The Trouble With Murder (34 page)

Zach had gone, and Ellmann was back in the chair beside my
bed. He seemed to have made all his “phone calls.” I guessed he’d really been
standing in the hallway outside my room, waiting until Zach left, because he
reappeared almost the instant the door opened.

“How are you?” I asked, extending
my hand to him. “How’s your arm?”

He took my hand, leaning his elbows
on his knees. He kissed my palm then held my hand in both of his.  

“I’m tired, and I’ve never been so
scared in my life, but I’m fine.” He indicated his shoulder. “Through and through.
Very little damage. Light duty for a couple weeks. How’d it go with your
brother?”

I nodded. “Fine. Thanks for calling
him.”

Ellmann grinned. “Maybe I did the
right thing after all?”

“That’s all you’re going to get
from me,” I said.

He chuckled.

“Ellmann, did you know about my
mother?”

The smile fell from his face. He
nodded slowly. “Yes. I was going to tell you, but I didn’t get the chance
before your brother showed up.”

If Ellmann had been willing to use
whatever he’d found in her room as leverage simply to get her to move out, I
didn’t think he’d suddenly be compelled to arrest her. So I didn’t ask him if he
had. But I thought I knew who had.

“Did Koepke arrest her?”

Another nod. “Yeah.”

“So . . . he connected her to
Pezzani?”

Only a small part of me questioned
what Ellmann had done with the information he had about my mother. Small as it
was, I still needed to know.

He leaned forward and clutched my
hand, imploring me. “Zoe, I never said a word to anyone about what I found in
her room when I searched it. I told you, Koepke is a good investigator. He made
the connections on his own. Once he did, he got a search warrant, found
everything she had stashed anyway.”

“There was still something to find?”

“Of course. I found it, but I
didn’t take it. I couldn’t have all that shit on me. The best way for me to use
it was to leave it there, let her think everything was fine, then confront her,
threaten her. That’s all it would have been good for, because the day I’d found
it, we were looking for connections between
you
and Stacy.”

Ellmann was slightly more devious
than I’d previously given him credit for. I liked it.

I nodded. “Sorry. I . . . it’s the
drugs. I’m not thinking straight.”

He shrugged his uninjured shoulder
lightly. “I know you don’t totally trust me yet,” he said, kissing my hand
again. “Just give me time to prove you can.”

I squeezed his hand. “I’m trying,
believe me.” My voice was a soft whisper.

After a moment, Ellmann shifted
slightly in his chair and redirected our conversation.

“So, have you put it all together
yet?”

I nodded. “When I saw Tina
Shuemaker, a lot of pieces fell into place. The rest came when I saw Officer
Pratt in the clearing after the Tahoe had rolled over. I am curious, did you ever
find Tyler Jay?”

“He wasn’t involved in this,
surprisingly.”

“No, I know. But still, did you
find him?” I studied his face. Then I smiled. “Ah, you did, didn’t you? Where
was he? Was he at his mom’s?” Another subtle change. “He was, wasn’t he? I
knew
it.” I shook my head and laughed. “It’s nice to hear
that’s
over.”

“Aren’t you going to ask about the
reward money?”

“No. I’m past that. By the end, it
was just about catching him. I suppose that’s ultimately what got me in
trouble.”

“I told you going after him was
dangerous.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But who else do
you know has tracked down Tyler Jay
three
times?”

“I’ll give you that,” he conceded.

“Saturday, after I’d been ‘fired’
again, I decided to take another crack at finding Tyler. I was sitting at his
mom’s house when Bilek’s Honda drove by. I followed it to the Motel 6. But it
had been a ruse to lure me to the motel. While I was sitting in the Waffle
House, Tyler’s friend Paul called his friend Tina. Tina ordered someone to come
to the Waffle House. I guess we were there a while because it took that long
for someone to go home and get his bad-guy uniform then report for duty. While
I was watching the motel, someone climbed into the back of the truck. The
lock’s been busted for a year, and I’ve never fixed it.

“Anyway, I saw Tyler and Paul leave
the motel room, and I’d been so focused on following them, I hadn’t noticed I
wasn’t alone. Plus, the stowaway was on the floor, behind the seats. When I
parked at Stacy’s house, the stowaway slipped out and proceeded with the
initial kidnap attempt. Of course, when I didn’t cooperate, Tina had to come in
with her stun gun.”

