Mending Fences (10 page)

“Believe me, I could happily go for years without ever seeing you again,” she said.

“Now that hurts,” he replied with feigned dismay.

She forced a smile. “Good. Paula, I’ll speak to you later.”

Paula gave her an odd look, then nodded. “Later.”

Emily waited till she reached her classroom before she released a heartfelt sigh of relief. She wasn’t sure why she let Detective Rodriguez get under her skin so badly. The man was just doing his job. Sure, he was trying to convict a boy she thought of as a son, but her reaction went deeper than that. He made her nervous, the way a man made a woman nervous when he was blatantly interested, but that was absurd. Detective Rodriguez wasn’t interested in her in that way. He was pursuing a lead, nothing more. She needed to keep reminding herself of that.

After all, a guy that good-looking probably had a wife and kids at home. And he was teamed up with a partner who was no slouch in the looks department. Detective Lansing could easily have modeled for some swimsuit calendar featuring female cops. As if that weren’t intimi
dating in its own way, she had kind eyes, too, which was more than Emily could say for Rodriguez. He had penetrating dark brown eyes that saw too much.

God, what was wrong with her? Why was she thinking about the man’s eyes? Why was she thinking about him at all? Obviously she’d gone too many months without sex. Without a man in her life at all, for that matter.

A bell rang and suddenly her room was filled with chattering students, which finally distracted her from her disconcerting thoughts. When a second bell rang, she forced a smile.

“Good morning. Has everyone finished reading
Moby Dick?
Shall we talk about Melville’s theme?” she asked her advance placement students. These were the honor roll kids, the best of the best, which made it her favorite class of the day.

Marty Jacobs, the class clown, waved his hand in the air. “It was a whale of a good story,” he joked.

Emily grinned despite herself. “Very insightful,” she commented. “Anyone have anything more illuminating to offer?”

To her delight, several of the students had actually done more than read a summary of the book online. The discussion that ensued was lively enough to fill the entire hour and to keep her mind off the man just down the hall who was diligently trying to lock away her best friend’s son.

Her next class, unfortunately, was less diverting. Just when she was ready to scream in frustration or order them all to get out the book and actually read it aloud right here and now, her classroom door opened and Detective Rodriguez beckoned to her. For once, she was actually grateful to see him.

“Open your books and read chapter one,” she instructed her students. “We’ll start with that when I get back.”

She stepped into the hallway. “I’m in the middle of class,” she informed Detective Rodriguez. “Can’t this wait?”

“Will there ever be a really good time?” he inquired.

“Probably not,” she conceded. “But I do get paid to fill young minds with knowledge, not to chat with the police.”

“Didn’t sound to me as if those young minds were all that interested in learning anything,” he commented.

She sighed. “They’re not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to try. Just tell me what you want so I can get back in there.”

“To be honest, we’re a little frustrated,” Detective Lansing confided. “All the teachers we’ve spoken to claim that Evan Carter was a perfect student, a perfect gentleman.”

“Maybe they’ve said that because it was true,” Emily said impatiently. “Evan was always a good kid.”

“No teenager is perfect,” Detective Rodriguez said. “It goes against nature. Take your son, for instance.”

“Josh?”

He nodded. “You’d be biased in his favor, right?”

“Of course.”

“Can you tell me in all honesty that he’s never made a mistake, gotten into mischief, done anything to make you want to throttle him?”

Emily was about to say just that, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter the lie. “He’s never done anything criminal,” she said, “but yes, he’s made his share of mistakes.”

“And Evan Carter?” he said. “There’s not one time in all the years you’ve known him when he’s been anything less than perfect?”

“Nothing I could point a finger to and say that’s where he went wrong,” she insisted.

“You’re either lying or wearing rose-colored glasses,” he said, not even trying to hide his impatience. “I can’t believe the mother of a daughter would sympathize with a guy capable of doing what the Carter kid did to this young woman.”

Emily knew he was trying to push her into reacting, hoping she’d say something condemning, but she refused to fall into the trap. “
If
he did it, I would be disillusioned and angry, but you’re asking me if I’ve ever seen any sign that he’s capable of doing such a thing and I’m telling you, for probably the tenth time, that I haven’t. You can ask me a hundred more times, and I’ll tell you the exact same thing.”

