Minutes to Kill (17 page)

What he wouldn’t give to be stalking this bitch in an urban neighborhood.

He rolled down the window and listened. Nothing.

Mick tapped a finger on the steering wheel. The house sat on a big rectangle of open ground, but woods surrounded the cleared area. With a cop in the house, he wouldn’t risk going to his favorite observation post. Maybe she’d called the police. Had she sensed his presence outside the night before?

“What do you want to do?” Sam asked.

He took his binoculars from the glove box, got out of the car, and went to the edge of the foliage. Putting the binoculars to his eyes, he peered through the pine needles and scanned the front of the house.

Nothing.

The windows along the front of the house were dark, and he didn’t see any movement behind the glass. But someone was inside, including a cop.

A few minutes later, the front door opened. The blond and a tall man in a suit and tie, obviously the cop, walked out onto the porch, their bodies close in an intimately acquainted way. Mick hadn’t gotten a good look at the man who’d been at the house the night before, but he bet it was the same man. The blond held the golden retriever on a leash. Mick increased the magnification, focusing in on a bulge on the woman’s hip. He expected the cop to carry a gun, but a lawyer? They got into the two separate vehicles.

Mick lowered the binoculars. Time to go. He’d have preferred to avoid the cop, but Mick would follow the woman. He wanted to know where she was at all times.

He slid behind the wheel. With the window lowered, he waited until he heard two vehicles pass before he started the engine. Then he nosed the car out from behind the trees. He could just see the taillights of two vehicles far down the road. He waited until they were nearly out of sight before pulling out onto the road. He had no intention of letting the cop spot him.

A cop will spot a tail on an empty road in a minute. Irritation buzzed over Mick’s excitement. He used the binoculars to keep them in sight.

Mick wasn’t taking chances. The cop could be her boyfriend. Hell, he could be her husband. The thought of stealing a cop’s woman sent an extra thrill straight to his groin. She’d be one of his spoils of war.

He thought of the gun on her hip. Why would a lawyer who lives in the middle of fucking nowhere carry a gun? Bears? Mick snorted. Just who was Hannah Barrett?

He wasn’t calling off his hunt just because there was a cop involved or because the blond had a piece. This went far beyond him wanting a woman. This was a matter of pride, of being a man, of getting what he deserved. No bitch hit him in the nuts and got away with it. Despite exorcising his demons on the pretty little blond girl last night, Mick had saved plenty for the lawyer.

He eased up on the gas. Far ahead, the sedan made a right turn. The pickup followed. Mick took his sweet time approaching the intersection. Giving the two vehicles in front of him plenty of room, he followed them to a quiet neighborhood close to the center of town. They parked in front of a small, tired house. Mick circled around the block and pulled to the curb a few lots down. A generous curve in the road gave him a straight view of the house. He took his binoculars from the console. The blinds were up in the front of the house, and he had a clear view within.

He slid down in the seat and watched the cop and the blond lead the dog up the front walk. The ease of last night’s grab reinforced Mick’s belief that opportunity would come to those who were patient. If he watched and waited, he would find Hannah Barrett’s weakness.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Brody escorted Hannah and the dog up Chet’s front walk.

Chet’s car was in the driveway, but the house was dark and still. The lawn needed mowing, and the clear morning light highlighted dirt coating the windows. The place looked almost vacant, which was appropriate. Chet
existed
here, but he didn’t
live
. Would he let Brody in? “I’m worried about him.”

“Nothing will happen to him today.” She leaned over and scratched AnnaBelle’s head. “We’ll see to that. Won’t we, girl?”

“He might not remember you were here last night.”

“In that case, we won’t remind him.” She smiled.

Brody’s heart did a double tap. He knew without a doubt she would take care of Chet. A verbal promise from Hannah was as good as a signed and notarized contract. She wouldn’t let him down, and he was really hoping that, with Hannah here as a buffer, Chet would actually open the door to the man who had destroyed his career.

Here goes.

They rang the bell. Footsteps approached. Chet’s face appeared in the sidelight. He stared at them for a few seconds, his face contorted by the swirls in the safety glass. Brody held his breath. The dead bolt slid away, and Chet opened the door, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Brody had seen corpses that looked more alive. Chet’s skin was gray. His eyes had been bloodshot when Brody had woken him that morning, but now they were lifeless.

With a questioning glance at Hannah, he stepped back to let them into the foyer. He squinted at her. “You look familiar.”

“Hannah was with me last night at The Pub,” Brody said.

