Whatever Remains (40 page)

             
“Mothers can always carry their own children.” Ben swallowed, and there was a heavy beat of silence in the conference room. He thought of Jade, of her preternatural strength when it came to Clara. “Doc Harding gives us a two hour window for time of death: Alicia killed her before seven, and fed Grace the timeline.”

             
“That kid needs so much therapy,” Riley said.

             
“The Reddings had already been a problem,” Ben said. “And she knew Jared had been in the house.”

             
“Bitch had the opportunity of a lifetime,” Trey said, then made a face. “So to speak.”

             
Rice thumped a fist against the back of a chair. “Good work, people. Get the paperwork going. Haley,” he said, turning to Ben. “Your suspension still stands.”

             
“Yes, sir.”

“You keep this in your car?”

              “Uh, yeah.”

             
Trey frowned at the silver flask in his hand, shrugged, and took a pull. He was still too young to keep from making a face when he drank whiskey, and his mouth puckered up hard as he handed the flask back. “Damn,” he muttered, coughing. “That’s nasty shit.”

             
Ben grinned, screwed the cap back on, and tossed the thing over his shoulder into the backseat. “You get used to it. You get so you don’t know what you used to do without it.”

             
They were in the parking lot, in his Charger, beneath a lamppost, neon water coursing down the windshield, rain thumping on the roof. He wanted to go home, but…well, he was proud of his boy. Ten years ago, he would have died before admitting such a thing about a newbie partner. But Trey, wet behind the ears and full of too many “dude”s, had managed to not only scrape together one hell of a last minute investigation, but interrogate a raging psychopath like a pro. He’d never held onto a permanent partner, but maybe, when all this was over…He’d see. For now, though, the kid needed to decompress. And in that department, Ben was a pro.

             
“Have you ever worked a case like this before?” Trey asked, staring out the swimming windshield, voice detached.

             
“Some child murders,” Ben said, pulling up the case files in his head.
Miles. Adamson. Fleming. Peters. O’Brian.
“One was the mother’s boyfriend; he hit her little boy with the reclining lever off the La-Z-Boy. Thirty-five times in the head.” Trey swore. “A kiddie rapist. A shaken baby. I’ve seen dead kids; but nothing like Alicia Latham, no.”

             
Trey took a deep breath. “I don’t even know…I mean,
how
? How does that happen to a person? How do you get
that
crazy?”

             
Ben took a deep breath too; there wasn’t enough oxygen in the car, but it was raining too hard to roll down the windows. “The kiddie rapist – he had the department shrink wrapped around his little kid-raping finger. He was abused as a kid, he said. His dad raped him, so as an adult, he couldn’t control his…’proclivities,’ the shrink called them.”

             
Trey’s face was twitching.

             
“It was all such bullshit. I’m supposed to look at this guy – thirty-eight-years-old, working, married, successful – and I’m supposed to feel so sorry for him ‘cause his daddy did sick things to him and now he can’t control himself and rapes little boys to death while his wife thinks he’s at poker? I’m supposed to feel
sorry for him
?”

             
Trey’s gaze came to his face, thoroughly repulsed.

             
Ben met his partner’s eyes and shook his head. “No. I don’t feel sorry for him. I hope he gets gang-raped every day in the joint. And if that makes me an asshole, so be it. Some things aren’t justifiable. Remember that. Whatever else you learn about this damn job, remember: don’t ever get so jaded that you start to think there’s nothing between right and wrong but a little perspective.

             
“Alicia’s sick in the head,” he went on. “But I don’t have any sympathy for her. She drove a screwdriver through her baby’s throat.” He could see it unfolding now: the screaming, the bug of Alicia’s eyes, the hissing. Heidi running, hair a silvered glimmer in the moonlight, breath pluming in the night air. Alicia catching her, wrestling with her. Heidi’s stomach heaving, bile coming up her throat, choking on her own vomit in her panic. What must it feel like, in the cold empty night, to know that your own mother was about to kill you? “She deserves worse than whatever she gets,” he said with finality. He reached over and patted Trey awkwardly on the arm. “Go hug your little sister. Call your girlfriend; get shitfaced and laid. It’ll feel better in the morning.”

             
Trey nodded, and the rain kept falling.

Canterbury was a warm beacon on the hill, the butter lights in the downstairs windows welcoming. Ben parked at the garage and sat for a moment, staring at the solid stone and plank of the place, lacy black trees wet and dancing around it. He didn’t care if he ever saw his brother’s secondhand ranch house again.

              The backdoor was unlocked and Jeremy was at the table, nursing coffee that Ben would bet money was spiked. The guy was a terribly put-together, poised semblance of haggard, elegant as always, but a little frayed around the edges.

             
Ben shucked his boots and hung his jacket up beside the dripping wet others.

             
Jeremy spoke first. “What’ll happen to her?”

             
Ben raked a hand through his hair, scattering raindrops. He felt a million years old. “She’s under arrest. The DA will start putting his case together tomorrow. Alicia was sloppy the second time around; there’s clear prints on the hay knife and skin under Grace’s nails. But with Heidi…” He shook his head. “The bitch covered her tracks well. I dunno what’s gonna happen, to be honest.”

             
“What about Grace?”

             
“Her dad’s in town. He’ll have full custody after this. Good luck to him – kid’s gonna need a lifetime of therapy.”

             
“Did she…point the finger at her mom?”

