by Joni Rodgers
When he felt the first four shots in a tight cluster below his left shoulder blade, he knew he’d figured things wrong.
It didn’t surprise him that Suri had pulled off the perfect Red Harvest, but until that moment, Shep would have bet paper money that Barth would be using Smartie’s gun for the multi-task of killing him, disposing of Kara and setting up Smartie as the raving, jealous lover, who was probably scheduled to kill herself shortly before the police got to her. But over the years, Shep had taken a number of pills through Kevlar vests. Bullets from a .38 carried the burning ache of a bee sting. This felt more like being hacked in the back with the harsh end of a claw hammer.
The next slug strafed the back of his helmet, slamming the front of his head into the back of Kara’s head and the front of Kara’s head into the unforgiving metal wall. She went limp in his arms, and Shep let her slump boneless to the floor, leaving a smear of blood from her broken nose and teeth.
He tried to draw his weapon from his shoulder holster. In his mind, he saw himself wheel and fire at eye level before he took a round in the face. But his arm refused to rise that far. When he turned his body, the agony was blinding, blackening. He managed to get a round off, and it caught Barth in his shoulder. A flicker of sideswiped irritation ticked across his face.
“Drop your weapon,” Shep attempted, but it sounded more like a plea than a threat.
“Drop your weapon!” A stronger voice echoed from the half-lit cave of the parking ramp. “HPD! I said drop it!”
Barth popped Shep in the kidney again as he turned, and it cost him a vital split-second. The officer’s first shot opened a hole next to Barth’s Adam’s apple. The second struck above his right eye, arching him back, dropping him to the cement floor. As his looming shadow went down and blossomed like an oil spill on the concrete, Shep saw Claire, still in Isosceles stance with her gun in both hands, incongruently garbed in scant silk pajamas, a trench coat and motorcycle boots, red hair wild, body wired tight, big eyes demanding what the hell.
Shep had never seen her look more gorgeous.
The doors slid closed between them, and the elevator crawled back up into the building like a squat, grumbling beetle up a drainpipe.
Shep leaned on the wall, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. He slid down next to Kara. She moaned a little, and he reached out to her, but the movement brought a siege of jackknives in his back. Working the helmet off his head, he studied the bullet sear that scored the outer shell half a click from his brain pan. Shep closed his eyes and felt Janny’s arms around him. He sat for a moment, regrouping, quietly croaking her name through the pain.
Drawing shallow, rasping breath, he worked his gray jacket off, then his white shirt. He struggled the weight of the bulletproof vest from his shoulders, forced himself up to his knees and hit the third floor stop on the elevator. Sirens closed in below, covering the bubbled noise of Kara’s crying and cussing.
“My face,” she whimpered, only it sounded like “by faith.”
As the elevator doors eased open, Shep got clumsily to his feet. Pushing and pulling for every exhale and inhale, he stumbled out into the fluorescent light of the third floor hallway and hit the button that would close the doors and drop Kara back down to meet the police unit.
“Asshole,” she bawled. “Look what you did to my face. What am I supposed to do now?”
Shep gritted his teeth and told her. “Apply some fucking physics.”
\ ///
27
The glass walls were streaked with the beginnings of sunrise when Shep got off the elevator at the offices of Salinger, Pringle, Fitch & Edloe. Suri’s face washed with relief when she saw him.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
Shep nodded.
“Thank God. It’s over, it’s over.”
Her knees buckled, and she had to lean against the wall until Shep got his arms around her. Because he needed his arms around her, needed her open mouth under his, needed the jagged agony of her strong hold on his battered ribs as she kissed his raw lips and sweaty neck and clenched jaw. For a moment, he didn’t care about anything else. But then it was a moment later.
“Suri,” he said, kissing the corners of her eyes, “we have to go to the DA now.”
She pushed back from him, collecting herself.
“No, it’s all right. There’s no need for that, Shep. I’ve carefully managed the evidence from the beginning. Everything will be on Barth. All we have to do is keep mum, you and I, just keep our wits about us and continue business as usual.”
