Husband by Choice

Her mind raced as she tried to figure out how to use it against him.

* * *

MAX ARRANGED FOR the older neighbor lady who’d babysat Caleb a couple of times in the past, to come to the house and stay with him on Saturday while he made hospital rounds just around the corner from the clinic.

He saw patients all morning. Life had to go on. People needed him.

Caleb needed some semblance of normal.

But how in the hell did a guy do normal when his world was exploding around him and there was seemingly nothing he could do about it?

He talked to Chantel each day, too. Lived for her calls, and at the same time was glad the other woman was on shift three hours away. The comfort she offered was too tempting to a man ruled by grief and fear.

Until Sunday’s call.

Saturday she’d told him that Diane had talked to someone who knew that Steve had undergone voluntary anger management counseling not once, but twice. She’d also added that he’d attended one of those times with his entire squad who’d been ordered to go as part of a continuing education LVMPD initiative that the human resources department had implemented.

On Sunday, she didn’t even bother with hello. Or to get home from work, for that matter.

He’d just hung up from lying to his parents—telling them that Meri was in the shower and would call later in the week—and was still treading around his bedroom barefoot, getting ready for bed, when she called.

“Max. I just listened to a voice mail from Diane. She tracked down one of the anonymous witnesses from that dancer girl’s death. As it turns out the guy across the hall still lives in the building—on the top floor. He owns the place now. And still remembers that night. He says there’s no doubt in his mind that the girl was running from Steve when she left the apartment. She wasn’t the partying type. And took cabs if she’d ever had more than one drink. He says there’s no way she would have gotten in that car if she hadn’t thought her life was in immediate danger if she didn’t do so.”

Suddenly wide-awake, with nerves on the edge of needing a run, Max said, “Because why would you trust a call for help, a call to the cops, when you had a cop in your apartment.”

“Exactly.”

“So what happens next?”

“She’s going to try to build a case. I can’t promise that anything will come of it. Chances aren’t good that a grand jury would indict an ex-cop with an exemplary record on circumstantial evidence, but if she can build enough of a case, she might be able to get an order to have the woman’s body brought up.”

This was not normal bedtime conversation.

“You really think they might do that?”

“Do you remember that case in Chicago a few years ago? The cop who was charged with killing his second or third wife, but they couldn’t find her body, so they brought up the body of his first wife who’d either committed suicide, or been ruled accidental, I can’t remember which right now, but they brought her body up. Did an autopsy. Her death was ruled murder and he was later convicted.”

He didn’t think he’d ever heard of the case. But was glad that Chantel had.

“Okay,” he said now, pacing his room, frustrated as hell that he didn’t have Meri with him to discuss this newest development. “Keep me posted and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

If only he’d known these things years ago—if only Meri had...

“She just needs us both to keep quiet about this for now,” Chantel told him. “That means you can’t tell anyone, Max. Not anyone. If Smith gets wind of what she’s doing before she has a chance to build a big enough case, he could make it go away just like he did before. And if not, then he’d definitely be out to get her. He’s already got the death of one woman on his slate, what’s one more if it’ll keep him looking clean?”

He hadn’t thought of that.

“Of course I’ll keep quiet. Who would I tell, anyway?”

“Well, it’s just...she’s put things in motion and if, by chance, you were to talk to Meredith, or she came home, she can’t know about this, Max. We don’t know what hold Smith has on her, or what she might tell him if, for instance, he threatened you or Caleb....”

Beads of sweat popped out on his lip. “You really think Caleb could be in danger?”

“Not now, I don’t, or you can bet I’d be doing something about it. But if Meredith were there with you, the stakes could escalate a bit.”

The words quelled his fear, slightly. But they also hit home. “What you’re inadvertently saying is that she might have left to protect us from him,” he said. He’d had the thought earlier, but had never quite been able to follow the reasoning through, knowing as he did that they’d have full police protection and knowing that Meri had been fully aware of that fact, too.

But it didn’t sound as if she’d have trusted police protection....