Wedding Day of Murder (11 page)

“You don’t like Frannie,” Tosh
said.

“Do you?” Jason asked.

“She’s my mother-in-law,” Tosh
said, keeping his tone carefully neutral.

Jason couldn’t help but smile a
little over that. “Lucky you.”

“She could easily be yours
someday,” Tosh reminded him.

Jason’s smile fled.

“I can’t believe she talked to a
reporter,” Tosh continued. “Lacy would hate that.”

“Maybe that’s why she did it,”
Jason mused. “Frannie delights in playing favorites, and your wife is the
anointed one.”

“Lucky Riley,” Tosh said dully.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed. Lacy was hurt
by her mother’s constant rejection, but he was thankful for it. The bruising
pain had produced her sweet and compassionate nature. He would take that any
day over Riley’s bratty self-absorption, although he did have to give her
credit. She seemed to be improving a little. Or maybe she was too sick and
exhausted from the pregnancy to misbehave. If so, Tosh should keep her pregnant
all the time. “Geez, you’re going to be a dad,” he exclaimed as the thought hit
him anew. A few months ago they had been locked in a dead heat over Lacy. Now
Tosh was married with a baby on the way. He was a couple of years older, but
still. How was he ready for such a monumental shift? Maybe he wasn’t. He made a
sucking sound like he’d been hit in the solar plexus with a medicine ball.

“I know,” he croaked.

Jason snickered. Tosh rubbed his
stomach as if trying to ward off an ulcer. They reached the lobby and found
Travis and a handful of off duty units along with Kimber and Andy. Jason had
set the hospital as their starting point; they would fan the grid from there.
Travis had the map. Jason put him in charge of creating a grid. Meanwhile, he
pulled out his notebook and jotted a few things, including names and phone
numbers of some hospital staffers, times Lacy had been spotted, and places that
had been searched. The doors opened, and Michael eased in. He stood at the back
of the group, looking markedly similar to the group of protesters. He also wore
a scruffy canvas coat. Despite the fact that he was clean-shaven, he seemed
perpetually disheveled somehow. Maybe that was what turned Jason off; he didn’t
like messy people. Something bothered him about the man, but what? He wouldn’t
let himself believe it was simple jealousy. He wasn’t that insecure and
immature. Was he?

“Your face is going to freeze that
way,” Kimber whispered.

“I don’t want him here,” Jason
said.

Kimber tsked. “Boy, you better grow
up. There are other men in the world, and Lacy’s going to be friends with some
of them.”

“It’s not jealousy,” he insisted.
Something about the man set his instincts on high alert. He scribbled his name
in the notebook. He had never checked Michael out because he’d never had reason
to. Now with a thready connection to the protesters and therefore the murder
victim, he did. Where did Lacy say he came from? He closed his eyes for a
second, thinking, and then scribbled on the pad.
Minnesota.
It was time to put the question of Michael O’Donnell to
rest. If he had anything nefarious in his past, Jason intended to find it. Not
now, though. Now he needed to find Lacy. He shoved the notebook back in his
pocket and walked away. This time he would begin at the ending and start at the
last place he had found Lacy. It was far away and worth a try. Maybe she had
walked back there for some reason.
Or
maybe someone took her and stashed her there.

He shook his head, sure he was
being paranoid. No one took Lacy, not yesterday, and not today. The medicine
made her hallucinate and she wandered, that was all. To think anything else
based on so little evidence was reaching. He had to stay focused, stay calm,
and work a logical investigation. He couldn’t afford to blur the lines of the
murder investigation with the fact that Lacy was missing. They were separate.
It was coincidence that Lacy went missing twice when her name came up as the
only lead in a murder.

What
if it’s not a coincidence?
The little voice wouldn’t be quiet, and it
threatened to break the dam on his self-control. He was tired, tense,
frustrated, and worried. When this was over, he would go for a long run and
work out all the negative emotion. Until that time, he had to keep it together
and keep his priorities straight. That was the real crux of the problem; he was
thinking like a boyfriend when he was supposed to be thinking like a cop. Lacy
was missing because she wandered and the murder had nothing to do with her.
That was what he needed to remember as he started the car and drove to the
baseball fields.
Find Lacy and everything
else will be okay.
This time when the little voice spoke, he listened.

