Before Another Dies

by Alton L. Gansky

  Also by Alton Gansky

  The Prodigy

  Dark Moon

  The Madison Glenn Series

  The Incumbent

  J. D. Stanton Mysteries

  Vanished

  A Ship Possessed

  Out of Time

  ZONDERVAN

  Before Another Dies

  Copyright © 2005 by Alton Gansky

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86108-X

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gansky, Alton

  Before another dies / Alton Gansky.

  p. cm.—(A Madison Glenn novel; bk. 2)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25935-0

  1. Women mayors—Fiction. 2. California—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3557.A519B44 2005

  813'.54—dc22

  2004030065

  * * *

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  * * *

  05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 /DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  Cover page

  Title page

  Copyright

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  chapter 35

  chapter 36

  chapter 37

  chapter 38

  chapter 39

  chapter 40

  epilogue

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  chapter 1

  He was in my parking place.

  And that was the least of my worries.

  Last week, I began my third year as mayor of Santa Rita. Prior to that, I served two four-year terms on the city council. After eleven years in public life, I thought I had seen everything.

  People are attracted to the city. Maybe it’s because Santa Rita is snuggled next to the Southern California ocean. Maybe it’s because our nights are warm and our days only slightly warmer. We don’t do hot; and we certainly don’t do cold. The ocean serves as our personal heat sink. Our restaurants are exceptional, and our ocean is blue enough to make the sky envious. People come to Santa Rita to escape Los Angeles to the south. Some just pass through on the way to Santa Barbara to the north.

  As I said, people are attracted to the city. Most are reasonable, civil, and normal people, but we have our share of fringe personalities. We have transients who wander our streets content to stay as long as their restless souls will allow. We have homeless who sleep in our parks and between downtown buildings. We even have our share of social gadflies. Some have burning messages for their civic leaders. Most are harmless; a few are scary.

  Last week, Bobby “Street Dog” Benson was waiting for me when I arrived at city hall. I had chosen to park in front of the building as I usually do in the mornings. In the afternoon, I hide my car in the back lot. Fewer disruptions that way. Street Dog—he named himself—had been sent by some alien race or another to warn me of an impending invasion. The mother ship was due to land on the beach just south of the pier at precisely 3:10 that afternoon. Street Dog hears voices. I thanked him and rewarded his civic contribution with a five-dollar bill I hoped he’d use to buy an Egg McMuffin. Street Dog left satisfied. The mother ship never arrived.

  Yes, I’ve seen it all. Or at least I thought I had until, under a bright January sky, I pulled into the front lot of city hall and aimed my car toward the reserved space with the sign that read, “The Hon. Mayor Madison Glenn.” That’s me, except I prefer the name Maddy. Madison sounds too . . . I don’t know—something. My father, a history professor at the University of Santa Barbara, named me after a dead president. He likes dead presidents.

  I directed my silver Lincoln Aviator up the drive and down the lot. A second later, I saw it: a lime green AMC Gremlin hatchback that appeared as if it had been traveling nonstop since the day it rolled off the assembly line sometime in the early seventies.

  “Great.” I’m not stuck on my title, nor do I think the citizens who elected me to be their first full-time mayor should treat me like royalty. I had moved beyond feeling that a reserved parking space made me important. The principle of the thing, however, bothered me. After all, the space was, well, reserved, and it had a sign that said so. Just like the space next to it for the city manager, city attorney, and the members of the council.

  I had a choice to make. I could simply drive around to the back of the building and park there, or I could confront the space thief. Most days, I would have chosen the former. This day, I stopped my SUV a few feet from the Gremlin and waited for the driver to catch my hint. I was ready with my patented how-dare-you scowl.

  He didn’t move. I gunned the engine and let the eight cylinders roar slightly less than a polite, “Hey, buddy.” Nothing. Was he asleep? The urge to honk grew but I chose a more diplomatic approach, one fitting an elected official, especially one facing an election.

  I exited my car and started forward. It was still early, just seven thirty, and the sun was crawling up the eastern sky, just beyond the coastal hills. Most of the city employees would not be around for another half hour. A brief but pungent fear rolled over me. What if the guy was off his rocker? I mean, he was driving a Gremlin. I considered calling security, but I was afraid I’d sound petty. A lot of things have changed in my life over the last six months, but I was still in a wrestling match with pride.

  I approached the driver-side door and tapped the glass with the knuckle of my index finger. “Excuse me, sir.” I tried to sound as pleasant as a woman could at seven thirty and one cup of coffee shy of contentment. “May I help . . . ?”

