Violent Crimes

by Phillip Margolin

  “Where can I find Kiner?”

  “At RENCO or at his house, but you’ll never get to him at either place. There’s too much security. If you promise to let me live, I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “He has a cabin in the mountains. It has heavy security too but it’s isolated and surrounded by woods. I can show you where it is.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “When my security detail finds me I’ll demand that Kiner meet me at the cabin. You can follow me and find out where it is.”

  Beatty was quiet for a minute. Then he turned to the lawyer.

  “You see how easy it is for me to get to you. Gaining entry to your house was no problem at all. But I don’t have to hide in your house to get to you. I was a sniper in the military, and there is no place you can go where I can’t kill you unless you decide to spend the rest of your life sealed in a panic room. If this is a setup you will be dead. Do you get that?”

  Hamilton moved his head up and down—slowly, because his broken nose ached when he moved. Beatty smoothed the tape across Hamilton’s mouth again. The lawyer waited for more questions or instructions. When none came, he rolled onto his side and looked around the den. There was no one else in the room.

  CHAPTER 38

  Ray knocked on the front door at 7:30 a.m., the time Mark Hamilton had told the security guard he wanted to leave for his office. When Hamilton didn’t answer, the bodyguard tried the knob. The door was locked. Ray pulled out his cell phone and dialed Hamilton’s cell. When Hamilton didn’t pick up, Ray signaled to the other guard, then entered using the key the lawyer had given him.

  The house alarm shrieked when the door opened, and Ray disarmed it. Then he called Hamilton’s name. There was no answer. Moments later, Ray walked into the den and found Hamilton lying on the floor. His hands were bound behind him, his ankles were lashed together, and a strip of duct tape sealed his mouth. Blood had crusted on the tip of his ear, a wound in his cheek was leaking blood, and his nose was mashed flat. Ray pulled a knife from the sheath on his belt and slashed the tape that bound the lawyer’s ankles and wrists. He removed the gag last because he wanted to delay the tirade he knew would start as soon as Hamilton could speak.

  “He was in my house!” Hamilton screamed. “That fucker cut off my ear!”

  “I don’t know how this could happen, Mr. Hamilton. We checked the house before we let you go in.”

  Ray helped Hamilton to his feet. The lawyer wobbled and the bodyguard lowered him onto an armchair.

  “I want Kiner. Call Kiner,” Hamilton ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” Ray said as he dialed Kiner’s cell, only too glad to let Hamilton scream at someone else.

  “Beatty attacked me in my house,” Hamilton shrieked as soon as Kiner answered. “He cut off a piece of my ear! I’ve been lying on the floor in my own filth all night!”

  “Stop, Mark,” Kiner commanded. “You’re on a cell phone.”

  “A phone your men assured me was secure. Of course, they also assured me that I was safe from that maniac.”

  “You have to calm down. Do you need medical treatment? Ray was trained as a medic.”

  “I’m not letting any of these incompetent assholes touch me.”

  “Okay, look, we have to discuss this in person. Not over the phone.”

  “I’m coming to the cabin. Be there,” Hamilton commanded.

  “Good idea—the cabin. You shower and change. And please let Ray patch you up. You don’t want your cuts to get infected.”

  An hour and a half later the Escalade stopped in front of Kiner’s cabin and Hamilton stormed out. He hadn’t said a word during the trip and had sat with his arms folded tightly across his chest, staring out the tinted windows.

  Kiner was waiting on the front porch. He ran down the steps and met the lawyer halfway. Ray had stitched up the cut in Hamilton’s cheek, sanitized and bandaged the tip of the ear, and reset his broken nose. Those injuries, coupled with a black eye and several bruises, made the lawyer look like the badly defeated loser in a barroom brawl.

  “God, you look terrible, Mark. Come inside. I’ll pour you a drink.”

  Hamilton glared at Kiner and followed him into the house without saying a word.

  “Tell me what happened,” Kiner said as he filled a glass with scotch.

  “I’ll tell you what happened. Your flunkies fucked up royally. Ray searched the house before letting me go in, and he did a piss-poor job of it. He told me everything was hunky-dory, so I went into the den. The next thing I know I’m on the floor, tied up and gagged, and that lunatic is slicing off part of my ear and breaking my nose.”

  “What did he say to you? What did he want?”

  “He wanted to know who sent the mercenaries to kill him and who killed Larson.”

  Kiner handed Hamilton the glass, and the attorney gulped down half of his drink.

  “What did you tell him?” Kiner asked.

  “Not a damn thing. That’s why he tortured me.”

  “You didn’t give him my name?”

  “No,” Hamilton lied. “I convinced him that I didn’t know anyone had tried to kill him and I said that Dale gave the order to murder Larson.”

  “Did he ask you how Dale was able to get in touch with hired killers?” Kiner asked.

  “I told him I had no idea how he could do that. I put on a great act, and I’m pretty certain he bought my story.”

  “So he just let you go?” Kiner asked.

  “No, he didn’t just let me go. Look at my face. The motherfucker tortured me until I couldn’t hold out any longer. Then I gave him Dale and he seemed satisfied.”

  “He just bought your story and left.”

  Hamilton could tell Kiner was skeptical.

  “You weren’t there, Reggie. It was awful. No one has ever hurt me like that. But I held out as long as I could. Then it took some doing to get him to believe I didn’t know anything more than Dale. He bought my story, at least for now. But he could come back.”

  Hamilton dropped his chin and he teared up, something he didn’t have to fake, because he was terrified of Beatty.

  “I couldn’t take it again, Reggie. You have to get him.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right. I’m sorry this happened. I was certain my men could keep you safe.”

  “Well, they didn’t. I can’t live like this. I’m a wreck. I jump at every sound.”

  “I think you’re safe for now. If Beatty was going to murder you he would have killed you last night. Our priority is taking him down. If he’s dead, he can’t hurt anyone.”

  Kiner escorted the lawyer to the car and told Ray to drive him back to town. As soon as the car was out of sight Kiner called in one of his guards and told him to check the surveillance cameras and motion sensors for any sign of activity and to organize a search of the perimeter. If Beatty was smart enough to get into Hamilton’s house with Ray guarding the grounds, he would be smart enough to have followed Hamilton here.

  After he talked to the guard, Kiner thought about Mark Hamilton. He wasn’t sure how much the lawyer had told Beatty, but it was clear that Hamilton was terrified. If he cracked and went to the authorities for protection, he would use his only bargaining chip: his knowledge of Kiner’s involvement in Christine Larson’s murder.

  Kiner had been tempted to kill Hamilton at the cabin just now. He didn’t know how many witnesses could tell the police about the bodyguards, or if Hamilton had told anyone the identity of the man who had supplied them. He figured that the security camera at the law firm had probably taken pictures of some of his men.

  Kiner finally decided that Hamilton had to go, and he wondered if there was some way that he could make the murder seem like Tom Beatty’s work.

  Mark Hamilton told Ray to take him home. There was no way he was going into the office looking like he did. Hamilton didn’t say a word on the return trip. He was too busy thinking about how to get out of the mess Christine Larson had created by sticking her n
ose where it didn’t belong. God, how he wished that bitch had never been born, but she had been, and now there was a real possibility that he would be killed by Tom Beatty or Reggie Kiner.

  Hamilton did not delude himself. He had taken a chance by going to Kiner’s isolated cabin, and he was certain that he had been inches away from death while he was there, but the only way he could think of to appease Beatty was to lead him to Reggie.

  Hamilton had no idea why Kiner had not killed him and buried him in the woods, but he was still alive and he meant to stay alive. Accomplishing that task was not going to be easy. But one thing he had decided was that Kiner had to go. If Kiner stayed alive he would eventually come to the conclusion that he would not be safe until Hamilton was dead. If Kiner was arrested, he would feed him to the sharks to make a deal. How to kill him was the question.

