“I’m sorry. I know this week hasn’t been what you envisioned.”
“What I envisioned was sitting around Tosh’s apartment, counting his show choir trophies, and wondering if he’s really my brother. This is so much better it’s off the scale.”
The ride to the Stakely building only took a couple of minutes. Lacy had grabbed her Grandpa Craig’s old flashlight from the shelf in the closet. It was huge, but powerful. There was some residual light from the outside, and if they hurried, they might be able to make it without needing to use the giant flashlight. She unlocked the door and led the way inside, stopping near a beam about a third of the way into the cavernous space.
“If I read the article correctly, then Susan’s store was right here. She was shot as she was leaving, so she would have been standing right here.” She pivoted so that she was facing Keegan, the beam to her right. “I’ve never been very good at physics or geometry or whatever you need to figure out trajectory. If the shooter was standing about where you are, where might the bullet have gone when it left her body?”
“So, I’m the shooter,” Keegan said. He raised his hands and pressed his index fingers together, pointing them at her like a gun. “If I were a bullet, where would I go?”
Lacy shuddered. It was darker in the building than she had imagined it would be and the junk lying haphazardly created a jumbled disarray of shadows. “This is sort of creepy. Maybe we should come back in the daytime.”
“You’re not turning chicken on me now, are you?” Keegan asked. He smiled and the shadows behind him seemed to take form and move. Lacy watched, horrified, as the butt of a gun emerged from the shadows and crashed down on his head. He slumped to the floor unconscious. Detective Brenner stepped over his inert body, palming his gun and turning it so that it was now facing Lacy.
“I own this building,” she said stupidly. “I’m not trespassing.”
“I know. You told me today. You remember, it was right about the time you said you weren’t going to stop digging until you found out the truth about the murders.”
“Are you saying that you killed Ed McNeil and Susan Pendergast?”
He didn’t respond, but she took the fact that he was still holding a gun on her as a yes.
“And you’re here now because you’re worried I’m going to find the bullet and it’s going to match the gun that was used to kill Ed McNeil?”
“No. That’s probably the stupidest proposition I’ve ever heard. What are the chances that you’re going to find that bullet? And, even if you do, the gun is long since gone. It’s not like we keep the same guns for twenty-something years.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because I know you meant it when you said you won’t stop until you find some answers. If you had just let it lie, then everyone would have been happy.”
“Except for Jason who will rot in jail for a crime he didn’t commit,” she said.
He shrugged. “What judge won’t go easy on a kid like that? An overachiever with a sad childhood; he’ll have the jury eating out of his hand. He’ll basically get a slap on the wrist and be out in a few years.”
“So it was all an act, this seeming like and respect you have for him.” Stall, stall, stall. She had no idea why she was stalling since she had no plan of escape, but she felt the need to keep him talking nonetheless, and he seemed happy to comply.
“No. I do like Jason, and I meant what I said. He’s a good kid and a good officer.”
“What, then, you’re just jealous because he’s better at his job than you are?”
He gave a short, humorless chuckle. “You don’t think we all start out like Jason, all starry-eyed dreamers intent on saving the world? I was once like him, and then I killed a woman and everything changed.”
“Why did you kill her? What did she do to you?”
“Nothing. That’s the joke of it. I was here because, with all the drug activity, we were supposed to be keeping an eye on things. I was a fresh-faced wunderkind like your boyfriend, checking the building like a good little soldier, when Susan stepped out of her store and surprised me. I thought everyone had gone home, and I was startled. I didn’t even know I had my gun out until she dropped and I saw it in my hands. I panicked.”
“And you framed Joe Anton to take the fall?” Lacy asked.
“No. I called Ed McNeil and asked him to go with me as I turned myself in. It was Ed who told me not to do it. He said it wasn’t worth losing my career over. I thought he was doing me a favor, but it turned out that he was just finding leverage. Didn’t you ever wonder why he won so many cases when he wasn’t a very good lawyer or why I couldn’t have cared less about doing any real investigative work? It’s because the entire system is rigged by guys like Ed. Guilt, innocence, it doesn’t matter.”
