Scottsdale Silence: a fun, romantic, thrilling, adventure... (Laura Black Mysteries Book 9)

by B A Trimmer

  “That matches what my men reported to me,” Sebastian said to Max. “The black sedan pulled up to a gate at that address. A uniformed security man let the vehicle into the compound. After that, my men could go no further.”

  “Do you know where in the house they might be keeping Danielle?” Max asked.

  “It could be anywhere,” Barrett said. “But the house has a wine cellar with a couple of smaller rooms with thick wooden doors that lock from the outside. They could easily use one of those to keep someone prisoner.”

  “Could you draw a map of the house for us?” Max asked.”

  “I could give you the general layout. It wouldn’t be exact.”

  “Give us what you can,” Max said. He then looked at Sebastian. “We should get off the street. Do you have somewhere nearby we could go?”

  “We run a company called Southwest Desert Transport,” Sebastian said. “It’s about half a mile east of here. We can use the offices there for Barrett to create his map and to plan out our next moves.”

  I looked at Max. Traveling into an enemy stronghold would be risky, but he didn’t hesitate. “Alright,” he said. “Lead the way.”

  “As soon as Barrett gets started on the map, I’ll need to go to the airport to meet Largo,” Sebastian said. “Once he arrives, he’ll be in control from our side.”

  “What do you think?” Max asked. “Will he be willing to use our help?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ll update him on what happened today and advise him to use your expertise. It’ll then be up to him to make the decision to work with you or not.”

  ~~~~

  We climbed into our vehicles and drove to Southwest Desert. It was a small trucking company where I had first met Danielle. As I later found out, it was also a front for the Black Death and part of their drug import operation.

  Along the way, Max called Johnny and updated him on the situation. He then called his admin, Cheryl, and asked if she could send over a satellite image of the address Barrett had given us.

  We pulled into the parking lot and Max had a quick meeting with his men. He decided they would stay outside and maintain a low profile. At the same time, Gabriella, Carson, and I would go inside with Barrett, Roberto, and Sebastian to work out the new plan.

  With Sebastian leading, the six of us walked into the offices. Coming back and seeing my desk from the time I’d briefly worked here was a rather odd feeling.

  “Laura?” I heard a voice ask. “Laura Brown? What are you doing back here?”

  I turned to see a woman named Phyllis looking at me. Next to her was another woman I knew named Irene.

  They’d trained me in billing and scheduling while I’d been here, working on an undercover assignment for Lenny. I’d given them the name Laura Brown and was surprised they still remembered it.

  “Hi, ladies,” I said as I walked over to them. “How have you both been?”

  Irene looked around the office and shrugged her shoulders. “We’re both still here. This place never changes.”

  “I see you’re moving up in the world,” Phillis said as she eyed Sebastian. “We were sorry to see you go. Come on back if you’re ever looking for a job.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  We walked into the plant manager’s office and gathered around a conference table. Roberto found a large piece of paper and some pencils. Barrett went to work on the map of the house while Sebastian took off to pick up Señor Largo from the airport.

  “I’ll come up with a general plan of the estate,” Barrett said. “But you’ll have to remember, I’ve never gone through Oswald’s house intending to make a map of it.”

  “Do the best you can,” Max said.

  As Barrett started on the outlines of the house, he told us what he was drawing. “Here’s the main living room. The bedrooms are in this wing. The kitchen is next to the game room. The entrance to the garages is back here. This is where Oswald has his office.”

  Ten minutes later, he had the map more or less complete. Everyone asked questions on entry points, exit points, the number of security personnel, and their likely locations.

  “What is this area?” Gabriella asked as she pointed to a short hallway between the living areas and the rest of the house.

  “It has something to do with the home security system,” Barrett said. “I asked Oswald about it once. He said it was to keep the bad guys out.”

  “Can we avoid it?” Max asked.

  “Not really,” Barrett said. “It’s at the choke point between one side of the house and the other. You can look down on the hallway from a balcony on the second floor. If there’s a man up there, he could fire down on you.”

  “We’ll need to take out the security forces before we get there,” Max said. “How many men are stationed in the compound?”

  “There’s usually one at the gate and two or three in the house. One of the guards walks the perimeter every fifteen minutes. Benny will also be there.”

  With the map complete, we only had to wait for Señor Largo to arrive. I used the time to ask Barrett the main question that had been bugging me. “With all of your family’s money, why have they turned to crime?”

  “That’s not an easy question to answer,” he said. “My family’s run one of the top philanthropic foundations in Scottsdale for the last three decades. We have over two-dozen ongoing community programs, everything from battered women’s shelters to camps for kids with special needs.”

  “That’s a noble goal,” I said. “But do you really need to finance it by selling drugs on the street?”

  He shook his head and gave a short laugh. “It didn’t start out that way. Dad started the foundation back in the eighties. It was solid with a large endowment to provide ongoing financing. Unfortunately, my dad died a dozen years ago and my brother has a lifestyle that burns through cash. Within about five years, the foundation was starting to run dry.”

  “How do you fit in with this?”

