Unidentified Woman #15 (28 page)

A confusion of sounds and voices poured from the speaker of my smartphone.

“What are you doing?” A woman’s voice.

“You…”

“It wasn’t our fault.”

“Wait.”

“No, no, no.”

Pop-pop-pop—the sound of Bubble Wrap bursting.

Nina disappeared from view.

“McKenzie, I’m shot,” she said.

I dropped both the phone and binoculars and flew out of the Cherokee, not bothering to shut the door behind me. The SIG Sauer was in my hand as I crossed the parking lot. There was no slipping or sliding this time. I ran with purpose.

As I moved to the ramp that led to the second floor of the pavilion, I saw her.

Fifteen.

She came down the ramp in a hurry.

She was carrying a gun. My nine-millimeter Beretta.

She saw me and stopped.

I stopped, too.

She brought the gun up with both hands and sighted on me, a pyramid stance—one foot in front of the other with about twenty-four inches between heel and toe, arms outstretched at the same level as her shoulders, leaning into the shot. Whether she knew what she was doing or just slid into it, I couldn’t say.

I, on the other hand, knew exactly what I was doing when I went into a Weaver stance and sighted on the center of her chest with the SIG.

We stood like that, two samurai waiting for the other to make a move.

One beat.

Two beats.

You don’t have time for this,
my inner voice screamed.
Nina’s been shot.

Fifteen lowered her gun and started running in the opposite direction.

I lowered mine and let her go.

I sprinted up the ramp.

Mitch and Craig were coming down.

They had guns in their hands, carrying them like they didn’t know what they were for.

“Dyson, Dyson,” one of them said—I don’t know which. “Thank God you’re early.”

“Did you see her?” said the other. “She tried to kill us.”

I might have told them to shut the fuck up. I don’t remember. I remember only that I didn’t care if I blew my cover or not.

The floor of the pavilion was crowded with benches. I dashed around them, making my way to the rear. I found Nina sitting down, her back against the railing, her legs stretched out in front of her. The box of pearls and the envelope filled with cash were lying next to her. Mitch and Craig had left them both.

They left her, too, the bastards.

I went to Nina.

Knelt at her side.

Set the SIG on the concrete floor next to the pearls and cash.

Nina’s eyes were wet and shining, yet her face was pale. She smiled, an amazing thing to do, I thought.

“It doesn’t hurt at all,” she said.

I examined her wool coat. There was no blood, but I could see the hole on the right side—the worst side to be shot, because that’s where so many major organs reside. The heat of the bullet had singed the material as it cut through it.

I cautiously unbuttoned the coat.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Nina said.

“Shhh,” I told her.

“You didn’t want to involve me in your quests, but I insisted. What did I say? I liked living the devil-may-care? Serves me right getting shot.”

“Don’t talk.”

I finished unbuttoning the coat and gently peeled it back. I expected to find plenty of blood. Instead, her white blouse was unblemished where the wound should have been.

I pulled the coat farther back and found a second hole.

Somehow the bullet had entered the front of the coat and gone out through the back without actually touching her.

Nina looked down.

Her hand went to her side.

She caressed it as if she wanted to see damage and was surprised that there wasn’t any.

“I’ll be a dirty name,” she said. “The way the bullet pulled at my coat … It actually knocked me down.”

I sat back and pulled my knees up. I rested my face against my knees.

“Hey,” Nina said. “Hey, McKenzie. Are you crying?”

FIFTEEN

It started drizzling at sundown. A half hour later it turned to sleet. Twenty minutes following that it became snow. The weather demanded my full attention as I drove my Jeep Cherokee north along Highway 169 at a cautious 35 mph—which was a good thing. It helped me get my head back in the game.

I was as surprised by my reaction to Nina’s non-shooting as she had been. I hadn’t wept since my mother died, and that was when I was in the sixth grade; my father forbade even the appearance of tears at his funeral, and I had followed his instructions. Yet there I was, all misty-eyed, my throat closed, my hands shaking, and Nina hugging my heaving shoulders and telling me in a soothing voice that she was perfectly fine; better than fine, she was exhilarated by the experience. When the cops arrived, they thought I was the one in trouble.

