Second Grave on the Left

My father lowered his head and, from underneath his lashes, cast furtive, sorrowful glances at me. To say I was taken aback by his plea would be the understatement of the century. The whisper of emotion he fought tooth and nail to control was not the pain of fear, but the pain of guilt. His eyes locked on to mine, a silent apology dripping from each lash, and the agitation that overcame me pushed me out of my chair like a bully on a playground.

I stumbled to my feet, the blanket and the rest of the recording forgotten, and scanned the faces around me. Denise was appalled that her husband was begging for my life when he hadn’t begged for hers. Her shallow sense of reality simply didn’t run deep enough to grasp the truth. It must’ve been nice to see the world so one-dimensionally.

But Uncle Bob knew. He sat with mouth agape, staring at Dad like he’d lost his mind. And Gemma knew. Gemma. The one person on planet Earth I didn’t want or need sympathy from.

Thankfully, any tears that might have surfaced from the knowledge that my father had practically painted a target on my forehead stayed behind a wall of bewilderment. My lungs were still paralyzed, as if the air had been knocked out of me. They started to burn, and I had to force myself to breathe as I stared in utter disbelief.

My father, a twenty-year veteran of the Albuquerque Police Department, was way too smart to do something so incredibly stupid. And my Uncle Bob knew it. I could see the shock and anger mingling behind his brown eyes. He was just as stunned as I was.

The look on my father’s face was reprehensible. The clueless look on my stepmother’s as her gaze darted back and forth between the two of us was almost comical. But there were three other people in the room who’d figured it out. Uncle Bob I could understand, but I couldn’t believe that even Taft had figured it out. He had planted a surprised look on me that bordered on apologetic.

But the look of incredulity on Gemma’s face was more than I could bear. She stared hard at our father, her face a picture of stupefaction. Her Ph.D. in psychology was paying off. She knew that our father had chosen her over me. Had chosen our stepmother over me.

My feet carried me back until I felt a door handle nudge my hip. I reached behind me and turned the knob just as my father stood up.

“Charley, wait,” he said as I rushed out the door. The hall opened up to a sea of desks with phones ringing and keyboards clicking. I hurried through them.

“Charley, please stop,” I heard my dad call behind me.

And let him see the drooling mess I’d become? Absolutely not.

But he was faster than I’d given him credit for. He caught my arm in his long slender hand and pulled me around to face him. It was then that I realized my tears had broken free. He was blurry, and I slammed my lids shut and wiped my face with the back of my free hand.

“Charley—”

“Not now.” I jerked out of his grasp and started toward the exit again.

“Charley,” he called out again and caught me just as I was heading out the door. He pulled me back inside, and in my attempt to get free, I jerked my arm out of his grip. He grabbed me again and I jerked again, over and over until my palm whipped across his face so hard, the sound echoed throughout the precinct. A silence fell over the room, and every eye was suddenly focused on us.

He touched his cheek where I slapped him. “I deserve that, but let me explain.”

We stood in the hall as a prickly kind of betrayal and humiliation kept me from hearing anything he had to say. I shut down. His words bounced back as though I had an invisible force field protecting me, and after delivering the best glare I could conjure, I turned and tried to walk away again, mostly because I saw Gemma and Denise coming. The thought of dealing with their indifference made me physically ill. I swallowed hard, fighting the bile in the back of my throat.

Dad didn’t grab me this time. He just braced an arm on the wall, blocking my path. He bent down to me, whispered in my ear. “If I have to handcuff you and carry you kicking and screaming back to that room, I will.”

I glowered at him as Denise hastened up to us in a huff. “Did she just hit you?” she asked, appalled.

More than any other time in my life, I wanted to belt her as well. Where was Ulrich when I needed him?

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked my dad. My dad. She glanced around the room, embarrassed that the other officers had seen my tantrum. “Leland—”

“Shut up,” he said, his voice so quiet, so menacing, it left her speechless. For once.

She raised a hand to cover her throat self-consciously. By law, any police officer who saw me hit him was duty bound to arrest me. None stepped forward.

Dad towered over me, his frame thin but rock solid, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he wanted to wrestle me back, he could. But he would be grabbing a cat by its tail. He would have a fight on his hands, one he would not soon forget.

“Fine,” I said, my voice just as soft as his, “cuff me, because I am not going back into that room so that everyone can feel sorry for me because my father sent a madman to kill his own daughter.”

He sighed, his shoulders crumpling. “That’s not what I did.”

“Isn’t it?” Gemma asked, her voice hard as she stepped forward. “Dad, that’s exactly what you did.”

“No, I mean—”

“She’s so special. She’s so unique,” Gemma said, her words stealing my breath. “She’s so much more than even you know. And you sent him to her?”