Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

Chapter 3

J.J. uttered a string of words he wouldn’t use in the presence of a real nun and got another of her fierce black looks in return. This one, though, seemed to hold less anger and more of what he interpreted as mute appeal. Help me. Words he was beginning to suspect this particular woman wouldn’t find easy to utter out loud under normal circumstances.

He touched on his radio mic. “Katie, I’m gonna need an ambulance out here, ASAP. Uh…scratch that,” he said as the woman abruptly sagged against the side of his patrol vehicle and began doing that pant-moan thing again. “Make that a chopper. And give me an ETA.”

“I’m on it. Let me get back to you on that ETA…”

The radio went silent. J.J. opened both driver’s side doors and waited while Moonshine jumped in ahead of him and clambered across to the passenger seat, then sat in the driver’s seat and got the SUV’s engine started and the air conditioner going full blast. When he went back to see how his pregnant nun was doing, he found that she’d taken off the head thing-wimple?-and was using one corner of it to mop sweat off of her face and neck. It came as no surprise to him that her hair, which she’d twisted into a knot at the back of her head, was ink-black and also soaking wet.

The radio crackled. “Uh, Sheriff? J.J.?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Dispatch wants to know the nature of the emergency. Are we talking MVA trauma or heatstroke?”

“Uh…that’s a negative on both. Make that…woman in labor.”

“Labor?” Katie’s voice rose to a squeak-not very professional of her, in J.J.’s opinion. “Are you telling me this is the nun?”

J.J. grunted, being involved at the moment in helping the “nun” in question into the backseat of his patrol vehicle. He watched her sort of crumple onto her side and pull her knees up onto the seat before he closed the door. She was whimpering softly now. There was a knot forming in his belly as he turned his back to her and spoke to his radio mic. “Yeah, well, that seems doubtful. The nun part, not the labor. You got an ETA on that chopper?”

“Uh…that’s the problem. Ridgecrest’s choppers are out on a multi-vehicle MVA up on 395. No idea how long they’ll be.”

J.J. looked up at the sun-washed sky and swore. He was pondering his best course of action when his radio crackled to life again.

“I could get you somebody out of Barstow, but it would probably be just as fast if you take her in to Ridgecrest yourself, that would be the closest. How far along is she?” Katie had three kids, which probably made her the closest thing he had to an expert at the moment.

“In months? I’m guessing…nine.”

“No, I mean the labor.” She didn’t say the word dummy. J.J. being her boss, but he could hear it in her voice just the same.

“How the hell should I know?” he said. “Her water just broke.”

“Yikes,” said Katie. “Well, that could mean…just about anything, actually. She could have hours yet. Or minutes.”

“Well, don’t ask me,” J.J. growled. “I’m not a doctor.”

“I…am.” That came, surprisingly, from the backseat.

He jerked around to look at the woman, who he could see was now half propped up on one elbow. Her exotic eyes seemed huge in her chalk-white face. “You are what? A doctor?”

She nodded, then closed her eyes and sank back onto the pillow of her folded arm. “Well…sort of. I never finished my internship. But I know enough-” she broke off for a couple more pants and groans, then finished with clenched teeth “-to know I haven’t got hours.”

Grimly, J.J. relayed to his mic, “She doesn’t think she’s got hours.”

“How far apart are the contractions?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Seems to me they’re more or less continuous.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Katie. “That’s not good.”

“If you’re going to take me to a hospital, you’d better get going,” came the faint, gasping voice from the backseat, at the same time Katie’s voice on the radio was saying, “Well, you’d better hurry. I’ll let Ridgecrest know you’re coming.”

“Ten-four.” He put the SUV in gear and made a U-turn, tires spitting fine gravel.

“Okay, drive safe.” The radio went silent.

He didn’t turn on his siren, since it would only make the dog miserable, and there weren’t any other vehicles in the immediate vicinity anyway. He brought the speed up to what he considered the maximum for safety, then glanced in his rearview mirror.

“How you doin’ back there?”

