Down a Dark Road--A Kate Burkholder Novel

  “Mr. Tucker?”

  I glance down, notice wet footprints on the linoleum. Someone has, indeed, been outside in the rain. Where the hell is he?

  Pulling out my phone, I scroll through incoming calls and redial the number of the last caller, which was Tucker. I’m about to turn around and go back outside when I hear a cell-phone ringtone somewhere in the house. I hold up my phone. Two rings. Three rings. Four …

  I let it ring half a dozen times and hit END. The ringing stops. “Well, shit.”

  I stand there a moment, trying to decide if I should continue on or go back to my vehicle and leave. I venture to the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, peer into the living room. The lighting is dim with the blinds pulled tight. I see a sofa against the wall to my right. A morning news show blares from a small TV on a stand.

  Sidney Tucker is laid out on a recliner. At first glance, I think he’s sleeping. Then I realize the pattern on the wall behind him isn’t some bad wallpaper print, but blood. Copious amounts of it.

  I fumble for the switch. Terrible light floods the room. Sidney Tucker’s head is thrown back. An ocean of blood on his shirt. His eyes are on me, terrified and blinking. Somehow, he’s still alive. His chest rising and falling, keeping time with the sound of a sucking chest wound.

  For the span of several heartbeats I’m so shocked, I can’t move. I’m aware of my heart thrumming hard in my chest. The copper-methane smell of blood offending my olfactory nerves. Then my cop’s mind clicks back into place.

  “Who did this?” I rush to him, my every sense honed to my surroundings, reaching for my phone. “Who did this to you?”

  His eyes roll back white. He makes a sound that ends with wet gurgle deep in his throat.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I tell him. “I’m calling an ambulance now.”

  It occurs to me this could be an attempted suicide, but I don’t see a weapon. And most often a suicidal man will put the weapon to his head, not his chest. I’m reminded that Sidney Tucker had been about to tell me something about the Naomi King murder case.

  I yank my cell from my pocket.

  “Get your hands up! Sheriff’s Department! Get them up! Right fucking now!”

  A hard rush of adrenaline. Jamming my hands in the air, I glance over my shoulder to see a deputy sheriff come through the back door, a Glock leveled on my chest.

  “I’m a cop!” I tell him. “I got a man down!”

  “Keep your fucking hands where I can see them!” He enters the living room. His eyes flick to Tucker. “Don’t fucking move.”

  I raise my hands higher, keep my palms toward him. “I’m a police officer.”

  “Shut up.” He’s young and jumpy. Keeping the Glock trained on me, he approaches. “Turn around and place your hands on the wall. Do it now.”

  I set my hands against the wall. “He needs an ambulance.” My heart is pounding, but I remain calm. “I’m armed,” I tell him. “I’m a cop.”

  “Don’t look at me,” he snaps. “Keep your eyes on the wall. And don’t you fucking move. You got that?”

  He sweeps his left hand over me, quickly and impersonally, and finds my .38 immediately. He slides it from its nest. I hear him check the barrel and then he says, “Step back from the wall. Put your hands behind your back.”

  I do as I’m told. I hear him remove handcuffs from his belt compartment. He snaps one bracelet over my right hand, cranks it down tight, and then grasps my left wrist and does the same.

  “This is for your safety and mine,” he tells me, calmer now that I’m restrained. “You’re not under arrest, but you are being detained until we can figure out what’s going on here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He motions to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Sit down and do not move.”

  I lower myself into the chair, motion with my eyes toward the living room. “He needs an ambulance now. He’s hurt bad.”

  When he looks at me I see sweat on his forehead despite the chill. He looks nervous, his eyes repeatedly going to the back and front doors. I guess him to be just under thirty. Light brown hair and eyes. For the first time I notice his Geauga County Sheriff’s Department uniform jacket, and an odd sense of uneasiness slips through me. This is Trumbull County; Geauga County has no jurisdiction here. What the hell is going on?

  “What’s Geauga County doing here?” I ask in my cop’s voice.

  He ignores me and he doesn’t holster his weapon. He makes no move to render aid to Sidney Tucker.

