One Clean Shot

by Danielle Girard

  Dee aimed the gun back at Jim. “Do not say another word. You said Nick was a liar, too. You’re the liar. You, Jim.”

  “Dee, please,” Liz said.

  “You, too, Liz. Not another word. You should’ve known what he was doing—where he was investing your money. You were too busy ironing your white linens to know that your husband is a killer.”

  Liz’s crying was muffled.

  “We can put him away,” Hailey said. “He’ll go to jail.”

  “Jail’s too good for him.” Dee choked on a sob. “He deserves to die for what he did to Nick.”

  “I don’t understand, Dee. You told me Jim was with you when Nick died,” Hailey said.

  “He was,” she snapped. “All these years, I believed him when he said he had nothing to do with it. Twelve years and Nick’s killer has been right under my nose.”

  Hailey edged closer, but Dee was focused. Hailey wouldn’t make it to the gun before Dee could fire. Her only choice was to keep talking. “Why do you think he killed Nick now?”

  “I heard it. Tom has it recorded. Jim said he’d pay four hundred thousand dollars if Nick was dead.”

  “Please, Dee—” Jim started to speak.

  “Don’t, Jim,” Hailey warned.

  Jim clamped his mouth shut. He gripped his hands together as though praying, his eyes pleading with his sister.

  The gun trembled in Dee’s hand.

  “Tell me, Dee. Tell me about the order to kill Nick. Is Jim talking to Tom in the recording?”

  Dee nodded.

  “How come Tom didn’t take it to the police?” Hailey asked.

  Dee’s eyes went wide. “Tom never thought Jim was really involved—it came up when we were talking. I told him how you and I talked about it.”

  Hailey felt like she’d been punched. That conversation in the kitchen—a chance meeting for five minutes—had led to this. No. Tom Rittenberg caused this. He was setting Jim up to take the fall, using Dee as his weapon. He preyed on her heartbreak, on the death of Nick Fredricks. Tom Rittenberg, who was a fifty-one percent shareholder of Regal Insurance.

  “Dee, I need to tell you something and I need you to listen to me.”

  “You’re not talking me out of it. This goes back too far. I’ve waited too long. He should’ve gone to jail when he shot Dottie. Dad should never have taken the fall for that. If he hadn’t, I could have stayed with him and mom.”

  Hailey couldn’t do it. The risk was too high. Telling Dee that Tom Rittenberg was a liar was only going to push her over the edge.

  How long had Dee been hovering at the edge?

  How had she missed it? How had Jim?

  Go back to the talking. “How did you meet Blake?”

  “He read all Nick’s work,” Dee said. “I keep a website up with everything he ever wrote.” Her smile was a mixture of sadness and rage.

  Just then, the office door rattled.

  Dee swung and put a bullet through the solid wood.

  Liz shrieked and the girls began crying again.

  Liz hushed them.

  Jim clutched the shirt over his heart in a pained silence.

  No sounds from outside the office. Would she have heard something if Hal had been standing on the other side?

  If someone out there was shot?

  She breathed slowly. “It’s okay, Dee.”

  Hailey couldn’t read her—didn’t know whether to move in or create distance.

  Dee had always been the calmest of the Wyatts—so controlled.

  Now, her eyes sparked in fury. Rage set her mouth in a straight hard line, flushed her cheeks.

  Dee moved to the wall as though she required propping. Had she been drinking? Jim had once made a comment about Dee’s Valium prescription. Dee had taken two pills in the kitchen the other night. Maybe she had Valium in her system. But the gun didn’t shake. She didn’t look drunk or drugged. She looked ready to shoot them.

  She was down three bullets. Still enough to kill the girls.

  “You could have just let us go, Jim. We were going back to Cornell. We were going to get married. You killed the man I loved!” Dee raised the gun and fired.

  The girls screamed.

  Jim howled.

  She sprang toward the girls. “Camilla! Ali!”

  The white fabric of Jim’s shirtsleeve began to go red.

