by Lauren Carr
“Unless Palazzi ended up in jail,” Joshua said. “Like for having you kill Khloe for him.”
“Hey,” Cooper said. “’I did not kill Khloe.”
“You’re Senator Palazzi’s cleanup man, right?” Joshua asked.
“Enough talk,” Cooper said. “You’re asking too many questions.” He ordered his men, “Kill him.”
When one of the men grabbed him by the arm, Joshua countered with a kick to his knee that caused the thug to drop to his knees. When the other man grabbed him and pinned his arms behind his back, Joshua turned to Cooper. “Even if Palazzi has the voting machines stacked in his favor, people are going to be asking questions and looking into how he can keep getting voted into office when the overwhelming public opinion is against him because he’s a rapist. So it’s in his best interest that those tapes aren’t made public. You’re never going to find them without me, and I’m not going to give them up unless I get answers.”
“What do you need answers for when you’re going to be dead in a few minutes?” Cooper asked.
“Wouldn’t you want to know who killed you?” Joshua answered. “Who gave you the order to kill me? Palazzi? Does he give you his orders directly?”
The gunman he had knocked down hobbled back up onto the bed.
“Senator Palazzi didn’t get where he is by being stupid.” Kevin Cooper laughed.
“His son.” Joshua shifted to ease the discomfort of the two guns stuck in his ribs.
“You’re a lawyer, right?” Cooper said. “Haven’t you had clients who have special needs?”
“Samuel Brooks,” Joshua said. “He takes the orders from Palazzi, who passes them on to you and then hides behind lawyer-client privilege.”
“That’s how it works.”
“So the order to kill me and my partner came from Samuel Brooks,” Joshua said.
“After we collect all of the copies you have of the recording,” the private investigator said.
“Do you know what’s on that recording? Palazzi admitting to Florence Everest the he raped her and got her pregnant.”
“Fat lot I care,” Cooper said with a shrug.
“As long as you get paid.”
“As long as Samuel Brooks pays me my retainer every month to take care of his big money clients and keep the skeletons in their closets behind closed doors, I do what I have to do.”
“How many clients does Brooks have you doing cleanup for? How many politicians have gotten themselves into office via this voter fraud scheme?”
Cooper and his men answered with wicked laughs.
“Come on,” Joshua said. “You’re going to kill me and my partner isn’t here yet. It isn’t like I can spread this around.”
“Okay,” Cooper said. “You want to know?”
“I have a right to know.”
“Palazzi is Brooks’ big client,” Cooper said. “I mean, this man has two serious problems. He can’t keep his fly shut, and he hates women. Bad combo. It’s like a couple of times a year we need to go convince some bitch to take the payoff that Brooks offers her to not go blabbing to the police and the media.”
“Where does Bevis fit into all this?” Joshua asked.
“You ever hear the nut doesn’t fall very far from the tree?” Cooper said. “Bevis hates women, too—only it’s worse than his daddy. No chance of the senator ever becoming a granddaddy with that one. He’s a royal whack job. He blames women for everything. If he’s got a big account coming in and it falls through—doesn’t matter that it’s the male client who pulled it—Bevis will blame the client’s wife, or if he’s not married, his girlfriend, or the client’s female assistant.” He paused. “It’s always the woman’s fault for everything.”
“What cleanup have you had to do for Bevis?” Joshua asked.
Without answering, Cooper stared at him.
Joshua could almost see the wheels turning in the PI’s mind while he was thinking.
“What’s taking your partner so long?” Cooper asked.
Holding his breath, Joshua wondered if he had pushed too far with the questions. On both sides of him, the muzzles of the guns pressed against his ribs.
“Sounds like the senator has a sweet setup,” Joshua said. “His lawyer handles the payoffs. You guys provide the muscle to the victims who have too much integrity to accept money.”
“Too much integrity and not enough brains,” Cooper said.
“Or, they could just plain be stupid,” Joshua said.
“We’ve had some of them, too.”
