Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel (25 page)

She’d sprung to her feet and started forward, despite the stupidity of such a knee-jerk reaction. Later, she’d remember she’d screamed his name, but in the next second, she was scrambling for cover as gunfire erupted out the other back window. Bullets struck her stadium chair and knocked it backward like a fly hit by a flyswatter. As she stumbled away, another bullet ricocheted off the light post, a sharp ping, then the concrete, sending up a spray of dust and gravel.

As she ran for her life, cracks in the curtains of the buildings across from her became smooth lines again as the occupants of the apartments retreated from the vulnerable position. The door of the nail salon slammed as the store owner took cover. She was holding her tablet up to cover the side of her face. The car couldn’t stop or the police would catch up, so as she heard glass shatter in the storefront behind her and heard the nail salon employees screech in alarm, she knew the gunman was being carried away from her. She spun around when she was pretty sure she was in the clear and saw the car rocketing toward the end of the street.

Her gaze shot to Leland. He was all right. He was helping Manny back to his feet as the other two cops sprinted toward their units, one shouting into his radio.

She pivoted and ran down the alley behind her. This was why it was critical for Billy and all the others to know the streets inside and out. The car was most likely to turn left so they could shoot down the parallel street. It was the quickest route to a warren of neighborhoods with rabbit holes for a fleeing vehicle. If she could run fast enough, she could see them as they passed by, get a better look at their faces. Rage accompanied the adrenaline now. Bastards. Thinking they could shoot at the police, at Leland. The police hadn’t returned fire, no time for it. Plus, a moving target was too great a risk to the civilians behind the windows. She’d been sitting on that same sidewalk herself.

She’d been on scene at a police shooting a couple years back. She’d known the dead officer. Tom had been twenty-nine years old, with a young son and a five-year marriage. He’d been gunned down on the street. By a stroke of unlucky fate, she’d arrived right before police backup had. 911 had already been called, officer down, but she’d been the one to see the life die out of his eyes while she held his hand impotently. She hadn’t been aware of the police arriving, of hands moving her out of the way. Eventually she’d found herself sitting in her car in an empty parking lot, no idea how she’d gotten there, with smears of his blood on her shirt.

Now she visualized Leland in the same position as Tom, that strong handclasp going limp around hers. Her speed doubled. Son of a bitch wasn’t going to get away with shooting at her man without her seeing his face.

She was glad for every punishing workout as she skidded out of the alley on the other side, right by Jai’s place. Triumph surged through her as she saw the black sedan come screaming down the street. The tinted windows in the front were raised, so no chance of identifying the driver, but she saw one of the two in the backseat. Shock froze her as Dogboy’s dead eyes pinned her, his lips peeling back. Fast as she could blink, he thrust his gun back out the window.

He could send a dozen bullets across her body faster than she could move. But it was harder to hit a moving target than a sitting one. Pure survival instinct had her dropping to the ground. As she went down, something grabbed her around the waist, swung her back into the alley, hard enough she hit the concrete with a bone-jarring thud. She was covered as the whine of bullets shot over her, then the weight on her back lifted.

She shoved herself up in time to see Leland spinning and lunging out of the alley, weapon drawn. He fired one shot before lifting the muzzle, the fury in his face indicating the car was making its getaway.

“Dogboy,” she gasped.

He didn’t hear her, so she said it louder, repeated it again and again before she realized she sounded like an answering machine stuck on a loop. Shock, probably. Yeah, she’d been in some sticky situations before, but that was the first time someone had tried to kill her. Christ. Dogboy. Teenage psychopath. The asshole had shot at her. Multiple shots.

Despite her legs feeling like noodles, she was on her feet and out of the alley, breaking into a half run to go after the car. Leland caught her around the waist. “Hey. Celeste, they’re gone.”

“Son of a bitch,” she snarled, fighting his hold. “Thinks he can take a fucking shot at me and make me scared of him. Bastard will wish he’d never been born.”

“Easy,
easy
.” He gave her a hard shake, snapping the red haze out of her eye. “Stop clawing at me. Settle down.”

She knew she was acting irrationally, fought it back, but she pushed against his hold. “I’m all right. Let me go. Let go.”

