by Lauren Carr
“We’ll get a court order,” Joshua said. “We have probable cause now. MacRae confirms that Dolly was blackmailing her. Not only do we have her for ten counts of murder conspiracy, counting the attempted murder of Henry MacRae, but we have a burn phone with her fingerprints that was found at the scene.”
“Ten?” Cameron did a quick mental count. Seven call girls, Virgil Null, Mike Gardner, Congressman Rod Hilliard and the two assistants on his plane, and Dolly makes thirteen.
“Van Patton’s lawyer says he’s copping to ten counts of conspiracy to commit murder,” Joshua said.
Sheriff Curt Sawyer came into the observation room. “Josh, we’re ready.”
“But—”
Joshua interrupted her objection with a kiss on the cheek. “Watch and you’ll get the answer to all of your questions.” He went out into the hallway with the sheriff directly behind him.
Clutching her valise against her chest, Cameron turned to watch Joshua and Sheriff Sawyer go into the room next door. Is Van Patton saying Rachel Hilliard was not behind all those murders? Maybe she is, but he didn’t commit them all. Maybe she did some on her own.
Larry Van Patton’s defense attorney didn’t offer to shake Joshua’s or Sheriff Sawyer’s hands. Instead, he started off the meeting by stating that Larry Van Patton was making his confession completely against his advice. “Before he tells you anything else about what he knows, we want to know what type of deal you’re offering him in exchange for the evidence that he has to offer.”
“I’m not offering your client any deals until I see exactly what he has,” Joshua said. “He has already made statements confirming that he killed six women who Congresswoman Hilliard had worked with, plus her husband and his two assistants. The fact that her late husband was a congressman makes this a federal offense.”
“We’ve already contacted the FBI,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “They’re on their way.”
“We’re prepared to turn that case over to the feds,” Joshua said. “So your client can talk to them about any deal he’s looking to make. As for the call girls, we’re in the process of contacting each of those jurisdictions. We’re going to have a full house here pretty soon with detectives and prosecutors fighting to get their hands on your client.”
“Over a bunch of dead hookers?” Larry Van Patton laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Don’t worry,” Joshua said, “I’m not turning you over to anyone until I get the facts about the cases in my jurisdiction. Let’s start at the beginning.” He flipped open his notepad. “Ava Tucker and Virgil Null.”
Larry Van Patton shook his head.
“You told me you were going to cooperate.” Joshua turned to Sheriff Sawyer. “We’re through here. We’ll turn him over to the feds and let them put a needle in his arm.” They both stood up.
“I am being straight with you,” Larry said. “Rachel had nothing to do with those murders. She had no reason to want them dead. Neither did I.”
Joshua regarded him for a long moment before slowly lowering himself back down into his seat.
“She seemingly had reason to kill the rest of her fellow call girls.”
“After I killed Rod Hilliard for her,” Larry said. “Ava and that john were killed way before I killed Rod. It was after I killed Rod Hilliard that the problems with the girls started. Turns out this green-eyed little redhead, and I don’t mean her eyes were green in color, but she was filled with envy for Rachel—her name was Bianca—she had been listening at the door when Rachel and Henry were talking about offing Rod. Bianca didn’t know that MacRae didn’t have the stomach for killing. As soon as Rod was dead, Bianca went running to Charleston and started threatening to ruin everything. She even set herself up in a penthouse suite at some fancy hotel and told them to bill Rachel for it. She had grand plans to bleed Rachel dry. So I went over there to party with her. She never saw it coming. In no time, I had drugged her, put her in the bathtub, and then slashed her wrists and made it look like a suicide. Rachel called in favors from her friends to close the case fast, and—” He snapped his fingers. “The case was closed faster than you could say cover up.” He shook his head. “After that, Rachel thought it would be best to simply take care of all of them, just in case any of the others got any bright ideas. It was actually pretty easy. After Dolly’s had closed, none of them wanted to stay in touch with each other. Dolly had given each girl fifty thousand dollars cash to start all over, and they scattered into the four winds. Not one of them had any idea what was coming when I came a-knocking on their doors and suggested that we get together to catch up on old times.”
