In the shadow, p.15
In The Shadow, page 15
“How the hell does he do it?” Jay’s information, like always, had panned out to perfection. Every claim proved true, and Gary Farren was now awaiting trial for a murder Hector was sure in his gut the poor little man hadn’t committed.
Nell shrugged. “It is a pity you are on opposing ends. I imagine he’d be a very useful member of our squad.”
Piers snarled wordlessly, and Nell raised his hands then pointed at a thin rectangular package waiting on the detective’s desk. “What’s that?”
Piers followed his finger and shoved Jay out of center stage in his mind. “I don’t know.”
He picked up the parcel, postmarked from Texas, and frowned. There was no return address, and he knew no one outside of Louisiana. Sitting down, he flicked open his pocket knife and neatly sliced the tape, then turned the box to dump its contents on the table.
Hector stared for a moment that seemed to last decades. On his table was a crumpled-looking paper in a pocket of sellotaped cling film, a small gold cufflink shaped like a sealed scroll, and a longer, typed letter.
“Get me gloves.”
While Nell hurried from the room, Hector found his eyes drawn again and again to the cuff link. It was worn only by the valedictorian of Louisiana School of Math, Science, and The Arts, on their unique blazer. Matthew Goldstein had been valedictorian there the same year Myra and Jay graduated, and eight months before her death.
He turned to his computer, grinning as the new machine, installed just this morning, brought up the results in seconds. He scrolled through the pictures, going back in time until he came to their class. There was Goldstein, looking smug as ever, his hands clasped neatly before him. Hector zoomed in and deflated a little as both cufflinks glittered in place.
That doesn't mean he didn’t lose one later.
Nell returned and held out a pair of latex gloves, a perfect match to his own and the ones Dr. Hutt wore as she hurried in a second later, field kit in hand.
Hector offered her the cuff link. “See if you can find anything to determine the age of that. An exact year would be best.”
Hutt nodded as Nell glanced at the screen, where a twenty-years-younger Goldstein still smiled. “You think it’s his?”
Hector nodded and indicated the folded, typed letter. “This seems similar to what we got from Linda.”
He scooped up the paper in clingfilm and turned it over, revealing a hand-written message, in pencil. He read it out for Nell’s benefit as the man was trying to see past the glare of the lights on the plastic.
Meet me for lunch. I know you think we are worlds apart, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Hector felt his blood beginning to boil. He knew, from Jay’s complaints after he and Myra started dating, that too many boys at school were into her. But there was one in particular who Hector, playing truant, had watched hound her again and again.
“Have it checked for fingerprints, and I’ll see if I can get a graphoanalyst in too.”
Hutt sighed and Hector threw her a questioning look. “What?”
“I just don’t want this to be another dead end chase for you. Look, promise me one thing, please. Don’t move on Goldstein with nothing but your gut to back you up. He’s too well protected.”
Piers held her gaze a moment longer then sighed. “I’ll try, but I’m not letting him escape me. He isn’t the only one with means anymore.”
He pulled the letter towards him and unfolded it. It followed exactly the same pattern as before. Anonymous, but claiming insider knowledge of Myra’s plans and connections to her murderer. The words, claiming that she had known her murderer for years before the fact, fit in with the little forensics had been able to tell them at the time. There had been no struggle. She hadn’t been carried, or dragged, into the Bayou. Her system was drug-free.
He handed the letter to Nell and then watched him pass it to Hutt, again for fingerprints or similar.
“Tell me what you find straight away. Oh, and I want this kept just between the three of us.”
Nell nodded and stripped off his gloves. “The coroner called too. He’s done with Linda Wei. She can be released for burial if you will sign.”
Hector grimaced but nodded. “Of course. Hutt, give her report a read over first. If you agree that there’s likely nothing more to find, send it to me to sign.”
Hutt left and Nell turned to Piers. “You’re not going to like what I’m going to say, but just hear me out, okay?”
