Cracked (32 page)

“Mm,” Miller said, as though bored.

“How’s Detective French?” I asked. “Should I send her flowers?” I tried to smile, tried for a little flirting. My face, I knew, probably resembled a death mask.

Miller looked at his fingernails for a long time without answering, during which time I wished I had something I could throw into his forehead to kill him dead on the spot.

Miller looked up at me and smiled. He knew I knew. I took a deep breath.

“So, Harry,” I said. “How long have you been a junkie?”

“Longer than you,” he said.

“Oh, no doubt,” I said brightly. “Takes a while to get to your level of depravity.” I looked carefully at his hands, waiting for him to make a move. I took a deep breath. “Please,” I said. “Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with Ginger. Please.” It was a small chuckle that did it. A small laugh that spoke of things that he’d seen, and done, and didn’t have enough conscience left to feel sorry for.

For the second time in twelve hours, I was in a room with someone who had helped kill my sister.

Miller saw my eyes change at the same time I saw him move his hands. He had the advantage of crystal methamphetamines jumping up his nervous system. But I had pure bloodlust, and rage.

Before he could get the gun out of his waistband, I was off the bed. I jump-kicked him in the head, just missing his nose, then pivoted and kicked the side of his head, hard, with my left foot. I stumbled, then. I was out of practice, weak. Miller’s head jerked hard and he grunted, loudly. For half a second I thought I’d broken his neck, but no such luck. He was up and out of his chair faster than I would have thought possible, but then again, I was out of fighting shape. And I was barefoot. I threw a neat punch, but he deftly ducked, and when he stood, a shiny silver gun was pointed at my head.

“Why us?” I said. I was talking to Miller, but I addressed the gun. I kind of hoped the gun wouldn’t answer me, though.

“That Jeanette,” he said. “She’s a spitfire.”

“Did you grow up at The Orchard?” I was trying for conversational, which is extremely difficult to do when you have a gun pointed at your head.

“For a while,” he said. “Long enough.” He shrugged. “However, Daddy Michael didn’t much like my habits.” I remembered what Jack had said about Michael’s opinion of addicts.

“So why, then?” I was still staring at the gun. “Why us, if you’re not in The Family?”

“Don’t you get it, Danny?” Miller said, shaking the gun at me ruefully. “Jeanette and Lola, they’re my sisters. Well, my foster sisters. We’re just like the Clearys. Family loyalty, and all that.” He looked at me. “Oh yeah – and money. That too.”

Crazy. He was crazy. Maybe crazier than Jeanette.

“When this is all over,” Miller answered, “we will have, through you, Jack MacRae’s money. Which is a lot, by the way. Not sure you knew that. Plus the cash from Fred, but that’s penny ante stuff comparatively. Besides, those stupid bitches spent a lot of that.”

“And now you don’t have to share the rest of it with Lola,” I said. “Just Jeanette.” I wanted to find out how many people were involved.

“Well, Lola’s out of the share, at least,” he said, grinning. “Thanks for taking care of that for me.”

The gun was shiny. I was waiting for it to go off in my face. Time was moving very slowly.

Miller was good at reading people. I closed my eyes so he couldn’t see my thoughts. For just a minute, it felt like he was superhuman. That they all were.

But if he needed me to get Jack’s money, he couldn’t kill me right now. If he did, my siblings would get whatever I had. I knew Jack would have left me everything; he didn’t have anyone else, and I just knew. With me dead, though, things would be much more complicated.

“You’re going to turn around now, and I’m going to handcuff you,” he said. “And then we’re going to go and meet up with Jeanette and little Luke. Now that Jack’s gone, Luke’s kind of unnecessary, wouldn’t you say?”

“If you want anything from me, Luke will be safely reunited with his brother. If that happens, I’ll do whatever the fuck you want.”

“You will anyway, darlin’,” he said. He sounded like Gene for half a second and I knew I would kill him. As soon as I could, I would kill him with my bare hands. He wouldn’t get the clean death of a gunshot.

“There’s a cop out there,” I said.

“He’s on break,” Miller said. His face twitched out a smile. I couldn’t believe that I had found him attractive. That I had trusted him. That I had – well, I wouldn’t think about that.

