On Thin Ice Page 17

  Before she could do more than nod curtly to acknowledge something of what she was thinking, however, Greg Lougynes, a huge, ponytailed roadie, twisted around to look at her over one massive shoulder. He was bent over the pool table, where he prepared to sink the four ball. “I saw Miller a coupla minutes ago,” he said in his hoarse, gravelly voice. “She was headed out to her car.”

  Over by the fireplace, Karen Corselli’s head came up. Rising casually to her feet, she tucked her purse under her arm, excused herself from the group she’d been visiting with, and, picking up her empty glass, left the room.

  “Her car?” Connie echoed after a moment of blank surprise. Her slender black eyebrows drew together in perplexity. “Whatever for?”

  “Smokes, I think she said.” Lougynes sank the four ball and his gaze on the felt, walked around the table setting up his next shot.

  “But Sasha doesn’t smoke.”

  Greg’s big shoulders moved in an indifferent shrug. “I’m just telling ya what I heard, Nakamura. I looked up when I heard someone say they was going out in this rain, and I saw Miller walking out the door. Ain’t no mistakin’ that coat of hers.”

  “Well, that’s odd.” Connie’s eyes met Lon’s across the room, and the looks they exchanged were equally bewildered. Then she shrugged and gave the man at the pool table a weak smile. “Thanks, Greg. I didn’t mean to jump all over you.” It wasn’t his fault if she couldn’t make sense of it.

  “No problem.” He sank the two and six balls in rapid succession. Straightening, he frowned in thought while he chalked up his pool cue. “You know, now that you mention it, the hair didn’t look like Sasha’s. I just saw that wooly ‘Follies on Ice’ on the back of the red jacket and figured—” His big shoulders rolled uncomfortably. “But come to think of it, her hair wasn’t as dark as Miller’s and I don’t think it was as curly, either.”

  Connie shrugged. “Then I imagine Sasha must’ve lent her coat to someone.” That made more sense than Saush going out in this weather for cigarettes that she’d never smoke. Connie decided to check in the kitchen for her friend; perhaps she’d find her there.

  She had barely cleared the rec room door when a woman outside began to scream.

  It was a sound guaranteed to draw a crowd, and it did exactly that. Every single party-goer rushed outside.

  Dave DiGornio and his father ran toward the street and the woman who had screamed was huddled on the patio under the eaves, pointing after them with one quivering hand, the other clamped to her mouth. Trembling uncontrollably, she tried to answer the barrage of questions that came like bullets from all sides. The volume from so many people all talking at once rose to cacophonous levels.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” Mick’s authoritative voice cut through the babble, leaving a momentary silence in its wake. Dragging Sasha behind him, he plowed through the crowd and stopped in front of the trembling woman. He dropped Sasha’s wrist and reached out to grip the woman’s shoulders in firm hands. “Are you okay, Cathy?”

  She made a reply, but he couldn’t hear it over the voices that had resumed their excited chatter. The decibel level had once again escalated and he impatiently jerked around to face the people surrounding them. “QUIET! ” he roared.

  A sudden silence fell, and he turned back to the trembling woman. “Now. Are you all right?”

  “Oh, God.” She pointed a shaking finger at the arterial that divided the expensive, sprawling homes from the lake. “A woman was h-hit by a c-car out there.” Tears poured down her cheeks. “It hit her so h-hard she flew, Mick. And then it just k-k-kept on going!”

  “Is anyone out there checking her condition?”

  “Y yes.” She nodded her head and then couldn’t get it to stop. She had to reach both hands up to hold it still. “Dave and Mr. DiG-Gornio and I were talking out here and they . . . and they’re . . .”

