Читать книгу Deadly Force - Beverly Long - Страница 8

Sam read while Cruz drove. He hoped the gritty details of the latest homicide would keep him from obsessing about Claire Fontaine.

She was different than Tessa and it wasn’t just that her hair was dark and short while Tessa’s had been blond and hung halfway down her back. No, it was something not quite so tangible. Tessa had been the life of the party, everybody loved her, especially men. While they were together, Sam had spent more than one sleepless night worrying about that. He’d always figured he’d been lucky to catch her.

Tessa had been…uncomplicated. He’d spent five minutes with Claire and somehow knew there was nothing simple or easy about her.

The radio crackled, blessedly interrupting his thoughts. “All units. District 23. We’ve got shots fired at 810 Maple.”

Cruz grabbed the wheel with both hands. “We’re four blocks from there. Want to go?”

Detectives, unlike uniforms, weren’t required to respond to the all-unit calls. But neither Cruz nor Sam liked stuff happening in Area 5 that they didn’t know about. “Sure. Let’s roll.”

Cruz whipped the car into traffic. “What was that address again?”

“810 Maple.” As soon as he said it, Sam knew. He’d seen that address just the night before. “Drive faster,” he said, as he pulled the envelope out of the inner pocket of his suit coat.

Apartment 3C. As Cruz weaved in and out of traffic, Sam tried to focus. Just because it was Claire’s address, it didn’t mean she was in trouble. There were probably lots of apartments in the building. But he couldn’t shake the sick feeling that was in his gut.

By the time Cruz pulled up, police cars were stacked three deep. Sam grabbed his vest from the backseat and worked his way to the front. He slid in next to Bobby Horowitz, who crouched behind his vehicle, a phone to one ear, scribbling with a pen on paper that was balanced on his knee.

“What’s going on?” Sam whispered.

Bobby held up a finger and Sam waited, sweat trickling down his back. Finally, Bobby hung up.

“Talk to me, Bobby.”

“We got a report of shots fired. Neighbor across the hall called it in.”

“What apartment?”

“3C.” Bobby pointed toward the building. “It’s that sliding door, third one from the left.”

Sam leaned his head against the warm metal of the police car. He swallowed hard. “Any known injuries?”

Bobby shook his head. “Our guys got as far as the apartment door. They knocked and somebody started shooting. They grabbed the woman from across the hall and beat feet back down to the second floor. Ain’t been a sound out of the apartment since then. Unfortunately, the neighbor hasn’t shut up. She’d been going on and on about how the apartment was burglarized a couple weeks ago.”

“What?”

“I don’t know anything else. She didn’t have many details. Hopefully, HBT will get here soon and we can put this one to bed.”

Sam’s stomach turned. Hostage Barricade Team. The last hostage rescue operation he’d worked, the hostage had ended up with a bullet in his neck. No doubt Bobby remembered it, too. He’d been standing next to Sam, looking like he wanted to rip somebody’s head off.

Sam studied the building. It would be a long shot, but he thought he could do it. “Look, Bobby. From the balcony of the apartment next door, I can get over to that sliding door. The blinds are closed. They aren’t going to be able to see me from inside.”

“So, then what?”

“It’s been warm this week. I’m betting they open that sliding door. Because they’re on the third floor, they probably keep it unlocked.”

“I don’t know. You fall three stories and it’s my job.”

“I get them out of there and it’s the mayor calling you up, inviting you over for drinks.”

Bobby’s green eyes took on a familiar glow. “Yeah, I’d like that. Maybe the guys from HBT could drive me there.” He looked at his watch. “Get going. Super said every apartment is laid out the same. Railcar-style. That sliding door is to a bedroom, which connects to another bedroom, then there’s the living room, kitchen and finally the bath.”

“Make sure our guys on the second floor know I’m coming in,” Sam said, moving fast. He slipped inside the building, his gun drawn. When he got to the third floor, he stopped, listened and then moved toward the door he needed. He unlocked it and went inside. He listened again but didn’t hear anything from Claire’s apartment.

That didn’t necessarily mean good news.

