Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter 32

'Who beat you up?' Evan
asked her again.

She shook her head. 'It
doesn't matter.'

'Was it those two guys?'

'Why? Are you going to
kick their asses for me?'

I might shake their
hands if you carry on like this.

'Is that why you didn't
show up at the hotel?' He held up his hand. 'Don't answer that. Stupid
question. Of course it was.'

He took her silence as
confirmation.

'Why did they beat you
up?'

'To scare me.'

He nodded and started
pacing up and down. That much was obvious. He could have worked that out for
himself. The question was
why
. It could be one of two things.

'Why? Because they want
you to stop doing something or because they want to make you do something for
them?' He was almost talking to himself. Asking the questions and answering
them as well.

'Evan?'

He stopped pacing and
looked at her.

'You're getting ahead of
yourself here.'

He realized she was
right. He was trying to analyze the situation without knowing what the hell was
going on.

'You're right. Why don't
you start at the beginning? Tell me about Dixie.'

'Okay. Why don't you sit
down first? You're making me nervous pacing up and down.'

He sat on the bed and
let her tell her story.

'Before I start I need
to say that you're not going to like this. But just hear me out before you
start going ballistic.'

He let out a short,
humorless laugh. He was looking forward to this already.

'You know Dixie's an undercover cop.'

He nodded. He also knew
that nobody seemed to know which side he was on any more.

'I was his snitch—'

'That's a crock. If you
were his snitch, it means you have a relationship with him, a system for
getting in touch and all the rest of it. How comes you need me to find him?'

'Just listen will you.'

'Why were you snitching
for him?'

'Evan!' It was almost a
scream. The people in the next room would have heard it easily. 'Just shut up
and let me tell you. Jesus Christ.'

She took a deep breath.
He held his hands open as an invitation for her to continue.

'I had a job in a real dive
of a bar—and no, it wasn't Kelly's. The money was awful and so when the manager
asked me one day if I wanted to make a bit extra on the side I jumped at it. It
was just delivering boxes to people. No big deal. Most of the people I was
delivering them to were complete low-lifes and I had to go to some pretty scary
places, but he was paying me really well.'

'And you thought what?
You were delivering potato chips?'

She gave him a look that
said it's all very well for you to say, after the event.

'You knew what was in
them?'

'I had a pretty good
idea. I'm not stupid, you know.'

'But you didn't actually
look?'

She shook her head. 'No.
I was desperate for money. I didn't want to think about it. The consequences if
I was caught. It was stupid, but it was easy work and I
didn't
get
caught—'

'Until . . .'

'Exactly, until.'

'Dixie caught you?'

She nodded. 'Obviously
he didn't make the arrest—he was working undercover. But they had me in an
interview room and in he walks. The rest, as they say, is history.'

She shook her head in
frustration and started picking at her fingernails.

'He gave me a straight
choice. Work for him or go to prison.' She looked up at him. He wasn't sure
what the emotion in her eyes was. Self-pity, most likely. 'What would you have
done?'

He gave a small twitch
of the shoulders. 'Same as you, I suppose.'

He couldn't feel sorry
for her, even if she was Sarah's friend. She'd brought it on herself. He'd
never worked for drug dealers and he'd known some pretty bad times.

'Dixie was obviously
well in with them,' she continued, 'and he arranged things so that I was doing
more and more for them. Obviously he put in a good word for me. Like any good
employer would for one of his best employees.' She snorted unpleasantly.

Evan could almost taste
the bitterness in her voice.

'It got to the point
where I was going on some of the big deals with them. Lord knows why they
wanted a woman along. All those macho wet backs. Maybe they wanted me along in
case they fancied a cup of coffee.'

He smiled to himself.
Maybe
they just recognized that you were a more ruthless bastard than any of the men.

'The situation was
unbearable,' she said. 'You can't imagine what it's like. Petrified that at any
moment they're going to find out that you're a snitch.' She drew a fast line
across her throat with her finger. 'Sayonara.'

'So what happened?'

She smiled. 'Let's say
an opportunity presented itself. An opportunity to get out for good with enough
money to disappear forever.'

Everything fell into
place in Evan's mind.

'So you ripped them
off.'

She nodded. He thought
he could almost see a hint of pride in her expression. Satisfaction certainly.

'How much?'

'A lot. In the
millions.'

If Evan had been prone to
letting out low whistles, he'd have done it then. She had more balls than most
guys he knew.

'So where does Dixie come into it.' He held up a finger. 'Let me guess—you want to find him so that he can
pull you out in return for handing over the drug dealers' money.' He smiled
knowingly. 'Most of it, anyway.'

She raised her arms and
clasped her hands on top of her head. 'If only it was that simple. Dixie's the problem, not the answer.'

Chapter 33

'This is where we get to
the bit you're not going to like,' Ellie said

He wished she wouldn't
keep saying that. He was already feeling very uncomfortable with what he'd
heard so far. The supposedly simple task that she'd given him of finding Dixie had turned into something very different. He wished she'd just get on with it and let
him make his own mind up about what he did and didn't like.

'Do you have any idea
how difficult it is to store stuff temporarily after 9/11?'

He shook his head.

'Immediately afterwards
they removed all the lockers in airports and train stations. Then they relaxed
a bit and brought them back but most of them are biometric so they work with
your fingerprint. The biggest problem is that you can't leave stuff for any
length of time. They clear them out after twenty-four hours.'

'I can see how that
would give your everyday rip-off artist a problem.'

She ignored the jibe.

'I put the money in a
locker at the train station to begin with, but I needed to store it somewhere
that would allow me to be away from it for more than twenty-four hours.'

Suddenly Evan realized
where this was going, but he didn't want to hear her say it.

