One Good Man (4 page)

“And you might react.”

He nodded, and she watched his pulse jump at his temple.

Her own jumped in response, then jumped again for reasons that had nothing to do with the case, and everything to do with the look in his eyes. “So it’s videotaped, and I can do it anywhere I’m comfortable, and you’ll be nearby even if you’re not in the room.”

“I’ll be there, too,” Kate said.

“You can observe,” Kell was quick to say. “But no family members or anyone connected to the case can be in the room during the session. The rules are set up to make sure the memories recalled are clean, not influenced by observers or by suggestion, that sort of thing. Otherwise, anything recalled is considered tainted, and anything turned up during a follow-up investigation questionable.”

“But as long as the rules aren’t broken…” Was she that strong? That brave? Would she be able to live with the memories if they came flooding back? Would she be able to live with herself if she didn’t give Kell’s suggestion a try? She wanted so badly to help; she always had.

All these years, she’d felt so impotent, unable to remember details with enough significance to break the case. Because of her own frustration, it wasn’t hard for her to understand that felt by the victims’ families. Their accusations had stung, yes, but she’d never taken them to heart. And now she had a chance to give them the one thing they most needed.

How could she not at least try?

Kell had been holding her gaze all this time, and he finally spoke. “As long as we follow the rules, this is our best shot to shut down this nightmare for good.”

We. He’d said we.

Jamie knew her mother was as torn as she was, and that Kate’s vote would most likely be no. She didn’t want her daughter to have to suffer the horror the refreshed memories could bring. As a mother, that was her right. Kate didn’t care that her baby was an adult.

But Jamie
was
an adult. She was the one who had to make this decision, weighing her mother’s worries and Kell’s assurances against her own counsel.

Really, though, there was only one course of action her conscience would allow her to take—and it would be as much for the other victims as for herself.

“I’ll do it.”

He’d lived in Texas all his life. He’d grown up in Austin where his parents and younger brother still lived. His youngest brother had moved to Houston to work after graduation, exchanging the landlocked central Texas heat for the Gulf Coast humidity. Complaining about the state’s weather was as much a part of being a Texan as waving the Lone Star flag.

But the heat sweating its way through Kell now was of a different sort. A heat wrapped up in pink scrub bottoms and long nimble fingers and an intelligence that wouldn’t quit. Jamie Danby was an amazing woman, and his gut knotted up thinking of what she’d been through.

Even more gut-wrenching were the questions he kept asking himself. What if the hypnosis backfired and Jamie got burned? What if he got his man, brought him to justice, yet Jamie spent the rest of her life scarred worse than she was now?

He adjusted his sunglasses, staring at the haze fogging his view of the Davis Mountains dipping and rolling in the distance. He owned property on the other side of those hills, in the Guadalupe range, to be exact, a hefty number of acres that were home to coyotes and white-tailed deer and javelinas.

He had a cabin there, a simple log structure where he spent long weekends when he needed to escape the horrors he dredged up and the pain his dredging caused the victims of the original crimes. The sort of hell Jamie would be going through once her mind released its hold on her memories.

She was a cute one, Jamie Danby. Tall and willowy, the scrubs she wore hiding the curves she did have, except for her very fine ass. Her hair was long enough for her to pull up into a ponytail, and though he supposed she’d call it brown, it held a whole lot of dark red. The color probably accounted for the smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks.

What he liked about her was a combination of things—all of them speaking to the depth of who she was. The way she considered Kate’s feelings about the hypnosis; it couldn’t be easy to peel back the protective layers her mother had wrapped her in, not knowing what waited on the outside of the cocoon. The way she had chosen to do what was right, though she’d had to fight herself to get there.

He had a feeling she was strong enough to get through whatever happened, but he would damn sure stick around to make sure that she did. That sort of follow-up might not be in his job-description manual, but Kell didn’t need a book of rules and regs to tell him how to be human.

Neither did he need a shrink to tell him that his history with the officer who’d fought to keep the case from going cold made his involvement as much personal as professional. He was going to have to toe a fine line, and not cross over into the kind of emotional territory that led to costly mistakes. But that was between Kell and his conscience.

Behind him, one of the SUV’s doors slammed closed. He didn’t turn, but continued to stare at the rocky mountainside, the trees and scrub growing on the face, their roots finding and clinging to meager patches of soil that neither time nor Mother Nature had eroded away.

