Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (31 page)

But no, that couldn’t be true. She didn’t know he was here. Then with a jolt of realization he understood: she was looking at the man sitting above him, up on the shed roof.

Oh, you clever dickens
. Guards—she must have helpers posted around here, watching. That’s who the man above was.… And wasn’t that an interesting new bit of strategic information?

New and crucial … 
Lucky, lucky
. He grinned in the fetid gloom of the horrid little shelter as she turned once more, squared her shoulders again and took another step.

• • •

WHAT A BUST
.
DESPITE THE BRISK EXERCISE SHE WAS GETTING,
the chill in the evening air made Jake shiver. Back and forth …

Halfway up Water Street again, she met a family headed away from the waterfront, two harried-looking young parents trying to get a pair of disappointed five- or six-year-olds into their car seats before the tantrums started.

“I guess they’re not going to have fireworks tonight,” said the dad, gripping one child’s hand and shooing the other ahead.

“But why?” demanded the kid in the death grip. He was clearly the powerhouse of the two youngsters; his brother just looked woebegone.

“We don’t
know
why,” began the mom, possibly on the verge of losing it herself. Obviously it had been a long day. “But, honey, I’m sure that when they
do
decide to have them, they’ll—”

Jake didn’t hear what the frazzled mother was trying to put over on her child, but she felt a spark of sympathy for the task of getting a kid to walk away from any long-promised treat. With Sam, she’d practically had to throw a net over him.

Until he’d gotten too big to throw a net over, and another set of problems had begun. She turned from the departing family just as a flash from the water caught her eye, the bright, fierce glare shimmering on her retina even after it subsided.

The sound, an instant later, was like a heavy wooden mallet on wet sand. Not dramatic or even very loud; heads turned toward it here and there, but not in alarm.

The next explosion, though,
did
cause alarm.

And the ones after that.

F
IREBALLS ERUPTED INTO THE SKY OVER THE WATER, AND
suddenly everyone around her was running. The sound came from everywhere, loud, reverberating explosions one after another.

It was obvious what was happening out there: the fireworks. Something had gone wrong. Jake hesitated, not knowing what to do or which way she should be going, then recalled the cellphone in her pocket along with the GPS locating gadget.

She backed into the doorway of the Berman Mall but didn’t know who to call. Just then George Valentine came running down the alley toward her.

“Tell Ellie I went!” he shouted as he charged through the crowd, one hand thrust out in front of him like a football player ready to stiff-arm someone.

Other men ran, too, all local guys who knew how to get out there to help, their skiffs and runabouts tied in the boat basin.

“Okay!” she yelled to George’s departing back, then spotted Wade sprinting at her. He stuck his index finger out at her, then made a
thataway
gesture uphill, with his thumb.

I’ll meet you at home
, the familiar gesture said, and under the circumstances she knew he meant, too, that she should go there, not hang around down here. But the spectacle on the water dragged her gaze back, boom after fiery boom in nightmare succession.

Sirens howled from a few blocks distant. Bob Arnold shouted into a bullhorn, trying to direct spectators to clear the way for police and emergency vehicles. Somewhere, someone was weeping loudly.

Another volley of what sounded like cannonfire boomed out, golden streamers rising like a fountain of fire from the water. The running lights of the spectator boats moved away, sensibly, except for a couple of larger vessels whose work lights had come on, washing their decks in white.

The air smelled like burning gunpowder mingled with chemical stink. Little bits of grit began raining down; they stung her skin. She drew her hands into her sleeves, hunched her shoulders to get her neck down inside her collar, and began to walk quickly up Water Street toward Wadsworth’s hardware store.

There was nothing she could do here, and as Bob’s voice on the bullhorn kept saying, staying meant being in the way. And if her dad hadn’t already started for home on his own, he’d probably be at Wadsworth’s.

Either way, her own project was done for tonight, and most likely it was done for good. She’d just have to let the police try to catch Garner, she realized grimly.

If they could. And if that meant living like a fugitive till they succeeded … well, she’d just have to.

But as she reached the alley George had come barreling out of and began crossing it, a hand shot out. Yanking her back by her hair before a squeak could escape her mouth, it shook her hard, then shoved her roughly against the nearest wall.

Her head smacked the brick so hard, she felt her jaw nearly dislocate. Her knees went watery as the hand seized her collar, then slapped tape over her mouth.

It all happened so
fast
.… She fell, the side of her face scraping the brick wall on her way down. Through one eye already beginning to swell shut, she saw people, just a few feet away.

But she was back here in the shadows, and they were looking toward the lights, so they didn’t see her. More tape went tightly around her wrists, binding them.

A knee in her back urged her up as a hand went roughly into her pocket, found her GPS locator.

“I knew you’d try something like this.” Hot breath gusted at her. He gave the gadget a low, underhanded toss so it slid on the alley’s pavement, downhill until it stopped on the sidewalk.

A passerby bent and picked it up, peered curiously at it for an instant, and went on walking, dropping it into his pocket.

Desperately she moaned through the tape.

Don’t take it! Please, just leave it where you found it, or my son will think that—

That she was still here, watching the fireworks accident’s aftermath or even helping somehow. Because whenever something bad like this happened, someone always called Wade, and if not, then they’d have been trying to find George.

So Sam would know quickly about the mishap on the barge. And given her propensity for sticking her nose into things, he would not think it was strange that the GPS device, supposedly still in her pocket, was now on its way up Water Street.

After a little while, he would catch on that something had gone wrong, that his screen was showing locations she wouldn’t be in. But by then it would be too late.

