The Slowest Death

by Rick Reed

Jack wasn’t so sure. He and Liddell still had to face the Shooting Board, Internal Affairs, and the Merit Board. Jack was a frequent flyer with all of them. “The Feds are having conniption fits. Frank was their best analyst. He’s caught more serial killers, killers and mass murderers than our whole department combined. Did you know he was decorated by the president himself?”

  “You’ve got to quit beating yourself up over this, pod’na. I was there too. It’s just as much my fault—if there is any fault—as it is yours. I could have stopped you from confronting him. We didn’t think we had a choice. He pulled a gun. We didn’t know it wasn’t loaded.”

  Liddell was wrong. He couldn’t have stopped Jack. He knew he was like a dog with a bone.

  Jack was told that Tunney had left his will with his boss back at Langley. In it, he requested Missy’s body and Sue’s remains be transferred to a mausoleum in Boston. He wanted his ashes put in the vault with them.”

  Jack touched Tunney’s hand. It was cold, unreal. “You did the right thing, Frank. You got the bad guys. You’re finished here. You can move on.”

  Jack and Liddell found their wives and walked to the doors. “I don’t want to stay for the cremation,” Jack said to them. He didn’t say that he needed to get out of there before he had a meltdown, but Katie could sense it.

  “We’ll go outside, honey,” she said. “But you need to stay.”

  Jack said, “I’m done, Katie. I’m really done.”

  Katie wrapped her arm in his. “You don’t mean that. We’ll go home. You need a Scotch and—”

  “I need a lot of Scotch,” Jack said. “It won’t help. I just…” He couldn’t finish. He felt sick. Sick of this life. Sick of damned police shit. Sick of everything. He looked at Marcie and wondered what they’d all do if it were Liddell in the casket. He felt sick. He had to get out of there. Get away by himself.

  “I’m going to the cabin, Katie. I need some time,” Jack said.

  Before he could leave, the Fed that Liddell had pointed out approached them. The man didn’t offer his hand. He said, “I’m Assistant Deputy Director Toomey with the FBI. I was Frank Tunney’s boss.”

  Jack hung his head. He had expected this, but hoped he could make a clean getaway before the Feds came to tar and feather him and run him out of town on a rail. He felt like he deserved it.

  “Look, Director Toomey. I can’t tell you how bad this makes us all feel. If there was any other way I—”

  “It’s Assistant Deputy Director, and that’s not why I wanted to meet you,” Toomey said. “We need to talk. Not now.” Toomey handed Jack a business card. “Call me next week. We need to talk.”

  Jack took the card. He didn’t know what to say. Why wait until next week to chew Jack’s ass out. “I don’t think—” Jack said and the FBI man stopped him.

  “Don’t think. Call me. I’ll be expecting it. I’ve already spoken with your chief.” Toomey walked away without another word.

  Marcie took Liddell’s arm. “Honey?”

  Liddell took the card from Jack and inspected it. “Shitfire, pod’na. I just hope it’s not Larry Jansen.”

  Jack said, “What?”

  “I hope my new pod’na isn’t Larry Jansen.”

  Marcie said a little more insistently, “Liddell?”

  “I’m not getting fired, Bigfoot,” Jack said, but he wasn’t too sure.

  “If you go, I’m going too,” Liddell said.

  Marcie yanked on Liddell’s arm and said, “I think it’s time.”

  * * * *

  Jack and Katie sat in the waiting room down the hall from the maternity ward. Jack had picked something up for his partner before they arrived, hoping they had time. It was Marcie’s first child, so he didn’t expect it to be quick. Katie was on the telephone with her sister, Moira, discussing baby gifts. Jack stared into space, half listening to his wife, and the other half thinking about Tunney. He wondered if Tunney had known what the outcome would be if he let Jack and Liddell into his room that night. Tunney knew they were coming. He proclaimed he’d never go to jail. He’d decided his own fate when he said only one of them would be leaving the room alive. It was a classic suicide-by-cop scenario.

  A nurse stuck her head through the double doors and said to Jack and Katie, “You can come in now.”

