by Tom Fowler
“You shoot her?” Winters said.
“I told you, I found her like this.”
“Uh-huh.” He looked at my PI license and gun permit. “Private investigator?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you just happened to come here and find a dead woman.”
I rolled my eyes. “Feel her neck,” I said. “Then feel the hood of my car. I got here fifteen minutes ago. The hood should still be warm. It’ll certainly be warmer than her body.”
Winters half-turned. “Check out the hood,” he said. One of the other cops went back down the stairs.
“Let’s say you didn’t kill her,” he said. “Know who did?”
I felt confident Esposito hadn’t killed Anna himself. Ordering it done made him as guilty as whoever pulled the trigger five times, but I had no idea who. “Not really,” I said.
“Not really?”
“You know a Sergeant Gonzalez?” I said. “I’ll be glad to talk to him.”
Winters was about to say something when the cop who had gone outside sprinted up the stairs. “Hood’s warm,” he said.
“Warmer than her body,” I said again.
The cop who went to the car moved into the room and put his fingers on Anna’s neck. “He’s right,” he said.
“We’re going to need you to come with us,” Winters said.
“You have to know I didn’t kill her,” I said.
“I don’t have to know anything,” Winters said. “You will come with us. You can pick the easy way or the hard way.”
I needed to talk to Gonzalez. Resisting here wouldn’t help me, and more importantly, it wouldn’t help Chris or Brian. If they were still alive.
I went with the easy way.
Chapter 17
I sat in the interrogation room. After Winters took my gun, phone, and wallet, the BCPD gave me a cup of water and made me wait forty-five minutes and counting. I did not consider this an even exchange. While I knew they must investigate Anna’s murder, they couldn’t have any reasonable suspicion I did it. What then was the point of having me sit here? I could help them. At the very least, I could talk to Gonzalez.
Instead, I sat. At least they hadn’t taken my watch. I began a fascinating study of watching the second hand do its herky-jerky dance around the dial. Anna was dead. I couldn’t find them, and she died. Had they been at the port? Should I have defied Rich and gone anyway? I would never know if any more positive action would have made a difference.
I recalled my conversation with Esposito. He said Anna’s life wasn’t in the balance in a phone call a few hours before I found her dead. I wondered if she had already been shot when Esposito called me the first time. He knew her life wasn’t in the balance because he’d already had her killed. Or maybe he ordered her shot afterward. Either way, Anna was dead a couple hours by the time I arrived at the house on Necker Road.
The realization spurred another thought. I had only been there maybe fifteen minutes when the BCPD rolled up. It meant Esposito or someone in his operation watched the house. When they saw me go in and look around, they called the cops. And there I was, carrying a gun and alone in a house with a woman who died from multiple gunshot wounds. Even though it would be easy to prove my gun hadn’t killed Anna, the police would have to be suspicious and take me in. Thus removing me from the case while I sat here and waited.
If I didn’t hate Esposito so much, I would have admired his strategy.
What seemed like an eternity later, Officer Winters entered the room, and Gonzalez came in behind him. “Finally,” I muttered.
“It was my day off,” Gonzalez said, sitting in the chair opposite me. Winters stood against the wall behind him. “I barely know you. You’re lucky I came in.”
“It’s obvious I didn’t kill Anna Blair,” I said. “You’re lucky I’ve sat here and waited while you two stuck your thumbs up your asses.”
Gonzalez glared at me but didn’t take the bait. His patience was probably a good thing. My frustration got the better of me there. “I know you didn’t kill her,” he said.
“So I’m free to go?”
“Not so fast. I also know you’ve gotten tangled up with Alberto Esposito.” He paused. I didn’t fill the gap. “I’m going to presume this poor girl did, too.”
“Yes,” I said, fighting my natural inclination to stonewall. “She’s the girlfriend of someone he’s interested in.”
“And he killed her.”
“More likely he ordered it done,” I said.
“Whatever,” Gonzalez said, waving his hand. “Semantics. Do you know where Esposito is now?”
“Come on,” I said. “We both know where he is. He’s at home. He’ll have an airtight alibi for whenever your ME says Anna died. The goons with him either won’t know anything or will have the same alibi.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Winters said.
I shrugged. “You know it’s how it’ll go down.”
Gonzalez said, “OK, let’s say you’re right. What are you going to do next?”
“I’m going to find the other two people Esposito took captive,” I said.
“Wrong,” Gonzalez said. “You’re done. A woman is dead. Now maybe you could’ve stopped it from happening and maybe not. But she’s dead. You shouldn’t risk anyone else’s life.”
I leaned forward in the uncomfortable chair. It was my turn to glare. “You think I could have stopped her murder and just sat on my ass and didn’t do anything about it?”
“Not what I meant,” he said.
“Whatever.” I stood. “I’m done here. You two can piss off.”
“Where are you going?” Gonzalez said.
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Then I’m leaving,” I said.
“You can’t go,” Winters said.
I turned and glowered at him. “Then come and stop me,” I said.
He didn’t.
I left.
