The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (19 page)

“I hate crooked politicians,” Joshua said.

“Is that because you’re one?” Mac shot back with a grin.

“I’m not a politician.”

“Yes, you are,” Cameron and Mac said in unison.

“You were elected prosecuting attorney,” Cameron said.

“I want to help you get Palazzi,” Joshua told Mac.

“Are you by any chance in the same party he is?” Mac asked. “Does this desire to bring him down have anything to do with party lines?”

“This isn’t about politics,” Joshua said. “It’s about law and order. Now do you want my help, or don’t you?”

“How do you propose to help me?”

“You think the senator had Nick Fields killed because he was blackmailing Palazzi with a copy of the tape where he confesses to raping Florence Everest,” Joshua said.

“Either that,” Mac said, “or Bevis had Fields killed because Fields knew Bevis was a serial killer who murdered women Fields had slept with.” He turned to Cameron. “Those uteruses in the freezer did come from our murder victims.”

“I knew it,” she said.

“Unfortunately,” Joshua said, “since Nick Fields was living in that house, Bevis Palazzi can, and will, point his finger at Fields. After all, his sperm was found on each of the victims.”

“Exactly,” Mac said. “How do you propose we get him?”

“If this was my case, I’d put pressure on the father.”

“But Bevis is the weak link,” Archie said. “He’s the most unstable. He’ll break before Palazzi.”

“And Harry Palazzi is a narcissist,” Mac said. “He’d let his own mother burn to save himself.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Joshua said. “Harry Palazzi is the one with the power to protect Bevis. All we have to do is remove that safety net, and he’ll as much as hand us Bevis. After all, who was it Fields called when you arrested him?”

“Bevis,” Archie said.

“And from that one phone call, the hit man showed up to kill Fields,” Joshua said. “Therefore, that hit had to have originated from Bevis.”

“Bevis called his father after he got Fields’ call,” Archie said. “That’s what we found from his call records. The senator set up the hit.”

“Possibly from Bevis’ orders, or maybe not,” Cameron said from where she was still stroking Gnarly on his bed. “We don’t know what Bevis said in that phone call.”

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot we don’t know,” Mac said. “We do know a lot, but then we don’t have enough evidence to make any arrests and make them stick.”

“But we do know enough to nail the senator,” Joshua said. “We know that every time someone becomes a threat to Senator Harry Palazzi, they end up dead.”

“Very true,” Mac said.

“We know how he works,” Joshua said. “He has enough of a history that we can count on that, and send someone up against him. Then, when Palazzi sends someone to take care of the problem, you’ll be ready.”

“Who do you propose to go up against him?” Mac asked.

“Me.”

Ben Fleming came out with a look of concern on his face when he heard David and Chelsea enter the office.

“Sorry I’m late,” Chelsea apologized before Ben could greet them. “David had trouble getting out of bed.” Realizing the innuendo as the words came out of her mouth, she hurried over to the coffeemaker to conceal the bright blush that covered her face.

“That’s perfectly okay,” Ben said, “I heard all about what happened last night. How’s Mac?”

“He’s fine,” David said.

Perplexed by his nonchalant tone, Ben said, “Even after getting stabbed in the chest and spending the night in the ER?”

“Oh, that wasn’t Mac,” Chelsea said. “It was Gnarly who got stabbed while saving David’s life.” She returned from the coffeemaker with two mugs, one of which she offered to David.

“But the news said—”

“Which goes to prove you can never depend on the news getting the facts straight,” David said.

“Well,” Ben said, “while you were in bed trying to catch up on some sleep, our case has been developing at warp speed.”

“What happened?” Chelsea asked him.

“Bevis Palazzi is in the wind,” he said. “I just got a call from Samuel Brooks, his lawyer. Teresa Winston, Bevis’ senior partner, was found dead this morning in her office. Her assistant said she had told her that she was going to confront him about the identity theft and embezzlement from Sheila McGrath’s accounts last night after everyone had left. Winston had been stabbed multiple times with a letter opener and the garbage from her trashcan was dumped over her dead body. There’s a warrant out for Bevis’ arrest. It’s hitting the news now.”

“What about a warrant for him killing Khloe Everest?” David asked. “Do we have enough now to nail him for that?”

Ben nodded his head. “I just called forensics. They’re notifying you now. DNA matches the uteruses found in Bevis’ house to our three murder victims, including Khloe.”

