one? How does that make sense?”
King lowered himself into the passenger seat. “Granted it’s ridiculous and degrading. Is that why you’re in such a bad mood?”
“No! The legendary Aphrodisiac was a complete waste of time, that’s why.”
“How can you say that? Not only did you get a job offer as a pole dancer, which could actually come in handy when our firm’s going through the inevitable lean times, but you also might have a real friend in Heidi.”
A second later King was rubbing his arm where she’d slugged him. “Damn, that really hurt, Michelle,” he complained.
“And it’ll hurt even more if you keep it up.”
CHAPTER
41
JUNIOR DEAVER STEPPED
outside his half-built house and looked at the dark sky. The man was tired, having worked all day on other people’s jobs before heading here to drive nails into shingles and plywood. He’d finished right before the light was gone, and then worked some on the inside. They were all looking forward to getting out of the cramped trailer.
However, the upcoming criminal trial was weighing heavily on his mind. Lulu never stopped talking about it. Could be the ruin of all our dreams, she kept saying. What if Mrs. Battle sued them? It would all be over. Then his mother-in-law would start in, and once started, Priscilla Oxley never shut up. Junior had experienced many lows in life. This one ranked right up there with the worst.
He thought about Remmy Battle’s offer. If only he had something to give her. It pissed him off that no one seemed to believe him. Yet with all the evidence stacked against him he could understand how the woman thought he was guilty.
As he munched on a sandwich and sipped a beer he’d pulled from his cooler, he mulled over some things in his head. He could end this thing right now if he wanted—just tell the truth of what he’d been doing that night—but he’d rather go to jail. He just couldn’t do that to Lulu. It’d been stupid, really stupid. But he couldn’t take it back now.
He finished his sandwich. His cell phone was vibrating with a box full of messages. He hated the damn thing; everybody wanted something right now. He checked the list of calls. One had him puzzled: Sean King. Wonder what he wants, Junior thought. Well, it would have to wait.
He went back inside. It was almost eight o’clock, definitely time to call it a day. He’d been up since four in the morning. His back was killing him from climbing up and down the ladder with the shingles. He was getting too old for this kind of labor. Yet he expected to be doing it until he dropped. What else was there for a guy like him?
The blow came from directly behind him, actually cracking his skull and staggering the big man. Junior clutched his head and in the same motion wheeled around. Through the blood pouring down his face he saw the black hood coming at him, shovel upraised. He managed to block the blow with his forearm, though it shattered it. He fell back, yelling from the pain. As he lay on the cold wooden floor, he saw the shovel coming at him again. He managed to swing out his right leg and knocked the person’s feet out from under him.
The man landed hard but sprang back up. Junior sat back on his butt, holding his broken arm. His big belly heaving, he kept kicking at his attacker, trying to keep him back as he scuffled away. His sandwich and beer came back up on him, covering the wooden subfloor with vomit. He managed to half raise himself, but another blow caught him across the back, and he went down again.
Junior Deaver was over six-four and weighed about 270 pounds. If he could just get in one shot on his smaller opponent, he knew things could change quickly. He’d kill the son of a bitch. Considering how badly he was already injured, Junior figured he had only one chance at this. Having been in his share of bar fights, he had some experience to draw on. He plotted to sucker his attacker in.
He knelt down, his head almost touching the floor, as though helpless. When he saw the shovel rise, he shot forward and hit his attacker directly in the gut, carrying them both across the room, where they crashed through a wall of studs.
They both hit the floor and sprawled away from each other. Junior tried to hold on to the smaller man, but the pains in his arm and shoulder were too intense. And blood was leaching through the fissure in his skull, putting pressure on his brain and causing his motor skills to rapidly deteriorate. Junior struggled to reach his feet, but the other man was quicker. He rolled away, picked up a piece of one of the broken studs and repeatedly beat Junior over the head with it, his blows becoming harder and more savage; the two-by-four splintered, popping out bent nails, and finally split in half. Junior moaned, went down, rolled over and didn’t get back up. His belly heaving, blood flowing from multiple head wounds, he just lay there, his eyes closed.
The man in the hood approached cautiously, wary of another trick. He first cursed Junior and then himself for having so underestimated his target. He was sure a direct blow from a shovel to the back of the head would have felled the man. He calmed, cleared his head, told himself he had to finish the job. So get on with it.
His own stomach heaving, his throat cottony and a swell of lactic acid in his muscles making him dizzy, he knelt next to Junior and slipped the rounded piece of wood and length of rope out of his coat. He placed the tourniquet over Junior’s head, settled it around his thick neck and slowly started to tighten until he could hear Junior gurgling for air. He kept turning it steadily, keeping constant pressure. A few minutes later the big belly heaved once more and then stopped.
