“Friends,” Warner snorted. “There’s a quaint thought.”
“You don’t believe in friendship, Jeff? Are you that broken?”
“People are either useful or they’re not. When they’re no longer useful, you no longer need them, you get rid of them.”
“And Gunther was no longer useful? Eddie is no longer useful then?”
“Eddie is what he always is—a tool. Kyle’s been carrying his ass forever, burying this fuckup or that one. I carried his dumb ass too, getting all those restaurants open. You think Eddie was capable of any of that shit? Irv beat him into a mental mess. And Kyle? You think Kyle gets where he’s gotten to without me and all the shit I did for him and for the company? All the work I did to launch business after business for that ungrateful prick. And Kyle thought he could screw me out of my piece of it!” Warner screamed. “I don’t think so!”
“What did you do, Jeff?” Tori asked, spitting away some blood. “How is it Kyle screwed you?”
“I did all that work for Kyle. I set his ass up and negotiated all these deals for him, made him all his money. He’s a billionaire because of me.”
“Right,” Tori replied through a bloody smile. “Kyle had nothing to do with any of it. No brains. No smarts. No guile.”
Warner’s eyes narrowed as he pushed himself up off the stool, his muscles tensing. Tori readied herself for the strike.
It didn’t come.
“That’s bullshit, Tori!” he yelled, gesturing with the knife before walking in a slow circle around the cellar, his muscles tensed again, the anger in him rising. He stopped and looked her in the eye. “Tell me you don’t you get sick of Special Agents in Charge taking credit for all your work. You rescued that girl in Iowa and did you get any credit? Were you on the news? Did the press ask you any questions?”
“My reward was the girl being safe.”
“Give me a fucking break, Tori,” he replied bitterly. “You wanted the credit. You crave it.”
“No, I don’t,” Tori answered. “I wasn’t motivated by credit, I was motivated by what happened to me, by what you did to Jessie. I just wanted families to have their kids come back.”
“Oh, you’re sooooo selfless,” Warner mocked. “What a life it’s left you. Nothing but work. No husband, no children, no family, nothing but…loneliness.”
“I don’t regret my sacrifices. As a matter of fact, sitting here right now, knowing what fate awaits I’m proud of my life. You’re going to take what you’re going to take but you won’t take that.”
“You keep telling yourself that for what little time you have left here. But Kyle? He’d be nothing without me. He’d never be remotely close to where he is today without me.”
“You didn’t get anything out of the deal, Jeff? He didn’t make you any money?” Tori asked incredulously. “You’re a partner with a national law firm here in Manchester. You don’t seem to be living check to check from what I can tell. I’ve been to your house on the lake.”
“He paid my bills that I sent him, but his company, the millions—fuck, billions he was going to make? I set all that up for him, all of it. And I’m finally supposed to get a piece of it, but he takes it away because I got fresh with a secretary or two. Because I put my hands on Jerry Lash’s employee’s ass? That means I lose my stock, my money, my payday. Fuck no! Fuck no!”
“That explains Genevieve Lash. There was a reason you chose her,” Tori shook her head, looking away, thinking Braddock had been right to focus on her all along. “So that’s what this all is? An elaborate setup of the Mannions?”
“It’s part of it. I wanted to ruin them. I wanted to fuck them and then fuck you. Win. Win. It’s a clean sweep.”
“Is it, though?”
“What?”
“Have you ruined them? Now that you’ve taken me, that whole setup falls apart, doesn’t it?” Tori asked.
“That’s not an issue,” Warner replied confidently. “You found Anderson’s car on Eddie’s hunting property, didn’t you?”
Tori didn’t respond. She wanted him to keep talking.
“And what’s funny is, I bet before you did you had some doubts as to whether it was Eddie, didn’t you? At least, that’s what Westlund told us. He thought Eddie might have gotten you to have doubts. You couldn’t believe your childhood friend could have done that to your sister.”
“Turns out I was right.”
“And look what it got you. I mean, had you gone all in on Eddie today and arrested him, I might have let this little thing between you and I pass, at least for now. I could have come after you later but there was just enough doubt that I had to take you now and finish this off.”
Tori coughed and spit out more blood before turning her eyes to Warner, shaking her head in pity at him. “You always thought you were the smartest. You had that arrogance, the cockiness that you were superior, and you always wanted people to acknowledge it, to kiss the ring. But other people are smart, too. Kyle Mannion will figure this out. He’ll realize it wasn’t just Eddie at all those places, the records will show you were there, too. And it isn’t Eddie or Kyle Mannion who has me here. You do. They’ll both have alibis for tonight, you can count on it. Hell, we have twenty-four-hour surveillance on Eddie right now. You’ll get me tonight, sure, but your burning desire to beat me, to get your clean sweep is going to cost you the whole game. It’s only a matter of time before the Mannions and Braddock figure this all out.”
Tori kept her eyes on Warner, his expression twitching ever so slightly, a hint of doubt in his mind. He pushed himself up off his stool and paced around the room again, for once quiet, deep in thought, running the scenario through his head. After a moment he shook his head.
“Tori, you really, really disappointed me just now.”