Distantly she understood that the explosions had stopped and that the dull
boom boom boom
she now heard came from inside her.

That it was her own heartbeat. Through a nearly overpowering wave of dizziness, she wondered how long she would go on hearing it.

On the other hand, she was still alive right now. So maybe she could still think of something.

“Walk,” said the man who had seized her, very near. Which ordinarily would have been a big cue in the think-of-something department.

Something like jerking her head back, breaking his nose with it. Or kicking him; who said that had to be done frontwards?

But a sharp little tickle of something just under her left ear suggested a more cautious strategy, one that wouldn’t put the tip of whatever he was pressing there right through her jugular.

Or whatever. Some big, highly pressurized blood vessel. Her legs went weak again.

“Stand up straight,” he hissed at her. “Walk. That way.”

Past the shed, the alley curved around toward Washington Street. But nobody ever came this way anymore; when the alley was built, Model T’s might’ve used it. But there wasn’t enough width to get a modern car through here comfortably, and as for any pedestrians, it was too dark.

Really
dark. On the other hand, apparently somebody liked it that way.…

A figure materialized in the gloom. The pinch at her throat kept her still as it approached. A flashlight beam hit her in the face, blinding her, then shifted minutely sideways to light up her captor’s. Then it went out.

“I want my money,” said a voice out of the darkness as the figure stepped forward.

Garner ripped the tape from her face, cut her wrists’ bonds with a swift, businesslike flick of something she didn’t want to think about at all, then pressed whatever it was into her neck.

He didn’t have to tell her to keep quiet. She knew.

“And I want it,” the figure added, “right the freak
now.
”

THEY’D KICKED HIM THE MINUTE THEY FOUND OUT HE
wasn’t who they were looking for. Mad about it, too. They took away the jail scrubs, the hygiene kit with the comb, toothpaste, and the little wrapped bar of motel soap in it, even the tray with the paper cup of watery coffee and the jailhouse breakfast on it, powdered eggs and blackened toast.

Not that any of those things were any great loss. It was what they’d given him in return that burned him up so badly: a freaking court date.

In the gloom of the little alley behind the buildings, he took another irritated step toward the little jerk who’d gotten him into this mess. Freakin’ little liar, he was.

“So hand it over. The other five hundred.”

Because that had been the agreement, and he’d lived up to his side of it. Spend a night in jail, big deal, he’d thought.

And now look. “I mean it,” he said, sticking his hand out.

For the first time, he noticed the little jerk’s ears, big and sticking out like his own. But it didn’t make him feel the least bit sympathetic.

It made him feel like ripping them off, maybe threading them onto a chain or a leather thong and wearing them like a necklace; oh, but he was ticked off now. The little jerk had a woman with him, one hand tight on her arm, other arm around her shoulders. She didn’t look too happy about it.

But the hell with her, too. He had his own problems. “You didn’t tell me it was a felony, what you wanted me to do.”

Because this Garner guy, there was a warrant out for him, and getting in the way of it at all, that was a big deal. Cops’d had him in a room all damned day, asking him questions.

And they’d kept his five hundred bucks. Evidence, they said. He’d get it back, they’d promised him. Eventually.

Yeah, right
, he thought. Sure he would. The only reason in the world that he wasn’t still in jail right now was that he’d done his best to tell them what they wanted to know.

The woman looked hopeful. Scared, too, like maybe she wanted him to do something about her situation. Help her out, maybe get her away from this weird dude. Play the knight in shining armor.

Not freakin’ likely. He got his money, he was going straight
back
to the cops, drop a freakin’ dime on this yo-yo here.

Maybe if he did that, he’d get a head start on a way out of his troubles, which he wouldn’t be in if it weren’t for—

The guy took his hand off the woman’s arm. Kept his other arm around her shoulder, though, his hand right up there in her hair.

“So they gave you a lot of trouble, huh? Down there at the jail?”

Which was his opening, maybe get a little more than the five hundred. His eyes began adjusting to the dark back here, a little bit.

That buoyed his confidence, too. “Yeah,” he told the guy. “I didn’t know you were—”

A wanted man
, he’d been about to say.
But wait. Don’t tell him that
. It was already too late, though.

The guy’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t know I was what?” he asked mildly.

The woman’s eyes darted back and forth. She looked like she was about to say something. The guy jerked his arm sharply as if to remind her of something.

She sucked a breath in but kept silent, and what was up with that? he wondered suddenly.

But never mind, it was none of his business.
Just get out of here
, he thought.
Just get the money and
 …

“Nothing,” he said, hearing the sullenness in his own voice. He stuck his hand out, palm up.

“Hey, man, I’ve got no problem with you, okay? Whatever you and the lady got goin’ on here, I just want my—”

The guy’s right hand flashed out fast and then back again, gripping her ruthlessly.

“Hey!” Pain flared in his hand. He looked down; something was stuck in it.
Through
it, actually.

All the way through it. Reflexively he grabbed the thing and pulled. “Hey, man, what the freak did you …?”

With another sharp flash of pain, the thing came out. It was long and very thin … a hat pin. His grandma used to use them.

“Why’d you do that to me, man?” he demanded, still not quite believing it. But as he spoke the guy’s hand came at him again.

He backed away, but not quickly enough. And this time it was not a hat pin, he saw as the hand moved right up under his chin.

This time, it was a knife.

ONE-HANDED, THE OTHER STILL WITH THE SHARP THING
nipping at her jugular, he slapped the tape back onto her mouth and wound it around her wrists. Then he gave her a shove, past the fallen body of the guy who’d wanted five hundred dollars.