House Blood - JD 7

by Mike Lawson

  He carried Brad back to the car, talking inane baby talk to him as he walked. He wanted to get in the car and peel out of the parking lot as fast as he could, but decided he needed to think, so he put Brad on his leash and they walked around the lot. Brad peed on the tires of two long-haul rigs, then crapped near some bushes on the edge of the parking lot. Normally, Hobson would have picked up the poop, but since he was more than just a little pissed at the town of Waverly, he didn’t bother.

  “Now what are we going to do, Brad?” he asked the dog. Brad ignored him while he sniffed an enormous beetle that had been crushed by a tire.

  He had no doubt that Mulray Pharma knew right where he was—that Amber Alert had been no prank—and he suspected that someone was watching him right now. And maybe while he was inside the jail they’d put a tracking device on his car.

  It would be dark in about an hour, and he recalled seeing a muffler shop when he drove into town. He’d take his car there, have them put it up on the rack, and see if he could spot a tracking device. Then, when it was dark, he’d take off and hope he’d be able to see the headlights of anyone tailing him, and if he did, he’d try to lose whoever it was.

  Then another thought occurred to him. Why run at all? Why not just go back to the police station and tell the cops—who would tell the FBI—that he was willing to be the star witness against Mulray Pharma.

  Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he liked that idea. If he stayed on his own, Fiona was going to kill him, no doubt about it. And since she now knew where he was, his chances of staying alive were between slim and none. But if he could get the feds to take him into protective custody, he might make it. And with what he knew about Mulray Pharma, he would definitely get a deal that would keep him out of prison. The other thing about going into Witness Protection was that the feds would do for him the things he had been planning to do for himself: get him a new identity and a job someplace where nobody knew him.

  He couldn’t believe it had come down to this: either run for his life or become a federal witness.

  He remembered the day he graduated from the Point with his beaming parents and his bride-to-be in the audience. And he remembered the day they pinned a colonel’s eagles on his shoulders at the Pentagon, his wife and kids proudly watching; well, his kids had been bored, but at least they had come to the ceremony. But after that it all went downhill at an incredible rate—arrested for embezzlement, six years in a cage at Leavenworth surrounded by animals, the things he’d done for Mulray Pharma. His wife was gone, his kids hated him, and the only one who loved him was a four-legged critter who, quite frankly, would love anyone who fed him.

  “Brad,” he said to his dog, “it’s like the old saying goes: Life’s a bitch and then you die.”

  And then Bill Hobson died.

  Betty Ann Farmer watched Hobson walk around the truck stop parking lot with his little dog, which was cuter than a bug’s ear.

  And then she saw him collapse.

  One minute he was just standing there, talking to his dog, and the next minute he was sprawled out on the ground and the dog was licking his face—and she didn’t know what to do. If he’d just fainted and she helped him, she might blow her cover. But what if he’d had a heart attack? No, she couldn’t just sit there—she was a Christian woman. No matter what Hobson may have done, she had an obligation to help.

  Betty Ann jumped out of her car and ran over to Hobson—and saw all the blood on the ground. She’d never seen a gunshot wound before but she was pretty sure that’s what the hole in his forehead was. She knelt down, shooed the little dog away—he had blood all over his paws—and felt for a pulse in Hobson’s throat. She couldn’t find one.

  The windows in her car had been rolled up and the radio was playing when Hobson fell, and she hadn’t heard a shot. She looked around and could see four or five places within two hundred yards where a sniper could hide—and suddenly realized that the sniper could be aiming at her, right at that moment. As she was thinking this, four guys came out of the restaurant and ran over to her, and she heard one of them say, “Jesus, this guy’s been shot.”

  Betty Ann suddenly felt queasy—she could actually smell all the blood on the ground—and she knew she had to sit down before she fainted. She walked on unsteady legs over to her car and sat there with the driver’s-side door open, taking deep breaths. Then she said in a firm voice, “Betty Ann, you just get a grip on yourself! You’re a licensed private detective.” She took out her cell phone and dialed the lady who’d hired her, but the call went to voice mail.

  After she left a message for the woman, she noticed the dead man’s little black dog sniffing at the corpse, looking forlorn, wondering what had happened to his master. Betty Ann pushed through the crowd of men standing around Hobson’s body and scooped up the dog—God, he was a cutie. She noticed he had two tags on his collar. One had his name on it and his master’s address; the other one was some sort of medical tag. Hmmm. She’d have to check that out. She figured she’d hang on to the dog until someone claimed him, and if nobody did, she’d give him to one of her granddaughters.

  The chief walked out of the Public Safety Building and over to where the Johnson brothers were standing. They were in the parking lot next to their patrol cars, bullshitting with another one of his officers, a plump, sexy gal named Donna Tremont who was married to a dentist. The chief suspected that both Johnsons were screwing Donna.

  “Dispatch just got a call from the truck stop,” he said. “And right after that we got another call.”

  “Yeah?” R. Johnson said, not sure what the chief was getting at.

  “That guy, Hobson? Well, someone just shot him, put a bullet right between his eyes.”

  “Jesus!” J. Johnson said.

