Driving Reign

by TG Wolff

  Cruz was pulling for the next generation.

  Diana the cat stretched luxuriously across the oversized center window of Fisher’s Rare Books and Antiquities. Her one good eye looked down upon the people to-ing and fro-ing in a queen-to-peasant manner. As Cruz climbed the stairs to the front door, her gaze fell upon him. When he entered the store, she ran up the aisle to greet him.

  “Hello, beautiful.” He squatted down, giving the cat a good rub. “How are you today?”

  Diana answered with an extended, contented purr as she twirled beneath his hand, putting his fingers where she wanted them most, right behind her ears.

  The scent of leather and old books greeted him as much as the cat. In the soft lighting, the space glowed. The front of the store was meant for reading and gathering. Mismatched chairs were pulled into haphazard groupings. Some were intimate, others inviting.

  “Hello there!” An animated voice called out the greeting with such enthusiasm, an exclamation point understated the depth of the welcome. “Sorry, I was in the back. I see Diana stood in for me. Looking for something in particular?”

  With a final scratch, Cruz rose and faced the book seller. “I’m looking for information.”

  The bookseller gasped. “It’s you.” The man stood just under six-foot with a lithe body. He wore fine pants with a slight sheen and a cream-colored knit sweater that was both warm and trendy. His dark blonde hair fell onto a wide forehead with same colored brows set over misty blue eyes. “I’m Jonathan Fisher, Jesus.” Fisher rounded his counter as he spoke to take Cruz’s hand in his own and pumped it with no end. “I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like we’re old friends.”

  As a police detective, Cruz frequently walked into situations where people’s reactions to him were unexpected. This one rated at the top, in a positive way. With a glance over the man’s shoulder, he spotted a framed photo of Fisher with Bollier. While Bollier had apparently talked to Fisher about him, his friend and sponsor had been tight-lipped in the vice-versa.

  “How is Aurora? I have to say, I love her work. I’m thinking about commissioning a piece for the store. Do you think she would consider doing it? I know artists can be famously temperamental.”

  Stunned, he heard himself answer. “I’m sure she would work with you.”

  “Fantastic. Just fantastic. Let’s sit. I assume you’ve come to talk about Sophie?”

  Cruz selected a classic chair in a fabric of deep red and gold, drawing Fisher into a position with his back to the window and door, controlling his attention. “I need to know what happened Friday from the first time you saw Sophie until the hospital.”

  Fisher took a deep breath, releasing quickly. “Sophie came into the shop around three-thirty to return a book I loaned her. She was animated, hot with moral outrage at the way depression is treated by society much the same way leprosy was. She talked about changing from being a cardiac surgeon to a psychiatrist and setting up a clinic of her own.”

  Cruz took measure of the man as he spoke. The breathing, the hand gestures, the body language. The face had been wide and bright during their handshake, telegraphing the unexpected thrill of the meeting. That same face was now sedate, brows slightly down, eyes focused and serious. “What happened next?” The cat jumped into Cruz’s lap, determinedly pushing her head under his hand. Since he wasn’t taking notes, at least not yet, he accommodated her.

  “Rachel came over from Three Witches. One of their other waitresses didn’t show and she was looking for Sophie to start early. After not finding her in her apartment, she came here, through the back door. Sophie left with her right away.”

  “Was she upset to be called in early?”

  Fisher shook his head. “She was very matter-of-fact about it. She left saying we were not done with our conversation.”

  “Tell me how you came to find her.”

  “I went over to pick up dinner and noticed she wasn’t on the floor. Rachel covered the entire dining room while Carly worked behind the bar. She told me Sophie was sick as a dog. I was concerned because, well, she’d been fine. I took my dinner back to my store, set it in my office, and went to check on her. I knocked, more than once I think, but she didn’t answer. I heard a noise from inside and on instinct or something, I tried the door. When it swung open, my heart started pounding. She always locks it. Always. I found her in her bedroom.”

  Cruz set Diana on the floor, giving Fisher his full attention. “Describe what you saw. What did you do?”

