Black Oil, Red Blood

by Diane Castle

  “Detective Nash,” the cop said. “I see.” He looked at me. “You Chloe Taylor?”

  Nash glanced at me in alarm.

  “Yes,” I said, hesitatingly.

  The cop handed Nash back his wallet and badge. “I’m going to need the two of you to come with me.”

  “How come?” Nash demanded.

  “I got an APB out for the two of you. You’re persons of interest in a murder case going on in the city of Kettle.”

  “The Schaeffer case?” Nash said.

  “That sounds about right.” The cop, sensing resistance, was fingering the cuffs hanging from his belt.

  “You can’t be serious,” Nash said. “That’s my case. I’m the investigator on it. There must be some misunderstanding.”

  The cop seemed uncertain. “Hold on,” he said. “Stay right there.” He went back to his car and radioed in to the station.

  “This can’t be good,” I said. “Do you think the Chief put out an APB on you?”

  “On us,” Nash said. “Which means he’s feeling antsy about having told us about the mayor.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  The cop got back out of his car and advanced toward us, hand on his gun.

  “Follow my lead,” Nash whispered.

  The cop drew his gun on us.

  Nash raised his hands in the air, and I followed suit.

  “Ain’t nothing I hate worse than a dirty cop,” the policeman said. “Word is, the Schaeffer case was yours until the police chief figured out you were falsifying evidence. Now it’s a matter for the FBI.”

  “The FBI has no record of the case,” Nash said. “Call them. You’ll see.”

  The cop didn’t lower his gun. “You think I got the FBI on speed dial?”

  “I’ll give you the number,” Nash said. “Seriously, just make the call.”

  “Yeah right.” The cop inched slowly toward us. “I call a number you give me so you can hook me up with some shill who sings your praises. I don’t think so. Turn around. Hands behind your back. Now!”

  I glanced at Nash, waiting to see what he would do.

  Nash lowered his hands slowly and put them behind his back. Then he turned around. I did the same, even though I felt uneasy about it. I didn’t relish the idea of being remanded into Chief Scott’s custody. Somehow, I didn’t think I’d get out again unscathed.

  “Down on the ground!” the cop said.

  Nash hesitated.

  “On the ground now, or I shoot!”

  Nash dropped to his knees, and so did I.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the cop fast-step toward us. When he got close, he aimed the gun at me with one hand and whipped a cuff on Nash’s wrist with the other.

  Just as the cop was about to close the second bracelet, Nash whirled, and the loose cuff caught him in the crotch.

  The cop doubled over. Nash’s hand shot out and sliced into the cop’s wrist. His gun went flying.

  A surge of adrenaline shot through me, and I jumped to my feet, not certain what to do.

  I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when Nash found his own feet, raised both arms and brought them down again on the cop’s head. This seemed so out of character for the ultra-straight-laced Nash.

  The cop struggled to regain his balance, but Nash’s blows put him on one knee.

  Nash spun again and knocked the cop’s one good foot out from under him. The cop went down, hitting the ground with a thud. He looked like he’d eaten one too many donuts in his day, and he was no match for Nash’s innate quickness and athleticism.

  Nash turned to me. “Get the gun.”

  The cop struggled, but Nash stomped a foot down on his back to keep him down.

  I got the gun, but didn’t want to point it at anybody, especially a cop. I held it, barrel down, in front of me.

  Nash seemed to understand that I was afraid to shoot, so he held out his hand, motioning for me to give him the weapon. I did, and he pointed it at the cop’s head. “I’m sorry about this, buddy,” he said, “but you’re interfering with my investigation. I really wouldn’t be doing this if you’d given me any other choice.”

  “This ain’t right,” the cop gasped.

  “Get the keys, Chloe,” Nash said.

  I bent down and retrieved the handcuff keys from the cop’s belt.

  “Car keys, too,” Nash said.

  I gave Nash an incredulous look, but did what he said. He held out his arm, and I unlocked the cuff that bound his right wrist. Then he took the cuffs from me and put them on the cop.

