***
Lieutenant Donovan followed Captain Kramer’s car to St. Michael’s Cathedral. A call had come in two minutes earlier of shots fired at a wedding. There was no word on the condition of the victim or who had fired the shots. The captain didn’t seem bothered by any of this as he strode confidently up to a cluster of people.
Lieutenant Donovan parked her car next to his and waited another minute for the captain to go inside the cathedral. Then she got out of her car to follow him. There was definitely something odd going on here. A police captain was never the first one at a scene unless the crime happened in his presence and sometimes not even then. You didn’t live long enough to get promoted by being the first one to charge into the fray.
As she approached the cluster of people who milled around the cathedral, Lieutenant Donovan pulled out her badge. “What’s going on here?” she asked.
“They shot my son!” a middle-aged woman said. She pressed against a man Donovan assumed was her husband.
“Who shot him?’
“I don’t know. Some man.” The woman pointed away from the cathedral. “He went that way!”
“What did he look like?”
The woman’s husband fielded this one. “We couldn’t get a look at him. He had on one of those ski masks. He was wearing all black.”
“Stay right here. I’ll see if I can find him,” Lieutenant Donovan said. She jogged away from the scene, though she was certain it was already too late. Maybe if she retraced the killer’s steps she’d find some evidence he’d left behind. She didn’t believe this, but it was a possibility.
She rounded a corner and nearly ran into a disheveled Emma Earl. The front of the woman’s dress was smeared with grime, as was her face. Lieutenant Donovan couldn’t help but notice Earl was barefoot.
“You’re too late,” Earl said. “He’s gone.”
“You were chasing him?”
“Someone had to.”
“Where’d he go?” Earl led Lieutenant Donovan back along the alley where she claimed the killer had gone. From the trashcans thrown around either someone had tried to disrupt a pursuit or a family of raccoons had happened by.
“He climbed over that wall. I couldn’t follow him,” Earl said. She sagged against a wall for support, clearly favoring her left foot.
Lieutenant Donovan patted the young woman’s shoulder. “You tried. That’s commendable.” Lieutenant Donovan reached into her pocket for a cigarette. Earl’s nose wrinkled as Lieutenant Donovan lit it. “You want to tell me what happened? Start at the beginning.”
“My friend was getting married. Becky Beech.”
“I remember her. Go on.”
“It was as they were going to kiss I heard the shot. It was silenced, so I don’t think anyone else heard it.” Earl went on to describe the pursuit from the cathedral’s balcony into the alley. She didn’t have anything to add on what the killer looked like.
“I guess we should go back and take a look at that rifle.”
“It’s not going to tell you anything.”
“Probably not,” Lieutenant Donovan conceded. “But maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll have gotten sloppy.”
“There’s someone else we need to talk to.”
“Who’s that?”
“Isis Dreyfus. She’s the wife of a friend from the museum.”
“You think she did it?”
“No, she was in the crowd when it happened. But she knows something about it.”
“How do you figure that?”
“She was acting suspiciously. Like she knew something would happen.”
Lieutenant Donovan tossed her cigarette to the ground. “Well, that’s not much to go on.” She put up a hand before Earl could say anything. “I’ll get her statement. That’s the best I can do unless you have something tangible.”
“No.”
Isis Dreyfus turned out to be a beautiful young Arab woman. She batted her big black eyes innocently at Lieutenant Donovan. “I didn’t see anything. I’m as surprised as anyone else. I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt Steve.”
“How well do you know the bride and groom?”
“I met Becky at a museum party two days ago. Then I visited her at Councilwoman Napier’s office. I wanted some information on charitable programs in the city. She invited me out for dinner and drinks with the rest of the wedding party.”
“I can vouch for her whereabouts at the time,” her husband said. “She was right beside me. Everyone saw her.”
“I’m sure she was. I’m trying to ascertain if anyone saw anything suspicious.”
“Isis wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“You’re probably right.” Lieutenant Donovan jotted a few notes in her notebook and then snapped it shut. “And I’m sure Ms. Beech will be able to vouch for your whereabouts last night?”
“Yes,” Isis said. She reached out to pat the lieutenant’s arm. “This is a terrible tragedy. I want to cooperate in any way I can.”
“That’s very admirable of you, Mrs. Dreyfus. I’ll give you a call if I need anything further.” Lieutenant Donovan wanted to find Emma Earl again, but she ran into Captain Kramer instead.
“What are you doing here, Donovan?”
“I heard the call on the radio. Thought I’d check it out.”
“This is my case. You got that?” He poked a finger into the lieutenant’s chest for emphasis. “I don’t want anyone fucking it up.”
“I understand, sir. I was interviewing witnesses. One of them said the shot came from the balcony. She says the murder weapon is up there.”
Kramer made a disgusted grunt at this. “I’ll go check it out. You keep interviewing the witnesses until someone else gets here. Then I want your notes and I want you gone.”
“Sure thing, sir.” She waited until Kramer had gone to growl, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, asshole.”
***
Becky wanted to go with the ambulance, but they claimed not to have room for her. “I have to go with him,” she said. “I can’t leave him!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” one of the paramedics said.
