Homicide! (Parker & Knight Book 2)

by Wells, Donald

  “Do you really think Mr. Woolley’s killer will come back here?”

  “I hope so. I’m looking forward to this case being closed.”

  “So that you can ask your question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Catch the bad guy, Rick. I look forward to giving you an answer.”

  Heather smiled, got out of the car, and sent him a wave as she headed back inside.

  It was only a few minutes later that Parker spotted the four figures running out of the woods wearing ski masks and carrying baseball bats, he thumped the button on the radio.

  “Trouble Jo, four guys with bats,”

  Knight didn’t reply, and Parker was still getting out of the car when one of the bats shattered the windshield of a pick-up truck, even as the three other men raced into the bar.

  ***

  Nico’s cell phone rang; it was his employer.

  He had been ignoring the man’s calls ever since Woolley’s body had been discovered, and at their last face-to-face meeting, he had sworn that he had nothing to do with the man’s disappearance, but was certain his employer knew he was lying.

  He took the call this time, because this time he had good news to deliver.

  “What’s up, partner?”

  “Have the police questioned you?”

  “No, and they won’t, because they don’t know where to find me.”

  “I want out, Nico; I think things have gone too far.”

  “Don’t wimp out on me now. I’ll have Taggart ready to sell by the end of the week.”

  “Why? What have you done now?”

  “I sent more trouble his way, just like you wanted.”

  “Is anybody going to be hurt?”

  Nico smiled into the phone.

  “Oh yeah, count on it,”

  ***

  As one of the men smashed windshields, Parker took out his gun and ran towards him while shouting, “Police!” and the man immediately dropped the bat and sprinted back into the woods. Parker ignored him and entered the bar.

  The first thing he saw was a customer lying on the floor, his teeth, gritted against the pain of a newly broken arm as one of the punks stood over him. The second thing he saw was the man standing atop the bar threatening his partner with a baseball bat.

  The man must have leapt onto the counter before Jo could get to her weapon. Movement on the left caught his eye and Parker saw the fourth man, his bat raised high and threatening as he stared at Parker’s gun. A clatter came from the right, and Parker saw that the punk who had injured the customer had dropped his bat and was now holding a small shotgun, a Serbu super shorty that was smaller than the bat, but far deadlier.

  Parker was about to tell the man to drop the weapon when Heather, who was carrying a tray of food, burst through the swinging doors that led into the noisy kitchen.

  Her sudden appearance startled the man with the shotgun and he jerked his gun at her and fired, even as Parker leapt into its path while firing off a desperate shot. All this took place so quickly, that Parker had only entered the bar three seconds earlier.

  The shotgun went off, spraying Parker with pellets, as his own shot hit the man in the chest.

  ***

  Jo’s back had been turned when the men entered the bar, and before she could react, there was a man standing over her with a baseball bat, threatening to strike her.

  The two other men went in different directions, and one of them hit a customer in the arm.

  As the injured man fell to the floor, Parker entered with his weapon drawn. As he turned his head to look at the man on his left, the one on the right dropped his bat and grabbed a shotgun from a makeshift shoulder rig beneath his jacket.

  That’s when Heather stepped out and everything went to hell.

  As Parker and the man traded shots, Jo swept the feet out from under the punk standing atop the bar, sending him crashing backwards to the floor. An instant later, she reached beneath the counter, took out her gun, and aimed it at the last man standing.

  “Get down on the floor, now!”

  The man dropped his bat and laid down, even as Heather dropped the tray of food and knelt beside Parker, who was fighting back waves of agony caused by the impact of the pellets.

  “Talk to me partner!” Jo shouted.

  “I’m good,” Parker said through clenched teeth. “My vest took most of it.”

  Jo climbed over the bar and went to the man Parker had shot, to relieve him of his weapon.

  “He’s alive, but unconscious,”

  As Jo called for an ambulance, Heather helped Parker to rise and take a seat on a bar stool. She was crying as she looked at the bloody wounds in his right arm, chest, and shoulder.

  After Jo cuffed the men and called in the attack, she checked on Parker.

  “Let’s see that arm.”

  “It’s not bad, I took the hit sideways, also, I think there was bird shot in the shell, not double-ought buckshot pellets; if I’d been hit with double-ought it might have penetrated the vest.”

  Jo patted him on the cheek. “Thank God you were wearing your vest.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine; they just came in so fast that I couldn’t get to my gun.”

  “I think this Nico just upped the stakes,” Parker said.

  ***

  Three ambulances arrived one after the other and Parker watched as the man he shot was loaded into the first one and taken away. The man turned out to be a seventeen-year-old kid, but he stood six-feet tall and was carrying a shotgun, so Parker felt little regret at having shot him,

  The customer who had his arm broken was next and then Parker climbed aboard the last ambulance. Jo was staying behind to deal with the aftermath, in between attempts to comfort a distraught Patrick Taggart.

  As the attendant was swinging the door closed, Heather grabbed it and swung it open.

  “I want to ride with him.”

