Death at the Wheel (39 page)

I didn't have a tissue. My sleeves were wet and muddy. I let the tears run down my face and drip onto my lap. I cursed my infernal caution, my defenses, my hesitation, my fear of commitment. Would I even get a chance to say yes?

"You know I didn't want you to do that," Jack said abruptly. "Delivering the food. It was no job for a civilian...." There was a long pause while he debated what to say. "But if he lives—" He choked and pushed on. "—it's probably because of you. Because you distracted Moreau and we were able to get off those shots. He was running out of time."

I put my hand over his. It hadn't been an easy concession. "Thank you, Jack. I was never more scared in my life." I tapped my forehead gently. "My brain wasn't working, you see. All I could think of was that we had to do something. That it had gone on too long. Then I got out there and realized what a stupid thing I was doing, but there was no turning back. Not with him pointing that gun at me."

"It wasn't bright," he said, "but it was brave."

Dominic Florio, my second favorite cop and today my Rock of Gibraltar, came in carrying food for himself and a ginger ale for me. I grabbed it out of his hand and sucked greedily on the straw. "They're all in an uproar downstairs because you got out of bed," he reported. "They were planning to seize you bodily and carry you back. I think I've convinced them it's a waste of time. Oh, and you had a phone call from the Grantham police. I said you couldn't be disturbed. Durren's dead. Ran his car into a bridge, going about ninety. He left a note, saying he acted alone. Telling Julie he never dreamed they'd suspect her. He apologized to her..."

"Fat lot of good that'll do her," I muttered. "She sure could pick 'em, couldn't she?"

"...and to you."

"I wonder why he did it. He was such a cold fish. He didn't seem like the type for drama, for emotional endings."

"Maybe he couldn't stand failure."

"Failure?"

"Humiliation? He was a complete bust as a murderer. He tried to kill Cal Bass, and failed, and then he tried to kill you and failed again." He started to unwrap a sandwich. "Sure you don't want some of this?"

I made a face. "Very sure. How could anyone eat at a time like this?"

"You learn," he said.

"I hope I never have to."

The door opened and a tired-looking man in surgical green came in, surveyed the room, and settled on me and Jack and Andre's parents. "Thea Kozak? Lieutenant Leonard? Mr. and Mrs. Lemieux?" Jack nodded. They nodded. A dozen pairs of eyes were fixed on the doctor's face. Well-trained eyes, trying to read his message before he spoke.

I took a deep breath. Held it. Rose slowly to my feet, my eyes glued to his face. Everyone else rose, too, as if we were in church. Dom reached out and took my hand.

"It's been touch and go in there," he said. No one breathed. No one moved. No one made a sound. The doctor's eyes were on Jack, on the ramrod-stiff posture, on the set and anxious face. "We'll know better in a few hours, sir, but I think your boy is going to make it."

Everyone exhaled. Dom, Jack, and I shared a tight, silent embrace, dried our tears, and settled in for the long wait ahead. Sometimes the good guys win. Our boy was going to make it.

 

The End

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from

 

Playing God

 

by

 

Kate Flora

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

The small black dog skittered into the street, shining eyes registering canine astonishment that a vehicle dared to be out at this hour. Burgess stomped on the brakes, the Explorer responding with orgasmic ABS shudders, stopping just short of the beast. Four-wheel drive beating out four-foot traction. With a look Burgess decided to take as gratitude, the dog turned and trotted away. A good result. The cops waiting with the body wouldn't have taken kindly to freezing their nuts off while their detective worked a dead dog scene.

Dog was right. Three a.m. on this icy bitch of a February night, even a murderer should have known enough to stay home. February in Portland, Maine, wasn't a benign month. Tonight, with the temp at minus ten, a roaring wind and black ice under foot, it was winter at its worst. But that was the cop's life. Get a call there's a dead body in a car on a lousy night, you don't roll over and go back to sleep, planning on working it in the morning. You get up and go.

Not that Burgess had been asleep when Remy Aucoin called it in. He'd been finishing the report on an unattended handgun death, detailing the reasons they'd concluded it was suicide. He preferred working nights. He liked his landscape gray and quiet, regarded the day's flurries of activity—all those sounds and smells and people—as intrusions into the peace that was possible at night. Some cops didn't like nights. They got used to it—when you were low man on the totem pole, you got stuck on late out—but always found it a little spooky. He'd seen it. Touch a guy on the arm in the afternoon and he'd act one way, touch him the same way at night and he'd wheel around, hand on his gun, a little wild around the eyes.

