by Diane Kelly
P.O.S. Foreign.
“Color?” Wriggle-wriggle. Definitely starting to burn. Uh-oh.
“Silver,” she said. “Or gray, maybe.”
I scratched my head and wriggled again. “Texas plates?”
She lifted one shoulder, noncommittal. “Probably. Might’ve noticed if they weren’t.”
“Did he say anything that would give you an idea of who he was? Where he was from?”
She shook her head. “He gave me the card. I gave him two hundred bucks. He drove away.”
“Have you seen him around again?”
She shook her head.
“Did anyone else at your complex buy a card from him?”
“Can’t say for sure,” she said. “Wasn’t nobody outside but me when he pulled in. Wasn’t nobody outside but me when he drove away.”
“That all you got?”
“That’s all I got.”
Ross gave me a look then that said the immunity deal might not have been such a good one. But, hell, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? And I had to find a way to nab Marcos Mendoza. Besides, people like Lizzie Crandall didn’t stay out of trouble for long. She’d rack up another offense soon and the DA could exact some real justice then.
I typed up an affidavit on my laptop, printed it out on Ross’s printer, and had Lizzie sign it. She dropped the pen on the table and stood to go.
“One more question,” I called as she walked to the door. “What was the prescription for?”
She turned in the doorway. “Jock itch.”
I shuddered. Ick. Sorry I’d asked.
* * *
It was nearly six when I pulled into the lot of the minor-emergency clinic. Good thing the place was open twenty-four hours.
After a brief wait, a nurse led me to an examination room. Dr. Ajay Maju arrived shortly thereafter, pulling my chart from the plastic bin on the door and entering the room. Ajay might be short in stature, but he was big in personality. Today he sported torn jeans, bright green Converse high-tops, and a white lab coat that hung open to reveal a T-shirt with Oscar the Grouch on the front. “My favorite patient, back again.”
Ajay might only work at a minor-emergency clinic, but he was nonetheless smart. Unfortunately, he was also a smart ass. He glanced down at the note the nurse had made on my chart then up at me, a grin tugging at his lips. “Your ‘girlie stuff feels like it’s on fire’?”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t think the nurse would write down what I told her verbatim. Still, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see flames shooting out of my you-know-what. “I think I’m having a reaction to a product I used.”
“A product?”
I nodded.
He waited a moment for me to clarify.
I didn’t.
“Douche?” he asked.
“No.”
“Yeast infection cream?”
“No.”
“Feminine deodorant spray?”
“Ew.” I crinkled my nose. “No.”
“Vibrator? Dildo? Strap-on?”
“No, Ajay! Jeez!”
He cocked his head. “Should I keep guessing until we are both entirely disgusted or do you want to just tell me?”
I didn’t want him to keep guessing. Given what he’d come up with so far, I could only imagine what remained on his list. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
“No, I do not,” he said. “I have to promise to do no harm and to keep your medical information confidential, but I am not legally required to refrain from laughing at my patients.”
I looked down at my lap and wriggled on the crinkly paper as a fresh wave of prickly heat turned my nether regions into an inferno. “It was a sexual enhancement product.”
He raised a brow. “Let me guess. The one from the television commercial where all the hot chicks are hanging on the nerdy guy?”
I shook my head. “No. I bought this one at a pharmacy.”
“You bought it?” he said. “Not Brett?”
“Right.”
A fresh grin tugged at his lips. “Is your man not satisfying you? Because I have several tricks I could teach him from the Kama Sutra.”
I glared at Ajay. “Brett satisfies me just fine. I was just trying to spice things up.”
“Next time try curry.” He grabbed his prescription pad. “By any chance, was this product called LovLub?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“You are my third female patient this month with the same problem. I should probably contact the FDA.” He reached in a drawer, pulled out a tube of ointment, and handed it to me. “This cream will help.”
“Thanks.” While I was there, I figured I might as well ask Ajay about my itchy scalp. Maybe I had some kind of rash.
