Jailhouse Glock (A Dead Sister Talking Mystery)

by Liz Lipperman

  Maddy’s mind raced. Were these Bernardi’s friends coming to get him out? The last few times Gino had been arrested for drunk and disorderly, his lawyer had posted bail before the ink had a chance to dry on the sign-in sheet. Or maybe it wasn’t Gino they wanted to spring. Maybe it was the other guy. He wasn’t a local. Was it possible they were looking for something in the police station? If so, what? And how did they know Jessie was at her grandmother’s?

  “What’s it gonna be, Madelyn?”

  The distorted voice jarred her back to the critical decision she had to make. She was way out of her league here. Shit! She’d only been an actual cop for three months.

  In a flash, Maddy made the decision. She opened the bottom drawer and pulled out her purse. She had to call her brother-in-law. Colt had been the head of Vineyard’s police department for many years and would know what to do. “How can I be sure you won’t hurt her?” she asked, hoping to stall while she frantically searched for her cell phone.

  “You don’t,” the voice replied. “It’s a gamble you have to take, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to call anyone on that cell phone you’re digging for.”

  Maddy dropped the purse with a thud, her eyes scanning the room, coming to rest on the security camera in the corner. Flanagan said it had gone on the fritz earlier that day, and the company was sending someone up from Dallas in the morning to fix it. The red light was off. So how did he know what she was doing?

  “That’s right, Madelyn. I can see everything, so it wouldn’t be real smart to fuck with me.” He paused before adding, “Unless, of course you prefer living alone.”

  She covered her mouth to stifle the sob welling up in her throat. This was not a spur-of-the-moment breakout. This guy had planned every detail. Gino must have friends in high places.

  “Tessa?” Maddy did a three-sixty, but her sister was gone. She was all alone and talking to a potential kidnapper. Or worse.

  “I’m waiting, Madelyn.”

  Maddy blew out a breath. This was a no-brainer. Her daughter was a helluva lot more important than making sure some slick gangster wannabe stayed locked up for the weekend. When his lawyer returned on Monday, he’d be sprung faster than an overwound clock anyway.

  “When do you want me to do this?”

  “Now would be good. My guy at Gramma’s house is just about due for a fix, and he always gets major jitters when that happens. Wouldn’t want his trigger finger shaking. Know what I mean?”

  She pulled the cell phone out of her purse and slammed it on the desk along with the other one she’d been using. Reaching across her body, she unholstered her Glock and placed it next to the phones. After a final glance around the room failed to turn up the location of another camera anywhere, she unlocked the main door and sprinted to the bathroom.

  Once the door closed, she searched for something she could use as a weapon just in case the caller had more on his mind than freeing Bernardi. She spotted a mop in the corner, cursing under her breath at her vulnerability without a gun. But she’d had no choice.

  She grabbed the mop and crouched in the corner behind the door. If someone did come in, at least she would have the element of surprise.

  Unless there’s a camera in here, too.

  She did a quick scan but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The smell of Clorox mixed with mildew caused her nose to crinkle, and she pushed the mop away from her body.

  Good Lord! Don’t they ever clean these things?

  Minutes passed with no sound, and Maddy was beginning to believe one of the guys would pop in, laughing his butt off. Rookie cops always got harassed, and she was due. She wondered who it would be? Flanagan? Rogers? Most likely candidate was Danny Landers. He was the practical jokester of the station. Probably called the minute he finished the sweet potato pie at his folk’s house.

  Let’s just see who surprises who, Danny, boy, she thought. It wouldn’t be so funny when the mop connected with his crotch, and she sure as hell was going to make sure it did. It would serve him right.

  She stiffened her back against the cold tiled wall when she heard a faint sound on the other side of the door. Leaning closer, she listened to the muffled voices.

  Probably Danny and the other guys getting ready to march in and scare the crap out of me. She tightened her grip on the mop.

  Please God, let it be Landers. A twisting in her gut told her it wasn’t.

  Then a loud shot rang out, followed quickly by two more. Maddy jumped up from her corner, nearly tripping over the mop. She pushed at the door, giving no thought to what danger lurked on the other side.

  It didn’t budge.

  She lowered her shoulder and jammed it into the door again.

  This time she was able to open it enough to squeeze through past her desk that had been shoved against the door.

  Raising the mop in an offensive position, she made her way to where the desk had been, aware her every move was probably being watched. She spied the keys to the cells lying in the middle of the floor next to her cell phone, but there was no sign of the other phone or her gun.

  An icy chill sliced through her body. She needed a weapon, and she needed it now. She raced to Colt’s office where she knew he kept a forty-five locked in the bottom drawer. Trembling, she felt under the desk for the key taped behind the leg, and when her fingers touched it, she ripped it from its hiding place and quickly opened the drawer.

  With the gun finally in her hand, she made her way to the back room, taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling. A quick glance at the camera focused on the cell area revealed nothing unusual, yet, a sudden sense of overwhelming doom washed over her.

  The minute she opened the door, she tried to convince herself the shots were only fired to scare her. Halfway to Bernardi’s cell, she knew they weren’t.

  Charging through the already opened steel door, she felt the nausea bubbling in her throat when she saw a man’s body sprawled on the concrete floor, a crimson river flowing beside him. She bent down and rolled him over, unable to stop her scream as she stared into the eyes of a very dead Gino Bernardi. She felt for his carotid, hoping to find a pulse, knowing she wouldn’t.

  Jumping up, she moved to the next cell only to see the other prisoner in a sitting position against the wall, his county-issue orange jumpsuit sporting a growing red ring. Two fingers on his neck revealed a pulse, weak and racing but still there.

  Running from the cell, she reached for the phone on Landers’s desk. After telling the 911 operator to send an ambulance ASAP, she called her motherin-law, her fingers now shaking so badly she could barely dial the number.

  After several rings, a sleepy voice answered.

  “Sandra, where’s Jessie?” Somehow she managed to sound semi-calm despite the ball of fear churning in her gut.

  “Asleep in her bed,” Robbie’s mother said after hesitating a few minutes. “Maddy, what’s the matter?”

  “Go check on her!” Tears fell unchecked down Maddy’s cheeks. “Now!” She tried to slow her respirations with deep slow breaths, but the silence on the other end was maddening.

  “She’s sound asleep. Maddy, what’s going on?” Sandra repeated, her voice escalating an octave.

  “Wake her up,” Maddy commanded. By the time her motherin-law came back on the phone, she’d already made several bargains with God.

  “Here she is.”

  “Hi, Mom.” Jessie’s sleepy voice was like music to Maddy’s ears. “Nana said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Oh, God, Jess. Are you alright?” Maddy heard the child’s sharp intake of breath as she yawned.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Maddy stifled the cry that threatened to escape her lips. No use terrifying her child. “Tell your grandmother to take you to her bedroom and lock the door. I’m calling Tom Rogers now and having him swing by the house to take a look. Don’t come out of the bedroom until he says it’s okay.”

  “Maddy?” Sandra apparently grabbed the phone from her grand
daughter. “What the hell is going on?”

  Maddy repeated the command, adding, “It’s probably nothing. I’ll tell you about it when I talk to you after Rogers checks out the house. Keep the door locked. Do you still hide a key under the flower pot on the patio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll let Rogers know. Stay in the room until you hear from me.”

  Maddy found Tom Rogers at the diner and related part of the story, telling him only what was absolutely necessary. She hung up just as the paramedics charged into the station with a stretcher. Her mind racing, she watched them assess the wounded man and start an IV. When he was on his way to County Hospital, she remembered she hadn’t called Colt and dialed his number, again using the phone on Landers’s desk.

