The Game of Life or Death: A Detective Series of Crime and Suspense Thrillers (The Jacob Hayden Series Book 3)

by Prandy, Charles

  “How you holding up, Rule?” Dan asked.

  “As well as anybody in this situation.”

  Dan nodded again and took another sip of Scotch. Ever since we’d arrived in the office, Dan had seemed to be on edge. I didn’t know him that well, but something about his posture didn’t sit right with me.

  “You feeling okay, Dan?” I asked.

  His voice was a little shaky when he responded. “Sure, why do you ask?”

  I glanced over at Rule to see if he noticed anything. He squinted his eyes a little, which let me know something wasn’t right.

  “Do you normally drink this early?” I looked at my watch, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  “Not really. But under the circumstances.” He shrugged his shoulders as if I knew what he meant. I did. Maybe the uneasiness was the fact that Dennis Rule had just been murdered and maybe he didn’t know what to do next with the company. So I made a mental note, just in case I needed to come back with any questions.

  An awkward silence filled the room. Dan looked at us, and we looked back at him. He sipped his Scotch again.

  “So, why did you ask about Betsy’s family?” Dan asked, obviously trying to rid the room of the awkward silence.

  “Just something I noticed.”

  “Wanna fill me in?”

  “When you walk around the office and look into the cubes, what do you see?”

  Dan shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know. Work stuff?”

  I nodded to the picture frame on his desk. “Who are they?”

  “My wife and kids.”

  “Right. That’s your family, and you have pictures of them on your desk.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s trying to say,” Rule stepped in, “that Betsy didn’t have any pictures of her kids in her cube.”

  “Is that a crime? A lot of people don’t have pictures of their families in their offices.” Dan said.

  “You said that she talked about them all the time,” I said. “In my experience, when a mother yaps about her kids all day, she usually has a shrine to them on her desk.”

  “So what are you getting at?”

  “Just curious as to why she doesn’t have pictures of her kids in her cube.”

  “They’re grown.” Dan said.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Wait. You’re not trying to say—”

  I put my hand in the air to stop him mid-sentence, “I’m not saying anything. I’m a detective. It’s my job to notice things, and I just noticed that she didn’t have pictures of her kids.”

  “Betsy’s been a good employee, Jacob.”

  “I’m sure she has, but right now I need to ask her some questions. And her not showing up for work right after what happened to the Rules piques my interest.”

  “I can try and call her again.”

  “No bother. I’ll get her address and stop by there today.”

  Dan gulped down the rest of his Scotch. We stood and shook hands and left his office.

  In the elevator, Rule said, “He’s hiding something.”

  “I know.”

  “Jacob, we’ve been friends for over thirty years now.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “And you know that I would never do anything to compromise your investigation.”

  “I do.”

  “But if I find out that he’s involved in my family’s murder.”

  Rule stopped before he said anything else. He didn’t have to say it because I knew what he was thinking. I looked down at Rule’s hands, and they were clenched into fists. Strong and tight fists. I looked back to the elevator door and thought, I’m glad he’s on my side.

  Thirty-nine

  Betsy Miller lived in an apartment off of Connecticut Avenue, which was within walking distance from Cardinal Rule. I pushed the button that buzzed her apartment, but no one answered. I pushed it again, and again no response.

  The side street next to her apartment building was covered with parked cars, not unusual for this part of the city and at this time of day. Personally, I’d hate to live around here and have a car because I can only imagine how many times I’d have to drive around the block to find a parking spot.

  “Know what kind of car she drives?” I asked Rule.

  “Surprisingly I do. I remember my dad mentioning that she bought a new Honda Accord. She was happy because it was her first brand new car and not a used one.”

  “Color?”

  “Can’t help you there.”

  We stepped away from the front door and walked up and down the block. There were plenty of cars but unfortunately no late model Honda Accords. We even walked around the block and still didn’t see a late model Honda Accord. Any other time, I’d see at least three on a block, but not today.

  We stood in front of her building again, but on the sidewalk. I looked up. I knew her apartment was on the third floor, but not sure if it was in the front or back. If it was in the front, I wondered if she was inside looking down at us and smiling because we couldn’t get in. The more Rule and I talked about my conversation with her, the more I believed she’d lied to me. Why, I didn’t know. That’s what I wanted to find out.

  “I’ll buzz her one more time,” I said to Rule.

  We started walking back to the front door, and just as we reached it a man wearing a biking outfit complete with helmet, yellow and black spandex shorts, and sunglasses came out holding a road bike. I held the door open for him, and he thanked me. As soon as he passed, we entered the building.

  We rode a small elevator to the third floor. The elevator door made a ding sound and then slowly opened. Standing on the opposite side of the elevator was a big man wearing dark clothes and sunglasses. He was reminiscent of the Terminator, the first one when Arnold was young and still in bodybuilder shape. He didn’t smile or acknowledge us like a normal person does when someone gets off an elevator in front of them.

