Double Down (Raven McShane Mysteries Book 4)

by Stephanie Caffrey

  I had been to the DA’s office before, just a few months earlier when I had interviewed the guy who had prosecuted Cody for murdering his brother-in-law. The guy I had talked to was a very senior prosecutor, while Tricia seemed a little bit wet behind the ears. She had me buzzed in and met me in a large open lobby on the sixth floor, a maze of cubicles and outdated computers and printer stations.

  Tricia was about five eleven, sturdy, brown hair, late thirties, and sporting a complete absence of makeup. She wore an understanding smile, which must have been one of the prerequisites of her position. She was the one who had to babysit the victim, to reassure her, to cajole her cooperation, and to keep her from backing out once they had filed charges. At work, I had known gobs of women who had been abused, assaulted, and otherwise mistreated, and four times out of five, they never filed charges, preferring to stick with the devil they knew than risk being alone. It was sad, but it was one of the oldest stories around.

  Tricia showed me into a small interview room with a white table and hard brown chair. I decided to clear the air right at the outset.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not going to back out of this.”

  She cocked her head slightly, taken aback.

  I continued. “I imagine this is hard for most women, but not for me. I want to nail the bastard so he can’t do this ever again.”

  It was the first time she smiled at me in any manner other than sympathetic. She was glad. “That’s the spirit,” she said, beaming. “Very refreshing.”

  She collected herself and then walked me through about a hundred different forms, many that required my signature. It felt like I was getting a mortgage on my house, but I just played along and scribbled my name where she told me. But after signing one form, I paused and pursed my lips.

  “I don’t like what this form is calling me, though,” I said. “Complaining witness? It makes me sound like I’m some whiny, annoying nag.”

  She chuckled. “Well, technically you were just complaining about that form. So I think it’s pretty accurate.”

  My eyes got big, and we stared at each other, trapped in the awkwardness of her joke. She barely knows me, I thought, and now she’s ragging on me? And then I burst out laughing.

  “I guess I can’t deny that,” I said, still chuckling. “I am, literally, a complaining witness.”

  Relief washed over her face. She knew she had crossed a line, but the joke was too good to pass up. I like this chick, I thought.

  After I filled out the forms as a complaining witness, she had me sit down at her computer where I typed up a statement describing exactly what had happened. It wasn’t the kind of story someone would fabricate, she said, and she told me the cops would canvass the neighborhood where I’d awakened to find the witnesses who found me by the side of the road.

  “And what about his secretary?” I asked.

  She nodded. “She will definitely play a role. My plan A is to get her to flip and I’ll threaten her if necessary.”

  “With what?”

  Tricia looked serious. “Accessory. She’s essentially serving as the lookout, if what you’re saying is true. She had to know what was going on in there, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged. “I caught a weird vibe off her right from the beginning. But I can’t honestly say, one way or another.”

  Tricia nodded. “We’ll know more once we use our leverage. A couple of burly cops and a seasoned detective sometimes make the situation a lot more real, especially if they’ve never had a run-in with the law before. She’ll sing like a canary,” she predicted.

  I nodded, not sharing her rosy optimism that this was going to be easy. I knew better. She probably did, too. “Anything else from me?” I asked. I had been there almost an hour and a half by then.

  She thought about it. “Nope. You’re free to go. My card is stapled to the victim packet we gave you.”

  There was that word again. Victim. I think I preferred complaining witness. “So you’ll call me when you know more?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” she said, standing up. “Sometimes these guys just wet their pants and blubber, spilling the beans at the first sign of flashing lights. We could get him to plead to something and be done in a month.”

  I felt like she was feigning optimism for my benefit, but I let it pass. I knew there was no way a guy like Owen Clavette was going to go down without a fight.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As had become my custom, I skipped dancing at Cougar’s on Tuesday night and stayed in to hit the gym, which I had passed on earlier in the day. My gym session ran longer than usual. The treadmill had slowly melted the anxiety away in me, and then, back in my apartment, the hot tub jets worked their magic on the tenseness that had turned my shoulder muscles into taut steel cables. Despite the welcome feeling of physical exhaustion, it was a restless night, with sleep coming in fits and spurts punctuated by long intervals of why can’t I sleep?

