He drove back towards the bar, smiling, and knowing that the next time he left the motel lot, Nico would be bloody, and all his problems would be over.
Parker filled Jo in about his meetings with Rachel and Hearn, and saw a look of disapproval.
“You need to stay out of this, Rick. You’re too close to the case.”
“I know, but Rachel needed help, and ex-wife or not I couldn’t abandon her, not that I did any good.”
“You’d better tell Heather about that meeting. If she hears about it from someone else she may begin imaging the worst.”
“I don’t have to tell her, she was there. I figured her presence would keep Rachel from playing games.”
“Smart move,”
“Thanks, but what do you make of all this?”
“It looks like Nico is putting the squeeze on the Hearns by using the only tactic he knows, intimidation.”
“And because Hearn has tied himself to Nico by providing an Alibi for Woolley’s murder, they can’t come in and ask for police protection, fearing that Nico will drag them down with him.”
“Exactly,”
“Rachel’s really gotten herself into a mess.”
“My guess is that Nico wants money, maybe Hearn will pay him off.”
“No, Hearn doesn’t seem to be taking Nico seriously; he thinks his injuries have made him less dangerous.”
“Do you think he’ll try and outmuscle Nico?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,”
After the bar closed in the early morning hours, Rachel paced back and forth in the office as Hearn stood to go pay his visit to Nico.
“I don’t want you to do this; it’s dangerous,”
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to kick the door in on him while he’s asleep. It’ll all be over before he knows it.”
“What if you’re caught?”
“I won’t be. I’ll be in and out before the cops can get there.”
“Don’t do it yourself. Why not find someone and pay them to take the chance?”
“That’s how I got into this mess in the first place, by hiring Nico to do my dirty work. I don’t want to trade one thug for another.”
Rachel kissed him.
“Don’t go; I have a very bad feeling about this.”
“Would you tell Parker that?”
“Rick is trained to handle men like Nico, you’re not,”
“I’ll be all right; hell, the whole thing should take less than an hour.”
Hearn sent her a wink and left the office. He got to Nico’s motel within minutes and found it quiet. Even the office was dark, but he could see a blue flicker come from a back room, where the night clerk was likely watching TV.
He backed into a space several doors down from Nico’s room and popped the latch on his trunk. After donning the ski mask, he slipped on the gloves and grabbed the bat.
It actually took three hard kicks to force the door open, but then he entered the dark room and began rushing towards the bed.
Someone yanked the ski mask off, and when the stun gun blasted him from behind, Hearn dropped the bat and fell atop the mattress.
Nico gave him one more hit for good measure, and then went back to the door to close it.
Four doors down, a bearded man came out into the parking lot and looked around. He was only wearing a pair of blue boxer shorts and his feet were bare. When he saw nothing amiss, he shrugged and went back into his motel room.
Nico turned on the light by the bed, and saw Hearn struggling to sit up.
“Relax Timmy; the fun is just beginning.”
Nico duct taped Hearn’s ankles together, but when he went to tape his wrists, he found that Hearn had recovered enough to push him away. A third shot from the stun gun remedied the situation, and caused Hearn to drool so much that Nico had to dry his mouth with a corner of the pillowcase in order to get the duct tape to adhere properly over his lips.
Nico rested in a chair as he waited for Hearn to fully recover from the blasts, the exertion of taping Hearn’s ankles and wrists had made him sweat, but he felt good knowing that even in his weakened state that he was not someone to mess with. Timothy Hearn was about to learn that lesson the hard way.
“Feeling better yet, Timmy?”
Hearn grunted behind the tape, his eyes alternating between fear and anger.
“Look at you, a stiff like you thought you could take me because I’m not my old self? Hell, Timmy, you would have had trouble when I was still in the coma.”
Hearn was tapping his chin against his chest, even as he kept casting his eyes downward. Nico gazed at him curiously.
“What the hell are you trying to tell me?”
Nico removed one side of the tape and Hearn took a deep breath before speaking.
“Five thousand... there’s five thousand in my jacket... all, all yours, just let me go.”
Nico reached in and plucked the envelope free.
“I’ll consider this a bonus, but I still want the two large every week, of course, while you’re in the hospital your wife will have to make the payments. I’ll have her come here to make them, then maybe she’ll give me a different type of bonus.”
“I’m sorry I tried this, Nico, and I swear I’ll pay you from now on; just let me go, please? Just let me go?”
“No Timmy, you still have a lesson to learn.”
Hearn opened his mouth wide to shout for help, and Nico slapped his face shut, before putting the duct tape back over his mouth. Afterward, he reached down and picked up Hearn’s modified bat.
“I see you wrapped it in a nice fluffy towel. Well hell, I bet being smacked with this won’t hurt a bit, but let’s find out, huh?”
Using his right arm, Nico raised the bat high and brought it crashing down on the side of Hearn’s leg, just above the knee.
Hearn’s eyes bulged, and a muffled scream slipped out from the tape covering his mouth.