  As we stepped out, he walked past us, almost robotic in motion, and onto the elevator. The detective in me couldn’t help but make a mental note of what he looked like: about Rule’s height, dark hair slicked back, rigid chin, broad chest, hands the size of a bear’s paw, and black work boots. As I walked past him, I thought I saw red dots on his boots.

  We looked for Betsy’s door. It turned out to be at the end of the long and narrow hallway. I knocked a couple of times and waited. No answer.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “We could wait around for a while. See if she comes home.”

  “You and me on a stakeout. Wouldn’t be the first.”

  I knocked again. “Betsy?” I spoke to the door. “It’s Detective Hayden. If you’re in there, I really need to talk to you.”

  I placed my ear close to the door to see if I heard any movement. Surprisingly, I did.

  “Someone’s inside,” I said.

  Rule leaned forward and placed his ear against the door.

  “Yeah, I hear something too.”

  I knocked hard this time. “Betsy, I can hear you. Please open the door.”

  I leaned my ear against the door again, and this time the movements sounded closer, but then suddenly I heard a loud crashing sound.

  Startled, I jumped back.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Knock it down.”

  I pulled out my sidearm and stepped back from the door. With one motion, I put the weight of my body into my kick and the front door flew open, sending wood splinters flying. My gun was already aimed. I stepped inside the apartment and saw Betsy lying over a broken glass coffee table.

  The apartment was a small efficiency. A makeshift kitchen was to the left, and next to it was an open door to the bathroom. I cleared the room and bathroom, and then turned back to Betsy. She was lying in a puddle of blood. Rule knelt down over her.

  “She’s still breathing,” he said.

  I pulled out my phone and called for backup. Seemed like I’d been doing that a lot lately.

  “The guy from the
hallway?” I said.

  “Go. I’ll stay with her.”

  I sprinted out of the apartment and found the door leading to the stairs halfway down the hall. I took them three at a time until I reached the bottom. When I opened the ground floor door, I had my gun aimed. It’d only been a few minutes, and chances were the guy had already left the building, but I didn’t want to take the risk.

  The ground floor was clear. I rushed to the front door, exited, and was instantly standing in front of the building. I looked around the area. No man in dark clothes was in sight. I ran to the street to see if he was anywhere, but he wasn’t.

  Police cars started showing up. I told them what we found and gave a description of the man I’d seen.

  “It’s only been a few minutes, so he couldn’t have gotten far,” I told them.

  The one thing we had going for us was that if he was in a car, at this time of day, traffic was usually heavy with people out to lunch. He wouldn’t have gotten far in a car. If he was on foot, that was even better. How hard would it be to find a Terminator-lookalike walking around in broad daylight?

  Minutes later, more police cars started showing up. Soon the whole neighborhood would be surrounded with cops. After talking to a few uniformed officers, I turned around toward the building and saw Rule step outside. Our eyes met and he shook his head no.

  Betsy Miller was dead. There went another possible lead.

  Rule looked more deflated than I did. I was about to walk over to him and say something encouraging like “we can still find out who did this” or “we’re close” when one of the uniformed officers called over to me and said, “Detective, think we found him.”

  Forty

  The man’s name was Alexey Gavronskii. When word spread that Viktor was dead, Alexey was immediately sent. Alexey was a bigger and better version of Viktor. He was also more familiar with the operation at hand. He had been there, in the former Soviet Union, when the men wearing black fatigues came in the middle of the night and took his father away never to be seen again. He was only a child then, but he remembered it like it was yesterday. He also remembered the faces of every American soldier who committed the crimes.

  Alexey was the first recruited when it was discovered that the videotape still existed; the tape that caught the horrifying images of what really happened thirty years ago. Alexey had been there with his father across the street. He was seven years old at the time. At first, he didn’t know what was happening. He never heard the rattle of gunfire. His father was already recording Alexey’s first day of school in the second grade. They were making their one-mile walk to the elementary school when the shooting started early that morning. He’d been tormented by the screams ever since then.

  When the elevator door opened, and the detective and the Rule son were standing there, Alexey nearly pulled out his gun and killed them both. He’d been told that Dominika Abramovich’s job was done, and that she must be killed. It was her efforts that led the group to learn that Dennis Rule still had a copy of the videotape. She infiltrated his business as Betsy Miller and became close to him. She didn’t need high-tech equipment to learn the truth. She did it the old-fashioned way with Vodka and seduction. According to Dominika Abramovich, Dennis Rule was an easy mark. She hid her accent and pretended to be an everyday American woman in need of attention. Dennis Rule never saw her coming.

  And now that he was dead, his son may be the only one who could tell them where the videotape was. Alexey stood next to a third-floor window peering out through mini blinds and watched as the police down the street scrambled to find him. Loose ends were starting to be cleaned up. Alexey turned from the window and to the plump dead woman lying on the couch with a bullet hole through her head. He’d met her through the Internet a month ago. She liked his body and thought that he was coming to America to marry her. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Forty-one

  “It’s not him,” I said.

