“Jimmy wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“He wasn’t so particular about hurting people when he was a kid.”
My eyes narrowed. Juvenile records were sealed. They couldn’t know about Jimmy and—
I cut that thought off before it could drift through my mind and show on my face. But I wasn’t fast enough.
“You know Sanducci is capable of murder,” Lands-down said triumphantly.
I did. But I wasn’t going to tell them that.
“He’d never hurt Ruthie. Never.”
Hammond shrugged. He didn’t seem convinced.
“Why are you so sure he did it?”
“Smoking gun.”
“Gun?” That definitely didn’t sound like Jimmy.
“Figure of speech,” Hammond said. “Knife. Pure silver.”
I winced. That sounded more like Jimmy. He’d always been weird about his knives.
“He fled the scene.”
“You’re gonna need more than that.”
“Fingerprints on the knife, hell, every old place.”
“Too dumb for Sanducci.”
Landsdown lifted a brow. “Why would a photographer be so savvy about evidence?”
Jimmy was a globe-trotting portrait wizard. Annie Lei-bovitz with a penis. An artiste of epic proportions. Everyone who was anyone wanted their picture taken by the great Sanducci.
“Any moron knows better than to touch everything,” I said.
“Maybe he was pissed. Maybe he’d just found out Ruthie was going to leave you all that she had.”
I frowned. “Ruthie doesn’t have anything.”
“According to the neighbors, they were shouting at each other. Then Ruthie’s dead; Sanducci’s running. Open and shut.”
Not so much. Jimmy never yelled. Unless it was at me.
“Do you know where he is?” Landsdown pressed.
“Give her the hat again,” Hammond ordered.
I held up my hand. “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t tell me what you want to know then expect an answer. I’m not a crystal ball.”
“What are you?”
Though Landsdown’s voice was neutral, his face gave him away. He thought I was an aberration, if not a con artist.
“I’ve never been quite sure of that myself,” I murmured. “I get flashes sometimes when I touch things or people.”
“But not always?” Hammond asked.
“No.”
“And not now.” Landsdown sighed. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t bother to say good-bye, just listened to the door shut behind them, then, seconds later, listened as another opened behind me.
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
The voice came out of the darkness, flowing over me like a warm summer wind, making me remember things I’d spent years trying to forget.
“You knew I wouldn’t, Jimmy. Otherwise you never would have come here.”
Chapter 3
I could smell him from across the room—cool water, tart soap, and a hint of cinnamon to his aftershave. Jimmy always smelled like he’d just stepped out of the shower. Usually because he had.
No doubt a remnant of a childhood without abundant water and scented toiletries, his teen years had been full of both. Sometimes he took three or four showers a day. I wondered that his skin didn’t peel off.
I bit my lip to keep from saying something I’d regret. I hated him, but I loved him too. Talk about a gift and a curse.
He hovered in the shadows; I reached for the light. “Don’t,” he murmured.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I couldn’t lie here any longer. I felt fine. Better than fine, in fact. Rested, jazzed, ultra-alert—not at all the way I assumed I’d feel after a four-day sojourn in the land of coma.
The tubes and wires prevented me from getting up, so I yanked them out. The IV hurt like a bitch anyway.
As I got to my feet, I flicked the switch on my bedside lamp. I never had been very good at taking orders, especially from Jimmy.
The muted glow spread across the faded tile, lending just enough light to see. He had one helluva shiner.
“Ah, Jimmy.” I lifted my hand toward his face.
He had the good sense to step away. “Baby, if you want to go back to where we were when you threw me out, I’m all for it. But right now I’m a little busy running for my life.”
“Do not call me ‘baby.’“ My hand, which had been hovering in the air, clenched into a fist. “You don’t ever get to call me ‘baby’ again.”
The pain in my voice surprised me. I’d thought I’d gotten over his betrayal. Guess not.
“Fine.” He sighed. “Just don’t touch me. I—” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair. Longer than I remembered, but just as sleek and black. “Never mind.”
Everything about him was dark—his eyes, his clothes, his heart. His complexion, tan even in the middle of winter, pointed at several heritages, but he didn’t know any for certain. Like me, Jimmy had been dumped. He hadn’t a clue who his parents were any more than I did.
Despite the shiner—or perhaps because of it—he still looked the same. Too good. Jimmy Sanducci was major eye candy, always had been. It was how he’d survived on the streets for so long.
There were things he’d done even I didn’t know about, and I didn’t want to. I’d done things too. Until you’re so hungry you’d wrestle garbage away from a rat, you have no idea what you’re capable of. Jimmy and I knew. We were two of a kind.
“Did you do it?” I asked.
His black eyes flicked to mine. “Fuck you.”
“Not in this lifetime. Or at least not again.”
“What the hell did I come here for?”
He started toward the door; I blocked his way. “What did you come here for?”
“Lizzy,” he warned.
Jimmy was the only one who dared call me that. To everyone else I was Elizabeth—Liz if you were really trying to be my pal. But Lizzy? Just try it, and Jimmy’s shiner would look good to you in the morning.
