Kill and Run (A Thorny Rose Mystery Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Dolly, what are you doing?” General Sebastian Graham raged behind the naked woman pointing a silver-plated .45 caliber Colt semi-automatic at Joshua.

“She’s not Dolly,” Joshua told the general. “She stole Dolly Scanlon’s identity and, if we’re not mistaken, her security clearance to get close to you.” He locked eyes with the woman holding the gun. “Most likely, the real Dolly Scanlon is dead.”

The corners of her lips curled upwards.

“That has to be a mistake,” General Graham said.

“Sebastian,” Joshua said, “she’s standing here aiming a gun at my face. I think we can safely assume in some way, shape, or form that she’s a bad person.”

With a moan, General Graham put his hands on his head and shook it. He collapsed onto the bed. “I need to call my lawyers.” He gathered up his pants and began digging through the pockets.

“Drop that phone!” she ordered while keeping her gun aimed at Joshua.

“I pay my lawyers a lot of money to keep me out of bad situations,” General Graham said. “I’m sure with the proper spin, that they should be able to get you and me out of this while making Josh out to be the bad guy. He broke into my apartment and started making deranged accusations. You feared for your safety, so you pulled a gun on him to protect yourself … Yeah, that will work. I’m sure you understand, Josh. It’s nothing personal.”

“Drop that phone now!” she shouted.

The force of her demand caused the general to drop the phone to the floor and clasped his hands to his face.

“You,” she ordered Joshua, “Toss your gun to the floor and kick it to me.”

Without moving, Joshua said, “You don’t want to do this.”

She stepped toward him. “Do you think I would hesitate to kill you?” She laughed. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t figured it out. I killed five women the other day. Shot that old woman twice. Lincoln Clark had cloned his wife’s phone so that he could read her texts. He told me that none of them knew each other. So it was easy for me to get into the old woman’s place.”

“You probably said you were one of the other women and got there early to help her set up,” Joshua said.

“And I did set up,” Dolly said with a grin.

“You put poison in the punch to kill them,” Joshua said. “That made for four murders. Then, Donna Crenshaw arrived.”

She took in a deep breath. “She knew Francine Baxter by sight. She thought I was one of the other ladies until we got up into the dining room and I said something that gave it away.” With a shake of her head, she concluded. “That last one refused to go down as easily as the others. I had to put five bullets in her before she would die.”

“Then you arranged for the murder of Emily Dolan,” Joshua said.

“Well, I can’t do everything,” she said with a laugh. “Enough talk. Throw your gun to the floor.”

Instead of following her order, Joshua told the general, “See what you’ve done, Sebastian?”

“I did not authorize those murders!” General Graham replied.

“I would not have had to kill any of them if they had just kept their mouths shut like they all agreed to do,” she said. “We knew Maureen Clark was the weak link. She had a very bad attitude. It was only a matter of time before she would go public with Tommy being Sebastian’s son. We weren’t one bit surprised when Clark called to say that she was meeting with Sebastian’s other victims.”

“Victims is such an inflammatory word,” General Graham said.

“We did get Tommy’s DNA.” Slipping his weapon back into its holster, Joshua eased forward. “It’s at the lab now. That will prove that you’re his birth father and you raped his mother.”

“Be quiet!” With both hands on the gun, Dolly moved in closer to where Joshua was glaring at the general.

“Clark was going nowhere until I got behind him,” General Graham said.

“After climbing on top of his unwilling wife.” Joshua took a step toward him. “The only difference between you and those predators lurking in dark alleys is that you have a nicer uniform.”

“Shut up!” she yelled.

General Graham climbed up onto his feet. “That’s the way it’s done in the real world, Josh! People do each other favors. You give me what I want, and I’ll make your dreams come true. Clark wants to be a general. I introduced him and whispered the right things to the right people. If his wife had kept her mouth shut, then it was only a matter of time before it happened.”

“Where was she when you two signed this agreement between men?” Joshua asked. “Did anyone ask her if she wanted to be a high-priced whore?”

“Any problem she had with the agreement was between her and her husband,” General Graham said.

“I’m the one with the gun!” She shoved the gun into Joshua’s chest.

With one hand, Joshua grabbed the top of the gun while shoving it around with the other. Stepping to the side, he thrust his foot at the side of her knee to buckle her leg out from under her.

By the time she hit the floor, Joshua was aiming her gun down at her. “Now who has the gun?”

The bedroom door burst in and Murphy raced in with two guns ready to fire. Finding a naked woman at his feet, he tried to look away. “Everything here taken care of, Captain?”

“What took you so long?” Joshua demanded to know.

“Traffic was a little backed up in Georgetown,” Murphy holstered one of his weapons.

“You came through Georgetown? You took Clara Barton Parkway?”

