The Littlest Witness Page 10

  He watched Nikki color for a moment, then turned back to Thea. The simple lines of her pink uniform did nothing to conceal her slim waist nor the tantalizing curve of her breasts and hips. She was a small woman, but she had a powerful presence, an impact that was undeniable.

  Something tightened inside him, and he realized how much he wanted to touch her. There was a sexual element naturally—what man wouldn’t want her? But what he really craved at that moment was, surprisingly, tenderness. The feel of her hair beneath his lips. The touch of her fingertips against his face. The whispered acknowledgment of feelings that ran a lot deeper than the bedroom.

  He thought of the good times with Meredith, the quiet dinners, the summer strolls along the lake, the winter evenings before a fire. Those were the things he missed about being married. The sex had been a bonus.

  As if sensing his gaze on her, Thea turned. A hint of color washed across her cheeks, but she lifted her chin, as if to deny her reaction. “Thank you for helping me with the groceries.”

  “No problem.”

  “I…don’t want to keep you.”

  He gave her an ironic smile. “That was subtle.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her blush deepened. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  She was one of the most interesting women John had ever met. Transparent one moment and completely guarded the next. She would keep a man on his toes, he had no doubt. “Luckily I’ve got a tough skin. Couldn’t be a cop without it.”

  “That’s true, I guess.” And then, without warning, she returned his smile.

  John had thought her attractive before, but she was absolutely beautiful when she smiled. Her dark hair seemed glossier, her brown eyes deeper, her lips…

  Those lips were made for kissing. For devouring. Suddenly tenderness was the last thing he desired from Thea. He wanted her to walk around that bar and rip off his shirt, press her body against his and—

  John gave a start when he felt a tiny hand slip into his. Glancing down, he saw Nikki at his side, not looking at him, not saying anything, just standing there holding his hand. And the bottom of his world dropped right out from under him.

  He glanced at Thea. She was staring at her daughter, her expression stunned, her face so pale he thought for a moment she might pass out. Then slowly she lifted her gaze to meet his. There was confusion and wonder in her eyes, and a glimmer of something that might have been fear.

  “I’ve never seen her do that,” she whispered. “Even before…” She put trembling fingertips to her lips, clearly overcome with emotion.

  John wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do or say. How he was supposed to react. He knew he couldn’t stand here forever holding the kid’s hand, and yet…he was reluctant to break the contact. Reluctant to diminish the warm glow that seemed to radiate from somewhere deep inside him. He felt as if he’d shared in a miracle in some small way, and the experience was humbling.

  He cleared his throat, but before he could figure out what to say, Thea came to his rescue. “I think she’s asking you to dinner.”

  As invitations went, it was a fairly devastating one.

  “DINNER WAS GREAT,” John said, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. Nikki had gotten so sleepy halfway through the meal that Thea had already tucked her and Piper into bed. She and John were alone over the remnants of salad and spaghetti, and she had to refrain from glancing at the clock. The minutes were ticking away. If she was going to Gail Waters’s office tonight…

  “It was nothing special,” she said. “The sauce came from a jar.” And then she felt herself blush again. She had no idea why John’s presence had such a powerful effect on her. She wasn’t some lovestruck schoolgirl. After her experience with Rick, she’d promised herself never to be vulnerable again, and yet there was still a part of her that wanted to believe in love.

  She didn’t remember her mother, but her father and Mona had had a very special relationship, a closeness that, rather than excluding Thea, had drawn her into the warmth of their love.

  That was the way it should be, she thought with an inward sigh. That was what she wanted someday for herself and Nikki. Only…not with a cop. Never with a cop.

  John Gallagher was nothing like Rick, but her situation made it impossible for Thea to become involved with anyone, let alone a police detective. John already had suspicions about her. He’d already been asking questions. She was crazy to even be spending this time with him. She’d invited him to dinner only because Nikki had responded so strongly to his presence. Thea had taken that as a positive sign. A wonderful sign. But now it was time for him to go.

  She rose and started clearing the table. He followed her, but she quickly said, “Don’t bother. It’ll just take me a minute to clean up. And I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

  “Again, not too subtle.”

  Thea shrugged. “I’m sorry. But it’s getting late, and I have to be at work early in the morning.”

  “You turn in at—” he glanced at his watch “—seven-forty-three?”

  “Sometimes. When I’ve been on my feet all day.” She saw him glance at her legs, and then slowly and deliberately his gazed moved over her.

  She was acutely aware of how she must look to him. She hadn’t bothered changing out of her uniform, and she knew her hair must be a mess. Whatever makeup she’d slung on that morning before dashing off to work had long since faded. Thea realized it had been some time since she’d felt attractive, and since she’d cared.

  But now was not the time to get vain. She ran her fingers through her tangled curls. “You must have an early day, too.”

  “I have the first watch, but it usually spills over into the second. Sometimes the third.”

  “Is that why you came here tonight?” she couldn’t resist asking. “Are you on official business?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I came here to talk to your baby-sitter, Bliss Kyler. I haven’t been able to track her down yet.”

  Thea just looked at him. “So you still don’t believe me about Nikki’s doll.”

