She had to figure out who this Richard was. She had the fingerprints in her possession or copies of them at least. She wondered if the guy in Miami would be able to do anything with them, he’d had a few days and the delay didn’t set well with her. She had to concede that this ‘Richard’ might not be in the data base, especially if he hadn’t any reason to be so. She was of two minds about the idea of a national data base with everyone’s fingerprints on file. On one hand it would make identification easier, and on another hand it would make identification way too easy, big brother watching and all that. She was a big proponent of smaller government. The politicians held way too much power and played with way too much money, she had seen how both power and money corrupted the most innocent man or woman. She knew herself that her money made a vast difference in her life. She paid her taxes religiously on the money she knew they might find if she chose to let them, the rest she socked away in ways they would never find, but it maintained a life style she enjoyed, had worked hard for, and she had paid her dues in a myriad of ways.
“This is the captain speaking, I’ve put the seatbelt sign on, we are about to begin our descent into Los Angeles International Airport, thank you for flying with us, on behalf of my crew and myself we hope you had a pleasant flight.”
The attendants came around to collect cups and glasses of their drinks, dinner had been cleared away earlier. Alice smiled up at the attendant that took her wine glass that had been empty a long time since dinner. She knew it hadn’t done much to relax her but the meal sure had and she was grateful for the combination. She hadn’t taken off her seatbelt so she just sat up straighter in her seat waiting for them to land.
She didn’t need her passport to fly within the United States so she easily walked to collect her bag. She was looking forward to getting home and washing her clothes. She hadn’t intended to be gone so long and the few clothes she had brought had been well used. She could have had the hotel staff clean and press them but she liked having them done a certain way, her way. Remembering where her car was parked was no problem since her memory could be like a steal trap and she headed effortlessly with a free flowing stride towards the long term parking garage. It wasn’t too late and she was grateful for the time change, it meant she had a couple of hours of daylight left since she had left Miami and sat on the plane for those five hours. The day’s June glooms had burned off and it looked like an excellent ending to her day. She was thinking of things she had to do when she got home but it didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of her surroundings.
“I knew you’d have to come back to your car eventually,” a raspy male voice said to her left.
She knew instinctively who owned that voice. She was a highly intelligent individual and could figure such things and a lot more instantly. She stopped where she was, half a car block away from her own Porsche. She slowly let her briefcase slip to the handle of her suitcase that she propped up. The man had chosen a foolish spot to confront her she immediately noted. They weren’t that visible and no one was around, but then, he might have thought it ideal. “What do you want?” she asked politely. She examined him closely since they were only a couple of feet away from each other. He was wearing a suit coat and matching slacks, a white shirt, and a tie was tucked in one of the pockets of the coat.
He seemed to consider her question seriously for a moment. “What do I want?” he repeated back to her. “I want answers,” he said in his raspy voice.
She wondered briefly at that rasp in his voice, in a dispassionate way it intrigued her. “Answers?” she decided to play along, she was in no hurry and she was certain the man thought he was safe. Her briefcase strap was wrapped around the handle of her suitcase and she took a casual stance with her hands visible next to her belt buckle. She knew putting her hands in her pockets would alarm him and put her at a disadvantage.
“Yes, I have a lot of questions for you, you know who I am?” he asked, a touch of arrogance in his voice.
“I take it your Richard?” she asked instead in a bored ‘let’s get on with this’ voice.
“Yes, I’m Richard, I am sure you got Bev to talk. She was incoherent when we freed her. How did you get the maid to find her? I walked in on a very embarrassing situation and had a lot of questions to answer for hotel security, including damages to their lock.”
She wanted to laugh at the sight that must have greeted the staff. They would have assumed that the shared room meant that Bev and Richard had played rough. They wouldn’t have appreciated the torn sheets or the pulled lamp cords, or the sight that was before them with Bev’s dumpy bloated body, but she thought the heart shaped bush was a nice touch. She hoped it had been embarrassing and delayed his return to the States. No sign of her amusement though passed her pretty face. She shrugged with apparent non-challance. “I merely asked for more towels and the bed to be made up in my room.” She remembered stopping at the hall phone before entering the elevator to check out.
He nodded as though it confirmed his own suspicions. “You ruined her you know, she was in shock when they took her away to the hospital.”
Again the shrug. “Well, you play with the big dogs you’re going to get bit,” she answered.
“And you’re a big dog aren’t you?” he said with a sneer.
Alice wasn’t about to stand there and be questioned or insulted. He was holding no gun that she could see, she had been curious enough to stop and perhaps find out some answers herself but she was becoming bored with the whole scenario. “Is there something specific you wanted?” she said with enough derision in her voice that he visibly stiffened.
“Yes, I want answers to my questions,” he said indignantly
“Well, I don’t have a lot of time for your ‘questions’ so do make it quick,” she answered knowing this would annoy him. She had assessed his character in the few minutes they stood talking. He was impatient for whatever answers he thought he deserved. He hadn’t liked being embarrassed at the hotel, it made him appear in a bad light. To men such as this how they looked was important.
