Drawing Conclusions (23 page)

We held each other, forcing time to stand still and wait for us while we lingered in a kiss so deep I felt as if I was falling through the floor. I could have held that pose for an eternity, knowing with unwavering conviction that I was meant to be in his arms. I felt his hand rise along my neck and grasp the back of my head. In one swift movement, he shoved me to the floor.

thirty-five

“Stay down,” DeRosa yelled
as he rolled my body behind the folded futon.

“What the hell?” I screamed, but my protests were drowned out by the shattering blast of glass exploding across the attic floor.

He darted for the light switch, but not before another round of fire shot through the broken window. The room went dark and I reached my hand out, searching frantically for DeRosa. Without making a sound, he grabbed my wrist and slid me across the floor about five feet from the door. His hand was sticky and warm, and I started to feel faint.

“What's the layout of the roof?” his voice low and hushed.

“Uh, there's a short catwalk that leads to the lookout tower.” I cried when I realized that the shooter was mere feet from my attic studio. “We can't stay here,” I croaked.

DeRosa stuck out his leg, making contact with a half-gallon can of paint. “Listen closely. I'm going to heave this paint can through the window. The second the can passes the glass, you head for the door. I'll be right behind you.” I nodded and filled my lungs with enough air to fuel my impending sprint.

DeRosa bowed his head as he silently counted to three. The paint can arched through the darkness, the thick liquid causing it to wobble unevenly. I watched as the moon lit up the silvery label and then I took off like a rabbit on a racetrack. With DeRosa hot on my heels, I covered my head as another spray of bullets riddled the wall behind me.

The stairs from the attic to the second floor were built for people who died almost two centuries ago. DeRosa's oversized frame took a beating as we tumbled down the steps with me in the lead. With his hand on my shoulder, he forced me to keep up the speed and within seconds I spotted the hinges on the solid oak door at the bottom of the staircase, which unfortunately was closed. I reached for the wrought-iron knob, but the door unexpectedly flung open.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, expecting to see a killer. I fell back onto DeRosa, who took the full force of the fall on his tailbone. I heard a pained huff behind me as I was tossed into the air and over the door's threshold, straight into Charlie.

“What the fuck?” Charlie had one hand on the door and the other gripping a hockey stick. “Igor is on our fucking roof with a shotgun!”

DeRosa stumbled to a standing position, a trickle of blood oozing from a wound on his shoulder. He slammed the door behind him, cutting off the only access to the attic. “Is that a positive ID, Charlie?”

“Damn straight,” Charlie said, swinging his stick in hopes that he'd connect with Igor's head. “I just caught him on the security camera. I ran up here right when he pulled off his first round.”

DeRosa grabbed the hockey stick from Charlie and shoved it through the door handle as a makeshift bolt.

“What's the fastest way to the roof?”

The urgency was spurred by the sound of a heavy footstep on the floor above us.

Charlie grabbed DeRosa's good arm and hustled him into a linen closet two doors down from the attic entry. At the far end of the linen closet was a window. Charlie yanked hard on the old-fashioned sash and pointed to a fire escape about four feet to the left of the window.

“It's a bit of a leap,” he said as the detective swung his leg over the paint-chipped sill.

“Get Jonathan and grab some tools,” DeRosa directed. “Once I'm safely on the ladder, you need to dismantle the lower half of the fire escape so Igor can't get back down.”

“But Frank,” I said, “you'll be trapped in the attic with Igor.”

He swung his other leg over the window. “Too bad for him.”

thirty-six

DeRosa's hand was slick
with blood, and I could see he was having trouble gripping the metal fire escape. I quickly tossed him a towel to sop up the blood, which had left a trail across the brick exterior of the building. He heaved himself up the ladder, his muscular thighs working overtime to compensate for the wound in his shoulder. His torso disappeared into the darkness above, but not before I caught a glimpse of the revolver strapped to his leg. I heard
movement below and prayed that Igor was still in the attic and not climbing up after DeRosa. I looked down and watched as Jonathan and Charlie began methodically unscrewing the ladder bolts, effectively trimming fifteen feet off the fire escape from the ground up.