  Dee spun toward her. The gun level at her head. The door flew open.

  Hailey dove sideways.

  A shot fired.

  She fell in slow motion. Hot then cold. Screaming. More shots.

  Then silence.

  Hailey opened her eyes, saw the ceiling. Hal’s face.

  The room exploded in noise.

  Shouts, commands. Crying.

  Hal gripped her shoulder. He wouldn’t let her sit up.

  “My girls,” she said, the word catching on her emotion.Z“They’re fine,” Hal said.

  Hailey shook her head. His hand on her face. “I promise they’re fine.”

  “Girls!”

  Then they were there. Beside her. Her beautiful girls.

  Then two men hovered over her. White jumpsuits with red. Paramedics. Hal gripped her hand, made room for them.

  Hailey reached up and touched their faces. Ali’s, Camilla’s. The skin like velvet—like silk and melted chocolate and everything perfect and good.

  Heaven.

  Pressed the furrow from Camilla’s brow and followed her worried gaze toward the wound on her shoulder.

  “Just flesh,” one of the paramedics said, pulling a length of medical tape from a roll with one.

  “It means I just need a Band-Aid,” Hailey told the girls.

  “You’re going to need a big Band-Aid, Mommy,” Ali said.

  Hailey nodded and turned to the paramedics. “Sure. Give me a big one.”

  Hal disappeared from view for a moment and when he returned, he helped her sit up. Propped against the wall, Hailey held Ali in her lap and Camilla tucked under her good arm.

  She could have stayed there forever.

  Chapter 33

  Moving gingerly around her sore shoulder, Hailey poured two fresh cups of coffee and returned to the conference room where Hal was paging through photographs and documents taken from Donald Blake’s home. She set a cup in front of Hal who grunted.

  The two girls were asleep on a cot in the corner of the conference room. Their heads in opposite directions, their feel curled in the center. Hal had brought them here when the paramedics took Hailey to the hospital.

  She had checked herself out of the hospital against the doctor’s advice. Hal’s, too. She had a nasty flesh wound across her shoulder. She could have used a night in the hospital to rest up, but she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to finally close this case. She needed to see it through.

  Hal hadn’t been to sleep yet. This was Hal when he got focused on something. Already, he had the pieces of the puzzle mostly put together. Tom Rittenberg had been arrested and Roger and his team were collecting evidence from his house and office. They’d already confirmed that Rittenberg was the owner of the Makarov Dee had. Roger’s team found it listed on an insurance policy. His prints were also all over the barrel.

  Jim was still in the hospital. He would survive. That was a good thing. The Wyatt family didn’t need any more deaths. But she was done with him. He would be charged with impeding an investigation, at the very least. Who knew if he’d do time.

  Hal had spent much of the night collecting evidence from Dee’s room and Blake’s house. Among her things, Dee had the taped conversation between Tom Rittenberg and Jim about Nicholas Fredricks. “I’ll put it this way,” Jim had said, sounding much younger than he did now. “It would do wonders for my career if Nick Fredricks weren’t around.” There was a muffled, scratchy voice then Ji
m’s again. “It would be worth four or five hundred thousand for sure.”

  The lab was running tests on the file. She wanted to believe Rittenberg had edited the recording to make it sound like he was hiring a hit on Nick Fredricks.

  But she wasn’t making bets on anything about Jim.

  Whatever Jim’s involvement was, he didn’t pull the trigger. They had already confirmed with the old case file that Jim was with Dee for a campaign fundraiser at his home the evening Nicholas Fredricks was killed.

  Even if he hadn’t pulled the trigger, Jim Wyatt likely got Nick Fredricks killed. Hal suspected Tom Rittenberg saw it as an opportunity to be able to manipulate Jim.

  And it seemed to have worked.

  The forensic accountants would take weeks to dig through the records, but already they had confirmed that Jim only started working with Tom Rittenberg after Fredricks was killed.

