Bleeding Blue

by Don Weston

  Bob Blaney’s shrewd eyes pierced me, but he said nothing.

  Schmautz got up and paced behind the table. “How do you know all of this?”

  “It’s the only way things fit. Gloria’s ex-husband, Ben Miller, goes to New York to take a new job. Gloria comes back to Idaho a month later and reports he died of a heart attack. Then she winds up in Portland as Mrs. Gloria Blaney.”

  “So?” Schmautz said. “What does that prove?”

  “As I mentioned earlier, the person she was having an affair with in Pocatello and Bob Blaney are the same person. Robert Paul also went to New York and he left a forwarding phone number with Pocatello, but it went to a message machine, and the calls were never returned. I think it was a way he could check and make sure there were no little problems that might surface later. Art Fleming tried to find him—even hired a private investigator until his money ran out.”

  I told them how Gloria bragged about Robert Paul becoming Bob Blaney and creating a new identity and a solid job history. She simply kept her own given name and added Paul’s false surname.

  “Gloria as much as admitted she killed Miller so she could marry Paul, who we know as Bob Blaney. She and Miller weren’t in New York long enough to meet anyone or establish residency. She killed him and left him as a John Doe for the authorities to file under unsolved cases. Then she stopped back in Pocatello to tell his colleagues he suffered a heart attack so no one would think to look for him, which freed her to marry her lover.”

  “That’s absurd,” Blaney said. “This woman murdered my wife in cold blood and now she’s trying to get away with it.”

  I ignored his accusation. “Angel contacted a Pocatello city clerk—you remember Grace don’t you Blaney? We sent pictures of you and Gloria to Mrs. Johnson and she identified them as Robert Paul and Gloria Miller. I’m sure we can get Grace to come here and make a positive ID.”

  Blaney sank into his chair, his chin on his chest.

  “Are you saying Gloria shot your brother?” Assistant D.A. Stone asked. “Why would she want him dead? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “She didn’t want Darrin dead. The assassin was trying to kill me, remember? Gloria was afraid I might track Art’s death to her, and she found somebody to stop me. At first, I thought her husband might have done it. After all, they were both trying to stay out of jail so they could tag along with Mayor Clemons to the state capital when he became governor.”

  “That’s never going to happen now,” Clemons said. “Why did I ever listen to that bitch?”

  “Is that a confession, your honor?” Schmautz asked.

  “Hell, no!” he said. “I did some things she asked me to, but I thought she was trying to help.”

  “What kind of things did you do for her?” I asked.

  “Little things at first. She suggested I put a man on you to make sure you were safe. That way I could also make sure you wouldn’t interfere with the investigation.”

  “Who did you have following me?”

  “Sgt. McGraw. I had him assigned to me so he could report on your activities—when he could find you. Each time he lost you someone got killed. I thought of replacing him, but Gloria was against it. She said it would be best to keep a tight lid on things.”

  “What else did she ask you to do?” I said.

  “She suggested we should cut Steve Thomas loose. She said McGraw could keep an eye on him and he’d either incriminate himself or lead us to you. That was before you paid us a surprise visit and then escaped from my office.”

  I looked at McGraw, then Steve. “No one else was assigned to watch me other than McGraw?”

  “No. We couldn’t afford to bring anyone else in on it.”

  I turned and glared at Earl. “Why were you the first one to show up at the scene when everyone thought I’d been tossed over the seawall?”

  Earl stammered. “How did you know I was there?”

  “I saw you. I was hidden a few feet away. You showed up almost immediately, followed by a couple of civilians, then McGraw. But you were the very first one on the scene. Were you following me, Earl?”

  “No. I mean not so much following you as tracking you. I got a call from Tuttle. He said you were rattling his cage. He thought it would be a good idea to see what you were up to and I agreed.

