Deadly Promise

by Brian Crawford

  “You know what, sweetheart, it’s not the craziest idea we’ve had,” I said. “Marshall is meeting with Mansfield in less than an hour. Maybe I should drive over there and let her know what we are thinking before she meets with him.”

  ***

  My inner voice had been gone for nearly nine months. Here one day, gone the next. I was starting to believe it was never coming back, which made me uneasy. Yet, brainstorming with Jessica had been fruitful. Driving to Mansfield’s house, I realized that many of my decisions in the last couple of weeks had been wrong. I thought Marino was involved in Boyd’s disappearance, and if I had been the one who questioned him, I would have busted him up pretty badly trying to get the answer I sought. Thankfully, Jessica went against my wishes and spoke with him. I thought Evan Baxter was just a pretty boy. That turned out to be wrong. And I was convinced that George Mansfield was behind Boyd’s disappearance, and Shelley Baxter was the hapless victim. Now, it looked like Shelley Baxter was the mastermind of a brilliant plan to steal three million dollars.

  I was more than just off my game, as Jessica implied days ago. I consistently made hasty, incorrect decisions during the last two weeks. Thank God for Jessica. She was the one who discovered Mansfield was Boyd’s client. She found Boyd’s hotel in Wisconsin. She recommended I reach out to my intelligence friends. And now, she suspected that Boyd had been used to perform surveillance on George Mansfield for Shelley and Evan Baxter. If my inner voice didn’t come back, I still had Jessica.

  I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt the need to talk to Special Agent Marshall before her visit with George Mansfield. Call it a hunch that she might find the new information interesting, maybe even useful when talking with the obnoxious lawyer. Maybe she could use the information to determine if Mansfield sent Pomeroy to kill Boyd and Shelley Baxter in Wisconsin. Lean on him. Make him nervous. Get him to make a mistake during their conversation. Maybe say something she could use against him.

  Or maybe I wanted to deliver the information personally to see how she might react. A big part of me wanted to believe she was nothing more than a quirky FBI Special Agent wanting to solve a very interesting cold case. Another part of me still doubted Marshall’s interest in Shelley Baxter. I needed to resolve my inner conflict.

  Jessica refused my offer to tag along. She wanted to thank Virgil and LeClair for their help by buying them a nice lunch before they headed home. She joked that we needed to buy LeClair one hell of a Christmas present this year for all his help. She was right about that one. I jokingly added we should make Boyd chip in on the gift.

  I arrived at Mansfield’s home 25 minutes later to discover Special Agent Marshall’s FBI-issue vehicle already parked inside the gate. She had arrived early, ruining my effort to talk to her beforehand. I was dealing with the disappointment, trying to decide to ring the buzzer on the front gate, when a muted popping noise from inside Mansfield’s home caught my attention.

  What the...?

  Three more quick successive pops interrupted my thought process. Gunfire. Inside Mansfield’s house. With Special Agent Marshall inside.

  Mansfield’s perimeter fence consisted of black metal security fencing sitting atop a beautiful stone knee-wall. Jessica said she doubted she could climb the wall, or Boyd for that matter. I was not Boyd or Jessica. Plus, I wasn’t climbing the fence.

  I pulled my rental car onto the lawn, stopping as close to the fence as possible. I exited the vehicle, climbed on top of the roof, and jumped the fence, remembering to bend my knees and roll.

  Two more pops from inside. I hoped I wasn’t too late.

  What the hell am I doing? Six gunshots already and the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum I took from Genovese was with Jessica.

  The front door was unlocked. I pushed the door open as quietly as possible, listening for anything that could tell me what had happened. What room they were in. Whether Marshall was okay. Anything.

  “You killed my brother. You bitch!” The voice belonged to George Mansfield. He was talking to someone upstairs.