  “Maddy, what’s wrong?” The concern in Colt’s voice was apparent. A call from the police station in the middle of the night couldn’t be good.

  “Colt?” She heard her sister’s sleepy voice in the background.

  “Bernardi’s dead.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  The phone rang as soon as she’d disconnected from Colt, sending a shiver of fear up her spine that only intensified when Tom Rogers’s name popped up on caller ID.

  She took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before answering. “Please tell me everything’s okay,” she begged.

  “Other than your daughter and your motherin-law being scared shitless, everything’s fine. I’ve checked all the nooks and crannies in this place and found nothing. No trace of anyone ever being here.”

  “Thank God,” she whispered before lifting her eyes upward and promising to go to church more often.

  “Do you want me to come back to the station now?”

  “No,” she shouted into the receiver. “Stay there until you hear from Colt. He’s on his way in now.”

  She hung up and sat down in Danny Landers’s chair. Within minutes she heard the siren from Colt’s police car and breathed a sigh of relief. Her brother-in-law would know how to make sense of all this.

  She walked back to the cell block and took one more look at Bernardi, noticing that the trail of blood had snaked its way to the wall and puddled. The metallic smell reached her nostrils just as a shiny black object on the edge of his bed caught her eye. Slowly, she walked into the cell, being careful not to step in the blood around the dead man’s head.

  The nausea resurfaced. Jerking her head around, she puked into the stainless steel sink. The shiny object was a gun. Her Glock.

  three

  Maddy was relieved to see Colton Winslow charge through the station door with her sister Lainey close behind. If anyone could make sense of this horrible situation, it was her brother-in-law. She crumbled into Lainey’s embrace while Colt stood to the side, patiently waiting to hear what had happened.

  As much as she wanted to stay in the warmth of her sister’s arms, she knew the faster Colt had the details, the faster they could begin collecting evidence and find Bernardi’s killer. Pulling away, she motioned for him to follow her into the back room where the cell block was located.

  Lainey fell into step behind Maddy before Colt held up his arm to stop her. “You’d better stay out here, honey.” When she shook her head, he added. “We need someone to direct Mark Lowell to the back when he gets here.”

  The look on Lainey’s face said she clearly wasn’t fooled by his suggestion that the medical examiner of Vineyard needed help finding his way to the cell block, and for a minute, Maddy thought she would protest. With an exasperated sigh, Lainey nodded.

  Her younger sister had never seen a dead body before, and she probably would have nightmares forever if she saw Bernardi. Maddy was a cop, but she’d only seen one other body herself. She shuddered at the memory of old Mrs. Roosevelt who had died in her sleep. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have required police presence before the funeral home arrived for the body, but her son had insisted that his sister had something to do with his mother’s death. Since Maddy had been Flanagan’s shadow back then, she’d gone out with him to investigate.

  Fortunately, she’d been able to get through the initial ordeal without a major GI disaster. It turned out the son had been right about his sister, and the crime had been solved in less than a week. But she’d never forget the way the old woman’s eyes had stared up at her—

  almost as if she were begging for someone to find her killer. Maddy still had an occasional bad dream about those eyes.

  “Maddy, you want to start at the beginning and tell me how this prisoner was shot to death on your watch?” Colt asked as he stared down at the body.

  She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I was in the bathroom when it happened.”

  He walked around Bernardi to the other side of the cell. “There’s a Glock next to the body.”

  “Yes.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s mine.”

  He whirled around to face her. “Thought you said you were in the bathroom.”

  “Someone shot him while I was in there.”

  “With your gun?”

  A wave of nausea pulsed through her again, knowing how this must look to a trained police officer. “It’s a long story, Colt, but you have to believe that I didn’t kill him.” She swiped at the tear threatening to roll down her cheek.

  His face softened, and he stepped closer to her. “Of course, I believe you, but I need help making sense of this. How it is that someone could waltz in here and kill this prisoner with your gun while you were in the ladies’ room? And where was Rogers?”

