Better Read Than Dead

by Victoria Laurie

  “They’re still checking her over. Do you want to wait out here with me?”

  I nodded and got up off the gurney, shuffling over to him. Milo wrapped a protective arm around me and guided me to the waiting room just down the hall.

  We sat down in the cushioned chairs and I looked dully at my feet, I couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought, and although this should have troubled me, it didn’t.

  “Can I get you anything?” Milo asked me after a while.

  I shook my head no.

  “Mind if I grab something?”

  “Go for it,” I whispered.

  Milo got up and disappeared down the hall, and I closed my eyes against the world. A few minutes later I felt something nudge my hand, and I opened my eyes to see Milo pushing a cup of hot cocoa at me. I smiled weakly up at him and took the cup. The warmth of the liquid felt good against my cold hands.

  “Not now,” Milo began, “but later we’ll need you to give a statement.”

  I nodded dully, grateful that he wasn’t pressing me for details tonight.

  I had no idea how many minutes ticked by—my sense of time was all confused—but finally a tall, good-looking doctor approached us. He squatted down in front of me, and right away I liked him. “Miss Cooper?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m Dr. Burton. I’ve been tending to your sister.”

  Dr. Burton had a pleasant face, and large brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He smelled of aftershave, and his smile was full of gorgeous white teeth. “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “Well, she got a pretty good knock on the head, and her throat’s a little bruised, but overall I think she’ll make a full recovery.”

  I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and reached a hand out to Dr. Burton’s arm. “Thank you,” was all my beleaguered voice could manage.

  “Would you like to see her?”

  I nodded vigorously and Dr. Burton led me down the hallway to another curtained bed. He pulled the sheet slightly away and stepped back, saying, “I’ll give you a couple of minutes with her; then she’ll need to get her sleep. We’ve given her a pretty aggressive sedative, so she might not make a lot of sense right now.”

  I nodded and shuffled past him but stopped just short of the bed.

  I’ve never thought of my sister as fragile. Even though Cat’s small, she’s feisty. But with her lying there in her hospital gown, with her hair matted, a large gash pulled together by ugly stitches over her right temple, and horrible bruises ringing her neck, I was taken aback by her sudden delicateness. Carefully I moved forward and took her hand, lifting it gently into mine. Her hand was warm, and this gave me more reassurance than any doctor could.

  Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at me, a slow, painful smile spreading along her lips, but never reaching her eyes. “Hey,” she said weakly.

  “Shhhh.” I scolded. “Don’t talk. Rest, and we’ll talk later, okay?”

  Cat grunted and closed her eyes. Within moments she was asleep again.

  A few minutes later a nurse came in and subtly told me that it would be better to let Cat rest quietly. I shuffled back out to the waiting room, and over to Milo.

  “Let’s get you home,” he said, getting up and wrapping his protective arm around me again.

  We walked over to his car and he drove me to my house, neither of us saying a word. He parked in front, and as I reached over to grab the door handle Milo stopped me and asked, “Is there anyone you want me to call?”

  I stopped and looked back thoughtfully at him. There were two phone calls that only I could make. One was to my brother-in-law, Tommy. “No, just my brother-in-law, but I think it’s better if I call him. Thanks, though . . .”

  “Sure. You going to be okay by yourself tonight?”

  “Yeah, I’m just really tired. I’ll call Tommy and then catch some sleep. When do you want me to give a statement?”

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven thirty and we’ll drop by the station before I take you to your office. Sound okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, and got out of the car. My limbs felt like lead. “See you then,” I said, closing the car door and trudging up the driveway. Once inside I waited until Milo pulled away, then walked over to my phone and began sifting through the numbers on my caller ID. Finding the number I wanted I dialed it quickly, my heart rate picking up as the phone began to ring.

  “Kapordelis residence,” answered a woman’s voice.

  “Andros Kapordelis, please,” I said into the phone, marveling at how calm I sounded.

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Abigail Cooper.”

  “One moment please.”

  I waited for about thirty seconds; then the line was picked up, “Good evening, Miss Cooper. How is your sister?”

  “I want to make a deal,” I said, ignoring his question.

  There was a low chuckle, and what I imagined a satisfied smirk as Andros answered, “What sort of ‘deal’ did you have in mind?”

  “We do a trade, you and I.”

  “What do you want to trade?”

  “I help you with this project you were talking about, and you make Goon help me identify the motherfucker who tried to kill my sister.”

  There was a pause on the other end as Andros considered my offer. “And what makes you think that my associate can help you identify this man? After all, he was wearing a mask, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Yes, he was—that is, until Goon pulled it off him.”

  “How do you know this?” Andros asked, surprise in his voice.

  “By the time I got there the psycho who attacked my sister was gone, but I saw Goon tuck the mask into his coat, and then the police arrived, so there wasn’t time to ask him about it. Goon saw the guy’s face, Mr. Kapordelis; I’m sure of it.”

  There was an even longer pause, followed only by, “I see. . . .”

  While Kapordelis pondered that, I had a chance to think about something that was bothering me and the valium allowed me to ask the burning question. “You know, Mr. Kapordelis, what I can’t really figure out is why Goon would help us at all? I mean I’m grateful, to a point of course, but why would he come to our rescue when not two minutes earlier he was threatening me with great bodily harm?”

