Drawing Fire

by Janice Cantore

  “But it bugs you.”

  “I guess. Not sure why.”

  “From what I learned, he didn’t graduate high school. Dropped out about a year before he would have finished.” Luke folded his arms and sat on the corner of his desk. “Your father was a party animal from everything I gleaned.”

  “Yeah?” Abby turned a few more pages, but she encouraged Luke to keep going while she looked.

  “So was Rollins. And they were close. Buck and Lobo—they were the ringleaders for a lot of pranks and troublemaking, from what my mom and others say. There were four or five guys who ran with them, and their high jinks made high school interesting. Kent came on the scene later. Rollins met him at Berkeley. ”

  “Gavin Kent?”

  Luke nodded. “He’s older; he was in college on the GI bill when he met Rollins. I got all this from an article that ran after he was first elected governor.” He pulled the article out of a file and gave it to Abby.

  “I know that my father enlisted right after high school, but he never saw combat. Rollins was 4-F—I saw that somewhere.” She glanced at the article. “My dad moved back to Long Beach and went to Long Beach State with his service money.”

  “Yes, I think that is when Buck reconnected with Rollins,” Luke said. “Rollins was working on a master’s degree. Everyone I talked to who knew them said they acted as if no time had passed—they were still great friends. And they were hot to start a big, successful business.” He pointed to some names on the board, and Abby recognized the names of businesses her parents started that failed.

  Luke continued and Abby enjoyed the narrative. “They finally hit pay dirt with the Triple Seven. Everyone who was around Long Beach then says the restaurant was a special place. It and the Queen Mary put us on the map. Buck Morgan and Lowell Rollins got some big names to patronize the place and perform there. By that time all their juvenile pranks were far behind them.”

  He sipped his coffee. “Kent was a war hero, very decorated. It’s no wonder he’s tough to get through.”

  “That’s right; you’ve tried to talk to Rollins.”

  “Tried. The standard line is ‘The governor doesn’t live in the past.’” His brow furrowed. “You didn’t have any better luck. Do you think he’d talk to you if the case were officially reactivated?”

  “You know I can’t do that. You, on the other hand, are not subject to Cox’s orders. You can keep asking questions.”

  “I still don’t think Rollins is a killer.”

  “We don’t have to agree at first. The facts will prove who is right.”

  He cocked his head. “I suppose.” He leaned forward and pulled out a pen and a legal pad. “Let’s get as much done as we can tonight.”

  Abby sat back in the chair and pulled it closer to the desk, nodding in agreement.

  Time passed unnoticed for Abby. It wasn’t until her phone began to play “Bang Bang” that she saw it was almost midnight. A dispatch extension brought a frown.

  “Interesting ringtone,” Murphy said.

  “No message to it—I just like oldies,” she said as she stood to answer the call. “But I’m not on call, so it’s odd. Excuse me for a second.” She walked to the doorway and answered the phone.

  A familiar dispatcher greeted her. “Detective Hart, sorry to bother you, but I have Westside Woody requesting you. It’s an attempted homicide and the victim had your card in her pocket, so he wonders if you wished to respond.”

  Abby’s stomach took a queasy roll and she turned to face Murphy. He stood, alarm showing on his face.

  “Can you have Woody call me?” Abby asked.

  At the dispatcher’s affirmative, Abby ended the call and waited, pacing toward the exercise equipment. Any number of people would have her card—she gave it out often, especially when she was trying to find witnesses. She’d handed out several that day when she and Roper had worked the Jenkins case. So why was her stomach a pit of dread?

  “What’s wrong?” Murphy came toward her, his eyes wary.

  Voicing what could only be called intuition, Abby said, “It might be Nadine.”

  “IT MIGHT BE NADINE.”

  Abby watched Luke pale at the words, but he said nothing as they waited for the next call.

  The phone rang a few minutes later. Abby told him it was Woody before she answered.

  “Sorry to get you up, but I got a call about a woman down at Hotel Pacific, and wouldn’t you know it—it’s that runaway we talked about last week, Nadine Hoover. She’s been beat up good. This may be a homicide before morning; she’s circling the drain. I went through dispatch because I want this to be official if you want to respond.”

  Abby took a deep breath and worked to keep her reaction calm with Murphy’s steady gaze focused on her. “I’m not on call this week.”

  “I know. I had dispatch call Jacoby before they called you. He put the ball in your court. If you want to respond, it’s your case.”

  “All right. Is the scene secure?”

  “Yep. I thought she was dead when I got there, so I buttoned everything up tight. I’ll let them know you’re on the way.” He gave her the address and the names of the officers on scene.

  Abby’s mind churned, and she began to pace again, ignoring Murphy for a minute. Evidence gathering in the first hours after a murder was crucial. Nothing would be different with a living victim. “I can be there in about twenty. Woody, was a weapon used?”

  “No, it looks like fists.”

  “Sexual assault? Defensive wounds?”

  “Not apparent on the first. She was fully clothed. . . . Uh, some wounds, though, yeah. She fought back.”

  “Do me a favor—if they haven’t cleaned her up, bag her hands. I’ll try to get the lab tech over there as soon as I can to scrape under her nails.”

  “You got it.”

  She faced Murphy. “They found Nadine severely beaten in a hotel room on the west side.”

  “But she’s alive?”

  “Right now.” Abby picked up Bandit and headed for the door.

  Murphy grabbed her arm. “I want to go with you.”

  She hesitated for a million reasons, but not wanting him to come wasn’t one of them. The warmth that spread through her whole body from his touch, the hazel eyes that missed nothing, and the realization that she wanted to keep the connection she’d felt during their discussion all conspired to cause her to fumble for words.

  Murphy obviously thought she didn’t want him along.

  “Look.” He released her arm and crossed his. “You’ll call me anyway and you know it. Besides, I can get ahold of her mother—”

  The words finally formed. “Yes, you can come.”

  “What?”

  “Just hurry. I have to drop Bandit off on the way, so there’s no time to lose.”

  “Great. I’ll just be a second.”

  Luke hadn’t felt so tense and off-balance since the day he arrived home from overseas to see his injured little girl in the hospital and to bury his wife.

  He’d hopped into Abby’s car after giving his mom the news. Abby had a police radio in her car, and she turned it on so they could listen for any traffic related to Nadine’s call.

  “She was found at a room in the Hotel Pacific,” Abby told him.

  “Will Bill be there?”

  “We’re not on call. I’ll have to see what’s going on and call our lieutenant to see if Bill is approved to respond.”

  The detective then clammed up. They stopped at her house, which Luke thought fit her, solid lines and no-nonsense. She jogged in with the dog and jogged out a few minutes later with a thick briefcase Luke guessed was her crime scene field kit. She had her cop face on, and Luke found that it inspired him with confidence; they’d catch whoever did this to Nadine.

  Hotel Pacific was very near the house that had brought Abby into Luke’s life, he thought as they exited the freeway on the west side of the city. He and Bill had walked by the tired hotel several times during their fruitless
search for Nadine.

  Flashing lights of several police cars lit up the night in front of and along the alley beside the Pacific.

  Luke unhooked his seat belt as Abby parked behind a black-and-white.

  “I have an extra Windbreaker in my trunk. Wear it, and I hope I don’t have to tell you not to touch anything.” She faced him, hands together in front of her chest. “And you will not, under any circumstances, give any statement to the press, unless approved.”

  “Of course not.” Luke wondered where that came from but didn’t pause to debate the point. He reached across the car and grabbed her arm as she opened the car door. She turned and he saw something indefinable cross her face briefly and then the cop face was in place. “Thanks for bringing me along.”

  “Sure.”

  Luke released her arm, and both of them got out of the car, stopping at the trunk, where Abby handed Luke a Windbreaker with Police stenciled on the back. He put it on as they walked toward the hotel room with the open door and the obvious police presence.

  The first thing that caught Luke’s eye when he could see through the open door—and the thing that compressed his chest—was the pink-and-green backpack he’d seen Nadine carrying a thousand times. Her teen girl giggle resonated in his memory, and he prayed that despite the evidence to the contrary she’d be okay.

  It looked as though the contents of the pack had been dumped out and strewn over the bed. A furious struggle had obviously taken place. There was blood spatter on the wall behind the bed with more blood pooled on the floor. Luke guessed that was where the girl ended up. The one nightstand in the room was knocked over and the cheap lamp broken.

  “Who called?” Abby asked the uniform handling the scene.

  “Hotel manager. Apparently there were complaints from several other hotel occupants.” He rolled his eyes, and Luke got the hint that that was likely because the other rooms were rented by the hour.

  “He didn’t act on the first complaint, which was—” the officer checked his notes—“around eleven. It took two more complaints for him to check on the room and then call us. By the time Woody got here, the suspect was gone and the girl had been pounded. We interviewed as many people as we could. All we got was they heard noise but did nothing.”

  Another officer stepped forward. “Detective, there was one guy who got involved, a john. He apparently saw what was happening—the door was cracked open—and confronted the assailant. Got slugged for his trouble; then he fled. His, uh, ‘date’ was still here when we arrived. Woody talked to her.”

  Luke watched Abby biting her lip as she considered this.

  “A good lead?” he asked.

  “It could be if we can ever talk to the Good Samaritan. Odds are it was a married man having a tryst with a hooker, and the last thing he’ll want to do is be a witness. I’ll bet Woody knew the working girl because this is his beat. I hope he has more for us when we get to the hospital.”

  She stepped inside the room and motioned for Luke to stay in the doorway. Even from there the smell hit him. Old pizza and sweat. He could see leftover pizza and old fries in Destination X wrappers on the bureau. From the trash strewn about, he bet Nadine had been holed up here for a while. Coins and one or two bills comingled with the trash on the floor. So this was no ordinary robbery.

  He concentrated on watching Abby and started when someone tapped his shoulder. He stepped aside for the lab tech.

  “Two weeks in a row on call?” she asked Abby.

  “Long story.” Abby turned an intense gaze to Luke. “Do you recognize anything here? Step inside for a minute.”

  “The backpack is hers, and some of the clothes I recognize as probably hers.” He did a slow sweep of the room. “I don’t see her phone. She had a neon-green case for her phone.”

  Abby folded her arms and turned back to the lab tech. “When you finish with the pictures, I’d like all the stuff that looks like it belongs in the backpack in an evidence bag. I’ll take it to the hospital on the off chance the victim can tell us if there is anything that doesn’t belong to her. Process the backpack yourself. I’m hoping you’ll get some evidence off of it. If the suspect was angry and if he’s the one that emptied it, maybe we’ll get lucky with saliva—”

  “How’d you get a live one?” the lab tech asked.

  Luke jerked back in her direction. “Live one.” Abby was homicide. Would that be how Nadine would eventually be classified?

  HANDS ON HIPS, Abby cocked her head and considered the tech’s question and the wounded expression on Murphy’s face.

  “She’s hanging on, at the hospital in critical.”

  “Part of the long story?”

  “Yeah. I’ll need you over there to check her fingernails for trace evidence. I’m off to talk to the hotel manager.”

  The manager was no help. He’d rented the room a week earlier to a blonde girl who said her name was Helen Smith. He saw nothing, he heard nothing, and he only called the police because other clients were complaining. As to the guy who got involved, since he hadn’t checked in yet, the manager knew nothing about him. Twenty minutes later Abby and Luke were on their way to Memorial Medical Center.

  Frustrated, Abby worked through the bits and pieces of the puzzle she had so far. The hotel was close to Destination X, and if Nadine had her card, Abby guessed it was the one she’d given Mr. Piggy. Did she run to hide because Abby had spooked her? Or was she already hiding from whoever it was who beat her?

  “I need coffee,” she said as she pulled into a 7-Eleven driveway. “Do you want anything?”

