Love Lies Bleeding (3 page)

“Ms. Alexander, we have some questions best asked in a more contained and less … emotional setting,” Erwin, rather formally, stated.

“I don’t think it gets more contained than this,” Pamela murmured, continuing to stare at Grady’s grave.

“I would prefer not to drag you,” Erwin threatened.

“I won’t walk away,” Pamela politely but determinedly stated.

Erwin growled out a sigh. “Well, I never said I had a problem with dragging.” He reached down to grasp Pamela by the upper arm. “Some help?” he asked Phil. He indicated Pamela, who was now ignoring them in favor of staring forlornly at her wrists.

Phil, determined to be helpful, copied Erwin’s movement on Pamela’s other side, and together they lifted her to her feet. Then, for a moment, they attempted to pull her in opposite directions.

“The car!” Erwin shouted.

“Right!” Phil flinched at Erwin’s tone and dropped his hold on Pamela. “I thought the pathway … never mind, if you want to cross over the grass.”

Erwin tugged Pamela away from the gravesite, and she moved with him despite her stiff legs and faint, achy head. Phil followed closely behind.

•••••••••

A nondescript four-door navy sedan was parked nearby. The cemetery’s roads were wide and well maintained. The pristine grass lay perfectly divided from the road by a smooth cement sidewalk. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

Phil settled Pamela in the back seat of the car, including belting her in, while Erwin crossed to the driver’s side. Pamela was as compliant as she could be without being at all helpful. She didn’t speak or even really acknowledge the men. Even in her blood-loss daze, Pamela noticed a luxury vehicle as it circled back through the cemetery a second time. It turned from a perpendicular road and slowed as it passed by.

Erwin made eye contact with the passenger of the car, Shep, who just so happened to be the brutal man from the church. A intellectually challenged-looking hoodlum was driving, but Shep’s employer, Mr. Doyle, was nowhere to be seen.

Shep raised an eyebrow at Erwin and deliberately lifted his arm, which had been resting on the door’s window frame even though it was far too chilly to have the windows down. Shep tapped his watch, then, curtly addressed the driver. “Go. Now.”

The luxury vehicle squealed off, the noise of which echoed around the empty cemetery. However, this would have been more dramatic had they been driving toward the exit. Now the vehicle had to either slow down, stop, or circle back to leave, as only one road led in and out of the cemetery.

“Hey! Those guys, the funeral.” Phil, who’d been waiting by the passenger door, pointed the vehicle out to Erwin.

“Hoods,” Erwin said. “Forget ‘em. Let’s get what we came for.” He climbed into the car, then under the guise of adjusting the rearview mirror, worriedly watched the departing vehicle. It seemed to be waiting for them to leave.

Phil looked oddly pensive — an emotion that didn’t rest well on his normally cheerful face. He belted himself into the passenger seat.

Pamela seemed to be sleeping in the back seat, but she was really only resting her eyes.

Erwin cranked the steering wheel, and after hitting the curb on the other side of the street, pulled a U-turn out of the cemetery.

CHAPTER FIVE

Interrogation Room, Undisclosed Location

The interrogation room was one of a few in the Undisclosed Location. This facility name was a bit of a joke in the Agency. Vancouver only housed one small satellite office — this one — and all stationed agents knew where to go if they wanted to have a chat with a suspect off the official radar. So it was actually fully disclosed, to a handful of people anyway. Other than that, it looked like any other building in its area of the North Shore.

A two-way mirror reflected thick concrete walls and a single rack of uncomfortably bright fluorescent bulbs.
 

A medic put final touches on the bandages he’d wound around Pamela’s wrists, but whether this was actually his job or just a favor to Erwin was unclear. Though Pamela’s arms were now clean, the remainder of her looked like she’d slept in a pile of wet dirt. Her makeup was remarkably fresh, though.

The medic turned away from Pamela and crossed toward the door, beside which Erwin waited. Pamela remained seated at a small, bare table in the center of the room. She stared at her hands, which she held folded in her lap. She was solemn, but not morose. Her wedding dress swamped the metal chair so thoroughly that it almost looked, from the front, as if she sat in mid air.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” the medic said, but he didn’t look at Erwin. Something about his stance seemed disrespectful. Erwin either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“I gathered. Jesus,” Erwin grumbled.

“I’ll leave the kit, but I won’t be held responsible.”

