DEAD MAN'S JUSTICE - A Place of Evil (Stone & McLeish Thriller Series of Stories Book 2)

by Gregory Stenson

  That was when he saw the man’s body lying on the floor. Mac squeezed through the gap and bent down to feel for the man’s pulse. His body was still quite warm to the touch but he was very much dead. The man appeared to be around thirty years old and of Middle East extraction. His eyes were still open, staring out into nothing. The man was wearing an overcoat over a summer shirt that was open at the neck, and Mac could see signs of trauma around the man’s throat area. For once he didn’t have his Nikon with him, it was too bulky for such a mission, so he took a shot of the man’s face with his Nokia.

  A suitcase stood by the door and the baggage label attached to the handle read NAS, which Mac recognized as Nassau airport in the Bahamas. Mac wondered why the label hadn’t been changed if he was now back in the US, he came to the conclusion that he must have come back another way.

  Lying on the floor between the suitcase and the body was another broken toothpick shaped into a triangle. Someone’s been careless again, he thought, there was a connection between the bomber and the dead guy. Either he was the bomber or he was killed by him.

  He needed to find what he was looking for, and quick. He’d had enough of being drawn into the Randall, Bloom and Shadow affairs, so he tried to put the body out of his mind. He didn’t want to get mixed up in yet another murder.

  The presence of a dead body and the toothpick, confirmed to Mac that he was in the right house. He made a mental note to call it in and to send the photo to Finch as soon as he was finished.

  He didn’t get a chance.

  The sound of a car pulling onto the drive stopped Mac in his tracks; he heard a rumbling noise and realized it was the up and over garage door opening. He moved over to the window and carefully glanced around with one eye just in time to see the back of a black SUV disappear into the garage.

  Mac figured he had thirty seconds max to get out of the lounge and find somewhere to hide. He also prayed they didn’t go into the kitchen, they would see the broken window for sure.

  He pushed past the body, through the double doors and hid in the dining room.

  He heard more than one sets of footsteps.

  Two men entered the house, Mac heard a door close, their voices grew louder, and he recognized that they were speaking Arabic to each other. Mac held his breath, they were certain to be armed and he had nothing to defend himself with. He scoured around the room but saw nothing of any use. If they came into the dining room, he was finished, he thought. They had killed once and would probably not hesitate to kill again.

  The men must have gone straight to the lounge, Mac listened into their conversation. After three years in the Middle East he couldn't speak the language, but he would pick up a word or two.

  He took a risk and opened the dining room door and cocked an ear to listen in. He picked up ‘yahrouq’ which means ‘burn’, ‘jasad’, which means ‘body’ and ‘moustawdaa’ which is a warehouse. In his daily life patrolling, searching and sweeping derelict buildings in the bombed out areas of Baghdad he’d heard his Iraqi translator say these words many times.

  There was a sound like a heavy sack being dragged across the carpet, he squinted through the crack in the door and saw the two guys pulling the body along the floor towards the access door to the garage. He could see that they still hadn’t closed the dead man’s eyes. Mac had thought about doing it but was careful not to leave any evidence of his presence at all. He wished he had now out of respect. Mac leant back, he didn’t want to be seen, but he took one more look and caught a glimpse of one of the men. It was the bomber, he was sure of it, he didn’t need to look at the photo he had in his pocket. The man had a scar on his left cheek.

  Now wasn’t the time for heroics, he remembered what Stone had told him, it was pointless trying to apprehend him, there were two of them and they had to be armed. Mac stayed where he was until he heard the car start to reverse out of the garage and off of the drive, he ran to the lounge and took a note of the plate number. If he understood their conversation correctly, they were taking the body away to be burnt.

  He could now move around more freely and stepped into the hall. There was one more door off the hallway that he hadn’t yet checked out. He opened it. It was an office; there was a desk with a swivel chair in front of it, and a filing cabinet to one side. Opposite the desk was a stack of shelves containing Government books on Politics, Law and Reports and Inventories of Weapons and Arms. Mac took one down and flicked through one of the books. There were pages and pages of military equipment, munitions and even aircraft. He put the report back exactly where he had got it from and adjusted the spine so it was in line with the others. He turned his attention back to the desk.

