Authors: Phillip Margolin
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective
“Hell of a way to start the day, huh Stan?”
“Hey, you know me. I love the smell of charred flesh first thing in the morning. To what do I owe this honor?”
McCarthy gestured toward the car. “We ran a trace on the plates. It belongs to Ally Bennett.”
“She’s one of Dupre’s girls.”
McCarthy nodded. “The body was badly burned, but it’s female and fits Bennett’s general description.”
“Lori Andrews. Now Bennett.”
“Don’t forget Oscar Baron.”
“You think the three murders are connected?”
“Two of Dupre’s women and his attorney murdered so close together. What do you think?”
“Dupre is in jail. He couldn’t have killed Baron or Bennett.”
“That’s why I called you out. You know all about Dupre’s operation. Did he have a partner, someone who’d get rid of witnesses for him?”
“No. He was a loner. I . . .”
“Sean!”
The detectives turned. Alex DeVore was crossing the meadow followed by a heavyset man wearing a green uniform.
“This is Dmitry Rubin. He’s with park maintenance. Dmitry made the 911 call last night.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Rubin,” McCarthy said. “I’m Sean McCarthy. This is Stan Gregaros.”
“I just finished taking Mr. Rubin’s statement. Tell them what you told me.”
“I was driving back to the garage last night when I passed a car. What made me remember it was it was driving without headlights. It came out of nowhere. There could have been an accident.”
“Can you describe it?” Gregaros asked, trying to keep his voice even.
“Nah. I figured it was kids, you know, going up to the meadow to make out.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Rubin,” DeVore said.
“The explosion was a few minutes after. I pulled over when I heard it. Then I turned around and headed back. When I was halfway here, a car came barreling by.”
“The same one you saw before?” Gregaros asked.
“No, a different one. But the car that was driving without headlights came by a few seconds later.”
“Can you give us a make or model on either car?”
“Mr. Rubin did better than that,” DeVore said. “He got most of the license number on the car he saw right after the explosion.”
“I didn’t get it all,” Rubin said apologetically. “It went by too fast.”
“What about the car that was driving without headlights?” Gregaros asked.
Rubin shook his head. “I was writing down the license number. My head was down. By the time I looked, it was too late.”
“Don’t worry about that,” McCarthy said. “This is a great help to us.”
“Yeah, nice work,” Gregaros added, successfully hiding his relief that Rubin had missed his car. Still, if they traced the partial plate to Tim Kerrigan, there would be trouble.
“Was there something about the shooting at Jon’s house?”
“No, nothing. But Ally Bennett is dead.”
“What!”
“She was murdered. They found her body in Forest Park.”
Amanda looked stricken. “She recorded the tapes at the Travis fund-raiser and she brought the tapes of the drug deals to Oscar Baron. The people who killed Oscar probably got to her.”
“I bet she was the woman who was staying at Dupre’s safe house.”
“The men you shot last night may have killed her. Are they in custody?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could they have left on their own steam?”
“Maybe. They were in a lot of pain but the big guy was tough. Have you made a decision on what to do with the evidence in the duffel bag?”
“Not yet. If the two men got away, maybe we don’t have to do anything. Just hang tight and we’ll talk later.”
Castillo pulled down his ski mask and rapped with the butt of his gun on the wall that separated the cab of the van from the back. The driver would stay in the van and keep the motor running while Castillo and his crew took care of business. All of the men were dressed in black and carried automatic weapons. The van was painted black and had stolen plates.
The house was dark and there was no moon. Castillo crossed the lawn quickly and surveyed the door for a few seconds before blowing out the lock. One of his men kicked it in and rushed into the house.
George, Amanda’s bodyguard, was waiting for them. He shot the first man as he came through the front door. Castillo hit the floor and fired a burst of automatic fire. It laced across George’s side and shoulder. The next man through the door shot the bodyguard in the midsection. George went down firing. His round sliced through the gunman’s kneecap. Castillo ignored the chaos and raced up the stairs to the second floor. The alarm shrieked so loudly that he did not hear the last man through the door drop from a bullet that drilled through the back of his head.
Amanda heard shots and raced onto the landing. The sharp bark of automatic weapons fire sounded over the alarm. Frank dragged Amanda toward a narrow back stairs that led to the kitchen. They were almost there when shots stitched a line down the landing. Frank turned and fired his shotgun. In the flash, Amanda saw a man in a ski mask dive into her room.