“Business as usual?” Shep gripped Suri’s head between his hands. Burning in his wrists was enough love and hate to break her neck. “Business as usual would have been Barth walking through that door instead of me.”
“You know that’s not what I wanted. He had to be gotten rid of, Shep, and you wouldn’t have done it any other way.”
“If we go to the DA,” he said, “if you come forward voluntarily, you’ll have that in your favor. You can argue the mitigating circumstances.”
“I won’t need to argue anything if we just keep mum.”
“Suri, it is going to come out. One way or another.”
“But not this way.”
She took his hand and pressed the listening devices from her home office into his palm.
“Friends close, enemies closer,” he observed.
“What does that make us, Shep?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“All I’m asking you to do is keep quiet. Like you have in the past.”
“I’m not going down that road again.”
“You have no choice.”
“I’ll find another way to get the evidence.”
“zYou’ll be in prison for rape and murder.” Suri waited. Allowed him to gauge the steel in her voice. “I will use your DNA, your blood, the bite mark, sizeable deposits to your personal accounts. My testimony will make you complicit in everything Barth did. I’ll tell them that when I tried to come forward you assaulted me and killed Barth in cold blood. It’s not worth it, Shep. You’ll lose what little you have left. The modicum of respect you’ve managed to recoup. Your wife’s money. The opportunity to see Charlie grow up.”
“None of that will mean shit if I crawl back under that rock,” said Shep. “I wouldn’t even want Charlie to know me. I won’t do it, Suri.”
“Yes, you will.” She spoke softly, spoke the words into his mouth. “Because you want me, Shep, and this is the only way we can be together.”
Suri took his closed fist and held it against her heart. Her pulse fluttered against the back of his hand like the wings of a hummingbird. Shep looked into her dark eyes, searching for the flash of gold, finding only raw fear and unedited resolve. Over her shoulder, all of Houston was coming alive, the soaring skyline, the teeming anthill of traffic. Rust-colored sunrise crawled through the steel beams and broken bayous of Shep’s beautiful city.
“I want you, Suri,” he whispered in her ear. “But I could never fall asleep next to you again.”
Rather than open the kitchen door when Shep knocked, Libby called through the curtained window, “If you’re here to apologize—”
“Open the goddamn door. I think my ribs are broken.”
The curtain moved a little, revealing a brief flash of her eye, then the door flew open, and Libby moved him to a kitchen chair with the jaded calm bred by all those years in the ER.
“Sit here. Off the shirt. Where’s this blood coming from?”
“Somebody else. I was wearing the vest.”
“Praise God and pass the Kevlar. Lean forward. Deep breath,” said Libby, and Shep clenched and groaned as she palpated the ribs on the left side of his torso. “Is there a stabbing pain when you inhale? Here? How about here?”
She fetched a blue canvas tote from a coat tree in the hall and hooked a stethoscope into her ears. Shep propped his elbows on the kitchen table and rested his head in his hand while Libby gave his blood pressure and pulse the once o
ver.
“Would it do any good to say you need this X-rayed?” she asked, and when Shep shook his head, she sighed and flipped out her cell phone.
The kitchen fell quiet while she waited for someone to pick up. In the silence, Shep experienced each beat of his heart as a dull, aching echo.
“Sandy, it’s Libby. I’m sorry to bug you at home. I’ve got my jackass brother here, and he’s been Kevlar popped below the left scapula. There’s at least one rib fracture, and I’m—yes, I know, but he won’t go in. Discoloration, stabbing pain. Respiration is a little shallow, but his vitals are good. I just want to make sure I’m not missing flail chest. Okay, hang on. Let me get him on his feet.”
Shep stood with some difficulty, and Libby set the phone aside, spanning her hands across his back while he breathed and swore. She whisked two Kleenex from a box on the counter and instructed him to cough while she listened to his chest with her stethoscope. She examined the tissues and retrieved her phone.