The man let go of the wood and sat back on his haunches. He felt his shoulder where the impact with Junior and the studs had done him injury. He could live with that. Far more problematic was that the fight had put potential evidence in play. Using Junior’s generator light, he methodically examined himself. He was covered in the man’s blood, retch and mucus. Fortunately, he was wearing his hood, gloves and long sleeves because even one pulled-out hair with DNA root attached from his head or arms could prove a forensic nightmare for him.
He scoured the area and then the dead man for anything that would give him away to the likes of Sylvia Diaz. He spent much time probing under Junior’s fingernails for any telltale human debris that might have ended up there. Finally comfortable that he hadn’t left significant traces of himself lying around, he pulled the clown mask from his other coat pocket and placed it next to the body. It had crumpled upon Junior’s impact with him, but even so, the police could hardly miss the intended meaning.
He checked Junior’s pulse to ensure there was none, then sat there for five more minutes and checked it again. Subtle changes in the body upon death were well known to him, and satisfyingly, they were all taking place here. The man was gone. He reached over and gingerly raised Junior’s left hand. He pulled out the watch stem and set it precisely to five o’clock—the same reading the impostor had set Bobby Battle’s watch to. This would send a clear message to the police and to the impostor. He wanted them both to be informed. Instead of propping up the arm, he laid the hand back down and then pulled a black marker out from Junior’s tool belt and drew an arrow on the plywood floor pointing directly to the watch. Lastly, he removed Junior’s big belt buckle with a NASCAR logo and slipped it into his pocket.
The sound startled him badly until he realized what it was. Junior’s cell phone was buzzing. It had fallen off in the fight. He looked at the screen. The caller ID showed that home was calling. Well, they could call all they wanted. Junior was never going home again.
He stood on shaky legs, looked down at the man with the tourniquet noose around his neck and then at the clown mask next to him, and his mouth eased into a smile. Once more for justice, he said to himself. He didn’t intend to pray over Junior’s body. With a swipe of his foot he turned off the battery-powered generator, and the area was plunged into darkness; the dead man disappeared as though by magic.
The next sound he heard shook him to his core.
It was the sound of an approaching car. He raced to the cutout of one of the front windows. Headlights w
ere slicing through the darkness, coming right at him.
CHAPTER
42
KING AND MICHELLE
climbed out of the Lexus and looked around. They’d switched vehicles at King’s houseboat because one of Michelle’s truck headlights was out. King pulled out a flashlight, but its thin beam did little damage against the darkness.
“His truck’s here,” said Michelle as she tapped the side of the battered pickup crammed with tools and construction supplies in the bed.
“Junior!” King cried out. “It’s Sean King. We want to talk to you.”
Michelle cupped her hands around her mouth. “Junior! Junior Deaver!”
They looked at each other.
“Maybe he’s in the house.”
“What, working in the pitch-dark?” said King.
“In the basement maybe and we can’t see the light from here.”
“Okay, so I guess we go in.”
“Do you have another flashlight in your car?”
“No, but maybe Junior has one in his truck.”
They looked and found one on the floorboard. Now twin beams moved through the dark.
They entered the front door and looked around.
“Junior,” called out King again.
They swept the room with their lights. Over in one corner a big tarp was covering what looked to be a pile of drywall. All around were stacked wood and other building materials, tools, buckets, and bags of cement, a real mess.
“Hey, this looks just like your house,” said King.
“Boy, you’re in fine form today. Look, the basement steps are over here.”
Michelle called down the stairs. There was no answer.
“Do you think he’s hurt himself?” she said.
King looked around. “This is beginning to look a little weird,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you…?”
Michelle already had her gun out. They went cautiously down the stairs.
In the far corner of the basement was a stack of cans. They looked behind this. Nothing. The HVAC system was in another corner of the basement. They shone their light on the mass of metal but again saw nothing.
Behind one of the large heating ducts in a space the light had missed, the man in the hood watched as they headed back upstairs. He slowly eased out of his hiding place.
Upstairs King and Michelle looked around more thoroughly. Michelle saw it first.
“Oh, no!” she hissed. She grabbed King’s hand and pulled him toward her.
“Blood,” she whispered in his ear, and then pointed her light at the floor. The crimson spatters were clearly visible. Their lights followed the trail to its source: the tarp.
They crept forward, careful not to step in the spatters. King knelt, lifted up the tarp, and they saw it was Junior. King quickly felt for a pulse and found none.
“Damn it! He’s dead.” He shone his light around. “Oh, shit!”
“What!”
“He’s got a noose tourniquet around his neck.”
