M.L. Gamble - Trust With Your Life

Cortez started pacing again. “Okay, let’s take this from the top, Miss Jakes. Tell me everything Alec Steele said to you.”

She started with Alec’s “put your hands back on the wheel” and kept talking, all the while wondering where he’d gone to. He wouldn’t get far with that handcuff hanging from his wrist, even if he did take her car. Once the police put out an alert on the plates, they would catch him.

That conclusion made her feel uneasy as she got to the part in her reconstruction where she was making tea for a man holding a gun on her. Just as she was figuring out some way to explain how she had forgotten to tell Cortez last night about the gun she had accidently carried off from the wreck, thereby having it to pull on Alec Steele, the female cop came running into the living room.

“He’s taken her car. It’s not in her carport.”

“Great. He’ll be out of the county by the time we get this on the air.” Cortez glared at Molly, then turned back to the patrolwoman. “Call the car in and put out an APB on Alec Steele. Get his description from the others.” He turned to Molly. “You did give them a description?”

“Yes.” She was anxious to ask Cortez why Alec thought the cops were out to kill him but decided to keep her questions for the district attorney this evening.

Molly listened as he gave a few more gruff orders to the other officers as they returned. “And bring Miss Jakes into the station. We’ll get her complete statement there.”

“Wait a minute. I have to go to work today.”

Cortez faced her again, his pockmarked skin oily and pale with fatigue. “We need your statement, Miss Jakes. A very dangerous individual is on the loose, and you may have important information. It’s your duty.”

“I don’t think I need or deserve a lecture on civic duty, Officer,” she replied.

He seemed to soften a bit and used a more civil tone. “This is for your own good. If he has your keys, he could get back in the house. He’s very dangerous.”

“How dangerous? What did he do?” Molly thought of the guy with the bullet in his back. A cop, maybe this one in front of her, might kill Alec if he resisted their efforts to apprehend him. “Did he shoot that man in the wreck last night?”

Cortez ignored her question and ordered the uniformed officers out on assignments, then turned and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “No one was shot last night.”

He had very dark eyes, making his pupils nearly invisible. Molly began to tremble suddenly and clenched her fists at her side. “Don’t b.s. me, Lieutenant. I saw the wound. The guy lying by the Bronco who was wearing a gun. He had a hole in his left shoulder—”

“You’re mistaken, Miss Jakes. No one was shot. But one of the men who was killed in the accident was a police officer. He was a good man. He had been out looking for Alec Steele the last time the station heard from him. He must have been bringing him in when the wreck occurred. Steele was lucky to get out alive and find your accommodating car to hide in.”

“Looking for him? Why? Has it got something to do with the Brooker case, too?”

“I can’t comment on that.”

“Can you comment on the fact that it’s too much of a coincidence that, in a county of seven million people, two witnesses in a murder trial were involved in the same fatal car wreck?”

Cortez blinked. “No, I can’t. You got any explanation for that coincidence?”

“None.”

“Then we’ll leave it there. For now.”

Molly sighed, stood and walked over to Cortez, unable to shake the feeling that the cop was lying. “I’ll come in, but it’ll have to be later this afternoon, after I check on my men.”

Quickly she explained about the crew of installers, ending by pointing to the mantel clock above the fireplace. “It’s already almost eight. I have to be there by nine, so if you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed and call someone to come pick me up.”

Cortez took a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “That’s my address and phone number. I’ll be back in around two. Be at the precinct by then, or I’ll come and get you.”

“Don’t you ever go home?” This small attempt at a more human interaction was ignored.

“I’ll see you at two, Miss Jakes. And let me take this opportunity to advise you that if you fail to appear, I have the authority to issue a warrant for your arrest, despite your friends at the Summer Point Precinct.”

What a jerk, Molly thought. A real hardball player. “You won’t need to do that, Lieutenant. I’m willing to cooperate, even though you’re treating me like a criminal.”

For a second, Cortez’s face softened, the wrinkles in his forehead slackening into his thick head of hair. But then he turned away and headed for the door.

Molly watched as he walked away. He never turned around or said goodbye, just slammed the door shut behind him.

Molly put Cortez’s business card on the coffee table and reached for the phone. She called Rafe Amundson, her installation foreman, at the shop. He agreed to send someone out, then proceeded to give her an earful about the new female cable puller, who didn’t pull fast enough to suit Rafe.

Rafe was sixty-three, one of the last icons of the prebreakup days of Ma Bell, when “men were men and women stayed home,” as he was fond of saying.

Rafe loved stirring up trouble, especially over equal rights and E.E.O. regulations, and hearing that he was in a balky mood threatened Molly’s last remaining hold on mature behavior. He enjoyed baiting her. She decided to give him a big thrill this morning and really get into it with him.

“Tell you what, Rafe. Why don’t you come here and get me yourself? We’ll discuss Sandra Jackson’s abilities on the way out to the client’s.”

Molly hung up and headed for the shower. As she cranked the window closed, her mind replayed Cortez’s denial that anyone had been shot. Though she was no medic, she was sure of what she had seen, and the round hole in the victim’s shirt didn’t look like anything he could have picked up from being bounced out of a car.

There were so many questions.

And there was Alec Steele.

Molly shook her head hard, wishing she could shake the thought of him away. He’d terrified her. And yet compelled her. Something told her he wasn’t truly a kidnapper and killer.

But what the heck was he then? Sexy as hell, some demented part of her brain answered. Disgusted with herself, Molly soaped up and washed her hair, running the water as hot as she could stand. She cut herself twice while shaving her legs and swore loudly over her lack of concentration. Ten minutes later, she was wrapped in her baggy robe heading for the bedroom.

With any luck of the bad variety, Rafe would be here before she was ready, and he’d have “women are never ready on time” ammunition to use against her during her planned consciousness-raising session.

She threw the towel and bathrobe onto the carpet in a heap, and wiggled her damp legs into panty hose. With a snap she put on her bra, then opened the closet and stared at clothes while brushing tangles out of her hair. Business suits, silk blouses and tailored dresses filled most of the space. But this morning she wanted something different. She sorted through an assortment of “mistake” buys: tweed culotte pants that made her legs look fat, a blue angora sweater dress that shed worse than a cat, a leather miniskirt that bunched up at the waist.

Finally she grabbed a beige silk dirndl and its matching cropped jacket. With a white sleeveless blouse, the outfit enhanced her skin, moderately freckled with typical brunette undertones of peach and brown. She hung the clothes on the doorknob and dropped to her knees to hunt in the bottom of the closet for beige pumps.