Protector With A Past Page 16

  "Maybe not." Cord's gaze narrowed. "That kid looks like he knew the mean streets pretty well at one time, but his clothes aren't what you'd expect for someone who's still out there hustling and scoring. Neatly pressed chinos and a clean shirt? And that girl over there with the bleached blond hair—I'd bet my bottom dollar that a few weeks ago she was standing on a street corner somewhere, but she's not even wearing any makeup."

  "You're right, Cord—we're probably the most disreputable-looking couple in the joint. What's going on here?"

  Even as Julia voiced the question, a young woman detached herself from a nearby group and approached them, her hand extended. "I'm Susan Redmond." She was pale to the point of colorlessness. Her eyes were the only spark of life about her—light blue, nonetheless they seemed to blaze with an inner fire. "Did you know my mother well?" Her voice was subdued, but Julia had the sudden conviction that she had only achieved that calmly uninflected tone through long effort.

  "We worked with her at one time," Cord said smoothly, before Julia could respond. "The department's going to miss her. You said you were her daughter?" he added, his voice rising in polite surprise. His implication was unspoken, but a faint flush of color touched Susan Redmond's pale cheeks.

  "We hadn't seen each other as much as I'd have liked to this last year or so. I regret that." Her small sad smile was confined to her lips, Julia noticed. Those pale blue eyes held no regret at all, and if anything burned even brighter. "But my work at the Center is so important that the few personal sacrifices I've had to make are really nothing in comparison. We're saving lives here."

  "Suze, John says the sound system's working okay now." The boy with the tattoos had joined them. "Do you want me to go up to the front with you?"

  "That's all right, Donny. Has he arrived yet?"

  "He phoned. He said he and Mr. Marshall might be a little late, but he wants you to go ahead and start—and Suze, Mr. Marshall's agreed to buy that property for the Center."

  The fire behind those blue eyes flared and was immediately banked again. "Good news." Susan turned to Julia and Cord, her normally restrained manner firmly in place. "I've planned to say a few words, so if you'll excuse me? Afterward some of the members will be talking about the changes the Center's made to their lives, and we'll be collecting donations for a new outreach program we're setting up in my mother's name. I hope you'll stay."

  "We wouldn't miss it," Cord said blandly. As Redmond turned and made her way through the throng to the front of the room, he exchanged a silent glance with Julia and then looked at Donny.

  "The Center's expanding?" he ventured casually.

  "Suze is handling all the details. It's going to be the second facility for the Friendship Center, and eventually there'll be two more for advanced members," the young man said enthusiastically.

  "Susan said the Friendship Center saves lives." There was a note of skepticism in Cord's voice, and Julia glanced sharply at him. "That sounds like a pretty tall order for a place no one's even heard of."

  "Someday everyone will know about the Friendship Center. And Suze is right—they do save lives here." Douny reddened as he directed a pugnacious stare at Cord, and Julia tried to defuse the situation.

  "How? Does the Center offer some kind of drug rehab program?"

  He shrugged, suddenly at a loss. "That's part of it, but it's more than that. Father says he gives them a new focus. He says their biggest problem is that their lives are empty, and the Friendship Center fills that emptiness."

  Father—so the center was affiliated with some kind of organized religion, Julia thought, feeling a little less uneasy. It obviously was headed by a priest who didn't confine his preaching to the pulpit, but had gone out into the community to effect a change in these young people's lives.

  Still, the man's influence over Susan Redmond hadn't been entirely beneficial—he'd separated her from her mother, and despite this off-kilter memorial that was being staged in honor of Jackie Redmond, it was too late for Susan to heal the breach in their relationship. A phone call when she'd been alive would have meant far more to her mother than any saccharine platitudes the girl could utter now.

  "Take a look at this. They're passing these out." Handing her something, Cord darted a look at their young companion, but Donny's attention was fixed on the slim woman at the front of the room. As Susan, her voice hesitantly soft, said a few preliminary words of thanks for the crowd's attendance, Julia looked at what Cord had given her.

