Hometown Homicide Read online

  No fire, nobody hurt—just the way Frankie liked it. Sort of. The only challenge so far included any of them staying awake.

  She grinned, thinking of how savvy farmers were these days. Even old-timers like Clyde Pettigrew, although she suspected that was mostly due to the influence of younger men like his son Russ. Nowadays techno-appropriate alarms warned them of fuel thieves before they could be cleaned out. It was a safeguard they’d taken for themselves, being unable to rely on sparse police protection in wide-open farmland. Gabe or another deputy would probably take the farmer’s statement in the morning.

  Anyway, this had been the slowest night since she’d been here, and there were still six whole hours to go. Marc had given in to his boredom and was dozing on a cot next to the fire engine. At the dispatch desk, Maggie daubed a third coat of polish on her nails. Once she yawned so widely, Frankie wondered if her next patient would be the dispatcher with a broken jaw.

  To Frankie’s dismay, the book she’d chosen to read had lost her interest and threatened to put her to sleep, too. She rose from a desk chair grown a little too comfortable and stretched, her back popping. Punching air like a boxer, she skipped—if one could call her awkward shamble a skip—into the break room to draw a glass of water.

  Automatically, she glanced out the window to where her Ranger sat parked side-by-side with Maggie’s old Subaru. Marc had followed his custom by walking to work, saying he needed the exercise.

  It was as she turned the faucet off that a quick movement near the cars caught her attention.

  Visions of the duplex exploding flashed across her mind.

  She froze, hand gripping the glass.

  The station stood right next door to Patterson’s Bar. It stood to reason a drunk might be wandering around looking for a ride.

  Or so she tried to convince herself. But there was something... something furtive about the figure she saw. And comfortable complaisance belonged to an earlier era, before Howie and Denise.

  Alarms went off inside her head.

  Reaching for the switch, she doused the overhead lights. The room dimmed, making her, she hoped, less visible to anyone outside. She peeped around the side of the window and squinted.

  “Frankie? What’s with the lights?” Maggie called from the outer room. “You in ‘save the planet’ mode?”

  Frankie didn’t answer.

  At first, until her night vision developed, she couldn’t see a thing, but a sudden sharp clang of metal on metal suggested vandalism. Anger flaring, she started for the door, meaning to shout a challenge—until renewed caution cooled her temper. The noise wasn’t quite loud enough to denote heavy damage, she decided. Perhaps it could wait.

  With her eyes adjusted, she made out an almost invisible, dark-clad figure darting through the open space between her car and the station. The glimpse showed a big man. Thick in body, tall, heavy-footed. The figure was carrying something metallic in his hand. It glinted under the moon. A pistol? It had that general shape.

  Her body took charge of her brain, a sense of self-preservation coming to the fore. Side-stepping the yard or so to the door, she snapped the lock on. Then, feeling as if she were moving in slow motion, she hurried across the station to the front and did the same. Her heartbeat thrummed in triple rhythm as if she’d been swimming upstream.

  Astonished, she discovered she was shaking like a palsied old lady. Pain shot through her temple.

  “Frankie? What’s the matter? Why did you lock the door?” Maggie, nail polish brush poised in mid-air, stared at her, brow furrowed.

  Frankie put her finger across her lips. “Douse your light, Maggie. I think we’ve got trouble.”

  “What?” Maggie stared at her blankly. “What kind of trouble?”

  Without answering, Frankie rushed back into the break room. Stood to the side and peered out the window again. There. A flicker of movement at the corner of the station.

  Should she call for help? Instinct urged her to do so, except what a fool she’d look if she reported a false alarm. Her first night here in charge. She’d be so embarrassed. And Gabe—

  They should call Rudy Swallowtail, Frankie decided. Ask him to come. He was probably somewhere fairly close.

  She reached for her phone, only to discover that instead of being clipped to the waistband of her jeans, the instrument sat out of reach on the work-station desk in the other room. Plugged into an outlet charging. Dandy.

  “Maggie,” she said quietly, “don’t ask questions. Please, just turn off your light and call Rudy.”

