The Girl Who Wrote The New York Times Bestseller: A Novel (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers Book 8)

by John Ellsworth

  "You liaise that for me, please. Keep me updated."

  "Done."

  "Rogert, one other thing. Just check the guys at my place. No need to upset Katy and the girls. Just quietly check, make sure systems are up and people in place. Cautionary."

  "Done."

  They hung up and Thaddeus considered calling Katy himself. At first he thought he would leave it to Rogert, then decided against that. She was probably down at the homeless kitchen.

  He pressed speed-dial 1.

  "Katy here, darling boy. What's up?"

  "Hey, girl. You down at the shelter?"

  "I am."

  "Turquoise and Sarai get off to school okay?"

  "They did. Sarai complained of a scratchy throat. I think she just wants to skip school, though. She doesn't like numbers."

  Thaddeus laughed. "I didn't either. I believe it was third grade when long division came crashing down on our heads. I was lost to math forever after that."

  "I loved math. Anyhoo, what you doing?"

  "Just being a little cautious today. Nothing to worry about."

  "I don't like the sound of that. Tell me what's really happening?"

  "Some woman came around asking for Christine."

  "Came to the office?"

  "That's right. Rogert is on her ass now."

  "She didn't head out our way, did she?"

  "No need to worry about that. If they come, they'll be looking for Christine like I told you."

  "What about Angelina Sosa? Does she need to be alerted?"

  "I have XFBI guys watching after her. She's clueless."

  "I think you owe her an update."

  "I suppose."

  "Hey, her help was priceless in Russia."

  "Word."

  "Word dat, my little rapper."

  "Hey, what do you say we catch a movie tonight?"

  There was a long pause. Katy could be heard talking off the phone momentarily. Then she returned.

  "I'm sorry, did you say something about a movie?"

  "I did. American Sniper just opened."

  "You and your guns. How about a nice romantic comedy."

  "Never mind. I'll go see it with Albert."

  "Come home after work. You know how I am when things flare up."

  "Sure enough. But I've checked up on the people working your security. It's all good."

  "I'm glad the girls are being watched over; but for me, I hate it."

  "We've been over this, Mrs. Murfee. It's part of the job description for being my wife."

  "I should have been told up front. When I met you, you were just some guy living in a cabin on my reservation. How simple things were then."

  "But it's been a good change. Lots of people being helped."

  "Here comes another guy wanting a bedroll. I better go."

  "Later."

  "Love you."

  Thaddeus clicked off and slipped the phone back into his shirt pocket.

  He considered calling Christine but decided against it. She had enough on her plate already. Better to let Rogert and his guys run with it.

  * * *

  Five miles west of downtown Chicago, as traffic was slowing on the westbound Kennedy, a buckle in the traffic brought Rogert's van to a sudden stop. Without warning, the eighteen-wheeler behind him kept coming and drove up and over the van. Rogert was killed instantly. The driver of the truck keyed his cell phone. "It's done," he said.

  Up ahead, Karli smiled and nodded. He spoke into his cell. "Stay here. Make sure."

  "Done."

  Now they were free to find the woman. Thaddeus Murfee would soon learn that the old schema and devices weren't enough this time.

  And at O'Hare, an Aeroflot jet was being serviced. It could be ready for a nonstop to Russia on a moment's notice.

  Exactly what Karli intended to pull off.

  50

  They had shattered her jaw and it had knit improperly, leaving her able to chew only pasta and soft vegetables. An oral surgeon was called in. Work began.

  Surgeons had amputated two of her fingers, and she needed rehabilitation to learn to use that hand. Vocational rehab was summoned.

  Beatings around the head had left her a victim of concussive syndrome; and doctors ordered her to avoid any concussive events again, lest she suffer permanent brain damage.

  The rapist had transmitted syphilis and herpes. She was embarrassed by the canker sores on her lips. The antibiotic was slow to stop the syphilis' spread.

  She was suffering from PTSD. Experts at the VA were called in.

