In His Thoughts, page 4
With so many lethal weapons readily available, the fact that the killer had done the deed with his own hands meant he felt a sense of personal attachment, either to the victims or the act of killing.
Deep-seated intimacy issues.
The phrase echoed in Eve’s memory as she pondered this new characteristic of their unknown perp.
“We need to interview the victims' social circles next," Eve said aloud, addressing the thought that she hadn’t spoken. “We need to find out if and how these women knew each other and who they knew in common. I think we’re looking for somebody who knew the victims personally.”
“Hold it a minute,” Thompson said. Her voice sounded further away than Eve expected. When she turned, she saw that Thompson had disappeared behind the free-standing shelves in the middle of the room. “Take a look at this.”
Walking around the small island created by shelves, Eve came to stand by her partner's side. She saw what Thompson was referring to right away. On the second shelf from the top, lined up as neatly as toy soldiers sat nearly two dozen white plastic jugs of Shock-Bright. They were set in rows of four. The spacing suggested there were two jugs missing from the front column. The agents looked at each other.
“I think we know where he got the pool chemicals,” Eve said.
“What do you think he did with empties?” Thompson wondered, looking around, “Did you see a dumpster anywhere?”
“In a bougie place like this, the garbage is probably outside and around the block, where the guests will never see or smell it.” Eve said, "If the killer has any brains at all, he would have disposed of the bottles somewhere else, but it’s worth looking.”
“Think he touched any of the others?” Thompson asked, getting a small but powerful penlight out of her pocket and switching it on. She shone the bright little beam on the bottles near the back of the shelf, which were shaded from the overhead light of the fluorescents.
“None of the others look out of place,” Eve said doubtfully, “See? All the labels are facing the same way.”
“Think it’s worth dusting for prints?” Thompson asked.
Before Eve could answer, there was a noise that made both agents freeze – a scritch, click, and scrape of metal.
The door.
Eve’s eyes flicked quickly, first to the door they’d come in by, which still stood open, then to the second door, which they had hitherto left bolted and unexplored.
As she watched, the lock slowly turned back. The knob turned, and the hinges groaned softly as the door opened.
The second door opened onto a small street that ran along the side of the country club like an access road. Daylight poured in from outside. A fly buzzed in the silence.
Eve and Thompson stared at the man who’d opened the door. He was frozen, the key still in his hand. His polo shirt bore the name of the country club – Lion’s Hill Athletic Club – over the breast pocket.
He was a tall, very tanned, strikingly handsome man in his late forties with broad shoulders and jet-black feathered hair. His white polo matched his white pool service shorts. He looked rigid upon finding the agents in the shed.
“Hey,” the man called out, stepping uncertainly into the room, “You’re not supposed to be in here. This shed is for maintenance staff only. Please return to the patio.”
“Sorry to startle you," Eve said, getting out her badge again and showing it to the bleach-white uniformed man, “Special Agent Hope, FBI. This is my partner, Special Agent Thompson. We’d like to ask you a few questions, starting with your name and job here at the country club.”
"Oh, I see," the man said, taking a step back and hitting the agents with a bright toothpaste commercial smile. "Well, my apologies. I didn't realize. Of course, I…”
Leaving his sentence unfinished and his smile hanging in the air behind him, the man suddenly turned and bolted, slamming the metal door shut.
“Quick!” Thompson shouted, “Don’t let him get away!”
The agents ran for the door, Thompson a few steps ahead of Eve. They could hear the sound of an engine starting up as she threw open the door. Eve saw Thompson struggling to get her pistol free from her holster.
She also saw the truck coming.
Thompson did not.
“Look out!” Eve cried as the truck bore down on them, the diesel engine bellowing like the hounds of hell. With a grunt of effort, Eve threw herself at her partner in a football tackle – just as Thompson freed her pistol from the holster.
There was a confusing moment of tangled bodies, burning rubber, diesel exhaust, and hard asphalt.
