A Panicked Premonition

by Victoria Laurie

  Kramer threw his hands up in surrender again and yelled at Grayson. “Hey! This is police brutality! You gonna stand there and let her threaten me?!”

  “She ain’t police,” Grayson said. “And all I see is a fellow citizen helping to straighten out your attire.”

  Kramer’s mouth fell open and his big eyes swiveled from Candice to Grayson, and finally to me. By this time, I’d had enough. “Talk!” I shouted.

  Kramer began shaking, but at least he also started talking. “I was driving home from a gig,” he began. “I play bass in a band, and we went pretty late. We usually practice in my buddy Grady’s garage, so none of us even knew what time it—”

  “We don’t care about that!” Candice interrupted, tightening her grip on his T-shirt. “Get to the accident and don’t leave out a single detail.”

  Kramer gulped. “Okay,” he said, blinking his eyes rapidly. “It was morning, I think, like around ten or maybe a few minutes before. I was pretty fried, but . . . uh . . . I was being really careful about driving when I heard this loud sound behind me—”

  “What kind of a loud sound?” I asked.

  Kramer frowned. “I don’t know, like a bang.”

  “Did it sound like a collision?” Candice asked him.

  Kramer seemed to mull that over. “Well, yeah, I guess it could’ve been that.”

  “Then what happened?” Grayson said, making a slight motion to Candice, who eased up on her grip of Kramer’s T-shirt.

  “Well, it was loud, so I don’t know. I think I ducked and my car swerved a little, and behind me I hear tires squealing, so I glance in my side mirror and I see this big silver truck, like, fly off the road and down this embankment. It bounced a couple of times and then it stopped kinda hard. I think it might’ve hit a rock.”

  “Then what?” Grayson asked. I saw that she was taking notes on notepad.

  “Well, then I pulled over to see if the guy was all right, and I called nine-one-one and while I was on the phone with them, I saw a black truck pull over right where the silver one had gone off the road. While I was talking to the nine-one-one operator, I saw two guys get out of the black truck and run down to the silver truck.”

  “Did they see you?” I asked.

  Kramer shrugged. “I dunno for sure, but I don’t think so.”

  “So what happened next?” Candice asked.

  “Next? Nothing. I hung up with the operator and saw that the guys from the black truck were pulling the dude from the silver truck out of his cab, so I took off.”

  Grayson finished typing on her phone and looked up at Kramer. “Anything else?”

  “No. That’s pretty much it. I got back on the road and drove home. I figured the cops were on their way and they’d send an ambulance and a tow truck.”

  “Okay,” Grayson said. “Can you describe everybody involved?”

  “Uh . . . ,” Kramer said, scratching his disheveled head of hair and rolling his eyes to the sky while he tried to remember. “Like, the guys in the black truck were big dudes. One had a beard and long hair, a white guy, and the other had lots of tattoos. He was, like, maybe Hispanic or something.” I looked meaningfully at Grayson. They sounded suspiciously like Gudziak and his accomplice.

  “What about the guy in the silver truck?” Candice asked.

  “Hmm,” Kramer said, thinking hard on it again. “He kinda looked like the one white guy from the black truck. He had a beard and long hair pulled back in a braid.”

  “Did he appear injured?” Candice asked, her face a mask of concern.

  Kramer tilted his head from side to side. “He seemed pretty woozy when they pulled him out of the truck. They might’ve been a little rough with him too, but maybe they were worried the truck would catch fire or something.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, imagining the scene. Poor Dave had been run off the road by Gudziak and the tattooed man, and then they’d nabbed him. I knew that’s what’d happened.

  “Did you see anything else that we should know about?” Candice asked him.

  Opening my eyes again, I could see that Kramer looked uncomfortable, or at least a little hesitant to say something else. “What?” I said to him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I . . . it . . . listen, I don’t want to get involved or anything.”

  “Involved in what?” Grayson pressed him. When he didn’t immediately reply, she added, “Kramer, I really don’t mind hauling your ass downtown for another possession charge. I’ve got all day to file the paperwork, son.”

  He glared at her, but then he said, “The two guys in the black truck . . . I kinda thought . . . I mean, for a minute I thought maybe they were cops.”

  “Why would you think that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “Well,” he said, “maybe it’s cuz they both had holsters strapped to their chests. I couldn’t say for sure that they were wearing guns, but it looked that way to me. And I swear, just before I took off, I saw some kind of automatic in the cab of their truck. The door was open, and I could see that something that looked like an assault rifle was in the front of the cab. That’s why I got the hell out of there. I mean, I was really tired, you know? And I didn’t need any hassle from the cops.”

  “Tired, huh?” Candice said skeptically.

  Kramer’s face reddened. “Yes,” he sneered. “I was tired.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You saw that those two men had weapons? And you didn’t think to say that to the dispatcher who took your call?”

  Kramer broke out into a small sweat. “Listen,” he said. “I didn’t know for sure if they were cops, but they could’ve been cops. I did my part—I called it in. After that, I thought I’d let you guys figure it out.”

