Interrupted Lullaby

TWO

“Your husband!” Lieutenant Willis blurted.

Maggie swiveled her head from Lieutenant Willis to Chief Garraway, her brow furrowed. Her lips pressed together as she studied the thunderstruck expressions on their faces. Well, they apparently hadn’t expected that to come out of her mouth.

“How could you not know that I was married if you have been searching for me?” Maggie planted her fists firmly on her hips, shaking her head at them. Seriously? “Wasn’t that why you wanted to find me, because I disappeared after my husband was murdered?”

Lieutenant Willis scowled, his gray eyes narrowed. But he made no answer.

“Okay, Ms. Slade... Is it Ms. Slade?” Chief Garraway’s smooth voice was the epitome of politeness. Her stiff posture and frosty gaze, however, flashed a clear warning that she wasn’t pleased. This was not a woman who enjoyed looking foolish.

Still, Maggie hesitated. She had developed a strong distrust of cops since Phillip’s murder. Her mind screamed at her to be careful. Don’t give too much away. Then she shot a glance at Lieutenant Willis. Her eyes caught on the bloody towel still draped across his shoulder and her heart clenched. He had taken that knife wound for her. Would he have put himself in harm’s way to protect her if he were on her enemy’s side? Her glance flicked back to the towel, then to his wounded side. Although the wound was hidden, she could see that he was holding himself stiffly. She recalled that he had refused to be medicated, despite being in pain. He’d told the paramedics that he needed to stay alert, to stand guard over her and her children. That decided it for her. She would trust them...to a point. She wouldn’t reveal everything. Not until she knew for sure she could trust them.

“I kept my maiden name, so yes, my last name is still Slade.” Let them think what they wanted about that.

Chief Garraway nodded. “Okay. Ms. Slade, we have gone over your history with a fine-tooth comb. There is no evidence that you were recently married. Or that you have ever been married.”

Maggie threw her hands in the air. She whirled and paced to the window. Still cautious, she remained to the side of the curtained panes and glanced beneath the blinds. When she was calm enough to speak, she pivoted and fused her gaze with the chief’s. “We married in Las Vegas, on a whim. We filed for a license and then went to a chapel. There’s no waiting in Vegas.”

“Las Vegas? You mean like Elvis? Why would you do that?” Her hackles rose at the poorly disguised scorn in Lieutenant Willis’s voice.

“Yes, Las Vegas. What’s wrong with that?” Maggie tossed her head. How dare that man judge her? “Lots of people get married there. It’s completely legal.”

She wanted to wince at the petulance she heard in her own voice. She should stop talking. She didn’t need to explain her actions to him. But for some reason his scorn really got to her.

“I don’t care about why you got married in Las Vegas,” the chief asserted, throwing a silencing glare at her lieutenant. “You could have gone to the moon for all I care. But there should have been some trace of a marriage license in your records. And I’m also concerned that you are claiming to have witnessed a murder, yet you never came forward. I need to understand why. It’s obvious you’re in danger. Were you somehow involved in whatever happened to your husband? Is that why someone is after you now, why you were in hiding?”

Was she a suspect? Maggie’s eyes widened, and her breath hitched in alarm. Never once had she dreamed that she could be facing charges. She found it ironic that after being a juror who had convicted a woman six years ago for murder, she could face jail time for a similar crime. She shuddered.

“I haven’t done anything wrong! I was running for my life!”

“Relax. We’re just trying to figure this out. You have to admit, your actions are suspicious.”

Maggie whirled to face the tall lieutenant, who was even now observing her, his eyes narrowed. His mouth was a hard line slashed across his handsome face. “I had nothing to do with his murder...” She stopped. What if it had been her fault? She had wondered that often during the past eighteen months.

“Something tells me you’re not sure of that.”

Maggie stared at him, a wave of helplessness pounding into her. Rory dropped his pacifier and startled, whimpering as he awoke.

“Maggie, why don’t you get your children settled. Then we will talk. But I warn you, I expect you to tell me everything.”

She was cornered. In her own living room. It was too bad she and God weren’t on speaking terms. She could really use someone in her corner about now.

With a stiff nod, she turned away from the officers invading her home and went to get Rory and Siobhan settled in their cribs. Fortunately, they both were exhausted and settled down to sleep without fuss. For several minutes, she stood over them, her chest tight as she fought to control her anxiety. Whatever happened, she couldn’t go to jail. What would happen to them? Foster care? Maybe they’d even be separated.

A shadow blocked out the hallway light briefly before moving aside. Startled, she looked up. Lieutenant Willis stood in the doorway. His expressionless face gave no clue as to what he was thinking.

