by Joseph Flynn
Kill Me Twice
Joseph Flynn
Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Springfield, IL
2015
Praise for Joseph Flynn’s novels
“Flynn is an excellent storyteller.” — Booklist
“Flynn keeps the pages turning.” — Houston Chronicle
“Flynn propels his plot with potent but flexible force.” — Publishers Weekly
Digger
“A mystery cloaked as cleverly as (and perhaps better than) any John Grisham work.” — Denver Post
“Surefooted, suspenseful and in its breathless final moments unexpectedly heartbreaking.” — Booklist
“An exciting, gritty, emotional page-turner.”— Robert K. Tannenbaum, New York Times Bestselling Author of True Justice
The Next President
“The Next President bears favorable comparison to such classics as The Best Man, Advise and Consent and The Manchurian Candidate.” — Booklist
“A thriller fast enough to read in one sitting.” — Rocky Mountain News
The President’s Henchman
“Marvelously entertaining.” — ForeWord Magazine
Books by Joseph Flynn
The Concrete Inquisition
Digger
The Next President
Hot Type
Farewell Performance
Gasoline, Texas
The President’s Henchman, A Jim McGill Novel [#1]
The Hangman’s Companion, A Jim McGill Novel [#2]
The K Street Killer, A Jim McGill Novel [#3]
Part 1: The Last Ballot Cast, A Jim McGill Novel [#4 Part 1]
Part 2: The Last Ballot Cast, A Jim McGill Novel [#4 Part 2]
The Devil on the Doorstep, A Jim McGill Novel [#5]
The Good Guy with a Gun, A Jim McGill Novel [#6]
McGill’s Short Cases 1-3, Three Jim McGill Short Stories
Round Robin
Nailed, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#1]
Defiled, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#2]
Impaled, A Ron Ketchum Mystery [#3]
Tall Man in Ray-Bans, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#1]
War Party, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#2]
Super Chief, A John Tall Wolf Novel [#3]
One False Step
Blood Street Punx
Still Coming
Still Coming Expanded Edition
Hangman, A Western Novella
Dedication
For Caitlin “Cat” Flynn
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Catherine who did her level best to catch all the mistakes I made. Any that remain are strictly my responsibility.
Copyright
Kill Me Twice
A Zeke Edison Novel
Joseph Flynn
Published by Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Springfield, IL 62704, U.S.A.
Copyright © kandrom, inc. 2015
All rights reserved
Visit the author’s web site: www.josephflynn.com
Flynn, Joseph
Kill Me Twice / Joseph Flynn
32,368 words eBook
ISBN 978-0-9908412-2-7
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover photo by Kevin Flynn. Please visit Fly’s Eye Photography at http://bitly.com/flyseye
Book design by Aha! Designs
Chapter 1
The house on Sheridan Road, just north of the Northwestern University campus, had thirteen rooms and a two hundred foot stretch of private beach on Lake Michigan, but it sold for a song, $2 million, because it had been stuck in probate for years and had declined to the point of being a fixer-upper. The contending heirs to the property also needed the funds so they could continue their fight over the remainder of Daddy’s estate.
Zeke Edison and George A. Black plunked down a million each and bought the place. A small army of George’s extended family, possessing every building trade known to man, was engaged in a massive rehab effort, and lived in the attic and the basement for the duration.
They were a sociable lot and Zeke didn’t mind the company, but he asked George, “You really think we’re going to need high-iron workers?”
An uncle and a cousin were the guys in question.
“They have other skills, man.”
“Okay, but their invoices get added to your half of the budget.”
That cost was also being split fifty-fifty.
“No problem,” George said.
On the morning Paulette Mallory arrived at the house, the new doorbell was working and had been wirelessly paired to the stereo speakers in Zeke’s home office so he could hear it above the sounds of reconstruction. The cacophony of the moment included an electrician’s power drill, the floor refinisher’s power sander and an industrial strength grinding tool being used outside as part of the tuck-pointing process.
Ms. Mallory had a hand pressed over each ear when Zeke opened the front door.
He’d come prepared. He dangled a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort headphones in front of her. She understood the gesture and quickly put them on. Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, Pastoral, replaced the din of home improvement. He took Ms. Mallory’s hand and led her through the rush hour traffic of skilled craftsmen.
More than one of them took a second look at the visitor.
Ms. Mallory had been blessed with a pixie-cute face, long auburn hair and slim legs revealed to advantage by her floral print spring dress. Zeke got several winks from the crew as he led her into his office, finished as job number one at his insistence. He looked back at the guys with a serious face and shook his head.
The young woman wasn’t a potential girlfriend. She might turn out to be his first client as a private investigator. He closed the door, cutting off most but not all of the racket.
He got Ms. Mallory settled in a guest chair.
She removed the headphones and extended them to Zeke.
