I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you have enough money? Is it always about more with you?” I thought of those women’s lives and how he’d killed them for a restaurant or personal appearance. I was happy with a small apartment and the possibility of a car. I certainly wouldn’t kill anyone for a house or a Beemer.
“It wasn’t about more money. It was about money. I’m nearly broke. My restaurants are doing poorly, and this show was not living up to the hype. You people were dull. You wanted to do your jobs and go home. That’s not what reality TV is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be arguments and drama and upset people. It’s supposed to have love affairs and people you love to hate. My show was all about food. That was it.” He was moving closer to me. I had about two feet between us now. It was still enough room that his arms couldn’t reach me, but I had to back up to keep that distance.
“Then why did you kill Annabella? You had a motive for Marsha, but not for Annabella.” I wanted the whole thing down before Danvers came crashing in. The agreement was that he was outside of the studio itself. He was in an unmarked van with Land and several members of a SWAT team parked near the gates. I knew that it would only take him a few minutes to get here, but I was still worried about how much damage Ruck could do in a few minutes
“She’d overheard Marsha and me talking. She’d heard Marsha announce that she was going to come clean with the network and all of you about the pranks. After that, she made her presence known. Marsha left, and I was stuck cleaning up the situation with Annabella. So I did. I knocked her out and tied her up. Then I went out and found Marsha. I did the same to her.” He was smiling at me now, which was much worse to my mind that if he’d gone on looking angry. The familiar face and the frightening words combined made for a terrifying situation.
“What did you inject them with?” I knew that the coroner was still running tox screens to learn what had been injected into the two women. It was the one point of the murders that Danvers had not been able to clear up.
“Air. It worked with Annabella. The syringe full of air killed her, but Marsha was still breathing, so I took one of my knives and finished the job with both of them. It made for a mess, but I didn’t have to clean it up, so I wasn’t too concerned.” He laughed at his last comment, and I took another step back.
He took a swipe at me, but missed. I jumped back a few steps. I lost my balance and fell. That was the last thing I remembered.
When I awoke, I was trussed up and lying on my side. I wasn’t in Johnny’s office any more. We were in some other part of the building that I didn’t recognize. That didn’t bode well for me. Danvers’ team would be expecting me in the executive suite, where I’d originally confronted Ruck. I wouldn’t be there. So then it would become a grind of going from room to room and office to office in the studio to look for me.
I didn’t know how long that would take, and I didn’t know how long I had. I wasn’t gagged, but that only made me feel that there was no reason for me to shout. I had to be in an area where I would not be heard.
I shouted a few times, but there was no cavalry coming over the hill to save me. I was alone in a room by myself. My arms were tied behind me, so I couldn’t check to see if Ruck had discovered my wire. Given that I was still dressed, I hoped that he’d left it intact. So I began to talk, telling the air and hopefully the rest of Danvers’ team that I was in a room that I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure how much help that would be since I couldn’t share much in the way of concrete information, but I was willing to try.
I described the walls and the floors and any equipment I could see from my vantage point. I kept at it until my voice started to become scratchy. I felt desperate and slightly silly. I didn’t even know if the wire was still attached. I could be spending my last few minutes describing the décor to myself.
Ruck appeared in my line of vision. He was holding a syringe in his hand, with the plunger pulled back and ready to use. I didn’t like the thought of that. He’d killed one woman with that contraption and tried to kill another. I knew that he probably had his knife on him, in case this didn’t work out.
He started his way to me, still smiling. “Don’t worry. This will be over one way or the other in a few minutes. You won’t feel any pain.”
I shouted again, cursing my sore throat. I went on shouting until he was a few feet from me. Then I stopped because I saw the door open. I’d never been so glad to see men with guns in all of my life. Danvers led the charge with Land, who was also carrying a gun, right behind him.
Ruck stopped as he saw the men in the room. He looked like someone caught in that game where you have to freeze in place. He didn’t move, and I wondered if he was trying to come up with a halfway decent excuse as to why I was tied up in a storage room at the studio with him carrying a syringe just as the murderer had done several days ago.
Danvers didn’t have that long. “Put down the syringe, Ruck, and come with us. You’re under arrest for two murders. You don’t want to add to the list of crimes.”
I thought about the implications of Danvers’ statement. Ruck had only committed the murders, which meant that it wasn’t a case of capital murder—yet. If he surrendered now, the police would have nothing else to charge him with except my kidnapping. I’d be willing to drop the charges to see him not be shot up like he was threatening to do to me. I just wanted this to end.
Ruck looked at the detective for a long time, and then he charged at the men with the syringe held high over his head—as if that would be a sufficient weapon against a group of men with guns.
It wasn’t.
His body danced as the bullets hit him repeatedly. The noise alone made me shut my eyes as if I could avoid what was going on around me. However, with my hands tied behind my back, there was no way to remove myself from the noise of the gunfire or the sound of his body hitting the floor.
When I opened my eyes, Land was in front of me, untying my legs. “Sorry it took so long. The sound went dead for a bit, and Danvers didn’t make the call to come in for a few minutes.” I could imagine what Land had said about that. He wasn’t known for holding his tongue.
