Dark Web (29 page)
Mike Simpkins wasn’t going to take any more shit. He took a couple of steps over to Tori McAfferty and placed his boot on the man’s shoulder and attempted to roll him over onto his back.
Tori groaned and his eyelids fluttered.
Mike had McAfferty’s gun in his hand. He pointed it down at the man’s head.
“Is my family in danger?”
McAfferty’s eyes opened and rolled around, attempting to focus.
Mike kicked McAfferty in the arm. He brought the tip of the rifle within inches of McAfferty’s forehead. “Tori. Is my family in danger? Did my father put you up to this?”
McAfferty moaned, still dazed from the pistol-whipping.
“Mikey,” Bull Camoine said. “Let’s be quick.”
The sirens grew louder, closer.
Mike cut Bull a look. Bull had seen the look before, just once, long ago. “Get out, Bull. You and Linda. Get out.”
“Mike, somethin’ stinks here. Somethin’s not right.”
“And you feel like
now
is the time to say so?”
Bull frowned. “Yeah, Mike, I feel like now is the time.”
McAfferty grimaced and touched the back of his head. “Ah, damnit,” he said.
“Answer me, Tori. Did my father put you up to this?”
McAfferty looked up, pure malevolence in his eyes. “Fuck you.”
Mike aimed the gun between those hate-filled eyes. “Did you kill Braxton?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Mike,” Bull said, “he’s going to say anything.”
Mike yelled at him. “Get out, Bull! Now!” He looked down at the man crumpled at his feet. “Tori, why did you blow up your house?”
Some of the enmity drained away and for a moment, McAfferty looked pathetic. Mike felt a tiny stirring of sympathy for him. The drug had cooked him, his body, his brain, and everything else in his life. Probably he could have made much more from the business if he wasn’t his own best customer.
“I told you,” Tori said.
“When the cops were coming to call on you, you struck a match to the place.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Bull said. He took Linda by the arm and they slipped out the back door, looking back urgently over their shoulders. Mike didn’t watch them go.
“That’s lucky,” Mike growled at Tori. “How come you’re not bits and pieces all over your own yard? Huh? How did you get out of there in time?”
“Look,” McAfferty said, flat on his back now, his hands up in front of him, warding off the gun, Mike, everything. “Okay? It takes about a minute for the charge to go off. I used a special incendiary device. I lost everything, man, My
Les Paul
, my Jimi picture, my good leather jacket . . .”
“That’s tragic, Tori.”
Tori licked his cracked lips. He looked up at Mike, standing over him. “Trish was the one who set this up, me coming here.”
“Who?”
“My fucking girlfriend, man. Tricia Eggleston. Her brother is a lawyer.”
Mike glanced away for a second and stared at the black windows. As the cops drew nearer Mike thought he could hear the roar of engines beneath the wail of the sirens. He thought he was close to putting it all together at last.
“Look,” Tori continued. “Eggleston is a lawyer for Frank Duso. Duso is a guy who did a little dealing for me, and then he got popped for a deewee, and the cops Maced him or something, and he sued. Made the cops mad as hell. Made Eggleston mad too, ‘cause he lost the case.”
“So they had you hide here to what? Make the detective look guilty of something? That’s pretty far to go for a pissed off lawyer and a young kid who wants payback against the cops. What does this have to do with my son, Braxton? Or your guy, the one you said was supposed to be here?”
Tori scowled up at Mike. “You think I know what this has to do with Braxton? I don’t have a clue. My guy said he was your brother, so you’re the one who should be telling me what the fuck is going on. You’ve got one fucked up family, man.”
“He what?” asked Mike. Things were starting to get confused again. Faces flashed through his mind; his father’s, Callie’s, the girls, and Braxton’s. What the hell was Tori saying?
There were noises outside. Doors opening and closing, the sound of boots on the ground, weapons loading. The dog was barking harder than ever.
His brother
? McAfferty must be crazy. His brain must be more mushed up than Mike first thought. He must be talking about his father. Mike didn’t have a brother. His grip on the rifle slackened.
Tori sat up and looked around, listening to the commotion outside, a bewildered expression contorting his features. “I didn’t kill the kid, okay? I didn’t kill my own kid.”
A voice boomed out of the night. “McAfferty. Simpkins. Come out with your hands up.”
Mike took a breath and looked at Tori. “Did you email him? Braxton?”
“I don’t even have an email account, man.” McAfferty looked petrified.
“So you never corresponded with him. You never got an email from me, telling you to back off or else?”
