Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) (24 page)

Clutching Charlie against her chest, covering his head with her arms, she rolled back on the seat and kicked at the window with both feet together. The glass popped and disintegrated. Without breathing, without thinking, without feeling the sear of torn skin as she scrambled over the broken glass, Smartie was out and running on the hot pavement with Charlie wailing under her arm, gunfire popping and echoing behind her. She stumbled to her knees, got up and ran again, though she had no idea where she was running to or what she should do when she got there.

Across the tarmac, the Rover’s left front wheel went over the edge, and the chassis slammed down, high-centered, wallowing with its nose out in the air seven stories above the old oaks. There was more screaming. From inside Smartie’s head. From the toddler in her arms. From undercarriage on concrete as the Rover inched forward.

Four staccato shots laid out like quarter notes on a staff. Then ambient airborne sounds like branches settling after the departure of startled birds. Even Charlie fell silent, waiting for what would happen next.

“Shep?” Smartie called thinly.

The driver side door of the Rover fell open, and Shep leaned out.

“Watch that first step, Nash. It’s a doozy.”

Smartie squeezed her eyes tight shut, opened them wide. Charlie squirmed in her arms, and she stroked his warm back.

“Nice puppy. That’s a good boy.”

Hearing concrete bits and engine orts crumbling and tumbling through the branches below, Shep opted to go out the back way. Slowly.

The Lincoln was still in gear, pressing idly against the rear end of the Rover, impotent without pressure on the gas pedal. Shep started breathing again after he’d carefully shifted his weight past the back seat. Climbing out the blasted back window onto the mangled hood of the Lincoln, he could see a bubbling pulse of blood from Van Reuse’s neck. Van Reuse’s lips were moving. He blinked, tried to lift his hand.

“Do not move, Van Reuse. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Keeping the .45 trained toward Van Reuse’s forehead, Shep wrenched the door open, shifted the Lincoln into park and turned off the ignition. He pressed his hand against the hole in Van Reuse’s chest and felt the sharp points of a shattered collarbone, the weak murmur of a heartbeat, the softened marsh of wounded flesh and blood-soaked shirt.

“I didn’t want to shoot you.” Shep kept his hand pressed in place while he felt for his cell phone in his pocket. “My kid was in the car. My kid was in there, Van Reuse. Why the hell did you make me do that, goddamnit? Smartie,” he called over his shoulder. “Smartie, I dropped my cell. Call 911.”

“My—my purse is—it’s—” She pointed bleakly toward the scuttled Rover. “Should I—should I—”

“No! Christ. Of course not. Stay over there. Don’t let Charlie see this.” Shep felt Van Reuse’s hand on his wrist. “Van Reuse, where’s your phone?”

Van Reuse raised his eyes up toward the visor. Shep felt for the cell with his free hand, found it, told the 911 operator, “There’s been a shooting. We need an ambulance.”

As he gave her the address of the parking ramp, he felt Van Reuse’s hand again.

“Stay with me here,” Shep told him, and he told the dispatcher, “Male vic. Multiple GSW to the neck and shoulders.”

Van Reuse was still moving his lips, but with the effort of each unsounded word, there was a gurgle of air from the tear in his gullet.

“Who’s shot?” asked the dispatcher. “Did you say multiple vics?”

“One vic. Male. Caucasian. Forty-nine years old.”

“Is the shooter still on the scene?”

“I’m the shooter. I shot him.”

“Sir, identify yourself,” said the dispatcher. “Are you a police officer?”

“Detective Martin Hartigate. HPD,” Shep said on auto-pilot. “Please hurry.”

“They’re on the way, Detective. Why aren’t you on proper channels?”

“Just get the goddamn meat wagon over here,” Shep roared.

Van Reuse clicked and gurgled, trying hard to tell Shep whatever he was trying to tell him.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” said Shep. “Just relax, dude. Hang on.”

Van Reuse worked a small nod.

“Detective, my supervisor would like to speak to you.”

“Mr. Van Reuse? Can you hear me?”

Van Reuse’s eyes had widened to that look. Silent surprise. Pupils as open and bottomless as dry wells.

“Fuck,” Shep whispered.

“Detective? Detective, I need your badge number.”

