Maternal Harbor (19 page)

The babies howled.

She stumbled on the rough surface of the boulevard, staggered, but managed to step across the curb at the edge of the parking lot.

She dashed to the side of her pickup, carefully laid Levi and Jimmy onto the bed, and jabbed the key into the keyhole.  She twisted it, flung the door open, eased Charlie into one of the infant seats that lined the back seat, and snatched up Jimmy and Levi.  They screamed.  She glanced at the building.

Erica bolted from the entrance.

Teagan stuffed the babies into their car seats and dove behind the wheel.  She fired the engine, jammed the gearshift into reverse, and wheeled hard to the left.  Whack!  A rock hit the cab?

Spread-legged and two-handed, Erica fired her handgun.

Bullets!  The babies!  Teagan dropped into drive.  Tires screeching, she gunned straight at Erica.

Erica dove to the right.

Whack!  Whack!  Teagan jerked the steering wheel side-to-side and floored the accelerator.  Whack!  Whack!  “Oh God!”  She played the wheel harder.  The pickup rocked at high speed and the tires hit the curb, nearly jerking the steering wheel out of her hands.  She skidded around a corner, straightened the wheel and accelerated again.

The babies squalled; their cries high-pitched with fear.  The distressing sound racked Teagan.  “Shut up!  Just shut up!”

They screamed harder.

She braked hard, shot around another corner and checked the rearview mirror.  No Mercedes.  She wheeled into an alley and sped down it.  At the end, she turned right, then right again at the next corner, and up a steep hill into a residential neighborhood.  On a darkened side street, she stopped behind a parked car, punched the headlights off, and hunkered down.  Several cars drove by, but no black Mercedes.

The poor little boys, dumped haphazardly in their infant seats, had cried themselves to sleep.  No signs of blood on Charlie, none on Levi and Jimmy.  She eased each of them into a comfortable position and secured the safety belts, then checked for pacifiers.  They were still attached to the blankets.  The diaper bags were on the floorboard.  Thankfully, they had been left in the pickup.

Teagan spread her right arm across the babies to try and quell the intermittent tremors leftover from their hysterical crying.  “Shh.  Shh,” she whispered.

First Charlie quieted into a more natural sleep, then Jimmy, and then Levi.    

Uncontrollable shaking hit Teagan.  She stuffed her hands under her legs and leaned against the steering wheel, pressing her forehead to the cool hard surface.  When the pressure hurt her face, she sat back, but her legs, arms, and belly shivered.  She tried to deny the truth, but the blood flowing from Doretta stayed a vivid picture.  How had she managed to step across her friend and escape?  It seemed like someone else moved through the horror.

Erica had killed Doretta, leaving her in a pool of blood and shot at a pickup with babies inside!

“Charlie, what do I do?” she whispered to her tiny infant.  Her first instinct was to go to the nearest police station, but they would believe Erica not her.  Lute even said he owed his first conviction to her.  They’d take the boys away, same as they did Jimmy.  His screams as they carried him away still echoed in unguarded moments.  Never again would he be carted away. 

Charlie squirmed and she patted his belly.  “I have to prove Erica did it, but how?  I can’t with you guys.”

Think.  Where to go?  Mac?  Pete?  No.  Erica would check the piers first, and she knows about the fish market.  Her parents and other friends were quickly dismissed.  Bryan popped into her mind.  “Damn it.  I need you!”  For a moment, panic blocked any coherent thought.  Fiona Winslow?  Bryan’s grandmother.  Yes.  He might be gone, but Teagan was still welcome at her place.  The boys would be safe in Montana.  She would return to gather proof and make sure the danger was gone before giving Jimmy to his father and Levi to his grandmother.  Just do this, like at the market, one crisis at a time.

Methodically, Teagan grasped the emerging plan as the only lifeline available from the ghastly scene in the condo stairwell.

Money
!

She drove west to draw on her bank account at an ATM.  Let Erica think she had headed west, then either north or south.  Right after she stuffed the money deep inside Charlie’s diaper bag, other problems demanded attention.  The cramped pickup could easily be traced and cell phones left footprints.

A pay phone hung on a steel post on the corner across from the ATM.  She checked the area for a full minute, slipped from the pickup to the phone, and dug the change left in her pocket from the grocery store.  Trying to lay the quarters and dimes on a ledge below the coin slot, she fumbled some and they rattled to the ground.  She bent to pick them up and saw her slipper coated with blood.

