Act of Betrayal

by Shirley Kennett

  “You knew about her?” Anita said.

  “I caught a glimpse of her when I was at your house. I wondered if she might have seen anything.”

  “Nice of you to come forward about it,” Schultz said sarcastically.

  PJ’s eyes flashed as the stress of the past few days surfaced.

  “I didn’t want to,” PJ snapped back. “I was convinced she would confirm that you were the driver. That you did it.”

  The three were frozen for a moment. No one seemed to know what to say. The toilet flushed in the men’s room across from PJ’s office, and that broke the uncomfortable silence.

  Anita punched Schultz lightly in the arm. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted.”

  Schultz rolled his eyes at her, and Anita walked away smiling.

  “I guess we need to talk,” Schultz said to PJ.

  PJ folded her arms across her chest. “You might say that.”

  He opened her office door and gestured inside. She preceded him, and he closed the door when they were both in the small room. She turned to face him, not knowing what she was going to say. There seemed to be a white noise in her mind.

  “C’mere, you,” he said. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her toward him, wrapping his arms around her as though he thought she’d try to escape. His mouth found hers.

  PJ resisted, but only briefly. His arms felt so good. She gave herself up to the kiss, melted into it, let all the emotion she’d been bottling up pour through her lips into his. She pressed the length of her body against him and thrilled to the warm delicious feeling that came over every inch of her body that was in contact with his.

  Doubts? What doubts?

  The first kiss was followed by many others.

  Breathlessly, they pulled apart. He held her at arm’s length.

  “Are we done talking?” he said.

  “For now,” she answered. “But I want you to know I don’t usually hold meetings like this.”

  There was a rapping on the door. They moved apart. PJ straightened her blouse, and Schultz ineffectually ran his fingers through the long strands of hair he combed over his bald spot.

  “Yes,” PJ said. “Come in.”

  Anita practically burst through the door.

  “They found him,” she said. “They found Elijah Ramsey. We got the son of a bitch.”

  Thirty-one

  “IS HE IN CUSTODY?” PJ asked. Relief was already coursing through her body. It was over.

  “I hope not,” Schultz said. “We have nothing on him but a lot of suspicion.”

  “He’s still out there. It was pure dumb luck,” Anita said. “Gregor and Ullman, over in Vice, went to a hotel to talk to a contact. They’re standing there, passing the time of day with the jerk, trying to get something out of him about a big transaction that was supposed to be going down soon. Who walks out of the room a couple doors down but our guy.”

  PJ remembered that Lieutenant Wall said he was going to work hard and fast to find Elijah and Darla, and that must have included broadcasting their pictures to every member of the department, especially those out on the street. It had paid off, at least in one case. PJ didn’t think Darla was going to be found walking the streets of St. Louis.

  An uneasy thought slid across the surface of PJ’s elation. Darla might be dead.

  “He make ’em as cops?” Schultz asked. PJ noticed that his eyes held cold sparks.

  “Nope. They were cool. Ullman started a shoving match with the contact, even threw a punch at him. Must have surprised the hell out of their contact, but to Elijah it looked like a little disagreement over a payment or something. He walked right on by, and they didn’t trail him.”

  “How sure are they that it’s him?” PJ said. “The case file picture is over ten years old.” Her good feeling had started to evaporate since she’d found out that Ramsey wasn’t in custody, but Schultz and Anita still seemed buoyed by the news.

  “Detectives have to be good with faces,” Schultz said. “Really good. Their lives depend upon it sometimes.”

  “Oh. So you trust the quick look these two men got as they were busy scuffling with their contact.”

  Schultz and Anita gave each other a knowing look, a look that told PJ exactly what they were thinking: Civilians don’t know shit.

  She put her fingers up to her lips and caught the retort that sprang to mind while it was still in her mouth. It wasn’t the time or place to be petty.

  “Yeah, I trust their ID,” Anita finally said. “No reason not to. Got a make on the vehicle, too. A rental car, nineteen ninety-four blue Hyundai, rented in the name of William Penn.”

  “Got a sense of humor, does he?” Schultz asked with a grim smile.

  Anita nodded. “Wall’s called a meeting. His office, fifteen minutes.”

  Schultz watched as PJ entered Wall’s office. She was on time to the minute, and carried her coffee cup in one hand and a notepad in the other. She treated the whole thing like a business meeting from her old corporate job. Most likely there was a fresh pen tucked inside the notepad, and the date and time of the meeting were already written at the top of the first page.

  He saw the surprise register on her face as she discovered it was standing room only in Wall’s office, followed by brief indignation that no one, including himself, offered her a chair. First come, first served, was the rule of the day, regardless of gender or rank. She dropped the notepad to the floor near her feet and gripped her coffee cup with both hands, studying the people around her. Her hold on the cup wasn’t quite strong enough to produce white knuckles, but it was clear that the cup wasn’t going anywhere.

  A good number of the faces must have been unfamiliar to her, because her gaze bounced off them quickly and continued the journey around the room. Her eyebrows slid up when she got to Ullman’s bruised jaw. Ullman was scruffy looking even when he was trying to look respectable, and the discoloration on his jaw didn’t help. PJ bit her lower lip in that manner she had when she was nervous.

