They broke from the tree line, and she pointed to a wreck of an old, two-story building. He squinted at a weathered sign above the loading dock. “Samsons’ Manufacturing,” he read aloud. “Founded 1889. Wheelwrights.”
“I like gritty, hard, incongruous. Industrial Revolution meets Norman Rockwell. Oliver Twist meets Pride and Prejudice.”
Shaw pulled out his phone and took a picture. “I’ll compare your painting to the original. I read about the layering, how the final painting is just a reflection of the first sketch.”
“You did? Really?” Her voice was soft, as she stared at the structure intently. “Inside’s even better. Come on.”
They climbed the stairs to the loading dock, mindful of the rotting wood. She followed Shaw through the open doorway and he found himself in a large, dimly lit factory space, aromatic of mold and of chemicals he couldn’t identify. As his eyes grew accustomed to the faint illumination—from a gap where a skylight used to be—he saw that the area was largely bare except for some ancient machine mounts, gears, and narrow-gauge rails for transporting gondolas.
As they walked, Shaw looked out a window—also missing its panes—to a weed-filled parking lot. He stopped walking. He saw a car.
Ron Matthews’s black Mercedes.
Shaw saw something else too. Eyes now accustomed to the dimness, he looked at the two other occupants of the factory. One was Matthews himself, gagged and bound with duct tape. His red face was distorted by fear, eyes wide as he desperately sucked air through his nostrils. The other man, crouching over Matthews to check the gag, was David Goodwin, the gallery owner who’d directed Shaw to Muncie. His eyes wide with shock and dismay.
Shaw ignored him for the moment and turned to see what he now guessed he would: Evelyn Fontaine, holding in a latex-gloved hand her husband’s black Glock, pointed at Shaw’s chest.
And the odds that Evelyn Fontaine was conspiring with David Goodwin to murder her husband: one hundred percent.
* * *
—
“The hell’s he doing here?” Goodwin said in a furious whisper.
“It’s all right, dear,” Fontaine answered calmly.
Goodwin stammered, “But, Evie . . . I mean, it’s not what we talked about.” The words trickled out cautiously. He was afraid of making her mad.
Shaw noted that the two of them were ignoring Matthews, who was moaning and thrashing on the floor. Shaw now saw that his arms and legs were not duct-taped directly on the cloth, nor was the tape applied to his mouth. Goodwin had first wrapped the man with what looked like plastic wrap, presumably so that no suspicious adhesive from the tape would be found by the police.
Cable TV had taught the world how to beat forensics.
“We need to add just another piece or two,” said Fontaine, the voice of reason. “Otherwise, it won’t work.”
Goodwin shot a contemptuous nod toward Matthews. “I said I’d help. After all he did to you. But this guy?” Now Shaw got the nod. “No, Evelyn . . .”
“It has to be done right,” she said, untroubled by his distress. “Unless you want to go to prison forever.”
“But, honey, you didn’t . . . you didn’t say anything.”
Fontaine’s plan was impressive; Shaw had to give her that. After convincing Goodwin to help her kill Matthews, they would wait for a fall guy—a PI, or, as it turned out, a reward seeker named Colter Shaw—to search for the “missing” Fontaine. In the course of the investigation, he’d find Goodwin, who would direct him to Muncie. Goodwin would then kidnap Matthews—and steal his gun—and deposit him in the Samsons’ factory. Fontaine would then trick Shaw here, as well.
To the police, the ensuing double homicide would have a simple explanation: Matthews, enraged by his philandering wife, had come to the retreat to kill her. Trying to protect the artist, Shaw had been fatally wounded, but grabbed the gun and killed Matthews before dying.
Tidy.
“She’d need a third party to pull the trigger,” Shaw said to Goodwin. “A wife killing her husband? She’d be suspect number one, even if she claims abuse.”
The poor, balding man looked horrified. “Isn’t there some other way? There has to be.”
