The Mia Quinn Collection Page 30

  At that moment she wasn’t a prosecutor. She wasn’t anything but a mother.

  She ran up onto the porch and threw open the front door. Too late, she realized that Gabe was just on the other side. He let out a grunt as the edge thumped into his left shoulder.

  At first she couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Gabe was gripping the tail of his skateboard. He held it cocked by his right ear as if it were a bat. His teeth were bared in a grimace. He looked like an animal.

  The other person standing in the entryway was Katrina. Bright rivulets of blood were running down her face from a nasty-looking gash on her left temple. She raised her hand to it and pulled back fingers that looked like they had just been dipped in red paint. Her eyes widened.

  “What’s going on?” Mia demanded. Had Gabe gone berserk?

  “Mom—she’s the one who killed Colleen!”

  Shaking her head, Katrina looked at her with pleading eyes. “Your son’s gone crazy, Mia—you’ve got to help me!”

  If the past few days had taught Mia anything, it was that teenagers couldn’t be trusted. That even her son was capable of lying.

  She hesitated.

  Katrina’s expression hardened. She wiped her fingers down the front of her trench coat, then slid her hand into her purse. When it reappeared, it held a small black pistol. A pistol that she pointed at Mia’s chest. “Put down the skateboard, Gabe. Or I’ll shoot your mom.”

  Mia’s mouth fell open. Nothing made sense. Gabe set the skateboard on the floor.

  “Now roll it down the hall and out of the way,” Katrina ordered.

  He complied, at the same time turning his head to give Mia a look that mingled fear and determination. The skateboard came to a stop near the kitchen.

  “What’s happening?” Mia said. “I don’t understand.” Her thoughts were sludgy. They kept getting stuck on Katrina’s icy eyes. On the blood that was now dripping from her cheek onto the floor. On the round eye of the gun pointed right at Mia’s heart.

  It was Gabe who answered her. “When you had me listen to Colleen, I heard something right after she died. Like classical music. I thought she must have been listening to the radio, and that I could hear it because she stopped breathing. But it was Katrina’s ring tone. She’s the one who really killed her.”

  Katrina puffed air out of her pursed lips. “I came over with my ski equipment like I told you about, and then all of a sudden your son picked up his skateboard and hit me in the face. He’s gone crazy, Mia. I had to threaten you to protect myself. To stop your son from hitting me again.”

  What was the truth? Whom should she believe? But Mia’s brain was picking up speed. And Katrina hadn’t put down her gun.

  She looked from Katrina’s eyes to Gabe’s. And then she made her choice.

  “So why did you do it, Katrina? Why did you kill Colleen?”

  Mia watched her decide whether to continue to lie. But then she shrugged and said, “Colleen didn’t understand.”

  “What didn’t she understand?”

  “She didn’t understand that you could still do a good job even if you were getting a little something extra.”

  “Something extra?” The light dawned. She remembered what Eli had said about a plea bargain that seemed too good to be true. “You mean like bribes?”

  “I’m just keeping the court system from getting clogged,” Katrina said. “But then Colleen started poking that big red nose of hers where it didn’t belong.”

  Mia remembered Colleen’s words. “If there’s one thing this job has taught me, it’s to turn over rocks—but sometimes you don’t like what you find underneath. Lately I’ve been thinking how flat-out ugly it can get.”

  “Colleen asked me about it over lunch. She was all lovey-dovey, pretending she understood. Like she was my mom and I was her little girl. I finally told her that I had helped out a couple of poor souls. And of course I said there was no money involved, just me trying to give a few people a second chance. That’s the kind of sappy stuff she liked. I gave it my best, but I could tell Colleen wasn’t buying it. And that it was only a matter of time before she took it to Frank.”

  Mia nodded. She was listening, sickened, but her mind was also working double time. Where was Brooke? She wasn’t even going to mention her. Mia just hoped that she was safe upstairs. That her daughter had escaped Katrina’s notice.