“No, man.” Tori was now looking at the blank windows, trying to see through, to get a look at the nightmare awaiting him. Red pulses of light silently flashed through the windows. Mike recalled that first night, the red in Braxton’s room. He renewed his grip on the rifle. His finger moved at the trigger.
“No, I never got an email. Tricia, she uses the computer on her phone, or whatever. We don’t even have a laptop in the house. I never sent any emails. The only way I knew Braxton moved back was when I saw it in the paper. Oh fuck man, oh shit . . .”
McAfferty looked utterly broken now, sitting there on the floor, legs sticking out in front of him, dirty clothes, mussed hair, rotting teeth. His eyes had grown droopy and glassy. “I loved that kid,” he said.
“Tori McAfferty. Mike Simpkins,” boomed the voice in the night. “You have thirty seconds to put down your weapons and come out or we’re coming in.”
Then Mike heard shouts, followed by gunfire. It didn’t seem to be directed at the house. It was out there. Where Bull and Linda were. McAfferty stared up at him. “Please,” he was saying. “Please, man.”
All he had to do was squeeze just a little bit harder.
Braxton, dragged through the night to his death. Lying there alone, terrified, hurt, trying to protect his sisters. Trying to protect his family.
Mike looked down the barrel at Tori McAfferty, and for a moment, he closed his eyes.
He saw Braxton’s face, saw him standing in the road, as if looking back at Mike, waiting for him to catch up. The boy held out his hand.
When Mike stepped out of the small cabin and down into the knee-deep snow, the whole world lit up. Headlights snapped on, bathing him in a harsh light. He heard shouts on the other side of the blinding glare. “Down! Get down on your knees!”
His heart in his throat, Mike could feel the ground vibrate as men pounded towards him. Their shapes loomed. He did as he was told.
“Put your hands on your head and drop all the way to the ground!”
The shapes became men — State Troopers — their weapons trained on him. Mike laced his fingers over his head, and lowered himself forward onto his belly in the snow.
Seconds later they were at him, guns inches from his face. One trooper grabbed him by the wrists and pulled his arms behind him, another slapped on the cuffs. They weren’t gentle. Mike stared up into the white lights.
Amid the thundering of his heart and the pounding in his ears, the shouts of the men and the dazzling lights he found that his thoughts had gone to Callie and the girls. If anything had happened to them, if any harm had come to them, it would be over. It would all be over. There would be no point left to any of it.
The cops hooked their hands under his armpits and hoisted him to his feet.
As he was being hauled away, he saw a familiar face. Detective Swift fell in beside the troopers holding Mike. Swift’s face was harried, he was out of breath, and he wore a look of sympathy. “It’s going to be okay,” the detective said, as Mike was shoved into the back of a trooper cruiser.
“My father,” Mike said before the door closed. “This is all him.”
Then he was driven away. Swift’s face receded into the night. Mike stared out the windows as cop after cop, probably every last man in the county and then some — blurred past, watching him as he was taken away. Their faces looked blank and distant.
“We were too late,” Mathis said. His usually coiffed hair was matted, he looked disheveled, as if he hadn’t slept at all in the past twelve hours since he’d been to court.
Swift sat across from him, at the same table across which he’d confronted Robert Darring the previous day. After all that had happened, culminating in a spectacular end to the manhunt for Tori McAfferty, at his own property, Swift felt like he was carved from wood. Nothing could faze him. He watched Mathis strutting the same way Kady watched squirrels running about on a tree branch outside the window.
“Darring is off the hook,” said Mathis. “Eggleston played the cord, the DNA, the McAfferty situation, everything. Judge threw the charges out. Says we can arrest him again on conspiracy or accessory, but the murder charge — dismissed. Darring spent the rest of the night in county and was processed out this morning.”
He paused for a moment, and his eyes seemed to search those of Swift.
“Darring is free as a bird. Dunleavy said the kid was headed over to impound to fill out the paperwork and get his car back. I don’t get it, man. I don’t fucking get it.”
“What’s to get?” Swift asked. “We didn’t have it,” he said. “We didn’t have anything in the car, anything at the scene until too late, and that’s my fault. I’ll take full responsibility for that. We didn’t have anything in his computer or accounts, and no confession that could prove rational motive, let alone any homicide.”
Mathis suddenly moved forward. He glared at Swift and jabbed his finger at him. “For Christ’s sake,
you
had something. You had the fucking headlamp. I don’t care if you take ‘full responsibility.’ Jesus, Swift. Come on. Too late for me to put in the discovery file, too late to introduce in court? And I ask for an adjournment, I get shut right down.”
