The Perfect Suspect

by Margaret Coel

  She managed to close the bag, then went to the corner, got down on her hands and knees and ripped back the carpeting, a green shag probably older than she was that smelled of dog hair and cat pee, with pink stains of old nail polish here and there. She had pulled a triangle back two feet before she spotted the floorboard with the knothole. Working an index finger into the knothole, she struggled to lever the board upright. The board was stuck. God, probably another leak that had run down the inside wall and swollen the boards. She could smell the acrid odor of mold. The board began to give a little, and she managed to jerk it upright and lift out the metal box.

  She carried the box over to the bed and opened it. The black bag with the pearl and diamond necklace from the vice president of some Florida company lay next to the bronze case with the diamond bracelet and ruby pendant from the oil guy with the sour smells of gasoline and aftershave. Beneath the jewelry was twelve thousand dollars, neatly stacked in one-hundred-dollar bills, rubber-banded together. The total savings for six years, a hundred clients—she had lost count—all blurred together, the well-trimmed hair and bulbous noses, the hearty laughs and big, hairy hands. The jewelry was worth another couple thousand. She’d find a high-class pawnshop in Phoenix, not one of those cheap places that tried to give you a few hundred bucks for diamonds.

  She closed the lid and slipped the box into an empty shopping bag she had left next to the dresser. She yanked open the bottom drawer and rummaged among the underwear and blouses for the baggie. The plastic felt cool to her fingertips. Hardly enough white powder inside to bother with. Besides, she had been cutting back. She kicked the drawer shut, then opened it again. She took the baggie. Beckman couldn’t find the cocaine. It would provide the perfect excuse: a drug addict, holding on to her stash, threatening a police officer. With what? A knife, maybe. All Beckman had to do was get a butcher knife from the kitchen and place it in Kim’s hand—after she had killed her. She pulled out the baggie and stuffed it inside the shopping bag.

  She would take I-25 south all the way into southern New Mexico, then turn west and drive for Arizona. It could take two days, but she wouldn’t stop. She would keep going, keep going. She fixed the strap of her bag over her shoulder, then picked up the fake leather suitcase and the shopping bag. She’d get a job on a ranch looking after horses, out in the wide open desert with the big sky all around. She had always liked horses, and they liked her, at least during that time Mama took up with the seven-foot-tall rancher in Nevada. It would be a good life, working with horses. She would be free.

  The soft thud of a car door shutting outside cut into her thoughts, and she realized that, behind her thoughts, like an annoying buzzing noise, had been the sounds of an engine. She froze. She couldn’t remember whether she’d thrown the lock when she came through the front door. She had been so preoccupied with getting her things and getting out. So little time. Not even enough time to throw the lock. The truth cut into her like a knife: Ericka would give Beckman what she wanted; even if Ericka had gotten the message, she would still tell Beckman where the condo was. Ericka wouldn’t forget that Kim had cheated her.

  She forced herself to relax. Another tenant had probably come home early. People found a way to leave the office early on Friday afternoons. If she had ever landed an office job, she was sure she would have spent the days planning to get out. She took in a long breath and started down the narrow hall, the bags banging against the walls.

  The blond woman in a blue blazer and tan slacks appeared at the end of the hallway. She was gripping a metallic colored gun, steadying her wrist with her other hand. Odd, Kim thought. She didn’t look like the calm detective on TV, framed in the doorway of David’s house. This was the disheveled woman with the wild, frantic look who had burst out of David’s house and stood under the porch light, blinking into the darkness.

  “Going somewhere?” Beckman said.

  “I’m going home.” Kim heard the sound of her own voice floating ahead, disembodied. “You here to arrest me?” She knew it wasn’t true. The last thing Detective Beckman wanted was Kim Gregory spilling her guts at police headquarters.

  “Home? That’s beautiful.” A piece of blond hair had fallen into Beckman’s eye, and she tossed her head a couple of times as if she could throw it away. “Where might home be? Rathole on East Colfax? Pimp waiting for you? Gonna beat the crap outta you if you don’t get over there?”

