The Harry Starke Series Books 4 -6: The Harry Starke Series Boxed Set 2 (The Harry Starke Novels - The Boxed Sets)

by Blair Howard

  Someone was going to pay. That was certain.

  Chapter 33

  I was still in bed, awake, staring up at the ceiling when my iPhone rang that Tuesday morning. It was Mike Willis.

  What the hell? At this time of day?

  I looked at Amanda. She was sleeping like a baby. Me? I felt like shit.

  “Hey, Mike,” I said quietly. “Let me call you back—”

  “Wait, wait, we have a match!” he yelled, before I could disconnect. “I got the reports back from the lab, both of them. That tissue with the lipstick you turned in. There was DNA on it. Yours and Ruth Archer’s. And Archer’s matched the DNA from the hair follicle. You’ve got yourself a killer.”

  I felt a surge of excitement, but I also had the strangest feeling, something akin to anticlimax, but more than that. I couldn’t explain it, not even to myself. DNA is DNA, and no one can argue with that. Except that…. Well, I had a weird feeling something wasn’t quite right.

  “I heard you had a bad night,” he said. “You got shot at, right?”

  “That would be putting it mildly. Look, there are a couple of things I need to sort out and confirm before you turn that information loose. Okay?”

  “Well... yeah, but….”

  “I know, I know. But I have to sort it through, figure some things out. Tell Kate, of course, but other than that, can you keep it to yourself for a couple of days?”

  Silence, and then, “Harry. You know I respect you, right?”

  “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re asking me to withhold evidence in a murder case. Evidence that I know will put away a killer. I don’t know if I can do that, even for you.”

  “I know, and I understand. I’m not asking you to withhold it. You’re going to give it to Kate. Then you’ll just sit on it for a couple of days…. One day. You expedited it, right? So it wouldn’t have been here for at least that long anyway. One day, Mike. Just one day.”

  “Oh shit. If this gets out, it’ll cost me my job. One day. I’ll call Kate now. Don’t throw me under the bus, Harry.”

  “I won’t. Count on it. Listen. Do me another favor, please? Give me thirty minutes. I need to call Kate before you do. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Thanks, Mike.”

  I got out of bed, took the phone into the bathroom, and made the call.

  “Hey,” Kate said. “How are you? How’s Amanda?”

  “We’re fine. Listen. I just heard from Mike Willis. The DNA reports are in. We have a match—to Ruth Archer. You can expect a call from him in the next few minutes and he’ll explain, but here’s the thing. I have one of those feelings. I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve asked Mike to give us a little time before he releases the results. I think we need to bring her in, Kate. Right now, but we need to do it without a whole of lot fuss and noise. Just you and me. What do you think?”

  She was silent for a minute, then said, “You think it’s enough?”

  “That’s the point. I’m not sure. That’s why the need for caution. We don’t need to blow it. I’ll meet you at Amnicola in say, an hour. Nine thirty. Okay?”

  It was.

  I went back into the bedroom. The early morning light was shining through the drapes. Amanda was still asleep.

  I shook her gently. She rolled over onto her back, looked up me through eyes full of sleep. “What?”

  “Hey,” I whispered as I pulled her to me. “I missed you.”

  “Missed me?” she mumbled, still half asleep. “I haven’t been anywhere.”

  “Yes you have. You were asleep, and I missed you.”

  “Oh, you big baby.” She hugged me, then pushed me away, lay back and closed her eyes.

  I smiled, got off the bed, and went to the bathroom.

  “Coffee please?”

  I smiled again. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I turned on the TV and flipped to Channel 7. They were talking about the attack, and how their star presenter had been caught up in it.

  “How come they haven’t called you?” I asked.

  “I turned my phone off last night. I suppose I’d better check in. I’m going to ask for a few days off.”

  I grabbed a quick shower while she was on the phone, dressed—jeans, black T-shirt—climbed into my shoulder rig, slipped my spare MP9 into the holster. I covered both with a lightweight white golf jacket, and kissed her goodbye. Then I took a deep breath and went down the stairs to my car. Fifteen minutes later I was heading over the Thrasher Bridge at close to seventy miles an hour. I looked at the dash clock. It was almost nine thirty.