“But there is nothing to tie him or his father to Dee Blakeley’s murder,” David said.

“Evidence tying Bevis to some of the victims is better than nothing,” the prosecutor said.

“Is there anything I can do?” Chelsea sat down at her desk and grabbed her keyboard. She was ready for action.

“Get started on the warrant for Bevis Palazzi’s arrest.”

“Bevis is going to point the finger at Nick Fields,” David said.

“We have enough to arrest him and get him off the streets,” Ben said. “Meanwhile, you and Mac work at getting enough for us to place him in the Everest home with the knife in his hands so a jury will convict him. Maybe with Willingham’s copy of the tape and a threat of public exposure, the senator will recant his alibi for his son. We need to get Bevis off the streets.”

“He’s a maniac,” David agreed. “We have no way of predicting who this psychopath is going to go after next.”

“We do know one thing,” Chelsea said.

“What?”

“He hates women,” she said.

“That should narrow down his potential victims by fifty percent,” David said.

Chapter Twenty

Senator Harry Palazzi was stretched out on his masseuse’s table waiting for his personal masseuse, a Vietnamese girl with a thick accent who he never understood, to dig her strong hands and claw-like fingers into his fatty shoulders. With his eyes closed, he anticipated the thrill of her working her fingers down his naked body. He could hear the light footsteps come into the room.

Abruptly, the light instrumental mood music ceased, and his own booming voice came through the speakers:

Slap!

“Oh, I forgot how you like it rough,” a male voice said. “If you want it like the last time—”

“Last time was not rough! Last time was an attack. I said no—”

“Of course you said no. They all say no, but they don’t mean no.”

“You pinned my hands down and you raped me!”

“You call it rape, I call it playing rough.”

Senator Palazzi practically fell off the table in rolling over to see the man peering at him with his eyes narrowed to blue slits. The unwanted visitor’s silver hair was combed back off his forehead and fell in a wave at his neck. The senator’s towel fell away to reveal his bulging stomach that covered up most of his private parts. “Who the hell are you?”

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” Joshua stuck out his hand. “Joshua Thornton. We had a mutual friend. Florence Everest decorated my home when I lived in Washington some years back. After my wife died, we renewed our relationship.” He grinned at the senator while he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Only our relationship was consensual. Unfortunately, your daughter never did approve, and eventually we had to go our separate ways. But recently, I received a package from Florence.” He chuckled. “You just heard what that package contained. She also left me a detailed letter telling all about your ‘relationship’ with her. How you raped her when she came to your home to give an estimate for decorating it…”

“Bruce!”

A huge, bald-headed security guard came rushing into the room.

“Show this bastard who he’s messing with!”

When Bruce came at him, Joshua delivered a kick to his groin so hard that it dropped him to his knees. Before Bruce could come back up, Joshua picked up the recorder and whacked him against the side of his head to knock him down and out.

“Now, where was I?” With both hands, Joshua smoothed his silver hair back against the side of his head.

The senator was gazing at the smashed recorder.

“Oh,” Joshua said, “we don’t have to worry about that tape. You can keep it as a gift.”

Seemingly speechless, the senator looked back up at him.

“Do I look stupid to you?” Joshua grinned. “Like I would have only one copy and bring it here to face you. There are more copies of that tape, plus the master. It will cost you a million dollars, cash, small bills, to get all of them. You have until tomorrow morning before they are automatically shipped out to various media outlets and will be uploaded to the Internet everywhere.” He picked up the tape and thrust it into his chest and held it there. His sheer will made Palazzi look at him. “I’ll call you.”

Joshua leaned in toward him. “Oh, and you had better pray that I don’t have any accidents or run into any maniacs with butcher knives, because as soon as that happens, my partner will be uploading that recording. It will go viral. I wonder what your women voters will do when they discover that you’re a serial rapist.”

After shoving him back down onto the table, Joshua sauntered out of the room. When he encountered the senator’s masseuse, he said, “Sorry about the mess. I’m sure the senator will clean it up.”

Bogie was snapping away to capture pictures of Kevin Cooper, private investigator.

Senator Palazzi’s personal cleanup man was meeting with two of his men in his office. In the passenger seat, Cameron was listening in on the meeting with a bug that she had planted during her earlier visit to the brownstone.

“Right on schedule,” she told Bogie. “They’re on a conference call with Palazzi and Brooks. The order is to dive into Joshua’s background for dirt to use against him—”

“I hope he’s clean,” Bogie said.

