“Okay,” she said finally.
“Good,” Don said.
He turned and headed toward the beds. He grabbed one on the end which was closest to the door. The significance of his choice was not lost on her. He wanted to be the barrier between her and the outside, both to keep her safe from anything that came in and to keep her from trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. Given the way the beds were arranged it was mostly a symbolic gesture. She could easily get to the door without having to walk right past him.
Mark and Traci walked over and laid claim to two beds next to the cribs. Blackie walked over and jumped up on the end bed on the far side. He quickly curled up into a little ball.
“I guess my choice has been made for me,” she said.
She walked over and sat down on the bed. Captain looked at the door and whined, and then after a moment came over and jumped up on the foot of her bed and lied down next to Blackie.
“I miss him, too, Cap,” she told the dog as she stroked his head.
The others started getting ready for bed. She kept petting Captain, trying to let her mind zone out. It was hard, though. Her body was crashing but her mind kept flitting from one thought to the next, only alighting on each for a second before moving on again.
After a couple of minutes Geanie came and sat down on the bed next to hers. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Cindy said. “Big surprise, right? Like it’s not obvious that I’m a complete basket case.”
Geanie reached out and touched her arm. “You’re handling this unbelievably well. I don’t think I’d be half as brave if I was in your shoes.”
“Thanks, but I’m sure you’d be just fine,” Cindy said.
“In the morning, we’ll all put our heads together and figure out how to clear Jeremiah’s name,” she said.
Cindy could feel tears suddenly stinging her eyes. “Thank you, that would mean a lot,” she said, her voice shaking.
“He’s important to all of us, you know,” Geanie said. “Well, maybe not to your mother,” she said with a tiny smile.
Cindy smiled back. “It shouldn’t be funny.”
“But it kind of is,” Geanie said.
Cindy nodded.
“See, with all of us thinking, we’re sure to get this sorted out,” Geanie said.
“I’ll get Martin to help, too,” Cindy said.
“Do you think he will?”
“I won’t give him a choice.”
~
Jeremiah rose with the dawn. He hadn’t slept as much as he would have liked, but he had work to do and no time to waste.
He had just scraps of clues to work with as to who he was dealing with. He knew that the terrorist he had killed at Geanie and Joseph’s wedding was one of them. He also knew that they had killed the Iranian student who wasn’t willing to go along with his brothers’ terror plot. He also knew that they had killed Captain’s former owner because the man had been a witness to that. One of their members had also thrown the envelope that bore his nickname into Cindy’s car.
He thought back to the wedding, to the man who had been trying to kill Cindy. Before Jeremiah had killed him he had said that his brothers would come for Jeremiah. He remembered clearly trying to find out who the man was.
“Who are you?”
“You do not recognize me?” the man asked.
He hadn’t recognized him.
“Of course, how could you?” the man said. “You never look to the left or the right.”
He still didn’t know what that meant. All he knew was that a man he did not recognize had been willing to kill Cindy to get to him because of something he’d done in his past.
The list of potential enemies was long, but he had to ask himself which small group of people would devote time looking to hunt him down? That list would be much smaller.
They had taken their time coming forward despite several opportunities. Was it because they were too busy with whatever scheme they were hatching that Martin’s people were trying to stop? Or was it because they weren’t local and only passed through the area occasionally?
Someone had framed him for Not Paul’s murder by planting that Barrett sniper rifle in his house. Given that the first known appearance of the men who were hunting him was a year later it seemed odd that they would have access to that information. In fact, outside the autopsy and police reports there should be no way they could have discovered what Not Paul was killed with.
Initially he’d thought the terrorists were the ones framing him for Not Paul’s murder and Pastor Ben’s. He figured they had wanted him exposed, vulnerable, and perhaps to destroy the trappings of his life before actually ending it.
However, that didn’t completely add up. It made sense for them to try and frame him for Peter’s murder and to expose the fact that he had killed their fallen comrade. They were in a position to know the details of both situations. It also was pretty common knowledge that he and Pastor Ben deeply disliked each other. Killing him and pinning that on Jeremiah would have been simple.
Not Paul, though, didn’t make sense. There were so many other murders they could have tried to frame him for, ones where the information would have been more readily available. Something about it felt wrong. But who else could possibly want to frame him for murder and why?
Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Maybe instead he needed to take a look at the murders that he and Cindy had solved and figure out if someone connected to one of them had the wherewithal and the motivation to destroy him.
In his head he tried to run it down. The serial killer from their first mystery together was dead and had no known family or anyone else to mourn him or attempt to avenge his death. The crooked cop who had been murdering the homeless and stealing their dogs was in jail. He wouldn’t have had access to the police records of what happened almost four months later.
