In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  Before heading up into the canyon toward home, I stopped at the supermarket in Malibu for something quick for dinner, some staples. As I bent to stow the bag of groceries on the backseat next to the tote bag I had left in the car overnight, and shielded by the open door, I removed Nelda's gun from under my waistband and tucked it into the bottom of the tote, cushioning it under yesterday's bundle of sympathy cards.

  The usual weekend traffic poured through Malibu Canyon: two continuous lines of cars, one lane in both directions, like two endlessly passing trains snaking around the curves, up one side of the mountain and down the other. No point trying to push the pace or play car leapfrog. All you can do is nose into position in the queue and keep your distance from the guy ahead, hope the guy behind does the same for you.

  The alternate routes are two, and neither has any appeal: head-on into the sheer face of a mountain wall on one side of the road, or a fast one-way trip down into the canyon on the other.

  Like doing time, I thought as I followed the car ahead, a little convertible Beemer, and watched the one behind, braked, accelerated, let the banked road do most of the steering. Resigned myself to do what needed to be done, didn't fool around, waited my turn to get sprung.

  All was fine until I neared the crest. Heading into a curve, I put my foot on the brake.... And nothing happened. I pushed the pedal to the floor. Nothing.

  I downshifted, snapped on the emergency blinkers and honked my horn to get the attention of the little convertible in front of me, downshifted again, pulled up the emergency brake, managed to slide through the curve, all the time looking for salvation. After that wicked curve, the road began its steep downhill descent. Gravity took a hand. The emergency brake burned out, started to smoke and squeal, the car accelerated. And I could not stop it.

  The Beemer in my path had nowhere to go except into the back of the massive yellow Hummer in front of him. At first the driver had a panic reaction seeing me bearing down on him, tapped his brakes, saw that the action only brought my fast-approaching front end closer to his rear, accelerated until his front grill tapped the Hummer in front of him, putting his face just about eye level with the Hummer's license plate.

  I had a flash of my car pushing that little convertible right under the yellow behemoth, shearing off anything in the Beemer that was higher than the Hummer's bumper.

  I made the only decision I thought I could, and steered to the right at a diagonal, cut a route across the narrow shoulder and hit the mountain obliquely, held the wheel to the right, scraping along until I plowed into a truckload of road scrapings dumped on the shoulder by a road crew after a rock slide. And stopped dead.

  Front end buried in dirt and gravel, right side accordioned: the car was totaled. I thought I was okay. I didn't realize how much racket there had been until there was no sound anymore except the dying pings and hisses of my car's engine and the clunk of occasional rocks falling off the mountain onto the roof and hood.

  On impact, grocery bag and tote bag had taken air, littering the car, covering my lap with their contents. The little .38 I had put at the bottom of the tote ended up wedged atop the dashboard. I had enough presence of mind to grab it and stash it back into the waistband of my pants. For no good reason except I couldn't at that moment think what else I should do, I picked up the tote, at rest upside down in front of the passenger seat, and began putting everything into it that I could reach without taking off my seat belt: a dented carton of milk, a box of strawberries, some sympathy cards, a funny-shaped box wrapped in white paper--odd, I noticed that the box was addressed only to MacGowen, the name of the studio, Burbank, and nothing more, and that the post office had delivered it the day after it was postmarked--the digital camera full of footage from Mayra's house, one tube sock, random other things. All of this probably occurred within the first half a minute after impact, but it seemed to take an infinity of time.

  People banging on my window made me look up. Some man with a very red face seemed to want me to unlock my doors. So I hit the button to accommodate him. But he couldn't get the door to open. Car frame's bent, I thought, sitting there dumbly. I saw half a dozen people standing on the side of the road with cell phones to their ears and remembered to pull mine out. Problem was, I couldn't think who to call.

  "Hey, lady." The big red face was suddenly right there beside mine, full of concern. He had come in through the back door and was leaning between the seats. "You okay? Anything broken? What happened?"

  I said, "No brakes."

