“So it says here,” Dance tapped the manila folder, “you have a license for a nine-millimeter Sig-Sauer.”
“Yeah.”
“Where might that be?”
“In my safe, where it has been for the last six months. Julia hates guns.” Nick hated the irony.
“So you do know how to shoot?”
“You don’t buy a car unless you’re licensed to drive.”
“No need to be a smartass.”
“No need to treat me like an idiot, like I killed my wife.”
“I’m trying to help,” Dance said.
“Listen, if you were trying to help me you’d be out looking for the real killer.”
“Fair enough. If you didn’t do it, you’ve got to talk to me, if we are to have any hope of catching who did do it.”
“So you believe it wasn’t me?” Nick said with a sense of hope.
“Well, the thing is this,” Dance said, pulling over the gold- and brass-plated Colt Peacemaker, “this gun here is covered in fingerprints.”
“But no one has taken my prints yet,” Nick said, his voice thick with confusion as he threw his hands up.
“Actually, we got them off your wallet and cell phone, I did it myself.” Dance paused. “And they were a spot-on match. So you’re going to need to be real clear as to how your fingerprints and only your fingerprints are on this gun.”
Nick sat there, his mind spinning. He had never seen this gun, let alone touched it. In fact, he hadn’t picked up his own gun in six months, and that was with his friend Marcus Bennett at his buddy’s shooting range. He hated guns for the incredible power they placed in one man’s hand, the power of life and death at the fingertip of anyone capable of pulling the trigger.
“I should also add,” Dance continued, “ballistics isn’t back yet, probably won’t be for a few days with everyone working the plane crash, but your watch had explosive residue, gunpowder consistent with bullets. So if your story is factual, lay it on me, and if you’re about to make something up, it’s time to get real creative.”
Shannon stepped into the room, locking the door behind him. “I would suggest real creative.” His high-volume words laid bare the fact he had watched the whole exchange from beyond the two-way glass. “And feel free to look at the center of the mirror, right into the camera. It’s always so much better at helping relate to the jury.”
Nick was once again lost, the brief hope he had thought he saw in Dance obliterated by Shannon ’s entrance. He glanced up at the clock: 9:56.
With volatile force, Shannon slammed his billy club onto the table, shocking not only Nick but also Dance.
“Cold-blooded murder,” Shannon said. “Plain and simple. You don’t need to tell us a thing. We’ve got it all in that folder, everything we need for a quick and easy conviction-”
“Let’s take a break,” Dance interrupted, trying to calm Shannon. He leaned back on his chair, raising it up on two legs.
“No. A woman is dead,” Shannon shouted. “She didn’t get to take a break. I don’t care if she was your wife or not. I want answers. Was she fucking someone else and you found out? Were you fucking someone else and she found out?”
Nick’s eyes went wide with rage.
“Yeah, I see the anger rising up in you. Come on, do something,” Shannon taunted him. “Use the same fury you struck out at your wife with. All this spit and polish, Italian clothes, foreign cars, minimansions in suburbia, it’s all just window dressing for your dark heart. You’re no different from the bum in an alley who guts a hooker.”
Nick was doing everything he could to restrain himself, his muscles tensed, his blood racing.
“She was fucking some guy and you killed her.” With a sudden crash, Shannon again smashed his billy club onto the table.
But this time the force startled Dance, to the point where he lost his balance on the two legs of his chair, falling backward while desperately trying to grab the table.
Shannon ’s outburst, the loud, shocking crash of the club against the table, pushed Nick over the edge. His wife was dead, he was being accused of her murder, and this Detective Shannon questioned his and her honor.
In the heat of confusion as Dance continued to fall backward, his sport coat flopped back, exposing his nine-millimeter in his shoulder holster, the butt of the gun protruding. Nick stepped past the point of no return and snatched the gun from Dance’s holster with lightning speed.
Nick thumbed off the safety of the Glock as his finger wrapped the trigger; his muscle memory ran true and on reflex. That he hated guns didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to use one. He spun the off-balance, tumbling Dance into a headlock and jammed the barrel against his head.
Dance’s gloved hands flew up in panic, desperately grabbing hold of Nick’s forearm.
And the moment spun out of control.
