The Last Man To Murder

by Dan Ames

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  The Last Man To Murder

  The Jack Reacher Cases #4

  Dan Ames

  Copyright © 2018 by Dan Ames

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  THE LAST MAN TO MURDER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Also by Dan Ames

  About the Author

  THE LAST MAN TO MURDER

  The Jack Reacher Cases #4

  * * *

  by

  * * *

  Dan Ames

  “Those who renounce violence can do so

  only because others are committing violence

  on their behalf.”

  -George Orwell

  1

  There was blood everywhere.

  And not just because it was covering the man’s eyes and he was seeing everything through a filter of red. It was equally true that a good majority of his body’s blood had seeped through his clothes, been splattered and flung around the inside of his truck, and pooled on the black rubber floor mats.

  The amount of blood in a person’s body depends to a certain degree on their size. The bigger they are, the more they have. The man in the truck was bigger than most, easily weighing two hundred pounds. Not overly tall, but thick in the shoulders, chest and arms.

  That meant at least a gallon and a half of the good stuff.

  All of it now pouring freely from multiple sources.

  There were at least three gunshot wounds, one in the abdomen, one in the upper chest and one in the leg. There was a deep slash along the scalp, which had resulted in the blood pouring freely down the man’s face.

  His hands were slick with his own blood. He kept one hand on the wheel, the other pressed against the most severe of his wounds; the hole in his belly from the high-powered military round.

  Frothy pink bubbles had already escaped his lips; he’d seen them on the back of his hand when he wiped his mouth.

  A lung had probably been pulverized by one of the rounds. He knew that. After all, he was a soldier and had been through many battles, tending to wounded who more often than not, ended up dead.

  Unfortunately, as bad as the wound in the abdomen was, he knew the leg wound might have been just as bad. He’d seen the floor of his truck, the sea of red that seemed to be fed by a tributary that emerged from his pant leg.

  An artery, maybe. The femoral. That would be very bad news. In fact, he was more and more convinced that things were spinning out of control as a fog began to seep into his brain.

  His mission remained clear, though.

  That was all that mattered now.

  The truck careened down the road, swerved occasionally and overcorrected, its tires bumping onto the shoulder and then jumping back onto pavement.

  The man drove from memory, and from the map he’d looked at earlier in the day. Before it had all gone to shit.

  He was fairly confident he was on the right road. He had to be. There was no turning back now. Even if he thought he was lost, it would be hopeless to try to find a new route. His brain was turning to mush and he was having trouble catching his breath.

  More pink bubbles escaped his mouth.

  He was dying, he knew that.

  There had been a chance, briefly, to turn into an emergency room. He’d seen the hospital signs from the road and stared at it as he drove by. That was not life, he knew. That was certain death. They were behind him. And a hospital room with witnesses wouldn’t stop them. He was safer on his own. Out on the road.

  If he could make it to his destination, he might have a chance.

  Anything else just wasn’t an option.

  Pulling over to the side of the road to tend to his wounds wouldn’t work, either.

  He would be killed there.

  And the men who were chasing him would make sure that every trace of him was wiped clean.

  The road before him swam in a wave of red and black, undulating between the two like a hellish snow globe in shaky hands. He lost his grip on the wheel and the truck veered toward a ditch. He grabbed the wheel with both hands and managed to get the vehicle back on the road, but he felt a new gush of warm blood seep down from his belly.

  He felt more lightheaded now, dizzy even.

  Even though he’d long ago given up the concept of a God, he prayed now that his destination was close.

  And then, finally, it was there.

  It was the house that he’d been to once before, a long time ago. Practically in a different life.

  Set in front of a desert mountain range, like a lighthouse keeping watch on a distant ocean of rock.

  The man in the truck struggled to turn the wheel but he somehow managed, making it onto the gravel drive toward the adobe house.

  When he finally let go of the steering wheel, and the truck slowly came to a stop in a cloud of red dust, he realized he would have to get out of the vehicle.

  It seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

  Speed was everything.

