by Linda Howard
Finally, almost automatically, she found herself on the road to Huntsville. It was the road she took to go shopping, to have her hair done. Whenever she left the house, it was to go to Huntsville. The road was nice and familiar. Twice she stopped and threw up, though she hadn’t eaten anything and it was mostly dry heaves. Withdrawal symptoms, she thought; her body was rebelling against not having its accustomed alcohol. She had been dried out before, but always in a clinic, where she’d been given drugs to ease the way.
Maybe that’s what she should do. Maybe she should check herself into a clinic, if she could manage to get herself all the way to Huntsville. She had done what she could, tried to warn Daisy, if she checked into a clinic, when she got out in a month, everything would be all over and she wouldn’t have to deal with it.
Except she would have to deal with her conscience if anything happened to Daisy and she hadn’t done everything she could to stop it.
She drove with both hands locked on the steering wheel, but still she couldn’t seem to keep the car in the right lane. The dotted line seemed to wiggle back and forth, and she kept swerving, trying to stay on the right side of it. A big white car blew past, horn blaring, and she said, “I’m sorry; I’m sorry.” She was doing the best she could. That had never been good enough, though, not for Temple, not for Jason or Paige, not even for herself.
A horn kept blowing. She checked to make certain she wasn’t accidentally leaning on her own horn, but her hands were nowhere near it. The white car had gone past, she hadn’t hit it, so where was that horn coming from? Her vision swam and she wanted to lie down, but if she did, she might not be able to get up.
Where was that damn horn?
Then she saw a flash of blue, the strobe effect making her even dizzier, and the big white car was on her left, coming closer and closer, crowding her off the road. Desperately she stomped the brakes to keep from colliding with the white car, and the steering wheel jerked in her hands, tearing free of her grip. She screamed as her car began a sickening spin and her seat belt tightened with an almost brutal jerk, holding her as she left the road; the front axle plowed into a shallow ditch, and something hit her in the face, hard.
Haze filled the car, and in panic she began fighting to get free of the seat belt. The car was on fire, and she was going to die.
Then the car door was wrenched open and a big, olive-skinned man leaned in. “It’s okay,” he said in a calm tone. “That isn’t smoke; it’s just the dust from the air bag.”
Jennifer stared at him, weeping, torn between despair and relief that it was all over. Now she wouldn’t have to decide anything. If Chief Russo was working in cahoots with Temple, there was nothing she could do about it.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked, squatting in the open door and examining her for any obvious injuries. “Other than your bloody nose.”
Her nose was bleeding? She looked down and saw red drops splattering all over her clothing. “What caused that?” she asked, bewildered, as if there was nothing more important than finding out why she had a bloody nose.
“Air bags pack a strong wallop.” He had a yellow first-aid kit in his hand and he opened it, took out a thick pad of gauze. “Here, hold it to your nose. It’ll stop in a minute.”
Obediently she held the pad to her nose, pinching her nostrils.
“You called the library this morning and reported a threat you overheard your husband making,” Chief Russo continued, his voice still as calm as if they were discussing the weather. “I’d like you to make a statement about what you heard, if you feel like it.”
Jennifer tiredly let her head fall back against the headrest. “Are you working with him?” she asked, all nasally. What did it matter? There was nothing she could do even if he said yes.
“No, ma’am, I’m not,” he replied. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but Daisy Minor is a special friend of mine. I take threats against her very seriously.”
He could be lying. She knew that, but she didn’t think so. She’d suffered too much pain at a man’s hands not to notice the complete absence of threat from Chief Russo. Her purse had spilled all its contents on the floorboard when she hit the ditch; she unfastened her seat belt and slowly leaned forward, scrabbling through the mess until she found the tiny cassette tape. “I didn’t just hear it,” she said. “I taped it.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Mrs. Nolan was very shaky, but she was coherent. To cover all bases, Jack insisted she take a Breathalyzer test; nothing registered. She not only wasn’t drunk, she hadn’t had any alcohol that day. One of his investigators took her statement; then several of them listened to the answering machine tape. The mayor’s voice sounded a little tinny, but recognizable.
