by Lisa Jackson
The viperous woman struck hard. Again.
This time he passed out.
CHAPTER 34
Settler wasn’t satisfied.
She sat at her desk in the homicide department, her eyes gritty from lack of sleep, and she didn’t yet feel that special little glow of gratification she always experienced when a case was closed, even though she’d found a new piece of evidence.
Maybe it was because everyone else in the department seemed to be in a better mood than she was, the hum of conversation and jangle of phones louder today, it seemed, than usual. Or it might be because the phone calls from the press had been non-ending. Or perhaps it was because Tim Vance had given her the once-over and hadn’t bothered to hide his disapproval at her disheveled appearance, even though she’d been up most of the wee hours of the morning bringing a killer to justice.
Pain in the ass.
Knowing she was being petty just because she was tired, she pushed Vance out of her mind and sipped the double espresso she’d picked up on her way to work. The night had ended somewhere around 4:30, and she’d gotten less than four hours’ sleep before she’d walked Earl, left him with the neighbors, and made her way like a zombie through her shower. Then she’d scraped her hair away from her face, snapped it into a ponytail, and dressed in black slacks, black top, and a jacket. Good enough.
She should feel a little more satisfied than she did, though.
Yes, they had Milo Gibbs in the hospital, a guard at his door, and statements taken from his wife, kid, and everyone at the Emerson house. Gibbs had already had surgery on his leg and should be rousing soon. She and Martinez intended to interview him once the anesthesia wore off.
It appeared as if Gibbs was, indeed, the assassin who had killed Karen Upgarde by giving her a little push, either psychologically, physically, or by lacing whatever she was drinking with psychotropic drugs. The autopsy and tox screen would clarify what was in her bloodstream. And, of course, he’d shot Trudie and Ned Crenshaw. She suspected the DNA from the blood found on the trail leading away from the crime scene would no doubt be matched to that taken from his body. Not to mention his killing of the handyman they’d discovered rolled in a tarp in the back of the man’s Kris Kringle van. Then there was the attempted murder of Noah Scott and/or Remmi Storm, and all of the eyewitnesses to that thankfully botched crime and who knew how many more?
But there were still big pieces of the puzzle missing.
From a pile on the corner of her desk, she picked up her copy of I’m Not Me and stared at the distorted picture of Didi Storm on the cover, wondering if Milo Gibbs had killed her. He’d certainly tried . . . or been a part of it somehow. Noah Scott had IDed him as the assassin who had put a bullet through his throat in the desert that night twenty years earlier. And someone had died in that burned-out Mustang. That, too, looked like Gibbs’s work, and the bullets confirmed it, though the male victim was still unidentified. She took another swig from her cup. Somehow, Didi had escaped in her white Cadillac that night, only to disappear the next day. It seemed as if Milo was the killer. But why?
Personal grudge?
Paid assassin?
Martinez showed up at her desk, all smiles in a pressed shirt, slacks, and jacket.
She eyed him and said, “I think I need a wife.”
“Everyone needs a wife,” he agreed. “Wives need wives.”
She thought of some of the projects that she needed done around her house. “Maybe I need a husband, too. And don’t say husbands need husbands.”
Martinez leaned a hip against her desk. “I just got off the phone with Milo Gibbs’s attorney.”
“He’s already lawyered-up?”
“I think Vera found the guy. In her church, no less. Anyway, it’s been hinted that Gibbs is probably going to talk. Work with us. Try to come up with a deal to avoid a long sentence.”
“Maybe we don’t need a deal. There’s a good chance we can figure this out ourselves.”
“Of course, we can, but I’m talking about saving time.”
“Take a look at this.” She pulled up a picture on her computer screen. “It’s the fake driver’s license for Brandon Hall.”
Martinez looked over her shoulder. “Uh-huh.”
“And here”—she clicked the mouse, and another image came up—“this is Oliver Hedges’s second son, the one who survived. He’s got a beard now, but . . .” She hit a few more keys, and the screen changed. “I did some digging, and here’s a shot of him twenty years ago, with no facial hair.”
