Blown Away (12 page)

He shook his head. “It's tough. But you've got to move on.”

“Why?” Emily pressed, not to argue, but to find out if he had an answer for the question that had plagued her since Jack's funeral. “Why should you have to move on?”

“Because living in the past is no damn good,” he said. “We've got to keep our eyes on the future, because that's where the…well, future is.” He shook his head. “Gee, Marty, that's profound.” A cell phone rang. Emily's hand drifted to her belt.

“Mine,” Benedetti said, answering. “Hey, Branch.” He listened, face darkening, then handed her the phone.

“What?” Emily said.

“He just paid another visit.”

“No!” she gasped. “Where?”

“You know those woods east of Neuqua? Separate the school from the strip mall and Y?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Your police card was tacked on a tree branch. Apparently, the Unsub parked at the mall, shot a fireman hauling ladders to the east wing of the school, then fled. A TV cameraman stumbled across the body a few minutes ago.”

Emily found it hard to breathe. “Where are you?”

“Leaving the station. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

Emily closed the phone, handed it to Marty, and pressed her eyes with icy hands. “Another innocent person is dead,” she groaned. “They'd be alive if it wasn't for me.”

“Wrong!” Benedetti snapped, backhanding her forearm so hard she yipped. “Some brain-dead scumbag murdered those people, not you!” Softer, “You are not the subject perpetrating multiple illegalities upon the populace, Detective Thompson. The Unsub is.”

“I suppose you're right.” She blew out her breath. “He tell you about the fireman?”

“Poor guy,” Benedetti sympathized. “All he wants out of life is to play with his hoses and ladders, and he goes and gets himself shot.” His face lit up. “Hey!”

“Chutes and Ladders!” she yelped, getting it.

“Monopoly, Duck Duck Goose, Boggle, Clue, now Chutes and Ladders,” Benedetti said, counting on his fingers. “That's five. What's left?”

“Operation, I Spy, and Timebomb,” she said. “Unless Neuqua counts as Timebomb, which we won't know till the arson investigation's finished.” She began speculating on the Unsub's next move, but it came out a yawn. “I need some sleep,” she mumbled.

He nodded. “Branch will run you home. I'll fill in the sheriff, then rejoin you.”

“Yeah,” she said, the word “home” banging around in her head. She desperately needed the rest but couldn't stand the thought of reentering the empty log cabin. It represented security, which was enormously appealing right now. Comfort and familiarity, equally so. But it also meant cooking for one. Laughing at her own jokes. Scratching her back with doorknobs, needing only half the king-size bed, and then only to sleep. The manless, childless, puppyless existence she'd cloaked herself in since Jack's death just wasn't enough anymore. “You know what, Marty?” she said. “I never did answer your question.”

“Which was?”

“Did I want to have dinner sometime?”

“Oh,” Benedetti said. “That. I completely forgot.”

“Yeah, right.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “Jack was a telephone engineer. With Bell Labs here in Naperville. I was the office manager for a small insurance company in Chicago. I ordered some new equipment, and he arrived with the crew to troubleshoot. Our eyes met, and I fell pretty hard.” She groped for just the right words. “His classiness, his confidence, the way he moved and dressed, being older and wiser…I was hooked. Guess he felt the same way, because he asked me out to dinner the day the installation was finished. One thing led to another. We got married and moved here.” She waved toward downtown Naperville. “The log cabin was his wedding present to me.”

“Beats a vacuum cleaner,” Benedetti said.

She laughed. “Jack would never do that. Gadgets weren't his style. He was high-tech at work, but when it came to real life, he was happiest in the 1800s. He greatly admired that period—the simplicity, the values, the social certainties.”

“The good old days.”

“Uh-huh. But he was fun, too. Not stuffy like you'd assume for a history buff. We had some great times. Then he died.” She drew a deep breath. “Jack wasn't buried twenty minutes when his best friend hit on me. I said no. I've been saying no ever since.” She worried the wedding ring again. “Marty, it's been ten years. A quarter of my entire life! But I have no idea if that's ‘too long,' or ‘not long enough.' I visit Jack every day—the cemetery is the halfway point of my morning run—and so far I haven't let anything intrude on that.” She moved her hands apart. “Not until now.”

Delight creased Benedetti's face. “So you do want to have dinner with me?”