  Next to the computer monitor was a stack of papers, bills and receipts, but no ordinary receipts. They were for arms. He noticed the same address cropping up on a lot of the papers and he lined them up side by side to check it was the same. It was the address of a building; it was a warehouse, just like the two guys were talking about. In each case above the address he saw a name, he had no idea whether it was significant or not or whether he’d heard it before.

  ‘Maloof Enterprises.’

  Chapter 56

  Sometime around three p.m. in the afternoon Ramirez was in the precinct and he got a call from Officer Christine O’Hara. The Officer was attending a call out from a woman walking her dog in Fort Greene Park.

  ‘Ramirez here, what can I do for you Officer?’

  ‘We have an unconscious girl fitting the description of Tamika Achebe. The first girl to go missing? She was found lying on a park bench by a Mrs. Lusardi who was out with her dog. Sir, the park is two streets away from her home.’

  Ramirez turned to Finch and told him they have the first girl. Stone listened intently.

  Ramirez went back to the call, ‘Is she alive Officer?’

  ‘Yes Sir. She’s unresponsive though, appears to have been drugged but...she is alive.’

  ‘Has she been...’ Ramirez halted for a moment realizing that Stone was sitting in the office, but it was his duty to ask the question. ‘...was she sexually assaulted?’

  ‘Can’t say for sure Sir,’ said O’Hara. ‘There’s some evidence of blood down there but I’ll have to leave that to the docs.’

  ‘Have uniforms tape the area off O’Hara and keep people away at all costs, especially the media, you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly Sir.’

  ‘When is she being shipped out to hospital? And where will she be taken?’

  ‘Any minute Sir, they’re loading the gurney now, she’ll go to King’s County.’

  ‘Next of kin Officer?’ asked Ramirez.

  ‘The mother’s here now, news has spread pretty fast, the dog lady knows someone who knows the family etc. etc. You never saw someone so happy who couldn't stop crying. She’s going with Tamika in the ambulance.’

  ‘Good job O’Hara, I’ll be with you in thirty minutes max.’

  Finch was already placing a colored pushpin to mark the location where the girl been found in the park on the map below Tamika’s details on the wall. He walked over to Stone and put a hand on his shoulder, ‘She’s alive, Stone.’

  Stone knew what finch was trying to do, he stared out of the window, it didn’t ease the deep seated panic that started in his stomach and filled his whole chest with acrid bile.

  Ramirez arranged for a CSI team to accompany him to the scene, he told Finch to keep working on the leads that they had. Stone stood up and said he’s going with him. Ramirez shot him down, ‘The best place for you is right here Stone, I know it’s tough but you’ll only get in the way.’

  Stone knew he was right, but he needed to do something soon he thought, otherwise he’d go crazy. The words ‘sexually assaulted’ were playing over in his head.

  Mac left the house the same way as he entered; he walked calmly over to the rental and drove away. He waited until he was a few streets clear of the house before sending the information to Finch. He text the plate of the car and attached a
photo of the dead man and then called Stone.

  Stone picked up and said, ‘Finch just got the info buddy, you okay?’

  ‘Never mind about me, how are you holding up? Any news?’

  ‘They’ve just found the first girl that went missing. She’d been drugged Mac but she’s alive. Ramirez is heading over there right now.’

  Mac didn’t know what the right response was, Stone would be so worried about Laura, the only news he wanted to hear was that she was home, safe and well. ‘That’s something mate?’ he said. Stone didn’t answer. He was still deep in thought, yet he was trying to stay positive.

  ‘I guess so,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I’ve got one more lead to follow up mate, then I’ll be back, we’ll find Laura, I promise.’

  Before Stone could answer he was gone. The line went dead.

  Tariq worked fast. He’d already run the plate number from Mac’s text through the DMV database and came up with the same owner’s details as the SUV from the hotel, the plate numbers were sequential.

