Maternal Instinct (4 page)

Nobody would mistake the relationship between the two men, although subtle differences in facial structure made Hugh handsome and his brother plain in a blunt, masculine way. Hugh's bone structure was more defined, his nose thinner, his cheekbones more pronounced. Both shared imposing height and powerful shoulders and arms.

"The dead guy right outside the elevator on the fifth floor is our shooter," the captain was saying.

While she was deciding which brother was sexier. Feeling a flush creeping up her face, Nell made a determined effort to block out awareness of Hugh McLean, sitting in the front row.

"A dozen witnesses have positively identified him." Tiredness showed in the deepened lines on Captain Fisher's face, but hadn't succeeded in relaxing his military carriage or the iron in his voice. "He died of a self-inflicted shot to the head. As you all know, he'd been shedding his arsenal as he went. It appears right now that he used up his automatic rounds on the lower floors. He started down the hall, shot one more victim, then headed back to the elevator. He might have heard sirens and realized he couldn't walk out. Hell, maybe he intended all along to end it that way.

"His name is Jack Gann. He was not a former or current employee of Greater Northwest. We don't know yet what the association was. We're guessing he was pissed about a denied claim, but, hell, it could be something else. One of the victims may be an ex-wife, the boyfriend of his ex… It'll be your job to find out.

"At this point, we believe he was acting alone. We can't yet be certain of that, either. His car is in the lot, but so are ones belonging to a lot of other people who won't be driving them home, either.

"The coroner has wrapped things up at the Joplin Building. You know the drill. We need accurate floor plans, drawings, notes." Captain Fisher paused, his penetrating gaze traveling from one of his officers to the next. "You will be acting under the direction of the detectives. When you're done, I want to know every step the son of a bitch took. How did he get to the third floor that heavily armed without being noticed? Who did he shoot first? Second? Third? Why those victims? Were they the ones who didn't hide fast enough, or were they chosen?" His voice became softer, colder. "I don't just want to know what he did, I want to know what he was thinking."

Nods all around. "Sir."

"These are your assignments." Like a schoolteacher, he stepped from behind the podium and passed out papers. When he'd reached the back of the room and Nell, he added his usual roll-call closer. "Do your jobs and do them carefully."

Nell was praying she and McLean had been assigned to hunt background on the shooter. Her stomach roiled at the idea of going back into the Joplin Building, of seeing again where the bodies had fallen.

No such luck. She and her new partner—her
temporary
partner—would be part of the team securing, searching and recording the crime scene.

She waited in the hall for him. He was one of the last out the door of the briefing room, presumably having stopped to talk to his brother. He'd hidden this morning's excesses better than she had, Nell thought in disgruntlement, watching him approach. With his dark hair, vivid blue eyes and well-defined cheekbones, he was as rakishly handsome as ever. Right now his mouth was set in a hard line, but his jaw was clean-shaven, his eyes clear and his hair slicked back from his face. His crisp uniform fit his tall, muscular body the way it was designed to, a fact that she resented.

She tried very hard not to let pictures of the body beneath the uniform flash in her mind.

His expression was unrevealing when he reached her. "Ready?"

"Naturally," she snapped. Did she look that bad?

"Do you want to drive today?"

Big of him, she thought uncharitably. They had to go—what?—ten blocks to the Joplin Building. No chance she'd screw up a chase or even a trivial traffic stop.

"You did fine yesterday," she said waspishly, then was annoyed at herself for being weak enough to display sulkiness. Why give him a weapon?

He lifted a brow. "Fine."

As they followed the rest of the officers down the hall, she wondered miserably what
he
was trying not to remember when he looked at her. Or, worse yet, what he was letting himself remember with secret pleasure.

Her cheeks heated in humiliation. Was he instead wondering how many beers he'd had to make him pull down his zipper for her? Flagpole tall women with no figure and hair of undetermined color had never heated his blood before.

She gave a stiff nod when he held open a door for her. Walking into the shadowy parking garage, she hated her awareness of his gaze on her back as he followed.

Damn it, she didn't
want
to excite Hugh McLean, Nell thought fiercely. She didn't like him. Last night—this morning… It was nothing. The stupid behavior induced by inebriation. The true embarrassment was discovering her behavioral control—her common sense!—could be so easily subverted.

Not until they were in their unit and pulling out of the garage did either speak again.

"Feel okay?" Hugh asked.

She felt like hell. "I'm all right." After a too discernible pause, she added, "You?"

He shrugged. She looked away. "Oh, hell," he said suddenly.

"What?"

He hit the flashers and took a sharp left. "Idiot ran the red light."

The driver of the low-slung Buick ahead had apparently not yet noticed the flashing lights. Nell radioed in the location and license tag number to dispatch.

"Violation?" dispatch asked.

She continued to give information while Hugh hugged the rear of the Buick and finally, briefly, gave a blast of the siren. For a moment the driver seemed to be giving thought to not stopping, but at last grudgingly pulled to the shoulder—without signaling. Hugh had a few choice things to say under his breath as he got out to go to the driver's side window.

He came back shaking his head. "That woman is ninety if she's a day. She called me 'sonny.'"

His chagrin improved her mood. "You probably look like a kid to her."