“I fell backward and hit my head trying to get away from Ruck. He was a bit crazy there at the end.” Land moved around me to untie my hands. I waited patiently as he did. Someone had thrown a blanket over the body. I knew this wasn’t standard protocol for a crime scene, but I was grateful not to have to look at his body while we waited for the ME.
“Well, it’s all over now,” Land said finishing the last knot.
I sighed deeply, bordering on the start of a sob. “But there won’t be any prize and we won’t win anything. I had counted on the publicity.”
Land smiled at me. I wasn’t really in the mood for smiles at the moment. I was dirty, disheveled and had rope burns on my wrists and ankles. My voice was hoarse, and I thought I was going to cry. I wasn’t up for anyone being nice at the moment. “You’re going to get more publicity than you can handle.”
Of course, he was right. No sooner than I’d left the building with Land at my side, at least twenty video cameras were in my face.
~ End ~
LEFTOVERS
Chapter 1
I climbed into the food truck, carrying my bag of clothes. I’d done my public duty that morning, and now I needed to get to work. The last few months had seen sales skyrocket at my food truck, Dogs on the Roll. It was definitely a mixed bag for me. The money was great, but it meant that one person could barely handle the traffic when the other had to go testify in court.
“What’s with the bag?” Land said. “Are you going running after work?” He smirked at his own comment, knowing that I was more likely to spontaneously combust than exercise of my own accord.
“Clothes from the trial,” I answered succinctly. I started taking orders in hopes that Land would stop asking questions. Helping to condemn someone to death had not been an easy task for me. I was more a forgiving soul, and punishment, despite the fact that my aunt had been
murdered, was something difficult for me. I had a hard time justifying my desire to help prosecute these people with my normally compassionate state.
“What’s eating you?” Land asked. That had become his pun of late, thinking it humorous since we worked in a food truck.
I just rolled my eyes and took two more orders. I went back to pouring coffees. We had a lull in the traffic after another 15 minutes, and Land started his questioning again.
“So what’s going on? You haven’t said two words since you got back?” Land stopped cooking for a minute to look at me. He was normally the silent one. Perhaps he was afraid that I would usurp his role on the truck.
I took a deep breath, knowing that sharing the truth would not make for an easy conversation. “I’m just feeling frustrated. I was on the witness stand, but they didn’t mention Linda Zoz at all.”
“Who?” Land asked.
“The health inspector, Linda Zoz. It was all about the rest of that ordeal, but the prosecutors and defense acted as if she hadn’t existed. It was frustrating.” I felt as though I might cry.
The ordeal of finding the health inspector’s body had been traumatic for me. Someone had cut the head off of the woman, presumably the health inspector, and used it as a paperweight on top of a pile of government papers which had been soaked in blood. Her eyes had been open, and her mouth had made the same O-shape that the other corpse in the case had made. The rest of her body had collapsed onto the floor, where it, too, pooled blood on the carpet.
I had to go with my observations on the matter. I’d interrupted the murderer and had been rendered unconscious for my trouble. I had woken only inches from the body, and I had been in the same room with the person who had done this. Those two thoughts haunted me for weeks.
“Danvers already explained this to you. They got a confession about the other murders. So they’re just going to prosecute that case. For some reason, he won’t cop to the health inspector’s murder, and so they’ll just close the case anyway when they get a guilty plea on this case. It’s easier.” Land looked very peaceful about the whole matter, but he hadn’t been forced to testify in the case.
I grabbed fistfuls of my apron to stop from getting too emotional about this, but it wasn’t easy. “Why do you think that is?”
Land raised an eyebrow. “You want me to tell you why a psychopath does something? No thanks. That way madness lies.” He went back to cutting up some pickles for some more of the homemade condiments we used on the hot dogs. Everything was fresh for Dogs on the Roll. “Besides, why do you care? She gave your aunt all kinds of shit about the permits. Alice almost didn’t get this truck because of her.”
I had to concede that Land had a point. At first, Alice had struggled to get a permit. Alice was able to learn that the city had some permits available from a friend. However, when she went to apply for one, the agency said they were out. She had spent months going around and around with city government over that. Finally, she took a count of the trucks in town and went back to the permit office and demanded to talk to someone about their lack of math skills. The Consumer Affairs Department had been the one giving her trouble about the permit.
Then she had failed to pass a health inspection. Linda Zoz had failed her the first two times. The third time another vendor cleaned the place for her, and the health inspector failed her again. That would have meant that she couldn’t apply for another permit for six months, but the other vendor went to bat for her and pointed out all the errors in the inspection report to the health inspector. The options at that point were to relent or to have a scandal on her hands. Linda Zoz, who was responsible for all three inspections, had finally relented and given my aunt a clean bill of health.
I had to be honest; we had closed the case surrounding the food trucks, but now in retrospect, we’d answered some questions and left other ones unresolved. No one would be charged with the murder of Linda Zoz, and the reasons why she’d refused to pass my aunt on the health inspection were still unclear. While I knew many cases met this fate, it felt wrong to leave it this way. My aunt would have wanted to learn the truth, and so did I.
