Jessica fixed a long stare at Nikkie. For the first time since meeting her, Nikkie saw a darkness in Jessica’s stare. A coldness behind her eyes.
Some people babble when they’re asked a question they can’t or don’t want to answer. Some, who are more skilled, are able to rattle off an answer more dismissive than informative. And some just stare back at the questioner. They look like a deer caught in a car’s headlights; paralyzed with fear. Lost as to which direction to take.
Jessica was staring back at Nikkie, but there was not a hint of being lost in her eyes. No suggestion of wondering whether to stand still, to run, to wait until the question asker breaks the silence.
Jessica dropped her eyes to her empty glass. Blinked hard a few times, then lifted her face to Nikkie. Her face had changed when it was lifted. The face of a woman lost in a grief few could imagine replaced that calculated look Nikkie saw, or imagined. It was the face of someone crippled with fear, with confusion.
“It’s all about time,” she said at last. “I’ve always believed time to be on my side. Yes, I hired her because of what I knew about her. About what she had done with Brian’s business. I felt she would waste no time in getting me out of the terrible mess I was in. Like a fool, I believed this whole mess would be over in five days.” She shrugged her shoulders. Shook her head a bit. “Five days. I figured I could get through five days of this torture. After five days, I could give Sam the funeral he deserved. I could start to grieve for him. To somehow make up for the affair I had with Brian. Now, Sam’s body is in Texas, Brian is dead and I am feeling for the first time in my life that I am running out of time. See Nikkie, I don’t think I have any time left to hire a new lawyer. Tomorrow is day six. Six days since my life has been turned upside down, and I’m still living a walking nightmare. I’m out of time.”
Chapter 34
Derek was finishing his second cup of coffee when Captain Duane Chambers tossed his pen onto his desk.
“I know you have to get to the airport, catch that flight of yours. I think we are all set here.”
Chambers spoke with a heavy southern drawl. Slow. Drawn out. Almost intentionally slow. He was a serious man. Had the type of face seen on men who lived a hard life. Probably had seen the moral decay of humanity up close and personal. Chambers stood up, extended his hand to Derek.
“On behalf of the fine citizens of Dothan and the State of Alabama, I want to thank you for your work. These Trainer boys, especially Jackson, have been a thorn in my side for too many years. Never thought they capable of murder, but it don’t surprise me in the least. Not in the least.”
Chambers hitched up his pants—which looked to Derek at least four inches too big in the waist—and gestured towards the door. Chambers noticed the quizzical look on Derek’s face. Saw him looking at the extra holes punched in his belt.
“Round about seven months ago,” Chambers said, “I made the God awful mistake of telling Mrs. Chambers about my doctor appointment. Doc said I needed to lose fifty pounds, cut back on salt, greasy food and beer. She took that as some sort of womanly mandate. Put me on a diet that’s just as sure to kill me as would a rack of ribs.”
“Guess she wants to keep you around a bit longer.”
Chambers let out a deep belly laugh that, had his wife not restricted his diet, would have certainly caused Chamber’s belly to rumble and roll.
“I’ll make sure I get a message to you, about how things turn out for the Trainer brothers. Right now, Jackson is stepping up and taking all the blame. Said he’ll admit to everything so long as the judge goes easy on his brother.”
“Glad to see he’s taking responsibility,” Derek said.
“May be some good in that boy. I do doubt there’s much, but may be a little.”
“Think you’ll have any problems getting a conviction?”
“He gave us a full and detailed confession, right down to where we can find the shell casing of the bullet he used to kill that doctor.” Chambers paused a bit. Gave Derek a sideways glance. “He was going on about how he knew things about the case you’re down here working on. Said he’d trade info for some time off his sentence.”
“He told me he and Bobby tapped Hilton’s cell phone. Overheard Hilton talking about Sam Gracers—the murder case I was hired to investigate. Didn’t know who Hilton was talking with, though. But I have a pretty good idea who it was.”
“Well, based on the way you fingered the Trainer boys for the doctor murder, I’m likely to believe you do know who Hilton was speaking with.”
The two reached the front door of the small police station. Chambers opened the door, patted Derek on the back.
“Again, I thank you on behalf of…well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Derek checked the time on his iPhone, then hurried down the three steps to the sidewalk.
Chambers called out to him, “Hey, just in case the district attorney is interested in hearing more of Jackson’s story, do you have any idea who the ‘sick bitch’ is, Jackson mentioned?”
Derek’s face fell. Mouth hung open. Body went tense then slack, then tense again.
“What are you talking about?” Derek asked.
“Jackson said he heard Hilton say to whoever he was speaking to, that the sick bitch did them both a favor by taking care of Gracers. I take it he didn’t share that bit of information with you?”
“Nikkie,” Derek said, more to himself.
“That the ‘sick bitch’ Jackson was talking about? Woman named Nikkie?”
“No,” Derek said. “Son of a bitch. I have to go.”
Derek dialed Nikkie’s cell phone, listened to it ring right through till her voicemail picked up seven times on his drive to the airport. He called her twice more when sitting in the terminal as the plane taxied up to the gate. Called her a final time while sitting on the plane. Would have called her a hundred more times if the flight attendant hadn’t insisted he turn the phone off.