  The attendant protested but Parker overrode his objections and Heather climbed aboard. As the ambulance headed toward the new hospital, Heather took Parker’s hand and laid her head on his good shoulder.

  “You saved me. If you hadn’t jumped in front of me... I might have died.”

  “I would never let anyone hurt you,” Parker said.

  They grew quiet, and the only sound beside the wail of the siren, was the voice of the ambulance attendant as he spoke into a cell phone.

  Heather lifted her head from his shoulders and stared at him.

  “Rick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That question you want to ask me? The answer is yes, hell yes,”

  Parker had just faced death and been wounded, but as he looked at Heather’s smiling face, he knew he was having one of the best days of his life.

  5

  The new hospital was eight stories high and sat on land that was previously a cornfield. There was also an annex building to house the administrative branch and teaching center, and despite being only three stories in height, it was sprawling, and covered nearly as much land as the hospital,

  A nurse escorted Parker past the crowd in the waiting room, but as he and Heather approached the treatment area, he heard a familiar voice cry out.

  “Rick!”

  It was Rachel, his ex-wife. She ran towards him in her white nurse’s uniform and winced when she saw his injuries.

  “Hello Rachel,”

  “Hello? What the hell happened to you?”

  “I was shot, but it’s not serious.”

  Rachel looked him over with a worried gaze; she then turned to the other nurse and told her that she would take over Parker’s case and that the other nurse could tend to the man with the broken arm. She also told her to tell the doctor to hurry. As the other woman walked away, Rachel noticed Heather.

  “Who are you?”

  “She’s a friend of mine, and also a witness to the shooting.”

  Heather held out her hand and introduced herself.

  Rachel ignored the
offered hand and gave her a hard look.

  “I’m Rick’s wife, well, ex-wife, and I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to follow him into the treatment room.”

  Heather noticed the chill in the air and pointed to a row of nearby seats.

  “I’ll just sit here and wait for him.”

  “I’d prefer it if you went out into the waiting room.” Rachel said.

  “No,” Parker said. “She’ll wait here for me; this shouldn’t take too long.”

  Rachel sighed.

  “Very well, and here comes the doctor now.”

  Parker received several stitches on his shoulder, and the cuts on his chest and arm were also treated. All of the pellets that struck, dealt him a sideways blow that left deep wounds like scratches, with most of the tiny pellets embedding themselves in his vest. The wounds to his arm hurt worse than the ones on his shoulder even though they were minor. The wounds on his chest were all where the edge of his vest had been, but the vest took most of the spray from the shotgun blast.

  When the doctor finished treating him he left to tend to others, and Parker looked up to see Heather enter the small treatment room. He was seated atop an exam table and shirtless.

  She studied his bare chest for a moment and then gave a sour look as she ran her fingers lightly over his wounds and bruises. She then spotted something that made her wince; it was a white, puckered mark over Parker’s ribs on the left side of his body.

  Heather touched it. “What’s this?”

  “That’s an old wound from a 9mm; I was shot there during a drug raid when I worked in Philly.”

  “That looks bad.”

  “It was; much worse than today.”

  “Poor baby,” Heather said, and leaned in to kiss him.

  “That was actually how we met.” Rachel said in a loud voice, startling Heather, who straightened up and backed away a step.

  Parker glared at his ex. “Yes, you seem to always be involved whenever I suffer a grave wound.” He hopped off the table and grabbed his shirt, then discovered that he had trouble getting his right arm back into it; the force sustained during the blast from the shotgun had left his arm numb.

  Heather gave him a hand getting into the shirt, and then stood looking up at him as she buttoned it. There was something intimate about the act and she and Parker smiled at each other.

  Rachel held up a package. “The doctor asked me to help you into this sling; he said you should wear it for a few days to help your shoulder.” She then spoke to Heather. “Please wait out in the hall while I put this on him.”

  Heather began to protest, but decided against it and spoke to Parker instead.

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Good, I’ll be right there.”

  As soon as Heather left, Rachel shut the door.

  “Who the hell is that, Rick?”

  “Heather works at Taggart’s; my partner and I are working a case there.”

  “So why is she following you around?”

  “She was worried about me and came along in the ambulance.”

  Rachel finished placing his wounded arm in the sling and leaned closer.

  “I guess you’ve heard that Tim and I are seeing each other again, hmm?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard, and it’s none of my business.”

  As he headed for the door, Rachel grabbed his good arm.

  “Tim and I, we’re not exclusive... if you want I can stop by tonight... I can even stay all night.”

  Parker stared at her in disbelief.

  “I’m not the sharing type; I thought you knew that by now.”

  Rachel crossed her arms over her chest, even as her face grew cold.

  “You’re going to be with her aren’t you, that child out there? What is she, twenty, twenty-one? You’re too old for her; you know that, don’t you?”

  Parker paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked back at her.

  “Yeah Rachel, actually, I do know that, now you have a nice day, hmm?”

  And with those words, he went out to join Heather.

  6

  The next day, Parker was in the Chief’s office with Jo as they talked about the case.

