Dead on Arrival

by R. J. Patterson

  Nick had never admitted to planting evidence, but he insinuated that he wished he had. But Nick was a saint; Linderman was a survivor. She was also an opportunist.

  Linderman saw an opportunity to make the most out of the situation. Leading a high-profile case like this would certainly put her in line for a promotion when the time called for it, not to mention all the additional perks that would accompany such a lofty position.

  Traffic was touch and go for the next few minutes before coming to a halt. Three minutes passed, and she didn’t even move.

  Linderman pounded her steering wheel. “What’s taking so long?”

  She turned on the radio and tuned to 97.7 to see if KOMO had an update on what had snarled freeway traffic. According to a report, a cattle car carrying a load of steers swerved to miss a highway patrol motorcycle in pursuit and tipped over, skidding sideway across the road and blocking all but one lane of traffic. The news anchor explained that all lanes would be blocked until the animals were under control and the Washington State Patrol could send more troopers to manage the scene. All motorists were advised to remain in their vehicles as at least one of the steers was raging along the road.

  She pounded her fist on the dashboard and cursed for a few seconds before resigning herself to the fact that Cal Murphy just might escape.

  “Typical Seattle,” she said aloud before pondering her next move.

  Linderman needed to make a phone call, one that she wasn’t thrilled about making.

  CHAPTER 32

  CAL TOOK A DEEP BREATH as he climbed out of the car. He looked skyward and couldn’t see a single star thanks to the clouds that had rolled in over Seattle earlier in the afternoon. A light mist started to fall, peppering his face. Checking his phone, he looked at Kelly, who had joined him.

  “You ready to put an end to this?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Just be careful, okay? We still don’t know what we’re fully dealing with here.”

  “That’s why we have to control the environment and make sure everything goes just like we want it to.”

  They joined hands as they walked up to one of the employee entrances. Cal then texted Adam Fulton, the Mariners media relations director, letting him know they were outside.

  A couple minutes later, Fulton opened the door and ushered Cal and Kelly inside.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Fulton said. “It doesn’t look like you got too wet.”

  “We’ve lived here for a while,” Kelly said. “We can handle a little Seattle mist.”

  Fulton chuckled and gestured for them to follow him upstairs.

  “I appreciate you agreeing to help us out,” Cal said after they exited the stairwell. “The past few days haven’t been easy.”

  “I’d say the past few weeks have been rough on everyone,” Fulton said. “But then for you to get arrested for murder—that’s just insane.”

  “We’re hoping this will put an end to everything tonight,” Cal said.

  “Whatever you need, just tell me and I’ll make it happen. I want this to be over for you as well, probably almost as much as you do. Meanwhile, the real killer is still out there.”

  “That’s why we’re going to kill two birds with one stone,” Kelly said. “Exonerate Cal by catching the killer.”

  “And you think this plan will work?” Fulton asked.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” Cal said. “Besides, my only other option would be to go into hiding and pray the real killer screwed up somewhere before the FBI found me. And I’ll tell you right now that I doubt I’d last that long. To be honest, I can’t believe I’ve lasted this long without getting caught.”

  “How long has it been?” Fulton asked.

  “About six hours,” Kelly said.

  “Glad I stayed to work late tonight,” Fulton said.

  “You stay late every night,” Cal countered. “That’s why I knew you’d be here and willing to help us.”

  Fulton shrugged. “I guess you’re right. I have no life, except the Mariners—which is kind of sad if you think about it.”

  “I see it more as dedication to your craft,” Cal said.

  “No, it’s just sad,” Fulton said.

  “How about we just get to work?” Kelly said.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Fulton helped Cal and Kelly set up everything to execute their plan. Once they were finished, they discussed all the details once more before heading to their respective stations.

  “We’ve got ten minutes,” Cal said. “Adam, all you have to do now is unlock the front gate and post this note there.”

  The note read: Meet me in the Mariners dugout.

  “You sure the killer will bite on this?” Fulton asked.

  “Based on the lengths someone has gone to in order to retrieve the payout money, I’m betting on it,” Cal said.

  * * *

  CAL TOOK A SEAT in the dugout and checked his watch. Five minutes until the person orchestrating this entire scheme waltzed up the tunnel and demanded Chase Dollinger’s cash. There was still risk involved, namely starting with the possibility that the FBI located their car and stormed into the stadium to arrest them. The person could also shoot him, though Cal considered all the possibilities and kept the cash offsite to prevent such an attempt on his life. But if everything went as planned, he hoped it would never get that far.

  He clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the bench. A few floodlights shone onto the field, lighting what was otherwise a dim ballpark. While scanning the stadium, Cal found the moment somewhat surreal. As a kid, he had dreamed of playing for the Mariners. He was eleven years old when Safeco Field opened, replacing the characterless Kingdome as the Mariners’ home. And Cal went to the first game played in the new facility. He never imagined almost twenty years later he would be sitting in the dugout in hopes of unmasking a murderer—and avoiding three murder charges of his own.

  The retractable roof was open, allowing a nice view of the Seattle skyline. But Cal didn’t give it much thought. He was too busy rehearsing what he wanted to say the moment he saw someone stride through the clubhouse doors and into the dugout.

