by Lucy Score
Like the fact that the white gouges and scrapes on the side of the car were consistent with hitting a bridge parapet. However, it was the damage to the front that bothered him. No matter how he played it, the car wouldn’t have jumped the sidewalk and slammed head-on into the bridge rail at speed and before sliding around to scrape down the side.
But if something had hit the car head-on… It seemed clear to him, a guy several years removed from traffic investigation training. Which meant that someone had intentionally misclassified the wreck.
He really didn’t like the idea of dirty cops. And if Shapiro thought they’d cleaned house by suspending Weber, there was obviously still at least one rat on the inside.
“Nick. I found something,” Riley called, interrupting his train of thought.
He found her upside down, head under the dash in the passenger seat, and felt his claustrophobia kick in.
“Are you stuck?” he asked, already reaching for her.
But she kicked her legs neatly out the door and popped back up. “This was wedged in a seam under the dash.”
He leaned in, his light playing over the object she held between her index finger and thumb. “What the hell is that?”
“A fake fingernail,” she said, excitement in her tone. She tugged a baggie out of her pocket and dropped it inside. “I think Rob had a passenger. And I think they made it out of the wreck.”
He took the bag and studied the nail. It was yellow with a black crosshatch.
“On the news, I noticed that the passenger side door was open. Which could have been how they got his body out, but both airbags deployed,” she said, tapping the deflated nylon on the dash.
“Nice work, Thorn,” he said proudly. “Maybe we should be partners.”
“Hang on to that admiration because I know exactly who the passenger was.”
Nick remained impressed with her for the next thirty seconds. Until she pissed him off by explaining what she thought needed to happen.
“No,” he said, still determined to argue the point on the rainy drive home.
“Why not? Think about it. Dickie owns Nature Girls. I happen to see Betty/Bessy/Betsy/What’s Her Name the server with crazy fake nails all cozy with Representative Rob. Representative Rob shows up at Dead Dickie’s apartment looking for something. Then he turns up dead hours later, and we find her fingernail under the deployed passenger airbag.”
“You’re not going back to Nature Girls,” he said stubbornly. “You almost got yourself assaulted last time you were there.”
“Please,” Riley scoffed. “It was a bar fight, not a shootout.”
“I don’t want you anywhere near that shithole,” he insisted.
“That’s what she said,” she shot back.
“Not funny.”
“Come on, Nick. It’s the only way. This all ties back to Nature Girls. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and Betsy will be working.”
“And if she isn’t, you’ll what? Start another bar fight?” he demanded.
“No. I’ll find out her last name or where she lives. I had to fill out an application. There’s got to be paperwork in that office.”
“Riley,” Nick said through gritted teeth. “Two people connected to your house and Nature Girls have turned up suspiciously dead. Use your damn head.”
“That doesn’t make me a target. That makes me the perfect person to figure out the connection,” she said.
“No,” he said stonily.
“Fine,” she shrugged. “Then you come up with a plan.”
42
12:07 p.m., Saturday, Fourth of July
For an early afternoon, Nature Girls was packed. Even the seedier side of society wanted to celebrate their patriotism on the Fourth of July Riley noted as she picked her way through the crowd toward the bar.
“Play this safe. Get in. Get out. Anyone looks at you funny, I want you out of there,” a pissed-off Nick grumbled in her ear.
“Yeah. Yeah. I hear you,” she murmured.
She’d won the argument thanks to Josie and Brian voting on her side. It made sense to have her go back in. She had the best chance of fabricating a reason to get into the office.
Nick had played the grumpy sore loser. He’d put a wire on her and parked the surveillance van—with Church of Scientology graphics on the doors—down the block, ready to burst through the front door at the first sign of trouble. Brian told her they’d originally had fake plumber’s graphics on the van, but they had too many people knocking on the windows with plumbing emergencies. No one bothered a van full of Scientologists.
She spotted Rod behind the bar and snarky Liz yelling at a table of guys who’d already had too much to drink.
