Black Notice - Cornwell Patricia (читать книги онлайн без TXT) 📗

"So you're driving along Grove," Marino got her back on track.

"Of course, I drove right on past my Apartment building, trying to figure out where to go to get away with him. And I don't know how I thought of it, but I suddenly cut over to the left and did a U-turn. Then I drove to where Grove ends at Three Chopt and took a left, him still behind me. The next right was the Country Club of Virginia, and I turned in there and drove straight to the entrance where the valets were. Needless to say, whoever it was vanished."

"That was damn smart of you," Marino said. "Damn smart. But why didn't you call the police?"

"It wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't have believed me and I couldn't have described a thing, anyway."

"Well, you should have called me, at least," Marino said.

"I know."

"After this where did you go?" I asked.

"Here."

"Rose, you're scaring me," I said. "What if he was waiting for you somewhere?"

"I couldn't stay out all night, and I went a different route home."

"Any idea what time it was when he vanished?" Marino asked.

"Somewhere between six and six-fifteen. Oh, dear Lord,. I just can't believe when I pulled up to that store she was in there. And what if he was? If only I'd known. I can't stop thinking there must have been something I should have noticed. Maybe even when I was in there Tuesday night."

"Rose, you couldn't have known a damn thing unless you're a gypsy with a crystal ball;" Marino told her.

She took a deep, shaky.breath and pulled her robe more tightly around her.

"I can't seem to get warm," she said. "Kim was such a nice girl."

She stopped again, her face contorted by grief. Tears filled her eyes and spilled.

"She was never rude to anyone and worked so hard. How could anybody do something like that! She wanted to be a nurse! She wanted to spend her life helping people! I remember worrying about her being.alone in there so late at night, oh, God help me. It even crossed my mind when I was there on Tuesday but I didn't say anything!"

Her voice tumbled as if it were falling down a steep flight of stairs. I came over and knelt beside her, pulling her close.

"It's like when Sassy wasn't feeling well… so lethargic and I just thought she had eaten something she shouldn't have…"

"It's okay, Rose. Everything's going to be okay," I said.

"And it turned out she'd somehow gotten hold of a piece of glass… My little baby was bleeding inside… And I didn't do anything."

"You didn't know. We can't know everything." I felt a spasm of grief, too.

"If only I'd taken her to the vet sooner… I'll never, ever forgive myself for that. Poor little girl a prisoner in a little cage and muzzle and some monster hit her with something and broke her nose… at that goddamn dog track! And then I let her suffer and die!"

She wept as if outraged over every loss and act of cruelty the world had ever suffered. I held her clenched fists in both of my hands.

"Rose, now you listen to me;" I said. "You saved Sassy from hell just as you've saved others. There's nothing you could have done for Sassy any more than there was anything you could have done when you stopped to get your shortbreads. Kim was dead. She had been dead for hours."

"What about him?" she cried. "What if he had still been inside that store and had come out just as I had pulled in? I'd be dead, too, wouldn't I? Shot and dumped somewhere like garbage. Or maybe he would have done awful things to me, too."

She closed her eyes, exhausted, tears sneaking down her face. She went limp all over as the violent storm passed. Marino leaned forward on the couch and touched her knee.

"You got to help us out," he said. "We need to know why you think your being followed and the murder might be connected."

"Why don't you come home with me?" I said.

Her eyes cleared as she began to regain her composure.

"That car pulling out after me right there where she was murdered? Why didn't he start following me long before that?" she said. "And an hour, an hour and a half, before the alarm went off. Don't you find that an amazing coincidence?"

"Sure I do," Marino said. "But there've been a lot of amazing coincidences in my career."

"I feel foolish," Rose said, looking down at her hands.

"All of us are tired," I said. "I've got plenty of room…" "We're gonna nail Chuckle-boy for drugs," Marino said to her. "Not-a damn thing foolish about that."

"I'm going to stay here and go on to bed," Rose said.

I continued to sort through what she'd told us as we went down the stairs and into the parking lot.

"Look," Marino said, unlocking his car. "You've been around Chuck a whole lot more than I have. You know him a lot better, which is too bad for you."

"And you're going to ask me if he's the one in the rental car following us," I said as he backed out and turned on Randy Travis. "The answer's no. He's a sneak. He's a liar and a thief, but he's a coward, Marino. It takes a lot of arrogance to boldly tailgate someone with your high beams on. Whoever's doing it is very sure of himself. He has no fear of being caught because he thinks he's too smart for that."

"Sort of the definition of a psychopath," he said. "And now I feel worse. Shit. I don't want to think that guy who just did Luong is the one following you and Rose."

Roads had frozen over again and Richmond drivers, lacking sense, were sliding and spinning all over the place. Marino had his portable police radio on and was monitoring accidents.

"When are you going to turn that thing in?" I asked.

"When they come and try to take it from me," he replied. "I ain't turning in shit."

"That's the spirit."

"The hard thing about every case we've ever worked," he said, "is there's never just one thing going on. Cops try to connect so much crap that by the time we solve the case, we could have written the victim's biography. Half the time we find a connection, it's not one that matters. Like the husband who gets mad at his wife. She goes out the door, pissed, and ends up abducted from a mall parking lot, raped and murdered. Her husband pissing her off didn't make it happen. Maybe she was going shopping anyway."

He turned into my driveway and put the truck in park. I gave him a long look.

"Marino, what are you going to do about money?"

"I'll be all right."

I knew it wasn't true.

"You could help me out as a field investigator for a while," I said "Until this suspension nonsense ends."

He was silent. As long as Bray was there, it would never end Suspending him without pay was her way of forcing Marino to resign. If he did that, he was out of the way like AI Carson.

"I can hire you two ways;" I went on. "A case-by-case basis and you'll get fifty dollars per..:'

He snorted. "Fifty dollars my ass!"

"Or I can hire you part-time and eventually I'll have to advertise the position and you'll have to apply for it like everybody else:' "Don't make me sick."

"How much are you earning now?"

"About sixty-two plus benefits," he replied.

"The best I could do is make you a P-fourteen at senior level. Thirty hours a week. No benefits. Thirty-five a year."

"Now that's a good one. One of the funniest things I've heard in a while."

"I can also take you on as an instructor and coordinator in death investigation at the Institute. That's another thirtyfive. So that's seventy. No benefits. Actually, you'll probably make out better."

He thought about it for a moment, sucking smoke.

"I don't need your help right now," he said rudely. "And hanging around medical examiners and dead bodies ain't part of my life's plan."

I climbed out of his truck.

"Good night;" I said.

He angrily roared away and I knew it wasn't me he was really so angry with. He was frustrated and furious. His self-respect and vulnerability were naked in front of me and he didn't want me to see it. All the same, what he'd said hurt.