“—-grab her when she leaves the library for lunch, or when she goes home this afternoon. She’ll just disappear. When Sykes handles something personally, there aren’t any problems.”
“Realty?” That was the second man, the one Mrs. Nolan identified as Elton Phillips, a wealthy businessman in Scottsboro. “Then why was Mitchell’s body found so fast?”
“Sykes didn’t handle it. He stayed behind at the club to find out who had seen them in the parking lot. The other two were the ones who handled the body.”
“A mistake on Mr. Sykes’s part.”
“Yes.”
“Then this is his last chance. And yours.”
Daisy hadn’t been mentioned specifically, but with the mention of the library and Mrs. Nolan’s testimony about the part of the conversation she hadn’t taped, it wasn’t necessary. Mitchell had been mentioned, and someone’s seeing them in the parking lot of the club. With Daisy’s testimony and identification of two of the men who had killed Mitchell and Temple’s own voice on this tape, the mayor was firmly implicated in a murder. Mrs. Nolan didn’t understand the reference she’d over-heard about a shipment of Russians, but Jack was beginning to have nasty suspicions.
Regardless, the mayor and his friend were nailed.
Eva Fay was one of the people gathered around listening to the tape. She put her hands on her hips. “Why, that snake.”
His people were angry, Jack saw. Investigators, patrol officers, and office personnel alike were incensed. He was no longer the outsider, but one of them, and his woman had been threatened. Not just any woman, but Daisy Minor, whom most of them had known for years. The bad thing about living in a small town was that everything became a personal issue. The good thing about living in a small town was that everything became a personal issue. During times of trouble, the support system was massive.
“Let’s bring the mayor in for questioning,” he said quietly, keeping a firm lid on his own anger. Daisy was safe; that was the important thing. “Contact the Scottsboro P.D. and have Mr. Phillips picked up, too.”
He would have liked to have thrown up a net to catch this Mr. Sykes, but he didn’t have the manpower to block every street in town to check licenses. Sykes worried him, but as long as Daisy stayed put, Sykes couldn’t find her.
“I’ve kept everything off radio,” said Tony Marvin. “He won’t have a clue we’re on to him.”
“Sure he will. Remember Kendra Owens? Do you think she’s gone all day without mentioning Mrs. Nolan’s call to anyone else?”
“Not Kendra,” said Eva Fay. “She’s sweet, but she loves to talk.”
“Then we have to assume the mayor knows Mrs. Nolan called us. He’ll be on guard, but he doesn’t know about the tape, so he may not have bolted. C’mon, let’s get this ball rolling.”
The damn Minor woman wasn’t anywhere in town, which made Sykes very nervous. She hadn’t shown up at work; she hadn’t been at home. She simply wasn’t there. When people veered so far out of their normal routine, something was up.
He even called the library, taking care to use a pay phone in case they had Caller ID—not likely in a municipal building, but possible, and that damn call-return service meant he had to be cautious all the time anyway—and asked for Miss Minor. The woman who answered gave
him no information other than that Miss Minor wasn’t in that day, but there was an underlying tension, a stiffness, in her voice that worried him even more.
Okay, he wasn’t going to get the Minor woman today. That was a setback, not a catastrophe.
But what had the woman at the library so on edge?
It was a small detail, the nervousness in a woman’s voice, but it was the little details that would jump up and bite you on the ass when you least expected it, if you didn’t pay attention and take care of them. His instinct told him it was time to pay attention.
He called the mayor on his private line, but there was no answer. That was another worrisome detail. If he knew the mayor, he’d planned to stay in his office all day long, providing himself with an airtight alibi in regard to Miss Minor’s disappearance, just in case.
His next call was to the mayor’s cell phone. No answer. Really uneasy now, Sykes called the mayor’s house. Nolan himself picked up on the second ring.
“The Minor woman isn’t working today,” Sykes said. “I’m calling it a day.”
“Sykes! Thank God!”
