She stepped inside and followed him to the kitchen where he refilled his glass.
“Can I offer you a drink?” he asked with his back to her.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I have one without you. I’m starting a little earlier than normal today.”
There was an edge to his voice. He was struggling to hide it, trying too hard to keep his cool. Rachel suddenly felt vulnerable. An alarm went off in the back of her mind, a distant voice yelling the word danger.
“Not at all,” she said.
It had been a mistake to follow him inside. Alone. Unarmed. Jones was guilty. She didn’t understand the motive yet, but she was certain of it. His demeanor told her everything.
“This house is amazing.” She took a quick look around the kitchen. There was a large island separating them. To her left, a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows offered an expansive view of the valley to the west. To her right, cabinets, a gas range with eight burners, a pair of ovens stacked on top of each other, a knife block sitting on the counter near the corner. She stepped closer to the knives, pretending to admire the stone countertops.
“I’d die for a kitchen like this.”
He laughed uncomfortably, and she smiled.
“I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday,” she said, “but I’m trying to finish up some reports for the sheriff. I just have a couple of questions for you.”
“Reports, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a nod. “Definitely not my favorite part of the job.”
He took a sip, dribbled some on his chin. “And what kind of questions would you have for me?”
“I hate to bring this up, since there’s probably nothing to it, but I was hoping you could tell me about a woman named Jamie Moody.”
Jones stared at his drink for a moment, then he downed the contents and went back for more. Rachel watched his hands out of the corner of her eye, making sure they didn’t reach into a drawer and return with a gun.
“Do you recognize that name, Commissioner?”
He didn’t answer.
“See, the trickiest part of this investigation,” she said, “has been trying to figure out what the victims had in common. So far, I’ve only found one thing—they were friends for a little while back in high school. There were actually four of them that spent a lot of time together. Dean McGrath and Andy Coughlan . . .”
Jones’s hand shook as he lifted the tumbler.
“Mark Newfield . . .”
He sucked in a shot, started pouring another while trying to swallow what was still in his mouth.
“Caleb Rucker . . . I hear they were the best of pals. Right up until they all got in trouble for sneaking away during their lunch break one day. Apparently, that was the last time they were all together. And Jamie Moody was with them.” She watched him lean against the counter and close his eyes. “You know about that incident, don’t you, Commissioner? Jamie was your daughter, wasn’t she?”
Slowly, he turned to face her. His shoulders slumped. He looked sad and weary.
“She was a good girl,” he said. “Those boys ruined her. They got her high and they . . .”
* * *
Bishop crested the ridge in a sprint, then followed it to an outcrop where the back of the house stood in full view. He raised his rifle and searched through the scope, found Jones and the woman in the kitchen. He sat down, propped his elbow on his knee, and kept his eye in the scope as he got on the burner. Jones answered a moment later.
Bishop heard him say, “Excuse me, I need to take this. Hello?”
“I can see you.”
“All right.” Jones turned away from her. “What do you think?”
The woman was watching him closely, but for all she knew, Jones was on a business call. He could be discussing any number of mundane topics that had nothing to do with whether she would die within the next few minutes.
“You tell me,” Bishop said. “If she’s questioning you, then she’s getting a little too close to the truth, wouldn’t you say?”
“I agree.”
“Maybe it’s time for her little journey to come to an end.”
“All right. If you think that’s best.”
“I could wait for her to leave and follow her out. Take her down while she’s on the road.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or I could find out where she’s staying and take her in her sleep.”
“Right,” Jones said, glancing back. It looked like an involuntary action. “I uh . . . I know where that is, if you need that information.”
“Hmm.” He adjusted his grip on the handguard, put the crosshairs on her chest. “Of course, I could just take her out right now. That would be the safest bet, don’t you think?”
“Well . . .” He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure. Maybe one of the other two options might be—”
“Out of curiosity, do you think she knows who I am?”
“I don’t think . . .” he glanced at her again. “I really don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Good-bye, Lawton.”
* * *
Jones put the phone in his pocket and said, “I’m sorry, Miss Carver.”
There was a snap at one of the windows. Rachel saw a long crack form in the glass. Jones grunted. Then there was another snap, and another. Shards broke away from the window pane. Jones grunted again and dropped the tumbler. It shattered and spread across the tile floor.
He looked out the broken window in disbelief. Rachel seized him by his shirt and yanked him down onto his back. A zip and a thud as a bullet passed over them and struck a cabinet door a few feet away. The sound of gunfire echoed through the valley outside. Lying facedown, she spun and clawed her way toward the island, dragging Jones with all her strength.
“Come on, goddammit,” she screamed. “Move!”
He kicked hard, slid a couple of feet, then wheezed as another bullet found him. He tried to kick again, but his foot slipped. He was losing strength.
Rachel made it behind the island. She sat up, braced her foot against a cabinet, and pulled with both hands. Another zip and a crack, and she felt a sting in her neck as the edge of the countertop exploded behind her. Jones’s shirt ripped, and she fell backward. She reached again, grabbed two handfuls of fabric, and pulled him to cover.
