“Oh, boy.” Mom set down her book and led me to the kitchen, where she put a tea kettle on the stove. “Nothing good ever starts with ‘I need to tell you something.’ What is it?”
“I think it might be easier if I show you this.” I navigated to the audio file on my phone. “Here, listen.”
She rested her elbows on the counter. “I’m ready.”
I pushed play.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“Please, I just found Vivian and Veronica Bauer in their apartment.”
My mother’s eyes widened at the familiar sound of the caller’s voice.
“I think—I think Mrs. Bauer is dead. I think someone killed her. Veronica—”
I pressed pause and waited for my mother’s reaction. She stared at the phone, then at me, her jaw unhinged.
“That’s your voice,” she said. “Sheila, that’s your voice.”
I tried to swallow the giant lump in my throat, but it stubbornly remained where it was. “Do you remember how I got fired from that job delivering pizzas?”
“Yeah, your boss said you took the orders from the restaurant, but the pizzas never made it to the customers,” Mom replied. “Are you finally going to tell me what happened?”
“That night, I delivered a pizza to the Bauers’ apartment,” I said. “When I got there, Vivian and Veronica were lying on the floor. They were beaten to shit, and it looked like whoever did it left in a hurry. Vivian was already dead, and I thought Veronica was too. Halfway through that call, Veronica woke up and begged me not to tell the police about her. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to her, but she was so incredibly broken, Mom. She—” My voice cracked, and I rested my forehead on the kitchen table so I didn’t have to look at my mother. “She’d been raped, Mom. Her mother, too. I couldn’t leave her there. I couldn’t, Mom. I couldn’t do it—”
“Oh, baby.” Mom folded over me, cradling my head as I broke down. She kissed my temple and smoothed my hair back and let me cry, but when my breath started to even out again, she had more questions. “What happened, honey? I need you to tell me what happened.”
I rubbed my eyes, smooshing my fists against the swollen skin like an exhausted toddler. “I brought her here and took care of her. You were asleep the entire time. I figured I would clean her up, and maybe she could talk to the police the next day after she got a decent night’s sleep, but when I woke up, she was already gone.”
I stood up and wandered down the hall. My mother followed me into my childhood bedroom, which looked the same as when I’d left home at eighteen. I ran my fingers across the comforter on the twin bed. Then I opened the bottom drawer of my old school desk, rifled around, and drew out an envelope. It was from a stationary kit I never used, and the handwriting on the letter inside wasn’t mine.
“She left me this,” I said, pulling the letter out of the envelope and unfolding it to show to my mother. I recited the note out loud without looking at it. The words were burned into my brain. “‘Thank you for everything. You saved my life. I won’t forget it. Vee.”
My mother studied the letter then carefully refolded it. “You kept this a secret for twelve years, honey. Why are you telling me now?”
“Because of my case.” I tucked the envelope safely away in the drawer. “The four men who have been murdered worked for or with Bauer Tech years ago. We got blood from the perp at the most recent crime scene, and when it came back from the lab, they identified it as Veronica Bauer’s. Dumas thinks it’s a mistake. He thinks Veronica Bauer is dead, but—”
“But she’s not,” my mother finished.
“No, she’s not.”
“Why would Veronica kill these men?” Mom said. “What’s her motive?”
Another bead of snot threatened to escape my nose. My mother frowned, led me into the bathroom, and gestured for me to wash my face in the sink. As I rinsed off the pollen and saltwater, I explained my theory.
“Wallace Bauer confessed to murdering his wife and daughter,” I said. “Dumas worked the case then. He said it was open and shut. They put Bauer away and didn’t bother to think about anything else. I followed the story in the news as much as I could, and it never made sense to me that Bauer told the cops he’d murdered his own daughter and buried her body when I knew she’d made it out of there alive. I saw what Vivian and Veronica looked like after they were attacked. There was no way one man did all of that. I think it was a group of them. I think Bauer’s associates ganged up to make a sick fantasy come true, and now Veronica is hunting them down for revenge.”
Mom blew out a long breath and handed me a towel to dry off my face. “You don’t think that’s a bit of a stretch, my dear?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I said. “I saw the killer at the ballet before she murdered Fisher. I thought she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Now—”
“Are you sure it’s her, Sheila?”