“No visible disarticulation. No bloody sputum. Cough sounds clear. I’d describe him as alert. Among other things.” She wrote on a pad attached to the side of the fridge. “All I have is OTC naproxen. How many milligrams? Okay. Thanks, Sandy.”
Guiding Shep to sit on the edge of the table, Libby spanned her hands again to measure from his sternum to his spine, prepped half a dozen strips of surgical tape in appropriate lengths, and suspended them from a cupboard door. Shep didn’t think about Suri’s claw marks on his back until he felt the sting of antiseptic and an ooze of antibiotic ointment being applied.
“Looks like quite a night,” Libby said dryly.
“Lib, I can’t talk right now.”
She taped his ribs and told him, “You need to cough. Often. Even if it hurts.”
Shep coughed feebly, and it hurt like hell.
“I can’t ask Sandy to call in a prescription if you won’t go for the X-rays. That’s not cool,” she said. “But I might have some Vicodin leftover from that root canal.”
“Thanks, Lib. I’m sorry I screwed up your date last night.”
“It wasn’t going great anyway,” Libby sighed. “He didn’t want to hear word one about Charlie. Got all handsy during dinner. I was like, geezes, can I eat my pork chop before you dive down my dress?”
“Maybe don’t look so gorgeous next time,” Shep tried to smile.
“Whatever.” She bundled the blood pressure cuff and tucked it in her tote.
“Can you give me a ride home?” Shep asked.
“You need to stay here today so I can keep an eye on you. Get in my bed. I’ll crawl in with Charlie until he wakes up. He slept all week in his big boy bed. He’s pretty jazzed about it.”
“Great,” said Shep, trying not to sound too profoundly weary to care. “Libby, the DA’s going to be looking for me in a little while.”
“They can pound it. You’re not here.”
“No. I don’t want you getting in trouble on my account.”
Libby’s cell vibrated on the kitchen counter. She glanced at the caller ID.
“It’s Claire.”
Shep took the cell and said, “I guess this makes us even.”
“Oh, ya think?”
“Claire.” Shep coughed again, pausing to groan and catch his breath. “There’s going to be a warrant out on me. Aggravated sexual assault. Murder. Conspiracy. I’d appreciate it if you’d process me so I don’t have to deal with those other assholes.”
“What the hell is going on, Shep? Your employers have closed ranks around your little girlfriend. Internal Affairs is crawling up my ass.”
“Just be cool and keep an eye out for the warrant. Please.”
He clicked off without waiting for her to answer.
Libby’s eyes were wide with questions, but she set the cell aside without asking, and for that, Shep was more grateful than she would ever know. He eased off the edge of the table, and Libby limped him down the hall with his arm draped over her shoulders.
At the bedroom door, Shep kissed the crown of her head and tasted a sad little skiff of leftover hairspray.
He knuckled her chin and quoted a line that raised a lump in his throat every time he reran The Maltese Falcon: “You’re a damn good man, sister.”
\ ///
28
“Herrick, it’s me,” Smartie said, but the call disconnected with an almost instantaneous click.
She bit her lip and hit the redial.
“Herrick, please, let me—” Click.
“Herrick, I just want to say—” Click.
“Herrick, please—” Click.
“Herrick, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it when I said your book was unpublishable, and what do I know anyhow, right? I’m not the grand arbiter of what should get published. Why, just look at all the stultifying books that get published and win big awards and get all kinds of glory. Look at Summons to Memphis, for goodness sake.”
“Smartie, it’s Casilda.”
“Oh. Casilda. Hello. How are you? How’s Herrick?”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you. I’m sorry. And I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m thrashing a bit,” Smartie confessed. “Things have been so strange lately.”
“I’ll talk to him,” said Casilda. “He’ll come around.”
“Tell him I feel terrible about all those things I said.”
“He needs a little more time, that’s all.”
