You Can’t Stop Me Read online

  No way, no chance, no how.

  Another left, and he was heading east on Two-hundred-fiftieth Street. The lights of their house, settled mostly by itself out here in the country south of Nevada, would be visible when he topped the next hill. As the idea of a cigarette drifted away like so much smoke, he crested the rise, looked to the left for the familiar glow, and saw only the mercury vapor light stationed atop the garage.

  No house lights—that was odd. He wondered if Ellen had mentioned going out tonight. He didn’t remember her saying anything like that, but sometimes words went in one ear and out the other, when you’d been married as long as they had. David could be most anywhere, with his buddies or his girl….

  Well, at least the national news boys hadn’t been waiting. Harrow slowed at the turn up the long driveway to the house. Turning just past the mailbox, he felt something inside him catch.

  The door of the mailbox was closed.

  Ellen always left it open, after removing the mail, her signal to him that he didn’t have to stop for it. Had he forgotten a dinner out she’d planned, or one of David’s many ball games? She was active with a couple of women’s groups and the PTA—maybe she’d gone to Des Moines to shop or run errands, and went straight to whatever it was.

  With a shrug, he put the truck in park and climbed out to get the mail.

  If the mail was still here, though, that meant she had been gone since mid-afternoon at least. He opened the box, pulled out its contents, and headed back to the truck.

  He climbed up and in, tossed the pile of bills and magazines and so on onto the passenger seat, and eased the truck into gear, then crept up the long blacktop driveway. The two-story house was dark, which made him uneasy.

  If Ellen was home, the lights would be on; but even if she was going to be gone, she would have left one light on for him. It was just something they did for each other.

  Something was wrong.

  Chapter Two

  Harrow gunned the truck up the short hill, pressing the garage-door opener and painfully counting the seconds as the door slid up. He still couldn’t see anything. He cursed himself for not replacing the opener’s burned-out bulb.

  The hill was steep, and the garage sat at a slight angle to the house. He would not be able to tell if her car was inside until the truck’s lights hit the garage. He crested the hill, and, as he feared, her car sat parked in its space.

  What the hell was going on?

  Where was David? If something was wrong with Ellen, if she’d gotten sick or been injured, why hadn’t David called his dad’s cell? Nearing the garage, Harrow kicked the brake and threw the truck into park, the sudden stop almost hurling him into the wheel.

  He hopped out, pulled his pistol, and circled around the back of the truck. Anxiety gripped him and his cop senses were tingling; but he hadn’t defaulted to cop objectivity—this was his home.

  Resisting the impulse to run, but still using the vehicle as cover, he crept around the truck, checked the windows in the house, saw no movement in the dark, then crossed the short distance to the back door.

  You’re being a dumb, over-reacting shit, he told himself.

  Still, he had the pistol ready as he opened the screen door….

  Then, his hip holding it open, he reached for the knob of the inside door with his left hand.

  The knob didn’t turn.

  The door was locked, yet another bad sign. They never locked the doors when they were home. Acid poured into Harrow’s stomach, his chest tightened, and his eyes burned. This afternoon had been about instantaneous action—leaping to stop an assassin a nearly instinctive move.

  This was different.

  Entering his own house had become about caution and danger, his mind flooded with possible outcomes, none good.

  In his gut, he already knew that tragedy was waiting. That didn’t stop him from praying that he was wrong as he unlocked the door. Entering the landing, he looked straight ahead at a family photo on the wall, Ellen, David, and himself smiling at the lens. His mother had snapped the photo at a family picnic a year before she died.

  He glanced left, down into the darkened basement, then turned right and went up two steps into the kitchen.

  Normally a bright room, with its yellow walls and white trim, now an inky threat, with no lights on, every shadow a trap. In the half-light that filtered in through the open curtains of the corner window over a small breakfast nook, knives in their wooden block on the counter to his right took on malevolence. Harrow glimpsed the moon through the window, a full fat moon, a butcher’s moon.

