Deadly Force (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The Hispanic boy on the right, looking like he was about to piss his pants, let his gun fall to the hardwood floor. Sam thought it was a damn miracle that it didn’t go off. The Caucasian kid, maybe a year or two older, kept his gun pointed at the store clerk. His arm was shaking and sweat poured off his face.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sam said. “Put your gun down.
Now!”

It was five long seconds before the kid did so.

His gun leveled at the kids’ chests, Sam moved close enough to kick their weapons far out of reach.

“Get on the floor,” Cruz ordered. “Get your face on the floor.”

Both boys obeyed. Sam sucked in a breath. It had gone well.

Then he heard a noise and he looked over his shoulder just in time to see a young woman in the
corner, back by the napkins and spoons, point a gun at Cruz.

The bullet hit Cruz’s upper thigh. His whole body jerked back and he stumbled into a stand-up rack of greeting cards, taking them with him when he fell to the ground.

Sam swung his gun around to return fire, but the girl dropped her weapon, put her hand over her mouth and sank to her knees. Sam, his heart about to burst, kept
his gun on the two young men at the front of the store while he circled behind her.

Then there were cops pouring in the door. EMTs came next and they moved quickly to get a still-conscious Cruz into the waiting ambulance.

Sam grabbed his partner’s hand as they wheeled him past. It scared the hell out of him when the man’s grip was weak. He’d lost so much blood. “Hang in there, Cruz,”
he urged.

“They. Keep. Getting. Younger,” Cruz said, his words coming in spurts.

Cruz was right. The girl couldn’t have been much over fourteen. And she’d come this close to killing his partner.

It could have been him.

Next time it might be.

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” Sam promised his friend as they loaded Cruz in the ambulance.

“If I don’t make it,” Cruz said,
his voice faint, “take care of Meg. Make sure she’s okay.”

Sam nodded and slammed the doors of the ambulance shut. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Meg’s cell number. He’d memorized it years ago in the event something horrible like this ever happened. And when she answered, he quickly realized that she’d spent those same years preparing for just such a call. She was calm,
decisive and said she would catch the next plane to Chicago.

Then he called Claire. Didn’t stop to think why. Just knew that he needed to hear her voice. He told her what happened, assured her that he was okay and promised to call her with any news.

Sam knew it would take a while to sort out the red tape. Police incidents where weapons were discharged, especially when the perps were
minors, were getting front-page news coverage. Every detail would be under scrutiny.

While neither he nor Cruz had discharged their own weapon, which would have required a roundtable meeting, a cop had been shot. Other cops took that real seriously. Sam knew he wasn’t going anywhere until he’d given his statement. He knew other detectives had been dispatched to the hospital to get Cruz’s
story.

He and Cruz wouldn’t be allowed to speak until that had happened. There could be no room for doubt at the conclusion of the investigation that statements had been given independently.

The press would be all over this. They’d spin it and analyze it and radio talk-show hosts would pick up the story if it were a slow news day. Sam didn’t like it but he understood it. After all, he’d
been close to being on the other side of the desk.

When he finally got the free-to-go nod from his captain, he drove like a maniac to the hospital. Captain Morris had given him an update an hour earlier, had said that Cruz was getting patched up in the Emergency Room. Sam knew he wouldn’t rest until he actually saw Cruz.

He parked and showed his badge to get quickly past the hospital
security. He asked for the charge nurse and when he told her why he was there, it didn’t take him long to realize that everything wasn’t fine, that everything might not be fine.

From far away, he heard her say things like blood clot, possible stroke, in surgery at this very minute. He let her lead him to the other side of the hospital, to a mostly empty waiting room. Claire was the only person
there.

“You didn’t need to come,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her gently, being careful of her sore shoulder.

“I know how much he means to you, Sam. I didn’t want you to be alone.”

He took the comfort that she so freely gave. When his legs finally felt like they might just keep him up, he pulled back far enough that he could see her face.

“I’m so glad
it wasn’t you, Sam. I’m so glad you weren’t hurt.”

