Act of Betrayal (2 page)

A son for a son.

PJ GRAY SMASHED THE
buzzing alarm clock with a righteousness worthy of a pulpit-pounding preacher. It was 6:00 A.M. Monday morning, and it seemed as if her head had just hit the pillow. In fact, she had gotten three hours of sleep, but her body was slow to admit even that. She turned over onto her side, closed her eyes, and indulged in wishful thinking.

Her cheek was lightly brushed by something that registered as spider legs. Popping her eyes wide open, she found herself with a close-up view of honey-colored feline eyes. Megabite, responding to the sound of the alarm and the expectation of the meal to follow, was on PJ’s pillow to make sure the human did her part in the morning routine. PJ, grateful that she had felt the cat’s whiskers and not real spider legs, blinked at the sunshine that was brash enough to come in her window. Still inert, she was bumped on the nose by Megabite, who clearly wasn’t satisfied with progress made.

She had just about convinced herself to sit up, promising herself a long shower and a leisurely breakfast, when the phone rang. Fumbling for it, she sent Megabite tumbling to the floor, and earned an indignant stare from the cat.

“What?” she barked into the phone. It was all of Monday morning pared down to a single word.

“Take it easy, Doc. After all, I waited until the alarm went off.”

“Just how do you know when my alarm goes off?”

“Deduction. I’m a dee-tective.”

“Not so anyone would notice.”

“Christ. Okay, I’ll call back after you have your coffee. You can explain the delay to Lieutenant Wall.”

A defensive Detective Leo Schultz was like a porcupine rolled into a ball. She squeezed the bridge of her nose and regretted every drop of wine that had passed her lips the night before. Mike Wolf hadn’t left until nearly 3:00 A.M., so that made it this morning rather than last night that she had done her unaccustomed drinking. Fine way to start the day.

“Let’s start over, detective,” she said in the best apologetic tone she could manage.

There was a pause as Schultz unrolled himself and flattened his quills.

“Got a call from Dave,” he said. “Tenant complained of a bad smell from an apartment next door. Dave didn’t get too excited, since this time of year we get a fair number of those calls. People go on vacation, leave the family pooch in a locked-up apartment. ‘But I left plenty of food and water out,’ they whine when King the Wonder Dog turns up looking like a well-done roast. Those places are like ovens, especially the ones on the top floor.”

“Could you get to the point?” PJ was thinking of cool water splashing on her face and Tylenol going down her throat.

“What, have to go to the bathroom? I always have to take a piss as soon as the alarm goes off. Got my bladder trained that way.”

“Schultz.”

“Yeah, anyway, this call turns out to be a corpse of the human variety. Male Caucasian. Weird setup in the room, plastic, bondage, must have been something kinky. Dave wasn’t too specific.”

“Good for him. He has excellent judgment.”

Schultz gave her the address and she wrote it down. It was on the way in to work, so she’d stop there without going to her office first. It looked as if a shower and breakfast had moved farther away—in fact, over the horizon. She told Schultz she’d be there before him, and to let Dave know to expect her.

PJ slipped on a pair of linen trousers that were draped over a chair. They were supposed to go to the dry cleaner’s that afternoon, but would have to get another wearing. Remembering with a groan that she had intended to do the laundry yesterday, she knew there wasn’t much hope of finding any clean clothes in her closet. She had spent time with her friend Mike instead.

Mike’s wife, confined to a long-term care facility after a botched suicide attempt that left her with a devastating head injury, had died suddenly. A brain aneurysm accomplished what Sally Wolf hadn’t been able to do with a bullet. Mike had appeared at her door with the news, and there was nothing to do except invite him in and let him stay as long as he wished. Mike had become like a brother to her, so that meant the death of his wife, even though PJ had never met the woman, was treated like a death in the family.

The price of her compassion—one of them, anyway—was opening her closet door and seeing that the only summer blouse left had large orange and red flowers and a deep V neck. It was that or go with long sleeves on a day that promised nearly a hundred degrees by noon. She slipped the blouse over her head, figuring that she had been possessed by the Demon of Poor Fashion Sense when she purchased it.

