The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Lauren Carr

  While Cameron went to check on Gnarly, who was being praised by the various officers for his deed, David moved on to Mac. Instead of a hug, he greeted Mac with a punch to the shoulder. “Why did you contradict my order for Bogie to take the shot?”

  “I was going to take the shot, David,” Bogie said. “I had it, but then I lost it when Northrop pulled you back.”

  “Because Mac started negotiating after I gave the order for you to shoot,” David said before turning his glare back to Mac.

  “Because Northrop was using you for a shield,” Mac said. “If Bogie had shot him, he would have taken you out, too. Gnarly had a better chance of saving you without the risk of you getting shot.”

  “I had a head shot, Mac,” Bogie said in a gentler tone. “I could have gotten Northrop without hurting David. He would have gotten covered with his brains, but the chief would have been fine.”

  “You don’t know that,” Mac said.

  “There’s always a risk,” Bogie said, “but David made the call, and I would have taken the shot it if I hadn’t lost it.”

  “Because you stepped in where you didn’t belong, Mac,” David said.

  “Hey, I may have made a mistake,” Mac said. “I didn’t know Bogie had a head shot—”

  “It isn’t your job to know!” David was yelling. “You wanted Northrop alive to get Palazzi, and you were willing to risk my life to make it happen.”

  “That’s not true,” Mac said. “I would never have put you in danger to get a collar. You know that.”

  “I’m the chief of police,” David said, “You’re not.” He poked him in the chest to make his point. “You have a tendency to forget that, Mac. I’m in charge, and when I give an order, I expect it to be carried out without question. You got that?”

  Not wanting to continue the argument that then had the attention of everyone around them, including Bogie and Cameron, Mac gritted his teeth. As much as he wanted to argue, he didn’t like doing it in public. He felt like a child being chewed out by his teacher in front of the whole class. David’s glare demanded a response from him.

  “Got it,” he bit out.

  “Good.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  At four o’clock in the morning, there was no traffic on the freeway heading south from Washington, Pennsylvania, to Morgantown, West Virginia.

  Halfway home already, Cameron Gates had declared that she was going back to Chester, West Virginia, to spend the morning with her husband and get some sleep. It wasn’t until they were on the road that Mac remembered that she had left Irving, the skunk cat suffering from separation anxiety, at Spencer Manor.

  Seeing that David was still livid, Bogie had invited Mac to ride home in his cruiser. Claiming to be man enough to take it, Mac declined the offer. Besides, Gnarly was already in the back seat in David’s cruiser.

  During the drive back to Deep Creek Lake, the tension in David’s cruiser was so thick that you could have cut it with a knife. Mac suffered the ride in tension-filled silence, broken only by the continuous sound of Gnarly’s licking, until they came upon Morgantown.

  Too angry to speak, both men refused to voice the growing agitation and instead listened to Gnarly lick and lick and lick. Neither one wanted to break the silence for fear of appearing to be the weaker one. So, they both suffered with every lick that came from the back seat.

  Finally, Mac couldn’t take it any longer. “Gnarly, will you stop that infernal licking?” He whirled around in the seat. “Stop it!”

  With a whine, Gnarly dropped back into the seat and began panting.

  Mac turned around to face the front.

  David turned the cruiser to exit the freeway and turn onto Route 68 to head east.

  Gnarly resumed licking.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Mac turned around to see that Gnarly, still in his bulletproof vest, was licking away at a spot on his side. “Is that vest uncomfortable?” He asked David, “Why didn’t you take the vest off him? It’s probably scratching him.”

  “He’s your partner,” David replied.

  Mac reached back to grasp one of the Velcro straps on the vest to release him. When his hand touched a moist vest, he assumed that it was drool from Gnarly’s licking. Unable to get a hand on the vest, Mac reached up to switch on the interior light to see Gnarly better.

  When the back lit up to reveal a blood-covered vest and a bloody snout, Mac let out a stifled gasp. As much as he tried to contain himself, his horror was evident.

