Down & Dead In Dixie (Down & Dead, Inc. Series)

by Vicki Hinze

  "You'll be safe with Johnson," Keller said, then softened his voice. "Miss Grant, I know this is hard. You've built yourself a life and it hasn't been easy, being on your own. But if you were my own daughter, I'd be making this same suggestion, okay?"

  "What suggestion?" I hadn't heard any suggestion.

  "You need to enter the Federal Witness Security Program. It was created for witnesses needing protection. Organized crime, drug traffickers, terrorists. You’ll get a new identity and be relocated—everything you need to start fresh somewhere else.” He talked fast, then added, “Johnson's setting it all up with the U.S. Marshals."

  New identity? Moving? Starting fresh? "No." I couldn't believe it. "You can’t just kick my whole life to the curb like it’s a piece of trash. I won’t let you do it.”

  “You need to run.”

  I need to run. “Why am I being treated like the criminal here? If you guys would do your job, then I wouldn't be in prison—and don't think just because your Witness Security Program doesn't have walls it isn't a prison because it is."

  "I am doing my job, okay?" Keller stood up, leaned toward me over the table. "Listen to me, Daisy. This is serious."

  "No joke." He did think I was stupid.

  "I didn't mean it like that," he said, and had the grace to flush. "It's just . . . well, you have no idea what these people are capable of doing."

  "They're going to kill me, Keller. That clear enough?" I frowned at him. "I'm not stupid, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop treating me like I am."

  "I didn't intend…" He sighed and gave up. "I'm sorry," he said, and then started again. "Your best shot is protective custody and then to go straight into witness security. Seriously."

  "No, that’s what’s best for your friend, Johnson. He needs a witness. I don’t need any of this.”

  “Okay, look. Johnson does need you. Without you, he has no case. But you need him and his protection, too.”

  I’d end up dead like his other witnesses. “I don't believe this." I stood up then hobbled a short path alongside the table, dragging my cracked heel. "My life isn't much compared to most, I'll admit. But it is mine. I’ve made it from scratch by myself, and I want to keep it. What you're suggesting isn't fair, and I'm not catching a whiff of justice in any of this. I lose everything, Keller. How can a witness losing everything be right?"

  "Who says it's right? Or fair? Or just, for that matter?" Keller raked a hand through his hair. Its tips spiked and caught the light. "It's not any of those things. But this isn't a lip-service warning to get you to testify, okay?" He cut to the chase. "If you enter the program, at least you'll have a life."

  "Will I?" Always looking over my shoulder. Expecting them to find me every second of every day. What kind of life is that? None. And—I gasped, looked at Keller. "What about Jackson?" I asked.

  Lost, Keller cocked his head. "Is he your boyfriend?"

  "He's my baby brother," I said. "Well, he’s not a baby. He’s only two years younger than me, but if I did your witness security thing, I'd never see him again, right? Or is that just how it is in the movies?"

  "No, I'm afraid that's how it is in real life." Regret scratched through Keller’s voice, turned his tone gruff. "You wouldn't be able to have any contact whatsoever with Jackson or anyone else currently in your life."

  No Jackson. No bailing out Lester. Alone. Totally and completely alone. Again. Everything in me rebelled. “No. Thank you, but no. I won’t do it.” My knees threatened to give out and the pain shooting through my ankle had me seeing stars. I stopped and leaned against the chair. "I—I can't…"

  Keller stood up, stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. "You don't have any choice."

  Something in his eyes scared me in a way I hadn't been scared since I was six and Mom gave me the two Grant coins then dumped Jackson and me out of the car at the front door of the Piggly Wiggly. She went to park her car and never came back. "Why not?"

  Keller looked at my neck. He tried but couldn't meet my eyes. "Because if you don't agree to witness security and protective custody, you're going to be held here anyway—as a person of interest in Edward Marcello's homicide."

  Shock pumped through my body. I planted my hands on my hips and glared at him. "You're gonna arrest me?"

  "Technically, no." He blinked hard. "We can hold you forty-eight hours without arresting you."

  Oh, no. Two mob families and a professional hitman after me and I'm taken prisoner by cops in a police station full of moles. Great. Anything else? Through now, or do You think I need a couple more body slams?