Explanations were made; Commander Dunston and Detective Shipman were summoned. Shipman smiled at my behavior but said nothing. Bobby, on the other hand, kept staring as if I were an old friend whose name he couldn’t remember.

Nina insisted that El hadn’t actually shot
at
her. She had been walking toward them, said, “What are you guys doing?”—something like that. All of a sudden, Mitch and Craig had guns. And El had a gun. Nina didn’t know who fired first, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t El, and if it was El, she was
defending
herself. She was shooting at Mitch and Craig and hit her by mistake, probably didn’t even know Nina was standing there. Neither Bobby nor Shipman could see what difference that made. Neither could I. Nina thought there was a
huge
difference and said she would refuse to testify against El if she was arrested.

“No harm, no foul—isn’t that what you guys always say?” she told us.

This caused Bobby to throw up his hands like a parent dealing with a child who won’t eat her green beans. He thought—aloud—that she must be suffering from shock. Nina buzzed his cheek and said, “Sure.”

Meanwhile, Shipman wanted to arrest both Mitch and Craig and sweat Elbers’s location out of them.

Except that Mitch and Craig don’t know where she’s hiding, I told her.

At least we could convince them to file a complaint against Elbers for assault with a deadly weapon, she said.

But, I said, given the reason they were soliciting money from Nina in the first place, it was highly unlikely they would press charges. Besides—and I was looking at Nina when I said it—there’s a question of who shot at whom.

“We’ll hold them for possession and sale of stolen property,” Shipman said.

“About that…”

I told her that the necklace wasn’t actually stolen. I had the receipt and the credit card statement, and the jewelry store more likely than not had video footage of me making the purchase.

Shipman demanded an explanation.

I gave her one, although I omitted both Herzog’s involvement and the staged drive-by shooting.

She asked what the hell I had hoped to accomplish by pretending to sell stolen merchandise to a couple of thieves.

Use Mitch and Craig to find El, I replied.

“Congratulations,” Shipman said. “Your plan worked. You must be very proud.”

Around and around we went. The money, pearls, and SIG Sauer were eventually returned to me and the responding officers were dismissed. I gave the money and pearls to Nina. She stuffed them into her bag and moved to the edge of the pavilion. She set the bag at her feet and rested both hands on the railing. Bobby joined her there. He whispered something. Nina hooked an arm around his and rested her head against his shoulder. Together, they both gazed out at Lake Como. Shipman and I decided to give it a rest and drifted to the railing as well, standing on either side of the couple. Nina took my hand and squeezed hard.

“Ever since you entered my life, I’ve been having the most fun,” she said. “Before that I was just a lowly, boring nightclub owner.”

“Lowly?” Shipman said.

“Boring?” Bobby said.

“No more,” I said. “I’m done putting you at risk so I can play cops and robbers.”

“Amen,” Shipman said.

Nina released Bobby and wrapped both of her arms around mine. She kissed my cheek the same way she had kissed his earlier—like it was the punch line to a joke.

“Sure,” she said.

“I mean it.”

“He had better mean it,” Bobby said. “Next time I’ll arrest him.”

“For what?” Nina asked.

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

Nina thought that was hilarious. Bobby was serious, though. So was I. Nina didn’t believe it. She quoted Sally Field’s second Oscar speech.

“You like me, you really like me.”

No one seemed to know what to say to that, so we all remained quiet for a few beats. It was Shipman who broke the silence.

“Got any more bright ideas, McKenzie?” she asked.

“One or two.”

“Any of them legal?”

Bobby asked, “What
are
you going to do, McKenzie?”

“I’m going back to Deer River.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

Neither Shipman nor Bobby asked why I was going or what I hoped to accomplish when I arrived there. I don’t think they wanted to know.

Bobby patted my shoulder and said, “Call me when you return.” He took a few steps away, then turned and came back. He hugged Nina hard.

“Dammit,” he said.

“Best to Shelby and the girls,” she told him.

