Exposed fury, p.7
Exposed Fury, page 7
“You’re in my way,” Annie said, trying to remain calm, not raising her voice.
“You two used to be partners, right?”
Annie decided to try to defuse the situation with honesty because that was less likely to get her arrested than what she really wanted to do. “We worked together for several years. Sometimes we still hang out.”
Sullivan arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Twice in one day? When he’s on a major case?”
“What? Don’t any of your coworkers like you enough to hang out?” Annie asked.
“Cute,” Sullivan replied, but she remained undeterred. “Is it true Laura Carlton hired you to follow her husband?”
Annie kept her expression neutral and said nothing.
Sullivan sighed. “The police haven’t been very forthcoming with details about this case.”
“Weird,” Annie said. “It’s like they don’t discuss active investigations.”
Sullivan ignored the sarcasm and continued. “You and Detective Jansson had a very high close rate. It would make sense if he was consulting with you on a difficult case.” She paused, waiting for Annie to reply. “Of course, it would also make sense that you’re a suspect if you were following the victim.”
Annie felt her jaw clench. She pressed her lips together to keep from telling Sullivan to fuck off.
“Is that it?” Sullivan asked, a twinkle in her eye. “Was he interviewing you?”
Annie glared at her as she pressed the button on the key fob that unlocked the driver’s side door. She stepped around Sullivan and got in the car.
“Detective,” Sullivan said.
Annie ignored her and put the car in reverse. The backup warning beep seemed to indicate to Sullivan that the interview was over, and she wisely stepped out of the way.
AFTER STOPS AT THE pet store and the post office, Annie walked into the Loudoun Rehab Center for her afternoon appointment.
“Annie!” Kesha said with a big smile.
“Hi, Kesha. How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. You can go on back. He’s ready for you,” she said from behind the reception desk.
Annie stepped through the door at the back of the waiting area to the large room of equipment that looked like a strange gym with massage tables.
Tim Robbins, her physical therapist, approached with a smile. “Hey, you’re moving around pretty well today. How are you feeling?”
“Good,” Annie said.
“Excellent,” Tim said. “How’s the leg?” He looked down at his notes on the tablet he was holding.
“It still gets stiff occasionally but better in general.”
“Are you doing your exercises and the stretching?”
Annie gave him a half-hearted smile. “Yes on the exercises, not as much on the stretching. I know I should. It just slips my mind.”
He affectionately wagged a finger at her. “You’ve got to stay on top of that.”
“I know.”
“Okay, well, why don’t we stretch you out some first, and then you can go through your exercises. What time are you seeing Carol?”
Carol was the occupational therapist that Annie saw specifically for her hand. She worked at the other end of the room but scheduled her own patients since she worked at two locations.
“I’m not today,” Annie replied. “There’s something going on at her kid’s school, so I won’t see her until next week.”
“Okay,” Tim said with a smile. “So you’re all mine.” He was perpetually cheerful and positive. Tim had to be in his thirties, but he maintained his straight blond hair in a little boy’s cut with bangs spilling over his forehead and a persistent cowlick that wanted to stand up at the crown of his head, so he looked much younger.
“Okay,” he said, “up you go.”
Tim patted the massage table, and Annie dutifully lay down on her back. He picked up her right leg, and they went through a series of stretches they’d done dozens of times before. Tim made small talk as he stretched her leg. They both loved video games, so that was the topic they explored most often. Physical therapy was strangely intimate compared to other medical interactions, which were often brief and formal. She was always there for at least an hour, often longer, and someone she didn’t really know touched her, leaned over her, and even hurt her. The experience was weird, but it was working, which was all that mattered.
When she’d first started therapy, she couldn’t put weight on her injured right leg. Now on good days, she barely had a limp.
“You know,” Tim said, “I’m going to have to graduate you here pretty soon. I think a couple more weeks, and you might be done with me.”
Annie looked up at him. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“Wow,” Annie said. The journey to this point had been a long one. “That would be great.”
“Now, I don’t speak for Carol,” Tim cautioned, “so don’t get too excited. She might not be done with you anytime soon.”
“Right,” Annie said, flexing her right hand. “But still, shaving an hour off my appointment every week will be great.”
“What will you do with all that free time?” Tim asked, bringing her leg back down to the table.
“I don’t know. The possibilities are endless,” Annie said, smiling.
Tim laughed. “Okay, you’re done here. Go do your exercises, and I’ll massage that leg when you’re done.”
The next half hour was a series of exercises on various machines around the room. No one had to walk her through the process anymore, so she moved along at her own pace. As she lifted weights, she tried to watch CBSN because it ran on several screens mounted on the walls around the room. The difficulty with doing the exercises on her own without a therapist there to chat with was that her mind wanted to wander back to the shooting that had landed her in this place. Pushing those thoughts away was easier with another person to grab her attention. It was more difficult with only a television to focus on.
To make things worse, the news was lame. Some celebrity she’d never heard of had been arrested in LA for driving drunk, and all the talking heads were speculating on how that would affect his career. Annie couldn’t care less, and despite her best efforts to resist it, her thoughts strayed back to the events of the shooting.