  Tariq ran over to where Finch and Stone were sitting. ‘Look Sir,’ he was addressing Finch. ‘Plate 003MLF is also…’ Finch shushed Tariq with his finger over his mouth. Luckily Stone was deep in thought and was looking out of the window and hadn’t heard what Tariq was saying yet. ‘… I mean the vehicle is registered to ‘Maloof Enterprises.’

  The name Maloof jerked Stone out of his trance, Stone muttered, ‘Maloof, Maloof, where have I heard that name before?’

  Ramirez hadn’t left yet. He came back into his office to collect his cell phone from the desk and heard Stone repeating the name.

  ‘From me,’ he said. ‘He’s the guy that was putting the squeeze on me. He’s bad news, how does he fit in?’

  ‘The car that Mac saw two guys putting a dead body into just now, belongs to a man called Maloof,’ Tariq explained.

  ‘We’ve got a bigger problem than we thought,’ said Ramirez. ‘Where’s Mac now?’

  ‘He called in to say he had one more lead to chase, then he rang off,’ said Stone.

  ‘Shit.’

  Officer James O’Reilly came through the double doors, he needed to open both to get through. He was carrying a piece of paper and handed it to Finch. Finch studied the information and he also said, ‘Shit.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Ramirez.

  ‘The mug shot,’ he said. ‘The photo of the guy sent in by Mac, the bomber, its Abdul Habib, otherwise known as ‘Scarface’. He’s a known assassin and wanted over here and in just about every capital in Europe.’

  Stone put his head in his hands. He’d just been told that the man Mac was chasing, the man who bombed the Deli, was a known assassin.

  ‘There’s something real funny going on here, if they’d have wanted that girl Tamika dead, she would be, but she’s not , don’t give up hope Stone. Something will break. I might be able to get some info out of her at the hospital. But, one thing is for sure, Mac is in real danger,’ said Ramirez looking around the room. Everyone was hanging on his every word. ‘I gotta go, but somehow Mac must be warned off pursuing these guys.’

  Stone tried to call Mac’s cell phone several times but it appeared to be switched off.

  He now had something else to worry about.

  Stone didn’t think it was possible but just for a minute he was as equally worried about the danger Mac was facing as he was about Laura. Their association went back almost ten years. They were business partners, but because of the scrapes and ordeals they went through in post-war Iraq, and more recently in Trinidad, they were much more than that.

  When Stone was twenty five, and not long out of university, his father, who had amassed a small fortune on Wall Street, wanted his son to reap the benefit of his wealth before he passed on. He bequeathed a sum of money to him that he could not access until his thirtieth birthday. The other proviso was that he must invest a minimum of fifty percent in a business of his choice. Construction was what he knew and loved and after returning from Iraq he planned to set up his own contracting business, but he wanted an equal partner, and it was a no-brainer. Mac had been invalided out of the army six months before Stone left. He received a large sum in compensation for his injuries from the contractor - that he had been seconded to - clearing and refurbishing buildings and facilities, the contractor that Stone had worked for.

  On one particular day, after the team sweeping an area for re-building had left, saying it had been neutralized, Mac checked it over for himself before handing it over to Stone. There was an explosion from inside the building. Mac survived but ended up in a wheelchair.

  It was widely regarded that Mac had saved Stone’s life that day by taking the hit himself.

  The doctors told Mac that he would never walk again. He spent months in hospital in Germany and was due for discharge when he began to get feelings back in his legs. Somehow they had misdiagnosed his injuries, a swelling next to his spine reduced and within weeks he had made a miraculous recovery. He kept the compensation and remembered Stone’s intention to start his own contracting company. They met up in New York, spent some time putting plans together and opened up for business in the Caribbean in 2006. He was more than a business partner.

