A Promise to Protect (Logan Point Book #2): A Novel

by Patricia Bradley

  Two hundred AR-15 rifles with no serial numbers sat boxed in a corner of the ceramics warehouse with a hold order on them. Tuesday evening after the lines closed down and everyone left, he would load the boxes on the truck. This was the most dangerous part of the operation. If anyone questioned him, he had a ready answer—a rush order came in and he couldn’t find anyone else to load it. But there was always the chance something could go wrong at any stage.

  Just thinking about the guns sitting in plain view sent a surge of blood racing through his body. Just like it had when he was a teenager and walked through the doors of a department store with no intention of paying for what he walked out with. It hadn’t been about needing a watch or any other item. It had been about getting away with it, and not once had he been caught.

  Until Tony. That had been a piece of bad luck. On a day that his own computer had been down, Armero used Tony’s to access his Switzerland account and thought he’d erased all traces of activity. His heart almost stopped when Tony showed him the web address that popped up on his screen and asked who’d been using his computer.

  Even though Tony seemed to buy his answer, he had not gotten this far taking anything for granted. He downloaded the spyware onto Tony’s smartphone and viewed the company security videos daily, which paid off when he saw Tony download data from his computer onto a flash drive. When he froze the screen and zoomed in on the computer monitor, the Switzerland website was up. Then the phone calls to Ben Logan. Armero had known he had to get that flash drive. Even if it took killing Tony to get it.

  Except Tony didn’t have it on him at the hotel, and three weeks later he still didn’t know where the drive was. Hopefully burned to a crisp in the house fire. But he couldn’t count on that. If the drive still existed, it was probably in Leigh Somerall’s possession. She could have it and not even realize it. He needed insurance. He needed to put enough fear in her so that if she found it, she’d be afraid to take it to the sheriff.

  It was time to give her another call and mention the flash drive this time.

  By Wednesday morning Ben was no closer to solving the mystery of who’d been setting the fires or who set the snakes loose in the park. He tapped his pen on the desk. Six crimes in a month, and only one definitely solved with Billy Wayne’s death and the discovery of the Sub-2000 in his saddlebags. Not good results. He dialed Livy. “I don’t suppose you’ve gotten a ballistics report back on the bullet you found or the .38 Smith and Wesson?”

  “Nada. The crime lab has a backlog of cases, but I’ll call and see if I can rush them.”

  He disconnected as his dispatcher stuck her head in his office.

  “What is it, Maggie?”

  “Ruby Gresham is at the front desk, asking to see you.”

  “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “No. Do you want to see her?”

  Not really. Every time he saw the poor woman, he thought of the boy who drowned. “Yes.”

  A minute later Tommy Ray’s mother stood in front of his desk. Today she was dressed in what he thought was probably her Sunday best. White shirt and black pants. She wasted no time in getting to the point of her visit.

  “I’ve been hearing how my boy shot that Jackson fellow.” She pressed her lips in a thin line and leveled her gaze at Ben, steel glinting in her blue eyes.

  Ben put down his pen and closed the report. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Gresham?”

  “Ain’t staying that long. Everybody says Jackson got kilt around eight o’clock.” She pulled an envelope from her purse and threw it on Ben’s desk. “Iffen he was in Memphis killing that man, then how did he get a ticket here in Logan Point at the same time?”

  Ben leaned forward and picked up the envelope. Inside was an Automated Red Light Enforcement ticket, complete with a photo of a motorcyclist running the red light at the intersection of Highway 72 and Reynolds Road. The time stamped on the ticket was 20:10:05. Ten after eight. The same night and about the same time Ben had entered the Peabody and ridden the elevator to the fifth floor. It was a forty-minute drive from the hotel to that intersection, ruling out any possibility that Billy Wayne could have been Tony’s shooter . . . if he was the cyclist.

  The ticket indicated the green Kawasaki belonged to Billy Wayne, and it certainly looked like the same one that he’d wrapped around a tree on Highway 310, but the tinted shield on the silver and black helmet made it impossible to identify the rider. “How can you be sure this is Billy Wayne? The racing suit, the helmet, it’s hard to tell who’s on the bike.”