  Chapter 34

  Kate was waiting for me when I arrived. Lonnie Guest was with her and, surprise, surprise, he was in plain clothes.

  “Hey, Harry,” he said, a smirk on his fat face. “I heard they almost got you last night, too bad.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, so I let it go.

  “They turned you loose again, huh?” I asked. “Bit early?”

  “Yeah, well. The LT couldn’t get along without me.” He looked at Kate and grinned.

  She rolled her eyes. “You ready?” she asked me.

  I nodded.

  “We’ll take a cruiser. Lonnie, you follow us. Stay close.”

  The fat man was at his desk again when we walked into the offices of the Archer Group. He looked up from his newspaper, started when he saw who it was, rose halfway to his feet, picked up the phone, and punched in a number.

  “Starke is here, Ms. Archer, an’ he’s…” he looked at the badge Kate was holding in front of his nose, “he’s got two police officers with him. One is a Lieutenant Gazzara.” He listened for a minute then looked up and said, “You can go up.”

  The door to her office was open. She was seated behind her desk. Her suit jacket was unbuttoned to reveal a semi-transparent white blouse. As always, she looked stunning.

  “So,” she said. “What do you want this time? Not more bullshit, I hope.”

  “Ruth Archer,” Kate began, holding her badge out for Ruth to see. “My name is Lieutenant Catherine Gazzara. I work in the major crimes unit, homicide division. I need you to come with me to the police department to answer some questions in connection with the death of Angela Hartwell.”

  “Excuse me,” she looked stunned. “Are you insane? What reason could you possibly have? I had nothing to do with her death.”

  “I have a DNA match that puts you with the body at the time of death.”

  “That’s impossible. She was still alive when I left the club, and I did leave the club. I can prove it.”

  Uh-oh. Here it comes. I thought.

  Kate looked at her. “Ms. Archer. We found a hair caught in Angela Hartwell’s watchband. It was yours. There’s no doubt about it. We have a DNA match. You had to have been there.”

  “Well I wasn’t, lady, and I can prove it. I was with someone, from the minute I left the club until after five the following morning.”

  “And who might that be?”

  She hesitated for a minute, then shook her head and said, in a low voice, “Jack Bentley. It was Jack Bentley. You can ask him. You have it all wrong. I had nothing to do with it.”

  I didn’t look at Kate. I kept my eyes on Ruth. I didn’t want her to get the idea we were stumped.

  “I still need you to come with me,” Kate said. “I’ll check your alibi, and if what you say is true…. Well, we’ll see. Now, please, if you don’t mind….”

  She stood. “I need to call my lawyer.”

  “Of course, and you can do that at the station. Let’s go.”

  We put her in Lonnie’s cruiser, and he left with her. We sat together in Kate’s cruiser out front of the Archer offices.

  “What the hell?” Kate looked at me.

  I shrugged. “I guess we’d better go see Bentley, and right now. If not, Drake will have her out before we can get back.”

  She nodded, started the car, and we headed west.

  It was just as Ruth
Archer had said. Bentley—very reluctantly—confirmed her alibi. She was with him all night. Unless he helped her, she couldn’t have done it. And he didn’t, because he stated that he made several cell phone calls from his home that evening, one to say goodnight to his wife in Barbados. Those calls could be pinpointed to within a few hundred yards. Ruth Archer was off the hook.

  Chapter 35

  “Don’t say a word,” Kate said to Dan Drake as we walked into the interview room. “You can go,” she said to Ruth. “I’ll talk to you again if I need to.”

  Both Drake and Ruth took the easy road and said nothing. They got up and left. Kate and I got coffee from the machine and went to Kate’s office.

  “Jack Bentley?” she said, dumbfounded. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Does his wife know, I wonder?”

  “I’m sure she does by now. What kind of man screws another woman in his marital bed? Well, with Grace away in Barbados with the girls I guess he wasn’t likely to get caught. The cat was away, etc. etc….”

