Ned was coming down the hill and had spotted us. Shaw took my hand and pulled me behind him as we went deeper into the woods. Ned obviously didn’t give a shit anymore; we heard more shots ring out, then tires screeching against wet pavement.
"Get in," we heard a female voice shout—Felicia—and then she gunned it, the Jeep skidding down the winding road until the sound faded and finally disappeared.
We stopped; Shaw dropped my hand.
"They got away," I said softly.
"John’s up there?" Shaw asked, cocking his head up the ridge.
I nodded. "Ned was chasing me. I don’t think Felicia could’ve gotten him in the Jeep. He must still be on the ground up there." I knew we were going back up there, but I also knew I had to call Tom again.
Shaw was one step ahead of me. The phone was in my hand before I could ask for it, and I thanked him as I punched in the number again.
"Annie?" Tom asked.
"Ned and Felicia, they’re in a red Jeep, Ned’s red Jeep—you can probably get his license plate. They’re on their way down the ridge. We’re going up to get Jack," I said.
"I told Shaw—" But I hung up before he could continue.
I nodded at Shaw. "Let’s go."
We’d stood still long enough so that my legs felt a little wobbly. I reached down to my right thigh and felt something sticky, something that wasn’t rainwater. I lifted my hand close to my face and saw a darkish hue. Shit.
The pain came back like a hot poker against my skin now that I had a few seconds to remember it. "I think I got shot," I said disbelievingly, and with those words, my jaw clicked and sent another rush of stabbing pain into my face.
Shaw studied my face, then stooped down and looked closely at my thigh. I had no pride left.
"How bad is it?" I asked, unable to twist around far enough to see.
He stood. "Flesh wound. It looks like it just nicked you on its way somewhere else."
"But it’s bad enough so it’s bleeding."
"It’s not bleeding anymore; it’s clotting nicely."
"I thought you were a preacher, not a doctor."
Shaw smiled, and I could see those straight teeth even in the dark. "You haven’t done your homework. I’m disappointed."
I didn’t have time to respond. He started off without me, and I followed, wondering what the fuck he was talking about. He had to know Google didn’t recognize him. LexisNexis showed nothing. He was a goddamn ghost, or, if the city fathers were to be believed, a guardian angel for the downtrodden.
Speaking of which . . .
"Jamond," I said as I limped up next to him. Now that I knew I’d been shot, or at least grazed by a bullet, it was affecting my brain and, by extension, my ability to walk properly. Just minutes ago I was flying through these woods like there was no tomorrow.
Of course I had thought there might not be a tomorrow, so the incentive was there.
"What about Jamond?" Shaw asked, not stopping.
"He was up here. Ned played him. I think he might be in danger, too." I told him about Jamond luring me to Southern and his change of heart, which seemed to anger Ned. And then how Ned had asked Felicia about "the kid." "Was Jamond involved with the guns, too? Did Ned know that? How much did Ralph tell Ned?"
"Why do you think I know anything about any of this?" Shaw asked softly. We were walking at a healthy clip, and the humidity was clinging to us, but he wasn’t even breathing hard. He was a cool operator, that was for sure.
"Because you’re here." As I said it, the butterflies flew up into my chest. He was involved somehow, maybe not with Ned but with something else. "Why
are
you here?" I asked.
He didn’t stop, looked straight ahead. "Jamond called me. He said I should come up here. I didn’t know any more than that until you ran into me. I make it a point not to ask questions of the young people. I don’t judge them. They learn how to trust that way."
I turned his words over in my head. "So Jamond’s okay?"
"He’s laying low. His words."
Jamond had called for help. Not the cops, I’d been right about that, but the one person he felt he could trust. Maybe he really would be okay after all.
We could see the outline of the Judges Cave now against the sky, which had brightened as the moon began to emerge from behind the storm clouds. The muscles in my legs felt like they were stretched too tight, the wound in my thigh just another place I hurt.
"What was between you and Ralph?" I asked. "What did you owe him?"
Shaw stopped then; a smile filled his face. "You thought the worst of him."
No shit.
