Page 23 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

“Listen good, lady,” the man said. Having secured me, he seemed to relax slightly. He slid the gun up so that it was pressed against my forehead. “You gonna drop the case. Okay?”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. Something was rising in me, overcoming my terror the way a bank of dark clouds eats the night sky. A billowing plume of anger grew so big, it seemed to bulge inside my ears, stifling all sound. “What did you say?”

“You gonnadrop ... that ... case,” the man said. “Make whatever calls you gotta make. Do whatever it is you gotta do. But you gonnadrop ittonight or I’ll be back here.”

I breathed, fury bending my bones outward to make space for itself. The man stepped around and stood between my knees at the end of the bench, a hooded silhouette against the night sky.

“You back away for good or I’ll be comin’ around again with my li’l ties.” He nodded at the cable tie on my right wrist. “I can have a lot of fun with those. You saw how fast I put ’em on. I got plenty of tricks where that came from. I’ll have you and that li’l teenage beauty all trussed up before you — ”

He didn’t get to finish. The balloon of rage burst in my chest. I heaved the barbell up off the hooks holding it, brought it to my chest, then used all my strength to simultaneously jump up and launch it at him. My tied hands carried me, and I smashed the bar horizontally into his chest, knocking him backward. We tumbled together to the ground, landed with the barbell pinning him, me straddling his chest. The gun skidded across the tiles and into the pool. I braced my thighs, lifted the barbell, twisted it vertically — and drove it down onto his chest.

The huge surface of the stacked weights attached to the end smashed into his torso. I heard a colossal crunch, felt a wet expulsion of air. I stood and as he rolled away, I dropped the weights and put a foot against the bar. I braced myself, then snapped the cable ties off my wrists like they were dental floss.

My attacker was crawling for the stairs, coughing blood. I marched over, picked him up by the ass of his jeans and the collar of the hoodie, and threw him through the open door down the stairs. He landed in a crumpled heap on the landing like a human bag of laundry, leaving blood smears on the walls.

CHAPTER25

BABY SLAMMED THE DRILLinto the toolbox on top of the ladder, thumped the lid closed, and examined her work. The camera she’d just installed on the pillar of Arthur’s porch was big and encased in white, a glistening black eye with a view of the entire front of the property. It was a showy piece, the kind of camera designed to be seen, the kind hooked up in stores to discourage shoplifters. Baby and Rhonda had used them a couple of times in the exact type of operation that Baby was about to pull.

The night was quiet all around her. The frogs and crickets in the long grass must have been scared off by the sound of the drilling. Arthur had gone to bed. She got down, folded the ladder, leaned it against the porch, and carried the toolbox to the back of the property. She checked the Ubers in the area. Six minutes for a pickup. When she got home, she’d sneak back into the mansion, try to catch a few hours of shut-eye.

Baby rounded the corner of the back porch and saw a figure in the moonlight just off the steps, a big man with close-cropped hair. He stood poised, waiting, listening. Baby guessed he’d been planning to enter the house until he’d heard her drilling up front.

Baby thought about yelling. She didn’t. Instead, she stepped around the side of the house, intentionally dropped the toolbox, and cursed loudly. Then she crept forward and, as expected, saw the man had spooked and bolted for the back fence.

She silently followed, the tall grass brushing at her hips, prickles catching in her jeans. She vaulted the fence a few seconds after he did, then trailed him through the overgrown garden of the house behind Arthur’s. The man turned right and headed toward a strip of apartment buildings. She was ten yards behind.

As the man climbed into a small gray Honda, Baby stopped by a tree, slipped her phone from her pocket, and prepared to take a picture of the license plate. She growled in frustration as a call from Rhonda flashed onto the screen, making the camera vanish. By the time she’d declined the call and tried to snap a picture of the trespasser’s license plate, it was almost too late, and the photo was blurry.

“Where are you?” Rhonda demanded when Baby answered her second call.

“In my bedroom?”

“That’s funny.” Her older sister’s voice was strained. “ ’Cause I just killed a guy right outside your door. You didn’t hear anything? You didn’t think to come out and help?”

Baby’s mouth opened and shut, the words caught in her throat. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up when she heard sirens wail on the other end of the line. “Youwhat?”

“Get your ass home, Baby,” Rhonda snarled. “Right now.”

CHAPTER26

A PLAINCLOTHES COP LEANEDagainst the ambulance beside me and peeled the lid off his coffee, which was still steaming. He was maybe pushing forty, fit, with a short-cut beard. I hadn’t even let him introduce himself before I launched into my statement from where I sat on the tailgate of the ambulance. The police officers stomping in and out through my front door eyed the eggshells on the steps suspiciously as they passed.

“I feared for my life, and I acted with the force I believed was required to defend myself,” I concluded my third run-through of the story. I was trying not to look at my hands, at the cuts the cable ties had left on my wrists. The comedown from the adrenaline and rage was giving me the twitches. “If you want more detail about what happened, it’ll have to be in front of an attorney in a formal setting.”

“You’re a lawyer, huh?” The detective sipped his coffee.

“How’d you guess?”

“I know who you are,” he said. “I’m not here because of the home-invasion homicide. I was actually on my way here anyway, even at this late hour. Hence the coffee.” He lifted the cup. “A call like that? A woman beat a guy to death in her home gym with a barbell? Hell, you know I hit the gas. I’d just picked up this coffee when I heard, otherwise I’d have skipped the caffeine injection.”

I stared at him. The confusion must have been plain on my face.

“I’m Detective William Brogan.” He shook my hand warmly. “I’m heading up the Troy Hansen investigation.”

“Oh, Jesus.” I held my head.

“You said the intruder told you to drop the case,” Brogan said. “Did he mean the Troy Hansen case? Is that what this was about?” Brogan gestured to the front door of my house where the EMTs were wheeling the dead intruder out on a gurney. I wondered how many of my neighbors had been awakened by the commotion and were now watching from their windows.

---