The Midnight Hour Read online

  It looked like a man. Or a dog or a deer standing on its hind legs. Or something very, very weird—and out of place.

  She had the terrifying conviction that unseen eyes were watching her. The hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  In a flash she leaped from the swing, sprinted for the door, got inside, and locked it behind her. For long moments she stood there, her hand still on the lock, getting her heart rate and her breathing under control.

  Stupid, of course. Who—or what—would be in her yard at this time of night? If anything, it had been a deer. Maybe a buck with antlers. It had certainly not been what it had most resembled—a man.

  Had it?

  Shivering, Jessica checked the lock again, then scurried up the stairs and into her mother’s bedroom. She carefully shut and locked the bedroom door behind her. Her mother slept on the left side of the bed near the alarm clock, lying on her right side in a semifetal position as she nearly always did. Jessica could just make out the shape of her by the clock’s neon glow. Just the sound of her breathing made her feel safer. Trying not to make any noise, Jessica crawled into bed beside her as she had done when she was sick or frightened since she was a tiny girl. Unable to help herself, needing the comfort of her mother’s touch, Jessica snuggled up against her back, so that they lay front to back, like spoons in a drawer.

  “Jess?” Her mom’s voice was sleepy.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Nightmare?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” If she told her the truth, she would have to explain what she was doing on the porch in the middle of the night. Bad idea.

  “You okay now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Go back to sleep.”

  “I will. Night, Mom.”

  “Night, baby. Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” Jessica said, curling close. Her mother’s even breathing told her that she had already fallen asleep again. But it was a long time before Jessica felt safe enough even to close her eyes.

  Chapter

  14

  THE SQUAD ROOM WAS, for the most part, a study in grays: light gray concrete-block walls, gray-speckled tile floor, charcoal-gray metal desks with gleaming silver legs. Even the molded plastic chairs pulled up beside the desks looked gray from age and usage, although their original color had been off-white. Only the police officers’ desk chairs were a different color: they were upholstered in black vinyl. They were comfortable chairs, as that type of chair went, chairs that swiveled and tilted easily and were mounted on casters.

  Tony Marino occupied one of those chairs, which was tilted back a little as he sat with hands linked behind his head, staring with some concentration at the glowing screen of the computer on his desk. On it appeared, in the upper right hand corner, the mug shot of a balding, middle-aged man in an orange prison jumpsuit: Lynn Voss. Tony knew him well, had helped bust him in fact.

  Not that it had done any good. Voss had gotten a life sentence for murder, plus twenty-five years for running a drug ring. He was still running the same damned drug ring from the federal penitentiary where he was incarcerated, unless Tony missed his guess.

  “Hey, man, how come you’re not out there with your brother tonight?” Darryl Withers entered from the booking area, shoving a skinny little handcuffed white man in front of him. An undercover cop, Darryl was tall, athletic looking, and black. He’d been working vice for the past two weeks, trolling the men’s rooms of the local parks, which was everybody’s least favorite assignment. Tonight he wore a navy knit watch cap pulled down low over his ears, ripped jeans, and a stained army jacket. It was after midnight, and the sickos were out in force. They’d been bringing them in steadily for the last hour.

  “We’re going,” Tony answered, as Darryl shoved his prisoner into a plastic chair, unfastened one side of the handcuffs with a quick turn of the key, and just as quickly secured the open cuff to the metal ring set into the side of his desk. The prisoner was thus handcuffed to the desk.

  “Mo’fo’, you makin’ a mistake!” the prisoner protested, looking earnestly at Darryl. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ but takin’ a piss! I got this prostate problem, see—”

  “I sure as hell don’t want to hear about your prostate problem,” Darryl said, sitting down at his desk and turning on his computer.

  “But I wasn’t jackin’ off, I was pissin’; it just takes me a long time and—”

  “Man, you say one more word like that and I’ll write you up for murder one, so help me God I will.”

