“How do you explain the lug wrench?” Scotty asked.
“I don’t have this all nailed down,” she shot back. “Humor me. Let’s see if we can roust a tenant at that place.”
No one there. The blinds in the front windows were closed, pulled down to within an inch of the window sash. Sally went to the window closest to the door and peeked in. No furniture. A pile of trash on the floor.
Scotty joined her. “No tenants,” he said, “but no ‘For Sale’ sign either.”
“That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been sold lately,” Sally observed, thinking back to the discussion between the yoga Realtors. “Sometimes they do deals before the house is listed for the public. In a hot market like this, I bet that happens a lot. Don’t you think it’s worth finding out if Brad had some connection to this place?”
Was that a glimmer of grudging admiration in his eyes? If so, it was gone in a second. “I’ll check it out,” he said.
They walked back around to the alley and got in his truck. But he didn’t start the engine. He turned to face her. “I also came by to let you know about those family photos of yours. They were taken with a camera phone.”
“How do you know?” asked Sally.
“The quality. Compared to other digital images, they’re pretty horrible. That won’t be true for long, I’m told, but for now, at least, there’s a big difference,” Scotty said.
“But they’re easy to take,” said Sally. “I mean, it’s getting to the point where everywhere you go, somebody’s taking a picture. Jesus, sometimes I think camera phone pictures could replace writing. I’m pretty much a throw-back when it comes to technology. Every other college professor in the country has gone to websites and Power-Point and all that stuff, or at least overhead transparencies, and I’m still scribbling all over the blackboard. But my students make up for it. Last week I did a lecture on the history of abortion in America, in my women’s rights class. I noticed one student pretty much slept through the whole thing, which bugs the shit out of me, naturally. But then, at the end of class, she woke up, took out her cell phone, and took a picture of the blackboard. She can probably Google every term I wrote down, and get enough information to pass a test on the subject.”
“Those camera phones can send pictures anywhere in a second,” Scotty said.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Sally. “Hawk finally got a digital camera, and he has to plug a chip into the computer in order to send photos to his dad. But you’re saying you don’t need that extra step with these phones?”
“Nope. And that makes them even more of a problem for us. Whoever took the pictures can just send them out, with messages, from a car, or a gas station, or sitting on a park bench. They’re completely mobile. Virtually impossible to track, if they don’t want to be found.”
Sally frowned. “You’d think, by now, I’d have noticed somebody taking pictures of me, even with a cell camera. But then again, I guess if they wanted to be sneaky about it, they wouldn’t make a big deal of holding out the phone, framing the shot, all that. They’d just act like they were making a call.”
“Take another look at the pictures,” said Scotty. “They aren’t exactly award-winning shots. They’re framed all crooked, off center, like that.”
“And the photographer’s purpose,” said Sally, “isn’t to make art. It’s to let Hawk and me know we’re being watched. It’s to intimidate us.”
“Especially you,” said Scotty.
“It works,” said Sally, “but it pisses me off too. I mean, whoever it was followed me down to the mall in Fort Collins. I was looking for Charlie, and they know it. They want me to stop trying to help her.”
Scotty was silent.
“I guess you know about the drug dealing that was going on at Billy’s place,” Sally said.
Scotty’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know about it?” he asked.
“Let’s just say that since I’m a university professor, certain information comes across my path now and then,” she replied. “Which one of the tenants was in the business?”
“Which of your students was looking to score?” Scotty asked in turn.
“Somebody who had nothing to do with anything, Scotty. Don’t hammer at me for a name—he’s not involved. He’s just a guy who’s trying to stop being a slacker and start being a grown-up, and along the way he happened in on one of the parties at that place. He described the scene to Hawk and me—lots of drink and drugs, predatory older guys, and underage kids there, getting drunk and stoned.”
“As your slacker students would say, duh,” Scotty said. “Why do you think we bother busting parties? It’s not because cops hate fun.”