She was still unable to get past her arrival at the scene. Gunnar had had a joint-task-force meeting that day in Fairfax, so she and Sam Davis had gone out to interview the mother of Eli Ribber, a suspected meth dealer who was linked to a stabbing in the western end of the county. Annie and Gunnar had been working the case with the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department because the meth was being distributed in Leesburg, but the stabbing had happened in Lucketts. The meth dealer was awaiting arraignment in county lockup. He was one of five children and not one of his mother’s favorites.
The last thing Annie remembered was walking up to the front door. She knew what happened next because she’d been told and had read the report, but in her mind, she just walked up to that little white house with the peeling paint and crooked screen door over and over and over again. She couldn’t help wondering if she’d missed something, some indicator that the front door would be opened by a crazed meth head with guns blazing. The meth head was Theodore Price, aka Tiny, which was a joke. Tiny was six-four and three hundred pounds. He actually told the officers who eventually arrested him that he was only taking meth to lose weight.
Ah yes, Annie had thought, meth will help you lose weight and your teeth and your mind. What a great idea. Tiny had come to his dealer’s mother’s house looking for a fix. Of course, she didn’t have anything for him, so he was slapping her around when Annie knocked on the front door.
She sighed and couldn’t help cataloging the resulting injuries.
The first bullet had gone through her right hand and into her right thigh but thankfully hadn’t hit the femoral artery. Otherwise, she would probably have died. The second bullet had left a deep groove in the right side of her skull and sent shock waves through her brain, causing bruising, bleeding, and swelling. The latter was the real problem because swelling tissue has nowhere to expand inside the skull.
She woke up with remarkably few deficits, considering. She felt as if a brick was jammed in the right side of her head, and the left side felt empty. Her speech was thick and slow, but she could speak, which was something of a miracle. For months, everything had moved in slow motion around her. She could remember how to read but couldn’t concentrate enough to do it for very long. Playing video games made her nauseated, and even watching television was challenging because following a story was impossible. She watched a lot of home-improvement shows and other programs that didn’t have a plot. Eventually, life returned to normal speed.
“So, what do you think about the Far Cry games?” Tim was asking as he walked over to where she was finishing with the weights.
Annie snapped back to the present. “I like them, but I wish they had more options for character development.”
“Yeah,” Tim agreed. “You kind of get what they give you on that. Let’s massage that leg so we can get you out of here.”
Annie smiled. “Sounds good.”
CHAPTER NINE
Monday Evening
When Annie arrived home from rehab, the light on her answering machine was blinking. She decided to shower and change before she listened to the messages.
Refreshed, she hit the play button.
“You have ten new messages,” the answering machine informed her.
Nine of them were from reporters. She erased those.
The last message was from Ford. “Hey babe, I’m being held at work. I’ll call your cell later when I can talk.” She was irritated that he would leave a message on her home phone instead of calling her cell or sending her a text. She would have gotten rid of her landline a long time ago except Joey knew that number and couldn’t seem to memorize her cell number. She was afraid to drop it in case he needed her in an emergency. Ford seemed to use the landline as a convenient way to get credit for calling without actually calling. Frustrated, she erased his message, too, and headed to Celia’s place. Sullivan was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen.
Annie parked behind Celia’s ancient Land Cruiser and let Chester out of his crate. She’d barely opened the car door when he bolted to join the dobermans, who were running toward the car. The dogs slipped under the fence and ran to the barn. Annie followed them through the horse gate, careful to latch it behind her, and found Celia sitting on the sofa in the tack room with her laptop open and a pile of receipts next to her.
“Hey, girl,” Annie said.
“Oh, hi. I thought that might be you. I heard the dogs bark.”
“What’re you up to?” Annie asked.
“Just putting receipts in the spreadsheet.”
Annie smiled sympathetically and flopped down on the other end of the sofa. “Fun.”
“Oh, yes, it’s loads of fun. There’s nothing like watching every dime to make for a good time.” She stuck out her tongue in disgust. “The house needs a new roof.”
“That sucks.” Annie was thankful that her grandparents’ house shouldn’t need a new roof for several years. Like Annie, Celia had inherited her house from her grandparents. While Annie rented out her grandparents’ home for the income, Celia chose to live in hers, so while she didn’t have a mortgage, something always seemed to need repairing, between the house and barn. Annie kept an account with a percentage of the rent money to handle repairs, but she rented the house through a broker who managed all that for her. Doing that was a lot easier than what Celia had to deal with.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had it repaired twice,” Celia was saying. “It’s just reached the end of its lifespan. I can’t put it off much longer. I should have done it earlier in the fall, but I didn’t have the money. Now, it can’t wait.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Me too.” Celia looked up from the laptop. “So what’s up with you?”
Annie sighed. “Nothing, really. I’ve got this stupid reporter stalking me. Ford’s acting weird. I don’t know.”
Celia closed her laptop. “That sounds like kind of a lot.”