  “You can’t do that! I tell you, I was just pissin’—”

  “Hellfire, I hate this job,” Darryl complained, looking over at Tony as his collar continued to explain the particulars of his plumbing in excruciating detail.

  “Listen to the man, Darryl, you might learn something,” Tony said, grinning. Darryl flashed him the bird and started typing over his prisoner’s bleats.

  “Withers, you got anything?” Captain Sandifer stuck his head out of his office to ask. It was located at one side of the squad room, its glassed-in walls shaded by closed, gray miniblinds.

  “Another indecent exposure,” Withers called back.

  “I was just pissin’!” the collar protested.

  Exchanging glances with Tony, Sandifer grimaced and withdrew.

  “You ready to go?” Dom emerged from the rest room at last.

  “Yeah.” Tony saved his file, turned off his monitor, and stood up. “What’d Jenny feed you tonight, anyway?”

  Dom had visited the rest room three times in the past two hours.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Dom shook his head as the two of them headed for the door. “I love the woman, but she can’t cook worth a crap.”

  Tony laughed. “Didn’t you invite me over for supper tomorrow? Guess I can’t make it.”

  “You guys get anything out of that little girl you picked up last night?” Sandifer stuck his head out of his office to ask.

  Both Tony and Dom paused. Tony shook his head.

  “She’s not going to be any use to us. She doesn’t know anything.”

  Sandifer nodded and withdrew.

  “You gave that kid a major break, you know,” Dom said as they walked out of the police station into the parking lot. “We had her solid on possession.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Tony shrugged. “She’s only a kid. Hell, if we tried we could bust half the kids in the city. We’ll do better concentrating on the big boys.”

  “Like Voss?”

  “Yeah. Like Voss.”

  “Her mom was kind of cute, wasn’t she?” Dom asked with a laugh; then before Tony could reply he got into the driver’s side of the blue Camaro.

  Chapter

  15

  IT WAS WEDNESDAY of the following week. Grace called home at exactly three-thirty P.M., just as she had done every school day since Jessica had been grounded, to make sure her daughter was in the house.

  “Judge Hart’s Reformatory for Wayward Young Women,” Jessica answered pertly. The Caller ID machine beside the phone would, of course, have revealed that her mother was on the other end of the line.

  “Good afternoon, Inmate Number One.” Grace responded to Jessica’s needling with unimpaired good humor. “Did you eat your snack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Check your blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. How was school?”

  “Oh, just peachy-keen,” her daughter said in a syrupy voice. “Nobody will talk to me now, but that’s okay. I like being the butt-girl of the school.”

  Grace laughed.

  “It isn’t funny, Mom.”

  “What homework do you have?” Grace asked, determined to ignore Jessica’s grumblings. If she was no longer accepted by the “cool” crowd, Grace for one was certainly not going to complain.

  “Algebra. Spanish. Read a short story for English.”

  “Better get on it.”

  “I will. Mom, I’m serious. Everybody hates me now. They think I squealed on some
of the kids to the cops.”

  “Oh, Jessica, why would they think that?”

  “Because it’s all over school that I got caught buying pot and nothing happened. They think because you’re a judge, you made some kind of deal with the cops.”

  “Jessica, that’s absurd! I don’t have that kind of clout.”

  “Mom, that’s what they think. They hate me, they really do. Somebody even followed me home from school today.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the truth, I swear it. The whole time I walked home, I could feel somebody behind me. I kept looking around, but I never did exactly see anybody. I mean, there were some people on the street, but I couldn’t tell who was following me. But somebody was watching me the whole way. I could feel it. It made my skin creep. Of course, I was alone, because none of the kids would be caught dead walking with me now, which made it even worse. It really freaked me out, Mom.”

  “Oh, Jess, are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?” Jessica’s vivid imagination, coupled with a strong desire to punish her mother for grounding her for three months, might just prompt her to make up a story that she knew would worry Grace to death.

  “Swear to God. It was creepy.”

  “Jessica . . .” It was a warning.

  “Don’t believe me. When I wind up murdered on my way home from school, then you’ll see I was telling the truth.”

