Saving Justice: A Legal Thriller (Tex Hunter Book 5)

by Peter O'Mahoney

“Vandenberg. Michael Vandenberg. He set them all up for the divorce payouts.” King rubbed his throat. “Michael Vandenberg was being blackmailed by Joe Fielding. Not me.”

  Chapter 40

  “Esther, get me everything on Michael Vandenberg.” Hunter used his cell phone to call Esther as soon as he was inside Jones’ truck. “We’ve got a lead in Fielding’s death.”

  “Michael Vandenberg? The divorce lawyer?” Esther questioned. “You really think it was him?”

  “Fielding was trying to blackmail Vandenberg. That’s what got him killed. And that murder caused the death of Stacey Fulbright. Vandenberg needs to pay for this.”

  “Ok.” Esther replied. “I’ll have everything we currently know compiled in fifteen minutes.”

  She ended the call as Jones roared the engine of the truck, slammed the accelerator, and left King’s mansion behind them. He drove aggressively through the streets, racing back towards Hunter’s office.

  Hunter stared out the window at the passing buildings. He hated that he hadn’t seen it from the start. If he had seen the connection, if he had found the truth, he would’ve been able to save Stacey. That failure ate at him. While the police couldn’t charge anyone with Stacey’s death, Hunter wasn’t going to leave it as a dead end. He owed it to her son, Noah. He needed to find the truth and he needed to expose it.

  “Why was Fielding in Fulbright’s parking lot?” Jones asked as they raced through the streets towards Hunter’s office. “And why was he stabbed with her letter opener? How did Vandenberg get his hands on it?”

  “If only Stacey were alive to tell us.” Hunter quipped.

  Hunter’s cell phone buzzed. It was Esther.

  “That was quick.” Hunter answered.

  “Well, I have something to add. I think it’ll be of interest to you.” Esther said as Hunter placed her on speaker. “It might be nothing, but to me, it looks like something. It’s a hunch.”

  “What do you mean?” Hunter quizzed.

  “I was being nosy, looking through the photos of Stacey’s memorial. Just scrolling through. I… It would be better if I showed you. Ray, do you have your laptop there?” Esther asked.

  Jones pulled the car over to the side of the road, stopping in a strip mall parking lot. Jones reached over the back seat, and removed his laptop computer from a bag. He connected to his phone’s hotspot. “We’re ready.”

  “I was looking through the photos of the memorial for Stacey and something struck me as unusual. Based off a hunch I had, I did a little bit of preliminary digging. Not much, just twenty minutes of surfing online. Just the easy stuff to check.” Esther said. “Stacey’s friend set up a Facebook page for her memorial and made it a private group. It was touching stuff—photos of Stacey’s life, comments from friends, memories that had been long forgotten and were now shared worldwide. Lots of smiles and good times. But whoever wanted to join the private group, needed approval from the administrator, which was Stacey’s best friend, Ursula. She approved my request when I said I had worked with Stacey. I looked through the list, and most were people known to us, but there were five profiles that I was suspicious of, so I looked into them a bit further. Four of the profiles checked out to be real people, but there was one profile that looked like a catfish.”

  “Catfish?” Hunter asked.

  “A catfish is a deliberately fake online profile, and this one looks like one to me. Ray, can you bring up the Facebook profile of Eden Malls?”

  Ray typed into his laptop as Hunter looked over his shoulder.

  “Have a look.” Jones turned the laptop towards Hunter, highlighting the social media profile. “I think she’s right.”

  “Looks legit to me.” Hunter scrolled through the profile. “I can’t see anything wrong with it. It looks the same as all the other profiles.”

  “The best ones look legitimate, but there’s always little giveaways that show it’s not real.” Esther said. “Whoever made this profile has done it well, but look at the start date for the creation of the profile. It’s the same day as the group approval. The person made this profile just to have access to the pictures.”

  “Interesting, but that says nothing.”

