Blood Money

by James Grippando

  He slumped back into the couch, as if drained, bringing a hand to his face. Then his shoulders heaved, two quick jerks, but he quickly brought the sobbing under control. Jack was certain that if Geoffrey Bennett had been of a constitution any less rich in testosterone, he would have seen a grown man cry.

  That, or Sydney wasn’t the only member of the Bennett family who longed to be an actor.

  “We need to get this information to Agent Henning right now,” Jack said. “I can try to reach her by phone, but I know I won’t get through. She’ll have to call us back. Meantime, you and I are going to take a ride right now to the FBI field office.”

  Bennett nodded slowly, signaling acquiescence as much as agreement, and rose from the couch. Jack led him to the door, showed him out, and locked the door behind them. They stepped down from the landing and onto the sidewalk. Jack was a half step ahead of Bennett when the bushes rustled and a woman’s voice pierced the darkness.

  “Stop right there.”

  The men stopped, and Jack saw the gun.

  “Ellen, no!” shouted Bennett.

  “Don’t make a move,” said Mrs. Bennett, “neither one of you.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Merselus stood at the door, listening.

  He’d turned off the noisy air conditioner to hear better, and the dark room was becoming an oven. He was too focused to care or even notice. He knew that there were twelve units on each floor in this wing of the complex, all facing the parking lot. An old motor lodge was anything but soundproof and, judging from the direction the sound had traveled, he determined that the police officers had started with apartment 112 at the other end of the wing and were working their way down in order. He’d counted three distinct rounds of knocking so far. By his estimation, they were still at least six units away from apartment 102.

  “I need to breathe,” said Sydney.

  She was still sitting on the floor near the closet, toward the back of the room, hands bound behind her back and double pillowcases over her head. She sounded so weak and frightened. It was the kind of pleading that would have been a sexual turn-on for Merselus in another setting. Under this kind of pressure, it made him angry beyond control. Merselus hurried across the room, yanked the pillowcases off her head, and dropped to one knee. He grabbed her by the throat so hard that the back of her head slammed against the wall.

  “Do you want to end up like Celeste?” he said in a voice that hissed.

  Beads of sweat rolled down her face, and wet wisps of hair were matted to her red cheeks and forehead. Her breathing was quick, shallow, and shaky.

  “Do you?” he repeated. His tone was even harsher, and his grip tightened, silencing her breathing. Sydney’s eyes bulged with that telltale struggle for air. She shook her head in reply, and Merselus released her throat. She rolled her head back and gasped for more air as Merselus rose from his knee.

  “Why,” she started to say, and paused. Then she somehow managed to get out the rest. “Why did you hurt Celeste?”

  He dropped to his knee again and grabbed her by the jaw, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Because I thought she was you.”

  She stared back at him, frightened and confused. He released her jaw, curious to hear her response.

  “You wanted to kill me right there?” she said. “Right outside the jail?”

  “Yeah, because you snubbed me.”

  “What?”

  “You were supposed to throw yourself in my arms when you saw me, remember?”

  “I did. By the airplane on the runway.”

  “But you didn’t when I found you in the parking lot.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “I was watching Faith Corso on my mobile, and she said you had been released into the crowd. Things were getting dangerous. I went to you. I told you my name. I said let’s go, I’ll take you to the plane.”

  “But—”

  He grabbed her arm, silencing her. “You looked at me exactly the way you’re looking at me now—like I’m a creep, and like you never heard of anyone by the name Merselus. The second I took your arm,” he said, squeezing tightly to make his point, “you tried to run.”

  “But—that wasn’t me.”

  “Celeste sure looked like you. And after all I went through to get your cute little ass out of jail, I was not going to be snubbed by some bitch who turns and runs.”

  Merselus heard another round of knocking. It sounded like the police were right next door. He quickly tore off a strip of duct tape and covered Sydney’s mouth. Then he went back to his position at the door and listened.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he heard one of the cops say to the neighbor in apartment 103. Then he heard the door close, followed by a pair of approaching footfalls on the sidewalk. Then they stopped.