“Did. You. Do. It.” I punctuated each word with a step forward; with each one he took a step back until his shoulders slammed against the wall.
He wanted to deck me; I saw it in his eyes. But while Jimmy might have done things he couldn’t forgive himself for, he would never hit a woman, especially me. I hit back. He’d learned that the hard way when we were twelve.
I smiled at the memory of the first day we’d met. He’d been living at Ruthie’s for two years; I was brand-new. Fresh from another foster home that hadn’t wanted to keep me.
I was an angry twelve-year-old. Taller than the other girls, already “developing” and mortified by it. I wore shapeless clothes, hunched my shoulders, let my hair cover my face. On the streets, in the system, you didn’t want to be noticed. And a girl like me, with my special talents, wanted to be noticed even less than most.
“What’s so funny?” Jimmy slumped against the wall as if he needed it to hold him up. Were there more bruises than the ones I could see?
Always.
“I was remembering the first time I had to kick your ass.”
He tilted his head and his too-long hair slid over his injured eye. “And that was funny?” “Hilarious.” Jimmy was the big cheese at Ruthie’s place. He’d had to move in with one of the other boys so I could have his room. He wasn’t pleased, so he’d put a grass snake in my bed.
I’d named the snake James, found him a cage, then loosened Sanducci’s teeth the next morning. He hadn’t messed with me again.
Until we were seventeen.
And there was a memory 1 didn’t want to revisit. Not now with him so close and me naked beneath my thin, gaping hospital gown.
“Who hit you?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“If you want me to help, you need to tell me everything.”
“Who said I wanted help?”
“Why did you come here if not for that?”
He looked away
, out the window where the snow still swirled. “Maybe I wanted to keep an eye on you.”
I recalled waking up once, the sensation that I wasn’t alone, then that weird flash of monsters.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“How long?”
I could just see him hiding in the bathroom, watching me. Hell, he’d done it before. Back when peeping at me was his idea of foreplay.
“Not long.” He flicked a finger at my hair. “When did you cut it?”
I blinked at the change of subject. What did my hair have to do with anything?
“Years ago,” I snapped, the amount of time reminding me that when I’d thrown him out, he hadn’t returned. Why was that almost harder to forgive than his betrayal had been?
“You had really pretty hair.”
Everything seemed out of sync. Jimmy in my hospital room, talking about my hair when the cops wanted to arrest him for Ruthie’s murder. I’d had dreams like this before—so full of mundane activities that they must mean something, though I never could figure out what.
The reality of Ruthie’s loss hit me, making me a little dizzy, causing me to snap out an answer. “Having hair down to your ass causes too many problems when you’re a cop.”
“I heard you weren’t a cop anymore.”
As if 1 needed to be reminded.
“The third time some dickhead spit his gum into my hair through the wire cage in the squad car, I hacked it off. It was so much easier, I never went back.”
“Seems even darker short.”
“My hair’s the same color it always was.”
Dark brown with a twinkle of red—mahogany in certain lights. My skin was also darker than the average Caucasian. I was part something else, but what that could be was anyone’s guess. My blue eyes were as much a mystery as the rest of me.
“What happened at Ruthie’s?” I asked.
“According to your cop pals, I killed her.” He stared at me for several seconds. “You seem to think I did too.”
“You wouldn’t.”
His brows lifted. “Such faith. I’m touched.”
“I’m the only friend you’ve got right now, Sanducci. Don’t piss me off.”
“i doubt I’ll be able to manage that,” he muttered.
“Just tell me what happened. Why would you and Ruthie argue? Who came to the house? Who killed her? And how could they if you were there?”
Jimmy would fight for Ruthie. He’d die for her. So then why was he here and she wasn’t?
“Lizzy.” He sighed. “There are things going down you don’t understand.”
There always were. Despite having “the sight,” as Ruthie said, I was a bit slow on the uptake when it came to people. I’d certainly been a dimwit when it came to Jimmy.
I’d believed in him, in us; then I’d seen him screwing someone else only hours after he’d screwed me. At the time, I’d thought we’d been making love. At the time, I’d thought what we had was love. But when I touched him, I’d learned differently.
“I don’t trust you,” I said.
“You believe I’d kill someone?”
“You have been known to stick sharp implements into people who annoy you.”
He scowled. “I haven’t stuck one into you yet.”
“No, but I’m sure you’ve dreamed about it.”
His lips turned upward. “When I dream of you, I don’t dream of knives. More like whips, chains, some rope, a little whipped cream.”
“Funny, when I dream of you I do dream of knives.”
His half-smile faded. “The cops told you Ruthie died from a knife wound?”
“I thought you were listening at the door.”
“I only heard snatches. Good door.”
“They said they found a knife and from the description, it’s yours. Combined with your fingerprints on everything and the screaming match you had with Ruthie, you’ve landed at the top of their most-wanted list.”
“I hope you didn’t tell them about my childhood fascination with sharp, shiny things.”
“They seemed to already know.”
He muttered several curses that would have singed the ears off most people, but not me. I’d heard every one of them before my fifth birthday.
“Maybe you should turn yourself in—” I began.
“No.”