Swift shook his head. “Wouldn’t have mattered.”
“But that’s not
your call
, detective! You’re not the lawyer, not the judge, not the jury. You act like this is all some sort of game.”
Swift looked at Mathis with a level gaze. “It is. It’s his game. We’ve all been playing.”
“No —
you’re
playing. And you lost, okay? Darring is toddling off to impound as we speak to do the paperwork on the vehicle. An hour from now, tops, and he’s out of here. We got the perpetrator, Swift. Last night before nine p.m. Pretty sure you were there. Tori McAfferty has been booked for first degree murder. We’ve got motive.” Mathis counted off on his fingers. “He had no custody of his son, who was legally adopted by Simpkins, we’ve got the emails showing their heated exchanges. “And,” he said, pausing for effect, “we’ve got the victim’s DNA on the piece of cord used to strangle the boy, which
you
found, sitting in McAfferty’s laundry room. Case closed, bye-bye McAfferty.”
Mathis straightened his spine. He raised his hands to his neck to fix his tie, but he had taken it off earlier and it lay nearby on the floor.
“That’s the game,” Swift said.
Mathis gritted his teeth. “Fuck you, Swift.”
At that moment, Captain Tuggey came into the room, with Sheriff Dunleavy close at his heels. After them, two people, a man and a woman, wearing snappy suits, whom Swift had seen once before. They were from Internal Affairs. They took up stances against the back wall, arms folded, watching like hawks.
Swift looked at the Captain.
“How you doin’, Tug?”
“Better than you, Swifty.”
Swift looked at the two IA investigators, who averted their eyes. Swift said, “We’re going to do this now, Cap?”
“Swifty, I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt all the way here. I’ve given you time. You’ve been a good investigator, John. But lately I think you’re having some trouble. That incident with the reporter, fair enough. But we just had the prime suspect in our murder case walk out of court. No bail, nothing. Stenopolis practically apologized to him.” Tuggey held out a hand towards Mathis. “And the guy who blew up his lab and nearly killed a cop was picked up at your house. I think it’s time you took a beat. You know? Step back and let us re-evaluate.”
“We got Camoine and his wife shooting at cops on your property,” Dunleavy interjected. “Couple of wild nutjobs. Who the hell are they; what were they doing there?”
Swift looked away. “They were muscle for Simpkins.”
Mathis snarled. “And how would you know that?”
“Because no one is going to protect a scumbag like McAfferty,” Swift said, jerking his head around to look at Mathis. “He had no friends. Simpkins does. Not a lot, but a couple. And he’s the type to call on some muscle because he wouldn’t have gone up to my place alone.”
“What about this money?” Mathis demanded. “That’s a hundred grand that was in the 529 account. Simpkins says it’s no longer there; I think he could’ve withdrawn it, maybe used it to pay Camoine and his wife for something.”
Captain Tuggey came closer. “Why, Swift? Why was McAfferty at your place?”
“He was told to be there,” Swift said. “Tricia Eggleston said they had a contact, someone who set it up for them.”
Mathis was relentless. “But Tricia
knew
it was your place. Why would she send her boyfriend off to hide out there? How did some guy she never met, whose name she didn’t get, convince her of that? And why was your property chosen in the first place?”
“Because he
worked
her, that’s how.” Swift ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Darring did his research. Knew where my house was, knew that if he or his accomplices wrote fake emails to Simpkins, he’d lose all faith in the police. In me. So he’d keep quiet. Darring brought Tricia what she wanted — he cut her loose from McAfferty. Her uncle is going to put up a fight, but if Cobleskill gets her emails, they’re going to find correspondence between her and Darring. I bet she was promised money, too. They both were.”
Swift looked directly at Mathis. “But no one ever got any money, Sean. Which, by the way, wouldn’t be the full hundred yards, remember? It would be taxed when it wasn’t used for educational purposes. It would be more like sixty-five, seventy grand. But there are only two people who could extract that money — Mike Simpkins and Mike’s father, Jack Simpkins, through a long, complicated paperwork process.”
Now Swift moved his gaze from Mathis to Tuggey to Dunleavy. “This was all a game, like I said. Mike Simpkins would look at the missing money and, knowing he didn’t take it himself, believe that there was only one other place that money could possibly be.”
Swift leaned back and hung a boot from his knee. “But Darring never cared about any money. This is a revenge story, boys. For something that happened a long time ago.”