Frank Butler was the man who had hired the assassins who killed Not Paul. Pinning that murder instead on Jeremiah wouldn’t much help him, though, given the other crimes he had committed and the fact that he’d cut a good deal with the district attorney in exchange for not pressing charges against Mark and the Pine Springs police force.
One by one he went through and dismissed possibilities. He kept coming back to Detective Keenan. He could think of no possible reason why the detective would have a grudge against him. He had seemed incredibly zealous the day before, though, like putting Jeremiah away was some personal vendetta.
He should do some digging into Keenan including his background and associates. Maybe it would shed a little light on things. He should also try to figure out what evidence Keenan had that convinced a judge to issue a warrant to search Jeremiah’s home. As far as he’d been able to tell, the Barrett they’d found in his house had been the only thing pointing the finger at him. To get the warrant there had to be something else. There couldn’t have been an eyewitness, but what if someone had lied and said they had witnessed the event or overheard Jeremiah confessing to it?
Since he hadn’t been home when the warrant was executed, and Keenan hadn’t shown it to him at the police station he didn’t know what was in it. Now that he had gone dark it was going to be nearly impossible for him to get a look at it. Since Martin had Mark in protective custody along with all the others he couldn’t get help from him in obtaining a copy.
That left him with three possibilities. He could try and get Liam to help. Given the position Liam had been placed in that would be tricky. Plus, he wanted to save interacting with Liam as a matter of last resort. He would only get one shot at playing that card and he needed to make it count.
He could reach out to Joseph’s attorney. No one knew yet that Jeremiah had gone off the grid, so the request would seem fairly standard. While he had a burner phone, risking the contact either in person or by phone wasn’t a great option. The less of a footprint he could leave the better.
The third option was to get it directly from
the police precinct. It was a tricky proposition, but he knew that there were ways he could get in and get out undetected as long as he was quick. In order to facilitate it he would have to break a couple of laws, but what was it they said? In for a penny, in for a pound.
He had two problems: terrorists from his past were after him and someone was trying to frame him for murder. Until he could determine otherwise his best bet was to treat them as two different things and attack both head on.
Sneaking into the police precinct would have to wait for later in the day so it was time to start looking for the men who wanted him dead. While Los Angeles seemed a better place to look for terrorists, particularly those wanting to buy nasty weapons as Martin indicated, he was rarely in Los Angeles. The Iranian student had been killed in Pine Springs as had Peter, the former C.I.A. agent. The odds were excellent that Pine Springs was where they’d spotted Jeremiah as well since he rarely strayed outside of town. So, if he acted on the assumption that they were in or near Pine Springs then he had a few ideas where to start looking.
He flagged down a cab and had it drop him a quarter mile away from his ultimate destination. He would have preferred to “borrow” a car that wouldn’t be likely to be reported missing for a while, but this would have to do for the time being. He was able to keep his hat low, shielding his face, and pay in cash. He was fairly certain as he walked away that the driver wouldn’t know him from Adam if he saw him again.
Once on the street he kept his head down and walked purposefully. People who looked like they were headed somewhere were far less memorable than those who wandered slowly or looked around excessively. He turned down side streets three times just to make sure no one was following him.
He couldn’t detect anyone watching him which was a relief. He didn’t hasten, though. With these kind of missions too fast could be just as deadly as too slow when it came to making a move. When he’d found the building he was looking for, he walked around the block three times before being satisfied that no one in the area was even remotely interested in him.
Finally, he came to a stop on the sidewalk in front of his intended destination. A tiny shiver passed through him as he stared at the store in front of him. He couldn’t help but feel déjà vu sweep over him. It had been a couple of years since he’d seen the place, but he’d never forget it.
He was staring at the check cashing business where the Passion Week killer had staged his version of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the Temple. And once again it looked like it had been the scene of a crime.
9
When Mark woke up it took him a few seconds to remember where he was. It was pitch black in the room, but there were a couple of night lights glowing in the two bathrooms. He sat up slowly, wondering how long he’d been asleep. Around him he could hear gentle snoring from at least three different people. It sounded like Traci was one of them. Her allergies must be acting up a bit.
He listened for sounds of movement, wondering if anyone else was awake yet. He desperately wished he could go back to sleep, but his brain was buzzing. It was Monday morning and they would miss him at work. He had a lot to do on his own cases and then he needed to be there to be an advocate for Jeremiah. If he was honest with himself that was going to be a lost cause once Keenan realized that Jeremiah had gone underground. Still, he would have liked to have spun it as long as he could. He trusted Liam to be fair, but he didn’t trust Keenan to supply him with all the facts he needed.
He wondered what Liam would make of his disappearance. Of all their disappearances, actually. He had no idea how Martin thought he could explain the disappearance of more than a dozen people and animals.
“I need to get out of here,” he whispered.
“How?” Cindy asked in his ear.
Mark jerked in surprise and barely suppressed a shout.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
In the darkness he still couldn’t see her, but apparently her eyes had adjusted already.
“Meet me at the table,” she instructed.
He nodded.
He heard a whisper of movement as she left. She was getting as bad as Jeremiah about sneaking up on people. He turned his head away from the bathrooms and their nightlights and tried to pierce the rest of the darkness. It was then that he realized that there was a clock on the microwave shedding some light in that area. According to it the time was a quarter after ten. With no windows in the room he would have never guessed it was day already let alone that late.
He got up and shuffled slowly toward the microwave, knowing that the table was close by. When he was almost there he saw it. A shadowy figure that had to be Cindy was sitting at it already. He took a seat across from her. They were both bathed in the glow from the microwave clock. As far as meetings went it didn’t get much more clandestine, he thought to himself.
“How long have you been up?” he whispered.
“A long time.”
He refrained from asking her if that meant she hadn’t slept at all yet. He didn’t want to know because he didn’t want to lecture her. That’s what her dad was for. He couldn’t deny that the urge was there, though.
“I’m turning into a dad.”
“What?” she asked.
“Never mind. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, the frustration evident in her voice.
“No word from our friendly neighborhood spooks?” he asked.
“Not a one.”
“You know, for Jeremiah to be free to do what he needs to do he can’t be worried about what’s happening to you. It would be better for him if you just stayed here, safe,” he said, feeling like a hypocrite.
“I can’t, for the same reason that I couldn’t just stay behind when he went to Israel,” she said.
“Because you want to know what happens if something happens.”
“Yes.”
He reached out and grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m sure he’s going to be fine. This is, after all, his thing. It’s what he’s trained to do.”
“You want out of here just as badly as I do,” Cindy said.
“Yeah, because I want to do my thing, what I’m trained to do. I want to make sure that he has a life worth coming home to.”
“Is this a private conversation or can anyone join?” Don asked from behind Mark.
Mark jumped again. “Dang it! I’m going to have to put bells on both of you,” he said.
Don sat down next to him. “You know, I think we have everything we need right here to help Jeremiah.”
“How?” Mark asked.
“Figure out who killed those four men.”
“That’s not entirely helpful since Jeremiah did kill one of them,” Mark said then winced. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said-”
Don shook his head. “I’m under no illusions when it comes to my future son-in-law.”
Cindy reached out with her free hand and grabbed her father’s. For one second Mark thought he and Don should hold hands, too, then they could all sing a chorus of Kumbaya.
“Okay, I definitely need more sleep,” he muttered.
“Don’t we all. Okay, so what about the other three?”
“We already know who killed two of them. Terrorists killed one and a hired assassin killed the other.”
“Then why is Jeremiah being accused?”
Mark shook his head. “Something strange is going on. I think someone is trying to set up Jeremiah.”
“Okay, so we can work on figuring out the who, why, and how of that. What about the last?”
“Pastor Ben. That just happened, and I don’t know much about it,” Mark admitted.
“Is it possible that whoever killed him is also framing Jeremiah for the other murders?”
“Anything is possible. It just seems like a lot of work.”
Even in the dim blue light Mark could see Don roll his eyes. “Have you never seen someone exact revenge before?”
/> His thoughts instantly went to the Passion Week killer who had been taking revenge in his own sick way on the friend who had wronged him. That man had gone to insane amounts of effort to make his point.
“I have and you’re right,” he admitted.
“Cindy and I walked around Ben’s place,” Don said.
“You, what? What did you do?”
“We checked out the crime scene,” Cindy said.
“Oh, well, we have that,” Mark said, not wanting to know how that had even come about.
“Maybe the best thing we can do is put together everything we know and solve the legal entanglement while Jeremiah handles the physical danger,” Don said.
Before either Mark or Cindy could say anything, Blackie landed suddenly on the table in front of him.
“For the love of all that’s holy!” Mark exclaimed.
“Ssh! You’re going to wake everyone else up,” Cindy said as she scooped the cat into her arms.
“Too late,” Traci said as she turned on a lamp on one of the nightstands.
Rachel began to cry.
“Now we’ve done it,” Mark said.
“I thought it was all a nightmare!” Carol wailed.
“Tell me about it,” Don muttered.
~
Jeremiah approached the check cashing building cautiously. There was yellow police tape around the building. There were no smashed windows or obvious external signs of a problem other than the tape itself. He slipped on a pair of gloves as he walked, another item he had “borrowed” from Joseph before leaving his house.
There was no one nearby. The parking lot of the church next door was empty. Once he was certain no one could see him he slipped under the tape. It took seconds to pick the lock on the door and then he was inside.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies Page 7