Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (37 page)

“So what? Most of them would be dead by now.”

“But their descendants would still be alive. A lot of those people were
rich, and we thought their children and grandchildren would pay some money to keep us from going public with the documents identifying them.”

“In other words,” said Jock, “you didn’t have a clue. Was King milking you for more and more money?”

“Yes. He was sort of obsessed with the documents. But we’d brought him into the drug business, so he was doing okay and nobody really needed the fucking documents. We just couldn’t get him to see that.”

“Why did you leave the murder weapon at King’s condo? Surely, you knew that it would be connected to Jim Fredrickson’s murder.”

“Yeah,” said McAllister. “Who the hell are you and how do you know all this?”

“Doesn’t matter who I am. Why leave the weapon if you were going to cover up the IBIS report?”

“Shit. Do you know everything?”

“Most of it.”

“I thought even if the gun was connected it would be a bit of misdirection. It would tie King into Fredrickson.”

“Why would you want to do that?” asked Jock.

“With both of them dead, I thought I could guide the investigation so that it would appear that they were the ones involved in the drug business and leave me out of it. It would look like a professional hit. Somebody from organized crime taking them out. I’d get my money out of the business, all washed and everything. Then I’d get out of the drug business and in five years or so retire from the department and find myself an island someplace.”

“Who was the prostitute you killed at Fredrickson’s house the night he died?”

I could see McAllister shaking his head beneath the hood. “Geez,” he said. “You know every goddamned detail.”

“Who was she?”

“She was a dancer at a joint up in Tampa. She used to come to some of our parties. Said her name was Amber Wave, but that was bullshit. I never knew her real name.”

“So when Katie Fredrickson shot her husband and ran out of the house,” Jock said, “you killed the girl and set it up to look as if Katie had been killed.”

“Yes.” I heard the voice of a completely defeated man.

“Are you Sal Bonino?” Jock asked.

McAllister let out a bitter little laugh. “I’m surprised. There’s finally something you don’t know. But no, I’m not Bonino.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s the boss of the whole thing, I never met him, don’t know who he is. And think about it before you fire up that torch again. If I knew, what would I have to gain by not telling you?”

“How did you contact him?”

“I didn’t. He always contacted me. Usually by phone.”

“Why even bother with him if you had the network all set up?”

“It was his network. He recruited us. There was one of the original guys who came in with us and he got greedy. One day he turned up dead at the Avon Park house. He’d been beaten and mutilated before he was killed. We buried him on the property. There was a DVD in the house on the kitchen counter with a note signed by Bonino that said we should watch it in case we ever got any big ideas of our own. It was a recording of our guy being tortured to death. It wasn’t pretty, but we got the message.”

“You got any beer in the refrigerator?” Jock asked.

“Yeah. A six-pack of Bud.”

“Thanks,” Jock said and motioned for me to follow him to the kitchen.

“I need some water,” McAllister said.

“Maybe later,” Jock said.

“You drinking beer?” I asked Jock.

“No. Can you think of anything else we need to ask him?”

“We need to ask him about the ten million dollars that showed up in Fredrickson’s bank account,” I said. “I also want to know what he has to say about Katie’s dad, George Bass, being in business with Fredrickson. And I’d like to search the place before we leave.”

“Go for it. I’ll give our good captain a little time to stew.”

I tossed the place without taking pains to be tidy. I figured McAllister would never be coming back to the house. He was going to spend the rest of his life locked up and possibly finish it at the end of a needle up at the old Raiford Prison. I found a large manila envelope hidden in his underwear drawer and a couple of pistols in the master bedroom closet.

The envelope contained a number of bank statements on four separate accounts in the name of somebody I’d never heard of whose only address was a post office box in Parrish, a small town near Bradenton. Each account held several hundred thousand dollars. The police would be able to trace the ownership of the accounts, and I was pretty sure they all belonged to McAllister.