  “That there ticket says it was his. And I know my boy. I would recognize him anywhere. ’Sides, that bike was new, and nobody rode it but him. He didn’t shoot that Jackson man, but somebody wants you to think he did.” Her eyes narrowed. “I want you to find out who’s trying to make my boy out to be worse than he was, Sheriff. You owe me that.”

  Her words stung. He squared his shoulders. “I will, Mrs. Gresham. I will.”

  Two hours later, Ben leaned back in his chair. Wade sat across from him. Ben ran his thumb back and forth along his jaw as Taylor Martin turned from the whiteboard where she’d been writing. This afternoon, the willowy brunette had opted again for casual with blue jean capris and her hair in a ponytail. On the board, she’d listed the crimes—Tony’s murder, the ransacking of his house, and the shooting the next morning, the torching of the house, the snakes on the ball field, and finally, the criminal justice center fire.

  “Six crimes, one of them solved, possibly more, when Billy Wayne overshot the curve on Highway 310.” Taylor drew a bracket around the first three crimes. “Before you called this morning with the information about the traffic ticket, I already had problems with these three being committed by the same person. Let’s start with Tony’s murder. How did the shooter know where Tony would be the night he was killed?”

  She nodded at Ben. “According to your notes, Tony thought someone might be after him, and he was paranoid about calling you on a phone that could be bugged, so it stands to reason, he’d make sure no one followed him to the Peabody. In all likelihood, whoever shot him arrived at the hotel before Tony did. Did he call you and give you the room number?”

  Ben nodded. “I was tied up in a traffic jam when he called with the room number.”

  Wade leaned forward. “I bet whoever killed him downloaded the same kind of spyware on his phone that’s on mine.”

  Taylor nodded. “Which means the person knew Tony was meeting with Ben that night at the Peabody.”

  “And even the room number,” Ben said. “Who could get access to his phone?”

  Wade said, “From what I know of Tony, he didn’t trust anyone, and I sure don’t see him leaving his cell lying around.”

  A strand of hair had worked its way out of Taylor’s ponytail, and she hooked it behind her ear. “For someone who knows what they’re doing, spyware only takes a couple of minutes to install. All Tony would have to do is leave his phone on his desk or a table while he went to the men’s room or to get a cup of coffee. If a spy program was used, the program will be on the host phone as well. Did you recover a cell phone on Gresham?”

  “Not in one piece.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Can the program be erased from the host phone?”

  Taylor shrugged. “Forensics could probably find it, but I feel certain if someone downloaded the spyware on Tony’s phone, they would have gotten rid of their phone. I only asked about Gresham because he might not have had time to get rid of his. Did Tony have a girlfriend?”

  Wade chuckled. “According to gossip, more than I can count until about a month or so ago when he started attending church with his nephew.” He looked at Ben. “I think you talked with one of them—Tiffany, the receptionist at Maxwell Industries.”

  Taylor picked up a folder and glanced through it. “I don’t see a mention of a cell phone in his personal effects.”

  “He didn’t have one on him, just like he didn’t have the flash drive he talked about whe
n he called.” Ben massaged the knotted muscles in his neck. “I think I need to take another drive out to Maxwell Industries. Do you think Billy Wayne was capable of putting spyware on Tony’s phone? They’d spent time together, and Billy had lost a couple of grand to Tony in poker.”

  “Judging from his computer skills, yes.” She pointed to the ticket on Ben’s desk. “But he couldn’t be in Memphis and Logan Point at the same time.”

  “If that’s Billy Wayne. There’s no way to prove this is or isn’t him, other than his mother’s assertion. Could it be his brother?”

  “Junior?” Wade asked. “He’s much bigger.”

  “I think I’ll go talk to him anyway. See if his brother had any friends who might have been on the cycle. If he did, then Billy Wayne could’ve been at the hotel.”