He walked out onto the balcony, staying close to the building. After attaching the radio to his belt, he slipped his gun into his shoulder holster and inspected the bricks. He pushed his fingers in between them, hoping to get some kind of hold. It wasn’t much but it did provide some balance. He stepped up onto the wrought-iron railing, first one foot and then the other.

Then he made the mistake of looking down.

His heart thumped. One good jump, he reminded himself.

Right. If the first one wasn’t good, he wouldn’t need to worry about a second try.

Sam took a breath and closed his eyes. From inside the building, from Claire’s apartment, he heard a scream and then a gunshot.

Sam opened his eyes, bunched up his leg muscles and leaped. He hit the deck with a soft thud, his knees absorbing the shock. He yanked on the door handle and started to breathe again when it slid open. Easing his hand inside, he caught the edge of the heavy curtain and pulled.

He poked his head and gun through the opening. Empty. It was a mess, with clothes and shoes everywhere. He moved quickly, his shoes making no sound on the carpet. Through the door, into the interior bedroom

It smelled like Claire Fontaine. Fresh with a hint of something exotic. Everything in its place. The bed covers were thrown back, as if someone had been sleeping.

He poked his head out the door and scanned the living room. His stomach cramped up tight.

A woman, half her head blown off, lay sprawled on the couch. Blood and tissue splattered the wall behind her. She was blond and many pounds overweight—not that she was going to need to worry about that anymore. A cigarette, still smoldering, rested in a butt-filled glass dish on the end table.

Across from her, a young woman, red hair, very pale skin, wearing standard-issue green scrubs, sat on a love seat. A revolver rested in the palm of her hand. She had her eyes closed but he didn’t think she was hurt. He could see the rise and fall of her chest, in even breaths.

Where was Claire?

Sam focused on the woman in scrubs because the woman on the couch wouldn’t ever be moving again. He slipped behind her. “I’m a police officer,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “Put your gun on the floor.”

She strained her neck to see him. Her eyes were open, her stare blank. She looked first at the gun he pointed at her, and then back at her own gun. Without a word, she bent over and gently placed it on the floor, next to her bare feet. Sam walked around the end of the couch, squatted, picked up the gun with his fingertips and dropped it in the pocket of his suit coat.

“Where’s Claire?” he asked.

“I’m here.”

Sam whirled around. Claire was at the far end of the apartment, leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, so pale that he wondered how she could stand. She had a hand towel up to her mouth.

“Anybody else here?” he asked, trying to stay focused. He could see streaks of tears on her cheeks.

She shook her head and made the mistake of looking at the dead woman. She swayed, her shoulder knocking into the wall.

He moved quickly to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in close. Her whole body was trembling. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You’re sure?”

He got a nod. Okay. Sam pulled back a little. Claire’s eyes were puffy, her nose was red and she kept the towel up to her mouth, like she wasn’t sure she was done losing her lunch.

“Who’s that?” he asked, nodding his head toward the woman in scrubs.

“My roommate, Nadine.”

“Okay. Look, I need to call this in,” he said. “Nadine, come over here. I want the two of you to sit in the kitchen.”

He led Claire over, keeping one arm around her. He kicked a pair of green rubber clogs out of the way and used his free arm to pull two kitchen chairs away from the table. He faced them toward the kitchen counters.

He lowered Claire down and backed away when he was sure she was steady. Nadine took the other seat without a word.

He pulled the radio off his belt. “Squad, this is 4433. I’m inside at 810 Maple. Let all units know the location is secure and roll me an ambulance.”

CLAIRE FOLDED THE WRAPPER over her half-eaten cheeseburger and pushed the almost-full container of fries toward the middle of the table. “I’m done.”

“At least you ate something.” Sam Vernelli gathered up his own garbage, added it to hers and put it on a tray that he shoved to the end of the table.

“I…” She stopped, pressing two fingers hard against her lips. “I’ve just never seen anything so horrible before.”

“There are cops who’ve been on the job for ten years who haven’t seen anything like that. It would shake anybody up.”

He was being nice and kind. The same as he’d been since he’d somehow, like some superhero, jumped onto her balcony. It was one more crazy thing in a day of craziness.