Becky leaned against the gurney so Steve could see her face. His eyes were only half-open, but she knew he could see and hear her. “Just hang on,” she whispered. “Everything will be all right. I love you.” She managed a brief kiss on the cheek before he was wheeled away. She flung herself after the gurney, but someone stood in her path.
Percival Graves, the man who had walked her down the aisle, took her arm again. “Easy now, lass. Let them do their jobs.”
“But I have to go with him. I have to be with him—”
“You can see him at the hospital.” Mr. Graves tightened his grip on her arm. “Let’s find someone to give you a ride.”
Her sisters volunteered for this job. She leaned against Brandi for support while her older sister Britney fetched her car.
“He’ll be all right,” Brandi said.
“No he won’t,” Becky said. “He’s going to die. Alone!”
“You can’t talk like that,” Bambi said. “He’ll pull through.”
Becky shook her head. No, he wasn’t going to survive. She had seen him slipping away as his eyes half-closed. She had felt his skin turn cold, like that of a corpse. And she had heard his last words whispered into her ear, “I’m sorry.”
He wasn’t the one who should be sorry. It wasn’t his fault. His life would have been much better if he had never met her at school. Since they had met she had already nearly gotten him killed once when that crazy Marie Marsh cut open his hand to drain some blood for some kind of ritual. This time he would die.
Why? Becky couldn’t figure that part out. Who would want to kill Steve? He had never done anything to hurt anyone. He didn’t gamble or use drugs. He didn’t owe anyone money. There was no conceivable reason for anyone to try and hurt Steve. It couldn’t be a random act of violence, not something so calculated as to happen the moment they were to kiss and seal their pa
ct. This was obviously a deliberate act, but for what purpose Becky didn’t know.
She still hadn’t figured it out as they reached the emergency room. Britney and Bambi helped Becky from the car; they let her lean against them like crutches as they made their way into the emergency room. The moment the doors opened, Becky pushed away from them to bolt for the nurse’s station.
“I need to see my husband,” she said.
“Name?”
“Steve Scherr. He was shot.”
The nurse checked her computer screens. “He’s in surgery. A doctor will be out to see you as soon as they’re finished.”
Her sisters pulled her away from the nurse’s station, into a corner. They sat on plastic chairs to wait for news. As they did, Becky continued to try and think of why someone wanted to hurt Steve. Poor, innocent Steve. He had never hurt anyone in his life. He had never put himself above anyone else; he’d gone so far as to stay in Rampart City with her when he could have gone to any lab in the world. He loved her so much that he had shelved his dreams for her.
If only she had married him sooner. If only she had agreed to move to another city. If she had pressured him to have the wedding outside instead of in that gloomy cathedral. So many ifs that might have changed everything.
She continued to torture herself with these ifs for another hour. Then a middle-aged man in bloody scrubs came into the emergency room. As he headed towards her, Becky wailed in anguish. She knew from the grim look on his face that Steve was gone. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said, which confirmed her fears. “We did everything we could but—”
Becky lunged forward and bowled the doctor to the ground. “Don’t you tell me that! Don’t you give me that bullshit! You didn’t do everything. You could have saved him!” She tried to scratch at the doctor’s eyes, but her sisters pulled her back into the chair. They pinned her there while the doctor made his escape. Becky screamed at him in rage, a scream that broke down into sobs. She buried her face into Bambi’s shirt and cried through her veil.
Just like that she had become a widow.
***
By the time Emma reached the hospital it was already too late. She recognized this when she saw Becky sobbing in a corner. Emma wasn’t sure for a moment if she should approach or let Becky deal with her grief. Finally she decided that as Becky’s best friend she had to be there at this moment. She put a hand on Becky’s back. “I’m so sorry, Becky.”
Becky pulled her head away from her sister; when she turned to face Emma her eyes were clouded with rage. “No you’re not. You didn’t want me to get married. You were jealous I was getting married and you weren’t. I saw you with my dress. I saw you!”
“Becky, please, it’s not like that.”
“You never wanted me to marry Steve. You wanted to keep me around as your fat friend. You couldn’t stand us being together.”
“No, Becky—”
“This is your fault!”
“Me? I didn’t—”
“They wanted to shoot you. Not him. No one would want to shoot Steve. Or me. Or my sisters. Or Steve’s friends.” Becky pointed an accusing finger at Emma. “You’re the only one with enemies. Enemies who could pull off something like that. You’re the one they wanted!”
Emma didn’t know what to say to this. What Becky said made sense. It could very well be that the assassin had really aimed for her. But for him to miss so badly that he hit Steve instead didn’t make sense. From what she’d seen, the man was a trained professional; he’d had plenty of time to line up for a perfect shot on her. He couldn’t have missed.
“Becky, please, I know how it hurts—”
“You don’t know anything! You think because your parents were killed you know everything. You don’t! Steve was my husband. The man I loved. I was going to spend my whole life with him. Now he’s gone.” Her finger trembled in Emma’s face. “Don’t you stand there and tell me you know. You don’t know anything about this.”
