Scars (Nevada James #2) (Nevada James Mysteries) (13 page)

Ellis
blinked. “What?”

“Oh, I’m
sorry,” I said “I thought we were having a contest to say a bunch of stupid
nonsense. ‘The game is the game?’ What the fuck does that even mean?”

“It
means I’m playing with him, not you. We’re the kings. White and black, sitting
across the board from each other.”

“Am I a
queen, then? Or how about a bishop? I always liked bishops.”

He shook
his head. “No. You’re just a trophy.”

“That’s
no fun,” I said. “But anyway, somehow I think you’re the only one playing this
game. You think the Laughing Man gives two shits about you? You’re just a
pretender.”

“That
won’t be true once you’re dead. Then he’ll play with me. I’ll be the only one
worth
playing with. I’ll have proved it.”

I
thought about that. “I guess I can kind of see what you’re getting at,” I said.

“And
what do you think?”

“Honestly?”
I asked. “I wonder what happened to you.” I shook my head. “Dan said you were
in a shoot a while back and you barely got through your psych evaluation after.
Was that it? Was that what set you off, or are you the type of psycho who set
fires and wet the bed when you were a kid?”

Ellis
reached into a pocket and removed a folded straight razor. He snapped it open
and admired the blade. “It was the shoot,” he said. “That’s what did it. It
was…transformative.” He sighed. “You’ve killed, Nevada. I know you have.”

“Yes.”

He
looked at me, eyes wide. “What was it like for you? The first time?”

My first
shoot had been a killer who had holed up in his bedroom and come out shooting
when I tried to talk him down. Everything about it had been clean, but… “It
made me sick,” I said. “I cried for a week.” I shook my head. “I still see him
sometimes. In crowds. Just for a second. I’ll look again and he’s gone.”

Ellis
looked at me like I’d just told him I hated ice cream and puppies. “Really?”

“Really.
Let me guess. Yours made you feel alive for the first time. It filled you
with…I don’t know. Power? Sex stuff? If you tell me you came in your pants I’ll
come over this table at you, I swear to god.”

“Nothing
like that,” he said. “It was power, Nevada. Just the power.”

“I
almost feel sorry for you,” I said. “Almost. Not enough that I won’t blow your
head off if I get the chance.”

Ellis
fingered the straight razor. “I’d love to use this on you while you’re still
alive,” he said. “I really wonder what that would be like. But it would be
breaking the rules, of course. The game is nothing without rules.”

I
sighed. “The game again. But you screwed up, you know? You made a mistake.”

“Oh? I
don’t see how.”

“You
know the Laughing Man is watching me. He’s obsessed, you could say. You know
what he did with the last guy who tried to off me.” Ellis squinted at me.
“Walked up behind him and cut his throat right when he was in the gloating
stage. What makes you think…” I took my eyes off of him and fixed my gaze on
the spot over his right shoulder.

Ellis
turned his head to look behind him, which took his gun even farther off of me
than it had been before. That was all I needed. In the time it took him to
realize nobody was coming and look back I had my Glock out of its holster and
pointed at his head. “That wasn’t the mistake,” I said. “The mistake was not
knowing I’m a Glock girl.”

Ellis
stared at my gun, then his eyes drifted down to look at his own. He wasn’t in
position to shoot. “Don’t do it,” I said. “Even if you manage to get a shot
off, I’ll drop you. Put it down.”

Sarah
said something that sounded very much like “Ha!” through the tape covering her
mouth.

Ellis
looked at his gun for a moment longer, then slowly lowered it onto the table
and took his hand away. “You’re right,” he said. “You got me.”

“Put
your hands flat on…” I started, but Ellis shoved the table at me instead,
knocking it into me and sending me flying backward in a waterfall of plates and
food. I got off one shot in his direction as I fell to the ground, but it went
wide. He was gone an instant later, running for the front door. I heard it open
as I got to my feet. “Damn it!” I shouted. I braced to go after him but Sarah
started screaming something through her tape, shaking her head wildly. She was
right. As much as my instincts wanted me to go after Ellis, it was too
dangerous. He could be waiting in the bushes for me to come out, and he still
had my .45, and probably his service weapon, as well. Plus it would mean
leaving Sarah here defenseless, and there was no help on the way if something
happened to me.

