Tori Carrington - You Only Love Once

Kelli wove her way through the maze that was currently her apartment into the dining area of her living room. She dodged precariously stacked, half-unpacked boxes, a hundred pound bag of diet dog food and her treadmill. Finally she nudged a manila folder aside with her mug, then put her coffee on the cluttered dining room table. Her attention catching on a pink message slip, she freed the bagel from between her teeth and took an absent bite. The message must have slipped from one of the files, the blue ink nearly faded. She leaned closer to see the date. March 25, 1982. The day her mother was murdered. The day she’d decided she wanted to be a homicide detective.

A sharp bark made her jump.

“Yikes, Kojak, you just about gave me a coronary.” Frowning down at the drooling blond boxer she’d rescued from a New York animal shelter, she considered the disgusting concoction that served as her breakfast then held it out to him. He sniffed, licked, then whined and walked away.

Kelli stared at the now inedible bagel half. “Thanks a lot.” She tossed it into a nearby bag she hoped was empty, then switched on the television across the room with the remote. The local news broadcaster’s voice filled the apartment reminding her again how David had charmed the reporters. His too handsome mug had been plastered all over the news last night, every hour on the hour, if not on the news itself, then in the news previews. “You don’t want to miss our story of the day as local man in blue David McCoy saves the day….”

It was enough to make a person ill.

Kelli plucked up the remote again, moving to switch off the television before the news could launch into another “local hero” bit featuring her partner the sexist cad, when a completely different scene stopped her. “We’re on the outskirts of Georgetown where a woman was found dead in her apartment, earlier this morning. Eyewitnesses tell us the murder of this quiet, private school teacher bears all the markings of the work of the man dubbed the D.C. Degenerate.” The female spot reporter looked over her shoulder.

Kelli wryly nodded. “Zoom in on the standard body shot,” she said under her breath.

The reporter looked back at the camera. “If so, then I, for one, think we need to upgrade his name to D.C. Executioner. Because it appears he’s just lost interest in playing out sick sexual fantasies and has just graduated to full-fledged killer.”

Kelli pressed the mute button, the case too similar to another for her comfort. She picked up the message slip lying on the table in front of her, wondering how much detectives knew about this latest guy. And if they would do any better catching him than they had her mother’s killer.

It had been awhile since she’d reviewed the contents of the folders strewn out before her. Three years, in fact. Ever since transferring to New York where doing any footwork on the case would have been impossible. She sat down and curled her right leg under her. Now that she was back home, though…

The telephone chirped. Propping a file open with one hand, she reached for the cordless with her other.

“Yeah?”

“Jaysus, Kelli, is that the way you answer the phone?” her father asked with obvious exasperation.

Kelli closed the file and reached for another. “I don’t know, Dad, you’d be the better one to answer that question since you are the one who’s calling me every five minutes since I got back in town.”

She winced the moment the words were out of her mouth. Not because she shouldn’t have said such a thing to her own father, but because of what it would ultimately lead to.

She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable speech.

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t have to call you if you were staying here, now would I?”

“No, Dad, you wouldn’t,” she said almost by rote.

“You know I have more than enough room for you. There’s no sense in your going off and getting an apartment.”

“Yes, Dad, I know.”

The sound of crumpling paper caught her attention. She turned to find Kojak nosing around in the bag for the uneaten bagel.

“Have you watched the news lately? It isn’t safe for a woman to be living on her own in this city.”

Kelli nodded. “Not safe.”

“And that damn mutt of yours is no kind of security either, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s nothing but an overgrown cat.”

“Cat…”

“Kelli Marie, are you even paying attention to what I’m saying, girl?”

“Sure, Dad. Though I really don’t have to because you’ve said it so often it’s etched in my brain.” She pulled another file in front of her and flipped it open. “Was there a specific reason you called, Dad? Or is this just another of your check-ins?”

Silence, then, “Can’t a dad simply want to talk to his daughter?”

Kelli slowly spread her hand out palm down on the table. She should have seen that one coming as well but stepped right through the open barn door all the same. Her voice was decidedly more subdued when she said, “Of course you can, Dad.” She leaned back in her chair. Sometimes it seemed it had always been just her and her father. “You and me against the world,” he’d said when he’d found her crying in her mother’s closet after the funeral. Words he’d repeated time and again after she’d gotten knocked down over and over while proving to everyone and to herself that she was just as good as the guys. “It’s just you and me against the world, kid.”

She curled the fingers of her free hand into a loose fist. “Dad…I know it makes you uncomfortable to talk about it…and Lord knows I’ve avoided bringing the topic up enough times…but I have to know.” She took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her. “Does it ever bother you that Mom’s killer was never caught?”

She regretted the question the instant it was out. The silence that wafted over the line was as palpable as her own unsteady heartbeat. “You know I don’t like talking about the past, Kelli.”

“I know, but—”

“What’s done is done. Nothing can change it.”

I can change it. “But don’t you think sometimes that it can be changed? That by—”

“No.”

She bit her tongue to stop herself from asking anymore questions, no matter how much she wanted to. She knew from experience that she would only upset her father more. And the more upset he got, the more he clammed up, locking himself away even from her. She didn’t want to make that happen. Not in her first few days back home, no matter how desperately she needed answers.

“Okay, Dad. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She switched the phone to her other ear, focusing her entire attention on lightening the conversation, coaxing it back to safer ground. “So tell me, big bad police chief…did you go for the Café Vienna or the French Vanilla this morning?”

For the next ten minutes she and her father talked about everything and nothing, with Kelli carefully redirecting the conversation whenever it moved too near career territory…too close to family issues that might include mention of her mother. It was altogether easier for both of them to forget that she was a police officer. Um, edit that. It was infinitely easier to make her father forget she was a police officer, much less why she had chosen the career to begin with. She wasn’t sure what he told everyone about her time in New York, but if she knew Garth Hatfield, and she did, it probably had something to do with art school.

Of course that explanation would not only raise some brows now that she was back in town, it would call into question his mental capacity.

Kelli glanced at her watch. “I gotta run, Dad.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.”

She methodically closed each of the files in front of her and piled them back up, chucking any idea she had of going through them this morning. “I’ll talk to you later, then?”