Deadly Secrets

by Ann Christopher

  “Go ahead and shoot. You’d be…doing me a favor.”

  Kareem’s lips curled. “Oh, I’m not doing you any favors, man. I’m going to let you bleed out. Might take a while. So get settled in. But before you do, tell me this: why’d you drop that first dime on me two and a half years ago? Jealousy? Spite? You wanted a bigger cut of the money?”

  Kerry sighed because this whole conversation had gotten tiresome light years ago. Kareem was so predictably sociopathic that he was like a parody of himself.

  “There’s no point…to explaining,” Kerry said.

  “Try me.”

  Kerry smiled, because on this one thing, if nothing else, he had the upper hand. “Nah. You’ve got no conscience, K.J. So it’d be like…trying to explain physics to a Rottweiler. Neither of you have the…tools you need to…understand.”

  “Yeah.” Kareem nodded thoughtfully. “You’re probably right.”

  With that, Kareem withdrew the gun. To Kerry’s utter astonishment, Kareem pressed a lingering kiss to the same spot on Kerry’s forehead that would now be sporting a bullet hole if things had gone differently.

  So that was it. After all those years and crimes, it all came down to this locked-gaze moment where everything they’d shared together jostled into the picture to pose for some twisted selfie.

  Fun was there, and he’d brought his best friend Laughter.

  But they were way in the back, their faces barely visible, and the front row was full of negatives: Mistrust. Resentment. Spite. Violence.

  Kareem finally blinked, and the moment was over.

  Kerry exhaled a ragged but relieved breath.

  Until Kareem planted a hand on Kerry’s belly and levered himself to standing.

  Kerry screamed, the sound shrill against the rain’s mellow patter.

  Kareem staggered a step or two, got his balance and pressed a hand to his wounded shoulder. Then he flashed Kerry the peace sign with bloody fingers.

  “I’m out, my brother,” Kareem said as Kerry passed out again.

  7

  Henry’s lids drooped. Surveillance work was the absolute worst, especially when you didn’t have a partner who could switch off with you on the food and coffee runs. Tedious. Boring. Exhausting. Plus, his old man’s bladder was about to explode, and he’d already filled up his pee bottle. He could get out of the car and use the bushes on the other side of the sidewalk, but he didn’t want to risk attracting the attention of any of the neighbors. Hell, he was surprised he’d lasted this long on a residential street without someone calling the cops about some strange guy in a car. Everybody was probably asleep, luckily for him. That was the thing about this rain. Good sleeping weather.

  He yawned and stretched, then turned to his napping wingman of several years, a thirty-pound embarrassment of a border collie who had one ear that stuck out and had been named after Henry’s favorite Seinfeld character. Damn dog wasn’t taking his job seriously.

  “Wake up, Kramer.” He scratched the dog’s crooked ear. “You don’t get to sleep through the whole night while I’m busting my ass.”

  Kramer uncurled from his ball in the passenger seat, raised his head and yawned with a loud groan.

  “What’re they doing in there?” Henry jerked his head at the shitty little ranch house several doors down, into which the subject, one Kareem Jason Gregory, had disappeared about half an hour ago. After unscrewing the porch light. While carrying a black duffel bag. Gregory’s snitch of a lieutenant (Henry recognized Randolph from the photos the Llama had given him) had arrived home and gone in shortly after.

  Presumably they were not looking through photo albums of all the happy times they’d shared. In fact, Henry would go way out on a limb and assume that Randolph was in there getting himself killed for his treachery right about now.

  Henry reached for another Funyun and crunched it before offering one to Kramer.

  Whatever happened in that house tonight was no skin off Henry’s nose. It was survival of the fittest out there. Did the elephants intervene when the lionesses took down a gazelle? No, they did not. The elephants minded their own damn business, and so did Henry.

  Kramer whined.

  “Forget it,” Henry muttered. “We’re working. You don’t get a W-A-L-K right now. If I have to piss in a bottle, you can damn sure hold it for a little while longer.”