“Right,” said Sally. “Take you, for instance. You practically invented fun.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Scotty, and their gazes met and glanced off each other, and she managed not to let him see her shiver.
“Um. Yeah. So anyway, this guy told us he’d seen Charlie pitch a fit when one of the guys started hitting on some young girls in a very aggressive way. Sounded like Billy dragged her away before she got herself punched or worse,” Sally told him.
“You never know,” Scotty mused. “Girls who’ve been treated like shit sometimes respond by leading other girls into bad situations. Sometimes they want to play savior. Sometimes both. They swing back and forth. It’s part of the pathology that leads them into trouble. And make no mistake, Sally, Charlotte Preston is in big trouble.”
“When hasn’t she been?” Sally asked. “Poor Charlie. Even if—when—she comes to her senses, she’s way too fucked up to be able to defend herself. It’s a good thing she’s got a smart lawyer.”
Scotty looked at her. “She does?” he asked.
“Yeah. Dave Haggerty’s associate. I called him right after they took Charlie to the hospital, and he got in touch with the lawyer. I saw her myself.”
“I was at the hospital that afternoon,” said Scotty. “I wanted to see if the kid was conscious enough to give us a statement. She wasn’t.”
“And she shouldn’t have, even if she had been,” Sally said. “That’s what lawyers are for.”
“There wasn’t any lawyer there,” said Scotty. “The only person there was Bea Preston. And she’d given the doctors strict instructions that nobody was to be allowed to see Charlotte. Nobody.”
Bad, bad news. “She must have fired the lawyer. I talked to Bea, Scotty. And Charlie too. Those women hate each other. What if Charlie needs to be protected from her?”
Scotty’s lips pressed together. He gripped the steering wheel, stared straight ahead, and then looked over at Sally with as much intensity in his icy green eyes as she’d ever seen him display. “We have a deputy at the hospital all the time, and we’ve let the doctors know we’re to be kept informed on the girl’s medical condition. When she’s able, we’ll talk to her. This is a murder investigation, Dr. Alder,” he said. “Even somebody who’s got a direct line to Jesus can’t mess with us.”
Chapter 19
The Ring of Fire
Hawk stood at the kitchen counter, sorting through the day’s mail. “There’s a message for you on the machine,” he said.
“Oh?” she said. “Who was it?”
He began leafing through the new Mother Jones magazine, not even bothering to look up as he said, “Dave Haggerty.”
“Uh, okay,” she said, a flush of embarrassment washing over her face.
And now he did look up, and then said in a very even, very quiet voice, “What’s the deal, Sal?”
She met his gaze. “I just saw Scotty Atkins. He said Bea Preston had gotten rid of Charlie’s lawyer. It’s probably about that.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, looking back down at the magazine, turning a page. “Listen to the message.”
“Hawk,” she began.
Now he looked at her straight, a furrow of pain between his eyebrows, lips pressed tight. “Later,” he said.
Dave Haggerty. He was one for crossing l
ines. What was on that message? Whatever it was, something had put hurt and distance in her lover’s eyes. She could feel Hawk stepping back, withdrawing. The fear of losing him seared through her.
She touched his arm.
“Go listen to your message,” he said. “Don’t, Hawk. Don’t do this. Dave Haggerty cares about those kids. He’s also a potential donor to my center,” she said. “Edna’s putting on the pressure.”
He took a breath. “This isn’t about Edna. It isn’t a work thing,” he told her, putting down the mail and walking to the refrigerator. “I think I’ll just have a sandwich for dinner and then go to my office. Got a lot of work to do.”
“Hawk,” said Sally. “Please. Don’t pull away from me. You care about this too.”
“Right now, actually, I don’t, Sally,” he answered. “It’s eating you alive, and I can’t compete. I don’t even want to.”
“You don’t have to compete,” said Sally. “You saw Charlie. For God’s sake, you saw Brad Preston’s body! Somebody sent those pictures to you. We’re both in this.”