  “Please,” I say. “That man in there’s a cop. He’s been shot.”

  He pulls a cell phone from his uniform pants. That’s when it occurs to me he has yet to use his radio. At this point he should have already called for backup, for an ambulance; he should have let his dispatcher know he’d encountered an unknown individual inside the home of a gunshot victim.

  He thumbs a button on the phone and puts it to his ear. “I got her,” he says, and drops the cell back into his pocket.

  I got her.

  A tingle goes through my body. I tamp down a rise of foreboding. Something is off about the way this is playing out. He hasn’t even checked on Sidney Tucker yet. It’s almost as if he’d already known what he would find …

  “I’m a cop,” I say again. “My ID is in my wallet. Back right pocket.”

  “I know who you are.”

  I’m still trying to get my brain around that when movement at the back door draws my attention. Uneasiness transforms into cold hard shock when I see Nick Rowlett and Wade Travers come through. Both men wear civilian clothes. Ski caps. Black leather gloves. Disposable shoe covers … What the hell?

  The realization that I’ve walked into a trap hits me like a brass-knuckle punch. I look at Rowlett. “Get these cuffs off me. Right now.”

  He turns his attention to the young deputy. “Tuck?”

  The other man nods. “Alive. Barely. Better hurry.”

  “I owe you, man.”

  The deputy shakes his head. “I’m out of here.” Giving me a final look, he goes through the back door without looking back.

  I turn my attention to Rowlett. “What the hell is going on?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  My heart begins to pound, a metronome flying out of control. A precursor to panic stabs claws into me, taking hold, but I shove it back in its deep, dark hole. I try to get a sense of how secure the cuffs are, find them snugged down tight.

  Vaguely, I’m aware of Travers going into the living room.

  Rowlett holds his ground, dividing his attention between the two of us.

  “If you don’t get Tucker help, he’s going to die,” I say.

  Rowlett doesn’t respond.

  “Nick,” I say. “What is this? You’re a cop. What are you doing?”

  “The official term for it is covering our tracks,” he tells me.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  One side of his mouth curves. “Yes, you do.”

  “Who did that to Sidney Tucker?”

  He looks amused. “Why, you did, Kate Burkholder.”

  I blink, bewildered. The one thing I am certain of is that the situation is about to get much, much worse. Rowlett is staring at me intently, a starving dog eyeing a piece of meat. I try to control my breathing, but I don’t manage. They’re coming too fast, betraying my mounting fear. “I don’t understand.”

  “Sure you do.” Pulling out the chair next to me, he straddles it, sets his elbows on the back, his chin on his hands, and gives me his full attention. “You were obsessed with Joseph King. Everyone knows that. Look at the way you were at the standoff that night. So you went to Old Tuck, armed, out of your jurisdiction, out of control, and you started making a bunch of wild accusations. Tuck, being the good detective he is, documented everything. Put it all in a file for safekeeping.”

  I stare at him, my heart pounding. “No one will believe that.”

  “We’ll make sure they do. I mean, we
’re cops after all. It’s what we do. And for fuck sake, we’ll have Tuck’s body to explain, right?”

  “He’s already been shot. Ballistics will disprove whatever the hell you’re trying to do.”

  “What? You’ve never heard of a throw-down weapon? The one you brought with you with the serial number filed off? The one that can’t be traced and has your prints all over it?” It’s a term used by cops for an unregistered gun they can drop at a scene to justify a bad shooting.

  “You, by the way, are about to have gunshot residue all over your hands and jacket,” he tells me. “From the throw-down and that trusty little thirty-eight you carry. Four slugs will be retrieved from Sidney Tucker’s body in the course of autopsy and sent to the lab. One from the throw-down and three from your thirty-eight. We might even put one in the wall to make sure nothing hinky happens with the striations or whatnot.”

  “That’s insane.”

  He only smiles.

  “People know I’m here,” I tell him. “They know I came here to see Tucker.”

