Shadow Tag (The Ray Schiller Series - Book 2) (8 page)

Deep in thought, Ray hit a pothole that felt more like a crater. The car was unscathed, but his back wasn’t as lucky. The walk from his parking spot to his apartment suggested he’d undone a day’s worth of healing.

All day long he’d absorbed information like a sponge. Now, having bypassed lunch, he needed to do a little of the same for his stomach. Ray went straight to the refrigerator. Its only contents consisted of a thin layer of frost forming on the freezer walls.

“Damn it.” He slammed the refrigerator door with undisguised vengeance.

Ray remembered throwing a few canned items into a box when he cleared out his old place: at least one can of soup, maybe as many as three, a can of Manwich and an unopened bottle of salsa, which he remembered clearly—Chi Chi’s—Hot, Thick and Chunky.

The soup
.
Which cupboard had he put it in? Pain reeled him back in as he reached for an overhead cabinet door without thinking. “Shit.”

Using a kitchen chair as a stepstool, he located two cans of tomato soup. Not even a close favorite, he wondered why he’d bought them in the first place. The two-for-a-buck sticker explained it. Tomato soup would have to do.

The handle of a can opener jutted from a small packing box near a table leg. He grabbed it and put it to work, realizing a half-turn later that he hadn’t the faintest idea which box held pots, bowls or utensils. He flung the opener into an empty drawer and slammed it shut.

A new idea flashed into his head: delivery food. No strain, no pain
.
He grabbed his cell phone only to find the battery had died an untimely death. He had one last hope: with any luck, the landlord had let the telephone company in to hook up his phone like he’d asked.
Still bent, he made his way to the opposite side of the couch. There it sat in all its glory—a shiny, beige phone, resting on the brown carpet where an end table was meant to be.

“God bless you, Mr. Bradley.” He picked up the handset. The sound of a dial tone was music to his ears. Ray poised a finger over the buttons and froze.
Who the hell am I calling?
He looked for a phone book, but found none. The handset crashed back to its base.

Humbled and famished, he crossed the hallway outside his apartment and knocked on the door opposite his own. He was about to knock again when the door cracked open.

The voice on the other side was soft and mellow. “Yes?”

In pain, Ray stood there bent at the waist, his eyes traveling from feet slippered in pink fluff to the hem of a short, white satin robe. The shapely legs looked like they went on forever; his neighbor had to be at least six feet tall.

The voice purred, “Is there something I can do for you?”

Unable to straighten up to his full height, Ray could only see as high as her chest—also impressive. He cleared his throat. “Sorry to bother you. I’m new in the building. My back’s screwed up and I don’t have any groceries yet. I’m starving and wondered if you might have a phone book.”

Veiled laughter filled the voice. “Does your taste run more toward the white or yellow pages?”

“Let me try that again. My name’s Ray Schiller.” He pointed to his apartment. “I just moved into 310. I thought I’d order a pizza or something, but the phone company didn’t leave a directory.”

The legs on the other side of the threshold shifted sensuously. “If it’s pizza you want, I know just the place. I can call your order in for you, if you like.”

“Great.”

“Size and type?”

“Large. The works.”

“Got it. I’ll order your pizza right now. It should be at your door in about thirty minutes.”

“Thanks, Miss ...”

“Gerrard.” A slender hand with tapered, polished nails reached out and shook his hand. “You can call me Patti…with an ‘i’.”

“All right. Thanks, Patti, with an ‘i’.”

Patti’s knees bent, bringing the two of them face to face. Beneath the powder, blush, mascara and brunette wig, the essence of that face was indefinably but irrefutably male. “It’s nice to meet you, Ray.” The door closed. Ray thought about the long, shapely legs and shuddered.

Ravenous, he returned to his apartment while thoughts of the hair-trigger smile and infectious laugh of a particular waitress at Widmer’s Copper Kettle Café played with his mind. There were all kinds of hunger. Amy Dexter had instilled a more dangerous kind, but he hadn’t indulged. Some hungers you fed, others you didn’t.