  Kim clenched her jaws together and gripped the handles of the bags hard to stop the shaking that had started in her legs and crawled up into her shoulders. “I’m done with all that,” she said. “I’m leaving Denver, and I’ll never come back, I promise. I don’t care about anything that happened here; it’s none of my business. I’ve never been one to poke my nose in other people’s business. Live and let live is what my mama used to say.” She was afraid she might start crying, and she swallowed back the lump of moisture in her throat. She made herself go on: “I’ll just be leaving now.”

  She started moving forward, framing the whole picture: the gun that got bigger with every step, the white hands wrapped around the handle, the wild eyes and grimacing lips that parted over a row of white teeth. A deafening noise crashed over her. Then she was looking down on herself and trying to grasp this new reality of floating up to the ceiling and being down on the floor at the same time, a hot flame shooting through her, the noise still reverberating around her.

  Catherine realized she had driven past the neighborhood on I-25 hundreds of times. She had never noticed the three-story yellow buildings that looked like the motel complex they had probably once been. The parking lot was empty. No sign of Kim’s black BMW, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t left the car a block away hoping to fool Beckman into thinking she hadn’t gone home. “I’d get the cash and stuff I’ve hidden away,” Kim’s friend had said. How long would it take Kim to collect her stuff? Five minutes? She could have left already. Or never shown up. What was the stuff worth compared to her life?

  Catherine slowed through the lot, scanning the black numbers on the sides of the buildings. Kim’s condo would be at the end of the second building, the condo of any ordinary girl. Except that Kim Gregory was not an ordinary girl. She could identify a murderer. She was on the run for her life.

  “Let her be here,” Catherine said out loud.

  She left the car at the curb and ran up the steps to the second floor. An eeriness pervaded the place, the way her footsteps echoed in the stairwell and followed her down the corridor, as if she had stepped into a wormhole that could suck her into another time or place. She made herself slow down to register the numbers on each door as she passed: 2, 4, 6. Goose bumps pricked her arms; her skin was taut, muscles clenched. She could almost smell the wrongness, the scent of things out of whack. The far-off sound of the highway traffic might have been the hum of a distant galaxy.

  Catherine stopped in front of number 8 and knocked. A vacant quiet engulfed her. She knocked again and leaned close to the door. Spider cracks crisscrossed the brown paint. “Kim,” she called. “It’s Catherine McLeod. Open the door.” Still nothing. She had the sinking feeling she was too late. Kim had already left and was on her way to somewhere else, but wherever it was, Detective Beckman would find her.

  And Beckman would come after Catherine, too. Eventually, Beckman would kill both of them. The certainty knotted like a rope inside her. It was ironic: the only way she could help herself was by helping the girl who didn’t want her help.

  She pounded on the door, then took hold of the knob. It turned against her palm. She pushed the door open and stepped into a small living room with a green sofa, shiny with use, a matching green chair, a couple of small plastic tables on spindly legs and a faint odor of dampness and neglect. The kitchen—half-sized refrigerator, microwave, footlong counter next to a sink—filled the alcove in back. The condo had an unlived-in feeling, with no sign of anything personal, no photos or books or newspapers. A place to stop off, Catherine thought, in between stays at hotels with marble f
loors and deep, plush sofas and mattresses.

  “Hello!” she shouted. “Kim! Are you here? It’s Catherine McLeod. I have to talk to you.”

  Nothing. But Kim Gregory was here, Catherine was sure now. The feeling of wrongness that had overtaken her in the hallway was so strong now, she was afraid she might throw up. A few feet from the alcove was a doorway into the hall that must lead to a bedroom and bath.

  “Kim?” She crossed the living room and turned into the hall. The body of a girl lay crumpled on the floor, blood pooling beside her, a bloody trail running up the wall, as if she had tried to crawl to her feet. Catherine found herself kneeling beside her, unaware of how she had closed the space between them. She laid a finger against the girl’s carotid artery. The pulse was faint, like an afterthought. Blood bubbled out of the girl’s chest.

  Catherine got up and ran back into the living room where she’d dropped her bag. She found her cell and tapped out 911, her hand shaking so hard she feared the phone would fly across the room. “Send an ambulance right away.” She was shouting. “A girl’s been shot. She’s bleeding badly.” She gave the address and listened to the dispatcher’s assurance that help was on the way before she closed the cell and ran back into the hallway.

  Down on her knees again, barely aware of the warm, dark moisture soaking through her skirt. She leaned over and told the girl that an ambulance was on the way. “Can you hear me, Kim?” The bleeding was worse than she’d realized.

  There was the tiniest flicker of the girl’s eyelids, then they started to open, a slow motion, as if someone were pulling the strings. Her lips were pale, parting in the effort of a smile “Catherine,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Detective Beckman . . .” The girl’s voice was raspy and choked. She might have been gargling, spitting up the words. “I told her I wouldn’t tell . . .”

  “Save your strength,” Catherine said. Then she got up and went into the small bathroom for a towel. Dropping on her knees again, she pressed the wadded towel against the black, gushing hole in Kim’s chest.

  “I had a horse named Ribbon once,” the girl said.

  “Shhh,” Catherine said. The towel was already wet. A siren screamed in the distance.

  “We went riding on the desert every day. It was like riding in the sky.” The girl’s eyes started to close in slow motion, as if puppet strings were being gently loosened.

  “Help’s almost here,” Catherine said. She could hear the sounds of engines cutting off in the parking lot. “Try to hang on, Kim. Please hang on.”

  32

  The doctor in green scrubs came around the corner into the waiting room. Catherine jumped to her feet, her mouth parched and rough, as if something vital had been drawn from her, but the doctor went over to the elderly couple huddled on chairs pulled close together. He leaned over, speaking in the kind of tone she imagined doctors reserved for the worst kind of news. The gray-haired woman let out a small, high-pitched cry, like that of a cat in pain. The old man gripped her hand, helped her to her feet and, wobbling side by side, they followed the doctor across the waiting room and out into the corridor. Catherine could hear the shuffling footsteps as they receded somewhere into the cavernous depths of Denver Health Sciences.

  She managed to lower herself back into the cushions of her own chair. The police officer, tall and wiry with pink cheeks, still in his twenties, sat near the door—she was a witness, after all, and the killer could still be looking for her. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her. They were alone in the waiting room now, with its rows of upholstered chairs and lamp tables and magazine racks and the soft glow of fluorescent ceiling lights, like a small ship adrift on the whir and bustle, the muffled clanking and knocking and subdued voices of the hospital. She closed her eyes and ignored the pulsing of the cell phone in her bag beside her. Marjorie had been texting and trying to call since she had gotten to the hospital almost two hours ago. “What’s happening? We hear there’s been another murder. Somebody else shot. Jason’s on the story. Where are you? Send me what you know. You okay?”

  I’m not okay, Marjorie, she had wanted to text back, but she couldn’t text anything. She couldn’t call. She couldn’t pull her notebook out of her bag and write an update for the Journal’s website. Kim Gregory, witness to the murder of David Mathews, was shot late this afternoon. Before she lost consciousness, Gregory identified the person who shot her as Detective Ryan Beckman, the same person she had seen emerge from Mathews’s home minutes after he was shot. Gregory is in surgery at Denver Health Sciences. She is in extremely critical condition. She might die.

  Catherine couldn’t write any of it. She would have to rephrase and couch the sentences with “allegedly” and not actually name Beckman who was innocent until proven guilty, and where was the proof? Somewhere beyond the yellowish green walls of the waiting room, a girl was fighting for her life on an operating table, and if she died, the killer might very likely go free. There would be no one to place Beckman at Mathews’s house. Even the fact that Kim had named Beckman as the one who shot her would be twisted by some clever defense attorney as the illusions of a dying girl. Catherine had seen the glances that two police officers gave each other at Kim’s condo when she told Nick what Kim had said. She had spent twenty minutes telling Nick everything, watching him scribble on a little notepad: how she had gotten the address where Kim had gone, how Kim’s friend Misty Somebody had given her Kim’s address, and all the while the pair of uniforms had worn plaster faces, but the glances had given them away. Then Nick had followed her to headquarters and stayed with her while she gave a video statement on everything she knew, including Misty’s name and address. Finally she left for the hospital. The receptionist in the lobby said Kim Gregory had been taken straight to surgery. Visitors were welcome to wait upstairs. Catherine and the officer were the only visitors.

  Whatever she wrote for Marjorie could be nothing but half truths, flimsy fodder for the public’s curiosity, crucial parts omitted. Somehow she had crossed the invisible line that separated reporters from the story. She was in the story herself; it was her story. Like a reporter, she had watched it unfold, and yet she had known the truth behind the surface and hadn’t been able to do anything. She hadn’t been able to help Kim Gregory. She felt diminished and exposed and helpless, as if the waiting room and the chair itself had eclipsed her.

  “Catherine?” Nick stood in the doorway, dark and big against the bright light in the corridor. “You all right?” he said, walking toward her.

  “Kim’s still in surgery.” She ignored the question. It had no meaning.

  He dropped down in the chair next to her. “I know,” he said. “I spoke with a nurse. It could be awhile before they know if she’ll make it. Why don’t you let me take you home?”

  Home. Catherine blinked hard, unable to bring the concept into focus. It seemed ridiculous, the idea that she could go home and go on, as if nothing had happened. “I didn’t get to her in time.” She blurted out the words, as if she had managed to spit out the stones choking her. This was the truth then: she had been close, probably minutes away from the condo, but she had been too late.

  “It isn’t your fault, Catherine.” She felt the warmth of Nick’s hand over her own. “Don’t blame yourself. You did what you could. You tried. We don’t always succeed, you know. What’s important is that we try.”

  “I couldn’t get her to listen to me. I couldn’t explain . . .”

  “She wouldn’t have listened to anyone. She was frightened, and her only thought was to get away. She didn’t make it.” Nick was working her hand between both of his now. “You’re in shock,” he said. “You should let me . . .”

  Catherine shook her head. “She has no one. I have to stay.”

  “I left a message for her friend, Misty Lucas. She’ll probably come to the hospital as soon as she gets it.” He took a long moment before he went on. “It’s over, Catherine. There’s an APB out for Ryan
Beckman. We found her car in a parking lot a half block from the condo. Kim’s black BMW is missing. We’re sure Beckman’s driving it. Every cop and sheriff ’s deputy in the metro area is looking for her. She won’t get far.”

  “The famous Detective Beckman.” Catherine tried to stifle the nervous laugh erupting in her throat. “Rock star detective, expert marksman, honored for bravery. No one will believe she had anything to do with this.”

  “She finally slipped up,” Nick said. “We got a call three hours ago about a shooting in a strip mall. A woman named Erika Frasier shot to death in a back office of the Morningtide Escort Services.”

  Catherine had shifted around until she was facing Nick. “The agency Kim worked for,” she said.

  “Looks like the weapon was a .38, the same caliber used to kill Jeremy Whitman, and the same caliber of bullets that we dug out of the wall of your kitchen. We have the evidence. Ballistics will prove the gun was used in all three incidents.” Before Catherine could say anything, Nick held up his hand. “There’s more,” he said. “We’ve been rounding up gang leaders for the last twenty-four hours, the guys we think gave the orders for a double gang shooting and for the random assaults downtown. Eight so far, and still counting. Guy by the name of Devon Waters is looking at a long prison term and desperate to make a deal. He says Beckman knew all along who gave the orders for the two murders and the assaults. She held it over their heads, threatening to arrest them unless they did what she wanted. Three days ago she wanted an untraceable gun, and Devon provided a .38 Ruger.”

  “Three days ago? She’ll still get away with having murdered Mathews.”

  “We don’t think so,” Nick said. “Beckman signed into the evidence room a few days before Mathews was shot. A 9mm Sig Sauer 226 has been found missing. You hear what I’m saying, Catherine? Mathews was killed with that caliber gun. We’ll know by tomorrow if it was the missing Sig.” Nick leaned closer; his arm around her shoulders felt heavy and comforting at the same time. “Listen to me, Catherine. Ryan Beckman is going to be charged and convicted of three homicides as well as attempted homicide. It’s over now. Let me take you home. I’ll have the guys bring your car to the house, and I’ll come by as soon as I finish up downtown. We’re still interrogating Devon and the others. It’s likely to take a few more hours.”