A Way With Murder (Bryson Wilde Thriller)

by R. J. Jagger

  “I mean, as soon as I step out of the bathroom.”

  “What does that mean? You expect me to go fetch it while you’re showering?”

  She nodded.

  “There you go.”

  An hour later they pulled up to an abandoned warehouse in the old industrial area north of the BNSF rail yard. The building was brick, four-stories, and boarded tight. Wilde worked at a window in the back until they got access, then led the way up the interior stairway to the roof.

  The view was unlimited in all directions.

  A crystal blue sky hung above.

  Puffy clouds were building up over the mountains, hinting of rain and maybe even a serious storm.

  At the south edge of the roof, Wilde trained binoculars on Dayton River’s boxcar setup, pulling the scene in good enough to make out someone’s face if there was a face there to make out.

  Right now there wasn’t.

  He handed them to Alabama.

  She pointed them at the target and got them in focus.

  “We good?” Wilde asked.

  She nodded.

  “We’re good.”

  River wasn’t the one who shot at Wilde last night. However, he was the one who initially took Alexa Blank out of the diner during her shift. That meant River was connected to the man from last night. With any luck, that man would show his face at River’s place today.

  With even more luck, Alabama would see him.

  She might recognize him.

  If she didn’t, she could at least memorize his face.

  Wilde looked around.

  The roof had a two-foot-high parapet at the perimeter on all sides. In the middle was a rusty heating unit.

  “Stay low,” he said. “Don’t get spotted.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Don’t get spotted.”

  “I heard you.”

  “If you see him heading this way, even if it looks innocent like he’s just out for a jog or something, get the hell out of here.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t let him trap you up here.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “I wish that was true. Are you sure you can do this?”

  “Yes, stop pestering me.”

  Wilde looked at his watch.

  “I’ll be back at noon.”

  “Bring food and water.”

  He nodded.

  “If the guy shows up, make your way over to the BNSF building,” he said. “Call me at the office with their phone. If I don’t answer, call a cab and get to the office. Wait for me there.”

  “Okay.”

  116

  Day Four

  July 24, 1952

  Thursday Morning

  From Stamp’s office Waverly headed over to the Brown Palace and left a note for Jaden with the cigar-smoking peach at the reception desk: Meet me at the corner of 16th and California as soon as you can safely break away.

  An hour came and went.

  Then more time passed.

  It was almost noon before the woman showed up. Waverly watched her from a distance for two minutes to see if Bristol was on her tail. Then she swept in and ushered the woman down an alley, around to the back.

  “I went to Stamp’s office this morning and told him that he was being used as a pawn to help Bristol find a witness,” she said. “His response was that Bristol actually came into town to get information as to who the real killer was. He’s going to feed that information to me to get me off his back.”

  Jaden nodded.

  “That actually makes sense,” she said.

  Waverly leaned against the building.

  “Have you ever been to Cleveland?”

  Jaden wrinkled her face.

  “No, why?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “What about Bristol? Has he ever been to Cleveland?”

  Jaden shrugged.

  “Not that I know of. He travels though, that’s part of his job. You know that.”

  Waverly exhaled, deciding.

  Then she said, “I wasn’t sure whether to tell you this or not, but I’m just going to do it. A woman named Bobbi Litton was killed in Cleveland in May of last year—same exact way, red dress, dropped off a roof, the whole nine yards. A friend of mine flew there to investigate. She hired a PI and he found that Bristol was in town at the time the woman was murdered.”

  Jaden wrinkled her face.

  “How could he know that?”

  “The hotel Bristol stayed at still had the registration book.”

  “Maybe it was another Bristol,” Jaden said. “It’s a common name.”

  Waverly shook her head.

  “It was him,” she said. “What I’m getting at is this. There are too many things coming together. You’re in danger. What you need to do is disappear, right now, not ten seconds from now, right now. Don’t go back to the hotel. Don’t see Bristol again, don’t talk to him, don’t tell him you’re leaving. Just vanish into the air.”

  Jaden paced.

  Her apprehension was palpable.

  She wasn’t faking.

  “I’m going to find out if he was in Cleveland like you say he was. If he was, I’ll do it—I’ll vanish—but first I need to know for sure.”

  “I already know for sure,” Waverly said.

  “Maybe someone signed in as him,” Jaden said. “Maybe someone else was setting him up.”

  Waverly frowned.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  Jaden shrugged.

  “All you have is a handwritten name,” she said. “You don’t have that name attached to a face. We don’t even know yet if the handwriting is his.” A beat then, “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll get something with his handwriting on it. I’ll probe around too. I’ll bring up Cleveland in an innocuous way. I’ll say my sister lives there or something. I’ll ask him if he’s ever been there. If he says yes, I’ll ask him when. If he says last May, then you’re right. I’ll find an excuse to get away from him and run like hell.”

