Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  Sure, pal. Got you on speed dial.

  CHAPTER 14

  Hope is not a game plan.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  After I left Gorman, my blood still boiled under my skin. My hope was that he was doing more than he admitted to. And even if he had his head up his ass, I had the consolation that he wasn’t on his own. He’d be working alongside men and women who were still breathing clean air.

  Regardless, I’d continue on my own path to find Kane’s killer.

  When Clyde and I got into the truck, I ignored the option for air-conditioning and powered down the front windows, then headed west toward Littleton and the home of Sherri and Jeremy Kane. Clyde gleefully watched out the window, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. He looked like a kid who’d reached the front of the line at the ice cream truck.

  Soon, Mason would stencil the Expedition with the same wording that appeared on my old vehicle: STAY BACK! K9 ON DUTY!

  Anyone who read that and saw Clyde would have a good laugh.

  “You should work on your image,” I told him.

  Clyde wasn’t the least bit concerned about his image. He could switch from tongue to teeth in an instant.

  I snapped on sunglasses, then took off my ball cap, fingered loose my braid, and let the wind sweep away the sweat from the roots of my hair. This was what passed in my life as communing with nature.

  I’d visited Jeremy and Sherri Kane’s home once before, when I’d needed information about a case involving a member of Kane’s fireteam. I’d been impressed with Jeremy Kane on that visit because—despite a likely permanent disability due to an injury in Iraq—he was still hanging tight to his goal to become a medical doctor. It would be excruciatingly difficult, given his memory issues, but he’d been determined, and his wife had been supportive. Maybe he’d started working toward that dream before the end came.

  I was less fond of Kane’s wife, Sherri. The daughter of a medical doctor and a socialite, she’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and clearly thought when she married Kane that she was going to maintain her social status. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that life will explode one land mine after another, even when all you’re trying to do is walk from the couch to the refrigerator. The war and Kane’s injury had thrown Sherri a grenade no one could catch with grace. Her husband had come home a hero. But he’d also come home with memory issues, a limp, PTSD, and a huge ration of cynicism that he hadn’t had before.

  Jeremy had told me his wife didn’t like to hear about the war. But as far as he was concerned, that was okay. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

  I took the Bowles Avenue exit from C-470 and headed back east. So far, there had been no hint of anyone following. At a traffic light, a couple of kids in a minivan waved at Clyde. He drooled and they squealed.

  The light changed.

  When I pulled to the curb in front of the Kanes’ split-level home, the first thing I noticed was that their house had gone from run-down-but-on-the-mend to just run-down. The wheelbarrow I’d noted on my last visit still sat on the side of the driveway, but it was now rusted. The dirt that had been piled next to it had vanished with the winter winds and summer rain. Since Kane had just died, the downward trend wasn’t because a widow was overwhelmed. It looked like Kane had been busy elsewhere.

  Or maybe he’d given up.

  The only positive note to the general dreariness was a gray Mercedes-Benz parked on the driveway as far from the wheelbarrow as possible, as if rust were contagious.

  I turned off the engine and moved Clyde to his air-conditioned crate in the back. The Kanes had a pit bull, and I didn’t want to rock anyone’s boat. As I walked up the drive, I did some quick math. Sherri had been eight months pregnant the last time I’d seen her. Their second child would now be five months old. Their oldest, Haley, was three or four.

  From the backyard, the pit bull unleashed a volley of barks. I glanced over my shoulder at Clyde. He was watching out the window, no doubt ready to break through it if the dog came after me. I gave him a thumbs-up. He kept watching.

  The pit bull cranked up the barks.

  I rang the bell. I waited a few minutes, then rang again. I wondered if Sherri could hear the bell over the barking. Then the dog fell silent, and the tread of footsteps sounded on the other side of the door.

  The woman who answered was twenty-five years older than Sherri, but otherwise looked much like her. Her chin-length bob was bright silver, her casual but fashionable clothes impeccably tailored. She had a ring on her left hand with a diamond the size of a small country.