  “When Colleen went to the bathroom, I took her office key. And over the weekend I went through her files. I found a notebook she’d been keeping. I took that home and burned it. And then I cut another special deal with one of my defendants to help me take care of the problem.”

  Gabe was looking, not at the gun, not at Katrina, but at Mia. He cut his eyes away to something behind Katrina. He did it again. Her son wanted her to notice something. But what?

  “But we didn’t find any evidence at the scene.” Mia hoped that Katrina didn’t notice her eyes searching for what Gabe wanted her to see. “How did you manage that?” She managed a note of admiration.

  “I got us both the same Danner boots the crime-scene techs wear.” There was a weird glint in Katrina’s flat eyes. Something oddly like pride. “I knew we could tramp all over her yard and no one would ever see it.”

  Katrina must think there was no chance they would repeat her boasts. Which meant that she was going to kill both of them. Everything was lost, Mia realized. Everything. It wasn’t enough that Scott was dead. Now her family was going to die. And for what? For what?

  She sent up an incoherent plea, a plea that wasn’t even really words. God, help us. Help my children.

  Then she saw what Gabe had wanted her to notice. On the entry table behind Katrina was something flat and silver.

  A knife. It was a knife. And it looked like a big one. Now was not the time to wonder why her chef’s knife had ended up on the entryway table.

  Mia looked at Gabe and then the door. With both hands, she made a steering motion. Katrina’s face screwed up in puzzlement. Then Mia drove in hard, pushing Katrina’s gun arm up, while groping desperately for the knife with her other hand.

  The gun fired into the ceiling, filling her nostrils with acrid smoke. Her ears rang as if they had been boxed.

  “The keys are in the car,” Mia yelled. “Go get help!” Gabe didn’t even have his learner’s permit, but if he tried to run to the neighbors, Katrina might shoot him dead on someone’s doorstep. He fumbled open the front door and ran outside. Mia grappled for Katrina’s gun with her left hand while straining for the knife with her right.

  Katrina elbowed Mia in the face, knocking her sideways. The gun fired again. It felt like someone had punched Mia in the shoulder. She staggered back, one step, two, as her left arm turned hot and tingly. Only the adrenaline coursing through her allowed her to ignore it.

  Katrina stepped over the threshold and began to aim.

  Mia lurched forward and grabbed the knife. She saw Brooke at the top of the stairs, her thumb in her mouth. “Go back to your room!” she screamed and then followed Katrina out the door.

  Outside, Gabe was hunched over the steering wheel. Mia heard the engine turn over, but it didn’t catch.

  The battery. The stupid battery that had been on Mia’s stupid to-do list. Too late now. Far too late.

  Gabe jerked his head up and around. He saw Katrina and threw himself sideways. Just as she fired.

  Mia ran toward Katrina, the chef’s knife clenched in her hand. Screaming, “No!” she raised it high overhead and brought it down, aiming for Katrina’s shoulder.

  Katrina spun sideways, and the knife caught her in the bicep. Her gun went skittering across the driveway.

  Mia yanked the knife free, yelling, “Get the gun, Gabe! Get the gun!”

  Gabe scrambled out of the car. He had just picked up the gun when Charlie screeched into the driveway.

  If it had been any other cop but Charlie, she and Gabe could easily have been shot. A cowering woman with obvious wounds facing a woman armed with a knife and a b
oy with a gun—who was the victim?

  Instead, Charlie aimed his gun at Katrina and said, “Katrina Nowell, you are under arrest for the murder of Colleen Miller.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Mia watched Eli walking toward her, toting the table saw. It was heavy, but he handled it easily. He set it on the card table Gabe had put up in the yard this morning, then handed Mia three crisp twenty-dollar bills. Brooke was under the table, leaning against Mia’s leg and whispering to herself. She seemed to be pretending she was in some kind of hideout.

  “That’s a good deal.” Eli tapped the side of the saw blade. “It doesn’t look like it’s ever been used.”

  “My husband was going to add on to the deck, but I think buying that saw is as close as he got to doing it.” Scott had been great at starting things.