“Brandon Hall in the flesh.”
“I think so, and the same initials? Both BH? Not very clever. But then he wasn’t the smart one. OH2, the older brother, went to Stanford, but this guy”—she tapped a finger at the image on the monitor—“bombed out at a junior college.”
“But he survived.”
“Trouble was, from what I understand, OH2, the oldest son, thought he was smarter than everyone else, but . . .”
“He’s the one who died.”
“Apparent heart attack, and the family didn’t ask for an autopsy. Nor was anyone in the P.D. interested at that time, so the body was released and he was cremated.”
“You’re thinking he was killed?”
She lifted a shoulder as she heard a cell phone ringing in a nearby office. “An awful lot of people associated with Oliver Hedges have been murdered, so it’s a big question mark. I’ve got a call into OH2’s wife, you know, Marilee? The woman who married both father and son? Waiting to hear back from her.”
“That should be interesting.”
“Very.” She smiled thinly, then drained her cup. “Conveniently, she lives in Las Vegas. As does the rest of the clan. OH Industries is located, for the most part, in Southern California, but they have on-site managers and run the company from Vegas, only show up at the offices a couple of times a month.”
“Okay.”
“I think we can interview them. Get to the bottom of this without Gibbs’s confession.”
“It might make things easier.”
“Do we really need to give this scumbag a break? He murdered two people for sure, attempted two more, possibly three, if you lump Jade Kim in with Remmi Storm and Noah Scott. How does he think he’s got any wiggle room?”
“A deal would avoid the cost of a trial.”
She knew that, of course, but it bugged her. She didn’t want to think of Gibbs getting anything less than the worst sentence possible. It killed her to be practical, but she grudgingly asked, “Does he have any other bargaining chips?”
“He thinks so. Claims he was an assassin for hire, and he’ll give up names if he gets a deal. We pushed, and he did admit this much: way back, twenty years ago, he was working two ends against the middle.”
“Meaning what?”
“He was hired by Didi first. Apparently, once she swapped the first baby, the girl, for the bucks, Gibbs was supposed to get the kid back from Hedges. The baby was dressed in blue to look like a boy, but Didi knew he wanted a son even more, so she was going to make another play. But the old man got wind that something was up—maybe from Shawna Whitman is my guess—so he overbid Didi and hired Gibbs to make it look like Brett died. How? By killing a guy about the same size as Brett Hedges, in this case a homeless man Gibbs found at random.”
“So, that was all for Didi’s benefit? Because Brett Hedges is alive and well and living in Las Vegas.”
“That’s what Gibbs says. They wanted her to believe Brett was dead. But everything went haywire when Noah Scott showed up in the desert, and Didi double-crossed Hedges.”
“So, she goes back for a second try the next day, and what? Gibbs somehow kills her and buries her and her Cadillac in the desert?”
“He’s not saying yet. Wants a deal, but yeah, that’s my guess. Unless Brett himself killed her. That’s always possible.”
“But why?”
“For the kids. The entire Hedges clan is all about those twins.”
Settler thought about it. She’
d spent a lot of time reading up on the Hedges clan. “OH2 died without an heir.”
“Right. And the old man might not have been able to father more kids after the accident, even if he did have a younger wife in Shawna Whitman.”
Dani slowly shook her head, thinking about the Hedgeses. “I’m beginning to wonder if the old man’s skiing accident was an accident.”
“Who knows. No one has ever questioned it. OH1 never said anything.”
“But then his son marries the wife who divorced him when he became an invalid. Maybe that started him wondering about his firstborn; maybe he questioned his motives, saw him for the louse he was.”
She leaned back in her chair, the wheels turning in her mind. “Do you think the eldest son who stole the wife also tried to kill his old man? Maybe he wanted the whole enchilada.”
“Could be. With this clan, I wouldn’t say any bet was off.”
“And then, tit for tat, the old man somehow has him killed. Has someone do it. Like Gibbs?” She asked, “Would a father kill his own kid?”
“Gibbs tried with Remmi Storm,” he pointed out.