  “Get in the car,” Nash told me.

  “The police car?” I asked, shocked.

  “Do you see another car around here?” Nash said.

  “I’ll have your badge for this!” the cop hollered.

  I felt rooted to the ground. Surely Nash wasn’t serious.

  “Car! Now!” Nash said urgently.

  I picked up my feet and ran to the car, hopping into the shotgun position.

  Nash backed away from the cop, gun still pointed at the guy’s head. “You move, and I shoot,” he told the cop.

  I could hear the cop shouting curses at Nash, but he wasn’t fool enough to try to get up off the ground. He must have sensed that Nash was serious.

  Nash backed up all the way to the car and hopped in. Then he floored it, and we high-tailed it back to the motel.

  “What are you thinking?” I said.

  “I’m thinking that the last place I want to ever find myself is behind bars on the orders of a dirty cop. I’ve lost enough to these kinds of scumbags already. I’m not doing it again.”

  “This just seems so unlike you,” I said.

  “It looks bad, but we’re still on the right side of things. We’ll find Cameron Gilbert, recover Schaeffer’s evidence, and then out all the corruption in Kettle.”

  “That’s a long shot,” I said.

  “Maybe, but it’s our only shot. Unless you really want to trust yourself in the hands of Chief Scott.”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “I’ll just need a good lawyer to help me straighten things out once we get to the other side of the action. You know one?” He shot me a sideways grin.

  “No,” I said firmly. I wouldn’t touch a criminal cop-on-cop case with a twenty-foot pole.

  “Come on! You can use the necessity defense. It’s an easy win.”

  “There is no such thing as an easy win,” I said.

  Nash fish-tailed into the motel parking lot. As he pulled up to our room, he wrenched the dash cam off its perch, opened the car door, and smashed the camera into pieces on the ground. “Get Miles and Lucy,” he said. “That cop saw your room key, so he knows where we are. We have to get out of here before that guy can get somewhere he can call backup.”

  “We’re not taking the cop car, are we?”

  “And have them spot us with their GPS system? I don’t think so.”

  I hopped out of the car and raced to our motel room, Nash hot on my heels.

  “Get up!” I told Miles.

  Miles didn’t budge.

  I raced toward him and shook him. “I’m serious, Miles! Get up! We have to get out of here!”

  Miles rolled over groggily. “I need my beauty rest. If I get up now, I’ll have bags under my eyes all day.”

  Nash grabbed Miles’ arm and flung him unceremoniously out of bed.

  “Hey!” Miles protested.

  “You want to ride in the car?” I asked Lucy. She immediately started prancing in circles and jumping up and down excitedly.

  Nash grabbed my keys off the dresser, threw Miles’ wallet at him, and ushered him forcibly out the door.

  Lucy was out the door ahead of us, bucking up and down in front of my car. I opened the passenger-side door and she jumped in. I followed. Nash dumped Miles in the back seat, hopped in the driver’s side, and took off.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Where are we going?” Miles asked groggily.

  We were all ex
hausted. Only Lucy was perky and excited to get to ride in the car, no matter what time of night it was.

  “To find Cameron, ASAP,” Nash said.

  I entered Cameron’s address into my GPS and filled Miles in on what had just gone down, omitting the part about my personal conversation with Nash.

  “Girl, you better be kidding me,” Miles said. “You took down a cop?”

  “Technically, Nash took down the cop, not me,” I said.

  “Wow,” Miles told Nash. “I am totally going to have to change my definition of who I think you are.”

  “Well, that makes two of us,” Nash said.

  We were about forty miles outside of Dallas. I was starting to worry that Chief Scott might have had a line on where we were headed, since he had bothered to put out an APB that extended this far north. I voiced my concerns to Nash.

  “He probably just issued a state-wide alert,” Nash said. “Even if he knows we’re looking for a guy named Cameron Gilbert, he won’t be able to get the address unless he calls the FBI—and I don’t think he’s going to call the FBI because he knows they’re the white hats in this situation. He won’t want to stir up anything that could come back to bite him.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but I was too tired to argue with Nash.

