I scrambled to my haunches, my chin dripping blood, my ankle aching so much it felt as though it had been held over a bonfire.
“He’s coming, Dove! Throw something toward the back of the precinct to buy time, Stevie!”
I whipped around, trying to stay as low as possible, reaching up on the desk to find what I was pretty sure was a stapler. I lobbed it over my head, the sound resonating behind me when it hit another metal desk.
“Get under the desk, malutka! Hurry, take the boy with you!”
“I said stop, Miss Cartwright!” Detective Montgomery yelled, just as I grabbed at Officer Baby-Face’s leg and tugged him down to the floor, pulling him in a crab-like walk until we were around a very small corner.
My voice trembled as I looked into his panicked eyes, my sweaty hands gripping his arm. “Detective Montgomery killed Sophia Fleming. You have to believe me! Get your gun and prepare to defend us. When he comes around that corner, you need to take him out or he’s going to kill me!”
I’m not sure if Detective Montgomery saw Officer Baby-Face—a.k.a Officer McNamara—or if he knew he and Sandwich were the only two in the station or not. I only know the kid was terrified, and it showed on his face and in his jerky gestures as he reached for his gun. When he went for his weapon, holstered at his side, he fumbled, dropping it on the floor, where it went skidding under a desk in the maze of steel.
He looked at me, wide-eyed and terrified, and I looked at him with likely the same expression. If he couldn’t save me, we were toast.
As Detective Montgomery crashed his way through the waist-high doors that led to the back of the precinct, calling my name, I was at a loss for what to do. Where did they keep the guns? Could I shoot a gun? Maybe that was something Win and I should practice sometime soon—if I lived, that is.
“Where are you, Miss Cartwright?” he called, almost playfully. “I like hide and seek as much as the next person, but I have things to do tonight! Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”
I squeezed into the corner as tightly as I could, keeping Officer McNamara close, praying Detective Montgomery couldn’t hear our ragged breathing.
“Stevie! Listen carefully, grab Baby-Face by the hand and hold tight. Now see that office chair about five feet diagonally to you?”
I looked to the chair and nodded. It seemed so close, but I knew it was about as far as Bangladesh if I messed this up.
“See the wheels on it? How it swivels?” Win asked. “Give it a shove. Shove it for all you’re worth right at him, distract him, then run for the gun, it’s right under that desk. See it?”
As Officer Montgomery continued to thrash his way through the station, I knew he’d be coming around the row of desks at any second.
“No, malutka! Do not listen to Zero! You need to make a sharp right back around the corner and dive under the desk until he turns his back, and then get that gun!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bagrov—that’s too risky and probably why you ended up dead in the first place! She needs to disable him first!”
“A gun disables, no, Zero? Always thinking you know better, but you are just as dead as me!”
I waited until Detective Montgomery banged menacingly on a desk before I whisper-yelled, “Knock it off, you two!”
Officer McNamara looked at me as though I’d lost the last nut keeping all my bolts in place, but the moment I saw Officer Montgomery’s feet, I sort of followed both of my bickering spies’ instructions. I launched myself at the chair, grabbing it by the legs and pulled myself up so quickly, I got a head rush.
Instead of sending it skittering across the floor, I picked it up and launched it at Detective Montgomery’s dark head (thank you, Tae Bo) with a rebel yell.
He howled when the chair made contact with his forehead, splitting it open and knocking him to the ground.
“Good eye, Dove! Now get that gun!”
“Go right, petal! It is under desk straight ahead. Go right!”
“Dive, Stevie, dive! Stay behind the desk. Use it as your shield!”
I dove just as Detective Montgomery recovered, but that wasn’t before I saw poor Officer McNamara making an attempt to run at Montgomery’s knees.
Without qualm, without so much as a bead of sweat, Detective Montgomery shot him, the bullet hitting him in his left shoulder, causing a patch of dark blood to bloom as he fell to the ground.
“Get the gun, Stevie!”
Someone was clearly on my side tonight as I stretched to reach the gun, my arm aching. I connected with the cool finish of it and gripped the handle. I bit off my cry of victory, but I clung to that gun that I had no idea how to use like it was the last Betsey Johnson purse on the seventy-five-percent-off rack.
