The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Laura needed to make sure she had enough evidence against him before interviewing him a second time; he still had some wiggle room.

  That was how she'd left it until today. Until this most recent phone call from Melissa Stevens. Melissa had gone to Sean's office because she still had to service the account. She hadn’t seen Grady, but she’d heard him. Or rather, she’d heard noises from the bathroom. Laura wondered if Sean's new inamorata was enjoying her turn over the bathroom sink.

  That was when Melissa had spotted the airplane tickets on Grady's desk.

  Tickets for two to Canada. One way.

  Chapter 11

  Gerald Grady Insurance anchored one end of a strip mall on Speedway Blvd. It was like any other strip mall in Tucson: beige stucco with glass store fronts, plastic letters spelling out the names of each business across the top. A black Hummer was backed into the slot immediately in front of the door.

  After driving through the back alley and checking the doors out to the rear parking area (there were three—not every store had one, and Gerald Grady Insurance was one that did not) Laura made another pass before parking on the street around the corner. Even with white-collar offenders, she was careful. She didn't want to tip him off into running.

  She walked inside, hit by a sour-smelling current of humid air coming from a vent somewhere above. Lurking underneath was an even worse odor—mildew.

  The office was empty. For a moment, Laura wondered if Grady had taken off already. It was possible he had taken a taxi and left the Hummer.

  She took in the spatial dimensions of the room, looking for three things: cover, concealment, and an escape route.

  At first blush, the only way in or out of the store was through the door she'd entered.

  Melissa had mentioned a bathroom, but Laura didn't see one. The door to a walk-in storage closet on the right side of the shop was ajar. She peeked inside. Shelves lined one wall above a counter with a coffee maker and a stack of cups. The room went only ten feet back, and most of the space was taken up by the copy machine—Melissa's copy machine. The door was hollow-core; bullets would go right through it. No cover here.

  She stepped back toward the entrance, turned, and scanned the room. The Gerald Grady Insurance office was a narrow oblong going back forty or so feet: filing cabinets along the left-hand wall, one desk, one business chair, one cheap rolling chair. Two-thirds of the way back, the desk came out like a peninsula, perpendicular to the wall and the row of file cabinets. The desk was particle-board with a wood grain veneer and had the usual detritus on it—in and out boxes, a computer. No airline tickets in plain sight—just a framed portrait of Sean Grady and his fiancée looking meaningfully into each other's eyes against a sunset.

  Laura ticked off designations. The desk would offer concealment, but not cover. The file cabinets were too tight into the wall to offer concealment or cover.

  She heard the rumbling of a paper towel dispenser and three quick, violent rips. Muffled footsteps came from the other side of the wall on the right. A few moments later, the front door opened and Sean Grady stepped inside, still fiddling with his cuffs. He looked up, saw her, and his face broke into a friendly grin.

  “Detective Cardinal. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Coming at her, holding out a hand, his smile predatory. Automatically, Laura shifted her body slightly so that her right hand crossed her body when they shook. This put her duty weapon a little farther away from Grady, just in case he was entertaining grabbing for it.

  His hand was still damp. Laura thought about Melissa and the bathroom sink. “I came in to take a look at those files you had and see if we could clear it up right now. If you have a minute.” She purposely added this last to see how he would react.

  He didn't disappoint her. “Hey,” he said, spreading his hands, “my files are your files. Why don't you sit down?”

  He pulled his chair away from behind the desk and rolled the customer's chair around so she could use the desk's surface. The chair wobbled on its three casters. It was short and squat, the orange cloth soiled from use. She noticed his own chair was leather and expensive.

  He flicked his eyes to the chair. “Let me clear a space for you.” He shuffled some papers, made a clear spot on the desk, looked back at her as if for approval. “Would you like some coffee? Water?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Sorry it's such a mess, but dealing with Sam Houston Fidelity . . .” He shook his head—deep disappointment. “You wouldn't believe it. I made a lot of phone calls, but I think . . .” He opened the second drawer of the file cabinet. “I think I've figured out what's happened.”