  “What’s wrong?” His eyes on the road, David could only guess at what Mac was gasping about.

  “Gnarly’s bleeding.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Gnarly’s bleeding.” Mac tore at the blood soaked vest.

  Now that he had his master’s attention, Gnarly laid down with a whimper. His panting was mixed with an undertone of high-pitched whining.

  “Are you sure?” David was still unconvinced. “He probably got blood spatter on him from when I shot Northrop.”

  Seeing a hole in the vest from which the blood was seeping, Mac whirled back around in his seat to face David. “There’s a hole in his vest. Gnarly was stabbed, David—in the chest. He’s bleeding.”

  “Why are we only finding this out now?” David asked.

  “I don’t give a damn!” Mac’s anxiety was increasing. “We need to get him to a vet—now!”

  David slipped on the lights and siren. “Hang on. We’re minutes away from an emergency room.” He pressed his foot on the accelerator.

  When Bogie and Officer Brewster discovered that Gnarly had been stabbed, they fell in line behind David in the race into Morgantown. Mac had no idea where David was taking them. He didn’t care. He assumed it was a veterinary hospital that had a pet emergency room.

  When David pulled the cruiser into the West Virginia University hospital emergency room and right up to the ambulance entrance, Mac argued, “David, you’re wasting time we don’t have. In case you haven’t noticed, Gnarly isn’t human.”

  “They’ll take him,” David said in a firm tone that dared Mac to object. “Follow my orders and we’ll be fine.” With one hand he unsnapped his seatbelt while shouldering open his door. “Get Gnarly out of the cruiser and onto a gurney and cover him completely with a sheet.”

  Bogie followed David through the automatic doors. Spotting a gurney, the deputy chief commandeered it to wheel over to the cruiser for Mac, with Officer Brewster’s help, to deposit Gnarly on. Once the dog was on the gurney, Mac urged Gnarly to keep still while Bogie and Brewster draped the sheet that had been on the gurney over him, including his head and ears.

  “We have an officer who’s been stabbed,” David told the nurse who came running out to greet him. “He’s bleeding from the chest.”

  “Is he conscious?” she asked.

  “Yes, but he’s in a lot of pain and losing a lot of blood.” David glanced over his shoulder to where Mac, Bogie, and Brewster were wheeling Gnarly in through the door. When he saw Gnarly’s tail hanging out from under the sheet, David stepped in front of the nurse to block her view. “I don’t think you should look. He’s really ugly.”

  She didn’t appear to notice the furry appendage. “Emergency room two.” Without pausing, they wheeled the gurney in the direction of the emergency room. “You go talk to admissions to get him admitted,” she instructed the police chief.

  “You know they’re going to kick our butts out of here,” Mac told Bogie in a low voice once they were in the room.

  “Keep your faith,” Bogie said. “Help me move him over onto the examination table. On the count of three.”

  Mac and Brewster took one end of the mattress while Bogie took the other. When Gnarly, still panting, attempted to sit up, Mac and Bogie eased him down. “Lie down, Gnarly,” Mac ordered.

  “I understand we have a police officer with a stab wound,” a nurse came rushing in with a doctor behind her.

  Mac felt a pang in his chest when he saw that the doctor looked not
much older than his grown son who was a third-year student at George Washington University. He would have preferred someone old and gray with a ton of experience under his belt, placed directly below his tubby belly. This doctor looked like he was barely old enough to be shaving, let alone treating patients who were bleeding all over the gurney.

  “Yes.” Bogie stood up to his full height and stuck out his chest. His build was intimidating before, but as he took on the demeanor of a man to be reckoned with, he dared the doctor and nurse to defy him. “Officer Gnarly here took a knife wound to the chest while saving our chief of police’s life from a murderer.”

  Behind him, Gnarly lifted his head and looked over at the doctor and nurse. His ears fell back and he uttered a pain-filled whine. Panting to alleviate the pain, he dropped back down onto the examination table.

