Jessie Black Box Set 2

by Larry A Winters

Had Jessie told Briscoe about the stolen files? She couldn’t remember, and now she felt a creeping sense of paranoia. “He was going to win the case Kelly brought against him, and he knew it. It was fixed. He bribed the judge.”

  Briscoe let out a short, approving laugh. “Smart man. I wish I could go back in time and do that for my case.”

  “That’s not how the legal system is supposed to work, Vicki.”

  “The legal system doesn’t work.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you. I’m going to do everything I can to make it right. You have my word on that.” Jessie hesitated, then decided to take a chance. “You think I’m wrong about Shaw? I mean, there was the brick.”

  “Exactly,” Briscoe said. “The brick on the gas pedal.”

  I definitely never told her about the brick. She’d only learned about it recently herself, from Graham.

  Jessie glanced as nonchalantly as possible out the passenger-side window. Could she open the door and jump out? Not without killing herself. Briscoe was driving too fast, racing through the city now that she’d found a path through traffic.

  “Can you pull over?” Jessie said.

  “Now?”

  “I need to use the restroom.”

  “Can’t you hold it in for five minutes? Are you a three-year-old?”

  “Okay.” Jessie chewed her lip. She didn't want to push too hard and arouse Briscoe’s suspicions, but she had to do something. “Let me check in with Leary, see if he’s made any more progress on your case.”

  “Good idea.”

  Jessie pulled out her phone and called Leary, but when he picked up, she realized she didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m just calling to check on the Briscoe matter. Have you found anything solid that shows Fulmer was lying about not giving informed consent?”

  “You know I’ve been tied up with other things,” Leary said. He paused, then added, “You’re calling me in front of her, aren’t you?” he said, understanding.

  “Alright,” she said. Her heartbeat raced as she struggled to think of something to say—something that Briscoe wouldn’t notice but that would clue Leary into the danger she was in. Then it came to her—their joke from the other night. “When you have a chance, can you stop by the grocery store?”

  “Grocery store?”

  “We need tomatoes.”

  Silence on his end of the line. Please, please let him understand.

  “Uh, okay, I guess I can stop for groceries.”

  Vicki Briscoe had pulled her gaze from the street and was watching her. She couldn’t risk saying more. “Thanks.” She ended the call and put away her phone.

  “Tomatoes?” Briscoe said. “I thought this guy was a detective.”

  “He’s also my … uh … roommate. I remembered we need—”

  “Shit,” Briscoe said. Her stare seemed to harden.

  Leary might not have understood Jessie’s coded language, but apparently Briscoe had.

  “Stop the car, Vicki.”

  “What gave me away?” She seemed to think about it, and then her face lit with understanding. “The brick.”

  “Let me out of the car.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Briscoe increased the vehicle’s speed.

  Jessie studied her determined face. “You killed her? All this time, it was you?”

  Briscoe kept her gaze straight ahead, but Jessie could tell she wasn’t focused on the road. She was thinking.

  “You aimed her car at a wall and used the brick to weigh down the gas pedal?”

  Still no response.

  “What about her case files?” Jessie said. “Did Shaw’s goons steal those? Or was it you?”

  Finally, Briscoe turned to face her. “Do you really want to know the answer to that?” Her eyes seemed to search Jessie’s.

  “I want to know the truth.”

  She let out a bitter laugh. “That’s your problem. I gave you Shaw. I practically giftwrapped him for you. But could you get him arrested for Lee’s murder? No. The police have barely even investigated him.”

  “Shaw didn’t kill her.” Jessie felt sick. “He didn’t even steal her files. That was all you.”

  “This doesn’t need to end badly. We can help each other. Put me on a witness stand. I’ll testify against Shaw. I’ll say I saw him tampering with Lee’s car. And I won’t be alone. I can bring a few other witnesses who saw the same thing. Just tell me how many you need.”