  She wondered what he'd come up with. Knew it would be good. She watched him rummage through the drawer, his white shirt pulling up as he reached into the cabinet. The mildew smell much stronger here. Laura wondered how he stood it. She breathed through her mouth.

  The file cabinets were ranged to the immediate right of the desk, so when Grady found the file he wanted, all he had to do was lean slightly to the right and drop it on the desk. He did this now. “Childers? That's Sam Houston, too, as I recall.”

  Laura found herself staring at his back. Thinking how normal he looked. He epitomized a young businessman on his way up. Dark trousers, well cut. A tad ample at the waist, but he could still turn heads. Brown hair topping his collar just enough to give him that slightly-bad-boy-who-won't-follow-rules look. Considering his father owned the place, it didn't seem like much of a statement.

  “Any more?” he asked. Flashing her a smile that was friendly and lazy. The smile made her think of a snake sunning itself on a rock.

  She gave him the rest of the list. He held it in front of him, his face a picture of concentration, rocking back and forth on his heels.

  One drawer slammed shut, another slid open. His manicured thumb snapped another file down. Close to her, almost crowding her out of the space between himself and the chair. Laura took the path of least resistance and sat down, her eye immediately going to the top page of the file.

  He was talking again, but she was doing a pretty good job of tuning him out. She knew he was telling her lies. Right now he was talking about his coming wedding. “Up to me, it would be just the two of us on a beach, and Moby could be my best man.”

  Laura said, “Moby?”

  “My dog.”

  Laura knew Grady was talking to keep her mind off the files. He thought he was smarter than her, that he could fool her. He was supremely confident in that belief.

  “Now this lady here, I know I sent the check in,” he was saying. Standing above her, looking at the file, then placing it open-faced in front of her. Her eye going to the name.

  “I'm going to need copies,” she said.

  “No prob.” Opening the top file drawer again. Crowding her some more.

  She smelled his aftershave as he leaned closer. Her mind registering the stealthy whicker of the casters as she moved the chair back to put more space between them.

  She heard him step away to the file cabinet, and then there was quiet. There should have been another file. The hair stood up on her arms.

  Suddenly, the stillness erupted—-a lightning bolt from left field.

  A knife arcing through space, white heat at the edge of her vision.

  Her palm flew up to ward him off—pure reflex—and she shoved her chair backwards. It tipped—go ahead and let it—just as the big knife slashed through the air past her face.

  Instinct taking over, everything in slow motion. Her sight narrowing to a very small space surrounded by darkness. He was yelling something, but she couldn't hear it. She saw the fluorescents barring the ceiling, the tilt of dark gray carpet, falling in slow motion, toppling onto her right side and something—the cheap wooden armrest?—walloping her arm a few inches below her elbow, all her body weight coming down, banging it hard.

  The shock running all the way up her arm and into her jaw.

  Her hand, trapped. Sticky, pulsing.


  She'd been cut.

  She saw the capering glee in Grady's eyes as he took a step back to take another run at her, the hunting knife with the seven-inch blade gleaming in his fist, a drip of blood ending in an exclamation point on the handle, smearing his hand.

  She kicked her way out of the chair and backpedaled before even forming the thought, scuttling across the six feet of carpet to the storage cabinet. The next time the knife sliced through the air, it would take part of her face, her eye. She reached the closet a second before his arm shot forward, her whole body slamming the door shut, her good hand and her good shoulder, the knife punching through the door, the blade whinging.

  This close to her eye.

  With her body and her good arm, Laura shoved the water cooler up against the door as the knife stabbed again through the hollow-core door.

  Heart pounding.

  In shock.

  She needed the SIG. Left hand. Left hand! Laura had backed up against the Formica counter, out of range of the punching knife, wondering how long it would take for him to hack it to pieces. She reached awkwardly across her stomach to unsnap the holster, sliding the SIG out backwards, taking an eternity to turn it around in her fumbling fingers.

