Front Page Fatality (23 page)

He jerked the big metal door closed behind him and walked to a small office, emerging with an empty plastic crate much like the ones that were stacked halfway to the ceiling throughout most of the room.

He stopped in front of a tower about ten yards from the door and pulled the top box down. Taking a large plastic bag of white powder out, he added it to the box he was holding.

I blew my breath out forcefully and thanked my lucky stars, every fiber of my being zeroed in on Mr. I’m-Too-GQ-For-This-Heat.

He chose another crate and peeked inside it before he lifted the lid and moved a smaller bag, this one full of little yellowish pebbles, into his box.

I wondered if my mystery man was getting ready to make a delivery, already contemplating whether I was stealthy enough to follow him without getting caught.

The next box was full of guns, and he pulled two out and added them to his cache.

“Jesus,” I whispered to myself. “Welcome to Costco for criminals.”

Replacing all the lids carefully and straightening the boxes, he turned to take the one under his arm outside and froze.

I clutched the window frame, forgetting to breathe. In all my excitement over a building full of proof that I was right, I hadn’t heard another car, but a long shadow stretched across the concrete floor in the light from the high windows.

Someone else was there. A very large someone.

And I couldn’t see them because they were standing behind a tower of plastic crates. Shit.

Mr. Box o’ Drugs and Guns shook his head hard, setting his loot on the ground and backing up three steps.

I wished I could hear what they were saying, and I would’ve traded my shoe closet for a camera. From the side of the discussion I could see, it appeared that maybe someone was taking things that didn’t belong to him.

Which shouldn’t surprise people who employed criminals, in my opinion.

Leather jacket man fell to his knees, and inspiration struck me seconds before a bullet struck him.

Clenching my eyes shut and flinching at the faint scream that was cut off by a muffled gunshot, I snatched my Blackberry out of the hip pocket of my baggy scrubs and hit the camera button.

Raising it to eye level, I pushed the selector and then the save key over and over, capturing the death of a drug dealer and wondering again if this was Smith. Whoever he was, he’d just become the story of the year.

The body slumped to the left onto the concrete, blood ebbing outward in a nearly-black circle on the smooth silvery floor.

The shadow moved.

I held my breath, my thumb still clicking automatically.

The shooter stepped out from behind the crates, sunlight glinting off the gun in his hand.

My entire body went numb. Clinging to the window frame, I managed to keep clicking the camera and tried not to throw up.

Tucking the gun under his pinstriped navy suit coat, Police Chief Donovan Nash surveyed the warehouse with a satisfied smile before his attention turned back to the hemorrhaging form at his feet.

The body shuddered once and fell still. Nash’s lips curved up and he pulled one foot back and sank his shiny wingtip into the man’s midsection before he disappeared into the office.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

Not Lowe. At least, not just Lowe.

I stumbled backward and clapped one hand over my mouth, the metal under my feet strangely less than solid all of a sudden. But even my shaking knees and roiling stomach couldn’t keep me from getting the hell out of there.

I whirled, scrambling on all fours as I stuffed the phone back into my pocket and half-jumped, half-fell back to the concrete, my leg protesting through the double dose of painkillers.

Diving behind the wheel, I started the engine and steered stealthily out of the alley, then squealed the tires when I got past the next building.

Shaking, I gulped deep breaths, the adrenaline fading fast. My stomach lurched and I groaned, barely getting the car stopped and the door open before I vomited Friday night’s turkey sandwich into the grass between the road and the river.

When my insides were empty I sat up, fumbling in the console for a napkin and a stick of gum. The image of the police chief kicking the dying thief would haunt my nightmares forever, no doubt. I’d been so focused on Lowe that I hadn’t even considered the possibility that Nash was involved. 

I dug my Blackberry out of my pocket.
Please, God, just let the photos be recognizable
, I thought.

Before I could call up the pictures, my phone started ringing, Bob’s office number flashing on the screen.

“Clarke,” I sighed as I picked up. I wasn’t obligated to work Saturdays, and I really wasn’t in the mood for Les’ bullshit.

“Charlie Lewis has a nice interview with the FBI about how they’ve ruled your boating crash an accident,” Les barked. “But it’s the damnedest thing—being the managing editor of a daily newspaper, I’m getting tired of getting my news from Channel Four. So haul your ass out of bed and get me a story I can put online before three.”

I barely heard him, my eyes resting on the printed copy of the story from the Miami paper Joey had brought me the night before.

Nash’s cold smile and something I’d seen in his office the day before zipped through my thoughts. I put Les on speaker and opened my Google app, tapping Nash’s name in.

It took less than twenty seconds for my Blackberry to make me swear I’d background every cop I ever worked with for the rest of my career.

Nash had come to Richmond from heading the narcotics unit at the Miami PD eight years earlier—about two months before the date on the article in my passenger seat. I’d seen a Gators pennant on his office bookshelf, but by the time I’d found the story about Smith, I’d forgotten all about it.

“Clarke? Are you even listening to me? I can send Shelby over to interview the FBI if you’d like,” Les’ voice blared from the tiny speaker in my phone.

I contemplated telling him to fuck off. But I’d pissed him off enough for one week and, exclusive of the year or no, Bob was right about Les. At his core, he was bitter and spiteful, and he could hang onto a grudge like a bride with a hundred-dollar Vera Wang at a Filene’s basement sale.

“I have something better,” I said. And I needed to let the feds know there was a dead guy in that warehouse, anyway. “And I have to talk to the FBI about it, so I’ll get your story while I’m at it.”

