“Hello, Ms. Roshard. I’m Lieutenant Harrington. This is Sergeant Steve Walsh. We’re with the Miami-Dade police. Is there somewhere we could talk?”
“Sure. Why don’t you guys come around and follow me to my office. There’s a little walk-through over here.”
I saw where she motioned and followed Steve around the front desk then behind it and into the hallway. The owner was fit, dark haired, and maybe five foot five. She wore a dark red fitted shirt and a pair of tight black pants. I followed her and Steve until we reached the woman’s office.
“Have a seat,” she said and stood at the open office door.
Steve and I walked in. The room wasn’t much bigger than a supply closet. We each took a chair at the woman’s desk. Miscellaneous sports nutrition supplement bottles were scattered on almost every available flat space. I recognized a few brands from whenever I’d get into my “I need to be in better shape” kicks. The truth was, I mostly held the same shape I had in my twenties. I chalked it up to good genes, fast metabolism, and actively trying to get off my ass every once in a while. A file cabinet sat in the corner. Papers were stacked all around it, and a printer sat on the floor next to it. A big computer monitor and keyboard took up most of the surface area of the desk.
“I apologize for the cramped space. We turned my old office, which was far larger, into a spin room.”
“No problem,” I said. “The reason for the visit. We’d like to see what we can do about seeing some video of one of your members from yesterday.”
“All right. I guess I have to ask which member and what for?”
“Laurie Jillette,” I said. “And she was murdered shortly after she left here yesterday.”
The woman covered her mouth.
CHAPTER 29
We didn’t get to see any video at the gym. My heart slammed against the inside of my chest. I yanked the wheel left, veering around a minivan then right to avoid the back of a dump truck. I drove a good twenty, thirty, fifty miles over the speed limit to my house. Steve was on the phone as we drove. He made call after call, looking for whatever information we could get. The only thing that I knew was that Bill, my neighbor, had called me and said he’d just dialed 9-1-1. Amy had been attacked in our home. He’d called for an ambulance. He never saw who the intruder was. I asked if she was okay, and Bill said it was bad.
As we jumped in the cruiser to leave the gym, my phone rang again. The second call came from Derick LePera, the patrol sergeant from our precinct, informing me of the 9-1-1 call that Bill had made requesting an ambulance and police to my house. Derick said the caller reported hearing gunfire from my home. I’d get more answers when I got on scene. The way I was driving at the time, I couldn’t be on the phone—I needed two hands on the wheel.
I continued to weave in and out of cars. Steve had someone on the line. He fired off question after question, confirming that Amy was injured. Steve asked about the gunfire. I couldn’t make out what he was being told on the phone. I glanced over at him but couldn’t pick up on any body language. Steve clicked his phone off and dropped it to his lap.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t respond.
“What?” I asked again. I took my eyes from the road and looked over at him.
“Just drive. Fast,” Steve said.
“What the hell did they say?”
“I had Rey on the phone at the scene. He said an air ambulance was on the way.”
“Air ambulance? How bad is she?”
“They don’t know.”
“Is she shot?” I asked.
“They say knife wounds.”
“Mercer?” I asked. “Do they have him?”
“There was no one on the scene but her. Patrol is searching the area.”
I looked out the windshield and slowed to run the red light and make the left at the intersection of Doral Boulevard and NW Ninety-Seventh Avenue. Ahead, in the air, I saw the Life Lift helicopter approaching in the distance. I kept the gas pegged as we flew past the golf club on our right. We were only blocks away. I slowed for the red at the intersection of NW Thirty-Third Street. The helicopter hovered directly over my house.
I got to my block and slid around the corner for the turn. I locked up the brakes immediately. Patrol cars had the street blocked. We skidded to a stop. I threw the cruiser into Park and bailed out. Uniformed officers were outside their cars, standing in the street. All had their backs toward me as they watched the helicopter descend.