I collected my stuff from the desk officer. From the police station, it was a short drive to Bobbi Lane’s apartment complex. I pulled into her lot. Her car was there. I caught a break; I didn’t want to call ahead, so I had to count on her being home. I parked in a guest spot, went into her building, and banged on her door. Soft footsteps moved inside and came toward the small foyer.
Bobbi opened the door halfway. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a tank top and a pair of yoga capris. Under better circumstances, I would have been glad to see her in such a getup. Bobbi saw it was me and smiled. Then her smile faded. If I looked as angry as I thought I did, I understood. “C.T., what’s up?” she said.
“She’s dead,” I said.
“What? Who?”
“Anna.”
Bobbi frowned in thought. “Anna?”
“Anna Blair,” I said. I pushed the door open all the way and walked in. Bobbi’s eyes went wide and then recognition crept across her face.
“Chris’ girlfriend?” she said.
“Do you know another Anna Blair?”
“Why come here and tell me?” Bobbi said. “You can’t think I had anything to do with someone dying.”
“She didn’t just die,” I said. “She was shot five times in the chest. She bled out on a bed in a house she’d never been in before.”
My description made Bobbi pale. “That’s terrible,” she said, “but I still don’t know why you’re barging in and telling me.”
“Because you gave Chris’ name to Danny Esposito.”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Bobbi. You’re too smart for it. You worked for Danny Esposito. He may have mentioned wanting someone good at writing code, and you gave him Chris’ name.”
She looked at me for a moment before giving a single nod. “OK, I did,” she said. “Danny had access to student records but wanted a recommendation. I took a class with Chris and thought he was really good.” She paused. “What does that have to do with Anna?”
“Because Danny wasn
’t asking for himself,” I said. “His brother is a mobster. He wanted Chris to write malware for him. Chris agreed to do it. Then they had some kind of falling-out.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Bobbi said, her hand covering her mouth. “Oh, my gosh. So you’re saying Danny’s brother ordered Anna killed?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Bobbi said. She shook her head and when it obviously proved insufficient, she shook it again, harder. “No, no, no.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You never thought this would happen.”
“I didn’t know anything about Danny’s brother.” Tears rimmed Bobbi’s eyes. “C.T., you have to believe me. I didn’t know.”
I watched her while she wiped at her eyes and a tear escaped and slid down her cheek. “You know what, Bobbi?” I said. “I do believe you.”
She smiled. “Great, I—“
“I just don’t give a shit,” I said. “You gave up Chris to Danny. Whether you knew anything or not, what you did started the series of events ending with Anna Blair bleeding out in a strange bed.”
“But I didn’t know!” Bobbi cried in earnest now. She reached out for me to comfort her, and I took a step back. Rejection made her cry more. “You believe me,” she said. “You said you believe me. I didn’t know anything like this would happen.”
“And now you do. Actions have consequences, Bobbi. You have to live with what you did.”
She sobbed as I walked past her. Part of me felt sorry for her. Bobbi was a great, sweet girl, and I knew she didn’t realize giving her boss Chris Sellers’ name would lead to someone getting killed. But it had, and she needed to know her role in the tragedy and own it.
“Don’t go,” Bobbi said. Tears stained her mocha cheeks and spilled from her eyes. I fought the urge to hold her. “You can’t just tell me something like this and leave.”
“I can,” I said, “and I am because I don’t want to be around you right now.”
I walked away. Bobbi stood in her foyer, crying with the door open. As I walked down the stairs, I heard it slam.
From Bobbi’s apartment, I drove home. I still felt conflicted over laying the blame on her. Even if she didn’t mean to land Chris right in the soup, though, she did, and Anna Blair paid for it with her life. I couldn’t let it go. Any comparisons I once made between Bobbi and Gloria now landed on Gloria’s side. If I survived this case, I would be twenty-nine in a few months. Maybe this was my wake-up call to put carrying on with two women behind me. I wasn’t in college anymore.
I parked a few houses down from my own. As I started up the walkway to my front door, I heard footsteps approaching. I turned. Matty, Esposito’s goon from the debacle in Abingdon, approached. “If you’re here to dissuade me,” I said, “there’d better be more of you.”
“Just me,” he said, stopping a couple paces short of me.
“Did you kill her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Matty said with a wolfish smile.
“You know damn well,” I said.
“What I know is the cops hauled you off,” he said. It meant Esposito had eyes on the Necker Avenue house, and this dolt confirmed it for me. He continued as if he hadn’t given me a piece of information. “Maybe you killed her.”
“Your boss was right—thinking isn’t something you’re good at.”
Matty glared at me. “Yeah?” he said. “I think we still have Chris and his brother. I think you have no fucking idea where. So I think you shouldn’t run your mouth.”
Now was my turn to smile. “Then make me shut it,” I said.
He came at me. Matty was a big fellow, probably six-five and a good 260 pounds. A lot of it was muscle. He was quicker than I expected, so I used his momentum to shove him away and get time to set myself. He came again, leading with a couple of hard punches. I blocked them. The force made my arms sting. Not letting him hit me would be a superior strategy.
After another two punches, I countered with a short left to Matty’s midsection. At the same time, he launched another hard left, and I didn’t have a defense for it. My jab hit him, but his punch hit me a lot harder, blasting my breath away. He followed it with a right that caught me flush in the face and knocked me down.
