Metsy Hingle - Flash Point

Kelly shifted her somber brown eyes to his face. “I’m afraid it was dark inside the car and she was wearing some kind of cloak with a hood that shadowed her face. I never got a clear look at her. Only of her gloved hand reaching for the gun, then pulling the trigger.”

“You said she called the man ‘Doctor,”’ Jack pointed out, approaching it from a different slant. “Do you think you’d be able to recognize her voice if you heard it again?”

Kelly paused, seeming to consider his question for a moment. “I doubt it. She spoke very softly, almost a whisper. And the man, well he was breathing kind of hard, like he was winded or maybe had asthma or something. Plus with the street noise and music, she could be sitting across the table talking to me right now and I don’t know that I’d recognize her voice.”

“What about—”

Leon’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, and answered the phone. “Jerevicious. Yeah? Hang on a second.” He stood. “I’m going to need to take this call.”

“If you want some privacy, you’re welcome to go into the bedroom,” Kelly offered.

“Thanks,” he told her, and disappeared into the adjoining room.

When they were alone, Kelly said, “I see you decided to follow your dream after all.”

“I didn’t think you remembered me,” Jack told her, unable to mask his surprise.

Kelly gave him a slow smile. “I was an impressionable teenager the last time I saw you. It’s not likely that I’d forget the man who saved my most valuable possession.”

Jack swallowed, taken aback by her candor. He also worried that the event had traumatized her more than he’d ever suspected. “Actually, I don’t think those punks would have really done anything to you. At heart, they were cowards who got their kicks out of scaring young girls. I doubt they’d have taken things any further.”

The smile turned into a chuckle. “I wasn’t referring to my virtue, Detective Callaghan. I was talking about my camera. I’d worked after school and on weekends for six months to buy it. It was my most valuable possession.”

Jack flushed, felt like an idiot for overreacting.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t resist,” she said, stifling a grin. “From your expression, it was obvious that you were worried I’d been permanently scarred by that incident in the park. I wasn’t.”

“You could have been.”

The smile faded from her lips. “Trust me, Detective. Benny Farrell and Reed Parker weren’t the first ones to think that, because no one else wanted me, I was fair game for them to do whatever they pleased to me. I never lost any sleep because of them. I’m tougher than that.”

Because she had had to be. Admiration and anger ripped at him as he thought of what her life must have been like. “I’m sorry. I never really thought about what it was like for you growing up at St. Ann’s.”

“There was no reason for you to,” she informed him matter-of-factly. “You come from a close-knit family, but I don’t. That’s not anyone’s fault. It’s simply the way things are. It’s certainly not something you should feel guilty about.”

“I don’t. I’m just sorry that your life was so tough.”

“Don’t be,” she informed him, her voice turning chilly. She stood, crossed her arms. “I’ve done just fine for myself. So you can save your pity, Detective. I don’t need it or want it.”

Jack shot to his feet. “First off, the name’s Jack. Since we share some history, I think we can dispense with the formalities. Second, you can quit trying to put words in my mouth. I don’t feel guilty because you grew up without a family and I sure as hell don’t pity you. I admire you. I did back when you were a kid. And I do now because you obviously did make something of yourself.”

She opened her mouth then clamped it shut, as though his remark had taken the wind out of her sails. After a moment, she whooshed out a breath. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say with all the enthusiasm of someone who’d just been poked with a needle.

Jack chuckled. “I get the feeling that you don’t do that often. Apologize,” he explained.

“I don’t.”

“Don’t make many mistakes, huh?”

“Hardly,” she said. “I make tons of them. But I try not to do or say things that I’ll regret.”

“Guess that explains why you look as though chewing a bucket of nails would have been preferable to telling me you’re sorry,” he teased.

Streaks of color raced up her pale cheeks. “It would have,” she admitted. “I guess I’m a little sensitive about my heritage. Or lack thereof.”

“A little sensitive?” he prompted, hoping to get her to smile at him again.

“All right. A lot sensitive,” she conceded, and rewarded him with a hint of that smile he’d wanted. “Anyway, I really am sorry for—”

“Jackson, we’ve got to roll,” Leon said, exiting the other room.

The homicide detective in him took charge. “What’s up?”

Leon looked from him to Kelly and back again. “The vic’s wallet turned up. We’ve got an ID on the man.”

“Who was he?” Kelly asked. When Leon hesitated, she said, “Please, I’d like to know. ‘Seeing’ things like I do—it makes me feel somehow connected to the persons involved.”

Leon glanced at him again and Jack nodded. “His name was Martin Gilbert. He was from Pass Christian, Mississippi.” Leon paused a moment. “And until five years ago, he was a doctor.”

“What happened five years ago?” Kelly asked.

“His license was revoked for performing illegal abortions on minors.”

“Please have a seat, Ms. Santos,” the receptionist at the law firm of Callaghan and Associates told Kelly as she was ushered into an office to wait for Peter Callaghan late Monday morning. “Can I offer you anything to drink?”

“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Very well. Mr. Callaghan will be with you shortly,” the young woman said, and left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

Still unsettled by her encounter with Jack the previous day and the disturbing vision that had led to it, Kelly looked at her watch. She felt as though she’d been in New Orleans for weeks instead of just a few days. Eager to put those days behind her as quickly as possible so she could return to New York, she stared at her watch. And she waited. When several minutes ticked by and Peter Callaghan still hadn’t made an appearance, she tapped her foot, growing more restless by the second.

Patience was not one of her virtues, she admitted. The fact that she was being forced to wait in a lawyer’s office only added to her discomfort. One of those psychological hang-ups from her childhood, she guessed. All she knew was that Peter Callaghan’s office made her think about those countless offices she’d been in and out of as a kid. Social workers, child psychologists and various state agencies—all insisting on regular evaluations of her. Granted, Peter Callaghan’s office was a far cry from the cramped, dreary bureaucratic offices she’d been sent to as a child. But there was still something about the scent of all those law books, about seeing them lined up on the shelves along with the legal documents hanging on the walls, that triggered her old feelings of being trapped and helpless. Just as she’d felt trapped and helpless all those years ago as she’d been shuffled through the state and legal systems.

But you’re not a child anymore. They no longer have any power over you.

Kelly drew in a steadying breath, released it. She wasn’t a child anymore. Nor was she trapped in the system, she reminded herself, echoing the voice in her head. She was the one in control of her life now—not some judge who saw only another unwanted child dependent upon the juvenile system. She didn’t have to shift in and out of a string of foster homes and St. Ann’s any longer. She didn’t have to subject herself to any court-appointed psychologist. Nor did she have to allow anyone to poke around in her mind, asking her a bunch of stupid questions and then diagnosing her as a troubled girl who made up stories about visions to get attention.