Steve and I jogged past the officers and ran to my house. With the sounds of helicopter blades thumping the air, I couldn’t hear if the officers said anything to us. A pair of patrol cars were in my driveway, and an ambulance was in the street on the far side of the helicopter. A gurney with someone on it stood at the back of the ambulance. Wind whipped through the air from the chopper’s blades as it neared touchdown. We reached my neighbor’s house. Officer Rey and my neighbor Bill, almost Rey’s size, stood in his yard. I could see blood on Bill’s T-shirt and shorts. More blood covered his hands and his tattooed forearms. Our tattoos were the topic that had broken the neighborly ice when I first moved in. Over the years that we’d been neighbors, we’d had plenty of beers and busted some knuckles on each other’s weekend projects. I considered him more a friend than just a neighbor. I looped around the guys into my yard. The helicopter touched down dead center in the street in front of my house. Palm trees flexed, and their fronds whipped back and forth. Men came from the helicopter and rushed for the ambulance. I did too, getting to the gurney at the same time they did.
“You need to get back,” one of the EMTs said.
I didn’t pay him any attention and stared at Amy. Blood wet her clothing and what I could see of her face. Her eyes weren’t open. She had a ventilator on and some bandages around her neck. Just as I reached out to touch her hand, the men started taking her toward the helicopter. I took a step to follow them but was grabbed by someone. I whipped around to see the same EMT who had told me to get back.
“You can’t be over here,” he said. “You have to let them work.”
I yanked my badge from my hip and held it in his face. “It’s my damn girlfriend. That is my house.” I pointed toward it as I shouted over the sound of the blades.
“You have to let them get her loaded. Every second counts,” he said.
I wanted to be at her side. I wanted her to know that I was there, but I stayed put, allowing the men to do their jobs. I stood at the back of the ambulance and watched the guys get the gurney into the helicopter. A moment later, the men all boarded, and we were instructed to get farther back. As the helicopter lifted from the ground and disappeared to the east, I learned what I could from the EMT. I asked how bad she was. He couldn’t tell me anything other than she had two significant stab wounds, one to the neck and one to the upper right chest. The one to the neck, the EMT said, had appeared to only lacerate flesh. The one in her chest had gone through her lung, which was why they requested the Life Lift. The half-hour drive to the closest hospital, plus the time to get her into surgery, would be too long, they believed. I asked where she was being taken, and they said Jackson Memorial Hospital. That was all I needed. I jogged back toward Steve, Rey, and my neighbor Bill.
“He didn’t see anyone,” Steve said.
I looked at Steve. “Stay here. Get a team out here. Find something. I’m going to the hospital.”
Steve nodded.
“Bill, I’m calling you in two minutes,” I said.
“Sure,” he said.
I went to the cruiser, hopped in, and pointed it in the direction of the hospital. I dialed Bill.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“I was dropping a letter in the mailbox out front when I heard a bunch of loud bangs from your place,” Bill said. “It sounded too much like gunfire for me to just ignore it. I went to the front door but didn’t get an answer from knocking or using the bell. I tried the knob. It was locked
. Lucky was barking her ass off outside in the back. I went around and looked over the fence. There was blood at the back patio doors, and Lucky was outside. She was covered in blood. I hopped the fence and got inside. Amy was on the living room floor. There was blood all around her. All around the couch. I went to her and dialed 9-1-1 right away. I sat there putting pressure on the wounds until the paramedics showed up. Maybe four or five minutes. She was mumbling something that I couldn’t make out when I got there, but she was unconscious by the time help arrived. I’d thought she was shot until the EMTs showed up and said they were knife wounds and not gunshot wounds.”
“And you didn’t see anyone?” I asked.
“Sorry. No. Maybe Lucky scared them off.”
“Shit. Can you get her? Do you mind?”
“I already have her at my house. Megan is inside cleaning her up, I think. None of the blood on her is hers as far as I could tell. She’s not hurt.”
“All right. I appreciate it. I’ll be in touch later.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just take care of whatever you have to with Amy. Lucky will be fine with us.”
