Violent Crimes

by Phillip Margolin

She paused, her mouth agape, giving the impression that she was speechless. Then she laughed.

  “Did you ever meet Dale? Do you know how much bigger than me he was? You try telling a jury that I beat him to death and they’ll fall over laughing.”

  “Oh, we never thought for a moment that you could do the deed, but you or your boyfriend could have hired someone to do it for you.”

  “What boyfriend?” Veronica asked, and Billie thought she sounded nervous.

  “There are rumors about you and Mark Hamilton. Are they true?”

  “I don’t like where this conversation is going. I think you should leave.”

  “One more question, then we will: Where were you between seven thirty and nine thirty last night?” Billie asked.

  “Why? What happened last night?”

  “The prime suspect in your husband’s murder was shot to death,” Billie said, staring hard at Veronica to catch her reaction.

  “Who was he?”

  “A man named Reginald Kiner. Ever heard of him?”

  “No, and if you think I shot him . . .”

  Before she could complete the sentence, a muscular, bare-chested man in a black swimsuit walked across the lawn. Billie put him in his mid-thirties. He had wavy black hair and clean features. In a TV movie he would be the club tennis pro who was screwing the rich widow. Billie wondered if life might be imitating art.

  “Any problems, babe?” the man asked as he looked back and forth between the detectives.

  “None whatsoever.” Veronica smiled. “Derrick, can you tell these nice detectives where we were last night between seven thirty and nine thirty?”

  Derrick blushed. “Where we were exactly?”

  “No need to be shy. We’re all adults,” Veronica answered.

  “Uh, in Veronica’s bedroom.”

  “The whole time?” Billie asked, knowing what he’d answer but asking just the same.

  Derrick nodded.

  “Satisfied?” Veronica asked.

  “For now,” Billie answered. She started to leave, but halted and turned to Derrick.

  “You aren’t a tennis pro by any chance, are you?”

  Derrick looked confused. “No, I’m an electrical engineer, why?”

  “Just an idea I had,” Billie said before she turned her back on the lovebirds ands led Hotchkiss back to their car.

  CHAPTER 47

  Amanda had the Sunday New York Times delivered to her condo. After breakfast, she would take a cup of coffee into her living room and curl up on the couch with the crossword puzzle. She liked the Sunday puzzle because it usually had a theme or a gimmick. Once you figured out the trick, you could fill in a lot of the words and the puzzle was easy to solve.

  While Amanda was working on her puzzle, Mike was studying a variation of the Petroff Defense on a walnut chess table with beautiful inlaid squares he had brought over from his apartment. The Sunday puzzle was getting the best of Amanda and Mike’s concentration was constantly being interrupted by swearing. Then Amanda barked out a victorious laugh.

  “I assume you’ve finally figured out the big clue,” he said.

  “I’m so stupid,” Amanda answered. “The title of the puzzle is ‘Reverse Engineering.’ You’re supposed to fill in some of the words from right to left instead of left to right.”

  “Great. Now that you’ve got that solved, is there a possibility that I’ll be able to work on my chess opening in peace and quiet?”

  “Sorry,” Amanda apologized meekly.

  “I love you,” Mike said with a big smile, “even if you’re not too bright.”

  Amanda gave Mike the finger and started filling in some of the answers that had stumped her. She was working on the bottom right corner of the puzzle when she paused and stared into space. Then her mouth opened.

  “You’re right. I am an idiot,” Amanda said.

  Mike sighed and looked up. “What is it now?” he asked.

  “This case—Kiner’s murder and all the rest of it. I’ve been looking at it the wrong way, just like I looked at the puzzle.”

  Amanda pulled out her cell phone and walked into her home office so she wouldn’t bother Mike. Then she speed-dialed Kate Ross.

  “I’ve got two jobs for you,” Amanda said when Kate answered the phone. “First, I want you to find every newspaper article, TV news story, and mention on the Internet about Tom Beatty’s assault case.”

  “That should be easy,” Kate said. “What’s task number two?”

  Amanda gave Kate a name. “I want a complete net worth: every bank account and investment account, real estate holdings, jewelry, art, cars, boats . . . everything. And I don’t care how you get the information as long as you don’t get caught.”

  “Can you tell me why I’m going to spend my day of rest working overtime while risking a stay in a federal penitentiary?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  Amanda explained what she expected Kate to find and what they would do with the information if Kate’s search panned out the way Amanda thought it would.

  CHAPTER 48

  Amanda walked into Jaffe, Katz, Lehane and Brindisi a little after seven on Monday morning. Before she went to her office she checked to see if Kate Ross was in. When she didn’t find her in her office Amanda left a note for the receptionist to have Kate come to where she worked as soon as she walked in the door. Then she went to her office and tried to concentrate on a brief she was writing.

  Kate knocked on Amanda’s doorjamb at one-thirty. Amanda told her to come in and close the door.

  “So?” she asked when Kate was seated.

  “First, as far as I can tell, there were no stories about Tom’s arrest or the fight at the Lookout, but that’s not surprising. A bar fight usually isn’t newsworthy unless someone dies.”

  “Okay, what about your other assignment?” Amanda asked.

  “You were right. The problem is you won’t be able to use anything I found because I broke several state and federal laws finding it.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to know if I was right. Now we have to get Billie Brewster on board, because she can legally get ahold of the information we need to nail the person who murdered Reginald Kiner. All we have to do is point her in the right direction.”

  “These are the ground rules,” Billie said when the three women were gathered in a booth at the back of Juniors Cafe. “One, this meeting never happened.”

  “That works for me,” Amanda said.

  “Two, we put all our cards on the table. No attorney-client bullshit.”

  “I’m bound by the attorney-client privilege, Billie; you know that. But I could speak hypothetically about things a client might have told me if I knew you wouldn’t subpoena me to a grand jury.”

  Brewster shook her head. “I am so glad I didn’t go to law school. You must have gotten an A plus in obfuscation and doublespeak.”

  Amanda cocked her head to one side, raised an eyebrow, and remained mute.

  Billie sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll let you play your games if it helps nail the person who’s behind all these killings. So why don’t you start.”

  “Here’s what we think,” Amanda said. “It all began with Masterson, Hamilton’s attempt to land Global Mining as a client. The firm was in financial trouble. I’m pretty certain that Dale Masterson and Mark Hamilton worked on their books to make it look like their financial position was better than it was.”

  “Do you know if any of the other members of the firm were involved?” Billie asked.

  “I have a source who told me that Dale Masterson and Mark Hamilton ran the law firm, and the rest of the partners were just along for the ride. You can probably get the partnership agreements and see if any other partners were in the inner circle.”

  “I’ll do that. Go ahead.”

  “I’m positive that Christine Larson found out about the cooked books and threatened to spill the beans to the people at Global. Dale Masterson and/or Mark Hamilton panicked and got in touch with Reg
inald Kiner. It was probably Dale Masterson.”

  “What makes you think that?” Billie asked.

  “Hamilton told someone who told me,” Amanda said.

  “Who is this confidant?”

  “A little bird, and that’s all I can say.”

  “Did this little bird cut off the tip of Mark Hamilton’s ear?”

  Amanda just stared at the detective. After a few seconds, Billie shook her head and told Amanda to continue.

  “We believe that the firm used Kiner in the past to deal with situations like this,” Amanda said.

  “You mean to kill people?” Billie asked.

  “Or something similar: threats, coercion. I don’t have details about crimes unconnected with the current cases, but I am very certain that the men who were found in the car trunk went to Tom Beatty’s house on the evening he was released from jail and tried to kill him. I am equally certain that Tom Beatty killed both men in self-defense and would be found not guilty if a jury knew all of the facts.”

  “What about the men we found at the campsite in Forest Park?” Billie asked.

