Shay O'Hanlon Caper 03 - Pickle in the Middle Murder (15 page)

I had to be in a lucid dream. We’d just tied up someone and Eddy’d used his head for batting practice. Amazingly, I didn’t feel one bit bad about it. A certain degree of sadness crept under my skin. I was a good person. So why didn’t I care that we’d just left another human being bound and blindfolded? Geller was no better than Krasski. Considering what he’d done, he deserved whatever came his way.

The darkness seemed even more absolute as we rapidly retraced our steps to the truck. The office was completely blacked out. “Uncle Steve” was probably enjoying his DVD. I shuddered at the thought.

We hopped into the pickup in record time. I pulled out of the parking lot and pointed the nose of the truck toward home.

Coop finally broke the silence. “Do you think he’ll call the cops on us?”

“So what if he does,” Eddy said from the back seat. “He was blindfolded. The little shit.”

I signaled and took the ramp onto I-94 west. “Uncle Steve in the office could turn us in.”

“What about people in the other rooms?” Coop asked. “They had to have heard something.”

“No,” Eddy said. “We paid the creepy office guy off. I’m sure worse have come in before us. I don’t think the Shamrock Motel houses much in the way of what one might call genteel folk. Probably there’s always squawking and carrying on. Bet no one even pays attention anymore.”

The rest of the ride home was quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Now that the excitement was over, I felt bone weary. It was like someone stuck a big straw in the top of my head and sucked the get up and go right out of me. My legs were jelly. The old spine kind of felt that way too.

I dropped Eddy off, and we agreed to meet back up in the mor-
ning.

Coop offered to come home with me and spend the night in the spare bedroom. In my little apartment above the Rabbit Hole, I’d never had a place to stash sleepover guests unless they didn’t mind bunking with me or sacking out on my sad excuse for a couch. Having an extra bedroom was one benefit of living with JT. Well, there were a lot of benefits, actually.

Besides, it’d be easier to jump right back in the hunt in the morning if Coop were right there with me instead of at his apartment. Yeah, that was it. My desire for company had absolutely nothing to do with the fact I was totally freaked out.

Rationalization was sometimes a very important coping mech-
anism.

By the time I pulled into the garage and clomped inside, leaving Coop having a smoke on the porch, it was almost midnight. Without the dogs rattling around or JT’s presence filling the space, the silence of the house was nearly unbearable. I was pathetically glad Coop was staying.

While Coop hit the bathroom, I trudged upstairs to a room and a bed that were way too big for one. I shed my clothes in a pile on the floor and dropped onto the mattress. Luckily, instead of spending countless hours praying for slumber and chasing racing thoughts around and around my mind, sleep claimed me almost before my eyes were closed.

fourteen

I was running through
the brain of a madman. Somewhere along the line, the brain had morphed into one of those funhouses that were built in the back end of a rusty semitrailer found on carnival midways. Lights from nowhere and everywhere flashed, hurting my eyes. Curved mirrors distorted my reflection. Swinging green-and-white-striped punching bags got in the way of my quest to find the exit. A bridge with spinning tubes instead of planks impeded my progress. Try as I might, I couldn’t get past its midpoint. The cylinders spun underfoot every time I tried to take a step forward. JT was at the far end of the bridge, her arm outstretched, desperately reaching for me. I leaned as far as I could, tried to grab her hand. I slipped, fell forward, watched transfixed as the rolling pipes rushed up.

I jerked awake with a gasp and groped blindly for JT’s solid, reassuring presence. When my hand found nothing but tangled, cold sheets, memory returned with the impact of one of those rolling pipes from my nightmare. I managed to prop myself up on my elbows, sucking air, heart pounding. I tried a couple deep breaths, hoping to slow my racing heart.

Spatial awareness kicked in. The bedroom was still dark. Not a drop of light leaked around the edges of the curtains. I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. 6:23 a.m. Whoa. Welcome to Monday morning.

I dropped back to the mattress, pulled the blanket tight around my chin and replayed the previous two days on my mind’s movie screen in about twenty seconds.

That little show took care of any thought of additional zzz’s I may have hoped for. With a resigned sigh, I unwound myself from the bedding and trudged into the bathroom. I flicked the light on, squinting at the harsh glare. The image that looked back at me in the mirror was decidedly scary. Dark smudges made my eyes look sunken and the pinched look on my face reminded me of a particularly dour teacher I had in junior high. My mostly black hair was longer than I’d worn it in awhile, and it looked a little like an upside-down rag mop.

I hit the shower and dressed. Afterward, I slowly opened the door so it wouldn’t squeak and stuck my nose out in the hallway for a look-see. The door to the spare bedroom was still closed. I quietly headed downstairs.

As I stood at the kitchen counter and chewed on a piece of toast smeared with peanut butter, strawberry jam, and Nutella, I thought about JT’s gun. She kept everything locked in a small gun safe in the closet in her office. The pull of taking a peek at her weapons stash was irresistible.