“Not at all. I hope it’s not her because I can’t fathom trying to put the girl I saved all those years ago in prison for murder.”
Mom brushed the damp hair out of my face. “Listen to me, honey. You did what you could. You saved a desperate girl who needed your help, but if that girl grew into the woman who’s terrorizing Simone City, you can’t let your feelings get in the way. This is your job, Sheila. You need to find her before she hurts anyone else.”
“What if they deserved it?” I asked. “The men she killed?”
She cupped my face in her hands. “You of all people should understand that justice is not upheld by mindless murder. If those men are at fault for what happened to the Bauers, then I have faith you will bring them to justice. You work for the law, honey, not Veronica Bauer.”
Chapter Fifteen - Vee
Breathe in. Breathe out. Flow. I moved into a twist, attempting to mimic Li Hui’s steady pace and fluid movements, and winced. The damaged muscles in my stomach twinged. Ever since that night, Li Hui kept a close watch on me. Unaccustomed to company, I found her presence irksome at first, but as the days passed and she refused to leave, I grew used to having her around. She arrived every morning with fresh food. I hadn’t ordered groceries in four weeks. She cooked, cleaned, and tended to the hole in my torso. The details about the injury were dependent on Li Hui’s ability to explain her off-brand medical expertise. Kyle Fisher’s bullet had lodged itself between my ribs, but none of my vital organs were hit, so Li Hui plucked the smashed bullet out with a pair of tweezers, sewed up the wound, and treated any possible bacterial infection with a potent mixture of unknown herbs. So far, I hadn’t experienced any complications. The wound was closing up as well as it could, but I’d had to run point on my own physical therapy. Mostly, I ended up doing a lot of yoga and core-strengthening exercises to get the muscles back in shape. Once, Li Hui walked in while I was in process of pushing myself too far with endless crunches.
“No, no, no!” she said, dropping her armload of fresh vegetables for that night’s stir fry. “You will hurt yourself!”
“I need to get back on track,” I said.
“Look what you’ve done, cricket.”
Blood seeped through the bandage. Li Hui sighed and redressed the wound. Later, when the stir fry had settled in our stomachs, she walked me through a restorative Tai Chi flow. We pushed the bed and the desk up against the walls to practice every day. It was a satisfying routine, a practice of discipline and meditation. In the beginning, my balance was off, my muscles were weak, and I couldn’t shift from one pose to the next in the same flawless fashion as Li Hui. After reminding myself that she’d been practicing for several years, I started to calm down and retrain my focus. Now that we’d been at it for a few weeks, I was starting to get the hang of it. The best part about Tai Chi was its practicality. You trained slow, similar to yoga, but if you sped up the movements, they could be applied to self-defense. It was the sort of thing I needed to learn more of if I was going to continue my crusade.
That morning, I felt di
fferent. Stronger. I took a deep breath, realigned myself, and caught up with Li Hui’s pace. I focused on matching my movements to the rhythmic sound of our breath, like ocean waves lapping against the shore. The pain in my torso subsided, or I became self-aware enough to control it, and we finished up the flow and bowed our heads toward each other.
“Very nice,” Li Hui said. She stood up on her toes to pat my shoulder. “You have improved.”
“Thanks.” I dragged the bed and the desk into their rightful places again as Li Hui made tea in the kitchen. “How did you learn all of this? Tai Chi, cooking, the medical stuff. I haven’t even heard of some of the herbs you use to make tea, but they always seem to do the trick. What’s your secret?”
“No secret,” Li Hui said. “I was born and raised in China. Lived there for most of my life. It’s my culture, my life, like how your computer is for you.”
I absentmindedly tapped the keyboard. The rapid click comforted me. “I don’t think my computer is my life.”
“No? You spend all your time there.”
This was partially true. When I wasn’t eating, sleeping, or training, I worked or researched on my machine. It was an obsessive pattern. I found a subject and fixated on it. At the beginning of this, I stalked the men on P3n173nc3’s list. I hacked into their bank accounts and phones, found out all about their wives and families if they had them, and watched them go about their daily business on whatever security or traffic cameras I could access. But ever since I’d told P3n173nc3 I needed time to recover from my injury, I’d been obsessing over a new subject. Detective Sheila Arden.
