by Lauren Carr
“Exactly,” Ryan said.
“Which made her your alibi.”
“Not that I thought I would need one.”
With a shake of his head, Mac said, “There’s a problem with that alibi, though.”
“What?”
“Fifty-year-old scotch,” Mac said. “Yvonne rarely drank hard liquor, because when she did, it took only one drink to make her drunk—it was almost like a roofie for her. Two drinks would knock her out. If Yvonne was drinking scotch with you that night, then she wouldn’t have been a very reliable alibi. All you had to do was give her two drinks, and she would have passed out—giving you plenty of time to lure Audra Walker here, kill her, seal her body behind a sheet of drywall, get back to Yvonne’s place, and clean up. Then you woke up next to her, with her being none the wiser.”
“I don’t have to take this!” Ryan shoved Mac out of the way and stormed out of the makeup department and into the studio.
“You shot Yvonne Harding, and we can prove it,” Mac said while following him.
Everyone spilled out of the makeup department to follow them into the studio.
“Oh, David,” Yvonne’s breathy voice said over the speakers. Her words were followed by a loud thud.
As if encountering the ghost of Yvonne Harding, everyone froze in place.
Mac grinned at Ryan’s wide eyes. “You did go to makeup, like you said, Ritter,” he said over Gnarly’s barking in the background on the recording. “While you were back there, the sound people started doing a sound check on Yvonne’s mic. They didn’t pick up everything, but they did pick up enough to prove that you shot Yvonne.”
They heard a clang in the distance.
“That’s the slam of the studio door when Carl Rubenstein ran out,” Mac explained. “When he got up here to the studio, discovered that no one was expecting him, and saw Yvonne collapse, he put everything together. He discovered he was being set up and ran.”
The clang was followed by a crash, Gnarly’s barking, and Mac’s yelling, “Gnarly, no!”
“Yvonne, stop it!” David’s voice was loud and anxious. “Stand up!”
“Why did David tell her to stand up? At that point, he didn’t realize she was hurt,” Mac said over the screaming of a crew member on the audio. “That scream is a crew member seeing the blood.”
“Obviously,” Lieutenant Van Patton said, “O’Callaghan didn’t know she’d been shot. I didn’t hear the shot.” He turned to his detectives. “Did you hear the shot?” They all shook their heads.
“David,” Yvonne gasped.
“The killer used a silencer,” Mac said. “Between that and the racket here in the studio, no one heard the shot—not even David. As a matter of fact, on my way out the door to pursue Rubenstein, Jim Wiehl stopped me. Assuming Yvonne had fainted, he asked me if she was pregnant.”
“Somebody call nine-one-one! Yvonne, darling, stay with me. You’re going to be okay,” David said.
“No, I’m not. Hold me, David.”
Tears were forming in the listeners’ eyes.
“I’m here, darling,” David said. “Don’t try to talk.”
“You’re right, David, I’m not the same woman.”
“Ambulance is on its way, baby. You got to hold on. What happened, baby?”
“Why would he be asking her what happened if he knew that she’d been shot?” Mac asked Ryan.
Yvonne’s voice was weak. “Baby … that’s what you used to call me.”
Abruptly, Pam Wiehl’s voice sounded over the speakers. “What happened? We heard someone shot Yvonne?”
“I came running over as soon as you told me that someone had shot her,” Pam said to Ryan in an accusatory tone. “Why would you know that if David O’Callaghan, who was holding her, didn’t know—unless you shot her?”
Mac waved his hand to signal for the assistant director in the control booth to stop the audio, which had brought many members of the crew to tears. Most of them were glaring at Ryan Ritter.
Stepping up to Ryan Ritter, Mac locked his gaze with his and asked Jim Wiehl, “How did Lieutenant Wayne Hopkins end up on the list of law-enforcement experts for Crime Watch?”
Jim looked over at Pam, whose eyes grew wide when she answered him. “Ryan recommended him. He used him for a segment on his show and said that the camera loved him and that he knew his stuff. So I called him in one day.”