“Dave, come on. You’ve already kidnapped Ron. And Shaw knows everything now. We can’t exactly let him live, can we?”
“But . . . I just didn’t . . .”
“You’re being used, Goodwin.”
Then, to Shaw’s dismay, another voice was calling, “Evie? You in there? Did what you asked. I’ve got Colter’s car outside. What’s with the Mercedes?”
It was Jason Barnes. Fontaine would have told him to bring the rental to the Samsons’ factory. And it was obvious why.
We just need to add another piece or two . . .
Barnes would be the second piece.
Ignoring the gun, Shaw shouted, “Jason, run! Get out of here. And call the cops!”
“What?” came the amused voice.
“Don’t do it,” Shaw said firmly to Fontaine. “It’s pointless now. I’ve—”
Barnes entered the factory, and before he could even squint to adjust his eyes to the dark, Fontaine shot him twice in the head. He dropped like a wet rag.
Shaw closed his eyes briefly. No . . .
Goodwin gasped. “My God. What’ve you done?”
Like a lecturing high school teacher, she said, “You’re in the jam jar all the way now, Dave, so let’s be strong. Can you be strong?” Still keeping the gun pointed at Shaw, she stepped to her husband and wiped her right hand on his and his sleeve. She’d be transferring the GSR, gunshot residue, to him, to make the police believe he’d been the shooter. It was the first thing they look for.
Cable TV, again.
Goodwin gasped, “But how . . . How could you do this?”
“Because,” Shaw said, “the script called for Ron to kill the man he thought was her lover, to make it credible.”
Evelyn Fontaine was clearly growing impatient. “Let’s get this over with, somebody might’ve heard the shot.”
Layering . . . The whole plot was like one of her paintings, the truth hidden, distorted, under coats and coats of pigment. Russian nesting dolls came to mind.
She now crouched once more, getting into a position from which to shoot Shaw.
Well, can’t wait any longer, Shaw thought. He spoke firmly. “David Goodwin and Evelyn Fontaine have just murdered Jason Barnes and are about to murder Ronald Matthews in the Samsons’ wheelwright building outside of Muncie, Indiana. Off Route 83. The time is approximately three p.m. on August thirty-first.” He didn’t mention himself as the other potential victim, not wanting to clutter the narrative.
With quick glances toward each other, the two remained motionless, a frown weighing down Goodwin’s face, while Evelyn’s was wary.
Shaw explained, “I knew before we got here this was a setup.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped.
“Goodwin, you told me you hadn’t spoken to Evelyn since June but you also knew she and Jason were going to the retreat in Muncie.” His eyes swung from Goodwin to Fontaine. “If she met Jason only a month ago, in Schaumburg, how could you know about him?”
Fontaine blinked and turned toward Goodwin, who looked stricken. “You did what?” she raged. “Why did you say anything about Jason?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
Shaw said, “I knew something seemed off. Felt like I was being played. Those texts I sent? And the picture of the factory? They went to my private investigator on the East Coast, who forwarded everything to the county sheriff here. They’re on their way now.”
Goodwin muttered, “Oh, Jesus. What’ve I done?”
“Shut up,” Fontaine snarled.
“We’re screwed,” Goodwin whispered. “Don’t you understand that?”
“He’s bluf
fing.” To Shaw: “Let me see your goddamn phone. Unlock it and give it to Dave. I want to see the texts. Now!”
Shaw, eyes on the Glock, carefully offered the unit to Goodwin, as Fontaine stepped to the side and raised the gun toward Shaw’s head, moving closer, though still keeping a safe distance from him.
Goodwin eased in. “Are you covering him?”
“Get the damn phone.”
Then both Fontaine and Goodwin cocked their heads when sirens wailed in the distance.
That tiny distraction was enough for Shaw. He grabbed Goodwin’s arm and spun him around, a shield, then charged forward. Goodwin was a big man but weak; he didn’t resist. Together, they plowed into Fontaine. The gun discharged, the slug hitting the wall above them, sending a faint rain of red brick granules down upon them.
