The Kill Wire

by Nichole Christoff

  These women worked side-by-side with Elena nearly every day. And if there’s one constant from salon to salon, it’s that the secrets women keep don’t last long in places like this. So, it was entirely possible they knew what Elena had on her mind—or even where she’d gone.

  “Too bad that cop won’t let you open the back door,” I said, picking my way across the sticky floor to them while Marc kept the officer engaged. “We’ll all drop dead from these fumes.”

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt ’im,” the redhead said.

  She darted through the curtain. With a clang and a bang, she must’ve opened some delivery door at the back of the storeroom. A cool breeze began to waft through the place.

  “Did you have an appointment?” Little Miss Broadchest demanded.

  “No,” I told her. “I hoped Elena might have time to see me, though.”

  “Elena’s not here,” she replied, rolling her eyes as if this fact were painfully obvious.

  “Well, I can’t blame her for not coming in on a day like this.” I flashed a sympathetic smile that got me nowhere—and turned to the third woman, lingering in the other’s shadow. “What on earth happened in here?”

  Judging by her glittering fingernails of black, orange, and metallic-gold tiger stripes, the shy woman had to be the salon’s manicurist. Her black hair fell away from her face in a perfectly straight-ironed sheet, but she turned her head so it shielded her from my direct gaze. She had to be over thirty, and I felt sorry that a woman of that age hadn’t picked up a little more confidence along the way. Still, she opened her mouth to answer me. Until the well-endowed woman shut her down.

  “We don’t know,” the buxom one snapped. “And we’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Wow,” I replied, not letting her rain on my determined parade. “The situation must be pretty bad, then.”

  Given an opening like that one, most human beings can’t resist the urge to gossip. After all, among other things, a good chin-wagging is what glues our social species together. But the top-heavy stylist didn’t take the bait.

  “Come on, Marley,” she said to the shy manicurist. “The smell of this stuff is killing my brain cells.”

  She stalked off to join the redhead, and if the trace of cigarette smoke drifting on the air was anything to go by, I’d have said the woman was in the alley, producing fumes of her own. But Marley didn’t move. And when I walked toward Elena’s workstation, she followed me.

  I’d been able to identify Elena’s space in an instant. Hairstylists often decorate their area with cards or fun cartoons, mementos from happy customers—and family photos. And among the postcards and photographs taped to the frame of one particular mirror, at one particular station, I’d spied a grinning snapshot of Cody.

  This mirror’s silvered glass—and only this mirror—had been shattered, however. The damage formed a kind of broken spiderweb in the pane. And when I looked at my reflection in the broken glass, my gray eye, ringed in black like a raccoon’s, was dead center—just as Elena’s might be.

  Because someone certainly wanted her attention.

  “Are you some kind of police officer?” Marley asked me.

  She gathered up the folded smock lying over the back of Elena’s turquoise stylist’s chair, shook it out, and folded it again.

  “No.” I tapped the glass beneath Cody’s photo. “I work for him.”

  Immediately, the manicurist warmed.

  “Cody’s such an angel,” she sighed. “Elena sent him to his daddy.”

  I didn’t point out that Marc, the man putting the cop on the spot, was said daddy.

  Instead, I said, “When’s the last time you spoke to Elena?”

  “I don’t know. Probably last week sometime.”

  But today was Thursday.

  “So, she’s missed a lot of work lately.”

  “Oh…I wouldn’t say a lot.”

  Marley’s tiger-striped nails plucked at the nylon smock.

  “I know you don’t know me,” I told her. “But I’ve got Cody’s best interests at heart. And Cody needs his mama.”

  Marley’s cheeks turned blotchy.

  Bingo.

  I said, “How long had Elena been planning to disappear?”

  “Planning? I don’t know anything about that. She just didn’t show up for work one morning.”

  “When was this?”

  “Saturday.”

  Five days ago.

  At least she hadn’t intended to abandon Cody when she dropped him off at Marc’s the week before. Still, five days was a long time for a woman, and the mother of a small child, to be off the grid. I said as much to Marley.

  “Last Friday, Elena showed up late,” she offered. “She acted pretty edgy all day.”

  “Edgy how?”

  Marley shrugged. She peered through the curtain of her hair toward the back room where her coworkers had gone, then up front where the owner waited impatiently for the cop to finish talking to Marc. And I deduced that Marley didn’t want to be seen gossiping about shop business on shop time.

  “Can you meet me?” she asked. “We can talk then.”

  “When and where?”

  She slid another look at her boss.

  “On Crescenta Boulevard, there’s a bar called the Miner’s Pick. Meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

  Chapter 14

  The Miner’s Pick, it turned out, was nothing more than a hole in the wall. And it was surprisingly busy for a Thursday morning. Marc and I used Marley’s fifteen minutes and more after leaving Shear Madness to be sure we weren’t followed to the tavern by my late-night wrestling buddies, or the man and woman in the gray suits. I didn’t see them along the way, but that didn’t mean they weren’t perfectly positioned to see us. And it wasn’t easy to see much of anything inside the Miner’s Pick.