  At first glance it seemed innocuous enough, if inappropriate for the occasion. Printed in slightly smeared ink on a single sheet of poor-quality paper that had been folded into three to create a rudimentary brochure, its cover bore the title Friendship Center, followed by the banal phrase, "A Family for Those Who Are Alone." Opening it up, Julia quickly scanned the densely printed paragraphs inside.

  "…for those who are looking for a direction in their lives … new purpose and strength … your voice will be heard … only those who persevere will win…"

  It was a garbled mishmash of words and phrases followed by amateurish sketches on the last page of the three new proposed centers and a blatant appeal for contributions to make them a reality. Looking quickly at the guests around her who had received brochures, Julia realized that they were just as taken aback as she was. An older woman a few feet away whom she recognized as one of the police department's dispatchers and a co-worker of Jackie's looked slightly outraged as she stuffed the paper into her purse.

  "This has nothing to do with Redmond at all. It's a damned fund-raiser for this Friendship Center her daughter's involved with," Cord whispered in her ear. "They'll probably start passing the hat any minute now."

  "My mother, as many of you here know, worked for the very authorities who are supposed to bring law and order to our streets."

  Susan's subdued voice, amplified by the sound system that Donny had been so concerned about, was gaining a strength that had nothing to do with the speakers dotted around the room, and looking up, Julia saw that the pale face was marked with two hectic spots of color high on her cheeks, and the blue eyes seemed almost piercingly bright She listened as the girl continued. Cord moved closer, and she was suddenly thankful for his solid bulk beside her.

  "I say 'supposed to,' because at the end my mother's faith in that system must have been shattered." The clear voice went on. "But our cities are filled with others whose faith in the traditional solutions has been betrayed—and too many of them are young people, crying out for help and finding none. That's why the Friendship Center was started—to reach out and help those that the system has failed. Some of them are here today." She inclined her head to a waiting couple—one of them the girl with the bleached hair. "Jason and Darla's lives have been turned around by the Center. After what they have to say, I'm sure that you'll feel privileged to make a donation in memory of my mother to help us carry on the invaluable work we do here."

  "They are passing the hat," Julia said heatedly as Susan handed over the microphone to the first of the Center's protégés and Donny left their side to meet her. "I can't believe this could have anything to do with a regular church."

  "It's a con job." The older woman Julia had noticed a moment ago turned to them. "I came here to pay my respects to an old friend, not to buy a bottle of snake oil from her daughter. Jackie was a very private person—she'd be horrified to know what a travesty this turned out to be." She thrust out a firm hand. "Ann Johnson—remember me? I retired a few months ago. Detective Hunter, isn't it? And bless my soul—you've got the famous Guardian Angel with you."

  Her voice was gruffly friendly. A shapeless black hat was crammed over her forehead, but it didn't obscure the alert intelligence in the snapping brown eyes below it.

  "Hold on a minute." Cord closed his eyes, frowning. "Kind of a husky, throaty quality…" He opened his eyes and grinned. "Okay, so you're Ann. You were always a sexy voice over my radio—I don't think we ever met face-to-face."

  The woman chuckled, h
er face pink. Inwardly Julia groaned, but she couldn't help smiling. Cord Hunter was a great big flirt, she thought, and no woman, young or old, was immune to his charm. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he'd noted the woman's distress at what she'd termed this con job and was trying to cheer her up.

  "Oh, dear—I should have preserved the illusion," Ann Johnson said. She turned to Julia, her craggy features softening. "You of all people must have found that nasty little dig at the department unwarranted. I've got a neighbor who says a prayer for you every single day of her life. Her little granddaughter was one of the hostages in that convenience store holdup that went wrong, and you talked the girlfriend of the gunman into bringing Chandra out just before the situation got totally out of control."

