Deathwatch (7 page)

Chapter Four

Man, being back was nice.
Murph didn't even care that his shoulder throbbed with pain.
He shrugged into the leather jacket he’d brought up from the basement and walked outside, around the house, scanning the property to make sure nothing needed his attention.
He was itching to get to the station and run a background check on his mysterious tenant, but first he wanted to see his place in the daylight.

He had a half-acre lot, large considering the fact that he was in the middle of town.
Most other properties like his had been long subdivided.

From time to time, he’d thought about doing the same.
What he’d get for half the lot would pay for finishing the house.
But he liked his privacy, too, liked it that nobody was living right in his back yard.

He had little out there but grass and a few trees, now covered in snow, and a dilapidated barn at the far corner of the property that a previous owner had used as a workshop.
The old building stood empty now.

The yard looked all right, the snow hadn’t broken any major branches, the storms hadn’t pushed over any trees.
Good.
He already had enough on his to-do list.
Not that he minded.
The thought of putzing around the house with a tool belt made him happy.

He walked over to Mrs.
Baker’s rancher and checked her place, too.
Since everything seemed fine, he went back to his own backyard.

A young woman in jeans and a ski jacket was waving at him from the back deck on his other side.

He waved back.
“Hi.”

“
Hey.
I’m your new neighbor.”
She beamed.
“Wendy White.”
 

“
Murph Dolan.”
 

“
I know.
I heard all about you from Doug.
Welcome home.
Thank you for your service!”
 

“
Uh, yeah.”
He wiped his hands on his pants, trying for a smile and not quite succeeding as he walked to the back door of the garage.
“I’ll see you around.”
 

The people who patted him on the back for being a soldier—starting right at the Philly airport—didn’t know the things he’d done, and the things that had been done to him.
He was no small town hero, and he didn’t want to be one.

He tapped the snow off his boots and stepped inside.

The garage was the same as he’d left it, a spare set of tires in the corner, his tool boxes lined up against the wall.

He climbed into his pickup and clicked the garage door opener above the visor.
As the door slowly creaked up, he put his key in the ignition and turned it carefully, half expecting the battery to be dead.
But his extended-cab Ford F-150 pickup came to life in the next second, the engine rumbling, and he felt as if the truck was saying welcome home to him.

“
Good to see you, too, buddy.”
He drove forward with a smile.
 

The boxy white mail truck trudged by just as he reached the end of his driveway.
Since Robin Combs was a friend of his, he got out to say hi.

“
How’s my favorite girl?”
 

She slipped from the truck, spry as anything.
Her gray hair in her usual bob, angel earrings dangled from her ears.
“I thought you might be home.
I had a feeling.”

He grinned.
“I wish you’d have a feeling about the lottery numbers.”

“
It’d be wrong to try,” she said in all seriousness, then her face turned even more somber.
“You got hurt.”
 

He was probably holding his shoulders stiff.
He rolled them.
“Nothing serious.
How have you been?”

“
Moving to Upstate New York to be closer to my sister.
I think she’s going to need my help with something soon so I’m retiring.”
 

“
What, twenty years early?”
 

Robin gave a whooping laugh.
“If only.
Truth is, all that sitting in the truck for all those years, my back’s killing me.”

“
They might be able to find someone to hand out the mail, but they’ll never find anyone half as pretty as you, Robin.”
 

She looked seven shades of pleased.
“Pete Kentner’s taking over my route.”

He raised an eyebrow.
He knew Pete from high school.
He was a couple of years older than Murph.
“He’s moving back home?”

“
His mother has cancer, but I don’t have a bad feeling about her,” Robin said earnestly.
“I’m pretty sure she’ll make it.”
 

“
I hope she does.”
Mrs.
Kentner was a nice old lady, a professional volunteer.
Any kind of fundraising and she was your gal.
She’d raised money for everything from the bandstand to a new fire engine.
Murph made a mental note to stop in and offer help once he’d gotten a few things squared away.
 

Robin glanced at her watch.
“I better go.
Mrs.
Torrino will be waiting by her mailbox, if I slip as much as five minutes behind schedule.”

She rose to the tips of her toes and pinched his cheek like she used to when he’d been much younger.
Murph enfolded her in a bear hug.

“
Aw, Murph.”
Her eyes glistened when he let her go.
 

He waved after her as she progressed down the street, then he drove to the police station, his second home.

The square brick building was nothing impressive, pretty much as plain as can be.
Nothing fancy inside either: reception, the main area where all their desks stood, the Captain’s office, the interrogation room and the conference room, then the hallway that led to the holding cells and the evidence room in the back.
Pretty utilitarian, but the work didn’t leave them time to worry about the aesthetics.

