State of Life: A Mystery Thriller Novel (Virgil Jones Book 12)

by Thomas Scott

  Don wiped his bloody nose on his shirt sleeve, then ran toward Sam, his face a mask of rage and embarrassment. When he was within striking distance, Sam turned slightly and kicked him in the balls as hard as he could. Don’s face went pale, and he bent over and vomited, both his hands holding his groin. Sam pushed him down, and said, “I told you not to get up.”

  Then he turned to Karen. “You thought you could get away with it, didn’t you?”

  “Get away with what? What are you talking about? You come racing in here like some sort of crazy man and start beating on your little brother? For what?”

  Sam shook his head in disgust. “For what, she says. I’ll tell you for what.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the copy of his father’s will. “For this. It’s Dad’s will. He left me a copy, Karen. Everything was supposed to be split equally between the three of us, but you and that cherry-picking asshole in the dirt over there decided—against Dad’s wishes—that it was going to be a two-way split.”

  “That’s a forgery,” Karen said.

  “The hell it is. I thought you guys were my family. I guess I just found out how much I’m worth to both of you. About five hundred grand each.” He turned his head and spat next to her feet.

  “Sam, Dad gave me power of attorney, and made me the executor of his estate.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’ve been throwing that line around for months. Well, guess what, Miss Executor, you’re about to get your ass handed to you. Don too. The two of you have cheated me and Danni out of almost a million bucks.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Karen said. She had her teeth bared at him now. “There were only three copies of the will. I have one, the lawyer has one, and Dad had the other. I know what it says, and it isn’t what you’re telling me.”

  “I see Don has taught you how to lie almost as good as he does.” He waved the will at her again. “This is Dad’s copy. He left it for me. I just now found it. Actually, Danni did. Want to know where it was? It was inside one of my books. That’s right…five months ago after the two of you went in there and stole all the loot, you made the mistake of leaving my books behind in the safe.”

  Karen was shaking her head. “Sam, listen to me, will you? Your books were the only thing in there.”

  “Not according to Dad. He left me an inventory sheet. The house, the furnishings, the gold coins, the bearer bonds, all of it.”

  Karen shook her head violently. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. There is no money.”

  “That’s bullshit, Karen, and you know it.” They were screaming at each other now.

  “No, it’s not. The estate didn’t go to probate because it was valued at less than fifty thousand. That’s the law.”

  “Right, and you made sure of that by stealing the contents of the safe, cramming your house with Dad’s belongings, and giving a bunch of it to Don…yeah that’s right, I went to both your places before I came here. You should lock your doors. I couldn’t get into Don’s but I looked in the window. I saw the furniture, the flatscreen TV, and the Benz in his garage. The car alone makes the estate worth more than fifty thousand, Karen. And you’ve got so much of Dad’s stuff in your house you can’t even open the refrigerator door all the way.”

  “You were in my house? My house?”

  “Like I said, you should lock your doors.”

  “I can’t believe you,” Karen said.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right. You can’t believe me. Well, guess what, I can’t believe you…or Don about anything anymore. Here are your choices: Write me a check for a million dollars, or I’ll take both of you down. I’ll file suit against you and Don. I’ll also file against Dad’s lawyer for letting you get away with everything. Now, what’s it going to be?”

  “Sam, listen to me. There is no money. Maybe it wasn’t right that Don and I took Dad’s stuff without offering you anything. I’m sorry. Tell me what you want, and you can have it. The car? It’s yours. Whatever. But there is no money, and because I was the executor, I had the legal right to decide who gets what. Maybe if you’d been nicer to Dad all these years, I would have cut you in.”

  “Fuck you, Karen. I think you’ve actually gone crazy. No really, like a clinical thing. I think you’re insane. Who the hell do you think you are to go against a deceased person’s written wishes after their death?”

  Karen smiled at him. “Check the law, asshole. I guarantee you, it’s on my side.”

  “I already have, Karen. You’re not only breaching a fiduciary responsibility to me, you’re breaking practically all the laws in the book. I’ll spend every last dime I’ve got to get what’s mine, and in the process, I’ll make sure you and Don go broke spending the money you stole from me.”

  Sam was so caught up in arguing with Karen, he didn’t notice Don approach. He had a gun in his hand and he pressed it into Sam’s ear at the same time he pulled the hammer back. The sound froze Sam.

  “That’s right,” Don said. “Not such a tough guy now, are you? You’ve got ten seconds to turn around and walk away. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you…brother.”

  “You don’t have the balls,” Sam said.

  Don pressed the gun harder into Sam’s ear. He was applying so much pressure, Sam’s head was tilted to the side. “I don’t have the balls? Who do you think killed—”

  Karen screamed at her brother. “Don!”

  Don pulled the gun away, looked at Sam then shoved him toward his car. “Get out, and don’t ever come back.”

  Sam looked at the two people he’d grown up with, suffered with, played with, and at that moment, he knew they were no longer his family, and never would be again. He barely recognized them…or perhaps he was finally recognizing them for who they really were. He shook his head and walked back to his car.

