The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(60)

Nardone sighed and gingerly touched his face with his fingertips.

When he was ready, he said, “Healy was driving. We were looking for a coffee shop when I saw a guy looked like Barkley cross the road, heading to the motel. I was pretty sure it was him, but the picture I have of Barkley, the dude had a beard.”

“Yep. He shaved. Go on.”

“So we pulled in the lot and saw him take the stairs to the second floor and enter room 208. You can see it at the head of the stairs. We parked over there, where we could watch the room, and I called in a sighting of a suspect wanted for questioning, and we requested backup.”

“But he saw you, right?”

“Yeah. He peeks through the curtain, then opens the door, and I see him assessing his next steps. He’s going to either bolt for the elevator at the end of the building. Or he’s going to vault over the railing. Healy and I get out of the car, draw our weapons, and I yell, ‘Stay where you are. Show us your hands.’

“That’s when the cleaning woman comes out of room 206 and slow-walks her cart along the second-floor walkway, blocking our view of the suspect. She’s wearing earbuds and she’s humming. I can’t see around her, and she doesn’t hear me.”

“And then?”

“And then fucking Barkley lunges, grabs her, and shoves her and her cart down the stairs. I’m in front and she bowls me over. Strike! I fall on top of Healy, who hits his head against the railing. Now all three of us are in a pile, right? Disoriented. Out of breath. The suspect, assumed to be Barkley, grabs Healy out of the pile, pushes him against our car, and yells into his face, ‘I’m the good guy, you dumb shit.’”

“Aw, jeez.”

Nardone swallowed, coughed, and then he continued.

“I’d lost my gun while rolling down the stairs with four or five hundred pounds of people and a cleaning cart on top of me. I hear Barkley gut-punching Healy, who’s grunting and trying to get free of him. Then I see that Barkley has bent Healy over the hood and he’s patting him down, saying, ‘Give me the keys.’

“And then the keys jingle. He’s got them.”





CHAPTER 87





NARDONE WANTED TO tell the story as much as I wanted to hear it, but he was running out of gas.

There were some small plastic bottles of water among the litter of toiletries. I got one from under the cart and brought it back to Nardone.

He thanked me. Sipped from the bottle.

Then he said, “I tried to shove that poor woman off me. But she’s dead weight. Unconscious. By the time I’m out from under her, I find Healy lying in his vomit, bleeding from the side of his head. Our guns are gone. The dude has also stripped off our shoulder mics. I didn’t even feel him do it. But now I’m on my feet, and I see him get into our car and pull out. My phone is in the car.”

“And your badge?”

“I have mine, but he ripped Healy’s off his shirt pocket. I gotta say this, Sergeant, and not as an excuse. We didn’t have a chance. The dude is MMA or something.”

“If it’s Barkley, he’s a Navy SEAL.”

“That explains it.”

“You did your best, Bob.”

Paramedics approached with a gurney. Nardone protested. They insisted. Paramedics won.

Out on the street in this light commercial area, horns blared, hydraulic brakes squealed, uniforms closed a lane and tried to control traffic. If the runaway psycho was Barkley, he had PTSD. Now he had weapons and a badge and a police cruiser. And he thought he was the good guy. The mayhem could set him off.

Conklin came over and said, “I spoke with Cappy.”

McNeil and Chi had been assigned to watch the Barkley house, in hopes that Barkley would need clean underwear and maybe a conjugal visit. But according to them, Barkley hadn’t shown up and Randi had been followed whenever she left it.

I called Brady, told him we needed to move Barkley’s wife, put her in protective custody. He said he’d get a warrant.

I got into our squad car, turned on the radio, checked in with dispatch.

Specialist Hess told me, “Good news, Sergeant. The cruiser was found on San Bruno, near Cliff’s Auto Body. Abandoned, engine left running.”

“Were there guns inside?”

“No guns. No nothing.”

Barkley had given us back the car. Good news. I no longer had to worry about him flipping on the siren and driving at 100 mph to parts unknown.

But that wasn’t enough.

Where was Barkley?

Maybe he was across the street, watching us.





CHAPTER 88





BY TWO THAT afternoon I was settling Randi White Barkley into her safe house in Parkside, which in my humble opinion was several grades above the shack she and Barkley called home.

It had two freshly painted, sunny rooms, comfy furniture, an ocean breeze, and a park only a few blocks away. Barkley Barkley, her large Rottweiler mix, climbed onto a white sofa and fell asleep.

He felt at home, but Randi complained while uniforms secured the windows and checked the door locks. She didn’t know that we had court orders allowing us to set up hidden cameras, bug the landline, and hack into her laptop.

Randi asked, “Is this actually legal?”

“Yes, and again, Randi, it’s for your protection.”