This Case Is Gonna Kill Me (23 page)

I stepped a little closer to the older man, wincing at my sore feet. I lowered my voice. “You know, there’s a story here. About how your driver saved someone from a rogue werewolf.”

He looked thoughtful. Sal threw me a grateful look, and they both left. Sergeant Balfour finally emerged from the lieutenant’s office, but he didn’t say anything to me. Instead he sat at his desk and typed out a report on an ancient PC.

It was nearly nine, and the final rays of the setting sun were stabbing through the glass and wire-mesh windows. I was suddenly ravenously hungry, and my clawed leg was hurting like crazy. I risked a question.

“Sergeant, is it going to be much longer?” He stiffened, but I wasn’t in the mood for any more cop authority bullshit. “I’ve given my statement, and now I want to go home.” I paused and inspected my shredded ankle. “And to a doctor. So please return my personal effects, and—”

“No,” the sergeant said.

“Am I under arrest? If so, I want my phone call and I want a lawyer, and I’m not saying another word until both of those things happen.” I folded my arms across my chest, and we glared at each other.

“I’m waiting on a cop from New York to show up. He says this case may be related to one he’s working on.”

“That’s crazy. I’m not involved in—” I broke off even before the cop interrupted me to say,

“When I typed your name into the ViCAP system it spit out a big fucking report about you and a murder and a dead werewolf.”

“Well, okay, that’s true. But I was a victim—”

“Like this time.” His tone dripped with irony.

“Yes. Who’s this cop?” I asked. “Is it Detective—”

Sometimes life does unspool like a movie, because at that moment the door to the station house opened, and Detective Washington walked in. For a moment I vibrated between relief at seeing him and concern because I was starting to feel like the criminal in these events.

Washington and the New Jersey cop introduced themselves and shook hands. Balfour jerked his head toward me. “Report’s on the desk. I’ll leave her to you,” he said, then walked away.

Washington sat down and carefully and slowly read over my statement, alternating between the typed pages and photographs of the inside of the house and the carnage in the street. My possessions were laid out on the desk. Washington carefully studied the dented metal clasp on the purse and the dented business card case. All the while, my knee vibrated in impatience and tension. He finally looked up at me. “You realize the bullet hit the clasp and the card case, and that’s why you’re not dead.”

“Oh” was all I could muster.

“You realize how unlikely that is?”

“I guess.”

He gestured at the statement and pictures. “You know this is a highly improbable series of events.”

“I know.” I sniffed, looked around for a Kleenex, and had to settle for dabbing my nose and eyes with the tail of my blouse.

“Once again, you are lucky to be alive.”

“I know.” My voice was a miserable mew.

“Who was this man…” A glance down at the papers. “This Gillford?”

“He said he had information about a case.”

“But you’re not going to tell me which case.”

“I can’t.” My leg was starting to throb in time to my heartbeat, and I felt faint.

“Did he have information?”

“He just made the claim. He never backed it up, and then…” I gestured helplessly. “All that other stuff happened.”

“Who were they there to kill?” Washington asked.

“Both of us. I’m pretty sure.”

“Werewolves again. And before you clammed up, you told me about Securitech.”

“So shouldn’t you be talking to Securitech?”

“There’s nothing linking any of these bodies to that company.”

“They had guns.”

“Guns are easy.”

“They cut the phones.”

“Any two-bit home invasion artist will do that.”

“You just don’t want to brace Securitech,” I accused.

“Not without something more. My pay grade isn’t that high.”

“Maybe after I get killed you’ll work up the nerve.” I only resort to out-and-out bitchiness in extreme circumstances. This seemed like one.

Washington matched me. “That doesn’t seem likely to happen, does it? Given your extraordinary luck in cheating death.”

He took me through the events again. Just thinking about it made my stomach clench, and I wasn’t hungry anymore. I was clinging to the last shreds of my patience and control when he suddenly focused on my torn ankle. “Why didn’t you get that taken care of?”

“Because I’ve been sitting here for hours.”