  "Daisy, I don't want to do this. But if we cut you loose, you'll be dead in an hour." Keller motioned outside. "We can't protect you out there."

  Too rattled to care about manners, I snorted. "You can't protect me in here, either."

  He frowned, then stilled. "Your odds in here are a lot better."

  I stared at Keller a long minute. My highly-honed BS detector swore he was being straight with me. At least he wasn't one of the moles. But his being straight about this also meant he’d been straight about my odds. Stay or go, it was just a matter of time before one of them got to me and I started my toe-tag stint. While being off my feet sounded really good, being laid out on a slab in the morgue held no appeal. What I needed was a plan. My plan.

  My success record might not be great, but I had kept myself and Jackson alive and out of trouble. Their witnesses were all dead. I couldn’t do worse. So the time had come to shift tactics. "Well.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “I guess that’s it, then."

  "You agree to protective custody and witness security?" Keller sounded surprised.

  "You said it yourself. I don’t have any choice. If I somehow managed to elude them, they’d go after Jackson, and I can’t have that." My eyes burned and I blinked hard, clenched the half-dollar until it dented my palm. "But I have to at least tell him good-bye. I'm—" I swallowed hard to get the crack out of my voice "—I'm all he's got."

  "I'm sorry, Daisy." Keller said and meant it; the truth shone in his eyes. He might not be alone now but he had been. I saw it in the lines grooving down his face. "We can arrange a final conversation with Jackson. It’ll have to be on the phone, though. We can’t risk a face-to-face meeting."

  “No. It’d put him in too much jeopardy. A phone call will have to do.” I sniffed, looked down at the scuffed tile floor. "If you'll excuse me, Detective, I need a minute alone." I shuddered and crossed my chest with my arms. "Where is the ladies' room?”

  He seemed torn. Surely he wouldn’t refuse me even restroom privileges to preserve my dignity. "Detective?"

  "Right this way."

  He led me down a short dimly lit hallway, took a right and then pointed. "Second door," he said, stopping. His shoe squeaked on the worn white floor. "I'll wait for you right here."

  "Thanks." He truly was afraid the families would kill me even in police headquarters. Not good. So majorly not good.

  I went in and closed the door behind me. Two stalls. Both empty and painted a garish blue. One window—small but I could fit through it in a pinch. And two sinks with the crooked silver pipes sticking out underneath. I limped over, still wearing my cracked-heel shoe. Forget going barefoot in a public restroom. I'd seen a bacteria-and-germ segment on Oprah . . . or was it on the Health Channel? Whatever. Even restrooms that looked clean were infested. I took a closer look at the window. If I got out, Keller would likely have someone outside waiting to snag me the second my feet hit the ground. But even if he didn't, where could I go? Home?

  Not bloody likely. I didn't even have my car here; I'd ridden in with Keller. That should have warned me, right there. Normally, it would have. But I don't see people blown wide-open everyday, you know? Edward Marcello’s death rattled me; I admit it. I didn't think.

  "Miss Grant, you okay?" Keller called to me through the door.

  Nice of him to worry. Sweet, actually. Not that I was crazy enough to think he really was worried about me. He wanted to nail his
case. That's what Keller was about. Special Agent Johnson, too. Not me. I provided the means to an end. That’s it. They were all about the case. Likely had been trying to nail both of the mob families for years.

  "I'm fine. Thank you." I turned on the tap and tried to think through this witness security program business. Never see Jackson again? Ever? I couldn't do it. I wouldn't. Because I really was about to cry and I didn't want to humiliate myself by blubbering like an idiot, I washed my face and then ripped off some paper towels and patted my skin dry in front of the mirror above the sink. My hair had fallen out of its neat chignon and shot out in blonde streaks in all directions. I plunked street grime out of it, tread lightly over a sore spot, and knew I’d be fighting embedded sidewalk grit for a week. Dabbing the streaked mascara from my face, I avoided the raspberry but nicked its edge anyway. Pain seared my jaw. Cringing, I glimpsed the ceiling in the mirror. Those big tiles . . .

  One of my old foster parents, Mr. Venier, had crawled all over the ceiling in the attic once. He hid pot up above those big tiles, too. I looked at these tiles more closely.