She spun around and lay flat on her back with her head next to his. “Hang on. I’m calling for help.”
He coughed. Warm droplets of blood rained on her. She pulled her phone out and dialed 9-1-1 with shaky hands. When the dispatcher answered, Rachel yelled at her to send help, then yelled at Jones to stay with her, then yelled back at the dispatcher, who was trying to keep Rachel calm.
Jones was looking weaker by the second. He was losing consciousness. A word formed in his mouth. He blurted it out in a sudden burst of energy that quickly faded. But he repeated the word as many times as he could manage while his life drained away. The last two were barely a whisper.
“Bishop . . . Bishop . . .”
53
Lying on the kitchen floor, staring into Jones’s dead eyes, Rachel had plenty of time to think. It had taken more than three hours for the SBI Special Response Team to arrive. An army of deputies had secured the front. Braddock had tried to push past them to get to her, but Jensen had talked him down. Rachel had helped over the phone. Jones was dead, and she was in a safe spot, hiding behind the island. There was no reason for him to go inside until they were certain the sniper was no longer a threat.
So Rachel waited while Jensen’s team combed the wilderness behind the house. And she thought about Jamie Moody.
Those boys ruined her, Jones had said.
Was it really that simple? She took out her Steno pad and flipped to the notes from her interview with Clarissa Moody. Across the top, she had written Moody’s number in case she had any follow-up questions. She called it twice before Moody answered.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard yet,” Rachel said. “But there�
�s been a shooting at Lawton Jones’s house. I’m here now.”
“A what? Damn . . . is he okay?”
She looked at Jones’s gray face. “We can’t say yet. There’s a SWAT team searching for the shooter. An ambulance is here. Things are a little crazy right now.”
“I don’t know what to say. I mean, I never wanted anything bad to happen to Lawton . . . Is it the same one who killed them other people?”
“I need to ask you for a favor, Miz Moody.”
“Oh . . . Okay, what is it?”
“Would you tell me more about your daughter?”
“What about her?”
“Everything you can. Starting from the moment she was expelled from Lowry County High.”
It wasn’t a pleasant story. Moody told it matter-of-factly, crying occasionally but never quite breaking down. Jamie had been a good student until the ninth grade. Then she started skipping classes, sneaking out at night, disappearing on the weekends. At that time, Jones and Moody were barely speaking, even though he was spending his weekends with Jamie. When Moody had begged him for the money to send her to a private school, he had refused. Then came the joint-smoking incident.
Moody moved Jamie to Knoxville and put her in a new school. But things only got worse after that. By the time she was seventeen, Jamie had been arrested three times: underage drinking, drug possession, and shoplifting. She spent three months in juvie hall, as Moody called it. Got out just before her eighteenth birthday, but she never came home. When Moody saw her a year later, she was hanging on the arm of a middle-aged biker, a man who eventually got sent away for selling cocaine to an undercover cop.
The story went on. Years of bad relationships, alcohol and drug abuse, trouble with the law . . . “She hit bottom two years ago,” Moody said. “She came home and sat down with me and said, ‘I need help, Momma. I can’t live like this no more.’ So I got her some help. At the church, there was this group. They had AA meetings and all. I got her in it, and they helped her a lot. They really did. Got her a job. Got her a little apartment. But then . . .”
Rachel heard her exhale. It sounded like she was smoking a cigarette.
“What happened?”
“She started hanging around that old crowd again. Then she started borrowing money from me. I knew she was getting back into trouble, but I just couldn’t say anything to straighten her out. She would just tell me, ‘Oh, Momma, I told you I’m all better now. There ain’t nothing to worry about.’ I really wanted to believe that.”
“Was she seeing her dad regularly?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, yeah. She made trips over to see him all the time. They spent a lot of time together, right up until about a month before she died.”
“What happened?”
“I think he got mad at her over money. She was always asking him for more, and, you know, he was always kind of tight with it.”
“And when was the last time you talked to him?”
“The day she died. I called him and told him. It was the first time I’d spoken to him since we moved away from there.”
“How did he react?”
“Hmph. Like a self-righteous asshole.”
“How so?”
She sniffed, took a second, and said, “He yelled at me. Said it was my fault she had turned out the way she did.”
“Why did he think it was your fault?”
“’Cause I didn’t stop her from hanging around them boys she got in trouble with. He said they’d raped her that day behind the school, and I hadn’t done nothing to prevent it. I told him that they hadn’t raped her, it was just sex, but he wouldn’t hear it. He kept saying I didn’t do enough to protect her. But I told him that was bullshit. I told him it was his fault as much as it was mine.”
* * *
By the time Rachel hung up with Moody, the sun had set. She brought up Parker’s number, and the screen cast a pallid glow over Jones’s body. It held her gaze while she listened to the phone ring. The eyes and mouth were half open, fixed in that moment of agony just before death.