  CHAPTER 39

  Tom Beatty had followed Hamilton into the mountains. When the Escalade turned off toward Kiner’s cabin, Tom kept going. A mile later, he parked on a logging road and approached the cabin through the woods. While surveying the area around the cabin, he spotted several hidden security cameras, motion detectors, and guards. He didn’t want to risk detection, so he scaled a tree and watched through high-powered binoculars.

  Hamilton had stayed inside the cabin for an hour before he got in the Escalade with his bodyguards and drove away. Beatty assumed that Hamilton was headed home to recuperate. If he went to his office he would have to explain his injuries to his coworkers, probably by claiming he’d been in an auto accident. After a few seconds, Beatty forgot about the attorney. He didn’t care what Hamilton did. The man he was interested in was the man in the cabin.

  Beatty was certain that Kiner’s men would stop hunting him if he killed Kiner, which he could do with ease from his perch once he got the right rifle. But killing Kiner would not solve all of his problems. Tom did not want to be on the run for the rest of his life. He’d had a stress-free job at Masterson, Hamilton until Christine was murdered. He wanted peace and quiet desperately, but he would never find peace as a fugitive.

  Amanda Jaffe had been able to trace him to his camp in Forest Park as a result of the pokeweed berries he had inadvertently left next to Dale Masterson’s body. Beatty assumed that the police would eventually make the same connection between the berries and his isolated camp. He had cleaned up the area and buried the bodies of the two mercenaries, but the graves would be easy to find. The MOs of Christine’s and Masterson’s killings were identical, and once the police found two more dead men, he would jump to the top of the list in Masterson’s murder case. If he wanted to return to the peace and quiet he’d experienced before Christine was murdered, he’d have to figure out a way to convince the police that Reginald Kiner had killed Dale Masterson and Christine Larson, and he had no idea how he could do that. Beatty decided that it was time to ask for help. He worked his way back to the ground and headed for his car to make contact with the one person he thought he could trust.

  Amanda usually walked to work on sunny days, but she had not slept well and she decided to drive to work with Mike. The couple had not made love last night, both protesting that they were exhausted, and Mike had been quiet during breakfast, burying himself in the newspaper so that, Amanda suspected, he would have an excuse to avoid talking to her.

  When Amanda arrived at her office, she dived into work that she’d put on hold because of the Beatty and Masterson cases. Issues in those cases and her problems with Mike tried to worm their way into her thoughts, but she was able to sidestep the attempts by burying herself in an obscure area of immigration law that had become important in a case involving a Guatemalan drug dealer she was representing. When five o’clock rolled around she congratulated herself on a productive day and called Mike to ask if he was ready to drive home. Mike told her he was tied up with detectives who were interviewing two prostitutes who were witnesses in a liquor store robbery and he would get the detectives to drive him home. Mike sounded friendly on the phone, and Amanda took that as a sign that he was not mad at her any longer.

  Amanda parked in a garage near her office. She entered the garage and pushed the button for the elevator. The elevator door opened and Amanda got in. Just before the door closed, a heavyset woman wearing jeans and a black polyester Portland Trailblazer jacket squeezed in.

  “Sorry,” she apologized with a smile.

  Amanda smiled back.

  “Looks like you did my work for me,” the woman said when she saw the fourth-floor button lit up.

  “Glad I could help,” Amanda replied.

  The elevator stopped at 4. The blond woman waited for her to get out, then followed after her as Amanda circled around to the back wall. The woman walked past her as Amanda got to her car. Amanda had just stopped to fish in her purse for her key when Tom Beatty stepped out of the shadows.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

  Amanda saw the blond woman standing next to a pickup truck, watching them. Tom followed Amanda’s eyes.