He sighed. “You keep count and let me know when we break the hundred mark,” he said. “Maybe then I’ll have worn you down enough that you’ll finally tell me the whole truth.”

He turned and walked away.

“Dammit, I am telling you the truth,” she shouted after him.

He merely waved, but Detective Lansing gave her a sympathetic smile. “Don’t mind him. He takes these cases personally. It makes him a great cop, but it’s a little hard on people he thinks are holding back.”

“But I’m not,” Emily said in frustration.

“You don’t
think
you are,” Naomi Lansing said. “See you, Mrs. Dobbs.”

Rattled by the suggestion that she might be inadver
tently lying to the police and even to herself, Emily stared after the two of them as they exited the building. Why wouldn’t they believe that she was being as candid with them as she possibly could be? She might be a reluctant source, but she was being truthful. Wasn’t she?

She thought of Derek’s belief that Evan was starting to take after his father and her own observations along that line. She hadn’t mentioned any of that, and she wouldn’t. She’d persuaded herself that it wasn’t really relevant. To be honest, she suspected Detective Rodriguez would disagree.

Before she could think too long or hard about what her silence implied, she heard a commotion in her classroom and opened the door to find that chaos had ensued in her absence. Sucking in a deep breath, she walked into the room and shouted for silence.

The quiet that followed was rewarding, but it was only a tiny victory. Still, on a day like today, she’d take it.

Grady was in a foul mood as he and Naomi left the school. He knew that the teachers he’d spoken to knew more than they’d said. He just wasn’t asking the right questions.

“Stop beating yourself up,” Naomi said, regarding him with sympathy. “You know it’s possible that none of them are lying. Evan might be the kind of kid who’s capable of putting on a great show in front of adults. This crime is something that happens in secret and involves kids his own age. They’re the ones we need to speak with. And when we do, we’ll put the pieces together to lock him up. Even if there’s no one other incident we can point to, the forensics alone in this case ought to be enough.”

“Possibly, but you know how it goes in court. A good defense attorney can rattle Lauren, make her seem like a less than reliable witness. Evan will claim it was all consensual, that she likes it a little rough. I want that pattern, Naomi,” Grady said. “I know there are other women out there. But how the hell are we supposed to find them, if everyone keeps looking at us as the enemy?”

“Everyone, or Emily Dobbs?” Naomi asked. “You seem a little obsessed with her. Are you sure it’s all about her connection to the case? Or is it personal?”

He frowned at her. “She’s a witness.”

“I haven’t seen you let a lot of witnesses rile you up the way she obviously does.”

Grady knew Naomi was right. He could lie and say it was all about Evan Carter’s case, but there was more to it. Something about Emily Dobbs got to him. Under the circumstances, though, it was best if he ignored the attraction.

“I don’t have time to think about anything except getting this kid convicted,” he told Naomi.

“Then let’s forget the school for now,” she suggested. “Maybe we can find Josh Dobbs on campus if we head up to UM.”

Grady was too frustrated to seize on the suggestion. “There are thousands of kids on that campus. How are we supposed to pick him out?”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she mocked. “Give me ten minutes in front of a computer, fifteen tops, and I’ll bet I can find his class schedule. Then we plant ourselves outside of his classroom and wait.”

“How much time do you spend on that computer of yours anyway? And what the hell ever happened to privacy?”

“I spend enough time on it to be intimately acquainted with what it can and can’t tell me,” she said. “If you weren’t a technophobe, I could teach you.”

“Old-fashioned legwork has always been good enough for me,” he grumbled.

“Which is why we’re a good team. I understand that we’re no longer in the Dark Ages and you have the persistence of a pitbull.”

“You get that kid’s class schedule and I’ll buy lunch,” he promised. “We can even go to that vegetarian place you like. I’ll suck it up and order a soy burger.”

She regarded him with justifiable astonishment. “You swore the last time I dragged you there that you would never, ever eat anything that disgusting again.”

Grady grinned at her. “Which should prove the depths of my gratitude if you get that schedule.”

“I’m on it,” she said as they pulled into the lot beside the station. “Give me ten minutes. You coming in?”

