Alone (Detective D.D. Warren, #1)(19)

Of course, Nathan didn't need a stranger to haunt his dreams. The danger for Nathan had come from right between these four walls.

Two a.m. She should go to sleep. She already knew she wouldn't. The press remained parked outside, impatient vultures still digging for dirt. From time to time, squad cars passed as well. Checking the scene, monitoring the press, staring up at the fourth floor.

She had given her first statement to the police within hours of Jimmy's death. She'd been proud of herself, cool, calm, and collected. My husband has a temper. He drinks, he gets angry; this time, he found a gun. What had we fought about? Does it matter? Does anything justify a man aiming a gun at his wife? Yes, I was afraid. In all honesty, Detective, I thought I was dead.

They had wanted to talk to Nathan as well. She'd put them off. My son is too tired, too traumatized, too sick. It had bought her some time. For now.

The investigators had spent most of last night and this morning in the master bedroom. Now the room was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. Parts of the carpet had been removed. Shattered glass gathered. Bedding whisked away. Plastic sheeting covered the hole where the sliding glass door used to be. The cold wind sliced effortlessly through the plastic, however, and carried a host of smells to the rest of the house.

Blood. Urine. Gunpowder. Death.

Her neighbors probably thought she was crazy to stay. The press and police, too. Maybe she was traumatizing Nathan. Or maybe she was insane. Truth of the matter was, where else did they have to go? Her father didn't know how to handle these kinds of situations; arriving at her in-laws would be akin to stepping into the lion's den.

Or maybe there was something more sinister at work. Maybe she just wasn't ready to leave. This house, this room, it was all of Jimmy she had left. And though no one would believe her, least of all her in-laws, in her own way, she had loved Jimmy. She had hoped, she had prayed with what little faith she had, that it would not come to this.

Now she ducked under the crime-scene tape. Now she entered the master bedroom, a chill, ghostly chamber of black and white. Gauzy curtains stirred, while the plastic over the shattered slider heaved and sighed. The smells were richer here. A pungent rusty odor that made her nose recoil even as it triggered memory.

She crossed to the bed, running her hand over the bare mattress and staring at the darker splatters of blood. She lay down in the middle of the vast empty space.

Jimmy seeing her for the first time and flashing that crooked grin in the middle of the crowded department store. “Hey, perfume lady. What's a guy gotta do to get a little spritz?”

Jimmy making love to her, then, afterwards, realizing that she hadn't felt a thing and trying to be kind about it. “Hey, honey, you know what? We'll just have to practice more.”

Jimmy fumbling the ring as he got down on one knee to propose. Jimmy staggering wildly as he carried her over the threshold. Jimmy promising her nine, ten children. Jimmy deliriously happy when she became pregnant with their first. Jimmy showering her with diamonds and pearls. Jimmy taking her on whirlwind shopping blitzes where he bought out half the city.

Jimmy sleeping with the maid, the nanny, her friends. Jimmy heading to the bar the first time she had to rush Nathan to the emergency room. Jimmy putting his fist through the wall when she dared to say he should drink less. Jimmy slamming his fist into her ribs when she dared to say something might be wrong with Nathan.

Then, six months ago, Jimmy coming upon the cache of letters written to her from her lover. He'd entered their bedroom at four a.m. He'd flipped her onto her stomach. He'd pinned her to the mattress, and then he'd sodomized her.

“Maybe I should've tried that in the very beginning,” he'd said when he was done. “Maybe you would've felt something then.”

Hours later, they'd sat across from one another at the breakfast table and made small talk about the weather.

Catherine curled up on the bare mattress now. She put her hand on the empty spot where her husband used to lie. And she remembered the last look on his face, during that instant right when the bullet found the tender spot behind his ear and right before it came shattering out the hard bone at his temple—an expression that was not handsome, not dashing, not charming, but totally, utterly betrayed.

And she wondered now, what had disappointed him most—his own imminent death, or the fact that he hadn't been able to kill her first?

A crash sounded from Nathan's room. Prudence started calling her name and Catherine scrambled down the hall, as surprised as anyone by the tearstains on her face.




A T THE HOSPITAL. Orders hastily shouted and promptly obeyed. One sharp needle and a nurse had drawn blood. Another sharp poke and the IV was in place. A third probing stab and Nathan had been catheterized.

Nathan's twenty-six-pound frame writhed in the middle of the hospital bed, jerking continuously as he fought to sit. His cheeks were on fire, sweat rolling down his limbs. His abdomen protruded painfully while his chest appeared concave as he gasped and heaved for breath.

A resident was reporting, “Severe epigastric pain—”

A nurse was shouting: “Temp one-oh-two. Heart rate one fifty, BP one fifteen over forty—”

Dr. Rocco was already barking out commands: “I need two milligrams morphine, cold compresses, TPN nutrition. Come on, people, move!”

The first time Catherine had been through this drill, she had trembled uncontrollably. Now, she was grim-faced as a combat veteran as two people pinned Nathan's writhing body to the bed and two others sliced off Nathan's cowboy-print pajamas and slapped on wires for the heart monitor. Nathan screamed in pain; they held him harder.