The Wrong Girl

60

This was such a long shot. Jake led DeLuca back down the stairway of 343A Edgeworth. Weapons stowed but available, the two moved quickly and silently. This long shot seemed like the only answer, and if he was wrong, he was wrong.

Mirror image.

Jake pointed to the first-floor closet under the stairwell, then pointed to himself. I’ll go.

DeLuca gave him a questioning look. Huh?

Jake took the last three steps toward the wooden closet door, turned the knob, pulled it open. Stepped inside. Dark. Smelled wood, and dust, and musty disuse. Empty. No fuzzy woolen silhouettes of coats, no clacking metal hangers, nothing. He could touch each side of the closet if he stretched out his arms. He took a step inside. Another. Like Ricker’s closet on the other side, it was deeper than he’d imagined. And dark.

Too risky to click on the overheard light.

He held out an arm until his fingertips touched the back wall.

He sensed DeLuca close behind. Heard him breathing. With the palm of his left hand, Jake felt along the left edge of the closet’s back wall, barely touching it, almost closing his eyes with the effort to find something that seemed out of place, different. But there was nothing. Maybe he was wrong.

Wishing for the light, he turned slightly, felt along the right edge of the wall. There it was. A hinge. A foot or two beneath that, another hinge.

“This opens.” Jake barely whispered the words, demonstrating with one hand. “Into Ricker’s side of the house.”

DeLuca nodded, touched a hand to his weapon.

Jake patted again along the left side, feeling for a knob, a hook, a gizmo of some kind that would allow him to open the back of the closet-and enter the other side of the duplex.

Nothing. Nothing.

There had been someone upstairs. Unless Jake was massively, impossibly mistaken, there had been a baby. Now, no one. And no one had left the house.

Only one other possibility.

Jake’s eyes had adjusted enough in the closet gloom to see the almost-amused look on his partner’s face. Jake pointed to his weapon, drew it, motioned to D to do the same.

He reached out his left hand, flat, and pushed as hard as he could.

The back of the closet swung open.

“Did either of you morons leave anything at Callaberry Street? Are we clean out of there? What about Margolin Street? Are we clear?” Kev paced back and forth in front of the TV, raking his hands through his hair and looking totally freaked out. The news was now showing some huge fire in a forest somewhere, Utah or Arizona. “We have signed contracts, right, Keef? Both places? I told you to get them.”

Keefer shook his head. “Not for Margolin Street yet. We went in on Hennessey’s go, but we’re waiting for next of kin. Hennessey was s’posed to call us, like, today.” He shrugged, waved his beer at the TV. “Guess that’s not in the cards now. Bummer.”

“Shit,” Kev said.

“What’s the big whoop?” Kellianne couldn’t figure out why Kev was so nervous. Yeah, it was true the cop who’d been the shooter was the one who’d hooked Afterwards up with the jobs. But that wasn’t on paper anywhere, just a “business proposition.” She’d learned that only when Dad got sick.

“Hennessey will call you as soon as he hears of a possible,” Dad had instructed the three of them from his hospital sickbed-once the hovering nurse left and Mom went down to the caf for coffees. “He’ll contact you by phone. If it’s his case, get to the scene, find him, and he’ll give you keys or point you to whoever’s got them. If not, you’ll work it out with him. Either way, you make copies, you get the keys back to him. The death family-if there is a family-will think the cops sent you, that it’s part of the deal, and who’s gonna tell them otherwise? They have no idea they’re supposed to hire the cleanup crew. How would they? They’re always upset, and don’t care who’s getting rid of the crap in their house.”

“How about the other cops?” Kev had asked.

“They’ll think the family called. Each one thinks the other did it. Nobody cares. There’s a dead person. That’s all they’re worrying about. That and the smell of death. So get in early, get what you can, and assess. Make sure there’s insurance.”

Had they been doing something she didn’t know about? she’d wondered. Pretty funny, considering now they didn’t know what she was doing.

“What’s he get out of it?” Kev had asked that day. “The cop?”

“That’s between us.” Her father said it was all off the books, and probably not strictly illegal. “Just do it.”

Far as Kellianne could see, it’d worked fine.

“Okay, we gotta take care of this.” Kev aimed the remote at the front door, as if he could open it that way. “We gotta go back to Margolin Street. I mean, like, now.”

“But Kev. We can’t.” Keefer’s voice always sounded whiny. “That’s where the guy had the heart attack. If the cops knew we were there, they’d put two and two together.”

“Shit.” The remote dropped to his side. “But what’re we gonna do, bro, UN-clean? We took up all the rugs. And…” Kev flashed his brother some kind of a look. “You know. The bathroom.”

“I told you,” Kellianne said. They were idiots. “I frigging told you. That was the world’s dumbest idea, dragging that guy out. Now they’re gonna know we were there, and figure out how he got into his stupid car, and you’re gonna be in the electric chair. I sure didn’t have anything to do with it. But you two morons are gonna fry.”

They all stopped talking. The only sound was the TV anchorwoman, yammering about how many acres of land went up in flames somewhere a million miles away.

“Holy freaking Christ,” Kevin said. “What’re we gonna do?”

Keefer pointed to the TV with his beer bottle. “Well,” he said, “I might have an idea.”