“The cops are no more expensive than the fines,” Ruby replied, staring straight ahead. “In fact, those two smoking over there are both detectives. Who are you by the way?
Zacharius introduced himself.
“Yeah. I’ve heard of you.”
Zacharius rubbed at the stinging in his eyes. He had stopped smoking eighteen years ago and now was like a human bloodhound when it came to cigarettes, able to tell someone was a smoker ten feet away. Ruby had yet to make direct eye contact with him, but even at this angle, something about him was pathetic. Small. That was the word that popped into Zacharius’s head. This was a small, limited man.
“I have three twenties in my pocket,” Zacharius said. “They’re yours if you’ll come someplace away from this smoke and talk to me for a minute.”
Zacharius wondered if he should have offered more, but something about Ruby said Zacharius could dole out what remained of his hundred and a half a bit at a time.
“You got any more than that?” the oddly pathetic man asked.
“If I like what you have to say, I do.”
“Call me Artie,” he said, pushing himself up abruptly and leading the way back down the hall.
They moved through the crowded nightclub to a small table in a black-lit corner that seemed to have been forgotten.
It was hard to believe that this twitchy, sad-eyed sack of a man was once a cop.
“You once worked in security at the McFall museum.” Zacharius said. “You must have known the place pretty well, known Rosemary and Chris Thomas.”
Artie continued staring off into the crowd. “You know, I never stole that cocaine from the evidence room. I was an honest cop. Oh, I cut a corner here and there, and maybe made a deal with a small-time crook to get at a bigger one. But I never deserved what came down on me.”
“Who hired you to work at the museum?” Zacharius asked, trying to keep the conversation on topic.
“I ended up becoming a fucking pariah.” The sadness in Artie’s eyes had intensified, and for a moment Zacharius thought Artie was actually going to cry. Instead, he got Zacharius’s assurance to cover his tab and ordered a boilermaker with Wild Turkey and a Heineken.
“Artie, tell me about Chris Thomas.”
“I don’t know anything. Thomas was a curator; I was a security guard-the two don’t mix. I said good-night to him when he’d leave for the night. That’s all.”
The boilermaker arrived and the shot of Wild Turkey was gone before the waitress had turned away. Zacharius now sensed that Artie had been drinking before he arrived.
“You’ve heard the rumors about Thomas…”
“Yeah, so what, he used to screw around on his wife, lots of guys do that.” Artie still wouldn’t look Zacharius in the eye.
“No, I don’t mean that. There was talk about drugs, forgery, theft…”
“I can’t tell you anything about that. Like I said, I used to do my job and go home.”
Zacharius knew that the window for getting any useful information was rapidly closing. The Heineken was gone and Artie’s words were beginning to slur. Hesitatingly, Zacharius slipped all of his wad but a twenty under the table and stood to go.
“Pay for your drinks out of that,” he said.
Zacharius had taken just a step when Artie Ruby cleared his throat, looked up at him, and spoke in a coarse whisper. “You should let sleeping dogs lie, Zacharius. You’re messing around in a cesspool, and the whole mess is going to blow up in your face. Now, how’s that for a fucking image?”
Diary of Jon Nunn J.A. Jance
After Chinatown, I went to a meeting, and when one didn’t work, I went to a second one. The idea of seeing Sarah at the memorial, now that it was drawing closer, made my guts roil. I wanted to see her. I didn’t want to see her. I wanted to smack Stan Ballard in the face. No, that’s not true. I wanted to put a bullet through his heart. That way we’d match. We’d both have holes there.
I knew those scumbags would all come out to mark the occasion. They’d have to. Snakes can’t hide under rocks all their lives. To give the appearance of having nothing to hide, they’d all be there; that’s what I was counting on. Rosemary’s good-for-nothing brother would come for sure. How could he stay away? He was in the witness room that night, and I noticed one thing about him that no one else seemed to catch. The other people there had the good grace to shed a tear or two, or at least they pretended to look sad. Not Peter Heusen. He had watched, grim faced and dry eyed, as they put the needle into his sister’s arm. Maybe it was the drink. I don’t know. He followed me out to the parking lot that warm, dark night. We had a few words. Rather, he did. Then I watched him drive away from his sister’s execution in an older-model Lincoln. And after he left, I drove away too, fully intending to get drunk. Evidently I did that in spades. By the time I finally sobered up, well, Sarah was gone for good and my job was history. And Peter Heusen? As the legal guardian for both his niece and nephew and as the conservator of the Thomas estate, he had come up in the world. Way up. As far as Sarah and her new husband, Stan, were concerned, they seemed to be living in much improved circumstances as well. They had all moved on in Rosemary’s unlamented absence, and as far as I could see, they had all prospered.
When the second AA meeting was over, I went to a third. It wasn’t all about drinking either. I had managed to keep my craving for liquor in check. Nowadays my drug of choice was guilt-the hard stuff, pure and unadulterated. To quit that addiction, I’d need far more than ninety meetings in ninety days. There was only one cure and it hadn’t changed: I needed to find the person who was really responsible for Rosemary’s death. To do that, I had to find Christopher’s killer, his real killer. And that’s what I was doing. The ball had started rolling and there was no way to stop it now.
I thought about Rosemary and Christopher Thomas. How they had lived and died in a marriage of convenience. That was their hell, at least Rosemary’s hell. But somehow I’d gotten sucked into it, had inadvertently become another one of Christopher Thomas’s victims, right along with so many others.
13 Gayle Lynds
Haile Patchett didn’t want to get caught by the police. She’d do whatever she could to avoid being locked up. But crime was in her blood. The danger, the fear, the cash-it always brought her a rush.
She put a smile on her face and kept her footsteps light as she walked toward the Ritz-Carlton, a sprawling, shingle-style resort commanding a bluff above the Pacific. The hotel was surrounded by emerald fairways, tidily winding cart paths, scattered cypress trees, and the endless sea.
When she stepped inside, she looked all around, nodding casually at the valets as if she belonged there. In her Vera Wang high-heel sandals and her Charles Chang-Lima sundress-short and sexy, just above the knees, to show her long, tanned legs-she could belong there. Should, even. But that was an old story.
Taking off her sunglasses, she entered the lobby, her shoulder bag clasped to her side. The men watched her, the clerks behind the registration desk and the aging husbands with glittering, hopeful eyes standing in line with their credit cards and forgotten wives. She was not truly beautiful, but she had something, something inside her that was like fire.
She passed hotel guests, lounging in padded wicker chairs before the sweeping views of bluff and bay, and stepped into the dark, wood-paneled bar. A slender woman of thirty-eight, with green eyes, red hair that flowed to her shoulders, and a nose so straight and true it could make Angelina Jolie jealous. Today was her birthday, but the only card in the mail this morning had been an invitation from Tony Olsen to celebrate Rosemary Thomas in a memorial service. Jesus Christ. Why was he honoring Rosemary’s execution-not her birth? It seemed twisted, and the whole thing worried her.