Mortal Crimes 1 Read online

The file cabinets were ranged to the immediate right of the desk, so when Grady found the file he wanted, all he had to do was lean slightly to the right and drop it on the desk. He did this now. “Childers? That’s Sam Houston, too, as I recall.”

  Laura found herself staring at his back. Thinking how normal he looked. He epitomized a young businessman on his way up. Dark trousers, well cut. A tad ample at the waist, but he could still turn heads. Brown hair topping his collar just enough to give him that slightly-bad-boy-who-won’t-follow-rules look. Considering his father owned the place, it didn’t seem like much of a statement.

  “Any more?” he asked. Flashing her a smile that was friendly and lazy. The smile made her think of a snake sunning itself on a rock.

  She gave him the rest of the list. He held it in front of him, his face a picture of concentration, rocking back and forth on his heels.

  One drawer slammed shut, another slid open. His manicured thumb snapped another file down. Close to her, almost crowding her out of the space between himself and the chair. Laura took the path of least resistance and sat down, her eye immediately going to the top page of the file.

  He was talking again, but she was doing a pretty good job of tuning him out. She knew he was telling her lies. Right now he was talking about his coming wedding. “Up to me, it would be just the two of us on a beach, and Moby could be my best man.”

  Laura said, “Moby?”

  “My dog.”

  Laura knew Grady was talking to keep her mind off the files. He thought he was smarter than her, that he could fool her. He was supremely confident in that belief.

  “Now this lady here, I know I sent the check in,” he was saying. Standing above her, looking at the file, then placing it open-faced in front of her. Her eye going to the name.

  “I’m going to need copies,” she said.

  “No prob.” Opening the top file drawer again. Crowding her some more.

  She smelled his aftershave as he leaned closer. Her mind registering the stealthy whicker of the casters as she moved the chair back to put more space between them.

  She heard him step away to the file cabinet, and then there was quiet. There should have been another file. The hair stood up on her arms.

  Suddenly, the stillness erupted—a lightning bolt from left field.

  A knife arcing through space, white heat at the edge of her vision.

  Her palm flew up to ward him off—pure reflex—and she shoved her chair backwards. It tipped—go ahead and let it—just as the big knife slashed through the air past her face.

  Instinct taking over, everything in slow motion. Her sight narrowing to a very small space surrounded by darkness. He was yelling something, but she couldn’t hear it. She saw the fluorescents barring the ceiling, the tilt of dark gray carpet, falling in slow motion, toppling onto her right side and something—the cheap wooden armrest?—walloping her arm a few inches below her elbow, all her body weight coming down, banging it hard.

  The shock running all the way up her arm and into her jaw.

  Her hand, trapped. Sticky, pulsing.

  She’d been cut.

  She saw the capering glee in Grady’s eyes as he took a step back to take another run at her, the hunting knife with the seven-inch blade gleaming in his fist, a drip of blood ending in an exclamation point on the handle, smearing his hand.

  She kicked her way out of the chair and backpedaled before even forming the thought, scuttling across the six feet of carpet to the storage cabinet. The next time the knife sliced through the air, it would take part of her face, her eye. She reached the closet a second before his arm shot forward, her whole body slamming the door shut, her good hand and her good shoulder, the knife punching through the door, the blade whinging.

  This close to her eye.

  With her body and her good arm, Laura shoved the water cooler up against the door as the knife stabbed again through the hollow-core door.

  Heart pounding.

  In shock.

  She needed the SIG. Left hand. Left hand! Laura had backed up against the Formica counter, out of range of the punching knife, wondering how long it would take for him to hack it to pieces. She reached awkwardly across her stomach to unsnap the holster, sliding the SIG out backwards, taking an eternity to turn it around in her fumbling fingers.

  Still straining under disbelief that he had attacked her. Why?

  It was illogical, crazy.

  She steadied her left arm against her side, hard. Standing so that her gun was squeezed against her stomach, rigid against her side—if she shot there would be a recoil and a burn—the gun six times as heavy.