  He smiled inwardly but had no intention of easing the way for her. He might as well have stood up and shouted through a bullhorn that he was sweet on the boss.

  Schultz, of course, had headed for Wall’s office immediately after the announcement and claimed a chair front and center, even before Wall came to his own meeting. He was heartily greeted by everyone who arrived afterward, since word had spread that he was somewhat back in good graces. There was a good-size crowd in the office, even though it was late Saturday afternoon. Most cops put their work ahead of their personal lives, and sometimes their marriages paid the price. Like his.

  Wall arrived right after PJ, his arms occupied with a large box containing a couple dozen doughnuts. He plopped the box in the middle of his desk and lifted the lid. Ullman stepped up and claimed his choice like the leader of the pack. Gregor took the next pick. Schultz selected a fat jelly-filled one, and then the rest of the people in Wall’s office crowded around. PJ held her spot against the wall. He could see in her eyes that she didn’t know if she was invited to the feeding frenzy.

  For a shrink, she’s damned unsure of herself sometimes.

  Then he chastised himself. There were a lot of unwritten rules in the department, and he couldn’t expect PJ to absorb them all in a little over a year.

  His thoughts strayed outside Wall’s office. He knew that sometime soon PJ would want to talk about Helen Boxwood. Helen was a nurse Schultz had met the previous year. He’d been freshly separated from his wife, and Helen had hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. He’d thought he was in love with her, and had confided that to PJ in an effort to enlist her in breaking through Helen’s reluctance to accept his advances. He should have kept the whole thing to himself. He had made a fool of himself over Helen, and surely PJ must wonder about his sudden change of affection. PJ probably thought she was just another rebound romance.

  It was a good thing Schultz had picked up a few women’s magazines to read up on that stuff. He had the ter
minology down.

  He didn’t have the slightest idea how he was going to explain his feelings for Helen, which had abruptly plummeted to the level of respect and cautious friendship from flat-out romantic pursuit. He shook his head, thinking that at his age he ought to be better at dealing with women.

  He looked over at Anita and raised his doughnut to her in a salute, like honoring her with a toast. She smiled back, a little wisp of a woman with an iron rod for a backbone. Now there was someone he could deal with, because he could relate to her as he would another man.

  He had no idea how he and PJ were going to handle it, the details of having a personal relationship outside work. It was uncharted territory. Would it affect them when word got around? And he didn’t kid himself. He knew word would get around. For the time being, he had to put all that aside and bring the man who’d killed his son to justice.

  Wall let the chatter and the munching go on for a few minutes before getting everyone’s attention.

  “Listen up, ladies and gents,” he said. “I don’t think I need to remind you how hot Wharton is on this one. You can’t get much more high-profile in this town than what this killer’s done. Not to mention he’s hit the son of a fellow officer, and nearly killed one of our own.”

  The room became somber. Schultz kept his expression blank at the mention of Rick. He was aware that several people in the room were looking at him, practically crawling over his face.

  “How’s Witless?” Ullman asked.

  “Dave’s doing better than expected,” Wall said. “There’s a chance the tracheotomy will be permanent. That means he’ll have a breathing hole at the base of his throat. There will also be physical therapy needed to regain stamina because he has diminished lung capacity.” He sounded like he was repeating, word-for-word, what he’d been told by a doctor.

  Wall’s gaze swept the room. “I fully anticipate having him back on active duty. The department stands by officers wounded on the job. He’s getting the best care there is to offer. I expect each one of you to be supportive.”

  “Yes, Mom,” said a voice from the corner. There was laughter all around, but the point was made and taken.

  Schultz produced the answering machine tape he’d taken from his house, and everyone listened to the threatening message.

  He didn’t die fast, you know. You think about that, Detective Schultz. You think about him tied up helpless like that, and gasping for air. Then think about what I’m going to do next. Oh, and have a nice day.

  Schultz watched the horror spread over PJ’s face. She didn’t bother to hide it. There was something else there that he doubted if anyone could pick up but him. She was angry that he’d held the tape back from her, that he’d left St. Louis without a word to her. He had wanted to protect her, to make sure whatever evil shadow he was casting didn’t fall on her. And even though he knew it had probably hurt her feelings, he’d do it all again.

  Around the room, expressions were grim.

  Ullman gave a firsthand account of the incident at the hotel; then Wall moved on to the follow-up situation. Photos of the rental car were handed around, and then current, although slightly blurry, photos of Ramsey. It was a profile shot.

  Schultz would have liked to look directly into the eyes of his son’s killer, but he figured that time would come soon.

  When the recent photo of Ramsey was placed in his hands, Schultz had felt a sudden strong tug from the psychic thread that helped him seek out killers. He closed his eyes and focused inward, momentarily shutting out the discussion around him and giving himself over to the visualization. The thread leapt to life, golden and coiling, dancing in the air in front of him, stretching out from his own heart. It crossed the short distance to the photo he held in his hands and flared so brightly the light burned the inner surface of his eyelids. It was a thick fiery rope, and when it impaled the photo it burned away Ramsey’s face, leaving a hole with charred, smoking edges. But it didn’t stop there. It kept going, speeding away into the darkness, pulling Schultz further out into the world, until the glowing end faltered. Schultz snapped his eyes open. The photo was whole in his hands.

