He flashed me a look I couldn’t read. “Anyway, that’s why I started following Benson full-time. I wasn’t going to school much, and I stopped while I tailed him. That’s why I was following Benson and that lawyer to the parking garage that day. I stayed below, ‘cause I thought they were going to the courthouse. Weird because it was late, but I thought maybe they had night court, you know? They took so long and I didn’t see them take the elevator and then I heard a woman scream.”
Me? Was he talking about me?
He stared fixedly at the floor, but I caught the tiny movement at the doorway. Charlie stood there, watching me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Learning the truth
Thank God for a damaged brain. In a voice devoid of emotion, I said, “What did you do?”
“Ran up the stairs.” Because that’s what superheroes did. “It only took a minute or two, but I was too late. The two guys had tire irons. They’d beaten her to a pulp, the lawyer just watching like it was a TV show.”
Still not looking up, Tyler hunched his shoulders in empathetic pain. At this point, he spoke in a monotone as if he’d repeated the story dozens of times.
“I yelled at them to stop. They did, but the lawyer said something and Benson took out a gun. I kind of froze but then the FBI came from everywhere: the stairwells, cars, up the ramps, some even from ropes from the floor above. Kind of like the way they did today. Benson started firing and someone shot him. The other guy put his gun down. The lawyer never moved. Not even when they cuffed him.”
His monotone eased to something like wonder, as if recounting his favorite part of the story, one that he hadn’t had to repeat as often to law enforcement, but one that he’d undoubtedly replayed over and over in his mind, the timely rescue when all was lost.
“Rick Jarrell grabbed me and tried to hustle me out of the garage. I fought him on it. When he let me go, I went to the woman. He probably thought I knew her. Another FBI agent was already there. Charlie Graff. He knelt next to the body and called for an ambulance. Her head was bashed in, but she was still breathing. So we waited there together till the paramedics arrived. He asked me once if I knew her, but I said no. I didn’t know then that she was his sister.”
He looked at me, then past me to Charlie. He grimaced.
“Finish it,” Charlie said.
I gritted my teeth. I’d waited twenty months to hear this story, but now it sounded like a news story that had happened to someone else. I’d been half-inclined to tell Tyler to stop, but old habits died hard. I wouldn’t back down in front of Charlie. He’d hidden the truth from me long enough.
Tyler’s gaze stayed on me as if waiting for my permission. I nodded, glad that the movement didn’t hurt my head much. “Finish it,” I echoed my brother.
“I never saw her again. Rick Jarrell kind of took over, hauled me to FBI offices, asked me lots of questions. Went over my investigation into Benson about a million times. They wouldn’t let me call my parents, which I thought was illegal. They let me sleep on a couch for a few hours. Then Charlie …” Tyler spoke as if my brother wasn’t in the room “… showed up and asked me to repeat what happened. That’s when he said the woman died.”
I felt Charlie’s sardonic look but didn’t return it. I did return Tyler’s steady gaze.
“You never went home?” I already knew the answer but wanted to hear him say it.
Tyler exhaled. “They told me they were putting me in Witness Protection, that they knew all about the law firm and that I wouldn’t be safe unless I disappeared. I figured that meant my family wouldn’t be safe either. The perps …” For a second, I lost track of the story as I reflected on his easy acquisition of law enforcement slang. From experience or crime shows?
“…the FBI fixed it that my disappearance didn’t have anything to do with the kid in the parking garage. Rick Jarrell got custody of me, but he let me live in that tricked out shed at an FBI rental. To give me more space. I had to finish high school online, which I did a year ago, and I worked at a diner too. They told me it wouldn’t take much time to arrest those guys and I could go back home. After a year, I started thinking it was taking too long and I should help them out.”
Uh huh. My back had kinked itself with me leaning forward so I relaxed against the cushion, feeling the tension in the bad leg and my back ease. I stared at Charlie till he sat in the chair next to Tyler.
