“No,” Sam said. “Don’t do anything. Wait for the police. They’re trained to handle situations like this. Besides, if you try to get inside the stadium, the people are going to rush the doors and stampede. My son will be trampled.”
The security guard shrugged. “The exit leading to the parking lot is right at the bottom of those stairs. If this guy gets the boy outside—”
Sam looked at Stella and then back to the security guard. He turned around in a small circle, running his fingers through his hair, anguished over what they should do. When he looked back at Brad, he had scooted another foot or so toward the stairwell. “Do it,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Just block his way, though. Don’t confront him. Don’t do anything unless Emerson tries to take my son outside of the arena.”
“You know this guy?” the guard said.
“Yes,” Sam said, glaring at Stella. “It’s a divorce situation.”
Adam’s feet were spread out in front of him, and his face had turned a bright shade of red. As Stella watched, a dark stain appeared in front of his pants. He had lost control of his bladder. Tears streamed down her face. He was so afraid, and there was nothing they could do to help him. “Oh, God,” she said, tugging on Sam’s shirt, “we have to do something. We can’t just stand here. Adam is so scared, Sam. Look at him.”
“It’s your fucking husband,” Sam snapped, a tortured look in his eyes. “Why don’t you tell us what he’s capable of, huh? Will the bastard kill my son if we jump him?”
Stella started to reply when Brenda’s message appeared in her mind. “Brad was my father’s business partner at one time,” she said. “Brenda tried to warn me this morning.”
“I thought your father was a building inspector,” Sam answered, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re not making sense, Stella.”
“He opened his own construction company some time before the fire,” Stella said, her speech rapid-fire. “Brad was one of the principals. The company went bust after only a few months.” It was all coming together now. “Don’t you see, Sam? My father’s company must have poured the foundation at Happy Day.” She recalled the night she had seen her father, the Happy Day headlines in the newspaper. People may say things, he had said. Had the fire been her father’s way of committing suicide, his guilt over the Happy Day disaster more than he could handle? She shook her head as if to clear it. Too many things were happening at once.
Sam had a blank look in his eyes. All he cared about was his son. Stella stood by his side in silence. Although only a few minutes went by, it seemed like hours before they saw five or six uniformed police officers running toward them. Several plainclothes officers were right behind them. Stella’s jaw dropped when she realized one of the men was Carl Winters.
Winters pulled Stella aside, while the other officers conferred with Sam, trying to get a handle on what was going on.
“What happened?” Winters said. He had been running, and his gray Stetson was sitting at an odd angle on his head.
“It’s my husband,” Stella said, tossing her arms in the air. “He took my purse, and the boy tackled him. We thought he was a purse snatcher.” Her suspicions regarding Winters flared, and she eyed him warily. “I thought you only worked homicides, Carl. Why are you here?”
“I’m one of the department’s hostage negotiators,” he advised. “What does your husband intend to gain by this?”
“I’m not one hundred percent certain,” Stella said, narrowing her eyes as she turned back to Brad. “But I have a fairly good idea. I had the metal chips from the fire in my purse. My guess is they came from a lighter, and that lighter has my husband’s name on it. Why else would he want them?”
“I see,” Winters said, although he looked more befuddled than before. He asked one of the men for the bullhorn. The Houston P.D. had secured the exits now, and no one other than the parties involved and the police were present in the corridor.
“Okay, Emerson,” Winters said into the bullhorn, “this is Detective Winters with the Houston P.D. Throw the gun out in front of you and let the boy go. There’s no way you’ll ever get out of the ballpark. We have officers stationed at every exit. You have nowhere to go.”
Stella stood beside Winters. A captain as well as a lieutenant had arrived. “Has he made any demands?” the captain said, a tall, slender man in his late thirties, his light brown hair cut close to his head. “You know, does he want money, transportation?”
“Not that I know of,” Winters answered, dropping the bullhorn to his side.
