Compulsion

by Terri Breneman

  Copyright © 2008 by Terri Breneman

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Editor: Christi Cassidy

  Cover designer: Stephanie Solomon-Lopez

  ISBN-10: 1-59493-126-7

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59493-126-0

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a labor of love and would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. As always, my editor, Christi Cassidy, helped me produce a wonderful finished product. I’d like to thank both her and Linda Hill for believing in Toni Barston. A special thanks to my friend Robin Schultz, RN, who continues to amaze me with her medical knowledge. Reference books by D.P. Lyle, MD, were also incredibly helpful for this book. A special thanks to John who helped me understand the frightening possibilities of a webcam. I’d also like to thank my mother, Dorth, for her belief in me and her light in this world. And of course I am most grateful for the love and support of my partner, Cat. She makes me laugh and inspires me on so many levels. She definitely makes the sky bluer in my world. Lastly, I’d like to thank all of those people who believed in me enough to buy my books. I am very grateful. Thank you.

  About the Author

  Terri Breneman was born and raised in a suburb of Kansas City. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and sociology from Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. While living in Germany she earned a master’s degree in counseling. As a psychotherapist specializing in borderline personality disorders, she worked with high-risk adolescents, juvenile sex offenders and their victims. She also worked with patients with multiple personality disorders. She decided to change careers and attended St. Louis University School of Law. After graduating, she opened her own practice. One year of that was quite enough and she was fortunate to find her current job as a research and writing attorney, working in federal criminal law. She also supervises students earning their master’s degrees in social work.

  Terri lives with her partner, Cat, in St. Louis, where they share their home with three cats—Dexter, Sam and Felix. The cat featured in this series, Mr. Rupert, was a longtime companion. Rupert Eugene died in 2003 at the age of 17 and weighing 22 pounds. He is still loved and missed terribly. Dexter (Little Stuffy) has moved up as the number one cat in Terri’s life and makes his debut in Compulsion.

  Compulsion:

  1) behavior or mental acts aimed at reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event, however these behaviors have no realistic connection to the event.

  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Ed., Text Revision, Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

  2) an irresistible impulse to perform an act.

  Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed., Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2003.

  Chapter 1

  The woman sat in her study looking at the screen on her laptop. She made a few more entries and stared once again. She was nothing if not meticulous in her recordkeeping. Everything balanced to the penny. Satisfied, she turned her attention to the yellow legal pad on her desk and picked up her mechanical pencil. It was the same one she’d bought herself when she was sixteen years old. It had been a part of her for over thirty years. She carefully wrote the heading To Do on the top of the page and underlined it twice. She had repeated this exact routine almost every afternoon of her life.

  Before entering the first item on her list, she picked up the lead crystal tumbler that held a generous amount of Famous Grouse. There were three ice cubes in the dark amber liquid. She placed her left index finger in the mixture and stirred in a circular motion exactly three times. After tapping her finger twice on the rim, she licked off the remaining Scotch. She slowly lifted the glass to her lips and took a healthy swallow. She breathed deeply and smiled before setting the tumbler back on its heavy square coaster. She didn’t even need to look when she put it exactly in the center. Some things just came naturally.

  The woman returned her attention to her list. She wrote Balance checkbook even though she had just completed that task. She added Set up meeting with Karl, Get birthday card for Susan, Organize bedroom closet and Go to grocery store. She crossed off the first item and took another drink, again placing the glass on the center of its coaster. What she really needed to do was to find two replacements for the two who’d been killed a couple months ago. But that wasn’t something she would put on her to-do list. She took another sip and leaned back in her tall, dark leather chair. Only a few minutes passed before she heard the front door open.

  A few months ago she would have assumed it was her girlfriend coming in, but things had changed. Her girlfriend of two years had packed her bags and moved to San Francisco with little warning. Her only explanation had been that she needed to find herself. She wasn’t the kind to chase after anyone, so she let her girlfriend go without an argument, but she’d kept her anger inside. The only thing she’d made sure of was that her girlfriend took nothing more than what she had arrived with. At least that memory usually made her happy. She was still smiling when her assistant came into the study.

  “Hey, boss,” Jan said, her voice deep and husky as usual. A voice, she knew, that earned its tone from many years of heavy drinking and smoking. “Can I get you anything?”

  The woman shook her head and gestured to one of the leather club chairs across from her desk. “Make yourself a drink, Jan. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover tonight.” She ran her fingers through her hair on the right side, three times.

  Jan mixed herself a rum and Coke, carefully replacing the bottles on the bar. She picked up the ashtray from the shelf below the bar. Even though her boss didn’t smoke, she didn’t mind if Jan did as long as she emptied the ashtray when she left. There was a metal can with a lid for just that purpose. Before sitting down she made sure there was a coaster on the end table, another one of her boss’s quirks. Satisfied, she sat down, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette.

