Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) (7 page)

BOOK: Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries)
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Chapter 7

 

 

I woke up
the next morning with my ankle aching, but nowhere near as badly as it had been
the night before. I’d really overdone it with all the walking around yesterday.
Not that I’d done a great deal of walking around, but it certainly had been
enough.

I considered
unwrapping it to take another look at the bruising, but decided the risk of
having it swell up was too great. If that happened and I couldn’t rewrap it
properly, I wasn’t going to be getting around at all today.

A quick
examination of my face in the bathroom mirror showed better results. The
stitches were holding fine, and I wasn’t entirely sure they’d really been
necessary in the first place. My face felt tight, like a puppeteer had attached
strings to it and was pulling on them. I poked one of the gashes with my
fingers. It hurt, but only when I messed with it. The itching could be
bothersome, though. I’d been scratching them more than I probably should. I was
supposed to go see the doctor in a few days to get the stitches out, but I
hadn’t made a decision on whether I would or not. If everything kept healing
the way it was supposed to, I might just get something sharp and cut them out
myself. It would save me the trouble of going to see someone. And it would let
me avoid the test results I was dreading for a while longer.

After
downing a few Advil I checked my phone for messages. There were none.
Abercrombie must not have anything yet, then. That was annoying, but not
entirely unexpected. I had no idea how long it took to crack cell phone
passwords, and I already knew he was focused on other things, too. I wondered
what his parents were like. I wondered what Abercrombie’s real name was, for
that matter. It wouldn’t have been terribly difficult to figure out, given that
I had been a reasonably good detective in my former career. But I didn’t really
want to know, and it was better for everyone that I didn’t. Nothing he and his
hacker compatriots did for me was legal. Most of it would probably get a person
a nice long stay in a federal prison. I could say under oath that I had no idea
who he was, if I ever needed to, and in a way I’d actually be telling the
truth. I liked it that way. So did he, I was sure.

I spent
a few minutes pacing around my living room to make sure my ankle was going to
hold up. It seemed like it would. For a while, anyway. Jogging was out of the
question, though. It was a good thing I never jogged.

I’d have
preferred to spend the day inside, but I wanted to talk to someone at the food
bank, and I wasn’t sure I could describe Krystal well enough to distinguish her
from any of their other more desperate clientele over the telephone. I had the
photo of her on my cell phone that I could show to people, though. I didn’t
much like the thought of doing that, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

It was
just past 10:30 now. I’d head out shortly, but I wanted to do something else,
first. Something I should have done a long time ago. I took my phone and called
Sarah’s extension at the SDPD. She answered on the first ring, her voice dull
and lifeless. “Sarah Winters.” I’d never heard that tone out of her before, and
I didn’t like it.

“Jesus,”
I said. “Are you all right?”

It took
her a minute to place my voice. “Oh. Nevada,” she said. She was silent for a
moment. “What’s going on?”

“I
wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I heard you maybe weren’t so good. I guess I
was right.”

“I’m
bored,” she said. “Dan won’t let me off the desk until he’s sure I’m not
dangerous. Asshole.”

That was
the first time I’d ever heard her speak badly about him. It wasn’t a good sign.
I wanted to say something reassuring, or maybe even hopeful, but that was a
language I wasn’t really familiar with. “You’ll be back out there soon,” I
said. It didn’t sound convincing at all.

“Sure.”

I had no
idea where to go with this. Why had I even tried? “Sarah…” I hesitated. Was
this the right path to go down? “Nothing that happened was your fault. You understand
that, right? You can’t beat yourself up over it.”

“I
already have a therapist, Nevada.” Her voice was cold. “I’m not getting into
this with you.”

“Well,
if you ever want to talk…”

“I
don’t.”

“I’m
just saying I’ve been through a lot, you know? Odds are I can relate to what
you’re going through.”

“I just
said I don’t want to talk, Nevada. Was there anything else?”

This
wasn’t the Sarah I knew at all, but I was out of things to say. I really was a
shit friend. Relationships of any kind had never been my strong suit. Besides,
I probably needed to get back into therapy, myself. “I won’t bother you about
it,” I said. “But if you’re as bored as I think you probably are, I’ve got
something that might help with that.”

Sarah
didn’t say anything for a long moment and I wondered if she was angry with me.
She had a right to be, I supposed. A better person than me would have touched
base with her a lot earlier. “All right,” she finally said. “What the hell?
Amuse me.”

Nothing
I had to say was amusing, but I explained the situation with Krystal, and that
she’d claimed to have information about three murders. Sarah thought about it
for a while. “Dan was telling the truth,” she said. “We don’t have an unsolved
triple. I can’t think of a double we haven’t put to bed, either. Did it sound
like a serial?”

“I’d
have to assume you guys would have picked up on some commonality,” I said.
“Same weapon, same method, same victim profile, same…
something
.”

“Not on
our radar,” Sarah said. “There are plenty of unsolveds, though. There always
are.”

“Do you
think you could find three for me that
do
have something in common?
Anything?”