  But worst of all was the depression. It had come over her during her second week in isolation at the Russian prison and now shrouded her in its iconic secret: life was no longer worth living.

  She didn't enjoy her husband and found her children noisy and needy. They were rejected; she felt she no longer loved them—which, thanks to the depression, was evidently true, as she simply had no energy for them or interest in them. Her own parents seemed childish in their demands that she behave as she once did. They insisted she come by on Sundays for dinner, go for a beer with her brothers on Friday night, or attend the dance and piano recitals of nieces and nephews.

  Night held a special horror for Christine. They had often come for her at night and waterboarded her in the dark room with the blackout towel smothering her face as she lay manacled to the dentists' chair. Now she awoke several times a night, sweating and panicked, often screaming, often certain that she was dying, imploring Sonny to dial 911 so that she might be rushed to the hospital.

  Surgery on her mandibular fractures was delicate and was repeated four times, each one a major surgery. The VD spread to her ovaries, and doctors recommended a hysterectomy.

  She separated from her husband and children, renting a room over a print shop, where she stayed in bed with the curtains and shades drawn. She refused to go to the office and resume work. Thaddeus missed her and felt powerless to help. He came by to see her every day, but she refused to allow him into her new home. Instead, she made him stand in the hallway, while she refused to make eye contact with him and spoke in the deadened meter and tone of the emotionally damned.

  Sonny sought marriage counseling; she refused. The kids called on the phone several times a day and cried and begged her to return home and mother them like she had before Russia. But the concussions and the depression took a terrible toll on her, leaving her at odds with Sonny, fighting and fearful, unable to cope.

  She tried transcendental meditation; one of the VA doctors introduced her to it. She cried and blamed the therapist for her inability to maintain any ongoing mental state for more than ten seconds without thought intrusion. Horrible images intruded when she meditated: thoughts of suicide, of imminent torture, of gang rapes, of mutilation, of being beaten with hands and feet, of being electrocuted with Tasers.

  The VA pastoral staff intervened. She found their Bible and belief systems "crazier than bat shit," as she put it, refusing every suggestion that she put her needs and hopes into prayer. She rejected the staff and rejected their God, seeing Him as "one angry dude," who made the lives of His Chosen People miserable. Therefore, He was untrustworthy. Christine rejected all religion and her prayers were left unspoken.

  * * *

  Finding her home address in Schaumburg took all of five minutes: Christine and Sonny Susmann were listed in the White Pages. From a block away, the Russians studied the house. Madi was driving a rented Honda, Glynda appeared to be a mountain bike rider on her way through the neighborhood, and Karli was still driving the Bronco from New York. The Bronco's plates were Indiana plates, which was right across the border from Schaumburg, Illinois; so the neighbors took no note.

  Sonny was usually picked up by a co-worker and gone by six-thirty a.m. Just as he was leaving, an older woman would drive up, leave her Impala in the driveway, and let herself in. They decided this was someone's mother, either Sonny's or Christine's. And it was clear she was there to watch the kids until they had left for
school. Clear, because Christine was never there. After the kids left for school, and after the matronly woman drove off, Glynda would wheel into the driveway, skip around to the back of the house, and let herself in with a simple set of lock picks. She was very cautious the first two times because Christine would be a very formidable opponent in a one-on-one fight and the kidnappers didn't know if she inside.

  From there the hunt became easy. A phone bill in the kitchen turned up numerous calls to Itasca, Illinois. Itasca was seven miles from Schaumburg. It was a tiny place. The Internet helped Karli reverse search the phone number; within five minutes they had the address of the Itasca phone number. They had found her.

  They went back to their hotel in Des Plaines and made their plans.

  * * *

  On the third day of their arrival in the United States, they went for her. But first they purchased Amtrak tickets for four passengers, Union Station Chicago to New York City. The idea was to abduct her, drug her, slip her aboard the train in a wheelchair, and hold her in a sleeping car, drugged while they headed east.

