“I don’t know,” Tucker replied. “Allison called a little while ago, and she said it was important.”
I didn’t argue. After all, a lot of guys wouldn’t have mentioned the pit stop at all. Tucker had been straightforward.
I had to trust him—or let him go. And I wasn’t any more ready to let go of Tucker than I was the bar downstairs, or my apartment. The best I could manage at the moment was not to cling like a scared climber on a steep wall of rock.
“See you when you get here,” I said as lightly as I could.
“Moje?”
“What?”
“It’s no big deal, my stopping by Allison’s. She probably just needs a form signed or something.”
“Did I say it was a big deal?” You sleep there. Couldn’t it wait?
“You didn’t have to. I can hear it in your voice.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “Okay,” I said weakly.
We said goodbye, hung up.
I decided to check my collection of Damn Fool’s Guides for one on keeping it together, even though I knew I wouldn’t find it. I settled for Time Management, but it didn’t hold my interest for very long, and I shoved it back onto the shelf with all its companion volumes.
I went into the kitchen. The coffee was still brewing, so I wandered into the living room—and stopped in my tracks because Gillian was sitting on the couch.
“Where have you been?” I mouthed, exaggerating each word.
She watched me the way she might have watched a mime at a street fair or in a park, then leaned forward and wrote in the layer of dust on top of my coffee table.
“MOM.”
I went to the couch, sat down beside her, slipped an arm around her tiny shoulders. She felt cold, but solid, and wiggled free to write another word in the dust.
“DOG.”
At this, she smiled.
“Maybe,” I said, thinking of Vince Erland, the promise he’d made to this little girl, one he’d never intended to keep. The chances were good he’d done a lot worse, too.
She smiled more broadly. “DOG,” she wrote again, this time with a confident flourish.
I thought about Justin and Pepper, and wondered if the dog and the boy had crossed over yet. As if in answer to the thought, Justin appeared, alone.
I started. You don’t get used to things like that.
“Still here,” I said, on a long breath.
Justin nodded. “Pepper’s gone, though.”
Tears filled my eyes. “When?”
“About an hour ago,” Justin said.
“I thought you were going with him.”
“I can’t. You need me.” He nodded toward Gillian. “And so does the kid.” He paused, looked around. “Different place. What happened to the fancy guesthouse with the plasma TV?”
“I’m sort of in between,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Justin replied.
“You should have gone with Pepper,” I said, though the truth was, I was glad he’d be around for a little while longer, although if he and Gillian were still hanging out when Tucker showed up, it would put a serious crimp in our plans to swing naked from the chandeliers.
Not that I had an actual chandelier. Apartments over shit-hole biker bars don’t usually come with that kind of extra.
“He’s okay,” Justin assured me. Then, in apparent anticipation of my next question, he added, “Mom is, too.”
Turning his attention to Gillian, he began to sign.
She beamed at him, happier than I’d ever seen her, and signed back.
“We’re going to Burger King,” Justin explained when the conversation was over.
“Why?” I asked. “You can’t eat, can you?”
“Happy memories,” Justin said. “And I like the way it smells.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Besides, you’re expecting company, aren’t you?”
I blushed, profoundly uncomfortable with the amount of information Justin was privy to concerning my personal life.
He grinned, apparently reading my mind. Which was even more disturbing than his knowing so much about my plans for the evening. “It shows in your aura,” he said confidentially. “No visuals, or anything like that. Just a strong glow.”
“If you’re spying on me, Justin—”
“I’m not spying,” he insisted. “I told you, it’s the aura.”
“It had better be,” I warned, though he must have known there would be nothing I could do about it if he was lying.
He signed to Gillian.
Gillian signed back.
And they both vanished.
I was a little jangled by the whole appearance/disappearance thing. Some of my earlier confidence ebbed away.
I put on some flip-flops—I’d been barefoot since my shower—and went down to the Volvo. Got my new used Glock out from under the front seat and carried it upstairs practically at arm’s length, half afraid I’d make some wrong move and it would go off in the case.
The coffee was ready when I got back.
I set the gun case in the middle of my kitchen table and stared at it for a while. When it didn’t explode, I figured it was safe to keep it in the apartment until morning, when I would motor over to the indoor target range and become a sharpshooter.
My computer beckoned, and I spent some time downloading the application to transfer Bert’s liquor license into my name. After that, I switched on the TV. When in doubt, do something constructive.
The early news was on, and I was noticeably absent.
It was all good.
I’d just switched to a rerun of Judge Judy, and was already half dozing, when a really weird thing happened.
I mean really weird.
Judge Judy did a fade-out. I yawned, expecting a commercial, and stretched out on the couch with a contented little sigh.
In the next moment I was sitting bolt upright, staring aghast at my rent-to-own TV.
On the screen I saw Gillian, in living color, dressed for the recital rehearsal, still wearing both dance slippers. There was no sound.
Gillian smiled up at someone off camera, nodded and extended her hand.
I shot to my feet, electrified. I knew I was seeing the child just before she was murdered—her death might have been minutes away. An instinct compelled me to examine the back of the TV for an extra wire, check the DVD player for a disc, but an even stronger one kept me riveted to the screen, even though I was terrified of what I might see.