The captain turned to Stella, and she shook her head. Brad looked as frightened as Adam, and she doubted if he had given any thought to what he would do next. Yanking the bullhorn out of Winters’s hands, she tried to reason with him. “Listen to me, Brad,” she said, “I know you were involved in the cave-in at Happy Day. There’s nothing to hide anymore. If you let Adam go, the police won’t try to apprehend you. They’ve given me their word.”
“They’re lying,” Brad barked. “As soon as I let the boy go, they’ll open fire.”
“You’re wrong, Brad,” Stella continued. “No one wants any bloodshed.” When she turned around, she saw her husband’s fears in the flesh. Twelve officers from the tactical squad had lined up behind her, each holding a high-powered rifle with a scope. “You can’t use sharpshooters,” she told the captain. “If you try to shoot my husband, you may shoot Adam instead.”
“Look,” the captain said, “you don’t know how good these men are. They can pick a fly off the wall from a block away. This is a volatile situation here. This creep is going to panic any second and kill the kid.”
Adam suddenly went skidding across the floor on his seat, propelled by a mighty shove from Brad.
Brad’s hindquarters rose in the air in a running stance. The police officers took off after him, but he had disappeared down the stairwell. A gunshot rang out, and the police officers halted. A second shot rang out, and then was quickly followed by a third.
The gunshots must have been heard inside the stadium, as the doors to the arena burst open and the police officers were pushed aside by the crowd of people who forced their way through. The captain started barking orders on the portable radio, and his officers formed a chain, blocking the area near the concession stand. This time, the officers had their nightsticks out and were not hesitating to use them to keep the crowd at bay.
Sam scooped up Adam in his arms and took off running toward the concession area. Stella raced to the stairwell. Brad was face down on the floor at the foot of the stairs, his hands cuffed behind his back, several police officers hovering over him. Once Stella had descended, the men gave her a strange look and then stepped aside.
“Roll him over,” she said. “If you don’t know already, this disgusting piece of shit is my husband.”
Once the officer had done what Stella said and rolled his prisoner onto his back, Brad Emerson looked up into his wife’s eyes. The baseball cap was no longer in place, and his silver hair sparkled in the overhead lights. “I wouldn’t have hurt the boy,” he mumbled.
“Right,” Stella said, exploding and kicking him in the ribs. Brad winced in pain, but he didn’t cry out. One of the officers stepped forward and seized Stella by the arm, but she kicked out again, her foot striking the edge of Brad’s jaw this time. “You’re the most contemptible human being who ever lived,” she said. “I hope you rot in hell.”
chapter
TWENTY
Holly had been about to walk out the door to go to a cocktail party when Jack Fitzgerald called her at home and told her to report to his office. Why would the district attorney want to speak to her at six o’clock on a Saturday evening? On the drive over, she decided it could only be one thing. A sensational case had come in, and Fitzgerald wanted her to try it.
Strolling into his office with a confident look on her face. Holly did a double take. Janet Hernandez was seated in a chair facing Fitzgerald’s desk. Holly knew this spelled trouble, but s
he slowly lowered herself to her seat, giving nothing away. “What’s going on. Jack?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” the older D.A. barked, a cigar locked between his teeth. “I’ve got a damn nut case posing as a prosecutor, that’s what.”
Holly placed a hand over her chest. “What the—”
“Shut up and listen,” Fitzgerald said, grimacing.
“You see this woman over here. She’s a secretary, right?”
“She was my secretary,” Holly said, kicking her leg back and forth. Wearing a short black dress trimmed in sequins, dark hose, and high heels, she looked out of place in Fitzgerald’s cluttered office. “She walked off the job last week.”
“She’s not a law clerk,” Fitzgerald said, “and she’s not an attorney. Do we agree on these points?”
“Of course,” Holly said, glaring at Janet. “What has she been telling you? To be perfectly honest, Jack, I don’t think Janet is emotionally stable. She’s been acting peculiar for several months now.”
“I have not,” Janet shot back. “You’re the one who has been throwing things and acting like a lunatic.”
