Dead Reckoning (30 page)

“What is it?”

His voice came to her as if from a great distance. Folding the note, willing her hands to still, Kate tucked it back into the envelope without meeting his gaze. “Nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?”

She raised her gaze to his. She’d almost convinced herself he was going to let this slide. But Frank Matrone didn’t let things slide. One look into his eyes and she knew he was going to force open a door she wanted to keep locked down tight.

“You’re sheet white.” His gaze flicked to the note, then back to her.

“I’m just . . . shaken up from this morning. That’s all.”

“You’re a hell of a lot more than shaken up.”

Making a sound of annoyance in an effort to hide the hard churn of emotion, she turned away. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Give me the note.”

“No.” She started for the hall.

“Kate, damn it, if someone is stalking you . . .” His voice trailed. “You’re too smart to ignore this.”

That stopped her. As desperately as she didn’t want to open the Pandora’s box of her past, Kate knew he was right. She could no longer ignore this. She could not sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away. But there was a very large part of her that simply couldn’t bear the thought of bringing what had happened to her and Kirsten eleven years ago back into her life.

For a full minute she stood with her back to him. She could feel herself shaking, both inside and out. She could feel Frank’s eyes on her, but she didn’t turn to face him.

“Let me see the letter,” he said.

When she didn’t move, he crossed to her. Without speaking, he turned her to him. His face was solemn when he opened her fingers and took the envelope. Kate could feel her emotions burgeoning as he opened it and began to read. For the first time in a long time she wanted to crumple. She wanted to curl into a ball and hide. Shame and outrage and a thousand other feelings she couldn’t begin to name overwhelmed her, like a tidal wave swamping a tiny island.

Kate had always considered herself an enlightened and educated woman. She dealt with all types of crimes on a daily basis. She
knew
what had happened to her and Kirsten was not her fault.

But nothing would ever erase the shame. The scars. Nothing would ever ease the terrible weight of guilt for what had happened to her sister.

Hugging herself, she walked to the bar, pulled out a stool, and climbed onto it. Closing her eyes, she lowered her face into her hands and tried not to cry.

 
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 11:49 A.M.

Frank had always possessed a sixth sense when it came to lies. He’d known for quite some time that Kate was hiding something. That she was in trouble and needed help. But he’d never expected this.

He stared at the crude lettering, his mind reeling, his heart breaking for her. Simultaneously something primal and male stirred violently inside him at the thought of someone hurting her.

He found her sitting at the bar with her face in her hands. She looked small and vulnerable and somehow broken. The urge to go to her, draw her into his arms, and tell her he was going to make everything all right was strong. But Frank was fresh out of promises. He knew firsthand that sometimes bad things happened to good people. He knew that sometimes the best they could hope for was that they could learn to live with it.

“How many letters have you received?” he asked.

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she raised her head. Her spine stiffened, and she looked at him with a directness that had him admiring her strength when he knew her reserves had long since worn thin.

“That one makes two,” she said.

“I need to see the first one.”

Her eyes skittered away.

He waited.

After a moment she slid from the stool and left the kitchen. He wanted to follow her, but sensed her need for space and so he gave it to her. She crossed through the living room and into the den. A moment later she reappeared with a small plastic storage container in her hand.

She set it on the bar and removed the lid. Inside, Frank saw a legal pad where she’d jotted notes. A folded piece of paper. A blue bandanna.

“I received the first phone call on January twenty-seventh.”

“How many calls have you received?”

“Three.” She picked up the legal pad. “I started a time line and documented everything.”

“Good job.”

Her smile was wry. “You can take the lawyer out of the courtroom, but you can’t take the lawyer out of the girl.”

Frank smiled, but it felt uncomfortable on his face as he reached for the pad. Her handwriting was neat and precise. She’d used black pen with a fine tip. She’d logged dates and times and used quotation marks to indicate what the caller had said. “Have you handled these items much?” he asked. “We might be able to raise some latents.”

“I don’t want the police involved.”

“You can’t handle this on your own.”

“I mean it, Frank. I don’t want this made public.”

“Kate, how many times have you seen people refuse to ask for help when they should have? How many times have you seen the results?”

“I know how things work,” she snapped. “But damn it, Frank, we’re talking about . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“We’re talking about your personal safety.”

“We’re talking about a nightmare I don’t want dredged up, damn it!”

Frank understood, as much as he could, anyway. He sympathized. But there was no way he was going to be able to honor her request to keep this quiet and still keep her safe.

Needing time to decide how to proceed, he looked down at the notebook. “It says here that you received the second note the same night you made the 911 call.”

“The stalker left the note in the fuse box in the garage.”

“You didn’t tell the police?”

“I didn’t want anyone to see the note.”

Using the pen to avoid smudging any potential latent prints or DNA evidence, Frank turned over the note and read.

 
Jesus.

Frank looked at the last item in the plastic box. A blue bandanna. The kind he used to put around his neck when he was a kid playing cowboys and Indians. But the bandanna looked somehow ominous lying in that box. Knowing what had happened to Kate, he didn’t want to ask about its significance. He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer he got.

“What about the bandanna?”

When she didn’t answer, he looked at her and was taken aback by the paleness of her complexion. He’d seen corpses with more color. She was staring at the bandanna. He was standing a couple of feet from her, but it was close enough for him to see that she was shaking. That her lips were dry. Her eyes liquid. And it was suddenly painfully clear that she was holding it together by a tattered thread.

“I can’t talk about this.” Abruptly she reached for the storage container and snapped on the lid, as if closing the box would keep the items inside from hurting her.

“Kate . . .”

Before he could finish, she turned and walked to the living room. Frank let her go. He would give her a few minutes to pull herself together. But he couldn’t let this go.

He found a glass in the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap, then took it to the living room. Kate was sitting on the sofa with her legs pulled up, hugging a pillow to her, the way a frightened child might hold a favorite stuffed animal.

Without speaking he handed her the glass of water. “This isn’t going to go away,” he said. “We’ve got to deal with it.”

Her eyes were dark and knowing and filled with dread when she took it. “I hate this.”

“So do I.” Grimacing, he took the chair across from the sofa. “Kate, you need to talk to me. Tell me everything that’s happened.”

When she said nothing, he sighed. “How am I supposed to help you if you won’t talk to me?”

Lowering her head, she pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

“Kate, you’re a prosecutor. You’ve spent the last two years putting some very bad people in prison. You know what guys like that are capable of.”

She raised her head and glared at him. “This has nothing to do with my job.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe that’s what he wants you to think.”

“Read the note. This is about . . . the past.”

Frank waited, but his patience was stretched taut. After a moment, he said, “I know what happened eleven years ago.”

Myriad emotions flashed in her eyes in an instant. Anger. Pain. Outrage. Shame. But it was shock that stood in the forefront. Her neck and shoulders went rigid. Her hands curled into the pillow. Her nostrils flared, an animal scenting danger. “You can’t.”

The sharp pang of sympathy went all the way to his bones. “I do,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“How did you find out?”

“I was a cop for twelve years.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to use those resources to dig into my past.”

Frank leaned back in the chair and tried to decide how to approach this. He’d broken some rules by running her name through the computer. As far as he was concerned he’d had a good reason. “Kate, someone tried to kill you this morning.”

“I’m aware of what happened this morning,” she snapped with sudden anger.

“We need to find this bastard who’s stalking you,” Frank said. “We need to stop him. And in the interim we need to keep you safe.”

She looked away. Stubborn. Beautiful. Hurting in a way no human being should ever have to hurt. “I don’t want Mike to know about this,” she said.

“I know where you’re coming from, but—”

“No,” she snapped. “You don’t know where I’m coming from.”

“The police will need to see these notes.”

“Frank, damn it, I don’t want that nightmare dredged up. For God’s sake, I’m a prosecutor. When people look at me, I don’t want them to see a victim.”

She tossed the word at him like a dirty word. Frank didn’t have any platitudes, so he let it go and said what had to be said. “Kate, your being a prosecutor is precisely the reason why we’ve got to get to the bottom of this. Intimidating a prosecutor in any way, shape, or form threatens our entire criminal justice system. We can’t sweep this under the rug because you don’t want to deal with it.”

“This is not about my job.”

Frank sighed, feeling as if he’d stepped into very deep water. “Why don’t we start by getting the facts on the table. Once we get the facts laid out, we can decide how to handle it later, okay?”

After a moment she raised her head. When her eyes met his they were dry and she was once again in control of her emotions. “I think this is about what happened eleven years ago. The notes appear to be from one of the perpetrators. Whether or not that’s really the case, I don’t know.”

“Someone could have done some digging, found out what happened. Knowing it might be a sensitive issue for you, they could be trying to use it to intimidate you.”

“Why?”

“Let’s face it, Kate. Not everyone agrees with capital punishment.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But I think it’s a weak angle.”

But Frank could feel his mind shifting into cop mode. “Eleven years ago . . . was there an arrest made?”

She shook her head.

“Was there ever a suspect?”

“No.”

“What about the voice on the phone? Could it be the same guy?”

“I don’t know. The voice is raspy, as if he’s trying to disguise it.” She bit her lip. “I wasn’t struck with a sense of familiarity.”

“Has he ever asked for money?”

“No.”

“That night eleven years ago . . . Was it one man?”

She closed her eyes briefly, then looked down at the pillow she was hugging against her and relaxed her grip on it. “Two. I was able to give the police a description of both men, but they were never able to come up with a suspect.”

He thought about that for a moment, and for the first time he began to understand what drove her. “So the two men got away.”

“Scott-free.”

Something dark and uncomfortable niggled at the back of his brain. “How does Jack Gamble play into this?”

She had a good poker face, but it wasn’t good enough to hide the lie from him. “I told you. Jack Gamble is looking into another case. My relationship with him is totally unrelated to any of this.”

Frank wanted to believe her, but he didn’t. “I’ll double check with the TDOC,” Frank said, referring to the alert sent out by the Texas Department of Corrections to all state law enforcement agencies as well as city, state, and county courts notifying the courts and law enforcement when a convicted felon was released from prison.

Kate nodded. “I’ve already checked the alerts, but maybe someone fell through the cracks.”

“Anyone else you can think of who might want to hurt you?” Frank asked. “Any enemies? Neighbors? Disgruntled friends? Ex-boyfriends?”

Kate shook her head. “My life pretty much revolves around work. I know my neighbors well enough to say hello, and that’s about it.”

“What about family?”

A shadow he couldn’t quite read passed over her expression. “There’s just my sister, Kirsten, and my parents.”

“Do you get along with them?”

“Kirsten suffered permanent brain damage eleven years ago.”

Jesus.
“I’m sorry,” he said.

“My parents never really recovered. Nobody was the same afterward.”

Frank knew firsthand how violence could destroy lives. How, like a greedy hand, it could reach out and snatch away happiness and the grand illusion of safety.

“Life, Inc., usually starts making noise about the time the DA’s office announces it’s going to try a capital case. They’ve been known to get creative in their tactics.”