“Touché.”
“Like I said, this whole family is one major piece of work. If we can believe Gibbs—”
“We can’t. Seriously, Martinez, we can’t believe a word he says.”
“I know, but if we did . . . Just stay with me here. Gibbs says, and I quote, at least from his attorney, that he’s ‘too old for this shit,’ that he ‘wants to turn over a new leaf.’ He wants to talk.”
She would have laughed out loud if she’d found anything funny this morning. “With the trail of bodies he’s left behind? Come on. This hired assassin who tried to murder his own kid just last night suddenly finds Jesus and develops a conscience?”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“Right. And I’m not stopping the investigation just because Milo Gibbs wants to talk. Forget it.”
Martinez’s smile grew, and he seemed amused at her bad mood. “So let me guess. You want to go back to Vegas to talk with the Hedgeses?”
“Yep. And let’s not forget the wives. I want to hear what Marilee Hedges and Seneca Williams—aka Shawna Whitman and now Shawna Hedges—have to say. So yeah, I want to interview them all, more than I want sleep right now, so that’s pretty bad.”
“I’ll drive. You sleep.”
“First, I want to talk to Milo Gibbs myself.”
Martinez was already straightening up from the desk.
Settler got to her feet as well. “Let’s drop by the hospital and see if Milo is serious about confessing; then, once we iron the details out with his attorney and him, we’ll fly to Vegas. I’ll try to tee up Stinson, see if he’ll take us there again.” She was already reaching for her shoulder holster and sidearm.
“I’ll call Davis in Vegas. We should give her a heads-up.”
“Okay,” Settler agreed, already heading for the stairs.
* * *
“Hey. Wake up. We’re almost there,” Noah said.
Remmi blinked and couldn’t believe that she’d dozed. They were in her Subaru. Noah was driving, and she was in the passenger seat, her head resting against the window.
Yawning, she blinked and saw by the clock on the dash that it was nearly 5:00 in the afternoon. Twilight had descended on the desert, the stars glittering in a lavender sky. Far in the distance, rising like a spangled phoenix from the desert floor, the lights of Las Vegas loomed.
They’d been on the road for nearly nine hours. Once the police had allowed them to leave, they’d each grabbed a bag, Remmi with a quick change in a shoulder bag, Noah snagging his backpack from his truck.
Remmi had insisted she wanted to see her siblings, and rather than argue, Noah had agreed. They’d loaded into her Subaru and, avoiding the crowd of gawking neighbors and reporters with microphones and rapid-fire questions, had driven past the police barriers in the waning storm, where light bars had strobed the morning gloom, reflecting on the wet streets.
Noah had gassed up at the first open station they’d found, then hit the freeway.
During the first hundred miles, they’d talked about the arrest, how Settler and Martinez had shown up with backup and EMTs. Milo had been driven to the hospital in one ambulance, while the dead man found in the back of the Kris Kringle Christmas Lights van, another of Milo’s victims, had been whisked away in another.
Remmi tried not to think about Milo Gibbs. She was still numb inside at the thought that he—Uncle Milo—was her father. That horrid fact explained so much—why Didi had fled Missouri, why she would never reveal his name, why there was a deep rift between Didi and her family, why Remmi had felt so much resentment from Aunt Vera while she lived with them, and why Milo had been so distant. But her stomach turned sour that a killer, and most likely an assassin for hire, had been the man who had sired her. Even more devastating was the sorry fact that Milo, knowing full well that she was his daughter, would have murdered her without thinking twice.
A stone-cold killer.
Now he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
The police had evidence. His rifle. Vera’s and Jensen’s statements. Both of which would become testimony at a trial.
Vera, too, was probably going to spend some time behind bars. She had to have known what Milo was doing—and if not known, then at least suspected. And yet she’d stayed married to the prick. It was hard to imagine.
Didi had been right: Remmi had been better off not knowing the identity of her father.
However, now that she did, she wasn’t going to let the fact that he’d sired her taint her life any more than it had. She wanted to meet her siblings and then finally, finally, once the chains of the past had been broken, get on with her life.
