Conard County Justice (Conard County: The Next Generation Book 42)

by Rachel Lee

  Another half smile from him. “I never would have guessed.”

  A laugh escaped her, brief but genuine. “I’m usually better at concealing my reactions to people. But there you were, looking like a battering ram. You sure looked hard and angry. Nothing about you made me want to get into a tussle.”

  He looked at the beer bottle he held. “Most people don’t want to tangle with me. I can understand your reaction. I came through that door loaded for bear. Too much time to think on the way here, maybe.”

  “You looked like walking death,” she told him frankly. “An icy-cold fury. Worse, in my opinion, than a heated rage. Scary.”

  “Comes with the territory,” he said after a moment, then took a swig of his beer.

  She could probably wonder until the cows came home exactly what he meant by that. Maybe it was better not to know. But she still had other questions.

  “Duke? That article Larry wrote? Can you be sure it’s not relevant?”

  “It’s been a while. Just over two years.”

  “That doesn’t mean it can’t fit into this.”

  He shook his head. “It was about a murder-for-hire scheme within the military.”

  Cat was taken aback. “Murder for hire? Someone wanted to get rid of someone else?”

  “Not exactly.” He put the bottle on the table and leaned back a bit. “There were apparently a few soldiers who were paid to eliminate certain Afghans. Contract killings. I don’t know if it was ever discovered who paid them, but I do know they were all charged with murder. Larry uncovered the whole thing, and witnesses were willing to testify. At least the ones not in uniform any longer.”

  “My God,” she murmured. “That’s awful.”

  “Absolutely. A stain on the uniform.”

  “But why should that reflect on you? Did you know anything about it?”

  “Not a thing until Larry’s story broke.” He leaned forward, and once again she caught a glimpse of the man who had walked into the office: hard as granite, angry. “If I had heard about it, I’d have done exactly what Larry did. Not in a newspaper, of course, but I wouldn’t have let it go until I cut the rot from the tree. Ugly. Disgraceful. Cold-blooded murder.”

  Cat wasn’t sure what Duke might have done to get himself out of the line of fire, but she could certainly understand why he had felt betrayed. To have the story hit the press and not even be prepared for it?

  But at the same time, she had no difficulty understanding why Larry had chosen not to say anything.

  “Do you suppose Larry might have thought he was protecting you by not including you in any way? Given what happened to you, maybe if you’d been able to send out a warning that the story was coming, people might have wanted to know why you didn’t stop it.”

  His gaze grew distant again, as if he was reviewing the past. “It’s possible,” he said. “I didn’t think of that at the time, but it’s possible. On the other hand, when we had our argument, he never once said he was trying to protect me.”

  Well, cross that out, Cat thought. She needed to move, to mull this over.

  “I need to change out of this uniform,” she announced. “If you want, head down to the basement for a workout. I’m sure it’s not what you’re used to, but if you don’t have to run in the rain, why do it?”

  She heard a wind gust as she walked from the kitchen, rattling windows and flinging raindrops around. Not a great day to be outside unless you had to. Right now she didn’t have to.

  After a hot shower, she changed into some warmer clothes, including a blue flannel shirt. The weather had made the day colder, and her house as well. Drafts crept everywhere, and she thought about closing curtains to settle them down. Nah. Whatever was left of the day’s light, she didn’t want to shut it out.

  In the kitchen, she discovered that Duke had washed the coffee mugs. Courteous guy.

  As the borrowed heat from her shower wore off, she still felt a bit chilled. She went to the living room, turned on a few lamps, then curled up beneath a knit blanket on one end of the couch. Her book still rested on the end table, and she picked it up.

  This case, she thought, was sprouting potential complications. Tomorrow she’d go to the office and catch up on what they’d learned. Right now, however, it was time to relax.

  She heard a clang from below that told her Duke was working with her free weights.

  Peace for a little while.

