by Adan Ramie
The woman turned to stare at Josie, then glanced at the car. "Please, don't make me do this. I don't want to get tangled up in someone else's mess." She squinted at Lee as she rifled around inside her car, and took a step forward. "What are you doing?"
Lee grabbed a hunk of cold, dark metal from the glove box and hauled herself back out of the car. The driver sucked in a breath and let out a horrified groan.
"Listen, you hit my friend with your car," Lee said. She held the gun pointed directly at the driver. "The least you can do is help us save the friend we were going to help when you derailed us."
"Damn, girl," Josie said. He slid himself across the pavement inch by inch until he was near enough the car's hood to get a grip. "Can I get a hand up?" he asked.
Lee gestured for the woman to help Josie up as she bridged the gap. She was much smaller than him, but stronger than she looked, and with the help of Lee's free arm, the two managed to get him up onto his good leg and into the back seat of the car. Lee wagged the gun at the driver's seat. "Get in."
Inside, Lee let out a sigh. "You couldn't just do this the easy way, could you?" She buckled her seatbelt with her free hand, the gun still trained on the driver as she cautiously buckled herself in and started the car.
"I can't get a break," the woman whispered as she glanced in her mirrors, then eased the car around to drive the opposite direction.
"Hey, you take us to help our friend, then to the hospital, and you'll never see us again," Lee said.
A police car sped past them, all sirens and lights, and Josie swore. "What the hell was that?"
CHAPTER 5
Ruby shook in the driver's seat. Behind her, a large man in yoga pants and a lollipop t-shirt bled onto her seats and gave her directions. Beside her, a woman about her size with shaggy hair and dark, haunted eyes held a gun on her. She said a silent prayer to something she didn't know she believed in that she would survive the night. They passed a burning building, where a fire truck, ambulance, and police car congregated. Their lights flashed, but their sirens were dead quiet.
"Well, we won't be going home again," the woman beside her muttered.
The man in the back seat snorted. "Like we want to. As long as Eddie wants my ass on a platter, we wouldn't have been safe there, anyway."
The woman with the gun let out a long sigh. "I hope Sunny is okay."
"Don't hold your breath," the man said, and reached a hand out to put it on the woman's shoulder. "I'm sorry I started this."
"It's not your fault, Josie," the woman answered. She didn't take her eyes off the road, but she put her free hand on his. "You didn't have a choice."
"I chose to take the stuff to the party."
The woman snorted and turned just far enough to look at him in the back seat. "Did you choose to be robbed?"
"You were robbed?" Ruby asked, and both sets of eyes landed on her. She wished she could take it back, or crawl into the floorboard and out of sight, anything to avoid the twin expressions of scrutiny now leveled on her.
"Yeah," he answered after a long pause. "And now a psycho is after me and my friends. Turn here," he said, and pointed one scuffed, but manicured finger at the next cross street.
"I'm sorry," Ruby said, and followed his directions.
Soon, they pulled into the dark parking lot of a building whose occupants were mostly outside. In various states of dress and intoxication, the residents watched as the building a few streets down burned to the ground with little help from the on-scene fire fighters.
"I don't think I can go," Josie said.
His partner turned to Ruby. "Leave the keys and come with me."
"Why? I'm not going anywhere." The woman pushed the gun closer to Ruby's ribs, and she winced. "Please, I swear."
"Don't make me use this thing."
Ruby nodded, unbuckled her seatbelt, and got out of the car. She reached for the keys by instinct.
"Leave the keys." The woman with the gun unbuckled her seatbelt. "I'll be right back," she said to the man she called Josie, then got out of the car. They closed their doors, the woman checked the safety on the gun, then tucked it into her waistband. "Let's go."
They pushed past the crowd of people fire-gazing and into the building. Inside, they could hear the steady thump of loud music from above. As they ascended the stairs, Ruby chanced a look at her abductor. Her jaw was set in a hard line, and the muscle twitched with the force of her clench. She was about the same size as Ruby, but there was something much stronger about her, as if she had been cut from a more rugged cloth.
