The Blackmail Club
Read The Blackmail Club Online
Authors: David Bishop
Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #General, #Mystery & Detective
The Blackmail Club
A Jack McCall Mystery
by
D
AVID
B
ISHOP
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental or within the public domain.
The Blackmail Club, A Jack McCall Mystery
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Copyright © 2012 David Bishop
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Published by Telemachus Press, LLC
http://www.telemachuspress.com
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http://www.davidbishopbooks.com
ISBN# 978-1-937698-77-5 (eBook)
ISBN# 978-1-937698-78-2 (paperback)
Version 2012.03.19
Table of Contents
Novels by David Bishop
For current information on new releases visit:
www.davidbishopbooks.com
Current Titles
:
The Beholder
Who Murdered Garson Talmadge
The Woman
The Third Coincidence
2012 Releases
:
The Blackmail Club February, 2012
The Original Alibi Summer, 2012
Future Titles
:
Empty Promises
Murder by Choice
The Red Hat Murders
The Schroeder Protocol
To be notified when each of the above titles are available,
send your email address to:
[email protected]
For more information on books and characters visit:
www.davidbishopbooks.com
Each forthcoming novel will have a new list of titles and dates.
This novel is dedicated to my loyal readers. It is for your enjoyment that I write. The Blackmail Club is also dedicated to my first son, Todd David Bishop. And to all my other relatives and loved ones whose faith in me was critical to my surviving the early writing years, including my sister, Diane Kilby, and the love of my life, Jody. And no thanks could be complete without remembering my unselfish and talented editors: Kim Mellen, John Logan, Jamie Wilson, Jerry Summers, and the talented and sincere people at Telemachus Press who have done so much to further the success of my novels.
The Blackmail Club
A Jack McCall Mystery
Dr. Christopher Andujar was swimming in a sea of fear, confusion, and hopelessness. His life had unraveled.
As a psychiatrist he understood the gloom of depression, the danger. But his detached clinical knowledge made no difference. He was lost. Swamped by the very forces he had controlled just a few days before—or thought that he had. His prayers had gone unanswered and nothing any longer seemed worth the effort.
Suddenly his hand jerked and the air ripened with gun stink.
His head recoiled, then flopped forward, a softened thump on the desktop, his cheek wrinkling against the drag of the blotter. His hand, still cradling the gun, made his final sound, a thud on the mahogany desk, his finger, protruding through the trigger housing, pointed at the ceiling.
A lifetime of accumulated ink stains, and one stubborn spot of mustard, disappeared as the green felt pad sopped red.
Then the door to his study clicked shut.
The official record stated Jack McCall’s wife, Rachel, had been dead four months, but for Jack it had been the kind of time you couldn’t find on a watch or a calendar.
He also knew it was time to get back to work. His friend and father figure, Dr. Christopher Andujar was dead. The police had closed the case with the label, suicide. But Chris’s widow, Sarah, believed her husband had been blackmailed prior to taking his own life, and that made the blackmailer a murderer, or so she said.
After Jack and Rachel had closed a government case known as The Third Coincidence, he resigned from the CIA and she left the FBI. They remained in Washington, D.C. and, after their honeymoon, opened McCall Investigations, partnering with Nora Burke, a former DC homicide detective. A few months later, Rachel had been killed and Jack traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East trying to ascertain if his wife’s death might be blowback from his counterintelligence work. Finding no linkage, he had flown home from Egypt. His first order of business would be getting to the bottom of the death of Chris Andujar.
Jack felt that had he been less self-absorbed, he might have saved Christopher. He couldn’t undo the death of his friend, but, by God, he was determined to find out who killed Chris or what drove him to kill himself. It would be far less than Jack owed the man, but it was all he could do, and he would not rest until it was done.
After unpacking, he called Sergeant Suggs, the DC homicide detective who had handled the inquiry into Chris’s death. Suggs wasn’t in. Jack left a message, made a drink and sat down at his piano. After trying several tunes, all of which sounded like the woman-gone blues he pulled the cover down over the keys. He stood at the window watching the light rain which had been falling off and on most of the day. Then his cell phone rang; he recognized Nora Burke’s voice.
“Hi, Jack, welcome back.”
“It’s good to be home. I’m unpacked and raring to go. Have you heard from Sarah? We need her take on the death of her husband. It’s a reasonable place to start.”
“I set it up for Tuesday. That’ll give you tonight to get settled at home and tomorrow to get re-acquainted with your office. You do remember where we are?” she asked, “eighth floor?” Jack deserved the remark. He hadn’t been to the office even once since Rachel died. After a polite laugh, she went on. “I told Sarah we’d be at her home around noon. She said you knew how to get there. You want me to call Sergeant Suggs?”
“I’ve already left a message for him. I briefly met the man once so it’s probably a good idea I touch base with him.”
Jack poured two more fingers of Maker’s Mark and headed upstairs while listening to Nora bring him current on a few minor matters MI, the acronym she had given McCall Investigations, had going.