“So? I’ve seen her. She must be a hundred-ten pounds soaking wet. Don’t try to tell me she gave you that egg on the side of your face.”
“You said the wife and kid were going to be out. You said McHugh would be alone. You said—“
“Jesus Christ almighty!” Crowder exploded. “So I was wrong and they were home! So what? Stop beating around the bush and tell me what the hell happened.”
“McHugh opened the door and I forced my way in like you said. I told him what I wanted and that I wasn’t leaving until I had enough shit to pay what he owed you.”
Crowder spread his arms, palms pointing at the ceiling. “Okay. When are you gonna get to the part where you explain why that fucking bag is empty?”
Derek took a deep breath and tried to collect his thoughts and Crowder said, “Now, dipshit.”
“I thought McHugh was alone, okay? I thought he was alone, and I was nervous and scared and all of a sudden the wife appears out of nowhere like the fucking serial killer in a horror movie, she appears out of nowhere and I was really nervous and I turned and…and…”
“And?”
“And the gun went off, okay? The gun went off and I shot her and she went down in a heap and McHugh charged me and I turned around just in time and I shot him as he was tackling me, and I shot him, and he damned near fell right on top of his wife and I shot them both and they’re dead, holy shit they’re dead and I killed them.” He was shaking again, even worse now, and the tears tried to force their way out again and he didn’t want to cry in front of Crowder and he mostly stopped himself but one tear leaked out of his right eye and he swiped it away with the back of his hand.
And Crowder said, “Okay, you fucked up and you killed them. Sucks, I get it. But I still haven’t heard anything that might explain why that fucking backpack is filled with nothing but air.”
Derek’s eyes widened in surprise. He wanted to keep cool in front of the man he was counting on to save his ass but he just couldn’t help it. He just killed two more-or-less innocent people and the boss wanted to know why he didn’t follow that up by ransacking their house?
“I…” He couldn’t think of a single goddamned thing to say.
“You idiot,” Crowder said. “If they’re dead, they’re dead. McHugh lives…excuse me, McHugh lived…in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors that could have heard the gunshots. So there was absolutely no reason not to go from room to room until you found the wife’s jewelry and then brought it to me.”
“Well, there was one reason. I had to tie up the kid.”
Crowder sat perfectly still and stared unblinkingly at Derek. He eyed him until Derek dropped his gaze, eyed him while Derek admired the floor, and when Derek looked back up he was still being stared in the face by Crowder.
The man cleared his throat and when he spoke, his voice was dead calm. “What did you just say?”
“I said I had to tie up the kid so I could get away, and between the thing with the parents and then almost getting my ass beat by a thirteen-year-old and tying her up and worrying about escaping, I guess getting the money and jewelry just slipped my mind.”
“It slipped your mind.”
Derek nodded.
“While you were tying up the kid.”
Nodded again.
“So you could make your getaway.”
“Well, yes. I couldn’t very well leave her running around or she would have called the cops the second I was out the door.”
Crowder cleared his throat a second time and finally dragged his gaze away from Derek’s face, a development for which Derek was more grateful than he would ever have imagined possible.
Then the man started thrumming his fingers on the desk like he’d done before and Derek cringed inwardly, and maybe even outwardly a little.
“So what you’re telling me,” Crowder finally said, “is you murdered two people in the course of committing a home invasion, and you left an eyewitness alive?”
“She-she’s just a kid. I couldn’t…I mean, she’s just a kid.”
“Just a kid.”
“She’s probably not even a teenager yet.”
“Right. Because kids are blind.”
Derek blinked. “What? What are you talking about?”
Crowder shook his head in disgust. “I assume she saw you?”
“Of course she saw me. She came out of nowhere and when she saw her parents lying dead on the floor she came at me just like her father had. You asked before if the wife was the one that gave me this?” He reached up and trailed the tips of his fingers over the swollen lump on the side of his face. “It was the kid.”
He took a deep breath and said, “So, yes, I had to tie her up so I could get away. I’m sorry about the empty backpack but I guess I panicked. All I could think of was how badly I needed to get back here so you could tell me what to do.”
“You guess you panicked.”
Derek shrugged. “Well, yeah.”
“You panicked, and instead of eliminating the only witness to a double homicide and then getting me my money, which was the sole reason you were even inside the house to begin with, instead of doing what any idiot would have known to do, instead of doing those things you left alive the person who could ID you and send you to the electric chair and then ran out of the house empty-handed, like a dog with its tail between its legs.”
“I couldn’t kill a kid. She was completely innocent, how could I kill her?” Derek literally could not believe what Crowder was suggesting. Sure, the man was a criminal, but to suggest shooting a child with absolutely no provocation? He couldn’t fathom anyone doing that.
“Of course,” Crowder said. “She’s just a kid. I understand.”
Derek swallowed heavily.
Crowder continued, still speaking in a tone of exaggerated calm. “Did you remember to take the gun with you when you left the house?”
“Sure.” He decided to skip the part about almost walking away without it. “I have it in my waistband, right at the small of my back.”
“Good. Let me take a look at it, would you?”
