“You solve a lot of crimes that way?” Samantha asked.
“Well, that’s an oversimplified example,” I said. “It’s not really a practical one. It’s more or less true, though. And sometimes you just follow a trail and find somebody waiting at the end of it.” I nodded at her. “Of course, sometimes you just come home and find someone pointing a gun at you, which makes things really easy. You’d be surprised how often that happens to me.”
Samantha looked at the gun in her hand as if she had forgotten it was still there. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.” She put the gun down on the table and slid it across to me.
I looked at the gun. “Well,” I said. “I have to admit that’s not what I was expecting.”
She squinted at me. “You thought I was going to shoot you?” Her speech was slurring now. In another twenty minutes she probably wouldn’t be coherent.
“I thought you might try,” I said. I took my Glock out of its holster and put it down on the table in front of me. “You’d have only had one chance, though, and I doubt you’re sober enough to aim.”
“I needed to drink,” she said. “To do what I had to do.”
“To make a confession?”
She nodded. “I heard you were looking for me, and it was only going to be a matter of time. But I wanted to explain to you…” She frowned. “I don’t know where to start.”
“You shot three men you thought were rapists who got away with it.”
She blinked. “Oh,” she said. “You figured it out.”
“It wasn’t rocket science.”
“Well, yes,” she said. “That’s what happened.”
“But that’s not all,” I said, “because you got one of them wrong. Same name, different guy. You killed an innocent man.”
Tears welled up in her eyes and she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.
I sighed. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know what to tell you. We could sit here and have some philosophical conversation about the nature of justice and the place of vigilantism and…I don’t know what else. At the end of the day we might find some agreement. God knows I’ve been called a vigilante before, and there’s some truth to it. The thing is, though…” I looked at her gun. “You killed the wrong guy, Samantha. Even if I did agree with you about hunting down rapists and killing them, even if I did go that far, it does pretty much hinge on you being right about them. There’s no place for mistakes.”
“I know,” she said. “I was so sure…”
“You got sloppy.”
She started to cry. Nobody had told me there would be crying. I wasn’t prepared for this. “I should have been more careful,” she said. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”
“Ah,” I said. “I’m not…” She was still crying. “You want a Kleenex or something?” I asked. I didn’t think I actually owned any Kleenex, but I could find her a paper towel.
“No,” she said. “I’m fine.” She wiped her face with her hands. “I just wanted to tell you. I thought I was…”
“What?”
“She said I was an angel,” Samantha said. “She said I was her angel.”
That was the same thing Krystal had called me. “That’s another issue,” I said. “Krystal was guilty of a lot of things, but she didn’t deserve what she got. Even if she was trying to blackmail you, you didn’t have the right to kill her.”
Samantha frowned. “Krystal?”
“Krystal Harris.”
She considered that. “I remember her,” she said. “She came in…a couple of times, I guess.” She frowned at me. “She didn’t deserve what she got? She’s dead?”
Well, shit. There was no way she was faking that reaction. I’d thought I’d been dealing with one killer. Now I knew there was another. Just when I’d thought this whole thing was going to be wrapped up with a neat little bow, it turned out that wasn’t what was going to happen at all.
“Krystal’s dead?” Samantha shook her head. “What happened to her?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Who are you working with?”
“I was the angel,” Samantha said. “I did it alone.”
“There had to be…” I said. “You know what? I’ll figure it out. So what is it you want me to do here? Call the police? Take you in myself? You’re obviously not here to shut me up and I’m obviously not going to let you walk out of here.”
“No,” she said. “I just thought…I remembered you from the news. You were brave. I thought you’d understand me. I thought you might be a kindred spirit.”
I didn’t particularly agree with any of that, but this wasn’t the time to start an argument. “And?”
“And I just thought you should know,” she said. Samantha’s head slumped forward and she shut her eyes.
I waited for a few moments for her to come around, but then it hit me. Samantha wasn’t just drunk. I sprang out of my chair and grabbed her by the sides of her head, turning her to face me. Her eyelids opened but I could only see the whites of her eyes. “Samantha!” I yelled. She was unresponsive. “Samantha!” I slapped her. “What did you take?”
I had to slap her again before she answered me. “Everything,” she whispered. And then she was out again.
I called 911.
Chapter 21
I wasn’t proud of what I did next, and I knew I’d regret it later, but I did it anyway. Once I hung up with 911 I took Samantha by the wrists and dragged her out of my kitchen, through the living room, and then out the front door. I’d be damned if another person was going to die inside my house. I didn’t think I could deal with it.
Once that was done I called Sarah Winters. She was hesitant to get involved, but I convinced her that now that this was more or less over, it was the right time. She’d helped me crack three open murder cases. It should be enough to convince Dan she was ready to do some real police work again. It certainly couldn’t hurt, anyway. He might be pissed at first, but he liked putting cases to bed as much as anyone.