Murphy nodded his head. “How did you think I got here?”

“George Washington Parkway,” Joshua said.

“It’s four miles longer.”

“But the traffic moves faster.”

“Maybe during rush hour, but it’s not rush hour and Clara Barton is a more direct route.”

“Hey,” she said, “if we’re done here—”

“Shut up,” Joshua ordered.

“Your son is right.” The general picked up his phone from the floor. “Clara Barton Parkway is faster during non-rush hour.”

Murphy grinned broadly at Joshua.

Tucking the gun he had taken from her into the waist of his pants, Joshua told him, “Cuff her while I take care of one last thing.”

Taking in her unclothed state, Murphy swallowed. “You want
me
to cuff
her
.”

“Son, if you’ve never touched a naked woman before, you need to have a long talk with Jessica.” Joshua went over to where General Sebastian Graham had already hit the speed dial for his lawyer.

“Good work, Joshua.” General Graham put the phone to his ear. “I knew I could count on you to take care of things.”

Joshua ripped the phone from his ear and hurled it across the room, where it shattered a mirror hanging on the wall. General Graham’s mouth dropped open at the same time Joshua’s fist punched him across the jaw. The general fell back onto the bed and slid unconscious to the floor.

“To answer your earlier question, Sebastian, I do understand but I still take it personally.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Since the Phantom investigation into the murders of the women was being conducted under the cover of NCIS, General Sebastian Graham and the unknown woman who had taken over Dolly Scanlon’s identity were dressed and transported to the NCIS headquarters at Quantico to be interviewed.

The Phantom operation had too much to lose if General Sebastian Graham discovered their existence. Therefore, as far as the general and his mistress knew, the investigation of the murders at Francine Baxter’s home, and the subsequent discoveries, was all done under NCIS, by a navy captain and lieutenant.

Upon the creation of the Phantom Team, the Chief of Staff for the United States Marines had arranged for a private headquarters for use when needed. An older building at the end of an out-of-the-way road at Quantico served the purpose perfectly. As far as everyone except the Phantoms knew, it was a retreat site for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to get away to work on classified projects in secrecy. The building had several offices, up to date computer technology, interrogation and observation rooms, and even four cells in which to temporarily hold prisoners.

The first order of business was to separate the general and his personal assistant so that they could not compare notes. Assuming that the murders and cover-ups were a conspiracy, they had obviously had more than enough time already to come up with their cover stories. Even if this was the case, Joshua and Murphy hoped that with things falling apart, self-preservation may move one or both of them to make deals in exchange for the truth.

After putting them each in a separate interrogation room, Murphy met Joshua in the observation room where he was watching General Sebastian Graham pace. Since seeing him at the Pentagon twelve hours earlier, the four-star general had transformed from a celebrated war hero on his way to the highest post in the United States Army, to a pathetic older man angrily clinging to what was left of his reputation. His face was pale and drawn. His dark hair with silver at the temples was disheveled from repeatedly rubbing his scalp in frustration.

He stopped and turned to the two-way mirror. “Thornton, I want to talk to General Johnston—now! You have no right to hold me here!”

“How pathetic,” Murphy said.

“He’s a four-star general,” Joshua said. “I met him in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Back then, he was a good soldier.”

“Who raped a fellow soldier and got away with it,” Murphy said. “He’s a serial rapist and killer.”

“I agree.”

“Who’s never spent a day in jail and never will,” Murphy said, “because the army doesn’t want to tarnish its image by having one of their most celebrated and highest ranking officers exposed as a rapist and murderer who killed his way to the top.”

Joshua cocked his head at him. “When did you get so cynical?”

“When I saw the list of victims whose lives this man has ruined over the last thirty years.” Murphy jabbed his finger in the direction of the interrogation room. “How many times during this man’s criminal career did the opportunity present itself to stop him? How many people turned their heads and looked the other way? All because doing the right thing would make them or their organization look bad, or because they didn’t have the guts to go up against Graham and his friends in high places, or because it was more beneficial personally to cover it up. You know what? Every one of them—from the commandant at West Point to Colonel Clark—had a hand in creating Graham into the monster that he is today. They own a part in every rape and murder he’s committed.”

“And you think I’m going to be one of those people who will let him walk out of here?” Joshua asked.

“Not directly,” Murphy said. “But he’s claiming he did nothing wrong. I learned enough from you to know that in spite of the lists and reports Francine Baxter has, those women who did report the assaults ended up withdrawing their complaints after a few days. With their deaths, without them to testify, no way can we get him in court for rape.”

“So you think we’re beat?” A grin crossed Joshua’s face. “You don’t know me very well.”

Feeling the vibration on his hip, Murphy took the cell phone out of its case to read the text from Ripley Vacarro. “FBI got a match on our phony Dolly Scanlon’s fingerprints. She’s Maya Fedorov. She immigrated here to the United States as a child with her family. Her father and brother are both in tight with the Russian crime family.”