  My client, Dan, called me the next morning, and I told him it would be a good idea to meet for lunch, if he could swing it. I met him at a little Asian restaurant near his office. An ancient Korean man was outside, working a squeegee back and forth across the restaurant’s tall glass windows.

  Once we ordered our noodles, he brought up what I’d told him about his wife which was simply that I’d seen her drive to the church and, in particular, to Owen Clavette’s living quarters. He didn’t seem too concerned about it, which surprised me.

  “They have spiritual sessions sometimes,” he said blandly.

  “But…never mind,” I muttered, cutting off my line of inquiry. If he wanted to rationalize it, that was none of my business. I had reported what I’d seen, and that was where my obligation ended. The fact that she had lied to him about her destination, and even taken evasive measures, was pretty damning in my book.

  I had to tell Dan about what Owen had done to me. It would be in the news, of course, once he was arrested, but I wanted to let Dan know first.

  I gave him the executive summary of what happened while he ate. Dan’s head was down, his mouth slurping at a wad of noodles bunched up between his chopsticks. He looked up, chewed them, and then wiped his mouth with his napkin. He was shaking his head back and forth.

  “I’m not saying that’s impossible, Raven, but I really think you’ve got to be wrong.” He said it so matter-of-factly that it made me feel like I was eight years old, like I had just suggested something to an all-knowing uncle who had shot it down as being unworthy even of discussion.

  “Well, I was there,” I said snippily. I was doing my best to avoid emotion, but Dan was being an idiot. It was one thing if he wanted to bury his head in the sand and ignore the truth about Owen and his wife, but this involved me and my own safety.

  “Raven,” he sighed, oblivious to the blood rushing to my face, “he’s not like that. Sometimes people, especially women, get, you know, a little caught up in the moment. He speaks in tongues sometimes. Maybe that’s what happened.”

  I wanted to kick him in the groin at that moment or dump scalding tea on his head, right on the spot where it was balding. Instead, I just stewed inside, raising my blood pressure and cursing the idea to go to lunch in the first place. I collected myself enough to finish off the conversation and then, hopefully, to change the subject.

  “I’m not arguing this with you,” I said through clenched jaws. “My purpose in bringing it up is simply a heads-up, a warning that this is coming, since I know you’re tight with that whole group. I didn’t want you to see it on the news first.”

  He shrugged. “Got it. Thanks, I guess. But I’ve got a warning for you then, too. A ‘heads-up,’ as you call it. This is going to backfire, and it’s going to be painful, Raven. I’d advise dropping the whole thing altogether before you get really hurt.”

  I looked at him, my mouth agape and my facial expressions screaming WTF. I had about eight million things to say, but I simply reached into my purse, found a ten-dollar bill, and threw it on the t
able to pay for my half of the lunch. I scooted the chair back loudly and stood up. It was dramatic enough that the ten or twelve other people in the restaurant turned to watch, probably figuring that Dan had just dumped me or something. I sneered at Dan, turned, and stormed away from the table, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. Apart from the angry click of my heels on the floor, the place had gone silent.

  And then it hit me. The glass window, that is. In my pique of anger, I had been so preoccupied that I had walked straight into a wall of glass, like a bird not realizing that anything was there. Somehow, the pane had managed to withstand the full brunt of my stride, and instead of breaking, it gave a little and bounced me back, a phenomenon almost more jarring than if I had broken through. Already dazed by my conversation with Dan, I now found myself falling backwards, dropping my purse, my hands flailing out to break the inevitable collision that would come as I spun. It felt like slow motion, but I’m sure it wasn’t. The air was pierced by the sounds of gasps and of chairs and tables scraping hurriedly against the floor as people dove to get out of my way. I was hitting the deck, sideways, when a table broke my fall, and I felt the sharp sting of wood on elbow, and then my wrist and hand became wet and very hot, and I knew right then that I was bleeding. Hard.

