Ed Gorman: Rough Cut

"You bet I do."

Then she turned back to the passing silence and her brooding again.

Half a block from Stokes's home I saw the running man. He came out of shadows so deep he was virtually one with them. At first my headlights caught only a glimpse of him. Then he ran into their ken, light and snow illuminating his bloody face and hands.

Even through the black overcoat, you could see blood seeping and soaking.

His glasses were on his eyes but they had been smashed. He was running blind, his arms flailing, his feet slipping on wet pavement.

He slammed into the car of his own volition then rolled away to the side.

Cindy screamed.

I braked, skidding, fighting the wheel for control. I slid into a curbing, then up over to icy grass. My car came to a halt a few feet from a big maple tree. Cindy's breath came in gasps.

I said nothing, just ripped the door open and worked my way out of the car, careful to put my feet down deliberately so I didn't slip.

A concussion wouldn't help me find out what was going on.

Moans came from somewhere down the street. I moved toward a black bulk on the edge of a street light's circle of illumination.

Stokes was there. Waiting. Dying.

He had started to vomit thick clots of blood. To stop himself from choking he'd rolled over on his side.

As I got near him, he reacted instinctively and began feeling inside his black overcoat for his pistol.

Whoever had shot him had taken it from him. Stokes was grasping for nothing.

He started to sit up, looking wildly as if he were going to run.

I knew I should have had more compassion-he was still a human being even if he was a damned mercenary version of one-but I couldn't help myself. I didn't want him to get up, I didn't want to have to chase him. He had only a few breaths left and I wanted him to spend them explaining to me what was going on.

I kicked him in the side. Not so hard that I broke anything. But not so gently that he'd think I was a good buddy, either.

Then I knelt down and grabbed his jaw so that he couldn't avoid my face.

"Who shot you, Stokes?" I said.

He couldn't see because of his smashed glasses. His hands flailed and groped in front of me. I twisted one of his wrists then slammed his arm to his chest.

"Who shot you, Stokes?" I repeated.

From behind me I heard a scream.

Cindy had come up, seen what I was doing.

"Please, Michael," she said, trying to calm me down. "Can't you see what condition he's in?"

I turned back to Stokes. "Now I know why you blackmailed Merle Wickes, why you said he had access to money. It was my company's money he had access to, wasn't it? You thought he'd pay you off to keep you from telling me about the embezzlement."

He had started choking on his own blood again.

Cindy grabbed me. "Is there anything we can do?" she cried.

I shook her away. "Then you came to me to tell me that Denny was having an affair with Cindy so I'd pay you to investigate him. Only then you stumbled on to something much bigger-the robbery that Denny and Merle and Gettig were in on together. Then you really had something to blackmail them with-but you didn't count on the killer. Something went wrong. A guard named Kenneth Martin disappeared and the people involved in the robbery started getting murdered. The killer even managed to get around to you, didn't he?"

I don't know when I realized it, but eventually I saw that my words were useless. Stokes was dead.

I looked down at him. Part of his face was dark red from blood. The other part was white from frost. His blind eyes stared up at me.

"You scared me, Michael, the way you looked and sounded-"

"I'm sorry," I said. Then I grabbed her and buried my face in her shoulder.

The back seat of Bonnell's police vehicle was surprisingly warm. He'd even been thoughtful enough to bring along a thermos filled with coffee.

He sat in the front seat, only turned around so he could face both Cindy and me.

In the windshield behind him I could see the emergency lights from the ambulance and the police vehicles splashing bloody light over the sullen neighborhood.

"I don't expect there are going to be many people at Mr. Stokes's funeral," Detective Bonnell said. "Not unless they turn out to gloat."

"I need to talk to you," I said.

"I hope you're ready to tell me the truth," he said.

"I am."

I told him everything about the murders I'd learned to date. Everything-from the embezzlement to the robbery to the disappearance of the security guard named Kenneth Martin. Then I told him about lying for Clay to give him an alibi.

Bonnell stared at me. "Somehow you don't strike me as the type to lie."

"I thought of my father in the nursing home. He was an honest man. He would want his son to be. I just want the killer stopped."

Cindy took my hand, squeezed it.

Bonnell said, "I ran a check on Stokes. He was not a licensed investigator-he couldn't have been with his police record, which was long and formidable and included convictions for extortion, rape, and armed robbery."

Cindy leaned forward. "You don't still think my husband committed the murders, do you?" she asked.

He frowned, a curious expression filling his chunky face. He looked at me, then slowly-almost unwillingly-at Cindy.

"No, I don't think your husband is who we've been looking for, Mrs. Traynor." He glanced up at me, then back to Cindy. "Your husband's dead, Mrs. Traynor. Somebody murdered him earlier this evening."

Ten minutes later, the ambulance driver slid in the back seat where I'd been and handed Cindy a sedative.

She was not doing well. Her first reaction had been tears, but she'd slid immediately into a terrible frozen state that was frightening to watch. Shock, the ambulance driver said.

Bonnell and I stood outside the car, our breath pluming the night air, several Action News types looking longingly at us-as if our conversation would be the most interesting anywhere in the world if only they could eavesdrop.

"You got any ideas about what's going on?" I asked.

"Only one. The guard."

"Kenneth Martin?"

He nodded. "It's obvious Martin was involved in the robbery with them. But since we don't know what happened, I guess it's fair to do a little speculating. What if Martin were paying each of them back?"

"For what?"

"For double-crossing him. From what you've told me about your partner, Harris, he certainly sounds capable of that. But what would happen if they cheated Martin out of his share of the robbery proceeds, maybe even tried to kill him, only somehow he managed to escape and has spent his time since then killing them one by one? There's no motive as powerful as vengeance."

"But why would he kill Stokes?"

Bonnell shrugged. "Simple enough. Stokes figured out who was doing it. Given Stokes's tendencies, he may even have tried to blackmail Martin. So Martin kills him."

He followed the line of my eyes. The last few minutes of the conversation I hadn't heard totally. I'd been watching Cindy deal with her grief over Clay.

"Nice lady," he said.

"Yeah."

"You should take care of her."

"I know," I said, turning back to him. I stared at him a moment. "It isn't over yet, is it?"

"No," he said flatly. "What happens now?"

"We put out an APB on Mr. Martin, and probably we have a long talk with Mr. Wickes."

"You think he can help?"

"Right now, he knows more about the robbery than anybody who's alive-except for Mr. Martin, of course. Even though he wasn't directly involved in it-which is why he's alive, apparently-he knows all the people and what happened to the gems."

"Yeah, I keep forgetting about the gems. I guess murder has a way of distracting my attention."