The word was clipped and just a little desperate. Jimmy never had gotten over the time he’d spent in jail as a kid. I couldn’t really blame him. Still—
“If you didn’t do it—”
“I’m going to have a hard time proving that, considering the knife.” His head tilted, as if he’d heard something far away. Before I knew what he meant to do, he crossed the room and slipped out.
I followed, reaching the door only seconds after it closed. But when I opened it, the hall was deserted.
“How does he do that?” I muttered.
The guy should be in covert operations the way he went Houdini at the drop- of a hat. I suspect being raised the way we were—basically raising ourselves until Rurhie—had made both Jimmy and 1 adept at disappearing.
Even in a crowd, I knew how to become invisible. And while Jimmy had made an art out of garnering attention for himself and his work, I doubted he’d ever lost the talent for avoiding attention when such avoidance was the best course of action.
“What are you doing out of bed?”
A nurse had appeared almost as mysteriously as Jimmy had disappeared. She shooed me inside and tried to hustle me back to bed.
“Did you see anyone leave my room just now?” I asked.
“The detectives.”
“After that?”
She shook her head, distracted by a call button dinging down the hall. I couldn’t take what she’d seen or not seen as gospel. She had other things to worry about be-sides me and my visitors. Although she didn’t have me for long.
The doctors could find nothing wrong with me, and though they weren’t wild about my leaving, they couldn’t stop me.
Within the hour, I’d checked out and headed for home.
Chapter 4
Friedenberg was a yuppie paradise. Located directly north of Milwaukee, the village had once been the oldest German community in the county, which was why we were overrun with Lutheran churches built of stone.
For centuries the area surrounding the place held nothing but cows; then the city got dangerous and those with money went north.
They discovered a quaint town with a main street that ran parallel to the Milwaukee River, making the real estate prime for any business that might profit from water flowing past an eastern exposure.
But what really made Friedenberg grow was the vast amount of farmland that surrounded it. Once the bottom fell out of milk and cheese, the farmers sold what they had left—the land—and a subdivision was born. A very wealthy subdivision. Houses around Friedenberg started at half a million dollars.
However, the town proper—where I lived—was jokingly referred to by locals as the ghetto. I didn’t find it funny, but at least my building didn’t boast property taxes that equaled the gross national product of a small African nation.
The cab let me out in front my place—a two-story, business-residential combo I’d purchased after leaving the force. I’d wanted to get as far away from my previous life as I could without being too far from Ruthie to visit.
I rented out the first floor to a small retail establishment that sold useless knickknacks to the wealthy haus-fraus in the area.
These women made a career out of raising spoiled children and spending wads of their doctor, banker, lawyer husbands’ money. They hired full-time nannies so they could shop, order salad at the ridiculously expensive local lunch spot, then work out until they were as slim and hard as their French-manicured nails. It was a weird, weird world.
I lived in the efficiency apartment on the second floor, which worked out well since the store opened at ten and closed at five. The rest of th
e time, which conveniently encompassed the hours I was home, the place remained dark and silent.
Like now, thank goodness. All I wanted to do was sleep. My earlier burst of energy had faded into the exhaustion that follows an adrenaline rush.
The ground was covered with snow. According to the radio, tomorrow had a predicted high of sixty-four degrees. Welcome to Wisconsin. By tomorrow night, everything would be a sea of mud.
The moon had come out from behind the clouds, bright and eerily silver, casting cool blue shadows across the pristine white carpet.
I stumbled upstairs and locked the door behind me. The place already smelled closed in, musty. Didn’t take long.
I left the mail in the mailbox—one more night wouldn’t hurt—and ignored the blinking red light on my message machine. I was certain at least one if not more of the messages was from Megan. According to the nurse, she’d been a frequent visitor while I was unconscious.
She’d left a Get Well Now card. At the bottom she’d scrawled: Come back as soon as you’re up to it. 1 planned to be up to it by tomorrow.
My apartment was sparse. The kitchen lay to the left, my bed to the right, a bathroom in the far corner next to the only window. I didn’t need much; I spent most of my life at Murphy’s anyway.
I didn’t bother with a light, just dropped my clothes in a trail that led to the bed. Then I crawled in, pulled the covers over my head, and dreamed.
I was at Ruthie’s, but in the way of dreams the house was different—white with green trim and a picket fence. Too hokey for Ruthie, but nevertheless I still knew it was hers.
A rugrat in ringlets opened the door. I’d never seen her before, though I’d seen a thousand just like her. The eyes were far older than the childish face and doll-baby hair.
Had I looked like that? I knew damn well I had, even without Jimmy’s never-quite-amateur photography to remind me.
“Who you?” the child asked.
“Elizabeth,” I said. “1 need to see—”
“Lizbeth?” The door opened wider and there she was, her appearance exactly the same as it had been for as long as I could remember.
Ruthie Kane was sharp—from her all-seeing dark eyes, past her razorlike elbows, to her spiky hips and knobby knees. The only soft things about Ruthie were her steadily graying Afro and her great big heart.
Any Given Doomsday (The Phoenix Chronicles) Page 2