“The ambulance drivers should have dealt with this. Come on.” He handed me my purse, took my bloodstained jacket off the back of the chair, and led me out of the station and to his car. He then drove me to the hospital.

Maybe it was because I had a cop with me, but I didn’t have to sit in the emergency room for hours. Since there weren’t any people actively dying, I got moved to the front of the line. The young Indian doctor numbed the area, cut away the curling edges of the drying skin, cleaned out the wounds, and bandaged my ankle. He then wrote me a prescription for antibiotics, saying, “The claws on those creatures can be very dirty. If it starts to hurt, and you see red streaks above the bandage, go immediately to your regular doctor.”

It was now 10:30 p.m., and I was dropping. Washington looked down at me. “Do you need me to take you home?”

“I have a rental car. I’ve got to get it back to the city.”

“It’s at the police station.”

“Then take me there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I said, but I really wasn’t.

Washington parked next to the tiny rental. The lights in the parking lot threw round flares of light on the pocked asphalt. The night was sticky hot, and out toward the Atlantic Ocean lightning played fitful tag on a line of clouds.

“I’ll probably have more questions for you.”

“Okay.” I unlocked the trunk and threw the bloody jacket in on top of my roller bag. I really just wanted to throw the thing away, but there wasn’t a trash can handy. I fumbled a bit trying to get the key into the front door lock.

“You’re sure you’re okay to drive?”

“Yes.” I wanted to scream at him
Just go
, because what I wanted right now was silence and the inside of my own head.

He waited until I was in the car and started to drive out of the lot before he got back in his car. For a while we traveled in the same direction, but then he turned off. I found a parking lot in front of a strip mall, turned in, stopped the car, and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I pictured driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, making my way across the George Washington Bridge onto I-95, and then into Washington Heights. I pictured trying to find a place to park the car near my apartment. I had been wrong. I couldn’t make it home.

I knew I shouldn’t let the senior partners find out about this latest misadventure from Detective Washington. I should call Shade’s answering service. That thought exhausted me too. But if I couldn’t face the drive home, who could I call to come and get me? Ray and Gregory? They didn’t have a car. My dad? Too far away. Finally I dug out my cell phone and called John. He answered on the first ring.

“O’Shea.”

I almost hung up when I heard a woman’s voice muttering in sleepy irritation. Instead I burst into tears. “John,” I sobbed. “It’s Linnet. I need your help.”

“Where are you?”

I looked around, but I was in the middle of a block and couldn’t see any street signs. “I don’t know. Somewhere in New Jersey.”

“Okay, that’s dire.”

“Let me drive to a corner. Find a street sign—”

“No, stay put. I can find you. Just don’t turn off your cell phone.” He hung up. I leaned the seat back as far as it would go, closed my eyes, and waited.

*   *   *

My phone rang, jerking me awake from a sleep I hadn’t intended to take. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me,” came John’s voice.

“Where are you?”

“Parked next to you.”

I looked out through the driver’s side window. There was a nondescript four-door sedan parked next to me. I opened the car door and got out. John did the same. The sight of his crazy-quilt hair, and the cleft in his chin, and the way the corner of his mouth always quirked up as if he were secretly amused, almost overcame my control. I started to run to him, then froze.

He sensed my need, because when he reached my side he put his arms around me. “What the hell happened?”

“It’s a long, long story.” I sighed.

“Okay. Is this piece of shit your car?”

“No, it’s a rental.”

“Okay, we’ll leave it here and come back for it tomorrow.” He checked his watch. “Later today.”

“What if it gets stripped?”

“Oh, please, nobody would want parts off this thing. But if you have any personal items, you better get those out.”

I opened up the trunk and, with a shudder, tossed aside the jacket. “Sorry about interrupting your evening.”

He didn’t pretend not to understand. He shrugged. “She’ll get over it. Or she won’t.”

I started to lift out my roller bag, but it was heavy and I was tired, and my arms began to shake. John quickly took it out of my hands and put it in the trunk of his car. He then held the passenger door for me. I paused.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ve got blood on me. I don’t want to get it in your car.”

