Sinnerman (16 page)

“I came to ask you a question,” I said.

“Which is?”

“I want to know why an innocent man is in custody.”

Her eyes widened, and she placed her hand over her heart.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh come on—you know. And I’ve been thinking, what could motivate a person enough to send an innocent man to trial?”

She looked at the ground like she didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t want to say it out loud?” I said. “Fine, allow me. Drugs.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

“Turn out your pockets,” I said. “Prove it.”

“You don’t have the right to tell me to do anything,” she said. She spread both hands out to the side like she was trying to push air away from her and said, “I’m outta here.”

Trisha steadied herself and looked like she was about to make tracks, but she didn’t get far before Sal and Lucio circumvented her escape. Each grabbed one of her arms and in simultaneous motion yanked her back toward the car.

“What—where you taking…get your hands off me!”

Once they reached the car, Lucio threw her into the back seat. Sal fastened a zip tie around her wrists and said, “Make a sound lady, and I tape your mouth shut.”

“You can’t do this to me!”

I reached into Trisha’s jacket pocket and jerked out a bag of white powder and stuffed it into the side of the seat. Trisha shrieked like she was in the throes of severe labor pains.

“Oh zip it,” I said. “This stuff is the reason why you’re in this mess. That and plain stupidity.”

“Give it back, it’s mine. Bought and paid for. You’ve no right to—”

Sal had taken all he could stand. He yanked off a piece of sticky white tape and smacked it across her lips.

“Let me know when you calm down enough that we can communicate with each other,” I said, “or the tape stays on and your hands remain tied.”

It took about four minutes for her to give me a look that indicated she’d thrown out the white flag.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” I said, “and I don’t want to hear any bullshit, got it? If you try to lie to me, I’ll know.”

She nodded, and I removed the tape from her lips.

“Why did you lie about what happened to you?” I said.

She thought about it and then said, “I didn’t.”

I waved the tape out in front of me.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “I needed the money.”

“That’s not enough. Start from the beginning.”

She buried her head in her hands and was silent. I waited.

“So I’m in the bar one night…”

“Which bar?”

“The one we were just at.”

“Go on,” I said.

“And this guy comes up to me and says do I wanna make some extra cash. I ask him how much extra cash he was talkin’ about and he said it depended.”

“On what?”

“He had a couple jobs for me to do, and each time I did what he asked, I’d get more money.”

“What did he look like?”

“I’ve only seen him twice,” she said. “Once in the bar, and once at the gas station. Both times he wore a sweatshirt and a cap on his head.”

“Do you remember what the hat had on it, what color—anything?”

“It was for that one team.” She thought about it for a minute. “It had a big ‘C’ on it.”

“Was it blue with a red brim and the C was done in red stitching?”

She nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’s the one. But what I thought was really weird was that he wouldn’t ever take his glasses off, and both times I saw him, it was like, at night.” She shrugged. “I didn’t get it. Thought he was just some weirdo or something, but hey, if he wanted to offer me money, I didn’t care how big of a freak the guy was.”

She had no idea.

“What did he ask you to do?” I said.

“He said I needed to get all roughed up like I’d just been in a fight and then go into the police station at eleven o’clock the next day. He showed me a picture of some guy and said when I saw him I had to tell everyone he was the man who tried to assault me.”

“And the shiner?”

“He punched me.”

“Who did?” I said.

“The guy who hired me. He said he had to so it looked real.”

“You let the guy hit you for some pocket change to feed your drug habit—that’s pathetic.”

She smirked at me.

“It wasn’t a little bit of cash, honey. It was five large.”

Sal and Lucio looked at each other but didn’t utter a word.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said.

She laughed.

“He said if I testified, he’d pay me ten thousand. Cash.”

“And you didn’t care that an innocent guy would get locked away for the rest of his life?”

“I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean you didn’t know?” I said.

“The guy said he was an undercover agent trying to bust the guy in the Sinnerman murders and that they knew it was him, they just needed a witness to make sure the guy went to prison. The way I saw it, I was doing every chick in this town a favor.”

“Except that the guy who paid you was the real Sinnerman,” I said, “and the one locked away is just some scared kid who hasn’t hurt anyone in his life.”

“You’re not serious?” she said. “That can’t be.”

I looked her straight in the eye. “It is. And do you want to know who he just came after? Me.” I said. “He attacked me.”

Trisha didn’t speak much for the rest of the drive, and I couldn’t tell whether she was scared or full of regret or both. I assumed it was both. She looked out her window into the black of night and pretended to sleep, but she didn’t fool me, and I was too repulsed by her to continue. I’d hand her over to Coop when I got to the station, and he could take it from there. I didn’t know what to believe about the story she told. She seemed to express genuine remorse, but I’d dealt with plenty of druggies before and was seasoned in the way they could make a person believe the blue sky was red when they needed to.

We parked, and Sal and Lucio got out. Lucio walked with me and Sal tended to our drug addict. When I reached the station door, I heard a sound behind me, like a pop. I turned. Blood streamed from the middle of Trisha’s forehead, and then another pop echoed in the distance and Sal collapsed to the ground. Blood gushed from his chest. I tried to run toward them but Lucio shielded me with his body and thrust me into the doors of the station. Rose looked at me like I was as mad as a hatter and out of the corner of my eye I saw Coop rush to my side.

“What’s going on out there?” he said.

“Two people have been shot,” I yelled. “Do something!”

By the time Coop and the rest of the guys swarmed around Trisha and Sal, it was too late—they were both dead, and the hunt was on to find the exact location the shots had been fired from. Agent Luciana arrived several minutes later and pushed his way past the reporters that had pullulated around the place. He headed straight for me and grabbed the edge of my sweater and walked me over to the corner of the room.

“Can we talk?” he said.

