Watch Your Back

by Karen Rose

  The woman went still, her eyes becoming abruptly calm.

  ‘It’s probably the hallmark of the flask’s manufacturer,’ Novak said.

  Stevie upended the flask. ‘Maybe, but I think Miss Drive-by here just got really scared. Anybody got a magnifying glass?’

  Novak produced a loupe from the pocket of his black leather trenchcoat. ‘Use mine.’

  Stevie squinted at the little mark next to the depression in the base. ‘There are two marks. One is a letter “B” in a diamond. The second is a picture, a tree with an acorn in front of it. The text below it is “FPL” with one of those R-in-circle marks.’

  ‘Registered trademark.’ Clay got his laptop from the night table, tapped the keys. ‘I searched “FPL logo acorn silver”. No silver makers show up.’

  Stevie stared at the magnified image, something about it tugging at her memory. ‘I’m going to take a picture of it, if that’s okay with you, Joseph.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, watching their captive, who lay statue-still with her eyes closed. ‘You’re right, Stevie. She doesn’t like that we saw that mark. I’ll get the lab working on it, ASAP.’

  He patted down her legs and arms for additional weapons, pressing harder than necessary on her left shoulder. She shrank back, sweat beading on her upper lip.

  ‘I wonder who treated her?’ Stevie said.

  ‘Whoever it was will be charged with harboring a fugitive when we find him. Agent Novak, let’s get her out of here, then I want you to find the vehicle that goes with those keys.’

  ‘What about us?’ Clay asked quietly.

  ‘Stay here and get some sleep,’ Joseph said. ‘Room’s paid for all night. I’ll send one of my agents to occupy the adjoining room, just in case JH’s “team” decides to mount a second offensive. We’ll put Miss JH in an interview room and let time be our friend. If she’s got a flask in her pack, it shouldn’t be too long before she gets very cooperative.’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ the woman spat as Joseph and Novak hauled her to her feet.

  ‘Wait,’ Stevie said. She stood in front of the woman and studied her face carefully.

  The bitch narrowed her eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘You could have killed my child and not lost a minute’s sleep, couldn’t you?’

  The woman laughed bitterly. ‘Like you did? You’re a murdering hypocrite.’ Shaking her head, she lifted her gaze above Stevie’s head, effectively dismissing her.

  Stevie watched as the woman was dragged away. ‘What the hell did that mean?’

  ‘I wonder whose child you killed,’ Clay said thoughtfully, locking their door.

  ‘I never killed a child,’ Stevie said defensively. ‘Never.’

  ‘I don’t think you did. But maybe you killed someone she loved. It could explain this single-minded focus on eliminating you. It might have nothing to do with fear of discovery because of Silas’s crimes. It might be good old-fashioned revenge.’ He pulled Stevie to the bed and held up the blanket. ‘Get in.’

  She obeyed, her churning mind coming to a screeching halt when he pulled off her sweats and T-shirt. ‘Wait. What is this?’

  ‘You heard the Fed. We’re going to go back to sleep.’ Shucking off his jeans and shirt, he joined her under the covers. ‘Eventually, anyway. I don’t imagine you’ll sleep until we figure out what she meant.’ He settled his laptop on his knees, giving her an openly appreciative once-over. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the view while we do.’

  Stevie did some looking of her own, liking what she saw. ‘I like the way you think.’

  Tuesday, March 18, 2.30 A.M.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Robinette snarled. He’d called Fletcher to come to his office hours before. He’d been lying on the sofa, trying not to think about how badly it hurt. He’d made it through the entire fucking Gulf War without sustaining a single gunshot wound only to be shot in the woods by some nerdy kid with fear in his eyes.

  Fletcher winced at the sight of his wound. ‘I didn’t have the phone in my room so I didn’t get your message until I got up to go to the bathroom. Then I had to get the right supplies. I don’t usually carry lidocaine in my pocket. What happened to you?’

  ‘I got shot,’ he snapped. ‘What the fuck does it look like happened to me?’

  Fletcher held a filled syringe to the light. ‘Who shot you? Watch out, this is going to sting.’