Lacy woke, feeling as though cotton
was stuffed in her mouth. A quick poke with her finger verified that her mouth
was indeed stuffed with gauze. “Wha happen?” she murmured, and a stream of
drool ran down her chin. She was groggy, disoriented, and confused. Her body
temperature alternated from freezing cold to burning hot in rapid succession.
Her mind was awash in blurry images. Doctors. Nurses. Water. Jason. Pudding.
What did it mean? What had happened to her? More importantly, where was she?
Everything was black. She attempted to move and banged her head on a wall.

“Ow.” Another stream of drool ran
off her face. It landed somewhere she couldn’t see; the space was so dark that
not even the front of her shirt was visible, if she was wearing a shirt. Was
she? She felt for it and found a thin cotton gown. “Am I dead?” As if in answer
to her question, someone appeared beside her, someone she recognized. “Bobby
Fway,” she mumbled. He smiled and nodded, his flaming red hair shimmering in
the darkness. She didn’t question why a food celebrity was suddenly beside her,
just as she didn’t ask why she could see him when she couldn’t even see her
hands. She simply enjoyed the company. She wanted to ask him the proper way to
grill a steak, but suddenly sleep seemed more important. “Will you stay wif me,
Bobby Fway?” He nodded again, smiling. Satisfied, Lacy curled into a ball and
fell asleep.

Lacy was not at the shack where
he’d last found her. So far she wasn’t anywhere. The search had lasted for
three hours, long enough for Jason to capitulate and call for the state
patrol’s infrared plane. They had swept the hidden areas in the
county—cornfields, sheds, cars, and anywhere else a person might hide.
They came up empty. The good news was that with them covering the outlying
areas, the search team could focus on town. People everywhere had now heard
that Lacy was missing and either promised to keep an eye out or actively joined
the search. The bad news was that no one had found her. She wasn’t anywhere,
and now he had the added pressure of her doctors telling him that she hadn’t
had enough antibiotic to effectively fight the infection. She was probably
raging with fever, in pain, hungry, and hallucinating from the medication. Why
had he left her? Why hadn’t he stayed at the hospital? While it was true that
hospitals were generally safe places and she had been asleep, it was
Lacy
. He should have known something
like this would happen. He had no one to blame but himself for this failure. He
hadn’t looked out for her well enough, and now she was gone.

You
can’t protect everyone all the time; you’re not Superman,
he could almost
hear Lacy arguing with him, and he smiled. Even when she wasn’t with him she
had the ability to cheer him. Perhaps his sense of obligation and
protectiveness was overdeveloped, but not without reason. If he had heard his
brother fighting for air in the night, if he had checked on him, if he had
realized how sick he was, maybe he wouldn’t have died. Jason had only been five
when Josh died, almost six. He had been sound asleep in the other room with the
door closed, but no amount of rationalization could take away the feeling of
guilt. He didn’t know how, but somehow it was his fault that his little brother
died all those years ago. He had spent the intervening years since trying to
make amends, trying to take care of everyone, trying to keep everyone safe.
“I’m a psychiatrist’s field day,” he muttered as he drove through the side
streets of Tosh and Riley’s neighborhood, searching for any flash of red. When
he saw one, he slammed on the brakes and stopped short. It only took a second
to realize that the person wasn’t Lacy; it was Michael. He stood staring
thoughtfully at Tosh and Riley’s house, probably trying to think like Lacy and
figure out where she might go. Jason watched him watch the house; the same
prickling sense of alarm that he’d felt earlier came creeping back.

He took out his phone and called
dispatch, hoping for another favor. Thankfully because of Lacy’s disappearance,
they were feeling generous. They promised to find everything they could on
Michael O’Donnell from Minnesota and get back to him. While he was on the
phone, Margie hailed him.

“I have that info you requested on
Susan Jenkins,” she said.

