While She Was Sleeping

by Diane Pershing

  “Hey,” the patrolman called out. “She okay?”

  “I’ll let you know in a minute.” Murmuring, the crowd parted for them and Nick carried her to a nearby bench several yards away. She lay still in his arms, but at least her breathing was regular. Her first sight of a dead body, he assumed, and she’d fainted. A common reaction.

  Lowering himself onto the bench, he held her close, rocking her and patting her cheeks lightly. “Carly, it’s okay, I’m here.”

  She stirred. “Richard,” she moaned.

  His jaw tightened again. “The name’s Nick.”

  “It was Richard.” Her eyelids fluttered open.

  “Who was—?” Comprehension hit him like a fist in the gut. “You mean, the body?”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes. “It’s Richard. They killed him.”

  “Who killed him?” When Carly didn’t answer, he found her chin and tipped it so she was facing him. “Dammit, who killed him?”

  “I...don’t know.”

  He wasn’t sure if he believed her. “All right, who is ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly.”

  “But you’re positive it was Richard?”

  “He was wearing the watch I gave him, and his awful plaid bowling shirt and black socks with the tennis racquets on them, and—” She put her hand over her mouth as though to stop a cry from escaping, then went on. “And it was bloated, but it’s his face.”

  “Are you sure? Without your glasses?”

  “Yes, it was Richard.”

  “Then we’d. better get over there and let them know you can ID the body.”

  She tensed. “No.”

  “Huh? Why not?”

  She pushed against his chest. “I’ll deny it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Carly’s sudden attitude change, from being overwhelmed by her ex-husband’s death, to fierce defiance at reporting it, took him completely by surprise. He wondered if he was hearing her correctly. “You’ll deny what?”

  “Let me go.” She continued to push at him, trying to make him release her. But he held her tightly.

  “What in hell are you hiding?”

  Instead of replying, she increased her struggling; it was as though she were a caged animal fighting for its life. This time he loosened his grip. She stood up, weaving slightly. He could see the enormous effort it took to bring herself under control. “I can’t stay here, near his body. I can’t.”

  Frowning, Nick stared at her. The tension poured out of her in waves. She was quivering again with obvious terror, but remained stubbornly unwilling to disclose anything that might help him understand its cause. He felt his anger rising. He was tired, tired of asking questions and not getting any answers. Tired of being patient. Tired of watching her tear herself into little pieces rather than let him in.

  He rose from the bench, his hands fisted at his sides, and looked right into her eyes. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said, keeping his voice level. “Either you tell me what you’re hiding, and I mean all of it, or I’ll haul you into the police station so fast you’ll think you’re on a spaceship.”

  She flinched at his tone and closed her eyes. Then, slowly, she nodded her agreement. “Yes. All of it,” she said in a small voice. “But not here. Please.”

  She was ready. He could sense it in his bones. Hell, if she didn’t spill her guts soon, she’d implode. All right, then, if she needed to be away from Richard’s body, fine. The restaurant he’d planned to take them to was nearby, so he grabbed her elbow and steered her toward it. She had about five more minutes of secrets left, and then she ran out of time.

  It was a weekday, past the breakfast rush, so Marina Muffin wasn’t overly crowded. The usual California beach types were there—surfers who’d already put in several hours at the nearby oceanfront, freelance writers, directors and actors taking meetings or reading Variety, businessmen with the Wall Street Journal folded by their plates and a few gawking tourists.

  Nick sat Carly down at a private corner table, ordered bacon, eggs, hash browns and coffee for both of them, then leaned his elbows on the table, steepled his hands and looked at her. By now, she’d regained her composure enough so the cornered look had left her eyes. Soft rock music and conversation filled the air, but as far as Nick was concerned, there was nothing else in the universe that required his attention.

  “All right,” he said bluntly. “Let’s have it. All of it Now.”

  Carly’s heart was racing, but she knew she was at the end of her rope. Richard was dead; if she felt anything at all about that, she’d have to deal with it later, when she had the luxury of her emotions. Right now, it was time to talk, to let one other human being in on what she’d been struggling with, alone—so alone!—for what had only been a couple of days but felt like a lifetime.

  She desperately wanted to take a moment and gather her thoughts, but Nick wouldn’t let her. “I’ll wring it out of you if I have to,” he warned. “If you don’t like my manner, fine, but you’re going to talk to me. Dammit, you can trust me.”

  Trust him. The man who had been there from crisis to crisis in the past thirty-six hours. Trust him. A cop.

  A cop who was not her father.

  The waitress, a fortyish woman with permed gray hair, came over with their coffee, giving Carly a little reprieve from Nick’s insistence. By the time she’d put in cream, stirred it with a spoon, and had a sip, she was ready.

  “You’re right,” she said. “But maybe when I explain, you’ll understand a little better. I hope you will anyway. I remember little bits and pieces and they add up to something pretty awful.”

  “How awful?”

  She swallowed. “Murder.”

  He went very still. She could see the surprised, even shocked, look on his face. But he recovered quickly, then understanding dawned. “Demeter,” he said. “You were there?”

  When she nodded, he looked to his right, then to his left, as though checking on possible eavesdroppers. “Go on.”

  Willing herself to speak as matter-of-factly as possible, she said, “I think I’m an eyewitness, but I’m not sure about a lot else. I saw him die.”

  Again Nick went still. “You saw it?”

  She nodded. “I was on his boat—it’s the first thing I remember since being at the restaurant with Richard. I suppose I was...waking up from whatever stupor I’d been in.” The relief of coming clean with Nick was overwhelming. The pace of her words picked up till they spilled out of her. “I was sitting. He, Demeter, was kneeling in front of me, kissing my feet, my hands. Crying, calling me Amanda, over and over again. Then someone behind me shot him. I—” she flinched, but finished her thought “—I saw his head blow up.”

  “Damn.” Nick gripped her hand; his face registered the grim understanding of someone who’d been there already and knew the horror.

  She bit her bottom lip to keep her feelings in check. The picture was one she’d carry with her the rest of her life, but she couldn’t allow it to take over now.

  She was so grateful for Nick’s presence, for his strong hands on hers. They steadied her and gave her the strength to continue. “Whoever it was that shot him put the gun in my hand, then aimed it toward my temple, I think to frame me, then to make it look like I’d killed myself. But Richard stopped him—”

  “Richard? He was there?” Nick was one hundred percent cop now; she could practically see the wheels turning.

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “Richard told me to run while he fought with this other person—it was a man, I’m sure, but I didn’t see him. I did as he said, and wound up at the bar with you. The rest of that night, well—” she shrugged self-consciously “—you know about that.”

  His grip on her hand gentled and he seemed to gaze inward for a moment. She knew he was evaluating her story, turning over the details, preparing more questions for her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?” he said.

  “Because I
thought I might be a murderer.”

  “You thought you’d killed Demeter?”

  She nodded. “I kept seeing this...picture in my head—me with a gun in my hand and a dead man. Then, last night, when I was having that nightmare...? That’s the first time I knew I hadn’t killed him.”

  Releasing her hands, he picked up his coffee cup, as though needing time out to digest what she’d told him. Before taking a sip, he shook his head slowly. “Whew, this is not what I expected to hear this morning.”

  “It’s all true.” If she sounded defensive, it was because she was afraid Nick thought she was inventing the whole thing; maybe he hadn’t lost his suspicions of her. The thought of that bothered her, but she was determined to go on. “I’m not through yet.”

  Setting his cup down, he met her gaze grimly. “I’m listening.”

  “On the news last night I saw a picture of Demeter’s wife, the one who died in a car crash. It was Nina, my sister. We’d always looked a lot alike—dressed and acted totally differently, but still, the resemblance was there. Hair, eye color, facial structure. She was more...curvaceous and more outgoing. And, I guess, since I’d seen her last, Nina had changed her name to Amanda, had gotten a lot blonder and had married Pete Demeter. Amanda died six months ago. Which means, of course, Nina’s dead.”

  Carly swallowed a lump of pain; like so much else she’d been hit with, further mourning for Nina would also have to wait until later. But despite her resolution, a feeling of melancholy swept over her, for her sister and for herself, for the innocent, frightened children they’d been.

  Nick saw Carly’s face crumble with the onslaught of emotion. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  She managed a small, dispirited smile. “Thanks,” she said, then seemed to will herself to keep going. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that I was chosen for whatever happened because I look so much like Nina.”

  He nodded slowly. “So, that’s why you woke up last night saying Nina was dead.”

  “Did I say that? I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming. Anyhow, I guess whoever shot Demeter won the fight with Richard after I left. This...other man must have killed him and pushed him into the water. So, just now, when I saw Richard’s body, I...” As a twist of pain crossed her face, she clasped her hands together tightly and brought them to her mouth. Closing her eyes, she seemed to take a moment to gather whatever resources she still had, then raised her lids again. “I realized,” she went on, “that, well, Richard might have set me up for this, but he died saving my life.”

  “If he hadn’t set you up in the first place,” Nick said bluntly, “it wouldn’t have happened at all.”

  “I know. Look, he was an awful husband, and the gambling made him a pretty dreadful liar, but I can’t hate him. Saving my life might have been the only decent thing he ever did.” Glancing down at her coffee cup, she shook her head. “Poor Richard, he always made such a mess of things.” She returned her gaze to Nick, unclasping her hands and resting them on the table. “So, that’s the story, as much as I know of it anyway.”

  Nick’s head was spinning, bouncing all over the place between compassion and rage, but he held on to the clearhead-edness he always had when he was on a case. He wasn’t on a case right now, not officially, but he needed that clearhead-edness and he knew it. Carly was in a mess, and in danger, too.

  There were a million more questions he wanted to ask her. Soon, he thought, he’d lead her through the whole story, step by step. And with it all, Nick couldn’t help being impressed. She’d been through a hell of a lot and had survived. She was brave, in a way that he’d never associated with the word before. Real bravery wasn’t battling adversity, but courage in the face of fear. She’d had so many battles to wage during her life, and so much to slog through on the way. But she’d persisted, hadn’t given up. He’d seen inherently stronger, tougher people go through this kind of thing and not have even an ounce of the resilience Carly had.