His grin reminded Joshua of the type of smile the serpent may have flashed at Eve in the Garden of Eden when convincing her to try the forbidden fruit. He felt ill to his stomach when he thought of each of those young women embarking on a new life only to have it snuffed by the self-serving, power-hungry Rachel Hilliard, who had once been one of them. “If Rachel wasn’t behind Tucker’s and Null’s murders, then who was?”
Larry said, “I have no idea who killed them. Dolly was convinced it was Rachel even though I told her that it wasn’t. I think it had to be someone connected with the guy Ava was with. I had seen him arguing with two other guys before he went upstairs with Ava that very night. I told the sheriff, too. But nothing came of it.” He flashed a telling glance in Sheriff Sawyer’s direction.
Curt Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. Neither he nor Joshua had seen any reference in the case file to Larry telling the sheriff any such thing.
Joshua wondered if Russell’s father, Brandon Null, a man of influence in the county, had anything to do with deleting all record of his son being on the scene and arguing with Virgil shortly before the murders.
Of course, Brandon would have had no power over Dolly Houseman and her recording of Philip Lipton and Russell Null threatening Virgil. While she must have been convinced that Rachel had killed Ava, she probably held onto the recording because of their reference to the mistake ten years before. Maybe—recalling the bouncer’s statement, Joshua asked, “Didn’t you run into a woman in the kitchen?”
The nod of Larry’s head turned into a shake. “But she had nothing to do with those murders.”
“What makes you so certain?” Joshua asked.
“She was the wife of one of the members.”
“Which one?” Joshua asked.
“I don’t know,” Larry replied, “but that used to happen all the time. We would get jealous or suspicious wives sneaking in to get a peek at their husbands fooling around with the girls. Some would even take pictures to use in divorce court.”
“Had you ever seen this woman there before?” Joshua asked.
“No, and considering that the club was closed six weeks later, not since either.”
“Could you give us a description?” Sheriff Sawyer asked him.
Larry shrugged. “Maybe.”
Curt said, “We’ll get a composite artist in here to do a drawing.”
Joshua moved on. “Tell me about Mike Gardner.”
“Never heard of him,” Larry replied.
Joshua slammed both of his hands down on the tabletop. “Now is not the time to play dumb, Van Patton! What’s the matter? Confessing to killing a bunch of hookers is one thing, but a cop—”
“Cop?” Larry held up his cuffed hands. “Whoa! Are you talking about the deputy that was found in the lake?”
“Yes, that cop,” Sheriff Sawyer said.
“I didn’t kill him,” Larry said.
“Come on,” Joshua said. “We know he was investigating Ava Tucker’s and Virgil Null’s murders. So he must have contacted you because you were a bartender at the club. We found his notes. He had uncovered the sudden deaths of each of Dolly’s girls—”
“Yeah, I heard from him and told him nothing,” Larry said. “He contacted Rachel, too. Yeah, you’re right. He figured it w
as suspicious that all of them died suddenly the way they did. That’s true. He told me so. He even thought that Ava was killed by the same killer, which isn’t true because I did the rest of them, but I didn’t do her.”
“And Rachel didn’t get nervous with a deputy poking around?” Joshua was doubtful.
“Oh, yeah, she was more nervous than a cat in a room filled with rocking chairs,” Larry said. “So she told me to do him and make it look like an accident. So I called him and suggested that we meet out at Tomlinson Run Park late in the afternoon, shortly before it closed to make sure we were alone. But he never showed. The next thing I hear on the news is that a deputy went missing.”
In a flash, Joshua recalled meeting with Mike during lunch at Allison’s diner. He was picking up his lunch on his way out to the park. It was much earlier than late afternoon. Then there was the note Mike had made in his notepad. He had scratched out four and changed it to one.
“Did you change the meeting time?” Joshua asked him.
“No,” Van Patton said in a firm tone.
“Maybe he changed it,” Joshua said more to himself than to Van Patton.
