Sidney Sheldon's the Silent Widow

by Sidney Sheldon

  How strange human emotions are, Nikki mused, as she wolfed down an enormous late breakfast of bacon frittata, fresh fruit, toast and cottage cheese, all washed down with gallons of strong Italian coffee. Her appetite was back too, apparently. And how resilient.

  She no longer felt afraid of tonight’s meeting with Anne. And although the drive back to the city was an inconvenience, it would be worth it to end that fraught relationship on a solid, kind note. Plus, although no longer obsessed with the case, she had to admit she was curious about this ‘evidence’ Anne wanted to show her. If it was significant, she would find a way to pass the lead on to Lou Goodman. Then, her conscience clear, she would head back to Palm Springs and after that, who knew? Maybe Arizona. Or Utah? If she were going to lose herself, to lay low until this case was resolved, she might as well do it somewhere beautiful and wild, exploring places she’d never been before like Zion and Moab, or maybe Monument Valley.

  After a morning spent reading inside, her sore face covered in soothing aloe gel, she showered, changed and headed to the reception desk.

  ‘I’ll be back tonight but very late,’ she told Señora Marchesa. ‘Do I need a key to the front gate?’

  ‘No, Dr Roberts,’ the hostess smiled. ‘Your room key works for both. Would you like me to leave a supper tray in your room?’

  ‘Maybe some fruit,’ said Nikki, heading out to her car. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the older woman muttered under her breath, watching Nikki go. As soon as her car had pulled out of the gates, Señora Marchesa picked up the phone.

  ‘She just left,’ she whispered.

  Hanging up as another guest came in, she fixed her welcoming smile back in place. ‘Buenos días, señor. Welcome to the San Miguel Hacienda. How may I assist you?’

  Stopping for gas at the Exxon station right before the freeway on-ramp, Nikki reached into her purse to retrieve her wallet and ended up pulling out Williams’ letter. Suddenly all her fear and over-thinking seemed ridiculous. Right there at the pump she tore open the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside.

  A few minutes later, a worried attendant came over. Nikki was bent double, clutching the paper, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Miss? Are you OK? Do you need some help?’ He touched her shaking shoulders nervously.

  Nikki jerked upright and turned around, wiping away her tears.

  Embarrassed and relieved, the attendant saw that she’d actually been crying with laughter.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m sorry!’ she said, screwing the petrol cap back on and getting back into the car, the paper still in her hand. ‘It’s … it’s an invoice.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘A bill! For services rendered!’ Nikki waved the paper delightedly in front of the man’s face. ‘The last thing he sent me, his oh-so-important message from beyond the grave? It was a bill!’ She laughed again, shaking her head.

  ‘OK, miss. Well as long as you’re all right,’ the baffled attendant said. In his experience, bills really weren’t all that funny. Then again, this was Palm Springs. If he had a dollar for all the crazies he ran into around here, he’d be able to pay all his bills and then some.

  Goodman sat at his desk at the precinct, idly re-reading the meager forensics report on Derek Williams’ killing. No fingerprints. No hairs. No DNA or clothing fibers, other than the deceased’s.

  Ballistics had had marginally more success. They’d retrieved two bullets, 9 mm Elite V-Crown hollow-points, and had a good idea of the gun the killer used, a Sig Sauer P938. Unfortunately those were a dime a dozen on the streets of LA. The only real lead was the suppressor the assassin had used, something called a Dead Air Ghost M, a much rarer, top-of-the-range, specialist piece of kit only stocked by a handful of gun stores. If it had been bought legally, the purchaser would have had to file an application for it with BAFTE.

  Mick Johnson was out interviewing Dead Air suppliers right now and Goodman was supposed to be trawling the BAFTE records. But he already knew in his heart that Derek Williams’ killer would never be caught. What worried him were the live threats still out there, specifically Dr Nikki Roberts, who was somewhere on the run and who clearly had zero intention of returning any of Goodman’s calls. So far, Johnson didn’t even know Nikki had left town, in direct contravention of police instructions to remain ‘available’ while the Flannagan and Raymond murder investigation was ongoing. Even Goodman had to admit that Nikki taking off the day after her PI got whacked didn’t look good. Innocent or not, it was what Washington politicians referred to as ‘bad optics’.