  Grayson fished around inside her purse and came up with the two six-packs containing Dave’s photo and Gudziak’s picture. “Anyone in either of these lineups look familiar?” she asked him.

  He surveyed both sets of photos, his brow lowered as he focused on the faces. Pointing to Dave’s picture, he said, “He looks like the guy who was in the silver truck.” Then he pointed to Gudziak’s image and said, “And that guy looks a whole lot like the guy who was in the black truck.”

  Grayson pocketed the photos and her cell. “Okay, Kramer. Thanks. That’s all helpful information.”

  His eyes widened and he appeared dumbstruck. “That’s it?” he said, like he couldn’t believe she was just going to let him off the hook like that.

  “That’s it,” she said, turning away, but then she stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “In the next day or so I may want you to come down to the station to look through some mug shots.”

  “For who?” he asked.

  “For the guy with all the tattoos,” she said.

  Kramer gulped. “I’m pretty busy the next couple of days,” he said.

  Grayson shifted her gaze to Kramer’s car. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, I’ve got loads of free time. You know what I like to do in my spare time, Kramer? I like to sit on the ass of lowlifes like you, following them around town, and see what they’re up to. I like to make my presence known too, so that all their friends, and maybe the dealer who gets them their drugs, know what a bad boy they’ve been. You feeling what I’m saying here, Kramer?”

  The blood drained from Kramer’s face. “I get it,” he said. “And I’ll come down.”

  “Good. Oh, and take your great-grandma to get her lottery tickets, you ungrateful freeloader!” she snapped, then moved away.

  Candice and I had little choice but to follow; however, before we left him, Candice leaned in and actually growled in Kramer’s face. He trembled and backed up against the garage, and it was enough, I thought, to let him know he’d been very, very lucky today, and not to push that luck any further by being uncooperative when we called on him to help us identify Gudziak’s accomplice.
/>   Once we were all back in Grayson’s unmarked car, she turned to us and said, “Okay, so, you two might have a point.”

  “How do you think we only might have a point?” I demanded, knowing she was referring to my theory that Dave had been run off the road and abducted. “Because, from where I’m sitting, we definitely have a point.”

  “Kramer didn’t say he saw the black truck run Dave’s truck off the road,” she said. “He only said he heard a loud bang. The bang could’ve been a blown tire.”

  “What difference does it make whether it was a blown tire or Dave was run off the road?” Candice said. “Either way, Gudziak and his buddy abducted Dave, then impersonated him to Wixom.”

  “It makes a difference, Candice, because I’m still not sure how Gudziak knew where to find Dave last Saturday morning. So, either Gudziak was following Dave when his tire blew and he ran off the road, becoming disoriented after his car came to a sudden stop, and forcing Gudziak to take over the role of Dave, or Gudziak and his accomplice were tailing Dave with the intention of driving him off the road, abducting him, and then impersonating him on the rest of his appointments.”

  I frowned. Grayson was right. I hadn’t even thought about that first angle. “I think he was purposely run off the road,” I said. “In fact, that’s what my gut says, so it’s less of a thought and more of a knowing.”

  Grayson nodded to me. “Okay, Abby, so let’s say that Dave was run off the road—that Gudziak and his accomplice had targeted him and were tailing him, waiting for an opportunity to take him off the road. How did they know where to find him? And how did they know where he was going? And how did they know that he’d be headed to the Roswells’ place? Because that scene was an assassination if ever I’ve seen one.”

  “In other words,” Candice said, “how did Gudziak learn about Dave and Safe Chambers?”

  “Texas Monthly,” I said immediately. “Dave was photographed standing next to his truck. All Gudziak had to do was read the article.”

  Grayson frowned. “So, what’s the personal connection between Gudziak and the Roswells?”

  “Does there have to be one?” Candice asked. “The same edition of Texas Monthly that featured the story on Safe Chambers also had Andy Roswell—whiz kid—as the cover story. Maybe it was simply a crime of opportunity.”

  “There were four other opportunities prior to their house, though,” I said. “To Nikki’s point, the violence of the crime at the Roswells’ house . . . it’s overkill.”

  “Yes,” Grayson said. “Exactly.”

  “It’d be interesting to know if Murielle has a subscription to Texas Monthly,” Candice said. “I wonder if they’d ask us to provide a warrant to look that up for us.”

  Grayson looked from Candice to me, then back again. “Who?”

  Candice and I filled her in on our theory about Murielle ordering the hit on Andy and Robin Roswell, Rosa Torrez, and Mario Tremblee all out of revenge.

  “Hold on,” Grayson said when we were finished. “You mean the Murielle McKenna? The woman whose house we had to provide extra security detail for when President Bush visited her here in Austin? The Murielle McKenna the governor and the mayor both interrupt meetings for whenever she calls?”

  “Yep,” Candice said. “That Murielle McKenna.”

  Grayson eyed both of us like we had to be insane.

  “You guys must be crazy,” she said. “No way would you ever get a warrant to look into Murielle’s anything in this town. Especially not when you have no evidence other than a couple of Instagram photos where it looks like the Roswells are actually stalking her. And besides all of that, you’d have to also find a connection between McKenna and Chris Wixom for your theory to work. Why would she order a hit on Wixom?”

