Injustice (43 page)

“You okay?” Sabin says.

I play with the phone on the table, spinning it distractedly. “I'm so stupid,” I say.

“Don't beat yourself up. I'm the detective. You're just a lawyer.”

“
Just
a lawyer, says the law school dropout.”

She looks up at me and I see hesitancy in her eyes. I'm afraid my attempt to lighten things up has hurt her feelings. “I'm sorry. I was just . . .”

She shakes her head and reaches across the table. She quickly squeezes my hand, then lets it go. “I'd hate it if you were dead,” she says. I have enough sense to leave it at that.

This detective knows a lot. She knows there is this chemistry between us, but she also knows I'll be back with Tina the moment it's possible. And I think she can also see that, given the state I'm in, I'd be defenseless against her if she forced the issue right now, but all three of us—Sabin, Tina, and me—would end up . . . I glance around the diner and spot the print of the shipwreck.

Right: That's how.

I'm suddenly self-conscious and feeling awkward. I pick up my phone, and to occupy my jittery hands, I play Lizzy's message. I put it on speaker: “It's me, Daddy. I got your messages. I'll tell CD you asked about whatever it was you wanted from him. I'm getting with him today: got a couple questions about those amendments. He's meeting me here in . . . um . . . this afternoon sometime. Love you.”

Lizzy: the one who discovered the essential pieces; the one who knows the most; the one who, right now, is interviewing Dunbar about it.

I
'm aware of knocking the seafood stew off the table as we leave the booth—fish and scallops like brain bits, clamshells like skull fragments in the tomato broth as it spreads out across the floor.

Sabin drives. I call Lizzy, then Flora. Neither answers. I try Chip. He doesn't answer, either, so I call Isler again. I try explaining, but it comes out in an unhinged rant.

“Hang up!” Sabin yells. I obey. She calls Isler back on the hands-free system. When he's on the line, she says, “Dunbar tried to kill Nick last night. Now he's after Nick's daughter.” She explains it in a coherent way that I wasn't able to.

Isler listens, then says, “If you're right, Dunbar is becoming unpredictable and explosive. He might do anything. Where are you? Where is Lizzy?”

“We're in Turner, driving toward their house.” The word “driving,” as Sabin uses it, means I am directing her along windy back roads as we round bends and make turns with tires screaming.

“Do you know for sure Lizzy and Flora are in the house?” Isler asks, and I notice how his voice has changed from its nerdy and conversational drawl to robotic and clipped. He is suddenly an agent directing an operation.

“Negative,” Sabin answers in the same voice. It is a voice that body-checks me out of her way. She and Isler are running things, and I'm along for the ride. “We haven't made contact with anyone in the home.”

(Meaning they all might be dead.)

I can hear voices and activity in the background of the phone call. “I'm putting together a team,” Isler says. “We can be there in twenty.”

Now I hear shouting on the phone. I hear chaos. I hear Chip, who has apparently just been notified that his wife and Lizzy are in the path of this unhinged killer. Hearing Chip settles me a bit: He's obviously in no condition to be running the operation, so the same has to be true about me. I feel myself surrender fully to Sabin. If Lizzy and Flora survive, it'll be Rachel and Isler who pull it off. Chip and I are just obstacles.

“Give me Lizzy's cell number,” Isler says.

I do.

“One second,” he says, “we can locate her phone . . . okay . . . one more second. And hold on . . .”

“Turn right up here,” I tell Sabin. She doesn't seem to hear me, because she's approaching the turn without slowing. I think we've already passed it, but she does something with the brake and the wheel, and we've abruptly made a ninety-degree right turn, and if I hadn't had my shoulder strap on, I'd be in her lap.

“There, we've got it,” Isler says. “It looks like Lizzy—or her phone, at least—is at home.”

I think this is good. We know where she is, even if Dunbar does, too.

“Do you have a cell number for Calvin Dunbar?” Isler asks.

I find Calvin's number and give it to Isler.

“Good,” Isler says. “Now let's see if we can locate him. How far are you from the house?”

“About a minute,” I say.

“Don't approach yet. We'll have his location in a second.”

“Turn left up here,” I tell Sabin.

The town is zoned rural estates. There are tracts of woods and horse pastures and hayfields. Flora's house is out of sight from others. The road is serpentine.

“I'll drive past at normal speed,” Sabin says. “If he's really melting down, anything could set him off. We'll get a quick look.”

“Got it,” Isler says. His voice startles me. I'd forgotten he was on the phone. “We've located his cell phone, and apparently he's—”

And the call cuts out. Cell signal lost. We're on our own.

“Up around the next curve,” I say.

Sabin slows to normal driving speed. Flora's house is on the right. We approach the house like Sunday drivers. Three cars are in the driveway: Flora's, Lizzy's, and parked askew and halfway onto the grass, the little blue Audi TT I saw in the Friendly City parking lot last night.

Sabin cruises past, but the second we're out of sight, she pulls over.

“He's in there,” I say. “We've got to do something.”

