by Nancy Bush
“Hey.” Aaron snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Come back.”
“I was just . . . thinking.”
“I could see that. Did you hear what I said?”
She tried to run back the last few minutes, but it was useless.
“I said,” Aaron reminded her in a measured tone, “that I think I’d like to meet Tiny and get to know her on a more personal basis.”
“Tiny . . . oh, the cat. Yes. Well, about that—”
“You don’t have a three-hundred-pound cat.”
“Well . . . no.” She smiled.
“Figured.” His answering smile was faint. “Just thought maybe you and I . . . could do something? Before I’m gone for good.” He made a face, as if he’d tasted something bad.
“What does that mean?”
“My father . . .” He looked back inside through the glass door with an unreadable expression. “He and my mom don’t get along. At all. Ever. She hates it that I’m here. Says it’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Liv repeated.
“Oh, it’s all bullshit. She doesn’t even mean it. She just mainly wants to irk my father any way she can. And it works, ’cause he starts yelling that he should just fire me to get her off his ass. And she tells him where to stick it, and blah, blah, blah. It just goes on and on. God. They can’t stand each other.”
“But you’re leaving Zuma?”
“I overheard the old man tell her that he was really gonna do it this time. By the end of the week.” Aaron shrugged. “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But if he does, I’ll survive. Just wanted to make sure we could stay friends.” He peered at her through heavy blond bangs. A scraggly beard darkened his jaw. His clothes looked like they’d come straight from the clothes hamper and his pants rode low enough on his hips to make her wonder exactly when gravity would win and puddle them around his ankles.
She liked Aaron. She really did. But not in the way his eyes said he was hoping for. “We’re friends,” she said lightly.
“Olivia . . .” he said, disappointed. “Give me something more than that.”
“Good friends?” To his crushed look, she added, “Maybe later, we could talk? I’m just on my way to lunch now. I’m late already.” She half-turned back to the building.
“Sneak out this way,” he invited, opening the gate. Now, this was definitely against all the rules. “Paul won’t like it.”
“Paul doesn’t have to know.”
Liv felt a stirring of rebellion fueled by the encouraging light in Aaron’s eyes. Add to that, she didn’t want to turn him down again, for anything. She hesitated a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “All right.”
He swung open the gate. “I’m not trying to push you, or anything. I just would like to . . . keep things going between us.”
“Okay.”
He smiled and swung the gate shut behind her, satisfied.
“But when I come back through the front door, Paul’s going to rip me a new one,” she said.
“Call me on my cell. I’ll sneak you back in.”
“I don’t have a cell.”
“Oh, God, that’s right.” He shook his shaggy locks. “I’ll leave the door propped open.”
“Nah, I’ll go through the front and just take the heat.”
“Check the side door. If it’s open, it’s open. If it’s not, the old man or somebody caught me.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Hey, I’m a short timer. I want to.”
“Okay, then.” Liv waved to him as she headed out. Aaron was a slacker and a truant and a bit of a slug, but at least he amused her. Everybody else on the main floor seemed to have had the humor centers of their brains lobotomized.
She went to a local deli whose chicken salad was to die for and ordered a chicken salad sandwich, Diet Coke and a packet of Miss Vickie’s Jalapeño Chips. She sat at a bistro table and watched the passers-by outside the window, her mind flitting back to the packet and Hague and his comments about the zombie man.
If I look he’s always there. Out of the corner of your eye . . . there!
Gooseflesh rose on her arms beneath the three-quarter-length sleeves of her V-necked shirt. It was late August and hot, and she could feel her skin break into a sweat.
Since she’d pushed her lunch break till after one, it was two-twenty by the time she made it back to the building. This time she did park her car in the front, way in the front, so no one saw her car return so late. Then she hurried around to the right edge of the parking lot. She might be able to sneak by as a pedestrian if she kept the parked cars between her and Zuma’s main doors and therefore screened herself from Paul’s line of vision. As she ducked along, she peeked a time or two through the glass windows of the front atrium but she saw no one. She found her way to the side entrance and saw that the door was firmly shut. Uh-oh. Somebody was onto Aaron.
Sighing, she retraced her steps to the front doors. She had five different excuses to tell Paul, none any good, and decided to just breeze in as if she owned the place and let him rain the litany of her transgressions down on her head. Take the bitter pill and get it over with.
Drawing a breath, she strong-armed the mahogany front door and wondered why Paul wasn’t standing at the ready, poised to berate her. As the door swung shut behind her she stepped through the atrium and turned toward Jessica’s desk, a question on her lips as the door swung shut behind her, and then she saw the carnage in the office.
Paul de Fore was splayed on the tile floor face down, blood pooling beneath his open mouth from a gunshot wound to the back of his head. She could hear moaning from beyond him. In a dream state she stepped over Paul and went to Jessica’s desk, giving a quick look over the top to see the receptionist on the floor behind her chair, curled up in the fetal position, blood blooming around the mounds of her breasts from a wound to the chest, small mewls issuing from her lips.
