The Midnight Hour Page 21

  “Mom, I really am sorry about sneaking out,” Jessica said, having no trouble interpreting that look. “I shouldn’t’ve done it. I know it. I shouldn’t’ve done any of the things I did. It’s just—there’s this boy I like and he invited me to a party and I knew you wouldn’t let me go and . . .”

  “If you wanted to go to a party, you should have asked me, Jess.” Grace met her daughter’s apologetic gaze over the rim of her cup as she took another sip of coffee.

  “Would you have let me go if I’d asked you?” Jessica asked, the challenging note in her voice softened by a hiccup.

  Grace sighed. It really was difficult for her to stay angry at this person she loved more than anyone else on earth. She could feel her wrath softening over Jessica’s escapade.

  “Probably not,” she admitted.

  “Then what good does it do for me to ask?”

  “You wouldn’t be grounded for the rest of your life for sneaking out, for one thing,” Grace pointed out.

  Jessica grimaced. “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  “I’m thinking about it. I’ll let you know.”

  “All the other girls get to go to parties. Why can’t I? It’s not fair!”

  “I can’t believe that all your friends—Emily Millhollen, for example, or Polly Wells—are going to parties with boys at age fifteen. Especially parties where there are kegs of beer, marijuana cigarettes, and obviously no parents present.” Grace’s voice was dry.

  “That’s only because nobody ever asks them,” Jessica muttered, but had the grace to look away as she said it.

  “Jessica—” Grace was interrupted by Marino’s re-entrance into the room. With him were his brother Dominick and another man, who was not wearing a uniform but who, Grace assumed, was also a police officer. From sounds elsewhere in the house, Grace guessed that others were now on the premises as well.

  “Grace, this is my boss, Captain Gary Sandifer.”

  “Judge Hart.”

  “Captain Sandifer.” Grace stood up and shook hands with the tall, thin balding man in the tan trench coat, who was regarding her with the respect generally accorded to her office. Grace felt the mande of authority that she wore primarily on the job settle over her. Her voice was crisp, her handshake firm.

  “I understand you’ve had some problems—” Sandifer began.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to talk about it in the kitchen. My daughter’s been upset enough.” Grace gestured toward the doorway behind them.

  “Oh, of course.”

  As Sandifer turned back toward the door, Marino detained Grace with a hand on her arm. In a low voice, he said, “Dom’s going to take Jessica’s statement. He’s got a daughter about that age, and he’s good with kids, so I’m hopeful he’ll get something useful out of her. We’re treating this as a threat against you in your capacity as a judge, by the way. Jessica, as a private citizen, wouldn’t be able to command the same degree of protection that you do.”

  “All right. Good idea.” So he had handled it. As upset as she was, Grace wasn’t sure she would have thought to work it that way. The idea that he had perhaps done a better job getting something done than she could have was both novel and, in a way, reassuring. Having someone she could lean on was a new thing for her.

  With a single glance toward Jessica, who was replying with a small smile to something Dominick had said to her, Grace went into the kitchen after Sandifer. Marino followed, then walked on past the two of them, presumably to supervise what was going on upstairs.

  “I understand that there have been a number of frightening incidents, including your daughter’s pet being killed,” Sandifer said, when he and Grace were alone. “Here in Franklin County we don’t take kindly to somebody threatening one of our judges and her family. What we are going to do, with your permission, is make this a top-priority investigation and assign twenty-four-hour protection to both you and your daughter until we get this situation resolved. We’ll have someone with both of you everywhere you go and someone posted here in the house at night. Detective Tony Marino has been heavily involved in this case from the beginning, I know, and he has volunteered to be the protection officer in your house at night. I assume you have no objection to that?” The look he gave her was a little searching, and for a disconcerting moment, Grace wondered if Marino’s kisses were branded in neon on her mouth. Which was ridiculous, of course.

  “No. No objection.” Grace shook her head.

  Sandifer nodded. “That’s fine, then. As for your daughter, I assume she’ll be maintaining her usual activities, going to school and so forth?”

  “I . . . haven’t had time to really think about it. At this point, I would answer yes.”

  He nodded again. “We’ll have someone with her everywhere she goes, even in class. We’ve got several young-looking women officers who would be ideal, I think.”

  “Jessica is the priority. I want her kept safe. All the incidents have focused on her.”

  “That’s what Detective Marino said. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her. We’ll take care of both of you, until we get this resolved.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Pardon me, Judge Hart.”

  Grace looked around inquiringly at the uniformed officer who had just appeared at her elbow. According to the badge on his breast pocket, his name was George Becker. He was a small man, about Grace’s own height, portly in build, with thinning black hair and a bristly black mustache. What caught her eye, though, was something else altogether: he was wearing what appeared to be surgical gloves, and carrying a small, zip-top plastic bag in one hand and a long handled Q-tip in the other.

  “If you don’t mind, Your Honor, I need to get a tissue sample from you. I’ll be taking one from your daughter, too.”

  Grace crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “Why?”

  “So we can compare the results with those from any physical evidence we find, and thus eliminate you or your daughter as sources.”

  “What kind of physical evidence?”

