A Good Girl

CHAPTER 3

There was nothing he could do but stand there, in a calm that was eerier than before the storm, and watch as rescue crews dug through the rubble that had once been an abandoned duplex on a block that housed mostly indigents. Two homes on the street were in shambles, belongings mixed in with drywall, nails and glass. Several cars had been damaged by falling branches. So far, no one was dead.

The home worst hit had been vacant.

The policeman, Officer Mason, who'd been inside the squad car in front of the other home—the duplex with two walls left standing over a pile of debris—was alive and conscious, on his way to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. They weren't sure they'd be able to save both his legs.

Or that he'd ever walk again.

People, mostly in uniforms of various kinds, swarmed what was usually a deserted street. Bill stayed out of their way. And prayed.

Officials believed there were two children buried somewhere beneath the drywall and shingles just feet away from him. They said that case manager Mary Anderson was with them.

Bill hoped that while Officer Mason, who'd been the only other person on the block when the storm took its sudden turn, had been unconscious, Mary and the children had escaped to safety. He hoped they were huddled somewhere safe, keeping warm, drinking hot tea and waiting for the authorities to come get them.

He knew better. He was the authorities. If there'd been a call reporting the appearance of these three, he'd have heard it.

Pacing, hands in the pockets of his gray dress slacks, he hunched inside the long dark unlined coat he'd pulled from his closet only hours before, and willed Mary to stay alive. He wasn't her next of kin. He wasn't anything official at all. He and Mary dated. Monogamously, on his part at least, for the past couple of years.

He assumed on her part, too. They'd never discussed it.

They talked about life. Laughed at the same things.

Discussed as much as they could about their individual cases.

Voices rose from workers digging through the piles of rubbish. Loud. Calling out. Had they found something? Someone?

"Can I get you anything, Detective?"

A uniformed beat cop, female, stopped in front of him.

"No, thanks," he said, shaking his head. "You all just do your jobs. Don't mind me."

"Holler if you need anything," she said, continuing toward the next group of waiting professionals. Everyone was there, ready to do their prospective jobs—depending on what emerged from the rubble. Dead bodies. Or live ones.

The road was roped off at both ends. Crowds of people had gathered behind the barricades. No one was allowed at the scene. Not even reporters.

He'd met Mary at a crime scene. A drug bust he'd been working on for months. A meth lab run by a husband-and-wife team who also happened to be the parents of five-and six-year-old boys. Bill was pretty certain that the couple were pawns in a bigger game—a gang expanding from Atlantic City. He hadn't been ready to bring them down. But social services had been called by the school, and Mary had gone in to take their kids away from them. Dad turned on her. Bill had arrived just as the paramedics were trying to talk Mary into a trip to the E.R. to be checked out.

She'd chosen to stay and talk to Bill. He'd never forget the blue eyes gazing up at him from the bruised and broken skin. There'd been no fear in them. Only resolution. She'd wanted to make sure that the man who'd backhanded her never got near his boys again.