  “That’s a dog,” the nurse said.

  “He’s also a police officer,” Bogie said. “He needs help now.”

  “We can’t treat a dog,” the nurse said. “The health department’ll shut us down quicker than you can say fleas and ticks.”

  While she objected, the doctor stepped forward, pulled back the sheet, and put the stethoscope into his ears. “We need to get a blood pressure reading on him,” he ordered while checking Gnarly’s heartbeat. “His heartbeat is accelerated. Get me some gauze and an IV. We’re going to need to sedate him. Tell the anesthesiologist to use our mildest medication. Different species and breeds react differently to human drugs.” He looked up to tell Mac, “It looks like it could be close to the heart. Good thing he was wearing this vest. It’s tight enough that it slowed down the bleeding—”

  “We can’t treat a dog,” the nurse interjected loud enough to be heard over him.

  “Maybe you can’t, but I can,” the doctor told her over his shoulder. “Get me a nurse willing to assist in treating this officer, and make it quick. He’s losing blood and needs help now!”

  When she stared at the doctor with wide eyes, Bogie said, “You heard the man. Move it!” The boom of his voice was enough to propel her backwards into the swinging doors. She spun around and ran out of the examination room and down the hallway.

  Seconds later, four nurses arrived with equipment and supplies. Unsurprisingly, they were all pet owners who tended to the fallen German shepherd with the same devotion as they would have with a human patient. One young nurse sat at Gnarly’s head, cooing at him with her lips so close to the dog’s snout that she was a hair’s breadth from kissing him, while he drifted off to sleep under anesthesia. Only after Gnarly was asleep and they were ready to stop the bleeding did the doctor allow them to remove the vest to examine the wound. Eventually, Mac, Bogie, and Brewster were ushered out of the examination room and to the waiting room while the doctor operated on him.

  David was already sitting with two cups of coffee. One, he was drinking. The second, he handed to Mac. “He’s going to be fine.”

  “Did you get him checked in?” Mac asked with a sigh.

  “Yes,” the police chief said. “Oh, if anybody asks, you got stabbed in the chest tonight.”

  The corners of Mac’s mouth kicked up. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Mac took a sip of his coffee. After a moment of silence, he said, “You were right.”

  “I’m always right,” David replied before asking, “About what?”

  “While Northrop was holding that knife at your throat, I was thinking about how we needed him alive to make a deal for Palazzi. I was thinking that there had to be some way to have it both ways—for you to come out okay, and for us to take Northrop alive and make a deal.”

  Staring straight ahead, David sat up in his seat. “I know you see how young I am and you assume that I haven’t been around long enough to understand the type of things that you’re going through—like this vendetta you have against Palazzi. You blame yourself for Blakeley’s murder, but it’s not your fault.”

  “It is my fault,” Mac’s voice hissed. “Her parents looked me right in the eye and told me that it was my fault their daughter was dead. They didn’t want her to testify. They convinced her not to testify, and I talked her into it. I promised her that she’d be safe.” He hung his head. “I thought I could keep her safe, and I was wrong. Maybe I’m trying to vindicate myself for being wrong.”

  “You want her death to be for something,” David said.

  Mac sipped his coffee in silence.

  “Do you think that hasn’t happened to me?” David asked.

  Mac didn’t answer.

  David stared into the coffee that was left in his cup. “Do you know why the chair of the town council, Bill Clark, hates my guts?”

  “Because he’s an arrogant jackass,” Mac said.

  “As true as that is, it’s not the whole story,” David said.

  “What is the story?”

  David sat forward in his seat and rested his elbows on his knees. “When I was active duty—it was after my first tour in Afghanistan—I’d just come back home, and ATF came to me. They had uncovered a group that dealt in illegal arms and transported them from overseas using troops that were coming home. The weapons were going to major drug dealers.” He paused to take a sip of his coffee. “It was a big operation. A lot of weapons. A lot of money. A lot of really nasty people involved. Bill Clark’s little sister was right smack in the middle of it.”