  “I’ll be surprised if it’s Billy Wayne,” said Taylor.

  Ben looked at her. “Why?”

  She picked up the file she’d brought in with her. “I studied his websites and Facebook page. If he had assumed the persona of the assassins he created, why didn’t he kill either you or Leigh that morning? I took the crime scene photos and drove by Leigh’s house. He had a clear shot. There was no reason for him to miss unless he only intended to scare or threaten you or he was a bad shot.”

  “He’s a Gresham,” Wade said. “He grew up with a rifle in his hands.”

  “Maybe a human target made a difference,” Ben said.

  Taylor shook her head. “Then he probably didn’t kill Tony, because if he had, another murder wouldn’t have bothered him.”

  “So you don’t think Tony’s death is related to the other things on the board up there?”

  “Only the ransacking of the house. I believe his killer was looking for something he expected Tony to have on him at the hotel. When it wasn’t, he searched the house.”

  “Do you have a profile of what type person I should be looking for?”

  “Someone educated and a professional, well-respected in the community, likable, social even, midthirties to late forties, and a male, of course.”

  “About 10 percent of Bradford County’s male population.” Ben scratched his jaw. “Could it be someone he gambled with?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No possibility of it being a redneck ne’er-do-well?” he asked, thinking of some of the men he’d seen Thursday night at the dogfight.

  “If they have highly developed reasoning skills, it’d be possible, but I’d be looking elsewhere.”

  “How about the other crimes? Same person?”

  “It’s my opinion you are looking at two different perpetrators. I think you’re right that someone is trying to make you look incompetent.”

  If Ben were a betting man, he’d put his money on Jonas Gresham. But he didn’t have a single piece of evidence against him.

  Wade’s cell phone vibrated, and he picked it up. “It’s Cummings.” The deputy leaned back in his chair as he answered. “How’s it going, Lester, my man?”

  Silence followed for less than ten seconds. “Today? I thought we’d agreed on tomorrow. Oh, I see. Well, sure, I’ll just tell Ben I’m going on patrol. See you in an hour.” Wade hung up and grinned. “Looks like I’m going to see a man about a dog.”

  “Then let’s check to make sure I can connect to your phone.” Ben took out his cell phone and dialed the number to activate the listening device on Wade’s phone. Then he turned on the speaker on his phone.

  Wade stared at his phone. “It’s not doing anything.”

  The words echoed in the room.

  “Well, I’ll be,” his chief deputy said. “You better never activate that when I’m with Ruth.”

  Ben disconnected. “How do you know I haven’t already?”

  Wade glared at him.

  “Now turn on the pen.”

  Wade clicked it on.

  “Testing, one, two, three.” Ben’s cell phone rang. “Okay, it seems to be working. Don’t turn it off.”

  “I’m private, not stupid,” Wade retorted. “Everything will be fine. Stop being such a worrywart.”

  Even with the surveillance tools, Ben didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.

  Wednesday was only a half day at the Helping Hands clinic, and Leigh wasn’t altogether sorry. Monday and Tuesday had been a whirlwind of activity, and she could use a breather. She turned as Emily called her name.

  “Is that your last patient?” her boss asked.

  “Yes. Strep throat. Probably see the rest of the family by Friday,” she replied with a grimace.

  Emily tilted her head. “So, how do you like working here so far?”

  “I love it. I’m looking forward to getting to know my patients and treating the whole family. You really don’t want that to happen in the ER.”

  Emily laughed. “You’re doing great. Everyone who’s been in here has commented when they checked out that they hoped you stayed on.”

  Guilt pinged her conscience. She hadn’t mentioned Johns Hopkins to her boss, and evidently neither had Ben. “I, ah, we might need to talk. Last week I received an offer to work at one of Johns Hopkins’s free clinics, and I accepted. I wanted you to know up front.”

  “Johns Hopkins? I can understand. We—”

  Leigh’s cell phone rang.

  “Go ahead and take that,” Emily said. “We can finish talking later.”

