The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  “I don’t know,” the woman sobbed. “I don’t know.”

  “Think,” Kent said, squeezing the woman’s upper arms. Which weren’t nearly as flabby as he would suspect of someone wearing an old, ratty housecoat.

  “Lacey normally takes the bus straight home,” the woman wailed, clutching her arms around her knees. He guessed that was better than the hysterical gulping of air.

  He shook her a bit to get her to refocus on him. “When was the last time you spoke with your daughter?”

  The woman took a few mouth breaths then spoke. “Lacey, texted me before dinner asking what we were having. I told her stuffed green peppers with cucumber salad.”

  Adelene began sobbing the word “no,” over and over again. He couldn’t lose her now.

  “Adelene, what happened then?”

  “She’d really wanted pot roast so she said she’d just eat on campus but she’d be home by eleven.”

  Kent ran the information through his head. Campus. Bus route. Passed by alley. “That would be the 58 line, wouldn’t it?”

  The woman nodded her head before launching into another sobbing fit. “If I’d just made pot roast, she would have come straight home. If only I’d made pot roast.”

  Kent knew that each person grieved in their own way and processed trauma in their own unique process, but sometimes it just came out plain weird.

  “So why would she have stopped off by the Freeland alley?” Kent asked.

  “There’s a small bodega at the corner. We usually buy our meat there,” Adelene stated before the histrionics started again. “Oh god, oh god, she probably went to buy roast. This is all my fault. All of it.”

  It always surprised him how quickly people jumped right from denial into the guilt level of grief. It seemed easier to take responsibility for a horrible tragedy than it was to have it be cruelly random.

  “Did you or your daughter feel like you were being watched or followed in the last few weeks?”

  The woman clutched her purse to her chest. “No, no, or I never would have let Lacey out of the house.”

  Sobbing again, Kent backed away from the woman. Maybe it was time to let her cry it out. He spotted Jimmi standing off to the corner, apparently trying not to get any blood on himself.

  “Anything on the surveillance cameras?”

  Since they knew they were stalking Lucky 37, they had proactively reached out to all the ATM’s and store security cameras. They had hoped to catch Lucky 37 either coming into the bar or leaving it. Even finding out his license plate would have been helpful, but now they needed it for an even more urgent reason.

  To catch the killer that had done all of that to the girl in the next bed. The thought that he too could have been in that condition passed through his mind. He let it exit as quickly as it had entered. He couldn’t linger on his mortality. Ruben had been there. He hadn’t been hacked up. End of story.

  Just like racecar drivers and shark divers, Kent couldn’t linger on the idea of his near miss with death. Not if he wanted to go after not one but two serial killers.

  “Sorry, no,” Jimmi said. “I mean we’ve got the girl getting off the bus, going into the bodega, coming out with a package and heading into the alley, but there’s no coverage inside of there.”

  Kent watched the image stream by. The girl was only in the alley for a few moments before Kent, then Ruben came into view of the camera. The detective really should work on his cardio.

  Then Ruben reemerged from the alley, covered in blood, flagging down the ambulance.

  “Nothing of the neighborhood where I chased the perp?”

  Jimmi again, shook his head. “That’s a residential grid. No cameras in the interior for the neighborhood.”

  “Great, thanks. You’ve been so helpful,” Kent commented.

  “Wait a minute, maybe you aren’t asking me the right questions,” Jimmi said. “How about the Vespa?”

  Oh yah, the scooter. “And?”

  Jimmi switched feeds and brought up the Vespa speeding down the street. “I picked it up a few blocks away, heading north.”

  “Do we see where he stopped?”

  “Sorry, man, I didn’t say that I was a miracle worker,” Jimmi unnecessarily explained. “He turned down a country road and we lost him.”

  Of course they did. This was Buzz Kill.

  Kent was going to ask about the parking lot footage from the bar to see if they captured Lucky 37 when all of the beeping stopped from the next bed and the sound became one continuous drone.

  Lacey had flat-lined.

  Kent caught her mother as she wailed incoherently, throwing herself toward the curtain.