The woman walked past another door, and Ruby cleared her throat. "What floor are we going to?"
"Sixth," the woman answered without a glance at her.
They continued on for another flight, when out of nowhere, the woman tossed an arm across her body to stop Ruby in her tracks. Ruby opened her mouth to question her, but the woman but a finger to her lips. In the distance, Ruby heard heavy footfalls above them, and the sound of men's laughter. The woman pulled Ruby into a door, then put her ear against it. As the voices got closer, Ruby could hear snippets of the conversation, and it made her stomach turn.
"She got blood all over me..."
Laughter and stomping feet.
"Did you see that slut's face when she saw it?"
Ruby watched the face of her captor contort in fury. The woman reached for the doorknob, and Ruby caught her hand. The two locked eyes for a moment, balled fist in soft palm, until the men had passed.
"We need to go help your friend," Ruby whispered when the voices had faded.
The woman let out a loud breath, jerked open the door, and got back on the stairs. In a few minutes, they were at the door, and the woman stopped with her hand poised above the doorknob.
"I don't know what we're going to see."
Ruby nodded, and the woman turned to knob. Already, a few nosy neighbors had their heads out of their doors, and their attention was on the open apartment door at the end of the hall. As they got closer, the woman sped up, until she was almost at a full run. A few of Sunny’s neighbors had their doors cracked, but only one had her head out. She was talking, fast and loud, into an old-style cordless phone. When she saw them, she covered the mouthpiece and motioned them over.
"Lee, come."
“What happened?” Ruby's captor asked.
The old woman shook her head gravely. “Sunshine was attacked. Two matons with guns. She screaming, then she stop. I did not go in. I just call police.”
“Stay here.”
As her captor rushed past the door, Ruby threw caution to the wind and followed her into the apartment of her old friend. When the young woman got to the bathroom, she stopped short at the door, just before a congealing pool of blood. The woman Ruby assumed was Sunny lie half naked on the uneven tiles, her body bruised and swelling fast; even from a few feet away, Ruby could see the boot prints as they began to show purple on her ribs. She bled from every visible orifice.
“Sunny...”
The exotic dancer’s blood-shot eyes rolled slowly up to meet hers. Ruby's captor bent down close, and rubbed one hand over Sunny’s sweat-damp hair.
"Lee?"
“Who did this to you?”
“Run.” Fluid rattled in Sunny’s lungs, and she coughed weakly. “They’re looking for you and Josie.”
“I know. I'm sorry."
“Go. Hurry.”
Boots ran up behind then, and Lee jumped onto her feet, her fists balled for a fight. She spun to face the goons and found the paramedics standing behind her.
“Whoa, easy,” the woman in front of her said. “We’re here to help.”
Lee stepped out of the way and watched as the paramedics checked Sunny’s vital signs and covered her nudity. One tried to pull her aside, but she brushed his hand away.
“We’d like to ask you about your friend,” he said.
Lee shook her head. “I just got here. You know as much as I do. You need to help her, she's dying!”
&n
bsp; “Lee?” Ruby said.
Her captor turned and met her eyes. For a moment, Ruby saw inside the gruff exterior, past the gun, the threats, and the swagger. Then, Lee's eyes hardened again—blackened like a shark's eyes—and she pulled Ruby by the hand away from the carnage in her friend’s bathroom. Ruby bumped against a table with a hip; she grabbed a picture frame just before it fell, and righted it before Lee gave her hand another tug. As they breached the doorway, Lee forced them both into a jog.
“We have got to get the fuck out of here,” was all she managed in way of explanation. Ruby matched her pace and squeezed her fingers in support as the two ran down the stairs and out of the building toward the safety of Ruby’s car.
"WHAT HAPPENED UP THERE?" Josie asked as Ruby and Lee jumped back into the car.
"Step on it," Lee told Ruby. She pulled the gun from her waistband, then laid it on the seat between them, her hand around its grip for good measure.
