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She was standing at the curb in a man’s white shirt, jeans, and bedroom slippers when I pulled up.
“Which hospital?” she asked me, getting into the passenger seat. “What’s his condition? Is it serious?”
“Buckle up,” I said.
The car shot off the curb and I set my course for Metropolitan Hospital. Nancy clenched her fists and beat her thighs as I told her about the standoff at Oswaldo Vasquez’s house.
I told her Vasquez had called her husband in a panic, saying that a number of cars had driven up to his house and that he perceived them to be a threat. I said that by the time Ted and I arrived, a full-scale shootout between the police and the men in those cars was in progress.
“He was safe in the car with me,” I told Nancy. “Then—he jumped out of the car and ran toward Vasquez’s house.”
“Oh, my God. That’s when he got shot?”
I nodded. “He was down but not out when the EMTs arrived.”
“This is all your fault,” she hissed at me. “Damn you, Sergeant.”
“I understand what you’re going through, Nancy, and I feel terrible for you.”
“I don’t care how you spin it. You’ve been crowding Ted for weeks now and he’s never done anything wrong. Anything he did, he did it for us. His family.”
“Do you understand the truth? Your husband is a criminal.”
She scoffed and said, “The real criminal is Kingfisher.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“He’s the one who had the Calhoun family killed, or didn’t you know?”
“Do you know this for a fact?” I asked her.
Nancy Swanson covered her face with her hands. Her neck and arms were red with welts. She sobbed, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have three kids. We can’t lose Ted. He has to live, do you understand?”
I said, “Nancy, can you tell me anything that might help us get the shooters?”
She turned her burning eyes to me and said, “Are you out of your mind? I’m a cop’s wife. Don’t you think I know what you’re trying to do?”
I stopped the car outside the emergency room and Nancy unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door, and took off at a run.
My phone began buzzing before I could close the door.
It was Brady.
“Vasquez is missing,” Brady said. “He doesn’t answer his phone. His house is empty, Boxer. He’s just gone.”
CHAPTER 98
THE NEXT MORNING at ten, Conklin and I took the drive to Parkmerced with two uniformed officers following behind.
Nancy Swanson opened the door. She was wearing the same big shirt and jeans she’d been wearing yesterday, and from the look of her eyes, she’d been crying since then, too.
I introduced Conklin, but she didn’t look at him. I handed her the search warrant and she stepped aside, snapping, “What do you have against Ted? Do you even know how he’s doing?”
“Have you heard from Vasquez?” I asked her.
“If I had, you’d be the last person I’d tell.”
Conklin and I went through the house, which looked cheerful now with daylight coming through the many windows facing the greenery of Villa Merced Park. We gloved up, and with Nancy watching, Conklin and I searched the den. We found a trick panel in a bookcase. There were innumerable banded stacks of twenty-dollar bills inside.