  “But what about the hair, the DNA? That was Ruth’s. We have a perfect match. Bentley must be lying.”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t want to admit anything. Hell, Kate. We had to twist it out of him. The hair? Planted. Obviously. Yes, the DNA is a match, but If Ruth wasn’t there, her hair couldn’t have gotten caught in her watchband, and she couldn’t have killed Angela, so someone must have planted it.” I paused, thinking.

  “She couldn’t have killed Ralph either,” I continued. “The night he died, she was at the club. She was there from four in the afternoon until after ten. I confirmed it with Sol Wise, yesterday evening, when I took Amanda home. I’ve had him following her for more than a week. That’s why I wasn’t sure when Mike told me about the DNA match. If she killed Angela, it would have made sense for her to kill Ralph too, especially after the meeting I had with her on Wednesday, right? Anyway, it’s a thirty-minute drive from the club to Signal Mountain. She couldn’t have done it.”

  Kate stared at me, her bottom lip between her teeth. “Damn! So if Ruth didn’t kill Angela, who the hell did? It couldn’t have been Ralph; he was murdered too. And who the hell killed him?”

  “Ah, well that’s where you’re wrong. Ralph could have killed Regis and Angela; he was still alive when she died, remember? If he did kill them, the question then becomes who killed Ralph?”

  “What about the twins?”

  “It’s a thought, but I don’t think so, because if I’m right, someone went to a lot of trouble to frame Ruth, and that wouldn’t have been the twins. It wouldn’t make sense. By the same thinking, we can also rule out Burke and Hare.”

  “So who was it then? And who the hell tried to kill you? Do you have any ideas?”

  “I think I do. Think about it.”

  “I have thought about it, you ass. I’m still thinking about it. There’s no one else.”

  “Then think about it some more. Come on, Kate. When all else fails, go back to the basics. Who else besides Ruth would benefit from the deaths of Regis, Angela and… Ralph?”

  She put her cup down on the desk, threw back her head, and stared up at ceiling, exasperated. “Regis? Angela? Ralph? I don’t know, dammit….” And then the light went on. “Ohhhhh. I see.” She jumped up from her seat, ran round the table, grabbed my cheeks, one in each hand, and shook, hard.

  “Ouch,” I yelled when she let go. “You got it, then?”

  “I got it. Mary Hartwell,” she said, triumphantly.

  “Yup. Mary. How the hell I missed it before, I don’t know. I guess I got fixated on Ruth—okay, okay, not that kind of fixated—and just didn’t look for alternatives. It was only when I knew she was out of it, when we were in the car driving here, that I started thinking, and there it was, right in front of us all the time. Everything that benefited Ralph and Ruth also benefitted Mary. Ralph’s death benefitted her even more. She now inherits everything—at least I assume she does—the Hartwell banks, Angela’s money; she gets it all. If Ralph was about to cave, lose his head and try to cut himself a deal… well, she couldn’t have that, now could she?”

  “Okay, I’ll buy in. How do we prove it?”

  “That’s the $64,000 question, and the answer is… I don’t know. Not yet.”

  She was serious now. “We have nothing. Not a damn thing. Just a theory. Hell, Harry, it might just as easily have been someone else.”

  “It might, but it wasn’t. She hated Angela. We know that. Regis too. And who else had motive, means, and opportunity to kill Ralph? No one! The only thing we might have is that spot on the rug: the saliva in the blood spatter, and that’s real iffy. It might be contaminated, might not even be a match, and we won’t even know one way or the other until we get the lab results. And we won’t have them for a couple more weeks, at best. If it’s not a match, we’re fu—Well, you know. Short of screwing a confession out of her, and I can’t see that happening, we’ll have to begin all over again, at the beginning.”

  “Oh my God. Chief Johnston will love that. So what do we do?”

  “Right now, I’m going to get another cup of coffee. You want one?”

  She sighed. “Yeah, black. No sugar.”

  I went to get it. When I returned, she was sitting forward in her seat staring at a spot on the wall, hands clasped together in front of her, elbows on the desk. She sat up. I handed her the cup. She raised it to her lips and sipped, then looked up at me expectantly.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I can’t conjure physical evidence out of thin air and, as they like to say around here, we don’t got none.”

