Deception (Southern Comfort) (19 page)

“You’re welcome.”  He sighed as she walked away.  “Ah, if I were only twenty years younger.”

“If you were twenty years younger,” Josh reminded him “you’d still be old enough to be her dad.”

“Okay.  Thirty years younger.  And a foot taller.”

He grinned, and Josh chuckled and shook his head.  “You’re a randy old goat,” he told Phil indulgently, “but I really like your necktie.”

Chuckling himself, Phil reached up to slap Josh on the shoulder.  “What can I say?” he retorted.  “It’s a wonder Kathleen can resist me.”

MAC
was in a black mood when Josh made it back to the station. Deciding it wasn’t worth getting his head bitten off to say hello, Josh simply nodded at the other man before retreating to the relative safety of his desk.  He had a computer program, called F.A.C.E, which allowed him to do relatively quick two-dimensional reconstructions after feeding the machine the correct information, but he wasn’t really satisfied with the somewhat generic results it had produced so far.  He’d hoped to get this composite done rather speedily so that he would have some extra time to look into Sam’s case, but he wasn’t going to compromise his standards just to get it done.  He’d play around with it a little, but if it looked too non-specific, he’d have to pull out his pencil and sketchpad and draw the image up by hand.  Computers were wonderful tools, but they still had difficulty replicating the infinitely subtle combinations which composed various human facial features.  So as much as he wanted to help Sam, he had to concentrate on doing his job.  And do his damn best to keep her safe in the meantime.

On that note, he dragged out his cell phone, calling himself an idiot because he couldn’t resist making this call.  But he was worried, dammit, and had every right to be so. 

Which was, of course, why lust and happiness leaked out of him in equal proportions just because she answered his phone.

“Hello?” she said, and he wanted to climb through the line and jump her.  He wanted her saying hello, just like that, for the rest of their lives.

“Hey.”  Good grief, he was practically gushing.  “I wasn’t sure I’d catch you.  I forgot to ask you last night whether you had to work today.”

“I’m a mid,” she told him, “which means I come in as the lunch crowd is leaving, and work until close tonight.  Then I’ll probably stop by the hospital and see Donnie before coming home.  Back here,” she corrected.

Home sounded damn good to him.  But at the same time he really hated the fact that she would be out so late tonight.  “Doesn’t the bar close around two?”

“One on weeknights. Luckily my friend Sherry is closing for me, so I’ll be able to go by and see Donnie and still get home by two-thirty or three.”

Josh felt his throat close up.  She was out, wandering around the city, at two o’clock in the damn morning?  Now he wanted to shake her almost as much as he wanted to jump her, but he knew he couldn’t say a thing.  If he started telling her what to do there was every chance she would up and leave. 

“I’m sensing worry vibes,” Sam admitted. 

“I’m sorry.”  He was no good at this diplomacy shit.  He felt like he was stepping through a mine field, desperately in need of a map.

“It’s okay, Josh.”  Her voice softened, and he thanked God she was a reasonable woman.  “I know you’re concerned, but I’m not stupid, and I’ll take every conceivable precaution.  Would it make you feel better if I called you to check in?   Although you probably won’t appreciate me interrupting your sleep.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, too quickly.  He had absolutely no self-control. 

“Okay. Well, I’ll try not to make too much noise when I come in tonight.”

She could make as much noise as she wanted.  She could jump up and down on his bed while belting out the theme song from Oklahoma.

In fact, he just might suggest it.

He would jump up and down with her.

“Um,” he cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly in his seat, because the thought of them in bed together tended to cause that reaction.  “Don’t worry about the noise.  Just come home all in one piece.”

She laughed, but it was abrupt.  “You know, I’ve never really thought about it, but that expression is a little bit morbid.  I’ll do my best to arrive at your place with all of my parts intact.”

Yeah, the expression really sucked.  Now he was picturing her underwear slashed to ribbons, strewn all over Donnie’s apartment. 

“I’ll talk to you later, Josh.  I have to get a shower before I leave for work.”

That image was considerably better.  “Bye, Sam.  Be safe.”

The phone clicked, and he listened to the dial tone for about ten seconds before he realized it was time to hang up.

And in fact, he probably wouldn’t have realized anything of the sort if Mac Washington hadn’t gotten friendly.

“Something you need to see,” he grumbled, slapping a sheaf of papers on the desk.

“What’s this?”  Josh picked up the top page, realizing it was a list of names.

“List of female missing persons matching the height, race and age parameters for our drainpipe vic.”

“All of them?”  Josh couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice. 

“The first page is local, going back no more than a year,” Mac informed him.  “The other pages spread out to include the tri-state.  Until Thomas gives us a better idea of how long she’d been there, I’m keeping it recent.  Makes sense, anyway, given the construction timeframe.”

Josh tended to agree.  “So you want me to start checking them out?”  Although technically, Mac should be handling that.  Josh had to get busy working up the reconstruction.

“Take a look at the fifth name on the list.”

Josh glanced at Mac, who looked bleaker than usual, then returned his attention to the names.

The fifth one was a real attention getter.

“Shit.”  He sat up straighter.

“Yeah.  Tell me about it.  This case just became our worst nightmare.” 

JOSH
sat in the Lieutenant’s office and dragged his hand down his face.  There was no question about it – this little plane they were on had just taken a nose dive, and the ground was coming up fast.  No time to bail before the whole thing went down in flames.

“If this is right,” Lieutenant Cunningham scowled, pointing to that infernal name on the list and dividing a look amongst him, Mac and Kathleen, “you three have just landed yourselves the biggest homicide case this city’s seen in decades.”

Super.  Josh supposed he should feel something other than irritation, but he had other things on his mind right now, and would rather the headlines go to somebody else.  The love of his life had just moved into his guest room – phase one of becoming a permanent fixture in his personal landscape – and had quite possibly attracted a stalker.  So go figure it was his damn luck to get the case of the century dumped in his lap. 