Painting on a smile, she pranced up to a stool and plopped down.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Rod demanded, pouring two beers into plastic cups and hurling some cheap tequila in the direction of a row of shot cups. His long white beard was festively tied with three red rubber bands. “Come back to burn the place down?”
“I left my favorite sweatshirt here on my shift,” Riley said, batting her eyes in what she hoped was a look of total innocence. “I think it’s in the office. Do you mind if I go on back and grab it?”
“Where the fuck are my Jack and Cokes, you slow-ass bastard?” Liz demanded, hurling her wet tray down on the service bar.
“You’ll get ’em when you get ’em, asshole.” Rod poured two more drafts and plopped them down in front of two inebriated patrons at the bar.
“Don’t be a dick to me. You take this shit out on Betsy. She’s the one who didn’t show.”
Riley held her breath. Betsy was a no-show? Was it by choice, or had something very, very bad happened to her after the wreck?
“Christ. Ten seconds in the door, and she’s already got them talking about Betsy,” Nick grumbled in her ear.
Suck it, Nick.
“You want your drinks, you pour ’em yourself,” the bartender snarled.
“I fucking will.” Liz ducked under the service bar and popped up on the other side. Yanking a bottle of Jack Daniels off the shelf, she whirled around to reach for the soda gun and spotted Riley. “What are you sitting your ass down for? Get to fucking work.”
“I’m fired, remember?” Riley pointed out.
“She’s just here to pick up a sweatshirt,” Rod said, grabbing a bottle of Sambuca from under the bar.
“What? You think baldy is gonna walk his no-neck ass out here and volunteer to do actual work?” Liz snapped at the bartender. She turned her attention back to Riley. “You want your sweatshirt? You’re gonna work for it. Take these to those stupid assholes in the cowboy hats, then get the herpes twins’ order.” She slammed three Jack and Cokes down in front of Riley.
“Stick with the plan, Thorn,” Nick warned.
“I thought you said I was a trouble-making moron who didn’t know her ass from her apron,” Riley said, pointedly staring at the drinks.
“You want an apology? ’Cause it comes with a boot to the vagina. You want some tips and your stupid sweatshirt? Then you work.”
“I’ll take the tips,” Riley said cheerfully and grabbed the cups.
“I am going to kill you, Thorn.” Nick’s snarl tickled her ear.
“Relax,” she said under her breath. “This gives me a bigger window to either get in the office or get some gossip.”
“Nope. Definitely killing you,” Nick’s voice snapped.
She worked, taking orders, delivering drinks, trying to scrape years of sticky filth off vacated tables. By three, things had started to slow with the first wave of celebrants either heading off to picnics and parties or to sleep off their cheap drinks. By four, she found herself sitting at a table with Liz, feet propped up on a chair counting her tips.
Yay, surprise money.
“So where’s Deelia and Betsy?” Riley asked, pocketing her wad of cash.
Liz snorted, her attention on fishing balled up cash out of her apron. “Deelia’s hanging with
her grandma for a bullshit picnic lunch. She’s in tonight. Betsy’s fucking dead to me. She was on the schedule for today, and then no-showed. Rod called me in early, so I’m working a double.”
“Does Betsy do that often?” Riley pressed, trying not to sound like she was hanging on Liz’s every word.
“Subtle, Thorn.” Nick’s sarcasm echoed in her ear. She tuned it out. His snark was no different than the usual psychic chatter she’d grown used to hearing.
Liz worked her way through the bills, ordering them from highest denomination to lowest without regards to front, back, or right-side up. “Who the frick cares? She’s dead to me.”
Treading lightly, Riley tried a different tactic. “I worked at Applebee’s for a year and always worried that something had happened to the no-shows. Like they were in an accident or got abducted.”
