by K. J. Dahlen
"How do you figure that?"
"These seven men share something special. These seven men died in the manner that they killed. Malcolm raped and murdered, when they found him his private parts were stuffed down his throat. Earl beat his wife under the influence, they found him beat to death with several empty bottles of whiskey nearby. Don’t you see? Gabriel defended these men. They were all guilty yet Gabriel got them off. Micah would see this as a betrayal. He was going to prove Gabriel was as guilty as the rest when it came to condoning the liars and the cheaters. He would think that by exposing what Gabriel had done with these men it would be enough to disgrace him in the eyes of the laws he believed in."
"But these men were found innocent by a jury of their peers. I had no control over that," Gabriel told her.
"In Micah’s eyes without the lies you fostered on the court these men would have been found guilty and punished accordingly," Sable argued.
"I get it now," Gabriel said sadly. "It wasn’t lies I told the courts. It was maybe stretching the real truths a bit but it wasn’t out and out lies. I offered an alternative supposition about how the events might have played out. Micah might have thought that I lied, but I really didn’t. All these cases were well before his time so all he had to go by were the court records. I was a defense attorney at the time. It was my job to defend the clients to the best of my ability."
Sable reached out her hand and touched Gabriel’s arm. "In Micah’s eyes you distorted the truth in favor of your clients, and he found that concept objectionable. He raised the boys to think justice should be swift and fitting the crimes they were charged with. Any sane person knows that today justice is often delayed, but it’s delayed for a reason. Nine times out of ten that reason is to find out why the person committed the crime."
"I taught that boy to love the law as I did. I taught him that justice for all was the backbone of our society and that sometimes justice was slow in coming, but it always caught up with the people it protected. He took what I taught him and warped it into something it was never meant to be. He didn’t become a defender of the law; he became a vigilante, a common thug hiding behind the law to administer punishment not fitting the crime."
Chapter Eleven
"I’d better make a call and find out what happened over at Scott’s," Nick told Sable.
At that moment Nick’s cell phone rang. He frowned when he flipped it open. He listened for a moment then snapped it shut. "That was Detective Brown. He was called back to Scott Black’s a few minutes ago by one of Scott’s neighbors and he wants us to join him. In fact he insists on us joining him."
Sable raised her eye brows. Nick noted her expression nodding. "He said there was something we had to see."
Nick glanced over at Max. "I need you to stay here to protect Gabriel and Emma. We shouldn’t be gone long."
A few minutes later Nick and Sable drove up to the front of Scott Black’s house. Police cars and ambulances with their red and blue lights flashing told their own story. There were at least a dozen officers milling around Scott’s yard.
Sable and Nick got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Nick flashed his FBI badge at the officer standing at the front door. He allowed them to enter by holding up the yellow police tape.
When they entered they saw Detective Ronnie Brown standing in the hall. Ronnie glanced up and waved them over to him.
Stepping over a broken coffee table Sable glanced around the room in shock. "My lord they made a mess."
The room was in shambles. Cushions from the sofa were all over the floor; lamps had been tipped over and broken. The glass topped coffee table was shattered. Glass shards crunched under their feet.
Blood was everywhere and there was a covered body off to her right. Sable glanced down the hall toward the game room and found more blood smeared on the walls.
Ronnie motioned toward Nick and said, "Follow me." He turned, walking down the hall to the master bedroom. Opening the doors Nick and Sable viewed the carnage in Scott’s room.
"My god…" Nick whispered as he saw what Sam and Shawn had done a few hours ago. The struggle had been one of life and death. Death had won.
The window was open but the curtains had been torn down and lay crumpled on the floor. The bar Scott had in the corner was smashed and broken bottles lay everywhere. His bedside table stood in the middle of the room on its side.
The king size bed was pulled away from the wall. The mattress was half on and half off the bed. There was blood everywhere. Whatever happened here Scott had fought to save his life.
"Where is Scott’s body?" Nick asked.
Ronnie walked over to the bed pointing to an area between the bed and the wall. Nick and Sable walked over to where he stood and glanced down. Sable gasped and turned away.
Scott stared at the ceiling with lifeless eyes. Blood pooled under him from a number of slashes on his chest and legs. But what stood out the most was the fact his throat had been sliced almost all the way through.
"I think you need to share information with us," Ronnie told them. "I never should have allowed you to leave this morning."
"It wouldn’t have made any difference," Sable told him quietly. "Scott would still be dead."
Ronnie seemed upset. "Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps all of this could have been avoided if we had known what to look for."
"You don’t understand. You couldn’t have stopped this," Sable tried to explain.
"You keep saying that but what does it mean?" Ronnie asked. "This didn’t have to happen."
"We told you Scott was targeted by a pair of killers," Nick said.
"The men that did this are not mere killers," Ronnie told them. "They butchered these two men and I want to know why."
"I told you this morning Scott was targeted …" Nick began but Ronnie interrupted him.
"I know what you told me this morning but you never told me why."
"He was targeted because twenty-seven years ago he beat the rap for a crime he committed," Sable explained.
