Shay O'Hanlon Caper 03 - Pickle in the Middle Murder (3 page)

“They were charged and most of them went down. But the number-one man was free. Once he healed up, the bastard could start up the whole thing all over again. JT was furious with herself. Talk about a boatload of trouble. She had to take anger management classes, do some other Internal Affairs crap.”

“She’s usually so in control. I can hardly imagine her on a rampage. If she snapped … I can totally see where it’d be next to impossible to stop her.” I stared at Tyrell. “She blamed herself, didn’t she?” I knew JT well enough to understand that it would drive her beyond crazy that she was the reason a no-good criminal walked.

“Yeah. She ran herself through the wringer. When she came back to work, even I wasn’t sure she was ready. While she was off, she decided it was her personal vendetta to nail the bastard somehow. Whatever it took, on the books or not. So she started following him on her days off, showing up at places he frequented. She wouldn’t say anything to him. She’d just be there, make it obvious she was on his ass.”

“Jesus.”

“Soon things started to escalate. She became even more obvious. She’d pull him over with our unmarked car, harass the hell out of him. Started getting in his face.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered. This was a JT I didn’t know. Why didn’t she ever tell me any of this? I thought she loved her job, fully believed in what she was doing.

“Krasski wasn’t stupid. He went to one of the watchdog groups that pull the police brutality card during trials. Got them all fired up. Wound up taking out a harassment restraining order on JT.”

I could hardly believe my ears. A criminal had been allowed a restraining order? On my JT?

“Part of the order was if JT were to come within a hundred feet of Krasski, she’d be arrested. Basically, her career would be toast. I think the order’s expired by now, though.” Tyrell heaved a huge sigh. “So that’s an abbreviated version of what’s probably the worst thing JT has ever been through professionally.”

I was still reeling over the fact that a badass hooligan had taken out a restraining order against JT. It was really hard to believe she’d never said a word about it to me. I could almost feel her pain, her shame, the incredible frustration she must have felt.

Tyrell said, “She tried to do what she could to prevent him from returning to the crap he’d been doing, but it was all just one huge cluster that spiraled into chaos.”

“She had every reason to want to kill him. I get that. But, Ty, do you think she really could’ve done it? That she could completely lose her mind? I would never believe she’d be capable of doing that.” Right?

Tyrell shrugged. “I don’t know, Shay. I do know she’s worked like hell to put this whole fucked-up nightmare behind her. I’ll see what I can find out and let the guys who can help know what’s going on. They’ll have ideas on a lawyer. Try not to worry, hey?”

Yeah right. Not worrying wasn’t an option.

Four

It was close to
nine, fully dark, and maybe fifty degrees when I emerged from the station. After letting the dogs do their business, I drove off in a complete fog, despite both Bogey and Dawg periodically slurping me. They knew something was up. Dogs were like that.

I hit Redial for Coop’s cell, tapping my thumb against the steering wheel impatiently as it rang in my ear, and hung up when voicemail kicked in. I didn’t want to go through what I’d just learned with Judith, the name Coop gave the irritating robotic female voice that narrated most voicemail. I’d have started to worry about him if I wasn’t already spending all my worry currency on JT.

Thoughts raged inside my head. One moment I was furious with JT for hiding all of this from me and the next I was terrified that she even theoretically may have hosed someone. Granted, it was someone who apparently deserved it, but the repercussions of her actions were unthinkable.

Waste. Whack. Pop a cap. Rub out.
The words bounced through my brain like an echo from a megaphone blasting at full volume.

Instead of heading directly home, I decided I needed the cool, calm advice of Eddy Quartermaine, my ex-landlord and mom stand-in. She lived in Uptown in the back of a large Victorian she owned. The front half of the huge old house was occupied by my café, The Rabbit Hole, on the main floor. Above that was a dinky one-bedroom apartment I’d lived in for years until just a few months ago, when I’d moved in with JT.

I was an independent person, and it took some serious cajoling on JT’s part to convince me to attempt to live in harmonious two-become-one-ness with her. We’d been cohabitating at her place now for a few months. In fact, I had surprised myself: I was actually pretty pleased with the whole situation.

Now the upstairs flat above the Hole was occupied by Rocky, a very endearing, somewhat challenged, multi-fact-spewing man of middling age who was mentally still in his teens. Almost a year earlier, Kate and I had hired him to help out at the Hole doing menial tasks and delivering rolls and coffee. The arrangement worked out nicely.

I parked in front of the detached garage just off the alley at the back of the house. My fingers were working about as well as my brain and I fumbled to open the gate to the fenced-in backyard. The motion light popped on, scaring shadows away. I filled Dawg and Bogey’s water bucket from a spigot attached to the house and left them racing around after each other.

The screen creaked as I pulled it open. I keyed the lock, and the knob on the main door twisted easily in my hand. Eddy was a night owl, most likely watching reruns of
Cold Case
or another crime drama. It was her version of crack.