  “When I got to City Hall there was a real buzz. People were gossiping about Eileen being escorted out of City Hall by security and how the cops were looking to arrest you. I talked to one of the security guards and he told me you’d gone in the direction of Waterfront Park. Cop cars were cruising all the main streets so I headed for the riverfront. Then I heard muffled gunshots a block away and ran toward them. I was walking along the edge of the park a bit later when I heard two more gunshots further down. I ran toward them but I wasn’t sure where the shots originated.

  “Eventually I ran into a bicyclist and asked if he’d heard anything. He said ‘no man, but some dude just threw a huge sack of garbage over the wall.’ I ran to the seawall and saw what looked like it could be a body wrapped in canvas. I made a Nine-one-one call and then a man and a woman stopped and said they saw a woman of your description earlier. They were at the other end of the park when the shooting occurred and they came back to see what was going on.”

  I thought about what Earl told me. I figured he still could have been the one who fired the shot at me by the Max train.

  “Is this going anywhere,” Stone said. “It’s starting to feel like a fishing expedition to me. I need something I can take to a jury. I’ve given you some leeway, but it feels like you really don’t know who you’re looking for.”

  “I’m getting there, if you can be a bit more patient, Mr. Stone . . . after Mayor Clemons told me there was a warrant for my arrest, I headed for my car, but I was blocked by police cruisers. It felt to me like I was being followed and I was right. Someone took a shot at me with a silencer at the Max stop. A silencer doesn’t mute everything, so Earl could have heard it.

  “I zigzagged toward the park and found Steve walking around like a lost puppy. At first, I thought it was he who shot at me. I believed then he killed Darrin and, for a moment, I was thinking of plugging him and getting my revenge. But one glance at his face told me he was as confused as me. And I had the familiar feeling I was being watched again.

  “Anyway, I realized why Steve was cut loose. It was to get more evidence against him. And what better way than to have him at large when I was killed. It wouldn’t do to have me killed while he was in jail. They’d lose their scapegoat. You see, they jumped the gun in charging Steve.

  “When I was away questioning witnesses in Pocatello, Gloria and Bob must have heard about it and got nervous. McGraw probably reported me boarding the flight. When I came back and wanted to talk to Gloria first thing the next morning, she panicked. It was time to finally get rid of the troublesome P.I. She talked the Mayor into releasing Steve and planned to kill me herself last night.”

  “Only we threw her a curve when it looked like I had killed Billie and thrown her into the river,” Steve said. “That was our plan. One of us had to die and one of us had to disappear. We made it look like Billie was dead, and then I had to disappear.”

  “We had to protect Steve too,” Dag said. “He called me from a pay phone, and I met him under the Burnside Bridge. I took him home and have been babysitting him ever since. You know, to give him an alibi in case anyone else got killed.”

  Chris seemed to brighten. “Hey, does that mean I can leave? I gotta appointment somewhere soon.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Can you tell me why you ran off last night?”

  He scratched his head. “Well, like I said last night. Every time I’m with you someone shoots at me. I didn’t want to take another chance. I mean the cops were coming, you know?”

  “You didn’t feel safe with the police coming?” I said.

  “Nah. You remember what that little guy said before someone popped him?”

  “About his handler possi
bly being a policeman?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. He said he followed his handler to City Hall and went through those offices to find the guy’s boss. I don’t trust anyone now. Not the cops. Not anyone sitting at this table for sure. I just want to go somewhere safe. Even prison is starting to look better at the moment.”

  “So, there you have it,” I said. “The assassin working with Gloria to kill me could have been Earl, Steve, Chris, Blaney, Mayor Clemons, or Tuttle. Earl is a P.I. and has been working on some confidential investigation for Commissioner Tuttle. Maybe they were afraid I was getting too close to something or maybe one of them was working with Gloria. She had half the men in Portland leering after her.

  “The Mayor and Gloria have been having an affair, and she’s been leading him around by the nose. Maybe she got him to commit murder for her.”

  “That’s a lie!” Clemons said.

  I shrugged. “Chris showed up suddenly at Finnegan’s and saved my life. But he is easily manipulated. Maybe he had been working for Gloria and had second thoughts. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to stick around after I chased off Gloria’s partner. And if the assassin hadn’t taken a shot at me last night, Steve wouldn’t have needed his alibi. But he was with Dag, so at least I know it wasn’t him.”

