by Lauren Carr
“No.”
“You heard the tape?”
“Of course I did.”
MacRae moved over to Joshua’s table. As he sat down, he said in a low voice, “I can explain.”
Sitting up, Joshua crossed his arms on the tabletop. “I’m listening.”
“Congressman Hilliard’s plane crash really was just an accident,” MacRae said.
“Which happened exactly the way you and his wife planned six months earlier during your rendezvous at Dolly’s?”
“Listen, I’m going to tell you what I told Dolly when she tried to blackmail me,” MacRae said. “Bring it on. I had nothing to do with Rod Hilliard’s death. I was in Huntington that weekend and the week before working a double homicide, and I have a whole team of police officers and detectives to alibi me.”
“So you paid someone to do it for you while you were wrapped up in a case,” Joshua said. “Like you said, I heard the tape. You and Rachel Hilliard conspired to kill her husband in what appeared to be a plane crash so that she could take over his seat, and then she used her influence to get you into Charleston, which is exactly what happened six months after that conversation was recorded.”
“Six months,” MacRae said. “A lot can happen in six months.”
“Like what?”
“Like I came to my senses,” MacRae said. “That’s right. I went along with it during the conversation, in the heat of passion, wanting her like I always want her. Have you ever heard about addiction?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s possible to be just as hooked on a woman,” MacRae said. “Sometimes I wish my drug was cocaine. I’ve been Rachel Hilliard’s lapdog ever since that night I busted her for possession of pot and she batted those eyelashes at me and offered me a carnal bribe.” He took a big gulp of his drink. “With one hit, I was hooked and have been sorry ever since.” He looked over at the prosecutor. “Is Congresswoman Hilliard a conniving, power-driven, manipulator? Yes. Do I love her? No. Sometimes I don’t even like her.” He shook his head firmly. “But I’m hooked on her.”
“Is your addiction strong enough to make you kill for her?” Joshua asked.
“No,” MacRae said with certainty. “Yes, we talked about killing Rod to clear the way for her to get to Washington, but when it came to actually doing it, I couldn’t. I’ve done a lot of things for that woman that I’m not one bit proud of. But murder?” He shook his head. “That was where I drew the line.”
“If you didn’t do it, why did you pay blackmail to Dolly Houseman all these years,” Joshua asked.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I told Houseman to take the tapes to the police if she wanted because I didn’t do it. She never did. I know she took the tapes to Rachel, and Rachel has been paying her off.”
“Do you think Rachel Hilliard arranged her husband’s murder without you?”
“Why else would she pay the blackmail?” MacRae replied. “But she wouldn’t do the dirty work herself, I know that.” He chuckled, “Rachel’s too smart to get blood on her hands.”
“Even if Dolly had enough evidence to destroy her?” Joshua asked.
“Do you know how many friends Rachel has collected throughout the years?” MacRae asked. “Dirty friends. Those rumors about mobsters funding her campaign with dirty money aren’t just rumors. You wouldn’t believe all the scandal that’s continuously brewing around her. But does the media ever even hint about it? No.” With a chuckle, he shook his head. “There’s a reason for that.”
“Like her enemies having sudden and fatal accidents?”
MacRae’s face was void of emotion. “You’ve been doing some research.”
“Were you aware of the number of former call girls who used to work with Rachel Hilliard who died suddenly within years of Dolly’s closing its doors?” Joshua asked. “It’s like Rachel made sure her past got completely deleted … maybe to pave her way to the governor’s mansion. How well are you going to sleep at night knowing that you played a role in putting her there?”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Thornton,” MacRae said. “I know more than you what Rachel Hilliard is capable of.” After glancing around, he moved in closer to Joshua. “She does not do her own dirty work. The weekend Rod Hilliard’s plane went down was the same weekend that a senator’s daughter was getting married. Rachel had three hundred witnesses in Hawaii to alibi her. Do you think that timing was a mistake?” He held Joshua’s gaze. “Sure, I can say with certainty that if—and I mean if—someone brought that plane down, Rachel was running things behind the scenes to make it happen. And as for the sudden deaths of all of Dolly’s girls? If that’s what it took to pave the way for Rachel to get ahead? Yeah, most likely she was behind that, too. But it wasn’t me who did it for her. Who’s her guy? I have no idea, and I don’t want to know.”
