The shock wave was still reverberating. The fallout still playing with her core.
Lena closed her cell phone after calling Rhodes and gazed at Bloom with utter amazement. She was thinking about the autopsy. The woman she had seen on the stainless steel gurney that had been cut up and dumped in the trash. The woman originally known as Jane Doe No. 99.
She was trying to picture her face.
The victim had been beaten. Disfigured. She remembered that her eyes had been spared, but not much else. That the sight of the decapitated head had been hard to look at. Yet, she seemed so vulnerable, it had been difficult for Lena to turn away.
Identification had been made based on a theoretical reconstruction of her face, a physical description that fit like a glove, overwhelming circumstantial evidence, and more than one eyewitness who saw her at the Cock-a-doodle-do on the night of the abduction and murder. Although the DMV confirmed that her driver’s license was legit, certification that the thumb print on the license matched the print taken from the actual dead body was still pending. Lena remembered Rhodes telling her that it would take a week before they arrived and SID could begin their examination.
“You’ll be okay,” Lena said to her. “Take my hand.”
She pulled the young woman off the floor and helped her over to the couch. Bloom was clearly frightened, and Lena’s words didn’t seem to make any difference to her. As Lena thought about the body count, Bloom had every reason to still fear for her life. Tremell had offered all his resources to help find the witness. Cava had been watching her apartment. And Chief Logan had shut down the case and made it the number one priority on his Loose End List. Everyone of them had wanted to find the witness at all costs. Now Lena understood why.
“You went out to the Cock-a-doodle-do with a friend,” she said. “Your friend was murdered. Who was she?”
Bloom lowered her eyes. “Beth Gillman,” she whispered. “She was waiting for me in my car.”
Lena heard the sound of footsteps through the door. They were moving down the hallway. She checked Bloom’s face, caught the edge, and stepped into the foyer. When she heard the tap, she peered through the peephole and unlocked the door. Rhodes hurried in and glanced at Bloom from a distance. Lena could see him making the connections. The shock as he got his first look and realized that their victim wasn’t a ghost.
“Were you followed?” he whispered under his breath.
Lena shook her head. “I lost them. A Lincoln. Who’s out there?”
“Two guys in a black Audi. I couldn’t make out their faces. But it doesn’t look good. They’re waiting for something. Who was in the Lincoln?”
A memory surfaced before she could answer. Jack Dobbs and Phil Ragetti had chased her down the hill last Sunday night in the rain, then innocently walked into Denny’s restaurant. The two former RHD detectives who got the boot for beating the life out of a murder suspect but somehow managed to escape jail time. She could remember the way they had looked at her when they got out of the black Audi. The recognition on their faces. Seeing them hadn’t been an accident, she realized. They had wanted her to see them. Both detectives had left the department three years before Lena was promoted to RHD. But Rhodes was there at the time and would’ve known them.
“Jack Dobbs and Phil Ragetti,” she whispered.
Something stirred in Rhodes’s eyes. “What about them?”
“Ragetti drives a black Audi,” she said. “They followed me Sunday night. How do we get her out of here?”
“Not through the front door.”
Lena gave him a look and they entered the living room. Bloom read their faces and seemed all jacked up.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Lena said. “This is Detective Rhodes. Why don’t you tell us why you took your friend with you last Wednesday night.”
She wanted to keep Bloom talking. Take her mind off what might be going on outside. Bloom appeared to buy it.
“How much do you know about Dean Tremell and Anders Dahl Pharmaceuticals?” she asked.
Lena moved to the window. “Your brother told me why you came here. We know about your son, and both of us have read Ramira’s transcripts. Fontaine and Tremell lied to push the drug onto the market when they knew that it wasn’t safe. We know you talked to Ramira and West.”
“I’ve been listening to the radio,” Bloom said. “Everybody’s dead now. Everybody except for me and West.”
“Why’d you take your friend with you?” Rhodes asked.
