07 Uncorked - Chrissy McMullen Mystery (14 page)

Luckily, an Arco station saved me from investing in Depends. After driving an additional five blocks I discovered that that esteemed establishment housed the doors of its restrooms inside. Ahh, the beauty of modern conveniences that will prevent you from getting mugged.

Still, I was as jittery as hell as I crossed the parking lot and subsequently dropped my keys on the asphalt twice. The second time I bent to retrieve them, someone whistled from a waiting van, but I was too harried to appreciate being subjugated. Hurrying into the well-lit interior, I waited outside the bathroom for a miserable thirty seconds, then hustled inside to relieve myself at the earliest possible moment.

While in the privacy of the restroom, I slipped the tiny recorder out of my bra and switched it on. Its brochure had promised sixteen hours of high quality audio so the time frame was the least of my worries. The fact that it was finally wedged between my boobs like a miniature cinder block again was both comforting and disconcerting.

Still, all was well when I paid for gas and a car wash and folded myself back into my Saturn. With a happy bladder, I felt confident and strong once again. I was in control.

The car wash was one of those fully automated units that sucks you through like a dark, weirdly animated tunnel of love. I put the car in neutral and shut off the engine. The whooshing sound of the washers was oddly soothing, giving me a few needed seconds to get in touch with my thoughts. Maybe, like my Saturn, I had been in neutral. But no more. Now I was being proactive but not foolhardy. Thoughtful but not obsessed. I’d wash my car, meet Coggins, learn what I could and go home to ponder—

I heard a noise from the backseat a fraction of a second before a hand slapped over my mouth. Terror ripped through me like a hurricane. I tried to scream, to twist away, but I couldn’t.

“Don’t do anything stupid, McMullen.” The voice was low and guttural. I froze, cranking my eyes backward, but I couldn’t see a thing.

My mind was buzzing, trying to think. Trying to figure out what to do. At that particular juncture, I was utterly willing to give him anything—my purse, my car, my firstborn—but I had no way to verbalize my stupendous generosity.

It wasn’t until that moment that my mind slammed into the realization that he’d used my name. But not my given name. My surname. My Irish name. McMullen. Who called me—

Rivera!

I knew it…knew that he had gotten out of jail and was trying to teach me a lesson…

again. Rage pumped through me like molten lava. I twisted wildly toward the rear. He tried to hold me still, but I was pissed. I bit down, drawing blood between his thumb and pointer finger.

He cursed and tried to pull away, but I was already clambering over the seat toward him, skirt bunching around my scrambling legs.

“Turn around! Stay back!” he warned, but I’ve never been one for taking orders.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I was hissing with fury, snarling with a dangerous mix of rage and relief to learn that Rivera was not only safe but free.

That’s when he hit me in the face!

I flattened back against the front seat, head spinning, cheek throbbing, thoughts scrambling like broken eggs in my cranium. The lieutenant may be a cheat and a liar. But he wouldn’t hit me. Raking my thoughts haphazardly together, I lunged for the door, but he yanked me back inside.

I screamed but the noise was washed away by the soggy arms that struck the Saturn.

He hit me again, clubbing me on the side of the head. My ears exploded, spurring up a new batch of rage and terror. I slammed my elbow backward and heard cartilage crunch, but it didn’t do me any good.

He was already pushing me face down into the seat, compressing my lungs, straddling my thigh. I felt his erection against my backside and almost gagged, but that was before I realized there was a cord around my neck. And suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

My chest ached. I bucked against him, sobbing and rasping for breath.

He growled something, a curse or a threat.

But at that second one of the washer arms must have hit my trunk just right. It popped open. The asshole atop me jerked his attention to the left, and in that moment I jabbed backward with my elbow. He slammed toward the door. I yanked my right knee over the edge of the seat, then kicked with all the force my screaming muscles could muster. I felt my heel strike his jaw, heard his teeth clack. I rolled onto my back and kicked with both feet. My heels caught him mid body. He fell against the door, hands flying up. I realized for the first time that he was wearing something over his head. But the sheer fabric didn’t hide the rage in his eyes. For an abbreviated moment, I could see they were bright with hatred, and then he was gone, toppling backward into the swooshing arms of the car wash.