“You can put it in airplane mode if you’d like. But the plane cannot take off as long as any passenger has a phone on.”
“You have WiFi on this plane?” Derek asked, hoping he could at least contact Nikkie through text messages.
“No sir. I’m sorry. This is just a thirty-nine minute flight. I’m sure whatever you have to say to whomever you are trying to contact can wait thirty-nine minutes.”
“I hope you’re right. God, I hope you’re right.”
Chapter 35
Nikkie stayed a while longer with Jessica, eventually bringing the empty bottles of wine and wine glasses to the kitchen while Jessica prepared for, what she was certain to be, a sleepless night. Once Nikkie was ready to leave, Jessica continued to talk, though understanding what she was saying had become increasingly difficult. Five glasses of wine, it seemed to Nikkie, was Jessica’s point of no return.
“You still think I had something to do with my Sam’s dying, don’t you?” she slurred as she fell onto her bed.
“There’s not a whole lot of evidence pointing at anyone else,” Nikkie said. “But evidence isn’t everything.”
Jessica rolled her body to face Nikkie, who was standing in the bedroom doorway.
“Are you going to look for more evidence?”
“That’s what you’re paying us to do.”
Jessica tried to laugh. Came out more like a wet cough.
“That’s not an answer.” She propped herself upright against her headboard. “Either you are going to look for more evidence about who really killed Sam or you’re not going to.” Jessica’s eyes were almost closed. Her face was falling slack. Arms lay splayed to her sides, motionless. “I know where you can find more.”
Nikkie took a small step closer to the soon-to-be-unconscious Jessica Gracers.
“More evidence?” Nikkie prodded. “What evidence are you talking about?”
Jessica’s eyes were closed, but a palsy-like smile crossed her face. She clumsily raised an extended index finger to her pursed lips, ble
w out a damp “Shhhhhhh.”
“I told you,” Jessica said, eyes closed, lips showing the immediate report of how firmly she had pressed her “shh-ing” finger against them. “There was more stuff in Sam’s report about Maryanne.”
“You never told me what that other stuff was.”
Jessica’s voice rose to a drunken yell. “I told you I couldn’t remember. But that report is gone now and I bet I know where it is.”
“You think Maryanne killed your husband, don’t you? You want me to investigate her, right? Is that the real reason you hired her? So that we’d be close to Maryanne?”
Jessica offered no response.
“If that’s how you feel, why the hell are you waiting till now to suggest Maryanne may have had something to do with your husband’s murder?”
Jessica pried open her eyes. Licked her lips with a thick tongue. Shot a crooked smile towards Nikkie.
“Wazz that they say?” Jessica slurred. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” The wine made the word come out like “emimies” but Nikkie understood the phrase.
Jessica’s eyes slid closed, weighed down by exhaustion and almost two bottles of wine.
“Just so happens,” Nikkie said softly as she turned off Jessica’s bedroom light, backed into the hallway and pulled the door closed, “I’m about to do a little freelancing work to find out what Maryanne Jenkins is hiding.”
“Her neighbor works late,” Jessica said in a much clearer, less clouded voice.
Nikkie, whose hand was still holding the door handle, pushed the door open a crack. Stuck her head inside the dark room.
“Her neighbor?”
“If you’re going to look in her office files. Her neighbor is nosey. Stays late most days.”
“I take it you’ve been to her office after hours?” Nikkie asked.
“Never admit to anything. They say that, too. Don’t they? Never admit to anything.”
Nikkie thought about calling Derek to give him an update of her visit with Jessica, but thought calling him would only either disturb whatever freelancing he was doing or would make him worry about what she was planning. Instead of calling Derek, Nikkie turned her phone’s sound off and tucked the phone into her clutch purse. She’d call Derek when her work was done.
She did take his previous advice and swung over to her hotel to grab her gun. She left her hotel room with her .40 caliber, Smith and Wesson M&P tucked out of sight in her inner-waistband holster. Her decision to pick up her gun was more out of her desire to kill some time than any worry or concern she had for her safety. While Maryanne’s office wasn’t in the best part of Largo, it was far from the worst. In fact, compared to many places Nikkie had worked a case, Largo and all of Pinellas County seemed to be vacant of any “bad parts.” Carrying a gun in her line of work, however, was just a smart thing to do.
She drove into Largo. Parked her car on the street a hundred yards north of The Law Offices of Maryanne Jenkins, Esq.
Jessica had been right; it was close to eleven-thirty before the lights in the office adjacent to Maryanne Jenkins’s office were switched off. Nikkie watched from the distance of her car as a middle-aged woman walked out of the newly darkened office, crossed the street, got into her car and headed south.
“Time for some freelancing,” Nikkie whispered.
She held the key to the front door so tightly in her hand that when she loosed her grip, the key’s teeth had left angry gouges in her fingers. Nikkie slipped into the alcove, put the key into the deadbolt, slid the bolt free, opened the door, and then prayed Jenkins didn’t have an alarm system. She hadn’t noticed one during her visit a few days ago, but she was more concerned about the health of Maryanne than looking for a flashing keypad on the wall.