  “Witnesses from your dad’s gang?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Justice matters. You killed Kelly. You’re going to be in the courtroom, alright, but you’ll be sitting at the defense table, not the witness stand.”

  “Justice?” Anger flashed in Briscoe’s eyes. “Kelly Lee was a scumbag lawyer who cheated insurance companies and ruined careers. Douglas Shaw is a rich bastard who values money more than children’s safety and thinks he’s above the law. I was a straight-A student my whole life, even though my parents were criminals. I grew up among drug dealers and kidnappers and rapists and killers, and even with all that crap in my life, I still excelled in school, got into college, got into med school. Do you know how hard it is to get into medical school? And it isn’t exactly easy once you’re there, either. It took everything I had to make it through that program. But I did it. So I could help people. So I could make a difference. And you want to punish me?”

  “None of that gives you the right to kill.”

  “I’m giving you one chance here, Jessie.”

  “No.”

  Briscoe let out a sigh. Her expression was one of sadness, as if Jessie had let her down. “You know, I was really starting to like you.”

  “Vicki, if you voluntarily place yourself in police custody and make a full confession—”

  Briscoe’s hand lashed out and jabbed Jessie with a black device. Pain erupted in Jessie’s side and vibrated through her body. Her jaws locked and her body went rigid. Taser, she realized. While they had been talking, Vicki must have reached into a pocket.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Briscoe said. “Good.”

  Jessie tried to talk, but her mouth refused to cooperate. She couldn’t move. The Taser had paralyzed her. She watched helplessly as Briscoe pulled her car into an alleyway and shifted into park. Reaching into the back seat, Briscoe came back with a roll of duct tape and started to bind Jessie’s legs and wrists. When Jessie was fully restrained, Briscoe pulled Jessie’s phone from her pocket. “I’ll take this.” Jessie watched her roll down the window and toss out the device.

  Then Briscoe shifted the car into reverse, backed out of the alleyway, and resumed their drive.

  “You talk about justice,” Briscoe said, “but you can’t understand justice if you don’t understand pain. I’m going to teach you.”

  The rural landscape was almost pitch black when Briscoe pulled her car onto the winding gravel road of her father’s headquarters. Jessie tried not to panic as the car bounced over the uneven surface. The compound of buildings appeared ghostly in the cloud-covered moonlight. She was still bound, duct tape wrapped tightly around her ankles and wrists.

  Briscoe had not seen fit to slap tape over her mouth, and the effects of the Taser had worn off, but Jessie remained silent anyway. She wasn’t going to beg for her freedom or her life.

  Briscoe parked the car next to the largest building—the one Jessie, Leary, and Graham had entered during their first visit to this creepy place, where she’d seen Briscoe operating on one of the gang members. Now, Briscoe pulled a wicked-looking knife from her glove compartment and brandished it in front of Jessie. Jessie did not want to give her the pleasure of seeing her fear, but she could not stop herself from flinching away from the gleaming blade. Briscoe bent down and used the blade to slice apart the duct tape around Jessie’s ankles. She left her wrists bound.

  “Now you can walk.”

  Jessie glared at her but did not respond. Briscoe got out of the car, then came around, opened t
he passenger-side door, and hauled Jessie out by one restrained arm. She gave her a shove and sent her staggering toward the building. “Let’s go.”

  Somewhere close by, a dog growled. Maybe the Rottweiler she’d seen on her first visit?

  Thoughts raced through Jessie’s mind as Briscoe shoved her inside the building. They were in the middle of nowhere. Amish country. No one knew she was here.

  Leary will find me.

  Would he though? She’d said the code word, but it hadn’t really been a code word. It had been a joke. Would he remember it and realize what it meant? And even if he did, would he figure out where she was?

  She had to hope so.

