Janice Johnson - With Child

Dean had left the porch light on. Through the stained-glass sidelight, she could make out a dark shape.

“Who’s there?” she called.

The muffled reply was “Quinn.”

Her heart somersaulted. Fumbling with the dead bolt, she thought, Why? Why Quinn? Why now?

Two men, not just one, stood on the porch. With Dean’s best friend was Sergeant Rycroft Dickerson. She remembered him from her wedding. Six foot four or so and brawny, his graying hair buzz-cut, he wasn’t the kind of man you forgot.

Not that you could forget Quinn, either, she thought irrelevantly. With his straight dark hair, vivid blue eyes, stark cheekbones and contained air, he would never go unnoticed.

“Is…is something wrong?” she squeaked.

Neither face softened.

Quinn asked, “Can we come in, Mindy?”

“I…of course.” She swung the door open.

Quinn first, the sergeant second, they stepped in to the foyer, filling it with a threat of…something. Something she didn’t want to hear.

“I could put on coffee…”

Quinn shook his head. “Mindy…”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Mindy.” His voice, she realized, was scratchy, rough. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

She backed away, talking fast. “Uh…Dean isn’t home. He will be by seven. I can tell him you need to see him. Or I can leave a note.” She said the last as if it were a super idea, a solution to some dilemma that her inner self knew didn’t exist. “He worked tonight.”

The sergeant reached out. “We know.”

She wouldn’t let him touch her. Clutching the lapel of her gown, she said in a high, breathless voice, “I don’t understand why you’re here.”

Quinn’s blue eyes were almost black. “He’s dead, Mindy.”

“Don’t be silly! He’s not a cop anymore. And he drives so carefully.” She laughed, convincing no one. “What could have happened to him?”

“He interrupted a burglary.” A muscle jumped in Quinn’s cheek. “Somebody shot him.”

Dean? Shot Dean? Her Dean? The idea was ludicrous, impossible, unthinkable.

“Have you tried his cell phone? What makes you think…”

Dark and melancholy at the best of times, Quinn waited her out, his eyes bleak. When her voice hitched and died—no, not died, what an awful choice of words!—trailed off, yes, trailed off, he said in that thick voice, “I saw him. I didn’t want to believe it either. But he’s dead.”

A keening sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Not until Quinn’s face contorted and he stepped forward to draw her into his arms did she realize she was making the sound. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face against Quinn’s chest despite the smell of sweat that wasn’t Dean’s. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on, because otherwise she wouldn’t have remained upright.

She was still crying out, still muffling that dreadful, shrill, unending scream in his dark shirt. She stayed stiff, her fists filled with his shirt, and tried to smother herself against him.

Quinn muttered brokenly, “God, Mindy. God. I’m so sorry.”

Perhaps shock was wrapping her in thick batting, because abruptly all strength left her, stealing the cry from her throat. She sagged, clinging. Still, Quinn held her. Strong arms, a body more solid than her lanky husband’s. She hadn’t known what he would feel like. He’d never hugged her, never kissed her cheek, never touched her at all. She’d always known he didn’t like her. But for Dean’s sake, they were polite.

Dead.

She heard the men confer, but made no effort to decipher words. Footsteps, and finally Quinn lifted her like a child and sat her on the couch in the living room. Mindy began to shiver.

“Don’t you have a throw?” he said in frustration.

She squeezed her arms against her body and rocked herself, hardly aware when he disappeared and then reappeared with a comforter he must have torn from the bed in the guest room. Even inside it, she continued to shiver. Her teeth chattered.

A weight settled on the couch beside her and Quinn held a mug to her mouth. Tea. Clumsily, with his help, she drank. Hot liquid ran down her chin, joining the tears that wet her face.

After a moment she took the mug from him and gratefully wrapped cold fingers around it. She drank again, letting it scald her mouth, aware it was sweeter than she would have made it but not caring. The heat sliding down her throat felt so good. Her shivers abated.

Finally she lifted her head. The sergeant stood a few feet away, looking down at her with concern. Quinn still sat beside her, his thigh touching hers, his face so close she could see individual bristles on a chin that was normally clean-shaven.

“You’re sure?” she asked. Begged.

“We’re sure,” Dickerson said.

Still pleading, although no longer with them, Mindy said, “What will I do?”

There was a momentary silence, and then Quinn stood. “What will you do?” He sounded harsh, the man who had always condemned her without knowing her at all. “I’m sure Dean left you taken care of.”

“I didn’t mean…” she tried to explain.

“Do you have someone we can call?” Sergeant Dickerson interrupted. “Family? A friend?”

She instinctively rejected the idea of calling her mother. Selene was her best friend, but…she was such a talker. She wouldn’t know how to hold Mindy without exclaiming over and over and wanting to dissect the tragic events. And who else could Mindy phone in the middle of the night to say, “My husband is dead. Can you come hold my hand?”

Mindy shook her head. “I’ll wait until morning.” Until then…until then, she didn’t know what she’d do. She couldn’t go back to that lonely bed. Perhaps she would just huddle here and try to imagine the man she loved gone. Erased as if he hadn’t existed.

“We’ve only been married a year.” She heard her voice, high and petulant, as if Dean had broken a promise. But he hadn’t. Till death do us part. It just wasn’t supposed to be so soon!

The two men were talking again as if she wasn’t here.

“I want to work this one,” Quinn said. “Who pulled it? Sawyer and Asavade?”

“Dobias and Williams. And the answer is no. You’re dead on your feet. And you’re too involved.”

“He was my best friend. I need to make this collar.”

“Uh-huh. You going to do it dispassionately? Read ’em their rights? When what you really want to do is kill them?”

Quinn paced, fury and grief radiating from him like heat from a woodstove. Mindy felt it without having to watch him.

“Goddamn it! Don’t shut me out!”

“No.” The sergeant didn’t move. Like Quinn, he seemed to have forgotten her. “Dean radioed in a license-plate number. There may have been an arrest already.”

She listened without real comprehension. Dean was dead? It made no sense. She would have worried if he’d still been a cop, but he owned his own security company. He hardly ever took a shift as a guard anymore. He met with property owners and businessmen, did payroll and billing, grumbled about how hard it was to find and keep good employees.

“They all either want to be cops or prison guards.” He’d made a sound of disgust. “They like the idea of swaggering around in a uniform with a gun in a holster. They find out how boring it is patrolling warehouses and apartment complexes at night, they opt out.”

Mindy came back to awareness of the present when she realized that Sergeant Dickerson had sat on the coffee table. Quinn stood to one side.

“Mindy? You with me?”

She nodded.

“Do you know why Dean worked tonight?”

She nodded again. “A new guy called in sick. Dean was really mad, because it was last minute. The dispatcher offered to go out, but Dean said he’d do it. He liked to once in a while, you know.”