Father Christmas Page 13

  They reached the landing and she turned right, entering a small squad room with six desks occupying the cramped space and a glass-walled office overlooking it. No one was in the squad room. She ventured in, thinking that if she could figure out which desk was John’s, she could leave him a scathing note about his carelessness toward his son. Before she could locate the desk, the door to the glassed-walled office opened and a man emerged. He was of average height, his chin softened by age. “Can I help you?” he asked, peering at her through thick eyeglasses.

  “I’m looking for John Russo. I’m Molly Saunders, the director of the preschool where his son Michael is a student.”

  The man looked troubled. “Didn’t they call you? Someone was supposed to call you.”

  Molly’s anger was doused by a shower of icy fear, colder than the snow falling outside. “No one called me.”

  “He—uh...” The man glanced toward Michael, then wove among the desks to Molly’s side, so he could speak in a softer voice. “I’m Lieutenant Coffey,” he identified himself. “John ran into a bit of trouble today. He’s at Arlington Memorial Hospital.”

  “Oh, my God.” The words emerged in a quiet rush, and she instinctively tightened her grip on Michael’s hand. She responded to the lieutenant’s words not as a teacher but as John’s friend, someone who cared about him and his child. “Is he all right? What happened?”

  “Well...” He sighed. “He brought down a perp. Unfortunately, the perp had a knife.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said again, only this time she scarcely had the breath to pronounce the words.

  “He was taken directly to Arlington Memorial, and he told one of the uniforms at the scene to make sure someone called his son’s preschool. But with one thing and another...” Lieutenant Coffey sighed again and lowered his eyes. “I guess it slipped past us. I’m sorry.” He glanced down at Michael again.

  Michael’s wide, dark eyes focused on Lieutenant Coffey and then on Molly. He looked worried. He couldn’t have understood everything the man had said, but he understood enough to know something terrible was going on. “I want Daddy,” he said in a tremulous voice.”

  “I know you do.” Molly staggered through her thoughts, trying to construct a plan of action. If she brought Michael to the hospital, he would be with his father. But what if his father had been gravely injured? What if he was right this minute in intensive care, plugged in to tubes and monitors, fighting for his life?

  The perp had a knife. The lieutenant’s voice echoed inside her skull, making her tremble, filling her mind with horrifying possibilities. The perp had a knife.

  She couldn’t take Michael home with her, even though she would like to. It would be too presumptuous. John had withdrawn from any personal relationship with her. She couldn’t just take over as a surrogate parent in this crisis.

  If he was in desperate shape, his relatives would have been called. He had all those brothers and sisters—some of them might be pacing the hospital’s waiting room right now. She could bring Michael and let one of his aunts or uncles take him for the night.

  Her heart pounded. Her eyes burned with fear. But she couldn’t let Michael know how frightened she was for his father. She had to make sure he was safely in the care of someone who loved him. After she did that, she could worry about John.

  She sent a silent prayer heavenward, then gave Michael’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go find your daddy, okay?”

  He smiled up at her with so much trust, it was all she could do not to burst into tears. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go see Daddy.”

  Chapter Nine

  WHEN THE NOVOCAINE FINALLY WORE OFF, John’s right arm was going to hurt like hell. But right now, he wasn’t feeling any pain.

  What he was feeling was a heady mix of exhaustion and exhilaration, a strange emotional high that came from the realization that he had outwitted death.

  From the moment he’d set down his bell and left his cash-filled bucket to check out the mysterious shadows he’d seen dancing in the alleyway between a high-end card shop and a jeweler on Hauser Boulevard, he’d sensed that he wasn’t going to have a pleasant time of it. A good cop trusted his intuitions. Just the way an allergic person might feel an itch in the presence of dust or cats, a cop felt itches in the presence of bad news. By the time John saw the knife, he was itching all over.

  It was a kid, a street punk, dressed straight out of the street punk manual. The woman wasn’t much older, but she was better groomed—probably an office worker out to do some Christmas shopping on her lunch hour. The knife had a six-inch blade that could have stripped the pelt off a bear, and it was pressed to the woman’s throat. The kid was asking her to do something obscene to him when John drew his revolver out from under his Santa tunic and said, “Police. Drop it.”