  “She didn’t,” I said. “I think Gudziak and his partner hit up Wixom’s home because that actually was a crime of opportunity. I think Gudziak and his accomplice grabbed Dave on his morning route at the point where they weren’t likely to be seen. Lost Creek Boulevard doesn’t get a lot of traffic, and they almost carjacked him without being seen, and certainly got away before the police arrived. From there, Gudziak was able to impersonate Dave and case all the homes on his roster before he got to the Roswells’.

  “And maybe the other homes were both an incentive and a payment for the hit,” I added. “Not only did they get to keep the money from the Roswells’ safe, but they would’ve gotten plenty of other goodies if they went back and hit up the other homes.”

  “That all sounds very risky,” Grayson said, and I could tell she wasn’t buying my theory.

  But I knew I was closer to the truth than not. It just felt right in my gut. “Carjacking and assassinating four innocent people is probably a bigger risk,” I said. “Gudziak obviously likes to push the line.”

  Candice turned to me. “Which reminds me, did you hear back from Dutch yet? Has he set up security for all the other clients Gudziak went to on Saturday?”

  “Yes,” I said, holding up my phone. “He’s got guards posted at all the other locations. He said he sent a team to Chris Wixom’s house, but the patrol is still there.”

  “They’ll be there until we release the crime scene, which won’t be for a couple of days,” Grayson said.

  My radar pinged with a thought. “Nikki, do you guys still have a patrol guarding the Roswell residence?”

  “Yes, but only through the end of the day,” she said. “We collected a mountain of evidence and we won’t release that scene until all of the evidence has been processed, but Sienna’s team is almost finished and she told me she’d send word to release the property between three and five today.”

  I sat with that silently for a minute, struggling with the uneasy feeling I had.

  “What is it?” Candice asked, and I knew she was reading my body language.

  Instead of answering her, I directed my next question to Grayson. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Depends on what it is,” she said warily.

  “I need for you to keep a guard at that scene for an extra couple of days.”

  “Other than the fact that it’s already putting a serious dent into APD’s budget, my butt would be on the line if I put in a request like that, Abby.”

  “I know, which is why I’m asking for the favor.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. Yet. But you still need to keep that patrol posted, twenty-four/seven.”

  Nikki frowned. “Why can’t your husband’s company just send a team over like he’s doing with the other clients?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Like, that would’ve been the logical next step, but my gut is insisting that APD not release the scene and continue to stand guard over that house until we figure this out.”

  Grayson blew out a sigh. “Fine,” she said to me. “I’ll pull some strings and send over the paperwork, but you should know that I’m only assigned to the Roswell case as an extra detective. I’m not the lead on it, so if I get overruled, there’ll be nothing I can do.”

  “Please try, will you?” I said.

  Grayson pulled up her cell and made the call. We listened as she spoke first to Sienna, who seemed reluctant to sit on the last few pieces of evidence and drag out the forensic analysis, but at last she agreed, and then Grayson called the lead detective and used her considerable charm to convince him not to make a big stink about how long the crime lab was taking to process the evidence.

  The second she hung up with the lead detective, I felt a huge sense of relief. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I bought you forty-eight hours,” she said. “Tops.”

  “I’ll take it,” I replied. “Hopefully, that’ll be all we need to find Dave and solve this thing.”

  Grayson frowned. “Assuming Dave’s still alive—”

  “He is,” I said.
I’d checked on his image about an hour before as we were driving to Helen’s, and he was still alive according to my sixth sense, but his energy spoke of immanent peril.

  “Okay,” Grayson acknowledged. “We need a lead to find Gudziak. Let’s head to the substation and see what we can dig up.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Candice said.

  As Grayson turned around to put the car into drive, however, I put a hand on her shoulder. “Nikki,” I said, sensing something in the ether. “I keep getting the feeling that if you go back to work, you’ll get pulled off course.”

  “Pulled off course?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be redirected by your superior. There’re a few more detectives than you working this case right now, correct?”

  “Counting me, there’re five,” she said. “I was the last-minute add-on, which is why I was made the lead on the Wixom case. I’m the bridge between the two cases.”

  “Ah, well, I’m sensing that you might be the last-minute add-off and redirected. We can’t go back to the substation, where you can be pulled off this case. We need you to stay on it.”

  “What would you suggest?” she asked me, looking a little exasperated.

  “We could head to the bureau,” Candice said. “Brice and Dutch have loads of investigative power at their fingertips. Let’s loop them in and see if we can’t utilize the FBI’s tools to help come up with some leads.”

  Grayson didn’t look happy. “Fine. But they’d better not try and take over the Wixom case. He’s all mine and we clearly have jurisdiction.”

  “They’ll behave,” Candice promised. “Or they’ll have me to contend with.”

  I smirked. They’d behave all right.

  “Good,” the detective said, and then she switched her gaze to the digital clock on the dash. “I’ve got . . . plans at six. So we need to work quick.”

  “You’ll make your date,” I promised, trying to sound reassuring. Trouble was, that’s not at all how I felt.

  Chapter Fifteen