“Kalashov.”

Gesturing with his cell phone, Murphy said, “You were looking for the connection between General Graham and the Russian mob. There you have it. It was his assistant and mistress.”

Joshua was checking a text message on his phone. “Send a Phantom team to Fedorov’s place to search for evidence proving her connection to the mob and what arrangements they have with Graham. Did you get that gun we took off her over to evidence?”

Murphy nodded his head. “The bullets were hollow, exactly like the type used on Baxter and Crenshaw. And forty-five caliber, too, which makes them the same size. The only problem is that the bullets they took out of our victims were too broken up for comparison.”

“Won’t need it,” Joshua said. “We’ve recorded her confessing to the murders in Graham’s apartment. Now we need to find a way to prove the general was involved in the conspiracy to take them out.”

Murphy pressed the phone’s speed dial number to connect with their commanding officer. “Are you going in to interrogate him?”

“Not quite yet,” Joshua said with a sly grin.

While Murphy was on the phone to request the search, he noticed Joshua staring through the glass at the increasingly nervous general. He disconnected the call at the same time there was a knock on the door of the observation room.

Dressed completely in black, and wearing an armed utility belt, Major Seth Monroe stepped in. His eyes met Murphy’s.
“Captain
Thornton?”

Murphy gestured at Joshua who turned from the window. “That would be me.”

With a chuckle, the major said, “I should have known.” He jerked his head in the direction of the hallway. “He’s here. We have him in the back of the van. What do you want us to do?”

“I want to play show and tell,” Joshua replied with a grin.

“I had no knowledge of what that woman had done!” General Sebastian Graham raged when Joshua, carrying a thick folder under his arm, and Murphy stepped through the door. While Joshua approached the table, Murphy perched himself by the door.

“I am as much—more—” he emphasized with the pounding of his fist on the table top “—of a victim here than anyone else. No one wants to see you get to the truth more than I do!”

“Then why did you put Colonel Clark on the fast track as a reward for his silence in the rape of his wife?” Joshua asked in a steady tone.

“It was not rape!” the general yelled. “I am not a rapist! These women throw themselves at me! They seduce me! Okay, I have a weakness when it comes to the ladies. Then after it’s over, they go bonkers and start screaming rape.”

Without a word, Joshua sat down at the table and opened the folder only enough to reach inside and take out a photograph. He slid the photo to the other side of the table for the general to see.

Perplexed, the general pulled out the chair and sat down. His salt and pepper eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead as he picked up the picture and studied the image of a woman’s face with a welt on her cheek and a bruised and swollen lip.

“What’s this?”

“That’s one of many pictures Francine Baxter took of Cecilia Crenshaw the morning after you raped her. Crenshaw showed up at Baxter’s office to report you,” Joshua said. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I have had my fair share of sexual activity in my day and never did I leave a woman’s face in that condition after consensual sex.”

“My women like it rough.” The general slid the picture back across to Joshua.

“Or rather, you like to rough up women.” Joshua slid another picture across the table of Maureen Clark holding up her wrists to display the bruises.

“I am not a common, low-life rapist.” The general bit off each word.

“No, you are not a common, low-life rapist.” Joshua leaned in to tell him in a low voice. “You’re a common,
high-powered
monster
.”

Abruptly, the door flew open. Murphy whirled around to close it again, but not before Major Monroe and Tawkeel Said led Colonel Lincoln Clark, his hands cuffed behind his back, inside.

“This room is taken,” Murphy said while pushing them back out the door.

The general’s and colonel’s eyes met.

“Sorry,” Major Monroe said. “We thought you had said interrogation room one.”

“No!” Joshua stood up from the table. “Are you deaf? I said three! Interrogation room
three
. Can’t you see I’m in the middle of taking this man’s statement? Get out of here!”

While Major Monroe backed Colonel Clark out of the room, Tawkeel Said stared at Joshua with his mouth hanging open.

“Tawk,” Monroe whispered. “Let’s go.”

Tawkeel’s dark face turned pale.

Murphy gently ushered the Phantom who had been smuggled out of Iraq decades before out of the room. “You need to go.”

Quickly nodding his head, Tawkeel backed out of the room—his eyes never leaving Joshua’s face.

After Murphy shut the door and turned around, General Sebastian Graham swallowed. His eyes were wide. “You picked up Clark? On what?”

“Conspiracy to commit murder,” Joshua said. “You heard your personal assistant. He called her to give you the heads-up about your victims banding together to go public. She killed them. . . to protect you. My only question is, are we going to nail you for conspiracy as well or will it be accessory before or after the fact.” He leaned across the table. “You can forget about becoming Chief of Staff. What we’re looking at now is Leavenworth.”

