One Murder Too Many Read online

  Jason had his gun drawn, watching the door. He tipped his head toward the emergency phone. ‘Try the dedicated line.’

  Kari picked it up, but it was dead. ‘How can that be?’ she cried. ‘It worked when we checked it a few hours ago!’

  Jason removed his mobile but could not get a signal. ‘This is not good.’ He stated the obvious. ‘They are jamming the signals and have cut the phone line.’ He could not hide his concern for their safety. ‘The plan – it should have worked. There should have been no danger.’

  Someone arrived outside the door. There came a pounding noise and several ineffectual shots were fired at the walls. After a few quiet moments there came a deafening explosion. It shook the building and almost knocked Jason and Kari off of their feet. Dirt particles were shaken from the ceiling, dusting them both, and a small crack appeared in the concrete floor.

  ‘Plan?’ Kari coughed from the powdery haze and moved closer to Jason. She stared at him, her complexion pale and eyes wide and frightened in the dim emergency lighting. ‘We had a plan?’

  ‘It was designed to catch the party responsible for all of this, the one who was being blackmailed and the one giving information to the cartel!’

  ‘Well,’ Kari said, frowning, ‘I’d say, at this juncture, the plan pretty much sucks!’

  ‘Granted,’ Jason agreed. ‘This isn’t the resolution I had in mind.’

  ‘Open up in there!’ a man shouted from the other side. ‘You open the door and we’ll make this quick. If we have to, we’ll find the air vent and pump chorine gas into it. You’ll die choking on your own vomit!’

  ‘We’ve summoned the police and they’re on their way,’ Jason called back. ‘You are running out of time.’

  ‘Ain’t no one coming to help you two,’ the man sneered. ‘You’re both dead!’

  Hampton was about to sit down to a boring and bland TV dinner when the phone rang. He answered and it was Peggy, the dispatcher from work.

  ‘Hey there, angel face,’ he cooed the words. ‘I was just thinking how I wished you weren’t on the night shift. My cooking—’

  ‘Something is wrong!’ Peggy cut him off. ‘I asked Emergency Dispatch to let me know if any calls came in from … well, you know where.’

  ‘And?’ Hampton was deadly serious now. He had given Peggy a heads-up about the safe house, without actually mentioning the address. She knew the area and was monitoring it for him.

  ‘The call was choppy and the operator lost it, but I’m certain it was your reporter friend. I listened to the tape and she identified herself … right before there was a loud crash and the call went to static.’

  ‘Thanks, beautiful. I owe you!’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Send every sector car you’ve got to Mountain Meadow Vista Road … the old Copeland house!’

  ‘On their way!’ Peggy responded … and she was gone off of the line.

  Hampton grabbed his gun, jacket and car keys, leaving his meal sitting on the table. He hit the button on his cell and phoned Grady on his way to the car.

  ‘Ham?’ Grady wondered. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Underwood and the Brit are under attack!’

  Grady swore … immediately adding ‘Sorry, Kitten,’ for doing it in front of the kids. Then he came back to Hampton. ‘But we had it covered. How could this …?’

  ‘I’m at my car and heading up there. You’d better get moving too!’

  ‘On my way.’

  There was no cover inside the safe room. It had not been foreseen that the occupant might have to defend himself with the door open. Now, that seemed a distinct possibility. Jason moved the table, chair and single cot to form a barricade. Unfortunately, there was nothing solid enough to stop bullets.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Jason growled as they couched behind the inadequate cover. ‘Someone was one step ahead of us!’

  Kari trembled and clung to his arm. ‘I thought this was a ploy to trap the blackmailer?’

  ‘Regrettably, the drug cartel must have missed that part of the news brief.’

  Several hard bangs came at the door. It sounded as if it was being struck with something heavy. Thankfully, it continued to hold.

  ‘Maybe they are out of explosives,’ Kari whispered to Jason.

  ‘Last chance!’ an angry voice bellowed from the hallway beyond the door. ‘If we have to cut our way through, that little reporter is going to wish you had let us put a bullet in her head. A few of my friends here have a special treat in mind for her!’

