Blind Spot (35 page)

“Powerful medicine.”

“If we assume Quaid is continuing his pattern of punishing bad guys, then maybe this means the pharmacist was dealing the drug.”

Garcia folded his arms in front of him. “Doesn’t seem serious enough for Quaid’s biblical-justice bit.”

“Maybe a kid died after taking the drug. Could be Stannard wasn’t even dealing. He filled a prescription wrong, and then someone croaked.”

Garcia shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right.”

“Quaid was checking out the wife, too. ‘Chris’ was the name you heard on the machine, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Quaid plugged in Chris Stannard’s name and then a Smith Avenue address and then the name of this building in St. Paul, which is located at aforementioned address. West Side Artists’ Block.”

“I think our next stop should be the West Side Artists’ Block,” said Garcia.

“I agree.” She pushed the chair back from the desk and stood up. That’s when she noticed the fat envelope sitting on the desktop, tucked next to the base of the monitor. “What have we got here?” She picked it up and pulled out the flap.

“What is it?” asked Garcia.

She reached inside and carefully extracted the green stack, holding it up for Garcia to see. “Think he’s been dipping into the collection plate?”

“What size bills?”

She set the envelope on the desk so she could flip through the layers. “Hundreds. Lots of hundreds. Few thousand bucks total, at least.”

“Could be our holy man’s got some folks funding his overall scheme. Bunch of pissed-off rich guys who wanted that death penalty passed.”

She picked up the envelope and examined the front and back, but found no writing or markings. She sniffed the white paper and wrinkled her nose. “What should I do with it?”

Garcia: “Leave it. We’ve got to come back to the Vatican with the proper paperwork.”

She slipped the stack back into the envelope, tucked in the flap, and returned the envelope to its spot on the desk. “A perfumed envelope with money. I don’t know why, but I don’t think we’re talking group financing here.”

Thirty-seven

Passing the Smith Avenue building, they scanned the storefronts on their right. “Doesn’t look promising,” grumbled Garcia, taking in the row of dark windows as he drove.

Bernadette snapped her head around and looked over her shoulder while they continued south on Smith. “There’s a light coming from the second story, on the end.”

He looked in the rearview mirror. “Could be there’s apartments above the artsy-fartsy shops. Let’s check it out.” He slowed the Grand Am and hung a right and another right, parking the Pontiac on the street in the residential neighborhood one block over.

The pair approached the shops from the back, jogging onto a tar strip behind the stores. The lot ran the length of the complex, but was only wide enough for two rows of cars. The back row had a set of cars and pickups lined up one after another. The two agents slipped between a sedan and a truck parked on the end.

Bernadette counted the vehicles. “If you figure one parking spot for each unit, there must be six apartments upstairs,” she said in a low voice.

They heard a crack and ducked down. More cracks. The noise stopped for several seconds and then resumed. “What is that?” Garcia rose from his squatting position and squinted into the darkness. A floodlight was mounted against the building near the roofline, but it was dim and dirty.

Bernadette straightened up and ran her eyes around the parking lot. The racket stopped and then picked up again—with a gust of wind. She pointed to the rear of the building. “Now I see it. Back door. Wind’s banging it. Someone left it open.”

Garcia drew his weapon while he eyed the door, situated less than fifty feet from where they were standing. Whenever the door blew open, a faint light became visible from the other side. “Someone was in a hurry.”

“A hurry to get inside, or a hurry to leave?” She unsnapped her holster and drew her Glock.

He darted out from their hiding spot, and she followed. They ran up the short stoop and went inside, leaving the door flapping behind them. Garcia flattened himself against one side of the stairwell, and she hunkered against the opposite wall. Their eyes went to the top of the steps. They saw only a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling by a frayed cord. The bulb danced and blinked as the door banged and a breeze rolled up the stairs. Beyond the bulb was an open door. Garcia whispered: “The hallway for the apartments.”

He took the stairs slowly, hugging the wall as he ascended. She did the same on her side. When they were halfway up the long, steep stairwell, the slamming stopped. In unison, the agents turned their heads and looked to the bottom of the steps. Bernadette trained her Glock at the closed door and waited. The door stayed closed.

They resumed their climb, the bare wood creaking with each step they took. They got to the top of the landing and went through the doorway. They were in the middle of a dingy corridor painted the same aquamarine as the hallway of Quaid’s apartment building. Instead of a musty perfume odor, however, they detected another stink. An old ladies’ beauty shop. Garcia looked to the left, and Bernadette to the right. Each counted three doors. Garcia leaned into her ear. “Your pick.”

Her eyes were pulled to the right, to the apartment at the end of the hall. It had a white door, whereas all the others were stained brown. “The white one. That’s the unit that we saw lit up from the street.”

He followed her down the corridor. When they got to the end, they stood with their backs against the wall, one on each side of the white door. That’s when Bernadette saw the smudge on her side of the doorknob. A dot of red spotting the white. Pivoting around, she cranked her foot up and brought it down on the bottom quarter of the door.