Then the gun went off.
CHAPTER FIVE
The pain was searing.
Almost before the report of the firearm was finished ringing in her ears, Eve knew where she’d been hit. It was her left arm, just beneath her shoulder. At once, the pain was radiating through her entire arm, through her shoulder, and up into her neck. Her temples began to throb.
She blinked, a nanosecond that seemed to go on for centuries. The world swam. The sound was muffled. She could hear the truck still, tearing away at full speed. She could hear Thompson cursing woozily.
“Shit!” she slurred, “Shit, shit shit! Are you hit?”
Without answering, Eve managed to roll over, now chest down on the street. Thompson’s pistol lay on the ground a few feet away. In the distance, she saw the red pickup truck gunning for the intersection.
In a combat daze, Eve pushed herself to her feet with an oomph and oo-rah. She scooped Thompson’s gun off the ground in the same motion and was sprinting after the truck before the other agent could gain her bearings.
Eve saw the truck barrel around the corner. She’d been too distracted by the tackle and gunshot to catch the license plate. She needed to catch up before he slipped away.
Eve sprinted at a hard-slanting diagonal across the street, bolting for the corner where she’d seen the truck turn. Her mind pounded one message through her skull, refusing to acknowledge the painful wound to her left arm. Take the corner and make the shot. Take the corner and make the shot. Take the corner…
Eve took the corner, bringing the pistol up to the level. The truck was disappearing into the distance, already thirty yards away, with the pedal to the floor. There were no other cars in sight.
With both eyes fixed on the red spot of the truck, her left hand hanging limp and useless by her side but her right steady as steel, Eve took an instant to set her aim, adjusting for the drop over an increasing distance. She knew that she only had a split second to make the shot before the truck was out of range. She drew in one smooth breath.
The world seemed perfectly still for an instant between her painfully throbbing heartbeats.
Eve exhaled and pulled the trigger.
The crack of the pistol was followed by the blowout pop of a tire as Eve’s bullet found its mark. Weak with relief, Eve allowed herself to clutch her arm painfully. Almost at the same moment, Thompson came sprinting around the corner.
“What happened?” she cried, her eyes wild with fear and frustration. With a grimace of pain, Eve handed the gun back to Thompson.
“I shot out his tire,” Eve grunted through clenched teeth, “Come on, I don't know if I can take him alone right now."
“You hit his tire from here? With my gun?” Thompson gawked, then shook her head and broke out into a sprint at Eve’s urging look.
Side by side, the agents charged down the road. As they ran, they saw that the door of the truck was open, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Eve slowed cautiously as they approached the truck. The prickling sensation under her skin warned her that danger was ahead. She pulled out her own trusty Beretta instinctively, holding up a hand to halt Thompson.
“Where’d he go?” Thompson asked in a winded whisper.
“I’ll check the truck,” Eve whispered back, “Cover me.”
Moving on swift, silent feet, Eve approached the last five yards to the truck in a defensive crouch, letting her injured arm hang but keeping the pistol level. She stalked up to the driver’s side of the red truck. Now that she was nearer, she could see that it bore the name and emblem of the Lion’s Hill Athletic Club.
Why would a custodian make a run for it in a company vehicle?
The time for questions would come later, Eve thought as she approached the door. Carefully, she stepped around the truck so that she could look down her sights through the open door.
The cab was empty. The passenger door was open. Had it been open before?
In an instant, Eve saw the man’s shoulder poke out into the open doorframe. He was turning quickly. There was something in his hands.
Eve saw the stock and barrel of a sawed-off shotgun flash for an instant in the sunlight, then dropped to the ground as the gun went off. The door behind her was peppered with buckshot. She heard the report of Thompson's pistol again as the man racked his shotgun.
Enough of this, Eve thought, laying flat on the street and aiming her gun at the man's right ankle under the car. She pulled the trigger.