  During those two solitary years at the lake house, Julia thought, she'd been haunted by ghosts. But now it seemed that there was a whole host of shadowy children out there—children she would never meet again, most of whom she'd never even hear about They were the children who would go on to live happy, healthy lives, who would themselves make a difference in the lives of those around them. Her throat tightened, and before she could manage a response she felt a hearty hand upon her shoulder.

  "Well, if it isn't little Julia Stewart—my God, the last time I saw you I believe you still were wearing braces!"

  The man confronting her didn't seem to fit in either of the two vastly different groups that had attended Jackie Redmond's supposed memorial service—he definitely had never known the life that Donny had escaped from, but he equally wasn't part of Jackie's circle of friends and co-workers. His suit had been expertly tailored to hide a well-fed paunch, and his manner was smoothly self-assured. Beneath the snowy linen of one shirt cuff glinted the dull gold of a Rolex watch.

  "How's your father? I hear he had bypass surgery a while back, but knowing Willard, I'm sure he was back at the office in record time. I've been intending to give him a call, see if he'd like to provide some much-needed backing to the Center here." There was a faint dusting of talc on the fleshy jaw, and at his last words Julia placed him.

  "It's Mr. Marshall, isn't it? Tom Marshall?" Automatically she took the hand he was extending, concealing her shocked dismay at the news that her father had been ill. "Yes, it has been a while."

  She disengaged her hand from his clasp and half-turned, intending to introduce Cord and Ann Johnson to her father's former business partner, but before she could get a word out he went on as if their presence was of no consequence to him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cord frown slightly.

  "You know, that bypass operation might well have served as a wake-up call for Willard," Marshall said, fixing a ponderously serious expression on his face. "Maybe he's ready to reach the same conclusion I did a few months ago—that it's time to give something back to the community by supporting a worthy cause like the Center. Have you met the fellow who's behind all this?"

  "No, we—" Cord started, but Marshall was in full spate, and he didn't even glance at him.

  "My God—now there's a story these people should hear," he said with an intensity Julia guessed he usually reserved for discussing the possibility of a ten-for-one return on an investment. "Wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit, fought for years to get his name cleared, and at the end of the day does he hold a grudge? No—he turns around and dedicates his life to helping others get back on track. The man's a damn saint. I want you to meet him, Julia, so when I hit Willard up for a contribution I've got his little girl already in my corner."

  His avuncular attitude was grating on her nerves, and the constant references to a supposed closeness with her father that she knew didn't exist were all the more painful since he'd mentioned Willard Stewart's health problem. She'd had to learn of it from a near stranger, Julia thought tiredly. It was a prime example of the distance between them that had existed for as long as she could remember.

  "I don't have any influence over my father's business dealings," she said. "And I know he already gives generously to a number of charities that he feels are worthwhile, Tom. I'm afraid—"

  She felt rather than saw Cord's sudden stillness beside her, and breaking off in mid-sentence, she turned to him, puzzled.

  "Cord, what is it?" she began, but one look at his face silenced her.

  The bones stood out starkly under his skin, and his eyes, fixed on something or someone behind her, were so dark that the pupils were barely discernible from the irises around them. A moment ago, like her, he'd been politely concealing bored irritation at Marshall's gushingly enthusiastic monologue, but now that veneer of civilized forbearance had been stripped away.

  On one of the back roads by the lake there'd been an auto-wrecking yard before the summer residents had petitioned the town to change a bylaw and have the place relocated, Julia remembered. The owner had kept a huge mongrel—part mastiff, part Doberman—permanently chained up beside the shack that had served as his office, and every time a prospective customer had driven into the yard the dog had lunged at them till it seemed certain that the heavy chain holding him back would surely break.

  Cord's expression was as full of barely leashed hatred as that long-ago junkyard dog's had been.

  "And as our generous benefactor has just agreed to back us on the retreat facility we've planned, we're already halfway toward reaching our final goal of a proposed group of four friendship centers, each serving our young people at a different point in their paths toward becoming constructive members of their new family."