She stared at it.

Her footprint was in the blood!

On the stairs!

Teagan pressed her fingers against her mouth, holding in her panic.  “Deal with it later, you idiot!”  She dropped coins into the slot.

Mac’s phone rang and rang.  “Come on.”  Teagan drummed the ledge with her fist.  “Answer!”  Finally, his voice, and she sagged.  “I’m in terrible trouble and need your car.”

“Meet me at the piers.”

“
Can’t.  Go to the Arco Station at Northgate.”

“
Thirty minutes.”

Teagan rustled through the tool box in the bed of the pickup for a pair of hiking boots.  They had to still be there.  Finally, she grabbed a lace, pulled them free, and stripped off the slippers.  She held them as though they were the most precious thing she’d ever touched; her friend’s blood was dried and crusted on the blue velveteen.  She tucked them under a tray inside the toolbox and hurried back to the safety of the cab.

Time blurred as she guided them through the night streets.  Over and over, her eyes fell onto the helpless babies.  She slapped the steering wheel.  Mac can’t know about Erica.  No one can know, not until the boys are safe.”

At last, she parked in the shadows at the station’s side entrance and left the engine idling.  A parade of vehicles rolled up to the fuel island.  Her hand gripped the gear shift, ready in case a black Mercedes showed.  She noticed another phone booth.  The monotony of watching cars roll up to the gas pumps, fill up and roll away rubbed against her agitation.  How much longer?  She needed to go now!

And the damned phone booth pulled like a magnet.  Was a call to Detective Lute worth the risk?  Charlie’s soft breathing answered.  Not until her son was in a safe harbor.

Teagan slipped Lute’s card from her pocket.  She remained sitting and carefully scanned everything beyond the windshield and side windows: a well-stuffed grandpa washed his windshield, a pair of teenagers paid attention only to each other, people inside the station cared only about a snack and paying.  A second scan also revealed nothing threatening.  She cracked the driver’s door.

Mac’s Buick LaSabre rolled to a stop beside her pickup.  His headlights illuminated the inside of her pickup.  She ducked her head from the blinding light, stuffed Lute’s card back into a pocket, slid from the cab, and hurried to his car.

At the sight of Mac’s grizzled face, Teagan blinked back tears.

“Now stop that, Sassy Lassie,” Mac said softly.  “Or did you want me to bring the trawler to float in them tears of yours?”

“
Doretta’s been murdered.”

Mac’s expression froze.  “I heard about Pai, but Pete never said anything about Doretta.”

“She’s in the stairwell of my building.  Blood all over.”  Teagan shuddered remembering the gaping wound and the massive amount of blood when she’d stepped over Doretta’s long motionless legs.  “I escaped with the babies.”

“
I’ll take you to the police.”

“
They’d put the boys in foster care where the killer can get at them.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
I know you don’t.  A psycho wants those babies.”  She held her breath while she waited for him to respond.

After a long moment, he muttered, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.  I’ll take you where you’re going.”

“If you don’t show up at the piers tomorrow, everyone will want to know why, maybe turn in a missing person’s report.  I can’t have any trace to where I’m going.”

“
But you haven’t told me where.”

“
Keeping that secret will protect us.”

Mac sighed.  “This goes against everything I know, but I’ll help move the boys.”  He tenderly lifted Charlie’s infant seat from Teagan’s pickup and secured him in the backseat of the Buick.  He did the same for Jimmy and Levi.

Teagan handed her pickup keys to Mac.  “Let Pete know?”

“
Yeah.”  He dropped his into her palm.  “Tank’s full.”

“
Mine’s empty.”  Teagan closed the door, and then jumped back out.  “I have to take the tool box.  My slippers are in it.  I stepped in Doretta’s blood.  I drove in them.”

I’ll wash the pickup.”  Mac grabbed the toolbox and slid it to the back.  Together they hauled it to the trunk and put it inside. 

Teagan glanced at Mac before driving from the station.  He stood with his hands in his pockets and worry across his dear face – watching her.

She fled the security of her old friend.

Traveling on East I-90, she carefully stayed within the speed limit.  A traffic officer would be curious about three babies, all the same age, all showing different heritage.  Levi’s silky brown tone, Jimmy’s almond-shaped eyes, and Charlie’s titian hair would certainly stir up questions Teagan didn’t want to answer.