“They’re going to be so mad at you.”

“Blame McKenzie.”

“I will. I do.”

A few minutes later he disappeared. So did everyone else. Nina and I stood alone at the railing.

“I know you’re embarrassed,” Nina said, “about crying the way you did when you thought I was shot and then found out I wasn’t. I need to tell you, though—that was the best gift you’ve ever given me. And you’ve given me a sixty-thousand-dollar piano.”

“You’re welcome.” What else was I going to say?

“It would bother me, though, it really would, if I couldn’t help out on your cases anymore.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

Nina kissed my cheek and said, “Sure.”

“I wish you’d stop doing that.”

“Do you have something else in mind?”

I did, yet it had nothing to do with sex—the second time I surprised Nina that day.

“You really are discombobulated, aren’t you?” she asked me.

“No, but you soon will be. That’s why I’m going to take you home. Right now you’re high on adrenaline, except it’s going to wear off. You’re going to crash and burn—maybe get the shakes, dizziness, nausea, exhaustion. I’m going to take you home and wrap you in a blanket, set you in front of a fire, and force-feed you hot chocolate until you relax and fall into a long and untroubled sleep.”

“McKenzie, this isn’t the first close call I’ve had since we’ve been together.”

“It’s going to be the last.”

“I thought we were going to talk about it.”

My burn phone started playing its ridiculous song, interrupting the conversation.

“This is Dyson,” I said. “What the hell do you want?”

“I just wanted … this is Mitch. I wanted to find out what happened. Should we be afraid?”

“The girl was unhurt, if that’s what you mean.”

“How is that possible? I saw her shot.”

“Just dumb luck, man. The bullet grazed her. I got her out of there before the cops came, which is what you should have done.”

Nina moved in front of me and pointed the fingers of both hands like they were guns.

“Phhew, phhew,” she chanted.

I turned my head.

“We were under fire,” Mitch said. “The girl—you saw the girl.”

“I saw her.”

“Why didn’t you kill her?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it was the thirty or forty people standing around going duh…”

“There weren’t that many.”

“Besides, I haven’t been paid yet.”

“We were going to pay you, except—now we’re a little short. The woman, Nina, she owes us four thousand dollars.”

“Stay the hell away from the woman.”

Nina stuck her tongue out, and I turned away from her again.

“But our money…” Mitch said.

“Forget the damn money. Listen to me. Right now the woman’s high on adrenaline with an interesting story to whisper to her friends when there’s no one else around to hear. If you start leaning on her, there’s a chance she’ll freak and go to the cops. Here’re the pearls, here’s the money; here’re the guys that tried to shoot me.”

“But we didn’t.”

“What’s the name of that cop, the female detective you told me about? Shipman? Think she’ll buy that?”

“I get it…”

“Whaddya think she’s going to do?”

“I said I get it.”

“Leave the woman alone.”

“Fine, fine, fine. What are we supposed to do now? The Boss wants the job done.”

“Who knew you were going to be in Como Park?”

“What? No one.”

“El knew.”

“She must have followed us like she did the other night.”

I came
this
close to explaining that I was responsible for Wednesday’s drive-by shooting.

“Think about it,” I said. “You must have told somebody.”

“Just the Boss,” Mitch said. “And Kispert. We sent them e-mails saying we were meeting with you and Mr. Herzog. Where is Mr…?”

“E-mails? You sent e-mails?”

“Yes.”

The silence that followed while I attempted to reason it out must have spooked Mitch.

“Do you think Kispert arranged it?” he asked. “Or the Boss? Why would they do that?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Dyson, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t want you to do anything. Leave it to me.”

“What are
you
going to do?”

Nina placed her thumbs on her temples, wiggled her fingers, and crossed her eyes, forcing me to turn away again. It’s because she distracted me that I blame her for the catastrophic mistake I made, although I wouldn’t realize it until much later—I answered Mitch’s question.

I said, “I’m going up to Deer River to see if I can get an idea where the girl is hiding from her friends.”

“Thank you, thank you. We’ll get you the money as soon as we can.”