Justice Served: A Barkley and Parker Thriller (8 page)

But not until he heard the words “not guilty”
did Blake Wallace feel confident that he had beaten this rap.

Now it was time to celebrate.

He pulled into the underground parking lot,
unaware that another car had come in shortly after while keeping a
safe distance.

Within moments Blake had parked right
alongside Rebecca’s Subaru Legacy. It was a birthday present from
him and he fully intended to be reimbursed in the way she best paid
her debts. Hot and heavy under the sheets.

He got out of the car and headed towards the
elevator in the lowly lit garage. When he heard footsteps that
weren’t his, he stopped instinctively, turning around.

Approaching was a tall, curvaceous,
blonde-haired black woman. Wearing dark gloves and a trench coat,
she was carrying a long bag and a killer smile. He smiled back,
feeling somewhat aroused.

“Aren’t you
the
Blake Wallace?” she
asked politely.

He regarded her more carefully. Who the hell
was asking? Was she a friend of Rebecca’s?

Someone Victoria knew?

Probably a damned reporter looking for a
cheap story at his expense, he decided.

“Yeah,” he said cautiously. “Who the bloody
hell are you?”

He watched as her pretty face suddenly became
impassioned with fury. “Your worst nightmare, asshole!”

Before he could even digest what this was all
about, she had removed something from the bag. It looked like a
bat. With a swiftness that further took him by surprise, she had
swung the bat backwards and brought it forward at lightning speed.
It slammed against the side of his head, dropping him as if hit by
a heavyweight champion’s right hook. Or running head first into a
brick wall.

“Did you really think for one minute you were
going to get away with what you did, you filthy bastard?” she
cursed.

Dazed and in a state of shock, Blake tried to
get up. But he was unable to ward off the next blow that crashed
into the top of his head with such force it shattered his skull
like an eggshell. Thick, dark blood spurted out.

“Your wife may have been too afraid to stand
up to your violence,” the woman shouted, “but I’m not. You should
have quit while you were ahead. Or had a head! Here, let me
rearrange it some more, you son of a bitch!”

Another blow exploded into his cheekbone,
fracturing it in multiple places. A second or two later came yet
another. This one landed squarely on his throat, crushing his
windpipe.

One more pounded into his head, what was left
of it, brain tissue spurting forth like an eruption from a
volcano.

Though Blake Wallace had ceased to be amongst
the living, she continued to inflict punishment on his battered
remains as if to beat his soul into submission as well. Only after
she had exhausted herself from clubbing him with the bat, did the
woman stop. Her breathing had become erratic and she felt
perspiration pouring from her armpits down her sides and chest.

Again, like the others, she felt a tremendous
amount of relief. The satisfaction was akin to an orgasm. Only much
more powerful. And lasting. At least till the next time when the
urge to kill a brutal abuser overcame her once more.

She tossed the bloodied bat on the corpse and
walked to her car. Opening the trunk, she yanked off the wig,
tossing it into a duffel bag. Then she took off the gloves, trench
coat, and clothes beneath it. She quickly slipped into jeans, a
jersey, and tennis shoes.

Within moments she had gotten into the car.
She applied lipstick to her dry lips. She then put on some
earrings, studying herself in the rear view mirror.

The woman drove out of the parking lot and
calmly made plans for dinner, as she was starving.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The detectives were glum as they viewed the
crushed and battered body of Blake Wallace. Ray tried to imagine
what it would be like to be the target of someone so full of hatred
and rage. He supposed many battered women knew the answer
firsthand.

And at least four men now knew, too.

“Wallace was acquitted today of charges that
he assaulted his wife,” said Nina, taking an anguished look at the
victim’s ghastly remains. “I imagine he thought he was on top of
the world.”

“Think again,” said Ray disgustedly. It was
more like the world was on top of him. Or at least one determined
killer. “Looks like it wasn’t his lucky day after all.”

“Maybe in some ways he was lucky.” Nina
twisted her lips. “My guess is that Blake Wallace was put out of
his misery long before someone finished with his body in the
batting cage.”

