Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (18 page)

Jessica looked past Claire, at the horizon, as if she beheld a vision. “After seeing death, well, I think anyone is entitled to go a little crazy. Cindy was young and beautiful, but that didn’t stop her from dying. It makes you realize how fleeting life is. And then you find yourself clutching at life.” Her gaze dropped back to Claire. “Plus he talked the bartender into selling him a bottle of Wild Turkey to go. Seeing how this was an emergency and all.” Jessica seemed to be perking up. Her face was animated, her eyes alight with the thought of how naughty she had been. How many times had Claire seen the same expression on her face in high school? Jessica self-esteem had always been found in a man’s arms. She had slept with the rich-boy sons of doctors and lawyers, the ones who owned brand-new convertibles, the ones who skied competitively or who had, at seventeen, already traveled extensively through Europe. Claire guessed that this latest conquest had also been a member of Minor’s ruling class. Twenty years ago, Claire had gotten a vicarious thrill hearing about Jessica’s conquests. Now she just wondered when Jessica would grow up.

“
So you end up making out in a car in a parking lot? Right next to a hotel that’s full of soft beds with clean sheets?” Jessica was silent, so Claire filled in the explanation herself. Her latest conquest must have had a wife waiting for him in one of those beds. “And your Romeo leaves you sound asleep in a car when there’s a murderer on the loose?”

Jessica looked away. She spoke to the shimmering asphalt. “I must have fallen asleep and he didn’t want to wake me. We watched the sun come up, so it’s not like he left me alone in the dark. And he locked the doors before he left. Besides, he was sure that the person who killed Cindy did it because it was
Cindy
, not because they were a homicidal maniac. “

“
But it’s hot in there. Hasn’t he read those stories about kids dying in locked cars in the summer?”

Jessica shot Claire a sullen look, the same one she was prone to giving Claire twenty-plus years ago, whenever Claire pointed out that having sex with someone didn’t necessarily mean he would talk to you at school. “He cracked the windows, didn’t he?” She tugged her fingers through her hair, the side of her mouth pulled upward by a personal smile. “There’s one good thing about being thirty-eight. I don’t have to worry about being grounded.” Her tilted her head as she looked at something past Claire’s shoulder. “Hey - what’s going on?”

Claire turned. A small crowd had gathered in front of the hotel, next to a black and white police car. The lights were flashing, but the siren was off.

“
Let’s go see what’s up,” Jessica said. They walked across the parking lot and joined the crowd.

“
What’s going on?” Claire asked the man standing next to her.

He didn’t take his eyes off the main door. “I hear they got him.”

“
Got who?” she said, but just then Tyler shouldered open the door. Ahead of him he pushed a handcuffed Hispanic man. He was short and young and slender, with dusky skin and black straight hair that looked like he trimmed it himself. He was dressed like a dishwasher or a busboy, in black polyester pants and a white shirt topped with a grimy white apron. His eyes were wide and confused, and he seemed to be talking to himself. “No. Madre de Dios! No mate a nadie!”

Claire understood a few of the words, courtesy of her
Let’s Learn Spanish!
tape that she had listened to a few times and then had shoved in her glove compartment and never taken out again, another self-improvement scheme abandoned.
No! Mother of God! I didn’t kill anybody!

He tried his English out now, appealing to the crowd that watched him silently, avidly. “I didn’t kill no womens!”

Everyone turned at the sound of screeching tires. A black Mercedes SUV raced through the parking lot straight toward where they were gathered. The door was flung open even before it came to a halt. Kevin jumped out and ran toward Tyler and his prisoner, so single-minded that he didn’t even bother to close his door or take his keys from the ignition. Behind him, the car beeped impotently. Kevin’s hands were balled into fists, his face a mask of anger, his lips pulled back in a snarl. Before Tyler or the police officer following him could react, Kevin launched himself at the man being arrested for the murder of his wife.

His fist caught the smaller man on the side of the head. The dishwasher would have fallen forward if Tyler hadn’t kept him upright by yanking on his handcuffs. The other cop started forward, hand resting on the butt of his gun, but he was too slow. Kevin was already raining a flurry of blows down on the prisoner’s face. Bright red blood splattered the man’s stained apron and Kevin’s white polo shirt, first spurting from the smaller man’s nose and then from a seam that Kevin opened up on his cheek.