When Van Reuse pissed himself, the life seemed to leak out of him, his whole body settling like a torn burlap sack. Shep took his hand away from the hole over Van Reuse’s collarbone, but nothing bubbled out.

“
Fuck
.”

“Sir, are you aware that it is a crime to falsely identify yourself as a police officer?”

Shep heard the whine of far off sirens below. He clicked off Van Reuse’s cell phone and set it on the dashboard, took off his darkly stained jacket and used it to wipe the blood from his hands as best he could. He crossed the tarmac to Smartie who stood there pale and shaking, holding Charlie out in front of her like she was serving a pot roast.

“Bob man it,” Charlie said seriously.

“I know, Ponch.” Taking the toddler into his arms, Shep pressed his mouth to the top of Charlie’s head, pacing with him, saying over and over, “You’re okay, scout. You’re okay.”

That was what mattered now. Libby would be livid. Shep figured he’d put off calling her until the paramedics had given Charlie a clean bill of health.

“Smartie, are you all right?”

She nodded, feeling nothing but the pulse of the sun and the hammering of her heart, but when she followed Shep’s eyes down the front of her body, she saw that her forearms and knees were etched and bleeding. She turned toward the sound of sirens down in the street, then looked up at Shep.

“It was self-defense,” she said. “He wouldn’t stop. You had to do it. I’ll tell them.”

“You tell them only what you
know
.” Shep didn’t have a free hand to take hold of her, but his voice had a hardness that made Smartie feel taken hold of. “You stick to the skeletal facts. No theories, no conjecture, no drama. We were having a personal conversation, we were attacked, you took Charlie and ran. You don’t lie, Smartie, but you volunteer
nothing
. Do you understand me?”

She nodded again. “I understand.”

Below them the sirens whined to a wail and wailed to a scream, careening up through the parking garage.

\\\ ///

25

T
he subject previously identified as Suri Fitch arrived home a little after eleven, entered her loft apartment, and dropped her keys into a painted bowl on a telephone table. She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, leaned on the door and sighed, selected a strawberry from a little balsawood basket. She opened a gilded box on the counter and took out a small square of white chocolate. Closing her eyes, moaning softly, she put it in her mouth, then took a bite of strawberry and smiled.

In the living room, she closed the drapes and tapped fish flakes into an aquarium. She picked up a remote control and clicked on the television. She clicked it off and cocked her head to one side, listening. She stepped back and looked down the hall toward the door.

“Zaffie?”

A sleek Siamese cat dropped from a bookshelf. Suri set her hands on her hips.

“You scared me, naughty girl. I thought you were a serial killer.”

She tried to gather the cat in her arms, but the cat wasn’t having any of that. Suri returned to the front door, rotated the deadbolt, and slid the chain lock in place. She stepped out of her expensive red pumps and carried them by the tall heels to her bedroom, where she flipped a switch that turned on two bedside lamps and an up-light in the corner.

In the walk-in closet, she positioned the pumps on a wall with several dozen pairs of pricey mules, slides, and running shoes, all organized by color and function. She took off her blouse, dropped it in a wicker basket of items for the drycleaner, took off her tweed pencil skirt, centered it on a wooden hanger. Reaching behind her back to undo the clasp on her bra, she turned toward the bathroom, and a sharp scream snagged across her throat.

“Hey, boss.”

After a deep composing breath, Suri let the bra fall as far as her wrists.

“Mr. Hartigate.” A slight tremor tripped her a little when she said, “Fancy meeting you here.”

There was no fear in her face, but it took her a little longer to extend that firmly placed self-possession to her voice.

“Van Reuse is dead,” said Shep.

“I heard.”

“Is that what you wanted? Or was he actually supposed to kill me?”

Suri took a kimono from a hook on the back of the closet door, slid one arm and then the other into the silk sleeves, cinched it at her narrow waist. She folded the bra, smoothing one lace cup inside the other over her balled fist, then reached toward a dresser drawer, but Shep sharply told her, “Don’t open that.”

She set the bra on a vanity table and folded her arms in front of her.

“How did you get him to do it?” asked Shep.

“I’m open to a frank and productive dialogue with you, Shep. But I’m sure you’ll understand if I insist on seeing that we’re not being recorded.”