“Justin Tremell wanted to meet there and talk. If it had been his father I would’ve blown it off. But Justin was different. I didn’t exactly trust him, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. I asked Beth to come with me and wait in the car. I didn’t think I’d be very long and I wasn’t. Justin was speaking for his father. They were making me an offer. Another bribe to not say anything and go away. But there was something about the place where we met-all these prostitutes walking in and out the door. When I asked him why he wanted to meet there, he wouldn’t answer me. I started to get paranoid, like maybe something was wrong. Like maybe I’d found out who these guys were but didn’t really know what they were. And so I left. I ran out to the parking lot. And that’s when I saw a man standing over Beth with a gun in his hand. It was dark, but I could see her body on the ground beside my car. She wasn’t moving and I didn’t know what to do. I found a place to hide and shot that video with my phone, but I was freaking out. All of a sudden I knew why Beth had been murdered. All of a sudden I knew that the guy who did it thought she was me.”
Bloom covered her face with her hands, the memory still too vivid. Rhodes sat beside her on the couch.
“You had blond hair,” he said. “The same color eyes. Roughly the same height and weight.”
“She was waiting in my car. She’s dead because of me.”
Lena had been listening with her back turned-staring out the window past the fire escape and looking for an anomaly. And she had found one hidden in the billowing clouds. She could see a man standing in the alley at the end of the building. The shape of his figure without any detail. She didn’t need a face or a name to go with the body to understand his purpose. The gun in his right hand said it all.
She turned and shot Rhodes a quiet look. They were fucked. She tried to keep calm, keep Bloom talking while she thought about what to do.
“Okay,” Lena said. “So what did you do after they left? You grabbed your friend’s purse out of the Dumpster and then what? Drove your car over to her place and hid out?”
Bloom met her eyes. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Lena ignored the question and kept cool. “Tell us what you did.”
“Beth had a garage. I got your name out of the paper. Then I delivered that package to you with my driver’s license and the video clip. But I could see what they were doing. The money they deposited in my bank account and the stories on TV. I never touched their money. I only took what was mine. I knew what they were trying to make it look like. I didn’t come forward because I saw what they did to Beth and knew they’d do it again.”
She was speaking quickly. Her voice tight as piano wire.
“Makes sense,” Rhodes said. “As long as they thought you were dead, you thought that you had a chance.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Lena asked. “Anyone at all?”
She shook her head. “Not even my brother. Not Ramira, or West, or Fontaine. Beth’s murder was my fault. I couldn’t jeopardize anyone else. I couldn’t take the chance. And I didn’t think I needed to. You guys were saying that Beth was me. As long as you were investigating my murder, there was a chance you’d find them before they found me.”
Lena traded looks with Rhodes. Bloom was a remarkable young woman. There was no reason to tell her that her friend had been beaten beyond recognition. No reason to mention that the man with the gun in the alley had a new buddy and that they had moved closer and were eyeing the fire escape. She drew her weapon from her belt and rocked the slide back. It was a.45 Smith amp; Wesson. She watched Rhodes check his Glock. Everything was copasetic. Everything tuned and amped up. There was no clean way to walk out of Bloom’s apartment. No easy exit. They’d have to cut their way out.
“Why did you risk exposure by coming here tonight?” she asked Bloom.
“Why did you guys just pull out your fucking guns? You’re scaring the shit out of me.”
Lena noticed the snow globe on the floor and picked it up. As she handed it to the woman she realized that it wasn’t snow falling over Las Vegas. The flakes were actually miniature silver dollars. And the streets outside the Bellagio Hotel and Caesar’s Palace were knee-deep in money.
“It was a risk,” Lena said. “Why did you take it?”
Bloom shook the globe and gazed at the silver dollars falling out of the sky. “I made a mistake,” she said. “Everything was okay at Beth’s place until a few days ago. Then the phone started ringing at odd hours. I made a mistake and answered it one night. I was asleep and woke up and wasn’t thinking. They didn’t say anything, but they heard my voice. I knew that I needed to get out of here. My husband gave me the snow globe before he left for the war. It was the only thing I brought with me.”