  Chapter Seventeen

  True to his word—or at the very least, his estimated timeframe—Virgil’s task force was up and running a week later. Thanks to Nicky, Wu, and Becky, they had digitized every single detail of over twenty missing teenaged girls, along with anyone who knew them either casually or intimately. Once that was done, they let their program compile the data sets over the weekend, and first thing Monday morning, everyone sat down in the MCU’s conference room to look at the results.

  Virgil looked at his team, including Nicky and Wu, and said, “I want everyone to understand something: We’re doing this to try to find out what happened to Lisa Tate. But as a point of fact, there isn’t one single girl who is more or less important than she is. We’ll follow every lead and try to narrow the results as much as possible but if it helps any of these young girls or their families in addition to Miss Tate, then we’ve done our job. That’s confidential, by the way. The Tates are friends of the governor, so we’ll want to keep that in mind.”

  Ross, who could be very direct at times, said, “You’re suggesting Tate is our main priority, but we also want to find out about these other girls as well, all without letting the Tates know what, exactly, we’re doing or how we’re going about it. Do I have that right? Because if I do, and just for the sake of argument, let’s say we find a bunch of kids, but none of them are Lisa Tate. Then what?”

  “Let’s not go there right now,” Virgil said. “We’ll cross that bridge if and when we need to. My hope is we won’t have to do that.”

  Nicky and Wu weren’t really paying attention. They weren’t cops, and they really didn’t care about the politics or procedures Virgil was discussing. They were both working at temporary computer stations that had been set up in the conference room. Their job—at least in the moment—was to search for all the girls who might still be alive. They were scouring every database they could—all across the country—to find out how many of the girls had either run away with a boyfriend or simply decided to go and live their lives elsewhere. It happened, and they all knew it. As a matter of fact, over the weekend, Wu had found five, and Nicky had found three. They had a little competition going, and Nicky was desperately trying to catch up.
r />   “It no use,” Wu said. “I am better than you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, keep talking,” Nicky said. “While you’re running your mouth, I’ll find the next one.”

  “Keep after it, guys,” Virgil said. “You’re doing great. The more you find, the better off we all are…especially the girls.”

  “Wu will do. Cannot speak for Nicky.”

  Nicky ignored him.

  Virgil turned back to his people. “We started with twenty-two girls. So far, we know eight of them are alive.”

  “That sort of creates a problem all by itself, doesn’t it?” Murton said. He walked over to Nicky’s station and said, “Can I see that list?”

  Nicky handed Murton the list, and he looked at it for a few minutes, then said, “Based on the birth dates of the ones they’ve found so far, as of this moment, all but one of them have turned eighteen or older. In the eyes of the law, they’re adults now. Three are in Vegas, two are in LA, one is in Miami, another is in Seattle, and the one who isn’t yet eighteen is living in Mexico. That’d be Mexico, the town in Indiana, not the country.”

  “What’s your point?” Rosencrantz said.

  “My point is,” Murton said, “there really isn’t anything we can do about it. I’m not sure we’d want to, even if we could.”

  “Explain that,” Becky said.

  Virgil shook his head. “He’s right, Becks. These girls, or young women, I guess I should say, took off for a reason. Maybe they were being abused, or whatever. If we reveal their locations to their parents or whoever they ran from, we might be putting them right back into a bad situation.”

  “What if they’re in a bad situation right now?” Becky said.

  “Your point is valid, but the bottom line is this: They’re adults.”

  But Becky wasn’t ready to let it go. “So the parents of these missing girls have to wonder where their child is, whether they are dead or not, and we have actual proof that they’re alive and we’re supposed to keep that information to ourselves? That’s nuts.”

  “We’re not going to keep it to ourselves,” Virgil said. “Not exactly.”

  “Meaning what?” Murton said.

  Virgil looked at his brother. “Know of a high-ranking official in the state who used to be a cop, and has a degree in psychology?”

  Murton smiled. “You’re speaking of Small?”

  “He is,” Sandy said. She’d just walked into the room. “I’m going to have Cool fly me to the different counties where these girls were from. First I’ll interview the investigators who initially worked the case, then based on my assessment of their findings, I may or may not go and speak with the parents or guardians of these young ladies.”

  “So you’ll have the final say?” Ross said, letting his directness fly around the room.

  Sandy smiled and winked at him. “You’re cute when you get right to the point.”

  “No, he isn’t,” Virgil said. Then to Ross: “And as a member of the MCU, you’ll be accompanying my wife as her protective detail.”

  “That’s fine,” Ross said. “What about Baker?”

  “She’s on vacation this week, so you were going to get the job no matter,” Sandy said.

  “I don’t mean to get all political on everyone,” Rosencrantz said. “But if Mac is off…uh…well, I mean Nichole is in town and all that, and if you’re flying around doing assessments of the victim’s families, who exactly, is running the executive branch of our state government?”

  Murton snorted. “Probably the same person who always does. Cora.”

  Becky looked at Sandy and said, “Do you want to punch him, or should I?”

  Don and Karen weren’t exactly panicking, but they were close. “I don’t know why we have to keep meeting out here,” Karen said. “I hate this place.” They were inside Don’s cabin, and while it was neat, there was an odor of stale beer, cigar smoke, and microwaved pizza. “The things you’ve done out here are sick. You need to get help, Don.”