  The driver was slumped in his seat. I assumed he was snoozing, perhaps having overexercised his right to knock back cold ones at the local bar.

  He wasn’t asleep. Spiders crawled down my spine, and I took a step back.

  Ret
urning to my car, I pulled the cell phone from my purse and dialed a number well known to me. Ringing was replaced by a curt voice. I made myself known. “This is Maddy Glenn. I don’t suppose Chief Webb is in yet.” The cop who answered assured me that Webb was in but that he was in some sort of early-morning meeting. “I need to speak to him right away.”

  “It might be better if we wait for the meeting to end. He hates interruptions. Trust me; he really hates to be interrupted.”

  “I understand. Please tell him Mayor Glenn needs him on the phone.” There was a pause, then I was in the never-never land of hold.

  “Webb.” Chief Bill Webb had a gruff voice that matched his face. He sounded even crustier than usual, something I attributed to the early hour and my having yanked him out of his meeting.

  “Chief Webb, it’s Maddy.”

  “Madam Mayor.” What little courtesy there was in his voice evaporated. Webb and I have history. He doesn’t like me and never has. The feeling is mutual which is a bit awkward since he saved my life a few months back. I owe him a lot but he never brings it up. He is too professional. Regardless of our mutual misgivings, I know him to be an excellent police officer and superior administrator. Our problems have to do with politics and money and goals and money; and to make things worse, we’ve disagreed over money. He wants more; I don’t want to give it.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but this is important.” I took a deep breath. “I just pulled into the front lot, and there is a car in my parking space—”

  “You didn’t just pull me out of an officer review meeting to evict some guy from your parking space, did you? Unbelievable. Call security. That’s their job. Call a tow truck.”

  “You don’t understand, the driver is in the car—”

  “Then tell him who you are and tell him to beat feet.”

  “I would, but he’s dead.” Silence. I could hear people talking in the background and the chief breathing. “You there?”

  “I’m here. You sure he’s dead?”

  I sighed. “Head tilted to one side, cloudy eyes open and unblinking, mouth agape . . . Oh, did I mention that he doesn’t appear to be breathing?”

  “I’ll be right there.” He hung up.

  I closed my flip phone and forced myself to the Gremlin again. The man hadn’t budged, but then I hadn’t expected him to. I’ve seen dead people before and he looked like a classic case. Once, out of some sense of misplaced loyalty, I attended a friend’s autopsy—well, most of it. There are some blurry spots, and the crystal-clear images I kept locked in a mental dungeon.

  The man in the car looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe a couple years younger than my thirty-nine. He wore a white dress shirt that I doubted had ever been touched by an iron and blue jeans. His hair was sandy brown and curly. I didn’t get close enough to see the color of his eyes. That was more information than I wanted.

  I could see my reflection in the driver-side window. I saw the same shoulder-length brown hair, narrow nose, and hazel eyes that were several degrees wider than they were in my bathroom mirror this morning—perhaps because there wasn’t a corpse on the other side of the mirror.

  The sound of rubber tires on asphalt caused me to turn. A patrol car with a uniformed officer stopped a few feet away. A moment later, a city-issued Lincoln Continental—the chief’s car—arrived. The Santa Rita police station sits less than fifty yards across the back parking lot that separates it from city hall. At best, it was a sixty-second drive. The uniformed officer stepped from his car and walked slowly in my direction. He took a moment to nod and offer a friendly, “Mayor,” before returning his gaze to the macadam. It took me a second to realize that he was making sure he wasn’t about to step on some piece of key evidence. I wondered what I had stepped in.

  Satisfied that no shell casing or other evidence littered the lot, the officer walked to the Gremlin. Webb was two steps behind him as was another man I knew, Detective Judson West. When I saw Webb, my stomach soured. When I saw West, my heart stuttered.

  “Madam Mayor,” West said, with a wan smile. He stood a well-proportioned six foot two, had hair black enough to shame coal and teeth that were whiter and straighter than piano keys. His dark eyes twinkled. At least I think I saw a twinkle. West is our lead robbery-homicide detective. He came to the city from the San Diego PD a little over six months ago. He’s never talked about why he left the big city.

  “Did you touch anything?” Chief Webb asked.

  “I knocked on the window with my knuckle.”

  “That’s it? You didn’t try to open the car door?”

  “It’s locked. Besides, I know better than to put my fingerprints where they don’t belong.”

  “How do you know the door is . . . ?” I saw his gaze shift to the lock button on the door—it was down. Webb leaned over and peered through the side window to the door on the other side. I had done the same. He frowned.