  They followed her into the maternity ward, where the nurse opened a door for them. Bigfoot sat in a chair beside the bed, gripping Marcie’s hand and grinning like a…well, a happy Bigfoot. The bundle on Marcie’s chest was still and quiet, and Jack felt a moment of panic before he heard some noises only a newborn is capable of making.

  “A girl pod’na,” Liddell said, and tears welled up in his eyes.

  Katie hugged Jack, kissed him squarely on the mouth, and did what any woman would do. She ignored the men completely and fussed over Marcie and the baby. That was the way life was. One new life brought into the world and another gone to the end of the path. He was glad to see Liddell immersed in the world of fatherhood, and not sunk into depression over what they’d had to do only a few days ago.

  “I got you a present,” Jack said to Liddell, holding something behind his back.

  “I don’t smoke cigars, pod’na. But if they’re chocolate cigars, I’ll split one with you.”

  Jack brought out a white paper sack and opened the top. He pulled out a long john with chocolate icing and handed it to Liddell.

  “Hey, thanks pod’na.” Liddell said, “Look, babe. He put ‘It’s a Girl’ on the top.”

  “That’s nice, Jack,” Marcie said.

  “Nice?” Liddell said. “He’s the best!” He waggled the donut toward the baby saying, “You want one, don’t you? You’re just like your daddy. Say donut.”

  Jack laughed at him. Katie and Marcie ignored him. The baby just made sounds. To Jack she was saying, “Feed me, Daddy.”

  Liddell bit off half the long john and asked, “What would you have done if the baby was a boy? Huh?”

  Jack reached in the bag and pulled out another long john. Iced on top were the words, “It’s a Boy.”

  “Always prepared. Just like the Boy Scout motto, pod’na.”

  Jack said, “The Boy Scout motto is ‘Don’t touch me there.’ Come out in the hall.”

  Liddell got up and followed Jack into the hallway and asked, “Did Yankowski call you back?”

  “I talked to his captain. He said Big Bobby was nowhere to be found. The Feds are looking for him on money-laundering charges, Boston PD wants him in relation to the murder of Missy Schwindel, Narcotics wants to see if he’s ready to make a deal. The only ones who don’t want him are you and I, Bigfoot.”

  “Speaking of Feds,” Liddell said, “Did you find out what the FBI Director wanted?”

  “Assistant Deputy Director,” Jack corrected him. “No. I haven’t called, and so far he’s left me alone. Maybe he’s got someone else he hates worse.”

  “How about Mindy?” Liddell asked. “Any luck finding her yet?”

  “In the wind,” Jack said. Mindy had completely disappeared. Jack figured she had left the country with the money Sonny had stashed in the safe. Good for her. He knew Sonny had been poisoned, but he still believed she didn’t know the tea contained deadly amounts of cyanide. Lots of people drank the stuff. Just another ditzy blonde. He heard the FBI weren’t actively seeking her, so he wished her well. He wished Sonny hadn’t been crooked. He wished Sully hadn’t been such an asswipe. He wished Frank would have done this differently. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do this anymore.

  Maybe he could quit and help manage Two Jakes Restaurant. Hell, he didn’t even have to work, with the money he was making off the business. He could stay home. Have beer-eal for breakfast. Have regular sex. Drink Scotch. Drink more Scotch. Maybe he’d even think seriously about having a baby like Bigfoot. Well, not like Bigfoot, but a baby.

  Liddell
and Marcie had decided on a name. Jane. They were naming her after Marcie’s mother. Jack wasn’t too disappointed, although he liked the name Jackie more than Jane.

  Katie’s sister, Moira, showed up and joined the other women in ignoring the men. Jack wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Epilogue

  Three months later…

  Mindy watched the ocean wash onto the white sands of the beach in Barbados. This was her life now, and it was a good one. She had the sun, she had the sand, she had a house with beachfront, and she’d even bought a new identity. Cash really was king, just like Sonny had said.