***
Eve stood over the man where he lay, half-covered by a thin blue hospital blanket. The man was bound to the gurney by handcuffs on his wrists and one of his ankles. The other was tightly bandaged.
Eve's own arm had been examined, cleaned, and bandaged. The shot had only grazed her shoulder. Eve had refused painkillers.
Her own bullet, according to the ER surgeon who worked on the man, had passed right through the front of the man’s ankle, exiting through his Achilles. It was a clean shot, Eve reflected with pride. The bone had been fractured and the tendon severed, but other than a simple reconstruction and setting of the ankle, the man was going to be alright.
Well, maybe not alright-alright, Eve thought. He would walk with a limp for at least a few years, if not the rest of his life, which might cause him serious trouble when he went to prison. Still, with the memory of the man spinning around to point the sawed-off shotgun at her still fresh in her mind’s eye, she found that her reserves of sympathy were tapped just about dry.
The chains of the man’s fetters rattled softly as he shifted, muffled by the thin fabric of the sheets. He was starting to regain consciousness. His eyes fluttered in the liminal space of wakefulness.
“Good morning,” Eve said loudly. The man’s eyes shot open. His handsome face tensed at once. His body jerked as if to pull away, but his wrists and ankles quickly found the limits of his bondage. “Actually, it’s afternoon. Did you have a good sleep? Pleasant dreams?”
The man turned his face away, although whether it was because he was avoiding the agent's eyes or because he was passing out again, Eve wasn't sure.
“Hey,” Eve snapped her fingers over the bed. The man’s face jerked up spasmodically again. “You better listen up, Fabio. It’s over for you. You tried to kill two federal agents. Forgetting for the moment that we’re homicide investigators working on a recent, active case, we’ve already got you on attempted murder, resisting arrest, impeding a federal investigation, and possession of an illegal firearm.”
“Hell,” the man tried to sneer, his voice still thick from the anesthesia and painkillers, “I don’t have anything to say to you, and that firearm was legal when I bought it.”
“I’m sure it was,” Eve replied woodenly. The man glared back at her, sucking his cheeks in, the sinews of his jaw flexing as he clenched his teeth.
“I said I’m done talking,” he replied.
“Well, I’m not done listening,” Eve shot back. “If you’d let me finish my sentence back in the shed instead of running for your shotgun as soon as you saw a badge, you know that we’re investigating the murder of two women – Pamela Macey and Selma Vishni. Right now, you’re looking like my prime suspect. Assault with a deadly weapon will get you 10 years, maybe fifteen. Double homicide means you go away forever, with no hope of parole. They'll put you in a little room and look at you through a tiny window for the rest of eternity until even your bones have rotted away into dust.”
“Jesus Christ,” the man muttered, his startled eyes pinned on Eve. She smiled back at him.
“That’s if they don’t go for the death penalty, of course,” she added.
The man shuddered but didn't say anything. Letting out a breath of frustration through her nose, Eve turned her back on the gurney.
“Suit yourself,” Eve said, “Whether or not you help us out, we’re going to get to the bottom of this, mark my words.”
Eve banged the door of the hospital room shut behind her, attracting a disapproving look from a passing nurse. Eve leered back. She wasn’t a fan of hospitals since she’d nearly been imprisoned in one, so she was already on edge, and the man’s defiance wasn’t helping.
Down the hall, Eve saw Thompson walking towards her. Her partner had been busy on the phone in the waiting room. She stormed along the corridor with a troubled expression.
“What’s the matter?” Eve asked.
“Hmm?” she looked up, then gave her head a quick shake. “Oh, nothing. Just reporting back to headquarters.”
“Mmhmm,” Eve murmured, giving her partner a suspicious squint. Thompson squirmed a little. Why did she look so uncomfortable?
“How’s the suspect?” Thompson asked, changing the topic quickly while avoiding Eve’s eyes. “Did he tell you anything? Did you even get a name?”