“But not before he saw his attacker and felt
the sting of this bat.” Ray looked at the blood drenched murder
weapon lying harmlessly on the torso of the victim as if drained of
its own raw power.

“Wallace was apparently here to meet his
mistress,” said Nina. “She’s over there giving her statement.”

Ray turned towards a young auburn-haired
woman talking to an officer. “Why don’t you find out if there were
any witnesses,” he told Nina. “I’ll see what she can tell us, if
anything.”

“Maybe we’ll both come up with something,”
Nina said, rolling her eyes doubtfully as she walked away.

Ray made his way over to the decedent’s
mistress who looked like she was still in high school, aside from
her obvious breast implants and heavily made up face. She had a
mole on the right cheek and wore a small nose ring. Tears flowed
freely from her lake blue eyes, which she wiped with the back of
her hand. She was wearing a lilac robe and matching slippers, as if
still waiting for her lover.

Ray identified himself, taking over for the
officer, and learned that the woman’s name was Rebecca
Ferguson.

“Ms. Ferguson,” he began, “I know this is
difficult, but we need to try and find out what happened here
tonight. Do you understand?”

She sniffled, and said in a high-pitched
voice: “Yes.”

“You knew the victim?” he asked routinely
while thinking: Obviously only too well in the intimate
department.

“Yes. He was my...I was
his...girlfriend—”

Ray met her eyes, understanding her awkward
position, considering Blake Wallace had a wife and three kids. “So
you were expecting him?”

“Yeah,” she said vacantly. “Blake called and
said he was on his way.”

Ray hesitated. “And when did you find out he
was dead?”

Rebecca wiped at her tear-stained cheeks. “I
came down here to meet him. That’s when I saw—” She choked back the
words and started to sob.

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything?”

She sighed. “I think I heard a car pull out
of the garage.”

Ray rubbed his nose. “Did you see it?”

“No,” she said apologetically. “It was gone
when I looked up.”

Damn! It was probably the killer. Or someone
who may have seen the perpetrator. Then he realized if she had come
down a minute earlier, she might have caught the person in the act
and in the process become a victim herself.

Ray glanced over at Nina and saw her talking
to a tall and slender, well-dressed African-American woman. Several
other people were nearby, as if waiting for their turn.

Though the crime scene had been sealed off
from spectators, the most dogged, along with the press, had found a
way in to gawk and snoop.

“Why?” Rebecca cried. “What would someone do
this? Blake wasn’t a bad man, despite the problems between him
and—”

“His wife?” Ray finished tersely. The man was
an asshole, pure and simple.

Rebecca fluttered curly lashes. “She just
didn’t understand him.”

“And you did?”

“Yes,” she insisted. “We loved each
other.”

Ray looked down at her large breasts.
There was only one thing—make that two—he loved about you
.
And it had little to do with affection, much less loyalty and
commitment.

But none of it mattered now. Let the lady
think whatever she wanted that made her feel better about her
lover’s untimely demise.

* * *

“We’ve got a possible witness. Her name’s
Jacqueline Davis,” Nina said to Ray en route to the victim’s
residence to notify his wife. “According to Ms. Davis, a late
model, dark colored BMW pulled out of the garage just as she was
about to turn in.”

“Did she see who was driving it?”

“She thought it might have been a woman, but
admitted the car shot out of there so fast she never really got a
chance to focus on the driver.”

Ray stared over the steering wheel. “Maybe
the car will be enough to point us in the right direction,” he
said. “Let’s see if the witness can tell us anything more specific
about the car—like the exact color, any marks, etc. Also, if she
can remember any part of the license plate number, we might really
be onto something.”

Nina took notes. Shifting her gaze to his
face, she asked: “What about the girlfriend? She any help?”

“Not really. Just another starry-eyed kid
full of dreams and fantasies who hooked up with the wrong man.”

“Some of us can relate to that,” Nina uttered
thoughtfully.

When Ray met her eyes, he wondered if she was
referring to her ex-husband. Or was she was referring to their
brief affair that had gone nowhere?