A roaring started in Liv’s ears. She glanced to the partition of her own desk, her blood pounding, a voice screaming loudly. She clapped her hands over her ears to stop it and realized the shrieking voice was coming from her.
She clamped her jaw shut; her lips trembled violently. Heart beating so hard she could see it jumping through her clothes, she cautiously stepped forward, half-expecting the gunman to jump from behind the partition. She was quaking so much she could scarcely stand. From around the corner that led to the executive offices, she saw the outstretched hand of a man wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt: Kurt Upjohn.
Liv staggered toward him, peeking reluctantly around the corner. Upjohn was lying half-in, half-out of his office. Beyond lay Aaron’s body. Both of them were riddled with gunshot wounds.
Kill you. Kill you!
Backing away, she threw a glance toward the stairway and the geeks upstairs and Phil. That door was always locked. Shivering as from ague, her brain unable to process, she staggered back to Jessica’s desk and hit the main phone line, punching out 911.
“Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”
“There’s—been a shooting,” she said in a stranger’s voice. She gave the address, then the receiver clattered from her hand as the operator begged her, “Don’t hang up. Don’t hang up,” and she didn’t. She simply let the receiver drop to the ground just like she had in her kitchen a few nights before.
She stood frozen for the space of five rapid heartbeats.
Then with a cry she ran back out the front door, her thoughts pinging around in her head as she considered how close she’d come to being gunned down as well.
It’s you they’re after. You! Always you, the paranoid voice in her head warned. Go home. Get your own gun. And RUN.
“Nine!” Detective George Thompkins bellowed from his swivel chair at the far end of the squad room.
Detective September “Nine” Rafferty, named and nicknamed for the month she was born, jumped as if goosed. She’d been filling out some paperwork but the tone of George’s voice dro
ve her instantly to her feet. She was a newly minted detective and so she stood ramrod straight. “Yes?”
“Just talked to D’Annibal. He’s on his way in.” George cast a glance to the darkened glass cubicle that was their superior’s, Lieutenant Aubrey D’Annibal’s, office. D’Annibal was on the last hours of his vacation and that left George in charge, a dubious honor for a dubious commander. George liked to squeak his heft in his swivel chair and remain at his desk and that was about it. Now he swiveled around and said, “Jesus Christ. There’s been a shooting at Zuma Software. Patrol’s on the way. Get over there and see what’s what. D’Annibal’s orders.”
“And me?” Detective Gretchen Sandler demanded in her nasal tone. She was slim, dark-haired and dark-skinned, a gift from her Brazilian heritage, with almond-shaped blue eyes that raked over September as if looking for flaws. She was also September’s partner, a fact Gretchen didn’t like much at all. But then she hadn’t liked her previous partner much, either. Gretchen and George had also tried to work together and that had not worked out. Gretchen’s stormy resentment and George’s deep, long-suffering looks had forced Lieutenant D’Annibal to prudently break them apart and that was how September had become Gretchen’s partner. As soon as they heard her nickname, to a one, the detectives and Lieutenant D’Annibal of the Laurelton Police Department called her Nine. None of them knew the nickname’s origin; they’d just taken it on.
“Of course, and you,” George growled at Gretchen, then swatted at them both as if they were gnats buzzing around his head. “Get outta here.”
September dropped everything except the wallet she kept in her back pocket that held her identification. She wore gray slacks and a matching gray shirt, buttoned to her neck. Gretchen had on a pair of denim jeans and a black sleeveless sweater with a matching cardigan that she snatched from the back of her chair and threw over her arm as they headed toward the front of the building. Gretchen walked ahead of September and ignored her as they passed by the front desk and outside into the shimmering heat. “You gotta dress for the weather,” Gretchen told her as September felt sweat gather along her hairline and the back of her neck.
“This is cotton,” she answered, gesturing to the gray shirt as they climbed into an unmarked black Ford Escape.
“Nobody wants to see you sweat.” Gretchen threw the SUV in reverse and wheeled them around, then slammed the vehicle into gear and they lurched forward.
Realizing the gray material was light enough to show moisture, September filed that away for future reference. She’d just moved to homicide from property crimes and it was a whole different ball game. She’d followed her brother into law enforcement but he was currently working with a gang task force in conjunction with the Portland PD and hadn’t been around to congratulate September about joining the Laurelton PD—the same police department he was also based out of—and still wasn’t.
She glanced back as they headed onto the street. The Laurelton Police Department was on the northern edge of the city, a squat, rectangular brick building that the idiots from the Laurelton City Council had demanded they paint white because it was in the original specs. Now, years later, that white paint had turned a dirty, yellowish beige. So much for city planning. Farsightedness was not their forte.
The walkie-talkie buzzed and Gretchen grabbed it. September heard squawking and Gretchen snarled back, “Yeah, yeah. We’ll be there in ten.” She switched off and added, “Four people shot. All on the first floor. Shooter didn’t go upstairs, or if they did, the steel door was locked.”
“What were they after?” September asked before recalling that Gretchen hated rhetorical questions.
Gretchen shot her a cold look and said, as if Nine hadn’t even spoken, “One’s dead. Three on their way.”