“Are you about ready?” His cool tone hit her like a whip. She straightened her spine and moved toward him, pausing until he stepped aside to allow her to precede him. Chief Garraway was on her cell phone pacing in front of the kitchen door while she listened to the person on the other end. She held up her finger as she spotted them. Maggie walked to the love seat and dropped down. She pulled her legs up onto the seat and hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin against them.

“I want to know as soon as his lawyer arrives. We need to get this situation under control...Sounds good.” Covering the mouthpiece of the phone, she whispered to Lieutenant Willis, “The perp is waiting for his lawyer. Hopefully he will turn on whoever hired him.”

The love seat shifted slightly as Lieutenant Willis lowered himself down beside her. She shifted closer to her side as inconspicuously as she could. Considering the way he smirked at her, she wasn’t very successful. She forgot about her discomfort with his nearness as he rubbed his side, grimacing.

“Are you okay, Lieutenant?” she whispered, casting a glance at the chief, who wasn’t paying any attention to them. “I could get you some ice or a heating pad. I’m not really sure which would be better.”

He sighed. “I’m fine. I’ve had worse.”

Which of course meant he didn’t want her to fuss over him. She rolled her eyes. “Men.”

“What do you mean, men?”

“Get a knife wound, and it’s nothing. Get a cold, and the world ends.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is. My husband was all macho, but when he got a cold, he wanted to be babied. He was a horrible patient.”

“Speaking of your husband, it’s time we talked about what happened to him.”

Maggie jumped. She didn’t feel bad as she noticed the lieutenant did, too. Obviously, he wasn’t in top form. He apparently hadn’t noticed his commanding officer approaching them, either.

She shook her head. She just needed to get through this. Drawing a deep lungful of air to steel herself, Maggie turned to face the chief. Surprisingly, though, it was the lieutenant who spoke.

“The last information we have on you is that you started working at the LaMar Pond Journal as a fact-checker three years ago. About two years ago, you made an appointment to come talk with the police. You never kept that appointment. You sent an email stating you needed to reschedule. But you never did.”

Maggie blinked. Nodded. “Yes. I remember. I had forgotten about that.”

The man beside her sat forward, his expression intent. “I didn’t. I was the cop you made the appointment with. Until someone spotted you and called the missing persons hotline, I was looking for a body.”

* * *

It was petty, but there was some satisfaction in watching the shock widen her eyes. He hadn’t been joking. He had been sure she was dead.

“Why would you assume I was dead?” He hadn’t noticed the soft lilt in her voice before, just the softest touch of an Irish accent.

“Remember that case, the trial for Melanie Swanson?” He waited for her nod before continuing. “It turned out several of the jurors had been threatened to give a guilty verdict. Melanie was framed, and the real killers wanted to cover their tracks. A few of the blackmailed jurors eventually tried to come forward to tell the truth, and they were murdered. I thought you had been, too.”

He had a hollow feeling inside as he remembered thinking he had allowed one more life to slip through his hands.

“Wait...she was innocent? That girl accused of murder? Oh, I feel awful! I thought she did it.” Her hands covered her face. Her entire posture suggested she was blaming herself for not seeing the truth. Dan could empathize; he knew only too well how it felt to have your insides torn out by guilt. By the feeling that you hadn’t done enough, hadn’t tried hard enough.

“Don’t. Feel guilty, I mean. You did your duty. If you really thought she committed the crime, then you had to vote that way.”

“If you didn’t make an appointment with the police because of the trial, then why had you made the appointment?” Chief Garraway had stationed herself directly in front of Maggie, a position that said she was in control. Normally, Dan would have remained standing, too. At the moment, though, he couldn’t seem to find the energy to rise. Between spending the past week on the late shift, hunting down Maggie and now getting stabbed, he was whupped good.

Some hair was hanging in his face, annoying him. Shaking it back out of his eyes, he focused on Maggie as she answered.

“I had thought that I was being followed. But almost as soon as I made the appointment, it stopped. I canceled the appointment. I’m sorry. I should have called you in person to tell you why, but I was embarrassed. Then I got married, and I forgot about it...until Phillip was killed.”

“Back to Phillip. Tell me about him.”

The chief’s tone made it clear this wasn’t a request.

Shrugging her shoulders, Maggie’s eyes grew distant. Dan could practically see the thoughts whirling in her head as she searched for where to begin. He could see her pain weighing her down as she remembered.