PJ made her way down the hallway to her son’s bedroom. Sitting on the edge of Thomas’s bed, she admired his unlined forehead and angular tan cheeks, and couldn’t resist running her fingers over the soft, barely there mustache on his upper lip. At thirteen, Thomas was looking more like his father every day. It was eerie, the way that she could catch a sideways glimpse of Thomas and think it was Steven, come back into her life.

No chance of that, even if she had wanted it. Steven had remarried the day after the divorce was final, and was happily cooing to his new wife and baby back in Denver.

Impulsively she bent over and tickled Thomas’s nose with the tip of her shoulder-length hair. He snorted, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and looked sleepily up at her.

“Mike gone yet?” he said.

“Hours ago.” She refused to think of how few. “I got a call from Schultz and I need to go to work. What’s on your schedule, T-man?”

He yawned. “Winston and I are going to bum around the house and then ride our bikes over to the rec center after lunch.”

“Swimming?”

“Yeah.”

She was glad the two boys were back together again, close companions as they had been since shortly after she and Thomas had moved to St. Louis. There had been a brief period when Winston believed that Thomas had started vicious rumors about him. It wasn’t true, but it had driven the boys apart.

“Tough life,” she said, thinking about how she had savored her own childhood summers in Newton, Iowa. “Be home by four. I don’t want you out during rush hour on your bike.”

“Geez, Mom, it’s not like we’re riding on the interstate.”

“By four.” She kissed him on the forehead. He was almost back to sleep. She noticed that his alarm was set for nine-thirty.

Envy swept over her.

In the kitchen, PJ poured Megabite a dish of dry food. The cat sniffed it and decided to wait and see what Thomas would offer.

PJ was surprised to find a trio of HazMat vans parked in front of the apartment building on Lake, and a crowd of people who must have been tenants clustered in small groups. Some were hastily dressed, some still in nightwear. A few men stood on the sidewalk in their boxer shorts. They had been rousted out of the building.

The HazMat teams were packing up to leave. When PJ got out of her car, a faint smell of ammonia wafted over to her. She had a short wait at the door of the building as her ID was checked and her name entered onto the log of people entering and leaving the scene. The walls of the tiny entry vestibule were dark dirty green, and seemed to press in on her. It would have been depressing to come and go through the spot every day. There was no one in sight, so she started up the stairs.

Climbing the flights of stairs to the third floor of the building where the murder had occurred, PJ was reminded in the clearest way that she had recently celebrated her forty-first birthday. The twenty extra pounds she carried weren’t defying the law of gravity, either, and by the time she reached the top she was breathing hard. The ammonia smell grew stronger as she climbed. It lightly stung her nose and throat, and there were tears poised in the corners of her eyes by the time she got to the third floor.

The door with the yellow tape was down at the end of the hall. There were three doors on each side, painted the same shade of green as the entry hallway, and a run of patterned blue carpet down the center. Decals were used to number the apartments, and the lettering was comically crooked, as if put on by a drunk. The yellowed wallpaper of mismatched patterns seemed appropriate for the place. There was a small window that hadn’t seen a washrag and a spritz of glass cleaner in years at the end of the hallway, but it wasn’t open. The overhead lighting consisted of two bare bulbs. The heat was stifling, a physical thing that crawled up her body. She closed her eyes and tried to pick up the bad odor reported by the tenant, but the ammonia overrode everything else, even the smell of the ashtray at her feet, crammed with butts. Evidently a smoker in 3A was exiled from the living quarters and used the hall as a smoking lounge.

It could be worse,
she thought.
If the toilets aren’t working, tenants in these places go out in the hall rather than foul their own nests.

There was an officer planted in the center of the hallway, controlling access to the apartment. The young woman looked as if she had been dipped in starch and blow-dried. Every hair was in place, her uniform was neat, and not a drop of sweat was in sight. PJ shook her head. It was criminal to look that competent before seven in the morning. The only concession to humanity was the fact that she had edged her way down the hall, presumably to escape the source of the odor—the end apartment, where the door was standing open. The officer’s eyes were locked onto PJ and narrowed in disapproval.

