and along came SPIDER ( A Martina Spalding Thriller ) (Spider Series Book 1)

by J. R. WRIGHT

  And then the phone rang. She dashed for it, so as not to allow it to disturb Gloria — any more than it had already. “Hello, Lieutenant,” she said, with bottled anticipation.

  “Lieutenant…? Lieutenant…?” a man’s voice mocked her. Then there was laughter. “God, you’re a crazy bitch, Martina. Why don’t you look out the window? I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

  “Who is this?” Marti frantically asked. Then, when it became evident she would get no response to that, she dropped the receiver and ran to Gloria’s room. She figured it was Raym on the phone, but since she had never heard his voice, except for that shout, “You!” from in front of his office building, she had no way of knowing for sure. And as far as him calling her by name, which shocked her at first, Gloria could have told him that at some point before she broke it off with him and all hell erupted.

  At the window, Marti hastily raised the blind. What she saw below completely devastated her. Her precious car, the one her dad had so lovingly cared for all those years, then generously handed off to her, was on fire. White smoke bellowed from the shattered rear window, and the interior was a cavern of blackness. So angry was she now, sound reasoning appeared no longer an option. And fright never entered her mind. Without further delay, she dashed for her keys on the table. Then, seeing the Beretta there as well, she pulled it from the holster, shoved it in the waist band of her jeans, and pulled the sweatshirt over it.

  At the door, she made a quick check through the peep hole of the hallway again, then unlatched it. To be doubly sure no one was out there, she looked again before fully stepping out and turning to relock the door. Then, just as she had the key in one of the locks, she heard footsteps behind her. Turning back, she saw nothing and hurried to finish the job. Gloria was inside. It raced through her mind that it was important this be done properly. The footsteps were louder now and she glanced back again. And again, she saw nothing but the stairwell railing, dead ahead. She could not see around the corner, where the mouth of the stairway was, but that was only a short distance. If someone was there, making the noise, they would have rounded the corner by now. The person must be on the stairs. But somehow that didn’t seem right, either. Footsteps on stairs sounded different. Or did they? Fumbling to get the key in the second lock, the keys accidentally slipped from her trembling fingers and rattled to the floor. “Shit,” she said under her breath.

  Snatching up the keys, she had a complete change of plan. She would let herself back into the apartment, where she should have stayed in the first place. Going back to the first lock, she inserted the key. That’s when her head exploded with a call for action. A killer instinct was now in control.

  “Miss Spalding?” had echoed down the hallway. But the words were of no importance. A reaction had triggered with the first tiny fraction of the first syllable.

  “Ahhhh!” Marti shouted and jumped into the air. Then when she came down again, the direction she faced had completely reversed… and she was in a stance to do battle, physically.

  “My! Now that was impressive!” Dunbar marched toward her. “Were you going somewhere?”

  It took her a second to register. “My car is on fire, Lieutenant!” She charged past him.

  “Your car is not on fire, Martina!” Dunbar turned to see her go, stop, then return.

  “I just saw it from the window… two minutes ago!” She was adamant in her effort to convince him.

  “Well, then I saw it before you, ha, ha, ha. I’ve been on those god awful stairs for at least five minutes,” Dunbar said. “Someone tossed a war surplus smoke grenade in your car, Miss Spalding. It’ll be fine, once the smell is gone. I don’t suppose you happened to see who did it?”

  “No. I got a phone call…”

  “From whom?”

  “I assumed it was Raym Koffee.” She paused for recall. “He said something like, ‘Look out your window, Martina. I have a surprise for you.’”

  “What made you think it was Raym?”

  “Who else could it have been? Besides, he called me a crazy bitch! Probably for what I did to him this morning.” She turned back toward her apartment door, where her keys still dangled in the lock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Unbeknownst to either of them, the apartment door on the right side of the hallway, half way down, quietly opened and a man of middle age eased up to within a few steps behind them.

  When Marti glanced back to Dunbar, she saw him there. But at first she thought her eyes had played a trick on her. How could it be? Where had he come from? Then she saw the open door. “Lieutenant!”