  “Come on, Harry; that’s not like you. This is what you do. This is why you’re a PI and not a cop. You make your own rules. You’re a tricky son of a bitch. Think of something.”

  “What are you saying? That I should go water board her?”

  “Something like that.” She was smiling when she said it, but there was a wicked gleam in her eye.

  I thought about it. Maybe she was right. She was right about one thing: I sure as hell didn’t have to conform to PD rules and regulations. I sat back in my chair, staring at her, my cup of coffee cradled in both hands. She stared back; her gaze unwavering. For several minutes we stayed like that. Finally, she broke.

  “So? What do you think?”

  “I think maybe you’re right. I should confront her. You can’t do it. You can’t even be there. If it goes wrong, you’ll lose your job. Me, on the other hand…. Dan Drake will come down on me like an avenging angel. I’ll get my ass sued off and lose everything I own.”

  “So you’ll do it then?” Her eyes were bright.

  I sighed. “You just don’t care about me anymore, do you?”

  “Of course I do. I just care about snagging Mary Hartwell more.” She grinned, showed me those beautiful teeth, and it worked.

  “Okay. I’ll do it; I’ll confront her. If I get it right, we’ll have her. If I get it wrong, well... hopefully, I won’t. This is what I propose….”

  Chapter 36

  The drive up Signal Mountain was pleasant, even though my head was full of mush. The sky was clear and blue, the views spectacular, my mood gleefully vicious. I was heading into the fray, and that’s what I live for.

  I turned into the driveway, parked, flipped my iPhone onto silent mode, slipped it into my jacket pocket. Then I got out of the car, walked up the steps, and thumbed the doorbell.

  She opened the door. “What the hell do you want?”

  I blinked. The change from the woman I’d seen before was startling. Obviously, Mary Hartwell hadn’t been expecting visitors. She was wearing black, form-fitting yoga pants and an oversize gray T-shirt. Her hair was a mess.

  “I have a few questions, if you don’t mind. Can I come in?”

  She looked at me, quizzically. “Questions about what?”

  “Ralph, of course. What else?”

  She opened the door wider and stood aside for me to pass. I waited while she closed the door, then followed h
er into the living room.

  “Please.” She indicated for me to sit in one of a pair of easy chairs. She took the other.

  “So. Here you are. What’s on your mind, Mr. Starke?”

  I looked her in the eye and said, “I know, Mrs. Hartwell. I know everything. I know you and Ralph killed Regis and Angela Hartwell, and I know you killed your husband.”

  She didn’t blink. Her lips were still smiling, but her eyes were not.

  “Are you expecting me to take all of that seriously?”

  “I am, and I can prove it.” The muscles in her neck tightened.

  “You’re crazy. That’s insane.” She said it quietly, but without conviction.

  “No. Not at all. Let’s start with your husband, shall we? That was the easy one, right. He was watching television. You simply walked up behind him and shot him, and then you tried to make it look like suicide.” She listened, her face expressionless.

  “It’s funny how people like you think it’s so easy to stage a suicide. It is, in fact, extremely difficult. First, there’s gunshot residue to consider. There was none on Ralph’s hand. Then there’s the blowback, blood spatter; no one ever thinks about that. When a large caliber bullet, or even a small one, is fired into the head at close range, the impact is explosive. Blood and pulverized brain matter are thrown back out of the wound with great force, as you found out, right?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “The blood spatter in this case was extensive,” I said. It was all over his shoulder, the chair, the carpet—it even made it into the palm of his hand. Not much. Just a couple of spots, but that was enough. When you put the gun into his hand, those two spots transferred from his palm onto the grip, which means that he could not possibly have shot himself. If he had, his hand would have shielded the grip from the blood spatter.”

  Again, she gave no reaction.

  “But there’s more, isn’t there, Mary?” I asked.

  Now, finally, she shook her head, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. You were covered in it, weren’t you? His blood. It was on your face, your clothes, and you must have had your mouth open when you pulled the trigger, because some of the spatter went inside—nasty—and you spat it out. We found it, Mary. Ralph’s blood and brain matter… mixed with your saliva. Your DNA.”