  Kramer grumbled and curled up again.

  Henry was debating the wisdom of leaning back against the headrest, just to rest his eyes for a second, when the front door to the ranch opened and someone staggered out.

  Henry snapped to attention and squinted, trying to make out a few more details in the darkness. “Is that our guy?” he asked Kramer. “Hang on…yeah, that’s Gregory. Is he injured? What the hell?”

  Gregory wobbled. Pressed a hand to his shoulder. Turned around, went back inside and reemerged with his black duffel. Hurried off down the sidewalk and around the corner, to where he’d parked his car. Got in and pulled off with a screech of tires and a flash of taillights.

  Henry sighed and cursed.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he told the dog. “But we can catch him again on the GPS I stuck to the bottom of his car. And I need to check this out.”

  Kramer snored.

  “Stay there, you lazy SOB,” Henry grumbled, snapping on his rubber gloves and reaching for the umbrella. “No need for both of us to get wet.”

  More snoring.

  Henry rolled his eyes. Making sure the dome light was off, he got out, unfurled the umbrella, hurried across the street in the driving rain and poked his head in the ranch’s front door—it was ajar—to see what was what.

  He was back in less than a minute, swiping the water out of his eyes and starting the engine.

  Kramer sat up and woofed.

  Maybe it was the cool rain dripping down the back of his neck, but Henry couldn’t quite shake an attack of the willies. Which meant he needed something stronger than the Funyuns. He pulled out his hip flash and took a long swig of Kentucky’s finest bourbon.

  “Ugly scene in there, Kramer,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Plastic on the floor. Blood everywhere.” He paused, wondering when life had gotten so cheap and when he’d become okay with that. “Gregory slaughtered his lieutenant like a pig. We’ll have to report this to the boss.”

  8

  The floating wasn’t so bad, Kerry decided.

  As a doctor, he didn’t believe in near-death experiences, like meeting up with loved ones who’d already passed. He did, however, buy into the hallucinogenic death throes of a dying brain and body, and that was what he was going through now.

  His body was on the floor.

  His brain was doing its own stream of consciousness thing up high.

  His mind’s eye had, in fact, found a nice little perch in a cobwebby corner of Cousin Ernie’s ceiling. From there, Kerry could see the way a circle of moonlight lit the carnage below. He could watch the poor spread-eagled loser whose fixed gaze stared up at nothing in particular.

  The rain had finally stopped, leaving the living room quiet and dark. It was a decent place to check out, all things considered. It was damn sure better than the cold and desolate field where Yogi had died after Kareem shot him in the back of the head.

  But Kerry didn’t want to think about Yogi. All Kerry wanted to do now was…nothing. He didn’t want to think, feel or be.

  All the more reason to lie still. Maybe if he stayed like this, his sad thoughts, like his pain, would leave him alone.

  Floor Kerry breathed, slow and shallow.

  Ceiling Kerry drifted.

  Did heaven exist? He didn’t think so. It seemed much more likely that the little heavens (great sex) and little hells (bleeding out on the floor) right here on earth were all that people were entitled to.

  Sad thoughts and memories lingered in the darkness and murmured amongst themselves. Disjointed whispers reached his ears. He recognized a voice.

  I raised
you better than this, boy. (His grandmother.)

  You’re just like your daddy after all, aren’t you? (Still his grandmother.)

  And then one of the memories stepped forward, into a circle of light.

  It was Kira.

  She gazed down at him with quiet reproach and resignation. As though he was only fulfilling the foolish destiny everyone had always known he had coming.

  That look, coming from Kira, jolted him out of both his peaceful indifference to his fate and his perch in the ceiling. The two Kerrys reunited with a slamming force that made his body spasm and his arms flail. With the sudden movement came an explosion of renewed pain that mushroomed from his side and ricocheted through every part of him, shooting out of the top of his head. He yelled, but when the effort and the sound intensified the torture, he clapped a hand over his mouth and choked it all back into a moan and then, finally, a series of whimpering gasps.