  Driving up I-35 as we neared Dallas, I could see the shifting lights that decorated the Reunion Tower ball and the green quasi-neon glow of the Bank of America building. I had so many memories here. High school, law school, Dorian. Under any other circumstances, I’d feel relieved to be back.

  Nearer to downtown, I started to realize I didn’t really care for the direction in which we were headed. We exited I-35 just south of downtown and took a right into the hood, into an area of town I never, ever went—especially at night—and was wholly unfamiliar with.

  There were no gas stations here. No grocery stores. Only boarded up buildings about twenty-five years overdue for new windows and fresh paint. Structures that passed for homes were scattered around what used to be commercial real estate and warehouses. It was like the zoning commission had completely ignored this area when planning the city. Occasionally, we’d drive past some guys who were out walking around for probably no good reason at this hour. They stared suspiciously at my shiny black Lexus. Lexus owners didn’t usually drive around in this neighborhood, and especially not in the middle of the night.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” Nash said.

  “You’re telling me. This place scares me more than Kettle.”

  My GPS dinged. “You have arrived,” it said.

  Nash pulled to a stop in front of an old, abandoned garage. Rusted-out cars littered the parking lot, and scrap metal was strewn about like post-modern confetti. “Guns out. You two stay here. I’ll go check it out. Try to cover me, okay?”

  I didn’t feel good about it, but reluctantly agreed. I would have felt a lot better calling for backup or something, which of course, was out of the question under the circumstances. Not that I didn’t trust Nash. It’s just that he was only one man backed up by a chick in high heels and a gay guy who was apparently allergic to steel.

  Nash left the keys in the ignition. I shut the car off and rolled down the windows so I could better hear what was happening in there, if anything. Then I took my gun and propped it gingerly on the window sill, careful to keep my fingers away from the trigger. I did press the laser sight button though, just to make sure I wasn’t aiming the thing at Nash accidentally. I settled for pointing it well to Nash’s right and held still, alert.

  Miles refused to touch his. “It’s all you, baby,” he said, leaving his gun on the car seat beside him.

  Lucy poked her head out the window and sniffed the air.

  Nash crept towards the half-open sliding garage door. He was crouched low, a gun in each hand, wrists crossed. He swiveled back and forth as he moved in, covering himself as best he could. It was pretty clear that he didn’t really trust us to do the job.

  Beside me, Lucy stiffened and let out a low growl. I tried to soothe her by stroking her head with my free hand. “Shhhh, baby. Shhhh. It’s okay.”

  Her growl got progressively louder. She refused to calm down. I followed her gaze to a stack of old tires off to the left of the garage and readjusted my laser sight in that direction, just in case.

  Lucy started barking immediately before the shots rang out. Not mine. Someone else’s. Behind me, Miles swore and ducked low in the back seat. I pulled Lucy down from the window, hunkered down, and hesitantly fired off a couple return shots at the tire stack. On the one hand, I didn’t want to shoot anyone. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to get shot. If I had to choose the lesser of two evils, I would choose the one that kept me alive every time.

  I peered at the tire stacks and still didn’t see anyone. The shots had stopped.

  Nash had his back pressed against an inside wall, out of the line of sight of the tire stack. Edging his head around the corner, he saw my laser sight pointed at the tire stack and gave me a thumbs up.

  A bullet from another direction slammed into the wall next to Nash’s head, and he dropped to the ground and rolled out of sight. There was more than one shooter, and they apparently had us surrounded.

  “Miles!” I yelled. “They’re on both sides! Cover the right! I’ll take the tire stack to the left!”

  Miles picked up his gun, pointed it out the window, shut his eyes, and fired off three rounds. He squinted one eye open. “Did I hit anything?” he asked?

  “I don’t think so.”

  Lucy was in the floorboard growling up a storm. I could barely keep her down.