  Ten minutes passed, and there was still no sign of anyone.

  Kelly sent Cal a text.

  You think they’re still coming?

  Cal replied:

  Eventually. Just be patient and stick to the plan.

  Five more minutes passed without the appearance of anyone. Cal started to wonder if an unwilling participant would thwart the plan. While Cal could’ve just turned the money over to the feds, he didn’t trust anyone. The level of sophistication and money to pull off a trio of murders—and then pin them all on Cal—took an enormous amount of power and persuasion. And Cal couldn’t risk leaving it up to any other entity to prove his innocence, especially when he wasn’t certain the FBI didn’t have a few bad actors involved as well.

  Kelly sent Cal another text message with nothing but question marks. He sighed and was about to type a response when the clubhouse door creaked.

  Cal slipped his phone into his pocket and waited for the person to come around the corner. As the person’s face came into view, Cal’s eyes widened, and his jaw went slack.

  “Mr. Murphy, aren’t you just full of surprises?”

  CHAPTER 33

  A WRY GRIN SPREAD across the thin lips of Amy Lincoln as she trained her gun on Cal, who was seated at the far end of the dugout some twenty yards away. His first instinct was to run, as he immediately questioned whether his plan would be for naught. Once she pulled the trigger, it didn’t matter how great his scheme was. He would be dead and Kelly and Maddie would have to deal with the aftermath.

  “You have a lot of nerve,” Amy said before placing her gun down on the bench.

  She reached inside her bra and retrieved a lighter and a cigarette. Igniting one, she stuffed it into her mouth.

  “Where are my manners?” she said. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  Cal shook his head. “Those things
will kill you.”

  Amy laughed, and she blew a steady stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. She picked up her gun and eyed it closely.

  “So will bullets from this gun, though one will get the job done more quickly.”

  “You would know, wouldn’t you?” Cal responded.

  “Now, Cal, I’ve always liked you, but you seem to have stuck your big fat nose in a place it doesn’t belong,” Amy said as she started pacing back and forth in the dugout.

  “I was just following a hunch.”

  “Sometimes hunches aren’t always a good thing. Look what kind of mess your hunch has gotten you into.”

  Cal shook his head. “You do realize that you’re going to go down for this.”

  Amy huffed a laugh through her nose and then took another drag on her cigarette.

  “Are you insinuating that you’ve laid a trap for me?” she asked with a smile.

  He didn’t say a word.

  “I met your little buddy upstairs. Adam Fulton—isn’t that his name?”

  Cal remained stoic, unwilling to engage with her in her mind games.

  “Yes, I believe that’s his name. Well, anyway, I sent him home and told him I’d never tell a soul about him being here tonight. Looks like it’s just me and you now.”

  Cal’s eyes widened.

  “That’s right, Cal. All those little plans you had of live streaming me confessing to crimes are now gone. Poof.”

  She blew another plume into the air.

  “Up in smoke,” she said before breaking into a laugh.

  “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Now why would I do that, Cal? I don’t hurt people; I help people. Haven’t you ever seen my commercials for the Lincoln Initiative? Over the past three years, we’ve helped more than one thousand families living below the poverty line get the education necessary to obtain higher-paying jobs and break the cycle of poverty. That’s almost one family a day. And here you are accusing me of trying to hurt you.”

  “You did bring a gun to our meeting,” Cal said. “It seems like there’s some intent to hurt me—or at the very least, threaten me.”

  “And to think I offered you a cigarette. Some people just don’t know how to react to my generosity.”

  Cal shifted on the bench, eyeing her closely as she continued to inhale from the dwindling butt dangling from her mouth.

  “I have to admit that you are quite skilled at the revenge game,” he said, attempting to assuage her ego.

  Amy scowled. “What do you mean?”

  “You went to great lengths to get back at your husband, didn’t you?”

  She wagged her index finger at him. “I’m not going to tell you anything, Cal. I just want the money Chase Dollinger stole from me.”

  Cal’s eyes widened. “Stole from you? He stole this money from you?”

  She nodded and took a final drag from her cigarette before stamping it out on the ground with great care. She picked up the butt and deposited it into a nearby trashcan.

  “I don’t know about you, but where I come from, when someone agrees to do something for you and you give them cash to ensure that they will follow through, that’s called a deal. And then when someone breaks that agreement after they’ve been paid, that’s called stealing.”

  “And what exactly was the nature of your agreement with Chase?”

  “I’m going to stop right here and warn you that if you’ve figured out what it was, we’re going to have a serious problem.”

  Cal smiled. “No, you’re the one with the problem, not me. I know where the money is, the money that links you to Chase. The money that you gave to him along with several other players to throw the final game of the regular season so the Mariners missed the playoffs.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “You have quite the imagination, Cal.”

  “Oh, do I? Why do you think you’re even standing here right now? The fact that you are confirms what I already suspected about Flip McCutcheon and his performance in that game. And then there’s Buster Portman. He didn’t play so well either.”

  “Cal, I need you to tell me where the money is before I have your wife shot.”

