Inside, the apartment was composed of a tiny living room, a cramped, makeshift kitchen, a bathroom barely big enough for the tub, toilet and sink it held, and a closet-sized bedroom. In the living room, a mattress sprawled on the floor in front of an over-large flat screen television hooked up to a new DVD player and an Xbox. As though suggested by its size, the bedroom was now a closet. It held a dresser, two metal clothes racks, several laundry baskets full of clothes, and stacks of plastic boxes full of shoes. In the kitchen, the appliances were covered with dust and the refrigerator empty.
When I got there, I set my things by the door; my laptop and the bag I used for massages into which I’d shoved some clothes. I used Peter’s landline to order some Thai food. There was a stack of menus conveniently kept on the DVD player. I dug around the closets until I found a fresh set of sheets. After I changed the bed, I turned on the TV and discovered that Peter had every possible cable channel; I decided to lie there and do nothing as long as possible.
Since it was safe to use Peter’s landline, I went out to my car and got the instructions to my cell. I looked through them to see if there was a way to retrieve messages from a landline. There was. I followed the instructions and picked up my messages. There was one from my sister asking if I’d be coming to Thanksgiving with the family. That felt totally bizarre. For one thing, they had no idea what I’d been going through; for another, Thanksgiving was only a few days away. You’d think if they wanted me there they’d have asked before now. Fortunately, there were no other messages.
Then I pulled out my computer and tried to get on Peter’s wireless. He had password on it. At this point, I was getting pretty sick of passwords. I knew Peter pretty well, and I wondered if I’d be able to guess it. I had no idea what the name of his first pet was, but I did know the name of his ex, Donald. I tried it. Didn’t work. I tried a few combinations of Donald and years that he might have been born. Donald1978, Donald77, things like that. Then, on a whim, I tried Donald&Peter. That worked. I was on. Moments later, I had mailed the file to myself. Now I had three copies. One on the flash, one on the laptop, and one in cyberspace. That wouldn’t necessarily keep me safe, but it gave me options.
As I ate my Pad Thai, I wondered if Detective Hanson was still following the guy in the Buick convertible.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Shit! Shit!” I’d been so worried about being found through some fancy new technology, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might be found through simple, old-fashioned footwork. They’d had my computer; they’d probably printed out my address book. Hell, they might have copied my entire hard drive.
All they had to do was work their way through, checking with people to see if they’d seen me, until they got to Peter’s name. Warren, Peter Warren. If they began at the beginning of the alphabet, it would take them quite a while to get to him. Well, maybe not such a long while. I didn’t know all that many people.
Jumping out of bed, I threw my clothes on and started grabbing my things. I had enough cash to spend the rest of the night in a hotel, thanks to my work as a masseur. I figured I should do that. Once I had everything, I turned off the light and left Peter’s apartment. It was around two in the morning. I walked down the complex’s sidewalk toward the street. Almost to the street, I was brought up short when a man stepped in front of me. Carlos Maldonado.
I looked into his angry eyes, then at the gun he held in his hand. “Turn around and go back to your friend’s apartment,” he said.
I wondered if he was waiting for Hanson. Was that why he was on the street? Had she said, “meet me out front then we’ll go in and kill him”, just as though they were planning some kind of shopping excursion?
Having no choice, I turned around and headed back to Peter’s apartment, Carlos close behind me. When we got in the door, Carlos asked, “Do you have it?”
There wasn’t much point in playing coy, so I said, “Yes, I’ve got it. It’s in my bag.”
He snatched my bag away from me, unzipped it, and began to rifle through it. A moment later, he looked up at me, pissed off. “Where is it?”
“The key chain. If you pull the duck’s head off, it’s a thumb drive.”
He pulled the duck’s head off and stared at the metal square end of the drive. “Is this the only copy?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
“That would be stupid. You must have made a copy.”
“The file is password-protected. I never figured out how to open it.” He stood there, deciding whether to kill me. I still held my bag in my hand. At the bottom of the bag was a knife wrapped inside of a towel. It wasn’t much help against a gun, but it was something. If I could get to it, that is.
“What’s on the drive?” I asked, trying to sound like I didn’t already know.
He just stared at me.
