by L. T. Ryan
I leaned against a pole supporting the porch and watched her work. I had glimpses of playing video games with her when she was a kid. As a girl, she’d been awkward in every way, even with a game controller in her hand. It was still hard to believe this was the same person. Relatively speaking.
I must’ve had a strange expression plastered across my face, because she glanced up and gave me a cross look.
“What?” she said.
“What?” I said.
“You’re looking at me all funny.”
“Sorry, just remembering when you were a goofy looking kid.”
“Ah, yeah.” She rose from her crouching position and walked toward me. “Well, I remember when you were a good looking young man. Guess we both changed.”
I smiled. So did she. Then she apologized.
“I shouldn’t act like that here. Your friend died in that room. You’d think as a cop I’d be able to cope better.”
“People adapt to horrible situations by acting like this, April. I saw a man in Iraq get both his legs blown off. He cracked jokes with the medics until he passed out.”
She looked frustrated, like she knew what she needed to do, but couldn’t. Her dad had held the job for thirty years or so. He was the law in Crystal River. With that, came a level of respect from the community. I doubted April received the same level of consideration from half the old timers in town. And what was Crystal River but a bunch of retirees now? What there was of the younger generation was probably the same as anywhere else. They didn’t care.
“It’ll come with time,” I said.
She smiled, nodded and went back to work. I decided to step away for a few minutes so she could complete the task without feeling like I was watching over her shoulder.
I walked to the end of the porch, scanned the street. The people across the road were still outside on their porch. They’d extinguished their cigarettes. I heard them talking, but couldn’t decipher what they said.
Elsewhere, the kids had all gone inside. It was hard to play soccer with the sun down. The streetlights that lined the road were dim and spaced far apart.
I stuck my head past the railing and looked up. Clouds had rolled in from the north. The breeze had died down. The air felt thick again. I heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. We might beat the storm on our way down to Clearwater, but we were sure to hit it on the way back.
A car pulled into the neighborhood. I saw the light rack on the roof as it passed under a street lamp. The headlights lit up the street. I followed the flood of white and saw the same beat up Tercel I had seen across from the car wash and in the parking lot of Dad’s senior care facility.
I walked to the porch entrance and ducked under the police tape.
The cruiser parked behind April’s vehicle. The guy got out.
“Jack,” he said. “Where’s April?”
I still couldn’t remember the guy’s name. Perhaps Sean had a yearbook lying around somewhere in his house.
“Inside,” I said as I hiked my thumb over my shoulder. We passed each other on the driveway.
“Hey Craig,” April said.
Craig, that was it. But was that his first name or his last? I questioned whether I really remembered the guy.
They spoke on the porch for a few moments. I turned right at the end of the driveway and headed toward the Tercel. It was parked in a dark area, making it impossible to tell if anyone was inside it.
About halfway between Jessie’s house and the Toyota, April called for me.
“Jack, what are you doing?”
Any cover I had had been blown. I turned around and walked toward her, casting the occasional glance over my shoulder. She waited for me beside her car, next to the passenger door.
I stopped two feet from her. “That’s the third time I’ve seen that Tercel today.”
She glanced over my shoulder. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips pursed.
“About a hundred feet back,” I said. “Older model. Primer gray.”
“Where’d you see it?”
“At my dad’s retirement home, across from the car wash, and now here.”
She shrugged. “Coincidence, that’s all. He visited his mom or dad earlier, had a bite to eat, and he’s home now. People do live and work around here, you know. They have lives, families, dietary needs.”
“Fast food is far from a need.”
“Whatever, come on.”
I didn’t accept her take on events as gospel, but they made sense. At least, they would to someone who didn’t carry around the same level of paranoia as I did.
She held her cell phone up. “I’ve got an ME who is going to meet us at the morgue.”
“ME?”
“Medical Examiner. Don’t you watch TV or read?”
“No.”
“Huh.” She studied me for a moment. “Well, you should.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe add it to my resolutions next New Year’s Eve.”
She waved me off. “Get in the car, Jack. We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us.”
Chapter 22
“I’m telling you, that was close, Vera.” Leon’s heart pounded. He had to force air through his nose. He was lightheaded.
It felt good. He felt alive.
Jack Noble had stood ten feet away from where Leon hid. The hedges were thin, too. If the man had aimed the heavy-duty flashlight in Leon’s direction, Jack would have spotted him. If he’d have sneezed, or been stung by a bee, Leon would be dead now.
“I told you to stay in the car,” she said with no inflection in her voice.
“I’m tired of that.”
“Take me through what happened so I can try and make some sense of why you stepped out of line?”
“They were inside the house for a while. Another cop showed up.” Leon paused a beat. The cruiser pulled a tight U-turn, hopping a curb, and raced toward the end of the street. “Hey, Vera, they just left. Pulled out in a hurry. You want me to follow them?”
The line was silent for a minute except for Vera’s steady breathing.
“Is the cop still there?” she asked.
“Yeah, he is, but Jack ain’t. Should I go?”