She slipped inside and was greeted by wonderful silence.
After closing the door behind her, Nikkie leaned against it. Took several long breaths, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the office. Several seconds later, she pulled out a penlight, flashed it low around the office, then moved quickly to a bank of metal file cabinets to the right of Maryanne’s desk.
Nikkie shook her head in disbelief when she pulled the top drawer open.
“Doesn’t even lock her file cabinets in an office without an alarm? Remind myself to never tell Jenkins anything personal.”
She bit the penlight, aimed its light with small nods and shakes of her head, as she thumbed through the well-organized first drawer. Finding nothing of interest, she pulled open the second drawer, closed the first, and repeated her method of search.
The file she was looking for, the file she hoped to find but honestly didn’t expect to, was in the third drawer. She pulled the folder, which was marked “HILTON” in thick, red ink, and walked it over to Maryanne’s desk. She sat, then shot back up after remembering the urine-soaked condition she had found Maryanne in when she visited this office earlier in the week.
If she had been sitting and not standing, slightly bent over the desk, the bullet, which tore into the side of her chest, may have slammed into her shoulder instead. She certainly would have been dazed, wounded but she may have been able to recover quickly enough to grab her gun from her holster. May have been able to fire back a round or two.
But she was standing, giving the shooter—standing in the dark hallway that lead to the rear exit—a larger target.
The bullet penetrated through her fifth and sixth rib. It ripped its way through her left lung, tore a two-inch wide gap into her right lung, before coming to a bone-shattering stop against her rib cage on her left side.
The first bullet may not have been a fatal introduction, if Nikkie received quick medical attention. But the only person who knew Nikkie was in mortal need of immediate medical attention, was the shooter.
The second bullet, however, was certainly, unmistakably and unrepentantly fatal.
Nikkie had fallen to the floor, grasping her side, hoping to somehow capture and hold the pain which had erupted. When the second bullet blasted through the left side of her chest, her pain suddenly lost its bite. It fell silent as if frightened away from the sound of the firing gun. Her arm dropped to her side. Lifeless.
“Find something interesting?” her shooter asked.
Nikkie looked up at the woman standing above her. The darkness prevented her from seeing any more than her shooter’s outline framed against the street lamp’s light leaking in through the office’s distant window. She tried to answer back, to say anything. To plead for help. And if help was denied, then at least for a reason.
The shooter raised the gun, pointed it at Nikkie’s chest and pulled the trigger.
As she felt the great sleep approaching, Nikkie began to cry tears no one would wipe away.
She turned to her side, dipped her index finger in the pool of her blood spilling out from her chest and side.
And scrawled two letters.
Chapter 36
Sunday
August 24
4:02 AM
He hadn’t slept but was charged with an energy no amount of rest could ever produce. Derek walked out of the stale, musty air inside the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department and into the humid, stale air outside. It was early, too early to be as warm and as promising of approaching oppressiveness as it was, but he didn’t notice. He didn’t care.
He had parked his car on the street across from Maryanne Jenkins office last night. Had ridden in the back of the ambulance to the hospital with Nikkie; holding her then lifeless hand, offering silent promises to her. Nikkie was dead when the sheriff’s arrived. Too far gone for the paramedics—who came in tow and entered the office after given the all-clear sign by a deputy—to even try to bring her back.
The sheriff’s deputy who had first entered Jenkins’s office, found Derek cradling the still body of Nikkie Armani to the left of the office desk. Gun drawn, eyes wide with trained preparedness, the deputy only said one word to Derek.
“Shooter?”
�
�Gone before I arrived,” came Derek’s answer. His voice was calm, despite the burning rage engulfing him. He knew he needed to control his emotions. Knew that if he allowed his bitter anger, his crushing pain to surface, he would tell anyone who listened about the initials written in her own blood Nikkie left behind. Those initials were not clues. They were not a suggestion from Nikkie of where Derek, or anyone else who might see the jagged letters, should begin the investigation into her death.
They were simple accusations.
Two letters. Five inches tall. Better than any GPS or map for Derek. He knew exactly what he needed to do. What he wanted to do. What he was going to do.
Derek was five minutes into the fifteen-minute walk from the department to his car when the sound of approaching footfalls behind him grew louder. He didn’t turn in startled surprise. Didn’t quicken his pace or position his body to launch an attack should the approaching person launch an offensive. He knew who it was. Only one person it could have been.
“Hello Rachel,” he said before she drew up to his side. “Wondered when you’d get here.”
She grabbed his arm, pulled him to a stop. Looked deep into his eyes: His clear and dry, hers damp with building tears.
“Derek,” she said. “I am so sorry. I can’t believe…What happened?”
“Ten minutes. I have ten minutes before I reach my car. When I get to my car, you’re going to turn around and walk back and I’m going to do what I need to do. I need some information from you. I know you’ve been doing some work on the Gracers murder case, even though it isn’t your case, so I need to ask you some questions. Don’t ask me why I’m asking the questions I’m going to ask or where I’m going. Don’t try to convince me of anything.”
Deathly Reminders: a Derek Cole Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 6) Page 22