             
“Sort of. She said, ‘Mommy’s mad,’ over and over. Maybe one of the Child Crimes people can get her to testify, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

             
Jeremy let go of a shaky breath and sipped his coffee. “I guess you never really know a person, do you?”

             
“Nope.” Ben rapped his knuckles against the back of a chair on his way out of the room. “You don’t.”

             
The lights were all out on the second floor: both his girls had called it an early night. He peeked in on Clara – a sliver of her face visible in the nightlight, framed by frilly pink quilt and her stuffed rabbit – to ease the tension in his chest. Then he slipped into Jade’s room, sealing the door behind him.

             
In the light coming through the gapped curtains, he made out the bed and Jade’s slender shape in it. He ditched his clothes and left them in a pile on the carpet, beyond the point of caring. The mattress dipped when he climbed up behind her and stretched out, close enough to feel the heat radiating off her body but distant enough to keep from waking her.

             
She wasn’t asleep. She rolled over toward him, flipping her hair over her shoulder, face a ghostly suggestion of its true beauty in the dark. The bruises were angry blossoms on her cheeks, eyes glittering deep in the black rings around them. The sight of her like this did things to his insides, tightened his stomach in a painful way.

             
“So Jeremy’s gun, huh?” he asked because he was afraid what might tumble out of his mouth if he said anything else.

             
He thought she smiled. “What would your captain have said if I’d been blowing holes in people with your sidearm?”

             
A snarky retort about the hotness of chicks knowing what “sidearm” meant formed and died on his tongue. “You alright?” he asked instead. His hand moved through the shadows and found the side of her head, her slick hair.

             
She moved in closer, a hand settling over his heart, her knee moving between both of his. Close enough for him to see her flickering lashes, even in the shadows. Her breath caught. “Not really.”

             
Carefully, mindful of her ribs, Ben circled an arm around her and pulled her in close. She turned her cheek against his chest, face pressed to the hollow of his throat. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts. Her warm breath. The wet slide of a tear against his skin.

             
Jade took a deep, rattled breath. “I lived next door to her,” she said, just above a whisper. “All that time…If I’d been paying more attention. If I’d told someone. Heidi wouldn’t have – ”

             
“No,” he said, firmly. “
No one
could have suspected what was going on over there. There’s nothing you could have done.”

             
“That’s bullshit,” she said in a soft, fierce voice. “That woman was
weird
, and I should have – ”

             
“Stalked her? Spied on her?” He cupped the back of her head and held her to him; felt shivers move through her. “If you followed up on every whackjob you met, you’d be a fulltime busybody. No, sweetheart. Alicia was a special kind of crazy. There’s no way you could have known what she was capable of, and there was no way to stop it. She was always going to kill her children; it was only a matter of time.”

             
She shuddered hard. “Those poor little girls. Is Grace…?”

             
“Physically, she’ll be fine.” He sighed. “But her head’s fucked up ten different ways.”

             
“Does she have anyone? Any other family?”

             
“Her dad came to get her. Alicia ran off from home years ago and snatched the girls. The ex was supposed to have full custody all along.”

             
“God,” she breathed. “And now one of them’s dead.”

             
Ben hooked his chin over her head, her hair rustling. “Why are you taking this so hard?”

             
“Because I’ve been living next door to a murderer – I’ve had her in my house, near my baby.” She sniffed. “And because I can’t imagine, in this awful world, how a person could hurt her own family like that. It’s just…incomprehensible.”

             
He sighed again, guilt twisting in his gut. “Alicia isn’t a ‘person,’ baby. You can’t put her into the equation of the world. She’s an outlier; what she did doesn’t even begin to fall into the realm of ‘family.’”

             
“I know that.” He felt another tear roll down his chest. “But I saw…well, it’s gonna take a while for that to fade.”

             
“Yeah.” He smoothed his hand up and down her back, the slender curve of her spine. “I know.”

**

When, she wondered, did cracked ribs stop hurting like a bitch? Jade’s eyes popped open the moment she attempted to stretch, pain streaking through her, electric and
gasp-worthy. She held her breath and shifted onto her back, waiting for the spasm to subside.

             
It was morning, fresh watery sunlight streaming through the gaps in the curtains, and her room smelled like Ben. He was beside her, on his side, sleeping with his face pressed deep in the pillow. The morning light was unforgiving to the lines around his eyes, the grooves along his mouth. She wouldn’t wake him.

             
She climbed out of bed without making a sound, dressed, brushed her teeth and washed her face down the hall in the bathroom. Her black eyes were a rich shade of purple now, and the bruises on her cheeks were beginning to go green around the edges. Beautiful. What guy wouldn’t want to wake up to that on the pillow next to him? It was just as well Ben was still asleep. She popped her head into Clara’s room – her little cherub face was pressed down into the pillow; she slept like Ben and it brought a smile to Jade’s lips – and then the guest room; her mom was still deep asleep too.

             
The rich smell of breakfast wrapped around her halfway down the stairs. In the kitchen, silver dawn pouring through the windows in iridescent puddles, Jeremy in breeches and high-collar sweater was the most beautiful thing to behold. He stood at the stove, in his socks, Keely watching and hoping for a handout, thick steam clouding over the cooktop.

             
“Ham?” she asked from the threshold, arms going around her middle out of protective impulse.

             
“Fried ham. No laughing at my love handles later.” He gave the contents of his skillet a stir and turned to face her. The dark circles under his eyes were almost as impressive as her bruises. “And eggs, and there’s a hash brown casserole in the oven. I figure we could all stand a big breakfast.”