“I don’t
know, Nevada. There are a lot of variables to look at. Besides race, gender,
backgrounds…I could probably think of fifty more.”

“Do you
have anything better to do?”

She
paused and I heard what might have been a grunt. “Well, I’ve got to finish
filing my nails, and then I’ll probably need another coffee. All right, fine.
Why not? I’ll see if I can dig something up.”

“I
appreciate it.”

“This
informant of yours…did you know her well?”

“Not
really. I hadn’t even thought about her in years. Why?”

“It’s
just…you seem to be taking it personally, Nevada. If she was just someone you
used to know, I’m wondering why.”

With
almost any other person I’d have told them to mind their damn business. But
this was different. “Isn’t that what therapy is for, Sarah?”

She
chuckled. “Yeah.”

“I’ll
tell you this anyway. Krystal was trying to find me for…I don’t know how long.
If I’d called her back right away, she’d be alive. If I hadn’t…” I felt a lump
in my throat and made myself swallow it down. “If I hadn’t thought she might be
setting me up and met her at her house instead of insisting it be in a public
place, she’d be alive. If I’d gone looking for her maybe fifteen minutes
earlier than I did, she’d be alive. I’d have been there when the killer came
for her and I’d have blown her head off.” Sarah didn’t say anything. “Krystal’s
dead because of shit I didn’t do, Sarah. So I
am
taking it personally,
yeah.”

“Yeah,”
Sarah said. “I guess I can understand that.”

“Like I
said, if you ever want to talk. You aren’t the only person that lives with some
shit, Sarah. But that’s all I’ll say about it right now.”

She went
quiet again, and then she simply said, “Thanks.”

“You’re
welcome.”

“I’ll
get on this as soon as I can. I can’t make any promises about time.”

“It’s
fine,” I said. “I appreciate you doing anything. I don’t think I’m going to get
much out of anybody else in the department.”

“You
aren’t.”

That had
sounded pretty definite. “Oh?”

“Dan’s
already told everyone you might be nosing around. If you do, we’re supposed to
tell him immediately so he can…I don’t know. Scold you?”

I
couldn’t honestly have said I was surprised. “But you won’t tell him?”

“Really,
Nevada? I couldn’t give a shit. I’ll be in touch.” And then she hung up on me.

I spent
the next ten minutes thinking about what had just happened. Dan’s concerns
about Sarah hadn’t been unfounded. She sounded entirely too much like me. That
wasn’t a good thing. It had the potential to be very, very bad.

But I
had no idea what to do about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8

 

 

I decided
to head over to the food bank where Krystal had been picking up her groceries.
It wasn’t far from the place where she’d been squatting. I was surprised to see
that it was located in a small strip mall, though. I’d imagined a larger
building. When you think of a grocery store, you think of a place significantly
bigger than the two tiny Mexican restaurants that sat in either side of it. The
food bank couldn’t have been bigger than either of them.

The
inside of the place was even more baffling. I’d expected aisles filled with
canned goods, but instead all I saw was a single counter and a door that led
into the back. That couldn’t possibly be for customers to go through, could it?
Did they pick out groceries back there?

A tall
young man with long dark hair in a ponytail smiled at me when I stepped through
the door. He had a nametag that said “Rick” and a waxed handlebar moustache
that wasn’t doing his face any favors. “Welcome,” he said. “What can I help you
with?”

I looked
around. There were a few generic inspirational posters on the walls that seemed
to promise that things would get better. I almost expected to see one with a
cat clinging to a branch with a caption that read “Hang in There.” I didn’t. I
actually hadn’t seen that poster in years. Did they still print them? Probably.
People loved cats and hanging in there.

“I’m not
sure I’m in the right place, honestly,” I said. “This is the food bank?” They’d
had a sign out front that said it was, but nothing about this place seemed
right to me.

“It is.”
He nodded. “You look like you might need this, though.” His hand disappeared
underneath the counter and my own twitched in the direction of my shoulder
holster, but I managed to keep myself from drawing on him. His hand came up
with a business card that he offered to me.

I
stepped forward to take it and looked it over. It had the name and address of a
local women’s shelter. “It’s a safe place,” he said. “Their security is the
best. If anyone calls asking if you’re there, they’ll say they never heard of
you.”

What in
the world was going on? It took me a minute to figure out, and then it hit me.
My face. I didn’t much care about my appearance, but I must have looked like
I’d been in a hell of a fight to anyone that saw me. “No,” I said. “This
isn’t…” I pointed at my stitches. “I jumped through a window.”

His eyes
widened slightly. “You must have been pretty desperate to get away,” he said.
His sympathetic look was starting to get on my nerves. “Do you want me to call
you a cab? It’s on us. Don’t worry about the money. We can write it off.”

“Actually,
he
was the one trying to get away,” I said. “Usually I’m the one people
are running from.” That had sounded weird. I shook my  head. “Let’s try that
again. My name is Nevada James. I used to be a cop.”