  Fitting then that he also noticed that the butcher knife was gone from its slot in the block.

  He moved past the stove on his left, the sink on the right, the big side-by-side refrigerator/freezer straight ahead. His rubber-soled shoes padded silently across the floor. Every nerve in his body strained, on alert for the slightest movement, the smallest sound. At the doorway, he could go right down a short hall to a bathroom and a downstairs bedroom that now served as a home office. Straight ahead lay the dining room.

  He wasn’t going to turn on the light, just in case. On TV, the criminalist would have used a mini-flashlight to find his way around. Never mind that said criminalist made himself a target by using the flash, giving away his position to any potential attacker. Television never showed the real use of the flashlight, which was to find the goddamned light switch….

  Not that he needed light getting around his own home. Still, this was not city dark, which wasn’t darkness at all, really—this was country dark.

  The house remained eerily silent except for the ticking of an old-time mantel clock atop the wood sideboard. As his eyes struggled to find clues in the darkness, he slowly slid forward past the formal oak dining set. The only illumination came from the tiny amount of moonlight and rays from the garage light that sneaked in through cracks in the curtains in the dining room windows.

  Gun up now, moving toward the living room, Harrow heard the thundering rush of his own blood and felt sweat streaking down his forehead; and, too, he heard his heart’s sledgehammer pounding. Just short of the living room, his foot touched something, and he looked down to see one of the chairs on its side under the table, a spindly wooden leg sticking out.

  He wanted to scream for Ellen and David, but something was wrong here, and if there was an intruder, Harrow couldn’t know if the bastard was still around.

  That meant doing things by the book.

  Finally, cop objectivity settled in. Moving slowly, his eyes well adjusted to the dim light, he eased into the living room.

  Moonlight spilled through the half-open curtains of the picture window and played like a grim spotlight on the face of Ellen on her back on the floor beside the coffee table, a dark pool on the rug around her body, her lifeless eyes staring at Harrow, begging to know where he had been when this terrible thing happened to her. She wore a cardinal-red ISU T-shirt and blue jeans, her dark hair framing her face. Two holes darkened the shirt like a huge snake bite near her left breast.

  Kneeling beside her, only vaguely aware of the tears running down his cheeks, he checked for a pulse, knowing already he would find none. Her skin felt cool and slightly rubbery—like meat left out to thaw on the counter.

  No pulse.

  Also, no wedding ring. It wasn’t like her diamond was anywhere near big enough to inspire a robbery.

  He swallowed and rose. Moving, Harrow looked through the entryway and saw David crumpled on the floor in front of the stairs to the second floor, a dark puddle around him too, the butcher knife on the floor nearby.

  David was on his back, eyes closed peacefully, two black holes piercing the first A and the D in the Nevada T-shirt that he wore over knee-length denim shorts.

  Looking at the knife on the floor, as clean as it had been in the block, Harrow knew instantly that David had been in the kitchen when he heard the first shot and had grabbed the knife in a vain attempt to protect his mother.

  H
arrow checked for a pulse, found none, paused long enough to run a finger through his son’s fine brown hair, then rose and checked the rest of the house.

  Assured that he was alone, he punched 9-1-1 into his cell phone.

  Then he found a chair and positioned it between his dead wife and son. This was a crime scene, and even that small act was out of bounds, but he did not care. He was not about to leave them alone.

  Harrow felt empty inside, hollow, but the emptiness, the hollowness, was Grand Canyon vast; echoes of screams and gunshots he’d never heard filled the abyss within him.

  Cops were crawling all over the house now, every light turned on, the windows bright in the darkness. The first uniforms to arrive, in a blur of flashing red and blue were Johnson and Stanowski, the deputies who had worked under Harrow when he had been sheriff. Johnson confiscated his gun and walked him outside to take his initial statement in the yard.

  Under the garage light, Lon Johnson, a rail-thin twenty-year vet with light green eyes and sandy hair, shook his head as he looked toward the house, his skin pale and a sickly yellow under the mercury vapor light.

