House Odds (30 page)

Maynard thought about the question, and it took him two seconds to figure out he wasn’t going to tell her a damn thing. If he told her that Harvey Samuels had hired him to kill the two people in the house . . . well, that wasn’t going to do him any good at all. And he’d only committed two crimes. The first one was trespassing: he’d snuck into somebody’s backyard and put a little duct tape on a window. He hadn’t even broken the window, so he didn’t think they could get him for attempted robbery. Well, maybe they could. The glass cutter might be enough to make an attempted robbery charge stick. But the real problem was the gun. They were going to throw him back into prison because he was a convicted felon carrying a weapon. He was going to prison for at least five years, maybe longer, with his record.

But if he gave up Samuels . . . Well, nothing good would come of that. He’d be admitting to attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder—and Samuels would, of course, deny that he’d hired him to do anything. And then, after he was in prison, Samuels would have someone kill him. There was no doubt about that.

“Tell me who hired you and I might be able to get you some kind of deal,” the woman said.

“Fuck you,” he said—and one of the young guys kicked him in the ribs.

“Watch your mouth,” the guy said.

“It’s okay, Buddy,” the woman said.

The woman walked away, made a phone call, and five minutes later a squad car showed up and two cops chucked him into the car.

* * *

DeMarco was sound asleep when the phone next to his bed rang—the kind of deep sleep where the ringing telephone became part of the nightmare he was having. In the nightmare, he was being chased by a faceless woman. She was holding hedge clippers in her bony hands, except the blades of the clippers were about six feet long, shaped like scimitars, and dripping blood. The ringing telephone became a banshee’s shriek coming from the place where the faceless woman’s mouth should be. The phone rang six times before he answered it.

“Hello?” he croaked.

“Meet me at the Montgomery County police station. They’re located on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda,” the caller said and hung up.

The caller was the faceless woman in his dream.

* * *

DeMarco found Emma and two very fit-looking young men sitting in a room at the police station that looked like it might be a briefing room. The young guys had camo paint on their faces and empty holsters on their belts. When DeMarco asked Emma what was going on, she said, “You’ll find out in a minute. I don’t feel like going through the story twice.”

“Okay, but who are these guys?” DeMarco asked, jerking a thumb at the two hardbodies.

Emma ignored him, and the two young guys just stared at him for a moment, then looked away.

Sheesh.

Ten minutes later a gray-haired uniformed cop in his late fifties entered the room. He had sergeant’s stripes on his right sleeve and his name tag said “J. Farris.” He pulled a chair around to face them and took a seat. “Who’s this?” he said, speaking to Emma.

“He’s my lawyer,” Emma said. “In case we need one.” DeMarco knew Emma’s real lawyer and he was in the same class with Daniel Caine—or maybe in a class above Daniel Caine.

“All right,” Farris said. “Tell me what’s going on.” Pointing at the young guys, he said, “These two obviously aren’t part of some neighborhood block watch, so why were they watching Campbell’s house?”

“I’ll tell you everything I can, Sergeant,” Emma said, “but would you mind telling us about the man we caught trying to break into Douglas Campbell’s house?”

Farris hesitated for a moment, then said, “Sure. Why not? We took his prints and found out that he’s a subhuman piece of shit who has a record that’s about ten miles long. His name is Casey Maynard. He’s thirty-nine years old and has spent half his life in prison. He started out in a biker gang, committed the usual drunken mayhem, and got sent to prison the first time on an assault charge for almost stomping a guy to death. Prison, of course, didn’t rehabilitate Casey. Instead it provided him with an undergraduate education in being a criminal.

“After his first hitch, he hooked up with a few other lowlifes in Richmond, manufactured and distributed meth, pulled off a few robberies, got caught for one of the robberies and went back inside. While he was in prison the second time, he ganged up with morons just like him and was suspected of killing another inmate.