I rubbed my hand over my neck and
felt the two small burns left by the stun gun.

“I knew you were going to call the
tip line,” Ellmann said. “So I had someone listen to the messages. We got yours
right away, but by the time I got to Stacy’s house, you were gone.”

“Where were you headed when Rita got
in touch with you?”

“To the cabin where you were
initially held. When I went back through Tyler Jay’s file, I found a connection
to the club Pezzani had once co-owned. There was also a list of known
associates. When I ran through the list, I found Paul Dortch also had a
connection to that club, and to Pezzani specifically. The only reason I started
looking into Pezzani with any real intent was because I didn’t like him. From
the first night I met him, I thought he was a prick. Then I turned up the cabin
that belonged to Pezzani, left to him by his uncle, Paul Dortch Senior.”

“You know, I thought they looked
similar. Not quite brothers, but a family resemblance.”

“Cousins. Anyway, the cabin was
fairly remote, and it seemed like as good a place as any to take a kidnapped
victim. While dozens of other units checked out dozens of other places, Koepke
and I headed to the mountains.”

“Pezzani and Tina Shuemaker were an
item.”

Ellmann nodded. “I went back over
the security-camera footage from the Elizabeth building around the time of
Stacy’s attack, focusing primarily on the exterior shots. I found a few seconds
in which Tina was unmasked, walking toward the building. After the attack,
there was a very clear shot of her getting into a red Mustang. I ran the plate,
and it came back registered to Pezzani. That started to connect a lot of dots
for me.”

“I never liked that car.”

He gave a small chuckle.

“Tina had begun dispensing ecstasy
with the food to her customers at the Olive Garden,” I said, “which helps
explain how her place was so well furnished and she was always so well-dressed.
My guess is she’d gotten Stacy involved in the same thing. The fight they’d had
in the kitchen not long before Stacy was attacked was probably about Tyler
finding out. He’d made a comment to me about Stacy being a goody two-shoes. I
think his feelings for her were genuine, and while he’s a bad guy, he didn’t
want her to become a bad girl because of him. He probably would have been angry
if he’d known she was selling drugs.”

I realized now, Tina had recognized
me from Elizabeth Tower the day I’d shown up at her door. That’s why she’d been
so weird. She’d been trying to figure out how I’d gotten on to her, what I
knew, what I was trying to figure out, and above all, she’d wanted to put me on
to someone else, like the criminal boyfriend Tyler Jay. I’d been right when I’d
speculated the attacker in the lobby would surely recognize me if I waltzed up
to their door, but I hadn’t anticipated that person being so good a liar and
thinking so quickly on his or her feet.

“Rather than risk Tyler finding
out, Stacy would have quit,” I went on. “I think Tina threatened to tell Tyler
what had been going on if Stacy backed out. That’s what they were fighting
about. I think that’s also why Stacy was in such a hurry to move out. She was
done with Tina and the drug business. And she likely planned to tell Tyler
herself after she was out rather than risk him finding out from someone else.

“But Tina couldn’t have that.
Pezzani’s business was already in jeopardy. With Tyler Jay being at the top of
the Most Wanted list, the last thing they needed was someone a step away from
being caught possessing information worth trading for. So Tina followed Stacy
to her meeting with me. And their attack was well planned; they’d even sent
someone into my office to delay me. I’d recognized the guy among the cronies at
the cabin.

“On the security video, when Stacy
turned around, it was as if she knew the person behind her. It was only after
seeing that person in a ski mask that she was afraid. But those stab wounds
didn’t kill Stacy, so Tina had to finish the job. The day Stacy went into
cardiac arrest, you told me you’d run into Tina at the hospital. An air bubble
injected into the IV line would have been enough to cause a heart attack. But
Stacy survived that, too. So Tina had to try again. The second time I went to
the hospital, I ran into Tina as she was leaving. A couple minutes later, Stacy
was dead. I suspect that time she used some sort of poison.”

Ellmann nodded. “Sort of. Tina’s a
biology major. Somehow she managed to get her hands on a big dose of potassium.
It was enough to cause another cardiac disturbance, which was more than sufficient
to kill Stacy in her fragile state.”