  “There were over a hundred photos added to the group page, and around twenty photos of the children. The person from the fake profile liked every photo the children were in. And they also left one comment— ‘My baby.’ That’s on a picture of Zoe, the youngest child. And nobody else in the memorial group is friends with Eden Malls.” Esther waited for a response, but when there wasn’t one, she continued. “Stacey Fulbright may still be alive. She may have faked her own death to save her children. They still haven’t found her body in the river.”

  “Any idea of the location?” Jones asked.

  “I was suspicious, so I tracked the IP address of the user. It’s a public Wi-Fi address from a motel outside Minneapolis. I called, and after some sweet talking, they confirmed a single woman who matches Stacey’s description checked in there a few days ago. The woman only had a backpack.” Esther said. “It’s a hunch, and it might be nothing, but I don’t think she jumped off that bridge. I think she’s on the run.”

  “What does your gut say, Esther?” Hunter asked. “Do you think Stacey is alive and this is her?”

  “I do.”

  “Ray, turn the car around.” Hunter said. “We’re driving to Minneapolis.”

  Chapter 41

  The motel outside Minneapolis was a stop for the lonely and desperate, a place to escape a life once lived. The street lighting was poor, the parking lot was littered with potholes, and the screams of the mentally ill occasionally cut through the night air. The front rooms of the motel were only a small strip of grass and a five-foot wire fence away from eight lanes of traffic on the Interstate-94 highway. The outside of the building, once painted cream, was now covered with grit, grime, and car pollution.

  It was past midnight when Jones and Hunter arrived after the six-hour drive. Jones parked the truck outside in the parking lot and walked into the twenty-four-hour reception desk. Hunter waited inside the truck, watching the rooms for any activity. There was an older couple stumbling into a hotel room on the second-floor balcony, a homeless man pushing a cart past the parking lot entrance, and a lonely figure leaning against a car smoking a cigarette, but no sign of Stacey Fulbright.

  Within ten minutes, Jones returned. “It’s amazing what money can buy.” Jones said as he climbed back inside the truck. “The motel had a person book in two days ago under the name of ‘Jane Black.’ No return address, and the lady matches the description of Stacey Fulbright, except for the hair color. I showed the guy a picture of Stacey, and he confirmed it.”

  “The first thing she would’ve done is dye her hair.” Hunter responded. “Room number?”

  “Number five.” Jones pointed across the street. “Bottom level.”

  Hunter opened the door and went to step out of the car, but Jones reached across and grabbed his wrist. “She’ll run the second you knock on her door. She’s a fugitive.”

  “You’re right.” Hunter nodded his agreement and closed the door. “It’s past midnight. We’ll have to wait until morning.”

  Jones looked at his watch. “If we stake out the room, we’ll see her leave to get something to eat tomorrow. I can’t imagine that we’d see much at this time of night, and I’d suggest she won’t go far for food, perhaps the diner across the road. The sign says it’s open twenty-four seven, and by the looks of the place, I don’t think it’s going to be booked out. Take it in two hour shifts to sleep?”

  “You want a room in the motel?”

  “Not a chance. You’d be eaten alive by bed bugs, if you weren’t first kidnapped by the rats. It’d be more relaxing here.” Jones nodded to the back seat. “Not a lot of room, but it’s comfortable.”

  “You sleep first.” Hunter said.

  Jones didn’t need to be asked twice. He climbed into the rear seat of his truck, his large frame barely fitting on th
e seat, but he curled his legs up, and was out within ten minutes. His snoring kept Hunter awake. For the next five hours, they took it in turns to watch the motel room, switching every two. Hunter couldn’t sleep. His long legs didn’t have enough room to stretch out.

  They were both awake by 5am, sitting in the front seat of the truck, a large coffee each from the nearby diner.

  “If there’s no movement by 10am, we go in.” Hunter reasoned. “I’ll go in quietly, because I don’t want to spook her, but I’ll still get you to cover the back of the motel room. I’ll go over and knock on the door and explain to her what we’re doing there. If there’s no answer, I’ll break in.”

  “That’s a good plan, but I say we go in at 8am.” Jones responded. “I’m not a patient man when I’m tired.”

