“Keep looking.”
• • •
He pulled back from her face, having kissed her for the second time to assess her condition. Glenda was very relaxed and her eyes were drooping just a bit.
It would be five, maybe seven minutes now before the drug took its full effect.
She was still able to move, however, and she was horny. Glenda pulled him back down to her.
• • •
“Agent Galloway, you need to hear this,” an agent with a phone to her ear bellowed, putting the phone on speaker. “Ma’am, tell Agent Galloway what you told me.”
“I think the woman you’re looking for is Glenda Richards. I work with her and that looks like her. I never met the man, but I know she’s been dating a guy named Gabriel with long blond hair and a bushy beard. She’s talked about it nonstop.”
Delmonico pulled up the DMV photo of Glenda Richards. “That could be her, Don. That could really be her. Her address is Allison Street NW.” Delmonico reached for the phone again. “Mac, where are you?”
• • •
“I’m waiting just north of Howard University on Georgia.”
“Keep going north. We think the woman’s name is Glenda Richards.” Delmonico reported the address. “That’s north on Georgia, a mile and half.”
Wire looked at her watch. “8:03.”
“Hang on.”
• • •
He could feel her motor skills starting to go now. Her arms were going limper and loosening around him and the kissing was becoming sloppy and wet. Finally, after another long kiss, her face drifted away from him and he could see the look in her eyes, the slow recognition of what was happening.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening,” Glenda said. “I … I … I feel weak. It’s like I can’t move.”
“I know,” he said darkly.
“You … know?” she slurred.
“Yes, I do,” he answered as he pushed himself up off the couch.
Then he quickly spun to the front window.
• • •
“Hold on!”
Mac hardly eased off the gas as he turned a hard left, fishtailing onto Allison Street.
“There!” Wire pointed to the black Civic parked mid-block. “There! There! There!”
• • •
Maynard rushed to the front window and saw a flashing light turn hard onto the street, coming his way. The BMW skidded to a stop and a woman immediately jumped out of the SUV, running to the front door.
It was Wire and out of the driver’s side was McRyan. Two more cars, one with flashing lights, turned down the street.
He backed away from the window.
What to do?
Glenda was lying motionless on the couch, ready to be taken but there wasn’t time.
He ran into the kitchen and to the back door. There was a butcher block of knives on the counter. He grabbed a long knife out of the block and exited out the back door onto the small deck. With his right hand on the railing, he threw the knife down to the ground and then threw himself over the railing and jumped down to the ground fifteen feet below, landing hard and then groaning as he rolled over on the ground.
• • •
Wire kicked open the front door.
Mac ran past her at a full sprint up the steps two at a time to the front door of the apartment and knocked. “Glenda! Glenda! It’s the police, open the door!”
There was no response.
Coolidge and Stretch were coming up behind them.
Mac stepped back and kicked the door just to the right of the knob.
The door shot open.
Wire burst past him and into the apartment. Mac followed her in, covering her right, as did Coolidge and Stretch, moving left to the back of the house.
Mac and Wire immediately saw the body lying on the couch. Glenda’s eyes were open but she couldn’t move. “Help,” she croaked quietly.
“She’s alive!” Wire exclaimed.
“Where did he go?” Mac asked Glenda.
Glenda couldn’t move, but rolled her eyes to the left.
“He went out the back!” Mac yelled as he moved quickly into the kitchen and found the back door open. He carefully peered out the back and he could see a man running in the distance to the east between the townhouses. Mac yelled back into the apartment as he stepped out onto the deck and saw the man turn left down another alley. “He’s on the run out the back, heading east. Call it in. Lock the area down.”
Mac threw himself over the railing and jumped down to the ground, dropping and rolling left and coming up quickly to his feet. He ran east in a full sprint.
“Add that we need an ambulance,” Wire ordered to Stretch, who was already on the radio. Dara ran back down the front steps to find Greene and Ridge waiting in the street. “Start your car! Start your car! He’s on foot heading east.”
“Okay! Okay!” Greene replied startled, jumping back inside her Mercedes and fumbling with the keys.
“Where are you going?” Ridge yelled.
“Giving chase with Mac,” Wire answered. “Go! Go!”
• • •
Munger looked back and saw a man come out the back of the apartment and onto the deck.
Maynard turned left down the narrow alley, running north and saw flashing lights for a patrol car approaching the alley entrance. He moved to the right side of the narrow alley, kept close to the fence and leaned his back against it.
The patrol car pulled to a stop but didn’t completely block the alley; only the nose of the car was visible.
He heard the door of the car opening and the officer speaking into a radio.
Maynard jumped from around the corner and lunged with the knife. The patrol officer, who was distracted and on his radio, reacted too slowly to the attack from the rear.
Munger thrashed at the officer again and again with the knife in a crazed frenzy, his right arm swinging violently, puncturing the officer repeatedly until the officer’s arms stopped fighting back and fell to his side.
He grabbed the officer’s gun and baton and continued running east.
• • •
Mac reached the end of the path and peered around the end to the left and saw the patrol unit, a man down and another standing up and then taking off.