“Who?” he asked, distracted.

Margie huffed at him. “Rain.”

“Oh, right. I’ll get it as soon as
I get to the station,” he said. Arroyo could handle Rain, especially since it
was his case. Jason had more pressing issues at the moment. He disconnected and
put the car into gear. Before he could go, Michael turned to look at him. He
wore a smile that seemed to say he knew Jason was there and watching him the
whole time. He gave him a little salute and walked away. Jason watched him go
with a frown. Yes, there was definitely something off about him; the sooner he
found out his story, the better.

For a while, he drove in endless
circles. When he could no longer stand the encroaching helpless feeling, he
went back to the station. It was shift change; he could talk to the units and
touch base on their search. Thanks to Mr. Middleton, he was more informed on
the volunteers’ search than the progress of his coworkers. Lacy’s grandfather
ran his control center with terrifying precision. His searchers gave updates on
the quarter hour and not a second later. Jason knew where all of them had been
almost down to the square inch. He wanted to talk to the other officers and
make sure they weren’t duplicating their search. Maybe he was being a control
freak. At this point, he didn’t care.

Of course there was always the
danger of getting sucked back into work if he showed up at the office. That
happened almost immediately after he met with the road units at shift change.
None of them had seen Lacy. It was a slow day, so they spent a lot of time
looking. They also stopped frequently at the firehouses to touch base with
them. None of the EMTs or firefighters had seen Lacy either. Once again Jason
stuffed down his frustration. It wasn’t their fault Lacy was missing. They were
doing the best they could; in fact, they were going over and above what they
might do for any other adult who had a habit of wandering. He thanked them and
left before he could give in to his desire to badger them for more vigilance.
They would keep looking for her until she was found. To pester them might
alleviate some of the pressure cooker stress he was feeling, but it would
needlessly alienate coworkers he was already trying to placate. Some of them
hadn’t been happy that such a young deputy made detective. After months on the
job, Jason was just now making some headway into their acceptance. He didn’t
want a moment of temporary insanity to undo all his hard work. He stuffed it
down on top of everything else.

He was attempting a clean break
back to his car when Arroyo waylaid him. “Did you have a chance to re-up the
interview with Rain yet?”

Jason gritted his teeth.
I’ve been a little busy, what with my
missing, delusional girlfriend and all.
“Not yet. She’s still stewing in
the tank.”

“Margie found her info.” He held
out a packet of papers to Jason, and the implication was clear.
Work comes first; do your job.

Jason looked at the papers and
considered smashing them in the older detectives chest, along with his badge,
but once again he knew that was the frustration talking. He had worked too long
and too hard for too many years to blow his career over one stressful day.
Besides, he couldn’t do anything for Lacy right now. What was the harm in
taking twenty minutes from his day to interview someone? Maybe this time he
would learn what he needed to know and they could send her on her way. Or, if
he was really lucky, Rain might confess to murdering Carl Whethers, and that
case could be neatly tied up with a bow. All these thoughts flew through his
mind at lightning speed so that there was barely a pause when he reached for
the folder and said, “Sure.”

“She’s waiting in Interview One,”
Arroyo said. Then he grabbed a sandwich from his desk and sat down to eat.
Jason turned away.
Stuff it down, stuff
it down, don’t lose it. A little while longer, and it will all be over.

He headed to the interview room
where Rain sat. He sat and studied the information that Margie had provided,
ignoring Rain completely.

“I’m going to sue you,” she said.

“If I had a nickel. What’s your
complaint?” he asked.

“My religion is not being honored,”
she said.

“Which religion is that?” he asked.

“Islam. I was not provided with a
mat and no one in the jail would tell me which direction was east.”

He thumbed over his shoulder. “That
way. Use a towel. How long have you been a Muslim?”

“Since this morning,” she said.
“I’m very devout.”

“You know, lunch in the jail today
was sausage,” he said.

“So?” she said.

“So you’re lying. You’re not
Muslim, you’re not ‘Rain,’ and you’re not a protester,” he said.

“I am,” she argued.

