Death of a Bankster

by David Bishop

  “Yeah.” Maddie’s mind raced without a destination.

  “It was in a trashcan liner left in my car where my feet go when I drive. Inside was the money, all of it. My car was locked so I don’t know how it got in there. I put it back in a safe-deposit box. Not at Nation’s First, I can tell you that.”

  Maddie knew only one person who could and likely would have gotten that money back, one man who had the leverage over Maxwell Norbert, one man with the character to do it. Ryan Testler, a man with a strange and contradictory set of values and code of conduct.

  Maddie smiled.

  * * *

  A month after the call from Paige Crawford, Maddie received a small box brought to the station by courier. The box was labeled personal, to be delivered only to and opened by Sergeant Madeline Richards. The box had no return address or sender identification. The delivery person had no record of who sent it and neither did his office. She had the bomb squad check it. When the package cleared, she brought it to her office. Lieutenant Harrison, Sue Martin, and several other officers were crowded into the doorway of her pint-sized office when she opened it. An unsigned note on top read: I forgot to say thanks for joining me for steaks. No name. Maddie shooed everyone out of her office.

  The box contained the following documents:

  1. A copy of the CIA report on the death of Rodger Davis, Paige Crawford’s father who had been shot dead on a street corner in Paris, France, about fifteen years ago.

  2. A copy of the interview of Barbara Davis following the death of her husband.

  3. A copy of the ballistics report on the bullet taken from the brain of Rodger Davis.

  4. A copy of the termination papers on former CIA employee Barbara Davis.

  5. Some unlabeled documents that suggested Russell Mueller took assassination assignments for people outside the government. And that Barbara Davis, his sister, could be doing his planning and logistics.

  6. A copy of a report from inside the French Prefecture of Police which stated they had a strong continuing suspicion that Russell Mueller is an assassin-for-hire. Russell has not been seen inside France since they reached that conclusion. The Prefecture does not believe this opinion is backed up by enough evidence for them to ask for extradition. It is of interest that while the Prefecture does not have a matching suspicion with respect to Barbara Davis, like her brother, she has not been known to visit France since her brother stopped returning to the country.

  7. An internal CIA document which concluded there were strong similarities between the killing of Rodger Davis and several missions Barbara Davis had planned for the agency. However, there was no clear evidence that she, with or without the help of Russell, had been responsible for the death of her husband, Rodger Davis.

  8. The agency lacked a sufficient basis to deny Barbara Davis her pension following her husband’s death.

  9. There were three tapes of sessions Barbara Davis had with her psychiatrist in which she talked about the death of her husband, Rodger. The summary notes from those sessions by the now deceased doctor commented on how Barbara ranted about her husband’s repeated infidelities. She never admitted having killed him, but often spoke of appreciation for whoever had killed the no-good, cheating bastard. The doctor’s notes mentioned that each time she said those words she did so in a very low and calm voice, after which she remained quiet, almost catatonic, for several minutes before rising and walking out to end that session. There was nothing indicating how these tapes and notes had been obtained.

  10. The last page was a conclusion: No evidence, but, if Barbara Davis killed her husband for infidelity, it is not all that much of a stretch to reason that she had similarly killed her son-in-law for that same offense against her daughter.

  That was it except for two centered, hand-printed words.

  Maybe SOMEDAY

  The End

  Thank you for reading Death of a Bankster, I hope you enjoyed it. On the following pages is an excerpt from the beginning of The Beholder, the first Maddie Richards Mystery.

  David Bishop

  The Beholder

  A Maddie Richards Mystery

  An Excerpt:

  Following are the opening pages of The Beholder, the first Maddie Richards mystery. I hope this preview will inspire you to read the full initial adventure of this indomitable woman, and most capable fictional detective as she strives to solve murders, raise her son, and find the right person with whom to share her love and life.