  The pain regrouped and shifted focus, streaming out of his eyes on hot tears. Kerry didn’t give a fuck because he had something important to do. He had to warn Kira that her abusive husband was alive after all. Kareem had raped her six months ago when he couldn’t force her to do what he wanted. What was to stop Kareem from killing her when he discovered that she’d happily gone on with her life as a “widow”?

  Kerry held Kira’s fate in his hands.

  So he levered himself up on his elbows (more pain; worse pain; infinite pain), unbuckled his belt with shaky hands, yanked it free of the loops, slipped it around his chest, above the slice, and tightened it again.

  The effort took minutes off the time he had left.

  The agony made him scream.

  But when he was done, he had a tourniquet.

  He planted his feet on the floor and scooted toward the side table and his phone.

  The plastic rustled. His arms and legs trembled. Sweat dripped. Blood trickled.

  He kept going.

  One scoot…two scoots…three…

  He thudded into the table with his back. Gasping, he reached up and behind and groped around the tabletop until his hand closed around the familiar flat surface. He sagged with relief.

  Until his shaking fingers fumbled with the touchscreen and refused to hit any of the right buttons.

  The call finally connected on his third try.

  “This is Kira—”

  “Kira, thank God! Listen, I need to—”

  “I can’t take your call right now, so leave me a message. Thanks!”

  There was a beep.

  Hang on. Had he gone through all this effort for nothing?

  “Kira? Pick up the phone.” The sudden burst of energy disappeared on a wave of dizziness, leaving him to collapse on his uninjured side. “Kira! For God’s sake, pick up the phone! Kir-aaa!”

  Lightheadedness took over, and the edges of his vision faded to white.

  Kerry tried to breathe, but his body had no room for oxygen because pain hogged all the space.

  “Kira.” His voice was barely a whisper now, a dying man’s echo. “He’s alive. He—”

  The line went dead as the machine cut him off.

  It took him a couple stupefied beats to realize what had happened. Then he laughed.

  Pain and hysteria burst out of him like pus from a lanced boil, and it kept coming…and coming…and coming. His limited breath ran out, leaving him to choke and sputter just as it occurred to his debilitated brain that he should call 9-1-1 for himself.

  His medical training told him survival was possible. Maybe not probable, but still possible. The wound, while bloody and painful, was shallow and didn’t have to be fatal. Not if he called for help and got it now. If he survived, he could eventually begin the new life that Jayne had engineered for him. He could start a practice. He could one day get married and have a family.

  And every day, as he went around looking for good deeds to do, he’d have to either hire bodyguards or develop eyes on the back of his head so he could see what was coming up behind him.

  Because there was no way Kareem Gregory would ever let him have a moment’s peace.

  So that was the bottom line, wasn’t it? Did he want to continue to live in fear and hiding, ducking from shadow to shadow while waiting for Kareem to catch up with him one day and finish the job he’d started today?

  Or did he want to die now, and be done with the fear and pain once and for all?

  Easy choice.

  So he chucked the phone across the room, resumed laughing and waited for death to come.

  9

  Seven forty-nine…seven fifty-one…oh, there it was. The gray ranch with black shutters. And she was right on time, too. Nine-thirty a.m. on the dot.

  Jayne pulled into Cousin Ernie’s driveway and headed up the walk, anxious to conclude this whole document-signing interlude with the should-be felon and get on with her Saturday. Plus, she’d passed an IHOP on the way, and the possibility of pancakes had burrowed its way into her mind— What the hell?

  Jayne froze, the nerve endings on the back of her neck doing a slow crawl.

  Why was the front door ajar? Why was there plastic sheeting on the floor inside and seeping out onto the concrete square of a front porch?

  More to the point, why was there a bloody partial handprint marring the door frame?

  And drops of blood on the porch?

  Jesus. Randolph.

  His hooded brown eyes, with their heavy brows, flashed through her mind.

  Trembling now, Jayne backed up a step, reached for her phone and hit 9-1-1.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” asked a brisk female voice.