He donned a fresh pair of latex gloves, grabbed a tongue depressor, and began examining my scalp, using the wooden stick to separate locks of my hair. After a moment, he stepped back. “You have lice.”
“What the hell!” Was my infestation some type of karmic payback for my insensitive thoughts about Zachary Merten’s hairy body? “Where would I have gotten lice?”
Ajay shrugged. “You tell me. Have you been around any young children? Maybe shared a hairbrush or comb with a homeless person?”
“No.” But I had tried on the pink pillbox hat at the thrift store. So had Alicia. Oh, shit. She probably had lice now, too. She’d kill me. I may have given lice to Brett, too. Great.
Ajay shrugged. “Go to the pharmacy. You can buy medicated shampoo over the counter. Wash your hair with it today, then again in two weeks. Wash all of your bedding, too. Throw out all of your brushes and combs and buy new ones. That should take care of the bugs.”
I closed my eyes. How humiliating.
The only positive thing about my visit to the clinic was that Ajay removed the pesky cast from my arm. Once the cast was gone, he plucked the broken plastic fork tines from my skin. “There. You are good to go.”
Having full use of my arm again felt great, even if the skin was a bit pasty and clammy. After one last scratch and wriggle, I hopped down from the table. “Thanks, Ajay.”
“Any time.” He left the room whistling Elvis’s “Burning Love.”
Like I said. Smart ass.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bedside Manners
As I left the medical clinic, I pulled my cell phone out of my purse. Then I did what I always did when I had a boo-boo and needed someone to make me feel better. I called my mommy. “Guess what, Mom? I’ve got lice.”
She gasped, apparently disgusted by her own daughter. “Goodness, hon. How in the world did you get those nasty bugs?”
I told her about the thrift shop hat. “The doc says a medicated shampoo will get rid of them.”
“There’s no need to make a special trip to the store,” Mom said. “Mayonnaise will do the trick. Just load it on real good. It’ll smother those critters.”
Ew. The thought of a mayonnaise massacre taking place on my head had my stomach rolling. Still, it would save time. When Mom and I finished, I phoned Brett and gave him the news.
“Lice I can handle,” he said. “It would be a different story if you’d given me crabs.”
I was fortunate to have such a forgiving boyfriend. However, I doubted my best friend would react the same way.
I dialed Alicia’s number, closing my eyes to fortify myself for the hissy fit she’d surely throw once I gave her the news.
“Has your head been itching?” I asked when she answered.
“Something awful,” she said, her tone suspicious. “Why?”
“We got lice from that hat at the thrift store.”
She shrieked.
“Look, it’s no big deal,” I said. “You just have to wash with a medicated shampoo and throw out your hairbrushes.”
“Oh my God! I told you we’d catch something from those secondhand clothes!”
“You thought we’d get an STD. Lice is nothing compared to syphilis.”
Sh
e shrieked again.
My phone bleeped, Eddie calling. My partner had perfect timing. “Gotta go,” I told Alicia. I hung up on her and answered Eddie’s call. “Hey, partner.”
“Bad news, Tara.” Eddie’s voice was tight, clipped. “Someone beat the shit out of the Pokornys and trashed the bakery.”
Holy crap. The earth seemed to drop away under me. “What happened?”
“The details are sketchy at this point. Darina and Jakub are in surgery as we speak. Head injuries, broken bones. God knows what else.”
I closed my eyes, saying a quick prayer in my head for the couple. “How’d you find out?”
“A nurse from the hospital called. Darina gave my business card to a medic on the ambulance and he passed it on to the ER staff.”
“You think this has something to do with the loan?” This could just be a crazy coincidence, right?
“What do you think, Tara?” Eddie’s tone told me exactly what he thought. Of course this wasn’t a coincidence. Why else would Darina have given Eddie’s card to the EMT?
“What hospital are they in?”
“Parkland.”
“I’m on my way.” Looked like the lice would get a brief reprieve.