“To the hospital . . . ?”
“To the Pearly Gates, is my guess,” she said dryly.
After that September kept her mouth shut until they reached Zuma Software, which was a two-story building of modern design in glass, wood and metal with two ambulances parked in front. A woman was being carried out on a gurney and loaded into the first one. A man was being carried toward the other. Both ambulances turned on their lights and started screaming out of the lot, past Gretchen and September, at the same time.
September had to race-walk to keep in step with Gretchen as they headed to the front door, a monstrous piece of mahogany stained almost black surrounded by floor-to-ceiling translucent windows. Gretchen pushed on the partially opened door and it slowly swung inward to an atrium and the office floor beyond. September stepped carefully after Gretchen and saw that the tech team was already at work on a man who was clearly a corpse.
“Coroner’s that way,” one of the techs said, inclining his head.
“Who’s this?” Gretchen asked, gesturing to the body at her feet.
“Name’s Paul de Fore. He was some kind of security.”
“Fat lot of good it did him,” she remarked.
September scanned the room, her pulse running fast. Her head felt light and she clamped down on emotions that had no place here. Gretchen could see through her too easily and she needed to keep a cool head. Easing around the dead man, she walked past a desk and chair covered in blood. Ahead was a partition and she peeked over it gingerly, but the workstation was unstained. Then she walked toward the office the tech had indicated and saw another man on the floor, his chest and neck sporting two or three bullet holes. His shaggy hair was thick with blood. His eyes were open but as she watched, the coroner closed them with thumb and index finger.
“Aaron Dirkus, the owner’s son,” the coroner, Joe Journey, known to all and sundry as J.J., said. “His father was conscious. Kurt Upjohn. He’s on his way to the hospital.”
“How bad are his injuries?” September asked.
“This one’s dead.”
“I meant Upjohn.”
Journey stood up, giving September a long look. He was heavyset and jowly with muttonchops that appeared to be his pride and joy. “They each took three bullets. If you can talk to Upjohn, I’d do it soon.”
Gretchen appeared. “Two dead, two on their way to Laurelton General. A whole group upstairs who heard popping sounds, or didn’t, depending on whether they were wearing headsets apparently. Nobody up there knew anything was even wrong until we showed up, or so they say. Doesn’t look like the killer even attempted to break in.”
“Who put the call into 911?” September asked.
She spread her hands. “Mystery guest, or maybe the missing employee.”
“Who’s missing?”
She inclined her head toward the undisturbed desk area. “Bookkeeper behind the partition. Know-nothings upstairs say her name is Liv something.”
“We should get to the hospital and check with Upjohn,” September suggested.
Gretchen lifted her brows, threw a glance to the coroner, then gave September an assessing look. “Why is your nickname Nine, again? Did you tell me?”
“No.” So there it was. The first person to ask. Not that it was a huge issue, but she was trying to avoid any reason for her coworkers to tease her. “Month I was born.”
“I thought it had something to do with you being almost a ten.”
September wasn’t quite certain how to take that. Was it a compliment, or a put-down? She knew she was pretty enough—auburn hair and blue eyes, slim, almost boyish, but still with enough curves to catch sideways glances—but Gretchen wasn’t known for courtesy and compliments. She decided she didn’t care what Gretchen meant and ignored the comment entirely.
Gretchen nodded her head, as if coming to a conclusion. “We’re going to head to the hospital. We’ll come back later and go through things. Make sure nothing’s disturbed.”
“That’s our line,” the coroner said and he looked damn serious. September understood. The techs and coroner’s office were constantly screaming about how the police first responders always screwed up the evidence. But the officers on this one had gone upstairs to inte
rview the other employees—the know nothings, according to Gretchen—as soon as the tech team had arrived so there wasn’t anything to complain about, as far as September could see.
As if her thoughts had willed them, she heard footsteps on the stairs and one of the employees, a young man with long, floppy red hair, most of which was tied back in a rubber band apart from two hanks beside his white face, was walking on rubbery legs down the last steps. The officer with him was someone September didn’t know, a young guy with an equally white face. She understood completely. The gory scene around them was like something out of an art director’s vision, except this one was real.
“I—I—I heard it. The pops. I—I—thought it was the game. Kinda. But it couldn’t be. I looked around but everyone was on their screens and nobody moved. And then Officer . . .” He gazed vaguely toward the young policeman.
“Lomax.”
“Officer Lomax was just there. And I asked what the hell he was doing upstairs. Mr. Upjohn doesn’t let people just walk upstairs. We’re careful, y’know? Piracy, and all that . . .” He looked from September to Gretchen and back. “Where is Mr. Upjohn?”
“The rest of the employees still upstairs?” Gretchen asked Lomax. The officer nodded. “How many?” she asked.
He looked to the red-haired man, who said, “Um . . . twelve? And Mr. Berelli. Phillip Berelli. The accountant.”
“Berelli came downstairs,” one of the techs said. “He’s puking in the bathroom.”
Gretchen looked to September, who said, “I’ll go check on him.”