  Chapter 1

  From the air, Maddie Richard’s neighborhood would appear as a checkerboard pattern with medium-sized, thirty-to-forty-year-old stucco tract houses with black asphalt driveways that softened in the summer sun. The yards populated with succulents, scattered palms, and a few old elegant jacaranda trees with their fernlike leaves and soft purple flowers.

  On the ground, today had been a good Thursday in Phoenix, Arizona. There had been no homicides and the temperature had stayed below one hundred. Maddie liked the heat or more accurately, she hated the cold.

  She had picked up her mail and walked halfway up the driveway when her cell phone rang. She considered not answering, but that was not an option. She was a cop working homicides.

  “We’ve got another dead woman,” her partner, Jed Smith, told her. “The killer left the same message as with that black chick last week, ‘I’ll Get You, My Pretty,’ printed in the woman’s own blood. Cinch up your britches, Maddie, the media will be dogging us on this one.”

  The smell of simmering taco meat enveloped Maddie when she opened her front door. She tossed the mail on the hall table, jotted down the address Jed gave her and hung up.

  After putting a smile on her face, she joined her mother and son in the kitchen. His lips tasted minty. He usually had to be reminded to brush his teeth before bed, but on taco nights he always brushed before dinner, saying it gave the tacos more zing.

  “Mommy’s gotta go back to work, honey,” she said, trying to keep it casual.

  “Ah, Mom. You missed tacos last week, too. You promised.”

  “You know I’d rather be here eating tacos with you. I’m really sorry.”

  Despite only being in the fifth grade, Bradley had already learned that murderers were rarely considerate enough to ply their trade during normal working hours.

  Maddie’s widowed mother, Rita, who lived with her and Bradley, stood at the stove stirring the taco meat. Thwack. Thwack. The large kitchen spoon her mother had seemingly been carrying since the Jurassic Period struck the side of the pot. A goober of taco sauce splattered her apron, joining the remains of many meals past. Strands of the old woman’s salt-and-pepper hair hung limp about a face lined by living and her husband’s death. Still, a contented face, Rita lived to help those she loved. Thwack. Thwack. Her spoon never struck in solo. The aroma from the meat reminded Maddie she had not eaten since breakfast. She took the wooden spoon, worn smooth by her mother’s coarse hand, scooped out some of the spiced ground beef and nibbled it over the sink.

  Rita, who had let herself go after her husband died, rested her hands on her well-padded hips. “I kinda understood your father being a cop. The man loved it. God, rest his soul. But I don’t get it with you. You’re a woman.”

  There was really no reason for her mother to get it when Maddie sometimes wondered why herself. She knew being a woman had helped her climb in the department, but she also knew she had done the job. Hell, more than done the job. She had kicked ass.

  Her mother still criticized her some about talking rough. To Maddie’s way of thinking, a woman could elbow her way into police work, but not a lady. Cop work was traditionally a man’s gig, and the women who shoved their noses under the cop boy’s tent were met more with tolerance than welcome. Maddie preferred to think of her sister officers as embattled women striving to prove themselves. Even to the point of sometimes taking on a masculine swagger, a choice Maddie had resisted. She liked walking as a woman, the looks from the men. Even the remarks, well, some of them anywa
y. She didn’t want to be one of the boys; she just wanted to be equal, knowing that to accomplish that she would have to be better than equal.

  “You need to find a good man and get married again,” her mother said with bias dripping from each word, “this time for keeps.” Thwack. Thwack. In the kitchen, the spoon punctuated everything Rita considered profound.

  Maddie liked the idea of having a steady man in her life. She wanted the sharing, the intimacy, not necessarily the “husband” label. A perfect relationship would include that, but her view of the world didn’t require perfect.

  “We’ve already had this conversation, Mom, too many times.” Maddie mussed her son’s hair. “Gotta go. Bye, you two.”

  The heat outside pressed through her clothing, moisture immediately leaching from her skin. The sun was gradually surrendering to a darkening sky that would soon shroud the city like a net dropped over a wild animal. She started the engine, twisted the AC dial to full blast, and aimed all the vents at her face.