No answer for a moment. Then, “Just lovely, thank you.”

He couldn’t believe he was even thinking of smiling.

As he drove, although his attention was totally focused on the road ahead, part of his mind kept jumping and skittering every which way, so full of the questions he wanted to ask, his head felt like a nest of spooked jackrabbits. For a long time he didn’t ask any of the questions because he couldn’t decide which one to ask first. Finally, though, when it seemed one kept popping up more often and more insistently than the rest, he looked up to his rearview mirror and said, “Ma’am, if you’re not a nun, what’s with the habit?”

Her voice sounded tired, out of sorts and groggy. “No…obviously…I’m not a nun. The habit-and the car-belong to a friend of mine. When I drove the car into that ditch…when I knew I was going to have to walk for help, I thought the habit might help protect me from the sun. You know, like the robes Arabs wear.”

J.J. nodded. He was thinking, Okay, she’s no dummy. But he wished he could see her face, because to him the speech sounded a little too long, a little too glib, like something she’d practiced in her mind ahead of time. It sounded plausible, might even be true-as far as it went. But he had a feeling there was more-a good deal more-she wasn’t telling him.

And it sure didn’t explain those bruises.

He said, “You ready to tell me the truth about how you got those bruises on your face?”

This time the only answer he got was some loud groans and whimpering cries, which he found both alarming and frustrating. Frustrating, because for all he knew she could be faking, or at least exaggerating her situation to evade the question. But if the sounds she was making were for real…

His radio coughed and Katie’s voice said, “Okay, J.J.? I’ve got Ridgecrest on the phone. Just in case.”

Just in case. Swell. He didn’t like the sound of that. “Copy,” he said on a gusty exhalation, but Katie wasn’t through.

“Okay, I gave them what you told me, about the water and all, and the contractions. They want to know if she’s feeling the urge to push.”

J.J. mashed the button to answer, but before he could get a word out, here came one of those gut-wrenching groans.

“Wow,” Katie said, “I heard that.”

Heart pounding, J.J. said, “Ma’am, are you all right?”

What he got for an answer was a sound that raised the hair on the back of his neck-a primal sound somewhere between a growl and a scream. It even got to Moonshine, who whimpered and licked her chops nervously.

“Ridgecrest says don’t let her push,” Katie’s voice crackled from his shoulder.

“Ma’am, you got that?” J.J. was trying hard to keep his voice calm, and on the whole wasn’t displeased with the results. So far. “You’re not supposed to push. Try not to push, okay?”

“Okay.” She said that in a thin, pitiful voice, like a scared child’s. And in the next second, sounding like someone trying to bench press a Harley, “I…can’t…stop!”

“She says she can’t stop,” J.J. relayed to Katie. And he was shaken enough to add, “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause, and then, “Ridgecrest says get her to pant.”

“Pant?”

“You know. When she feels the urge to push, tell her to take in a breath and blow it out through her mouth in short puffs.”

“Ma’am? You got that?”

“Yeah. Okay…” Now she sounded like a little kid trying to stop crying.

“Oh, and J.J.? Ridgecrest says that won’t work indefinitely. It’ll only slow things down, and unless you’re less than ten or fifteen minutes out, you might want to pull over sometime soon.”

J.J. swore, muttering under his breath. The woman in the backseat was silent, for the moment, thank God. And for a moment, hope flared within him. Maybe…just maybe, she was slackening off this pushing business. Maybe things would ease up enough to give him time to get her to the hospital in Ridgecrest. Maybe…

“J.J., you copy?”

The woman in the backseat picked that moment to start with that awful noise again, causing Moonshine to whine and flop down on the seat with her head on her paws. J.J. bet she’d have put her paws over her ears if she could. He wished he could.

“Don’t push! Take a deep breath and blow!” he yelled over his shoulder, then said to his radio, “Yeah, copy. Ten-four.” Back to the woman again: “Like this-” And he was puffing like a steam engine, all the while craning to see the backseat in his rearview mirror.

