Backfire fst-16

by Catherine Coulter

  That roused Boozer. “Oh, man, did that torturer accuse me of having bad blood? Did the hospital send you over because I’ve got that avian virus?”

  “No, your blood is splendid,” Sherlock said. “No viruses. We need you to tell us about the torturer.”

  Boozer looked from one to the other. “Why should I? You’re cops, like those other yahoos who hauled my butt to lockup for no good reason. My manager had to bail me out, and he was yelling at me, too, and there I was, hurting since I was the one that got knocked crazy, not those four other bozos who ganged up on me. At least the cops sent me to the hospital. Why should I tell you anything?”

  Savich said, “We think the person who drew your blood has tried to murder Judge Dredd twice.”

  Boozer blinked raccoon eyes at them. “Judge Dredd? You’re kidding me, right? I mean, they used to have a poster of Judge Dredd at the martial arts school since he used to work out there. You’re telling me the dude who took my blood is the one who tried to shoot him in the elevator yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Sherlock said. “Judge Dredd is okay, for the moment, but we want to find the shooter before he tries again. You called the man who drew your blood a torturer. Tell us about it.”

  The front door opened, and a very beautiful woman strolled in. She was wearing a black pantsuit and low-heeled shoes, and she was as blond, porcelain-skinned and fine-boned as a storybook princess. She was carrying a bag of groceries under her left arm with what looked like a pair of folded boxers sticking out of the huge tote in her right hand.

  “What is going on here, Paul? Who are these people? You’re not one of those missionary groups, are you? If you are, you’re out of luck. Paul’s a devout Catholic.”

  “Oh, hi, Mom. These here guys aren’t Christians, they’re FBI agents, and they need my help to find the guy who’s trying to kill Judge Dredd.”

  Now it was her turn to stare. “Goodness me,” she said finally, and accepted their hands to shake and their introductions and creds.

  Boozer said, “Oh, yeah, this is my Mom, Cynthia Howell. She doesn’t have my name because she divorced my pa for being a mean drunk and married Daniel, my stepdad. He gave me that black Ford One-fifty last Christmas. You saw it in the driveway, didn’t you?”

  Savich said, “A fine machine.”

  “Well, that about sums it up,” Mrs. Howell said. “My Paul can help you? Really?”

  “Mom, it turns out I saw the guy who shot Judge Dredd in the hospital. He drew my blood.”

  “I see. Paul, you tell these agents everything you know about this man while I get you another pain pill. Oh, I brought over two homemade pizzas, with lots of pepperoni, the way you like it. I know you’re hungry, but let me warm them in the oven for about ten minutes.” And she walked out of the living room and into the kitchen.

  His mother made him pizza? Pepperoni? Sherlock felt her mouth water.

  Mrs. Howell came right back with a glass of water with three ice cubes and a slice of lemon wedged on the side of the glass. Boozer took the pill, drank the water, and gave a sweet smile to his mother. She gently cupped his face. “It doesn’t look as bad this morning. I’ll get your pizza in the oven now, sweetie. Don’t wait for me. You can tell me everything later.”

  Sherlock said, “The tech who came to draw your blood?”

  Boozer leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. “He was a little guy.”

  Savich said, “Being as how you’re on the tall side, what do you mean, exactly, by little?”

  “I don’t know, shorter than you, lots less than six feet. Kind of scrawny, not all that much to him, you know what I mean?”

  You’re a behemoth. Even Dillon looks scrawny to you. Sherlock said, “Tell us about his face. What did he look like?”

  “I can’t tell you much about his face because he was wearing one of those surgical masks, you know, like he needed protection from me, like I was contagious or something. That’s why I thought when you showed up the hospital had found something was bad.”

  Savich said, “No, Mr. Gordon, there’s nothing wrong with your blood. How about his hair? What color?”

  “He had a green scrub hat on his head.”

  “Could you see his hair at all?”

  “I remember thinking the cap was too big for him. It covered his whole head, came down over his ears. If he didn’t have that big needle in his hand, I would have said something, like why didn’t the hospital give him caps that fit him, but I kept quiet.”

  Sherlock said, “How tall is your mom, Boozer?”

