Act of Betrayal (27 page)

“Just a little while ago. You’re pretty much clear on the hit-and-run. Wall was relieved, to say the least. He didn’t like the idea of somebody under his command freaking out like that.”

During the conversation, Schultz decided that he had to trust Anita with what he knew about the recent deaths. He took a deep breath and launched into it.

“I think the recent deaths are connected, Anita. Starting with Rick’s and Caroline Bussman’s, and including Rheinhardt and Canton.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me something I don’t know already.”

“You mean you’re already working on digging up past cases all the parties were involved with, looking for a revenge killer, that kind of thing?”

“Doc was way ahead of you,” she said smugly. “We’ve even got the killer identified, we think. Doc’s been out pounding the streets and making secret tape recordings.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah, we’re all kind of proud of her. Don’t tell her I said that.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“Elijah Ramsey. His son was executed last year. Remember the case?”

“Of course I remember the case. Man beat his kid sister to death over a wrecked car.”

“Good old Dad Ramsey has vanished from the face of the earth.”

“Why doesn’t anybody tell me this stuff? Hell, it’s not like I’m involved or anything.”

“Need I remind you that you’re the one who’s been slightly out of touch?”

Schultz pictured himself sitting in Mandoleras’s darkened living room, thinking seriously about blowing the guy away the minute he opened the door.

It wasn’t a pretty picture

“Okay, so I’m back. I want in on this.”

“Don’t talk to me, Boss man. I figure you got some talking to do to Doc and Wall.”

“You’re right,” he said. He reached to hang up the phone, then pulled it back toward him. Anita was still on the line.

“Thanks, Anita, for all you’ve done. I won’t forget it.”

“You got a memory like an elephant and a prick like a mouse, ain’t that what they say?”

He hung up on her, smirking. That woman had potential.

Schultz tried PJ’s number first. She was out of the office, and he didn’t want to try her home phone. He didn’t want Thomas to pick up and have to talk to the boy right then. He dialed her cell phone number, but got the message that it was unavailable, so she’d turned it off. So he did the only thing left: he called Wall.

Fifteen minutes later, after a blistering tongue-lashing and acknowledging numerous times that he ought to be tossed out of the department on his sorry ass, he was back on the case.

P
J GOT TO THE
fast-food restaurant with five minutes to spare. She’d missed lunch, so she bought a number two combo—two double cheeseburgers, no pickles, fries, and a soda. Her small square burgers came on a white paper plate, and her fries came in a cardboard box with a tiny package of salt inside. She sat at a booth next to the window. The only other customers inside were two couples, motorcyclists judging by the Harleys parked outside, sitting several booths away. There was a steady parade of vehicles through the drive-through right outside her window.

The cheeseburgers were hot, covered with diced grilled onions, and had the distinctive White Castle taste, something which has to be experienced rather than described.

As she ate, she watched the drive-up activity, wondering idly if one of the people was Cracker checking out the situation, or if he was somewhere remote like the Fiji Islands.

Thick gray smoke started to pour out from underneath the hood of a Chevy pickup in the drive-up lane. It was old, dented, and had rust along the rocker panels that reminded PJ of reddish lace edging. The driver flung the door open and raised the hood, then angrily kicked the tire. An employee glanced out the window, then sauntered outside with a fire extinguisher and sprayed the engine. He helped the irate driver push the vehicle out of line.

The lack of excitement and the relaxed pace of the employee led PJ to think vehicle fires might not be an unusual occurrence.

She ate her meal with no sign of any contact by Cracker. At two-twenty, she was about to give up and leave. The motorcyclists cleaned up their table and walked toward the door. One of the women dropped a piece of paper on PJ’s table as she walked by.

Pay phone at west corner of lot, five minutes.

PJ hurried to her car and looked for the pay phone outside. It was one of the type intended to be used from a car, and fortunately it wasn’t in use. She backed her car into the parking spot next to it and rolled down the window. She didn’t have long to wait before the phone rang.

