Kill and Tell (24 page)

"Yes, come in," she said.

He parted the curtain and stepped inside. He was middle-aged, his face shiny with sweat. How could he be sweating? It was so cold in here, the air conditioning must be turned on maximum. He sat down in the single chair in the cubicle, and Karen pulled the blanket tighter around her, shivering. He watched her with that cool, assessing cop look, as if he didn't believe anything anyone told him. Marc had that look, too, she thought, and she wanted him here so much she ached inside. She had never felt safer than when she had been with Marc, and just now she needed that security.

"Detective Suter," he said by way of introduction. "Do you feel like answering some questions?" They had taken a brief statement from her at the apartment, but since there was no question about the manner of the man's death, her importance to them was as a witness, not a suspect. The medics had wanted to transport her to be checked out, so they had let her go and taken care of more pressing matters.

"Yes, I'm fine," she said automatically.

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He gave her an assessing look but didn't argue. He flipped open a small notebook. "Okay, in your previous statement, you said you were in the bedroom when you heard the suspect enter the apartment—"

"No, he was already inside. I didn't hear him enter. I heard him stop outside my bedroom door and look in." She knew what she had said, and it wasn't that she had heard him enter. He looked back at the notebook and didn't comment. Maybe he had been testing her, to see if the details still matched.

"But he didn't see you?"

"No. He didn't come into the bedroom. I was standing off to the right, next to the window. The bedroom door opens to the right, so I was hidden from view unless he came all the way into the room."

"What did he do then?"

"After that, he wasn't as quiet. Since he didn't see me, he must have thought no one was at home. He went into the kitchen and began… searching."

"Searching?" He seized on the word.

"That's what it seemed like. He looked in the cabinets, because I could hear the drawers and doors opening and closing. He even looked in the refrigerator."

"What for?"

She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. "I don't know."

"Okay, what did he do then?"

"He turned the kitchen chairs upside down and looked under them." Her voice mirrored her bewilderment.

He wrote in his little notebook. "What did you do?"

"I—I didn't think I could get out of the apartment; from where he was, he had a clear view of the door. I tiptoed to the phone by the bed and put the receiver under a pillow to muffle the noise, then dialed nine-one-one."

"Good thing you did," he said. "The responding officers were less than a block away. They didn't know what apartment, but the street address was enough to get them there."

"They figured out what apartment," she said, staring blindly at the floor. "It was the one where shots were being fired."

He cleared his throat. "Uh—yeah. What happened then?"

"I tried to sneak into the bathroom, because that's where I keep my hairspray."
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He gave a brief smile, and for a moment he was a man instead of a cop. "Smart. That stuff gets in your eyes, it burns like hell."

"I know. It was all I had." She swallowed, trying not to remember the terror of facing an armed burglar with nothing more than a can of hairspray. "The bathroom door squeaked a little. He heard it. I—" She took a deep breath. "I thought he must have, because the noise from the kitchen stopped. I just stood there in the bathroom with the can in my hand, watching the door to see if it moved. He shoved it open, and I sprayed him in the face. He had the gun in his hand," she finished, and fell silent.

"Did you know him?"

She shook her head.

"Maybe seen him around?"

"No."

"So what happened then?"

"I shoved him, but he caught my gown, and we both fell on the bed. I sprayed him again, and he hit me." Unconsciously, she touched her cheekbone. "I hit him on the nose, with the can of hairspray. I remember kicking him with both feet… then I rolled off the bed and crawled to the door, and he started shooting." She fell silent, remembering the blur of details, the terror, the rage. Detective Suter didn't ask any more questions, didn't prompt her, but she could feel him waiting for the rest of the story, for what happened after the police officers arrived. She rubbed her forehead, trying to get the details straight. "I made it out the door of the apartment… the officers were just coming up the stairs. I almost ran into them. The man came out of the apartment and aimed his gun at me, and they shot him. He didn't fall. He… he
laughed
and shot at me again, and they shot him again."