  As Maddie backed out of her driveway she saw Gary Packard, her new neighbor from across the street, walking toward his mailbox. At more than six feet he moved with grace, his height mostly in his vee-shaped upper body.

  Gary smiled and waved. Maddie waved back as she drove away. So far, this had been the extent of their exchanged pleasantries. Maddie’s mother had learned through the neighborhood women that Gary was single or at least lived alone. Maddie knew nothing else other than he wore tight Levis, had a dimple in his chin, and drove a pickup truck. Yet, her police instincts told her he was a city boy.

  Maddie’s father had started his police career as a New York patrolman in the days when cops walked a beat. When the family moved to Arizona, the Phoenix police department put him in a cruiser. His retirement seven years later lasted only two years. After a lifetime of rich doughnuts and poor cigars, he died. The death certificate read natural causes, which Maddie knew translated to boredom, no hobbies, and no self-identity without a badge pinned to his shirt. He had wanted his daughter to become a doctor.

  A doctor would be home eating tacos with her son, Maddie thought, not to mention making a hell of a lot more money. Instead, as a homicide cop she was on her way to the scene of a murder.

  As she sped toward the interstate, the light cones from each street lamp passed crawled up the hood of her car, pierced the windshield and streaked across her face.

  Maddie’s first thought about the case had been that the sick memo should have read, I got you, my pretty. “I’ll Get You, My Pretty” was the wrong verb tense unless the killer had meant it as an open-ended warning for killings to come.

  At this week’s detectives’ meeting, Maddie had learned that Folami Stowe, who now appeared to be the first victim, had been a poor, pretty, single black girl with one arrest for prostitution. Tonight’s victim, Abigail Knight, was a rich, married white woman. Serial killers rarely mixed victim types, but that departure hadn’t changed her partner’s mind. Jed remained convinced that both killings were the work of the same fruitcake, and Jed’s instincts were generally right on.

  She accelerated down the on-ramp into the concrete funnel known as Interstate Fifty-one. The serried hills to the west were already fading from view as the night tugged its dark blanket under the city’s chin.

  Chapter 2

  An armada of police cruisers, their sirens muted, and other official vehicles that responded to mayhem were idling in the street, immune to the parking rules of the road.

  The tires on Maddie’s five-year-old Taurus rubbed the curb as she came to a stop while leaning sideways to get a full view of the Knights’ home—strike that, estate—on Mummy Mountain in Paradise Valley, Phoenix’s ritzier side of the tracks. Brick-like pavers framed the driveway in an alternating pattern.

  After shutting off her engine, Maddie could hear the cries of coyotes, scattered in the bordering hills, voicing their objections to the static sounds coming from the squad-car radios. As she stepped out of her car, she noticed that the lining of her size-ten beige, linen blazer had begun to fray from rubbing over the short-barrel Smith and Wesson .38 she carried on her hip. She had tried a shoulder holster, but rejected it after Jed said it made her look like she had three boobs.

  Jed walked toward her, his biceps sagging a bit from age. He took pride in the fact that he still worked out regularly on a heavy bag that hung in his garage, while remaining unconcerned with the leathering of his face. One of the lingering differences between the sexes, the time spent caring for the face.

  “Got a score in the D’backs game?” she asked. Jed was a big Arizona Diamondbacks fan.

  “My car lost the signal coming up the mountain. We’re playing the Dodgers. The only thing I got to hear was a pre-game interview with one of the spoiled visiting superstars. The jerk was crying about having to play five away games in the next six days. Those guys make a gazillion playing a kid’s game, have women throwing their panties at them while they’re on the road, and only have to work about eight months a year. And they think us regular stiffs ought to feel sorry for them. Those pricks have no clue.”

  Maddie ended Jed’s sports editorial by asking, “Who called in tonight’s main event?”

  “A couple of young studs in heat, they hike over the back hill on their way home from summer ball practice. Over this way,” Jed said, nodding his head toward the end of the cul-de-sac, “I’ll show you.”

