Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (76 page)

Gabriella turned to Nick and Riley. “Should I go in to work tomorrow?”

“Go to work as you always do,” Nick said. “Keep an ear out for anyone asking questions about Sarah’s whereabouts. We’ll check in with you—and
don’t
come back here until we tell you to, understand?”

Gabriella nodded, gave Sarah a quick peck on the cheek, and pulled the door shut behind her.

Sarah turned to Nick and Riley. “Well, this is interesting. My sister and a tall, dark stranger mysteriously appear in my apartment late one night, and two minutes later my roommate moves out. What are you, Nick, an immigrations agent? I’m pretty sure Gabriella’s got a green card.”

Riley shook her head. “Sarah, there’s so much to explain, and there isn’t time. Do you trust me?”

“The last time you said that you set me up for a blind date with an anesthesiologist. I’ve been drowsy ever since.”

“I want you to pack a bag. Pack enough for—” She looked at Nick.

“A few days. A week at most.”

“A
week!
You know, this is a little sudden for a road trip. What’s going on?”

“I can’t explain it all now.”

“So I’m supposed to just disappear for a week—from my job, from my friends, from the club—and just head with you two to parts unknown?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Nick said. “We can talk on the road.”

“We can talk
now,
” Sarah said. She strolled to the sofa, plopped down, and picked up a magazine from the coffee table. “I’ve got lots of time—I
live
here.”

Riley charged over to the sofa, ripped the magazine from her hands, and threw it across the room. “You pack that bag,” she said. “You pack it
now.
This is your big sister talking to you, and if you give me any more trouble, I swear I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here kicking and screaming—I’ve done it before, and you know I can do it again.”

Sarah looked at her, then turned to Nick. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“I’d do what she says,” Nick said. “She’s been very belligerent tonight.”

Sarah gave her sister a bored look, shrugged, and headed for her bedroom.

“Five minutes,” Riley called after her. “Don’t make me come looking for you!”

“We’ll take two cars,” Nick said, “yours and Sarah’s, if it’s OK with her. Stop at an ATM and take what you can out of your checking account—no more credit cards, OK? I’ll do the same, but I’ll find an ATM in the opposite direction. If they check our bank activity, they’ll know we’re on the run—but they won’t know where. Let’s meet at the motel in thirty minutes. And build a fire under Sarah, will you?” Nick turned and headed for the door.

“Nick,” she called after him.

He turned.

“You can’t protect me.”

“Thirty minutes,” he said. “Don’t make me come looking for you.”

It was just after midnight when they checked into the King’s Motel, a sixties-era relic complete with flat, gravel-covered roof and open hallways fenced in by black iron railings. Riley and Sarah checked in first; they took a room together on the second floor overlooking the street. Nick watched from the parking lot until they disappeared behind a peeling orange door; then he entered the small office himself and requested a room nearby. He paid in cash, and he registered under the name of William F. Burns. Five minutes later, he knocked softly on their door. Riley quietly slipped out and shut the door behind her.

“I put her to bed,” she said. “I think she’s a little overwhelmed.”

Nick took her by the arm and led her down the hallway to a place where the elevator blocked them from view from the street. He reached up and twisted the incandescent bulb once, and the hallway instantly went dark.

“Your sister doesn’t seem the type to be easily overwhelmed,” Nick said.

“Sarah? She’s as tough as an old razor strop.”

“Sounds like someone I know.”

Their shadows came together and touched once, then drifted apart again.

“This is a key to my room,” Nick said. “I’m in 213, just a few doors down. If you need me, call. If the phone doesn’t work for any reason, you come straight to my room—understand?”

She nodded. “Nick—what are we going to do next?”

“You’re going to get some sleep. I’m going to do some thinking.”

Riley slipped the key into the lock and turned it gently; she felt the bolt give way. She pushed on the door, and it begrudgingly opened. The rubber weatherstrip dragging along the short-pile carpet made a sound like a stretching balloon.

She stepped quietly inside. It was just before six a.m., but every light in the room was on. In the center of the room, Nick straddled a wooden desk chair. His chin rested on his folded arms, which draped across the back of the chair. He sat utterly still; he stared directly ahead at an empty spot on the dingy wall, and his floating eyes were as still as two rafts on a glassy sea. Riley started forward in alarm, then stopped, recognizing telltale signs of life. Every day at the Coroner’s Office she was reminded of the infinite difference between even a coma and death; Nick was lost in the depths of thought, but, thank God, he was still very much alive.

She approached him head-on, but there was no look of recognition or even awareness of her presence. She leaned down and looked into his face; at this distance his eyes were truly overwhelming, and for the very first time she saw them motionless. She felt a sense of gratitude, as though some rare or endangered species had allowed her to approach unchallenged. They were
soft and dark, and Riley understood why few people could bear to look at them directly. But somehow she loved them; she loved the way they floated over her, calming her, like a groom with two soft brushes.

She reached out and stroked his chestnut hair. His eyes jumped suddenly like awakening birds and began to slowly take the room into focus. At last Nick straightened up and looked directly at her, but it was several seconds more before he spoke.

“I’m going to Leo’s,” he said. “You two stay here until I get back.”

“Good morning to you too. Do you always sleep sitting up?”

Nick was still too lost in abstractions to engage in pleasantries. “I thought about it all night—what do we do next? We did the right thing first by grabbing Sarah and by sending Gabriella to her parents. But we can’t stay on the defensive forever; the only way to eliminate the threat to us is to expose the ones who are threatening us.”

“But how do we do that?”

