Smoke Screen (37 page)

“The day of the fire, how did you escape the building?” she asked.

The judge guffawed. “Jay set the fire, and we left Jones in the room alone. I didn’t need to stick around, so I took my departure then. By the time I was half a block away, I could smell smoke and the fire alarm had begun to sound. I joined the crowd of spectators who were rushing toward the building to watch the blaze. Nobody realized I’d just left it.”

“And your companions weren’t going to tell.”

“Not without incriminating themselves.”

“You helped engineer the Suzi Monroe incident.”

“I hated doing that to Raley. I truly did.” A vertical line appeared between her heavy eyebrows, making her contrition almost believable. “When we were kids, he was always nice to me. I wasn’t pretty, wasn’t one of the popular girls. He and Jay teased me a lot, but Raley’s teasing wasn’t cruel like Jay’s could be. Raley always treated me kindly.”

“And that’s how you repaid his kindness? By ruining his reputation and destroying his life?”

The line on her forehead disappeared and she shrugged. “As I said, Britt, I never won any popularity contests. And I had to advance my career. No, I had to
make
my career.”

“Even if it meant killing people,” Britt said. “Cleveland Jones. Suzi Monroe. Pat Wickham, Senior. At least I assume you staged that fatal shooting in the alley.”

“He was breaking down, falling apart. I was afraid that he would confess.” She shrugged, glanced behind Britt toward Smith, said, “I did what was necessary.”

“What did Jay and McGowan think of that timely fatal shooting?”

“I don’t know. I never asked. They might have thought it was an awfully lucky break for them. They might have suspected me of having something to do with it, but in any case, we all pretended that it was a tragedy and never discussed it among ourselves.”

Trying to buy more time, Britt said, “So the secret remained intact another few years. Then Jay got sick. Did you consult George on what should be done about Jay?”

Candy shook her head. “George drinks too much. I couldn’t trust him not to get shitfaced and tell Miranda. So, I acted alone again. Well, alone except for Mr. Smith and his partner, Mr. Johnson.”

“The man who came to Fordyce’s house.”

“That’s the one. Although I doubt his name is really Johnson.”

“Did you find them in the yellow pages? On Craigslist?”

Candy chuckled. “Call it underground classifieds. They’re very handy when you need them. They flew in from St. Louis on the day you met Jay at The Wheelhouse.”

“And this morning Johnson responded immediately to Fordyce’s summons.”

“We’d tapped the AG’s phone and heard him call his assistant, asking that she send a capitol guard to escort you and Raley to a hotel. Lucky for me, he didn’t specify to her why he wanted to keep you under lock and key. Even luckier, Johnson was waiting at the capitol building for you and Raley to arrive for your eleven o’clock appointment. He rushed to Fordyce’s house and impersonated the requested guard.”

Britt remembered Raley saying they would’ve been ambushed before they entered the capitol building, and she recalled Johnson explaining why he wasn’t in uniform. But she was confused. “Are you telling me that Cobb Fordyce believed Johnson to be a capitol guard?”

“Jesus Christ, Britt,” the judge said with asperity. “Aren’t you getting it yet? Cobb Fordyce had nothing to do with either Cleveland Jones or Suzi Monroe. Everything he told you and Raley is the truth.” She smiled as she dropped the small video cartridge into her pocket. “Too bad no one will ever see this video of yours. It probably captured one of our AG’s crowning moments. Which is kind of poignant, when you think about it. He’ll die—”

“Wait!” Britt exclaimed. “What do you mean he’ll die?”

“Oh, jeez. In all the excitement, I forgot to tell you that Johnson shot Fordyce in the head after you ran. You and Raley are being sought for his attempted murder.”

Britt listened with mounting incredulity as the judge described Cobb Fordyce’s precarious medical condition. He
had
told her and Raley the truth. He
had
wanted to protect them until he could get to the bottom of the whole ugly story.

Then he had opened the door to his would-be assassin, sent by Cassandra Mellors.

Candy continued. “The real capitol guard arrived at the house to find Mrs. Fordyce in the foyer, cradling the AG’s bloody head in her lap and screaming hysterically. It made for a dramatic news story. It’s a shame you weren’t available to cover it. But you still have celebrity status, Britt. You and Raley are the new Bonnie and Clyde.

