Murder in the Shadows Read online

  “I don’t want you to change,” he blurted. “I like what I see whenever I look at you. I told you that. I meant it.”

  “Okay.” Argo seemed to be forcing out the words. “I’m just saying…it’s not always about having what you want. It’s wanting what you have.”

  Darian forced a laugh, but it came out nervous and he knew they both realized it. “Now you’re getting too deep for a Friday night. I’m off duty too, remember?”

  They pulled up at a convenience store just off the highway, one exit over from the one that led to Argo’s house. The whole place, including the parking lot, lay eerily quiet. The lights blazing through the front window seemed garishly bright. Theirs was the only vehicle in the parking lot.

  “This won’t take long,” Argo said. When he reached for the door handle, Darian reached for him. Argo paused and he leaned over and gave him a long, slow kiss that, he hoped, promised better things to come. He hated to think that Argo was insecure about Victor. Maybe in another life, Darian could have gone for a guy like that. They could have whiled away the hours discussing literature, theater, and the nuances of Victorian architecture together. But that would get boring fast, Darian suspected. He liked the contrast Argo provided. It kept things lively.

  “Maybe I’ll get a lottery ticket,” Darian said as they broke apart. “Lately I’ve been feeling lucky.”

  Argo grunted in response.

  Inside the store, a bored young woman in her early twenties sat behind the counter, reading a glossy women’s magazine. He and Argo walked down the silent aisles to the dairy case in the back.

  “Should we get some ice cream too?” Argo said, scanning the shelves. “We might as well enjoy it before the weather turns cold.”

  “It’s already cold as far as this Florida boy is concerned.” Darian wrapped his arms around himself.

  Argo smirked. “This is nothing. Wait a couple of weeks! Never mind the subzero nights we’ll get after Christmas.”

  “I’m going to need warming up then. But don’t forget that we’ll be visiting my moms soon. Then you’ll be the one having to buy new clothes. Skimpy ones, I hope.”

  Argo’s face flickered, and Darian thought he saw apprehension flash in his eyes. He felt his stomach tighten. Was Argo having second thoughts about their trip to Florida?

  “What’s wrong now?” he asked. “You said you had vacation time coming, and that you were all set to go.”

  “I am. But I get the sense your moms don’t like me.” Argo selected a carton of half and half, checked the expiration date, and then examined one further back on the shelf.

  “How could they not like you? They’ve never met you.”

  “That’s sort of my point. I feel like I’m in a hole with them before we even get started.”

  “You can’t blame them for being nervous after everything that went down at the school last month. I mean, two dead bodies over the course of my first few weeks on the job? How often does that happen?”

  “Maybe they’re right to be concerned. Dead bodies might be new to you and your moms, but I deal with stuff like that all the time. Granted, there aren’t many murders around here, but there’s plenty of other ugly stuff. Violence. Overdoses. My life isn’t pretty, Darian. It’s not like living in a manor house and dabbling in theater and TV commercials on the side.”

  “That conversation really got to you, didn’t it? Why, Argo? Do you think I’m that delicate? Did you forget what happened after I found those bodies? I helped you solve the case!”

  Argo set aside the creamer and returned to examining the ice cream flavors. “This isn’t the time to discuss all that. Let’s drop it until we get home.”

  At least the invitation to Argo’s house was still on, Darian thought grimly. He forced a smile.

  “All right. While you ponder the existential merits of peanut butter versus marshmallow delight, I’m going to work on my plan to gain unbridled wealth.”

  As soon as he said it, he regretted his choice of words. He could hear Argo’s next thought as clearly as if he’d expressed it out loud. People like Victor Reece didn’t dream of striking it big with scratch-off tickets. Still, adding anything would probably only make the situation worse.

  He moved over to the rows of tickets by the counter, their glossy logos promising cash prizes big enough to set him and Argo up for early retirement. Should he risk ten bucks on a deluxe ticket? Takes money to make money, people said. But ten bucks was a lot to blow on a single chance. Better to get ten one-dollar chances, maybe. Or did the more expensive ones have better odds?

