As she was leaving, Van Zile offered a parting word. “This doesn’t buy you any freedom from prosecution for other crimes—past or future.”
Bonnie nodded. “I’m aware.”
Dan, loitering nearby, lifted his head when he heard that. He sidled up to her, his voice low.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Parker. Now that I know what I know, I’ll be watching you closer than ever. One slip-up, and you’re mine. Just one.”
“Great, Danny. Hold on while I change into some boots, so I can shiver in ’em.”
He only stared at her as, very slowly, a ghost of his old grin materialized on his face.
On the move in the Jeep, she powered up Sammy for the first time in hours and retrieved her voicemails. Brad’s was the only one that mattered. She could hear his concern and fear, though he’d done his best to sound coolly professional. He knew the message might be heard by cops investigating her disappearance or death, so he’d covered himself. Smart. She respected someone whose instinct for self-preservation remained paramount at all times.
Yellow crime-scene ribbon was strung across the front door of her duplex, which was still guarded by a bored cop. Some lookie-loos were hanging around at a safe distance, as if the place was radioactive and they were afraid to get too close. Enough of them were local to ensure that she was recognized. Their reaction to her was less than positive. She saw a lot of scowling faces.
Jeez, she was like friggin’ Typhoid Mary all of a sudden. You would think they’d be grateful to her for bringing a little excitement into their lives.
She felt their cold stares on her back as she approached the door. “Take a picture,” she muttered, “it’ll last longer.” Then she noticed that some of them actually were taking pictures with their cell phones. Shit. They were one step ahead of her.
The cop on duty checked her ID before letting her in. He warned her, “They trashed it pretty good.”
“Well, I’ve been meaning to redecorate.”
She went inside and surveyed the damage. The windows had been shot out, and the place was cold. Bullet holes were everywhere. Broken mirrors—that was seven years’ bad luck right there. TV set shot to hell. The laptop computer on the dining table had been plugged multiple times. She was guessing that kind of thing probably wasn’t covered by the warranty. The kitchen floor was littered with shattered plates that had formerly been stacked in the cabinets. The cabinets themselves had been blasted apart, the doors hanging on busted hinges.
They’d even shot up the freakin’ toilet. The bowl was cracked, the tank leaking.
It was lucky she didn’t collect Fabergé eggs, or she’d really be ticked off.
Basically the place had been totaled. Her office must be pretty much the same. Fixing all this crap was going to be a real pain in the ass. If she’d known Streinikov’s boys had been this thorough, she might have clipped his finger while he was still alive.
Outside, she saw Mrs. Biggs leaving her unit. The older woman didn’t notice her at first.
“Eleanor,” she said.
Mrs. Biggs flinched. She turned slowly, her face unreadable.
“Sorry about all this. It was a big mix-up, but it’s all taken care of now.” Even as she said it, Bonnie realized how inadequate it was.
Her neighbor said nothing.
“I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt,” she added pointlessly.
A beat of silence passed between them. When she spoke, Mrs. Biggs kept her voice low and flat.
“This is a small town. Things like this don’t happen here. Or at least—they never used to.”
She walked away.
Bonnie shut her eyes. If even Mrs. Biggs had turned against her, then she’d lost her last friend in Brighton Cove.
45
Out of habit she parked several blocks from Brad’s apartment and walked there in the cold wind. She expected him to be home on a Sunday, and he was.
“So,” he said, opening the door, “you slipped out of it. We should call you Houdini.”
She stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind her. “Houdini was a piker compared to me.”
He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t amused. Not that she’d expected him to be.
“So I guess Dan’s brought you up to speed?”
He gave a curt nod, his eyes fixed on her face. “That’s right.”
“We were supposed to have a confidentiality agreement.”
“He’ll honor it. But he had to vent to somebody. I was elected.”
“Lucky you.”
He kept staring at her, as if he’d never seen her before. “You shot that man Krauss in cold blood.”
“He was trolling for a hit man for his wife.”
“Then he should have been arrested. Not—executed.”
“I guess it depends on how much faith you’ve got in the legal process.”
“I guess it does. And there were others, weren’t there? Other hits?”
She was sure—almost sure—he wasn’t wearing a wire, but she still wasn’t going to incriminate herself. She remembered Van Zile’s warning about the limitations of her immunity. “No comment.”
“The other night—the last night when we ... You’d come directly from killing him.”
“Not directly.”
“You still had blood on your hands.”
“No. I’d washed it off.”