  Cal felt his face flush red. Rage boiled within him as he stood up. With clenched fists, he stormed down the dugout toward Amy. She snatched up the gun and pointed it at him.

  “That’s far enough,” she said. “You can sit down right there.”

  “You let her go,” he growled.

  “Sit,” she said, gesturing toward the bench with the barrel.

  Cal had stopped about fifteen feet short of where Amy stood and complied. The knowledge that Kelly was under duress somewhere in the stadium was the only thing that kept him from rushing toward Amy. He figured that she could only squeeze off one shot at the most before he reached her—and there was fifty-fifty chance that he’d survive that hit. If he did, he considered how he might subdue her. But it was all fruitless exercise. He needed to focus and think about what to do next to regain the upper hand. He needed to coax all the information he could out of her.

  “You know, Mr. Murphy, to get ahead in life, you always need to be two steps ahead of your competition. When you’re able to do that, you go from surviving to thriving.”

  He glared at her, his nostrils flaring. “It’s easy to get ahead when you’re playing a rigged game.”

  She chuckled. “All these players are getting paid, and somebody has to lose.”

  “Not on purpose, they don’t.”

  “Charles has underpaid players for far too long,” she said. “The fact that the Mariners even had a chance to make the playoffs this season was a miracle—and no thanks to the stingy ways he’s run this organization.”

  “So you figure if the Mariners lose and don’t make the playoffs, he won’t care about them any more and would sign the entire franchise over to you?”

  She shrugged. “Or sell his shares to another investor who would sell them to me for a profit. I wasn’t picky about how I took control of the team. I just wanted it.”

  “Using players as pawns in your divorce is beyond disgusting.”

  “Like I said, two steps ahead. Now, I need you to give me the money.”

  “It’s not here,” Cal said.

  “Of course not. I never expected you to be that foolish. But I need the address and anything else necessary to obtain it.”

  “I’m only giving it to you once I know Kelly is safe.”

  “Fine,” Amy said.

  She placed her left thumb and index finger in her mouth and whistled. After a few seconds a man emerged from the leftfield bullpen, his gun trained on Kelly. Even from this distance, Cal could see the fear on her face. He’d promised she’d never have to be in a position like this again, but here she was, even if she’d joined him willingly in an attempt to catch Chase Dollinger’s murderer.

  After a long agonizing minute, Kelly and her captor arrived at the dugout. He shoved her over to Cal. They embraced briefly as Cal wiped away a tear streaking down Kelly’s cheek.

  “The information please,” Amy said.

  Cal blurted out the address as well as the number and the passcode to gain access.

  Amy grinned. “By the way, Cal, I wouldn’t suggest trying to write anything about this in the paper, the paper that I will own as of the stroke of midnight. If you want this all to go away, just let it go away. I know where you live, and I know how to find you. And now I know how to ruin your career. I’d hate for you to get caught in a plagiarism scandal.”

  “Been there, done that,” Cal said.

  “Whatever. It’s your life. But I can assure you that no one that matters will believe you.”

  She spun on her heels to walk away only to be met by Matt Preston.

  “He doesn’t have to tell a soul, Mrs. Lincoln,” Preston said as he held up his smart phone with a streaming video of their conversation. “You just told the whole world for him.”

  CHAPT
ER 34

  CAL COULDN’T THANK Adam Fulton enough for his ability to foresee any potential problems, like Kelly’s phone getting confiscated. Fulton admitted that he simply wanted to have a better angle from a high definition camera. The idea of turning on the dugout mic to capture everything was actually his biggest stroke of genius.

  With Amy Lincoln delivering the news that Adam Fulton had been sent home and threatened with his job—and then Kelly being detained—Cal thought his grand scheme to capture the truth about Chase Dollinger’s killer was going to fail spectacularly. Yet Fulton’s quick suggestion for Kelly to turn on one of the cameras in center field paid big dividends.

  When Fulton was directed to leave, Amy took his keys from him to ensure that he couldn’t get back into the office. However, he didn’t need to get back into his office; he only needed to get into the production room.

  Armed with all the necessary technology at his disposal, Fulton managed to mix the feed and sound together before streaming it on multiple social media pages controlled by the Mariners. YouTube and Facebook streamed the conversation live, all but enabling an arrogant Amy Lincoln to condemn herself in front of a sizable internet audience.

  Even more satisfying was watching Lana Linderman rush into the stadium only to have her partner Matt Preston leading Amy and her henchman out in handcuffs. By this time, a handful of local journalists including television reporters were all on the scene to capture the fallout.

  “What did I miss?” Lana asked as she stormed toward the open gate at Safeco Field.

  “Oh, just your career defining arrest,” Preston said with a smirk.

  Cal didn’t fully exhale until he saw Preston and Linderman drive away with the killer.

  Cal’s phone buzzed with a call. He glanced at the number and answered it.

  “You did it,” Hugh Dollinger said. “You really did it, Cal. You got justice for Chase.”

  “I got his killer arrested,” Cal said. “We’re still a long way from justice, especially when it involves someone of Amy Lincoln’s stature.”