  “Thanks, Billie,” Steve said. “But I could have sent someone after you.”

  Dag shook his head. “He didn’t make any calls.”

  “And of course, Blaney embezzled over $500,000 from Pocatello,” I said. "He’s knee deep in cover-ups. I bet he even siphoned some money from the city of Portland. Mayor, you hired Blaney. Have you balanced your books lately?”

  “I don’t . . . .” Clemons face turned red.

  The D.A. smiled and almost licked his chops. He wrote notes furiously on a small memo pad.

  “My guess is Blaney has been up to his old tricks,” I said. “Tuttle became suspicious and hired Earl to find proof.”

  “Since you’ve figured it out, I might as well confess,” Tuttle said. “I did hire Earl to prove that Blaney was embezzling.”

  Blaney reacted by sulking.

  “So which one of them is the other killer?” Angel asked. “I hope it isn’t Earl.”

  “Blaney and Clemons are the only two people with a strong enough motive to cover things up, but I don’t think either of them has the guts to even order someone killed. Blaney is a wiz at numbers, but he’s an embezzler, not a murderer. He’d just disappear and show up somewhere with a new identity. He probably knew what Gloria was doing, maybe even helped plan it, but he wouldn’t be able to do the deed himself. And the Mayor isn’t murderous, although I think he might like to make an exception for me. He just isn’t very smart.”

  Clemons face reddened more.

  “This secret assassin was someone working for Gloria,” I said. “She hired The Jet to kill me in the warehouse because she found out I was looking for Art Fleming, and she had killed Art to protect her husband and herself so they could become rich and successful and move to the state capitol. When she somehow learned The Jet had been going through her husband’s office, she had him killed. She already seduced someone with this contingency in mind and got him to do the deed.”

  “That sounds like something she’d do,” Blaney said. “Why couldn’t she just have come to me? We could have paid Fleming off and been done with it. Now all these people are dying, and she—she’s dead too.”

  He started sobbing and I noticed McGraw behind him smirking.

  “I guess that just leaves you, McGraw,” I said.

  “Me?” he said.

  “You killed my brother and you also killed The Jet. You fired the shot that killed Darrin from the adjacent hospital parking structure. It was a simple thing. You were on watch for potential assassins coming after me when I got out of the hospital. When you took the shot all you had to do was to drop your rifle in your trunk. No one was going to search a police vehicle for the murder weapon. I’ll wager it was still in your trunk when you drove me home that day.”

  “You’re hallucinating,” he said.

  “You followed me when I went to Cathedral Park. It was dumb luck we went to meet The Jet. You probably brought your sniper rifle into the park planning to finally finish me off. But The Jet was in the line of fire, so you took him out first and then tried to kill me. When it was time to frame a patsy, you tossed the murder weapon in Steve’s trunk and phoned a tip to Homicide.”

  “That’s a lie,” McGraw said. “The D.A. said it. You’re fishing. Hoping someone will take the bait. My only job was to follow you. Period.”

  McGraw paced nervously on the side of the room near a window and stopped to look outside as if for and answer. I backed my wheelchair away from the table and pivoted so I could better face him.

  “The Mayor said you kept losing me whenever anything bad happened. He said you lost me when The Jet was murdered. Did you lose me again when my garage blew up? How about yesterday at Waterfront Park or last night at Finnegan’s?”

  “I was supposed to be watching Steve.”

  “But you didn’t, did you? I think you were following me after I left the Mayor’s office, hoping I wouldn’t get caught long enough so you could kill me and lay the blame on Steve. But you missed again and by the time you got to the waterfront, you couldn’t believe your luck. You saw or heard Steve and I struggle and the gunshots and you saw Steve carry a canvass bundle and dump it in the river. You didn’t want to be the witness so you dropped back and let Steve go, figuring you could collar him later. You called Gloria, then the police dispatcher, and interviewed enough witnesses to be able to piece a case together against Steve.”

