The Vengeful Dead (21 page)

“We still have to find Vasquez,” she said.

“That’s still a different case,” McManus replied. “He’s not who you and I were after.”

Jackie let out her breath, chin sagging to her chest. How ironic was this, to be explaining supernatural case elements to her partner?
I miss you, Laur. I really, really do.
“If Rosa’s ghost isn’t done and she believes Vasquez was a part of her death, then this case isn’t done, McManus. I’ll bet Vasquez is hiding because he knows someone is killing those involved in Rosa’s death. He just doesn’t realize that it’s Rosa that’s after him and eventually, if she wants to, she’ll find him and spill his entrails all over the floor like everyone else.”

“Thanks for that,” he said with a pained sound. “So much for breakfast.”

“Vasquez is gang stuff, Ryan. This is your gig, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know Chicago gangs very well, but I should be able to help out.”

“Then find him before Rosa does, because she’s only got one goal and doesn’t give a rat’s ass who gets in the way.”

Nick arrived about ten minutes later, a white bag in his hand, the familiar brown with gold trim lettering partially obscured by his hand. Jackie snatched it from his hand and stuck her face in the bag. “Damn it! I can still smell blood even through the chocolate. This is so gross.”

“It should hopefully clear with your concussion,” Nick said. “Is it really strong?”

“Other than wondering if there’s a beheaded body stuffed in my piano, no.” She took the bag over to the couch and sat down. “You can have one of these if you want. I’m not all that hungry actually.”

He shook his head. “Keep it for later then.” He sat opposite her on the couch. “Are you going in today?”

“They’ve all got questions. The sooner it’s out of the way the better, and I’d rather they didn’t come out here.”

“Any more memories of the events come back?”

“Nick, it was a mild concussion. I’ve got the headache from hell, not amnesia.”

“OK. You just look really tired. Will it be safe for you to drive in?”

“Nick!” His concern was actually kind of endearing, but too much was going to drive her batty. “If I need a ride, I’ll let you know. OK?”

“All right. Sorry.” He sighed and gave her a wary smile. “It’s just you come up to a gun fight and see a head wound and nine times out of ten, it’s not good.”

Jackie swallowed the lump in her throat. Christ. It really had freaked him out. What did that mean? Was it just sweet or should she be worried he was stressing over her getting shot? These weren’t questions she had needed to consider, except with Laurel. She had not needed to worry about wanting to sleep with Laurel either. “You’re right. You’re right. I was this close to being dead yesterday. It was reckless and—”

“Brave,” Nick finished. “It was brave and foolish and, for the most part, worked. I don’t think you could have stopped Morgan without killing or seriously wounding him. It’s just unfortunate Rosa kept him going long enough to kill the other guy.”

Jackie held her breath and chewed on the chocolate-filled croissant. If she did that, at least she could enjoy the flavor without it being tinged with the metallic, pungent flavor of blood. “Would Morgan’s ghost be there, you think?”

Nick gave a noncommittal shrug. “I didn’t feel his presence, but he could very easily come back, too. Shelby and I will check it out again today.”

It was time to change the subject. The creeping nerves of the situation were working their way in. Jackie knew she had killed someone, someone who didn’t deserve to die, a victim of circumstance and caught in the crossfire. It happened in law enforcement. You just hoped it never happened to you. The worst of it was, everyone else figured Morgan was the bad guy, and she was in no position to tell anyone what the truth of the matter was. It was not a subject she could afford to deal with right now.

“What have you reported about the incident? McManus is all nerved out wanting to ensure we have consistent stories. He’s not sure how to deal with the ghost business, though I guess I’m not either. I still don’t understand what’s happened to me, Nick.”

“None of us do,” he said. He laid a hand across one of her ankles. “But we’ve figured out some of it and we’ll figure out more until we get a firm grip on your abilities, Jackie. It’s just going to take a little time.”

She gave him a disheartened smile. “Prefer it was sooner than later. Seeing and talking to ghosts is one thing, but this channeling bullshit can go away.”

“Pick up your feet,” he said.

“What?”

“Lift your feet up. You’re stressed. I’m going to help you out a bit here because you’ve got a shit day ahead of you.”

