“I have never helped a person flee if they are kidnapping their own children. All custody matters must be finalized first. And I have never changed a person’s identity to minimize their chances of being found.”
“And what do you charge for this service?” She practically sneered at me.
“Charge, Detective?” I sneered back. Time to get hateful. I enjoy the philanthropic work.
“I never charge for this. Most of the time these are life and death situations. These victims have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. They have been humiliated, isolated and brutalized. I would never ever charge for helping these people. Ever. Even if it cost me every dime I have ever made. They suffer enough and our laws can’t protect them all the time. It would be inhumane to charge them. And I take it very, very seriously. If they do not want to contact anyone once they leave the area, I’m fine with that. I keep no records and would never divulge their location without their approval.”
“You must keep records or you can’t write it off.”
“I don’t keep records. I don’t do it for a tax write-off. My donations to the shelters aren’t even deducted from my taxes. I do it because I want to, not because it gives me a tax break.” I spat the words at her. I hated people who insinuated that I did this because I wanted a tax break. Philanthropy really is its own reward.
“So, even if you knew Amanda Reed, you wouldn’t admit to knowing her.” Gallagher wrote in her book.
“No, I’d admit to knowing her, I just wouldn’t tell anyone where she was.” I forced a smile onto my face.
“Really?” Gallagher closed her notebook. “And these people you help, what do you get out of it?”
“The joy of doing it. It may not sound like much, but when I was a kid, one of my aunts was beaten to death by her husband. She had a restraining order against him. Had been hospitalized six times because he had violated the restraining order. But there was never any evidence and her testimony was never enough. He beat her to death outside a courthouse after a custody hearing. He killed her with two blows, before the police or even the court security guards could stop him. No one should have to die like that. I have lawyers on staff that make sure any involvement we have is done to the strict letter of the law. We also provide free legal counsel as necessary with custody cases. No child should have to grow up in that environment either.”
Detective Gallagher took a deep breath and looked around. She stayed silent for several minutes, seeming to think about what do to do next. Finally, she turned back to me.
“Do you have any extra business cards with you?” She asked quietly.
“No,” I blinked at her. “I don’t normally carry more than one.”
“Could I swing by your office and pick some up?”
“Are you asking if you can hand out my cards?”
“Yes,” she was still very quiet.
“Of course, I would be glad to give you some.” I was still sort of puzzled.
This was the first time I’d ever been asked by a law enforcement officer if they could hand out my card. I knew that some officers already pointed people my direction, but they had never asked for a card. It was too much like admitting the laws didn’t always work.
“Detective Gallagher, I’m sorry if I seemed confrontational.” Humility is the better part of valor.
“You obviously take it very, very seriously,” she smiled as she parroted my words.
“It’s understandable that you would get defensive and confrontational. You have no idea who killed the victim?” She added as if suddenly remembering why were talking.
“No, pretty sure it wasn’t one of my brothers though. None of them had high caliber guns with them, well, except Vladik, I think he carries some kind of Magnum, but I would have noticed if he’d fired it.”
“What makes you sure it’s a high caliber gun?”
“Half his head is missing?” I smiled at her. Better to smile and keep it light, otherwise I would probably have nightmares about it tonight. “I have trouble imagining a .9mm doing it unless it was directly under the chin or something and had hollow points that fragmented into thousands of pieces on impact with lots of velocity.”
I paused, “but even then, I wouldn’t be sure about it. Of course, I’m not a gun expert or a coroner. I could be wrong.”
“Ok, did you see or hear anyone else?”
“Not really. I mean, I did hear one of my guys shoot one of his guys, but I’m pretty sure it was in self-defense.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Well, Vladik does have some anger management issues. However, I can’t see him running around shooting people for no reason. Most of his anger gets taken out on walls and things. He gets pretty frustrated watching people kill other people for no reason. Zeke doesn’t have anger issues, but he was Special Forces, he would hear someone trying to sneak up on them. I could see Zeke alerting Vladik to the presence and Vladik shooting him in the arm. But that’s just speculation. It could be that Zeke shot him. Then again, Vladik works for some secret government agency, so he would probably notice someone sneaking up on him. I don’t really know, I was dealing with Mr. Al…” I paused. “I was dealing with the victim.”
“Why didn’t you call the police when he made contact?”
“And tell them what? Some guy just called and confessed to hiring two goons to kill an employee? Oh and did I mention that the goons are in custody but are swearing they did it because Thomas owed them money?”
“Detective Daniels is keeping you well informed.” She smiled again.
“Uh, well, uh,” I closed my eyes. Oops.
“I won’t tell if you don’t mention it to anybody else.”
“Good, I’d hate to have unemployed brothers, they’d just hover around me all the time. Wait, they do that now and their employed, but it would make them bitchier.”
“How come you didn’t follow the family profession?”
“I have a Masters in Business, I get distracted easily, I ramble a lot, I wouldn’t make it as a cop. Suspects would be killing themselves just so they wouldn’t have to listen to me talk. The department would frown on that. Hell, even my kidnapper regretted kidnapping me.”
