Baltimore Station Widower Read online

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE Baltimore Station Widower

  Prologue

  Ch.1

  Ch.2

  Ch.3

  Ch.4

  Ch.5

  Ch.6

  Ch.7

  Ch.8

  Ch.9

  Ch.10

  Ch.11

  Ch.12

  Ch.13

  Ch.14

  Ch.15

  Ch.16

  Ch.17

  Ch.18

  Ch.19

  Ch.20

  Ch.21

  Ch.22

  Ch.23

  Ch.24

  Ch.25

  Ch.26

  Ch.27

  Ch.28

  Ch.29

  Ch.30

  Ch.31

  Back Matter

  Letter from Penny

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Baltimore Station Widower

  Prologue

  Charles Wood

  When they’d first broken in Charles was sure he had been in another part of the house, in another room. He told the first responder that he’d been in the...laundry room? Maybe the dining room? The house was dark because it was late, later than they would usually stay up. Megan had insisted on finishing watching some crap on the TV show, and he couldn’t go to sleep if she was still downstairs; being a light sleeper he hated when she woke him up while getting into bed and sometimes being awake was just easier. When he called 911, he'd said it had been a burglary gone wrong or something. He sat there, unable to look down at her body, staring at the hole the bullet had drilled in the wall through the open living room door. When the officer arrived, Charles was waiting, holding his son tight, shielding him from it all, his shirt soaked with his sons tears. He didn’t let Jack go as he explained what had happened.

  Muffled voices had come from another part of the house. Charles didn’t know from where, but because one of the doors was kicked in, he assumed that’s how they’d gotten in. Footsteps had pitter-pattered somewhere nearby. They'd gone through the kitchen and missed him by sheer chance. He thought it had been the TV. Fear had stopped him going nearer to the sound, as he realised that they weren’t alone in their own home.

  He wasn’t able to tell, over the phone or to anybody now in his home, how many people had entered. Perhaps it had only been one? Maybe two? They hadn't talked while they'd been in the house. No voices or other sound in the house had tipped him off to the danger that they were in and if they had, he hadn’t heard it. He'd shuffled back, away from the kitchen towards the hall, hoping to get away from wherever they were. To find Jack, then Megan, to warn them.

  He told the officer that getting to his son, Jack, was the thought that pushed him to finally make his move, was what he told the first officer on the scene.

  He told her about the year it had snowed, and Jack had hidden behind a wall, the elevated platform, allowing him to reach Charles’ height and dump snow down the back of Charles’ mechanic overalls on his way to work. He had spent the entire day wearing an ice-cold shirt, and he'd thought it had been the worst thing in the world at the time. But not knowing where his son was had definitely been worse.

  As he'd gone to the door there had been more footsteps. Not Jack’s footsteps. He was too small to make such a noise and hadn’t been wearing shoes either. He was supposed to be in bed. It was late. Charles couldn’t hear his voice anywhere, yet that’s when another voice piqued his attention.

  It was Megan. Her voice had grown louder, yet it hadn’t sounded like she was getting any closer.

  “Put it down,” Megan said.

  At the time, the words hadn’t meant anything to Charles. Put what down? There was an entire spectrum of things that this intruder could have been holding. He had wanted to know, but now, he just wished he hadn't found out the way he had. He wished it hadn't cost him his wife.

  As more police arrived, he cried into his hands. He told her that all he'd been thinking about was the whereabouts of his son. He told her he felt like a coward for that. He told himself that she could handle herself.

  But deep down he knew the real reason he hadn't gone after her when he'd heard her say, “Put that down.” He knew he couldn't have told her that though. After all, just because he wasn’t in love with Megan, it didn’t mean he had killed her.

  It wasn't until he saw the look on the first responders face that he realized he had said that aloud.

  1

  Danielle Anderson

  “Here we go,” Danielle muttered to herself, rolling her tense shoulders back.

  There seemed to be only a few times in the day that left her without undue stress. She moved through the office slowly, plodding down the row, nodding at a few familiar faces, wincing at the fact that they were so familiar.

  Danielle knew she had been in the office too long when she started to notice the changes in the marks on the wallpaper. There was a spot outside the waiting room that hadn't been there two years ago, probably left by a clients fist, then plastered over, hidden. This wasn’t what she had imagined when she had chosen to pursue a career in law, or joined Davis & Davis, specialists in hate crimes and systemic injustice. Danielle had envisioned a life of constant cases, yet the pool of crime, real crimes, was always smaller than what she had imagined and was rarely interesting.

  She felt almost guilty at how her mind had to work because of her job—preying on the misfortune of others, hoping that they are the victims of corruption or hate so each day wouldn't be a slog. Sometimes she caught herself wondering when the next interesting crime would happen, and she'd feel like a monster for thinking about it. She'd always soothe her guilt by picking up a few pro-bono cases for a few weeks, only to end up thinking the same things about them. There were always enough pro-bonos to go around at Davis & Davis, the brothers enjoyed giving back to the community.