That which does not kill us only makes us stronger. She hoped to God that Nietzsche was onto something.
As they closed in on Las Vegas, she put in a call to Settler, at Noah’s insistence, but the detective’s voice mail picked up, so Remmi left a message. She and Noah had already decided they would stay out of the heart of the city, find as quiet a place as Las Vegas could offer.
“Is this good?” he asked, motioning to a two-story motel on a side street at least two miles out of town. The area was undergoing a renovation, it seemed; most of the surrounding buildings were empty or being reconstructed. “According to the motel’s reader board, it comes with a pool and a twenty-four-hour restaurant.”
“What more could we want?”
He pulled into the dusty lot of the Western Oasis with its illuminated sign of a cowboy in a Stetson riding a camel.
Within twenty minutes, they’d checked in, left their bags locked in the room, and were being seated in a faux-leather booth near the windows of the restaurant. The view was of the access road, but it didn’t matter. Not much did. After the waitress, an impossibly tiny woman with hair teased high enough to give her another three inches, took their orders, Remmi’s phone buzzed.
Dani Settler was on the other end of the connection. “Don’t try to meet with Hedges,” she ordered. “Not with any of them. We’re still figuring this out, and until we do, it’s just not safe.”
“That’s why I called you. I want to see my sister and brother.”
“Just wait. Please. Martinez and I are already in the air. We’ll be landing in about an hour. I’m serious about this, okay? I understand why you want to see the kids, but just hang tight. One more day is all it will take, maybe less, for us to wrap this up.”
Her heart dropped.
As if she expected Remmi to argue, Settler went on, “Remember what happened last night. So, go into town. Gamble. See a show. Whatever. But do not confront the Hedgeses.”
Remmi hesitated.
“You hear me, Ms. Storm? We don’t want you in harm’s way, and we don’t want our investigation compromised.”
“I get it. We’ll wait.” Remmi was frustrated as hell.
“Good. Where are you staying?”
&nbs
p; “The Western Oasis,” she said, sinking back into the booth before disconnecting.
“We wait?” Noah asked.
“Yeah.” She felt deflated. “Story of my life.” Taking a sip from her water glass, she said, “Settler suggested we take in a show.” She let out a half laugh. “Do you know how many shows I watched from the wings while I was growing up? No thanks. I think I’ll pass.”
The waitress returned with huge platters of food. While Noah dug into a thick steak and French fries, washing it down with beer, Remmi picked at her pot pie and sipped her Chardonnay slowly, her appetite practically nonexistent.
She thought about her siblings. What if Adam and Ariel, now Kyle and Kayla, didn’t believe her? What if they didn’t want to know her? What if they thought she was a liar, someone trying to get close to them because of their rich family? What if the thought of Didi Storm being their mother was repulsive? She had no idea what they’d been told or how they would react.
She finished the wine and took another sip of water.
One step at a time.
First, you have to meet them.
If they choose not to be in your life, if they think you’re a liar or some kind of scam artist, you have to be patient.
She found herself dunking her straw in her water glass, up and down, the ice cubes dancing, the water swishing, her thoughts a million miles away.
Noah grabbed up the check. “Let’s go,” he said, and she saw that he’d nearly finished his entire meal. “You’re exhausted.”
“What about you?”
“Feel like a million bucks.” He slanted her a crooked smile that touched the corners of her heart. Careful, she told herself, you could fall in love with this guy all over again . . .
The thought surprised her, and she cleared her head. You are tired. You barely know him. But she let him pay the check and watched him as he talked to the waitress—how comfortable he seemed to be in his own skin, a boy who had grown up in a difficult, if not impossible, family, who had nearly been killed that night in the desert, and who had hitchhiked to safety before reinventing himself.
You could do worse, she told herself, and then, as Noah was distracted with his credit card, she felt it again, that eerie sensation of being watched. She glanced over her shoulder to the night beyond and saw only a few scattered cars in the parking lot, no one around, no one peering at her from the darkness.