  “That’s why they’re here, right?” He tilts his head, looking at me as if he’s trying to figure out some intricate math equation. “What was it with you and that fucking Joseph King anyway? He was a loser, but you just wouldn’t stop. None of this would have happened if you’d just kept your big mouth shut. If you’d gone back to Podunk and shut the hell up. If you’d done that one simple thing, Old Tuck would still be fishing the lake and everyone would be happy. But no, you had to keep pushing, pushing, pushing.”

  Keep him talking, a little voice whispers. Stall him. Buy some time. Someone will come.

  But no one is going to come. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I had no cause to be concerned. I was so eager to get the information from Sidney Tucker, I was careless.

  “Is this about the Naomi King case?” I ask.

  Nothing.

  “If Joseph King didn’t murder her, who did?”

  He glances into the living room, then turns his attention back to me. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “Travers,” I murmur.

  Though he’d been on my radar, I still experience a surreal wave of disbelief that this is happening, that a fellow cop is sitting a foot away from me, divulging it. “Why?”

  “Oldest reason in the world. Travers and the Amish bitch were fucking like rabbits every chance they got.”

  “That’s hardly a motive for murder,” I say.

  “It is if you’re married with four kids—and have your eye on running for sheriff. I told him to cut it out, but … you know how it goes. After a few months she started getting serious. I mean, it was like Fatal Attraction meets Amish Mafia.” He laughs at his own joke. “She wanted to leave the Amish. Leave her kids. Her husband. Scared the shit out of Wade. I mean, that would have destroyed him. Ruined his career. His marriage. His future.”

  He shrugs. “He tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen. Kept pushing.” He pauses. “Kind of like you, Chief Burkholder. I mean, she had this … obsessive personality. Who would have thought? A fucking Amish chick?” Another shrug. “Anyway, Travers knew if he didn’t find a way to stop her, it would cost him his marriage. His children. His future. She was a nobody so … bang, bang, problem solved.”

  “He murdered her and framed her husband?” I ask.

  Rowlett nods. “King was a fucking idiot and practically laid the framework. He was abusive. He had a temper. Liked his booze. All we had to do was pull him over a few times and plant some weed or meth or maybe just haul him in for a DUI. He made it easy.”

  “Bring her in here!” comes Travers’s voice from the living room.

  Another punch of adrenaline, tangling with the fear inside me. I’m helpless without the use of my hands, unable to defend myself or get away. I look down at my .38 on the table in front of Rowlett.

  He notices and picks it up. “Get up.”

  I’m thinking about making a break for the back door, but he grasps my arm, pulls me to my feet, and shoves me toward the living room. Wade Travers is standing a few feet from the recliner where Sidney Tucker is fighting for every breath. It’s such a macabre, surreal scene I can barely process it.

  “We need to uncuff her for this?” Travers asks.

  “No, just turn her around,” Rowlett says.

  Grasping my arms roughly, the two men turn me so that my back is to Tucker. I try to jerk away, but they’re too strong, fingers digging into my biceps and forearms.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I ask.

  No one answers. Travers lifts my cuffed wrists. Rowlett holds the .38 snug against my hands and fires three times in quick succession. The gunshots deafen me. I jolt violently with each. In my peripheral vision, I see Sidney Tucker’s body jerk.

  Dear God …

  Gunshot residue, I realize. On my jacket. My hands. And now two slugs from my weapon are inside Tucker’s body. These men—these cops—are going to frame me for the murder of Sidney Tucker and then they’re going to kill me. Probably make it look like there was an exchange of gunfire and both of us sustained fatal wounds.

  “The throw-down, too,” Travers hisses. “Put one in the wall above him. We need her prints on it. Shells, too. Residue on her hands and jacket.”

  A pistol is pressed against my palm. A gloved hand crushes my fingertips against the cold steel in multiple areas, multiple times. Next come the shells; two of them are pressed against my fingertips. Another blast shocks me. My ears are ringing. Terror jangling every nerve in my body. Panic kicks in, mindless and ineffective. I twist, bring up my knee, try to ram it into Travers. He dances back and I only manage to brush it against his hip.

  “Cut it out,” he snarls.