“Hello,” she said nervously.

“It’s Cracker. What can I do for you?” His voice was flat and distorted, in the same way that Eleanor’s voice had been during the computer simulation. Startled, she wondered if Cracker was someone she knew personally. Would she recognize his unaltered voice?

“I need to locate a person,” she said. “It’s important.”

Of course it is, or I wouldn’t be talking to him. Get a grip.

She felt that every word she spoke to this genius would be analyzed, considered, undoubtedly recorded. She had to think before she spoke.

“I have some skill at that. Is this person a fugitive from the law?”

“No.”

Technically.

“Good. If so, I wouldn’t take the job.”

PJ’s silence asked the question for her.

“Because I’m only willing to help the police so far. I have a certain compassion for fugitives.”

There was no arguing with that, given his situation. Cracker was a wanted man himself.

“I need to talk to Darla Beth Ramsey, born April fifth, nineteen fifty-three, in Springfield, Illinois.” PJ gave him Darla’s last known address and place of employment. He asked for her social security number, but PJ didn’t know it.

“How do you plan to pay for this information?”

“I don’t suppose you take credit cards?”

There was a brief pause, then eerie mechanical laughter.

“It so happens I do,” he said. “Although it’s usually without the owner’s consent. I happen to know that your credit limit isn’t high enough on either of your two cards, and that your bank balance was exactly fourteen thousand, four hundred thirty-nine dollars and twenty-nine cents as of this morning. That’s checking plus money market account. You have some old Series EE savings bonds, which by the way you should cash in, since they’ve matured. You could get a better rate elsewhere.”

It was disconcerting to hear her finances discussed and know that he had been prying into her life. But she should have expected that when she asked Merlin to broadcast the message. Having attracted Cracker’s interest, she’d opened the door herself.

“What exactly is your charge? Maybe I can make installment payments.”

“I’m not a used car dealer, Lucky Penny. It’s cash up front. My usual fee is thirty-five thousand dollars.”

It was PJ’s turn to be silent. There was no way she could raise that kind of money. With the divorce, she had walked out on her old high-paying job, their house, and their savings just to retain custody of Thomas. PJ might be able to borrow it from her ex-husband, Stephen, but the thought turned her stomach.

She remembered the informal help network run by Louie, the A/V technician. There was no cash exchange there, only favors.

“You mentioned that I should bring something to trade,” she said.

“So I did. You have something interesting?”

“How about the promise of a favor in the future? Anything I can do that isn’t illegal.”

“Hmm. Let me think about that.”

PJ waited in the heat of an August afternoon. The sun was hot where it poured in the open window onto her left shoulder, and beads of sweat ran down her forehead and the back of her neck. She blinked as the salty drops rolled into her eyes. The double cheeseburgers made their presence known in her stomach. The heat and her nervous state would make her nauseated if things went on too long.

“It’s a deal. One future favor for the delivery of one Darla Beth Ramsey. Don’t worry, I won’t ask for your firstborn son or anything like that.”

“That’s—”

The connection was broken, and she was left sitting there wondering what she’d gotten herself into. It was going to have to be some favor to be worth thirty-five thousand dollars.

The things I do for that man,
she thought as she rolled up the window, started the car, and switched on the air-conditioning. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t strictly for Schultz. There could be other lives still at stake. And anyway, it was part of her job to bring the killer to justice.

P
J WAS BACK IN
the headquarters building, trying to shake off the disturbing feeling of having sold her soul. She was walking toward her office when she heard a familiar voice coming from around the corner. She quickened her step.

She came around the corner and there was Schultz, standing outside her office talking to Anita. The two of them were intent on each other, and hadn’t noticed her yet. PJ’s face cycled through several different emotions in succession, like an actress practicing before a mirror. By the time they turned toward her, she had regained her composure.

“Long time no see,” she said evenly. “Looks like you’ve been lying on the beach while the rest of us were working.”

She was pleased to see his hand start to rise to his sunburned head, then stop midway by a clear effort of will.

