Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  When she was halfway underneath the bed, she extended her arm as far as it could reach. Her fingertips settled on the polymer frame of the weapon. It was chilly to the touch. Faith panted as if she had been running for a long time. Her open eye bleared with tears.

  She forced herself farther. Her hand closed around the weapon’s grip. She had it. Breath exploded from her lungs. She tasted dust and carpet fibers.

  He seized her by the ankle. Faith croaked as he dragged her from underneath the bed by both feet. The carpet burned her flesh, and her nightshirt bundled up around her armpits. The room opened up as she came clear of the bed. He spat. He grabbed her by the material of her shirt.

  Faith rolled onto her back and brought the pistol with her. The man’s face blanked. Faith pulled the trigger and hit him in the throat.

  Blood burst from the wound. The man recoiled, grabbing at his neck. Hot red jets painted Faith and the space around them. Faith pulled the trigger again and again. Bullets carved wet holes in the man’s chest. He collapsed, gagging on his own fluids. Faith managed to sit upright. Her finger worked against the pistol’s trigger, but there were no more rounds to fire. The slide was locked back.

  The man’s legs twitched. The flow of blood between his fingers slowed. His face was smeared with crimson. He gurgled once, and then he was still.

  Chapter Twenty

  IGNACIO WAS NOT sure of the time when the phone rang. He’d been dreaming of something, but the dream was gone in the instant he awoke. He thrashed in the bed, disoriented in the dark. His hand landed on the phone. He accepted the call. “Montellano,” he said. “It’s—”

  “A little after midnight.”

  He checked the red numbers of the bedside clock. It was 12:04. “Brady?”

  “I have a body here. I think maybe you ought to come out and see it.”

  Ignacio rubbed his eyes. “I’m not working nights.”

  “You’re going to want to see it.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Pool clucked his tongue. In the background, the sound of low discussion. Ignacio saw the busy scene as if he were there. “I have a single white female, aged twenty-nine, who shot an unknown white male, approximately forty years old, six times in the neck and chest. He broke in, beat the hell out of her, wrecked her place, and when he came back to finish the job, she got him with a .380 she took possession of a day ago.”

  Ignacio pushed back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. It was dark in his bedroom, but light slanted through the window from his neighbor’s security lamp. “What’s this girl’s name?”

  “It’s Faith Glazer. She’s an accountant. Works downtown.”

  “Wait a minute. I know about her.”

  “I know you do. I have Detective Herrera from Special Victims here, and she says you called her a while back about a stalking case. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “So why are you calling?”

  “Camaro Espinoza is here.”

  Ignacio straightened up. “You sure she’s not the shooter?”

  “No, it’s Glazer. The deed was done before Espinoza arrived on the scene. We have witnesses to that effect. But I know you have your ear out for this woman and she’s here, right now, talking to Glazer. I can’t keep them apart.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Send me the address.”

  “Don’t take too long.”

  Ignacio was half dressed before his text alert pinged and Faith Glazer’s address appeared. By the time he got to his car, the route was programmed in, and the phone talked him all the way there. He saw flashing lights two blocks out. He turned onto the street and saw two men with crime lab windbreakers examining a car parked against the curb. The car’s doors were open wide, and its dome light gleamed.

  The apartment complex had a secure lot, but the gate was open to admit emergency vehicles. There were two crime-scene vans, an ambulance, a fire truck, and three police units in addition to Pool’s unmarked Crown Victoria. Ignacio saw Camaro Espinoza’s motorcycle. Her helmet was on the ground. Ignacio slipped into the knot and killed the engine. He found Pool outside. The idling fire truck was loud. The uniformed officers had tape up. The neighbors were kept well back.

  “You look rested,” Pool told Ignacio.

  “That’s funny. Can I look at the crime scene?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Pool led him through the open door of the apartment. The front room was demolished, the couch slashed to ribbons and stuffing everywhere. The same had been done to the room’s only chair. Everything had been turned over, from the television to the cable box. In the dining area the table was upside down. Pictures had been torn from the walls and smashed before being ripped from their frames. “What the hell?” Ignacio said.

  “This guy was very angry. He worked Glazer over something awful.”

  “Sexual assault?”

  “No, thank God. Looks like he wanted to tenderize her a little bit first.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Next door with a neighbor friend. Espinoza’s there, too.”

  Ignacio walked the apartment. The kitchen was as wrecked as all the rest, and even the refrigerator had been moved, pulled away from the wall to expose the coils. Every cabinet was open. It seemed as though the intruder had smashed every dish Faith Glazer owned. Ignacio shook his head.

  The body was covered with a plastic sheet while the crime-scene investigators did their work. A woman with flame-red hair gave Ignacio a sour look. “If you people keep trampling through here, it’s going to make our job harder.”

  Blood had splattered the wall and ceiling and soaked into the carpet. The dead man was an awkward shape under the white plastic. “I’d like to look at the body.”

  “It’s been processed. Go ahead.”

  Ignacio lifted the sheet to expose the corpse. The man’s dark shirt was sodden with congealing blood. His face was pallid, smears of red from his ruined throat like brilliant, unreal paint. There were bruises on his face, and three perfect fingernail gashes on his cheek. “I have no idea who this guy is. ID?”