  The police couldn't protect me. The FBI or U.S. Marshals couldn't, either. I had to protect me. And I needed to buy a little time to figure out how to do it.

  I opened the window and left it cracked. Inside the first stall, I stood on the stool then lifted the ceiling tile and slid it aside. I walked up the sides of the stall like I'd seen Bear Grylls walk up sheer-faced cliffs back when I’d had a TV and watched it. Scaling the wall looked easier than it was, especially with a bad ankle. Pain shot through my foot and up my leg. The whole mess throbbed. By the time I hoisted myself up into the dead space and straddled the rafters, I was in a cold sweat and my muscles burned so badly I shook like somebody half-frozen. Biting my lip to keep from groaning, I slid the tile back into its slot.

  "Miss Grant?" Keller's voice carried up to me. "Miss Grant?"

  I didn't dare answer. Crawling on hands and knees across and down the wooden beams, I made it to the other side of the building. Lifting the corner of a tile, I peeked down.

  Keller was going nuts; he'd discovered I was gone, and he and half the force were looking for me, inside and outside the police station.

  A younger man with a flat nose and short brown hair wearing a black suit and a bad attitude hooked up with Keller near the door. "Are you sure they didn't take her?"

  "No, I'm not sure, Johnson." Keller shouted back. "I wasn't in the john with her. I was in the hallway. I’m not Superman. I can't see through walls, okay?"

  "But the window was open, so they could've taken her," Johnson pushed.

  "Yeah, the window was open." Johnson whipped out his phone and barked orders into it.

  Special Agent Ted Johnson. The FBI guy Keller had said was coming for me. I hunkered down and stayed put. Once the dust settled, I could get out of here, get some money, and then get out of Biloxi.

  They'll just hunt you down, Daisy. You know they will…

  They would. Fear blew up inside me crowding into so much space I could barely breathe. Doubt crept in and took up the rest. Could I do anything to protect myself better than Keller and Johnson could protect me? They had training, I didn't. They had a track record—a bad one, yeah, but they did know what hadn't worked. I knew nothing.

  You can't afford this kind of thinking, Daisy…

  I couldn't. So okay, I wasn't formally trained, and I didn't have their kind of track record, and I didn't know what hadn't worked. And—just to not delude myself, rationalizing my situation—I was scared spit-less, which isn't the best condition to be in when you're making life-and-death decisions. The cops, FBI, and Victor Marcello wanted me alive to testify. Lou Boudin and Tony Adriano wanted me dead so I couldn't testify. Both groups would undoubtedly go to any lengths to get what they wanted. That left me with no choice but to be willing to go to any lengths to get what I wanted.

  Well, I thought. I do have one thing the families, the police, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals lack, and it’s nothing to sneeze at. Actually, it could be pretty powerful—and on several occasions in the past, it had been powerful enough to save my backside. I have a personal, vested interest in the outcome of this situation that is bigger and stronger and runs deeper than their interest or investment—singularly or even combined.

  This is my life on the proverbial chopping block, and I want to survive to live it.

  Chapter 2

  THE HUSTLE INSIDE the police station dulled to a quiet roar, and then fell to silence.

  Except for a skeleton crew left to man the station, the cops on duty had hit the streets, looking for me. Between the underside of the roof and the backside of the musty ceiling, I'd crawled all over the building, rafter to rafter, and while my tights and skirt were now in about as good a shape as my once-white shirt and torn-up shoe, I had finally pegged a way out of the station—the side exit door I now watched through a hiked corner of ceiling tile.

  Problem was the keypad on the wall beside the door. It had a four-digit code; I'd counted the beeps. But until now, I hadn't been in position to see the numbers the officers exiting the building punched into it. Straddling two wooden beams like a contortionist on crack, I had a clear view and only hoped my left hipbone held out. The constant pain in it had me dripping sweat and seeing spots, but I didn't dare move. The exit had been fairly active. It wouldn't be long…

  A uniformed officer approached the door, lifted a hand to the keypad and tapped in the numbers. Three, seven, three, seven. The door opened, and he walked outside.