  “Okay, Cathy, you’re doing fine.” He looked up. “Somebody grab her a cup of coffee, please. And put some sugar in it.” He looked at the crowd gathered around them. “Someone needs to call an ambulance.” His gaze traveled swiftly from face to face; it stopped on the third one it saw. “Morrison. Call nine-one-one.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “People,” Mick ordered. “Get out of the rain.” He reached out and snagged Sasha’s wrist again, pulling her near. “Take care of Cathy,” he said. “She needs to be wrapped up and kept warm to combat any shock she may be in. I’m gonna go see what I can do for the woman who was hit.” Mrs. DiGornio arrived just then with a large mug full of steaming coffee, which she extended to Mick. He took it and handed it to Sasha. “Get it down her.” Turning back to Mrs. DiGornio, he briskly requested blankets, umbrellas, and a tarp if she could lay her hands on one quickly.

  Their hostess conscripted the services of several of the people standing around and the items he required were promptly rounded up. Within moments, Cathy, wrapped in a blanket and clutching the cup of coffee in both hands, was being led indoors, and Mick, hugging a tarp, an umbrella, and two blankets, was jogging down the gradual, grassy slope to the street.

  Dave DiGornio and his father were squatting on the sidewalk in the pouring rain. They were soaked to the skin. Except for one camel-colored leather sleeve and a pale hand with short, narrow fingers that curled toward the sidewalk on which she lay, Mick’s view of the woman sprawled facedown in front of the two men was blocked by their drenched backs. He walked around Dave and stopped dead in his tracks.

  This wasn’t the stranger he had expected. The woman on the ground was wearing a jacket that was very familiar to him. Of deep red wool with a silver wooly JOLLIES ON ICE in cursive across the back and a skating patch on the camel leather of its left sleeve, there was only one jacket like it in the world and it belonged to Sasha Miller.

  “Ah, Jesus,” he said hoarsely. “It’s Amy Nitkey.”

  Without interrupting his gentle search for broken bones, Dave DiGornio shot a glance up at Mick over his shoulder. “Whataya, blind, man? It’s Sasha Miller.”

  “No,” Mick retorted firmly, squatting down next to him. “It’s Sasha’s jacket, but that’s Amy.” He popped open an umbrella, set it up to shelter the fallen woman’s head, then reached out to gently pull her hair away from her face. Even with her head turned away from them the identity was clear.

  “I’ll be damned,” Dave murmured and helped Mick set up the tarp to form a rough shelter over the fallen technician. “It is Amy.” He looked over at Mick. “She’s got a weak pulse, but to tell you the truth that’s about all we’ve been able determine—that she’s still alive. She’s getting soaked here, but we’re afraid to move her in case she’s got a spinal injury. Oh, good, you brought blankets,” he added as he watched Mick snap one out and cast it over the injured woman. He pulled off the coat that had been covering her and tossed it to his father. “Dad, put this back on before you catch your death.”

  “What the hell happened, Dave?” Mick demanded. “Cathy said it was a hit-and-run?”

  It was his father who replied. “It happened so damn fast I’m still reeling,” he said. “The three of us were out talking on the patio and we heard the car accelerate, but our view of it was blocked by the laurel hedge. And I don’t know about Cathy and Dave but I didn’t give it much thought—I assumed it was just another car going too fast. That’s been a growing problem in our neighborhood. Then, too, we didn’t know that there was anyone in the street.”

  Mick looked at the thick, lush hedge. It was a good ten feet high and had probably been grown for that express purpose, to muffle traffic noise and provide privacy.

  “We all looked down there, though, at the sound of a car gaining so much speed.” Dave picked up the narrative. “And the next thing we know, there’s a muffled thump and this woman’s literally flying through the air. Cathy started to scream, but even over the noise she was making we could hear the car pick up speed again.” He shook his head, incredulous that anyone could be so coldhearted as to mow someone down t
hat way and then simply flee. “Dad and I moved, let me tell you. Even so, by the time we got down here the car was already gone.”

  “Can you describe it at all?”

  “No lights, medium sized, and I think it might have been dark red, but I’m afraid I’m not positive about that,” Dave supplied unhelpfully and his father nodded. “Had to have been a drunk.”

  Probably. But Mick looked down at Sasha’s jacket on the rag-doll stillness of Amy Nitkey’s body and shivered.

  Sasha folded the heavy plastic bag that held her jacket over her arm and shivered. She looked up at Mick, who had just handed it to her and now stood on the other side of the threshold of her hotel room doorway. “How is she?” she asked.