“When he gets out of prison, he goes to work for a guy named Harvey Samuels who lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Samuels owns a strip club there and a couple of auto body shops, but he’s essentially a small time Mob boss. He employs several geniuses like Maynard who deal drugs for him and steal cars and motorcycles, and if someone needs somebody killed, Samuels acts as a middleman and gets people like Casey to do the job for him.”

“How did you find out about Samuels?” Emma asked.

“When I saw that Maynard had a South Carolina driver’s license and a Myrtle Beach address, I called the cops down there to see what they could tell me about him. Now it’s your turn.”

“I suspected that a man in Myrtle Beach named Russell McGrath was going to try to kill Campbell,” Emma said, “so I hired Benton Security to watch over him. Buddy and Brian work for Benton.”

DeMarco had heard of Benton Security. They were essentially mercenaries for hire and worked mostly overseas. He figured Emma probably knew somebody in the company, like Benton himself, the ex–Marine general who owned the company.

“And based on what you’ve just told me,” Emma said, still speaking to Farris, “it sounds like McGrath went to this Samuels person and paid him to have Campbell and, I’m guessing, his wife killed. Maynard would have broken into the house, shot them with the gun he had, and then stolen a few things to make it appear like a robbery.”

“Why does McGrath want Campbell dead?” Farris asked.

“It’s a long a story,” Emma said, “but it involves insider trading and McGrath is afraid that Campbell is going to testify against him.”

“Okay,” Farris said, “but we can’t get Maynard for attempted murder because your guys caught him outside the house and he’s not going to admit that Samuels told him to kill anyone. What he will do is go back inside for carrying a weapon, and with his record, he’ll probably be in his fifties when he gets out.”

“He won’t deal Samuels for a reduced sentence?” Emma said.

“No, because according to the Myrtle Beach cops, Harvey Samuels would have him killed.”

“Shit,” Emma said. “Can we leave now, Sergeant? All Buddy and Brian did was make a citizen’s arrest and they’ve given your people a statement. And when Maynard goes to trial, they’ll testify—assuming they’re still stateside.”

“Yeah, they can go. And so can you. But I don’t ever want to see them again in Montgomery County, lurking around some neighborhood armed to the teeth. If you’re concerned about some citizen’s life being in danger, you call us.”

* * *

DeMarco followed Emma out of the police station and watched as she shook hands with Buddy and Brian. After they left, she turned to him and said, “Let’s go talk to Campbell.”

“Yeah, sure, but why did you . . .”

Emma ignored him and walked toward her car.

* * *

Campbell and his wife were in bed when Emma and DeMarco arrived at their house. The police had woken them up after they arrested Casey Maynard and asked if Campbell knew the man. Campbell said he didn’t and thanked the cops for catching the guy—having no idea that two mercenaries hired by Emma had actually apprehended Maynard. After the cops left, Campbell went back to bed, telling his wife how lucky they were and how they needed to start setting the security system at night before they went to sleep.

Campbell answered the door when Emma rang the bell at six a.m. He was dressed in a blue T-shirt and white pajama bottoms with red stripes. He looked like an overweight Uncle Sam. His big feet were bare.

“What in the hell do you two want?” he said when he saw Emma and DeMarco standing on his porch. “And what are you doing here at this time of day?”

“Campbell,” Emma said, “the man the police arrested trying to break into your house was hired by Rusty McGrath to kill you.”

“What?”

“Let us in. We need to talk to you.”

They took seats in Campbell’s living room and Emma told him how she had hired people to protect him and who Casey Maynard was. “Do you believe me now, Mr. Campbell?” she said. “McGrath tried to kill you in Charlottesville with a bag of peanuts and he tried to kill you again tonight. If I hadn’t had people watching over you, you and your wife would both be dead.”

“You don’t know that,” Campbell said. “The guy could have just been trying to rob the place. I mean, this is a wealthy neighborhood and . . .”

“Get real!” Emma said. “That man didn’t drive all the way from South Carolina to rob you. Like I told you, the cops said he works for a gangster in Myrtle Beach and he’s a contract killer. And can you think of anyone, other than Rusty McGrath, who lives in Myrtle Beach and might want you dead?”

