“He sent me his, I added a couple. We could be working against the clock. Better to have more than one person work on it. I’ll share it with him.”
“You haven’t shared it with him yet?”
Todd’s head gave an involuntary jerk. “You’ll see why I wanted to find you away from the office.”
I’ve shown self-control, haven’t I? Except for when I went off on that doctor when Dad was in intensive care, but he deserved it. And maybe that thing I said to Mom, that was bad. Mostly I felt like that old poem I had to memorize in school and never forgot, where everyone was losing their head and blaming it on me. But with that, and Dad being sick, and losing the appeal, and watching Creighton being executed, and Laura Coleman’s meltdown, and Mom not being Mom, and finding Shayna Murry’s body, and … I guess that’s all, but you can understand my finally flying off the handle. Before looking down at Todd’s list, I knew what I would see, and I just couldn’t handle any more. I tore the paper in half and tossed it, if not in his face, then pretty close. I leaned across the table and whispered, with what I consider great restraint, “Fucking bullshit.”
He leaned back at me, though with his resonant man voice I couldn’t swear that the candy striper sitting a couple of tables away couldn’t hear. “Look at you. You’re so convinced she’s innocent, what have you got to worry about?”
“That’s what we always say before the interrogation starts.”
“Look, none of us wants to be caught with our pants around our ankles when the next victim goes down. Who said, ‘This isn’t an isolated case?’ Who said, ‘This isn’t over?’ You should be able to see it’s a routine investigation. Nothing personal.”
“Why are you even telling me about it?” I asked. “You want to interrogate me? Maybe I’m an accessory.”
“Oh, can the drama. I could have done this without telling you. It’s family that makes me show you my hand, and it better be family that makes you keep it to yourself.”
I thought of the moment when I told Laura that I had met with Shayna Murry and was convinced she had information she wasn’t giving up. I thought of Laura saying some people deserved to be punished. I thought of Laura promising not to kill anyone.
“It’s not Laura,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s stupid. I know Laura, and it’s not Laura.”
“Well, that’s a compelling argument. You spent a few days working a case with her more than a year ago.”
“We were nearly killed. She saved my life.”
Todd made that jerk-off gesture that guys do to show they’re not impressed. “You were the one who told me she was angry that night, that she was going out to kill Alison Samuels.”
“I didn’t say that. And even if I did, we all think it. You can’t tell me you’ve never wanted to exact a little justice yourself.”
“Who would know better than you?”
He could have gone the rest of his life without saying that. If we were alone we would have been yelling at each other. But in public even the Quinns know to keep their voices down. I leaned across the table, and my voice got softer as the words got harder. “You self-righteous little prick.”
“You’re biased,” Todd said. “You’re blocking it out.”
“And you’re locking in. Just like Delgado did with Creighton.”
Rather than tell me to fuck myself as he normally would, Todd reached across the table and grabbed my hand. I was too stunned to move it. Other than the usual duty hug at meeting and parting, I couldn’t remember my brother ever touching me. I’ve mentioned we weren’t a touchy-feely kind of family. “Brigid. I’m not saying anything. I’m just following investigative protocol. From an unbiased viewpoint. You know, unbiased? And remember, Dr. Brach said there was no telling even whether Shayna Murry was killed before or after the execution.”
I started to object, but he put up his other hand to silence me. “You said Laura was desperate to stop the execution. Who knows what she might have done to get some truth out of Murry? I’m going to play it safe, put a tail on her.”
“You’re wasting valuable time chasing this. And you’re risking the lives of the other people who were involved in prosecuting Creighton’s case.” I picked up the paper I’d torn in half, worked on it some more, and threw the pieces into the air. Maybe he was prepared for my reaction. He got up and brought us both a black coffee from the drink bar. After he put one in front of each of us, he calmly bent over and gathered the pieces that had fallen onto the floor. It was all so not Todd. I wondered again about the strain of him looking after his sick wife for nearly two decades, how it must have been greater than anyone realized. Here I was, just watching out for Dad for a week, and I’d been ready to run screaming even before this latest trouble.
I said, suddenly weary, “Do you realize our father could be dying upstairs and we’re talking about a case?”
“Oh come on, you said he was feeling better. Besides, Dad’s going to go sometime, and I can’t stop that. This, I can stop.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “Dad would be proud of you.”
“So do you agree to stay out of the way and let me do my job?”
Instinct born of my guilty childhood years made me look toward the entrance to the cafeteria, much the same way that Dad did when she walked into his room. I said, “Shut up, here comes Mom.”
I noticed Todd rearranged his face the way I always did to protect Mom from what we all did for a living. Different from the rest of us. Poor Mom, not as tough as the rest of the family. Someone to kid about. I still hadn’t apologized for what I said to her. Who knew, maybe enough time had gone by and there was a statute of limitations on gratuitous cruelty. Still, my gut cinched in her presence like when I was thirteen and she caught me forging sick notes to my teacher.
Todd and I both looked up at her approach, our gently solicitous smiles in place. She took her time coming across the cafeteria. As I watched her walk slowly but relentlessly, it occurred to me this was another difference; she’d always moved deliberately in a family that was always tearing about. Literally off-beat from the rest of us, just like I’d said to her, in so many ways. I wondered whether it was by choice, depression, or simply controlling one of the few things that was in her power.