“Oh, you’ll make time for MY questions,” he said importantly.
“I will?” she smiled at his assumption, “I don’t think so,” she moved to gather her belongings, one of her hands remaining by her belt buckle but the other reaching for her briefcase.
A gun suddenly appeared and she was not surprised. Something about his stance had triggered warning signals in her mind and she almost smiled at being able to read him so easily. “You will stay and answer my questions,” he ordered brusquely.
“I don’t think so,” she repeated. She knew there was a time for action and reaction. As he reached for her arm from where she had turned slightly away her other hand came up in an arc and her belt buckle sliced across his neck. His hand came up at the pain in his neck, it came away with blood all over his fingers, and he stared in horror at what she had done, the blood dripping from his hand. His other hand dropped the gun he had threatened her with, it clattered on the concrete and she swiped it under a car with her foot. His eyes started to immediately glaze. She knew where she had sliced him and how deep. She watched dispassionately as his lifeblood drained from him down his neck. He sank to his knees and then to the concrete floor.
Alice knew she might only have minutes as she wiped the blade of her belt buckle on him to clean it, deliberately smudging it to make it harder, but not impossible, she thought wryly, to identify. She rifled through his pockets looking to see what she could find. His suit coat had two on the outside and two on the inside. She found his cell and opened it to scan the numbers, those that had been recently called, superficially memorizing them before erasing the history, and then quickly reading through his contacts before wiping her prints from the phone and returning it to his pocket. What she found in the wallet of the one on the inside made the blood drain from her own face. She found an L.A.P.D. badge. His identification gave his address and his full name. He had a few credit cards and not much else, some loose change in his pants
pockets and a wad of cash in a curious little money holder. She was careful that her fingerprints didn’t touch but the edges of anything and even then she wiped them using his handkerchief. Who used handkerchiefs in this day and age? She took the money, she hesitated over the badge and then returned it to his pocket, she wasn’t a fool and maybe they would assume he had been mugged, robbed for his money. She took the money clip as well.
Minutes after she had sliced him she was walking towards her Porsche. Using her key button she turned off the alarm and opened the trunk putting her suitcase inside. She put her briefcase on the passenger seat and drove away. Stopping at the booth she paid her bill for the extended stay and was on her way down Century Boulevard in no time at all. Stopped at a light she examined her hands for some sign of shock, for some reaction to the fact that she had just killed another human being. No tremble greeted her, not even a quiver. Her heart wasn’t racing, her breathing unchanged, there should be some reaction shouldn’t there? She used her rearview mirror to check and see if she had any blood on her but her wide handed arc and the way he had been cut had kept it from splattering her as it drained down his chest into his shirt. She returned her mirror back to its position. The light changed and she roared off down the road toward home.
~The End~
MISTAKEN MALICE
Book 3
“If at first you don’t succeed, destroy ALL evidence that you TRIED”
So she had killed a cop, so what. Alice knew though there could be serious repercussions from that. They would review tapes from the parking garage, of who came and went and ask questions. She was fairly certain from what she could see that Richard had chosen a spot that wasn’t visible from the cameras for his own use. She wondered how long it would take to find his body.
She walked around her condo like a caged lion. She didn’t make mistakes often and she had nothing against Richard personally but it had been almost automatic, a self-defense response. Her buckle was already soaking in bleach, removing any DNA from it. The leather had been washed even with a leather solution and she was fairly certain it contained no blood. She had wiped it off on his clothing.
But killing a cop? This was a new one for Alice. She couldn’t justify this one as she had the others. That a cop was on her tail made her wonder, what else did he know about her, how long had he been investigating her, and why? Questions like this could drive you mad, she thought. But that was how Alice’s mind worked; she was analyzing it from every angle. She knew she had to go to the man’s office and home and see what else he had on her. She glanced out the patio window, it was still closed with the drapes across it, and it also told her she had several hours before sunset. Several hours that other cops would discover the body and search the very places she needed to. She couldn’t wait for them to find something she needed to see, some evidence that would link her to his death.
She got on her computer and looked up what she could of one Richard Haggard, L.A.P.D. She was intrigued to find he wasn’t an active police officer. He had been retired two years ago with honors. Apparently he had been hurt in the line of duty after some heroic deed saving a woman’s life and been retired ever since. She wondered that he had been still carrying a badge though; did he use it to intimidate people? Was it for show? Some guys just couldn’t give up being a cop. Shit, she had killed a cop! Even a retired one, he was still a cop, and the other cops would go nuts over it. They tended to band together at a time like that, all for one and all that.
“Hello,” her cell went off.
“Hi, my friend in Florida came through, he found out why it was taking so long to get the results we were waiting for.”
‘We were waiting for?’ she thought to herself before she answered, “Well?” She wasn’t in the mood for word games.
“Yeah, he was some cop.”
‘No SHIT!’ she said to herself.