  Had it really been almost eleven years? The thought churned her stomach. To know that she had walked around that same building, fighting cases and filing paper, the two sometimes didn’t seem to go hand in hand. The job of a lawyer involved leading a double life. Her office persona was in a constant conflict with her case-fighting, witness-interviewing mask. Conflicting the dull with the serious.

  It was turning out to be a particularly miserable month. The boiler had broken down, leaving the entire office as cold and miserable as it looked from the outside. The only source of warmth in her job came from an electric heater and slightly chemical-tasting coffee. She didn’t even like coffee. There were rarely cases that resulted in happily ever afters in the real world, a place that to Danielle felt so devoid of warmth that Danielle spent the nights wrapped in brightly colored blankets, just to stop the cold from seeping into the rest of her life. She told herself it was working.

  Still, she couldn’t complain about her life too much. She glanced at the line of photos leading up to her office. In each one was someone who had been falsely accused or a victim of the system in some way. She’d come to Davis & Davis for a reason. The pay wasn’t it; it was knowing that someday she’d find a case where she would make a difference.

  There was already a stack of papers waiting for Danielle at her desk. If she’d been a theatre worker, she’d have described her current work as 'working in the wings', the boring, practical grind that had to take place, little cases, a never ending stream of them. Nothing useful, except for the people they helped, that made it almost worth it.

  Someone knocked on the door as she placed down her cup of coffee. “Come in,” she replied.

  She stood still, as Mr. Davis, the elder Mr. Davis, opened the door and leaned into the room. She could count the number of times she’d seen him on
one hand, including office parties. Danielle smiled at him, positioning herself in front of the paperwork, hoping that it’d disappear if she hid it. If he saw the height of the pile, he’d wonder what she does all day.

  “Can I come in Danielle? There’s a bit of a problem.”

  She winced. Those were not words you wanted to hear from your boss.

  “Of course, sir.”

  She drew back a chair for him and took her place as he shuffled into the room. She already knew why he was here, what he was going to ask her. She had planned to visit his brother after getting comfortable, to tell him that, as always, she didn’t take cases in Baltimore.

  She’d seen the news this morning: “Renowned Baltimore Officer Shot Dead in Home; Husband Held as Suspect.”

  As soon as she’d seen the headline, she knew she’d be getting a visit from a Mr. Davis. But she hadn’t expected the older of the pair.

  “I’ve got a case for you,” he said. A sentence that she had been dying to hear for far too long. But she knew she was going to have to say no to his request. There wasn’t enough money in the world to take her back to that city. She wondered how many times she’d have to explain this, and if one day she’d just start wearing a shirt that said, “Anywhere but Baltimore.”

  “I can’t take it, si-” He raised his hand to cut her off.

  “It’s a personal request. The client is on the phone right now.” These weren’t the words that Danielle had expected. By no means was she well known outside the firm. She’d never had a personal request for representation. “Someone has called you with their one phone call. He’s on hold right now.”

  She couldn’t think of anyone that might ask for her personally. She sat down, picked up her coffee with one hand, and the phone with the other.

  “Hello?”

  “Dani?”

  She cringed. That wasn’t her name. The voice on the other end of the phone was deep, a rumbling purr that even after so long she still recognized. She maintained a professional tone. How dare he call her? And worse, how dare he call her Dani?

  “This is Danielle Anderson speaking on behalf of Davis & Davis.”

  “My mistake, Mrs. Anderson.”

  “Ms. Anderson,” she corrected. “Is this Charles Wood?”

  “It is.” He said, his voice calm and even, concealing his true feelings, as it always had. It left her unable to deduce whether or not he was scared, nervous, or angry. Or maybe he was all of these things.

  Every particle of energy in her body was focused on steadying her hand, not permitting herself to melt at the sound of his voice, not in front of her boss. No matter how many feelings had come flooding back upon hearing him. She was twelve years older and stronger. Just because he called her Dani didn’t mean she’d take the case. It was probably something minor, and pointless that even Megan and her friends on the force couldn’t wave away for her husband.

  “What can I help you with?”

  “I’m at the police station.” She knew that ,and she almost cut him off. “They think I killed Megan. I want you to represent me.”

  She froze. She wasn’t sure how long it took her to process what he had said. They thought he killed Megan. She almost laughed, holding it back with one hand. He had to be joking. He couldn’t kill anyone, least of all Megan.

  After all, he loved Megan. He loved her enough to break up with Danielle for her. Danielle took her hand away from her mouth.

  “Can you explain to me what you remember?” She had to keep her feelings out of this. She had to gulp them down and not let personal prejudices or vendettas get in the way of this case. Even if she wasn’t well known at large, she was still respected in the firm. She couldn’t throw that many years of hard work down the drain in front of her boss.

  “I was in the dining room when I heard a gunshot go off from where Megan was,” he said. His voice remained steady and monotonous. Mr. Davis pushed the file across the desk to her. She flicked through it, scanning the facts that had been sent through on the case so far.