  Dunbar followed her glare and slowly turned.

  “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” Raym Koffee said, gleefully. “Finally, I have you all together. I assume Gloria is inside? Martina, will you please do the honors?” His eyes went past her, to the keys in the lock. “How does it feel to be on the hot seat, for a change, Lieutenant? I bet you never expected this, did you?”

  “I can’t say that I did,” Dunbar said, stepping to the side to place himself between Raym and Martina, behind him, at the door.

  “Martina…” Raym shifted to see her fully again. “The door!” He waved the gun to point at her, briefly. “I should shoot you now for that little stunt you pulled at my office today.”

  The footsteps she heard moments ago must have been Raym moving around in that room he came out of. But how did he make the phone call? Then she remembered the pay phone down the hall, at the mouth of the stairs. He could have tossed the smoke bomb, dashed upstairs, made the call, then ducked into the room, all in the span of a few minutes if he hurried.

  “I assume that’s a Colt patent 1896, Vest Pocket pistol in your hand there, Mister Koffee?” Dunbar said, as if not frightened by it in the least.

  “Actually, this one is a 1908. A later model. But don’t judge it by its size, Lieutenant. It packs a deadly wallop.”

  “I guess we both know that! Don’t we Raym?” Dunbar barked, in an effort to unnerve him. “In fact, I’ll bet the farm that bullets from that gun killed at least three people. And those are just the ones I know of. Let’s see, there’s the John Doe at the morgue,” he said, counting on his fingers. It was a ploy to get his gun hand closer to the thirty-eight revolver tucked away inside his jacket… “Officer Bright! The first Misses Koffee, Susannah…”

  With that Marti, who had yet to move, gasped! So he had killed Susannah! Like Gwyn Raizel assumed all along.

  “Lieutenant!” Raym shouted. “That’s enough!”

  “Oh! So there’s more…?”

  “Actually, it’s the gun you have under that jacket… that concerns me. Will you be so kind as to gently remove it, using only two fingers, and place it on the floor? Now Lieutenant!”

  Dunbar did as he was asked — to a point. Instead of placing the gun on the floor as told, he intentionally dropped it, with a thud. This almost got him shot. Raym jumped to the side and extended his gun full arm’s length, as if he intended to fire it, near point blank, into Dunbar’s face.

  This petrified Martina for a spell. Then it eventually became obvious he wasn’t apt to shoot, perhaps because the noise from it, here in the hall, would surely resonate loudly throughout the building. That would most likely bring the police before he could do his dirty work and escape the building. Inside the apartment would be a better place to do what he had in mind. Now she feared the Beretta, at her navel, was leaving a noticeable bulge in the sweatshirt. She hoped to get a chance to use it at some point, if it was not taken from her. It would be their only chance of survival now that Dunbar was disarmed.

  “Kick it over!” Raym ordered, rage consuming his face.

  Again, Dunbar reacted defiantly, kicking the gun with such impact, it went skittering over the uneven hardwood floor, coming to rest far down the hallway.

  “Now, look what you did!” Raym stepped in and slammed the palm sized pistol into Dunbar’s head, causing his ever present hat to go flying, and dropped him to his knees.


  Marti’s reaction to that was to quickly grab the keys from the lock and fling them the forty feet to the stairwell. No way was she about to let this maniac get to Gloria without putting up some resistance. Even if it killed her. To her thinking, they were all dead anyway, if he got into that apartment. Soon, the sound of the keys crashing to the floor far below echoed back to them.

  “What did you do, bitch?” Raym came at her now.

  She answered him with a knee to his crotch. But the broad side of the gun reached her head first — before the knee had much impact — sending her to the floor as well.

  Then, as if what else could possibly go wrong, Marti heard the lock snap, and, with its usual squeak, the door swing open. Looking up, dazed, with blood dripping down her face, she saw Gloria framed by the opening. “What’s going on out here?” she said, obviously still inebriated.

  Raym’s reaction to that was to leap over Martina and charge Gloria, forcing her back inside. Promptly he began beating her. At this point, all Marti could do was listen to her screams as things banged around inside. Then, as if getting a second dose of adrenalin, she struggled to her feet and staggered through the door. She saw him atop Gloria now, pounding on her face. Getting to him, Martina got an arm around his neck, and fell on him. Knowing she would not be allowed there long, she did what she was taught at self-defense school — use any means available to hurt your attacker — which included biting. Once her teeth were on his ear, even though he came off Gloria and flung her around like a pinwheel, she did not let go. But a good sized piece of his ear finally did, and she went with it, crashing into a table.

  After stumbling around the room for a moment, screaming in agony while holding a hand over what remained of the ear, Raym marched up to the motionless body of Gloria. There he glanced back at Martina, who appeared unconscious, and leveled the pint sized gun at Gloria’s head. A shot then echoed throughout the room, followed closely by several more.

  But those sounds never came from Raym’s gun. Marti, who’d been shaken and dazed on the floor, finally collected herself enough to fire once. Then, rolling, she fired four more times, all connecting with the torso of Raym Koffee. A final shot was then fired into Raym’s right eye as he painfully stumbled about the room, doing his best, as he emptied his gun, to kill her. Dodging the bullets and then the falling body, Marti bounced to her feet and rushed to Gloria, spitting out the chunk of Raym’s ear along the way. Then as Martina was checking Gloria for vitals, she caught sight of Dunbar, standing at the open door.

  “How much did you see?” she asked.

  “Enough,” he said, as he shuffled to Raym and dropped to his knees beside him. It was obvious Raym was dead, Dunbar determined by the remaining eye that glared up at him. “Well, that’s the end of that.” He scooped up the piece of ear from the floor nearby and poked it into Raym’s shirt pocket. “The undertaker may want to reattach that,” he mumbled. Seeing the Beretta there as well, he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped it clean of Martina’s prints, even the clip and remaining cartridges in it. Then he gathered the empty casings and polished them as well, before dumping them into his jacket pocket.

  “You okay, Lieutenant?” Marti asked.

  “I think it’s best no one knows you did this. The Koffees are a revengeful lot. It’s still the old west, as far as many of them are concerned. Since it’s my gun you used, I’ll take the credit,” he said. “They more than likely won’t come after a lawman. Especially since we now have the evidence that would have sent Raym to the electric chair, anyhow.”

  “What about the ear? How will you explain that?” Marti asked.

  “Hell, I’ve got teeth!” Dunbar bared them briefly, before glancing about the room for what else may need tweaking, to make the scene fit the story he was conjuring up at the moment.

  “I appreciate it,” Marti said, looking down at Gloria. “I was wondering how I was going to tell her. Now, I won’t have to.”

  “How is she?” Dunbar asked, still on his knees.

  “Unconscious. But she’ll be fine. I didn’t find anything major wrong with her,” Marti said. “I’ll call for an ambulance, just in case. It’s best she doesn’t wake up to this anyway.” She then got to her feet and went to the phone. A cry was coming on, but hopefully she could fight that off until Gloria was safely in a hospital bed.

  Moments later, a uniformed police officer appeared at the door. He was Dunbar’s driver for the day, Smitte, and he had Dunbar’s snub nosed Smith and Wesson in hand, picked up down the hall. “I heard gunshots. What in the name of Jesus happened here, Lieutenant? Is that Raym Koffee?”

  “It was,” Dunbar said, and got to his feet. “Go in the bedroom and get something to cover the body. Then call the coroner, okay?” He retrieved his 38 S&W and returned it to the holster under his arm, then went to the hall to gather his brown fedora. He felt naked without it.

  It was only minutes before several sirens were heard in the area. The first to arrive was the ambulance. Marti made her presence available at the top of the stairs to direct them back. She then helped to lift Gloria onto the stretcher. And since the two attendants would physically carry it down five flights, she made certain the available straps were applied to prevent her from accidentally sliding off it.

  Marti did a quick job of washing the blood from her face, then checked the half inch gash on her head. She would have a stitch put on that at the hospital, once Gloria was taken care of. She then collected a jacket and her purse from the bedroom, before stopping at Dunbar on the way out. “I’m going with her in the ambulance — County General, again, Lieutenant.”

