Shattered by Death (A Jo Oliver Thriller Book 2) (17 page)

“How would any killer smart enough to administer scopolamine be dumb enough to be caught on video abducting one of the victims?” Gino had unshakable faith, but this was a little much.

He concluded his roofline examination and joined me at the entrance. “Perhaps it is not about the desire not to be seen but rather the opposite.”

“As in, she’s taunting us again?”
Just like in the photos.
We pushed through the double sets of doors and turned left into the assisted living part of the facility. Two polyester-clad nurse’s assistants tended to residents. A third woman, in loose blue pants and a V-neck, cartoon-splashed top, pushed Arnie down the hall.

“Perhaps.” Gino stepped into the cafeteria and took over Arnie’s chair, steering into dining position.

He locked the wheels and bent down low to talk to him. The man’s head swiveled to look at Gino. His eyes were quite clear today, opening a window into the valiant, soft-hearted warrior he’d once been. The picture on his door featured a pixie-eyed blonde in a yellow sun dress looking up at her handsome man in uniform. Cuban phrases popped up out of their murmurings every few words.
Maybe Gino’ll get something out of him.

Ceci walked in my direction from the station down the hall. When our eyes met, she looked down at the threadbare floor.

“Good afternoon, Ceci.” I smiled and walked past her.

She murmured a response, but I was already at the station. Two TV monitors were mounted behind the desk, in full view. One recorded inside shots, and one seemed to display nothing but outside shots.
Please be recording and not just displaying.
It was disheartening how many times people installed security equipment just for show. Why hadn’t I thought about this system before? I hadn’t needed to. I’d thought this place was safe.

Safe. Is anything, anyone, any place, safe anymore?

I stepped back out into the hall toward the cafeteria. Gino was seated next to Arnie, drinking what was probably luke-warm, watery coffee. With generic non-dairy creamer. God bless him. Everyone knew he’d rather drink weed killer.

“And now our lovely Chief approaches. Could it be she wishes to dance with one of us?” He gave Arnie a light, conspiratorial elbowing. A slow, half-grin etched itself across Gino’s face as he put his arm around Arnie’s back, then rose to his feet. “Alas,
companero mio
, I fear it is me she seeks. Like the black widow spider stalking her prey.”

“Relax, G. If I was stalking you, you’d be the last to know.” I bent down and landed a kiss on Arnie’s cheek. “I’ll be back to walk you to your room after snack time.” I waited for his slight nod before following Gino’s receding figure down the hall.

If anyone could reveal the mysteries captured on tape by outdated security cameras, it was Gino.

Gino stopped at the empty nurse’s station, looking around as if to assure himself that all staff and residents truly were otherwise occupied for the moment. He glanced down the hall a final time and then swung behind the laminate divider and started messing with dials and switches on a panel in front of the monitors. Within seconds, he had the footage moving forward and back with ease.

“We shall soon learn how lucky we are or are not today.” He squatted in front of the panel.

“Looks like I’ve got a little time to kill.” I wandered toward my mother’s room. She rarely went to afternoon snack time, opting instead for her tray to be delivered. It would be better for her to get out more, but it would also be better for me to visit more often and
take
her out more. I sighed. At least she could afford a facility with tray service.
Tradeoffs.

Her door was closed, as usual. I pulled the handle down and entered her little apartment. Her oxygen machine whooshed and hummed, but she wasn’t in the kitchenette or living area. The plastic tubing lead from the oxygen unit into her bedroom. I peaked in. She was sound asleep. I stood over her bed for several seconds, staring at her bruises and offering up fervent prayers for safe-keeping and protection.

My cell phone buzzed with a text from Gino.

VENGATE. AHORITA.

Get over here. Now
. I tucked a stray hair behind my mother’s ear and left her sleeping. Then, I hurried to join Gino down the hall.

