Out Of Time (38 page)

As for me, a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. The day after Steven Hill tried to blow off my butt, I snuck out of my hospital bed and visited the hospital’s automatic teller machine in hopes of coaxing enough cash from it to pay for a snack from the lobby machines (Bobby D. turned out to be right: the food there was horrible). When my balance flashed on the screen, I felt like the winner of a slot-machine jackpot in Vegas: I was $20,000 more flush than I had anticipated. I’ve never been great about balancing my checkbook, but this seemed a substantial slip-up.

When I was released from the hospital, I traced the funds to a cash deposit made several days before our chase through the woods. I knew at once that Steven Hill had been trying to set me up for the murders by making it look like I’d been paid for killing Tillman, Carter and Bunn as a way to set Gail free. He had used a deposit slip stolen from my office during the break-in and he forged my handwriting pretty damn well. What a shame his plan had been nipped so early in the bud.

I kept the money.

I didn’t even have to think about it khinhei.

Hill couldn’t complain without admitting his guilt. All I had to do was pay taxes on it and spend the rest. Life can be simple if you let it be. I thought hard about how I should spend it, though. I needed a new car, but Nanny Honeycutt’s fee would cover that. I needed a new gun, but even a clean one was unlikely to cost more than five hundred dollars.

I decided that what I really needed was a vacation, one that would take me far from the “real world,” as defined by Steven Hill. Of course, I didn’t want to go alone. And I hadn’t gotten through this case all on my own, as much as I hated to admit it. Past history aside, one man had been there for me when I needed him and he’d been working as hard as I had over the past month. It was time to put my pride aside and recognize that, like it or not, he was an important part of my life.

Which is why I took Jack with me on a three-week cruise through the Caribbean on a private forty-foot sailboat. A man who gives foot massages is worth his weight in ballast.

I didn’t forget Bill Butler, though. I sent him a postcard from Nevis that read “The weather is here. Wish you were beautiful. Love, Casey.”

Jack and I had a great time. We swam, we fished, we sunned, we sinned and we spent every penny of Steven Hill’s ill-gotten gains beneath the bright Caribbean sun. Jack sat back and let someone else make the drinks for a change. I ate fish baked in banana leaves, with fresh tomatoes and chilies, danced drunkenly on the deck each night to recorded calypso music and swore to lifetime friendships with a crew whose names I could never remember once morning and sobriety came. That’s what happens when you can order paper umbrella-topped drinks without feeling like a pain in the butt for the bartender. A week into the adventure, Jack said he felt like a gigolo. I told him not to worry. I told him that’s what friends are for.

When I got back to work, tanned and ready to deal with my backlog of cheating spouse cases once more, Bill Butler tried to make my near-death up to me. In fact, he’s still trying. He’s said he is sorry a million times and has long since ceased telling me what to do. But I’ve kept telling him that he’s going to have to kiss my .45 caliber ass for the next twenty years in order to atone.

Besides, I had asked the gods for a sign as to our future together and I got one in spades: the medical report came back stating that measurements proved the bullet that had ripped a hole in my left thigh came from Bill’s gun. If that isn’t proof positive that Bill is, quite literally, a pain in the ass, I don’t know what is.

Bill tried to make that one up to me by pulling out his badge and biting into it when I reminded him that he’d promised to eat his badge if Steven Hill was dirty. Unfortunately, he broke a crown chomping down, and I had to drive him to the dentist for emergency repairs. He bitched the entire way.

In a way, I’m glad he screwed up so royally. It allows me to lord it over him for years to come. I expect I’ll get tired of my petty revenge eventually, and then we’ll probably give our ill-fated non-love affair another try. It’s tough to walk away completely. I keep thinking of him carrying me through the woods and the way we laughed ourselves silly over a bullet wound beneath the Carolina moon.

For whatever reason, somewhere, underneath it all, we connect—and I can’t say that about myself and very many people. Maybe it’s a good connection; maybe it’s a bad connection. I don’t know. I just know that I miss it when it’s not there. So I keep hoping that one day the planets will align just right and we can test the bond between us. In fact, I might just ask Robert if he also does astrology. I’d like to know when that might be.

For now, Bill and I spend our days happily arguing the finer points of every topic we discuss. It appears that we disagree on everything. For example, Bill says that Steven Hill got what he deserved. That death was too good for him. He thinks Hill’s paying the price for what he did every day for the rest of his life. I’m not so sure. Someone like Steven Hill could end up running the prison and loving it. He’s cruel. He’s cunning. He’s amoral and smart. And he’s still alive.

I asked Bill once why Hill was allowed to plead down to life in prison when Gail never had that chance. He told me that he thinks the system works just fine and that, in the end, justice prevails.

Me? I don’t agree. Everyone says that justice is blind. But I think that, most of the time, she’s just looking the other way.

# # #

Published by Avon Books August 1998

Copyright © 1998 by Kathleen G. Munger

e-book version published by Thalia Books February 2011

Visit 
http://www.katymunger.com
 for more information on the author and her books.

Books by Katy Munger, writing as Gallagher Gray

PARTNERS IN CRIME

A CAST OF KILLERS

DEATH OF A DREAM MAKER

A MOTIVE FOR MURDER

Casey Jones books by Katy Munger:

LEGWORK

OUT OF TIME

MONEY TO BURN

BAD TO THE BONE

BETTER OFF DEAD

BAD MOON ON THE RISE

Books by Katy Munger, writing as Chaz McGee

DESOLATE ANGEL

ANGEL INTERRUPTED

ANGEL OF DARKNESS (2012)

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.