Deathmarch (Broslin Creek Book 7)

by Dana Marton

  “Do the sons still live in Broslin?”

  “One died in a car accident on his way to the Jersey Shore years ago, head-on collision on the Atlantic City Expressway. Drunk driver hit him. Other people got hurt too. Big news story. Don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  “You might already have gone back to college. It was right at the end of summer.”

  Harper had no time to reminisce. “What about the other son?”

  “Oh, he moved away. He got married out west. Seattle?”

  “How about Donovan’s wife?”

  “Lynn? She died shortly after the older son was in that accident. She had breast cancer. Sad thing was, she was recovering. But after that boy died, her firstborn and like that, so suddenly, I always thought she just lost her will to live.”

  Dead end after dead end after dead end. But his mother wasn’t to blame, so Harper kept the frustration out of his tone as he asked, “Call me if you remember anything else, all right? Especially about the part-timers that worked there. I’m looking for a list of everyone who’s ever done a job for Donovan. Everyone who installed safes for him.”

  Because that was who else knew Lamm’s safe’s location. The guy who’d installed it. That was the clue Harper had missed.

  “I’ll ask your father,” his mother said. “Just talked to him a minute ago. He’s packing. He’ll be on the first flight back home tomorrow. He wants to help.”

  “Let me know if he remembers anything about the Donovans.”

  Then Mike came on. “The techs triangulated the kidnapper’s phone at the time of contact. Call was made from the middle of a damn cornfield. Guess where? Call originated near where Allie ran into the ditch the night of the murder. Kennan and Murph are already on their way to check the place out, but they don’t expect much. Kidnapper’s probably long gone. I doubt they’ll find more than a smashed burner phone.”

  “All right. Thanks.” If there was anything in that cornfield to find, Murph and Kennan were the ones to find it. Neither man missed a thing. Harper grabbed onto that faint glimmer of hope and held tight.

  “Hey, your mom says if you need to figure out who works for a company, you can look at their payroll records.”

  Bingo.

  “Tell Mom I love her.” Harper hung up, knowing exactly where he was going next.

  Payroll.

  Who had a list of employees at the bar, going back to day one? His parents. Except Donovan was gone. If, God forbid, something ever happened to Harper’s parents and he had to find old payroll records, where would he go? Their accountant.

  Because his parents did run a business and so did half their friends, Harper happened to know that three professional accountants handled most of the small businesses in town. Claire Lee, the one who did Finnegan’s taxes, had a home office. Harper had been there once with his father. Might as well start with her, since he knew exactly where she lived.

  * * *

  Allie picked up the sharpened can lid. Instead of trying for the window again, she went to the stairs and stood to the side of the door that led into the house, then waited, still shaking.

  The next time the kidnapper came out, she would attack.

  He hadn’t shot her in the back of the truck. He’d just cursed her out, then gone back inside, maybe to have another beer. He had decided to kill her. She’d seen the dark resolution in his eyes. He was just working up the guts.

  I didn’t set out to kill anyone, he’d said. He’d either killed Lamm by accident, or in the heat of the moment. He needed to find courage to deal with Allie. And then he’d be back.

  Her only chance was to act before he did. As soon as he came back, as soon as he stepped through that door, she was going to jump him. If one of them had to die in the damn garage, it wasn’t going to be her.

  She gripped the metal lid, breathing hard. Too hard. She was gasping for air. He would hear her on the other side before he opened the door.

  Slow breath in. Hold. Slow breath out.

  Several seconds passed before she succeeded.

  No footsteps inside. The door didn’t open.

  Maybe he’d had that additional beer boost and fallen asleep. Allie waited for his return for a full hour before she gave up.

  She searched the garage for a tool she might use on the window, but she didn’t find anything. Not much there other than more paint cans and a couple of brushes. She sorted through those and found what she identified by smell as paint thinner in a jar.

  She could set a fire. If she had matches. And if she didn’t think she’d be the one to burn first.

  She rifled through a pile of rags between the cans and the wall and nearly walked away just as her fingers brushed against something metal.

  A screwdriver.

  Thank God, thank God for that.

  She could have kissed the damn thing as she hobbled around the truck, back to the window, carrying hope in her hands. She blessed whoever had painted the house and left the tool behind. Then she went to work.

  When her hands slipped and she cut herself, she didn’t care. And she didn’t care when she stabbed a finger, nor when she ripped another nail.

  When the tilt-down window finally popped open, she forgot all the pain. She yanked to widen the opening. Too hard. The window panel nearly crashed into the wall. She caught it at the last second.

  Breathe.

  Cold air rushed in.

  Allie didn’t stop to savor the victory. She had to keep moving. The single-pane window had the lock at the top, hinges on the bottom. The glass now protruded above her head, in the way. To gain her freedom, she would have to crawl up and around it.

  Damn bad design. What were people supposed to do if they had to get out through there in an emergency?

  She tried to pull herself up. Awkward. She hurried off for a paint bucket, which raised her by eight inches. She didn’t dare add another one for fear that her little tower would collapse.