Piers frowned but nodded. “Sure.”
“I want you to be prepared for this all to be some hoax. Some ill-bred joke.”
Hector shook his head. “I don’t think so, Nell. Her murder wasn’t widely publicized, and the facts are fitting too well.”
“And yet I can name at least one person who knows all the tiny details, too.”
Piers tensed but still shook his head again. “Not even Jay would stoop so low. For all his faults, I really believe he loved my sister.”
“Not even if she chose another over him?”
Piers eyed Nell for a long moment. “Where’s all this coming from?”
Nell shrugged, the intense look leaving his eyes. “I don’t know. I guess, I just want you to be prepared if all this leads to someone other than Goldstein.”
Piers watched Nell leave, and his frown deepened. He wasn’t sure where the outburst had come from, but it had left him with an uncomfortable pit in his stomach.
****
Jay arrived at Linda Wei’s grave, thankful that only Stella and Ruby were still there. He had tried to time it carefully, knowing it was unwise to cross paths with anyone from his old life at the moment.
Stella gave him a tentative smile as Ruby wrapped her arms around his waist, her tears finally coming now she felt safe with the people she had chosen as her family.
“I wanted to go and leave flowers at the memorial like Nanna used to. Do you think that’s okay?” Ruby asked, pulling away.
Jay smiled, looking down into the huge, dark eyes watching him. “I think that is a great idea. Take Stella with you, though, just in case anyone gets nasty.”
Ruby nodded. “I wasn’t planning on going through the park. They really hate you there now, and I guess me too, because I won’t turn my back on you. We’ll go through the forest.”
“It’ll be alright. Anger doesn’t last forever, Ru.”
He watched them leave and turned to the headstone, trying to keep his mind free of all the memories seared into his brain—the smell in the night air. Goldstein’s cold, calculating gaze. Linda, looking so old and fragile through the sniper’s scope.
“You were the strongest person I knew,” he told the newly-turned earth at his feet. “You never let emotion cloud your judgment. It was why everyone always felt like they could confide in you.”
Footsteps brought him up short, and he half-turned to find Hector watching him.
“Have you come to say goodbye, too?”
Hector glanced at the tombstone, then back at Jay. “I had, but I am glad to have caught you here. Saves me having to drive on to Goldstein.”
Jay smothered a smile and instead arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Luther Penn was arrested this morning. He’s the one who sent the knife man after you. There’s enough proof to lock him away.”
Jay chuckled at the curt delivery. “My thanks, Detective Piers.”
He gave Linda’s stone one more look then began to walk away, up the slow rise, leaving Hector alone beside the grave. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he frowned at Stella’s number.
“Is everything al—”
“Get out of the cemetery! Now!”
Alarmed by the fear in her voice, he immediately froze, letting his eyes scan the sloping ground and surrounding trees.
“What’s happening?”
“Gunman. Headed your way. Get out of there!”
Adrenaline shot through his blood like lightning, and he scanned the trees again, finally spotting movement. He’d only seen the man because he had been specifically looking for him. He was camouflaged from head to toe, a long black gun just visible as he shifted.
He was too far for Jay to be sure of the weapon’s capabilities, but as the man knelt on one knee and began to raise it slowly, he was suddenly crystal clear on the target, and it wasn’t him.
“Get Ru back home and stay safe,” he barked at Stella then ended the call, already running.
Hector had his back to the sniper, crouching down by the grave. His head snapped up as Jay barreled down the slope, colliding as a gunshot rang out in the air.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jayden felt as if he were floating, the world around made up of nothing but light and sounds so distant they were unrecognizable. It was beautiful. Peaceful.
Then the peace was shattered with enough force to make him cry out. Sirens screamed, making his ears ring. People were shouting orders, and purposeful hands moved him. The pain licked over his body, tongues of searing flame that originated somewhere in his left side and spread through his whole abdomen.
