Doggone Page 3

  ‘‘It’s okay, girl.’’ She sang another couple of chords. Stopped. Stared. Barked. Maybe she thought she was a whale. It was more like that than a dog. She growled. Usually dogs liked me. Two homeless guys abandoned a doorway, moving fast. The dog started vocalizing frantically, running up and down the scales.

  ‘‘Gun,’’ Connor yelled.

  I turned and stared. Sun glinted off metal in the open car window. The shots were loud. No one ever tells you that. Really loud and distant at the same time. Glass shattered behind the building’s metal grate. I couldn’t move. Connor hit me with a flying tackle. We hit the ground rolling. My breath came out in a whoosh. He log-rolled us into the alley and behind the garbage bin. My ears were ringing and the world had gotten very fuzzy. Air. I needed air. Breathe. In. Out. Breathe. Shots pinged off the metal. An engine revved and tires squealed. Then silence.

  I remained still. Frozen. Waiting. A minute passed, then another. I started to feel Connor’s weight on me, squeezing my lungs. He was sweating, his body damp— or maybe that was me. I couldn’t tell where he stopped and I started. His heart beat so hard, so loud I could feel it in my body. He rose on hands and feet, lifting his weight off me. I clung to him, then let go. I could feel the ground now. Hard. There was a rock digging into my back. My cheek stung. I checked my arms and legs. Moved my fingers and toes. There wasn’t any pain. No blood that I could see. I was alive. He was alive. Amazing.

  Connor ran his hands over me. For the first time since I’d known him, his touch wasn’t sexual. I winced when he reached the lump on the back of my head, but otherwise his check hadn’t elicited any additional pain. Alive. We were alive. Fine. Cold. I was cold. He rubbed my hands but I could barely feel it. It was like I was watching us from a distance. He swam in and out of my vision.

  ‘‘It’s okay, babe. It’s over.’’ He glanced over his shoulder, shifting his weight and peering around the garbage bin. ‘‘They’re gone.’’

  ‘‘People were shooting at us, Connor.’’ Was that my voice? I sounded calm. Really calm. As if getting shot at were normal. Was it normal? It was starting to seem normal. That couldn’t be good.

  ‘‘Yeah, but they’re not anymore.’’ He brushed my hair away from my face. ‘‘You hurt anywhere? Your neck? Your back?’’

  My head pounded. I started to sit up. He pulled me into his arms, wrapping himself around me. He was so warm. I squeezed closer. I was cold. He was warm. I wanted to crawl inside him and stay there.

  ‘‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’’ he soothed. His voice was so gentle even while his heart pounded. That was strange. My heart rate had slowed and his still pounded. He shuddered against me, then pulled away.

  ‘‘Do you think somebody called the police?’’ I asked. ‘‘Oh, my God. The dog. Do you see the dog? Is she hurt?’’

  ‘‘She’s fine. Got away clean.’’ He kissed my hair. ‘‘I’m going to check the street. Stay here.’’ He turned and crouched next to the garbage can.

  I panicked.

  ‘‘Connor.’’ I grabbed at his arm.

  ‘‘It’s okay, babe.’’

  It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t nearly okay.

  ‘‘No.’’

  He brushed my hair, stroking my arm.

  ‘‘My job now,’’ he said.

  His face showed nothing. He was calm. He was back in control. This was his realm. His zone. It might be my case, and there might be bad guys with guns, but he had me covered. I knew he could get hurt. I knew he could. But it didn’t feel real. At that moment he was a superhero. My superhero. Invincible.

  ‘‘Be careful,’’ I whispered before kissing his cheek.

  ‘‘I’ll be right back.’’ He kissed me hard and moved from the bin to the building, flattening himself against the brick. I got onto my knees and crawled to the edge of the garbage can. I didn’t have a good view of him, so I moved around the can to keep him in sight.

  He checked the street first. I turned my head to do the same. No movement, no lights, no curious neighbors with sawed-off shotguns. Nothing. I turned back to him. He moved. He was fluid, graceful. Review the scene. Move with purpose. Regroup. Repeat. Building to abandoned car. Car to light post. Light post to doorway. Doorway to body.

  Oh, my God. Body. I hadn’t seen him before. A T-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and battered tennis shoes. Untied laces. Pool of red seeping along the concrete. Connor knelt and reached for the man’s wrist. He didn’t react.

  ‘‘Connor?’’ I called to him.

  He stepped into the street, staying low as he moved toward me. Gripping the edge of the garbage can, I put all my energy into wishing him back to me. When he was within reach I lunged, wrapping my arms around him and holding on as tightly as I could. I needed to touch him. He was back. We were together. A man was dead but we were okay. He rubbed my arms.

  ‘‘Are we waiting for the police?’’ I asked, staring into his eyes. Grass green. No sign of stress. Or fear or panic. His calm slid into me like honey.

  ‘‘I doubt anybody called them.’’

  ‘‘You’re kidding. No, of course you’re not. You already told me no one would call the cops, didn’t you? Sorry. What are we going to do? We could call them from the car.’’

  ‘‘Honey, we’re going to call the cops. But not from here. From someplace safer.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, okay.’’

  ‘‘I want you to stay behind me. Behind but close. Really close.’’

  I nodded, chewing my lower lip. I was going to be so close we could pass for Siamese twins.

  ‘‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’’

  Connor nodded.

  ‘‘We’re going to the car. When we get there, you’re going in first on the driver’s side. Get across and down as fast as you can. Got it?’’ I nodded.

  I wondered if he felt it. The man. Did he know he was dying? Was it quick? Of course it was. How long had we been in the alley, a minute? Five minutes? The man hadn’t been on the street when I’d walked by the first time. He’d been alive. Now he was dead. I clung to Connor.

  ‘‘We’re going to move fast, stay low. Ready?’’

  I clutched at his waist. ‘‘Ready,’’ I whispered.

  We ran.

  Connor made a deal with the dispatcher to send a detective to us instead of making us go back to the scene or to the police station. Being charming paid dividends. The cop who met us at the coffee shop an hour later was in his early thirties, Hispanic, with broad features and the paunch of an ex-high school football player gone to seed. He slid into the booth across from us. After meeting Connor’s eyes for a brief moment, he turned all his attention to me. Connor bristled beside me. I almost laughed. It wasn’t really funny. The cop wasn’t really flirting, but Connor was jealous. It was just so normal. So everyday.

  Connor slid an arm along the back of the booth, playing with my hair. The cop seemed amused when Connor introduced me as his wife. The cop shook my hand, lingering over the gesture. I let him.

  ‘‘Why were you in that neighborhood, Mrs. McNamara? ’’ Officer Hector Montoya asked.

  ‘‘I use my own name, Officer. It’s Townley, but you can call me Sara.’’

  He preened under my smile. Maybe it was relief, but I felt a little light-headed with the emotional swings of the day. Montoya was attractive. He was flirting, and I flirted back as if I hadn’t just seen a guy gunned down in the street. I sipped at the lemonade. Tart and sweet. Adrenaline and relief. Flip sides of the same coin. Second wind, maybe, but I was feeling better. More in control.

  ‘‘Sara.’’ He smiled back.

  Connor stiffened fractionally. I slid closer to him. He wrapped one of my curls around his finger and tugged. I glanced at him and rolled my eyes before turning back to the cop.

  ‘‘I was meeting Henry DeVries. The radio guy?’’ I made it a question.

  ‘‘Ah.’’ The cop wrote in the notebook he’d laid on the table.

  ‘‘You ever listen to him?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘C
an’t say I do.’’

  ‘‘But you do know who he is?’’

  ‘‘Yes, ma’am. I mean Sara.’’ He sent another grin my way. He was laid-back, not pressing. Probably updated at the scene first. He wasn’t rushing.

  Connor tightened his grip on my hair just enough for me to feel it. Without looking, I reached up and unwrapped his fingers, taking his arm from around me and placing his hand next to his orange juice. A mouse swatting at a lion’s paw.

  ‘‘I was supposed to meet him at nine,’’ I continued.

  ‘‘He set the time?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘He set the place?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Not exactly Beverly Hills,’’ Montoya remarked. ‘‘Why would he want to meet you there?’’

  ‘‘I got the message secondhand. It came through my office. Apparently Henry DeVries was insistent. He didn’t say why.’’

  ‘‘You knew how dangerous the street was before you went?’’

  I glanced at Connor. If I hadn’t, Connor had filled me in pretty thoroughly before we’d headed out. ‘‘I needed to talk to him.’’

  The cop looked at Connor. ‘‘You have anything to say about that?’’

  ‘‘It’s her show.’’

  That was a new one. What was he up to? Montoya looked at him with something like pity. Violation of the guy guide: Never let the little woman run the show. If only Montoya knew . . .

  ‘‘Why were you meeting him?’’ The cop directed the question to me.

  ‘‘He interviewed someone I wanted to get in touch with.’’

  ‘‘Who?’’

  ‘‘Charles Smiths.’’

  Montoya looked surprised. He sipped his coffee. ‘‘The philanthropist?’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ I confirmed. I looked directly at Montoya. Smiled. Still. I wasn’t lying but I wasn’t sharing either. I knew I wasn’t much of a poker player. Connor could always read whatever I was thinking on my face, even if he ignored it on occasion. I didn’t look away. Maintaining eye contact was the key to not looking shifty. The cop didn’t even blink. If he was reading me, I couldn’t tell. He could draw to an inside straight.

  ‘‘There must be easier ways,’’ Montoya suggested. ‘‘Smiths is famous. San Diego’s mental health facility was built by him. Or by his money, anyway. Not just that, either. There are scholarships. Even one for the kids of local cops. If you wanted to meet him, why go through DeVries?’’

  ‘‘I was looking for Charles Smiths, and he’d recently done a radio interview here in San Diego. I contacted the station to see if they had a phone number for him, and Henry DeVries called back.’’

  ‘‘And DeVries set the time and place?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘If Sara never talked to DeVries directly, I guess he wouldn’t have been expecting you, Mr. McNamara?’’ Montoya asked without even glancing Connor’s way.

  ‘‘It’s Commander.’’ Connor shrugged.

  I could see where Montoya was going. If that was DeVries in the doorway, maybe whoever had set him up planned a two-for-one. Me and him. DeVries claimed to have important information about Charles Smiths and my mysterious identity thief. Mind-blowing, Pulitzer Prize- winning information. When Joe had relayed the message, I’d thought it was hype. Why would anyone give such vital insight to a credibility-testing, right-wing blow-hard? What information could it be, anyway? Smiths was practically a recluse whose only mention in the press or anywhere included reference to the many people helped by his generous financial contributions. He would have been socially bulletproof from everything but the most heinous of accusations. I winced. Well, if Henry DeVries was the guy in the street, he’d never had a chance to share anything with me. Nor would he. Meaning there was no reason to want me dead. It might explain the timing, but surely there were easier ways to get to him. Less public ways.

  ‘‘So take me through it, Sara,’’ Montoya went on. ‘‘You arrived when?’’

  ‘‘Ten minutes to nine, maybe. I got out and went over to knock.’’

  ‘‘Where were you, Commander?’’ His emphasis mocked Connor’s rank. My husband really did have remarkable self-control. He didn’t react at all to the snide-ness of the comment.

  ‘‘At the car.’’

  Montoya raised his eyebrows.

  ‘‘Like I said, her show.’’

  ‘‘What happened after you knocked?’’ Montoya turned back to me.

  ‘‘Nothing, so I knocked again. When there was still no answer, I went around the side to try to look in the window.’’

  ‘‘Did you see the man in the doorway at any time?’’

  ‘‘No. I think I heard the door open. Or maybe it was the lock. I’m not sure.’’

  ‘‘Did you see the car?’’

  ‘‘Sort of.’’

  ‘‘It was coming toward you?’’

  ‘‘It’s all kind of a blur. Yeah, it was coming toward me, I guess, but all I really remember was Connor yelling and then I hit the ground.’’

  ‘‘Good move. Might have saved your life.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t mean I hit the ground. Not like that. Connor knocked me to the ground, actually. He saved my life. I just stood there with brain cramps.’’ I smiled at Connor. Had I said thank-you?

  ‘‘You saved me,’’ I said. ‘‘Well, you and the early-warning canine alarm, anyway.’’

  The cop cleared his throat. I leaned back, taking Connor’s hand under the table. Considering we’d been within range of automatic gunfire less than an hour ago, I was feeling pretty good. We were okay. I was back on the case. A real case. Real enough to warrant machine-gun fire. Okay, that maybe wasn’t the best sign, but it did mean that this wasn’t just some paper-pushing case. I wasn’t half-naked in front of Connor’s parents anymore, and if the case was important, I wasn’t going to have much time to do the family-bonding thing. Everyone would understand. Yeah, things could be worse.

  ‘‘What did the guy who got shot see? Have you had a chance to talk to him yet?’’ I asked.

  Montoya and Connor exchanged a look.

  ‘‘Oh,’’ I said. He was dead. I didn’t know him. Never actually met him. But he’d been standing twenty feet away from me less than an hour ago, and now he was dead. ‘‘Poor Henry.’’

  ‘‘I thought you’d never met him.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t.’’

  ‘‘But you got a good enough look to identify him? How? Have you seen a picture of him?’’ Montoya probed.

  I shook my head. ‘‘I guess . . . I mean, I assumed . . .’’ I looked at Connor. He was watching the cop. ‘‘It wasn’t Henry DeVries?’’

  ‘‘You don’t seem surprised he’s dead, Commander.’’

  Connor shrugged.

  ‘‘Would you be surprised if the ID turns out to be someone other than Henry DeVries?’’

  ‘‘I’m not prone to surprise, Detective.’’

  If it wasn’t Henry DeVries, who was it? Okay, the neighborhood was terrible. People probably died there all the time. Not when I was standing near them, thank goodness, but a coincidence? They couldn’t honestly believe . . . No way. Wait a minute. I looked from Connor to Montoya and back again. Was there a book they gave the XYs when they were born? A gift basket that included blue booties and the guy guide to keeping the little woman on the sidelines? Fine. They were so not getting away with it.

  ‘‘Why’d you leave the scene?’’ Montoya asked. Damn. He used the same smile when he was asking dangerous questions as he did when he was making idle chitchat.

  ‘‘It seemed prudent,’’ Connor offered.

  ‘‘People were shooting, Detective. We thought to get out of range, but we did call nine-one-one and tell them where we’d be.’’

  ‘‘Which must explain how you found us, Detective,’’ Connor added.

  The two men had an eye-to-eye standoff. Montoya looked away first.

  I needed to get rid of the cop. No problem. He’d handed
me the spin. In that neighborhood a body wouldn’t be news. He could chalk it up to gangs or drugs or bad timing. I’d play along. He was giving up more than he was getting. If he wanted me out of the way, he’d have to accept that I wouldn’t return his call the next time he tried to pump me for information. And there would be a next time. This body, DeVries or not, was connected to my case. My case. Montoya was coming late to the party. I had the upper hand.

  I glanced at Connor. He was staring at me, one eyebrow slightly raised. Connor was another story. There was no chance he’d check out, given today’s dramatics. I’d get more space from my shadow. No, avoidance wouldn’t work with Connor. But I didn’t know him well enough to know what would work. It was a drawback to the wake-up-married approach we’d taken. Maybe not a drawback, exactly. I smiled. Figuring out how his head worked might be as much fun as figuring out his . . . well, the rest.

  ‘‘What about you, Commander?’’

  ‘‘Sorry. I drifted off for a minute there. What did you ask?’’

  ‘‘When did you see the victim?’’ Montoya asked.

  ‘‘Peripherally, after I’d seen the car.’’

  ‘‘Can you describe it?’’

  ‘‘Nova. Not in great shape.’’

  ‘‘Did you get a license number?’’

  ‘‘It happened pretty fast,’’ he said.

  He was hedging. Maybe it was a hesitation in his voice, or the almost imperceptible slowing in the thumb stroking my hand, but I knew Connor had something.

  Montoya stayed for another ten minutes, asking routine questions while flirting with me. If he got anything important out of the Q & A, I didn’t hear it.

  ‘‘What didn’t you tell him?’’ Connor asked as soon as Montoya was out of earshot.

  I shifted in the narrow booth, looking at him with my most innocent expression. ‘‘How do you know I held something back?’’

  ‘‘Educated guess.’’

  ‘‘Well, stop it. You’re creeping me out.’’ I gave an exaggerated shudder.

  He shook his head. He could read me the riot act, but it would come back to bite him. He knew that. Particularly since I’d bet my last dollar that he hadn’t exactly owned up to everything he knew or suspected either. He had to know that sooner or later I’d figure out he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming either. No sense setting himself up to crash and burn. He wouldn’t make an obvious mistake like that.