  The backdrop of the city’s twinkling lights made the neighborhood a beautiful place to live, but a bad place to die and death was what had brought them here.

  “What’s the latest on your ex-husband’s efforts to snatch Bradley?” Jed asked as they walked.

  “Curtis’s attorney just filed for a review of the custody agreement. My lawyer’s sending me a copy.”

  “What grounds could he possibly have? I’m sorry but your ex is a real butt.”

  “Curtis just got hired to do color commentary for the Phoenix Cardinals on radio. He got that by marrying the station owner’s daughter who, rumors say, is barren. So he’s using her to get near football and she’s using him hoping to get a child. Her only problem, Bradley already has a mommy with a gun. My attorney says Curtis’s argument is that he’ll give Bradley a more stable and safer home life than he’ll get being raised by a divorced homicide sergeant. Odd hours. Threats from unsavory characters, blah, blah, blah. Do you ever get the impression that except when they need us, civilians see cops as the enemy?”

  “Maddie, my love, you’re way too beautiful to be so cynical. Now, what are you going to do about Curtis?”

  “Fight the son of a bitch, what else? Listen. We need to get into tonight’s show.”

  “Right over there on that hill,” Jed pointed. “If they were old enough to remember Fats Domino, the boys would likely call it Blueberry Hill, ‘cause that’s where they found their thrill.”

  Maddie had long ago learned to just grin at her partner’s hackneyed humor. “Two boys,” she asked, “right?”

  Jed held up two fingers. “It’s private over there, a great spot for peeping.”

  “What did the boys tell you?” Maddie asked.

  “Mrs. Knight regularly left the drapes open while she undressed. The teens carried binoculars in their backpacks.”

  “You buy that?”

  “Yeah, boys banging up against their hormones. According to them, she’d gyrate her shoulders in front of a big mirror on her bedroom wall. Last night they think she saw them. I guess it freaked them a little. They said she walked right up to the window wearing nylons and heels and crooked her finger beckoning them to come to her. After spending the day challenging each other’s stones, the boys decided if she did that again tonight they’d knock on her door and offer to leave their cherries.”

  Maddie smirked. Then Jed added, “The boys say they never saw her with anyone.”

  “What time were they up here?” Maddie asked, taking Jed’s arm and turning him back toward the crime scene.

  “About seven, summ
er practice ran a little late. They had stopped for a slushy.”

  “And that’s when they saw her?”

  “That’s their story. But this time she was on her bed, naked and dead. And—”

  “Wait a minute,” Maddie raised her hand. “How did they know she was dead if they saw her on the bed through binoculars?”

  “Well, there you go, Maddie. That’s what I asked.”

  She gave him her look that meant: and the answer is? She didn’t use her go-to-hell expression—that one required more shoulders than eyes.

  “At first they fantasized some man having swizzled chocolate syrup all over her, but when they didn’t see a man and she didn’t move, they eventually threw a few pebbles against her window. When she didn’t react, they called it in on their cell phone. I had them take me up there so I could check the magnification. Looks like it went down about like they said. What surprises me is that the boys didn’t just run off. Or call it in anonymously.”

  “Where are these boys now?”

  “They were already late so, after they told me what they knew, I let them go home. They’re both shook up about what will happen when their parents find out the boys were using their fathers’ binoculars to peep. Then again, the boys weren’t peeping so much as Mrs. Knight was showing. Their behavior would have been stranger if they hadn’t watched.”

  “Look at that,” Maddie said, pausing as they neared the crime scene. “The frigging place looks like the mall at Christmas.”

  The house had been cordoned off with the department’s standard yellow crime scene tape, as if anything could make a murder scene appear standard. Neighbors, a few holding drinks, had their bellies pressed against the tape, their faces splashed with red from the taillights of one of the TV trucks at the curb, the driver sitting with his foot on the brake. There were more than the usual number of cops and crime scene investigators milling about. And the media was scurrying around like ants at a spilled picnic.