  “You can’t prove a thing. I never even met Gloria before.”

  “I can prove it. You see last night when you were calling to report in to Gloria she was peeved. She wanted to see a body. You told her you were all doing all that was humanly possible, but the body could have drifted a mile down the river.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You shouldn’t have been talking on your phone where anyone can overhear you.”

  “I don’t know what you think someone heard. I reported to my Captain a few times and the Mayor once. That’s all.”

  “I happened to eavesdrop on another conversation Gloria was having with you in Finnegan’s a little later. I didn’t get all of it. Just that she was surprised as hell to see me and told you so. You must have asked what I was doing at Finnegan’s when I was supposed to be at the bottom of the Willamette River, and she said she didn’t know. Or maybe she didn’t know who was wrapped in the canvass in the river—it was a bit of stage metal Steve and I rolled into a tent canvass. Gloria directed you to find out what was in the bundle and said she’d take care of me.

  “And she tried but didn’t succeed because my good friend Chris popped up unexpectedly to save my life.” Chris smiled sheepishly. “But you had to find out what I was doing at Finnegan’s. You heard the shots and raced to the scene in time to catch us standing over Gloria, obviously dead and partially floating in the shallow water, and you decided to avenge her death. Or maybe you were just protecting yourself by then.”

  “Is this true?” Schmautz said.

  “Hell no!” McGraw said.

  “Can you prove any of this?” Schmautz asked.

  “I thought I wounded him last night when he tried to ambush me again. Maybe it was a flesh wound he could hide.” McGraw’s hand went instinctively to his thigh, and I knew I was right.

  “You could check his thigh for a bullet wound, but I have another way to prove what I’m saying if you’d give me a minute to make a quick call.” I rummaged through my purse and pulled out a cell phone.

  Schmautz nodded and I searched for the proper button on the phone and hit redial. I waited for an answer as it rang again and again. No one spoke. Meanwhile, a vibrating noise sounded from the vicinity of McGraw. I raised my eyebrows.

  “Is that you vibrating, McGraw?”


  Beads of sweat formed above his upper lip. “I’ll get it later,” he said.

  “You might as well answer it now. My party isn’t responding.”

  He nervously fished the phone out of his shirt pocket and looked at it. “This is some kind of trick,” he said.

  “It’s a call from the grave, you mean?” I said.

  McGraw stared as his caller ID and Gloria’s phone number.

  “This is Gloria’s phone,” I said. “McGraw’s number appears on her call history about twenty times yesterday.”

  McGraw raised a formidable service gun at me. “I guess the charade is over,” he said. “You.” He pointed to Angel. “I want you to go around and relieve these gentlemen of their guns.”

  Angel scrambled out of her chair and walked over to Dan, Jason, and Dag and retrieved their hand guns and dropped them at McGraw’s feet. She did the same with Schmautz. “Check the rest,” McGraw said.

  Earl gave up a 25-caliber revolver. No one else appeared to have armaments, but I knew Angel probably had three guns on her person or purse.

  McGraw puffed himself up, feeling in control now. “It’s all your fault, you bitch. Gloria was right about you. She knew you would never quit. That’s why she wanted you dead.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “We were going to get married.”

  “What?” Blaney and Clemons said in unison.

  “Yeah, she said she loved me. We kept it on the quiet side because she had plans. She was going to be the wife of Clemons when he became governor, and I was going to be his personal bodyguard. We’d have plenty of connections and money opportunities and afterwards she’d divorce Clemons and marry me.”

  “Did you really think that would ever happen?” I said, incredulously.

  “You bet. We were in love.”

  “Gloria doesn’t divorce men,” I said. “She uses them and she kills them. She killed her first husband, Ben Miller, so she could hook up with Blaney. She probably would have killed Blaney, or got you to do it, so she could marry Clemons. Of course, if she really was in love with you, I guess she could arrange for Clemons to have an accident. It would have to be carefully done, because the death of an ex-governor would be closely scrutinized. And what do you think would have happened when she got bored with you?”