Monahan 01 Options (44 page)

“The
truth
Philip, the truth is what everyone is going to know after tonight,” I said defiantly. “You’re blackmailing Chris and Chris had something to do with Evelyn’s death. All of it’s going to come out. You’ll never survive this Philip. Your career and Oakes’ is over.” I was tempted to call him some names too, but I didn’t want to push my luck, whatever little I had left. He didn’t respond to this so I pushed on.

“So tell me,” I continued. “What did Oakes and Everly do that made your father’s company go bankrupt?” My right hand was full of blood now from my ear and I wiped my hand on the carpet.

“They stole from him.” His voice was above me and without moving my head I raised my eyes up from the mess I was making on the carpet and looked at Philip’s shoes. My eyes continued up his pants leg and I finally had to move my head and when I did, I looked directly in his face. The gun was held steadily in his hand and it pointed directly at me, less than a foot from my face. “They stole his money. And he was going to the police when they killed him. I came home early from school. The nurse had sent me home because I wasn’t feeling well. Mommy wasn’t there so I went to look for daddy.” His voice had changed and now he sounded like a young boy.

“There were voices in daddy’s den and I was never allowed to interrupt when he was having a meeting but I wasn’t feeling well. So I went outside and peeked in the window to see. They were there. One of them was holding daddy in the chair and the other one was holding daddy’s hand to his head. And then there was a loud noise. Mommy said daddy went to live with the angels.”

The poor child had witnessed his father’s murder. No wonder his mother thought she’d lost both her husband and child. The shock of seeing something like that had obvious, lasting effects.

Philip’s voice changed again and this time, a man’s voice spoke to me. “We suffered. Mom and me. And I promised myself that I’d make it better for us. I was probably 15 or 16 before I realized what it was I witnessed that day.”

“I believe you Philip. But why did my friend Evelyn have to die?”

“It was an accident. She was only supposed to get sick. We wanted Rick Cox out of the picture but things went wrong. We needed to fire him. The woman was never supposed to die. Just get sick and be out of the picture for a couple of days. We disabled her EpiPen. Put a little peanut oil on the food. It was supposed to be no big deal. We needed access to her computer system.”

I thought sadly about Evelyn and the tragic way this madman had ended her life.

“You bastards,” I whispered.

Philip didn’t hear me, he just continued. “Chris promised me Rick’s job. He was going to pay for what he did. I wanted money. And lots of it. For my mother. Chris said if we got rid of Rick I could have his job and his stock options. He said Larry would find another company to buy TechniGroup and then we’d all make lots of money on our stock options.”

Fucking stock options. The level of greed amazed me.

“Well you’ve succeeded. Rick’s out of the way. We’re about to receive a take-over bid. Your options’ll make you scads of money. So just leave it at that. Let me go.”

“Sorry.”

I watched in horror as the shoulder muscle of his arm holding the gun twitched imperceptibly and as I waited for the shot that would kill me, my life virtually passed before my eyes. An overwhelming sense of sadness took over and I willed myself to pass out.

A groan from the other side of the room told me that Chris was still alive. And then a voice, that definitely wasn’t Chris’s said, “Mr. Winston. Drop the gun.”

From my position on the floor, I watched Philip’s eyes dart up in reaction to the voice. The voice was unfamiliar to me but I felt a surge of relief that help had arrived. Philip crouched slightly and without moving his eyes, he grabbed my arm and pulled me up. He spun me around so my back was against his chest and held me tightly with his left arm around my neck. My hands grabbed instinctively at the arm across my throat and I tore at his forearm with my fingers. My fighting made him tighten his hold. I saw one eye of a policeman’s face peek around the wall at the end of the staircase. His left hand held a gun pointed directly at us.

“Just drop the gun, Mr. Winston,” he was saying calmly as he looked directly at me. His eyes were telling me not to do anything stupid but I felt the situation dictated otherwise. I manoeuvred my chin under Philip’s forearm and his grip tightened, which luckily forced my mouth open around his arm. So I bit down as hard as I could and stomped on the top of his foot at the same time. Philip’s reaction was exactly what I expected. He yelled out and loosened his grip slightly from around my neck. I took the opportunity to pull down on his arm with my hands and then I let him have an elbow in the stomach. His arm dropped and I fell to my knees on the floor behind the chair, covering my head with my arms.

One shot rang out and the sound was deafening so I knew the police officer was the one who had fired. I heard a rush of footsteps on the staircase and voices filled the room. I remained frozen in place and listened to the sounds around me.

“He’s alive,” I heard someone say and then the same voice was talking to me.

“Miss. Are you all right?” An arm snaked around my shoulders, where I was huddled.

“Fine,” I managed to say.

“There’s an awful lot of blood, Miss. Where are you hurt?”

I put my hands on the floor and pushed myself up to a kneeling position. “My ear, I think,” I said as I pointed. Adrenaline continued to rush through my body and I felt no pain from the wound. Yet. I swivelled my body around to see Philip lying behind me, face down on the floor with his hands handcuffed behind his back. I used the arm of the La-Z-Boy to pull myself to my feet and stood there on shaky knees looking down at him. He stared back at me silently with hate in his eyes.

“Can you stand him up?” I asked the police officer. “I hate to kick a man when he’s lying down.”

chapter fifty-nine

Chris Oakes’ basement television room was full of people and because of the low ceilings, the noise level was high. I was sitting on the coffee table that had broken my fall and a paramedic was attending to my war wound. I was told I was a lucky person because the bullet from Philip’s gun had only nicked the top of my ear. They were insistent though that I go to the hospital and it was there that I found out that the bullet had taken off a piece of the top of my ear that was the size of my baby fingernail.

Philip Winston was handcuffed to a stretcher with a flesh wound in his shoulder and the paramedics were taking him up the stairs to the ambulance. Oakes had already been taken out, but he had walked. Barely.

