Woman With a Gun_A Novel

by Phillip Margolin

  The phone call jarred Jack Booth out of a deep, alcohol-induced sleep. He jerked up, eyes wide, heart beating rapidly. Where was he? The phone rang again and the nerve-jangling ring sounded strange. The room didn’t look right, either. Jack groped for the receiver and couldn’t find it. Then he remembered why everything seemed so odd. The phone wasn’t where it should be because he wasn’t where he should be. He was in a cheap apartment in a strange bed.

  Jack turned on the light, located the phone, and grabbed the receiver. “What?” was all he could manage. His mouth felt like it was filled with packing material and the words coming out of the receiver took ages to penetrate his brain.

  “Wait,” he said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He felt light-headed and he paused a second before turning on the lamp on the nightstand. The light stabbed into his eyes. He closed them and groped for the pen and pad he kept next to the phone. He opened his eyes slowly and took a deep breath. The air irritated his throat and he coughed.

  “Okay,” he croaked. Oscar Llewellyn was on the other end of the line. He made a hangover joke. Jack didn’t laugh. Llewellyn read off an address and gave him directions. Jack repeated the address to make sure he had it right. Then he said, “I’m on my way.”

  Jack hung up and buried his head in his hands. After a moment, he leaned over and pulled a cigarette out of the open pack on his end table. Jack lit up, inhaled, and coughed. He took another drag, stabbed out the cigarette, and stared at the floor.

  After a moment, Jack stood up. It took an extraordinary effort to get to his feet. He felt light-headed again. While he waited to regain his equilibrium, Jack looked at the bed. It was a single. Adrianna would be curled up on her side of the king in their bedroom, which would become her bedroom as soon as the divorce became final.

  Jack felt bad. He’d fucked up big-time. Adrianna was a good person and he’d taken her for granted, burying himself in his job and in strange beds with any woman to whom he took a temporary fancy. He was seized by regret, but only for a few seconds. Jack was an expert at anesthetizing his feelings and he’d shaken off this one by the time he staggered into the bathroom.

  The bigger they are, the harder they fall was the first thought that popped into Jack’s head when he saw Joey Kneeland sprawled on his back on the floor of room 107 of the Weary Traveler Motel. Joey was huge. Jack eyeballed him as at least six foot seven, and he didn’t have to wait for the autopsy report to put his weight around three hundred and fifty pounds.

  Jack knew all about Joey Kneeland. He’d played a year of college ball at Portland State but was too dumb to keep himself academically eligible, so he’d engaged in the only profession for which he was suited, muscle for the drug dealers in his neighborhood. From what Jack had heard, Joey wasn’t that great at roughing up people. He was too slow, both mentally and physically, and Jack knew of at least two times Joey had been put in the hospital.

  “What a mess, huh?” said Oscar Llewellyn. Detective Llewellyn was a twenty-year veteran who’d been investigating homicides for eleven years. He was five foot ten, wore his hair in a Marine cut, and dressed like a blind man had chosen his outfit. Jack had worked with him before and he was very good.

  Jack walked around the body. If it weren’t for Joey’s unique physique, he wouldn’t have been able to ID the victim. Joey had been shot in the face, probably with a shotgun. Jack studied Joey’s massive, pear-shaped torso, which was also riddled with entry wounds and bathed in blood.

  “How many times do you think he was shot?” the deputy district attorney asked.

  Llewellyn shrugged. “With all that blood, who can tell? Talk about overkill.”

  Jack cocked his head and looked at the detective. “You think one shot would have brought Joey down? If it was me, I’d have used every bullet I had.”

  “Point taken,” Llewellyn said.

  “Where are the witnesses?” Jack asked.

  “The guests who saw something are in their rooms. The two from this room are in separate squad cars.”

  “They stuck around?”

  “The manager called 911 as soon as he heard the shots, so there was a car here in no time. First responders found the two of them cowering behind the bed. There are more bullet holes in the walls behind them. The guys who shot Joey told them to stay put for ten minutes. I guess they were too scared to run.”

