Shot Through Velvet (40 page)

“Rod told me I was going to have to pay.” Kira gulped some air before going on. “He was drunk and he stank of booze. He kept breathing in my face and trying to kiss me. I tried to run out of there, but he grabbed me. He tore my blouse and backed me against the wall. Slobbering all over me. Slapping me. He kept saying I was gonna like it. Son of a bitch. He put his hands around my neck and started squeezing. ‘How do you like that, you worthless piece of—’ You get the idea. He’d let go of my throat for a second, then grab it again, two or three times, till I’d almost pass out. That’s when I thought I was going to die.”

“It’s okay, Kira. Take a deep breath,” Lacey said.

“I kneed him in the groin. Hard as I could. It didn’t stop him. It just made him really mad. He slapped me and I didn’t care anymore what happened to me. I didn’t care if I died, if I could just hurt him. I wanted to kill him. I just went crazy. I felt for something to hit him with. There were some old softball trophies on the bookshelf. From back in the day. We used to have a team. I grabbed the first thing I touched. One of the trophies. It was heavier than I expected.” Kira gasped for breath. “I hit him in the head. He went down like a ton of bricks. I killed him.”

Lacey glanced at Vic, but said nothing. The autopsy showed the head wound was substantial, but it did not kill Rod Gibbs.

“What happened then?” Vic asked. Kira shook her head. “Someone helped you?”

“No,” Kira was crying. “No, no, no.”

“We know someone helped you,” Lacey said. “Hank Richards?”

“I can’t tell you anymore,” she insisted. “It’s all my fault. I killed Rod! Or near enough.”

“You’ll be safe,” Vic said. “We won’t let Richards find you.”

“You don’t understand! Hank went there to protect me! He knew what Rod was like. He saw what I did and he told me it was the right thing to do. ‘This planet will not miss Rod Gibbs,’ he said.”

“Hank?” Lacey pressed.

“Hank. Poor Hank. But it’s not his fault. I killed Rod.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Vic asked. “If it was self-defense, it would have stopped right there.”

“I wanted to. I told him we had to.” Kira wiped her tears with a napkin. Lacey handed her another one. “He wouldn’t let me call the police. Hank said he would take care of things. And he said maybe Rod could do some good now that he was dead. He could be an example. I didn’t know what to do. I had just done the worst thing anyone could do. I’d killed a man. I went to the ladies’ room and threw up, and I wondered how fast the cops would come and arrest me. But Hank was calm. So calm. He told me to get myself together.”

Lacey was afraid to say too much. She didn’t want to lead the witness. But it was difficult to watch someone unburdening her soul and not try to help. She slid over next to Kira and hugged her shoulders. Vic squeezed Lacey’s hand under the table.

“What happened to the trophy?” Vic asked. “Was there blood on it? Did Hank clean it up?”

“I don’t know. It was gone when I came back from the ladies’. Hank had put things right in the office. I don’t remember any blood. But Rod wasn’t moving.”

Kira was drained. She slumped back in her chair. “Hank told me not to worry. We could take care of things ourselves. That’s when he decided to string Rod up. I about fainted when he told me what he wanted to do. But, oh God, I helped Hank tie him up. On that big damn spool of velvet.”

She rubbed her hands together as if she were still cold.

“Why tie him up with those strips of velvet?” Lacey asked.

“They were there. That’s all there was, no rope or anything.” Her voice caught in her throat and she looked at Lacey, then Vic. “We dragged Rod to the spool and tied him to it. We wheeled the spool over to the vat to hook it on the chain.” Kira closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands, but she couldn’t get rid of the memory.

“You’ve gotten through almost all of it.” Lacey squeezed Kira’s icy hands.

“Rod woke up!” Kira blurted out, her eyes wild with the memory. “He wasn’t dead! I’ll never forget the look on his face when he realized where he was and how he was tied up. He saw the two of us. He started screaming.”

Lacey took a deep breath. “You hadn’t killed him after all, Kira.”

“I said we should let Rod go, maybe now he’d learned his lesson. But Hank said no, people like Rod Gibbs never learned their lessons. Rod started screaming for Wade. But Wade didn’t come. Hank said maybe we’d just leave him hanging there so everyone would see him when they came to work. But Rod made such a racket. Screaming and yelling and cursing. He wouldn’t stop. So—so Hank shot him.”