  Pool looked on. “Nothing. He had an unlocked phone in his pocket we’re going to check out, but at first glance it looks like he never made any calls with it. There’s nothing in the history, anyway. Car keys in his other pocket go with a Buick out on the street. I’m having them turn it over.”

  “Got to be something good on the registration.”

  “Rental car.”

  “Of course,” Ignacio said.

  “Weird thing is, the trunk’s full of phone books. Like, a ton of phone books. I have no idea what he’d want with all of them. And they’re new.”

  “Has to mean something.”

  “Maybe. The important thing is he’s dead. And I have to say this for Faith Glazer: she may have only owned that gun for one day, but she’s a good shot. Any one of those bullets would have killed this guy, and she put six into him.”

  “Hard to miss at close range.”

  “I’ve seen people miss from a foot away.”

  Ignacio nodded. He put the plastic sheet back in place. “I want to talk to her.”

  “Glazer?”

  “And Espinoza.”

  “You want to take this one off my hands?”

  Ignacio looked at the room in disarray. “Yeah, I think so.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE NEIGHBOR’S NAME was Andrea. Camaro didn’t think anything of her. She seemed pleasant and ordinary and pretty, and she wasn’t afraid to open her door when Faith needed somewhere to hide.

  The police brought Faith fresh clothes and took her nightshirt away as evidence. Now she huddled on Andrea’s couch in sweatpants and a Florida State University sweatshirt. She wore socks but no shoes. Even with a blanket around her, she shook. Camaro didn’t sit next to her. She watched from a chair close at hand. She told Andrea to make some soup. Anything hot would do.

  Faith’s face was a mass of bruises from chin to hairline. The swelling a
round her eye was pronounced. She pressed a plastic bag of ice against the injury. The cold made her shiver more, but there was no helping it.

  Camaro had examined Faith when she found her. There was nothing broken except her nose, though it was possible the blow to her eye might have caused a fracture. Only an X-ray would tell for sure. The paramedics arrived. Camaro told them what they had to know. Faith needed a hospital, but the police had to sign off on it first. Camaro ground her teeth and waited.

  A detective named Pool interviewed Faith before a woman detective arrived to get a second interview. This detective stayed in the room with them, making calls and writing notes. Camaro did not want to talk around her.

  She heard Ignacio’s voice before she saw him. When he appeared in the front room of Andrea’s apartment and caught sight of Faith for the first time, Camaro saw a stricken expression on his face that lasted only until he hid it behind another, more studious look. He nodded at Camaro. “Ms. Espinoza.”

  “Detective.”

  The woman detective stood up. “Detective Montellano, I’m Detective Herrera, Special Victims. We talked on the phone.”

  They shook hands. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “You were following up on this.”

  “Not fast enough. Look, I’d like to release Ms. Glazer to the hospital. Are you taking the lead on this one?”

  “Seems like it. And she should go to the hospital. She’s already been here too long. But I’m going to want to talk to her.”

  “I have notes, if you want to go over them.”

  “In a minute.”

  Ignacio approached Faith. She didn’t look at him. Her bad eye was toward him, and she had done nothing for a while except stare into the middle distance with the eye that still worked. He didn’t try to touch her. “Faith, my name is Ignacio Montellano. I’m a detective with Homicide Unit. I’d like you to go to the hospital for a full examination. I’ll be by after you’ve rested. Okay?”

  Faith blinked. She glanced toward Camaro. Camaro inclined her head. Faith turned to Ignacio. “Okay.”

  Ignacio straightened. His voice sharpened. “Okay, let’s get her out of here. Grab the paramedics and tell them I want the works once she gets to the hospital. We’ll share information as it comes in. Detective Pool will oversee the rest of the crime-scene examination, and I’m going to follow up with Ms. Espinoza. Faith, take care of yourself. You’re in good hands.”

  Herrera summoned the paramedics. They brought a stretcher even though Faith didn’t need one, and they secured her before carrying her away. Herrera disappeared with them. There was only Camaro and Ignacio. “So now what?” Camaro asked.

  Andrea appeared. Ignacio put up a hand. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute, ma’am. I need to talk to this witness alone.”

  The woman swallowed hard. She disappeared. Camaro looked at Ignacio and he looked at her.

  “Did you know this was going to happen?”

  “Not tonight. But I knew it would eventually.”

  “Whose idea was it for her to buy a gun? Yours?”

  “Yes. And it’s good she had it—otherwise she’d be dead now.”

  Ignacio lowered himself onto the couch. He touched the abandoned plastic bag, half full of melted water. “It’s not like I don’t believe you, but I need to know: Do you have any idea who this guy was?”

  “No. I’ve never seen him before.”

  “That situation in Glazer’s apartment is not normal. I don’t work stalker cases or rape cases, but I’ve done plenty of homicides. I’ve seen what people do.”

  “The guy was crazy.”

  “Oh, sure. No doubt. But crazy people are generally crazy about something, you know? They have a thing. Like this guy, he has a trunk full of phone books. I’m sure the shrinks will talk about how it’s some kind of OCD, or whatever, but it’s a thing.”