  "No brakes?" he repeated.

  "Yes, no brakes."

  I don't remember how it happened, but next I was standing on the side of the road, surrounded by concerned people. One of them was a doctor, who listened to my chest, looked me over, pronounced me sound, and handed me half a cup of Starbucks.

  "Take this," he said. "You need the caffeine. You'll wake up sore tomorrow, effects of adrenaline rush, and you'll have chest contusions from the seat belt. No big collision here, don't think you'll have to worry about whiplash." He gave me his card and said, "Call me sometime. Love to buy you a drink, get to know you."

  Things were beginning to compute enough by that time that I understood he was making a pass. Which, under the circumstances, I thought was very odd.

  I don't know how emergency personnel got through. It took quite a while, but they got up the canyon. By the time they arrived I had become good friends with some of my fellow commuters. But after traffic flow was restored, they left me alone with the service people: the tow truck drivers, a road maintenance crew, a female deputy sheriff named Olsen, and my poor car. Before the car was winched onto the tow truck bed, I gathered up my belongings, leaving the groceries in the wreckage. By that time, it had been dark for hours.

  I rode back down the mountain to Malibu with Deputy Olsen.

  "What happens to the car?" I asked her.

  "It goes to a bonded body shop in Malibu. Mechanics will take a look at it, see what happened to the brakes." She gave me a game smile. "Then, I get to write reports. Lots of reports."

  I called Triple A and made arrangements for a rental car to be delivered to me at the sheriff's Malibu substation, where Deputy Olsen took me. The car had to come all the way up Pacific Coast Highway from LAX, so I settled in for a wait.

  I called Guido and Nick and Lana and Early and my daughter, Casey, reached no one, left messages for all of them.

  Sitting on a wooden bench in the lobby of the Malibu substation, waiting for something to happen or someone to call me, I searched in my bag for coins for the vending machine. My hand hit that odd little white package again, the one addressed only to my name, at the studio. I was intrigued by its trapezoidal shape, and by the optimism the sender had in the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service that spare address implied.

  This was not the only little hand-addressed package I had received. So far, during the two weeks since Mike's death was announced, I had received five boxed rosaries with prayer cards; a silver guardian angel pin; a slim leather-bound edition of the Gospels, embossed with my name, misspelled, with a mushy gift card signed Love Mike enclosed, and a bill--a skeezy scam effort, one of several; and various other tokens. So I had no expectation about what I might find inside this little package.

  The wrapping was ordinary white copier or printer paper, the box inside had once held a printer ink refill cartridge. I untaped one end of the paper, opened the box, and looked inside.

  With shaking hands, I dialed Guido's cell phone again. This time he answered.

  "Where are you?" I asked.

  "You don't sound very good, Maggie. What happened?"

  "Where are you?"

  "At the studio," he said. "We just got back from the morgue. My hands were full when you called a few minutes ago, I couldn't pick up your call."

  "Do you have the disc Early gave you that has the footage he shot after the house was broken into?"

  A pause. "Yes. It's here. What--"

  I interrupted him. "Would you
please load it?"

  When he said he had the video in front of him, I described the little white figure I found inside the box. "Can you see it?"

  "That little Japanese thingy you gave Mike? Yeah, I see it," he said. "It's on the floor in front of Mike's desk."

  "Miss MacGowen." Deputy Olsen loomed over me. I looked up at her. "We're impounding the car."

  "Impounding the car?"

  "For evidence. Mechanic says your brake lines were deliberately severed."

  Chapter 17

  A knock at the door wakened me from a fitful sleep. I wasn't in my own bed and it took me a moment to remember exactly whose bed I was in. I sat up and looked around, heard the surf pounding outside my window: The Breakers Hotel, Santa Monica, standard queen bedroom, fifth floor, middle of the corridor.

