“Old coast guard station,” Quinn said, apparently reading my mind. “Hasn’t been used in years.”
From this distance and in the gathering darkness, it was hard to tell, but it looked like there was a chain-link fence all around the station and the property that surrounded it.
“Somebody doesn’t want any trespassers,” I said.
“Or anybody vandalizing the place.”
“Or anyone getting close.”
What I was saying finally clicked with Quinn. “Which would make it the perfect spot—”
“To dump a body.”
Perfectly inaccessible, too.
By the time we walked (okay, I clomped) all the way to where that finger of land stuck out into the water, my hair hung in my eyes and I was sweating. Well, just a little, anyway. As for getting over that chain-link fence…
I’d rather not go into details. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t easy, and by the time we were officially trespassing on what was probably government property and so off limits to civilians, I was breathing hard and my leopard-print coat was ripped in two places.
“Damn!” I fingered the tears caused by rough spots on the fence. “I got this for a steal at a Nordstrom sale. There will never be another one like it.”
“Told you to dress appropriately.”
Too bad Quinn had already whirled around and started for the Coast Guard station just as he said this. He missed a mighty good glare.
The station itself was actually way bigger up close than it looked from the beach. While Quinn went around to the right, peering into the water and poking around with a stick, I clomped to my left. When I’d finally made it over that chain-link fence, I’d picked up a tree branch and now I poked, too, along the shoreline, half hoping I wouldn’t find anything at all.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to put the Jack mystery to rest, but that thought of a body left in the water for a few months…
I trailed my stick through the water, and a bicycle tire floated to the surface. I poked again, and this time for my effort, I brought up an old shoe.
Clomping and poking, I walked to my right. The plan was that on the other side of the building, Quinn was doing the same thing, only moving to his left. We would meet at the farthest north point of the station. I only hoped we did it before long. Out there with the cold rain pattering against what was left of my raincoat and in the gathering darkness, I was more unsettled than I ever had been in any cemetery.
It didn’t help when a noise behind me brought me spinning around and just as I turned, I saw something small and dark dart into the weeds.
“Cat,” I told myself, even though I knew it was too small and not nearly furry enough. I clomped quicker and poked faster, my efforts punctuated by the lapping sounds of water and the noise of a boat motor from somewhere near the marina. Brave souls to be out on the water on a night like this, I told myself. And the reminder was all I needed; I poked even faster.
After twenty minutes or so, I caught sight of Quinn coming around from the other side of the station. He didn’t look any happier than I felt, and unfortunately, I knew what that meant. Great theory, I mean about Jack’s body being stashed there and all. But a big zero in execution.
Poor choice of words.
Especially when I jabbed the stick into the water one more time and trailed it along the shoreline and a skull floated to the surface, its big, empty eye sockets staring right at me from above the piece of duct tape over its mouth.
I screeched. And jumped back.
Quinn came running.
After that…
Well, it’s kind of hard to remember exactly. I know he got to me in record time, and that he saw the skull. I know he already had his phone out, too, and I was pretty sure he was going to call those somebodies who take care of things like this for the police department.
He never had a chance.
But then, that was because a whole different somebody picked that exact moment to take a shot at us.
Instinct. It was all about instinct.
My instincts told me to drop to the ground and cover my head.
Quinn had other ideas.
“We’re sitting ducks here,” he said at the same time he grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet. By the time the second shot pinged into the worn blacktop too near my yellow rain boots, we were already running for the cover of the Coast Guard station.
“Son of a—” A shot plopped into the building and sent tiny pieces of cement shrapnel flying all around us, and Quinn shoved me behind him. He had his gun out, but I could tell by the way his mouth thinned as he scanned the landscape around us that he didn’t know where the shots had come from.
“Somebody followed us.”
The perfect moment for a no shit, Sherlock, if ever there was one, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Somebody doesn’t want us to find Jack’s body,” I said instead. Not that he heard me, because another shot hit close by. It was followed by another, and another.
My arms over my head and my body folded as small as it was able for a five-foot-eleven woman to get, I listened to Quinn call in to emergency dispatch and report an officer in trouble. That was pretty much when we both realized things had gotten quiet.
Really quiet.
I let go a breath and slumped against the cold cement building. “He stopped. He’s gone.” My words bumped like my heart. Which at that moment, was knocking around like a clog dancer on steroids. Relieved, I pushed off from the wall of the building. “We can leave now.”
If this was such good news, why did Quinn still have his gun out and a steely eyed gaze trained at the desolate landscape around us?
When I moved forward, he stuck out an arm. “He’s closing in,” Quinn said.
“What? No, no, no. It’s supposed to be over now. What are you talking about, he’s closing in? He stopped shooting. He’s going to—”
“Come around from one of the sides of this building.” That big ol’ gun of his raised, Quinn pivoted one way, then the other. “If we can hold him off until backup gets here…”
We both heard it at the same time. The distant sounds of a pulsing police siren.
Far away.
Too far.
And the put-put of that boat motor, louder now, closer, revving up little by little as if it was sending us a message: run and run fast.