  ‘This came for you.’

  The bored new desk officer, a young mother named Latisha Hall who’d joined the force to escape the dull routine of domesticity, only to find herself wasting her days filing and delivering mail to a bunch of ungrateful detectives, tossed an envelope lazily in Goodman’s general direction.

  ‘You opened it?’ Goodman frowned accusingly, seeing the rip across the top.

  ‘Course not, Detective,’ Latisha defended herself. ‘It came like that.’

  Flipping the envelope over, Goodman went white. It was addressed to ‘Dr Nicola Roberts’. Inside were two pieces of paper. The first was a neatly typed bill for ‘services rendered in April/May’ from ‘the offices of Derek. B. Williams, PI.’ It was dated May 12th, the day Williams died. On the back of the invoice, someone had written by hand the word ‘Grayling’ and the number 777.

  The second piece of paper had been roughly torn off a pad and was in Nikki’s own hand, hastily scrawled.

  ‘Thought you should have this,’ it read. ‘Hopefully, it means more to you than it does to me. Don’t come after me. But please watch your back, Lou. Johnson’s in this up to his neck. NR.’

  Goodman’s heart began pounding, speeding up like an overloaded freight train heading downhill.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded, glaring at Latisha as if she’d delivered some personal affront. ‘Who gave it to you?’

  ‘No one “gave it” to me. I—’

  ‘Did it come in the regular mail?’ Goodman interrupted impatiently. ‘Why didn’t you give it to me earlier?’

  ‘Because I only saw it now, on my desk, when I got back from the bathroom. Sir,’ the girl shot back sassily. Goodman might be a senior officer, but Latisha Brown didn’t take shit from no one. ‘Someone musta dropped it off in person. I already gave out the regular afternoon mail, two hours ago.’

  Pushing past her, Goodman scrambled to the window and looked out at the parking lot below and the street beyond. Nikki must have been here! Maybe even in the last few minutes. He scanned the lot, staring down at the handful of milling people, willing her to be there. But of course she wasn’t. He’d lost her. So close, and he’d lost her!

  Turning the paper over, he stared at it and the envelope again intently. There was nothing untoward about Derek Williams’ invoice, nothing unusual or noteworthy about it at all as far as Goodman could see, other than the date. And yet Nikki had felt it important enough to leave it for him. To risk coming here to the station in person. Why?

  Only the writing on the back, ‘Grayling 777’, was in any way unusual, although even that looked harmless enough, like it could have been anything or nothing. Surely she wouldn’t have come back to LA and taken such a risk just for that?

  ‘Call Detective Johnson,’ he barked at Latisha.

  ‘OK,’ she replied sullenly. ‘Call him and say what?’

  ‘Tell him to get his ass back here,’ Goodman snapped. ‘Right away.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The address Anne had given Nikki was for a small, deserted warehouse, situated right on the edge of Downtown’s fashion district, off San Julian Street. Wedged between two much larger buildings, one a printing shop and the other a factory full of seamstresses, it nestled in almost total shadow, hidden from the surrounding streets by its neighbors, as well as by a double-height brick wall to the rear.

  It was an are
a Nikki used to know well. Doug and Haddon’s first drop-in clinic had been only a few blocks away, although a lot had changed since those days. The junkies were still here of course. But rising real estate values and the insane amounts of money pouring into downtown had seen them driven further and further east, past Olympic Boulevard. The new mayor’s clampdown on homelessness had also had an impact. Five years ago, unused spaces like the one Anne had chosen for their meeting would have been full of rough sleepers. Now they sat, still empty but untouched, while landlords waited for a tenant rich enough to pay their outrageous rent hikes, or for a development offer they couldn’t refuse.

  Parking at a meter a few blocks up the street, Nikki worried about Anne. Meeting somewhere neutral and private, especially if she had sensitive information to impart, was one thing. But to pick such an eerie, desolate spot seemed at best eccentric and at worst a sign that Anne must be genuinely afraid of being seen with Nikki. This wasn’t a meeting place so much as a hiding place. But hiding from whom?

