The Undertaker's Widow (33 page)

Quinn took off. As he rounded the corner, he heard pounding footsteps racing after him. Quinn flung open the door to the near stairwell and leaped down the steps. He slipped on the third-floor landing and slid down half a flight before checking himself. In the second it took Quinn to regain his feet, he strained to hear his pursuer and thought he heard the sound of feet descending.

Quinn hit the bottom stair. The corridor in the back of the courthouse was dimly lit. He held his gun in front of him. His stomach was cramped and his breathing grew ragged. His senses were intensified. All he had to do was make it to the end of the hall.

Quinn sprinted for the alcove. The moment he reached it the door to the other stairwell flew open and the man in the ski mask ran into the hall. Quinn had been certain that he had heard footsteps in the stairwell he had just descended. Could there be two people hunting him? Before he could consider the question, the masked man sprang. Quinn backpedaled into the alcove and raised his gun, which was halfway up when the knife struck it. The impact jarred the gun and the knife loose and sent Quinn stumbling backward. He tripped on his own feet and fell heavily to the floor. His head smacked against the wall. Quinn's eyes wouldn't focus. He shook his head. When his vision returned, Quinn saw that the masked man was holding the gun.

Time slowed to a crawl and a feeling of overwhelming
calm flooded through Quinn as he accepted his death. He saw the attacker sight down the barrel of the gun. His eyes locked on Quinn's. Then there was an explosion. The assailant's knees buckled, the gun fell and the front of the ski mask dampened with blood. There was a second shot. Quinn tried to push his way through the wall. The attacker collapsed at Quinn's feet and Ellen Crease stepped into the alcove holding a smoking .38-caliber revolver.

The jail elevator opened and two men stepped into the alcove. They were dressed in the light green shirt and dark green pants worn by the Multnomah County Corrections deputies. The first person out was Sergeant Art Bradford, a huge man with a marine crew cut who had been in Quinn's court guarding prisoners on many occasions. Clyde Fellers, the second deputy, was a black man with massive arms, a thick neck and a gut who had played football for Portland State. Bradford and Fellers stared at the dead man. Then they stared at Quinn, who was slumped on a bench outside the alcove.

“The judge is okay. He's just shaken up,” Ellen Crease said.

Quinn looked up. He was pale and spoke softly.

“The dead man attacked me in the parking garage two days ago. He just broke into my chambers and chased me downstairs. Senator Crease shot him.”

“I was supposed to meet Judge Quinn in his chambers,” Crease explained. “I took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Someone raced around the far corner of the hall just as I came into the corridor where the judge's courtroom is located. No one was in the judge's chambers, so I ran down the back stairs looking for him.”

Crease stopped her narrative. She looked as bad as Quinn.

“I had to shoot. He was aiming at the judge.”

“Someone should call Portland Homicide,” Quinn said. “Ask them to send Detectives Lou Anthony and Leroy Dennis over here. This is connected to one of their cases. And make sure that Anthony and Dennis are told that I know who murdered Lamar Hoyt.”

“You can turn him over now,” Dr. Marilyn Kinsey, the assistant medical examiner, said to Sergeant Bradford. Quinn, Detectives Anthony and Dennis, Ellen Crease and the other people in the group surrounding the dead man waited expectantly as Bradford rolled the corpse onto its back. Kinsey knelt down and slowly peeled back the ski mask.

“Looks like you were right,” Anthony told Quinn. The judge looked down on the lifeless face of Jack Brademas.

“Let's go up to your courtroom so you can show us that report,” Dennis suggested.

Anthony, Dennis, Crease and Quinn went up to the fifth floor. Quinn preceded everyone into his courtroom and switched on the lights. While the others sat at the counsel table that Garrett and Crease had used during the hearing, Quinn went into his chambers through the door behind the bench and retrieved the document that had cleared up the case for him.

“Why don't you tell us how you figured out that Jack Brademas was involved, Judge?” Dennis said as soon as Quinn laid the police report of Martin Jablonski's home burglary on the table. The report was the one he had just finished reading last Sunday when the police detective called to see if Quinn could provide information about the disappearance of Andrea Chapman. It was only while Quinn waited for the police to arrive at the courthouse that the judge realized that the man on the
line could not have been a police detective. The incident on St. Jerome had been staged. Andrea Chapman never existed and Marie Ritter did not disappear on St. Jerome. The call from the phony detective was part of the plan to unnerve him so that he would be easy prey for the blackmailer. The caller had probably been Jack Brademas.

“This is the police report of the arrest that sent Martin Jablonski to prison this last time,” Quinn said. “This was the crime for which he was serving time until he was paroled last year. It was a brutal home invasion. A nighttime burglary accompanied by a violent assault on the homeowners. Take a look at the report.”

Anthony and Dennis studied the handwritten report. They looked confused.

“I don't see …,” Anthony started. Then he looked as if he had been shot. He pointed at the bottom of the report where the arresting officer had signed his name.

“J. Brademas,” Dennis said out loud.

“Exactly,” Quinn said. “Brademas knew Jablonski. He arrested him. I think he hired Jablonski to break into the Hoyt mansion and kill Lamar Hoyt and Senator Crease. If Jablonski was caught later, the crime would fit his M.O., but Brademas was probably going to murder Jablonski after Jablonski committed the double murder at the estate.”