  Fisher wrung his hands together, pulling hard enough to turn his knuckles white. Diana now weaved in and out of his planted feet, rubbing her head against his shin. “She was lying on the floor, blood pooled under her,” he became notably uncomfortable, “she wasn’t wearing a shirt.”

  “You’re doing fine.” Praising him using a calm voice, Cruz sought to keep the emotional reaction in check while collecting the critical information. “You realized she was in distress. Did you go to her?”

  “I did. I called 911, ordering an ambulance. I, uh, wasn’t polite about it. The woman asked me too many questions I couldn’t answer.” He opened his hands, stretching the fingers wide then bunching them into tight fists. “I remember there was a shirt on the floor and being determined to get it on her. After everything she’d been through, I couldn’t let strangers find her in just her bra. I couldn’t do much for her, but I could do that. I heard the sirens. They were fast. I told her the paramedics were on the way and I was going to let them in. Once they were taking care of her, I called Oscar.” Emotions played across his transparent face. He was struggling to keep them in check and failing. Tears leaked down his cheeks. “I know this doesn’t help. I can’t seem to stop it. I think of her. I see her and, oh God.”

  “Focus on Friday night,” Cruz said, giving the man something productive to do with the energy. “Details are important to discovering the truth. Now, did you touch anything beside the door and the shirt you put on her?”

  Fisher’s gaze snapped up and then color flooded his pale cheeks.

  In a resigned voice, Cruz said, “Just tell me.”

  “There was a bottle of cheap wine on her bedside table. I took it with me when I went for the ambulance and threw it in with the dirties from the bar. I took a glass of water from the kitchen and put it where the bottle had been.” Fisher flopped back against the couch, eyes to the ceiling. “That’s all. I swear.”

  The facts were tumbling into place. Now Cruz had to sift between the evidence of a suspect and the fumbling of a well-intentioned friend. In his mind, he saw the bedroom as it had been the first time. Wine bottle replaced glass.

  “Was there a glass with the wine?”

  Fisher shook his head. “I put the water glass on the circle the bottle left on the stand.”

  When the suspect returned to the scene, he had to notice the bottle was missing and the glass in its place. What did he think happened to it? Did it alarm him?

  Another question, did Bollier know what Fisher had done? Because if this was another of his fucked-up Yoda games, Cruz was going to go Galactic Empire on his pompous ass. “Did you tell Bollier—”

  “No!” His head snapped up, eyes as big as quarters. “And you can’t tell him. I don’t need another lecture from that man.”

  Ooookay then. Moving on… “You suspected Sophie tried to kill herself. That was the reason you tampered with evidence.”

  Fisher looked sheepish. “I’m sorry, if that does any good.”

  Not so much, Cruz thought, but let it lie.

  “Yes, I assumed she consumed them herself. There was no one else in the room, nothing screamed ‘someone tried to kill Sophie.’” He shouted the last part, sending Diana scrambling deep into the store. “I was protecting her, Jesus, from a world that had already been too ugly.”

  “When did you begin to think this was more than a suicide attempt? Bollier didn’t come to me on his own. He asked for my help because you asked for it.” He was ga
mbling, but it made sense. “You must have shared something compelling to have him get up in my face.”

  “A week later, the dribble being passed off as news was going on and on about Sophie drinking. How she was always drunk at frat parties and how her preferred drink was red wine because she was too classy for beer. Out of nowhere, it hit me. Sophie didn’t drink wine. Not a sip. She said the smell bothered her so much, she had trouble serving it without her stomach rebelling. Her freshman year she had drank too much and had gotten sick. When she drinks now, it was a mixed drink or beer. Never wine.”

  “If she was depressed, it may not have stopped her. Depression doesn’t think logically.”

