A Dark and Lonely Place (18 page)

“You sure, John? Remember, a good friend will help you move. A very good friend, like your brother, will help you move a body.”

“I’m sure.” He checked his watch. “Hey, my replacement’s due here in twenty minutes. Get Laura the hell out of here, to a safe place. Then I’ll call it in.”

“Okay.” Robby turned to Laura. “We’re gone.”

“What about you, John? Come with us.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Let’s both go with Robby.”

“Can’t. I want you long gone, miles from here before all hell breaks loose. Robby’ll take good care of you. Keep down, don’t let anybody see you in his car.”

She nodded.

He kissed her, then asked Robby to buy her a prepaid cell phone.

“And a gun,” she said. “Nothing smaller than a thirty-eight, short barrel.”

“That can be arranged,” Robby said, with a crooked smile.

This time John didn’t object. Hell, she’d just seen that he couldn’t protect her. Maybe nobody could. How could he, with any conscience, deny her the means to protect herself? Her grace under pressure spoke to him. They both came from Florida pioneer families who never asked for help or a handout.

“Protect her,” he told his brother.

Robby nodded, picked up her suitcase, and took her arm. Her eyes, though haunted as she looked back at John, were fearless.

“We’re ghosts,” Robby said, and they were gone.

John wiped clean every surface she might have touched. If things went south, it might help to make her presence at the scene difficult to prove.

He waited twenty minutes, then used his cell phone to call his lieutenant and 911.

He had previously told only one person in the department their location. Just as he began to think she might have betrayed him, Officer Mona Stratton, a large woman, showed up late.

“Sorry, Sarge. Couldn’t find you guys way back here.” Breathless, she flashed a broad, gold-toothed grin.

She was in uniform. Perfect, he thought.

“Come on in,” he said, “and join the party,” as the sounds of sirens grew louder in the distance.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

W
onder what’s shaking up in this neck of the woods?” Officer Stratton glanced over her shoulder as the incoming sirens built to a crescendo, then converged. “Sounds like something big.” She rolled her eyes and chuckled in relief that it didn’t concern her.

John nodded as she lumbered by him into the room. She set a tote bag full of magazines, a paperback romance novel, and convenience store snacks on the floor just inside and urgently glanced around. “Is that the john?”

He frowned.

“I really got to pee.” The big woman beelined for the bathroom.

“Don’t go in there,” John warned. “It’s a mess.”

She squinted at him over her shoulder but never slowed down. “Don’t worry,” she sang out. “You should see mine.”

“Wait!” John called.

She didn’t. “Where’s the witness?” Officer Stratton asked casually, as she pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside.

John sighed and counted down. Three, two, one. The shriek, more high-pitched than he expected, preceded a roller coaster whoop, followed by a gag reflex and a series of terrified puppylike yelps.

Arms flailing, she nearly fell back into the room, eyes squeezed shut, her feet pounding the floor like an Irish dancer.

“We had a problem,” he said.

She paused, eyes growing wider as, for the first time, she took in the damaged walls, furniture, and ceiling.

“What happenin’ here?” she cried, as the earsplitting sirens stopped outside and cops with guns burst into the room.

Three squad cars, Lt. Mac Myerson, and two marginal homicide
detectives arrived simultaneously. Myerson walked directly to the bathroom. “Christ! It is him! How the hell did this happen?” he asked John and Officer Stratton.

“How’d he know where we were?” John countered. “I told no one, except Officer Stratton here.” He looked at her and frowned.

Bug-eyed, she protested, denied, disavowed. “Had nothing to do with it. Not me! Don’t ask me! I just walked in! Didn’t see nothing. Didn’t hear nothing. Don’t know nothing!”

Only hours ago she’d been John’s new best friend. Now she regretted ever hearing his name. This night was to be an easy shift babysitting a female witness, eating pizza, and watching TV, her feet up, the remote in her hand. Instead, it started bad and was growing worse.

“How we gonna tell his wife?” Lieutenant Myerson raked his fingers through his hair like a man who’d lost his best friend.

John believed he had a more important question. “Why did the captain try to kill me and my witness?”

“Where is she?” Myerson scanned the room.

John shrugged.