  I pulled on the pants and shirt I had draped over the desk chair the night before and went to the window to look out. It was early, barely dawn. But I could see that the same dark blue Crown Victoria car that had delivered me to this pleasure palace the night before was still parked outside the entrance. Maybe it was a replacement dark blue Crown Vic. The important thing to me was that the car was there.

  I slid Nelda's .38 into my waistband under my shirt anyway, just in case. If someone was bold enough to sever my brake lines and break into my house, twice, then getting past the pair of sleepy policemen in that car and through a hotel room door might not be too difficult.

  I knew what Mike would have said about the gun: "You're more likely to shoot off your own ass than to stop anyone coming through the door," but I liked the weight of the gun at my waist.

  "Maggie?" The voice of Nick Pietro accompanied the second knock at the door. "Breakfast is served."

  When I opened the door, Nick held up a damp-looking McDonald's bag and grinned.

  "Good morning," I said, backing into the room so he could enter. He bolted and chained the door behind him. "And thanks, but the network will spring for room service."

  "You should watch more TV, TV girl." Nick set the bag on the desk, opened it, and took out a cup of coffee and an Egg McMuffin. I accepted the coffee, declined the muffin.

  "Don't you know?" he said. "The bad guy always sneaks in disguised as the room service waiter, pulls out a Tommy gun from under his cart, and..."

  "Thanks, Nick." I was grateful for the coffee. "What time is it?"

  He checked his watch. "Sun'll be up soon."

  He looked like hell, and I told him so, invited him to sit down. I asked him, "You weren't sitting up all night out there with my watch dogs, were you?"

  "No. And they weren't sitting in the car, they were right outside your door all night." He ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. "I sat up with Nelda a good part of the night."

  "Did she talk to you?"

  He nodded. "Don't know how much of it was self-serving BS and how much of it was the truth, but she talked to us. Me and Kenny and Eldon ran a relay on her."

  "Where is she now?" I sat down on a corner of the bed, facing him, blowing on the coffee to make it cool enough to drink.

  "In a high-power unit at Metro Detention downtown, in federal custody. Super segregation. She had a long, rough night, but we got her through processing in time for a nap before breakfast. A shower, a meal and a cell to herself, she'll probably sleep all day."

  "What did she tell you about Jesus?"

  "Pretty much what she told you," he said. I didn't expect Nick to say anything more, yet, but he did.

  "One interesting nugget I owe to you, from a lead you gave Kenny."

  "Tell me."

  "You told Kenny that Teresa Galba, Jesus' girlfriend, set off the panic to find Jesus as soon as Mike drove away with him." He took a deep breath and stifled a yawn. "So I went over to see Teresa."

  "Did she tell you anything?"

  "No. She took her kid and left the country again," he said. "Same thing she did when the grand jury subpoenaed her."

  "She knows something."

  He cocked his head and studied me. "Why do I think you have a pretty good idea just what that something might be?"

  "I've given it a lot of thought and asked more than a few questions," I said.

  "And?"

  "Teresa told me that when Mike drove away with Jesus, Nelda was standing with Boni beside his car. I think that Teresa just may have overheard, or Nelda told her, that Boni was going to silence Mayra by giving her the uncut heroin. And Teresa understood what that meant for Jesus. The kid would get a share, because that was the arrangement with his aunt."

  "You think Boni would talk like that out on the street?"

  I shrugged. "May have had no choice if he suspected the car was bugged, and it was."

  He shook his head. "Pretty risky for him."

  "Maybe, but maybe it would be even riskier to deliver Nelda into Mike's hands for questioning without scaring the bejesus out of her first. If he could take out Mayra, he could take out Nelda."

  Nick's attitude about the notion was hidden behind his detective poker face.

  "That's my best guess, anyway," I said. "If I'm anywhere near the mark, then if Teresa had told Mike or Julia the truth that day then both Jesus and Mayra would have been spared."

  "Spared what?" Nick had a sardonic smile, a wise-ass grin that reminded me of Mike. "Mayra and Jesus would have continued using, and odds are that drugs or the street or their friends would have killed them both by now. For blabbing, Teresa wouldn't have lasted through the day. The one person who could have been saved by the truth that day was Mike. And I doubt that Teresa gave Mike Flint's well-being one nanosecond of thought."