  Nikki’s first assumption was Luis, and Anne had pretty much implied as much over the phone. But why would her ex suddenly want to hurt her now, after all this time? Nikki’s view of Anne’s husband had always been that he was both jealous and controlling, but that, by his own lights, he did love his wife. He might threaten and cajole and intimidate, to try to win her back. But he had never raised a hand to Anne, whatever else he may have done.

  And yet the fear, the panic in Anne’s voice when they spoke yesterday had been unmistakable. She sounded petrified. It was a feeling Nikki had come to know intimately herself over the course of the last few weeks. She hoped she would be able to help Anne this one last time, before she returned to her own hiding place, running from her own demons.

  She checked her watch. It was five to six when she approached the warehouse, tapping the five-digit code Anne had given her into the keypad beside the front gates. With a satisfying ‘click’ the heavy steel door unlocked, allowing Nikki through to a thin strip of open space, and concrete stairs up to the building itself. Here the sliding doors were already part open, as Anne had said they would be. ‘You can let yourself in. If I’m late, please wait for me. I promise I’ll be there.’

  Instinctively, Nikki drew her thin cashmere cardigan more tightly around her as she stepped into a cold, dark room. A trickle of early evening light streamed through two dirty upper windows, but the overall feeling was one of institutional gloom. The gray concrete floor was scratched and pitted, and other than a few desultory plastic chairs and tables stacked against one wall, the space was devoid of furniture. A few scraps of discarded fabric lay scattered here and there, presumably remnants of the last business to occupy the space. Straight ahead, at one end of the room was a double-wide elevator, designed for moving stock rather than people. To both the left and right of it, ugly metal fire stairs led up to a mezzanine level, and then up again, presumably to a second and third floor.

  ‘Anne?’

  Nikki’s voice bounced off the walls, the echo seeming to drift upwards until it died away. There was no response. Somewhere above Nikki’s head a bird shrieked and she could hear the sound of frenzied flapping before silence fell again.

  Poor thing. It must be trapped.

  Striding towards the fire stairs, determined not to give in to the uneasiness that gripped her, Nikki climbed to the mezzanine level and continued straight on up to the next floor. Here the space was divided into a series of smaller rooms, presumably once offices, along a long, narrow corridor. It was a lot darker than downstairs, with the only available natural light coming from only one side of the building. And there was an awful smell, the unmistakable stench of human feces. Reaching up, Nikki touched a switch on the wall. With a flicker, then a glare, and a loud buzz from the revived electrical current, all the strip lighting along the windowless walls burst into life.

  Nikki screamed, a shrill, strangled sound that half-caught in her throat.

  There, nailed to a wooden beam against the wall with outstretched arms, like a grotesque parody of Jesus, hung a naked, bloated male corpse. Beaten and bloodied almost beyond recognition, it took Nikki a moment to register who it was:

  Willie Baden!

  Someone had stuffed a wad of money into his mouth, presumably a final insult in what looked like a gruesome ritual killing. Nikki felt the bile rise up in her throat, partly in disgust and partly in terror. She was no expert, but from the blood still dripping from the wounds on his groin, Baden didn’t look like he’d been dead for long. If whoever did this was still here …

  ‘Nikki! Over here.’ Anne’s voice sounded reedy and thin.

  ‘Anne!’ Turning away from Baden’s corpse Nikki blinked, her eyes stinging under the bright lights. ‘Where are you? I can’t see you.’

  Like a faun stepping out from the protective cover of the forest, Anne emerged from one of the box-like ‘offices’ into the long corridor where Nikki was standing. Barely glancing at the crucified body hanging only a few feet away, she stumbled towards Nikki. Only as she came close did Nikki see the bruises, from Anne’s eye, all the way down the right side of her face and neck, where the skin was blue gray and swollen.

  Nikki rushed towards her. ‘He hit you?’

  Anne looked down, ashamed, biting her lower lip.