“How so?”
“You haven’t lost your Minnesota DNA. That was such a wonderfully passive aggressive way of pleading for your life.”
Tori coughed up a laugh. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of that. I ain’t gonna beg.”
“Oh, I bet you will. Before I’m done you’ll beg me to end it. They all do,” Warner replied, gesturing at her with the large knife. “And let me tell you why you’re wrong. Sure, there will be some records of me in those towns, too. I did all that work, but for only half of the women will records show me being in those towns when the women disappeared. However, as you already know, and as I have made certain, for Eddie they show him always there. Eddie is my insurance policy.
“See, I don’t like to fly on that small corporate jet. For some reason it freaks me out. My solution then was to drive to most of these places. And then I’d make a point of leaving to come back here, but then I’d drive back to those towns and I’d take those women after the records show that I left town. Then I’d bring those women back here.”
Tori shook her head in dismay at the sick wickedness of it all.
“So, Tori, you’re wrong. Everyone is going to look at Kyle and Eddie when you’re gone, disappeared, vanished. Tomorrow when you’re under six feet of soil it’ll be obvious who is to blame. The Mannions will be the prime suspects, especially after I take out Braddock here in the next day or two. And this time I won’t miss him. Heck, to make it look truly awful, I’ll take out Braddock and his kid. Who would have more motive than the Mannions? The danger such an investigation poses to the company, the fortune, they’d do anything to protect it.”
“Nobody will believe that.”
“Yes, they will. I’ve seen to it.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, just insanely intelligent. I still have access to everything at the company. You know what else I have?”
“What?”
“I have two million in a Cayman Islands bank account that I’ve siphoned from the company and nobody knows about it. Nobody has or will detect it. The auditors go through the books year after year and nada. I’ve laundered that money with some other folks down there who know people who will kill if you ask the righ
t way and pay them. You think I haven’t already created the documentation and a money trail to a numbered account in Zurich? That money went to the account when? A week ago, two weeks after who came back to town for the first time in twenty years to investigate her sister’s disappearance? And that money is now gone. Collected by who? The person who will have killed Braddock. Or so it will appear.
“Now there is a little transaction I added back in, traceable in the company’s corporate records for those dollars and who’ll be at the company, overseeing discovery responses to the criminal investigation as corporate counsel? That’s right, me. I won’t make it easy. I’ll put up a big fight, but I will make sure that record is discovered. Kyle is worth over a billion. With so much to risk, they’ll see this record and know it was him. With all of that nobody will ever look to me, Tori, nobody. As good as you are, as good as I’ve discovered Braddock to be, you still are so far behind.”
Tori shook her head in disbelief at him.
“You see, Kyle isn’t that smart. And as for Braddock—” Warner laughed and gave a dismissive wave. “He’s good, far better than I thought, I will give you and him that. But honestly, Tori, I think all that sex you’ve been having with him has caused you to overestimate what he’s really capable of.”
“Have you been following me, Jeff?”
“Ohh…I could hear it the other night, Tori. I stood right below that bedroom window at Braddock’s lake house just feet away, listening to you two up there, you and Braddock carrying on with each other. Was it really that good? Tell me, Tori, is it the best you’ve ever had?”
“Like I’d give you the satisfaction. He’s a man, which is more than I can say for you.”
Warner leapt forward, slapping her across the face again, leaving her teetering on the edge of her chair before she tipped off and plummeted to the floor, contorting her body in the air to land on her right shoulder, letting it take the brunt of the fall.
Damn my smart mouth, Tori thought as she saw stars from the slap. Don’t fire back. Don’t push him that way. She needed to keep Warner going, keep him basking in the brilliance of his plans. There was plenty to ask him about and he was in love with his own brilliance. She had to keep using that.
“Why Katy?” Tori asked after a moment, looking up from the floor. “What happened to Katy?”
“Katy.” Jeff shook his head as he lifted her back up by her restraints and sat her down, this time more gently on the stool. “That was not a contingency I planned for, I can tell you that.”
“Why kill her? What did she do? She’s not your type.”
“You’re definitely right about that.”
“So why?”
“She left me no choice,” Jeff pleaded and then gestured to his right, to outside the cellar. “I’m out there burying Genevieve Lash and Katy comes waddling up the hill from down on County 48. Surprised the hell out of me, I’ll tell you that.”
“And you killed her, just like you’re going to kill me?”
“No. No, no, no,” Warner shook his head, “Not just like you. Not just like the others. Are you kidding me? Katy had no business being in this room. No, I just simply hit her in the head with a shovel and stuffed her in the trunk of her car.”
“The gate is up on the right,” Kyle directed.
“Gate?”
“Yeah, he has a big iron gate for the road up to the house,” Kyle replied. “I asked him about it once. He said it keeps people from driving up the road. Apparently, there was an issue with that once, someone breaking into the house, which I guess is in the same state it was when his mother died. He keeps it as some sort of shrine to her.”
“If I had nickel for every serial killer who had mommy issues.” Braddock sighed as he pulled to a stop where the edge of the driveway met the road. He peered up to his right and saw the iron gate ten yards up the driveway. “Besides the gate, what else do you know about the property?”
