4 Shot Off The Presses (23 page)

“I don’t want spaghetti,” Derrick grumbled.

“Yes, you do. You love the spaghetti.”

I didn’t give him a chance to continue arguing. Instead, I pulled him through the swinging double doors and through the kitchen, not slowing down until we were behind the restaurant. “What were you thinking?”

“What was I thinking? I was right,” Derrick replied snottily. “I was right and he was wrong.”

“He’s never going to admit he’s wrong,” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Derrick pouted.

“No, you’re not wrong,” I agreed. “This isn’t a fight you can win, though. So why fight it?”

“Maybe I can win?”

“No,” I shook my head, my blonde hair swinging vigorously as I did. “You’re mad about something else and just picking a fight with him to get it out.”

“And who am I mad at?” Derrick asked curiously.

“Me,” I said simply.

“I’m always mad at you,” Derrick scoffed. “Today isn’t anything special.”

I considered my next words carefully. “I saw your face last night. You were scared when you heard that I had been shot at. You were even more scared when you realized Lexie was there.”

“She’s finally getting her life together, or kind of,” Derrick sighed in exasperation. “I don’t want this to derail her.”

“It won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t you know? Our family knows everything. Lexie is a survivor. She’s going to be fine. I’m going to be fine, too.”

Derrick rolled his eyes but followed me into the detached shed out back. It was dark inside and I could hear Derrick fumbling for the light switch on the wall. “
Ooomph.”

“What happened? Did you stub your toe? Find the light. It’s freaky out here.”

Derrick didn’t answer. I turned around, trying to find his silhouette in the dark. It was hard to make out, but it looked like he was still standing in the doorway behind me.

“Dude, seriously, turn on the light.”

After a few seconds, the light did switch on. It wasn’t Derrick that flipped the switch, though. The figure in the doorway wasn’t one I expected – or even remotely suspected, when this all started.

“Oh, crap, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Not who you expected?”

“Not exactly,” I said carefully, glancing around the dimly lit shed cautiously. The figure in the door hadn’t pulled a weapon yet, but it was only a matter of time. “Where is Derrick?”

“Is that the little guy who came in here with you? He’s here on the floor. I had to hit him so I could get a chance to talk to you. He’ll be fine, though. I need him to live through this.”

I bit my lower lip as I regarded Chelsea – yes, Chelsea – as she stood in the doorway. I didn’t know a lot about guns, but the one she was holding looked pretty big. “I didn’t expect you,” I said honestly.

“Don’t try to talk your way out of this,” Chelsea said. “I know you suspected me. That’s why you followed Brick and me to that parking lot. That’s why you showed up at the insurance agency.”

“I showed up at the insurance agency to talk to employees of the first victim,” I said firmly. “That’s standard procedure.”

“Then why did you focus on me and not the other women in the office?” Chelsea asked doubtfully.

“Because I knew you were the only one that was going to talk to me,” I replied. “I read people. That’s what a reporter does.”

Chelsea rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe you. You knew it was me the minute you came into the office. That’s why you followed us that night.”

“Actually, I was following Brick,” I replied honestly.

Chelsea knit her eyebrows together. “That’s what you said then, but I didn’t believe you. Why would you be following Brick?”

“Because I thought he was a suspect,” I said honestly.

“Brick? He’s the most honest man I know.”

“He’s got a trail of angry ex-wives in his wake that would probably disagree with that assertion,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean he’s a freeway shooter,” Chelsea scoffed. “He would never. He has a code.”

“I don’t see how an insurance secretary becomes a freeway shooter either,” I said honestly. I was trying to buy time. Hopefully, Derrick would wake up and handle this situation. Or, if I stalled long enough, Eliot would come looking for me. I didn’t think he’d have a problem with a frumpy insurance secretary – even if her gun was bigger than my car.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Chelsea said. “Malcolm had it coming to him.”

“Had what coming to him?” I was trying to infuse as much empathy into my voice as possible. If she saw me as a friend, maybe she would have a harder time shooting me. I pushed the thought of the dead high school student out of mind, for the time being, though. It was counter productive.

“What I told you about Malcolm was true,” Chelsea said. “He hit on everyone in the office. He thought we were all his personal property.”

“You said he didn’t hit on you,” I prodded.

“He didn’t, not the way he hit on the other women,” Chelsea said. “I thought he would. I know this is going to sound weird, but I was a little insulted that he never even looked at me sideways.”

