Justice Buried

by Patricia Bradley

  “I’m okay,” she said, then bent over and braced her hands on her knees to catch her breath. “My . . . arms . . . gave out.”

  “Are you crazy? That’s a fifteen-foot drop.” He had to be an idiot to let her do this. “I should have stopped you when I saw you were getting tired.”

  “Excuse me?” She raised her hand. “I’m okay. Not the first time I’ve fallen.” She pinned him with a hard stare. “And it won’t be the last. And for the record—you don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Somebody needs to.” The words were out of his mouth before he thought. He stepped back. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, but you almost made me have a heart attack.”

  Her expression softened. “I’m sorry for that, but I’m not trying to kill myself. I’m an advanced level climber, so there’s no need to worry.”

  Brad didn’t care what level she was, falling was falling. “You’re not invincible.”

  “I know how to fall as well as when to quit.” She crooked her arm. “Ready to leave?”

  His shoulders relaxed. “Definitely.”

  “Maybe the next time we come, you can try it,” she said as they walked out the door. “Wear loose clothes, and we’ll rent your shoes. I’ll even show you how to fall.”

  “That’s supposed to make me say yes? Although you did make it look easy that first time you went up.” He scanned the area. The parking lot needed more lighting. Anyone could be lurking in the shadows. Because the lot had been so full, he’d had to park near the busy street, and he guided Kelsey toward it.

  “Did you leave your trunk open?” she asked.

  Across the parking lot a light shone from his trunk, and a dark figure moved.

  “Hey!” Brad yelled.

  The person looked toward him and took off running toward the street.

  “Go back inside,” he said.

  “What?”

  Brad turned to Kelsey. “Hurry—get inside the building.”

  Her eyes wide, she wheeled and ran.

  When he looked around, the man was gone. Brad reached for his gun and remembered he’d left it locked in the console before they entered the gym. Kneeling, he grabbed the ankle gun he usually wore and crept between the parked cars, listening for sounds over the hum of traffic. Nothing but normal sounds. Cars coming and going—he had no way of telling if one of them was his guy.

  Brad returned the gun to its holster and approached his car. The trunk had been jimmied open, and the files belonging to Paul Carter were gone. He checked inside the car and opened the console. The gun was still there, and he strapped it on. Whoever the thief was only wanted the box of papers. He took his phone out and dialed the dispatcher and requested a patrol car to take a report.

  While he waited for the patrolman, Brad went back inside the gym.

  “Did you catch him?”

  “No. Not even sure it was a male—too far away. Could you tell?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone. That’s why I had trouble understanding why you wanted me to come back inside. What did they take?”

  “Your dad’s papers.”

  She frowned. “Why would they want—” Her eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Tell me the person trying to kill me wasn’t here.”

  “I’m afraid he was. No one else would have any reason to take them.”

  “That means he was watching us at the house. But why did he wait until we were ready to leave to steal them?”

  “Either he likes to press his luck, or the person I saw was someone who came along later, saw the jimmied trunk, and planned to help himself.”

  Either way, the killer knew their every move. He could up his game any time, and tonight showed Brad that he would be helpless to stop him.

  32

  “YOU DON’T HAVE TO HELP ME INTO THE CAR,” Kelsey said. The light from the overhead streetlamp cast shadows in the car. “I’m not falling apart.”

  “Can’t a guy just be nice?” Brad replied, leaning in to check her seat belt.

  She made a face at him, and he grinned. Then he straightened and blocked the light, creating a silhouette of his body.

  In an instant she was hanging eleven stories outside the window Thursday night. The man in the room. Brad moved and the streetlight almost blinded her. The killer’s face flashed in her mind.

  She screamed.

  He jerked the car door open. “What’s wrong?”

  “I saw it again.”

  Brad knelt beside the open door. “Saw what?”

  “The killer’s face.”

  He took her hands, stilling them. She hadn’t even known they were shaking.

  “Take a deep breath. You’re hyperventilating.”