The EMTs took Samantha away on a stretcher about fifteen minutes later. She was still alive, but only barely. She’d most likely taken the pills when she’d seen me arriving home earlier, or maybe the first time she’d rung my doorbell. She didn’t have any bottles on her, but a search of her pockets turned up an empty Ziploc bag she’d probably been carrying them in. I had no idea how much alcohol she’d had in total. Samantha had never intended to surrender herself. She’d just wanted to talk to someone she’d thought would understand her. I’d have had to admit I knew what that felt like.
Dan arrived shortly after Sarah finished taking my statement. He came wading through a sea of patrol cops like a Russian icebreaker. I’d had about all I could take of his shit for one day, and I was ready for a fight if that was what he wanted. I decided I didn’t want to wait for him to get in the first shot. “Don’t fucking start with me,” I said to him. “Samantha came here. I didn’t go looking for her.” It probably wasn’t worth pointing out that I’d intended to go looking for her as soon as I got home and picked up my car.
Dan stared at Sarah until she walked away. Then he looked at me. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” he said.
“You want to dance?” I asked. I stepped up to him and looked in his eyes. “Bring it. Tell me how I fucked this up, Dan. Tell me it’s my fault she came here and overdosed.” He stared back at me but didn’t say anything. “You want to lock me up again, tough guy?”
He held my gaze for a long moment and then averted his eyes. “No,” he said.
“Good.”
Dan put his hands in his pockets and glanced in Sarah’s direction. She was talking to another one of the detectives, a young guy I didn’t recognize. “How is she in this?” he asked. “I seem to remember her saying something about going to get some coffee, and now here she is.”
“How she’s in this is that she did some fine-ass police work,” I said. “Three bodies off your books. It was her that put the pieces together.” That may not have been entirely true, but
it wasn’t like I did this because I enjoyed the notoriety.
Dan grunted and looked away. I took his cheeks between my hands and turned his head back in her direction. “Look at her,” I said. “She’s fine. She’s not flipping out over it. She did her job.”
He grunted again. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Do that,” I said. “Let her off that fucking desk. You need people like her on the street.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me how to run my department, Nevada.”
“Maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass,” I said. “That seems about as likely as me keeping my mouth shut.”
Dan sighed and shook his head. “Don’t I know it,” he said. He looked me up and down. “You all right?”
“I’m fine. Samantha didn’t come here to hurt me. She just wanted someone to talk to.”
“That’s not really what I meant, Nevada.”
“Yeah.” I put my hands in my pockets. “Are we talking or fighting now? I get confused about the transition sometimes.”
“We weren’t fighting to begin with.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t your best work if we were,” I said. “I was winning pretty easily.”
“Then there’s the proof we weren’t fighting.” A smile tried to force its way onto his face but couldn’t quite make it there. “This time try answering the question. Are you all right?”
“It’s been a long goddamn day, Dan.” I shrugged. “First with the jail, and now…” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I went looking for Krystal’s killer and wound up with some poor girl who thought she was doing the right thing and found out the hard way that she wasn’t.”
Dan nodded. “That must sound familiar to you.”
“It sounds…I don’t know. It sounds like a story I’ve heard before, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose it does.” He looked in Sarah’s direction. “I take it I can get the details I need from her?”
“You can. You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to rehash everything again.”
“Is there anything else I need to know?”
I thought about telling him that Samantha wasn’t the one who’d killed Krystal. It would have been a good idea. But I wanted to handle it myself. “No.”
“I’ll talk to Sarah, then.” He looked at my house. “At least nobody died in there this time. You won’t have to tear this place down again.”
“Yeah.” I decided not to mention I’d dragged Samantha out of the house to keep that from happening, either.
“We’ll get out of your hair,” Dan said. “This isn’t a crime scene.” He looked at me and then put a hand on my shoulder. “I think it’s about time you took that vacation, Nevada. Send me a postcard or something, all right?”
“I’ll bring you back a t-shirt,” I said. Then I squinted at him. “I’m surprised you said that. I thought you might try to throw my badge at me again. Get me back under your control.”
“Not today,” he said. “When you get back, we’re going to revisit that. Take that vacation first, though. A long vacation. Then we’ll talk.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I’ll hit some islands. Get a tan. Go surfing. I don’t know. What do people even do on vacations?”
“Have you ever actually taken one?”
I thought about it. “No. Have you?”
He frowned. “It’s been a while,” he said. “I guess you’ll just have to figure it out. Have some fun and forget about all of this for a while.”
“Yeah. I will.”
And that was the plan, more or less. But I still had unfinished business, and I wasn’t about to try to talk to him about it. I’d told Sarah that Krystal’s killer was still out there. She’d tell Dan, but not before I got out from under his watchful gaze. That would give me time to do what I needed to do.
I knew exactly who I needed to find. I didn’t know how hard it would be, but I’d find him.