  Perpetual dusk reigned inside the place, brightened only by low-wattage spots aimed at what passed for top-shelf beverages against the mirror at the back of the room and the anemic glow of a 1970s-era jukebox in the far corner. The bar proper ran from left to right. Stools with Naugahyde seats lined up in front of it. Patrons held down the stools. A desultory barkeep kept an eye on the place, wiping down beer glasses with the greasy cloth in his hand.

  Marley had made herself small in a booth sandwiched in the corner. Cheap, knotty pine paneling formed a kind of inglenook, and I suspected the rough bench seats built of the same stuff would deliver splinters to the unwary. Mindful of this, I slid onto the bench across from her carefully. Marc, still as grim as the Reaper himself, crowded in after me.

  Behind her scrim of black hair, Marley’s brows knit as she pondered who Marc might be, but she couldn’t get up the gumption to ask about him, and I felt no compunction to tell her. Her beer glass was half empty. Or half full, depending on how you looked at. Marc signaled for a refill for her. And for beers for the two of us as well.

  “How about lunch?” I offered Marley. “My treat.”

  “Thanks,” Marley said, “but I don’t think I could eat a thing after—well, after being in those chemicals all morning.”

  I couldn’t say I blamed her.

  “Must’ve been a shock,” I said, “to walk into a mess like that.”

  She nodded, peered into her beer.

  “Has anything like that ever happened before?”

  Eyes averted, Marley shook her head.

  “So, the first break-in Shear Madness has ever had has been since Elena Preble took to her heels.”

  That got Marley to come out of her shell.

  “Elena wouldn’t be into anything…crooked…if that’s what you mean,” she said boldly. “Besides, if she wanted in, she could just use her key. She wouldn’t need to break the glass with a ball-peen hammer.”

  “Did you tell the police that?” Marc asked.

  The police officer at the scene hadn’t told Marc much of anything.

  “No!” Marley glanced around the bar as if she expected Manitou Springs�
� finest to descend on her immediately. “I didn’t mention Elena at all. I don’t want to make things worse for her, you know?”

  “Worse how?” I demanded.

  Marley clammed up.

  “You told me something shook her up,” I reminded her gently. “That Elena was edgy all day Friday. And that she didn’t come to work on Saturday. But what happened? What upset her?”

  “She didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “She told me so.”

  Marley’s mouth snapped shut as the bartender approached with our drinks. He slapped his tray onto the tabletop, slopping suds over the lip of each glass. His fingers weren’t all that clean—and neither were the paper napkins he set in front of each of us.

  Only when he’d made himself scarce did Marley continue.

  “Some nights, we come in here after work. Just to blow off steam, you know? Elena doesn’t usually come with us. She’s always in a hurry to get home to her boy, but Cody’s been with his daddy for Spring Break.”

  When Marley said this, I glanced at Marc. The muscle in his jaw ticked. But that was his only reaction.

  Marley said, “Last Thursday, we talked Elena into coming with us because it was Becky’s birthday. We had a couple rounds pretty quick. Becky loves Jell-O shots. Anyway, we were in this booth here. Elena slid out to go to the restroom, and she froze like a block of ice. When Sandra asked her what was going on, she said ‘nothing.’ But I got a good look at her face. She was staring at someone at the bar. That someone practically turned her inside out.”

  “Did you know this person?” I demanded.

  “I never saw her before in my life.”

  Her.

  That was significant.

  “Would you know her if you saw her again?” Marc asked.

  Marley shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. I didn’t get to look at her too long. She had her head together with some guy. He handed her some cash and left while she paid the tab. Elena went over to her then. I got a glimpse of her when she saw Elena, though. This chick turned as white as a sheet. Their conversation didn’t last long. Then they hugged and that girl got out of here in a hurry.”

  “Did you ask Elena about the incident?” I inquired. “How did she explain it?”

  “In the restroom, I teased her. I said the woman must’ve been an unhappy client. Elena went so pale, I thought she’d faint. She grabbed me by the arms and made me swear I’d never tell anyone I saw her talking to that woman. But I was just joking. I mean, Elena does hair better than that.”

  “Was the woman’s haircut distinctive?” Marc asked.

  “Gosh, no. Just a shoulder-length cut with bangs. No layering. Nothing fancy. She just had a really bad dye job. It was way too dark and not flattering at all. My guess would be she’s got naturally light hair: ash brown or even dirty blond. But maybe she’d gone gray way too early and wanted to hide it, you know?”

  I did know.

  Because in my profession, I’d found hair dye could hide a lot of things.

  “Did Elena mention the woman’s name?” I persisted. “Or how they’d originally met?”

  “I asked,” Marley admitted, “but all Elena said was ‘Her name used to be Lucy.’ Isn’t that the funniest thing? I mean, if a girl gets married, you might say, ‘Her name used to be Smith.’ But who says that about a first name?”

  No one that I knew.

  “Thanks for your time,” Marc said abruptly.

  He clambered from the booth.

  I slid my business card across the table toward Marley. “If you hear from Elena, please give me a call.”

  “She isn’t in any trouble, is she?” Marley dipped her head to retreat behind the curtain of her hair.