The envelope also held a thumb drive that probably had a lot more documents relating to McAllister’s drug business. I went back to the kitchen and found Jock sitting quietly at a small dining table. He had learned patience over many years of lying in wait for bad guys, and I had often wondered where his mind went when he was so absorbed. Knowing his brainpower, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he was doing quadratic equations in his head. Whatever a quadratic equation is.

I put the bank statements on the table. “Have a look at these,” I said. “I think our boy has gotten rich.”

“What’s on the thumb drive?”

“I don’t know. I saw a laptop in his living room. Let’s find out.” I brought the computer to the table and fired it up only to find it password protected.

Jock called into the living room. “Hey, McAllister, what’s the password for your computer?”

“Open sesame,” said McAllister.

Jock made a face. “You’re kidding me,” he said, but typed the words into the computer. It came alive and I put the thumb drive in the port. A file marked “fun and games” popped up on the screen. I clicked on it and a large number of thumbnail pictures filled the screen. I clicked on the first one and saw a completely naked Katie Fredrickson lying on a bed. The next picture showed her having sex with McAllister. I was taken by the expressions on their faces. McAllister was laughing and looking past his shoulder, as if he were joking with the photographer. Katie’s face showed nothing. Absolutely nothing. She could have been dead. Maybe part of her, the thinking part, was dead. I hoped so.

I let my eyes scan across the thumbnails without opening any more. “Jock,” I said, “there’re a lot of pictures here of Katie in sexual situations.”

“I don’t want to see them. Is McAllister there?”

“In at least one of the pictures. I don’t want to open the others.”

Jock got up and I followed him back into the living room. “McAllister,” he said, “I’m about one inch away from using the blowtorch on you.”

“Hey, man, I’m answering all your questions.”

“How many times did you screw Katie Fredrickson?”

McAllister slumped in his chair. “We had a little affair. That was all. Didn’t mean anything.”

I slugged McAllister in the solar plexus and when he bent over struggling for breath, I hit him with an uppercut to the mouth, knocking him back into the chair. I knew what was happening. The Rage. That’s what I called it. Sometimes, when I was very stressed, usually when somebody was trying to kill me, the Rage would take over. I could almost see red. It was like it was on the periphery of my vision, slowing spreading like a puddle to cover my entire visual field. I was standing off to the side somehow, knowing what was happening, watching myself being consumed, knowing it was wrong, and helpless to stop it. I wanted to kill, take no prisoners. I watched myself pick up the blowtorch, struggle to find an ignition source. I knew I was about to use it on his face. I wanted to wipe away the smirk I imagined was under the hood that covered his head.

Jock pulled the torch from my hands and wrapped me in a bear hug,
restraining me. “It’s okay, podna,” he said softly in my ear. “It’s okay. Let me take it from here.”

It was over. The Rage left as suddenly as it had appeared. I felt drained and stumbled back to the sofa and slumped onto it. “I’m sorry, old buddy. I’m so goddamned sorry.”

McAllister was gulping air. “You broke my nose. I’m bleeding all over the place. Get this hood off me. Untie me. Your buddy’s a lunatic.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jock said, low, quietly, menacing, “or so help me, I’ll light you up with the blowtorch.”

McAllister fell quiet. Jock looked at me and I nodded. The Rage wasn’t a stranger to Jock. He’d seen it before. We’d talked about it. I never knew when it was going to come over me and I’d never discovered where it came from. J.D. thought it was probably rooted in my lousy childhood and maybe my war experiences. She’d urged me to talk to a shrink, to try to understand it, and, by doing so, banish it forever. I didn’t take her advice. I didn’t think I could talk to a shrink without revealing a lot more of myself than would be prudent.

The Rage had never taken me unless somebody was trying to kill me or kill a member of my family, which consisted of Jock, J.D., and Logan. Not until now, anyway. I’d have to think on that some.

“Okay, asshole,” said Jock, leaning in close to McAllister. “Maybe you want to revise that last statement. You didn’t have an affair. You raped the girl.”

“No. It wasn’t rape,” McAllister said. “She never resisted.”

Jock laughed. “How could she? You had her drugged to the gills.”

“Have you found Katie?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s safe.”

“I’m glad,” McAllister said.