  Maggie didn’t move. “What for? What’s going on?”

  “Just do it. Stay calm and ask him to come. Quickly, please.”

  “Oh, my God. Is it the murderer, Frankie?” For Maggie, the penny finally dropped. She swallowed with an audible click. “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just—there’s someone outside sneaking around. I—call Rudy.”

  Flattened against the wall, Frankie threw the bolt, a flimsy thing left from when the building had been a grange hall and checked the lock again. Like in any good horror movie, as she tried the doorknob, it turned beneath her hand with a series of soft clicks.

  Her heart gave a hard bump. Whoever was on the other side rapped softly several times.

  Relief poured through her. It must be one of the volunteers, she thought, on foot instead of driving. Any moment now, she assured herself, he’d call out, identify himself, and ask her to open the door.

  She reached for the lock, ready to twist it open.

  Except whoever was there didn’t call out. And it occurred to her that no self-respecting volunteer would come at this time of night.

  Instead, the door shook hard a few times. She heard footsteps as the visitor shuffled away.

  The silence grew more ominous.

  In the other room, Maggie sat frozen, watching Frankie with her mouth half open.

  Frankie waited, listening. Had he gone? She didn’t think so. Not for a minute. She sensed him out there laying low, trying to lure her out. Fear surged through her veins with every heartbeat. Coward. What was she afraid of? Nothing had happened to make her feel this way.

  Yet.

  The fact remained that she was terrified. A vision of Howie as she’d last seen him flashed across her retinas, then a blinding light and a stab of pain.

  No, no. I don’t have time for this.

  She blanked for a moment.

  “Maggie, get down on the floor. Did you call Rudy?” Frankie hadn’t heard whether Maggie had or hadn’t followed orders, but at least she’d finally turned off the lamp above her desk.

  “I can’t reach him.” Maggie’s voice shook, infected by Frankie’s tension. “He must be circling Hawkesford Mountain about now. Reception is awful out there.”

  “Damn.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Now, at last, Maggie squatted down, pushing her fully-rounded body into the undersized kneehole space of her desk.

  “Keep quiet and stay out of sight.”

  From the truck garage, Marc’s snore thundered against Frankie’s eardrums. Oh, Lord. Was the garage door down and locked? It was supposed to be in the evening after the firemen went home, but it was hot out tonight. Had Marc followed procedure? Why hadn’t she checked?

  After a dragging minute that felt more like an hour, she edged toward the desk where her cell beckoned. They couldn’t wait for Rudy. As much as she hated waking him, she’d call Gabe.

  Her hand was on the phone when a bullet whizzed through the window. Glass shattered. A chunk of the desk flew into the air.

  Frankie clutched the phone and leaped back. Blood welled along her forearm. Fiery pain blossomed. Another shot followed, maybe two.

  “Frankie!” Maggie’s shriek rose to a high C.

  Marc’s snores faltered, stopped. “Hey!” His boots thumped as they hit the floor. “What was that?”

  Caught in the middle of the room, for a moment, Frankie didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t think
, wits scattering, until her training took over.

  Stay low. Return fire.

  Except, of course, she had no weapon.

  “I’m okay. Stay put, Maggie. Marc, don’t move.”

  Gripping the phone, she dropped to the floor and crawled toward the break room, scrabbling on hands and knees through stabbing shards of broken glass. A thin trail of blood marked her path.

  Another shot, the bullet blasting through the station wall a scant inch over her head. Whoever was doing the shooting knew to aim low.

  “Shit!” She dove into the lee of the old-fashioned steel cupboard housing the sink.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Marc yelled. He’d ignored her advice to remain in the garage and stood in the doorway between there and the main station.

  Maggie answered, telling him to get down, hide behind something.

  Panting as though she’d run a hundred-meter sprint, Frankie squatted. Punched in Gabe’s personal number, trying to ignore the pain in her cut fingertips. The keypad turned slippery. Her arm dripped blood. The palms of her hands and her knees stung. Her ears rang with shock.