  Sherri’s mother, I assumed. The owner of the Mercedes.

  I said, “My name is Sydney Parnell. I’m a friend of the family. Is Sherri at home? I’d like to express my condolences.”

  The woman’s face was a perfect blank. On closer inspection, I saw that her lipstick was smeared and her mascara had flaked.

  “Sorry, who?” she asked.

  “A friend of the family.”

  “Oh. All right.” She unlatched the door and waved me in. I stepped into the living room, which was empty of furniture and filled with moving boxes.

  She closed the door behind me, then came to life slowly, as if her battery had just reached enough capacity for her to function.

  “Sherri is changing Megan’s diaper,” she said. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  “Thank you. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Oh. I’m Sherri’s mother, Krystal.” She blinked a few times. “Would you like some coffee? We’ve got muffins, too. Blueberry.”

  “Coffee would be great,” I said.

  I followed her down a hall stacked with more cardboard boxes and into the kitchen. Here, someone had clearly been hard at work, scrubbing away all semblance of dirt. Many of the cupboard doors stood open, the shelves empty. More boxes were stacked in the corner.

  “Is Sherri moving?” I asked. Master of the obvious.

  “She and the girls are coming home to her father and me,” Krystal said. She pointed toward the table. “Please, sit down. Do you take cream and sugar?”

  “Black, please.”

  She set a mug of steaming coffee in front of me along with a buttered muffin.

  “I have coffee cake, if you’d rather. The neighbors have been bringing food. I’m sure they mean well. But it’s just too much.”

  “The muffin is wonderful.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so hot in here. We offered to help Sherri and Jeremy with air-conditioning.” She stopped and blinked at the moisture in her eyes. “But Jeremy . . . that boy had too much pride.”

  “I know this is a terrible shock.”

  She looked at me and frowned. The battery hit 100 percent capacity, and the skin around her pale eyes tightened. Maybe it was the dog hair on my pants.

  “How did you say you know the family?”

  At that moment, Sherri walked into the kitchen carrying a baby. The baby was round and soft, with wide eyes and a pink hair band holding back her soft frizz of hair. She smelled of talcum powder. Hard on Sherri’s heels was her first child, Haley. Haley had been zoned out on cartoons the last time I’d seen her, but now she was as wide eyed and alert as her sister, staring at me from behind her mother’s leg.

  Sherri herself looked like she hadn’t slept since she got the news. Her eyes and the tip of her nose were red. The rest of her was white as a sheet. She saw me and managed to muster a little outrage.

  “You,” she said.

  “Sherri?” her mother asked. “She said she’s a friend of the family.”

  I stood. “I’m so sorry for what happened, Sherri. I came to see if I could do anything to help.”

  Sherri’s anger whooshed out of her like air from a popped balloon. She handed the baby to her mother and sank into the chair across from me. When Haley climbed into her lap, Sherri absently wrapped her arms around the girl. Haley studied me with her father’s intent gaze and blue eyes. She ha
d his red hair, as well. Kane must have loved that.

  “Mommy, can I have a blueberry muffin?” Haley asked.

  Without waiting for permission, I slid my untouched plate across the table. Haley smiled at me.

  “Thank you.” She looked up at her mother. “Mommy?”

  Sherri’s gaze settled on me. “Why are you here?”

  “To help, if I can.”

  “Yes, you were such a help when Elise died.” She wielded sarcasm like a knife. Sherri had been livid during the Hensley case when I’d dragged Kane into it. “Mother, would you take the girls upstairs to watch TV?”

  Krystal looked like she would protest. But then she nodded and shifted the baby to her other hip. “Of course. Haley, honey, let’s go upstairs. We can play dress up if you want.”

  “Can I take my muffin?”

  “Food stays in the kitchen.”

  “Mother. It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Haley, you can take your muffin.”