  Robinette clenched his jaw, riding through the wave of discomfort from the injection. ‘None of your business,’ he said roughly.

  ‘You come to me for first aid and for occasional sex. It’s my business when someone puts a bullet in your arm.’

  ‘Just get it out.’

  Fletcher poured four fingers of Robinette’s best whiskey. ‘Drink this.’

  Robinette gulped it down. It sloshed in his stomach and he had to fight to keep it from coming back up, especially when Fletcher gave him a second injection. ‘Shit.’

  Fletcher grabbed a wastebasket, set it next to him. ‘Tell me if you’re gonna vomit. I don’t want to cut you up worse than you are. You need to get an X-ray. Your ulna could be fractured.’

  ‘I’m not going to a hospital.’

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ Fletcher said with an eye roll.

  Robinette closed his eyes, gritting his teeth now against the nausea. That damn kid at the farm had come out of nowhere. Carrying a goddamn assault rifle. What the hell?

  ‘Just be quiet and sew me up.’

  Fletcher worked for several minutes in blissful silence, then ruined it by talking. ‘Have you been watching the news?’

  ‘No.’ Because he was the news. He didn’t want to hear about his fucked up attempt to breach the Assistant State’s Attorney’s compound.

  ‘I heard the story while I was getting my stuff to come meet you. I think Henderson got caught tonight. Hey! Hold still.’

  Robinette blinked hard, trying to focus on Fletcher’s face. The whiskey was finally taking effect. ‘Whaddya mean, Henderson got caught? Where?’

  ‘At the Peabody. There were news reports of an arrest on the penthouse level and that a woman wearing man’s clothes was dragged out by police. That friend of Detective Mazzetti’s, you know, Dr Townsend, was staying there. She did an interview with that Radcliffe fellow.’

  ‘I saw it. What makes you think it was Henderson? Could have been a fan of the doctor’s wanting an autograph.’

  ‘There was a short statement by the guy in charge of the operation. Here, bite down on this.’ Fletcher slipped a strap of leather in his mouth that tasted sweet. ‘Sorry, it’s my watchband. I didn’t have anything else for you to bite down on. I have to extract the bullet now. Anyway, this Fed, name was Carter, said that VCET, the task force between BPD and the FBI, had been in complete control the entire time and at no point were any staff or guests at the hotel in danger. It was a trap. For a minute, I thought you’d been shot there, but the Fed said they’d apprehended their suspect without a single shot fired.’

  ‘I figured it was a trap,’ Robinette said, his words muffled by the strap between his teeth. Then a wave of intense pain hit him and he felt himself going under. No. He fought the sensation. Fought to stay awake. But the world grew wavy and strange.

  More than whiskey, he thought dully. ‘You drugged me.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t cooperate otherwise. If you flinch, I could slice a nerve and leave you unable to use this arm for the rest of your life. Stop fighting it. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Can’t go to sleep.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Fletcher said in a singsong voice that echoed. ‘And you will.’

  ‘Going to . . . kill you.’ He struggled but the world was growing dark. ‘Drugged me.’

  ‘You’ll have to catch me first.’

  ‘Tell Brenda Lee . . . bail Henderson out. Can’t have . . . talk.’ Then he heard Fletcher’s words. You’ll have to catch me first. Fletcher was leaving. Leaving me. ‘No. Don’t go.’

  Warm lips pressed against his br
ow. ‘Goodbye, Robbie.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Baltimore, Maryland, Tuesday, March 18, 2.30 A.M.

  Stevie rested her head on Clay’s shoulder, but he could feel the tension in her body. ‘I remember every shot I ever fired on the job, Clay. Every wound and every fatality. I don’t remember “JH” or Miss Drive-by, or whoever the hell she is. And I never shot a little child.’

  ‘You’re seeing Paulie and Cordelia when you think “child”. My mother called me her child until the day she died,’ Clay said quietly.

  ‘Drive-by didn’t look old enough to have an adult child.’

  ‘Neither does Daphne, but Ford is twenty. Maybe we’re talking about a teenager.’

  Stevie closed her eyes. ‘There have been only two teens during my whole career.’

