Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

“Dr. Steadman…” Carrie pressed. “What did you mean by-”

The line went dead.

Carrie sat back and blew out a breath for the first time. Almost two and a half minutes. A phone number had come up on the screen, but it wasn’t for Steadman’s; it was for a completely different phone. A White Fence Capital. Steadman had likely stolen the phone from somewhere.

“Excellent work, Carrie,” Chief Hall said. “Certainly a lot of excitement, no, for what I understand is your first day back?”

“Yes, sir,” Carrie acknowledged. Though she found herself wanting to ask if they should follow up on the blue car.

“Well”-he squeezed her on the shoulder-“you did just fine…”

Then suddenly someone shouted from the detective’s pool. “There’s been another shooting!”

Tony Velez, one of the homicide crew, ran up. “In Avondale! This must be what Steadman was just talking about. Victim’s name is Michael Dinofrio. His wife came home from exercise and found him dead at his desk. Two in the chest. His car’s gone. A silver Jaguar. And the kicker is… guess who Dinofrio was supposed to be playing golf with right about now…? At Atlantic Pines. Steadman, ” Velez finished, looking around the table.

“I took a call from a cabbie,” Carrie said, suddenly remembering the location, “who claimed he drove someone resembling Steadman from the Clarion Inn near Lakeview to an address in Avondale…”

“That’s about a half mile from where Martinez was killed,” Bill Akers said.

Frantically, Carrie checked back on the call screen, locating the time of the call and drop-off point. 11:02 A.M. “33432 Turnbury Terrace.” She looked up. “That’s only a block away.”

Suddenly she knew what Steadman had meant when he said, “You’ll see, there’s more…”

Then Sally Crawford, who’d been tracing Steadman’s call, said loudly, “The phone Steadman just called in on… White Fence Capital. It’s a real estate partnership here in town.” She turned to face the chief. “Michael Dinofrio is the CEO.”

Carrie felt a flush of embarrassment come over her. If there was any doubt before about Steadman’s connection to these murders, there wasn’t one now.

The son of a bitch just called in on the second victim’s phone.

It took close to two hours, but the trailer’s front door finally opened. Vance saw a woman step out into the night, wearing a tight red halter and a denim jacket hanging from her shoulder, her blond hair all mussed up.

He watched from his perch in the woods. Good ol’ Wayne, the guy Amanda was supposedly in love with, came out, shirtless and in jeans, with a beer in hand. The girl spun around and pressed up against him and gave him a lingering kiss, Wayne’s hand snaking down her back and onto her shorts until it came to rest on her behind.

Vance couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out.

She turned and continued down the steps, a little wobbly, to her car. “You know one thing…” she said, turning back, and pointing at Wayne. “Whatever it is you got, it sure does make my register ring.”

“Ring-a-ding-ding,” Wayne sang, and took a swig of his beer, the two giggling like fools.

The girl stumbled to her car and waved as she drove away, passing right by Vance. After a short while, when Vance was sure she wasn’t coming back, he picked up the black satchel from the seat next to him. He got out of his car, lifted the trunk, and took out a heavy lead pipe, the words the responsibility starts now drumming through his mind. Wheat from chaff.

Just no knowing where it ends.

He stepped up to the front door, hearing the TV on inside. He knocked.

It took a few seconds for the door to open. Wayne appeared, with that same shit-eating grin on his face, still holding his beer, surely expecting someone else. “Forget something…?”

“Yeah,” Vance said, staring into Wayne’s shocked eyes. “I did.”

Vance swung the pipe and struck Wayne in the kneecap, probably shattering it right there, and when Wayne buckled on one foot with a yelp, Vance jabbed the butt end into the boy’s jaw, sending him across the floor in a groaning heap.

Vance shut the front door.

“Where the hell am I?” the boy moaned, groggily, finally opening his eyes.

The room was dark. Vance had turned off all the lights. Wayne was hog-tied, his arms behind him, dangling from a crossbeam on the ceiling. He couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe. He just hung there, his feet bare, blood pooled in his mouth and all over his shirt.

“Who’s there?” Wayne called out into the darkness. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this to me?”

Poor kid had no idea who had even strung him up there.

Vance rose up and shined a flashlight into Wayne’s eyes. The boy squinted, blinded, turning his face away. “ Who is that? Mr. Hofer? Why the hell are you doing this to me, Mr. Hofer?” The kid was shaking. “What’s going on?”

“What am I doing here, son…?” Vance said, pulling out a chair and sitting down on it in front of Wayne. “I’m simply here to ask you a few things. And how you answer them will go a long ways toward determining whether you ever walk away from here… So you think about what I’m about to say, and then we’ll see. Okay, son?”

Wayne nodded, scared out of his mind.

“Good.” Vance continued to shine the light on him. “First is, what did you do to my girl?”

“I’m s-sorry, Mr. Hofer,” Wayne said, tears and mucus streaming down his face and falling onto the floor. He’d always been scared of Amanda’s old man. The guy was crazy. Even Amanda said so. The stories she would tell of him, when she and Wayne were high. How he had this violent streak. How he would just hurt things-stray cats, squirrels, Amanda’s mom. And what he used to do on the force. How he once busted a man’s wrists with his nightstick while the guy was writhing on the ground. Used it in other ways too, he’d heard. Got him thrown off the force.

“You mean her? Brandee ? She ain’t nothing to me. She’s just a friend. Amanda’s still my girl.”

Vance shook his head. “I don’t mean about the girl, son. The girl could fuck you to kingdom come for all I care. You really think this is about her? You want to go on living out that putrid, dog-shit life of yours?”

“ ’Course I do!” The kid was openly crying now, almost shitting in his pants. “Please, let me down, sir. You know I do. You-”

“So then I’ll say it again, how you answer’s gonna go a long way toward determining how we get that done, Wayne. So you tell me…” Vance stood up and faced him now. “You tell me where you got the drugs from, son. I’m talking the Oxy. That’s why I’m here.”

“ Oxy? We only just smoked a little weed,” Wayne said. “That’s all. We weren’t hurting no one… We jus-”

“I don’t mean tonight, you stupid fool,” Vance said, feeling his temper rear. “The Oxy that my little girl was taking. Who just got her life stolen away by whatever it was you pushed on her. That’s where she got them from, right?” Revulsion pooled in his eyes. “The stuff she was on. From you, right, son?”

“No, no … It wasn’t from me, Mr. Hofer. I swear.” Wayne was hanging like a side of beef, the blood rushing into his head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, sir… I-”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” Vance humphed cynically, almost smiling. “What Amanda was high on when she killed that poor, young gal and her baby… While her husband was serving his country over there. Now, I know it was you, son, so there’s no sense playing this out. The Oxy, where’d you get ’em, boy? That’s all that I want to know. Then I’ll hoist you down.”