Now You See Her

by Merline Lovelace

  “That man . . . The one who attacked me. He said Ollie arranged the hit on my in-laws through someone named Dean or Dino or something.”

  A wolfish glint jumped into Sinclair’s eyes. “Dino D’Roco?”

  “I think that was it. He said . . . He said this Dean or Dino had paid him fifty grand to kill the Roths.”

  Her hand went to her throat. Feathering shaky fingers around the vicious red marks, she hovered on the verge of breaking down completely.

  “He told me this was payback,” she whispered raggedly. “First, for dumping Ollie and trying to cut him out of the Roth deal. Then for taking him out of the picture completely.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE interview continued for hours. Ruiz, Sinclair, and Paul Donati took turns pumping Diane for more detail. About Oliver Austin’s activities in Afghanistan. About her legal battle with her in-laws. The shooting incident. The attack at the spa. They raked through the information again and again, until my initial disgust over Diane’s failure to tell the Florida police about Austin gave way to reluctant sympathy.

  She looked so devastated by it all, and so exhausted. Toward the end of the interview, her shoulders sagged and she had to use both hands to raise a paper cup of water to her lips. When they finally finished with her, she could barely drag herself out of the chair.

  I felt almost as wiped just from listening to the inquisition. That’s my only excuse for fumbling the face-to-face with Diane when we emerged from our respective rooms at the same time. Sinclair, Hurst, and Ruiz went down the hall toward the front entrance. Donati headed for the men’s room. That left me momentarily alone with Diane, who glanced in the dimly lit observation booth.

  “You were watching? Listening?”

  When I nodded, a puzzled frown creased her forehead. “But I thought . . . That is, the first time I spoke to Special Agent Sinclair . . . He told me anything I said was extremely sensitive and close hold. He stressed that I should speak only with him. That’s why I insisted on waiting till he got here.”

  “I know. He told me the same thing.”

  Her frown deepened. “Then why . . . ?”

  I realized I’d slipped up when she staggered back a step.

  “Oh, my God! You’re working with them, aren’t you? With Sinclair and Hurst?”

  “Not working with them, exactly. Just . . .”

  Her weariness evaporated, replaced by a rush of anger. “Just what, Lieutenant?”

  “I called Sinclair, okay? After Ms. Hall told me about your in-laws being murdered. I kept thinking there had to be a connection.”

  “I can’t believe this.” Breathing hard, she bunched her hands in the pockets of her red exercise jacket. “I trusted you. I thought we were friends.”

  I came within a hair of blurting out that I’d had a hard time generating real palsy feelings after watching her cuddle up to Mitch. I managed to bite that back but did add a pointed reminder.

  “Whatever else you may think of my contacting Sinclair and company, it paid off when I went with you to the spa this morning.”

  “Right,” she ground out, her jaw tight. “I’m sure I’ll express the appropriate gratitude . . . once I get past being pissed.”

  She spun on her heel and stalked down the hall. I followed, feeling almost as angry and resentful. The throbbing ache in my stomach didn’t help matters. Nor did the nagging guilt that I might have been somewhat motivated by jealousy when I launched my Best Buddy campaign.

  That uncomfortable feeling was still with me when we departed the station. Dusk had given way to the endless, star-studded night skies I’ve grown used to out here in West Texas. The temperature had dropped accordingly, so I zipped up my jacket and tucked my chin inside the stand-up collar.

  Diane rode with Hurst and Ruiz, who wanted to scope out her neighborhood and apartment. The plan was to add extra patrols to keep both her and the kids under surveillance until they nabbed the man who’d attacked her and admitted to murdering the Roths.

  Donati and Sinclair headed downtown to the FBI’s regional offices. Blue Eyes didn’t say so but I got the impression that Diane’s revelations had given him the added ammunition he needed to lean on this D’Roco character in hopes he would finger the big guys.

  That left me to drive Diane’s new minivan back to her house. While I sped through the star-spangled night, I tried to work up a righteous indignation to counter her anger at my duplicity.