Cameron gasped. “They’re getting another assignment—to take care of Mac.”

In the cruiser’s back seat, Irving let out a growl.

“Quit complaining,” Cameron told the cat. “You’re just going to have to learn to get along with Joshua.”

“Are you surprised?” Bogie asked her.

“About him being jealous of Josh? No.”

“I mean about targeting Mac.”

“Nope,” she said. “I just hope they don’t get ahead of us.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Darkness enveloped Spencer, Maryland.

Stings are, by their very nature, stressful. Trying to anticipate every move and every angle and expecting the unexpected makes for a stressful situation.

In a vain effort to keep Palazzi’s men from finding a connection with Mac Faraday so that the senator would not sense a trap, Joshua Thornton had checked into a roadside hotel in McHenry.

Mac and David staked out Joshua’s room from the connecting room next door. Bogie and every man available, dressed in plain clothes, were scattered around the hotel and lounge.

Mac felt like a voyeur listening to Joshua and Cameron in the next room, which was wired for video and audio. Even though they were aware of the audience, and Joshua was not one to offer public displays of affection, the chemistry between the newly wedded couple was evident.

“You know you don’t have to do this.” Cameron lay down next to him on the bed and wrapped her arms around him.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to do this,” he replied while hugging her close. “Besides, if I wasn’t here, then you would be here without me and I’d be home with a teenager with raging hormones and a mopey dog missing your neurotic cat.”

“Ah.” She started to sit up. “So you’re doing this for purely selfish reasons?”

“Of course.” Joshua pulled her back down and held her tight so that she couldn’t escape. “I’m a lawyer. I wouldn’t be doing this unless I got something out of it. I’m expecting teeth chattering sex from you after all this is done.”

She sat up and looked down at him. “Okay. Do you want payment in advance?”

“No,” Mac hissed in the adjoining room as if they could hear him. “Pay up later on your own time.”

“Prude,” David muttered to Mac.

Bogie’s voice came across the earbuds. “You are about to have company. Three men just parked over next to the employee entrance and came in through the kitchen. They do not look like dishwashers. They are all carrying.”

“Three?” David asked.

“One of them is Kevin Cooper,” Bogie said.

“He’ll recognize Cameron from the interview at his office.” Grabbing his gun out of his holster, Mac leapt from his seat and ran for the door connecting the two rooms. He threw open the door to catch Joshua and Cameron in the midst of a kiss.

Instinctively, Joshua pushed Cameron away and went for his gun on the bed stand while she went for hers in her holster.

“They’re on their way and Cooper is with them.” Mac waved for the detective to hurry. “Cam, you have to come with me.”

“They’re on their way up to the room,” Bogie reported. “Everyone get ready.”

“You need to get out of there, Cameron,” Mac said.

She ran for the door, but stopped halfway across the room before turning back to grab Joshua’s face in both of her hands and kissing him passionately. “I love you,” she whispered when she pulled back before running through the open doorway.

Mac closed the door as the pounding started on the door to Joshua’s room.

Joshua took his time checking the gun he had in one ankle holster and the knife he had put in a sheaf on the other ankle. For show, he had tucked a gun into the back waistband of his pants.

When he opened the door, he was greeted with a fist to the face that knocked him backwards. He was still tumbling backwards when he got a fist to the gut that doubled him over. Two men then grabbed him by the arms and shoved him back onto the bed where they continued punching him to the stomach and chest after disarming him of the gun tucked in his belt.

In the next room, hearing Joshua taking a beating, Cameron ran for the door, only to have Mac block it. “I can’t let them—“

“Had enough?” One of the thugs asked Joshua.

“No,” Joshua called out with a forced laugh. “I can take it.”

Monitoring the audio and video feed, David, Mac, and Cameron sensed the comment was meant for them.

“He knew this going in,” Mac told her in a low voice.

“Well, Joshua Thornton, I presume.” Kevin Cooper sauntered in. “You made a big mistake trying to cash in on your relationship with Flo Everest. Instead of the senator paying, it’s going to be you.” He asked the men who were searching the room, “Is his partner here?”

Spotting her purse on the table, Cooper grabbed it. “Where is she?” He started to open up the purse.

Realizing Cameron’s police shield was inside her handbag, Joshua snatched it out of his hand. “Out getting us a bottle to celebrate.” He tossed the purse across the bed and into a corner, where it was out of their reach. “She’ll be back soon.” With the back of his hand, he wiped the blood from a cut on his cheek.