  Half the table came down with me, including a glass of lukewarm tea that inundated my blouse. After I landed, my first concern was my arm. I pulled it up and examined it. Confusingly, there was no red liquid, no pool of blood. Instead, my wrist and hand were covered in egg foo young, someone’s half eaten but still hot omelet. The hot brown sauce was still running down my arm when I noticed an unusually warm sensation coming from below which caused me to scoot to the side, only to find that I had come to rest on an entire plate of steamed dumplings, several of which were now caked on the back of my shorts. At least they had broken the fall, I thought. And then I thought, there’s gonna be a bruise there, a big one. I buried my head in my chest, again feeling everyone’s eyes on me, and I let out a big sigh. I wanted to cry, especially when the first snicker escaped someone’s mouth, a low pfft of utter merriment that, no doubt, expressed the sentiments of every other diner in the place. I’m sure I looked pretty damned funny, first running into the glass window and then collapsing slapstick fashion in a tsunami of tablecloths and Americanized Chinese food. The only thing missing was the banana peel.

  But I didn’t cry. In fact, I started laughing. It wasn’t like I planned it or anything, but that guy’s lone chuckle had started a chain reaction in the restaurant, and I wasn’t immune myself. First it was the waiter who had come over to check on me and who had appeared very concerned and who now was covering his mouth in a hopeless effort to stifle his laughter. And then it was the people at the table I’d ruined who began guffawing in unison, a sense of relief that I wasn’t seriously hurt, which meant they, and everyone else, had the green light to laugh. Because, after all, I’m sure it had been damned funny. They had all been watching me storm out of there in a high pique and with great drama, only to strut headfirst into a wall of glass. And now I had steamed dumplings on my ass.

  As I looked up, I noticed more than a few people holding their cell phones out to snap my photo, no doubt to put it on their Facebook page or tweet about it. At least that wasn’t me, they’d write, thinking themselves very clever. The problem was that they were all laughing so hard that none of them could hold the phone still long enough to snap a good shot. A bald guy was doubled over, pounding the table with his fist, almost hyperventilating in between his high-pitched pig-like snorts. A Korean woman was leaning against the wall crying, dabbing vainly at her eyes, her mouth covered by her left hand, trying desperately to keep herself together. The laughter echoed throughout the small restaurant, building on itself, a kind of catharsis that everyone joined. The very act of everyone laughing was itself funny.

  Somebody yelled out, “Do it again!” And that brought the house down all over again.

  Dan was a mess, I noticed. His face was on the table, his body heaving with hysterical cackling. I shook my head. It was all his fault in the first place, and now he was enjoying it just a little too much.

  I tried to take some deep breaths as I sat there on the floor dabbing a napkin on my shirt to dry it off. When the laughter had finally subsided a little, I grabbed a chair for support and stood myself up. Almost in unison, the other diners began a raucous applause, and the only thing I could do was smile and give the crowd what it wanted, which was a grandiose bow and flourish. They applauded even more, some of them standing up, even the elderly Asian man who had been washing the windows outside. I found my bag under a chair and headed for the exit, the door this time, but I was stopped by the guy who seemed to be in charge of the place.

  Here we go, I thought. He’s going to stick me with a big bill for all the mess I made and the food I ruined. But his eyes were dancing, and his face was still creased with smiles. He fished a business card out of his wallet and scribbled something on the back.

  “You come back any time you hungry, lady!” he said, his English a little rough. He showed me the back of the card, which read, “25% off any meal. No weekends.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said in mock appreciation, knowing he was trying to buy me off on the cheap. And then I got the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The feeling of intense, utter mortification was not unknown to me. In fact, it had become commonplace, almost an expected part of the itinerary of my life, a must-see event that played with enough regularity that I should start selling tickets. The customers at the noodle restaurant sure got their money’s worth.

