Lead Flying, page 14
Speaking of which, the hard plastic cylinders were making their presence known against my belly every time I had to bob lower with the walkway’s floating movement in order to maintain my line of sight. I hadn’t really paid attention when I’d peeked into the bag, but I sincerely hoped Reginald had been a conscientious injector and recapped the syringes when he was finished using them.
I hated to think about it like that. Were these syringes Tessa’s mode of death? Perhaps in tandem with the plastic bag over her head once she was nice and relaxed. If Reginald had killed her, then she must’ve trusted him to some degree, to let him get that close to her without putting up a fight. Then again, she’d gone boating with him in the past—which was kind of like putting your life in the hands of the skipper—and he was married to her sister.
My gruesome ruminations were interrupted by a loud bang. The source was unmistakably Simon McNamara, even though from this distance he just looked like a short man with a knit beanie pulled down low over his ears, hiding that thick snarl of unruly hair. A short man with a pugnacious tilt, who was busy tearing gear out of storage locker on the adjacent dock finger and hurling it at the tethered Breaking Wind.
I forgot all about hiding. One of Breaking Wind’s cabin windows cracked with the impact of what appeared to be a pipe wrench.
“You did it!” Simon yelled, his voice hoarse and echoing, bouncing off all the liquid surfaces around us. “You killed Tessa! You grubbing, scheming son of a bitch!”
Not surprisingly, Reginald refused to make an appearance and defend himself in spite of Simon’s histrionics. Probably pulling into that turtleneck of his and invoking his imaginary cloak of invisibility. Which made a relatively non-confrontational form of murder like poison and hands-off mechanical asphyxiation right up his alley.
Unlike Simon, whose temperament seemed more compatible with blowing a hole in someone or hacking them to pieces with an ax. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that before—that the crime was likely to fit the personality of the perpetrator.
But Simon wasn’t about to be placated by Reginald’s shrinking pacifism. “You did it!” he was still shouting, his face an alarming shade of red, and a metal toolbox crashed onto Breaking Wind’s deck. “You talked her into changing her will, didn’t you? Where are the files, Reg, huh? You big buffoon. Can’t do anything right, can you?”
It was like a soap opera in real time, drawing me in with a sort of repulsive fascination. And also excellent diversionary cover. I scrabbled back the way I’d come, heading toward the main walkway, thinking that the loud, one-sided argument was a sufficient attention-draw for all parties and that I might be able to sneak away unnoticed.
“Murder invalidates your inheritance, you moron!” Having exhausted his ready supply of projectiles, Simon was boarding Breaking Wind, crab-crawling over her side awkwardly, like a leech with opposable thumbs.
Once again, I was momentarily caught up in the spectacle—one of those rubberneckers who creep by the scene of a fatal traffic accident, grateful they’re not the one on the stretcher with the blue sheet draped over them exactly while they’re obliviously creating a situation in which the same thing could happen again in an instant.
This confrontation was not going to turn out well. It took another second for my brain to remember that the sooner I was away, the better.
I turned and headed down the main walkway, shoulders hunched, knees bent, trying to be smaller and faster at the same time—and taking the long way back to the parking lot in order to completely bypass the escalating, one-sided showdown a few dock fingers to my rear.
But then I was tackled from behind and dropped like a load of bricks.
Actually, that’s not quite true, even though that’s what it felt like as I lay there gasping a moment later, my face mashed into the rough planks. In truth, a firm hand had snagged my ankle—a firm hand that I’d recognized as belonging to someone I know, in that fleeting instant before my palms flew out and tried unsuccessfully to break my fall. Karleen had hooked inside the top rim of my boot and utterly halted my forward progress. Regardless of the method, the result was that my breath was knocked out of me and my brain was spinning inside my skull.
Karleen wasn’t sympathetic. “Get over here,” she hissed. “He has a gun.”
I whimpered—at least I had enough oxygen left in my pummeled lungs to do that—and rolled and scootched, mashing the hard plastic syringes even further into the soft flesh of my belly, and finally squirmed in beside her behind a standard component of marina infrastructure—a low red storage locker that housed emergency supplies like life rings, a dry powder fire extinguisher, extra line and an emergency ladder, with an integral flashing beacon on top. It didn’t exactly provide us with full coverage.