"He wanted to win you back. He knew once you found out about the charity money that you would never return to him."
Again, no shit. I waited as Shaw sighed deeply.
"He gave the money to me."
I let his words sit for a second. "When? Why?"
"We met that night he was arrested. I was there, too. That’s when we met Mr. Decker."
"The three of you? In lockup together? What were you there for? I know about Ralph and Jack." I couldn’t wrap my head around "Mr. Decker."
Shaw had resumed hiking up toward the cave, but at a slower pace as he contemplated what he was going to tell me. Finally, "Drugs. Worse than Ralph. A lot worse. But we shared something there—I knew he’d lost his dream."
I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. Shaw gave me a nasty look. Even in the dark I could see it.
"He lost his dream, his wife. He wanted to purge himself."
He fucking purged it all right.
"So he gave me the money. But on one condition. That I use it to educate myself." Shaw paused. "So I did."
"Give me a break," I said. "That’s all it took to turn you around? You didn’t take the money and go out and buy more drugs? Were you a dealer?"
"He didn’t give it to me right away. We’d become friends."
"You can’t tell me he hadn’t spent that money before that."
Shaw stopped, studying my face. "He had it in a separate account. He knew he had no right to it."
No shit.
"Did you know what he was up to? I mean, with the guns?" I asked.
"I was trying to help him, but he got in over his head. Once he was in, he couldn’t get out." He stole a glance at me. "He wanted to see you."
He saw me all right—through a camera lens. "Did he even think he could justify stalking me?"
Shaw sighed. "He didn’t know how to approach you. I told him he should just call you."
While I could see Shaw might have been trying to talk sense into Ralph, it obviously hadn’t worked.
He was talking again. "But he knew it was too late once those kids got shot in Hartford. Someone went to the authorities, gave them Ralph’s name."
"Who? You?"
"It was Mr. Decker."
Jack? Really?
"I thought Jack was involved," I said. "He had that duffel bag at the nature center the other day, the one that looked like the others the feds took out of the apartment."
Shaw chuckled. "He went hiking. He was no more involved than I was. We both wanted to help Ralph. He didn’t know Mr. Decker was the one who’d turned him in. But Mr. Decker and I talked to him, and he finally agreed to cooperate. He was repentant."
I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Ralph. He’d never been sorry for what he’d done to start this roller coaster; how could I believe he’d be sorry for anything after that?
Shaw was nodding. He knew what I was thinking.
"I know. He’d spent his entire life pretending to be a victim. He saved me, but I could do nothing to save him. The least I could do was to get him a good lawyer." Shaw’s tone was full of regret.
The story didn’t explain how Felicia and Ashley got so mixed up in this, why Shaw had given them a place to live, and I was about to ask about that, but we’d reached the cave. I pushed the questions aside as we circled the smaller boulders around to the entrance, which was dark, the candle no longer flickering. But even in the dark, we could see.
Jack Hammer wasn’t there.
Chapter 46
I stared at the empty spot where Jack Hammer had been moaning not too much earlier. Did Felicia untie him, set him free? Or did she just untie his feet and make him get into the Jeep, and now he was being held captive somewhere else? We’d passed no one, heard no one else in the woods, as we came back up the hill.
"You’re sure he was here?" Shaw asked.
Under normal circumstances, I’d get pissed that I was being questioned, but since Jack wasn’t here and I’d said he was, I couldn’t blame Shaw for his confusion.
"Yes. He was right there. On the ground. Tied up." I glanced around. "Felicia had a gun on him."
"Felicia Kowalski is a troubled young woman," Shaw said quietly.
"Yeah, like I couldn’t figure that out," I said sarcastically. "Listen, what else do you know about all this, I mean, really? That was a nice story and all about Ralph and his bullshit, but Felicia and Ashley Ellis were involved, too. You must know more. Ashley’s dead—someone killed her in your condo."
"I’m aware of that. I spent most of the afternoon with the police."
"Why did you rent the condo to them?"
"They needed a place to live. I needed a tenant. There’s really nothing sinister about that."
