Michael dropped his forehead onto hers, his shoulders shaking with laughter, his eyes blurred with tears of relief. “The usual,” he managed to mumble after a few moments. “But it’s looking better.”
Near the doorway, Sam slumped against the wall, her gun hanging loosely from her hand, her face averted from Jane Sebring’s body. Looking at corpses and then hunting down the killers was her job. It was a service she performed . . . but, oh, God, it was another thing entirely to know she’d done the killing. McCord had needed to enter the room at an angle from around the doorframe, but Sam had had a straight shot, and she’d taken it the instant Sebring fired.
Around the corner on her right, McCord finished checking Sebring’s body for vital signs; then he stood up and walked over to Sam. “Miss Sebring won’t be making any more appearances anywhere,” he told her quietly. “Nice shot, Sam.”
“It would have been hard to miss her,” Sam said grimly, lifting her eyes to his. “She was only ten feet away.”
He understood the bruised look in them and slid his hand around her nape, pulling her face to his chest and sliding his arm around her waist. “I can only think of one heartfelt, reassuring thing to say at a moment like this,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Better her than me.”
Sam smiled a little.
“Everyone feels this way the first time,” he added somberly. “With a little luck, it will be your last time.”
It was at that moment that Shrader trotted into the room and stopped cold, taking in the scene with a puzzled grin. “You guys having a shootout in here or an orgy?” he asked, looking from Leigh’s tied ankles to McCord’s arm around Littleton’s back. “I see bondage and some evidence of S and M. What I don’t see is a victim. Anybody seen a victim lying around?”
“Over there,” McCord said mildly.
Shrader caught his tone and correctly assumed Sam had fired the fatal shot. He strolled around the corner, walked over to Sebring’s body, and gave a low whistle as he looked at the victim’s face. “Wow! Talk about your bad hair days!”
He walked back over to Sam, who was standing on her own now, and patted her shoulder, offering his own kind of comfort for what he knew she was feeling. “Listen, Littleton, you did her a favor. She wouldn’t have wanted to go on living with that haircut she’s got.”
When Sam smiled, he turned to the bed, where Michael Valente was untying Leigh’s ankles. “Good evening, Mr. Valente,” he said politely. “Good evening, Mrs. Manning.”
Valente ignored him, but Leigh was anxious to foster good relations with the police for Michael in the future. “Good evening, Detective Shrader,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m pretty good. You’ll be happy to hear that the boys downstairs picked up your stalker. He’s volunteered to go for treatment, but we’re going to check him out before we release him.”
Satisfied with his visit to the crime scene, Shrader sauntered through the doorway with his hands in his pockets; then he leaned back inside and said, “By the way, the chauffeur had a flesh wound and a heart attack, but the paramedics said he’s in pretty decent shape. The housekeeper’s got a concussion for sure, and she’s a little short on blood, but they’re giving her a fill-up on the way to the hospital.”
Leigh slid off the bed and stood up unsteadily, keeping her face turned away from Jane Sebring’s body. “I’ll go with them to the hospital,” she told Michael.
“Yes, you will,” Michael said emphatically, putting his arm around her as they started down the hall, “and while you’re there, you’ll have some X rays, too.”
“Women who are probably pregnant have to be very careful about X rays,” Leigh told him.
Michael grinned, but shook his head. “Isn’t it a little too soon for you to know that?”
“It would be a little too soon for other women, but not for me.”
“Why?”
She shook her head and smiled. “Because you’re—you.”
“In that case,” he said after a split second’s thought, “we need to move the wedding date closer.”
She laughed softly. “I should have known you’d go straight to the heart of the matter.”
Michael stopped her and pulled her tightly into his arms, his jaw resting atop her head, his mind on the way she’d tried to get Sebring to admit she’d killed Logan when she expected to be shot herself. His voice gruff with tenderness, he said, “You go straight to my heart.”
Chapter 73
* * *
Standing in the living room, waiting for CSU to arrive, McCord updated Womack and Shrader on the events of the last hour. The apartment door was open and uniformed officers were standing around in the foyer, so he kept his voice low, but Sam could still hear him as she sat on a sofa nearby, making notes for the report she would have to file.
In the middle of a sentence, McCord suddenly stopped talking, and Sam glanced up in time to see him pull his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. It was vibrating, and he glanced impatiently at the caller’s name; then he swore under his breath and reached for the television’s remote control lying on the coffee table near Sam’s knee. As he flipped through the channels, he jerked his head toward the living room windows and said to Shrader, “What’s the street look like down there?”
Shrader walked over to the windows and looked down. “It’s a zoo,” he replied. “Ambulances, cruisers, and dozens of—”
“—news vans,” McCord concluded in disgust. “They must be running the story already, and Trumanti’s calling me about it.” As he said that, the television station he’d just tuned to interrupted its regular programming and an announcer said, “We have a late-breaking development in the Logan Manning murder. Our reporter, Jeff Corbitt, is at the scene now, where ambulances have just left the Fifth Avenue apartment building where Logan Manning once resided with his wife, actress Leigh Kendall. Jeff, what’s going on over there?”
“It’s pandemonium right now,” the reporter on the scene replied, standing in front of the building, holding a microphone. “The police have the lobby and sidewalk roped off Three ambulances just left a minute ago, and the street is full of emergency vehicles. Michael Valente was here, and he left in one of the ambulances.”
“Was he in police custody?” the newscaster asked eagerly.
“No, he got into an ambulance with Mrs. Manning. It looks like Valente may have slipped through NYPD’s net again, this time with Mitchell McCord in charge of the case. McCord is reportedly upstairs right now.”
The news anchorman looked stunned and disgusted by the news that Valente had evidently been turned loose. “We’ve just heard from Police Commissioner Trumanti’s office,” he said, “and they assure us that Commissioner Trumanti will have an official statement for us shortly”
Sam’s cell phone went off before the end of that news announcement, and
so did Shrader’s and Womack’s.
“Don’t answer those calls,” McCord said sharply when Shrader started to answer his phone.
Shrader complied instantly, but looked worried. “My call’s from Captain Holland.”
“So’s mine,” Womack agreed.
Sam’s phone was vibrating for the second time. “Mine, too,” she said.
“Who’s your other call from?” McCord asked her.
“My stepfather,” Sam said wryly after glancing at her phone again.
“I’ll return his call for you in a minute,” McCord said. “He has a phone number I need.” He held out his hand for her cell phone, and Sam got up and gave it to him; then he spoke to all three of them in a clipped, imperative voice. “I don’t want any of you to return any phone calls about this case to anyone tonight. In a minute, I’m going to phone Mayor Edelman and try to persuade him to handle the press conference himself tonight and keep Trumanti out of it. Regardless of what Edelman says he’s going to do, I’ll make a brief statement to the press downstairs exonerating Valente from all involvement in Manning’s murder. That should temporarily discourage Trumanti from addressing the media on his own tonight and trying to incriminate Valente anyway.”
Sam realized at once that Edelman’s phone number was the one Mack needed from her stepfather, and she would have been happy to call him for it in front of Shrader and Womack, but Mack was obviously intent on protecting his team right then. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and told them, “I’m going to fly solo on this case from now on. I want the three of you to stay clear of it. Tomorrow, write up your reports but stick to the bare facts and avoid any mention of the logic or reasoning you may have followed during the investigation. I directed your activities, so when you’re questioned about why you did something, blame me.”