  She finished her drink, picked up her bag, folded her chair, and walked up the beach to her house. She’d always wanted a house with a glass front with a view of the beach. She could watch the sunset every day if she wanted. At last, she could relax. She had outrun everyone. It had been three months since Sonny’s death and she’d held her breath every single day. But not now. Now she was Jillian Wozniak. It was the name of a friend she knew from grade school. It was a stupid name, but it was the one she’d given the guy who made her a passport and Colorado driver’s license. She’d even had a birth certificate made in case she wanted to get a driver’s license here.

  She opened the sliding doors and admired her tan legs. She thought about Sonny and how careless he had become at the end. She was the one who figured out how they could skim money off the drug busts. She knew Big Bobby would catch on sooner or later, and that was why she had started poisoning Sonny. It was slow to work, but if he died from that particular poison no one would be the wiser. She’d get everything, he’d get the blame.

  She wasn’t sorry that asshole FBI guy killed everyone. It made her plan that much better. She was a victim her whole life. But she wasn’t stupid like Big Bobby and Sonny and Sully and even those detectives had thought. Big Bobby thought Sully took the money. Sully got dead. She got away. And she read online that Big Bobby had died of something. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

  She reluctantly turned away from the gorgeous vista that was her new life and walked into her kitchen. She opened a bottle of wine, poured half of it in a Big Joe glass, walked into her front room and stopped dead in her tracks.

  An older gentleman with white, slicked-back hair sat on her sofa. He ran a hand through his hair and wiped it on the white slacks of his Panama suit.

  “Hello, Mindy,” Uncle Marty said. “Big Bobby’s wife sends her regards.”

  The Deadliest Sin

  Don’t miss the next exciting Jack Murphy thriller by Rick Reed

  Coming soon from Lyrical Underground,

  an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Keep reading to enjoy a page-turning excerpt . . .

  Chapter 1

  Coyote sat in the booth, drinking stale coffee, eating a crust of cherry pie and writing in a five by nine inch ring notebook. He had to record his thoughts, his feelings. That’s what his shrink said. His shrink was an asshole, but at two Benjamin’s a session Coyote didn’t want to waste the advice.

  The gray-haired waitress shuffled over in dirty house shoes.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  Coyote looked around the shabby cafe. It was narrow, with a six-foot counter on one side, and two ramshackle booths on the other, one with duct tape holding a leg together, and no customers. The coffee in the bottom of the carafe was black and thick as syrup. This’s what she calls this drain cleaner.

  He was polite. “No,” he said. His voice was gruff, deep for a man barely five and a half foot tall. He was wearing a Stetson, crisp white shirt with imitation pearl snaps, creased blue jeans and Western boots. His trench coat lay on the bench beside him. He was not a big man by any standard, but only a few men had made the mistake of seeing him as small.

  The woman said, “Closing in five.”

  He ignored her as her shoes scuffed across the stained black and white tiles. He dug deep in a pocket and pulls out a crumpled twenty. He slid it under his cup and reads what he’d written so far:

  I’m tired. Tired of everything and everyone. People disgust me. Food doesn’t taste good. There’s no happiness anywhere for me. I see people pretending to sing, their words full of hate and anger and violence. They dance with faces showing hate and confrontation. What are they so unhappy about? Why do they want to disrespect everything they got for free? They won’t work. They think they can be rich and happy taking drugs. They dishonor their parents and each other. They fight from a safe distance with texts and computers and phones. Cowards.

  Everyone is out for themselves and the only thing they can agree on is that their elders were wrong, racist, or homophobic. They don’t see why ‘elders’ always talk about the past, about the lessons that took a lifetime to learn. They are confused about who they are, who anyone else is, angry that their elders didn’t give them more. Why should they take any blame or responsibility?

  This is where my mind goes when I’m on the road. Alone, thank God. My dreams are visions, premonitions of things to come. Slackers, drug addicts, and alcoholics, irresponsible, arrogant, pretenders surround me. They have created a world where they matter, but they don’t. If the last three or four generations were wiped from the face of the earth, we wouldn’t notice. They contribute nothing. They do nothing. They want everything. They’re using my air.

  “Time,” the old woman said.

  Coyote got up. He couldn’t wait to leave. The smell of putrid coffee mixed with the odor of fried onions was enough incentive to go. He walked out the door, his boots crunching on rock salt. He pulled his coat tighter against the frigid air, looked down the street at the Impala with the fogged up windshield. The asshole had made Coyote wait. Coyote respected that.