  I had screeched the warning that had her dodging a bullet. And fought off a strangler intent on exacting revenge. And tried to suggest that Oliver Austin had, in fact, orchestrated her in-laws’ brutal murders.

  She’d known that, or at least suspected it. Yet she hadn’t so much as mentioned him to the police. So where did she get off railing at me for helping the authorities get to the bottom of this vicious morass? And why the heck did I still feel so guilty about my role in all this!

  I didn’t admit the truth until I’d pulled into Diane’s assigned parking space outside her apartment. I sat there for a while, letting my gaze roam the four-apartment unit while I tried to come to grips with an ugly realization.

  I admired the heck out of Diane’s courage in going after what we all thought at the time was a mass shooter. I respected her obvious and unstinting love for her kids. Admiration and respect aside, though, I didn’t like the woman. Period. End of story.

  It wasn’t just the play she’d made for Mitch, although I still had a hard time getting past that. It was a bunch of little things. Playing to the media. Accepting all those freebies. Using her heroine status to negotiate a cut-rate deal on a new minivan. None of them big deals by themselves. Collectively, they added up to someone I wouldn’t choose as a friend.

  Except I had. Deliberately and with malice aforethought. So what kind of person did that make me?

  Geesh! Nothing like coming full circle! Wracked with guilt again, I knocked on Diane’s door. I caught a shadow of movement behind the drawn drapes and knew either Ruiz or Hurst was checking me out before Diane opened the door.

  “Here’s your car key.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her expression was as unfriendly as the clipped response. I should have left it at that. Guilt—and my fatal tendency to butt in when everyone tells me to butt out—prompted an offer that surprised me almost as much as it did her.

  “I know it has to worry you that the spa guy is still on the loose. If you like, I could take Trish and Joey to my place tonight.”

  “I called Mrs. Hall. She’s going to keep them until . . .” She had to stop and draw a breath. “Until it’s safe.”

  “Okay. Well . . .”

  “Yeah. Well.”

  She shut the door and I made my way to the convertible I’d parked at the curb when we’d left for the spa this morning. I should have driven straight home. That’s certainly what I planned to do. What I would’ve done if that darned “until it’s safe” hadn’t buzzed around inside my head.

  As I drove out of the apartment complex I kept thinking of Joey and prissy little Miss Trish. They’d already lost their grandparents in a brutal double homicide. Almost lost their mother, too. Not once, but twice. Those attempts had failed but might prompt another approach. What better way to get back at Diane than through her kids?

  That sickening thought had me fumbling in my purse for the cell phone Sinclair had given me. He answered on the second ring.

  “What’s up, Lieutenant?”

  “Detective Ruiz said they were going to keep Diane under surveillance. What about her children?”

  “She’s left them with their designated caregiver. She says they’ll be safe there.”

  “Designated?” I echoed.

  “Right. After your call this morning, I checked her Family Care Plan. Roth submitted a revised plan two weeks ago, designating Annette Hall as both short- and long-term caregiver for the kids. By the way,” he added on a note of fierce satisfaction, “we got a hit on the perp from the spa. His name’s Vincent Capel
li. He flew into El Paso yesterday and rented a midnight blue sedan from Hertz.”

  “Flew in from where?”

  “Newark, New Jersey. Capelli is one of D’Roco’s boys. Reportedly does a lot of Dino’s dirty work for him, although the FBI hasn’t been able to pin anything on him. Maybe this time.”

  I didn’t like that “maybe” any more than “until it’s safe.” This was all getting too darn scary. So scary I found myself changing direction. Moments later I dimmed my headlights and flashed my ID to the guards manning Fort Bliss’s twenty-four-hour Cassidy Gate.

  You’d think a sprawling, frontier-era military post would be relatively quiet at nine p.m. on a cool, crisp Sunday evening. You’d think wrong. Fort Bliss is a major training center, remember? I pulled over to let a convoy on its way out to the range for a night-fire exercise rumble past. A little way farther on I slowed for a troop of joggers in Army-drab sweatsuits banded with orange reflective tape. They huffed past with the sergeant at the rear calling out a cadence that lifted my brows. I’ve heard some pretty inventive rhyming during my months at Fort Bliss. The lines that followed this “I-don’t-know-but-I’ve-been-told” sequence, however, presented a new and very imaginative play on the word “duty”!

