Paula Graves - Chickasaw County Captive

“How about a teenager?” Foley nodded at Kristen.

She pulled out another photo and laid it on the table in front of Morris. It was a photo taken at the crime scene of Sam Cooper’s niece Cissy lying unconscious and still, her face wet with blood from her head wound.

Morris recoiled. “You think I did that?”

“Where were you this past Tuesday night?” Kristen asked.

Morris looked at her suspiciously. “At home.”

“Anybody there with you?”

He looked down at his hands. “No.”

“Nobody saw you at home?”

“I live up in Pell City, near the river. Not a lot of neighbors around.”

“You took these photos of Maddy, didn’t you?” Kristen pulled out the photocopies of the pictures Sam had received, both the more recent batch and the set from two days earlier.

He looked down at the photos again. She saw his eyelids flicker, and she knew she had him.

“Why did you take the photos and send them to Sam Cooper? Why did you tell him, ‘your child for mine’?” Kristen pulled up the chair across from Morris, settling down to look him in the eyes. “He denied you the justice you needed, and yet there he was, with his perfect, happy little child. It wasn’t fair, was it? That he could go home to his kid while the best you can do is go see a headstone.”

Morris’s eyes welled up with tears. “Charlie didn’t deserve to die. Yeah, he had some trouble, but he didn’t deserve to die!” He wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. “Sam Cooper didn’t think his life was worth crap, or he’d have tried that stupid son of a bitch who ran Charlie over!”

“You wanted to give Sam a taste of his own medicine.” Kristen kept her voice low and soothing. “Because he should know how it feels to lose his kid.”

Morris froze. “No, I didn’t say that-”

“Why did you take the photos, Darryl?”

“The guy paid me to.”

“What guy?”

“The guy who gave me the envelope. He was right outside the courthouse-didn’t your cameras catch that, too?”

Kristen slanted a look at Foley. He shrugged.

“What did the guy look like?” she asked, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to play along.

“I don’t know-average. About my age. Blondish hair, going gray, maybe, what there was of it. Not short, not tall.” Morris’s face twisted with frustration. “Go look at the video.”

Kristen glanced at Foley again. He gave a little nod and slipped out of the room.

Kristen remained silent for a few minutes, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to let Morris sweat a little more. She wasn’t really buying his story about another man-what were the odds that there were two men, both with an axe to grind with Sam Cooper, collaborating on the threats against Maddy?

But might as well be thorough. Foley would check with Jefferson County Courthouse security and be back with the answer. Meanwhile, she could toy with Morris a little more, see if she could coax a confession out of him.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Morris broke the silence after a couple of minutes.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that a guy who has it in for Sam Cooper managed to find the only other guy in town who feels the same way?”

“Maybe he heard about my son’s case.”

“And just knew you’d go along with his plan to terrorize Cooper?”

“I didn’t know what he was going to do with the photos.”

“Then why did you take them?”

“He said he was working for Cooper’s old lady.”

“His old lady?”

“Yeah, the kid’s mother. Said she was looking to take the kid away from Cooper, and if I’d take pictures of her at the day care it would prove he just pawned her off every day to other people to take care of.”

Kristen frowned. “Maddy Cooper’s mother is not seeking custody of Maddy.”

Morris looked confused. “She’s not?”

“No, she’s not.”

He pressed his lips into a tight, thin line. “Then he lied to me about what he was up to.”

“Isn’t it more likely that you decided to pick this excuse for your own behavior without knowing the real situation between Sam Cooper and his ex-wife?” Kristen asked gently. “It’s understandable, to assume Maddy’s mother wanted custody. Most mothers do.”

“You’re trying to twist me up and make me cop to something I didn’t do,” Morris protested. “I didn’t touch that kid. Or that girl, either.” He pushed away the photo of Cissy. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Foley came back into the room. She looked up. He gave a small shake of his head.

“The camera outside the courthouse didn’t pick up anyone else with you, Mr. Morris,” she said aloud.

Morris looked up at her, alarmed. “He was there!”

“The camera didn’t see him.”

“I’m telling you-”

Foley pulled up a chair next to Darryl Morris, crowding close. “Mr. Morris, what say we start over from the beginning?”

“IS MOMMY REALLY GONE?” Maddy asked Sam that afternoon as he fed her a snack of peanut butter, banana and crackers.

He paused, his heart breaking a little for his daughter, who seemed more confused than saddened by the question. “She went back to Washington. That’s where she lives, just like we did for a while, remember?”

Maddy licked a stray dollop of peanut butter from her fingers, blinking at him. “And she’s not coming back?”

“Maybe now and then to visit. I don’t know.” He handed her a slice of banana. “Does that make you sad, baby?”

Maddy shook her head. “Now Miss Kristen can be my mommy, can’t she, Daddy?”

He stared at her, nonplussed. “Miss Kristen isn’t your mommy, Maddy Jane. You know that.”

“But she can be, right? If I want her to?”

“I don’t think it’s that easy. Miss Kristen may not want to be your mommy.”

The look of puzzlement on Maddy’s face would have been comical under other circumstances. “Why not?”

“She may want to wait and have a little girl of her own.”

“She don’t have to wait.”

“But maybe she wants to.”

The light of determination in Maddy’s green eyes reminded him of his younger sister, Hannah, who’d never taken no for an answer without a fight. “You do it, Daddy. You tell her to be my mommy.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at the thought. “I know that won’t work.”

She reached out and cradled his face between her sticky hands, her expression serious. “Try, Daddy.”

He swept her up into his arms, cracker crumbs and all. “Tell you what. Why don’t you take a nap and we’ll talk about this when you wake up?” He tickled her gently to distract her.

She squealed in his ear, half deafening him, but at least she dropped the subject of Kristen after that. The last couple of days with Norah had apparently taken some energy out of her, for she settled down to her nap without protest, drifting off before he’d finished half of The Cat in the Hat.

He tucked her in, his mind still worrying with her question about Kristen. Of all the women in the world, why had Maddy decided a kidphobic cop with a bleak and tragic past was the best candidate for motherhood? Hell, why was he himself thinking about taking their already-complicated relationship into dangerous new territory?

Anytime now, Kristen could call with the news that Darryl Morris was the guy behind the attack on Cissy. Then it would all be over.

Maybe instead of thinking so much about how to make their relationship with Kristen last beyond the end of the case, he should be thinking about how to close the book on the Kristen Tandy chapter of his life for good.

“JEFFERSON COUNTY’S BOOKING him,” Carl Madison told Kristen after another fruitless hour of interviewing Darryl Morris. “We only have the threatening message to hold him on, and that happened in their jurisdiction.”