“But I don’t understand why you waited so long to frame Joe Anton,” Lacy said.
“The blackmail went on for years, and I was tired of it. I thought if the case was closed, then Ed would get off my back. I sweated a few bullets when he took Anton’s case because I knew he could prove that the man didn’t do it. You’ll never know how much he tortured me during that trial. I should have killed him then, especially because it didn’t work. In fact, things got worse after the trial. Then your article came out, and I knew I was going to be under a lot of scrutiny, so it was time to get rid of Ed.”
“Joe Anton said he gave the police a receipt that proved his alibi for the time of the murder,” Lacy said.
“He did. I destroyed it, altered the evidence, and set out a trail that led right to Anton. I knew your boy would follow it like the eager beaver he was, and I was correct.”
“Then how did you frame Jason?” she asked.
“I switched our guns. The ballistics are correct, but it wasn’t Jason’s gun they tested; it was mine.”
“So, you’re just going to shoot us? Don’t you think that might be suspicious, especially with Jason in jail? What are you going to do, frame someone else?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I am. True to my word, I did some investigating on the license plate you gave me. Turns out it comes back to the developers who were so eager to buy this building. They, the mayor, and Ed McNeil had a lucrative little deal going where they would buy the building for a pittance, build a bunch of cheap stores, and sell them for ten times what they paid. Even if I can’t make the connection between the developers and the mayor, I can still make it look like they did this, especially when I burn down the building. Fire is so good at destroying forensic evidence. Sometimes knowledge is a powerful weapon, you know?”
The moon slipped from behind a cloud and illuminated the ring on his pinky finger. “You made a mistake. You took Ed McNeil’s ring when you killed him,” she said.
“This isn’t Ed’s ring; this is mine.”
“You guys had matching rings? That’s, uh, nice, I guess. Weird, but, okay.”
“We’re not the only people in town who have these rings, and there’s nothing nice about them.”
“What do you mean?” Lacy asked.
“Ding, your time is up,” the detective said. He took a step closer and Keegan sprang up out of nowhere, knocking the detective aside. They didn’t pause to see if he dropped his gun, instead Keegan took Lacy’s hand and dragged her behind him.
Instead of dashing toward the door and freedom, he led her toward the stairs. She tugged on his hand. “Wrong way,” she yelled.
“Trust me,” he said, not turning around or slowing down. Since she had no choice, and since the detective was gaining on them, she picked up the pace and followed after him, sprinting up the stairs as fast as he did.
They reached the roof and he kicked open the sometimes sticky door. “Step exactly where I step, okay?” he said.
She nodded and then concentrated on looking down, placing her feet exactly where his had been. His steps were large and measured, and she guessed he was stepping on beams.
They were almost at the edge of the roof wh
en the detective appeared behind them, panting from his labored run up four flights of stairs. He paused in the doorway to get his breath and his bearings before raising his gun.
“You can’t really think you’re going to hit us from over there,” Keegan said, and his tone was taunting. “Are you a sharpshooter, detective? Not to mention all the questions multiple shots would raise in the neighborhood. You know from up here they’re going to echo.”
His taunts seemed to be working because the detective was coming closer. Keegan and Lacy backed up a step. “That’s far enough,” Keegan said. “Come closer, and we’ll go over the side and down the fire escape.”
“There’s no fire escape up here,” Lacy blurted.
Keegan gave her a look and the detective laughed, advancing again. “Oh, Lacy, sometimes you’re so unbelievably stupid,” he said. He was only fifteen feet away now and closing fast. He raised his gun, and then he was gone, along with about half the roof. Lacy and Keegan picked their way across the beams, standing at the edge of the gaping hole to look down.