  “I told you I’d quit all that when Dad died, and I have.”

  Karen looked at her brother for a long minute. “Have you?”

  “When you ask someone the same question after they’ve already answered, it’s the same thing as calling them a liar.”

  Karen let her expression speak for itself.

  “Yeah, well, fuck you too,” Don said. “It’s not like you didn’t do a little killing yourself.”

  “You’re just as guilty as I am,” Karen said. “You’re the one who bought the arsenic.”

  “Yeah, and you’re the one who gave it to him, made sure it was in his coffee pot every morning, and his liquor bottle every afternoon.”

  “Look, Don, we talked about this months ago. We had to get rid of him. He was spending every last dime right out from under us.”

  “Buying a new car isn’t exactly spending every last dime. I think we could have waited. He was going to kick the bucket sooner or later.”

  Karen shook her head in frustration. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. We’ve got to focus on what we’re going to do now. Sam isn’t going to let this go. Maybe we should cut him in. He’s got a list of assets. If it’s accurate—and it probably is—then he’s not going to just wait and see what happens.”

  “I’m not giving up a half million, especially to a guy who doesn’t even need it. Besides, I spent my entire life earning that money.”

  “We all earned it, Don, in one way or another. Even Sam. Maybe especially Sam.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I can’t give up my share. I owe some pretty heavy hitters, and you know it. If I don’t pay up, these aren’t the kind of guys who just shrug their shoulders and walk away.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re deranged. You’ve killed and raped god only knows how many women, all while gambling your inheritance away. What’s wrong with you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Don said. “Things just got a little out of hand.”

  “How far out of hand?”

  “Almost the exact same amount I’d have to pay Sam. That means I’d end up with about a million, while you end up with almost twice that when you count the money from the sale of the house. We should have split that too.”

  Karen was shaking her head. She pointed a finger at him and said, “No. Dad always told me he wanted me to have the house. Me, and only me.”

  Don waved her words away. “First of all, that’s bullshit, even if he said it or not. It’s what’s in his will that matters, and you know what the will says. Secondly, if you wanted the house so bad, why are you just letting it sit there? Sell the damned place.”

  “I don’t have to sell it. I refinanced it before he died, you idiot. The mortgage company will foreclose, and I’ll get to keep the money.”

  “Yeah, great plan, Karen. Do you think they won’t come after you?”

  “They can’t. The lawyer made sure of that.”

  “Well, good for you,” Don said. “That still doesn’t get us anywhere when it comes to Sam.”

  “If we make an enemy out of him, things could start to unravel for us in ways I don’t want to think about,” Karen said. “You in particular, especially after everything you’ve done out here. Where are the bodies?”

  “Why?” Don asked, suddenly suspicious. “Going to turn me in?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Damn straight you’re not. Because if you ever do, I’ll go away for life. Probably get the needle.” He walked over and got right in his sister’s face. “And if that ever happens, I’ll tell them what really happened with Dad, and what you did. Maybe they’d wheel in a double gurney and execute us both at the same time.”

  Karen edged away from her brother. She was the only one who knew her brother’s secret, and she also knew that if Don killed her, all his problems would go away. Time to reconsider, she thought. “Listen, Don, I love you, and even though I’d hate to do it, if we give Sam his money, I think everything could work out. Let’s do what he wants. I’ll cover ha
lf your share if you clean up your gambling debts and address your other…problem. Go see a therapist, or whatever. If you do that, you’ll still be out three-quarters of a million, but so will I. That makes us even.”

  “Not quite, Karen. You’ve still got the money from the house. I want half of that too.”

  “Don, you’ve got the car. Sell it.”

  “The car cost over a hundred grand brand new. I’d get fifty at best. Meanwhile, you’re sitting on almost three hundred grand from the refi on Dad’s house. That’s hardly fair, and you know it.”

  “That’s as far as I’ll go, Don. Your problems are your own. I won’t budge from that. Take it or leave it.”

  “I guess I’ll take it then,” Don said. “Take it right up the ass, is what it sounds like.”

  Karen was losing her patience. “Enough. There’s something else I want to talk about.”

  “What now?” Don said.

  “I’ve been watching the price of gold. It’s higher now than it has been in a long time. I want my share. I’m going to cash it in.”

  Don laughed. “Bullshit. You’re afraid I’ll spend it.”

  “The reason doesn’t matter,” Karen said. “Open your safe and hand it over.”

  Don stared at his one and only sister with disgust. Finally, he moved to the center of the room and pushed the sofa aside. He bent down, pulled on the handle set into the hardwood, and opened a small hinged section that revealed his floor safe. He spun the knob a few times, entered the combination, and opened the door. When he reached inside, he pulled out exactly half of the gold coin rolls, then handed them to his sister before locking the safe and replacing the rug and sofa. “Satisfied?”

  “Yes,” Karen said. Then she let out a little laugh, and said, “Do you want to give Sam the check, or do you want me to?”

  “You’re the executor,” Don said. “I’ll let you handle it. I don’t ever want to see that son of a bitch again.”