“And wouldn’t it be better, in pretty much every way, to leave this to the cops?”
“It would be easier,” Sally admitted. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why Dave called.”
His eyes bored in on her. “The man’s hitting on you, Sally. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“You’d better do something,” he told her, opening the fridge and turning his back on her.
She went to the phone and punched up the message.
“Hello, beautiful woman. Dave here.” His hypnotic voice. “We’ve got a problem. I need to see you as soon as you can get away.”
Yeah. That crossed the line.
The last time she’d seen that kind of hurt in Hawk’s eyes, he’d been standing by her bedroom door, covered with snow. It was the middle of a winter night. And she was naked in bed. With somebody else.
She’d never expected to regain his trust, let alone his love. Years and years had passed before she’d seen him again.
Even a man as sane and strong as Hawk Green had a fragile side. How could she hurt him again?
But what could she do?
She heard the front door slam.
She could call Haggerty back, but she was hardly in the mood.
She could try to find out more about the parties and the drugs. Aggie Stark doubtless knew a lot more than she’d been telling.
The idea of pounding on a fourteen-year-old didn’t have much appeal.
She could call Bea Preston and ask why she’d gotten rid of the lawyer. Now there was a really pleasant prospect.
Sally was out of gas.
She poured herself a glass of sauvignon blanc. A big glass. Then she went into the bathroom, opened the tap, dumped in enough lilac bath potion to submerge the entire bathroom in perfumed bubbles. She got a steamy suspense novel and, after a minute, her cell phone. If a long and very indulgent soak didn’t make her feel better, she could call Delice and vent. Or maybe, when she’d relaxed a little, she’d call Hawk and see if she could coax him into coming home to talk it out.
The combination of warm, fragrant, foamy water, cool wine, and Hollywood writing had her dozing in no time. She awoke with a start, just in time to save the book from following so many of its best-selling predecessors to a watery grave.
But it wasn’t just the weight of the downward drifting paperback that had wakened her. Had she heard the front door open and close?
Her spirit lifted. Maybe Hawk had decided on his own that it wasn’t a good idea for them to spend an evening by themselves, getting madder, or more defensive, at least farther apart. Maybe, any minute, he’d open the bathroom door, give her a pleading smile, propose joining her in the tub.
Footsteps in the front hall. Damp as she was, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She knew the sound of Hawk’s footsteps, and these were different. Unfamiliar. Oddly tentative, as if the person who’d entered was tiptoeing, trying not to be heard. And nobody was calling out to see if anybody was home. Something was very, very wrong.
She leaped out of the bathtub, sloshing water and bubbles on the floor as she hurried to lock the door.
Not a moment too soon. Her splashing around let the intruder know she was there. Running footsteps, pounding, and in no time, the terrible noise of somebody strong trying to wrench the bathroom door off its hinges.
Sally lunged to the floor for her phone. Standing naked and dripping, as far from the door as she could get, she called 911. “This is Sally Alder. I’m locked in my bathroom and there’s somebody trying to break in. Listen!” She held the phone out so that the operator could hear the banging. “You’ve got to get out here right now!”
The dispatcher asked for her address.
Sally gave it. “They’re on the way!” she shouted, hoping the prowler was paying attention. Then she went nuts. “That was the sheriff’s office, you fucking creep, and they’re going to be here in about ten seconds!”
The pounding stopped.
Sally froze. She desperately hoped the guy—a guy, surely?—was half as scared as she was now, but wouldn’t that set him running as fast as he could? Maybe she should have tried to stall him until they came, so they could catch him in the act of breaking into her goddamn bathroom?
Silence. She waited a fraction of a second, listening hard for the sound of footsteps moving away from the door. Nothing. She was shaking so hard her teeth were rattling. And she was still bare-ass naked. She wrapped a towel around herself, working for a little warmth.
Still nothing.
And then a clicking noise, followed by the clunk of metal on the wooden door. Stop. Hey. What was that sound?