  “You hired Roger to kill me seven years ago.” The voice was unfamiliar; however, it was easy to assume it belonged to Shelley Baxter. “And your bona fide asshole of a brother sent another one of his little pansy-assed mercenary flunkies after me in Wisconsin. Isn’t it completely ironic that the guy you hired to find me was responsible for the death of your brother’s hitman.” Baxter laughed out loud. “Thank you for that. Being the elitist prick we know you are, you probably thought Boyd Dallas was an easy target since he had a Southern accent and walked with a limp. Well, screw you, George. And screw your dead brother. Here’s another piece of irony for you, George. Your private eye was a stud in bed. Thank you for that as well.”

  More laughter. Shelley Baxter was enjoying herself. I could almost picture the look of satisfaction on her face as she faced down the man she believed tried to have her killed seven years ago.

  “How are you doing in there, Agent Marshall?” Baxter yelled.

  “Why don’t you come in here and find out?” Marshall’s voice was quieter than Baxter’s. As if she were behind another door. Perhaps in a master bathroom.

  “And get shot in the head as I come through the door? I don’t think so. But thanks for the offer.”

  “I’d probably aim for center mass, not the head, so come on through, you sociopathic cunt.” Marshall’s voice sounded strained.

  “Sticks and stones, Agent Marshall. Sticks and stones. Stop making this personal. I’ll tell you what, I promise to kill dear old George quickly and leave. Hopefully, you haven’t bled out by then.”

  While Marshall and Baxter yelled at each other, I began moving towards the sound of their voices. The volume increased as I found the stairway, confirming they were upstairs. I looked around for Evan, wondering if he was in the room with his sister. Wondering if he was covering the bathroom door while his sister gloated over George Mansfield. Wondering how I planned to help with no weapon.

  I started climbing the stairs, stopping as the third stepped squeaked quietly under my weight. Multimillion-dollar house — the floors should not squeak. Please, Marshall, keep Baxter distracted.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Marshall yelled, seemingly in response to my silent pleading.

  Baxter said, “You hear that, George? Agent Marshall of the FBI thinks I won’t get away with this. What do you think, George? Agent Marshall, you should hear George go on and on about attending an Ivy League school. How students are selected not only upon their grades but because they possess qualities that make them more likely to become future members of the power elite. The ruling class. Those people uniquely qualified to determine how the rest of us should live. How’s that ruling class bullshit working for you now, George? Do you think it will save you from little ole me? You think I won’t get away with killing you?”

  I managed to scale the rest of the stairs without being heard. Baxter’s voice was coming from a room on my left at the end of a long hallway. If they exited the bedroom before I traveled the length of the hallway, I was a sitting duck. Still no sign of Evan.

  “Dear sister.” It was Evan Baxter’s voice coming from the same room. I still didn’t have a plan, but it was nice to know where he was finally. “Let me kill him so we can get out of here. Please.”

  Mansfield said, “The FBI knows you’re alive this time. They will hunt you down. You’ve killed too many people.”

  “And who’s fault is that? Yours, you tiny-pricked, sorry ass excuse of a man. You started this. I’m finishing it.

  “You slut. You cheated on me. You deserved whatever I had planned for you.”

  “Of course, I cheated on you. You should have gotten off the statin drugs. You know testosterone is biosynthesized from cholesterol. What do you think happens when you lower your cholesterol levels too much? Less testosterone, which leads to sexual dysfunction, dumbass. As for your plan, I knew everything. I knew how Roger planned to kidnap me, where Roger planned on stashing me, and how Roge
r planned on killing me afterward. All Evan had to do was show up and dispatch Roger’s men. They were so confident. Just like you and your brother. Evan had no trouble killing them. From there, we merely followed your kidnapping plan to the letter.”

  “We still got your damn finger, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, George, you got my finger. Only because I let you. It was necessary to sell the story. And I got your three million. All your life, you’ve thought yourself the smartest one in the room. The best at everything because your mother was so smart and your dad made a lot of money. Ha. How’s it feel to get outsmarted by a girl three years out of law school?”

  “Screw you, Shelley.”

  “Not on your life, George. Three years of you was torture enough for one lifetime.”

  “You’re crazy. You killed an innocent woman to fool me.”

  “Also necessary to sell the lie. You were such a moron, George. Even when Roger’s men failed to show up with the money, you never suspected a thing. You honestly believed they ripped you off.”