Fatigue nagged at her shoulders and shock numbed her mind.  Could she make the ten-hour trip?

Split by her headlights, the night stretched ahead. 

Zoltan Lutavosky checked his watch.  11:58 P.M.  He left the bubble light flashing on his dash and unwound from his car.  A Medic One van crowded the entrance of Teagan’s condo complex, and a lonely reporter with her cameraman stood on the sidewalk beside it.  No way, lady, Lute thought and walked by without comment.

Horror-stricken and disbelieving tenants stared at him from the vestibule, hoping he might quell their fears, and tell them why their safe building wasn’t immune to violence.  They parted ranks without comment, and he strode to the stairwell where Hal waited.

“
Hauled you out of bed, too?”  Lute asked.

“
I’ve been here from the get go.  The crime scene’s already processed, but I decided you’d better take a look before they clean it up.  Female victim was with Teagan O’Riley the night we took the Sanders baby.”

“
Doretta Johnson?  Who ID’d her?”

“
Neighbor.  Said he met her once.  A guy would remember that gal.”

Lute scanned the crowd.  “Where’s Ms. O’Riley?”

“Don’t know.  Her place is empty.  Door was wide open and no signs of anyone.”

“
Cause of death?”

“
Initial report is cut jugular.  Footprint in the blood was tracked down the stairs and outside.  Lost the trail in the grass.  Looks like some kind of slipper.  Lab boys are ready to transport when you are.”

Lute mentally prepared while he climbed the beige tile stairs.  Even after years of witnessing what people did to one another, surveying a crime scene required discipline.  Lute slowly exhaled to deaden his sensibilities and sharpen his awareness.

The wide, standard green stairwell smelled like all brick buildings with enclosed passageways: stale tobacco, dust, and mildew.  Then the odors turned to the sickly stench of death, the confirmation of a body.  A few more steps and he saw the vibrant young woman he’d met a few days before sprawled across the stairs.  Blood flow stained her chest and pooled along one side.  A footprint made by a slipper smeared in the middle of it and tracked to other steps.  The killer’s?

Doretta Johnson’s face appeared angelic in stark contrast to the slashed throat and bloody chest.  She showed signs of a struggle.  Bruises blemished her graceful hands and forearms.  Black heel marks streaked on four of the tile steps.  This gal fought.  Enough to mark the killer?  Forensics would answer that by swabbing teeth and scraping under nails.  Her black waitress uniform was twisted and torn.  Had someone followed her from work?  Panties intact.  Didn’t appeared to be rape.

Lute’s brow furled into a thoughtful frown.  The murder happened shortly after he left Teagan’s condo.  A longer visit might’ve prevented this.  He shook away the unearned guilt.  Who could change the passing of moments?

Hal cleared his throat.  “I figure we have a serial.”

Lute stepped around the body and hustled up the stairs.  Before opening the door to the third floor, he glanced back down at Hal.  “Put out an Attempt to Apprehend on Miss O’Riley.”

Inside the condo, he methodically scrutinized the living room, noting the shoes he noticed earlier were still by the door.  She hadn’t changed from her slippers before going out.  The same blanket lay on the floor with baby rattles and a bottle scattered in the middle.  He lifted a portrait of two elderly, pleasant-looking people from the mantel.  Teagan’s parents he guessed when he sat in the wing-backed chair the first time.  “What happened to your daughter?” he asked softly.  He sensed nothing.  How tired he was of dead young women.

Teagan’s bedroom was tidy.  The nursery held a crib, baby clothes, toys and a fish tank.  And everything brand new, fixed up by a mother for her first baby.  The father was clearly absent.  Lute listened to the gurgle of the aquarium and couldn’t picture Teagan as a criminal, especially the kidnapping kind.  But two women had been brutally murdered while she cared for their newborn sons.  A movement at the door caught his eye.

Hal walked inside.  “I bet the woman who lived here stole the babies to sell.”

Hal’s sureness irritated Lute.  “Any evidence of that?”

Counting off on his fingers, Hal recited, “Two women dead, two babies gone, one woman involved with both.  Evidence?  No.  But I’d like to hear Teagan O’Riley tell her story.  Besides I think her record is
too
clean.”

“
Shouldn’t take the troopers long to locate her.”