Terror struck. She dived behind the toilet. The door splintered. The full-length mirror next to the bathtub shattered, glass spraying everywhere.
Her ears were ringing so hard, she almost didn’t hear the siren.
She did, at last, hear the footsteps running away, as she squeezed herself into the space between the toilet and the wall.
That was how Dickie Langham found her when he surged in, minutes later. He hauled her to her feet, held her at arm’s length. “Are you hurt? Anything? Anything, Sally?”
She burst into sobs.
“Come on!” he said. “If you can tell me, spit it out. Sally...” He began to run his hands down her arms, eyes moving over her body to check for injury.
She clung to the towel, knotted under her arms. “I-I-I-, I’m f-f-f-f-f-f-f...”
“Oh fuck,” said Dickie, ascertaining that she wasn’t bleeding, nothing was broken. “Oh Jesus, oh God, oh fuck, oh Christ,” he said, pulling her into a crushing, incredibly comforting bear hug. “Oh God, Sally. How the fuck...”
She hugged him back, the towel hanging in there, partly due to the lack of space between them.
And then Hawk was there, and Dickie let her go, and Hawk wrapped her up, and there was quite a bit of crying going on.
By the time Scotty Atkins and the crime scene team arrived, she was bundled up in sweats and wool socks and felt slippers, shivering at the kitchen table while Hawk put on the kettle for tea, and then came back to sit down and hold her hand. “It’s my fault,” he kept saying. “I shouldn’t have left. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Dickie said, unwrapping a stick of gum and chomping down. “The responsibility belongs entirely to whoever fired that gun. Now, Sally, you have to stay calm here and tell me everything—every single living thing—you can remember about what happened.”
“How the hell do I know?” she said. “I was nodding off in the bath when somebody came into my house. I locked the door and called 911 while whoever it was did his best to rip the door off.”
Dickie’s lips curled upward. “It’s not everybody who takes their phone into the bathtub,” he said.
“It’s not like I can’t go anywhere without it,” Sally said. “But, well, Hawk and I ha
d a fight. I was thinking about calling him from the tub.”
“Too much information,” said Dickie.
“You asked,” Sally shot back.
“Well, anyway, maybe it’s good you had that fight. So can the guilt,” he told Hawk.
Hawk just shook his head.
“Now give me the details,” said Dickie.
So she went over it for him, trying hard to recall the sound of the footsteps, of first the clicking, then the thunk of the gun against the door. And when Atkins emerged from the bathroom, leaving the crime scene guys to complete their meticulous work, she recounted every detail all over again.
“We found the slug,” said Scotty, “embedded in the Sheetrock behind where the mirror was. It’s messed up, but judging from what it did to the door and the size of it, it looks to me like a three-eighty.”
“Nice,” said Dickie. “Very nice.”
“What does that mean?” Sally asked. Everything she knew about guns could be put in your eye.
“You say you heard a click first, before the sound of the gun on the door?” Scotty asked.
“Yes,” said Sally. “I’m sure.”
“There’s a kind of gun called a three-eighty, very popular with the street punk crowd,” said Scotty. “Nice little death machine you can put in your sock. The bad little kids love ’em because they’re cheap and small with a lot of stopping power.”
“Stopping power?” Sally said.
“Yeah. Like about twice as much as a small caliber weapon of about the same size,” Scotty explained. “That’s why they’re so well liked.”
“Oh,” she said weakly.
“But they’re not real reliable, and that appeals to the kind of moron who gets a rush out of wondering if he’ll blow his hand off when he pulls the trigger. Lots were, and are, sold illegally,” Dickie added. “People generally refer to this kind of cheap gun as a ‘Saturday night special.’ There are a bunch of gun manufacturers, in a kind of ring surrounding L.A., that specialize in making cheap handguns for gang-bangers. Cops call it the ‘Ring of Fire,’ ” Dickie said. “This one company, Bryco, used to make a hell of a lot of three-eighties.”
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