Jan Coffey Suspense Box Set: Three Complete Novel Box Set: Trust Me Once, Twice Burned, Fourth Victim

by Jan Coffey

  “You greedy little parasite, you won’t get a dime from me. Do you hear me? I had nothing to do with my wife’s disappearance. And I say there is nothing on that tape. As far as that letter goes, Arnold wrote it to incriminate me. Perhaps he killed my wife and Andrea Beck.”

  “As you wish,” Sarah said as she dropped the tape in her bag and rose to her feet. “I would advise both of you gentlemen to contact your lawyers. I’m turning these over to the authorities this morning. And Senator, I think your political career is about to come to a crashing—”

  By the time she saw North advancing with the gun in his hand, it was too late.

  A single shot rang out, and Sarah Rand fell back on the chair, her blood already staining the white silk suit.

  Chapter 33

  “What are you doing?” Paying no attention to the gun that was now pointed at him, Judge Arnold leaped to his feet to check on Sarah. “Call an ambulance—right away. There must still be time.”

  His hands covered with her blood, the judge looked back over his shoulder and found neither of the men moving.

  “Call for help, damn you!”

  He crossed quickly to desk and reached for the phone himself, but Rutherford tore it out of his hands. As he turned, the senator yanked him by the collar and pushed him roughly into a chair. Stunned, he stared up into the barrel of the pistol North was holding nervously. Rutherford actually frisked him.

  “You know I don’t carry a g—” A light went on. “You think I’m wired?”

  Rutherford nodded to Edward North, and the younger man tucked the gun into his pocket before moving to check on Sarah.

  “She is clean,” North said a minute later. “No wires that I can see.”

  The senator looked at her. “Is she alive?”

  “I think…barely.”

  “Get the tape out of her bag. Check it out.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” the judge barked at his old partner. “There is no way you can push this one under the rug.”

  “You’d be amazed what I can get away with these days.”

  Arnold shook his head in disbelief. “How could I have been so stupid? I actually believed you that day. You told me it was an accident and I believed you.”

  “With her big mouth and her ambitions, Julia was an accident waiting to happen. She was good for that connection with the blue-collar crowd, so I had to put up with her. My mistake was in doing it myself. She asked for it, you know. Threatening me…asking all those questions about my contribution list, always wanting more. That day in Philadelphia, she went too far.” Rutherford’s face was hard and bitter. “She asked for it, and she got it.”

  “And what about Andrea? She worshipped the ground you walked on. She would never in a thousand years—”

  “One of the plagues of my existence—” He glanced over at Sarah. “—is to be surrounded by ambitious women. It would have been just a matter of time before Andrea tried to dig her nails into me, too. She was high risk. She had to go.”

  Rutherford walked to his desk and picked up the phone, dialing a number. On the other side of the room, North pulled a cassette player out of a side drawer and inserted the tape he’d taken out of Sarah’s handbag. Listening through an ear piece, he pressed a button on the machine, never taking his eyes off the judge and the senator.

  Rutherford spoke into the phone. “We’re finished at this end…Yes, as we planned. Of course…” The senator looked at Sarah. “Listen, it’s the judge’s regular boating day, and I think he can’t wait to get back out on the water after his time behind bars. Yes, she’s going with him…sort of a ‘kiss and make up’ excursion, except that they aren’t coming back. Understand?”

  “I don’t understand you.” Arnold tried to push himself to his feet.

  “Good.” Rutherford, still holding the phone to his ear, pushed the judge back into the chair. “They need to be picked up here. Of course I want you to do it yourself. Yes, just step on it. We’ll be here.”

  “Is this worth it, Gordon? Is it worth killing so many people, worth the price of this monstrous chain of corruption, just for a Senate seat?”

  Rutherford’s face broadened into a smile as he looked at his old partner. “Don’t make me laugh. There is no difference between us, Charles. You and I are the same.”

  “Bull.”

  “Say what you want. We’ve just set different goals for ourselves.” He stood over the judge. “My goal is within sight. The presidency is only an election or two away. You, on the other hand, just think of the way you’ve always controlled Avery. And why? You couldn’t wait to get your grubby claws on her money. On Hal’s money. And I think you loved running his life, making him beg.”

  “There’s a limit to how far I will go to get what I want.”

  “Recognizing that you have a limit means recognizing that you’re a loser, Charles.” Rutherford moved toward North and the tape cassette. “I have no intention of living my life like it’s some kind of slow death.”

  He cast a half glance at Sarah, and the blood that was staining his chair. He came to a sudden stop, scrutinizing the figure of the woman in the chair. He saw her body twitch once from the wound. Her hand was lying against the spot where the blood flow was now slowing.

  “Edward.”

  The other man lowered the ear piece.

  “Anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then come and finish this first.” Rutherford moved behind the chair and grabbed a fistful of Sarah’s hair in one hand. “Finish this.”

  He pulled her hair until her head lay against the back of the chair. His eyes narrowed as he noticed the color rising in her skin. He felt for the pulse on her throat.

  “What the hell…?”

  Sarah opened her eyes and stared up at him. “Bastard.”