  For the last couple of weeks, Mansfield’s role in Shelley’s apparent kidnapping baffled me. Now, everything was clear. George Mansfield tried to kill his wife but was outsmarted by his intended target. Perpetrator and victim of his own crime.

  For her part, Shelley Baxter was hardly the hapless victim. She expressed no remorse toward the killing and beheading of Stephanie Woodson, heartlessly describing it as necessary. And it was reasonable to believe Shelley and her brother were responsible for killing Bill Lewis and John Wood from Oklahoma City.

  If not for Stephanie Woodson, I might have been able to stand aside and let Shelley and her brother escape. Killing and mutilating an innocent woman was too much. Plus, Special Agent Marshall was injured. Bleeding to be more specific, and I had no idea as to the severity of her injury.

  Mansfield’s loud swearing thankfully disguised any noise I might make as I started down the hallway. Reaching the doorway, I peered inside. The first thing I noticed was British leather wingtips pointing up to the ceiling. The man wearing them was supine and immobile. Assumedly dead. It was now obvious the tall, lean man in George Mansfield’s lobby was his brother Roger. At the time, I had assumed he was George’s protection. If so, he was doing a poor job. It never donned on me that he was George’s brother and co-conspirator.

  I leaned a little further to see the whole room. Shelley Baxter stood with her back to the door. No weapon in her hand. George Mansfield sat on the edge of the bed, angry and defiant. He spotted me peering around the door frame, his eyes locking onto mine, pleading for help.

  Shelley turned her head towards the door, providing me my first good look at her. Mansfield had described her beauty accurately. She was gorgeous. A beautiful, evil sociopath who killed an innocent woman, stole three million dollars from her husband, killed Roger Mansfield, and did something to injure Special Agent Marshall. She started to smile.

  She didn’t get a chance to finish her smile. I launched through the doorway, my long arms catching her with a sharp, hard punch to the face. The blow knocked her off her feet, probably knocked her out. She shouldn’t be much of a threat. Without breaking stride, I continued past her toward Evan Baxter. He was standing near a closed door in the back of the spacious bedroom, pistol in hand, standing sentry to the door.

  Evan turned. Took aim. Fired a wild, hurried shot.

  Not even close.

  I closed the gap quickly, my left hand coming down across the top of the pistol to shove it to the side. Evan fired another shot. Again, not close. My grip on the pistol prevented the pistol from ejecting the spent round, meaning it couldn’t cycle in a new one.

  I made no attempt at stopping my forward momentum, catching Evan in the side of the head with a well-placed elbow strike before smashing him against the wall with every bit of my 235 pounds. The drywall cracked upon the earth-shattering, teeth-clattering impact.

  Surprisingly, the pretty boy was still conscious after the horrendous blow he took, so I did what I always do — I hit him again.

  Don’t stop until the threat is neutralized. Ouch, what the hell!

  Sharp pain in my right ribcage distracted me from hitting Evan a third time. I pushed Evan to the ground away from the gun he dropped, twisted my body, and experienced a similar sharp pain before I could get turned around to determine the source.

  Shelley Baxter up, and she was attacking me with a knife.

  I hate knives.

  When I punched Shelley in the face, I figured Mansfield would use that opportunity to his advantage. Maybe fight for his life. But George Mansfield was lying on the floor, trying unsuccessfully to staunch the flow of blood spurting from his abdomen. Bright red arterial blood. Pulsating blood. Shelley’s blade hit a major artery. Probably his abdominal aorta. If he had tried to fight, then he lost.

  Now, Shelley was trying to do the same thing to me. She had already stabbed me twice, and her arm was cocked back, ready to stab me a third time. “You hit a girl!” she screamed.

  Apparently not hard enough.

  Experience matters. In combat, in a situation when the losers don’t live long enough to learn from their mistakes, experience matters a lot. Experience, instinct, training. And speed. Speed was perhaps my strongest asset. My body and my brain were hard-wired for speed. But the next few seconds were a blur even for me.

  Click.

  The sound of a firing pin hitting an empty chamber. Evan is back up. That’s a surprise.