Dan watched the woman with a clinical sort of interest. She was beautiful, he acknowledged—but that wasn’t what interested him right now. What he found interesting was the tenseness in her posture. Everything about her suggested the willingness to run at a moment’s notice. He had the feeling that the only things that were keeping her in that house at that moment were the two children sleeping in the next room. Somehow he felt that they were the only things that anchored her to anything. He had seen that same sort of wariness in soldiers’ eyes in the battlefield in Afghanistan. Was it just the trauma of seeing her husband killed before her eyes? If indeed there had been a husband. He still felt the need to see some proof of that. Growing up in the foster care system had taught him that there were many people willing to play on others’ sympathy to get what they wanted.

But deep inside, he believed her, although he couldn’t say why.

Just as he was beginning to think that the silence had gone on for too long, Maggie appeared to come to some sort of decision. She nodded her head, lifted her chin and faced them with defiance beaming out of her eyes. The most incredible blue eyes he could ever remember seeing. Where on earth had that thought come from?

“His full name was Phillip Michael Nelson,” she began. Although she appeared calm, he detected a slight tremor in her voice. “We met about three years ago, right after I started working at the Journal. We got engaged a year later. We never really got around to planning a wedding or setting a date. Then one day, Phillip said he had it all figured out, and that we should rush off to Las Vegas to get married.”

“And you just went along with that?” Dan blurted out. He didn’t mean to sound so incredulous, but man, he just couldn’t picture it. How could an intelligent woman not ask the important questions? Questions such as “Hey, honey, why the hurry?” They’d already waited a year.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Maggie snapped. “I trusted him. If it meant that much to him, I was fine with it.”

Chief Garraway gave Dan a stern look that clearly told him to keep his opinions to himself. Dan grimaced. Normally he had iron control over his emotions, but right now he was tired and in pain. Not to mention something about Maggie really confused him. He wasn’t used to feeling off balance. He sighed and nodded at the chief to show her that he had gotten the message.

Pulling his phone from his pocket, he sent a quick text to Jace with Phillip’s name. This process would move quicker if he had the case details. A minute later, his phone vibrated. He read the text and frowned.

“This just keeps getting stranger,” he muttered to himself.

“Lieutenant?”

He shook his head and handed Chief Garraway his phone. “I had Lieutenant Tucker check our case files. No Phillip Michael Nelson was ever reported as dead or missing in LaMar Pond.”

Chief Garraway narrowed her eyes as she read the message for herself. Her lips pressed together. “Ms. Slade,” she said finally, “do you happen to have a picture of your husband?”

Maggie sprang to her feet and dashed out of the room. The sound of a drawer opening and closing came through the thin walls. A moment later, she hurried back, holding a small photo album in her hand. She flipped through it as she approached until she found the picture she wanted. Then she handed it to the chief, who in turn glanced at the photo and handed it to Dan.

“Yeah, I remember him. We found him in Lake Erie. He had been shot. We were never able to identify him.” He hesitated. If he had been alone with the chief, he’d be fine giving her the rest of the information. He decided to hold his tongue until he could get the chief by herself.

“You found him in the lake?” Maggie whispered, her voice cracking, pain saturating each word.

She covered her face with both hands briefly, shuddering. A strange tension seized him. Not tears. Please, Lord, anything but tears. He was relieved when she brought her hands away from her face. Her lashes were damp, but no tears fell.

“I don’t understand. He was killed in our house.”

That surprised him. “In your house? We went through your house after you disappeared. There was no sign of murder.”

“Not that house. The one we were fixing up together.”

“We found no other property in your name.”

Maggie rolled her eyes and sighed. “That’s because it’s not in my name. It’s in my mother’s name. She was selling it to us. But the deal hadn’t closed yet.”

Chief Garraway nodded. “Okay. Just tell us what happened.”

Maggie took a deep breath. “I came home from work early and heard arguing. It was really loud. I walked to the doorway of the kitchen. Phillip saw me and shouted for me to run. He threw himself at the other man. The gun went off and Phillip fell. I ran out, hopped in my car and took off.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police, Ms. Slade?” Chief Garraway inquired.

“Because the man who shot him was dressed as a policeman.”

Silence.

“Let me get this straight, a cop killed your husband?” Dread curled in Dan’s stomach. It felt as though he’d eaten a lead ball for lunch. Not again, he thought wildly. As much as he didn’t want to believe her, didn’t want to believe that someone charged to serve and protect could do the opposite, he had seen that happen too often in the past. If there was even the possibility, it needed to be taken seriously.

Apparently, Maggie thought he was mocking her. She burst to her feet and crossed her arms across her chest. “I’m not lying! He was dressed like a cop! He kept demanding that Phillip hand something over. He threatened to bring him into the station. Said the chief of police had issued a warrant for his arrest.”