“I’m barefoot,” I said. When Miller looked down at my feet, I took my chance. Springing forward, I knocked his right arm, the one pointing the gun. It went off, and I felt a searing pain across my bicep, like a lick of intense fire. I dove to the floor, and tackled Miller. He wasn’t expecting it, and he went down. But he held onto the gun, and with my good right arm, I tried to keep his on the floor. I was sweating, and I thought I might be sick.

Not now, I thought. Breathe, I thought.

Miller struggled to get to his feet, while I used every ounce of my body weight to keep his right arm down. He landed a good punch on the side of my head with his left. It was just above my right ear.

The door flew open, and the young Toronto police officer who was supposed to have been guarding my room stood there, his weapon in hand. It must have been a pretty scene: me, bleeding all over the place, doing my best to pin down a cop who was trying to beat me off him.

“He’s dirty,” I yelled at the cop. “Belliveau is on his way. Help me restrain him. I’m shot.”

The cop probably wouldn’t have believed me, would have hauled me off Miller, had Miller not chosen that moment to squeeze a round out, which missed the officer’s feet by a couple of inches. Cops tend to not like to be shot at. They’re funny that way. He pointed his weapon at Miller, and took two quick paces forward, kicking the gun out of Miller’s hand.

“Get to your feet,” the cop said to me. His gun was pointing at Miller’s head. With the help of a jolt of adrenaline, I managed to jump back up onto my feet. I didn’t like having the young cop’s gun pointed anywhere in my general direction. He might try for Miller, and miss. I didn’t imagine they put experienced cops on guard duty in a hospital.

The cop spoke into a radio on his shoulder. I didn’t hear what he said, because I was occupied with trying not to faint. Miller lay still on the floor. He probably didn’t want to be shot either. He was breathing hard, and staring at the ceiling.

“My name is Detective Harry Miller, of the Newport Beach Police Department, in California,” he said to the cop, trying to sound calm and commanding. “I came here to question Danielle Cleary for three unsolved murders in the Orange County area. She went for my weapon.”

The cop looked uncertain. I would have, too, were I in his shoes.

“Neither of you move,” he said. Two nurses came to the door and stuck their heads in, but the cop waved them away.

“This man may be a cop, but he has killed several people, including my sister, and was involved in kidnapping my nephews,” I said. “He’s also a junkie. Have him tested.”

“My badge is in my pocket,” Miller said to the cop. “I’m going to get it.”

“Don’t move,” the cop said, but Miller’s hand was creeping inexorably towards his jacket.

“No!” I yelled. But it was too late. Before I could see it happening, Miller had pulled another small gun from his inside jacket pocket. I dove under the bed. Three shots rang out, and it sounded like they came from two different guns. I couldn’t tell, however, because I had my arms over my head, under the bed. I got my own blood in my eyes. Something hit the floor.

The young cop was lying on the floor, his head inches from mine. Blood was streaming from a small hole in his forehead. His eyes were open and staring into mine. I watched the light go out of them.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Miller was saying. I could hear him scrambling to his feet. “I didn’t want to do that. That was your fault, Danny,” he said. He stood beside the bed. I could see his lower legs when I turned my head. “Get up, Danny. You’re going to help me.”

Miller didn’t give me a chance to respond. He pulled me out from under the bed by my right leg and arm. He was stronger than he looked. Crystal meth, it’s a hell of a drug. And I was losing strength by the minute, with the blood that was seeping down my arm.

“We’re going to walk out of here,” Miller said. He put me in front of him, and put the gun to my head. He was a few inches taller than I was, just enough for his eyes to clear the top of my head. “You are not going to try anything stupid, like trying to fight me or kick me, because if you do, I will shoot you in the head. And eventually I will get the money from your heirs. You know what that means. Messy, right? And then I will proceed to shoot whomever is in the hallway, who gets in my way.”

I moved my head in the direction of a nod. The barrel of his gun was pressing into my temple. I didn’t want to move much.

“Okay, then!” Miller said, like we were embarking on a great adventure.

We walked into the hallway, Miller’s left arm wrapped very tightly around my body, holding me to him, and the right held the gun to my head. Two cops were running down the hallway towards us. Both had their weapons out of their holsters. A hospital orderly was pressed up against the wall, and a patient on a gurney looked wide-eyed.

