A Bitch Called Hope

by Lily Gardner

  It was enough to shock her into moving. Somehow she made it across two lanes of traffic to the sidewalk.

  House of Pancakes. She was on Sandy Boulevard, a mile and a half from home. Mostly naked, cuffed, bleeding, what kind of help could she expect from pancake patrons? They could call the cops.

  The wind tore at her back as she took off running, behind the Cameo Motel and into the neighborhood off Eighty-second. Running from whoever was on duty in the east precinct and what the story of her, stripped, worked over, her weapon used on her, would do to her already fucked-up reputation. She’d have to be dead to let the cops find her in this shape.

  She’d have to be dead.

  The wind roared through the nearby fir trees. Bare-assed, barefoot, she sprinted into the wind. Were the Altar Boys out there somewhere? The Camaro got taken out of the equation but what about the Land Rover? Would he come after her? She couldn’t be sure. What was sure —she needed backup, she needed a weapon.

  Thirty degrees and the Gorge wind gusting like a mother. Lennox stumbled, her bare feet registering every stone and twig on the sidewalk, her back beginning to stiffen from where they kicked her, hip bleeding from where she landed on the pavement. She’d be damned if she’d let them find her.

  The way they found Gabe. Mac sicced the Altar Boys on Gabe. Mac was the murderer.

  Lennox’s heart pushed against her chest. And Mac had to believe that Alice was in on the blackmail. They’ll kill her. Lennox ran harder. She stayed out of the streetlights, porch lights, ran across yards. The grass was stiff with frost; the trees thrashed in the wind. She glimpsed the blue glow of televisions from people’s living rooms. A mile to go.

  Save Alice. Get out of these cuffs. Get her other gun. Big Ugly. Call the police. Someone must’ve called already—a naked woman falling out of the trunk of a car. Lennox ran past bare bushes, empty gardens, then deeper into the neighborhood, turn of the century bungalows, the Monkey Puzzle tree on the corner of Sixty-second. Her feet were frozen; she tripped, caught herself before she hit the ground and willed herself to keep moving.

  The backbone of survival is self-control. Half a mile to go. Pick up the pace.

  Her feet were shredded, her shoulder and hip bleeding. The wind like a pack of wild dogs, every inch of her skin felt bitten. Two blocks.

  Think. Could they already have gotten to her house? Had they taken her keys from the Bronco? She didn’t think so. And the Camaro looked bad. A crash like that, a body thrown from the car, they could both be dead. What were the chances they would come after her? The Land Rover would have go back to the warehouse, find her parked car, get her keys. How long had she been running? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

  The Goldners’ Subaru was parked across the street from her house as always, and Mrs. Kurtz’s ancient Pontiac was parked next door. No other cars. Her house looked just like she’d left it. The thin line of yellow light where the velvet curtains met in her front windows. The porch light. Her instincts told her they weren’t there yet. But it’s hard to trust your instincts when you want something so bad. The motion sensor floods turned on one by one, lighting her progress as she hobbled up the driveway.

  She hugged the back of the house to stay out of the flood light, then pressed close to her office window, kitchen, the bathroom, watched for movement, listened past the roar of wind, the rush of traffic from Sandy into the house’s interior. She made herself calm her breath and listen. Through the frozen windowpane, she heard the thin spangle of the television.

  She unhooked her spare key from its place by the garden hoses and quietly let herself in. Eased through the kitchen and peered around the corner through her dining room to the living room.

  Alice. Alive and well and sprawled on Lennox’s sofa watching an old sitcom eating popcorn. Thank God.

  Alice looked up from the television and let out a cry. She jumped off the sofa and ran to Lennox. Her eyes were wild. “What happened? You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s Mac. He’s the murderer,” Lennox said.

  Alice clapped her hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “There’s no time.” Lennox made her voice harsh. “He’s still out there.”

  She slammed the steel security bar across the kitchen door. Ran upstairs, Alice right behind her. At the bottom of the drawer in the night table was the gold heart and handcuffs key. Lennox had Alice unlock the cuffs. They fell from her wrists to the floor.

  Alice tried to get Lennox to explain what happened. No time, Lennox told her. She pulled on pants, socks, boots, and struggled into a tee shirt and sweater. Then retrieved Old Ugly, and pulled the slide to the rear, fed the loaded magazine, seated and holstered it. Loaded her gun belt with extra clips, a flashlight, handcuffs, buckled it around her hips and snugged it tight. So much for Lennox the victim.

  Alice sat on the floor rocking and moaning. Lennox made her crawl under the bed.

  “No matter what you hear, don’t come out until I tell you,” Lennox said.

  Lennox turned off the lights as she went through the house. Turned off the television. The house hushed. Her body knew the house by feel. She came to the front door and slid the bar across that one as well. You work as long as she had in vice, you see what a dark yard and hollow-core doors get you. If Mac wanted her, he was going to have to work for it. Gun. Secure house. Check. Now 911.

  How long had she taken? Fifteen minutes. If someone was coming for her, he’d be here soon. Her cell phone was on the warehouse floor, her landline was in the office. Outside her office window the firs heaved in the wind. She hugged the wall until she came to her window, crept on her hands and knees careful to stay out of the sight line, slipped the phone from its cradle, then crawled back to the wall and called 911.

  “Can you speak up, ma’am?”

  Lennox gave the responder her name and address, told her to hurry. “The men who abducted me are coming back. They know where I live.” She said, “I need medical assistance and tell them two black-and-whites. These guys are pros.”

  She hung up and listened for cars or footsteps, any movement. Her doors were barricaded, the cavalry on its way, her gun holstered against her hip. She called Fish.

  “Cooper.” She heard the excitement in his voice. “The two guys you gave me, Resnick and Zimm—”

  “I know,” she said. “They jumped me. They’re headed over here to finish the job.”

  “Your house?” Fish said.

  “Are you coming or not?” she said.

  “I’m there,” he said. The line went dead.

  The phone rang. It was Dan. She let the recorder get it. “Where are you?” he said. He sounded frantic. She couldn’t pick up. There wasn’t time.

  He said, “Mac killed the old man. His goons are out. Where the fuck are you?”

  She reached to pick up the phone when something smashed into her back door. The house shuddered. She drew her pistol from the holster and thumbed off the safety. She heard glass shatter. Another blow and another. Was it Mac? Was it Zimm who was beating down her door? Where the fuck was the law? She heard Alice crying beneath the bed.

  She ran from her office to the hallway where she’d have some cover. She heard wood splintering. She pressed her back flat against the wall and edged along the hall to the kitchen.

  The room suddenly quieted, only the wind blowing through the trees. She led with the barrel of Old Ugly and peered around the corner. The outside floods made a puddle of light by the sink and lit a bigger area inside the broken kitchen door. He stood on her back step. He dropped the maul or club or whatever it was. It clanked and fell down the step onto the cement pad. But it wasn’t Mac, or Zimm, or Resnick. Someone blond. Skinny.

  Scott Pike.

  Of course. The third man. The man in the Land Rover. Why hadn’t she worked out that crazy combination of cunning and loose cannon. Mac and Scott were partners. Scott reached in the pocket of his jacket.

  Sirens whining in the distance. Two minutes? There were a couple ways to play this
hand, she could hide and wait for the cops or she could stay behind cover until Scott entered. Make a citizen’s arrest or shoot his ass. That last choice was up to him.

  Scott stepped inside the doorframe. The wind blew his hair over his forehead, the way it did Dan’s. He held his hands at his sides, a gun by his right thigh.

  “Drop it,” she shouted. “Hands behind your head.”

  He stood there frozen, the gun still in his grip.

  “Now,” she shouted. “Or I’ll shoot.” The pulse of adrenaline roared in her ears, the thousand hours of training taking over her mind and muscles.

  Scott didn’t drop the gun. He took a step towards her into the shadow. She shot twice. And missed. Scott raised the pistol. She didn’t weigh his intention; she emptied her clip into him. She hit him twice at least the way she figured. You never know exactly; you’re shaking from adrenaline and fear.

  The room was full of shadow and dark corners. What she registered was how his legs gave out and he collapsed sideways. How the wind rushed through the shattered door. Lennox faded back behind the wall.