  “Duck, McCain!” The voice belonged to Agent Marshall. I turned to see her lying on her side just inside the partially open door of the master bathroom. Gun drawn. A pained expression on her pale, bluish face.

  I ducked.

  Marshall fired her service pistol. Two quick shots.

  “Whoa!” Shelley yelled as she spun her body and ducked into cover.

  I considered hitting Shelley again, but I could hear Evan cocking the slide back on his pistol to chamber another round as he realized his earlier mistake. Two threats surrounded me. One with a pistol. One with a knife.

  My inner voice might have abandoned me, but not my experience. I was in the kill zone. Retreat seemed the best option. My mind quickly flashed to the young woman from the martial arts class who screamed at her attacker. The scream that escaped my mouth was like no noise I had ever made before. Primal. Explosive. It surprised my attackers. Hell, it surprised even me.

  Run. Run and scream. Scream and run.

  Three shots harmlessly exploded behind me as I ran toward the master bathroom door, hoping Marshall would roll out of the way. Instead, she lay in the doorway, knowing what was coming, bracing for the inevitable collision while holding her gun up as high as she could to hand it off to me. She appeared to be straining from the exertion. Her bluish pallor worried me.

  Busting through the doorway, I grabbed Marshall’s pistol by the barrel with my left hand. The door collided with her body, causing her to grunt in pain.

  I can worry about Marshall if we survive the next couple of seconds.

  I dove onto the hard tile floor of the bathroom face first, sliding across the blood-stained tile, twisting onto my back as I slid. My right hand grabbed the gun from my left.

  Evan fired two more shots through the wall.

  The plume of drywall dust gave me a pretty good idea where he was standing. I aimed the pistol to the right of the bathroom door, firing three quick shots through the wall.

  Marshall pushed the bathroom door shut as Evan returned fire through the drywall once again. The shots exploded into the wall two feet over our heads.

  “How many more rounds do I have?” I quietly asked.

  Marshall answered by sliding another full magazine across the floor. I fired the remaining rounds in my current magazine now that I knew I had a full magazine in reserve.

  “Ow. Ow. Ow!” Evan yelled. “He shot me.”

  I ejected the spent magazine and loaded up the new one, aiming the pistol at the closed bathroom door. Hoping they dar
ed to come inside.

  “Not to sound cliché, darling brother, but it’s just a flesh wound.”

  “He still shot me.”

  “Legend McCain,” Baxter yelled through the door. “You don’t mind if I call you Legend, do you?”

  She sounded like she was near the bed. I propped up on one knee, aimed Marshall’s 9mm into the mirror over the sink, and fired two rounds through the wall in Baxter’s direction before dropping back onto my stomach.

  Someone shuffled in the bedroom for a couple of seconds, presumably Shelley before she responded. “McCain, that was bad form.” She concluded with a mild chuckle.

  The crazy woman sounds like she’s amused.

  “Bite me,” I replied.

  “I would love to take you up on that offer, Legend McCain. It sounds most tempting and tantalizing. I’m sure you’d be a much better lover than dear old George was.” She paused for a second and laughed again. “Or ever will be. Oh, you should see him right now. I find his impending, unavoidable death so very comforting. It’s too bad I can’t stick around to watch him go. I guess I’ll have to be content reading about it in the papers.” More laughter, this time more contemptuous than amused.

  “Let me kill him, Shelley. Please,” Evan said.

  “And shorten his agony? God no. McCain, Marshall, if you’re still alive, before we leave, I’d like to say nice try. You almost saved the pitiful bastard. I sincerely wish you more luck in your future endeavors, especially you, Legend McCain. You are truly everything Boyd said you were and more. On that note, we bid you adieu.”

  I heard them shuffle out of the room. It didn’t mean I trusted them. The 9mm remained fixed on the bathroom door until I couldn’t take it any longer — I needed to attend to Marshall’s injuries.

  Marshall looked like crap, which was hardly a surprise considering the amount of blood on the floor. Finding the source of the blood was easy — a deep, jagged stab wound high in her right thigh.