“Nah. I’ll wait here.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “Here? In the parking lot?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“You sure you’re not planning to bolt down the street for a corned beef on rye from John Martin’s the second my back is turned?”

“Never even crossed my mind,” he declared innocently. Now, a burger and fries from McDonald’s he could grab and finish before she ever knew he was gone.

W
alking into the building where Josh Dobbs was taking a class in political science snapped Grady right back to his own college days. It hadn’t been the best time in his life, at least not at first. He’d gone to school filled with simmering resentment. He’d wanted to go straight to the police academy, but his dad had insisted he needed a college degree if he ever hoped to advance beyond being a patrolman. He could still hear his old man.

“A good education is never wasted, son. If you don’t listen to me for once, you’ll live to regret it. Don’t let that stubborn determination of yours to defy me at every turn make you let this opportunity slip away.”

Eventually Grady had let himself be persuaded, mainly because his uncle, a career police officer and the man he really looked up to, agreed with his dad for practically the first time in Grady’s memory. The two sons of Cuban immigrants—one an overachieving, by-the-book engineer, the other a jovial, dedicated street cop with no driving ambition—rarely agreed on anything, so it was worth taking note when they did.

Grady’s first semester at community college had been flat-out awful, filled with classes he was convinced were
a waste of time. By the second semester, when he was finally able to take a course in criminal psychology, he finally started getting the value of being in school.

And then he’d met the woman who would become his wife. Kathleen Donovan, with her red hair and flawless complexion, could have stepped into a pub in Dublin and been right at home. She had the friendly effervescence that Grady lacked. All it took to brighten his mood was the sight of her smile. And Kathleen was always smiling, right up until the day the smile was wiped from her face forever. Knowing he’d done that would haunt him through eternity.

But for a few years there, they’d been good together, their Irish and Cuban backgrounds blending surprisingly well. Both came from large, boisterous, Catholic families, and if one side spoke Spanish at home, well, they figured it would be great for their children to be bilingual.

His mother had embraced Kathleen as the daughter she’d always wanted in a houseful of boys. Even his father had adored her. Marrying her was the first thing Grady had done of which Miguel Rodriguez totally approved. When things had gone so tragically wrong, they’d taken her side over his. Not that he blamed them, but it had hurt just the same.

“Hey, where’d you go just then?” Naomi asked, digging an elbow into his ribs.

“Long ago and far away,” he said. “How much longer till class gets out?”

“Five minutes,” she told him.

“We don’t even know if he’s in there,” Grady groused. “We could be wasting our time.”

She gave him an odd look. “You have any other leads we could be pursuing?”

“No.”

“Then let’s just see where this one takes us.” She gave him a long, considering look. “And wherever you went a minute ago, don’t go there again.”

Grady sighed. If only that were possible…

Ten years earlier

Grady had been on duty for nearly twenty-four straight hours. He’d taken a double shift to bring in some extra cash so he could buy Kathleen a new car. Hers was being held together by wishes and paper clips, or darn close to it. It had broken down half-a-dozen times in the past month and the repairs were getting more and more expensive. It didn’t make sense to patch it back together one more time.

She needed something solid and reliable. She had a forty-five-minute commute to work every morning and she was out of the house before dawn. He didn’t want her on the road at that hour in a car she couldn’t count on.

Unfortunately, they’d depleted their savings to make the down payment on their first house. It had the pool that Kathleen, an ex college swimmer, had wanted. They’d probably overextended themselves to get it, but Grady knew she’d given up a lot when she chose him over some of the MBA guys who were destined to make a fortune in stocks and bonds or in their climb up the corporate ladder.

Between the need for cash and his willingness to take on extra shifts because he loved the adrenaline rush of being on the job, Grady worked too much. Kathleen had started complaining about it lately, but he’d rationalized his workaholic tendencies by citing her need for a new car.

When he’d crawled into bed this morning, exhausted down to his bones, she’d nudged him back awake.

“Don’t forget you’re picking Megan up from school
today,” she reminded him. “It’s a half day, so you need to be there at noon.”

Grady groaned. Their six-year-old was a handful on her best days. He adored her with every fiber of his being, but she could get on his last nerve quicker than anyone he knew. Then she’d crawl into his lap and give him a smile that he swore turned on the sun.