  Leigh glanced at the caller ID. Ian. She hadn’t seen him since Friday although he’d called almost every day, usually with a dinner offer. “Hello,” she said.

  “Dr. Somerall, I have this problem, and I really need to see a doctor.” Ian’s rich voice teased.

  “And what seems to be your ailment?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I have pains around my heart from lack of seeing a certain doctor. Do you think you can help me? I know the clinic isn’t open on Wednesday afternoon, but I thought perhaps you could prescribe a luncheon date to cure me?”

  She stared down the hallway. He never gave up. And it wasn’t like her dance card was filled with admiring beaus. She hadn’t even heard from a certain sheriff, not even to escort her to and from the clinic. He’d sent Andre or Wade. She looked out the front window. Andre’s cruiser waited in the parking lot.

  But why this campaign of Ian’s to court her? Did he view her as another notch on his belt? Was that his motivation for letting her have the house?

  “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here, and I’ll go on one condition.”

  “And that is?”

  “That you won’t try to push our relationship beyond that of friendship.”

  “Friendship is a good beginning.”

  “Ian.” She drew his name out.

  “Okay,” he grumbled. “Strictly friendship, nothing more.”

  “Then, yes, I’ll go with you, but let me go home and change and check on TJ.”

  “Wear something casual.” He sounded mysterious.

  At home, Leigh found a note from Sarah saying she had taken TJ to the pool. Her stomach twisted. She needed to spend more time with her son. Quickly she scribbled a note telling TJ they would watch a movie later, then she hurried upstairs to change.

  The front doorbell rang just as she pulled a white V-neck T-shirt over her head, and she quickly pulled on a pair of blue jean capris. When she opened the door, she gaped at Ian. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in shorts.”

  “First jeans, now shorts.” He grinned at her. “You must be a good influence on me.”

  He escorted her to his black Escalade and opened the passenger door. Ian Maxwell knew how to make a girl feel special. As she slid into the seat, she noticed a picnic basket in the backseat. “We’re going on a picnic?”

  “You’ve never seen my cabin at the lake. I thought I’d give you the grand tour. Of course, if I’d planned ahead, we could have boated across the lake instead of driving the long way around.”

  Ninety minutes later, Leigh felt like Cinderella when she stepped into the ballroom. Her
grandmother’s house that had burned would have taken up no more space than the living room of Ian’s cabin. She’d only ever read about spreads like this. Rooms that could be in House & Garden. Or Architectural Digest. So this was how 10 percent of the world lived. She moistened her lips. “Did you do the decorating?”

  He laughed. “Hardly. No, a decorator out of Memphis pulled all of this together.”

  She’d hate to even try to put a figure on how much he’d spent.

  “Could you imagine yourself here? In this house?”

  She laughed. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Depends on what your answer is.”

  “Have you already forgotten the condition of this lunch?”

  “Well, you can’t fault me for trying. Just remember, more than one couple started out as friends.”

  She’d have to give him credit for not giving up, and in spite of her resolve, the question of what life would be like with Ian Maxwell darted through her mind. Never worry about money. Jetting to Paris . . .

  Reality cooled her face. She didn’t love Ian, not the way a wife should love a husband, and she’d been there, done that before with the man everyone thought was TJ’s father. Not that she hadn’t been grateful to Matthew or that she hadn’t loved him in her own way. She shook off the dark thoughts. “I thought you brought me here for a picnic.”

  He tilted his head and said nothing, his blue eyes holding hers. Finally he sighed. “So I did. Follow me.”

  Ian led her out of the house to a stone walkway that wound around the grounds to a gazebo that overlooked Logan Lake. He flipped a switch, and a bamboo fan whirred softly, sending a soft breeze against her cheek. She took the rattan chair Ian offered and sat back as he spread an enormous amount of food on the table.

  The throbbing hum of cicadas competed with the fan. Cicadas always made her think of hot summer days. To her left was the lake, and she knew there had to be several other cabins around, but she didn’t see a one. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a granite building that matched the house. It was too large to be a garage.