  There he stood, holding her as they heard the shout “Clear” then the loud clunk of the defibrillator.

  Then the sound of the flat line again.

  CHAPTER 9

  Nicole’s hand flew to her mouth as the sound of the flat line filled the room. The only other sound that could be heard above it was Lacey’s mother’s wailing. The two seemed to form a harmony together describing infinite anguish.

  Then the clunks. Finally they seemed to have jump started Lacey’s heart and it beat in erratic fits, but at least it was beating again. The curtain burst open as the girl’s gurney was pushed through along with a bank of monitors and more IV stands than you could count.

  A nurse was on top of the gurney giving Lacey CPR as they raced to the OR. Lacey’s head was turned to the side. Her eyes wide open, yet not seeing. Her teeth showing through her chewed up cheek. The facial tissue looked like hamburger.

  One doctor was still on the phone, “Well, then I suggest you get that appendectomy out of there because they are on their way!”

  Adeline sank to the floor, sobbing, “I did this. I did it. I should have made the pot roast.”

  Then the woman became completely incoherent, only sobbing and making loud moaning sounds. Kent was clearly uncomfortable and Nicole was pretty much getting there too. Bare, naked, raw grief felt like it hurt her too.

  Luckily a nurse came over and helped Adeline up. “I’ll get the doctor to give her something.”

  Nicole nodded. That level of grief needed to be medicated.

  Jimmi was off in a corner, rocking from foot to foot. He clearly liked his laboratory better than out here in the field where things got real. Too real.

  “I think…” Jimmi said. “I think I’ll head back.”

  “You do that,” Kent stated.

  Even though Nicole was pretty sure Kent was implying that Jimmi was being a wimp, the tech nearly ran out the sliding ER doors.

  With the critical emergency racing to the surgery suite, the ER descended into an unsettled quiet. The nurses began cleaning up the god awful bloody mess as an orderly started getting patients from the waiting room into beds now that there were some doctors available.

  “Let’s get you back into bed,” Kent said urging her back.

  Nicole didn’t fight it. Even though the GHB was being pushed from her system, she still had a raging headache. Like she’d drank a bottle of whiskey instead of a glass.

  Kent tucked her sheets in. “There ya go.”

  “You aren’t leaving are you?”

  The profiler shook his head. “And leave you with these quacks? Never.”

  Nicole smiled back at Kent even as she surveyed his temple. The wound was turning a nasty bruise and still oozing blood. Guess it got missed in all the calamity.

  “You should have the doctor take a look at that.”

  “And have them tell me what? Yikes, that looks like it hurts?”

  Nicole shook her head. Typical Kent.

  “No, it might need stitches,” she tried to insist.

  “What? To add to my lifelong suture count? No thank you. Now scoot over.”

  Nicole did as instructed as Kent lay down next to her and draped her blanket over him.

  “How about a power nap?”

  * * *

  Ruben sat at the nurses’ station filling out his
paperwork. He’d gotten here after all the drama. He could only see the aftermath of it. It was shocking the girl had survived such a brutal attack.

  You could see the effect on the floor of the ER. They were still trying to collect all of the bloody gauze squares and they were stacking emptied blood bags. There looked like there were quite a few. The stack was getting pretty tall.

  Next to the scene of all that horror was Nicole’s bed. Kent, of course, was curled up next to her. Which kind of epitomized their relationship. Even in the hospital, he was able to sneak his way in between the sheets with her.

  Worse, Nicole rested her head against his chest, idly toying with a button on Kent’s shirt. In the three years they had been together, never had she done that to him. Theirs was more of a partnership rather than a relationship.

  Somehow Kent could balance the two with her.

  Just one more talent that Kent had that Ruben did not. Like out of all the city, he somehow had them staking out a bar not two blocks from Buzz Kill’s next victim. Maybe the profiler was as psychic as he was made out to be.

  Or maybe he was hiding something, which given it was Kent made a whole lot more sense.

