The Man Behind the Cop. Janice Kay Johnson
shelter,” Cecilia added. “She didn’t tell him she was leaving him. I don’t know how he found her.”
“He had to have followed her tonight.” The detective was thinking aloud. “Where are the children? He didn’t get them?”
Cecilia was a dumpy, endlessly comforting woman likely in her fifties. Detective Walker hadn’t even finished his question before she shook her head. “Lenora’s aunt picked them up and took them home for the night. She’s to bring them back in the morning.”
Karin’s heart chilled at his expression. “You don’t think…?” Oh, God. If he had the aunt’s house staked out…
She’d warned Lenora. “Stay away from friends and family,” she’d said.
Focused on Cecilia, Detective Walker asked, “Do you know the woman’s name?”
“Yes…um, Lopez. Señora Lopez.”
Aunt…Karin groped in her memory. Aunt…“Julia.”
“Yes.” Cecilia flashed her a grateful look. “Julia Lopez. I have her phone number back at the shelter.”
“Call.” He held out his cell phone. “We need to send a unit over there. She should know about her niece, anyway.”
“Yes. Of course.” Cecilia fumbled with the phone but finally dialed.
Karin didn’t listen. She stared helplessly at Lenora, who had been so triumphant Friday afternoon because she’d successfully made her getaway. “He never guessed anything,” she’d told Karin in amazement. “He gave me money Thursday after he deposited his check. He was even in a good mood.”
Now, gazing at Lenora’s slack face and blood-matted hair, Karin could only say, “He followed her aunt to the shelter tonight, didn’t he?”
At the first wail of a siren, Karin’s head came up. She prayed fervently, Let it be the ambulance for Lenora.
A second siren played a chorus. Two vehicles arrived in a rush. A Seattle PD car first, flying into the parking lot, then the ambulance, coming from the opposite direction.
The EMTs took over. As Karin stood and backed away to give them room to work, her legs trembled as though she’d run a marathon. And not just her legs. She was shaking all over, she realized. For all the stories she’d heard from brutalized women, she’d never witnessed a rape scene or murder or beating. The experience was quite different in real life.
Cecilia came to her and they hugged, then clung. Karin realized her face was wet with tears.
Bruce Walker was busy issuing orders to two uniformed officers. Their voices were low and urgent; beyond them, in the squad car, the radio crackled.
“We should wait inside,” Karin said at last. She needed to sit. “He’ll probably want to ask us both some more questions.”
Cecilia drew a shuddering breath. “Yes. You’re right.”
Karin glanced back, to find that Detective Walker was watching them. He gave her a nod, which she interpreted as approval. His air of command was enormously comforting.
Thank God he’d still been within earshot. Imagine how much harder this would be had she been dealing with strangers now, instead.
The gurney vanished into the guts of the aid car, one of the EMTs with it. The other EMT slammed the back doors and raced to the driver’s side of the vehicle. They were moving so fast, not wasting a motion. Then once again the siren wailed, and the ambulance roared down the street.
She couldn’t stop herself from looking again at the blood slick, dark under the streetlight, and at the tire iron, flung like some obscene kind of cross on the pavement. Then the two women walked into the building, still holding hands.
HE CAME IN sooner than she expected, thank goodness.
Through the glass doors, both women were aware of the blinding white flashes as a photographer worked, a counterpoint to the blue-and-white lights from the squad car. Why don’t they turn them off? Karin wondered, anger sparking. What good did they do?
Once inside, the detective walked straight to them and sank into a chair beside Karin. Turning his body so that he was facing them, he was so close to Karin his knee bumped hers and she could see the bristles on his jaw. Like most dark-haired men, he must need to shave twice a day to keep a smooth jaw. But then, this day had been longer than he could ever have anticipated.
Karin gave her head a shake. Did it matter how well groomed he was? No. Yet she couldn’t seem to discipline her thoughts. She wanted to think about something, anything, but that awful smash-squish and the sight of Lenora collapsing. Karin had never seen anyone fall like that, with no attempt to regain footing or fling out arms to break the impact. As if Lenora had already been dead, and it didn’t matter how she hit.
Detective Walker pulled a small notebook and pen from a pocket inside his leather jacket. With a few succinct questions, he extracted a bald description of events from Cecilia, then Karin.
“Thank the Lord the other women had gone,” Cecilia said with a sigh.
“Amen,” Karin breathed. Imagine if Olivia, recently raped and still emotionally fragile, had witnessed the brutal assault.
The shelter director asked, “Have you heard anything about the aunt?”
“Not yet.”
Was he worried? Karin scrutinized his face. She couldn’t be sure—she didn’t know him—but thought she saw tiny signs of tension beside his eyes, in muscles bunched in his jaw, in the way he reached up and squeezed his neck, grimacing.
“This was a bad idea,” Karin exclaimed. “To bring all these women here like…like sitting ducks! What was I thinking?”
He laid his hand over hers. “No, it was a good idea,” he reassured her quietly, those intense eyes refusing to let her look away from him. “Once Roberto knew where his wife was, it was a done deal.”
“It’s true,” Cecilia assured her. “Don’t you remember? Just last year, Janine’s boyfriend was waiting outside the shelter for her. He shot her, then himself, right there on the sidewalk. It was—” She stopped, sinking her teeth into her lip. “This could just as easily have happened at the shelter. Lenora had to go out eventually.”
Karin deliberately relaxed her hands, and he removed his. What was she doing, thinking about herself now? Her guilt could wait. Right now the children mattered; Lenora mattered. Karin was wasting this man’s time making him console her, when he should be doing something to catch Roberto.
“Do you know which hospital they took Lenora to?” she asked.
“Harborview. It’s tops for trauma.” His cell phone rang. “Excuse me.”
He stood and walked away, but not outside. Although his back was to them, Karin heard his sharp expletive. Her hand groped Cecilia’s.
Still talking, he faced them. His eyes sought out Karin’s, and she saw anger in them. It chilled her, and she gripped the director’s hand more tightly. He listened, talked and listened some more, never looking away from her.
Finally he ended the call and came back to them. Karin wasn’t sure she’d even blinked. She couldn’t tear her gaze from this man’s.
He dropped into the chair as if exhausted. “He’s already been there. The aunt’s dead. A neighbor says the uncle works a night shift. We’ll be tracking him down next. The kids are gone.”
“Oh, no,” Karin breathed, although his expression had told her what happened before he’d said a word. Cecilia exclaimed, too.
“I’m heading over there. I’m Homicide. This case—” his voice hardened “—I’m taking personally.”
“The children…” Horror seized Karin by the throat. “Does that mean they