Madigan's Wife. Linda Winstead Jones

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      “Sure,” she said, and then she sank into the soft cushions of the couch.

      “Right here,” Grace said, pointing down to a perfectly innocent-looking section of the sidewalk. “A man jumped out of a moving car…at least I guess he jumped. I didn’t see that part. When I first saw him I thought maybe he’d fallen out of the car.”

      She noted the skeptical glance Luther cut in Ray’s direction. No longer frightened out of her wits, she was offended by his obvious disbelief.

      “What kind of car was it?” Luther asked, holding the tip of a pencil to his small notebook.

      “Dark,” she said, “and kind of big.”

      Luther glanced up at her and wrote down nothing. “Dark and big. A van or a SUV?”

      She shook her head. “No, it was a car.”

      Okay, it was a poor description, she admitted silently, but she’d never been good with cars. Darn it, she’d been surprised and terrified. Noting the make and model of the car idling at the curb hadn’t been her major concern at the time.

      The weary homicide detective apparently decided it would be a waste of time to write “big dark car” in his notebook, so he snapped it shut and looked around with sharp, narrowed eyes. Light traffic whirred past on the street, and a few early morning walkers claimed the sidewalk. All was apparently perfectly normal here. In bright sunshine, it seemed impossible that a murder had recently taken place in this very spot.

      Luther reached into the pocket of his dark suit jacket and pulled out a piece of hard candy, slipped off the cellophane wrapper and popped the sweet into his mouth. “I’m trying to quit smoking,” he explained as he placed the wrapper back into his pocket. “It’s hell. Pure hell, I tell you.”

      He looked like hell, to be honest. Tired and haggard and worn out, he showed the years Ray did not. They were the same age, within three months, but today Luther appeared to be several years older. He’d always been the more serious of the two, the cop who took everything to heart, who wanted to right every wrong. Maybe he’d finally figured out that he wasn’t going to change the world after all. Life’s disappointment showed on his face.

      Ray hung back while she answered Luther’s questions, but he stayed close enough for her to feel he was with her, that he supported her. Silly notion. She hadn’t leaned on Ray, hadn’t depended on him, for years. The lessons weren’t always easy, and some days they were damned hard, but she had learned to depend only on herself.

      “Tell me what the man looked like, the one who was driving the car,” Luther asked as he sucked on his candy.

      She did have a better description of the killer than of the car. When she’d turned to attack him with the pepper spray she’d gotten a pretty good look. “He was a big guy, maybe six-two or-three, with kind of a Neanderthal face. Lots of forehead, square jaw.” This Luther deemed noteworthy. “He looked strong,” she added. “Like maybe he works out.”

      “Hair?” Luther asked, raising his eyes from the notebook.

      “Under a baseball cap, and since I didn’t see much I’d guess it’s pretty short. Brown,” she added. “Not as dark as yours, not as light as Ray’s.”

      She described what he’d been wearing, his broad face, his pale eyes—those eyes she remembered well, though at the moment she couldn’t be sure if they were blue or green. Luther wrote everything down, but she could see he was supremely unimpressed.

      Inside, she was still unsettled by the experience. Her heart beat too fast, her palms were sweaty and her mouth was dry. The memory of what she’d seen remained solidly in her mind, too vivid. Too real. If it wasn’t for Ray she’d be a basket case right now, she knew it.

      So much for her newfound independence.

      The three of them walked down the sidewalk to the place where she’d sprayed and kicked the murderer. Again, there was no sign of violence; no blood, no dropped clue. Nothing. Everything appeared to be normal, as if nothing unusual had ever happened here.

      Luther closed his notebook again and shoved it into the pocket of his dark suit jacket. He dressed more traditionally these days, thanks to his job in homicide she supposed. Black suit, white shirt, gray tie. His hair was shorter, too, cut in a quite conservative style. She didn’t remember Luther being so conventional. He’d always been as wild as Ray, just in a different way.

      “Maybe the man isn’t dead,” he offered tiredly and with a brief spark of optimism. And more than a spark of condescension. “Maybe you saw two men fighting and you panicked and thought…”

      “No,” Grace interrupted, annoyed that she had to try so hard to convince Luther of what she’d seen. Dammit, she’d heard the crack, she’d seen the murdered man crumple like a rag doll. “He’s dead.”

      Luther grumbled and turned to walk back toward the curb, where his car and Ray’s were parked; one nondescript gray sedan parked before another, vehicles that were forgettable, invisible, anonymous. Cars that would remain unnoticed on the street. Neither of them wanted to be noticed when they worked.

      “There’s not much to go on, but I’ll keep an eye out for missing persons and see what comes up,” Luther said casually. “Would you recognize the victim if you saw a picture?”

      “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “It happened fast, and I wasn’t very close. He had dark curly hair, that’s all I can be sure of.”

      The homicide detective sighed: a long suffering, weary, “why do I bother?” sigh.

      How could she convince him of what she’d seen? Grace tried not to give in to frustration. Luther would know the truth soon enough, when the body showed up. Then he’d listen to her. She took some comfort from the fact that Ray stood supportively beside her. He believed her.

      Deep down she knew she shouldn’t find comfort in the fact that Ray remained with her, reassuring and strong and constant. They weren’t married anymore, and she didn’t lean on him the way she used to. She didn’t lean on anyone. Ray Madigan was no longer a part of her life.

      And yet, after this morning’s harrowing experience she did feel much better when she turned her eyes and thoughts to Ray. The world stopped spinning, and it was almost like the old days, when he was a part of her and she couldn’t imagine life without him.

      Luther shook his head and bit down on the last morsel of his hard candy with a loud crunch. “So, how do you like being back in Huntsville?”

      “Fine,” she said, puzzled that he wasn’t more concerned about the murder.

      “Are you going to stick around this time?” he asked as he threw open his car door.

      She heard censure in the question, undisguised, open hostility. Of course he was hostile; he was Ray’s friend, had been his partner for years. Ray had forgiven her for leaving, but apparently Luther never had.

      “For a while, I guess,” she said uneasily. “You’ll call me when the body’s found?”

      Luther gave her a quick, joyless grin as he slipped into the driver’s seat. “If anything turns up, I’ll give you a call.”

      If?

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