“Good grief. You were a walking target, Eva,” Karleen growled from her crouched position while keeping her gaze locked on the florid man who’d commandeered Breaking Wind’s rear deck.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered back. “Who has the gun?”
“One of them, at least. Or both, possibly. They both had opportunity to steal Tessa’s from her house. And there are lots of other ways to obtain weapons if one is so inclined. You must always assume the suspect is armed.” She was sounding like an instructor at the police academy, reciting what was probably one of the first tenets drilled into new recruits.
But it was a training I’d never had. Had never assumed I’d need. So I wriggled up closer to my guardian angel. “Are you bringing in a SWAT team?”
“On their way. Takes a while for them to mobilize. But we’ve got some PPB officers up on the bank and more approaching as they’re able, under cover on the walkways.”
“Vaughn?” I queried.
“Flanking.” She jerked her chin down the length of the main walkway, toward Breaking Wind’s starboard side.
I couldn’t see him, but that was a good thing. Surely he’d taken cover the same way Karleen had. He’d come to my rescue. And walked into a mess.
CHAPTER 17
Simon yanked Reginald-the-shrinking-pansy out of the cabin and shoved him up against the instrument panel between the two swivel chairs upholstered in cracked leatherette. Reginald flailed ineffectually, apparently having never mastered the appropriate use of his limbs in a combat situation.
I growled a little, low in my throat. Why was the guy such a wimp? Even if he’d murdered Tessa, I still wanted to see him give Simon a good wallop. Somebody needed to.
But the confrontation was decidedly one-sided, with Simon up in Reginald’s weakly vacant face. “You pea-brained impostor,” he was shrieking. “You hooked Tessa with your inflated promises, didn’t you? And then you killed her for it. Well, I’ll make sure you never see one penny of her inheritance. Got that? You’ll rot in prison like the money grubber you are!”
He fished in his pocket, pulled out something small and hard and jammed it up under Reginald’s chin, snapping his head back. Immediately, Karleen was barking into her radio. Something about a 10-32.
At that close range, Simon wasn’t going to need the laser sight that’d been affixed to Tessa’s feminine handgun.
“Where are they?” Simon shouted. “The file boxes? Where are they?” He was roaring now, pressing his beet-red face into Reginald’s pasty white one as though the larger man was hard of hearing and needed to read his lips.
A large wake from a passing tourist stern-wheeler rocked them apart, and Simon grabbed the back of one of the swivel chairs for balance. The gun was so tiny, even in his small hand. But the red dot of the laser sight was bouncing in a pretty tight elliptical pattern on Reginald’s cream-colored cabled sweater in spite of the water swelling beneath the boat.
I didn’t think Simon was stupid. Killing Reginald wasn’t going to accomplish his purpose. I was pretty sure he was just trying to scare the hooey out of his former brother-in-law so that he’d admit to murdering Tessa—not knowing I had what probably amounted to sufficient evidence stuffed down the front of my raincoat.
So Simon could inherit. Whatever it was that they were both so eager to get their hands on.
But with his impulsive temper already in evidence, there was no accounting for what his index finger might do on the trigger. And it appeared he’d been too successful—terrifying Reginald way past the point of coherent speech.
I rolled over, scanning the riverbank for signs of the SWAT team. The angle was bad, though. Any shot from the riverbank would have a high potential for passing through both Simon and Reginald.
And then Reginald did the unthinkable. He lunged, knocking Simon back against the cabin cruiser’s side, and a wrestling match for the small gun erupted.
The weapon held only five bullets. Five bullets. Five bullets. I kept repeating this terrible comfort to myself, knowing full well a person could be killed by one bullet. It might’ve been a lady’s gun, but the bullets were an equal-opportunity form of lethal.
Immediately, law enforcement personnel appeared out of nowhere, rising in crouches from their hiding spots along the walkway, and a SWAT sniper in black with his rifle raised in silhouette flicked out of the corner of my eye, up on the riverbank.