“You’re all right, Ms. Daniels. Different, but all right. Is there a number I can contact you at?” I rattled off my cell phone number. Detective Gallagher wrote it down.
“Only bad guys and very formal people call me Ms. Daniels, to everyone else, it’s just Nadine.” I told her.
“I’ll be in touch, Nadine.” She walked away. I saw her talking to Ivan for a few moments. Then Ivan joined me.
“You just impressed the toughest, most jaded detective I’ve ever met,” Ivan patted my back.
“She’s so young and pretty, she shouldn’t be jaded yet. Maybe we should hook her up with Vladik.” I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder. “Can I go home yet?”
“Yep, we are all free to leave.” Ivan pulled away from me. “Do you want someone to carry you so you don’t have to step on any graves?”
I considered that for a moment.
“No, we’ll just have to take the long way and stick to the paths.”
Chapter Nineteen
“How can you be afraid of ghosts?” Zeke asked once we were back home. We sat around my living room, trying to relax. Thankfully, no one had been arrested. Not an ideal situation, but nothing in my life ever was. I frowned at Zeke.
“I just am.”
“But that means you believe in them.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How can you believe in ghosts?”
“It’s the same principle as believing in God. There’s no concrete proof, but millions still believe in God. Well, there’s no concrete proof of ghosts, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or can’t harm you.”
“I never thought of it that way. Do you believe in God?” Zeke tilted his head sideways. My brothers were all smirking.
“Yes, and my life is his idea of a practical joke. I swear I was
created for his sole entertainment.”
Zeke frowned, obviously trying to decide if I was kidding or not. I wasn’t.
“Moving right along,” I said after a moment. “I think we need to find out who Amanda Reed is and why people are dying over it.”
“Isn’t that one of the people on the list that Anthony made?” Zeke asked, eyebrow raised. I was actually kind of jealous of this facial move, I couldn’t do it.
“Uh, I don’t think we should go near it. I think we should stay put and let the police handle it. I don’t know how many more dead bodies can show up before someone starts rumors that you’re a serial killer.” Ivan took a sip of coffee.
“Cause I know this is at least the third in three months.” He added after a moment.
“If you know of three, I wonder how many we don’t know about.” Liam seemed thoughtful for a moment. “I didn’t even know about three though.”
“The first one was a mob boss, then Thomas and now Mr. Almost-headless.” I sighed. “But that’s all I’m going to admit to.”
“Which means there are more,” Vladik made a noise in his throat. “Nice Nadine, very nice.”
“Hey, it’s been a bad summer and fall isn’t shaping up much better. Besides, I didn’t technically kill any of them. Not even the mob boss.”
“So she’s the Grim Reaper.” Vladik harrumphed at me.
“That’s what Zeke said early. He called me a ‘death magnet’ to be exact.”
“Could you do me a favor?” Liam leaned forward in his chair, looking me dead in the face.
“Try not to kill anyone?” I asked not quite nicely.
“I’m ignoring the dead people that keep piling up at your feet. Instead, could you remove the posters off the library wall. It’s kind of creepy sleeping in a room surrounded by posters of men.”
“Uh, no.”
“Then could you remove some of them? I’m not really picky, Kapt’n K and about six others would be fine.” My other brothers agreed with him.
“Why?”
“Why would we want to sleep in a room surrounded by men you find attractive?” Vladik asked. “And you’ve had a crush on Kapt’n K since you were eleven, that means we’ve been staring at posters of him for twenty years. Frankly, we’re tired of him.”
“How can you be tired of him? Especially now, age is doing wonderful things for him.”
“Will you move them?” Liam asked again.
“No, the reason they’re in the library is because I can’t sleep with them in my room. Some of them kind of reflect light in the dark, I wake up at two a.m. thinking they’re ghosts.”
“Geez you’re weird.” Ivan smiled.
“I know. So back to the topic at hand. I’ve been kidnapped and had an agent killed because of Amanda Reed. I think we should do something about it.”
“We are, we’re trying to keep you from getting killed,” Vladik touched my shoulder. Vladik was a very touchy-feely person. The only one in my family. Sometimes I could deal with it, sometimes it annoyed the snot out of me. This was one of the latter times. I brushed his hand away.
“Besides, you aren’t a detective, you can’t find your keys four days out of seven.” Liam added.
“Alex is, the four of you are, why do I have to be a detective, everyone in my family is.”
“No, I’m DEA, not a detective. I just break down doors and schedule buys from drug dealers.”
“Ok, so I’ll make an exception for you and Vladik, since I don’t know what he does.” I said that very pointedly.
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” Vladik smiled at me.
“Can’t be any worse than a family reunion.” I smiled back.
“I think Nadine’s right, I think we should try to figure out who this Reed woman is,” Zeke finally spoke up. Yea, on my side for a change. Usually, he was vetoing my ideas. Who says people can’t change.
“But I think it should be done very carefully. Whoever killed the man Nadine was meeting with is a very good shot. There’s something going on.” Ivan added.