The moon illuminated the detective, lying on his back and staring up at them, still alive but groaning in pain, and no wonder. His leg and arm were twisted at an impossible angle, and there was a splinter of wood sticking up through his side. The gun was nowhere in sight, but they still backed away as Lacy pulled out her phone and dialed 911.
Chapter 19
Keegan sat on the cot, holding tightly to Lacy’s hand while the doctor prepared to stitch his head. He had at first refused an ambulance for the angry-looking gash, but the officers who first showed up at the scene explained that it would take a lot less time waiting in the emergency room if he simply gave in and rode in the ambulance. Lacy had ridden with him, abandoning his rental car for later retrieval.
The ride had been silent as they clasped hands and attempted to process all that had happened. Now, however, Keegan looked ready to talk.
“Lacy,” Keegan began, gripping her hand tighter. “I need to finish telling you what I started to tell you earlier.”
“Maybe it could wait until later,” Lacy said, darting a not so subtle look at the eavesdropping doctor.
“No, it can’t wait. I’ve got to get this out before I go. There’s something I need to tell you.”
Lacy squeezed her eyes shut, both to block out the sight of the needle heading toward Keegan’s head and the words she didn’t want to hear. She couldn’t add another man into the mix, and especially not this one. Keegan plunged ahead, rambling about life in general while Lacy plotted her response. I don’t see you as more than a friend. Or maybe she could use her failsafe: I could never date Tosh’s brother.
“Wait, what?” she said as his words finally registered.
Keegan took a deep breath and said it again. “I’m going to be a priest.”
Lacy stared at him, not blinking until he gave her hand a squeeze. “You’re the first person I’ve told, so it would be really great if you said something right now,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head to clear it. “It’s just that there’s a little voice in my head that keeps saying ‘four days spent with you, and the man is sprinting toward lifelong celibacy,’ and the voice sounds suspiciously like my mother.”
He laughed, wincing as the stitches pulled. “It has nothing to do with you. Well, it does, but not the way you think.” Noting her horrified expression, he hastened to continue. “I’ve been feeling the call for a while now, but it’s not the easiest thing. So I ran. Only apparently I’m Jonah and this is my Nineveh because as we were in the building and that guy was trying to kill us, all I could think was that Someone was definitely trying to tell me something. So I gave in and said yes, and the peace was immediate. Of course, that could be because I was knocked unconscious, but I’m pretty sure it was the priest thing.”
“I think you’ll be a really great priest, Keegan,” Lacy said sincerely. She put her arm around his shoulders and gave them a squeeze. The doctor finished the stitches and slipped away, closing the curtain behind him.
“Do you really?” Keegan asked. The blatant insecurity in his tone was endearing. By now Lacy knew that there weren’t many things Keegan was insecure about.
“Maybe the best ever. You’re going to give the pope a run for his money.”
Keegan chuckled uneasily. “Spoken like a true protestant.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a few beats until Lacy spoke again. “Not to be totally shallow and self absorbed, but I can’t help notice that in the last few days one man has tried to kill me while I’ve sent another to the priesthood. Not a great week for my self esteem.”
Keegan laughed and slipped his arm around her waist, giving it a squeeze. “You want to know something that might help? I was thinking that I should have one last kiss before I go, one kiss to last me through all of eternity, and I think that kiss should be with you.”
“So now I’m supposed to kiss you, and it’s either supposed to be so good that the memory will linger until you die, or so bad that you’ll willingly renounce women forever.”
He nodded. “No pressure.”
Lacy laughed and slid off the cot. “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. No awkward angles for the man of the cloth.” She stood in front of him, thinking that the possibility of a no-strings kiss sounded pretty good, even if it was uncharacteristic for her. Unlike with Tosh and Jason, she didn’t have to think about a past, present, or future with Keegan. She only had to concentrate on this one moment. She also liked the fact that Keegan was just sitting there smiling at her, allowing her to make the first move.