"What does that mean exactly?" Ronnie asked.
"It’s too complicated to get into and make you understand everything," Sable told him.
"Well you’d better tell me something I can understand because this is getting weird. Not only that but whoever did this left you a note." He moved over to the wall opposite the bed and removed a sheet. Written in blood were the words, "Now the original six are dead. Sister you’re next"
Sable felt cold as she read the words. She glanced at Nick then back to the wall. "I guess the message says it all. Now they will come after us with no holds barred."
"Damn," Nick swore. He glanced at Ronnie nodding, "We have to get back to our office. I would like to see any reports from the crime scene."
"Watch your backs. I have a feeling this crime scene is nothing compared to what they have planned for your friend there.
"You could be right about that," Nick agreed.
About twenty minutes later they arrived back at the office. Max glanced at Sable and saw the look on her face. He glanced over at Nick and saw him shake his head.
Sable joined Gabriel and Emma while Nick filled Max in about what they found.
"It was a very ugly scene. Whoever went back to Scott’s after we left, really left the place a mess."
"Everything has been quiet here," Max told him. He turned to watch Sable for a moment. "How is she holding up?"
Nick glanced at Sable. He had been worried all the way back from Scott’s. She hadn’t said a word to him since she had seen the message on the wall. "She’s holding her own. For how long is anyone’s guess."
Sable stood and walked over to Nick and Max. "Maybe I could try reasoning with Sam again."
"How are you going to do that?" Gabriel asked as he joined them.
"He called me on my cell phone. At first I wondered how he got the number, but if Greg is working with them he must have given it to Sam. All I have to do is hit redial" Sable explained as she reached for her phone.
"Hello?" a young male voice answered her call. His voice didn’t sound like Sam’s voice.
"Is this Shawn?"
"Yeah, who is this?"
"This is your sister, Sable."
"What the hell do you want and how did you get this number?" Shawn demanded.
"I just hit redial."
"So Sam went behind my back and made contact with you already."
"He’s called me several times already."
"Damn him. He wasn’t supposed to call you until we were ready," Shawn swore.
"Which rule did he break by calling me ahead of time?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone line. "How do you know about the rules?"
"Sam thought I should know them since I’m one of Micah’s children too. He wanted me to understand why the two of you had to finish what Micah started."
"Do you? Understand, I mean."
"No, I don’t," Sable admitted. "To me Micah was nothing more than a killer I had to hunt down and put out of his misery."
Shawn snorted. "And you say Micah was a killer. You aren’t any better. You murdered him in the same way he stopped the people that got away with their crimes."
"Did Micah ever tell you what he did to me when I was four years old?" Sable asked her brother.
"What do you mean?"
"After he murdered his brother Richard he dropped us both into a dry well, slid a cement cover over the top then walked away. I was still alive when he did that. Did he tell you that?"
After a long silence Shawn finally said, "I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t have walked away, not if you were still alive down there."
"But he did. Did you also know that he had plans to murder you and Sam? After he murdered everyone else in his family, he was going to take his own life. Did he share that information with the two of you?"
"That’s a damn lie," Shawn protested.
"No, it’s the truth. On the backs of the pages we got from you he spelled it all out."
"Liar. I’ve seen those pages. There’s nothing written on the back of them."
"There is if you hold them up to the light," Sable assured him. Sable picked up Gabriel’s rules of life and glanced through them quickly. "Ok, let me ask you something. Is one of Micah’s rules something like be true to yourself and who you are?"
Another long silence greeted her. Finally Shawn asked, "How did you know that?"
"Micah learned seven rules of life from his grandfather, Gabriel. He distorted those rules to justify the life he taught you and Sam."
"Why would he do that?"
"So he could justify his own life of murder and mayhem. Micah wasn’t born to kill people; he chose to become a murderer. He liked watching people die. He told me once I should never have been born, and that he was going to make sure I died before he did."
"Then why didn’t he murder you?"
"He almost did, but I got him first. He tried and failed to kill me as a child. He murdered his mother and beat his grandfather almost to death, but in the end he died by my hand," Sable explained. "And I would do it again."
"Then you are no better a person than he was," Shawn told her. "But you’re wrong about one thing."
"What’s that?"
"He didn’t murder his mother. Greg killed Jill and it was Greg who wrote the message in her blood."
Sable’s eyes got huge in her face as reality sank in. "Why would he do that?"
"Because Dad asked him to," Shawn told her. "Dad needed to know if Greg could carry on his work if something happened to him."
"Oh my god. Micah was crazy." Sable was stunned by this news.
"No, Dad wasn’t crazy. The law is broken and he was trying to fix it." Shawn ended the call.
Sable slowly closed her cell phone. She couldn’t speak for a few minutes as she absorbed what Shawn had said. As a profiler she was beginning to understand the mind of a killer, but as a daughter she was beginning to see the truth in what her father believed. She didn’t know which one was worse.
"What did he tell you?" Nick wanted to know.
Sable glanced over to where Gabriel had joined Emma on the sofa. She didn’t want him to hear her statement. "He said it was Greg that killed Jill and left the message in her blood."