  Jesus Christ, Ramsey is the one. He killed my son.

  The certainty of it struck Schultz hard, and he struggled to keep his face impassive. He felt as though his heart had stopped beating for a moment, and a silent shout of grief reverberated in his body. When the surge of emotion passed, he puzzled over the fact that the golden cord had kept going past the photo, as though it had overshot. He put it down to the fact that he was reaching outside the room to try to locate the man physically.

  “Suggestions?” Wall asked.

  Schultz wondered what he’d missed. PJ could fill him in later, assuming she was still speaking to him.

  “Yeah,” said one of the detectives, “let’s find this scum bag and cut his balls off real slow.”

  There was laughter, but the kind of laughter that said everybody else had been thinking the same thing.

  PJ cleared her throat. “Has anyone considered the possible next targets?”

  “Enlighten us,” Wall said when no one responded.

  PJ glanced down at her notepad on the floor. Schultz realized she had prepared some notes to speak from during those fifteen minutes since the meeting was announced, during which he’d parked his butt on a chair and cleared his mind of any useful thoughts. She decided to go on without bending over and picking up her notes, which was probably a good thing. A woman bending over in front of the crowd in Wall’s office was guaranteed to elicit at least a couple of obnoxious comments even if she was forty-one and a little bottom-heavy. It wouldn’t matter in the least that she had a doctorate in psychology and a glare that could cause a hard freeze in the tropics.

  “The suspect has attacked Schultz, indirectly, through his son and an attempt to frame him. That was followed by the deaths of Rheinhardt and Canton. The arresting detective, the prosecutor, and the judge. He’s probably working on what he perceives as a decreasing order of responsibility for the death of his son, like a score he’s assigned to each person.”

  “You mean, Schultz gets ten points for arresting him and collecting evidence, the prosecutor gets eight points for building a case against him, the judge gets six points for presiding over that case, and so on,” Wall said.

  PJ nodded.

  “So why am I still alive?” Schultz asked. “I’m a perfect ten.”

  “He’s not done with you,” PJ said. “You’re the prime target. He wants you to realize what’s going on, that you’re responsible not only for the death of his son, but for all the other deaths happening now because of your investigation years ago. He’s pushing the blame off on you for all his actions.” PJ looked thoughtful. “There might be some religious element here. Come judgment day, he wants to make sure all the bad stuff is on your side of the ledger, not his.”

  “When you say he’s not done with Schultz,” Wall said, “you mean there are other targets before he comes back to Schultz at the end of everything?”

  “Exactly. I think the next target might be Jeremiah Ramsey’s attorney, Arnold Cartwright. He was the public defender assigned to the case when Jeremiah couldn’t afford a private attorney and none of his family members jumped in waving cash. After that, it’s possible he might start in on members of the jury. I’m not sure how long he intends to drag this out. He’s very organized, so he probably realizes he can’t carry this on long enough to get all the jury members. So my guess is that he won’t bother with the jury because he knows there’s an excellent chance he’d be caught before he could finish. He wants closure, and that means he starts and ends with Schultz. One more killing, then Schultz.”

  PJ had put on her shrink hat, and everyone was listening carefully to her chilling words. She’d been right more times than wrong, and they were willing to pay attention to her expertise in her own field. It didn’t hurt that her voice had gained in confidence.

  “How likely is it that we’ve even got the right g
uy?” Ullman said.

  “This particular combination of victims, the timing that is related to Vince Ramsey’s death, Ramsey’s presence here in St. Louis, his military and post-military experience with killing, the violent cruel personality that his ex-wife admits he has—those things are hard to ignore. It’s as close to certainty as we’re likely to get without finding Ramsey in the act.”

  Damn straight.

  There was a buzz of conversation when she finished. Wall picked up the phone and the buzz tapered off into a low hum.

  “Find out where Arnold Cartwright is,” Wall said into the phone. “He needs to disappear for a while.”

  There were several nods in the room, including Schultz’s.

  “You’re going to mess up Ramsey’s schedule,” PJ said.

  “Put him off balance,” Schultz said. “Off balance people make mistakes.”

  “That means he’ll go after you in earnest,” PJ said. “If he can’t get at his next planned target.”

  “You mean killing my son and framing me for murder wasn’t going after me in earnest?”

  PJ’s cheeks colored. “You know what I mean. Don’t twist my words.”

  Schultz didn’t react. His thoughts had already moved on. “That means I’ll have to get out there and wag my tail for attention,” he said.

  “Like a puppy that wants to be petted,” Wall said.

  “Or a stripper who needs extra cash,” came another response from the group.

  “A prostitute on a busy corner.”

  “A new convict…”

  “Enough,” Wall said, cutting off the comments.

  “You mean you’re deliberately going to dangle Schultz in front of Ramsey?” PJ asked.

  “Yes,” Wall said. “We have a killer to catch. You have a problem with that?”

  All eyes turned toward PJ. Schultz held her gaze. Was what they had together going to get in the way of their jobs? So soon?