The teacher look. It still worked.
“You have enough on Pellery to lock him up for good?” I asked my brother.
“Our people are going through the law offices now. They’ve already found the files of kids taken. A couple of dozen in the last eight years, from Orange, LA, and Inland Counties. The other shooter is copping a plea, giving us all he knew. He only worked for the law firm for a year, so he didn’t know about Pellery having you beaten or why you were there. So, Pam, why were you there?”
His question triggered an ominous pounding in my head. I also noticed he hadn’t answered my question.
I raised my voice. “You have enough to convict Pellery, right?”
Tyler slewed sideways in his seat to stare at my brother. “Charlie?” He gripped the metal armrest so tightly, his hand whitened.
“Pellery’s gone. His lawyer showed up and we left her alone with him. She had papers for his release. After talking with him, she requested we process him out, but we stalled her till we could talk to the judge. When we returned to the interrogation room, he was gone. A locked door, a dozen personnel between him and the exit, and he gets out.”
“My parents, sisters …” Tyler’s face paled.
Charlie shifted his gaze off me to Tyler. “We’ve moved them to a safe house. They’re okay. They’re more than okay. I told them that you were safe so they’re pretty much overjoyed.”
Tyler took a shaky breath and managed a grin.
Charlie’s laser-beam consideration shifted back to me again. “You don’t remember, do you?”
I shrugged. “Not much. Does it matter? If you catch the guy, you have enough without Tyler or me testifying, right?”
“We can get more with you on the stand and the photos of what he did to you.”
I glanced down the hall. The Ruiz family hadn’t returned from dinner yet, I needed to get back to Dante, and Ivy was walking towards us, a question on her face. Weller was with her.
I stood. “What you have will have to be enough. You’ve got the kid secured?”
He masked his disappointment well. He did a stone face as well as Dante did. Does. “I’m taking him to his folks as soon as Jarrell gets here.” Catching sight of our aunt, he stood, followed by a well-mannered Tyler.
“I’ll be with Dante.” Rising from my wheelchair, I walked past Weller and Ivy with a nod.
After I buzzed, the nurse waved me over to Dante’s bed. “No change,” she said, before retreating to her desk.
I thought he looked better, but what did I know? I told him about Tyler, what the FBI had uncovered, and Pellery’s vanishing act. I had personal proof that people do hear things while unconscious so maybe it would comfort him to hear that we’d located the kid. Also I needed some time to think about the man who’d been responsible for my injuries. And that the FBI had lost him.
Twenty months I’d waited to find out about the accident. I felt cheated to learn there’d been no accident and simmered thinking of the conspiracy of family and healthcare professionals involved in deceiving me.
Some of the anger dissipated as I thought of the weeks Ivy sat by my bedside praying for my recovery, patiently holding my hand as I shifted between coma and recovery.
I hoped Dante didn’t feel the waves of anger, betrayal and, yes, vulnerability rolling off me. I had been beaten for a reason I might never know. And I hadn’t been able to stop it.
Why had I been in the parking garage that day? I hadn’t been lying to Charlie. I didn’t know. I remembered little of the months before the accident. Common after my type of brain damage.
&nbs
p; I did remember something. Or rather someone. And when I got to him …
Dante’s hand moved under mine. Startled, I looked at his face and saw him looking back at me.
“Ms. Graff.” His voice sounded rusty, his tone sounded both unsurprised to see me and aggrieved.
“You’re alive?” I said stupidly. The doctors had been preparing us for his dying.
“I been dead?” He sounded interested and not shocked. I suspect he knew that he’d been destined for dying before thirty.
I winced. For having a poetical mother, his tough guy grammar was atrocious.
Speaking of which … “Dante,” I began, but noticed that he looked beyond me, a mix of emotions on his face.
“Dad?”
I stepped away from the bed as his father and brothers rushed forward. As I left the joyful reunion, a nurse rounded her station, another rising with an interested expression on his face.
