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What You Don't See. Tracy Clark
Читать онлайн.Название What You Don't See
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781496714954
Автор произведения Tracy Clark
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Серия A Chicago Mystery
Издательство Ingram
I checked the small room, with its neat shelves of fragrant oils and freshly folded towels. There was only the one door, so that was easy. I then checked Jade. Harmless.
I started to leave. “I’m right outside the door.”
Allen acted as though she hadn’t heard me. Rich people tended to do that—act like they didn’t hear or see a person. I was starting to expect it from Allen.
“I’ll take a mineral water.” She didn’t bother looking up. “You’ll find it at the juice bar. Try getting it to me while it’s still cold, will you?”
Allen calmly slipped off her anklets. I assumed she’d been talking to Jade, but when the young woman didn’t move, it dawned on me that it was me Allen was sending out for water. I turned, smiled at the perky masseuse. “Um, Jade? Would you give us a minute, please?”
Jade hesitated, unsure what to do. After all, Allen was paying her. She didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat.
I held up a finger. “Just one minute.” I maintained the smile. “Ms. Allen will be with you toot sweet.”
When Jade stepped out and shut the door behind her, I walked over to the table and stood directly in front of Allen so she couldn’t help but see me. She looked up, a bored expression on her face. I looked down, not bored, deadly serious. We were mere inches from one another, so I didn’t have to raise my voice. Sometimes a whisper could be just as effective as a shout.
“I’m not your maid. I’m not your groupie. I don’t go for water, cabs, energy bars, or escorts for the evening. You want water, you’ll get up off that ridiculously overpriced table and get it yourself. Anybody bursts in here and tries to strangle you, that’s when I do what you’re paying me for. Capisce?”
She didn’t say anything, but it looked like she had loads of things bubbling up inside of her. She flushed, glowered at me, then looked away briefly before turning back to find me still standing there, serious as a heart attack.
“If not, all you have to do is say so,” I said.
A tiny muscle twitched in her neck. She was clenching her teeth too tightly. Maybe she was balancing her desire to fire me with her need for someone to cover the door while she got her backside worked over with jasmine-scented oil and emulsified vegetables. Jade seemed like a nice person, but I didn’t think Allen believed she’d take a bullet for her. At this point, I wasn’t even sure I would.
“I knew you’d be trouble,” she said. If steam could have shot out of her ears, I thought it would have. In contrast, I was perfectly calm, not angry in the least, just insistent that Allen fully grasp the true dynamic of our relationship.
“Five thousand dollars I’m paying, or have you forgotten that?”
I hadn’t, but money didn’t move me. I’d had it, not had it. Money wasn’t integrity or self-respect; it wasn’t love or death. You couldn’t do a thing with it on your deathbed. I could hear activity outside the door, the busy health club going about its business, while I waited on Allen to straighten up and fly right.
Finally, “I’ll get my own water.”
I stepped away from her, our deal done. “Enjoy your massage, Ms. Allen.”
When I pulled the door open to leave, Jade was standing right there. She looked at Allen, as if assessing her for body damage, but she didn’t say anything. In her hand she held a bottle of chilled mineral water.
I smiled. “Oh, looky, looky. Jade brought you your water. How nice.” I stepped aside and let her in, then leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Good luck with that.”
Chapter 7
I cooled my heels outside the door, giving people who passed the once-over, making sure no one got too close, occasionally glancing up at the television sets to check the news. I was watching an older man in tennis whites pass me on his way to the courts when I heard a gasp go up and turned to see a breaking-news alert crawl along the bottom of the nearest screen. Cop killed. Suspect in custody. The choppy footage, shot from a news helicopter, showed blue-and-whites, lights flashing, cordoning off a city block in Bridgeport. My throat tightened. I couldn’t move from the door, and I couldn’t hear the report from where I stood. Cop killed. I thought of all the cops I knew, friends, more than that, family. Eli, but it couldn’t be him. Not his district. No ID yet on the dead cop. I felt for my phone, but just then it vibrated in my pocket. I slid it out, glanced at the number. Ben.
“Who is it?” I asked before he could say anything.
“No one we know. New detective. Eighteen months in.”
I felt a selfish wave of relief that it wasn’t any of my friends, but the relief was short lived. A cop was dead. I felt the loss, mourned it, as though I’d lost a member of my family all the same.
“Cass? She was partnered with Farraday.” Just the mention of the man’s name nearly took my breath away, and it felt like someone had just kicked me in the stomach. “They hit the door without calling for backup. Her first, him bringing up the rear. She caught a round to the head. Dead before she hit the ground.” Ben paused.
He was waiting for me to say something, but I was still on Farraday. I was back on the roof where I had almost died, the taste of blood in my mouth as I lay dying; back to another door Detective James Farraday had barreled through, hoping to make his bones. Almost three years ago now. A pit grew in my stomach, my heart raced, and the years fell away. The rooftop was here, now, again.
Ben continued. “I got the details from Corrigan. We used to work the same district. The news is just breaking, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”
Farraday was a menace, a danger to himself and others. I’d said as much to the bosses, but they hadn’t listened, because Farraday was connected, the latest in a line of top-brass cops who shielded him from his own incompetence.
She. Eighteen months in.
We’d been after a banger on that roof, and I’d nearly talked him down. That was when Farraday had made his play. He had stumbled in, gun drawn, and it had all gone wrong. Jimmy Pick. That was the banger’s name. He hadn’t meant a thing to Farraday; neither had I, or Ben. I drew my hand up to my chest now, feeling for the healed-over spot where Pick’s bullet had pierced my flesh. Pick was dead. I killed him. I wouldn’t have had to had it not been for . . .
“And him?” I croaked it out, my voice sounding far away.
“Not a scratch. He’s blaming the screwup on her, but this time I don’t think it’s going to fly. This is about as bad as it gets.”
I watched the people passing by, held the door, the phone sweaty in my hand.
“I can sub you out if you want.” He was at the front of the club, watching who came in and who went out.
“No. I’ve got it. Ben? How old was she?”
He took a moment to answer. “Thirty-two. Second-generation cop. Had a two-year-old at home.”
I ended the call, squared my shoulders, my fists clenched tight, shaking. “Oh, my God.”
* * *
Allen, peering through a pair of half-glasses, stared out the window of her limo as we rode up Michigan Avenue a short time later. The quiet was just fine by me. I didn’t feel like talking. Besides, I’d known Allen just two days, and already I’d had my fill of her. Elliott was at the wheel, Ben was beside him in the passenger seat, and I sat across from Allen, both of us trying not to look at each other. To pass the time, I stared at the normal people outside the window and longed for their company.
I thought of my grandfather who had worked at a die-cast factory for more than forty years, day in, day out for union pay, and my grandmother who had worked just as long for the phone company before Ma Bell split up and died. They had been working people, not by any means wealthy.