  37

  Leary stared at the screen of his phone, which seemed overly bright in the dim lighting of the bar, then put away the device. Across the table from him, Emily Graham arched an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”

  “I think so.” Leary leaned back against the padded booth seat. On the table in front of him, his and Graham’s notes were spread across the old, battered wooden surface. They’d come to this bar so they could discuss the case out of earshot of the DA’s Office and the PPD, and although the odor of beer floated temptingly in the air, neither of them was drinking—although they had indulged in a plate of buffalo wings, at Graham’s suggestion.

  “You look like something’s bothering you,” Graham said. “That was Jessie who called?”

  Leary nodded. The truth was, although her call had been utterly mundane—pick up tomatoes?—something was bothering him. He couldn’t put his finger on it. “I’ve been looking into Lee’s malpractice suit against Vicki Briscoe. Jessie asked for an update, but I think the question was mostly for Briscoe’s benefit. They’re together right now, retracing Lee’s steps.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That and she wants me to pick up some groceries.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “I don’t know.” Leary shrugged. “We are living together now, so I guess it makes sense.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Living together?” Leary thought of some of their recent disagreements. Then he remembered their recent kiss, and he smiled. “It’s good.”

  “Glad to hear that.” Graham picked up a buffalo wing and managed to eat it without making a total mess of her face and hands—a skill Leary had never developed. He ate, too, with liberal use of his napkin.

  When she was done chewing, Graham looked down at the papers on the table. “So we’ve gone over our notes on Shaw, Lee, and Dax. I see plenty of corruption and other shady crap, but not murder. What are we not seeing?”

  Leary shook his head. “A motive, for one thing. I still don’t get why Shaw would have Lee killed, when he already had Dax in his pocket. Murders are hard to get away with, and the risks are huge if you get caught. You met Douglas Shaw. Did he strike you as the kind of guy to take unnecessary risks?”

  “No.”

  “Me either.”

  “What if there’s something else Kelly Lee knew about him—some other piece of evidence—that we don’t know about?” Graham said.

  “Such as?”

  “Didn’t Jessie say that there might be a criminal element to the case?”

  Leary tried to remember his conversations with Jessie. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I think she said that Kelly told her she could show that Shaw knew about the danger, but sold the products to children anyway. Jessie said Shaw could go to prison if that was true.”

  “So maybe that’s the missing motive,” Graham said. “Shaw takes the risk of having her killed in order to escape criminal prosecution.”

  Leary took a moment to turn the idea around in his head. “How would he know for sure that killing Lee would accomplish that? He couldn’t be sure Kelly hadn’t told anyone, or shared the evidence with anyone. I mean, we know she did tell at least one person—Jessie.”

  “Good point.” Graham seemed to consider. “Think back to our meeting with Shaw. Did he seem to be hiding anything?”

  “He seemed pretty direct.”

  “But was there anything hidden behind his words?”

  Something about the comment brought Jessie back to mind, and made Leary feel uneasy again.

  “What’s wrong?” Graham said.

  Tomatoes. She’d asked him to pick up tomatoes.

  “Shit!” Leary bolted out of his seat.

  Minutes later they were in Leary’s car, racing through the rain-slick streets of Philadelphia, heading for Lancaster. Leary couldn’t know for sure that he would find Jessie at Ray Briscoe’s gang’s headquarters in Amish country, but he had a feeling if Jessie had become Briscoe’s prisoner, that’s where the woman would take her.

  “Listen to me! We need backup! This is an emergency—” Graham was on her phone with the local cops in Lancaster County. She was yelling, and not just to be heard over the drumming of rain against the roof of the car. Leary risked a glance at her and saw her frustrated expression and her clenched fist. The local yokels weren’t being cooperative. “Yes! I am a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department. You’re not hearing what I’m saying!”

  Leary’s eyes shifted focus to the buildings whipping past. Realizing how fast he was going, he pulled his gaze back to the road.

  “Just send some people, damn it!” Graham ended the call. “Jackasses.”

  “Let me guess. Local law enforcement lost all interest when you mentioned Briscoe’s name.”

