The Crush

by Sandra Brown

  “What I mean is,” Weenie continued, “I don’t want to become an accessory. I was watching Law and Order the other night. And they charged this guy with being an accessory before the fact. He went down for almost as long as the guy who did the actual killing. I want no part of that.”

  “You’re afraid?”

  “Damn right I’m afraid. How long do you think a guy like me would last in prison?”

  Lozada looked him up and down. He smiled. “I see your point. So you’ll have to be doubly careful not to get caught, won’t you?”

  Weenie went through his routine of nervous twitches again with the eyeglasses, the scab, the snot in his nose. He avoided making eye contact. Lozada didn’t like it.

  “Sit down, Weenie. I’m in a hurry. Let’s get started.”

  Weenie seemed to consider refusing, but then he reluctantly sat down in the rolling desk chair in front of the bank of computer terminals, all of which were oscillating with a variety of screen savers.

  “Rennie Newton,” Lozada told him. “Doctor Rennie Newton.”

  Again Weenie groaned. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I saw her being interviewed on the news about that cop. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  Weenie went to work. His nose stayed within inches of the screen as he squinted into the glare. His fingers struck the keys with impressive speed. But Lozada wasn’t fooled. He could tell Weenie was dillydallying. It went on for at least five minutes. Occasionally he mumbled with frustration.

  Finally he sat back and said, “Bunch of dead ends. Truth is, Lozada, there’s not much on her.”

  Lozada slipped his hand into his pants pocket and removed a glass vial with a perforated metal cap. He unscrewed it slowly, then upended the vial over Weenie.

  The scorpion landed on Weenie’s chest. He shrieked and reflexively tried to roll back on the chair’s casters, but Lozada was standing behind it, trapping Weenie between him and the computer table. He clamped his hand to Weenie’s forehead, pulled his head back, and held him still while the scorpion crawled over his chest.

  “He’s been mine only a short while. I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to show him off. Isn’t he a beauty?”

  Weenie emitted a high-pitched squeal.

  “All the way from India, meet Mesobuthus tamulus, one of the rare species of scorpions whose venom is toxic enough to cause death in humans, although it may take days for a sting victim to die.”

  Weenie’s glasses had been knocked askew. His eyes rolled wildly as they tried to focus on the vicious-looking scorpion crawling up his chest. “Lozada, for the love of God,” he gasped.

  Lozada calmly released him and chuckled. “You aren’t going to pee on yourself again, are you?”

  He calmly scooped the scorpion onto a sheet of paper, then formed a cone and funneled it back into the vial. “There now, enough fun, Weenie,” he said as he replaced the perforated cap. “You’ve got work to do.”

  Chapter 25

  “You don’t like it?”

  Wick looked up from his plate. “Uh, yeah. It’s great. Just… I think that potato-soup breakfast filled me up.” He tried to smile but knew he failed.

  They’d taken their dinner trays out onto the patio behind the house and had watched the sunset while they ate, in silence for the most part. In fact, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few inconsequential sentences since Wick’s telephone conversation with Oren.

  She stood up with her tray and reached for his. “Finished, then?”

  “I can carry in the tray.”

  “You shouldn’t. Not with your back.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “Will you just give me the tray?”

  He relinquished it and she took it into the house. He heard her moving around in the kitchen, water running, the fridge door being opened and closed. Background noise for his preoccupation.

  When Rennie returned, she brought with her a bottle of white wine and set it on the small table between their two teak chairs. He said, “That’ll hit the spot.”

  “You don’t get any.” She poured wine for herself into the single glass she had brought out.

  “Why not?”

  “The medication.”

  “You slipped me another mickey in my chicken breast? Or was it in the wild rice?”

  “Neither. Because I don’t know what you take.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For the panic attacks.”

  He thought about playing dumb. He thought about flat-out denying it. But what would be the point? She knew. “I don’t take anything. Not anymore.” He turned away and stared across the landscape. “How’d you know?”

  “I recognized the symptoms.” His gaze moved back to her and she softly confessed, “Borderline compulsive obsessive. Back, years ago. I never counted each heartbeat, or every footstep, nothing that extreme. But everything had to be just so, and to a great extent still does. It’s all about being in control.”

  The topic under discussion made him terribly uncomfortable. “I had a… a few… what you’d call episodes, I guess. Rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath. That’s all. A lot of shit happened to me all at once. Major life changes.” He gave an elaborate shrug. “The shrink seemed to think there was nothing to it.”

  “There’s no reason to be ashamed, Wick.”

  “I’m not ashamed.” His brusqueness implied just the opposite.

  She gave him a long look, then said, “Well, anyway, the drugs I gave you today would be compatible with anything you happened to be taking. Just so you know.”

  “Thanks, but as I said, I’m off that stuff.”

  “Maybe you should go back on it.”

  “Why’s that, Doctor?”

  “Because if you weighed five pounds less, I don’t think the earth’s gravity could keep you in that chair.”

  He made a conscious effort to stop fidgeting.

  “Why don’t you just tell me what Wesley told you?” she said.

  Again, he turned his head aside and gazed out across the rear of her property. It was a pretty spread, the kind of place he’d love to have if he could ever afford it, which he never could. He wasn’t, nor had he ever been, materialistic. Greed wasn’t one of his flaws. But a place like this, this would be nice to have.

  The pasture beyond the near fence was dotted with mature trees, mostly pecan. A stream cutting diagonally across the pasture was lined with tall cottonwoods and willows that swayed in the south breeze. The breeze had cooled the evening off, making it comfortable to be outdoors.

  After being cooped up in the hospital for a week, he had welcomed her suggestion that they take their dinner onto the patio. But he hadn’t enjoyed the al fresco meal as much as he should have. Oren’s news had spoiled his appetite.

  “Grace Wesley left her school office today around four-thirty,” he began. “The last couple of weeks, she’s been getting things ready for the upcoming term, same as the rest of the faculty. Except that Grace is extremely conscientious. She’s usually the last one to leave the building, as she was today. When she got into her car, Lozada was sitting in the backseat.”

  Rennie sucked in a quick breath and held it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Scared her half to death.”

  “Is she…”

  “She’s okay. He never lifted a finger to her. He just talked.”

  “Saying what?”

  “He wanted to know where I was, where you were.”

  “Does she know?”

  “No, and that’s what she told him. But he must not have believed her.” He looked over at Rennie. She folded her arms across her middle as though bracing for what was coming. “He told her it would be in her best interest to tell him what he wanted to know, and when she said she couldn’t, he remarked on how pretty her daughters were.”

  Rennie bowed her head and supported it in her hand, her middle finger and thumb pressing hard against her temples. “Please, please don’t tell me tha
t—”

  “No, the girls are all right too. It was a warning. A veiled threat. But a real one because he knew a lot about them. Their names, favorite activities, friends, places they like to go.

  “Grace started crying. She’s a strong lady but, like all of us, she has a breaking point, and her family is it. Oren says she didn’t fold, didn’t beg or plead. But somehow she must have persuaded him that she didn’t know anything. He got out of her car and into his. He even waved her good-bye before driving off.

  “Grace immediately called Oren on her cell. Within minutes the girls were collected and put under police guard. Grace, too. Oren was… well, you can imagine.”

  They were quiet for a time. Crickets were tuning up for the night.

  “He wants Grace and the girls to go stay with her mother in Tennessee,” he continued. “Even while he was talking to me he was packing their bags. Over their protests. I could hear the girls fussing in the background and Grace saying that if he thought she was going to leave him alone, he could just think again. Nor, she said, was she going to be frightened away from her home by a homicidal freak like Lozada.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh, he’s a freak, all right.”

  “You know what I mean. Should she leave?”

  He shrugged. “I can see both sides.”

  “So can I. Having met Grace, seen them together, it doesn’t surprise me that she would refuse to leave her husband in a time of crisis.”

  “Not only that, Rennie. If Lozada wants to hurt Oren’s family, he will. A trip out of state would be only a minor inconvenience.” They exchanged a long look.

  Then suddenly Wick left his chair and began to pace the width of the flagstone patio. “Lozada. He really is the lowest turd in the shit pile. He’s threatening women and children now? I mean, what kind of lowlife… You know what I think? I think he’s got no balls, that’s what I think. He attacks in the dark like those goddamn scorpions he keeps.”

  “Scorpions?”

  “He gets his victims in the back. In the back. Think about it. He choked the banker to death from the back. He stabbed me in the back. The only one he’s met face-to-face in daylight is a woman, and he threatened her children. He’s never faced a man. I wish to God I could get a crack at him face-to-face.”

  “That could prove dangerous.”

  He shot her a bitter look. “You and Oren are reading from the same script. I was already out of your porch swing and on my way to the garage to get my truck and return to Fort Worth, but Oren told me if I so much as crossed the city line, he’d have me arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “He didn’t specify, but he meant it. He said the only thing he needed to make a bad situation worse was a hot-headed avenger. He said the only good thing about Lozada’s terrorizing Grace was his choosing to do it when I was out of town.”

  “He did it because you were out of town.”

  He stopped pacing and turned to her. “Did you eavesdrop on our conversation? Because that’s exactly what Oren said. He thinks Lozada threatened Grace in the hope of smoking me out.”

  “I’m sure he’s right.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m sure he is too,” he mumbled. “Lozada would expect me to ride in like the cavalry”

  “Making you a target that would be hard for him to miss.”

  “Especially if I was the aggressor. Lozada would love nothing better than for me to come after him. If I did, he could drop me and then claim self-defense.”

  Rennie agreed with a nod, which agitated him further. He resumed pacing. “Oren hoped I’d gone back to Galveston. He wasn’t too happy to learn I was still this close to Fort Worth.”

  “With me.”

  “I’ve told him there’s no way that you and Lozada are, or ever were, in cahoots.”

  “Does he believe you?” His hesitation in answering gave him away. She said, “Never mind. I know he thinks I’m shady.”

  Wick didn’t belabor the point. He returned to his chair, picked up the bottle of wine, and took a drink from it. She didn’t stop him. He then leaned toward her. “Lozada upped the ante today when he messed with Grace. Attacking me is one thing. Going after her, Oren’s kids, that’s another. I’m gonna get this son of a bitch, Rennie. For good.

  “And it can’t be done through legal channels. I’ve learned that lesson several times over. Now Oren realizes it too. We can’t rely on the system. It’s let us down. We’ve got to get him some other way. We’ve got to forget the law and start thinking like Lozada.”

  “I agree.” He registered his surprise, and she continued, “You thought I left town to escape him. That I ran in fear when I learned that he’d been released from jail. You thought I had come here to hide. Well, you’re wrong. I left because I needed time to plan how I was going to free myself from him. I refuse to live in fear, especially in fear of a man.

  “Lozada has invaded my home. Twice. He killed my friend Lee Howell. He killed Sally Horton and tried to kill you, and, so far, he’s gotten away with it. He got away with killing that banker, and I helped him do that.”

  “You were a juror. You voted according to your conscience.”

  “Thanks for the endorsement, but I regret that decision now. Lozada seems to be immune to the law, but he’s not invincible, Wick. He’s not bulletproof.”

  “And you’re a damn good shot.” His grin collapsed when he saw the drastic change in her expression. “I was referring to the bobcat, Rennie, not to what happened in Dalton.”

  She formed a half smile and nodded acknowledgment. “I have no intention of shooting anybody, even Lozada. I don’t want to wind up in prison myself.”

  “I’d rather not either, although I’m committed to eliminating him no matter what it costs me.”

  “Because of your brother?” When he nodded, she added, “Was that one of the life-changing things that happened to you all at once?”

  “That was the major one.”