For the last eleven years, Sam Vernelli’s name had been synonymous with everything evil. She didn’t want him to be nice to her. She didn’t want to owe him anything. But when he’d pulled her into the kitchen and squatted in front of her, his hand steady on her knees and his eyes even steadier, it had been hard to remember that.

And suddenly it had seemed as if there were a hundred people in her apartment. Cops who wanted to talk to her, then to Nadine, then to both of them. The paramedics from the ambulance had arrived, looked at the dead woman and left. Then some skinny guy, who everyone called The Weasel, in a black suit that looked too big for him had walked around with a camera and if he’d taken one picture, he’d taken a hundred. Of everything, from every angle.

And when it had been over and she’d been so lightheaded that she thought she might faint, she hadn’t protested when Sam had practically dragged her out of the apartment and across the street to McDonald’s. She’d been a quivering mess.

It was time to suck it up. “I need to go.”

Sam looked at his watch. “It’s not quite four yet. I’ve got a few more questions.”

“Look, Detective Vernelli, you and I both know that it’s not a good idea for you to be assigned to this case.”

“It’s a little too late for that.”

“No. I’m going to call the police department and request that another officer be assigned.”

Sam pulled a card out of his pocket. He wrote down a name and number and shoved it toward her. “This is my boss’s name and cell. Right about now, he’s walking his daughter down the aisle, so I don’t think he’d appreciate the interruption. But on Monday morning, you can call him. Make your request. I don’t really care. But for now, I’ve got a dead woman and a hell of a lot of unanswered questions. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way, but I’m not going to sacrifice this investigation just because you’ve got a problem with me.”

Claire chewed on her lip. “All right, fine. But don’t think I won’t call Monday.”

He shrugged. “I’m counting on it. Now, start at the beginning.”

She’d never wanted to do anything less, but just maybe, if she went through it again, it would start to make some sense to her, too. “I got up pretty early this morning. I was mad at myself because I’d somehow managed to lose my paycheck last night.”

Sam held up a finger and reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I found this next to my steps.”

She grabbed the envelope. “Thank you. One less thing to have to deal with on Monday.”

“So you got up early…” he prompted.

“Yes. I realized Nadine was still sleeping, so I quietly made some breakfast and then went back to my bedroom. I had left a couple projects undone at work, so I figured I’d use the time to catch up. I worked for a few hours on my laptop. I got a little sleepy and decided to catch a nap. When I woke up around eleven, I heard voices in the living room. I recognized Nadine’s voice, so I walked out to see what was going on. She was telling the stranger to get the hell out of our apartment.”

Sam flipped the pages of his notebook. “Nadine said that she was leaving for work and the woman had been in the hallway when she opened the door. She’d pushed her way into the apartment.”

Claire shook her head. “What kind of crazy person does that?”

Sam shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know. What happened next?”

“The woman pulled a gun out of her pocket and started waving it around, screaming. It was pretty disjointed. Something about everything was ruined and that she wasn’t going to be the last fool left standing. She pointed the gun at us and she was shaking so much that I was afraid it was going to go off. She told us to sit down and when we didn’t move fast enough, she shot the gun. The bullet went over our heads, probably just a foot or two.”

“That’s probably what saved your life. The neighbor across the hall heard it.”

“Mrs. Peters. She hears everything.”

He smiled and she realized it was the first time she’d seen him do that. His teeth were white and straight and he looked like some model on the cover of GQ. She remembered overhearing her mother tell one of her friends that Sam was as handsome as Tessa was beautiful.

She swallowed hard and focused on getting the details right. “Nadine and I sat on the love seat and the woman sat across from us on the couch. She got really quiet. Then the police knocked on the door. She went crazy again and shot twice at the door.”

“Then what?”

“She was smoking one cigarette after another. Every once in a while, she’d wave her gun around. She asked us how much money we had and I told her I had sixty dollars in my purse and Nadine said she had about two hundred.”

“What did she say?”

“She started laughing hysterically, and said that wasn’t nearly enough. That she couldn’t have any kind of life on that kind of money. Then she pointed the gun at us, said she was going to have to kill us after all, and I knew she meant it.”

“But Nadine shot her first?”

“Yes. I just sat there and waited to die. Nadine, thankfully, wasn’t quite so willing to give up. Her backpack was wedged between the two seat cushions. When the woman was ranting, she somehow managed to reach into it, pull out a gun and shoot her.”

