The sky was baleful red, the last light of day. As Jolie drove in from the right side of the parking lot, a wind blew in all the way from the Gulf, hot and pregnant with rain and dust, foul-smelling from the paper mill. An ill wind, rattling the tall palms out front like sabers. It buffeted the car as she slowed. The door to the office was wide open, and the wind caught angry voices and kited them into the ether.
A dark shape materialized in the doorway. As Jolie watched, it bent into a lurching run toward the U-Haul—a tall man, awkward running style, one arm folded across the other.
Hurt.
Young.
He could have been hit, knifed, or shot. She would assume whoever was inside had a gun, or a knife, or both.
Jolie stopped the car on a diagonal partway between the office and the U-Haul. Got out, crab-walked her way around the open door, and crouched behind the engine block. From there she could see both the office doorway and the U-Haul.
Glad she’d thought to wear her vest.
Another gust of wind and the office door blew shut. The angry diatribe continued.
She concentrated on the wounded man, now hunkered down by the front right tire of the box truck.
She identified herself and shouted, “You by the U-Haul truck. Sit down. Sit down now.”
The man complied, trying to keep his hands out toward Jolie despite the injured arm.
“Cross your legs. Do it now.”
He did.
“Put your good hand on top of your head. Do it now.”
He did it—painfully.
“Do not move.” She keyed the mic and got the Palm County dispatcher—Lonnie—and blurted out the code for officer needing assistance. She told Lonnie the subject inside had a weapon and asked for paramedics. Keeping her SIG trained on the man sitting by the U-Haul, Jolie also kept an eye on the office door. On the radio she heard distant chattering sounds—Palm County on another frequency. Another voice, another code. That would be the Gardenia PD. They’d be closer, even though technically it was not their jurisdiction. On her drive over, Jolie had checked to see if the Royal Court Apartments was inside or outside the Gardenia city limits. They were outside.
Which made this hers.
Lonnie said, “Palm County and Gardenia PD are on their way. What are you wearing?”
Lonnie was asking so they wouldn’t mistake Jolie for the bad guy. “Jeans, a white tee, navy windbreaker.”
“All units are responding.”
The guy sat on the asphalt Indian-style as Jolie had instructed him. In the sodium arc lights she could see his dark blood, slick and shiny, where his shoulder met his forearm. She worried he would bleed out. She wanted to instruct him to take his hand off his head and stanch the wound as hard as he could with the palm of his hand, but she couldn’t do that. The units would be here in minutes, but Jolie found herself counting down the seconds. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.
Time stretched. Adrenaline, at first quicksilver running to her extremities, started to recede. She had to be sure her strength and resolve wouldn’t go along with it. Hoped she wouldn’t be here alone long enough for her body to let down completely and start shaking.
But her bigger problem was the guy on the ground. Jolie didn’t want him dying on her watch.
Inside the office, the shouting continued, riddled with expletives. Jolie worried that whoever had the gun might shoot someone else. But there was nothing she could do about that. All she could do was maintain the status quo.
Ten-one-thousand, eleven-one-thousand.
Jolie kept her eyes on the man by the U-Haul. It was as if he’d been preserved in amber. His hand remained on top of his head, and Jolie saw no weakness there. He’d probably be all right. He wore cargo shorts, a surfer’s shirt, and boat shoes. In the yellow light, his face was stamped with his heritage along with his pain. Pakistani or Indian. Even sitting down he was amazingly tall. A beanpole.
The yelling turned up a notch. “I can’t believe this. You sneak off with your boyfriend, and I get left behind to deal with the cops?”
The yelling man must have moved closer to the window, because now she heard whole sentences. The voice was familiar.
She heard a woman’s voice but couldn’t make out the words.
“How do you know?” the man demanded.
The female mumbled something unintelligible.
“How do you know? They aren’t dumb. One thing’s for sure—I’m not going down for this. I didn’t do anything!”
The woman spoke, her voice barely there. If cringing was a tone of voice, this was it. “…be all right. You just… ”
“So what happened? The three of you got together and said, ‘Let’s get Royce in on this, string him along, and let him take the fall’?”
Royce Brady. The owner of the Starliner Motel.
“…wasn’t like…”
“Screw the old guy, huh? Like you really had the hots for me. How could I be so stupid? You guys having a threesome? Is that it? Are you and your boyfriend meeting that lying bitch somewhere while I sit here waiting for a knock on the door?”
“You shot Niraj. He’ll go to the cops—”
“I don’t give a shit. The way I feel right now, I might just call them myself. All I did was look the other way. That’s all I did, but you…you. You set the poor fucker up!”
What Jolie was hearing was an impromptu confession. She saw it as a gift.
“Poor bastard…poor fucking fool didn’t know he was sleeping with a goddamn viper!”
The woman said something else Jolie couldn’t catch.
The man again: “I come here, thinking you and I had a thing, and there’s this fucking camel jockey—” A pause. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it? He didn’t beat his wife.”
The girl, whimpering now. “Please…”
He mimicked a female voice. “Oh, Royce, she’s scared to death he’s going to kill her! That was bullshit, wasn’t it, Amy? Like everything else—just something you two girls cooked up to get me on your side.”
Amy and Maddy.
Jolie realized that something had been bothering her all along, but she’d ignored it. Now, though, it all became clear. She recalled the sequence of events—Amy Perdue driving up Chief Akers’s street this morning. An hour later, Maddy Akers drove into Bizzy’s parking lot, just as Jolie caught up with Amy.
Just happened to show up.
Jolie flashed on the interrogation. The way Maddy gave it up so quickly. Jolie had thought at the time how it was like pushing over a domino.
We suicide widows have to stick together.
Maddy Akers had played her.
15
Before going in to interrogate Amy Perdue, Jolie found a quiet spot and tried to put herself in Amy’s place. On a notepad, she wrote four reasons why Amy might have helped Maddy Akers set up Chief Akers’s murder. Jolie would try one rationale after another, until one of them worked.
All you did was arrange to meet Chief Akers at the motel?
Did you think you’d lose your job if you didn’t help your boss?
Was Maddy afraid of Chief Akers?
Did Chief Akers threaten to kill Maddy?
Amy wasn’t the prime target here. Maddy was. Jolie wanted to make it easy for Amy to give up Maddy Akers. Her job was to find the right lever to pull.
To keep Amy around, Jolie was holding her on a domestic violence charge—Royce Brady claimed she’d hit him—but in a few minutes, she would tell Amy she was no longer under arrest. She would tell Amy that her only goal was to take Amy’s statement and get her side of the story.