One arm struck the open door, banging it closed. It took all my strength to reach up and punch the locks closed. Then I lay on the seat like a beached trout, crying and trembling.

I have no way of knowing how much time passed, maybe it was several minutes before my car rolled to a halt.

But finally a face appeared at my window. I gasped and jerked to a seated position at the sight of an acne-riddled boy staring into the car. He scanned the front seat, then saw me in the back and adjusted his position, making a rolling down motion as he did so. My hands shook like leaflets in a windstorm as I tried to open the window, but the car was shut off. I was almost entirely incapable of opening the door. The boy scanned the backseat as if searching for a covert lover. His voice was quizzical.

“You gotta clear the area,” he said. “We got another customer wants a wash.” I filed a police report at the nearest station that night, sat in a snot-green plastic chair while they dusted for fingerprints and checked for DNA, then refused an escort and drove home like someone in a functional coma. Once there, I turned on every light in the house and crawled into bed, fully dressed. Harlequin heaved himself up beside me and let me cry onto his velvety ear until I fell asleep.

I woke up sometime before dawn. The house was as bright as a shooting nova and utterly silent. Harley’s right ear was still wet from my tears, I was sweating like an ox, and my chest ached. For a second I thought I might be experiencing a well-deserved heart attack, but then I remembered the diminutive tape recorder I had shoved between my boobs.

Harley gave me a jaundiced glance as I sat up and retrieved the tiny device. It took me a few minutes to remember how to play back the recording. A series of hisses and scrapes issued from the machine. The noises were totally unidentifiable and did nothing but make my hands shake and my stomach heave.

The rest of the night was pretty much of a bust.

The following morning wasn’t much better, but I applied makeup to the worst of the bruises, assured myself I looked somewhat better than road-kill and drove to the office.

Once there, I told my clients a not-too-far-fetched story about being dragged down the sidewalk by Harlequin, and tried to carry on as if my face didn’t look as though it had mauled by a grizzly.

In the afternoon, I drove to Rivera’s station to talk to Captain Kindred. He came in through the back door finally, hound-dog face haggard, but when he saw mine he winced.

“Holy shit,” he rumbled, and motioned me irritably toward his office.

I followed him into a room the size of my thumb. Despite the fact that my face looked like an impressionist’s angry pallet, I was doing a pretty fair job of controlling my tears if I do say so myself. But by then I had spent the past sixteen hours blubbering like a spanked infant, so maybe my stoicism had more to do with a lack of body fluids than with fortitude.

“Sit down,” he ordered, and motioned toward a chair beside the door.

I considered refusing, but my legs were as weak as my bladder. The chair felt hard and solid against my thighs.

“What happened?” His voice was as hard as the chair.

“Last night…“ I took a deep breath and wondered if the proverbial dam would hold.

“At approximately 7:15 I stopped at an Arco station on Foothill and Cullen.” I’d been through enough of these situations to know how to give a detailed report. It wasn’t a good sign. “I paid for thirty dollars worth of gas and a car wash. When I returned to my vehicle there was someone in the backseat.”

He clenched his teeth and moved to the far side of his desk for a pad of paper. “You filled out a full report?”

I swallowed hard and managed a nod.

"I'm sure they've checked the video cam, but I'll look into it."

"Thank you." I still didn’t cry. Miracles do happen. I took a deep breath and dove in.

“I believe the perpetrator was Officer Coggins.”

The pad dropped out of his hand. He didn’t seem to notice. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I tightened my fists and wished I had fortified myself with a couple dozen cupcakes.

Or at least a glass of wine.

“I was supposed to meet him at the Wheel at 7:30. I was attacked at 7:17. When I called the restaurant at 7:42, he still hadn’t shown—”

“Why?” His body was very still, his voice low.

“What?”

“Why the hell were you supposed to meet him?”

“I just…” I considered telling him I was irresistibly attracted to the man, but my face hurt too much to formulate a decent lie. My Emerald Isle antecedents, a list of prostitutes and con artists as long as my arm, were probably rolling over in their graves like loose dice at my lack of ability. “I believe I told you about my suspicions regarding his connection with Rivera’s incarceration.”