“Okay, but you stay right there.” He kept a hand on her shoulder, fingers curled in her shirt while he spoke into his radio. “Black Chrysler sedan, bullet hole in the back trunk, Louisiana license plate Delta-Hotel-Lima, 5756.”

“Dogboy,” she said again. “It was Dogboy doing the shooting in the back. Earl Edward James is his real name.” She took a breath, suddenly remembering standing at Leland’s door this morning. “Guess neither of us watched our asses, did we? Good thing we were watching each other’s.”

It was a weak joke, and he glanced at her, concern etched on his face. There was a ringing in her head, a keening sound like a frightened woman. That wasn’t her. She’d shoot herself before she’d make such a noise. As she focused, she realized it wasn’t her. The unidentified sound widened her focus so she could take in more of her surroundings. As soon as she did, she wrenched herself from Leland’s hold and was off like a shot, but not to chase down a car that was long gone.

One of Jai’s windows was gone except for jagged glass teeth, and there was a trio of bullets in an arc along the thick glass door. She jerked it open and saw a woman on her knees by the cash register. She wore a yellow tunic and brown leggings. The tunic was stained red. A dozen tomatoes were around her, but they were unbroken. They weren’t why her tunic was stained and her hands were red and wet. She lifted them to Celeste, eyes frantic. “Help us. Help…”

Leland pushed past her, already back on the radio. “We need an ambulance at the Mini-Mart at 447 Weller Avenue for…” His voice hitched as he reached the end of the counter. “Multiple GSWs to the chest. One male, mid-forties… Ma’am are you hurt? Are you hurt? No? I need you to move back then, let me help him. Step back for me.”

Celeste, her heart in her throat, moved forward. Leland briefly met her gaze as she eased the woman away. Jai was crumpled behind the counter, a thick puddle of blood soaking his shirt. His head lolled toward her, his eyes glazed, but she thought she saw a hint of the half smile he always gave her. Muscle memory. Shock as well.
I’m not really shot if I can smile and say hello like I always do, right?

The woman was crying louder now. Despite wanting to stay right at Leland’s side, Celeste moved the woman further away, in front of a display of Hostess cakes. Jai had teased her about those.

“Two for a dollar. Makes your butt bigger, Celeste. A man likes at least two good handfuls. You see any skinny porn stars? How about the classics? Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Sophia Loren. Those are women, the ones men fantasize about it. Not these pencil thin super models.”

The Mini-Mart had a small supply of overpriced folding stadium chairs, cheaper versions of her own. Thank God Jai had one set up so his customers could see how they worked. She sat the woman down in it and checked her over, made absolutely sure the blood wasn’t hers. It wasn’t. It was all Jai’s. Celeste’s hands shook as she turned the woman’s palms over. Pulling some paper towels off the shelf, she ripped them open and helped her clean off the blood. It gave them both something to do.

Celeste wondered if she was the lady who brought the tomatoes, or if she’d just knocked them off the counter. She’d assumed she would be an older woman, but this woman was about thirty, pale under her hazelnut skin. She had a figure Jai would like. Wide backside and generous breasts. Right now she smelled like blood and a fragrant hair spray, mixed with cigarettes. They might have been flirting before the shooting. If so, it would have been harmless fun, like how Jai teased Celeste, because Jai was faithful to his wife. His wife and two daughters. The one who was studying to be a doctor and the other dedicated to partying, to giving her father sleepless nights.

Celeste swallowed on a hard lump.

“Monsters,” the woman sobbed. She had a heavy Jamaican accent. “They are monsters. Jai did nothing to them.”

Celeste held her, uttered something pointlessly soothing, but her gaze clung to Leland. He was doing what his training allowed to slow the blood flow, keep Jai responsive. His hands were covered in blood, too. When his gaze slid back to her, checking on them, she saw in his face what she already feared.

Jai’s head turned, his hand fumbling to rest on Leland’s arm. The store owner coughed, muttered something. Leland bent to hear him. As he did, his full lips twisted in an attempt at a smile. Jai’s hand closed in a fist, beat a weak tattoo against his arm. Leland took his hand while holding pressure on the gunshot wound in his chest. So she saw when Jai’s fingers loosened and that stillness set in. It was over.