While I’d seen her take one weapon or another out of the safe numerous times, I’d never considered going into the thing. Guns didn’t particularly freak me out, but I certainly wasn’t an aficionado, either. What was it Tyrell had called the gun? A Smith & Wesson something or other.

I stuffed the last bite in my mouth and washed it down with a swallow of milk. I rinsed the glass in a show of my newfound neatness and headed for JT’s office.

I paused at the doorway to flip on the light. JT’s office, like mine upstairs, was a converted bedroom. She had the requisite desk; three well-used, uglier than sin, olive filing cabinets; a love seat; and a wide, cushy recliner stowed in the room. I’d fallen asleep in that recliner on a number of occasions as she’d worked on cop stuff late into the night. The walls were light blue, a color I thought fit her cool-till-you-got-to-know-her demeanor. Awards and certificates for various cop-related activities hung above both the couch and chair.

The desk was neat as a pin, following my girl’s personality. She was a neatnik, which I was sure was going to be the cause of many a head butt when I first moved in. Instead, my messy influence helped her to chill while her careful attention to detail helped me to organize my own stuff into something more workable. It was a win-win. Who knew?

JT’s gun locker was in the corner of the closet. I steeled my resolve. This was for JT’s own good. My feet made no noise on the carpet as I strolled over to the closet door. I was a heel for sticking my nose into my lover’s stuff. However, her freedom outweighed the dreaded snoop factor.

The closet folded open with a clunk. I pushed the hanging police duds out of the way and crouched down to the gun locker hidden in the shadows at the back of the space. The heavy hunk of metal was dull black and knee high, with a digital number pad instead of an old-fashioned dial. I tapped my fingers impatiently on my knee, trying to guess what code she would’ve used as a combination.

It was highly unlikely she’d have employed the date we called our anniversary, which, I realized, was coming up quickly. I filed that tidbit in the back of my mind for future action and concentrated on the present. Her birthday? I keyed it in, both with the four-digit year and then tried the two-digit, just in case. The buttons beeped as I pushed them, but neither set of digits did a thing except make a red LED glow.

As I poked the buttons in another possible combination, I hoped to hell the safe wasn’t rigged to trigger an alarm somewhere when wrong codes kept being entered.

No luck—the LED remained red.

I tried JT’s house number, her mom’s birthday, and then the date of her graduation from the police academy. Zip.

My knees were starting to ache, so I stiffly stood up and limped around the office so the blood would resume flowing through my legs. As I passed JT’s desk, I saw she’d left the 8.5x11 planner and address book she usually carried with her laying next to the keyboard. Had she been un-JT-like and maybe jotted the code somewhere within it? I doubted it, but since I wasn’t getting anywhere as it was, I had nothing to lose in looking.

The worn red leather cover of the address book felt soft against my fingers. The planner was refillable. Maybe that’s what I could score JT for an anniversary present. On second thought, maybe that wasn’t quite an appropriate first-anniversary gift.

In typical JT fashion, the inside of the front cover listed out her complete contact information just in case she lost it. However, JT was too careful with her stuff to let that happen. I figured way back in school, when the teacher would hand out fill-in-the-blank worksheets, she’d make sure to complete each and every open slot. She was a through and through t-crosser and an i-dotter.

JT’s neat printing covered page after page, last name, comma, first name. She knew way more people than I realized. Birthdates and anniversaries were written in for friends and relatives. I carried the book over to the closet and tried various numbers I ran across. No go. I flipped through the book again. In the middle of her M’s there was a first name listed, but no last name, which was odd. Every other entry included both.

This one simply read Maria. A circled star asterisked the name. I flipped through the pages again and there were no other similar entries.

I knew a couple of Marias from years back, but, to my knowledge, neither JT nor I currently associated with anyone by that name.

Frustration was playing with my temper. I stuck my bottom lip out and blew a breath that lifted the hair at my forehead. I pushed myself to my feet and backed up until I felt the edge of JT’s chair hit my legs. Then I plopped unceremoniously into the seat, address book still in hand. The edge of the planner hit my leg, and some of the sheets of paper that had been tucked in the back spilled out.

I gathered the sheets and tapped them on my thigh to straighten them. An envelope slipped out and fell between my legs to the floor. JT’s name was on the front, addressed to the precinct she worked out of. I picked up the envelope and took a closer look. The return address, printed in block letters, listed a Maria Delgado at an address in Ramsey, which was about thirty miles north of Minneapolis. I held the envelope closer. The post office date stamp was less than a week ago. Interesting.

With devil-may-care-nonchalance, better known as nosiness, I slid the letter out of the envelope. It was a short typewritten note on a white piece of paper. I unfolded the sheet, read the first two lines, and just about dropped it.

Hola JT,

I miss you.

Holy shit. My eyes scanned the rest of the letter as my brain churned to make sense of this.