  * * *

  OUT IN THE RAIN, wearing camouflaged ponchos, three men sat in their gully and watched the creek rise even higher. It was too wet for a fire, which meant they couldn’t even make coffee. Alcohol lamps could heat their rations a bit, but not make any decent coffee. Unless they wanted cups of instant.

  They were used to the discomfort, but that didn’t mean they liked it. At least with the cover of rain, they could walk a little, stretch out the kinks from being cramped so long.

  On the other hand, the dropping temperature and the dampness reminded them of abuse their bodies had suffered over the years, of old wounds and battered joints.

  “Ah, hell,” said Man One. “We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do next. This rain won’t last forever, and it’ll wear out as an excuse pretty quickly.”

  “Who’s gonna know?” asked Man Three. “Seriously. This takes as long as it takes, and if they don’t get that, we need to refuse to go any further. It’s not like this is an enforceable order.”

  The second guy spoke. “I like the money. Do you?”

  “Hell, yeah,” said the third man. “But we’re operating under some pretty tight constraints here. And some pretty bad intel. We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for.”

  “Any information he might have wanted to use in that book he was writing.”

  The first man, who’d been listening, spoke. “But we don’t even know what it was about. Someone has a suspicion, obviously, but without telling us, we can’t know for sure if we’ve found it.”

  The second man jumped in. “I suspect,” he said sarcastically, “that we’ll know because it mentions the Army somewhere.”

  “Or some officers,” suggested Man Three.

  They all nodded, agreeing on that.

  The second man spoke again. “Here we are, sitting in the damned rain again, freezing our cojones off—”

  Man One interjected. “Don’t exaggerate. We’ve been in worse.”

  Man Two answered him. “Yeah, man. We have. But my point still stands. We’re not doing anything. We’re not even sure how to proceed. Staging a series of break-ins that look like some teenage fools did them is fine as far as it goes. But we wanted to do the jobs after dark when no one was home. We didn’t want anyone to be able to say they saw big masked men. Hell, we don’t want anyone to suspect these actions are anything except robbery.”

  “So here we sit,” said Man Three. “I don’t like it, either.”

  Man Two threw a pebble into the blackened firepit. “We already killed one man. Larry effing Duke. Do you really think they sent the body away because they didn’t suspect torture? We can’t leave a string of murders behind us.”

  The first man picked up a thin stick and flexed it, as if to test its springiness. Beneath his poncho hood, he didn’t look any happier than the other two. But happiness wasn’t a prerequisite. They had a job, and now it was time to figure out how to complete it. After a bit, he threw in his two cents.

  “We’ll leave murders behind us, but only if there’s no other way. This was supposed to be a clean, quick op. It’s not. Who would have guessed that Larry Duke would have refused to give us the info? I sure didn’t. But we’d have had to kill him anyway.”

  “I’m not arguing against that. I’m just pointing out that the whole idea of waiting for these buddies of Larry’s to leave town overnight isn’t going to pay any dividends. How many of them do you see taking trips
? How long are we going to wait?”

  “I don’t know,” Man One said. “But I’m going to place a call soon and find out if our mission has changed, or if there are any better suggestions because of what we learned. We didn’t come out here suspecting we’d need to pay a visit to anyone but Larry.”

  “Intel failure,” said the second man. “A serious intel failure.”

  “We know that,” said the third man.

  The first man threw the stick he was holding. It fell into the rushing creek and vanished. “The thing is, nobody thought Larry would be able to withstand questioning like that. How many have you known who could?”

  “His brother is a Ranger,” said Man Two. “Maybe it’s in the genes.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” snorted the third man.

  The second man just shook his head. “Who would have expected such resistance from a reporter, for Pete’s sake?”

  Man One spoke. “It’s irrelevant what was expected. We have to deal with what is. Now put your brains to it, men. It’ll probably be sometime tomorrow before I can get someplace we can get a cell phone signal.”