  While he agonized over his options, the front door jingled and a guy in a puffy black jacket, blue scarf, and a battered baseball cap pulled low over his forehead walked in. He sidled up beside Darian, studying the rows of candy bars on display below the counter.

  For reasons Darian couldn’t quite define, a frisson of unease rippled down the center of his back. Instinct caused him to glance back at Argo, who paused with an ice cream carton in one hand and the creamer in the other. Darian could tell that Argo didn’t like the look of the new customer any more than he did. Moving slowly and noiselessly, he set both cartons back inside the dairy case.

  All at once, Darian realized what had drawn both his and Argo’s attention. The guy was taking a little too long. Either he really had no idea what type of candy he preferred or he was getting up his nerve.

  “Get to the back of the store,” Argo mouthed. Frozen in place, not quite willing to accept what he was seeing, Darian pretended not to understand him.

  Half a second later, the guy was holding up a gun.

  “This is a hold-up!” he shouted aiming at the clerk. “Give me everything that’s in the register!”

  Argo had already shifted into cop mode. He drew the small gun he always carried under his leather jacket and aimed it with deadly precision. The magazine flew into the air as the clerk dived for cover behind the front counter.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” Argo barked. “Drop your weapon. Then get on the floor and don’t move.”

  The gunman made no effort to comply. Instead he wheeled around, his own gun out in front of his chest. His hands were shaking and his eyes were wide with panic.

  “Get out of the way, Darian. Now!” Argo ordered next. He seemed to move in slow motion as he took a step forward. “I said drop it!” he repeated to the gunman.

  Even before he saw the gunman’s finger tighten on the trigger, Darian decided what to do. Tensing his right shoulder, he lunged sideways. Momentum carried him and gunman to the floor together, the force of the impact briefly disorienting him. The gun went off just before it skidded in direction of the potato chip display. Darian heard the bullet ricochet against the floor, shards of tile spraying in its wake. Before he could catch his breath, the gunman was up again and racing out the door. He heard the clerk screaming and scrambled to his own feet.

  “You’re okay,” Darian said, reaching toward her. “Everything’s okay. He’s gone.”

  Screaming again, she pointed over Darian’s shoulder. With sudden dread, Darian turned.

  The store seemed awash in red. Argo was on his knees, the left side of his jacket covered in blood.

  “I’m hit,” he said, turning his attention to the clerk. “Call 911. Tell them there’s an officer down.”

  Then he slumped to the floor.

  Chapter 2

  The next few minutes passed in a blur. Darian’s whirling mind registered a few events in a semi-connected sequence. The gunman fled empty-handed. The clerk stopped screaming and made the phone call. Argo struggled to his hands and knees and then slumped down again, his face a mask of agony.

  “Apply pressure,” he said through gritted teeth, holding his right hand to his left shoulder. Blood was seeping through his fingers. The bullet had torn a hole through the shoulder of his leather jacket. “Hurry.”

  The clerk pressed a handful of white cloth towels into Darian’s hands. Where had they come from? Were they clean? He cou
ldn’t form the words to ask. Instead, he crouched beside Argo, forcing the entire stack of towels against the bloodied area. Hours seemed to pass before he heard the sirens. At least there were lots of them. The next thing he knew, EMTs and cops crowded into the store.

  Someone pulled him away from Argo and wrapped him in an ugly brown blanket with bright red stitching around the edges. Someone else gave him overly sweet coffee in a store-branded Styrofoam cup. Argo would have been horrified at the foul flavor, made worse by what he suspected might be powdered milk.

  No one would tell him how Argo was, beyond the fact that the medics were in control of him now. He’d been hit in the shoulder. Darian repeated that to himself every time despair tugged at his heart. Not a vital organ. But there’d been so much blood….