“The hell with this,” he muttered, and pulled onto the wide dirt shoulder and jerked to a stop in a rising cloud of dust. He left the motor running for the air-conditioning and got out of the vehicle, telling Moonshine to stay put-not that it was necessary; the dog obviously wasn’t going anywhere except maybe to hide under the seat.

When he opened the back door, his passenger raised herself on both her elbows and stared at him, and this time her eyes were bottomless wells of fear. That kind of got to him, more so than the fact that she was breathing hard and her face was wet with sweat so that wisps of her black hair clung to her pale cheeks like seaweed on a drowned corpse.

“Why are we stopping?”

He really wished he had a more gentle and nurturing nature, but in his defense, those weren’t exactly qualities that made for a good homicide cop-or probably any kind of cop, for that matter. Still, he tried his best to be patient. “Because you’re about to have a baby, ma’am, and I can’t be much help to you if I’m driving.”

It wouldn’t have seemed possible for her face to get any whiter or her eyes any blacker, but he could have sworn they did. “No! We have to go to the hospital!” She struggled to sit up, at the same time yelling, fierce and stricken at the same time, her words tumbling from her with gasping breaths. “I can’t have my baby here-I can’t. I won’t push. I promise-just don’t let me-Oh…God!” And then she was doubled up, hands gripping her drawn-up knees, face contorted, making that awful sound.

J.J. looked over his shoulder, then up to the sky, as if there might be some form of help coming from either of those quarters. Which there wasn’t. Of course there wasn’t. It was all up to him. And he’d never felt so helpless in his life.

The contraction seemed to be passing, thank God. The woman was only sobbing now, which at least was something more like what he was used to. In homicide, everybody did a lot of crying-family and friends of the victim, traumatized witnesses, even the perps, when they got caught. This he could handle.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed, then hiccupped loudly. “I can’t help it. I just…can’t keep from p-pushing.”

“Well, ma’am,” he said, trying a firm and authoritative approach, “since we are going to do this thing, I guess there’s no need for you to stop pushing. But I’m going to need you to do some things, okay? I’m gonna need you to help me out here. It’s been a long time since they told me how to do this, so I’m pretty rusty. I’m sure you know a lot more than I do. So you need to stay calm, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered, sniffing. She swiped at her wet cheeks with one hand. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, for starters,” J.J. said, giving her a smile he was sure wouldn’t fool anybody, “since it looks like I’m about to help your baby into the world, I’d like to be able to call you something besides ‘ma’am.’ Could you tell me your name?”

She hiccupped again and gave a funny little laugh. “Rachel. It’s…Rachel.”

Rachel.

The name sounded strange, coming from her own lips, like a word in a foreign language. The person named Rachel seemed to her like someone she might have known a long time ago, or perhaps in another life. Another universe.

The one she occupied now was a strange, dreamlike world where nothing seemed real and time had no meaning. How long had it been since she’d driven Izzy’s car into that ravine, since she’d put on Izzy’s habit and set out walking across the desert? One moment it seemed like hours-she knew it must have been hours-and the next she felt it had could have been only seconds. Right now she felt as if she was still out there plodding along, one foot setting itself down in front of the other in endlessly repeating sequence, sometimes without any direction from her.

I’m so tired. She wanted desperately to stop, to lie down somewhere. But her body kept pushing her on, forcing her on.

“I want to stop,” she said. “I have to rest.”

She heard a soft deep chuckle, and the face from the Western movie swam into view. “Afraid you can’t do that, Rachel, honey. Looks like you’re gonna have your baby right here, like it or not.”

What? Here? Ridiculous! She shook her head, adamant, furious. “No. I can’t. You’re taking me to the hospital. I have to go to the hospital.”

But then she felt her body being wrenched out of her control again, and now it seemed it was trying its best to turn itself wrong-side-out. Again and again she was caught up by terrible, powerful forces and was utterly helpless to stop what was happening to her. The only thing she could think of to compare it to was once when she and Nicky had been at the beach, swimming, and she’d gotten caught in a huge breaking wave. She’d felt herself being tossed and twisted and dashed down into swirling sand and seawater, arms and legs going every which way like a rag doll in a washing machine, and her mind, disconnected from her body, had thought, Oh, wow, I’m drowning. And she’d felt no fear, she remembered, only mild surprise.