“Drop your weapons,” Miller yelled at the cops. “I will shoot this woman.” The cops looked at each other, and didn’t drop their guns. They were both trained on him. I hoped nobody was going to try to be a hero, ’cause I wasn’t that keen on being shot again.

We proceeded down the hall fairly quickly, Miller keeping his back against the wall with me pressed tight into him. I couldn’t move my head, but my eyes were moving wildly, looking for an exit. As much as I didn’t relish leaving the hospital as Miller’s hostage, I thought my chances were better if we were outside where he might not be so on edge.

We were on the ground floor. Miller backed against an emergency door and pushed through it, still holding me to him. An alarm wailed.

We were outside, and the ground was cold on my bare feet. The cops were behind us in the doorway, ordering Miller to drop his weapon. Unsurprisingly, he chose to ignore them. He moved quickly backwards, and I stumbled. He pulled me tighter into him again.

“We are going to get into that Lexus there,” Miller said to me. “You are going to drive.” He opened the passenger side door and shoved me into the car, pushing me over the console until I was in the driver’s seat. Miller stuck the keys in the ignition and crouched down, his gun still pointing at my head.

“Drive,” he said. I started the ignition, and automatically looked behind me to back out of the spot. I was operating on some fear-based autopilot. All I knew how to do was what Miller said. The pain from my arm was making my brain scream.

I glanced again in the rear view and slammed on the brakes. Detective Paul Belliveau was standing ten feet behind the car, a gun trained on us. He wasn’t in uniform. I had never been so happy to see anyone in my life. Even D-Man. Miller screamed at me to keep going and hit my right knee sharply with the gun to get me to release the brake. Belliveau was sprinting, quickly for such a big man, to get out of the way of the vehicle, which was reversing down an incline and picking up speed. Without thinking, I opened the driver’s side door, car still in gear, and fell to the ground.

I heard yelling, and shots, but then there was nothing. I passed out, my bad left arm under my body as everything went black.

I woke up back in a hospital room. Again.

“They held my room for me,” I said. I felt no pain. I gazed to my right and saw that I was hooked up to IV, so some nice opiates were flowing into my bloodstream.

Detective Belliveau was sitting at the end of the bed, looking ten years older than he had the night before. Darren was there too, with a face like thunder.

“Is Miller dead?” I wanted to know. My throat was scratchy, and my arm was bandaged and in a sling. But I was floating on a wispy morphine cloud.

No one answered for a minute, but their faces told me everything I needed to know.

“Fuck,” I said, feeling like I was speaking in a dream. “Fuck.” How did he get away?

“Fred?”

Belliveau shook his head. He explained that Miller had shot wildly and jumped from the car at the same time I did, and shooting from both guns like something out of a Tarantino movie, managed to get away. Belliveau had thought helping me, lying unconscious on the ground, was more important. It was his instinct, he said.

“It was a bad one,” I said. “I don’t matter in this, Paul. Don’t you get that?”

Paul never took his eyes from my face, but he patted my foot and shook his head. He reminded me of my dad, in that movement. I closed my eyes. No more. No more loss. Morphine. Concentrate on the morphine.

They had found Miller’s blood-stained jacket a quarter of a mile from the hospital, he told me.

“So he’s wounded, and we don’t know how badly,” he said. I nodded. Good.

“Pack my bags, Darren. I’m going to Maine. He’s gone to Maine. They’re all in Maine. Luke is there,” I said a little more loudly. Darren and Belliveau looked at me. “King of the Road,” I said. I knew I sounded crazy with the opiates, and it made me more impatient. “Destination: Bangor, Maine. The Orchard, Darren. God, how are you not getting this?”

They were both looking at me strangely, and they both looked exhausted. “We are going to keep a protective detail on your family, and Matthew,” Belliveau was saying. He rubbed his hand over his face.

Matthew.

“How is he?” I said to Darren. “You should be with him, not here.”

“He’s in the cafeteria surrounded by about twenty nurses and cops,” he said drily. “His mother is dead, he’s been drugged, and he watched his precious Uncle Jack die violently. Oh, and his twin brother is still missing. Other than that? Just peachy.”

“The house is fully guarded, 24/7,” Belliveau added.

“Skipper and Marie are coming to help us take care of them for now,” Darren said. I thought he might be saying something else, but I decided to succumb to the drugs, and enter oblivion.