  Amanda flashed on the violence she’d witnessed in the park and had to take a deep breath to calm down. She was subdued when she answered the detective’s question.

  “I was there when that happened, Billie. Those men followed me to Tom’s camp. They were going to torture me. Tom rescued me. He saved my life.”

  Billie lost her hard edge. “Why haven’t you said something?”

  “I didn’t know if you’d find Tom’s camp and the bodies.” She looked down at the tabletop. “I couldn’t get him in more trouble after he saved me.”

  “There’s something else,” Kate said. “Amanda realized that she must have been under surveillance, so she asked me to sweep her condo and her office and check her phones and her car. I found state-of-the-art, very expensive bugs in her office and home, taps on her phones, and a tracking device on her car—the type of equipment an outfit like RENCO could get their hands on.”

  “Interesting,” Billie said. “What about Dale Masterson? Did your client kill him?”

  “So you think Brandon is innocent?” Amanda asked.

  “Since we’re off the record, I can tell you that I have very serious doubts that Brandon Masterson killed his father.”

  “Why haven’t you dismissed the charges?”

  “I said that I had doubts. Alan isn’t as open-minded as I am.”

  “If it helps, Brandon told me that his father was dead when he found him. He confessed to get a platform to spout his views about the environment and to tell the world what a shit his father was. Now he deeply regrets that lamebrain decision.”

  “You still didn’t answer my question. Did Beatty kill Masterson?”

  “He swears that he didn’t. He was in Masterson’s den but he says Masterson was dead when he found him. I’m pretty certain that was also Kiner’s work.”

  “Did your boy pop Kiner?” Billie asked.

  “No, but I’m pretty certain I know who did. Only I’ll need your help to prove it. Kate talked to a retired PPB detective who was investigating Kiner when he was on the force. He said Kiner was a bad cop. Can you tell us anything more about him?”

  “When Kiner’s name started coming up I did get curious, and I talked to Greg Nowicki—Kiner was Greg’s partner just before he left to work for RENCO. Nowicki didn’t have anything good to say about him. Alan Hotchkiss knew him too. Alan told me that everyone thought Kiner was dirty. He was suspected of killing a drug dealer, stealing drug money he’d confiscated in other cases, and making a witness disappear, but they could never get enough evidence to go to a grand jury.

  “And there’s something else that could be important. Kiner was partnered with Nowicki when Carol White started informing for Greg. Greg says that Kiner knew her. So Masterson or Hamilton or both could have gotten Kiner to send men to murder Christine. Then Kiner could have paid White to go to Nowicki so he’d get a warrant for Tom’s house. After that, all they had to do was lure Tom to the law office. That would give Kiner’s men the time they needed to plant the body and the heroin in Tom’s house.”

  “Have you checked on Mark Hamilton’s whereabouts during the time Kiner was murdered?” Amanda asked.

  “We’re taking a hard look at Mr. Hamilton,” Billie assured her. “He says he was at his office from seven thirty at night until his bodyguards got him two hours later. Most of the employees were gone by seven-thirty, and no one we talked to can say he was or wasn’t there during the crucial times. We checked the law firm’s security cameras and there are blind spots, so he could have left and come back.”

  “Do you have any other suspects?” Amanda asked.

  “Veronica Masterson is going to be a very rich woman when the will is probated. She signed a prenup, but it cut her out of Dale’s estate only if they divorced.”

  “Does she have an alibi for the time Dale was murdered?”

  “She told us she was shopping all day, and we’ve talked to salesclerks who back up her story for some of the day, but there are some times she can’t account for during which she would have been able to drive home, kill Masterson, and go back to shop. Two girlfriends cover her from five to seven thirty. They had dinner at the Westmont before she drove home.”

  “What about Kiner? Does she have an alibi for the time of his murder?” Kate asked.

  Billie told them what Veronica’s hunk had told her and Hotchkiss.

  “Do you have any other suspects in Kiner’s murder besides Veronica Masterson and Mark Hamilton?” Amanda asked.