“It was also Tina who killed
Derrick Bilek,” I said. “Derrick had probably gotten mixed up in Pezzani’s
business somehow and was a part of the ‘mess’ he’d talked about needing to
clean up. I was supposed to be the fall guy. Pezzani had helped me move the day
before, so he knew where I lived. All he had to do was tell Tina. Then, while I
was out to dinner with Pezzani, Tina and Bilek went to the house. Tina shot him,
and we found him later.”

“Bilek had been a bouncer at
Pezzani’s club. After the club closed, he worked ‘security’ for the raves they
threw around the area.”

“As the fall guy, I was supposed to
shoot the people Pezzani needed dead. The most efficient way he thought to do
that would be to have them try to kill me. Then I would kill them in self-defense,
a situation the police don’t really look into. Pezzani needed a public attempt
on my life, something like at a restaurant. I think the best shooter Pezzani
had was Pratt, a cop who had some training and lots of practice. He couldn’t
have just anyone come into that restaurant and shoot at me, because, one, he
would be right beside me, and, two, I couldn’t actually get shot. Any marksman
will tell you it takes skill to hit a target and even more skill to miss. After
the restaurant, Tina took Pengue to Pezzani’s house, where Pengue was under the
impression they were there to kill me. Of course, I shot and killed Pengue. I
also hit Tina.”

“You did. The coroner noted a flesh
wound on her left arm. Initial blood testing indicates it was her blood we
found on the stairs.”

“Margaret Fischer must have been
killed because she interrupted something, saw something she shouldn’t have.
She’d gone to the house after work to assess the damage, but I’m guessing
Pezzani was there. He was trying to set me up as the fall guy, so I’m thinking
he went there to find a weapon, which he did. It was a stroke of seriously bad
luck he had to kill Fischer and leave the gun there to incriminate me. It would
have taken him more than a few minutes to get that lockbox open.”

“He told us Pratt had looked up
your registrations. He knew you had a handful of guns registered to you. He was
more than a little pissed off he only found one of them and then had to leave
it behind.”

“Having a cop in the inner circle
would go a long way in helping Pezzani stay ahead of the police. Plus, it also
meant he got access to all sorts of information, like my history. And, I’m
guessing it was how Tyler managed to stay one step ahead of you guys every time
I tipped you to his location. Pezzani didn’t care if Tyler got pinched, but
timing was everything. If Tyler got picked up too early, it would have affected
his plan.”

“Pratt tipped off Paul, who spent
most his time with Tyler. The coroner said Pratt had levels of X in his system
when he died, and rather significant damage to his brain, thought to be the
result of prolonged usage of the drug. Pezzani was likely blackmailing Pratt
into cooperation after learning of his drug problem. X wasn’t the only thing
Pratt liked, apparently.”

“Really? He was a decent shot.
Think how great he could have been sober.”

“Probably a good thing he wasn’t,
then.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Although, it was a little
unsettling to think he’d been high when he shot up the restaurant that day. Especially
since I’d been in the restaurant.

“Speaking of, I’d still like to
know what happened to my mother.”

“When she was arrested last week,
she’d been at one of Pezzani’s raves. And the X I found in her room had the
same stamps as the stuff Pezzani is known to distribute. Now that we have
Pezzani, he’s doing some talking, trying to buy himself a better deal. He gave
her up.”

Like any other bad guy making lots
of money doing something illegal, Pezzani couldn’t just deposit his ecstasy
profits into the bank. It had to look like it was coming from somewhere legit.
This was where my mother came in. It would have been nothing for her to take
Pezzani’s money, run it through a couple legit businesses, and make it all look
like he’d earned it on the up-and-up. And in her compromised mental state,
she’d somehow aligned herself as Pezzani’s partner. But, sound decision-making
has never been her strong suit.

And, for once, the cops had been
telling the truth: not even Bridget Grey’s sliver-tongued lawyer could slither
her out of trouble this time.

“Zoe? You have that look again, the
happiest-kid-in-the-world look.”

I realized I was still in the
hospital, still sitting with Ellmann. I’d forgotten myself for a moment. I’d
been daydreaming about my mother in a bright orange jumpsuit, living behind
bars for the next fifteen years. I realize for most children, such a thought
would be sad or scary. For me, it was a
huge
relief.