Some men didn’t see it that way. His own father had stooped to accepting payoffs to finance a sleazy affair. That discovery devastated Ray. His father—the man he’d looked up to all his life—was a cheat and a dirty cop—a criminal. Destroyed by the revelation, his mother took her own life. Blinded by grief and rage, Ray helped send his father to prison where he died at the hands of another inmate two months later.

Four years had gone by since then, and Ray still hadn’t come to terms with the past. He hoped overcoming the pain of Gail’s betrayal wouldn’t be as slow a process.

The telephone was suddenly in his hand—eleven digits between him and home. He dialed, his stomach tightening as he waited, unsure what he would say if Gail answered. Three rings later, a babysitter answered. Gail was out. Laurie was at a sleep-over, and Krista was in the tub. He gave the sitter his new phone number, asking her to pass it along to Gail. “Tell Krista I sent a big hug and kiss, will you?” he said before hanging up.

He wondered where Gail had gone. One thing was for damn sure: she wasn’t with Mark Haney—wouldn’t be ever again. He and his Smith and Wesson had seen to that. His stomach knotted at thoughts of the accidental shooting. He pushed the remote control buttons for the TV without really seeing or hearing, let alone caring what each change produced. As his eyelids grew unbearably heavy, Ray’s body surrendered to sleep, but his subconscious gave him no rest.

In his mind’s eye, boxes were again piled in high stacks to his right, his left, all around. The obstructed lighting in Mark Haney’s hardware store basement cast shadows at cockeyed angles in all directions. Across Ray’s forehead and upper lip, a sheen of perspiration appeared as the nightmare mirrored the actual events.

Gun drawn, he moved with care through the maze of pathways amidst the disarray. He detected movement. Close. Too close. A pall of foreboding overcame him. “Police.” His repeated, unacknowledged warnings thundered in his subconscious. His skin prickled as if an electrical charge were dancing over his arms. The attack came—a murky silhouette, hurtling toward him in a downpour of heavy, tumbling cardboard towers. Pain. Momentary darkness.

A thunderclap of sound brought Ray painfully upright, his eyes wide open, his hand reaching for his absent gun. The room was no longer dim, his living room no longer a store basement. The sound proved to be nothing more than a knock on his apartment door, not the blast from his police revolver that killed his estranged wife’s lover. His confusion lifted as he tried to shake off the latest replay. He blotted the perspiration from his face with a forearm and headed for the door.

Another knock.

“Hang on, I’m coming.” As he swung the door open, the man on the other side extended a large, flat box in his direction. Across the white paper sleeve covering the pizza box, he saw the unlikely name “Bubba’s” in bold, scarlet script. A smaller form of the same script on the bottom left-hand corner announced, “Bubba sends his best.”

Ray reached into his pocket for his wallet.

“Don’t bother. It’s on me.”

“What?”

“It’s the least I can do for yanking your chain before.”

The man was softly handsome. Mid to late twenties, Ray guessed. Waves of thick chestnut-colored hair framed the intelligent face and wide-set hazel eyes. Behind the lips parted in a broad smile there were white, even teeth.

Ray shook off his sleep fog and studied the face more closely. “Patti?”

“Make it Patrick.” Patrick Gerrard handed the box to him. “I had the pizza delivered to my place so I could bring these over, too.” Reaching down, he grabbed a frozen gel pack and a heating pad lying at his feet. “For your back,” he said. “Cold for inflammation, heat for healing. Keep them as long as you like.”

“Um...thanks.” Ray moved aside. “Want to come in?”

Gerrard stepped inside and set the gel pack and heating pad down on the nearest unpacked box. He made no secret of checking out the room. “Single?” Gerrard laughed at Ray’s awkward pause. “Don’t worry; I’m not casting my net in your direction.” He looked around again. “It’s just that your décor suggests you’re—”

“Separated,” Ray said. “Recently.”

“Sorry to hear that. Listen, I can’t stay. I just wanted to apologize for that
Patti
thing before. Sometimes I get a kick out of messing with people.”

“Hey, whatever. Your lifestyle’s your own business.”

“Absolutely. But just to set the record straight, that get-up you saw me in was job-related. I work at Lacey’s.” In apparent response to the blank look on Ray’s face, he said, “It’s a gay bar. I work there part-time—female impersonation.”