  Her room was on the second floor of an apartment complex across from the train station in the center of Itasca. It took Karli less than fifteen minutes to drive there with Madi and Glynda.

  Christine had just returned from the maxillofacial surgeon's office. They had ground her teeth and taken dental impressions for a solid hour. Just sitting in a dental chair called up the waterboarding in her mind. It was all she could manage to sit there and let the surgeon do his work. The staff called Sonny, and he left work to help her. She was angry that he had come. Still, Sonny stood his ground and insisted on holding her hand while the dentist and staff went about their work.

  Then she returned to her apartment.

  She had taken to sitting in the second-floor window seat and counting the trains passing through Itasca. The track was a Metra line, the daily commuter that ran from Harvard, Illinois to Chicago. At times, she thought she would lie down on the tracks and let the train run her over. Then at times she imagined herself on the train headed for Union Station and a cross-country trip to someplace she would never be found.

  She didn't notice Karli from the upstairs window when he stepped out of the Bronco dressed in coveralls and wearing a seed corn cap. He looked like any other farmer and her eyes didn't linger. Nor did she notice that the Bronco had dropped Madi and Glynda at the station, where they had disappeared into the ticket office.

  The trio joined up in the lobby of the apartment building. There was no security. It was a $550-per-month apartment, right on the Itasca square where anyone could open the door and walk in. The elevator was also public. Karli punched the button for the second floor and the slow ascent began.

  Which was when the XFBI agents positioned themselves on either side of the elevator upstairs. They had noticed Karli and his friends; they had seen them cluster in the lobby; they had a strong suspicion who they were. At the very least they posed a threat because they weren't usual tenants and because there were three of them together.

  The XFBI crew was run by Matty Harroway, a retired FBI agent who stood six feet, five inches tall and packed a MAC -10 machine pistol hidden in his overcoat. He believed in being armed for bear and was poised on the button panel side of the elevator as it chugged upstairs. Across the opening from Harroway was Ronald "Big Mac" MacDonald, a retired FBI agent who had worked white-collar crime for twenty-five years while secretly yearning to engage in shoot-outs with bad guys on the street. After his retirement from the Bureau, XFBI’s work had appealed to Big Mac because bodyguards found themselves in "kill or be killed" situations more than any other post-retirement work out there. And standing sentry at Christine's closed apartment door was Elise Marilynn Sullivan, a retired FBI investigator who had spent her entire career working federal crimes on two Indian reservations in South Dakota. Elise had found herself in no less than a dozen firefights during her twenty-two years behind the badge and counted Wild Wally Juniper among her kills. He was the crazy man who had led the police and FBI on a nationwide manhunt while he killed his way across the country in 1995. Elise had cornered Wild Wally behind a drugstore in Butte, Montana while she waited in her Crown Vic for her partner to pick up a Vicodin prescription for his chronic back pain. Wild Wally had burst out the back door of the drugstore, guns blazing at Elise's partner, who was in hot pursuit after interrupting a robbery inside. Elise had simply lowered her driver-side window and shot him through the temple with her left hand. A special Certificate of Merit was awarded, signed by the president, and now mounted in her kitchen where she spent her off-duty hours, cooking for the love of her life, a college professor named Wendy. Elise was quick to acknowledge that she was even better at the Glock with her right hand than she was with her left. So far, while working for XFBI, she hadn't found it necessary to prove that point.

  When the elevator door opened on Christine's floor, the three XFBI agents were there with guns drawn. Glynda saw them and said, "Sorry, wrong floor," and punched the button for 1. The doors began closing, but Big Mac managed to insert his foot into the crack before it completely shut. One of the three inside the elevator fired a shot into the agent’s foot, a clean through-and-through; he cried out and jerked himself free, then rolled to the floor, wincing in pain.