  Which was kind of surprising to them all, considering they had a satellite phone. This was a communications dead zone for some reason. Or maybe the satellite phone was screwed up.

  “Did anyone consider he might have left his research back in Baltimore?” asked the third man.

  Man One answered, “I suspect I’ll get that ball rolling when I call tomorrow. Just think, men. Try brainstorming ideas. If we’re stuck with burglary, then we’ll have to figure out how to do it without alerting the entire damn region to our presence.”

  With that they all fell silent, but irritation and gloom filled the air around them.

  Not even a tent to cover them. Oh, it sucked.

  Chapter Four

  Duke refused Cat’s offer to take him back to the motel. The rain had let up a bit, and despite his workout in her basement, he still felt a need to run.

  He wasn’t exactly dressed for a workout, but he didn’t care if he got wet or sweaty. He didn’t care about much except his brother.

  Maybe his focus was getting too narrow. He wondered what he could learn from people who had played poker with Larry. Probably not much. If the cops had questioned Larry’s poker mates, if one of them suspected anything of the others, they probably wouldn’t remain mum.

  He was pretty damp by the time he passed the sheriff’s office and reached Mahoney’s bar. Not so wet that he decided against going inside. Another beer was in order, and maybe some of the patrons would talk to him.

  But the whole damn idea that he could just talk to people around here and learn something was beginning to look stupid to him.

  Why in the world would anyone tell him something they hadn’t told the cops? Because he was Larry’s brother? Right now that didn’t seem like much of a reason.

  Feeling truly grumpy, he walked into the bar. He’d been out of his mind when he came here, swamped in grief and fury and the need to do something. Anything for Larry other than put him in a casket.

  Inside, Mahoney’s felt like an old-time pub. Dimly lit and bigger than he’d expected from the outside. A couple of dartboards and two pool tables could be seen through a wide door at the back of the bar portion. Wooden booths and tables filled the front end. Nice. It was filling up for the evening, mostly with men, and all of them talking to each other.

  He took an empty stool at the bar and lifted his feet to the rail. A chubby man of about sixty came down the length of the bar and scanned him with sharp dark eyes before smiling and saying, “I’m Mahoney. What can I do you for?”

  Duke took a chance. He extended his hand across the bar. “Daniel Duke.”

  Mahoney responded with a firm grip while saying, “Any relation to Larry Duke?”

  “I’m his brother.”

  Mahoney’s face sagged. “I’m sorry, Mr. Duke. Really sorry. I didn’t know Larry for long, but he was a great guy. Made friends fast and made a lot of people laugh.”

  “That’s how I remember him.”

  Mahoney nodded, seemed about to say something else, but finally chose the safest thing. Hard to talk to someone who was grieving, Duke thought. “What can I get you, Mr. Duke?”

  “Everyone calls me Duke. And whatever you’ve got on tap.”

  “Be right back.”

  There was a big mirror over the bar, even in the dim light catching the glimmer from liquor bottles. The mirror was probably as old as the establishment, showing signs of losing its silvering in scattered spots. Mahoney returned a minute later with a big glass filled with beer and foam. Duke liked the foam, always had.

  “On the house,” Mahoney said. “I suppose you want to be left alone.”

  Duke shook his head. “I was hanging around thinking I’d like to meet some of the people Larry knew. A few stories might do me some good, and it would be nice to know that Larry had friends in the area. Cat Jansen told me he used to play darts here.”

  Mahoney smiled. “He was a mean dart player. He must have played it for years. It got so folks who watched him started placing dollar bets on whether Larry would lose.” Mahoney chuckled. “Think about that. Not whether he’d win, but whether he’d lose.”

  Duke felt himself grinning. “Definitely Larry. I never could beat him in a game.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but it didn’t matter. “And people still played against him?”

  A twinkle came to Mahoney’s eye. “You bet. After a beer or two, a challenge can become irresistible.”

  Duke laughed outright. He knew the mentality.