  “Hairs, body fluids such as blood, saliva, or semen, possibly a sliver of skin if someone has been scratched or cut, that type of thing.”

  “Oh. Certainly.”

  “If you’ll just open your mouth . . .”

  Grace did.

  As Becker inserted the swab between her teeth and the inside of her cheek, and swished it around, Sandifer asked, “Has any physical evidence been found?”

  Becker withdrew the swab. “I really couldn’t say, sir. I just take the samples.” He put the swab into the plastic bag, sealed it shut, and headed toward the family room.

  Chapter

  31

  TONY WAS STANDING in front of one of the long windows in Jessica’s room, arms crossed over his chest, watching as Randy Zoller of the crime unit meticulously vacuumed the carpet. The contents of the vacuum bag would be examined for evidence such as hairs or textile fibers not consistent with the room or its inhabitants. Charlene Young, also of the crime unit, was performing the same service for the bottom bed-sheet, using a smaller, hand-held vacuum.

  Dom entered the room, distracting Tony’s attention. He walked over to join his brother by the door.

  “Still think I’m taking her complaints too seriously?” Tony gibed in a low voice.

  “It’s a freakin’ dead hamster, Tony, not murder one. The most we could convict the perp on if we caught him red-handed is cruelty to animals and trespassing.”

  Tony shook his head. “You’re missing the big picture, brother.” He held up his hand, counting possible charges off on his fingers as he spoke. “What we got here is possible terroristic threatening. Obstruction of justice. Interference with a public official in the performance of his—in this case, her—duties—”

  Dom interrupted. “Let me point out, this was aimed at the daughter.”

  “If somebody wanted to intimidate you, what would be the best way to go about it? Threaten you, or threaten, say, Christy?”
<
br />   Christy was Dom’s teenage daughter.

  Dom looked at him. “Point taken.”

  “Did you get anything useful out of Jessica?”

  “The daughter? Where she was, who she was with, any enemies she might have—apparently half Hebron High School, she thinks. I got it all down. One interesting thing. She was on her porch late one night just after this started and thought she saw someone in the yard, watching her. She ran into the house, so scared she slept with her mother.”

  “You think we got something?” Tony knew his brother well. He could tell that Dom was starting to believe there might be some substance to Grace’s fears after all.

  “Maybe.” Dom shrugged. “Okay, there’s probably something here. But it looks to me like what it might be is somebody stalking the daughter, not the mother.”

  Tony and Dom both watched as Charlene Young bagged the bottom sheet.

  “Like I said, if somebody wanted to get to you . . .”

  “Okay, okay. The only thing is, we can’t justify an investigation of this scope or twenty-four-hour police protection if the perp is just some kind of weirdo targeting the daughter. We’re only able to do it if the target is your girlfriend, because she’s a public official.”

  Tony gave Dom a sour look. “Would you quit with the girlfriend crap? And I’d say there’s a good possibility that Grace is the target. We need to check out the cases she’s working on, people she might have sentenced lately, that type of thing.”

  “Well, gee, I guess I’ll just let you go over all that with Grace.”

  Tony’s sour look lightened fractionally. “When’s the last time somebody told you to go fuck yourself?”

  Dom pretended to ponder. “A couple of days ago, I think. And I think it was you.”

  Tony laughed. “Yeah, well, this time I mean it. Anyway, let’s get to work.”

  By the time the police finally left, it was after four A.M. Jessica lay on the family room couch, nearly asleep. Grace sat in the blue leather chair nearby. She was yawning when Marino walked into the room, having seen out the last of the contingent of police officers who’d scoured the house from top to bottom looking for evidence.

  “You look beat. Both of you. Go on to bed,” he said, looking from one to the other of them with a crooked half-smile.

  “What did . . .” Grace began, and yawned again.

  “Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you tomorrow. Go to bed.”

  To Grace’s surprise, she found the thought nearly irresistible. “All right then.” She got to her feet, walked over to the couch and pulled Jessica up as well. “Let’s go, sweetie.”

  “Oh, wow, I’m tired,” Jessica said.

  “You need any help?” Marino asked Grace, as Jessica swayed on her feet. Grace put an arm around her.

  “No, I can manage. There’s a daybed upstairs in my office. It’s all made up, all you have to do is throw the little pillows off it. If you need extra blankets . . .” She yawned again.

  “I’ll find them. Don’t worry about me. Good night.” His voice was faintly dry.

  “All right. G’night.” In truth, Grace was too tired to worry about him. She was so tired her eyes felt gritty, and every other breath was a yawn.

  But as she settled into bed—she and Jessica were in her bed, because Jessica could not bear the thought of returning to her own—she did reflect, with one of her last, conscious thoughts, that being able to surrender so fully to sleep was a luxury she had not enjoyed since the night she had found Mr. Bear down by the road. And the only reason she was able to do so tonight was because she was perfectly confident that she and Jessica would be safe as they slept.

  And the reason she was so confident that they would be safe was that Marino was in the house, spending the night.