  Two dozen police officers, FBI agents, and Justice Department officials burst into the room. Swarming in from the terraced lawns and through the house, they surrounded the senator in an instant, forcing him against the wall. Before he could even open his mouth to voice a complaint, an agent was cuffing his hands behind his back and reading him his rights.

  Across the room, Edward North and the judge were talking to Agent Hinckey and watching the proceedings. Dan Archer helped Sarah to her feet, but she could only stare at Gordon Rutherford with a look of disgust.

  As the officers prepared to take the senator out of the library, the judge approached him, ignoring his old friend’s glare.

  “I guess recognizing a limit can have its advantages.”

  ~~~~

  The entire estate was crawling with police cars and rescue squads. There were people everywhere, and Sarah couldn’t wait to get away.

  The agents who had come to her condo this morning to help her with the body suit had told her that there would be additional help inside the mansion. Until it actually happened, though, Sarah hadn’t guessed that Edward North would be that help.

  The cool she’d maintained throughout the ordeal was suddenly gone. She could feel intense weariness, and she only wanted to escape.

  A medic checked Sarah before she was even allowed out of the library. In the entrance foyer of the mansion, a female police officer loaned her a blue jacket with NPD in large yellow letters across the back and a matching cap. Grateful for them, Sarah went to the bathroom and changed out of the blood-stained jacket and shirt, removing the apparatus that had produced the effect of the bloody gunshot wound. Her pants were soiled with the fake blood, too, but she was too tired to worry about perfection.

  Outside of the bathroom, Archer was waiting for her. The detective’s greeting was uncharacteristically enthusiastic, though she wouldn’t call the look on his face a smile exactly. She could understand. This was probably the biggest collar of his life, and he was obviously thankful for her help. She thought for a moment that he was going to hug her.

  “Well, you’ve certainly had a brilliant week, I’d say.” She handed him the apparatus. “First, Billy Hamil
ton and now this.”

  He nodded, and his face resumed its customary lack of expression.

  “Ms. Rand, I’d appreciate it very much if you could come down to the station sometime today. We have about a mountain of paperwork that we need to complete.”

  “Sure.” The two of them walked toward the front door. “I just need to get home and change, then I’ll be there.”

  “Thanks again,” he told her by the door. “And I guess this is as good a time as any to apologize for whatever…ahh, difficulties…you and I might have had in the past.”

  She knew he was talking about the Hamilton case. “Apology accepted. Congratulations on that arrest.”

  “We never let up on our efforts to get the son of a—well, you know.”

  She nodded, but as she turned to go, the detective stopped her.

  “Please give my regards to Mr. Dean.” Archer actually smiled. “Off the record and just for your information, I knew you were there in his apartment when I went through it last Thursday morning.”

  “You did?”

  “You were in the closet. That was the only place I didn’t check.”

  “And what makes you so certain that I was there at all?”

  “Your appointment book was lying open on the end table. For the two weeks prior, I’d been eating, sleeping, breathing and reading everything that pertained to Sarah Rand. Recognizing your handwriting was nothing.”

  “Just like the detective in…” She paused. “What was that movie? Laura?”

  Archer colored. “Aha. Except in the movie, the handsome detective gets the girl in the end, not the movie star.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t say that. One word of this to my wife and you’ll find me floating in the harbor.”

  Sarah was actually smiling by the time she got outdoors and made her way past the line of official vehicles choking the drive.

  A police officer let her through the barricade they’d set up to hold back the curious onlookers and the media. Pulling her hat down over her eyes, Sarah pushed past them without incident. A half block down Bellevue, she was just thinking that she could have asked for a ride home when a car slowed down in the street.

  “Need a ride, Sarah?”

  “I sure do.”

  Stepping out from between two parked cars, she climbed in without thinking twice.

  ~~~~

  Owen watched Sarah get into the charcoal-gray Lincoln two cars in front of him and instead of parking his car on the street as he’d originally intended, pulled immediately back into the traffic, trailing the other car.

  Following his instincts, he reached for the phone and dialed Newport police. Quickly, he introduced himself and asked to be connected with Captain Archer, explaining that it was urgent.

  Yesterday, Owen had sat down with Agent Hinckey and Archer, this time hitting it off much better with the police captain than he had in their earlier meetings. Archer had had one of his people contact Owen this morning to tell him that the operation was completed, and that he could come and pick up Sarah.

  A moment later, Archer came on line.

  “Have you arrested all your suspects? Are there any loose cannons out there?”

  “My boss thinks I’m the only loose cannon around here. Where are you? I thought you were coming for Ms. Rand.”

  “I was, but it seems someone else beat me to it.” Owen ran a yellow light to keep up with the Lincoln, still two cars ahead of him. “Do you have everyone? Are all the heads accounted for?”

  “We just traced the last call that Rutherford made. We’ve identified the last suspect we need to pick up.”

  “With all due respect for your procedures, would you tell me if your suspect drives a late-model, charcoal-gray Lincoln…I can’t give you the license plate from here.”

  There was a second’s pause on the line.

  “Yes he does. What’s going on? Are you following him?”

