The Night Watcher. John Lutz

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СКАЧАТЬ to go along with the child molestation. There were three active warrants on Jamal the dealer, one of them for a homicide in Queens.

      It turned out to be a productive night’s work.

      If Stanford had seen what happened with Rica’s gun, he never mentioned it, at least to her. Maybe the hall was too dim. Maybe he’d been woozy from getting cracked with the door and knocked back against the wall. Definitely he might have been shot and killed that night, and it would have been Rica’s fault. Jamal the dealer didn’t mention the gun during his trial two months later, possibly out of embarrassment at being brought down by a five-foot-two female cop.

      Rica knew she’d somehow gotten a second chance.

      At Blender’s Lounge the night after the shooting, where some of the cops from the Eight-oh went to drink when off duty, they toasted Rica. The place was noisy and crowded, warm with so many bodies.

      Ed Kaline, still in uniform, raised a mug of beer high and whistled shrilly for silence. “To Rica Lopez!” he shouted. “A small cop with a big blue heart!”

      Everyone applauded and shouted. Rica felt great, but at the same time wondered if she should have said something about the gun. It didn’t figure anyone would ever find out. Even if Jamal Jefferson mentioned it at his trial, who would believe him? Anyway, it wouldn’t be mentioned in court. How he was captured had no bearing on his case.

      Rica forced her concerns aside, grinned, and drank.

      She’d probably drunk a bit too much when a tall, handsome plainclothes detective came up to her and patted her on the back. She’d heard about him, seen him around, knew his name was Stack. Even then, the other cops seemed to think he was something special, though she didn’t know why.

      “Congratulations on a fine collar,” he said with a smile that suggested he meant it.

      Rica thanked him and he introduced himself.

      “I was lucky,” she said.

      “No,” he told her.

      “I was scared,” she admitted.

      He nodded and looked closely at her. There was something about his calm gray eyes that held her. He rested a big hand gently on her shoulder and his voice was soft and only for her. “Everybody, especially when they’re new, gets scared, does something wrong. The best of them make it right. I think you’ll be among the best of them.”

      That’s when she realized he knew about the gun, and that he wasn’t the only one who knew. There were few secrets in the badged and blue, mostly male world she had entered and had now become a part of, peopled by fellow professionals who understood in ways only other cops could comprehend.

      That was the night Rica became a better cop. The night the blood coursing through her veins turned blue.

      Looking back on it, she realized it was also the night she fell in love with Ben Stack.

      FIVE

      January 2002

      The sweet, burnt smell remained in Hugh Danner’s co-op unit. Rica wondered if it would ever leave completely.

      Helen Sampson said, “I don’t want to go into the kitchen.”

      “You don’t have to,” Rica assured her. “We only want you to look around, see if anything might be missing or out of place.”

      “Not in the kitchen.”

      Rica exchanged glances with Stack. “Of course not.”

      Helen Sampson was wearing a simple black dress and black flat-heeled pumps. Her straight blond hair was lank and looked greasy, and it had dark streaks, though Rica was sure she was a natural blonde. She was a gaunt, attractive woman with pale blue eyes, but she looked almost unbearably weary. Her grief was dragging her down. She glanced around her, then began walking slowly about in the living room, now and then running a finger lightly over things as if checking for dust, or maybe making sure she was among real objects and not in a bad dream.

      “Approximately how many times have you been here?” Stack asked her.

      She paused and looked at him as if he’d awoken her. “I’m not sure…a dozen, maybe more.”

      He smiled at her and made a palms-up motion with his hands held low, gently urging her to continue.

      She resumed her seemingly aimless slow roaming, her haunted eyes constantly moving.

      “Do the wall hangings look the same?” he asked.

      She nodded but said nothing.

      “Nothing missing? I mean, did Mr. Danner have any valuable art?”

      “He didn’t like art,” she said. “A decorator did the apartment a few years ago, and Hugh just left things the way they were.”

      She left the living room and went down the hall to the main bedroom, moving along the wall as far away from the kitchen door as she could, actually holding her hand up to her eyes to block her view into the kitchen in case she might accidentally glance in that direction.

      In the bedroom she went immediately to the bed and ran her hand over the wooden footboard, then touched the mattress softly with her fingertips. She clenched her hands together as if squeezing something between them and turned in a slow circle.

      “It all looks the same,” she said. She walked to the bureau, where there was a framed photograph of her and Danner standing before what looked like a lake with boats in the distance. There were no leaves on the trees, and both of them wore jackets and were smiling, huddled tightly together. Danner had his arm around her waist and she was clutching his wrist with both her hands, as if she didn’t want him ever to release her.

      “May I take this?” she asked, floating out a hand and touching the frame.

      “We’ll let you know when,” Rica told her, “and we’ll make sure that you get it.”

      “Hugh didn’t have any family he cared about other than his ten-year-old daughter in Oregon. I know he had a sister in Philadelphia, but they never saw each other and hardly even spoke except on birthdays. She wouldn’t want a photo like that. No one else would want it.”

      “I wouldn’t think so,” Rica said.

      “I think we were going to be married.”

      “Had he asked you?”

      “No, but I’m sure he was going to.”

      “Miss Sampson—” Stack began.

      “Helen.”

      “Of course. Helen. You’re an attractive young woman. Might there be somebody in your life who was jealous of Danner’s involvement with you? Who might have resented it and turned to violence?”

      She seemed to take the question seriously, chewing her lower lip for a moment as she searched her memory, then shook her head no. “In the relationship I was in before I met Hugh,” she said, “he left me.”

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