  “I’m here because I need your help and I couldn’t risk going to your office. Please. I just want to talk, then I’ll leave. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Amanda hesitated. Then she opened the car and got in.

  “What do you want to talk about?” she asked when Beatty was seated next to her in the passenger seat.

  “I know who’s responsible for killing Christine and the attempt to kill me in Forest Park and at my house.”

  “Someone tried to kill you at your house?”

  “Miss Ross and I were followed from the jail when she drove me home. There were two men. Before I disarmed one of them, his gun discharged and killed the other man. Then I . . . I hit the man with the gun too hard. He died as well.”

  “These were the men who were found in the trunk of a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Dale Masterson to avenge Christine’s death?”

  “No, Amanda. I went to Masterson’s house to find out who was responsible for killing her. He was dead when I found him in his den. Moments later, I heard the front door open and I heard someone go upstairs. That’s when I left.”

  “Did you break into Dale Masterson’s law office?”

  “Yes. Christine knew his password and she knew I was good with computers. During our argument, she told the password to me. She wanted me to get into Masterson’s computer to see if I could find evidence about the books. When I broke in, I copied his hard drive, but there was nothing on it that helped.”

  “Who killed Christine and sent the men who tried to kill you?”

  Beatty told Amanda everything he’d dragged out of Mark Hamilton, and she listened without comment until he was through.

  “So Hamilton told you this highly paid executive sent teams of killers after you and Christine?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “Out of the goodness of his heart?” Amanda asked.

  Beatty looked down. “I . . . I had to rough him up to get Kiner’s name.”

  “He told you about Kiner under torture?!?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, Tom. Even if you had him on tape, nothing he said would be admissible or even believable. People will say anything to escape pain.”

  “I know that. I just couldn’t think of any other way to get what I needed.”

  “What do you expect me to do with this?” Amanda asked.

  “I need you to prove Kiner is behind the killings.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded desperate. “Maybe you can tell the cops or have your investigator look into it.”

  “What are you planning on doing? Are you going to stay on the run?”

  “I can’t turn myself in. I’d be killed in jail.”

  “I can make sure you’re safe.”

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. These people don’t follow any rules. I’m safer staying hidden. And you watch your back,
too.”

  “I need a way to get in touch with you if something comes up.”

  Tom handed her a cell phone and a slip of paper.

  “If you need me call this number.”

  Before she could say anything else, Beatty got out and headed toward the stairs. Amanda watched him leave and saw the blond woman walk around the corner and head back in the direction of the elevators.

  Amanda pushed the cell Tom had given her into her purse. Then she grabbed her own phone and called Kate Ross. As soon as Kate answered, Amanda told her what Tom Beatty had said.

  “What do you want to do with his intel?” Kate asked when Amanda was through.

  “My first thought was that we go to Hamilton and grill him. Tom tortured him, so he’s probably scared to death. He might crack.”

  “Not if he’s going to end up in prison.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m not sure. Kiner isn’t going to admit to anything. The head of security for an outfit like RENCO isn’t going to be intimidated.”

  “I’m too wound up to think straight right now. Let’s sleep on this, then talk in the morning.”

  Amanda wasn’t in their condo when Mike got home. He’d picked up some Chinese at a restaurant in the Pearl after the detectives dropped him off and he was starting in on the kung pao chicken when Amanda walked in.

  “Want some?” he asked, pointing at the take-out boxes.

  “You bet. I haven’t eaten and I’m famished.”

  “I tried to get you on your cell. When I couldn’t get through, I bought enough for two just in case you hadn’t eaten.”

  “Thanks. I was working out and I didn’t get your voice message until I left the pool.”

  Mike’s eyebrows went up. “Working out at night? That’s not your usual routine.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t had a normal day and I needed to clear my head.”

  “Oh?”

  Amanda grabbed a plate and chopsticks and sat down opposite Mike at the kitchen table.

  “If I say the words ‘attorney-client privilege,’ will you go ballistic?” Amanda asked.