  They watched the motel as the minutes ticked past, and almost on the stroke of 7am, the door to room number five opened. The figure was under a hood, moving quickly, heading for the diner across the road. A gust of rain drifted through, loud as it hit the top of the truck, but the men kept their eyes on the woman.

  “Did you think it’s her?” Jones asked. “Matches the description.”

  “Hard to tell from this distance.” Hunter responded as he opened the door to the truck. “And there’s only one way to be sure.”

  Hunter jogged towards the diner, followed by Jones, watching for anyone else following them. The diner was as expected for a place opposite a road-side motel. It stunk of burned bacon, old coffee, and stale bread. The lights were too bright, the tables were dirty, and the country music was too loud. There were two truckers at the counter, hunched over their breakfast, grunting about the weather.

  The woman from number five had sat in the furthest booth from the door, away from any wandering eyes. Hunter approached the woman. He sat down.

  “Hello Stacey.”

  Stacey Fulbright gasped and then froze. She was speechless. She had no idea what to say next. Jones followed Hunter and sat down.

  “How…” She composed herself. “How did you find me? How did you even know I was alive?”

  “I have the best team in the criminal justice system, Stacey.”

  “Do other people know I’m alive? The cops? Carl?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But if you’ve found me, then Carl will find me as well. I can’t risk that. Not now.”

  “Carl?” Hunter questioned. “Your husband?”

  “Don’t you get it?” She said. “He killed Joe Fielding and made it look like me. He set me up. He never wanted the divorce, but he wanted me out of his life. He killed Joe Fielding to get rid of me.”

  Hunter leaned forward. “Do you have evidence?”

  “He went to Michael Vandenberg to talk about a divorce. See? That’s all the evidence I need.”

  “We don’t think that’s right, Stacey.” Hunter lowered his voice. “We think it was Michael Vandenberg who killed Joe Fielding.”

  “What?” She whispered. “Not Carl?”

  “Vandenberg was using Fielding to set up Dr. Mackie for sexual assault. He needed Mackie to sell the medical clinic to profit from the sale.” Jones said. “There was ten million dollars involved. We think Fielding was coming to you to see if you wanted to buy the information about the fraud. Fielding was going to turn on Vandenberg and blackmail him. You were going to be a pawn in Fielding’s plan.”

  “I don’t understand.” Stacey shook her head. “I’m sure it was Carl.”

  “Fielding was turning on Vandenberg.” Hunter replied. “His assistant, Becky Bennett, told us that he had leverage on someone, and they were going to pay big. We thought it was Christoph King all along, but it wasn’t. It was Michael Vandenberg. Stacey, you said you were on the phone late at night in your office just before Fielding was killed. Who were you on the phone to?”

  “I was discussing a divorce case.” She looked at her hands. They were shaking. “I was on the phone for an hour before the person hung up. The person on the other end of the line just didn’t want to let me go, like they were waiting for something. They called me from their car at 10pm. I thought it was unusual, but they said it was important. They were talking from their car… almost like they wanted to keep me in the office. They wanted to make sure that I didn’t leave the office until after 11pm.”

  “That person didn’t want you to leave the office until Fielding had walked into the parking lot. They knew the lot only had cameras outside. They needed you to stay in the office until after Fielding arrived.” Hunter pressed. “Who was on the phone, Stacey?”

  Stacey looked into the distance. Her world had come tumbling down again. “I was on the phone with Michael Vandenberg.”

  Chapter 42

  The six-hour drive back from Minneapolis was long. The roads were mostly clear, except for the large semis hauling loads of goods. Hunter stared out the window, the thoughts pounding through his head as tiredness started to kick in. Jones had the cruise control on past the speed limit, but the drive was still draining.

  They’d talked to Stacey for an hour. Once the shock subsided, she agreed with their theory. Michael Vandenberg had always hated her. He was a man on a power trip, a man with a chip on his shoulder. He was sexist, racist, and heavy-handed. She never thought he’d be a killer, she said, but she didn’t doubt it.