  “Everybody liked Larry,” Mahoney said. “That’s why this came as such a shock.” Then he looked around and called out, “Merritt? Can you come over here? I want you to meet someone.”

  Duke twisted his head and saw a big guy who looked like someone who worked outdoors a lot get up from a table he’d been sharing with two other men. He wended his way over with a loose gait.

  Mahoney introduced them. “Merritt, this is Daniel Duke, Larry’s brother. Duke, Merritt was one of them fools who was always trying to beat Larry at darts.”

  Merritt laughed and stuck out his hand. “I used to be the best darts player in this bar. Not after Larry came.” He slid onto the stool to Duke’s right. “I’m sorry about your brother, man. He seemed like a straight-up guy and funny, too. And the puns? He raised them to a new art form. Had to be careful or prepared when you were talking to him.” Merritt’s eyes creased with a smile.

  “Larry was good people, although his knack for puns sometimes nearly drove me up the wall.”

  Merritt nodded. “I get it. You’d be sailing along in a conversation, and he’d make a pun on some word or other. Then everyone would crack up, and the conversation would get derailed. But it was always fun.” Then he shook his head. “I don’t get why anyone would want to kill him.”

  “Me, either.” Which wasn’t entirely true, because Larry had gotten knee-deep into investigations that might have made someone angry enough. But none of them were here.

  He swallowed some beer, thinking. No, of course none of them were here. Larry had come here to write a book, and while that might be a useful cover, it wouldn’t be about this place. Hell, he couldn’t imagine anything around here that would draw the attention of a reporter of Larry’s stature. Sure, there had to be crime and corruption, like everywhere else in the world, but nothing big enough to reach Larry’s radar.

  Merritt spoke again. “So were you big brother or little brother?”

  Duke summoned a smile. “Little brother. Larry was two years my senior. Didn’t keep us from being tight, though.”

  Merritt paused long enough to raise a finger to Mahoney. “Let me buy you another beer. Then you come join me and my friends. If you want, we can reminisce about your brother. It was a short time, but it was a good time. Would’ve lik
ed it to be longer.”

  “Me, too.” Truer words were never spoken. Mahoney brought a fresh draft for Duke and a new bottle for Merritt. Then the two of them wound their way to the table near the back where the two other men were looking curious.

  “Larry Duke’s brother,” Merritt said to them, his thumb pointing backward to Duke. “Just call him Duke, he says.”

  The two, introduced to him as Dave and Rich, were friendly enough, although maybe a bit cautious. Duke could understand. Maybe they feared an outpouring of grief.

  But his grief was private, and he preferred to keep it that way. He’d nurse it in the quiet, dark hours and keep up whatever other appearance he deemed necessary.

  Dave and Rich told him what a great guy Larry had been. Duke found himself remembering how he’d suggested to Cat that people might be franker with him because he knew Larry was imperfect. So much for that pipe dream.

  Never had not speaking ill of the dead seemed like a heavy weight. How to get past it?

  The other two men joined Merritt in talking about Larry’s skill at darts. “He was pretty damn good at pool, too,” Dave said.

  “That’s interesting,” Duke said. “He never mentioned that he played.”

  “He sure did,” Rich said. “Really good at it, so he must have done it a lot.”

  “Larry said it required being able to see vectors and forces, whatever he meant,” Dave announced. “Never saw a guy make a ball curve around another the way he did, and right into the pocket. He should have played competitively.”

  But Larry wouldn’t have enjoyed that. He had undoubtedly learned and used it as a tool. Duke nodded but remembered his brother’s passion for investigating and writing. A very real passion. Just like Duke’s passion for the Rangers. Duke wasn’t as interested in getting a star as he was in being able to keep the job, which challenged him to his limit, mentally and physically.

  Merritt spoke. “Larry was a reporter, right?”

  “Yes,” Duke answered. “One of the best. He did a lot of investigative pieces, some of which were pretty dangerous work.”