“And you said earlier that you had no idea that she had a gun.”

She shook her head. “No. She had mentioned something about a woman getting attacked in the parking lot at her work and that she was thinking about getting a gun. I didn’t realize that she’d followed through on it. I’ve never been all that crazy about guns, but call me a hypocrite because right now, I’m pretty darn glad she had it.”

Sam smiled. He glanced through the pages of his notebook again before looking up. “And neither of you ever met this woman before?”

“No.”

Sam rubbed his jaw. “Not through your jobs? Not some night at a bar?”

“No.” She pushed her empty soda container to the center of the table. “She was a stranger. I don’t even know her name and now she’s dead.”

“Her name is Sandy Bird. Ring a bell?”

“Sandy Bird,” Claire repeated. She let the name roll around in her head but it didn’t bump into anything familiar. “How do you know that’s her name?” she asked. “That’s pretty fast police work.”

He shrugged, letting her know that her grudging admission hadn’t been lost on him. “It wasn’t all that tough. She didn’t have a purse or a wallet on her, but she did have a set of keys in her pocket. When you were talking to the others, I walked outside, pointed the electric door opener at several cars, and sure enough, the lights on the green Toyota Camry started blinking. Her purse was in the trunk and when I matched up the license picture with uh…her face, I knew it was her.”

“She doesn’t have all that much of a face left,” Claire said, swallowing hard.

“A family member will need to make a positive ID down at the morgue. My partner, Cruz Montoya, is helping the coroner chase that down right now.” Sam pulled his straw out of his empty container and started tapping it on the table. “I understand your apartment was burglarized just a few weeks ago. Do you think this has anything to do with that?”

“I have no idea.”

He bent his straw double, then again, until it was a hard ball of plastic. He relaxed his hold and it sprang apart. Then he started folding again. “How long have you known Nadine?”

“Forever. We went to grade school together. We’d been planning this move to Chicago all through college. We both took jobs in Omaha after graduation. I needed some work experience before advertising agencies in Chicago would consider me. When I got the job at Alexander and Pope, she applied for nursing positions. She got one at Melrey.” Claire scooted to the edge of the booth. “Look, if there aren’t any more questions, I’d like to go.”

“Your apartment is a crime scene. You can’t stay there.”

Right now, she didn’t ever want to see her apartment again. “I know. I can’t even have it cleaned up until I get the okay. Fortunately, one of the officers gave me a business card. He said they’d do a good job.”

Sam shook his head. “They aren’t supposed to do that. Just so you know, it’s probably his cousin.”

She shrugged. She couldn’t care less. Their landlord had been one of the hundred people who’d flooded the apartment. He’d told them it was their responsibility to get the apartment cleaned and repainted. She and Nadine had agreed the couch was simply getting thrown out.

“So where are you two planning to stay?” he prompted.

“I’m staying at a hotel.” At the cheapest one she could find. Her credit card balances were mounting. “Nadine’s going home for a week or two. She worked it out with her supervisor.”

“I’m not crazy about her leaving right now,” Sam said. “I might have more questions for her.”

“I have her cell number, her mother’s cell and her parents’ home number.” Claire slid her purse strap onto her shoulder. It wasn’t going to be Sam Vernelli’s worry. She was making that call at eight o’clock Monday morning.

He pointed to his card that was still clenched in her fingers. “My work number is on that card. Let me give you my cell, in the event that you think of something else or if you…need anything.”

“Do you give your personal cell number to all your crime victims?” she asked.

“You’re not just anybody. You’re Tessa’s—”

“Little sister.” She squared her shoulders. “I don’t think either one of us can forget that.” She squatted and reached for the handle of the black duffel bag that she’d stuffed under the table. “Good night, Detective Vernelli.”

“I’ll drive you to your hotel.”

She shook her head.

He looked as if he wanted to spit nails. “Fine. I’ll get you a cab.”

She held up a finger. “Detective Vernelli, I am grateful for your assistance today. To say I wasn’t would be lying. But you and I both know that nothing good can come out of our having anything to do with one another. So, don’t call me a cab. Don’t call me period.”