“God damn it.” He said the words very softly.

I straightened my spine. “He knew my name.” My hands were shaking again. I put them against my thighs and raised my chin like a martyr at a lynching. “I believe he was going to warn me not to interfere with the…” My voice failed me. I cleared my throat.

“With the investigation.”

The captain’s hang-dog gaze didn’t leave my face for several seconds, but finally he strode to the door, yanked it open and growled at some poor gopher on the far side.

In a second he was back. He turned away from me, gazing out his dusty window. He had a dynamite view of the parking lot and the northwest corner of the city library.

“Did I or did I not warn you against getting involved in this?” His back was as broad as a Ping-Pong table. His button-down shirt was wrinkled except where it was stretched tight across his shoulders.

I felt my eyes tear up and swiped the back of my hand beneath my nose lest it join the drippy brigade.

“Miss McMullen,” he snarled, and pivoted toward me just as the first traitorous tear fell.

“Ahh, hell,” he said, and dipped his head as if trying to disavow my tears, but they were the real deal…the stuff that makes grown men run screaming into the night.

He reached for a squashed box of tissues just as the door swung open.

Coggins stood in the opening, gaze sharp on the captain’s. His squinty eyes were narrowed. His nose was an odd hue of purple and his left cheekbone harbored a superficial laceration about two inches long. “You wanted to see me?”

“Come in here,” the captain ordered.

He stepped inside. I felt my guts shake.

“Shut the door.”

He did so. And in that second his porcine eyes swung toward me.

“Holy fuck!” He breathed the words, narrow eyes going wide. “What are you doing here?”

I tried to speak, but it was impossible to open my mouth.

“Where were you at 7:15 last night?” Captain Kindred asked.

“What? I…” Coggins’s mouth remained open as he stared at me. No more words came.

“Coggins!”

“What the fuck is this about?” he rasped.

“Just answer the damn question.”

“This is a fucking set-up.”

The captain took a step toward him. “Where were you?” Coggins scowled. His eyes darted from side to side, but he finally conquered the worst of his terror and steadied his gaze. “I was supposed to meet her.” The captain fisted mallet-sized hands beside his thighs and lowered his head.

“But you already know that, don’t you?” Coggins asked.

“So why didn’t you?” The captain’s voice was low, laced with suspicion and anger.

“Why didn’t you meet her?”

“I don’t think it matters,” Coggins said, and flattened me with his glare. “Not when Rivera’s bitch is here telling stories about-”

“I’m going to ask you once more,” the captain said. His tone had gone from dangerous to deadly. “Where were you?”

For a moment I thought Coggins would refuse to answer, but he wasn’t suicidal. “I got a flat.”

Silence filled the room like toxic smog.

“A flat tire?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“What the hell difference—”

“Where?” the captain asked, but I was already speaking despite my smarter instincts.

“What happened to your face?” I asked. I meant to sound accusatory and self-assured. I may have sounded more like a quivering castrato.

He tightened his hands to fists and took half a step forward. “You hit me in the nose, you—”

“Coggins!”

He straightened immediately at the captain’s reprimand. “She hit me,” he said.

“When we went to pick up Rivera.”

"I didn't hit you in the cheek. What happened to your cheek?"

"That's from the tire iron. Not that it's any of your business, you fucking little-"

“Watch your language!” Kindred snarled, then turned to me. “Is that true?”

“I—”

“What the hell is this?” Coggins snapped. “You sucking up to her, too, just because she’s Rivera’s—”

Kindred took a step toward him. Coggins dropped his head and went immediately silent. The room echoed with tension.

“Tell me what happened last night,” Kindred ordered.

“Just because—”

“Tell me!” he growled.

Coggins snorted a laugh. “You’re not going to believe me anyway. The whole fucking department knows you’re kissing up to Rivera’s old man. We all know who the real problem is in this—”

“Coggins!” the captain barked.

The man seemed to visibly shrink. “My tire blew on the 710.” Their gazes met and smoldered. “Any witnesses?”