Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (12 page)

“Thanks,” she said, and she turned and left him alone.

I
T TOOK
K
AHLER
maybe twenty minutes to finish. Kate sat on the couch in the living room while she waited, images of someone rummaging through her belongings invading her mind. Occasionally she thought about the missing pictures, wondering why he would have taken those. It didn’t make sense. Unless…

Resolutely, she banished that thought. Barrington wouldn’t want his own pictures. No one had believed her idea that the judge was involved with the package that had been sent to her office. Both Kahler and Lew had discounted that scenario. It was somehow even more far-fetched to imagine a respected jurist breaking into her apartment to throw confetti between her sheets.

She hadn’t told Kahler that Barrington had called her or that she had an appointment with him tomorrow, and she didn’t intend to. She had already confessed that she wasn’t completely unbiased when it came to the judge. It was all too complicated to explain, especially with everything else that was going on.

“All done,” Kahler said. “You want me to stay a while?”

He was standing in the doorway of the hall. She had the sudden, inexplicable feeling that he might have been there a few minutes, silently watching her.

“I’m not quite that big a coward,” she denied.

“Sometimes having company helps,” Kahler suggested.

“It’s just the thought that he was here.” She had said that before, but somehow it was the one thing she couldn’t get past. He had been in her home. He had touched her things, had run his hands over the sheets of her bed. Violation. She shivered.

“Put the chain on. And get that lock tomorrow. Then if he wants in again, he’ll have to break the door down. You just made it easy for him, Kate.”

“I know,” she admitted. “Who do you think could have—”

“Whoever sent the package. We’ve already played this game. I don’t have any answers for you. We’ll let the lab see if they can find anything. There’s nothing more I can do tonight.”

“Thanks for coming,” she said. She stood up, aware for the first time of the sheerness of her gown. Not that Kahler had revealed he’d noticed.

“I don’t like this, August. I don’t like the way it feels. Usually creeps who pull stunts like this are harmless. But occasionally…”

“Occasionally, they do more than terrorize,” she finished for him. She was very well aware of the dangers of stalkers.

“You be careful,” Kahler ordered. “You’re smart. Don’t take any chances. And forget the series. Let it drop. It’s not worth the risk. Not for some stupid story.” His voice was suddenly passionate. No longer the detached professional. Apparently, this felt personal to Kahler also.

“It’s my job, Kahler. If I run at the first sign of trouble, at the first indication that someone doesn’t like what I write, then I’m not much of a reporter.”

“Maybe they’ll put that in your obituary. She was a hell of a reporter, but she didn’t have sense enough to know when to leave it alone.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, I want you to know that you’re doing a hell of a fine job.” Her voice was tight with anger. He was supposed to be comforting, protecting her from this maniac, and instead he was just making it worse.

“Good,” he said. “Get the lock, August. First thing tomorrow. Be late for work if you have to. Remember what they say.” His voice was just as hard as hers, his eyes challenging.

“What do they say, Kahler? I know you’re dying to tell me.”

“Better late than never,” he said. He stalked across the room and opened the door, every motion indicating anger.

She watched him, her eyes glazed with sudden moisture. She hated it, but it always happened. She always cried when she got mad. Kahler was supposed to be her friend. He wasn’t supposed to tell her it was too dangerous to keep doing her job. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear from Detective Byron Kahler.

“By the way,” he said, turning just before he stepped through the opened door. She blinked, determined not to let him have the satisfaction of seeing her cry, but still his features were slightly blurred. “To me, August, foreplay won’t consist of putting confetti between your sheets.”

He closed the door behind him, the noise sharp in the confines of the small room. She opened her mouth slightly, almost the comical dropped jaw of the sitcoms, and then realized she had nothing to say. Even if she had been able to think of a comeback, he had timed it so it was far too late to deliver it.