The crowd was stunned into silence, so that Claire could hear the sound of every punch landing, the grunts each of the two men made as the blows were given and received, even the drops of blood falling like rain on the sidewalk. Only a few seconds had elapsed, but the Hispanic man seemed on the verge of unconscious. His head lolled, whipped back and forth with every punch.

A shriek cut through the awful sounds, and Belinda ran out the front door of the hotel. She wore only a white terry cloth bathrobe, and her feet were bare. Her eyes were like two holes burned in a blanket, and her hair was an uncombed mess. She stopped a few feet away and reached her arms out, imploring.

“
No, Kevvie! No! This won’t bring her back.”

With his left hand, Kevin made a shooing motion, as if Belinda were a pesky fly. With the other hand, he landed another blow, this one to the dishwasher’s ribs. Claire thought she heard a muffled snapping sound.

Finally realizing he was hurting more than he was helping, Tyler let go of his prisoner, who fell to his knees and then sideways onto the sidewalk. His head made a sickening, hollow thunk. Kevin paused for a moment, his hands fisted, one foot raised, torn between punching or kicking. In that moment, Tyler took two quick steps around the fallen man and grabbed Kevin in a bear hug. Off-balance, the two men staggered together. Meanwhile, Tyler’s sidekick had drawn his gun. Now he held it out before him in a two-handed grip. First he pointed it at the prisoner, but he was still, except for a thin stream of crimson blood beginning to wend down the sidewalk. Then he focused it on the two struggling men.

“
Halt!” he yelled out. “Halt or I’ll shoot!”

At first, his words had no affect, but when he repeated his threat, Kevin sagged, his arms still draped around Tyler’s shoulders so that they looked like a pair of drunken dancers.

“
Belinda’s right, man. This won’t solve anything,” Tyler said. His words were soft, pitched for Kevin’s ears, but the crowd was still hushed, so everyone heard them.

“
But he killed her! He killed her!” Kevin’s voice was more of a moan than a shout. His eyes were so wide the whites showed all the way around, and his mouth was pulled down at the corners, a rictus of sorrow and anger. “He killed my wife.”

“
But you killing him won’t solve anything. Think of your daughter. She needs her father with her, not in jail for the next thirty years.”

Kevin stepped back from Tyler and put his face in his hands. Just before he hid it from view, Claire thought she saw a strange, uncertain expression cross Kevin’s face.

Tyler seemed at a loss as to what to do. His gaze went back and forth from his prisoner to his prisoner’s attacker. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you,” he finally said, but his words were weak and unconvincing. There was a murmur from the crowd. “I’ll ask the judge to go easy on the bail, though. What man wouldn’t go temporarily insane in a case like this?” He turned to the younger policeman. “Mike, take him on back to the police station. I’ll stay here and wait for the ambulance.” Mike opened the back door of the squad car, and an unhandcuffed Kevin got in without even a backward glance for the man who lay, barely breathing, on the sidewalk.

Tyler turned to wave his arm at the two dozen stunned spectators who had watched the savage attack in silence. “And the rest of you - show’s over, folks! Break it up and get out of here!” Now that it was too late, Claire found herself wishing that she had intervened, found a way to stop the lightning quick blows before they had done so much damage. When no one moved, Tyler face began to redden and he yelled even louder, “Go on, get out! Now!” Everyone finally started to walk quietly toward the hotel’s brass doors as the police car let the parking lot.

Her gaze on the fallen man, Claire remained behind. Two years before, she had taken a one-day first-aid class at the Red Cross. Her half-remembered encounter with a rubber Resuci-Annie doll hadn’t prepared her for a much messier reality. On the other hand, she was afraid this guy was going to bleed to death on the sidewalk. Kevin was calling for an ambulance on his cell phone, but would it come in time? Fleetingly thankful that her sports bra was black and sturdy enough to pass for a top, Claire pulled her T-shirt over her head and knelt down. Beneath her knees, the concrete was slick with warm blood.

