Lady 52: A Jack Daniels/Nicholas Colt Novel

by Jude Hardin

  The man who had kicked him walked over to the crate, but the cop said, “Chain of evidence, Colt. Don’t touch.”

  The Marshmallow Man pulled some latex gloves from his jacket pocket, pulled them onto his chubby hands, and overturned the crate Sergio had been sitting on, revealing two wallets and Sergio’s fake passport in the name of Javier Sanchez. He picked it all up and thumbed through it.

  “William Shipman and Sheldon Lowe,” the pig said. Then he glanced over at the dropped utility knife, and back at Sergio. “You’re The Defacer?”

  Sergio shook his head, frantically. “No! I just took the wallets. I am a…” He searched his mind for the word. “A accomplice! Just a accomplice! A white man, he is the one who killed Dr. William Shipman and Sheldon Lowe. He was also the one that shot at you. He forced me to work with him. He said he would kill me. I can describe the man. You must believe me, señor.”

  Sergio saw the fat cop frown. If they continued to search the vacant store, they would find the faces he had removed. But perhaps Sergio could blame that on the rich gringo as well.

  “You must believe me! I will take a lie detector test! I can describe the man! He was in a Cadillac. Dr. Shipman was trying to get his car started, using cables.”

  “What did you say?” the cop asked.

  “They were both parked in the alley, facing each other. The killer’s hood was open. Dr. Shipman was trying to…” What was that damn English phrase? “To jump the car. That’s when the rich man stabbed him.”

  DANIELS

  SUNDAY, 9:01 P.M. CST

  I was getting pretty hammered.

  Dr. John Boggan had been forcing me to take sips of whiskey for almost two hours. During that time, he’d attempted to be pleasant, trying to coax me to converse on a variety of subjects. Everything from gun control to the possibility of life on other planets. For a cold blooded killer he was pretty chatty.

  From the couch, I could see the digital clock on his DVD player. The numbers were blurry at first, but I finally managed to squint them into focus. As I stared at the little LED panel on the front of the Sony machine, they changed from 9:01 to 9:02.

  Boggan had mentioned eleven o’clock as launch time, which meant I had two hours left to live. Give or take. The fall itself would probably last ten seconds or so.

  And then?

  Splat.

  No more Jacqueline Daniels.

  I’d been in dire situations before, but this one seemed particularly hopeless. Herb knew I was with Dr. Boggan, but he had no reason to suspect that I was in any danger. My only hope was that Ray Hitchcock had gotten in touch with Herb and told him about the scalpel. But, if that was the case, Herb would have figured it out and the cavalry would have arrived hours ago.

  At the rate I was drinking, I wouldn’t even be conscious for my own demise. I knew my tolerance level, and I was about three shots away from passing out.

  Boggan walked up to his little bar in the corner and poured us another round. He and Renke had been drinking, too. Not as much as me, but they had to be tipsy.

  Dutch courage. Throwing a woman off a balcony probably wasn’t an easy thing to do.

  He walked back to the couch and held my glass to my lips. I took a little sip, and managed to spill some of it down my chin.

  “Do you believe in life after death?” he said.

  “I don’t know. But if there is, I’m going to come back and haunt your ass.”

  He laughed. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor. If the circumstances were different, I really would have liked to get to know you better.”

  “But the circumstances aren’t different. You’re a killer, and I’m your next victim. Given the chance, I wouldn’t hesitate to blow your brains all over this fancy leather couch.”

  “I’m not a killer, Jack. I don’t get any joy from this. I’m just covering my tracks.”

  “You never did tell me why you murdered your friend. Was that about covering your tracks too?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “What’s the difference?” I said. “I’m going to be hamburger on the sidewalk anyway. It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone.”

  “It’s just not something I want to think about. I loved Bill Shipman. He was my friend. I want to put all that behind me.”