  Jan had worked for the woman for over ten years now. She did a little bit of everything, and her best qualities were that she was smart, worked hard and kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t afraid to either break the law or someone’s jaw and for that she was paid handsomely. She also knew enough not to ever mention the somewhat obsessive traits her boss often displayed, like insisting on checking her bank balance at least ten times a day. She waited patiently for her boss to begin.

  “We need to find another judge,” the woman said, “and we need to figure out which lawyer can take over Butch’s job.”

  Jan nodded and took a sip of her drink. She knew no response was needed at this time. Her boss was just thinking out loud. The judge would be a tough call. They’d had Judge Smith on their payroll for years and things had been going smoothly until some crazed woman had killed both the judge and an attorney, Butch Henley. This had put a real crimp in their organization.

  “Judge Smith was an asshole, but we had him by the balls,” the woman said. “We still have Judge Carmen, but he’s only good for the small stuff. His appetite for young Asian girls is embarrassing for him, but not enough to push him. What about Judge Wilson? Did you get the video on him yet?”

  Jan smiled and set her drink on its coaster. She put out her cigarette and produced a DVD and a few photos from her old gray backpack and handed them to her boss. “We’ve got about two hours total on the DVD. I made a couple still photos from it.” He’d been using their services for about six months now. “He’s done a few things for us in court and there’s been no problem so far. He’s married and has two youn
g boys of his own. In fact, they’re about the same age as the ones he asks for from us. He’s also active in his church and has the backing of the local Republican Party. I think he’s perfect.”

  The woman looked at the photos, frowned in disgust, then quickly pushed them back across her desk. Jan smiled, tucking them back inside her bag.

  “Okay. What about a replacement for Butch? Do you think Bill Hogan can handle things?”

  “I talked to Mike this morning and he thinks that Bill’s the best choice. He can handle the additional cases. Mike says we can pay him a little less if we give him a supply of ecstasy and GHB.” That was the popular date rape drug.

  Mike Johnson was a senior detective on the Fairfield Police Department in Missouri. Jan had worked with him off and on for almost twenty years and his take on people was rarely wrong. He was also the only one with the exception of her who knew who actually ran this organization. Jan knew her boss had always been very careful about that.

  The woman nodded. “Tell Mike to go ahead, but he needs to take things slowly. I want to be sure these guys are on board. And make sure you’ve got enough on both these guys to make them squirm if we need them to.”

  The woman turned to her laptop and typed in a few things. She was frowning as she emptied her glass. Jan quickly rose to refill the drink. She placed the fresh one back on its coaster and made sure it was centered. The woman nodded and looked at her glass. Jan had made sure it was filled exactly right. Out of habit the woman put her left index finger in the liquid and stirred three times. She tapped her finger twice on the rim and licked up the last drop. After a long swallow she replaced the glass on the coaster.

  “It’s going to take at least another couple months for us to get back up to speed,” she hissed. “All because of that psycho bitch.”

  Jan nodded but said nothing. She pulled out another cigarette, lit it and slowly exhaled the smoke. She’d seen her boss upset before, but this seemed more extreme than usual. Jan supposed it was because her girlfriend had left at about the same time as the murders. She tried to soothe her. “It shouldn’t be a problem, boss. Mike will get these guys up to speed in no time and we’ll be back as strong as ever. And if Davey can make us this new designer drug, we may have an even larger market.”

  The woman was adjusting items on her desk, apparently making sure each one was in its exact right place. “I know,” she responded with a sigh.

  Davey was the boss’s younger brother and at thirty-nine years old, he would rather play video games than work. He’d had a few jobs when he was younger, but his inability to work with others always resulted in him getting fired. The man was brilliant, Jan thought, and wrote his own computer games. He was also an excellent chemist and supplied the organization with all the drugs they needed. Even though he cooked, he never used. But as long as he could cook enough to meet the supply, his sister let him play as often as he liked. She paid him well and he always seemed content when Jan saw him.

  “Davey told me yesterday he’s just about got the formula right,” the boss said. “We should have some samples by the weekend. But that doesn’t help this situation. If that bitch hadn’t killed Judge Smith and Butch, we’d be ahead of the game. Where is she now? I want her dead.”

  The “psycho bitch” was actually a woman who’d been infatuated with Toni Barston, an assistant prosecuting attorney, several months ago. She’d killed Judge Smith and Butch, a lawyer, out of a distorted love for Toni. The two dead men had worked for the woman and their demise created a slump in her business.

  “She’s in a locked psych ward with twenty-four-hour guards. The cops are all over this. Mike told me that she also injured two women, one of them an assistant prosecuting attorney and the other an investigator. Apparently the psycho woman was in love with the attorney and was killing anyone who she thought this attorney didn’t like.”

  “So this psychotic bitch killed our guys because she wanted to get in the attorney’s pants? Who is this dyke lawyer?”

  “Her name is Toni Barston and she’s given us some trouble before.”

  “Find out everything you can about her. I don’t want her to give us any more shit.” The woman logged onto her bank account and dismissed Jan with a wave of her hand.