“
Murph!”
Leila, the admin assistant, rushed from behind the counter and gave him a fierce hug.
She was a no-nonsense widow with three boys, cropped hair, short nails, little makeup, black pants, tan shirt, but the most colorful footwear she could find—her only nod to fashion.
 

A plate of his favorite chocolate chip cookies sat on the reception desk.
Bing must have told her that Murph was coming in.

“Man, it's good to be back.”
He might not have had a large and loving family, but somehow the town had always made up for that, even when he’d been a troublemaker of a kid.

“
Welcome home.”
She pulled back so she could fully look at him.
 

He narrowed his eyes.
“You look younger than when I left.
How are people around here supposed to focus on their work?”

She swatted him on the arm, but she smiled.

“
How are the boys?”
 

“
Trying their best to drive me to drinking.”
 

“
Have they discovered girls yet?”
 

“
Bite your tongue, Murphy Dolan.”
She looked like she might say more, but the phone rang and she grabbed for the switchboard.
“Broslin P.D.”
 

Harper Finnegan and Chase Merritt came from behind their computers to take a turn at greeting him.
They were in a contest to see which one of them would make detective first.
Murph had been in the running until his deployment.
And he’d get back into the game, he promised himself, no matter how long it was going to take.

“
Now he comes back,” Harper groused, struggling with a grin.
“When all the puke is mopped up and the Deering twins have been sent upstate.”
 

He was Broslin’s black sheep turned cop, tall and lean, a ladies’ man and then some.
His parents owned and operated Finnegan’s, the town’s only Irish pub.
Harper and his six brothers weren’t officially involved in the family business, but helped out when called upon.

Harper flashed a long-suffering look at Chase.
“The man treats police work as a holiday.”

“
If this is vacation, where is the beer?”
Murph challenged them.
 

“
You let me know when you find it.”
Chase gave him a quick, manly embrace, nothing near as demonstrative as Leila’s had been.
 

He was the mildest of the bunch, easy going.
Had a reputation for being a big teddy bear, but he could lay down the law and finish a fight with a single right hook if the occasion called for it.
Of course, with Chase, that was rarely the case.
He was good at talking people down.
Such an all-around nice guy, even the criminals liked him.

He checked Murph over.
“What’s up?”

Murph reached for a cookie, smiling his thanks to Leila.
“Can’t complain.
Found a sexy redhead in my bed when I got in last night.”

“
Shit like that never happens to me,” Chase mumbled.
“Can I have her?”
 

Murph flashed him an as-if look as he chewed.
“Find your own woman.”

“
It’s easier for you.
You have that whole returning warrior thing going.”
 

“
Don’t let me stop you.”
Murph laughed.
“I’d be happy to hook you up with my recruiting officer.”
He grabbed another cookie.
“Caught the Tractor Trio Gang yet?”
 

Harper shrugged.
“The FBI is taking lead.
They have some temporary office set up over in Chadds Ford.”

The Captain appeared in his office door.
Stepped forward.
“Murph.
I’m sure I said it last night, but it’s damn nice to have you back.
Come into my office.”

The change in him was even more obvious under the neon lights than it had been in the dark of night.
He looked beat up and beat down, older.
He looked as if he was fighting some serious illness, still chancy whether or not he’d slip back into it.

Murph followed him inside the office, dominated by a wide desk and a row of filing cabinets.
“
Any word from Hunter?”
He’d forgotten to ask the night before.
The news about Stacy had thrown him.
Hunter was the Captain’s younger brother over in Afghanistan with the army.
 

“
Talked to him on the phone last week.
He’s all right.
You ever run into him over there?”
 

Murph shook his head.
“Any news on when he’s coming home?”

“
Not yet.
He wanted to come for the funeral, but it doesn’t work like that.”
Bing sat behind his desk, his eyes haunted.
“You ought to take time off and just rest.
You don’t have to return to work right away.”
 

“
That’s what I came to talk to you about.”
Murph tapped his left shoulder, swallowing the bitterness in his throat.
“I’m not going to pass the physical.”
 

Concern flicked across the Captain's face.
“You didn’t say your injury was serious.
How bad is it?”

“
Not that bad.”
Not considering that good men had died around him.
“I need to gain back full range of motion in my left shoulder again.
Got some shrapnel embedded in the bone.”
It hurt like a sonovabitch when he moved the wrong way.
He
gave a brief summary, the bare basics: patrol, trap, IEDs.