“Always do.”
Maguire huffed toward his car, and Bonnie allowed herself to relax.
Close one. She kept betting against the house. One of these days, she was going to lose.
Before joining his boss, Bradley risked a moment of conversation with her.
“So, uh, you were staying with Mr. Harris, the art gallery guy?” He looked pained.
“He’s an old friend.”
“You know him before he was a cripple?”
She didn’t like that word. “Yeah,” she said a little too sharply. “But not as well as I do now.”
It didn’t take an expert in body language to see that he was itching to ask just how well she did know him.
“Walsh!” Maguire glared at him in the rain. “Get a move on!”
“Yes sir.”
The kid trotted off, and Bonnie revved the Jeep and got out of town.
CHAPTER 19
Dan Maguire was feeling pissed off. He always got like that when he dealt with Parker. She had this way of getting under his skin like a damn deer tick. But before long, he would be uprooting that tick once and for all. He would perform a Parker-ectomy.
“Parker-ectomy,” he muttered, pleased with his own wit.
“What’s that, Chief?”
That was Bradley Walsh, riding shotgun. Maguire had almost forgotten the kid was there.
“Nothing.”
Maguire steered the cruiser onto Main Street, heading for Jay’s Deli, where an alarm was ringing on backup power. Rain tap-danced on the windshield. The wipers beat in long, steady strokes.
He threw Walsh a glance. “What were you saying to Parker back there?”
“I just asked if she was being more careful. She rolled through a stop sign yesterday. I gave her a warning.”
“You didn’t ticket her? God damn it, I told you to put heat on that bitch.”
“Sorry, Chief. I figured with the storm and all, we had bigger fish to fry.”
Maguire shook his head. It had been a mistake to hire Walsh. The kid didn’t understand how things worked in this town. He wasn’t local; he’d grown up in New Hampshire, for Christ’s sake.
It was different for Maguire. He’d been raised around here and had served under Brighton Cove’s previous chief, a good man but too easygoing. Maguire’s dad, now deceased, had been a cop in Algonquin. Dan Maguire had risen higher in the ranks than his old man, but he still felt he had something to prove. And Parker was his ticket to proving it.
Bigger fish, hell. For him, there were no bigger fish. He hadn’t been kidding when he compared himself to Captain Ahab. And Bonnie Parker was his white whale.
And yeah, maybe he was a little obsessed. He could admit it. He’d had a bug up his butt about Parker for years, and even more so since August. He knew Parker was involved in that mess—the shooting at the pavilion, the craziness in the Coach House, and whatever had gone down at the airport. But there was no proof. The damn girl had covered her tracks too well.
But not about everything.
Through relentless digging into the PI’s past, Maguire had tentatively identified her parents as Tom and Rebecca Parker, both murdered in a motel room in central Pennsylvania in 1998. The motel clerk had reported that they’d had a girl with them, a girl of about fifteen or sixteen, the right age for Bonnie. A girl who’d never been found.
The Pennsylvania state police had worked the case. Evidence at the scene had identified the killer, a certain Lucas Hatch, though indications were that more than one perpetrator had been involved. Hatch couldn’t be found, and probably the authorities hadn’t looked too hard. The two victims had been drifters, the wife a high school dropout who’d gotten pregnant at sixteen, the husband a small-time crook with a lifelong history of making trouble. No great loss. And the girl? Well, nobody could say what had become of her.
Six months later, Lucas Hatch turned up dead in Buckington, Ohio, along with two other losers who might have been the guys from the motel. The Ohio authorities got nowhere. But something caught Maguire’s eye when he went through the old police reports. Two days before the killings, Hector Samuelson, owner of a Buckington gun shop, spotted a teenage girl shoplifting a box of ammunition. He chased her down in the parking lot outside, at which point the girl turned, calmly finished loading an antique .38, and aimed it at his face. Prudently, Samuelson backed off. In his statement to police he described the girl as approximately sixteen, blond, blue-eyed, and “fierce.”