“I hope she’s good looking.” Cooper uttered a lewd chuckle. The other men joined in. “After driving all the way out here from Washington, we’re in the mood for a party.”

“Oh,” Joshua said, “and you’re going to have one, too, when she sees the looks of you guys.”

They all laughed until Kevin Cooper saw shakes of his men’s heads indicating that they had not found what they had come to search for. “Where’re the tapes?”

“What tapes?” Joshua asked with a wicked laugh.

Cooper backhanded him across the face. Before Joshua could regroup, Cooper grabbed his jaw in his hand and squeezed. With a gunman on either side pressing their guns into his ribs, Joshua had no escape when Cooper bent over him and glared into his face. “Wrong answer. You told Palazzi that you had a master and a number of copies. I want them all, and I want them now.” He pressed his fingers, squeezing Joshua’s jaw so that the inside of his cheeks pressed against his teeth until his jaw and mouth hurt.

Cooper shoved him back onto the bed. “Now, let’s try this again. Where are the tapes?”

“I should expect such stupidity from an elected official,” Joshua laughed. “I told Palazzi that if anything happened to me that those tapes would be made public. So what does he do? He sends you to rough me up.”

“Not just rough you up,” Cooper whirled around to face him. He shot a cold glare at him. “You’re the one who isn’t very smart, Thornton. Haven’t you figured it out yet? We’re going to kill you and your lady partner when she gets here—after having some fun with her, of course. If you’re lucky, we’ll let you stay alive to watch.” He grabbed Joshua by the shirt. “Now where are the tapes?”

“If Palazzi ruthless enough to send you to kill me for blackmailing him, what do you think he’s going to do to you when those tapes end up on every news station and Internet site all over the world after you kill me without getting them?” Joshua asked. “Do you think he’d hesitate about killing you for being so sloppy? In other words, if you kill me, you’ll be writing your own death warrant.”

“I don’t think so,” Cooper said. “Palazzi has enough friends in dark places that he’ll never get voted out of office.”

“Unless the voters get so physically ill of having a sexual predator representing them that they’ll walk, run, and crawl to get rid of him.”

“So what?” Kevin Cooper broke into such a deep cocky laugh that Joshua wondered if he had lost his mind. Seeing that Joshua didn’t get the joke, he shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I can tell you. After all, you’re going to be dead. It isn’t like you’re going to tell anyone. Haven’t you ever heard of voter fraud? Palazzi has greased all the right palms in all the right places. As long as the senator pays his bills, the computers inside the voting machines will always say he wins. He’s in for life.” He scoffed. “And he’s not the only politician in Washington who’s found a way to take the worry out of elections. So what the voters think really doesn’t matter.”

“Unless Palazzi ended up in jail,” Joshua said. “Like for having you kill Khloe for him.”

“Hey,” Cooper said. “’I did not kill Khloe.”

“You’re Senator Palazzi’s cleanup man, right?” Joshua asked.

“Enough talk,” Cooper said. “You’re asking too many questions.” He ordered his men, “Kill him.”

When one of the men grabbed him by the arm, Joshua countered with a kick to his knee that caused the thug to drop to his knees. When the other man grabbed him and pinned his arms behind his back, Joshua turned to Cooper. “Even if Palazzi has the voting machines stacked in his favor, people are going to be asking questions and looking into how he can keep getting voted into office when the overwhelming public opinion is against him because he’s a rapist. So it’s in his best interest that those tapes aren’t made public. You’re never going to find them without me, and I’m not going to give them up unless I get answers.”

“What do you need answers for when you’re going to be dead in a few minutes?” Cooper asked.

“Wouldn’t you want to know who killed you?” Joshua answered. “Who gave you the order to kill me? Palazzi? Does he give you his orders directly?”

The gunman he had knocked down hobbled back up onto the bed.

“Senator Palazzi didn’t get where he is by being stupid.” Kevin Cooper laughed.

“His son.” Joshua shifted to ease the discomfort of the two guns stuck in his ribs.

“You’re a lawyer, right?” Cooper said. “Haven’t you had clients who have special needs?”

“Samuel Brooks,” Joshua said. “He takes the orders from Palazzi, who passes them on to you and then hides behind lawyer-client privilege.”

“That’s how it works.”

“So the order to kill me and my partner came from Samuel Brooks,” Joshua said.

“After we collect all of the copies you have of the recording,” the private investigator said.

