Death in Her Eyes (A Mac Everett Mystery Book 1) (29 page)

“Where was it?” Ashton asked.

“She had a second car in a storage garage downtown,” Nancy disclosed. “The suitcase was in the trunk. Now it’s in mine.”

“It took you long enough,” Ashton huffed.

“Shut your yap,” Nancy grumbled. “It was a messy business. I used one of her own knives on her. She held out longer than I expected.”

“Why all this hate,” I asked.

“Tell him,” Ashton said as she nodded her head toward me. “It won’t do him any good.”

“I believe Ash told you about Sharon’s arrest. The girl she stabbed was my little sister. She’d stumbled into a West Village bar called Pride by mistake, while looking for a friend. She had no idea it was a gay pick up club. Sharon, ever the predator, hit on her and my sister got scared. She said no and you don’t say no to that one. Sharon stabbed her, puncturing a lung and carved a mark on her cheek. My sister survived the collapsed lung, but the facial scar…she committed suicide three months after getting out of the hospital. That’s why I’d do anything to get her. Hell, I’d have done this for free, but getting paid is so much better.”

“Wish I’d known that,” Ashton said.

“This was all a plot to get back at Sharon Greer?” I asked. “So many bodies for simple revenge, I can’t believe it.”

“No, not just that,” Ashton said. “It was an opportunity to make a lot of money.”

“Did you plan to have Stephanie killed when you stole the neurotoxin? That was in April and…”

“No, it was in March,” Nancy said. “I was going to use that on Sharon then I found out Stephanie and Sharon had this great plan. I decided to wait.”

“Did you give Sharon the poison or did you just plan to pin the hit on her.”

Nancy just smiled. “Brilliant idea, don’t you think,” Nancy bragged.

“Everything was going according to plan until her idiot brother mucked things and got himself arrested.”

“He was the logical suspect,” I said.

“He was out of town for God’s sake!” Nancy shouted. “I shot the rest of them because I ditched the neurotoxin.”

“Once they had their man the cops stopped looking,” I replied. “The other murders only muddied the waters.”

“I hadn’t counted on that. I was going to plant the guns and the empty vial in Sharon’s car, but she ducked me. I slipped the second vial into Ashton’s purse. I figured her for my fall guy, but now I have you.”

The petite woman looked out of place holding a .45. I started to think it might be the last thing I was going to see.

“Why did you make a play for me Ashton, I was flattered, but…”

“But why would a woman like me fall for a loser like you? Yeah, I overplayed that one.”

“I put her up to it,” Nancy teased. “When you hold someone’s secrets, well I can be persuasive, can’t I Ash.”

“Shut up and get this over with, will you,” Ashton croaked.

“I thought we might need you,” Nancy said to me. “It turns out we do. We can pin this whole mess on you.”

“You were surprisingly gallant,” Ashton said. She gave me a tense smile. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I mocked.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Nancy grumbled.

“Why Ashton? All this for money, you’re family’s filthy rich; you’re a New York lawyer…”

“It’s never enough,” she mumbled. “There is that wad of cash I owe the syndicate and Daddy’s apparently going to live forever. The SOB won’t die. I planned to kill him, but couldn’t go through with it. I needed that money if I wasn’t going to get an inheritance. It all seemed so simple.”

“Why so many dead? Did you have to kill…?”

“Oh come off it,” Nancy snapped. “Haven’t you done worse? How about the water boarding, the electric shocks and worse.”

“You killed for an honorable reason, is that it?” I scoffed, “and the suitcase full of money was no concern. What about the tennis coach, Taylor and Detective Wagner, did they need to die?”

“They knew bits and pieces. When you started putting things together, they had to go,” Nancy crowed.

“We had a deal. I helped you, but you forced me,” Ashton hissed. “You shot all those people.”

“Oh chill out. I wanted to blame it all on Sharon. You wanted your father, brother, and Stephanie out of the way. It was the perfect set up.”

“What about Kristin Wagner?” I asked.

“The woman with the pictures, she would have recognized me,” Nancy insisted.

“Kristin couldn’t have recognized you. She had those pictures, but she never saw you in the flesh,” I insisted

“Well that sucks for her,” Nancy shot back. “The others, well they got in the way.”

“You told me she had to be killed,” Ashton exclaimed. “You set me up! The cops never stop looking for a cop killer.”

“Oh calm down, that’s why we’re here, to give the cops a fall guy. You figured that out didn’t you, Mac. When they find the murder weapons in your car after your apparent suicide it’ll be quite convincing. Maybe we’ll put one in your car and one under the mattress. There’s no sense making it too easy for them.”

She was right, with my history, the drinking, and proximity to the hits, if the cops found the two guns at my place they’d be stupid not to believe it. They wouldn’t even blink to close so many tangled cases. I had to stall.

“Do you hear yourself, they got in your way, you’re going to kill me, and plant the evidence. It won’t work,” I said. “The lead detective is a friend. He might believe I’d kill with a gun, but with a poison, he’d never fall for it. You need someone to pin it on, but who uses poison? That’s a woman’s weapon.”

I looked over at Ashton hoping she’d pick up on my suggestion she could also be a fall guy. I was praying Stan would show up soon.

Nancy was smiling. Leaving me alive was not part of
her
plan. Someone had to take the rap. So long as it wasn’t her she was fine with any candidate.

“Why use two weapons?” I asked trying to stall.

Ashton was taking it all in. A dark shadow had fallen on her face and I wondered who she would plug first.

“Was it to sow confusion? The cops know the killings are connected,” I reminded them.

“Mac, you have to help me. She made me do it,” Ashton complained.

Nancy swung her .45 until it was trained on Ashton.