  He turned down the alleyway, slipping something from his pocket.

  * * * *

  The old-model VW sat halfway down the street, lights off, engine running. The man inside was tall and lean. He was bent like a pretzel, stuffed into the driver’s compartment, knees touching the dashboard, his upper body bent forward over the steering wheel, head almost touching the roof while he watched the man inside the coffee shop. They made him spend two days driving in circles, St. Louis to Chicago to Louisville and back to Evansville. He waited another two days to meet this man they called Coyote, to whom he was to turn over his load and get paid.

  He didn’t trust them, nor believe them. He’d made this same run dozens of times over the last five years and each time took the same route. They were worried about something or they wouldn’t have changed things. That meant he had to worry too. He’d deliberately missed the delivery to Coyote. They wouldn’t get delivery until he got paid, double the original amount, and he’d taken steps to ensure they wouldn’t double cross him.

  The cramped quarters of the VW were claustrophobic compared to the big cab of the Ryder truck but it wouldn’t be long now. The VW was the only thing he could steal on short order before this meeting, and it didn’t stand out in his surroundings.

  He was late for this meeting with Coyote but one thing a life of crime had taught him—caution. He’d driven around, randomly passing by the meeting spot he’d selected, and watched the man in the cowboy hat go inside. He didn’t know Coyote by sight, but the description he’d been given matched this little guy to a tee. Coyote sat down in a booth and didn’t move except to drink something, probably coffee, and eat a piece of pie.

  Several times he’d driven past the University of Evansville, with its sweeping lawns, water fountains, concrete benches, fraternity houses, bookstores and libraries and labs. He’d had thoughts of going to school once upon a time. He’d given those ideas up before he made it to high school and joined his father in the family business instead. Stealing and stripping cars brought in money and you didn’t need a degree to do it. That’s how he was in possession of this car. He wondered how different his life would have been if he hadn’t…

&n
bsp; Coyote came out, glanced down the street, looked directly at the VW with the engine running, turned and walked into the alleyway. Coyote had seen him. He hadn’t been as careful as he thought. But he had to get his money. All of his own was spent keeping his mom in that goddam nursing home in Florida. He owed her. She’d kept him alive in between the beatings his drunken bum of a father had given him.

  He watched the last light go out in the shop. The old woman that had waited on Coyote came out wearing what looked like a long bathrobe. She was thin as a rail and he could see her S-shaped spine pushing against the back of the thin garment. She made her way down the street, stopping and turning around several times, as if someone would be desperate enough to molest her wrinkled ass.

  She was swallowed by the darkness down the block. The neighborhood was dark. The only light came from the campus parking lots and it barely spilled over onto the streets. Three blocks north was a scattering of little one-bedroom houses. It was from one of these that he’d ‘borrowed’ the car.

  He turned to the dog in the back seat. “Stay, uh…” He hadn’t given the dog a name. Maybe he’d keep him. Maybe not. He’d never had a dog. Wouldn’t have this one but he couldn’t leave it behind. Too damn cold in the truck. He couldn’t do that to the mongrel. It was his soft spot. “Spot. I’ll call you spot,” he said to the dog. “Okay? You like Spot?”

  The dog’s head cocked to one side, its mouth opening as if smiling. The dog was a pup really, maybe a shepherd mix. “Stay,” he said softly to the dog. It cocked its head to the other side and its dark seemingly pupilless eyes locked on his. It gave a short whine, as if to say, “You can call me anything. Just take me with you.”

  He laughed. When he got paid he could afford for both of them to eat better than dog food. His little pun made him laugh again.

  He exited the VW. The hinges creaked long and loud. He didn’t want to leave the door ajar because the dome light would stay on and even though there seemed to be no one around, it would attract attention. He had to slam the door twice to make it latch. It didn’t really matter if Coyote heard it. Coyote knew he was there. Knew he was coming to meet him in the alleyway. He just didn’t want some asshole to steal the car. And his dog. A dome light was like a bug light. It attracted thieves.