I stepped into a tidy, comfortably worn kitchen filled on this night with the familiar scents of vanilla and cinnamon. A deep sense of comfort and love settled over me. The light above the range was on, and the sound of the TV filtered through the doorway leading to the living room.

“Eddy,” I called out, not wanting to be the cause of a heart attack.

“Shay!” she hollered. “Come on in, girl. Just let me pause this show. Don’t know what I ever did without the wonders of a DVD player.” She cackled with glee. The DVD player was a recent addition. Coop had tried numerous times to show her how to use the DVR that came with her DirecTV, but she promptly blocked him and the instructions out. I gave it another five years before we’d be able to cajole her into learning how to use it. Eddy didn’t like change much.

Well-padded, almost-new carpet cushioned my footsteps. It was officially called Sand Swirl, but it looked to me more like the color of Dawg’s belly hair. However, I doubted that Dawg’s Fawn was the name of a color anyone would want to put on their floors.

I dropped onto the couch. Captain Frank Furillo’s profile was frozen on the TV screen, his mouth open. I’d recently given Eddy the first two seasons of the early Eighties series
Hill Street Blues,
and she’d finally cracked the wrapper.

Eddy was kicked back in a recliner, Winnie the Pooh slipper-clad feet crossed. Her rich mahogany skin was a marked contrast to the white housecoat with frilly pink cuffs she was wrapped up in. She gave me a once-over. “Child, you look plum wore out. And sort of queasyish. Did you eat one too many Scotch eggs at the Renaissance Festival? Crazy people sell ’em, I know. Where’s JT?”

I was attempting to formulate how to explain the events of the last half-day, but Eddy’s comment about the Scotch eggs startled a laugh out of me. Something about the comment hit me as so inanely hilarious that I rolled from a gentle chuckle into a full-blown laughing fit in the space of a heartbeat. I gasped for breath.

With a sharp look, Eddy said, “You about done there? That wasn’t funny.”

I tried to compose myself and opened my mouth to speak, but the words that tumbled out weren’t the ones I’d meant to say. “JT’s been arrested.”

Eddy cocked her head and frowned like Dawg often did. I thought for the briefest moment she was going to ask me what in the world I’d been smoking. Instead she said, “You best tell me what is going on.”

I unloaded the whole mess on the poor woman, who sat through my recitation without so much as a question. She let me pour it all out.

When I finished, she said, “Well, that’s one hell of a note.”

My mind felt scrambled, bruised actually. My mouth ran off before my neurons had a chance to catch up. “Eddy, I can’t believe JT held out on me from the moment we got together. Now she’s a murderer. Well, a theoretical, could-be murderer,” I amended. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and dropped my head in my hands. “What a mess.”

“Shay, you stop right there.” Eddy’s voice dropped, low and deadly. “That girl no more killed someone than I suddenly became Olivia Benson from
SVU
. Or maybe Tina Turner would be a better comparison. JT had her reasons for not telling you. Anyway, the question is—what can we do to help her? We could bake her a cake with a file in it so she could saw her way out.”

“Eddy.” I said, and closed my eyes. At a base level I knew she was right about JT. My cop did everything by the book. Okay, maybe not
everything
, but most things. She sure as shit didn’t kill anyone. No way. That would be beyond her. Wouldn’t it? And even if she did kill this Krasski guy, so what? I thought the man deserved to die. But not by JT’s hand, if only because of the repercussions she’d have to live with.

But then, what did that say about me? About her? The inside of my head was doing the swirlies again.

I was under the assumption that long-term lovers shared deep shit. I’d always shied away from divulging my true feelings and deep, dark skeletons with those I hooked up with. Come to think of it, hook-ups was exactly what they were
because
I refused to let anyone in. I never bothered to analyze my psyche deep enough to root out the cause of my recalcitrance. A mind and the depths of the soul can be scary things.

But amazingly, things were different with JT long before I laid eyes on the badge in her hand when she’d come to question me about Coop and the death of his employer eleven months ago. Trust was hard for me to come by, but for whatever reason, she made me feel safe. Like it was okay to have imperfections, self-doubt, and a complex, sometimes shameful past. That confiding those issues would make life easier to bear. I had coughed up most of my inner demons, and I thought I was getting the same in return. But JT had hidden her greatest pain from me, and damn, that stung like hell.

I stared grumpily at Eddy.

“Easy, child. Come on now. I’m kidding. We can get her one of those lawyers, like those Meshbesher and Spence people who are always on the TV, interrupting my shows.”

With a great deal of effort, I managed to rein in my sparking emotions. “I think they’re personal injury attorneys, not defense lawyers. Tyrell said he’d talk to some people.”

“Well, whatever you want to call those shysters, make sure JT gets one—gets some, maybe more than one. What she needs is someone to figure out who did the deed. Killed Krasski the ass. That’ll take care of the situation.”

I shot her a look. She didn’t usually take liberties with people’s given names.

She said, “Dead man’s name was Krasski, right?”

I nodded.

