Kill Me Friday (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  “No.”

  Alabama covered the woman’s body with hers and said, “Do it.”

  Wilde held his breath, put the end of the barrel against the chain of the cuffs and said, “Everyone ready?”

  Yes.

  “On three,” he said.

  Then he counted.

  One, two, three!

  Bam!

  Alabama screamed.

  110

  Day Four

  July 18

  Friday Night

  Friday night after dark a heavy rain fell out of a black sky. Rain wasn’t the right word, storm was more like it. Thunderstorm was even more like it. Jina sat on the fire escape hunched against the building in the dry spot, sipping white wine from a bottle.

  Her legs were stretched out.

  The rain fell on her feet and shins.

  The client was dead.

  Taylor had been found.

  Things could have turned out worse.

  Lightning arced across the sky.

  Fierce.

  Violent.

  Suddenly a figure crawled out of the window and sat next to her. It was Taylor.

  “We knocked, you didn’t answer,” she said.

  We?

  A second figure joined them. It was a man, handsome, about forty, wearing a brown suit and matching hat. Jina recognized him as Everett Somerfield, Esq., a high-profile attorney and former husband of Grace Somerfield who was murdered last Saturday.

  Taylor introduced him.

  “This is a surprise,” Jina said.

  Taylor put an arm around Jina’s shoulders and squeezed. “Thanks again for hiring Wilde to find me. The only reason I’m alive is because of you.”

  Jina shrugged.

  “No problem.”

  Taylor’s face grew serious. “We have a few things to tell you,” she said. “I’m not necessarily proud of what I’m going to tell you. Let me say that right off the bat.”

  Things?

  What things?

  “Everett and I have been together for some time,” she said.

  Everett nodded.

  “We fell in love a year ago, while I was still married to Grace. Neither of us planned it. It was just one of those things that happen.”

  Taylor put her hand on the wine bottle and said, “You feel like sharing?”

  Sure.

  No problem.

  Taylor took a long swig, followed by Everett, then back to Taylor.

  “Okay, here comes the bad part,” Taylor said.

  “We needed money and decided to take some from Grace,” she said. “Everett knew what she had and where she kept it, namely in the safe in the master bedroom. He also knew the combination. Grace usually has a board meeting at the museum on Saturday nights. Last Saturday, Everett made himself visible downtown—getting a public alibi in effect—while I broke into Grace’s place.”

  Jina blurted out the question on her mind.

  “You’re the one who killed her?”

  Taylor answered without hesitation.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She took another swig of wine.

  “I got the safe open, took everything out, put it in a pillowcase that I’d brought and closed it back up,” she said. “I was on my way out when Grace suddenly came home out of the blue. I was trapped and ducked into the next room. She fiddled around downstairs for five or ten minutes then came up to the bedroom and started to get ready for bed. I just stayed quiet, waiting for her to get into bed and fall asleep. Then something unexpected happened. A woman showed up. I saw her sneaking up the stairs with a knife in her hand. She was blond and had her hair up. There was a tattoo behind her ear.”

  “Night Neveraux,” Jina said.

  Taylor nodded.

  “Right, Night Neveraux, although I didn’t know her name at the time. She went into the bedroom and said, I want the scroll. Grace said, What scroll? The woman—Night—said, Don’t play dumb—the scroll Emmanuelle gave you for safekeeping. Grace hesitated then said, It’s in the safe. Night said, Open it. That’s when I snuck down the stairs and left.”

  Lightning flashed.

  Close.

  A deafening clap of thunder exploded overhead.

  Jina jumped.

  “Close,” Taylor said.

  “Anyway, I waited outside across the street to see if I could get any information on this woman after she came out,” Taylor said. “She eventually appeared and headed for a car. I snuck over in the shadows until I was close enough to get the license plate number. It was FC211. She squealed out of there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Me and Everett met up later,” Taylor said. “I had the scroll, of course, along with Grace’s jewels. We didn’t know anything about the scroll at the time other than a suspicion that it was worth a fortune.”

  “That’s correct,” Everett said.

  “Monday, I read in the paper that Grace had been murdered Saturday night,” Taylor said. “That’s when I got scared.”

  111

  Day Four

  July 18

  Friday Night

  “When I read that Grace had been murdered, the last thing I wanted was to be caught with the things from her safe in my possession,” Taylor said. “Stealing is one thing. Being implicated in a murder is something else. Everett and I came up with a plan. We traced the license plate number FC211 to a woman named Night Neveraux. Since we knew that she was the one who killed Grace, we decided to plant the stuff at her house. We did that Monday night, we hid the stuff in one of her shoeboxes in the closet.”

  “Wow.”

  Right.

  Wow.

  “The more we thought about Night killing Grace, the more we decided that she needed to be brought to justice,” Taylor said. “On Tuesday morning, I put on a strawberry wig and went to the office of a private investigator named Bryson Wilde.”