  I catch a glimpse of Rowlett’s face, teeth clenched, lips peeled back. He comes at me. Twisting, I brace against Travers, bring up my leg, and kick him in the abdomen. He reels backward, and hits wall.

  “Watch her feet,” he growls.

  “Help me!” I scream the words as loud as I can in the desperate hope that a passerby—a jogger or dog walker or someone out on the lake—will hear me and intervene. But it’s a hopeless last-ditch effort.

  “Don’t mark her up,” Rowlett says. “We don’t need any more complications.”

  They lower me to the floor, facedown. I bring up my knees, try to get my legs under me, but the men are too strong. With my hands cuffed behind my back, I’m powerless to help myself. I jerk my wrists against the cuffs brutally, hoping they’ll bruise my skin. Evidence, I think, but it only fuels my fear because by the time any bruising is discovered I’ll be dead.

  The sound of a car alarm shrills over the cacophony of the struggle. Both men go stone-still, exchange a puzzled look.

  “That’s mine,” Travers says.

  “Turn that fucking thing off,” Rowlett snarls. “The last thing we need is neighbors sniffing around.”

  I look up to see Travers jog to the back door, yank it open, and go through.

  “Let me go and I’ll help you,” I say.

  “Shut up.”

  The car alarm goes silent. I raise my head, look around. A few feet away, Sidney Tucker lies dead. Before they leave here today, they’ll put one or more bullets in me from Tucker’s weapon so it looks as if Sidney Tucker and I got into a firefight. Dear God, I walked right into it.…

  I close my eyes against the fear crawling inside me. I think of Tomasetti and what this will do to him. I think of the people I love. The ones I’ll leave behind. The things I’ve left undone. Unsaid. The sense of outrage, of loss and absolute terror overwhelms me.

  “Was Sidney Tucker in on it?” I ask.

  “Tucker was a stupid old man. Went soft after his old lady bit it. We knew it was just a matter of time before he started talking.”

  “He told you I talked to him?”

  “Fuckin’ guy had a death wish, I guess.”

  He’s waiting for Travers to return. When he does, they’ll kill me, clean up the scene, plant any a
dditional evidence, and go. Wait for someone to find our bodies.

  I set my forehead against the hardwood floor and close my eyes. I’m shaking all over. My arms and legs. My teeth are chattering. I’m incredulous that my life will end this way. I’m sorry, Tomasetti.…

  Renewed fear surges when I hear the back door open. Rowlett is kneeling beside me, his knee pressed against the small of my back. He’s messing with the throw-down pistol.

  “Hurry up,” he says. “We gotta go.”

  I raise my head, glance toward the door to see Vicki Cascioli standing just inside the kitchen. She’s assumed a shooter’s stance, a nasty-looking Sig Sauer in her left hand. Is she part of this, too?

  “Put the gun down,” she calls out. “Get your hands up. Do not move.”

  Rowlett glances over and freezes. I feel a quiver run through his body. The weight of his knee shifts off my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the .38 in his hand. His finger making its way inside the trigger guard …

  “He’s armed,” I call out.

  Her eyes are focused completely on Rowlett. “Don’t do it. You know I’ll make the shot—”

  Rowlett throws himself backward, brings up the .38. Gunfire erupts. An endless stream of explosions. A slug tears into the floor inches from my shoulder. Chunks of wood hitting my face and hands. Free of him, I curl, put my face to the floor to protect my eyes.

  The gunfire stops. A shocking silence falls. The smell of gunpowder fills the air. I hear a groan, glance right to see Rowlett lying on the floor a few feet away, a red bloom spreading center mass. I swivel my head, look at Cascioli. She’s down on one knee. Sig still up. But her head is angled down. Blood streams from a tear in her cheek.

  I roll away from Rowlett, get my knees under me and rise. “Where’s Travers?” I ask her.

  “Outside. He’s down…”

  The words are garbled. She’s been shot in the face. Her mouth is mangled, filling with blood.

  “Cascioli, get me out of these cuffs.”

  She nods, spits blood on the floor. Moving gingerly, she rises, tucks the Sig into the front of her pants. “Tuck’s got a key,” she mumbles. “Back here.”