  She leaned back against the seat and filled her lungs and released the air. As she focused on her breathing, her body quit shaking. If only she could hold on to the memory of the face. “I saw him. The killer.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No. Thursday night. Remember I told you I saw a flash of light in the room? I must have seen his face, because this is twice that I’ve had an image pop into my mind superimposed on the silhouette. But I only see it like a flash, and then it’s gone.”

  “That’s why the killer thinks you saw him.” Brad rubbed his chin, an odd look on his face. “Have you ever been hypnotized?”

  She stared at him. “No. Do you think hypnotherapy might help me see the face more clearly?”

  “It’s possible. I’ve seen it work before.”

  “Who would I see?” She would do just about anything to be able to identify the face. Ever since Brad revealed her father was dead, the desire to catch the murderer had grown from a tiny seed to a full-blown obsession. It had been all she thought about as she climbed and was the reason she hadn’t realized the strength in her arms was gone.

  “I have an idea, but let’s talk more about it tomorrow.” He stood. “Do you think you’re okay now?”

  She nodded. “Let’s get my car so I can go home.”

  “How would you feel about leaving your car at the museum? We can call your bodyguard so he can drive to your apartment, and I can drop you off and pick you up in the morning.”

  Did she want to be without a car?

  “Your bodyguard will have a car if you need one.”

  The question must have shown on her face. “Okay. Let me call him to go to the apartment.”

  “I’ll wire the trunk shut.”

  While Brad took care of the trunk, she called the number her bodyguard had given her, and he assured her that he would be there and have the apartment secured by the time she arrived.

  “Thank you,” she said and was about to end the call. “Oh, check the top of the doors before you go in. I put tape across all the doors before I left so I would know if any of them had been opened. I even put a strip across the garage door at the bottom.”

  She hung up as Brad slid into the front seat.

  “I heard that. Good idea,” he said.

  “Yeah. If anyone comes into my apartment, I want to know about it,” she said. “He’ll be there by the time we get home.”

  “Good deal.”

  Kelsey let her body sink against the seat, feeling each sore muscle and bruise caused by the fall. The Rock Zone had good mats, but still, she’d fallen fifteen feet and hit something solid. Practicing how to roll when she fell had paid off, though.

  She should have known better than to climb another round after two mistakes. First, her foot had slipped on an easy foothold and then she’d misjudged a handhold. Sometimes she didn’t understand why she pushed beyond her fatigue. Yeah, she did. It was the only way to build endurance, not because she thought she was invincible.

  She glanced at Brad’s profile, smiling at his square jaw. Stubborn jaw. But he was a good man. He’d stayed with her after delivering that awful news. Despite how badly she’d treated him earlier today.

  Except, he hadn’t trusted her with the truth. Did h
e think she couldn’t keep a secret? No, that wasn’t it, or he wouldn’t have told her at all. “Do you think someone at the museum killed my father?” It was so hard to say those words.

  “Strong possibility,” he said. “There are at least five people working at the museum now who were there when your father was killed. Robert Tomlinson and his brother Mark, Jackson King, the—”

  “Jackson worked at the museum twenty-eight years ago? He would have been a teenager then.”

  “Eighteen. He was a summer intern. Julie Webb worked there, as well, and remembered your dad.” He frowned.

  “What?”

  “I just realized your stepdad was on the board of trustees at the museum twenty-eight years ago.”

  “Surely you don’t think Sam . . .” She studied his face. He did. Well, Brad was wrong about that. Sam Allen would not hurt a soul. “Grant was collections manager at the time as well.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “Yes. I don’t know if Mom told you, but she met Sam and Grant in college and they became good friends. Dad was Sam’s and Mom’s professor, and the four of them worked on an archaeology dig in the Giza Pyramid Plateau in Egypt. That’s where Sam met his first wife. Sam and Grant still do digs here in the States occasionally.”

  “Were your parents married when they were in Egypt?”