  They would never get evidence against Jim from Dee. For as much as she obviously loathed him, she depended on him, too.

  There were still some pieces missing, some they may never understand fully. Blake had photographs of Hank Dennig meeting with Jeremy Hayden, their dead gunrunner. Hayden appeared to be delivering a bag of cash, likely from the sale of the stolen guns.

  Hal thought Hayden was probably the hedge fund’s primary connection for selling the guns on the streets.

  Hailey sipped her coffee and watched as Hal flipped through the documents from Blake’s house.

  “Why didn’t he just bring this all to us?” she asked. “It would have been enough to open an investigation.”

  “I think he was too far gone for that,” Hal said, pushing a black composition notebook toward her. “Take a look.”

  Hailey reached out and gasped at the pain in her shoulder.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Hal said. For the nineteenth time. “But I know you won’t leave,” he added before she could respond.

  She slid the composition book close and flipped it open. The pages were collages of photographs—some in color, some black and white. Some were photocopies of the same images. Most images had been cut so only their faces remained.

  Blake’s family.

  Page after page after page of their faces, the photographs overlapped and turned sideways and upside down. On one page, his wife’s face created an X across the page. On another, his son’s was an O. There was no pattern, no message.

  Hailey felt a drowning sensation. The tightness in her chest, difficult breathing. She’d lost John, almost lost Camilla and Ali. And Liz.

  Liz, too.

  After everything that had happened at the house, Liz had to be medicated. She was spending the night at General so the doctors could keep an eye on her.

  Jamie Vail was coming to pick up Camilla and Ali in a few hours. They would stay with Jamie and Tony for a couple of days. Jamie’s adopted son, Zephenaya, was thrilled to have other kids in the house. And Tony planned to keep them home from school—all three of them—so that made it especially exciting.

  Zephenaya had been through his own trauma. It might be good for all of them to have some time together.

  Hailey was always amazed at how openly kids talked about things adults buried.

  She turned through the pages of Blake’s journal, where he had written out his wife and children’s names hundreds—maybe thousands—of times. “He was heartbroken.”

  “He describes the day his wife’s car broke down,” Hal said, glancing over at Camilla and Ali. “She was taking the kids to the zoo,” he went on, lowering his voice. “He came and switched cars with her so she could take the kids. He was going to wait for a tow truck, but he managed to get her car started again. He drove three blocks toward home and saw his sedan. Riddled with bullet holes. His entire family gone.”

  “Because he had switched cars with her.”

  “Would have been him otherwise,” Hal agreed.

  “I’m sure he wished it had been him.”

  Hal nodded. “Absolutely.”

  The door opened and O’Shea poked his head in. “James Robbins is here for the line up and we’ve got Gordon Price in interview two.” He caught her eye. “Good to see you all in one piece.”

  Again, she looked to Camilla and Ali. She wasn’t in one piece—not since the day Camilla was born. Being a mother meant part of your heart walked around outside your body. “I was lucky.” I am lucky.

  Hal rose from the table. “You want to interview Price with me, Sheaster?”

  “Damn right I do.”

  Hal and Hailey hushed him simultaneously as the girls shifted in their sleep.

  “Sorry,” O’Shea whispered.

  Hailey left the conference room door open so she could hear the girls if they needed her. James Robbins waited in the viewing room.

  O’Shea and Hal gathered the line up. Robbins rubbed his hands together and bounced on the balls of his feet.

  “They won’t be able to see you,” Hailey told him.

  “It’s not that,” he said, pausing momentarily. “I’m afraid I won’t recognize him. What then?”

  “We’ll have to get him another way,” Hailey said.

  His eyes widened. “What about the safe house? Can we stay there—if I don’t recognize him, I mean.”

  “Of course,” she said. Hal was working to place James and Tawny Robbins in witness protection. Hal would make it happen. He related to James Robbins. A young black man, no father figure, it was a familiar story. Some might say Robbins was another statistic, but not Hal. He’d read Robbins from the start—knew he wasn’t a killer and he hadn’t given up on finding the truth. That was classic Hal. How had she ever let herself doubt him?