The paramedic who was working on me was packing up his large first aid kit that resembled a toolbox.

“Can you walk, or do you want a stretcher?” he grinned at me.

“I think I can walk, thank you very much.”

“Well, your ambulance awaits you.”

“I’ll go to the hospital, but
not
in an ambulance. He’ll take me.” I nodded my head at Jay who was sitting across from me on the loveseat.

“I’m sorry miss. We have to insist. Your friend can follow in his car. I’ll even sit in the back with you.”

“Fine,” I agreed rather than fight. Of course I was dizzy when I stood up but a deep breath and a conscious decision not to act weak, gave me strength.

Detective Leech appeared which didn’t surprise me. In fact, I was surprised that it took him so long to get here.

“What took you so long Leech?”

He ignored my jibe. “A few questions Miss Monahan.”

My paramedic saved me, for the moment. “Later Detective. This lady’s on her way to the hospital. She’s lost some blood and we understand she took a blow to the head earlier today. So, the questions’ll have to wait.” He took me by the elbow and led me away.

“For that, kind sir, I propose marriage,” I whispered to him as we made our way up the stairs. “You saved me from the dragon.”

He laughed. “At your service.”

The street outside of Chris’ house resembled a circus. Red flashing lights from all of the emergency vehicles were lighting up the street and yellow tape cordoned off the area. A television crew were set up behind the line and their bright white lights made the scene look like a large, budget film was being made.

“There she is,” I heard someone yell and a surge of bodies pressed forward. My saviour paramedic hustled me up two steps into the back of a waiting ambulance and he quickly pulled both doors closed behind him.

Detective Leech finally had his way with me at the hospital. I was forthcoming with as much information as I had but he had nothing to share with me. The hospital staff kept him at bay and before he was allowed access to me, the doctors and nurses patched me up and x-rayed my head. The doctor had been concerned about the blow to the side of my head because the lump where Philip had hit me with his gun was quite large.

“It’s just a mild concussion,” the doctor told me. “Rest is the best cure. As for the ear, the bandages can come off in a couple of days.” I was sitting up on the side of a gurney when he gave me the good news.

“A few people outside want to see you,” he told me. “But protocol tells me that the Detective gets first crack at you. One person tells me his name is,” he paused as he checked a name he had written on my chart, “Jay Harmon. The screaming pack of reporters are being kept outside the hospital but they all want to talk to you. I’m ready to discharge you now but if you want to hide from everyone, we can admit you for observation.” I was sure he wouldn’t be offering the hospital for asylum purposes if I didn’t have such good medical insurance coverage, but I thanked him anyway.

“Send in the good Detective,” I told him. “And thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll go home tonight.” I offered my hand and he returned a firm, but cool handshake. He pulled the curtain closed around my gurney when he left and I rummaged around in the small cart that held my clothes. When I had arrived, the nurses had quickly and efficiently stripped me of my clothes and I made a mental note to call my mother and thank her for always reminding me to wear clean underwear.

My clothes were covered in dried blood and I was loathe to put them back on but it was better than leaving the hospital in a gown that didn’t fasten in the back and was three inches above my knees. I quickly stripped off the gown and was buttoning my blouse when a voice behind the curtain told me that Leech had arrived.

“Just a sec.” I dropped my shoes on the floor and manoeuvred my feet into them without bending over. I left the gown on the gurney and pulled open the curtain to find Leech.

“Miss Monahan,” he said formally. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Where do you want to talk?” I was anxious to get this over with and get home to bed. The large clock on the wall told me it was past three o’clock in the morning.

“Here or at the station.”

“Now?”

“A few questions now, and we can finish tomorrow, if you like.”

“Here then. Is there somewhere we can sit and I can have a cup of coffee while we talk?”

“I think there’s a lounge on this floor. Follow me.”

Jay was sitting in the waiting area and he jumped out of his chair when he saw me approaching but Leech waved him off. “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Harmon. If you’d be good enough to wait, we won’t take long.”

We found the lounge and Leech bought us each a coffee from a vending machine that looked like it had been installed before the Second World War. I was dying for a cigarette but there was no way I could light up in a hospital. I didn’t have any smokes anyway because my purse, which I’d forgotten about, was still in either my car or Sadie Weinstein’s house. I spied my reflection in a dark window. The entire right side of my head was swathed in white bandages and my blood-soaked clothes looked almost unreal. Like props in a movie.

I sat down carefully in a straight backed chair at a table covered in old magazines. Leech sat across from me and opened his ever-present notebook.

“Please fill me in on events since we spoke on Saturday night after the break-in at your apartment.”

Where to start was the hardest part so I decided to take him back a few days before the Saturday night attack. And this time I tried not to leave out any details. I told him about seeing Winston and Cox at the restaurant and Jay’s discovery of the link between Oakes and Everly and Weinstein Textiles. I recounted how Jay and I had met Philip’s mother and discovered that he was using an assumed name. Then I told him about Philip kidnapping me in the parking garage at work and waking up in Sadie’s house.

I showed him my scraped knees which the nurses had disinfected and covered with Sesame Street Band-Aids. Throughout the telling of my story I was calm and almost detached but I had to pause before continuing when I got to the part about what had happened at Chris Oakes’ house. Leech smiled when I described my efforts at sobering up Chris but his expression turned deadly serious when I told him about Philip’s arrival and the subsequent events.

I closed my eyes and told him about looking down the barrel of Philip’s gun and how everything seemed like it was in slow motion. I felt Leech’s hand cover mine and he said softly, “It’s all right now.” Embarrassment flushed over my face for having such a hard time getting the story out so I finished off quickly, with my eyes open, and told him about the things that Philip had said and admitted to.