“Officer down! Officer down!” Mac hollered as he reached the patrol officer who was gasping for air, covered in blood that oozed from the stab wounds made by the knife lying on the ground to the right.
“Hang on, brother,” Mac exclaimed as he reached for the patrol officer’s shoulder radio. “This is Agent McRyan with the FBI. I have a ten double zero, officer down, Buchanan Street, east of Georgia. Send an ambulance! Send an ambulance!”
“How is he?” Wire asked, gun hanging low in her right hand.
“Not good, but he’s alive,” Mac answered as he glanced to his right. A block east he could see Munger running with a baton in his left hand and something hanging down in his right. “Shit,” Mac muttered as he looked down to see the officer’s baton missing, and worse, his gun. “Stay with him.”
“Mac, he’s gone crazy. We have him,” Wire answered, kneeling down. “He’s caught. He’s not getting out of this.”
“He has a gun. He could get a hostage and get inside a house,” Mac shot back, pushing himself up and taking off, sprinting east on Georgia.
Mac was quickly closing and as he did, Munger glanced back.
“Munger, give it up!” Mac yelled. “Give it up! There’s no way out!”
Munger didn’t stop. Instead, he turned left into an alley.
Mac kept after him at a full sprint and at the alley opening stopped against the building on the corner. He pulled out his Sig Sauer and peered left around the corner of a tall fence. The alley was empty and quiet; the only noise the sirens rapidly approaching the area. He did not see Munger running. Mac stepped inside the alley and held close to the fence on the left side while
he quickly shuffled his way down, scanning, although it was difficult in the dark as there was no illumination in the alley.
As he stayed close to the fence on the left side, he reached the back end of the building on the right. Behind the apartment building was a large open area with a small playground and swing set.
It was eerily quiet.
“Where are you?” Mac mumbled quietly under his breath as he stepped past the end of the building and more into the open, still stepping sideways to the left, his gun at two o’clock on the back of the apartment building, scanning to the left. At twelve on the clock, he was focused on the swing set, and then sweeping to the left to ten o’clock toward a long building housing single car garages where he zeroed in on an open garage door. “Are you hiding in there?” he muttered in a whisper. Taking a step forward when he heard a slight noise to his right. He pivoted that direction, sensed the movement and danger, and Munger had the drop on him.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Mac dove and rolled left. There was a dumpster twenty feet away. Mac pushed himself up and scrambled toward it.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Mac’s legs were taken out from under him, sending him down hard on his right side, his gun flying from his grip.
He felt it, the burning sensation in the calf of his right leg.
Ignoring the pain Mac frantically swept with his hands, searching for his gun but couldn’t find it. He glanced back to the right and Munger was quickly approaching, the gun drawn, boring right in on him.
He needed to buy time.
“You didn’t get her,” Mac grunted, pain searing through his right leg. He reached for the wound, or at least wanted Munger to think that was what he was doing. His backup piece was on his lower left ankle and he needed to get his hand down to it. “You didn’t kill her.”
“But I have you,” Munger replied. “I may not make it, I may be a goner, but I beat you.”
“Did you?” Mac replied with a grimace, pushing himself up to a sitting position, bringing his left leg closer to his right and reaching with both of his hands to his right leg to the wound, but with the last two fingers of his left hand started pulling up his left pant leg. “You didn’t get your four. You didn’t get your masterpiece. You only got three women. Glenda is alive. I found you, Maynard. I identified you, Maynard Munger, medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I exposed you. And I know one other thing, Maynard. You know what that is?”
“What?”
“I know you didn’t do it alone. I know you had help.”
Mac could see the surprise register on Munger’s face.
“Who is it? Who’s your partner, Maynard?”
“Don’t call me Maynard!” Munger growled.
“Who’s your partner? Who put you up to all this?”
“Nobody put me up to it.”
“Bullshit, Maynard,” Mac answered back, sitting up now, slyly working his left pant leg up. “Someone pushed you, manipulated you. You’re caught. No sense being the only one.”
“I was not manipulated. I did what I did.”
“Oh, you were manipulated, weren’t you?” Mac laughed. “You were the submissive. Your partner was the alpha, the dominant. You were dominated.”
“No! No! No! No!” he shouted angrily, pointing with the gun. “I was not the submissive. I did what I wanted to. And you know what I want to do now? I want to kill you.”
“But you had a partner, Maynard,” Mac replied, his right hand up, pleading. His other hand had the left pant leg up. He was readying to move, to roll left and pull the Glock. “Who was it?”
A white SUV turned hard into the alley.
Munger turned back to see the truck.
The SUV came roaring straight ahead.
Mac threw his body left, rolling twice and reaching for his Glock.
The truck roared down the alley and didn’t stop, driving into Munger, sending him flying into the fence.
Mac rolled back right to see April Greene, Ridge and Wire in Greene’s Mercedes SUV. April had rammed Munger.
“God, that hurts,” Mac grunted as he pushed himself up. Standing now, his Glock 9 out front, Mac limped toward Munger, who’d been thrown into the fence, partially caving it in.
