Blood Relative (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 4)

by Michael Allegretto

  “I…”

  “It’s either that or you go to the police with this.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “You told me I don’t have to testify, and I won’t.”

  “I said the court can’t force you to testify. That’s not the same as your volunteering.”

  “No, I—I can’t.”

  “Are you forgetting that your father-in-law is in jail?”

  I must’ve shouted, because she winced. Her eyes were rimmed with red and filling with tears.

  “I…” She stood stiffly. “Excuse me, please,” she said, and hurried from the room.

  She disappeared down the hallway. A door closed.

  I sat for what seemed a long time, staring at the empty room, trying to imagine the pain within Doreen. Finally, I walked to the kitchen, found the cupboard with the glasses, and got a drink of water.

  The window over the sink offered a view of the backyard. There was a wide expanse of lawn and a lot of lilac bushes just beginning to show leaves. One corner of the yard was taken up by a mammoth jungle gym. The Butler tykes clambered over it, involved in some elaborate fantasy. Not unlike their parents.

  I went back to the living room and sat down. A moment later, Doreen appeared, her eyes red but her tears gone. Her face was paler than before. She’d washed off her makeup.

  I stood. “Are you ready to call Kenneth?”

  “No.”

  “Look, Mrs. Butler—”

  “I said no.” She gave me a glare almost too brief to mention. “I will not disturb Kenneth at work.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kenneth has an important order to get out. That’s why he’s working today. He’ll be home sometime this afternoon. Then we can— Then you can talk to him about…everything.”

  Her mouth defined a thin, straight line. She was trying her damnedest to stand firm, to maintain her dignity. Or perhaps she just wanted to preserve the status quo as long as possible.

  “Mrs. Butler…”

  “No.” Her voice was shrill.

  I didn’t want to push her. I needed her cooperation. That is, Samuel Butler did. Because unless Doreen convinced Kenneth to turn himself in—or agreed to testily against him—there was no way to prove he’d killed Clare. Sure, he’d had a motive: Clare had found out about the phantom employee, Jeremy Stone. Although now I wondered how she’d done it without the help of Gil Lucero; he’d barely gotten started before he’d had his “accident.”

  Whatever the case, there was little if anything to tie Kenneth to Clare’s murder. My testimony as to what Doreen had just told me would be worthless—hearsay, inadmissible. I had to get her to testify or to pressure Kenneth into confessing. But pampering her by letting Kenneth complete his workday? I don’t think so.

  “Listen to me,” I said, getting parental, “either you call your husband right now, or I will.”

  She blinked as if she’d been slapped. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

  “Make up your mind,” I said. “And I mean now.”

  Her eyes filled again with tears. Lomax, you bully.

  “I’ll…call.” Her voice was low and pathetic.

  I followed her to the kitchen. She phoned Butler Manufacturing and asked for Kenneth. She listened for a few moments, requested that Kenneth phone her, and hung up.

  “He’s gone to lunch with a customer,” she said, looking at the phone, not at me. “Alice doesn’t know where they went or when they’ll be back.”

  Swell. Business before prosecution.

  “All right, we’ll do it this afternoon. Oliver Westfall should be here, too.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you have his home phone number?”

  “I—yes, I believe so.”

  She got out a small binder and flipped pages until she found the number. I copied it.

  “Mrs. Butler, if Kenneth should come home without calling, maybe you’d better wait until Westfall and I get here before you confront him.”

  “Why? I want to talk to him alone.”

  “Yes, but you said he sometimes gets angry. It’s possible he might—”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Kenneth would never hurt me. Never.”

  I had to assume that she knew what she was talking about. And really, my greatest concern wasn’t that Kenneth would harm Doreen. He may have murdered Clare in a fit of rage, but he did it to protect his interests, which I believed included his family. No, my chief worry was that he’d convince Doreen to clam up, making it much more difficult for Westfall and me to convince him to admit his guilt and turn himself in.

  Of course, he might run. But there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do to stop him—not legally, anyway.

  “I’ll come back this afternoon with Oliver Westfall,” I said. “He can help only if Kenneth does the right thing.”

  “I—I know. Good-bye, Mr. Lomax.”

  She showed me out, then closed the door softly behind me, alone at last with her agony.

  I drove to my office to phone Westfall. There was a message on my machine from Lieutenant MacArthur asking me to call him. He didn’t say why.

  I dialed Westfall first. He seemed annoyed that I had his home number.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news,” I said.

  “I don’t have time to play games, Mr. Lomax. My wife and I are just leaving for a luncheon with the Republican—”

  “The good news is we can prove that Samuel Butler didn’t murder Clare.”

  That got his attention. “Are you certain?”

  “The bad news is your new client is Kenneth Butler.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Kenneth killed Clare.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  As briefly as possible I filled him in on what I’d learned about Jeremy Stone and what Doreen Butler had confessed to me.

  “Have you told any of this to the police?”

  “No. I thought you should hear it first. Besides, there’s little I can tell the cops that I can prove. We need to get Kenneth or Doreen to talk.”