  “Right, but it says here in the file that the only fingerprints found on the gun were yours and your...son’s.” It hurt. She couldn’t deny how much it stung. How far he’d moved on without her.

  She couldn’t say it out loud, but some small, smug, ugly part of her was reveling in it. She’d always felt that karma would eventually catch up with Megan…now it had.

  “My son picked it up after she was shot. He’d been woken up by the shot and came downstairs. I took it from him. Any responsible parent would.”

  She knew it could easily be true. If she were to represent him, it would have to be true. She went through the case file, discussing the details with him, blow by blow: what had been said so far, what hadn’t, where the police were in their investigation.

  But inside, her mind was roiling and her heart was pulling at levers, trying to drag the conversation away from work. Memories and feelings alike washed over her. It was unfair, wounds were meant to fade with time, but all it took was him calling her Dani once, and it was like peeling the bandages back off a fresh wound.

  She could remember it all: How inseparable they were. The love that they’d once shared so deeply. How messy their break up had been.

  Her boss tapped her shoulder, shaking Danielle from her thoughts in order to bring her back into the room.

  “Just a moment Mr. Wood.”

  “I really think this would be a good case for you.” Mr. Davis said as she removed the phone from her ear for a moment. “You know the area better than anyone else here, you know the people, and I feel like a cop killing could really bump you up.”

  “Charles, are you in the local jail?” Danielle asked.

  “Yes, I’m in Baltimore.” Each word he spoke was like a sharp bee sting. Soon there would be too much poison within her to be able to suck it all out successfully. “I told them that I’m not going to speak again until I have a lawyer present.”

  “I’m afraid that they still will need another statement from you soon, Chas-Charles,” she said, quickly correcting herself and coughing in an attempt to cover it up, her boss leaning forwards slightly. Danielle knew that this was a big risk. She didn’t want people to catch onto the fact that she would be both professionally and personally involved.

  “Will they wait until you arrive?”

  She hadn’t even promised him she’d take the yet, but as always, he just assumed. Ten years had gone by, and he was more than happy to just phone her up as if it wasn’t anything and ask her for help.

  But this was what Davis & Davis did. He was a man in a city with “Problems,” with a capital P, and worse, he was accused of being a cop killer. If she said no then the representation he would get wouldn’t save him, even if he was innocent.

  She couldn’t let that happen to anyone—Charles or not.

  “I’ll take it.” She nodded to both her boss and confirmed vocally over the phone to Charles. She wanted this.

  Something in her gut felt as though this was a second chance.

  Another part of her screamed.

  2

  Charles Wood

  The surface of the table felt cold against his skin. The handcuffs dug firmly into his flesh, overtightened; he had mentioned it twice, but no one had come to adjust them. Charles huffed and stared at each wall of the tiny room. Nothing but a naked bulb overhead illuminated the barren space. There was a clock on the wall, although he had no way to confirm that it was the correct time, unsure of whether or not to trust in the authorities anymore.

  Ryan had lied to him earlier, and there was no reason for them to stop lying now.

  *

  “I remember it in pieces.” Charles’ voice was strained, despite his best efforts to appear composed, it fell short. His vocal chords gave way to a larger force: Guilt. “It’s like remnants of a drunken night out. It’s not very clear. I guess I was in shock.”

  “Honestly Chas, you just need time to recover.” Ryan leaned on the desk by the main entrance t
o the garage.

  Charles knew they had chosen Ryan for a reason. He had been close to Megan. He’d even come around the house a few times in the past. Maybe they thought it would be easier on him. But they hadn’t bet that Ryan's body language--every action, every word, every movement –radiated the sense that there was little sympathy for him.

  Charles felt a sharp spike of annoyance run down his hunched back, almost causing him to drop the spanner in his hand. It would have been a nightmare trying to fish it out of the open car engine. His name was Charles to Ryan. He hadn’t earned enough respect from Charles to have the privilege of using his nickname, Chas. It was reserved for people he liked. Ryan wasn’t in that category.

  “And you’re sure that you didn’t see the guy at all?” His persistent questions were wearing down on Charles’ patience faster than he’d anticipated.

  “Like I said, all I saw was a figure running through the door after firing the gun. I was a little bit preoccupied with my dying wife.” He could feel the heat on his face as he tried not to snarl, unsure if it was believable. Charles only connected for eye contact for a moment before moving back over to the engine.

  “Okay.” Ryan held his hands up in defense. As a local detective, it was incredibly concerning that he was lurking around like this. “What about Jack? I thought you said he was with Megan before she was shot? Surely he saw something.”

  “He barely speaks,” Charles said. He put the spanner down and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying not to remember how Jack had clung to him as the police had pulled him away and wrapped him in a foil blanket . “Still too much in shock that his mother is gone. I have no idea how to cope myself, let alone how to help my son.”

  After the...event, it was clear that his life was going to take a dramatic turn, no longer following the average clean-cut path that every other eleven-year old embarked on. Jack had seen too much.

  “I’m just trying to help,” Ryan reiterated. “I want to catch the guy who did this. A lot of her colleagues want justice too.”