Soon enough he heard—and felt—footsteps on the deck as Jamie returned, heard the crunch of ground gravel and the squeal of burning rubber as Kate Danby left her daughter alone with him. Still, he didn’t turn. He waited for Jamie to make the first move.

Her agreeing to the hypnosis was huge. He wasn’t about to rush or press or insist they had no time to waste. Giving her the time she needed was the best way for Kell to accomplish his goal, and accomplishing his goal was paramount.

Her steps brought her closer. He sensed her at his side, her body heat, her tension, the sound of her sigh. When he caught her scent, his body tightened, and his conscience told him not to be a fool. “It’s a rough one. I know.”

He didn’t, of course. At least not what she was going through now. Or even what was to come. But he’d made his own share of tough calls, decisions he would rather have not come to. So in that regard…yeah. He knew.

“About that,” she said, stepping on the tail end of his thoughts. “What
do
you know?”

He shifted enough that his elbow grazed hers. “What do you mean?”

She stayed there, brushing his shirtsleeve, and followed the direction of his gaze. “Some of the things you said. I get the feeling this case is more than just another left unsolved.”

What had he said? What had he let slip? It had to have been something in his tone of voice. He knew he hadn’t given anything away with words. She was his reason for being here, and he didn’t want her to think otherwise should she discover his connection to the original officer on the case.

“Unsolved cases take a toll. Not that fresh ones don’t. They do. I know that.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck, wiping at both the stress and the sweat that it—more than the day’s temperature—had caused. “But cold cases require the people involved, the victims, the bystanders, the witnesses…they all have to open closed doors, turn keys in locks they thought were keeping them safe.”

He kept it at that. Hoped she’d leave it at that. She didn’t need to know his professional interest came with a personal bent. The man who’d convinced Kell of his calling, the man who’d been a lifelong friend of his father, deserved better than to have this case go unsolved. But that was Kell’s cross to bear. And it was his responsibility to make sure it didn’t get in the way of his doing his job.

She didn’t respond except to return to their table where she’d left her purse. Kell watched her sling the strap over her shoulder, her expression thoughtful, her eyes beneath frowning brows full of so many things she obviously wanted to know.

He walked toward her, detouring to the opposite side of the table from where she stood. It would be easier to talk to her from here. “Ask me.”

Her gaze came up. Her chin, too. She tilted her head to one side, toyed with the end of her ponytail where it fell over her shoulder. He got a kick out of her scrubs top, with its teddy bears wearing firefighter gear, wielding hoses, mounted on ladder trucks.

Finally, she spoke. “I’m not sure you being so perceptive is a good thing or bad.” She added a smile; shy, he thought. “I mean, it’s good since you’re an investigator…”

“But it’s bad because it’s your case I’m investigating? And I might pick up on things you prefer keeping close to the vest?”

She nodded, released her hold on her shoulder strap and lowered slowly to sit again on the picnic table’s bench. “Something like that. Though Roni and Honoria know where I came from and what happened, my mother has made sure that I’m anything but an open book.”

And here he was turning her pages. He sat, too.

“It’s strange having so few friends to confide in. Living a solitary sort of life.” She looked off into the distance, smiling, but for her own benefit, not his. “I was just thinking this morning that I’m a hop and a skip away from turning into a crazy cat lady. Or I would be if I had the cats.”

“I hope you’re not going to. Hop and skip in that direction.” He wanted to give her a reason not to. A reason, instead, to reach for the full life she’d been denied. He couldn’t imagine what things had been like for her, existing, not living, within a bubble he doubted was insulated against fear.

She looked back, and shook her head, laughing. “I’ve been tempted, but so far I’ve resisted the lure of feline ownership. And of covering a multitude of sins with lace doilies.”

She had a sense of humor. Dry, self-deprecating. Even a little bit black. He liked that. Laughter cured a lot of ills. “If this works out, you might just be spared a future of cats, doilies and tea spiked with Jack.”

This time when she laughed, it was at his expense completely. “Known a lot of crazy cat ladies, have you?”

She was going to get close. He knew that as surely as he knew he was going to let her. Let her, hell. The way she was hitting his buttons, he’d probably roll out the red carpet before they were done.

“I’m happy to say my experience has been limited to movies and TV.”

“Then maybe I’ll be your first.”