Ruby let out a whimper, started the car, and buckled her seatbelt. She put the car into gear and started out of the parking lot, away from the flashing lights, and sucked in the deepest breath she could to steady her erratic heart. "What hospital can I take you to?"
"We're not going to the hospital." Lee's voice had turned to gravel, and the sound of it sent a tingle through Ruby's limbs. Lee tapped the gun on the seat between them; Ruby pressed herself against the door; any feeling she thought had passed between them in the apartment building was forgotten.
"Why aren't we going to the hospital?" Josie asked from the backseat. He had stretched himself as far as his long legs would allow. Ashen-faced, he could barely project his voice to the front seat.
Lee dropped her head. "Sunny's dead. Or she will be by the end of the night. Eddie and his sicko buddies got to her, and they ..." Ruby shot a glance at the passenger seat, and caught her as she swiped her empty hand across her eyes. "She told me we needed to get out of town before he finds us."
"Where are we going to go?" Ruby asked.
Lee adjusted her grip on the gun, twisted in her seat, and stared out the window as the dark street passed. "Where do you live?"
Ruby gulped down the sweet, acidic taste of fear that boiled up from the bottom of her stomach as the road thumped beneath them. "Northbridge." If Truman comes home and finds them in his pristine prison... She pushed the thought away; to dwell on it wouldn't change the fact that she had little power in the situation.
Lee nodded, and gestured with the gun. "Northbridge, it is."
CHAPTER 6
"I'm telling you, Thresher, sometimes you just have to let things go," Cal continued, while Harry stared at her computer screen. She had spent the last few minutes steadfastly ignoring him, but her resolve grew weaker by the minute. She pushed the down arrow on her keyboard to scroll to the next screen, then typed information into the form-filling wizard. Paperwork wasn't her favorite thing to do, but with Cal yapping at her heels, she had to put her attention somewhere else.
Briggs leaned her head out of her office with the phone receiver still in her hand. "Thresher, Gafferty, head south. I'm sending you the location of a homicide."
Harry saved her work for later, locked her computer, then hopped up and grabbed her coat. She walked toward the elevator while she slipped it on. Cal hopped up as she passed him and matched her stride. As they waited for the elevator, Harry's phone vibrated with the information from Briggs. They stepped onto the elevator, and Harry pulled her phone out. She made a face, then tucked her phone back into her pocket.
"Bad neighborhood?" Cal asked with a smirk.
"Is there a good neighborhood left in this place?" she asked as the doors closed on them and they started down.
A quarter of an hour had passed when they pulled up to the apartment building on the South side where a woman named Sunshine "Sunny" Galaviz took her last breath. Harry locked the car as they walked away from it, and Cal shot a furtive glance all around them.
"This is worse than I thought," Cal said.
Harry pulled open the door to the building, and her hand came back moist. She wiped it on a handkerchief from her pocket. Once inside, she watched Cal pump the button for the elevator for only a moment before she walked over to the stairwell and opened the creaky door, careful this time to use the handkerchief as a barrier.
"It's busted," she said, and indicated that she would follow him in. Once inside, she couldn't hide her repulsion at the dank, dripping walls and pervasive stench of urine that caught in her nostrils and wouldn't let go. "This place is disgusting."
"Yeah," Cal said, his long strides keeping him ahead of her. He towered over her by over a foot on flat ground; as he twisted around to look at her on the stairs, he had her by almost two feet. "This kind of grime doesn't wash off with regular soap."
Harry snorted her agreement, and the two ascended the last of the stairs without saying another word. When they opened the door, Harry spotted the crime scene tape across the door of Sunny’s apartment, but her eyes landed on the open apartment across the hall. The dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra singing one of his classics floated down the narrow corridor.
"Think whoever lives there saw anything?" Cal asked.
Harry nodded. "See if you can get the tenant to talk. I'm going to check out the scene."
"You got it, boss lady," he said with a grimace. "I'm not in any hurry to get in there."
