With Vics You Get Eggroll (A Mad for Mod Mystery Book 3) (21 page)

THIRTY-TWO

Iverson stood by the back tail lights. His police cruiser was parked catty-corner behind me, leaving me nowhere to go. He pointed to the ground where a puddle was forming from a drip underneath my car.

“I’d loan you money for gas, but there’s no telling how much good it’ll do you. How about you hop in and I’ll give you a ride?”

He acted cool—too cool. It was like he was detached from what was happening—aloof and calm and emotionally bereft. Conversely, adrenaline coursed through my arms and legs. In that moment, I saw the pair of handcuffs that dangled from his left hand, a hand that he kept close to his side so I wouldn’t see it. And I knew. We were alone in the parking lot to the side of a Mini Mart. He’d cut my fuel line, so even if his car hadn’t parked me in, I couldn’t get far. My handbag with my phone was on the floor of the passenger side of my car—too far to reach.

“Get in my car, Ms. Night.” His voice was dead, like it had been programmed.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going voluntarily.” I had to keep calm. I had to figure out something before Iverson got me into his car. I looked over his head. I couldn’t see inside the shop from where we were, and any cars on the road wouldn’t be able to see me.

“You were one of the lucky ones,” he said quietly. He reached into the back seat of my car and pulled out a black plastic trash bag that had been stashed behind the cans of Cool Cat and Beach Party. I hadn’t put it there. He must have anticipated this very encounter from the minute Hudson and I left the paint store. “You could say Lt. Allen saved you. When I pulled you over, you were just another woman to me. Then you mentioned his name. Ironic, isn’t it? That the same man who killed my sister is the one who saved your life.” He fed his arm into the trash bag and then pulled his gun from the holster.

“Your sister? The woman Jake Morris was hiding in his apartment was your sister?”

“Stephanie.” His voice hitched, and he stepped toward me. I stepped back. “She left me alone when she went off with him. And now she’s dead and I’m alone again.”

He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Jake had said that Stephanie came from an abusive family. She ran away and left Iverson to fend for himself. He’d been fourteen at the time. Whatever he’d lived through in those fourteen years had turned him into a killer.

“Lt. Allen was at that house to save your sister. He heard her call for help.”

“I’ve heard his story,” he said. “His shift was over. He should have walked past. I kept a watch on her. I would have saved her. He had no business going inside.”

“But you’re a police officer now. You know he only went inside because he thought she needed help. Just like he’s trying to find Barbie Ferrer—” I stopped. “Where is she? Where are you keeping her?”

“It ends where it started,” he said. His voice remained flat, lifeless. He pulled a rolled up wool blanket from the back seat and folded it around the gun.

“You abducted women. You killed at least two. It couldn’t all be to frame Lt. Allen.”

“My sister was abducted. The police didn’t save her, they killed her. That’s what I relive over and over.”

Realization dawned on me. “You kill the women who have no siblings. You release the ones who have brothers and sisters.” He was tortured by his own sister’s death when he was fourteen. He protected the sisters of families from living through the nightmare of loss he’d dealt with, but murdered the women he thought no one would miss.

“Your sister wasn’t abducted. She left with Jake voluntarily. She wanted to get away. She would have come back for you.”

“You know your fate, Ms. Night.”

He spoke my name with the same detachment he spoke of life and death. I remembered his words in front of Jumbos.
When will this end? When justice is served.
He saw himself as justice.

Without warning, Iverson lunged at me. The handcuffs snapped onto my wrists. I pulled away. He was faster than I was. He jerked on the links between bracelets. I fell forward. He pushed me back. My thigh bounced off the side of the car.

Fear clouded my mind. My hands were cuffed together and I couldn’t think. A car appeared on the road. I turned to look at it and heard a faint gunshot. I looked back at Iverson. He’d shot out my right rear tire. He moved to the right and fired at my front tire, and then tossed the blanket in the front seat of my car.

“You almost spoiled everything, you know that? I marked your car like I marked the rest of them—broken tail light, out-of-state plates. Single woman in her late forties. No family. No anybody. You would have been perfect. Who would have come looking for you?”

Inside, a rage bubbled up to the surface. I stood perfectly still. The only thing within reach were the paint cans stacked in the backseat of my car. A bullet would tear through the aluminum like a hot knife cutting through butter.

“What about Tex?” I asked.

He laughed. “Your precious lieutenant isn’t available to save your life tonight.”

“Where is he?”