  Jan left, shaking her head. She assumed that the loss of the judge and attorney had finally affected the bottom line and that’s why her boss was concerned. Disgusted, she slammed her car door shut. I saw this coming the day they were killed.

  Chapter 2

  Toni Barston sat at her desk in the Fairfield Metropolitan Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and looked at her pile of cases. She was glad to be back to work full time. She’d received a concussion and two broken fingers on her right hand from a crazed woman about two months ago. Her hand was basically healed, but it still gave her trouble every once in a while and her typing was dreadfully slow. She felt glad to just be alive. She was studying a preliminary file on a murder charge when she heard a knock on her door.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Boggs said, poking her head inside. “Got a minute?”

  Toni grinned and motioned her inside. Victoria “Boggs” Boggsworth was one of the investigators at the prosecuting attorney’s office and there was no doubt she was the best. She was also Toni’s lover of almost eight months. Boggs was five-feet six-inches tall with an incredibly athletic body. Her hair was short and stylish, light brown with a few gray strands scattered about. At thirty-nine years old she could still turn heads, and her green eyes were the kind that made you look twice. Her voice was deep and a little gravelly. She could make Toni’s knees weak with just a few words.

  “Stop saying things like that. You know our rule—work is work. Okay?”

  Boggs grinned. “I know, but it’s true. You are gorgeous. But okay, I’ll try to contain myself. Unless, of course, you want me to close your door and then you can discipline me.”

  Toni rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Maybe later. What’s up?”

  “You got the Martin case, right?”

  “Yeah. I was just looking at it. The police report is pretty straightforward. Martin shot the victim, let’s see . . . Kevin Tucker, kicked him a few times while calling him a fag and then shot him again. He was sitting next to the body when the police arrived. The officer called it a ‘hate crime’ in his report.” Toni was slowly shaking her head. Sometimes she just couldn’t understand the stupidity of people.

  “Right,” Boggs said. “But I talked to a couple people this morning and something doesn’t sound right to me.”

  “You don’t think Martin is our guy?” Toni asked.

  “No, he’s our guy for sure.” Boggs stretched her legs out and leaned back in the chair. “But I don’t think it’s a hate crime. I talked to the neighbors and Martin’s sister. Martin’s son was gay and Martin was involved with PFLAG. And his son died two weeks ago from a drug overdose.”

  “Do we know anything about the victim?”

  “I’m looking into that. He’s got a few priors, mostly misdemeanor possession charges, but I’m going to ask around. Are you going to talk to Martin?”

  “He’s got a public defender,” Toni said as she looked at the file. “Jill Barger. I know her from law school. I’ll give her a call and see if I can set something up. If this isn’t a hate crime, it’ll take a lot of years off his sentence.”

  Boggs stood up to leave. “I’ll let you know what I find out, okay? And how about if I bring dinner over tonight? We can have a quick bite to eat, but then I’ve got to do some laundry. Someone kept me so busy over the weekend I never had a chance to wash clothes. I’m down to my ‘emergency’ underwear, for God’s sake.”

  Toni laughed. “That sounds wonderful, but why don’t you just bring your laundry over to my place? We can do it while we eat and then maybe watch a movie or something.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Hell, yes. Now go away so I can get some work done. And let me know if you find out anything new, okay?”

  Boggs c
rossed the tiny office, heading not for the door but straight toward Toni. She leaned down and kissed her passionately. Toni reacted immediately, putting her arms up around Boggs’s strong shoulders. She felt her entire body pulse. Boggs pulled away and winked at her before leaving. It took Toni several minutes to regain her focus. She sometimes had a difficult time after seeing Boggs because the thought of making love with her still drove her crazy. Working in the same office with someone you were in love with wasn’t easy. She shook off her thoughts of lust and put in a call to Jill, scheduling a meeting for later in the day.

  By the time Jill arrived, Toni had learned from Boggs that Kevin Tucker, the victim, might have had ties to a drug organization. Although he’d never been specifically linked, he’d been a person of interest. She also knew that Harold Martin had no criminal record and had been employed as a mechanic for thirty years.

  “Thanks for coming over, Jill,” Toni said as she ushered her into her office. “How’ve you been?”

  “Great.” Jill took a seat. “Hard to believe that we’ve been out of school for almost a year. Seems like I’ve been doing this forever. How about you?”

  “Swamped, just like you, I’m sure. But I love it. Did you get a chance to talk to Mr. Martin?”

  “Yes. I talked to him right after you called this morning. He’s pretty devastated by what he did and wants to get this resolved as soon as possible.”

  “Do you think he’ll talk to me? He may have some information.”

  “Yes,” Jill said. “In fact he wants to talk to you. I don’t know what information he may or may not have, but let’s set it up. Maybe we can work out some kind of plea agreement.”

  “Okay.” Toni looked at her calendar. “Are you free in the morning?”