  He leaned back and laid his head against the chair cushion. The sky had turned an inky purple. Already he could see stars. Thousands more than were visible in the city. Even more than he could see on the Galveston beach where commercial lights reduced stars to dim reminders of what they should look like.

  “Joe and Lozada had actually known each other in school. Or rather they knew of each other. They attended rival high schools but graduated the same year. Joe was a star athlete and student leader. Lozada was a hoodlum, hell raiser, drug dealer. They saw each other occasionally at places where teens hang out.

  “They only clashed once, when Joe broke up a fight between Lozada and another guy. They exchanged words, but it amounted to no more than that. Joe became a cop. Lozada became a hired killer. Both excelled at what they did. They were destined to collide. It was only a matter of time.”

  He reached for the wine bottle and took another drink, hoping it would relieve the throbbing pain in his back, which had returned with a vengeance.

  “Fast-forward a few years. Joe and Oren were working a high-profile homicide case. Typical Texas tale. Socialite wife of wealthy oilman whacked on terrace of mansion.

  “The husband was conveniently out of town and had a long list of indisputable alibis. Since nothing had been disturbed, nothing stolen, it stunk of a murder-for-hire. Joe and Oren leaned heavily on the husband, who had a very demanding, very expensive twenty-two-year-old mistress in New York.

  “Figuratively speaking, the murder had Lozada’s fingerprints all over it, but they couldn’t link him to the husband. Joe hammered the guy, and each time he questioned him, he cracked a little more. Joe was relentless, kept at him. He was this close to splitting the thing wide open.”

  He was quiet for a time before continuing. “The last time I saw Joe, we met for a cup of coffee. He told me he could taste the man’s fear. ‘I’m close, Wick. Close.’ He predicted that the guy was gonna crash and burn soon, and when he did, Joe would have his ass as well as Lozada’s. The oilman wa
s a schmuck, he said. Pussy-whipped by this brat in New York. His dick had done him in. Joe said you could almost feel sorry for him.

  “ ‘But that Lozada dude is bad news, little bro. I’m talking real bad news.’ Joe’s words exactly. He said Lozada killed for pleasure more than for money. He liked killing. Joe said he was gonna do the world a favor and put that heartless, hairless son of a bitch away for life.

  “I remember us clinking our coffee cups in a toast to his success. Which, apparently, Lozada also thought was coming down soon. He must’ve sensed the oilman was close to ratting him out.

  “That same evening, Oren left the office a few minutes behind Joe. When he got to the parking lot, he noticed that Joe’s car was still there. The driver’s door was standing open. Joe was just sitting there, staring through the windshield. Oren remembers walking toward the car and saying, ‘Hey, what’s up? I thought you’d be gone by now.’ ”

  He paused to inhale a deep breath and let it out slowly. The darkness was now complete. The moon was a sliver hanging just above the horizon.

  “Joe was already dead when Oren found him. I was hosting a party at our house that night. Oren and Grace came to tell me.” He leaned forward, planted his elbows on his knees, and lightly tapped his lips with his clasped hands.

  “You know what I wonder about most, Rennie?” Turning his head, he looked at her and realized that she hadn’t moved since he began talking. “You know what really puzzles me?”

  “What?”

  “I wonder why Lozada didn’t kill the oilman instead. That would have shut him up. Why didn’t he do him instead of Joe?”

  “Joe posed the greater threat. Killing the oilman would have been a temporary fix to a long-range problem. Lozada knew Joe wouldn’t give up until he had him.”

  “His twisted form of flattery, I guess.”

  “Why was he never charged and brought to trial for Joe’s murder?” she asked.

  But Wick’s cell phone rang, sparing him from having to answer.

  * * *

  He opened the phone and put it to his ear. “Yeah?”

  He listened for a few seconds, glanced at Rennie, then left his chair and moved to the edge of the patio, keeping his back to her. “No, we haven’t talked about it yet,” she heard him say as he stepped off the flagstones and moved even farther away from her.