Only there was no place to run to.
“If you have to,” Quinn said with another lethal glance all around. “Go into the water.”
I looked down at what used to be my adorable raincoat. “Into the—”
“You can swim, can’t you?”
“In chlorinated water, yes. When the sun is shining. And the water temperature is a minimum of eighty-seven degrees. But—”
“But nothing. When I tell you, you run and you run fast and you don’t look back. With any luck, you can get out of here the way we got in. If not, there’s always the water. Got that?”
I actually would have answered if the fierceness in his voice and the heat of his eyes didn’t stop me dead.
Okay, okay, so it was a bad choice of words. It wasn’t like I had a thesaurus around or anything.
“But, Quinn, I—”
He held up a hand to signal me to keep quiet, and I heard what he heard, the sounds of shoes crunching on pitted blacktop.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he promised.
I was about to tell him I appreciated that when the shooter came around the corner.
“That way,” Quinn yelled, pushing me around to the side of the building where he’d searched the shoreline. But then, that’s because he was so busy returning fire with our attacker, he didn’t see the other guy blocking our exit that way. I tugged at his jacket sleeve, he managed a quick look over his shoulder to see what I saw, and we exchanged glances. There was only one thing to do. Our land exits were blocked; we had no choice but to head to the water.
Maybe it was the sounds of the pinging gunshots
that blocked out the noise of the boat motor. Or maybe the police car sirens on the freeway across the railroad tracks did that. Maybe I was just so freakin’ scared, I wasn’t paying attention to anything except putting one yellow boot in front of the other and being grateful that I was still alive to feel the asphalt beneath my feet. Whatever the reason, I didn’t hear the boat slip up to the shoreline or realize it was there waiting for us until we got to where I thought I was going to have to jump.
“Come on, honey, hurry!” My mother looked her usual resplendent self in a hunter green rain slicker and boots that weren’t nearly as clunky as mine. Her eyes wide and her voice tight with panic, she offered me a hand and held on tight while I took a deep breath and jumped in beside her. Dad was behind the wheel and he took off the moment Quinn landed on the deck next to me.
“But what…how…?” I looked back and forth between my mother (who either had tears rolling down her cheeks of was getting hit with as much rain and lake spray as I was) and my dad, who whooped in triumph and piloted us on a wild zigzag course toward the break wall and the open water beyond.
“It’s amazing what you learn in prison,” Dad called out.
“Like how to hot-wire a boat. Imagine!” I don’t know when she managed to grab the other one, but Mom now had hold of both my hands.
Quinn was not all that into tender reunion scenes. No big surprise there. A hand on each our backs, he pushed us down until both Mom and I were kneeling on the wet deck. His gun still out, his hood back, and his dark hair slick with rain, he angled himself between us and the back of the boat and when one last shot pinked into the water not three feet off our left side, he returned fire.
When the noise of the blast finally stopped echoing in my ears, I dared to look up long enough to cast a glance at my mother. “And you knew we were coming here because…?”
When Quinn sat back, apparently signaling that we were far enough away from shore to be out of danger, Mom did, too. “Don’t be silly, honey.” She patted my hand. “It looks as if all sorts of people followed you to Whiskey Island tonight.”
She was right about that.
All sorts of people. Including the two who had saved our lives. And the couple shooters who wanted us good and dead.
What with me being the world’s only private investigator to do the dead, you’d think I’d be a little more used to talk of bodies and what happens to them after they shuffle off the ol’ mortal coil. Still, my mouth soured when I looked at the closed door in front of us—the one that led to the autopsy room at the county morgue—and asked Quinn, “You think they found all the…pieces?”
“The coroner is sure they did.” His cheeks were red, but then, my complexion wasn’t at its best, either. The mad dash in the boat, the wind, the rain…it all added up to stinging eyes, rough skin, and crimson cheeks. Even the avocado facial I’d given myself in the wee hours of the morning when I finally got back home from Whiskey Island hadn’t done much to help. “They put the skeleton together,” Quinn continued. “You know, like a puzzle.”
“And then they’ll be able to tell us what happened to Jack.”
“Or you could just ask me.”
I wasn’t surprised by the shockwave of cold or the puddle that suddenly appeared on the green linoleum floor of the waiting room. The raspy voice, though, that was another thing.
Then again, I guess Jack had an excuse, what with not being able to talk all these months because of that duct tape over his mouth.
Now, he popped into the room and stood in front of us, scrubbing his hand over both his mouth and chin.
“No duct tape. He’s talking.” I tugged at Quinn’s sleeve and pointed to the puddle at the same time I wondered what was up. “There’s no duct tape because—”
“Coroner took it off, of course.” Jack filled me in on the details and tossed a bit of raised eyebrow in, too, for good measure, and to let me know I should have thought of this myself. “About damn time. Plastic ties, too.” He held up his hands to show me that his wrists were free and massaged each as if it might actually bring back the circulation. “I was getting tired of playing games trying to communicate with you.”