  “Check that out,” the same cop said.

  “Looks like blood,” the other cop replied.

  The old man’s blood. Merselus hadn’t noticed any on the other side of the threshold, but splatter was always a risk.

  Three booming knocks rattled the door. “Miami-Dade Police Department. Open up.”

  Andie was on the phone with MDPD Sergeant Jake Malloy. In her other ear she had her SWAT team leader, who was awaiting her confirmation that local police had ceased the door-to-door sweep. Andie was making no headway with Malloy. His response was to share an update that, in his mind, confirmed that MDPD’s plan was working.

  “Two of my patrol officers just reported blood outside the door to apartment 102.”

  “We know that already,” said Andie. “Our SWAT unit spotted it in the first sweep. But the plan isn’t to walk up and knock on the door. Pull your officers back!”

  The crack of four quick gunshots ripped through the night. Andie heard it three ways—her radio communication with SWAT, her cell connection with MDPD, and the echo that reverberated down the black Miami River to the parking lot behind the vacant warehouse where Andie was standing. The next thing she heard came over her cell, a man shouting to MDPD Sergeant Malloy.

  “Officer down!”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Jack kept an eye on the pistol in Ellen Bennett’s hands. She seemed to read his mind.

  “Yes, I know how to use it,” she said.

  After three years of Shot Mom and threats against the whole Bennett family, Jack didn’t question it. “This isn’t smart,” he said. “Just put the gun—”

  “Shut up!” she said.

  A breeze rustled through the ten-foot ficus hedge around Jack’s yard, as if to remind him of the downside to landscaped privacy. Ellen Bennett was standing just off the stone path to the driveway, between Jack and his car, about five steps away from Jack and her husband. She held the gun with both hands, arms extended. She was aiming at her husband, but it would have taken only a split second to target Jack. If not point-blank range, it was darn close to it.

  “I know why Geoffrey came to see you,” she said, speaking to Jack.

  Bennett said, “You don’t know anything, Ellen.”

  “Quiet!” she said, pointing her gun for emphasis, her voice quaking. “I’m talking to Mr. Swyteck.”

  There was just enough moonlight for Jack to see the range of emotion on her face—anger, frustration, fear. Jack tried his most soothing tone. “Would love to talk to you. Let’s do it without the gun.”

  She pushed on. “I bet Geoffrey didn’t tell you that he’s the one who met Merselus online.”

  “Stop, Ellen,” said Bennett.

  “I bet he didn’t tell you about all the other strangers he’s brought into our marriage. If you can call it a marriage. Twenty-five years of strange men who do unspeakable things to the wives of other men while their husbands watch and enjoy.”

  “That’s enough,” said Bennett. He took a half step toward her, but she stopped him with a menacing thrust of the gun in his direction. She continued in an angry but unsteady voice.

  “I bet Geoffrey didn’t tell you what he did when his wife st
arted to look middle-aged. When the videos he made of me were no longer the lure on the Internet that they once were. Did he tell you about that, Mr. Swyteck?”

  “Please,” said Jack. “Let’s put the gun away, all right?”

  “Ellen, I’m warning you,” said Bennett.

  “Hah!” she said, but it wasn’t a laugh. She was on the verge of tears. “You’re warning me? Who’s in control now, Geoffrey? I should have done this so long ago, before you could use your own daughter as bait for perverts like Merselus.”

  Bennett shot a sideways glance at Jack. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “I’m speaking the truth!” she said, her voice cracking. Her eyes darted back and forth from her husband to Jack, as if she were pleading with Jack to believe her. “Geoffrey didn’t tell you why I did nothing, did he?”

  “What?” said Jack.

  “Damn it, Ellen! I told him Merselus did it!”

  Did nothing. Her words were like a light switch for Jack, a confirmation of that gut feeling he’d carried with him since the start of Sydney’s trial, continuing through his visits to the Bennett house after her release.

