“Ramona Peeples. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Hurry,” she said through gritted teeth and couldn’t believe she had the urge to push. Right here in the Jeep. “It’s . . . it’s coming!”
“Hold on!” Horn blasting, Santana slowed for a red light and apparently saw no traffic, as he twisted on the steering wheel and the Jeep careened on to the main street leading to the hospital.
Oh. Dear. God.
“I . . . I can’t. It’s . . .” She let out a wrenching groan as pain ripped through her body. The fingers of her right hand dug into the armrest, while her left gripped the console. “Oh, oh . . .” Northern General came into view. “It’s . . . he’s . . . she’s . . . almost . . . almost . . . here!” She was fighting the urge to push and failing.
Speeding around a final corner, Santana roared onto the access road, then hit the brakes and slid to a stop in front of the double glass doors of the emergency room. He cut the engine and was out of the Jeep in an instant, rounding the vehicle as Pescoli, deep into a contraction, bit back a scream and clawed at her seat belt, releasing the buckle.
When Santana opened the passenger door, she nearly tumbled out just as two attendants with a gurney arrived and somehow hoisted her onto the stretcher and began wheeling her inside. “Hold on,” one of the attendants said, and to Santana: “We’re taking her straight to a birthing room. You can do the paperwork later.”
They hustled her through the emergency room doors, the lights of the interior of the hospital bright, the walls seeming to gleam, and into an elevator.
The rest of the delivery came fast. They barely got her into the bed and removed her clothes before she could hold back no longer and began to push in earnest. She didn’t care that the doctor hadn’t arrived or that the staff was scrambling around, not prepared. This baby was being born!
“Okay, Mama,” one of the nurses said. “Baby has crowned. Now—”
Regan didn’t hear the rest, didn’t know if Santana was in the room or what had happened to her other children, who were supposed to have followed them to the hospital. All she knew was that she had to push this thing out of her, and in a rush, she did.
A nurse caught the baby, she heard a squall and Regan fell back on the raised portion of the bed. She was vaguely aware of a large, warm hand on her head, then Santana’s voice in her ear. “Good job, Mama,” he whispered as the baby was placed on her abdomen. “We have a son.”
Tears filled her eyes as she held the boy, and raw emotion, as deep as the craters in the sea, filled her. “Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, all of the worries of her job, her family, the world and universe vanishing with the little gurgling sounds of this tiny, minutes-old infant. “Welcome to our crazy life,” she whispered.
Smiling despite the glisten in his eyes, Santana touched his son for the first time, his hand seeming huge as it caressed the back of the dark-haired baby. “Hey, there,” he said softly as he looked for the first time at the tiny face of Tucker Grayson Santana.
CHAPTER 30
Richtor Tufts was genuinely upset. He couldn’t sit for five seconds without jumping to his feet and pacing in front of the small table separating him from Alvarez in the interview room at the station.
“I just don’t understand,” he said in a devastated voice for what had to be the fifth or sixth time. “Who would do this? Why?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” she said. “Please, Mr. Tufts, take a seat.”
“Oh, right. Right.”
At the morgue, he’d ID’d his wife’s body, the petite, young woman who had the same dark bruising on her neck as had been evident on Destiny Rose Montclaire.
Alvarez had arrived at the crime scene and seen Marjory’s body, tossed carelessly in the brush. Mrs. Tufts had been dressed as if intending to go out, in a short white mini dress, gold bracelet and necklace that matched her expensive shoes. As yet, the ME could give no precise time of death, but it was thought to have occurred sometime the night before. From the condition of her body, the bruises and contusions, Alvarez believed there had been a struggle, the scattering of leaves and pine needles, disturbance of dirt and branches, indicating some kind of fight had occurred. As far as she knew, the only evidence found at the scene was a large footprint discovered about ten feet from the body. A cigarette butt had been found as well and that, too, was being processed, in the hope that there would be DNA found.
The only good news about this killer was that he was careless, a person who didn’t watch crime or cop shows, or know about trace evidence.
Finally, a break.
Alvarez had noticed the similarity of bruising on Marjory’s body, so close to that of Destiny Rose Montclaire’s, but hadn’t mentioned it to Richtor, as she’d wanted to witness his reaction. That had been swift. His face had contorted in disbelief, his knees nearly buckling as he’d viewed his wife’s corpse. He’d broken into tears and had eagerly agreed to meet Alvarez at the sheriff’s department and go over their last conversation, a heated argument that had occurred the night before.
“It was a stupid thing,” he said now in the interview room, going over the story again. “Madge had wanted to go out with friends—Madge is what I call her—and I’d argued with her. This was an on-going thing with her. She’s pregnant, and her crowd—well, they’re young, so they all like to party until the wee hours. Some of them, including my sons, are involved in filming that new reality show, Big Foot Sightings in Montana, or something like that.”
“Big Foot Territory: Montana!”
“That’s it. She didn’t say as much, not right off the bat, but Madge, she wanted to be a part of it, and was jealous . . . No, no, that’s the wrong word. Not exactly jealous, but envious, maybe, of all the kids who were involved. She would have loved to be a part of that, even knew of that producer guy, Spinks?”
“Sphinx. Barclay Sphinx.”
“She was a big fan of a couple of his reality shows, the one about the Hollywood has-beens, Tarnished Stars, and she was excited about the new ones, this one about the Big Foot sightings and that one in Oregon about ghosts.... She was all over those and when I told her it was stupid, that she was married, going to be a mother, and she should forget all that nonsense, she blew up, said I didn’t ‘understand.’ And that’s the truth. I didn’t. She has, had, a good life and some slick producer wasn’t going to change that.”
Alvarez was taking notes, watching Richtor’s expressions, even though the interview was being recorded on video and audio from a camera mounted high on the cinder-block wall. Others, including Sheriff Blackwater, were observing as well, standing on the other side of the two-way mirror mounted on the wall.