“Like Nick Fields,” Joshua said. “He had no integrity or brains. That’s why you had to send Lincoln Northrop to kill him at the Spencer Police Department.”
Cooper’s cocky grin fell as Joshua’s stretched across his face. “It’s a set up!” Grabbing his gun from his holster, the private investigator ran for the door, only to have it fly open. He came face to face with Bogie and the muzzle of an assault rifle. Seeing that he was outgunned, he spun on his heels and ran for the connecting door. When he threw it open, he came face to face with Cameron’s and David’s guns. Throwing up his hands, he backed up into the room while Cameron grabbed the gun from his hand.
Before both gunmen could fire their weapons, Joshua reached up behind them and slammed their heads together. In the seconds that they reacted to the sudden head butt, Joshua somersaulted backwards over the bed. When the two assailants dove across the bed to pursue him, they froze when Joshua came back up with a gun in each hand and aimed at them. It was only then that they realized that Joshua had managed to disarm both of them simultaneously after butting their heads.
A look of disbelief filled their faces as Joshua aimed their own guns at both of them. “Told you we were going to have a party,” he told them before they were cuffed and taken down to Spencer police department.
“You’re wasting your time. Palazzi will have us out by morning,” Kevin Cooper said when Bogie shoved him down into a chair at the table in the hotel room.
“I don’t think so,” David said. “We have enough on you to nail you for conspiracy to commit murder in this case, and once we get a warrant for your phone records, we’ll connect you to Lincoln Northrop and prove that the order to kill Nick Fields came from you.”
“Not to mention all the big name clients who Brooks has had you doing cleanup for,” Joshua added.
“I want a deal,” Cooper said.
“Oh,” Mac said. “I can imagine that. You’re going to say it was Brooks, and Brooks is going to hide behind lawyer-client privilege. Someone is going to jail, and we’ll settle for you.”
“There’s no hiding with what I have to offer,” Cooper said. “I have recordings—video and audio. Sometimes, Palazzi wanted his messages delivered in a special way, and he wanted to give his orders in person.” He chuckled. “I have him on tape telling where all the bodies are hidden…” His grin was like that of a cat who had eaten a very plump canary. “…including his wife’s.”
They all exchanged glances before Mac said, “You went to work for Senator Palazzi a dozen years ago. His wife disappeared over twenty years ago.”
“That’s right,” Cooper said. “She disappeared with her best friend. Palazzi had me move their bodies ten years ago when they decided to build a subdivision on top of an old farm in Virginia where he had buried their bodies. He killed them because he raped the friend and she told his wife. She believed her friend and was going to leave him and tell the media about him being a rapist. So he killed them both and framed some guy he had arrested who had just gotten out of jail.”
Cooper chuckled. “I got it all in both audio and video, in Palazzi’s own words. Samuel Brooks was there in the meeting, too. Plus, I can lead you to their bodies. Is that good enough to get me immunity and protection?”
Every officer and detective in the hotel room gazed at each other in silence, too stunned to form words to respond to the private detective’s news. The only noise in the room was Kevin Cooper’s arrogant laughter.
/> Mac’s words were very low. “Do you mean to tell us that you not only knew, but got evidence a decade ago, that Senator Harry Palazzi killed his wife and her friend, and framed an innocent man, and you did nothing?” His voice rose in anger. “All these years, over twenty years, an innocent man has been rotting in jail for something he didn’t do while you—a former police officer—did nothing to make it right!”
“If he had, then he wouldn’t have been making all the sweet money he has been making helping Brooks and his powerful political friends who have gotten sweet jobs for life,” Joshua said with sarcasm.
“Yeah,” Cooper said. “I want my lawyer, and I want a deal. Once I get the deal in writing, you’ll have Brooks and Palazzi.”
“Do you have any idea what a reputation you would have gotten if you had turned over this evidence a decade ago?” Mac replied. “You would have put Senator Palazzi away, solved a double homicide, prevented the rapes that Palazzi has committed since then, and freed an innocent man.”