  “My Bryson Wilde?” Jina said.

  Right.

  Him.

  “I told him I was making love to a woman in a car Saturday night and saw someone run out of Grace Somerfield’s yard. It was so strange that I got the woman’s license plate number, which was FC211. I later found out Grace was dead. I wanted Wilde to make a substitute police report on my behalf. That way, I’d stay out of the picture while bringing Night to justice.” A beat. “Wilde fell for it and made the call. When the police searched Night’s place, they didn’t find the stuff from the safe that I’d planted there. I don’t know why. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. It’s really not important. What’s important is that I kept the scroll.”

  “You did?”

  Taylor nodded.

  “Then I did something I shouldn’t have,” she said. “I didn’t know if anyone knew that Grace was holding the scroll for this Emmanuelle woman that Night referred to. To play it safe, though, just in case the scroll could be traced back to Grace, I decided to distance myself from it. I hired a man to have it delivered to our table as we ate lunch. I made it a delivery from a vague client, which could have been yours or could have been mine. My plan was for you to take the scroll as a temporary measure. If it ever got traced back to Grace, both you and me could back each other up in that it was mysteriously delivered to our table. The mystery client would be the suspect, not you or me.”

  Jina tensed.

  “You set me up.”

  Taylor exhaled.

  “Not really,” she said. “You were never in any danger. What happened next is what I didn’t expect. I thought you would just keep the scroll safe and leave it alone. Instead, you started to investigate it. You went to that professor, Blanche Twister, and told her about it. Then she started to get interested in it and—as far as I can tell—hired someone to pretend to be your client, in an effort to trick you into giving her the scroll. The woman you saw in the cab wasn’t me. It had to have been her.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “It is, it’s the absolute truth,” Taylor sa
id. “Anyway, now I was worried about someone trying to get the scroll out of your hands. I needed to get it back without letting you catch on to any of the background. Unfortunately, it had a hold on you.”

  True.

  Very true.

  “You pretended that someone had taken it but I knew in my heart that you still had it,” Taylor said. “The fake client idea that Twister used on you was a good one, so good that I adopted it. Me and Everett hired a friend of his—a man named Paul Slipstone—to pretend to be my client. He told you he’d kill me if you didn’t get the scroll to him by noon. I thought that would be good enough to pry it loose from you. It wasn’t.”

  No.

  It wasn’t.

  “That forced us to take things to the next level,” Taylor said. “We scouted around and found an old boxcar. I vanished at lunchtime and never returned, as if I’d been abducted. The client then took you to me that night. All the time, I was just waiting there. When he pulled up in the car, I put the handcuffs on and stuck a gag in my mouth. I had to make it look realistic. The plan was for him to make you get the scroll, then he’d come back and release me. Unfortunately, you killed him.”

  Everett motioned for the wine bottle.

  Jina handed it to him.

  He took a long swallow and said, “That brings us to now. The way I see it, we’ve put you through enough trauma that you’re entitled to be a joint partner in the scroll. We’re each entitled to one-third of it.”

  He stopped talking.

  Both of them looked at Jina, waiting for her reaction.

  “I have no problem with that,” she said.

  That was true, too.

  “So where is it?”

  Jina paused.

  Then she said, “It’s buried out by some railroad tracks.”

  “Let’s go get it.”

  “Right now?”

  Yes.

  Right now.

  “Why now?”

  “Because it has a hold on you,” Everett said. “Let’s get it over with while we all agree as to what’s right. We’ll get it, keep it here at your place for the night and then decide tomorrow what to do with it.”

  Lightning flashed.

  Jina stood up.

  The wine made her legs wobble.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  112

  Day Four

  July 18

  Friday Night

  A drizzle started at sunset and got heavier and heavier as night rolled in. In the shadows of that storm, Wilde approached Raven’s house with a dark heart.

  This was it.

  Friday night.

  Game time.

  With a hammer and screwdriver, he punched out the trunk lock of Raven’s car and pulled the lid up. Then he pounded on the inside latch until it broke off. He pulled the spare tire out and rolled it behind the hedges. Then he tossed the tools into the neighbor’s yard, climbed in the trunk, pulled the lid closed and cinched it down with a belt.

  There.

  He was in.

  Wherever Raven went, he’d be with him.

  He waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Minute after claustrophobic minute passed.

  Wilde almost got out a hundred times but forced himself not to.

  His breathing got heavy.

  The oxygen was getting thin.

  Then it happened.

  Raven got in, fired up the engine and squealed out of the driveway. The vehicle stayed in motion for ten or fifteen minutes and stopped. Raven got out but left the engine running.

  What was he doing?

  Suddenly a payphone rang.

  Raven said, “It’s me.” Moments passed without further talking from his end. Then he said, “Okay,” hopped back in the vehicle and took off.