  “J.C., I’m sorry. Christ, I’m sorry. Do you have any idea what the hell happened in there?”

  Harrow shook his head.

  Night-shift sergeant Stanowski, another longtime vet, was heavyset, his crewcut tinged with silver. “No questions, Lon. Not till the detectives get here.”

  “Jesus, Stan,” Johnson said to the sergeant, “this is family.”

  Stanowski gave Johnson a sharp look that said, Family or not, he’s still a suspect. In the sergeant’s place, Harrow would have done the same.

  Johnson seemed about to say something to his sergeant, and Harrow held up a hand. “Lon, take it easy. Stan’s just doing his job. Wants his ducks in a row.”

  “I know, J.C., but…”

  “No buts,” Harrow interrupted. “You want to do me a favor? Do this by the book.”

  The sergeant tried to hide his embarrassed smile at the show of support from the man who, if you went by the book, was their prime suspect.

  Looking at Stanowski, Harrow said, “Any chance I could get into my truck?”

  “Not before it’s processed. Why?”

  “Cigarettes in the glove compartment.”

  Stanowski pulled a pack from his shirt pocket and shook a smoke out for Harrow. The sergeant knew Harrow supposedly had quit, but had the decency not to point it out, and lit up the former sheriff.

  Harrow took a long drag, letting the smoke fill the emptiness, as he wished nothing more than for cancer to strike him instantly, right at this moment, right here in the goddamn yard, and kill him. A second later, however, the thought dissolved, like a hailstone battered by rain, replaced by another one: Someone had to find the person who had killed his family.

  And in that moment, the decision that would inform years to come was made: if it took every second of the rest of his life, he would find the killer of his wife and son.

  “J.C.,” Johnson asked, “you all right?”

  Harrow just stared at him.

  After a moment, the deputy blanched and said, “Sorry, stupid damn question.”

  The detectives drove up then, putting the awkward moment out of its misery, and Harrow was left alone to finish his cigarette as the two deputies talked to the investigators.

  The secondary was some young pup that Harrow never saw before—short black hair, a suit that probably cost almost a month’s pay, and the well-scrubbed shine of someone who didn’t like getting his hands dirty. What the hell was he doing in this job?

  The lead detective Harrow knew. A short, wide-bodied man in jeans, an open-collar shirt, and a cheap sportcoat, Larry Carstens looked like the one-time college football player he’d been—close-cropped blond hair, wide forehead, wide-set brown eyes, formless nose, and lips as thin as a cut.

  Carstens had been a uniformed deputy under Harrow, and had made detective three years after Harrow’s departure. In the last couple of years, they’d even worked a couple of cases together, Harrow representing DCI.

  When they had been filled in by the uniforms, the detectives walked over to where Harrow stood next to his truck, his eyes darting between them and the house, which seemed to call to him in a low whisper.

  “Larry,” Harrow said with a faint nod.

  Carstens returned the gesture. “J.C., we’re all very sorry about your loss.”

  Harrow gave another nod, but said nothing.

  “We’ll do it by the book,” Carstens said with a world-weary sigh.

  “Please.”

  “I had patrol cars set up a half-mile in either direction. Any reporter, national or local, that wants to turn this into a circus will have to hike his ass in.”

  Harrow sighed. “Appreciate that.”

  “Tell me what happened. I know about this afternoon—it’s been all over the media. Start with leaving the state fairgrounds.”

  Harrow told Carstens what little there was, right up to the 911 call.

  “Let’s back up,” Carstens said. “Take from the morning till the presidential assignment kicked in.”

  Harrow did.

  Finally Harrow said, “Look, Larry, you’ve got my gun. Run it, and you’ll see it hasn’t been fired.”

  Carstens nodded absently. “By the book, J.C. We’ll want to do a GSR test too.”

  “Fine, then where the hell is Ogden?” Harrow referred to the only real criminalist employed by the Story County Sheriff’s Office, the man who should be doing the gunshot-residue test.