“Even if Fordyce survives, there’ll doubtless be significant brain damage. No one will ever know that Johnson shot him. By now he’s probably dealt as effectively with George and Raley.”

Britt gave an involuntary whimper.

“Does this spoil a budding romance?” Candy asked, her lips pursing with regret. “That’s too bad.”

Just then the judge’s cell phone rang again. She took it from her jacket pocket. As soon as she flipped it open, Smith clamped his hand over Britt’s mouth again.

“Yes?” Candy said into the phone. She listened, her face breaking into a wide grin. “That’s wonderful news! When is he due to call? Fine. I’ll be right there.” She closed her phone. “The Senate just voted. I’m the new federal district court judge.”

She spoke the words in a whisper, as though she barely believed the news. Then she met Britt’s gaze. “You understand. Surely as a career woman, you understand, Britt. It’s a man’s world. I did what I had to do.”

Britt jerked her head, and Smith’s hand moved away from her mouth. Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, “You won’t get away with this. You’re bound to know that. Eventually—”

“Excuse me, Britt. I’d love to hear what you think will happen—eventually—but the president is due to call with his congratulations in five minutes, and the media are gathering in my office to cover the event.” She smiled sympathetically. “This would be a big story for you. I’m sorry you won’t be there among your colleagues. I mean that sincerely, because basically I liked you and admired your work ethic. If only you’d told Jay you had other plans that night.”

It didn’t escape Britt that she was referring to her in the past tense. Her heart began to hammer with fright.

But the judge was the epitome of composure as she moved toward the door, saying to Smith as she went past, “Do it quietly. We’ll take care of the body tonight.”

She opened the door to leave, but her exit was blocked by two men.

As they barged in, Britt couldn’t have mistaken them, although they were wearing black bulletproof vests over their golf shirts, shouting for everyone to drop to the floor, sweeping the room with drawn pistols, and identifying themselves as federal officers. Rushing in behind them were several SWAT officers of the PD, in full assault gear.

Bringing up the rear was Raley, also wearing a bulletproof vest.

Smith let go of Britt. She dropped to the floor as instructed by the men waving assault rifles. Smith didn’t drop, or freeze, but instead went for the gun at the small of his back. One of the SWAT officers rushed him and knocked him to the ground, then flipped him face-down and yanked his weapon from the holster. Another of the men in black knelt beside Smith and, planting a knee between his shoulder blades, put restraints on his hands.

Raley ran straight to Britt. She felt his strong hands on her arms, pulling her up. “Are you all right?”

Dazed, she nodded, then stammered, “Y-yes.”

Candy Mellors was screaming invectives at the FBI agent who had her face against the wall and was patting her down. “Are you crazy? The president is about to call me. The Senate—”

The man Raley had nicknamed Butch turned her around to face him. “The president isn’t going to be calling with congratulations, Judge. He got a call from my boss a couple of hours ago. The director advised him to withdraw your nomination, telling him that a full explanation about your alleged criminal activity would be forthcoming. The president took his advice.”

Her eyes were wide, wild, as she gaped first at him, then at Raley and Britt, then back at the agent. “But they approved my appointment. My assistant called just now and said—”

“That call was a ruse, to cover our approach,” the agent told her. “There was no vote today. There won’t be a vote. Ever.” He began reading her her rights.

Raley was still supporting Britt, caressing her upper arms as he held her close. “Is he the one who messed with you?” he asked in a quiet voice. She followed his hard gaze to the man she knew as Mr. Smith.

“Yes.”

Gently, Raley moved her aside and strode purposefully toward the man. “Raley?” she said apprehensively.

Sandwiched between two SWAT officers, Smith must have felt safe from retribution. He saw Raley coming, but all he did was give him an insinuating smirk.

He was totally unprepared for Raley to swing his foot up and kick him between the legs, a kick hard enough to raise him off the floor a couple inches. There was a second or two delay before the agony slammed into his system. Then his whole body shook, he screamed like a girl, dropped to his knees, and toppled face-first onto the floor.

“That’s enough, Gannon!” Sundance barked. “Back down.”