  Jason called back, ‘The police are on their way. If you want to remain a free man, you should leave right now.’

  That elicited another vicious oath. ‘You’ve had your chance! Now you’re both going to die … real slow!’

  A piercing stream of bright light suddenly flared between the door and its frame. They were attempting to cut through the bolt with a blowtorch. Time was short.

  Jason turned to Kari and his heart yearned for a way to save her life. Facing a no-chance situation, he had her look at the gun.

  ‘I will hold them back as long as I can. If I go down, you grab the gun, stick the barrel under your chin, lean your head forward and pull the trigger.’

  Kari’s eyes were wide with terror, yet the tears were not for fear of dying, but regret at losing a chance of true happiness. ‘I love you, Jason,’ she murmured softly. ‘I pray God will grant that we may be together after death.’

  Jason ached to kiss her one last time, but the cutting torch was nearly through the locking mechanism. He raised the gun and aimed at the door. Any second now, their lives would end … violently!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘QUIET!’ SOMEONE HOLLERED on the opposite side of the door and the torch was suddenly extinguished. The abrupt total silence caused Jason’s ears to ache from the strain of listening. Through the numbing quietude it sounded like … .

  ‘Cops!’ came a cry from farther away, possibly the top of the stairs.

  There was more cursing, the sound of sirens approaching, and the clamor of footsteps running up the stairway. Jason rose to his feet and turned toward Kari … just in time to catch her. She threw herself into his arms and smothered him in kisses. He returned her ardor and their kiss became fused with their combined relief and passion. It was the most immobilizing, unrestrained embrace he had ever received in his life. Had he not been forced to hold Kari up – due to her feet not touching the floor – he would have sunk to his knees in complete elation.

  Kari, Jason, Grady and Hampton were in Captain Mercer’s office. The captain was more than a little repentant about the attack on the safe house.

  ‘We thought we had every angle covered,’ he explained. ‘We arrested a chain of four people before the attack took place. There should have been no danger.’

  ‘You’ll excuse me for pointing it out,’ Kari didn’t hide her annoyance, ‘but it didn’t turn out that way!’

  ‘Come with me,’ the captain said, gesturing to the door. ‘As you both nearly lost your lives, I’ll allow for you to witness exactly what happens next.’

  Kari and Jason trailed along behind the captain. He opened a door that led to an observation room. On the opposite side of a large window sat a familiar redheaded woman – District Attorney Gloria Streisand. Her controlled wrath was visible within her haggard, yet anxious, expression.

  Grady and Hampton had not joined them to observe, but appeared instead at the interview-room door. They bid the uniform cop who had been keeping Gloria company to leave.

  ‘I don’t know what you people think you’re doing.’ Gloria immediately attacked the two detectives vehemently, ‘But I’ll have your jobs for this! I’ll have you all up on charges!’

  ‘You were read your rights?’ Grady asked politely, ignoring her threat.

  Rather than answer the question, she shouted: ‘You’ve held me against my will the whole dammed night! I demand you tell me what this is about!’

  ‘DDA Martin has confessed ev
erything to us,’ Grady informed her.

  As Gloria tried to process that mentally, Hampton motioned to someone outside in the hallway. Don Streisand appeared and shuffled into the room. He stopped as he reached the table and regarded his wife with a sorrowful countenance.

  ‘Don?’ Gloria was shocked. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘These detectives came to see me yesterday,’ Don replied. ‘I had to tell them the truth.’

  ‘Truth?’ Gloria was dumbfounded. ‘What truth?’

  ‘I’m the one who took pictures of you and Tony Martin,’ Don admitted. ‘I knew you were cheating on me. I.…’ He lowered his head shamefully. ‘I thought, if you were caught – blackmailed by someone – you would break it off with Tony. I tried to show you that I still loved you, but you kept pushing me away.’

  ‘That’s why you were being especially nice and we had the night out at Flemming’s,’ Gloria muttered inanely. Then she glowered at him. ‘You mean to tell me that you took pictures of me and Tony, then extorted fifty thousand dollars from me, all to try and save our marriage?’

  ‘I didn’t know you suspected Dominick until you mentioned that he and Juno might have been involved in blackmail. After that …?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I was afraid you’d hire someone to kill me too.’