  “Oh, I can manage that,” he said heatedly. “I’ll force Kenneth to surrender his books and hand them to the police. When they see his motive for killing Clare, they’ll rake him and Doreen over the coals until one of them breaks.”

  “I see. So you won’t represent Kenneth in court?”

  “I will if he wants me to. At the moment, though, I represent Samuel Butler, and I’ll do everything in my power to get him freed.”

  “Do you want to talk to Kenneth or not?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could there be a conflict of interest?”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “Right. Look, I don’t know when Kenneth’s going to return, so—”

  “I’ll phone Doreen Butler now and tell her to call me here the minute she hears from him.”

  “What about your luncheon?”

  “Screw the luncheon.” He hung up.

  I called police headquarters and was put on hold. Five minutes later, MacArthur came on the line.

  “Hi, Pat, it’s Jake.”

  “I want you to come in here.”

  “What, no hello?”

  “Now. I’ll send a squad car if you like.”

  “Hey, I can drive. What’s up?”

  “I have some pictures I want you to look at, see if you recognize anyone.”

  “Pictures of who?”

  “Friends of William Royce.”

  CHAPTER 28

  WHILE I RODE THE ELEVATOR up to MacArthur’s floor, I debated whether to tell him about Kenneth Butler.

  I was still working for Westfall, though, and Westfall was more or less Kenneth’s attorney. So what I had was privileged information, albeit hearsay. In times past, MacArthur and I could’ve spoken off the record about such things, friend to friend. But I feared those times were gone. MacArthur was grooming himself for promotion—a company man. If I convinced him Kenneth Butler was guilty, he’d never let him
surrender on his own. He’d send the troops after him. And while he was at it, he might find some reason to lock me up, just to show everyone what a good cop he was.

  I passed through the squad room, which wasn’t nearly as busy as the last time I’d been here. Of course, this was Saturday. Even crooks need a day off.

  The door to MacArthur’s office was open. I knocked as I walked in.

  He was on the phone, listening more than speaking. He waved me into a chair in front of his desk.

  “All right, Chief,” he said, “if that’s what you want, I’ll see that it gets done. Count on it, Chief.” He hung up.

  “You forgot to say hi to your wife for me.”

  He didn’t crack a smile, just the folder on his desk, all business. The good old days were dead.

  “We’ve received information from California on William Royce,” he said, scanning a page in his folder. “His last known employer was Frank Dykstra, a twice-convicted drug dealer. Over the years, Dykstra has dealt heroin, cocaine, and more recently, a drug called ice. Have you heard of it?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “It’s a pure form of methamphetamine that the user smokes rather than injects or eats. Addicts can go about their lives—school, job, whatever—for months before the drug catches up with them. Then it’s paranoia and sometimes violence. In any case, ice was first smuggled into this country from Korea, and then labs began to show up in Hawaii, California, and Texas. That’s where Dykstra comes in. He’s got a nephew, Carl, same last name. The kid’s a recent college graduate, chemistry degree. Frank’s apparently taken him under his wing.”

  “Carl’s cooking ice for his uncle Frank.”

  “It looks that way. The L.A. police believe the Dykstras were setting up an ice lab before running afoul of some Asian competition. Three Korean men were shot to death, and Frank and Carl disappeared. That was six months ago, and there’s been no sign of them until you ran into William Royce last Wednesday.”

  “You think the Dykstras are in Denver?”

  “It’s possible, and if so, Frank might be setting up a lab. He’d keep Royce and others like him around for protection. Here he’s got the bikers to worry about. Speed is a biker industry, and they might consider ice to be part of it.”

  He withdrew photos from the folder and set them on the desk, facing me.

  There was a mug shot of Frank Dykstra, full face and profile, holding a numbered placard under his chin. Chins. He was heavyset, around fifty, with a high forehead and one sleepy eye. He looked familiar. There was a series of photos, apparently taken with a long lens, showing Frank and Carl walking out of a building and getting into a car. Carl wore a bomber jacket and a nineties haircut—shaved on the sides and long in back. The last picture from MacArthur’s folder was a posed shot of Carl in a cap and gown.

  “Where’d this come from, the family album?”

  “Do you know either of them?” MacArthur asked, all business.

  I tapped Frank’s mug shot with my finger. “I think I’ve seen him before.”

  “Where?”

  “Driving the carload of shooters last Wednesday night at the golf course.”

  MacArthur’s brow wrinkled. “Are you sure?”

  “Not a hundred percent. The light was bad. But I think it was him.”

  “Then he’s probably setting up an ice lab. Would you know anything about that?”

  “No.”

  “Why would Dykstra want you dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you?” He gave me a look that cops are famous for: You’re lying, and we both know it, so you might as well start telling the truth and ease your conscience.

  “Hey, Pat, give it a rest, all right? There’s only—”

  “I asked you a question.”

  I’d been about to explain that there were only minor hints of ice in the Butler case: Clare Butler owned an ice pipe, Wes Hartman had admitted that he’d once smoked ice, and Samuel Butler’s flower vendor was an ice addict. All of it was a long way from a hard-core drug operation and the Dykstra boys. And it was doubtful any of it would be useful to MacArthur. Still, I should’ve told him. But I was put off by his brand-new hard-ass attitude.

