With a Vengeance

by Annette Dashofy

  “But you didn’t unload all the clean dishes yet.”

  “No.” Zoe had a feeling she’d given the wrong answer.

  “You did that yesterday too.”

  This time Zoe didn’t reply.

  “And I didn’t know the dishes in there had already been washed, so I loaded dirty ones with the clean.”

  From the look on Rose’s face, Zoe gathered she’d broken some Bassi household law. A felony at that. The only response she could come up with was, “Sorry.”

  Rose shifted in her chair to face Zoe head-on. “I’m not the only one you owe an apology to. Patsy stopped by this morning looking for you.”

  The trail ride. Zoe let her head drop forward. “Crap. I completely forgot she said she’d pick me up.”

  “You need to be a little more responsible, don’t you think?”

  Rose’s accusatory attitude reminded Zoe a little too much of her own mother. “I’ve been distracted. I have a few things on my mind that are more important than your stupid dishwasher.”

  “Girls.” Sylvia’s sharp tone ended the exchange. “I know we’re all on edge right now, but stop taking it out on each other.”

  Chastised, Zoe lowered her head. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Rose turn back toward her plate and sullenly start layering ham, cheese, and lettuce onto a slice of bread.

  “Zoe,” Sylvia said, her voice softer, “have you mentioned anything about Hector’s accident to Pete?”

  “I haven’t talked to him yet today. Why?”

  The older woman stared at her tea, but Zoe sensed she was seeing something entirely different. “Because if you’re thinking of Hector as a possible suspect in these shootings, there’s something Pete—and you—need to know. Hector’s an avid hunter.”

  “So is at least half the population of Vance Township,” Rose said.

  Sylvia fixed her daughter-in-law with a hard stare. “Yes. But half the population hasn’t won awards for sharp shooting.”

  The room fell quiet except for the crunching of the cats eating their lunch.

  Zoe let the tidbit sink in as she reached for the loaf of bread. She definitely needed to share this information with Pete. But there was someone else she needed to talk to first.

  Pete closed his office door and unbuttoned his drenched uniform shirt. The rain had ushered in a cold front, and if his jaw wasn’t so tightly clenched from this case, his teeth would’ve been chattering. He peeled off the shirt and t-shirt underneath, dropping them in a heap behind his desk before retrieving a fresh uniform from the cramped closet.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Chief?” Baronick’s voice filtered through.

  “Come in.”

  The detective bore no evidence of having been out in the deluge. “I personally delivered the casts of the tire tracks to the lab. They’re short-staffed on a good day, but it’s a weekend so…”

  “Put a rush on it.” Pete tugged on the dry t-shirt.

  “Already did. We should hear something shortly.”

  Shortly. Pete hated that word. It could mean ten minutes, ten hours, or ten days.

  Baronick picked up the coffee mug from Pete’s desk—the one Zoe’d had made for Pete last Christmas—and squinted at the police chief emblem on the side. The detective glanced toward the half-full pot in the corner.

  Pete snatched the mug from him and thunked it back in its spot. “Clean cups are in there.” He motioned to the cabinet on which the coffeemaker sat.

  “Feeling a little territorial, are we?” Baronick opened the cabinet door and came up with a mug bearing the Vance Township Volunteer Fire Department’s logo.

  The sight of it soured Pete’s stomach. “Any word on Yancy?”

  Baronick studied the design. “I was about to ask you the same thing.” He set the cup down and reached for the pot.

  Pete buttoned the clean, dry uniform shirt and made a mental note to call the hospital.

  “So what do you think?” Baronick asked while pouring coffee. “Is Snake smarter than we give him credit for? Or are we completely back at square one?”

  Pete tucked his shirttail into his trousers and headed into the hallway, letting the question follow him. He didn’t like either option.

  Baronick followed him into the conference room. “I know you’ve been saying Snake’s too stupid to pull this off—”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  Pete spun on the detective. While they might disagree about a lot of things—procedure, methodology, Zoe—Wayne Baronick rarely called him out on his case assessment. “Why?”