“As a matter of fact,” Preston Blakeley said, “Ritter has been campaigning for ZNC to give Hopkins his own show.”
“Somehow Lieutenant Wayne Hopkins found out you killed Audra Walker,” Mac said while taking his cell phone out of his pocket. “Maybe while he was questioning Yvonne Harding, she revealed that she had passed out. I can see you spinning things around—under the guise of helping Yvonne when Hopkins and Roberts questioned her about Walker’s disappearance—and coaching her. Hopkins must have caught on.” He grinned. “Somehow, Hopkins realized you had used Yvonne to establish an alibi for yourself, so you offered to help make him a star in exchange for cleaning up your mess.” He pressed the button on his phone to dial the preprogrammed number.
“If Hopkins said that, then he’s lying.” Ryan Ritter turned around, taking in the faces of his colleagues and subordinates, all of whom were staring at him, their faces filled with suspicion. “He’s conjuring up this whole conspiracy with nothing concrete to go on. Hopkins?” He scoffed. “He said he had a dream of being a television star, and I’m a nice guy, so I put in a good word for him. That’s all!”
Ryan Ritter jumped to attention.
Mac studied the screen on his phone.
Ryan’s breathing quickened.
“Don’t you think you should answer that, Ritter?” Mac asked. “It might be Hopkins.” He lowered his voice. “I think his goons ran into some problems on Long Island.”
Ryan Ritter followed Mac’s line of sight to where David O’Callaghan and Dallas Walker had entered the studio through the back door. Even though they had changed clothes and freshened up, the bruises and welts on their faces were evidence of their ordeal.
“We’ve got some bad news for you, Ritter,” Mac said in a low tone. “Hopkins and his hired guns failed miserably in their job of tying up your loose ends. And there’s more bad news.” He gestured to where Lieutenant Van Patton was holding up an evidence bag with a bloody cell phone in it. “We got Hopkins’ phone and the list of calls he made to the burner in your pocket.”
With wide eyes, Ryan stared at the phone in the evidence bag. Slowly, a grin crossed his face. He broke into a laugh. “Burner in my pocket?” He extracted a cell phone from his pants pocket. “Are you talking about this?” He continued to chuckle. “Maybe Hopkins was calling this phone. I wouldn’t know. I just found it in the men’s restroom less than an hour ago. I was on my way to turn it into lost and found when I ran into Pam and Jim downstairs.” He tossed the phone to the police lieutenant. He winked at Mac. “Nice try, Faraday.”
“You did have an arrangement with Lieutenant Hopkins,” David said. “You were the one giving him orders behind the scenes to tie up your loose ends.”
“Like I said, I’m a nice guy. I put in a good word for him with ZNC’s producers to use him as a law enforcement expert. I didn’t ask or expect anything from him in return.”
“I got the impression that it was more than a good word when you suggested I give Hopkins his own show,” Preston Blakeley said. “You brought it up again just yesterday.”
“Was that before or after he closed the case for Yvonne’s murder with Carl Rubenstein named as the shooter?” Mac asked.
“After finding the gloves Rubenstein tossed in the stairwell after he shot Yvonne,” Ryan said.
“While there’s gunshot residue on the gloves indicating they were worn while firing a gun,” Lieutenant Van Patton said, “there’s nothing to positively connect them to Car
l Rubenstein. Not only that, but forensics found nothing on his clothes or body to prove he had shot a firearm.”
“Yet, Hopkins insisted Carl Rubenstein was the shooter,” Mac said, “hours after accusing me of shooting Yvonne in the back to free David up to marry someone else this weekend.”
“A marriage Hopkins already knew about when he questioned me right after the murder,” David said. “No one here in the studio knew Yvonne and I were married except you because you overheard Mac and me talking in the control room about my wanting a divorce.”
“I already admitted I told Hopkins about that and you said that as a police chief you understood,” Ryan said.
“Actually, it was you who told me that as a police chief I should understand,” David said. “Thing is, no one here at ZNC knew I was a police chief. The only person I told was Lieutenant Hopkins while giving my statement.”