  “You’ll never be able to put all that behind you, John. You’ll see him in the face of strangers. You’ll see him in your dreams. When you least expect it, a classic tune will come on the radio and remind you of the great times you and your buddy had that year, the year the song came out. Talk about coming back to haunt your ass. William Shipman will be with you forever, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “How about you, Mark? You’re just sitting there, looking moody. You gonna let John throw me off the building by himself? Like you made him kill your good buddy Bill? Or are you gonna help this time?”

  He gave me the finger again. “Fuck you.”

  I decided to lay it on thick, see how many buttons I could push.

  “Third grade,” I said. “I bet you called him Billy back then. I bet you can remember trading your cheese sandwich for his peanut butter and jelly at the lunchroom table. I bet you caught snakes and swam in ponds and had spitting contests, and all sorts of other things boys do together. I bet you guys built model cars and airplanes and traded comics and had sleepovers every chance you got. I bet you went outside to your parent’s driveway and lay on your backs and stared at the stars on hot summer nights and talked about how great it would be when you finally got to drive. And it was great, wasn’t it? Passing the test and getting your driver’s license, tooling around in that first car. Remember the first time you all got drunk together? I bet you had some terrific—”

  “Shut up!”

  Mark got up and backhanded me, and I must have blacked out for a couple of seconds. When I came to, I spit blood on the carpet. Maybe, after I died, they’d find my DNA in John’s condo.

  “Did I hit a nerve, Mark? If you guys loved your old buddy Bill so much, why did you kill him?”

  Mark reared back to hit me again, but John caught his arm. “Enough, Mark. She’s just trying to get us riled up. This will all be over soon.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear it.

  “Why the alley?” I said.

  “What?”

  “My partner and I, we couldn’t figure out why Bill parked in the alley instead of the parking lot. We thought he stopped for cigarettes.”

  “Bill didn’t smoke,” John said.

  “You told me he did. When I first met you.”

  “So I lied. Sue me.”

  I thought it through.

  “So he wasn’t there for cigarettes,” I said. “He was there for you. You called him after you left Genario’s, told him to meet you in the alley”

  He smiled. “And why in the world would I do that?”

  I remembered the hood of Shipman’s Mercedes. It was open an inch when we’d seen it in the alley.

  “You must have faked some kind of car trouble. Battery? That would explain his hood being open. You told him your battery was dead and you needed a jump. You parked in a dark alley, and he pulled up in front of you, so you could connect the jumper cables. How’s that sound? Am I close?”

  John seemed pleased. “You’re actually a pretty good detective, Jack.”

  “And then, while your best friend was helping you, you sliced through his femoral artery with a scalpel. And then you cut off his face while he was still alive.”

  John lost the smile. His eyes narrowed. “I did not cut off his face. That happened after I’d gone. Someone else did that to John. Probably that Terrence Rush man who your partner shot. We got lucky. That Defacer fellow drew suspicion away from us.”

  “You consider that lucky? I read the M.E.’s report. Your friend Bill had his face cut off while he was still conscious.”

  John looked shocked, but he recovered q
uickly. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not the lying murderer in the room, John. You are. You cut your friend, didn’t wait for him to die, and then someone else came along and cut his face off while he was still alert and oriented.”

  Mark had a look of absolute disgust on his face. “John? Did you leave Bill there while he was still breathing?”

  “He was still breathing, but he’d lost a lot of blood.”

  “You didn’t stay with him until he died? He was our friend.”

  “You didn’t even have the guts to come along,” John said. “And now you want to lecture me? Do you think it was easy, Mark? You didn’t see the look on his face when I… when…”

  “When you cut him,” I said. “And then left him there for some maniac to come by and carve him to pieces while he tried to fight him off. That’s right. He had cuts on his hands. Trying to keep the knife away.”

  It was a lie, but it was having its desired effect. Both men were turning green.

  “He was dying,” John said. “He’d lost a lot of—”

  “If this is how you guys treat your best friends, I’d hate to see what you do to your enemies,” I said. “I couldn’t even imagine it. Bill, woozy from blood loss, helpless and begging, while someone sliced off his nose and lips and ears and—”

  Mark vomited all over the carpet.