  Grace took a deep breath. Whether someone had actually followed her home or not, Jessica believed what she was saying. Grace knew her daughter well enough to be sure of that. “Is Linda there with you?”

  Linda was the college student Grace had hired to be there in the afternoons with Jessica. No more staying home alone after school for her, because it meant too much unsupervised time to get into trouble.

  “She’s down in the family room watching some dopey soap opera.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Up in my room.”

  “Are the doors locked?”

  “How do I know? I guess.”

  “Check when you get off the phone. And stay in the house.”

  There was a pause. Grace could sense Jessica’s growing uneasiness even over the phone lines.

  “Taking this kind of serious, aren’t you, Mom?”

  “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Jessica? Now get off the phone, check to make sure that the doors are locked, and stay in the house. Do your homework. If somebody knocks at the door . . .”

  “Don’t let any strangers in the house. I’m not five years old, you know.”

  “If anything strikes you as really odd, like you see someone you don’t know hanging around the house or something, call 911.”

  “Oh, Mom, I think you’re overreacting as usual.”

  “Probably. Still . . .”

  “I know. Better safe than sorry.” Grace could almost see Jessica rolling her eyes.

  “Right,” Grace agreed. “Let me speak to Linda, please.”

  “She’s all the way downstairs,” Jessica protested.

  “I don’t care. I need to talk to her. Get her, please.”

  “God, Mom, you’re a lot of trouble. ‘Bye.”

  “ ’Bye,” Grace said, but she doubted that Jessica heard her. A bellowed Linda, telephone! from Jessica echoed over the line a split second later.

  After finally getting her on the line, Grace talked to Linda for a few minutes, repeating what she had told Jessica about making sure the doors were locked and not letting anyone in the house. Then she had to go back to work. She still had a half-dozen cases left on her docket before she could call it a day.

  The whole rest of the afternoon, she worried about Jessica. Was she being targeted by someone who thought she was talking to the police? Was she into the drug scene more heavily than Grace knew? Who, if anyone, was following her?

  What had really happened, after all? The hard facts didn’t really add up to much: Jessica had been caught buying pot and had not been prosecuted, she herself had chased someone from their yard on the same night, and Mr. Bear had been found lying by the road. Everything else was subject to interpretation.

  Still, Grace was disturbed. Disturbed enough to call Tony Marino.

  When he called her back, she was in court. When she called him back, all she got was his pager again. Checkmate.

  His car was parked in her driveway when she got home. She recognized the black Honda immediately. He was nowhere in sight.

  Eyes narrowing slightly, Grace stopped behind his car, got out, and headed for the house.

  Godzilla greeted her. Or, rather, a clear plastic sphere rolling noisily across the front hall as she came through the door greeted her. From experience, she knew it was Godzilla in his exercise ball.

  Nimble despite her two-inch heels and the slim cut of her navy skirt suit, Grace did a quick two-step to avoid the hamster, who careened on into the dining room. A savory smell from the roast and vegetables she had thrown in the Crock-Pot before leaving that morning reminded her that she was hungry. That smell, coupled with the sound of laughter and people talking, drew her on toward the kitchen.

  Sure enough, Marino was there, looking right at home. He was leaning against the center island, munching an apple, wearing jeans with a white T-shirt tucked into them and a blue-and-gold flannel shirt hanging loosely over all.

  Also dressed in jeans, as usual, and a gauzy fuchsia smock, Jessica sat on a bar stool, her Spanish text open in front of her, a pencil lying forgotten on the notebook beside the book, and a not-on-her-meal-plan apple in her hand. Linda sat on the other bar stool, laughing.

  “Hey, Mom!” Jessica waved with the hand holding the apple.

  “Your Honor.” Marino’s tone was, to Grace’s ears at least, sardonic.

  “Judge Hart.” Linda sounded slightly nervous, as if laughing on the job was something of which her employer might not approve.

  Three very different greetings, delivered in three very different voices. Three pairs of eyes fixed on her with very different expressions.