  “No, I have no idea why Dykstra would want to kill me.” That much, anyway, was the truth.

  He gave me one last long, hard stare. Then he said, “Here,” and handed me a voucher with his signature at the bottom. “Take that down to the property clerk and you can get your gun back.”

  I hesitated.

  “Something you want to say?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then close the door on your way out.”

  Downstairs the property clerk gave me my .38 snub-nose and a little plastic bag with the empty shells.

  Walking out to the car I thought about William Royce and Frank and Carl Dykstra. After they’d tried to snuff me at the golf course—in fact, right up until this morning—I’d assumed their attempt was somehow tied to Clare’s murder, part of a cover-up. But Kenneth had killed Clare. So if the shooters were covering up, they were working for Kenneth.

  Somehow that seemed unlikely.

  Kenneth had been stealing from his father, stealing for himself and his family. He’d committed one desperate, violent act to protect himself. But Royce and the Dykstras were another breed, involved in something else entirely. So why were they after me? Somewhere in the past few days I must’ve kicked over a rock and disturbed them. The question was, which rock?

  I tried to put a name to it. Only one came to mind—Wes Hartman. Perhaps because he was the sole member of the Butler clan who’d smoked ice.

  Well, there had been one other. Clare.

  Had she been connected with the Dykstras?

  On my way to the office I swung under some golden arches for lunch. Before I unwrapped everything, I phoned Doreen Butler. She still hadn’t heard from Kenneth. I told her I’d wait by the phone for her call.

  Halfway through my burger the phone rang. It wasn’t Doreen, though, it was Karen.

  “I need your help.” She sounded upset. “I don’t know who else to call.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Can you come to my house?”

  “Now?”

  “Please.”

  “Karen, I’m expecting an extremely important call, and if I’m not here to—”

  “This is important.”

  “All right, calm down. If you’d just tell me—”

  “It’s my sister,” she said.

  “Nicole? What’s wrong?”

  “She’s here. She says…she killed Clare.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I CALLED WESTFALL AND told him where I’d be without saying why. Then I drove to south Denver.

  Karen lived on South Pearl Street in a quiet neighborhood of small brick bungalows and huge old elms. There was a new silver Subaru parked crookedly in front of her house, its right front tire over the curb.

  I climbed the steps to the front porch and rang the bell.

  Karen answered wearing tight blue jeans and a loose cotton pullover that wasn’t quite as black as her hair. Worry lines divided her delicate eyebrows. Again I was struck by how little she resembled her father and her siblings, her facial bones more fragile, her eyes pale hazel, not dark brown. In fact, she hardly looked like a blood relative.

  “Thanks for coming.” She held the screen door open.

  The living room was small and tidy and smelled of flowers. A pair of blue-and-white-striped love seats formed an L before a fireplace framed in rose and white tiles. The firebrick and inner hearth gleamed, and the andirons had been replaced by a porcelain cat. On the mantelpiece was a large cut-glass vase with a spray of white carnations.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the bedroom. I told her to lie down. I didn’t know what else to do. When she came here, she was jumpy as hell, talking a mile a minute. She said she’d gotten in an argument with Clare and then
sort of blacked out. The next thing she knew, she was in her car, driving home. There was blood on her clothes. At home she told Wes she didn’t know what had happened. He explained that she’d killed Clare and that they were to keep it a secret.”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  I followed Karen through the room to a closed door on the left. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned to me.

  “She might be asleep,” she said softly.

  I nodded, and she opened the door. “Nicole?”

  I went in behind her. The bed was empty, the bedspread rumpled. Karen turned right, and I followed her through a long bathroom with an old black-and-white-tiled floor, a bathtub standing on clawed feet, a shoulder-high cedar bureau, and a freestanding white sink with separate spigots for hot and cold water. There was another door at the end of the bathroom, hanging open, leading into the kitchen.

  “Nicole?” Karen called, panic in her voice.

  I had to jog to keep up with her through the kitchen and out the back door.

  At the rear of the yard was a detached two-car garage. The side door stood open. Karen ran for it.

  Karen’s white Miata was parked inside with the top up. Nicole sat behind the wheel, struggling to get the key in the ignition. She looked up and saw us, terrified, and fought more than ever to work the key. I don’t know where she thought she was going; the garage door was closed and manually operated. She’d have to get out of the car to open it.

  Karen hurried around to the driver’s side and pulled on the door. It was locked.

  “Nicole, please come out.” She’d spoken loud enough to be heard through the closed side window but still managed to keep her tone gentle. “We want to help you, honey. Please.”

  Nicole continued to fight with the key. Then suddenly she stopped and pressed her forehead to the steering wheel, eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly. Karen pleaded with her to unlock the door. Finally, Nicole did so, slowly, as if she were in a trance.

  Karen helped her out of the car.

  Nicole’s face was very pale. Her eyes were half-closed, and the lids were so dark they looked bruised. She was dressed the way I’d seen her at her condo Tuesday night—black tights, black running shoes, and a billowy long-sleeved man’s shirt spattered with paint.