  From the way her nose wrinkled, I knew the scent of all those spilled chemicals had come back to her—and that she’d realized I hadn’t been barking up the wrong tree when I’d pointed out that Shear Madness had only had a break-in now that Elena had hightailed it.

  “Just give me a call,” I said. “And if you can persuade Elena to call me, that’d be even better.”

  Before Marley could protest, Marc withdrew his wallet. Her eyes grew large as he peeled off enough bills to cover our beers. And whatever Marley wanted to drink next.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

  “Great.”

  I offered her a parting smile.

  And under the watchful eye of the bartender, Marc and I left the gloom of the Miner’s Pick.

  Chapter 15

  “Okay, I give up,” I said, once Marc and I were in the car, and the Miner’s Pick was just a memory. “Who’s Lucy and why did running into her shake up Elena?”

  Wordlessly, Marc fired up the SUV.

  But based on how he’d blown from the ugly bar, I was fairly sure he knew.

  Marc whipped away from the curb and adroitly merged into what passed for late-morning traffic in Manitou Springs. Five blocks down, he turned onto a side street. As if we were visitors coming to call, he veered into a parking spot before a series of handsome condos and cut the engine.

  Marc didn’t take his eyes off his white knuckles fisted around the steering wheel as he said, “Before Elena and I broke up—and before she left the federal prosecutor’s office to go into rehab—she worked one last case.”

  “I’m with you so far.”

  “That last case,” Marc said, “was the conviction of Maximillian Ribisi.”

  “The Maximillian Ribisi?”

  Marc nodded.

  Max Ribisi was a gangster, born and raised in the old school. His great-grandfather had been a notorious mob boss in Brooklyn. Two generations later, his father worked New York while his uncle expanded into Pittsburgh and Chicago. Max had cut his teeth in his dad’s organization, but fled to his uncle’s territory when he tried—and failed—to strangle his own father in a takeover attempt. Three years down the line, said uncle mysteriously disappeared during a fishing trip in the western Caribbean, conveniently leaving Max’s cousin to become point man in Chi Town. At the same time, hoods answering to Max began to edge out drug lords, pimps, and master bookmakers from Las Vegas to San Francisco. All that ended, however, when Maximillian Ribisi got himself thrown in prison. But if nothing else, that man had proved one thing: he rarely stayed where others put him.

  “Know how they finally got him?” Marc asked.

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Domestic violence.”

  Marc spat the phrase as if it left a nasty taste in his mouth.

  “Let me guess,” I said, putting two and two together. “Elena’s buddy Lucy is Max Ribisi’s wife.”

  “Well, she was,” Marc answered. “Ribisi, Lucy, and their five-year-old daughter lived on the West Coast. About seven years ago, he rented some big house here in the mountains, brought the family and a bunch of his cronies for a little vay-cay and who knows what else. According to the local sheriff’s office, he and his group got pretty rowdy every night, but they couldn’t catch them doing more than disturbing the peace. The kicker came, however, when Max lost his cool with his wife at one of the ski resorts. Apparently, he socked Lucy in the mouth right in the middle of the après-ski fondue. Fortunately, someone had the sense to call the cops. Once the prosecutors got a crack at him, they didn’t let him go.”

  “And Elena was on the team that put him away.”

  “More than that,” Marc replied. “Elena worked out a deal for Lucy Ribisi. In exchange for pressing charges, and bringing forth evidence to convict Max of other crimes, Lucy and her daughter got to disappear into the Federal Witness Protection Program.”

  Since its inception in the early 1970s, the Federal Witness Protection Program has ensured the safety of thousands of people, and their family members, brave enough to testify against some of this nation’s worst criminals. The U.S. Marshals Service administers the program, guarding witnesses before trial. Afterward, they provide participants with new identities
and all the documentation, from passports to Social Security numbers, to match.

  Perhaps most important, the marshals move these families to a new town or city far from their old way of life—and their old enemies. Essentially, these witnesses become new people in order to save their lives and the lives of others who could fall victim to criminal networks. And Lucy Ribisi had given up everything familiar to become one of them.

  “I don’t get it,” I admitted. “Why would Lucy Ribisi—or whoever she is these days—come back to Colorado and Manitou Springs? And how could Elena’s seeing Lucy on Thursday relate to the things that happened to her car, her parents, and her salon since Saturday?”

  “Those,” Marc said, “are excellent questions, babe, and I know the place to start looking for answers.”

  Forty-seven minutes later, Marc and I strode into the Colorado Springs branch of the United States Attorney’s Office, located on the sixth floor of a nondescript concrete building in the heart of downtown. A long reception counter separated us from a series of desks meant for staffers and secretaries. Most were empty, and little wonder. We’d arrived at high noon and lunchtime. But one desk, in the back corner, was occupied by a slender brunette who nibbled on a sandwich as she paged through a glossy magazine.

  She glanced up when we approached.

  Marc brandished his shield, tapped it on the countertop. “I’d like a word with the assistant U.S. attorney, please.”

  The brunette gulped down her mouthful of tuna on rye as she rose. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Not today.”

  I could see the recommendation that Marc schedule one balance on the tip of her tongue. But then she glanced at me, took a long look at my puffy black-and-blue eye. And it made up her mind for her.