by K. J. Emrick
“I got a phone call,” he explained, his voice reedy and tense. “Someone looking for a room to rent. How could I refuse?”
It was obvious that he was embarrassed, and still a little scared. When Kevin and I had been here, telling him our theory about who had killed Bostwick, we must’ve made more of an impression than I thought. Alfonse was full on scared. I took a breath, and reminded myself that he had a right to be antsy. He’d witnessed the Lakeshore PD covering up a crime.
“Look,” I said to him, in a calmer tone. “There was nothing wrong. You’re fine. You got rats in your establishment and so help me God, you better take care of this, ‘cause if I get rats in my Inn because of your filthy bar, I’m going to—!”
Out in the pub, I heard the sound of a rubber soled shoe squeaking against the floor.
We both froze, staring at each other.
Alfonse’s eyes were wide in his dark face. He might have jumped the gun before, but there was someone else in the Thirsty Roo now.
I lowered my voice to a whisper, quieter even than Alfonse had been earlier. “We need to go. Is there another way out?”
He nodded, pointing to the back of the storage room. There was a door, and even though I didn’t know where it went, I knew it led away from here.
It might be James out there, I thought to myself, hope rising and then dying in me quickly again. No. I’d called him on the way here, but it would take a bit longer for him to arrive. Plus James would have called out for me, or rang my mobile to let me know he was here. He wouldn’t be sneaking around.
I heard footsteps, and then bottles clinking against each other.
With a finger up against my lips to tell Alfonse not to make a sound, I started with him toward the back door.
It was one of those metal security doors with the crash bar, um, push bar thingy, that opened it. We were careful not to make a sound. Not to touch anything, or bump up against the racks of stored food and supplies.
I gently set my hand to the crash bar and shoved the door open, hoping it wasn’t rusty with disuse or that it hadn’t been painted shut from the outside with white paint or—
The emergency alarm blared in a jarring, pulsing monotone.
I glared at Alfonse.
“I didn’t know,” he said, still whispering even though there was no reason to be stealthy now. “I’ve never used this door! It’s not my fault!”
Grabbing a handful of his gold shirt I shoved him through the open doorway. “Just go!”
The door led into the narrow space behind the Thirsty Roo, where the garbage was piled up and the stairs led up to the apartments. I was halfway out, with the alarm still blaring, when I chanced a look back.
I caught a glimpse of a man coming through the door. He had a gun in his hand.
I didn’t wait to see more.
The door worked on a pneumatic slide and I didn’t have time to try and shove it closed. The best I could do was run after Alfonse, up the stairs to the apartments. He already had the entry unlocked and I found him as he was unlocking the apartment where Officer Bostwick had been murdered. He practically fell inside and motioned for me to follow.
When I did, he closed and locked the door behind us.
I looked at him, then at the room around us, then at the locked door, then back to him.
“Why,” I asked him, too angry to even yell, “did you bring us up here? We’re sitting ducks up here!”
“I wasn’t thinking,” he babbled, “I just wanted to be somewhere safe and there’s a man in me bar, oh dear God, Dell, what’re we gonna do, what’re we gonna do!”
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I still had the broom gripped so tightly in my hands that my knuckles were beginning to ache. I really thought I was going to break the handle over his head this time.
He was saved from having to prove just how thick his head really was by the sound of footsteps rushing up the stairs.
I motioned for Alfonse to get in the other room, the bathroom, while I stayed out here, scared half out of my mind. Instead of letting that emotion paralyze me I used it, let it energize me. Bits and pieces of a hasty plan came together. The door on the stairs wasn’t locked. I hadn’t even closed it behind me when I was following Alfonse up here. The door to the apartment here was locked, but I didn’t think it would stop the man out there for long.
It certainly wouldn’t stop bullets.
Keeping my eyes on the door, I moved to the side—just in case whoever was out there did decide to start shooting—and stepped down on the head of the broom. Slowly, silently, I unscrewed the handle.