“I get that,” I said. “You didn’t really want him to hit on you but it was hurtful that he didn’t hit on you at the same time. I think that’s a common reaction. I’m not sure that was a very good reason to shoot him, though.”

“That’s not why I shot him,” Chelsea said hurriedly.

“Then why did you shoot him?” In addition to being a stalling technique, I really did want to know.

“I was back in the file room one day. It was late. I thought I was the only one there. Mr. Hopper let me work late and take half days on Fridays when my schedule worked out. That’s what I was doing. I was looking forward to an extended weekend.”

Chelsea’s face contorted as she spoke. She was close to tears. I felt a certain level of sympathy for her, which surprised me.

“I had locked the front office, so I wasn’t really worried about someone coming in. I heard a noise, though, and when I turned around it was Malcolm.”

I had a feeling I knew where this conversation was going – and I didn’t like it. I just let Chelsea tell the story at her own pace, though.

“At first I thought he just forgot something,” Chelsea continued. “He was looking around the room, but he wasn’t really focusing on anything. You know what I mean? It was like his eyes were vacant. He asked me what I was doing and I told him. When he got closer I could smell the liquor on his breath. He smelled like he had been drinking for hours.”

Chelsea stopped telling her story long enough to wipe the stray tears that had started streaming down her face.

“Did he . . . hurt you?” I asked finally.

“He told me that I was his property,” Chelsea said. “He told me that he hired me because he knew that I would give him what he wanted. That I would like it when I gave it to him, too. I told him that I was with someone. I told him that I loved Brick, that I was trying to make a life with Brick. He didn’t listen, though.”

“He raped you?”

“Right there on the filing room floor,” Chelsea said bitterly. “He just lifted my skirt and put his hand over my mouth and . . . he just did it right there.”

Chelsea’s voice was hollow – as hollow as her soul, I suspected. I didn’t know if what Malcolm had done to her had emptied her out or if she’d always been that way. That wasn’t my current concern, though.

“Did you go to the cops?”

“I was going to,” Chelsea said. “When he was done, though, he told me the cops would never believe me. He told me that I was fat and ugly and that they would never believe me.”

Malcolm Hopper was definitely an asshole.

“I tried to tell Melanie, one of the women at the office,” Chelsea said. “She just laughed at me and told me to stop telling lies. She’d been sleeping with him on and off for the past six months, you know. She said there was no way he would have sex with her and then rape someone like me.”

“You still should have went to the police,” I offered. “They would have helped you.”

“I tried to ignore it,” Chelsea pretended she didn’t hear me. “I worked there for another two months. I did my job. Every day I went in there and I did my job. And Malcolm? He pretended nothing had happened. He never even mentioned it. He never apologized. He never did a thing.”

“So, what was the tipping point?” I asked. “When did you decide to kill him?”

“When he gave every woman in the office except me a raise,” Chelsea said honestly. “He said that he couldn’t be successful without his staff and that’s why he gave them a raise. He didn’t give me a raise, though.”

“If he had, would you have forgiven him?”

“No,” Chelsea shook her head vehemently. “I wouldn’t have forgiven him. It was the final straw, though.”

“So you bought a gun?” A really big gun.

“It’s not mine,” Chelsea said. “It’s Brick’s. I don’t even think he knows it’s gone.”

“Does he suspect you?”

“Of course not,” Chelsea laughed. “He would never suspect me. I’m just the sweet little girl he used to date in high school. I’m just the woman that loves him for who he is and doesn’t want him to change – not like those other women he married. I’m the woman that cooks him dinner and cuddles up to him at night.”

“I thought you were having sex in parking lots?” Not one of my better ideas, I know. My Foot-In-Mouth Disease rears its ugly head at the oddest of times.

“We had to keep things a secret,” Chelsea said. “I couldn’t spend the night at his house in case his wife came home. If she had proof of an affair, even though they’re separated, she could have gouged him for alimony in addition to the child support. We could stay the night at my house, but that was only once or twice a week – at least until the divorce papers were actually filed.”

“I don’t understand, Chelsea,” I admitted. “Why didn’t you just tell Brick what happened to you? He would have helped you.” I didn’t know a lot about Brick, but I believed that was true.

“And tell him that I was treated like a dirty whore? I don’t think so. I couldn’t stand the way I knew he would look at me if he knew.”

“So how did you target Malcolm? Did Brick teach you how to shoot?”