  “We were minority owners of Scottsdale General and we were bound by contract to build a new wing at the main hospital campus. My brother made it part of the deal to have me installed as the President and CEO. He then hired Lillian to run a narcotics operation.”

  “You didn’t set up the drug ring?”

  “I didn’t have a clue they were using the hospital to funnel drugs into the community until I’d been working there for over a year. I had to piece it together for myself. I then had a meeting with Lillian. When I confronted her with the facts, she confessed to what was going on.”

  “Why didn’t you make her stop?”

  “I tried. But she told me I needed to talk with my brother if I had a problem with it. When I confronted Oswald, he let me know the money from the drug ring was the only thing still holding up the family foundation.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I’ve never heard of anything that crazy. But others at the hospital must have known. It’s not like you can hide something like that for long.”

  “Oh sure, several people knew. But Lillian either pays off or has blackmail material on everyone who matters. Well, it started out as simply gathering evidence. Over the past two or three years, having intimate relations with one of the girls has turned into a reward for them to keep their mouths shut.”

  “And if they don’t keep quiet?”

  “If it seems like someone’s about to go to the police, they’re killed and it’s made to look like a suicide.”

  “The curse of Scottsdale General? We read about it. The paper made it seem like it was common knowledge that people at the hospital sometimes killed themselves for no reason.”

  “When Lillian had one of the doctors killed four or five years ago, she let it leak to the paper that it was all part of a suicide curse. Now, everyone in the Valley knows about it.”

  “It seems like a convenient excuse to use whenever someone dies.”

  “Yes, and the drug ring had been running smoothly for several years because of it
. The doctors were too scared to do anything about it. Between blackmail and bribes, they’d been trained to look the other way.”

  “Did you say it had been running smoothly? As in past tense?”

  “That’s right. Last week, Lillian’s operation started to fall apart.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone broke into the Palmer townhouse and began filming our operations there. She shut down the activities and was going to move it somewhere else. Benny managed to capture the woman who’d planted the cameras, but someone on the inside helped her escape.”

  I sighed. “That was me. But I didn’t know about your drug ring. I was only trying to get a video of Doctor Palmer being unfaithful so his wife could divorce him.”

  “Seriously?” he started laughing. “Well, Lillian became convinced the entire operation had been compromised. She went nuts trying to learn who you were and who’d helped you escape.”

  “I escaped on my own. I hope too many people weren’t hurt because of it.”

  “Well, she had Benny bash in the skull of the head of medical operations, Isaac Elmaghrabi. She then had Benny toss him off a bridge.”

  Oh my God.

  Barrett must have seen the look on my face because he held up his hand to stop me from saying anything.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with you,” he quickly said. “I think Lillian was only tying up some loose ends. She’s suspected Isaac for several months. When she questioned him about who had helped you escape, things between them escalated rather quickly. Benny was brought in to question him using his stun-gun. You read about the results.”

  “I don’t like the idea of someone being killed because of something I did, no matter how remote the connection.”

  “Lillian was also in the process of shutting down the narcotics distribution center and relocating it somewhere else.” He let out a short laugh. “Although, it looks like she was a little too slow on that.”

  “Why were you being held there? It looks like they were treating you pretty roughly.”

  “Lillian was convinced the hospital was about to be raided and shut down by the police or the DEA. She was setting me up to be the fall guy.”

  “How was that going to work?”

  “Benny had me write a note confessing that the entire narcotics operation had been my doing. Lillian has the note and was planning on putting it next to my body after I committed suicide. I’d only be one more victim of the curse of Scottsdale General. After things calmed down, Lillian would then be free to set up operations somewhere else.”

  “How could anyone believe something like that?”

  “I overheard them talking in the hallway. I would be taken to my home and killed as soon as the police showed up at Scottsdale General. By raiding the distribution center, you and your friends saved my life. I do appreciate it.”

  “What happened to the blonde woman who was with the men at the townhouse? Is she alright?”

  “You mean Aurora?”

  “I don’t know her name. Tall, thin, long bouncy blonde curls.”

  “Yeah, that’s Aurora. She’s fine. It’s crazy, but we’ve ended up paying her almost as much as we do the doctors. Unfortunately, it looks like she’s out of a job.”

  Through the open office window, we heard the sound of vehicles pulling into the parking lot. Max got up and Gabriella followed.

  We looked out the window to see almost a dozen men get out of two black SUVs and the bakery van. In the center of the group, I recognized Señor Largo.

  As I remembered from the only other time I’d worked with him, he was slightly older than a typical gangster, maybe in his early fifties. Although he was dressed in slacks and a golf shirt, he had the look of a gunslinger from the old west.

  He was a tall man with a handlebar mustache, a lean weathered face, and piercing blue eyes. His dark blond hair was still cut in a short military style but had grown out a little since the last time I’d seen him.

  Hanging by a strap over his shoulder was a brown leather pouch. Like Gabriella’s, the bag looked big enough to carry a compact machine gun, along with several high-capacity magazines of ammunition.