“You’re not the only one. But what about…” I looked down at the heavy rope around Jack’s legs. By the time we saw the police cars with their flashing lights arrive at Whiskey Island and Dad cruised into the marina and dropped us off so we could pretend we’d gotten away from the shooters without any grand theft larceny involved, our attackers were long gone. The good news was that while Jack’s skull had sunk back into the murky depths of Lake Erie, it was easy for us to show the cops where we’d seen it and easy for them to locate, too. Big plus, the skull hadn’t floated far from what was left of the rest of Jack’s body. High-intensity lights were brought in, those somebodies from the elite police diving unit showed up, and before the sun came up over the eastern horizon, all the earthy remains of Jack Haggarty lay on a blanket on Whiskey Island.
When his flesh dissolved or was eaten by fish (shiver!), that rope around his legs went slack, but it never fell away completely.
The cinder block still attached, Jack shuffled around the waiting room. That is, until as if by magic, those ropes snapped.
“About friggin’ time!” Jack breathed (I use this word figuratively, of course) a sigh of absolute relief and took a couple quick steps around the room. “I can move again.”
“They cut the ropes from around Jack’s legs,” I said for Quinn’s benefit. “And his hands are free and because the tape is off, he can talk.”
“Good.” Quinn’s gaze was so intense, I swore he could see Jack standing there in front of a blond wood table with a stack of old National Geographics on it. “Now ask him what the hell is going on.”
I turned to Jack. “What he said. If we’re going to help, we need details, and you’re the only one who can give them to us.”
“You mean Mr. Super Detective here hasn’t figured it all out yet?” Jack’s top lip twisted. “I thought he’d have all the answers by now.”
This didn’t seem the time to report this comment word for word, not when less than twelve hours earlier, Quinn had risked his life to save mine. Not when my parents had taken chances, too, with their own lives and with Dad getting himself in all kinds of trouble if word ever got out about how he’d taken that boat for a joyride.
I decided it was better not to get mired in emotions and stuck with the facts. “Who killed Dingo?” I asked Jack.
“Who are those folks?” he countered, glancing over to where Mom and Dad were trying to get a cappuccino out of the vending machine. If the way they were laughing and pounding on the machine meant anything, they weren’t having much luck.
“My parents,” I said, eager to keep the explanations short and sweet. “They’re sort of…kind of…” A cup fell into the little receptacle at the front of the machine and frothy faux cappuccino poured down into it, and my parents hooted with delight. “They work with me,” I told Jack. “They’re helping with this case.”
“Not what I expected.” He slid a look at Quinn. “Figured he could work this out all by himself. At least that’s what he always told me back in the day. Detective Quinn Harrison didn’t need me. He didn’t need anybody. He had all the answers. Always.”
I wasn’t imagining it. There was something going on here, and I didn’t like being clueless. I turned to Quinn.
“Did you and Jack like each other?” I asked him.
His shrug was barely noticeable. “We rode together for a three years.”
“Not what I asked you.”
“We always got along.”
“Another dodge.”
“Look, Pepper, you don’t understand cops.”
I propped my fists on my hips. “I’m not trying to. Not all cops, anyway. Just two of them. You and Jack.”
He pulled in a breath (the he obviously being Quinn since he was the only other he in the room who was actually breathing). “We did our job and we did it well. Did I
like Jack? That’s not the word I’d use. But I always…respected…him. He got results.”
“Respect, huh?” Jack stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. Since he was still wearing that golf shirt stained with his blood, I was grateful. His arms were beefy; they covered the red splotch. “A cop who respects his partner doesn’t walk off and leave him.”
“Did you?” I’d already turned back to Quinn when I realized he didn’t know what I was talking about. “Did you leave Jack in the lurch?”
“The only place I ever left Jack was in uniform.” Quinn stepped back, too. He crossed his arms over his chest. Jack was shorter than Quinn, and broader. His hair was buzz-cut, his nose was wide, his chin was a little too small for the rest of his face. That didn’t keep them from looking like twins. Then again, attitude is everything, and these two had it in spades. The raised chins. The stone shoulders. The tight muscles of arms and jaws that told me there had been more to their partnership than either of them wanted to talk about.
I didn’t think it was possible for Quinn’s chin to come up even more. Shows what I know. “I got promoted to the Detective Bureau. Jack didn’t.”
“And he thinks I’m jealous,” Jack growled and at the same time Quinn chimed in with, “I guess he’s jealous.”
It was a classic pissing contest. And it was getting us a big ol’ nowhere.
“Would one of you like to tell me what this has to do with Dingo’s murder?” I demanded.
“Not me.” Quinn had been leaning against the wall, and he pushed off. “If I knew that, this case would be wrapped up already.”
When Mom and Dad strolled in with their cappuccino, I’d already turned back to Jack. “Time for answers,” I said, and because I knew they’d start pestering me and I didn’t want to be bothered, I tossed a casual, “The ghost is here,” in their direction along with a gesture toward Jack and the puddle.
PM09 - Supernatural Born Killers Page 20