Fitzgerald held up a hand. “Miss Oppenheimer, did you or did you not assign specific and vital research to Miss Hernandez? Research your supervisor instructed you to handle yourself.”
“Absolutely not,” Holly lied, tossing her head. “Why would I ask her to do my research? She can’t even spell.” She leaned forward, her voice almost a whisper. “This poor woman is a basket case. I don’t know if she’s going through a divorce or what’s wrong with her, Jack, but she’s got major problems.”
“Let me ask you something,” Fitzgerald said, rolling his cigar in his fingers. “Whatever happened to the search for truth? Isn’t that what your job is all about, Oppenheimer? If you had done what the county pays you to do, an innocent woman would not have been charged with murder, a respected investigator would not have been shot, and this agency would have been spared considerable embarrassment.” Holly opened her mouth to defend herself, but Fitzgerald silenced her with a look. “As if this weren’t enough, additional charges of impropriety have been brought to my attention. Mario Cataloni claims you seduced him in an attempt to get him to testify against his sister. Prosecutors don’t sleep with criminal defendants. Miss Oppenheimer, at least not in my agency.”
“He’s lying,” Holly shouted. “Mario Cataloni is only trying to worm his way out of drug charges. He’s a damn cocaine addict, Jack.”
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Fitzgerald said forcefully. “I want you to remove all your personal effects from your office, then walk out the door of this building. Do you understand? As of this second, you are relieved of your duties. If you have any questions, you can contact personnel next week.”
Holly stood, then fell back to her chair. “You can’t be serious!”
Fitzgerald stuck his cigar in his mouth, then pointed his finger at the door. “I’ll give you three minutes to vacate my office, Oppenheimer. If you don’t, I’ll have security come and cart you away.”
Stella stood next to Carl Winters in the dark room, peering through the one-way glass at Brad Emerson. The clock behind her read nine-fifty. Sam and Adam were waiting for her at the Ritz-Carlton. As soon as Stella concluded her business at the police department, they would return to Dallas on the next available shuttle.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Winters said. “But I guess I owe you something after all the hell I put you through.”
Stella wasn’t listening. She couldn’t take her eyes off Brad. He wasn’t her husband, she told herself. The man she was looking at was a stranger. “He’ll never waive his rights,” she said. “You’re wasting your time, Carl.”
“You never know,” Winters said, a sly look on his face. “Things may work out better than you think. Your brother came through, you know. He found the documentation in the Happy Day files. Emerson Construction poured the foundation.”
“Brenda Anderson figured it out before Mario,” Stella said, her eyes trained on the glass. “I told her my father had been in business with Brad for a short period of time. I guess she finally put two and two together.”
“How is she?”
“I called the hospital earlier. Her mother says she’s doing very well.” Stella turned to face him. “Never in all the years we were together did I have a reason to believe my husband was involved in the fire.”
“Too bad Mario didn’t uncover the truth before he told Brad you were at an Astros game, huh?” Winters said, smacking his lips. “It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“Yeah,” Stella said pensively. “What about the metal chips? Could the lab make anything out of them?”
“Nah,” Winters said, glancing through the glass at Brad. “Isn’t life a bitch? This guy was panicked over those scraps of metal, and they were so melted, no one would have ever figured it out.”
Detective Winters stepped into the interview room, placing his tape recorder in the center of the small round table. He read Brad his Miranda rights off a small card, then asked him if he was willing to speak without an attorney. ‘Til talk,” Brad said, fidgeting in his seat. “I’d like a cigarette, though. You’ve had me cooped up in this room for hours.”
As Brad had already been booked into the county jail earlier in the day, he was dressed in a jail-issued white jumpsuit. Winters had asked that the handcuffs be removed during the interview, but Brad’s legs were shackled at the ankles.
“Not supposed to smoke in a city building,” Winters said, shrugging. He studied his subject, sensing a coldness that he knew he had to penetrate. His eyes drifted to the one-way glass. He wanted Emerson to confess, for Stella’s sake more than anything. “Were you ever in the military, Emerson?”
“No,” Brad said.