  Chapter

  32

  THE ONLY GOOD THING about his mom was that she made the best rice pudding in the world. With a spoon, he scraped out the last creamy remnants from the big white mixing bowl and ate it with leisurely enjoyment. Then he carefully pulled the Saran Wrap back over the empty bowl and returned the bowl to the refrigerator, in a kind of revenge of the nerd thing, he thought with a snicker. His dad was going to be home before lunch tomorrow, which was Sunday, and his mom had made the pudding special for him. Which had made eating it just that much more fun.

  The house was completely dark, except for the glow of a single TV and the light from the refrigerator, which he now shut. His mom was in bed. She had fallen asleep partway through Jay Leno, and it was her TV that was still on. Even in the kitchen he could hear little bits and pieces of some dumb late-night movie. Donny, jr., having just finished humping Caroline on the couch down in the basement, was at that moment hustling her out the basement door. Through the kitchen window he could see them sneaking up the outside steps, then heading hand in hand for Donny’s car. Listening to them getting it on had been fun, too. No, exciting was more the word. Real exciting.

  Lately he’d been heading over to Caroline’s at night to watch her undress for bed. Not that she knew he was there, of course. But her bedroom was on the ground floor and her curtains didn’t quite close in the middle and if he got up real close and put his eye to the glass he generally got quite a show.

  He debated whether he wanted to go over there tonight. It was only a block away, and he could cut through the yards in about three minutes, but he’d already had a really big day and he was dead beat.

  It had been a good day. A full day. He’d dropped off his present for Jessica—his two presents—and picked up his memento and then hung around to watch as the judge lady, true to form, called the police. He would have hung around longer, maybe come back at about eleven or so that night to see if his second present had been discovered—the judge lady would be calling the cops twice in one day, a record—but it was raining and so he’d decided to go to a movie instead. In the end, he’d sat through three for the price of one and gotten home just in time to listen to Donny, jr., and Caroline in the basement while he finished off the rice pudding.

  The rain had stopped, though, so he guessed he could amble on over to Caroline’s. He would only be gone maybe twenty minutes max, and then he could come back and go to bed in happy anticipation of his mom’s explosion in the morning, when she found out that somebody had eaten up all the pudding.

  She would know who, too. Donny, jr., didn’t even like rice pudding.

  What the hell. He grabbed a baseball cap and jacket from the closet in the hall, just in case it should start raining again, and headed out the back door.

  The air was cold, the grass was wet, and every time he accidentally brushed against a bush he got showered with icy droplets. The one fence he had to climb—it was one of those wood, four-board, farm-type fences—was slippery. His left foot slid off the bottom rail just as he straddled it, causing his groin to crash painfully into the top board.

  He was still limping and cursing under his breath by the time he got to Caroline’s house.

  Squeezing through the opening in the hedge into her backyard, he saw that she and Donny, jr., were standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, kissing and groping as they said good night. He watched envyingly until Donny managed to drag himself away and head back toward the street where his car was parked. While Caroline was waving at Donny, Little Brother got himself in position to get a bird’s-eye view of the peep show.

  Sure enough, Caroline went inside, went into her bedroom, and turned on the light. With his eye to the window, he was able to get a pretty clear view of most of the far side of the room, including her closed door and the light switch. Fortunately her closet was in his line of vision, as was the foot of her bed. Tonight her cat, a fat white Persian, sat on the foot of the bed. Like himself, the cat watched with rapt attention as Caroline began to undress.

  God, she was pretty. Just like Donny, jr., to get the prettiest girl in school for a girlfriend. He always got the best of everything, always had, all their lives. If his mom was cooking steaks for
supper, she’d always give Donny, jr., the biggest one. He needed it, she’d say. She bought him the best, most expensive clothes, because he looked so good in them, she’d say. They’d paid for half of Donny’s car, and all of his insurance. He’d had to scrounge up the funds for his own motorcycle, and he had no insurance. Everything Donny wanted, Donny got. Little Brother got the leavings, if he was lucky.

  Caroline’s room was painted blue, which he knew was her favorite color, probably because it matched her eyes. Her bedroom furniture was white, with little bits of gold around the edges that was probably some sort of fancy style, though he didn’t know what it was called. He could see her dresser, which was on the wall opposite the window, with its attached mirror. She stood in front of the mirror, brushing her hair.

  Although her back was turned to him, he could see her face through the mirror. Actually, he could see the whole front of her body to the waist. He hoped she stayed there while she undressed.

  She didn’t, of course. She turned away from the mirror, and walked to the left, out of his line of vision. When he could see her again, she was just wearing her bra and jeans. God, she looked good like that, so slim and sexy, with her tits swelling up over the silky blue bra and her skin all creamy.

  The only thought that marred his pleasure as Caroline reached for the fastening of her jeans was that Donny, jr., got to do more than watch. He got to . . .

  She stopped, with her hands on her waistband, staring like she heard something that startled her. It couldn’t have been him, he hadn’t made a sound, and anyway she was looking to the left, toward her bed. He shifted a little, so that he could see what she was looking at.

  The big white cat was sitting on the end of her bed, just like it had been before, only now it was staring fixedly at the window. At him.

  Just like it knew he was there.

  Shit. Before he could get away, before he could jump back or duck or anything, the curtains whipped apart in front of him and there was Caroline, staring through the glass at him.