  “Finish it,” John said, pressing the full glass of whiskey to my lips.

  “No.”

  “I’ve grown weary of you, Jack. We’re going to move up the timetable by an hour. Now drink this, or I’ll get the nasogastric tube.”

  “Go get your tube, asshole. And get a bucket for Mark. I don’t think he’s finished yet.” I looked at Mark. “You’re a wimp, buddy. And John knows you’re a wimp. He’s going to be worried that you’ll break down, tell somebody what he did. He’s the killer, Mark. Not you. He’s the one who will go to jail for life. He knows if you turn state’s evidence, you’ll go free. As soon as he kills me, he’ll come after you next. Don’t think he won’t. He killed Bill in cold blood, left him there to die. Don’t be surprised if he calls you up one day, saying he needs help because his car won’t start.”

  John left the room.

  “He’s probably going to get his scalpel right now,” I said to Mark. “He killed your best friend. You don’t think he’ll do the same thing to you?”

  John returned. Not with a scalpel, but with a roll of medical tape and a long flexible piece of plastic tubing.

  “Enough chit chat,” he said. “We’re doing this. Now.”

  COLT

  SUNDAY, 9:16 P.M. CST

  Herb and I sat in Jack’s office looking out the window. The Chrysler 300 was a crime scene now, and the street in front of the station house had been closed a block in each direction. Blue lights flashing, investigators and detectives and uniformed officers scurrying around doing their jobs. There was a fire engine and an ambulance and a couple of unmarked cars with government tags.

  I still couldn’t believe Laurie was gone. I felt like crawling off in a corner and crying my eyes out, but the mourning would have to wait. There was work to be done, and I wanted to be part of it. Laurie would have wanted it that way. It’s what she would have expected.

  Still, it was hard. The hardest thing I’d ever done, including crawling away from that crash site while everyone I cared about went up in flames.

  “I still can’t get ahold of Jack,” Herb said. “But I’ve called in a sketch artist. She should be here any minute.”

  “Sketch artist for what?”

  “Sanchez says he can describe the man who killed Dr. William Shipman last Thursday night. We’re going to give it a shot.”

  “You’re going to cut that jackwad a deal?”

  “My captain talked to the DA, and he said they’re willing to consider it. If Sanchez comes through, and if what he gives us leads to a conviction. Right now he’s facing murder one charges for Laurie. The wallets also tie him to the murder of Shipman and Lowe. But that thing he said about jumping the cars, it made sense. According to Sanchez’s passport, he’s only been in town for a few days. He doesn’t have a car. But the vic’s hood was open, which is consistent with getting a jump. It also explains why he was parked in the dark alley, not the CigsMart parking lot. He was trying to help someone who had planned to murder him.”

  “Maybe he gave someone a jump,” I said. “Then Sanchez killed him after that.”

  “Maybe. But something about his story sounds true. Doesn’t hurt to pursue it, see where it goes.”

  “And if it goes somewhere, Sanchez gets a deal?”

  “No matter what happens, Nicholas, Sanchez is going to prison for a long time.”

  The phone rang, and Herb picked it up.

  Identified himself.

  Listened.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

  He set the receiver back in its cradle.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “The sketch artist is here. She’s in an interview room with Sanchez down on the first floor.”

  “I’d like to go with you.”

  Herb shook his head. “You’re a civilian. You shouldn’t even be here right now.”

  “The woman I love just got shot in the head, man… What else am I supposed to do? Find a bar, crawl into a bottle?”

  “Can you control yourself, with Sanchez in the room?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, although in reality I wasn’t so sure.

  Herb hesitated, then said, “Okay. But you’re there as an observer. Don’t talk. Don’t engage the suspect at all. He’s already trying to press charges for you kicking him.”

  “He fell while trying to escape.”

  “I know. That’s what my report says. But he’s lawyered up now. So don’t say or do anything. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  We left the office and took the stairs to the first floor. I followed him down a long hallway to a door with a red 5 stenciled on it. We walked inside.

  A petite blonde wearing jeans and a leather jacket was sitting at a table with a pencil and a sketch pad. Sanchez was sitting in a steel folding chair across from her. Orange jumpsuit, shackles. A tall thin uniformed corrections officer stood behind Sanchez with his arms crossed. He looked bored. The room was stuffy and hot and it smelled like Old Spice aftershave.

  “How’s it going?” Herb said.

  The artist stood and introduced herself, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. My eyes were on Sanchez. I wanted to walk over to where he was sitting and break his neck.

  But I didn’t. I stood there and kept my mouth shut like I said I would.

  “It seems our suspect here got a pretty good look at the perpetrator,” the artist said. “Mr. Sanchez was hiding behind the Dumpster on the side of the CigsMart where Shipman was killed.”

  She sat back down and addressed Sanchez.

  “What about the chin?” she said. “Round? Square? Pointy?”

  “Square,” Sanchez said. “With a dimple.”

  “Facial hair?”

  “No.”

  “I want you to take a look at these mouths, and tell me which one most closely resembles that of the assailant.”

  She handed Sanchez a piece of paper with pictures of human lips on it.

  “This one,” he said.

  She penciled the one he chose onto the face on her pad. When she finished with the mouth, she showed him some pictures of noses and eyes and hairlines. She finished the composite based on Sanchez’s choices. The whole thing only took about ten minutes.

  “I think we can work with this,” the artist said. “I’ll get it scanned into the computer, and then we can run a comparative analysis against photographs of known felons from several different databases. With a little luck—”

  “Let me see that,” Herb said.

  He stepped to the table, picked up the sketch pad. His jaw dropped and his face turned pale. Sweat beaded his forehead.

  “What is
it?” the artist said.

  “It’s Shipman’s partner, John Boggan. Jesus, Jack’s with him.”

  Herb dropped the pad, yanked the door open, and trotted down the hall.

  I followed.

  DANIELS

  SUNDAY, 9:35 P.M. CST

  Turned out a nasogastric tube hurt a lot when it was being forced down your nose and throat, especially when two men held you down and you were fighting the whole time.

  I did a lot of spitting and gagging and choking, but they managed to get it down, and then put about five shots of bourbon into my stomach using a large feeding syringe.

  It didn’t take long after that for the room to start spinning.

  I fought to keep my eyes open, to keep my head clear. John put his palm on my face.

  “Just pass out, Jack. You don’t want to be awake for this anyway.”

  So I passed out.

  At least, I pretended to.

  I wasn’t sure how many minutes I kept my eyes closed, but it seemed like a long time, and my brain was messing with me, telling me I needed to go to sleep for real. I tried to slow my breathing, tried to go completely limp. Someone slapped me, hard, which helped me focus a little, but I managed to keep my eyes closed.

  “She’s out,” John said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” Mark said.

  “You have to. That way, we’re both in this together. A hundred percent. I can’t rat you out, and you can’t rat me out. Come on. We’ll get this last bit done, and then we can get on with our lives.”

  I felt the tape being unwrapped from my wrists, my ankles.

  Wait for it, I told myself. Wait for just the right moment…

  Once my limbs were free, someone tried to lift me up.

  Now!

  I struck out with the heel of my hand, hitting Mark square in the nose. He dropped me to the floor and pinwheeled backward. The moment after I hit the ground, I yanked out the N.G. tube in one mighty jerk. It had the results I expected, stimulating my gag reflex and causing me to vomit up a stomach full of booze.

  John fell on top of me, trying for a headlock. I twisted out of it, rolling to my feet, standing up and then staggering sideways. Mark came up behind me, and I twisted my hips and snap-kicked him in the gut, my black belt in tae-kwon-do making the move automatic even though I was inebriated.