Night Moves

by DJ Steele

  After exiting the elevator into the lobby, he looked out the glass door exit and knew he’d lost track of time. The sunlight had been replaced by darkness.

  His phone vibrated in his hand. Hauser.

  Anxious to hear what Hauser had learned about Bambi he swiped the phone and sprinted for the exit to get a better signal.

  The message caused him to stop right outside the hospital door.

  Another homicide.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  A chorus of police car sirens lashed the night air signaling to Julia something was wrong.

  This wasn’t a neighbor reporting them to the police. Too many sirens. Something serious had happened.

  She and Laquita hurried down the lane toward where it intersected with 15th Street. At the intersection there were two-story homes on both sides of the lane blocking their street view.

  Julia stayed low and eased along the home facing the street on the north side of the lane. A row of tall shrubs alongside the home’s front yard provided cover to peer around.

  In the distance she saw the reflection of blue and red lights dancing off homes and treetops. Quickly she sized up the situation to figure out their next move. She was too far away to see what had happened. One possibility of why there were so many police cars made her chest hurt.

  "Laquita. Listen to me. We’ve got to get closer and find out what happened."

  "Ya think somethin’ happened to Lester?"

  "There’s only one way to find out."

  Laquita rubbed the scar on her forehead.

  Julia asked, "You okay?"

  Laquita shook her head. "I got a bad feeling."

  "Let’s not jump to conclusions. You can stay here if you'd like and I’ll check it out."

  "I should go with ya. It’s just all ‘em police make me nervous."

  Only one of them needed to find out what had happened. She placed a hand on Laquita’s arm.

  "Partners work together. If you stay here, you can keep an eye out for anything suspicious. You still have the phone we got you the other day when we went to your apartment, right?"

  "Yeah." Laquita reached around and got her phone out from her back-jean pocket. "I’ll call you if I see anythin’ that gives me the willies."

  She looked up the street. "It’s not that far. I’ll be right back." Julia forced a smile.

  She didn’t allow herself to think the worst. Cautiously, she stepped out on the sidewalk and headed toward the parade of lights, her senses on full alert. Every step closer, she tried to determine if the commotion was at the location where they were supposed to meet Lester.

  If this didn’t involve Lester, he would have taken off when he heard the sirens.

  Hurrying along the walkway, a bright red door to her right swung open before she passed by. A round man, barefoot and wearing an unwrapped bathrobe, stepped outside onto his concrete porch.

  "Hey," the man yelled. "You know what’s going on?" He seemed indifferent that his oversized beer belly and tighty-whities were on display. Not to mention it was cold outside.

  "No," she said. "Hopefully nothing serious."

  "Probably that ol’ woman on the corner. She calls the cops every time the wind rattles her door."

  "Maybe that’s it, but that’s a lot of sirens, don’t you think?"

  The round man mumbled something as he headed back inside and slammed his door.

  She hoped Laquita’s suspicion was wrong. If Lester was in trouble, they were in trouble.

  The parked cars and trees on the street obstructed her view from the rendezvous spot. A crowd of curious gawkers had gathered on the sidewalk. Some of them wrapped in heavy robes, most in coats. She hustled along keeping vigilant of her surroundings.

  She stopped when she heard one couple say, "Do you think something happened to Amy or Theodore? He does have a heart condition."

  "Excuse me," she interrupted. "Which house do Amy and Theodore live in?"

  The woman averted her eyes from Julia and said, "The recently remodeled blue Victorian home."

  "Do you know the address?"

  "No. Not their address." The older woman pointed. "It’s the one just around the corner, across from the playground."

  "Do you know them?" asked the woman.

  Julia ignored her and continued toward the crime scene. She felt a rush of relief.

  Maybe this wasn’t about Lester after all.

  Shockley hit the gas pedal and sped out of the hospital parking lot headed to the crime scene. What bothered him was the crime scene wasn't far from where Julia Bagal lived. If the homicide was connected to her in any way, he needed to get there fast. He activated his emergency lights and sirens.

  He was more than twenty minutes out. This might be the break he needed to blow the case wide open.

  Shockley thumbed the number on his cell while he kept his eyes trained on the traffic in front of him. He needed to catch up with Hauser who was already on the scene.

  "Hauser," he began. "What’s going on?"

  "Thankfully the media hasn’t arrived."

  "What do we know?"

  "Caucasian. Male. Mid-seventies. No ID. Took one to the right temple. The bullet exit shattered the driver’s side window. Looks like the killer was next to the victim in the passenger seat."

  "Witnesses?"

  "A man who lives a couple houses down. He came outside to investigate, saw the blood and called 9-1-1."

  "Did he see anybody leaving the scene?"

  "No. Pretty shook up though. Says this is a friendly quiet neighborhood."

  "Have the plates been run?"

  "As we speak."

  "I want eyes on the ground for Julia Bagal. Twenty-nine, long brown hair, blue eyes, thin, 5’6". She might be with another woman. Black, short hair, 5’8", full figure."

  "Lot of people out here, Mike, but not seeing anybody matching that description. You think she’s involved?"

