Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

"I don't know. I just heard this noise."

Parker lay down next to him. He glanced at the clock. It was 3:30. Joan would be here at 10:00 with her social worker… Jesus, what a nightmare this was. There were a dozen bullet holes in the walls. Furniture was damaged, the breakfront shattered. The back door was destroyed.

And in the middle of the carpet was a bloody corpse.

"Daddy," Stephie said, mumbling in her sleepy voice.

"It's okay, honey."

"I heard a firecracker. Petey Whelan had firecrackers. His mother told him he couldn't have any but he did. I saw them."

"That's not our business. Go back to sleep, honey"

Parker lay back, closed his eyes. Felt her slight weight on his chest.

Thinking about the bullet holes, the bullet casings, the shattered furniture. The body.

He imagined Joan's testimony in court.

What could he do? What excuse could he come up with?

What…?

A moment later Parker Kincaid was breathing deeply. Content in the sleep of a parent whose children were close in his arms, and there is no sleep better than that.

When he opened his eyes it was five minutes to ten in the morning.

Parker had been awakened by the sound of a car door slamming and Joan's voice saying, "We're a few minutes early but I'm sure he won't mind. Watch your step-he knew we were coming and he didn't bother to shovel the walk. Typical. Typical."

He rolled from the bed.

Nauseous, head throbbing, he looked out the window. Joan was walking toward the house. Richard was with her, bringing up the rear, sullen. He didn't want to be here. And another woman too-the social worker. Short, clattering along on stocky heels, looking at the house appraisingly.

They walked to the front door. The bell rang.

Hopeless…

He stood in the upstairs hallway, toes curling on the carpet. Well, just don't let her in, he told himself. He'd stonewall. Make her get a court order. That would buy a couple of hours.

Parker paused, looked at his sleeping children. He wanted to grab them and escape out the back door, drive away to West Virginia.

But that would never work, he knew.

The bell rang again.

What can I do? How can I stall?

But Joan would still know something was wrong. Stalling would make the paranoid woman even more suspicious. And what would two or three hours buy him?

He took a deep breath and started down the stairs.

What could he possibly say about the bullet holes in the walls? The blood? Maybe he could-

Parker stopped at the landing.

Stunned.

A thin, blond woman in a long, black skirt and white blouse, her back to Parker, was opening the door.

Which was surprising enough. But what truly shocked him was the condition of the house.

Immaculate.

Not a piece of broken porcelain or glass anywhere. Not a bullet hole in any of the walls. They'd been plastered and primed; buckets of paint sat in the corner of the living room on white tarps. The chair that had been peppered with bullets last night had been replaced by a similar one. There was a new breakfront.

And the Diggers corpse-gone. On the spot where he'd died was a new oriental carpet.

With Joan, Richard and the social worker standing in the doorway, the woman in the dark skirt turned. "Oh, Parker," said Margaret Lukas.

"Yes," he answered after a moment.

She smiled in a curious way.

He tried again. "Morning."

"How was your nap?" she asked. Then prompted, "Good?"

"Yes," he said. "It was good."

Lukas turned back and nodded to the visitors. She said to Joan, "You must be Parker's wife."

"Ex-wife," Joan said, stepping inside. The social worker-a pudgy brunette-entered next, followed by handsome and impeccably slow- witted Richard.

Parker continued down the stairs and couldn't resist touching a wall where he knew he'd seen a cluster of bullets strike last night. The plasterboard was smooth as Stephie's cheek.

He had a terrible pain in his shoulder and head from where he'd dived to the floor last night as the Digger came through the kitchen door. But if not for that he'd have thought the entire attack was a dream.

He realized that Joan was staring at him with a put-out smile on her face. "I said, 'Hello, Parker.'"

"Morning, Joan," he said. "Hello, Richard." Parker walked into the middle of the living room and kissed Joan's cheek, shook her husband's hand. Richard carried a shopping bag of stuffed animals.

Joan didn't introduce Parker to the social worker but the woman stepped forward. She shook his hand. She may or may not have given her name. Parker was too dumbfounded to notice.

Joan looked at Lukas, "I don't think we've met. You're…"

"Jackie Lukas. I'm a friend of Parker's."

Jackie? Parker lifted an eyebrow. The agent noticed but said nothing about the name.

Joan glanced at Lukas's trim figure with a neutral look. Then her eyes-the color so reminiscent of Robby's, the cynical expression so different-took in the living room.

"Did you?… What did you do? Redecorate or something? I didn't notice it last night."

"I had some free time. Thought I'd fix things up a little."

His ex studied him. "You look awful, Parker. Didn't you sleep well?"

Lukas laughed. Joan glanced at her.

"Parker invites me over for breakfast," Lukas explained, offering the two women a look of female conspiracy. "Then he goes upstairs to wake up the children and what's he do but fall back asleep."

Joan's grunt repeated what she'd said earlier: Typical.

Where was the blood? There'd been a lot of blood.

Lukas asked the guests, "You want some coffee? A sweet roll? Parker made them himself."

"I'll have some coffee," the social worker said. "And maybe I'll have half a roll."

"They're small," Lukas said. "Have a whole one."

"Maybe I just will."

Lukas disappeared into the kitchen and came back a moment later with a tray. She said, "Parker's quite the cook."

"I know" Joan answered, unimpressed with her ex-husbands talents.

Lukas handed out coffee cups and asked Parker, "What time did you get back from the hospital last night?"

"Uhm."

"The hospital? Were the children sick?" She asked this with melodramatic concern, glancing at the social worker.

"He was visiting a friend," Lukas responded.

"I don't know what time," Parker said. "It was late?" The answer was largely a question; Lukas was the writer of this scene and he felt he should defer to her script.

"What friend?" Joan demanded.

"Harold Cage," Lukas said. "He'll be all right. Just a broken rib. Isn't that what they said?"

"Broken rib."

"Slipped and fell, right?" Lukas continued her award-winning performance.

"Right," Parker recited. "Slipped and fell."

He sipped the coffee that Lukas had put in his hand.

The social worker ate a second sweet roll. "Say, could I get the recipe for these?"

"Sure," Parker said.

Joan kept a benign smile on her face. She walked around the living room, examining. "The place looks all different." As she passed her ex-husband she whispered, "So, Parker, sleeping with skinny little Jackie, are we?"

"No, Joan. We're just friends."

"Ah."

"I'll get some more coffee," Lukas said.

"I'll help you," Parker said.

In the kitchen he swung the door closed and turned to Lukas. He whispered, "How? How on earth…?"

She laughed-undoubtedly at the expression on his face. "You called Detention last night. Said you were spooked. Night watch called me. I tried to call you. Bell Atlantic said your line'd been cut. Fairfax County SWAT got here around three-thirty on a silent roll-in and found a dead body downstairs and you in bed taking a nap. Who was the shooter who got the Digger? Wasn't you, right?"