“She’s got food in my kitchen pantry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bill said.
“Thank you.” I clicked off from the call, and my focus went straight to driving—around one car then another. I used the shoulder when necessary. The lights in the grille flashed, and the siren wailed. The normal twenty-plus-minute drive took me fifteen. My mind bounced back and forth between two thoughts—if Amy would be okay and if Mercer was who had attacked her.
I pulled up to the emergency center of the hospital and parked at the curb. I left the car and jogged to the sliding doors. Inside, I went straight to the front desk.
A woman, in her fifties and wearing scrubs, sat behind the hospital’s reception desk. “Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m Lieutenant Nash Harrington with Miami-Dade PD. Life Lift should have just arrived with a woman. Her name is Amy Solvo. I need to know where she is and get an update on her condition.”
“Can you give me a minute?” she asked.
I nodded but said nothing. After I’d paced a few minutes, the receptionist asked if I could take a seat in the waiting area. She said a doctor would come speak to me when they had information. I didn’t imagine I’d get any answers from anyone for a good hour or more. I left the waiting area, stepped outside, and dialed Steve. He answered right away.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m over here. Just waiting to hear anything from a doctor. I’m guessing it will be a bit. What’s going on out there?”
“We’re going through your place. It looks like most everything happened in the living room. We have pretty clear signs of a struggle. There’s a few things knocked over. A lot of blood. In the backyard, we have what looks like a line of blood drips that go straight to the fence and over in the back. The patrol guys followed the drips until the trail was lost about a block away. Her attacker was injured.”
“The gunshots?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We haven’t found a weapon. There are a couple of bullet holes in your living room wall. No shells that we saw anywhere. Revolver, maybe.”
“Neither Amy or I own a revolver. We have a gun vault next to the bed and a big gun safe in the closet. Both should be locked.”
“I’ll just double-check that they are and cross it off the list. Make sure she didn’t go for a gun and it left the house with our intruder.”
“Sure,” I said. “What else?”
“No forced entry. Door jambs and windows all look intact.”
“We leave the back sliding door open so Lucky can go in and out throughout the day.”
“Okay,” Steve said. “Speaking of Lucky, I think she may have gotten ahold of our attacker. We have two small pieces of ripped-up fabric that I can’t place. It’s denim. The neighbor said Amy was wearing all black.”
“Yeah, she wears all black to work. She got dressed in her work clothes this morning.”
“All right, well, we’re going to keep at it here. I’ll give you a ring as soon as we get anything.”
“Okay. I appreciate it, Steve.”
“No problem. We’re praying for her.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I clicked off from the call and stared at my phone. I needed to contact Amy’s family and I had no idea what the hell to tell them.
CHAPTER 30
“Son of a bitch!” Chris snapped. He limped through one backyard and into another. He’d made it four or five blocks away from the home of Amy and the cop. He wasn’t going to stick around. In addition to the damned dog and his injuries, the gunfire was sure to alert the neighbors. Chris limped along the side of a beige ranch. He paused to catch his breath.
With his head down, Chris noticed the right leg of his pants was shredded and bloodied. So were both of his forearms, one of which pumped blood at a pretty good rate. The wound definitely required medical attention. The dog might have opened up an artery. In addition to bites on Chris’s arms and legs, the dog had gotten a few good bites in on his head and the back of his neck.
Across the street, an older woman was leaving the front of her house and walking to her car in the driveway. Chris got closer to the house and waited to make sure the lady didn’t see him.
The moment she pulled from her driveway, Chris left the cover of the home and crossed the street to the woman’s house. He tried the front door—locked. Chris walked around back. The yard was fenced. “Shit,” he said.
He’d climbed three or four fences after he’d left Amy and the cop’s place. He’d need to hop at least one more. Chris grabbed the top of the fence and pulled himself up. He put one leg over then the other and fell to the grass on the other side. The impact knocked the wind from him. Chris stared at the sky, trying to get a breath. Finally, he coughed.
