LOVING HER SOUL MATE (2 page)

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Shay Turner.
 
Yours?”

“I’m asking the questions here.
 
Is this your house, Miss Turner?”

“Yes.”

“Lived here long?”

“Two weeks.”

“You’ve lived here on Bluestone Road for two weeks,
or here in Brady for two weeks?”

“Both,” Shay said.

John nodded his head.
 
He knew he’d never seen her around these
parts before.
 
He didn’t see how he could
forget a face like hers.
 
Not just
because she was pretty: pretty faces in Brady were a dime a dozen.
 
But this woman had a sharpness about her that
made him know not to even go there with her.
 
She meant business.
 
He could see
it in her swagger, in the way she moved from side to side just standing there
as if she had promises to keep and this was holding her up.
 
He could see it in her smooth, oak-brown face
dominated by her large, golden brown eyes that seemed laced with a small,
almost hidden dose of vulnerability, and a massive dose of ice.

“That guy,” John continued, “he’s your husband?”

Shay wanted to say something harsh to drive home
the point that there was no way under this sun that he was any husband of
hers.
 
Although, just a few hours ago,
before the truth knocked her sideways, he had been a strong contender.
 
“No,” she said instead.

What’s his name?”

“Lonnie Resden.”

“And you’re telling me he’s the one who started the
fight?”

“He hit me first.
 
I call that starting a fight.”

“Over what?”

If he wasn’t burned out, Shay thought, then he was
shell-shocked.
 
She’d seen it
before.
 
Only this cop’s demons didn’t
appear to be from some hard-fought war, but from life itself; that maybe his
best days were behind him and he was just trying to stave off the coming night.
 
He was surviving, she figured he wanted to
live, but he wasn’t thriving anymore.

“What was the fight about, Miss Turner?” John asked
her again.

“It’s hard for me to answer questions from a man
who won’t even tell me his name.
 
I feel
at a decided disadvantage here.
 
The
least you can do is
answer
that one question.”

Any other suspect and John would have answered her
question, all right.
 
Answered
it with cuffs on the wrist and a swift ride to headquarters.
 
But with this particular suspect, he couldn’t
go there.
 
“John Malone,” he said,
answering her earlier question.

Shay’s eyebrows lifted up into a quizzical
arch.
 
John Malone?
 
This burned-out looking cop was Captain John
Malone?
 
The legendary cop who cracked
some of the toughest cases in Brady’s history?
 
She’d only heard about him.
 
This
was their first face to face.

“Why would a man of your rank and position be
handling a domestic like this?” she asked him.

John stared at her.
  
Had they met before?
 
He would not have forgotten that face.
 
“You know me?” he asked her.

“I wouldn’t call it knowledge,” Shay replied.
 
“I’m a reporter with the Brady Tribune.
 
I know your reputation.”

John almost asked which reputation was it: his
legendary cop rep or his legendary lady man’s rep.
 
The former rep he was not worthy of; the
latter rep he wore like a badge of shame.
 
But then he caught himself and stood erect.
 
What the hell was he going around the
mulberry bush with her for?
 
“Answer my
question,” he said instead.
 
“What was
the fight about?”

His reputation also included how gruff he was, Shay
remembered.
 
“His women,” she finally
replied.
 
“The fight was about his
women.”

John nodded.
 
He had already worked that part out.
 
These domestics were usually always about one of two things: money or
some other woman.
 
Or
women
in this case.
 
“So you found out
he was cheating on you?”

The pain was still there.
 
But Shay wasn’t about to reveal that part of
herself to this cop.
 
“Yes.”

“He put his hands on you first?”

“When I refused to ignore the facts, yes, he did.”

“So he hit you and you fought back?”

“That’s right.”

“And let me guess,” John went on, “you didn’t mean
to hurt him?”

“I meant to beat the shit out of him,” Shay replied
without batting an eye.
 
“Of course I
meant to hurt him.”

John almost smiled, so much for his theory, but he
kept it professional.
 
“What did you hit
him with?”

“The first thing I could get my hands on.”

“Which was?”
 

“A lamp.”

This surprised John.
 
He had heard of weapons before.
 
“A lamp?”

“It was the first thing I could get my hands on.”

“Mind showing me this lamp?”

Shay was a reporter, so she knew the drill.
 
It was just annoying and embarrassing that
she had to be associated with the drill.
 
But she was in it now.
 
Thanks to
that good-for-nothing Lonnie Resden.
 

She went inside her home, leaving the door open for
John to follow.
 

It was even smaller than it looked from the
outside, with a boxy living room leading into an even smaller dining room.
 
The kitchen was just around the corner,
apparently, by the arch of the doorway that led in that direction, but Shay
stopped just short, at the foot of the dining room, where a lamp lay on the
floor.
 
She didn’t pick it up, however,
knowing that it would be evidence.

“
That
 
it
?” John asked as he moved in front
of her.