“Never that lucky,” Liz said, tapping her wonky stash of cash on the table three times before folding it and returning it to her apron. “No-shows are too busy being selfish jackoffs to tell anyone they’re not coming in. She’s probably shacked up with that on-again, off-again suit she bangs on the weekends.”
“I love a guy in a suit,” Riley improvised.
“Do they make suits big enough for your guy?” Liz asked.
Riley realized she was talking about Gabe. “Gabe’s more of a gym clothes kind of man. How did Betsy land a suit? She seems…” She trailed off, hoping Liz would feel compelled to fill in the blank.
“Dumber than a bucket of hair? Yeah. She never had much going for her up top. Except for the math thing. She always lived with roommates, and then I guess the suit started coughing up cash for an allowance or BJs or whatever. Got her own place over in Camp Hill and almost got kicked out because she didn’t realize rent was due every month.”
“Why didn’t she just move in with the guy?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Liz said irritably. She fished out a pack of cigarettes from her apron. “She was like this even in high school.”
Annnnnnd jackpot.
“You went to high school with her? I thought you were a lot younger than Betsy,” Riley covered quickly.
“Nope. Just didn’t hit the tanning beds quite as much as Little Miss Harrisburg High School Homecoming Queen.”
“Nicely done, Thorn,” Nick said grudgingly.
Riley felt triumphant.
Liz rose. “Takin’ five,” she called to Rod, who was eating a turkey sandwich with one hand and chucking plastic cups in the garbage can with the other.
“Whatever,” he said.
“You didn’t totally suck today,” Liz said to Riley.
“Uh. Thanks.” With Liz heading out to fill her lungs with poison and Rod shoving food in his face, she could head out or… She glanced toward the dingy hall that led back to the office.
“Get your ass out of there, Thorn. You’ve done enough today,” Nick said.
She felt a pull on her subconscious. A tug toward the hallway.
“I can get in the office,” Riley said quietly. “We still don’t have a last name or an address.” Or whatever lay behind that door.
“No.” Nick’s tone was stony.
She ignored it and got up from the table. Rod was still eating, but his attention was on the baseball highlights on the TV. Quietly, she moved past the bar and into the hall.
“I swear to God, Thorn, if you don’t walk out that front door in five seconds, I’m going to make you very sorry,” Nick snarled.
The restrooms were on her left. Years of hands and boots had left their marks on the wood wearing through the wood stain. The office was just ahead on her right. Its door a mismatched green to the metal exit door at the end of the hall.
Her heart was pounding loud enough to drown out Nick’s swearing. There were answers on the other side. She could feel it.
The knob turned, and before she could react, the door flew open.
She stopped in her tracks and stared in horror as a man stepped out. He was short with the broad shoulders and bulging biceps of a gym rat. He had no neck or hair to speak of.
His shaved head was shiny under the flickering fluorescent bulbs overhead.
Riley’s vision tunneled, and for just a second, she found herself peering through her peephole at Dickie’s door. The floating orb hadn’t been an orb after all. It had been a shaved head.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Okay, maybe it wasn’t this shaved head. Maybe it was someone else’s bald noggin?
“Can I help you?” No Neck asked gruffly. He had a duffle bag in one hand and file folders tucked under his arm.
Just do it. Just look.
Riley glanced down at his shoes.
Quadruple shit.
Black sneakers with red lightning stripes.
“What the fuck, Thorn? Who is that?” Nick demanded. He was probably punching things in the van.
No Neck’s eyes narrowed, and Riley realized she hadn’t responded yet.
“Sorry,” she said quickly, trying to return her bug eyes to normal size. “Bathroom?” she croaked. She was so super chill under pressure.
“Behind you,” he said, jiggling the knob of the door he’d just exited. Testing to see if it was locked.
“Right. Ha,” Riley said, trying to shake the vision of Shooty McBalderson taking out her neighbor.
Blindly, she turned around and pushed open the first door she found.
He cleared his throat. “That’s the men’s room,” Baldy said at the same time she noted the urinals.