"Did anyone say anything?"

"Both officers yelled at him to drop the gun. That's when he laughed and said… ah—" She looked at the detective and cleared her throat. Funny, she normally wasn't such a prude, but she simply couldn't say the word in front of this man who was old enough to be her father. "To paraphrase, he said, 'Screw you.'

Then he shot at me the last time."

He looked down at his notes and nodded, as if she had corroborated something he already knew. He closed the notebook and slipped it inside his jacket. "That's all for now. Where can I get in touch with you, if I need to talk to you again?"

She stared at him. "I don't know," she said blankly. "You won't let me back into my apartment."

"Do you have family here?"

"No." Her throat closed. "No family."

"Friends?"

"Yes, but I don't—" Piper had offered her house, her company. "Maybe Piper Lloyd. She's a nurse here at the hospital, too." She gave him Piper's number. "Even if I'm not staying there, Piper will know where I
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am. Or you can reach me here at the hospital. I work nights."

He gave her a shrewd look. "I bet you won't work tonight."

"Of course I will," she said, automatically rejecting the notion that she wasn't fit. Why did everyone keep acting as if she had suffered more than some minor bruising and a small cut?

He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "Ms. Whitlaw, it's none of my business, but I think you should cut yourself some slack. You handled the situation just about as well as possible, under the circumstances. You kept your head, didn't panic, alerted nine-one-one, and defended yourself with the means you had at hand. But you haven't had any sleep, you've been in a fight—and believe me, you're going to start feeling all sorts of bruises and aches. Look at you. You're shivering and huddling under that blanket, but it isn't cold in here. You're a nurse. What does that tell you?" Shock. Her mind immediately supplied the diagnosis. Her blood pressure had dropped after the surge of adrenaline that allowed her to fight off the burglar. Karen was annoyed. She should have recognized the symptoms and been lying down. This was twice she had been oblivious to what her own body was telling her, she who was one of the best on the surgical floor at looking at patients and quickly summing up their overall condition.

"All right, so maybe I won't work tonight," she admitted. "I need a uniform, anyway. How do I get my things from the apartment?"

"Make a list of what you need, and I'll have a policewoman pack a bag for you."

"How long will it be before I can get back in?"

"A couple of days. I'll try to hurry things along."

"I can't live there again."

He sighed and reached out as if he would pat her knee, then paused without making the gesture of comfort. She diagnosed his hesitation as fear of lawsuits. "No," he said, "I don't guess you can." The sound of running feet caught her attention, and a moment later Piper burst into the cubicle. She was red-faced and panting. "Karen! My God, are you all right? One of the emergency nurses called upstairs and told us you were here. You were
mugged
?"

"Not exactly."

Detective Suter got to his feet. It looked like an effort. "I'll be in touch, Ms. Whitlaw. And I'll get your things to you."

"Thank you," she barely had time to say, before Piper shifted from concerned friend mode to nurse mode and pushed her down on the bed.

He hadn't heard from Clancy, who was always prompt about reporting. Hayes waited, growing more annoyed and worried by the minute. Finally, he called his source in Columbus.

"Anything interesting happened today?"

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"Ah, yeah. The good guys killed a burglar in a lady's apartment. She was at home, surprised him, put up a good fight and got away. The word is he was a pro; the piece he was carrying had the serial number filed off."

"No shit. Did he have anything else on him?"

"Nothing on him, but a rental vehicle was located in the parking lot, and a wallet with his license and credit cards was found in the glovebox."

Hayes hung up and sat drumming his fingers on the desk. Clancy was dead. How in hell had that happened? He'd been one of the best.

Moreover, nothing had been found on him, so that meant he hadn't found the book. Hayes spared a moment for regret that the book hadn't been on him; it would now be in police possession, but he would know where it was, and getting it
out
of police possession was child's play. Karen Whitlaw was beginning to worry him. This was twice things had gone wrong. The first time was a logical mistake, but now he wondered
why
she had moved. To make herself harder to find? How much had her father told her?