  “Yes, hello, I think I’ve stumbled onto a crime scene,” Jayne said. “I was supposed to meet this guy for a work thing, and I came to his house, but the door’s open and there’s a bloody handprint on the door frame. And there’s plastic sheeting on the floor inside.”

  “Is anyone else there?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t hear anything. I didn’t go inside.”

  “Where are you, ma’am?”

  Jayne told her.

  “I’m dispatching the police, ma’am. It’s very important for you to stay outside, where it’s safe, until they get there.”

  “I know.” Jayne crept to the door and peered into the house’s dark interior. Living room, looked like. “I’m an assistant U.S. attorney. Tell the police to hurry. This looks bad.”

  “They’re on their way, ma’am. Do you know who was home?”

  Jayne wasn’t about to give up Randolph’s name. Not when the audio from 9-1-1 calls routinely made the news. “No.”

  Someone moaned from inside.

  The sound was so small and low, so insignificant, that Jayne almost missed it. She stiffened. Cocked her head to listen.

  That horrible plastic rustled.

  Her fear worsened, putting her in a stranglehold.

  She didn’t want to be on this porch. Definitely didn’t want to go in there.

  Her mind flew to all the unspeakable things one of Randolph’s enemies might have done to him, things she never wanted to see. Sure, she’d worked on the drug task force and seen innumerable crime scene photos where vengeful psychopaths made creative and varied use of their weapons. She knew the score. She’d just never seen the score in person.

  Her car—lockable and reasonably safe until the police arrived—beckoned her.

  But then she thought of Randolph’s eyes and his voice on the phone the other night, and a surge of anger swallowed her fear.

  “Something alive’s in there,” she told the dispatcher.

  “Please stay where it’s safe, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “The police are en route.”

  Excellent advice. Not to mention the whole disturbing a crime scene problem.

  Jayne ignored both issues for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand.

  “Hang on,” she said, and put her briefcase down and the phone in her pocket.

  The dispatcher’s muffled voice said someth
ing unintelligible but clearly disapproving. Jayne didn’t care.

  “Randolph?” Jayne used her elbow to nudge the front door open wider. “Randolph, are you here? Answer me.”

  Another moan, louder now, coming from what sounded like the back left-hand corner of the room. Oh, God. She couldn’t…

  Wait a minute. What the hell was she doing with a concealed carry permit (just in case one of the criminals she’d prosecuted got any bright ideas) and a pistol in her briefcase (with the shooting lessons to back it up) if she didn’t use them when the opportunity presented itself?

  The distant sound of sirens gave her courage the last little nudge it needed. Or maybe it gave her stupidity a big thumbs-up.

  Either way, she pulled out her Beretta, flipped off the safety, held it in her two-handed grip and stepped inside the shadowy house.

  There was no foyer, she saw at a sweeping glance. Just a living room. Sofa. Chairs. Tables. Lamps, one of which had been knocked to the floor and had its shade askew. A dropped bag of burger and fries. A spilled drink.

  And the coppery and overwhelming tang of blood saturating everything.

  She didn’t want to fumble for a light switch and maybe mess up a set of fingerprints, but she could see the blood everywhere anyway. It was pooled in the plastic on the floor. Smeared in brownish streaks on the wall. Smudged on the bottom of the light-colored sofa.

  And there, almost an afterthought amid carnage that could have been from a Pablo Escobar documentary, lay the crumpled remainder of Kerry Randolph’s body, curled into the fetal position.

  Jayne’s heart thudded to a stop. “Randolph?”

  No answer.

  Outside, the sirens sounded much closer.

  Inside, she did another quick sweep of the room, decided both that there were no worrisome hiding places and that the prickling nerve endings on her nape and forearms had gone silent. Which probably meant that no one else was there.

  Screw it.

  She hurried over to Randolph and, ignoring the blood, knelt alongside him.

  “Oh, God.” She got a good look at the damage. He had his head turned away, so she gave herself a quick second to press her hand to her mouth, blink back her stinging tears and get her shit together.