Never Go Home (12 page)

I inched the
flashlight up, panned left and right.

“Look at that,”
I said.

“What?” she
said.

I pointed at
the small drop of red on the millimeters wide baseboard ledge.

“Is that
blood?” she said.

“That’d be my
guess.”

April looked up
at me. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. We were close enough that I felt
her breath hit me in spurts.

I said, “The
faded wall, that could be dismissed, despite the bullet hole. One of the kids
could have gone crazy with markers there one day, or spit their juice there.
But that single drop of blood there tells us something.”

“She didn’t
kill herself.”

“Nope.”

“Someone missed
the first time.”

“They hit.” I
pointed to my ear. “But not in the right spot.”

“She started to
run that way.” April shined her light to the left. “That explains it.”

“What?”

“Why the angle
seemed odd. It makes sense now. See, that’s what bothered me. Everything about
the way she would have had to hold the gun to get that angle of entry, the
blood, it was off because she didn’t do it.”

“Did you find
two wounds?”

“Just the
entrance and exit.”

“April.” I
paused a beat and rose. “That wasn’t an exit wound. That was the second shot.
It either grazed her or went through and through. Either way it hit the wall,
and so did her blood. It wasn’t as much as the other shot, but it was enough
that someone cleaned it. They failed to wipe away one little drop.”

“You’re kidding
me,” she said.

“Agreed,” I
said.

“What now?”

“Where’s the
body?”

“Clearwater. At
the morgue.”

“OK. We seal
this place up now. You need to get someone out here to guard it. Then we head
down south.”

We turned and
walked to the door. The warm air that rushed in was a welcome relief.

“What about those
two idiots from earlier?” she said.

“We pay them a
visit after,” I said.

April went back
inside and collected samples while we waited for one of her deputies to show
up. I expected her to botch it after her claims of limited training. Whether
she’d picked up her skills online, or from TV, she acted like a pro. Best I
could tell, at least.

I leaned
against a pole supporting the porch and watched her work. I had glimpses of
playing video games with her when she was a kid. As a girl, she’d been awkward
in every way, even with a game controller in her hand. It was still hard to
believe this was the same person. Relatively speaking.

I must’ve had a
strange expression plastered across my face, because she glanced up and gave me
a cross look.

“What?” she
said.

“What?” I said.

“You’re looking
at me all funny.”

“Sorry, just
remembering when you were a goofy looking kid.”

“Ah, yeah.” She
rose from her crouching position and walked toward me. “Well, I remember when
you were a good looking young man. Guess we both changed.”

I smiled. So
did she. Then she apologized.

“I shouldn’t
act like that here. Your friend died in that room. You’d think as a cop I’d be
able to cope better.”

“People adapt
to horrible situations by acting like this, April. I saw a man in Iraq get both
his legs blown off. He cracked jokes with the medics until he passed out.”

She looked
frustrated, like she knew what she needed to do, but couldn’t. Her dad had held
the job for thirty years or so. He was the law in Crystal River. With that,
came a level of respect from the community. I doubted April received the same
level of consideration from half the old timers in town. And what was Crystal
River but a bunch of retirees now? What there was of the younger generation was
probably the same as anywhere else. They didn’t care.

“It’ll come
with time,” I said.

She smiled,
nodded and went back to work. I decided to step away for a few minutes so she
could complete the task without feeling like I was watching over her shoulder.

I walked to the
end of the porch, scanned the street. The people across the road were still
outside on their porch. They’d extinguished their cigarettes. I heard them
talking, but couldn’t decipher what they said.

Elsewhere, the
kids had all gone inside. It was hard to play soccer with the sun down. The
streetlights that lined the road were dim and spaced far apart.

I stuck my head
past the railing and looked up. Clouds had rolled in from the north. The breeze
had died down. The air felt thick again. I heard a rumble of thunder in the
distance. We might beat the storm on our way down to Clearwater, but we were
sure to hit it on the way back.