Jackie narrowed her gaze at him but lifted her feet. “What are you going to do?”

Nick slid over until his lap was beneath her feet. “Pressure points. You familiar with that?”

“I’ve heard Laur talk about them,” she replied.

“If it makes you feel better, think of it as a glorified foot rub.”

He pulled off a sock, her bare toes staring up at him, unpainted and in need of a trim. “My feet aren’t much to look at right now. I haven’t—”

“Your feet are fine, Jackie. I haven’t had a pedicure in months either.” His hands weren’t overly large, but they easily wrapped around her foot. The coolness of his hands was soothing on her aching feet. “If I do this right, it’ll help. If not, it’s no loss because it’s still a foot rub. Shelby used to swear by them, but I haven’t given her one in about thirty years.” His hands relaxed for a moment as he stared at her. “You look unsure. It’s not going to hurt. Trust me.”

Jackie shifted her gaze from his hands up to his face. Perhaps she looked as dumbfounded as she felt. “I know. It’s just . . .”
You really want to rub my feet? Seriously?
“Never mind. Go ahead.”

“Good,” he said. “Just lay back and relax. Try to think about something unrelated to anything going on here. Walk in the woods or swim in the ocean. Something you find peaceful, and in thirty minutes you’ll feel much better going into the rest of your day.”

Walking sounded like a very bad idea just then, so Jackie opted for sitting in the woods on a large, mosscovered stone near a stream that rushed and tumbled over the rocks below. A groan involuntarily escaped her lips when Nick’s fingers began to work their way into the muscles and tendons of her feet. She could feel herself sinking into that fresh, earthysmelling moss, the cool mist from the water hitting her legs, and a warm sun caressing her face.

“OK. You seem pretty relaxed now,” Nick said.

Jackie tilted her head back down to look at him. “Thirty minutes already?” It barely felt like five.

“Thirty-five,” he said. “I was feeling generous.”

She wiggled her toes and rotated her feet. The bones had all turned to mush. Best of all, her headache had receded to a manageable, dull throb. “Damn, Nick. Shelby was an idiot to leave that.”

His face eased into a pleasurable smile. “My hands weren’t the problem. I was a depressed, grumpy, sonofabitch.”

She could certainly relate. “You might have to come over every morning and do this.”

One corner of his mouth turned up even more. “Perhaps I shall.”

Not serious! Hello, cowboy. I didn’t literally mean it. Not really. But I kinda sorta did maybe.
“As long as you stop at Annabelle’s,” she said, trying to cover up the warm flush flooding her cheeks, and reached over to grab the other croissant from the bag on the coffee table. “I actually feel capable of going in now. Thanks, Nick. Really.”

“Anytime,” he said and shifted himself out from under her feet. Before he got up, Nick stared at her very seriously, his bright, brown eyes dancing, and said, “Really.”

Jackie felt the squirmy worms of nerves wiggle into her belly. Nick’s subtle, or perhaps they never had been subtle, cues about his interest in her were growing by the day or so it felt. They had not even had a real date yet and a couple of kisses did not count. Nothing would happen until they had gone on a real date. There had to be some sort of normalcy to them if it was going to happen at all, and nothing to this point had been anywhere close to that. Regardless, a small part of her grinned at the thought of reaching up and hooking her fingers in that six-shooter buckle of his and pulling him down on top of her.

“So, what are you doing today?” she asked instead, and managed to stand up on loose, wobbly legs.

“Shelby and I are going to see if we can track down Rosa or Vasquez. At this point, either one will do. We’ll keep in touch with McManus.”

“No word from Laurel about what she’s found over . . . there?”

“She’ll have walked, since she had no reference points to travel to in that area of town. Hopefully she finds something.”

“Yeah,” Jackie said, remembering Laur’s voice calling out to her at the end of her dream. “Hope she knows to get out if she finds Rosa.”

“She’ll leave her alone and discuss it with us if that’s what she finds,” Nick replied. “My suspicion is we’ll find her here, controlling someone else to get this Vasquez fellow.”

“Let’s hope they can avoid Morgan’s fate.”