Before I had chance to imagine a scuffle between DeRosa and Igor, a single shot popped like a firecracker, followed by an ungodly wail. I covered my ears as if I were a child wishing away the boogey man, but the screaming continued. The thought of Frank writhing in agony was more than I could take. Losing Teddy had been beyond my control, but no one, including Igor, would take Frank away from me.

I ran back to the attic stairs. With one quick jerk, I removed the hockey stick from the door handle and opened the attic door. I stood at the landing, my legs spaced firmly below me. I gave myself sixty seconds to take stock of my life. This was not the first time Igor and I had crossed paths; by my count, I was winning simply because I was still alive. That was all the encouragement I needed. Let Igor be afraid this time.

My steps were nimble and practiced, having climbed this route repeatedly over the last ten years. Without a doubt, I knew I could make it to the top without disturbing even one cranky floorboard. I managed each step with care. The door at the top of the stairs was slightly ajar, providing a sliver of a sightline. The attic room was long and narrow, covering the entire length of the house. From my vantage point, I spotted four legs splayed prone on the ground in the farthest corner of the room. I poked my head through the door to get a better view and didn't like what I saw.

DeRosa's and Igor's bodies were wrapped so tightly I had difficulty determining where one began and the other ended. Their physical strength was so evenly matched that neither could move the other an inch. Despite the difference in their sizes—Igor short and stocky and DeRosa with his beef and brawn—they were deadlocked in an inextricable hug. The only variable left to consider was endurance. At some point, one of them would break.

I was discreet in my movements, making the most of each step. Working in my favor was the position of Igor's head. If I approached from the left and remained on a course aligned perfectly with the top of his crown, I'd avoid any chances of being caught in his peripheral view. An art table stocked with painting paraphernalia was located about ten feet from me. If I was careful, I could nab something on the table and brandish it as a weapon. In this case, my choices were limited to a handful of paintbrushes with very pointy tips.

Working against me was DeRosa, who had at this point spotted me. He was careful not to look up and alert Igor, but I grasped his message in one quick glance. He wanted me out of the room and fast. But he already knew I didn't take orders well.

Against his wishes, I moved forward, reaching tentatively for the art table and sliding the nearest paintbrush through my fingers. I ran my palm along the tip, putting pressure on the brush to feel its sharpness. DeRosa shook his head as my steps came even closer. When I was no more than three feet away, I saw the reason for his warning. Igor's wrist was pinned down by DeRosa's bursting, bloody forearm. Clenched in Igor's fist was a gun, and his finger was securely around the trigger. DeRosa's arm was shaking furiously and although I had been prepared to see the wound in his arm I could see that the shot I'd heard had torn into his other arm. I drew the paintbrush high into the air, as if swinging an axe and then, with all my might, pierced the fleshy part of Igor's forearm just above his wrist.

Igor screamed bloody murder. His painful grunts were raw and throaty, with an animalistic quality that tore at my ears. My action had caught him so off-guard that he couldn't mimic a human sob. The stabbing was swift, causing his reflexes to respond against his will. As a result, his palm opened like a flower blooming in fast forward. I watched as his hand released and the gun slid a few inches from his grip. If there was a time to strike, it was now.

I pounced on the weapon, grabbing it like a hot potato. It was warm from his touch, the way a metallic necklace feels mere minutes after taking it off. It was also wet with sweat, causing me to fumble. I slapped my hands together in one last desperate attempt to calm the weapon, but my index finger caught the trigger and the gun let out a round of fire that lit up the room like the Fourth of July. I screeched like the audience at a horror film as the gun kicked back, dove to the ground, and twirled across the floorboards.

I watched it rotate and with my fingers crossed, stuck my foot out at the exact moment the nose of the gun was pointing away from my body. I squatted, picked up the gun, turned, and pointed at Igor, who was frantically trying to dislodge the paintbrush from his forearm.

With the gun directed safely at Igor, DeRosa pulled his elbow back at a ninety-degree angle and slammed his fist directly into the man's jaw. The blow knocked him unconscious and left blood smeared across his mouth.

“Showoff,” I muttered as I lowered the gun to my side.

