Janice Kay - Maternal Instinct

Worry did indeed stir like a coiled asp, necessitating a few slow, deep breaths to calm herself. Fate couldn’t be that cruel. She wouldn’t be pregnant. Focus on the job, quit agonizing over nothing.

Thank God on bended knee that Kim never would know how foolish her mother had been. If she ever found out…Nell shuddered. All of those talks about maturity, impulse control, looking to the future, might as well have been given to herself in the shower, to swirl down the drain with the water that had been sluicing her body.

Of course, those very same—no, not lectures, she tried hard not to be autocratic—those very same mother-daughter talks, might be useless anyway. Teenage love, lust and sense of invincibility were powerful opponents to a mother’s word and common sense. What if, right this minute, Kim was letting Colin slip his hand inside that skimpy bikini top, his mouth hot and hungry on hers, his urgently whispered, “Come on, we love each other,” filling her heart with a glorious need to show him how much she loved him?

Nell must have moved, because Hugh asked, “Something wrong?”

She surfaced to see that they were turning into a neighborhood she knew well from patrolling.

“No…yes. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “You were a teenage boy. If you had a girlfriend, did you respect her desire to wait for sex until—oh, not marriage, but until she was older?”

“Respect her for wanting to wait? Maybe.” The car paused at a stop sign, and his eyes met hers. “But I still tried to get down her pants. That’s what teenage boys do.”

She whimpered.

“Your daughter?”

“She’s sixteen. I told you that, didn’t I? She seems to be spending every day with her boyfriend this summer. What can I do?” Nell begged.

“Cuff her and lock the door.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I thought about sending her away to summer camp, but she’s a little old for that.”

“Isn’t she working?”

“Part-time at the library. She’s a page during the school year, too. She didn’t want to quit that to work full-time at some fast-food joint, and I figured, hey, she’s still a kid, let her enjoy one last summer.”

“There was your mistake.” He frowned. “Damn it, I thought Vista Drive was right here.”

She shook her head. “Another couple of blocks. I patrolled this neighborhood for a year.”

“All rentals?” he asked.

“Yup. I got on-the-job training in domestic disturbances. Couple a night, sometimes.”

Not that the neighborhood was a slum. The houses were decent but low-end in price, which meant they were starters for young couples or owned by landlords. Clearly thrown up by one builder, the ranch and split-level houses varied little except by color and orientation—garage doors might be on one side or the other so that bedroom windows didn’t line up. Lawns were already turning brown in a neighborhood where homeowners didn’t bother sprinkling. Most were too busy trying to scratch out a living.

A kid in baggy cargo pants burst from between parked cars on his skateboard. Hugh braked and muttered a curse as the boy gave one push with his foot and rocketed away without any realization of how close he had come to getting hit. Nell saw up the next cul-de-sac that a group of older kids was playing basketball with a backboard on wheels, while younger girls threw pebbles and took turns with a chalk hop-scotch grid drawn on the sidewalk. Now that she was paying attention, there weren’t many adults around, but there were plenty of children: skateboarders in the next cul-de-sac soaring over a jump erected in a driveway, more girls jump-roping, a war with squirt pistols on a front lawn.

Mostly latch-key kids, Nell guessed. Rather like Kim had been for too many years. As she herself had been. Family patterns that played themselves out, generation after generation.

Please not the next one, she prayed.

“Here we go,” Hugh said with satisfaction, pulling to the curb in front of a ranch house with a row of rosebushes blooming beside the driveway.

“I didn’t look at who we’re interviewing,” Nell said. “What floor did we get assigned?”

Hugh showed her the map of the wing of offices on the fourth floor. “Gann’s last stops. We’re to interview everyone working along this hallway, and then the people upstairs where the last victim was, too, if we finish these in time.”

Nell nodded.

On the walk up to the front door, she paused to inhale the heavy fragrance of a huge, fiery red bloom.

The interior of the house was shadowy, but a tinny woman’s voice cried, “How could you? I trusted you!”

Over the ring of the doorbell, the man’s deeper murmur was indistinguishable. Music cued dramatically, followed by the familiar jingle of a television commercial.

A young woman came to the door immediately. She was pretty, no more than twenty-one or -two. A blonde who wore her hair in a ponytail, she wore shorts and a skimpy tank top that outlined high, full breasts.

“Officers. Please, come in.” Her smile wavered. “They said you’d be coming.”

“Thank you.” Narrow-eyed, Nell stole a glance at her partner. He’d damn well better not be checking out their interviewee, who reminded Nell uncomfortably of Kim.

But he only nodded courteously and gestured for Nell to go ahead. Ladies first. She had mixed feelings about his gentlemanly instincts. She was counting on him being chivalrous enough to keep his mouth shut. On the other hand, cops with old-fashioned attitudes generally didn’t like the idea of the little woman under gunfire. Frowning, Nell reminded herself that they’d functioned like a well-practiced team in the Joplin Building.

Watching the young woman turn off the television set, Nell rubbed her temple. A headache, and well deserved. Why in hell was she obsessing about Hugh McLean, she wondered irritably. They were stuck together temporarily. That was all. They could stand each other for a few months. Who cared what made him tick, or what he thought about her?

Stick to your real worries, she advised herself. The unprotected sex she’d had, and a teenage daughter with overactive hormones.

Like her mother’s, apparently.

Nell winced before realizing that Hugh was looking at her.

He raised his eyebrows.

She gave her head a small shake before smiling at the young woman. “You’re Carla Shaw?”

“Yes. I don’t know that I can tell you very much.” She swallowed and then squeezed her hands together. “Um, would you like to sit down?”

“Thank you.”

They chose opposite ends of the couch, facing the TV, while Ms. Shaw sat in an old upholstered rocker.

She rushed into speech, her voice tight with anxiety. “I didn’t actually see very much, you know.”

“That’s fine,” Hugh said, more gently than Nell would have guessed him capable. “We just want to know when you figured out someone was shooting, what you did, whether you saw him at all.”

“I…” She shivered, her face pinched. “I got a phone call from a friend downstairs. Becca is in Accounting. You know, down on the third floor? We’re roommates. Her bedroom is at the end of the hall.” She gestured vaguely. “Only she’s in the hospital. Doctors say she’ll live, but…” A shudder rolled through her body. “Excuse me, I think I’ll get a sweater. I thought it was going to be a hot day, but…” She jumped up and ran from the room.

“Should I follow her?” Nell whispered.

“I think she’ll be back.” Hugh shifted. “It’s already stifling in here.”

Nell nodded. Mid-July, she almost wished the police department had summer-weight uniforms, like the post office did. Except that an officer of the law wouldn’t garner much respect if a pair of shorts showed knobby knees.