I pulled
the tape off her mouth. “My god, Nevada,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I should
have…”

“Forget
it,” I said. I took a steak knife from off of the floor in one hand, keeping my
Glock at the ready in the other, and went to work on the tape that bound her to
the chair. The minute she was free I started looking for a phone, finding one
in the kitchen. Thankfully, it had a dial tone. “It’s over,” I told Sarah.
“We’ll wait here until SWAT comes. That asshole won’t get far.”

Chapter 20

The first
uniforms arrived six minutes later and secured the scene. Then the detectives
came to do their thing, and shortly after Dan Evans arrived to do
his
thing. His thing involved a great deal of cursing and slamming his fist into
the wall hard enough to put cracks in it. Sarah and I gave statements. Sarah
had been onto Ellis fairly early. If I hadn’t been ignoring her messages it was
possible none of this would have happened. I didn’t feel great about that.

After a
while I told Dan I needed to step out and get some air. Part of that was the
truth. The air outside was cool and it did help clear my head. And then I got
in my Mustang and headed for Miramar.

Dan
called five minutes later. “Where the
hell
are you, Nevada?”

“I was
done,” I told him. “You think I need half the department following me home? The
last time this happened you had me under surveillance for a month.”

“That
was to protect you, you dumb shit.”

“Yeah, I
know. It was pretty annoying, though.”

“Where
are you, Nevada?”

“I’m not
telling.”

He swore
for a while. When he was done I said, “Take Sarah to the hospital and make sure
someone stays with her. She’s going to blame herself, but none of this is her
fault. Make sure she understands that.”

“It’s
not her fault,” Dan said. “It’s my fault. The son of a bitch was right under my
nose.”

“Psychopaths
are hard to spot, Dan. That’s why they’re called psychopaths.” I thought about
that statement. “Well, no, that’s not really why they’re called psychopaths.
The word origin is…not really relevant, I guess. The point is you couldn’t have
seen this coming.”

“I’m
going to tear him apart if I ever get my hands on him. I’m serious, Nevada.”

I
sighed. Dan was the most upstanding, honest cop I’d ever met, but Ellis made
the second person I had no doubt he’d execute without so much as an arrest or
trial. The Laughing Man was the other one. Spending time around me really
wasn’t a healthy thing. “Get some rest, Dan. And put a new team on it. No,
screw that. Call in another department. SDPD Homicide is going to be pretty
shaken up. I don’t think your people are going to be at their best.”

“We’ll
find him,” Dan said. “I promise you that, Nevada. We’ll find him.”

“I
know.”

“Now
where are you?”

“In the
wind,” I said.

“What
the hell does…” he started, but I hung up on him. When the phone started to
ring again, I shut the power off. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

I drove
all the way to my motel in Miramar and sat in the Mustang for a good ten
minutes, trying to decide what to do next. Drinking had never sounded as good
as it did right now. I still had vodka in my room. I’d brought my security
bottle with me when I’d hastily moved up here. But another part of me, a surprisingly
strong part, didn’t want the drink. It wanted to go to the roof of a tall
building to shout and scream at the sky. Ideally it would be raining when I did
this; it would have been good for dramatic effect, but it had been a clear day
and rain hadn’t been in the forecast.

I
powered my cell phone back on and looked through the voicemail, erasing the
messages Dan had left without listening to them. There was very little doubt as
to their content. It would be all swearing and demands that I go somewhere he
could make sure I was safe.

As
strange as it might have sounded, the only person I really wanted to call right
now was the one person I had no way of reaching. The Laughing Man. It was sick,
but he was really the only other person on Earth capable of understanding any
of this. In another very, very strange world, we might have been friends.

Eventually
I gave up and went into my room. The vodka I’d brought along was still in my
suitcase. I took the bottle and turned the television on, then sat on the bed
to watch it. The truth was I had no interest in the TV. I just wanted to hold
the liquor. It was my old friend. It would keep me safe.

Halfway
through some late-night talk show I realized I was shaking. Was that
adrenaline, or was it the vodka in my hand? I hadn’t opened the bottle yet. It
was about three-quarters full. It would be enough to knock me out if I could
get the whole thing down without vomiting. That itself would be a test. In the
last of my drinking days my body hadn’t reacted well to alcohol at all. If I
wasn’t already drunk I’d had to fight to keep the first few swallows from
coming back up.