Then, Nico hit him again, and again, and kept hitting him until he dropped the bat and reeled backwards in exhaustion, his shirt soaked in sweat, his mouth gasping for breath, as he fell into the scarred wooden seat of the motel chair.
Atop the bed, Hearn was whimpering. He had one eye closed, both lips split open, and his scalp had a deep laceration. There were several broken bones in each hand, and beneath his clothes, numerous bruises were forming.
It took a while for Nico to recover from his exertion, but when he finally did, he picked up the bat and smiled at Hearn.
“Okay, that’s enough warming up. Now the fun really starts.”
With the first fresh swing of the bat, Hearn’s right arm broke in two places.
Chapter 31
At 4:47 a.m., Rick Parker entered the hospital with Heather at his side.
They met Jo by the nurse’s station, and she told them that Rachel was in the trauma unit, speaking with the doctor.
“Nico put Hearn in a world of pain, Rick. It’s one of the worst beatings I’ve ever seen.”
“What did he use?”
“A bat wrapped in a white towel, although the towel is red with blood now and the bat broke during the beating. The bat actually belonged to Hearn. He brought it to Nico’s motel and Nico turned the tables on him. He also claims it was self-defense, but there are ligature marks on Hearn’s wrists and ankles. The doctors also found glue on his skin; I’m thinking that Nico used duct tape to bind him.”
Heather made a face.
“You’re saying he taped him up and then beat him?”
“It looks that way.”
“Well, then it couldn’t be self-defense,”
“Nico claims those marks were there before he beat Hearn, said that Hearn and Rachel must be into kinky bondage games, but those marks are fresh.”
“How bad is he, Jo?” Parker said.
“Both arms are broken, all but one finger, several ribs cracked, a shattered collarbone, and deep lacerations on his scalp and face. His nose is particularly bad, and the doctors say he swallo
wed several teeth.”
Heather shivered. “I don’t like Timothy Hearn, but my God, he didn’t deserve that.”
“Did you get a statement?”
“No, he was too banged up, and now he’s zonked out on morphine. I’ll return later in the day and try and talk to him.”
“What about Nico, did you arrest him?”
“No, I’m waiting until I get a statement from Hearn, one that will hopefully include his earlier dealings with Nico. I doubt he’s still willing to offer him an alibi for the Woolley murder after this.”
“Don’t be so sure, he may now fear Nico so much that he’ll never talk.”
Rachel walked around a corner at the end of the hallway. When she spotted Parker, she ran into his arms, weeping.
“I told him not to go after Nico, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Parker eased her off and led her to a set of chairs, as Heather stayed behind with Jo.
“I’m sorry you have to go through this, sorry for you and Hearn.”
“The doctors say it will take months for him to recover, and that he’ll need plastic surgery too.”
“Nico Umbria plays in a different league. I told Hearn that.”
“Rick, I’m scared, what if he comes after me too?”
“He won’t. Don’t worry,”
Rachel moaned.
“Oh Tim, I... I love him, Rick, not as much as I love you, but I do love him.”
“I know, Rachel,”
After talking a little longer, Rachel left to return to Hearn’s side and Parker walked over to speak with Jo.
“I can’t work this case, only you can,”
“I know.”
“I told Rachel she was safe, but we both know that Nico is capable of anything.”
He leaned closer and both Jo and Heather saw the hate in his eyes.
“Ex-wife or not, if he harms her I will kill him.”
Jo reached out and gripped his arm.
“I’ll get him, Rick. One way or another, I’ll put him away.”
Parker exhaled loudly,
“Thank you,”
Heather took his hand.
“Let’s go home, baby, Jo will handle this,”
Parker nodded in agreement, and then he and Heather went home.
They arrived at Heather’s house at noon. Parker was taking a scheduled day off and the two of them were going to spend the time planning their wedding.
Heather’s mother was working, but Heather wanted to check the mail, hoping to receive her acceptance letter into the research program, however, when the mail came, she received disappointing news.
“I didn’t get in,” she said in a dispirited voice.
Parker took her in his arms.
“I’m sorry, baby; I know how much you wanted it.”
Heather sniffled, as she fought back tears.
“This would have meant so much to us financially, now I’ll be burdened with student loan payments until retirement.”
Parker kissed her.
“You won’t be burdened by anything. We’ll just have a debt to whittle down, and the two of us will pay it off together.”
“It’s just so much money, Rick, and it’ll be years before I make a good salary. How will we handle it?”
Parker led her to the sofa, where he snuggled with her.
“We’ll handle it; we’ll take it day by day, live simply and get to where we want to go. We’ll just handle it. People do it every day while earning even less than we do. All I care about is you. I have you and life is good.”
Heather stared at him, a look of wonder lighting her face.
“I love you so much.”
“I love you too, baby, and we’re going to have a great life together,”
Heather balled up the rejection notice and tossed it onto the coffee table.
She smiled. “Let’s plan our wedding,”
Hours later, Nico Umbria sat in one of the white interrogation rooms at police headquarters.