“Go!” Frank yelled.
Amanda raced for the back stairs. Castillo stuck the muzzle of his automatic weapon into the hall and pulled the trigger. Amanda was halfway down the stairs when she heard Frank grunt. She turned and Frank tumbled by, almost bowling her over. He landed in the kitchen in a heap.
“Dad!”
Frank’s shoulder and his pants leg were drenched with blood. Amanda bent over him.
“Get out,” Frank gasped. “Go!”
Amanda looked for the shotgun, but it had fallen out of Frank’s hand on the upper landing when he was hit. She dragged her father into the butler’s pantry, hoping the darkness would hide him. Over the shrieking alarm, she heard footsteps pounding down the back stairs. The door to the basement was in front of her. Amanda wrenched it open and leaped down the stairs in the dark.
A little moonlight filtered through the dirty basement windows. It was barely enough to see, but Amanda had grown up in this house and knew every inch of the basement by heart. Frank had stacked a cord of wood against the unpainted concrete wall to the right of the stairs. Next to the logs was an axe. A light bulb hung from the ceiling in front of the stairs. Amanda grabbed the axe and shattered the bulb. There were three other bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Amanda raced through the room smashing them. She had just finished when she heard the basement door fly open.
Evenly spaced through the unfinished basement were massive wood beams that supported the ceiling. Amanda hid behind one and waited. The few times she had hunted with her father, he had shown her how to move through the woods quietly. She tried to remember her father’s lessons now.
Someone started down the basement stairs. Amanda tightened her grip on the axe. In the dim light she saw a man holding an automatic weapon. He turned away from her and looked at the cord of wood. When he was satisfied that Amanda wasn’t hiding behind him, the man turned in Amanda’s direction. He was wearing a ski mask.
“Hey, sweetie, come out.”
She recognized the voice of the pockmarked man who had kidnapped her, and she started to shake.
“If you surrender to me now I’ll make it fast,” he said as he moved across the concrete floor. “If you piss me off I’ll take you with me. It will be just you and me hour after hour, day after day.”
Amanda knew what she had to do if she and her father were going to survive this night.
“I read about some guy,” Castillo went on. “He kept a woman chained up, with tape over her mouth, in a box under his bed. When he wanted her he would take her out and fuck her. Some days he’d even feed her. Then she’d go back in the box, like a deck of cards. I have a nice bed. There’s plenty of space for a coffin under it.”
Terror threatened to paralyze Amanda; she forced herself to block out the killer’s voice and visualize what she had to do, just as she did before a swim meet. When her tormentor was within reach, Amanda would move and swing and swing again, the way she stroked in a race—powerful strokes, rhythmic strokes, one after the other.
Castillo was close to the beam now. She could hear his feet slide toward her along the concrete floor. The moment his back was to her, Amanda stepped out and swung with all her might. The axe bit into Castillo’s right shoulder with a sickening thud. He grunted and his gun clattered to the floor. As Amanda yanked out the axe and raised it again, Castillo stared at her in disbelief. Amanda’s light-colored flannel pajamas were spotted with his blood. More blood speckled her face. She looked insane.
The blade sliced into his knee. Castillo shrieked. The next blow took him in the side. Blood spurted from his shoulder, his knee, and this new wound. He crashed to the floor face-first, unable to move his hand to break his fall. Amanda straddled him, screaming with each blow.
“Don’t,” Castillo croaked as the blade descended one last time. The axe sliced through the killer’s throat and cut off his words. Amanda stepped on his shoulder and wrenched out the blade. She prepared to swing again, but footsteps brought her around. The slender man in the Mariners’ baseball cap, whom Amanda had seen in the courthouse and thought she’d seen in her garage, leaped to the bottom of the stairs. He swung a gun toward Amanda’s midsection and froze. She raised her axe.
“Red! Red!” he shouted. “It’s okay, Amanda. You’re safe.”
The killing rage still had hold of her and she took a step forward. The man lowered his gun.
“They’re all dead. You’re safe,” he said softly. “I’m Anthony.”
Amanda gripped the handle. What if it was a trick?
“I’ve got to get an ambulance for your father. He’s hurt. He has to go to a hospital.”
Suddenly her arms were too heavy to hold the axe and it clanged to the floor.