  ‘Marina Craig was one,’ he supplied. ‘The girl on the courthouse steps.’

  ‘Yes. She wasn’t going to stop shooting until someone stopped her.’

  ‘And the other?’ he prompted when she didn’t continue.

  ‘His name was Levi Robinette.’ Her body suddenly tensed. ‘Oh my God.’

  He tilted her chin so that he could see her eyes. They were filled with a horror that chilled his blood. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Levi Robinette. He was the son of . . . oh, God, what was his father’s name? Todd. Todd Robinette.’ She started to breathe faster. ‘This was the case. The one I told you about last night – the case I was working the night Paul and Paulie were killed. I was trying to get it reopened.’

  ‘Reopened? Then it had been closed?’

  ‘It had been closed twice already. It was supposed to look like the wife and her employee died in a car accident and that’s what the ME called it, but I got him to take another look at the victims’ head wounds. He agreed the wounds were made with a blunt instrument and not a result of the accident. The accident had been set up to make it look like Julie and her head chemist had been having an affair and were running away together. I made Todd for the murderer, but could never pin it on him. He had an alibi, but I still had this gut feeling that he did it. I knew I’d missed something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I didn’t know, but it didn’t fit. The pieces didn’t fit. I kept asking questions of the other employees and there was hardly anyone who respected Todd or even liked him for that matter. They all loved the woman’s first husband, but he’d died a few years before.’

  ‘So what happened with Levi?’

  ‘We brought Todd in for questioning and he brought his attorney. I can’t recall her name off the top of my head, but she was in a wheelchair – a war injury, I think. She urged Todd to tell us what he knew and he did. I remember he cried and I kept thinking, crocodile tears. He said his son was an addict. That Levi had been acting strangely since the death of his stepmother.’

  ‘Not his biological mother, then.’

  ‘No, she’d died, years before. Julie, the victim, was Todd’s second wife. The first wife died of an overdose when Todd was deployed. Julie and her first husband had taken Levi in. By all accounts, the boy loved her dearly.’

  ‘Why would Levi kill her then?’

  ‘Levi was an addict. Todd told us that Levi and Julie had argued about money, that she’d cut him off and he couldn’t get his drugs anymore. Todd allowed us to search Levi’s room, and we found the murder weapon – a bat – in his closet.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Silas and I found him at a friend’s house. The friend had loaned him his car and Levi had escaped through the back door and was driving away. I shot out one of his tires and Levi jumped out of the car, started to run. I tried to talk to him, but he was high and scared. And armed. He started shooting. It was a neighborhood. It was a spring day and children were playing outside. Levi wasn’t specifically aiming, but kids were everywhere.’

  ‘What happened when he started shooting?’

  ‘I . . . shot back. First in the arm. I tried to debilitate him, but it just made him wild. He ran to a group of kids, grabbed one and was trying to use him as a shield. I had to stop him.’

  ‘Where was Silas?’

  ‘He’d gone to get the car, hoping to cut Levi off. He caught up with me after I’d already shot Levi a second time. He was sixteen. I was . . . devastated. The boy was dead.’

  ‘You saved other potential victims.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ She pressed her lips together. Regained her composure. ‘I got put on desk duty pending the investigation of the shooting. Silas closed the case. Levi Robinette was listed as the probable killer of his stepmother, Julie.’

  ‘But you didn’t believe it.’

  ‘No. Levi was skinny and someone with some strength was responsible for killing Julie and her employee. Even if he’d been high at the time . . . I couldn’t see him being lucid enough to plan putting them in a car and crashing it. I didn’t agree with the ruling.’

  ‘But you found the murder weapon in the boy’s room.’

  ‘I know. And it had his fingerprints on it. I can’t explain it other than a feeling in my gut.’

  ‘I trust your gut.’ And my own. Clay’s gut was telling him that this was very bad even before he Googled Todd Robinette. He stared at the results. ‘Stevie, does the name “Filbert Pharmaceutical Labs” ring a bell?’

  ‘“FPL”,’ she whispered. ‘That was Julie’s company. Filbert was her maiden name. Her father had started the drug business when she was a small child.’