  “I am. And he has Sarah with him.”

  ~~~~

  She felt as if she was babbling on, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  In just a few minutes, she had not only thanked him profusely for the ride and for his help, but also had given him a quick rundown of the events this morning. Everything would be on all major news stations before the day was half-over, anyway, she’d decided.

  “From the way I understand it, the Justice Department has had Senator Rutherford under investigation for some time, for campaign fraud and for possible connections to some organized-crime families. Now, murder was—”

  Sarah stopped midsentence as the Lincoln made the wrong turn off Bellevue.

  “If it’s out of your way to drop me at my apartment, I can just get out here and take a cab for the rest of the way. Or I could walk. It’s really not that far from here.”

  “No, it’s not out of my way at all.” Evan Steele replied, making another turn and heading in the opposite direction of her condo.

  Sarah felt a sudden chill settle in the pit of her stomach. “Do you have to make a stop anywhere first?”

  “No.”

  She glanced out the window as the car picked up speed on the narrow road. “You do remember where I live?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why are you heading this way?”

  He gave her a glance. “What’s wrong? You don’t like the scenic route?”

  She saw something in the eyes—and she knew. The truth poured on her like ice water.

  “What were you doing in front of Rutherford’s house, Evan?”

  “Just driving by.” His eyes never left the road. The car ran a yellow light and turned onto America’s Cup Avenue, heading north.

  Sarah tried to jog her memory regarding what she knew about the man. She couldn’t come up with much. He’d been in the service at one point or another in his life, and she always thought of him as a security expert who had started his own company years ago. But as far as the person behind the face, she knew nothing.

  Downtown, the traffic was bad, but Steele maneuvered through it. By the visitor’s center, three lines of cars suddenly came to a halt, but he swerved up onto a sidewalk, cutting around the stopped cars.

  “If you wouldn’t mind letting me out at the next corner, I have some errands that I need to run in town.”

  The next corner was history before she could even finish the sentence.

  The car took a sharp left at the end of the street, and Sarah clutched at the door handle to keep herself steady.

  “It was you Rutherford called, wasn’t it?”

  There was no answer.

  “You were going to take the judge and me to his boat.” Again, only silence.

  “You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you? Then, damn it, at least give me an answer.”

  He sped onto the ramp for Newport Bridge.

  “It figures Rutherford would pick someone like you to do his dirty work for him. Someone smart. Someone who has all kinds of connections with mercenaries. With people who’ll do anything for money. He had you hire those two killers. You made all the arrangements. Well, guess what? You’re the one who will show up on the books as the responsible party for all these murders. He’ll walk away scot-free, and you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.”

  Steele frowned as he was forced to slow the car on the bridge. Traffic ahead was moving at a crawl.

  “He has already been arrested, you know. Evan, this is your chance to turn yourself in. You could make a deal with the D.A. Ike Bosler wants to nail Rutherford so badly that he’d agree to anything. You can help him put the senator behind bars.”

  The line of cars came to a complete stop at the top of the bridge. There were no cars coming in the opposite direction, either. Steele veered the car to the left so he could see the reason for the hold up. From his scowl, it was obvious that he couldn’t see much.

  “What are you going to do to me?” she pressed.

  His continuing silence was beginning to play on her nerves.

  “I mean,
if you’re going to kill me, why don’t you just shoot me in the head or throw me off the bridge right here. Let’s just be done with it. I’m no use to you.” Sarah reached quickly for the door handle, but his fingers closed around her throat, and he pushed her back against the seat. His thumb pressed against her windpipe, and Sarah felt her head about to explode.

  “I’ve had it with all your talking. Now, sit there and listen. You got into my car. Bad mistake. Don’t worry, you’re going to get what’s coming to you—but when I’m ready.”

  She clawed at his grip, and he eased up only enough for her to let out a gasp.

  “After all the trouble you’ve caused me, I’d have no problem breaking your neck right here and dumping your body on the road on my way north. Or maybe you can behave yourself, and I’ll let you live a day or two before I decide a good way to turn you into some cash.” His grip tightened again around her windpipe. “Which is it, Sarah? Will you shut up or not?”

  She felt her lungs burning. Her fingers tried to push his hand away. She tried to nod her head.

  He eased his hold again. “What’ll it be, Sarah?”

  She nodded.

  When he pulled his hand away, she reached up to touch her neck. Her throat felt bruised and raw. She could barely force the air in and out. It took a few long moments before she could take a decent breath.

  Sarah saw him unlock and push the driver’s door open. He stood with one foot on the ground, peering at the traffic jam ahead of him. Her own door remained locked.

  She didn’t know how she gathered the strength, but she swung her legs up and delivered a solid kick with both feet to his hip, almost knocking him down. Steele took two or three steps sideways to regain his balance, and that was all the time Sarah needed to scramble out the open door.

  He dived after her, but Sarah leapt out of his reach, landing on the hood of the car behind them. Rolling to the other side, she hammered desperately on the window asking for help. The young woman behind the wheel slammed down the lock on her door and shrank back. Sarah glanced over her shoulder and saw Evan Steele standing a foot away.