Dan shook his head. “Not much, Chief. His fingerprints weren’t in any databases, so he had no criminal record.”
“Did you circulate his picture?”
“Yes, ma’am. But it must have set off some sort of red flag. Before we got any responses, the FBI stepped in and took over. We were out of the whole case.”
“The FBI?” Chief Garraway’s voice rose in surprise. “Just what was your husband involved with, Ms. Slade?”
“Chief, I can have the LaMar department go over to Maggie’s other house and see if they can find anything.” When she nodded, he got the address from Maggie and stepped outside to call Paul. A few minutes later, he hung up. More bad news. He sighed and pivoted on his heel to head back inside. Stopped.
A row of high shrubs blocked the side of the house from the street. But from his angle, Dan could clearly make out several sets of footprints in the dirt between the house and the shrubs. They had to have been recent, since it had just rained two days ago. The sizes were different, showing that they belonged to more than one person, but all of them were large footprints. Much too large to have been Maggie’s.
He burst inside, startling the women. Briskly, he explained what he had seen.
“That means that you were being watched. Probably to determine your identity. And by more than one man. Whoever that man sitting in jail is, he had a partner. Maybe the man who killed your husband. Maybe someone else. We have no way of knowing how many people are involved.”
Chief Garraway took charge. “Right. Willis, request officers to process the scene. Ms. Slade and her children will accompany us to the station. This house is not safe for them, even with us here.”
Dan remembered his conversation with Paul. As hesitant as he was to deliver more bad news, there was no sense in holding back. “I checked with the LaMar Pond PD. The address that Maggie gave me burned down eighteen months ago.”
What had her husband been involved with? The question reverberated around Maggie’s brain time and time again as she rushed about getting herself and the twins ready to go. Maggie got herself and her cranky kids out the door in record time. The idea that someone had been watching her gave her the willies.
Not to mention the obvious fact that somebody had tried to kill her earlier. This house was no longer safe for her. Or her babies. She glanced over at the lieutenant just in time to see him wince and rub his side. She grimaced, feeling guilty that he had been injured while protecting her. With her hair tucked inside a hat, Maggie followed the cops out to the cars. With reluctance, she watched her babies being belted into their car seats in the chief’s car. Lieutenant Willis straightened up, sketched a cocky salute at the chief and sauntered to his own car on the street. She definitely would have preferred to ride with the lieutenant rather than his stern-faced chief. But she went where her children went, so she stepped into the car without protest and buckled up.
“I don’t suppose it would be possible to let the owner know no one is in her house?” Wendy had been a good friend. She hated to let her down.
“We can do that. Will she shorten her mission trip?” Realizing her mouth had fallen open, Maggie closed it with a click. They really had researched everything.
“Either that or she’ll have to find someone else to house-sit.”
“Good.” Chief Garraway touched her radio. “Move out, Lieutenant. We don’t have all day.”
Lieutenant Willis’s voice responded back with a pert “You got it.”
Almost as soon as they merged onto the interstate, Siobhan started to fuss. Maggie looked at the chief, expecting to see an impatient frown. Instead, she saw the other woman’s lips twitch.
She blinked, sure she had imagined it. Nope. Chief Garraway’s mouth had turned up at the corners. Amazing.
“It never fails, does it?” The chief’s voice was mild, conversational. “They can be as quiet as mice, but the moment you are trapped in a car with them, they start wailing. At least that was my experience with my own.”
Maggie had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that. It had never occurred to her that Chief Garraway might be a wife and mother. The older woman wore her authority like a cloak. It was hard to look past it.
“I’m going to see if she will calm down with a pacifier.” Maggie twisted in her seat to place a pacifier in her daughter’s mouth. As she did so, she noticed a car moving toward them. It was dodging in and out of the traffic. Unease slithered down her spine and sank into her stomach, leaving a greasy, queasy feeling.
“Chief,” she began, her voice pitched low so as not to further disturb the babies.
“I see him.” She touched the button to the radio. “Lieutenant? We have a vehicle that appears to be moving in on us.”
“I’m a little ways behind you, Chief. I will—”
They never heard what he was going to do. The car was beside them. It jackknifed, slamming into the chief’s car’s side. She yelled as the driver’s door caved in and her left arm slammed against the window. It remained limply at her side as she continued to steer with her right hand. In the backseat, the twins started screaming in terror. Desperate to see her babies and ascertain if they were hurt, Maggie started to unbuckle.
“Don’t you dare!” the chief barked.
Realizing how her being unbuckled could affect the chief’s driving, Maggie clenched her fists and remained seated. Her jaw started to ache. She had started grinding her teeth.
A siren blared as Lieutenant Willis roared up behind their attacker, a blue light flashing on the dashboard of his unmarked car.
The other vehicle sped away, zigzagging furiously through the traffic. Lieutenant Willis pursued the car, but Maggie could see the distance between the cars growing. His voice came over the radio, snapping out a description of the car, its license plate and location. Maggie could almost feel his frustration crackling through the radio.
“Lost him, Chief.” They could barely hear his voice over the howling twins.
“Understood, Lieutenant. We are pulling off. Need to have the babies checked over.”
Chief Garraway maneuvered the cruiser awkwardly off the next ramp, calling for an ambulance crew as she did so. Her face was drawn with pain, and sweat was beading on her forehead.
The car had barely stopped moving when Maggie pushed open the door and ran to the back door. After wrenching it open, she checked on the twins. Only the chief’s demand that she not remove the children from their seats or the vehicle prevented her from grabbing her babies out of the car. Worry simmered in her gut as she tried to soothe the angry twins. A couple of times she winced as Siobhan hit a piercing note.
When the ambulance crew arrived, it soon became apparent that the chief was stuck inside the vehicle. Maggie’s heart bled for Chief Garraway. The older woman was obviously in pain, wincing and muffling groans. Maggie couldn’t help but feel that this situation was somehow her fault. Stop it! You didn’t ask for any of this. Still, the knowledge that within twenty-four hours two officers had been injured trying to protect her was humbling. Maggie felt the weight of the debt she owed them. She grimaced. She didn’t like being in debt to anyone.
Two members of the crew used a set of metal cutters and set about the arduous task of extracting the chief from the damaged vehicle. The noise was horrendous. While they were doing that, another team member carefully examined Rory, Siobhan and Maggie. Lieutenant Willis pulled in as the crew was strapping Chief Garraway onto a stretcher. He leaped from his car and hurried over to his chief, an anxious expression on his face. Even injured, the woman was reluctant to hand over control.
“This is an attempted