“Nah, nothing,” Eve said, clicking her tongue with dismissive frustration. “He’s still coming out of the surgery. Anyway, he doesn’t want to talk to us.”
“What’s your instinct tell you?” Thompson asked.
“He’s guilty of something – the question is what. Nobody runs and shoots like that just because they don’t feel like talking,” Eve said, pursing her lips with thought. “As for my instinct, it’s telling me to check the truck.”
“The truck?” Thompson asked, “Why?”
“Mister good-hair isn’t going to start talking until we have something we can use against him. He didn’t flinch at the accusation of the murders, so we still have to figure out why he ran. If he’s not our man, we need to unload him from the local authorities and get back to our own case. My gut says the truck will be our fastest route to the truth.”
CHAPTER SIX
The man came home. He strolled up the walk past the three rustic wine barrel flowerpots. The gardenias were in bloom. The lawn was green and mowed. The day was good.
He whistled an improvised tune under his breath as he stepped lightly up the short stairway to his front porch. Still whistling, he checked the mailbox. Three advertisements, a political mailer, and his water bill. Everything was in balance.
Still carrying the improvised tune, the man fished his keys out of the pocket of his slacks. He unlocked his front door and pushed it open.
“Hello!” he called out cheerily, closing the door behind him and turning the bolt with a neat click. He smiled.
Kneeling, he unlaced his brown leather loafers and took them off. The bunion on his left foot throbbed with relief. He rubbed it, wincing, half with pain and half with pleasure.
From the living room of his home, he could hear the sound of the television. It was a cheerful sound, the commercial jingle reminding him to brush his teeth with Crest toothpaste. The man made a mental note to pick up a tube to Crest the next time he was at the supermarket and smiled again, clicking his mental pen shut.
“Darling,” he called out in a loud, jovial voice, “I’m home! What’s for dinner?”
There was no answer from the living room. The man’s smile faltered only a half-degree.
“Darling?” He called out again, loosening his tie as he came around the corner from the foyer into the hallway, “I said, ‘What’s for dinner?’ Perhaps you should turn down the volume on that television. You’ll lose your hearing.”
With a wide, paternal smile, the man rounded the corner of the hallway. The television was on, but his wife was not there. The smile faded from his eyes, although his mouth remained twisted in the same grin as if held up on fishhooks.
He turned slowly, his eyes scanning the room.
“Darling?” he called a third time, his voice rising with the first note of concern. Something was amiss.
Stepping into the living room, the man found the remote and turned the television off himself. He stood for a moment with the clicker in one hand, the other resting on his hip, looking around with a puzzled expression on his face.
The house was totally silent.
There was no sound of life from the bedrooms, no scent of food or heat of stovetops from the kitchen. There weren’t even any lights on.
True, the dying sunlight of the late evening hadn’t completely vanished yet, the man thought, scratching his head with gentle puzzlement. The dusk was still light enough to see by, although it was growing less so by the second. The night was coming, trailing along behind day like a solemn little sister.
“Hello?” the man called out, more uncertainly now, reaching for the light switch as he entered from the living room into the kitchen. A warm wash of artificial yellow light flooded over the kitchen, a tidal wave of homey illumination.
The kitchen was practically bare, except for that morning’s breakfast dishes, which were still dirty in the sink. The congealed yellow yolks of soft-boiled runoff clung to the ceramic dish. The kitchen had the pungent smell of day-old eggs.
“Oh, there you are,” the man said, his eyes landing at last on the familiar figure of his wife. “Really, Cindy, it’s one thing to come home and find that you haven’t even started dinner, but couldn’t you at least have cleaned up the breakfast dishes? What have you been doing all day?”
Cindy said nothing. Her eyes remained fixed in a blank, wooden stare trained on the wall across the room. She didn’t move an inch from her seat at the table. The man stared at her for a moment, sucking in his cheek thoughtfully, then let out his breath and painted another smile across his face.