  “At three-thirty, she wasn’t depressed but railing against our society’s preference for jailing mental illness over treating it. Two hours later she’s trying to kill herself with pills and a drink she detests? You say mental health diseases can trump logic but just because something is illogical doesn’t mean it was caused by mental illness. I know she struggles with the assault and the fallout, but she was picking out baby names, for goodness sake. She was figuring out the future, not an exit strategy.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees as he argued for Sophie. “Think about this, if she was going to buy alcohol, why not a fifth of vodka? If she took it from work, every other liquor was kept in the same storeroom as the wine. Depression doesn’t take away the core of who we are. It doesn’t make you eat carrots if you never liked them. It doesn’t make you drink wine when you vomited a bottle into a toilet.” And he was on his feet. “No. No. No. If it was her hand on the pills, it wasn’t by her choice. Someone tried to kill her and still may have. You need to find that someone and exact justice on her behalf.”

  The tirade revealed an important fact. Jonathan Fisher knew Sophie was having a baby. “When did she tell you she was pregnant?”

  He sank back into the couch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” When Cruz just stared, he caved. “New Year’s Eve. She was despondent then. Her sorority kicked her out. She came here, lost, crying. I brought her in the back room and made her tea. She told me everything. I wanted her to come home with me, but she refused. I showed her the basement apartment then. I didn’t like her being alone, but at least I knew she’d be warm and watched over. Please,” he said in a whisper, his heart in his eyes, “there’s more to this than meets the eye. I’m certain.”

  On that last point, Cruz agreed. Fisher’s story cleared away some of the fog but didn’t give him a name or a direction. Cruz littered him with questions about people, places, and things. Only one thing came of it.

  “The label on the wine bottle, it said Red Number 7. I’m certain.”

  Cruz left Diana in charge of a downhearted Fisher and went out his rear door to the back alley. Dumpster diving was not Cruz’s favorite past time. Middle of the day, middle of January, made it marginally better. The water was frozen; the alcohol wasn’t but the temperatures kept the smell to a dull memory.

  “Come on, Billy, we talked about this.”

  Big hands grabbed Cruz by the shoulders, bodily disconnecting him from his work. Separated from the ground, instinct kicked in. Cruz used his assailant’s strength against him, kicking the inside of his thigh and swinging for the square jaw.

  Instantly, his fist was wrapped in a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt and a forearm across the collarbone pinned him to the dumpster.

  “What the hell, Billy—you’re not Billy.” The eyes that widened in surprise narrowed again, this time with threat. “This place is off limits. Period.”

  “My name is Detective Jesus De La Cruz, Cleveland police. Step back. Now.”

  The man who could have been a linebacker for the Cleveland Browns took two long steps back, his gaze raking over Cruz. “You police?” His accent pinned a few hundred miles south of their current latitude.

  “Yeah, I’m police.” Cruz dug out his ID and showed it. “Let’s see yours.”

  The man obliged. “Ronnie Taylor. I live here. Sorry about the air lift, officer, I thought you were this guy named Billy who comes around when his bottle gets empty. I told him he can’t be doing that and he listens for a while, then he’s back.” He waited patiently as Cruz studied his license. “Whatcha doing in there?”

  “Looking for a wine bottle, it’s evidence in a case.”

  “Lemme give you a hand.” He took up a station at the left end of the dumpster. “What’s it called?”

  “Number 7.” Cruz took the right end. “It was thrown away over two weeks ago, the day after this was emptied last.”

  “It’s gonna be at the bottom, then, if it’s here at all.” The big man threw a leg over and climbed in. The dumpster was for glass only and came past his knees.

  There wasn’t enough room for two, leaving Cruz to supervise. “Check that one. You see it?”

  “Vodka.” He kept searching.

  “Which apartment are you in and how long have you lived here?”

  “I’m in 3B, have been since last June. I’m a PhD student in chemical engineering.”

  “Do you know Sophie DeMusa?”

  The big man straightened, a hand squeezed the coat over his heart. “Yes, sir. I know Sophie.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  He blushed. Standing knee deep in the dregs of alcohol and glass, the six-four, two-hundred-fifty-pound man turned pink. “Not as well as I wanted to.”

  “You wanted to date her?”