  The kid didn’t drop the knife, although he did drop the woman, shoving her against the grimy brick wall and bolting, around the rear of the card shop and back out the other side onto Hauser. John took off after him.

  On the sidewalk, the kid tried to lose himself in the milling crowds of holiday shoppers. John tucked his revolver back into the elastic waist band of his slacks; there were too many innocent people in the vicinity to risk taking a shot. The kid still had his knife, though. He gripped it in his fist and plowed through the throngs, which had the good sense to part before him like the Red Sea, leaving a path for John as well. Anyone wise enough not to block the path of a creep with a hunting knife was also wise enough not to block the path of a really angry cop charging down the sidewalk in a Santa Claus costume.

  As he ran, John considered the kid’s knife, but only in the most reflexive way. There was a chance of injury—serious injury—and he factored it into the equation. He wasn’t one of those crackpots who acted as if they were immortal, or who measured their manhood by how many stupid chances they took. But he had witnessed a felony—assault with a deadly weapon— and it was his job to bring the bastard down.

  Pedestrians screamed and gasped as he sprinted past them, but he tuned them out, hoping they’d stay out of his way. He would likely run over anyone who crossed his path at the wrong time, but if he slowed down, he’d lose the perp. Instead he ran faster, harder, closing in on the kid until he was near enough to attempt a flying tackle. Feeling the exertion in his thighs, he leaped forward, snagged one of the kid’s ankles, and landed him.

  John saw the sharp glint of silver in the punk’s hand as they tangled and rolled along the slushy pavement. He didn’t feel the first cut, but he heard the rip of his sleeve as the blade gashed through the red flannel. They wrestled some more, and he noticed large circles of red spreading into the slush. But even then, he felt nothing more than anger that this thug, this SOB, this useless piece of human excrement who had hauled a woman into an alley and threatened her life, dared to resist him.

  He used his hand to deflect the second slash of the knife, but the blade sliced through his glove, stinging wickedly. More blood leaked onto the sidewalk. John’s blood.

  Fueled by rage, indignation, and the fierce sense of justice that kept good cops from going bad or giving up, he slugged the punk in the jaw, snapping his head back. Stunned by the blow, the kid deflated, his eyes getting wilder but his body losing power. Before he could regain his breath, John had him on his stomach, the knife tumbling from his fingers as John cuffed his hands behind him.

  Only after John had rolled the kid onto his back again, with his manacled hands under him and John’s knees planted firmly on his chest, did John turn off his reflexes and turn on his brain. Struggling to catch his breath, he reached under his tunic for his radio. When he pulled it out and lifted it to his face to call for assistance, he realized that his glove was soaked with blood and his fingers were tingling.

  If he tried to stand, he probably would collapse. So he just stayed where he was, sitting on the bastard while he called for back-up. He remained on the chilly sidewalk, watching his blood leak in dark stains thro
ugh the cheery red fabric of the Santa suit, and waited for help.

  He might have faded to black once or twice on the ride over to Arlington Memorial, but all in all, his injuries weren’t critical. No major arteries had been severed, no tendons cut. Eighteen stitches closed the wound in his forearm, and a flock of butterfly-clips currently held the skin of his palm together.

  He was alive. He’d nailed a prick who didn’t deserve the space he took up in the world. He’d saved a woman from an assault. He’d gotten cut. He was bloody but unbowed. He had survived.

  Definitely a high.

  The doctor molded wads of bandage into the curve of his palm, arched his fingers around the packing, and then wrapped about a mile of gauze around it. “If you use this hand, it’s not going to heal,” he said. “I’m binding it this way so you won’t be able to move it and reopen the cut.”

  “Uh-huh.” John’s tongue felt as dry and rough-textured as the bandage the doctor was using to tie up his hand. He needed a drink. As soon as he picked up Mike and got home, he was going to pour himself a generous portion of something strong.