They walked down the hall and parted ways at the open door. Cal knocked while Harry walked on the few feet to the taped-up door. The uniformed officer on guard at the door nodded at her as he stepped aside to let her in. She took note of the general destruction of the apartment as she walked through, and nodded at a young crime scene tech as she passed her. The girl's gaze lit on hers with a blushing grin; Harry made a mental note to ask the girl her name later.
She stepped around a cluster of evidence tents as she rounded a corner, and stopped just outside the blood-drenched bathroom. A trim older man in CSS gear squatted beside a pool of congealed blood with tweezers in his hand. He plucked something small, a fiber or hair, from underneath the overhanging lip of the vanity, and placed it into an evidence bag.
"CSS Vinton," she said from the door.
His head swung up to look at her, and his ruddy face broke into a grin. "Hey, there's my favorite detective," he said, and stood up. He dropped the sealed bag into the plastic tub beside him, peeled off his glove, and held out one freckled, olive hand to shake. "It's good to see you're on this one, Harry." His face turned brooding, and his gaze fell to the giant blood pool beneath their feet. "This was a heinous crime."
Harry shook his head and followed his gaze. "I can see that. What can you tell me so far?"
CSS Shoney Vinton took a deep breath. "Well, I can tell you that no one was in the mood to clean anything up. We have a smorgasbord of evidence left on the scene. Fingerprints, hair, fibers, and semen have all been recovered so far, and we still have a long way to go. Miss Galaviz wasn't a particularly tidy housekeeper, we can tell that for sure, but by the time her attackers left her, they had destroyed any semblance of order she had put into place."
"Insult to injury."
CSS Vinton nodded, and slipped on a new glove. He dropped back down and rifled through the evidence tub. When he stood again, he held a framed photo in a bag, which he handed over to her. "One of the EMS guys said this woman was on the scene when they got here."
Harry inspected the evidence. The photo was splattered with blood, but she could still make out the picture of Sunny Galaviz with her arm around another woman in a friendly embrace. Harry recognized the other woman, but she didn't know from where, and made a mental note to follow up on that lead quickly.
"Did she see it happen?"
CSS Vinton shrugged and took the photo back. He put it back into the tub, and looked up at Harry. "No one knows exactly what she was doing here. EMS said she was here when they came in. Door was open, and this girl was leaning over the body. She actually took a swing at them."
Harr
y whistled. "Sounds like someone I need to get into an interrogation room."
"When you do find her, we need some DNA, if only to rule out her contributions to this mess."
Harry nodded, gave him a friendly salute, and backed out of the room. "Let me know if you find anything else you want to draw my attention to," she said.
He saluted back, then picked up his tweezers and went back to work. Harry dodged the evidence tents as she walked back out to the main living area of the apartment. Cal caught sight of her and swung his head at her to call her over to where he stood with the young, female CSS.
"Detective Harry Thresher, this is CSS Klaudia Biznicki," he announced. The girl blushed when she caught Harry's eye.
"You can call me Busy," the girl said, and held out a gloved hand to shake. "It's so amazing to finally meet you, Detective Thresher. I've heard so much about you."
"All good, I hope." Harry indicated the glove with a nod of her head. The girl dropped her hand, blushing, and peeled off her glove. Harry shook her hand with a grin. "The pleasure is all mine."
Cal looked from one to the other, and his shoulders dropped. "I was just telling CSS Biznicki -"
"Busy," the girl corrected him.
He cleared his throat. "I was just telling Busy that we were going to be working this case. She says she will let us know anything she thinks might be important."
"Oh, of course," the young woman answered, her eyes still on Harry. "Anything you need, Detective Thresher," she said, her breath short and her face pink.
Harry gave her shoulder a pat. "I'm glad to hear that, Busy, since our departments work so closely."
Busy nodded with enthusiasm.
Harry stepped closer, and Cal backed away, then moved toward the back of the apartment, leaving the two women alone. Harry watched him leave, then turned her attention back to the young CSS. "So closely, in fact, that I'm not sure why we haven't met before."