Taking the Heat. Brenda Novak
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hope interest rates stay down.”
“I pray to the interest-rate gods every day. How’s Allie?”
“She’s happy and chubby and sometimes I look at her and think I could never love anyone quite so much.”
He fell silent and, for a moment, Gabrielle feared she’d hurt him. “I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it,” he said. “We’ve already been through all that. You love me, but you don’t love me, as if I’m supposed to be able to tell the difference.”
“David, you’re my best friend. I never wanted to cause you pain.”
“I know.” He cleared his throat. “Is Allie walking yet?”
“Almost. She gets around by hanging on to the furniture. When are you going to come see us again?” David’s visitation rights included weekends and holidays, but Allie was still so little, he rarely took her to his place. Even when she and David had first separated and Gabrielle was living in an apartment in Mesa, he typically spent the weekends at her place, where they could all be together.
“I’ve got a lot to do here at the office, and I was planning to get caught up this week. I could come down next Monday. Can you wait that long?”
Five days sounded like an eternity. Gabrielle was tempted to say no. Her life was much easier when David was around. But she wouldn’t let herself use him. He needed to let go of her and to meet someone else, someone capable of being the kind of wife and lover he deserved. “Monday’s fine, except I have to work.”
“Don’t you get off at three? I’ll come down late Sunday and spend the night so I can watch Allie while you work on Monday, then I’ll take the two of you out to dinner.”
Allie started to fuss, wanting to be held, and Gabrielle gladly obliged. “Sounds great.”
“You be good till then. Let Hansen and the others take the lead. Don’t risk yourself for an inmate again, you hear?”
Gabrielle pulled the phone cord out of her daughter’s mouth, but Allie shoved it right back in. “I hear,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound like a real commitment.”
Gabrielle thought of Randall Tucker and his broken hand and knew she couldn’t make David any promises. She wanted Tucker’s hand X-rayed and set. She wanted him to have stitches so the cut above his eye would heal properly. And she feared the only way to make that happen was by going over Hansen’s head.
But would Warden Crumb listen? Or would all hell break lose?
“I’ll give it another day or so,” she said. “Maybe Hansen will change his mind.”
“Yeah, maybe he will,” David agreed, but he didn’t sound any more convinced than she was. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Gabrielle said goodbye and hung up, but her thoughts didn’t linger on David. Instead she pictured Randall Tucker. Intelligent, articulate, handsome, he was so unusual for a convict.
Was jealousy enough to drive a man like that to murder?
CHAPTER THREE
NIGHTS WERE THE WORST. Especially this night, Tucker thought. He lay on his bed trying to tolerate the throbbing of his hand and the snoring of the man in the next cell so he could get to sleep, but he couldn’t manage it. He’d waited until ten o’clock to take the Tylenol that Officer Hadley had given him, hoping that might help, but it wasn’t enough. Rodriguez and his gang had fixed him up good this time. He needed something stronger.
Still, it wasn’t the physical pain that bothered him half as much as the images in his mind—images of Landon taking his first step, Landon playing T-ball, Landon learning to ride a bike.
If a man could die of missing someone, Tucker had one foot in the grave. He’d sell his soul to see his son again, even for only a few minutes. At six years old, the boy had lost both parents. Death had taken one, prison the other. Now the poor kid was being raised by strangers in a foster home in Phoenix, strangers who, in the six months Tucker had been imprisoned at Florence, had never once brought him to see his father. Tucker’s own parents had brought Landon down a few times, but it was a bittersweet experience to see him sitting in a booth on the other side of a piece of thick glass.
The guy next door rattled into a wheeze, then guttered out, giving Tucker a moment’s reprieve from the racket. Wishing he could ease the pain as well, he shifted, but he was in a world of hurt from which there was no escape, at least until his injuries healed.
Perhaps he’d been stupid to let Rodriguez provoke him. He’d known from the beginning that the Border Brothers wouldn’t fight fair. There was no such thing as “fair” in prison. Most inmates did anything and everything they could to hurt and maim. His best defense against the Border Brothers would be to join a rival gang such as the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, but he refused to align himself with that group or any other, refused to espouse their twisted ideals. So he had to fight to survive.
Those who didn’t join a gang and wouldn’t or couldn’t fight got shoved so far down the ladder they couldn’t take a piss without permission from someone. And Tucker wasn’t about to ask a fellow inmate’s leave to do anything. Too many things had happened to him that he couldn’t control—the disappearance of his wife, the accusations that followed, the single-minded determination of the district attorney to see him behind bars. At least he could defend himself with his fists. At least he could retain control of that.
His neighbor started to snore again. “Shut up, man,” Tucker hollered. “I can’t sleep.”
His outburst brought no change, except a few curses from those he’d disturbed.
God, he wanted it to be morning. Then, if he was still able to function with his injuries, he could focus on his job making thirty cents an hour as a “skilled laborer”—an electrician. It was a trade he’d basically taught himself since coming to prison. His other alternatives, come daybreak, were to take a walk in the yard, lift weights, read—anything to distract himself from the same subjects he dwelled on every night. Landon. His freedom. His dead wife.
He and Andrea certainly hadn’t been the happiest of couples. They’d split several times, talked about divorce. They’d been going through a rough period right before the police had found her blood spattered on the cement floor of the garage. But Tucker had cared about her and he’d been trying to hold their marriage together for Landon’s sake. They might not have been as much in love as they were at first, but a lot of couples drifted apart during a marriage. The fact that he wasn’t a particularly doting husband certainly didn’t make him a killer. He couldn’t prove his innocence, though, because he’d never dreamed he’d need an alibi.
His thoughts strayed to the strange way his wife had been acting before the night that had changed everything. He was sure she’d been seeing someone else—again. She wouldn’t admit it, of course. But Tucker had known something was different. He’d felt it. The private investigator had proved that she’d cheated on him more than once. But even that evidence had worked against him. The more suspicious of Andrea he appeared, the stronger his motive to kill her. The police hadn’t even considered that one of the men she was sleeping with might have done it. Or they hadn’t cared. They’d had their scapegoat.
He sifted through Andrea’s friends and acquaintances but, as always, drew a blank. He didn’t know anyone who’d want to kill her. She was beautiful, successful, admired by all. If she was also a little selfish, overly ambitious and egotistical, most people didn’t know that. She had no real enemies. Even his friends quickly became her friends.
His eyelids were finally growing heavy, his thoughts slowing. Closing his eyes, Tucker released the tension in his body and started to relax. The pain in his hand ebbed and his neighbor’s snores seemed to fade, along with the other background noise that never ceased in prison. Blessed sleep approached, promising oblivion at last—
Wood