“That’s what I spent the night asking myself. Whoever we call next, whoever we choose to trust, we’d better be right about it—because making that contact will be like sending up a flare. Our problem is that we don’t know who to trust. Santangelo is with the FBI; surely the entire Pittsburgh field office isn’t in on it—at least, I hope not—but we don’t know who would be safe to call. Your own office has been compromised—it may have been Lassiter’s lone involvement, but then again he may have had help. It seems possible that at least two of your deputy coroners are in on it; they pick up the bodies at the death scene. And that raises the question of the police. They’re at the death scene too—at least in cases like the drive-by shooting. Who can we trust within the police department? Who can we trust anywhere?”

“And the answer is …”

“The newspaper. We go to the
Pittsburgh PostGazette.
”

Riley looked aghast. “Nick, that seems incredibly risky. First they’re going to think we’re nuts, and then they’re going to start calling around to make inquiries. That will stir up everything.”

“I hope so. Look, we’ve only got two things going for us: first, they don’t know where to find us; and second,
we have physical evidence.
We have the shredded documents that prove that Mr.
Vandenborre picked up a spare kidney somewhere along the way. And we also have my entomological report and specimens, remember? That report could raise all kinds of awkward questions. The trick here is to reveal the physical evidence without exposing ourselves.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’m going to swing by Leo’s and grab the reconstructed documents. Then I’m going to drop them off at the
PostGazette
and head back here.”

“Why can’t Leo bring them here? Or why can’t he take them to the newspaper himself?”

“Because I can’t reach him. I’ve left messages, but I haven’t heard back from him. This can’t wait, Riley. They’re searching for us right now, and they’re looking for Sarah too. The sooner we get this out in the open, the safer we’ll be—and the sooner I get this out of Leo’s hands, the safer
he’ll
be.”

“I wish I could go with you,” Riley said.

“You know better—Sarah needs you here. There’s a very rich person somewhere waiting for one of her kidneys, and you need to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid. Don’t dial out. If the phone rings, don’t answer it. If it’s me, I’ll let it ring once, and then I’ll call again. Got it?”

“Got it.” She stroked his hair again. “Are you OK? You didn’t sleep a wink.”

“My species requires very little sleep.”

Riley frowned. “If you’re not careful, your species will be extinct.”

Nick stopped half a block from Leo’s apartment. He considered whether to park several blocks away and walk over, but he wanted to remove all the evidence at once, and it occurred to him that the sight of someone carrying an armload of trash bags several blocks would raise far more eyebrows than one quick trip to the street. He pulled his car into the same space he had occupied just the night before.

“Leo,” he called out as he rounded the corner into the ever-open doorway. “Hey, Leo!” He headed directly for the bedroom. It was still early, and even tireless Leo might still be in bed. But
the bedroom was empty, and the bed was unslept in—unless Leo was more fastidious than Nick remembered. He had hoped to find Leo here, to set his mind at ease and to brief him on their plans, but it didn’t really matter. Right now all he needed was to collect the evidence and deliver it to the proper person at the
Pittsburgh PostGazette.

He pushed open the bathroom door; it was empty. On a whim, he slid open the shower curtain and felt the inside; it was perfectly dry. It was possible that Leo made his bed
and
skipped his morning shower, Nick told himself. It was
possible
—but he moved to the kitchen with a crawling feeling on the back of his neck.

The kitchen table was completely bare; even the black-and-white trash bags surrounding it had been moved. But where had Leo taken them? Nick had asked him to
organize
the evidence, not to remove it. He assumed it would still be here on the kitchen table, where it had always been. Now he would have to search the whole apartment for it. Now he would have to—

He stopped.

Over the Formica counter, on the white ceramic kitchen floor, Nick saw the edge of a crimson pool.

He sat down hard on one of the kitchen chairs and stared at the wall below the counter that blocked his view of the kitchen beyond. He didn’t need to look on the other side. He knew what was there—he could see it in every detail. He could see Leo’s body stretched out facedown, just as it had first fallen, with a small slit below the rib cage or a gunshot wound through the occipital bone—or maybe even a crushed skull, depending on the savagery of his attacker. And somewhere on the floor there would be a wine bottle or a shattered cup of sugar, some small favor that Leo had been asked to fulfill that would cause him to pause momentarily in a vulnerable and accessible position. And in his mind he could hear the sound of the falling body, lifeless before it hit the floor without reflex or recoil, and the dull, flat sound of flesh slapping tile. Nick cringed and covered his ears with both hands.

He turned and looked across the room at the long computer workbench. The monitors were still in place, and the printers and scanners too—but the two computer towers had been removed,
and their hard drives with them, along with all digital record of the reconstructed prescriptions. Nick ran his hand over the empty kitchen table. Leo didn’t move the evidence—it had been removed by his attacker, and by now it was all completely destroyed.

Nick rose slowly to his feet and stumbled toward the kitchen. He had already seen it all in his mind—why did he have to look? But he knew he had to be a witness to the horror of his oldest friend’s death—to do less would be cowardice. He owed it to Leo; somehow he knew that Leo would want him to look. “Drink it
all,
Nick,” Leo would say. “If you leave any behind, you’ll only regret it later.” When he remembered the sound of Leo’s voice, he felt alternating waves of rage and nausea. Why did he ever get Leo involved in this? How did he let things go this far? Leo was the most
alive
person he had ever met. He was all heart—he was
Nick’s
heart. And now his heart was dead, and all he wanted to do was climb back up into his skull and lock the door forever.

He stepped into the kitchen and looked at the floor. He felt no additional shock, no fresh grief over the reality before him. Why should he? It was just as he knew it would be, down to the shattered bottle of claret and the deep green shards of glass lying in a stain of purplish red. He knelt down beside him; there was a trickle of red from the base of his skull. He leaned over the body and gently brushed back the wavy hair. Around the entry wound was the tattooing of gunpowder, indicating a close-range shot. There would be no exit wound; it was a small-caliber shell, intended to ricochet off the inside of his—Nick shut his eyes and pushed back the thought.