Derek reached behind his back and under his shirt, and Crowder said, “Nice and easy, now, we don’t want anyone else getting shot.”
He handed it over and Crowder ejected the magazine. Then he glanced disinterestedly at the unloaded weapon before pressing a button on his phone.
Instantly the door opened behind Derek and one of the goons who’d kicked his ass this morning entered the room. “You rang?” the goon said.
Crowder tossed him the weapon and the man caught it with one beefy paw. “Lose this,” Crowder said, “and make sure it’s never found.”
The goon nodded once and backed out of the room. When he’d closed the door, Crowder shrugged and said, “The serial number’s been scratched off the gun and it was stolen to begin with, so it’s not like anyone could ever trace it. They certainly could never tie it to me, but you can’t be too careful, right?”
“Right.” Derek nodded and felt a sense of relief begin flooding his body. This was the sort of guidance he needed. Getting rid of the gun was something he would never have thought to do on his own. He would have thought he should keep it for protection, but that would be stupidity of the highest order, he now realized. If he were caught with the gun, the police could match it to the bullets fired in the McHugh home and use that match to send him straight to death row.
There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Crowder’s eyes bored into and seemingly through Derek. He seemed to be sizing Derek up somehow, like a cat eyeing a mouse. It was a withering stare, and it went on and on, and Crowder just sat behind his desk and looked at Derek, and Derek just stood in front of the desk getting more and more uncomfortable.
The relief he’d felt a moment ago evaporated, and a feeling of impending doom rushed in to take its place. Derek began to feel hot and ill, and he wasn’t sure whether that was thanks to his still-worsening dopesic
kness or Crowder’s fucking death stare.
The tension continued to mount and, and when Derek couldn’t take the awful silence anymore he said, “So…we’re safe now, right?”
“We?” Crowder said sardonically.
“Well, you know, I pulled the trigger, but I was there doing a favor for you.”
Crowder’s eyes narrowed and Derek instantly realized he’d made a horrible mistake. “Not that I would ever say anything. Ever. Not to the cops or anyone else. Of course not. I just meant…I mean, you know, I’ve never shot anyone before and I’m a little…you know…I mean, what do we do now?”
9
“That’s a damned fine question,” Crowder said, his voice dripping with acid. “What do we do now, indeed?” He’d stopped thrumming his fingers on the desk when Derek handed over the murder weapon, but now he began again, that fucking miniature horse galloping through the fucking imaginary field for all it was worth.
Derek decided he would be thrilled if he never had to hear that sound again. It was an earworm crawling into his brain and infecting it and combining with his heroin jones to drive him to the edge of insanity.
He realized Crowder had said something but with that invisible horse galloping around inside his head he’d completely missed it. “Excuse me?”
“I said did the girl hear your conversation with McHugh?”
“The girl?”
“Yeah, you know, the eyewitness to the double homicide you committed. The one who could send you to death row.”
There it was again. Send you to death row. For the second time, Crowder had left himself out of any reference to the McHugh situation. As hot as he’d felt a moment ago, Derek now felt every bit as cold. It was a chill unrelated to the temperature, a feeling like all the blood had been drained from his body and replaced with ice water.
And it wasn’t a good thing, like Yeah, that dude has ice water running through his veins. He’s one cool customer.
It was more like when his family had gone to Wells Beach in Maine one summer when he was a little kid, long before he’d alienated everyone who’d ever loved him with his drug use and its attendant lies and deception and thievery. He still remembered his dad carrying him out into the water and then dropping him into the Atlantic, and even though it had been mid-July, the hottest time of the year, the water had been ice-cold, frigid, and it had enveloped him and he’d felt paralyzed, constricted, like his muscles had turned to stone and he couldn’t move or even breathe. His dad had had to rescue him before he drowned.
That was how he felt now, with Crowder distancing himself from the situation and leaving Derek drowning in the Atlantic.
It was a terrifying feeling and he was confused and upset, and damned if he hadn’t forgotten—again—what Crowder just said.
Get ahold of yourself.
He swallowed and the conversation came back to him and he said, “No, I don’t think she heard me talking to McHugh.” His answer came out sounding weak and fearful, which only made sense because if there were two words that would form a perfect description of Derek right now, one would be “weak” and the other would be “fearful.”
“You don’t think so? What the fuck does that mean? She either heard you say who you were working for or she didn’t. Which was it?”
“I-I don’t think I ever said your name specifically. I think I just assumed McHugh would realize why I was there.”
“Again, you’re saying ‘think’ instead of ‘know,’ and that’s not good enough, goddammit.”
And then Derek remembered. The ear buds!
“No,” he burst out. “I’m certain she didn’t hear anything I said to her father. She was wearing ear buds when she charged into the living room, which meant she’d been listening to music, so there was no way she could have heard anything I said, even if I mentioned you specifically by name, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”
He forced himself to stop babbling, but it was hard to do. He wanted so badly to tell Crowder what he wanted to hear, because that icepick stare was creeping him right the fuck out.