His vision focused sharply as he was hoisted onto a stretcher. He caught a glimpse of Hector, brown eyes wide with shock and shaking hands covered in blood. Then the stretcher bounced over the uneven ground and everything receded into darkness.
****
“You don’t get to die, damnit. Do you hear me, Jay? No dying. Not by saving me.”
Jay heard the words as he regained consciousness, Hector’s voice drawn with equal parts worry and annoyance. He could also hear monitors beeping, and he caught the sharp tang of disinfectant. He kept his eyes shut and his body still, making sure everything was in order in his mind. He remembered Stella’s panicked command for him to leave the cemetery. He remembered the sniper in position and getting ready to fire. He remembered the way his gaze had focused only on Hector, how his feet pounded across the short distance. He felt again the painful impact as their bodies had collided and then a pain far worse tearing through his side on the back of a gunshot cracking the air. They had tumbled back, and a new pain had blossomed for a second across his head before everything faded to white light.
Gingerly, he raised a hand slowly to his head. He felt the sickening pull that indicated an IV was stuck in his hand. His left eyebrow still sported the two stitches it had gained from when his house exploded, but the right side was now injured, too, covered by a padded, gauze lump.
“Mr. Roe? Can you hear me?”
It was a woman's soft, but commanding voice. He cracked his eyes open, expecting the blinding glare of hospital lights. Swimming slowly into focus above him was a nurse, bearing the name Lake on her tag, and Hector, relief evident in his eyes even as his mouth remained tight.
So you don’t completely hate me, then.
He shifted his eyes back to Nurse Lake, and she smiled.
“Good to have you back.”
Jay attempted a small smile as Hector collapsed back in a chair beside the bed, and the nurse began checking the machine’s readouts while asking questions.
“How do you feel, Mr. Roe?”
“Fine,” he replied, then clamped his teeth. The pain that lashed out from his abdomen brought little lights dancing before his eyes. “I mean, I can hear and see as normal. Everything seems to be working right.”
“Luck of the devil,” Hector muttered as the nurse smiled again and began to check his pupillary reflex.
She pulled the sheet down and discretely lifted the side of the hospital gown he was wearing, checking the wound.
“It all looks good, but you’ll need to take it easy, Mr. Roe,” the nurse told him. “The doctor will be in later to explain. If you want to sit up, use that button there and the bed will tilt up. Once you are up, there’s more pain meds and some water.”
After she left, Jay pressed the button and winced. Even without his active use of his abdominals, the change in position caused spikes of pain. Silence reigned, heavy and still. Jay forced himself to shift past the pain and reach over for his glass of water and pain-relief tablets. He downed the lot then turned his grey eyes back to Hector, who was watching him with a kind of fierce intensity.
“I will admit that I am relieved you are awake. For a while there, the doctors weren’t sure you’d pull through.”
Jay managed a small chuckle. “Did you catch the shooter?”
The question caused Hector’s face to darken, and the concern in his eyes was pushed behind something hard and dark. He pulled out a little silver voice recorder and clicked it on. “I actually have a few questions, if you feel alert enough to answer.”
Jay registered his return to his role as detective and swallowed another chuckled while nodding his assent. “Sure.”
“Good. I think the most pressing is how you knew there was a shooter in the first place?”
“I didn’t, not in the way your tone suggests. Ruby and Stella had decided to cut through the woods because Ru wanted to go visit the memorial and leave some flowers like Linda used to,” Jay paused as Hector winced and looked away. He only continued when the dark-brown eyes were resting on him once more. “She spotted the man and called me, told me to run for it.”
“Why? Why would Ms. Haraby assume you were the target?”
Jay tilted his head to the side. “You’d be best asking her that, but if I were to guess, I’d say it is because there have already been two prior attempts on my life. A third would not have seemed unlikely.”
“What happened next?” Hector asked, shifting his own head to the side revealing a long graze across his left temple.
“I spotted the man and then ran for you. I could see he wasn’t aiming at me.”
