Guilty (34 page)

It was full night as she pressed the button to open the garage door, but the silvery moon hanging low on the horizon kept it from being totally dark. A brisk wind blew in from the east, and the trees cast dancing shadows over the house and yard. A lamp was on in the living room—she'd deliberately left it on that morning—and the soft glow visible through the curtains should have been comforting.

It wasn't. She was too nervous.

I'm going to kill a man tonight.

Her stomach churned.

Maybe Mario won't show.
It was a sneaking, hopeful thought, followed by the depressing corollary,
If he doesn't, then I'll just be living in fear until he does.

Which was worse?

That was a question for which she had no answer. What she did have was her gun, safe on the passenger seat beside her. In case there were any surprises, like Mario jumping her unexpectedly, she meant to be ready.

But there had been no sign of him for nearly two days.

Still, her heart was thudding as the garage door finally opened all the way. Given the new locks and the new security system, it was unlikely that Mario could already be inside the house waiting. But she had felt hideously vulnerable sitting in her driveway, and she felt hideously vulnerable now as she drove inside the garage and sat waiting in her locked car for the door to close again before she got out. Once it did, she figured she was relatively safe. She should have plenty of time to get inside and get ready. Get her courage up.

If Mario even came.

She was so busy watching anxiously out the rearview mirror in case anyone—read: Mario—should duck under the door as she waited for the thing to close that she almost missed it.

Or, rather,
him.

Mario. He was already there, in her garage.

C h a p t e r 23

KATE GASPED as her gaze found him and stopped, riveted. Her eyes went wide with shock. Her hands tightened on the wheel. Her heart threatened to leap out of her chest. Mario was in the front left corner of the garage, partially hidden by some boxes of dishes and things she hadn't yet unpacked. She could see him only from the mid-chest up and from the knees down, but from what she could tell he sat on the concrete floor with his legs splayed out in front of him and his head slumped toward his shoulder.

And unless her eyes were playing tricks on her, there was a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

Whatever, she was almost one hundred percent certain he was dead.

Murdered.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Terror sluiced like ice water through her veins as, all at the same time, it occurred to her that if Mario had been murdered, someone had to have done it, and they had to have been in her garage, and they might very well still be somewhere nearby. Gasping with fear, heart galloping, pulse racing, she looked wildly around, making sure the car doors were still locked and that no one was hidden in the shadows. At the same time, she jabbed at the garage door opener so that the damned door would open back up and she could get the hell out of there, and cringed in hideous anticipation of a bullet finding her at any second.

Mario's eyes were open. His mouth was, too. His face was slack. The hole was dime-sized and black and oozing just a trickle of blood. All this she saw in a series of horrified glances as, with glacial slowness and enough noise to wake the dead, the garage door ponderously rose.

Call 911. Call Tom.

She had just replaced her cell phone the day before, and she thanked God for it as she grabbed it. Tom's number—what was it? She didn't know, but thank God it was programmed into her phone.

Punching the button, she listened to the call connecting and at the same time shifted into reverse with one hand while she waited for the garage door to reach a height sufficient for the Civic to scoot beneath it. But as the door continued to rise and the phone finally began to ring at the other end, and she listened to both and glanced in horror at Mario and kept looking desperately around, she could see how vulnerable she was. Stuck in the garage, she was as exposed as an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Until the opening was wide enough, she couldn't get out. Anyone could get in.

Her skin crawled at the thought.

"Tom Braga."

Tom's voice in her ear was the most welcome sound she had ever heard.

"Tom. You need to come." Even as she gasped the words out, she was reminding herself that she didn't know who this man in her garage was. To her, supposedly, he was a dead stranger. Not Mario.

"Kate? What's wrong?"

"There's a dead man in my garage. Please hurry."

"
What?
Jesus fucking Christ. Is anyone else there? Are you in danger?" His tone was sharp, urgent.

"I ... don't think so." The garage door was finally high enough so that the Civic would fit. Taking her foot off the brake, she hit the gas and zoomed backward, flying out beneath the door and down the driveway toward the street. Darkness swallowed the Civic like a giant mouth. "I don't know. Okay, I'm out of the garage."

He was swearing a blue streak. He said something in reply to something that was said to him by whomever he was with, but she was breathing so hard and her pulse was pounding so loudly in her ears that she didn't really catch what it was he said. The Civic careened into the street just as another car went past that she nearly hit, but it swerved and honked and went on its way, so she shifted into forward and took off, heading back the way she had come.

She was shaking from head to toe, she discovered. The one thought in her head was to get as far away as she could from the scene.

"Kate!" From the sound of his voice, Tom had called her name more than once without getting an answer.

"I'm here."

"There's a patrol car close by. It'll be at your house in a few minutes. I'm on my way."

"Okay." Kate was at the top of the street, braking for the stop sign, when she heard a siren approaching. She could see the flashing lights coming toward her fast. "I see it."

"That's good." He said something indistinguishable, presumably to whoever was with him, and then the patrol car was in full view, speeding toward her, and the shaking was going away and her heart was slowing down and her pulse was quieting a little because it was starting to seem like she was safe now.

If Mario was dead ...

The thought remained unfinished as Tom spoke again. "I can hear the siren over the phone. Are you okay?"

She was still at the stop sign, waiting, watching the patrol car racing toward her. It bore down on her street, and she knew that when it passed an innocent person would follow it back to her house, open the garage door for the officers, let them see Mario, answer their questions ...

Then it hit her. She
was
an innocent person. At least about this. She hadn't killed Mario.

"Kate?" Tom's voice was more urgent. "Are you okay? What about Ben?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine. And Ben's not with me. I just got home and ... there this guy was. I think somebody shot him in the head. Oh, my God."