  Mick rubbed a weary hand over his chin. “Let me come in, Sasha.”

  She was all cool poise when she replied, “I don’t really think that’s a good—”

  “Please.”

  She stepped back, holding the door open for him.

  He walked straight to the little table situated near the window and collapsed into its nearest companion chair. Sitting there with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, he dug at his scorched eye sockets with the hard-skinned heels of his palms. Sasha took a moment to detour into the bathroom to hang her jacket from the showerhead so it could drip into the tub and then sat down at the table opposite Mick, reaching out to graze the back of one of his hands with her fingertips. “How’s Amy?”

  He straightened up and reached for her hand. Gripping her fingers, he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “She’s in ICU, but they’re ‘cautiously optimistic’ . . . whatever the hell that means.” He scrubbed his free hand over his face and then let it fall to the tabletop, staring through bloodshot eyes at Sasha. “I contacted her parents and they’re on their way from Oklahoma City. Hopefully, by the time they arrive her condition will have been upgraded from critical to serious or maybe even stable.”

  He looked so discouraged that Sasha couldn’t help herself, she reached out to brush his hair off his forehead with gentle fingertips. “What a mess.”

  “You got that right.”

  “So, what’s next? Do they have any idea who did this to her?”

  “Well, I talked to a detective from the State Patrol Accident Investigation Unit. He took all her clothes to the Washington State Crime Lab in Bellevue to be checked for transfer of fibers, paint chips; that sort of thing.”

  “But . . . my jacket.”

  “Yeah, well, I, uh, sorta held that out.” At her look of horror, he assured her quickly, “They have enough without it. Amy was struck about thigh level. That means any fabric impressions and paint chips from the impact itself are going to be found primarily on her pants.” And that would just have to do. He’d learned how much this jacket meant to Sasha and it might be months before she ever got it back. “Unfortunately, the heavy rain may have washed away much of the trace evidence, but the cop said the crime lab does wonders finding anything there is to be found. All it takes, apparently, is one tiny paint chip and they can tell what model, make, and year of car it came from.”

  “Yeah, but what good does the information do them once they’ve got it?” Sasha wondered. “Say they learn it’s from a silver Honda Accord or a blue Buick Skylark. There must be thousands of either in Seattle alone.”

  “True, but an impact like this does some damage to the car and the driver’s first inclination is going to be to get it fixed. The investigators will put out a bulletin to all the auto body shops in the greater metropolitan area and its environs, and they’ll also lean on all the local illegal operations they know of. Patrol cars will be alerted to be on the lookout for a silver Honda Accord or blue Buick Skylark, such and such a year, with a bashed-in grill or whatever. The smokie I talked to said their case closure rate is pretty decent.”

  “Sounds like you got a lot of information.”

  “I had a lot of time on my hands waiting to hear how Amy was doing, and so did the cop assigned to the case. We talked.” Then, to alleviate the small wrinkle still pulling her dark eyebrows together, he added, “He gave me a number to call tomorrow for a little preliminary information. If the crime lab comes up empty of trace evidence on Amy’s other clothes, we can still volunteer your jacket.”

  “Oh, Mick, good.” She relaxed. “I’d feel so awful if I thought I was withholding the one piece of evidence keeping them from solving her case.”

  And this is the woman you thought was running lethal heroin? Mick looked at her across the table and wondered why it had taken him so long to get a clue. “Leave it in the shower tonight with the plastic bag under it, and if you need to move it, put it back in the bag.” He thought about Amy, crumpled on that sidewalk wearing Sasha’s jacket. “I want to stay here tonight,” he said and it wasn’t so much a request as a statement of intent.

  “No.” Sasha pushed back from the table and rose to her feet. Shaking her head, she stared down at him. “No, Mick. Forget it.”

  Mick curbed his impulse to grab her wrist and yank her back down. “I can’t forget it,” he said. “I want to stay.”