"What?" Nick was shocked. "Why would he do something like that?"
"Micah asked him to do it. To prove he was able to finish Micah’s work if anything happened to him."
"That doesn’t make any sense."
"It makes perfect sense. Micah knew he was dying. He came home to murder his family before he died. Shawn told me Micah believed the law was broken, and he was going to fix it. He was going to try to bring back the old ways where justice was swift and fitting of the crime." She picked up the Melinda papers. "This is the way Micah thought the laws should be. Whatever you did to someone else is the sentence the law should carry. Today Micah would have carried out his plan. He’s dead so his sons and father will finish his work."
"But they can’t finish it if we’re in the police station. They know they can’t get to us in here."
Suddenly an alarm began to shriek. It wasn’t the fire alarm but it was loud and filled Sable’s heart with dread. "They can if they call in a bomb threat."
Nick began gathering the papers up into a bundle. Max grabbed his computer while they all heard people scurrying in the halls.
"What’s going on?" Emma asked.
"We have to evacuate the building," Sable told her.
"Why, what is the alarm all about?"
"Someone called in a bomb threat."
"Oh dear," Emma was stunned.
"Let’s go out through the basement. My car is parked down there," Nick suggested.
"Yeah, so is mine," Max told them. "We should probably use my van instead of your car. There’s more room."
"We’ll have to find somewhere to hide Gabriel and Emma for a few hours anyway," Nick said.
By the time they arrived in the basement several officers were already there. Nick threw his keys to someone he knew and asked him to follow them to a safe house. A few minutes later Max drove his van out of the parking structure. As he turned the corner Sable glanced into the rear view mirror. Nick’s car was right behind them. As it pulled out of the structure something flashed from underneath the car and the car exploded into a fiery ball of flames.
Max slammed on the brakes. They all turned to look. "What the hell?" Nick swore as he watched his car burn.
Fire trucks arrived in seconds as they were already on their way. By the time they set up and began pouring water on the car they fire was almost out. The driver of the car was dead the moment the bomb had gone off. There was nothing left except a burnt skeleton of what was once a human being.
Nick turned to Sable and Max. "I’d better stay here and deal with this. You two head for the safe house. I’ll call you later."
Nick turned to see Captain James walking over to him as Max drove off. "Who was in the car?"
"Bill Opal. He offered to follow us."
"Ok, I know you don’t have to tell me anything about your cases, but what the hell is going on here? First, your offices get all shot up then a bomb threat is called in and your car explodes killing a cop. Not only that but a fire chief just informed me two houses have been firebombed today, and you told them to check one of the houses out before the bomb went off. I think it’s time you came clean about the details of your investigation."
"Normally I wouldn’t share our case with anyone, but I think you’re right. We’re dealing with a pair of murderers. They are twin brothers and they are determined to murder every member of their family. That bomb," Nick pointed to his car, "was meant to take out their sister, Sable Quinn. Their targets are Sable Quinn, Gabriel and Emma Reardon."
"Judge Reardon?" Captain James asked.
"One of the houses blown up today belonged to them."
"What is the connection to the Reardons?"
"Our suspects are Gabriel and Emma�
�s great grandsons. Sable killed their father about a month ago."
"I read about that in the paper. Wasn’t Micah Reardon her father too?"
"We thought we had them this morning at Scott Black’s, but we missed them. Oh by the way, we think they doubled back to Black’s to finish what they started. We were called back to Scott’s house a little earlier. Scott and his bodyguard Curt are both dead, and it was a messy scene."
"I think we got a call on that just before the alarm went off. A neighbor called in a disturbance." Captain James glanced at the burnt car then turned his gaze back to Nick. "How do I get hold of you in the meantime?"
Nick handed him a card and asked, "Can you call me a cab? I have to get to the safe house we put our guests in, but I don’t want to get a ride from a police car."
"Sure. Just make sure you aren’t being followed."
"Have them pick me up at the corner of Cannel and Swift streets." Nick turned and began walking away from the police station.
Before he turned away, Captain James scanned the crowd gathering outside the police station for anyone paying particular attention to Nick’s departure. When a young man began following Nick up the street and crossed the street moments after Nick, Captain James reached for his phone. His first call was to Nick to warn him of the man following him. His second call was to the cab company. He almost followed Nick the six blocks to meet his cab, but he knew the uniform he wore would give him away.
Instead he saw one of his detectives standing there watching the chaos. "Lonnie," He called out.
Detective Lonnie Grant turned his head and walked over to him. "Do you know what Nick Ramer looks like?"
Lonnie titled his head. "I see him everyday, why?"
"Because he’s on his way to a safe house to protect witnesses, and he’s being followed. I need you to make sure he’s not compromised."
"What do you need me to do?"
"Hike up to Cannel and Swift and make sure that no one follows after he’s picked up by a cab."
"Sure. What does the guy following him look like?"
"He’s a younger guy, maybe twenty, wearing a blue shirt and jeans. He’s also got a red backpack."