by Kara Lennox
Just as she got out of the car, the silver phone rang again. She checked the caller ID and didn’t recognize the number. That was odd. The only people using these silver phones were Project Justice people. Deciding it had to be a wrong number, she almost let it go to voice mail but then impulsively answered.
“Liz.”
Only one person called her that. “Hudson. Where are you?”
He didn’t answer her question. “I’m sorry, Liz. I couldn’t let them take me to jail. We’re so close to finding the real killer.”
“I know, but Hudson...” Hell. Tonda was waiting for her. She might be bleeding, unconscious, in dire need of medical care.
“I wanted you to know I’m okay. Tell them I’ll turn myself in. In two days. I just want two more days. If I can’t wrap it up by then...”
“Okay, but I can’t talk right now. Tonda’s in trouble. Jackson beat her up. I need to find her and take her to the hospital.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely regretful. “Where is she?”
“At her apartment.”
“Don’t you dare go there alone. Tonda is a big girl. She’s tough and streetwise. If she can call you, she can call 9-1-1.”
“She said Jackson left, and she’s afraid—”
“I don’t care. You’re not going there alone, are you? Surely Daniel wouldn’t let you.”
She bristled a bit at the implication that Daniel had the last word on where she went and what she did. But then a surge of guilt coursed through her at the underhanded way she’d slipped out of her building and away from Toby. “I’m here already. I have to go to her. She said if I didn’t come alone—”
“Liz, don’t—” The line went dead.
She couldn’t wait any longer. Tonda needed her. She made her way up the uneven brick walkway and five steps leading to a wide concrete porch that ran the width of the building.
Number 2 was on the ground floor, left side. A large picture window faced the porch, but the curtains were drawn and Elizabeth couldn’t see in. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the peeling brown door. “Tonda?”
Nothing. Had Tonda heeded her advice and called for an ambulance? Or was she even now lying inside, injured too badly to answer?
Elizabeth turned the knob. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open a few inches. It appeared dark inside. All was quiet.
“Tonda!” She called again, louder this time. “Are you here?”
Her heart pounding, she pushed the door all the way open. A coat closet faced the doorway, open. A couple of jackets hung among several empty wire hangers. She left the door open and ventured farther inside.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. What if this wasn’t really Tonda’s apartment? What if she’d misheard the address Tonda had given her and this was a crack house or something?
Then her eye caught movement. She reached for a light switch and flipped it.
Tonda half sat, half lay on the sofa. Her face was a bloody mess, one eye swelled closed. But her other eye was open and full of fear.
“Don’t be afraid. It’s just me.” Elizabeth strode to the couch, intent on checking Tonda’s condition more carefully. Was she still bleeding?
Tonda’s one good eye widened. She shook her head almost imperceptibly
The hairs on the back of Elizabeth’s neck bristled to attention. Something was very wrong. She started to turn, but before she could, something heavy crashed down on her head, and everything went black.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Out of minutes.
“DAMN IT!” HUDSON screamed impotently at the message blinking on the screen of his cheap cell phone. Each of his mother’s discarded phones had less than five minutes. He grabbed another phone and powered it up. Two minutes. He didn’t have time to mess around. He called Carla’s cell. Thank God he had a talent for memorizing phone numbers.
“Who’s this?” Carla answered suspiciously.
“Carla, it’s me. Are you alone? Please, dear God, don’t give me away. You know I didn’t do it, right?”
She cleared her throat. She wasn’t alone.
“I need an address. Tonda Pickens. In the Third Ward, somewhere. It’s an emergency—a woman is injured there and I have to find her.” It was at least part of the truth.
“Hold on.”
He felt the seconds ticking by. Carla was probably in the LTD, looking up the address on the onboard computer as Hudson headed his car toward the Third Ward.
“I’m still looking,” Carla said casually, as if having a normal conversation with a friend. “What’s going on?”