“I was scared, Claire.” He pulled her close and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I was so scared. I almost shot that girl.”

She wrapped her free arm around him like before and held him tight. “What happened?” she asked, her words muffled by his chest.

“She was the inside guy. She had a cell phone and she’d called her friends
and told them to come, that the store was almost empty. I’m not even sure those boys knew she had a gun. They just froze when she shot Cruz. I really don’t think they were planning on shooting anybody.”

A woman, in her early forties, walked into the room. She had on green scrubs and her hair was pulled back and covered by a hairnet. “I’m Dr. Janssen. I understand you’re his partner. We got
the bleeding stopped, replaced two pints of blood and got him stabilized. He’s in the recovery room now. I’ll be back in a few minutes and take you to see him.”

The woman, her rubber-soled clogs softly clumping, left the room. Sam sat in his chair and tried to remember all the bargains he’d made with God when he’d seen Cruz bleeding out on the coffee-shop floor. He intended to keep every
one of them.

“He might not be happy that I called Meg.”

“That was the right thing to do,” she said. “I would want somebody to call me.”

That would be horrible. My God, he’d been just three years younger than she was now when he’d walked in and practically stumbled over Tessa’s dead body.

The doctor returned. “Mrs. Vernelli can come, too,” she said.

Mrs. Vernelli.

Tessa had spent hours writing that on all her notebooks. When he’d introduced her to friends as Tessa Fontaine, she’d put out her hand, flashed a smile and said, “You can call me Mrs. Vernelli.”

She was crazy about being Mrs. Vernelli.

They’d been kids playing grown-up games.

Now he was a grown-up acting like a kid. He’d met Claire, seen something he wanted and regardless of the
consequences, had decided he had to have it.

She was a young, beautiful woman. She’d been protected her whole life, sheltered, almost shut away. She’d been lonely.

This was her time to soar. The sky was the limit for Claire Fontaine.

Unless she was tied to some idiot who could get shot at most any day. Then she’d just be a young widow. Alone and lonely again.

“She’s not Mrs.
Vernelli,” he said, his voice hard.

Claire’s head snapped up.

He looked at her and prayed that he’d have the courage to keep going. “You were right, Claire. It was a crazy idea to pretend we were getting married, to even think about it. Call your parents. Make sure they understand that it’s over.”

“You want it to be over?” she asked, her voice choked with tension. “Everything?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what the hell I was doing.”

“Is it because of Tessa?” she asked.

He nodded. It was better for her to think so. Better for her to believe he was trapped by the past rather than afraid of the future. Maybe this was the one last thing he could do for her.

With a careless swipe of her hand, she brushed a tear off her cheek. “I’m sorry she died, Sam. I loved her,
too. I’d like to think that she would have wanted us both to be happy.”

“Detective Vernelli?” The doctor still stood in the doorway, looking very impatient.

Claire glanced from him to the doctor, then back to him. Her eyes were bright with tears. “He’s right. I’m not Mrs. Vernelli.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Goodbye, Sam.”

* * *

C
RUZ
WAS
FLAT
ON
HIS
BACK
in a bed, with an IV pumping something into his arm. He was pale and his mouth was a tight line. His eyes were closed.

Sam closed his own eyes and said a quick prayer. Then he opened them and gave a low whistle. “Some people will do
anything
for a couple weeks off,” he said.

Cruz opened his eyes and wet his dry lips with his tongue. “It would have been a better plan if they’d shot you
and I took off time to take care of you.”

Sam sat down in the lone chair, extended his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Doc says you’re going to be fine.”

Cruz nodded. “She said if I work like hell in physical therapy, I should get full use back.”

Sam let out the breath that he must have been holding. “I assume you gave your statement.”

“Yeah. Right after I got here. I
was fine for the first hour and then all hell broke loose.”

“What? You weren’t getting enough attention?”

“I’ve had my fair share now,” Cruz said, his voice sounding strained. Sam knew he shouldn’t stay much longer. His friend would need sleep.

“I called Meg,” Sam said. “I hope you’re not mad. She’s coming.”

“I don’t want her pity,” Cruz said.