  His eyes narrowing in the darkness, Carstens took half a step toward Harrow. He kept his voice low, tone clipped but not disrespectful. “Try to remember, J.C., you’re not running this investigation. For now, in fact, you’re a suspect.”

  Harrow stepped back, stubbed the cigarette out under his foot. “Okay, I’m a suspect. You’re right. But can I ask one question?”

  “You can ask.”

  “Was there any sign of robbery in there?”

  “Nothing so far, unless precious items turn up missing. You have a safe, or a locked box with jewelry or money or anything in it?”

  “No.”

  Carstens frowned. “Then why the question?”

  “Ellen’s wedding ring is gone.”

  “…Could she have taken it off to do the dishes? Maybe it’ll turn up on her nightstand or—”

  “No. She never took it off. She had a thing about that.”

  “Was it valuable?”

  “Not particularly. Less than half a karat. She’d never let me upgrade. She was…sentimental.”

  Carstens swallowed. “J.C., I’ll look into it.”

  “Please.”

  When the crime scene van did turn up, Harrow was surprised to see not Story County’s criminalist Ogden, but a crime scene team from the state Department of Criminal Investigation, his own employer.

  He watched with detached professionalism as the DCI crime scene team, people he had known for decades and worked with for years, started in. Several went into the house, while others worked the exterior and the driveway. They all scrupulously avoided making eye contact with him. To them, at least for now, he was the invisible man.

  The flashlights in the yard and on the driveway bobbed around, wielded by techs who seemed little more than silhouettes in the dim moonlight. Inside the house, every light continued to burn—idly Harrow recalled that the only times every window in a home burned with light were when a party was in progress or a tragedy had just occurred.

  The night insects were silent, almost as if they respected the seriousness of the situation. The temperature had dropped, but the cold that Harrow felt emanated from within not without. A crop-riffling breeze carried the smell of someone barbecuing nearby. A family having a meal. The familiar scent took on a strange bitterness.

  Eventually, the crime scene investigators started toting out his life, and the lives of Ellen and David as well, in plastic and paper bags, boxes, and envelopes. He had ne
ver been on this end of a crime scene and, for all his familiarity with the process, felt violated watching these people, his friends, going through his family’s things and carting off anything that might prove him either innocent or guilty of the murders of his wife and only child.

  He wanted to scream for them to stop. Christ, they knew him, didn’t they, they knew he couldn’t have done this, but he also understood they were just doing their jobs, and that job was neither to convict nor to exonerate, but to discern the facts.

  Harrow held up pretty well, standing there in the yard, watching them pore and pry over and through every private thing in the house, at least until the coroner’s crew brought out the first gurney.

  A sheet was drawn up over the face, but Harrow instantly knew the body beneath the sheet was his son. Wetness striping his face, he took two steps toward the stretcher before Carstens eased a consoling arm around Harrow’s shoulder and turned him gently away.

  “Smoke, J.C.?”

  Harrow accepted the cigarette automatically and held it between trembling lips as the detective lit him up.

  “You found him. You saw him. You don’t need to see him again, not that way.”

  As if anything could erase that horrific image burned forever into his brain.

  Under their white sheets, David and Ellen would join the others now. They would both be in there with all the other ghosts he’d met over the years at crime scenes. Ghosts that sometimes came when he slept…

  …the little girl that wanted to know why he never caught her killer; the old woman who had died of natural causes but hadn’t been found for three days, the only ones aware of her passing her four unfortunately very hungry cats; the twenty-one-year-old wife who had been stabbed to death by a husband who accused her of cheating, even though he’d been the one having the affair.

  Hundreds of ghosts.

  And now David and Ellen, too.

  As he heard the second gurney on the sidewalk, he turned his back to the house, sucked on the cigarette, and did his best to ignore the sound of the wheels rolling along over the concrete. With all his heart, he wished Ellen would sit up and tell him to put out his damn smoke.