  Jack took another look at Joey. “Can’t say as I blame them.”

  “Room one eleven is vacant. You can use it if you want to talk to the witnesses here.”

  “Sounds good. Bring in Joey’s roommates, one at a time.”

  On the way to the motel, Jack had stopped to get a large black coffee. He took a sip as he walked down to room 111. The caffeine helped a little but he was still groggy.

  Room 111 was as seedy as the crime scene and only a few steps down from his apartment. The bed was covered by a cheap quilt, and the mattress sagged in the middle. The motel advertised HBO and adult movies. The TV was a flat-screen, but it was the only thing in the room that looked like it didn’t predate World War II.

  Jack looked for someplace to sit. There was an armchair next to a lamp and a wooden straight-back chair at the desk. He chose the armchair and was about to sit down when Llewellyn escorted a woman into the room.

  “Mr. Booth, this is Sally Russo,” Detective Llewellyn said. “Sally, Mr. Booth is the prosecutor in charge of this case.”

  Jack put Russo at five seven and two fifty and she looked like she had a lot of miles on her. She appeared to be exhausted and shaky. Her eyes were bloodshot and her stringy hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a few days. Russo was wearing an extra large sweatshirt and pants with a stretch waist. There were blood spots on both garments.

  Jack held out his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, although I regret that it has to be under these circumstances.”

  Russo seemed surprised by the way the DA had greeted her. He guessed that she’d had run-ins with the authorities before and had not been treated courteously.

  “Take a seat,” Jack said. “Can I get you some water, coffee?”

  “I could use some coffee,” Russo said. Jack nodded at Llewellyn, who stepped outside for a minute to give one of the uniforms the order.

  “Please sit down.” Jack pointed at the straight-back chair. Russo lowered herself onto the chair slowly. It wobbled a little as she settled.

  “Are you doing okay?”

  “Not really,” Russo said. She sounded subdued and she was staring at the floor.

  “Detective Llewellyn told me a little about what happened. I can tell you, I’d be messed up if I’d been here.”

  “They just shot him,” Russo said. Her voice quivered. Then she started to cry. “Joey never hurt nobody. He looked scary but he wasn’t mean.”

  Jack nodded. “I never met Mr. Kneeland, but that’s what I heard, too. So why was he murdered, Sally? Did he do something to scare the guys who did this?’

  Russo wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve and rubbed the tears away.

  “They didn’t give him a chance. As soon as he opened the door, they started shooting.”

  “Did you recognize the shooters?”

  “They were wearing masks, and even if they weren’t . . . Man, I was on the floor behind the bed as soon as the shotgun went off.”

  “Okay. Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “Not really. It happened so fast. I didn’t even see the other men. Just the guy who shot Joey with the sawed-off. He had jeans.” She shook her head.

  “Were they white, black, Asian?”

  “They sounded white and the guy who pointed the shotgun at me, he was wearing gloves but his wrists were white.”

  “Did you see any tattoos or scars?”

  “No. I was so scared I just looked at the ground. I didn’t want to see anything. I didn’t want them thinking I could be a witness against them. Then they might have killed me.”

  “Did anyone say anything?�
�

  “Yeah. The one with the shotgun. He told me and Carl to stay on the floor for ten minutes. He said they had a guy outside who would shoot us if we stuck our heads out the door.”

  “Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Okay, Sally. You’ve been great so far. Now, I’m going to ask you a question that you’re probably not going to want to answer. But I promise you won’t get in trouble if you answer honestly. I’m not going to give you your Miranda warnings, so a judge wouldn’t let me use what you say against you. Understand?”

  Russo nodded.

  “I prosecute murder cases. I’m not interested in what you were doing in this room if it doesn’t involve you, Carl, or Joey killing someone.”

  “We never did anything like that,” Sally assured him.

  Jack nodded. “Why did these guys bust in here? What did they take?”