The patrol car turned in front of her, heading down her street, heading toward her house. In the distance she saw more flashing lights coming her way.

"I'll be there in about fifteen minutes," Tom said to her, and then there was a pause. She could hear someone talking in the background. "We got a call coming through dispatch from the officers who arc-pulling up in front of your house. Are you there?"

"I'm at the end of the street." She was actually pulling into a neighbor's driveway and backing out so that she could head home again. Small rectangles of light that she knew were front doors opening were appearing up and down the street as neighbors stepped outside to see what was going on. "I can see them. Tell them I'm coming."

She could hear him talking to somebody else again. The patrol car was stopped in her driveway now, and officers were getting out. Kate pulled in behind it, narrowing her eyes against the stroboscopic light as another patrol car turned in at the top of the street and raced toward them.

"That's you in the driveway behind them, right?" Tom said. "They told dispatch a woman in a red car just pulled in."

"Yes, it's me," Kate said, taking a deep breath as she watched the uniformed officers walking toward her. Her mind was already moving at about a million miles a second as she explored the ins and outs of what she was going to say. "I'm going to hang up now and talk to them. Hurry, please."

Then she disconnected, turned off the engine, and got out of the car to talk to the waiting officers.

THE INVESTIGATION hadn't been assigned to him and Fish, which suited Tom perfectly. He knew Kate way too well now to be satisfied with her responses if it had been, although he was keeping his opinions to himself and letting the detectives on the case, Jeff Kirchoff and Tim Stone, both relative newcomers to the Homicide Division, take the lead. He propped a shoulder against the wall in her living room and stayed out of the way, watching and listening as Kirchoff, who was young and easily dazzled, gently led Kate through her discovery of the body one more time.

Still wearing the conservative navy blue skirt suit she'd worn to work—he knew because he'd been there when she'd left, and had followed her to the office—she sat on the couch with her slender knees and calves pressed tightly together, her feet in a pair of nude high heels that made her legs look a mile long, her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she leaned toward Kirchoff. With her hair pulled back into a loose bun so that her beautiful bone structure was on full display and her big, blue eyes wide on Kirchoff's face, she looked sexy and fragile and the very picture of innocence. Kirchoff didn't stand a chance. Nodding sympathetically, he was drinking in every word that fell from her soft, pink lips. His notebook lay in his lap, forgotten. He was so convinced that he was dealing with an innocent victim of circumstances that he wasn't even bothering to write things down, or to check her story against things she'd already said.

Tom, on the other hand, was drawing an entirely different conclusion.

Those flickering lashes, the quick downward glances, the tight clasping of her hands—he'd seen them all before.

His smokin' little prosecutor was lying through her pretty white teeth again.

And the thing that was really getting to him about it was the knowledge that he had no intention in the world of calling her on it. At least, not where anyone else could hear.

Finally, he couldn't take it any longer.

Straightening away from the wall, he walked toward her.

"Is she free to go?" he asked Kirchoff. Kate broke off what she'd been saying, interrupted in mid-spiel, but he didn't care. Kirchoff, perched in the gold chair, looked up at him with surprise that quickly changed to respect when he saw the veteran homicide detective who was addressing him.

"Yeah," he said, and looked at Kate. "I'm sorry to keep you so long."

"That's all right." She smiled at him, a brave little smile that had Kirchoff practically melting in the chair, and stood up. "If I can answer any more questions ..."

"I'll let you know," Kirchoff promised, standing, too, and smiling back.

It was all Tom could do not to roll his eyes.

Kate's gaze just touched his as she moved toward him. The medical examiner's office was still busy in the garage, and, behind him, flashes were popping as investigators finished photographing the premises. They'd already searched the house from top to bottom, dusted for fingerprints, used Luminol for blood, etc. It was after ten now, and things were winding up.

"Go pack a bag," he said, low-voiced. "I'm taking you home with me."

She stopped, looking up at him in mute surprise.

"Would you rather stay here?"

She shook her head.

"You got any better offers?"

She shook her head again.

Kirchoff skirted around them, casting them a curious glance that he quickly averted when Tom met it with a level look. By then, Kate was moving again, heading for the stairs, presumably to pack a bag.

Tom cursed himself for three kinds of a fool as he watched her go. At least Fish, in whose car they had arrived, was already gone. Otherwise, he'd be getting an earful. An earful of hard truths and common sense that he was too far gone to hear.

He was standing in the door between the kitchen and the garage, talking to Lally Cohen of the medical examiner's office when Kate came up behind him and touched his arm through his black wool jacket. With gray slacks, white shirt, and a black tie (he owned just one that wasn't red), he'd been good to go to work, two funerals, and back to work again.

"Ready?" he asked her over his shoulder.

"Yes."

He nodded good-bye to Lally and turned to Kate. A small black suitcase sat on its end on the ground beside her. Picking it up—it wasn't heavy—he headed toward the front door, with her trailing behind him. When he reached it, he opened it and stood back for her to precede him through it, jeering at himself inwardly all the while.

Clearly, he was a sucker for pretty blondes, too.

"We'll have to take your car," he said when they were outside. "Fish drove."

She nodded, pausing for a moment on the porch to look around. Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the front of the house just beyond the sidewalk, although it had not yet been extended to the driveway, which was still full of vehicles. A patrol car, dark and still, was in front. The white coroner's van was parked behind Kate's Civic, waiting for the body to be released by the PPD. Two more black-and-whites, dark like the first one, Kirchoff and Stone's Taurus, and a few other assorted official vehicles lined both sides of the street directly in front of the house. Earlier there had been an ambulance, but it was long gone, its services not needed.

The man in the garage was definitely dead.

"How long do you think they'll be here?" Kate asked over her shoulder as she stepped off the porch and onto the walkway.

"Few more hours. You can probably come back tomorrow night, if you want."