by Joanne Pence
Slowly, she inched across the darkened bedroom to the wall, then used it to guide her toward the doorway. Her pulse raced, making her head light.
Why hadn’t she listened to Paavo? Why wasn’t she back home, with Joey and Rico to guard the apartment and Paavo nearby?
The hallway was windowless. She hurried down it to the living room. There, through the sheer drapery covering the sliding glass doors, silhouetted by moonlight, she saw the shape of a man.
She froze and then pressed her hands to her mouth, stifling a scream as she stumbled backward into the hall. She could run out the front door, but from where he stood, he could see the door open and might be able to run around the house and catch her. No, it was safer inside. He might not be able to enter. He might give up and leave.
But if he didn’t…if he entered…. She had to protect herself, find something to use as a weapon. Knives were in the kitchen, on the opposite side of the living room. She dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl, hardly breathing, praying he wouldn’t see her.
As she reached the kitchen, the lock on the glass door clicked open. She had put the wooden pole in its place between the sliding door and the doorframe, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she? She’d meant to….
The glass door slid open. She pressed her knuckles against her teeth. A slight thud sounded as the pole was pushed into the window frame. She had remembered it! She heard the door slide shut, then open again. Once more, the thud—a little louder this time.
Cold perspiration broke out over her body.
The noises from the glass door stopped.
She had a terrible urge to shriek, to laugh or cry, to do anything to end this cat-and-mouse game.
She ran across the kitchen. Her hands shook. First, second, third drawer over, to where the knives were kept. Her fingers were stiff, scarcely able to grip the drawer handle. She yanked the drawer open.
Too loud! The contents of the drawer clanged against one another. She gasped. Had he heard it?
She reached into the drawer, touching the knives with quivering fingertips until she found what she wanted—the meat cleaver.
She clutched the handle with both hands as her eyes fixed on the back door. She crept toward it.
All was quiet outside. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her, and she was safe. Please, God, she prayed, make him go away!
The back door was right in front of her. If he was still at the sliding glass door, or even the front door, she could sneak out this one. Her car was parked just beyond the door, a spare key under the floor mat. The back door became her safety valve, her escape, and she inched toward it, scarcely breathing, the meat cleaver held upright in front of her.
Her fingers touched the door handle just as a heavy weight crashed against it from the outside. She screamed. She clutched the meat cleaver tighter, staring, unable to move as he hit the door again.
The sound of splintering wood jarred her.
She ran from the kitchen as the door gave way. The sofa stood in the middle of the living room, facing the fireplace. She dropped behind it. Pressed hard against it, she could only hope he wouldn’t be able to find her in the darkness.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the kitchen, the floorboards creaking beneath his weight as he searched.
Footsteps tapped on the hardwood floors as he walked into the living room, then when the sound grew muffled, she knew he had reached the carpeted area nearby. Her eyes wanted to squeeze shut, but she forced them open, unwilling to give up without a fight. She waited.
His breathing was low and raspy as he stalked her.
When she saw the toe of his shoe, she jumped up and threw the meat cleaver at him. He cried out. She tried to run, but her feet got tangled up in her nightgown, tripping her. The blast from his gun was the last thing she heard.
21
Paavo hadn’t gotten home that evening until after eleven o’clock. He’d stayed at police headquarters, going over leads, shuffling through reports, trying to do anything to make himself feel useful. It didn’t work. Nothing did anymore. He felt a weary emptiness as he dragged through each day.
He couldn’t believe how many times a day he’d see something, or get an idea, and think, “I’ve got to tell Matt,” or “I wonder what Matt’d say about that,” and then it would hit him all over again that Matt was dead. The pain, ever present, would grow sharp once more. Christ, but he missed him.
At least when Angie had still been in the city, she distracted him. Not that she interested him, he told himself, but he could work on her case and, doing so, enter a world he had only read about up until then. It wasn’t often, in Homicide, that he got to hobnob with the upper crust of the city. Angie had provided him with a diversion, that was all. But she, too, was gone now.
He called the Bodega police every day for a report, and they put an extra patrol on her place. If anyone had followed her, Paavo would know about it by now. She was safe in Bodega.
It was probably best that she was gone. He was growing far too…attached to her. God knows he hadn’t expected anything like that to happen, and he certainly hadn’t wanted it. But, damn, he missed her. Even her bad jokes. And her smiles, her tears, the way her eyes had filled with compassion over Matt, whom she hadn’t even met. Somehow, she’d managed to help him through one of blackest periods he’d ever known. But with her gone, and Matt dead, the blackness was total now.
He had his job, but what else? It used to be enough. It would have to be again.
In Bodega, she was out of his jurisdiction, no longer his concern. That’s how he’d wanted it. He’d arranged it so that they’d never have to see each other again.
Finito, as her mother would say.
Hell.
A copy of the Bay Area Shopper had been left on his doorstep that day, free to him as it was to every household in the city, filled with advertisements and coupons. He always used to throw it away, unread. Since he’d met Angie, Jon Preston, Meyers, and the others, he’d flip through it for a minute or two, then throw it away.