“Two women missing. Which life is more valuable? You? Or Barbie Ferrer? He knows about her. He’ll find out about you on the news.”

He spoke Barbie’s name with a quiet reverence. Barbie, I knew, had a sister. She had a family. In Iverson’s world, she was going to live and I was going to die.

Time stood still. I grabbed the handle to the can of Lemon Twist. Iverson aimed. I swung the paint can at him. It clipped his elbow. The lid came loose and bright yellow paint flooded the ground. The gun fired past me. I grabbed a second paint can and threw it. He fired again. Beach Party exploded on impact, sending taupe paint through the air.

I ran to his police cruiser. He tackled me. I clawed at the ground, trying to get away from him. The handcuffs made it difficult. His fingernails bit into my calves and yanked me backward. The flesh of my knees and thighs burned as I was pulled over the loose gravel. I twisted and kicked wildly, terrified.

“We both know how this is going to end, Ms. Night. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”

I hated the way he said my name, how he maintained the professionalism of the police force while his hand moved up my leg and gripped the back of my thigh. My stomach turned. I relaxed for a moment, and then shot my foot out at him. My patent leather shoe connected with his head. He screamed. I scrambled back up and ran to his cruiser.

The keys were still in the ignition. I threw the gear shift into reverse. A gun fired. The car rocked to the right. In the rearview mirror I saw Iverson stand and approach. He was grotesque, his face bloodied and his uniform now covered in taupe paint. I stomped on the pedal but my shoe, slick with my own coating of paint, slipped off the surface. Iverson fired at the left tire. The car shuddered and stalled.

I twisted the key and pumped the gas. “Come on, come on, come on,” I said. The car jerked to life. Iverson was directly behind me. I threw the car in reverse and slammed into him. Even after I felt the collision, I kept my foot on the pedal. The tires jumped the curb in front of the Mini Mart and plowed through the corner of the building. The airbag deployed and smacked me in the face and that’s the last thing I remembered.

THIRTY-THREE

To count among my least favorite experiences was waking up in a hospital bed. I left as soon as the staff was comfortable that I could manage my pain at home. The physical injuries I sustained would heal in time. The emotional ones would too. Iverson had called me one of the lucky ones. I couldn’t help but be reminded of those who hadn’t been as lucky: Kate Morrow and Linda Gull, now dead. And those who had lived: Cleo Tyler, Susan Carroll.

Barbie Ferrer had been found chained to the back of the sofa in the same house where Iverson’s sister had died. He’d bought the house years ago but had left it unattended. If Tex had noticed anything unusual about it on his drive-bys, lives might have been saved. But Iverson had been hip to what people would notice and what they wouldn’t, and he used that knowledge to stay under the radar while keeping hostages. Each woman would be forever scarred by the memories of their imprisonment. I suspected feelings of paranoia and mistrust would haunt them far longer than they’d been held captive.

I had an odd pair of caretakers: Hudson and Lyndy. It seems that while on painkillers, I’d refused Hudson’s offer to stay with him until I was well, so instead, he brought me to my apartment building. Lyndy joined him. Something about me reminding him of his daughters. The thought was both heartbreaking and touching at the same time, so I accepted his kindness.

I knew from the news that ran on the small television set in my hospital room that Officer Iverson—just Iverson now—had been pronounced dead on arrival. Chief Washington and Sgt. Osmond had visited me and I’d told them what I’d learned in that parking lot. Iverson’s sister had been abducted when he was fourteen. Tex had worked the case. Iverson had been drawn to the force to protect and serve to try to avenge her death, but he couldn’t handle what he saw on the job. Tex had predicted it when he said he didn’t know what the job would do to Iverson in the long run, but he’d been blind to the fact that the long run was also the here and now.

Any consolation I could have taken from knowing the abductions were over was trumped by the knowledge that I’d killed a man. That’s what
I’d
have to live with for the rest of my life. It made me a different person than the one I thought I was, and it made me rethink a whole lot of things about what it meant to be an independent forty-eight-year-old woman.

The sun streaming through the bedroom curtains told me it was afternoon, and the empty feeling in my stomach told me I was hungry. I was in a pair of yellow cotton PJs, and I pulled a lightweight robe on top of them and went to the living room. Rocky bounded into the hallway and almost knocked me over.

“Well, look who’s awake,” Hudson said. He sat at my dining room table with Tex, Lyndy, and Dennis O’Hara, the realtor I’d called to list the building. A pile of poker chips sat in the middle of the table. Hudson set his hand of cards face down. I recognized the deck; the cards were printed with orange and green daisies.