  “The other call we got was from a man saying that he took care of that motherfuckin’ child molester we turned loose. Excuse my language, Donna. Did you boys tell anyone about Hobson?”

  “Well, yeah,” J. Johnson said. “I mentioned the Amber Alert to Ray when I took Hobson’s dog into the restaurant, and the other cook heard me.”

  “How many people were in the diner?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Three truckers, maybe four. I didn’t know any of them. Karl from the hardware store was there. So was Tim McIntyre and—”

  “McIntyre?” the chief said. “His grandson in Kansas City was molested by a soccer coach a few years ago.”

  “And he’s a hunter,” J. Johnson said.

  “Tim McIntyre wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Donna Tremont said.

  “Well, you guys get down to the truck stop and get the names of everybody who was in there today. Donna, you call the weigh stations on the interstate and tell ’em to e-mail you the license plate of every truck that passes through in the next hour, and I’m gonna call the FBI and tell them this hacker-prankster they got just got a man murdered.”

  As Emma and DeMarco walked down the jetway at Nashville, Emma turned her cell phone back on and saw she had a voice mail. She listened to the message, muttered “Goddamnit,” and hung up. “That was a message from the detective I hired to follow Hobson. She said Hobson was shot. He’s dead.”

  “Good work with Hobson,” Fiona said to Earl Lee when he told her the Hobson problem had been taken care of.

  “Piece o’ cake,” Lee said.

  Fiona sat at her desk, pleased that Hobson was no longer a problem, but then her thoughts turned to Kelly and Nelson. When Kelly had been planning to free Nelson from the hospital, she hadn’t seen a whole lot of downside with that idea. But now that Nelson was in Wallens Ridge, the situation had changed dramatically, because Nelson was now getting a taste of what his future was going to be like—and maybe he’d get desperate enough to talk about what he’d done for Mulray Pharma. And there was no way Kelly was going to be able to spring Nelson from a maximum security prison. She called Earl Lee back.

/>   “I want you to take care of Kelly.”

  “Oh,” was all Lee said. He didn’t say, “Piece o’ cake.”

  “He was planning to break Nelson out of the hospital where they were keeping him,” Fiona said, “but Nelson’s been moved to Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. So I’m not sure what Kelly will do next, but he’ll have a hard time getting Nelson out of Wallens Ridge. On the other hand, I can get to Nelson in Wallens Ridge. But I want Kelly gone before I do that, because if Nelson dies, even of natural causes, Kelly will cut my head off.”

  “I can protect you,” Lee said.

  “Yeah, right. You just get Kelly, and get him right away.”

  “How do I find him?”

  “He’s probably scoping out the prison where they’re keeping ­Nelson, but I don’t know that for a fact.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Drive around the prison hoping to spot him?”

  “I want you to get to Virginia as fast as you can. I’ve got a guy who specializes in finding people, and I’m going to call him and get him looking for Kelly. And, Lee …”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you catch up with Kelly, just kill him. Nothing tricky, nothing fancy. Just blow his brains out.”

  “Roger that,” Lee said.

  Fiona sighed, and hung up.

  Since Bernie had researched Kelly before Fiona recruited him in Afghanistan, Bernie already had Kelly’s military ID photo and a lot of other information about the man. Now, Fiona gave him Kelly’s cell phone number, but she said she doubted Kelly was still using the phone because she’d called him on it several times after he got back from Peru and he never answered it; she figured Kelly had most likely dumped his old cell phone as part of his preparations for Nelson’s escape. “Your best bet,” Fiona said, “would be to throw a net around Wallens Ridge. He’s most likely checking out the place to see if he can spring Nelson from there.”

  Bernie started to tell Fiona that he didn’t want the assignment. His contact at the Hoover Building had called half an hour earlier, hysterical, saying that Hobson had been killed and the FBI was on a witch hunt trying to find out who had issued the phony bulletin. And if the bulletin was traced back to his contact, his contact would give up Bernie in a heartbeat. So it was time to sever his relationship with Fiona; working for her was just too dangerous. But before Bernie could say it was time for Fiona to find another team of headhunters, Fiona said, “If you can find Kelly in the next forty-eight hours, you’ll get a bonus. Twenty-five K.”

  Bernie took the assignment.

  41

  DeMarco and Emma were sitting at a bar in the Nashville airport waiting for their flight back to D.C. DeMarco was drinking a beer; Emma was having orange juice. He knew Emma liked a martini now and then, and he wondered if her medical condition no longer allowed her to drink alcohol. For DeMarco, that would be a tragedy of epic proportions.

  “So now what?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Emma said, “but I’m not giving up.”

  “I’m not talking about giving up. I’m just saying that we’re running out of options. Do you know anyone at the Bureau?”

  “The only senior people I know are all in counterterrorism. Why?”

  “Well, maybe one of those guys can steer you to someone in OPR—”

  OPR was the Office of Professional Responsibility, the FBI’s version of Internal Affairs—“and tell them that if they can find out who issued that phony Amber Alert they might eventually trace it back to Mulray.”

