The Perfect Suspect (35 page)

She had slowed down for the turn onto the concrete apron in front of her garage, aware of the police car's lights jiggling in the alley behind her, when the cell rang. Marjorie calling again, but there was nothing more she could write, nothing she could add to the police report Jason would get. What could she add? That a girl had died because she had failed?

Rex was a dark shadow hurling himself at the chain-link fence, barking and howling. She stopped a few feet from the garage door and dug in her bag. She might as well tell Marjorie there would be no more stories; the story had ended. She yanked out the phone. Bustamante glowed in the readout. She snapped the phone open and pressed the garage button between the visors.

“Catherine, where are you?” Rex was barking so loud, she could hardly hear, but she sensed the tension in Nick's voice, the hard, steeliness of the detective.

“I just got home.” In the rearview mirror, she saw more headlights. Headlights streamed into the other end of the alley. The garage door started to creak upward, her own lights sweeping across the concrete floor.

“Listen to me,” Nick said. “The BMW's parked around the block. Beckman's at your house. I'm a couple blocks away, and police cars should be pulling up in a few seconds. Drive away now!”

The garage door was almost open, and her headlights bounced off the gun held by the dark figure crouching in the middle of the concrete floor.

“She's in the garage,” Catherine managed, the words like splinters working out of her throat. She jabbed at the button to bring the door down. The phone rolled onto the floor as she flipped on the bright lights. The woman in the garage bared her teeth and squinted into the brightness as the door started to fall. There was the noise of tires squealing. At the blurry edge of her vision, Catherine saw police cars careening toward her.

Catherine kept her eyes on the woman in the middle of the garage, like an animal caught in a trap, frenzied and wild, desperate and haunted looking. She held her arms out in front, as if she were bringing an offering of some sort, and Catherine saw the gun coming toward her, the muzzle as large as a cannon. She threw herself sideways, barely aware of the noise of the gunshot crashing over her, the windshield fracturing into a thousand spidery cracks. A sharp, hard pain clamped onto her shoulder. She rammed the gear into forward and stomped down on the accelerator. The convertible shot ahead. She was barely aware of the shouting voices, the boots thudding outside, the garage door scraping the frame of the convertible. Then the convertible bumped over something that seemed to bend and deflate beneath the wheels. Her own face was smashed into the leather of the passenger seat. Not until the car had slammed into the garage wall and the safety bag had exploded out of the steering wheel did she allow her foot to slip off the accelerator, bricks, plaster and wood falling around her like meteors out of the sky. There was no pain now, only a vast numbness that moved through her shoulder and a wet stickiness that soaked her blouse.

She lay against the passenger seat and tried to make sense of what was happening outside—still a reporter, she thought, the objective observer watching the story unfold: footsteps pounding nearer, uniforms crowding around the car, voices still shouting, lights from flashlights as big as torches flooding over her. Rex barking.

“Get an ambulance!” She recognized Nick's voice.

Catherine wasn't sure how long he had been leaning over her, pressing a cloth of some kind against her shoulder. The pain had flared up like a dead campfire and begun moving down her arm and across her chest. She tried to reach for Nick's hand but the gap seemed a thousand miles away.

“Take it easy, Catherine,” Nick said. His voice was low and reassuring in her ear. “The bullet grazed your shoulder. You're gonna be okay. Medics will be here in a couple minutes. You following me, sweetheart?”

She had managed to take hold of his hand, or maybe he had found hers, she wasn't sure. She squeezed his fingers and nodded. “I'm with you,” she heard herself whisper.

“Beckman's dead,” he said. “It's over, sweetheart.”

 

BLOOD MEMORY
THE PERFECT SUSPECT

 

 

THE EAGLE CATCHER
THE GHOST WALKER
THE DREAM STALKER
THE STORY TELLER
THE LOST BIRD
THE SPIRIT WOMAN
THE THUNDER KEEPER
THE SHADOW DANCER
KILLING RAVEN
WIFE OF MOON
EYE OF THE WOLF
THE DROWNING MAN
THE GIRL WITH BRAIDED HAIR
THE SILENT SPIRIT
THE SPIDER'S WEB