But Britt didn’t think Raley heard him. Or if he did, he didn’t heed him, because instead of backing down, he lunged after Candy, who had used the distraction to break free from the agent. She threw herself against the window Britt herself had considered using as her escape and plunged through the shattering glass.

Raley went through it a nanosecond behind her.

Britt stared in horror at the empty window.

R
ALEY LEAPED FROM THE WINDOW AND LANDED ON THE
surface ten feet below.

He knew this old building because he and fellow firefighters had run practice drills in it. In this block of Broad Street, one of the oldest in the city, the buildings were jammed together, the backs of them converging to form a labyrinth of brick walls and a patchwork quilt of rooftops. He knew that a mere four inches separated this building from the one abutting it, and that a jump from the six-story window would put him on its rooftop.

The roofing material was old and spongy and made for an easy landing, but it didn’t provide good footing as he scrambled to stand up. Candy was already teetering at the edge of the roof when he shouted her name.

“Stop. Let’s talk about it.”

She turned toward him, putting her back to a drop he knew was straight down, fifty feet, give or take. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Only everything.”

The FBI agent had extended her the courtesy of cuffing her hands in front rather than behind her back. Raley saw that they were bleeding, lacerated by window glass. Pieces of glass were caught in her hair. Landing on the rooftop had shredded her stockings and left her with scraped knees. If she was even aware of these injuries, she gave no sign of it.

“There’s nothing more to talk about, Raley. You know everything. What you don’t know, your girlfriend does.” She hesitated, then said, “I’m sorta glad, you know. About you. Her. You deserve a break, after what we did to you.”

“Why’d you do it, Candy?
How
could you?”

“Because, dammit, Raley, you just wouldn’t stop with the questions about that goddamn fire. And the skinhead. Short of killing you, too, we had to do
something.
You wouldn’t give up.”

“You didn’t give up, either,” he said quietly. “You had all of them killed. Pat Senior. Jay. Your
friend
Jay.”

She smiled wryly. “Once I was in, I had to protect myself, my career.”

“You can give up now.” Not wanting to spook her into jumping, he moved closer an inch at a time, none of his gestures or movements threatening.

Her gaze jumped to something behind him. He took a glance over his shoulder. Two SWAT officers had rappelled out the window and down the side of the building and were crouched against the exterior wall, their rifles aimed at Candy.

“Stay back!” Raley shouted. Neither moved, but they didn’t lower their rifles. “Let me talk to her,” he pleaded in a softer voice. Turning back to Candy, he said, “Don’t give these guys the satisfaction. Surrender now. It’s over.”

“They don’t think so,” she said, looking down over her shoulder.

He couldn’t see over the edge of the roof to what was going on below, but he could imagine. He could hear police shouting for curious onlookers to move back. Sirens announced the arrival of emergency vehicles. Reporters and cameramen would have been jostling for advantageous spots from which to do their stand-ups.

Confirming what he guessed, Candy said, “This wasn’t exactly the news story I had planned for today.”

He heard the shift of boots behind him and knew that the SWAT officers had moved stealthily closer, but they weren’t charging forward. They were giving him a little more time to talk her out of jumping. But how much more time before they rushed her? How much more time before she decided to end their conversation on her terms?

“From a presidential appointment to this,” she murmured.

“I’m sorry it turned out this way for you, Candy.”

She came back around to him, her expression scornful. “Not really.”

“Yes, really. I
am
sorry. About all of it, starting with Pat Junior being assaulted in the park, the victim of a hate crime.”

The clap of rotors alerted them to the helicopter’s approach. She looked out across the rooftops, spotted the chopper coming in low, spotted other SWAT officers taking position on neighboring rooftops.

She turned back to Raley just as he froze in place. Using her distraction to his advantage, he’d taken baby steps toward her and was now only six feet away, almost, but not quite, within arm’s reach.

“I can’t escape, can I, Raley?”

He shook his head and dared to take another step. “No, but you don’t have to die.”

“No, see, I do. Everything I’ve worked for is gone. So what’s the point?”

And with that, she leaned backward.