Shep was wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved black tee shirt instead of his customary gray suit and white collar. He pulled his shirt off over his head and stood, arms wide, feet stepped apart. Suri nodded toward his belt buckle. Shep unlatched it, opened his fly, pushed his jeans and boxers down over his hips. Suri walked a full circle around him, drifting one snake charmer hand over his torso. 

“Sit, please.”

Shep sat on the end of her bed. Suri knelt in front of him and removed his shoes, felt inside each one, inspected the soles. She eased her hands down his calves, dragging everything else off over his feet, leaving him naked. She shook the jeans out straight, reached through each pant leg, smoothed the length of each seam between her fingers.

“Did you set it up or was it Barth’s idea?” Shep asked.

Suri placed two fingers against his lips.

She extracted the wallet from his hip pocket and examined the contents of each folded compartment. She powered down his cell phone, removed the battery and turned it over on her palm before putting it back in. Weighing his keys in her hand, she smiled at the little plastic keychain photo of a goofy, grinning Charlie, but then she lowered her thick lashes and asked, “Is he all right?”

“He’s fine.”

“Thank God. And Ms. Breedlove?”

Shep shrugged. “Not my problem.”

Suri resumed her careful search of his jeans. From one hip pocket, she withdrew several folded bills, a drugstore receipt and a foil accordion of four condoms.

“Hmm.” She smiled up at him. “Aren’t we the optimist?”

Shep took the little accordion from her and said, “We’ve both known for a while it was going to happen. I figured I’d better move things along before you send someone more competent to kill me.”

Suri folded his jeans neatly and placed them on the floor next to her.

“It wasn’t my intention to have you killed, Shep. I knew that whatever happened, you could handle it.”

“No, you knew that if I killed Van Reuse, your client would be satisfied, and if Van Reuse killed me, he’d go to prison, which also satisfies the client and takes care of me as an added bonus. Either way, it worked out well for you. It was a smart move.”

“That’s not true, Shep. You’re a valued staff member, and I considered you a friend.”

“Gosh, I feel all warm now.”

As she folded the rest of Shep’s things in a perfectly symmetrical pile, Suri said, “Van Reuse was a domestic violence statistic waiting to happen. You’ve seen what he’s like. Volatile. Arrogant. The restraining order meant nothing to him. The authorities did nothing to enforce it. He’s been making increasingly ugly threats, refusing to seek counseling. Last week, he posted some inappropriate photographs of his wife on their nine-year-old son’s Facebook page. Yesterday in my office, he said he was going to make her wish she’d never been born. He said the children would be better off dead if Mrs. Van Reuse gained full custody. Which she did. The hearing took place this morning.”

“So you had Barth waiting for Van Reuse when he came out of court.”

Suri nodded.

“And Barth told him what? That he could see his children if he killed me?”

“This woman needed to be protected, Shep. Sometimes the system fails to provide adequate safeguards.”

“Nothing so adequate as three slugs to the gullet, anyway.”

“I’m so sorry for the way things worked out. With your nephew being present. Surely, you know I never intended that.”

“I know.”

“If he’d managed to kill you, Shep, he’d have been inside the building to kill me five minutes later. I could have left, but I didn’t. Ask Paige. Ask anyone.” She set her cool hands on his knees and smiled up at him. “I had complete confidence in you.”

Shep touched her temple where a jet black tendril teased toward the corner of her large, dark eye. Suri briefly turned her mouth toward his palm. The tiny diamond on the side of her nose grazed his thigh. She moaned the same small moan that had preceded the white chocolate, and he felt her tweedy cat’s tongue. Shep removed one condom from its foil packet and set the rest of the accordion on the nightstand.

His eyes burned yellowly.

“S
hep?”

He jolted awake when the silk sleeve of her kimono trailed across his neck. Suri set her hand on his racing heart. Shep rubbed his face, enjoying the scent of her on his hands.

“I’m awake. I’m listening. You were talking about taking the train from Pondicherry.”

“That was an hour ago,” she laughed.

“Sorry. Guess I dozed off.”

“Don’t apologize. I took it as a compliment.”

“Because you burned me to the ground?” he smiled.

“Because you trusted me enough to fall asleep after.” Suri set a carved wooden tray on the bed between them. Fruit and flatbread with mint tea and honey. “I’ve been fixing us a nosh.”