“Amateur,” DeRosa said, pretending to catch a weapon in mid-air.

“You realize I'm still holding a gun,” I said as he approached me with a smile so transparent I was almost embarrassed. He peeled my fingers off the gun, checked the barrel, and set the safety. Then he leaned into me and kissed me softly on the cheek. “You're a cop's fantasy,” he whispered, sending a warm thrill down my body.

Then he turned and walked back to Igor. He stopped at my art table and dunked a paintbrush into a can of turpentine. He knelt down over Igor, slowly waving the brush under his nose until Igor twitched at the smell. Then he slapped him with an open palm and shook his head until Igor's bleary eyes opened. Before Igor could get his bearings, DeRosa dragged his beaten body across the room, shoving his squat back against the wall. He dug his hand under Igor's chin, pinning him to the wooden slats in a chokehold. As he squeezed Igor's neck harder with the better of his two arms, a small trickle of blood formed on his sleeve.

“Here's how it works,” he said as Igor came to, “I'm going to ask you questions. You answer yes or no. If I like your answers, your daughter walks. You fuck up and you'll both spend the rest of your life in a dank, dark, cement block cell in Siberia.”

Igor moved his head an inch indicating his agreement.

“Your wife died fifteen years ago in a clinical drug trial in Slovenia,” DeRosa asserted.

“Yes,” Igor answered although it sounded more like
ja
.

“Your brother-in-law, Peter Dacks, helped recruit patients for the test.”

I could see he wanted to confirm Becky's story.

“Yes.”

DeRosa tilted his head slightly in my direction before asking his next question. “The doctor who conducted the trial was Dr. William Prentice, head of Sound View Laboratories. The trial subjected healthy people to unapproved drugs that ultimately killed them.”

“Yes,” Igor answered again.

I gasped at the shocking revelation. It was his eureka moment. Detective Frank DeRosa had discovered Dr. William Prentice's big secret: he had conducted unreported drug trials in a foreign country with disastrous results. Healthy people died due to his greed and negligence. In the medical world, it was the type of black mark no amount of backpedaling could erase.

“Peter Dacks successfully blackmailed Dr. Prentice, threatening to reveal the deadly results of the failed trials in exchange for DNA samples.”

“Yes.”

“He arranged for your daughter, Becky, to deliver cookies to Dr. Theodore Prentice.”

Igor grew agitated at the mention of Becky's name. “She don't know,” he pleaded.

“We'll get to that in a minute,” DeRosa said. “The doctor had figured out the blackmailing scheme and was prepared to go to the press to put an end to a very old secret.”

“Yes.”

“After Dr. Theodore Prentice's death, Dacks sent you to threaten his daughter, Constance Prentice, as a message that more killing would occur if he didn't stay in line.”

“Yes.”

“But threatening Constance Prentice wasn't good enough for you.” DeRosa tightened his grip as Igor strained to look away. “Answer,” he yelled, while, with his other hand, he banged Igor's head against the wall.

“Yes,” Igor responded as he shifted his eyes.

Instead of staring down DeRosa, Igor swung his steely eyes in my direction, and I felt his hatred burn through me like hot wax on my skin.

“You wanted Dr. Prentice's family dead. You were seeking revenge for the death of your wife.”

Igor's mouth turned down as his red-rimmed lids filled with water. He tried to push the detective backward, but DeRosa held firm. Igor yelled a name I did not recognize, but I assumed it was the name of his dead wife, Becky's mother. The sheer force of his effort drained his broken soul and he sank back on the wall, his shoulders collapsing.

“You stick to those answers,” DeRosa said, “and your daughter's safe. You help me with one more thing, and I may even arrange a plea bargain for you.”

The man's eyes filled with hope at the prospect of freedom. I wasn't sure where DeRosa was going, but I was almost certain life would be very difficult for me with Igor on the loose.

I listened intently as DeRosa outlined a way to trap Peter Dacks in his own web of lies. The plan was simple. All Igor had to do was have a scripted conversation with Dacks to capture his guilt first-hand, making Igor the prosecution's silver bullet.

Igor nodded once more and this time, it was clear that he truly meant it.