Admittedly, they were wrong for each other,
even if it seemed right at the time. But then he’d had little luck
in the relationship department. Except maybe bad luck. His ex had
turned out to be
very
wrong for him. The only thing they had
in common was that they had nothing in common. Combine that with
her lack of focus on anything but herself and how much she could
bleed him dry and they had the perfect recipe for a marriage doomed
to failure.

Sort of like Blake Wallace’s marriage, Ray
contemplated sadly. Only someone decided to help put his wife out
of her misery permanently, while sending Wallace straight to
hell.

* * *

When Victoria Wallace was informed of her
husband’s death, she appeared expressionless. Her face showed old
and fresh signs of the abuse inflicted by her husband, particularly
around the eyes, with one nearly swollen shut. Although in her
early forties, she looked much older. Her graying flaxen hair was
thin and listless, her body so frail it looked as if it might snap
like a twig beneath the rose print jacket dress she wore.

At first Nina wondered if the Mrs. even
grasped what she’d just been told. The woman had obviously been
drinking. She observed her unsteadiness on gimpy legs.

“It was only a matter of time,” Victoria
mumbled.

“Meaning?” Ray asked, as they stood on thick
moss green carpeting in the study of what was an expensive
tri-level home in the upscale neighborhood of Winston Heights.

She fixed her hazel eyes on the detective.
“My husband had enemies,” she said without preface. “He didn’t get
where he got without them.”

“Does that include you?” Ray narrowed his
focus.

Victoria sighed. “I loved Blake. But I hated
his temper and willingness to turn it on me whenever he saw
fit.”

“Did you hate your husband enough to kill
him?” Nina asked pointblank. “Or hire someone to do the job for
you?”

Victoria’s head jerked back, as if she’d been
slapped. “How dare you!”

Nina was undeterred. “With all due respect,
Mrs. Wallace, your husband was beaten to death with a bat less than
an hour after being acquitted of charges he beat the hell out of
you.” She met her hardened gaze head on. “No suspects can be ruled
out at this stage—not even you.”

Victoria seemed to gather her composure. “The
last time I saw Blake, he was leaving this house to go to his
mistress,” she said levelly, looking from one detective to the
other. “Yes, I knew all about his affair. It wasn’t the first one.
And wouldn’t have been the last. I stayed with my husband for the
sake of the children. If I had wanted to kill him, I would have
done so years ago when I still had the strength, and maybe the
desire, to take away his life, the way he did mine—”

Nina made eye contact with Ray before saying
to the newly widowed woman: “Can you tell us if you’ve ever been to
the Rose City Women’s Shelter?”

Victoria’s face flushed, as if ashamed to
admit such. “Why do you ask?”

“Because we believe that whoever killed your
husband may be affiliated with the shelter in some way.”

After a moment or two, Victoria said shakily:
“Yes, I stayed there one night about six months ago when I needed
somewhere to hide from Blake’s fists. Just until things cooled
off—”

The detectives again exchanged glances.

“We’ll need a list of some of these enemies
you said your husband had,” Ray told Victoria. “One of them may
have decided to settle a score once and for all.” He wasn’t sure he
believed that, not in this case, but would pursue all leads. “In
the meantime, we’ll need you to come and identify the body.”

Rebecca Ferguson had already done that and
had probably seen more of him in recent times than the man’s wife.
But, in addition to standard and official procedure of positive
identification by the next of kin, in some strange way Ray believed
this just might put closure to this chapter of Victoria Wallace’s
dark life with Blake Wallace.

Whereas their investigation still appeared to
have a long way to go. Ray was admittedly more than a little
disturbed that this was going on under their noses and they seemed
almost powerless to do anything about it. With four men dead and
countless others at risk, they sure as hell had their work cut out
for them. And the clock kept ticking.

A madwoman was out there somewhere, waiting
for the next opportunity to strike. Almost daring anyone to try and
stop her before she put the bat and her rage to victim number five
in continuing to draw deadly attention to the plight of battered
women—and now battered men—in the Rose City.