I was relieved to see that whatever cracks there had been the day before were neatly patched up, and the person who came across the room was Old Saint Mom.
Todd didn’t get up, but pushed a chair out for her with his foot. The politeness I remembered from his wife’s funeral, those days when we tried to guard against eruptions of our anger, was gone, forgotten in the stress of this latest case. Mom gave that look of withering disappointment at what she had spawned, and sat down in the chair. Yep, she was back to herself, someone I could safely count on.
“You haven’t been up there to see him yet. What are you doing here?” She looked at the torn paper on the table between us as if to indicate she knew damn good and well what we were doing there. I wondered now if she had always known. After all, how did she know I was on birth control pills when I was seventeen? How did she know to shut and lock that window after Ariel and I snuck out that night, so we couldn’t get back in? This realization, that Mom had always been more savvy than I gave her credit for, took some getting used to.
“How’s he doing, Mom?” Todd asked.
I guess she figured I would have told Todd about Dad’s improvement, and his getting out in a couple of days. So she just said, “Could be worse.”
“Could be raining,” Todd and I said at the same time, and smiled wider.
Those Quinn family in-jokes. Can’t get enough of them.
I managed to take Todd aside and get him to agree to let me do a little reconstructing of timelines for means and opportunity before he destroyed someone’s reputation. I got his point about motive, I said, but even an official interview could do Coleman harm. I asked him to trust me to keep an eye on Laura, not to have her followed. She’d know.
Then I did my duty and went up to see Dad, trying to tell myself he looked even a little better than when I’d visited before, even though in retrospect he did not. I should have been with him more on that day than any other. But no, the whole time I was there, another part of my brain was thinking about Laura. People I respected, people I trusted with my life, were not vengeful murderers.
Laura? Not Laura. Laura.
“Who would know better than you?” Todd had said, about my comment on exacting justice outside the law. Okay, here we go again. Todd was right. There have always been rogues, good people with noble ideals who went into law enforcement and then over time turned into white knights who couldn’t endure the endless grinding of the system, and the inherent flaws that let bad people slip through the net. Including their personal flaws that made for some instances of poor judgment in their personal life. I know all about this because I’m one of those people.
Must we really revisit this? I suppose we must. I sit here flashbulbing through all the stories of my life.
I’ve already told you about framing the child molester to avenge the suicide of my colleague. That Manny Gutierrez I mentioned? There was a night in the swimming pool at the Delano Hotel in South Beach. Having sex with your confidential informant is a real no-no in squeaky-clean FBI circles. But I’ve done worse. Back in Tucson the year before, after I’d been retired, I had killed a man. You could call it self-defense, sure, but I covered it up because I didn’t think Carlo could take knowing what I was capable of. I still wasn’t sure that mistake wouldn’t come back someday to bite me in the ass.
Yet I’ve done worse.
About five years ago, I tracked an eight-time serial killer, operating exclusively in New Mexico. I followed him across the border into Mexico, following a trail of body parts that he planted just to taunt me. I finally found him in the wilds south of Nogales where he’d joined up with a drug gang who found his résumé appealing. I killed most of the gang, which was appreciated by the Mexican government, not a problem for anyone. But I was supposed to do the usual extradition process for my guy, and then watch him get a life sentence because New Mexico had just abolished the death penalty. He knew this. I knew this. So as he was surrendering, I shot him in the face, and planted one of the drug dealer’s guns in his hand.
I was cleared of any official wrongdoing with a suicide-by-cop ruling. But the civil suit by the guy’s family cost the FBI a lot of defense funds, and cost me my career. That’s how I got sent to Tucson.
These things happen, so I got why Todd had Laura Coleman in his sights. I got it even better than he did. I saw her after her Achilles tendons were slashed, and she was kept, drugged, in a storage unit for two days. I was a witness when she made her first bones. In watching her over the time I knew her, in the way she’d been betrayed by the people who should have protected her, in her passion for clearing the innocent and catching the scumbag, in her determination never to let anyone hurt her again, in her single-minded devotion to exonerating Marcus Creighton, whether or not she was in love with him, I could see what Todd saw.
Why was I so hell-bent on maintaining Laura Coleman’s innocence?
Simple. Because I’d been through everything she had been through, and in Laura Coleman I could see myself, what I had become.
Thirty-seven
It wasn’t with Laura in mind that I returned to my hotel room with my gun drawn that afternoon. I was just feeling generally suspicious. After sliding my key card and opening the door with more caution than usual, I punched the button that turned on all the lights in the room. The closet door was open the way I left it. Same with the bathroom door, and the shower curtain, also left open. The thick blackout drapes with an unattractive geometric design were drawn over the sliding glass door that led to the minuscule balcony overlooking the pool. Those I had forgotten to leave open, and, nerve sparking in my neck a bit, that old warning signal, I quickly slid my gun across them to find there wasn’t a body standing behind.