“You have something better than the FBI concluding the crash that killed five people was just bad luck? What’d you do, witness a murder?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.” My lips turned up slightly, picturing his face when the line went silent. “And I have art. Charlie will be chasing my byline for the foreseeable future.”

I actually shut him up for so long I thought I’d lost my signal.

“Les?”

“You have what?” he asked finally.

“You heard me. Murder. Art. It’ll be ready in two hours. Just watch for an email from Bob and don’t say anything to anybody. Please.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he snapped. “But I’ll be waiting. It better be good.”

“You won’t believe it.” I hung up on him and stood, physically unable to sit still despite the injured leg that burned with every step. Pacing the length of the car, I waited for my actual boss to answer his phone.

Something so monumental was not going on our presses without Bob seeing it first. Les could bite my ass. No way he was touching this story.

“Bob, oh my God,” I began when he picked up, the story tumbling through my lips so fast I wasn’t sure I got the words in the right order.

“Jesus, Nichelle,” he whistled when I stopped for air. “That’s…Wow. I’m not often at a loss for words, but I don’t know what to say. When will you have it done?”

I turned back toward my car and opened my mouth to ask him if I could go to his house to write. Before I got the words out, a silver sedan shot out of a side street and lurched to a stop near my back bumper.

I let out a short scream and dropped the phone, my battered leg giving way when I tried to leap for my door. Sprawled in the grass, I threw a glance over my shoulder, but the glare from the sun obscured everything except the barrel of what looked like a rifle in a pair of very large hands.

I should have called Agent Starnes first.

Shoving hard with my good leg, I made it back to my feet and tried to spin toward the rifleman.

He was faster.

I heard a harsh huffing noise, like air being forced through a tube too fast.

Something stung my right hip.

I didn’t even get my hand there to see what it was before I was lost in the darkness.

18.

Exclusive of the year

My head was bigger and heavier than I remembered, and my eyes opened to a world painted in watercolor, blurred and fluid at the edges.

I tried to remember where I was and how I got there, but the closest I could get was an odd urge to run. Except I couldn’t muster the energy to get up. Everything seemed floaty and far away. Was this what dying felt like?

Voices filtered through the fog. I strained to hear the conversation, but it was akin to trying to listen to a television with the volume too low. I could make out syllables here and there, but nothing that made sense. And I couldn’t hear them well enough to tell who they belonged to. One rose in pitch and volume, angry. The other remained flat.

Blinking too-fat eyelids, I looked around. White, industrial-looking walls, exposed metal ceiling beams, and a corrugated tin roof.

So I wasn’t dead. While I’d never given much thought to what waited beyond the pearly gates, I was pretty sure the hereafter didn’t resemble a warehouse.

A warehouse. There was something important about that.

Then I saw the boxes.

Fuck.

My heart took off at a gallop, adrenaline blazing a trail through the haze in my brain. Stacks and stacks of plastic boxes, in a warehouse where I’d just witnessed a murder.

I preferred the view from outside.

I tried unsuccessfully to lift my arms and legs. I was lying on hard, cold surface, but from the distance I perceived there to be between my body and the ceiling, it wasn’t the floor. I tried to calm myself with a few deep breaths and caught a whiff of something that stung my nostrils.

The voices got louder.

“We certainly can’t stay here.” Donovan Nash’s booming tenor wasn’t a huge surprise, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying.

“Why not?” The reply was barely audible.

I closed my eyes and focused. Nash’s friend sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place the voice.

“I caught her before she got more than three blocks from here, didn’t I?” the mystery man argued. “No way they have a story yet. We get rid of her, and we’ve contained the situation.”

“Didn’t you say she was on the phone when you caught up to her?” Nash boomed. “How stupid do you think this girl is? If she figured out enough to come here, don’t you think she told someone where she was?”

I wished. It hadn’t occurred to me to mention my location as I spilled the murder story to Bob.

“So check her phone,” Captain Mystery said. “See who she talked to and we’ll take care of that.”

“Yes, because disappearing in the wake of the murder of an assistant CA and half the city’s newspaper staff is not at all suspicious,” Nash snapped. “Not to mention, we still don’t know where the hell the Boy Scout brigade got off to. What if Sorrel and White know more than I gave them credit for?”

I sighed, a small smile breaking through the insanity surrounding me. I knew my guys couldn’t have been crooked. And if he didn’t know where they were, then they probably weren’t dead.

“The FBI said they were done for now,” Nash continued. “I don’t need them poking around anymore. We need to clear out of here and I need time to figure out our next move. Make those biceps useful and haul boxes out to the truck. If we can get out of the state, we can buy a little time.”

Biceps?

And the voice. Damn. Mr. Mystery didn’t really sound like Parker, but I’d never heard Parker sound mad.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” Nash clapped his hands, the sound echoing in the cavernous space.

I turned my head toward him and bit back a scream, full-on panic drawing acid to the back of my tongue.

I was tied up and surrounded by at least two very large, armed men who wanted to “get rid of me.”

Objectively, I didn’t like my odds.

“Nichelle, I didn’t expect to see you again today.” Nash took two more steps and stared down at me with the same cold smile I’d seen from the window. Up close it was a thousand times more frightening, and a hundred and eighty degrees different from the charming grins he’d flashed in his office the day before.

“I knew you were working on a story about this.” Nash waved a hand at the surroundings. “But I was pretty sure you suspected Lowe.”

“And I thought I was being so secretive.”

“I’d give you a solid B,” he said. “I was impressed with your roundabout questions yesterday. I thought having McClendon arrange a meeting with you last night would keep you from tying anything back to me. It appears I was wrong, on a couple of counts. Notice the ropes. I won’t be losing an eye to one of those pretty shoes.”