The Laura Cardinal Novels (66 page)

Halfway to the door, she stopped and listened. The restless shadows playing across the blue-gray planks.

Laura, preparing herself, letting the fear shrivel up into a ball inside, letting training take over. Collecting herself. Gun steady. She sighted up the line of the house with her bare eyes, looking for movement, fixing on the screen door. About to go forward.

A click. An acorn falling onto the roof maybe, but metallic—

Suddenly she knew.

She felt it on the nape of her neck. Cold, alien. A small circle, a half-inch circumference.

The fear she’d been keeping under wraps broke loose and flooded her system as she realized what it was.

Barbara Wingate’s voice broke the silence. “Don’t move.”

For a fraction of a second Laura was
unable
to move, unable to even think. Then her brain unlocked again. Remaining still was the right thing to do. But freezing from fear—that had never happened to her before.

She willed herself to stay still. Managed to crane her head a little to the side, felt the cold thing slide under her hair, pinch her skin, saw blue jeans and boots and a fawn suede jacket in the corner of her eye.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then put the gun down,” Laura said.

“Only if you throw your gun away.” Laura felt the gun press deeper into her neck. “Do it now.”

Laura threw the gun.

“Turn around. Face me.”

Laura did so.

“I want you to see what you did.”

Barbara Wingate’s face was haggard, mascara running in two tear marks down her cheeks. Her hair had pulled out of its neat pony tail, was as frazzled as she was, filaments of red-gold hair catching the sunlight like a halo. Her eyes gleamed with a crazy light.

Thoughts flew through Laura’s head—would she die? What was death like? Would there be nothing? Or would she
not
die? What if she became a vegetable? Who would take care of her if that happened? She had no one, not even Tom.

She tried to say something, but her vocal cords lost purchase. Stopped, her mind stuttering on one thought, one silly thought, Jay Ramsey’s spinal cord injury.

Helpless. What would she do if that happened?

Stop it! Talk to her
.

“Mrs. Wingate—”

In a flash, Barbara Wingate brought the gun to the side of her own head. “Don’t
move!”
she shouted. “I’ll shoot myself if you move at
all
.”

The cop in Laura moved back in and took command. The spell was broken. “Mrs. Wingate,” she said carefully. “You don’t want to do that. What about Erin?”

“Erin’s gone.” A tear coursed down the woman’s cheek, dripped off her chin. She held the gun steady though. Her eyes had gone from crazy to steely.

Laura was aware she was holding her breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“They’re coming, aren’t they?”

“The police? They don’t want you to hurt yourself. They want—”

“Fuck what they want! I want my daughter back.”

If Barbara Wingate wanted to call the child her daughter, so be it. “If all this was a mistake, you’ve got to let them figure that out. I know you love Erin. You want what’s best—”

“You don’t know what I want!
I
want you to see what you’ve done to me.
I
want you to see it in living color.” She bit the words off one at a time. “I want this to stick with you for the rest of your life.”

Talk
to her. Talk was all she had. “Barbara, if you do this, you’ll never see Erin again. Think what it will do to her. If she knows—how guilty she’d feel.”

Barbara Wingate held her gaze. The gun muzzle steady at the place above her ear, the cold blue-gray metal dark against her hair. Her finger pressing—Laura thinking about the two pounds of pressure, all it would take.

“Think about Erin. This can be worked out. We can work it out. I can vouch for you. But you have to show them you’re all right. You want that, don’t you, Barbara?”

For answer, Barbara Wingate stared a hole through Laura’s soul.

And pulled the trigger.

Laura had seen countless gunshot wounds, and they were ugly. She had been lucky enough not to see the act of murder or suicide—the moment a bullet crashed through the brain, obliterating everything that was human. She knew this time, though, it was going to happen, and she also knew she was powerless to stop it—there wasn’t enough time. She flinched, seeing in the blink of her eye the explosion in slow motion, the angry cloud of blood obliterating one side of Barbara Wingate’s face, gray matter and pulverized bone spraying sideways into the blue wall.