  “You sure you don’t want to hold on to it?” Eli pushed it toward her a half inch, and the card table rocked a little bit.

  “Positive. You’re saving Gabe from sawing off his fingers. Or at least me from worrying that he will.”

  Mia thought about her own fingers. Had Eli noticed the pale band of skin on her left hand, the one poking out of the blue cloth sling? The bullet had cut a clean path through her shoulder, missing any vital structures. At the hospital they had removed her wedding band, worried that her hand might swell. The ring had been returned to her in a plastic envelope, and she hadn’t put it back on. Last night she had held it in her palm for a long time and then locked it in the fire safe.

  “If you’re sure.” He hefted it under his arm.

  “I am.”

  “I still owe you that cup of coffee,” Eli said. “Maybe I can buy it for you over lunch sometime.”

  She didn’t know what to say, so she was surprised to hear herself answering, “I’d like that.”

  Eli stepped back to let a woman deposit all of Mia’s mismatched plastic storage containers and a stack of paperbacks on the card table. She gave him a wave with her good hand, which he returned before turning and carrying the saw to his car.

  In quick succession she sold a step stool, more books, and a game of Monopoly with London place names. The garage sale was doing brisk business. A lot of purchases were being made by curious neighbors who wanted to know more about what had happened. Gabe was talking to one of them now, a girl who lived down the street and who seemed to have shot up three inches in the last three months. By the way he was swinging his arms, Mia guessed he was retelling the story of how he had fought off Katrina with the help of his skateboard.

  Katrina was sitting in jail, as was the man she had offered a plea bargain to in exchange for providing the gun and pulling the trigger. Ben McFadden had thought he was trading Colleen’s life for his freedom, but now both were gone. Mia’s co-workers had been combing through Tami’s and Katrina’s files, looking for more plea bargains that might have been the result of bribery. Katrina wasn’t talking, and Tami claimed she had had no knowledge of any, but Mia suspected that this was as spurious as the idea that Tami had only been hugging that inmate. She had always been willing to claim anything in the courtroom in the hopes that her clients might go free. Now it looked as if she had been willing to let anything happen outside the courtroom as well.

  Ronni put down two of Mia’s old sweaters and then reached into her pocket.

  “Your money’s no good here, I’m afraid.” Mia started to put the sweaters into an old brown paper grocery bag, but it was hard to do. It was amazing how much you needed two hands to do things well—or at all. Cutting up food, using a computer, getting dressed, driving. Even sliding a sweater into a grocery bag was nearly impossible. Mia promised herself that when she got this sling off she would be forever grateful for the use of both of her hands.

  “I owe you too much already,” Ronni said. Thanks to Mia’s suggestion that Ronni house-sit for Violet while she was at college, the girl now had a place to live.

  “You don’t owe me anything.” Mia had to raise her voice over the sound of the shop vac, which an old man in high-waisted jeans had turned on to see if the homemade sign that read Works Fine was really true. “Except to keep your grades up.”

  “Then all I can say is thank you.” Ronni took the grocery bag from her, folded the sweaters neatly, and placed them inside. She smiled at Mia before stepping aside for an older woman who was toting Brooke’s old high chair.

  “That will be seven dollars,” Mia said.

  “That’s my chair.” Brooke stood up with her lower lip pushed out.

  “But you’re a big girl who sits in a big chair now,” Mia said. “Can you press the buttons on the cash register for me? It’s a seven and then zero, zero.”

  Distracted by her new adult role, Brooke did as she was asked. She hadn’t had a single night terror since Mia had adjusted her bedtime. With a ding, the red plastic drawer popped open. Mia told Brooke where to put each of the bills. Scott had bought the cash register a year ago, when paying thirty dollars for an “educational” toy had seemed like a good deal.

  While Mia was recuperating, she had gotten started on refinancing the house. Yes, she would be sixty-seven when she finally owned it free and clear, but a re-fi would allow her to pay off the debts and give her some breathing room.

  A familiar figure walked into the yard. Charlie. While Mia was being treated at the hospital for her gunshot, he had gruffly admitted that he had thought the worst when he pulled into the driveway and saw the blood.

  He shot her a crooked smile, waved at Gabe, and then began to browse. Finally he came up to her card table with a cast-iron frying pan.

  “I really didn’t figure you for the cooking type, Charlie.”

  He shrugged. “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

  She thought of Katrina. “I guess we both learned that, didn’t we?”

  He looked away. If she didn’t know it was impossible, she would have said Charlie was acting shy.

  “I also wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “Pretty well, all things considered. The doctor says I can go back to work on Monday. And the sling can come off in another week.”

  “Actually . . .” Charlie glanced down at Brooke and back up at Mia. “I’ve been looking into an old case and I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  “Sure.” He probably wanted her opinion about whether it could be prosecuted. There was no sense in reopening a case if the prosecutor felt there was little or no chance of winning a conviction.

  “Maybe over lunch?”

  Two requests for lunch in one afternoon? Then again, it was only lunch. With people she worked with.

  She realized Charlie was still waiting.

  “I’d like that.” She held out her good hand. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Gingerly, he took it. His fingers were cool. “What?”

  “You owe me two dollars.”

  A Deadly Business

  For my children, Jacob and Dani, with my unconditional love. Always. Mom

  CHAPTER 1

  MONDAY

  There are a million ways to die. As a prosecutor in Seattle’s King County Violent Crimes Unit, Mia Quinn had become familiar with far too many. But before the first week of November was over, she would learn there were even more ways than she’d thought.

  “Good afternoon, Your Honor,” Mia said as Judge Rivas took the bench. Her phone hummed in her pocket, signaling a call or text, but she ignored it. Judge Rivas was a stickler for courtroom decorum.

  He inclined his buzz-cut head toward Mia, who stood at attention behind the prosecution table. “Good afternoon, Counselor.” He turned toward the empty defense table. “Is Mr. Dockins here?”

  The courtroom clerk, Trevor Gosden, answered, “Yes. He’s in with Mr. Young.”

  Despite the formal titles used in court, Mia thought that Trevor’s use of Mister most certainly did not belong with the name Young. Rolf Dockins was the defense attorney, a gentleman from the top of his silver hair down to his highly polished wing tips. And Be
rnard Young was the glowering twenty-two-year-old defendant he represented, aka the monster who had raped and strangled two runaway girls.

  Today Young was to be sentenced. There were only a few observers in the courtroom, most of them relatives of the girls. Mia had asked for life in prison, and felt confident Young would get it. Her case was airtight. Dockins had done what he could, but she was sure down to her bones that it wouldn’t be enough. Young would never be able to hurt anyone again.

  A side door opened and Rolf walked in, followed by Young in an orange jumpsuit. A sheriff’s deputy brought up the rear.

  Mia watched them walk toward the defense table, not thinking about anything except how her phone was buzzing again. Maybe she could manage to sneak a peek as she sat down.

  Then Young’s upper lip curled back and his eyes narrowed. His face was full of rage. And faster than Mia could react, faster than she could even process what was happening, he broke into a run. Straight for her. Then he lunged.

  Young had already fisted her hair in one hand before Mia drew breath to scream. The other hand pressed against her throat. They tumbled backward. She was still screaming when his weight punched all the air out of her.

  “Get off her!” Trevor yelled, swearing. “Get off her!” And then he threw himself on top of Young, wrestling with him. Mia’s thoughts ping-ponged from the pain in her scalp to the pressure on her throat to the sheer crushing weight of the two men. She squirmed and kicked and pushed, trying to get away, but she was pinned in place.

  “Just try it on me, man,” Trevor panted. “I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

  Now the deputy was grabbing at Young, yelling, adding his orders to the tumult. Even Rolf, who was seventy if he was a day, knelt next to them and began to yank and grab, trying to subdue his client. Mia found a brief moment to hope that the deputy didn’t draw his gun. All of them were so close together.

  “Watch out!” yelled Catherine, the court reporter. “He’s got a razor blade.”