Just Evil

by Vickie McKeehan

  The ten-minute shower helped Jake get rid of the wine buzz. Wide awake now and refreshed, he quickly toweled off and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Slipping on his topsiders sans socks, he grabbed his wallet and car keys, and headed back toward the salon. As he rounded the living area, he stopped in his tracks when he saw her sleeping on the part of the couch that made up the L.

  She’d fallen asleep curled up in a ball, lying half on her side and half on her stomach, facing toward him with a fist placed just so under her chin.

  He bent down to her level, rocked on his heels to get a better look. Inches away from her face, he studied her full mouth, the cute nose, the gold colored skin. She’d loosened her hair and strands of it fell across her face. On instinct, he nudged a few locks away, letting his hand rest on her hair.

  Even curled up in a ball, snuggled under his mother’s knitted afghan, she was all legs. Suddenly, a jolt of lust hit him. How could he let her spend the night thinking the way she did? Gently, he rubbed at her arm before shaking her back and forth. But after drinking so much wine earlier, she didn’t so much as stir.

  Wasn’t he looking at the very reason he’d made some changes recently? The timing had always been off, and he intended to change that.

  But now she was the one in trouble. He tried all the reasonable lines before reality took over.

  Oh hell, he thought, as he reached down, picked her up, and carried her to his bed.

  CHAPTER 6

  In the dark, he hid inside the backseat of the Benz—waiting—patiently waiting for the prey to come to him was all part of the process. But the spider-waiting-for-the-fly-game was always incredibly boring. And by jeezus, she was taking her sweet time.

  He tried not to think about what she was doing—inside that house. He wondered if her husband knew about her little sex nest, all the trysts she’d had inside. Funny, he thought, everyone thinks she’s such a pillar of the community, such a workhorse; if they only knew. Underlings do most of the legal work, except of course for the work she doesn’t want anyone to find out about.

  Prophetically, poetically, philosophically: for he thought of himself as all those things, prophet, poet and philosopher, he wondered if anyone ever really knew another person. Oh, they think they do, would swear that they knew another’s heart. But does one person ever really know the evil that lurks inside another?

  He laughed about how often they’d be wrong.

  Finally he heard heels clicking on pavement, heard the beep of a keyless remote opening the locks. She was so distracted she never realized her security had already been breached. The car door flew open. He waited for her to start the car before popping up from the back seat.

  “Nice of you to finally join me.”

  When she started to scream, he calmly clamped a hand over her mouth. The other went around her throat. In a whispered brogue, he told her, “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. Do you understand?”

  When she nodded, he removed his hand.

  “Don’t rape me,” she breathed out raggedly.

  So that was it. Well, he’d set her straight on that score. “Look lady, with all the people you’ve screwed over the years and I mean that both physically and metaphorically, the last fucking thing I’d want is to exchange bodily fluids with you, not even with a fucking condom, not even if you were twenty years younger. Right now, I hate having to get this close to you. Unfortunately, it’s necessary. Now drive. Were you headed home after your little rendezvous? You’ll head to The Enclave now.”

  When she didn’t answer, he went on, “Jess, Jess. Your little press conference this afternoon was quite a performance. ’Lana would have applauded your efforts; that is, if she could. But did you really think your charade would go undetected forever? Now, take the Coast Highway. And let me tell you a story. Once I’m done, you’ll never see me again.” He saw her relax somewhat.

  “How...how did you get inside my car?”

  He smiled, held up a little black scanner. “I love technology.”

  “What do you want? Don’t hurt me.”

  “I want you to listen to a story and see if a hotshot lawyer like yourself can argue your way out of this one.” He put his hand in his pocket, touched the 9-millimeter Glock pistol, and wondered if the police would be able to solve this puzzle. Would they take the easy way and blame it on the woman with the big green eyes? Well, we’ll see what we will see about that, he thought, as Jessica’s car headed up the ramp and toward Malibu.