But she didn’t see it, because it didn’t happen.

Like film, time had stuttered forward. First frame: woman standing on the porch, gun to her head. Second frame: woman standing on the porch, gun to her head.

No gunshot, no smell of Cordite, no blood, no thick wet sound as the woman collapsed onto the floorboards.

Just Barbara Wingate standing across from her, the gun at her head, her face both defiant and triumphant.

Laura didn’t wait for her to pull the trigger again. She lunged forward, using her weight to topple Wingate to the ground. Scrambled on top of her, grabbing one hand and then the other from behind. Placing her knee in the woman’s back, jerking her arms roughly backwards and cuffing her. Adrenaline quicksilvered through her veins; it was easy to drag Mrs. Wingate to her feet and force her the few feet to the car and shove her against the hood.

Rage like a red haze in her head.

Watch it.

Don’t lose it, she told herself. And so she was gentle when she nudged the woman’s blue-jeaned ankles with her own foot.

“Spread your legs.”

Barbara Wingate didn’t protest. She was a lamb now. No tears, no shouting, just meek compliance. Laura patted her down, then reached down at her feet for the revolver lying in the grass.

She cracked open the cylinder and spun it: empty.

Feelings—relief and anger foremost—rushed through her, making her legs shake. She had to sit down. She sat on the porch, keeping her gun trained on Wingate. “Don’t you even think about moving,” she said.

“Why? You think I care if you shoot me?”

“Brave words,” Laura said, “from someone who never meant to kill herself in the first place.”

She heard the familiar sound of someone gunning a patrol car. A sheriff’s car, lights blinking, slewed into the drive.

“What’s going on?” A deputy shouted.

Laura, still training her gun on Barbara Wingate, said, “Nothing. Now.”

The sheriff’s deputy—his name tag said Frank Gutierrez—put Barbara Wingate into the back of his patrol unit, then came to stand over Laura.

“You going to stay like that?” he asked.

Laura realized that she was still holding her gun in the same position, both arms shaking. Slowly, she let her arms down.

“What happened here?” he asked.

“I’m trying to figure that out myself.”

The next hour went by quickly. Richie, Laura, and three members of the sheriff’s department entered the house, which was as neat as it had been when they were here two days ago. Nothing to indicate Barbara Wingate’s state of mind; the beds were made, the girl’s room neat as a pin.

In other words: perfect.

Framed prints on the walls, all with a romantic theme. Works by Maxfield Parrish, lords and ladies, beautiful maidens. Unicorns.

Richie went to interview Barbara Wingate, talking into the back of the police car. She kept her eyes steady to the front and refused to talk to him, except to say she wanted her lawyer.

The adrenaline which had helped Laura subdue Mrs. Wingate had not gone away. All it did was make her shake.

She went through the motions, looking through the house, allowing herself to be interviewed by both Richie and the sheriff’s deputy, but her mind was on what she could have done to prevent this situation.

How did she allow Barbara Wingate to get the drop on her like that?

Laura realized she had not been sufficiently aware enough of her surroundings. She took for granted the early morning wind, the sounds, and shadows. She had been so focused on breaching Barbara’s house that she had succumbed to tunnel vision.

Hard to believe she had allowed herself to be ambushed like that.

From the start it had gone wrong. She had set this whole juggernaut in motion, and it had come back to bite her in the ass.

The sheriff’s unit containing Barbara Wingate headed up the drive. Richie came up to her. “They’re taking her to Flagstaff Medical for observation. They’ll keep her on suicide watch, at least overnight.”

“Then what?”

“She’ll be charged with threatening and intimidation and probably released. Her son’s on his way.”

Suddenly, she needed to sit down. She opened the door to the Impala and sat on the edge of the driver’s-side bucket seat. None too soon: The adrenaline that had sustained her was slowly slipping away. She felt incredibly weak.

Still seeing that gun muzzle pointed at her face, looking into that perfect, round black hole.

Richie surveyed the area. “I guess our work is done here.”

“Yeah.”