  Never again.

  “Okay,” Robbins said.

  “You’ll be safe, I promise.”

  Robbins blinked, emotion in his eyes.

  Hal joined them. He put a hand on Robbins’s shoulder. Robbins seemed to relax under the protective gesture. “You ready?” Hal asked.

  Robbins glanced at Hailey who nodded. “He’s ready,” she said.

  Hal pressed the intercom button and told O’Shea to bring them in.

  The men weren’t even all the way into the room when Robbins pointed out Gordon Price. “That’s him.”

  “You’re sure?” Hal asked.

  “Positive.”

  Hal squeezed his shoulder. “That’s all we need.”

  The Marshall came to take Robbins back to his sister. As they started down the hall, Robbins turned back. “Thank you,” he said to Hal.

  “Thank you,” Hal told him.

  Hailey could feel Hal’s pride at protecting James and Tawny Robbins. It was earned. Thank God for Hal.

  “Time to tell Gordon Price what he’s won. You want to be there?”

  “Think I’ll watch from here,” she said.

  Hal stepped into the interrogation room where Gordon Price stood with O’Shea. Hal was grinning.

  O’Shea opened a manila folder and laid out photographs for Price. Kenny Fiston. Dwayne Carson and Griffin Sigler, who had been driving the car Carson was getting into in front of the police department.

  “We know you killed these people,” Hal said.

  Price flipped the retainer in his mouth. He looked relaxed. Hailey settled against the two-way mirror. She wished she was in there. She wanted a piece of Price, too. She glanced at the conference room where the girls were still sleeping. Not this time. Right now, she needed to be a mother. She’d have her turn in the interrogation room. For now, Hal and O’Shea could handle it.

  Hal looked up at the mirror. He couldn’t see her, but he was including her. Watch this, the look said. Then, he slid one final picture in front of Price. A photograph of Price’s mother.

  Price went pale. “What the hell you playing at?”

  “Your mother’s going to
jail.”

  “My mother ain’t done nothing.”

  “By helping you, she’s been aiding and abetting a killer,” O’Shea said.

  “She’s a receptionist at the law firm of Martin Abbott,” Hal went on. “That’s how you got his business cards. Carson called Abbott. Your mother takes the message, calls you. Then you go out and take care of whoever it is.”

  “Ain’t none of that true.”

  “We already talked to your mother,” Hal said.

  Hailey wasn’t sure he actually had but the grin was unnerving. It was working on Price.

  “We have an eyewitness to Kenny Fiston’s murder. The question is, do you want your mother to go to jail, too?”

  Price said nothing.

  “We want the guy who hired you to take these guys out.” Hal let it sit out there a minute. “You help us with that, we’ll forget about your mother.”

  “And me?”

  “Depends on how much we can prove.”

  Price chewed his lip. “If you get him for murder, I’ll get a reduced sentence?”

  “We can talk to the DA.”

  “I want it in writing first,” Price said. “Then I’ll talk.”

  “Got to give me something to take to the DA.”

  “Guy’s name is Tom Rittenberg,” Price said after a minute. “You get me a deal and leave my mama out of this—and I get you enough to pin him for all this… and more.”

  Hal’s grin never wavered.

  Chapter 34

  Three weeks later

  Hal sat in the back of the courtroom for Tom Rittenberg’s preliminary hearing. The courtrooms were right off the marble foyer. Unlike the upstairs offices that had been remodeled with linoleum and cheap paper-thin walls, these rooms retained their original majesty.

  Marble pillars marked the four corners of the room, crisscrossed by white veins that ran through the rich brown marble. Along the walls were black and white photographs of the judges who had doled out justice from the walnut bench. At the front, Ryaan Berry sat beside the DA. She would get to take credit as lead investigator on bringing down this gun trade. This would be good for her career. He was glad for her.