“You drove over in your car?” Rhodes said.
Bloom nodded at him.
“Where did you park?”
“Out front.”
Her words settled into the room. But only for a split second. Then someone tried to kick down the front door. They didn’t make it. The lock held, but Bloom screamed.
“Get down on the floor,” Lena said.
Bloom glanced at the window, panicking. “I need to get out of here. I don’t want to die.”
“Behind the couch,” Rhodes said. “Hurry.”
The door took another hard kick. When Lena checked the window, the two men were racing up the fire escape. Rhodes raised his Glock and fired a round through the front door chest high. They heard someone fall down in the hall and shout, “I’m fucking hit.”
Rhodes quickly lowered his aim and took a second shot. Chaos followed as the round punched through the wood and that first voice never came back. Just the thunderclap of a 12-gauge shotgun blowing a hole out of the cheap door. It was a repeater, the muzzle poking through the hole. Then five quick shells lashed out free and clear, tearing chunks of plaster out of the walls. The sound was deafening.
Lena rolled behind the chair, keeping her eyes on the window behind them. When the two men reached the second floor, she didn’t recognize them. The only thing that clicked was that they looked mean and angry. The only thing that mattered was that she knew that they were coming. She pulled the trigger on the.45 before they spotted her, felt the kick and heard the pistol roar. Three quick shots. The glass shattered and began raining down on her. But she had hit her mark. She could see their bloody faces. She could see their bodies tumbling off the fire escape and heard the thud when they hit the ground.
She turned, spotted Bloom crawling over the broken glass toward the window, and shouted at her to stay down. But the repeater was back-the shotgun on steroids-ripping away at the chair and blowing out the lights. Rhodes signaled from the other side of the couch to hold her fire and take the shelling. After another barrage, the repeater shut down and the thunder faded out.
Lena could hear them priming semiautomatics in the hall and laughing like devils. Then the front door burst open and two men entered the foyer. They stepped through the French doors, eyeing the wreckage and searching for bodies in the darkness. And that’s when Rhodes reared up from behind the couch with everything his Glock had left. Thirteen rounds into the open targets. Thirteen shots finding their mark.
Lena unloaded her clip, the.45 pounding. She could see the two men taking fire and shooting at the phantoms in the room. The shadows in the night. Remarkably, they were still laughing when their pistols ran out. Still giddy until they finally dropped onto the floor. Then their bodies shuddered, their eyes blinked, and they lost their grip and passed into a sleep so dead, so silent and still, the blood stopped flowing from their wounds.
Lena gazed out the front door into the hall. A man sat on the floor leaning against the wall. She noted the wounds in his chest and stomach, the splintered wood on his suit jacket. As her eyes rose to his face, she realized that she knew him and that he carried a badge. The dead man had been Klinger’s young protege from Internal Affairs. The watcher, the listener-the one who helped Klinger do the dirty work at her house.
“You okay?” Rhodes called out.
“Yeah.”
She stood up and looked over at Rhodes in the muted light feeding into the apartment. The air was thick with plaster dust and the strong smell of fresh gunpowder. As she dusted herself off, she glanced at the two dead men on the floor but didn’t recognize their faces. When she turned to check on Bloom, her chest locked up.
Bloom wasn’t hiding behind the end of the couch. She wasn’t anywhere in the room.
Lena ran over to the window. The two guys she had shot through the glass were laid out on the ground, the fog sweeping over their dead bodies. Farther down the alley she could see a blur of motion rounding the corner.
“She’s making a run for it.”
“We’ll cut her off,” Rhodes said.
They raced into the hall, hit the stairs two at a time, and ignored Jones screaming at them in the lobby. Bursting through the doors, they looked up the street through the swirling clouds. Lena saw it and knew that Rhodes did too-Dobbs shoving Bloom into the Audi and jumping into the passenger seat, Ragetti throwing his gun on the dash and pulling out.