“What if I told you that forensics found two blood types at Dolly Houseman’s murder scene?” Joshua asked. “What if I told you that forensics says the DNA from the killer’s blood type came from a woman? Would that make you consider Rachel Hilliard a hands-on killer? Maybe if she got desperate enough to protect her political career?”
MacRae stared at him in silence, which answered more than any words could. The server brought his check. He took the pen and wrote down his room number.
Joshua waited until the server left before continuing their conversation. “If you aren’t her guy,” he asked him in a low voice, “then who is?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“You’ve been with her for over forty years,” Joshua said. “You know her better than anyone. You have to have some suspicion of who it would be.”
With the pen that he had kept from the server, MacRae wrote on the cocktail napkin and slid it across the table in Joshua’s direction. He said in a low voice, “Rachel hasn’t deleted everyone from her past—yet.” He then got up from the table and walked out.
Joshua picked up the napkin and read the name that Henry MacRae had written across it.
Larry Van Patton.
The former bartender at Dolly’s, who was then the bar owner Dolly had called after realizing she was dying.
Joshua glanced up from the napkin in time to see Henry MacRae waiting for the elevator to take him downstairs to his room from the VIP lounge on the top floor. A movement near the bar caught Joshua’s eye. The name on the napkin connected with the familiar face.
Larry Van Patton waited for Henry MacRae to board the elevator before making his way through the crowd to the stairwell.
After depositing a twenty-dollar bill on the table for his drink, Joshua reached across the table to see what room number Henry MacRae had written on his bill to charge his drink to.
Suite 214.
It was one floor down.
A group of executives with a convention was coming off the elevators at the same time that Joshua hurried out of the lounge. Ducking and dodging the crowd, he forced his way through the bottleneck to reach the door leading to the stairwell.
The sense of urgency roaring in his ears was drowning out the party noises from the conventioneers. Joshua ran down the stairs to the next floor and threw open the door in time to hear the sound that, to anyone else, resembled that of a car backfiring. But with the situation at hand, he recognized it for what it was—
Gunshots.
At the sound of the gunshots, a busboy in the corridor dropped a serving tray that he was picking up from outside a room door to put onto the cleaning cart.
While Joshua ran down the corridor in the direction of the gunshots, the server ran toward him in his haste to escape on the elevator from whatever was happening. When Joshua grabbed him by the arm, he pulled away. “You need to let me in that room.”
“Are you crazy?”
The sound of a crash came from inside the room followed by shouted cursing.
“I’m the
county prosecutor! If you don’t unlock that door to let me in, someone is going to die!”
Another gunshot prompted the server to thrust his keycard into Joshua’s hand before running down the stairs.
Joshua ran to the room and pounded on the door. “This is Thornton! Van Patton, I know you’re in there, and I know what you came for! Give yourself up! I’m coming in!”
The next gunshot sounded close to the door.
Joshua dropped down to grab the gun he wore in his ankle holster and used the keycard to open the door. Keeping low, he pushed his way inside. He was halfway through the door when the two men fighting in the room rolled along the wall to crash into the door and pin him against the doorframe.
Larry Van Patton had Henry MacRae in a headlock. MacRae twisted in his grip to jab Larry in the ribs. The blow was enough to make Van Patton collapse onto the floor with MacRae under him.
Joshua squeezed through the door, stepped over them, and aimed his gun at the former bartender. “It’s over, Van Patton. Give up.”
“Never!” Larry Van Patton jumped up and grabbed Joshua’s arm with the gun.