“You never have a camera when you need one,” I said. My legs collapsed under me and I caught myself on the turquoise sofa. Three of the four men jumped up to help me. Tex remained seated.

“Lt. Allen, can I see you outside for a moment?”

He pushed his hand over his dark blond hair and leaned back in his chair. His eyes connected with Hudson’s, who nodded once. Tex stood and left the room.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to the remaining men. I followed Tex out of the apartment and into the hallway. It smelled vaguely of paint. Tex descended the stairs faster than I did, and I caught up with him in the parking lot. A mist hung in the air, indicating that rain had either happened while I was asleep or was on its way.

“Night, I don’t know what to say,” Tex said.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I bought into Iverson’s act. He fed me just enough information to keep me distracted. I knew the job was taking its toll on him but I didn’t know why. I didn’t even see that every time a body showed up, he was there. I should have seen the rest. I should have been there.”

“No, you shouldn’t have been. It was not your investigation. You should have been anywhere
but
there. So I don’t see what the problem is.”

He turned to me, and I saw loss in his eyes. “Because of his vendetta against me and the force, women died. Blood was shed. You almost died. I trusted him and that put you in danger.”

“He would have gotten to me no matter what you did, Lieutenant. He kept a watch on me because I kept a watch on you. I’m as much to blame for my part in this as anybody.”

He put his hands on my upper arms and faced me head-on. We were six inches apart. “You’re not to blame. You were a victim.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I said quietly. “I fought back. Iverson’s dead because I wouldn’t let him make me a victim.”

He put his arms around me and held me close. I felt his heartbeat against my ear. There was no heat in the embrace, no passion, no lust. Only consolation. And I hugged him back to reciprocate.

Tears filled my eyes. In the past week, Tex and I had traded in the commodity of personal experience. We knew each other’s vulnerabilities; we’d shared secrets that we might both have preferred to keep to ourselves. Things between us would never be the same.

“When I moved to Dallas, I put up walls. I built myself a glass house and you came along and threw a rock at it.” I said. “Before that, I didn’t know what I was shutting out of my life.”

“Night, I’ve seen things I never want you to see. I’ve seen bugs digesting a corpse. Victims of knife wounds. Women who have been beaten to the point of concussions.”

“You didn’t put those things in the world. They were already there.”

“But if I can keep you from seeing them, then I’m doing my job.”

“Your job?”

“My job. To protect and serve.”

He reached his hand out and hooked his finger over mine. We stood there, index finger to index finger, with the scent of cut grass and burning mesquite in the air. While I could feel things falling into place, I felt other things shifting. I looked down and blinked a few times to stave off the tears of good-bye.

“Hey,” Tex said. He raised his knuckle to my chin and tipped my head up. “You’re in good hands,” he said. He bent down and kissed me lightly.

We pulled apart. “You know there’s no way we would work as a couple, right?” I said.

“I’ve played a couple of scenarios out in my head and—while I wouldn’t mind reenacting a few of them—I came to the same conclusion.”

I stepped away and held up a hand in a wave. “See ya around, cowboy,” I said.

He walked to his Jeep, but turned back when he reached it. “Hey, Night,” he said. “No matter what, we’ll always have Hunan Palace.”

I walked backward toward the building. The mist had turned to a light rain that bounced off his shoulders like a halo of pixie dust. He flashed me a bright white smile that, coupled with his crisp, clear, blue eyes, would have stolen the heart of a lesser women. Who was I kidding? No matter what happened, there would always be a place in my heart for Tex.

When I went back inside, I ventured into the downstairs hall. The walls glowed with a soft shade of aqua, and the casing around each door frame had been refreshed with a coat of bright white. The vintage lighting fixtures mounted to the hall ceiling cast off a soft, pinkish light. There wasn’t a burned out bulb in sight.

I climbed the stairs and found Hudson alone at the table. The poker chips sat in a pile in the center. I raised an eyebrow and sat in one of the empty seats.

“Who won?” I asked.

“Lyndy,” Hudson said.

“Too bad for you.”

“You win some, you lose some.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I think Tex made him nervous. When you guys went out the back door, he collected his winnings and left out the front.”

I laughed. “What about Dennis?”

“Outside having a smoke.”

“How do you know him?”

“You had a meeting scheduled for this past Monday. When you didn’t show, he tried to track you down. He probably would have figured things out from the news, but I called him back and told him what was going on.”