“You killed two people to get it.”
“I have a big future ahead of me. City council. Maybe mayor some day. Maybe more. I’m going to be able to do good things for people. Do two lives really matter when compared to all the people I can help?”
I tried not to think too much about this, instead, I stayed focused on letting my hand fall into the bag and extending my fingers until I felt the towel.
“That’s kind of a leap, don’t you think?” I said, confronting him in hopes of keeping him distracted. “You killed to cover your ass, plain and simple.”
He raised the gun and aimed. I had my hand on the towel, separating it, my finger grazing the knife as I tried to grasp it without being noticed.
“They were blackmailing you, but that doesn’t make it okay to be my self-appointed executioner.”
“Who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong?”
“I’m innocent. I never tried to blackmail you. How are you going to justify killing me?” I could see him wavering at the thought. I had my fingers on the knife. I got my fist around the handle and pulled it out of the bag as I stepped forward. Before I really knew what I was doing, I plunged it into his stomach just below his ribs as the gun fired over my shoulder. The knife was cold, and the blood that spilled out of him was hot and sticky. I’d stabbed a man. I nearly stopped breathing.
Dropping the gun, he looked down at the blood pouring out of him in a wave. Bloody knife in hand, I backed away from him. I’d hit something major. Peter’s carpet was covered in blood. So was Carlos. So was I. With one hand, he feebly attempted to put pressure on the wound, but the blood kept coming. Then his hand dropped away. He was weakening all ready. I couldn’t believe how fast it was all happening. I must have driven the knife right into his heart.
He fell to his knees, looked up at me, and with barely any strength left, said, “Fuck you.” He collapsed onto the floor. I stared at his lifeless body for a moment, then jumped into action. I ran into the bathroom and with a wet towel wiped as much of his blood off of myself as I could. I could have taken a shower and changed, but I felt like I had to get out of there as quickly as possible.
I put the bloody knife in the bag; I’d get rid of it somewhere. On my way to a hotel, maybe. I’d find a quiet neighborhood with an open storm drain. I’d drop it in and go on my way. Of course, I felt bad about leaving a dead body in Peter’s apartment. But he had the perfect alibi. He was in France, so no one would suspect him. And no one could connect me to Carlos without connecting him to the deaths of Eddie and Sylvia.
Calling the police and telling them the truth wasn’t even an option. Hanson had it in for me, and my actually killing someone, even in self-defense, wasn’t likely to stop her. Her devotion to Carlos wouldn’t end with his death.
I left the apartment and bolted down the sidewalk toward the street. I was just about to get into my car when I heard the scream, “STOP RIGHT THERE!”
I spun around. A wave of nausea hit me when I saw Hanson standing in the middle of the street aiming a big, black gun right at me. I breathed deeply, trying to get hold of myself. There was nothing to do but stop. “Where’s Carlos?” she asked.
“He’s in my friend’s apartment. I gave him the video. He told me to take off.”
She gave me a disbelieving frown, then she saw the blood on my clothes. “What did you do?”
“I cut myself shaving.” Raising the gun, she squeezed her eyes as though she might shoot. “I was just protecting myself. He was going to shoot me.”
“I, he…” Realization hit her like a brick. If I was alive and standing in the courtyard, it was clear what had happened to Carlos. Her eyes flashed from sadness to anger.
“You’re a cop. Why is okay that Carlos killed Eddie?” I asked.
“It isn’t okay, but it had to happen. Javier was a prostitute and a blackmailer. Carlos is someone who matters. We couldn’t let Javier--”
“You were in love with him, weren’t you? Carlos, I mean.”
“We had a bond. A deep bond. Something you wouldn’t understand.”
“Did Tripp have trouble understanding it? Is that why you arrested him?”
“He’ll be all right. You don’t need to worry about him. He’ll see that what we’ve done was…necessary.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
She was tired of talking. Glancing around, she plotted her next move. Her Crown Vic sat at the curb in front of the building. She stepped aside, then waved me toward the street with her gun. I suppose she wanted me to think that she was planning to handcuff me and push me into the Crown Vic, but I knew better. If I was dead, she’d be safe.