A basket of clean towels for the horses was sitting on top of the dryer. Unable to sit still, Annie got up and grabbed a towel and started folding it.
“So what’s the deal with the reporter?” Celia asked.
“She’s looking for info on Nick Carlton’s murder.”
“Shouldn’t she be asking the police about that?”
Annie put the towel on the stack with the others. “Yes, but she knows that I found the body and that I used to be a cop and that I was working for Laura Carlton at the time of his death.”
Celia let out a low whistle. “Awkward.”
“Very,” Annie said, picking up another towel. “But I’m handling it. Eventually, she’ll go away.”
Celia leaned back against the sofa. “Okay, so what’s the deal with Ford?”
Annie stopped folding and just looked at the towel in her hands, an old beach towel with little faded blue boats all over it. She remembered it as one Celia had used on a spring-break trip they’d taken to Myrtle Beach in college. “I think he might be going back overseas.”
“Oh.” Celia pursed her lips in an expression Annie knew meant she didn’t want to comment.
Annie frowned at her. “Try not to be too upset about it.”
Celia’s eyes slid away from her gaze. “You want some dinner?”
Annie sighed. “Yes.” She knew Ford was not Celia’s favorite person even though Celia had never said as much. Her friend could speak volumes without saying anything.
They walked back to the house, the dogs trailing behind them. The house was a small white 1930s bungalow that was far more modest than the barn, which had been refurbished and expanded several times. With the exception of paint colors, the house remained essentially as it had been when she inherited it. Clearly, most of Celia’s interest lay in the horses.
They left their shoes on the porch and walked into the kitchen. Annie loved Celia’s house. It was so perfectly Celia. The tiny kitchen was painted sunshine yellow. Strings of garlic and dried herbs hung from the cabinets, which had glass panes in the doors to show off Celia’s handmade pottery.
Celia opened the slow cooker, and the delicious aroma of cooked beef filled the room. Annie set the table while Celia took the pot roast, potatoes, and carrots and arranged them on a platter.
“I’m going to make a quick gravy,” Celia said, “while the meat rests.”
Annie couldn’t help smiling. She never made gravy, and meat never got to “rest” at her house. She wasn’t even sure what that was supposed to accomplish. Celia, though, always took time with food even if just the two of them were eating. Annie would have taken the Crock-Pot, set it in the middle of the table, and skipped the gravy. She was pretty sure Celia never stood over the stove eating Kraft macaroni and cheese out of a saucepan either.
Annie took a seat at the kitchen table. She smiled to see the electric candles in the windows for Christmas. On the barn doors, she’d seen pine-bough wreaths that were clearly handmade. A Christmas tree stood in the corner of the living room, which was decorated mostly with ornaments Celia had also made. None of the crafts were Pinterest fails. All of them looked as though they belonged at a high-end craft boutique. Annie wished she were in the mood for Christmas. She hadn’t even bothered with a tree this year, and she really needed to do her shopping.
The newspaper was on the table, so Annie browsed it while she waited for Celia to finish the gravy. The paper was already starting in on the police department for not solving Nick Carlton’s murder, even though only a few days had passed. A murder in Leesburg was big news. Despite the recent surge in population, it was still a relatively sleepy town, and the local papers were wringing every drop out of the story. They mentioned Gunnar and implied that, as the head of the investigation, he should be doing more. Annie felt terrible for him. She knew he was doing everything he could, but the paper made it seem as though he was sitting around eating doughnuts and scratching his head.
Unfortunately, a second article by Dawn Sullivan mentioned that Annie was connected to the case. The article didn’t say a lot, but it implied a great deal. Annie had to give Sullivan credit: she knew just how to word things so that, depending on the frame of mind of the person reading the article, they would come away from it thinking either that Annie and Gunnar were having an affair, that he was collaborating with her on the case, or both. Worse yet, the article featured a picture from when she was still on the force.
“Great,” Annie said, as she refolded the newspaper.
“Anything good in the paper?” Celia asked as she brought the gravy boat to the table.
“Is there ever?”
Celia shook her head. “Wine?” she asked.
Annie nodded, and Celia poured them each a glass of pinot noir. Annie told her about the articles, including what was implied in the one about her.
Celia frowned and started putting the food on the table. “Well, that’s just reprehensible. I’m sure no one will be fooled by that. Everyone knows how the press loves to sensationalize and create scandal where there isn’t one.”
Annie couldn’t help smiling. “I think you’re very optimistic about the way other people look at the world. Not everyone is as reasonable as you are.”
Celia sighed and sat down. “You might be right. Did I tell you Alan Parker called me?”
Annie knew Alan from when she had been on the police force. He was the head of the Loudoun County Animal Shelter.
“No. What did he want?”
“Someone left two alpacas tied to the fence by the animal shelter.”
“What a crappy thing to do.”
Celia waved a hand in disgust. “Some people are assholes. Anyway, he says they’re in fairly good shape, a little thin maybe. He asked if I wanted them.”
“What did you tell him?” Annie asked, although based on the excited expression on Celia’s face, she already knew the answer.