  “No thanks.” Luke regarded her with those eyes, and it made her tingle with warmth as she hurried into the store. She selected and poured coffee on autopilot as possible scenarios about what happened to Nadine ran through her mind. Had the girl run away with a dark purpose and had that caught up to her? What would bring about such a savage beating? Abby could only pray that Nadine would soon be able to tell her. She kept her scenarios to herself when she got back into the car to continue to the hospital.

  When they walked into the emergency room, Abby got a confused smile from Woody when he saw Murphy. It changed to welcome when he saw the coffee she’d brought for him. Abby knew he hated hospital coffee.

  “Bless you,” he said as he took the cup.

  “No problem. How is she doing?”

  “Not as bad as I initially thought, but bad enough. Possible head injury, broken arm and nose, internal bleeding, and fractured ribs.”

  Abby heard Murphy mutter something as Woody listed the injuries. She didn’t look his way.

  “She needs surgery, but they’re waiting on the mom for permission. I sent a unit to pick her up. Hands are bagged, but if she needs to go into surgery . . .” Woody’s voice trailed off, and Abby knew that the hospital would need her sterile in surgery.

  “Lab is on the way,” she told Woody.

  “How’d she get your card?” Woody pulled it out of his pocket. It was the one she’d left at Destination X, with a note to Nadine scribbled on the back.

  “I talked to a manager at Destination X who said he’d seen her.” She sipped her coffee. “I guess I hoped she’d contact me.”

  Woody regarded her for a moment, and Abby knew he was wondering what had gotten into her.

  “I talked to Georgie on scene,” he said after a minute.

  Abby knew the name. Georgie was a working girl everyone on the west side had arrested for one thing or another.

  “Her john confronted the suspect, got popped in the mouth for his trouble. But that could be the reason the guy stopped punching our vic and fled, so maybe the interference saved the kid’s life.” He reached into his pocket for an interview card and handed it to her. “Here’s what she had to say. And the john was a regular, so there’s a small—” he held his hand up, pinching the index finger and thumb together—“chance we’ll get a shot at him. Georgie says she’ll call me if he shows up again.”

  Just then the lab tech trotted in.
>
  “I’ll take her back there,” Woody said. “Why don’t you wait for the mom and bring her up to speed.”

  “Sounds good,” Abby said, and she and Murphy sat in the waiting room. She bent to study Woody’s notes.

  “You left your card for her?” Murphy’s question jolted Abby from her thoughts.

  “Um, yeah. I wanted the creep at Destination X to call me when she stopped by. Easier to give him a card than to trust him to look up my number. I give my card to a lot of people.” Abby hiked one shoulder, not sure why the subject made her uncomfortable.

  Murphy smiled. “Thanks. It was a decent thing for you to do.” His phone rang, and he looked at the number and grimaced. “It’s Glynnis. The officers must be at her house.” He stepped aside to take the call.

  Abby turned her attention back to the card Woody had given her.

  Georgie described the beater as “big like a giant.” When she was pressed, Woody got her to specify: the man was six-five to six-six, heavy but all muscle. Abby considered this, trying to place a name to such a description, but not having the same luck she’d had when Lil’ Sporty’s name came to mind. After a few minutes she drew a blank and let her gaze wander around the waiting room, resting on Murphy, who finished up his call. Pain etched his features, and Abby felt it in her own being.

  “The uniformed officers freaked her out, but she’s on her way.”

  Abby returned her attention to Woody’s notes. It wasn’t long before she was pacing the waiting area. It was empty—this wasn’t a bustling weekend; it was an early Wednesday morning. She barely noticed when Murphy got up to use the restroom. But the whoosh of the emergency room door opening got her full attention.

  Though she’d never seen the woman before, Abby knew Nadine’s mother immediately. It was the frantic eyes.

  “Mrs. Hoover?”

  “Yes, yes, where’s my daughter? What happened to my daughter?”

  “I’m Detective Hart. I’ll be handling her case. Let me see if I can find the doctor for you.” Abby stepped toward the nurses’ station.