He touched the bloodstain on my skirt. “First, it’s dried, and second, this car has been bled in more than a few times. Come on. Let’s go.”

I leaned back against the headrest and briefly closed my eyes. When John turned the key the radio started up, a pulsing salsa beat. He snapped it off, turned up the air-conditioning, and pulled out.

“Okay, we’ve got a drive ahead of us so tell me the long, long story.”

So I did.

After I finished, John drove in silence for a while. He frowned out the front window, chewing a bit on his lower lip. The strobe of oncoming headlights periodically brought the angular planes of his face into high relief.

“Linnet, there is something going on with you. Something strange. Nobody has luck like yours.”

“What, shitty?” I asked.

“No, good. You should be dead four times over.”

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. I just know it’s not normal. But let’s get to what I
do
know. You are
never
to go off alone like this again.” I shrank back at the tone. “You call me and take me along.”

The injustice of that put starch back in my spine. “You might recall that I tried. I called you a number of times, and you never called back.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed. “Yeah, well, now that I know what you’re dealing with that won’t happen again.”

“What am I dealing with?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ve got suspicions, but no certainty.”

“Are your suspicions like my suspicions in that they all center on Securitech?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “So you didn’t tell anyone where you were going?”

“No.” I amended that. “Well, David Sullivan knew. He’s the one who found the address.”

“So you think Sullivan set you up?”

“No, of course not.” I hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

“Or you don’t want to think so.” John chewed thoughtfully at his lower lip. “If this other will exists, the old guy should have been dead weeks ago, before he could tell anyone.”

I pondered on that for a moment. “The fact that he wasn’t implies they didn’t know his identity or where to find him.” I slewed around to face him. “So, how did they find him now?”

“Because you led them there,” John said, his tone grim. He suddenly spun the steering wheel, sending us cutting across four lanes of traffic and down an exit ramp onto a street called Edgewater Ave.

As the sound of furiously honking horns died away behind us, I swallowed my heart again and gasped out, “Are you nuts? You could have gotten us killed!” I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing.

John pulled into the parking lot of an all-night burger joint. He jumped out and ran around to my side of the car, opened my door, and pulled me out. He was muttering to himself.

“Okay, it probably wouldn’t be on you.” He pressed the car key and the trunk popped open. He lifted out my roller bag. “Do you take this everywhere?”

“Pretty much.”

His clever, long-fingered hands flew across the surface of the case. He unzipped the pockets, reaching inside each crevice. “Have you left it unattended recently?”

“In the office when I go to lunch or the bathroom.” My tone was waspish. I was still shaken by his crazy driving, and low blood sugar was making me cranky.

“Outside the office,” he said, with the kind of patience you reserve for the very young or the very old and senile.

I opened my mouth to say no, then remembered
Mame
. “I checked it when I went to the theater.”

“Aha!” It was a cry of triumph. His hand emerged from inside a pocket of the case. He was holding a small disk.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Tracer.”

“Oh God,” I moaned as I sank down to sit on a concrete tire stop. “I led them to him. I got Gillford killed, didn’t I?”

John knelt down in front of me and gripped my shoulders. “No, the guys who killed Gillford are the guys who killed Gillford.”

“But—”

“No buts. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He paused. “Other than going alone, which … You. Are. Never. Ever. Going. To. Do. Again.” He gripped my shoulders and gave me a little shake. “Right?”

“Yes, yes, I promise.” A new, and very unwelcome, thought intruded. I craned my neck and looked all around the parking lot. “Are they following us now? Do you think they’ll come after us? Why didn’t they come after me while I was waiting for you?”

“Who ever sent those guys may not yet know the plan went tits up. Also, if you fetch up dead right after this other incident, the cops are going to start taking a real hard look at events surrounding you, your life, and your work. I don’t think our killers want that much scrutiny.” He tossed the tracer into the air and caught it several times. “You said your cell phone didn’t work in the house?”