He went on, “But they retired him like two years ago and now he does a kind of private investigations kind of work but for real high end security, not that sleazy ‘dick’ work,” he loved using the word ‘dick.’
“Really?” she pretended amazement at ‘his’ find as though he had given her important information. She didn’t want him tying her in with the apparent murder; it was going to be plastered over all the television stations in L.A. by tomorrow.
“Yeah, once we figured out he was using the wrong database; I helped him piece it together.”
“My client will be pleased then,” she planted that little tidbit in his psyche.
“There’s more if you’re interested,” he offered, you never knew, sometimes she gave ‘extra’ into his account for information. He already had to wire the prick down in Miami a sizeable chunk and soon but he knew his payment would be in his account by morning after he gave his report to Alice.
“Of course,” she coaxed him. She knew how to handle him. He was greedy, he wasn’t stupid.
“All the information indicates he was honorably retired for helping that woman but I have friends who I remember telling me about the case. He was forced to retire or the scandal would have been horrendous. She was some high muckety muck who was bopping him and got caught in an awkward situation. She was blackmailed and he killed her blackmailer. They covered it up because he not only got shot but ‘saved’ her life. Her husband was ‘grateful.’”
“You haven’t discussed this with anyone?” she asked, knowing the answer but wanting to confirm.
“Of course not, may I ask why your investigating him?” he cringed knowing he had stepped over some invisible line with her, there went his bonus.
“No, you can’t, but I will pass this information on to my client so they can decide what to do with it, I’m sure they will be ‘appreciative.’” She stressed that last word knowing his greedy mind would grasp it.
“Thank you,” he said relieved. He had to learn to shut his mouth sooner; she had sent him numerous ‘clients’ that paid very well. She had taken his retirement and these extra’s and he was really set for someday when he did actually retire. He couldn’t afford to offend her; he had an eye on a condo near the beach.
“If you find out anything more or remember anything more, let me know. I don’t know what my client wants with him but I am sure if he does what you say he does they might want to know.” She planted this in his mind, it would at least cast any doubt on the thought that she, petite little Alice, had anything to do with his death.
He smiled delighted. “Of course.”
After getting off the phone with him she went to her computer and transferred several thousand dollars to his liquid account. He would make sure his ‘friend’ in Miami got paid; she didn’t have to worry about that. There was a network of contacts around the country, hell around the world that would do things like this for a price.
It still didn’t settle the problem of rifling through one Richard Haggard’s files; she couldn’t have anyone else but herself do it since it was about herself! It settled the problem of going to the police department which really hadn’t been an option. He had to have an office somewhere.
Going back to her trusty computer she couldn’t find a listing for an office. Apparently whatever he did as a sideline to supplement his income he kept fairly quiet so as not to affect his retirement from the force. That he used contacts and buddies to help him she had no doubt. She wondered if anyone besides Bev had been used to research her own life and activities. She would worry about that when the time came; she wasn’t going to spend time in useless speculation. She decided the only way to find out anything was to go to his home. She had a hard time finding his home, probably a failsafe against anyone he had put away over the years finding him when they got out. She finally found it through archives of retired L.A.P.D; breaking into their database through a third party server so no one could trace it back to her. By the time she found he was divorced (no surprise there) and found his condo on a nice address in Venice it was dark and she gathered a few things to help her on her foray.
> Dressed in dark but inconspicuous clothing, she wasn’t going to wear a black mask and tight jumpsuit; it would be too obvious on her lush form. She instead chose a baggy sweatshirt she could zip up, some sweatpants with pockets, and a hat that she could put her blonde locks into if necessary. If anyone saw her they would assume she was out for a jog and she could pull that one off. She looked at her Porsche in disgust; it was a highly visible vehicle with its expensive paint and style. It was too obvious but she didn’t have a second car to drive and there was no time to rent one. She shrugged, she didn’t have a choice and if the place was swarming with cops, then she would just drive on by.
Marina Del Rey and Venice Beach were neighboring communities and she was quickly there despite L.A. traffic. She drove slowly around the cul-de-sac where he lived realizing there was nowhere for her to park her white Porsche. She found a park a few blocks away and got out to follow the canals back to his address, figuring out the address from the back along the walkway. Fortunately the structure of his house was distinctive. She saw no lights on; no one must live with him. She jogged past it before jogging back as she looked around for anyone who might be watching as she pretended to stretch; it was sufficiently dark that she had no problem slipping into his fenced off yard. She quickly went to a door where she slipped on tight leather gloves from her pocket and slipped on the hat to hide her bright blonde hair, the door was in shadow and she looked around several times for any prying eyes. Who would rob a cop’s house anyway? They’d have to be insane! She smiled at the thought as she soon had the lock picked. Putting away her case in a back pocket she pulled out a thin mag light. There was sufficient light from the drapes being open and the street lights to let her move stealthily around the condo and get her bearings. She felt creeped out though and it wasn’t because she thought anyone was there. She had felt awful since she had killed Richard, feeling without a doubt that somehow it was a mistake.
Malice Masterpieces Page 10