  “Do you want me to tell her when she comes around, Martina?”

  “I believe that would be for the best, if you don’t mind? Sad as it may sound… I think secretly she still has feelings for him. In that case, it may be better coming from you.”

  “I gathered that myself, from our little chat at the diner,” Dunbar said. “It seemed to me then, there may be some coals still glowing in that old fire. And no, I don’t mind. I’ll try to get over there in the next couple of hours, okay?”

  “Okay,” Marti said. Then, seeing Gloria’s purse nearby, she grabbed it, turned through the open door and hurried for the stairs.

  “And, Martina?” Dunbar called after her.

  “Yes?”

  “I wouldn’t talk to the press if I were you,” he warned. “Best let me handle that.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Lieutenant.” She waved and chased after the ambulance attendants, who could be half way down by now. She didn’t want to delay them getting Gloria to the hospital.

  After she’d gone from sight, Dunbar shook his head again, for the second time that day. “Where in hell did that gal come from?” Even though a bit eccentric, he couldn’t help but like her. Especially now that she had single handedly saved all their lives here today. He hadn’t seen everything, but enough to know that much. Martina on Raym’s back, like a panther, gnawing on his ear, was certainly a sight he wouldn’t soon forget. And the way she handled that gun… rolling! Professional! Too bad he wasn’t in any shape to help her, at the time. It wasn’t that she needed it. However, it would have served to assuage the shame his masculinity suffered at the moment.

  Within a few more minutes, the building was swarming with cops. And soon after, the morgue arrived to pick up the body of Raymond Ringo Koffee. St. Louis would never be the same without his flamboyance around town. If only they had known there was a cold blooded killer among them, things may have been different. But then, maybe some did, or at least suspected it, the way the first wife had been so brutally beaten, raped, and murdered. However, the smell of money often blotted out such suspicions, as if the wealthy were immune to sin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After everyone had left the building, Dunbar sent young Officer Smitte down to the manager’s office, with instructions to find out how Raym had acquired a set of keys to that apartment next door. He’d ha
d them in his pocket, and it was important to know who supplied them. The apartment itself was empty except for a goodly number of cigarette butts, stomped out on the floor. What disturbed him was the butts were of two different brands: Lucky Strike and Kool. A partial pack of Luckys was found on Raym. The Kool smoker, however, remained a mystery.

  In the meantime, Dunbar decided a little poking around in the crime scene apartment couldn’t hurt, seeing as how he knew little to nothing about either of the girls who lived here. Being a moral man, undergarment drawers were avoided completely, once it was determined which they were. One drawer in Martina’s room, however, had a considerable number of photo albums, scrap books, old letters and such, which piqued his interest.

  As he sat on the bed to begin going through a high school year book, something uncomfortable in his pocket caused him to stand again. It was Raym Koffee’s vest pocket pistol. He removed it, wondering why he hadn’t thought to send it downtown with the other evidence collected, when the responding officers were here. Tossing it on the bed, he went back to the yearbook. Thumbing through it, he eventually found Martina Spalding’s graduation picture, but not without some effort. He found it by name, as opposed to recognition. She didn’t look a whole lot like she does now, he noted. But who did, years later, he reasoned? Strangely, though, someone had inscribed “Spider” in ink across it. Why, he wondered? It must have been her that did it, seeing as how it was her yearbook. But again, why? She was quite slim, from what he could see of her. Perhaps it was a nickname on that account?

  Setting the yearbook aside, just so, so he could replace everything just as it was, he went on to what looked like a file, only laced with a string. Inside were various letters of recommendation from hospitals, doctors and such, her degree from nursing college, and several (maybe a dozen in all) achievement awards from the Kincaid School of Martial Arts, Chicago. “Bingo,” he said, and went through each and every one of them. It seemed she was the top of her class in about everything. Even a special course on gun handling. Wow, he was impressed. And smart. This gal was at the top of her graduating class in nursing college, as well.