He opened a can of 9 Lives for Hercules, made himself a cup of instant coffee, and then sat down to look over the day’s mail. After that, he picked up the Shopper and thumbed through the pages. When he reached an inside page, he stopped and stared, his coffee cup poised against his lips. There, in front of him, was “Eggs and Egg-onomics” by Angelina Amalfi.
He jumped to his feet. “What the hell does she think she’s doing?” he exclaimed aloud.
Hercules, who had polished off his canned food and curled into a sleeping ball on a kitchen chair, suddenly jumped to the floor, crouched, ears back. With his stomach nearly touching the ground, he scuttled out of the room.
Paavo paced a moment, telling himself he was overreacting, that there was no danger. She couldn’t have been foolish enough to let people at her paper know where she was staying.
But he wasn’t sure. He should phone her…and say what? Are you still alive? Be careful? Get the hell out of that house. And if he did say that, where could he tell her to go?
He didn’t know what such a phone call would accomplish, except to scare her and maybe make things worse. She was only two hours away. He could look over the situation in person, talk to her, find out exactly how many people she had told where she was hiding. He called the Bodega police and asked them to check on her. He said he’d get there as soon as he could.
He pushed the old Austin as fast as he dared along the precarious coastal highway. Why hadn’t he warned her against doing anything that could give her pursuer a way to trace her? He’d been more concerned about leaving her before he made a fool out of himself than he’d been about her safety. Never before had he been so negligent. Why now? Why with Angie?
He arrived at the police station at 1:50 A.M.
“Anything?” he asked the night lieutenant.
“Been quiet as a mouse out there, Inspector. Nothing’s gonna happen tonight.” The lanky, sandy-haired officer tilted his swivel rocker back and lifted his feet onto his desk. “
Coffee?”
Paavo ran his fingers through his hair. “She’s probably sleeping like a baby. I don’t know if I should wake her up or just go to a motel and see her first thing in the morning.”
The lieutenant’s face spread wide in a grin. “I don’t know, but seems to me a fellow rides up here in the dead of night, hell bent for leather, to see a pretty woman, he ought to see her.”
Paavo gave him one of his steely stares. “It’s not that way!”
“Oh, no, Inspector. I wasn’t implying anything. The coffee’s fresh made. I figured you’d need some. Want me to call the motel for you?”
Paavo walked over to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup. It was strong and black, just what he needed. “Yeah. I’ll need a place to sleep tonight whether I see Miss Amalfi or not.”
The lieutenant smirked as he picked up the phone. Paavo chose to ignore him.
It was nearly two o’clock before the lieutenant finished talking to the motel desk clerk. “They got plenty of rooms available. I didn’t bother with a reservation—in case you get hung up with the investigation,” he added with mock innocence.
Paavo grimaced. “When’s your patrol due to report in?”
“Any minute. He’s been calling in every half hour since you phoned.”
“Your man’s on it alone?”
“This is just a small town, Inspector. There’s only two men on night duty besides me, so I split them up. We often have to work alone.”
It was 2:01. “Shouldn’t he have called by now?” Paavo asked.
“We’ll give him a minute or two.”
“Try to reach him.”
“Bill’s hardly late,” the lieutenant muttered as he made a call over his radio. No answer.
Paavo paced.
“Hell, Inspector, the man’s probably taking a leak!”
“Try again.”
No answer.
At 2:05 Paavo and the lieutenant jumped into their cars to ride to Angie’s place. Paavo never pushed his Austin so hard. If anything happened to her, he thought, how could he forgive himself? How could he live with himself? He had never even told her how much he enjoyed being with her.
He was the professional, the one who knew the dangers. She was just…just Angie. Smiling, laughing, enjoying life even through this madness. It had been bad enough going to bed alone on their last night together, after he’d kissed her and felt her wriggle beneath him, knowing she wanted him as much as he did her. Then to see her looking so appealing and sexy the next day, even as she rebuffed him…. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so desperate about a woman. Maybe never.
Why had he left her alone in this wilderness? He should have known better. He did know better. And he had never even told her….
He pressed the accelerator harder. She was beautiful, she was sexy, but much more. There was an emptiness in his life that she alone seemed to have the ability to fill. Somehow, sometime, somewhere she had taken hold of his heart….
No! The thought shook him to the core. He’d never given his heart before. It hurt too much to love…and then lose. But Angie was a woman who deserved to be loved, a woman to grow old with. She was a woman who could make life seem worth all the ugliness that went along with the good.
She was a woman he could love.
In less than five minutes, he stood beside the patrolman’s car. The officer was slumped over in the seat, dead. He’d been shot through the temple.
A horrible emptiness drained Paavo as he stared at Angie’s dark, silent house. As the lieutenant called for assistance, Paavo quietly crept closer.
He wanted to burst in there, yelling for Angie, but too many years of training kicked in, and he was automatically cautious, though raw with fear.
As he approached the side of the house, he heard a loud crash. A scream, then the sound of splintering wood…
The front door was solid, with a dead bolt, he remembered, but the back door was flimsier. He ran toward the back. The splintered door hung open ominously.
A man cried out. Paavo hurled himself through the kitchen to the living room just in time to see a small blur of white and a dark, hulking figure raise his gun and shoot. Paavo heard the distinctive ping of the silencer.
“No!” His cry shattered the air. “Drop the gun.”
The man spun and aimed his gun at Paavo.
Desperate to stop him, Paavo fired, and the intruder fell. But the small, white figure remained absolutely still where it had fallen. Paavo lowered his arm.
The lieutenant stepped to Paavo’s side, his gun drawn, then switched on a lamp.
Paavo stood motionless, his chest constricted and aching as he looked at Angie lying face down on the floor. All the life went out of him in that moment, and with it, all hope.
He stepped toward her on leaden legs. His fault…this was all his fault….
He saw no blood, though, and his heart began to beat again. He dropped to her side, down on one knee, touching her shoulder, her back. She was alive. Gently, he turned her over. She’s alive, his heart shouted as his breathing came hard and fast.
“Angie,” he said, his voice choked as his hands carefully moved over her, checking for injuries. No blood, no bullet wound. How could the gunman have missed at that range? “Angie, wake up. Angie, please.”
Her eyelids fluttered, and her head rolled slowly from side to side. She lifted her hand to her forehead and winced.
“What’s wrong, Angel? Tell me. Where are you hurt?”
She opened her eyes. “Paavo.”
Relief washed over him. He realized his hands were shaking as he clutched hers tighter. “Do you hurt anywhere?”
She tried to sit up. He put his arm around her for support. She blinked hard, looking dizzy, and then gave up and slumped against him. “My head. I was trying to run, but I tripped…”
“You tripped?” He chuckled. “Tripped? That’s wonderful!”
She looked at him strangely.
He ran his fingertips over her forehead and lightly probed her scalp. “I don’t feel any lump.”
She touched his wrist, stopping him. “I didn’t knock myself out! I think I may have…fainted.”
Their eyes met, and he smiled.
“It was so scary!”
“I know.” His voice had a peculiar catch to it. “It’s all right now.”
“She okay?” The lieutenant asked. Paavo looked at the officer, and then over at the man he had shot. Only then did he realize the man who had broken into the house was dead. Paavo’s eyes turned to the lieutenant’s with the question all cops understood. The lieutenant answered. “I was right behind you, Inspector. If you hadn’t gotten him, I would have. In fact, I wish I had. How’s she doing?”
“She’s just scared,” Paavo said. “She’s tough. She’ll be all right.” He looked back at Angie. “You ready to get off this cold floor yet?”
“Okay.” She tried to get up on her own, but Paavo didn’t let her. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the sofa. He was struck again by how slight she was. He was reminded once more of the small, battered bird she had been sent, and of the aching despair he felt when he thought she had been killed. Gently, he put her down, then hovered over her, brushing her hair back from her brow.
“Sheriff should be here any minute, Inspector. I told him about Bill—”
Paavo jumped to his feet and motioned him to the farthest corner of the living room.
“I don’t want her to know about the policeman who was killed.” Paavo’s voice was hushed.
“Why not?”
“She’d feel responsible. It’d…I think it’d tear her apart. I don’t want that to happen to her.”
“It’ll be in the papers,” the lieutenant said. “Bill and I worked together a lot of years. He was a good friend. Do you know what it’s like to lose a man like that?”
Paavo’s heart twisted. “I know,” he whispered.
The lieutenant eyed him a moment. “I’ll do what I can.”
/> “Thanks.”
Paavo went back to Angie. She lay with her arm across her eyes. “Angie,” he said, “Angie, listen to me.” She lowered her arm and looked at him.
He spoke slowly. “I know it’s not easy, but I want you to look at the man who’s lying on the floor. Tell me if you recognize him. Okay?”
She nodded, raised herself up on her elbow, and glanced where he pointed. The man lying on the carpet was skinny and had black hair, and his chest was saturated with deep red blood. She quickly shut her eyes.
“Do you know him?” Paavo asked again.
She shook her head.
“Have you ever seen him before?”
She forced herself to look at the man again, to look carefully, this time, at his face. He had bushy black eyebrows, his nose was long, and his mouth, even in death, was mocking and twisted. She raised her eyes to his open, vacant ones, and a shock of recognition surged through her.
“It’s him,” she whispered, shutting her eyes, trying to block out the sight before her as she lay back on the sofa. “On the Vallejo steps, the day Sam was killed. It’s him. Oh, God,” she cried, her face turning deathly white and clammy, and her hands going to her mouth. Paavo knew what was happening; he’d seen it often when people came face to face with this kind of death. He grabbed the handiest thing, a huge candy-dish, dumped out the mints, put the dish on the floor beside her, then rolled her onto her stomach, her head hanging over the edge of the sofa. He patted her shoulder as her stomach turned over and over. When she was through, he took away the dish, got a damp washcloth and passed it over her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes were bewildered and wet with tears.
“It’s okay. Rest now.” He took off his overcoat and covered her with it. The sound of cars pulling into her driveway caught his attention, and he went to the door to meet the sheriff.
22