Let’s just see who was shooting whom now, eh?
As Detective Montgomery’s footsteps grew closer, I was ready. I rolled to the opposite side of the desk, wincing when I rolled on the shoulder I’d hurt back in the parking lot.
I had to get behind him in order to get any leverage. Just as he rounded the corner of the group of desks, I popped up. “Do not move, Detective Simone!” I barked the order, pointing the gun at his broad back with a hand that shook like a leaf.
“Stevie, no!” Win shouted.
“Malutka, stop!” Arkady bellowed in my ear.
But I had a gun. Why would I stop? Silly spies. Don’t they know I get how this works now?
In that moment, in that very crucial moment when Detective Montgomery swung around and I totally expected him to have a look of crushed surprise on his face, he didn’t look very surprised at all.
No. In fact, he looked downright smug. Which was curious indeed. So I decided to get heavy-handed with my orders and wipe the smug right off his handsome, evil, framing-someone-for-murder face. “I said don’t move!”
“Stevie!” Both Win and Arkady yelled at once, and it was with much exasperation.
“Miss Cartwright?”
I lifted my bloody chin, my eyes narrowing. “Detective Going-To-Do-Life-Behind-Bars?”
And then, as though in surround sound, Win, Arkady and Detective Montgomery all said, “The safety’s still on the gun!”
Again with the hindsight, right?
I blanched. I didn’t know thing one about getting the safety off, and beyond that, there wasn’t time.
So I made peace with death, totally ready to meet my maker as Detective Montgomery lifted his pistol and pointed it at me, aiming right at my forehead.
Closing my eyes, I whispered, “Catch up with you on the other side, Win.”
“Stevie, nooo!” Win roared, the words rife with a terror I could actually hear.
I saw my whole life flash before me. Belfry’s tiny wings whirred behind my eyelids, his tiny giggle wrenching at my heart. I saw Whiskey, happy, bounding toward me, ball in mouth, his soft fur pressing to my face when I kissed him.
And I relived that daggone kiss with Win, just before I heard, “Montgomery! You’ll pay for killing my principessa!”
And then there were more shots of gunfire—what sounded like a hundred before I heard the screech of metal desk meeting a body and a hard crash to the ground.
“Stevie! Open your eyes!”
I popped them open to find a very beefy man in a navy suit with thick, slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair shove a gun across the floor in plain sight and hold his hands up in submission, dropping to his knees.
Officer Gorton raced up behind him, gun drawn as he approached the large man. “Police! Keep those hands where I can see them! Don’t move!”
Chapter 17
“Don’t you look at me like that, Sipowicz, all bug-eyed and caged-animal rage. I can’t help it if you worked with a psychopath. Stop behaving like I stole your BFF right out from under you and be grateful I stopped him before he could take you out, too. Oh, and he called you a moron. Howdya like them apples?” I seethed at Officer Moore as he growled at me as though this was all my fault.
Unfortunately, hours later, even after a full confession f
rom Cesar Ortolini to Sandwich, and our Eb-Falls police department’s reigning captain, Anson Meadows as well as all the slimy details shared with Luis, Detective Moore still wasn’t in the Stevie’s Telling the Truth camp. He was angry and disgusted, but I had to suspect he was disgusted with himself for not figuring out his partner was a total douchcanoe.
They’d put me in my favorite interrogation room once more, and we’d been going over my story, and how I’d figured out Detective Montgomery was the murderer, for what felt like forever. My ankle was ablaze and swollen and my nose might just as well have its own zip code for the size it had become. Literally, I felt it throb in time with my hacked-up chin.
Detective Moore leaned forward and snarled at me, but Sandwich put an arm in front of Moore and shoved him back in his chair. “She’s telling the truth, man. I just heard it myself from Ortolini. Back off!”
Cesar Ortolini was the man who’d shot Detective Montgomery. I still couldn’t believe it—or my luck that he’d shown up when he did.
Luis, his eyes bleary from lack of sleep, still managed to have that stern look that left you feeling his disappointment without him ever saying a word. “Gentleman, have we any more questions for Miss Cartwright? As you can see, not only is she innocent, but she’s in need of some medical attention.”