“What do you mean?” The red vein in the lieutenant’s forehead bulged and throbbed. “You were protecting her!”

“Obviously, I couldn’t. She didn’t feel safe and split.”

“You let her go?” he asked, alarmed. “Alone? When? Did she leave in a car?”

John shrugged again.

“Is she driving a vehicle?”

John paused to think. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Did she call a taxi?”

“Not that I heard. But I was busy with your boss, who was trying to kill us. He didn’t say a word. Let his trigger finger do the talking. I hit the deck, fired three rounds in self-defense. Had no idea who he was.”

The lieutenant turned to Officer Stratton. “Did you see her?”

“Who? Me? I didn’t see nothing. Didn’t hear nothing. Don’t know nothing! I just walked in the door.”

She refused to say more, demanded to talk to her union rep, plopped herself down on a shaky plastic chair outside the room, put her head between her knees, and inhaled noisy deep breaths.

Between frequent private phone calls, Lieutenant Myerson had uniforms
rope off the area and check for surveillance cameras, then gave the room over to the homicide detectives. He and John moved to the small nearby lobby.

Myerson tucked his fat rear end into a chair behind the desk like a sinister clerk about to check John into a room. Where? John wondered. Hell? County jail? The state pen? Or a pine box?

“You know the drill, Ashley. Your badge and weapon.”

John handed them over. “Three rounds fired,” he said.

Myerson took the gun, his shaggy eyebrows raised, his expression mocking. “Ain’t this the second time you’ve discharged a firearm in twenty-four hours? You must be almost out of hardware.”

“I’ll manage,” John said. Myerson’s attitude firmed his decision to talk no more that night.

The lieutenant asked for his cell phone as well.

“Nope. I don’t think so.” John shook his head. “A captain from our department tried to kill me tonight. Since I’m not sure why, I’m more comfortable hanging on to my phone. I may need it.”

Lieutenant Myerson responded with an icy stare, then stepped away to use his phone. He returned more confident and less stressed.

“You look like hell, Ashley,” he said. “You’ve had a long day, pal. Head home. Get some sleep and report to my office at eleven a.m. If it makes you more comfortable, bring a rep.” He shrugged. “But I assume you have nothing to hide.”

John hated to leave. What about the integrity of the scene, the collection and preservation of evidence? “Where’s crime scene and the medical examiner? Shouldn’t they be here by now?”

“On the way,” the lieutenant said dismissively. “My office at eleven. And oh yeah, we need your city car.” He instructed a young patrolman to drive John home.

Where the hell was the press? John hated to see his name in the newspaper, always had, but a masked police captain slain by one of his own sergeants under circumstances suspicious, to say the least, seemed newsworthy to him. This case would need the scrutiny of a topflight medical examiner, the press, the public, and the work of good crime scene investigators and photographers to ensure an honest and thorough investigation. Where was everybody?

The baby-faced young cop said little as they exited onto the Boulevard.
John saw nothing reassuring on the horizon. No morgue wagon, no ME car, crime scene van, or media sound trucks.

“Where are the troops?” he asked. “Your radio traffic sounds light, seems to be a slow night. Crime scene, an ME, the shooting team, the brass, a PIO officer, and the news media: should be here by now.”

The young cop shrugged. “The lieutenant’s handling all that.”

Myerson had stayed off police radio, used his cell phone exclusively. That could mean that neither the public, the press, nor other members of the department and support staff even knew there had been a shooting.

John got out of the patrol car in front of his building, swung the door shut, and watched the taillights until they were out of sight.

He felt weary but had things to do, places to go. His car was parked on level two of the garage. He took the stairwell instead of the elevator. As he approached the second level, he felt overwhelmed by a strong feeling that an intruder had been there on his turf. He could almost smell him. He scrutinized his car, searched it for anything missing—or added. Despite the aura of a hostile presence, everything appeared normal until he swept beneath the back bumper with his fingers and found something—a tiny tracking device. The same model that detectives in SIU, the department’s Strategic Intelligence Unit, once planted on the personal car of a scandal-prone mayor.

When did they do this? he wondered. Had to be after he and Laura switched back to the city car. Why? How did they . . . ?

