Janice Johnson - Cop by Her Side

Damn. Focus. Do your goddamn job.

“You didn’t really answer my question. Was Melissa speaking to you lately? For some reason you want me to think everything was sweetness and light between her and Drew, but I need to know if it wasn’t.”

She averted her face. He sat through the silence while she struggled with herself. When she finally looked back at him, her expression was guarded.

“No, we haven’t been getting along well lately. Like I said, we have...tensions. There’s three years between us, and after Mom took off I sort of stepped in as a mother figure. Then Lissa was only seventeen when Dad died and she lived with me until she graduated from high school. Especially once she hit about thirteen, she resented me having any authority over her. Her favorite line was, ‘You’re not my mother and you can’t tell me what to do.’” Jane shrugged. No biggie, she was trying to convince him. What had she said? Ancient history.

Too bad he didn’t buy it.

“Rivalry for your dad’s attention?”

Her expression shut down with the finality of a steel door. He didn’t have to hear the lock to know it had slid into place.

“No,” she said, and that was all.

Oh, man, he wanted to pursue the subject, but had an uneasy feeling he was straying into personal territory. Yes, he wanted to know Jane, but right now, the people he needed to know were her sister, her brother-in-law and the missing niece.

“Drew and I are friends.” Jane didn’t sound as if she wanted to tell him, but felt compelled to. “If they were really having problems, he would have told me. Like I said, there was the job thing and the question of whether they’d move if he found a good enough one, but he hadn’t yet, so—” She lifted one shoulder.

“Is he good with the kids?” Clay made his tone casual.

“Drew?” Jane looked genuinely surprised. “Sure. Hey, right now, he’s the one who’s home with them. That’s probably why Lissa took Bree with her. Especially with her two friends having moved away, Bree probably needed some exclusive mom time.”

She didn’t know that Drew had implied Melissa had felt extreme reluctance to take her daughter along. Because she’d been cranky and wanted some peace and quiet? Or because she’d never intended to run the errand that was her ostensible reason for leaving the house?

Or—and this was the big or in Clay’s book—was the whole story fiction? Melissa Wilson’s supposed trip to Rite Aid, the possibility she and her husband had squabbled about whether she was going to take Brianna, the later phone call... It all came from the same man.

Not the phone call; Clay had verified that there was a call lasting just under one minute from Melissa’s phone to Drew’s. But what was said, who’d actually dialed the call, that was all in question as far as Clay was concerned.

His least favorite scenario involved the pedophile who got lucky and happened on a really pretty little girl trying to flag down a passing motorist.

But he had some others that would keep him awake, too, and they involved Drew Wilson.

What if he and his wife had done more than squabble? What if they’d had a nasty fight? If she fled, he might have pursued and been responsible for running her off the road. He could have Brianna stashed somewhere so she couldn’t tell what had really happened. He might figure he could brainwash her, then have her miraculously restored to him.

Or what if he was sexually molesting his eldest daughter, and he really couldn’t afford it if either she or his wife talked?

Jesus. What if he’d killed his daughter and then chased down his wife to shut her mouth? So far, Clay hadn’t found a witness to confirm anything beyond the fact that Drew had dropped his younger daughter off at the neighbor’s without saying anything but that he thought maybe his wife’s car had broken down and he needed to go check on her. His frantic appearance at the police station could be a con job.

And Clay didn’t like being conned.

He was honest enough with himself to admit that he also didn’t like the idea that Jane had a closer relationship with her brother-in-law than she did with her sister.

Once he finished talking to Jane, he was going to have a chat with the nurses in ICU and make sure they kept at least half an eye on Melissa Wilson and her so-devoted husband.

“You said you take the girls alone sometimes. I’ll bet you tried to keep Brianna from feeling too sad this summer.”

“I’ve tried to do something fun with her every week. Sometimes both girls, but Alexis is happier at the day camp than Bree is this year. I know Drew lets her stay home some days even when he takes Alexis.”

A father should want to spend individual time with his kids. Unfortunately, in his job, Clay had seen too many cases where a father liked being alone with one of his kids for a sick reason.

“I’ve mostly been working Tuesday through Saturday,” Jane continued. “So I’ve devoted a lot of Mondays this summer to the girls. Sometimes they spend Sunday at my place. In July I took just Bree over to that really cool water park in McMinnville.”

He decided he had to be direct. “Does she talk to you? Would she tell you if something was weighing on her?”

Jane’s uncomprehending stare slowly altered to one of outraged understanding. “You’re suggesting that...that Drew or Lissa was abusing her?”

“I’m asking if the possibility exists.”

“No!”

He held her gaze with a steady one of his own. “Jane, you’re not that naive. I know this is your family. Nobody ever wants to think a person she loves could do something like that. But it happens. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot more common than most people have any idea.”

She visibly choked on it, but she had been a cop too long to deny what he said was the truth. “No,” she repeated, but more moderately. “I really don’t think so. The girls are both cheerful and affectionate and—” Jane scowled. “If I could imagine it with either of their parents, it wouldn’t be—” She stopped again, unhappy.

“Your sister,” Clay said slowly.

Her mouth tightened. “Actually, I was going to say Drew. He’s a really nice guy. I think Alexis and Bree are more comfortable with him than they are with Lissa. She’s, I don’t know, uptight and—” something else she didn’t want to say “—self-centered, I guess.”

An unpleasant suspicion had entered Clay’s mind as she talked. Clay remembered the way Drew’s face and tone had softened when the subject of Jane came up. Now listen to the warmth in her tone. Was there any chance something was going on there? Even the idea enraged him.

But, truth was, he couldn’t think how a flirtation or even an affair between Jane and Drew could have played into today’s events, unless it had been a catalyst for a monumental fight between husband and wife. And then how did that involve the kid?

No.

He didn’t believe it anyway, he discovered. He thought Jane’s sense of integrity was too unbending to allow her to sleep with her sister’s husband.

But he also found he hated almost as much the possibility that she wanted to. That the two of them looked at each other sometimes with the knowledge between them that they might have been happy together.

And yeah, what grated maybe most of all was the way she’d described Drew. He was a really nice guy—while Clay Renner was scum of the earth.

Like acid in his belly, it ate at him knowing he’d given her damn good reason to believe exactly that.

And...maybe she’d be right to believe it. A self-confident man, Clay had taken a serious hit that day. Since she’d walked away, he’d looked hard at a lot of crap he’d grown up taking for granted. What shook him most was discovering how much contempt for women had been embedded in his father’s “traditional” views of male/female roles.