  “I know you’re right-handed, so this isn’t going to be easy for you,” the doctor commiserated. “But it’s a tricky wound. Hands can take forever to heal if you don’t keep them motionless.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s your name?” the doctor asked evenly, measuring off a strip of adhesive tape and snipping it with a scissors.

  John frowned. “John Russo. One of the uniforms took care of the paperwork—”

  The doctor cut him off with a laugh. “I just want to make sure I’m not losing you. You have a glassy look in your eyes, Detective. It isn’t too late to go into shock.”

  “I’m not in shock.”

  “Good. If you were, I’d admit you for observation.”

  “Come on, Doc. It’s a scratch.” He eyed his bare arm wrapped in white bandage, and then his immobilized hand. “Two scratches,” he amended.

  “And some bruised ribs,” the doctor reminded him. As best John could figure, the perp had kicked him in the chest a couple of times while they’d been rolling around on the sidewalk. He’d been wearing thick-soled shit-kicker boots. John had a few technicolor welts on the left side of his chest, but they didn’t hurt, either. Not yet.

  His shoulders ached, but he suspected that was from sitting on an examining table with no back support. He and the doctor were enclosed in a small corner of the emergency room, a nook blocked off from the ER waiting area by a pale green curtain. The Santa tunic had been cut off him by an earnest intern who hadn’t looked old enough to shave. Seeing the costume reduced to rags brought a wry smile to John’s lips. Maybe, finally, he wouldn’t have to play undercover Santa Claus anymore.

  “What time is it?” he asked. “I’ve got to pick up my kid.”

  “You’re not going anywhere until I release you,” the doctor reminded him. “Wasn’t someone from your squad supposed to bring some clothes to the hospital for you?” He eyed John’s blood-spattered Santa trousers and shook his head.

  “They’re probably outside in the waiting room.”

  Nodding, the doctor smoothed the last strip of tape around John’s hand. “I’ll see if they’ve arrived. Don’t you dare move while I’m gone. I mean it, Detective. You stand up too quickly and you’re going to keel over and smack your head on the floor. The last thing you need right now is a concussion.”

  “Uh-huh.” He secretly tested his thumb to make sure the doctor hadn’t taped it too tight. He wasn’t planning to play the Minute Waltz on the piano any time in the foreseeable future, but he had to have some movement in his fingers. If he couldn’t do the most basic things—button his jeans, grip the steering wheel in his car—he’d be no use to himself or Mike.

  The doctor set his tools neatly on a wheeled tray, then shot John a warning look and pulled back the green curtain.

  “Daddy!” Mike shrieked from the waiting area, and a blur of energy flew toward John, barely slowing enough for him to make out the yellow rubber boots, the blue-and-green parka, the mittens flapping loosely from a cord strung through the jacket sleeves. Then he saw Mike’s face. His tousled hair, his shining eyes, his dazzling smile.

  John couldn’t imagine a more welcome sight. And then he could imagine one, because it materialized before him: Mike hurtling joyously at him, and Molly behind Mike, loitering near the curtain, cautious but hopeful, her eyes damp and her smile fraught with worry.

  Had she been crying? For him?

  If she’d shed any tears, it had probably been because she’d been stuck taking care of Mike for an extra hour, and Mike in top form could reduce anyone to tears. John concluded that Mike must have reduced Molly to weeping because it was a safer explanation than the alternative: that she cared to cry over him.

  Whether or not she cared, she obviously didn’t feel comfortable enough to enter his little curtained compartment. She held his gaze for an immeasurable moment, then lowered her eyes to his naked chest, wincing when she spotted the bruises. She lifted her gaze back to his face.

  “You’re all right.” It was half a question, half a sigh. Her voice wavered.

  “Yeah.”

  Mike was skipping and twirling around the foot of the table, trying to figure out a way to scramble into his father’s lap. “We were at the policeman place,” he reported, bustling with excitement and self-importance. “We saw a tree. They have a very, very, very big tree. This big!” He extended his arms as wide as he could. “Is Santa Claus gonna leave toys for the policeman people?”