  “I did date her. That is, we dated each other. Our first date was the Feast of the Assumption party they have here in August.”

  “Let me guess, she broke it off after Halloween.”

  His eyes widened again, as if he thought Cruz were physic. “That’s right. I guess she found someone she liked better.” He rubbed his heart again.

  “Ronnie, you heard about Sophie and Andrew Posey?”

  He shrugged as though it was nothing; his eyes disagreed. “I heard something. Between my research and martial arts competitions, I pretty much just sleep here.”

  “How come people here didn’t seem to know you two were dating?”

  “We kept it quiet like. Sophie was busy with that ball and I had a regional competition to train for. We saw each other when we could. I thought things would lighten up in November and we’d spend more time together. She had different ideas, I guess.” Glass clinked together as he shuffled through the oversized bin. He bent over and came up with a bottle in his gloved hand. “Is this what you were looking for?”

  Two hours later, Cruz sat in Montoya’s office wishing he had a pair of toothpicks to keep his eyelids from slamming shut. His day was twelve hours old, but given it had come on only two hours’ sleep, it felt more like was thirty-two hours old.

  “You stink.” Montoya leaned back in his chair, widening the space between them.

  “You should smell the other guy,” he said, forcing a smile he couldn’t feel. He shared Fisher’s story and the encounter with Ronnie Taylor. “I sent the wine bottle to the lab for prints.” His own coffee cup empty again, he eyed the one sitting at his commander’s elbow.

  “Anything I need to know about Posey?”

  Cruz stifled a yawn then recapped the previous day’s visit. “I keep turning away from Posey. If it checks out, he has an alibi for that Friday night. Motivation is weak. He’d beaten the rape and sexual assault charges, he didn’t need her out of the picture. Revenge? Punishment? Maybe, but this is a guy who doesn’t see people. Yablonski got torqued because Posey overlooked me and spoke to him. Once he defeated Sophie, I don’t think he looked back.”

  “I hear a ‘but.’”

  “He had a flyer for Fisher’s bookstore. He wasn’t there, I believe that. But.” He shrugged.

  “That doesn’t mean someone wasn’t there for him.” The commander leaned forward. “That’s a big leap, from suicide to murder for hire.”

  “And I’m not leaping.”

  “What are you planning next?�
��

  “A face-to-face with Teresa Addison. Those pills are a key to the truth.” Figuring turnabout was fair play, he reached across the desk for the neglected coffee.

  The cup was pulled decisively away. “Tomorrow. You are officially off ’til morning. She’s not going anywhere, and you need some sleep. You’re dull as a brick.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Dull as a brick,” Cruz muttered as he unlocked his side door, irritated his commander doubted his abilities, his professionalism. Well, fuck him, fuck them all. They didn’t want him on duty he damn well wasn’t going to beg to work. He had his pride, didn’t he? His dignity?

  Inside, his house was warm and silent.

  He hated it.

  He kicked off his shoes, snow scattering across the small landing while he wondered where the fuck Aurora was. She better know by now that this was her home. Not her mother’s house. Not her sister’s condo. This fucking house was the one and only one she came to after the school day ended.

  Which would happen in another hour according to the clock on the microwave.

  He blew out a breath, sending temper with it. Maybe he was a little fried.

  He dropped his coat over the back of a dining room chair, letting the shit of the long ass day fall with it. Last summer, when he was undercover, Aurora transformed the long wall of the dining room into an abstract café with diners and waiters on a cobble street. The real table in front of him matched the ones in the mural, as did the chairs. The stone-patterned flooring matched into road so seamlessly, the first time Yablonski saw it, he walked into the wall.

  The memory brought a smile, the way it always did. He scratched his chin on his shoulder and got a whiff of himself. Turning into the living room, his grin grew at the whitewashed wall. The start of another mural. He hadn’t asked Aurora what, enjoying seeing the art come life. Too tired to haul his ass upstairs, he showered on the main floor, pulling sweatpants and a Henley from the basket of clean laundry waiting to be carried up.