Maguire obtained a copy of Bonnie’s PI photo, on file with the state, and had a computer guy age-regress her to sixteen. He put it in a six-pack with five mugshots of teenage female offenders, all blond and blue-eyed. He flew to Ohio and showed Samuelson the photo array. It was a long shot—the encounter had taken place twelve years earlier, and the witness was in his sixties now. But it paid off. Samuelson unhesitatingly selected the photo of Parker. No doubt, he said, none at all.
The best part was that one of Hatch’s pals had been shot with a .38. The other two had been shot with 9mm rounds, but that could be explained easily enough. Little Bonnie had killed the first guy with her antique gun and then lifted the victim’s own piece before going after the remaining pair. The police hadn’t connected the shoplifting with the murders, because who would suspect a teenage girl of being the triggerman in a bloodbath?
Maguire would. He knew Parker. She was a bad seed. Hatch and his gang had made a mistake not finishing her off in the motel. Somehow she’d tracked them down and taken them out.
He was certain of it. Dead certain. But Samuelson’s word on the basis of a computer-altered photo and a twelve-year-old memory wasn’t enough.
Maguire’s next move would be to persuade Ohio law enforcement to depose Samuelson. Armed with an affidavit, he hoped to get a court order to exhume one of Parker’s parents. He would do a DNA test on the remains, and another one on Parker herself. If she could be confirmed as Tom and Rebecca’s daughter, and as the armed shoplifter who stole ammo in Buckington just two days before the killings, then he could put some serious pressure on her.
All he needed was an opening, and he could make her crack.
He slant-parked at the curb outside the deli, beaming his headlights at the shop, where the alarm was still clanging frantically. Right away he could see there was no break-in. One of the plywood panels nailed up over the storefront windows had blown free, and a loose awning had punched through the glass. Even so, he’d better check it out.
He left the car and tramped through puddles, the rookie at his side. While the alarm screamed in monotone, Maguire angled his big steel flashlight through the opening in the window and let the beam explore the interior of the deli. The cash register appeared untouched, and there was no sign of intrusion.
“Call Jay,” he told Walsh, yelling to be heard over the alarm. “Tell him to get down here and board it up again before something worse happens.”
“Right, Chief.”
They were back in the squad car, returning to the checkpoint via a roundabout route, when Walsh spoke up. “So Parker and Desmond Harris—they’re an item?”
The question came out of nowhere, asked with phony casualness. For the first time it occurred to Maguire that Walsh might have the hots for the PI. The idea wasn’t so far-fetched. Parker was comely enough in a chain-smoking tough-gal kind of way. To a rookie like Walsh, barely old enough to shave the peach fuzz off his cheeks, she might exude an aura of glamorous mystery.
“That’s how I figure it,” Maguire said, watching the kid’s reaction. “Weird, huh? She’s got a thing for a fucking paraplegic. Maybe they do it in his wheelchair.”
Walsh nodded in a distracted way.
Maguire stared straight ahead. “Look, kid. I don’t want you getting close to that girl. She’s bad news.”
“I know that, sir.” The words came out a little too fast.
“I’m not shitting you. The stuff I found out about her—it’s serious. She’s a bona fide sociopath. Violent and crazy, deeply me
ssed up. And she will be going away for a long, long time.”
“Okay.”
“Keep your distance, is what I’m saying. For your own good.”
“Yes, sir, Chief. I understand.”
Maguire grunted, unconvinced.
The kid would bear watching. Everyone had to be part of the team.
CHAPTER 20
The drive to Devil’s Hook Island was all kinds of hell, and not just because of the weather. She kept flashing on Alec Dante’s face just before he hit the water. That stupidly surprised expression.
In the past she never would have been haunted by a thing like that. She had done her job and moved on. Now it was different. After Pascal, she knew what it was like to be in the crosshairs. What it was like to be hunted. And if she’d been in danger of forgetting, tonight’s little tea social had served as a timely reminder.