Hayes's preference was to find the book, not kill the woman. But, logically, she was the only one who would know where the damn thing was hidden. If he couldn't find the book, then obviously he had to get rid of her.

«^»

"You see what a problem it is, Raymond," Senator Lake said. The big, gray-haired man nodded in acknowledgment. They sat in the parlor of the senator's Washington townhouse, lingering over their morning coffee. Raymond had gotten a late flight out of Minneapolis the day before and arrived in Washington well after midnight, so the senator had left word for him to get a good night's sleep, and they would talk in the morning.

The senator had gotten, for him, a late start; he had slept until eight, and now it was ten-thirty, the morning sun bright and hot. "I had my doubts about the way Hayes handled the matter of Medina," he said slowly, "and now it looks as if he lied in order to get me to do things his way. I can't imagine any reason why Frank Vinay would deny knowing about Medina's death, if he already knew, or any reason for him to say Medina had no family if in fact he did. I wasn't asking for classified data, and I
am
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee."

"Hayes must have his own agenda," Raymond said, his thick brows furrowed as he thought. He looked like a boxer who had gone one round too many, but there was an agile brain behind the battered appearance.

"That's what I thought, too. I wonder if perhaps he is gathering ammunition with which to blackmail me. Whitlaw could have given him the idea." The one good thing about that scenario, the senator thought, was that it proved Hayes's minions hadn't discovered the notebook and he had kept it himself. If Hayes had
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the notebook, he wouldn't need any other means of blackmail.

"You know what I think about loose ends." Raymond shook his head. "They're dangerous. You don't use people you can't trust. You said Hayes used people you didn't know to take care of Medina?"

"Yes. He swore they knew nothing about me, that they thought he was the head, but if he's lied in one thing, then nothing he says is trustworthy."

"Get their names from him," Raymond said. "I'll take care of it." Raymond had always taken care of things. Senator Lake could remember, as a child, hearing the burly man quietly say to his father, "I'll take care of it," and his father had always smiled and nodded, and it was done. It was reassuring now to hear him say the words, to know his affairs were being handled by someone he could trust with his life.

"Do you have Hayes's address?"

"Yes, of course." The senator had made it a point to find out. He had not, however, written it down in his address book or had his secretary add it to his computer files. No, anything to do with Hayes was stored only in his head. In his position, he knew too much about the capabilities of current technology to believe anything in his computer was private, and though he took the security precautions any sane man would take, he didn't assume his system was inviolate. If it wasn't written down, then it wasn't accessible; that was the most secure any information could be. He rattled off the street number to Raymond, whose lips moved slightly as he memorized it.

"I'll get right on it," Raymond said, and the senator knew everything was going to be all right.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Piper asked for the tenth time as she and Karen walked across the hospital parking lot to Piper's car. There was a parking deck, but it was reserved for the doctors and administrative staff, so they wouldn't get wet or have to walk very far. The nurses and other peons, who were evidently all in good shape and not allergic to water, had to use a parking lot that was half a block away from the hospital.

Karen squinted into the hot afternoon sun and wished she had her sunglasses. "I'm fine," she said, for more than the tenth time. Piper had insisted on taking Karen home with her. Several of her friends and colleagues had stopped by the emergency department to check on her. Ice had been applied to her various bruises, the cut on her foot had been anointed with antiseptic and covered with a bandage, and she had been made to lie down for several unnecessary hours while they plied her with food and fruit juices. She didn't feel shocky any longer, she just felt tired and harassed. Piper carried her suitcase, having refused to let Karen lift it because of her sore ribs. Detective Suter had been prompt about having her things collected, earning Karen's undying gratitude. Her options until then had been wearing either her own blood-splattered gown or a hospital gown. The hospital gown had won the contest, but just barely. Now she was dressed comfortably and securely in the all-American uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers.