Cheryl Bradshaw - Sinnerman

Trisha steadied herself and looked like she was about to make tracks, but she didn’t get far before Sal and Lucio circumvented her escape. Each grabbed one of her arms and in simultaneous motion yanked her back toward the car.

“What—where you taking…get your hands off me!”

Once they reached the car, Lucio threw her into the back seat. Sal fastened a zip tie around her wrists and said, “Make a sound lady, and I tape your mouth shut.”

“You can’t do this to me!”

I reached into Trisha’s jacket pocket and jerked out a bag of white powder and stuffed it into the side of the seat. Trisha shrieked like she was in the throes of severe labor pains.

“Oh zip it,” I said. “This stuff is the reason why you’re in this mess. That and plain stupidity.”

“Give it back, it’s mine. Bought and paid for. You’ve no right to—”

Sal had taken all he could stand. He yanked off a piece of sticky white tape and smacked it across her lips.

“Let me know when you calm down enough that we can communicate with each other,” I said, “or the tape stays on and your hands remain tied.”

It took about four minutes for her to give me a look that indicated she’d thrown out the white flag.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” I said, “and I don’t want to hear any bullshit, got it? If you try to lie to me, I’ll know.”

She nodded, and I removed the tape from her lips.

“Why did you lie about what happened to you?” I said.

She thought about it and then said, “I didn’t.”

I waved the tape out in front of me.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “I needed the money.”

“That’s not enough. Start from the beginning.”

She buried her head in her hands and was silent. I waited.

“So I’m in the bar one night…”

“Which bar?”

“The one we were just at.”

“Go on,” I said.

“And this guy comes up to me and says do I wanna make some extra cash. I ask him how much extra cash he was talkin’ about and he said it depended.”

“On what?”

“He had a couple jobs for me to do, and each time I did what he asked, I’d get more money.”

“What did he look like?”

“I’ve only seen him twice,” she said. “Once in the bar, and once at the gas station. Both times he wore a sweatshirt and a cap on his head.”

“Do you remember what the hat had on it, what color—anything?”

“It was for that one team.” She thought about it for a minute. “It had a big ‘C’ on it.”

“Was it blue with a red brim and the C was done in red stitching?”

She nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’s the one. But what I thought was really weird was that he wouldn’t ever take his glasses off, and both times I saw him, it was like, at night.” She shrugged. “I didn’t get it. Thought he was just some weirdo or something, but hey, if he wanted to offer me money, I didn’t care how big of a freak the guy was.”

She had no idea.

“What did he ask you to do?” I said.

“He said I needed to get all roughed up like I’d just been in a fight and then go into the police station at eleven o’clock the next day. He showed me a picture of some guy and said when I saw him I had to tell everyone he was the man who tried to assault me.”

“And the shiner?”

“He punched me.”

“Who did?” I said.

“The guy who hired me. He said he had to so it looked real.”

“You let the guy hit you for some pocket change to feed your drug habit—that’s pathetic.”

She smirked at me.

“It wasn’t a little bit of cash, honey. It was five large.”

Sal and Lucio looked at each other but didn’t utter a word.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said.

She laughed.

“He said if I testified, he’d pay me ten thousand. Cash.”

“And you didn’t care that an innocent guy would get locked away for the rest of his life?”

“I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean you didn’t know?” I said.

“The guy said he was an undercover agent trying to bust the guy in the Sinnerman murders and that they knew it was him, they just needed a witness to make sure the guy went to prison. The way I saw it, I was doing every chick in this town a favor.”

“Except that the guy who paid you was the real Sinnerman,” I said, “and the one locked away is just some scared kid who hasn’t hurt anyone in his life.”

“You’re not serious?” she said. “That can’t be.”

I looked her straight in the eye. “It is. And do you want to know who he just came after? Me.” I said. “He attacked me.”

Trisha didn’t speak much for the rest of the drive, and I couldn’t tell whether she was scared or full of regret or both. I assumed it was both. She looked out her window into the black of night and pretended to sleep, but she didn’t fool me, and I was too repulsed by her to continue. I’d hand her over to Coop when I got to the station, and he could take it from there. I didn’t know what to believe about the story she told. She seemed to express genuine remorse, but I’d dealt with plenty of druggies before and was seasoned in the way they could make a person believe the blue sky was red when they needed to.

We parked, and Sal and Lucio got out. Lucio walked with me and Sal tended to our drug addict. When I reached the station door, I heard a sound behind me, like a pop. I turned. Blood streamed from the middle of Trisha’s forehead, and then another pop echoed in the distance and Sal collapsed to the ground. Blood gushed from his chest. I tried to run toward them but Lucio shielded me with his body and thrust me into the doors of the station. Rose looked at me like I was as mad as a hatter and out of the corner of my eye I saw Coop rush to my side.

“What’s going on out there?” he said.

“Two people have been shot,” I yelled. “Do something!”

CHAPTER 39

By the time Coop and the rest of the guys swarmed around Trisha and Sal, it was too late—they were both dead, and the hunt was on to find the exact location the shots had been fired from. Agent Luciana arrived several minutes later and pushed his way past the reporters that had pullulated around the place. He headed straight for me and grabbed the edge of my sweater and walked me over to the corner of the room.

“Can we talk?” he said.

I nodded. He looked over at Lucio and said, “Wait here.” Lucio reclined into an office chair and folded his arms and titled his head back toward the wall like he was ready for his evening nap. I couldn’t figure out how he remained so calm. My body felt like an electric current flowed through it and that if I touched something it would light up.

Agent Luciana raised his hand and gestured down the hall, and we walked into an unoccupied room. He closed the door and then rested the weight of his body against the back of it. With both hands, he pressed hard into the sides of his face and then rested them there until he decided to speak.

“This is a disaster,” he said. “Did you at least get her to talk before she died?”

I nodded and filled him in on the details.

When I finished he said, “This guy has a much deeper agenda that I thought.”

“Have you released the kid in custody yet?”

“Not yet, we were waiting.”

“For what—a sign or something that you had the wrong guy? Because if you are, this is it.”

“Your attitude doesn’t help,” he said.

“You need to find him—fast.”

“And how do you suggest I do that? This guy’s a ghost—an expert at evading everyone.”

“Every killer has a weakness.”

“And what might his be?” he said.

I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye.