Deceptive Practices

by Simon Wood

“Didn’t think so.”

  “We don’t have to justify ourselves to you, Mr. Macready,” Finz said.

  “I beg to differ.”

  While Andrew bickered with Finz and Lyon, the reason for the search warrant fell into place for Olivia. The tire iron was the murder weapon.

  A sense of dread settled over her, its cold touch pressing down on her. This was Roy’s doing. He’d said he’d punish her for her betrayal. The son of a bitch had stolen her tire iron from her and tipped off the police.

  It should have been time for her to come clean with Finz, but two things stopped her. First, Finz was beyond making deals. He wanted her head on a spike. Second was the advice she had received from Karen Innes. She’d warned her Roy would do this for crossing him. “Burn him before he burns you,” she’d said. There was no option now. She had to destroy Roy.

  “Mrs. Shaw, I want you to come with me,” Finz said.

  “Don’t go, Liv.”

  “I’m not.” She couldn’t take Roy down from a jail cell.

  “Excuse me?” Finz asked.

  Olivia scanned the warrant. “You were hoping to find the tire iron missing, which means you have a tire iron. So, you were trying to prove a negative. You didn’t find my tire iron—so what? Can you prove my car ever had a tire iron? Do you have proof that the tire iron you have is from my car?”

  She waited for an answer that didn’t come.

  “Until you do, we have nothing to talk about. And furthermore, I don’t want you coming to my home, my place of work, or anywhere else with these thinly veiled attempts to embarrass me in front of my friends, coworkers, and neighbors. It’s harassment. I suggest you focus your energies on finding my husband’s murderer and stay away from me.”

  Lyon’s expression was ugly as she seethed at the dressing-down. Finz just looked disappointed. His expression said that he knew he’d lost any cooperation with her. Despite the situation, Olivia almost felt sorry for them.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” Finz said.

  He took the keys from Lyon and handed them back to Olivia. “I’ll be back soon . . . and it will be with proof.”

  “That would be good.”

  Olivia and Andrew watched Finz and his team pack up from the garage’s threshold. They worked in silence. Olivia’s neighbors moved back inside their homes.

  As Finz headed back to his car, he stopped and turned around. “Just before I go, I thought I’d let you know about an interesting development. Your sister offered to become my confidential informant. Apparently, she has something to get off her chest.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  When Concord’s finest pulled away, Andrew said, “He’s bullshitting, right? Clare wouldn’t sell you out, not her own sister.”

  Olivia didn’t think so, but a lifetime of Clare’s antics said anything was possible, especially if her back was against the wall. Somehow she didn’t think Clare was talking—yet. If she were, Finz wouldn’t be wasting his time with a search warrant. He would have arrested her by now. But that was subject to change. Just because Clare wasn’t talking today didn’t mean she wouldn’t tomorrow.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Olivia said, “but she’s the least of my problems. This tire-iron crap was a message from Roy. He’s coming for me.”

  “What can we do?”

  Using Karen Innes’s words, she said, “We burn him before he can burn me.”

  Olivia called Roy. She could guarantee he had his phone on. He’d be eagerly awaiting her reaction to Heather’s and Amy’s murders and, no doubt, the discovery of the murder weapon that killed Richard. Despite her belief, the call went to voice mail.

  “I found them,” she said, leaving a message, and hung up.

  Now began the waiting game. Playing voice-mail tag was just his way of showing who was in charge. Andrew told her it was going to be okay. She so wanted to believe that, but recent history said otherwise.

  She went up to her room, peeled off her clothes, and tossed them on the tiled bathroom floor. Staring at them, she knew she wouldn’t be wearing them again. They were a liability, since they’d been exposed to a crime scene. But that was a minor reason. More importantly, those clothes would be a constant reminder of Heather’s and Amy’s murders. Their bodies, cold and still, left in their own blood. That was the real reason she could never wear them again.

  She got under the shower and scrubbed herself. Soap and water would clean her of all physical traces of the murders, but not the mental ones. She found herself weeping as she ran the soap over her body.

  Three people were dead because of her. She hadn’t wielded the tire iron that killed Richard or brandished the knife that took Heather’s and Amy’s lives, but she was involved. She’d set the wheels in motion. She’d hired Infidelity Limited, and she’d told Heather and Amy to trust her. Her actions had gotten all three of them killed. Bringing down Roy and Infidelity Limited was her only penance. It would be justice for all the dead people and all the ruined lives. She turned off the faucet and stepped from the shower.

  She wrapped a towel around herself and dried her hair off with another. As she returned to her bedroom to grab fresh clothes, she found Andrew standing in the doorway, holding her burner phone. It was ringing.

  “It’s Roy,” he said.

  Any self-consciousness she had felt about finding Andrew in her bedroom was set aside. She took the phone from him.

  “Come in,” she said, “but be quiet.”

  Andrew came in and sat on the corner of the bed. His gaze flashed to her body, hidden by the towel, before he fixed it on her face.

  “Yes,” she said into the phone.

  “So you found them?” Roy snarled.

  An image of Heather and Amy flashed into her mind’s eye. “Yes. Did you have to kill them?”

  “Did you have to lie, Olivia?”

  “I didn’t want to be another of your victims. I had to try something.” She walked to the window overlooking her street, leaned against the sill, and looked out to see if he was out there. She felt Andrew’s gaze on her.

  “I thought you were smarter than that. You can’t game the system. It’s perfect. You lose if you don’t follow instructions.”

  No, Infidelity Limited clients lose regardless, she thought. “You’ll be pleased to hear that the police were here. They’ve found the murder weapon used to kill Richard. It’s a tire iron, and it just so happens that the one from my car is missing. Does that have anything to do with you?”

  Roy barked a derisive laugh. “I told you there’d be consequences, Olivia. Why aren’t the cops sweating you?”

  “Because they can’t prove the one they have is the one from my car.”

  “Yet.”

  “And will they?” This was an important point. If Finz was going to connect that tire iron to her in a matter of days, she stood no chance of ending Infidelity Limited.

  “The police will have an uphill struggle proving it’s yours.”

  She wanted to believe Roy’s intimation that putting the tire iron in Finz’s hands was nothing more than a warning shot, but she knew better. Roy was likely holding back a piece of evidence that would definitively tie her to that tire iron. The good news was he wouldn’t burn her yet. He was still talking to her, which meant he wanted something from her.

  “I’ve learned my lesson. How can I make it up to you, Roy?”

  “What makes you think you can?”

  You’re still talking to me, she thought. If he didn’t want to put her through the wringer one more time, he wouldn’t be calling. He would have disappeared back into the shadows. “I’m hoping you’ll let me.”

  “That’s what makes you smarter than everyone I’ve dealt with. And that’s why you aren’t in a jail cell. You’re right; you can make it up to me. Meet me at Los Vaqueros Reservoir. Come via the Morgan Territory Road. Leave now,” he said before the line went dead.

  She tossed the phone on the bed.

  “What’s he want?”

  “To meet now
at Los Vaqueros Reservoir.”

  “Shit. He’ll see me if I shadow you.”

  “I know. That’s why I don’t want you following me. He doesn’t trust me anymore. His guard is going to be up, and his people won’t be taking any chances. You can’t back me up.”

  She went into the walk-in closet and closed the door. She grabbed fresh clothes, dropped the towel, and started dressing.

  “I don’t like it,” Andrew said from the other side of the door.

  “It’ll be okay. He won’t do anything drastic. I haven’t paid him his hundred grand yet,” she said, pulling on a pair of jeans.

  When she opened the closet door, Andrew was standing there.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  She hugged him and felt safe. In a world of shifting sands, he felt like a rock. “Go home. Get changed. Wait for me. I’ll call you when it’s over.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she was on the road. Maybe that was a good thing. With her Audi on the move, Finz couldn’t swoop in for a second shot at examining the car.

  She called Clare. She hadn’t wanted to do it in front of Andrew. This was something between sisters only. Her call went to voice mail. Clare was no doubt screening her calls.

  “Clare, it’s me. Finz says you’re offering to inform on me. You’d better not be. Call me.”

  After half an hour, she found herself in Roy country. The roads had narrowed to two lanes, and farmland replaced civilization. She hadn’t come across another vehicle in the last five miles, and she still had another ten miles to go. She was sure it would get good and isolated by then.

  What’s Roy’s next play? she wondered. She hadn’t killed for him. What was the punishment for that—to kill two people? Making her an accessory to Richard’s murder was only the tip of the iceberg. He’d want something that indebted her to him further to ensure she didn’t cross him again. In the same way she’d known she couldn’t kill Amy, she also knew she couldn’t follow through on anything he instructed. She’d agreed to this meeting to buy time, find an angle, and sink Infidelity Limited and all who sailed on her. Maybe he wouldn’t have a new task for her. Perhaps Roy was done with her and was bringing her out here to put a bullet in her head. She pushed that thought into the recesses of her mind.

  The road rose and curved to the left. As she crested the rise, a dull explosion sounded under the car, and the steering wheel bucked in her hands. The Audi held the corner, but the steering lost its solid feel. The all-too-familiar thud-thud-thud of a deflating tire followed. She didn’t want to stop on a blind corner, so she let the sedan run on around the corner and eased it to the side of the road, half on the road and half on the dirt.

  She climbed out of the car to check the wheels, and lo and behold, her front right tire was flat. And because Roy had taken her tire iron, she couldn’t change it. Life was really playing a cruel joke on her.

  She debated calling Andrew for help, but decided it was too risky. She tracked back up the road to see what had punctured her tire. In the road sat a spike strip, the expanding kind police used on COPS and other reality cop shows.

  “What the hell?”

  She counted herself lucky it had only taken out one of her tires. Whoever the asshole was who left it out there thought he was pretty funny. As she bent down to yank the thing off the road, she heard rustling in the pasture behind her.

  Reflexively, she straightened and swung around. Her first move should have been to run back to the car. That fraction-of-a-second delay was all her attacker needed. Head covered with a ski mask, he pounced, driving a shoulder into her stomach and blasting the air from her lungs. The impact sent her flying. She hit the ground hard, just managing to keep her head from connecting with the asphalt. She scrabbled to her hands and feet but gave him the perfect opening to kick her in the stomach. Again, the blow robbed her of her breath.

  “You thought you could fuck with us, Olivia,” he snarled. “You’re going to learn the price of betrayal.”

  Olivia curled into a fetal ball as pain radiated throughout her body. This was it. Roy was really going to kill her. One of his lackeys would do the deed and dump her at the side of the road. Well, she wasn’t going to go quietly. She shot out a donkey kick, which barely missed when he jumped clear.

  She used that momentary edge to jump to her feet. Every stomach muscle screeched in pain when she stood. She lurched for her car and reached it, but not before he caught up with her. He slammed her against the Audi’s side, then drove his heel into the back of one of her knees, which dropped her to the ground. He swiftly looped a pair of flex cuffs around her wrists and cinched them tight.

  “Got her,” he barked into a phone.

  A van she was all too familiar with roared around the corner a minute later, with Dolores driving. She brought the van to a stop in front of Olivia’s sedan and jumped out.

  “Let’s get this bitch boxed up,” she said, yanking open the rear doors.

  “Time to learn your fate, Olivia,” Ski Mask said.

  He produced a hood from his pocket and pulled it over Olivia’s head. The two of them hauled her to her feet and tossed her in the back of the van, where one of them bound her feet.

  “You got this?” Ski Mask asked Dolores.

  “Yeah, you stay and clean this up.”

  “Will do.”

  The tires spun when Dolores drove away. The van surged forward, sending Olivia sliding across the van’s metal bed and crashing into the doors.