“I’m sorry.” Emma took a step back. At this point she knew there was nothing she could do for her friend. Becky needed some time to work through her rage and sadness. Then she would see that Emma was her friend and wanted only to help. “I’ll wait for you at home.”
“I’m not going back there. I’m not going to live with you. Murderer!”
Emma nodded sadly. She backed out of the emergency room. As the doors closed, she saw Becky sobbing against her sisters again. Emma’s fists clenched. Maybe she couldn’t be there to comfort Becky, but she could find the man who’d taken away her husband. She would find him and then figure out why they had tried to kill Steve.
Chapter 10
The armor appeared in the alley. Emma usually didn’t like to change in a semi-public place, but she didn’t want to waste time by going to her apartment or the Sanctuary. She used the Sword of Justice like a surgical tool to slice up the skirt of the lavender dress so she could get her legs into the armor. Given what had happened she didn’t want to keep the dress as a reminder anyway.
She didn’t know the assassin or who he worked for, but in Rampart City it was always a good bet to start with Don Vendetta. The don herself would be holed up in the Plastic Hippo or her compound in the Heights, but there were plenty of her lieutenants available. To find one of these would take a little effort.
It would have been easier to go to the Sanctuary and use the computers there to find someone. There was another way, one far more direct. For that she needed to find the nearest of the don’s thugs and then work her way up the chain of command.
She didn’t have to go far to find the needed thug. There was a pawnshop a block away from the hospital used as a front to sell guns, jewelry, and other items taken from heists. Emma wrapped the golden cape around her body so no human eyes could see her as she approached the rear of the store. There were cameras mounted at the back entrance to give advance warning of what she was about to do.
As she let the cape drop, Emma abandoned all attempts at subtlety. She used the Sword of Justice to slash through the heavy steel door and then kicked the remnants aside. She didn’t bother to duck as the counterman opened up with an Uzi. The bullets pinged off the red armor to embed themselves in a set of drums, a kayak, and the head of a wooden ventriloquist’s dummy. The counterman realized the futility of continued resistance and raised his hands in surrender.
Another night Emma would have accepted this surrender and then gently asked him for information. Tonight was different. Someone had killed her best friend’s husband; she didn’t have long to find him before he skipped town and disappeared.
Tonight she seized the counterman’s right arm and then wrenched it behind his back until he cried out in pain. To emphasize her point she slammed his head on the counter. The man howled in pain; she let him sink to the floor. She held the Sword of Justice beside his ear as if about to knight him. The golden blade began to glow, which indicated she was in the presence of evil.
“There was a murder this afternoon at St. Michael’s. I want to know who did it.”
“I don’t know anything. I just work the counter.”
Emma picked the man up by his collar. “Give me the name of someone who would know. Otherwise you’ll have to cash in your insurance policy on this place.”
“I don’t know anything,” the man pleaded. Emma slammed a gloved fist against the glass counter. The glass shattered; some of it sprinkled onto the man’s head like snow. “All right! All right, damn it. Talk to Jamie Moreno.”
“Where do I find her?”
“She’s usually at the Winchester, over on 56th.”
“Thank you.” She sheathed the Sword of Justice and then wagged a finger in his face. “You should consider another line of work. In another city.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
Emma hopped over the counter to leave by the front door. She primed her boots for a jump and then leaped onto the top of the building. From there she ran and jumped from one building to another until she reached
56th Street. Winchester’s was one of the higher-end bars in the city, frequented by those who preferred brandy to beer.
She wrapped the cape around her body as she dropped to the rear entrance of the building. The cape hid her as she wound her way through the kitchen. She paused to avoid someone who carried a large pot of tomato sauce. When a waiter scooped up a tray to take out to the dining room, Emma followed him.
It wasn’t hard to determine which one was Jamie Moreno. Emma only had to locate the bodyguards who sat beside a middle-aged Hispanic woman. As luck would have it, the waiter delivered three plates of pasta to the table. He didn’t get a chance to drop the third plate in front of Moreno before Emma had grabbed the woman by the collar and began to drag her to the front door. The bodyguards pushed away from the table and pulled their weapons, but there was nothing to shoot at.
Out in the night air, Emma finally let the cape drop. “You,” Moreno said. She didn’t get any farther before Emma threw her into the bar’s dumpster. Emma slammed the lid shut and began to shove it along the alley. Moreno pounded and shouted curses from within the dumpster but Emma paid her little mind. She pushed the dumpster along until she reached a wall.
She opened the lid to look inside. The mobster was covered in trash; she peeled a thick leaf of rotten lettuce away before she screamed, “When they find you, they’re going to kick your ass!” She followed this with a stream of curses in Spanish.
“You’re going to tell me about the hit at St. Michael’s,” Emma said in flawless Spanish.
Moreno stared at her for a moment and then shook her head. “I’m not going to tell you anything. The don has promised death for anyone who talks.”
“So the don is behind the hit.”
“You already knew that or you wouldn’t be here, ruining my dinner.”
“I suspected. Thank you for the confirmation.”
“That’s all you’re going to get.”
“Maybe you’d like to stay here until the garbage truck arrives. There are plenty of rats for you to befriend in the dump.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Page 64
