“Unless they can hold him on something more than beating up a gay kid, he’ll be out on bail in no time. With luck, he’ll get sent up as a three-time loser, but in the meantime he’ll be out, without a whole lot to lose. Which is why I want you to be extra careful, Dixie. Bull Banks wouldn’t be following you just because you’re a hot babe, somebody’s paying him.”
“You think I’m a hot babe?”
He gave me an exaggerated leer. “Hon, if I was straight, I’d jump your bones in a minute.”
“Do you think I should be scared?”
“You think I’m in danger of becoming straight?”
“No, I mean should I be scared of Bull Banks?”
“Damn right you should. Dixie, can you find someplace else to stay for a while? Until this whole thing is cleared up?”
I started to tell him about Marilee’s trust, then decided to wait and tell him and Michael at the same time.
“Paco, where is Michael?”
“In bed with a headache. Too much sun today. He’s sort of lobster-colored.”
“Tom Hale invited me to stay at his place for a while.”
“He’s the guy at the Sea Breeze? That’s a fairly secure place. Do it. I’m leaving in a little while and I don’t want you here alone. Especially with Michael out like a light.”
I got up and gathered our empty bottles. “I’ll get my things together.”
“Dixie? It’ll just be for a couple of days.”
I heard the concern in his voice and smiled back at him.
“I know. I’ll be fine.”
It took me less than fifteen minutes to throw some clothes in a duffel bag and copy Marilee’s Social Security number and birth date from her tax return. Then I drove straight to Marilee’s house. I used Marilee’s remote control to open the garage door, and pulled the Bronco inside. Funny how things have a way of working out the way you intended all along.
My heart was jumping like crazy against my ribs. If Guidry knew what I was doing, he would have my head on a platter. If Michael and Paco knew what I was doing, they would have my whole self on a platter. I intended to find Marilee’s new wall safe, and I intended to open it. Call it intuition, a hunch, or an informed guess, but I was convinced that whatever was in that safe was the reason Harrison Frazier and Marilee had been murdered.
A little voice sitting on my shoulder yelled that the killer had trashed Marilee’s bedroom, looking for whatever was in the safe, and might come back to try again. I could imagine newspaper headlines screaming “Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter!” But I had been cowering from danger too long, protecting myself from ugly reality like I was a delicate flower that would wither at a breath of hot air. If I went on like that, I might never get back my courage or my ability to live in the real world. Besides, I kept seeing the words Marilee had written to her daughter, and imagining how awful it must have been to miss seeing her daughter grow up. This was something between Marilee and me—mothers banded together against everything and everybody who would take our children away from us.
My bet was that the code to open the safe would be one of the numbers I had copied, and that the safe would be hidden somewhere in Marilee’s closet. Women always keep valuables in places that feel intimate and inviolate to them, places like their underwear drawer or under their mattress. The killer had looked in those obvious places, but he—or she—hadn’t known about the wall safe. I, on the other hand, not only knew about the safe but was a pro. If a safe had been hidden behind a baseboard or in the floor or in a wall, I would find it.
Two hours later, hot and sweaty from crawling around Marilee’s closet, I gave up. I hadn’t found a thing. So much for being a pro.
I showered in Marilee’s guest bath and crawled into bed in her guest room, first sliding my.38 under the pillow. My stomach was gnawing on itself, my knees hurt from thumping around on the Mexican tile, and my head ached from hunger and anxiety. It was after midnight when I finally fell into exhausted sleep. It didn’t seem that I’d been asleep five minutes when a scream rang out in the darkness, and it took me a full minute to realize I had made it. I lay with my heart pounding, trying to get oriented.
Okay, I was at Marilee’s house, in Marilee’s bed, and something—a sound of somebody breaking in the house or a nightmare I couldn’t remember—had caused me to scream. The red numbers on the bedside clock read 3:34. I got my gun from under the pillow and slid out of bed. Holding the gun in the stiff-armed position and hugging the wall as much as possible, I moved to the open bedroom door. If somebody had broken in, my scream had already clued him that I was on the alert. It had also told him exactly where I was located. Arms stiffly extended, I flattened myself against the wall beside the door, ready to take out anybody who entered.
For a terrible second, I remembered an exercise at the Police Academy that tested our physical and emotional reflexes—not to mention our gag reflexes—by having us handle the aftermath of a mock terrorist attack. We had to pick up body parts and lead hysterical survivors away from the severed heads of their loved ones. Even though we all knew the body parts were plastic covered in fake blood, they felt and looked real enough to make us feel horrified sympathy for the actors who played their roles so convincingly. I had nightmares about that exercise for months, which was the whole point of it. Life is precious, and the obscenity of willful destruction of human bodies is an affront to the soul. We should never forget that, no matter who we are. People in law enforcement, with the legal obligation to blow people away if they’re a threat, need to have it indelibly seared on their brains.
I wasn’t a deputy anymore, so I didn’t have the sworn duty to kill a person threatening me. I could legally clip them in the leg or arm just to stop them. But my police training told me that doing that would almost surely get me killed. Criminals have a way of shooting back even when they’re wounded. They have a way of playing dead and then turning their guns on you when your guard is down. So would I shoot to kill, or would I shoot to maim?
The truth was that I didn’t know.
Minutes passed without a sound, and then the alarm sounded and made me jump a foot in the air. I flipped on the light and padded down the hall, holding the gun ready but now acutely conscious that I was naked except for underpants. Turning on lights as I went, I checked the entire house, feeling more foolish with every closet door I opened. All the doors and windows were secure, and I didn’t find any evidence of a break-in. I probably had just scared myself with a bad dream.
I finally went to the bathroom and got ready for the day. Now I would be late getting started because I’d let fear get in the way. I drove the short distance across Midnight Pass Road to Tom Hale’s condo, where Billy Elliot was pacing behind the door, waiting for me. We ran for about fifteen minutes and I took him back upstairs. He wanted more, but I didn’t have the stamina. All the cats on my schedule got the same short shrift. I was too wasted to give them what they deserved. I promised I would make it up to them in the afternoon, and as soon as time came for the diner to open, I sped there like a winter bird to a feeder.
The diner was moist with biscuit heat and coffee steam. I waved to Tanisha behind the cook’s window and took a stool at the bar. Judy raised her eyebrows at me from across the room and I nodded. She stopped at the cook’s window and put my order in before she came with a mug and the coffeepot.
She said, “Everything okay?”
I said it was, because that wasn’t the time or place to tell her everything that had happened since we last talked. Besides, if I told her about Phillip, I would probably break down and blubber all over the counter.
“The regular?”
“With two biscuits. And bacon.”
She said, “Baaay-connn,” as if I’d had some kind of epiphany, and went off to turn the order in.