“Oh!”
Now his eyes widened even more. Great. “I’ve read all about you,” he said.
“Well, what can I do for you, Ms. James?”

We were
finally getting somewhere. “I’m still not sure I’m in the right place,” I said.
“Isn’t this supposed to be a food bank?”

“Yes.”
He nodded eagerly.

“So…” I
looked around. “Where’s all the food?”

He
looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “I don’t understand.”

“Do I
not know what a food bank is?” I asked. “Hungry people come in here, they pick
out some food, and they go home and eat it. Is that wrong?”

“Oh.” He
nodded. “Now I get it. You were expecting this to be like a Costco or
something.”

“I
guess. Maybe not
that
big.”

“Well,
there is a warehouse just behind me in the back, but it’s pretty small. Mostly
what we do here is take donations.”

“People
bring
you
food?”

“That’s
right. Whatever we get that can be used we distribute to shelters, soup
kitchens, that kind of thing.”

“So you
don’t really do retail here.”

“No.”

“I’ve
seen a box with this place’s name on it. What would have been in it if it
wasn’t food?”

He
laughed. “I’m sure it was food. If someone comes in hungry, we give them a box
with whatever we have on hand. Technically you can only get one once a month,
but…” He gave me a conspiratorial look. “We’re not going to send people away
hungry. But we also refer them to services nearby. For people needing a meal,
it’s the soup kitchen over on Lemon. They do lunch and dinner five days a
week.”

I held
up the card he’d given me. “And for women who look like they’ve been in a
fight…”

“Yes.
I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. It’s just…well, it was just more likely
than not.”

He
hadn’t needed to apologize. I was the one with the hair trigger. “No, it’s good
to know. Do you mind if I show you a picture?”

“Go
ahead.”

I took
my phone out of my pocket, pulled up Krystal’s photo, and showed it to him.
“Have you seen her in here before?”

Rick
looked at the photo for a moment and then got a look on his face like he was
going to be sick. “She’s…she’s
dead
, isn’t she?” His voice was a
whisper.

“Yeah.
Sorry, I probably should have said that up front.”

“My god.”

“Did you
know her?”

Rick put
a hand on the counter to steady himself. If he passed out on me I didn’t know
what I was going to do. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never actually seen a dead
person before.”

“I’ve
seen lots of them.” I didn’t tell him that seeing Krystal’s face again just now
had made me feel like I’d been punched in the stomach.

“Um…yeah,”
he said. He stared at the picture. “What happened to her?”

“She was
murdered. Someone shot her.”

“Oh,
god.”

“So I’m
trying to run down some leads, and this was one of them. What can you tell me
about her?”

Rick
thought about that for a moment. “She came in here…maybe every three weeks.
Maybe more than that, when she thought she could get away with it. All our
staff are volunteers so we don’t work long shifts. Just a couple hours at a
time. And it’s not like they’re taking down the name and social security number
of everyone who stops by. We don’t really have records.”

“Sure. But
you saw her in here more than once?”

“Oh,
yeah. She always took a box of groceries and left.”

“You
referred her to the soup kitchen on Lemon?”

“Of
course, but we can’t
make
people go there, and I’m not going to turn
anybody away if they need help. Hungry people need food. They don’t need to
have a door shut on them.”

“True.”

“I probably
gave her one of every card we have, to be honest.” He rummaged around under the
counter for a moment and came up with another half dozen or so business cards.
I watched as he laid them out in front of me like he was dealing a hand of
poker. “Domestic violence, the women’s crisis center, Planned Parenthood,
urgent care…”

I raised
a hand to stop him. “Urgent care? Was she hurt?”

“Once,”
he said. He frowned. “Maybe six months ago? She said she fell down, but I’ve
seen those kind of marks before. She’d been beaten.” He paused. “Come to think
of it, that was the day she asked about the drug treatment program.” He tapped
another one of the business cards. “She’d never actually asked for anything
specific before.”

“Do you
know if she ever went?”

“No. She
never mentioned it again and we don’t ask. We’re not supposed to play amateur
therapist, although I want to sometimes.” He sighed. “I’d really hoped she was
going to make it. She seemed nice. She was just a lost soul.”

Krystal
had
been a lost soul. She’d gone looking for someone to find her. Unfortunately,
she’d chosen me. I’d failed her. I decided not to tell Rick any of that. “Do
you mind if I keep these?” I held up the cards.

“Sure.”
He nodded at  me. “I’m glad you’re a cop again. The city is better off for it.
I hope you catch whoever did this.”

I
decided Rick didn’t need to know I wasn’t actually a cop, either. That would
raise more questions than it would be worth. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Anything
else I can help you with?”

I looked
around. “Honestly, I’d say you’re doing pretty well here. Keep passing out
those cards. You never know when somebody will use one.”

“Sure
thing, Detective.”

“I’m not
a…” the urge to correct him was automatic, but I held it back. “Thanks, Rick.
I’ll see you around.”

BOOK: Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries)
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