  Gloria sprang up from her chair defiantly. ‘I absolutely, positively, did not order those boys killed! That moron, Chock Lincoln, was only supposed to get the pictures back and scare Dom into silence. Then he upped and killed Hector Gomez to cover his stupidity and make this look gang-related. It was all him!’

  Grady cleared his throat before intruding into their conversation. ‘DDA Martin, in a plea for leniency, told us how you ordered him to put the word out on the street as to where Lincoln was hiding. He also admitted to planting the guns and computer – which Lincoln had turned over to him – in the man’s room.’

  ‘Lincoln was guilty of three murders; he paid the price for his crimes,’ Gloria avowed. ‘It was justice.’

  ‘What about Miss Underwood?’ Grady jeered. ‘You sent him after her too.’

  ‘He was only to warn her off, make it appear as if this was all about drugs and the Colombian Cartel.’

  ‘And the hit teams?’ Hampton charged, his voice thick with anger. ‘Were they only supposed to warn her and the Brit?’

  Gloria closed her mouth and sat down. Don scrutinized her with incredulity. ‘All of this because you wanted out of our marriage.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘You only had to be honest with me, tell me it was over.’

  Gloria swallowed hard and looked at him with tear-filled eyes. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’

  ‘So,’ Grady’s face was red from controlling his rage, ‘having DDA Martin spread word on the streets that Kari knew the identity of the drug kingpin, then providing the address of the safe house for the cartel hit squad – those were simply unhappy quirks of fate?’

  Gloria blinked back her tears and stubbornly grit her teeth. ‘I am invoking my right to counsel.’

  Captain Mercer led Jason and Kari back to his office. After a few minutes they were joined by Grady and Hampton. Once the door was closed Kari was the first to speak.

  ‘All of this trouble, caused by a woman over committing adultery.’

  ‘The confession of DDA Martin and the admission from DA Streisand doesn’t account for the attack at the safe house,’ Jason said. ‘What went wrong with the plan?’

  ‘We thought we had every contingency covered,’ Hampton was the one to reply.

  ‘Everything worked to perfection.’

  ‘Pray tell what went wrong,’ Jason requested.

  ‘Yes,’ Kari was quick to join him. ‘We were about one second away from dying. That doesn’t sound like a foolproof plan to me.’

  ‘Each step went as expected … until the attack,’ Hampton admitted. ‘After Jason decrypted your notes, we figured we knew who was being blackmailed. The plan was to bring everyone out in the open and arrest them red-handed. The cartel should have never been a part of this.’

  At Kari’s perplexed frown, Jason cleared his throat. ‘Better start from the beginning.’

  Hampton sighed and started again, speaking to Kari. ‘Jason showed me your notes and explained Rick Cory’s help with some of the slang. We deciphered the meaning of the sentences you jotted down from when you met with Juno and Dom.’

  Jason took over. ‘The term hitting it, meant Gloria was engaging in a romantic tryst with another person. The getting baked was only a slang term for using drugs, so it didn’t figure into the blackmail. However, calling Gloria’s lover a fizzle indicated DDA Martin, who was obviously her amorous lackey. It’s exactly what the woman was afraid you had learned at Dom and Juno’s house.’

  ‘So Gloria and DDA Martin got Chock Lincoln off on a weapon’s possession charge,’ Kari concluded. ‘Then she sent him after Dom and Juno.’

  ‘You heard her admit that much of the story,’ Captain Mercer said. ‘And when Gloria thought you were about to uncover her part in all of this, she had Martin put news on the street that you knew who was behind the drug cartel.’

  ‘Getting back to the plan,’ Jason took over, ‘Captain Mercer told Gloria where the safe house was to get her to act. As soon as she passed the information to DDA Martin, she was nicked and confined without any outside contact. The same went for Martin, once he had given the information to a street informant named Selene.’

  ‘Selene was picked up as soon as she spoke to Radar.’ The captain assumed the explanation. ‘Radar was nabbed, but not before he managed to make a phone call. We checked the call but weren’t too concerned because he had contacted Rick Cory.’