“
Mira.
Just take a look at this.” Gino was on fire. Something big was up. He was wearing a rarely-seen pair of glasses. He’d managed to find a way to display a time and date stamp for the video feed from the various security cameras located inside and outside the facility. He finished rewinding one of the tapes and turned to look at me.

“Whaddya got?” Electricity flowed up and down my spine.

He stared at me without speaking.

“What did you find?” My heartbeat thundered in both ears, and my face burned. “G, what do you have?”

“It is more of a
who
than a
what,
m’hija.
Quite the who indeed.” He let out a deep breath and hit the play button.

The first clip showed footage of the parking lot. Leaves blowing, trees sagging, a very windy day. Gino’s arms were folded across his chest. I mirrored him.

“Watch this next series very carefully.” He hit a button to slow things down a notch. For several seconds, nothing showed on the screen but the occasional piece of paper flying through the parking lot and tree branches swaying in the wind.

Then a dark blue sedan pulled into the director’s parking spot. The driver’s door opened, and one boot-clad leg snaked out the door. And then Kira Stoklavich slid out, elegantly dressed, complete with dark glasses and a navy silk scarf wrapped around her head, Joanne Woodward style.

She walked toward the building, stopping several paces from the edge of the sidewalk, perfectly framed in the shot. She turned her face up to the camera, offered a little wave, and mouthed, “
Catch me if you can.
”

I kept staring at Kira’s face on the screen after the clip ended. “What the heck?” Kira?
Kira?
“Is this some kind of joke? Or is this really possible, G?”

He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and shook his head. “It can mean nothing else. And the fact that she is no longer hiding her identity and has led us here may mean that she intends to kill Director Murray and disappear for good… or end herself as well.”

I shook my head. “But that makes no sense. Why go to all that trouble to frame me if she was just going to walk away from it all? What’s her end game? To tease us, keep us on a string, only to disappear? I don’t get it. And I’m pretty sure I don’t believe it.” I rubbed my temples. The string of violent deaths, starting with Del and leading us to Angela Murray. “Do you think we interrupted her, maybe ruined her timing somehow? This can’t be the script she intended to play out all along. It doesn’t make sense.”

Gino kept fast-forwarding video clips next to me. I clenched my hand, tapped it on the desk top, opened it and spread my fingers wide. My legs were trembling. I sucked in air, forced it back out, stretched out my neck, and shook my head.
I want to run after her. Now
. But where? Where would we even start to look for her? I whipped out my cell phone.

Nick answered on the first ring.

“Kira. It’s Kira. And if it’s not her, she’s working in concert with someone who’s as evil as she is.” Oops. What about Nick’s broken relationship history with her? Had there ever even been one?
Who knows
. We could sort through that later. “Put out a BOLO, and then I need you to call in one of your favors and get a court order allowing us into her case files. We need someone to look through everything she’s worked on and documented since the murders, and fast. And… start with mine.”

“Josie?” Nick wasn’t following me.

“She’s targeting me. She’s framing me by going after people I’ve talked about during our sessions. Get into those files. Start reading. There’s got to be something to point us in some reasonable direction. Nick, I need it to be you. I know it’s an investigation, but…” God only knew what I’d said during my hours of therapy in her office. I needed some cover.

“Of course, beautiful. I’ll read it myself and do all I can to only extract what’s essential to the investigation.” Warm tones infused his voice.

“Um… what about the stuff that isn’t essential to the investigation, but
is
essential to me?” A bead of sweat broke out on my forehead. A court order would be written in such a way that she’d have to give up
all
of her files. Once a file was entered into police custody, all real control was lost. “Ugh. What’s one more personal humiliation out of series of thousands in the past several weeks?” I let out a deep breath.

“It doesn’t have to be humiliating.”

“Maybe not for you. But it will be for me.” He wasn’t getting it. Again.