Someone-the stranger named Rachel-was screaming. Belly-deep, grinding screams that sounded like something being torn in half. She felt unbearable pressure, pressure she was sure she couldn’t stand another second. She heard someone bellow, “I can’t…”

“Shh…yes, you can…you’re doin’ fine, darlin’…just a little bit more…” The voice was deep and growly, like a tiger purring, and seemed to be very close to her ear.

It was him again, the man from the Western movie. He even sounded a little like a cowboy, she thought, with that accent. A little bit like John Wayne. For some odd reason she found that reassuring. She realized that he was holding her, and that his arms were very hard and strong and that his shirt front was warm and slightly damp where her forehead pressed against it. She was sorry when he eased her away from him. She opened her eyes and watched his face as he laid her down. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat now. His hair was damp and there was a groove around his head from where it had been. She wondered what had happened to his hat.

She closed her eyes and whimpered, feeling ashamed, “I’m so tired.”

“I know…rest a little bit now, okay? Just rest…that’s right.”

I can’t believe this is happening. My baby, Nicky’s baby- Carlos Delacorte’s grandson-is going to be born in a cop car. Delivered by a cop!

That struck her as terribly funny. She wanted to laugh, but when she started what she thought was a laugh, tears squeezed from her eyes and ran down into her ears.

“Easy, now…you’re gonna be okay,” the growly voice said. But then another voice-a woman’s voice-rode right over it and drowned it out.

“J.J., Ridgecrest wants to know what’s happening. Um…like, what can you see?”

See? “Uh…Lord, I don’t know…hold on a minute,” J.J. said.

This was all happening much too fast for him. He ran a hand over his face while he regarded the woman, who was now lying back on the seat. She appeared to be crying. He could see her face, with tears streaming down the sides and into her already soaking-wet hair. Other than that, she looked to him like a great big mound of clothing. He knew what he was going to have to do next, and the only thing he could think of he’d have dreaded more was breaking the news to somebody that their loved one was dead. That was the worst. But peeling nun’s clothes off a woman in labor was right up there close.

“Ma’am-uh, Rachel, I want you to listen to me, okay? I’m gonna need you to take off whatever you’ve got on under that gown you’re wearing. Can you do that?”

He didn’t know what he’d expected-protests, maybe, or some shyness? But she didn’t bat an eye. Just sniffled and said, “Okay…” But then she only plucked ineffectively at the habit, like she didn’t know what to do with it.

He took a deep breath…heaved a silent sigh. “Need some help?”

She nodded and muttered, “I’m all wet.”

It struck him then, that this must be something Mother Nature provided, this temporary suspension of modesty that made it possible for a woman to tolerate being intimately exposed to total strangers. Knowing that she truly wouldn’t mind made it easier for him, somehow.

It also occurred to him that the habit made a pretty damn good drape.

Still, it wasn’t easy, getting her out of her wet clothes. Especially since she wasn’t able to be of much help. She kept having contractions that doubled her up and seemed to take her off into a place where she wasn’t even aware of him and what he was doing. By the time he had her shoes off-at least they were good quality sensible athletic shoes-and her wet socks, and started tugging on her slacks, he was almost as wet with sweat as she was.

But he got them off, finally, and her underwear, too. And that was when he ran into something unexpected. When he pulled off her underpants, something came with them-an envelope. It was thick and white and addressed by hand, with no stamp or postmark, just some tape around the edges, the kind used to hold bandages in place, the kind that doesn’t irritate the skin.

What the hell? His cop radar was pinging again, this time clear off the scale. A pregnant woman wearing a nun’s habit-some kind of disguise, he now figured-clearly having suffered a fairly recent beating, found walking alone in the middle of the Mojave Desert-what was she doing with an envelope taped to her stomach?