  She held the phone to her ear, plastic bouncing against her head in time with her trembling.

  On the other end, the telephone rang what seemed an unholy number of times, but which her brain counted as five.

  “’lo,” Gabe mumbled at last.

  Her whisper sounded thick as if she were winded. “Gabe. Wake up. It’s Frankie. I’m at the station. Someone is shooting at us. My arm—”

  “Shooting?” Suddenly, he sounded wide awake. “Frankie? Get down and stay there. Don’t move. I’m on my way.”

  “Hurry,” she begged.

  Hah! She’d known he’d say to stay down—low—whatever.

  The phone line remained open and, for a few moments, she continued to hear sounds. Then, after perhaps fifteen seconds, it went dead, and the automated operator came on, telling her to hang up and try her call again.

  Gabe was on his way.

  Meanwhile, not six feet from where she cowered, the back door shook violently on its hinges as fists drum-rolled against it. Old and weather-beaten, it clattered loosely in its heat-shrunken frame as if ready to fall down.

  Another shot rang out, and a bullet thrummed into the wood as if the attacker was trying to shoot out the lock. On the inside, the heavy coat of paint starred.

  Frankie shook right along with the door as if to rattle her bones.

  In the main room, Maggie cried out, sobbing. Marc was asking over and over, “Maggie, Frankie, you okay?”

  Frankie answered him, earning another shot pinging into the siding above her head. “We’re all right, Marc. Stay where you are. Gabe will be here in a second.”

  But they weren’t really all right.

  Oh, God! Gabe will never make it in time. Someone is going to be killed.

  Me, she thought. My turn.

  Quickly, before the shooter succeeded in breaking through the door, she reached up and dragged open the drawer next to the sink. Her blood-sticky fingers closed on the handle of a steak knife. So dull it would hardly cut hamburger, she well knew, but if the worst happened—

  Nobody was going to catch Frankie McGill cowering in the corner. No way.

  Hidden by the bulk of the sink cabinet, she rose to a crouch, prepared to spring to her own, to the others, defense.

  In the distance, the wail of a siren split the night. The disturbance at the door ceased. She heard a muttered imprecation before their attacker took off running, footsteps fading across the parking lot into the yard of the building behind the station.

  “Stay where you are,” she yelled to Marc and Maggie, wisely adhering to her own advice. Another shot slammed into the building and, as though to vent his rage, the shooter sent a final round into one of the parked vehicles. She heard the bullet clang through sheet metal.

  It brought her to her feet.

  Outside, brakes squealing, Gabe’s SUV pulled up only inches from the station entrance. The headlights threw weird, dancing shadows into the room. She watched through a broken window as he jumped out, clutching his Glock.

  “Frankie!” he called

  Drawn by the sound of shots and the wailing siren, three men and the bartender from Patterson’s Bar down the street raced up to join him.

  “What the hell’s going on?” one yelled. “Who’s doing all the shooting?” The others started talking at once, most of them at the top of their lungs.

  “Get back,” Gabe hollered.

  They flinched away from his gun.

  He tried the door. “Frankie, you okay? Open up.”

  “I’m coming,” she called back, her voice without force. Her shoes crunched broken glass as she tottered across the room on unsteady legs. The computer monitor, she saw now, was dark. Funny she hadn’t noticed before. The shooter had managed a hit and shorted it out. Lucky Maggie, under the desk. But too, too close.

  The dispatcher fought her way from the kneehole, gazing at the carnage with horrified eyes, her mouth working wordlessly. Marc poked his ghost-white face around the corner.

  “I’m coming,” Frankie said again, louder this time, and surer. “I’m all right. We’re all okay.”

  She threw back the lock and flung herself into Gabe’s arms.

  Chapter 20

  Clasping her against his chest for what struck Frankie as way too brief a time, Gabe thrust her aside. He paced a track around the station, looking at everything and seeing nothing—as far as she could tell. Shirtless, barefoot, and carrying his pistol in his hand, he was in a towering rage.

  He managed to yell through clenched teeth—a trick Frankie viewed in utter fascination.