  They were close, and probably closing the gap.

  There wasn’t any possible way he could put the truck in gear so he left it. With monumental effort, he lifted his left hand and pulled the lever on the door, sagged against it. Slowly, the heavy door opened and the man slid out of the blood-covered seat and fell to the ground.

  He hit the dirt with a resounding thump and felt nothing. No pain. No shock.

  Nothing.

  For a moment, he forgot where he was. What he was doing. Who he was, even.

  He just wanted to close his eyes.

  And sleep.

  But the pain shot into him then, bringing with it a moment’s focus and just as suddenly he remembered why he was there, who he needed to see.

  He staggered to his feet and nearly fell again as his leg began to collapse beneath him. But he veered and fell
against the truck instead, which propped him up. Like a comrade on the battlefield, lending support.

  The man realized the leg was useless, so he limped forward on the other one, using the truck for balance.

  When he made it to the front of the truck, his hand on the hot hood, he reached into his pocket and found the sheet of paper he’d scribbled on hours before. Back when he knew the end was coming soon.

  At that moment when he knew there was only one option.

  Now, he pushed off from the truck, like a swimmer leaving the shallows heading for deeper water.

  He made it three steps before he started to fall forward, his feet shuffling faster until they couldn’t keep up with his upper body and he toppled over, landed on his chest and his jaw cracked on the hard ground.

  His eyes were full of blood and his mind turned black.

  He reached forward with his hand.

  The paper inside was now covered with blood, too.

  His fingers uncurled, his fist unclenched.

  His only hope was that the man he’d chosen to give the message to would find him soon.

  There was no time left.

  It was his last thought.

  And then he died.

  2

  Lauren Pauling was uneasy.

  As a highly paid and thoroughly confidential private investigator, walk-ins rarely happened. It wasn’t the typical scenario. Nearly all of her clients came from referrals, and among those rare cases who found her on their own, they usually called or emailed. The client who walked in off the street happened maybe once a year. If that.

  But so far, this morning was anything but typical.

  Her office was located just off of West 4th Street, a walk-up with a front room for receiving clients, and a second space that was her functioning office. She had a security system, with a camera, and after the doorbell was pushed, Pauling viewed the man standing outside the door.

  He looked fine. He was slim with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a nice suit. His face was all sharp edges and straight lines. He had either lived a hard life, or took good care of himself, possibly in the extreme.

  She closed the security camera window on her computer, left her desk and unlocked the front door.

  When it opened, the man gave a forced smile and said, “Good morning. Is this…uh…” she looked at the business card in his hand and recognized her own information.

  It was an elegant piece of salesmanship. Lauren Pauling was engraved at the top and Private Investigator under the name. Then: Ex-Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. At the bottom was a downtown address, with 212 and 917 phone numbers for landline and cell, and email, and a website URL. There was no shortage of information but it spoke of high-end professionalism.

  It wasn’t false advertising.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, stepping back to allow him into the office. He had passed the eye test in terms of being a threat.

  When the door closed, he turned to her. “I’m Logan Brody.” He said it with no small degree of confidence and Pauling got the impression that he expected her to recognize the name.

  She didn’t.

  “Lauren Pauling,” she answered and they shook hands. “Please, have a seat and tell me why you’re here.”

  Brody was the same height as Pauling, about 5’10” and maybe only ten or twenty pounds heavier. Pauling herself was slim and in great shape.

  Brody’s hard lines appeared to be from purposeful intention. His eyes were blue and there was intensity, but also a shade of anxiety. A driven man, perhaps driven by something more than ambition.

  They sat opposite one another in the small reception area and Brody wrung his hands. They were heavily veined, perfectly manicured, and he wore an expensive Swiss watch.

  “You’re a private investigator, right?” he asked. His voice was smooth and cultured, with a clipped diction.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, good. Well, this is a bit nerve-racking for me. You see, I have concerns about my wife. What she’s doing.”

  There was a long silence and Pauling considered prompting him, but she knew he would continue on his own, when he was ready. Which he did.