  They heard a lovely voice call from the kitchen, “I’m five-foot-nine, Agent Sherlock. Paul is tall, too; he takes after me.”

  Sherlock smiled at Boozer. “Picture the guy in your mind, he’s standing by your bed. Is he taller than your mom?”

  Boozer thought about this. “Nah, he’s about the same as my mom, maybe a little bit shorter.”

  “Is there anything you can tell us about him that stood out when you met him? You called him a torturer. So he wasn’t very good?”

  “That’s for sure. He would have really hurt me if I hadn’t been a little looped from all the drugs. He had a real hard time getting the needle in a vein, had to go to my other arm. I don’t know how many times he stuck me. I was wishing I could knock his block off, even with the drugs.”

  “But he finally got the needle in a vein,” Savich said. “Do you remember how many blood vials he filled?”

  Boozer shuddered, scrunched up his face like a kid. “I didn’t want to look, but after a while I did. Three of those vacuum vials with the purple stoppers. I asked him what all that blood was for, and he said something like, ‘I guess they want to make sure your insides didn’t get as wrecked as your face.’

  “I remember that because I thought it sounded kind of nasty what he said; then he left, didn’t say anything else to me. I guess he was the only one at the hospital who wasn’t nice to me.”

  Savich studied Boozer’s face for a moment. He could see the pain meds were starting to work. Boozer was sitting more easily in the big chair, his muscles loose, his hands smoothing out the afghan. He said, “Go ahead and close your eyes, Mr. Gordon. Relax. Imagine you’re watching him draw your blood. Is there anything unusual about him?”

  “I heard him cursing under his breath when he couldn’t find a vein.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, he stopped in the door when he was leaving and turned around.”

  “Look at him, Boozer. Was he old?”

  “Hard to say, over fifty, I’d say, somewhere in there.”

  Sherlock wanted him to compare his age to his mother’s, but she wasn’t stupid. She heard Mrs. Howell coming into the living room carrying a huge tray with a pepperoni pizza so hot you could feel the cheese dripping off your chin.

  “I have another pizza in the oven, so there’s plenty for all of us. Agents?”

  Boozer had his slice of pizza in his hand when he said, “I remember now, the guy was wearing this butt-ugly ring on his finger, and another ring with a big diamond on his pinkie finger. I saw them when he pulled out those surgical gloves to put on his hands.”

  The same diamond pinkie ring Mrs. Moe described the man wearing when he rented the Zodiac in Sausalito.

  Sherlock chewed a bite, then asked him, “How big was the butt-ugly ring?”

  Boozer studied her face for a moment. “You have a piece of cheese on your chin, Agent Sherlock.”

  She laughed, swiped her napkin over her face. “Thank you. The pizza is delicious, Mrs. Howell. Now, the ring, Mr. Gordon?”

  “It looked like a religious ring, you know. It looked real old and solid, with some dull jewels sticking up in the middle.”

  “Why do you say religious?”

  Boozer shrugged. “I don’t know, just a feeling, I guess, when I saw it. I was flying sort of high and it popped out of my mouth—‘You an ex-priest?’ He asked me why I thought that, and I pointed to his ring.

  “He said, �
��Nah, it’s just a ring I won off this old guy in a poker game.’ Nothing more, that was it. I didn’t really care because I was worried about that needle in his hand and I wanted it over with.”

  Twenty minutes later, the pizza settling happily in their stomachs, Mrs. Howell showed them to the door. Sherlock simply couldn’t help asking her, “May I ask you how old you are? You look like Boozer’s sister instead of his mother.”

  Mrs. Howell laughed. “If I told you it might get back to my husband. It’s the strangest thing, but it embarrasses him that I look so much younger than he does. The joys of cosmetic surgery, but don’t tell Daniel. He thinks I’m perfect, and I don’t want him to think otherwise. Isn’t my Paul an amazing young man?”

  As they walked away from Boozer’s apartment, Savich stopped by their rental car, pulled Sherlock against him, and kissed her. “Yep, pepperoni.”