  The Malibu Police patrol car flipped on its lights as it circled the black late model S420 Mercedes Benz, parked in the left turn lane near the 1600 block of Cross Creek Road. Before he got out of his car, Officer Mark Wilson noted the time as 1:55 a.m. and automatically ran the California plates. Parked in a random fashion next to the median, the vehicle was a road hazard. Believing he had a well-to-do drunk driver who had merely passed out at the wheel in a very inconvenient location, Officer Wilson parked his cruiser behind the Benz, and grabbed his flashlight.

  However, when the beam hit the driver’s side window, the blast of blood splatter on the glass had him instinctively trying to open the driver’s door. Finding it locked, he tried the other three doors and found them locked as well. He backtracked to his cruiser and radioed dispatch for backup and requested a CSI unit, explaining that he had what looked like a suicide.

  After several minutes another patrol cruiser pulled up. Backup had arrived in the form of Officer Bill Schroeder. Promptly Wilson explained the situation to Schroeder and they both decided they should get inside the vehicle.

  Schroeder went back to his police car, opened his trunk as if searching for something, and pulled out the auto thief’s age-old tool: a pry bar. This time when the officers walked up to the passenger window, Schroeder slid the metal between the glass and the frame. The passenger door popped open.

  A White female in her sixties sat behind the steering wheel, slumped back as far as the seat would allow in a recline position. Blood stained the leather seat and saturated the victim’s clothing, coagulating inside the crevices. A 9-millimeter Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol lay on the passenger side floorboard. The Glock had caused a sizeable hole in the woman’s left temple.

  “Why commit suicide in the middle of an intersection?” Wilson asked Schroeder.

  Just as perplexed, Schroeder pointed out, “Not only that, but there’s not much recoil to a Glock, how’d the pistol get on the passenger side floorboard when the bullet wound is in the woman’s left temple? That’s on the opposite side.”

  Without disturbing any of the blood evidence, both officers combed the car for a suicide note. There wasn’t one. They looked around the interior of the car with a flashlight until Wilson focused the light on a shiny gold object lying on the front seat of the passenger side. “What do we have here?”

  “Looks like some kind of toy soldier.” Without picking up the toy trinket, Schroeder focused his flashlight on the object. “No, it looks like a cowboy. See the horse? The cowboy is sitting on top of a horse. There’s a sunset in the background.”

  Schroeder asked Wilson, “You run the plates?”

  “Plates came back clean, no outstanding warrants. The Mercedes is registered to Jessica Geller Boyd.”

  Max St. John had hoped he could wrap up the Stevens murder in a neat, tidy package. But Jessica Boyd’s murder muddied the water. Considerably. Since three-thirty that morning, he’d known he had a problem. He had two murders and two victims who knew each other. And both murders fell into that high profile category. Throw in another gold cowboy trinket left at the scene and he had a complication. At least this time the thing hadn’t been shoved down the victim’s throat. Another reason, he thought, to suspect Kit Griffin. Maybe she wanted to silence her mother’s lawyer.

  Holloway recognized his partner’s thoughts. “Max, where are you going with this?”

  “We have a mess on our hands, Dan. For now, we’ll let people think the Boyd woman committed suicide. But we both know we’ve
got two women, friends, pillars of the community—”

  “And two identical toy cowboys left at the crime scenes.”

  “Which we’ll keep to ourselves for now.”

  Driving along the Malibu shoreline, St. John pulled his police issue Crown Victoria up to a gatehouse where a security guard with a clipboard stepped out of his hut to stop his progress.

  “Detectives Max St. John and Dan Holloway to see Sumner Boyd,” St. John said as he held up his badge for inspection. After glancing at the shield, with a nod of his head, as if he’d been expecting them, the guard pushed a button inside the hut, opening the iron gates, allowing them to enter the grounds toward the massive compound known as The Enclave, a cluster of multi-million dollar homes snuggled up against the Malibu cliffs and the Pacific Ocean.

