Second Hand Smoke: Blood on Wolfe's Words

by Bill Capron

  ~ ~ ~

  He was out of breath when he turned the last corner. There was another pfft and his left leg went numb. He sprawled onto his side, rolled onto his back then curled up before he hit the tree with his left shoulder. He pushed with his right arm to get upright, but fell to his knees when his leg refused to straighten.

  Zov slid to a stop, almost tumbling over the trail’s edge. He kept the gun on Robin. From the bushes behind him, Carla stepped out. She wore a waterproof parka over beige khakis.

  “Kill him now,” she said. The .22 target pistol with its smaller silencer was pointed at his eyes, the small bore looked huge.

  Zov/Beebe/Ennis smiled. “Take it easy, sis. Here Robin is the only one to figure it out. Don’t you think he deserves to know what it is?”

  Peter jabbed the gun in Robin’s direction. “Don’t you want to know?”

  He wants to talk; let him talk. Robin answered, “I know you were lucky to get this far …”

  Zov cocked the hammer with a loud click. “Lucky! Twice would be lucky, thirty-six times is sheer skill.” The killers were focused on Robin; the rest of the world did not exist for them.

  “Well, I finished it.”

  Carla laughed the same pretty laugh he liked so much. “Only for a little while, Robin dearest. Anyway, we were getting a little tired of this gig.”

  They looked so smug. “You’ll never get away with this.”

  Zov’s laugh sounded like Carla’s. “We’ve already gotten away with it, Robin. We’ve had escape plans since the fifth one in Buffalo. By nightfall I’ll be bald with a mustache and a limp. Patti will have purple hair and a nose ring.”

  Carla added, “I wouldn’t even need that, Robin. They don’t know I exist. Why even you, the bright guy who figured it all out, you didn’t know, did you?”

  Robin let out a sigh; “No.”

  “I knew you didn’t have a clue when you called last night. You should have read the whole book, Robin. Carla Masters was another character.”

  Keep them talking. “You made a mistake with me, you’ll make another.”

  Zov sneered. “Robin, you’re such a child. We always planted a clue, but human nature, cop nature, held true. What’s a little contradictory evidence when there’s so much pointing to the killer? Why muddy the waters.”

  Keep them talking. “So what’s your story, Peter? Tell me your sad …”

  “Hands up!”

  Detective McMartin and Officer Simpson were positioned on opposite dry edges of the trail. Their legs were apart and their guns were aimed.

  Carla turned her head and followed with her pistol. She fired a wild shot as Simpson shot her in the knee. The sound was like thunder.

  Peter dropped his weapon and dived for his sister; he turned his head and growled at Robin, “You’ll pay for this. Someday you’ll wish you’d never been born. When I get through with you …”

  “Can it, Peter.” Robin propped himself up with both hands.

  Three uniformed officers slogged around the corner with their pistols drawn.

  Robin spoke down at the two killers, more like lovers than brother and sister, but then maybe both. “You’ll rot in prison until some state does the right thing and fries your butts. But until then, you’ll rot,” he paused, “separately.”

  Zov sprang for him, but Maureen was quicker. She caught him on the neck with the revolver, sprawling him face down in the mud.

  Carla screamed, “Barry,” and rolled to his side.

  She hissed at Maureen.

  ~ ~ ~

  Robin hobbled with his arms over the shoulders of the policewomen. The pain in his leg throbbed.

  He talked without turning his head. “How did you find me?”

  Maureen kept her eyes on the path as they negotiated their way to the parking lot. “I put a locator in your car. You can imagine our surprise when we get to the Corvallis looking for Mr. Beebe and the receiver goes off.” She answered the question in his face, “It has a five mile radius. We followed it here and called for backup when we heard the shot.”

  “But it was silenced.”

  Diane answered, “We were two hundred yards away, Mr. Morgan. We knew what it was. We’re cops, remember?”

  Two ambulances pulled into the lot with lights flashing. The women leaned Robin against his car, talked with the EMTs, sending one group up the trail, the other to Robin. The paramedics sat him on a stretcher and cut the leg of his pants up to the thigh.

