Authors: John McEvoy
Riders Down (23 page)
From a pay phone at the Lake Forest Oasis on Highway 94 north of Chicago, Bledsoe called the Heartland Downs press box. Posing as prominent trainer James Burkhart, he asked for Matt. The receptionist replied that O’Connor “was in the building but I don’t know where. Shall I give him a message?” Bledsoe, satisfied as to O’Connor’s current whereabouts, hung up on her.
Bledsoe trotted back to his car and sped down the ramp heading south. As he slipped into the stream of traffic, massive rain clouds began to advance swiftly from the west. Bledsoe gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles shone white in the gathering gloom of the afternoon.
His rage both propelled and disturbed him. Against his will, the wound in his massive ego continued to widen. He hadn’t been outsmarted, no, but he had been undone, partially as a result of the snooping by this persistent newspaperman. For the second time in his life, Bledsoe felt drastically diminished—much like he had that long-ago summer night at the lake when Greta Prather had so cruelly spurned him. It was a feeling he could not countenance. It would have to be replaced by an act of revenge that would restore him, make him complete once again.
Bledsoe had been galvanized into action that noon. Returning home from his Chinese literature class, he had turned on the television news and heard his name. “Authorities are seeking for questioning a Madison man, Claude Bledsoe, in connection with the fatal shooting yesterday of Chicago sportswriter and horse racing handicapper Rick Rothmeyer. Bledsoe is well known locally for having spent decades as a University of Wisconsin student,” the television reporter said.
The man continued, “Rothmeyer was shot to death last evening in the parking lot of Heartland Downs Racetrack near Chicago. A security camera attached to a light pole in the parking lot captured the shocking event on videotape. Bledsoe is believed to have shot Rothmeyer from a distance of some seventy-five yards, using a rifle. He then fled in a blue Toyota Corolla. Police refused to speculate as to a motive. Police retrieved the videotape after Rothmeyer’s body was discovered by racetrack maintenance workers. They then traced the car’s license plate to Bledsoe. This is a photo of the suspect, who is considered armed and dangerous.”
Bledsoe’s Wisconsin driver’s license image, blurry but recognizable, appeared on the screen.
I don’t remember sneering like that
, he thought. But it sure as hell was him, all right, and he realized he had made two terrible mistakes. This, for a man with thirty-two years of straight A university academic work behind him. He had not only killed the wrong man, he’d never even given a thought to the possibility that a racetrack parking lot would be equipped with security cameras, never suspected that they had been installed years earlier following a rash of auto break-ins and tire thefts by tapped-out horse players.
Continued the television reporter, “This is the fourth murder in recent months involving men who work in American horse racing. Before Rothmeyer was killed by a single rifle shot, three jockeys were killed in similar fashion at three different sites around the country. No motive for any of these killings has ever been established.
“For more on this story, we’ll go to reporter Mary Rodriguez in Evanston.” Ms. Rodriguez was shown standing next to a tall, blond, somber-looking man. “I am with Matt O’Connor outside of his Evanston home,” she explained. “Mr. O’Connor is a racing journalist who was a long-time colleague of Mr. Rothmeyer.”
As she began questioning O’Connor, Bledsoe muttered, “So that’s what the son of a bitch looks like.” He watched as O’Connor told the reporter, “The man authorities are looking for, Bledsoe, may well be the key figure in a national race-fixing scandal. We’re all very anxious to talk to Mr. Bledsoe. That’s all I can say at this point.” O’Connor turned away from the camera, then abruptly pivoted to again face the lens, his expression hardened. “What I will say,” he added bitterly, “was that my best friend has been killed, way, way before his time.
“Why?” Matt said in answer to the reporter’s question. “There have been all kinds of theories, speculation. An embittered bettor. Some lunatic with a grudge against mankind, acting randomly. My guess,” Matt added, turning to again face the camera directly, “is that someone screwed up and my friend died as the result of a case of mistaken identity.”