§

Marigold was the woman who brought Jai those non-USDA approved tomatoes. Her gaze couldn’t seem to leave them, the way they gleamed on the floor. When someone accidentally stepped on one, Marigold winced as if she’d been punched. There was about ten feet between her and Celeste, and they were under the supervision of one officer, Jack Bronski. She knew his job was not only to see to their comfort while they waited, but to minimize conversation between them. Witness statements tended to be more accurate if they hadn’t discussed the scene with other witnesses.

Jack explained that to Marigold, but she looked as if she heard none of it. She was fixated on the tomatoes, mumbling to herself. Celeste asked Jack if they could collect them in a basket, give them back to the woman. Bless him, Bronski checked with the detective on scene and the crime techs and received the go-ahead. She suspected the officer who’d stepped on one had made the case for removing them from the floor before a bigger mess happened. When Celeste automatically rose to help, Jack put a firm but kind hand to her shoulder, keeping her in place on another stadium chair they’d opened up for her. He had one of the crime techs hand him a grocery bag from behind the counter, then squatted to collect the tomatoes. Marigold stifled a sob as Celeste stared at his long fingers closing over the shiny red spheres. For some reason, she felt a similar desire to cry over the simple, normal act. Gathering up tomatoes, putting them in a bag. Bronski brought them to Marigold, who held them like she was cradling a baby.

They were at the back of the store. Normally they might have been parked outside until the detectives decided where they wanted to take their statements, but perhaps the death being caused by a drive-by had driven the decision to keep any material witnesses in the store. Most reporters would donate a kidney to be allowed to sit this close to a crime scene, but given that Jai had paid for her privilege with his life, Celeste couldn’t derive any satisfaction from it. It was automatic for her to log comments and information as she heard and saw them, but the largest part of her mind was oddly fuzzy and disjointed. Besides which, her tablet was shattered on the concrete in the alley outside the store, and she had no idea where her paper notebook was.

Detective Toby Allen eventually came over and pulled her aside to get her statement. It was a relief to shift into her reporter mode and recall as much detail as possible. Yet when she was done, she couldn’t remember a word she’d said, like a driver who couldn’t remember parts of a long trip, lost to highway hypnosis. Detective Allen’s gaze was approving, though, and he touched her shoulder, telling her she’d helped. He told her she was free to go, because they knew how to get hold of her. Nodding numbly, she moved toward the door.

“You okay?”

She found herself staring into the wall of Leland’s body, standing in front of her. Celeste’s gaze shifted to Leland’s hands. He’d cleaned his off as well, but there was some on his shirt. He’d used something to dry the excess blood on his trousers where he’d knelt next to Jai, though she could still see the stains.

Her attention lifted to his face, the flat hardness of it. Yet when he said, “You okay?” she could tell her answer meant something to him.

She choked on a near sob, startling herself, but firmed her chin, never mind that her eyes were glassy with tears. “I’m good. You do what you have to do. Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah. No. He told me…” He shook his head. “Tell you later.”

“Sarge?” Bronski had shifted forward, his eyes narrowing. “Are you…”

Celeste followed his gaze, and saw it too. Before Leland could stop her, she yanked his shirt from his belt with enough force to make Leland wince. The tear in the fabric had been concealed by the bloodstain, and she’d assumed it was all Jai’s blood. “You’ve been shot.”

“Grazed,” he corrected her, guiding her fingers along the wound so she could feel it was indeed shallow, no puncture. The blood had already clotted and dried over it. The firm touch of his hand had its usual steadying effect on her, though this time it also cracked open something deeper, and she couldn’t pull away. As if he knew she needed it, he held on to her hand, let it stay resting on his waist over that graze. “Nothing to worry about, darlin’,” he murmured, for her ears only. He touched her face, made her look at him, meet his gaze. “Okay?”

“Sarge, you know we have to—”

“Bronski, you finish that sentence, a report has to be filed. Every time my aunt sees ‘officer-involved shooting’ on the incident reports and finds out an officer was hit, she calls the captain and makes him tell her if it was me. He can withstand the press, the Mayor-President, the damn Metro Council, but we went to high school together and she can pull a lie out of him like giblets from a turkey’s ass, same as me. He’ll spill.”