  Ramirez faced a barrage of reporters when he tried to leave the precinct and wondered why the hell he hadn’t taken the back door. There was at least three TV crews camped out on the sidewalk and several radio station’s vans also. Lt. Grolnick was standing at the top of the steps and had half a dozen microphones stuck in his face, he was fencing questions from the media about a rumor that one of the young girls had been found in Fort Greene Park. There was a cacophony of voices asking questions, ‘Is she dead?’ ‘Has she been raped?’ ‘Which girl is it?’ ‘Can you make a statement? ‘Do you think there’ll be another two girls Officer?’

  Grolnick was holding up his hands saying ‘One at a time guys, please one at a time.’

  Ramirez thought he would leave him to it and crawled past shielding his face from the cameras. Until he heard someone call him out by name.

  Only it wasn’t a reporter.

  ‘Senior Detective Ramirez?’

  He took one look and knew immediately who they were but he asked the question anyway.

  “Who are you?’

  Two smartly dressed men in dark raincoats, both well over six feet, approached him from the under the shadow of a tree and held out their badges. One guy was broader, stockier than the other. He had a round face and slicked back hair.

  He spoke first.

  ‘FBI.’ The agents held up their badges, ‘I’m Agent Hunter Wade and this is Agent Geoff Gray.’

  ‘What’s this all about? I’m already late for a crime scene.’

  Agent Wade took out a wad of photographs from his inside pocket and showed them to Ramirez. ‘You know this man?’

  ‘Shit yeah. Why?’

  The photos were of Mac.

  Ramirez thumbed through them; he saw there was a timestamp on each of the photos. The first had Mac walking up the driveway to a house at 14:05:15, in the second, moments later, he was opening a side gate to the back of the property, and in the third he was leaving the house thirty minutes later at 14:36:33 p.m.

  ‘Where were these taken?’ asked Ramirez.

  Gray, the younger, bald guy answered with a smirk all over his skinny face. ‘Afraid we can’t tell you that Detective. If you know him, tell him to stay out of our way, and stay away from the house. He’ll get himself killed, or worse, ruin three month’s work. That includes you Detective.’

  ‘Screw your investigation. Where’s Mac now? Do you know?’

  ‘We’re not at...’

  ‘...liberty to say, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.’ Ramirez sarcastically finished off the ‘time old’ statement banded by all FBI Agents. ‘He’s in real danger guys,’ he spat. ‘What are you doing about it if you can’t tell me stuff.’

  ‘How do you know he’s in danger?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not at li
berty to say.’ Ramirez’s sarcasm hit the spot again. ‘Now, what are you doing?’

  Gray’s expression changed slowly from a smirk to an indignant grin.

  ‘Let’s just say we’re keeping an eye on him,’ he said.

  Ramirez was also getting angry and impatient. ‘Look, We’ve just found one of the missing girls, half-dead, drugged up to the eyeballs on a park bench, four more are still missing, this guy Mac was almost blown to bits yesterday and you can’t tell me a single thing, if anything happens to him and you don’t stop it ‘...cos of some greater cause’,’ Ramirez made the quotes sign with his fingers, ‘I’m coming after you, got it?’ Ramirez slammed the photos into Agent Wade’s chest and took off for the squad car waiting for him by the curb.

  Wade looked across at skinny face with a condescending smile as he was putting the photos back in his pocket.

  The FBI Agents left as covertly as they came.

  Chapter 57

  Lt. Grolnick stuck his head around the door of the squad room complaining about the media parked up outside the precinct. ‘They’re like vultures,’ he said. ‘Once they get a sniff of a body or a potential headline, they’re like a pack of wolves baying for a kill. If we have something for them we’ll issue a press release, don't they know that?’ he disappeared as fast as he came and everyone returned to their work.

  ‘Wolves or vultures, doesn’t matter, they’re all the same,’ Finch chuntered to himself.

  The room returned to a quiet hum of activity, Stone was walking back to the desk with coffees for him and Finch when his cell phone rang. Everyone looked up, nerves were starting to fray, the good news about the first missing girl being found alive had buoyed moral and what they didn’t need now was any bad news. They were all trying not to look but each time Stone’s phone rang it would either be Laura, they thought, calling to say she was okay, or...bad news.

  It was Eleanor, Stones wife calling.