It must have been the orange-and-red flowered blouse.

PJ strode purposefully down the hall and identified herself again. Officer Erica Schaffer informed her that there had been cyanide gas in the end apartment which had condensed, evaporated, and left a film of acid. The HazMat team had washed down everything with an ammonia mixture and then sucked up the liquid with powerful vacuums. A few minutes ago, the place had been declared safe for entry, and the tenants would be let back into the building soon. It was obvious, though, that none of the curious stood a chance of getting past Officer Schaffer.

At the sound of their voices, Dave Whitmore’s head popped around the corner of the doorway. He came out, wiping his brow, pushing back the shock of brown hair that spent more time blocking the vision of his left eye than staying neatly in place. One look at his face and she knew that he was seriously upset. Dave had a reputation for squeamishness, but what he was feeling must have been far beyond that. It set off alarms in every part of PJ’s body. She was close enough so that the smell of decay from the end apartment slammed into her, floating out on top of the ammonia like roadkill layered on hot asphalt. She felt her legs grow weak, as if she were trying to stand on columns of water rather than muscle and bone.

“What is it?”

“Boss, the victim is…” Dave said. “My God, it’s Schultz’s son.”

PJ exhaled, and tried to draw shallow breaths instead of gulping the foul air. “Can’t be. He’s in prison.”

“He was released last Wednesday. The Assistant ME says the decomposition is accelerated because of the heat, but she estimates the body’s been there four days or more. Probably won’t be able to be more precise than that, but the general time frame fits.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

“He had the release papers in his pocket, along with some letters addressed to Rick Schultz. His clothing was searched by the HazMat team before they bagged it. You might find a dead guy with somebody else’s wallet, but not his prison release, for God’s sake. He looks bad, real bad. He was tied up and gassed. There’s no positive ID yet. That’ll come later. But it’s him, all right.”

She could read the certainty in his voice, and a numbness settled over her like a cold fog descending from somewhere much chillier than the ceiling of the hallway.

“Schultz is on his way here,” she said flatly.

“Go on back down and see if you can intercept him. He shouldn’t be up here.”

PJ pivoted and headed for the stairs. She hoped to catch Schultz outside the building, but she was too late. She heard his booming voice in the front hall, stepped up her pace, and met him on the second-floor landing. She put her arms out, her hands touching the walls on each side, forming a barrier to block his way. He towered over her five-foot-three height, and was still a powerful man although the years and poor habits had taken their toll. He could easily charge right past her. He stopped and melodramatically shielded his eyes.

“Christ, Doc, you ought to hand out sunglasses when you wear a blouse like that.”

“Schultz…”

He came up close to her and dipped his eyes toward her neckline.

“Nice view, though.”

He swiveled his head around, and when he was sure there was no one else in sight he kissed her lightly on the forehead. She remembered doing the same with her own living, vibrant son, not thirty minutes ago, and she trembled at the thought of what waited for Schultz in the apartment on the third floor.

“Leo, there’s something I have to tell you.”

He nodded his head toward the stairs. “Let’s go on up, and we’ll talk. You have some ideas already? This place smells like the world’s biggest cat litter box.”

She was silent. He studied her face and took a step back.

“Tell.”

There was no way to sugarcoat it, and Schultz wouldn’t want that, anyway. She put her hands on his shoulders, feeling the warm skin beneath his light shirt. There was a slight dampness under her fingers. The Pacer he’d driven over in didn’t have air-conditioning.

“The victim is Rick.”

His eyes went wide. “He’s in—”

“No, he’s not. He was released last Wednesday.”

“The asshole didn’t call me.”

PJ wasn’t sure if Schultz was referring to his son or to some prison official. She knew that Schultz had used his law enforcement connections to keep an eye on his son in prison.

His body slumped, and he leaned against the wall. She watched his face carefully, and saw waves of emotion pass over it like an earthquake and its aftershocks.

“I’ve got to see him,” he said. “Move, Doc.”

“Dave thinks it would be better if you weren’t involved right now,” she said. Her words sounded hollow. “So do I.”