Survival Clause, стр. 63
“She took her!” David bellowed. “She took my baby sister!”
Rafe set him upright and dusted him off and slapped him on the back a couple of times. “Good job. You got her. Good job.” He met my eyes over David’s head.
“She’s OK,” I said, patting Carrie’s warm little back. The screams were down to hiccupping sobs now, and she was starting to snuffle like she was hungry. “Take care of David. I’ve got Carrie.”
Rafe nodded, and put a hand on David’s shoulder. “C’mon, son. Let’s finish this up.”
David nodded, still vibrating with fury. I made my way over to him and bussed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
He nodded, and his eyes fastened on Carrie. “She all right?”
“She’s fine. Just shook up and hungry. She’ll never even remember this.”
“Not sure I’ll ever forget it,” David said, and followed Rafe toward the corner of the house. The bystanders gave way for the two of them like the Red Sea before Moses.
Grimaldi, meanwhile, had dragged the stalker to her feet. “You have the right to remain silent…” she began, as she marched the girl toward the street in the wake of the other two. The woman’s hands were cuffed behind her, and she had tears streaking down her face.
Charlotte crept out of the crowd inside the French doors and made her way to me. “What the hell, Savannah?”
Blame the reaction of coming off an adrenaline high, but it sounded like such an unlikely thing to come out of her mouth that I snorted, and then started to laugh. After a second, the laughter turned to sobs—blame that on the reaction, too—and Charlotte put her arms around me, and around Carrie, as well. Some of the bystanders shuffled their feet awkwardly, and some started to drift away.
“Show’s over,” I managed. “If you’re interested in making an offer on the house, my number’s on the sign out front.”
“We’ll fix the bathroom window,” Charlotte added. “We’re getting good at that.”
We were. And we would. But probably not tonight. All I wanted was to take my baby home, and batten down the hatches, and celebrate the fact that she was safe, and I still had her. The window could wait.
So we boarded it up, and shooed the remaining people out, and locked the doors, and went home. Charlotte to her kids and her parents, and I to my empty house and my dog.
Word spread about what had happened, of course, so I spent a lot of my time fielding phone calls. Mother called to make sure Carrie and David were all right. Dix and Catherine did, too. Grimaldi called to tell me that the girl, whose name was Jessica Lloyd, had been booked on kidnapping and stalking charges.
“It was a good thing she tried to take the baby,” she told me, “because without that, we might have had to let her go. There’s nothing illegal about taking pictures of people and posting them on social media. It happens to celebrities all the time.”
Of course it did. And can’t be much fun for them, either. “Rafe isn’t a celebrity. He’s a cop. And his safety depends on people not knowing too much about where he is and what he’s doing.”
“You and I know that,” Grimaldi said, “but the law doesn’t.”
She let that sink in for a second before she added, “But because she took the baby out of the house and, we assume, tried to walk away with her, she not only demonstrated that she was a threat, but she committed a felony. So we can charge her with some things that are going to keep her locked up for a long time.”
Good.
“There’s just one thing.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. I had a feeling that I knew where this was going.
“She won’t make bail. I’ll make sure the DA sets it high enough that she can’t meet it, and that’s if they agree to bail at all. I’m going to push that they won’t, and I’m sure between me and your brother and Bob, we can prevail on Todd Satterfield to prevail on his boss to deny bail.”
Excellent. “So what’s the problem?” I asked.
“Her public defender will most likely insist on a psychiatric evaluation. I would.”
I would, too. “You mean, they’ll discover that she’s nuts.”
“My guess is they will,” Grimaldi said. “Sane people don’t act that way.”
No, they don’t. “So what does that mean? They won’t let her out, will they? She’ll still be locked up, right?”
Grimaldi assured me that she would be. “It just won’t be in prison. It’ll be some psychiatric hospital instead. For inmates.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” I said. “I don’t need her to suffer. I just want to make sure she can’t come near my husband or my baby again.”
Or David, but he was probably safe in Nashville by now.
“She won’t,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“Thank you.”
She sounded embarrassed. “No problem. Are you still willing to go investigating with me tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said. “What are we doing?”
And did she know that Rafe and Bob—and perhaps Dix—had plans to visit Art Mullinax to test out her theory that he’d killed Kent Jurgensson?
“I thought we’d take a walk around Mullinax’s back forty,” Grimaldi said.
Oh. “Um…”
I could hear her eyebrows going up. “Problem?”
“Not exactly. I mean…”
She waited, and since I’m just about the world’s worst liar, and not much of a prevaricator, I broke within the first few seconds. “I told Rafe what you said. About Mullinax and Jurgensson’s remains. And then we told Bob. And the two of them decided to go pay a visit on Mullinax tomorrow. Dix may be going with them.”
Grimaldi sighed. I waited for her to start chastising me, but instead she said, “Good time to explore the back forty, then, while they’re keeping him busy at the house.”
That was one