“No. I can trace a cop car. They don’t have many in that town. I know where you’re at, so it won’t be hard.”
He heard her tapping on her keyboard. He tried to imagine what Vera’s office looked like. He’d never been in there. Never been close. Hell, he hadn’t ever met her. He only knew the voice, that stiff, monotone voice. Did she sound like that all the time? When she had sex, was it like screwing a robot?
“Leon, why don’t you go inside and talk to the cop? Find out what he’s doing there.”
Leon glanced at the police tape surrounding the porch. “How am I gonna pull that one off?”
“Tell him you’re the detective from the city.”
“What? What detective?”
She sighed. “Don’t question me. You have to accept that I know more about what is going on than you do. When the time is right, I’ll fill you in. Until then, you’ll be told what you need to know and you will keep doing what I say to do when I tell you to do it. Understand?” She paused a beat. “I don’t need to tell you what will happen to you if you don’t. After all, you’re usually my go to guy to get rid of a rotten apple.”
“Bad apple or rotten tomato.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Leon hesitated. Though he’d never asked, he always assumed that there were more like him. Someone had to assassinate the assassin. “Yeah, I know, V. Whatever you need, I’ll do.”
“OK, then. Call me back when you’re done with the guy.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He hung up, opened the door, turned in his seat and placed both feet on the ground. He didn’t have his good shoes on. He hadn’t counted on this job lasting this long. Now he regretted it. And his feet hated him for it. As he walked toward the house, he slipped his cell in one pocket and a blackjack in the other. It we
ighed down his pants, causing the Glock to slip a little in his waistband.
A holster would have been a good idea, too, he thought.
Leon walked down the sidewalk at a steady clip. He stopped in front of the house. The windows were dark. The door propped open. Leon crossed the street. He stepped lightly up the driveway, across the walkway, and ducked under the yellow tape and stopped on the porch. The cop stood in the front room, facing away.
Leon whistled at the guy.
The deputy spun around and reached for his pistol.
Leon already had his drawn. “Hey, ho, man, take it easy.”
“Who…who are you?” the deputy asked.
Leon smiled a little. The other guy had no business being in the house. He wasn’t a cop. The guy was a glorified secretary.
Leon said, “I’m Detective Jones from Tampa. Was asked to come down here and check this crime scene out. I saw your car out there, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t a perp.”
Perp? Where had that come from? Too many movies.
“I’m a deputy in the Crystal River Sheriff’s department. I was told by my boss to wait here and protect the scene.”
Leon wondered from what. He smiled, nodded, and said, “Looks like you’re doing a stellar job, my man.”
The deputy’s flashlight hit the floor and lit up a decent space around it. Leon caught sight of the blood on the wall.
“Man, what happened here?” he said.
“Suicide,” the guy said.
Leon chuckled. “Ain’t no suicide, man. Who the hell shoots themselves while they’re standing up so that the blood sprays on the wall like that? People tend to develop nervous leg syndrome when a gun is pointed at them.” He caught the deputy’s attention. “Meaning their legs don’t want to work anymore. Knees get all rubbery and give out. They fall to the ground, crying and whimpering and begging for their life and whatnot.” He still held his gun. He aimed it toward the ceiling and wagged it around, let it come to rest on his temple. “Now, I seen a few men put a gun to their own head. They sat down for it, though. I figure, maybe someone could stand, but they ain’t gonna go up to the wall and hold one side of their head against it.”
“What?” the deputy said as if every word had passed around him. “Who the hell are you?”
“Like I said, I’m Detective Johns from Tampa.”
“You said Jones a minute ago?”
Leon smiled. “Did I?”
The deputy took a step back. “Let me see your ID.”
“Don’t move.” Leon aimed his Glock at the man.
The guy lifted his hands in the air.
“Turn around,” Leon said.
The man did.
Leon walked up to him. He grabbed the man’s handcuffs, yanked his arms back, and placed the cuffs on the deputy’s wrists.
“It’s nothing personal,” Leon said right before he knocked the deputy out with his gun.
The man fell to the floor in a heap. Leon dragged him into the kitchen. A trail of blood followed them. Leon saw it, cursed. He grabbed some peroxide and a towel and cleaned it up. Then he dropped the towel on the guys face and the peroxide on his stomach. The man had no reaction.
Out cold.
Leon pulled out his cell phone and called Vera.
“Well?” she said.
“He’s down. This place is a mess. Blood all over the wall, the carpet, the deputy’s face.” He held back a laugh.
“I want you to tamper with it.”
“How?”
“Get creative.”
“Don’t you think they already have what they need from it?”
“Let me worry about that, Leon.”
“What about the cop?”
“Did he see you?”
“Yeah.”
She sighed. “Take him someplace.”
Leon glanced at the man on the floor. He didn’t need to hear anything else. “OK.”
After Vera ended the call, Leon looked around for something to use to destroy the crime scene. He knew enough about forensics to keep from getting caught. There was little he could do to get rid of all the blood at this stage. Besides, the crime scene was old enough that they would have gathered all the evidence they needed. But Vera gave him an order, so it was best to carry it out.