“If he did, he didn’t tell me about it.”
“Could Congresswoman Hilliard have taken care of him herself?” Sheriff Sawyer asked.
“That’s what she pays me for,” Larry said in a firm tone.
“Who else knew about your meeting with Mike Gardner?” Joshua asked.
“No one,” Larry said. “That’s how we’ve been able to get away with it all this time.”
“Someone else had to know,” Joshua said. “When you called Mike, did you call him at the police station?”
“No, his house. This was before cell phones.” With a start, he added, “When I first called to set up the meeting, I had left a message with his wife—at least I assumed it was his wife. I left the number for the bar for him to call me back. She may have known about it.”
Staring at the wall behind Larry, Joshua was still digesting the possibilities when the sheriff asked, “What about Dolly Houseman?”
“She was off limits,” Larry said. “That woman knew her stuff. Heck, she learned from the best. Al Capone was her Uncle Al. She knew how to keep Rachel in line. Why else do you think Rachel paid her five thou every month to keep her happy? But Dolly was fair. I mean, she was a woman of honor. She never raised her rates. She was decent. I think over the years Rachel even came to respect her. I mean, it got to the point that when Rachel was passing through the area, she would even take Dolly out to lunch once in a while and give her the pay off herself. As long as Rachel paid her, then Dolly was cool.”
“But you did lie to us about Dolly calling you,” Joshua said. “Henry MacRae never came into your bar looking for a hit man, and you didn’t set him up with Anthony Tanner, and you didn’t give Dolly a heads up. So now tell us the real story.”
“Hey, I did nothing illegal there,” Larry said. “Really. I had nothing to do with it, and I had nothing to do with killing Dolly. Just take a look at what’s happened in the last few days because Dolly got offed. Those recordings ended up in your hands. You guys looked up MacRae, who is going to roll on Rachel, who is going to try getting a deal by rolling on me. Like I didn’t know this was going to happen the second I saw her name in the newspaper?” He shook his head vigorously while waving his hands. “Dolly dying was the last thing we wanted to happen.”
The more Larry talked, the more Joshua was convinced that he and Rachel Hilliard had every reason to keep Dolly alive. Scratching his head, he asked, “Why did Dolly call you?”
“You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t.”
“She wanted me to set her up with a hit man,” Larry said. “But I had no idea who the target was. I swear.”
“So you set her up with Anthony Tanner?” Joshua said.
“I gave her Anthony’s burn phone number, and she called him and dropped my name. I know nothing else. She never gave me the name of the target.”
Joshua leaned across the table at him. “Did Rachel have a burn phone?”
“That was what she used to call me on, yes. Do you think we were stupid? We didn’t want to be connected to each other.”
“Did she lose her burn phone recently?”
Larry stared blankly at Joshua.
The corners of the prosecutor’s lips curled.
“Yes, I believe she did mention that to me. She said not to accept any calls from that phone. She was afraid it had been stolen.”
“My client has been cooperating fully,” his lawyer interjected. “What kind of deal are you prepared to offer him?”
With a single knock on the door, two federal agents entered. In contrast to Joshua’s easy-going demeanor, the agents had stern expressions on their faces.
Joshua rose from the table. “He’s all yours, gentlemen.”
“So what do you think?” Curt Sawyer asked Joshua as soon as they were outside the interrogation room and down the hall.
Before Joshua could answer, Cameron came rushing out of the observation room. “You don’t actually believe him, do you? Dolly called him to hire a hit man? For who? Who would she want dead?”
While Curt and Cameron gazed at him, Joshua waited to allow a grin to work its way across his face. “Think about it.” He folded his arms across his chest. “If we put Larry’s statement and Anthony’s together, they do kind of match. Especially when you pair them up with Tad’s autopsy results.”
“Dolly was dying,” Cameron gasped. “She gave me those albums the same day that she died and said something about justice.”
“Are you saying she hired Tanner to kill herself?” Sawyer asked.
“If we ask Hilliard, I’ll bet we find out that she had met with Dolly recently, at which time her cell phone and a pendant necklace belonging to her disappeared,” Joshua said.
“Dolly used that phone, making sure she was careful not to lose Hilliard’s fingerprints on it, to coordinate with Tanner,” Cameron said. “Then, she arranged for him to come in to kill her using the same MO for how Ava and Virgil were killed. She held Rachel’s locket in her hand to make it look like she had ripped it off her killer. With the tapes coming to you, she bet on burying Rachel for her murder.”
Sheriff Sawyer said, “Van Patton just told us that Dolly was convinced Rachel killed Ava and Virgil.”
“But she also didn’t have any proof of it,” Joshua said. “That’s what she wrote in her letter to me when she sent that package.”
“Framing Rachel for her murder was the justice Dolly was looking for,” Cameron said.
Joshua turned to Curt. “Let’s dig around to see if we can get a recording of Dolly’s voice anywhere and then do a voice lineup with Tanner. If he can identify the voice of the old woman he spoke to as Dolly, then we’ll know who hired him.”
Sheriff Sawyer grabbed his cell phone from his belt.
“But he didn’t kill Dolly,” Cameron said. “A woman’s blood type was on the knife.”
“If Larry told the congresswoman about Dolly hiring a hit man, Hilliard may have feared that she was the target,” Joshua said. “That may have motivated her to set up a face to face with Dolly to hash things out.”
“I’m going to go start looking for audio recordings for that voice line up.” Curt turned to trot down the hallway.
Joshua stopped him. “Hey, Curt, can you do a favor for me?” The prosecutor wrote a name on a blank yellow sheet of paper on his notepad, tore it off, folded it in half, and handed it to the sheriff. “Can you run a DMV check on this name and see if you can find a black Bonneville registered to him?”
Once Curt was gone, Joshua asked Cameron, “Have you had dinner yet?”
“Are you asking me for a date?”
He chuckled, “No, I was hoping that you’d go home and cook so
mething.”
She pinched his arm. “Think again.”
“Cricksters?”
“Great!” She kissed him on the lips. “Then we can go over the evidence I collected from Slim. I’ll go order our sundae and meet you there.” She whirled around and headed down the hallway to the exit.
“I said dinner,” Joshua corrected her.
“That will be my dinner.” She shot back over her shoulder.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Crickster’s was their place.
When Joshua walked in the door, the hostess grinned at the regular customer. “Your C & J Lovers’ Delight Sundae is already on its way, Mr. Thornton, and your bride is waiting.”
As was often the case when he entered a crowded room and laid his eyes on her, Joshua felt a surge of excitement in seeing that Cameron Gates, his wife, was the prettiest lady in the room—even with a black eye, which was now a nice shade of purple.
When he attempted to sneak up behind her, he got only within four feet of her when she said, without turning around to face him, “It’s not a good idea to sneak up on a woman packing a nine-millimeter semi-automatic.”
He grasped both of her shoulders from behind, bent over the back of the booth, and kissed her on the top of the head. “Clearly that concussion didn’t affect your observation skills.” He went around and slid into the booth across from her. Spotting the sundae in the middle of the table, he picked up the spoon that she had set at his place. “Ladies first. Dig in.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She snatched the cherry resting on top of the whipped cream. After dropping it into her mouth and chewing it, she said, “You weren’t kidding about Slim.”
“I hope my mind is half as sharp as his when I’m his age.” With a shake of his head, he scooped up a spoonful of the chocolate ice cream. “Did you know he bowls three times a week? Plus, he jogs on alternate days.”
“Stays active,” she said.
Spotting a folder on her side of the table, Joshua asked, “Is that from Slim?”
She nodded her head. “Claim filed by Russell and Virgil Null’s father for a wrecked truck that happened the first weekend in September in nineteen sixty-six.” She slid the folder across to him with one hand while continuing to eat the sundae. Between bites, she said, “Russell and Virgil were out gallivanting around on Friday night with two other friends, Philip Lipton and Toby Winter.”