  Ruben turned back to his paperwork. Glick was going to need it in the morning to tackle the press conference set for nine am. Somehow the captain was going to have to explain how they let Buzz Kill slip through their fingers. If the girl survived it might lessen the sting of losing Buzz Kill.

  Then there was Lucky 37. The guy was sure keeping his head down. Was he afraid of Kent or playing a new game?

  Joshua with quite a jaunty bounce in his step as he walked up to Ruben. He had a huge clear plastic bag filled with bloody clothes. “Guess it’s kind of nice I didn’t have a body to pick up.”

  “At least not yet,” Ruben said with a frown. He’d just gotten a text from a nurse friend to let him know the girl had arrested again in surgery, but they got her back, barely.

  “Ya,” Joshua said. “This bag is really, really heavy.”

  No wonder, there was probably two pints of blood in there. Ruben had been at the crime scene. It looked like someone had broken into a blood bank and smashed it to bits.

  Joshua looked over to Nicole’s bed. “Nicole’s going to be okay?”

  “That’s what the doctors say.” Physical wellness and emotional wellness were two very different things.

  “They really are a power couple, aren’t they?” Joshua said, waxing poetic as he always did with Nicole and Kent.

  “Sure,” Ruben replied.

  “Oh sorry,” Joshua said. “I forgot that you two used to be together.”

  As apparently Nicole had. “No worries.”

  The ambulance bay doors opened as bright lights flashed in Ruben’s eyes. Bridget and her crew rushed into the emergency room like a tornado. Nurses jumped from their seats, hurrying to intercept the interlopers. Bridget held out a piece of paper as if it were a holy shield.

  “Why wasn’t I informed?” Bridget demanded, her cheeks ever redder than her usual crimson rouge.

  “Of?” Ruben asked coolly.

  “Another Buzz Kill victim found alive?” Bridget sputtered. “I should have been your first call.”

  Ruben shrugged, not carrying how it looked on TV. “Sorry, not how it works.”

  Bridget tsked her tongue then spun her thin stiletto, waving her arm at the still messy ER. “Get this. All of this.”

  The camera man turned his lens away from Ruben and started slinking about the place, honing in on any blood he could find. After the day Ruben had, he was happy to be out of the camera’s eye.

  “Okay,” Joshua said, turning for the door. “Looks like this is my cue to adios.”

  Bridget however cut the short man off. “What do you have there?”

  Joshua looked down at the bags he was carrying. “Stuff, you know, stuff.”

  The host snapped her fingers, calling her cameraman over. “Can we have a looksee?”

  Joshua looked to Ruben who slowly nodded. There was no real sense in fighting Bridget over it. She was going to get the footage that she wanted sooner or later.

  “Oh my god,” the dark-haired producer exclaimed as she put her hands over her mouth and looked away.

  Inside the black evidence bags were dozens, perhaps hundreds of blood soaked gauze squares.

  “And what are you going to do with all of this?” Bridget asked.

  “Well, I have to go through each one and make sure it is only the victim’s DNA, that somehow inside of all of this there isn’t a shred of the killer’s DNA.”

  “All of that?” Bridget said, her expertly plucked eyebrow shot up, at just the right angle for the camera.

  “Well, since we don’t have a body to process, unless we get lucky enough the victim dies --”

  “Lucky enough?” Bridget retorted. “You would consider it lucky if the victim dies?’

  “Well…” Joshua was scrambling. It was never good when Joshua scrambled, however Ruben was going to let him get himself out of this one. “No, no, of course not from a moral standpoint, but from a forensic standpoint, her being alive does make it more difficult to collect evidence.”

  “So survivors are quite the problem for you then?” Bridget pressed.

  “No, yes, I mean, I’ve got to get back to the morgue and start processing.”

  Before Bridget could intercept him, Joshua sprang into action, hustling past the film crew and out the ambulance doors before anyone could even react.

  Bridget swung her microphone around to Ruben, bearing down on him. “Do you have anything to add?”

  “Nope,” Ruben said. He was so not in the mood for this. He felt a little sorry for Paggie who was not going to get to see her man at his best on TV.