“I've been sick ever since Judge Quinn told me about the report,” Crease said. “Jack was my friend. I helped him get his job and Lamar treated him very well. Why did he do it?”

“I think I can answer that, Senator,” Lou Anthony said. “Your husband suspected Junior of embezzling from the mortuary business. He had Jack Brademas investigate. My guess is that Brademas went to Junior and made a proposal. He would arrange to have you and your husband murdered for a cut of the estate. The plan must
have looked great on paper. Junior had no ties to Jablonski and Jablonski was known for this type of violent crime. But neither Brademas nor Junior counted on you killing Jablonski.”

“Our problem now will be proving that Junior was Brademas's partner.”

Dennis stood up. “You people have been through enough for one night. Wait here and I'll see if there's any reason to keep you further.”

Dennis left and Crease slumped in her seat. She looked exhausted.

“I still can't believe that Jack was behind all this. I've known him for years.”

“If Junior confesses, maybe you can salvage your election campaign,” Quinn said in an attempt to cheer up Crease.

“Winning the primary seems less and less important to me, Dick. I've lost Lamar. Now I find out I've been betrayed by someone I really trusted. Besides, I'm so far down in the polls …”

Crease smiled sadly and shook her head. The courtroom door opened and Dennis returned.

“You can go,” the detective said, “but you'll have to run the gauntlet. Someone notified the press.”

Quinn walked toward the courtroom door. Crease started to follow him, but Anthony stopped her and said, “Wait a minute, Ellen. I know I put you through hell by arresting you.”

“I don't hold it against you. You thought you were doing the right thing.”

“I did, but I might have cost you the campaign, so I figure I owe you one. I need your promise that you won't reveal where you got this information.”

Crease gave it.

“Karen Fargo was paid five thousand dollars to tell her story to me.”

“Who did it?”

Anthony repeated Fargo's description. As soon as he mentioned the scar, Crease said, “That's Ryan Clark, Benjamin Gage's A.A., and he doesn't spit without Gage's say-so. If he bribed Fargo, Gage is behind it.”

Political Necessity

Henry Orchard popped the videotape into the VCR and pressed the Play button on the remote. Ellen Crease drew in smoke from her Cuban Cohiba Panatela. The anchor on the evening news suddenly appeared on the forty-eight-inch television screen in her home entertainment center.

“This is the Saturday night news report on Channel 6, but it's representative of the stories that the other local channels carried as the lead story last night,” Crease's campaign manager told the senator. “The networks used local feeds.”

Crease watched herself leave the courthouse protected by a phalanx of policemen. She saw herself ignore the outstretched microphones and the reporters' entreaties. Then Judge Quinn came down the courthouse steps. He stopped at the bottom and turned to the reporters.

“This is good,” Orchard said as he turned up the volume.

“The police have asked me to refrain from making a statement or answering questions, and I am going to follow their instructions with one exception. Senator Ellen Crease saved my life tonight and I want to acknowledge her heroism and my debt to her.”

“How did she save your life?” several reporters asked simultaneously, as others asked what had happened in the courthouse, but Quinn refused to say anything
more. The next shots were of Quinn's and Crease's cars driving from the scene while a voice-over informed the viewers that Senator Benjamin Gage had refused to comment on the incident at the courthouse.

“Now, here's where they hurt us,” Orchard said.

“Although Senator Gage refused to comment on the shooting, United States Congresswoman Renata Camp, a strong supporter of Senator Gage, did have this to say.”

The screen showed a stern-looking woman of fifty with short gray hair. When she spoke into the camera, she looked very concerned.

“I want to preface this statement by saying that I know very little of the facts surrounding tonight's shooting incident. I do know that the man who attempted to murder Circuit Court Judge Richard Quinn at the Multnomah County Courthouse was a longtime friend and associate of Senator Ellen Crease and the current head of security at her husband's company. I hope that the authorities will look more deeply into the facts surrounding the murder of Lamar Hoyt.”

“The information we have,” a reporter told Congresswoman Camp, “is that Senator Crease saved Judge Quinn's life by shooting Jack Brademas. You seem to be suggesting that there was something more sinister going on here.”

“I'm not saying that at all. I do find it interesting that the senator hid behind a legal technicality in order to escape a trial of the facts of her murder charge, after spending her political career decrying the so-called legal loopholes that murderers, rapists and child molesters use to escape punishment. Then we have her good friend and associate trying to murder the judge in her case. I think these kinds of facts deserve investigation.”

Orchard stopped the tape and switched off the set.

“You don't need to see the rest, unless you want to.”

Crease waved her cigar at her political adviser.

“It's more of the same,” Orchard continued. “What hurts is the innuendo and the accusation that you're hiding behind legal technicalities to keep the voters from learning the truth about Lamar's murder.”

Orchard leaned toward Crease. “There's just over a month to the primary and you are way back in the polls. You've got three choices. You quit, you sit and take it or you fight back. If you choose column A or column B, you might as well concede the election and go on vacation.”

Crease blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Then she looked at Orchard.