T
HE HEAT WAS SHIMMERING
off the pavement again. The members of the construction crew across the street were at least pretending to work, but somehow all the jobs they had found to do today were in the shade. Kate didn’t blame them. The bank clock she’d passed on her way to the Barrington mansion had read 102, and it was probably ten degrees higher than that in the exposed upper stories of the dilapidated house they were renovating.

She followed the judge’s instructions, ringing the bell. Her lips curved as she remembered the comment on which he’d ended their conversation last night. She had thought a lot about his tone. There was no doubt it had contained amusement. It was the first time in her encounters with Barrington that she had been allowed a glimpse of the man reflected in those old photos.

Her smile faded when she remembered the fate of the pictures. She had also thought long and hard about taking Kahler’s advice, but she could no more have cancelled this appointment today than she could have confessed to the detective what she had confirmed during the sleepless hours of last night—that the only thing missing from her apartment was her secret collection of Thorne Barrington’s pictures.

“Miss August.” The old man had arrived, his trembling hands already beginning to deal with the gate.

“Hello, Elliot,” she answered, smiling at him. She knew the butler would not have forgiven her for what she had done the last time he’d let her in. Not given the degree of affection that had been in his voice for his beloved “Mr. Thorne.”

“Judge Barrington is waiting in the parlor,” Elliot said, pulling the gate inward. “If you’ll follow me.” She could tell from his tone there would be no protective umbrella today and no iced tea. She had definitely not been forgiven.

He said nothing else to her as he led the way up the now familiar walkway and through the glass-paneled front door. The crystal tears of the chandelier in the foyer proclaimed their entrance as they had the first night she’d come to this house. She had expected Elliot to announce her, but instead he disappeared into the darkness behind the central staircase, leaving her alone in the artificial twilight.

This was what she had wanted—an interview with Thorne Barrington, so she didn’t know why she was hesitating. Her palms were clammy, and it had nothing to do with the humidity. Unconsciously, she straightened her shoulders, and taking a deep breath, she pushed aside the sliding wooden door to reveal the formal parlor, exactly as it had been before.

Its dimness was a contrast even to the unlighted hall. Enough light seeped in from the porch-shaded glass door there to offer some illumination, but Kate had to pause on the threshold of the parlor to allow her eyes to adjust to its lack of light.

“Ms. August.” The deep voice came from the shadows on the opposite side of the fireplace, the spot where he had been sitting on the first night she’d come here. Gradually, his figure began to take shape, emerging again from the surrounding darkness. And again he was standing—the perfect gentleman.

“Judge Barrington,” she acknowledged his greeting, walking toward him with her hand outstretched. Properly brought up Southern men never extended their hands unless a lady offered hers first. Business women down here knew the rule—a rule that hadn’t changed as far as the old-money crowd, a group to which Barrington certainly belonged, was concerned.

His voice stopped her before she had halved the distance between them. “I no longer shake hands, Ms. August. Please forgive me.” There was no inflection in the statement, no embarrassment, and despite the way it had been phrased, no apology. Simply a statement of fact.

There must have been injuries to his hands, she realized, remembering what Lew had said. Something about how it would change your character to have a bomb blow up in your hands. She hadn’t picked up on the significance of that. The comment had undoubtedly stemmed from some bit of gossip her editor had heard.

Her gaze dropped to Barrington’s hands, to verify that was the reason for the curt dismissal of her attempted handshake. His arms were at his sides, the big hands almost touching the faded denim of well-worn jeans. She could see no details other than the seemingly normal shape of the thumbs and the profile of the rest, palms relaxed, curving slightly inward.

Belatedly aware of the rudeness of what she was doing, she forced her eyes up. His were focused calmly on her face, waiting, his expression absolutely unrevealing. She allowed her own hand to drop to her side. Like an idiot, she had continued to hold it out, even after his comment. All her encounters with this man seemed destined to be mired in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Since you’re not at fault, I see no need for you to apologize. Would you like to sit down?”

“Thank you,” Kate said, finding that another chair had been conveniently situated directly across from the shadowed one the judge had chosen. She sat down in it, putting her bag on the floor and fumbling in it for her notebook and a pen, attempting to hide her nervousness. She was aware when Barrington sat down, still moving as gracefully as the athlete he once had been.