Detective Moore held up a hand. “I just wanna get this straight. So you figured out Montgomery was the gun for hire on Sophia Fleming how, again?”
I rolled my eyes and held an ice pack to my bloody chin. “From Eleanor’s picture. Do you see him parked in that car, taking photos? This isn’t the only one she has, either, Detective Moore. He’d been following Sophia around for at least a month. Eleanor was taking pictures of Officer Nelson and Sophia, and she caught your BFF in them on several occasions.” I pointed to the most damning picture with my also very bloody, ripped-to-shreds fingernail.
Detective Moore was finally getting the big picture when he snarled, “So he’s been working for Antonelli all this time. That son of a—”
Luis, obviously fed up, slammed his briefcase shut. “A lady is present, Detective. I’ll kindly ask you to keep your language clean.”
Sandwich, who also held an ice pack to his head, said, “So here’s the story as per Cesar Ortolini. Sophia Fleming isn’t Sophia Fleming, she’s Theresa Ortolini. The mob boss’s kid.”
My eyes popped open. A mob boss’s kid? Sophia? “You’re kidding?” I asked, even though I knew darn well he wasn’t.
Sandwich’s eyes went serious. “Yep. She was Gino Fratiani’s girlfriend back in Chicago and they were gonna get married, but because there was bad blood between the families, Cesar didn’t want his daughter to marry him.”
I sighed as everything came together for me in mere seconds. It really was the ultimate sort of Romeo and Juliet.
I turned to Luis, who confirmed Sandwich’s words with a nod, and then I looked to Sandwich again. “So Sophia ran away after Gino was killed, didn’t she?”
He clucked his tongue. “Yep. That’s what I’m hearing from her sister, she’s the girl in the picture you found at Sophia’s.”
Sophia’s—or Theresa’s—sister. When Luis briefed me moments before I was going in to be questioned, he’d told me Audrianna had arrived at the police station just twenty minutes after her father had shot and killed Officer Montgomery.
She was the woman in the picture hidden in the teddy bear, and she’d spilled the whole story about what happened the night Gino Fratiani was killed to the police, as told to her by Sophia.
“So Sophia…er, Theresa, saw the guy who killed Gino?” I asked, my heart clenching tight at how horrible that must have been for her.
Leaning his burly arms on the table, Sandwich bobbed his head again. “Yes. But the hitman wasn’t who Gino’s father, Loosey Luciano, thought it was. It wasn’t a hit ordered from Cesar at all. He didn’t like Sophia dating Gino, but he didn’t order him killed. The hit came from Tonio Antonelli. He had some kind of beef with Luciano, so Tonio took Gino out to prove a point. Tonio knew Cesar Ortolini would immediately suspect Luciano. So Tonio set up the whole bar murder, according to Audrianna’s suspicions. But what he didn’t count on was Sophia seeing who killed Gino because she wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with.”
I pinched my temples, perplexed. “But all Sophia had to do was tell her father who the killer was and he’d have killed Antonelli’s hitman, wouldn’t he? Isn’t that how it works? Eye for an eye, horse heads, ring kissing and such?”
Luis patted my hand. “Audrianna said Sophia thought it was their father who’d set up the hit—which apparently isn’t uncommon in a mob family if you don’t like who your child is dating.”
My stomach sank. How dreadful to think your own father would do such a thing.
Sandwich reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “But even more, Audrianna said Sophia was fed up with all the death. She hated the whole mob thing. Hated the violence, the continual fear. Her sister says Sophia claimed the cycle had to be broken somehow or the revenge killing would never end. She wanted to mourn Gino in peace. So one night shortly after Gino was killed, she packed up very few things and ran away. Being no stranger to stolen identities and the means to get her hands on them, she had a friend create one for her, and she left everything behind to start over. Somehow, she ended up here in Eb Falls. In fact, Miss Fleming never contacted her family again except for that one time in the library.”
Running my finger along the table, I nodded my understanding, my eyes grainy and sore. “You mean when Tippy overheard her on the phone speaking in another language?”
“Yep.”