Had the killer had an accomplice?
What kind of sicko would take pictures…
Bile scalded the back of my throat.
Gillian was walking beside someone, along a familiar sidewalk, one hand upraised, no doubt clasped in the killer’s, signing cheerfully with the other. I stared hard, but I couldn’t see any detail of the other person—not an arm or a leg or even a hand.
There was a clue here, I knew that subliminally, but I was so riveted, so horrified, that I couldn’t catch hold of it. I wanted to turn away before I saw something I would never get out of my mind, but doing that would have amounted to betraying Gillian.
Tears stung my eyes.
My stomach roiled.
I watched, mute, as Gillian walked between two buildings, then over dry ground littered with old beer bottles and rusted things, smiling, curious.
Trusting.
Then the screen suddenly went blank again, and Judge Judy was back, with her lace-collared judicial robe and her attitude. I stood there, blinking, paralyzed.
What the hell had just happened?
Who had held the video camera?
A couple of minutes must have passed before I could move. I went to the TV, looked for a wire at the back. Nothing. Same with the DVD player—there was an old copy of Smokey and the Bandit in the disc holder.
I straightened, shivering.
Looked around. Somebody had piped the clip in, somehow, from somewhere. They’d wanted me to see it.
But how had they done it?
And how had they known I would be in the apartment to see the piece, instead of in Greer’s guesthouse, where I’d been staying for days?
A shiver trickled down my spine, then shinnied back up again.
What the hell was going on?
I spent the next forty-five minutes scouring the place for electronic bugs, hidden cameras, anything. There was nothing.
Finally I hunkered down on the couch again, drawing my knees up, wrapping my arms around my legs. And I brooded.
But I think I knew even then that what I’d seen hadn’t come through a wire, or by means of some electronic techno-magic. Oh, no. This was another kind of thing entirely, and there were no Damn Fool’s Guides to explain it.
I was still sitting there, staring, when I heard a knock at the apartment door and knew Tucker had arrived.
I felt both relief—when he was around, I was safe—and sorrow, because I knew even he wouldn’t believe it if I told him I’d seen the prelude to Gillian’s murder on my TV screen.
“Coming,” I called halfheartedly, heading for the door. My legs felt wooden, and I was stiff. Cold. “Tucker?”
“Yo,” he said.
I opened the door.
He was holding a cluster of takeout bags in one hand and a leash in the other. At the end of the leash was a small black-and-white dog with pointy ears, one of which tipped forward at a rakish angle.
“Meet Dave,” Tucker said, apparently referring to the dog.
Dave gave a hopeful little yelp of greeting and looked up at me with one blue eye and one brown one.
I stepped back to admit them both.
Tucker frowned as he handed me the takeout bags and reached back to shut the door. “What’s up?” he said. “You look—if you’ll excuse the expression—like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I had a headache earlier,” I fibbed. “I’m better now.”
I hadn’t had a headache, and I wasn’t “better,” either.
Tucker unclipped the leash, and Dave went sniffing into my living room. “Aren’t you going to ask about the dog?”
“What about the dog?” I asked dutifully.
Dave lifted a leg against a bookshelf and let fly.
“See that,” Tucker said. “He already feels at home.”
I gave him a look, carried the takeout into the kitchen, dumped it on the table and started tearing paper towels off the roll to wipe up the piddle.
“Somebody dumped him at Allison’s front gate,” Tucker went on, watching me closely and somewhat thoughtfully, as if he knew something was up with me but couldn’t quite get hold of what it was. “That’s why she asked me to come by. She checked him over and gave him his shots, but she can’t keep him because she’s shutting down the practice while she and the kids visit her folks.” He spread his hands, as if he’d just brought stone tablets down from Mount Sinai to a waiting world. “You need a dog. Dave needs a home. It’s fate.”
CHAPTER TEN
RIGHT ABOUT NOW, you’re probably thinking I broke down and told Tucker all about seeing the prologue to Gillian’s murder on my TV screen—and about my visit to Vince Erland at the county jail.
I did neither. I needed to make sense of both experiences within myself before I could share them, and I was a long way from doing that. I’m big on processing, and that’s a private thing.
So we ate Chinese food in my kitchen and drank coffee.
Dave scored some of the chicken, then curled up in the corner of the room, yawned and went to sleep. He had the air of an exhausted traveler, home at last after crossing mountains and valleys and windswept prairies.
All to get to me, the human Mecca.
I looked askance at Tucker, because I couldn’t look askance at the dog, now snoring contentedly, with his bent ear almost touching his nose.
Tucker followed my glance and grinned. “Falling in love?” he asked.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “No,” I said. I’d loved my cat, Chester, and he was gone. I’d loved Russell, the basset hound—ditto. I’d even begun to love Justin’s dog, Pepper, for heaven’s sake, and where was that going to get me?
I flat-out couldn’t afford to love Dave, too.
“Liar,” Tucker said, looking smug.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I said. “Bringing that dog here, expecting me to take him in.”
“It’s required in my line of work,” Tucker answered. “A lot of nerve, I mean. And you’ve been wanting a dog ever since Russell went into Witness Protection.”