  "No wonder you and Mike worked so well together," I said. "That's exactly what I would expect Mike to say."

  "Yeah?" He looked at his watch again, but I saw some color rise in his face. He liked being compared to Mike. "We should get going. How long do you need to get ready to blow this cushy pop stand?"

  "Fifteen minutes," I said, rising to my feet. "Twenty if the shower here is any good."

  "You mind if I wait right here? This chair feels damn comfy right now."

  "Suit yourself." I turned my back as I headed for the bathroom.

  "But, Maggie." He rose enough to catch my hand as I walked past him. "Give me the gun first, please."

  I took it out from under my shirt and laid it on his open palm; it must have made a bulge.

  "Where did you get this?" he asked, turning it over in his palm.

  "Mayra took it from Nelda when she was sleeping. I forgot to give it to you yesterday."

  "You forgot? You've been walking around with a gun on your hip since yesterday? You run your car into the side of a mountain and..." He opened the chamber, saw it was loaded, gave me a reproachful glance, dumped the bullets into his hand, snapped the chamber in place and then slipped the gun into one pocket and the bullets into the other. "Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Odds are you'd shoot off your own--"

  "Don't say it," I said. "I already know the amateurs-and-guns speech. I heard it from Mike more than once."

  He just shook his head.

  I took my meager possessions into the bathroom and closed the door. Turned out to be a very good shower indeed, steamy hot water delivered with a lot of pressure through a massage setting on the showerhead. It felt so good that I lingered. When I was at last blown dry, dressed and as presentable as circumstances allowed, I opened the door expecting to find Nick pacing impatiently. Instead, I found him stretched out on the unmade bed, arms folded over his chest, sound asleep.

  "Nick?" I took hold of the toe of one of his polished black brogans and gently shook it. "Nick?"

  He opened his eyes enough to check his watch. He yawned before he sat up. "Long night."

  "Would a shower help?" I asked.

  He stroked his chin again, considering the offer. He said, "No time, but do you have a razor I can borrow?"

  "I left a disposable on the tub," I said.

  He was in the bathroom long enough for me to finish my cup of by-t
hen lukewarm coffee and to pack up the few things I carried in the night before. I turned on the television and caught an early morning newscast. There it was, Live Breaking News: filmmaker saves lives of other motorists by crashing runaway car into a mountainside. Sheriff's Department investigators believe the brake lines were deliberately tampered with. Fuzzy video of my poor smashed-up car in the dark behind a locked grate at the Malibu garage where it had spent the night. News hen standing in front of the Malibu substation reported that I was inside with law enforcement, and "thankfully" was uninjured.

  "Thankfully," I repeated into the room as I snapped off the TV. My muscles ached and my chest was black-and-blue from the seat belt. Thankfully, because of the angle of the collision the airbags had not deployed. What a nightmare that would have been, trying to steer across a mountain sheer with an airbag going off in my face.

  I had spent a good chunk of the night before in the Malibu substation. LAPD arrived to join the sheriff's grilling: who, how, where? A deputy was dispatched to Early's house to retrieve a copy of the disc that showed the netsuke on Mike's office floor amid the mess the burglar had made during the first break-in. Obviously, the burglar had come back for a second look around, and wanted me to know it.

  By the time I was released, I felt like a one-woman crime wave, screwing up the statistics of the entire neighborhood. In the history of my neighborhood, I was told by Deputy Olsen, there had been only two home break-in reports. Both of them were mine. And one car tampering. Also mine. I thought that the suggestion, from the LAPD, that I spend the night away from home was a good one.

  Nick drove me away from the hotel in the second Crown Vic in a convoy of three traveling down Pacific Coast Highway. I thought we were expected downtown, so I was curious when, instead of turning off to catch the freeway, we kept traveling north.