  Expelling a loud breath, he shook his head. “You’ve really been through it, haven’t you.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment Then Carly started picking on the edges of her napkin; his cop sense told him her anxiety level was on its way up again.

  “What else?” he prompted.

  “I wish I could remember more,” she said, gazing at him with worried eyes. “Like where I was from Friday night to Saturday night. If anything happened to me that I need to know about, apart from someone completely redoing my hair—” A laugh that was part mocking and part agitated escaped, but he saw her bite it back. “I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but if I was someone’s plaything, Demeter’s, or this other person’s, the killer, whoever it is, or even Richard’s, I want to know. It’s the not knowing that’s making me crazy.”

  The waitress chose that moment to arrive with their food. She set their plates in front of them, then, propping a hand on her hip, asked cheerfully if they needed ketchup, jam, more coffee?

  Glancing up at the gray-haired woman, Nick shook his head, then went back to concentrating on Carly. “Neil Mishkin will help, promise. Okay, right now, is there anything else I should know? Anything?”

  “I don’t think...” She hesitated. “Yes, there is one thing. The man who was at the airport yesterday, his voice was familiar, so I think he was there.”

  “Was that the guy I chased earlier? He was short, pale, like you said he was. Was it the same one?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, without my glasses—” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Could you describe him to a police sketch artist?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Nick was about to ask another question when he glanced down to see two full plates of steaming food on the table. He picked up his fork. “Eat,” he told Carly, “before it gets cold.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat anyway. You need your strength. I don’t want you fainting on me again.”

  “I’ve never fainted before in my life.”

  He looked up at her indignant face. “And you’ve never cried. Broken a couple of records, haven’t you?”

  She managed a smile, then began to eat. After a few moments of clattering utensils, Nick said, as though no time had passed, “So, let’s assume you were followed yesterday to the airport and this morning here to the marina. Both times he must have tailed you from my place. Which means he followed you from the boat on Saturday night, because that’s the only way he’d know where you’d wound up—at my place. So he was on the boat with you and Richard and Demeter.”

  “Do you think he’s anywhere around, I mean, now?”

  “Nah. I’ve been keeping a lookout. We’ll get him, the little creep.” She was wolfing down her food and he smiled. “I see your appetite’s come back.”

  She swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “Telling you all this has helped. I feel a lot better.”

  “Good.” In one way, he felt better, too. That invisible barrier of secrets she’d kept between them was history. All kinds of new possibilities for the future were conceivable now. But first they had to take care of the present. Briskly, Nick said, “Finish up and then we need to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “There’s a sheriffs department substation right near here, on Fiji Way. You’ll tell your story, we’ll look at some pictures, see if we can get a make on this guy, track him down.” He glanced around, caught the waitress’s eye and signaled for the check. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there with you.”

  “No.”

  Both her answer and the determined way she said it surprised him. “You don’t have a lot of choice.”

  The fear returned to her eyes briefly, but she seemed to be making an effort to stay in control. “Are you sure it will go the way you think it will? Are you sure I’ll be treated as an innocent party, or even that I’ll be treated fairly?”

  “I’ll see to it,” he said confidently.

  “It’s not enough, Nick. Remembe
r, I told you my dad was a cop. I know what happens. He used to brag about it—if they have someone in custody, and any kind of a case can be made for their guilt, they stop looking. They’re shorthanded, or case-loads are too large, or maybe they’re just lazy, but if there’s enough evidence to turn it over to the D.A., they stop looking. That’s how it is in Massachusetts, and I imagine it’s the same in California.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I said, I’ll be there.”

  Damn, he hated when people ran down his profession, even though what Carly said was—on occasion—how the system worked. If she turned herself in, the authorities would have a woman who admitted to being on the scene of a murder and whose fingerprints probably matched the ones found there. They might or might not book her and throw her in a tank, but whatever happened, she’d wind up having to deal with lawyers, bail, notoriety. Her life would be changed forever.

  Still, there really was no other option. “Sorry,” he said as the waitress set down the check. He fished in his pocket for money then peeled off a twenty. “If I could spare you the ordeal, I would, but I can’t. Besides, it’s probably the safest place for you to be right now.”

  “Nick.” The intensity in her voice made him glance up. Her jaw was set stubbornly. “I don’t have to go to the police station, not if I don’t want to. I’m a witness, not an accessory, and I also know that no one can force a witness to come forward. So, I’m sorry, but I just won’t.”

  “Carly—”

  “At least, not now.” The determination in her eyes softened slightly. “Give me a little time, please, twenty-four hours. Maybe I’ll remember something else, maybe the police will make some progress on their own. It’s a lot to ask of you, I know, but I’m asking.” She swallowed, then added, “If by this time tomorrow you still think I should turn myself in, I will.”

  “This is crazy,” he said with equal intensity. “If nothing else, you belong in protective custody. You’re in danger. You’re an eyewitness to one of the biggest gangland murders in southern California history.”