  Baronick waved an arm around, indicating the otherwise empty room. Or maybe the station. “Where is he? We haven’t been able to catch him. Every police jurisdiction in three counties has BOLOs on this guy. He’s smart enough to evade capture. Why shouldn’t he be smart enough to mastermind these ambushes, plot his escape, and act dumb to throw us off his trail?”

  Pete glared at the detective. He made a good argument. Except for one thing. “Have you ever talked to this guy?”

  Baronick swallowed. “No.”

  Pete nodded. “When we catch him, you interrogate him. And then tell me about what a brilliant mastermind he is.”

  The bells on the front door jingled followed by an unfamiliar male voice calling, “Hello?”

  Pete brushed past the detective into the hall. Two men stood at the doorway to the empty front office. The first wore a suit and tie and had his longish hair slicked back. Pete recognized him as Attorney Andrew McCoy. The lawyer blocked Pete’s view of the second man.

  “Chief Adams.” McCoy flashed a mouthful of small but perfectly straight teeth and extended a hand. Oversized rings adorned three of his fingers. “I believe you’ve been looking for my client. We’re here so he can turn himself in.”

  As the attorney stepped toward Pete to shake his hand, the other man, shoulders sagging, hung back.

  Snake Sullivan.

  Pete set a glass of water on the conference room table in front of the tattooed and pierced suspect and shot a glance at Baronick.

  Now the detective would have his chance to experience “the mastermind” firsthand.

  McCoy sat next to Snake, his briefcase, a legal pad, and a pen on the table in front of him. “I want the record to show that my client is here of his own volition.”

  “So noted.” Pete eased into a chair across from them and studied the pair. One all slick and polished. Too polished. Too smooth. The other, sweaty and dirty and smelling like he hadn’t bathed in days, looked like he wanted to crawl into a dark hole. “What were you doing out in the game lands last evening?”

  Snake ignored the glass of water, choosing to keep his arms tightly crossed. “Just riding with friends.”

  “So why’d you run?”

  “’Cause you cops was chasin’ me.”

  “We were chasing you because you ran. Your buddies complied with Officer Williamson when he ordered them to stop. You didn’t. Why?”

  Snake glanced pleadingly at McCoy. “Do I have to answer him, Uncle Andy?”

  The lawyer fixed Pete with a hard stare. “Let’s cut to the chase. We are aware that you suspect my client—”

  “Your nephew,” Baronick said.

  McCoy turned slowly to give the detective a withering look before bringing his gaze back to Pete. “You suspect my client of some rather heinous crimes.”

  “Murder,” Baronick said. “Aggravated assault. Arson. Just to name a few.”

  The attorney’s jaw clenched.

  Realization hit Pete.

  Baronick and McCoy knew each other. And not in a good way. “Yes,” Pete said to McCoy. “We do.”

  “I didn’t do none of that shit,” Snake said, his voice trembling.

  McCoy put a hand on the table in front o
f his nephew. “Quiet. Let me handle this.” To Pete, he said, “We want to cut a deal.”

  “A deal? For what?”

  “My client has information that you may find helpful. He’s willing to give you a statement, but in exchange, you agree not to press charges against him for…certain minor crimes he might have to admit to in order to give you this helpful information.”

  “Minor crimes?” Baronick said. “Like possessing drugs with intent to sell?”

  “I wasn’t gonna sell none of it.” Snake’s voice had soared into falsetto range. “I planned on using it myself and sharing it with my friends.”

  Pete hid a smile behind his hand and lifted his gaze to meet Baronick’s. Mastermind? Yeah. Right.

  Nineteen

  Zoe paused in the doorway of Yancy’s hospital room, debating whether to enter. He was alone, his eyes closed and his jaw slack. She knew from experience how difficult it was to get real rest in these places and considered walking away, leaving the patient to his nap.

  On the other hand, she really needed to talk to him.

  She crept into the room, wincing at the squeak of her shoes against the floor. Yancy didn’t stir. She eased into the most comfortable-looking chair in the room.