  Another gunshot from the tire stacks distracted me. Lucy took advantage of my momentary lack of vigilance, leapt over me, and jumped out the window. She ran straight toward the tires.

  “Lucy! No! Nooooooooooooooo!”

  I didn’t even think. My protective instincts kicked in, and I jumped out of the car and ran straight for her, shooting at the tires the whole time. Miles remained in the car, screaming.

  Lucy rounded the tire stack and pounced on a man. In the glow of the headlights, I could see that he was Hispanic and wore black pants and a black t-shirt. Lucy looked like she was about to rip the tendons out of his gun arm.

  I lunged to get her away from him.

  The man tried to grab me and simultaneously fight off Lucy at the same time. I resisted him. In the scuffle, my gun went off, and he went down with a sickening thud. I watched, horrified, as he stopped breathing.

  Realizing that I’d just killed a man, my body went cold and my muscles went slack. I felt a wave of nausea. Oh no. This was bad, bad, bad! But there wasn’t enough time for the emotional repercussions to really sink in. Lucy, who was still growling, whirled and leapt out of my arms at someone behind me.

  Before I could see who she was growling at this time, a hand came down hard on my arm and my gun went flying. A muscular arm wrapped around my throat. My hands were powerless to dislodge it.

  The man shook Lucy off. She hit the ground with a squeal and ran away. I couldn’t turn my head to see where to. I prayed she wasn’t badly hurt, but the fact that she’d given up on attacking this guy didn’t bode well.

  In the parking lot, Miles must have scrambled into the front seat and fired up the engine. Tires peeled and screeched on the concrete as he floored the car and sped toward us, hand out the window holding his weapon.

  Now he was going to use his gun? To shoot the guy behind me, who had his arm around my throat and was using me as a human shield?

  “Don’t shoot!” I screamed. “Are you crazy? You’ll hit me!”

  Miles withdrew his gun arm and floored it, speeding toward me and my captor in the ultimate game of chicken.

  The guy bought it.

  He let me go and dove left as I flew right. Miles hit the brakes and fishtailed in front of me. “Get in!”

  It nearly killed me to get in the car not knowing what had happened to Lucy, but I did anyway, praying I could save myself a
nd find her later.

  I dove through the window and Miles took off, but not before my attacker jumped on the hood.

  For the first time, I was able to get a good look at the guy. He was white, skinny, lightly tanned, clean-shaven, and wore the same black pants and t-shirt as the other guy. I might have thought he was a cologne-ad model if I’d met him in the daylight under different circumstances.

  “What do I do? What do I do?” Miles asked, clearly panicked.

  “Keep driving!”

  Right about this time, fatigue caught up with me and I started to shake. . . this on top of the nausea wracking my body as a reaction to the accidental killing of a few seconds ago. If I took time to think about what might be happening to Lucy and Nash, I would vomit, for sure.

  We sped away from the broken down garage, desperately trying to figure out how to shake the guy off the hood.

  Miles glanced over at me. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I think I just killed a guy,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Miles rolled down my window. The opportunity was all I needed to put me over the edge. I leaned out and lost my breakfast.

  “Chloe, you had to,” Miles said. “If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed you first.”

  “It was an accident,” I said, wiping my face. “I don’t know. Maybe I could have gotten away.”

  Our current attacker had a grip on the top of the hood just below the windshield wipers, and he was muscling his way up to get whatever kind of foothold he could. To me, it looked like his black sneakers were getting pretty good traction on my paint job.

  “What about this guy? How are we going to get away from him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Try to shake him off!”

  I reached over and flipped on the brights. Immediately, I spotted a mini skateboard ramp on the sidewalk ahead. “The ramp! Hit the ramp!”

  Miles swerved, and the left front wheel bounced up on the sidewalk and hit the ramp. The ramp, instead of putting air between my ground and the wheels, just splintered beneath the weight of the car.

  The guy inched over to the driver’s side, putting himself directly in Miles’s line of vision.