  Trouble was, she had to put her weight on her elbows on the glass to move up. It would be just her luck to break the glass now and cut her arms to shreds. Not to mention how much noise broken glass would make crashing to the cement floor below.

  She pulled, wiggled, tried to find purchase on the wall with her toes. Pain shot through her ankle. The brace was in the way, but when she took it off and tried again, the pain was significantly worse. Since she couldn’t climb at all like that, she had to refasten it before she tried again.

  Then she finally, finally, succeeded. Her head was outside—grinnin’ like a weasel in a henhouse, Calamity Jane would have said—her feet dangling. Freedom was so close, she could taste it.

  An abandoned backyard waited ahead. Beyond that, Allie saw other houses. Safety.

  She just had to get to the point where more of her body weight was outside the window than inside. It’d be easy after that.

  Just a few more inches.

  She sang “Defying Gravity” from Wicked in her head and heaved her body forward. And she did lurch in the right direction.

  Right before she slipped back.

  * * *

  Claire Lee had not handled the accounting for Donovan Security while they’d been in business, but she knew who had. Chad Holmes. Apparently, Broslin’s three accountants were all friends and played Friday-night poker together, along with their spouses. They were aware of each other’s clients.

  Harper drove to the address Claire gave him, while Claire called ahead so he would be expected.

  On his way, Harper called Brody Cash. The call wasn’t picked up.

  Frank Carmelo’s phone went straight to voice mail.

  Harper dialed Dave Grambus next.

  “Detective Harper,” he said as soon as Grambus answered. “This is a police emergency. Don’t argue, please, just answer. Do you know when the in-ground safe was installed at Lamm’s place?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” Grambus argued, of course, sticking to character as diligently as if someone paid him
fifty bucks every time he was surly. “You can’t just wake up people in the middle of the night like this—”

  “I swear to God,” Harper’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, “I’m going to be on your ass for the rest of your life every time you go half a mile over the speed limit.”

  “That’s police brutality.”

  “Not unless I touch you.”

  “It’s police something.”

  “Christ, Dave. Someone was kidnapped. I need to find her. For once, just once, do the right thing, all right?”

  “What kidnapping? Who? Why the hell didn’t you start with that?” Grambus coughed while he thought. “We had the safe installed in twenty sixteen. The price of gold was dropping—”

  “Thanks.” Harper hung up on the man and called the captain next, explained the current situation. “I need a search warrant for Ernie Donovan’s business records. Donovan Security. Year of twenty sixteen. Unidentified suspect.” He sketched out his theory in a few sentences.

  “I’ll wake up the judge,” Bing said immediately. “I’ll let you know when we have that warrant. I’m on I95. I should be there in another hour and a half.”

  “And the training?”

  “They’ll have another one in the fall.”

  Harper’s throat tightened as he said, “Thank you, Captain.”

  They ended that call just as Chad Holmes’s house came into sight, the porch light on.

  The front door opened as soon as Harper jumped from his car.

  “Come on in, Detective.” Holmes waved him in, wearing a beige sweater over his old-fashioned blue-striped pajamas. “I already booted up my laptop. I have all my files on there. Claire told me what you need.”

  “Thank you. Sorry to bother you this late. Hope I didn’t wake up the whole family.

  “Widowed,” he said, the overhead light glinting off his thinning gray-brown hair. “All alone and can’t sleep much anyway.”

  “Sorry,” Harper said again. Then he added, “We might have to wait a few minutes. I need the warrant to come through.”

  “Claire explained about the situation. I don’t care about the warrant. You can look at any records I have.”

  “I appreciate that, Chad. Really do. But I want the evidence admissible in court when this is over.” Yet if Allie’s life depended on it… “Let’s see how fast that warrant comes in.”

  He walked behind the man into the guy’s kitchen where the laptop waited on the table.

  Holmes slipped on his glasses, then dropped into his chair and typed on the keyboard. “Here they are. Donovan’s files. What do you need?”

  “A complete list of employees for twenty sixteen.”

  Holmes’s fingers drummed across the keys. “Twenty sixteen.” He clicked to bring up the file, talking while he unzipped it. “Donovan’s was never a large business. Had maybe a dozen residential customers, the rest all small businesses up and down Route 1, and the shops on Broslin Square.” He paused to read the spreadsheet that opened. “Here we go. Seven employees that year.”

  “I’m not interested in the receptionist or anything else but installations. Any way to tell which people were responsible for installing the safes?”

  “I don’t have job descriptions.” Holmes clicked on another tab. Shook his head. “Just names, social security numbers, and payroll information.”

  Harper’s phone pinged. A PDF from the captain.

  “Okay. I got the warrant.” He opened the file and showed it to the accountant. “List me the names.”

  Chad did.

  Harper knew a couple of them. Dusty Chotkowski was one, Leila’s neighbor’s nephew who’d given him advice on the damage on Lamm’s safe. He dialed the guy, but Dusty didn’t pick up. Probably because it was after midnight.

  “Any phone numbers in the files?” Harper asked Chad.

  “Sure.”

  “Give me Brandon Speidel’s.” They’d played baseball together in high school. Brandon would remember him, help him out.