In a smooth sweep, Shaw yanked the gun from the woman’s hand. He backed quickly away, dropped the magazine a few inches, to make sure there were rounds in the weapon, and snapped it back into place. He then lifted the black, boxy pistol toward them.
Shaw blinked as an unearthly wailing scream poured from Fontaine’s throat. “No, no, no!” The petite woman had dropped to her knees on the floor, rocking back and forth hysterically.
He supposed that the bullet had in fact struck her. Keeping the muzzle aimed her way, he carefully circled so he could find the wound and assess how serious it was. But he saw no blood.
She looked up at him, and her violet eyes were those of the rabid wild dog that had made its way onto the Compound one March. Fontaine held her hand up toward him and raged, “My finger! Look what you did!” It was the index digit of her right hand, which had been on the trigger.
Her painting hand.
“You broke it,” she howled. “You broke it, you broke it, you broke it . . .”
* * *
—
“I surely do apologize, sir,” the sheriff was saying.
He was a solid, calm man of about fifty, and, with an impressive mustache, he looked like a Texas Ranger, or at least what central casting thought a Texas Ranger should look like (Shaw enjoyed Westerns too, in addition to noir).
They were in the parking lot of the wheelwright factory.
Samsons’ Manufacturing . . .
Did the plural apostrophe signify father and offspring? Or siblings, à la the Ball Brothers? Whatever the family configuration, Shaw bet that never in a million years would they have guessed that their products would morph into the thousand-dollar Pirellis mounted on the Mercedes-AMG, presently quarantined by yellow police tape in the front drive of their establishment.
Shaw asked why the apology.
“We didn’t get here as timely as we hoped. Our dispatcher got your private eye’s call? With the information about the old Samson place? Delia’s a peach, she is. Could be a deputy herself but for the joints. Arthritis. So anyways. The units she called were the nearest, but they weren’t near, if you see what I’m saying. They were off on some wild-gander chase, a meth deal gone bad. I say ‘gander’ because the granddaughter always correcting. Have to be attentive to such things nowadays.”
He then grew somber. “Weren’t in time for that poor fellow, Barnes. He just walked in, wrong place, wrong time, hmm?”
“No. Evelyn asked him back, knowing she was going to kill him. It was part of her plan.”
“My word.”
“How’s Ron?” Shaw asked.
Matthews was presently in the back of an ambulance parked at the other end of the lot.
“That man is not a happy one, I will tell you. Learning his pretty little love puppy was going to kill him? But physically he’ll be right as a turkey that can still gobble on Black Friday . . . So, Shaw, I looked into you. Seems you’ve done this sort of thing before. What’re your thoughts? She wanted to kill him ’cause Matthews was abusive? I checked and didn’t find a single report.”
“No. She spun that story to trick Goodwin and Barnes into helping. And to get me to trust her. Femmes fatales generally seduce with sex; she went for sympathy.” He then offered a hypothesis about the insurance. “All she cared about, more than anything else, was painting. The rules didn’t apply when it came to that.”
He told the sheriff about the juvie cases—stealing art supplies, when she was a kid.
“Anything to sustain her. Living with Ron was okay when he was rich. But Matthews’ company was going under. No more trips to Paris. She hated working even part-time and he’d probably want her to go to work full. That’d interfere with her vision.”
“Vision? Heaven forbid,” Foote said sardonically. “What about Goodwin?”
“Pawn.”
“She had her hand on his tiller, you might say?”
Shaw liked this man. He nodded. “Guarantee she’ll turn evidence and blame him for the whole thing. But you’ve got your witness.”
“You.”
“And the forensics. And you can get a psych workup. I’ve had experience with sociopaths. She’s a classic example. She lived with three other men. She might’ve been thinking of trying the same thing with them—a meal ticket—but I’d guess they wanted prenups or just saw through her.”