  “I didn’t say that.” He reached for his coat on the hook by the front door. “I wouldn’t be much of a detective if I didn’t follow up on every lead, now would I?”

  She watched him shrug into his coat. The collar was turned up, framing his handsome face. His eyes were very blue tonight, and intense, but not cold as she’d once thought them.

  “Bliss will tell you exactly what I told you,” she said.

  “Then you shouldn’t mind if I talk to her.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s just…” Thea paused, wondering how far she dared go. She wrapped her arms around her middle and stared up at him. “I can’t help wondering what it will take to convince you that Nikki and I don’t have anything to do with this.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” He was standing at the door, a tall imposing man who had too much power over her—in more ways than one. His gaze was still intense, but the warmth was gone, replaced by a steely determination that made Thea shiver. The attraction was still there, too, but he wouldn’t let it get in his way, she knew. He was too much of a professional for that.

  “Get what?” Thea demanded.

  “This isn’t about you. This is about a possible homicide, and someone who may already have killed once in cold blood. Do you think a murderer would hesitate to kill again if he thought there was a witness to his crime?”

  Cold fear knotted in her stomach. “But Nikki didn’t see anything. She wasn’t on that roof Saturday night.”

  “Then let’s make sure everyone else knows it, too.”

  His statement hit Thea with the subtlety of a bomb. He wasn’t trying to prove Nikki was a witness. He was trying to prove she wasn’t. He was trying to make sure if Gail Waters was murdered, the killer wouldn’t come after Nikki.

  Thea started to tremble all over. “I still want to believe she committed suicide.”

  John shrugged. “Ma
ybe she did. But I’m not willing to turn my head and take that chance. Not where Nikki is concerned.”

  Thea felt tears sting behind her lids. She and Nikki had been on their own for so long. The temptation to let someone else take care of them was almost overpowering, but it wouldn’t work. It couldn’t work. Not with a police detective.

  She bit her lip. “I guess I should thank you for…caring.”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  He touched his fist to her chin. “That a cop has feelings. We’re not all macho men with John Wayne complexes.”

  “I never said you were.” But of course, there’d been a time when she’d thought exactly that.

  “Most of us are just ordinary guys with mortgages and families and the same problems as everyone else.”

  You’re wrong, Thea thought. There’s nothing ordinary about you.

  He was no ordinary cop, either. Which was why he scared her so much.

  “You’d better go,” she said. Before I do something stupid.

  But the choice was suddenly taken out of her hands. He bent swiftly and touched his mouth to hers. Thea parted her lips automatically and her eyes drifted closed, yielding to the kiss—wanting it—before she realized what she was doing. She was kissing a man who had the power to destroy her and her little girl.

  Before she could move away from him, John straightened, threading his fingers through her hair for one brief moment as he gazed down into her upturned face. “Good night, Thea.”

  She stared, stunned, at the door he closed between them.

  Chapter Seven

  A short while later John was northbound on Michigan Avenue when his cell phone rang. His thoughts were still on Thea as he answered the call. Her lips had been so incredibly soft—

  “I need to see you, Johnny.” His uncle’s voice cut across the air waves. “This can’t wait until morning.”

  John switched on his wiper blades. The snow had started coming down again once he’d left Thea’s building, and the streets were getting treacherous. “You still at the station?”

  “No, I’m at the house. Swing by here before you go home.”

  “What’s this about, Liam?”

  “We’ll talk when you get here.”

  Twenty minutes later John was driving through the old south-side neighborhood where he and his brothers and cousins had all grown up, and where his mother still lived with his grandmother, Colleen. His grandfather had died a few years ago, and St. Anne’s had been packed with officers in full dress uniform, from beat cops all the way up to the superintendent, who had come to pay their last respects to William Gallagher.

  There had been no such tribute for John’s father, whose case was still technically active. Every once in a while a detective in the cold-case squad would take out the file and reexamine the evidence, but nothing new had turned up—until now.

  The porch light was on at his uncle’s house. John parked in the driveway, and Liam opened the door almost immediately, as if he’d been standing at the window watching for John. John shook the snow from his coat and stamped his shoes before following his uncle inside.

  A fire crackled in the fireplace in the den, and a half-empty whiskey glass sat on an oak coffee table. The Sun-Times lay scattered about the floor and sofa, and John wondered if his aunt was out of town. Helen Gallagher was something of a neat freak, the polar opposite of Liam, but somehow the two had managed to coexist peacefully for almost forty years. As Gallagher marriages went, theirs was one of the more successful.

  “Sit down, Johnny. Care for a drink?” Liam picked up his own glass and swirled the amber liquid, then lowered his frame into a recliner near the fireplace.

  John shook his head. “No, thanks. What did you want to see me about?”

  Liam took a long swallow of whiskey. “I got a call from the superintendent today. It seems the Gail Waters case has caught his attention.”

  “Why? Was I right in thinking she might have contacted him before she died?”

  Liam leaned forward, lowering his voice even though John suspected they were alone in the house. His uncle’s eyes were bloodshot, making John wonder how long he’d been hitting the bottle. “What I’m about to tell you can’t leave this room.”