  "A violent crime in a friendly quiet neighborhood is a red flag. And she lives just a couple blocks over from the park." Maybe he was jumping the gun. Just because she lived walking distance from the crime didn't mean she was involved.

  "If I see Julia Bagal, you want me to detain her?"

  "Yeah. She could be in danger."

  "10-4."

  "Any sign of the Feds?"

  "Not yet."

  "If you see a male who limps and looks suspicious, I want him detained as a person of interest."

  "Want me to hold his hands to see if they’re rough?"

  "Just work the crowd smart ass and find me a witness."

  "Copy that."

  There was a problem with this case, he thought. If they are related, why'd the killer delay blowing up the room at the motel. Why wait?

  Kill cops?

  Then why not blow up Chance Martin Stephens' car when the officers showed up? Blowing things up and killing cops was the MO for two different gangs in town. And neither gang’s territory was near the crime scene. Maybe the perp wanted the cops to believe it was gangs fighting a turf war. Amber Bull had taught him the ABCs of a crime scene. Assume nothing. Believe nobody. Check everything.

  Right now, he needed to find the guy with the limp.

  When Julia walked up to the crime scene the crowd was being managed by uniformed cops securing the area. The thick throng of bystanders obstructed her view. Maybe Lester wasn’t involved. Hopefully he heard sirens and left.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked. No calls or messages from Lester or the Bridge Club.

  Word rapidly spread through the crowd about what had happened. One woman bundled in what looked like a man’s coat and wearing fuzzy bedroom slippers said she heard somebody was murdered.

  "Do you know if it was an older man?" Julia asked.

  "Oh dear." The woman’s face contorted with pity when she saw Julia’s face.

  Julia’s hand shot up to her eye. "Slipped and fell in my living room the other night. My roommate likes to rearrange furniture."


  The woman’s eyes said I don’t believe you, but she didn’t press the issue. "Does somebody you know live there, dear?"

  "Yes. My uncle."

  The woman’s hand squeezed her arm. "Let’s pray it wasn’t him. Maybe it was somebody who doesn’t even live in our neighborhood."

  Annoyed, Julia pulled away and thanked the woman. She snaked her way through the crowd until she saw the car. Her heart stopped. She wanted to throw up.

  Her hope that Lester wasn’t involved vanished.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Lester was dead.

  Julia had just met Lester earlier today. He was the man parked outside her home. The man from the Bridge Club. The one she asked to help her.

  She heard the orders from the police to clear the area, but she wasn’t ready to leave. On the other side of the crime scene, there was a uniformed officer talking into the radio mic attached to his vest. Next to him she spotted a young skinny man dressed in jeans, a dark windbreaker with long hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  He wasn’t leaving either.

  He was doing the same thing she was doing, scanning the bystanders, many of them pressed against the barricades trying to capture the crime scene with their cellphones. Even though he wasn’t in uniform, he was standing behind the crime scene tape by other policemen and talking to them. He had to be a plainclothes cop.

  Instinctively, she drifted back behind a tall man to shield her from the young cop’s view. Her eyes continued to travel across the remaining people, most of them slow to withdraw from all the excitement. They seemed the kind of neighbors who liked to gossip. Several were trying to get information from the uniformed officers.

  She looked to the right of the plainclothes cop and saw a man who sent goosebumps racing up her arms. A tall man with dark eyes. He wore a dark fedora. A cigarette dangled from his large lips. Not only was he not moving away from the area, his eyes seemed to have settled on her. The hardened look on the man’s face made her panic. Could he be the one who killed Lester? Pretty ballsy to stay at the crime scene. Unless.

  Unless he was waiting for his real target.

  Her.

  Shoving her hand in her coat pocket, she wrapped her hand around the pistol grip. She shifted to the side of the tall man in order to see what the plainclothes cop was doing. He was walking away and headed in the same direction as another man. She had to elbow her way out of the crowd to see who the cop might be following. When she was able to get a better look, the plainclothes cop was already out of sight. She glanced back in the direction of the tall man wearing the fedora. He was gone.

  Her muscles twitched uncontrollably. She began to shake. Where was he? She twisted around, making a 360-degree turn. He had vanished into the shadows of the night.

  She spun on her heels, gripped the pistol tighter and started back the way she came. A few people tried to stop her to see if she knew what had happened. Their words didn’t register, they sounded hollow. She picked up her pace.

  She snagged her phone from her coat pocket and was going to call Laquita when it buzzed.

  Assuming it was Laquita, she quickly answered, "Laquita, I’m almost…."

  The voice on the other end cut in.

  "Julia, this is the Bridge Club. We’ve lost contact with Lester. Where are you?"

  "Lester’s dead," her unsteady voice replied.

  Shockley thought he was taking the fastest route to the homicide scene, but soon realized traffic was a problem. Cars in front of him were pulling to the side, but the number of vehicles on the street was slowing him down.

  He’d be there in five if the woman driver in front of him would look in her rear-view mirror. Was she deaf?

  His cell began buzzing. Before he could identify himself, Hauser blurted out, "Does she have a black eye?"

  The question caught him off guard. "Who?"

  "Julia Bagal."

  "Probably." The last time he saw her, her eye was swollen with purple yellow bruising. By now her eye probably looked like a black eye.