  On his way to view the crime scene, one of the forensic experts had told Jack that he’d found cocaine residue on the desk in room 107. He watched Sally debate how much she should say.

  “Tell me the truth and I’ll treat you right.”

  Jack didn’t add a threat. Sally knew she was in trouble and Jack was the only one who could help her.

  “What if we were doing something we shouldn’t be?”

  “I can give you immunity if it didn’t involve violence. Look, I know you’re scared. I can’t even imagine how I would feel if I saw a good friend gunned down and I thought I was next. That’s why I want to help you. Let me do that.”

  Sally looked Jack in the eye. She was scared, but Jack could see that she was clinging to hope.

  “We had some coke. Not a lot. We were down on our luck and thought we could score.”

  “You were dealing out of the room?”

  Sally nodded.

  “How many people knew?”

  “A few. We got friends who know people who use. We weren’t gonna get rich,” she said quickly.

  “What did the killers take?”

  “Our coke and all the money.”

  “Do you have any idea who did this?”

  “No.” Sally’s jaw clenched. She wasn’t sad anymore. She was angry. “But the guy with the sawed-off said we’d end up like Joey if he ever caught us selling again.”

  “You think he’s a dealer and you were in his territory?”

  “That’s what I thought, but I don’t know any more than what he said. Believe me, if I could help you get the bastards who killed Joey, I would.”

  Jack was about to answer when Llewellyn walked in with the coffee. He handed it to Russo. Then he bent down and whispered in Jack’s ear.

  “We may have caught a break. One of the guests heard the shots and peeked through the blinds on his window. He saw one of the shooters run by his room. The guy braced himself on the guy’s car. He wasn’t wearing gloves.”

  “Did you . . . ?” Jack started to ask.

  Llewellyn nodded. “Dave lifted a beautiful set of prints.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bernie Chartres’s foot had been tapping like a telegraph key since Jack walked into the interrogation room in Oklahoma City, where Bernie had been arrested. Jack had flown to Oklahoma as soon as he got the news. The prisoner was a sloppy-looking man with a pockmarked face, who was not much brighter than Joey Kneeland. Bernie’s straight black hair was tied back in a greasy ponytail and he had trouble making eye contact. This wasn’t Chartres’s first brush with the law, but he’d never been in trouble like this before.

  Bernie’s court-appointed attorney was driving Jack crazy. Every few seconds she’d either brush her frizzy black hair off her face or adjust her glasses. Jack thought she might have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  “You know you’re fucked, right?” Jack asked Bernie Chartres.

  “Don’t answer that,” the lawyer said.

  “She’s right,” Jack said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you. Unfortunately for you, we don’t need a confession. An eyewitness saw you tear out of the room where Joey Kneeland was shot. Your mistake was pushing off his car. He’d just had it cleaned and your prints look really great. So don’t talk. I’ve sent three guys to death row and I can use another notch in my gun.”

  “I didn’t shoot him!”

  Chartres looked panicky. His attorney told him to shut up.

  “Look, Bernie, I’m gonna be honest. You’ve got a pretty clean record. A couple of minor assaults but nothing that would indicate you’d blow the shit out of someone. But you’re also the only suspect I’ve got. So, unless you help me—and, by helping me, help yourself—I’m going to be forced to bring the full weight of the law down on you. You know that old saying about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush?”

  Bernie didn’t look like he had any idea why Jack was talking about birds.

  “Well, you’re the bird I have in my hand, and I don’t have any other birds or any idea who the other little birds at the motel were.” Jack squeezed his open hand into a tight fist. “So you’re the only bird I can crush at this time.

  “Now I’m going to step outside. You talk with your lawyer. Give me the names of the shooters and I’ll treat you right. Exercise your right to remain silent and I promise to bring popcorn to your execution.”

  Twenty minutes later, Chartres’s attorney beckoned Jack into the room to talk about the deal. A few minutes after they had agreed on a disposition, Bernie was talking like his life depended on it—which it did.

  “Gary Kilbride shot Joey. I didn’t know he was going to shoot him, honest.”