“Don’t you tell me what you will or won’t be responsible for,” Erwin snapped.

The medic shrugged. “She should eat.”

“Phil’s on it.”

The medic exited as if washing his hands of the entire situation. Pamela didn’t look up.
 

“You haven’t even asked a single question,” Erwin sneered as he crossed toward Pamela. “That’s a little suspicious, if you ask me. Don’t you even care where you are?”

Erwin threw himself into a chair across from her, and she obligingly looked up to catch his gaze. He grew uncomfortable under her steady but sorrowful eye, fidgeting in his chair. “You don’t have to stare.”

“I’m sorry. You were addressing me. I thought it polite to look at you.”

Phil, winded but joyfully blustery, entered, looked around, and then flicked a switch that turned on additional lights, less harsh. “Wow, that’s way better.”

Erwin leaped up as if to punch Phil. Then, reconsidering, he just snatched the brown paper bag Phil carried.

“Those lights will give us serious headaches.” Phil addressed Pamela as if they were old friends.

Ignoring Phil, Erwin looked in the bag. “Good, good.” He shoved the bag back to Phil and prompted him with a jab of his head toward Pamela.

Phil pulled a small milk carton and muffin from the bag, smoothed the bag onto the table in front of Pamela, and placed the muffin on one side. He then opened the milk and placed on the other side of the bag, which now served as a place mat. He waved a hand over this arrangement as if presenting a magic trick.

An awkward pause stretched between the three of them. Pamela had reverted her gaze to her lap.

“It’s skim milk. Non fat, lots of calcium,” Phil offered up to fill the space.

“Good,” Erwin answered.

Pamela didn’t respond.

“And a whole wheat blueberry muffin,” Phil helpfully added.

“Right, whole wheat. Fine, let’s —”
 

“Way better for digestion, and blueberries. Blueberries have … have something good in them, don’t they, Erwin?” Erwin just glared at Phil, who didn’t seem to notice. “Ah, they’re sweet. Not like candy, but —”
 

“Antioxidants!” Erwin, beyond frustrated, yelled.

Phil fell silent. Pamela didn’t participate.

Erwin paced until he’d calmed himself a bit, then he turned to address Pamela. “Listen, you heard the medic. You need to eat, especially after that scene at the grave —”

“Yeah, you should probably be in the hospital,” Phil rather earnestly interjected. Erwin looked at Phil sharply. Phil threw his hands up in defeat. “I can’t figure out what we are playing at, good cop, bad cop, concerned nutritionists …”

“Pamela, we’ve brought you here for a reason,” Erwin said, ignoring Phil’s outburst. “And if you don’t answer our questions, we may have to use other methods.”

“Methods that won’t go well with the fact you’ve lost a lot of blood and haven’t eaten.” Phil attempted to menace.

Erwin glared at Phil and he backed off. Erwin then sat across from Pamela, and she looked up at him. “I’m sure this comes as no surprise, but Grady was high up in the black ops in our division.” He paused for effect, and Pamela, for the first time, looked a little confused. “Over the last few months, Grady was sent on various missions to collect, let’s say …”

“Information,” Phil completed Erwin’s sentence.
 

Erwin clenched his jaw, but continued his prepared speech as if uninterrupted. “However, for a number of weeks his reports have been … spartan. We suspect he had allied himself with …”

“The wrong sort of people,” Phil again finished Erwin’s open-ended statement.

Erwin twisted out of his chair, picked it up as if to throw it across the room, but then placed it carefully back down in its exact spot. He then paced angrily. As he passed his partner, he looked pretty ready to start beating on Phil, who, conversely, seemed to be enjoying the interrogation immensely.

“Grady is a doctor,” Pamela, still very polite, insisted. “Was. He was going to open a clinic after we returned from our honeymoon.”
 

“Hawaii?” Phil asked.

“Barcelona.”

Erwin spun and slammed his hands, harshly, on the table by Pamela. “Really? The same Spain you wrote about in your email?”

“Yes,” Pamela answered.

Pamela’s guileless response momentarily threw Erwin, who had been moving in for the kill. “Well … maybe you’d like to explain that writing?”

Phil looked questioningly at Erwin, who was also less than pleased with his phrasing.