I opened
the bottle, sniffed the contents, and gagged almost immediately. With my eyes
and mouth watering, I closed the bottle. Not yet. I wasn’t going to drink it
yet.

The
phone rang and I ignored it, not even bothering to check the caller ID this
time. The late-night show ended and an infomercial started up. The guy was
hawking an amazing secret for cleaning dirty clothes. It seemed to involve some
kind of spray. Also, if you ordered quickly enough, you could get three bottles
for the price of one, and you could pay for them in small installments. I
wondered if you could just pay them everything up front. Probably. It didn’t
seem worth calling to check. When I did laundry, I just used the cheapest
detergent from the store. It seemed to work just fine.

I turned
the cap on the vodka again. Smelled it. My mouth started watering, but I didn’t
gag this time. I screwed the bottle shut. My hands were shaking again. Now I
knew it was the alcohol. The adrenaline had worn off a long time ago.

I put
the vodka down on the nightstand and took my Glock out of its holster. I’d been
asked to surrender it as evidence, but I’d told Dan anyone who tried to take it
from me was going to get a bullet in the neck. Brad Ellis still had my .45 and
I wasn’t going anywhere unarmed. God only knew what Ellis had done with the
other gun. Maybe he’d blown his dick off while he’d been running away with it
in his pants. That would have been fitting.

The
Glock still had the powder smell on it from its recent firing. On another day
I’d have taken it apart and cleaned it, but that would have meant leaving
myself unarmed. There was no way in hell that was going to happen anytime in
the near future. Maybe I’d ask Dan for another gun so I had a backup piece. Or
maybe I’d just get my own. The more guns I had that he didn’t know about, the
better. That would make it harder for him to take them away from me if he ever
decided to try.

I
dropped the magazine on the Glock into my palm, looked it over, and slid it
back into place. I could have popped another bullet into it, but that didn’t
seem that important. I had plenty left. If Brad Ellis had any sense at all he
wasn’t coming after me. He would be halfway to Los Angeles by now. Or he could
have gone to Mexico. They didn’t even check IDs when you entered from the U.S.
Nobody cared about who you were until you tried to come back. Did Ellis speak
Spanish? That might be worth asking, but someone else could ask it. I was done
with this.

For a
moment I had an urge to turn the gun on myself and pull the trigger. Everything
would be over in a split second. I’d never have to worry about anything again.
It probably wouldn’t even hurt.

I
sighed, put the Glock down, and picked the vodka up again. The bottle seemed
heavier now. It couldn’t be, of course. My mind was playing tricks on me. The
clear liquid inside looked appealing. It wasn’t expensive stuff and this brand
tasted more like industrial chemicals than anything a person should actually
drink, but it would get the job done. There was no doubt about that. If I
managed to get it down I wouldn’t wake up until tomorrow afternoon. Sleep would
be nice. And booze chased away the nightmares, if I drank enough of it. I knew
that from experience.

The cap
was off the bottle almost before I noticed my hands were unscrewing it again.
Once again the smell hit me hard, but I didn’t gag this time. That probably
wasn’t a good thing. It was becoming familiar now. My body was getting used to
it again.

I glared
at the bottle, then raised it and took a good-sized sip into my mouth. The
liquid didn’t feel like anything more than water in my mouth, but it wouldn’t
as long as I was holding my breath. So what if I swallowed it? What was it
going to matter?

Then I
turned my head and spat it onto the motel carpet. My mouth and nasal passages
started burning from the liquid almost immediately. I gagged once, then went to
the sink and gagged again. I put the bottle down and rinsed my mouth out with
tap water. If any of the vodka had made it down my throat, I couldn’t feel it.
I’d probably be smelling it for a while, though.

I picked
up the bottle and took a long look at it, then turned it over and poured the
contents into the sink, watching as the liquid swirled and disappeared down the
drain. When it was gone I ran the sink for a few minutes to flush it away. Then
I capped the bottle and tossed it into the trash can. I wasn’t going to be
drinking tonight. Maybe someday I would, if I got low enough. But it wouldn’t
be tonight. And it wouldn’t be because I had a bad day. Or at least, it would
have to be a worse day than this had been.

I went
back to the bed and looked for something else to watch on television. It was a
reasonable bet that I wasn’t going to sleep tonight.