“I hope it’s not related to the mob or KGB,” I sighed.
“I think we would know if it was.” Devlin frowned. It was the first time he’d spoken since we had arrived at my house. I’d almost forgotten he was in the room. “You’re sure you’ve told us everything about your company and its business dealings?”
“Yes.” I thought for a second, “even the illegal stuff.”
“Yeah, we’ve decided to ignore that.” Ivan huffed.
“Good, I don’t want to go to jail. I think it would be bad for my disposition. I’d lose my optimistic nature.”
“My sister the optimist who’s afraid of maggots, ghosts, and boredom. Yeah, you wouldn’t last very long in prison,” Devlin got up. “Any one need more coffee?”
Everyone but me nodded.
“I’ll take a soda.” I smiled at him.
“Sure,” Devlin walked into the kitchen.
“You’re afraid of boredom?” Zeke frowned. “Those are three of the weirdest phobias I’ve ever heard of.”
I shrugged.
“That’s why she rambles once in a while. When she gets bored her mind kicks into overdrive and she just starts spewing out information. Which she has tons of because she reads all the time to alleviate her boredom. When we were kids she used to toss pencils into her bedroom ceiling and keep count of how long the pencil stayed in the ceiling.” Vladik leaned so he could look at Zeke.
“Wait, the kidnapper said you were rambling. We’re you bored?” Ivan asked, his smile so wide all his teeth were visible.
“Well, I was waiting for the cavalry and it seemed like a good way to kill time.”
“You were being threatened with torture and you were bored?” Liam’s smile matched Ivan’s.
“The guy didn’t really want to kill me. He took his dear sweet time even getting around to torturing me. And I don’t think you can actually call it torture. It was pretty tame. More of a psychological game that he was losing. Plus, I really do just ramble once in a while and it has nothing to do with boredom.” Devlin reentered the room as I spoke.
He handed me a soda and they passed the coffee pot around. It was almost empty when they had all filled their cups.
“I don’t know if she still keeps track of it, but she does throw pencils into the ceiling at work.” Zeke took a sip.
“She also listens to music and dances around singing when she’s bored.” Liam put his cup on the table.
“Hmm, I didn’t think you guys knew about that. I still do it.”
“Figures, please don’t when we’re home, you can’t carry a tune. So, do we have Alex investigate?” Vladik moved next to me. He was becoming fidgety.
“Would you sit still?” I asked him.
“No,” he frowned at me. “My leg really itches.”
“Oh great, now you’re going to get a rash,” I shook my head. Only me.
“No, I’ve had the rash. The doctors say it should go away in another couple of days. No, I can’t tell you how I got the rash or what it is. It’s not contagious and I got it through work.”
“Oooh, top secret government work,” Liam teased. “It’d be dangerous for Alex to do it. It might make someone think she’s involved.” My cell phone rang, cutting him off. I checked the number and groaned. News spread fast for this to be a city of almost a million people.
“What?” I answered.
“Just got one question, were you really in a cemetery talking to someone when their head got blown off?” Anthony asked.
“Yes and no. Yes I was in the cemetery. No, I wasn’t talking to them, I was walking away from them and their head wasn’t entirely blown off, just partly. He claimed to be the brother of Amanda Reed.”
“Shit, Nadine, isn’t that the woman the kidnapper was asking about? Didn’t I warn you about her?”
“Yep.”
“What have you gotten into?”
“Beats the hell out of me, but I
’ll be glad when it’s over.”
“Me too. What do you want me to do?”
“Guard Alex.”
“I’m thinking we should send Alex on vacation.”
“Is she becoming a pain in the ass?”
“No, but it’s getting rough. I’m beginning to think we should send you back on vacation.”
“All that would do is delay the inevitable. When I got back, people would still be trying to kill me.” It should have bothered me that I could talk about it so casually.
“Could it be a ploy to get something else out of you?”
“Like what? I don’t have anything. Books. I don’t have anything valuable except information. If they want that, they’ve got a strange way of getting it. It would make more sense to stop dancing around the issue and just ask me for the information. They wouldn’t get it, but it’d be a hell of a lot more effective.”
“Could Amanda Reed be a code for something?”
“A code for what Anthony? I can’t even do a word search, I certainly wouldn’t know if it was a code, only you special ops boys think like that.” I stole a glance at Zeke. “Here, talk to Zeke about codes.” I handed him my cell phone and yawned. Next to me, Vladik continued to scratch his thigh.
“Would you stop?”
“No, it itches.”
“So stop anyway.” I snapped at him.
“I’m not going to stop. The damn cortisone cream doesn’t seem to be working.”
I let out a long sigh mixed with a groan. Zeke was chattering away at my cell phone, Vladik was having a scratching marathon and I was getting bored. Not really bored, just slightly. I needed a new hobby.
“What are you going to do about mom?” Liam asked.
“I don’t know.” Back to that, but I supposed it beat discussing Vladik’s rash. “I honestly don’t have a clue. I can’t get anyone to help me. I thought about going to confession, see if a priest would tell her, but vetoed it.”
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