  Aiming chest-high. “Throw the knife away! Do it now! Or I will shoot you through this door.”

  The knife withdrew and he punched the door hard, fist coming right through. Class ring, Rolex, manicured nails. A roar of rage.

  “You’re not going to fuck this up! I’m not going to jail again! You bitch!”

  The words punched into her heart. Bitch.

  Suddenly, centuries of fear uncoiled in her stomach, the tentacles wrapping around her organs and squeezing them.

  He thinks he can do it because I’m female.

  Another punch, awakening the atavistic urge to survive. One more punch and I’m shooting.

  Another garbled yell, a rhino charge. A whole two-inch-wide segment of the door broke through.

  Laura fired.

  A scream.

  He was the one backpedaling now, she could see him through the slit in the door.

  She’d got him. Or thought she did. She fired again.

  Heard him muttering.

  Then he giggled.

  “Missed me, Ms. Cardinal. Should I call you Ms.? How many more rounds do you have in that gun?”

  Her useless hand nudging the cell phone on her belt. 911. Simple. Just three numbers. But she had no feeling in her hand at all.

  Laura forced her mind to think. How could she make the phone call? She’d have to put her gun down. But she couldn’t do that because, in her mind, he would get her. She realized that Sean Grady had grown in her imagination. He had a supernatural quality, the way he had avoided taking a bullet through that door. She thought he might be able to sense what she was doing—her instant vulnerability as she let go of the gun. Was certain of it, in fact.

  Quiet out there. Not a sound.

  Sweat beaded under her hair.

  Heart pounding. Realizing too late that just because Sean Grady committed fraud didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Now she knew better.

  Also knowing that by all rights she should be dead right now. Still unable to believe she’d made it this far.

  Another boyish cackle.

  Laura felt as if she’d been frozen in amber. Unable to move, unable to think. What was he planning?

  One more charge and he’d come through. Nothing to stop him. Certainly not fear. He had no fear. He literally did not know what fear was, and so he would never learn from it. Sociopaths 101.

  Switch hands.

  A simple solution. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? If she could even loosely grip the gun in her right hand, she could punch in the number with her left.

  Gingerly, she transferred the SIG’s grip from the left to the right hand, almost dropping it. But it hung there, suspended from two fingers. She used her left, awkward as it was, to punch in 911.

  Made sure her voice was loud and clear. Gave her badge number, the address, and said succinctly, “This is a Triple Nine. Triple Nine,” repeating it. “Do you understand? I’m triple nine.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Stay on the line.”

  Laura made the transfer again, shored her left arm against her stomach, parallel to the door, square stance.

  No sound from outside.

  Thinking: He tried to kill me in his own office. For some reason, that was the hardest of all to fathom; that he’d kill her in his own office.

  Laura didn’t know how long it took for her to realize he had left the room.
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  Distantly, she heard an engine grumble to life, then the shriek of tires, the sound of acceleration.

  Was he gone or was it a trick? Couldn’t be a trick, don’t be ridiculous. He’s gone. But she did not move. Just held the SIG fast against her side, aiming at the busted door.

  When she heard the sirens coming, her legs wanted to give way. She spread them wider and leaned against the counter, still cradling the gun awkwardly in her left hand.

  Legs shaking like a jackhammer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As Steve Lawson opened the door, Jake got up, tail wagging slightly, as if he only dared hope a little.

  “Not this time, Bub. Sorry.”

  Steve let himself out, careful to avoid eye contact, and made sure the door was not only closed, but blocked by a picnic bench he dragged over from under a pine. He had his new trowel in one hand and a plastic bucket in the other. He flashed on all times he and his sisters had spent on the beach at Laguna with their colorful plastic buckets and trowels, making sand castles under the watchful eye of their mother. He remembered how she’d sit on the beach in a one-piece suit with green vines on it, her dark hair pulled back by a scarf, full face makeup on, sunglasses, and sometimes, zinc on her nose. They spent a large part of every summer at his grandfather’s cottage on the beach.