“Wow,” I whispered, sorrow punching me in the gut again. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if she’d had the chance to tell Dana about her past. But I tried not to linger on what-ifs—they only made everything much harder.
“Yeah. Wow,” Sandwich muttered.
Detective Moore popped his lips and squinted. “So Antonelli found out Sophia was here somehow. That’s why they got in touch with Montgomery. Right?”
Sandwich’s lips thinned as he sat back in his chair. “According to Cesar Ortolini, Detective Montgomery’s been doing paid hits for the Antonellis and others like him for some years now. They had to eliminate Sophia because she knew the identity of the man who’d killed Gino, a man by the street name of Right-Eye Tucci, who works for Antonelli.”
“So how did they find out Sophia was here?” Detective Moore asked, his face not nearly as angry anymore.
Luis cleared his throat and folded his hands. “It was that same phone call Tippy Brown, from the diner, overheard. Unfortunately, Detective Montgomery heard it, too, per Tippy. Sophia was calling her sister—on a burner cell, according to Audrianna. Sophia found out her mother was ill by reading her sister’s Facebook page. So she took a chance and called Audrianna to check on her.”
Which was the nail in her coffin. Gosh, I hated that. Just one phone call and nothing but pure luck on Detective Montgomery’s part, and a beautiful spirit was gone forever. But it explained everything. Why Sophia didn’t appear to have any past, why she’d been afraid to accept Dana’s proposal.
“When Detective Montgomery discovered Sophia was actually Theresa, we assume he called up Tonio, told him he’d found her, and named his price for her head. The rest, unfortunately, was quite easy,” Luis explained. “As Miss Cartwright told you, Sophia knew Detective Montgomery, so it was easy enough for him to approach her, and he knew she’d trust him.”
Sandwich shifted uncomfortably in the small metal chair, where he sat opposite me and Luis. “That rat bas—Er, liar. And by the way, that’s why there wasn’t a shred of evidence found by forensics in Sophia’s apartment.”
“Something else to note,” Luis offered. “Montgomery also knew his way around a safe, according to his prior precinct sergeant in, of all places, Chicago, where he did his early years as an officer of the law. I’d bet my retirement fund that was how he got into Of
ficer Nelson’s, stole his gun, used it on Sophia, and got it back before Officer Nelson was the wiser.
“Now that we know Detective Montgomery killed Sophia, I’ve asked your people to recheck the gun for his prints as a just in case. Likely there’ll be none, but it never hurts to be thorough. I’ve also asked them to conduct a search for Sophia’s cell phone, which still hasn’t been recovered, according to your evidence roster, and that shirt with the lipstick on it; the one Miss Cartwright saw when she was questioned early in this investigation. With any luck, it hasn’t been laundered.”
I fought the bile rising in my throat. What a smarmy so and so. All that time I’d thought Detective Montgomery was such a decent, if not annoying guy, he was a cold-blooded killer for hire—a mole for the mob.
But I still needed a couple more answers. “So how in the heck did Ortolini find out it was Montgomery who’d killed Sophia?” I asked Luis.
“That happened just before he killed Tonio Antonelli. According to Cesar, anyway. Antonelli had a mole in his midst—a mole from the Ortolini camp. When the mole overheard the hit on Sophia was successful, he went straight to Cesar, and Cesar went straight to Antonelli.”
My head spun from the details of all this retribution and murders for hire and mobsters and revenge. I could only imagine how awful that had to have been for Sophia, but I hoped she knew, wherever she was, her father hadn’t ordered the hit on Gino.
“So you put Sophia’s murder together with just the picture, Stevie?” Sandwich asked, putting the icepack on his forehead now.
I shrugged, exhausted, but I explained once more how I’d dawn my conclusions. “It wasn’t just the picture, but that cinched the deal. When Detective Montgomery and Sipowicz here interviewed me after I found Sophia, Montgomery had that lipstick on his collar, and when I remembered Sophia had a very similar color on that night, everything clicked. I have to assume she brushed against him—maybe when he picked her up and put her in the boat to stage the murder? I don’t know how it got there, but if they find the shirt unlaundered and they test it against Sophia’s lipstick, I’d guarantee they’re one in the same.
The Old Witcheroo Page 18