“Ever been arrested before today?” Winters asked.
“Never,” he answered.
Quietly slipping out of the room, Winters returned with a pack of Winston cigarettes and a book of matches, pilfered from one of the homicide detectives’ desks. “Sometimes rules are made to be broken,” he told Brad, smiling as he handed him the cigarettes.
“I haven’t had a cigarette in ten years,” Brad said, lighting the cigarette and then exhaling a stream of smoke.
The detective sprawled out in one of the chairs, tipping his Stetson back on his head. “Let’s start at the beginning. I understand you and Stella’s father were business partners. Is that correct?”
“Yeah,” Brad said, flicking his ashes on the floor. “All the partners put in ten G’s, but we used my name and called the company Emerson Construction. I’d been a subcontractor for a number of years, so we decided to trade off my reputation. It worked out better that way. Tony being a building inspector and all, we decided using his name was too risky.”
“Was that the name on the lighter?” Winters asked. “The writing says Emerson Construction?”
“Yeah,” Brad said, a question mark on his face. “Don’t you guys already know that? You have the metal chips, right?”
“When you refer to the partners,” Winters continued, ignoring Brad’s questions, “who exactly are you referring to?”
For a long time Brad didn’t respond, and Winters didn’t press him. He’d take it slow and easy. If they had to stay here all night, so be it. His eyes roamed to the windows again. Stella deserved to know the truth, and he wanted to be the one to bring it to her.
“There were three of us,” Brad said at last, his body hunched over at the waist. “Clem, myself, and Tony Cataloni. Clem was a silent partner. All he did was put up the money. He didn’t participate in the day-to-day business of running the company.”
Winters removed his cowboy hat and ran his hand over his head. His eyes were as small and dark as the buttons on his jacket. “You’re trying to tell me that Captain Cataloni was your business partner, that he was involved in this Happy Day mess?”
“That’s what I said,” Brad answered. Dropping his cigar
ette on the linoleum floor, he extinguished it with the heel of his shoe, the chains jangling around his ankles. “Your little captain wasn’t such a big hero after all. If it hadn’t been for Clem, the Happy Day foundation wouldn’t have collapsed.”
“Oh, really?” Winters said, thinking Brad Emerson was handing him a pack of lies. Cataloni was dead, and a dead man was the perfect patsy. “You want to explain that statement?”
Brad said, “Clem worshiped money, and he was as shrewd as they come when it came to business. You guys uncovered the pension scam, so I guess you know about his business sense.”
“Were you involved in this pension thing?” Winters asked, keeping his voice low and steady.
“Nah,” Brad said. “I knew Clem had a sweet little deal going, but I didn’t share in the profits. No one profited from Clem’s schemes but Clem. He taught me everything I know about the building trade, though. Stella’s father didn’t know anything. Tony was the Last Boy Scout.”
“Let’s go back to Clem,” Winters said, straightening up in his seat. “How did you meet him?”
“Stella’s father introduced us. We were looking for investors and he thought his brother would be interested.”
“You said Clem was responsible for the cave-in,” Winters said. “If he wasn’t involved in the daily operations of the company, how could that be true?”
“When we got the Happy Day contract,” Brad continued, “Clem suggested that I shave some of the costs by not using rebar to reinforce the foundation. What’s the big deal? he said. Everyone cuts corners. If you don’t cut corners, you’ll be out of business in sixty days. The school was a big contract for us, but we’d won it by submitting a ridiculously low bid. If we hadn’t done some cost containment, we would have lost money on the job.”
“Is the rebar the only thing you scrimped on?”
“Hardly,” Brad said, reaching for another cigarette. “If you mean on this particular job, yeah, but on other jobs, we cut corners everywhere we could. We used cheap materials, failed to reinforce beams, used plywood instead of sheetrock. Hey, it was a competitive business. People want the world, but they don’t want to pay diddly squat. We were trying to establish a name for ourselves, get some money in the company’s coffers, then we would have produced some quality work.”
Trial by Fire Page 34