She didn’t like these thoughts, these issues. She didn’t like feeling damaged and scared and—hell—guilty, even. But while she might not be happy about it, she didn’t know what she could do.
Except quit. Or die.
The first wasn’t an option. The second—well, that one was very much in play.
Cohawkin Bridge was impenetrably blocked. She wasn’t surprised. The population of Devil’s Hook had been cleared out, and the police didn’t want anyone sneaking onto the island to loot the empty houses. Still, there might be another way in.
She swung around to the island’s southern tip, where a second bridge allowed access from the mainland. It was an ancient, narrow structure barely wide enough for two vehicles, and while she didn’t think the authorities would have forgotten about it, she hoped they’d made less of an effort to blockade it.
She reached the bridge. Inexplicably, the entry was clear. No barrier at all.
Weird. There should have been something.
She slowed the Jeep, suddenly wary. She had learned not to trust good fortune.
Close by, a big SUV was parked sloppily on the dirt shoulder. The side window was broken.
She parked behind the vehicle, got out, and took a look inside. A mess of wires hung below the steering column. Someone had hotwired the ignition. She didn’t think they had taken it for a joy ride. Her guess was that the SUV had been parked at the entry to the bridge, straddling both lanes. Someone had moved it out of the way.
If so, she wasn’t the first one to trespass on Devil’s Hook tonight. The other visitor could be a looter, of course. But she wasn’t counting on it.
She returned to the Jeep and crossed the bridge, uneasily aware of the whitecaps sloshing at the girders. From here it was only a short distance to Alec Dante’s cottage. Most of the streets were awash; her tires jetted up hissing plumes of spray. Nearing the house, she killed her headlights. Dangerous move in a storm, but she had her reasons.
She glimpsed the driveway as she coasted past. The Porsche Boxster, Dante’s car, was still there; but another car had joined it. She was willing to bet the new arrival had everything to do with the hotwired sport utility.
As before, she parked the Jeep in the woods. She retrieved the .45 from under her seat. Through a whirl of windblown leaves, she made her way to the edge of the woods, where she crouched low, hidden by holly bushes, studying the driveway.
Two figures were visible through the rain. One leaned into the Porsche, while the other stood watch.
She had a pretty good idea of who had sent them, but she needed to be sure. When the sentry’s back was turned, she sprinted across the open lawn to a row of arborvitae fronting the house. She slid behind the hedges like a runner sliding into third and listened for any indication that she’d been seen.
The one pulling guard duty was talking. “… So the manager says, ‘That’s great, but you gotta be bilingual.’ And the dog says, ‘Meow.’”
The guy in the car laughed. “Heh. Fuckin’ meow.”
“Hurry it up, will ya? I’m gettin’ soaked out here.”
“It’s not as easy as the SUV. The security system in this thing is state-of-the-art.”
“Just shake a leg, for Chrissakes.”
A cell phone chirped. The sentry answered.
“Hey, Frank. It’s Lou … We had a little trouble getting onto the island. Cops replaced the prowl car you bulldozed with a big-ass SUV. Too big to push, so we hadda hotwire it … The Porsche? Same deal. Paulie’s working on it now … We looked, but the keys weren’t in the house, at least no place we could find. It’s pitch dark in there … Don’t sweat it, Frank. We’re getting it done.”
Two of Frank Lazzaro’s people. Sent here to move the Porsche. Something Lazzaro wouldn’t want to do unless he knew about his nephew. The only reason he would go to all this trouble to conceal someone else’s crime was that he didn’t want the police involved. He was treating Dante’s death as a personal affront, and he meant to handle it himself.
“I’ll let you know, Frank,” the one named Lou said. “Ciao.” He ended the call.
“Still no word on what’s going on?” the other man, Paulie, asked from inside the Porsche.
Lou shrugged. “He’ll tell us what we need to know, when we need to know it.”
So Frank was playing it close to the vest for now. Good. That was better than having the whole organization on the case.