I heard something jiggling in the lock. A pick set, I realized, just like Kevin had used. He’d been right about that part. No key required.
My makeshift weapon felt far too light to be any kind of effective as I raised it up over my head, holding my breath, trying not to think past the moment I was in.
The doorknob turned.
The door began to push inward.
I moved back, flattening myself against the wall where I wouldn’t be seen.
A man’s bald head poked its way inside.
With all my strength, I slammed the broom handle down, exhaling as I did. My aim was dead on. The wood cracked over the man’s skull, breaking in two as he yelped in pain and tumbled to the floor.
His gun clattered out of his hand as he dropped to all fours. On impulse I lunged for it and picked it up and turned on—
Bruce Kay.
He was shaking his head, rubbing the back of his scalp where I was sure a nasty bruise would’ve already started to form.
Getting up to his feet, he stumbled toward me, one hand raised in a fist. He’d dressed down for this, in a pair of ripped brown jeans and an old red t-shirt. Guess he figured wearing the police department’s uniform to kill Alfonse Calico would’ve been in bad taste.
“Give me that back,” he growled at me, meaning the gun. “Give it back right now or I’ll kill ya!”
Don’t give him the gun, he was going to kill me. Give him the gun, he would kill me. Bruce wasn’t the best negotiator in the world. I didn’t like either of those choices.
“No thanks,” I told him. “Think I’ll hang onto this.”
“Why you—!”
Flashes of light from the doorway caught both me and Bruce off our guard.
James was a beautiful sight, standing there with his camera, flashing pics of the whole thing. “I didn’t quite get that last bit, Bruce,” he said, snapping one last shot of the scene in the apartment. “Want to give it another go so I can quote ya properly?”
Bruce’s mouth moved, but he wasn’t able to make any words come out. He blinked at the two of us, and then dropped his fist, his chin sagging down to his chest.
“It’s over,” I told him. “You’re done.”
“Too right,” James agreed, putting his camera back in the case hanging from his belt. “Listen to the lady, Officer Kay.”
The gun was awkward and heavy in my hand. When I raised an eyebrow at James, he just shrugged. “What? The weapon of choice for a reporter is a camera. Besides, seems like everything was already under control here. It was like ya didn’t even need me.”
I started to tell him that wasn’t true, that I needed him so badly in my life for so many reasons. I started to tell him a dozen different things.
He didn’t stay to listen. He already had Bruce Kay by the elbow, leading him out and back down the stairs.
While I was grateful to him for that, I wish he would’ve stayed. I wish we had the time to sit and talk and tell each other that everything was fine between us. I wanted so badly for things to be fine between us.
The truth was, I didn’t know what to do. If I told him about my husband’s ghost, James would surely think I was crazy. But, if I didn’t tell him about it, I’d be lying to him.
Either way, it would still be there between us. My husband’s ghost.
A lot of couples are haunted by their past, right?
; Just not so literally...
When Alfonse finally came out of the bathroom I was still standing there, gun in hand. He wiped at the sweat on his forehead with a satin hankie that he must’ve had in one of his pockets and then flashed me a big, big smile.
“Well,” he said. “That was exciting. Not exactly the Christmas I was expecting in a small little speck of a town like Lakeshore.”
That actually made me laugh. “Stick around,” I told him. “This place is always exciting.”
***
Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember what Christmas morning meant to me as a little girl. Presents, definitely, and church services. Family members I hardly ever saw dropping by the house. Mom and Dad, happy and stressed and doing everything they could to transform our house into a happy place.
There was something else about Christmases back then. Something that I think gradually gets lost as we get older. There’s this feeling of hope that surrounds Christmas when you’re just still little and new to the world. A belief that kids carry deep in their hearts that when it’s Christmastime, anything is possible.
I’m not sure how old I was when I lost that feeling, but this year, I found it again.