Hoo-boy. The thought of her being his anything…He shook it off. All of it. The temptation, the attraction, the heat that had him wanting to do more than sweat.

He cleared his throat, pulled off his hat and set it on the table, brim up, crown down. “What I’m hoping is that you’ll be my first forensic-hypnosis success.”

There. He’d successfully switched them back on course. And just as successfully doused her good mood.

“You haven’t done this before?” Her voice cracked at the end of her question.

“I’m not the hypnotist, remember? But, no. I’ve never had cause to use hypnosis on a cold case before.”

She looked down, tugged her purse into her lap and held it close, toying with the rings that anchored both ends of the strap. “What if it doesn’t work? If I don’t remember anything that helps? Or anything at all?”

It was a very good possibility that would be the outcome. He knew that going in. She deserved to know it, too. But the way she’d withdrawn, pulled in on herself as if seeking shelter…She was asking for more than a simple answer.

He’d do his best to give her what would help. “As far as the case goes, I’ll rework what’s been worked before. New questions, a new investigator, it can make a difference in what memories are jarred. We’ve got the credit-card receipts from that night. We’ve got the same from the gas station next door. Those from the motels on either side, too. Someone who was there, working, gassing up, staying the night, stopping for a meal…1 hit them again. My angle. My methods.”

She was listening. She wasn’t looking at him, but she was still, attentive. He took a deep breath and went on. “But as far as what will happen with you…”

Her head came up then, her chin trembling. Tears welled in her eyes and threatened to spill. She reached toward him with one hand, her fingers, her face imploring.

“If I can’t remember anything that helps, it’ll be hard, but I can live with it. What I can’t live with is having to leave here. I’m making it. It’s not the life I would have chosen, small town, small job, but I’m happy enough. If that little bit gets taken away…”

She closed her fingers, made a fist, held her lips pressed tight. “This is all I have, Kell. My life in Weldon. I’m safe here. I can’t mess that up. I can’t start over. There is no starting over.”

He wasn’t sure why she thought not remembering would mean starting over. What did she think would change? “If you don’t remember, things will go on as they have been—”

“No. They won’t.” She pulled away, sat straighter, taller. She didn’t need to dry her tears. They were already gone. “Going on as they have been would require that I not risk the sort of exposure my involvement in your investigation will bring.”

“It won’t be public—” he started to say, but she cut him off again.

“You can’t keep my involvement from going public. You’ll try. I know you’ll try. But it’ll leak out. Someone who knows about it will say something offhandedly, nothing they think twice about. But some listener will pick up on the news, and that spark will become a wildfire that’s out of control before you have a chance to blink. You know how these things are, Kell. How they happen.”

He did, but he wasn’t sure what to say. She seemed certain that whatever the result of the hypnosis, things would change. And since there was no guarantee that her refreshed memories would bring an end to the manhunt—or even give him a place to start—he couldn’t argue the validity of her concern.

All he could do was protect her to the best of his ability, and make sure she knew that he would be there anytime she needed him, for as long as she needed him, even after the case was closed.

He circled the table to sit beside her, their thighs close though he faced away from the store while Jamie faced forward. Rather than meet her gaze, he let his nearness assure her while he leaned his forearms on his knees and stared at what he could see of Weldon from here.

The town wasn’t small enough that he could stand at the southern city-limits sign and see all the way to the north, but that was only because the main drag took a left and a right before splitting at a fork. One way led to Alpine, the other to Marfa, with not much of Weldon beyond.

Sonora, Texas, the place where Jamie, as Stephanie, had done her growing up was only about three times the size of Weldon, but it wasn’t off the beaten path and tucked away in the craggy mountains as was her home for the last ten years.

He understood the lonesome appeal of the place; his cabin was similarly isolated. But he didn’t know if he and solitude got along well enough to spend their lives together. He wondered how Jamie did it. He was just about to ask her, when she scooted away.

“I need to get back to work before Honoria and Roni send out a search party.” She swung one leg then the other over the bench and stood.

Kell stood, too, hands at his hips. “Do you want me to make the arrangements?”

The look she gave him was full of so much sadness his gut started second-guessing his years of experience.

“How long will it take?” she asked, hitching her shoulder strap higher.

“To set things up? I can do it this afternoon.”

“And how soon would it happen?”

“As soon as you want.” He couldn’t tell if she wanted to get it over with or put it off.