Bachelor Sheriff, page 5
The Harris house stood near the halfway point between Gossamer Ridge and the county line, the nearest house a quarter mile away. Woods encroached on the property from three sides.
Aaron and Riley split up near the house, Riley circling to approach from the west, while Aaron set up closer to the property edge, behind a thick mass of kudzu that had overgrown a scrubby stand of crab apple trees just east of the Harris home.
The house itself was vintage rural Alabama, a dilapidated old farmhouse fallen into chronic disrepair. Its clapboard siding hadn’t seen new paint in at least a decade, the cream color grimy, weathered and peeling in spots. Aaron felt depressed just looking at the place. He wondered what it must feel like to live inside its flaking walls, terrified of the person you’d once loved enough to marry.
They’d gone radio silent this close to the house, the teams communicating through text-messages on silenced cell phones. Aaron felt his phone vibrate and picked it up to see a message from Grace Baker.
DRAPER IN PLACE. GO?
It took a second to realize he was the one who had to make the call. He was the guy with seniority on the scene. He typed “GO,” pausing with his thumb over the send button. Once Melissa Draper arrived at the Harris driveway, any number of unpredictable events could occur, many of which were very bad. There was still time to back out.
She knows the situation. She’s ready to do it. Trust her.
He pressed Send. And waited.
Melissa’s Volkswagen finally appeared around the curve a hundred yards down the road and drove slowly to the edge of the Harris property. She parked on the road, aware that they’d put roadblocks at either end of the road to divert traffic.
Her movements deliberate, she stepped out of the car. Aaron saw her punch a number into her cell phone. They hadn’t had time to wire her for sound, but her voice carried to his position. “Terry, it’s Melissa Draper. Let me talk to Dinah.”
Aaron was also close enough to hear Harris’s roar of rage through the thin walls of the farmhouse.
For a moment Aaron’s vision burned red with the memory of the bruises staining Melissa’s creamy throat, and the urge to break the man’s neck was almost more than he could handle.
He controlled himself with effort, centering his attention on Melissa’s vulnerable profile. She didn’t need his anger. She needed his undivided attention, focused like a laser on her precarious situation.
“I just want to know she’s okay. Why don’t you let her come out and talk to me?” Melissa asked.
“Why don’t I come out and talk to you instead?” Terry bellowed. Aaron thought he heard the walls of the house rattle.
“If that’s what you want. I’m certainly not coming in.”
Nice, Aaron thought. She was leading him right into the trap she was setting.
He couldn’t hear Terry’s response this time, but Melissa’s voice rang clearly in the cold air. “Look out the window, Terry. I came alone. No police. Dinah has always been clear about keeping the police out of her business. I have a duty to respect her wishes. You know that.”
Aaron had a feeling that Dinah would forgive her for that lie, if she got out of this mess alive.
From his vantage point, he spotted the curtain moving in the front window. A man’s face appeared in the pane, morning sunlight casting a glare on the glass, obscuring his features. But what Aaron did see when he lifted his binoculars to his eyes made his blood run cold.
The man held a large black handgun clutched in both hands.
Aaron’s heartbeat stuttered, kicking up to a gallop. He quickly texted the information to the other teams. Riley replied back immediately. “Aiming?”
Aaron checked again. Terry had the gun pointing upward, not outward toward Melissa.
“No, Terry. Please don’t do anything you can’t take back.” Melissa’s voice had softened, but Aaron’s senses seemed to be on full alert, picking up even the most subtle bits of stimuli, from the rough texture of winter-dried mulberry bushes against his cheek to the loamy odor of decaying vegetation beneath his boots. Had Harris told her about the gun, or was she able to see it from her position at the edge of the property?
“At least send Dinah out first. Do you really want this to be how she remembers you? So weak and cowardly?” The contempt in Melissa’s voice caught Aaron off guard.
Was she trying to provoke Harris into hurting her?
Glass shattered. Aaron whipped his gaze from Melissa’s pale profile to the front window in time to see something small and black fly out the window.