“We’ve got to call for an ambulance,” Anthony insisted as he turned and raced up the stairs with Amanda on his heels. While Anthony called 911, she dropped beside Frank and rested his head in her lap. When the police and the medics found her, Amanda was still sitting on the floor with Frank, but Anthony and the Indian were gone. Amanda tried to remember what the man in the cap looked like but she could not recall a single feature.
“Mike.”
Greene looked up and saw Sean McCarthy and Stan Gregaros walking out of the hall that led to the kitchen.
“Where is she, Sean?”
“Upstairs, away from this mess.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s in shock. The first cop who got here found her sitting on the floor in the kitchen. Frank’s head was in her lap and she was rocking back and forth.”
“Is Frank . . .?”
“He was shot twice and bleeding badly, but the medics got to the house in time. He’s at the hospital now. The doctors think he’ll make it.”
“Thank God.”
“There’s something else,” McCarthy told Greene. “There’s a dead man in the cellar. Amanda killed him with an axe.”
“It’s self-defense, all the way,” Gregaros added. “The guy in the basement is Manuel Castillo, an enforcer for Pedro Aragon.”
“What would Aragon want with Frank and Amanda?” Mike asked Gregaros.
“She was pretty shaken when we talked. I didn’t press her,” McCarthy answered. “We’re hoping that Amanda can clear up everything when she’s calmer.”
“Shit. It’s not fair after what she went through with Cardoni.”
“She’ll be okay, Mike,” McCarthy said.
“I want to see her.”
Greene started toward the stairs but McCarthy stopped him.
“Amanda needs a friend, right now. That’s why I called you. This is not your case. You’ve got a conflict. Comfort her, but don’t question her. Understood?”
Greene nodded then shook off McCarthy’s hand and ran upstairs. Amanda was being photographed by a lab tech. She startled when Greene ran into the room. Greene stared at her blood-streaked face and pajamas.
“Are you okay?” he asked. She nodded but the fear he saw told him she wasn’t.
“I’m through, Mike,” the photographer said, “but we’ll need the clothes.”
A policewoman had been sitting with Amanda. “Let’s go to your room,” she said. “We’ll get these things off of you and get you warm.”
Mike followed the women down the hall and waited outside Amanda’s door while she cleaned up and changed. At the far end of the hallway, another lab tech was examining blood that had splashed on the wall across from the back stairs.
Amanda looked terrible. He couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through. She was tough—he’d been there when she’d set herself up as a sacrificial lamb so they could trap the surgeon—but she was basically a decent and gentle person. Mike knew policemen who had killed criminals in self-defense. No matter how justified the killing, most of them were scarred psychologically from the experience.
The door to Amanda’s room opened, and she came out dressed in slacks and a sweater. She was pale, and her hair was damp from a quick shower. Mike hesitated, not certain that Amanda would want to be touched.
“Can I . . .” he started, but Amanda cut him short by falling against his chest. He held her while she sobbed.
“Sean heard from the hospital,” Mike said as he led her down the hall and into the study, where they’d have some privacy. “Your dad is going to be okay.”
“I killed him, Mike. I lost control.”
Mike forgot what Sean had said about discussing the case with Amanda. He stepped back and put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to look in his eyes.
“You had to.”
“You don’t understand. I wanted to kill him. I couldn’t stop. My arms just kept moving.”
“Amanda, listen to me. You didn’t do anything wrong. The man you killed was Manuel Castillo, an enforcer for Pedro Aragon. It was him or you.”
Mike was about to say something else when a man knocked on the doorjamb. He was an African American with glasses and a sturdy build, and Greene had never seen him before.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Greene, but I’d like a few words with Miss Jaffe.”
“Who are you?” Greene asked.
“J. D. Hunter. I’m with the FBI.”
“Can’t this wait for later?”
“I’ve been informed that Ms. Jaffe had been kidnapped by one of her assailants.” Mike stared at Amanda. “Kidnapping is a federal crime.”
“What’s he talking about?” Mike asked.
Amanda put a hand on Mike’s arm. “It’s okay, Mike. Let me talk to him.”
“I’d like to question Miss Jaffe alone, if you don’t mind.”
Mike knew that he had no business being in the room, but he didn’t want to leave Amanda. She flashed him a tired smile.
“I’m still a lawyer. I know how to protect myself.”