Bonnie crept closer, staying behind the shrubbery. She was within fifteen feet of the men on the driveway when Lou asked, “The name Parker mean anything to you?”
She froze, a small, huddled shape hidden in the shifting hedges.
“Parker? Nah. Should it?”
“I thought I heard the Chang kid say something about somebody named Parker. And Frank was gettin’ real interested.”
Okay, so Lazzaro had already talked to one of the Long Fong Boyz and gotten her name. That had to be why Chiu had spared her; Lazzaro’s actions supported her story. That was the upside. The downside was that Lazzaro would be gunning for her. He might be doing it on his own, without bringing his men up to speed, but he was still doing it.
“I don’t know no Parker,” Paulie said. “Okay, I think I got it.”
The Porsche’s engine revved to life, and the headlights flashed on. With the car parked at an angle, the beams sliced directly into the stand of arborvitae where she was hiding. Instinctively she pulled back.
“Hey,” Paulie said. “You see that?”
“See what?”
“I think something moved in those bushes there.”
Shit.
In a situation like this, the old saying definitely applied: He who hesitates is fucked.
Bonnie didn’t hesitate. She plucked the .45 from her purse, aimed it at Lou, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Misfeed.
She racked the slide and squeezed the trigger again. Nothing happened.
A gunshot cracked like a whip, blowing into the aluminum siding at her back.
The bad guys’ guns were working fine.
On hands and knees she retreated along the front of the house, using the hedges as cover. While on the move, she ran through the procedure for clearing a jam. Slap the bottom of the magazine to seat it firmly, pull back the slide, and fire. Tap, rack, bang.
No good. Goddamn slide was stuck.
“There!” Paulie yelled.
Another shot sounded, spraying her with bits of pine needles from the closest hedge.
She ducked behind the corner of the house, pushed herself to her feet, and broke into a run, fighting to keep her footing on the sodden ground.
She was betting the pistol’s malfunction was a double feed—two live rounds trying to occupy the chamber at once. She could probably clear it, but not while she was running for her life.
Behind her, the first pursuer rounded the corner.
“Holy shit”—Lou’s voice—“I think it’s a woman!”
He took a shot, but she’d already swerved to throw off his aim. The bullet didn’t touch her, and then she turned the corner and found herself at the rear of the
house, where the battered remains of the patio butted up against a flat expanse of beach and crashing surf.
She wasted a second trying the back door. Locked. She kept running.
If they caught her alive and saw her ID, they would know she was the Parker their boss was after. Then she would take a trip to see Frank Lazzaro, whose methods would make the Long Fong Boyz look like amateurs.
A bullet would be better. But staying alive would be better still.
As she rounded the far corner, it occurred to her that Paulie might have doubled back to cut off her escape. If so, she was running into an ambush.
But no one was there. She had a straight shot to the driveway if she wanted it. She could jump in the Porsche and take off—
And they would gun her down before she could back out of the driveway. In the car she’d be an easy target. Like Clyde and Bonnie, she thought distractedly. Shot to pieces in an automobile on a rural road.
Halfway along the side of the house, she nearly bumped her head on the broken branch that had speared the kitchen window and started the flood in the cellar. The window had been smashed, and whatever stubborn shards might have clung to the frame had been swept away by wind and rain.
She grabbed the branch, hoisted herself up, and slipped through the window feet first, landing on the wet floor.
Outside, she heard Lou shout, “She went in the window!”
They weren’t giving up. But she had the edge now. They were in full cry, not thinking clearly. They had sized her up as prey. They weren’t expecting her to fight back.
She retreated to the cellar stairs, sinking into a crouch, and went to work on the gun. She locked back the slide and tugged at the magazine. It wouldn’t budge.
Lou appeared, swinging a stubby leg over the window sill.
She slammed the magazine against her thigh, hard enough to leave a bruise, but it still wouldn’t pop free.
His other leg was over the sill now.
She slammed the magazine down again. This time it loosened. She stripped it out. Two crushed cartridges spilled onto the steps.
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