Deadly Force. Beverly Long

roommate, Nadine.”

      “Okay. Look, I need to call this in,” he said. “Nadine, come over here. I want the two of you to sit in the kitchen.”

      He led Claire over, keeping one arm around her. He kicked a pair of green rubber clogs out of the way and used his free arm to pull two kitchen chairs away from the table. He faced them toward the kitchen counters.

      He lowered Claire down and backed away when he was sure she was steady. Nadine took the other seat without a word.

      He pulled the radio off his belt. “Squad, this is 4433. I’m inside at 810 Maple. Let all units know the location is secure and roll me an ambulance.”

      CLAIRE FOLDED THE WRAPPER over her half-eaten cheeseburger and pushed the almost-full container of fries toward the middle of the table. “I’m done.”

      “At least you ate something.” Sam Vernelli gathered up his own garbage, added it to hers and put it on a tray that he shoved to the end of the table.

      “I…” She stopped, pressing two fingers hard against her lips. “I’ve just never seen anything so horrible before.”

      “There are cops who’ve been on the job for ten years who haven’t seen anything like that. It would shake anybody up.”

      He was being nice and kind. The same as he’d been since he’d somehow, like some superhero, jumped onto her balcony. It was one more crazy thing in a day of craziness.

      For the last eleven years, Sam Vernelli’s name had been synonymous with everything evil. She didn’t want him to be nice to her. She didn’t want to owe him anything. But when he’d pulled her into the kitchen and squatted in front of her, his hand steady on her knees and his eyes even steadier, it had been hard to remember that.

      And suddenly it had seemed as if there were a hundred people in her apartment. Cops who wanted to talk to her, then to Nadine, then to both of them. The paramedics from the ambulance had arrived, looked at the dead woman and left. Then some skinny guy, who everyone called The Weasel, in a black suit that looked too big for him had walked around with a camera and if he’d taken one picture, he’d taken a hundred. Of everything, from every angle.

      And when it had been over and she’d been so lightheaded that she thought she might faint, she hadn’t protested when Sam had practically dragged her out of the apartment and across the street to McDonald’s. She’d been a quivering mess.

      It was time to suck it up. “I need to go.”

      Sam looked at his watch. “It’s not quite four yet. I’ve got a few more questions.”

      “Look, Detective Vernelli, you and I both know that it’s not a good idea for you to be assigned to this case.”

      “It’s a little too late for that.”

      “No. I’m going to call the police department and request that another officer be assigned.”

      Sam pulled a card out of his pocket. He wrote down a name and number and shoved it toward her. “This is my boss’s name and cell. Right about now, he’s walking his daughter down the aisle, so I don’t think he’d appreciate the interruption. But on Monday morning, you can call him. Make your request. I don’t really care. But for now, I’ve got a dead woman and a hell of a lot of unanswered questions. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way, but I’m not going to sacrifice this investigation just because you’ve got a problem with me.”

      Claire chewed on her lip. “All right, fine. But don’t think I won’t call Monday.”

      He shrugged. “I’m counting on it. Now, start at the beginning.”

      She’d never wanted to do anything less, but just maybe, if she went through it again, it would start to make some sense to her, too. “I got up pretty early this morning. I was mad at myself because I’d somehow managed to lose my paycheck last night.”

      Sam held up a finger and reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I found this next to my steps.”

      She grabbed the envelope. “Thank you. One less thing to have to deal with on Monday.”

      “So you got up early…” he prompted.

      “Yes. I realized Nadine was still sleeping, so I quietly made some breakfast and then went back to my bedroom. I had left a couple projects undone at work, so I figured I’d use the time to catch up. I worked for a few hours on my laptop. I got a little sleepy and decided to catch a nap. When I woke up around eleven, I heard voices in the living room. I recognized Nadine’s voice, so I walked out to see what was going on. She was telling the stranger to get the hell out of our apartment.”

      Sam flipped the pages of his notebook. “Nadine said that she was leaving for work and the woman had been in the hallway when she opened the door. She’d pushed her way into the apartment.”

      Claire shook her head. “What kind of crazy person does that?”

      Sam shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know. What happened next?”

      “The woman pulled a gun out of her pocket and started waving it around, screaming. It was pretty disjointed. Something about everything was ruined and that she wasn’t going to be the last fool left standing. She pointed the gun at us and she was shaking so much that I was afraid it was going to go off. She told us to sit down and when we didn’t move fast enough, she shot the gun. The bullet went over our heads, probably just a foot or two.”

      “That’s probably what saved your life. The neighbor across the hall heard it.”

      “Mrs. Peters. She hears everything.”

      He smiled and she realized it was the first time she’d seen him do that. His teeth were white and straight and he looked like some model on the cover of GQ. She remembered overhearing her mother tell one of her friends that Sam was as handsome as Tessa was beautiful.

      She swallowed hard and focused on getting the details right. “Nadine and I sat on the love seat and the woman sat across from us on the couch. She got really quiet. Then the police knocked on the door. She went crazy again and shot twice at the door.”

      “Then what?”

      “She was smoking one cigarette after another. Every once in a while, she’d wave her gun around. She asked us how much money we had and I told her I had sixty dollars in my purse and Nadine said she had about two hundred.”

      “What did she say?”

      “She started laughing hysterically, and said that wasn’t nearly enough. That she couldn’t have any kind of life on that kind of money. Then she pointed the gun at us, said she was going to have to kill us after all, and I knew she meant it.”

      “But Nadine shot her first?”

      “Yes. I just sat there and waited to die. Nadine, thankfully, wasn’t quite so willing to give up. Her backpack was wedged between the two seat cushions. When the woman was ranting, she somehow managed to reach into it, pull out a gun and shoot her.”

      “And you said earlier that you had no idea that she had a gun.”

      She shook her head. “No. She had mentioned something about a woman getting attacked in the parking lot at her work and that she was thinking about getting a gun. I didn’t realize that she’d followed through on it. I’ve never been all that crazy about guns, but call me a hypocrite because right now, I’m pretty darn glad she had it.”

      Sam smiled. He glanced through the pages of his notebook again before looking up. “And neither of you ever met this woman before?”

      “No.”

      Sam rubbed his jaw. “Not through your jobs? Not some night at a bar?”

      “No.” She pushed her empty soda container to the center of the table. “She was a stranger. I don’t even know her name and now she’s dead.”