“You bitch!” Harris howled through the shattered window. He expounded on his rage in a flood of vicious epithets that set Aaron’s blood to boiling.
Blake Clayton put his hand on Aaron’s arm. “He just got rid of his weapon. He’s not going to be able to reach her before we stop him. Stay cool.”
“He may have a rifle or something like that.”
“As long as he stays there yelling at her, he’s not hurting his wife or going for another weapon. Let it play out. She’s doing a good job with him.”
Too good a job, Aaron thought blackly, expecting Harris to crash through the window any second.
“Don’t put down the phone, Terry,” Melissa called out, her voice firm and strong. “Dinah did what you wanted, didn’t she? She called me here. You’re angry at me, not her. Let her come out so I can make sure she’s okay. Then you and I can talk.”
Harris didn’t answer. With a large section of the window broken, Aaron’s view of the man was unimpeded by glare off the glass. He still hovered at the window, holding his hand up against his chest. It looked bloody—had he cut himself when he threw the gun through the window?
“Terry, come on. You’re supposed to be a man. Are you afraid to come out here and face me?”
Aaron looked over at Melissa. Had she lost her mind? It was one thing to try to talk the man out, but taunting him was only going to make him that much more dangerous.
“She’s got steel—”
Aaron shushed Blake as Harris yelled another stream of crude profanities at Melissa.
“Just words, Terry,” Melissa called. “Afraid to face me now that I’m ready? Why don’t you give it a try?”
“That’s enough,” Aaron growled, starting forward.
Blake grabbed him again. “Harris just disappeared.”
“He could be going for another weapon. We need to get her out of here.” He sent a quick text to Riley, telling him to abort the plan.
Before Riley could respond, the front door of the Harris house opened and Terry Harris strode out, moving at a dangerously fast clip.
“Go, go, go!” Aaron shouted, surging forward as Harris moved toward the pistol he’d thrown into the yard.
Aaron spared a quick look toward Melissa. She’d run back to the Volkswagen and taken cover, thank God.
He turned on the afterburners, wincing as his old knee injury twinged, and hit Harris at full speed, slamming him to the ground. The impact drove the air right of out of Harris’s lungs. He gasped for breath, each attempt at respiration coming with a rattling croak.
“Let him up, let him up!” Hands grabbed Aaron’s arms, tugging him away, but Aaron fought to stay where he was, pinning Harris to the ground with his forearm.
“You’re suffocating him!” Riley’s voice ripped through Aaron’s adrenaline-fueled haze. His brother-in-law jerked him back from Harris, dragging him away.
Four other deputies immediately converged on Harris, cuffing him and hauling him to his feet.
Harris found his breath and howled across the yard at Melissa, calling her names so foul, Aaron almost pulled loose of Riley’s restraining hold to go after the man again.
“Just words,” Riley growled, echoing Melissa’s earlier taunt. “He’s in custody. We have a job to do.”
Aaron struggled against the anger still boiling inside him, stunned by how close he’d just come to killing Terry Harris. If he’d held him in that choke hold another minute—
“We have to go inside, Aaron.” Riley’s grip gentled. “Got to see what kind of damage he did.”
Aaron took a few more deep breaths, forcing his head back to the task at hand. He looked over his shoulder and found Melissa staring at him, her eyes huge in her pale face. She turned away, leaning against the side of her car.
“Let’s go inside,” Riley repeated.
Aaron turned and followed his brother-in-law inside the Harris house, his mind swirling with bleak images of what horrors might lie inside.
“I’M HER ATTORNEY. I have a right to be in there with her.” Melissa stood her ground with the red-haired deputy Grace, who currently barred her way into the Harris home. Aaron and Deputy Patterson had entered the house a few minutes earlier while she was still fighting off a massive wave of queasiness behind her car. But if Dinah was still alive—and Melissa prayed she was—she had a right to an attorney before the police asked her any questions.
Especially someone as reckless and out of control as Aaron Cooper was at the moment.
Aaron appeared in the doorway, filling the space completely. “You can come in,” he told Melissa. “And give Grace’s vest back.”