  ‘So who ordered the attack on us?’ Kari asked.

  Rather than answer the question, the captain said, ‘The information I gave Gloria was that you could not only solve the blackmail, but that you had discovered who was working with the Colombian cartel.’ Captain Mercer lowered his head. ‘We knew she would have to act fast and she did.’

  ‘You claim to have arrested everyone who knew where we were,’ Kari said. ‘If that’s true, who gave away our location?’

  ‘We didn’t arrest Rick Cory,’ Hampton told her. Then with a sad shake of his head, ‘Because we didn’t know that he and Radar were working with the drug cartel.’

  Kari gasped in shock. ‘Not Rick! He wouldn’t do that!’

  The captain presented a look of disgust. ‘We checked the call history on both his and Radar’s cell phones. The day Chock Lincoln died, Radar’s first call was to Rick Cory. Rick then called both Jesse Ventura and Victor Orozco. He alerted them a full two hours before the attack at the motel, meaning Rick gave the address to the two gang leaders.’

  ‘He might have justified his actions by claiming he was allowing the Hard Corps and the Lobos to have their revenge,’ Kari suggested. ‘It might have been a way to stop any other violence.’

  ‘The night you were attacked outside your apartment,’ said Captain Mercer, not addressing her comment, ‘Radar’s phone showed only one call that entire afternoon … to Rick Cory. He is the one who passed along the information to a blocked number – we think someone working for the cartel. A few hours later and you had three gunmen blasting away at your car.’

  Jason put a consoling hand on Kari’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, love, but the evidence is very much against him.’

  ‘He’s in the lockup downstairs,’ the captain told her. ‘When I spoke to him, he defended his actions by saying he was saving lives. When Cory took over the gang unit there were a dozen shootings every week. Many of those wounded or killed were innocent bystanders and the streets weren’t safe to walk. He brought order to the drug trade and eliminated most of the infighting. If anyone got out of line, he would use his position in the gang unit to find a way to take them down.’

  ‘I can’t believe he ordered us killed,’ Kari murmured, still suffering shock from the deadly betrayal.

  ‘He believed Gloria was tellin
g the truth about what you knew. The information came from the DA herself. Cory had to tell the Colombians to protect himself, and they sent the hit squads.’

  Hampton summarized: ‘Having failed in their first attempt, they were only waiting to discover your location. Gloria provided that, but we had no idea Rick Cory was involved.’

  Kari sniped, ‘That man just got crossed off of my Christmas-card list!’

  ‘And that’s about all there is,’ Captain Mercer said. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry we are that we didn’t adequately protect you. We thought we had arrested everyone involved.’

  Jason said, ‘It also explains how they knew to bring explosives and cut the landline to the telephone in the safe room. The hit team was very well informed.’

  Kari frowned at Jason. ‘When did you learn the blackmailer was Don Streisand?’

  ‘Remember the wording of the note. Once we decided it wasn’t Paul Hanson or Dominick, it had to be Gloria’s husband or the secretary,’ Jason reported.

  ‘Don had the greater motive and the most to gain,’ Hampton added. ‘If she divorced him he would probably have been left penniless.’

  Grady added: ‘And he had been to her office a great many times … including back when Gloria occupied the same room as DDA Martin has now.’

  The frown remained. ‘You might have told me,’ she scolded Jason. ‘I thought we were partners.’

  ‘It was my idea to keep it from you,’ Hampton took the blame. ‘I asked him not to say anything, in case the plan didn’t work.’

  Kari accepted his explanation and returned to quiz the captain, ‘What will happen now?’

  ‘Selene will testify and probably get probation. Gloria and Martin will face conspiracy to commit murder and several other charges. As for Radar and Cory, they face attempted murder and drug trafficking. All four of them are headed for long stays at the state pen.’

  ‘It’s a funny thing,’ Grady said. ‘Judge Westmoreland said that his son’s death was one murder too many.’ He bobbed his head at Kari. ‘Turns out, it wasn’t Dominick’s death, but yours, Miss Underwood. You were the one murder too many. In attempting to get to you, everyone involved in murder, blackmail or with the cartel, ended up behind bars or dead.’