He’d have given a lot to know what was in that envelope, but right now he had more pressing things on his mind.

“J.J.? Are you there?”

“Copy…”

“Ridgecrest wants to know what’s happening, and so do I.” Katie’s voice came tensely from his shoulder.

“Uh…hold on…” He took mental note of the name on the envelope-Rachel Malone Delacorte-and the address, a very pricey part of Beverly Hills, then laid the envelope on top of the pile of shoes and clothing on the floor where they’d be out of the way. Then, hoping his hands weren’t going to shake, he lifted the edge of the habit.

“Uh…okay, looks like the baby’s right there.”

“Ridgecrest says, can you tell if it’s the head.”

“Uh…yeah, seems to be.”

“Okay, Ridgecrest wants to know, which way is it facing-up or down?”

Jeez. “Too soon to tell,” he said tersely. He gulped in air to fight off the beginnings of queasiness and looked over the top of the draped habit. Smiled wretchedly. “Hear that, Rachel? Won’t be much longer now…” Lord, I hope.

“J.J., Ridgecrest says you better get ready. Have you got anything to catch the baby with.”

Catch the baby? Envisioning a giant-sized catcher’s mitt, he felt an absurd impulse to laugh.

“And something to tie off the cord.”

“Copy.” He leaned across the mound of Rachel’s draped knees and said, “I’m just gonna go and get-”

Which was as far as he got before a hand clutched at the front of his shirt, a very small hand with a whole lot of strength to it. “Don’t…leave…me.”

He didn’t know why he did what he did then-he sure didn’t think about it beforehand. He cupped his hand behind her head and kissed her forehead, then pressed his cheek against her wet hair. Under the salty smell of sweat, he caught something sweet and exotic, like tropical flowers.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” he said huskily. “We’re doin’ this together, you and me. I’ve just got to get some things out of the back of the vehicle to help us. Okay?” He pulled back and waited for her to look at him and nod her comprehension, then he kissed her forehead again. “Be right back…”

For a moment then, he stood upright in the bright sunlight, pulling in big gulps of hot desert air, trying to get his bearings. Then he went around to open up the back of the SUV and took out the first aid kit and a blanket. When he got back to Rachel, she was lying back quietly, evidently resting, so he took a moment to open up the first aid kit and check the contents. Scissors…cotton balls, bandages, disinfectant…all good. Even a bulb-thing for suctioning out airways, which he seemed to recall he’d probably need. It was good to know some of what he’d learned in his training days was coming back to him.

“J.J.?”

“Copy.”

“How are you doing?”

The worry in Katie’s voice made him respond with more confidence than he was feeling. “Doin’ fine. I think we have everything we need.”

“Okay, Ridgecrest says you’re going to have to help her push.”

“Uh-huh.” Lord, how do I do that?

“They say when the contractions come you should lift her so she sits up, don’t let her lie flat. Gravity helps.”

“Gotcha.”

“And J.J.? They say don’t let her push too hard. You, um…don’t want her to tear.”

No, I sure as hell don’t want her to do that. He swallowed down another wave of queasiness and muttered, “Ten-four.” And then, although he wasn’t exactly a praying man and it had been a long, long time since his last appearance in Sunday school, he sent up a little one: Okay, Lord, I could use a little help, here!

“I have to push again.”

The sound of her voice startled him, it had been so long since she’d spoken. And when he looked at her he got a jolt that startled him even more. He wasn’t sure what it was, something about the determination in her voice, maybe, contradicting the stark fear in her eyes, but whatever it was, it made something kick in his chest, and the next thing he knew he had a lump in his throat and a big ball of fear in his belly. Because that went against his grain and everything he thought he knew about himself, his voice grated hard in his ears when he said, “Okay, let’s do this thing.”

Those fearful eyes clung to his, and she whispered, “I don’t know if I can.”