“Just like that?” Vic asked.

“Well, Hank talked to him some first. He said he wanted to make sure Rod knew he was going to die, and what a horrible moral degenerate he was, and how the Blue Devil was gonna go straight to Hell. And how he was going to wind up in the dye vat. And Rod started to cry. Cried like a little boy. But I didn’t have any pity for him. I kept thinking about how scared I was when I thought he was going to rape me and kill me. Rod started cursing and yelling again. That’s when Hank shot him.”

“What did you do then?” Lacey asked.

Kira shook her head. “Nothing. My brain was wrapped in cotton. I just covered my ears and lay down on the floor.”

“Where’d he get the gun?” Vic asked.

“Rod had it in his jacket pocket. I don’t know why, unless he planned to use it on me. Hank found it when we were tying him up.”

“What about Wade?”

“Never saw him. I guess he was out cold. Drunk.” She looked as if she were thinking something over for the first time. “I guess if he hadn’t been drunk, none of this would have happened.”

Rod Gibbs set himself up for disaster
, Lacey thought. He brought his own gun, he disabled the cameras, he got the security guard drunk, and he assaulted the wrong victim, with the wrong protector. He set up his own murder.
What a smart guy
. But why did he end up blue?

“Kira, why the blue dye?” Lacey had been wondering this from the beginning. “Because of the Blue Devil thing? To make a statement?”

“No, it was the only vat still full of dye. Midnight Blue. It was just meant to happen that way, I guess. Maybe it was fate.”

“You have to understand something, Kira,” Vic said. “If I have information about a crime, I’m under an obligation to report it to the police. But Kira, I want you to talk to the police yourself. You need to see Agent Caine with the Virginia State Police.”

Her voice was very small. “I know.” Kira looked straight at him for the first time, and she seemed relieved. She ate the pita chip. “I’m sorry.”

“We know you are,” Lacey said. “We are too. You just went back to work the next day, like normal?”

“Pretty much. It seemed like a nightmare. But it’s funny what you can tell yourself.” She picked up another chip. “I didn’t think about him being under the velvet in the dye vat. I just put all that in a separate place in my mind. Like it was a bad dream.”

“And Hank?”

“He told me to just play it cool. I wouldn’t have to do a thing, he said. He’d protect me. He was so sweet, and I realized what a great guy he could be. Why didn’t I ever see that before? I think I always kind of liked him, just not on the surface. He told me to remember I wasn’t a murderer, because he’s the one who killed Rod. And if anyone had to be punished for it, Hank said he’d be the one. But he said it was justified. And—” She stopped.

Vic prompted her. “And what, Kira?”

“He said there were other people who used people the same way Rod did. Because they were killing our jobs, they were killing us all, slowly. And maybe they needed killing too. I told him he was wrong and I couldn’t listen to that kind of talk anymore. But he calls me every day since then, just to see if I’m okay. He’s a good man. I can’t believe he killed this other man too.”

Kira had discovered her feelings for Hank, but he had gone too far now.
What a mess.
“Is that all Hank told you?” Lacey asked.

“He said something about killing two birds with one stone. I told him not to say anything else. I can’t stand it when he talks that way.”

Two birds.
Both Claudia Darnell and Tazewell Flanders would be at the fund-raiser slated for Monday, Lacey realized. The very next night. So would Hank Richards.
One stone.

Vic pulled out someone’s business card from his wallet and started writing on it. “Don’t talk to Caine without an attorney. Talk to the attorney first. Tomorrow morning. Very first thing. Stay at your brother’s place tonight, and don’t go home. Call tonight to set it up. I’m writing down that number, and I’ll call them first myself. You won’t have to face this alone.”

“I can’t afford a lawyer.”

“Here’s the name and number of a great attorney. She doesn’t specialize in criminal defense, but she’ll find you the right defender, someone who’s a wizard at making deals. Ask about pro bono. And don’t be afraid. You have a good story to work with. Just tell the truth. You’ll be all right.”

Kira took the card. Lacey recognized it. It was Brooke Barton’s card.

“Thank you. I was wondering something,” Kira said. “You think I could get a burger now? I’m starved.”