Bledsoe turned off the television. His hand shook slightly as he poured a cup of coffee. He felt as if the air had been vacuumed from his lungs. He took a sip of coffee, then hurled the cup against the kitchen wall. “I can’t believe this,” he said loudly. Bledsoe slammed his fist down on the old, wooden kitchen table. The table crumpled in the middle, its legs splaying out across the linoleum floor. He sat for several minutes amid the debris, head in hands, knowing that he would never have the satisfaction of dumping his mound of cash on lawyer Altman’s desk, knowing that Grandma Bledsoe’s $15 million would never be his. Disappearing along with those many millions were his dream of the Claude Bledsoe Chair of Economics. “
Damn
it,” he said, kicking one of the broken table legs against the far wall. Finally, he took a deep breath and shrugged, now resigned but full of a new resolve. “I’ll just have to make do with my one million,” he said with a bitter laugh.
He walked to the desk in his bedroom. His computer whirred and gurgled into life. As it did so, he dialed 411 on his phone. “Evanston, Illinois,” he told the operator. “The name is O’Connor, Matt or Matthew. I need the address, too.” She was back within seconds with the information.
Turning back to his computer, Bledsoe hit Google, then Mapquest. He typed in his address and O’Connor’s. When the directions came up on the screen, he memorized them instantly before shutting down the computer. From his bedroom closet he took a roll of fiber tape, a clear plastic bag, a pair of latex gloves, and two brown duffel bags. After grabbing his car keys he ran down the stairs.
Matt’s voice rang in his ears, a scathing irritant. “We’re all very anxious to talk to Mr. Bledsoe…”
“You’ll get your chance, motherfucker,” Bledsoe growled as he settled behind the wheel of the Toyota. “You’ll get your chance.” He heard a siren from blocks away, heading his way, as he accelerated onto the street leading to Highway 51 going east.
Twenty-seven minutes later, Bledsoe had emptied his safe deposit boxes in the Sun Prairie bank. He placed the bundles of cash in the two duffel bags, each now weighing some fifty-five pounds. In the bank parking lot, he tucked the bags in the tire well of the Toyota’s trunk. He transferred the fiber tape, gloves, and plastic bag into his briefcase, which he placed next to him on the passenger seat. Then he rejoined the eastbound traffic on the highway heading toward Milwaukee. He would bypass that city while heading south into Illinois and to Evanston.
***
With a carryout bag of Chinese food in each arm, Maggie struggled at the door to Matt’s condominium, first locating the correct key on her keychain, then briefly balancing the food in one arm as she turned the key in the lock. She bumped her hip against the door to keep it open as she entered. Before the door had completely closed behind her, a large hand covered her mouth, and she heard a man’s voice say, “Let go of the bags. Right now.” Maggie dropped the bags, the white food cartons spilling from them. She dropped her keychain, too, and heard it bounce on the hardwood floor of the foyer.
For an instant Maggie thought of Katherine Ross being surprised by Robert Redford in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. But that neat example of expectation reversal did not apply here. It wasn’t Matt’s hand pulling her chin upward so that her jaw strained, nor his other arm propelling her through the living room and to the kitchen at the rear of the unit. It wasn’t Matt pushing her down hard on a wooden chair at the kitchen table. Or stuffing a gag in her mouth and fiber-taping her torso to the chair, actions all carried out so swiftly she could barely register them.
Then she heard the male voice say slowly, gloatingly, “That was easier than I thought it would be.”
The man moved from behind her chair, her purse in his hands. He took out her wallet and flipped it open to her trainer’s license with its ID photo. Then he stood before her, nonchalantly leaning on the kitchen table with one hand, moving her hair away from her eyes with the other, his hand lingering on her forehead. His eyes glittered. I know who this is, Maggie realized, remembering the photo that had been shown on Chicago television the night before. So this is what a murderous fanatic looks like in the flesh. She gave Bledsoe a scornful look and attempted to speak, but the gag muffled her.
“Let me introduce myself, Ms. Collins,” he said with mocking formality. “I’m Claude Bledsoe. I believe you’ve heard of me.”
***
As usual Bledsoe had come prepared, but he’d been lucky, too, for he had not expected what was obviously O’Connor’s lady friend to walk in on him. He’d come for O’Connor. The woman was a bonus.
Bledsoe had also been fortunate in gaining entrance to the condo. After parking his Toyota two blocks down the street on Hinman Avenue from Matt’s address, Bledsoe had walked to the rear of the old, brick, eight-unit building and peered around the basement doorway. What he saw was Chester Pocius, the seventy-seven-year-old building maintenance supervisor, deeply asleep in his cramped office, an ancient twelve-inch television set atop the battered desk showing a
Jeopardy
rerun.