No way was she guilty of anything. Not murder, not corruption. If she’d framed him, she’d be hanging him out to dry. She could be sending units to Tonda’s address, and that would be okay, too. He had a very, very bad feeling about Liz showing up at that address by herself. The timing was highly suspect.
“I need two days.”
“Okay by me.”
“Knightly’s with you?”
“Not him. Right after we left the Logan place, he said he wanted to go talk to some Houston cops he knew regarding the Munch homicide. Man-to-man. Clearly he didn’t want me interfering, so he dropped me at the station.”
More alarm bells.
“Don’t trust him with your back, okay? Don’t trust anybody. Just so you know, whoever railroaded me is trying to do the same to you. The bullet Munch fired at me was traced back to your gun.”
“What bullet? Where?”
“Remember, the prowler who shot at me? Daniel’s people found the bullet. They checked it against the ballistics database—”
“Well, it’s not mine!” she said hotly. “I never... Oh, my God.”
“What?”
“My backup weapon was stolen! That first week you were out, somebody bashed my car window at a gas station and grabbed my purse.”
“Carla, listen. I think Knightly’s dirty. He knows Project Justice is getting closer to the truth, which means he’s desperate. I have to go now.” His minutes were about to run out anyway, and he only had one more phone after this. Anyway, he was getting close to the neighborhood. He knew vaguely where Tonda’s street was. He just had to find it. “Do you have Tonda’s address?”
“It’s on Cherry Blossom. Thirty-three—” The phone cut her off. Out of minutes again, damn it.
He picked up the last phone from the passenger seat. Unable to resist the compulsion, he dialed Liz again. The phone went to voice mail.
His apprehension turned into a cold, hard ball of fear. He stomped on the gas pedal. He knew Tonda lived on the 3300 block of Cherry Blossom. He’d find Liz if he had to bash down the door of every house and apartment on that street.
* * *
CARLA STARED AT her phone. She had no idea what to make of all this. If Hudson had given her half a chance, she’d have begged him to turn himself in. She might have her issues with Hudson—and yes, she might have enjoyed his being a murder suspect just a little too much. But she didn’t believe he was guilty. No amount of DNA found in Mandalay’s car would convince her Hudson had killed the man. DNA could be planted. Tissues could be taken from the trash and placed anywhere. And that baseball cap—Carla remembered Hudson wearing it to the station earlier, during the summer, when he’d come straight from a softball game. Why would he have worn it at night, to commit a murder, then left it at the scene? He wasn’t stupid.
“What’s going on?” She’d rendezvoused with a deputy from Patrol, Ronnie, to help her with some routine neighborhood canvassing around the area where Mandalay’s car had been found. Although she and Knightly had done this once, a lot of people hadn’t been home and she wanted to follow up.
Now she had a new objective. “Head for 3322 Cherry Blossom. It’s in the Third Ward.”
* * *
ELIZABETH’S HEAD POUNDED. If she opened her eyes, she was going to throw up. Where was she? Was she dying? She couldn’t remember anything. Wait. Wait. Tonda had called. She was hurt, need
ed help. Elizabeth had slipped out of her apartment building and away from Toby the bodyguard...but that was the last thing she remembered.
Her arms were twisted painfully behind her. The pounding in her head now warred with a piercing ache in her shoulder. Had she been shot? Stabbed?
She had to open her eyes. Her thoughts were starting to align themselves, feel less chaotic. Something bad had happened and she had to figure it out.
The smell of stale cigarettes assaulted her nose. Her stomach roiled, threatening to revolt.
Open. Open your eyes.
She cracked one eye open then the other. She was half sitting on a ratty green sofa in a small, sparsely furnished living room. An old-style TV was on to some infomercial, but the sound was turned down.
Something stirred beside her. She slowly turned her head. Every small movement brought stabbing pain behind her eyes and a kettledrum pounding inside her skull.
Tonda. Tonda was sitting next to her, her face bloody and swollen.