Score one for me.

“Good to be back, Doc,” he said, ignoring her comment after the damage was done. “I was just telling Anita that I’m glad Dave is doing so much better. Looks like it takes more than a couple of bullets to do that guy in.”

“Like one of those dinosaurs in old movies,” Anita chimed in. “Had to shoot ’em right in their little pea brains to kill ’em.”

“He should patent that luck of his. Could’ve sold some of it to Judge Canton.”

PJ frowned. Leave it to the two of them to make a joke out of a serious situation. She knew it was an example of the defensive kind of humor she frequently encountered on the job, but she never seemed to get into the spirit of it herself.

She had been elated to hear of Dave’s improvement, and she said so. Heads nodded in agreement.

She took a closer look at Schultz’s face. “Is that a—”

“Yes,” he said curtly.

Apparently he didn’t want anyone to notice the blister on his nose.

“Has Anita filled you in on the hit-and-run yet?” he asked.

“No, I’ve been… out of the office,” PJ said.

Just having a phone conversation with a killer. And what did you do over lunch?

Traffic flowed around them in the hallway. Frequently someone nodded to Schultz or stopped and clapped him on the back and said how glad they were he was back in the fold. PJ thought that he must know every single person in the department.

“There’s something I have to ask,” PJ said. Both pairs of eyes turned to her expectantly. “When you were working on the Ramsey case originally, did you consider the possibility that the victim got Jeremiah’s blood on her hands when Jeremiah defended her from an attacker? That there was another person present, someone Jeremiah later tried to cover up for?”

Schultz blinked. She could see him sorting back through his memories.

“Yeah,” he said. “No defense wounds on Jeremiah’s arms or hands. Check the photos taken during his physical exam. All that shows up is the scratch on his shoulder. If he’d been fending off somebody who had a baseball bat, he would have shown more damage.”

“Oh,” PJ said. She was mollified that Schultz had an answer.

The conversation veered off into details of the bombing, and PJ had to force herself to focus on what they were saying. Something inside her was in turmoil, and it had to do with how close Schultz was standing to her.

Anita went through the explanation about Loretta Trent, the witness who saw Schultz’s car stolen.

“Ah, the busybody.” PJ nodded. At least she could firmly set aside her doubts about Schultz on that score. She tried to recapture the feelings she’d had about him getting a man sentenced to death in order to further his own career. In the hallway, with his image filling her eyes and his presence raising goosebumps on her arms, those conjectures seemed far away and trivial.

“You knew about her?” Anita said.

“I caught a glimpse of her when I was at your house. I wondered if she might have seen anything.”

“Nice of you to come forward about it,” Schultz said sarcastically.

PJ’s eyes flashed as the stress of the past few days surfaced.

“I didn’t want to,” PJ snapped back. “I was convinced she would confirm that you were the driver. That you did it.”

The three were frozen for a moment. No one seemed to know what to say. The toilet flushed in the men’s room across from PJ’s office, and that broke the uncomfortable silence.

Anita punched Schultz lightly in the arm. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted.”

Schultz rolled his eyes at her, and Anita walked away smiling.

“I guess we need to talk,” Schultz said to PJ.

PJ folded her arms across her chest. “You might say that.”

He opened her office door and gestured inside. She preceded him, and he closed the door when they were both in the small room. She turned to face him, not knowing what she was going to say. There seemed to be a white noise in her mind.

“C’mere, you,” he said. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her toward him, wrapping his arms around her as though he thought she’d try to escape. His mouth found hers.

PJ resisted, but only briefly. His arms felt so good. She gave herself up to the kiss, melted into it, let all the emotion she’d been bottling up pour through her lips into his. She pressed the length of her body against him and thrilled to the warm delicious feeling that came over every inch of her body that was in contact with his.

Doubts? What doubts?

The first kiss was followed by many others.

Breathlessly, they pulled apart. He held her at arm’s length.

“Are we done talking?” he said.