  He rode to the hospital in the back of one of the police cars, still covered in the flannel blanket. The coffee cup was gone, though. He didn’t remember putting it down. The cop who drove him didn’t say a word to him, which suited Darian fine. He tried to decipher the codes coming over the police radio in the front seat, but couldn’t concentrate long enough to make sense of anything. The chatter came fast and furious, though, suggesting that Argo’s injury had mobilized the entire department. He was glad about that.

  The next thing he knew, he was in a small white-walled room, seated in a padded contraption that reminded him of a dentist’s chair. A nurse bent over him, taking his blood pressure. After that she shone a penlight in his eyes. The whole time, he clutched the edge of the blanket. The scene of Argo’s bloodied hands reaching toward him played out over and over in his mind. The quiet weekend they’d planned would never happen now. How had things gone south so fast?

  “I’m fine. I wasn’t hit by any bullets and I don’t have a concussion,” Darian told her. His voice sounded very distant, almost tinny, as though he were listening to a recording of himself. He felt himself start to tremble again and made a conscious effort to stop it. The last thing he wanted was to be wheeled off to some other part of the hospital or given some kind of injection. “I’m just cold.”

  “You’ve experienced trauma. It’s natural for your senses and emotions to be heightened right now. The effects should subside quickly. We’re keeping you under observation just to be on the safe side.”

  “There’s no need.” Darian clutched the blanket to him to hide a shiver. “When can I get out of this room? I want to see Argo. Is he all right?”

  The nurse gave him what he considered a condescending smile. She ignored both his questions. He began to grow agitated. Not a good sign. “Someone will be in to talk to you soon,” she said and bustled away.

  More waiting. Darian was about to get up and leave on his own when the welcome figure of Deputy Barry Cutler strode into the room.

  “What’s going on?” Darian demanded. “How’s Argo?”

  “They’re working on him now. We’ll know more soon. Don’t worry, though. Sheriff Sullivan’s pretty tough.”

  “What about that creep with the gun? Did anyone catch him?”

  “We’ve got officers out looking for him.” His grim tone suggested to Darian that there wasn’t much hope of finding the guy. Great. He’d tried to kill Argo and so far had gotten away with it. His stomach churned with rage.

  “He couldn’t have gone far. I think he was on foot.”

  “We’re handling it,” Cutler cut him off. He took a small notebook out of his uniform pocket. “Meanwhile, I want to ask you a few questions about the events of this evening. Tell me step by step what happened. Include every detail you can remember.”

  Darian cursed inwardly. He had already gone through this with the first group of responders on the scene, but he predicted he’d be telling the same story over and over for a while to come. If he failed to cooperate, he suspected, it would take even longer for him to get to Argo’s bedside.

  “Argo—Sheriff Sullivan and I pulled up at the store to get some coffee creamer.” It sounded lame beyond belief, even to his own ears. Cutler lifted his eyebrows, but didn’t comment. “I was standing by the front counter when this guy came in. He looked shifty, even to me. Argo seemed to know something was wrong. Next thing I knew, the guns came out.”

  “You shoved the perp when he tried to shoot Sheriff Sullivan, the clerk said.”

  “Yes. I saw him point the gun at Argo. I wanted to push him off balance so he’d miss. But I guess he didn’t.” Darian’s eyes filled with tears as the full, terrible reality of what had happened finally sank in.

  “Can you tell me what the guy looked like?”

  Darian recounted what he could remember about the gunman. Young, rail-thin, white. The cap, the muffler that hid the lower part of his face, the puffy black jacket. No doubt the guy had ditched all three of those by now.

  “I want to see Argo,” he said.

  “Soon enough,” Cutler told him. “We don’t want to rush the doctors, right? Need to make sure they stitch him up right.”

  “Right. Of course.” Darian looked down at his hands. He wondered if Cutler knew they’d just come from a date at the Granite Carnation Theater and were heading home to spend the night together. Come to think of it, he ought to call Bryce and Hanson and let them know what happened. He definitely needed to call his moms, though he wasn’t looking forward to their reaction at hearing he’d been in the middle of a shootout. But he didn’t want to talk to anyone until he had some news about Argo.

