?”

After a pause, Nick’s voice came, muffled. “Hold on. I’m looking for my last notebook. One of the neighbors mentioned a car, but it wasn’t near Harwood’s house.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was parked a block down the street, so we discounted it.”

“I dunno, Joe. People go back and forth from Portland to Nova Scotia all the time on the ferry. That’s what we have The Cat for. Folks ride over to Yarmouth on the catamaran, spend the day sightseeing and come back.”

“Nick, think! The vanishing body. The patrolmen checked Harwood’s car, but they didn’t check every car parked on the street.”

“You’re stretching it, Joe.”

“Prove it.”

“What was the name of the woman who mentioned that?”

“Eileen McAdams,” Joe said, staring at the name in his own notes. “Did they pop the trunk yet?”

“No, they’re waiting for me to get there.”

“Small blessings. Get over to the airport and call me from there!”

Joe rolled out of bed early the next morning and got an early start. He parked in front of the Portland police station just as Nick arrived for duty.

“You going over to interview Harwood’s neighbors again?” Joe asked him without the usual civilities.

“Yeah. By the time we finished at the terminal last night, it was too late.”

“Can you give me a ride-along?”

Nick frowned. “Yeah, I guess. Wait out here.”

Joe leaned against his car and watched the uniformed officers going into the building. He thought about Petra and the weekend they’d spent together—idyllic if one overlooked the ragged discussion of their pasts and fast-forwarded to their sweet good-nights. Sunday was an all-around good day, the best he’d had in years. Church with Petra and her sisters, followed by a home-cooked dinner and a lazy afternoon sitting on their front porch and playing catch with Mason.

A passing police officer recognized him and stopped to chat for a minute. At last Nick returned and they headed for Harwood’s street in an unmarked police car.

“The clump of hair I found in the trunk of the car last night is definitely human,” Nick said as he drove.

“I knew it,” Joe said. “I’m telling you, this is how he got rid of the body. He carried it out to her car and drove down the street a little ways.”

“And none of the neighbors noticed?”

“Apparently not. Did you tell your sergeant about the possible connection to the murder Petra witnessed?”

“I told him. He’s not buying the theory yet, but he agreed I should check it out.”

At the McAdamses’ house, Nick rang the bell, and again Joe let him be the spokesman.

“Yes, I remember the car,” Eileen McAdams told them, “but it’s been a while. Let’s see, it was down there when we came home from the movies that night.” She pointed to a shady spot by the curb between her house and the next one on the block. “I figured the Dales had company.”

“We checked with them, and they didn’t,” Nick said. “Can you describe the car for me again, ma’am?”

She grimaced and stared off down the quiet street. “I didn’t think it was important. Let’s see, it was light-colored. Maybe tan or…or silver.”

Joe said nothing, but he recalled his notes from the previous week. She’d said then the car was white. But after all, it was after dark when she saw it.

A young man approached the doorway from behind her.

“’Scuse me, Mom. Gotta get going.”

“Okay. Have you got your phone with you?” Mrs. McAdams stepped aside, and her tall, blond son eased past her. Nick and Joe retreated down the steps.

“Yup. Catch you later.” He nodded in the general direction of the two officers.

“Hey, Will, wait a sec,” his mother called, and the young man stopped on the walkway and turned around, his eyebrows raised.

“These gentlemen are detectives. Remember, I told you they were asking questions a few days ago?”

“Oh, sure.” He took an uncertain step back toward them.

“You saw that car that was parked over by the tree a couple of weeks ago, didn’t you?” she asked.

His face clouded. “What car? Mom, you’ve got to be more specific.”

Nick told him, “This was the evening of May seventeenth. Your mother told me the family went to a movie together to celebrate your sister’s birthday.”

He nodded, still frowning.

“Do you remember a strange car parked down there when you came back from the theater?”

“The one from New Brunswick,” Mrs. McAdams said.

Joe almost spoke but caught himself.

“Oh, that one.” Will McAdams threw his mother an indulgent smile and said to Nick, “It was Nova Scotia.”

“Are you sure?” his mother asked.

“Yes, Mom—830 JHP.”

Joe barely succeeded in keeping his jaw from dropping. He spoke for the first time. “Tell me that’s the plate number.”

“Yeah—830 JHP.”

“He has a good memory,” his mother said.

Nick flashed a look at Joe.

“It was my girlfriend’s birthday,” Will said.

Nick’s brow wrinkled. “I thought it was your sister’s birthday.”