Garcia jumped next to her. “Again. On three. One, two, three.” They kicked in unison, and the door slammed open.

Thirty-eight

Her eyes were wide open, and so was her mouth. Red stained her lips and chin and throat and the front of her bathrobe. The blood had dripped down her neck and formed an oval puddle on the rug beneath her.

Garcia maneuvered around the body and checked behind the kitchen screen while Bernadette took the bathroom. They met back at the body, one standing on each side. Garcia took out his cell and called for an ambulance and assistance. He snapped the phone closed and dropped it back in his jacket pocket. Keeping his gun in his hand, he glanced through the open doorway into the hall. “I’m going to do a sweep of the rest of the—”

She cut him off. “Do what you want, but he’s gone. We were too slow.” She paused. “I was too slow.”

His jaw stiffened. “We got here as soon as we could.”

Bernadette holstered her gun and nodded toward the woman on the floor. “Not soon enough to help Mrs. Stannard.”

“We don’t even know if that’s who we’ve got here.”

“Let’s solve the mystery,” she said, tipping her head toward the purse on the nightstand. She reached into the bag, fished out a wallet, and flipped it open to the driver’s license. Holding the open wallet in front of his face, she said: “Chris Stannard.” She snapped it closed and dropped it back into the purse. “Mystery solved.”

“Watch the attitude, Cat.” He disappeared into the hallway.

She inspected the apartment from where she was standing. The coppery smell of blood was mixed with another stink that frequently permeated murder scenes: booze. On the nightstand, next to the purse, she spotted a drinking glass with a quarter inch of amber liquid and ice in it. The dregs of a cocktail. On the area rug, between the nightstand and the body, was a tumbler on its side. Halfway across the room was a broken glass on the wood floor. Something had happened in the middle of the room. A drunken fight between Stannard and Quaid? Another smell was sandwiched between the booze and the blood: stale perfume. The vanilla scent from the envelope in Quaid’s apartment. Chris Stannard had given him the money. Why? Was Quaid blackmailing her, or was she bribing him? Was Quaid little more than a paid assassin? She hoped not; it would make the case much less intriguing.

She went down beside the corpse, her knees at the top of Stannard’s head. She ran her eyes over the length of the body. The woman wore white anklets, dotted with red that was undoubtedly her own blood. Her legs were bare. The bathrobe was wrapped around her upper body and tied with a belt, but the robe had fallen open below the knot. She was wearing baggy cotton briefs, not the kind of thing women usually wore under their jeans. Too bulky. The panties sure as hell weren’t worn for a romantic encounter, either. They were the kind of comfortable clothing women slept in, especially when combined with ankle socks. Stannard might have willingly let Quaid into her place, but she hadn’t been expecting him. She was getting ready to hit the sack.

Bernadette looked over at the bed and its linen, so frilly and feminine. It had to be the woman’s bed alone, her apartment alone. Had she and her husband split up? Was it over the drugs? How had Quaid gotten involved? Why was the wife targeted in addition to the husband? Were both tangled up in narcotics? Or did Quaid go after them for something unrelated to the OxyContin?

Peering down into the woman’s face, Bernadette noticed there were no cuts or bruises around Stannard’s eyes or on her forehead. All the blood came from the mouth. A lot of blood for a cut lip, or even a knocked-out tooth. She leaned forward and looked down into the woman’s gaping mouth.

Garcia materialized in the doorway. “Neighbors didn’t hear squat. No yelling or screaming.”

“I’m not surprised,” she muttered while her eyes stayed focused on the woman’s mouth.

As he holstered his gun, the sound of sirens again peppered the night air. “You know, we don’t even know if it was him. MO is all wrong. No rope. No missing hands.”

Bernadette sat back on her heels. “No tongue.”

He stepped into the apartment. “No shit?”

Bernadette scanned the floor around the body. “I wonder what he did with it?”

“Why would he start in on tongues?”

She glanced back at the dead woman’s face. “Maybe she said something he didn’t like. Something sacrilegious. Sinful.”

“Doesn’t sound serious enough for our holy man. There’s gotta be more to it. Quaid’s set his revenge bar higher than that—he’s been going after killers and sex fiends. And how does her killing tie in with the husband’s murder?”

Bernadette folded her arms in front of her. Sirens sounded right outside the apartment’s windows. “The money in Quaid’s apartment—how about the obvious? She paid Quaid to kill her husband?”

Garcia held up his hand. “Stop. How do we know the wad was from her?”

“The stink on the envelope in Quaid’s apartment. I smell the same perfume here.”

“Why does she have Quaid kill her husband?”

“Who knows what marital turmoil they had going on.” Bernadette threw her hand toward the bed and the apartment beyond it. “Obviously, if the woman had her own place, they were having problems. Maybe he had a girlfriend. She had a boyfriend.”

“Then the murder-for-hire arrangement turns sour. Holy Man comes over here for more money and doesn’t get it.”

Bernadette: “I still don’t think this was about money.”

“Okay. Comes over for something else and doesn’t get it. Whatever. Fights with Mrs. Stannard. Kills her. Cuts out her tongue.”