She tried not to glare at him as she removed the vest, even though her mind brimmed with the violence she’d witnessed from him a few minutes earlier. No matter what Harris had done, no one had a right to throttle him to death the way Aaron had nearly done.
She was right. He was like all the others.
“Is Dinah okay?” she asked briskly.
“Seems to be.” Aaron cupped her elbow.
Melissa jerked her arm away.
Aaron gave her an odd look but said nothing else as he led her into the Harris’s kitchen, where Dinah sat hunched over in one of the old ladder back chairs at the table. Her face was tear-stained but unbruised, to Melissa’s relief.
She crouched by Dinah’s chair. “Are you all right?”
Dinah nodded, sniffling. Melissa got up and found a paper towel roll standing by the sink. She pulled off a couple of sheets and handed them to Dinah, shooting Aaron and the other deputy an indignant look. They couldn’t bother to give the poor woman a napkin to wipe her eyes?
“Where are the children, Mrs. Harris?” Aaron’s voice sounded deceptively gentle.
Dinah didn’t answer.
Melissa put her hand on Dinah’s arm. “It’s okay, Dinah. He’s locked up now. He can’t hurt you. Any of you. Now, where are the boys?”
Dinah met her gaze, her green eyes lifeless. “They’re locked in the cellar.”
“Are they okay, Dinah?”
Dinah’s gaze dropped. She didn’t seem to hear the question, even when Melissa repeated it.
“Where’s the key to the cellar, Dinah?” She tightened her grip on Dinah’s arm. When she still didn’t answer, Melissa looked around the kitchen until she spotted Dinah’s purse lying on the floor in the corner by the refrigerator.
“See if the keys are in her purse,” she told Aaron, her stomach knotting.
Aaron picked up the purse and rifled through it until he found a key ring with several keys.
“I’ll show you where the cellar is.” Melissa rose to her feet and led Aaron down the narrow hallway to the small door that led down to the cellar beneath the house. She tried the door. It was locked.
Aaron tried the keys one at a time. The third key worked. “You should stay here,” he told Melissa.
She shook her head. “If they’re still alive, they’ll be terrified. They know me.”
“And if they’re not?”
She couldn’t let herself think that way. “Let’s go.”
Pocketing the keys, Aaron opened the cellar door and they headed down the stairs.
He led the way, filling the stairwell so completely that Melissa couldn’t see anything ahead of them. He emerged finally at the bottom of the stairs and stopped, blocking Melissa’s view of the room.
Her heart skipped a beat. Why had he stopped?
“I don’t see them,” he said softly.
“Let me look.” She nudged his back, and he stepped aside, giving her an unobstructed view of the cellar.
The room was large for a root cellar, spanning at least half of the farmhouse. The stone walls of the foundation were unadorned here, giving the cellar a cavelike atmosphere. Along one side of the stone walls, Terry Harris had built a long row of rough pine shelves that held Mason jars full of pickles and preserves, half-empty boxes of onions and potatoes and at least a half a year’s worth of commercially canned food.
“Benjy? Ronnie?” Her heart hammered a cadence of dread against her breastbone. “It’s Miss Melissa. Are you in here?”
She listened over the rush of blood pulsing in her ears. At first, she heard nothing. But the softest of rustles in the back corner of the cellar drew her gaze in that direction.
“I heard that,” Aaron murmured.
“Stay here,” Melissa said quietly. She walked deeper into the cellar, toward a stack of large cardboard boxes that created a half wall between the door and the back of the cellar. Another rustling noise, louder than before, drew her around the boxes into the makeshift alcove.
Benjy and Ronnie huddled there, gazing at her with two pairs of fearful green eyes. Anxiety lined their little faces, making them look old beyond their years.
“Is Daddy still here?” the older one, Ronnie, whispered.
“Your daddy’s gone away.” She glanced at Aaron, who watched from his position at the bottom of the stairs.