“Ah, shit.” Chet scrubbed a hand across his scalp. “Can we talk for a minute?”

He’s going to kick me out
.

“Sure. Would you excuse us?” he asked Hannah.

“Certainly.” She took the dog into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, Chet,” Brody said.

“What the hell are you sorry about? I’m the one who fucked up. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.” Chet pressed the heels of both hands over his closed eyelids. “I can’t do anything right these days.”

“Chet . . .”

“Don’t make excuses for me.” Bitterness sharpened Chet’s tone. “I should have called my sponsor last night instead of driving down to The Pub. I’d been drinking the other day, too. I knew I was in trouble.”

“What happened with the chief?”

“He called me into his office this morning and strongly suggested I retire. I left my gun and badge in his desk drawer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop fucking apologizing.” Chet paced a three-foot square. “This is entirely on me.” He pivoted. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep my shit together, Brody.”

A rattling sigh rolled through Chet’s skinny chest. He shook like a dog shedding water from its fur. “So, who’s the hottie?”

Change of topic. Chet really needed a distraction.

“Hannah Barrett.”

Chet’s brow shot up. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Can I ask why she’s in my kitchen?”

“I thought you might be able to help her.” Brody gave him the rundown on Hannah’s assault and her search for the young girl in Vegas.

“I happen to have some free time.” Chet shook his head. “But that’s like trying to find a needle in a hundred acres of haystacks. No word on the fingerprints the Vegas PD lifted from the rental car?”

“Last I heard, they hadn’t found any matches, but we don’t even know for sure that those fingerprints belonged to either of the suspects or the victim. Could have been the parking valet or one of Hannah’s clients.”

“Do you have a copy of the sketches Kailee made?”

“Hannah brought them with her.”

Chet scratched his head. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You really like her, don’t you?”

Brody glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Yeah.”

“Go to work. Thanks to me being a drunken asshole, your caseload just doubled. My files will be on your desk by end of shift. The least I can do is look out for your girl.”

His girl
. He wished.

But for now, Hannah was looking out for Chet, and Chet was taking care of Hannah. Brody could get back to work without worrying about either one of them.

Genius.

Unless together they got into more trouble than either one of them would alone.

“
Nice dog.”

“She is.” Hannah and AnnaBelle followed Chet up a narrow staircase.

The second floor of the Cape Cod was a converted attic. Two windows, deeply recessed into dormers, provided scant light, leaving the space dark.

Chet walked into the dim room. A bare bulb hung from a string in the center of the room. “I haven’t been in here for a while.”

Hannah’s boots clunked on raw wood. Dust tickled her nose, and she sneezed.

“Sorry about the dust.” Chet yanked on the pull string. The swinging light arced, sending light careening around the room.

Hannah’s head swam. Swaying, she closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Chet reached for the bulb. He stilled it with one hand and rolled a desk chair behind her. One hand on her elbow guided her into the seat. AnnaBelle stretched out on the floor at her feet.

She sat. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“No dance clubs for you.”

“That’s not exactly a hardship.” She opened her eyes. Her surroundings settled back into place.

“Not a clubber?” Chet crossed the room to a desk nestled between the dormers. He switched on a desk lamp.

“No.” Hannah remembered the evening at Carnival. The lights and music had been irritating. But she’d never reacted with dizziness. Maybe that neurologist hadn’t been entirely wrong. She sneezed again. Or it was allergies?

He grabbed a metal folding chair and opened it in front of a computer monitor. “That’s something you and Brody have in common. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a bar.”

Random comment? Or not . . .

Hannah scanned the room, her belly cringing. Magnetic whiteboards held dozens of images of a teenage girl with long dark hair. In some of the photos, she was looking away, her body projecting discomfort, as if she didn’t want her picture taken. In other shots, she clearly didn’t know she was being photographed. Handwritten notes accompanied each shot. There were pictures of other people as well, and Post-it notes or index cards full of scrawled annotations. A date in red ink headed each group of photos.

It was a timeline of Chet’s daughter’s disappearance, and the progress of his investigation.

Hannah brought her gaze back to Chet. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” He leaned over and pressed the on button of the computer tower under the desk. The computer hummed to life. Behind them, a printer beeped.

“Why haven’t you been up here?”

Chet dropped into the chair. His gaze followed the timeline. At the very end, he’d scrawled “Happy Birthday” in blue. “Last March was Teresa’s eighteenth birthday.”

