Bleeding Blue

by Don Weston

  “It doesn’t matter now because she’s dead. You killed her and now you’re going to pay. He aimed the gun at me and Jason slowly rose from his chair, with a determined look in his eyes.

  “Stay where you are, Jason. I don’t need another dead brother hero. He isn’t going to kill anymore.”

  “Well, maybe just one more time,” McGraw said. His brown eyes dilated and a mischievous sneer betrayed his intent. “Gloria will be able to rest when you’re dead. I’m going to send you to hell.”

  “Before you kill me, I want to thank you,” I said.

  He laughed. “For what?”

  “For letting me avenge my brother’s death my way.”

  From between the side of my leg and the wheelchair I brought out Darrin’s old service revolver. I’d asked Angel to bring it when she visited earlier. McGraw had the advantage because I needed to raise my arm and aim, and he would be quick to respond.

  “Avenge your brother’s death? How do you plan to do that?”

  I pushed off the floor with my feet and the wheelchair scooted back and swerved to the left. McGraw reacted and put a slug where I had been. I raised my gun and quick shot it from my side.

  Two more shots rang out from McGraw but they disappeared into ceiling panels as he fell to his knees in pain. He was dead before he collapsed on the floor.

  “That’s how,” I said.

  Jason ran to him, kicked his gun out of reach and checked his pulse. “He’s gone,” he said.

  “Did you have to shoot him?” Clemons said. “If you knew he was the murderer, we could have had the drop on him at any time. Why didn’t you let us in on it? We could have brought him to trial.”

  “Let you in on it?” I screamed. “When you did everything possible to come down hard on me and my brothers and Steve? You son-of-a-bitch. You almost single-handedly caused the death of my brother, The Jet and Stella Fleming.

  “I just wish you’d give me a reason to shoot you.”

  Clemons cocked his head and thrust it out like a rooster. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m the god-damned Mayor of Portland!”

  “What are you going to do, fire me?”

  “I wouldn’t count on your being Mayor for too much longer,” Stone said. “Not after I launch my investigation of you and Blaney as accomplices in three murders.”

  Chapter 31

  Two days later I had risen from bed early and drove to the cemetery to visit my brother. I knelt at the foot of Darrin’s grave and said a prayer of thanks for God’s help in finding his killer.

  I told Darrin of the transpired events and asked him to watch over me. I thanked him for giving his life for mine, cried, placed a single rose on his grave, and made a decision to quit my profession.

  I had planned to announce my retirement to my family and friends, and we sat at my dining room table a few hours later to share the latest news. The District Attorney’s office charged Blaney with four counts of second degree murder and Mayor Clemons with two counts of second-degree murder. McGraw, of course, was dead so the taxpayers avoided the cost of a third trial.

  “It seems a bit anticlimactic,” Dan said of the arrests. “I mean we’ve been slogging through each day trying to find Darrin’s killer and now that it’s over I still feel depressed.”

  “We’re all going to miss him so terribly,” Angel said. She was comforted by Earl who took her hand.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you why Tuttle hired me,” Earl said. “I was sure it didn’t have anything to do with your brother’s death. If I had any idea what was involved, I would have broken client privilege and told you about Tuttle’s suspicion of Blaney.”

  “It would have given me the link I needed,” I said. “I was treating these as two separate cases all along. I only went to Idaho to check out the Fleming angle because I was stuck and hoped by working on that case I might shake something loose in my brain. I thought I was at a dead end in Pocatello. All the players in the accusations against Fleming had disappeared.

  “Ben Miller supposedly died of a heart attack and Robert Paul seemingly vanished without a trace. I thought it odd that the two people involved in putting Fleming in jail couldn’t be found. But I couldn’t turn up anything to disprove Fleming’s claims of being framed except what he told his mother, and even she had doubts about her son’s innocence.”

  “Delilah sure was excited when you told her you found her son’s killer,” Angel said. “I could hear her hooting through the phone.”