He held the license as though it were poison ivy. "Can you believe she still has one?" he said, passing it to her. "Doesn't she have kids or grandkids to ride herd on her?"

"Would you let yours tell you what to do?" Nell asked, picking up the microphone.

Grandma—or Great-Grandma—turned out to have a dozen unpaid traffic tickets and outstanding warrants. Out of curiosity, Nell strolled back with Hugh to get a look at the feisty eighty-eight-year-old. So tiny she could barely see over the dashboard, she had delicate skin crumpled like tissue paper and vague blue eyes that sharpened when given the news that she wouldn't be driving away from this stop.

"I drive just fine!" she snapped. "That light was yellow when I started across the intersection. You're the one who needs your eyes examined, sonny."

Hugh beat an undignified retreat, Nell hiding a grin as she followed. In the car, they waited for a patrol unit to arrive and finally handed her over with intense gratitude.

"I can't throw a woman her age in jail," the patrol officer was whining as they waved and pulled away.

Hugh's hands relaxed on the steering wheel. "I need more sleep to cope with senile old ladies."

"I feel sorry for her," Nell admitted. "She'll lose her license this time for sure."

He gave her an incredulous stare. "She's a menace with that damn boat of a car."

"But that car is her freedom." Nell caught his gaze and interpreted it correctly. "Of course we have to take her license. I'm not arguing! I'm just saying I sympathize with her. Who wants to wake up one day and say, 'Gosh, I'd better not get myself to the store or the doctor anymore. I'll just depend on other people's kindness from now on.'"

Hugh squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Can't we just make a traffic stop without delving into the life problems of everyone we ticket?"

She opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again. "I'm just saying…"

"I know what you're saying," he snapped. "I heard you."

They drove the five blocks to the Joplin Building in thick silence.

"Oh, hell," said Hugh again, as it came in sight. The sidewalk was thick was reporters who surged toward the police car before it came to a stop.

"Were you on the SWAT team that first went in yesterday?" reporters yelled. A forest of microphones surrounded Hugh and Nell as they moved grimly toward the front steps. "Can you describe the scene?" "Was there one killer? Can you confirm rumors that he's dead?"

"We're working a crime scene," Hugh said. "I'm sorry, we can't comment."

They broke out of the crowd and gratefully ducked under yellow tape, Nell a little shaken by the shoving bodies, the heavy TV cameras and the urgency of the demands. Port Dare had catapulted into the national news.

The instant they walked into the lobby, Captain Fisher stalked toward them. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Old lady ran a red light right in front of us," Hugh said expressionlessly. "Sir."

"Goddamn it, you're not on patrol!"

Hugh said nothing; of course they couldn't have let a serious violation like that slide.

He scowled, looking more than ever like a bulldog. "Get the hell upstairs for your assignment!"

They were able to ride one of the elevators; the second was still disabled until the evidence techs were done with it. Alone with him, Nell stared straight ahead as if she were enclosed with a stranger and meeting his gaze was bad manners if not dangerous. But when the doors began to open, she hesitated, not in any hurry to offer her memory banks a second glimpse of the horrors she'd gotten drunk to forget.

It seemed to her that Hugh hesitated as well. His back looked rigid when he went ahead of her. Nell took a deep breath and made herself buck up—she was a police officer. Which didn't prevent a wash of relief when she saw that the receptionist's body no longer slumped over her broad desk.

A bagged body on a gurney was waiting to be wheeled onto the elevator.

"What's the count?" Hugh asked a lieutenant, nodding at the gurney.

"Twelve." His mouth twisted. "Another one died this morning at Mercy."

Nell let out a breath. To have miraculously survived the carnage and then die on an operating table or in a hospital bed seemed unbearably cruel.

"Three others are in critical condition."

"All for what?" Hugh asked. He made a sound in his throat. "Let's get busy."

They spent the next hours running tape measures, sketching rooms and hallways and the angles at which bodies had fallen or weaponry had been abandoned. No mysteries in the blood spatter patterns—all were consistent with the victims having been shot with automatic fire at close range.

Nell remembered to call Kim—via the boyfriend's cell phone—to inform her that she wouldn't be home for dinner.

"Is Colin taking you out?" she asked.

"Mrs. Cooper said I could have dinner with them," Kim told her. "We'll be chaperoned, Mom."

Nell ignored the sarcasm. "Be sure and thank her."

"Mo-
ther
."

She sighed. "Sorry."

Her daughter's voice became tentative. "Are you at the Joplin Building?"

Hugh, waiting a few feet away, watched her, which made Nell edgy.

"Unfortunately."

"Is it…is it really
gross?"

Nell's gaze was inexorably pulled to the dark stain down the hall. She stripped her voice of emotion. "That's one way to put it." She rubbed the back of her neck. "I've got to go, Kim. I won't be in until late tonight. I assume we'll be back on regular shifts tomorrow."

"Okay," Kim said, sounding subdued. "I love you, Mom."

Tears stung her eyes. "I love you, too."

Hugh's astonishingly blue eyes met Nell's as she stowed her cell phone. "Your kid?"

"Daughter. Kim's sixteen."

"Do you have others?"

Was he really interested? She couldn't imagine. Nell shook her head.