'I asked Sarah to keep
it for me for a few days.'

Her words hit Evan like
a slap around the face. His guts twisted violently. If he hadn't already been
sitting on the bed his legs would have crumpled. He felt as if he'd been given
something—something that he wanted more than anything else in the world—only to
have it snatched away before he could grasp it. If he could believe her—and he
knew it was a massive
if
—he had proof Sarah was alive. And then, a
fraction of a nano-second later, came the news that she'd been dragged into
Ellie's sordid drug dealer rip-off scam. And he knew as sure as hell that she
wasn't about to tell him she picked the money up again two days later, no
problem.

'You've gone a funny
green color,' she said. There was even a hint of real concern in her voice.

He gave her a
what
did you expect?
look. Like she'd just told him she'd seen Sarah at the
mall. No big deal. Not that she'd just given her a few million dollars of
stolen drug money to hold onto.

He snorted. 'I feel a
lot worse than just turning green.' He stood up. He felt a bit shaky on his
legs and he was far too hot. He took off his jacket and threw it on the bed. He
crossed the room and stood over her as she sat in the armchair. She shrank
backwards into it.

'I didn't have any
choice. Honestly . . .' Her voice was whiney now. He wanted to get his hands
around her neck and squeeze until the horrible noise stopped. And the breathing
too. Seeing her eyeballs pop would be good too.

'Tell me you went back
and picked the money up again a few days later, no problem.'

She tried to stand up
but he pushed her back down into the chair. She clasped her hands together in
her lap. She wouldn't meet his eyes.

'Tell me, Ellie,' he
shouted.

He looked down at the
top of her head level with his stomach. He didn't even feel like saying:
while
you're down there. . .

'No,' she said quietly,
'that isn't how it went.'

He spun round and
stamped over to the window to stop himself from slapping her.

'What happened?'

'Dixie came after the
money.'

'For himself or for the
people you ripped off?'

For himself, I think.'

Evan swallowed a lump
the size of his fist. He felt sick. He didn't know exactly where this was
going, but he knew it wasn't anywhere good. There wasn't going to be a happy
ending any time soon.

'Dixie found Sarah,'
Ellie said. Her voice wasn't whiney any more, just dead. Resigned. Helpless.
Hopeless.

'How?' His voice sounded
the same. A
please tell me your very worst news
voice.

She shook her head,
still not looking at him. 'I don't know. Does it matter?'

'Not really—apart from
the fact that he manages to do in a couple of days what I couldn't do in five
years. But no, it doesn't alter the outcome.'

'He made her tell him
where the money was.'

Somehow he managed to
not think about the implications of that statement immediately, because what
she said didn't make sense.

'What do you mean? You
said she had it.'

'She wasn’t happy with
it lying around the apartment'—he laughed ironically at that—'so she moved it
to a self-storage facility.'

'So why the hell didn't
you do that in the first place?'

She shrugged helplessly.
'I don't know. I didn't think about it. Those places are big. Who puts a single
bag in one? I was more worried about who might be coming after me.'

He looked at her and
felt a rising tide of disgust inside him. He didn't want to hear any more of
this. It was only going to get worse. He refused to even think about what the
ultimate outcome might be.

'You said he made her
tell him where the money was. How?'

She looked at him like
he was an idiot. 'How do you think?'

Her strode across the
room and stood over her again. He reached down and grabbed hold of her hair at
the nape of her neck and pulled her head back until she was staring into his
face.

'We don't all live in a
world where people routinely torture other people to get what they want. Pardon
me if I'm finding it difficult to get my head around it.' He threw her head
back against the chair and walked away.

'You want to know what
these people are like?' she said. 'Here, look at this.'

She started to unbutton
her blouse. Evan stared in astonishment. She got it open all the way down and
then took hold of one of her breasts and lifted in up. She got hold of the
bottom of the cup of her brassiere and pulled it halfway up over her breast. In
the crease of flesh between her breast and ribs he saw a four inch long
adhesive bandage taped to her skin. For a split second he wondered if she was
going to ask him to rub some ointment in.

'They were going to
slice my breast off.' Her voice cracked as she said it.

Now that would be a
waste. She had very nice breasts
.

'That was after they
were going to cut off my nipple'—Evan wondered if she was going to show it to
him in case he didn't know what one looked like—'with some gardening
secateurs.' She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her other hand.

He shuddered at the
thought. Women might have better nipples than men, but men still have them, and
he had no problem imagining the horror of having one snipped off.

She pulled her brassiere
back into place and buttoned herself up again. He wondered if the demonstration
had been strictly necessary. It also made him wonder what had occurred to stop
them following through on their threats. They'd released her—there must be
conditions attached.

So far he'd managed to
hold off thinking about Sarah being tortured. But Ellie's graphic demonstration
was too much. He imagined Sarah tied up and helpless, straining against her
bonds, screaming and sobbing as some maniac snipped off the end of her nipple.
He felt light-headed at the thought of the dark red blood gushing out, her
helpless screams music to the ears of her tormentor.

It was suddenly way too
hot in the room. His head felt like it was about to explode. His mouth was dry,
his throat scratchy. He swallowed the ball bearing caught in his gullet.

'I've got to get a glass
of water,' he said.

He took a couple of
quick strides across the room to the bathroom and slammed the door after him.
He filled the sink with cold water and buried his face in it. If it had been
deeper he'd have stuck his whole head under the water. He pulled the plug and
watched someone else’s pubic hair swirl round and round until it disappeared
down the drain. He poured himself a glass of water and downed it in one
swallow, before slumping down on the toilet seat. He rested his head in his
hands and forced himself to calm down. When he felt a bit better he poured
himself another glass and carried it back into the room.