Elizabeth gasped. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Tonda, are you okay?”
Tonda wouldn’t look at her. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Downey. He made me do it.”
“No, honey, it’s not your fault—” As Elizabeth tried to sit up, she realized her wrists were confined behind her back. She jerked her arms, trying to free herself, and found she was wearing metal cuffs.
“He made me do it,” Tonda sobbed again, her voice barely a whisper. “He made me call you. He hurt me and he said he would k-kill me.”
Elizabeth still wasn’t clear what was going on, but she knew one thing. “It’s not your fault. It’s Jackson’s.”
“No, not him. It wasn’t him. He made me lie.”
“Who...who made you lie?”
Her eyes cut to the other side of the room. “Him.”
Elizabeth jerked her head to look. She recognized the face that looked back, though she’d never seen it with such an expression of evil. “Sergeant Knightly.” This made no sense at all. “How do you even know Tonda?”
“I know a lot of working girls. I’ve seen her around. Saw her at the clinic, in fact, that first day Sanchez and I came to talk to you.”
Elizabeth felt even sicker, knowing her fondness for her client had put the girl in danger. “So this was a trap. Hudson said it might be, but I was too stupid to listen.”
“You told Vale you were coming here?”
“Yes. He should be here any minute.” No. She hadn’t taken the precautions she should have. She’d been so sure this had nothing to do with the murders. “Your only chance to escape is to leave. Now.”
He just kept smiling at her. He was holding a gun, she realized, though it wasn’t pointed at them. He wasn’t worried about either of them making a bolt for freedom or overpowering him. Elizabeth’s hands were cuffed behind her back. She could run, but she couldn’t fight, couldn’t even open a door without a great deal of maneuvering.
Tonda wasn’t cuffed or tied up, but she was hurt, possibly seriously, and so terrified she wasn’t about to move.
“I’ve got it all worked out,” Knightly said. “The fact you’ve called Vale here makes it easier. I had to get him here somehow.”
“You want him here?” she asked incredulously.
“Someone has to be blamed for all the shooting.”
Thank God she hadn’t actually given Tonda’s address to Hudson. If she’d lured him to his death, she’d never be able to forgive herself—never. Not that she’d be around long enough to forgive anyone. It was clear Knightly planned to kill her and Tonda.
Tonda whimpered. She was trembling with terror.
“Let me at least help Tonda. She’s bleeding. You can take the cuffs off. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”
“You don’t seriously think I’m stupid enough to take your word for it, do you? Anyway, helping her would be pointless.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“That should be obvious. You and Vale were really close to finding out the truth. He talked to Detective Vilches’s widow in the hospital. I’m sure she gave him my description. I couldn’t wait around for her to identify me in a photo lineup.”
“Detective Vilches? The one who investigated my mother’s disappearance?”
“The very same. I must say, his notes on the case—which his wife very obligingly handed over—made for fascinating reading.”
Hudson hadn’t told her any of this. It probably would have made her mad that he was still stirring that pot. But damn it—he’d been right the whole time. Her father’s murder was linked to her mother’s disappearance.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll still get away. Just not as clean as I’d hoped. A confession letter in Hudson’s handwriting would be a nice touch. But one in yours should suffice.”
“I’m not writing any confession letter.” He could torture her, beat her, whatever. She refused to help him get away with his crimes.
“Oh, really?” He took a couple of steps toward her. No, toward Tonda. He grabbed Tonda by the hair and yanked, and she screamed in pain.
“Okay, I’ll do it.” He would have to uncuff her. That could work in her favor.
She had absolutely nothing to lose. She could just attack him, gun or no gun. If he shot her point-blank, he’d get blood on himself. That would make it much harder for him to slip out, maybe blend in with any law enforcement who showed up. She might not live, but Knightly would pay.
Maybe.
Did she have the nerve to launch an attack, knowing it would probably be the last thing she did?
Knightly let Tonda go then handed her a small key. “Unlock her cuffs.”