  ‘Did he kill Willie Baden, Anne?’ Nikki put a protective arm around her as she turned back to the grisly apparition nailed to the beam. ‘Did you see what happened? Were you here? The poor man was obviously tortured.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anne mumbled. She was obviously still in shock.

  ‘What for?’ said Nikki. ‘It isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Anne sobbed, shaking.

  ‘Listen, we need to get you out of here.’ Nikki’s practical side kicked in. ‘Whatever’s happened, neither of us are safe—’

  ‘It is my fault,’ Anne interrupted her. ‘I wish … I wish things could have been different. But he made me do it. He made me watch.’ She looked at Baden’s corpse then, for the first time. ‘He made me film it.’ She held up her phone to Nikki with a shaking hand. ‘And he made me bring you. He wanted you to see. I’m so sorry.’

  From the rooms behind her, two heavyset men in dark suits suddenly appeared. ‘This way please, Mrs Rodriguez,’ one of them said politely, while the other one firmly grabbed Anne by the upper arm. With a lurching stomach, Nikki noticed that his hand was covered in dried blood. Presumably poor Willie Baden’s. Although what on earth Baden had to do with any of this she couldn’t imagine. ‘We’ll escort you to your car.’

  Nikki watched helplessly as a sobbing Anne was bundled into a different, smaller elevator and disappeared from view.

  ‘Wait!’ she called after them. ‘Don’t hurt her! Don’t you touch her!’ But the doors had already closed.

  Frantically, Nikki tried to gather her thoughts. Anne had been upset to see the two men, but not surprised. She knew they were coming, knew she’d be taken away. What was it she’d just said? ‘He made me bring you. He wanted you to see.’

  Nikki had seen enough. She had to get out of here. Had to save herself, even if she couldn’t save Anne. Turning around, she started back the same way she came in, averting her eyes from the hunk of flesh that had once been Lisa Flannagan’s lover and running along the corridor. But before she’d gone more than a few yards, a tall, distinguished-looking man in a dark suit stepped casually in front of her, blocking her path.

  He was relaxed and smiling, and she recognized him instantly from the picture on Google that Derek Williams had shown her.

  ‘Mr Rodriguez.’

  Luis nodded, still smiling all the way to his brown eyes.

  ‘Dr Roberts. We meet at last. So glad you could make it.’

  Pulling a pistol out of his inside jacket pocket, he pointed it right between Nikki’s eyes.

  Mick Johnson looked at Officer Latisha Hall as if she were something unpleasant he’d found stuck to the bottom of his shoe
.

  ‘You said Goodman needed me back here. You said it was urgent.’

  ‘That’s what Detective Goodman told me, sir.’ Latisha knew better than to risk the same levels of sass with Johnson that she had with his partner. You did not want to get on the wrong side of Mick Johnson. Everyone in the department knew that. And if you weren’t Irish, Catholic, White and Male, you already had four strikes against you.

  ‘So where is he?’ Johnson asked through gritted teeth.

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Johnson repeated, in a whisper that could only be described as menacing. Sinking down into his chair in the room he shared with Goodman, he closed his eyes and literally willed himself not to lose his temper. Not because the lazy, stupid desk officer didn’t deserve it. But because he didn’t have the time or the energy to waste on her. Things were getting serious now. Deadly serious. He needed to know where Goodman was.

  It didn’t help that the two of them had been lying to each other for a long time. Johnson hadn’t spent this afternoon trailing around muffler dealers, any more than Goodman had spent it checking up on BAFTE license applications. He’d been at Carter Berkeley’s Investment Bank, Berkeley Hammond Rudd, strong-arming the accounts department into handing over the files he needed. Files that made very interesting reading and that he’d only gotten halfway through copying when he received Goodman’s summons.

  Johnson knew why he’d been lying. He’d stopped trusting his partner in this cursed case a long time ago. But he hadn’t been sure of Goodman’s motives for concealing so much from him. Not till today.

  Today, sitting in Carter Berkeley’s offices, it had suddenly come to him. A reason for Goodman to lie, to operate in the same murky world of half-truths that had blinded both of them.