“You're taking the fall, sweetie,” I snarled. There was no malice in my voice or my heart, just business and self-preservation. “You’ve never played square with me for more than five minutes at a time! You used your family, your client, even your body to make your lies believable. Well, I’m no weak sister and you’re through.”

“You know in your heart that in spite of everything I've done, you love me,” she pleaded. “I’ll share what I have…”

“You plotted your own father’s death, helped kill all those people and you’re going over for it. Kristin is the one that tipped the scale. If it hadn’t been for Kristin, I might have gone along with you for part of your dough. The other thing is I’d have something to hold over you. I know what you really are and you can’t stand that. If I went along, I’d never know if or when I’d get a syringe of poison or a bullet to the head. How soon would it be before you pushed me off a sailboat or arranged for some accident? If you think for one minute I’d be with you again, you’re as crazy as a shithouse rat. Besides, Nancy here isn’t going to let either of us live.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Mac,” Nancy muttered. Her gun had swung away from me and was aimed at Ashton. “If you think I’m taking the fall for all this…”

I was about to go for my .380 when the door to my apartment opened. We all turned toward the sound. Now there was a third gun in the room and I wasn’t holding it. General Martin Hunt was in the doorway and he was holding a piece.

“Nobody move!” the general ordered.

“Daddy, what are you doing here?” Ashton said. She sounded like a ten-year-old caught sneaking cookies.

“Shut up,” he demanded. “Captain Everett invited me to this party,” he explained. “Thanks for the call Captain. Sorry I’m late. I let myself in through your apartment as you suggested. Ash,” he said turning to his surprised daughter, “I came in just as you were explaining about the SOB who wouldn’t die. Very interesting.”

“You have a part in this too, don’t you, sir? I asked.

He looked at me, and then nodded. “I completely misjudge you, Captain. You puzzled it out, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir, it was muddled by all the falling bodies, but I figured out who kicked over the first domino.”

“What are you two talking about and daddy, what are you doing here?” Ashton demanded.

“My investigator invited me here for a briefing,” he replied. “What did you find captain?”

“Can we all lower our guns a little? Being the only one in the room without a piece is giving me a complex.”

I only had one more confession to secure. Then they could all blast away. The three of them lowered their guns and I breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“General, I found the answer in something Ashton said about you. You’re a student of history so you’d find the irony in a death by tetrodotoxin,” I said. “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. George Santayana said that, sir, not Churchill. It occurred to me you were telling me something, maybe even unconsciously when you said that. I looked up the facts on the Nha Trang serial killer. There’s a whole page on Wikipedia about the Nha Trang murders and the suspect, Wan Tran. He paralyzed his victims with an injection of blowfish venom before he raped and killed them. Blowfish venom is tetrodotoxin, isn’t it, sir?”

The General nodded.

“Wan Tran was responsible for the deaths of dozens of prostitutes. Your daughter-in-law, Stephanie…, she was a whore too wasn’t she?”

“Yes, the worst kind. She married a man she didn’t love for his money and kept company with someone else. I didn’t find out who that was until tonight.”

“You had to take out one more prostitute and your daughter inadvertently handed you the weapon of choice – tetrodotoxin?”

“I found it in the trash. There was a label on the damn tube, for God’s sake. I didn’t want to think why it was in my home.”

“You could have dumped it,” I said.

“I could have,” he said, “but seeing that word on the vial was divine inspiration.”

“You could have walked away. You’d paid her off,” I said.

“But they always come back for more, don’t they Captain. You reminded me of that. ‘Envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God,’ Galatians, chapter five, verse twenty-one,” he said.

“General…”

He was glassy eyed, with a faraway look.

“Wan Tran tortured, raped, and killed more than twenty young women in Nha Trang province. There may have been more. It took us three years to catch him,” he said. He dropped his head, but his .45 never wavered.

“General…” I said.

“It was a war zone,” he mumbled. “There was death all around. Once I left Nam, I tried to forget what he did to those women. I believed every life had value. When I learned how horrible their deaths had been I just couldn’t get them out of my mind. That drove me to catch a serial killer in the middle of a war. I still think about those poor women. When I go out on the lake, I don’t think of anything else. I still believed every life was important. Then I found out what Stephanie was and how she’d betrayed my son. She was a parasite. She married my son for his money, she was blackmailing me, and I just had to end it. The juice was right there. I…”

“You couldn’t help it, could you sir?”

Ashton broke in, “Daddy you killed Stephanie?”

He just nodded, an old man beaten down by time and history.

The door buzzer shattered the silence and all four of us glanced at the door. I hoped the answer to my prayer was downstairs. Ashton stood frozen ten feet in front of me. Nancy was to her right, against the back wall maybe a dozen feet further away. General Hunt was fifteen feet to my left. My office never seemed smaller.

I pushed the button to unlock the street level entrance as I dove for the floor. Nancy cranked off three quick shots. One caught me in the left shoulder. Another flew high, shattered the window behind me showering me with broken glass. I took a quick peek around the corner of the heavy desk, the little .380 in my hand. Two shots whizzed by my head. I took aim and gave Nancy a double tap to the chest. She flew back against the wall with a loud humph and then slid down the wall leaving a smeared trail of blood. She settled into a seated position then fell to her right, DRT- dead right there.

Two more shots from my left splintered the desk above my head.

“General, give it up. The cops are down stairs,” I shouted.

I heard the bookcase by my apartment door crash to the floor. Without waiting to aim, I fired two shots about chest high in the direction of the door. A moment later, I fired two more about knee level. I heard the general grunt as my rounds hit home.

I heard feet pound up the stairs and gave a sigh of relief as I heard my buddy call out.

“Mac, hold your fire,” Stan shouted.