“Drop it,” Shannon screamed, as he drew his gun, fell to a knee, and pointed it straight at Nick’s head.
“You don’t understand, neither of you understand, she’s alive,” Nick yelled, sounding like a madman, his eyes jumping back and forth between Shannon and the clock. “My wife is alive.”
Shannon and Dance exchanged a quick look.
“Listen,” Dance said calmly, despite the gun at his head. “Put down the gun. I know what you must be feeling-”
“Bullshit,” Nick shouted over Dance. “You have no idea what I’m feeling.”
“-losing her and all. Let us listen to your story. If someone else killed her, let us catch him. All this is going to do is send you to the morgue. There’s no death penalty for killing your wife, but for killing a cop… it’s a capital offense, they’ll execute you for that.”
“You don’t understand, my wife is alive. I’ve been set up. I need to get out of here.” Nick dragged Dance backward toward the two-way mirror.
“Put your gun down,” Nick yelled at Shannon.
“Not a chance,” Shannon shouted back.
Nick look at the clock: 9:58. He thumbed back the hammer of Dance’s nine-millimeter Glock pistol, the click startling Dance.
“Bob,” Dance yelled, looking at Shannon. “Do it.”
“No way.”
“Do it,” Dance yelled. “You’re not playing chicken with my life.”
Shannon ’s eyes were defiant, but he complied.
And Nick instantly aimed the gun behind him at the glass and pulled the trigger, the gunshot sounding like a cannon as the two-way mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, revealing a small, dark room, a video camera in the center trained on them. Nick cocked his arm forward and tucked the gun back up against Dance’s chin, scorching his skin with the hot barrel.
“Are you out of your mind?” Dance screamed.
And Shannon was back on a knee, his retrieved gun in his hand, aimed squarely at Nick.
“Look at me.” Shannon ’s voice became eerily calm, his gun remaining fixed on Nick as he picked up the manila folder and poured a handful of eight-by-ten pictures out onto the Formica surface.
“Do you see these?” Shannon said through gritted teeth, picking them up one by one, shoving them toward Nick, inches from his face.
There were twenty in all, from various angles, in full color. The blood was thick, nothing like what Nick expected. It wasn’t like TV or some movie, where the blood repulsed, but deep down your stomach stayed calm knowing it was just the trickery of Hollywood. These images were real, and they pulled Nick in. As much as he tried to avoid doing so, he looked at each and every picture: at the floor, at her clothes, at the black skirt she was wearing when last he saw her; at her ring finger, at the wedding band he had slipped on in St. Patrick’s, and finally at her face, or what was left of it.
The left side was gone, the eye missing, the temple and forehead shattered, but the right side… It only took the sight of her blue eye, the hazel specks dancing there under her blond eyebrow, to convince him. The dead woman staring up at him was his wife.
And in that moment, the confusion rose. The scream in his head, the manifestation of his bleak reality. Julia was dead.
“I’m going to count to three,” Shannon said. “I don’t give a fuck if you shoot Dance, I’m going to kill you right here in front of the running videotape, fully justified in my actions.”
Nick pressed the gun harder up into Dance’s chin, the detective’s grip about his forearm tightening in nervous response. And Nick realized Dance’s right ring finger was missing, the vacant finger of the latex glove flopping about like an errant hair.
Nick looked up at the clock on the wall, the second hand ticking toward the top of the hour.
“One,” Shannon whispered.
“This can’t be,” Nick said in desperation as he looked again at the pictures, wishing it was all a dream, wishing he was someone else so he could escape his now dead, hollowed heart. The pain in his soul was unbearable, as Julia’s decimated image stared back at him. He tried to avert his eyes-
“Two,” Shannon ’s voice was louder this time. There was no question of his threat.
“I need to get out of here,” Nick said, an unnatural calm over taking him. “You don’t understand, I can save her.” But nothing made sense, not Julia’s death, not this impossible situation. How could he save her if she was already dead? But the tone of the man’s voice was still fresh in his ears, “You have twelve hours.”
“Three.”
And Nick watched as the hammer of Shannon ’s gun slowly drew back.
But before the hammer struck home on the back of the copper cased bullet, before it exploded out of the barrel…
… the world fell into darkness.
CHAPTER 11