  I shuddered and tried to shake it off. At least I hadn’t gone face-first through the glass, I thought. That could have sliced my neck open, or worse. I could just picture some newspaper flunky trying to come up with the perfect headline. Topless Dancer Now Headless, Too.

  My cell phone buzzed at me as I pulled up to the last stoplight before I got home.

  “Raven, this is Detective Goss. Just a little update for you,” he began.

  I grunted at him.

  “We went to serve the arrest warrant on Rev. Clavette. His secretary told us he was in a meeting, but something didn’t feel right to our guys, so they looked around the parking lot and couldn’t find his car.”

  “Uh huh,” I said, my chest tightening ever so slightly. “And then what?”

  “Well, they went back inside and confronted the secretary. Her name is, uh, let me see here—”

  “Corinne,” I said, interrupting.

  “Yeah, yeah. So Corinne gives us the deer-in-the-headlights look, you know, ‘Uh, I don’t know where he is. Why are you asking?’ and all that. But then our Sgt. Michaels, who’s about six three and runs two fifty easily, gets close to her and starts using words like ‘accessory’ and ‘aiding and abetting.’ And she looks like she’s going to break down, but…” He trailed off.

  The light changed, a point I hadn’t noticed until the guy behind me honked at me loudly. I zoomed through the light, crossing the Strip, and pulled into my building’s valet parking lane.

  “You still there, Raven?” Goss asked.

  “Yup. Just parking my car,” I said, still distracted. “She wasn’t gonna cooperate?” I asked, trying to get Detective Goss to his point.

  “Not without a little more persuasion,” he said. “For now, though, Reverend Clavette is in the wind. Nobody knows where he is.”

  “But it’s only been a few hours, right?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. We’re not too worried. He could just be at the golf course, or shopping, or whatever. He’s supposed to turn himself in when he gets the message.”

  “From Corinne,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “But it’s too soon to turn the screws on her. Sgt. Michaels has a feeling she’s covering something up, but it’s not like he’s a fugitive yet, so we can’t just haul her downtown. Sometimes it takes days to get a guy. Unless it’s a crime in progress or a violent felo
ny kind of thing, we don’t start up the manhunt.”

  I sighed. There was a bad feeling developing in the pit of my stomach. A feeling I’d felt before. “Okay, Detective,” I said, resignedly.

  “Just don’t say anything yet. I’m just giving you an update. As a courtesy. We don’t want the media jumping to conclusions or scaring him off with eighteen big TV trucks outside his place. Got it?”

  I nodded vigorously, even though he couldn’t see me. “I got it. Just stay in touch, okay?”

  “You bet,” he said. “Have a good night, Raven.”

  “Yeah right,” I muttered into a dead phone. It was two in the afternoon, I was standing outside my building watching the valet park my car, my clothes stinking of MSG and dumplings, and all I knew was that it was too hot to keep standing out there.

  I took a shower and changed. The shower didn’t take. Sometimes a shower could be refreshing, invigorating, even relaxing, but that one just got me wet. I made some green tea and began staring out my window, frustrated and more than a little unnerved. It wasn’t just the situation with Owen. It was that this was becoming a habit—stirring up trouble and then finding myself in danger. I had just turned Owen, a very powerful man with a massive ego and a thousand or more loyal followers, into an enemy. Singlehandedly, I threatened his whole lifestyle, his little empire, his freedom. And that made me a target.

  Whether the danger was real or not didn’t matter. What was bugging me was that there was a legitimate potential for danger. This was about the fourth or fifth time in just a few months that I’d found myself with a tight chest and a rapid heartbeat, pacing around my apartment like a caged animal because I’d stuck my nose in the wrong place. I was giving up a lucrative career as a stripper for this? I knew I’d have to give it up eventually because my clock was ticking, and every time I turned around, there seemed to be a new girl who was barely eighteen. I hated them, although I knew I had once been one of them. The stripper gig would be over eventually, but did I have to quit while I was on top, while I could work thirty hours a week burning gobs of calories, all while pocketing wads of twenty-dollar bills every night?