“So you stopped looking for her?”

He stared at his timeline, his eyes moving from entry to entry, the scrawled notes becoming neater and more detailed as his investigation wore on. “Teresa hit puberty, and she changed. She was a pretty normal kid until then, maybe a little shy. But from the age of about twelve, she became increasingly unstable and erratic. Her mood swings went far beyond any normal range, even for a teenager. The doctors diagnosed her as bipolar. We managed her condition with medication for a couple of years, but the drugs had side effects, and it was hard to get the dosage just right, the way her hormones were all over the place. She was nauseous and lethargic and didn’t want to take the meds. With the medication, she felt sick. Without them, she was uncontrollable. School was out of the question. My wife attempted to homeschool her, but really, her full-time job was keeping Teresa safe. Eventually, she ran away, from us, from the medications we were forcing her to take.” He paused for a few breaths, his eyes roaming over the photos strung around the room.

“She’s an adult now. She’s no longer a missing child. I can’t make her come home. Even if I got her here, I can’t legally make her take medication. I can’t make her do anything. An adult is free to do as she pleases, even if that means living on the street and eating out of Dumpsters. Unless a person is dangerous to herself or others, and that is damned hard to prove, this is a free country.”

“I’m sorry.”

Chet pulled a pair of reading glasses from his chest pocket and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt. “Last March, on Teresa’s birthday, I closed the door on this room and promised myself I’d never open it again. I took two weeks of vacation and spent the time hammered on Johnnie Walker. I went to The Pub, turned into my alter ego, Drunken Asshole Man, and picked a fight with the biggest guy in the bar. Luckily for me,
he
wasn’t a drunken jerk. The bartender called Brody to come and get me. It wasn’t the first time, but I’d been sober for almost a year. My last bender had been right after my wife died. No one was arrested, but word got round, and the captain found out. He gave me my last warning. No drunks on his force. He warned me that I wouldn’t get another break.” He sighed, the exhalation sounding shaky and painful. His eyes met hers. “You don’t have to look so glum. I was coming up on the mandatory retirement age anyway. This week’s stint of stupidity just moved the date up six months.”

Hannah frowned.

Chet held up a palm. “The chief’s not a bad guy. He’s running a police department, not a rehab center. I either need to act like an adult and deal with my shit in a responsible manner, or I have no fucking business being on the police force.” He grimaced. “Please excuse the language.”

“I’ve heard worse in multiple languages,” Hannah said. “And how can you possibly move on after this week?”

“When the DNA results come back, I’ll have to.” Chet stopped rubbing his glasses. “Closing the door on this room didn’t do anything except let me not deal with my problems. I haven’t even answered the e-mail in the account I set up for the search for Teresa in six months. I didn’t return calls from my contacts. That is denial, pure and simple.”

“Brody doesn’t think it’s her.”

Chet’s shoulders slumped. “Brody is an optimist.”

Hannah wanted to assure him that the dead woman wasn’t his daughter, but who was she to say? Hope was a balancing act. Too little left a person unable to hang on. Too much made bad news unable to bear. She had a clear memory of her father telling her that her mother would be fine. That everything was going to be all right. She could beat the cancer. He believed it in every corner of his soul. In turn, Hannah had believed him, even though the doubt in the oncologist’s eyes told her otherwise. “I wish I could tell you to have faith, but it feels like empty advice. I tend to expect the worst.”

“Then
we
have something in common.” Chet rubbed his eyes, put on his glasses, and turned to face the computer. The monitor had illuminated. Icons lined up in neat rows on an enlarged photo of his daughter at a much younger age, maybe five or six, with a smile that didn’t indicate the devastating mental illness that was to come. “Now let’s see if we can do something to help somebody. I’m starting to feel useless.”

“Where do we start?” she asked.

“Did you bring the composite sketches?”

Hannah pulled the drawings from the manila envelope and handed them to Chet.

“Brody called the cop in Vegas and got him to send the fingerprints they lifted from the rental car.” Chet opened an e-mail. “We have three sets of possible fingerprints, we have a name, which may or may not be the girl’s real name, and a rough idea of what she looks like.”

“That doesn’t seem like much.”

“It isn’t, but what we do have is time. I happen to have scads of that to kill, so there’s no harm in trying.” Chet looked at her over the rims of his glasses. “You have anything better to do?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Now we have two things in common.” Chet pulled a stack of index cards from his drawer. “Let’s start with a timeline.” He dated the first card. “Tell me what happened.”