The Babysitter. Nancy Bush

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СКАЧАТЬ was when she invariably hung up on him. Laura was angry that he’d never been committed to the marriage in the same way she had. He’d tried, but she was a “ruleser.” Everything had to be just so, and well, he didn’t fit into the mold. He’d found himself heading home from work later and later, and finally recognized he didn’t want to go home at all. Laura was a nice, friendly person in front of others, but she was quick to drop that facade in the privacy of her own home and became tyrannical when things didn’t go her way.

      They’d gone to a psychologist, at Laura’s insistence, who’d said they both needed to try harder, which hadn’t been what Laura wanted to hear. She wanted complete vindication. So, no more trips to see Gwen Winkelman, which was fine with Cooper; Gwen was another River Glen alum and the less gossip about his failing marriage around town, the better, and though he trusted she wouldn’t blab about all their problems, just seeing a psychologist was enough to start a few tongues wagging.

      And then they’d divorced and everyone had gasped, how had that happened? Cooper and Laura? They had the perfect marriage! How can that be?

      During the split, Laura was good about not giving too much away and so was he. Irreconcilable differences. That was it. Nothing more to say. And then Cooper’s father had a stroke and his attention was diverted, completely taken up with his father through his illness and until his death a few months later. By that time, Cooper had moved out of the house he and Laura had purchased together and into the home he’d grown up in. His mother had died years earlier from breast cancer. He had no other siblings and now no wife or children. Work was all that mattered and he attacked it as if his life depended on it, which in a way, it did.

      Eventually, the gossip had died down. Laura moved on and was currently dating David Musgrave, who seemed a decent-enough guy. He’d heard talk that the two of them might even move in together. They were shopping for a house in Staffordshire Estates, River Glen’s chichiest area, a development that adjoined the Stillwell property, a parcel sold to home builders by Race and Deon Stillwell’s parents before their deaths in a small plane accident.

      Now Cooper pulled into the back lot of the station. Several black Ford Escapes with the River Glen Police Department’s gold ribbon sat idle. Cooper parked his own SUV, a black Ford Explorer that looked a lot like it belonged in the River Glen PD fleet, and took the short flight of steps in two bounds.

      Inside, he walked down a short hall that held the break room, restrooms and a storage closet to an open area that held six desks in three groups of two, front to front. His was one of the two closest to the window and faced Howie’s. Only three of the others were ever used. Today, they were all empty. Howie and Elena Verbena were on a case, a domestic fight between a man and his wife, both of whom were currently in the hospital from the injuries they’d inflicted upon each other. Cooper had been unavailable at the call out, and the department sent whoever was closest to the incident.

      The River Glen PD chief, a man who’d been appointed by the mayor, knew less than nothing about law enforcement from experience but was smart enough to stay out of the way of those who did. Hugh Bennihof had an office at the end of the squad room. The door was a glass pane, so it was possible to see when he was at his desk, except for the few times he pulled down the blinds.

      Cooper had just finished writing up his notes on an investigation he’d done for a case that was going to court: a messy custody case. He was glad to be done with it. He hadn’t been impressed by either parent of the six-year-old boy.

      He was now a little bit at loose ends, which made him restless. He walked to his desk but kept standing, looking out the window to the street. Seeing Jamie Whelan again had broken something loose. Something he’d thought he had under tight lock and key. Not Whelan, he realized, she’d said her last name was . . . ?

      I’m Harley Woodward.

      The daughter’s name was Woodward, so Jamie’s was likely to be, too. Jamie looked a lot like Emma, and yet she didn’t. He remembered her from high school. She’d been skinnier, but not by much. Her hair had been blonder, he thought. Now it was a light brown. She’d had a quirky smile back then, like she was embarrassed, or a fish out of water. He hadn’t noticed that today. She’d been poised and . . . careful.

      She was supposed to babysit that night.

      Cooper had given the attack on Emma a lot of thought over the years. It was the event that had spurred him to go into law enforcement. He’d had an uncle who was a River Glen cop, now long retired, and he’d harangued the man for answers, begged him, damn near threatened him, to find out what had happened, but there were no clues that went anywhere. If Emma could help, then maybe, his uncle had told Cooper over and over again, but it became clear that was never going to happen.

      His cell phone rang and he clicked on. “Yeah,” he answered Marissa.

      “Mom won’t let me go to the mixer tonight! I can’t believe it!” she cried, practically in tears. “I have plans! I have friends!”

      “The mixer?”

      “At the school. It’s like music and stuff, and it’s the Halloween one early because already the school won’t let us do Halloween. It’s so unfair! It’s just so unfair!”

      “Why won’t your mom let you go?”

      “I don’t know. Can you talk to her?”

      He knew better than to try to get between Laura and her daughter. Boy, did he know better. “Find out what her reasons are, and maybe then you can work it out with her.”

      “You won’t help me?” She moaned, as if her life were destroyed.

      “Find out,” said Cooper.

      She moaned again and hung up. Ten minutes later, Laura’s number popped up on his cell.

      “I don’t want her to go alone,” Laura said without preamble in a hard tone when Cooper clicked on. “There are drugs at the school. I don’t want her to be a part of it.”

      “Drugs? This is something you heard?”

      “Yes! There are drugs.”

      Knowing he was putting too fine a point on it based on the tone of her voice, Cooper nevertheless waded in. “Do you mean kids are using during the day? Or just this evening?”

      “Does it matter?” Her ire was rising.

      It wasn’t that he was purposely making light of the issue. He didn’t doubt that a certain percentage of kids were experimenting with drugs. It was what happened at every school. What he was objecting to was Laura’s capacity to come up with excuses to win an argument or have her way, whether she believed what he was saying or not.

      And he didn’t believe Marissa and her friends were users.

      He said, “Marissa goes to school during the day, so the drugs are there when she’s there . . . ? But she can’t go to the school tonight because the drugs will be there?”

      “I don’t think tonight will be chaperoned the same way,” she delivered through her teeth. “Unless you want to go there? Be the policeman for all those teens? You want to do that?”

      Hell no.

      “Sure,” he said. “Just let me know when I should pick Marissa up.”

      She hung up on him.

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