  “I got to eat all yours, too. Poor Mrs. Howell, she was mortified that she hadn’t brought a vegetarian pizza, just in case. Do you think our shooter really won that butt-ugly religious ring in a poker game?”

  Hyde Street, Russian Hill

  Sunday

  After four long knocks, Eve opened her door to Harry Christoff.

  “I had this feeling it was you, but I was sort of hoping I was wrong.”

  “Why? You wanted maybe the postman? It’s Sunday, no delivery on Sunday.”

  A laugh spurted out of her. “No, I’m not really up to acting all social and civilized. I’m sorry I missed the meeting this morning; you’ll tell me everything?”

  “I will, but you have to invite me in first. I figured you’d be in pretty bad shape, so I came bearing gifts.” He held out a bakery bag and a covered go-cup that sent the aroma of dark roast coffee wafting to her nose.

  Eve took the bag first, looked upward, and said “Thank you,” then, “You’re amazing, Harry, and you even brought coffee. No, you’re more than amazing, you’re a prince, Agent Christoff. Are there any glazed?”

  He looked down at her scrubbed face, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders over a faded red robe, her bare feet. “You look like the homecoming queen on a reality show. I’m glad you slept in this morning. How’s your back?”

  She forced herself to stand up straight. “I’ll be good to go after three donuts and this wonderful coffee. Come in, let’s go to the kitchen. Are there maybe more than one glazed?”

  “There are three, but I was hoping for one myself,” he said, as he followed her into her kitchen. He still couldn’t get over how streamlined and cool it looked, with pale green granite counters shot with black, and hanging copper pots over a small center island. He said, “My kitchen’s right out of the forties.”

  “As long as everything’s clean and works, who cares what decade it comes from? It’s all about the food and the person making it, right? You want milk in your coffee? You don’t want a glazed donut, do you? You somehow knew it was my favorite?”

  “Nah, give me a chocolate with sprinkles. I’m a real man.”

  “How many donuts?”

  “Six.”

  She set everything out on the small kitchen table, and they started in on the donuts and coffee, neither saying much of anything until only one donut, not glazed, was left on the paper plate between them. Eve wiped the sticky glaze off her mouth and her fingers, laughed, and leaned forward to flick a red sprinkle off his chin. She sat back and sighed, contented. “Thank you. Before you came, I’d just gotten out of the shower and wondered what I was going to make for breakfast. Nothing appealed, then you showed up.”

  She toasted him with her coffee cup.

  He asked, “How’d you sleep last night?”

  “In the arms of the angels, with the help of two aspirin and a sleeping-pill chaser. I’m trying to stay away from the codeine.” She stretched, froze, then began, very slowly, to stretch again.

  Harry stood up. “Let me see how bad the bruising is today.”

  She stared up at him. “You mean you want me to drop my bathrobe?”

  “Well, yeah, but don’t feel like you have to put on a show for me, even though I did let you eat all three of the glazed donuts. No, just show me your back. You know, if you can’t think of me as your doctor, you can pretend you’re an artist’s model draped with a towel. Come on, Barbieri, I’m not going to jump you. You’re safe. I’m not desperate enough, and, fact is, you’re too pathetic-looking right now.”

  She stood up, turned her back to him, and let her robe drop to her waist. Harry pushed her hair out of the way, even though he didn’t need to, and studied the shades of her green, black, and yellow back. “You got a modern art painter living with you?”

  She tried to look back over her shoulder. “That bad?”

  He lightly touched his fingertips to one bruise. She didn’t flinch. “Do you have some muscle cream?”

  She pulled her robe back up. “Yeah, I do, for all the good it did me. I can’t reach the bad areas.”

  “Get it. I’ll do it for you.”

  She gave him a look, then left him in the kitchen to finish his coffee and stare out at her small back garden with its six-foot stone walls and single cypress tree. Everything looked dormant now, but he imagined there’d be lots of color in the summer.

  He ate the last donut since it was chocolate.

  She came back into the kitchen in a minute, handed him a white tube. It was brand-new.

  “It’s supposed to be good stuff, not only for muscle soreness but for bruising as well. I bought it yesterday before I realized I couldn’t reach anything.”