He was right, of course, but I didn’t have to admit it.
My conscience, napping during the Dave exchange, yawned, stretched and shook itself awake. Focused on the gun I’d bought that day.
I’d buried the Glock, still in its case, under the crumpled takeout bags piled on the table, hoping it wouldn’t catch Tucker’s eye before I was ready to break the news that I now owned a lethal weapon. I wasn’t sure how he’d react—he might be relieved, but he was more likely to give me the speech about how easy it would be for an assailant to get hold of the gun and use it against me. The standard discourse on tragic accidents would follow, complete with verifiable statistics.
Tucker, like many cops, believed ordinary citizens were better off without guns. It wasn’t that I disagreed with him—in fact, I was sure he was right—but I wasn’t an ordinary citizen. I was a detective, and a psycho magnet.
I had enemies.
I could feel them, a dark pressure in the atmosphere around me.
It made me shiver, dimmed the light flowing in through the kitchen window.
I looked at Dave again. He’d be a lousy guard dog, small as he was, but he’d make good company, I supposed. I’d just have to be extra careful not to start caring about him too much.
He slept on.
Tucker and I finished our meal in silence, and when he would have cleaned up the bags and cartons, thus uncovering the Glock, I suggested sex instead.
We retired to the bedroom, got naked and spent the next couple of hours alternately rattling the walls and lying stuporous in each other’s arms.
I was just mellow enough to tell Tucker about the Glock and my assessment of Vince Erland and my appointment at the target range the next morning, not to mention the blackmailer’s call I’d inadvertently taken at Greer’s, when the phone on my bedside table broke the blissful, honey-warm silence with a shrill bling.
I scrambled over Tucker’s bare torso to grab it.
He looked at me curiously, and one side of his mouth kicked up in a little grin.
“Hello?” I said.
“What are you doing at the apartment?” Jolie demanded. “The locks have been changed at Greer’s, and nobody answers the door.”
Tucker set me astraddle his hips. Eased inside me, the stroke long and slow and deep.
I fought to keep my voice normal. “C-Carmen’s with her.”
Tucker watched my face as he began to move beneath me, his hands cupping my backside, guiding me along the length of him in a maddening rhythm. My nipples hardened, and he raised his head far enough to take one into his mouth.
I gasped, my control shattered. Jolie was ranting, but I couldn’t make sense of the words, and I didn’t dare answer. So I thumbed the end button and tossed the receiver aside, groaning hoarsely as the first of several sharp orgasms slashed through me.
The phone immediately rang again.
I ignored it.
Tucker took me over the edge, and soon followed.
“That was a dirty trick,” I told him some fifteen minutes later when I’d recovered my power of speech. “Jolie’s probably on her way over here right now, thinking something awful’s happened to me.”
Tucker eased out of my arms, sat up, grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled them on. “Hey,” he said. “You were naked and lying across my chest. What was I supposed to do?”
Male logic.
A car door slammed hard in the parking lot below the apartment.
Footsteps pounded on the outside
stairs.
Dave, who hadn’t made a sound while Tucker and I were raising the roof off the bedroom, started up with a yappy bark, his toenails tapping on the bare floor as he headed from the kitchen toward the front.
A fist thundered against the door.
“She’s here,” Tucker said, grinning as he tugged a T-shirt on over his head.
I got out of bed, too, and had all my clothes on while Tucker was still pulling on his boots.
Blushing, I dashed for the door, practically tripping over Dave in the process, and wrenched it open.
Jolie stood on the mat, glaring at me. Her gaze rose, and I knew Tucker must be standing right behind me. In the next instant she was back to drilling a stare into my face.
“We’re in the middle of a family crisis and you were having sex?”
“We weren’t…” I protested weakly, stepping back, as an afterthought, to admit her.
“Hi, Jolie,” Tucker said, with a grin hiding in his voice. “Come on in. There might be some kung pao left.”
Jolie softened a little in spite of herself. Tucker had that effect on people of the female persuasion. She grumbled a “hello” and looked down at Dave, who was peering around my right knee and no longer barking.
Tucker receded.
Jolie bent to pat Dave on the head.
“Is Greer all right?” I asked.
“What do you care?” Jolie retorted, straightening and pinning me with another scorching look. “I called all over looking for you. I couldn’t get you on your cell phone, or at the guesthouse. Who’d have thought you’d be here, where you were almost murdered, bouncing on a mattress with the boyfriend?”
“Can we get past that?” I asked, getting annoyed. “Carmen was at Greer’s when I left. I asked her to have the locks changed, and she must have gotten right on it.”
Jolie followed me into the living room, Dave keeping pace. He was an odd, wiry little dog, with a spring in his walk that made his bent ear jiggle.
“Sit down,” I said to Jolie, gesturing toward the couch.
My sister seemed calmer, now that I’d told her I’d ordered the lock change at Greer’s myself. I’d probably put such a scare into Carmen, telling her about the threat against her boss’s life, that she was afraid to open the door.
“Did you see Carmen’s car?” I asked. “When you were at Greer’s, I mean?”
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