  Chief Gabe Howard sat behind his desk and tapped a file laying on top of it.

  “Despite their size, all three of those kids you captured yesterday were under the age of eighteen, but they all have juvie records and belong to a gang called, Muerte Soldado, that means Death Soldiers or some such crap.”

  “I assume the shotgun was stolen?” Parker said.

  “You assume right, and lucky for you that the homeowner it was stolen from loaded it with birdshot, if you’d been hit with double-ought, vest or not, things would have gone much worst.”

  Jo reached over and gave Parker’s arm a squeeze.

  “My partner’s a hero, by taking that blast he saved a citizen, Heather Jones.”

  “So I heard, it was very brave of you Rick, and oh yeah, you’ve a meeting with the shooting review board when we’re through here.”

  “I didn’t know we had a shooting review board.”

  The chief grinned.

  “It consists of me, the mayor, and a member of the town council, but I can tell you right now that it’s being deemed a good shoot. All of the witnesses say that you probably saved lives.”

  “It’s all part of the job, speaking of which, when can I come back onto active duty?”

  “Tomorrow, or you can take some time if you need to?”

  “No, we have to find this man, Nico, and put a stop to things before they escalate even more. Jo told me that the gang members refused to talk, but we all know that Nico Umbria was behind this attack.”

  “He’s a hard man to find,” Jo said. “He apparently doesn’t own or rent and there’s no record of him at the DMV. He doesn’t even have a credit card or cell phone in his name.”

  “His arrest took place in Freehold; check with the cops there and see if they know where to find him,” Parker said.

  Jo nodded. “Good idea, and I think I’ll start with the cop who arrested him.”

  ***

  After Parker had his meeting with the Review Board, Jo walked him out to his car.

  “You’re sure you want to come back tomorrow? I can handle things here if you need more time.” Jo said.

  “No, I need to get right back at this case. If we’re right, Umbria already killed one man, and now he’s escalating the violence against Patrick Taggart’s customers in order to get him to sell.”

  “So where are you going now, home?”

  “I actually thought I would go have lunch someplace.”

  Jo grinned. “Let me guess, you’re going to Taggart’s to see Heather Jones.”

  “I have to eat somewhere.”

  “Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you mean the other day when you said that it would be worse if Heather said yes rather than no when you asked her out?”

  Parker sighed.

  “I... I have feelings for her. They remind me of what I felt for my ex when we first met.”

  “So, that’s a good thing, right?”

  Parker leaned back against his car.

  “Losing Rachel hurt more than I let on, not just her betrayal, but losing her. I thought that she and I would be together forever and I... I can’t go through that again.”

  “Heather’s not Rachel, you two just might make it work,”

  Parker shook his head.

  “Not with our age difference, and hell, the woman will be a heart surgeon someday, while I’ll still be just a cop, an old, broken down cop at that. If we get together, it’ll only be a matter of time until she tires of me, one way or another.”

  “You can’t think like that, Rick, if you do, you’ll never be happy again.”

  He shrugged. “Just facing facts,” He climbed into the car and lowered the window. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Are you still going by Taggart’s to see Heather?”

  �
��Yeah,”

  “Why, when you’re so pessimistic about the two of you?”

  Parker sighed again.

  “I can’t help myself.”

  ***

  Parker arrived at Taggart’s and found the parking lot nearly empty. Before going inside, he stopped and spoke to the two cops sitting in their patrol car, keeping watch on the place.

  They were a man and a woman, both rookies, the man was white while the woman was Hispanic. They were so fresh-faced that they looked even younger than Heather.

  “I see that yesterday’s trouble has had an effect on business.” Parker said, after greeting them.

  “Yes sir,” the man said.

  “Call me Rick, guys, and you’re Ed and Sierra, right?”

  They both nodded, pleased that Parker knew their names, his heroism of the day before had made him a bit of a star in the department.

  “It’s been real quiet,” Sierra said. “But we’re ready if trouble comes.”

  “When do you get relieved?”

  “Chief said we could stay until closing, which is good, I could use the overtime.” Ed said.

  Parker slapped the car’s roof. “Stay safe guys, and keep aware,”

  “We’ll do both, Rick,” Ed told him.

  On his way into the bar, Parker saw a beautiful blond sitting in the passenger seat of a black Lexus. After looking him over, she sent him a smile and he sent her one in return.

  When Parker entered the bar, Heather and the rest of the staff crowded around and thanked him for his actions of the previous day. He was still wearing the sling, although the numbness had left his arm, but he found that it helped with the wounds to his shoulder.

  Heather had to take care of a customer, and so Parker went into the back to speak with Patrick Taggart, but when he entered the small office, he saw that Taggart already had a visitor. It was the man his ex-wife had her affair with, Timothy Hearn.

  “Detective Parker, I’m told that you’re quite the hero now.”

  “What are you doing here, Hearn?”

  “Pat and I were discussing business if you must know.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “The type of business that is none of your business, but we’re finished now anyway. Pat, think over my offer, that number will only go lower now that I’ve seen how few customers you have.”