The day before Christmas dawned bright and warm, the breezes stirring the Monterey pines and ruffling my hair into my face as I walked into the Lakeshore Police Department. I’d hardly gotten any sleep last night, and if my reason for coming here hadn’t been so important I would’ve stayed in bed for a few more hours. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing until well after midnight. The news had spread around town like wildfire that I was off the hook for Jason Bostwick’s murder, that Bruce Kay had been arrested—by me, no less—and how Alfonse Calico had swept in and saved the day.
I had a feeling that last bit was being spread by Calico himself down at the Thirsty Roo over a few too many pints of Christmas Eve beer.
Not one call from James. I hadn’t seen him at all since we got Bruce Kay locked away. I knew that couldn’t mean anything good.
With a deep breath to help me focus my thoughts on what I was here for, I stepped up to the service window and slapped the plunger on the little bell.
It was Senior Sergeant Cutter who met me at the window, just like I knew it would be. If my night had been a long one, Cutter’s had been even longer.
“What d’ya want?” he grumped, blowing out a breath through his mustache. “Haven’t ya caused enough trouble?”
“I didn’t cause your troubles,” I pointed out.
That earned me a snort. “Whatever. Get yerself in here and state your business so’s ya can get out again. I’ve got things to do.”
“I’m sure you do,” I muttered under my breath, catching the door as he buzzed it open for me.
There was no one in the building besides us. I had been in here enough times to know what the place sounded like when it was empty. It sounded like this. Cutter led the way down the hall to his office. He didn’t exactly hold the door open for me, so much as he just threw it open to bang against the wall.
He sat down at his desk and started shuffling through papers and folders. “Make it quick, Miss Powers. I’ve got more work than I’ve got people now. Had to arrest another one of my officers. ‘Course, that’s nothing new far as yer concerned, is it? Seeing as how it was you who got him arrested.”
“Bruce Kay got himself arrested,” I pointed out, sitting down across from him. I took out the little envelope I’d been carrying in my back pocket and held it tightly in my hand.
Cutter ignored me as he signed his name to another report in a looping scrawl. “Can’t get good help these days. Can ya believe Bruce Kay murdered that Officer Bostwick? Struth, ya think ya know someone.”
He didn’t look up as he said it, but I knew he didn’t mean it. He wasn’t a bit surprised that Bruce Kay had been arrested for murdering Officer Jason Bostwick, a man who Cutter had promised me only yesterday was still alive. No, arresting Bruce Kay didn’t bother him in the least.
After all, that’s the way he planned it.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he said, talking to fill the silence. “Seems like every time I turn around my men are failing me. Just like that worthless son of yers. Well. What’re ya gonna do, I suppose. Some men just can’t be trusted.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
That got his attention. His head snapped up and his pen paused over whatever he’d been writing. “Excuse me?”
“I said, I couldn’t agree more. Some men can’t be trusted. At all. Like you.”
“Now listen to me, Miss High-and-Mighty Dell Powers. If ya think I’m gonna just—”
I tossed the yellow envelope down in front of him.
He eyed it like it was a brown snake.
“What’s this?”
“These,” I explained to him, “are pictures of you. That worthless son of mine took them. Guess he’s not so worthless after all.”
I smiled. Cutter did not smile back.
When he reached for the envelope, and then opened it, and then went through the pictures one at a time, I could see the light slowly dawn behind his eyes. I couldn’t help but feel a little smug for it.
While I had been saving Alfonse Calico’s life, and unintentionally cementing a rift between me and James, Kevin had followed Senior Sergeant Angus Cutter from the police station to the spot out between here and Geeveston where he’d buried a dead man. In the middle of nowhere, far from where anyone would have ever looked for him, Cutter had buried Jason Bostwick’s body. With a telephoto lens on a digital camera, Kevin had managed to get several crystal clear pictures of Cutter digging the body up, and then burying his mistake again.
Because it wasn’t Bruce Kay who killed Bostwick. Bruce was just there to help clean up his boss’s mess, as usual.