  “Merselus didn’t kill your granddaughter, did he?” said Jack.

  She shook her head, glowering at her husband.

  “It wasn’t Sydney,” said Jack.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Thirty seconds ago I would have said it was Geoffrey. But now I know it wasn’t him, either. Right, Ellen?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Jack pressed on, his theory still gelling in his head. “I know what you meant, Ellen. But I want to hear it from you. What did you mean when you said you ‘did nothing’?”

  Her voice shook, and it seemed to take every bit of her strength just to steady the gun. “I’ll bet Geoffrey didn’t tell you how it killed me that my own daughter was living the same life I’d lived. How much it killed me to know that Geoffrey was already working on Emma, making her so sexually aware that she even talked to the babysitter about it. Geoffrey didn’t tell you that, did he? That’s why I did nothing. She was next. I knew she was next.”

  Did nothing. Jack needed to square that with what his forensic expert had told him about the cause of Emma’s death. There had to be more to what Ellen was saying, and suddenly it all made sense. “Tell me,” said Jack. “Tell me what happened when Emma fell in the pool.”

  She didn’t answer right away, but the expression on her face told Jack that he had nailed it.

  “Maybe I would have made a better decision,” she said through tears. “Maybe I would have been thinking more clearly if I hadn’t been drinking the way I do to get through every day of my life. But at that very moment, when I heard that splash in the swimming pool, I truly believed that this innocent little angel was better off dead!”

  “You did nothing,” said Jack.

  “I . . . I did nothing,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “That’s not true,” said Bennett. “Damn it, Ellen! It was Merselus!”

  His continued defense of his wife made no sense to Jack, until Bennett’s words from the other day came back to him. In his own twisted way, Bennett was beating back adversity to “protect what was left of his family.”

  This time, Ellen Bennett was having none of it.

  “That’s just another lie, Geoffrey! Lies, lies, and more lies! Twenty-five years of living your lies!”

  “Ellen, stop—”

  The crack of a gunshot dropped Bennett where he stood. As Jack dived to the ground for cover, another shot rang out, then another, and another. Each shot hit its mark—three to Bennett’s chest, one to his belly, and the last two directly to the head. She kept squeezing the trigger even after the chamber was emptied. Crying and on the verge of hysterics, she threw the gun at Geoffrey. It hit him in the face, but he didn’t flinch. There was no reaction of any sort. She dropped to her knees, fell forward, and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

  Jack rose slowly, but he didn’t move toward her. Ellen Bennett remained on the ground, wailing. Jack let her be, her husband’s lifeless body just a few feet away from her in the grass. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Go!” shouted Merselus as he yanked open the apartment door.

  Three clean-through bullet holes in the chest-high door panels marked his response to the police officer’s knock. He was certain that at least one of those shots had hit the mark. The fact that there was no body to step over told him that the downed officer had been dragged to safety by his partner. Merselus kept Sydney directly in front of him, his human shield, as they exploded through the open doorway and into the night.

  “Run, run, run!” He was pushing her from behind, almost faster than she could move her feet, and with each word he squeezed off another round in the direction of the patrol car for cover. There was no return fire, surely for fear of hitting the hostage. As they approached the car, Sydney tripped at the curb and fell hard onto the asphalt. Merselus fired two more rounds at the squad car as he flung open the car door. Then he lifted Sydney from the ground, using the bindings behind her back like a handle as he shoved her across the driver’s side and over to the passenger seat. Sydney crouched low, her head below the dashboard.

  “Stay up!” he shouted, pulling her toward him on the seat. A hostage in the line of fire was his best shot at getting the police to hold their fire.