Rachel felt a shudder and looked away. She didn’t want to think about how close she had come to dying. Had the shooter been aiming for both of them? Was she alive because she had simply gotten lucky? She felt tears welling in her eyes. She felt weak, and that made her angry. For the first time in her life, she wanted to kill someone.
As a professional investigator, she had always managed to keep her emotions in check. She had never allowed herself to hate a suspect. She had never thought of doing anything more than finding the evidence needed to make an arrest and get a conviction. But this time was different. Whoever the shooter was, she wouldn’t be satisfied by watching him go to prison. She wanted him dead.
When Parker answered, Rachel asked, “Find anything interesting?”
“Not really,” he said with a yawn.
“Can you tell me anything about his personal life?”
“Yeah, a little. He’s had two divorces, as far as I can tell, both of which made the local papers. Those small-town reporters are fascinated by rich people. Anyway, that’s about all there is. It doesn’t look like he has any children. I mean, other than Jamie.”
“Makes sense,” she said. “Can I add something to your search?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Something Jones said to me. I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he was talking about. He said the word ‘Bishop.’”
“Bishop . . .” he repeated as if he was writing it.
“Yeah.”
“That’s it? He didn’t say anything else?”
“Kind of a long story.”
Parker laughed. “Okay. I’ll look into it.”
* * *
Rachel lay in the dark, stared at the ceiling, and tried to put it all together.
Had Jones had been unable to cope with his daughter’s suicide? Maybe.
Perhaps the guilt had been too much for him to handle, so he had projected, found someone else to blame. He had traced the roots of Jamie’s self-destructive behavior back to her ninth-grade year. Coughlan, McGrath, Newfield, and Rucker were his scapegoats. In his mind, they had been responsible for Jamie’s life going down the drain. They were to blame for her death.
His only daughter. Divorced and nearly fifty, he might never have another. Guilt had turned to rage. When he could no longer contain it, he used his best weapon to take action: his money. Jones had hired a killer. Someone vicious and resourceful. Smart and careful. Someone who was capable of manipulating people and getting them to do his dirty work. Someone who was ruthless enough to take out anyone who got in his way. Someone who knew when it was time to cut his losses and eliminate anything or anyone that might lead back to him.
Like he had done with Gifford . . . and now Jones.
It wasn’t impossible, but it felt like a stretch. Guilt wasn’t the most plausible motive for hiring a professional killer. There had to be more. Had Jones actually believed that the victims had raped his daughter? Had he known something that no one else seemed to know about the incident? If so, he was taking it to his grave.
54
Bishop finished pounding on the rifle barrel, dropped it into the form with the burner and its battery, and dumped the concrete mix over it all. Then he stripped, burned his clothes, and went inside to check the TV. His work had made the twenty-four-hour news networks. He couldn’t help but smile, even though he knew it was nothing to be proud of.
When the anchor switched to another story, he got on the phone and called Pratt. After several rings, it went to voice mail. She called him back a few minutes later.
“Hey. I had to go to my car. I can’t talk for long.”
“That’s okay,” he said, sounding relieved. “I’m just happy to hear your voice. I’m watching the news and . . . My God, what the hell’s going on over there?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This is crazy. Nobody seems to have a clue what’s happening. The SBI is all over this place. I’ve never seen anyth
ing like it before. I think they’re getting ready to go inside. Yeah, I’d better go.”
“Okay. Stay safe and call me whenever you get a chance.”
“I will. I miss you.”
As the call ended, he chuckled to himself, thinking about how ridiculous he had sounded. He flipped through the channels in search of more news coverage. When nothing appeared, he stared blankly at the TV and considered his future.
As payment for his services, Jones had provided the financial backing for Bishop to start a security company. That had been the deal. A reasonable price, considering what Jones had asked him to do. And Bishop had been paid in full. It didn’t matter that one of the men was still alive. Not anymore.
The business was doing well. It had grown rapidly in its first eleven months. Jones had also hired Bishop to provide security guards for several of his residential developments, and other developers had been quick to follow suit. Bishop was presently on track to become the largest security service provider in Western North Carolina within another year.
But Jones had remained a silent partner, supplying the additional capital that had allowed the company to expand so quickly. Now that he was gone, Bishop had to figure out how to handle Jones’s stake in the partnership. There were provisions for dealing with his untimely death in their agreement, but it was all written in legalese. Bishop would have to consult his lawyer about it once enough time had passed. Until then, he would play the distraught friend and business associate. He would attend the memorial service, shake hands, and look somber. Act like he didn’t know how he could continue without Jones’s guidance.
The man was more than a partner, he would say. More than just a friend. He was a mentor.
Bishop laughed at that thought.
With nothing to watch, he went for a shower, came back ten minutes later, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and dropped onto the sofa. The local news was breaking in on a commercial. The scene behind the reporter showed deputies blocking a road. The entrance to Jones’s driveway was barely visible in the distance. At the bottom of the screen, the ticker said, “SBI HUNTS FOR SNIPER.”
The anchor and the reporter went back and forth, trading questions for speculation. They promised the full story at 11:00. And Bishop thought, If only they knew.
Among the Dead Page 23