  Mac stared at him. “I never knew Clark had a sister.”

  David broke his gaze. “Lisa and I went to school together. We graduated the same year. She was a friend of Chelsea’s. That’s why they sent me in.” He added, “Chelsea knows nothing about any of this, by the way.”

  “How was Lisa involved?”

  “Lisa worked in logistics and scheduled the flights. She was a key operator and living with the guy who was running the whole operation. He was in charge of base security. She’d schedule the transportation of the arms. He would arrange security so that his people would inspect the shipment and the smuggled goods would get into the country without the good guys knowing.”

  “Slick operation,” Mac said.

  “It’d been going on for years right under everyone’s noses until one of Lisa’s supervisors noticed something fishy and started asking too many questions and ended up dead. During the murder investigation, they uncovered the operation and got circumstantial evidence that Lisa’s boyfriend had killed the supervisor. Problem was, they had no concrete proof. They knew that Lisa had enough information to put them all away and bring down the whole operation.”

  Mac saw where he was going. “And since you two were old friends…”

  “I was sent in undercover to turn her.” David said, “The old high school friend from back home who just so happened to be transferred to the same base cover. My story was that I was in a financial fix due to a gambling problem that I had picked up and needed some quick cash. She vouched for me. They cut me in.”

  His cut empty, David stood up. “Want a refill?”

  After draining his cup, Mac handed it to David, who went over to the coffee maker to pour their fresh cups. “Am I right in assuming it didn’t turn out well?”

  “When I got close, I saw what was happening behind the scenes,” David explained. “Sid, Lisa’s boyfriend, was the ringleader. He was abusive to the point that she was nothing like she had been back in school. She used to be alive. Funny. Clever. He’d beaten her down so far physically and emotionally that he’d broken her. It took a lot of work for me to earn her trust. I promised her that if she helped me to nail him, I’d protect her and he’d never hurt her again.” His face contorted in emotion. “I promised her.”

  Mac’s mind raced back to when he had made the same promise to Dee Blakeley. It was a promise that he ended up not able to keep. Choked with the emotion of his own broken promise, he asked softly, “What happened?”

  David stood over Mac when he handed the cup to him. “We both wore wires,” he whispered. “I was with her, but Sid sent me with
some guys to go check a shipment.” He sat down next to him. “I was wearing an earbud to hear orders from the surveillance van. I could also hear what was going on at her end, too. Sid was a jealous bastard. He’d noticed that she had been spending a lot of time with me. He suspected that we’d been sleeping together.”

  “Were you?” Mac asked.

  His silence answered Mac’s question.

  “It was a set up,” David said. “The guys Sid sent me with were supposed to beat me up, but not kill me. They told me Sid wanted to do that. They were just supposed to prep me for him. I took out one of them, and my backup took out the other two. By the time the smoke cleared, I heard her in my earbud.” He swallowed. “While beating the crap out of her, Sid had found her wire.”

  “Oh, geez,” Mac breathed.

  “The whole time I was running across the base to get to her, I could hear her screaming and begging—begging for me to save her while he was stomping the daylights out of her.” He stopped to swallow. “Her last words were ‘David, you promised me—you promised.’ He shot her between the eyes a split second before I got there—”

  “I’m sorry, David.”

  “So don’t tell me that I don’t know what you’re going through.” He took a sip of his coffee. “My point is…” He paused to clear his throat. “Mac, I respect the hell out of you. When I look at you, I see Dad.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mac looked at him.

  “Maybe it’s because of that that I give you a lot more free rein than I would any of my other officers.” David swallow. “But I am the chief of police. My people have to trust me enough to follow my orders. You may have the experience and instinct to solve these types of cases, but I’m still the guy in charge. When I give an order, you have to follow it. If I let you get away with disobeying my orders, then what’s the rest of my department going to think about my authority? Do you understand?”

  “Understood.” Mac waited for David to drain his second cup of coffee before he asked, “What did you do to Sid after he killed Lisa?”