He had slept the day away, and after teaching Hearn a lesson, some of the old cockiness was back, so much so, that he had decided not to ask for a lawyer.
Nico held up a hand to Joanna Knight, who sat across from him.
“Before we start, has Tim Hearn pressed charges?”
“No, Mr. Hearn has remained silent on the matter.”
“And that hot wife of his?”
“Mrs. Hearn has made a statement. Would you like to read it?”
Nico looked surprised by the offer.
“Sure, I’ll read it.”
Jo slipped a sheet of paper out of a manila folder and passed it across the table to Nico.
As Nico read it, a smile formed on his lips.
“She just backs up what I told you, that Hearn hit me first when I visited their office.”
“Yes, she says he struck you three times.”
“I wasn’t counting, but okay, sounds about right,”
“The doctors estimate that Mr. Hearn was struck over a hundred blows last night.”
“One or a hundred, he came at me with a bat and I defended myself.”
Jo smiled.
“If your goal was to make him terrified of you, it worked.”
“He just thought I was a punk because of my injuries, now he knows better,”
The door opened and a rookie cop, Sierra, handed Jo a sheet of paper. Nico leered at Sierra until she left the room.
“Damn, who does the hiring around here? Whoever he is has got an eye for tasty tail, you included, Detective.”
Jo held up the sheet she just received.
“We found the stun gun you hid in the trunk of your car, along with the roll of duct tape, and the prongs on the weapon correspond with the faint burn marks on the back of Timothy Hearn’s neck.”
Nico cursed silently. One of the other motel guests must have seen him driving the Chevy and pointed it out to the cops.
“I don’t know anything about a car, and Hearn could have gotten those marks anywhere.”
“There’s blood on the walls and ceiling of your room, cast-off from the bat as you continually raised it to strike. If you had only wanted to defend yourself, you could have disabled Mr. Hearn with the stun gun and then called the police.”
“The guy broke into my room in the middle of the night. Maybe I was too scared to think straight.”
“You weren’t scared; you were actually lying in wait for him, weren’t you? You knew that he would try something, didn’t you?”
Nico sent her a sly smile.
“There’s no way to prove that, and anyway, Hearn won’t be pressing charges.”
Jo reached into the manila folder again, and took out several sheets of paper.
“This is a second statement by Mrs. Hearn, in it, she details the conspiracy between you and her husband, the campaign of fear that was used to get Patrick Taggart to sell him the bar. She also states that she was alone with Timothy Hearn on the night of Charles Woolley’s murder, and that you intimidated Hearn into providing you an alibi.”
Nico’s look of self-assuredness slipped a bit, but he shrugged and smiled.
“The bitch doesn’t know anything. That’s... what do they call it, hearsay? And besides, she already told you cops that I was there with them, right?”
“Wrong. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hearn ever gave a formal statement saying that you were present with them on that date. When you were rendered comatose last year, I suspended the investigation. Mr. Hearn did make a verbal assertion that you and he were together, but we now know from Mrs. Hearn that he made it under a threat of violence.”
Nico stared down at the table and was silent as he thought over his options. When he looked up, he was smiling again.
“Tim Hearn will still tell you that I was there with him. I own his ass now. He would blow me if I told him to.”
“You think he fears you that much?”
“After the beat down I gave him? Hell yeah, he’ll do anything I say.”
�
�You did beat him severely,”
“And you can’t charge me for it. There’s no way he’ll press charges, because he knows that even if I did time for it, that I’d be back. So, can I leave now?”
Jo stood.
“Yes, I think we’re done.”
Nico stood, and then looked on with wide eyes as Jo took out her handcuffs.
“Nico Umbria, you are under arrest for the murder of Charles Woolley. Please turn around sir, so that I can cuff you.”
“What?”
“We’re arresting you for murder based on Rachel Hearn’s statement, now turn around.”
Nico looked disgusted, but did as ordered.
“This is bullshit! Tim Hearn will back me up and then it will be our word against the wife.”
“I’m sorry to say that Mr. Hearn will be unavailable to comment.”
“Why?”
“Timothy Hearn is dead. He died earlier from a cerebral hemorrhage, a cerebral hemorrhage that the doctors say was a direct result of the beating you inflicted on him. Along with the murder charge, you’re also being charged with manslaughter in the death of Timothy Hearn.”
Nico’s mouth dropped open as the color drained from his face. Jo read him his rights, and then marched him into a cell.
Epilogue
In a plea bargain arrangement, Nico Umbria pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of Charles Woolley and Timothy Hearn.
Nico was to serve a maximum of only eight years; however, after arriving at prison he received a severe head injury during a prison riot, and later died. The doctors speculated that his earlier cranial wound contributed to his demise.
Rick Parker and Heather Jones married in a simple ceremony at her mother’s home.
The handsome groom and his lovely bride would later fly off to the Bahamas for their honeymoon.
Rachel Hearn became the sole owner of the bar named Taggart’s.
Two days after her ex-husband’s wedding, she sat alone at the bar drinking, despite the fact that it was only nine a.m.
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