  Wilde wiped sweat off his forehead.

  He already had the gun out of his waistband.

  He twisted it in his fingers in the dark.

  Traffic sounds got lighter and lighter. They were heading out of the city. Then the asphalt gave way to gravel, which further gave way to dirt.

  They were somewhere remote.

  Suddenly the vehicle stopped.

  Raven sat there, not getting out.

  What was he doing?

  Then he got out and shut the door.

  Wilde got on his back and pointed the gun up, just in case Raven was coming into the trunk. That didn’t happen. He released the belt and raised the lid. The storm immediately pounded on him, cold and invasive.

  The night was thick.

  Wilde got out and looked around.

  He saw nothing.

  The world was blacker than black.

  Suddenly lightning arced across the sky.

  It lit up the warehouse district. Raven was parked in front of the large building, the one with blood on the concrete, the one with the shed out back where Jessica Dent had been kept, the one Wilde had checked twice to no avail.

  Raven was climbing in the side window.

  Wilde ran that way.

  His footsteps were inaudible.

  The heavy pounding of the storm masked them.

  Hold on, Nicole.

  Just a few more minutes.

  He got through the window and was surprised at how quiet everything suddenly got. The splash of a flashlight came from the stairwell.

  Wilde headed that way.

  The light continued up, all the way to the top floor.

  Close the gap.

  Close the gap.

  Close the gap.

  He sped up, now only ten or fifteen steps behind, as Raven walked through the door into the top floor. The door shut behind him and the flashlight disappeared. Wilde raced up the stairs two at a time and opened the door enough to stick his head in.

  The flashlight came back into view.

  It was pointed at a woman.

  Nicole.

  She was roped against the wall in a standing, spread-eagle position.

  She wore pants but her blouse and bra were gone.

  Her eyes were blindfolded.

  A gag filled her mouth.

  She pulled at her bonds as Raven ran the light down her body and then back up.

  Wilde trained the gun at the man’s back and tightened his finger on the trigger.

  See you in hell, asshole!

  113

  Day Four

  July 18

  Friday Night

  Jina didn’t say much other than give directions as they drove through the storm to the railroad tracks. The windshield wipers beat back and forth with full power but were still losing the battle. No other cars were on the road. All the sane people in the world were home watching TV or sleeping.

  They got to the service road and stopped.

  No headlights were in front of them.

  None were behind.

  “Looks clear,” Taylor said.

  They headed down the road, which was muddy but not impassable. The bodies of Michael Spencer and Kent Dawson came into view on their left, snuggled into the recesses of a grouping of rabbit brush.

  Everett studied the bodies but didn’t slow down.

  “Is that Slipstone?”

  “No,” Jina said.

  “It’s not? Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They just showed up here.”

  “Weird.”

  “This road is cursed.”

  The headlights punched into a pinion pine and Jina said, “Pull over by that tree. The scroll’s buried out in the field under a rock.”

  They stopped and killed the lights and engine.

  “We should have brought a flashlight,” Taylor said.

  Jina pulled one out of her purse.

  “I did.”

  She led them into the field and sprayed the light on the rock. “It’s under that rock,” she said. “About a foot down.”

  Everett grunted.

  “I suppose I get the honors.”

  “Looks that way.”


  Jina handed the flashlight to Taylor and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where you going?”

  “To get rid of a little wine.”

  She took twenty steps, relieved herself and came back just as Everett was pulling the scroll out of the ground. He took it out of the pillowcase and held it out for the rain to wash off a layer of dirt.

  “It looks like it’s in good shape.”

  Taylor trained the light on it.

  “It looks perfect. I was worried.”

  Everett handed it to her and she took a closer look with the light. When Jina looked back at the man, he had a gun in his hand.

  It was pointed at her.

  “Thanks for bringing us here,” he said.

  “Everett, don’t,” Taylor said.

  “Got to,” he said. Then to Jina, “I’m sorry to say this, but your piece of the partnership has just been cancelled.” Then he looked at Taylor and said, “Yours too.”

  “Everett!”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You bastard.”

  He trained the barrel at Jina’s heart.

  She froze.

  So did Taylor.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  114

  Day Four

  July 18

  Friday Night

  Wilde’s finger tightened on the trigger but he couldn’t plant the bullet in the man’s back. Do it as soon as he turns. A heartbeat later Raven started to turn. In less than a second Wilde would have the shot.

  “You’re right on time.”

  The words were like fire in Wilde’s veins, not because of their meaning, but because they didn’t come from Raven’s mouth. They came from someone else, another man somewhere in the room. They startled Raven as much as they did Wilde judging by the way he swung the flashlight at them.

  A man lit up.

  A strong man.

  In his hand was a gun pointed at Raven’s chest.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Raven said, “but whatever is going on is between you and me. Let the woman go.”

  “Let the woman go?”