I relaxed a little. Tired from the day, but a little wired just the same, I threw the bolt on the door now that I didn’t have to worry about a quick exit, and tossed my tote bag and pistol on the bed. Then I stripped down and stepped into the shower for a long hot one. When I’d lived here I’d never noticed the smell of the chlorine in the water. I re-dressed, planning to pick up Mom and take her out to dinner for a bit of a break from the hospital. I combed my wet hair, and decided to let it dry on the balcony.
The sliding glass door slid open easily.
It had been locked when I left the room.
Was I on someone’s list after all?
I immediately tried to slam it shut again, but whoever was out there was prepared for me. A shoulder wedged in the door to stop me from closing it. I dealt that shoulder as crushing a blow as eighth-inch hurricane glass in a steel frame can deliver.
I preferred not to deal with my assailant hand to hand unless I had to, so I made a dive toward the bed, hoping he didn’t have a gun and wouldn’t simply shoot me before I could reach mine. I made it to the bed and clawed after the gun but felt myself jerked back by someone’s grip on both ankles, and I ended up on the floor.
I kicked back like a mule, aiming for his nuts, but I think I hit him in the kneecaps. I heard him make an oof sound and fall back against and possibly through the open sliding glass door. While he was getting his balance, I pulled on the bedspread to help me get up, and dove for the gun again, but he had recovered from my kick and was on top of me. And he had the gun. I had started to roll over and now kept the momentum going. He wasn’t prepared for my strength and how close I was to the edge of the bed. We both crashed off the side onto the small space between the two beds, but now I was the one on top of him, if on my back. The safety was on the gun, and that gave me a half second to scramble back up on the bed, stepping on his groin in the process. That must have made him lose interest in the gun, giving me another half second to grab the lamp off the bedside table and, without looking where I was aiming, swing it over the side of the bed and clock him on the side of the head. I rolled back off the bed on top of him and was about to break his collarbone with the lamp when I saw who it was.
“If I knew it was you I wouldn’t have hit you that hard,” I said as I patted Glen Slipher, Manny Gutierrez’s accountant, down, removed the gun from his jacket pocket, and then watched his eyes refocus.
“Look at that,” I said. “You did have another gun.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’ll just bet you are.” I got off him and helped him get up and sit down on one of the beds. I sat on the other opposite him. You’d think we were friends if it wasn’t for the gun I was pointing at him just to be on the safe side. “I thought Manny warned you not to startle me.”
“I didn’t mean it to happen that way. I was just waiting on the balcony, and with the thick door I didn’t hear you come in.” Slipher rubbed the side of his head where I hit him.
“Do you want some ice for that goose egg?”
He fingered the small lump that was coming up at his temple and gave his head a shake to see if it ached any. “It’s not that bad.”
“Couldn’t you just call from the lobby?” I asked him. “Or stalk me in the garage like you did the last time?”
“You weren’t here when I arrived. And the balcony is a nicer place to wait than the garage. I’ve been waiting a couple of hours.”
“How did you know my room? And how did you get in?” I asked, out of professional curiosity.
“Money,” he said.
“Well, tell Manny I don’t have time to go see him today. Marcus Creighton is dead, and so is his old girlfriend.”
“He heard. He’s curious about his own welfare.”
“He should be.”
“He says in exchange for information on the Shayna Murry case he’ll talk.”
* * *
Now here’s the thing with Manny Gutierrez. It’s true he was a scumbag of the lowest order. But
all his crimes, as far as I knew, were financial. He preyed upon others’ greed, and from my point of view, that wasn’t as bad as, say, tricking women to come from Guatemala and then using them as sex slaves to migrant farmers. Or distributing child pornography. Or making snuff films.
No, Gutierrez was just another nonstandard lender, the technical term for a loan shark before the days when the check-cashing shops and payday loans started whittling away at the business. He was a relatively average-sized fish on the spectrum between your major whales, aka the Mafia, and chum. But he had splashed in the same water and knew more about the whales than anyone realized.
Sure, I didn’t much like him, but not liking can sometimes morph into a kind of transference for people who get off on adrenaline. I owed much of my success to having Manny Gutierrez as my confidential informant.
Slipher escorted me through a vast cavern of white marble identical to that outside the front of the house, then through some ceiling-to-floor gauze curtains that beckoned flirtatiously in the offshore breeze coming through sliding glass doors.
The patio was nice, not a big yard, with a pool. A six-foot wall with decorative yet deadly colored glass shards stuck into the top hid the beach itself from sight. On the north and south sides of the yard, banana trees, hibiscus, and oleander covered high concrete walls you could glimpse here and there through the foliage. The same colored glass along those walls told me this was as much a fortress as a home.
Somewhere jasmine blossoms assaulted me with a sickeningly sweet smell that made me think of Shayna Murry.
Manny was reclining on one of two chaise lounges, in the shade now that we were in the late afternoon and the sun well over the house. He wore carefully creased chinos and a white shirt, sleeves turned up at the cuffs. Loafers, no socks. His full head of hair hadn’t thinned, combed back from his face and carefully sprayed to stay that way. A small Baccarat glass of something amber rested on the table between the chaises. Snapshot: He looked costumed and posed. Waiting for me.
A Twist of the Knife Page 24