my teeth. No teeth were broken. I gingerly touched my nose. My nose seemed okay.
The blood had to be coming from somewhere. I was lying in a pool of it.
I pushed up to hands and knees and saw the source of the blood. A body lying facedown in the narrow hallway. Light from an alley streetlight carried through the store’s open back door, enabling me to recognize the man on the floor.
It was the guy who’d pitched me against the wall.
I crept forward and took a closer look, seeing the hole in the back of the man’s shirt where the bullet had entered, and a similar hole in the back of his head. The wall to my right had been sprayed with blood and brain and the left half of the dead man’s face. His right eye was intact, wide and unseeing. The mouth was open, as if he’d been mildly surprised.
The sound that carved up from my throat was part scream, part gag as I floundered away from the body, arms windmilling out, searching for a handhold where none existed. I sat down hard on the floor, back to the wall, unable to think, breathing hard, only aware that time was passing. I swallowed back bile and closed my eyes, and a thought snaked into the horror. The thought was of hope…that this wasn’t so bad, so final. That the man could be saved. That a miracle would happen.
I opened my eyes and all hope vanished. The man on the floor was beyond a medical miracle. I had brain gunk and bone fragments stuck to my jeans. My assailant had been murdered, and I’d missed it. Unconscious in the bathroom. The idea was ludicrous.
And the killer. Dear God, where was the killer? My heart gave a painful contraction. For all I knew he was hidden in shadow, watching me struggle. My shoulder bag was on the floor, under the sink. I reached inside and found my gun. The gun wasn’t loaded. Dammit, I was such a screwup.
I rose to a crouch and looked through the open back door. The yard was partially illuminated, as was the hallway. I was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. I was bathed in sweat, shivering with fear. I wiped my hands on my jeans. Go for the door, I thought, then run for Ferris Street.
I clenched my teeth and took off, stumbling over the obstructing body. I burst through the door and sprinted the length of the building and across the street. I ran to shadow and held up, gasping for air, searching the neighborhood for movement or for the glint of a gun or belt buckle.
A siren sounded in the distance, and at the end of the street I caught the flash of cop lights. Someone had called the police. A second blue-and-white turned the corner at Lindal. The two cars angled into the curb in front of the store. The uniforms got out and trained a flashlight beam into Mo’s front window. I didn’t recognize either of the uniforms.
I had myself backed into a corner between stoop and porch, two houses down. I kept my eye on the road and rummaged in my pocketbook, looking for my cell phone. I found the phone and dialed Morelli. Personal feelings aside, Morelli was a very good cop. I wanted him to be first homicide on the scene.
It was well after midnight when Morelli brought me home. He parked his Toyota in my lot and escorted me into the building. He punched the elevator button and stood silently beside me. Neither of us had spoken a word since we’d left the station. We were both too weary for anything other than the most necessary conversation.
I’d given an on-scene report to Morelli and was ordered to go to St. Francis Hospital to have my head examined, inside and out. I was told I had a concussion and a lump. My scalp was intact. After the hospital, I went home to shower and change my clothes and was brought to the station in a blue-and-white for further questioning. I’d done my best to recall details accurately, with the exception of a small memory lapse concerning the key to Mo’s apartment and store and how those two doors happened to swing open for me. No need to burden the police with things that didn’t matter. Especially if it might give them the wrong idea about unlawful entry. And then there was the matter of my gun, which happened to no longer be in my pocketbook by the time I got to the police station. Wouldn’t want to confuse the issue with that either. Or to be embarrassed by the fact that I’d forgotten to load the miserable thing.
When I closed my eyes I saw the intruder. Heavy-lidded black eyes, dark skin, long dreadlocks, mustache and goatee. A big man. Taller than me. And he’d been strong. And quick. What else? He was dead. Very dead. Shot in the back at close range with a .45.
The motive for the shooting was unknown. Also unknown was why I’d been spared.
Mrs. Bartle, across from Mo’s store, had called the police. First, to report seeing a suspicious light through the storefront window, and then a second time when she heard gunshot.
Morelli and I stepped out of the elevator and walked the short distance down the hall to my apartment. I unlocked my door, stepped inside and flipped the light switch. Rex paused on his wheel and blinked at us.
Morelli casually looked into the kitchen. He moved to the living room and lit a table lamp. He sauntered into the bedroom and bath and returned to me. “Just checking,” he said.
“What were you checking for?”
“I suppose I was checking for the phantom assailant.”
I collapsed into a chair. “I wasn’t sure you believed me. I don’t exactly have an airtight alibi.”
“Honey, you don’t have any alibi at all. The only reason I didn’t book you for murder is I’m too tired to fill out the paperwork.”
I didn’t have the energy for indignation. “You know I didn’t kill him.”
“I don’t know anything,” Morelli said. “What I have is opinion. And my opinion is that you didn’t kill the guy with the dreads. Unfortunately, there are no facts to support that opinion.”
Morelli was wearing boots and jeans and a heavy olive drab jacket that looked like army issue. The jacket had lots of pockets and flaps and was slightly worn at the cuffs and collar. By day Morelli looked lean and predatory, but sometimes late at night when his features were softened by exhaustion and eighteen hours of beard growth there were glimpses of a more vulnerable Morelli. I found the vulnerable Morelli to be dangerously endearing. Fortunately, the vulnerable Morelli wasn’t showing its face tonight. Tonight Morelli was all tired cop.
Morelli strolled into the kitchen, lifted the lid on my brown bear cookie jar and looked inside. “Where’s your thirty-eight? It wasn’t on you, and it’s not in your cookie jar.”
“It’s sort of lost.” It was lost two houses down and across the street from Mo’s store, neatly tucked into an
