No way out

Chapter Eighteen

Carter pointed toward the elevators. Joy looked at me as we waited for one of the doors to open, her eyebrows raised in a silent question I answered with a shrug. Her shoulders deflated, and her eyes lost their luster. She tired easily, no matter how much rest she got, always needing more, raising questions we couldn’t answer.

How do you live when you know you are dying? Do you ignore what’s happening inside you, conceding nothing? Do you conserve your strength, spending it only on the things that matter the most? Do you do the most and best you can and not worry about the rest? Joy’s answer was yes to all of that. I didn’t know how she did it.

Staley ignored us, earbuds plugged into his phone, listening to music and texting. I leaned toward her, a hand on her shoulder, whispering, “You okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “You?”

“Marvelistic.”

“We’re both lousy liars.”

“Long as we know it. Hang in there. This won’t take long.”

“Take as long as it takes. This is the most comfortable hospital bench I’ve sat on all day.”

“You’re too good for words.”

“I know,” she said, smiling and stroking my face with her palm. “Don’t forget you said that because I won’t.”

Officer Fremont motioned to Carter from the nurse’s station, and Carter joined him. Fremont said something I couldn’t make out, but Carter’s grimace said it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Bad news?” I asked when Carter returned.

Carter bent over, tying a shoelace that wasn’t untied, pretending he hadn’t heard me. The elevator arrived, and we stepped on, the doors closing, the car giving us a jolt before it began its descent. I leaned against the handrail, closing my eyes and clenching as the day rattled my cage.

“Still with the shaking,” Carter said.

I took a deep breath as the tremors passed. “Yeah.”

“Be better off home in bed.”

“Lot of ways to be better off.”

Carter nodded, watching the numbers for each floor flash by. “I get what you do. The whole protect-the-weak-and-innocent bit.”

My torso pretzled, my chin planted on my shoulder for a three count until the spasm let me go. “Keeps me busy.”

“Trouble is, you start out from the wrong place. You want people like Roni to be innocent so bad you quit thinking like a cop. You push things the way you want them to go instead of going where the evidence takes you.”

“You’re kidding yourself if you think anyone starts in neutral, not even a good cop like you. It’s not a level playing field for people like Roni. Somebody has to push back.”

“There’s a difference between pushing and getting in the way.”

“Meaning I’m still a pain in the ass?”

He smiled as the doors opened. “Big time.”

“Good to know.”

Roni was sequestered in a first-floor conference room in the administration wing of the hospital, a cop on the door, this one not going anywhere. She was sitting at a long oval table, rotating her swivel chair side to side while plugged into her phone and texting, a mirror image of Brett Staley, the two of them leaving an electronic trail for Carter to follow.

Cops believe in causation, not coincidence. If Roni Chase had intentionally caused a disturbance so someone could kill Frank Crenshaw, Brett Staley climbed to the top of the shooter short list when he showed up at the hospital, his timing too good and any alibi he may have too pat. The shooter would have to have been someone Roni trusted, and who would she trust more than the man who was saving up to buy her funeral dress? It made sense if she was guilty.

Carter and I were coming at the case from opposite directions. He suspected she was guilty, and I hoped she was innocent, the truth hidden somewhere between certainty and doubt.

She looked up when we entered the room, taking off her earbuds and sliding her phone into her jean pocket, gathering her jacket around her like a protective shield, her face brightening for an instant when she looked at me, then darkening when she focused on Carter.

“So,” she said, “can I go home now?”

“Soon, I hope,” I said. “Detective Carter says you and I can talk, but only if he gets to watch and listen.”

“Can he do that?”

“Depends on how hard he wants to play this. He can hold you for questioning here or take you downtown. He knows that if he doesn’t let you go home in the next five minutes that you’re going to call a lawyer and if you don’t know who to call that you’re going to ask me to call someone, and he knows that whoever I call is going to turn his long day into a shitty night. Either way, he knows he’s not going to get diddly-squat out of you tonight. Except for what you’ve already told him, which is that you had nothing to do with Frank Crenshaw being murdered in his unguarded hospital bed.”

Her grin split her face. “So,” she said to Carter, “am I under arrest?”

Carter, hands planted on his hips, blasted me. “That’s what you call getting her to cooperate?”

“Here’s how it is. You want anything else out of her tonight you’re going to have to give us the room. I’m not promising anything after that, but I’m sure as hell not going to serve her up to you for a midnight snack.”

Carter glared. I stared, and Roni waited, wisely swallowing her grin.

“Motherfucking pain in the ass,” Carter said, wagging his finger at me. “That’s what you are-a royal, motherfucking pain in my ass.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, pointing to the slack-jawed uniform cop standing in the door. “I’ll have him call you when we’re ready.”

Officer Fremont knocked on the conference room door. “Detective Carter, the ATF agent is waiting for you upstairs. I told him you were interrogating a witness and I didn’t know how long that would take. He said to tell you he wasn’t much interested in waiting around. Guy’s a fed through and through, thinks his shit don’t stink.”

“So that was the good news Fremont gave you,” I said. “Don’t worry about us. We can come back tomorrow if that’s more convenient for you.”

Carter aimed his finger at me again, his caramel complexion purpling. “You keep pushing and you’re gonna push too far.”