  A thousand options raced through her head to make sure this ride wasn’t her last, but she decided against them all. Roy wouldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t be that merciful.

  Olivia guessed they’d been driving for fifteen minutes when Dolores stopped the van. In that time, Dolores had tossed her around on the twisting roads. She estimated that they couldn’t have traveled more than ten miles.

  The doors burst open, and a pair of hands snatched her ankles and yanked her onto the bumper. A moment later she was weightless as she was hoisted into the air before landing on someone’s shoulder. Although she couldn’t see, she knew she was being carried over rough ground from the uneven steps her carrier took.

  The noonday sun blazed against her back, but cool air soon replaced the heat. Wherever she was, it was dank and musty smelling.

  “I’m lowering you down.” It was Roy’s voice. “Stand still, and I’ll cut your ties.”

  There was little emotion in his voice, other than disappointment. He was acting like she’d really hurt his feelings. Poor lamb, she thought, someone not playing by your little rules?

  He carefully lowered her to her feet. She wobbled, but he steadied her.

  He pulled the sack free of her head before going behind and snipping the cuffs off her wrists and ankles. The sudden blood rush to her extremities rode the line between pleasure and pain. She massaged her wrists and rolled her shoulders, relishing the freedom.

  Roy had brought her to what appeared to be a farm. They were standing at the center of a cavernous prefab structure close to three hundred feet long. It was open at both ends, with aluminum siding and clear plastic panels for lighting. There was no floor, just dirt and wood shavings. It smelled fairly fresh, except for the undercurrent of industrial cleaner.

  He noticed her taking in her surroundings. “This was a poultry farm until the USDA shut them down a few months ago. This was a broiler house for raising chickens for eating, but there’s also a battery farm and a hatchery here. Now it’s up for sale.”

  She wondered if she was supposed to read some meaning into this location. Was Roy saying he was fattening her up for the kill?

  Dolores stood next to the van at one end of the broiler house, blocking Olivia’s potential escape route. No one guarded the other doorway. She might be able to outrun Roy, but then what? She was miles from anywhere.

  “You went a little overboard with the security check,” she snapped. “Hijacking me at the side of the road was a bit excessive, don’t you think?”

  Roy
put his hands behind his back, grasping his right wrist with his left hand, and meandered in the direction of the unguarded entrance. Olivia had no choice but to follow.

  “You deceived us, Olivia. I can no longer trust you. That means I have to incorporate more stringent security checks. Getting a little rough with you is our way of showing how upset we are with you.”

  “Killing Heather and Amy, was that your way of showing them your displeasure with their actions?”

  “I’ve told you how Infidelity Limited works. Amy was destined to die as soon as Heather hired us. Heather gave us no option. We had to kill her too. She was a liability.”

  “And me?” She did her best to sound like she wasn’t intimidated.

  “You have to pay a price for trying to mislead us. You’ve personally insulted me. That’s hard to forget.”

  She bit her tongue. Roy had scammed her, killed her husband, and tried to get her to kill a stranger—and he was the aggrieved party? He was either delusional or playing a cruel joke.

  “So how do I make it up to you?” she asked. “Do I kill someone else for you? I still owe you a life. Isn’t that the debt I owe you?”

  He stopped walking and circled around to face her. “As much as I would like you to do that, because I think you’d do a very good job, I think that ship has sailed. You won’t kill for us. It doesn’t matter what I threaten you with. You won’t do it.”

  The hair went up on the back of her neck. That was bullet-to-head talk. “What can I do, then?”

  “Pay a fine.”

  “A fine?”

  “Yes, a onetime payment to get us out of your life and vice versa.”

  It sounded too good to be true. “How much?”

  “You cost us a lot of money. Heather was due to pay us a significant sum. There are people that need to be paid for their work on the double killing we had to do on your part. There has to be a punitive element too. You did betray us after all. I would say one to two million.”

  “You’re crazy. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “I know. I’m just letting you know how much you’ve cost the organization. Richard had life insurance, correct? What’s it worth?”