  Graham looked furious. “You’d think they’d want to rout those scumbags, if for no other reason than to protect their tourism industry.”

  “Unless they make more money from their Briscoe industry. A guy like Ray Briscoe knows how to persuade local law enforcement to look the other way.”

  “More graft,” Graham said dully.

  “Seems likely.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Graham’s face creased with frustration. “Wait. I think I know someone who can help.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Leary said, “because I’m running out of friends. Who do you have in mind?”

  “Lorena Torres. She told Jessie to let her know immediately if she found evidence Vicki Briscoe is involved in criminal activity—”

  Leary felt all his muscles tighten at once and he almost lost control of the car. “Wait. What?” He shook his head. “Did you just say—”

  Graham let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, Leary. I introduced Jessie to Lorena Torres. Jessie wanted background on Briscoe and Lorena’s been a detective in Organized Crime for years—”

  “Hold on. You introduced Jessie to Lorena Torres?”

  “Jessie’s in trouble and this is what you’re focusing on?”

  Leary shook his head. “Of course. Right. That’s silly.” The highway expanded to four lanes as they left the city behind. “Call her.”

  Graham returned her attention to her phone. “Just don’t kill us before we get there,” she said.

  Leary looked at the speedometer. The needle edged past 80 miles per hour. Probably not a great idea in these conditions, when even with his headlights on and his wipers on full speed, he had to lean over his steering wheel and squint. Rain lashed at the windshield, and the night was so dark that he could barely keep the contours of the highway in sight.

  Conditions got even worse when Leary’s GPS app led them off the highway and onto a back road. With the rain coming down faster than his wipers could slash away the blur, Leary drove as quickly as he dared. The surrounding area was difficult to make out in the darkness, but Leary sensed they were passing farmland, grain silos, barns. Amish country.

  “Look out!” Graham yelled.

  A horse and buggy materialized out of the darkness. Leary slammed his foot on the brake and wrenched the wheel sideways. The front of his car narrowly missed the back of the buggy. They went over the side of the road and into muddy grass. The impact bumped his head against the ceiling of his car and rattled his whole body. Pain shot up and down his spine. His heart pounded i
n his chest.

  He looked over at Graham. Her hair was in disarray and her eyes were wide. “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Leary twisted the wheel and gunned the engine, trying to shoot the car back onto the road. The wheels spun uselessly in the mud. “Damn it.”

  “We’re stuck?”

  “I hope not.”

  The car was facing away from the road. Through the rain, the headlights illuminated what looked like acres of fields. There was a barn-like building not far from where the car had skidded to a stop. Its doors were open and Leary could see hay and tools in the shadowy interior. He felt like he’d traveled back in time. He was out of his element.

  Gazing back at the road, he saw no sign of the horse and buggy. He tried the accelerator again. The engine revved and the wheels spun, but the car didn’t move.

  “We need traction,” Graham said. “I have an idea.” She opened the passenger-side door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Follow me!” she called over the pounding noise of the rain.

  Leary got out of the car and ran after Graham. She was heading for the barn. By the time they reached it, they were both soaked, their shoes covered in mud. At least the barn was dry.

  The place was bigger than it had looked from a distance. About the size of a two-car garage. Leary looked around, trying to understand why Graham had led him here.

  “If your idea was to make the rest of the trip on horseback, we’re out of luck,” he said. There were no horses or any other animals in the building.

  She squinted at him. “Why would that be my idea?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t.”

  Graham pointed at the hay, stacked in neat cubes against one wall of the barn. “That’s my idea.”

  “The hay?”

  “Growing up, my family used to visit an uncle who lived in Vermont. He had a cabin set back pretty far from the road. In the winter, I used to help him put down straw in a path from the house to the road. He liked to use straw because it provided traction, wouldn’t ruin his lawn, and could be raked up in the spring.”

  “Okay,” Leary said, looking at the hay—or straw, or whatever it was—with renewed interest. “That is a good idea.”