  Jack was a trial lawyer and any good trial lawyer can keep from reacting to a surprise, no matter how devastating. In this case, the surprise was really great. Gary Kilbride wasn’t the biggest drug dealer in Portland but he was big enough, and he was a very bad person who liked to hurt people. Jack was a very ambitious prosecutor. Putting a scumbag like Gary Kilbride on death row would definitely give his career a boost.

  “Why would Gary waste time with a penny ante operation like the one at the motel?”

  “They were selling in his territory. He wanted to make an example out of them. The plan was we beat them up, take their drugs and money, and tell them we’d do worse if we caught them selling again. But we didn’t know Joey would be there.”

  Bernie shook his head.

  “Joey looks like King Kong. When he opened the door, Gary freaked and started shooting.”

  “What did you do?” Jack asked.

  “I got out of there. I didn’t want anything to do with that shit.”

  “Okay. Now who was shooter number two?”

  “Nick French. He’s how we learned about everything. I think he got spooked and opened fire because Gary opened fire.”

  “How did you learn they were selling out of the motel?”

  “Angie Reed is Nick’s girlfriend. Nick was over at her house with a bunch of other people and one of them knew. He said he was going to score some coke the next day at the motel. So Nick told Gary at this bar. And I was there and Gary was pissed because he didn’t want anyone selling to his customers. He said Nick and me could have some of the coke and money if we backed him up. He said he wouldn’t do anything really bad. All he wanted was to scare them. I thought he’d smack them around a little. I never thought he’d shoot anyone.”

  “Whose idea was it to bring the guns?”

  “Gary. I don’t even own a gun. He gave me one. I didn’t want it but he said I had to wave it around to look like I meant business.”

  “Where’s the gun now?”

  “I tossed it in some bushes. I don’t even know if it was loaded.”

  Jack asked for the location of the bushes. Then he made some notes. When he was finished he looked across the table.

  “You done good, Bernie, and I’m going to do right by you. We’ll polygraph you. If it turns out that you didn’t shoot anyone, you walk after you tell a grand jury what you told me and testify i
n court. I’ll get an immunity agreement to your lawyer. We’ll keep you here for your safety. Then we’ll fly you to Portland when the time is right.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  It strained the limits of Jack’s self-control to keep from staring when Gary Kilbride’s attorney walked into his office. She had long ash-blond hair, high cheekbones, and liquid blue eyes. Her white silk blouse was open at the neck, and her severe black business suit came with a skirt that was cut just long enough to be tasteful but short enough to show off her long legs. The legs and face were tanned gold.

  When the Kilbride case ended and Jack had been thoroughly humiliated, he blamed his disastrous loss on Kathy Moran’s amazing looks and killer body. Overactive hormones and the desire to come out on top in every competition had always been the twin drives in Jack’s life. During Kilbride, however, his hormones redirected the blood that would normally have flowed to his brain, causing Jack to spend time that should have been spent on legal research fantasizing about what might happen between him and Kathy Moran when the case concluded.

  But Jack’s downfall was several months down the line on the day he met Miss Moran. On that day, he was sitting pretty. True, he had fucked up his marriage, but he was only twenty-seven and already a top prosecutor in the Multnomah County district attorney’s office, fast-tracked into Homicide because of his stellar record and gaining a statewide reputation he hoped to parlay into a partnership at a prestigious law firm where he would make the big bucks he believed he deserved.

  “We haven’t met, Mr. Booth. My name is Kathy Moran and I’m Gary Kilbride’s lawyer.”

  Jack walked around his desk and shook Kathy’s hand. It was soft and warm. Jack’s palm tingled and his heart and nether regions went haywire. He was certain that something electric had passed between them when they touched and he believed Kathy felt it, too, because her eyes widened briefly.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Moran. Take a seat.”

  “Are you with the public defender?” Jack asked when he was back behind his desk.

  Kathy smiled. “No. Mr. Kilbride has retained my firm to represent him.”