Long Shot: A John Rockne Mystery (John Rockne Mysteries Book 4)

by Dan Ames

  One of the nice things about Nick Giordano’s house was that by being so near the lake, it made taking long walks in the evening along the water so easy.

  After ringing the doorbell and waiting, looking into the garage and seeing the Lexus, I decided that maybe Katie and Oscar Shaw had decided to go for a walk.

  It was early evening now and the sky above the lake had just the slightest tinge of orange at the far horizon. Across the water, I could see the edge of Canada and the windmills they had installed a few years back.

  I walked to the edge of the lake and looked to my left. There was a path that ran along the bank haphazardly before petering out at the property line of the nearest house.

  To my right, the sidewalk meandered back into the neighborhoods before reappearing at the edge of the park.

  There were two people walking together, not holding hands, but close enough to suggest an intimacy. I set off after them and when I got closer I could see that the couple was, in fact, Katie and Oscar Shaw.

  “Hello,” I said as I caught up to them.

  They both turned and Katie’s face went nearly white with rage. I saw her jaw harden and she stepped forward.

  But then something bizarre happened.

  Oscar Shaw put his hands on Katie’s shoulders and she seemed to nearly melt at his touch. It was as if the anger completely left her body and the pale fury in her face was almost instantaneously replaced with warmth.

  “What can we do for you?” Shaw said, with that honey-smooth voice he’d used for the old folks at the War Memorial.

  “How much of your money are you giving this guy?” I asked Katie.

  “Nothing,” they said in unison.

  Shaw seemed puzzled.

  “Why do you ask that?” he said.

  I’ve been lied to by so many people I’ve lost track so I have a good appreciation for good liars. Oscar Shaw was smooth.

  “I’m not buying all that bullshit you’re selling,” I said. “Your whole pitch was ridiculous. But it worked on Katie, didn’t it?”

  “I’m not selling anything other than healing,” Shaw said. “I’ve always been totally clear on that.”

  “What did you need to heal from?” I asked Katie.

  She tensed again, but Shaw’s hands seemed to soothe her and the rage that briefly flashed across her face was gone immediately.

  “The end of my marriage. The end of my family,” she answered.

  I was surprised she answered at all considering what she said to me the last time we spoke.

  Oscar Shaw looked at me.

  “Katie had nothing to do with any of this,” he said. “I understand you’re an investigator and I can tell you, this path of investigation will not lead you to Nick Giordano’s killer. Katie is only interested in rebuilding her relationship with her sons right now.”

  Damn it. I believed the guy.

  Something wasn’t adding up. If Shaw was exactly who he said he was–

  And then a chill swept through my body that was so cold and powerful for a brief moment I thought it came from the lake.

  Her sons.

  But it hadn’t.

  I thought about what Brian Fairbanks had told me. How he had been so sure that Nick hadn’t been having an affair with Colleen Fairbanks.

  The ramifications ricocheted around my brain and I found myself backing away from Shaw and Katie. I turned and walked away as the different pieces finally fell into place.

  It couldn’t be.

  But I had one way of finding out if I was right.

  I turned and began running to my car, dialing Ellen’s cell phone on the way.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I barged into the police station, headed for the media room. When I got there, Ellen was at the computer screen, staring at the image of Nick Giordano leaving with Colleen Fairbanks.

  Stocker and Radcliffe looked at me.

  “What’s he doing here?” Stocker said.

  “It was his idea,” Ellen answered, without any emotion.

  I stood behind them and looked at the screen.

  “Is this the footage from Colleen Fairbanks’s building? The one you said showed Nick was there?”

  “It is,” Ellen said.

  “The detectives on that case sent it to us,” she said. “They were confident it was Nick, but never able to prove it.”

  The footage was from two security cameras, one inside the building, and one outside.

  It showed Nick walking into the camera’s view from the parking lot, then into the building. The footage had then been edited to show Nick coming back out of the building with Colleen, and walking off-camera into the parking lot.

  Ellen used the keyboard to toggle back and forth.

  “Never got a good look at his face,” Stocker said. “But it sure looks like Nick Giordano.”

  Everything I suspected jumped out from the screen.

  “That’s not Nick,” I said.

  I thought back to what Brian Fairbanks had told me.

  “Colleen Fairbanks’s husband told me that Nick Giordano was not having an affair with his wife.”

  “Yeah, so what? How would he have known?” Stocker asked, his voice full of skepticism.

  “He said that Nick would have been way too old for Colleen.”

  Ellen, Stocker and Radcliffe turned, looked at the image, then back at me.

  I nodded.