Fighting to keep from accidentally firing it at Henry MacRae, Joshua elbowed Van Patton in an effort to fight him off.
Meanwhile, MacRae swung his legs around and kicked Larry Van Patton directly behind the knee. Van Patton buckled and dropped down onto the floor. As soon as he was down, the police superintendent slugged him to knock him out. “Now stay down!”
The suite was a wreck with overturned and broken furniture. The mirror over the dresser was shattered where one of the men had been slammed into it. Joshua spotted a semi-automatic on the floor at the end of the entrance hall and another next to the bed. He also spotted bullet holes in the walls. How neither man had been shot was a mystery to him.
Gasping and moaning, Larry Van Patton rolled on the floor. Equally exhausted, Henry MacRae climbed up to sit on the edge of the bed.
There was a loud knocking on the suite door. “Hotel security! Open up in there. Police are on the way.”
“You’re going to jail, Van Patton,” Joshua said while making his way around the overturned furniture to open the door.
“You’ve got nothing on me,” Van Patton grunted.
Joshua threw open the door and introduced himself. “The man you want to arrest is on the floor. His name is Larry Van Patton. The charge is attempted murder.”
“I bet I know who sent you.” MacRae said before looking up at Joshua. “What’d I tell you? Tying up loose ends.”
“I have no idea what you two are talking about,” Van Patton said. “I came here to the Mountaineer to have a few drinks, but I got lost and walked into this room. This guy, who I happen to know from long ago, got paranoid and started shooting at me. I haven’t talked to Rachel in decades. I know nothing about her wanting to tidy things up.”
Joshua knelt down to peer into Larry Van Patton’s face. “Who said anything about Rachel?”
Realizing his blunder, Larry Van Patton glanced from Joshua to Henry, and then back again to the prosecutor, who narrowed his eyes while he studied him. “I want a deal,” Van Patton said.
“What do you have to offer me?” Joshua asked.
“A congresswoman.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Are you kidding me?” Cameron said by way of greeting Joshua when she found him in the observation room at the sheriff’s department. “Larry Van Patton is handing Congresswoman Rachel Hilliard over to you for hiring him to kill her husband and all of her sisters in prostitution?”
“Good evening to you, too, beautiful,” he replied with a tone heavy in sarcasm.
Her abrupt entrance brought to her attention, she tossed the valise in which she carried her folders and notes, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him fully on the lips while taking time to taste his mouth before letting go. “How’s that for a how do you do?”
“Much better,” he replied before kissing her again. “And yes, he is rolling over on the lethally ambitious congresswoman.”
“I thought he was the one who pointed you and Sawyer in the direction of MacRae and Hilliard in the first place,” she said.
“Haven’t you ever heard of honor among thieves?” he said with a wink. “It’s worse with killers.”
“Why insinuate Hilliard if he was her guy?” Cameron asked him. “Wouldn’t he realize that the trail would lead right back to him?”
“Because Dolly was dead,” Joshua said. “All of her blackmail victims had to know that those tapes are now in the hands of the authorities,” Joshua said. “When we walked into his place, he knew that if we had not already heard that tape, we would.”
“He wasn’t on that tape,” Cameron noted.
“But MacRae was,” he said. “So Van Patton pointed us in the direction of MacRae. Since the idea of him being the killer was already planted in our minds by the recording, it wasn’t hard for us to take his tip and run with it. Then Hilliard sent him to kill MacRae to keep him quiet about all of her other dirty dealings—which includes accepting bribes and all of the other assorted dirty games that she has immersed herself in during her long career in politics.”
“Is MacRae going to help bury her?” she asked.
“MacRae took this attempted hit personally,” Joshua said with a laugh. “It’s going to be hard to shut him up.”
Delighted, she grasped his arm. “Then do you even need Van Patton’s testimony to convict her? If I were you, I’d tell him to forget any deal and throw the book at both of them.”
“Van Patton has killed half a dozen ex-call girls and a congressman, plus the two assistants who were on that plane with Hilliard,” Joshua said. “He’s never going to see the light of day again.” He patted a stack of case files on the table next to him. “While Van Patton has been conferring with his lawyer, Sawyer has been busy. He’s doing a full background check on Van Patton and his club. Since we showed Mike Gardner’s notes to him this afternoon, Sawyer has collected reports on every one of those call girls’ murders and is going to compare them to Van Patton’s statement. Van Patton claims he’s recorded every meeting he’s had with Hilliard where they discussed each hit going all the way back to Rod Hilliard, her late husband, and up to tonight’s hit when he was supposed to kill Henry MacRae.”
“They both wanted to pin her husband’s murder on MacRae,” she said.
“According to Van Patton,” Joshua said. “Rachel Hilliard wanted MacRae full time. When he refused to kill Rod Hilliard, she hired her good friend from behind the bar at Dolly’s. It was Hilliard, not Dolly, who gave him the seed money for his own bar as payment for getting her husband out of the way.”
“And the superintendent of the West Virginia State Police knew that the wife of a United States Congressman had her husband killed, and he did nothing to arrest her?” Even though she had seen a lot of outrageous things in her career as a police officer and detective, she was still shocked.
“Suspected, not knew.” Joshua nodded his head. “He didn’t want to know.”
Cameron turned to the two-way mirror to watch Larry Van Patton in the interrogation room where he was meeting with his attorney. “Do these two men know enough to take Hilliard down?”
Joshua nodded his head. “MacRae told us that when he heard Dolly Houseman had been murdered, he confronted Hilliard. They had a huge fight last night at the Mountaineer and she suddenly took off for Washington, which sent up a red flag to him. She’s smart enough to make sure she’s nowhere in the local area when a hit is going down.” He held up a finger. “However, he did say that she was in town the night Dolly was murdered, and forensics says that they have not completed the profile on the second blood sample left at the scene. However, they have determined that it was left by a woman.”
“If the killer’s blood didn’t come from a man—”
“If it d
idn’t come from a man, it had to have come from a woman,” Joshua interrupted Cameron to whisper into her ear. “What else is there?”
“A mutant.” She narrowed her eyes before giving him a playful jab in his ribs. “You know what I’m saying. That clears Anthony Tanner. Maybe he’s telling the truth—as outrageous as it sounds. He was hired to kill Dolly—”
“By a woman,” Joshua said, “but not Rachel Hilliard, because Larry Van Patton claims he was her go-to guy.”
“Maybe Rachel Hilliard went to Dolly’s to coerce her into turning over the tapes, things got out of hand, and she ended up killing her. Tad says it was a crime of passion.”
Joshua shook his head. “That would be stupid.”
“Most killers are stupid.”
“Not all of them,” Joshua said. “Rachel Hilliard is very smart. Larry Van Patton is copping to more than ten kills on her command—ten kills that she has never even been on the radar for being behind. After all these years, she’s too smart to hire an unknown quantity like Anthony Tanner to kill Dolly Houseman, especially before she got out of town. She would have made very sure that she was in Washington or Charleston, and with witnesses to alibi her for the time of the murder.”
He made sense. Cameron lowered her eyes. She thoughtfully gritted her teeth. “Josh, think about it. Why kill Dolly now? Even if Rachel was planning a bid for the governor’s mansion, killing Dolly, who had that recording, would be stupid because she had to know that Dolly had insurance. If anything happened to her, it would get into the hands of the authorities, which is exactly what happened. No way would she want anything to happen to Dolly before making sure she had that tape in her own hot little hands.”
Joshua agreed. “Rachel had every reason to want Dolly to stay alive.”
“But she’s our only female suspect,” Cameron said.
“I know.” He shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out for sure. Ask Hilliard for a sample of her DNA to compare to the blood left at the scene.”
“She’ll refuse to give it up.”