Hal’s brows rose in doubt.  “You think she ran?  Not holed up somewhere?”

“If I was protecting babies, I’d run like hell.”

“
Protect?  From what?  Why?  We have dead women, not babies.”  Hal picked up a stuffed bear from the corner of the crib.  “Some little guy is going to sleep without his teddy.”

Lute nodded at the fish tank.  “What does that gurgle tell you?”

“She keeps a clean fish bowl?”

“
I think it’s a watery lullaby.  Pretty soft for a baby stealer.”

“
Give me a break,” Hal snorted.  “That woman loves her son all right, but maybe too much.  Maybe she needs things for him.”

“
We’d better get a search warrant and see what the techs turn up.  For now, seal it off.”  Lute leaned down and counted fish in the tank while he waited for Hal to walk out.

In the stairwell, the body of the beautiful young lady no longer lay privy for all to stare and comment over.  She was loaded and on the way to the morgue.  Lute slowly descended the stairs.  The smell of strong chemical cleaner mixed with the pervasive odor of death.

“I hate this,” said the man who scrubbed away the blood as Lute walked around the wet disinfectant.

“
Folks need these stairs,” Lute snapped.  Outside, the reporter held a mic at him.  “Talk to media relations in the morning,” he barked and strode to his car.  He flipped off his bubble light and dialed dispatch.  By the time they answered, his voice returned to normal, and he asked for the address of Teagan’s parents.

Erica just missed hitting the back of her garage with the front bumper of the Mercedes, slammed out of the front seat and dragged the pillowcase filled with Levi’s baby clothes and teddy bear from the backseat.  Derek needed playmates, not their things.

You dare not leave the sweet boy without his friends
.

Of course not!  He’d never learn the art of controlling.  She hid in the shadows until the garage light turned off.  Then, in the black, rain-drenched night, she stumbled around the side of the house and climbed the ladder.  The claw hammer was still on the sill.  She pulled the two nails, worked the window open, and pitched the pillowcase inside.  It fell with a thud on the hardwood floor.  There, she was going to just leave it.

Derek needs order
.

Swearing under her breath, she crawled inside and stuffed the things under the crib.

The boards across the doorway should be removed.

“
Iska, I know someone might see me crawling through that stupid window, but I can’t have the door open.  What if Derek leaves?  What if Mother’s man comes?”

Erica’s arm throbbed from Doretta’s deep bite, and her left thigh felt bruised to the bone.  Her mind grasped only that she’d failed to bring Charlie, Levi, and Jimmy.

How come Teagan knew to run?

Erica held the sides of her head and moaned.  She crumpled to the floor and beat her fists against the hardwood until she slipped into a state of numbness.

The memories came then.  Like they always did, like she knew they would; tonight the strength to fight failed her.  Images floated . . . Daddy packing and leaving for a week at the academy . . . Mother laughing, putting on her pretty dress . . . Grandma pleading for mother to stay home.  The scarring words came back, loud and harsh like they were then.

“
Don’t threaten me,” Mother snarled after applying another coat of crimson lipstick.  “This is the only fun I have.”

Grandma reached out to restrain her.  “You have a husband and child.”

“What good are they?”  Mother dodged the hand and slammed the door behind her.

That was the first night a man came home with her.

Erica listened to them enter her mother’s bedroom, heard their bumping noise until she finally fell asleep.

“
This time I’m telling Erik.”  Grandma’s voice shook.  “You can’t bring strange men into his home and screw them.  You have a daughter.  It is not right.”

“
If you do,” Mother said, “I’m locking you out.  What will you do?  Live on the streets?  You’ve never earned a damned dime.”

Grandma ran to her room, holding her hands over her ears.

Erica remembered screaming at her mother, “Father will find out and then what?”

She pointed her finger.  “Just wait, your little vagina will grow and then you’ll understand.  I showed you how to use it and have fun with it.  Why can’t I have fun with mine?  But no, you just sit in judgment over everything I do and make it impossible to love you.  Your father doesn’t either.  Nobody does.”  She bumped Erica out of the way.  Her bedroom door slammed.

The hardwood floor of Derek’s nursery felt as hurtful and cold as her mother’s words that had always sounded so reasonable, and yet were so deadly wrong.  Erica pulled from the ghastly images, forced them to retreat inside where they couldn’t hurt.

“
Grandma should’ve told.”