  “They were. Mom stayed with the dig until she was pregnant with me and decided she didn’t want to deliver a baby in the desert, so she came home. Dad didn’t return to the States until I was a year old.”

  “Do you know when Sam and Grant returned?”

  “About the same time as Mom, I think.” She turned his question over in her mind. Funny, she’d never connected the dots between Sam and her mom. Or how it seemed as though Sam had always been in her life, especially after his first wife died. Even more than her own father. And then not long after her dad left town, her mom and Sam married.

  She looked up. “You don’t think Sam killed my dad, do you?”

  “Everyone is a suspect at this point,” Brad said as he started the car and backed out of the space. Sam and Paul both loved Cynthia, but had Sam been in love with Cynthia in Egypt? Cynthia hadn’t wanted to marry Sam because of Paul, even though they were divorced. Maybe Sam decided to get rid of his problem.

  Not that he thought there’d been any impropriety on Cynthia’s part, but it had happened before—a love triangle resolved with the death of one of the participants. But why would Sam kill Hendrix and Rutherford, and most of all, why would he try to kill Kelsey? He didn’t like the answer that came to him.

  Was Sam afraid Kelsey had seen his face? He stopped for a red light and glanced at Kelsey. She’d leaned her head back on the rest and had her eyes closed. But closing them didn’t hide the tears seeping through her lashes.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” he said as the light changed and he pressed the pedal.

  “Me too.”

  They drove a few blocks before she spoke again.

  “It’s funny. All my life, I’ve been okay with him leaving. I mean, I hated that he stole the artifacts and left behind a ruined reputation. But I understood why he ran away. Because that’s what I always wanted to do.

  “I didn’t let people get close to me in high school. I was afraid they either liked me because of Sam’s money, or if they passed that test and I let them past the wall I’d built, I was afraid they’d find out my father was a thief.” She sighed. “And now I’m full of guilt because I believed he stole the artifacts and ran away so he wouldn’t have to face the consequences.”

  Brad turned into Sabra’s drive and pulled around back to Kelsey’s apartment. He didn’t know what to say. Kelsey wasn’t the only one dealing with guilt. All those years ago, he’d thought she was an arrogant rich kid and had judged her for it.

  “You need a good night’s sleep,” he said.

  “It probably won’t be tonight.” She sat up straighter. “Oh look, there’s my bodyguard, and he’s checking the tape on the garage door.”

  He followed her nod, recognizing a fellow police officer at Kelsey’s garage door. Tim Corelli. With five kids to put through college, he was like more than a few MPD cops who picked up security jobs to supplement their income. “I didn’t know he was moonlighting with Rutherford Security.”

  “You know him?”

  “Tim? He’s a uniformed officer.” Brad lowered his window. “Wait up and I’ll back you,” he called.

  Nodding, Corelli walked toward them. “I already have the remote. I’ll get the door up.” He turned and pointed the remote toward the garage door.

  Brad didn’t know if he saw the light flash first or heard the explosion that blew the door out, pitching the police officer to the ground.

  With Kelsey’s screams in his ears, he was halfway out of the car when the shock wave rocked him back. He jerked his phone out and dialed 911. “There’s an explosion at . . .” What’s the address? He pulled it from his memory and shouted it into the phone. “There’s an officer down.”

  Pocketing his cell, he ran to Corelli, but Kelsey beat him there. She knelt and felt his wrist.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “But his pulse is too fast to count. And it looks like he might have hit his head.”

  Brad knelt on the other side. All he could think of was those five beautiful kids. “Come on, man, stay with us.”

  The officer’s eyes blinked open. “What happened?” he whispered.

  “Explosion. Can you cough?”

  “What?”

  “Can you cough? Your heart rate is high. I need you to cough!”

  He gave a weak cough, and Brad said, “Harder.”

  “I hear a siren,” Kelsey said.

  They couldn’t get there fast enough to suit Brad. Footsteps ran toward them, and he looked up. Sabra’s husband.