  Robin’s phone rang in the truck; he made a move to stand, but the EMT tsked him.

  Diane opened the door, pulled the phone from its Velcro strip and answered it. She handed it to Robin.

  “Hello … hi, Dick … you too, Kathy … it’s done … that’s great … congratulations … same here … thanks.” He snapped the phone shut; to no one in particular, “Free at last.”

  The detective added, “And innocent.”

  “Yes, innocent, detective McMartin.”

  “Maureen.”

  “Robin.”

  “Okay.”

  Robin yelped when the paramedic prodded the bullet hole. He said to Maureen, “Can you call the police in Seattle. Jake Tarn, he’s got to be freed now.”

  She patted his shoulder. “All in good time, Mr. Morgan.”

  He was adamant; “No, he’s dying and I don’t want him to spend one more minute in jail. It’s important, really.”

  He handed her his phone.

  Epilogue - Thursday, June 29

  Robin spent three hours in the hospital, and a uniformed officer drove him to Portland. He slept through most of the ride. He dreamed about Jake Tarn, and Jack Daniels, and Don Johnson, and David Jones.

  His cell rang. “Hello … Mr. Goodwin, it’s good to hear from you … Jake’s free … hey, under guard at the Four Seasons isn’t so bad. Tell him they have great room service … of course I’ll come up and see him … I’m thankful, too.” He folded the phone.

  The station the officer was listening to was interrupted; “The Portland police have scheduled a press conference at five. We’ve learned there is a major break in the Mona Morgan murder case, and two suspects have been arrested. We will carry the announcement live.”

  “You’re going to be famous,” the driver stated.

  Robin took a deep breath. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Maureen waited as the phone rang; “Meg, it’s mom.”

  She told her daughter the whole story in five minutes; she asked her to stay at her friend Melanie’s house. “I’ll pick you up in the morning, hon, this will take a while.”

  The cop at the front desk said the captain was waiting. She made her way to his office where John James was in one of the visitor chairs. James looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, whole. Maureen took her seat and nodded to the captain.

  Hardaway spoke first; “Your partner here thinks he should be put in charge of the case. What do you think, detective?”

  Maureen didn’t even look at James. “I think if it had been his case, Robin Morgan would be in prison for the rest of his life, and two serial murderers would be free.”

  James rose out of his chair. “Now wait one minute, Mau …”

  She still didn’t look at him. “That’s what I think, Captain.”

  Hardaway’s smile was not kind. “Yeah, me too. It’s your case until it’s done.” To James, “John, you’ll get a new partner.”

  The captain returned his attention to Maureen; “For the time being, Simpson is assigned to you. You’ve both earned the right to see this to the end.”

  She got up and left with John James still sputtering.

  ~ ~ ~

  It was nine p.m. when Maureen and Diane closed up for the day. A task force of twenty cops had been on the phones, working through Robin’s list and emailing preliminary statements from the killers.

  The buzz was on. The police department was fielding appearance requests for McMartin and Simpson, local and national. The captain told the t
wo women they would be the main attraction at a news conference on Friday. Until then, he would keep the press off their backs. After that, it was their problem.

  They had not seen Robin Morgan since the Corvallis parking lot; his statement was taken by the DA. They spent the afternoon interrogating Patti and Barry Sinclair of Portland, Maine, starting the ripples that would wash dirty laundry onto the shores of thirty-five police departments.

  Meg called around seven to describe the news coverage to her hermetically sealed mother. The firestorm was growing; there would be a lot of second guessing, but not by Maureen, though she’d almost made the same mistake. She was lucky the suspect never gave up, and her daughter saw the good in the man, and a serendipitous partner put intuition ahead of the evidence. But it wasn’t all luck. It happened because she was a good cop, an honest cop. If John James’s appendix hadn’t burst, who knows?