  The car started quickly, and the engine revved as Merselus backed out of the parking spot so fast that Sydney lunged forward and banged her head on the radio. Merselus pulled her up, back into her shield position. The tires screeched and the car raced across the parking lot toward the main exit. He was almost to Miami Avenue when a lone police officer jumped into the path of his vehicle and assumed the marksman’s pose. Merselus jerked the wheel from left to right, putting the car in serpentine mode to prevent the cop from getting a clear shot at the driver. He accelerated enough to send a message that vehicular homicide wasn’t just a bluff. Sydney screamed as the speeding car bore down on the officer, but at the final moment the cop dived behind a parked car without firing a shot. The car fishtailed as they squealed out of the parking lot and turned onto Miami Avenue.

  An ambulance raced toward them as they sped away. If it was for the old man in apartment 102, they were too late. If it was for Officer Knock-Knock, they might arrive in time.

  “Just let me go, please,” said Sydney.

  Merselus almost chuckled. “Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen.”

  Chapter Sixty

  The white sedan was a blur as it sped past the vacant warehouse on South Miami Avenue. The nearest law enforcement vehicle in the area was the FBI communications van, just two buildings downriver.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Andie as she jumped into the passenger seat. She activated the siren and the blue police beacon on the dash. Her partner was behind the wheel. The van roared out of the parking lot, and the not-yet-buckled tech agent in the back of the van slammed into his wall of equipment as the van squealed around the corner.

  “Shit, guys!” he said as he climbed up from the floor and into his seat.

  Andie got on the radio, no time to apologize.

  “In pursuit of late-model white Chevrolet sedan headed north on South Miami Avenue toward Flagler,” Andie said into the microphone. “Subject is armed and dangerous. Appears to have at least one adult female hostage with him. Identity unconfirmed, but possibly Sydney Bennett. Request perimeter control to block all arteries and expressway on-ramps east of I-95 between Northwest Eighth Street and Southwest Third Street. Raise all drawbridges between Northwest Fifth Street and Brickell Avenue.”

  “Copy that,” came the reply.

  Andie hung the mic in its cradle and then unbuckled her seat belt long enough to put on a Kevlar vest—just in case.

  City blocks are short in downtown Miami, and the van raced through one intersection after another, the siren blaring. The western edg
e of downtown was definitely not a pedestrian area after midnight, especially on weekdays. Storefronts were dark, many of them barricaded with roll-down shutters of corrugated metal. Streets and sidewalks were empty, scarcely a parked or moving car in sight. North-south traffic signals were programmed for long green lights—not that a red light or anything else would have stopped Merselus.

  Four blocks ahead of them, the Chevy made a sudden turn east on Flagler Street.

  “I think we got him,” Andie’s partner said.

  Unless Merselus planned to jump the curb and drive through Bayfront Park straight into the bay, he would have to go left or right at the T-shaped intersection at the east end of Flagler Street, taking Biscayne Boulevard either north or south. Just as Andie radioed for additional backup, the Chevy made a hard left turn into an empty parking lot, cutting north toward the Miami-Dade College campus. The FBI van did the same, maintaining pursuit due north, weaving around the concrete parking bumpers in the empty lot.

  “He’s headed straight for a fence.”

  Just as the words crossed Andie’s lips, the Chevy crashed through a chain-link fence at the end of the parking lot and careened to the right. Broken metal fence posts and an entire section of chain link lay strewn across the asphalt, and the van bumped and rolled over it as they drove through the hole in the fence. They were suddenly on brick pavers, not asphalt, speeding down an empty pedestrian-only walkway in the heart of the urban campus. The FBI van was quickly gaining ground.

  “I think he’s got a flat,” said Andie.

  They’d closed the gap to less than a half block when the Chevy stopped so short that the orange taillights rose another foot from the ground. Merselus had reached a dead end: the three-foot-high, in-ground security posts that normally stopped vehicles from coming the other way, from the street to the pedestrian walkway. The driver’s-side door flew open, and Merselus fired at the van as he ran from his vehicle. There was a loud pop and starburst crack in the windshield as a bullet whizzed through the space between Andie and her driver, and the van screeched to a halt.