Chapter 37

Lacey had a 100-percent solid-gold scoop. But it was a little hard for her to appreciate this coup after midnight, long after
The Eye
’s usual deadline, with Mac Jones and the paper’s attorney, Meg Wong, sitting over her shoulders, reading and second-guessing every word she typed. At least they liked her headline:

“Fix that sentence fragment,” Mac ordered, “and move that second paragraph.”

Lacey sighed.
Why don’t you move your—!
“Fine. Is that better?”

Lacey didn’t reveal Kira’s name, but everyone in Black Martin would know exactly who it was. There was an exchange of strong words and a protracted argument between Meg Wong and an irritated Special Agent Caine, who complained bitterly that Lacey and Vic should never have interviewed Kira Evans without him. Wong won.
The Eye
’s story triumphantly named Hank Richards as the prime suspect in the murder of Rod Gibbs and a person of interest in the death of Walter Pojack.

Caine grudgingly gave Lacey an official statement, confirming that Richards was a “person of interest” being sought for questioning in the murders by the Virginia State Police and the District.

Mac was grumpy, as usual these days when late-breaking news kept him away from Kim and the girls. But he had that familiar newsman’s mad gleam in his eye, and he was hopped up on the idea of scooping the rest of the Washington media. And on late-night coffee and doughnuts.

“I think that does it,” Meg said. “You’ve got one killer scoop, I’ve covered the paper’s ass, and I’m going home.” Meg was dressed in an oversized Redskins jersey, tight jeans, and a black leather jacket. She looked nothing like her daytime persona of buttoned-down Washington lawyer.

“Nice job, everyone,” said Claudia. When their publisher showed up, coffee in hand, to oversee the final draft, the party was complete. And Lacey was completely frazzled.

By the time the last sentence was vetted, Lacey felt like she’d been pulled through a meat grinder, legally and editorially. She was also a little afraid that Hank Richards might materialize out of nowhere and pin a blue velvet ribbon on her. With a bullet. She was grateful when Mac waited with her until Vic returned to pick her up. It was after one in the morning. Vic had staked out Kira’s brother’s place himself until Turtledove took over for him.

“This is completely unnecessary, Mac. I’m totally safe.”

“Yeah, that’s what you always say.” He smirked at her. Vic’s Jeep pulled up in front of
The Eye
and Mac opened the passenger door for her.

“I’m not coming in till after noon,” Lacey said.

“You always say that too.”

 

By Monday evening, Kira Evans had an attorney, pro bono, personally recommended and approved by Brooke Barton: her brother Benjamin. He and Kira had an appointment to talk with the Virginia State Police. According to Brooke, Kira and her defender had a good chance at successfully playing Let’s Make a Deal with the State of Virginia in exchange for her testimony. Kira and her daughter were under police protection in a hotel, at the proverbial “undisclosed location.”

Congressman Tazewell Flanders was rehearsing his speech to announce his bid for governor of Virginia, and trying to ignore his temporary bodyguard, one Forrest Thunderbird. Vic Donovan’s new client, Claudia Darnell, also needed personal protection services. The Virginia State Police had an APB out for the arrest of Hank Richards, considered armed and dangerous, whereabouts unknown.

Fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian had wrangled a pass to Congressman Flanders’s political fund-raiser. She was on edge. Her gut was telling her to be on guard, but she also wished Hank Richards could go on fishing from the
Gypsy Princess
at Lake Anna.

Lacey had a lot of unfulfilled wishes. She wished she’d never seen the Blue Devil. She wished she’d witnessed Hank slipping a blue ribbon into Rod Gibbs’s swollen blue hand at the funeral. She wished he could have been stopped there, before the Velvet Avenger killed again. But her wishes were not horses, and no one had seen Hank since Lacey and Vic left him sitting on his boat at Lake Anna. At least they knew his targets now, and she felt very relieved to be out of the bull’s-eye.

The campaign kickoff was being held at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria, Lacey’s neighborhood. It could be a stroke of PR genius, or exquisitely bad timing.

“Tazewell Flanders is bound to be associated with factories for the foreseeable future,” Lacey told Vic, when he showed up at
The Eye
to escort Claudia to the event as her bodyguard.