  A reluctant grin tugged at my lips as I drove past Officers’ Row, with its tile-roofed adobe quarters built circa 1893, then turned onto Pershing Road. No lights showed in the windows of the building housing FST-3’s offices. I punched in the security code at the side entrance to let myself in.

  Ever notice how spooky empty office buildings can be? Especially thirties-era buildings with floors that creak and outdated HVAC systems that tend to burp and hiss. I didn’t waste time. Just hurried down a hall lit by the reddish glow of emergency exit signs and flipped on the lights in my office. I lingered there only long enough to grab the NLOS system.

  I tucked the carton under my arm and retraced my steps. When I opened the exit door, I came face-to-face with a terrifying, two-headed apparition. My already shredded nerves unraveled completely. Shrieking, I hurled the carton containing the NLOS system at its upper head.

  “Hey!” The creature ducked and flung up an arm to fend off the missile. “Hold your fire, Geardo Goddess!”

  Gulping, I forced my heart out of my throat and back down to my chest. I recognized O’Reilly now, but it’s going to take a long time to erase the startling image of his crinkly orange hair haloing his head like an alien’s space helmet and the lens of his glasses glowing demonic red in the reflected light of the exit sign.

  I also belatedly recognized the holographic face imprinted on his gray sweatshirt. I should. Anatoly Karpov, who Dennis considers the greatest chess player of all time, adorns his chest often enough.

  “What the heck are you doing here, Dennis?”

  “A World Chess Federation player in Indonesia challenged me to a match. We’re connecting at five a.m. our time, but my home computer has a slow connection so I came for the laptop I left at the office.”

  That was O’Reilly. Why bother with sleep when you could push bishops and rooks and pawns around a computer screen all night?

  “I saw your car in the parking lot,” he said, knuckling his glasses back into position. “What are you doing here so late on a Sunday night?”

  “Retrieving some equipment.”

  I edged past him to reclaim the carton. Luckily, it had landed in the bushes beside the door.

  Dennis leaned over to peer at the carton. “Isn’t that the NLOS system?”

  “It is.”

  His eyes went wide behind the red-tinted lenses. “Are you taking it for another test drive?”

  “Sort of.”

  “With no preestablished test parameters? No instrumentation to record the results?” A diabolical smile added to his already ghoulish appearance. “Rocky’s gonna have a cow.”

  “Probably. Gotta go.”

  “Wait! Let me get my laptop and I’ll come with you.”

  He darted inside and was out again with a computer case slung over his shoulder before I’d reached my parked car. Halfheartedly, I tried to discourage him.

  “I’m not sure you want to tag along, Dennis. There’s more going on right now than you know.”

  “So tell me,” he said as he plunked himself down in the passenger seat.

  I put the carton in the rear seat and slid behind the wheel. To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that averse to having some company. The attack at the spa this morning had left me a little jumpy.

  I pulled out of the parking lot and had just started to explain my intent when my cell phone pinged. The number on the LCD display was as familiar as my own. More familiar, come to think of it. Who calls their own number, anyway?

  “Hi, Mitch. Did you get your band of drug runners taken care of?”

  “I did. Where are you?”

  “On post. I had to stop by my office.”

  “How’s Diane?”

  “Still pretty shaken when I left her place a little while ago.”

  That caught Dennis’s attention. He twisted in his seat and sent me a questioning glance. I held up a finger, promising an explanation as soon as I got off the phone.

  “When are you heading home?” Mitch asked. “I want to swing by your place and get the skinny on what went down this morning.”

  “Actually, I’m not heading home. I’m going back to Diane’s apartment complex.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m worried about the kids. She’s left them with Mrs. Hall until all this is over but I . . . uh . . .”

  What? Hoped to soothe my guilty conscience by babysitting the babysitter?

  “Just wanted to check on them,” I finished.

  A short but speaking silence ensued. Mitch knew me too well.