  “Hi, baby. Linda. Detective Marino.” Her answering salutations descended the scale of friendliness as they were uttered. Her warm smile for Jessica (in the few minutes since she had spotted it, she had decided not to nag about the apple) became a hard, straight look by the time it reached Marino. His brows lifted in response to that look, but he didn’t say anything, waiting for her to take the lead.

  “Oh, gosh, is it that time already?” With a glance at the clock over the pantry door, Linda jumped up and came around the island toward Grace. She was an attractive brunette with a chin-length bob and a no-nonsense manner, dressed today in green hospital scrubs that were all the fashion with the current college crowd. Grace had liked her upon meeting her, and so had Jessica, which made the situation somewhat easier. Grace knew it would probably happen sooner or later, but so far Jessica hadn’t accused Grace of hiring Linda to act as her jailer.

  “I’ve got to go,” Linda continued, retrieving a hunter-green backpack from the coatrack. “I’ve got a seven o’clock class.”

  “ ’Bye, Linda! Thanks for the help with Spanish!” Jessica called as Linda opened the back door.

  Before Linda could exit, Paul burst through the open door, just missing crashing into Linda as he bounded inside. He was dressed in jeans and a purple T-shirt with a picture of a tiger on the front, his short fair hair ruffled and his blue eyes sparkling mischievously. Right behind him came Courtney, her blond hair done up in twin pigtails, wearing a black Mickey Mouse T-shirt and black-and-white polka-dotted leggings.

  “Hi, Aunt Grace! We’ve got McDonald’s!” Paul whooped.

  “I wanted to get some french fries for you and Jessica, but Mom said you don’t like junk food,” Courtney supplied earnestly.

  “I do,” Jessica said. “But Mom won’t let me eat any anymore.”

  At that moment, Paul spied Godzilla in his exercise wheel as the unsuspecting animal rolled with a clatter across a corner of the kitchen on his way from dining room to famil
y room.

  “Look at that!” Paul cried, and sped after the gyrating hamster.

  “What is it? What is it?” Courtney was right behind him. “Paul, let me see!”

  “Godzilla!” Jessica exclaimed protectively, jumping up from her seat and darting after her cousins.

  “Goodness,” said Jackie, appearing at the back door with two small bags from McDonald’s in one hand. She was wearing a loose-fitting denim blouse embroidered across the yoke with flowers, and a pair of stretchy black pants. Black sneakers were on her feet. “What’s going on?”

  Her gaze swept from Linda to Grace, then touched on Marino and widened.

  “Hi, Jax.” Grace’s voice was dry. “They’re after Jessica’s hamster. Come on in.”

  “I’m out of here,” Linda called, and left with a wave to a chorus of good-byes.

  “Is it loose? Her hamster?” Jackie came on into the kitchen, letting the back door close behind her and advancing toward Marino and the counter with another quick look for Grace. She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Those things give me the creeps.”

  “Sort of. He’s in his exercise ball, which gives him free run of the house. This is Detective Tony Marino, Jackie. My sister, Jackie Foster.”

  “Hi,” Jackie said to Marino, placing the food bags on the counter and beaming at him. She was looking tired today, Grace thought, noting the faint shadows beneath her sister’s eyes that remained despite her wide smile, and the pallor of her skin. Once again Grace felt a spurt of anger at Jackie’s husband, for not doing more to provide his wife and children with an easier life.

  “Nice to meet you.” Marino smiled back. He had, as Grace had noticed before, a really nice smile.

  While Marino’s gaze was focused elsewhere, Grace gave her sister a look. From long and intimate acquaintance, she could pretty much divine what Jackie was thinking. Grace’s single state bothered her. Almost from the moment Grace’s divorce had been final ten years before, Jackie had been trying to fix her up.

  What was it they said about misery loving company?

  Forget it, Jax, Grace thought, and tried to silently convey that thought with her eyes.

  A shriek, a crash, and pounding feet cut the wordless exchange short.