Raley lunged. The humerus of his left arm snapped when he landed hard on the edge of the roof. The pain caused him to cry out. Or was it a cry of joy, because with his right hand, he was able to catch Candy’s left hand. Ignoring the pain in his arm, he held on. He looked over the edge and saw her kicking thin air, kicking the brick wall, trying to wrest her hand free.

“Let me go, Raley,” she shouted up at him. “For godsake, let me go.”

The SWAT officers moved to either side of him. One dropped his rifle and extended his hand toward Candy’s arm. But she was out of his reach. It was up to Raley to hold on. The cuts on her hand had made it slippery with blood, nearly impossible to hold on to, and yet he maintained his grip.

“Raley, please,” she groaned as she doubled her efforts to pull free.

Blood-slicked skin slipped a fraction of an inch against his palm. His shoulder socket burned with the effort of holding her. His left arm was useless, the pain searing in its intensity. But he gritted his teeth and held on.

“Let go!” she screamed. “I ruined your life, you fool!”

In that instant, he couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t open his hand.

Their eyes connected. In hers he saw the hopelessness he’d experienced when his life was shattered by her treachery. Driven by single-minded ambition, she had destroyed his life and, for a time, robbed him of all hope.

He held her gaze, staring straight into her eyes as he felt her hand slipping, slipping, slipping, out of his grasp.

Special Agent Miller of the FBI said, “It think that’s it.” He silently consulted his partner, Special Agent Steiner, who gave a nod of agreement.

Miller, a.k.a. Butch, switched off the camcorder. “Thank you, Mr. Gannon. I appreciate your willingness to do this tonight. It could have waited until tomorrow.”

“I wanted to get it over with,” Raley said.

“Gentlemen?” Miller turned to Detectives Clark and Javier, who’d been invited to sit in on Raley’s deposition. Between them they hadn’t said a dozen words throughout the whole proceeding.

Clark asked, “When do we get a copy of the video?”

“First thing tomorrow,” Miller replied.

Javier stood and, without a word, headed for the door. Clark gave them all a curt nod, then followed his partner out.

“Assholes,” Raley said under his breath.

“They get perturbed whenever we horn in on their case,” Miller said, seemingly unfazed by the detectives’ sullen rudeness.

Raley wondered what the two federal agents would think of the nicknames he’d given them. Oddly, each name fit the man—at least as the pair had been portrayed in the movie. Of the two, Miller was more easygoing. Steiner was more sinister. His eyes were sharp and seemed to miss nothing. On appearance alone, he could easily have been mistaken for a hit man.

Steiner had been studying Raley closely for the last several minutes. Now he said, “You don’t look so good.”

Raley knew that to be true. They were sequestered in a small room in the FBI office on Meeting Street, just blocks from where the dramatic events of the afternoon had taken place.

Before the lengthy interview began, he’d caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window. His skin looked pasty. His left arm was in a cast and supported by a sling, his palms were abraded from when he’d landed on the roof, and there were several cuts on his face and arms from broken window glass. George McGowan had given him a black eye that was swollen and tender.

He didn’t even resemble the man he’d been a week ago, but not all the changes were the results of today’s physical ordeals. They also went beyond shaving his beard and trimming his hair. The real change was internal. It had to do with finally settling the matter of all that had happened five years ago. And a lot to do with Britt, who was sitting beside him, close, attentive to his weakening condition, attentive to everything.

“Are you holding up all right?” she asked now, her concern showing.

“Yeah.” He squeezed her hand, which he’d been holding throughout the deposition. For almost three hours he’d talked into the camcorder, telling the FBI agents and the two Charleston PD detectives the whole story, repeating what he’d babbled in a verbal shorthand on the race from George McGowan’s estate.

There in George’s study, it had taken him several seconds to assimilate that the two men whom he’d mistaken for assassins were actually federal agents. He’d dropped George’s pistol as instructed, but he’d made certain they understood, in a very short amount of time, that Candy Mellors was the instigator of several murders—which he was surprised to learn they had already deduced—and that Britt’s life was in imminent danger.

Reacting swiftly, Steiner had offered to wait for other officers to come and take George into custody. Meanwhile Miller had sped toward downtown and, along the way, notified the police of the crisis situation and coordinated an operation to end it, they hoped without casualties.