“Do you know what’s on that recording? Palazzi admitting to Florence Everest the he raped her and got her pregnant.”

“Fat lot I care,” Cooper said with a shrug.

“As long as you get paid.”

“As long as Samuel Brooks pays me my retainer every month to take care of his big money clients and keep the skeletons in their closets behind closed doors, I do what I have to do.”

“How many clients does Brooks have you doing cleanup for? How many politicians have gotten themselves into office via this voter fraud scheme?”

Cooper and his men answered with wicked laughs.

“Come on,” Joshua said. “You’re going to kill me and my partner isn’t here yet. It isn’t like I can spread this around.”

“Okay,” Cooper said. “You want to know?”

“I have a right to know.”

“Palazzi is Brooks’ big client,” Cooper said. “I mean, this man has two serious problems. He can’t keep his fly shut, and he hates women. Bad combo. It’s like a couple of times a year we need to go convince some bitch to take the payoff that Brooks offers her to not go blabbing to the police and the media.”

“Where does Bevis fit into all this?” Joshua asked.

“You ever hear the nut doesn’t fall very far from the tree?” Cooper said. “Bevis hates women, too—only it’s worse than his daddy. No chance of the senator ever becoming a granddaddy with that one. He’s a royal whack job. He blames women for everything. If he’s got a big account coming in and it falls through—doesn’t matter that it’s the male client who pulled it—Bevis will blame the client’s wife, or if he’s not married, his girlfriend, or the client’s female assistant.” He paused. “It’s always the woman’s fault for everything.”

“What cleanup have you had to do for Bevis?” Joshua asked.

Without answering, Cooper stared at him.

Joshua could almost see the wheels turning in the PI’s mind while he was thinking.

“What’s taking your partner so long?” Cooper asked.

Holding his breath, Joshua wondered if he had pushed too far with the questions. On both sides of him, the muzzles of the guns pressed against his ribs.

“Sounds like the senator has a sweet setup,” Joshua said. “His lawyer handles the payoffs. You guys provide the muscle to the victims who have too much integrity to accept money.”

“Too much integrity and not enough brains,” Cooper said.

“Or, they could just plain be stupid,” Joshua said.

“We’ve had some of them, too.”

“Like Nick Fields,” Joshua said. “He had no integrity or brains. That’s why you had to send Lincoln Northrop to kill him at the Spencer Police Department.”

Cooper’s cocky grin fell as Joshua’s stretched across his face. “It’s a set up!” Grabbing his gun from his holster, the private investigator ran for the door, only to have it fly open. He came face to face with Bogie and the muzzle of an assault rifle. Seeing that he was outgunned, he spun on his heels and ran for the connecting door. When he threw it open, he came face to face with Cameron’s and David’s guns. Throwing up his hands, he backed up into the room while Cameron grabbed the gun from his hand.

Before both gunmen could fire their weapons, Joshua reached up behind them and slammed their heads together. In the seconds that they reacted to the sudden head butt, Joshua somersaulted backwards over the bed. When the two assailants dove across the bed to pursue him, they froze when Joshua came back up with a gun in each hand and aimed at them. It was only then that they realized that Joshua had managed to disarm both of them simultaneously after butting their heads.

A look of disbelief filled their faces as Joshua aimed their own guns at both of them. “Told you we were going to have a party,” he told them before they were cuffed and taken down to Spencer police department.

“You’re wasting your time. Palazzi will have us out by morning,” Kevin Cooper said when Bogie shoved him down into a chair at the table in the hotel room.

“I don’t think so,” David said. “We have enough on you to nail you for conspiracy to commit murder in this case, and once we get a warrant for your phone records, we’ll connect you to Lincoln Northrop and prove that the order to kill Nick Fields came from you.”

“Not to mention all the big name clients who Brooks has had you doing cleanup for,” Joshua added.

“I want a deal,” Cooper said.

“Oh,” Mac said. “I can imagine that. You’re going to say it was Brooks, and Brooks is going to hide behind lawyer-client privilege. Someone is going to jail, and we’ll settle for you.”

“There’s no hiding with what I have to offer,” Cooper said. “I have recordings—video and audio. Sometimes, Palazzi wanted his messages delivered in a special way, and he wanted to give his orders in person.” He chuckled. “I have him on tape telling where all the bodies are hidden…” His grin was like that of a cat who had eaten a very plump canary. “…including his wife’s.”