“You’re glad?”

“Yeah. I would’ve killed her if I could’ve found her, but I guess I’m done, so I’m glad she’s okay.”

“She’s the one who’s going to sink you when you get to a court of law.”

“Maybe, but I doubt I’ll live to see that.”

“If you give me everything, I won’t kill you,” Jock said.

“I hear you.”

“Tell me about the bank accounts,” Jock paused to look at the bank statements, “in the banks in Tampa and Orlando.”

“Nothing to tell. That’s where I keep the drug money.”

“Somebody would be looking into that if you made a bunch of large deposits.”

“Most of the money was electronically deposited by some dummy corporations that were supposedly my employers, and some of it was deposited a few thousand at a time. Never more than ten grand, not enough to get the feds excited.”

“Where did the ten million dollars wired to Jim Fredrickson’s account the day before his death come from?” Jock asked.

“That was actually sent the day after his death. Evans simply changed the date of death on the estate documents he filed so that it appeared as if the deposit was made before he died. Otherwise, there would have been questions. Evans altered the death certificate that’s part of the file. Check the date in the probate file against the police report. They’re different, but Evans didn’t think anybody would look that closely at it.”

“Why the transfer?”

“We needed to get the money laundered. The submarine didn’t work out and there was only so much we could feed into bank accounts like mine without somebody taking a look at it. Evans thought we could move the money into Fredrickson’s account by showing it as compensation for the sale of the Avon Park property. All the paperwork had been done before he died, but Evans said that if the money had to be paid to the estate instead of to Jim, it could create a probate problem and the money might get tied up and take us a long time to get to it. We decided to simply move Jim’s death forward a day.”

“But you still don’t have the money.”

“No, but we know where it is and Evans controls it. Katie was the only beneficiary under the will and as soon as Evans can get her declared legally dead, we’ll get the money.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “The probate court really controls it.”

“Evans says if nobody contests any of the assets, we won’t have any trouble.”

“Who is Hammond, the guy who bought the property?” Jock asked.

“I think Hammond is Bonino, but I don’t know that.”

“What’s your relationship with George Bass?”

“Only that he’s Katie’s dad. I talked to him every now and then to find out if Katie had been in touch with them.”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t know that Bass was part of the drug trade?”

“He wasn’t.”

“He told Katie that he and Fredrickson were in business together in the drug trade.”

McAllister was quiet for a beat. “That’s funny,” he finally said.

“What’s funny?” asked Jock.

“Jim must have told his father-in-law about what we were into, but that doesn’t make sense.”

“Why?”

“Jim hated the old man. Said he’d screwed up Katie in the worst possible way.”

“Do you know what Jim meant by that?”

“Not really. He said that Katie had told him some things. Apparently she and Jim were having some problems in their sex life, and he attributed it to her old man. I assumed there had been some sexual abuse going on, but Jim never actually told me that.”

“Then how else would Bass even have known that Jim was in the drug business?” asked Jock.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Are you aware that Bass thinks he’s going to inherit the ten million in the estate?” I asked.

“How would Bass even know about the money?” asked McAllister.

“Under state statutes,” I said, “if Katie is dead, then George and Betty Bass are the remaining beneficiaries. They get the money.”

“Evans didn’t mention that.”

“Maybe Evans doesn’t know,” said Jock.

“I don’t understand,” said McAllister.

“Not your problem,” said Jock. “Did you send a goon named DeLuca to rough up Matt Royal?”

“No. I don’t know anybody named DeLuca. And I didn’t know Royal until I met him at King’s condo the night of his death.”

“The night you killed King and his girlfriend,” Jock said.

“Yeah. That’s what I meant.”

“What did you have to do with Ken Goodlow’s death?” Jock asked.

“Who’s that?”

“A harmless old man who was killed on Longboat Key last week.”

“Oh. That was King’s deal.”

“Tell me about it.”

“The guy in New Jersey, the one who King had killed, said that there was an old man in Cortez who would know the answer. He said that he and the old man had been friends as young men back just after World War II.”