“I’ve known how to shoot since I was a kid,” Chelsea said. “My daddy taught me. I’ve always been good with a gun. It was just a matter of learning the way he drove home every night and making sure I had an easy escape route. I’ve always been good with a gun,” she repeated. “I never thought I would use it on a person, though.”

“You used it on three people,” I corrected her. “If you were just looking for revenge on Malcolm, why do the other shootings?”

“I wasn’t going to, not at first,” Chelsea admitted. “I was only going to kill Malcolm. When the police were all over the insurance agency, though, I knew I had to point them in another direction. I was worried that Melanie would tell the cops what I told her about the rape and then they’d focus in on me. I thought, if there were other victims, they would just assume it was a random freeway shooter and pull their focus away from the agency.”

“Didn’t it bother you? Killing a mother? Killing a student?”

“I wasn’t aiming at a student,” Chelsea said. “I thought it was your car.”

Even though Eliot had suspected it, even though I had expected it, the confirmation was like a bullet ripping through my heart. “God, Chelsea, he was just a kid.”

“I thought it was you!”

“Why did you even care about me?”

“Brick told me that you were looking into the freeway shootings,” Chelsea said. “I had no idea who you were the first time I met you. I didn’t put two and two together then. That was my fault, I know. I told him about you coming by the office that night, though, and he told me to be careful about you.”

“He told you about me?”

“He told me you were a snake in the grass,” Chelsea said. “He told me that you were one of those women that didn’t know her place, that you thought you should be in charge like a man. I wanted to think it was just a coincidence, but then I did a little bit of research on you and realized that you weren’t going to give up on the story. I knew you would be back.”

“So that’s why you targeted me? Was I going to be your last?”

“I don’t know,” Chelsea shrugged. “I hadn’t decided yet. I just knew I had to shut you up. When I hit the kid, though, I decided to back off. I figured that would be enough of a warning to you. If I went after you again, then it would tip the cops off that you were on to something. I thought hitting the kid was divine intervention; that God was looking out for me. That he’d led me in the right direction and now you would just give up.”

God, she really was crazy.

“It didn’t take me long to realize, though, that you weren’t giving up,” Chelsea continued. “That became glaringly apparent when you followed Brick and me that night.”

“I was following Brick, not you,” I corrected her.

“Because you suspected him?”

“I thought there was something weird about him,” I admitted. “He was hardly the only one on my suspect list, though.”

“Really?” Chelsea looked alarmed. “Who else?”

“Well, I thought it had ties to the National Guard base for awhile,” I admitted. “Commander Turner was acting weird. Then there was the new public relations liaison for the sheriff’s department. I saw her buying ammunition one day.”

“Lots of people buy ammunition,” Chelsea pointed out.

“I know,” I said hurriedly. “I just really hated her and it would have made things so much easier if it was her.”

“So you really didn’t suspect me?” Chelsea was flabbergasted.

“Not even a little.”

“Well, this is a little embarrassing then,” Chelsea said sadly. “I’m going to have to kill you because you know now. I really am sorry, though. I know your family is in there and this will probably upset them, but I have to protect myself and Brick. We have a future, and we deserve to be happy.”

“Brick isn’t liable for you stealing his gun,” I said. I was starting to panic. I was running out of time.

“No,” Chelsea agreed. “I’ll be able to put the gun back now and no one will know. The case will just go unsolved. It will be one of those things people talk about after awhile, like Jimmy Hoffa and the Oakland child killings.”

“What about the guy in the Oakland County Jail?” I asked. “How is he tied to you?” I needed to continue stalling.

“I don’t know him,” Chelsea said. “That was just a stroke of luck.”

“How did you get away so quickly?”

“It wasn’t hard. I was up on the footbridge above the street. I fired and ran. I didn’t realize I hadn’t hit you until I saw the news coverage later. Imagine my surprise when I saw they’d made an arrest?”

“Chelsea, they’ll track it back to you,” I said desperately. “When I’m found out here, they’ll eventually track it back to you.”

“How? You said yourself I wasn’t on your suspect list. They’ll never know.”

“Derrick is here. He’ll know.”

“Then maybe I’ll have to kill him, too, after all,” Chelsea mused. “I was originally going to try and make it look like a robbery gone bad. Maybe even use his gun and try to finger him for it.”

“Why would Derrick want to shoot me?”

“Family strife? Your family is notorious for infighting. Your grandfather was just in the news for calling a judge a faggot or something. Would it be that much of a stretch?”