It seemed like a conspiracy with the information that they’d tried to deny her a permit as well, but I had no proof for that supposition. I had a hard time believing that the two departments had both lied and delayed my aunt’s truck for no reason. I wasn’t a big one for conspiracy theories, especially if another easier solution was available.
With the closing of this case, the answers to those questions would remain forever unanswered. I wasn’t sure that I could live with that. My aunt had been a model citizen, so why had she been treated in that manner? And it concerned me, in that it could happen to me at any point as well. The future of my business was dependent on my permit and the yearly health inspections.
I wasn’t sure why that bothered me so much now. Perhaps it was the fact that I’d been the first to discover the gruesome murder. Perhaps it was the legacy of my aunt and what she’d done for me. I felt grateful for her bequest to me, and I wanted to understand why she’d had such a hard time getting the truck business moving.
Even so, it was most likely that the men behind the murders had killed Linda Zoz too. However, I couldn’t be as sanguine about the results as the police and prosecutors were. Granted, they did this for a living and saw this as a matter of open and closed, wins and losses. I saw it more as the death of someone who would not be avenged if the police were wrong.
I pondered these things as I took orders, handled the money, and handed out the hot dogs to the hungry customers. Land apparently had given up trying to persuade me—or even talk to me—in my current mood. He was cooking and filling orders in silence.
Detective Jax Danvers stopped by after lunch. He seemed to have an unerring sense of when we had a break in the customers. Sometimes I had a feeling he stood behind a lamppost until he could see the pause or had some app on his phone to tell him when it was safe to come around. He’d been involved in the murder case and had been one of the policemen who had found me unconscious after Linda’s murder.
“Good job in court today,” he said as he ordered. Normally he just had a cup of coffee, which he got gratis, but today he ordered three hot dogs and a Coke. I was a bit surprised by the fitness buff eating like a couch potato.
He was still wearing his suit from court today. I suspected that he’d worn it to impress the women. He did look good in it. His jacket was tailored to highlight his broad shoulders and narrow waist. His crisp white shirt showed off the contours of his chest and arms. If I was a juror, I would likely ignore the testimony and just watch the man on the stand. He would make a few hearts flutter.
“She’s stewing about the health inspector,” Land said helpfully. “She wants you to fry someone for it.”
“What? Why?” Danvers seemed genuinely surprised by the news. I had stated on several occasions that it struck me as odd that no one had taken credit for the murder. After you confess to multiple crimes, why should you refuse to admit to one more? The logic had always struck me as off. It’s like saying that I stole the bag of M&Ms, but not the blue ones. Why lie when you’re caught? It’s not as if they could execute him twice for admitting to one more crime.
“She thinks that maybe you haven’t found the killer yet.” Land was just being incredibly giving today. I’m sure he thought he was being helpful in his own way, but I felt awkward being talked about in the third person while I stood between them. I knew that while Land played nice with Detective Danvers, they were not friendly at all. There was an unresolved history between them.
Danvers just growled. Normally, I would have found that sexy, but now I knew that this came from frustration, and there was nothing attractive about it. During our last case, we’d shared a kiss, but neither one of us had been willing to discuss it afterward. I thought of what Land was doing now and wondered if he would be willing to do the same for my relationship with Danvers. I doubted it. Land had warned me to stay away from Danvers
, and I didn’t think he’d take kindly to being ignored in that manner.
“So what do you plan on doing?” Danvers finally asked. “I know better than to try to talk you out of wasting your time like this.” His tone told me that he was annoyed.
“I went to the health inspector’s office to find out why she’d failed my aunt three times. I think I’d like to see those reports. I can’t talk to her, obviously, but maybe the reports will tell me something. I just find it incredibly coincidental that she was murdered just as I was going to talk to her about this. It feels like they should be connected.”
Danvers sighed. “If you work on police cases long enough, you’d learn that coincidence does happen. So her death was part of a different matter, and your timing was unfortunate. Your aunt could have gotten any number of different inspectors. This inspector could just have not liked your aunt. Ever think of that?”
“You mean the inspector was homophobic? I guess it’s possible,” I admitted. I gave it some thought. My aunt had become involved with a woman after the death of her husband and the two of them had started the food truck together. My family was confused by the matter, thinking that orientation was rigid and unchanging. They strongly thought that Alice’s girlfriend had been her downfall—and the cause of her death. I was now wondering if the food truck and the matter of the health inspections might be related to her death instead.
“If you start looking into this, you could uncover a bunch of ugly attitudes and behaviors, and I really don’t think that would serve you well—or the family of the inspector, either.” Danvers tried to put on a respectful expression, but I had a feeling that he was just saying this to put a lid on any notion I had of looking into this further. He had a point. I only had my permits due to the determination of my aunt. If I kept up the pressure to find out more about this death, the same people could make my life hard when I had to renew the licenses and permits.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 29