“Look,” Kathleen began, the Voice of Reason. “I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble but aren’t we putting the cart before the horse?  We haven’t even attempted to verify identity yet.  This could all be a false alarm.”

A false alarm got Josh’s vote.  You can all get back to your regularly scheduled lives, folks.  Nothing to see here.  Keep moving right along.

“Why don’t we just request a DNA sample, or get her dental records.  Eliminate her from the list and move on.”

Yeah.  You go, girl.  Eliminate.  Move on.

“It’s the mayor’s daughter we’re talking about, Detective Murphy.”  And those two words dropped from Cunningham like giant anvils, flattening Josh into a pancake where he sat. Allie Beaumont, the mayor’s nineteen-year-old daughter, had been MIA since the beginning of July.  Quite possibly because she’d been shoved down an old piece of drain pipe.

Shit, he might as well bring his mattress down to the station.  He was never getting out of this place. 

“And we need to handle this with kid gloves,” Cunningham continued to depress him.  “You know the mayor’s wife has been… unstable since their daughter turned up missing.  If we go to them requesting DNA or dental records and it turns out not to be her…”  He let the thought trail off, gray eyebrows rising skyward.  

“So what do you suggest?” Kathleen asked.  “We can’t just hogtie the investigation to protect the mayor’s wife’s delicate grip on reality. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but we have a homicide to investigate and there are only so many ways to go about it.  First step on that plan is to positively identify the deceased, which has pretty much been SOP since the dawn of time.  You know – Look. Abel’s dead.  Maybe we should talk to Cain.”

The lieutenant shot her a look.  “I’m familiar with the procedure, Detective.  However, I just want to make sure we have a damn good reason before we bring Mayor Beaumont into this.  Otherwise, we’re pretty much putting ourselves over a barrel.”  He turned his attention to Josh.  “Harding, how quickly can you have a composite worked up for us to look at?”

Josh sat up straighter in his seat.  With the new computer program, he could crank one out in a matter of hours, but given the sudden unexpected pressure he figured he better dot every I and cross every T.   And he trusted his hand-sketched reconstructions more than the results he’d gotten from the machine.  “Twenty-four hours,” he estimated. If he spent every one of them drawing.  No way was he taking the chance of messing up one pencil line on this sketch.  “Provided it’s the only thing I’m working on.  But I had a couple other things lined up for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Shelve them,” Cunningham said with alacrity, not even asking what those things might be.  “As of this minute, putting a face on Jane Doe is your number one priority.”

“Understood.”

Cunningham nodded and looked at the others.  “Until we see if Jane Doe in any way physically resembles Allie Beaumont, not a word is to be breathed beyond the walls of this room.  If the press or the mayor’s office gets wind of this before we have our ducks in a row, I can assure you that my ass will not be the only one hanging out to dry.  And if I find out that one of you talked out of turn I’ll hunt you down and hang your ass myself.  Are we clear?”

“Yessir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Crystal.”

Josh followed Mac and Kathleen out of the office.  She flashed her best you-are-so-screwed smile.  “If it’s any consolation, we have some barrels down at the bar.  I can get you one real cheap so you can get acquainted with it.”

“Funny,” he said, not meaning it.  Nothing about this was funny at all.

POOR
Josh, Sam thought as she closed her phone after checking in.  She’d expected him to be home in bed – he had to be exhausted after the hours he’d been keeping – but from the sounds of it, he was still at the station.  She wondered if he always worked such long hours, if he was compensating for the time he’d been off after being shot, or if maybe he just didn’t feel comfortable being alone with her in his condo.

“Get a grip,” she muttered, rolling her eyes as she walked into the hospital.  He was probably no more uncomfortable around her than if he’d brought home a new piece of furniture.   

There was some sort of commotion going on in her brother’s room, and Sam heard it as she approached.  Heart racing, she kicked the lead out of her sneakers and ran.  Donnie.  Please tell her something hadn’t happened to her brother.

There was a nurse she didn’t recognize and an orderly she did, leaning over her brother when she rounded the corner, skidding into the room.  Donnie was thrashing, his too-thin legs kicking more strongly than she would have thought possible, the monitors beeping and squealing as they tried to get him under control. 

“What’s going on?” she asked above the din, more than a little concerned about what this meant.  Was he seizing?  Was he in some kind of unbearable pain?

Unfortunately, the unfamiliar nurse didn’t recognize Sam either.  “Visiting hours were over quite some time ago, ma’am.  I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Not with her brother in that condition.  She scanned the room, looking for Karen, who would never have suggested such a thing.  “Where’s Karen?” she asked, hurrying over to grab one of Donnie’s feet.  “Donnie, it’s okay baby.  I’m here.”

“Who are you, again?” the nurse demanded as she untangled some tubing.  On the other side of the bed Karen’s un-favorite orderly took an elbow to the gut.

“I’m his sister,” she explained, keeping one eye on the glowering orderly.  He pinned Donnie’s arm with a double fisted grip that was certainly hard enough to bruise.  “Hey!” she told him.  “How ‘bout watching what you’re doing?”

“Ma’am, I really don’t think you should be –”

“Where’s Karen?” Sam cut the other woman off and made her inquiry again.  Karen would never have let the orderly from hell be rough with one of her patients.  She looked over and the man was glaring at her, a strange little smile on his lips.  Sam glared back, thinking the guy was a total creep.

“Ms. Davis neglected to show up for work today. And I don’t know what sort of rules you’re used to her bending, but I really must insist that you leave the room until we have your brother under control.  His doctor has been paged, and after he does an examination he might be able to give you some answers.  But until then, you’ll have to wait in a designated area.”