I nodded. He looked over at Lucio and said, “Wait here.” Lucio reclined into an office chair and folded his arms and titled his head back toward the wall like he was ready for his evening nap. I couldn’t figure out how he remained so calm. My body felt like an electric current flowed through it and that if I touched something it would light up.

Agent Luciana raised his hand and gestured down the hall, and we walked into an unoccupied room. He closed the door and then rested the weight of his body against the back of it. With both hands, he pressed hard into the sides of his face and then rested them there until he decided to speak.

“This is a disaster,” he said. “Did you at least get her to talk before she died?”

I nodded and filled him in on the details.

When I finished he said, “This guy has a much deeper agenda that I thought.”

“Have you released the kid in custody yet?”

“Not yet, we were waiting.”

“For what—a sign or something that you had the wrong guy? Because if you are, this is it.”

“Your attitude doesn’t help,” he said.

“You need to find him—fast.”

“And how do you suggest I do that? This guy’s a ghost—an expert at evading everyone.”

“Every killer has a weakness.”

“And what might his be?” he said.

I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye.

“We both know the answer to that. You’re looking at her.”

***

I hadn’t figured out why Sinnerman picked me, or why I was the only woman he didn’t choose at random, but I imagined it had something to do with Gabby. Either that or he was fascinated at my relentless approach to hunt him. The former seemed more likely.

“You look like you’re about to fall asleep on that chair.”

I looked up at a smiling Giovanni who hovered over the chair I sat in.

“Just got caught up in my thoughts,” I said. “My mind never really shuts off. I am kinda tired though.”

After the attempt on my life and the assassination at the station, Giovanni insisted I stay at his house, and his brother agreed. It was the safest place I could be, and given the fact that there were cameras all over the place and men who wandered around that looked like they were part of Giovanni’s crew of whatchamacallits, I believed him.

“Let me show you the room you’ll be staying in,” he said.

I lifted my arms into the air and stretched them out to both sides and yawned.

“Alright,” I said. “But it’s just for tonight.”

Giovanni gave me a look that made me feel like I wouldn’t be going home anytime soon, and then he turned and walked down the hall. I followed. At the midway point, he opened a door and stepped inside.

“I hope this works for you,” he said.

I looked around. In all my life I’d never stayed in a room so lavish. It mirrored the decor in the living room except that in the center of the room, instead of a sofa and chairs, was an enormous four poster bed fit for a queen, and I had one thing on my mind—sleep.

***

When I opened my eyes the next morning Maddie was on a chair diagonal from the bed. I sat up and leaned my head back against the headboard behind me.

“You slept long enough,” she said. “I’ve been worried about you since Wade told me what happened to you in the woods. And thanks for calling by the way.”

I wanted to tell her everything before the chief did, but it had all happened so fast.

“I’m sorry. Have you been here awhile?”

“Long enough to hear you chatter in your sleep.”

I don’t chatter.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I just listened to fifteen minutes of back and forth banter.”

“About what?”

“It was hard to make out,” she said. “You blabbed on and on and you were out of breath, like you were running away from something—or someone.”

I had a good idea of who the someone was.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“I have my ways, and on that subject,” she said thumbed in the direction of the doorway, “what a little hottie he is.”

“Who—Giovanni?”

“Who else? Surprised to see you slept in a different room though.”

“Maddie!”

She bobbed her shoulders up and down.

“What—you know me. I would have tapped that once, if not twice if I was in your position. I’m just sayin’.”

“It’s not like he’s taken.”

“Girl, please. The man’s talked about you nonstop since I got here. So do you like him, or what?”

“Too much is going on right now for me to even consider it, you know that.”

Maddie walked over and sat down next to me on the edge of the bed. “Make time for him,” she said. “Don’t let something that delicious get away.”

“I see what you’re doing.”

“Which is?” she said.

“You know I can’t let anything distract me right now, not until—”

Giovanni tapped on the door a few times and then came in.

“Would you ladies care for some breakfast?” he said.

“You bet,” Maddie said.

He looked in my direction.

“Sloane?”

“I don’t want you to put yourself out,” I said.

He made a face that reminded me of a disgruntled employee so I tried again.

“I’m starved,” I said. “Thank you.”

He smiled and said, “It will be ready in ten,” and then he turned and shut the door behind him.

Once he left Maddie prodded me in the arm with two of her fingers.

“What was that for?” I said.

“If you don’t stop acting like that the guy is going to think you’d rather get with some over-the-hill senior citizen than with him.”

“Oh stop it,” I said. “He understands. Have you examined the bodies from last night?”

She nodded and said, “Strange, don’t you think?”

“Because he used a gun?” I said.

“Yeah—I mean, what’s up with that?”

“He’s angry,” I said. “I shot him and ruined his plans, and because of that he was forced to clean up the mess he made, which started with Trisha. My guess is that he planned to kill her before she got the chance to talk.”

“And the other guy?”

“Sal? Wrong place, wrong time, maybe.”

“So why not you? He must have had a clear shot at some point, but he didn’t even try for you.”

“It’s like he skipped over me on purpose. Think about it, Maddie. He set this whole scheme up, framed someone for murder, and paid someone to help him do it. There has to be a driving force behind an action like that. He wants something.”

“Not something—someone,” she said. “You.”

“And a guy like that won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”

After breakfast Maddie left and I showered and got ready—for what, I didn’t know. I was in the middle of towel drying my hair when a sound emanated from my phone.

“How are you?” I said.

“Why?” Nick said. “It’s not like you care.”

“Of course I do.”

“Why?”

“Where are you?” I said.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Are you coming back?”

“Would it make a difference if I did?”

“I still care about you,” I said.

He laughed into the phone.

“Right. You care. From what I hear, you have someone else to look out for you now. I have to say, I knew it would happen, but not that fast.”