  “That’s not Nick Giordano. It’s Paul Giordano. His son.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I rode with Ellen to Frederick’s apartment, and after she and Stocker and Radcliffe entered, I was allowed to join them.

  Frederick was sitting in the same chair Paul had been sitting in, but now his face was a bloodied mess, and there were liquor bottles on the floor and the smell of pot was even stronger.

  “Where is Paul?” Ellen asked him.

  “I don’t know,” Frederick said. He was completely dazed and I didn’t know if it was from the liquor, the marijuana or the beating he had clearly taken.

  “Who was the girl that was here before?” I asked.

  Ellen looked at me, then back to Frederick.

  “What girl?” she asked.

  “Francine?” Frederick said to me.

  He looked at me, and I waited patiently. “Her name is Francine,” he said. “My girlfriend. She flew back to New York yesterday.”

  “Where’s Paul?” Ellen asked.

  Stocker and Radcliffe walked around the apartment, looking at anything that might tell them where Paul was.

  I watched Frederick wrestle with the question.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  “He’s probably on his way back to Chicago,” Stocker said. “That’s where he lives, right?”

  With a shake of my head I said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  Stocker snorted. “Okay genius, then where is he?”

  Everyone in the room looked at me. Chicago just didn’t make sense. Everything he cared about was here. In fact, I had a pretty good idea of why he’d killed both Colleen Fairbanks and his father.

  And it had nothing to do with Chicago.

  “Come on, spit it out, Super Star,” Stocker said.

  Ellen started to say something to him, but I waved her off.

  It had been Katie’s comment about rebuilding her relationship with her sons that had helped me put it all together. There had been something about the way she said it, with Oscar Shaw standing behind her, and in the background, the lake–

  Just as suddenly, I knew where Paul was.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Nick’s sailboat had been processed and then returned to the Grosse Pointe Park Marina.

  The marina was less than a quarter mile from Nick’s house, which had probably made it convenient for him to buy the boat and use it in the first place.

  It had also made me wonder if that’s why Katie and Oscar were walking toward the park, which housed the marina. When Shaw had mentioned Katie’s sons, it st
ruck a chord with me. Maybe their walk wasn’t aimless. Maybe instead, she was walking somewhere to work on her relationship with Paul, at that very moment.

  We pulled into the marina’s parking lot, a group of Grosse Pointe police cars with lights flashing, but sirens on silent.

  It was cooler now and the park was empty.

  We got out of Ellen’s car and jogged toward the marina. There were still a few boats in their slips, even though most had been taken out already.

  Nick Giordano’s sailboat was in the middle of the marina.

  A quick glance told me the boat was big enough to have a cabin that could serve as a place to hide out. I figured it also had a toilet, and maybe even a basic cooking area.

  If Paul had wanted a place to think about what had happened, and maybe think about escaping, a boat wasn’t a bad idea.

  Two other Grosse Pointe policemen had taken positions at the entrance to the marina to make sure no one entered or left until Ellen got there.

  Once again, I followed Ellen, Stocker and Radcliffe past the officers, and out onto the marina’s slips.

  We got to the boat, and Ellen tentatively stepped aboard, her service revolver out of its holster and in her hand.

  Stocker and Radcliffe had also taken position with their guns, flanking Ellen.

  I waited, closer to the entrance of the marina, near the two other officers.

  I was close enough that I heard Ellen call out.

  “Paul?” she said.

  There was no answer.

  I heard a voice from behind me and I looked back. Katie was running into the park, past the swimming pool toward the marina.

  Oscar Shaw was trying to hold her back.

  “No!” she yelled out.

  I looked back at Ellen and she had moved closer to the sailboat’s cabin.

  “Paul, you have to turn yourself in, there’s no other option.”

  But we all knew there was.

  And Paul did, too.

  Because just then, the boat rocked back and forth slightly and then a gunshot rang out.

  Ellen ran forward, jumped into the space in front of the sailboat’s steering wheel and threw open the doors to the cabin. Stocker and Radcliffe followed her in.

  We all waited.

  Moments later, Ellen came back up.

  She shook her head.

  Katie screamed and fell to her knees, sobbing.

  I knew then that Paul was dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “It was Paul’s idea, based on a suggestion by my Dad,” Frederick explained to us.

  We were sitting at my kitchen table. Anna, Ellen and Frederick.

  Anna had made some pasta and now we were having an after-dinner drink.

  “Dad had developed a portable device that could measure brain waves,” Frederick explained. “He hadn’t shared any of the details with me but I guess he had with Paul, because Paul went to school for engineering. And I guess it was something he had stumbled upon and wasn’t exactly sure what it could mean.”