Chris moaned in pain and pushed himself up to his feet. He wavered and walked to the back patio doors. He tried sliding the glass, which didn’t budge. Chris peered inside at the dining room and kitchen. None of the lights were on. The television wasn’t on. The furniture and wall hangings were something an older woman would have. He didn’t see anything that suggested a man lived there.
He turned away from the glass and looked around. A terracotta pot about a foot in diameter caught his eye. Chris scooped it up and tossed it toward the glass patio door. The door rattled in its frame and the pot bounced off, hitting the cement patio slab and shattering. “Dammit,” Chris muttered.
He needed something heavier. Another flowerpot caught his eye, though this one appeared more robust. The planter was concrete, in the shape of a frog with some plant growing from its back. Chris raised the forty-some-pound planter and heaved it at the glass. Like the pot, it bounced off yet didn’t break. “What the hell is this damn door made of?”
Chris glanced to his right. A window caught his eye.
He grabbed the cement frog and limped to the back window. Chris got a good hold on the frog, lunged, and heaved it up toward the glass. The planter exploded the window into the house.
After knocking out all the shards of glass that remained in the window, Chris climbed up and through. The window was directly over the kitchen sink. Chris climbed down off the counter and looked around.
He walked forward and made a left down the hall in search of the home’s bathroom. He hoped the woman had something that he could use to stitch himself up. Chris turned in to the woman’s bathroom and slapped on the light. He opened the door of the medicine cabinet and began going through it. It seemed to be fairly well stocked. Chris removed some gauze, bandages, ointment, peroxide, and alcohol. Chris had the items to clean his wounds, but he still needed to stop the blood loss. He was fairly certain the woman, being older, would have a sewing kit around.
Chris dropped his pants and used his teeth to twist off the top of the peroxide bottle. He took a seat on the toilet and put his heavily injured right leg up onto the knee
of his left. He stared at his ripped-up leg. The damage was all caused by the dog. A few spots on his calf had chunks of flesh missing. Simply sewing that up wouldn’t fix his leg.
He shook his head as he recalled the attack. Just as he was about to strike Amy with his knife, she opened her eyes and screamed. He brought the knife down, delivering a stab to her neck as she tried getting away. Chris snatched her hair and yanked her back. As she flailed, he brought the blade down into her chest and ripped it back out. Before he could strike again, the damn dog came leaping through the open patio door.
The dog came straight for him, sinking teeth into his leg and ripping back and forth. Chris got the dog off momentarily with a hard punch. Figuring the dog had been dispatched, he went back to Amy. She lay flat on her back on the couch. She coughed and expelled blood. Blood leaked from her neck onto the couch cushions. Blood pooled around her chest wound, and she grabbed at it. Chris leaned forward, about to pull the knife across her throat, when the dog jumped onto his back and sank its teeth into the back of his head and neck. Chris flailed around, trying to throw the dog off. As he fought with the dog, he saw Amy roll off the couch. Chris went to the floor with the dog. He got ahold of its collar and yanked as hard as he could. The dog wouldn’t release its grip on his neck. Chris reached behind his back and got a hand on his pistol. He fired blindly. The shots scared the dog off him. By the time he turned the weapon on the dog itself, it was already coming back for another attack.
Chris had dead aim on it. He pulled the trigger to the sound of a click. The dog, snarling and snapping, sank its teeth into Chris’s forearm. He tried punching it again. The dog let go just at the right moment to snap down onto his other arm. It ripped its head back and forth. Chris screamed. The dog was relentless, biting and thrashing. Chris knew the dog would kill him if he couldn’t get it off him. He gripped the pistol and smacked the dog in the head. It was enough for the dog to break its grip. Chris looked down. The dog didn’t move. Pushing himself to his feet, Chris planted a hand on the end table to steady himself, knocking over a lamp in the process. Amy lay on the floor, her movements lethargic.
Wrath (The Lieutenant Harrington Series Book 1) Page 15
