Deadly Dreams (40 page)

But he’d never imagined they could escape altogether.

He inched forward a few feet before cars ahead jammed again. Maybe Chandler had known he was there. Maybe she’d felt his presence in that damp cellar, just waiting for a chance to start the fire and then slip out again. Instead, nothing had gone according to plan.

Nerves skittered down his spine. Chandler didn’t know shit. She couldn’t, or he wouldn’t still be free. Maybe he’d overreacted. Those sketches had spooked him.

They continued to spook him every time he looked at them.

The pictures hadn’t depicted what they’d found at the crime scene. She’d drawn the events of that night, the exact time that Patrick Christiansen had finally gotten what was coming to him. The picture had captured the plumes of smoke, the twisted graceful dance of a man meeting his fate.

And his own pose silhouetted against the flames.

A chill worked under his skin. He’d spent far too many years of his life being afraid. As usual, fear made him angry.

And anger so easily turned to rage.

Chandler might have thought she’d outsmarted him. She’d discover that once he made up his mind, no one escaped. Not for long.

She was just as dead as the next three cops.

Risa stopped short when Nate halted at the butt-ugly tan car. Her eyes met his. “Your requisition came through.”

Her lack of enthusiasm was echoed in his tone. “Another example of being careful what you wish for. I’m holding on to their promise of getting the other one back with a new paint job.”

“They’ll probably only paint the one door.” She rounded the hood and waited for him to unlock the passenger side.

“And even that will be will be an improvement over this one.” He immediately corrected himself. “If they use a matchingcolor paint.”

She buckled herself in and he lost no time nosing the car out of the lot. Reaching for the overhead visor, he slid her a quick glance as he withdrew his sunglasses. “How’d you get a cell phone so quickly?”

“My one-hour marathon shopping spree while Mom was napping. Bought both of us some necessities and went to Best Buy for a replacement phone, computer, and software.” She’d contacted Gavin Pounds, Raiker’s cyber wizard back in the Manassas headquarters, to tell him that her agencyissued laptop was toast. He’d promised to equip her new one with all the necessary access codes to databases and other sensitive information as soon as she returned. Then he’d demanded an update on Adam’s condition, and the rest of their conversation had centered on their boss.

It wasn’t until she’d hung up that she realized the man had assumed she’d be returning to the agency.

And that she hadn’t disabused him of the notion.

Resolutely, she pushed the thought aside. She wasn’t making life decisions right now. She had more than enough to keep her occupied.

“Are you sure you have time for this?” He stopped for the red light at the corner. “I know you’ll want to check on your mom tonight yet. And Adam.”

“We can make a couple stops first.” Nate’s phone call to the officers tasked with bringing in Juicy for questioning again had been fruitless. If the man had been seen around his old neighborhood lately, no one was talking about it. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and trip over Emmons.”

“Lots of rat holes in that area,” he muttered. The light turned green and he turned right. Another of his shortcuts, undoubtedly. “And I’ll bet he knows every one to disappear in.”

“Vice won’t be too happy if he goes underground.”

“Vice can get in line.” They drove for a time in silence, with Nate taking side streets and alleys that had her doubting her direction sense. But when the neighborhoods started their visual decline she assumed he was heading the right way.

She used the time to call the hospital. Talked to Burke about Adam’s condition. It remained unchanged since she’d been there earlier. The only way to contact Hannah was by contacting Jerry Muller’s number, which she’d programmed into her new phone when she’d taken her mom there this afternoon. But his line was busy so she gave up and dropped the cell back into her new purse.

Nate was on his own phone, but was doing more listening than speaking. She reached forward, fiddled with the radio. Was mildly amused to discover it didn’t work. Risa was half looking forward to Nate’s reaction when he made the same discovery. Things hadn’t changed much since the days when she was on the force here.

He hung up, silent for a few minutes. His jaw was tight. “That was Cass,” he said abruptly. “She claims that one of Kristin’s coworkers told her my sister talked about going to Atlantic City.”

She eyed him carefully. It was difficult to tell from his expression what he was thinking. “That’s not far. What? An hour by car?”

“She quit her job.” His mouth was set in a flat straight line. But she thought if she could see his eyes, hurt might flicker in them. “That tells me she doesn’t plan on coming back.”

“Where did she work?”

“A fast-food place.” He took the next corner a bit sharper than usual.

“So it’s not like she couldn’t get another one like it without much trouble. She may have just intended to go for a few days and couldn’t get time off so she quit. People do.”

“Maybe.” Clearly, he wasn’t convinced. “But she could have told me that. Hell, she’d have to explain once she got home anyway.”

“What would your reaction have been if she had told you?”

He was silent for a long moment. “I’d have made her leave Tucker with me.”

Risa didn’t respond. She didn’t figure she needed to. Whatever problems Nate and his sister were having, it seemed clear to her that Kristin didn’t mind letting her brother suffer a little. Risa had never missed having siblings. Now was no different. But she couldn’t help sympathizing with his obvious concern.

He slowed on a familiar street. On the next block, she recalled, would be Juicy’s apartment building. “I’m not convinced that’s really where she headed, but Cass will check with hotels there and see if she can find anything out.” One corner of his mouth pulled up slightly. “She’s showing some real aptitude for pretext calls.”

“How does Recker have time to be doing all this?”

His sideways look was sharp. “I forgot. You missed out this morning.” She listened with growing disbelief as he filled her in, with short succinct sentences about Recker’s removal from the task force. He finished with, “It’s a case of her decisions coming back to bite her in the ass. Something she has in common with my sister, unfortunately. I just don’t want Kristin’s decisions to end up hurting Tucker, too.”