  “Goddamn maniac shoots up the station, then gets away free as a bird,” he gritted. “But do we know who did it? Hell no. Not us. Somebody tell me why don’t we have security cameras around here. Damn all cheap county commissioner bastards.”

  Oh, yeah. The deputy was definitely on a rant.

  Marc jumped into action, binding the wound on Frankie’s forearm and cleaning blood and glass splinters from her hands. He winced as the deputy’s anger flowed around them.

  For a moment, hoping to take her mind off Marc’s ministrations, Frankie considered hosting a contest featuring Gabe and Russ Pettigrew to see who could out-curse the other. She’d sell tickets. Probably make enough for the first month’s rent on a new place to live. If she ever worked up enough nerve to look for a place, anyway. Cocooning at her grandmother’s old house with Gabe was a lot more reassuring. Except she really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his blistering tongue.

  “Ouch!”

  “Sorry,” Marc muttered as he dug a small, glittering shard of glass from her palm. His hands shook, the tweezers gouging the wound deeper, beyond the glass.

  Frankie pulled her hand away. She’d recovered from the trauma of being under gunfire a whole lot more quickly than Marc or Maggie, the latter still sitting at the break room table and periodically emitting a heavy sob.

  “Leave it,” she told Marc. “I’ll take care of the glass later. It’s not going anywhere, and you’re a wreck.”

  “Sorry,” Marc apologized again.

  “Don’t you be sorry. None of this is your fault. I’m just glad we all came out okay.”

  Maggie choked out another sob. “I’m not okay!”

  Marc, at least, found a weak smile for the dispatcher.

  Yeah, on the surface, Frankie had recovered her equilibrium. Inside she was having a more difficult time wrapping her head around the idea that someone wanted to kill her. Someone other than a nameless foreign enemy, I mean. Someone she probably even knew. This was his, or her, second try.

  Fortunately, Lew, along with Tom and the rest of day crew entered the station just then, summoned to finish out the night shift. Their clamor and questions helped take her mind off her dismal thoughts—and fears.

  Lew touched Marc’s shoulder. “I got this, Marc. Give Gabe your statement, then go on
home. Get some sleep. But damn well don’t be late tomorrow night.”

  The normalcy of Lew’s gruffness seemed to reassure Marc. “Thanks,” he said and gave Frankie a twitchy smile. “I don’t know how you service people handle the stress, Frankie. You’re the one hurt, but I’m shaking, and you’re steady as a rock.”

  “Practice.” She answered his smile with a small one of her own. “People can get used to anything. Loud noises like gunfire is the least of it.” Besides, they always said you never heard the shot that killed you. A stupid statement if she ever heard one. How would anybody know?

  Marc nodded and, flinching a little, went to face Gabe’s wrath. Frankie felt sorry for him. She’d already served her term at answering Gabe’s rapid-fire questions. Her answers hadn’t pleased him. Marc’s probably wouldn’t either since he’d been asleep when the affair started.

  Maggie, having spent most of the shoot-out under the desk, had only stuttered replies.

  Picking up the tweezers Marc had dropped, Lew sat down in his place and grasped Frankie’s hand. “How you doing?” he asked.

  “Doing great. Living the dream. Just another night in paradise.”

  The joke, if that’s what it was, fell flat.

  “Do I detect a little sarcasm? Gabe must’ve talked to you already.” Adjusting the desk lamp, he bent over her hand, plucking yet another glass sliver from the base of her thumb.

  “Yes. First thing.” Frankie shied away from remembering how she’d thrown herself into his arms like some 1950s suburban TV housewife. Yuk. “I couldn’t tell him much. The shooter didn’t say a word, didn’t show himself, and knew just the right time to break off the engagement before help came.”

  Lew frowned, much as Gabe had when she’d told him the same thing. And like Gabe, he asked, “A professional?”

  Frankie put bloody fingertips to her temple, trying to still the blaze of pain. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Lew, including why this person is still after me. He must know by now that I don’t have whatever he’s looking for. He completely destroyed the duplex and all my stuff.”