A car pulled
into the neighborhood. I saw the light rack on the roof as it passed under a
street lamp. The headlights lit up the street. I followed the flood of white
and saw the same beat up Tercel I had seen across from the car wash and in the
parking lot of Dad’s senior care facility.

I walked to the
porch entrance and ducked under the police tape.

The cruiser
parked behind April’s vehicle. The guy got out.

“Jack,” he
said. “Where’s April?”

I still
couldn’t remember the guy’s name. Perhaps Sean had a yearbook lying around
somewhere in his house.

“Inside,” I
said as I hiked my thumb over my shoulder. We passed each other on the
driveway.

“Hey Craig,” April
said.

Craig, that was
it. But was that his first name or his last? I questioned whether I really
remembered the guy.

They spoke on
the porch for a few moments. I turned right at the end of the driveway and
headed toward the Tercel. It was parked in a dark area, making it impossible to
tell if anyone was inside it.

About halfway
between Jessie’s house and the Toyota, April called for me.

“Jack, what are
you doing?”

Any cover I had
had been blown. I turned around and walked toward her, casting the occasional
glance over my shoulder. She waited for me beside her car, next to the
passenger door.

I stopped two
feet from her. “That’s the third time I’ve seen that Tercel today.”

She glanced
over my shoulder. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips pursed.

“About a hundred
feet back,” I said. “Older model. Primer gray.”

“Where’d you
see it?”

“At my dad’s
retirement home, across from the car wash, and now here.”

She shrugged.
“Coincidence, that’s all. He visited his mom or dad earlier, had a bite to eat,
and he’s home now. People do live and work around here, you know. They have
lives, families, dietary needs.”

“Fast food is
far from a need.”

“Whatever, come
on.”

I didn’t accept
her take on events as gospel, but they made sense. At least, they would to
someone who didn’t carry around the same level of paranoia as I did.

She held her
cell phone up. “I’ve got an ME who is going to meet us at the morgue.”

“ME?”

“Medical
Examiner. Don’t you watch TV or read?”

“No.”

“Huh.” She
studied me for a moment. “Well, you should.”

“I’ll keep that
in mind. Maybe add it to my resolutions next New Year’s Eve.”

She waved me
off. “Get in the car, Jack. We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us.”

“I’m telling
you, that was close, Vera.” Leon’s heart pounded. He had to force air through
his nose. He was lightheaded.

It felt good.
He felt alive.

Jack Noble had
stood ten feet away from where Leon hid. The hedges were thin, too. If the man
had aimed the heavy-duty flashlight in Leon’s direction, Jack would have
spotted him. If he’d have sneezed, or been stung by a bee, Leon would be dead
now.

“I told you to
stay in the car,” she said with no inflection in her voice.

“I’m tired of
that.”

“Take me
through what happened so I can try and make some sense of why you stepped out
of line?”

“They were
inside the house for a while. Another cop showed up.” Leon paused a beat. The
cruiser pulled a tight U-turn, hopping a curb, and raced toward the end of the
street. “Hey, Vera, they just left. Pulled out in a hurry. You want me to
follow them?”

The line was
silent for a minute except for Vera’s steady breathing.

“Is the cop
still there?” she asked.

“Yeah, he is,
but Jack ain’t. Should I go?”

“No. I can
trace a cop car. They don’t have many in that town. I know where you’re at, so
it won’t be hard.”

He heard her
tapping on her keyboard. He tried to imagine what Vera’s office looked like.
He’d never been in there. Never been close. Hell, he hadn’t ever met her. He
only knew the voice, that stiff, monotone voice. Did she sound like that all
the time? When she had sex, was it like screwing a robot?

“Leon, why
don’t you go inside and talk to the cop? Find out what he’s doing there.”

Leon glanced at
the police tape surrounding the porch. “How am I gonna pull that one off?”

“Tell him
you’re the detective from the city.”

“What? What
detective?”