“Where’s my lawyer?”

Joshua called to Murphy over his shoulder. “The general wants his lawyer.”

Murphy shrugged his shoulders in a sign of dismissal. “He’s coming.”

Joshua stood up. “And while we’re waiting, I’ll go take Colonel Clark’s statement.” He stopped and turned back to the general. “You do know that I’m a lawyer?”

“Yeah, I heard about when you were moving up in JAG.”

“So, I have a little bit of experience in these things,” Joshua said. “Someone sent a hit squad after my wife and daughter-in-law today after they left Colonel Clark’s home, where there was an altercation between him and them about our investigation.” He gestured with a wave of his hands. “Which was a huge mistake because now this case is totally personal to us.” He pressed his finger on the table top. “Now, a simple check of the phone records will show us who Clark called after they left. If we find in those logs that he called your assistant, well—basically, you’re toast, Sebastian.”

“Clark’s career will be toast if he turns on me,” General Graham said.

“It’s already toast,” Joshua said. “We got Tommy Clark’s DNA. Yours is in the system because you served overseas. I’m sure you remember giving it up for identification purposes. Once we compare—”

“We had an affair!”

“Keep saying that and you might convince yourself.” Joshua scoffed. “Actually, I think you’ve already convinced yourself of that. Clark knows his career is over because he knows you’re going down. It’s just a matter of if he wants to stay on your sinking ship or not.” He chuckled. “Do you want to make a bet about which ship he’ll choose?” He lowered his voice. “Considering that he traded in his wife for career advancement—I wouldn’t count on his loyalty if I were you.”

Joshua slid out of the seat. “I still have some pull with the legal community. If you voluntarily withdraw your name from consideration for the nomination to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and make a full confession about the rapes and murders—”

“I had nothing to do with any murders!” The general slammed both fists down on the table.

“Seriously?” Murphy replied. “Every one of your personal assistants was either murdered or committed suicide. Lieutenant General Davis was blown up in a helicopter that you drove him to—all because he was asking too many questions about his daughter’s depression. You knew that as soon as he found out about you raping her that your career would be over.”

With a growl, Murphy added, “And that’s just scratching the surface. You’re nothing more than a parasite murdering your entire way to the top of the food chain from day one!”

“Stand down, Lieutenant!” Joshua yelled.

To Joshua’s surprise, the general’s jowls were trembling. His voice was soft when he replied to Murphy’s accusation, “No, that’s not true.”

“Oh, you just have rotten luck with personal assistants?” Murphy shot back.

“That’s what I thought,” General Graham said in a low voice. “They’d get disgruntled or all moralistic after catching me cheating on them. Two got mad because they realized I wouldn’t leave Paige. Three threatened to go public about my long list of mistresses—like I really cared.”

“And then they would suddenly be dead and your problems would be solved,” Murphy said. “That’s been the case throughout your whole career.”

General Sebastian Graham raised his eyes to Murphy’s.

Joshua saw disbelief in the war hero’s eyes.

Seeing red with rage, Murphy slammed his fist down on the table top. “You’re not a man to take any chances. You even had a Pennsylvania State trooper killed for refusing to give up trying to identify a rape victim you had abducted when she became a threat after having your baby.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” General Graham yelled.

“Officer Nicholas Gates,” Murphy said. “He had only been married four months. Cecelia Crenshaw died in his arms. He made it his mission to find her family—that’s all he wanted to do. He even went on national television to identify her so that he could let her family—her daughter—your daughter—know what happened to her. But you saw him on television, didn’t you?”

General Graham’s mouth hung open.

“And you could not take a chance on anyone finding out what you did,” Murphy continued. “So you sent out your Russian clean up team to run him down—all because he wanted to let Cecelia Crenshaw’s family know the truth about what had happened to her.”

“N-no.” General Graham’s voice shook.

“That’s enough, Lieutenant!” Joshua yanked Murphy back and pushed him toward the door. “We need to go take Colonel Clark’s statement now.” He turned back to General Graham. “We’ll let you know when your lawyer gets here.”

Joshua watched the general while Murphy left the room. His face was frozen in an expression of shock. An inkling of concern for the general crept into his gut. Stepping forward, he slammed his hand flat down on the table top to snap him back into the moment. “Sebastian, we’ll call your lawyer and tell him to meet you here.”

“Thank you, Joshua,” he said in a low voice.

Joshua turned to leave. When he opened the door, General Sebastian Graham called his name again.

“Yes, Sebastian?”

The general seemed to have aged ten years in a manner of minutes. “I never wanted to be a monster.”

“None of us do,” Joshua replied. “It’s been my experience, from what I have seen in criminal court cases, it happens when you’re not looking—while entertaining your inner demons.”