Karleen gave my shoulder a hard shove back down toward the wooden planks. “Stay here,” she commanded as she disobeyed her own directive and began awkwardly squat-crawling closer to the erratically heaving Breaking Wind.
Instead, I hunched on my haunches and hugged the storage locker, knowing it wasn’t sufficient cover but unable to not peek over the top and watch the horrifying, mesmerizing scene unfolding before me.
A jeans-clad leg swung above the boat’s side, followed in rapid succession by a fist, a knee, a shoulder. Simon and Reginald were interlocked, grappling and thudding in the bottom of the boat, discharging loud grunts, all devious and vital methods employed. Simon found his vocal cords again and began roaring incoherently. Or maybe that was Reginald, newly awakened and bellowing, finally using his superior size and weight.
Simon’s knit beanie came sailing over the side. Then Reginald rocked back and lurched semi-upright, aiming vicious kicks at Simon’s midsection, the gun clutched in his right hand. Just realizing, a fraction of a second later, that he had a whole host of guns aimed directly at him from the semicircle of officers balancing, legs spread in sturdy stances, on the floating walkway.
“Drop your weapon over the side,” Vaughn yelled.
The ferocious snarl slid off Reginald’s face, and he went blank again. Dear God, was he losing his mental faculties?
“Drop it!” Vaughn repeated in a loud, hoarse baritone that brooked no argument.
But Simon was still fighting. His booted foot punched up and sunk heel-first into Reginald’s potbelly. Or maybe a little lower, given the way Reginald dropped in a squealing, quivering mass.
The officers had no cover. Most dove to their bellies or sides, keeping their weapons aimed at the rocking cabin cruiser. Karleen, with her arthritic knees, was slow to get down in a crouch.
Simon came up blazing. He had to have known he was surrounded. The idea that he could fight his way out of the situation with five bullets was ludicrous. But he tried. And fired into the ring of officers methodically, robotically, starting with the closest one.
I bit my lips against a scream and pressed my cheek against the storage locker. Gunfire reports seemed to be ricocheting from every direction, cracking over my shoulders, pinging off metal masts, and digging sprays of splinters out of wood and fiberglass. I don’t know how I knew these things with my eyes squeezed shut, but I did.
When the noise was still ringing in my ears, I risked a glance again. Karleen was standing straight with her arms raised, the silence of dead reverberations all around her.
And officers were starting to tend to each other—with checks, pats, hands on shoulders, calm questions.
Except two. Terror like I’ve never known seized me. Worse by far than the actual, brief gunfight. Because two forms weren’t moving. And one of them possessed my heart.
I went streaking down the walkway, forgetting all but the long, handsome man in jeans and a navy-blue windbreaker sprawled on his back on the walkway. The one with dark, wavy hair that needed a trim and chocolate-brown eyes that make me melt. The one who has my engagement ring.
I skidded on my knees beside him, ramming into Officer Samuels who was leaning over him, unzipping the jacket. The jacket with two holes in it.
“Eva.” Officer Samuels pushed me back, not roughly, but firmly. “It’s okay. He’s wearing his vest.”
But Vaughn’s eyes were closed, his face relaxed. I cradled his head in my hands, bent over to feel his breath on my cheek. Was it there? Or was it my imagination?
Officer Samuels gasped. Quietly, but I heard it. And he was on his radio in an instant.
One of the bullets had hit Vaughn’s vest, splaying the inner protective layers in a mushroomed divot. The other hadn’t.
And a dark red slick was seeping across his shirt just above his belt.
CHAPTER 18
A bunch of blue arms pulled me away then, and I was passed from one to another until it was Karleen who was holding me against her chest, murmuring to me as though I were a baby. She dragged me along the walkway, out of the way of the swarming officers with first-aid kits.
Sirens. Sirens were howling on the periphery, bleating woe to all who heard them. My ragged panting was heavy in my own ears.
I struggled against Karleen, but she held me firm, whispering fiercely, “Pull it together, Eva. He’s breathing. He has a heartbeat. The ambulance will be here in a second.”