  “What if he says no?”

  Jaden shrugged.

  “Bristol has a meeting with his attorney at four o’clock,” she said. “I’ll find an excuse to not go with him. Meet me back here at four.”

  “Okay but be careful.” A beat then, “Does he have any enemies? Someone who would want to frame him for murder or bring him down?”

  Jaden receded in thought.

  “There’s only one thing I know of,” she said. “A couple of years ago, before I knew him, he was bidding on a project for a ferry terminal in Hong Kong. Something went wrong on that project. Something out of the ordinary.”

  “He has that file at his houseboat, hidden under a dresser.”

  “He does?”

  Waverly nodded.

  “See if you can find out what went wrong.”

  “Okay.”

  “Concentrate on Cleveland, though. That’s the most important thing.”

  Jaden nodded.

  “Four o’clock.”

  117

  Day Four

  July 24, 1952

  Thursday Morning

  Mid-morning, River noticed something in his peripheral vision, way off in the distance, on top of one of those abandoned buildings over in the old warehouse district. It was a motion up on the roof.

  He didn’t stare at it.

  Instead he headed inside, got behind the window covering and pulled the area in with a pair of binoculars. The parapet came into view, distinguishable from the side of the building, but nothing moved. It hadn’t been his imagination. He stayed with the scene, expecting Vaughn Spencer’s face to pop up.

  A minute passed.

  Then a head appeared.

  The face belonged to a woman.

  She looked familiar.

  Where had he seen her before?

  Was she working with Spencer?

&nbs
p; She brought binoculars up to her eyes and shifted them around until she got her bearings on the boxcar. River dropped back, stepped outside and stretched. Then he picked up a rock and threw it at a pigeon. January came out of the adjacent boxcar zipping her pants.

  “I need that asshole to come for us,” she said. “Sitting around and waiting for him is driving me nuts.”

  “Don’t turn your head,” River said. “To the north there’s an old industrial area. A woman’s up there on one of the roofs watching us with binoculars.”

  January started to turn.

  “Don’t look,” River said.

  She obeyed.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know but I’m going to find out.”

  “How?”

  “Sneak up from behind.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  River considered it.

  “One of us needs to stay here,” he said. “If we both leave she might too.”

  “You stay here,” she said. “You’re the target. Let me go get her.”

  River studied her.

  “Are you up for it, after last night?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m fine.”

  River frowned.

  “It’s too risky,” he said. “Spencer might be there.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No.”

  January put her arms around River’s neck, brought her mouth up to his ear and nibbled on it. “I’ll take the car and head the opposite way,” she said. “After I’m good and gone and out of sight, I’ll swing around to the back and park way off where she won’t see or hear anything. Then I’ll close in by foot. You stay here and keep her focused on the prize.”

  River ran his fingers down her back.

  It was risky.

  Still, there was no way everything was going to come to a resolution without risk.

  “Okay but be careful,” he said.

  They stepped back inside.

  January slipped River’s gun into her jeans and draped the T-shirt over it.

  “When you get her, signal me from the roof,” River said. “I’ll head over on foot. Bring her down to the ground level but stay in the building. Once I get there, you can tell me where the car is. I’ll go get it and bring it over. Then we’ll get her in the trunk.”

  January kissed him.

  “Deal,” she said.

  118

  Day Four

  July 24, 1952

  Thursday Morning

  Wilde’s office was dark and undisturbed when he got there. No one had broken in. He kick-started the coffee machine, dangled a cigarette in his lips and called Secret St. Rain at her hotel.

  She actually answered.

  “You dropped off the face of the earth,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “We need to talk.”

  A tone must have been in his voice because she said, “About what?”

  “About you not really being Secret St. Rain,” he said. “About you being Emmanuelle LeFavre.”

  A pause.

  “How’d you find out?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that you lied to me. What I want to know now is how many more lies were piled on top of that one.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me none,” he said.

  “I can’t do that. I’m sorry Bryson, I really am. I didn’t mean for things to get like this.”

  The line went dead.

  Two minutes later the door opened.

  London stuck her head in, saw Wilde was alone and ran to him. She wrapped her arms around his body and laid her head on his chest. Her blood trembled. Her breath was quick. She wore the same clothes as last night.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, that’s the problem. The taxi guy dropped me off at the phone booth but the call never came,” she said. “I waited an hour. Then a car stopped on the opposite side of the street. I ran. I didn’t wait to find out what was about to happen.”

  Wilde rubbed her back.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I was too scared to go home,” she said. “I went to your house. You never showed up. I figured you were dead.”

  Wilde shook his head.