The truth was, he didn’t know if she could, either. It seemed an impossible thing she was trying to do, and it didn’t help to tell himself it had been done billions of times before, even under worse circumstances than these. Though he didn’t like admitting it, he felt just plain scared, more scared than he’d ever been in his life. Going into a house where a guy crazy high on PCP had just hacked up his wife and the family dog with a machete and was threatening to do the same to his kids-that had been a piece of cake compared to this. That, he’d been trained for. Prepared for. He’d felt confident, capable, sure. Here, he felt lost. Clueless. What if she couldn’t do it? There wasn’t anybody here who could help her. Just him.

What if I can’t?

“That’s not like you, Jethro,” he muttered to himself, and imagined he could hear his mother saying the words, the way she’d said them to him so many times when he was growing up.

“Who’s Jethro?” She was gazing at him, looking confused.

And he was saved from having to answer that when all of a sudden her face crumpled up and her eyes filled with tears and she grabbed hold of his shirt as if she was going over a cliff and he was the only thing saving her.

He got his arms around her shoulders and held her up while she made sounds that turned his insides to ice water. He realized his own body had gone rigid and his jaws were clamped tight, as if somehow that was going to help her, and to make himself stop it, he began to talk to her in a voice that sounded like a truckload of rocks.

“You’re doin’ fine, sweetheart…that’s it…just a little bit more…okay, ease up now…that’s it…rest a minute…almost there, darlin’…”

And it became a kind of rhythm, almost like a dance they were doing. She’d grab on to him and he’d hold her, and while she strained and hollered he’d talk to her and tell her how strong and brave and beautiful she was, and it never occurred to him he couldn’t possibly know whether she was really any of those things because he’d only known her for an hour or so. Just then, it seemed to him he’d always known her, and always would. Right then, it felt like they were the only two people on the face of the earth-the two of them plus the baby she was trying to push into the world. The SUV’s air-conditioning did the best it could, but sweat ran into his eyes and stung like fire, and soaked his shirt and every bit of clothing they were wearing between the two of them. Between contractions he gave her sips of water and poured some on the cloth thing she’d been wearing on her head and bathed her face with it. And it occurred to him while he was doing that, that once he looked past the sweat and the bruises, she really was beautiful.

Who in the hell would hit a little bitty pregnant woman? Especially one with a face like that?

He vowed if he ever found out who’d done this to her, he’d give the animal a dose of his own medicine.

Yeah, idiot, and it was that kind of impulse that got you banished to this desert Siberia in the first place. Last thing you need is to get emotionally involved again.

Great advice, he told himself, but hard to follow when the woman in his arms was twisting the buttons off his shirt and soaking his collar with her tears and sweat.

“One more,” he told her grimly.

She screamed at him in desperate fury, “You said that the last ten times!”

Then, when he thought neither of them had enough left in them for one more time…

“That’s it-I see the head! Come on, baby, just a little bit more…keep pushing…almost there…”

“J.J.,” Katie’s voice squawked from his shoulder, “Ridgecrest wants to know…” And he didn’t even hear the rest.

He was yelling, laughing and…who knows what else, but he didn’t give a damn who heard him. “How ’bout that, honey, we have a head!”

“A head? Really?” She was laughing and crying, too, weakly, and breathless with relief. “Is it…is he…?”

But J.J. was too busy to answer her, using his hands and whatever else happened to be within reach, wiping off the scrunched-up face, remembering the bulb-thing to clear stuff out of the flattened lump of a nose and the puffy purple mouth. Then she was pushing again, and he gently held the head while first one shoulder appeared…then the other, and suddenly there he was, with his hands full of slippery, squirmy, brand-new living human being.

He couldn’t believe it. He’d never felt such exhilaration in his whole life. Or such awe. And when, after a strangled-sounding gurgle, he heard the first mewing cry, such sheer overwhelming relief.

“My baby…” She was struggling to sit up, sobbing, hands frantically reaching.

J.J. shoved all the habit material out of the way and placed the baby right on her stomach. “Well, Rachel,” he said gruffly, as he guided her hands to cradle her newborn, “looks like you have a son.”