The mayor sounded winded and on the verge of losing control, which wasn’t good at all.
“Listen, we’re in trouble. We have to get our stories straight, back each other up. All we have to do is lie low for a while and I think it’ll blow over.”
“Trouble? How?” Sykes kept his voice mild.
“Jennifer overheard me talking to Mr. Phillips this morning, and the drunk bitch called the library, asking for Daisy. She wasn’t there, so Jennifer told Kendra Owens that I was plotting to have Daisy Minor killed.”
Jesus. Sykes pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. If the mayor had just used an ounce of caution in his telephone conversation—
“What did Kendra Owens do?” His question was just a matter of form. He knew damn well what Kendra Owens had done.
“She called the police department. It’s a good thing Jennifer’s a drunk, because I don’t think anyone believed her, but if you’d grabbed Daisy today, it would have raised all sorts of questions.”
Great. Now the Hillsboro cops were alerted.
“There’s one other thing.”
With an effort, Sykes remained calm. “What else?”
“Chief Russo and Daisy are romantically involved.”
“And this interests me, how?”
“Russo is the one I called to run the tag number for you yesterday. I told him I’d seen the car parked in a fire lane at a doctor’s office. He knows I lied, because he knew she wasn’t sick. And when he gave me the information, he pretended not to know her.”
Okay, so now we had a suspicious chief of police. It was those damn details again; Nolan had added too many, and they’d tripped him up. If he’d just asked the chief to run the license plate, without explanation, then the chief would want to know why the mayor was running his girlfriend’s tag number, but he wouldn’t know Nolan had lied. For that matter, why did Nolan have to get the damn chief of police to run a simple tag number? But, no, Nolan couldn’t use a lowly peon; he had to get the head man, just to show his power.
“I came home to find Jennifer, shut her up, but the bitch isn’t here.”
“That’s good. Her turning up dead after making a call like that wouldn’t look good.”
“She’s a drunk,” said Nolan dismissively. “Drunks have wrecks all the time.”
“Maybe they do, but the timing would still be suspicious. Just lay low.”
Nolan didn’t seem to hear him. “Maybe I’ll take her for another visit to Mr. Phillips. He’d like that, but she wouldn’t.” The thought pleased him, because he laughed.
He was dealing with idiots. Sykes closed his eyes. “The police might be keeping an eye on her, so Phillips wouldn’t like it if you led them straight to him.”
“No. You’re right. I have to find her, anyway. She said something about having her hair done, and she’s just stupid enough to make a call like that, then toddle off to the beauty salon.”
Or the police had brought her in to make a statement, which was the most likely thing. Didn’t Nolan know a damn thing about police procedure? They didn’t just blow off a call like that, especially when the subject was the chief’s squeeze. Miss Minor had conveniently disappeared, Mrs. Nolan was also missing and probably at the police department, and the next step was to pick up the mayor for questioning.
This wasn’t good at all. After Nolan’s performance yesterday and today, Sykes had drastically revised downward his opinion of the mayor. He was cold-blooded, but he didn’t hold up under pressure, and he let his ego get in the way of clear thinking. What would happen when the cops started asking him questions? Nolan might hold the line, but if he got rattled, Sykes figured he’d try to cut a deal and roll over on everyone else.
Well, he couldn’t let that happen.
“How good a cop is the chief?” he asked.
“Damn good. He was a SWAT team member in Chicago, then in New York. I was lucky to get him for a small town like Hillsboro.”
Yeah, lucky the way a turtle crossing a busy highway was lucky: it took a miracle to get him across unsquashed. Sykes didn’t figure Nolan had any miracles coming. He’d picked a chief who was at home on the front lines, one who would act aggressively in dealing with a threat to his woman. The only thing working in their favor at this point, as far as he could see, was that Mitchell’s death and the discovery of his body hadn’t happened in Russo’s jurisdiction.
Then a thought occurred to him. “Did you mention Mitchell this morning when you were talking to Mr. Phillips?”