  “She was relieved her son was innocent of the embezzlement charges,” I said. “In a small town, everybody knows the latest gossip. Delilah was stuck with the shame generated by her son’s arrest and carried it for several years. She said she was going to call the editor of the local newspaper and demand a story with the new facts exonerating her son.”

  “When did you finally connect the two cases?” Dag asked.

  “I was sitting in a hole down at Riverfront Park with Sgt. McGraw talking on his cell phone above me. He made excuses to someone about the divers not finding my body. At first, I thought he was reporting in to headquarters, but I heard an edge to his voice. He wasn’t defensive, more resentful.

  "Earlier, I had realized the necessity of Steve’s release to be the fall guy when they killed me. It became obvious all the juice on this case came from the city or someone connected with the city. When McGraw spoke on the phone it wasn’t the kind of tone he’d use with the Mayor. There was a certain familiarity with the person, like you’d expect with a wife or girlfriend instead of his Chief or the Mayor.

  “The Jet tried to find who pulled the strings and followed the cop who hired him. Probably, it was McGraw reporting to the Mayor in City Hall offices. It occurred to me in that dark dank rat-infested hole, that Art Fleming worked at City Hall in Pocatello, which also had its problems with corruption.

  “I wondered if there was a connection between the two cities so I asked Angel to email pictures of Mayor Clemons, Blaney, and Gloria to Grace Johnson, the receptionist I met in Pocatello, and viola. She identified the photo of Bob Blaney as Robert Paul, the former Pocatello city auditor, and Gloria as Gloria Miller.”

  “If you knew they killed Darrin, why did you let Gloria get the drop on you?” Dan said.

  “I didn’t have any proof yet, so I decided to put myself in a vulnerable position and see if I could get her to admit it.”

  “You almost got yourself killed.” Jason huffed. “You should have called me for backup.”

  “I didn’t have time. The cops were looking for me and I was playing hunches. Anyway, I had two or three ways I could have gotten the drop on her. I was just giving her enough rope to hang herself.”

  “It’s a good thing Chris showed up when he did or you might have been killed,” Angel said.

  “I think if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about Billie Bly, it’s she can take care of herself,” Earl said.

  I was about to answer him when a knock sounded at the front door. I got up to answer it and was met by Steve and Chris.

  “We were in the neighborhood and thought we’d drop in,” Chris said. I ushered them into the living room. Chris sat at attention and appeared very earnest.

  “Billie, here’s a copy of a dismissal of my lawsuit against you. You turned out to be a pretty swell gal even if you did slam my head in that revolving door.”

  “Thanks Chris. What are you going to do now? Go to Reno?”

  “Nah., I think I’ll hang around for a while. I’m going to go straight. I still got my money from the city and I’m gonna invest in one of those Pay Day cash loan places. I hear those interest rates rock. It’s like stealing money, only it’s legal.”

  So much for going straight, I thought. Chris excused himself and went into the kitchen where Angel huddled around fixings for lunch.

  Steve managed a little smile as we sat for a while in awkward silence. “I just wanted to apologize for cutting you out of my life,” he said. “I think—I’ve always thought you w
ere the greatest. But I never felt it would be right for us to get together—you know—because I enforce the law and you tend to break it.”

  “What would people say?” I laughed.

  “I’d like to give us a shot,” he said.

  “You aren’t worried about your promotions?” I said. “Because I know your supervisors are going to say: ‘Steve Thomas is dating that Billie Bly scumbag. Anyone with such poor judgment wouldn’t make a good Captain,’ or whatever promotion you’re going for.”

  “I don’t care. I’d rather settle down with you than worry about a promotion.”

  “Settle down? That sounds good. I’ve been thinking about maybe retiring from being a P.I. Maybe get married and downsize into a nice house with a guy and a white picket fence. You could be that guy.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying you’d quit,” he said. “I figured we’d spend the rest of our lives bumping heads–me working the straight and narrow and you working the seamy cases P.I.’s take to make ends meet.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been shot at too many times on this last case. I think I need some time to mourn the death of my brother, and I don’t know what I would do if anyone else was hurt because of me. It’s probably best for me to give up being a Private Investigator.”