“Better hold on to those for the return trip,” he said.
She nodded and placed the headphones on her lap with her purse.
Zeke sat behind his desk and said, “You spoke with the senior partner in the firm, Aaron Levy, and he recommended me to you?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Aaron told you this will be my first case? Well, the first one I’ll work on my own.”
“He did. He was very forthcoming. He said you were a quick learner and you don’t know how to give anything but your best effort to get a job done.”
That was putting it mildly, Zeke thought.
He’d break bones — his or anyone else’s — to finish a play … a job.
“Mr. Levy also said it would be more convenient for you to see me here than in his office down in the city. I live just up the road in Wilmette.”
All right, Zeke thought. He was licensed and had served his apprenticeship. It was time to take the plunge. “How can I help, Ms. Mallory?”
She leaned forward and looked closely at Zeke.
Seemed to take comfort in the fact that he was a very big, strong man.
“Someone is going to try to kill me,” she said. “Aga
in.”
The lead sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune labeled the play “The Hit Heard ‘Round the World.” In fact, the clip from the football game had gone viral on the Internet with tens of millions of views. It happened late in the third quarter of a game in the fifteenth week of the National Football League schedule. The Chicago Bears were playing the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field. The score was 17-14, Chicago.
Only three of the 31 combined points had been scored on offense. The Bears placekicker, Jerry Burnside, had managed to edge a 57-yard field goal attempt just over the crossbar. Green Bay had scored its two touchdowns on pick-six interceptions. The Bears also scored on an intercepted pass by cornerback Dalton McKinney. Their other touchdown came when rookie middle linebacker Ezekiel “Zeke” Edison blitzed and stripped the ball from the Packer’s quarterback, Rick Timmons, at midfield, breaking Timmons’ throwing wrist in the process, and running the ball in for a score.
With their starting quarterback out for the remainder of the season and pissed off that Zeke had done the damage, even if it was a clean play, Green Bay started to run the ball on every play. Stoked by their anger, the Packers managed to pick up yards on the ground for the first time in the game.
Part of Green Bay’s success was fueled by emotion, but it was also a product of a new strategy. The Packers ran away from where they thought Zeke Edison would be and assigned two blockers solely to him. They were willing to win or lose with that tactic, but they weren’t going to let Zeke beat them.
The rookie linebacker was already closing in on the Bears’ team record for tackles in a single season. One of the Zeke’s defensive teammates had even coined a tag line for the new kid: “You get hit by Edison, he’s gonna light you up.”
The Packers, late in that game, were doing their best to cause a power failure. Their double-teaming of Zeke was frustrating him, getting under his skin. The Packers began taunting him, saying he wasn’t such hot shit after all, now was he? They even caught him with a two-on-one block, the first hit throwing him off balance, the second knocking him on his ass in front of God and the Bears’ faithful.
The Packers were now inside the Bears 30-yard line, in field goal range but looking like they were going to ram the ball in for a go-ahead touchdown.
The Green Bay squad was openly laughing at the Bears now.
To a man, the players in the Bears huddle in the moments after Zeke had been humiliated said they’d never seen any player as enraged as the rookie middle linebacker. Nor had they or their coaches ever seen the defensive alignment Zeke called for. The four down linemen were in their normal positions; so were the four defensive backs.
The three linebackers — strong side, middle, and weak side — were stacked in a single file in the middle of the field with Zeke at the back of the line.
The Green Bay second-string quarterback, Ticker Tomlinson, saw the unorthodox defensive alignment and looked for just a moment as if he would call for a pass play, but with the Bears already having returned an intercepted pass for a touchdown he decided not to risk it. So he played it safe and went with the running play the offensive coordinator wanted to see.
Tomlinson pitched the ball to halfback Larry Monroe on the wide side of the field. The Packers offensive saw Zeke feint to his left, to the narrow side of the field. The two linemen assigned to block him thought he’d made a mistake and would have to try to catch up to the running play from behind.
They moved to try to seal him off from that avenue of pursuit.
But Zeke reversed himself and shot forward to take a direct approach to the ball carrier, cutting off Monroe from getting to the sideline. The Green Bay running back had one blocker clearing his path, the Packers’ prize rookie, left offensive tackle, George A. Black.
George had been Zeke’s teammate at Northwestern University. They’d been friends, too. Zeke had been drafted number three overall last spring; George had been number four. Just then, however, the two players were out to crush each other. Zeke was the only Bear between Larry Monroe and the goal line.
Zeke Edison stood six-five and weighed two forty-five. George A. Black stood six-seven and weighed three twenty-five. Eighty pounds was a lot of weight to give away. For that matter, Larry Monroe was just as heavy as Zeke. The opposing combination should have steamrolled him.