Looking at the man’s swollen, bloody face, she tried to remember her first aid training. She had a vague memory of the instructor writing down the letters A, B, C, and saying that they were the first priority. Only what did the letters stand for? Airway, bleeding, cardiac? Alimentary, brachial, cuticle? Even if the first three didn’t sound quite right, she decided they were close enough.

Airway. Even though the man’s breaths sounded labored and somehow gravelly, at least he was breathing. And if he was breathing, she figured his heart must still be beating, so that meant she didn’t have to worry about the “C” word. That left bleeding. Turning her attention to the numerous cuts Kevin had opened on the man’s face, Claire dabbed at them tentatively with her T-shirt, trying to decide which needed the most attention.

Only a few seconds had passed, but it felt like hours. Time fell into place again when Rachel Munroe burst out of the hotel’s doors. She was dressed in a damp T-shirt and shorts, and her hair was still in wet curls from the shower. As she shouldered open the door, she was reaching into a satchel, and now she tossed Claire a pair of pale vinyl gloves while slipping on another pair.

“
Take off his handcuffs!” Rachel commanded Tyler, while her fingers felt the fallen man’s pulse. Her tone was such that Tyler sprang into action without question. While he fumbled with a set of keys, Rachel ran her hands lightly over the man’s body, stopping every now and then to probe. “Have you called an ambulance?” When Tyler nodded, she barked, “Then get me a blanket. He’s going into shock.” Finally, she turned to Claire while she straightened the man out so that he now lay face up on the sidewalk. “I need you to hold his feet on your lap. I want whatever blood he has left to go flowing back to his brain and heart.” Claire quickly complied.

“
Would you mind telling me how you let this happen?” Rachel demanded of Tyler, who had returned with a gray blanket. “How could you let someone attack a defenseless man?” Her voice was surprisingly low and powerful, given her fine-boned, diminutive frame. “Right now I can tell you that at a minimum he’s got a broken nose, a fractured cheekbone, possibly a skull fracture, three or four cracked ribs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his hearing’s been damaged. And you just stood back and let it happen.”

“
Hey, this jerk killed Cindy,” Tyler answered, stung. “Why don’t you spare some worry for how she died?”

“
What makes you so sure he did it?” Rachel asked. “This is America, you know. Ever hear of innocent until proven guilty?”

“
Someone tried to use Cindy’s ATM card about two last night.” With his index finger and thumb, Tyler rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “I guess I mean this morning. On the surveillance camera, you can see a man spread all her ID out on the little metal ledge and start systematically going through the numbers he found on different things. According to the computer, he tried punching in her birthday, the first four digits of her Social Security number, her street address, etc. All the usual things people use for their PINs. Until finally the ATM swallowed the card. And this guy, this Juan deJesus, matches the pictures we got from the bank’s camera. The night manager says Juan -” Tyler exaggerated the “whaw” sound in Juan “- was out in the parking lot taking a smoke break about the time the medical examiner thinks Cindy died. He must have seen Cindy weaving out to her car, fishing around in her purse for her keys. Maybe she even took her wallet out. And the sight of this nice-looking lady, drunk, holding a wallet full of money, well, that’s just too much for this mope. He’s a wetback who’s only been in this country for a month or so. Maybe once he found that the streets aren’t really paved with gold out here, he decided to take matters into his own hands.”

Rachel shook her head and didn’t answer. Instead, she began to lay gauze over the worst of the cuts, only an inch long but deep and still pulsing blood. “Whatever he did, he didn’t deserve this. And no matter how good they sew him up, he’s going to be left with a nasty scar right here over his eyebrow. It’s kind of ironic in a way,” she added, putting down another layer of gauze that was immediately soaked through. “I’d say this cut was probably made by Kevin’s wedding ring.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Clutching her once-white T-shirt, now heavy with blood, Claire made her way to their room, glad that the hotel corridor was empty. She tensed when a door opened farther down the hall. At first she thought it was Belinda, but then she realized it was Belinda’s daughter. The girl went the other way. Claire took her room card key from her back pocket and slipped it in the slot. Dante was gone. On the bed, the sheets were pulled up, and when she went in the bathroom, a damp towel hung neatly on the rod. That was one of the little things Claire liked about Dante, that he always tried to minimize the work of the waitress or hotel maid.