  The pleasant and earnest voice was audible even over the conversation around them, but Julia barely glanced over her shoulder at the nondescript and casually dressed man addressing a group of people a few feet away. Her eyes darted back to Cord worriedly.

  "What is it—"

  "Dear God!" Ann Johnson's exclamation was a breathlessly shocked prayer. "Hunter, isn't that—"

  "But we still need to raise funds for the third and fourth facilities, and every contribution, no matter how small, is appreciated. So be generous, folks. Remember—"

  Turning again, Julia saw the pleasant-voiced man with the thinning brown hair make an expansive gesture with his hands, and then, as if he sensed her presence, he met her eyes with a smile.

  Nondescript? How had she ever come to that conclusion? she thought, suddenly confused. His gaze was powerfully compelling, as if with a glance he knew a person's most secret fears, most hidden desires. She tried to turn away, but somehow she couldn't seem to wrench herself from that mesmerizing stare.

  "—two down," the pleasant voice continued.

  "Gary Donner!" Cord's voice was a harshly explosive whisper.

  The brown-haired man looked across the few feet separating them, straight into Julia's horrified eyes.

  "And two to go," Donner said to her, and her alone.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  «^»

  "God dammit, Hunter—in case you haven't noticed I've had a lot more to worry about than bringing you up to speed on the current status of the local perps," Lopez snapped. Striding ahead of them, she pushed open a door that was clearly marked Emergency Exit Only and stalked outside, a cigarette already between her lips and her lighter in her hand.

  They'd come straight from the memorial service to the precinct, but judging from Lopez's attitude, Julia sensed she and Cord had arrived at a bad time. The woman continued impatiently.

  "We still haven't located Tascoe, when we tried to contact DiMarco last night for further questioning he'd disappeared into thin air, and the damn press is all over me every time I step out the front door. Erica's gone to visit her sister and she took the cat, so even when I do get home for a couple of hours each night the place is so freakin' empty that I end up watching reruns of Starsky and Hutch and falling asleep in front of the television."

  She raked her hand through a swath of glossy hair and glared at the cigarette in her hand. "On top of that I've started smoking again, so forgive me if I don't get real excited about you
discovering that Gary Donner is now running some kind of shady charitable organization."

  "It's not that I'm worried about," Cord said tightly, falling silent as the door to the back parking lot opened once more and a weary-looking man in jeans and a tweed jacket joined them.

  "Thought I'd find you here." The newcomer flicked a professionally encompassing glance at Cord, nodded at Julia and then focused his attention on Lopez. "The last of the lab results are in."

  "And?" Leaning against the brick wall behind her as if she hardly had the energy to stand, Lopez didn't sound hopeful.

  "And nada." He rubbed a hand across one side of his face. "Well, not quite. Jenny says she found microscopic traces of some kind of shell caught in the carpet fiber. She's trying to identify them."

  "Traces of shell casings?" Lopez frowned.

  "No, shells. You know—like in seashells on the seashore," the man said with a tired grin. He turned suddenly to Cord. "Hey, it's Hunter, right? I thought the face was familiar, but I'm so bushed I probably wouldn't recognize my own mother. Julia, tell him I'm usually a pretty polite guy when I'm not suffering from sleep deficit." He stuck out his hand. "Phil Stamp. I'm Lopez's new partner. I hear you think you've got a lead?"

  She was the one who wasn't all there, Julia thought. She'd worked with Phil for about six months a few years ago, when he'd asked to be transferred to the Child Protection Unit. He'd been good at the job, but in the end he'd told her he was transferring out again.

  "It's the stress, Julia," he'd confessed helplessly to her when he'd told her. "I've worked Vice and I'm going to try to get back into Homicide, but when the victims are always kids, day in and day out, it starts to get to you. I've started to dream about them, and my wife says I'm becoming paranoid about our two little tykes. I don't know how you take it."

  He was a decent guy, and competent, she thought. But then, he had a pretty high standard to live up to in replacing Paul as Lopez's partner.