Patterson, James - Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance

“It just wasn't the right time for you then, honey.” Claire said.

“That wasn't it,” Jill answered quickly. “I wanted it. It was just that everything was so intense. I was pulling stints at the office until ten. It seemed like Steve was always away.” She paused, a remote cloudiness in her eyes. I had some bleeding. The doctor warned me to cut back. I tried, but everyone was pushing on this case, and I was always alone.

“One day I just felt my insides explode. I lost it... in the fourth month.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Claire gasped. “Oh, Jill.”

Jill sucked in a breath, and a hushed silence fell over the table.

“So how are you feeling?” I asked.

“Ecstatic... ” she replied. “Physically strong as ever... ”

Then she blinked remotely for a moment and faced us again.

“Truth is, I'm a total wreck.”

I reached for her hand. “What does your doctor say?” “He says we'll keep a close watch and keep the sensationalist cases down to a minimum. Run it in low gear.” “Do you have that gear?” I asked.

“I do now.” She sniffed.

“Wow.” Cindy chuckled. “Jill's suddenly got drag,” referring to the dot-com term for anything that could keep you from your job 24/7.

In Jill's eyes, I saw a glorious transformation taking place, something I had never seen before. Jill was always successful.

She had that beautiful face, that hard-charging drive. Now I could see at last that she was happy.

Beautiful tears welled up in her eyes. I had seen this woman stand up in court against some of the toughest bastards in the city; I had seen her go after murderers with an undeterred conviction. I had even seen the scars of self-doubt on the insides of her arms.

But until that moment, I had never seen Jill cry.

“Dammit... ” I smiled. I reached for the check. “I guess I pay.”

Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance

Chapter 17

AFTER A FEW MORE GIDDY HUGS with Jill, I made my way home to my apartment on Potrero Hill.

It was the second floor of a renovated blue Victorian.

Cozy and bright, with an alcove of wide windows overlooking the bay. Martha, my affectionate Border collie, met me at the door.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said. She wagged up to greet me and threw her paws against my leg.

“So, how was your day?” I nuzzled close, smooching her happy face.

I went into the bedroom and peeled off my work clothes, pulled up my hair, putting on the oversize Giants sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants I lived in when the weather turned cool. I fed Martha, made myself a cup of Orange Zinger, and sat in the cushioned alcove.

I took a sip of tea, Martha perched in my lap. Out in the distance, a grid of blinking airplane lights descending into SF1 came into view. I found myself thinking about the unbelievable image of Jill as a mom... Her thin, fit figure with a bulging belly... a shower with just us girls. It made me chuckle. I smiled at Martha. “Jilly-bean's gonna be a mommy.”

I had never seen Jill look so complete. It was only a few months ago when my own thoughts had run to how much I would have loved to have a baby. As Jill said, I wanted some of that, too. It just wasn't meant to be.

Parenting just didn't seem like the natural occupation in my family.

My mother had died eleven years before, when I was twenty-four and just entering the Police Academy. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and my last two years of college, I helped take care of her, rushing back from class to pick her up at the Emporium, where she worked, preparing her meals, watching over my younger sister, Cat.

My father, a San Francisco cop, disappeared on us when I was thirteen. To this day, I didn't know why I had grown up hearing all the stories - that he handed his paycheck over to the bookies, that he had a secret life away from Mom, that the bastard could charm the pants off of anyone, that one day he lost heart and just couldn't put the uniform back on.

Last I heard from Cat, he was down in Redondo Beach, doing his own thing, private security. Old-timers down in the Central district still asked me how Marty Boxer was. They still told stories about him, and maybe it was good someone could think about him with a laugh. Marty who once nabbed three perps with the same set of handcuffs... Marty Boxer, who stopped off to lay a bet with the suspect still in the car.

All I could think about was that the bastard let me tend and nurse my mother while she was dying and never came back.

I hadn't seen my father for almost ten years. Since the day I became a cop. I'd spotted him in the audience when I graduated from the police academy but we hadn't spoken. I didn't even miss him anymore.

God, it had been ages since I had examined these old scars. Mom had been gone for eleven years. I'd been married, divorced. I had made it into Homicide. Now I was running it. Somewhere along the way, I had met the man of my dreams... I was right when I told Mercer the old fire was back.

But I was lying when I told myself I had put Chris Raleigh in the past.

Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance

Chapter 18

IT WAS ALWAYS THE EYES that got him. Naked on the bunk, in the stark, cell-like room, he sat staring at the old black-and-white photographs he had looked at a thousand times.

It was always the eyes... that deadened, hopeless resignation.

How they posed, even knowing that their lives were about to end. Even with the nooses wrapped around their necks.

In the loosely bound album, he had forty-seven photos and postcards arranged in chronological order. He had collected them over the years. The first, an old photograph, dated June 9, 1901, his father had given him. Dezjones, lynched in Great River, Indiana. On the border, someone had written in faded script: “This was that dance I went to the other night. We sure played afterwards. Your son, Sam.” In the foreground, a crowd in suit coats and bowler hats, and behind them the limply hanging corpse.

He flipped the page. Frank Taylor, Mason, Georgia, 1911. It had cost him $500 to get the photo, but it was worth every penny. From the back of a buggy parked under an oak, the condemned man stared, seconds before his death. On his face, neither resistance nor fear. A small crowd of properly dressed men and women grinned toward the camera as if they were witnessing Lindbergh arriving in Paris. Dressed up as if it were a family portrait.

Their eyes conveyed that the hanging was something proper and natural. Taylor's, simply that there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it anyway.

He got off the bed and dragged his slick, muscular frame to the mirror. He had always been strong. He had lifted weights for ten years now. He flinched as he drew blood and mass into his swollen pecs. He massaged a scratch. That old bitch had dug her nails into his chest as he wrapped the coil around the ceiling pipes. It had barely drawn blood, but he looked at the scratch with contempt. He didn't like anything that disturbed the surface of his skin.

He posed in front of the mirror, looking at the seething lion-goat tattooed across his chest.

Soon, all the stupid assholes would see that it wasn't just about hate. They would read his pattern. The guilty had to be punished. Reputations needed to be restored. He had no particular antipathy for any of them. It wasn't hate. He climbed back on the bed and masturbated to the photo of Missy Preston, whose tiny neck was snapped by a rope in Childers County, Tennessee, in August of 1931.

Without even a groan, he ejaculated. The forceful rush made his knees quake. That old lady, she had deserved to die.

The choir girl, too. He was pumped up!

He massaged the tattoo on his chest. Pretty soon, I will let you free, my pet.