“Why isn’t she going to the sitter’s?”

“Because Becky’s having a root canal done. Remember, we talked about this, Grady,” she said, her tone impatient. “I offered to call your mom, but you said you wanted to spend the afternoon with Megan.”

He had a vague recollection of the conversation. “Right. Noon. I’ll be there.”

“And don’t take her for a burger and fries for lunch,” Kathleen warned him. “I’ve left tuna fish for both of you.”

“Oh, goody,” he said, making a face.

“It’s good for you.”

He pulled her down beside him and planted a lingering kiss on her lips, then said, “Which is why Megan thinks I’m the fun parent.”

“I can live with that,” Kathleen said. “Get some sleep, sweetie. I’ll be home by six-thirty.”

“You work too hard.”

“So do you, but it’s all for our future. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” he murmured, his head already buried under the pillow.

He woke at eleven thirty, but only because Kathleen had been wise enough to set two alarms, one beside the bed, the other across the room. They jarred him out of a sound sleep and had him cursing as he stumbled to shut off the particularly shrill alarm she’d placed out of reach.

A half hour later he was sitting in front of the school
waiting for his daughter. When she bounded down the sidewalk and saw him behind the wheel her eyes lit up.

“Daddy, I forgot you were getting me today! Can we go for ice cream?”

Grady grinned. Obviously he’d carried the indulgence thing a little too far. Then he thought of the tuna fish waiting at home.

“How about pizza instead?” Kathleen hadn’t said anything about pizza, had she? So it wasn’t like he was breaking his word.

“I
love
pizza!” Megan declared, her dark auburn braids bouncing. She had her mother’s creamy complexion and green eyes, but her hair was a combination of his brown and Kathleen’s red.

Grady grinned at her. “Me, too.” When she was settled into her car seat in the back, he glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “How was school today? Did you learn anything exciting?”

“Ricky Johnson said a bad word and the teacher gave him a time-out.”

“Now, that
is
exciting,” Grady said. He decided against asking what the offending word had been. “But I was wondering more about arithmetic or spelling, something like that.”

Megan frowned. “The teacher wrote some stuff on the board, but I already knew it.”

“Really?”

“I could spell cat and dog a long time ago,” she said with pride. “Mommy taught me.”

“What about me? Have I ever taught you anything useful?”

She giggled. “You taught me to tie my shoes and to burp.”

Grady grinned. “Well, at least one of those is useful.”

Megan’s smile faltered. “Mommy says ladies don’t burp.”

“That’s true, but you have years and years before you have to worry about what a proper young lady should or shouldn’t do. But believe me, when the time comes, Mommy is the one to listen to about things like that.”

“Daddy?”

“Hmm?”

“Can we have ice cream after we have pizza?”

“Let’s see if you have room for it,” he said, not ruling it out.

“I’ll have lots and lots of room,” Megan assured him.

“Then we will definitely fill it up with ice cream,” Grady told her.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“You, too,
niña
.”

She and her mom were his reasons for being.

Present

Students were spilling into the hallway. Grady had his eyes peeled for Josh Dobbs, hoping he’d recognize him after that one brief glimpse of his picture when they’d interviewed Emily Dobbs. Naomi was watching intently as well.

Just when he was convinced that the last student was gone and they’d wasted the trip to campus, he spotted the young man. He looked more like his mother than Grady had noticed in the photo. And in a happy coincidence, he was deep in conversation with Jenny Ryan, Lauren’s roommate.

He and Naomi exchanged a look. She nodded in unspoken understanding and stepped into the couple’s path.

“Jenny, I’m sorry to interrupt, but could I have a word with you?” Naomi asked.

Jenny’s attention shifted from Josh Dobbs to Naomi and her expression faltered. “Detective Lansing, is everything okay? Lauren hasn’t withdrawn the charges, has she?”

“As far as I know, she’s sticking by her statement, but I thought we could talk about how you could make sure that doesn’t change.”

“Sure, no problem.” She looked at Josh. “You don’t mind, do you, Josh? This is important.”

The boy had been watching the scene in wary silence, but he nodded. “No, go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Grady watched Naomi and Jenny walk outside and head for a nearby bench in a grassy area beneath some towering royal palm trees. Josh stood staring after them.

