She knew he was right, but she hated what he was suggesting. “Dad wasn’t dirty.”
“Didn’t say he was.”
One of the toddlers in the next booth lost patience and started to wail. Voice sharp, the kid’s mother tried to quiet him. When she didn’t succeed, the two women, still gossiping over the sobs, collected their garbage, bundled their children in parkas and gloves and hats with earflaps as if this was Juneau in January, and finally left. The kid’s face was turning purple as he screamed all the way to the door.
Ann muttered, “Talk about an argument for abstinence. They should borrow that kid as an object lesson for sex-ed classes at the high school.”
Diaz laughed, real amusement crinkling the skin beside his eyes. “I take it your biological clock isn’t ticking.”
She didn’t even know if she had one. She was still trying to figure out how girls got guys to ask them to the prom.
“Not if it means taking one of those home from the hospital.”
“They have their moments, you know.” His smile had changed, become tender.
Ann’s heart felt too big for her chest. Surreptitiously, she pressed her rib cage.
“Kids let you see the world fresh, through their eyes. When your baby smiles the first time, just for you, or you hear this giggle of pure glee, or you see understanding dawn on your little girl’s face…” He hunched his shoulders suddenly, as if embarrassed.
Damn it, her sinuses burned. She concentrated on her milk shake to hide emotions that embarrassed her.
Had her father felt that way about her, at least in the beginning? Had her first smile filled him with tenderness? Things had gone wrong, but she’d like to think he had loved her.
And Diaz… Why in heck did she turn to mush just because his eyes softened every time he mentioned his kids? Yeah, okay. It was a nice quality in a man. She was starting to think his ex-wife was an idiot. But she was not looking for a husband. Even if she had been, Juan Diaz wouldn’t be on her list. So she really, really needed to stop with the knees-buckling, heart-swelling thing.
“Yeah, maybe someday,” she mumbled.
He was looking at her in a way that made her shift on the hard plastic seat. “I’ll bet you were a tomboy. I can see you. Baseball cap turned backward, sneakers, knees ripped out on your jeans. Not taking any crap from the boys.”
He was right on, but she’d been like that because somehow, some way, she’d always known Daddy didn’t really want a little girl. He wanted a little boy.
Until she’d turned sixteen and suddenly in his eyes she was supposed to be a girl—she sure as hell was never going to measure up as a son. Why wasn’t she a beauty he could brag about to his friends? He’d have liked to make jokes about fighting off the boys, but it was painfully obvious to him and Ann both that no boys were interested. And she was still struggling to be that little girl in ripped jeans who didn’t take any crap from the boys.
“Got it in one.” She wadded up her garbage even though she hadn’t finished her fries. “Can we go?”
Something flickered in Diaz’s dark brown eyes, but he only nodded. “I’m done.”
They were on the way to the hospital to talk to a woman whose husband had beaten the crap out of her the night before. Or so said the neighbors who had called 911 after hearing an escalating fight, crashes and screams. The woman hadn’t been able to say anything; she’d lain unconscious on the floor, her face blood-smeared and distorted.
Ann and Diaz didn’t do the average domestic disturbance call anymore. This one wasn’t average. Gene Verger’s first wife had been viciously beaten to death. Police had never been able to prove he had killed her. He’d claimed he’d found her when he got home from work.
When a 911 call with his address came in, it was like little red cherries all lining up. People who’d seen Marianne Verger’s body had long memories.
His second wife looked grotesque. One eye was swollen shut; the other peered through a slit in purple flesh. One arm was in a cast, and the print of fingers was visible on her neck.
Ann took the lead. “Ms. Verger?”
The woman in the hospital bed gave the tiniest of nods, then winced. At least, Ann thought she had. With her face looking like a raw ribeye roast, reading expressions was a little difficult.
“We’re hoping you can give us a statement about last night.” Ann pulled up a chair.
Diaz stood near the foot of the bed, his notebook out. When the situation called for it, he was good at presenting himself as bland. Next best thing to invisible. This was one of those times.
Rochelle Verger studied him with what Ann took for suspicion, then turned her head on the pillow to scrutinize Ann.
“You’re not wearing uniforms,” she whispered, voice as damaged as her face and throat.
“No. I’m Detective Caldwell and this is my partner, Detective Diaz.” Ann showed her badge.
She struggled to swallow before asking, in that hoarse whisper, “Why you?”
Ann chose honesty. “Because of your husband’s history.”
The woman didn’t move for a long time. Finally, a tear seeped from her open eye.
“He’s been arrested,” Ann assured her. “He’s behind bars.”
“He… I fell. I always say I fell.” More tears dribbled down her cheek even as her eye closed.
Ann touched Rochelle’s lax hand. “He almost killed you.”
She cried, her mouth opening as tears ran into it. Her hand turned in Ann’s and clutched it in a painful, clawlike grip.
Never comfortable with emotional displays, Ann cleared her throat. “Hey. You’re safe now. He won’t get near you again.” When that had no effect, she repeated, “You’re safe. It’s okay.” Letting her hand be mauled, she kept murmuring the same things over and over. As if that would do any good.
At length the battered woman’s grip loosened and the agonized contortion of her face relaxed. Ann reached for a tissue and said, “Um, do you want to blow your nose?”
The one eye peered at her again. The mouth twisted into what might have been a laugh. Rochelle Verger nodded and took the tissue.
She dabbed rather than blew, and even that must have been painful.
At last, in an exhausted, hoarse whisper, she said, “He killed her. He tells me he did every time he beats me. He says I’m lucky.”
“Will you testify in court?”
The single eye fastened with heartrending intensity on Ann. “Do you promise he won’t get off? That I’ll be safe?”
At the foot of the bed, Diaz stirred.
Ann wanted, very badly, to promise anything. She wanted to twist Gene Verger’s nuts until he screamed.
But that swollen, discolored face, tracked with tears, the desperate strength of the fingers that had probably bruised Ann’s hand, stopped her.
“You know I can’t promise. He should get several years for what he did to you. Whether he’s convicted for murder depends partly on what he’s told you.”
The young woman who looked and sounded old started to whisper. Ann had to lean close to hear.
“He liked to talk about it. He liked to scare me. He told me everything.”
Ann smiled at her. “Then you have the power to