His Only Defense. Carolyn McSparren

a long moment nothing happened, then the front door opened barely enough for the thin child to slip through. The door shut quickly behind her, but not before the fading light glinted off the barrel of a rifle.

      Uncertain, the girl stood on the porch, her eyes on her ragged sneakers. Despite the cold, she wore only a thin T-shirt and grimy jeans two sizes too big. Her dirty face was streaked with tears.

      “Come on, Sally Jean, honey,” Liz said softly. “It’s all right, baby girl. Just come on down the steps to Liz.” She held out her arms. The child moved hesitantly down the porch steps.

      Where was Marlene? Liz glanced at the door. She hadn’t heard a word from the woman in over an hour.

      She had a bad feeling about this. It was imperative that she get the kid to safety, then go back for Marlene. If she was alive.

      The child looked up at her with terrified eyes and began to stumble toward her. Liz started to kneel to gather her up when she caught movement from the corner of her eye.

      The door opened again. Marlene?

      No! God. The rifle. Bobby Joe was going to shoot her. As she stared, openmouthed, the barrel of the gun swung across and down.

      He was aiming at Sally Jean! His own daughter! He’d sworn he’d kill her before he’d let her go. Liz had failed. He’d chosen to kill them all rather than surrender.

      Liz swept the child into her arms and spun to shield her with her own body.

      Sally Jean screamed and fought, arms and legs flailing, as Liz ran crookedly toward the command post.

      She felt the first impact in the middle of her back before she heard the soprano ping of the rifle shot.

      As she fell forward, two other thuds hit her between the shoulder blades. Worse than a mule kick. Much worse.

      No breath. She’d crush the child….

      Another ping. Pain seared her hip.

      And all hell broke loose. As she went down on top of Sally Jean, she heard the thuds of running boots, the shouts of the TACT squad, a barrage of gunfire.

      Hands grabbed her under her armpits, swept the child away from her, dragged her toward the command post, hauled her up the steps and dropped her facedown on the floor.

      Captain Leo was talking to someone. She heard his voice through a halo of pain. She managed to turn her head to stare up into the grizzled face of Bill Lansing, head of TACT.

      “Is she okay?” Her own voice sounded strangled.

      “The kid? Yeah.”

      “Am I dying?”

      He laughed at her. Actually laughed, the bastard!

      “Not unless one of your broken ribs punctured a lung.” Then he was gone and Captain Leo took his place. Her leg felt warm and wet.

      “Three in the back of the vest, Liz.”

      “I’m bleeding, I can feel it.”

      “Oh, yeah. That. Flesh wound. Graze. Couple of inches over and you’d have a brand-new asshole.” He grasped her hand hard. “If you had to act like a goddamn hero, couldn’t you have managed it without getting shot in the butt in front of a dozen television cameras?”

      CHAPTER TWO

      SIX WEEKS LATER Liz shifted carefully on the wooden chair in the Cold Case interrogation room. Her rear end could still send a shock of pain through her if she moved the wrong way.

      “Want to tell me about it?” Liz asked the obviously terrified young man who sat across the beat-up table. She could tell he longed to talk. He was barely out of his teens. He’d been seventeen when he’d shot one of his friends.

      He’d been sitting in the “perp seat” for over two hours now. The front two legs had been shortened an inch and a half so that the chair canted slightly forward. Suspects were uncomfortable without knowing precisely why.

      Liz kept her voice soft, gentle and understanding. One thing she’d learned from her negotiator’s training was that the key to getting a suspect to confess or a taker to give up was to exude empathy.

      She’d left Leroy alone for thirty minutes while he ate his burger and drank his cola. Through the two-way mirror she’d watched him finish the food, lay his head on the table and fall asleep.

      “Gotcha!” she’d whispered. Suspects frequently fell asleep the moment they were left alone, as though suddenly released from the tension of trying to get away with whatever crime they’d committed. Now, seated once more on the other side of the table, she leaned forward and regarded him sadly.

      His words tumbled out. “Man, I never mean to kill Skag,” Leroy whined. “He my runnin’ buddy. He just be in the way. It was a accident. See, I mean to shoot Marbles.” He raised his eyes. He no longer looked frightened; he looked much put-upon. “Man, I ain’t goin’ to jail for no accident.”

      He truly believed that because he’d shot his friend instead of his intended target, he shouldn’t be treated as a killer. Unbelievable.

      Twenty minutes later she left Leroy writing out his confession on a yellow legal pad, and stuck her head inside the door of the darkened room with the mirror. “So, Lieutenant Gavigan, how’d I do?” she asked the big man watching Leroy write.

      He gave her a thumbs-up. “Not bad for your first solo homicide interrogation.” He motioned her inside. She closed the door behind her.

      She leaned her butt against the wall beside the mirror, but caught her breath and stood straight again when pain pierced her hip.

      “Still smarts when you do that, huh?” Gavigan said.

      “Yeah. It’s been six weeks since I got wounded. When does it stop hurting?”

      “Hey, I’ve never been shot. I hear it can take six months to a year. You’ll probably have a groove in your rear end forever.”

      “How nice of you to mention that.”

      “Cop groupies love scars.”

      “They have male cop groupies, do they?” she asked.

      “Sure. So, how do you like Cold Cases so far?”

      How could she tell her new boss that she had been transferred to the tiny Cold Case squad not so much because she needed to recuperate from her wound, but because she needed time to recover from the entire experience? Waiting for her wound to be tended in the emergency room, she’d been told that Sally Jean had seen Bobby Joe kill her mother at least an hour before he let the child leave the house. Liz’s physical wound was almost healed. The blow to her self-confidence might never heal.

      She didn’t think she’d ever get her nerve back. Or be confident that she could talk an armed taker into surrendering. She didn’t trust her ability to read the taker’s mind or voice level or body language correctly.

      She’d been grateful the sheriff’s department had basically created a job for her. They’d probably gone out of their way because the media insisted on calling her a hero—which she most definitely was not.

      Cold Cases was theoretically a stopgap until she was fully recovered physically and ready to go back to Negotiations. She knew better. She had to make a success of the transfer to keep her career with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department on track.

      She suspected Captain Leo had explained her loss of confidence to Lieutenant Gavigan, but he’d never said a word to her. “At least here the crimes were committed a long time ago,” she said. “I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

      Like with Marlene.

      “So, how’d you find him?” Gavigan hooked a thumb at the interrogation room.

      “Did what Jack and Randy told me. Went back and reinterviewed all the witnesses.