  “I think she’s having an affair.”

  “I see,” Pauling said.

  Ordinarily, she didn’t handle this type of work. It was messy, often didn’t pay well, and didn’t line up with her expertise. Not that every case she handled was enormous or of extreme importance. Quite the contrary. She often worked on small, but highly sensitive projects that more often than not, involved a limited number of subjects.

  For these kinds of situations, she had a network of other investigators to whom she typically referred clients. Or, in some cases, she would subcontract them and oversee the investigation. The level of her involvement depended upon the presence of any extenuating circumstances.

  “I know this isn’t probably what you ordinarily do,” Brody continued, and he glanced around her office. Pauling had chosen fairly high-end furnishings, as well as the office itself. She wasn’t a flashy, ostentatious private investigator, who chose the highest profile cases possible to get her firm’s name splashed in the news.

  Discretion and professionalism were her calling cards.

  As the business card had communicated.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Marital issues, like infidelity, aren’t usually my cup of tea. But I know many people who can help you. Perhaps a referral–”

  Brody held up his hands.

  “Wait, I’m not done,” he said.

  Perhaps it came out a bit more harshly than he had intended. Perhaps not. Pauling wasn’t certain. Logan Brody seemed like a man who was used to giving orders. Either that, or it just came naturally.

  “I’m a successful businessman. I’ve founded several companies, sold two of them, and would never have to work again if I didn’t want to. But it’s what I do. It’s what fires my passion.”

  He paused, and Pauling knew exactly what he was going to say. That he spent so much passion on creating wealth, he’d let the passion between himself and his wife wane.

  “It seems my wife isn’t only fueled by desire for another man, she appears to be lusting after my bank account as well.”

  “I see,” Pauling said. It was a tale she’d heard many times and recognized as always the inherent falsehood. Every divorced person tells horror stories of their former spouse. With a man, it’s always the wife’s fault. With the woman, it’s always the husband’s issues that split apart the marriage.

  In most cases, the truth was somewhere in between.

  Pauling could guess the next part. Brody wanted a private investigator to document his wife’s infidelity to be used in an ugly divorce proceeding, in order to protect his money. It wasn’t going to happen. Pauling began to feel impatient as she was losing time listening to a case she knew she wasn’t going to take.

  “No, you don’t,” Brody said.

  She resisted the temptation to cut off the discussion, but something made her wait.

  “Okay, proceed.”

  “Her lover is not wealthy.”

  “You know who he is?” Pauling asked.

  “Unfortunately, I do.”

  “Is he a friend? A business partner? A stranger?”

  “I’ll get to that. Because it’s the second most important part of this situation. Maybe equally important, I don’t know.”

  Outside, a car honked, a high-pitched treble note. Something much larger, and with a lot more bass, answered. Maybe a bus. Or a garbage truck.

  “First,” Brody continued, “it’s not enough that they’re having an affair. They want my money. All of it. Plus the life insurance.”

  He stopped and let that sink in.

  Pauling understood immediately what he was saying. “You think they’re conspiring to kill you?”

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they already tried once, and obviously, they failed.�
�

  “Did you go to the police?”

  Brody smiled, a tired expression full of bitter irony.

  “That’s just it. My wife’s lover? The man who’s trying to kill me?”

  Pauling nodded.

  “He’s a cop.”

  3

  He hung by his hands from a dying pinyon tree. The branch was thick, dry and gnarly, exposed directly to the sun.

  It was why Michael Tallon had chosen it.

  He’d already done nearly five hundred pull-ups, resting only with a dead hang.

  His body was covered in sweat, his tanned, dark skin taking on a deep, reddish rue.

  Tallon was less than a mile from his home in Independence Springs. It was a tiny town, halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, not far from Death Valley.

  Michael Tallon often took solace in that fact. Somehow, living near a famous geographic landmark so strongly associated with death, made Tallon feel alive. It played no small part in the constant physical punishment he inflicted upon himself, in the name of staying in shape and combat preparedness.