  Uneasy, John managed a casual shrug. “Whatever you say.”

  Liam sat back in his chair. “The superintendent thinks his son may be living in the building where Gail Waters died.”

  “You mean Eddie?” John stared at his uncle in shock. He hadn’t seen or heard anything of Eddie Dawson in years. Once, they’d all lived in this same neighborhood, been taught by the same nuns at St. Anne’s, played in the same park, but that was before Eddie’s stepsister was murdered, before Ed Dawson began rising in the department ranks. Months after Ashley’s death, Dawson had moved the family into a swanky condo on Lake Shore Drive.

  Just as John and his brothers had done, Eddie had followed his father and grandfather onto the force. But he hadn’t been able to cut it, and he’d left the department under a cloud of controversy, much to his father’s embarrassment. But Dawson had managed to quiet the speculation surrounding Eddie’s departure from the force, just as he’d kept Eddie’s name out of the official report on Ashley’s death.

  “His name wasn’t on the tenant list,” John told his uncle.

  “Dawson thinks he’s living there with some girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “He didn’t say. I’m not sure he even knows. He’s worried that Gail Waters may have gone there that night to talk to Eddie about Ashley’s murder. He might have been the one who let her in.”

  John exploded. “Why the hell didn’t he tell us this before?”

  “He just found out.”

  “What do you mean, he just found out? He didn’t know where Eddie was living?”

  Liam shrugged. “Dawson hasn’t heard from Eddie in years, not since the kid left the force. Annette’s the one who kept in touch with him. I guess she went to Dawson after she read about the case in the paper.” His uncle paused. “You heard they split up?”

  John had heard all right. There was a lot of talk around the department that the superintendent was involved with a younger woman, but John hoped those rumors weren’t true. He’d always felt a little sorry for Annette Dawson. He didn’t think she’d ever gotten over Ashley’s death.

  “Evidently Annette is worried that Eddie might get dragged into the investigation somehow.”

  John said bluntly, “Is she also worried Eddie might have had something to do with Gail Waters’s death?”

  “For your sake, I hope you don’t repeat that.” Liam’s voice was traced with something that might have been a warning.

  “Why?” John demanded. “If Eddie’s innocent, what are they so worried about?”

  “Having the media rehash Ashley’s murder. You can understand that, can’t you, Johnny? I don’t want to see Sean’s name dragged through the papers again, either. But if some reporter connects Eddie to Gail Waters, it wouldn’t take much digging to find out she was investigating Sean’s disappearance when she died. The rest is bound to come out, too.”

  “Maybe it needs to come out,” John said slowly. “Let’s think about this for a minute. Eddie Dawson was at that party seven years ago when Ashley was murdered. Tony and Miles both swore they saw him, but somehow his name never made it into the official report. Now you’re telling me he may be somehow connected to Gail Waters’s death. I don’t think this is something we can sweep under the rug, Liam.”

  His uncle shrugged, but he didn’t seem quite able to meet John’s gaze. “I talked to Miles. He’s not so sure anymore Eddie was there that night. He thinks he and Tony may have been mistaken.”

  John glared at him, a suspicion of something ugly slithering inside him. His cousin, Miles, had always been an ambitious man. “What dimmed Miles’s memory? The prospect of a promotion?”

  “I’m going to forget you said that,” Liam said coldly. He sat
forward again and placed his empty glass on the coffee table. “I’m thinking about the family, Johnny, and you should, too. If someone starts digging into Ashley’s murder, looking for a scandal, Eddie Dawson’s name isn’t the only one that could turn up.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I think you know what I mean.” Liam heaved himself out of his chair and went to replenish his drink. Instead of taking the recliner when he returned, he stood with his back to the fireplace, as if suddenly chilled. “What do you think would happen if some hot-to-trot reporter got a notion to make a martyr out of Daniel O’Roarke? Hell, it’s already happened. O’Roarke’s got his own web site, from what I hear, and a bunch of death-row groupies who think he’s some kind of hero. If that same reporter started looking for other suspects in Ashley’s murder, who do you think is going to come off looking guiltier? Her step-brother or her jilted lover?”

  A thrill of alarm shot up John’s backbone. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your brother, Tony. He and Ashley had a heated argument at that party. That’s why she left without him. Tony had too much to drink and passed out after she left. He didn’t even remember the fight, but Miles came and told me about it the next day. He told Sean, too.”

  “If that’s true, why wasn’t it in the report?” John rose and faced his uncle. He didn’t much like what Liam was implying.

  “Because Sean left it out. He wanted to protect Tony just as Dawson wanted to protect Eddie. And under the same circumstances, I would have done the same for Miles. We look out for our own, Johnny. That’s how it works.”

  “Including suppressing evidence?” John turned away from Liam in disgust. “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe any of this. And I sure as hell don’t believe what you’re asking me to do.”

  “It’s the only way,” his uncle said quietly. “If Gail Waters committed suicide, all this other stuff goes away.”

  John glared at him. “And if she was murdered?”

  “There’s no proof she was.”