Raley had insisted on going with Miller and said he would only follow in his own car if the agent refused to take him along. Miller had conceded. It was during that drive—which had seemed agonizingly long—that Raley had told him a sketchy version of everything George had confessed.

Over the last one hundred eighty minutes, he’d given a more detailed account, providing answers to the agents’ many questions. Miller had another, which he asked now. “How did you and Ms. Shelley join forces?”

“I kidnapped her.”

Miller and Steiner glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. “Care to expand on that, Ms. Shelley?” Steiner asked.

“Is it relevant?”

“You tell me,” the agent replied. “Is it?”

“No.”

The two agents looked at each other again. Steiner raised his shoulder in a shrug. Since Raley and Britt were sitting shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, Raley doubted the agents would arrest him for committing that federal offense.

“I have a question for
you,”
Raley said. He was ready to get out of here. His arm was throbbing, his eye was making his whole head hurt, he badly needed another pain pill, but he didn’t want this meeting to conclude until the agents had all their answers, and he had his. He didn’t want to wake up tomorrow morning dreading another go-round of Q and A.

“How did the FBI get in on this?”

Miller explained. “Routine investigations are conducted when a judge is nominated for the federal district court. Cassandra Mellors’s judicial record is commendable, noteworthy even, which is why she was nominated in the first place. No one expected to find anything out of whack.

“But one of our sharper data analysts brought to our attention that her name was tangentially linked to the investigation of one Suzi Monroe’s death. From that we learned about the fire, the heroes of it, and—oops—the arson investigator’s connection to the girl’s lethal overdose. We learned that, a year after the fire, one of those same heroes was fatally shot in an alley, which remained an unsolved murder.

“So now we have two mysterious deaths, and interestingly, the same people were involved. Again tangentially, but we thought it was hinky. So we dug a little deeper and started looking at Jay Burgess and George McGowan, along with Judge Mellors.”

“That’s what you were doing that night in The Wheelhouse.”

Miller nodded at Britt. “We knew Burgess was sick and didn’t have long to live, but we were keeping him under surveillance all the same. We followed him to the bar. The two of you met, seemed compatible, left together, went to his house.” Chagrined, he looked at Raley. “Steiner and I figured the guy deserved time with a pretty woman, so we knocked off for the night.”

Raley sensed how deeply the agents regretted that decision.

Britt asked, “After Jay was killed, why didn’t you come forward and let the local police know that you were conducting a covert investigation?”

“Well,” Steiner said, “for all we knew, you’d had a lovers’ quarrel with Burgess and snuffed him, just like the police suspected. It could have had nothing to do with the other matter. It was CPD’s jurisdiction, their homicide, their investigation.”

“Besides,” Miller said, “we didn’t want to tip our hand. If Judge Mellors was involved, we didn’t want her to sense she was being investigated and start covering her tracks. And Burgess was a cop. Men in blue can get funny about protecting their own, even their dead own. If they thought we, the bleeping Feebs, were trying to pin a conspiracy on one of their heroes, how much cooperation do you suppose we’d have got?”

“But then you went missing,” Steiner said. “That threw us.”

“You didn’t assume that I’d run away to avoid arrest?” Britt asked.

“It crossed our minds, but by then we’d done further background on you. Clean as a whistle. You didn’t seem the type to skip out, any more than you seemed like a lady who’d smother a guy.”

“Thanks for that,” she said.

“Frankly, we feared the worst,” Miller said. “We were afraid someone had removed you from the scene permanently.”

“Was I among the someones you suspected?” Raley asked. Neither agent picked up that gauntlet, but he wasn’t going to be deterred. “You came looking for me when Britt disappeared. Why? Why did you search my cabin?” He and Britt had already admitted to seeing them there.

“We wanted to talk to you about your old friends Jay and Candy, get a feel for you, get a read on how you felt about them.”

“My ass,” Raley scoffed. “If you’d only wanted to talk, you would’ve stuck around till I showed up.”

Caught in the fib, Miller blushed. Steiner coughed behind his hand. “Okay, we suspected you might have had something to do with Burgess’s murder.”

“And Britt’s disappearance,” Raley said.