He duct-taped the device to a concrete pillar next to his parking spot, then drove to an all-night convenience store for several prepaid, untraceable cell phones. He knew he wouldn’t be picked up on store surveillance tape. Just the other day, the manager had complained to him that his video system, damaged in a recent robbery-shooting, wouldn’t be back up for at least ten days.

As he turned the familiar corner half a block from home, his eyes rose, as usual, to his balcony on the building’s east side, his private little window on the world, with its patio chair, potted palm, and outdoor grill. He blinked, startled, as a flash of light bloomed in the dark behind the sliding glass door. He pulled over and killed his headlights to watch. There it was again. A flashlight beam. Somebody was in his apartment.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

H
ey, look who’s here, darlin’,” John murmured.

Laura tore herself away from the bolt of shimmering blue silk the color of her eyes. The graceful, glistening fabric, perfect for a special dress she planned to make, spilled like water across the counter at Burdine’s Trading Post.

It was their third brief visit to Miami.

“ ’Member when I told you about Mr. Carl Fisher?”

Laura followed his eyes and flashed her brilliant smile at the couple who entered. “Is that him?”

John nodded.

The tall, slender girl on Fisher’s arm was full-faced, with a high forehead, dark hair, and bold, sparkling eyes. “Look at that elegant dress,” Laura murmured. “His daughter’s lovely.”

“No!” John whispered hoarsely, as Fisher hailed them. “That’s his wife.”

Laura’s eyes widened.

“Ashley, isn’t it?” Fisher boomed.

“Yes, sir.” John introduced Laura as his wife. That made life less complicated in Miami, where they planned to live. Husband and wife in every other way, they hoped to make it official soon. The day before, as they explored rustic, tree-shaded Coconut Grove, they stumbled upon a church construction site. The builder told them that Saint Stephen’s would be completed and consecrated the following year. The design was clean and simple, the surroundings romantic. They decided it was where they would quietly marry when Laura was free and the church finished.

“We plan to take a boat out to see the beach before we leave,” John told the Fishers.

Jane Fisher rolled her eyes dramatically and pushed her hair back off her brow, as though weary. “You poor thing,” she told Laura. “You have my sympathy. Why Carl is so interested in that swampy sandbar, I’ll never know. It’s nasty.” She shuddered delicately. “He took me there and I couldn’t have been more disgruntled.”

“Disgruntled?” Laura said.

The girl nodded, her eyes serious. “More than you can imagine. The boat ride made me seasick and millions of hungry mosquitoes swarmed all over me the moment we arrived. Right in the center there’s a huge crocodile hole with all those ugly, awful creatures wallowing . . .”

Her eyes lit up. “Carl! Look!” She snatched the silk from in front of Laura. “Wouldn’t this be perfect for my new ball gown? It’s my color!”

“Laura liked it too, I believe she was thinking the same thing,” John said.

By the time the clerk returned to say they had no more in stock, Miami’s only bolt of blue silk was tucked possessively under Jane Fisher’s arm.

Fisher mumbled something in his wife’s ear. “Oh.” She cocked her head in startled surprise. “Were you interested in it, too, dear?”

Laura smiled graciously. “You take it, Mrs. Fisher. It’s special and will look absolutely beautiful on you.”

Fisher urged John to contact him when he made his permanent move to Miami. John promised he would.

“Are you all right?” he asked Laura as they left.

“No.” Slyly, she cut her eyes at him. “I am disgruntled.” She mimicked Jane Fisher’s little-girl voice. “More disgruntled than you could imagine. John, that girl can’t be more than fifteen years old.”

“You were even younger when I knew I wanted to marry you.”

“But he’s almost forty. The man is losing his hair.”

“She was fifteen when they met,” John said. “Must be sixteen by now. You really wanted that blue silk, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “But that girl will go to more fancy parties than I will. And you may go to work for her husband.” She shrugged. “I’m fine; she’s welcome to it.”

They stayed at the Price House, a small three-story hotel built by Henry Choice Price. A Georgia cotton planter before the Civil War,
Price became a firebrand blockade runner for the Confederacy, then morphed after the war into an upstate Florida citrus grower. He gave that up when a winter freeze wiped out his entire orange crop and moved his family south—to Miami.