  “I think he’s going to leave toys that the policemen can give to needy children in town,” John explained. The Arlington Fire Department ran the city’s Toys-For-Tots program, but the police force usually collected donations for the firefighters.

  “Look at this!” Mike touched the bulky bandages covering John’s hand. “Your hand looks so big! It’s funny, Daddy!”

  “It’s all gauze and tape,” John told Mike, ruffling his hair with his left hand. He wanted to cup his hand around the back of Mike’s head and cling to him. He was beginning to come down from the high, and as he descended the truth caught up with him. If the punk had nicked a vein he might have bled to death. He might have died on Hauser Boulevard, on a cold, wet sidewalk, in front of holiday shoppers. He might have died and never had the chance to see or touch or talk to his son again.

  But if he wrapped his arms around Mike, the good arm and the bad, and hugged as hard as he wanted to, until he popped the sutures the doctor had tacked into his arm, until his muscles ached and his bruised ribs cracked and he squeezed tears from his own eyes, he would only frighten Mike. The boy didn’t understand what John had just been through. He couldn’t begin to understand. At his age, he shouldn’t have to understand such awful things.

  Mike’s hair felt downy beneath his fingers, still baby-soft. John traced the curve of Mike’s skull, down to the hollow at the nape of his neck. So precious, he thought. His little boy. His little boy might have lost his daddy the way he’d already lost his mommy.

  But he hadn’t. Fate had been kind to Mike this time. To Mike and John both.

  He raised his eyes back to Molly, who still hovered near the curtains, watching him. He wondered what she saw in his face, what his eyes might be giving away. “I’m okay,” he murmured, needing reassurance as much as she did.

  “I know.” Her gaze journeyed to Mike, who wriggled out from under his father’s hand and was bouncing around the curtained nook again. “What happens now?”

  “Someone from my squad was supposed to bring me my clothes.” He glanced down at his bare chest. Those bruises were nasty. No wonder she kept gaping at them.

  “There are a lot of officers out there,” she said. “At least six of them.”

  He eyed the clock hanging on the wall behind the table. “They probably ended their shifts and came over. When one of us gets hurt, we do that.”

  “That’s nice.” Her voice sounded rusty. “Do you
want me to see if one of them has your clothes?”

  What he wanted was for her to stay right where she was, in his line of vision. Actually, no—he wanted her to come closer, so he could hug her the way he couldn’t hug Mike. He wanted to absorb her strength. He wanted her soft, warm curves to remind him that he was alive.

  Mike found the blood-pressure cuff dangling from a wall rack and tore the Velcro with a loud rasp, jolting John and clearing his mind. He glanced at his son, then back at Molly. As he continued his descent from euphoria, he realized he was cold. Cold and tired.

  “The doctor is getting my clothing,” he said.

  “Even with clothes, John, you can’t drive home like that.” She gestured toward his right hand.

  “Shh.” He peered toward the curtain, wondering if the doctor had overheard her. “If they think I can’t drive home, they’ll make me spend the night here.”

  “Maybe you should stay the night. Just in case.”

  “No.” Arlington Memorial was a fine facility, but John had heard enough stories about people who went into hospitals to have a nose job and wound up paralyzed for life, people who had the wrong leg amputated or the wrong kidney removed, people who had gone in for routine tests, picked up bacterial infections and died. Besides, if he had to spend the night at Arlington Memorial, who would take care of Mike?

  Molly’s earnest gaze gave him his answer. Of course she would take care of Mike, if necessary.

  But John was too selfish to want her to take care of his son. What he wanted was for her to take care of him.

  Cripes, where had that thought come from? Maybe he was in shock, after all—or else he was still tripping on adrenaline. He shouldn’t want Molly doing anything for him. She’d already done too much, taking care of Mike for the past hour, and then bringing him here.

  “What I was thinking,” she said quietly, “was that maybe I could take you and Michael home. A police officer could drive your car to your house, right? You shouldn’t be driving tonight. The roads are still a little slippery, and you...” Her gaze wandered to his chest again, to his lap where his right hand rested, to the thick bandage taped around his forearm. “You shouldn’t drive.”