  “I doubt they’ll find any connection to Mulray,” Emma said, “but tomorrow I’ll call a guy I know.”

  Neither of them said anything for a while, until Emma said, “With Hobson dead, we have to make Nelson talk. We have to. He’s the only one that can give us Mulray. But we’re going to have to wait a while—at least a couple weeks, maybe a month.”

  “Why wait so long?”

  “Because he’s a tough guy. I mean, putting him in Wallens Ridge like you did was a good idea.” Now that was rare: for her to give him credit for a good idea. “But it’s going to take more than just a couple of days for him to appreciate what it’s going to be like spending fifteen years in the place.”

  “Maybe while we’re waiting we can work on Linger,” DeMarco said.

  “Linger?”

  “Congressman Talbot’s chief of staff. If he’s willing to talk about the conference call that was used to frame Kincaid, maybe that’ll give us something to grab on to.”

  “Like what?

  “Hell, Emma, I don’t know. But I can’t think of anything else to do.”

  “Do you think Linger will talk to you?”

  “No, but he’ll talk to Mahoney.”

  Mahoney decided to talk to Stephen Linger like DeMarco wanted because if he succeeded he might be able to cause Republican congressman Edward Talbot a major problem. Causing any Republican a problem always made Mahoney’s day, but with Talbot it was personal. Talbot was an annoying, grandstanding little asshole, and he took cheap shots at Mahoney every chance he got. (The fact that Mahoney took cheap shots at Talbot every chance he got was beside the point.) He called Linger and politely asked him to come to his office.

  Linger was a tall, slim, dark-haired, dark-complexioned guy in his thirties with eyebrows that turned up at the end. Mahoney thought he looked like the Devil dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit. He had been involved in Republican Party politics in one capacity or another since graduating from college, and had been Talbot’s chief of staff for five years. He probably danced in the streets the day Mahoney lost his job as Speaker.

  “Would you like a drink?” Mahoney asked.

  “I don’t drink … Congressman,” Linger said, emphasizing the word to make the unnecessary point that Mahoney was no longer the Speaker.

  “Well, good for you.” Mahoney poured himself a shot of Wild Turkey over ice, then settled into the chair behind his desk with a grunt. “You remember a lobbyist named Phil Downing who was killed a couple years ago?”

  “Vaguely,” Linger said.

  “Son, now is not the time to get cute with me. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Help me? I don’t understand.”

  “You see, Steve, I know how it happened. Your boss got a call from Mulray Pharma and they asked for a little favor—they asked for you to be in on a conference call at a certain time with some Warwick people. And Mulray, being a big supporter … I can understand why Ed would want to be helpful.”

  “Sir, I don’t know what you’re …”

  “But then Downing is killed and his partner, an unlucky bastard named Kincaid, gets convicted for murdering him—and the conviction is based primarily on the time of the conference call, a time you basically established.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Listen to me, Steve. I’m sure you’ve been reading all this stuff about Mulray and Warwick and how some poor refugees may have been killed to test Mulray’s new drug. Well, that stuff’s all true, and there’re a lot of things going on behind the scenes right now that you don’t know anything about. The bottom line is the government knows Phil Downing was murdered because he knew what Mulray Pharma was doing in Peru, and they know that Brian Kincaid was framed for his murder. And when the FBI puts all the pieces together, you’re going to be convicted as an accomplice to Downing’s murder unless you help yourself. You see, I know how your boss’s mind works. He’ll say he didn’t have anything to do with that conference call, that it was all your idea. He’ll leave you out there high and dry, son. He’ll leave you out there to hang.”

  Linger just shook his head, as if everything Mahoney was saying was total nonsense.

  “Now, the smart thing for you to do is to step forward right now, before things get too far downstream and—”

  “Step forw
ard how?” Linger said.

  “All I want you to do is talk to a guy. Tell him everything you know about how the call was set up, who talked to who, that sort of thing. If you don’t do that … Well, there’s no point repeating myself.”

  Linger sat there a moment staring at Mahoney with no expression on his face, then he stood up and said, “I’m late for a meeting, Congressman. I haven’t done anything wrong, Congressman Talbot hasn’t done anything wrong, and nobody can prove otherwise. Good day, sir.”

  “Well, poop,” Mahoney said to himself after Linger left his office. He took another sip of bourbon and called DeMarco. “He didn’t go for it.”

  “Shit,” DeMarco said—but he wasn’t really surprised.

  This had been DeMarco’s plan: Step One—convince Stephen ­Linger that the government knew more than it really did and convince him that he could be convicted as an accomplice in Phil Downing’s murder. Step Two—get Linger to talk about who at Mulray Pharma had contacted him or his boss and then, maybe, Step Three—stick a wire on Linger and have him go talk to this person and see if he or she would admit to something they could use to get Orson Mulray.

  It hadn’t been much of a plan to begin with, and Stephen Linger was smart enough—or arrogant enough—not to fall for it.

  When DeMarco called Emma and told her that Mahoney had struck out with Linger, she said, “All we can do now is wait a while and go talk to Nelson.”

  “I just hope Mulray doesn’t make a run at him while we’re waiting,” DeMarco said.