Hola JT,

I miss you.

I want to see you again soon. I had so much fun last night at The Depot. I can't wait to do it again. And again. I’m sorry I got you so wet. Well, no, not really. You have to remember your swimsuit next time.

Te quiero, Maria

Te quiero
? That was something about love: Love, Maria.

Love, Maria?

I blinked. Blinked again, hard. Squinted as I reread the note.

I stuffed it back in the envelope and peered again at the date stamp. Last Tuesday.

Air whistled from my lungs in one big gust. I slouched against the backrest, my mind churning like a hurricane-buffeted ocean.

Think, Shay
.

Monday night. JT had called to say she was going to be stuck on an overnight detail. When did I see her the next day? I’d worked the Hole early that morning. JT had wandered in sometime in the early afternoon. That was that. I’d never had call to question her odd hours, her occasional nights away from home.

Oh my God.

A boulder settled in the bottom of my stomach. Then the Protector stirred, winding its way insidiously up through my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.

Maybe it was a good thing JT was safely behind bars. If she was cheating on me, I’d kill her. And whoever she was doing the horizontal mambo with.

A still-rational piece of my psyche ordered,
Chill out, Shay. You’re jumping the gun. Bad idea.

I
firmly told that voice to shut the hell up. I was running now on about three-quarters anger that was rapidly developing into full-fledged fury. After all my worrying, after all the work Coop, Eddy, and I had done to try and find the person who’d killed Krasski in order to free JT, I find this? Well hell, maybe JT did do Krasski after all. The bastard deserved to be dead, preferably not by JT’s hand, but that was no longer the point. If she was dancing the tango with this Maria floozy, she could rot in that cell for a good long time.

I wrapped my self-righteous outrage around me like a down jacket on an ice-cold winter day.

My original task was forgotten. The need to find out who this mysterious Maria was—and getting the truth out of her—burned under my skin, the flames ready to explode from within. If I had to wring the woman’s neck to get a full and complete confession, all the better.

I slapped the address book on the desk and stalked out of the room, the envelope in my fist.

Usually when I was in the midst of the Tenacious Protector’s grip, the situation involved somebody else. Someone I loved or cared deeply about was being threatened. This time, the threat directly involved me and JT and our future. If we had a future. The power of the Protector steamed through me in a rush, and I gasped. I rarely let anyone—especially a woman—get this close to me, for damn good reasons. I was a fool.

I blindly grabbed a zip-up sweat jacket off the back of a dining room chair and let myself out. Coop would be fine till I came back. In fact, he’d probably still be sleeping.

Unless I didn’t return at all because I’d been arrested for murder. Maybe JT and I could share that jail cell after all.

An involuntary choking sound burst from my mouth as I backed out of the garage.

I’d driven down the alley, made a couple turns, and was on Franklin headed toward Hennepin and the freeway when I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was going. I pulled to the curb in front of a shop called Patina that was next to my favorite ice cream joint of all time, Sebastian Joe’s. If I’d been in a better mood, it would’ve been hard to resist the siren call of ice cream, even at this early hour. What time was it anyway? I glanced at the in-dash clock. Still a bit before eight. Served the bitch right that I make an early stop at her place. Unless she was already off to work, doing whatever it was that home-wreckers did to make money.

To hell with it. I’d take my chances and see if the bimbo was home. I wedged my iPhone out of my pocket and tapped the address in. A moment later, a map with alternate routes popped up on the screen. A-fricking-mazing. In thirty-seven minutes and thirty-two miles, with a little luck, I’d have my answers. Whether I liked them or not.

The trip north past the wilds of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, and up into Coon Rapids and Anoka went relatively quickly. Luckily all the traffic was headed for the city, so I had little to deal with in the way of jam-ups and slow-downs. I passed a huge HOM furniture building when I merged onto Highway 10 westbound.

Fifteen minutes later I passed a sign on the side of the road telling me I’d now entered the city of Ramsey. I turned off on a ridiculously named road called Sunfish Lake Boulevard and wound my way past streets that sounded as if they belonged in a geology class, not a map. I was light-years removed from the city. All the space, huge houses, gigantic yards, and even cornfields were giving me the heebie-jeebies. I could never live out here, in the middle of nowhere, practically away from life itself.

I slowed and stopped at the curb in front of a mini castle. The number on the siding matched the number on the envelope. All the houses on the block were McMansions. Did people really live in these things? How on earth could they afford it?

I smoothed the now wrinkled piece of incriminating evidence on my leg as I surveyed the area. There wasn’t a tinker’s chance in hell I’d be able to put it back in JT’s address book without her knowing something very wrong had happened to it. Oh well.

It was now or never. This was it. I repeated Eddy’s mantra: action was always better than contemplation. It was never truer than at this moment. I got out of the truck and hoofed it up to the front door before common sense and fear of the truth stopped me cold.