“Give her a chance,” Sam
cautioned. “She—”

He stopped when a nurse entered the room. She smiled, walked over and checked the machines that were beeping and whirling and left, her clogs making the same soft noise he’d heard earlier when the doctor had walked through the waiting area. She had on a similar purple-and-green smock.

She was a walking color wheel. Whatever happened to the white uniform, little white
hat and ugly white shoes?

Sam stood up, leaned over Cruz’s bed to tell his friend goodbye and stopped.

No white shoes. Green clogs. Just like the green clogs that had been under Claire’s kitchen table the day Sandy Bird had stormed her way in.

Oh, damn.

“Sam?” Cruz said, his voice full of fear. “What the hell’s wrong? Am I bleeding somewhere?”

“No. No.” Sam rushed to assure
his friend. “Cruz, I think I missed something. Something big. That nurse that was just in here. She had on green clogs. The doctor did, too. Nadine, Claire’s roommate, works at this hospital and she wears them.”

“Maybe it’s the pain medication, Sam, but you’re not making a lot of sense.”

“The day of the shooting, I moved Nadine and Claire into the kitchen. Claire almost tripped over
the shoes, so I kicked them under the table. And now, I remember that when I got behind Nadine and I told her to put her gun down, her feet were bare. She laid her gun next to bare feet.”

“So? She’d taken her shoes off.”

“No. She said she’d been leaving for work when Sandy Bird, a stranger, had surprised her in the hall. That she pushed her way into the apartment. Claire heard them arguing
in the living room. I don’t think Nadine took the time to take her shoes off and put them in the kitchen when she’s got a stranger waving a gun in her face.”

“She invited her in,” Cruz said, coming to the logical conclusion. “She knew her.”

Sam rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know how. I thought we’d looked at every possible connection. All I know is that her shoes were under the
table.”

Cruz lifted his head up off the bed, just inches. “Call The Weasel. If they were there, he’d have gotten a picture of them.”

Sam hit the door running. “I’ll be back,” he said over his shoulder.

* * *

“I
NEED
T
HE
W
EASEL
,” he said, when the department phone was answered.

In less than a minute, the man was on the phone. “What’s up, Vernelli?”

“About three weeks
ago you worked the scene at 810 Maple Street. Head shot, hardwood floor.”

“Ah, yes, I remember it well. Did they ever get that wall clean?”

“I need to see the pictures. All of them. I’m on my way in. I’ll meet you at my desk in fifteen minutes.”

The Weasel was waiting for him when he got there. It took Sam less than three minutes to find the photo he wanted. There they were. Ugly
green clogs. Under Claire and Nadine’s table.

It was starting to make sense. After Claire had surprised the two of them, things had turned bad quickly. Bird hadn’t been a stranger. She hadn’t come for Claire. She’d come to see Nadine.

Sam picked up his cell phone and started to dial Claire’s cell number. He stopped, suddenly shaking so hard that he couldn’t press the small buttons on
his phone. The call had come into Claire’s home telephone.

The caller was somebody who knew that new number.

Like maybe the roommate who’d been there when the telephone line got activated. It had been a man who called. But something told him that Nadine Myer was in this up to her eyebrows. She’d grown up with Claire, their families knew each other. She would know about Tessa.

He
and Nadine were going to have a little conversation.

For the second time that day, Sam got in his car and drove like a crazy man to Melrey Hospital. He went to the front desk this time and asked to see the administrator in charge.

In less than two minutes, a middle-aged woman, wearing a white lab coat and the same awful shoes walked toward him. “Detective, I’m Margaret Moore, Director
of Nursing. May I help you?”

He pulled out a card. “I’m investigating a potential homicide. I need to speak with one of your employees. Ms. Nadine Myer. I’m going to need someplace private.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you. Nadine Myer hasn’t worked here for six weeks. Trust me on this, Detective. Nadine won’t ever work at this hospital again.”

Sam started to get a bad feeling. “Why
not?” he asked.

Margaret Moore looked around. The lobby was full of people. “Follow me,” she said.