“I won’t be long,” she said.
Lucy came racing down the stairs, wearing a pink fairy costume and clutching her favorite toy, a stuffed dog she had named Marvin. “Mommy, I want to go! I want to go with you! Please.”
Carey caught her daughter and hugged her tighter than the occasion called for. “Sweetie, I’m just going and coming right back.”
“I want to go with you,” Lucy insisted, tears filling her eyes.
She was afraid. Afraid her mother might get hurt again, afraid she might never come home. Lucy was a bright and perceptive child. She knew something bad had happened, something worse than just her mother falling down. Carey knew she could also sense the tension between her mommy and daddy. They never argued in front of her, but the negative energy between them vibrated subtly in the air around them. Lucy picked up on that. She was probably feeling very insecure.
“Okay,” Carey said. “You can come along.”
An instant, beaming smile lit up her daughter’s face. “Do we get to ride in a police car?”
“No. The officer will drive us in Daddy’s car.”
“My car?” David said. “Why my car?”
“Because mine is at the police impound yard, being processed for evidence,” Carey said. “Were you planning on going somewhere?”
“No,” he said, obviously scrambling mentally for a logical reason he didn’t want her in his car. “I just need to get some paperwork out of it before you go.”
“We’ll be gone twenty minutes. Your paperwork has been out there all day, and suddenly you can’t wait twenty minutes for it. What’s that about?”
“It’s not about anything,” he snapped, getting out of his chair. “I just realized I need it.”
“Then get it,” Carey said.
She wanted to add that he should be sure and get out any of his girlfriend’s stray lingerie while he was at it, but she didn’t.
“Fine,” David said in a huff. “I’ll get it.”
He stomped down the hall to the kitchen and out to the garage.
Carey glanced down at her daughter. Lucy was watching her with a somber face.
“You need to have a coat on, Miss Sugar-Plum Fairy,” Carey said, and turned to the hall closet to get one out.
The officer, Paul Young, parked the car at the curb in front of a “No Parking” sign and escorted them into the government center and to Carey’s chambers. After looking through the offices to make certain there were no bad surprises waiting for her, he stationed himself in the hall outside to wait.
Lucy ran around behind the desk and climbed up in Carey’s chair, wide-eyed with excitement at the prospect of all the fun she might have with the stuff on the desk.
“Mommy, can I play on your computer?”
“No, sweetheart. This is where I work. The computer isn’t for playing with,” Carey said as she took the copies of the phone bills, the credit card receipts, the list of escort agencies out of the tote bag she’d brought with her. She pulled an empty file folder from a cupboard, put the papers in it, and put the folder in the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk. The evidence could stay there until she decided what to do with it.
“Mommy? This was Grandpa Greer’s hammer, wasn’t it?”
“That’s called a gavel,” Carey said. “Yes, that belonged to Grandpa Greer.”
Lucy held the gavel with both hands. It was almost as long as her arm, and an incongruent accessory to her pink fairy costume. An impish smile curved her mouth. So precious. The one good thing to come out of her marriage: her daughter.
Carey brushed a hand over Lucy’s unruly dark hair. Tears burned the backs of her eyes.
“I wish Grandpa Greer could remember me,” Lucy said.
“I wish that too, sweetie.”
God, I wish that too.
All her life she had been able to go to her father with anything, for any reason, day or night, 24/7. He was the Rock of Gibraltar, her foundation, her anchor.
He had never really liked David. She knew that because he had told her when she had announced her engagement to him. Not in a harsh way, but with concern for her. Was she sure that was what she wanted? Was she sure David was the one?
She had been upset with him at the time. She had wanted him to be happy for her, to be supportive of her, to approve.
David had been a different person then, confident from the success of his work and the accolades of critics. But even then her father had sensed a lack of foundation in him. And he had said to her that if this was what she truly wanted, he would give her his blessing but that she needed to know that she would always have to be the strong one in the marriage, that when the chips were down the only person she would be able to rely on was herself. He felt that David’s strength would always rise and fall with the opinions of other people.
Her father had walked down the aisle with her and handed her over to the man who would be her husband. And he had never spoken of his opinion of David again.
“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Lucy said. She put the gavel down on the desk and stood up on the seat of the chair and hugged her mother.
Carey winced at the pain in her ribs, but she didn’t tell Lucy to let go. She wanted to feel the security of being held by someone who loved her, even if that someone was only five years old.
A sharp knock at the door startled her. Before she could ask who was there, Kovac walked in with a stormy expression. He stopped short to take in the scene. He had wanted to come in with a big temper to throw at her for leaving the house, but seeing her with Lucy, seeing her with tears in her eyes, knocked the wind out of his sails.
Embarrassed, Carey touched gently beneath her eyes to wipe away the tears. She could probably have counted on one hand the number of people who had ever caught her crying. Kovac had managed to do it twice in one day.
“By all means, come in, Detective Kovac,” she said with an edge of sarcasm ruined by the weakness of her voice.
Kovac looked from Carey to Lucy.
“How did you know we would be here?” Lucy asked, bright-eyed with curiosity.
“I’m a detective,” Kovac said. “That’s what I do. I find out where people are. I find out who committed crimes.”
“My mommy’s a judge,” Lucy said proudly.
“I know.”
“She puts bad people in jail.”
Kovac glanced at Carey, biting his tongue on some smart remark, she thought.
“Hey, Princess Lucy,” Kovac said. “I need to speak with your mom in private. Why don’t you go out in the hall with Officer Young, and he’ll show you all the cool stuff on his belt. He’ll show you how handcuffs work.”
“I’m a fairy now, not a princess,” Lucy informed him. She turned. “Can I, Mommy?”
“Sure, honey.”
Lucy climbed down from the chair and went around the desk to Kovac and offered him her hand. By the look on his face, she could have been offering him a live snake.
“I’m not allowed to go places alone,” Lucy said. “You have to take me.”
Carey motioned to the door when Kovac looked to her.
“Uh… okay,” he stammered, taking her small hand. He walked her out to hand her over to the care of Officer Young.
When he came back, he looked a little rattled, as if he didn’t know what to do with the emotions Lucy had evoked in him. Murderers he could deal with. A five-year-old child undid him.
“Do you have children, Detective?”
He hesitated a beat before he answered. “No. I’m not married.”
Not that one necessarily had anything to do with the other. Like eighty percent of the cops she knew, Kovac had probably been married and divorced at least once.