  Max looked at Largo and let out a long breath.

  “Gabby?” Max asked.

  “I see him,” she said. “He looks to be ex-Fuerzas Especiales.”

  Carson slowly shook his head. He groaned like a man who knew his job had gotten a little more complicated.

  “He has a Mexican Special Forces tattoo on his forearm,” Max explained to me. “It’s their version of the Navy SEALS.”

  “From what I know about him, it makes sense,” I said.

  “This could go one of two ways,” Max said. “I think we’ll be okay, but everybody be ready.”

  Gabriella unzipped her black bag and began to stroke her Uzi with the tips of her fingers. “We will be ready,” she said.

  “Barrett,” Max said. “Go wait in the outer offices. We’ll call you in if we have any questions.”

  Barrett quickly left the room. He obviously wanted no part of being close to so many people with guns.

  “You’d better go too,” Max quietly said to me.

  “I’d like to stay with you.”

  “This might end badly,” Max said as he shook his head. “You’ll be in harm’s way.”

  I held my arms up and made a point to look around the office. “We’re at one of the main locations of the Black Death, surrounded by twenty men,” I said with a small laugh. “If there’s a shootout, I don’t think I’ll be any safer in the main office as opposed to being in here.”

  Max nodded his head in acknowledgment. I went over to a chair in the corner of the office and sat. Carson took a similar position in the far corner.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Less than a minute later, Sebastian entered the room, followed by two grim-looking men. Roberto came in next, followed by Señor Largo.

  Largo stood near the doorway and surveyed the room. He only briefly glanced at me before spending several seconds looking over Max and Gabriella, his eyes lingering on their body armor. Largo then studied Carson, who was also dressed for combat.

  After a few moments, Largo seemed satisfied that he knew who everyone in the room was and what their roles were. He made a small gesture with his hand, and the two goons left and closed the door.

  Gabriella seemed to be in a trance, her eyes never leaving Largo and her hand never coming off her Uzi. Her breathing had quickened, and her face had started to flush with a pink glow. You could feel the tension in the room as if it were something alive.

  “Sebastian has told me of your efforts to rescue Danielle,” Señor Largo said. He spoke slowly with a thick Spanish accent. Each of his words seemed to carry meaning. “He says we owe you a debt and we can trust your motives. However, I do not know you, nor do I trust you. I do not know why you seem willing to place yourself in danger to help a rival.”

  “We just made peace between our groups…” Max started to say.

  Largo waved his hand as if acknowledging the statement. “Yes, peace is a good thing, of course. However, it is in your interest to have our group fall into chaos, is it not? You could then more easily take over what you were not able to obtain through the assassination of Carlos or in the negotiations.”

  “Today, we’re only here to rescue Danielle,” Max said. His voice again had the tone of command. “Over the past few months, I’ve come to know and respect her. But beyond that, I don’t want another struggle for power within your group. The last time led to death and loss of profit for both sides. I believe it’s in the mutual interest of our groups to work together on this.”

  Largo glanced at me, still sitting in the corner. “What is Laura Black doing here? What is her role?”

  I saw Max stiffen, but I held up my hand to stop him from saying anything. “I’m only here to help Danielle,” I said.

  Largo thought for a moment and nodded his head. “Yes, you recently performed a service to Danielle
and our entire group. You could have backed away from the danger then, but you did not. You are a brave woman, and I believe your motives toward Danielle are true.”

  “We’re all worried about her,” I said. “Max and his group have military training in hostage rescue and he’s willing to help. We’ve all worked hard to establish peace between the two groups. You might as well use the resources you have available.”

  Largo stared into space and weighed the situation, obviously forming what had to be a difficult decision. I could see him going over the pros and cons in his mind.

  Carson appeared to be relaxed, but he was paying close attention. He was wearing a pistol on his hip, and I noticed the strap had been unfastened.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gabriella’s hand tighten on her Uzi, her face turning crimson. Her mouth had dropped open, and she was starting to breathe faster.

  “Very well,” Señor Largo said. “I see the wisdom in what you propose. However, let this be understood. I will be the one who leads the rescue team in.”

  “Agreed,” Max said.

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. Carson relaxed, and Gabriella’s empty hand slowly came out of her bag. From the way her bottom lip poked out, she looked disappointed.

  “I propose two teams of two enter the house,” Max continued. “You and Carson lead us in.” As he said this, he pointed to the big man in the corner. “I’ll go in with Gabriella. We’ll each leave a couple of men on the perimeter to warn us if anyone new comes in.”

  “Agreed,” Largo said. “Do you have a map of the house and grounds?”

  “Yes, and we have the man who drew it. It’s his brother’s house. We can fill you in on the background story as we go along.”

  Barrett was asked in, and everyone again went over the map. Largo asked many of the same questions as Max and Gabriella had. The four raiders then huddled around the map to sort out some of the details.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked Barrett.

  “I’m going to turn myself in. By now, the police will have raided the drug warehouse and arrested Lillian. They’ll probably show up at the hospital sometime tomorrow, the day after, at the latest. I know I’ll be next on their radar.”