  Soon he heard voices in the hall, calling Cutler’s name. He motioned for Darian to wait and left the room for a while. When he came back, he looked pleased. “Probably just a loser from town who wanted to get high and went looking for fast drug money.”

  “Hope you get him.” “We will.” A pause. “The boss is asking about you. He wants to make sure you’re doing okay.”

  Darian’s anxiety melted away in a single warm rush of relief. He threw the blanket off his shoulders, not needing it anymore, and leaped to his feet.

  “I am now. Can I see him?”

  “In a minute. They’ve just finished cleaning up his wound. Luckily it wasn’t as bad as it looked at first. Bullet didn’t go in, it turns out. It’s just a graze. He’s madder about his leather jacket than he is about his arm.”

  So Argo really was okay. That statement alone told him all he needed to know. “Can you get me out of here? They can’t keep me in this room against my will, can they?”

  Cutler held up a hand to stop him from charging out of the room. “Sorry about that. It was necessary to isolate you. We wanted to make sure we got a full statement from you that hadn’t been contaminated by anything else you heard. I know you wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this guy’s conviction.”

  “Damn right I wouldn’t. He tried to kill Argo. Maybe the clerk and me, too. She didn’t look like she was much more than a teenager.”

  “Yeah. I know. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt at all. She called us right away and was calm enough to tell us what happened. Sounds like all three of you are heroes.”

  “I hope not.”

  Cutler grinned. “Heads up—the media’s going to be after you for a couple of days, until something else diverts their attention. Don’t say anything that could affect the case. Just say no comment. The investigation is pending.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I have no desire to talk about this awful night ever again, if I can help it. I know that’s probably too much to ask, though.”

  “You’re right about that, unfortunately.” Cutler lowered his hand and gestured for Darian to follow him. In the doorway, he draped his arm around Darian’s shoulders and gave him a comradely shake. “You did great, Darian. Probably saved his life. Come on.”

  Argo was in a recovery area, covered in a johnnie-style hospital gown and a thin tan blanket, with two other uniformed cops and a firefighter standing around his bed. To Darian’s relief, he was grinning and engaging in some lighthearted banter Darian couldn’t hear. When he saw Darian approaching with the nurse, he waved the others away
with his right arm. His left was bandaged up mummy-style and tucked against his side in a light blue sling.

  The three of them eyed Darian a bit frostily, gave Argo a last round of encouragement and best wishes, and moved off.

  “You’re in one piece, I see,” Argo said when they were alone. Darian felt a surge of disappointment when he didn’t look as enthusiastic to see him as he’d expected. But then, he was probably still in pain and was definitely on heavy medication. Darian could see that much from the spacey glaze in his eyes.

  “Yeah. No harm done.” Darian forced a smile. “They got the guy, Cutler just told me.”

  “Yeah. I knew they would.” Argo nodded. “I have faith in my men.”

  “I was really glad to hear that. We don’t want him to hurt anyone else.”

  “Exactly. Guy was on the edge. He was an amateur, though. I could see that.”

  “So what about you? Cutler said the shot didn’t actually…uh…you know.” Darian found he couldn’t even say the words. That clammy feeling crept over him again.

  “I’ll live,” Argo said. “The bullet hit me and bounced off, probably thanks to my jacket. It made a bloody mess, and I’ll be on restricted duty for a while, but otherwise no permanent damage. They’re keeping me overnight, of course, and pumping me up with antibiotics and junk like that.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, actually. Why take any chances? I can stay with you.”

  “No. Go on home. I’m going to get some rest, and you should do the same. They gave me some pills that will knock me out in a few minutes.”

  Darian hid his disappointment. Did Argo expect him to just slip into bed and go to sleep as though nothing had happened? Still, this was no time to argue.

  “I’ll come back for you tomorrow, then.”

  “Not necessary. Cutler will take me home. We can meet up there later. Trust me. It’s better this way.” He held out his good hand, wincing with the effort.

  “Sure. If that’s what you want.” Darian took his hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”