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Revelations
By Janice Johnson Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
Copyright © 2004 Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-71228-6
Chapter One
STANDING AT ATTENTION, shoulder to shoulder with her fellow police officers, Ann forced herself to look at the gleaming cobalt blue casket resting on a framework above a dark hole.
A funeral in all its solemnity was the worst of all places and times to become mired in self-pity.
"Comfort us in our sorrows at the death of our brother. Let our faith be our consolation, and eternal life our hope."
She tried to make her mind a blank. If she let herself think, she either remembered her father's funeral, so much like this one, and tears threatened, or she felt sorry for herself because she had no idea how to look pretty or flirt or make men feel protective and was therefore achingly lonely.
Spring sunlight didn't yet bring much warmth to the cemetery grounds, but leaves budded on the maple and sycamore trees and on old lilacs. A bird twittered in the tree behind Ann and the phalanx of other solemn, uniformed police officers who had come to see one of their own laid to rest. Just as they had come to her father's funeral last August.
"This joy that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord does not make human grief unchristian," the pastor promised the grieving.
Did anyone truly grieve? Ann wondered. She'd known Leroy Pearce for most of her life - he'd been a crony of her father's - and she couldn't honestly say she'd liked the man. He'd been bigoted, crude and sexist. When Ann had transferred to Major Crimes, he'd refused to work with her.
"Sorry, babe," he'd said with an insincere grin.
"Can't think of you as anything but a little girl."
Huh. Girl was the relevant word. If she'd been her daddy's son, he would have been thrilled to show him the ropes. But not her.
Okay, Leroy's widow and daughter seemed to be genuinely grief-stricken. Ann was trying not to look at them, because her very own partner was hovering over the gently sobbing daughter, a divorcee in her late twenties, Ann's age. He had one arm around her, while he held her elbow with his other hand. When Ann stole a look, Eva turned her head and cast a tear-drenched look up at Diaz.
It was enough to make Ann want to puke. Or go home and cry, she wasn't sure which.
Her mind had wandered earlier, too, during the church service. She'd struggled to remember the words to hymns. She wasn't the churchgoer she should be. When she was young, her mother had taken her, but later her father couldn't be bothered. Maybe it was because her mother had been the one to take her that now Ann had no interest in sliding into a pew every Sunday morning. Besides, she'd spent too many of those Sundays crouched beside a body assessing blood spatter patterns. She'd quit thinking of Sunday morning and church as connected. Saturday night was too popular for committing murder.
"Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom," had sung the mourners at the church.
Almost everyone here to honor Leroy was a cop, and they'd sure seen scenes of deepest gloom. Ann had had to hustle to get home, shower and change into dress uniform for the funeral. Her morning had been spent in the parking lot of a biker bar, where a regular had been stabbed upwards of a hundred times and left to bleed any remaining life out on the pavement in a bronze slick.
Her partner had been there, too, scribbling notes and seeming unaffected by the remarkable amount of blood pooled on the pavement.
Now, at graveside, Diaz was a lot more moved by the grieving daughter, who just then sniffed and turned to lay her cheek on his shoulder. He patted her back.
Ann tried to remember if he'd even been at her father's funeral. Maybe. Probably. But he hadn't been at her side, prepared to blot her tears on his uniform front. The captain had been beside her, she remembered, but several feet away. She had stood staring down at the casket and the large hole beneath, icy with shock and grief and the paralyzing realization that she was truly alone now.
She'd always wished she had a sister or brother. Now she heard other officers complain about huge family get-togethers and their packs of nieces and nephews and their interfering mothers and brothers-in-law and what have you, and she was jealous. All she had left in the world were grandparents, and she hardly knew them. Because they didn't live in the Northwest and hadn't made much effort to stay close to her after her mother died, her relationship with them consisted of polite Christmas cards.
Ann's eyes burned, and she tried to sniff without being audible. Damn it, why had her father had to die? Sure, he'd had a beer or two before he drove home that night, but not so much he should have missed a curve. But he had, and in his arrogance he hadn't bothered with a seat belt. Investigators told Ann that he'd hit a tree with such force, they weren't sure he would have survived even with the belt. His old pickup truck didn't have an airbag, the only thing that might have saved him.
Don't think about Dad, Ann ordered herself. Don't think about the fact that his grave is only a hundred yards or so uphill. Or you'll cry, and you can't cry now, in front of everyone.
She was good at not crying. Her father had been disgusted when she cried. If she hurt herself and bore it stoically, he might nod with approval and say something like, "That's good. You're toughening up now."
She used to think she had toughened up. Now she thought maybe she'd just been pretending all along, that inside she was still all girl.
On the outside ... well, she had no idea how to be a girl. She was neither fish nor fowl, woman nor man. Her entire social life revolved around other cops, and it was limited. She had drinks with fellow officers on occasion, but there was always a barrier separating her from the men, and an even bigger one yawning between her and their wives and daughters and even the few other women cops she knew. They might wear a uniform and pack a gun during the day, but they also liked to shop and get makeovers and go dancing and crochet or quilt or "do" memory books. She would stand there with a smile frozen on her face and have no idea what they were talking about. She liked jewelry, but when would she wear it? She couldn't imagine decorating the pages of a photo album filled with images of her father with metallic gel pens and cute stickers. She didn't want mud all over her face or cucumbers slapped on her eyeballs. The reason women seemed to enjoy wandering the mall even when they didn't need anything was as foreign, even unknowable, to her as the age-old hatreds in countries like Israel and Ireland. Her few friends were misfits in their own ways as much as she was, and therefore incapable of guiding her.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Revelations by Janice Johnson Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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