Sabin unclips her seat belt and turns to face me. “If he came to kill Lizzy, there's no time to wait for SWAT. He's clearly not a sentimentalist. And if he's really in full meltdown, it means he's unpredictable and irrational.” Sabin reaches over to the glove box and takes out her gun and a folding knife. “I'm going in,” she says. “You wait here. When reinforcements show up, brief them.”

I start babbling protests, but she ignores me. She unfolds the knife, then reaches up and presses the blade against the top of her head. “Scalp wounds,” she says, “they bleed like a son of a bitch.”

With one unflinching motion, she draws the blade forward through her hair as though she's defining the part. She waits a second, then musses her hair with both hands and rubs her face and arms until she's covered in blood. She gets out, tucks her gun into the back of her slacks, and runs toward the driveway shrieking. “Help me!” she screams.

I get out of the car and, keeping out of sight behind trees, watch her sprint toward the house.

“I think he's dead! Oh my God, he's dead! I called 911. Oh my God, help me, call 911!”

She gets to the door. Pounds on it, then disappears inside. Half a minute later, I hear a shot.

I burst into the house. There's blood everywhere. Calvin lies near the kitchen door with blood pouring from his right shoulder. Lizzy is hysterical. “She killed Calvin! She killed Calvin!” Lizzy screams, but
this clearly isn't the case, because now Calvin is sitting upright with his hands cuffed behind him. Flora is just screaming. And Rachel Sabin, looking like Carrie at the prom, is packing towels around Calvin's shoulder.

“It's okay,” Sabin keeps yelling, “it's okay. I'm with your dad. I'm with Nick.” She sees me and stands up. There's a gun on the table. She points to it. “Calvin's,” she says.

I move Lizzy and Flora into the living room and try to calm them, then go to help Sabin with Calvin Dunbar. Soon—though it doesn't feel soon—the yard fills with ambulances and police cars. Calvin gets packed into an ambulance with a couple of cops to babysit him and heads for the hospital. Rachel gets a head bandage. Flora and Lizzy get sedatives.

The medics want to take Rachel to the hospital, but she refuses. “It's just a scalp wound,” she says. “Scalp wounds bleed like a son of a bitch.”

Dorsey shows up. Rachel tells him what happened. Flora is talking to another cop while she sits in Chip's lap with his big arms around her. He looks awful. I sit in the living room with Lizzy and a detective I don't recognize while Liz gives her version of events.

“I was just here talking with Calvin when Detective Sabin showed up,” Lizzy says. “But I didn't recognize her; she'd been in an accident.”

“Talking about what?” I ask.

“My research. My investigation,” Lizzy says.

“Was Calvin acting strangely?”

“Not really.”

“What did he say?”

“He wanted to know who else I'd talked to about this legislative research.”

“How long had he been here?”

“Only a minute.”

“Go on,” the detective says.

“So Calvin started talking about how nice this house is, and he asked if it had a basement, because he's doing research on furnace
systems and energy efficiency. He wanted Mom and me to show him our heating system. And right then was when we heard the screaming.”

“You mean Detective Sabin?”

“I guess. And she was at the door and just came inside, and Mom was like—you know Mom—she was trying to help this woman who was hysterical and covered in blood. Then suddenly there was a gun.”

“Detective Sabin's or Calvin's?”

“Detective Sabin's. And Calvin: He was standing beside me, but then he grabbed me and pulled me in front of him, and before I even knew what happened, there was a gunshot and Calvin was on the floor. It was all so fast.”

“Did you ever see Calvin's gun?”

“Not till you came in, Dad.”

The detective keeps working Lizzy for details, and then this detective and Dorsey and the detective who was questioning Flora compare the stories. The only significant difference among the three versions is that Sabin says Calvin grabbed Lizzy and pulled out his gun. Flora and Lizzy say they never saw Calvin's gun until after Sabin shot him.

Things settle down. The driveway clears out. Sabin takes me aside and says, “They want me in town, Nick. I'm not supposed to drive. Shall I have someone else drive, or do you want to take me?”

Good question. I want to be here with Lizzy, but I want to get home and see Tina and Barnaby and to feel the belonging I feel with them. Maybe Tina will invite me to stay. Chip can watch over Flora and Liz this afternoon. I'll come back out to check on them this evening.

I walk to the street to get Sabin's car. I bring a towel for all the blood. I have no doubt that Rachel saved their lives. Calvin came here wanting to kill Lizzy and anyone else who happened to be home; Rachel arrived with no more than minutes to spare. Calvin would have preferred to kill them in the basement, but if they'd resisted, I'm sure he wasn't going to quibble.

I don't care whether Calvin had already pulled his gun when
Rachel shot him. And if I have to, I'll go into court and swear under oath that I saw the whole thing and that Calvin was waving his gun like a madman before Sabin drew her weapon.

I wipe down the steering wheel and seat of Rachel's car. On the seat, I find a thick full-length lock of Rachel's dark, wavy hair that got sliced off by the knife. I wipe it free of blood, then ball it up and press it to my cheek. I sniff it for the now familiar scent of her shampoo. I straighten the hair, coil it, and put it in my billfold. I'll find a safe place where it won't bother Tina but where I can have it—this memento of Sabin, who, whatever else she means to me, is now my daughter's savior.