* * *
I laid rubber to the hospital and eased into a tight space between a rusty pickup and an oversized SUV, risking door dings to my precious Beamer. But there were bigger things to worry about at the moment. I rushed into the waiting room of the Parkland Hospital ER, the same waiting room where I’d sat mere weeks before, waiting to find out if my partner would survive the bullet wound to his head. Luckily, Eddie had pulled through. I hoped the Pokornys would do the same.
Eddie sat with the Pokornys’ children, who actually looked like children now despite the fact that both were in their early twenties. The son worriedly chewed the inside of his cheek, while their daughter sobbed into her hands, her shoulders heaving.
Eddie stood and introduced me to the Pokornys’ children.
“I’m so sorry,” I told them as I took their hands. As upset as I was, I couldn’t even imagine what they were going through.
Eddie gestured to the automatic glass doors and we made our way outside to talk.
“How are the Pokornys?”
“Darina has three cracked ribs and a broken arm. The thugs fractured Jakub’s skull. He’s in a coma. The doctors won’t be sure of the extent of his brain injury until he comes out of it.” He paused a moment before adding, “If he comes out of it.”
My hands fisted reflexively and it suddenly seemed as if there wasn’t enough air to breathe. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. “Eddie, this is…” Too terrifying. Too close. Too real.
“Some seriously scary shit?”
“Yeah.”
* * *
It wasn’t until midnight that we were able to see Darina Pokorny. Darina’s children had gone into the room twenty minutes earlier. Her son had since moved on to intensive care to be with his unconscious father, but her daughter remained in the room, slumped in a chair next to the bed, holding her mother’s small, pale hand.
When I first saw Darina’s face, my fingers flew to my mouth, stifling my gasp. The figure lying in the bed looked nothing like the woman we’d met at the bakery only two weeks earlier. Her curly hair was matted and in disarray. Both of her eyes were swollen nearly shut and bore purplish-black circles around them, as if she were wearing a dark sleep mask. A long, deep cut slashed across her cheek, a dozen stitches holding the wound closed, pulling her skin taut. And didn’t her nose used to be in the middle of her face?
As if the facial injuries weren’t enough, a plaster cast encased her right arm from wrist to shoulder, indicating multiple fractures. The white bandage visible through the gaping armholes of her gown told me the doctors had also wrapped her ribs. An IV bag hung from a metal stand next to her bed, the plastic tube feeding into a vein in her left arm.
The injuries I’d suffered on the job were nothing compared to what Darina had suffered. Now my job wasn’t just taking over my life, it was taking an emotional toll on me. With all the dead ends we’d encountered, I was beginning to think it might be easier to simply shoot Mendoza than to try to nail him for tax fraud. Heck, with my keen eye and sharp finger, I could take Mendoza out with a clean head shot from a hundred yards. Given the many loopholes in gun registration laws, my dad had a whole cabinet full of unregistered hunting rifles. Nobody would ever know it was me.
Very tempting.
Also, a bit scary that I was seriously considering this option.
Darina slowly turned her head to look at me and Eddie. The doctors had given her pain medication, so we weren’t sure how much information we’d be able to gather from her. Still, it was worth a try. Who knew how much she’d remember later? Or if she’d even be willing to talk to us once her mind cleared and she realized that cooperating with federal agents could pose further risks?
“Mrs. Pokorny?” I stepped closer and put a hand on the cold metal bedrail. “Are you up to talking to us?”
She emitted a groan that sounded affirmative.
Her daughter released her hand and stood, offering me the chair. “I’ll go check on my dad.”
I nodded, thanked her, and sat down next to Mrs. Pokorny.
My gaze met hers. As I took in the fear and pain reflected in her bruised, bloodshot eyes, I felt the tingle of tears forming in mine. What kind of sick bastard could hurt someone like this? “Do you know who did this to you, Darina?”