“He’ll be back,” Ronnie said bleakly. “He always comes back.” He reached over and wrapped his thin arm around Benjy’s narrow shoulders. “Mama said I should take care of Benjy. I did good, didn’t I, Miss Melissa?”
Melissa blinked back hot tears. “You did great, Ronnie.” She crouched beside them and took Ronnie’s small hand. “I’m very proud of you. I bet your mama will be, too.”
“Where’s Mama?” Benjy whimpered. “I want Mama.”
Melissa turned to look at Aaron again, but he wasn’t there. She heard him climbing the stairs. What was he doing?
“Mama’s upstairs. She needs to talk to some friends of hers for a few minutes, and then we can go see her.” She wiped away the tears spilling from Benjy’s eyes and pulled the little boy into her arms. “But I talked to her myself. She’s okay. You don’t have to worry about her.”
“Daddy hits Mama.” Shame reddened Ronnie’s face.
“I know.” Melissa stroked his cheek. “But he’s not going to hit her anymore.” Not if she had anything to say about it. And since he’d attacked her instead of Dinah this time, she’d have quite a bit to say about it.
She heard the door open upstairs and two sets of footsteps on the stairs. Pulling Benjy up on her hip, Melissa stood to see who was coming.
Aaron appeared first, followed by Dinah Harris. She’d combed her hair and washed her face sometime in the last few minutes, Melissa noted, and there was a bright if unconvincing smile pasted on her pale face.
“Mama!” Benjy wriggled frantically in Melissa’s arms, and she let him go. He and Ronnie raced each other to their mother’s waiting arms.
Melissa followed slowly, her gaze moving away from the heartbreaking reunion to level with Aaron’s. He nodded for her to join him by the stairs.
“Quite a change,” she murmured.
“I just reminded her she was still a mother,” Aaron responded quietly.
Melissa wondered just how tough he’d been with Dinah to bring about her sudden change of demeanor. Aaron Cooper was apparently the kind of man who thought everybody could be bullied into doing his will, no matter how good his intentions might be. She’d known enough men like that to last her a lifetime.
She certainly didn’t need another one.
Chapter Five
It took only a little coaxing, and a reminder that Terry Harris might get bail despite their best efforts, to convince Dinah that she and the children needed to go to a shelter for a few days. Melissa helped Dinah pack bags with a few days’ worth of clothes for each of them. The shelter would provide the food and toiletries they’d need.
Outside, Aaron waited for them, standing with Riley Patterson and the red-haired deputy who’d lent Melissa her bulletproof vest. Aaron took the bags from Melissa and Dinah, looping both handles of the canvas bags over one large hand.
Melissa noted that the cruiser holding Terry Harris had already left the scene. She released a little sigh of relief, glad the boys didn’t have to see their father in custody after everything else they’d already witnessed in their short lives.
“Mrs. Harris, this is Deputy Baker. She’s going to drive you to the shelter. We’ve already called ahead to make sure there are rooms for you.”
Dinah looked anxiously at Melissa. “I don’t want to be separated from the boys.”
“The rooms are right next to each other,” Grace Baker told Dinah, her expression kind. “There’s a door between them that you can leave open if you want. I asked for that special for you.”
Dinah’s look of surprise made Melissa’s heart hurt. Had she so rarely seen kindness in her life that a little extra attention to her comfort was shocking to her?
She felt guilty that she hadn’t probed deeper into Dinah’s life, beyond the sketchy information the woman had given her once Melissa had signed on to be her pro bono attorney. She knew almost nothing about Dinah’s life before her marriage. Had she been abused as a child, too? Had she seen marriage to Terry Harris as a way out of a miserable home situation?
Unfortunately, juggling her office duties and her pro bono work gave Melissa far too little time to dig more deeply into her clients’ situations, beyond getting them out of danger and into a better situation.
Or maybe she didn’t want to dig deeper. Maybe she was afraid looking too closely into her clients’ lives would only stir up painful old memories she’d spent years overcoming.
Melissa watched Deputy Baker leading Dinah and the children to another cruiser. “I should go with her.”
“I don’t think you should,” Aaron said.