Amanda squeezed his hand and watched as he left the room.
“Who called you?” Amanda asked as soon as the door closed behind Greene.
“Sean McCarthy,” Hunter said.
“It seems like a funny thing to do, calling in the feds at this point.”
Hunter laughed. “You don’t miss a thing, do you? I heard you were sharp.”
“So, what’s this really about?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, not yet. But I’d appreciate it very much if you’d take it on faith that Jon Dupre may benefit from my investigation.”
Amanda thought about that for a moment. “Ask your questions.”
“Tell me about the kidnapping.”
Amanda took a deep breath. Her kidnapper was dead but her emotions hadn’t fully accepted that yet.
“I was captured in my parking garage a few days ago. The man in the basement and the two dead men in the living room took me out in the woods. They threatened to . . . to do things to me.”
Amanda stopped, unable to repeat Castillo’s threats.
“Do you know why you were kidnapped?”
Amanda nodded. “They wanted me to throw the cases against Jon Dupre.”
“From what I’ve heard, they’re easy cases to win. Why would Pedro Aragon have to fix them?”
Amanda hesitated. There were policemen, a senator, lawyers, and judges in The Vaughn Street Glee Club. Why not an FBI agent? Amanda closed her eyes. She didn’t care anymore. After what had happened this evening, she decided that her best defense was to make what she knew about the club public. Keeping quiet had almost gotten her father killed.
“Despite the way things look, Jon Dupre may be innocent of both murders,” Amanda said. “I’m certain that Wendell Hayes was sent to the jail to murder Jon and that he, not Jon, smuggled the shiv into the visiting room.”
Amanda watched for Hunter’s reaction and was surprised to see none.
“Who do you think sent Hayes to kill your client?”
“Have you ever heard of a group called The Vaughn Street Glee Club?”
“Yes, but I’m impressed that you have. Why don’t you tell me what you know about them.”
“I think Pedro Aragon met Wendell Hayes in nineteen seventy when they were in their teens or early twenties and formed a pact to help each other. I think some of Hayes’s childhood friends were part of the group. Over the years, Wendell and his friends rose to power and they drafted new recruits into their club. If I’m right, there are bankers, judges, politicians, district attorneys, and police involved. How am I doing?”
“Keep going, Miss Jaffe,” Hunter responded noncommittally.
Amanda told Hunter about the evidence that pointed to Senator Travis as the man who murdered Lori Andrews. Then she told the agent Jon Dupre’s version of the Hayes killing and the evidence that supported it, including Paul Baylor’s opinion that Dupre had been attacked.
“My investigator has discovered two suicides going back many years, which may have been murders committed by these people. But I think that the real reason they want to shut me up is that I filed a motion for discovery for the police reports in a multiple murder in a drug house that occurred in nineteen seventy. Here’s the kicker: The drug house was on Vaughn Street.”
Hunter’s poker face was transformed by a wide smile.
“Weapons taken from Wendell Hayes’s home were used in the shooting. The police concluded that a burglar stole the guns but I think Wendell took them. Hayes had an alibi for the night of the killings. Supposedly he was at a party with college friends who were home on Christmas break. I’m willing to bet that somewhere there is an interview with these boys. I think they were the original members of The Vaughn Street Glee Club and this is the only record that can point us to them.”
“Miss Jaffe,” Hunter said, “if you ever get tired of practicing law there’s a spot for you in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Then you believe me?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been on this case for a while. Senator Travis had a penchant for rough sex and a thing for Lori Andrews. Dupre was buying his drugs from Pedro Aragon. When Portland Vice arrested Andrews, she agreed to work as an informant to help them get Dupre. The Bureau has been trying to break Pedro’s cartel and we found out about Lori. During a debriefing, she told an agent about the senator, and I was brought in. We’d heard rumors that Pedro was connected to several prominent people in Oregon, and I’d heard Sammy Cortez’s story about The Vaughn Street Glee Club. When Wendell Hayes tried to kill Dupre I started taking the story seriously. You’ve given me the last piece of information that I needed.”
“To do what?”
“Again, I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, not until we close the loop. But I can tell you that you’ve performed an invaluable service by opening up to me.”
“Since I’ve been so helpful to you, do something for me.”
“If I can.”
“Can you take me to the hospital? I’ve got to see my father.”