“Don’t tell me…”
King pulled back the tarp some more and shone his light down the dead man’s arm. “And his watch is set to five, and there’s a black arrow drawn on the floor pointing right to it.”
Michelle directed her light to Junior’s features. “He hasn’t been dead long, Sean.”
“I know; he’s still warm.” King froze. “What was that?”
Michelle looked behind her, her light making arcs through the darkness. “What?”
“I thought I heard footsteps.”
“I didn’t hear anything—” Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the red laser dot appear on King’s head. Its meaning was crystal clear to the firearm-savvy Maxwell. “Sean, don’t move,” she said hoarsely. “You’re red-lighted.”
“I’m wha—” But then it dawned on him what she was saying. The laser aim tracker could be followed at any moment by a bullet that would hit precisely where the dot was: in this case his brain.
As she watched, the red dot slowly moved to Michelle’s gun, flitting there like some deadly wasp ready to sting. This message was also clear. She hesitated, debating whether to chance it, turn and fire. She glanced at King. He’d obviously seen the dot’s location too and, reading her thoughts about trying to get off a shot, shook his head in a definite no.
She reluctantly put down her gun on the floor, pushing it away with her foot. When the red dot appeared on her flashlight, she turned it off and placed it on the floor. King slowly followed suit. The red dot then appeared on her chest and moved up and down her body, seemingly in a teasing manner, as though the person aiming the laser were fondling her.
Michelle was growing more and more irritated and beginning to gauge how far she’d have to jump to grab her weapon. While she was calculating the odds of getting off a shot before the other guy did, she failed to notice that the red dot had disappeared.
Finally realizing it, she looked at King’s image in the shadowy darkness.
“Is he gone?” she said softly.
“Don’t know,” King whispered back. “I don’t hear anything.”
That changed moments later when they heard the gunshots. They both hit the floor, Michelle crawling desperately toward where she thought her gun was. One inch, one foot. Come on! Come on! As her fingers closed around the metal, she stopped and listened.
“Sean, are you okay?”
Seconds went by and there was nothing.
“Sean!” she whispered desperately, her hopes bottoming out when he didn’t answer.
“I’m okay,” he finally said.
“Damn it, you almost gave me a heart attack. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I fell on top of Junior, that’s why!”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
They waited a few more minutes. When they heard a car start up in the distance, Michelle leaped to her feet, grabbed a light and raced out, King right on her heels.
They slid into the Lexus.
“Call 911,” said King. “Tell them to get the roads around here shut down as fast as possible. And then get hold of Todd.”
Michelle was already on the phone.
King hit the gas and the car lumbered forward. The ride was so bumpy it knocked the phone out of Michelle’s hand. He hit the brakes.
They looked at each other.
“Damn it, he shot out the tires,” said King in disbelief. “That’s what the gunshots were about. Let me see if I can still drive it.” After a hundred feet it was very clear that if they drove over five miles an hour, they’d soon break an axle.
Michelle jumped out of the car and shone the light at the flattened front and rear tires on her side. She ran back and examined Junior’s truck. There were two tires shot out there as well. Michelle called 911, gave them the information, then called Todd while King slumped against his car.
When she was finished, she came over to him and said, “Todd and his men are on their way.”
“That’s good to know,” he said quietly.
“You never know; they might get lucky and nail the guy, Sean.”
“The good guys are rarely that lucky.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at the half-built house.
Michelle slapped her hand against the car’s hood. “God, I feel like the biggest rookie in the world for letting that guy get the drop on us. I can’t believe we were probably ten feet from this maniac. Ten feet! And he got away.” She grew silent, staring at the ground before glancing over at her partner. “Okay, talk to me, what are you thinking?”
He didn’t answer right away. When he spoke, his voice quivered slightly. “I’m thinking that tonight three little kids lost their father and a wife her husband. And I’m just wondering when it’s going to stop.”
“Not until someone stops him.”
King never took his eyes off the unfinished house. “Well, starting right now, that’s our full-time job.”
CHAPTER
43
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AS KING HAD PREDICTED,
the police arrived too late to catch Junior’s killer. When news of yet another murder became public, the entire area fell into a complete frenzy. The mayor of Wrightsburg, in a stunning show of no confidence in either Todd Williams or the FBI, demanded that the National Guard be called out and martial law declared. Fortunately, no one granted that request. The national news machine had descended on Wrightsburg and its environs with an enormous appetite for detail, no matter how trivial or irrelevant to the investigation. The large media trucks and their sky antennae and news jockeys with wireless mikes in hand became as ubiquitous as the sprouting spring buds. The only people happy about this situation were the local restaurateurs, innkeepers and conspiracy buffs,