  I waited a couple minutes, then slid back the tile just enough to drop down to the floor. I landed with a thud. My ankle gave out, and I crashed on my butt. Grunting and groaning, I scrambled to my feet. To me the racket sounded like a small explosion, but no one entered the hallway so I guess the real uproar was inside my head. I punched in the code and shoved the door hard.

  Seconds later, the night swallowed me. I ran two blocks on the battered ankle with pain screeching up my leg before I slowed down, then standing on the side of the dark road, I wondered. What do I do now? I had my mobile phone, but the police would be monitoring it—I'd given Keller the number, for crying out loud.

  Near a streetlamp, I twisted my wrist to check my watch. Finally, it caught the light—3:20 a.m. I had no one to call. Nowhere to go. I'd heard the FBI guy, Johnson, tell Keller to put an APB out on my car, so retrieving it was out. The beach and Highway 90 intersected about 2 blocks south. It’d be dense with traffic and people even in the wee hours before dawn, but some of those people would be cops. I walked another block north and noticed headlights on the road. Glancing back, I watched an old clunker pass by and the driver hit the brakes.

  Spinning around, I took off south. It wasn't a good idea to cut across lawns—people had gotten itchy trigger fingers since the hurricane because of looters—but better that possibility than—a man in a ski mask grabbed my shoulder.

  I gasped and struck out. "Get off—"

  “Spitwads and fudgesicles. Don’t kill me, Daisy girl.”

  Mid-swing on a big roundhouse, the man's words penetrated my mind and I stilled, dropped my arm and relaxed my fist. Only one person said spitwads and fudgesicles. "Lester?"

  He nodded. The ski mask tugged down over his head bobbed and the eye slit crept over his right eye. "Get in the car."

  I hustled over and got in. When he slid onto the seat behind the wheel, I asked, "Lester, what are you doing here? Whose car is this—and why are you wearing a mask?"

  He slapped at the gearshift with a bony hand and punched the accelerator. "You didn't come home tonight. I got worried. I was sort of waiting for you."

  "There was some trouble outside of work."

  He grunted. "There was some trouble at home, too."

  "What kind of trouble?" Could be anything. A raccoon in the garbage, teens hanging on the corner. "And whose car is this?"

  "Emily's," he said, talking about the elderly woman two apartments down from him.

 
"Emily’s blind. Why does she need a car?” Did she even have a car? I couldn’t recall ever seeing one, and this clunker, I wouldn’t miss.

  "She ain’t blind. She’s got cataracts,” he corrected me.

  “But they can fix cataracts.”

  “Yep, if you got surgery money. She ain’t, and she ain't old enough for Medicare. She's keeping the car for when she gets her eyes back."

  Money. Always money. I sighed inside and shifted the topic. "Well, what are you doing with her car?" It did smell musty and like mothballs. Like it'd been closed up a hunter's moon or two.

  "I borrowed it after the two men left your apartment."

  My heart jackknifed. "There were two men at my apartment?"

  "Nope, not at it. In it." Lester braked for a red light then hooked a right on Highway 90 and passed by my bank.

  "Pull in there." Wagging a fingertip, I added, "I need to withdraw some money from the ATM."

  "They pretty much tore the place up, Daisy.” Lester made the corner and then doubled back to the bank.

  Violated to the bone, I swallowed a knot of outrage. "Cops?"

  "Thugs," he countered. "I called your work to tell you, and Gilbert told me what had happened with the shooting and all." Lester heaved a sigh and pulled into the drive-thru. "Are you crazy, girl? Why did you call the cops?"

  "When I called them, I didn't know who the victim was, okay?" I fished out my bank card and gave Lester my pin number. "Get the max they'll let me get."

  He adjusted his mask then stepped in front of the camera, inserted the card, and then punched in the first digit. "What's the number again?"

  I repeated it, realizing how this would look to anyone watching—but maybe the false impression was a good thing. They'd think the unidentified masked man was forcing me to withdraw the money and give it to him. This could be helpful in the way of a plan—as soon as I came up with a solid one, anyway—and it wouldn't jeopardize Lester. He had a history of vacant rooms in his personal mansion of a head.

  Lester got the money, the card, and then pulled away from the bank machine and its camera. "Here you go."