Simon was howling too, flopped over the side of Breaking Wind and clutching a bloody arm while a couple officers tended to him. Fury flooded what little sense of agency I could muster, and I wanted nothing more than to kill him myself.
Karleen noticed my shift in weight, the intention in my eyes, and jerked me away. She also noticed the crinkly plastic bag stuffed inside my raincoat, asked me about it, and helped me coax it back out into daylight again. She took possession of the bag and syringes and empty ketamine bottle and used latex gloves and dropped them all into a large paper evidence pouch.
Everything was a blur. I’d been walked up to the parking lot, where grim-faced Thatcher and Willow were waiting for me, holding back, hesitant, thoroughly drenched and bedraggled. But when I opened my arms, Willow lunged at me and buried her face in my chest, clinging to me as though she were drowning.
“Oh, Eva,” she sobbed.
Slowly my awareness of place and sequence was merging with reality, and I returned the favor Karleen had paid me by stroking Willow’s hair, tears streaming down my own face. The rain was of no consequence under the deluge we were producing on our own.
“That’s it,” Karleen said abruptly, slamming the lid of her beefy sedan shut, the evidence pouch safely ensconced inside. “Thatcher, you good to drive?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Eva, Willow, you’re coming with me.”
I blinked at her.
“To the hospital,” she added.
“Me? I’m allowed?” I bleated weakly. “We’re not related.” I almost added “Yet” but held my tongue.
“You’re the first person he’s going to want to see when he wakes up. And I’m going to make damn well sure you’re there.”
I wasn’t about to argue with her—my heart skidded into overdrive at her promise. Willow and I scrambled around to the passenger side. I got the cushy front seat while Willow had to make do with the hard bench behind the security screen.
“Don’t tell Gran,” she mumbled. “My first ride in a cop car, and I’m in the back.”
“Sans handcuffs,” Karleen pointed out with a forced cheerfulness. But she flicked on her lightbar and siren, and barreled out of the parking lot with purpose.
She worked some kind of magic on the phone and on her radio while she sped through town, because within minutes of staggering into the hospital entrance, Willow and I were surrounded by family and, well, family—friends who were so close they counted as blood relations.
Roxy was there, and instinctively smothered Willow in a warm hug—unusual for her, but so necessary in that moment. Bettina clung to my elbow, her pert brown eyes bright with worry. Five seconds later, Sloane and Dad rushed in, and a deep-seated need I hadn’t even known I possessed rose in my throat like a strangled cry.
“My girl,” he murmured, enfolding me in his long, lanky arms.
He rocked me then, his lips brushing my hair, and I let loose on his shoulder. Sloanie adopted Bettina and joined our huddle.
I had no idea I had so many tears in me. Eventually, I sniffled and wiped my nose on Dad’s shirt. Chief Monk had arrived too, and was bent in conversation with Roxy and Willow.
The waiting room was lined with cops, and I became self-conscious about the copious, and mucilaginous, expression of my emotions. Whether in uniform or not, they were obvious from the rigid lines of their bodies—repose not being in their vocabulary—and solemn demeanors. It’s a bad day when two of their own go down. Grief wasn’t my exclusive domain.
A middle-aged man in an official and authoritarian, but exceedingly wrinkled, white coat stepped into the room and immediately drew everyone’s focused attention. He glanced around, probably decided it wasn’t worth trying to separate the blood relatives from the rest of the audience for the disclosure of private information, and said calmly, “It looks good.”
The room collectively exhaled.
He balanced a tablet on his forearm, and swiped at the screen with his forefinger. “The gunshot to Officer Rocha’s calf was a flesh wound, through and through. He’s already stitched up and is resting comfortably. He has extensive bruising to his sternum where the other bullet hit his vest, but his ribs are not cracked. He’ll be staying overnight for observation, but he can receive visitors.” The doctor held up a warning hand as the level of appreciative buzzing in the room increased. “Just a few people at a time. His attending nurses have the authority to cut off visiting when he tires. I’m sure you’ll all respect that.” He nodded, with a slight smile under his clipped mustache, and added, “Family first.”