  Kapordelis’s tone grew annoyed and his answer sent a shiver up my spine. “My associate suffers one great weakness. His mother was raped and murdered when he was a small child and he witnessed the event. I can see I have indulged this weakness too much, and I will have to take appropriate measures to ensure it does not happen again. Consider yourself very lucky, Miss Cooper—if I’d sent any of my other associates to deal with you, we would be having a very different conversation right now.”

  “Do we have a deal?” I asked anxiously, wanting to change the subject.

  “Yes, we have a deal. My associate will not make a statement to the police, but I will allow him to describe your sister’s attacker, and it goes without saying that you will not mention my name to anyone at the police department.”

  I didn’t respond to Andros’s demand, mostly because he was only stating the obvious, plus I was listening for my lie detector, but the valium I’d taken had dulled all my senses, and I wasn’t sure if my intuition was able to work under the influence.

  My silence, however, was read as hesitation, so Andros felt it necessary to pound on me a little more. “I’m warning you, Miss Cooper, any leak to the police about myself or my associates will be met with immediate action. Are we clear?”

  “Perfectly,” I snarled.

  “Fine, it is settled. I will send a car to get you on Sunday evening at seven o’clock and bring you here so that we may discuss my project.”

  “Fine, but know this, Kapordelis—I help you, you help me, then we’re done with each other—understand?”

  Andros chuckled ominously and answered me by hanging up.

  Chapter Ten

  “So then what happened?” Milo asked me. It was Friday morning, and I
was parked across from him at his desk, giving him my version of what happened to Cat the night before.

  “Well, I was wrapping up with a client, and I sent Cat on ahead to the car, you know, so that I could take her to the airport.”

  Milo nodded as he scribbled my comments on a legal pad. “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “And I was talking to my client in the hallway—”

  “What’s the name of your client?” he asked, interrupting me.

  “What does it matter?” I snapped back.

  Milo looked up at me in surprise, not understanding why I was so defensive. He explained: “Well, your client may be another possible witness. I’d like to follow up with them, if that’s okay?”

  “They didn’t see anything. I got the phone call from Cat right as I was finishing with them—”

  “So they didn’t overhear your conversation?”

  My face was turning red, and my palms were beginning to sweat. There was no way I could tell Milo the full story and live to tell about it. I wanted to cooperate with him, but only so much. My plan was to get a physical description from Goon, and then bring that to Milo later. I hadn’t worked out how I would introduce this little tidbit, but I still had time to sort through the details. “No, they didn’t. In fact, I think they had already walked away when I got Cat’s call.”

  Milo was studying me curiously. He knew I was lying. He just didn’t know why. Finally he said, “Okay, so this client of yours is out of the picture; then what?”

  “Well, Cat said she couldn’t find my car, and she said she was on the third floor, so I’m telling her that she’s up one floor too high when all of the sudden I hear her being grabbed—”

  “How did you know she was being grabbed?”

  “Uhhh . . .” I thought for a moment. “I heard this like gulping sound and then I heard her phone drop to the pavement, and I heard sounds of a struggle—”

  “Did she scream?”

  “No . . . I think her mouth was covered or something. I could only hear this muffled struggle through the phone, and I just knew she was being attacked.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And so I just started running to the parking garage screaming at the top of my lungs, and I guess when I got to the third floor the rapist must have gotten spooked by all my screaming, ’cause all I saw was Cat, lying unconscious on the pavement.”

  “I see. . . .”

  “So I went over to her and picked her up and started screaming for help, and a few seconds later I heard the sirens in the parking garage, and you guys showed up.”

  “So no one else was with you?” Milo asked.

  The way he said this made me think he knew more than he let on, but I had to stick to my story for now. “Nope, no one. I just came up to the third floor and there she was. . . .” My voice wobbled a little as I recalled the image of Cat beaten and bloody, lying limp in Goon’s arms.

  “Anything else you want to tell me?” Milo’s voice, normally soft and coaxing, had a hard edge to it. He knew I was full of crap, and it pissed him off that I was unwilling to trust him.

  “Nope . . . that about covers it,” I said, not meeting his eyes.

  “Okay,” he said, and closed the file in front of him. “We’ll look at the videotape from the garage’s security cameras and maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  My head snapped up. “Videotape?”

  “Yeah. Our first really good break in this case. The garage has a couple of security cameras posted around the structure. With any luck we’ll be able to see the attack on your sister, and maybe help identify this guy.”

  Uh-oh! “That’s great Milo. Really . . . that’s great!” I was totally screwed. “How soon before you analyze the videotape?”

  “Well, unfortunately the owner of the garage is in Morocco or something, and the management company can’t release the tape without either his permission or a search warrant. We’re working on both right now.”

  “So it could be a day or two . . .” I said.

  Milo nodded, watching me closely. “You worried about something on the tape, Abby?”