  Camaro remembered. She leaned forward. “Phone books?”

  “Yeah. You know something?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Whatever it is, I have to figure it out. That’s the problem with these kinds of cases: the guy’s dead, but we have to have all the answers.”

  “Are they going to charge Faith?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s self-defense. Anybody can see that. Stalker decides he’s tired of watching and she has to do what she has to do. Can’t argue with that. Public-service homicide.”

  “I should probably go to the hospital and watch over her.”

  “Why? The wacko’s dead.”

  “It’s something I have to do.”

  Ignacio regarded her. “I think I get it. But listen, I’m going to have to get a full statement from you. You have to repeat everything you told me about this case for the record. You ready to do that?”

  “You can’t keep my name out of it?”

  “You came to the crime scene. I can’t cover up something like that.”

  Camaro looked toward the door. The emergency lights flashed blue and red ceaselessly. “All right.”

  Ignacio rose from the couch. “One more thing: You have a permit to carry that piece?”

  She touched the weapon under her shirt. “I do.”

  “So you figured out Florida doesn’t submit to NICS, huh? Nice way to skirt around any legal troubles you might have out of state.”

  “You want to see my papers, Detective?”

  “No, I don’t. And it’s Nacho. Nacho.”

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yeah. You will.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  LAWRENCE KAUR WAS forty-seven years old but looked thirty-nine. He had perfect hair and an even tan from long hours on the water. He kept his body fit with daily sessions in a private gym with a personal trainer. He ate a fully organic diet made up of purely vegetarian nutrients. His breakfast this morning was toast with black beans and avocado, a Samoan coconut, and tapioca porridge, served with fair-trade coffee and a large glass of Florida orange juice squeezed right in the kitchen. The in-season oranges were always the best, and Kaur’s chef chose only the finest and freshest ingredients.

  Kaur still read a newspaper, though newspapers were passé. He liked to go through the stock reports and single out key accounts in the long rows of tiny letters and numbers. All this could be gotten through his iPad, but he preferred the tactile sensation of paper and ink, even when the latter left dark smudges on his fingers.

  He sat in the breakfast room of his house, a glassed-in box, which allowed in sunlight from every direction. Spread beyond the teak deck outside was the full expanse of blue water off Key Biscayne. The previous day’s lingering clouds had vanished overnight, and the sky was a perfect shade of robin’s egg. Sometimes, like this morning, Kaur had to eat breakfast with his sunglasses on. Life was simply too brilliant.

  The sound of voices drifted over to him. He didn’t look up from his paper. A minute later he heard his assistant clear his throat. “Mr. Kaur? Mr. Roche is here to see you.”

  “All right, John, tell him he can come in. And tell Enrique to make something for Mr. Roche.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

  Kaur heard Roche’s footsteps approaching. Only when the legs of a chair scraped the floor did Kaur set aside his paper.

  Brandon Roche was in his early fifties, darker than tanned, with heavy eyebrows, which made him seem perpetually angry. It did not help that he rarely smiled. He wore a cream-colored linen suit with a white shirt underneath and no tie. He looked ready for a trip on a sailboat. It was Saturday. “Larry,” Roche said. His voice was cold iron.

  “Brandon. I didn’t expect to see you today. I have Paul handling any weekend matters.”

  “We missed,” Roche said.

  Kaur froze. He ran his hand over his newspaper to make a crease. “Okay,” he said.

  “You do understand what that means.”

  “Yes, but maybe you’d like to explain it to me again. I don’t think I grasped the urgency of the situation.”

  Roche shook hi
s head. “Don’t make light of this. We missed and now the police have her.”

  “What about our man?”

  “He’s dead,” Roche said. “Which is good for us, because dead he can’t talk. I heard from my people that there are three different detectives involved in the case, and any one of them might have gotten our man to say things he shouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t think you’d let someone sloppy do this.”

  “I wouldn’t, but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. I also didn’t anticipate he’d obsess over his subject.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean sexually obsessed. They found a pair of her underpants in his car.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But I don’t understand. You told me he had every angle covered. It would be no problem if we decided to go all the way with this. That’s what you told me, Brandon.”

  “I know what I told you. I didn’t lie. It turns out she bought a gun. I suppose our man didn’t secure the weapon before he did the rest. She managed to get ahold of it, and now he’s dead. No one could have foreseen it.”

  “You should have.”

  “I’ll accept that. But the more pressing matter is what to do to recover from the situation as it stands. Faith Glazer is still alive, and she has to know we’re responsible. She might not have known before, but she’s going to be certain now.”

  Enrique entered the breakfast room with a platter. He presented Roche with a mirror image of Kaur’s meal, poured a cup of coffee for him. A wisp of steam danced around the brim. “There you are, Mr. Roche. The best breakfast you’ll have all week,” Enrique said.

  Roche didn’t look at him. “I’m not hungry.”

  “But, Mr. Roche—”

  “Enrique!” Kaur interjected. “Mr. Roche says he’s not hungry. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to take it away.”