“Which means you had a conversation with Lieutenant Hopkins a second time after he questioned both David and I,” Mac said. “I suspect that was when he decided to remove us as persons of interest in his investigation and go back to who you originally intended to frame—Carl Rubenstein.” He added, “Dead men don’t put up as vigorous of a defense as live ones.”
“Yes, I had a second conversation with Hopkins after he questioned you,” Ryan said. “Big deal. But it was by no means as sordid as you’re making it out to be.” He pounded his chest. “I’m a journalist. I was pumping the homicide detective investigating the murder of a good friend for information. And yes, he told me that you were a police chief and, because they found gloves with gunshot residue in the same stairwell that Rubenstein tried to escape down, they were focusing on him for the shooter.”
“What if I told you that’s not what Lieutenant Wayne Hopkins told us?” Mac asked.
“I’d say he’s lying.”
“Even if he’s got recordings of your phone conversations to prove it?” Mac countered.
“Like the one you two had this morning when you gave him the order to kill both of us?” David asked. “You specifically told Hopkins to seal our bodies in the wall of a building under construction like you did with Audra Walker.”
His eyes narrowed, Ryan Ritter locked his gaze on David O’Callaghan.
“In spite of all your efforts, you’ve still got loose ends, Ritter,” Mac said.
“Why’d you kill Yvonne?” Pam asked with tears in her eyes. “She was your friend!”
“Because he found out I was investigatin’ my mother’s disappearance,” Dallas announced.
A collective gasp sounded throughout the studio at the revelation that the young woman they had known as Yvonne Harding’s assistant was actually Audra Walker’s daughter.
Years of fury bubbling to the surface, Dallas charged up to Ryan with David directly behind her—trying to keep her emotions in check. “You were sittin’ right there on the corner of my desk with a big bunch of yellow roses, tryin’ to sweet-talk me into goin’ to lunch with you when Roberts called. You must have seen his name on the caller ID. Was that when you decided to take out Yvonne and me, or was it after Gnarly sniffed out my momma’s body just a few feet from my desk—where you buried her and let her rot like garbage!”
“Now I see it.” Ryan Ritter laughed. “All these months, you reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. That double-backboned attitude should’ve told me.”
“Careful, Ritter,” Mac said. “Your accent’s slipping.”
Ryan sneered at Dallas while David held her back. “One brick shy of a load—just like your mother.”
After jabbing David in his broken ribs, Dallas slugged Ryan across the jaw so hard that she managed to knock him backward and almost off his feet. She would have hit him again if David hadn’t thrown his arms around her, lifted her off her feet, and carried her out of punching distance. Holding her close, David spoke softly into her ear.
“Why?” Pam asked again. “I thought Ryan and Audra Walker had only met that night she came here for her interview with Yvonne.”
“That’s what he wanted everyone to think,” Mac said while trying not to chuckle at Ryan Ritter nursing the bloody nose Dallas had given him. “Ryan changed his name and had a lot of cosmetic surgery over the years, but somehow, someway—maybe it was something he said or did—Audra Walker recognized him for who he really is.”
“Who’s that?” Ian asked.
“Romeo of the book that Audra Walker had been working on for all those years,” Mac said.
“Ryan Ritter is Romeo?” Dallas gasped.
Mac explained, “Clint Brown. Supposedly, he died in a suicide pact with his high school sweetheart, Kimberly Castillo, thirty years ago, the night of their senior prom in Marfa, Texas. Audra Walker was friends with Kimberly. She was there at the lovers’ point when the car that her two friends were in caught fire and went over a cliff. Supposedly, both bodies were burned beyond recognition. But something about that suicide bothered Audra for years.”
“The car catchin’ fire before it went over the cliff,” Dallas said.
“Then a week later, during the memorial service, Kimberly’s father’s home was broken in to. Her brother and his girlfriend were murdered, and several thousands of dollars and jewels were stolen out of a safe.”
“Too much of a coincidence,” David said.
“Over the next thirty years, Audra kept going over the details of the case,” Mac said. “Maybe she heard about the young army soldier and his bartender girlfriend who disappeared around that time. After hearing about how the Mexican barmaid had a way with men and recalling what a Romeo Clint was, I could see how Audra started putting things together.”