So much for not getting hit.
My head throbbed, and I struggled for breath. Complicating those woes, Matty knelt atop me and put his hands around my neck. He squeezed. I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t have a lot of breath to begin with. I used both my arms to box his ears. His winced but didn’t let go. I did it again. He still didn’t let go. Darkness crept into the edges of my vision, and I saw stars.
My thumb jabbed hard into Matty’s left eye. He pulled one hand off to cover his eye. I did it to the other one. Now he released me and covered his face. I sucked in a deep breath, then shoved him to the side. He rubbed at his eyes while I lay on my walkway and tried to fill my lungs with oxygen. I wished it were a faster process.
Matty got up and stood over me again. When he knelt once more, I kicked him as hard as I could in the midsection. He doubled over, which allowed me to kick him in the face. The boot bent him back the other way and sent him to the ground. I kept breathing, my lungs thankful to drink in fresh air. I scrabbled to my feet before Matty did.
Over the years, I’ve learned a couple different fighting styles. Every lesson I took in a dojo stressed fighting with honor. Avoid a fight if you could, but if you couldn’t, use what you’ve learned with honor and respect for your opponent. My opponent, however, recently tried to strangle me, and he also might have killed Anna Blair. Before Matty could get up, I planted my foot and kicked him hard in the gut. This second boot dropped him to the ground on his side. I kicked him again as he struggled to protect himself.
Matty covering his midsection left his face wide open. I drew my fist back and walloped him square in the nose, splaying it against his face with a satisfying crack. Now he covered his face, so I stomped on his stomach with as much force as I could muster. This prick may have killed Anna, and he tried to kill me. I stomped again and again on Matty’s gut, snapping a couple ribs. Blood rimmed his lips even as it ran from his nose.
I fought down the urge to keep going. If I did, I knew it would be impossible to stop, and I didn’t want to beat this asshole to death a few paces from my front porch. I took a step back out of his reach and crouched beside the fallen Matty. “Where are Chris and Brian?” I said.
“Piss off,” he said.
Matty’s hands covered his nose. I leaned closer and hammered my fist down onto them, crunching his broken nose again. He yelled in pain. I leaned back, out of his reach again. “Same question,” I said.
He coughed a couple times and spit some blood at me. “Fuck off,” he said.
“I’m trying to be nice here,” I said. I noticed a set of car keys poking out of Matty’s pants pocket. “But maybe I don’t need to be.” I grabbed the keys and pressed the lock button on the keyfob. A late-model BMW 3 series chirped its alert back at me.
“You’re probably not smart enough to read a map,” I said. “I’m going to guess you have a nav system.” Matty frowned above the hands still covering his nose. “Which means I don’t need you to tell me shit.” I grabbed him by the hair and bounced his head off the pavement a couple times, knocking him out. If it cracked his skull at the same time, I didn’t care.
With Matty down for the count, I took out my phone and looked up how to get location information from a newish 3 series. Then I got my laptop from the house.
While I downloaded the information from Matty’s navigation system, I called 911 for the police and an ambulance. The download finished a minute later. I locked Matty’s car, activated the alarm, pocketed his keys, and stashed my laptop inside. Then I sat on my front porch and waited for the cops and the paramedics.
They arrived about three minutes later. One of the paramedics looked at Matty while the other checked me out. The two uniformed BPD officers looked all around for any evidence they could find. The pa
ramedic told me one of my teeth had been knocked loose, and I would need to get it checked out. When he finished with me, he joined his partner, who fetched the gurney to put Matty into the ambulance.
The officers came to me after the paramedic left. They were Jennings, whom I knew a little and a younger officer named Turk. “Want to tell us what happened?” Jennings said. He looked to be about forty. Maybe he was training Turk, who looked like he started shaving all of two weeks ago. He was about as big as Matty, however, so the baby face only went so far.
I gave them the rundown, omitting the part about getting the navigation info from the BMW. “When he was knocked out, I called nine-one-one,” I said in conclusion.
“This guy drive here?” Jennings said.
“No idea,” I lied. “He was here before I was.”
“We didn’t find any keys on him,” Turk said. His voice matched his body.
“There you go, then,” I said.
Jennings said, “This guy local?”
How much should I tell them? I already held back the information about the car. Once Matty woke up, he wouldn’t rat out Esposito. If the BPD knew about him, though, and if they worked with the BCPD, maybe Esposito would feel some pressure. “He works for a guy named Alberto Esposito,” I said.
“That name supposed to mean anything?” Turk said.
“Minor-league gangster trying to make it to The Show,” I said. “He’s based out of the county, as far as I know.”
Turk started to say something, but Jennings cut him off. “We’ll talk to the county about him,” he said.
“You might want to talk to Sergeant Gonzalez,” I said.
“You been working with him?”
“To the extent I work with anyone, yes.”
“Why do I think you know more?” Turk said.
“Because you have correctly deduced I’m a genius,” I said. “Perhaps you’d like to talk philosophy? Programming?”
“Just be around if we have more questions,” Jennings said, shaking his head. He smirked, while Turk looked like he just sucked on four lemons in succession.