“It seemed personal.”
Rico considered this. “I arrested a guy for beating another motorist with a bat,” he said. “Then he started in on the man’s kid. All over a fender bender with less than a thousand dollars in damages. See, the guy with the bat lost his job the day before, and then some Lexus cuts him off at a stoplight. The boss who fired him had a Lexus.”
“What are you saying?”
“Every crime is personal, even the random ones.” Rico’s mouth settled into a grim line. “You say you didn’t know the man, but did you know his victim?”
“I’ve never seen either of them before.” It was only after I answered that the first two words registered: You say. As if he doubted what I said was true.
“So you say you were coming from work?”
There it was again. “Yes.”
“And you left at what time?”
“Just after ten.”
“Anyone able to verify that?”
“I was alone for the last hour, but before that, certainly.”
“Any surveillance cameras at your clinic?”
“No.”
The rain that had soaked my clothes had wicked into the borrowed sweatshirt, the chill finally seeping into my skin. I shivered.
“The number three mean anything to you?” he asked.
I studied his face, but he hid his thoughts well. “No. Why?”
“Just something one of the officers found. Probably nothing.”
Rico jotted something in his notebook, and he attempted a smile.
“Looks like someone may have spotted your vehicle in a grocery store parking lot, so we’ll know more soon,” he said. Then the smile disappeared and his eyes grew heavy. “Earlier, I said that Carver Sweet’s not getting anywhere near your house, and I meant that. But you need to be careful. You’re a threat to him.”
The detective handed me his card, then called Officer Willis over to drive me home. When Rico walked away, he wiped his palms on his slacks, as if trying to rid them of something unpleasant.
3
We lived in a three-bedroom ranch-style house in Lomita Heights, a neighborhood that dated back to the early 1960s. Our family had moved in sixteen years before when I was pregnant with Leo. Back then, I would walk, stomach near bursting, along the gently sloping hill. Once, I had fallen on my backside on the sidewalk.
Okay, maybe more than once.
My legs didn’t feel much steadier now, and as I walked toward the house, I realized I didn’t have my keys.
After escorting me home, Officer Willis watched as I walked toward the door. Leo’s face was already wedged between the slats of the blinds, hair disheveled, eyes bleary, mouth frozen in a scowl. Despite the fact that, at fifteen, he now had half a foot on me, he was still that bundle I had carried up and down that hill. Like then, the weight of being his mom threw me off balance.
He opened the front door. “What the heck, Mom?” A rumpled blanket on the couch suggested he had waited up for me. I knew he lingered more out of curiosity than concern, but I hugged him fiercely nonetheless. “The police came and talked to Dad, and now a cop brought you home? Where’s the van?”
“Stolen.”
“Really? Do they know who took it?”
“They do. I’ll get it back soon.” I trotted out my fail-safe distraction, “You hungry?”
Leo had eaten only an hour before, so of course he wanted a sandwich. I made two: turkey for him, veggie for me. Nerves roiled my stomach, but I forced down half the sandwich before grabbing a handful of batteries from the junk drawer and slipping them in my pocket. After Leo ate and returned to bed, and after I tested the lock on his window, I checked on a sleeping Audrey. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead. As usual, my first grader had insisted on falling asleep under a pile of blankets. I removed all but one and kissed her on her sweaty cheek, then felt her forehead. Damp, but not feverish. She hadn’t yet caught her father’s flu.
From Audrey’s closet, I pulled out her old baby monitor, coated with several years’ worth of dust, and switched out the batteries with the ones in my pocket. It still worked. I took the receiver with me.
Finally, in the hallway outside the master, I took a breath, bracing for an argument, and pushed open the door. Sam was waiting in his pajama bottoms on the end of the bed. My husband had the wiry build of an academic, and his nose was ruddy against pale skin. He was also beautiful. You weren’t supposed to say that about a man, but he was: dimpled smirk, messed hair that invited fingers, thick lashes that, thankfully, our children had inherited. My own eyes were fringed with stubby lashes visible only through the magic of volumizing mascara.
“I would’ve come out, but it seemed like you needed some time with Leo,” he said. I read judgment in his comment. He seemed to sense this, because he paused, then softened his voice when he continued. “Tell me what happened.”
I placed the receiver on the dresser next to a bottle of cold medicine and told him everything—almost. I described coming upon the couple and about the casual way the man had tossed the woman over the embankment. I told him about my interview with the detective and how I sensed Rico was withholding some key piece of information. But I didn’t tell Sam about my panic attack in the van, and omitted from my story the details that made me seem most reckless. I didn’t want to hear those four words again: I love you, but . . .
I love you, but you should’ve been more careful.
As I talked, I removed my clothes, which were streaked with mud, and slipped on a sleeping shirt, one of Sam’s. He watched me, and the nerves buzzed beneath my skin. I blamed it on the stress hormones.
When I stopped speaking, Sam sighed, his chest rattling with the effort. “Cassie.” Part accusation, part concern.
He climbed off the bed, disappeared into the bathroom, and returned with the first aid kit. He switched on the light before sitting beside me on the bed.
“Give it here,” he said, gesturing toward my arm. It was barely a scratch, but I extended my arm anyway. When he squinted to get a better look, I handed him his glasses from the nightstand.
“I’m a little irked with you right now,” he said, the virus making his voice husky. He placed a pillow on my lap and gently rested my arm on it, then set to cleaning the wound with an antiseptic wipe.
“Irked, are you?”
He pulled a foil packet of antibiotic ointment from the kit. “Yes, irked. Why did you risk your life like that?” He gently dabbed the ointment on my arm. “The kids—”
I recoiled as if pushed. “I was thinking of the kids,” I said. Every choice I made, every day, was viewed through the lens of motherhood. “What kind of mother would I be if I let someone else’s daughter be victimized? Besides, you would have done the same.”
When Sam looked up from his task, his blue eyes intense inside the black frames of his glasses, my breath caught in my throat. “It’s not just the kids.”
“I know.”
He covered my cut with an adhesive bandage, then placed the first aid kit and his glasses on the nightstand. “The next time you see a man with a knife, don’t get out of the car.”
“You sound like the dispatcher.”