Campbell just shook his big head and DeMarco didn’t know if that meant he didn’t believe Emma or was just in denial over everything that was happening to him.

“Campbell, you dumb shit,” DeMarco said, “McGrath killed Praeter and he’s going to kill you. He’s afraid you’re going to give him up. And he’s willing to kill your wife, too. Your wife! You need to testify against him now, because the next time he tries, somebody might not be here to stop him.”

But Emma and DeMarco couldn’t move him. Campbell just sat there looking down at the floor—a hulking, brooding form on the couch—obviously scared and trying to figure out what to do next, but refusing to cooperate. Emma and DeMarco gave up.

As they were walking toward their cars, DeMarco said, “I thought you weren’t helping me anymore.”

“I’m not,” Emma said. “I hired Benton Security to watch over Campbell before I found out you lied to me. I couldn’t let McGrath kill that imbecile.” Emma stopped walking and gave DeMarco the full force of her eyes. “You’ve set something in motion to clear Molly Mahoney of a crime you know she’s committed, and now you’re getting people killed. Do you understand that?”

“I didn’t set anything in
motion,
Emma. I didn’t have some sort of master plan when this all started. All I did was ask Campbell a couple of questions.”

“And one other thing, genius,” Emma said. “McGrath didn’t kill Praeter. He has an alibi.”

“What! What alibi?”

“The guy who ran the marina in Myrtle Beach said McGrath was taking his boat out for a couple of days. Remember?”

“Yeah. You thought he parked it somewhere and flew up to New York using a fake ID.”

“Well, I was wrong,” Emma said. “I had asked a Coast Guard friend of mine to contact marinas near Myrtle Beach, and the day Praeter was killed, McGrath’s boat was docked in Georgetown, South Carolina. When I called the marina operator, he said McGrath was there the whole time entertaining a local woman. The woman confirmed McGrath was with her the night Praeter died.”

“I’ll be damned,” DeMarco muttered.

“Without a doubt,” Emma said.

“So maybe McGrath hired someone to kill Praeter. Maybe this guy Maynard was the one who did the job.”

Instead of responding to DeMarco’s latest theory, Emma said, “Don’t call me again regarding any of this, Joe. If fact, don’t call me period. And Campbell’s your responsibility from this point forward.”

After Emma drove away, DeMarco stood on the curb feeling . . . What? Shame? No, not so much shame as a sense of loss. One of the few good friends he had no longer trusted him.

Molly Mahoney wasn’t worth what he’d just lost.

44

“Why would Rusty want to kill us, Doug?” Kathy Campbell said.

Campbell had made the mistake of telling his wife what Emma and DeMarco had told him, and now she was yammering at him, asking questions he couldn’t answer.

The fact was, he didn’t know why Rusty wanted to kill him. With Praeter dead, both he and Rusty were safe. Praeter was the weak link—he was the one who bought the stock, hid the trail from the SEC, and set up the offshore accounts—but the SEC had never been able to connect him leaking information to Praeter. With Praeter gone, they didn’t have anything to worry about—so why did Rusty want him dead? Was Rusty afraid that he’d crack under the pressure if people kept investigating? Did he think this whole thing with Molly Mahoney was going to lead back to them? It just didn’t make sense.

Well, one thing made sense. Rusty McGrath was a cold-blooded son of a bitch who loved nobody but Rusty McGrath and he’d do anything to protect himself.
And
he was a fuckin’ psycho. When they’d played together at UVA, the one thing he learned about his pal, Rusty, was that he was not only willing to hurt people, he liked to hurt people.

“Doug, answer me!” Kathy Campbell shrieked, her voice piercing his skull. “What are we going to do?”

Campbell was still wearing the pajama bottoms he had on when Emma and DeMarco woke him. He left his wife—she was still yammering at him as he walked away—went to his bedroom, put on a pair of battered loafers and a lightweight jacket, and shoved his wallet and his car keys into one of the jacket’s pockets.