  Even before he told me the rest, I knew what was coming. It was money. Murder was almost always about money.

  “Anyway, after he talked to Paul about it, Dad said he met Colleen Fairbanks somewhere and told her about the idea. She immediately saw how the device’s application could be more than just a purely medical device, but one for everyday use.”

  “Kind of like those wristband exercise things?” I said.

  “You could use one of those,” Ellen said to me.

  Anna laughed. She thought my sister was a hoot.

  I didn’t exactly share that sentiment.

  “Exactly,” Frederick told me. “So then Dad went back to Paul to tell him the good news, but Paul was furious. He didn’t think they needed Colleen Fairbanks. In the process, he seduced her and tried to get her to back out of the deal.”

  Frederick shook his head. “But when she wouldn’t do what he wanted, he killed her.”

  “Did your Dad put two and two together?” Ellen asked.

  Frederick shook his head. “Hell no. Like I’ve said before, he hardly knew us. Which made him figure that there was no way Paul had anything to do with the woman’s murder. But I knew Paul had always liked guns. It was like a secret hobby with him. If my Dad had ever been around, he would have known that, too.”

  “So why did he kill your Dad then?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  “It was partly greed. And partly hate. He hated my Dad for never being around. I mean, our friends always assumed our parents were divorced because our Dad was never at anything. Parent-teacher conferences. Sporting events. Homecoming and prom. Nothing. Never around.”

  Frederick started crying.

  “I swear I didn’t know,” he said. “He just told me and when I tried to get him to turn himself in, he went crazy, kicked my ass and left.”

  Anna put her arms around him.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” Anna said. “There was nothing any of us could have done.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I was parked outside the tiny office of Sky Investigations. It was an ugly brick building with a flat roof and bars on the windows and doors.

  Down the alley there was a Chinese restaurant and a laundromat.

  A bus stop was just up the street with several people milling around smoking cigarettes.

  I had a nice cup of coffee in my hand and a smile on my face.

  During questioning after Paul’s suicide, Katie admitted she had hired Sky Farrow to keep tabs on me, but both she and Oscar Shaw swore they hadn’t asked the woman to frame me.

  Even better, they had recorded the meeting and after listening to the audio, I believed them.

  What made things even better was the fact that my building had a security system and I was able to get footage of a woman dressed as an HVAC installer entering the front door of my office.

  Combined with the listening devices detectives had found on my office line and beneath my desk, there was more than enough to bring Sky Farrow in for questioning.

  There probably wasn’t enough to get a conviction, and even if she was found guilty, a good attorney would probably keep her from going to jail.

  But still, a point needed to be made.

  On cue, an unmarked squad car pulled up to the building. Two detectives got out of the car and knocked on the door.

  Sky Farrow opened the door and after a brief conversation she was quickly placed in handcuffs.

  I jumped out of my vehicle and ran to the unmarked car before they put her inside.

  “Nice try,” I said. “This isn’t over, just so you know.”

  Her face was grim as they stashed her in the back seat of the unmarked car.

  I raised my coffee cup to her and she mouthed something at me. It looked like she said a couple of words that were very naughty.

  With an elaborate wink, I turned my back on her, got into my car and drove away.

  Sky would definitely have some time to think about what she’d done.

  Proof once again, that you should never mess with John Rockne.

  THE END

  Also By Dan Ames

  Dead Wood (A John Rockne Mystery #1)

  Hard Rock (John Rockne Mystery #2)

  Cold Jade (John Rockne Mystery #3)

  The Killing League (A Wallace Mack Thriller #1)

  The Murder Store (Wallace Mack Thriller #2)

  Death by Sarcasm (A Mary Cooper Mystery #1)

  Murder with Sarcastic Intent (Mary Cooper Mystery #2)

  Gross Sarcastic Homicide (Mary Cooper Mystery #3)

  The Circuit Rider (Circuit Rider #1)

  Killer’s Draw (Circuit Rider #2)

  Head Shot

  Killing the Rat

  To Find a Mountain

  Choke

  Beer Money

  Dr. Slick

  The Recruiter

  Room 729

  The Garbage Collector #1

  Bullet River (Garbage Collec
tor #2)

  Four

  Hanging Curve

  Scale of Justice

  Just a Taste

  Take the Koi

  Until Death

  Ames to Kill (Box Set)

  Total Sarcasm (Box Set)

  Afterword

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  About the Author

  Dan Ames is an international bestselling crime novelist and winner of the Independent Book Award for Crime Fiction.

  @AuthorDanAmes

  AuthorDanAmes

  www.authordanames.com

  dan@authordanames.com