Bledsoe carefully reached above the old man’s head to the pegboard on which hung keys for each of the building’s units. Pocius snored with a remarkably rhythmic rumble as Bledsoe extracted the key labeled “Unit Seven-O’Connor.” Cautiously backing out of the office, Bledsoe kept an eye on Pocius, thinking,
How ironic is it that this old fart will remain
alive today because he happened to be sleeping on the job.
***
Maggie heard rain beginning to pelt the roof and windows. Evanston, adjacent to the huge lake and a frequent summer dumping ground for eastward-moving storm clouds, was being hit with a vengeance. A blast of thunder made her wince. The kitchen was dark now and filled with Bledsoe’s presence. Looking at him, Maggie was as afraid as she had ever been in her life. And conflicted, too, because while her only hope seemed to be the arrival of Matt, that possibility frightened her badly. How could her ball-playing newspaperman deal with someone like this monster?
Bledsoe whistled softly as he moved about the kitchen, restless but poised, enjoying himself. At one point she heard him say, as if he were lecturing her, “If you want revenge, you don’t have to confine yourself to extracting it only from the object of your hatred.” He shook his big head, eyes gleaming with malice as he stared at her. “What you can do,” he said, “is take away what they love.” Maggie’s eyes widened and she twisted violently in the chair. It was no use. He had bound her tightly.
***
Matt drove with one hand on the steering wheel down busy Dempster Street heading east, with the other hand hitting “repeat dial” on his cell phone for the seventh time in the past half-hour. He had thus far failed to reach Maggie on her cell since he’d left the racetrack. His original impulse had been to ask if there was something he needed to pick up to go with their planned Chinese dinner, wine or some beer. But after repeatedly failing to make contact, he had begun to worry. She always answered her phone, for if it wasn’t Matt calling, it could be one of her clients, or perhaps someone back at her barn who needed to talk to her about one of her horses. Matt started to sweat, thinking about a killer on the loose who certainly knew about him and his role in the dead jockeys’ case. Could Bledsoe have gotten Matt’s address? Would he go there? Would Maggie be there when he showed up? The questions ate at him. “Please, God,” he prayed, zooming through a yellow light at McCormick Boulevard on the western edge of Evanston, “don’t let that be so.” For the next twenty-five worry-ridden blocks, before he at last turned right onto Hinman, he had the windshield wipers at top speed as rain pounded down harder.
***
Despite having sprinted the half-block from where he’d parked to the back stairway of his building, Matt’s clothes were sodden. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs to wipe his face and hands with his handkerchief. He also dried off the handle of the aluminum softball bat he’d taken from the trunk of his car, the only weapon immediately available to him. He prayed again—that he wouldn’t have to use the bat, that he’d find Maggie humming to herself as she laid out dishware for their dinner, humming as she always did when working alone in the kitchen.
Moving quickly and quietly, Matt went up the stairs, careful to avoid brushing against the locked bicycles on the second-floor landing, stepping past the tarpaulin-covered barbecue grill on the third. Nearing the back porch of his condo unit, he slowed and crept carefully up the last few steps. Rain drummed on the roof above him.
Matt crawled across the porch floor to the kitchen window. It had been raised only an inch or two, not enough to allow the rain in, but enough so that he could hear Bledsoe’s thin tenor voice. Bledsoe’s broad back was turned to Matt. He was speaking to Maggie. Matt heard him say, “Your boyfriend was too good at snooping. Too good for your good, anyway, and for his own, too. You’re going to pay for it first. He’ll be the second note come due once he shows up here.” For a moment Maggie switched her defiant gaze from Bledsoe. She saw Matt through the kitchen window. Her eyes widened, but she quickly shifted them back to Bledsoe.
“Smart girl,” Matt whispered, as he pulled away from the window and crawled to the back entrance of the condo. The main door was open, the screen door closed but unlatched. Both led into a long corridor that ran to the front of the unit. On the right, ten feet inside the doorway, was an entryway to one of the condo’s two bedrooms, the one Matt used as an office. Directly across the hallway from it was the kitchen. Matt remembered how, in response to Maggie’s urging, he had only the previous weekend sprayed the screen door’s squeaking hinges with the last of his can of WD-40. At the time, he had kidded Maggie for being “too sensitive to inconsequential noises.” Now, he was grateful he’d done her maintenance bidding.