Obviously the man was worried about being implicated in the murder of the girl’s parents, and while Derek wasn’t happy about having to shoulder that particular burden all by himself, right now he wanted nothing more than for Crowder to stop staring at him like a specimen under a microscope.
This news should at least accomplish that goal.
But Crowder’s expression never changed. If anything, the man’s cold fury seemed to be worsening. He thrummed the desk and he stared at Derek with a thoughtful look in his eyes, and suddenly, without warning, Derek realized the significance of the chill that had enveloped him. His body knew where this line of questioning was going even if his heroin-addled brain didn’t.
Crowder was going to kill him.
He’d disarmed Derek, and then he’d questioned him to be certain the law wasn’t going to come knocking on his door, and once he received the reassurance he was seeking, he would force Derek into a car and drive him somewhere secluded—a construction site in Dorchester or a landfill in Charlestown or a fucking vacant lot in Revere—and he would pump a couple of 9mm slugs into Derek’s skull and then he would bury the body where it would never be found.
Next to the murder weapon, maybe, wherever that had gone.
Derek tried to think but it was so fucking hard. He needed a clear head but his mind was spinning. Everything was a blur, from being yanked out of the abandoned car this morning to being presented with an ultimatum this afternoon to fucking up at McHugh’s house tonight to receiving the third degree right now, things were out of control and moving too fast, and Derek just couldn’t think straight.
“So I’m thinking it might be good to get a little fresh air,” Crowder said. “You know, maybe take a drive and clear our heads. It’s been a long day and a difficult one, and the air sometimes gets stuffy in here and it’s a beautiful cool night. Whaddaya say? Want to go for a ride? We can discuss our next moves.”
Crowder pushed the chair back from his desk with his calves and began to rise, and that was when Derek reacted. He took one giant step forward and lifted Crowder’s desk lamp and swung it at his head. He’d never been an athlete but he had played Little League baseball and he gripped that fucking lamp like a Louisville Slugger and swung for the fences.
And he missed Crowder’s head. Of course he did.
Crowder leapt backward to avoid the lamp and stumbled over his chair. He fell backward and cracked his skull against the wall and swore loudly as Derek broke for the door, which was swinging open as Crowder’s second gorilla entered the office to investigate the sounds of chaos.
The man’s gun was in his hand, and his eyes were sweeping right to left, and they widened at the sight of his boss crumpled in a heap behind the desk. The door crashed into the rear wall and rebounded forward, and Derek grabbed it and whipped it toward the goon, clipping him in the shoulder and the left side of his skull, and his gun dropped to the floor and then so did he.
The man grabbed Derek’s ankle with one hand as he was reaching for his gun with the other. Derek ripped his foot out of the guy’s grip and then kicked at his face, a mostly ineffectual act that he realized was only costing him valuable time. Crowder was pushing himself to his feet behind his desk and the goon’s hand was wrapping itself around his gun and Derek knew if he didn’t get the hell out the front entrance he would only continue breathing for another few seconds.
He pulled the office door closed behind him and made a beeline for the door. The other bodybuilder-looking dude had been given the assignment of disposing of Derek’s gun and Derek had no idea how long it would take to accomplish that assignment. For all he knew, the guy might come strolling back into the building at any moment and Derek would run right into his fucking arms.
He reached the front and pulled open the door just as a bullet thudded into the heavy reinforced metal. Next to Derek’s head. It had missed him by inches.
<
br /> He swore reflexively and darted outside and yanked the door closed in a panic and it shook the crumbling brick foundation, and Derek charged down the alley feeling like a rat exiting the long straight portion of a maze. There was nowhere to go until the end of the alley and if he didn’t reach it before the goon or Crowder came out the front door behind him he was fucked.
But although Derek was nobody’s idea of an Olympic sprinter, he was long and lean and pretty goddamned quick. He was discovering that was especially true when guys with guns were chasing him. The shakiness of rapidly building dopesickness was forgotten, for the moment at least, as was the fuzziness of thought he’d been suffering from since stepping through Jeff McHugh’s front door.
The world and its options had boiled down to their essence, and they were clear and simple and binary: escape and live, or be recaptured and die.
He reached the mouth of the alley as another bullet clanged into a metal street sign, and he feinted left before turning right. Behind him, the Lexus’s engine roared to life, and he could hear random angry threats coming from Crowder.
Derek sprinted along the sidewalk to the next corner. He wanted to melt into a crowd of people but there were no people, just one loser junkie who was running as fast as he could but rapidly losing steam.
He hit the next corner without being cut down in a hail of gunfire, and the realization that he’d made it this far came as a bit of a shock. This cross street seemed to be more of a main thoroughfare rather than an alley like the one he’d just exited, so he turned and pounded down the sidewalk, now panting and gasping for breath. Nothing about homelessness and drug use had prepared him for extreme physical activity.
A couple more corners and a couple more random turns and Derek felt comfortable enough—not to mention exhausted enough—to slow to a walk. He had no idea where in the city he was, but a few pedestrians offered at least a little cover, and he was too fucking tired to continue running, in any event.
He’d escaped Crowder with his life.
It was a minor miracle, maybe a major one.
Chasing China White Page 5