“You said on the phone that you’d learned some things about the Draper bombing which you wanted to discuss with me,” he said.

That really wasn’t what she had meant to suggest when she’d talked to him. She didn’t know what might be significant about the minutiae of Hall Draper’s very ordinary life. She had just hoped something would trigger a response from the judge.

“I don’t know that I’ve
learned
anything. Not anything relevant. I just talked to Draper’s widow. I thought if I read you some of the things she told me, you might make a connection.”

“Did you see some connection, Ms. August?”

She smiled, thinking how far removed from the privileged life-style of the Barrington millions Hall Draper had been. How different his growing up. His career.

“You and Draper seem light-years apart to me, but…” She paused, trying to think what she wanted to say, and he waited patiently through the hesitation. “But there must be something. Somewhere in your lives—
something
in your lives—must connect. It’s the only way to make sense out of all this.”

“You’re still trying to make sense out of what he does?”

“You think he strikes at random?” she asked. This was what she had come for. To finally talk to Thorne Barrington. To get his take on the whole insane situation.

“No,” he said simply.

“Then…” Again she hesitated.

“I think he chooses his victims,” Barrington went on. “But despite the three years I’ve spent thinking about who might hate me enough to…” The break was brief, but there was a tinge of emotion that had not been allowed before. “…want to kill me, I’m no closer to an answer than I was then.”

“What about Mays?” Kate asked. “Did he hate you enough?”

“He hated us all. With all the mad-dog rabidness you’d expect from a man who would blow up a school because a black child had been allowed to enter it. But he didn’t seem to single me out particularly. I was just part of the establishment that had been trying to destroy his mind-set, his way of life, for the past thirty years. He seemed to despise the fellow conspirator who had gone to the authorities far more than those who were attempting to impose a long-overdue justice for what he’d done.”

“But that informant didn’t receive a bomb through the mail.”

“No,” Barrington confirmed.

“Do you think Mays was responsible for the school bombing?”

“Yes,” Barrington said, with a conviction she could hear.

“No doubt in your mind?”

“No.”

“And that’s why you gave him the maximum sentence?”

From out of the shadows came a brief whisper of laughter. Unamused. Self-mocking. “The maximum? A year. Less than a year out of his seventy to pay for the deaths of two children.”

“That was all you could do.” Surprisingly, Kate found herself wanting to comfort that bitterness.

There was no answer from the man in the shadows.

“But you don’t believe he’s Jack?” she asked when he seemed disinclined to pursue the justice, or injustice, of Mays’s sentence.

“Based on everything I know, he doesn’t fit. It bothered me enough—the fact that I’d had personal contact with another bomber—that I
did
mention Mays to the police. Apparently, they’ve never found a connection.”

“Who did you tell about Mays?” Kate asked, wondering why that information had never been conveyed to Kahler.

“I really don’t know. At first…” The deep voice hesitated, and Kate recognized some trace of emotion, but again the pause was brief and whatever she had heard was gone when he continued. “At first there was only an endless confusion of voices. I never learned to separate them. Thank God, that was a skill I wasn’t forced to acquire.”

Thank God whatever damage there had been to his eyes hadn’t been permanent, Kate realized. That had certainly sounded heartfelt and for the first time she thought about what blindness would have meant to the man Barrington had been. But at least he wouldn’t have been a prisoner in his own home. Maybe what
had
happened had somehow been worse than the loss of his sight.

“And later on? Did you tell Kahler about Mays?”

“I don’t remember mentioning the school bombing to Detective Kahler. I suppose I assumed that whoever I had told at first had investigated Mays and that the possibility of his involvement had come to nothing. There’s never been any mention of him in anything that’s been written about the mail bombings.”

She wondered suddenly if that meant Barrington had read her stuff. He had been familiar with her name, so even with his disdain for the media, he had still followed the investigation.