  Maureen’s neighbor told her there were camera crews ringing her house. The captain recommended the Hilton. He said a room was reserved and the department would pay. When she said the press should be talking to Morgan, not her, Hardaway said Morgan hadn’t been seen since he left the DA’s office.

  That’s what I want to do, disappear. She turned into the woman’s locker room and found a wool cap and a rubberized raincoat; and attached herself to a foursome leaving on patrol. She turned to the Hilton.

  At the front desk they gave her a key card. She cut through the lobby towards the elevators. “Why don’t you sit down, detective.” Robin Morgan tilted back the hat that hid his face. “You on the run too?”

  She sat catty corner to him, their knees almost touching. “Yes, I am. It’s quite the coincidence meeting you here?” She made it a question.

  He grinned. “Not so much. Your captain helped. I was hoping to buy you dinner,” he looked at his watch, “but you wouldn’t stop working.”

  She smiled and blushed simultaneously. “What, no room service.”

  He looked at his key. “I’m in 2310. You?”

  “I’m in 2312. Another coincidence.”

  “Why don’t you shower and I’ll order up some grub.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They sat on the neatly made bed, propped up with pillows from both rooms. The detective wore a thick terrycloth robe, Robin had jeans and a polo shirt; the plates on either side of them were empty. The television was low. They’d spent an hour surfing the cable stations, watching the unfolding stories from reporters and news anchors all over the country. It was war-type coverage, nonstop. Thirty-six murders and many more lives ruined. The airwaves were filled with accusations, facts, fantasy, blame, excuses. It was embarrassing to watch the fourth estate pick apart the performance of the police as they ignored their own bandwagon performances.

  Robin hit the mute button. “Okay, now for your story, the real story. They confessed?”

  She levered herself upright and crossed her legs. “Well they didn’t confess to everything, but we dug up the rest of it.”

  “Out with it.”

  “Okay, already, the short version. Patti and Barry Sinclair are fraternal twins. Fourteen years ago Barry murdered their father, Mort. Rumor had it Barry and Patti were doing the dirty, and dear old dad caught them in the act, but it was never verified. Well, Barry killed his father, shot him dead. Barry got three years as a juvenile, but was out in a year for good behavior.”

  “Good behavior?”

  She waved it away with her hand. “Yes, whatever that means in Maine. Patti got her father’s estate, which after death taxes was more than twenty million dollars. One of the prosecutors thought she was the one who pulled the trigger, but what could they do, Barry confessed to everything, said she had nothing to do with it.”

  “So money was never a worry?”

  “That’s right, they were well financed. They never held real jobs; they spent their time scouting out victims. In fact, they picked you out a year ago, before Mona even, and started collecting information on you. It was like a choreographed leapfrogging of finding future marks, researching those they had, stinging the current one, and spectating past successes.”

  A last question; “What’s with the Nero Wolfe connection?”

  “That goes back to the father who, no surprise, looked like you. He was a fan of the fat detective.”

  He smiled. “Like me.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. He had catalog files to cross reference crimes and criminals and weapons and, well, you name it. He might even have known more than the guy who wrote that book about Wolfe. You probably know it.”

  “Yes, I have it in my library.”

  “Well, he was a bit of an eccentric on Stout. Patti and Barry used the names, no especially grand reason, more for the fun of it.”

  He wondered aloud, “So are they going to prove to be whackos?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Of course they’re wackos. It was for kicks, if the profiler can be believed.”

  “Did the profiler do me too?” Robin asked.

  She laughed. “No, you don’t take such extraordinary steps for a one time killer. For people like you we can use all the standard motives.”

  Robin turned on the bed, sending his empty plate to the floor. He grimaced as his wounded thigh touched her knee. “So what would the profiler say I should do now?”

  She turned her body carefully, her face six inches from his. “I think he’d say you should kiss me.”

  He kissed her lips softly. “Is this going anywhere, detective?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know for sure, Mr. Morgan, but this time I’m waiting until the evidence is in.”

  He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her body close. He felt her move softly against him.

  She kissed his ear and whispered, “But it’s got definite possibilities.