Jackie,” he said in a low voice, “you can’t blame yourself for events you don’t have a lot of control over. Trust me, I’m an expert. The point is, you can’t, and—”

“I know. I know.” She waved off his words. She knew what they were going to be. She had told them to others and herself. Still, when it came down to brass tacks, all of that went out the window. The haunting specter of doubt would be nagging at her for days or weeks to come. “I’ll get over it, but right now I still am not even sure what happened.”

Nick nodded. “Understandable.” He began to make his way toward the door. “OK if I call you later, see how you’re feeling?”

“Not sure how available I’ll be with the Standards guys crawling all over me, but sure. I’d um . . . I’d like that.” And there it was, an open invitation. For better or worse Jackie had just put it out there for Nick to run with. She followed him to the door, knowing full well he could let himself out.

Nick opened the door but then turned and nearly bowled Jackie over. “Call Shelby or me if anything odd comes up.”

“I will. I just want to go in and tell them what happened and then get back home and sleep for fifteen hours. That’s all I plan on doing.”

“Uh-huh,” he said and his hand came up under her chin, tilting her face up toward his. “Plans tend to go astray around here most of the time.”

Jackie gave him a little shrug but didn’t pull away. “Shit happens. What can you do?”

His lips came down, soft and quick, just a light brush of a kiss. “Please, be careful.” He stepped out into the hallway. “I’ll call if we find anything useful.”

Jackie smiled and closed her door. She felt so good at the moment she wondered if Nick had worked a little more than just his fingers into her feet.

The mood took a sharp right turn into Shitsville in about the time it took for Jackie to dress and drive over to headquarters and park her butt in her chair. Just getting from the parking garage to her chair had felt like it took undue effort. A Post-it was stuck to her monitor from Belgerman, reminding her of the meeting with the BPS guys at eleven-thirty. McManus had left to track down leads on Vasquez, but at least he had left her a copy of his report on her desk, along with a copy of the morning paper turned to an article about the incident.

Tillie had left a brief but kind message to drop by her office in the afternoon if it was convenient or to call and set up an appointment in the next couple of days. That wasn’t about her issues. That was regulations. She had been involved in a shooting and the visit was mandatory. In some ways it might be preferable to talk about her issues instead of about killing Morgan. Maybe she would not be going home early after all.

It was only a few minutes after ten, so Jackie had some time to deal with getting all her facts straight and go over what she wanted to say to the Standards guys. They would be thorough, more so than usual because Morgan had been a cop. Every damn
i
had to be dotted and every
t
crossed in these situations or you could end up with a public relations disaster. Jackie picked up the paper and skimmed through the article.

FBI S
TOPS
R
OGUE
C
OP’S
V
ENGEFUL
G
ANGLAND
K
ILLING
S
PREE
. Poor Morgan. Jackie felt even worse for his wife and daughter. It looked like he had gone insane. Nice legacy. There had to be a way to inform the family and keep it hushed. Maybe in a couple of weeks when the media frenzy had died down over it. Or a couple of months. Sometimes these things would drag on and on. She would have to ask John what his thoughts were. Damned if she would let psychic politics ruin the family. They would be screwed on benefits, too, without any way to prove what had happened.

Jackie threw the paper hard into her wastebasket, which sent it spilling into the aisle. “Damn it.” She wheeled over and reached down to pick it back up and was greeted by familiar-looking shoes and crisply pleated pants.

“Got my note?” He pointed at her monitor where the Post-it used to be.

“I’ll be ready, sir, much as I can at least. I had one question, though, related to all of this.” He raised an eyebrow but said nothing and took a sip from his coffee. Jackie lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. “What happens to Morgan’s family in all of this? Morgan, the real Morgan, was as much a victim in this as everyone else. He wasn’t a murderer.”

Belgerman gave her a pained smile. “I know, but we can’t let that be public knowledge. It would be a disaster for the department. The best we can do, which is all that we are going to do”—he motioned with his coffee cup at her—“is make sure that whatever pension and insurance he had coming in case of death on the job is correctly and fully paid out.”

“You don’t think Beverly Morgan will wonder about that?”

“Would you want to lose a twenty-year vet’s benefits?”

Jackie shrugged. “Nope, guess I wouldn’t. I suppose that’ll have to do. Which sucks by the way. He had a thirteen-year-old daughter.”