“Some files are a lot less complete than you’d expect.” His voice grew cold. Was he suggesting he was willing to bury evidence to protect me? “Nick, don’t…” I let my voice plead my case with the words I couldn’t form. What would happen if he tampered with evidence and got caught? A better woman would ask a better question. How can I be dancing with the idea of ruining this good man’s career just to protect my self-image?

“Not all things are under your control, Jo.” He hung up before I could tell him not to do it. Not to take that kind of bullet for me.

I took a deep breath and put my phone back in my pocket with trembling hands.
Why do I always say the wrong thing? What about “Don’t even think about stepping over the line for me”? Why hadn’t I said that?

Nick would be freaked out if he read any of my regrets about having chosen Del over him—and my darkest fears about whether or not I was worthy of a man like Nick. He was my gold standard. Would I ever be good enough for him? So I’d chosen Del instead. Nick wasn’t the most flexible thinker when it came to man-woman stuff in general. He wasn’t a big fan of hearing about hard feelings that he couldn’t fix, let alone those of the distorted nature I’d risked sharing more than once with Kira before I knew about her history with him.

What would happen when he read my files? How much of my warped thinking and ruminations about him and our complicated friendship, about my secret fears and longings, had Kira written down?

“These sessions of yours, they are the key to this
maldita
, aren’t they?” Gino appraised me through narrow eyes. “She plays a game with you. You are the mouse—she is the cat. She has been batting you about for how long now?” He kept his arms folded, casual.

“I don’t know, G. Four, five years? How many sessions is that? How long has she been up to this? Who else has she killed? How did she stay so far under the radar?”
How can she be that much smarter than the rest of us?
“Hiding in plain sight. But for that long? And why target me? Why now?” All the stories she must’ve heard over the years. Why had mine been the ones to trigger her murderous spree?

“But there is much about you that is unique.” Gino hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Like what? This crap job full of angry people and unsolved murders that keep piling up? Take a look around my life—personally or professionally. I ain’t exactly living the dream over here. What do I have that she could possibly want? What have I ever done that could drive her to this?” I dragged a hand through my hair, pulling on the ends.

My pulse beat as if I were a frantic lion in the middle of a kill-or-be-killed spree. I clenched the edge of the desk to keep from running as fast as I could, gathering my mother in my arms and leading as many of these gentle elders as I could out of this place. The building itself loomed, oppressive and unsafe. Had Gino felt it too?

“Enough of this crooked thinking,
m’hija
. You have done nothing to fall into the sights of this
matadora
. Whoa!” Gino erupted. “Did you feel that?” He looked puzzled. The lights flickered off and on in rapid succession.

“What just happened?”

Nurse’s aides popped into the hallway from the cafeteria thirty feet down the hall. Ceci made her way toward us. I met her in the middle of the corridor and put my hand on her arm. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. Just a friendly little bump in the road of the wonderful world of construction. We get a little brown-out action every coupla days. It’s nothing.” Her words were measured.

“It was definitely something.”
And the timing was awfully convenient
.

“We don’t worry around here until we get the five and ten minute stretches. Our generators are excellent, but with as many special-needs residents and electricity-sucking machines as we have on this wing, like in your mother’s room, we don’t want to push our luck.”

My mother’s room? Was that a coincidence—or a threat?

Ceci turned and walked toward the cafeteria, and I returned to Gino.

Gino uncrossed his arms and hunched over the monitor. “You have that
I-don’t-believe-it
look on your face, yet I tell you, it makes sense. All of this construction—this sort of thing happens with great frequency.”

“So let’s get back to Kira. Coming here. We need to get a tech crew on that car. Check out that still-shot again. Didn’t she have gloves on when she got out of the car? I’m thinking she did. A la Audrey Hepburn.”

“It was the director’s car. That much is certain.” Gino picked a picture up off of the desk featuring all the staff members posing in or around the car, parked in front of the “Director Parking” sign. Underneath the photo was the inscription, “We heart driving you crazy.”