“That was why Mr. Phillips called. He wasn’t happy that the body had been found so fast, and I explained to him that it was because you hadn’t handled it yourself.”
So Nolan had mentioned not only Mitchell, but Sykes’s name as well. Mrs. Nolan didn’t know them, but now she had their names. This whole thing was unraveling so fast Sykes couldn’t even begin to catch the threads.
“Tell you what,” said Sykes. “Just sit tight, pretend nothing unusual is going on, and they can’t touch us.” Yeah, right. “Nothing has happened, no attempts have been made against Miss Minor, so no crime has been committed. Russo might wonder why you lied about her tag number, but so what? Stick to your story. Maybe you wrote the number down wrong, transposed some numbers or something.”
“Good idea.”
“If they question you about Mrs. Nolan’s telephone call, tell them you have no idea what she’s talking about. Was she drinking this morning?”
“She’s always drinking,” said Nolan.
“Did you see her have a drink?”
“No, but she was clumsy, falling over stuff.”
The way things were going, if Nolan thought his wife was drunk, Sykes was willing to bet she’d been stone-cold sober.
“Do you think Russo will ask me any questions?”
Is the sun coming up tomorrow? “Probably. Don’t sweat it; just follow the plan.”
“Should I warn Mr. Phillips?”
“I wouldn’t. Let this blow over, and he’ll never know anything about it. We’ll handle this shipment of Russians and he’ll be happy as a clam.”
“Shit, I forgot about the shipment.”
“No problem. I’ve got it covered,” said Sykes, and disconnected.
What he had here, he thought, was a major fuckup. The mayor’s wife had his, Sykes’s, name, and Mitchell’s. If Russo was half the cop Nolan thought he was, he had Mrs. Nolan’s statement and was checking out everything she said. Mitchell hadn’t been found in his jurisdiction, but with goddamn computers every-where, all Russo had to do was a search and, lo and behold, there was a dead man named Mitchell. That would really get things stirred up, and when they began wondering what a dead man named Mitchell had to do with Daisy Minor, they’d show her Mitchell’s photograph and she just might remember where she’d seen him—and the three men who had been with him.
There were times when there was n
othing else to do but cut your losses and do damage control. This was one of those times.
Sykes pondered his options. He could cut out; he had his alternate identity in place. But he’d always thought he’d save the alternate identity for a life-and-death situation, and this didn’t qualify. He’d have to take a hit, maybe do a year or so of hard time, but maybe not even that. He hadn’t been the guy with the knife; they could get him for conspiracy to commit, obstruction, things like that, but not murder one.
Besides, he had a powerful weapon to use: information. Information was what made the world go round, and prosecutors make deals.
He had no faith in Temple Nolan; the man would roll over on a dime. Within a few hours, Glenn Sykes would be a wanted man.
But not if he rolled first.
Calmly, the way he did everything, Sykes drove to the Hillsboro Police Department. For a P.D. in a sleepy little town, the place looked unusually busy; there were a lot of cars in the parking lot. He walked in through the automatic glass doors, noting the officers standing in clumps talking in low voices, the air of tension. Patrol officers should be out in their cars, patrolling, so these guys were probably the first shift, hanging around. Again, a telling detail.
He went up to the desk sergeant, his hands at his sides, obviously empty. “I’d like to speak to Chief Russo, please.”
“The chief’s busy. What can I help you with?”
Sykes looked to his left, down a long hall. He briefly saw a very pretty woman, distraught, accepting a cup of coffee from a plainclothes guy, probably an investigator. Because he’d made it his business to know things about Temple Nolan, he recognized Mrs. Nolan right off. She certainly didn’t look or act drunk; so much for Nolan’s theory.
He turned back to the desk sergeant. “I’m Glenn Sykes. I think y’all are looking for me.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Of all the things Jack had never expected to happen, having Glenn Sykes walk into the station, introduce himself, and ask to speak to him was number two on the list. Number one was his reaction every time he got close to Miss Daisy, but he was learning to live with that. He was also beginning to think nothing was impossible.