  Scott groaned. In a trapezoid of light, he lay on his side. She held her pistol on him. His gun had fallen to the floor, a Glock 22, her own backup piece. The fucker planned to use her own gun on her.

  She kicked it out of range and patted him down. Her Taser was in his back pocket.

  The kitchen smelled of smoke and gunpowder and cold wind. There was not enough light to see how badly he was hurt. The sirens grew closer.

  “Help me,” Scott murmured.

  “An ambulance is coming,” she whispered.

  The light from the kitchen windows shifted from white to the red and blue strobe lights. Boots coming up her porch steps, shouts of “Police. Coming in.”

  Chapter 42

  The only cop Lennox recognized was Fish. “I’m okay,” she told him for the eighth time. Fish tried to hand her a victim blanket. She handed it back even though it was warm and warm was something Lennox was not. She told him to knock it off with the solicitude; it was getting on her nerves. If he wanted to help get her jacket from the front hall closet.

  “Whatever you say, tough guy,” Fish said.

  All her house lights were on. Alice sat curled on the sofa, a blanket wrapped around her. Two of the cops taped off Lennox’s yard. One took a preliminary statement from her. Both Ugly and the Glock were in police custody for the time being. Lennox stood shivering in the corner of the kitchen and watched the medics work on Scott.

  “How many times did I hit him?” she asked.

  The medic looked up at the duty cop. The cop nodded slightly.

  “Three times,” the medic said. “Hip, thigh, lower abdomen.”

  Her voice came out small and frightened sounding. “Is he going to make it?”

  “C’mon, lady. You know the deal.”

  Fish stepped around the medics and handed Lennox her coat.

  “I don’t get it, Cooper,” he said in a low voice. “The cell phone logs pegged both Resnick and Zimm a hundred feet from the hit-and-run going forty-five in a twenty. This dude,” Fish jerked his head in Scott’s direction, “I got a negative.”

  “He was with Zimm and Resnick when they kidnapped me,” she said. “When I escaped he came over here, smashed my door down, drew his gun.”

  The medics clamped an oxygen mask over Scott’s face and strapped him on a gurney.

  “Lennox!” Dan’s voice yelled from the porch. Shouting, threats, the sound of bodies colliding.

  “Lennox!” His voice cracked. She pushed her way through the first responders out the door to her porch. Two uniforms blocked Dan from entering her house.

  She ducked them and ran to him. Felt his arms enfold her, his lips kissing her hair. “Thank God you’re safe,” he said.

  It was over. They stood holding each other in the wind. Somehow they’d figure a way to forgive each other for the past weeks. They would start over. The medics wheeled the gurney past them. Dan glanced at the man strapped to the gurney.

  He dropped his arms and stepped closer. His face went from recognition to disbelief. “What’s going on?” Dan asked the medics.

  Lennox answered for them, “He’s been wounded.”

  Dan turned to her. All the affection he had for her drained from his face.

  “He was involved with the Altar Boys in the murders,” she said. “They went after me, Dan. He was going to kill me.”

  Dan stepped farther away from her. “And you shot him.”

  If she had feasted on human flesh, the look on Dan’s face would have been just the same. That moment wasn’t a moment but an hour, a week, a month. She loved him with a little girl’s heart. Then she forgot him. And found him. And wanted him.

  She’d gone on hoping.

  Scott moved his head. Groaned.

  Dan ran to his side, clung to the gurney rail. “I’m family. Is he going to make it?” he asked the closest medic.

  The medic’s look was kind. “He could.”

  Dan climbed in the back of the ambulance with the medic and a cop. He didn’t look back.

  Chapter 43

  It must’ve been buy-a-cop-a-beer night because a line of blue sat stool to stool from the new cop by the door clear to the waitress station at the far end of the bar. Lennox pushed the door closed against the rain and took a good whiff of the Shanty’s signature bouquet of spilt beer and French fries. Groans chorused from the bar as the Blazers struggled against the Lakers on the flat screen. She straightened her spine and headed for the back room. If there was a dirty joke made at her expense, she didn’t hear it.