She was twenty-nine. Born and raised in Simone City. She’d lived with her mother in Vesta until she was eighteen, then attended Simone City College in Venus, where she obtained a degree in criminal justice. She joined the SCPD Academy after an early graduation. Her dark hair, green eyes, and olive skin spoke of a Mediterranean background. She was petite for a career in chasing down hardened criminals, but a picture from a vacation to Mexico on her social media pages showed her displaying a ridiculous amount of muscle mass in a pink bikini. With those biceps, the woman could take down an angry lion.
Recently, Sheila Arden had been promoted to detective status, and if my research was correct, she was the youngest one in the division. I was hesitant to hack into the police’s database to find out more about her. It was a violation of Arden’s privacy. Eventually, I did it anyway and discovered Arden had been assigned to lead what SCPD was calling the Switchblade case. I wondered why a novice detective had been given the biggest investigation haunting Simone City at the moment. There had to be something special about her. She had to know something that the other detectives didn’t.
“Who’s that?” Li Hui appeared over my shoulder, carrying two steaming tea cups as she peered at the picture of Arden on my screen.
“The detective who’s working my case.”
“Pretty,” she said. Her eyes widened at the sight of how much information about Arden was available to me. “Are you—? Cricket, no! You can’t! She has a life, and she is just doing her job!”
“I’m not going to kill her, Li Hui.”
Li Hui’s shoulders relaxed. “Are you sure? You won’t kill her?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“But I am going to follow her.”
She muttered something in Chinese, set down the tea cups, and threw her hands in the air. Apparently, my reply had not done much to reassure her. I got access to Arden’s cell phone and navigated to her calendar, but her schedule was less organized than my refrigerator before Li Hui got to it. If I wanted to track her down, I’d have to do it old school.
I got dressed in dark jeans and a linen blouse that no longer suited me but blended in with the wealthier residents of Juno. On top of that, I wore a blonde wig and knockoff Dior sunglasses that obscured everything from my eyebrows to the tops of my cheekbones.
“Are you sure?” Li Hui said as I spun around for her.
“She saw me that night at the ballet,” I said. “I have to make sure she doesn’t know any more than she needs to.”
“And what if she does?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Li Hui sighed as I climbed through the window and down the fire escape. I rode the motorcycle to Juno, the first time I’d used it in the light of day. The wind whipped as I leaned low over the handlebars. I zipped in and out of the other cars, enjoying the bike’s easy handling. There was a cop car on the bridge across Slickwater Lake, so I slowed down and hid between two large trucks. Then I whizzed out of sight on the other side of the lake.
I rode to Arden’s precinct, parked the bike across the street from the entrance, and straddled the seat to wait. Juno’s daily commuters filled the streets, nursing coffees on the way to their nine-to-fives. I couldn’t imagine having a life like that. Wake up, work all day, go home to the spouse and kids, sleep, then wake up and do it all over again. It was immeasurably boring to me, but my parents had led a similar life and never complained about it. My father threw himself into work because he had a passion for technology, and my mother loved organizing the social side of things and taking care of me. Then, I was happy and satisfied to be their child. Now, I shuddered to think of the life I might have led if everything went according to plan. I’d be here, no doubt, shuffling along with the rest of Juno, drinking coffee as if my life depended on it as I fretted away in an office for eight hours a day.
My mind stopped circling around the indefinite purgatory of a nine-to-five work day when Sheila Arden turned up at the precinct. She was shorter in real life, if that was possible. Unlike the other robots in the streets, she did not hold a cup of coffee. There was no slump to her posture. She strode up the sidewalk, exerting a proud, confident energy. Then she stopped, sneezed, and swore so loudly that I could hear the expletive from all the way across the street. She wiped her nose on a used tissue from the pocket of her jacket and headed into the station.