“Do you have any idea how much Brooks and his friends pay me to keep them in power?”
Mac raged. “You were a cop!”
“Hey,” Cooper shrugged, “shit happens. Where’s my deal?”
Afraid of what he would do if he got too close to the private investigator, Mac turned away.
Cameron stepped into his space. “I’ve got an idea that will make us all feel better.” She took the gun that she had taken from the private investigator from out of her waistband. “We’ll shoot him.”
The officers and detectives in the room were uncertain if they should believe her or not. They looked to David for his reaction. He was equally unsure.
Joshua’s smile stretched across his face.
Confident, Cooper laughed. “Yeah. Right.”
Cameron went on. “We know what’s going to happen. We’ll take Cooper to the police station. He’ll call Brooks or another lawyer. Since he knows where all the evidence that we want is, he will refuse to talk until he gets a deal, which he’ll get because that’s the only way we’ll get to Palazzi and Brooks and all of their bottom-sucking friends in Washington. Cooper here is going to get immunity. He will skate and be taken into witness protection where he’ll get a new life without any payback for the slimy existence that he has lived. Meanwhile, all of the women who Palazzi has raped, something he got away with thanks to Cooper’s protection, will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives.”
She waved Cooper’s gun. “Well, this is our chance, men—our only chance—before the slimy lawyers get their hands on him—”
“Hey!” Joshua interjected.
“No offense meant.”
“None taken,” Joshua replied with a grin.
“As I was saying,” Cameron continued, “This is our only chance to give Cooper here the payback that he deserves. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll shoot Cooper dead. Then, we’ll say that when we burst in, Cooper pulled his gun and took a shot at me and I had to kill him in self-defense. If we all say that’s what happened, no one will ever know, and there will be one less slime ball wasting oxygen.”
“We can’t forget to shoot his gun,” Joshua said.
“Of course we’ll do that,” Cameron said. “Do I look stupid? I’ve done this before.”
Seeing the sly grin on Joshua’s face, Mac said, “Sounds good to me.”
“Now we can’t contradict each other,” Cameron said, “but we can’t all tell the same story in the same way. If we all use the same words then they’ll know that we got our stories straight.”
“Now wait a minute,” Cooper objected.
“Shut up, “Cameron ordered.
“I want to shoot him,” Mac said.
“Can I hit him before you shoot him?” Bogie cracked his knuckles. “I want to break his nose.”
David said, “You know, it would be more believable if we had an actual gun fight before we killed him. I think we should shoot out his kneecaps and wound him really good before we actually deliver a kill shot.”
“How about if we make it a big gun fight,” Joshua suggested. “We’ll all get to shoot him.”
“But I get the kill shot,” Mac insisted.
“Then we’re going to need a bigger gun to explain how he was such a big threat that we all had to shoot him,” Cameron said.
“I have a throwaway assault rifle in my cruiser,” David said. “I’ll go get it while you stage the scene.”
“Who wants to shoot out his kneecaps?” Bogie asked.
“You can’t do this!” Cooper struggled while the deputy chief pulled him up to his feet.
“Oh, yes we can,” Cameron said while leaning over to tell him in a low voice. “We have the badges. We can do anything we want.”
“Be a man, Cooper.” Mac cocked his gun. “Shit happens.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Knowing the justice department would quickly accept Kevin Cooper’s offer for a deal in exchange for the evidence he had been collecting for a dozen years, David waited until the private detective had broken into hysterical pleas for mercy before ending their charade of planning to kill him. Even if Cooper didn’t change as a result of thinking he was going to be killed, at least the detectives got their frustration off their chests.
Hours later, armed with arrest warrants, David, Mac, and his officers swooped in on the senator’s mountain home to take him in for questioning about his wife’s disappearance and murder. Senator Harry Palazzi had a seasonal home on Spencer Mountain that provided a view of the whole lake and surrounding mountains.