He found the laundry room at the end of a hall off the kitchen. On a shelf he saw a bottle of bleach and a bottle of ammonia. He grabbed both, and carried them to the kitchen. The deputy moaned and rolled over. Leon kicked him in the head three times. The guy stopped moving.
Leon opened the back door. He saw a hose coiled up on the ground. It had a spray nozzle attached to the end. He turned the faucet on and dragged the hose through the kitchen and into the living room.
He squeezed the nozzle’s trigger and aimed the powerful stream at the wall and the floor. Dried blood began to liquefy and slide down the wall. After a minute of dousing the area, he emptied the bottles of bleach and ammonia on the wall and the floor. The mixture of the two burned his throat and nostrils. He ran through the room and the kitchen and burst through the back door. He filled his lungs with thick fresh air.
He knew that was a bad combo, but he hadn’t expected that reaction.
Leon waited a few minutes. He wanted to hang outside longer, but knew time was critical. He followed the green hose through the house and scooped it up by the spray nozzle. Then he aimed the jet of water at the wall and the floor.
“That’ll have to do,” he said.
He carried the hose into the kitchen. The guy had scooted to the wall. Leon sprayed him down. The deputy screamed as the high-powered jet of water hit his open wounds. Leon laughed at the guy as he tossed the hose outside.
He walked back to the deputy and squatted down in front of him. The man looked away.
“That’s what I thought,” Leon said.
The deputy said nothing.
Leon pulled him to his feet and pushed him into the garage. The deputy tripped. Somehow he managed to turn so that his side hit the concrete floor first.
“Wait here,” he said. “You so much as move, I’m going to kill you.”
Leon exited the house, picking up the deputy’s pistol along the way, jogged down the street and got into the Tercel. He raced toward the house, backed into the driveway and butted the rear bumper up to the garage door.
He waited behind the wheel for few minutes, watching his surroundings.
Inside the garage, Leon belted the sheriff again, almost knocking the man unconscious. He lifted the garage door just enough to shove the deputy into the trunk of the Tercel. Leon watched as the man rolled his head back and forth, trying to talk. Blood covered spittle flew a few inches into the air and crashed back down on his face.
“Save it,” Leon said, closing the trunk lid.
He got behind the wheel and pulled out of the driveway. The guy banged against the frame and the backseat. Leon turned up the music and drowned the noise out.
Chapter 23
The morgue loomed ahead like a gateway to hell. The dark hid the bulk of the building. Landscape lights set at ten-foot intervals were aimed upward, highlighting long thin stretches of the building’s concrete facade.
April pulled into the parking lot and double-parked near the door. She left the car running for a minute. For the first time, it felt like the air conditioning had cooled me off.
She said, “You sure you’re ready for this, Jack?”
I said, “I’ve seen plenty of bodies, April. Some were my fault, others weren’t. Some were friends. Some of those friends died because of me. I can handle this. It’s the only way we’ll figure out what happened.”
We exited the vehicle and met in front. We walked silently to the morgue’s entrance. Inside, April signed us in. The older guy on the other side of the counter wore a white coat, blue jeans and a t-shirt. He had messy hair and was unshaven. We’d woken him up, and he looked pissed about it. He looked at me, then at her. I presumed he wanted to say something. He didn’t.
>
“That’s him,” April whispered.
He led us down a narrow hall that deposited us into a chilled room. The walls to my left and right were fifteen feet high and lined with chambers. There were three rows on each side, with fifteen frozen caskets to a row.
When the hell would there be ninety bodies needing a place in the morgue in Clearwater?
The guy looked at his chart. “Let’s see, Jessie Staley.” He traced his finger down the page. “Ah, there we go.” He led us to the other end of the room. He turned a handle and pulled Jessie’s chamber open.
Her dark hair was matted against the pale skin of her face. Her eyes were closed. Blood caked her eyebrows. Her lips were parted slightly. The top one was split in the middle. One of her teeth had been knocked out and another broken.
The ME moved her head to the right. He pointed at the obvious bullet wound above and slightly forward of her ear. “Entrance.” He turned Jessie’s head a little more. His fingers walked around her skull and came to a stop a few inches behind the first wound. “Entrance. And, you can’t see it, but exit just an inch behind. That bullet grazed along her skull and popped back out.”
“That explains the hole in the wall,” I said.
“And the blood on the baseboard,” she said.
“You notice anything else?” I said to the ME.
“Obvious trauma to her mouth.”
“How did she fall?” I said.
The ME shuffled through her file and pulled out a photograph. Jessie lay on her side right. Her right arm stretched out along the floor. Her left fell across her chest. One leg was straight, and the other pulled forward. The back of her head rested on the floor. The last thing she saw lay somewhere between the man who shot her and the ceiling.
“That rules out the fall knocking her teeth out,” I said.
The ME reached out and opened Jessie’s mouth. “I found the full and partial teeth inside. I’m waiting on results.”
“What would that tell us?” April said.