Mac leaned toward Ryan. “How long did you wait before killing Carmen after she helped you pull it off? I’m assuming you were the mastermind of it all.”
Mac studied the lifetime of fury working its way to the surface of Ryan Ritter’s face. “It was about more than a simple burglary. It was about avenging your father’s death. An eye for an eye. Your father died working for Castillo, so you seduced and then killed his only daughter. We can assume that Kimberly, who trusted you, gave you the combination to her father’s safe, which had in it thousands of dollars in cash and precious jewels. Kimberly’s brother and his girlfriend walked in, so you killed them, too. The heartbreak of losing his children led to Castillo’s death six months later.”
The corners of his lips turning up in a smirk, Ryan said, “You can’t prove any of it.”
“I noticed you didn’t say that you didn’t do it,” Ed Willingham said, “but that we can’t prove it.”
“Which isn’t true,” Mac said. “DNA was in its infancy then, but it isn’t anymore. We now have enough evidence to get your DNA and to compare it to the DNA of your deceased parents, which will prove that you are Clint Brown. The police in Texas are already comparing the dental records for a missing army soldier to the body you’d planted at the bottom of the cliff to make everyone think you were dead. It’s only a matter of time before the police in Texas will want to know where you were during the memorial service when Kimberly’s brother and his girlfriend were killed and the safe was broken in to.” He paused and shrugged. “And that’s why you killed Audra Walker—to keep all of that from happening.”
Ryan uttered a low chuckle. “Out of everyone here on this earth—if anyone had been perceptive and keen enough to finger me, it would have been Audra Walker. I had planned to not be here on the day of the interview. But I had to see—after all the changes I’d made to my appearance, the voice lessons, the years of extensive training to get rid of my Texas drawl, and the decades spent cultivating my poised New England persona—if she would catch on.”
Ryan’s frown filled his entire face. “She nailed me within minutes. That cock of her head. The look in her eyes. I tried to tell myself that it was just my imagination. I even agreed to have her on my show the ne
xt week. And then, as she was leaving, she said she had a special surprise for me.” He gritted his teeth. “When she called me Tex, I knew.”
Mac picked up where Ryan had left off. “So you took a bottle of scotch over to Yvonne’s to get her drunk and to establish an alibi. As soon as Yvonne passed out from the scotch, you lured Audra here, where the ZNC studio offices were being renovated, and got rid of your problem.”
“You killed my mother,” Dallas hissed at him.
“He’s going to jail,” David said to soothe her while smoothing her long, dark locks. “We got him now.”
Dallas spat in Ryan’s direction. “I hope you rot in hell.”
“You’ll be right there with me,” Ryan chuckled while whipping a gun out from under his suit coat.
Screams filled the studio. Crew members ran for cover. Gnarly charged him.
Reaching for his gun, David threw himself in front of Dallas. Before he had a chance to take aim, three shots rang out, each one striking Ryan Ritter in the back.
With a look of surprise, Ryan Ritter dropped to the floor.
Confused, Mac, David, and the police detectives looked around for the source of the shots.
Standing in front of his wife, Jim Wiehl held up his hands; a semiautomatic was dangling from his fingers. “Don’t shoot! I give up!”
Ed Willingham went into instant defense-attorney mode. “It was defense of another. Ritter was going to shoot Dallas Walker.” He waved his hand at every member of the crew in the studio. “You’re all witnesses.”
Lieutenant Van Patton took the producer’s gun from him. “We all saw what happened, and we’ll make sure the district attorney knows.” With a sigh of regret, he took out his handcuffs. “We’re going to have to take you into custody.”
With a sense of resignation, Jim Wiehl turned around and clasped his hands behind his back. “Make sure Dallas gets back to Texas safe and sound,” Jim told Mac. “We owe that to Audra.”
“I guess this makes you and Audra Walker even,” Mac whispered to the producer.
Mac saw David wipe the tears from Dallas’s face. Their heads were bowed toward each other, and their foreheads were pressed together.