Only Zeke was faster than both of the Packers players, and he normally played with a controlled fury. In that moment, though, his rage was completely unrestrained. Reason was left farther behind with each accelerating stride. Both Zeke’s old college teammate and Larry Monroe had laughed at him on the play in which he’d been knocked on his ass.
Zeke was not only going to light up the two Packers, he was going to —
Make contact even sooner than he’d expected.
The collision between Zeke, George and Larry Monroe, while completely within the rules, was so violent that all three players recoiled upon impact like an atom being split. Zeke smashed into George and both of them flew backward. George hit Monroe at an oblique angle and the running back shot into a crowd of Packers’ players standing on the sideline. Two of them also went down.
Zeke, George and Monroe all lost consciousness and their pro careers in that moment.
The two innocent bystanders on the sideline were out for the rest of the season.
Thirty minutes were required to get the five injured players off the field, into ambulances and on their way to the hospital with sirens blaring. The crowd rose as one to salute the fallen warriors as they exited. The league looked for someone to criticize, if not fine, but it had to conclude no one was at fault. Tremendous physical damage was just a part of the game.
The Bears hung on to win the game without another point being scored.
Zeke immediately sprang into Chicago folklore as the only Bear ever to take out four Packers in a single play.
“Who wants to kill you,” Zeke asked Paulette, “someone you know?”
One of the many things Aaron Levy had taught him was that, by far, more people were killed by someone they knew than by a stranger. The problem with that was, Zeke had a hard time imagining anyone wanting to kill Paulette Mallory. She was more than just good looking, she had an air of childlike innocence about her.
What could she have done to provoke murderous hostility?
Of course, if the threat came from someone who was a loon, no reason was needed.
“His name is Jonas Dawson.”
“Is he family or a friend? Someone you worked with? Someone you dated?”
“He was a professional client, and there was a social relationship.”
“So a boyfriend?”
“A fiancé.”
“You broke the engagement?”
“Yes.”
Okay, now they were getting somewhere. As a nasty combinations of character flaws, you couldn’t beat jealousy and a thirst for vengeance: Baby, if I can’t have you, nobody can.
How many dimwits had used that rationale to shed blood?
“Does your new boyfriend know about your problem, Ms. Mallory?” Zeke asked.
“I don’t have a boyfriend, new or old.”
“You’re gay? Sorry, I meant lesbian.”
“No.” Paulette Mallory looked down and wrung her hands for a moment. Lifting her eyes back to Zeke, she said. “What I’m going to tell you, I hope you’ll be able to keep an open mind about it. Some people might find it hard to believe.”
Turned out Zeke was one of them.
Zeke had received a note from George while both of them were still in intensive care. George’s nurse had penned it for him. Zeke’s lead nurse, Caroline Rosemeyer, read it to him: “Sorry, man, never should have laughed at you.”
That was all Zeke needed to hear. He and George could remain friends.
Through the fog that seemed to fill his head as well as cloud his vision, Zeke managed to ask in a rasping voice, “How is he?”
“Grade four concussion.”
“That’s real bad?”
“And then some. It indicates a loss of consciousness longer than a minute, headache, foggy vision, ringing in the ears, confusion, irritability, the list goes on.”
“Surprised he knew enough to apologize, being like that.”
“His doctors took it as a very good sign that he did.”
“I think I might have some of those things, symptoms or whatever.”
“You have most of them. Your concussion is grade three.”
Zeke closed his eyes and asked, “What about Larry Monroe?”
“Worst bilateral knee damage the chief orthopedic surgeon ever saw outside a war zone or so he said. Mr. Monroe’s playing days are over, too.”
“Too?”
“Just like yours and Mr. Black’s.”
“All of us? Shit.”
“Yeah, that was some hit you put on those guys.”
Like almost everyone else in town, Nurse Rosemeyer was a Bears fan.
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Write a couple of notes for you?”
“That, too. That first. One for George, one for Larry.”
Zeke expressed his regrets as best he could at the moment.
“I’ll see that Mr. Black and Mr. Monroe get your notes.”
“Thank you.”
“Was there something else you wanted me to do?”
Zeke tried to summon the thought that had occurred to him only a moment ago. It wasn’t easy. Aside from the throbbing ache of his entire body, one area felt particularly sore.
“This isn’t what I was thinking before, but can you bring me something for my stiff neck?”
“You’re wearing a neck brace,” the nurse told him.
Zeke opened his eyes, but he couldn’t tilt his head to see the brace, and he didn’t feel like exploring with his hands.
“Doctor’s orders,” Nurse Rosemeyer said.” Surgery looks likely. When you’re more lucid, the doctor will be in to have a long talk with you.”
“Surgery?” Zeke groaned at the thought, but the prospect of talking to a surgeon reminded him of what he’d wanted to ask a moment ago. “Can you send a shrink in to see me?”
“A psychologist?”