“You said the man demanded Nelson hand something over. Any idea what it was?” Now they were getting somewhere.

But she shook her head and sank wearily back onto the couch. “I don’t know. I had to get out of there. The man might have said he wanted to arrest Phillip, but he wasn’t holding handcuffs, he was holding his gun—and he looked like he couldn’t wait to use it. I think he planned to kill Phillip all along. And then I realized he would know who I was. I’d brought over plenty of my things—letters and paperwork with my name on them—and there were pictures of Phillip and me together on our wedding day hanging on the wall. It wouldn’t be hard for him to know who I was.”

Chief Garraway turned back to Dan. “What information was the LaMar PD able to find out about Nelson after he was found?”

Dan shook his head. “Not much, Chief. His fingerprints weren’t in any databases, so he had no criminal record.”

“Did you circulate his picture?”

“Yes, ma’am. But it must have set off some sort of red flag. Before we got any responses, the FBI stepped in and took over. We were out of the whole case.”

“The FBI?” Chief Garraway’s voice rose in surprise. “Just what was your husband involved with, Ms. Slade?”

“Chief, I can have the LaMar department go over to Maggie’s other house and see if they can find anything.” When she nodded, he got the address from Maggie and stepped outside to call Paul. A few minutes later, he hung up. More bad news. He sighed and pivoted on his heel to head back inside. Stopped.

A row of high shrubs blocked the side of the house from the street. But from his angle, Dan could clearly make out several sets of footprints in the dirt between the house and the shrubs. They had to have been recent, since it had just rained two days ago. The sizes were different, showing that they belonged to more than one person, but all of them were large footprints. Much too large to have been Maggie’s.

He burst inside, startling the women. Briskly, he explained what he had seen.

“That means that you were being watched. Probably to determine your identity. And by more than one man. Whoever that man sitting in jail is, he had a partner. Maybe the man who killed your husband. Maybe someone else. We have no way of knowing how many people are involved.”

Chief Garraway took charge. “Right. Willis, request officers to process the scene. Ms. Slade and her children will accompany us to the station. This house is not safe for them, even with us here.”

Dan remembered his conversation with Paul. As hesitant as he was to deliver more bad news, there was no sense in holding back. “I checked with the LaMar Pond PD. The address that Maggie gave me burned down eighteen months ago.”

THREE

What had her husband been involved with? The question reverberated around Maggie’s brain time and time again as she rushed about getting herself and the twins ready to go. Maggie got herself and her cranky kids out the door in record time. The idea that someone had been watching her gave her the willies.

Not to mention the obvious fact that somebody had tried to kill her earlier. This house was no longer safe for her. Or her babies. She glanced over at the lieutenant just in time to see him wince and rub his side. She grimaced, feeling guilty that he had been injured while protecting her. With her hair tucked inside a hat, Maggie followed the cops out to the cars. With reluctance, she watched her babies being belted into their car seats in the chief’s car. Lieutenant Willis straightened up, sketched a cocky salute at the chief and sauntered to his own car on the street. She definitely would have preferred to ride with the lieutenant rather than his stern-faced chief. But she went where her children went, so she stepped into the car without protest and buckled up.

“I don’t suppose it would be possible to let the owner know no one is in her house?” Wendy had been a good friend. She hated to let her down.

“We can do that. Will she shorten her mission trip?” Realizing her mouth had fallen open, Maggie closed it with a click. They really had researched everything.

“Either that or she’ll have to find someone else to house-sit.”

“Good.” Chief Garraway touched her radio. “Move out, Lieutenant. We don’t have all day.”

Lieutenant Willis’s voice responded back with a pert “You got it.”

Almost as soon as they merged onto the interstate, Siobhan started to fuss. Maggie looked at the chief, expecting to see an impatient frown. Instead, she saw the other woman’s lips twitch.

She blinked, sure she had imagined it. Nope. Chief Garraway’s mouth had turned up at the corners. Amazing.

“It never fails, does it?” The chief’s voice was mild, conversational. “They can be as quiet as mice, but the moment you are trapped in a car with them, they start wailing. At least that was my experience with my own.”

Maggie had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that. It had never occurred to her that Chief Garraway might be a wife and mother. The older woman wore her authority like a cloak. It was hard to look past it.

“I’m going to see if she will calm down with a pacifier.” Maggie twisted in her seat to place a pacifier in her daughter’s mouth. As she did so, she noticed a car moving toward them. It was dodging in and out of the traffic. Unease slithered down her spine and sank into her stomach, leaving a greasy, queasy feeling.

“Chief,” she began, her voice pitched low so as not to further disturb the babies.