  Hunter had a theory, but no evidence on Vandenberg. Nothing. Not a note, not a clue. Not even a lead. The only hint they had came from Christoph King, and he would never turn on Vandenberg.

  As Hunter and Jones drove back to Chicago, they discussed their options, but there weren’t many. Stacey Fulbright was still officially on bail, still charged with murder in the first degree. The fact she faked her own death to skip bail wasn’t going to look good for her, no matter the outcome of the Fielding investigation.

  “She looked determined to run over the border and start a new life.” Jones said as the blues hummed on the radio. “She was ready to disappear. Had it all planned out. Get a job in a small town. Start a new life. She looked shocked that we left her there.”

  “She needs time.” Hunter responded. “She wasn’t ready to come back yet. We’ve just re-calibrated her world by telling her it was Vandenberg that set her up. She was running because she thought it was her husband. She was running to protect her children, not herself.”

  “Do you think she had a point? That her husband could’ve done it? We don’t have any evidence that Vandenberg did it yet. He could’ve been a part of it.”

  “Evidence is the key. Stacey’s not going to come back to Chicago until there’s evidence that Vandenberg was involved, and we don’t have one shred.”

  Hunter stared out the window as they passed another truck. It was only on the open road that a person began to comprehend the size of the country’s population. Miles upon miles upon miles of once empty land was now consumed by the spread of suburbia. Farming land was disappearing, empty space was vanishing, and cities were becoming joined by the coverage of new developments.

  “Do you think she’ll keep running?” Jones tapped the steering wheel. “Even with this new information?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Most people in her situation…” Hunter paused to work through his thoughts. “Most people would cross the border, and start a new life. Forget about the past. She’s made it this far, and the cops think she’s dead. They’re not chasing her.”

  “But you wouldn’t run?”

  “Not me.” Hunter agreed. “I’d fight until the end. I’d fight until I had nothing left. That’s the only way I know how to handle things, and that’s what I’m going to do for Stacey. I won’t let this pass. But we need a plan. We have to be able to prove it was Vandenberg.”

  For the next hour, they discussed their options. Every possibility was raised, and discussed. By the time they had reached the outskirts of Chicago, they had an idea. Hunter picked up his cell phone.

  “Tex Hunter?” Detective Regina Heart asked. “This better be good.”

 
; “You owe me a favor, Regina.”

  “Already? The court case was only resolved a few days ago. I didn’t expect you to be calling this soon.”

  “You asked me to contact you if I knew about the sexual assault case and who set it up. I did that for you, and now I’m calling in the favor.”

  She paused, and then sighed. “I’m reluctant, but go on. Tell me what you need.”

  Chapter 43

  Stacey Fulbright waited near the entrance to the motel. It was dark and cold again, but the people of Minnesota seemed to be used to the long winters that stretched into early March. In the twenty-four hours since her world was rocked by Hunter’s ideas, she had gone back and forth between her options. She was only five hours away from the Canadian border. The crossing would be easy. There were places she could walk across.

  She had one last chance to change things. One last chance to move the game into her favor. With one last roll of the dice, she called him. She told him where to meet her. 10pm. Minneapolis Roadside Motel. Outside of the I-94.

  He agreed. She wasn’t sure if it was the right decision, but she needed to take the risk. It was her last chance to see her kids grow up.

  She waited near the corner of the motel, in view of the entrance to room 5, and watched the cars come and go in the night. The noise of the highway was a constant drone, but she was becoming used to the rumbling of trucks. It was becoming a comforting white noise.

  If the meeting didn’t work out, she was still going to run. Canada wasn’t far away, and once over the border, she had contacts that could help her disappear.

  The black SUV rolled into the parking lot just before 10pm. The new vehicle looked out of place in such a rundown area. She recognized the vehicle. It had parked outside her house on a number of occasions. There were no plates.

  Michael Vandenberg stepped out of the vehicle, looking around for his safety. Dressed in a suit without a tie, Vandenberg searched the parking lot for any suspicious movements, before striding towards Room 5.