  Yancy appeared much as he had the previous day. Right arm bound to his torso. Oxygen flowed through tubing to a nasal cannula, which sat cockeyed under his nose. Two bags of fluids dripped into his arm from a pump attached to the IV pole. Zoe strained to read the labels on the bags.

  One was dextrose—sugar water, a typical maintenance fluid to replace his lost blood volume. The smaller bag was an antibiotic to fight the potential for infection. Another pump contained morphine—the same stuff that made him loopy yesterday and was probably knocking him out today.

  “Zoe?”

  She flinched.

  Yancy’s eyes were open, although his lids appeared heavy. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping.” He shifted in the bed—a monumental task. “Goddamnit. Can you give me a hand here?”

  She leapt to her feet. “What are you trying to do?”

  “I keep slipping down in this damned bed and can’t get back up with only one arm.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Zoe pressed the button on the bed railing to lower the head. Then, ordering the fire chief to bend his knees and press with his feet while she tugged on his good shoulder, she managed to maneuver him in the preferred direction. “There.” She pressed the button again, this time to raise his head.

  “Who’d have thought sitting would be so hard?” Yancy grunted.

  Zoe contemplated pointing out he was alive at least, but decided he already knew.

  He fumbled with the sheets coming up with a button attached to a cable and pressed it. The morphine pump. “Weren’t you and Pete just in here?”

  “That was yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? Oh. I guess my days are running together a little.”

  She pointed at the IV. “Drugs will do that to you.”

  Yancy shrugged. His eyes hardened. “Did anything else happen last night?”

  “The shooter staged another ambush, but the police showed up and scared him away.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “Nope.”

  He gave a relieved sigh. “Good. Did they catch the son of a bitch?”

  “No. He got away.”

  Yancy swore. “Did they at least figure out who he is?”

  “Snake Sullivan’s still at the top of the list.”

  The fire chief snorted. “That moron’s lucky if he can tie his shoes.”

  Zoe pulled her chair closer and sat down. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “About the shootings?”

  “Maybe.” She thought of Curtis in a similar room. Different hospital. Same gunman. “Do you know Hector Livingston?”

  A look crossed Yancy’s face that Zoe had never seen there before. Anger didn’t quite cut it. Loathing was more like it. “That SOB? Hell yes. What about him?”

  “Did you happen to be on call a few weeks ago at a traffic accident on Oak Grove Road?”

  “Minor two-vehicle collision. Yeah, I was there. Hector was driving one of the cars.”

  The back of her neck tingled.

  Hector, Yancy, Barry, and Curtis. All in one place. “What happened?”

  The fire chief let his head drop back against the pillow. His gaze shifted to the ceiling tiles as if the answers lay there.

  As Zoe watched, his eyes drifted shut, and for a moment, she feared he’d fallen asleep. But he took a deep breath and said, “The accident wasn’t much of anything. The other guy—can’t remember his name—swerved to miss a deer. Smacked into a tree. Wasn’t hurt, but his car partially blocked the road. Hector was traveling the other direction. Came around a blind turn, saw the car, but couldn’t stop in time. Clipped the back fender and ended up in a ditch.”

  As everyone had told her, the accident didn’t sound serious. And yet she knew there was more. “What else?”

  Yancy’s eyes opened, but his gaze remained focused on something Zoe couldn’t see. “No one was hurt, but the cars were both inoperable. Plus, the one that hit the tree was smoking, so we were called in.”

  “We?”

  “Fire, ambulance, police.”

  She came forward in her chair, resting her arms on the bedrail. “Come on, Yancy. What aren’t you telling me?”

  He turned to meet her gaze, the same angry look in his eyes. “Hector used to be an okay guy, but that was ages ago. After he lost his wife, he went batshit crazy. Blamed everyone for his bad fortune. Did you know he used to be on the fire department?”

  “Sylvia told me.”

  Yancy nodded. “He quit after his wife passed. Quit everything. Took their daughter and all but crawled into a cave. Got into that survivalist hooey.”

  “Survivalist? How do you mean?”