“I don’t really understand,” Pamela said.
“Well, understand this!” Erwin swung a briefcase onto the table, opened it, and pulled out Pamela’s laptop, which was last seen in her bedroom. “Is this your —”

“My laptop.” Pamela, very confused now, identified it.

“Ah, right.” Erwin was a bit thrown by her ready response. “Well, can you explain the emails we found on it?” He toggled a few keys, found the email folder he was looking for, and turned the computer to face Pamela.

“I assume you mean the story emails that Grady and I liked to send, though I’m not sure why you’ve stolen my laptop or what interest you have in this. Grady was a doctor, and now he’s dead. If you would just let me follow —”

“You better assume,” Erwin growled. “And assume we know everything, everything about you, Grady, and your little blonde friend, too.”

“Karli?”

“Kindergarten teacher, my ass,” Erwin sneered.

“I wouldn’t mind her teaching me to finger paint.” Phil grinned and wagged his eyebrows.

Erwin closed his eyes in utter frustration, but chose to continue to ignore Phil. “We know that Grady was sending you coded messages in this series of emails. We know you passed this information on to your superiors. What we want to know is who you work for and what information you passed on.”

“Coded emails?” Pamela seemed to have no idea what Erwin was talking about.

“These are no ordinary love letters,” Erwin insisted.

“It is difficult to define love,” Phil added. “True love especially. If I may be so bold to call it that.”

“Yes, but what good is true love in the face of death?” Pamela said quietly.

“Aren’t you suppose to endure, to keep the memory of your love alive?” Erwin nastily turned on Pamela. “Maybe it wasn’t really true for you.”

“Maybe you have absolutely no idea,” Pamela said, not quite so polite now as she stared Erwin down until he looked away.

“Ahem, err, the emails?” Phil tentatively tried to alleviate the tension and get the interrogation back on track.

“The emails were just a game. Grady couldn’t talk a lot about where he was or what he was doing, so we made up a life … we … wanted …” Pamela’s voice cracked.

“Don’t play the ingénue with me,” Erwin snarled. “You will break this code for us with or without your willing cooperation.”

Phil opened the small medical kit that the medic had left on the table. It held a couple of vials filled with clear liquid and a bunch of hypodermic syringes.

“We have ways of making you talk.” Phil attempted to match Erwin’s menacing tone. “And an overdose could be fatal, so might I suggest you eat something.”

They stared at Pamela. She stared back at them, clearly confused.

“So, lunch?” Phil asked as he turned to Erwin.

“Sounds good to me.” Erwin ground out his answer to Phil through clenched teeth, while actually addressing Pamela.

Phil zipped up the medic kit and tucked it in his suit jacket pocket. Erwin slammed the screen of the laptop closed then spun away, leaving it on the table. Phil held the door open, and Erwin exited without another glance in Pamela’s direction. Phil flashed Pamela a grin and leaned back into the room to whisper, “I just must say that the love lies bleeding floral arrangement at the memorial was perfection itself. I … I … just felt it.”

“Thank you,” Pamela answered politely, and then, not interested in prolonging any conversation about Grady’s death, she reverted her eyes to her hands which she once again held folded in her lap.

Phil followed Erwin out into the hall.

•••••••••

Phil shut the door gently behind him and Erwin. He was still grinning. The long hallway was empty. Bare gray walls, punctuated by closed steel doors, stretched in either direction.

Erwin vehemently turned on Phil the second the door clicked closed. “When I pause, it’s for her, or whomever the suspect is, to answer, not you!”

“Right!” Phil excitedly replied. “The pause makes them nervous, makes them more likely to talk.”
 

“That was an utter bust.” Erwin abruptly switched subjects as quickly as he got abruptly angry. He stretched his back with a groan.

“Seemed to go pretty good to me. And don’t worry, I’ve already started the paperwork.”

“The paperwork? When was the last time you were in the field?”

“Well, my shoulder bursitis …”

“Grady would have never made those mistakes.”

“Hey, you weren’t exactly ‘perfect spy’ in there, you know.”

“You threw me. Now if she doesn’t eat, we’ll probably kill her with the serum before we get any answers.”

“There is a possibility. I mean, she could possibly … not know anything.”

“You make me sick,” Erwin said. And then, after he felt his glare of disapproval had done enough damage to Phil’s fragile ego, he stalked away down the hall. Phil looked severely hurt. “I’ll handle this from here,” Erwin called back over his shoulder. “Stay out of my way.”