  Bones and Conklin glanced sideways at her and Bones nodded. Lennox nodded back like no big deal.

  When she got to the back room, she took a deep breath. But that didn’t do it so she took another one. What she dreaded was five faces giving her the poor-you. She cracked the door and the guys looked up from their beers. Stacks of cash and poker chips sat in front of each of them. Everything normal, no big deal. Jerry winked at her, a three-day beard on his face.

  “Hey there, gents,” she said. “Miss me?”

  Sarge got to his feet, like he planned to assist her to her chair.

  “Are you okay?” His pale eyes watered more than usual. So much for normal.

  Lennox waved him back to his seat and took hers. “I’m fine, Sarge. Thanks again for the flowers.”

  “Were we supposed to send flowers?” Fulin said. He shook his head, his black hair brushing the table, his mouth in a perfect “O”.

  Jerry batted Fulin’s hair from his tweed blazer. “You’re too late, Tinkerbell.”

  Someone from the bar changed the channel and the sound system went from eighties hits to doo-wop.

  Ham looked up from his hand. “You’re late. We had to start without you.”

  She’d called old Hammy from the hospital the night she was abducted. The night Dan walked out on her for good. Ham drove her home, was sitting in a chair by the window when she woke up the next morning.

  Ham was the only one who knew the final chapter of the Dan Pike story. How she’d gone to his place to apologize, explain herself, whatever it took. Sure, she was a cop. When you’re under attack, you empty your clip. That’s training. That’s how you keep yourself alive.

  She’d solved his father’s murder and saved his mother. Shouldn’t he be grateful? It didn’t matter. She read the loathing on his face as soon as he opened the door.

  Deep down Lennox knew they never had a chance before she ever rang his doorbell. Dan had crossed the line. Hell, he was sixty-two thousand and change over the line and they both knew it. It would have never worked because every time he told their friends a story about what a big shot he’d been back in Chicago, he’d see his lie on her face.

  Ham let her cry without telling her to suck it up. Brought her cartons of hot and sour soup from Zien Hong’s. But that was three weeks ago. It was time to play cards.

  Jerry dealt the first hand.

  Ham dr
ew the high hand with a pair of treys and threw in a red chip. “Ten,” he said.

  Katy, the cocktailer, walked in the room with a tray of empties and a shot of Jack, which she placed in front of Lennox.

  “From Officer Conklin,” Katy said.

  “Don Conklin?” Lennox said.

  “The one and only,” Katy said.

  Jerry scratched his chin. It made a nice sandpapery sound. “A fan.”

  “Another cop’s glad to see Tommy taken down a peg,” Fish said. “Pass.”

  “Tell him thanks,” Lennox said. She raised the shot of Jack to her lips. The bouquet of sour mash filled her head.

  “I’ll see your fifteen and raise you another ten,” Jerry said. “So tell me how the priest was involved?”

  “He put the idea into Scott’s head,” Ham said. “Something about Bill’s bad health, just a little nudge and Scott’s financial problems would be in the past. Scott did the actual poisoning. And if Scott went down for the murder, the priest knew Scott would dime him out. That’s why he sicced the Altar Boys on the blackmailer. And why they went after Lennox.”

  “Are you passing or what?” Jerry said.

  “Pass,” Ham said.

  Fish said. “Third case in the last twelve months Tommy’s blown.”

  “Then there’s the problem with the missing evidence,” Sarge said. “Gerber’s going after him. His name was last in the logbook.”

  “The DA’s pissed, bitched him out for his sloppy work,” Fish said. He was looking mighty happy. “The DA’s convictions are way down since Cooper left homicide. He’s looking to make some changes.”

  Sarge threw in his chips. “And guess who’s rumored for a promotion?”

  Fish rapped his knuckles on the table.

  “I thought you people prayed,” Jerry said.

  Lennox glanced again at her ace-five. She had a bad feeling about this hand. She took another sip of the Jack. Maybe it was her life she had a bad feeling about. It was all very well to get another murder investigation from Kline, it’s what she said she wanted. She should be happy. She shifted in her chair to ease the pain in her side.