Now began the waiting game. Obviously, I couldn’t follow Arden into the precinct, and I wasn’t all that interested in her job anyway. Despite what I’d told Li Hui, I didn’t want to see Arden at work. I wanted to find out what she did during her off hours. Where she went, who she spent her time with. Those things would give me a better clue as to who Detective Sheila Arden was as a person than the sight of her scrolling through her computer at her desk. I got comfortable on the seat of the motorcycle and kept my eyes trained on the door to the precinct.
An hour later, sooner than I’d expected to see her, Arden emerged from the station with a tall blonde officer at her side. His movements were relaxed and easy, but he kept stepping into her path to keep her from leaving. Finally, she ducked under him and landed a quick punch to his kidney. He rubbed his back, raised his other hand in defeat, and retreated to the station. Arden glared at him until he went inside. Then she glared at the cherry trees that lined the sidewalk. Then she glared at the set of car keys in her hand as she unlocked a nearby squad car and got in. I fired up my bike, gave her enough time to pull into traffic, and followed behind the cruiser. As we merged onto the interstate and she flipped on her siren to cut off another car, I shook my head with laugher. If I’d learned anything from the past hour of observation, it was that Detective Sheila Arden had one hell of a temper.
Chapter Sixteen - Sheila
The morning was a grumpy one. Payne was being a pain, as per usual. It was a relief to lose him at the station and drive away from the precinct. I wanted to roll down the windows, but my allergies weren’t cooperating. The over-the-counter medication only did so much, so I kept the windows up and turned on the air conditioning instead. I settled into the drive. Slickwater Regional Prison was about an hour and a half out of the city, past the outskirts of Minerva. It was nowhere near Slickwater Lake, but somehow it qualified for the namesake. I wasn’t sure if going out there was the best idea, but ever since I’d spoken to my mother about Veronica, I’d
gotten it in my head that if anyone knew anything about that night, it was Wallace Bauer himself.
No one had heard from or about Wallace Bauer since the hubbub around his wife and daughter’s murders had died down. His life sentence was satisfying enough for Simone City’s population to stop gossiping about him. His company was dismantled and rebranded. John Halco became the new name of technology in town, and no one bothered to mention that Halco and Bauer were once best friends. As far as anyone knew, Bauer was rotting alone in prison to atone for the sins he committed, but something told me this wasn’t the case. I wanted to talk to Bauer in person.
The last time I’d driven through Minerva was as a nervous rookie cop fresh out of the academy, working her first beat. Back then, they paired us with an older, more experienced cop. Dumas, before he’d made detective, was my assigned babysitter. He scared the shit out of me back then. We never spoke, just listened to the radio chatter as we cruised through the rough neighborhoods of the lesser boroughs and looked for trouble. Dumas wasn’t pleased with the assignment. Patrolling Minerva was reserved for officers lower on the food chain than he was. On my first day out, we ended up in a shootout when we tried to stop a couple of guys from robbing a bodega. I got shot in the vest, which left one hell of a bruise. The experience scared me more that Dumas’s poor attitude. I almost quit that day, rethinking my entire career, but Dumas convinced me to stay. Ever since then, I had mixed feelings about the lowest borough.
What astounded me about Minerva was how poverty like this could exist so closely to the wealth in Juno. Growing up, I never considered my mom and me to be privileged. The church gave Mom money to take care of me—they cared for the welfare of the child even if the mother had sinned to bring the kid into the world—but it wasn’t enough for us to live off. Mom started her job as a private tutor, but she clipped coupons, shopped for everything on sale, and reused paper towels to save a few cents here and there. When she bought me a new pair of jeans, they were too long and I’d fold up the hems to avoid tripping over them. A year later, the same pair would be too short as I outgrew them. I wore tennis shoes until my toes poked holes through the fabric, and I signed up for the free lunch program all through elementary and middle school. But all of that didn’t compare to the situation in Minerva. Some of the kids here didn’t have shoes, let alone food, and the rest of Simone City turned a blind eye to it. We preferred to forget about Minerva, as if the city were made up of three boroughs instead of four. The people of Minerva were simultaneously outraged and indifferent to this. They made their own way, refusing to count on aid from the upper boroughs. As I drove through the trashed streets, I wished I could do something to make a difference, but cleaning up Minerva was a job for a superhero, not a fresh detective.
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