  “You’re going to quit?” Earl said as he entered the living room. “Hey Angel, Billie’s going to quit. You’re going to be unemployed. Maybe you can settle down with me now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you bet.” Angel set a plate of sandwiches on the dining table as the phone rang. “Let me get the phone first.”

  “Hey Dan,” Earl said. “Did you hear? Your sister’s going to quit being a P.I.”

  “Is that so? Dag, Billie’s going to quit the job.”

  “I could see it coming,” Jason said. “Hey Sis, can I have your desk. It would look great in my home office.”

  “You got any P.I. stuff I could have,” Dag said. “I might want to quit being a cop someday and . . . ”

  “Hey Billie, there’s a lady on the phone who wants to hire you,” Angel said. “She thinks her ex-husband is trying to kill her. You want I should refer her to the cops?”

  “Maybe I better take this call,” I said to Steve. “I wouldn’t want the poor woman to die on my watch.”

  “But what about settling down?” Steve said.

  Dan and Dag laughed into their sleeves and Angel just rolled her eyes and handed me a note. “She’s at this address. I told her you’d be there in 15 minutes.”

  “That was a short retirement,” Steve said.

  “I’m sorry, but I just have to take this case.” I started to walk out the door and stopped. “Would you like to go with me? Maybe I could use a cop’s perspective.”

  Steve shrugged and rose from the couch. On our way out the door I heard Angel make another wisecrack.

  “It must be love. They’re going out on their first date.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Don Weston is the Author of the new Billie Bly, P.I., series about a hard-boiled P.I of the feminine persuasion.

  Don lives in Portland, Oregon, widely known, as of late, as the location for TV shows Portlandia, Grimm and Leverage. He is a member of Willamette Writers and Oregon Writer’s Colony. He was the Volunteer Coordinator for the annual Willamette Writers Conference with over 1000 attendees and worked on the OWC conference committee staging author workshops.

  He writes thriller mysteries “but somehow humor manages to sneak into my writing voice,” Don says. He also writes a blog on writing and getting publishing called I Love A Mystery.

  Coming Soon:

  The Facebook Murders

  Featuring Billie Bly

  Billie Bly takes on her toughest case yet, in this second book, when she matches wits with a serial killer using Facebook to stalk his victims.

  It starts when a client has her house burgled while on vacation to Maui because she posted her itinerary on Facebook and anyone could see she wasn’t home.

  Billie explores the online world of Facebook and realizes that most people don’t fully utilize their privacy controls. She tries to track down some Facebook Burglars, to retrieve a groundbreaking computer design that uses a hologram as a computer screen and the Internet Cloud as a hard drive, when she stumbles upon a possible serial killer.

  What Billie doesn’t know is the killer has already infiltrated her Facebook page and she is about to be one of his victims. He believes they have been linked by fate and the only way for him to survive is to kill her before she catches him.

  And worse, the police and her detective boyfriend don’t give her suspicions much merit. Stubbornly she investigates on her own with the help her office assistant and a female sheriff’s deputy who has been demoted to a library beat.

  In the end, the serial killer has the upper hand. So why do we feel sorry for him and how will Billie survive?

  Be sure to read this thrilling sequel in the Billie Bly series, entitled “The Facebook Killer,” available now (See links on next page).

  If you enjoy a good mystery, check out other print books or e-books by Don Weston currently exclusively on Amazon. You can also find his books free on Kindle Unlimited.

  The Facebook Killer: A Billie Bly Thriller

  The Homeless Pirate: A Billie Bly Short Book

  Death Fits Like a Glove: A Billie Bly Short Book

  The P.I. Who Found Christmas

  A Billie Bly Christmas Short Book

  The Reluctant P.I. and the Redhead, Book 1. From the new exciting new Max and Maxine Series, Exclusive to Amazon Kindle Books.

  Coming Soon: A new Billie Bly Book featuring drone murders, Death From Above