He parked behind a rusted-up small pickup and opened the door. She joined him on the street, but both of them paused before heading toward the apartment building. “Looks a little different from last time,” she murmured.

The street was nearly deserted. Across the way there was someone hurrying up a cracked concrete porch and into a building. But there was no one on the sidewalk up ahead. And as they approached, Risa saw that the porch to Juicy’s apartment building—the one that had been jammed with young men when they’d been here two days ago—was empty.

They walked up the stoop, pushed open the unlocked front door. Retraced their steps to the apartment upstairs. But this time when Nate pounded on the door, no one answered it. They knocked at every single door on that floor and not at one did anyone acknowledge their presence.

Babies still cried. Music still played too loudly. People were inside. They just weren’t interested in talking to Nate and Risa. They headed back downstairs. Nate rapped at the building super’s apartment door. “Philadelphia PD. Open the door now or you’ll have a whole lot of unwanted company on this street. In this building. And then you can come downtown and explain your shyness there.”

A chain rattled. The door was pulled open the length of it. A visual slice of a short, stocky African American man clad in a tank-style undershirt and shorts could be seen through it. “Don’t have nothing to say to you.” The door began to close. Was halted by Nate’s foot.

“Where’s Jasmine? The woman in apartment two eighteen?”

“Moved out. Yesterday. Don’t know where she went and didn’t ask questions. Rent’s paid up and it’s none of my business anyways. It don’t pay to ask too many questions.”

“What about the guys who hang out on your stoop?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me shut the door.” The one brown eye that was visible in the wedge of opening had worry flickering in it.

“Where’s Javon Emmons? Juicy?”

“Don’t know him. Don’t know where he is.”

Nate and Risa exchanged a look, and Nate stepped back. The door was shut firmly.

“I think he found a different place to live,” she observed as they headed back down the empty steps.

“And made damn sure no one around here talked about him after he was gone.”

Spying an ancient stooped man sweeping the porch a couple doors down, she hurried toward him. “Excuse me.” She saw his lips moving. Couldn’t hear what he was saying until she drew much closer.

“Don’t know nuthin’. Don’t see
nuthin’
.”

“Yeah.” She blew out a disgusted breath as she turned back to rejoin Nate. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

“He’s not far,” Nate said after they’d gotten back into the car. “He can’t be and still be able to run his business.”

“Think Randolph was working the protection profit angle with Emmons?”

“He was his arresting officer,” Nate pointed out, turning the key in the ignition. “On the other hand, as such, he was in a perfect position to make sure evidence disappeared before the appeal. Maybe that’s how he worked out the deal with him.” He pulled away from the curb. “At any rate, even if we get to talk to Juicy again, I’m not going to be able to ask any questions like that. But I’d sure like to ask a few regarding Lamont.”

“He’ll have to come up for air sometime.” It took effort to tamp down her impatience. “A man like him doesn’t trust his business dealings to underlings for long.”

“Earlier you said you had time for a couple stops. Did you have somewhere else in mind?”

She turned toward him in the seat, as much as the belt would allow. “When I found Tory Baltes’s obituary earlier today, it listed a surviving sister, a Carly Williams. I’ve got her address. We could always stop by and see if she’s more forthcoming about her sister than Juicy’s neighbors are about him.”

As it turned out, Carly Williams had plenty to say in answer to their questions. And all of it was delivered in a selfrighteous half sneer that did little to endear her to Risa.

“I don’t like speaking ill of the dead.” The bone-thin woman spoke the words with the relish reserved for people who thrived on doing just that. “Tory and I took different paths all our lives. She followed a path of self-indulgence and it eventually destroyed her. Tragic, but I used her as an example with my kids and now with my grandkids. Straying from the path of the Lord leaves us stumbling in darkness.” She turned away from the screen door then to check on the welfare of the three children sitting in a row on the couch, eyes all glued in the same direction. The sound of cartoons could be heard.

“Do you remember what she did after her business burned down? How’d she make a living?”

The woman patted her graying bun and gave a slight sniff. “Not sure the bar was ever her business to begin with. I think that man she took up with gave her the cash for it. Had her put it in her name, and I told her at the time, there’s no good reason a man does that, unless he’s trying to hide something. Did she listen?”

Obviously the question was meant to be rhetorical. Carly didn’t wait for an answer. “He was bad news from the start, and I told her that, too. He’d been in prison and he didn’t make his living any way that I could see, so where’d that money come from? She was doomed to come to a bad end from the day she met him. And she should have known better, with a kid to take care of and all.”

“So the boy didn’t belong to Fredericks?”

The woman shook her head hard enough that it should have set her hairdo to unraveling. Not a strand moved. Risa was beginning to believe it was shellacked in place. “Can’t tell you where the kid came from, but he appeared long before she took up with that Fredericks. I will say,” and the words were uttered so grudgingly they appeared painful for her, “he was good enough to the boy. Sammy idolized him. Was real broken up when he died. I always figured it was drugs brought Fredericks and Tory together. She’d had her own problems with that stuff before, but after his death, she just spiraled further and further downward.” For the first time a hint of true emotion flickered over her face. “Maybe I didn’t try hard enough with her. Might have been a bit too strong in my opinions back then. But she sort of pulled away. When I heard she’d overdosed, I hadn’t seen her in almost a year.”

“What happened to her son?”