  Matty Harroway and his Mac-10 stayed behind to give first aid while Elise headed for the stairwell. She beat the three Russians to street level, but had to give up the chase when her Glock suffered a hang-fire—an impossibility, most Glock aficionados would say. Still, it happened to Elise at the worst possible moment. Luckily the gang went the opposite direction and she didn't get the opportunity to give chase with the .380 semi she carried for backup in her ankle holster. The Glock failure had taken all the fight out of her; she'd seen enough for one day. Besides which, she was totally outgunned and knew it. Even on its best day the .380 couldn't be counted on to stop an oncoming man under the best of circumstances, much less in a street shootout where its usefulness was at a distinct disadvantage.

  The Russians fled in their Bronco, which went unseen by any XFBI agent that day.

  Immediately after hearing the elevator round fired off, Christine had leaped for the front door to her apartment, where her pistol was hanging in its shoulder holster. She drew the gun and placed her back against the wall, waiting. Finally, she heard the elevator chugging downstairs and cracked her door open. She knew the agents, knew of their assignment, and quickly hurried to aid Matty with Big Mac.

  "Dial 911," ordered Matty as he struggled to wrap Big Mac's bare foot.

  "Got it," said Christine, and she ran for her cell phone.

  After Big Mac had been rushed to the hospital by the EMTs, Matty turned to Christine.

  "You need to rethink this living situation, girl," he told her. "You're a target here in this building. Not good."

  Christine gave him a hard look before answering.

  "You may be right, Matt, but I've got a ton of baggage to work through right now and I need some space. I'm not going home to Sonny and the kids. Not yet. Maybe not ever."

  "No, no, no, I wasn't saying you should go home. Far be it from me to stick my nose in there. I'm just saying the apartment is street side, which makes it an easy target from a moving vehicle. There's no good cover for us in the event of shots fired. You were an MP, you know what I'm saying."

  "You're saying it's dangerous for you here, and I can appreciate that. I'll look for something more secure."

  "Yes, please. Well," he said, and his voice trailed off.

  "I'm thinking of moving, taking Thad up on his offer of a place downtown. It would be too expensive for me to make it work, but he's offered to find me a condo with good lobby security, pass cards, and so forth."

  "Definitely worth looking into. These sons of bitches will be back."

  "I'm sure you're right. I'll call Thaddeus tonight and make some plans."

  "Thanks, Chris. Well, we'll be downstairs if you need anything. I'm sure Elise has called
for backup by now, so you'll be in good hands."

  "Thank you."

  She returned to her apartment and holstered her pistol. Then she sat down on her couch and waited for the tears, the tears that always came with even the slightest provocation anymore. Sure enough, a minute later her eyes were brimming and her vision glassy. She pressed the remaining three fingers of her right hand to her face. "Calm the hell down," she admonished herself. "You've gotta quit this."

  At which point, her cell buzzed. THADDEUS said the ID.

  "Hey, Thad. Guess they called you."

  "Elise called me. We need to get you moved."

  "Agree. This place isn't safe for your agents."

  "Nor for you."

  "I'm not worried about me."

  "Well, while you're not, I am. So I'm going ahead with a condo for you, something on the near north side. Fair enough?"

  "That's fine."

  "I'll have the movers there tomorrow. In the meantime, please catch a cab downtown. You'll be registered in the Hilton under the name of Christopher Luckman."

  "Sounds a lot like Christine Susmann. You going soft on me?"

  "I'm just trying to make it easy. Right now, we need to be very careful with you."

  "Christopher Luckman it is. I'll be there in an hour."

  "Matty and Elise are close by. They'll follow you down and make sure you get registered okay."

  "Please call them off. You know how I feel about being watched."

  "No can do. My guess is the Russians are officially here. These are some very bad people."

  "Well, I can be very bad back. Just give me the right gun and stand back."

  "I have no doubt of that. But you're just going to have to stand aside this time. Besides, there are political ramifications here."

  "How's that?"

  "What I've been told so far is that the three who visited you today are officially attached to the Russian Embassy. Complaints will be filed."

  "Oh, screw all that."

  "I know. But it is what it is."