“Well, you’re pretty damn convincing.” Ray didn’t share exactly
how convincing. “This Lacey’s place… How did you—”

“Ray, I’m sorry, I can’t stick around right now. I’ve got to run. See you later?”

“Okay, yeah. Thanks for the pizza and gel pack,” he said, shaking his hand. “The heating pad, too.”

“No problem.” Gerrard stepped into the hallway. “Remember…twenty minutes of cold, then twenty of heat.”

Ray was salivating as he parked in front of the TV with the pizza. The first slice convinced Ray Bubba was Sicilian. Patti sure knew his pizzas. Checking his watch, he slipped the ice pack between the couch and his tailbone. As he brushed the last of the crust crumbs from his shirt, he checked his watch again. Nineteen minutes. Close enough. He replaced the ice pack with the heating pad.

The soothing warmth and full stomach worked wonders, but as his eyes closed, he began another trip to the basement of Mark Haney’s hardware store on the dark wings of troubled sleep.

9

The following morning, Ray and Waverly sat at their desks, brainstorming. “Yeah,” Waverly said, gulping coffee from his personal mug—the one with his computer-generated mugshot on it, “I kept thinking along those conspiracy lines last night, buddy. Had me so preoccupied I didn’t finish dessert. Worried Phyllis half to death.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Ray said. “Could be that Gaines was paid off for turning a blind eye.”

Waverly gave him a skeptical look. “I thought you believed the kid’s story.”

“I’m not sure what I think anymore.”

“Okay, let me just slide over and make some room for you up here on the fence alongside me,” Waverly said. “You know, I’m confused. I thought you’d be happier now that Ed Costales is back in the lineup.”

“I would be, but the implications bug me,” Ray said. “I’d like to believe Todd Gaines is on the up-and-up, but even though Ed Costales had every reason to want Davis dead, he’s the only one with an airtight alibi.”

“Hey, I feel for the Gaines kid, too, but something smells fishy about this whole thing. I’m convinced Chalmers doesn’t figure into any of this. The problem is that both Gaines and Johnson claim Davis was alive after Costales left. So either it was one of them who killed Davis or Costales paid off one or both of them off to provide an alibi. Hell, maybe he even paid them do the job
for
him.”

“Right,” Ray said, “but there’s a problem with that. No one knew Davis was coming back to ACC that night—not even Costales.”

“True,” Waverly said, “but Costales might’ve seen him there and taken advantage of the opportunity.”

“But he’d be crazy to risk bringing one, let alone two strangers in on a last-minute murder plot.”

Waverly shoved his coffee aside. “Then that brings us back to Johnson or Gaines.”

“Yeah.” Ray drummed his fingers on his desktop. “Johnson had a possible motive and opportunity, but we’ve got nothing solid on him unless or until we can make a connection between him and the murder weapon.”

“That leaves us with Todd Gaines.”

“Yeah, the kid had opportunity but nothing else—nothing we know about. Not yet, anyway.”

“Buddy, I’ve been working this case longer than you, and I’ve already made turns down those same dead ends. Believe me, there’s no connection between Davis and Gaines.”

“If it’s a waste of time, why let me keep going on about it?”

Waverly looked at him with mock concern. “I’m being your sounding board. Aren’t I doing it right?”

“Jackass.” Ray slapped a pen against his palm hard enough to feel its sting. “Look, I don’t like it, but we can’t completely rule out Gaines yet. Maybe Costales was more desperate to take over ACC than we thought. Maybe he took a stupid risk and waved a fistful of money under Gaines’ nose that night. The kid’s just starting out, and he’s got a grandmother who’s about to become totally dependent on him. That’s a hell of a lot of pressure. The prospect of getting more money than he’s ever seen in his life might’ve been enough to make him cave. Maybe Costales just got real lucky.”

“It sucks, but it’s a possibility,” Waverly said. “So, say Costales promised Gaines a ton of money to kill Davis after he’d left the building. Gaines could’ve pulled the trigger and earned himself a shitload of blood money, and Johnson’s story about seeing Davis alive could be true. Yeah, it could’ve gone down that way.”