“Jay?” she called. “Freddy?”
She pulled at the screen door and was surprised that it was unlocked.
Suddenly she remembered the last time she had walked into this house uninvited, the night Jay Ramsey was shot. For a moment the two incidents, decades apart, seemed to meld together into this one surreal moment. She withdrew her weapon. Heart slamming against her ribs, she cleared each room she came to. Heading down the hallway to the master bedroom, unable to shake the bad feeling growing just beneath her solar plexus. The air coming from the vents was frigid, a vapor that seemed to seep like melting ice into her bowels.
Something wrong.
The white carpet with the vacuum marks had long ago been replaced by Saltillo tile. The tiles reflected the white of the hallway walls and ceiling, gleaming yet cold; inviting yet ominous. Ahead in the half-light, Laura spotted a sheet of paper lying in the hallway. She picked it up. The freezing air coming from the vents made the paper flutter in her fingers.
The letter took up most of the page, twelve-point print. Laura returned the note to the floor where she found it. There would be plenty of time to look at it later; right now, she needed to find out if Jay was alive or dead.
She approached the open doorway to the master bedroom. The black iron dogs guarding the foot of the bed were gone, but she saw them as clearly as if they were here in real time, along with the indelible image of Jay Ramsey tangled in the sheets, bleeding onto the white carpet.
Superimposed by reality.
Now Jay Ramsey sat in his wheelchair. A bottle of whiskey and an empty pill vial lay in his lap. A plastic bag had been pulled over his head.
55
Laura holstered her weapon and was at Jay Ramsey’s side in three strides. The bag had already been torn by his desperate fingers, leaving a hole, probably the last thing he did before he lost consciousness—suicides often had second thoughts.
A possibility then that he was still alive—she felt for a pulse. Weak, but there.
She removed the plastic bag and checked his airway—unobstructed. Breathing through his mouth. Good, she didn’t have to give him CPR. She couldn’t risk moving a quadriplegic from his wheelchair and laying him out on the floor.
Laura fumbled for her cell phone and pressed the TALK button.
“What’s going on?” Mike Galaz called from the hallway.
“In here,” she called. “Ramsey tried to kill himself, but he’s still alive.”
Galaz appeared in the doorway, his gun out and held at his side. “Is someone on the way?”
Face pale, eyes dark in his head. Agitated. “Did you call dispatch? 911?”
“I was just going to call it i—“
He put his gun away and crossed the space between them. “Let me do it.”
Before she could object Galaz seized the phone from her hand. He looked at the screen for a moment, raised his arm, and threw the phone savagely across the room. It hit the wall and exploded into plastic shards.
Laura stared at the wall and back to Galaz.
“Houston, we’ve got a problem!” Galaz shouted. “Do you hear me, Mickey?”
Laura heard a noise from the master bathroom and pivoted, but it was too late; her fingers had just brushed the grip of her Sig when two huge hands closed down on her wrists like a vise, wrenching her arms up against her spine. Her shoulders and neck protested as Harmon shoved his knee square in the small of her back. He pushed her hard against the bedside table with crushing force, knocking the breath right out of her. Cuffs ratcheted around her wrists.
She didn’t feel the gun being taken from the holster, but knew he had it. Smelled his sour breath: Pickles. Harmon yanked her upright, and as he did so, Galaz darted in like a bantam-weight prize fighter, jabbed her in the hip with a hypodermic needle.
He jumped back as Laura howled.
Galaz started pacing. “
“Don’t worry, boss. We can contain it.”
“You don’t understand! She’s not some dime-a-dozen street hustler off Miracle Mile. She’s DPS. This is not going to go away!” He crossed over to Jay and fiddled with the plastic bag. “There’s a hole in this thing!” He tore the bag apart, crumpled it up and shoved it into the pocket of his slacks. Breathed deeply. “The whiskey and the pills’ll finish him off. All we needed was a little time.”
He sat down on a chair by the window. “There’s a way to do this, I just have to figure it out. I know what to do, I just need a little space. It’ll come.” He checked his watch, then looked at Ramsey. “He can’t last much longer. While we’re here, we might as well stay around and make sure.”
Mickey kicked Laura’s feet out from under her, and she sat down hard on her tailbone, legs jarring as they hit the floor.
Shit-scared. What had he given her?
Galaz crossed one elegantly-trousered knee over the other and stared down his elegant nose at her. “Under the weather, Laura? You should start to feel it any time.”
