Free Cry Wolf by J. Carson Black Page B

going to make it?”
    “I don’t know. I think so.”
    He took a step toward her. The blood coating his chest and arm was black in the moonlight—shiny and slick.
    But Laura didn’t care. She went to him and pressed herself to his chest and held him tight. They stayed that way for a good long while.

21: When Good Things Happen to Bad People

    Both Williams and Strickland were dead. Ruby, however, survived. The short trip to University Medical Center and UMC’s trauma surgeons made the difference. It would be some time before Laura and Anthony could interview her—she had a long road ahead.
    It had been a long night that rolled into the early morning. Laura was questioned at the scene by TPD SIU and turned her duty weapon over to them as required. Soon after, DPS SIU arrived, debriefed her, and issued her a replacement weapon. Laura was placed on paid leave. There would be an administrative investigation. She would see a psychologist in two days. This was all standard procedure, but that didn’t make her feel any better.
    Laura was positive Ruby had no part in Sean’s murder. It was far more likely that Ruby had been used by both Strickland and Williams. The two of them had conspired to kill her before she could remove Strickland from her will.
    Turned out that Alex Williams had a safe deposit box, which she’d kept under the name Madison Neville. The number and location had been among her personal effects. There was one lone possession inside the safe deposit box; a Ruger LCR-22 revolver, one shot fired. Apparently, Alex couldn’t part with the one keepsake that could have implicated her.
    That was a moot point now.
    Laura had no sympathy for Williams. She wished she could dredge up some, but she couldn’t. She thought about the cold-blooded way Alex shot Sean Perrin. How she’d tried to kill Ruby Ballantine.
    Laura didn’t feel vengeful, though. She just felt . . . tired.
    So many homicides, most of them sordid, ugly, and small. The reasons people took a life were so often mundane. Violence came first to solve their problems.
    Williams was a schemer. She had planned everything and executed well. But there was nothing inside her but a void. At the moment when Laura got to her, when she saw Williams crammed up against the dash, Laura had thought of it as a cheap nightlight going out.
    Money and violence .
    Sometimes it sickened Laura so much she wanted to march in to the office and hand over her badge and her weapon and find something else to do.
    But she didn’t.
    She’d made a promise to Sean Perrin that she would find his killer, and she did. That was the reward. That was what kept her going.
    Sometimes it was a gift to the people left behind. A gift to the one who died. And other times, it was just plain vengeance.

Epilogue

    Fall stayed around for a long time, and turned into Indian Summer.
    One night, Laura couldn’t sleep. She’d been having nightmares, mostly of the shootout and the chase down Hoff Avenue. She opened the sliding glass door and walked out onto the terrace. From where she was, she could look out at the lights of the city sprawled out far below in the Tucson valley. She was surprised how many lights were on at two in the morning.
    A cool wind rattled the palm tree above.
    She saw a shape on the path down by the horse corrals.
    Frank Entwistle .
    Or maybe it was nothing at all.
    He was just a shape, insubstantial, maybe just the side of the water tank up against a mesquite tree.
    But she heard his voice, as if he were right beside her.
    “Looks like we’ve come to the end of the line, Kiddo.”
    She could see him now, looking as unhealthy in death as he did in life, his face red, his jowls sagging above his open-necked shirt.
    “End of the line?” Laura didn’t believe him. He had been with her all this time. Years. He had always been her sounding board, always been with her.
    “When you was a kid,” he said. “I bet you got a bike for your birthday.”
    “Didn’t