“There is the main two-story house at the top of the driveway, and then behind the house to the left down a narrow driveway that’s, I don’t know, fifty or sixty yards is where the little family cemetery is located,” Kyle answered. “There is a light pole out there and another small house.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“He likes guns. He shoots competitively and likes to hit gun shows. I know he owns an arsenal. He keeps a gun case down in the cellar of that little house by the cemetery. If he’s here with her, that’s where he’d have her. And if that’s where he has her, he’ll have guns at his disposal.”
“Wonderful.”
Braddock turned off the truck lights and pulled into the driveway and up to the gate. He got out of the truck and checked the iron gate. It was closed and locked but there was a small narrow gap between the two swinging halves that provided for some give. He ran back to the back of the truck and opened the rear tailgate. Kyle joined him, and Will handed him the shotgun. “You know how to use one of these?”
Kyle took the shotgun and chambered two shells. “I hunt, too. What do you need me to do?”
“Work your way west around to that little house, but maintain your cover in the woods,” Braddock answered while he released, checked and then slid the magazine back in his Glock and then grabbed two more magazines and stuffed them in his back pocket. “It might get a little sporty around here.”
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a minute and then I’m ramming this gate with lights and siren and going right up that driveway. If he’s down at the little house, I’m going to draw him away.”
“What am I doing?” Mannion asked.
“Finding Tori.”
Warner was starting to tire of the questions. The answers were shorter. His face less animated.
She could see the mounting hunger in his eyes, the craving for her, and then there was the aggressive, almost animal-like posture he was starting to assume. He’d started pacing around now, stalking around her slowly, lightly brushing her face with the knife, teasing her, making her wonder and anticipate when the assault would start. And then it would. Then when he was done, after he was good and satisfied and the domination complete the knife would be coming. She could feel the jagged edges of it now as Warner lightly grazed it down her cheek.
Tori just sat still, staring forward but one thing that had happened in the times he hit her and knocked her off the stool was that her restraints had loosened ever so slightly, especially around her ankles. If she was going to use that somehow, she needed to keep him in front of her.
Warner now stood in front of her, leering hungrily.
Tori avoided eye contact, staring straight ahead and then she darted her eyes slightly right and her heart skipped a beat. On the monitor on the workbench she could see a truck at the iron gate. A man got out of the truck.
It was Braddock.
She could tell by his height, his gait. He was testing the iron gate.
Tori flashed her eyes left, back to Warner, meeting his eyes for a moment. Keep him focused on you, she thought.
Warner moved in and she steadied herself, watching the knife, which he left hanging at his right side. Instead, with his left hand Warner grabbed the collar of her blouse and ripped it down, the buttons popping off, exposing her chest.
“So nice,” he murmured sickly, staring at her breasts. “Oh, so nice.”
Tori kept her face tilted down but her eyes slyly glanced back right again, looking at the monitor.
The truck, lights flashing, was coming fast, turning right into the driveway, charging the gate.
“I’m going to enjoy…”
There was a faint sound of a siren. Then the truck hit the gate and there was a loud distant crash.
Warner wheeled around at the sound, looking to the monitor.
Tori leapt off the stool and jumped forward, throwing her shoulder into the back of Warner, who was caught off balance. Her shove sent him staggering forward, crashing into the steps.
She managed to keep her balance. Still
on her feet, crouching with her knees bent, she angled her body, her left foot slightly forward.
Warner leapt up and charged her, leading with the knife.
Tori was ready for him, her knees bent, her legs coiled, up on her toes.
When he was two steps away she jumped back but kicked out and up with her legs, catching him with her feet, her heels, square in the sternum, the force of the kick sending him careening backward again, the knife flying out of his hand as he landed awkwardly against the left edge of the steps before crumpling down to the floor.
Tori rolled over on her right side.
Dazed yet raging, Warner pushed himself up to his feet and quickly searched for the knife, but he couldn’t find it. He quickly gave up the search and went for the gun case, opening the door.
Tori struggled to push herself up onto to her knees and with a grunt rocked up to her feet, keeping her eyes on Warner.
He’d pulled out an AR-15 and was slamming in a magazine.
Tori turned to the right, hopped once and dove forward for the top of the desk, landing on the slick top, sliding over and then crashing down the other side to the floor as the shots from Warner rained over top of her, hitting the cinderblock wall just above her and then into the metal desk.
“Will! Will! Will!”
The house was dark, but as he glanced to the left, he saw Tori’s rental car parked down at the little house that Kyle described. He sped forward and came to a screeching stop thirty-feet short of her car, with his driver’s side door open before he even stopped. He jumped out and heard her voice.
“Will! Will! Will!”
“Tori! Tori!”
He took two quick running steps forward before he saw movement at the door of the shed. “Oh shit!”
Warner appeared in the doorway. He had an assault rifle.
Braddock dove back and away as the hail of shots pelted the truck. He scrambled on all fours to the back of the truck as shattered glass rained down on him. Braddock worked his way around the backside and over to the rear passenger side and peeked around the corner.
Silenced Girls Page 41