  Haley slid off her mother’s lap, balancing the plate in her small hands. The stairs creaked as she and her grandmother and the baby disappeared from view.

  Sherri turned to me, narrowing her own eyes down to slits in perfect imitation of her mother. “Why are you really here?”

  “Jeremy tried to call me five times the day he died. I’d like to know why.”

  “You didn’t pick up?”

  “I was in Mexico. I didn’t see the calls.”

  Sherri’s mouth went slack, and her hands fluttered up as if to ward off my words. Her hands were pale and slender, fragile in a way the rest of her was not. They settled on her chest, fingers spread like a cage over her heart.

  “Why would he call you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said gently. “I thought you might.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  I walked out onto the ice. “Something to do with the war, maybe?”

  “Damn the war.”

  She lowered her hands to the table, flattened her palms, and pushed herself up. She poured herself a mug of coffee.

  Every time I’d seen Sherri in the past, she’d been flawlessly put together in a way I couldn’t fathom how to achieve. Money was part of it—the perfectly tailored clothes, the expensive hair. Attitude was the other half. Sherri had been raised to believe the world was her oyster and, if you were patient, life gave you pearls.

  Now she looked as if she’d been shattered from the inside and pieced back together with bailing wire and Xanax.

  She groped for her chair and sank into it.

  She said, “For a long time, Jeremy was doing all right. He loved his job with the RTD. Standing watch was what he knew best, and because of that, he also thought it was what he did best.”

  I understood. Why not monetize your anxiety? A lot of us did.

  “But a week ago,” she went on, “he started acting the way he did when he first came home from Iraq. Those horrible nightmares. He’d wake up screaming, and his screaming would wake the girls, and then they’d start crying. On the nights he didn’t have nightmares, it was because he never went to sleep. I’d find him walking the house or standing at the living room window. I thought he was having a . . . a breakdown. I begged him to go back to his therapist.”

  “You have any idea what triggered this?”

  “I know when it started. I’d gone out with my girls group. Dinner and a movie. Jeremy was fine when I left. But when I got home, everything had changed.”

  “What did he say when you asked?”

  She flushed. “I didn’t. Not at first. I just thought he was mad that I’d left him alone with the girls.” She gave me a plaintive look. “I keep telling him I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t understand. I’m sorry I got mad. Do you think he can hear me?”

  “I’m sure he knew that, Sherri.”

  “I need him to know now. I need to know he can hear me.”

  She tilted her head back as if she couldn’t get enough air. I gave her a moment. Then I said, “So when you got home that night, he was angry.”

  “Not angry. Not exactly. Agitated.”

  “Later, did you ask him what had made him agitated?”

  Her flush deepened. “I asked Haley. She said someone called, and Daddy was on the phone for a long time. After that, he put the baby down with a wet diaper and sent Haley to bed without reading her a story. Megan was soaked when I got home.”

  “He was distracted.”

  Her gaze roamed the room as if she wasn’t sure where she was. “He was terrified.”

  “Of what, Sherri?”

  But she’d jumped tracks. “Detective Gorman told me Jeremy was killed by a lunatic. A bum. A . . . a random stranger. How can this happen? My husband defended his country in Iraq. He survived a bomb blast. And then he comes home to be killed by a madman.” Her fingers curled into fists. “Tell me where there’s any justice in that.”

  There wasn’t, of course. I remained mute before her rage and grief.

  “If they find him,” she said, “I hope they fry him. That would be justice.”

  Part of the Xanax had given way, exposing the cracks, and tears poured unheeded down her face. I spotted a box of tissues on the counter and passed it to her. She pressed a tissue to her eyes and sat silently for a moment.

  My chest aching, I waited her out. In the backyard, the pit bull loosed a broadside of barks that tapered off to a cranky growl. He whined at the door, then gave up on that, too.

  A siren whoop-whooped in the distance.