She sighed.
“Don’t question me. You have to accept that I know more about what is going on
than you do. When the time is right, I’ll fill you in. Until then, you’ll be
told what you need to know and you will keep doing what I say to do when I tell
you to do it. Understand?” She paused a beat. “I don’t need to tell you what
will happen to you if you don’t. After all, you’re usually my go to guy to get
rid of a rotten apple.”

“Bad apple or
rotten tomato.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Leon
hesitated. Though he’d never asked, he always assumed that there were more like
him. Someone had to assassinate the assassin. “Yeah, I know, V. Whatever you
need, I’ll do.”

“OK, then. Call
me back when you’re
done
with the guy.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He hung up,
opened the door, turned in his seat and placed both feet on the ground. He
didn’t have his good shoes on. He hadn’t counted on this job lasting this long.
Now he regretted it. And his feet hated him for it. As he walked toward the
house, he slipped his cell in one pocket and a blackjack in the other. It
weighed down his pants, causing the Glock to slip a little in his waistband.

A holster
would have been a good idea, too,
he thought.

Leon walked
down the sidewalk at a steady clip. He stopped in front of the house. The
windows were dark. The door propped open. Leon crossed the street. He stepped
lightly up the driveway, across the walkway, and ducked under the yellow tape
and stopped on the porch. The cop stood in the front room, facing away.

Leon whistled
at the guy.

The deputy spun
around and reached for his pistol.

Leon already
had his drawn. “Hey, ho, man, take it easy.”

“Who…who are
you?” the deputy asked.

Leon smiled a
little. The other guy had no business being in the house. He wasn’t a cop. The
guy was a glorified secretary.

Leon said, “I’m
Detective Jones from Tampa. Was asked to come down here and check this crime
scene out. I saw your car out there, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t a
perp.”

Perp? Where
had that come from? Too many movies.

“I’m a deputy
in the Crystal River Sheriff’s department. I was told by my boss to wait here
and protect the scene.”

Leon wondered
from what. He smiled, nodded, and said, “Looks like you’re doing a stellar job,
my man.”

The deputy’s
flashlight hit the floor and lit up a decent space around it. Leon caught sight
of the blood on the wall.

“Man, what
happened here?” he said.

“Suicide,” the
guy said.

Leon chuckled.
“Ain’t no suicide, man. Who the hell shoots themselves while they’re standing
up so that the blood sprays on the wall like that? People tend to develop
nervous leg syndrome when a gun is pointed at them.” He caught the deputy’s
attention. “Meaning their legs don’t want to work anymore. Knees get all
rubbery and give out. They fall to the ground, crying and whimpering and
begging for their life and whatnot.” He still held his gun. He aimed it toward
the ceiling and wagged it around, let it come to rest on his temple. “Now, I
seen a few men put a gun to their own head. They sat down for it, though. I figure,
maybe someone could stand, but they ain’t gonna go up to the wall and hold one
side of their head against it.”

“What?” the
deputy said as if every word had passed around him. “Who the hell are you?”

“Like I said,
I’m Detective Johns from Tampa.”

“You said Jones
a minute ago?”

Leon smiled.
“Did I?”

The deputy took
a step back. “Let me see your ID.”

“Don’t move.”
Leon aimed his Glock at the man.

The guy lifted
his hands in the air.

“Turn around,”
Leon said.

The man did.

Leon walked up
to him. He grabbed the man’s handcuffs, yanked his arms back, and placed the
cuffs on the deputy’s wrists.

“It’s nothing
personal,” Leon said right before he knocked the deputy out with his gun.

The man fell to
the floor in a heap. Leon dragged him into the kitchen. A trail of blood
followed them. Leon saw it, cursed. He grabbed some peroxide and a towel and
cleaned it up. Then he dropped the towel on the guys face and the peroxide on
his stomach. The man had no reaction.

Out cold.

Leon pulled out
his cell phone and called Vera.

“Well?” she
said.

“He’s down.
This place is a mess. Blood all over the wall, the carpet, the deputy’s face.”
He held back a laugh.

“I want you to
tamper with it.”

“How?”

“Get creative.”

“Don’t you
think they already have what they need from it?”