  Still straining under disbelief that he had attacked her. Why?

  It was illogical, crazy.

  She steadied her left arm against her side, hard. Standing so that her gun was squeezed against her stomach, rigid against her side—if she shot there would be a recoil and a burn—the gun six times as heavy.

  Aiming chest-high. “Throw the knife away! Do it now! Or I will shoot you through this door.”

  The knife withdrew and he punched the door hard, fist coming right through. Class ring, Rolex, manicured nails. A roar of rage.

  “You're not going to fuck this up! I'm not going to jail again! You bitch!”

  The words punched into her heart. Bitch.

  Suddenly, centuries of fear uncoiled in her stomach, the tentacles wrapping around her organs and squeezing them.

  He thinks he can do it because I'm female.

  Another punch, awakening the atavistic urge to survive. One more punch and I'm shooting.

  Another garbled yell, a rhino charge. A whole two-inch-wide segment of the door broke through.

  Laura fired.

  A scream.

  He was the one backpedaling now, she could see him through the slit in the door.

  She'd got him. Or thought she did. She fired again.

  Heard him muttering.

  Then he giggled.

  “Missed me, Ms. Cardinal. Should I call you Ms.? How many more rounds do you have in that gun?”

  Her useless hand nudging the cell phone on her belt. 911. Simple. Just three numbers. But she had no feeling in her hand at all.

  Laura forced her mind to think. How could she make the phone call? She'd have to put her gun down. But she couldn't do that because, in her mind, he would get her. She realized that Sean Grady had grown in her imagination. He had a supernatural quality, the way he had avoided taking a bullet through that door. She thought he might be able to sense what she was doing—her instant vulnerability as she let go of the gun. Was certain of it, in fact.

  Quiet out there. Not a sound.

  Sweat beaded under her hair.

  Heart pounding. Realizing too late that just because Sean Grady committed fraud didn't mean he wasn't dangerous. Now she knew better.

  Also knowing that by all rights she should be dead right now. Still unable to believe she'd made it this far.

  Another boyish cackle.

  Laura felt as if she'd been frozen in amber. Unable to move, unable to think. What was he planning?

  One more charge and he'd come through. Nothing to stop him. Certainly not fear. He had no fear. He literally did not know what fear was, and so he would never learn from it. Sociopaths 101.

  Switch hands.

  A simple solution. Why hadn't she thought of it before? If she could even loosely grip the gun in her right hand, she could punch in the number with her left.

  Gingerly, she transferred the SIG's grip from the left to the right hand, almost dropping it. But it hung there, suspended from two fingers. She used her left, awkward as it was, to punch in 911.

  Made sure her voice was loud and clear. Gave her badge number, the address, and said succinctly, “This is a Triple Nine. Triple Nine,” repeating it. “Do you understand? I'm triple nine.”

  “Yes, ma'am. Stay on the line.”

  Laura made the transfer again, shored her left arm against her stomach, parallel to the door, square stance.

  No sound from outside.

  Thinking: He tried to kill me in his own office. For some reason, that was the hardest of all to fathom; that he'd kill her in his own office.

  Laura didn't know how long it took for her to realize he had left the room.

  Distantly, she heard an engine grumble to life, then the shriek of tires, the sound of acceleration.

  Was he gone or was it a trick? Couldn't be a trick, don't be ridiculous. He's gone. But she did not move. Just held the SIG fast against her side, aiming at the busted door.

  When she heard the sirens coming, her legs wanted to give way. She spread them wider and leaned against the counter, still cradling the gun awkwardly in her left hand.

  Legs shaking like a jackhammer.

  Chapter 12

  As Steve Lawson opened the door, Jake got up, tail wagging slightly, as if he only dared hope a little.

  “Not this time, Bub. Sorry.”