Chapter 22
It took me two days to find the man I was looking for. A little research and an hour on Facebook had been enough to get the things I needed to show him. And once he’d answered my question, I went hunting. I knew where my target was, of course, but I didn’t want to do what needed to be done at her office. Making a scene there might have been upsetting to innocent people who needed help. So I followed her to a coffee shop on her lunch break and waited until she’d taken a seat before I moved in.
Vanessa was blowing steam away from her cappuccino when I sat down across from her. “This seat taken?” I asked.
She looked shocked for a moment, but then she smiled at me. “Detective James,” she said. “You come here, too?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Well, the coffee here is a lot better than Starbucks. I’m surprised to see you, though.”
“Are you?” I asked. “Surprised, I mean? I sometimes wonder if people can feel me coming.” I shrugged. “A guy told me he could once, a long time ago. He’d been running for a while, though. I think paranoia might have gotten to him.”
Vanessa looked like I’d just given her a riddle to solve. I wondered how much of it was an act. Certainly some of it was. I’d underestimated her because of it. “I’ve got to tell you,” I said. “I was sure it was Esther Cromwell.”
She nodded. “That it was Ms. Cromwell who…what?”
“Shot Krystal Harris.”
Her facial expression didn’t change, but her eyes went cold. There hadn’t been any question in my mind, but that confirmed it anyway. No innocent person would have reacted that way. “Please, Detective James,” she said. “I really have no idea…”
“You should never have left a witness,” I said. “That’s how I got you.”
Vanessa’s eyes darted to the left, and then met mine again. “A witness?”
“The homeless guy outside Krystal’s house.” I raised my eyebrows in a question. “Maybe you didn’t see him? That hadn’t occurred to me. You may have been in a rush to get away. He saw you, though.”
“I don’t…” she started, but now I heard a trace of panic in her voice. It wasn’t much yet, but it was definitely there.
“He picked you out of a photo lineup,” I said. “The business woman with the .32. I suppose you must have dressed up a little that day.” I gave her a stern look. “Did you get rid of the gun, Vanessa? I’m betting you didn’t. I’m betting you thought you might need it again. Is it in your house right now?” She didn’t say anything. “If it is, the detectives will have it soon. They’re tearing your place apart right now.”
Vanessa gave me a long, hard look, and then she sighed. “Shit,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “I did see the homeless man. I thought maybe…he seemed harmless enough. He was talking to himself. I didn’t think he’d be coherent enough to identify me. And shooting a man on the sidewalk was more of a risk than I was willing to take.”
I nodded. “You might have gotten away with it in that neighborhood. Of course, there might have been someone else around to witness that murder, and then you find yourself on a little killing spree.”
“Yeah.” She frowned. “He never saw the gun, though. How did he know it was a .32?”
“He heard it. He was a veteran. Iraq. 1991. Poor guy’s out of his head. His best friend, or maybe it’s his worst enemy depending on the day, is a shopping cart, but he knows guns. He saw my Glock for a split second the first time I met him and called out the model and caliber. It was impressive.”
“I should have gotten rid of it,” she said, “but you’re right. I thought I might need it again.” Her eyes narrowed. “For you.”
“I wish you’d tried it,” I said. “Instead I got poor Samantha and…you must know how that ended.” I leaned forward. There was something I wanted to know. I suspected I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from her. “Tell me this,” I said. “Why Krystal? She found you out?�
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Vanessa nodded. “She overheard Sam talking to me. Sam was…losing it. She’d figured out that she’d killed the wrong person. She blamed me. And the truth is she wasn’t wrong. I was the one who gave her the wrong Brian Haskill. It was my mistake. I got careless.”
“You were the one who called her an angel?”
“I was.” She smiled. “She was an angel.”
“And Krystal wanted money?”
“She did.” Vanessa rubbed her eyes. “It wasn’t even very much money, to be honest. She asked for five hundred dollars. I could have paid it.”
I felt my jaw clench. “You killed her over five hundred dollars?” It wasn’t like there was an amount of money that would have made her murder acceptable to me, but five hundred dollars was just insulting.
“No,” Vanessa said. “I did it over what would have come next. She was an addict. She’d have spent that and come back for more. And then more. As long as she had something on us, I’d never be rid of her. So I did what had to be done.” She gave me a look that suggested sympathy, but I wasn’t sure if it was meant for me, or for her, or maybe for Krystal. “I liked her. I really did. There was a point before any of that happened where I’d hoped Sam would get through to her and…” She shrugged. “I suppose hope makes fools of everyone.”
“That’s why I try to avoid it,” I said. “Or I did, I guess. Now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Vanessa looked confused. “What?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Long story. Involves my liver. Forget it.”
“Fine,” she said. She crossed her arms in front of her. “But tell me one thing. Were we wrong?”
“Wrong?” I shook my head. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because I know exactly who you are, Nevada James. I knew who you were the minute you walked through the door at Second Star that first time. I know you were off the reservation when you went after the Laughing Man four years ago. Somehow I doubt you were going to arrest him when you caught him.”
Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) Page 14