The brass preferred him working days. Their grudging compromise was some of each. So Burgess, already well into a double shift, had gotten the call. He'd put on his expedition-weight underwear, lined, waterproof boots, and a snowmobile suit. A hard-faced, middle-aged Michelin Man.

But not everyone would dress for the weather and they were going to suffer. Crime scenes didn't take less time because it was cold. Ninety above or ten below, the job required the same slow, meticulous work. You had to give the dead their due.

In fiction, crime scenes were the pristine springboards of the mystery. People didn't move bodies and carry away souvenirs, cops didn't stomp on footprints, track blood everywhere, litter the scene with their own hair and fibers. In real life, anything could happen. He'd been to scenes so compromised by cops that the perp couldn't have asked for better. Once he'd found two EMTs and a fireman handling the murder weapon. Another time a patrolman washed the glasses the victim and her killer had used “so her parents wouldn't know she'd been drinking.” Hell of a piece of numbskull chivalry, with the girl already dead. He'd said that loud enough to make the papers. Gotten called on the carpet for making the department look bad. He didn't care. Truth was truth. At least the hour and the weather would keep spectators away.

He passed the neon lights of the hospital, moving fast as the slippery streets allowed. Saw the flashing light bar, only sign of life at this dismal hour. He stopped well short of the cruiser and the parked Mercedes. Stepping carefully in the existing tracks, he went to meet Remy Aucoin, the young patrol officer who'd found the body. Aucoin got out, head down and shoulders hunched defensively, like a kid expecting to be yelled at. Burgess wanted to slap a hand on his shoulder and tell him it was okay, but held back. He didn't know if it was okay, or if the kid had fucked up somehow. Looked like the kid thought he had. It usually wasn't the end of the world, but he'd never let on he thought that. He'd never have another crime scene go right if word got around he was getting soft.

The wind whistled up the hill and tore into them, rattling the ties on his hood and stinging his eyes. “What have we got?” he asked, raising his voice.

Aucoin was hanging on to his uniform cap, trying to keep it from blowing away. “Dead guy in the Mercedes. Looks like someone jammed a rod down his throat.” There was a faint whiff of sickness on his breath.

An ugly corpse, maybe the kid's first, or the prospect of getting reamed by Portland's meanest cop? He'd find out soon enough. “Rod. That a euphemism or are we talking about a piece of metal?”

“Metal, sir.”

“There's crime scene tape in a bag on the front seat. Mark it off and then I want you to be the recording officer. You got your notebook?” Aucoin nodded. Burgess raised his flashlight and examined the kid's face. His color was bad. Despite the sour breath, Burgess decided it wasn't distress, that would be green. This was the blue of hypothermia. Kid probably wasn't wearing thermals. Didn't want to look fat in his uniform. Young guys were like that, and this was Aucoin's first winter. He'd learn. “There's a watch cap, a heavy sweater and wind pants on the back seat. Put 'em on.”

Aucoin hesitated, pride warring with common sense, then nodded. Burgess watched Aucoin grab the gear, then look around for a dressing room, like he wasn't standing in a snowy street. “Out here or in your car, I don't care, but hurry it up. Like to get things under control before I turn into a Popsicle.”

While Aucoin opened his cruiser door and sat on the seat to pull on the pants. Burgess got the crime scene tape, a mallet and a handful of wooden stakes and dumped them in Aucoin's lap. “Ground's probably too hard for stakes. Trees. Poles. Use whatever you can,” he said. “How'd you happen to find him?”

The young patrolman looked like he wanted to be anywhere else on earth. “I'd noticed the car earlier, sir. It had been there a while. I thought I'd better check.”

“How much earlier?”

“Three hours, sir.” The words came out a little bit strangled.

“You waited three hours to check on him?”

“Man's a regular, sir.”

Burgess shined his light on the MD plates. “So our victim's a doctor. What's this regular do here?”

“Sex, sir.”

He didn't like it that the kid had let so much time pass. That this doctor was allowed to park on a residential street and have sex in his car. “You know of any sex act that takes three hours?”

“No, sir.” Kid's teeth were chattering.

No sense wasting time out here on things they could do inside later. Like talk. “You run the plates?”

“Pleasant. Dr. Stephen Pleasant. Radiologist over at the hospital. Pine State Radiology. Car's leased by the business.”

The shiver he felt wasn't from the cold. He'd run into Pleasant before. “Live around here? This neighborhood?” In this part of town, the West End, there were some lovely houses.