I suspected she was intentionally irritating me to distract me from my anxiety.
“Well, I thought someone of your years would have the wisdom to be nicer to the person who’s helping them on an investigation and supplying them with fresh-baked cookies. I guess we were both wrong. Now have you found an office yet?”
Etta chuckled. “Yeah, you need more of that backbone, dear. You’ll go further in life that way.” A click of a door sounded. “Ah, this looks more like it. But there sure are a lot of files in here. You know it would go a lot quicker with an extra pair of hands.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but having an extra pair of hands in prison doesn’t make your sentence pass any quicker.”
“All right, all right. Where should I start?”
“I don’t know. I guess if she has school files, you could look up Jaden and Joy and see if she’s got anything in there. But she’d probably keep it separate from official school records, so maybe you should find her personal files.”
“So… anywhere then?”
“That’s why I told you to stop stealing licorice and start looking.”
Twenty minutes later, Etta yawned. “I thought breaking into someone’s house and looking at their files would be interesting, but it turns out, paperwork’s just paperwork, and it’s boring no matter what the circumstances.”
“I’m glad to hear this won’t become a new hobby then.”
“I don’t know. Being a cat burglar might be more fun. I think I’d look good in a black one-piece, scaling walls and stealing jewels.”
I was pretty sure she was kidding. “Remind me what it is you did again, that kept a mind like yours entertained for all those years?”
“This and that, dear. This and that… I think I found something.”
She fell silent.
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s a copy of reports she’s filed with Child Protective Services. There are at least a dozen different ones in here.”
“Any for Jaden? Or Joy?”
“Yes. Both of them.”
“It’s a start, but it’s not going to be enough to get a warrant. It’s a mandatory part of her job after all. It only proves what we already knew—that she suspected Jaden and Joy were being abused.”
“You’re stating the obvious again,” Etta grumbled. “I’ll snap some pictures anyway, but I’ve got over half the files to go.”
“It’s close to lunchtime. What if Gibson comes home?”
“Your mechanic friend has taken care of that, remember? Stop worrying so much.”
“I’d just be concerned about your mental health if you had to wear an unstylish orange jumpsuit day in, day out. Let alone if you were tragically deprived of all your boy toys.”
Etta snorted. “I told you, the worst they can get me for is trespassing.”
More long minutes passed before she spoke again.
“Aha. This is more like it. There are a few surveillance shots of Michael Watts and the same four addresses Abe was given… Yes, this is the box all right. There’s more.” She let out a low whistle. “Izzy, I don’t think this is the first time she’s done this. There are a bunch of photos of kids in here, with handwriting on the back. Each one has a date at the top with a list of issues like ‘withdrawn, flinches easily, C grade average’ and then what seems like progress reports of the kid recovering after she’s rescued them from an abusive parent. You need to come and see.”
“No. Oh no. Etta, get out now! Gibson just showed up with Bergström. She must’ve caught a lift.”
It was even worse than if she’d come alone. A lot worse.
“You need to stall them,” Etta told me. “This office is a mess. And I need to get photos of this stuff.”
“Stall them? How? We can come back for the photos.”
“No way. She has a huge shredder in here. If she notices the house has been disturbed, she might get rid of it. You have to stall them.”
I tried to think, but my brain was stuck looping through a litany of cuss words. Then I spied Dudley’s leash.
Telling myself I wasn’t that memorable, I jumped out of the car, leash in hand, and strode down the street toward Bergström and Gibson. “Fido?” I yelled. Okay, that was a stupid name choice, but I was going to have to roll with it in case they’d heard me. “Where are you, boy?” I made sure my path collided with theirs. “Excuse me, have you seen a dog around here?”
“No, sorry,” they said, barely bothering to pause.
“Please. I’m desperate. Could you help me look?”
“Sorry, I’m on my lunch break and need to get back to work. But give me your number. If I see a dog, I’ll let you know. What does he look like?”
I had to buy time. “He’s the most adorable little thing. White. Fluffy. About six inches tall, maybe seven. And he has the most darling eyes. The color of treacle or maybe more like molasses. And his tongue is as pink as bubblegum and—”
“Okay, I’ll know him when I see him. What was your number?”
Uh-oh. What number should I give her? And how could I make it take enough seconds for Etta to escape? I’d had to rip out the earbuds for my stall tactic to work, and now I had no idea where she was up to.
And she had no idea how badly this was going.
“Um. Let me see.” I got my phone out and scrolled through my contacts slowly. “Sorry, now that we don’t dial numbers anymore, I can never remember my own. Have to keep it in my contacts.” I chuckled.
Gibson twitched with impatience. “Wait. Do I know you from somewhere?”
I kept my head down, over the phone. “Nope, I don’t think so.”
“Yes, I remember now. Your grandmother. The one that used to be a teacher.”
Shit. I might not be memorable, but Etta sure was, even in her harmless-old-lady disguise. I wanted to deny it, but what if Etta came out the front in a minute to let me know she was out of there?
“Oh. That’s right. Ha, sorry, I try to block out my more embarrassing memories.”
Bergström was now looking at me too intently. “I’ve seen you around before as well. With your grandmother. You came to my office and demanded I tell the police I sent Abraham Black to beat up Michael Watts.”
They exchanged glances.
“Now that I definitely have no recollection of.” I smiled, trying to act unconcerned. “Did I do something embarrassing enough to block out?”
Bergström wrapped his hand around my arm. “Why don’t you come with us for a minute.”
“I can’t. I need to find Fido!”
“Fido wasn’t white and fluffy as I recall.”
“See? Must be the wrong person.”
His grip on my arm tightened. “I don’t think so. You have a very memorable nervous chuckle.”
Damn. So much for the not-being-memorable thing.
I had no choice but to go. My Taser was in my bag and my pepper spray in my pocket, but now that Gibson wasn’t looking so friendly, I was pretty sure I was outmanned. Maybe when we caught up with Etta, the odds would be more favorable.
Or maybe Etta was already gone.
“The door’s unlocked,” Gibson reported. “Not a false alarm then.”
Alarm? Crud. She must’ve had a silent one. No wonder she’d come home with reinforcements.
As soon as we stepped inside, Bergström grabbed me around the waist, pinning both of my arms, and pressed a gun to my head. “Now let’s find your companion.”
This was bad. This was very, very bad.
Gibson went over to the kitchen counter, near the licorice sticks, and pulled out another gun. Then we walked down a short passage as if they knew exactly where Etta had gone. I was no longer sure whether I wanted her to have left the house or not.
We stopped outside a door that I guessed was the office, and Gibson swung it open.
The room was empty.
My stomach dropped. I was all alone with two bad guys and two guns.
One of the guns prodded my temple.
“Tell us where she is.”
The window behind the big sturdy desk was open, sheer curtains fluttering in the breeze. Files were scattered over the floor. Even getting taken hostage, I hadn’t bought her enough time. “I don’t know,” I said, hoping my honesty would ring out through my fear.
Gibson headed for the files while my brain registered the three heavy filing cabinets, the cluttered floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on the left wall, and the built-in robe on the right. No wonder Etta had wanted an extra pair of hands. Maybe if I’d been less stubborn or less of a coward, we’d have been gone by the time they showed up.
“They know,” Gibson said, holding one of the formal school photos Etta had found. “Do you still make a habit of carrying unregistered weapons? We can make it look like self-defense.”
Bergström shifted behind me. “What do they know?” he asked.
She didn’t seem to hear him.
“Livvy, I promised you I’d always have your back. Nothing’s changed. So talk to me. Tell me what’s going on here.”
She sighed and gently returned the photo to the floor. “Oh, Leo. I busted my ass my whole damn life to be successful. To not let my past dictate my future. To get away from the brokenness and poverty and abuse we lived in for so long.”
“I know. You did good, kid.”
A smile flickered around her mouth, then vanished. “Well, it worked. Or so I thought. Until I started seeing children who were scared to call attention to themselves, who never wanted to take their jackets off even if it was hot, or flinched if you raised your voice.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “Children who claimed to be accident-prone but never boasted about how they broke their arm. And it was like I was right back there. I realized money doesn’t solve the brokenness or the abuse. It just makes it easier to cover up.”
She swiped angrily at a stray tear. “I couldn’t let those kids live through that. I tried the official channels, but it almost never went anywhere…”
“I know how it goes,” Bergström agreed.
“Then one of the abusive bastards died in a car accident, and it gave me an idea.” She seemed to stand straighter. “Six months later, I orchestrated an accident for another sicko. The kids transformed, Leo. You should’ve seen how they came out of their shells.”
Bergström was silent for a minute, processing the news that his friend was a murderer. A vigilante serial killer to be exact.
“Wow.” He said the word softly. “Why didn’t you ever tell me all those years?”
She looked solemnly past my right shoulder. Into my captor’s eyes, I assumed. “Because I know how much it meant to you that I got out. That I was happy and successful… But I shouldn’t have involved one of your men—shouldn’t have asked you to have Black beat up Watts—without letting you in on the plan. I’m sorry. It just seemed like the perfect opportunity to take out two bastards with one stone.”
The grip on my arms had loosened, and I debated stomping down on his foot as hard as I could and ripping free the way Connor had shown me once, but it was still two guns against a Taser, which would take me too long to dig out of my bag.
“You sure about Black?” Bergström asked. “He’s always struck me as soft, and he seems to love his girl.”
“He does!” I interjected. “She does parkour, this military obstacle course thingy which is how she keeps hurting herself.”
The grip tightened again, and I cursed myself for reminding them I was there.
“Even if that’s true, it’s too late now,” Gibson said, ignoring me and addressing Bergström. “Those kids need me, and I’m not going to jail for this. So do you have any unregistered weapons or what?”
He hesitated, just long enough for me to start hoping. Then he said, “Yes, I have one in the car.”
My hope squashed like a slug under a shoe.
“Good. We’ll deal with her and then go find her grandma. She could barely walk, so she can’t have gotten far.”
I supposed the harmless-old-lady outfit was paying unexpected dividends. For Etta. Not so much for the one of us who hadn’t wanted to be here in the first place.
Bergström released me.
Since he’d first taken me captive, all I’d wanted to do was get away, but I wasn’t stupid. He’d only let go so he didn’t shoot at point-blank range. Difficult to claim self-defense then.
It would be difficult to claim self-defense if he shot me in the back too, but he was between me and the door, and Gibson was between me and the window. I couldn’t keep my back to both of them. But maybe I could get my Taser somehow…
I was still frozen in indecision when Bergström spun me around and gave me a hard shove. I stumbled backward into the bookshelf, and he raised his gun.
“Nooo!”
Out of the corner of my terrified eye, I saw a white shape hurtle toward Bergström.
Bergström pivoted and pulled the trigger.
Blood blossomed in a rapidly expanding circle on my would-be rescuer’s giant chest. His white shirt the perfect, horrific showcase.
But it was like trying to stop the momentum of a freight train with a peanut. Mr. Black crashed into Bergström, and they both plummeted to the floor. Bergström’s head bounced on the carpet, then neither of them moved.
My ringing ears registered another gunshot, but my eyes were glued to the unmoving Hulk. The man I’d held a grudge against. The man who had a wife and daughter he loved more than anything. The man who’d just taken a bullet for me.
23
I crawled over to him, an abstract part of me noticing that I was sobbing hysterically, snot dripping down my chin. Like his blood, oozing onto the carpet.
Fingers touched his neck. “He’s alive, Izzy. It’s okay, he’s alive.” Etta’s head swam into my vision. She swiped away the hair that was sticking to the wetness on my face. “Come on. The ambulance is on its way. Help me roll him over so we can slow the bleeding.”
I’m sure that in any other circumstances, rolling Mr. Black would’ve been impossible. But as Etta’s words brought hope to my heart, we found the strength.
It helped that he had the inert body of Bergström beneath him to use as a kind of fulcrum to pivot on.
Etta’s hands guided mine to the center of the sticky crimson patch on his chest. “Press here. Hard. Imagine it’s your ex-husband’s head in a bathtub. I’ll make sure Gibson and Bergström are properly disarmed.”
It could’ve been seconds or hours later when men in blue uniforms shifted my hands and miraculously maneuvered Mr. Black onto a gurney. Lucky it was one of those modern hydraulic ones that raised itself off the ground, or that might have been as far as they got.
“Will he be okay?” I croaked.
“We’ll do everything we can,” they said. The same promise I’d made to Joy when I didn’t have any hope to offer her. The promise I’d made about saving her dad.
As they wheeled him out of my sight, I noticed that two more teams were dealing with Bergström and Gibson. Gibson was bleeding too. Had Etta shot her?
“Well,” Etta said under her breath. “That was some stalling you did. Now we better get our stories straight before we’re questioned…”
The police officers who’d responded to the 911 call kindly allowed me to wash the snot from my face and the blood from my hands. If only I could wash away my guilt so easily. I couldn’t understand how what had started out as me begrudgingly helping Mr. Black clear his name had ended with him taking a bullet for me. Even prison was better than a coffin. Every fiber of me was strung tight, desperately hoping he’d be okay. The thought of explaining his last act of heroism to Joy and Hallie made me want to crumple to the floor. The floor stained with his blood.
The officer was asking me questions, and I was trying to stick to Etta’s improvised version of events, but I couldn’t concentrate. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how Etta had come to be hiding in the built-in robe, able to spring out at the moment of Mr. Black’s distraction to take out Gibson. And I didn’t have the
faintest idea about how Mr. Black had known I was in trouble and come to my rescue.
We must have been at the scene for at least an hour before one of the officers suggested we go down to the station to answer some more questions. Numbly I obeyed, despite a twinge in the back of my mind that there was something wrong with that plan. Etta took one look at my face and asked for the car keys.
“You better ring Connor,” she said. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m okay. I’m just afraid for Mr. Black.”
“Don’t be. He’ll be fine.” Her words were cheerful, but I could hear the underlying worry. “It would take more than a single tiny bullet to take down such a strong man. Plus we got immediate pressure to the wound and zipped him off to the hospital real quick. You’ll see.”
Her phone dinged to let her know she had a message, and she read it while driving. I didn’t have it in me to tell her off for it.
“Ha. Told you so. Hallie says the bullet missed anything vital, and he’s out of surgery already. The doc’s expecting he’ll make a full recovery.”
Relief didn’t flood me, but it trickled into my system and slowly spread, returning life to my numb limbs.
I called Connor. Mostly because if I didn’t, it would set a very low bar for the new standard of communication I was trying to establish in our relationship.
“Good news and bad news,” I told him. “The good news is, we found out who killed Michael Watts, and the police now have evidence to that effect.”
“And the bad news?”
“Well, I kind of got taken hostage, and they were going to shoot me and then arrange things so it looked like self-defense, but then Mr. Black and Etta came to my rescue except Mr. Black got shot in the process, but the doctor said he’s going to be okay, so I guess that’s kind of good news too.” I said it all in one breath, like if I got it out fast enough he might miss it.
“Hostage?” His tone was a tad scary.
Guess he didn’t miss it.
“Kind of taken hostage,” I reiterated. “And I didn’t get shot or anything.”
Poison is the New Black: (Bonus story: Taste of Christmas) (An Eat, Pray, Die Humorous Mystery Book 3) Page 18