It was Cutter who killed the man.
“How’d ya get these?” he asked me.
“That’s not important.”
“It’s important if I say so!” he bellowed, slapping the photos down on the desk.
I sat there, unmoved by his anger. Not this time. He was in no position to bully me this time. “You’re wrong, Senior Sergeant. How Kevin and I got the photos isn’t important. You can keep those if you want. I made copies. What’s important is that you knew exactly how to find the grave of a man you said wasn’t even dead. Now how d’ya suppose you knew that?”
As his hands began to shake he folded them on top of the desk and held them together tightly enough that his knuckles turned white. “This doesn’t prove anything.”
He said the words, but I could tell he didn’t believe them.
I had to admit, I was enjoying myself. “It proves everything, Senior Sergeant. By the way, you should enjoy me calling you Senior Sergeant while it lasts. At the end of this conversation, you won’t be the Senior Sergeant here anymore.”
“That so?” he said, trying for a cocky smile.
“Yes, it is. Remember I told you once that I would see you bounced out of this job? You’ve been dirty for as long as I’ve known you, Senior Sergeant. I just couldn’t prove it. Well, now I can. You did a good job of burying that body again but the Federal Police dug him back up. They know the truth now. Bostwick is dead. And you killed him.”
He shook his head vigorously. “No. Bruce killed him. I was just—”
“As if. Bruce Kay never wipes his nose without getting permission from you. Besides, he’s not the one who got scared when I said I’d found a button from Bostwick’s sleeve. I was talking to Bruce Kay, but you were in the room, too. I saw you listening. Alfonse saw Bruce at his bar when someone else took the body out. That was you. Unfortunately for Alfonse, that made him another witness to get rid of. You discredited me by having me arrested, and that would have made it impossible for me to point fingers afterward. If I had, it would have seemed like sour grapes.”
I leaned in closer. “But then I found proof, and you bit on it. It’s not sour grapes now. It’s a fact. You’re a murderer. You
’re done, Cutter. This is your last day as senior sergeant in the town of Lakeshore.”
“Ha,” Cutter barked. “Yer lying. If the Australian Federal Police had anything on me they’d be arresting me right now.” He made a show of looking over my shoulders, then at the open door behind me. “So where are they? Ya seem to be all alone here, Miss Powers. All. Alone.”
My son has a secret flair for the dramatic. He chose that moment to step around from the hallway and enter the office.
“She’s not alone,” Kevin said. “I’m with her.”
Cutter jumped up to his feet, knocking his chair over as he did, his face turning red right up to his thinning gray hair. “What in the name of all that’s holy do ya think yer doing here? I fired yer backside! Get outta my police station!”
“First of all,” Kevin told him, just as unimpressed by Cutter’s yelling as I had been, “you didn’t fire me. I quit. Second of all, the Federal Police have everything they need to put you behind bars for a very long time. The reason none of them came here with my mom is because they agreed to let me have the honor of arresting you.”
“The day the likes of yer mug can arrest me,” Cutter growled, jabbing his finger in Kevin’s direction to emphasize each word, “is the day Hell freezes over!”
I wasn’t prepared for what came next. Kevin took two steps and then jumped over the desk, tackling Cutter before he could make a move. Down on the floor, he wrestled with Cutter, dodging a badly aimed punch from his former Senior Sergeant, finally pinning the man down with his arm twisted like a pretzel behind his back.
“Ya can’t do this!” Cutter complained, his voice reaching a high pitch. “I have powerful friends! Yer not even a cop anymore!”
“The Federal Police think otherwise,” Kevin promised, locking in his hold. “Seems I found where I belong after all. I’m on a department of real cops now, and whatever friends you have up in Sydney or wherever can’t save you now.”
I saw handcuffs appear in Kevin’s hands as if by magic. He had them on Cutter’s wrist easily enough, and when Cutter tried to struggle more Kevin pulled back on that arm until I heard something pop.