Still sobbing, Tonda did as ordered. Her hands were shaking so badly it took her several tries to get the key in the lock and turn it.
When Elizabeth’s hands were free, she rubbed her wrists to get the circulation back into her fingers. Knightly placed an old envelope and a ballpoint pen in front of her.
“Write down exactly what I say. If you deviate, if you even misspell a word, I’ll shoot your friend in the knee. If you cooperate, you’ll both die cleanly, no pain.”
* * *
THE FIRST THING Hudson noticed about Cherry Blossom Lane, apart from the fact there were no cherry trees, was the lack of driveways—and parking. So much for his hope of spotting Liz’s car in Tonda’s driveway. If she’d come here, she might have had to park blocks away. But the street was blessedly short, only three blocks long. He cruised all the way down it. His heart jumped when he finally spotted a white Prius.
Was that it? He stopped in the middle of the street and got out so he could peer through the windows. The driver’s window was open a crack. He couldn’t see anything that definitely identified the car as hers, though it was neat and clean, the way he was sure she would keep her vehicle.
He stuck his nose near the crack and sniffed. There...a trace of that peculiar fruity mixture of scents that was hers and hers alone. She was here. He quickly parked behind her in a No Parking zone. Last thing he was worried about was a parking ticket.
Hudson had one phone and about two minutes left. How to spend it?
He had to decide fast; for every minute he delayed, Liz could get herself a minute deeper into trouble. With a sigh, he pulled the silver cell phone out. Plenty of minutes, but the moment he used it, Daniel could pinpoint his location.
Maybe that was the best solution. Daniel and his Project Justice people had every portable weapon, surveillance gadget and computer trick in the universe. They would figure out which apartment Tonda lived in among the six or eight buildings on this block.
He called Joe.
“Hudson?” Joe sounded amazed. “Dude, you’re in some hot water.”
“I know that. I think Liz might be in trouble—real trouble.”
“Yeah, no kidding. She shook off her bodyguard. Daniel is livid. Usually people don’t slip out of his custody, or whatever you want to call it. Big Brother knows—”
“Joe, I don’t have much
time. I think Liz might have walked into a trap. Todd Knightly is the dirty cop—I’m ninety-nine percent sure. I need you to collect anyone you can find and bring them to the 3300 block of Cherry Blossom—but without causing a stir. Any show of force might tip Knightly over the edge. I don’t know which building Liz is in, but she went to help Tonda, and I need to find her. If I can just know she’s safe, I’ll turn myself in. Now. Please.”
“I’m on it. Sit tight.”
He loved that about Project Justice. They were all pissed off at him, but when the chips were down, if you needed help, no questions. They just jumped in with both feet.
He would owe them a lot when this was over.
Hudson expected it would take at least an hour before a team arrived. Joe would have to collect people, supplies, body armor, surveillance equipment. That was too long.
Liz had said an apartment, not a house. He would knock on the doors of some of the small houses sandwiched in between apartment buildings, see if any of them knew Tonda or...what was her pimp’s name? Jackson, that was it.
A child of about five answered the first door he knocked on.
“Hi, is your mom or dad home?” Hudson asked.
The child continued to stare. Then he slammed the door in Hudson’s face. He’d probably been left home alone while the parents worked. Sad fact of life among the poor—child care was too expensive.
No one answered at the next house, but a large dog sounded as if it was about to come through the door. Finally, at the third house, an elderly woman answered, took one look at Hudson and cursed him out in Spanish way too fast for him to follow, which was probably a good thing. She slammed the door, too.
One house left. A young woman answered, African-American, about Tonda’s age, peering suspiciously at Hudson with three chain locks still fastened. “I’m looking for a woman named Tonda who lives on this block.”
“You a cop?” she asked suspiciously.
“No.” He hated the truth of his answer. But right now, he was not a cop. The cops were his enemies. “I’m a friend, and I think she might be in danger.”