  Steve let himself out, careful to avoid eye contact, and made sure the door was not only closed, but blocked by a picnic bench he dragged over from under a pine. He had his new trowel in one hand and a plastic bucket in the other. He flashed on all times he and his sisters had spent on the beach at Laguna with their colorful plastic buckets and trowels, making sand castles under the watchful eye of their mother. He remembered how she'd sit on the beach in a one-piece suit with green vines on it, her dark hair pulled back by a scarf, full face makeup on, sunglasses, and sometimes, zinc on her nose. They spent a large part of every summer at his grandfather's cottage on the beach.

  The perfect family.

  It really had been, until the cancer.

  Most of the time it was a great childhood, the voice inside his head amended. When his father wasn't there. Luckily, his father's visits were as rare as earthquakes. They had the same effect as an earthquake. Shaking their lives to the foundations and causing major structural damage.

  But there had been the good times. When his father forgot them.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, transported back to the those foggy and sunny days on the beach, the sound of the water ruffling the shore, the gloop between his toes as the tide pulled out around his feet. The yells of other kids, the cries of the seagulls, and the fishy smell of kelp: the brown-and-gold boa kelp of southern California—egregia menziesii—kept afloat on the tide by rubbery, bulb-shaped pneumatocysts you could pop with your fingers like grapes.

  He wasn't going to make sand castles today. In fact, he wasn't going to do anything at all.

  Sure, and that's why you're carrying a bucket and a trowel.

  He'd just look. The bucket and the trowel were just in case. He'd just look at the hole Jake dug up and see if there was anything else there—another book maybe.

  He followed the stream bed, his eye catching and automatically labeling schist, feldspar, and quartzite. Mica, weathered into sand, mixed with the carpet of pine duff. Up ahead, he saw the disturbed ground where he had coaxed the book out of the dirt.

  He hunkered down beside it and ran his fingers over the earth, then scooped out a trowelful of dirt and let it slide into the bucket.

  Pretty soon he had a full bucket. He walked a few feet away and dumped it on the ground.

  Nothing there. Of course there wasn't. He shouldn't even be doing this.

  Why not? A voice said in his head. It's your property . . . now. It's your pro
perty and your dog dug up a little piece of your very own real estate, so what's wrong with digging a little more?

  And so he digs a little more. One bucket's worth, two bucket's worth. The sun listing to the west in the clear blue sky.

  The hole is getting wider. Steve is digging faster, he realizes. He's not bothering with the bucket anymore. At some point, he goes down to the garden shed and grabs a shovel. He thinks about stakes and string, too, remembering the grid on an anthropological dig he worked as an undergraduate. But he's not digging up anything of importance, he's not digging up pots, he's not digging up bones. He's definitely not digging up bones. No, he's just digging for the sake of digging.

  As he heads back upstream, he glances back. Jake is looking out the window, front paws on the couch back, that old plaid Early American couch that must have been there since the forties. Jake is looking out the window, and he is barking. His barking follows Steve all the way up the hill to the dig.

  The dig.

  “It's not a dig,” he says to himself. “I'm just digging for the sake of digging.”

  The explanation sounds hollow to his ears. He goes back to digging. Good thing he put on the garden gloves; his palms were starting to blister.

  When he looks up a little later, the sun has hidden itself behind the trees, shimmering between the trunks in a halo of gold.

  He wipes the sweat from his forehead. Despite the sweat, he feels chilled. He feels an ache in his bones, too, as if he has a fever.

  How long has he been at this?

  He looks at the hole he has dug. It yawns in front of him, deep.

  It reminds him of another hole, in Evergreen Cemetery, where they buried his mother. Danielle Ailling Lawson. It was a sunny day like this, the hole was a lot bigger, a perfect rectangle mired in shadow, the mahogany coffin suspended on runners above it. He remembers looking down at his shoes and the green indoor-outdoor carpeting his shoes were on, the light catching the fibers like flecks of mica. Shiny like the glitter-rubber seaweed coming up on the shore at La Jolla. Shiny like the schist littering the ground all around here.