  As they pulled away from the guard station, Holloway joked, “Not a bad gig if you can get it; sitting in a hut, stopping traffic. But all this security didn’t help Jessica, now did it? If someone’s got it in for you, a guy with a clipboard isn’t going to stop a determined killer at some point.”

  Over the wrought iron eight-foot tall fence, St. John noted that the Enclave looked more like a bustling resort at the height of the busy season rather than a row of private residences. Behind the iron gates, three families lived within walking distance of each other and chose to use golf carts as a means to go back and forth. Rich people, he thought, could afford such luxury. The mansions shared the one common gatehouse, hence the security guard. After that, a private road took visitors along the water for almost two miles in either direction, winding by driveways belonging either to a Gatz, a Geller, or a Boyd.

  Impressed at the Boyd mansion, Holloway looked at the lavish tri-level, contemporary- style, forty-thousand-square-foot main house and recalled he’d seen a tour of the place on the Home Channel one Sunday afternoon during football’s off season. He remembered the program had boasted that the house had ten bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, a theater room, and a law library. He wondered if the rumors he’d heard about the place over the years were true.

  The Boyds’ had purchased the property in the late ’60s after they’d won their first major court case in 1967, a David-versus-Goliath type lawsuit that had pitted a small-time rancher against a mega construction company. Just when it looked as if the fledgling law firm was going to lose, they’d pulled a bona fide miracle out of thin air, producing not only flawless documentation at the eleventh hour that proved liability but a surprise witness who had testified that the construction company dumped toxic waste on the rancher’s land, killing his cattle.

  The court had awarded a record fifteen-million-dollar judgment that had gone on to bankrupt McKetrick Construction. At the time, the case had been the first monumental court victory of its kind on the West Coast against a major environmental polluter.

  The court victory had been so impressive that, even today, law professors used it as a model. That one case had put Boyd Boyd Geller & Gatz on the proverbial map to overnight success. To celebrate their victory, every year on Memorial Day Sumner and Jessica held a decadent festival known locally as The Boyd Bash.

  For four days beginning on Friday and ending on Monday, they opened The Enclave to close friends and business associates, including some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities as well as guests from all over the world. Dan knew the local legend. Each year the parties got a little raunchier. He wondered as he looked the place over if this year they’d still carry on the tradition.

  In spite of his seventy years and his snow white hair, Sumner Morgan Boyd was a good-looking man. Trim and fit at six feet tall, he made sure he ran three miles every day and hit the links at least three times a week, which explained the perfect golf tan. Life’s setbacks were new to him. He simply wasn’t used to failure or disappointment. In fact, he didn’t permit it.

  Those who knew him said he was tough. And he was. But it was important to Sumner that people believe he was a regular guy, a self-made man. Proud of the fact that he came from humble beginnings and made something of himself, he didn’t want his sons forgetting that he had grown up in a blue collar neighborhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the oldest of six children.

  And he was proud of the fact that he had never taken a cent from Jessica’s wealthy parents. He knew Jessica’s father, old Jacob Geller, had disapproved of him the moment he’d set foot inside the man’s front door. Jacob Geller had made no secret that he thought Sumner Boyd had been after his daughter’s trust fund.

  When Jessica had announced her plans to marry Sumner in their last year of law school, Jacob Geller had done the only thing that a wealthy, stubborn father could to get his way: he threatened to cut her out of the family fortune if she went ahead with the marriage. But instead of breaking off the relationship Jessica had dug in her heels. She decided she could do without a few of life’s luxuries. After all, she was deeply in love—if not a bit naïve in her stubbornness.

  Giving up family money couldn’t be that difficult, or so she’d reasoned. She’d simply make her own. They’d start their own law firm and money would roll in. At the time her stance went a long way to alleviate any rumors that the poor-boy law student had married the wealthy debutante for her money. And in the beginning they’d been blissfully happy.

  Unfortunately, the bliss hadn’t lasted very long.