  ‘Todd Robinette is now the president and CEO. Apparently they’ve grown considerably in the last eight years. Now they ship vaccines all over the world.’

  She slid the computer to her own lap and Googled images for ‘filbert’. ‘The nut on the silver flask isn’t an acorn. It’s a filbert, their logo. Unless she stole the flask, Drive-by worked for Filbert Labs.’ She looked up at Clay. ‘I don’t think she stole it.’

  ‘Neither do I, but we have to keep that option open. If it was hers, then Todd Robinette was her boss. Did he hate you for the death of his son?’

  ‘Oh yes. He did.’

  ‘What happened after you shot Levi?’

  ‘IA investigated me, which was procedure. Todd made a big stink about how he’d begged us not to hurt his son, that he’d cooperated only because he wanted help for Levi, but there were enough witnesses to vouch that I had no other choice than to shoot Levi. IA cleared me, but by then it was time for me to go on desk duty anyway because of my pregnancy.’

  ‘But you didn’t let it go.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘No, I didn’t. I never seem to be able to let things go.’

  He brought her hand to his lips. Kissed her fingers. ‘I don’t consider that a failing, Stevie.’

  ‘Then that makes one of us, I guess.’

  ‘Why didn’t you let it go? What was bothering you?’

  ‘The whole thing. Robinette was slick, you know? He had all the answers before I asked the questions. Cried in all the right places. Told us about his son at exactly the right moment. There were other things, too. Really specific issues with his story. I can’t remember all of them now, but I know they’ll be in my notes.’

  ‘Did your boss agree to reopen the case?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never submitted my report. I was working on it when Hyatt came to tell me about Paul. After that . . . nothing made sense, not for months after. Now Todd’s getting his revenge. But why did he wait eight years?’

  ‘Because other people weren’t shooting at you eight years ago. But then cops like Tony Rossi started shooting at you, trying to keep you from exposing the investigations they fixed. Perpetrators and their families tried attacking you to keep you from discovering that they’d bought their innocence and let someone else go to jail for their crimes. What better way for Robinette to camouflage his vendetta?’

  ‘He would have taken my child because I took his,’ she whispered.

  ‘You didn’t “take his”. You removed a clear and present danger to a neighbo
rhood.’

  ‘I know. But Levi was only sixteen. I’d talked to him about Julie when Silas and I started to investigate. He was distraught and I thought it genuine. He cried in my arms, Clay.’

  ‘Did you think back then that Levi’s father set him up to take the fall?’

  ‘I did. That made me so . . . angry. That a father could do that to his son. When I think about that and then I think about Paul . . . He protected our son with his dying breath.’ She shuddered, her body growing still. He could almost hear her brain click, re-engaging.

  ‘But the past doesn’t matter now,’ she said practically. ‘That he’s trying to kill Cordelia and me today is the issue. His hate has had eight years to fester. I doubt he’s going to just stop.’

  ‘We’ll make him stop. For now, we’ll tell Joseph. He can keep Robinette under surveillance. He’ll also want to use this information when he questions JH, whoever she is.’

  ‘All right. But I want to witness her interrogation.’

  ‘So do I. I’ll ask Joseph to call us when he thinks she’s about to break.’

  Clay made the call, leaving a message summarizing what they’d discovered about Todd Robinette on Joseph’s voicemail when the Fed didn’t pick up. ‘There. That’s done.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Stevie became quiet, but he wasn’t fooled into thinking she’d gone to sleep.

  ‘What’s happening in your brain?’ he asked.

  ‘Just . . . playing with the puzzle pieces. Seeing how they all fit together.’ She tried to slide off his lap, but he held her firm.

  ‘Stay here. Let me hold you.’

  ‘I wasn’t leaving. I just want to look at your laptop again.’

  He guided her so that she sat between his legs, her back to his chest. He gave her the laptop, then locked his arms around her stomach and propped his chin on her shoulder so that he could see the screen, too. ‘What do you want to see?’

  ‘The security video from your house. Mr Cocksucker and Mr Backpack.’