  “Me?” I said, forcing a chuckle. “No, not at all. I think it’s great! Wow, good job! Maybe we’ll catch this guy,” I said with a fake smile. And then it hit me: If Goon had pulled off the rapist’s mask, maybe there would be a good image of the rapist. I’d have some explaining to do, but at least we could possibly have a face to identify. I brightened at that thought and said, “Good job, Milo, really. And thanks so much for taking care of me last night; I was kind of a basket case.”

  Milo was thoroughly confused at my sudden change in temperament. I’d gone from dodging his twenty questions and avoiding his eyes to sincere appreciation. The switch had to be a little bizarre. “That’s what I’m here for. You need a lift to your office?”

  “Please. I want to get my car and head back over to the hospital to visit with Cat before I start work.”

  “Did your brother-in-law fly in last night?” he said, getting up and grabbing his coat.

  “Yeah, he flew in on the red-eye and went straight to the hospital. I was totally out of it by the time he landed—that pill they gave me really knocked me on my butt.”

  “Valium will do that. You feeling all right today?”

  We had reached the downstairs lobby, and Milo held open the door for me as I walked through the door leading to the parking lot. “You mean for nearly having my sister killed right before my eyes? Yeah, I guess I’m okay. I just want her to recover quickly and go home as soon as possible—” Crap! I hadn’t meant to say that!

  “Go home? Why’re you in such a hurry to have her go home?”

  I got into Milo’s car and waited until he’d gotten in as well before I answered, my mind working furiously to come up with something. “Oh, trust me, it’s not me who wants her to go home; she’ll be all over that idea. If I know Cat she’ll want to get back to work as soon as possible; you know, she has an empire to run.” I inserted a small forced laugh as I said this.

  “Uh-huh,” Milo said, again watching me closely.

  “So!” I said quickly changing the topic. “Are you going to talk to Cat today?”

  “Yes, just as soon as her doctor gives me the go-ahead. Probably later on this morning.”

  Whew! I still had time to tell Cat not to mention Goon to the police. All I needed was for Milo to ask a lot of questions and start sniffing around Andros Kapordelis. That would bring a boatload of trouble down on me, as I was sure Andros would know immediately who had fingered him. My sister was too vulnerable. I had to get her out of town, and then I’d help Andros out with whatever project he needed me for, get my description from Goon, identify the rapist and finally take a nice long vacation somewhere. I still wasn’t convinced that Andros recognized that, after this, there would be no continuation of our “partnership.”

  The moment Milo dropped me off at my car, I sped over to the hospital to visit with Cat. Tommy met me in the hall; he looked pale and shaken. I hugged him hard and asked, “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he answered in a hushed tone. “It’s your sister I’m worried about. She looks like hell.”

  “I know, but she’ll heal. She’s strong, and the doctor said she’s just got a bad gash and a concussion. The bruises will fade, and she’ll get better quickly. Before you know it this will just be an ugly memory.”

  Tommy nodded and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. My brother-in-law was a gentle man. It was unfathomable to him that someone could have been so violent to his wife. “She’s up if you want to see her. I was just on my way downstairs to get her something to eat. She’s refusing to eat the slop they served her for breakfast.”

  “See?” I said with a winning smile. “Now that sounds like Cat, doesn’t it?”

  Tommy gave me a small smile and said, “Yeah, I guess. She’s already got all the nurses jumping. I have a feeling they may want to discharge her early just to get her out of here.”

  I smiled and squeezed Tommy’s
arm as I moved past him and into the room with my sister. “Hey, there,” I said when I saw her.

  She still looked awful. The right side of her face was swollen slightly, there were scratch marks and bruises over most of her neck, and her lower lip had a cut on it, but at least she was sitting up in bed, awake and alert. “Abby!” she said warmly. “Oh, I was wondering when you’d get here.”

  I moved quickly over to the bed and pulled up a chair. “How’re you feeling?” I asked, taking her hand.

  “All things considered I think I’m doing okay. Oh, and before I forget, can I please have the address of that client of yours?”

  The blood drained out of my face, and I asked, “Which client?”

  Cat looked at me as if I were daft, and said, “Uh, the one who saved my life?”

  I gulped down my anxiety as I looked at her, trying to come up with an answer. I thought for sure Cat had lost consciousness before Goon showed up, but maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d seen him rescue her and then blacked out. “How do you know he saved your life?” I asked carefully.

  “Because I was the one being attacked, remember? I saw him come out of the stairwell and charge toward us. My assailant let go of me and tried to run, but your client chased him down, and the last thing I remember was that they were wrestling with each other. Then I must have lost consciousness, because I don’t remember much else until this morning.”

  My heart was racing. How the hell was I going to explain everything to Cat and get her to cooperate? If the word “mob” even remotely entered the conversation, my sister wouldn’t waste a second whisking me off to some hideaway to make sure I was safe. She’d never let me set foot in this town again. She would also insist on a career change and probably a change of name. She’d be as tough to deal with as the frigging FBI. “Cat,” I began, “listen, about my client . . .”

  “What was his name?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated, but trust me, I can’t tell you.”

  “I don’t understand. He’s your client; why can’t you tell me his name?”

  I took in a big breath, racking my brain for a plausible explanation. Finally a thought occurred to me. “Because he’s hiding from the Russian Mafia.” Liar, liar, pants on fire . . .