My hand turned the knob. Unlocked. The little bit of pressure eased the door open. Someone had kicked it in. Splintered wood stuck out jagged in the frame. The same someone had simply pulled the door closed. I pushed it open all the way, wary of who stood behind it.

The unmistakable stink of cordite hung in the air, floating in a bank of smoke at the ceiling, too soon for it to dissipate. I walked in like an awestruck civilian. I had grown to like Chantal and saw her as a special friend. I went over and sat on the couch next to her. Her eyes stared off into oblivion, her lips were parted slightly, a narrow trickle of blood ran down the corner of her mouth. I reached up and put a gentle hand on hers; her skin still warm to the touch. Under her left breast, difficult to discern from any distance, a small red dot wept another trickle of blood. In the back of my mind I knew I should’ve cleared the apartment first. But I also knew this, the money on the coffee table, had not been his big payday. This whole time, he’d been after the million-dollar reward for Wally Kim. He was just tying up loose ends. Chantal.

All that money was too bulky to carry. And he was in a terrible hurry. Odds of someone finding Chantal before he got back were slim to none. That’s why he’d pulled the door shut. A calculated risk. Then I realized another reason he had to come back. He’d not had time to set the scene up to frame me for her murder. No, he’d be back for the money.

The bullet must have hit a vital organ, and killed her instantly. On the table was everything he had stolen from me. The motives for murder have always been timeless: money, power, sex. Robby Wicks succumbed to all three. First, the influence of the job now lost, power. Then, the woman, sex. Then, the money, greed.

The sight of the money on the table, what it represented, what it had caused, the untimely death of this beautiful woman, made me physically ill.

Her hand moved.

“Chantal? It’s okay, it’s me, Bruno. I’ll call 911.”

I looked around for a phone. No one had landlines anymore. Everyone had cells. Where did she keep hers? “Where’s your cell phone?”

Her head moved slightly from side to side, her lips moved, “No.” Her eyes held that faraway gaze. Then I realized it was the heroin, an analgesic, a painkiller that also slowed down all the bodily functions. Anyone else would’ve already been dead. Slowly, she became more animated. She gripped my hand. “I’m sorry, Bruno. It’s all my fault. Not his. It was my fault.”

She spoke in short sentences, spoke around the pain, spoke around the lack of air, with small words.

I didn’t want to leave her, not for a second. I ran into the bedroom, grabbed a blanket, found her phone on the night stand and dialed 911 as I ran back into the living room. “I need medical aid at 2615 Crenshaw, number 310.”

“What is the reason for your—”

I shut the phone.

Chantal’s skin turned chalky in the time I was gone. I wrapped her up in the blanket and held her close. I rocked her back and forth. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. You just have to hang on a little while longer. Help’s on the way.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said haltingly. Her eyes refocused, she came alive a little more. The blanket, the physical contact, the hope of medical aid, did it.

“I shot him.”

“What?” I looked around on the table and floor for a gun.

“No, listen. I shot McWhorter. Kendrick’s aide. McWhorter found out about—” She coughed. More blood rippled out of her mouth. “—me and Kendrick. My gravy train, baby. McWhorter was shutting down my gravy train. My retirement. You understand, don’t you?”

Kendrick was a supervisor on the County Board of Supervisors. The pear-shaped man. The man with the clothes in the other room.

“Chantal, you have to relax. Don’t move.” Far off to the north, a siren started up.

“No, you have to listen. Please, Bruno.

“I shot McWhorter. I called Robby. Robby loved me. We were going to run away—” She gulped hard. “He came over, made it—He made it look like—the burning.”

“It’s okay, I understand. Now please, just relax, concentrate on your breathing.”

The siren drew closer.

I wanted to ask her who shot her. But it didn’t matter. I knew.

She convulsed. She went still. Limp.

Chapter Fifty

I stood in the shadows waiting for him. He was already there. He knew he’d erred when his team snatched up Marie seconds before she led him to the children. Then he’d driven me over there to gloat. He must’ve thought he’d later pit her against me in the interview and get the information that way. A critical mistake he’d rue the rest of his days.

Robby must know it had to be one of five or six houses. He, too, was there in the shadows waiting for something to give it away. A tell: father, the kids, someone going to a door with food, something out of place in the neighborhood. Wicks had never been patient. He’d wait only so long, then he’d make it happen by going door to door, force his way in, insist on searching, gun in hand without a warrant, without the shroud of law as a protective cloak. He would risk discovery to make it happen.

After I calmed down, I stood there thinking it through, about the kids, how I’d been a fool putting them second in my search for revenge, an odyssey masked by a moral obligation to make things right. I realized what I needed to do. I would miss Marie dearly. She was going to be mad.

I walked out into the street, right into the middle beneath a streetlight, stood and turned a slow circle. “I’m here. I’m right here, Robby.” I searched the shadows, the overgrown trees and shrubs in untended yards, the abandoned, rusted-out cars. He could be anywhere.

“I’m alone. Now’s your chance. You’re a coward. Come out and face me man to man. I’m unarmed. What’re you afraid of?”

Nothing.

I held my hands open, up in the air, and continued to turn. “You’ve always been a self-serving coward, using people, hiding behind the badge. I was a fool. I fell for your smooth talk, your words of righteousness. I let you turn my head, convince me what we did was what was necessary. You’re no different than the street thugs we chased. You’re worse. You’re—”

I heard the shot. I didn’t see the muzzle flash. The bullet bit into my ass. It spun me around, threw me facedown in the street. I flipped over, tried to get up. My body was in shock and slow to respond. I couldn’t rise any higher. Hot pain shot up my spine. I reached back, my pants sopping wet. I was hit hard, losing serious blood.

“You going to finish me or let me bleed out here in the street?”

He yelled from the blackness. “You came from the street, you can go back to it. Where’s the kid?”

I pivoted around to the sound of his voice. Over by a sagging box-wire fence all but obscured with a hibiscus, he stepped out.

He had someone small around the neck, the gun to the head. “Lookee what I found.”

“Marie.” Her name slipped past my lips in a whisper. We were lost. I didn’t have a weapon and was too hurt to make a difference. He knew it. He smiled, his eyes twinkled, victory for him seconds away.

“Bruno! Bruno!”

“Shush. Shush. We were just having a discussion, you know the nice friendly kind, only she wasn’t being cooperative, not in the least. Then look what shows up? The solution in the form of one dumb son of a bitch.” He continued to drag her over to me. She kicked and fought. He stood a foot taller and seventy pounds more in muscle. “I gotta be honest. I don’t believe Mack turned the both of you loose. If I was sticking around, I’d launch him from the team.”

“Let her go.”

“Which house is it?”

I said nothing.

“I gotta tell ya, Bruno, you confounded me at every turn. And what makes it worse, what really chaps my ass is that I trained you. How did you hide it from me? For months. Man, I cussed you.”