  We were four blocks away from the apartment building on the corner of Connecticut Avenue and California Street in front of The Churchill Hotel. Four squad cars had the corner blocked off with a man lying on the ground in handcuffs. When I pulled up to the scene and got out of the car, I immediately knew they had detained the wrong guy. Height and size were wrong. Wrong kind of clothes. The only things that were right were the dark clothes and the slicked-back hair.

  The guy was immediately picked up to his feet and let go. I apologized to him, and he walked off without crying police brutality.

  “Continue looking around, guys,” I said. “He couldn’t have gotten too far.”

  Everyone quickly hopped in their cars and left. I went back to the apartment building. Rule was still there talking to a uniformed officer. I got out of the car and made my way back to the building.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Wrong guy.”

  I looked toward the front door. “Was she able to say anything after I left?”

  “Nah, she was pretty much gone. Looks like she was shot in the chest three times.”

  I rubbed my hands over my head and blew out a deep breath.

  “So, now at least we know we were on the right track,” I said. “They killed her because they didn’t want us getting to her.”

  “She was with my dad’s firm for six months. Who knows what kind of intel she was giving them. Whoever them is.”

  “I think we need to start at the beginning.”

  “I can get access to her files. I think I still have her initial application.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  Rule shook his head. “You mean my father, don’t you?”

  “Everything has happened so fast that we haven’t had a chance to look into his background.”

  Rule nodded again.

  “Whatever way we look at Betsy Miller, she’s been giving these people information about your father. For what reason, we don’t know. Did she get a job at the firm with the intent to learn information, or did they get to her sometime afterward? And there’s the question about this tape. What’s on it, and why’s it so important that a family has died over it?”

  “I wish I knew,” Rule said.

  “Does your dad have a safe or something, where he keeps important documents?”

  “Actually, he does. It’s at the house.”

  “Then the killers didn’t get to it. There was no mention of a safe when our people went through the house.”

  “My dad was very good at hiding things.”

  “Can you open it?”

  He paused before answering. “Yeah, I can open it.”

  “If you want, you can give me the combination. You shouldn’t go back to the house if you’re not ready.”

  “You won’t be able to open it,” Rule said. “It’s fingerprint encoded.”

  “Do you know what’s in it?”

  “No.”

  “Then how will you be able to open it?”

  “My print’s encoded as well.”

  I looked around. Police had the block sectioned off and were questioning potential witnesses. Crime scene technicians were upstairs searching for prints or other traceable evidence that would help identify the killer. Before we left, I informed a few of the officers to notify me ASAP of any breaks in the case.

  Rule and I hopped in my car, and I fired up the engine.

  “Ready?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  But his voice didn’t sound too confident to me.

  Forty-two

  We turned right onto Sudbury Lane. The quiet neighborhood was lined with mature trees and manicured yards, looking more like a suburban neighborhood than a neighborhood in the city. We pulled in front of the house, which was covered with brown bricks, large front windows, and two large mahogany front doors. The house was on a slight hill, so from the street level we had to look up slightly.

  I turned off the ignition, and we sat there for a few minutes. Neither of us said anything. I w
asn’t sure what was going through Rule’s mind, but if it was anything near what I was thinking, he had to be wondering if he’d made the right decision to come here. It was only yesterday that we’d found his family murdered in the house. His father’s tormented face was still fresh in my mind. I instantly got goose bumps up my arms at the thought.

  “You said there were no signs of forced entry?” Rule said.

  “Yeah, no signs.”

  “Wonder if my dad knew them?”

  “I thought the same thing. I mean, why would he let them in the house?”

  Rule looked up toward the house, and I followed his line of sight. Above the front door to the right was a small video camera.

  “Camera’s still at the front door. He would have known who was at the door.” Rule said.

  “They knew as well. We couldn’t find the recording.”

  “It doesn’t record. It only provides a live feed of the front door.”

  I nodded.

  We fell quiet again, almost as if we were stalling the inevitable.

  “We should go inside,” I finally said.

  “Yeah, guess you’re right.”

  We still didn’t move. We looked at the house for another minute or so until Rule finally opened his door. We walked up to the house, and Rule pulled out his key and slid it into the front door. Before he turned the lock, I heard him take in a deep breath. The lock turned, and Rule started to push open the door.

  “Rule, before you go inside I need to prepare you that there’s a lot of blood on the carpet in the living room.”

  Rule shook his head. “Thanks.”

  He pushed open the door and we went inside.

  The living room was the first room to the left. It was more like a living room/family room combination with an expansive two-story ceiling and a wall of windows. Standing in the foyer, we could see the deep red stains of blood from where Dennis Rule had been hanging, and the spatters of blood on the walls from where his mother and sisters had been shot.

  Rule took in another deep breath and then walked toward the bloodstains.