  “Nothing? Who is the victim? How was she injured? How was she rescued?”

  Ruben just shook his head. Bridget inclined her head to Kent and Nicole resting.

  “Or was it the partners, who aren’t partners over there?”

  “Like I said, no comment.”

  Bridget got tired of toying with such a boring subject and turned to the nursing station. “Where was the victim taken?”

  “OR 6, but you can’t go in there.”

  Bridget, with her tiny army of two following behind her, headed for the elevator. “Oh you just watch me.”

  Then with the whoosh of the elevator doors opening and closing, her conquering force was gone.

  Once again the ER was still. Just the sharp bite of antiseptic in his nose and the whirr of the air conditioner. Ruben hunkered back down.

  This paperwork wasn’t going to finish itself.

  * * *

  Nicole woke with a start. Someone was flashing a pen light in her eyes. Great way to wake up.

  “I’m fine,” Nicole said, waving away the white coated intern.

  No wonder people got worse in hospitals. You were awakened every ten minutes to check your “vitals.” Which of course spiked your vitals, so much for a baseline.

  Kent was already up, putting on his coat. “They are discharging you now, but we’ve got to head over to the barn. Glick wants to talk to us before the press conference this morning.”

  Nicole’s eyes, still sore from the stupid penlight slid over to the clock. It was eight o’seven. Plenty of time to get across town to the station.

  A nurse yanked out the catheter in her hand.

  “Ouch!” Nicole exclaimed. “You could have warned me.”

  The purple scrubbed nurse, who looked a little like Barney’s illegitimate child, shrugged. “Works better if you aren’t anticipating it.”

  With the throbbing under the little bandage, Nicole kind of doubted that. She found that she could get out of bed with ease. The effects of GHB nearly gone. She nearly felt herself.

  The nurse brought a wheelchair.

  “I’m fine,” Nicole said.

  “Oh stop it,” Kent said waving her into the chair. “You’ve been in the hospital enough to know it is policy.
”

  Ya, she’d been in the hospital enough, usually because of following Kent down the rabbit hole, like last night.

  After Nicole signed about a hundred papers, all of which protected the hospital from her suing them for an early release, Kent rolled her out the ER doors. The Mustang sat in the ambulance bay, purring in idle.

  He tipped the wheelchair forward, thrusting her to her feet.

  “Hey,” Nicole said.

  “What?” Kent said with that mischievous grin. “You said you didn’t want to ride.”

  He was right. “True, but I’ve got to use the restroom.”

  “Again? Jesus, you kept me up half the night.”

  “Hey, you have four liters of fluids pumped into you overnight and see how long you can go.”

  Kent waved her off like that was TMI so Nicole, who had just been rolled out the door was able to walk back in the door on her own two feet. Bureaucracy.

  A nurse came up to her. Nicole was afraid she was going to get into trouble, but the Barney offspring nurse smiled. “She made it. She’s out of surgery and in ICU.”

  “When can we talk to her?” Nicole asked.

  “Oh, not for a while and then only once the doctors agree, you’re going to have to get through her mom. She doesn’t want her daughter disturbed.”

  Nicole could imagine.

  But she had Kent on her side. If anyone could talk his way into that room, it was him.

  But for now they had the captain’s briefing to get to. Oh ya, and a bladder to empty.

  * * *

  Kent yawned. Sleeping in your fiancée’s hospital bed was not nearly as comfortable or romantic as one would think. He had a kink in his back that he just couldn’t get out.

  Nicole looked refreshed. She was still bleach blond with smeared makeup but considering how rough she looked in that alley, she was a freaking beauty queen. Someone, re Ruben, had brought her a change of clothes to the hospital so she didn’t have to walk into Glick’s office in full biker gear.

  They reached Glick’s door which was already open for them. Kent stood to the side, allowing Nicole to enter first. Mainly to see Glick’s response.

  While Nicole had been turning heads all the way through the bullpen, the Captain’s response was priceless. His jaw dropped as he sputtered. Ah, it was moments like this when everything was worth it.