The house was dark when the cruisers swarmed in from all directions. Mac was hoping that they would wake up the senator. He deserved to be woken up. When no one answered the door, they broke it down and the police poured in with their assault rifles, ready for a fight.
Wanting to see Senator Harry Palazzi’s face when they snapped the cuffs on him, Mac was jogging up the steps behind the police when he heard the lead agent come to the door to tell them, “You need to see this.”
Mac followed David inside. The first thing they noticed when the lights came on was the blood spatters on the walls and doorframes leading into the living room.
Lying in the middle of a blood-soaked rug was the senator, dressed in what had to be a smoking jacket. His body had been mutilated.
“Revenge for one of his attacks?” David asked.
“This one’s still alive!” one of the officers called out from another room.
Expecting to find Bevis, Mac rushed into the den where they found Samuel Brooks lying in the middle of the floor. Like his client, he had been stabbed several times in the chest and stomach.
That he’s still alive could only be a miracle. Mac knelt down next to the man struggling for every breath. “Brooks,” he asked, “who did this?”
“Be-Bevis,” the lawyer gasped out while clutching Mac’s jacket with his blood soaked hand. “He’s crazy.”
“Why?” Mac ignored the EMTs coming in with their first aid equipment. Fearing that Brooks would die before he could give them the whole story, he refused to move.
“Crazy…he found out…Harry had to…ordered Fields killed. Bevis flipped out…said he…he was husband.” Brooks let out a pained gasp. “He thought…money he was paying…he believed it. He thought Fields was his hus…band. Fantasy…thought real.”
The grip on Mac’s jacket loosened. As he stared up into Mac’s face, Samuel Brooks’s eyes filled with fear. His mouth dropped open. In death, he released Mac and his hand dropped down to his side.
“Excuse me, Mr. Faraday,” one of the EMTs ordered him to move so that they could tend to the lawyer.
Mac found David with Cameron and Joshua outside. Afraid of missing Senator Palazzi’s arrest, Joshua had refused medical treatment for the cuts and bruises he had suffered in the fight at the hotel.
“Bevis?” Cameron asked.
“He’s lost it,” Mac said. “Brooks said he killed his father because he thought he killed his hu
sband—he believed Fields was his husband.”
“And killed his father?” Joshua said. “Avenging his husband’s murder. Now he’s killed a man. Remember Cooper said he blamed women for everything.”
“Maybe there was no woman here to blame,” Cameron said.
“No woman here,” Mac said. “He had to strike out upon learning the news. This is a crime of passion. Now that he’s had time to think, what’s he going to do?” When none of them answered, he concluded, “Find a woman to blame.”
As much as she loved Mac and their friends, Archie Monday loved those occasions when she was home alone at Spencer Manor.
Well, on this particular day, she wasn’t really alone.
Irving had just as much attitude as Gnarly. Unlike Gnarly, who was an independent sort, Irving didn’t like being alone. So he had spent the day following Archie while she went from room to room in the huge manor home doing laundry, cooking lunch, stretching out across the sofa while editing a book, and then cooking dinner to eat with Chelsea after Ben had driven her home.
After they had dinner, Chelsea took Molly out for a long walk, which she did every evening. It had become a habit for David to take Gnarly and go walking with them, but on that night, David was out closing the case, and Gnarly was still recovering on a bed Archie had made for him up in the master suite.
After Chelsea had left for her walk with Molly, Archie resumed busying herself. All the while, she was under the penetrating emerald green gaze of the Maine Coon that looked like a giant skunk.
No wonder Joshua Thornton refused to let Cameron leave him alone with Irving in Chester, West Virginia. It’s creepy the way he stares. Does he ever blink?
She finished folding the last load of laundry, which consisted of her Victoria Secret silky lingerie, and took it upstairs with Irving leading the way. In the bedroom, she smiled while placing the intimate clothing away in the walk-in closet and dressing room. Each piece brought back memories of special moments she had shared with Mac.