  She again dropped the robe to her waist. She grinned over her shoulder. “Am I really that pitiful?”

  “Not quite; you combed your hair.”

  “Well, I looked in the mirror and nearly fainted. I had to do something.”

  Harry covered his fingers with the cream, stared at her long stretch of back, closed his eyes for a moment to get a grip on himself, and touched his fingers to her skin. I’m a solid, consummate professional, doing my job. He wished she did look pathetic, but the fact was, she didn’t, not at all. He reminded himself he was looking at a deputy marshal’s back splotched blue and green, but, unfortunately, that didn’t help.

  “Am I rubbing too hard?”

  She said over her shoulder, “No, it feels grand.”

  “Would you like to lie on your stomach? Speaking as one solid professional to another?”

  She laughed, then groaned. “Not a good idea, even speaking as a professional. You’ve got really good hands, Harry.”

  Really good professional hands. He started whistling as he continued rubbing the cream on her back in steady smooth strokes, deepening when he realized he wasn’t hurting her, and if his hands went a bit lower than the bruises, surely there were sore muscles at her waist, and the massage couldn’t but help.

  “You can’t see the bruises now,” he said. “You’re all white since I’ve used half the tube on you.”

  “Feels like it, nice and hot.”

  He didn’t want to stop, but he did. He stepped back. Slowly, she shrugged back into her robe. She turned. “Thank you. Look at me, I think I can straighten without groaning.”

  He went to the sink to wash his hands. He could feel the heat deep and knew it must feel good on her back.

  “Tell me more about your meeting this morning with Cheney, Savich, and Sherlock.”

  So he told her, answering her questions until she had no more. His cell phone chimed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Cheney here, Harry. They found Mickey O’Rourke. Two kids in Nicasio saw a man bury him. Thank God they had the sense to keep quiet so he never saw them. The Marin County sheriff, Bud Hibbert, had a photo of Mickey on his desk, recognized him, and called me. I called Savich and Sherlock. They’ve finished interviewing Boozer Gordon. I don’t want to call Barbieri; she’s probably still flat on her stomach, high on codeine.”

  “Actually,” Harry said, “I’m with her now, and she’s doing okay. She’s got t
o get dressed, but we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “Good. Ask Eve to requisition a Chevy Suburban out of the marshals’ pool, that way the five of us can ride up together.”

  Harry punched off his cell. He looked up to see Eve standing in the doorway to the kitchen, unmoving, her face set.

  “You heard what Cheney said?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t want to believe Mickey could be dead, it hurt too much, so I tried not to think about it.” She swallowed. “But I knew he had to be. Harry, he’s dead, just—dead. That monster murdered him.”

  Harry said, “Yes, the monster murdered him. But we’ve got two kids who saw him. We’ve got witnesses, Eve. Cheney wants us to go up there. We’ll catch him; you know we will.”

  She turned to go into her bedroom, saying over her shoulder, “I can’t stand this, Harry, just can’t stand it.”

  Harry thought of Mrs. O’Rourke, thought of Mickey O’Rourke’s teenage daughters, thought of the uncertainty they’d been living with for the past four days, the soul-eating fear, and now they had to face the death of a husband, a father.

  When Eve came out, she was dressed in her black and red, her hair in a ponytail, no makeup on her face. Her eyes were puffy from crying.

  He walked to her and lightly rubbed his fingertip over her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Eve. Believe me, I know how you feel.”

  Near Nicasio, California

  Forty-five minutes northwest of San Francisco

  Sunday afternoon

  Harry turned the U.S. Marshals’ Chevy Suburban west off Highway 101 on Lucas Valley Road, drove about ten miles, then turned right on Nicasio.

  Sherlock looked out over the rolling hills of cattle and horse country. “The hills are still all gold and brown, even with the rain.”

  Cheney said, “The rain was a little late this year. By March, the hills will be as green as Ireland.” He saw Harry turn the windshield wipers on intermittent, and said, “I hope we stay with this light mist. A full-on downpour would really make things difficult.” He waved a hand as Harry curved left. “There’s Nicasio, one square block, really. Its claim to fame is the 1871 red schoolhouse. It’s a historical landmark.”