As Grady approached, the kid seemed to stiffen, as if sensing that Grady was with Naomi, even though they hadn’t exchanged a word in his presence.

“Josh Dobbs?” Grady asked.

Alarm flared in his eyes. “Yes.”

“I’m Detective Rodriguez. Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

The kid frowned. “You’re the same cop who came to the house to talk to my mom, aren’t you?”

Grady nodded.

“She told me about you.”

“I’m sure she was filled with glowing praise,” Grady said wryly.

Josh grinned. “Not so much, to be honest with you. Why do you want to talk to me?”

“Because I imagine you have a very different perspective on what’s going on than your mother might have.”

“My mom’s pretty smart. She’s around kids all the time. I think she knows how to read them.”

“Probably so, unless they’re intent on hiding their behavior.”

“I suppose.”

“Was it like that with Evan Carter?”

In an instant Josh’s open demeanor shut down and he gave Grady the same kind of defiant look his mother had. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Grady grinned at his attempt at evasiveness. “Oh, I think you do. You’re a straight-A student. Your mom bragged about that. I think you can follow my line of thinking. Does Evan Carter have a side that he doesn’t let most adults see, especially your mother or his parents?”

The kid looked torn. Grady just waited as he struggled to decide between honesty and loyalty.

“Look, I really don’t think I’m the one you ought to be talking to,” Josh said.

“Why is that?”

“Evan and I have been friends since we were kids.”

“So you’re loyal. I get that. But loyalty should only go so far. Evan’s committed a crime. And what about Lauren? Since you obviously know Jenny, I’m sure she’s told you how tough things are for her roommate right now.”

Josh looked even more distressed.

Grady pressed harder. “I’ll ask you again, is Evan always the clean-cut, all-American kid that everyone thinks he is?”

“Look, I know what you’re really asking me,” Josh
admitted finally. “You want to know if I ever saw him mistreat a woman. The answer is no, not physically, anyway.”

Grady seized on the loophole he’d left. “Verbally?”

Josh nodded with obvious reluctance. “But he didn’t hide that from his folks. He treated his mom the same way. My parents would have grounded me for a year if I’d said some of the stuff to my mom that Evan said to his on a regular basis.” He regarded Grady earnestly. “It’s because of his dad. Mr. Carter talks to his wife the same way, like she doesn’t have a brain in her head. It’s like she’s his personal slave or something, not a woman he’s supposed to love and respect.”

Grady heard the disgust in the boy’s voice and thought to himself that Emily Dobbs and her ex-husband had done a good job with him.

“And you heard Evan speak with the same disrespect to women he was seeing?” Grady asked.

Josh nodded. “I tried to talk to him about it, but he just blew me off as if I was some kind of jerk for thinking it was wrong. I kept thinking that word would spread and women would start refusing to go out with him, but I miscalculated about the jock factor. He was a big man on campus and he knew it. A lot of girls will put up with just about anything if the guy is some big wheel.”

“Did you ever have the sense that it went beyond verbal abuse, that he might get physically abusive behind closed doors?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Josh admitted, “but we didn’t double-date a lot. It was bad enough listening to him brag about all his conquests the morning after. To tell you the truth, that was one of the reasons we haven’t been as close for the past year. I didn’t much like being around him.”

“You ever heard any complaints from women he’d been out with, any hints that he’d pushed too hard for sex?”

He shook his head. “Like I said, he’s a star athlete. A lot of girls are so thrilled that he’s paying attention to them at all, they’ll just go along with whatever he wants. To be honest, I was surprised that he even asked Lauren out. She’s not a groupie. She didn’t hang all over him.”

“Maybe that made her a challenge,” Grady suggested.

“I suppose.” Josh met his gaze. “I feel really bad about what happened to her. She’s a nice girl. I just wish I’d warned her, you know.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Grady assured him. He glanced toward the bench where Naomi and Jenny were still talking. “You dating Jenny?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t really know her till the other day. We have this class together, but I didn’t even know she was Lauren’s roommate till she came up to me after all this started. She got right up in my face,” he said with admiration. “She wanted to know where I stood, if I believed Lauren or if I was going to stand by Evan. She’d apparently found out we went way back.”