  Hauser continued, "There’s a shit load of old people limping around here. I followed the wrong guy. After I was threatened with ‘I’ll have your badge’ from some old guy, who by the way is related to the Mayor, I had one of the uniforms tell me when I got back that a woman had told him some young girl with a black eye was asking about the crime scene. She’d never seen her in the neighborhood before and thought she might know the victim."

  "Did the woman see which direction Julia came from?"

  "Negative. Just stated she suspected there might be a connection. Said the young girl was acting weird. Like she’d seen a ghost or something."

  "I want you to recruit eyes for the area. If it was Julia Bagal then her life’s probably in danger."

  "Already got officers checking the area."

  "You search to the north and west around the playground. I’ll take south and east. I should be there in 5." If this damn woman would get out of my way.

  The woman driver in front finally looked in her rearview mirror. She stopped. Shockley slammed on the brakes, barely missing a rear end collision.

  "Dammit." She thinks I’m pulling her over and stops in the middle of the road. He honked his horn several times. "Get out of my way or I'm gonna run your ass over," he yelled knowing the driver couldn't hear a word.

  Slowly she eased her vehicle over allowing him enough room to go around. The old woman wasn’t a woman. It was an elderly man who could barely see over the steering wheel.

  He stomped the gas pedal, his car racing past the elderly driver. Just a couple more minutes and he’d be there. His adrenaline was pumping as he had one thought rolling in his head, don’t let this bastard get away or harm Julia. He knew Hauser had it handled on his end.

  When he was close to the crime scene, he turned east and headed south. He killed his siren and emergency lights so he wouldn’t alert the perp.

  The guy was still in the area.

  He could feel it.

  There was an extended pause on the line while Julia waited for a response from the Bridge Club. She was certain the woman on the phone was in shock about Lester’s murder. She heard muffled voices in the background. Maybe they were trying to figure out what she should do.

  Finally, it came. "Get back to your house. We’ll be in touch soon." The woman clicked off.

  That was it? That's all?

  She wasn’t even given a chance to tell the woman about the creepy man she saw at the crime scene. And that he might be involved. Or that he might have been waiting on her to meet with Lester. Maybe the club was going to notify Elke since she had refused to go to a safe house and now the man she was supposed to meet had been murdered? Right now, she wasn’t sure how she felt about anything.

  There were more porch and floodlights on than earlier as she hustled back in the direction she had just come from. The walk back felt like it was taking longer. Perhaps it was the dread of telling Laquita that everything had gone to shit, and a good man had paid the price trying to help them.

  Looking ahead she saw no sign of Laquita at the entrance to Kathryn Lane. Maybe she was sitting down beside the shrubbery next to the alley. How on earth could she see anything suspicious sitting on her butt. Her irritation with Laquita grew.

  She rounded the corner of the shrubs and stood idle in the lane.

  Laquita wasn’t here.

  She crept into the darkness of the lane. She paused long enough to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

  She whispered, "Laquita, we need to get back to the house."

  No response.

  She descended deeper into the lane calling, "Laquita."

  Silence.

  Would Laquita have gone back to the house? She checked her phone log. Nothing. Come on Laquita, where are you? At least call me.

  That was it. She needed to call Laquita. Lester’s murder and the strange man wearing the fedora had distracted her focus. Just calm down and get a grip, she told herself. She pulled her phone and called
Laquita.

  A gust of cool wind tunneled down Kathryn Lane muting a sound she thought she heard in the distance. Tapping her foot, she pressed the phone harder against her ear. After what seemed like too many rings, Laquita’s phone went to voice mail.

  Her stomach lurched. This wasn’t good. Laquita should have answered.

  She eased the pistol out of her coat pocket. Crouching, she used a two-handed grip and aimed the barrel straight ahead.

  In her peripheral she caught a streak of movement near the dead-end alley to her left. She caught her breath and proceeded forward. The streetlight casted eerie shadows across the alley entrance.

  The open area was flanked by an oversized shed on one side. She shoved her back against the shed that extended into the alley. She kept low to make herself a smaller target. Her pistol trained in front of her. Her weapon and self-defense classes were like learning to ride a bicycle, you never forget how to do it.

  Cautiously she eased along the side of the shed toward the back of row houses. This was the same place she and Laquita tried to cross earlier that evening but were blocked by backyard fences—the dead-end alley. Floodlights on several of the homes lit up their yards, but most of the space was dark.

  She thought about calling out Laquita’s name but decided against it. At the corner of the shed, she took a step away, pulled out the small mag light and shined across the area while keeping her pistol pointed straight ahead. She didn’t see anything and decided to move back to the lane when she heard a high-pitched primeval shriek.

  She jumped and lost her footing causing her to fall against the shed, her eyes stretched open. Breathing hard, she pointed the light and her weapon toward the sound. Fleeing past her was a large furry cat.

  She stood still, her heart pounding. She blinked and slowly breathed deeply. After she caught her breath, she again attempted to call Laquita. The phone kept ringing. She started to pocket the phone when her eyes caught a glimpse of a light shining in a patch of grass near where she was standing.