Wire jumped out of the car, picked up the patrol officer’s gun as well as Mac’s Sig Sauer and stuck them in the waistband of her jeans. As Mac kept his gun trained on Munger, Wire reached down and checked the side of the killer’s neck for a pulse. Dara looked back up and shook her head and Mac lowered his gun and stumbled to his left, bracing himself against the fence.
“Jesus,” Wire exclaimed, rushing over to him. “You’re hit!”
“I’ll be okay,” Mac bit out through gritted teeth and then looked back to Greene, who seemed to be in total shock. “Thanks, April. I’m glad you didn’t stop.”
“Y…y…yeah, good,” Greene replied, pale and shaking uncontrollably, holding tightly to Ridge’s left arm. “Are you…you…hurt?”
“I don’t think too badly, although, man, it hurts like a motherfucker.”
“I’m not sure about the not too badly part,” Dara reported, having knelt down to take a look at his right calf.
Mac looked down as well. His right pant leg was soaked with blood.
“We need to get you to the ER,” Dara ordered, taking a hanky out of her coat pocket, tying it around the wound. You’re bleeding pretty heavy down here.”
“How bad?”
“You’re not going to die, unless Sally kills you because you can’t dance in a month.”
Ridge approached. “He’s okay, though?”
“I’m alive. I’ll take that,” Mac stated, leaning back against the fence, breathing heavily, now realizing he was soaked with sweat. “I don’t need to do that again.”
“Hell of a finish to the story,” Ridge muttered, drawing scornful looks from Wire, Greene and a weary shake of the head from Mac. “Sorry, guys, but it is.” The author was clearly relishing the thought of writing the story and the financial rewards for doing so.
“Yeah, it is quite the story,” Mac replied, but then added with a tinge of disappointment, “You know what would have made it better?”
“What?” Ridge asked.
Mac looked over to the lifeless body of Maynard Munger. “Finding out who his partner was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Writers are dangerous.”
Mac rubbed his face, exhaled and then looked at the thick bandages on his lower right leg. The emergency room doctor repaired the wound to the back of his right calf. He’d been shot from the side and the bullet clipped the back of his large right calf muscle. The pain from the wound had been searing, and there was a fairly significant amount of blood, as he could now see based on what was left of his pair of khaki pants lying over the chair in the corner. All in all, he was lucky. The patrol officer that was attacked by Munger was still in emergency surgery, having been stabbed several times, most ominously in the neck.
While the wound took out a small hunk of the flesh on the back of the calf, there wasn’t much in the way of muscular damage.
“I’m getting married in less than a month, Doc. How mobile will I be?” He was dreading telling Sally about this.
“I take it there’s dancing involved?” the doctor asked as Sally tore the partition curtain open to see her fiancé and hear the question.
This was not good.
“This lovely lady must be your fiancée,” the doctor smiled, folding his arms across his chest and looking at Sally over the top of his cheater glasses.
“Yeah, Doc, that’s her. Isn’t she pretty?”
“I imagine, Agent McRyan, you’ll want her to be very happy on her wedding day.”
Mac took in Sally’s worried yet pensive posture and replied, “You have no idea, Doc.”
Sally stood looking at him with her hands on her hips. She was fronting disgust but he knew she was both worried and now, it appeared at least a bit relieved. “I heard your qu
estion, Doctor. There is in fact dancing. What’s his status going to be?”
The doctor looked back to Mac. “Well, what’s your pain tolerance, son?”
“It better be pretty damn high,” Sally suggested hotly but with a bit of a smile.
“When is the wedding?”
“Four weeks,” they answered in unison.
“Can he follow doctor’s orders?” the doctor asked Sally.
“From me, yes.”
“Good,” the doc laughed in reply. “Listen, son. Take it easy for a few weeks. Let it heal up and you should be fine. The wound isn’t as bad as it looks—didn’t get into the muscle much, but it did some. Use these crutches. Take your pain medication, elevate your leg, ice it and let it heal, and I think you’ll make her happy.”
The doctor finished up and left them alone.
“Eventful night there, Mac?”
“You could say that.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not right now.”
“Okay. I’m just glad it’s over,” Sally stated.
“Well,” Mac replied with a grimace, “not quite. Rubens had an accomplice.”
• • •
“So what about this other guy?” Ridge asked, looking at Wire, Greene and Coolidge all sitting on a bench and drinking their non-alcoholic beverage of choice.
“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” Greene suggested, not looking up, twisting her Diet Coke in her hands. “Munger is dead. Dead men tell no tales. I mean, we haven’t found anything at that office, have we?”
“Not so far,” Wire replied as she took a drink from her bottle of water. “I spoke with Galloway a while ago. The FBI forensic team has been in there now for hours. Unfortunately, other than some fingerprints for Munger, they have found little other information and nothing about anyone else, another person who might have been involved. There are some handwritten notes, but they’re all about the victims. There was a box of burner phones that the FBI is going to try to figure out where they originated from but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They wouldn’t lead to a partner, at least most likely not.”
“If Munger’s buddy has any sense, he’s blown town by now,” Coolidge stated. “What happened tonight is all over the news. It’s over. If that guy has half a brain, he’s a thousand miles away by now, making his way to a non-extradition country.”
Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book) Page 29