  West gave me a knowing smile. He knew of the tension between the chief and me and always seemed to find it entertaining. He turned to the officer. “All right, Bob, let’s get the area taped off. In fact, I want the whole parking lot secured. No one in or out until we’ve searched the place and taken photos. You’d better call for some help. In the meantime, block the entrance with your car. The lot should start filling up any time now.”

  “Got it.” Officer Bob reached for the microphone attached to the shoulder of his uniform and starting talking as he walked away.

  “Not the way I planned to start the day,” I said.

  “You okay?” West asked.

  “Fine. Just wasn’t expecting a dead man in my parking spot.”

  I caught Webb looking our way and scowling. He was shorter than West, and his mane had grown comfortable with gray. He kept his hair combed back and held in place with some magical hair tonic. His eyes were an unhappy blue, and his face seemed frozen in disgust, as if he were on a castor oil diet. Red tinted his cheeks and the end of his nose.

  Detective Judson West gave me one of his now famous smiles and inched his way over to his boss. I was still close enough to hear, but far enough away that I didn’t have to see the dead man’s face. I had seen enough of that.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen him before,” Webb grumbled.

  “No, and I’m pretty sure I’d remember.”

  “Not even during council meetings?”

  The city council met every Tuesday evening at seven. It was a public meeting held in the chambers of city hall. Attendance was usually sparse with only a handful of citizens interested enough to pull themselves away from the television. Occasionally, a city measure would come up that would pack the place, but I could count those times on one hand. “Still no. I don’t recall seeing the car either. I know I would remember that.”

  Even the chief nodded at that. He studied the car a little longer, then turned to West. “It’s all yours, Detective.”

  “Gee, thanks,” West said. He smiled for a moment, then the grin disappeared. He was slipping into professional mode. I had seen it before. Half a year ago, I was embroiled in a mess of abductions and a murder. It ended badly, and I was still having nightmares. West had just started with our department, and I was his first case. I had seen what he could become when a mystery loomed before him.

  Webb took a step back and watched West. The chief’s chest seemed to swell as if watching his only son show up the neighbor’s kid on the Little League field. West walked around the car, examining the paving, tires, door handles, windows, and everything else his eyes could fall upon. Then he stepped to the front of the car and placed his hand near the radiator grille. “Cold,” he said. “It’s been here for a while.” He tilted his head to the side. “Anyone else hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I asked.

  He paused before answering. “Music. I hear music.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t hear anything. I stepped closer and picked up the hint of a tune. It was low, just loud enough to hear that something was there, but
not enough to make out words. West walked to the passenger side of the car and looked in. “The keys are in the ‘on’ position. The music is coming from the radio.” He straightened and turned at the sound of another police car arriving on the street. He waved the officer over. “Hey, Mitch, you got a Slim Jim in your patrol car, right? Bring it to me. Bring some gloves, too.”

  A moment later, the officer was by West’s side. He was holding a long, flat piece of metal and a box of disposable latex gloves. West donned the gloves, then took the flat tool. “Call the coroner, tell him we have some work for him, and then give Bob a hand with the crime-scene tape.”

  He studied the Gremlin again and then returned to the passenger-side door. Without a word, he slipped the metal strip down between the window and rubber trim. He pushed, pulled, wiggled, and twisted the tool. “This is why I had to become a cop; I never could break into a car.”

  “It was a good choice,” Webb said. “Benefits are better.”

  “Got it.” He pulled up, and the door unlocked. He looked at me. “You want to guess why it is illegal for regular folk to own these?”

  “I think I know.”

  “Yeah, but did you know there’s an urban legend about police officers being killed while using them?” I admitted that I didn’t. “The story goes that cars with side-collision air bags have shoved these devices into officers’ heads. It’s not true, of course. It makes a good story at a party.”

  “But you’re still glad that a car this old doesn’t have side air bags.”

  “I’ll never admit it in public.” He removed the tool and set it on the roof of the car. Using just one gloved finger, he pulled the handle and opened the door. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I steeled myself for whatever came my way. The only difference I noticed was that I could now hear the music. The volume was weak.

  “He must have had good ears,” I said.

  Webb looked at me and fought back a frown.

  “I think the battery is dying,” West said. He leaned in the car. I took a step back and shuddered. I couldn’t see what he was doing. Seconds chugged by like hours and finally West came up for air. “I was wrong when I said the key was in the ‘on’ position; it’s turned to ‘accessories.’”