“You’re not,” he said. “What I have
in my hands is everything I need to know about who you are. My dispatcher
called your dispatcher and got the scoop on you.”

“I didn’t have a record when I was
a kid,” she said.

“Exactly. You were a good kid. Even
when your family fell apart, you kept it together. Something happened, I don’t
know what, and you ran away. That’s when it all fell apart, isn’t it Susan?”

“Don’t call me that,” she said.

“Because Susan is boring and you
want to be interesting, right?”

“I am interesting. I’m saving the
world.” She smacked her palm on the table. Her fingers quaked, breaking up the
sound.

“You’re trying to save yourself.”
He held up the booking picture from her first arrest. She looked like every
skinny, insecure dork he’d ever seen, except maybe more. Whatever her childhood
issues had been, they’d had a profound effect on her. She looked nothing like
the girl from the picture. “You want something to believe in, you want a
cause.”

“I do have a cause, I have lots of
them,” she said.

“You have nothing. You are Susan
Jenkins from Polar Springs, Michigan. You turned to petty crime to try and make
an impression, but it’s not happening. It’s not working. No one is buying your
act, least of all me. Now, tell me why you’re here and what you know.”

She stared at him a minute, lip
quivering. “This is all Michael’s fault,” she said.

“What’s Michael’s fault?” Jason
asked.

At the mention of his name, she
burst into loud, convulsive tears and dropped her head to the table. Jason
tried without success to get a few more words from her. If she said any, they
weren’t coherent. He finally broke her, but he broke her too well. How was he
supposed to put her back together enough to get a cohesive answer from her?

Someone tapped on the door. He did
a double take when he saw Margie tapping impatiently. She never left dispatch.
It had become something of a joke that if she went anywhere other than the
dispatch room or her car then the world would turn on its axis and begin to
rotate the other way.

He waited to speak until the door
closed on Rain’s weeping. She was so loud that Margie scowled. “What’d you do
to her?” she asked.

“I have a way with the ladies,” he
answered. “What have you got for me?”

“The information you requested on
Michael O’Donnell. When I read it, I knew I needed to deliver it in person. I
also have a message.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Margie,
you’re hand delivering information and messages now? What’s happened to you?”

“Senility, I guess. I knew one day
the job would take what was left of my mind. Anyway, a nurse from the hospital
called, the one you’ve been trying to get ahold of. Her phone battery died, but
she’s back at work now and needs to talk to you. She said Lacy had visitors.”

“Thanks, Margie. Remind me to buy
you something pretty,” Jason said.

“I’ve seen what you make; you
couldn’t afford what I think is pretty.” She ambled away, probably never to
emerge from dispatch again. Jason eagerly pulled out his phone and called the
nurse, tapping his foot impatiently when he was put on hold. His impatience
grew when he had to listen to her describe the delay again.

“My phone died. That never happens.
I always have it on me in case my kids need me. I’m due for another phone in a
few months, so I have to cope until then. It’s so frustrating to think it can
just die like that, you know?”

“Yes, frustrating. You said you had
some information,” he said.

“Oh, right. Well, I was the one who
brought your girlfriend the pudding. I’m probably the last one who saw her
before she left. But I didn’t know if maybe she went with the visitor who was
with her when I brought the pudding.”

“The visitor? What visitor?” Jason
asked.

“I didn’t catch a name.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man, definitely man. I don’t usually
go for that type, but this one was particularly charming.”

“What type?” Jason asked.

“Redheads,” she said. She might
have said something after that, but he didn’t really listen. He thought he
thanked her before he hung up, but he couldn’t be sure. Michael had been there.
Why hadn’t he said so?

The mention of Michael reminded him
of the information now in his hands. He opened the interview room again and sat
down. Rain was still weeping. He tuned her out as he read. One page in, he
stood up, sat down again, took out his phone, stared at it, and put it away
again. He forced himself to keep reading. By the time he was finished, the
little veil on his self-control was gone. All the day’s frustration boiled
over, and he lost it. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, Jason
Cantor threw out the rulebook and went rogue.