  As Sumner stood looking out onto the majestic Malibu cliffs and the Pacific Ocean beyond, he reflected back to that time when they’d been looking professional failure in the face. But they’d overcome the odds. That one case had turned the corner for all of them. If they’d turned a blind eye to ethics every now and then through the years, it just showed they would do whatever it took to win. And as long as it was a Boyd, a Gatz, or a Geller doing the winning, that was fine with him.

  He watched his beloved sons Connor, Cade, and Collin take their place around the huge mahogany conference table.

  It was in the back of his mind that someone had discovered their secret. But he knew that was impossible. No one alive knew what they’d done, how they’d gotten their start. If someone had it in for his family it didn’t have anything to do with that. And no matter what they had done, he would fight back with all he had to protect what was his.

  He stood there in the library waiting for Jessica’s sister Eva Geller Gatz and her sons Jacob and Adam to get settled around the table along with Frank Geller’s four children. Sumner’s eye twitched in annoyance as he remembered that Frank was honeymooning somewhere on the Riviera with his fifth wife.

  Never could count on Frank anyway, he thought miserably, as he looked back on his forty-two year marriage to Jessica the woman he’d married in Las Vegas the day after they’d both graduated law school. He decided, hands down, those early years had been the very best. But because he’d lost Jessica, he could indulge himself today, to look back and wonder what would have happened if things had gone the other way. He shook his head at that. It had all worked out for the best. And it had been a helluva ride.

  When they’d all settled around the table, Sumner took a deep breath. “I won’t permit anyone to intimidate this family. We’ll get whoever’s responsible.”

  A slightly drunk Collin stood up. He was a preppy-looking younger version of his older brothers with dark hair and dark eyes like their mother, and announced, “You know suicide is bullshit.”

  “Yes. That’s why I’ve prepared a cursory list of our enemies. After forty years of success, we’ve created a few.”

  “Is it possible someone found out?” asked Connor.

  Even if he did suspect just that, Sumner didn’t want to rule out the fact there could be any number of other reasons for his wife’s murder—as well as Alana’s. The nonsense about Kit being involved in Alana’s murder was just that. He’d read the papers, knew the girl as well as he did his own sons.

  When he realized they were waiting for an answer, he assured them, “That isn’t possible. But I’ve put Auslo and Taft on it. They’re good for grunt work such a
s this. But let me make this clear, from here on out, no one makes a move without consulting me, understand?”

  His middle son Cade spoke up, “So we leave it up to Auslo and Taft? I don’t like it.”

  A rather loud knock on the door broke the moment.

  A butler in a black tux showed St. John and Holloway into the law library. The smell of expensive leather and polished mahogany overwhelmed both detectives. Dan took in the tight-knit consortium entrenched in their world of privilege. They looked as if, for the first time in their lives, they’d suffered a major defeat. And they weren’t used to losing. Looking around at their faces, he remembered all the triumphant press conferences he’d seen over the years with these same people, touting their courtroom wins, and decided they didn’t look too victorious now.

  After introductions all around, the family listened as St. John delved into the coroner’s preliminary findings, keeping most of the gory details to himself, but telling them enough to watch their faces go cold with anger at the loss of the woman who had been their wife, mother, sister, and aunt.

  St. John had done this many times before. It was never easy. But he never failed to search the faces of family members for a certain type of reaction, an emotion, an indication of how they took the news. Now was no exception.

  The family had practical questions, so before wrapping up their visit, St. John briefly addressed the family’s concerns about how long it would take before the autopsy was completed and how long the body would remain at the morgue. After answering a few more pertinent questions about what happened next in the investigation, both detectives were escorted from the room by the butler.

  Once they were out of earshot, Dan turned to Max and said, “Well, they didn’t buy the suicide angle. But that’s the damnedest thing, Max. Did you notice the lack of tears, no crying, no hysterics, no emotion from any of them, just cool, collected faces? Am I jaded? What happened to telling the family about a death and having just one family member in the room show some grief, or shed a few tears over the deceased?”