  “Too bad. I wasn’t just blowing smoke when I said I was checking out your story, Mick. I meant it. When it comes to drugs I’m not taking anyone on faith ever again.”

  “I’m not asking you to. And neither am I planning to slap the moves on you, Sasha, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll keep my hands to myself. I just don’t want to leave you alone tonight. Hell, baby, I don’t want to be alone.”

  Sasha thought of Amy wearing her jacket when she was hit by the car. It was absolute foolishness, the threatened feeling it gave her, because it was an accident, nothing more. That’s what everyone was saying, that it must have been a drunk who ran Amy down like that and then simply continued on his way.

  And yet . . .

  It left her with an odd, uneasy sensation at the base of her neck. She didn’t much care for coincidences and here were two accidents that shouldn’t have happened, occurring within a week of each other. One impacted her directly, the other peripherally. And Mick was so darn capable. “Are you willing to sleep in the chair?”

  Mick looked at the small chair and then down at his long legs. A small smile curved one corner of his mouth. “No. But as I said, I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

  “Very well.” Sasha nodded. “But don’t make me regret it.”

  The bed was queen size and there was really no reason why they couldn’t both occupy it, each on their respective sides. When Mick climbed in a short while later, however, he immediately rolled to the middle, hooked his arms around Sasha and pulled her over to occupy the same space. He wrapped himself around her, tangled his legs with hers, and pressed her head to his bare chest. His hand lingered to stroke her hair. “Night,” he rumbled.

  So much for keeping your hands to yourself, she almost protested. But she held her tongue, because truthfully she felt too secure to complain. For the first time since she’d heard about Amy being struck while wearing her jacket, the possibility of some deliberate malevolence in the action ceased to torment her. The possibility had been remote to begin with, yet an unease had still persisted. Here in the warmth and comfort of Mick’s arms she finally saw the notion for what it was.

  Entirely ludicrous.

  TWELVE

  Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not kill. It was a feverishly repeated refrain in Karen Corselli’s brain.

  She wielded the foaming brush and high-powered sprayer at the coin-operated car wash, applying extra care around the front bumper and the undercarriage of her dark red rented Taurus. Thou . . . Shalt . . . Not . . . Kill.

  Oh, merciful God, I know that You understand the necessity of removing Sasha Miller from this world and forgive me that un-Christian spurt of satisfaction when I hit her. You must have. Otherwise You surely never would have infused me with Your light, never would have allowed me to taste of the Glory and the Power. Karen scrubbed and sprayed, scrubbed and sprayed, warmed for a brief instant
by the recollection of that raw infusion of savage gratification.

  Then a cold chill rolled down her spine. It was Amy she had struck. Feeling complacent, she had blended back into the aborted party without anyone even realizing she’d been gone, and that’s when she had heard who had been hit. Oh dear merciful God, forgive me . . . Not Sasha at all; it was AMY.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  Falling to her knees on the wet cement, Karen scrubbed furiously at the backside of the bumper and underneath the front wheel wells, scoured the ridges of the steel-belted radials. How had this come to be? She had seen that coat; it was indisputably Sasha’s. And Greg had said it was Sasha who had gone out to the car. Her face had been blocked by the umbrella, of course, but why would she need to see it when she’d already known whom it would be? It wasn’t her fault. It should have been Sasha.

  Amy would be okay. Yes, Amy would heal just fine; the Lord would provide. Karen could leave her fate in His hands and concentrate on other considerations. Like returning this car to Avis without being subjected to all sorts of inconvenient questions. There was no way on earth she could avoid owning up to some kind of accident, but the trick, clearly, was to provide a red herring to divert their attention. She finished blowing the suds clear with the powerful sprayer and stood back to assess the damage. Panic fading, her mind began to tick over with cool precision. She climbed in the car and drove away.

  Fifteen minutes later she found exactly what she was looking for. Idling in the shadows of a rain-swept, twenty-four-hour Super Safeway parking lot, she adjusted her seat belt and eyed the small cluster of cars parked over in the far corner.

  Then, giving the gas peddle just the barest touch of acceleration, she rolled straight into the white Ford station wagon.