  “I almost was. He took a shot but not a good one. I drove all over the damn city looking for you,” he said. “Then I waited outside your house.”

  She exhaled.

  “Do you think he killed Alexa?”

  “I’m positive he did unless he was smart enough to figure out the map was a fake,” he said. Hearing the words out loud elevated his thoughts to a new level. “That’s what we need to do. We need to tell him it was a fake.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” A beat then, “Dayton River has some kind of connection to this guy. Alabama has River’s place staked out. If the guy shows up, maybe we can communicate with him—tell him he’s got a fake.”

  London pulled back and looked into Wilde’s eyes.

  “Why don’t we just tell River to give the guy the message?”

  Wilde considered it.

  He’d been hoping to ambush the guy.

  The problem now was time.

  Time was critical.

  He lit a pack of matches on fire and watched the flames.

  “Even if we get the message to him, he’ll think it’s a trick. He’ll probably think we’re just trying to draw him out.”

  “We’ll get the real one back from Bluetone,” she said. “Then we’ll tell him what the problem was. The story’s the truth and he’s got to recognize it. It’s too convoluted to make up.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Wilde paced.

  “The other option is to wait and hope he shows up,” he said. “I’m tired of him being the one in control.”

  119

  Day Four

  July 24, 1952

  Thursday Morning

  Waverly called the Chicago investigator, Drew Blackwater, to see if he’d found out anything about Bristol or the tattoo guy who broke into Waverly’s apartment. It turned out that he had.

  “The guy you described with the scar and tattoo—the one I thought sounded vaguely familiar—he’s been around town before,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You got a name?”

  “Not yet,” Blackwater said. “What I have is a bartender who remembers him. That’s all.”

  “Did you check the hotels?”

  “Yes, for him and Bristol. Nada on both of them.”

  “Can you keep digging?

  “I can but the bill’s racking up.”

  “I’m good for it, I promise.”

  Silence.

  “Where can I contact you?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Then call me in a couple of hours.”

  “Thanks.” She almost hung up but pulled the phone back and said, “Drew, you still there?”

  He was.

  “When did that bartender see the tattoo guy?”

  “He wasn’t certain but it was a ways back,” he said. “More than a year.”

  “Two years?”

  “Possibly.”

  “August of ’50?”

  “Possibly.”

  “So he’s the one.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Well he certainly could be the one.”

  “I’ll give you that much,” he said. “Maybe he works for this Bristol guy.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Can I give you a piece of advice?”

  “No.”

  He laughed.

  “Good, because here it comes. Let it go. That’s my advice, let it go.”

  “Someday.”

  “If you don’t it will kill you,” he said. “Either from the inside or the o
utside, but one or the other for sure.”

  “I’ll call you later today. Have something for me.”

  Waverly’s stomach growled and she ended up at a ratty diner with a plate full of meatloaf and mashed potatoes in front of her and a glass of milk at the side.

  She needed to check in with the boss man Shelby Tilt but couldn’t.

  If he had any idea how deep she was, he’d pull her off faster than he’d yank her panties down if she ever gave him half a chance.

  His cigar-stained face was best left in the dark for right now.

  Clouds were building up outside.

  Their bellies were black.

  A storm was coming.

  When she got back to her hotel, Su-Moon was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the building with her knees hugged up.

  “Big news,” she said. “I just called my investigator back in Cleveland to see if he had anything else for me. It turns out that Bristol wasn’t just in town the exact same day as when that woman—Bobbi Litton—got dropped off a roof, but there was a piece of paper in her purse that said:

  Tom.B.

  Monday, 1:00

  Euclid and 9th

  Tom B has to stand for Tom Bristol. Do you understand what I’m saying? He actually knew the woman. He was in town to meet her about something.”

  “How did the PI find that out?”

  “He has connections down at the police department,” Su-Moon said. “He called and asked if the name Bristol ever came up in the Bobbi Litton investigation. It didn’t specifically but they had this mysterious Tom B. note that never made any sense.”

  Waverly wrinkled her brow.

  “The blond with Bristol, Jaden, had an interesting theory,” she said. “She said someone might be setting Bristol up. If that’s true, maybe he planted the note in the woman’s purse. Jaden’s running it down this afternoon. I’m going to meet her at four.”

  Su-Moon looked at the sky.

  “I thought it was supposed to be sunny in Denver,” she said. “I can get this back in San Francisco.” A beat then, “If someone was going to set Bristol up, don’t you think they would have used his name instead of Tom B.?”

  True.

  Very true.

  “I want to run it down anyway,” Waverly said.

  “We already know the answer. Bristol’s the one.”

  “I need to be a hundred percent certain,” Waverly said. “I don’t want any second thoughts creeping into my life after I do what I’m going to do.”