“Not the day. The license plate. My girlfriend’s birthday is August thirtieth, and that was the plate number. And J for Jessica—her name.”

Joe smiled. “What’s the HP for?”

Will grinned back at him, clearly pleased. “My new Hewlett-Packard printer.”

His mother came down the steps. “Things like that are a game to him. I told him he should be an accountant, but he’s majoring in Phys. Ed. Can you believe that?”

Five minutes later Nick had extracted all the pertinent data he could get from the young man, and Will went on his way to his summer job.

“It’s the car that was left at the airport, all right,” Nick confirmed as he pulled out of the McAdamses’ driveway. “I’ll get back to the police station and get on the computer. We’re still trying to contact the owner in Nova Scotia.”

“Or the next of kin?” Joe asked grimly.

Nick gritted his teeth. “Yeah.”

“I think you’ll find the owner didn’t get on a plane that day.”

“If there was a body, he got rid of it before he took the car to the airport.” Nick shook his head. “Could be anywhere.”

“Oh, so you believe me now. The woman Petra saw strangled was in the trunk of that car.”

“I’m not married to the idea, but it’s worth a second date. Look, we still don’t have enough for a warrant on Harwood. We have nothing to connect him to the car. No prints on the steering wheel, for instance. If the car’s owner is missing, we’ll have to see if we can get some DNA from the family. Working back and forth over the border, that could take some time. But if we can match the hair from the trunk to the car’s owner…”

“Go for it,” Joe said.

“What are you going to do?” Nick asked.

“I’m doing some work on another case today. I’ve got a meeting in an hour. Then I’ll try to do some more background on Harwood. I did quite a bit of research on his family last week, but this Nova Scotia connection puts a new twist on things. I’ll go over to the library and use one of their computers. We need to know what his link is to Nova Scotia.”

Several hours later Joe left the library with the papers he had printed tucked neatly in his briefcase. His meeting had run longer than he’d anticipated, and he’d had to cut the library time short. He’d previously pinpointed the location of the Harwood family home, where Rex grew up, in Sidney, between Waterville and Augusta. Apparently the father moved away after Rex’s mother died, and Joe’s attempts to trace him had so far been a dead end. He’d remarried, Joe was certain. Rex was only eight when his mother died. The father must have remarried and relocated, but so far Joe hadn’t turned up the details.

He glanced at his watch and realized Petra would be off work in an hour. He wanted to see her again. They both knew they still had issues to overcome, but spending time with her couldn’t hurt, could it?

His stomach rumbled. He’d worked through the normal lunch hour before he thought of food and then grabbed a hot dog and coffee, but it was barely a memory. He decided to eat a candy bar now, make a few calls on his other cases, and stick around long enough to see Petra. He wished he could whisk her away from Portland until this was over, but she was determined to work out her last two weeks at the hospital. Somehow he’d have to make sure she survived it.

Petra’s phone rang as she turned in to the residential neighborhood. She flipped it open and put it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, want to get something to eat with me? Nothing fancy tonight.”

She laughed. “Joe! You’re really coming all the way down here again so soon?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll meet you at your house.”

“Okay, what time?” She signaled and turned onto Acton Street.

“Oh…about 5:18?”

She glanced at the dashboard clock, which read 5:17, then peered down the street. A black car was sitting in her driveway. Her spirits soared.

“Great! Just give me time to change and get rid of the detective in my yard.”

She exited her car a minute later smiling.

“How you doing?” Joe asked.

“Good. Even better now.”

“Can you stand a cheeseburger tonight?”

“If you want to save money, I can feed you here. Salad and a ham sandwich?”

“Deal.”

He followed her inside, and Joe said at once, “How’s Mason doing?”

Petra smiled. “I miss him. Bethany says he’s making himself at home up there. I’d like to think he misses me a little.”

She put Joe to work making coffee while she changed from her uniform into jeans. When she walked into the kitchen, she found him peering into the refrigerator.

“More leaves than the arboretum in there,” he muttered.

“I eat a lot of salad.”

He nodded skeptically, and she laughed.

Petra began to make the sandwiches, and Joe leaned against the counter. “They found a car abandoned at the airport.”

She froze and looked at him. “And?” She knew he wouldn’t be here telling her this unless he had a good reason.

“And the same car was parked a block from Rex Harwood’s house the night you saw the murder.”

She stared at him. “Okay. What does this mean?”

“It means the police are looking into it. Could be related to the murder.”