“See, he’s got an
ass
in his name. K-R-A-S-S-K-I, get it?”

I rolled my eyes.

“So now we gotta find out who did the pickle stuffing and that’ll get JT off the hook. Tyrell had a file, you said.”

I could see where she was going with this, and I did not like it one bit. “Yes, he did, and it’s locked up tight at the police station.”

That troublemaking gleam appeared in Eddy’s eyes.

“Oh no,” I said. “No way. We are not going to steal Tyrell’s file.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing. All you’d have to do is just a little peek. I’m sure there’s a list of no-good scallywags in there who’d want to see Krasski swinging from the nearest flagpole. That’d be a start.”

Prior to
Hill Street
, Eddy had been on a
Pirates of the Caribbean
kick.

“Besides, we need to piece together why the whole Krasski thing got to JT so bad. I’m sure she’s seen lots of terrible stuff on the job, so why did this send her off the deep end? She’s usually a steady, even-keeled little gal.”

I wasn’t happy with the
we
in her sentence, and that
little gal
had about eight inches of height on Eddy.

She continued, “It was certainly something more than the fact the man was evil. She deals with evil all the time.” Eddy stretched and then recrossed her Winnie the Poohs. “You find out why that ass got to her and you’ll understand the reason she couldn’t tell you. And beyond that, why she became obsessed. Mark my words.”

My brain was pretty much melted as I drove to the house I shared with JT. It was a little after ten, and I was wiped.

I pulled into the attached double garage and killed the engine. JT’s two-story, redbrick colonial was originally owned by an aunt of hers. Somehow, JT managed to inherit the joint outright, which was fortunate since property taxes on a place overlooking Lake of the Isles were close to the same amount that a mortgage would run. Add utilities and upkeep to the equation, and JT wouldn’t be quitting her day job anytime soon. Too bad that aunt hadn’t left JT a nice trust fund to help out.

I shouldered open the truck door and exited. The two dogs clambered down onto the chipped concrete floor, and I slammed the door shut. It was past time for doggy din-din, and the mutts knew it. Dawg didn’t think I was moving fast enough, so he gave me a healthy nudge in the butt and woofed. Bogey added his two cents by drooling a long, stringy trail of saliva onto my right shoe. I was still working on accepting his horrifyingly excessive salivation.

Together, we headed for the door that led from the garage into the house. It opened directly into a short hall that we used as a mudroom.

Dawg and Bogey scrambled past me and bolted into the kitchen, their nails scrabbling noisily on the linoleum.

A bench sat on one side of the tile floor of the mudroom with footwear neatly lined up beneath it. When I lived in my apartment, I was used to kicking off my tennis shoes and tossing them helter-skelter out of the way. But since I’d moved in, JT had been gently working on me to take the time to be less of a slob, and I was getting better about it. Most of the time.

Tonight, however, was not one of my more well-behaved moments. I toed my sneakers off, and with a flick of my foot, first one, and then the other shoe bounced against the wall and tumbled to the floor beside the bench.

Five coat hooks lined the opposite wall waiting for the heavy jackets that spelled winter in Minnesota. Soon enough they’d have more than windbreakers and sweatshirts hanging from them.

The hallway opened into a spacious dining room. It was filled with JT’s aunt’s ancient, heavy, hand-me-down furniture. They might be antiques, but they were so well used that I didn’t think they’d be worth much more than family memories. The collection included an oblong table that probably weighed two tons and eight straight-back, walnut wood chairs. A matching gargantuan hutch filled with family glassware took up a big chunk of one wall, and a sliding patio door opened onto a nice porch that faced the backyard. I particularly liked the two-person rocking glider JT had tucked into the corner of the porch. We spent many evenings rocking and talking as the dogs exhausted themselves playing in the yard. I often wondered why JT’s aunt had decided to leave all this to her, but I hadn’t felt it necessary to be that nosy. Yet. Sometimes family politics worked in strange ways, and a grudge against one became the windfall of another.

The hall ended at the bottom of the stairway to the second floor. The rest of the main floor was taken up with a laundry room, the kitchen and living room, and JT’s office.

I dumped my backpack next to the steps. The battered, broken rose JT bought me drooped from the zippered opening like an at-rest marionette. That’s how I felt: bent and bruised, although not quite yet broken.

I scored the mutts their food, which they devoured in record time. I hadn’t gotten anything to eat at the Renaissance Festival myself, and now, my stomach reminded me it was ready to rumble with a none-too-quiet grumble. I peeled a banana and smeared on Nutella, wolfing it down as I leaned against the sink.

Bogey wandered over and sat on his haunches facing me, one eye on the banana peel I’d tossed to the side of the sink. He’d eat just about anything—including plastic bags and tin foil—as long as it had any kind of food residue on it. He didn’t much care for details, but he almost always managed to prove his guilt either by barfing up bits and pieces or leaving some interesting (and highly disgusting) doggie doo with remnants that pointed at exactly who the serial offender was. Luckily, he’d had no lasting negative effects. So far.