“Tell him I’m almost ready to send this rough draft to Fritz and Dove,” Smartie said, “and I’ve never turned in a manuscript without Herrick reading it first and telling me what a piece of worthless dratch it is, and… I miss him.”
“The manuscript,” said Casilda. “You’re finished already?”
“Almost. There’s one more thing I have to do tonight for research.”
“You have to feel how it feels,” said Casilda. “Out on the balcony.”
“Yes.” Smartie started to ask, “How did you know?” But she already knew the answer.
Phyllis must have told Casilda about what they’d been reading in critique group, which meant that Phyllis had decided to be a Buchan, and that broke Smartie’s heart a little. Phyllis would run with the literary crowd now, eating sushi instead of Fig Newtons. The reviewers would read her books and saying things like “The convolution of her luminescent prose evokes a Plathian otherness, like peering into a vagina and seeing the face of God.” And Phyllis would eat that up because reviews like that are so very edible.
“How is your book coming along, Casilda? The Oliver La Farge biography.”
“Oh, I had to set it aside for a ghostwriting project.”
“I’m sure it’ll be wonderful,” said Smartie absently, her attention drawn to the e-mail that had popped up on the screen of her laptop, heralded by a tiny doorbell. It was from Gwynn Salinger of Salinger, Pringle, Fitch & Edloe.
Re: spousal support hearing
Ms. Breedlove:
Due to a family emergency, Suri Fitch is out of the country for an extended period. I’ll be handling the dispensation of your case. I’ve reviewed your file, but we need to meet prior to the support hearing Wed AM to clear up a few questions. Please call my assistant at your earliest convenience to arrange. Looking forward to meeting you.
Yours,
Gwynn Salinger
P.S. My husband is a big fan! Would I be imposing to ask for a signed copy of your latest?
Shep woke up in Libby’s bed, sweating under the weight of a nightmare. He coughed, as he’d been told to, groaned and swore, coughed and swore some more.
Struggling upright against the headboard, he found a spavined posture that allowed him to sit and breathe without feeling a meat cleaver under his shoulder blade. Afraid to move, he remained still for a long while, sorting and matching things, trying to make the necessary connections.
Everything had a place except the toss of Smartie’s office. That didn’t fit. Barth wasn’t one to waste effort, Suri had said. If he’d had it done, there w
as a reason.
But there was no reason. Not even the wrong reason.
If he’d acquired Smartie’s gun, he would have used it.
But he didn’t.
Revisiting the scene as it stuck in his mind—the blood evidence and wreckage and Twinkie’s pulped head—Shep saw someone who’d been searching. But something more. There was a grasping in the way the books had been unshelved, a clenched determination in the close-range way the dog’s brains had been blown out.
Reaching his cell was an act of will. No answer at Smartie’s house. Her cell went directly to voicemail. Shep looked at the missed call log: three messages from Smartie and several calls from Paige Edloe’s office.
“Un go shit,” Charlie said from the doorway.
“Hey, Ponch.”
Shep held out his hand, and Charlie toddled a drunkard’s path over to the bed. Libby came in a moment later with her blue canvas bag and stethoscope.
“Your writer friend is here,” she said. “Let me check your vitals before you get up.”
“Did Claire call?”
“No warrant yet.” Libby wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm. “She said hang tight and she’ll let you know if she hears anything.”
Libby listened to Shep’s lungs, prodded his aching midsection and retaped his ribs. Then she had to pretend to take Charlie’s blood pressure so he would stop squawking. Leaving a pair of cargo pants and a clean tee-shirt folded on the end of the bed, she left Shep alone to get himself out of bed and dressed, and Shep let her go without asking where the men’s clothes came from.
“I thought you’d want to see this,” Smartie said when he came out to the living room. She handed him the folded printout of Gwynn Salinger’s e-mail.
Shep stared at the paper, and Smartie stared at Shep, wishing she genuinely was the adroit reader of people he seemed to think she was. He finally raked his fingers through his hair and puffed his lower lip. She figured that meant well, dang, but there were definite undertones that remained a mystery.