“If Kira did take Angela, why go to all the trouble of bringing it back here?” My head was spinning. There had to be psychopathological reasons for all of these careful steps of the dance. But what were they?

“It is part of the chase for her. The cat playing with her prey.”

“So that makes us the prey. And the victims are just bait. She’s using them to get to us.”

“Not us,
m’hija.
You.” He opened up a drawer in the nurse’s station, started rifling through it.

“But why?”

“I am telling you, again—you have something the big cat wants. Badly.” He pulled out a small flash drive, held it up, shook his head and replaced it.

“Badly enough to kill for.” Something had to shake loose in my muddled brain.

“So it seems. You have the greatest meal of all in a heap at your feet for all the world to see, yet you refuse to eat.” Gino’s eyes hardened. “As is only right and just, but that is not how Kira would see it. She would see you as having the greatest quarry at your fingertips, and ignoring him.”

“Nick…” A light ringing flitted through my left ear.

“Indeed.”

“She’s after Nick? But she had him.” Icy shields wrapped themselves around my face.

“
Thought
she had him. Wanted to have him. But she lost out. To a far more beautiful hunter.” Gino studied me. “And the most dangerous beauty of all…” His eyes squinted, released. “One that draws prey without intending, without even being aware of her powers of attraction. The kind a man like Nick cannot turn away from.”

I stared at him. Stunned. “But, G, I… I never wanted—”

“Yes, as she so well knew. And your ambivalence, your woundedness, drew Nick to you like a moth to the flame. While she watched. And listened to excruciating details revealed during your sessions, no?” He shifted his weight, leaned a hip against the counter.

“Dear God, what have I set in motion?” Goose bumps rippled my flesh. A tremor shook my pocket. What was that? Then it happened a second time. Nick was calling me. He’d also left a text message:

PICK UP. STAT.

“Nick.” My answer was a whisper. A harsh whisper.

“Are you still at Riverside?” Worry infused his voice.

“Yes. With G.” Even though it wasn’t 100% fair, I was playing the part of Madame Butterfly, discovering her one true love’s betrayal. And the sharp knife conveniently placed on her nightstand.
What happened between Kira and Nick? Who is he when he isn’t with me? Should I have trusted him? Can I trust him moving forward?

“I found something.” His voice was flat.

“Me too.” I was in junior high again. Come on, Nick, go first. But we didn’t have that kind of time. We needed—I needed—to snap out of it. And catch a killer.

“I’m already on my way.” He hung up before I could tell him what we’d found.

Why? Did he already know? “That was Nick. He’s on his way over here.”

“So I gathered. He has found something in the files. Something you may wish to tell me first, no? Something you might be feeling embarrassed by?” Gino turned to face me, leaning in. “What could be in those files to turn
la mala
against our Nick? If it is true that what you shared with her during your sessions became the roadmap to her victims, perhaps you will tell me what it is that you are so afraid of? What else might you have suggested about our good Saint Nicholas that may have incited her evil attention further?” Gino was all investigator now.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember everything. I just know I was a jumbled mess on more than one occasion. I mean, how many casual and professional conversations have I had with her over the past five years?” My chest tightened. Pain shot through my collarbone, down my right arm.

Is this what a heart attack feels like?
What did I say about Nick?

My heart squeezed, hard. What happened between Nick and Kira, and how could I have missed it? Was Nick on Kira’s side or mine?
I glanced into a small round mirror tacked onto the wall. My ashen face stared back. A stranger to me.

Gino stepped forward and took me by the shoulders. “
M’hija
, there is no way our Nick is involved in any of this.
Me entiendes
? You must banish those lies and come back to the truth.” He shook me ever so gently.

A single tear escaped my eye. Was he reading my mind?
Or am I that transparent?
Sludge filled my veins. “You don’t know that, G. You can’t know that. Who is anybody, really? How far can any of us ever really see into the heart of another?”

Nick.
I was talking about Nick. But was he
my
Nick anymore?