Hector’s face paled. Jay assumed that while Hector must have suspected he had been the intended target, it was still hard to hear it said so clearly.
At that moment, the nurse popped her head back around the curtain, and Hector hastily shut off the recorder.
“The doctor will be coming by, and you have a few other guests waiting, Mr. Roe. A Ms. Haraby and Ms. Wei, and also Mr. Goldstein.”
She had said the last name with a kind of breathless tittering in her voice that made Hector scowl and Jay bite his tongue on a laugh.
“Well, I guess I should get out of the doctor’s way, then,” said Hector when the nurse eyed him expectantly.
With a nod and grin, she left, saying that she’d let the others know they’d be able to visit after the doctor had seen him. With an “Only two at a time though”, she was gone.
Jay shook his head and looked back at Hector, who, despite his words, hadn’t moved an inch. His eyes were out of focus as he thought about something. He was absently shifting the side of his shirt as if scratching an itch.
“You got hurt,” Jay said, leaning forward with significantly less pain as the drugs took effect. The gauze pad looked how he imagined the one on his head did, a rectangular lump of bandage covering an absorbent pad soaked in iodine.
Hector jumped and quickly removed his hand, the shirt falling back over the bandaged wound. “Just a graze. The bullet went right through you. Military-grade.”
Jay winced at the picture that conjured, and Hector turned to scoop up his hat that had been hooked over the back of the chair.
“I really should leave. I trust you have no objections to me collecting a statement from Ms. Haraby and Ruby?”
Jay gave him a mocking smile. “Since when did you need my permission to do your job, Hector?”
“Since I’m in no mood to have you hounding me later trying to turn this all on its head.”
Jay laughed, winced, then sank back against the pillows. “I really shouldn’t be your concern, Hector. Someone tried to assassinate you a few hours ago.”
Hector tensed, then raised his eyebrows.
“Hours? It has been two days and a night, Jay. You were in surgery for sixteen hours the first time, and then you were rushed back in again five hours later and stayed in for another three. All those machines and tubes you’re attached to aren’t there just for show.”
Jayden could do nothing but stare. He’d been shot more than two days ago? He suddenly felt he understood now why Hector had sounded so sincere in his berating him not to die.
Hector put his hat on and Jay remembered the fleeting image he had seen after the shooting. Hector standing there, his hands shaking and covered in blood.
“You tried to stem the bleeding, didn’t you?”
“Why did you do it? Why risk your life for mine?” Hector asked from the door, ignoring Jay’s question.
Jay raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Really? You mean you would have just let me die? Do you really hate me that much?”
In answer, Hector let out a heavy breath and left the room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The doctor came bustling into the room while Jay was still staring at the spot where Hector had vanished. He was a portly man, with a very large belly and nearly no hair. He had a genial smile on his face, which made him look like a short Santa Claus.
“It is good to finally see you awake, Mr. Roe. I am Dr. Grayson.”
“Is it you I should thank for saving my life?” Jay gave the doctor a small smile.
Dr. Grayson grinned as he read the readouts and the notes the nurse had left in the folder.
“If you’re asking if I was the surgeon, then, no. Dr. Benedict treated you, and good thing he was here too. On loan from the military hospital, you know, lots of experience with battlefield wounds. We’d have had to airlift you elsewhere; no one here would have had the expertise.”
The way the doctor’s face suddenly lost all its happiness and fall slack made Jay sure that if he’d had to go any further than this hospital, he would have died en route.
“What exactly happened?”
The doctor shut the folder and met his eyes. “The bullet went straight through you, left to right. It sliced through part of your liver and nicked your hepatic artery before exiting, fracturing your lower floating rib. Dr. Benedict spent hours trying to fix you up, then a complication arose when a minuscule nick in one of your intestines ripped a little. No one had noticed it before. You’ll have to take things real easy for the next few months, on a special diet and no alcohol.”