She closed her eyes, letting out a long, slow breath and, for a moment, I thought she was going to submit to the sedatives and fall asleep. But, finally, she opened her eyes again, as much as she could open them in their swollen state, and answered in a barely audible voice. “Three young men, around my son’s age. Two white. One black.”
“Did you recognize them?”
She gave a small, nearly imperceptible shake of her head.
I asked her what the men looked like.
She told me all of them were tall, big, and muscular.
“You think this had something to do with your loan? The one we talked to you about?”
She nodded, just barely.
“How do you know that?”
She struggled in the bed then, trying to sit up, grimacing despite the pain meds dripping into her arm. I found the controller among the blankets and pushed the button to raise the top half of the bed so she would be more upright.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Better.”
I laid the controller down on top of the white blanket.
She spoke slowly, so softly I had to lean in to make sure I could hear her. “The grocery store we made kolaches for filed bankruptcy a few days after we met with you. They didn’t pay our last invoice. Without their money we couldn’t make our full loan payment this month. I sent a money order for half of the amount with a note explaining we would pay the rest as soon as we could.” She paused a moment, as if trying to work past the painkiller-induced fog in her head. “A man called the bakery a few days ago and told us to have the rest of the money today. But we had nowhere to get money from. The banks will not loan to us and we do not have wealthy relatives or friends. When we were closing up this evening, the men showed up and demanded the money.” Tears spilled over her bruised lids then, running down her cheek. “The black man stood watch at the front door. The others took all of the money in our cash register and my purse and Jakub’s wallet.”
And then, obviously, the men beat the holy crap out of the Pokornys. I couldn’t imagine how terrifying that must have been. Well, maybe I could. I’d recently been trapped in a hole with gunfire raining down on me. Still, the fractured arm I’d suffered was nothing compared to what the Pokornys had been through.
“Did you see what kind of car they were driving?”
“No.”
“Did any of them refer to the others by name?”
She slowly shook her head. “No, but the man who attacked
Jakub wore one of those leather western belts with his name printed on the back.”
“What was the name?”
“Bubba.”
Eddie grunted. Translation: With a name like Bubba, the guy had to be a dumbass, white trash motherfucker.
It was unlikely that Bubba was his given name. Still, even a nickname gave us something to go on.
When I asked for a more detailed description, her swollen eyes narrowed even further. “I’ll never forget them. All of them wore dark clothing. Both of the white men had shaved heads and dark goatees. The one who beat me had dark eyes. The one who beat Jakub had light blue eyes, like ice.” A cold heart, too, apparently. “The black man was a little smaller than the others. He wore his hair in short braids.”
“Did you or your husband mention that we’d been by to see you?” I hoped they hadn’t blown our case, though under the circumstances I could hardly blame them if they had.
“No,” she said. “I think that would have made them even more angry.”
“Good call,” Eddie said, speaking for the first time, his voice cracking. Apparently he wasn’t dealing with this all too well, either.
“They wore gloves,” Darina said. “The thin latex kind. But the one who took the money from the cash register had trouble picking up the bills with his gloves on and took one of them off. There might be fingerprints on the till.”
“Was that Bubba or one of the others?”
“Bubba.”
That would’ve been my guess. A guy named Bubba would’ve been dumb enough to forget why he was wearing gloves in the first place. Weren’t many Bubbas giving valedictorian speeches at high school graduation ceremonies.
When we’d gathered all the information we could from Darina, we wished her a speedy recovery and told her we’d be in touch if we learned anything. We found her daughter just outside the door and asked her to call us if there were any developments, if her parents remembered anything else that might be helpful. A nod was all the poor girl could manage.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Crack in the Case
By the time we arrived at the Pokornys’ bakery, it was two A.M. Eddie and I parked in the lot and made our way to the door. The night was unusually cool for early May and I hadn’t brought a jacket. I wrapped my arms around myself in a vain attempt to keep warm. When Eddie noticed, he slipped his suit jacket off without a word and draped it over my shoulders. I gave him a grateful smile.