Guess not, if you looked at it from a purely business point of view.
"So who killed Ashley?" I asked as a siren sounded in the distance.
"Ralph got your friend Ned involved in things he shouldn’t have," Shaw said grimly.
"He’s not my friend. Anymore," I added. "He killed her?"
"I didn’t say that."
"So Ned didn’t kill Ashley?"
"Ned introduced Ralph to Felicia. Ned knew Felicia had connections with the young people in the projects. He knew what Ralph needed for his scheme. He helped set it all up. But he was just a pawn." Shaw was so damn calm about all this. Why was he making me figure it out when he obviously knew everything that was going on? He wasn’t my goddamn shrink.
"Someone else was involved, right? Someone Ralph was working with. Did Ned know about this other person?"
Some of the puzzle pieces had started to fit, but I still didn’t have the whole picture.
Shaw didn’t have an opportunity to answer. The siren had gotten louder, and the cruiser swung around just beyond the picnic table that sat on a small patch of dead grass in the middle of a paved circle. A uniformed cop stepped out of the car and approached us. As he got closer, I recognized my new best friend, Officer Riley.
"Hey there," I said casually.
He flashed a light across my eyes, then across Shaw’s, stopping on Shaw’s face. "You," he said simply.
I felt a slight tension hanging in the air amid the humidity. Could be racial tension. Riley hadn’t seemed that way earlier, but then again, I didn’t know him too well.
The light scanned the cave after a few seconds.
"Thought someone was tied up here," Riley said.
I shrugged. "Was earlier. No clue where he got off to."
"Detective Behr said you’re both to come with me."
I wondered where the other cops were. I mean, I’d told Tom about Ned and Felicia and Jack Hammer, but he only sent one guy? I asked Riley about that.
He was still eyeing the cave as he said casually, "The Jeep didn’t make it too far. We stopped them at the corner of Wintergreen and Fitch. They sent me on ahead to pick you up."
He herded us into the backseat of his cruiser, and we started down the road. I watched the back of Riley’s head as Shaw stared out the window like we were on a Sunday morning drive.
The drive down made me a little dizzy, sitting in the backseat and all. I never did well in the back. I figured I could keep my questions for Tom, even though it was driving me crazy that I didn’t know everything. I thought about Shaw and his claim that Ralph’s stolen money turned his life around. Could it be true? And why didn’t Ralph turn his own life around?
"He knew he couldn’t," Shaw said, startling me. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud—or, at least, whispered it to myself.
"Why not?" I asked.
"He liked making up that story. He liked the con," Shaw said flatly, watching me carefully. "He was good at it—conning people."
I snorted. "Yeah, he was."
Shaw sighed. "I was the impetus for getting him back here. I thought maybe by coming back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, he could sort it out, sort out what happened with you and, by extension, what had happened to him all those years ago. Instead, he managed to get involved in something worse."
The words scrambled around in my head. Shaw kept talking as if he didn’t notice my confusion. But I was learning that not much got past Shaw.
"He met a cop who got him started with the gun purchases," Shaw said, his eyes lifting up toward the back of Riley’s head. "The cop wanted drugs. He gave Ralph the guns for a trade, plus a little monetary incentive. It was easy. Really easy."
Riley’s ears perked up at that. He cocked his head back a little, listening to us without even pretending he wasn’t.
"My mother said Ralph was going to spill the beans, tell the feds who was in on it with him. Did you have something to do with that?" I asked.
Shaw nodded. "But then he died."
"Who’s the cop?" I asked, more than aware that Riley had slowed down now, waiting to hear what Shaw had to say.
"He’s been closer than you think."
With a lurch, the cruiser slammed to a stop. I hit the back of the front seat with my forehead. I hadn’t bothered strapping myself in. Shaw had landed with more of a thud than I had; his head was bigger.
"What the fuck?" I muttered, sitting back and looking up at Riley.
But I didn’t see him.
I saw the barrel of a gun aimed at my face. I remembered Jamond telling me how "Johnny" had supplied guns to his friend. Riley’s first name was Jonathan.