“I asked him to list the apartment building for sale. We were going to do a walk-through. Did you paint the hallway?”

He tipped his head to the side. “Lyndy thought it would be a nice touch to spruce the place up before you sold it.”

“A buyer might not want aqua walls in the hallway.”

“The realtor found an interested buyer and it turns out, that’s exactly what he wants.”

“Already?”

“Madison, I know you have some bad memories of this place, but it’s a good investment. Somebody was bound to snatch it up.”

“I guess so. I didn’t expect anything to happen so quickly.”

“Nothing’s going to happen if you don’t want it to. You’re the owner and technically it’s not even listed for sale.”

The clock on the wall read two thirty. “What day is it?” I asked.

“You don’t know?” He looked amused. “It’s Wednesday. The doctor gave you some pretty heavy medicine. You don’t remember me coming up to check on you? Bringing Rocky to visit? Putting
Pillow Talk
into your DVD player?”

I looked away and tried to remember details from the last couple of days. Fragmented images ran together like a pileup of cars in a highway accident. I didn’t remember Hudson checking on me. I didn’t remember Rocky or
Pillow Talk
or day turning to night or night turning to day. The only thing I remembered was feeling safe.

He reached his hand across the table and held mine. His amber eyes stood out against his tanned face and black hair. I stood and pulled him to his feet. “I’m going to shower and get dressed. When I come back out, do you think we could get dinner?”

“I can’t. Dan and Cleo Tyler are expecting me to come over. They want to talk to me about optioning the rights to my story.”

“That’s okay with you?”

He shrugged. “I’m willing to listen to what they have to say. Besides, I think we’d make a pretty attractive on-screen couple, don’t you?”

I laughed.

“Why don’t you and Dennis go on that walk-through?”

“Sure,” I said. After all that had happened, I was less certain about selling the apartment complex than I’d been, but the ball had been set into motion. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready. Come on, Rocky,” I said.

Rocky sat on the bathroom rug while I showered and dressed in a turquoise and white eyelet dress that belted at the waist and swirled out in a full skirt. I slipped on lime green ballet flats and knotted a white ribbon in my hair. Dennis was waiting in my living room.

I hooked Rocky’s leash onto his collar and we walked out the back door, around the perimeter of the property, and up the sidewalk to the front. We entered the lobby. I hit the switch on and off a few times, but the light didn’t go on.

“Blown fuse,” Dennis said. “Happens in these old buildings.”

He walked further into the hallway and looked at the newly painted aqua walls. He ran the toe of his shoe over a spot where the carpet had been pulled away from the wall, exposing unfinished hardwood floors underneath. As we walked into and out of the vacant units, I tried to see what Dennis must have seen, a running list of upgrades needed to get top dollar. Instead, all I could see were aqua walls and Mamie Eisenhower-pink bathrooms. Memories and opportunities.

“I heard you have a buyer,” I said as we walked up the stairs to the second floor.

“I have an interested party,” he corrected. “Technically you haven’t created a listing. Technically, I haven’t said I’m going to handle the sale.”

I looked down the vacant hallway and tried to picture what an investor might do. Chrome lamps, textured walls, generic art from the big DIY home décor stores. High traffic carpet, sterile white bathrooms, and big ugly ceiling fans. And then an overwhelming sense of being in the right place at the right time rooted me to the torn carpet. It was like the last five minutes of every Doris Day movie when the music swelled before “The End” hit the screen. When the characters’ eyes are suddenly open wide and they realize what’s been in front of them all along.

“This interested party, do you know what he plans to do with the building?”

It was Hudson’s voice that answered. “I thought I’d pull up the carpet, maybe install a Nelson Bubble lamp in the foyer. Nothing major,” he said.

“You’re the interested party?”

He leaned down to my ear and dropped his voice. “It was Mortiboy’s idea.”

“Mortiboy’s a smart cat,” I said.

“Hasn’t steered me wrong yet.”

Hudson rescheduled his meeting with Cleo and Dan and I followed him to his house for dinner. The mist had turned into a steady shower. It was too hot to stand over a grill, too late to plan an elaborate menu. Hudson prepared a picnic of pitas, hummus, and fresh vegetables, and I poured us two glasses of Chablis. Dinner conversation steered clear of recent events involving the abductions and decorating jobs. Hudson told me stories about driving out west with Mortiboy as his copilot and Rocky and I listened with rapt attention.