  She lowered her head, thinking there was no way she would be able to make him believe her. “Out checking a domestic disturbance call that came in around one from that trailer park by the airport. You know, the one that keeps the guys busy nearly every weekend with drunk and disorderly calls.”

  She waited until he nodded, deciding not to tell him that Rogers had stopped at the all-night diner for a cup of coffee afterward. Everyone knew the divorced cop was sweet on the new waitress who worked the graveyard shift there, but it would serve no purpose bringing that up now. “Anyway, he told me to leave my gun and my cell phone on the desk and to lock myself in the ladies’ room.”

  “Why would Rogers tell you to do that?”

  “Not Rogers. The guy on the phone.”

  Colt’s forehead wrinkled in question. “Somebody called you on your cell phone and told you to lock yourself in the bathroom?”

  This time she couldn’t stop the tears from falling, and she shook her head. “There was another phone in my desk drawer, and when it rang I thought one of the guys was calling to say he’d left it. The voice sounded like it was computer enhanced and—” She stopped to reach for the tissue Colt handed her.

  “I don’t get it, Maddy. You know the protocol when you’re here alone at the station. Why didn’t you go into lockdown? You’re been here long enough to know you should never leave the front door open with no backup.”

  “I was so scared.”

  He wrapped his arms around her until the shaking stopped. “Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head and pulled away. She had to tell him the story before the medical examiner and the forensics team showed up. “He texted a picture of a man with a gun standing over Jessie while she was sleeping at Sandra’s. Said if I didn’t do exactly as he instructed, he’d kill her.”

  Colts eyes widened, and he headed for the door. “Call Rogers and tell him to meet me at your motherin-law’s. Tell him to sit tight until I get there.”

  “Colt, wait!”

  He stopped abruptly and spun around to face her.

  “Jessie’s fine. Rogers is over there now, and other than being scared to death because I freaked out, both my daughter and her grandmother are fine. Actually, they slept right through the whole ordeal, and neither had a clue that someone had been in the house.”

  Colt blew out an audible sigh of relief. “Thank God for that.” Maddy knew he loved Jessie almost as much as he loved his own daughter. Sw
itching back into cop mode, he narrowed his eyes. “Show me the picture. Maybe we can get forensics to pick up on something.”

  “Like what? He had on a mask.”

  “Like a tattoo on the hand holding the gun or some other distinguishing mark.”

  She turned and raced back to the front office with Colt close behind her. Ignoring Lainey’s questioning look, she sprinted to her desk, which was still partially obstructing the bathroom door. After going through the drawer, she glanced up and shook her head. “It’s gone.”

  Just then Mark Lowell burst through the front door. “Heard someone saved the taxpayers a lot of money tonight,” he said, winking at Colt.

  “The body’s in the back.” Colt sent the Vineyard County Medical Examiner a look that instantly wiped the grin from his face before he twisted around to face Maddy again. “Can you sit over there at Landers’s desk while I do the preliminary exam with Mark? I’ll be back shortly to take your full statement.” He motioned to Lainey. “You too. This place is about to become a zoo, and I’ll need both of you out of the way.”

  “Shouldn’t I come with you?” Maddy asked.

  His eyes told her more than she wanted to know. No matter how much of her story he believed, she was still a potential suspect—actually, the only suspect at the present time.

  “Hang tight, Maddy. I promise we’ll get to the bottom of this.” Then he nudged the medical examiner toward the cell block and disappeared behind him.

  Maddy flopped down behind Landers’s desk, and her sister pulled up a chair beside her.

  “You must’ve been so scared,” Lainey said, reaching for Maddy’s hand.

  Maddy could only nod. She was the oldest of five sisters, and she’d always been the one to comfort the younger ones. It felt strange being the one needing support right now.

  “Who’s with Gracie?” was all she could think to say without breaking into tears again. She had to get the image of that man in Jessie’s bedroom out of her head.