The actual motive, however, was one for the prosecutor to wrestle with.
Foote spotted the state police crime scene van pulling up and excused himself.
Shaw spotted Ron Matthews stepping from the ambulance and walking up to the yellow tape surrounding his car, in whose trunk he would have spent a harrowing two hours after Goodwin kidnapped him.
Shaw joined him. Neither spoke for a moment. Matthews stared at the sedan.
“You know the AMG story, Colter?”
“I don’t.”
He was a camper-and-motorcycle guy pretty much exclusively.
“Started in the sixties, the company did, making racing engines. Founded by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher. That’s the A and M. The G is for Grossaspach, Aufrecht’s hometown. Mercedes bought them. I always aspired to sell them. I could’ve gone places with a Mercedes dealership. Was my favorite car in the world.”
Colter nodded. He had nothing to add, knowing he was listening to the ramblings of a man talking himself through the first moments of grief.
“I’m dumping it,” Matthews said then. “Getting something different. Can’t afford the lease anyway. Colter, be honest. You think Evie had . . . had this in mind all along?” He couldn’t bring himself to say “killing me.”
Shaw didn’t share his earlier thoughts. “That’d be quite the elaborate plan.”
“I suppose it would be.” He took a kernel of comfort from Shaw’s words. The man wiped away a tear, making no bones about it this time. Then cleared his throat. “I owe you that reward. The ten.”
“There’s no hurry.” Which meant two things. First, there was no hurry. And, second, yes, you do owe me that ten, even if things didn’t turn out like you’d hoped.
“What’s next for you?” Matthews asked.
Shaw had personal business in Berkeley, California. Some unfinished matters about his father. But he said only that he was going to the West Coast for a while.
“We went to the Getty once,” Matthews said, “Evie and me. California, Malibu. Flew there on a whim on a private jet. They had one painting I liked. Out of everything, only one painting. Can you believe it?” A sigh. “My father sold lawn mowers. Reconditioned. I moved up to forklifts and platforms. Your father? He into this reward thing too?”
Colter Shaw, a man who rarely smiled, smiled now. “No.”
Matthews wiped his brow with his sleeve. He seemed to notice for the first time his clothing was torn and filthy.
Shaw said, “I’m not leaving till the morning. I can give you a ride back to Indianapolis.”
“Could use that, thanks.”
“My rental car’s around here somewhere.” Shaw scanned the weedy lot and
spotted the Toyota, parked beneath a maple whose leaves were dusty and going late-summer pale.
“Don’t know if you’re interested,” Shaw said, “but I could use some food.”
“I guess.”
“Chinese?”
Matthews uttered a faint laugh. “Sure. Let’s try it again.”
AND NOW, TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCERPT OF DEAVER’S NEW NOVEL, THE NEVER GAME
When Colter Shaw learns of a reward for a missing college student in the Silicon Valley, he takes the job. The investigation draws him into the dark heart of the billion-dollar video gaming industry. All of the clues soon point to one video game, in which the player has to survive after being left abandoned. With a madman bringing the game to life, Shaw has to stop him before he strikes again—and before he figures out that Shaw is on his trail.
Level 3: The Sinking Ship
Sunday, June 9
Sprinting toward the sea, Colter Shaw eyed the craft closely.
The forty-foot derelict fishing vessel, decades old, was going down by the stern, already three-fourths submerged.
Shaw saw no doors into the cabin; there would be only one and it was now underwater. In the forward part of the superstructure, still above sea level, was a window facing onto the bow. The opening was large enough to climb through but it appeared sealed. He’d dive for the door.
He paused, reflecting: Did he need to?
Shaw looked for the rope mooring the boat to the pier; maybe he could take up slack and keep the ship from going under.
There was no rope; the boat was anchored, which meant it was free to descend thirty feet to the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
And, if the woman was inside, take her with it to a cold, murky grave.
Captivated Page 4