“That’s it,” Shay replied.

John crouched down and looked at the decimated
lamp, his expensive loafers sparkling against the white tiled floor.
 
He pulled a pen out of the inside of his
jacket and lifted the lamp shade that had sagged down against the base.
 
There were blood stains on the base, with a
crack in the base itself.
 
She really let
him have it, he thought, looking at the condition of the lamp.
 

He then stood again and looked around the area
itself.
 
Although books and papers were
stacked on the kitchen table, and also on the living room’s coffee table, there
were no visible signs of any struggle of any kind.
 

Then he looked at her.
 
She was staring at him with such intensity in
her eyes that he suddenly felt exposed.
  
As if she knew, like he knew, like nobody else bothered to know, that he
was a burned out shell of the man he used to be.

“So the fight took place right here?” he asked
her.
 

“Yes,” she replied, “if you want to call it a
fight.”

“What do you call it?”

Her arms were folded now, as if just looking at
that lamp again brought back the memories, and he was suddenly sorry she had to
relive them on his account.
 
But he had a
job to do.

 
“What
happened, Miss Turner?”

Shay exhaled.
 
It was no use.
 
She was in it
now.
 
“He slapped me across my face.
 
I grabbed the lamp and knocked him upside his
head.
 
That’s what happened.”

“One
lick
apiece?”

“That’s right.”

“Only yours could have killed him.”

Shay was offended.
 
“He put his hands on me.
 
What was
I supposed to do?
 
Let him?
 
Then tomorrow it’s a black eye.
 
The next day it’s a broken arm.
 
Then the day after that it’s me in a pine
box.
 
No, sir.
 
He’ll get in that box first.”

Tough as nails, John thought, and he liked that she
was that way.
 
But why did he keep seeing
an almost searing vulnerability in her eyes?
 
“After you hit him with the lamp,” he asked her, “did he hit you again?”

“No.”

“Had he ever hit you before this incident?”

Shay hesitated.
 
“No,” she said, without looking John in the eye.
 
“We hardly ever argued before.”

“Until you found out about the girlfriends?”

A sadness
appeared in Shay’s
eyes.
 
“Yes.”

John looked down, at that flat tummy of hers
again,
and then back into those radiant eyes.
 
Something she wasn’t telling him, he could
sense it.
 

“And it was just you and Resden in this house when
the incident occurred?”

“That’s correct.”

“Are you here alone now?”

“Yes, Captain Malone, I’m alone.
 
No-one’s here.
 
No one witnessed any of this but me and
Lonnie.
 
So I guess it’s my word against
his.”

Maybe, John thought.
 
Then he glanced over at the dining room
table.
 
“Let’s sit down for a minute,” he
said to her, pulling out his notebook.
 
“I need to get some background.”

They moved over to the dining room table.
 
John pulled out the side chair for Shay,
oddly aware of her femininity and attractiveness.
 
Usually, when he was investigating cases, he
didn’t give a damn.
 
Then he moved next
to her to the armed chair at the head of the table.
 
But as soon as he sat down in that chair, he
caught Shay grimacing painfully as she moved around in her seat.
 
He also noticed she was sitting with a
sideways slant to her small body.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her as he sat his
notebook on the table.

Shay looked him in his tired, blue eyes.
 
And although her mouth told him nothing was
wrong, her eyes told him something completely different.

And his heart pounded against his chest.
 
Which surprised him.
 
He stared at her.
 
“Come here,” he said, reaching out his hand.

“I told you nothing’s wrong.”

“Come here,” he said again, a frown on his
face.
 
There was more to this story, a
lot
more,
he could feel it in his bones.

Shay didn’t see the point, especially since she was
beginning to wonder if Lonnie had been right and she had completely
overreacted, but she took his hand and went to him anyway.
 

John was surprised at how small her hand felt in
his.
 
And again she seemed so
contradictory to him: so tough, but so vulnerable too.
 

He opened his legs, lodging her between them, and
moved to the edge of the chair.
 
“Turn
around,” he said to her.

“Captain, I’m okay.
 
For real, though.
 
I told you
nothing’s wrong.”

“I saw you grimace, Shay.
 
So don’t tell me nothing’s wrong.
 
I have to see the full extent of your
injuries or that asshole may just walk and end up doing the same thing to another
woman.
 
Is that what you want?”

“Of course that’s not what I want.”

“Then turn around.”

But that didn’t stop her embarrassment.
 
That didn’t stop the shame she felt.
 
A look of distress came over her face.

John felt her distress.
 
He couldn’t explain why but he felt it as
deeply as if it was his own distress.
 
She stood there, barely taller than he was sitting, her troubled eyes
piercing him.
 
“You didn’t do this,
Shay,” he felt compelled to say to her.
 
“This was done to you.
 
You
understand me?
 
He did this to you.
 
And I’ll be damned if you’re going to stand
up here in front of me and be ashamed of what somebody else
did
to you.”