She cupped his face in her hands, closed her eyes, and kissed him. And kissed him, and kissed him. Apparently the flip side of a kiss without forethought was that it could easily take on a life of its own. At last they broke apart, and Keegan rested his forehead on hers, breathing hard.
“Okay, new plan. Forget the priesthood and Tosh, and we go to Vegas and get married. Right now. Tonight.”
Lacy laughed and stepped away. “I feel bad enough that I’ve sent a man into the ministry. I’m not going to be responsible for bringing him back out again.”
“That was, well, that was just really wow, Lacy. Thanks. It’s going to take me a while to forget about that kiss.”
“As penance, every time you think of it you can give a dollar to the poor,” Lacy suggested.
“By the time I stop thinking about it, those poor are going to be so stinking rich,” he said, and they laughed together. “So, I guess that was my last official act as a layman. Now I’m going to make my first official act as a priest in training.” He settled his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “You need to make a decision soon because you have two good men dangling on the line. Cut one of them loose, or cut them both loose, but don’t leave them hanging.”
“How do I know which one?”
“That’s the part only you can answer. I think you know which one I want you to choose, but I also want you to be happy, to do what’s best for you. Only you can figure out what that is.”
Lacy nodded. “Thank you, Father Keegan.”
Keegan shuddered and dropped his hands. “I wonder how long it’s going to take before that stops freaking me out.”
They both turned to look as the curtain beside them was roughly jerked aside. Tosh stood there, scowling as his eyes darted between them.
“I’m okay. Lacy’s good, too. Thanks for asking,” Keegan said.
“Oh, yeah, well, you know,” Tosh muttered. “Are you good to go, or do we need to wait around some more?”
“I’m good,” Keegan said. “And we’re giving Lacy a ride.”
“Oh,” Tosh said, clearly uncomfortable with that idea. Before Lacy could try to respond, she heard the familiar voice of her grandfather at the nurse’s station, and even from so far away she could tell he was upset.
She stepped outside of the curtain and saw him leaning toward the nurse, speaking implori
ngly. “Grandpa,” Lacy said, so overwhelmed with joy and relief at the sight of him that she didn’t at first realize she had overcome her stumbling block and called him something other than “Hey” or “You.”
He realized, though, as he turned to her with a smile that was a mixture of delight, relief, and worry. He opened his arms to her and she tripped into them, being careful not to knock him over when she returned his hug. She needn’t have worried, though. He was surprisingly solid for someone in his seventies. When his arms wrapped around her and squeezed, strong and secure, she felt six instead of twenty six.
“Okay?” he asked.
She nodded against his chest, not wanting to speak for the moment.
“I’ll take her home,” she heard him say to Tosh and Keegan.
She looked up to see Tosh staring at her, perplexed. Keegan grabbed his arm and wrenched it behind his back. “C’mon, Pastor,” he said. “You and I are going to have a little talk.”
She watched them walk away and her grandfather released her from his embrace, settling his arm around her shoulders. “Ready to go home?” he asked. “Your grandmother is baking.”
“Your grandmother is baking” was their code for “your grandmother is worried sick.” “Poor Grandma,” Lacy said, feeling bad that she had caused her grandparents so much worry lately.
“She’s fine,” her grandfather said, giving her shoulders a bracing squeeze.
“Because she has you taking care of her,” Lacy said. “I’m so glad for you, Grandpa.” It was funny how once she finally said the name she had no trouble repeating it. “Grandma’s always been so stalwart, but I guess I never realized how much she was hiding. Since you’ve come along, she’s more settled, more peaceful, and definitely happier. It’s nice.” She smiled, picturing the sweet look her grandparents reserved for each other.
“Your grandma is a great lady, Lacy. I’m the one who’s lucky.”
As much as Lacy was happy for them, there was always a little bit of wistfulness thrown in. Would she ever find what they had? And would she find it before she was seventy? She hoped so.
Building Blocks of Murder Page 15