  “What are you up to, Samantha?”

  “Nothing.”

  Much. I fended off further probes with a hurried promise to call him later.

  Flipping the phone shut, I told my unintended accomplice what was going down. The incident at the spa filled him with shock and righteous anger on Diane’s behalf. Those emotions diminished noticeably, however, when I hinted that the attacker might be a professional hit man responsible for at least two brutal murders . . . and that he was still on the loose.

  Nervously, O’Reilly tugged at the neck of his gray sweatshirt. “You’re, er, not suggesting we use the NLOS system to hunt this killer, are you?”

  “Lord, no! All I want to do is provide a second line of defense for Diane’s kids so this guy can’t get to her through them. Once we deploy the sensors, we’ll just sit nice and safe in the car. If anything looks even remotely suspicious, we’ll call in the cavalry.”

  Completely unaware of the inadequacy of that blithe assurance, I pulled into a Starbucks to fortify us with grande nonfat caramel cappuccinos before heading north again.

  OUR coffees were steaming up the windshield when we cruised past Diane’s four-apartment unit. We didn’t encounter a patrol car or note any parked vans that might contain a surveillance team. Not that either of us was all that familiar with police surveillance procedures. For all we knew, they could have set up passive sensors and be monitoring her apartment from a vehicle parked two blocks away.

  Which is exactly what I intended to do with the NLOS sensors. As soon as I verified Annette Hall’s address.

  “You’re riding to the rescue and you don’t know which direction to head?” Dennis asked with a touch of his usual acid.

  “Diane told me she lives in the neighborhood.”

  But where? There had to be at least a hundred or more units in the complex. Pulling over, I flipped up my phone again. Instead of going high-tech via Google and MapQuest, I went the good, old-fashioned route and dialed information.

  “Got it!”

  Darkness had descended with a vengeance now. We had to squint to see the numbers on the buildings but finally found Hall’s unit. It was a good half mile away from Diane’s, although I noted a big, grassy playground she and
the kids could cut through to shorten the distance. I drove past Hall’s building and parked halfway down the block. Twisting around to reach into the box, I extracted the tubular goggles and egg carton containing the sensors.

  “You take six and scatter them in front of her apartment,” I instructed Dennis. “I’ll go around back. Don’t forget to activate the switches.”

  “I won’t.” He pocketed the shiny round sensors. “Any suggestions what I’m supposed to do if I get mistaken for a peeping Tom or burglar?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got connections with the EPPD. If you get pinched by the cops, I’ll bail you out.”

  Not particularly reassured, Dennis exited the Sebring. I did the same. The pockets of my jogging suit sagged from the weight of the sensors as I made my way back down the block and around to the rear of the unit.

  As I had that fateful day at the shopping center, I switched on the sensors and planted them in strategic spots. My intent was to cover the gate leading to Hall’s fenced backyard from all possible angles. I placed one sensor on a stone ledge, two atop trash cans, another on a covered parking support beam, The last one I wedged in the Y of a tree branch.

  All my sensors deployed, I circled back around to check Dennis’s progress. I spotted him throwing nervous glances over his shoulder as he scurried back to the Sebring. Pudgy, geekish O’Reilly is not exactly hero material, as he himself made clear when he dropped into the passenger seat, huffing from his sprint.

  “I’m having serious doubts about this, Samantha.”

  So was I, but I switched on the goggles and slid them in position atop my nose with the slit at eye level. My world narrowed instantly to a tiny slice of dark, starry night. I knew what to expect this time, though, and braced for the barrage.

  It hit with a wallop. All of a sudden dozens of flickering, green-tinged images came zinging at me from all directions. Reflected by moonlight, they weren’t as blinding as those reflected by sunlight. Still, my head jerked back and my eyeballs seemed to spin in their sockets.

  Took a few moments, but I finally managed to focus on one image and exclude the others. I turned my head to the left inch by cautious inch. Slowly, so slowly, I sifted through the images until I located the rear of Annette Hall’s apartment. The sensor I’d wedged in the tree reflected a clear view of her back door.