“I think so,” she said. “Buuuut…”

“Buuuut…” Benedetti mimicked without a hint of condescension, “it might be cheating on Jack. But you like the idea, anyway. But you want it strictly dinner because anything else is just too complicated right now. But it's been ten years, so the idea of dinner and, uh, dancing appeals enormously. But you can't, not yet, anyway, and would I have any chance of understanding all that since I'm just another piggy guy who wants only one thing?”

Emily patted his shoulder. “You're even smarter than Columbo.”

“Damn straight. But seriously, all I want right now is dinner.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He paused, and the earlier black notes resurfaced. “I've got things, too.”

“Your wife?” she said, recalling Annie's report.

He nodded once, small. “Late. Like Jack.”

“Oh! Marty!” She clutched her knees. “I had no idea. I'm so sorry.”

“Me, too. Bone cancer. I watched her shrivel away. She was a terrific gal and didn't deserve it.” He stared at the steering wheel. Her heart ached for him, and she asked if he wanted to talk about it.

“No,” he said. “There's enough bad topics on our plate. Let's save that conversation for dinner.”

Emily closed her eyes. “It's been forever since I cooked. Hope I remember how.”

“Cooked,” Benedetti said. “Like at your house?”

“Mm-hm,” she said. “I make a lamb curry so spicy even your battery-acid tongue can taste it.”

“Sounds great,” he said. “All right if I bring the kids?”

Annie hadn't mentioned that!
“I didn't know you had children.”

“Yup. Four. Fortunately, they're housebroken.”

She blinked. “As in—”

“My beagles,” Benedetti said, popping his off-kilter grin. “Moe, Larry, Curly, and Branch.”

He likes animals! This is getting better and better!
“Dinner with the Five Stooges,” she enthused. “This is gonna be one terrific date.”

“Uh-uh!” Benedetti protested, waving his hands. “No date! Just dinner!” The grin turned sly. “Though maybe we ought to find a restaurant, not tempt fate. We hang out at your house, there's no telling what we'll have for dessert.”

“Well, maybe you're right,” she said, feeling like she was sixteen. “But I want to hear about your wife, and it's hard to do that in a restaurant. You come over. Definitely bring the kids.”

“You don't mind hair on your furniture?”

Emily shook her head. “I adore dogs, Marty. I'll get some nice bones from the butcher.”

“Get the fat, too. They like that,” Benedetti said, beaming. “I'll pick up a '65 Bordeaux. It's an exceptional vintage.”

“That's the year I was born,” Emily mused. “1965.”

Benedetti drew so close, she could smell the warm spiciness of his skin. “I know. I read your personnel file.”

He began tracing her jawline. She closed her eyes, brought her face to his. He brushed her lips with his fingers. She kissed one callused tip, then the next, flushing from sudden warmth. She moved her lips toward his for the kiss.

“Dum-da-dum-dum,” he murmured, gently pushing her away.

“Branch just showed up, right?” Emily said, eyes still closed.

“Uh-huh.”

“Aw, let him get his own date.” She opened her eyes and brushed her hair into place, hands shaking from the fire of the almost kiss. They exited Love Shack and waved over the unmarked car. Branch pulled up and rolled down his window. He detailed the firefighter's shooting, they did likewise on Chutes and Ladders, then Benedetti purred off to see the sheriff. Branch and Emily rolled west on Ogden Avenue. “Nice breakfast?” he asked as they passed Washington.

“Exceptional,” she said as they passed Royal St. George Drive.

Branch arched an eyebrow. “Something you want to tell me, Detective?”

“No.” She relaxed into the stiff cop-car seat. “Well, maybe. Branch, can we stop by a forest preserve? That one on River Road maybe? I need to uncurl my brain, and I do it best with trees. Then I'll go sleep, promise.”

He called their location into dispatch and a few minutes later slowed for the turn into McDowell Grove Forest Preserve, several hundred acres of hardwoods, meadows, and hiking trails watered by the same DuPage River that edged the bottom of Emily's hill. He wasn't turning fast enough for the car on his bumper, and the driver blasted her horn while popping both middle fingers so vigorously it looked like juggling. “Probably flipping me off with her toes, too,” Branch laughed. He waved an apology. “You like Marty, don't you?”

“I like him a lot,” she murmured.

“Sorry, didn't catch that,” Branch said, cupping his right ear.

“Just clearing my throat,” Emily said.