Still, I didn’t have much choice but to follow her instructions. I wondered if she was just going to shoot me on the sidewalk? Then she answered my question by saying, “Run.” I turned to look at her, almost as though I hadn’t heard her. “Run!”
“No,” I said. I took a step closer to her. “If you’re going to kill me, kill me here. Kill me right up close.” It might be the last thing I ever did in life, but I’d at least make my death harder for her to explain.
“RUN!” She pushed me. I fell back a couple feet, but got my footing and moved back toward her. “I SAID RUN!”
I moved closer.
“RUN! RUN AWAY.”
Pushing me away from her, she attempted to step back from me, but I recovered and stepped in closer. She became more and more frustrated.
“FREEZE!” A man’s voice called out. Hanson glanced over her shoulder. Tripp stood on the sidewalk twenty feet behind her, having just come onto the street.
“This guy’s a cop killer,” she told her partner. “We’re not letting him get away with that.”
“Put the gun down, Lucy. It’s over.”
“The blood on his chest. That’s a cop’s blood. Think about it, Aaron. He killed a cop.”
“It’s a murderer’s blood. You know Matt’s innocent. Put the gun down.”
With another glance over her shoulder, she said, “Don’t make it go down this way.”
“I’m not the one in charge here. You are. It’s up to you how this goes down.”
Hanson bit her lip and thought through her options. From the look on her face, she wasn’t finding any of them acceptable. Unexpectedly, keeping her gun raised, she grunted and spun around to face Tripp. She squeezed off a shot.
The back of Hanson’s jacket blew open in a cloud of blood. A sharp, burning pain sprang to life in my bicep. And then, afterward, I finally heard the shot Tripp had fired.
It was followed by a second shot from Hanson’s gun. The bullet went wild. She was already crumpling to the ground when the gun discharged. Neither of the shots had hit Tripp, but still pain flooded his face. Pain, and the most profound sadness I think I’ve ever seen. I looked down at my wounded arm; blood flowed out of it quickly, had already painted my forearm and the back of my hand. I felt light-headed for just a second before the world collapsed and I ate the pavement.
I woke up in the hospital about six hours later. Strangely, Peter was looking down at me. He looked tired, as though he’d been up for days, and he may well have been. His blond hair was disheveled and floated around his head like cotton candy.
“You are such an asshole,” he said.
“I am?”
“I called to have you come get me at the airport and some policeman answers your phone to tell me you’ve been shot. You know perfectly well you shouldn’t get yourself shot when I need a ride from the airport.”
“I’ll try not to do it again.” I almost drifted off again, then I said, “Hey, wait a minute. Why did you need a ride? What happened to Mr. Limousines and Private Jets?”
“And that’s the other thing. I’m having a personal crisis and you just have to go and have a bigger one. Don’t you have the least little bit of consideration?”
“What happened, Peter?”
“Oh my God, I am so humiliated. You know how I was thinking he’s some kind of tycoon? Turns out he’s not. He’s just an assistant. The jets, the hotel rooms, the fabulous dinners. Not only not his, but, you know, sort of stolen. From his boss. I had a lawyer screaming at me about embezzlement half of yesterday. I actually paid my own way home. Can you believe that?”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Pish posh. After being framed for murder and shot, don’t you even try to pretend you’re impressed by my embezzling paramour. I admit it. Compared to you, I’m lame.”
“I am sorry, though,” I said truthfully. He was right. By comparison his problems weren’t all that big, but they still sucked.
He shrugged. “It’s all right. The lifestyle was wonderful. But to be honest, the sex was… laborious.”
“I’m sorry about your apartment,” I said, assuming that Carlos had probably bled all over it, and whatever he didn’t destroy the crime scene personnel probably did.
He shrugged. “It’s time to move anyway. I should be closer to you. Someone needs to keep an eye on you.”
“You should move into my spare room,” I said weakly. I could use the money. What with being unemployed and all.
“That’s possible. We’ll talk about it later, though. First, you have to tell me, who’s the cop? The tall one, looks like sex on a stick dipped in chocolate.”
“Detective Aaron Tripp.”
“He’s been lurking about, glowering. I told him you were going to be okay, and he left.”
“When’s he coming back?”