“Right,” she said again, backing out of the room. “Blood sugar must be low.”
She hurled herself through the ladies’ room door as if shitty particleboard could protect her from a murderer.
Pressing her ear against the door, she tried to listen.
“Report, Thorn,” Nick said.
Riley yanked the earpiece out and stuffed it into her pocket.
“What’s with the girl? She wasted?” she heard No Neck the Murderer ask.
Rod’s answer was too muffled for her to catch.
“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” she breathed. Not trusting her shaking hands to shove the earpiece back in place, she pulled the neck of her t-shirt out. “I just found our murderer. Watch the door for a short, stocky, bald guy.”
She heard footsteps and froze.
Quickly, she reached into the stall and flushed the toilet.
Then she moved to the sink and ran the water. How long was too long to pretend to wash her hands? Was it suspicious that she was washing her hands in a place like this? Would that tip him off that she was a plant?
She wanted to stay locked in here. She also wanted to run out and break a chair over that murdering bad guy’s face.
She made a racket with the paper towel holder and then shoved through the door.
No one was waiting to murder her in the hall. Cautiously, she eased through the saloon doors. No Neck was standing at the end of the bar, facing her.
She tried to walk normally, then realized she had no idea how to do that. Her legs felt too loose in the joints. It went against every self-preserving biological urge to force herself to walk toward a guy who had put two bullets in her neighbor’s head.
Did he have a gun? Was that what was in the bag?
“Riley,” he said when she pushed through the saloon doors.
How did he know her name? Was he psychic, too?
Holy shit. She was psychic. There had to be something in her psychic toolkit that applied to this situation.
Help. Help. HELP! She sent up the plea to her spirit guides, to a god or a goddess—or maybe there was a psychic 911, and she’d just called it.
She felt a wave of calm that definitely wasn’t her own wash over her.
Taking a deep breath, she smiled at No Neck the Murderer. “That’s me.”
“Interesting name,” he said finally.
She watched in detached amazement as she extended her hand toward him. “And you are?”
No Neck eyed her hand for
what felt like an eternity before taking it. Cold. It rushed through her like jumping into the deep, dark waters of a lake. There was no rage here. No fit of passion waiting to erupt like a volcano. No nothing. Just cold.
“Dun,” he said, dropping her hand.
“Dun?” she repeated. “Are you the owner?” Shut up, Riley. Shut the hell up. She wasn’t sure if it was her self-preservation sending the message or a higher power or Nick shouting in her ear.
“No.” A man of few words and many bullets. “You’re new here,” he stated.
“Yeah. Well, sort of. I just helped out today because Betsy didn’t show up for her shift.” She watched his face for a flicker of anything at the mention of Betsy. But there was nothing there. Dead shark eyes. Goose bumps cropped up on her arms.
“Well, look who decided to show up and lend a hand an hour too late.” Liz banged her way through the front door and strutted up to the bar, glaring at the cold-blooded killer.
Dun the Neckless turned his dead eyes on the purple-haired woman too abrasive to know she was insulting a killer.
Riley stepped in front of Liz just in case there was a gun in that duffle bag.
Dun ignored Liz’s dig and looked at Rod. “Later, man,” he said.
“Later,” Rod shot back, attention already back on the TV.
Dun the Murdery ignored the front door and headed back the hall toward the emergency exit. Dammit.
She was just weighing her chances of running out the back and getting a picture of the guy when the front door flew open, bouncing off the wall.
“Who the hell are you?” Liz asked, eyebrow raised in what kind of looked like admiration.
Josie, Nick’s muscle, strolled in wearing tight motorcycle leggings, a black tank, and a somehow sexy-looking fanny pack. She had a chain choker around her neck, and her steel-toed boots sounded ominous on the sticky floor.
Her gaze was cool as she scanned the room.
“I’m her girlfriend,” Josie said, nodding at Riley. “Time to go, cupcake.”
43
4:15 p.m., Saturday, July 4