  “What happened? Was it the water heater?” Mason asked.

  He thought it was an accident? “You have anything to cover him with?”

  “I have blankets in the bedrooms,” Mason said.

  “Would you get one? It might keep him from going into shock.” Brad tried to get Corelli to cough again. A minute later Mason handed him a duvet.

  “It’s the first thing I found,” he said.

  Brad took it from him, and Kelsey helped wrap it over the injured man. Minutes later firefighters and paramedics were pouring past Sabra’s house to the garage apartment in the backyard.

  “His heart rate is really fast,” Brad said to one of the paramedics.

  “We’ve got it from here.”

  Brad grasped Tim’s hand. “You’re going to make it.”

  His eyes widened. “Wait.” He tried to sit up. “The tape—”

  “You two take this up later,” the paramedic said, moving between his patient and Brad.

  “No! I have to tell him.”

  “What about the tape?” Brad asked.

  “It was intact.”

  Brad barely noticed being hustled out of the way by another medic. Either it was a gas explosion or . . . He turned and sought Kelsey, his throat constricting when he couldn’t find her. He scanned the area, finally spotting her at her sister’s back door with a detective he recognized from the Bomb Unit, Lieutenant Robinson.

  Brad took out his cell and called Rachel Sloan. When she answered, he said, “I need a place for Kelsey. I think someone just tried to kill her again with a bomb. Any chance we can put her in one of the safe houses we use for witnesses?”

  “I’ll check and see. Is she all right?” she asked. “What happened?”

  “Not sure yet, but I believe someone planted a bomb in her garage. She’s shaken, and one of our uniformed officers was injured. Tim Corelli. He was moonlighting as her bodyguard.”

  “I’ll be right there. Is Corelli going to be okay?”

  “I think so. And call Reggie—Kelsey may have seen Hendrix’s murderer Thursday night. It was so brief, she only got a flash of his face. And let me know as soon as you can about that saf
e house,” he said and hung up. He’d had no experience with the safe houses, only that they were used occasionally for witnesses in big cases.

  His cell rang. “Hollister,” he barked into it.

  “Brad?”

  Elle. Wait. Is it Tuesday night? “Sorry, I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Oh. I . . . I thought you might be home soon.”

  “I’m afraid not. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m dealing with an emergency.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “I’ll hang around a little longer, and if you don’t come soon, I’ll leave the dish I made on the stove. You can have it when you get home.”

  He hated the hurt in her voice but didn’t know what to do about it. “Are we still on for dinner Saturday night?”

  “You don’t have to work?”

  Brad couldn’t guarantee it. “Shouldn’t. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He pocketed the phone. As long as he was a detective, the job would come first sometimes. Not always, but there would be nights like tonight, and it would be interesting to see how Elle handled it.

  He jogged over to the back door, where Kelsey was sitting on the steps with her head in her hands. He addressed Robinson, who was standing nearby. “You think it’s a bomb?”

  Robinson glanced toward the apartment. “Yep. Figure it was on the garage door opener and that’s what took the brunt of the explosion. If he’d put a delay switch on it, it would’ve damaged more of the apartment. Of course that’s me guessing. Won’t know for sure until the investigation is complete. Cooley is bringing his bomb detection dog.”

  Brad didn’t need the dog to tell him it was a bomb. The odor of ammonia was burning his nose. This changed everything, and Kelsey wasn’t taking a step anywhere without him by her side.

  The lieutenant jerked his head toward the stretcher the paramedics had brought in. “Who’s the victim?”

  “Tim Corelli. Patrol officer. Been a cop maybe seven years.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Kelsey asked from where she sat.

  “I think so. Main thing will be to make sure there’s no internal bleeding and get his heart rate back to normal. Are you okay?” Brad asked Kelsey. Seemed like he asked her that a lot.

  She shrugged. “About as well as the next murder target. I called my parents, and they should be here any minute. Where’d Mason go?”