  “I thought you wanted to meet me so you could tell me whodunit,” Billie said.

  “All I have is a theory,” Amanda answered. “What we need is hard evidence. And that’s where you come in.”

  The women talked a little longer before driving off in their separate cars. Amanda was lost in thought during the return to Portland, but part of her brain had been on high alert ever since Kate had told her that she was being spied on.

  On the way to Juniors she’d thought that a dark green Chevy had followed her into Washington. Then the car had taken the exit before the one that led to Juniors and she’d written off her suspicions as paranoia. Now, as she crossed the border into Oregon, she thought she saw the Chevy several cars behind her, but it was too far back for her to be certain. Before she drove to her condo, Amanda took several fast turns and circled through back streets until she was convinced that she had lost any tail that might be following her.

  CHAPTER 49

  Mike was watching a movie when Amanda got back to the apartment. She sat next to him on the sofa and tried to lose herself in the film, but her mind wandered as she tried to twist and turn the facts in the Masterson and Larson cases this way and that, with the same lack of success she’d always had when she tried to solve a Rubik’s Cube or a Chinese box puzzle. She was pretty certain she knew who had killed Kiner, but she wasn’t in a position to prove it until Billie found the hard evidence the case was lacking.

  The movie ended, and Mike wanted to make love. Amanda was distracted, but she didn’t want to disappoint him, and she hoped sex might take her mind off murder. It didn’t. When Mike fell asleep, she was still wide awake, and what little sleep she got after that was fretful.

  The next morning, Amanda crawled out of bed, more tired than she’d been when she went to sleep the night before. She had no appetite, so she ate a piece of toast and drank a cup of tea before heading to the gym in hopes that a vigorous workout would clear the cobwebs that were wrapped around her brain.

  During the first ten laps Amanda’s mind wandered to the questions posed by Reginald Kiner’s murder, but she went all out in every set, and the harder she swam, the less energy she had for anything but survival. When she hauled herself out of the pool, she was thoroughly exhausted and it took everything she had left to shower and dress.

  Amanda didn’t have any court appearances or client conferences on her calendar, so she decided to carbo
-load with a hearty pancake breakfast before going into the office. She was walking to her car, thinking how great it would be to polish off a stack of blueberry pancakes and a side of thick-sliced bacon drenched in maple syrup, when she saw a car racing toward her. She’d started to turn when she was tackled into a space between two cars. Before she could defend herself she heard a gunshot and a car window just above her head exploded, showering her with glass.

  “Stay down,” a voice shouted in her ear. Then the weight that had pressed her to the asphalt lifted.

  Amanda rolled onto her side and saw a woman in a shooter’s stance. The car sped out of sight and the woman straightened up, dropping the hand holding a .45 automatic to her side. Amanda struggled to her feet. The fabric at her knee was ripped and the knee was bleeding. Her elbow throbbed where it had smashed against the asphalt.

  The woman turned. She was dressed in a warm-up suit and she had mid-length red hair, but she was definitely the same heavyset blonde from the parking garage, and Amanda was willing to bet she was also the woman with dark hair in the business suit who had been watching her on the morning she’d been unnerved by the crows.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked.

  “What just happened?” Amanda asked.

  “Someone tried to shoot you.”

  Amanda tried to process what she’d just been told. It was hard to believe, but the glass fragments that covered her and the ground around her were pretty good evidence that the woman was telling the truth. Until this moment Amanda had been in shock, but now she started to shake.

  “Who are you?”

  “Jenny Harwell,” the woman answered. “But, many moons ago, I used to strip as Candy Delight.”

  “You’re a stripper?!?” Amanda asked as her addled brain tried to fit this fact into what she’d just seen.

  Harwell laughed. “Ex-stripper. Now I do this and that for Martin Breach. After you told him about the guys who tried to kill you in Forest Park, Marty asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  “Jesus,” Amanda swore as she leaned against the trunk of a car for support.