“Yes. Mr. Ruiz is awake.” I wanted to scold them for their pessimism, but perhaps I should congratulate Dante. He deserved the credit for exceeding expectations again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Endings, resurrections, and feathers three months later
“Why are we here?”
Dante inclined his seat as far back as it could go. Although he’d healed enough to resume driving, I suspected his wound still troubled him. He wore his stoic face.
I glanced out the window, swiping at the medallions hanging from his mirror that impeded my view of the building.
“Wait,” I said. “It’ll be worth it.”
Three months ago, he would have continued to carp at me. Three months ago, he hadn’t been shot and his thorax hadn’t been scrambled by a high velocity bullet. Now he rested with only murmur of discontent. A beam of sunlight reflected off the handful of Saint Christopher medals hanging from the rearview mirror and illuminated his face.
Unlike the rest of his family, Dante had a restless spirit. While they delighted in his recuperation at his parents’ house and newfound interest in religion, I knew better. I’d noticed his backpack behind us and his hand straying for his phone. When he’d picked me up earlier, he let an incoming message go to voicemail, but I’d seen Harmon’s name.
Yeah, I looked. That’s what I do.
“Here they come.” I straightened in the passenger seat and nodded at the door of Orange County’s Children Services.
A couple with an older woman emerged. The man carried a two year-old boy who clutched a fire engine as long as his arm. The two women flanked him. The child rested his head against his father’s shoulder while the two women touched the boy over and over with wonder and joy.
“What about them?” His face blank, Dante studied the tableau. I winced as his fingers probed the scar beneath his dark turtleneck with delicate precision.
The shirt was another reason I wanted him here. At his parents, he’d worn sweats or the casual business wear his father pressed upon him. Turtlenecks and jeans were what he wore when planning a con.
He hadn’t looked at the Virgin Mary card on his dashboard once during our drive here.
“That kid was taken at a baseball game almost two years ago. They found him in Pellery’s files and returned him to his folks today.”
Dante hunched over his steering wheel and stared at the family as they descended the steps and headed for a side parking lot. The kid waggled his fire engine once and even from this distance, I heard the father’s delighted roar. They all seemed to be laughing.
Especially the older woman. I had a clear view of her face as she glanced our way. Medy Soto. I was delighted to see her here. Not just because her grandson had been restored to their family. Mostly because her ghost no longer haunted my bedroom.
The egret population had dwindled considerably too.
“Cool,” Dante said softly.
“Worth a shot to the gut?” I asked.
He winced. “Not my gut. Why do you gotta say it like that? I didn’t do it for the kid. Not that I ain’t glad to see him back with his folks.”
The family had disappeared from our view, so Dante shifted his seat up again and would have started the car if I hadn’t stayed his hand.
“You gonna produce another family I saved?” he asked politely.
“I hear there were a couple dozen.” I’d told him this in the hospital. He fidgeted with his car keys so I decided to go with Plan B. “Since you’ve taken a tone with me, I’ll cancel the other reunions.”
He shrugged. No wisecrack. Another bad sign. He was distracted, his gaze roving the parking lot, foot tapping the clutch, hungry for trouble.
“You still thinking about that long con?” I asked.
A shade of eagerness warred with his slipping restraint as he met my gaze. “You still in?” he asked.
I pursed my lips. “I wanted to suggest an alternate project. Just waiting for when you were ready.”
“I was born ready.” Somehow his words sounded hollow, and his attention turned wary.
“I’m thinking of a longer con,” I said. “Interested?”
He frowned. “You know how it works. You get nothing from me until I have all the details.”
Although I’d rehearsed the offer with my aunt, Bobbi, and Haney, the speech fetters in my brain unlocked with a clang. I spoke from the heart, or something like that.
“You want data?” I snarled. “Here it is. I’ve decided to take on a partner in my detective agency, and you’re it.”