  As Holmes read the numbers off his screen, Harper made the call. The phone rang a dozen times before it was picked up, a groggy voice saying, “This had better be good.”

  “Brandon? It’s Harper Finnegan.”

  “You know what time it is?”

  “It’s a police emergency. When you worked at Donovan’s, did you install safes?”

  “I did security systems.”

  “Do you know who installed the safes? In twenty sixteen specifically.”

  “You gotta be freaking kidding me.” He hacked. Big dreams for a baseball career or not, he’d been a smoker for as long as Harper had known him. “Let me think. You woke me up from a sound sleep.”

  “Think fast. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  Brandon hacked again. “I need a cigarette.”

  “Have one later.”

  “All right. All right. Jack freaking Lowry did safes. Who else?” He paused. “Dusty… Damn, he only worked for Donovan for a year. What was his last name? Lives in Avondale.”

  “Dusty Chotkowski.”

  “That’s it. Snooty little hippie shit. Thought he was better than the rest of us because he recycled.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Brian Kaplan, but only if everyone else was busy. He didn’t like working with the welding machine. Always thought he was gonna get burned. Chickenshit.” Brandon hacked. “That’s it, man.”

  “Any chance you remember who installed the safe at Old Man Lamm’s house?”

  “Christ, you gonna drive me to drink. In the middle of the night, you want me to remember who did a job back in twenty sixteen, at a company I haven’t worked for in years?”

  “Life and death, buddy. Think. Your next speeding ticket’s on me.”

  “I take it this has to do with Lamm’s murder? What’s the rush? Old bastard’s already dead.”

  “Related kidnapping.”

  “Who the hell was kidnapped?”

  “Allie Bianchi.”

  “Word is you’re porking her.”

  “I swear to God, Brandon—”

  “Dusty!” the idiot yelled, deafening Harper for a second. “Dusty, the little hippie shit. Only reason I remember is ’cause he complained about it for freaking weeks. He called the old man…an environmental disaster.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Damned if I know. We never really hung out. That’s all I have. I swear.”

  Harper thanked him before he hung up. Then he took a picture of Dusty’s address on the laptop screen, thanked Chad, and took off running.

  As soon as he was in his car, he used the radio to share the address with the team, requesting all available units. And then he drove like they just waved the starting flag at the Indy 500.

  Chapter Thirty

  Allie stood under the open window and listened to the man moving around inside the house. When she heard a door open, she held her breath. But he wasn’t coming into the garage. Footsteps thumped down a different set of stairs. Sounded like he was descending into the basement.

  Then scraping noises. He was dragging something up.

  Suitcases? Maybe he planned on chopping her up and hiding the pieces in luggage.

  That thought gave her the motivation to push harder and not pause when the window scraped some skin off her waist where her shirt rode up.

  This time, she made real progress and didn’t slide back. With the top half of her body outside, the rest was easier. She wormed forward, then curled her body up so she could hook a hand on the windowsill, righting herself because she didn’t want to fall on her head.

  Go!

  She dropped. Landed on her feet. Saw stars and lost her breath from the pain in her abused ankle. She crept forward anyway, through a dead flower bed, toward the next-door neighbor on the right. No lights, but it was the closest house, a rancher. They’d wake up and help her when she banged on their window. Run.

  Floodlights clicked on. Motion sensor. Crap.

  She speed-limped forw
ard, toward the chain-link fence, just as a window slammed open behind her.

  “Hey!” the kidnapper shouted. “Stop right there!”

  Like hell.

  Allie scrambled across the frozen grass, then up the fence, lost her grip, fell back, but not on her bad ankle. The next second, she was up again. She was about to heave herself over the top when the kidnapper came barreling through his back door.

  Drop and roll.

  Except before she could drop, her weight tipped the old fence off its moorings, and the entire section of fencing collapsed into the neighbor’s yard with a loud crash.

  Damn, that hurt.

  She hissed with pain as she scrambled to her feet.

  Go, go, go, don’t look back.

  She kept going, heard a grunt and a crash. She hoped the bastard had fallen on his face, but didn’t waste time by turning to check. She climbed up onto the neighbor’s back patio and banged on the sliding glass door. “Help! Let me in! Please! Help!”

  No response. No lights flickered on inside.

  She threw her weight at the door. Even if they weren’t home, she could use the phone to call 911 if she could get in.

  “Help!”

  The door didn’t give.

  She scrambled off the patio and headed to the next house, where there was a light on upstairs.

  “You can’t run from a bullet!”

  The kidnapper sounded closer, eating up the distance between them. This time, Allie did glance over her shoulder.

  He had his gun in his hand, the metal glinting in the moonlight. When he stopped to aim, she froze for a moment.

  His smile was nasty angry. “I’m gonna shoot you, bitch.”

  Dagnabbit.

  Then again, she wasn’t on a middle school stage, didn’t have to censor her language. Allie looked the bastard in the eye as she gasped for air, and she said, “Fuck you, you fucking bastard.”

  Not as creative as Calamity Jane would have been, but at least Allie had expressed her feelings.

  She dove into the dark gap between the two houses, throwing herself at the tall bushes, desperate to break through to the front. She bounced back. Another fence.