  “Stockpiling shit. Canned foods. Bottled water. Guns. Gasoline for a monster generator. Hell, I’m surprised he didn’t tape tinfoil to his windows to keep out aliens.”

  Zoe’s grip tightened on the bedrail, her brain stuck on one thing Yancy had said. “Guns?”

  “Lots of them.” He tugged at the brace on his arm. “No one really cared. About him being into that survivalist stuff, I mean. He didn’t bother anyone. In fact, he stayed completely to himself. What bothered me—and some others—was his daughter.”

  “Lucy.”

  Zoe wondered if Yancy knew her as Loco Lucy.

  “Yeah. What the damned fool does to himself is one thing. But dragging that girl into it was a whole other matter.”

  “Dragged her into what?” Zoe couldn’t picture the petite diva, crazy as she was, in camo, eating rations from a can.

  As if reading Zoe’s mind, Yancy gave a slow, knowing smile. “His paranoid world. He taught her to shoot when she was barely big enough to hold a damned gun. Took her hunting. She bagged a deer one year. I remember there being a question about legality. Oh, the deer was legal, all right. But we were all pretty sure she was too young for even a junior license.”

  The idea of Loco Lucy with a rifle turned Zoe’s stomach. She forced her mind back to the present though. And the crash on Oak Grove Road. “I get the feeling something more happened at that two-car accident.”

  “Probably my own damned fault. Couldn’t keep my trap shut.”

  Finally something that didn’t surprise Zoe. Yancy was notorious for his lack of tact. “What’d you say?”

  He fumbled with his morphine button, as if considering zapping himself into a coma rather than answering her questions. “I knew better. You don’t badmouth a guy’s kid.”

  “You said something about Lucy?”

  “That girl goes
through men the way most people go through loaves of bread.” Yancy looked at Zoe askance. “I know she’s got her hooks into your buddy Curtis right now.”

  Zoe decided to keep their breakup to herself for the moment.

  “Well, a while back, she had a fling with Jason Dyer.”

  “I’d heard something about that.”

  “She was older than him. The damned kid thought he’d snagged himself the brass ring. He also thought he was in love and gonna marry her.” Yancy’s voice deepened into a menacing rumble. “Of course, he needed to graduate high school first.”

  Zoe imagined Rose’s son, Logan, involved with a girl like Lucy, and mother-bear instincts kicked in.

  “I don’t know which pissed me off more. Hector’s girl messing around with Jason or her dumping him and breaking his heart. Anyhow, that day at the wreck, Hector was being his usual charming self, so I made some crack about his daughter needing to be locked up for fooling around with an underage boy.”

  The comment hit too close to home for Zoe, bringing back a flash of memory from last winter—only with an underage girl and a grown man. She shook it off. “Was Jason there when you said it?”

  “Hell no. I’d never have brought it up in front of the kid. He was devastated as it was.” Yancy’s expression changed from disgust to regret. “Probably shouldn’t have said anything with Curtis standing right there though. I guess he didn’t know. Looked like it knocked the pegs out from under him.”

  Zoe pictured the scene. Tried to imagine what went through Curtis’s mind at the revelation. Was this the impetus behind their breakup? No doubt it was what he’d wanted to tell her and Earl. But not in Lucy’s presence.

  Yancy went on, interrupting her musings. “Hector went all postal. Cussed me out. Said my mouth was gonna get me in a world of hurt one day.” His eyes widened. “Holy shit. Do you think…?”

  Granted, it sounded bad. But some of the puzzle pieces didn’t fit. “I doubt it. Barry and Curtis were the first victims. What reason would Hector have to harm them? Besides, whoever he is tried again last night.”

  Yancy didn’t appear appeased. “That’s not all though. Hector saw the look on Curtis’s face. Must have figured the kid suddenly had second thoughts about Hector’s little princess. Because he lit into Curtis right after he jumped all over me. Told him if he broke his daughter’s heart, he’d have hell to pay. Poor Curtis looked terrified. Tried to assure Hector he’d never hurt the girl. But Hector kept ranting until Barry stepped in.”