“Jessup turned out to be a dry hole.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bobby and Shana are in the wind.”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Guess there’s nothing else I can do here. I’m going home.”

“See you in Tucson.” He thumped the roof of her Impala and walked to the Starskymobile, whistling. He looked like a man on top of the world.

Glad it was her and not him.

So what? He was up, and she was down. At this moment, she didn’t give a damn. Numbly, she dragged herself back to the motel. She packed her duffle, put it in the trunk of her car, and headed for the airport.

Laura barely saw the scenery as she drove Interstate 40 toward Flagstaff. Her mind was elsewhere.

She still felt the cold circle at the base of her neck. She couldn’t stop thinking about her own reaction.

Paralyzed with fear, unable to do anything. Unable to think. It had only been for a split second, but in her job, a split second could last an eon. A split second could mean the difference between life and death.

And she had frozen up.

Not only that, but even now, driving on the interstate—she was still scared.

Scared because she’d seen the intention in Barbara Wingate’s eyes. The woman had thought about shooting her. It was in the tone of her voice, in the flicker of her eyes. It had been temper, because Wingate had already made sure the gun was unloaded. She’d already had her plan, and her plan was to scare Laura so badly that it would stay with her for a long time. But for a moment, irrationality had taken over, and Laura had seen the resolve in her eyes.

The woman was far from crazy. But she had a bottomless well of rage, and that rage had bubbled up for a brief moment. If the gun had been loaded, Laura wouldn’t be here now.

It had been Barbara’s decision. Her life had been in Barbara Wingate’s hands.

Laura slowed for the exit to I-17, aware of the trembling in her fingers. She had underestimated the woman. She’d planned her way to Mrs. Wingate’s door, but she had not planned well enough. She had not considered that the woman could be outside, that she could come at her from around the side of the house.

Laura was alive now only because she’d been lucky.

The contained worry that had lived with her every day—the constant, nagging thought at the back of her mind that this day would be her last—had finally broken loose and taken over her body and her mind.

If it continued to happen, she would be useless for police work.

The possibility of dying in the commission of her job was real. It was something you figured into the equation. When you said goodbye to your loved ones in the morning, you made sure there was no unfinished business. Every day could end early. But you couldn’t let it paralyze you.

Her legs were shaking. She had to pull over. She drove onto the grassy verge on the road near the airport, opened the door, and walked out among the stolid ponderosa pine trunks. Tipped her face to the sun, felt it on her cheek, smelled the pines. A grasshopper catapulted out in front of her through the tall, rust-red and gold grasses.

Alive
. She was still alive. Time to appreciate that. Time to send up a prayer of thanks.

She’d made mistakes, but she was still here. When she got home, she would deal with what had happened today. She’d do things differently. She’d go to the eye doctor. She’d request counseling. She’d face what had happened today and make her peace with it.

She’d straighten things out with Tom, find out once and for all where they stood. At least she had a second chance to do all these things.

She stood under a massive pine tree, feeling the shadows play across her face, listening to the whiz of traffic, her fingers going automatically to the Vaseline lip balm in her pocket. Suddenly thirsty for it, her lips feeling like the crevices in the Grand Canyon. So intent on the relief she craved that for a moment she didn’t register the chirp of the cell phone clipped to her belt.

It was Shana. At first her words made no sense—she was on the verge of hysteria.

“Slow down,” Laura said. “Take a deep breath and tell me again.” Hoping the girl wouldn’t hang up on her.

“He
left
me there! He tried to kill me, I thought I was going to die, I had to dig and dig and—oh Jesus! How could he do that? How could he? Troy, I told you, you’re not going to do
anything!”
she said, addressing someone in the room with her. “He’d kill you!”

She was sobbing now, her voice breaking up on the cell, a male voice yelling in the background. Laura had the damn thing pressed to her head so hard it stung her ear, thinking how technology was a bastard. “Where are you? I’ll come to where you are.”

There was a pause.

“Shana? Shana?” Had she disconnected?

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Her voice dull.

“You said he tried to kill you. Is that true?”