  Sherri shook herself and pushed up from the table. She moved around the kitchen, touching boxes, closing cupboards and reopening them. She stopped by the window.

  She said, “War never ends, does it? Even after they sign peace agreements or armistices or cease-fires or whatever the hell it is the politicians do. It just goes on and on. You can’t escape. You can’t rewind. War changed Jeremy, and when he tried to fix things, it sucked him back in.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  Forgetting her half-full mug on the table, she yanked another out of one of the boxes and splashed coffee into it. She didn’t seem to notice when coffee spilled on the counter. “He thought I needed to be protected. He decided for himself that I couldn’t take it. But that was all on him—he wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “I’m sorry.” And I was.

  “You’re with someone, aren’t you?”

  “Jury seems to be out at the moment.”

  “Things come and go. Doesn’t matter what you plan.” She blew her nose. “Do you talk to him about Iraq?”

  “No.”

  “And here I thought women were smarter than men.”

  A weight settled onto my chest. Weight with a capital W, Nik Lasko used to say. Heaviest pounds you’ll ever carry.

  “So what made you think this was about the war?” I asked.

  “He finally told me it was Lester Crowe who called.”

  “One of his fireteam members.”

  “Crazy Crowe. That’s what Jeremy called him. Not in a mean way. In a . . . a Jeremy way.”

  “He and Crowe talk often?”

  “Almost never. But that’s Crowe. He disappears for months at a time. Pops back up like nothing happened.”

  “And did his calls always upset Jeremy?”

  “Not like this one. They made him sad and worried. But not angry. And not scared. Then . . . this.”

  “Did he tell you what they talked about?”

  “No. But whatever it was . . . things got weird after that.”

  “How so?”

  “Jeremy is—Jeremy was always protective of us. But after that night, he got paranoid. First he tried to get me and the girls to move in with my parents. When I refused, he ordered an alarm service we can’t afford. And twice I found him up in the middle of the night. He said he couldn’t sleep. But he had a gun. We agreed we wouldn’t have guns in the house.” Another plaintive look. “I think he was going crazy.”

  “No, Sherri. He wasn’t.”

  �
��How can you possibly know that?”

  I decided it was time she understood a little of what her husband had been through. If I ever managed to crack this case and expose the Alpha, it was better she heard it from me, not on the five o’clock news.

  Plus, I didn’t want her thinking Kane had been crazy.

  “What you said about war never ending, it’s true,” I said. “The war is still here. There’s something you need to know. A group of us were involved in something in Iraq. Jeremy and his fireteam. My commanding officer and me. It was something we should not have done. Something wrong.”

  She held up a hand like a stop sign. “That’s not possible.”

  I trotted out the same words I’d used with Cohen. They were starting to feel thin. “We thought we were saving Americans.”

  “No.” She set the coffee down on the counter and folded her arms. “You’re wrong about Jeremy. He would never be involved in anything wrong.”

  A memory rose.

  The Sir and I climbed out of our vehicle, and the Sir’s flashlight caught the faces of the men. They were all masked. Until they’d spoken, I’d thought they were Iraqis.

  “This is fucked,” one of them said.

  “Who cares?” one of the others asked. “They killed Renks. And Haifa.”

  That’s when I realized they were Marines. I’d looked at the Sir, bewildered.

  But all he’d said was, “Let’s get this done,” before he led me into the house.

  I shuddered.

  Sherri was looking at me like maybe I didn’t have full ownership of my marbles.

  “He was trying to do the right thing,” I said. “We all were. War . . . it jumbles up what’s right and what’s wrong. You get tunnel vision.”

  Fury flared in her eyes. “Is this why you came here? I’ve lost my husband. Are you trying to destroy his memory, too?”

  “His death wasn’t random.”

  “Why would you do that? Take what little I have?”

  “Sherri, please. I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

  Her nostrils flared. “You need to leave.”

  “Sherri—”

  “Now.”

  I stood. “It’s the truth. You need to know.”