“Some things don’t wash off.”
“Yeah. I kinda knew you’d see it that way.”
“You think you’re so smart, but you’re just a killer. A sociopath, like Dan says.”
“Dan’s a moron. He couldn’t even spell sociopath.”
“You are one, though. Or something worse. You’re evil, Bonnie.”
“I’m complicated.”
“You’re evil. Evil all the way down.”
“Bad to the bone,” she whispered.
Brad nodded, his face grave. “Yeah.”
He just stood there, arms folded, giving her the old stink-eye. It was starting to piss her off.
“I did warn you,” she said. “I told you to keep your distance. I tried everything I could to push you away for months and months. For years. You think you can make me feel guilty. You can’t. I know what I am. No delusions. You’re the one who doesn’t want to deal with it. You’re the one who kept looking the other way. You even read my file and you still didn’t want to believe it. You wouldn’t believe until it was pushed right up in your face.”
“So it’s my fault?” he said in a toneless voice.
“It’s nobody’s fault. It is what it is.”
“And you are—what you are.”
“Damn straight, buddy. I’ll kill whoever needs killing, and I won’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.”
Yeah, she said it. So what if he was wired up? Fuck it. She could always beat the rap.
“You’re as bad as Dan says,” he told her. “It’s just that simple.”
“Things are never just that simple. They’re never just good or bad.”
“They are, for me.”
Bonnie nodded. Of course they were.
She figured she ought to leave now. This conversation felt extremely over. But he surprised her by speaking again.
“You’re just like her, aren’t you?”
She almost asked who he meant, but it wasn’t necessary. The subtle stress on the word her gave it away. Her namesake, the first Bonnie Parker.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I’ve lasted longer. And I don’t rob banks.”
“Do you write poetry? She did.”
“I ain’t Shakespeare.” She frowned. “He wrote poems, right? Not just plays?”
“He wrote poems. Think you’ll end up like her?”
“Blown away in an ambush?” She considered the question seriously. “Yeah, probably.”
“I do, too. She had Clyde Barrow with her when she died.”
Her memory flashed on those dreams she sometimes had—blood and broken glass, and Clyde�
��s screams mingled with her own. “I know.”
“Who will you have?”
She took a breath, let it out, felt her body sag with the finality of surrender. “Nobody, I guess. Nobody at all.”
He seemed satisfied with that. Like an inquisitor, he’d wrung a confession out of her.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said.
She let him have the last word. He deserved that much.
In her Jeep, heading back to the bullet-pocked mess she called home, she took out a cigarette. Her hand shook only a little as she thumbed the lighter.
So it was over. No surprise. It could never have lasted. Bradley Walsh believed in rules and order, things making sense. She didn’t. She knew what life really was—the insanity of it, the biting cruelty. Life was a blade, and it cut deep. Streinikov had known that blade, and so had she.
And she couldn’t change, no matter what Frank Kershaw thought. She’d crossed too many lines already. She’d gone too far to ever double back.
The road she was on—it was a rough road, and it led to a bad place, but it was her road, the only one she knew. She would travel that road all the way to the end of the line.
And she would travel it alone.
From the author ...
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Michael Prescott
Author’s Note
As always, I invite readers to visit me at www.michaelprescott.net, where you’ll find links to all my books, news about upcoming projects, contact info, and other good stuff.
Bad to the Bone is the third book in a series that began with Cold Around the Heart and continued with Blood in the Water. A fourth book featuring Bonnie Parker is in the works.
Many thanks to Diana Cox of www.novelproofreading.com for her usual fine job of proofreading the manuscript. I made some changes after she read it, and I probably introduced some new errors; so if you find any mistakes, they’re all mine.
The lines of poetry at the front of the book were written by the historical Bonnie Parker, partner of Clyde Barrow. Two weeks before her death, she gave the poem to her mother. It was published posthumously.
—MP
Books by Michael Prescott
Manstopper
Kane
Shadow Dance
Shiver
Shudder
Shatter
Deadly Pursuit
Blind Pursuit
Mortal Pursuit
Comes the Dark
Stealing Faces
The Shadow Hunter
Last Breath
Next Victim
In Dark Places
Dangerous Games
Mortal Faults
Final Sins
Riptide
Grave of Angels
Cold Around the Heart
Steel Trap & Other Stories
Chasing Omega
Blood in the Water
Bad to the Bone
Bad to the Bone,
by Michael Prescott
Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Borton
All rights reserved
Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3) Page 24