The car went silent. Emily searched for something to fill it, some inanity about the weather perhaps, as a half dozen clouds pregnant with rain drifted into view. She hoped they'd keep moving since the CSIs didn't need more aggravation—raindrops wiped out evidence like industrial solvents. Several cars followed them into the forest preserve. The place was bustling for the early hour, but then again school was out for one of those unfathomable “teacher institutes.” The clouds hovered. A small enameled sign on the bridge arching the river announced C
AUTION
! S
LIPPERY
W
HEN
W
ET
!

Branch eased though the hairpin turn into the parking lot. Little girls scrambled along the riverbank, giggling and throwing sticks and leaves. Emily envied their carefree abandon. She glanced at the long wooden picnic table where a half dozen animated moms poured coffee from a stainless-steel thermos. Steam curled and danced in the cool riverside air. In the Kodak moment of life without monsters, she felt her anxieties tumble away.

“Want to take a walk?” Branch said, shutting off the engine. “Talk about it?”

Emily nodded. The river was a broken mirror of clouds and sunlight. Shoreside daffodils were starting to bud. In a few weeks they'd trumpet their full yellow glory. The pregnant clouds dipped low, merged as one. The girls sang something about a bear going over a mountain to see what he could see, and she was seized by a hunger for Marty so intense, she hadn't realized how hard she'd been suppressing it. The bear went over the mountain, the moms poured more coffee, the clouds drifted.

She exited and walked behind the car to join Branch, who was fiddling with the gas cap. A white minivan rolled through the hairpin. She kicked a leaf gob off the crusted mud flap. The van slowed. She glanced its way. It looked familiar. Branch muttered, banging the cap with a knuckle. The van stopped, and the driver's window inched down. An alarm began ringing in Emily's head. She stared openly. The van
was
familiar. She'd seen it at Grandma Sally's, waiting for traffic to clear. A sun shaft poked from the clouds to illuminate the driver's bulbous face…shiny…helmetlike hat pulled low on his forehead…strawberry birthmark on his left lower jaw…Hey, didn't the naked kid at the library say the birthday-card man had a strawberry…

“The Unsub! It's him!” Emily screamed, reaching for her gun.

The driver's hands snapped up, lighting the gloom with the stutter-flash of submachine-gun fire. Girls screamed as moms dove on them, blood and coffee drenching the picnic table. Emily shoveled her Glock in front of her face, no time to think just fire-fire-fire. Branch joined in with his Colt .45, roaring “Police, don't move, don't move!” Emily knew that she was screaming because she felt it in her throat, that she was firing from the jerk-jerk-jerk in her fist. She couldn't hear shots, couldn't hear anything, but watched orange flames spurt from the Glock's steel snout—
one-two-three-nine
—and bullet holes pock the van and the Unsub's cherry Wind-breaker. But he wasn't falling, just sitting there, calm, turning the deadly stream their way. Emily crouched for the protection of the engine block, then remembered Branch wasn't wearing his bulletproof vest and instead leapfrogged sideways, arms flailing over her head, trying to stretch herself larger. A laser gunsight lit her midsection. Then a million sledgehammers slammed home, pounding breath from her lungs. “Ahh,” she hissed, all her joints melting. The Glock skittered across the parking stripes. Her head cracked off the blacktop, and, vision fuzzing, she splayed herself over Branch's limp body. She absorbed the bullet stream but felt several thwock Branch's exposed hip. She begged her arms to grab the .45 from Branch's unmoving hand, but they refused—her muscles were frozen solid from the shock wave. Helpless, she watched the Unsub hop out of the van, run to her, rip her father's bayonet from her boot sheath and her handcuffs from her gun belt, jump back in the van, throw her a sloppy kiss, and roar up the driveway to freedom.

Uhnnnnnnnh.
She was shot to pieces, unable to move, unable to feel, dying like Daddy, like Mama, like Jack, like Lucy and Arnie and firefighter and birds. Black fog shrouded her head, and the bagpipes chanted “Amazing Grace.” Then the music faded, and the fog began lifting. “Why are you doing this?” she screamed at the lingering wisps of exhaust. “What do you want from me?” A strangled “wuhhhhh” was all that emerged. A tear slid as she realized how perilously close to death she was and what little she could do about it. She managed to gargle to the form under her, “Branch…talk…me.” No reply.