  The perfect family.

  It really had been, until the cancer.

  Most of the time it was a great childhood, the voice inside his head amended. When his father wasn’t there. Luckily, his father’s visits were as rare as earthquakes. They had the same effect as an earthquake. Shaking their lives to the foundations and causing major structural damage.

  But there had been the good times. When his father forgot them.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, transported back to the those foggy and sunny days on the beach, the sound of the water ruffling the shore, the gloop between his toes as the tide pulled out around his feet. The yells of other kids, the cries of the seagulls, and the fishy smell of kelp: the brown-and-gold boa kelp of southern California—egregia menziesii—kept afloat on the tide by rubbery, bulb-shaped pneumatocysts you could pop with your fingers like grapes.

  He wasn’t going to make sand castles today. In fact, he wasn’t going to do anything at all.

  Sure, and that’s why you’re carrying a bucket and a trowel.

  He’d just look. The bucket and the trowel were just in case. He’d just look at the hole Jake dug up and see if there was anything else there—another book maybe.

  He followed the stream bed, his eye catching and automatically labeling schist, feldspar, and quartzite. Mica, weathered into sand, mixed with the carpet of pine duff. Up ahead, he saw the disturbed ground where he had coaxed the book out of the dirt.

  He hunkered down beside it and ran his fingers over the earth, then scooped out a trowelful of dirt and let it slide into the bucket.

  Pretty soon he had a full bucket. He walked a few feet away and dumped it on the ground.

  Nothing there. Of course there wasn’t. He shouldn’t even be doing this.

  Why not? A voice said in his head. It’s your property … now. It’s your property and your dog dug up a little piece of your very own real estate, so what’s wrong with digging a little more?

  ________

  And so he digs a little more. One bucket’s worth, two bucket’s worth. The sun listing to the west in the clear blue sky.

  The hole is getting wider. Steve is digging faster, he realizes. He’s not bothering with the bucket anymore. At some point, he goes down to the garden shed and grabs a shovel. He thinks about stakes and string, too, remembering the grid on an anthropological dig he worked as an undergraduate. But he’s not digging up anything of importance, he’s not digging up pots, he’s not digging up bones. He’s definitely not digging up bones. No, he’s just digging for the sake of digging.

  As he heads back upstream, he glances back. Jake is looking out the window, front paws on the couch back, that old plaid Early American couch that must have been there since the forties. Jake is looking out the window, and he is barking. His barking follows Steve all the way up the hill to the dig.

  The dig.

  “It’s not a dig,” he says to himself. “I’m just digging for the sake of digging.”

  The explanation sounds hollow to his ears. He goes back to digging. Good thing he put on the garden gloves; his palms were starting to blister.

  When he looks up a little later, the sun has hidden itself behind the trees, shimmering between the trunks in a halo of gold.

  He wipes the sweat from his forehead. Despite the sweat, he feels chilled. He feels an ache in his bones, too, as if he has a fever.

  How long has he been at this?

  He looks at the hole he has dug. It yawns in front of him, deep.

  It reminds him of another hole, in Evergreen Cemetery, where they buried his mother. Danielle Ailling Lawson. It was a sunny day like this, the hole was a lot bigger, a perfect rectangle mired in shadow, the mahogany coffin suspended on runners above it. He remembers looking down at his shoes and the green indoor-outdoor carpeting his shoes were on, the light catching the fibers like flecks of mica. Shiny like the glitter-rubber seaweed coming up on the shore at La Jolla. Shiny like the schist littering the ground all around here.

  His mother going into the hole. Forever.

  He looks at the hole again and realizes it is not as deep as he originally thought. He thinks he’s been at it for eons, but by his watch, he’s only been out here for a little over an hour.

  Actually, the hole he has dug is relatively shallow. For a while there, it felt as if he were digging down to China. It had to be an illusion, didn’t it?

  His palms start to itch. He feels an almost insurmountable craving to dig some more.

  One more bucketful, he tells himself, although the bucket is lying on its side just down the hill.

  Just one more. Then, put a fork in me, I’m done.

  He puts the blade against the earth and shoves down with his right foot.

  And the shovel strikes something hard.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Twenty-one feet. Let anyone with a knife within twenty-one feet, he can kill you before you have a chance to shoot him. Every cop knew that.

  You always maintained a distance of twenty-one feet between you and a subject with a knife. That was gospel.

  Sean Grady had not been twenty-one feet away from her when he’d attacked her. He had been right next to her. By rights, she should be dead. She knew that it had only been luck—and Grady’s poor aim—that had saved her.

  Laura thought she must be in shock. She felt fine, except for the bang on her elbow and the disturbing lack of sensation down to her fingers. Except for the sticky, bloody cut of her pinkie finger. Except for the knowledge that she could have very well ended up in the morgue at the same ME’s office she’d been to today.

  It was still hard to believe Grady had come at her like that.

  He had tried to kill her. For what? His daddy had money; he would have gotten a good lawyer. To kill her for a simple fraud case?

  Laura knew she hadn’t taken Sean Grady seriously because he had committed a white-collar crime. Even though she knew he was a sociopath. That lack of care had nearly cost her life.

  The ambulance in the strip mall parking lot rumbled so loudly she could barely hear the paramedic, who had her sitting on the back bumper, manipulating the area above her elbow.

  “We can patch you up,” he was saying, “But you’ll need to see a doctor and get an x-ray. You’ve damaged your radial nerve.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “From your symptoms, it’s probably a soft contusion and pretty small, but you need to put ice on it and keep it that way for seventy-two hours.”

  She opened her mouth to say she was too busy to fool around with icepacks—that while they were using up precious time here, she needed to get with the TPD detective in charge of the case and run it down for him�
��but decided to keep her thoughts to herself. She had to go through this anyway; there was no reason to alienate a man who was just doing his job.

  “You keep this sling on,” the paramedic said. “I’ve got some written instructions for you to follow, but I strongly recommend you see your doctor.”

  She nodded, knowing she wouldn’t.

  As soon as the paramedic was done with her, Laura snagged the First Officer at the Scene, a TPD cop. “The subject—Sean Grady—has tickets to Canada in his possession. Be sure to tell whoever’s handling this case that he’s a flight risk.”

  The cop’s reaction time was slow; he just stared at her sling as if he’d never seen one before.

  “Aren’t you going to call it in?” she asked.

  She made sure he did, then waited in her car for the DPS investigator and the TPD ag assault detective assigned to her case. Her mind buzzed with everything that had happened and would happen. Internal Affairs at DPS would have to convene a Shooting Board, since she had fired her weapon. Even though the shooting was justified, the internal review would go forward. That would take up the rest of the day and then some.

  The TPD detective was Dave Toch. Dave Toch had been a friend of Laura’s mentor, Frank Entwistle. Frank Entwistle was the TPD detective who’d investigated the deaths of her parents when she was twenty. Frank had found her parents’ killer, a loner named Ricky Lee Worrell, who’d broken into the wrong house looking for drug money.

  It was Frank who’d made Laura decide to go into police work.

  Frank Entwistle had died of a heart attack last year, but Laura always felt he was with her. She talked to him all the time.

  Dave was polite, even deferential, but Laura knew her special status with him had slipped. She knew he was thinking: What do you expect from a taillight-chaser? That was what most TPD cops would think. She herself, like pretty much everybody else at DPS, thought of TPD as “the local cops,” and sometimes even “the Keystone Kops,” so she understood the prejudice. She felt his disappointment in her.

  It just added to the rotten feeling.

  Laura tried to wall herself off from the depression that was slowly enveloping her. She needed to suck it up. The main thing was to get this guy, and she couldn’t be much help if she was feeling sorry for herself. Like the commercial said: Never let ‘em see you sweat.