For good measure, I reached across the gear shift and poked him in the chest. He winced.
“Why me?”
At least he hadn’t rejected the idea. “I need a partner who has my back. You’ve proven you have mine.”
He avoided my gaze. We weren’t sentimental people, and I didn’t belabor the fact that he’d saved my life.
“So not my good looks or brilliant criminal skills?” He smirked.
“I’m not saying we won’t stray over legal boundaries now and then.” I gave him a severe look. “You will get a private investigator’s license, and you’ll have to drop any extracurricular activity. Got it?”
“Ms. Graff, you’re the one asking me to break into people’s houses and …”
Ignoring his indignation, I raised my voice. “You’re taking the straight and narrow from now on. Got it?”
“You paying me?” he countered.
“Like I said, we’ll be partners. You’ll get 30%, I’ll get 60, and the rest is for office expenses.”
“I want 40.”
I nodded and almost laughed at his chagrin. I’d been willing to go to 45%.
“You get enough cases, right? And I get a say in what we take?”
“It’s the reason, I need a partner,” I said. “One of the FBI men has family money, and wants to pass us cases that the FBI can’t work.” Rick Jarrell had sat down with me yesterday, and I drew up a retainer. I found him marginally less interesting now that I knew he was an agent, but the room still felt electric when he was in it.
Dragging my attention back to negotiations, I sweetened the deal. “The final check for the Tyler Hinshaw case, which I’ll split with you when we’re partners, was substantial. With you joining Graff & Associates, we can work more cases, not just the ones the FBI passes to us.”
“Graff & Ruiz,” he said.
I smothered a grin. “Okay. Graff & Ruiz. You pay for the new signage and business cards. And you’ll need your own desk at our Santa Ana office.”
He’d lost that restless look. Now he touched a Saint Christopher with the same reverence his mother touched the cross at her neck.
“That crappy office?” he scoffed. At my look, he added with less attitude, “It’ll do till we find something better. I’ll have Harm look around.”
Good. His color seemed better, and lively interest gleamed in his eyes. I hesitated. I’d only rehearsed this scene till he accepted and didn’t know what to say next. Teachers didn’t have partners, and I’d worked alone as an investigator.
Eventually I’d tell him that I intended to go after Pellery. I’d told my brother I wouldn’t interfere with the FBI’s search, but I was only willing to carry our current détente so far.
Instead I asked, “You want to go to the office and look over some cases?”
He shook his head. “Neither of us are recovered enough. We need a holiday. To get back to fighting form. About a week should do it.”
Fair enough. The man had earned it.
“Meet in my office a week from Monday then?”
He shot me a severe look. “And who’s gonna drive you around while I’m gone, ma’am? Those high school kids with pea-size brains? I don’t think so. You should come with me.”
I started to ask where he was going, but I suddenly knew. I could almost smell the tilapia tacos with a side of hell and hear the creak of his spider-infested catering truck.
Hey, it was better than living with egrets.
“Let’s leave tonight,” I said.
AVAILABLE NOW
Sinking Ships
The First Novella in the Abishag Mystery Series
Michelle Knowlden
An Excerpt fromSinking Ships
Until I agreed to marry an 83-year-old brain-dead man, I’d never been on the second floor of the Abishag agency.
“You can change your mind, you know.”
Parked in front of the Westwood office building on a quiet, palm-lined street off Wilshire, I stared at the second floor overlooking the courtyard. Uncomfortable in my contract-signing clothes and hearing Jen’s words, I squirmed. Before she spoke, I’d only been thinking about not moving into Thomas’s Palos Verdes Peninsula home till tomorrow night and felt glad of the reprieve. I thought she at least would be on my side.
I inhaled the scent of sage from the courtyard and warm leather seats in her Audi convertible. “I can’t back out now. I signed a contract.”
Egrets, I've Had a Few (Deluded Detective Book 2) Page 11
