Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1)

by Ed Markham

  In complete control now, she watched with cool focus as Judge Perry followed her instructions. But as he bent to one knee and tenderly pulled his wife toward the edge of the bed, Edith heard a sound at her back that ripped her attention away from the judge and loosed a fresh bolt of adrenaline into her veins.

  Everything fell apart in an instant.

  Chapter 17

  MARTIN COULDN’T REMEMBER drawing his Smith & Wesson. It seemed to him as though the gun had materialized in his hands at the same instant he heard the man cry out.

  He’d jogged up the hill leading to the back of the judge’s house, and had paused to linger and look from the edge of the trees.

  The moon had nearly vanished below the horizon, but a few tasteful ground lights partially illuminated the gardens surrounding the rear of the house, providing enough light for Martin to see without his flashlight. He’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary. There were no footprints visible in the grass of the small back yard separating the woods from Judge Perry’s home, and there were no indications of illicit entry.

  He had walked from one side of the yard to the other, and had shined his flashlight along the perimeter of the house, listening and looking for signs of a jimmied window or evidence of a break in. He’d seen nothing and heard no one. He’d returned to the rear of the house and stood for a moment looking at the back door, which stood at the top of a circular stone patio.

  He didn’t want to try the door for fear of triggering an alarm; explaining to a federal judge why a retired FBI agent was creeping around his property didn’t sound like a lot of fun. But he wanted to take a closer look to be sure someone hadn’t picked the lock.

  He stepped onto the patio and bent to examine the knob and keyhole. Both looked unadulterated, and Martin had started to turn away when he realized the door itself was only partially closed. He took a quick half-step back and tried to peer beyond the dark panes of glass into the home beyond. He could see nothing but blackness. Carefully, he reached forward, turned the knob, and slowly eased the door open.

  And that’s when he’d heard the shout from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house.

  As he pulled the door open and stepped quickly into the dimly lit kitchen, gun drawn, he patted the pockets of his windbreaker in search of his cell phone. He swore under his breath when he realized he’d left it in his car. He didn’t even consider returning for it to call for backup. He knew by the time anyone arrived the judge might be dead. He had two simultaneous thoughts: She’s here, and, Hurry your ass up, David.

  He stood quietly for a moment, listening. He could hear faint sounds of conversation and movement overhead. As he stepped cautiously down the hallway toward the front staircase, he heard, much more distinctly, a man’s frightened voice pleading, “NO!”

  The woman’s voice was nearly as deep as the man’s and much easier for Martin to make out now that he’d reached the staircase. He heard her telling the judge not to speak, and waves of cold rippled down his spine.

  So that’s what the devil sounds like, he thought as he lingered at the bottom of the stairs, nearly holding his breath.

  He looked up toward the second floor and winced, trying to decide the right course of action. He recalled all the times during his nearly forty-year career that he’d tracked down a killer only to send in a SWAT unit or a coroner to handle the dirty work.

  Your turn at the plate, he told himself. No calling in a pinch hitter this time.

  He flipped the safety off his 9mm and moved up the stairs, one hand holding his pistol and the other gripping the railing for support. He could feel the gun wavering slightly as he held it near his brow, and a part of him wished he had knocked back a second whisky before leaving the house—just to steady his hands.

  As he approached the second floor landing, the sound of the woman’s voice grew louder; he could hear her telling the judge to get dressed.

  When he reached the topmost stair, he paused to listen.

  “Who are you?” he heard the judge ask. He could tell without looking around the corner that they were in a room at the end of the hallway, and the door to that room had to be open because he could hear them plainly. When the woman shouted back at the judge not to speak, Martin felt his hand tighten on his weapon.

  “Pick up your wife and carry her downstairs,” he heard her say. And as the woman instructed the judge on how to lift his sedated wife without injuring himself, Martin decided that she had to have her back to the hallway and the top of the staircase.

  Do it, he told himself. Now.

  He crouched and stepped quickly up onto the second-floor landing, keeping his shoulders square and his pistol raised in the direction of the open bedroom doorway at the far end of the hallway.

  But he did not see a woman. Instead, he saw the judge stooping alongside a large bed.

  Where is she? he asked himself, his mind racing.

  Then the floorboards creaked loudly beneath his heels, and she appeared.

  Tall and wide-eyed and impossibly pale, the woman had been standing just a few feet inside the bedroom doorway and out of sight. But at the sound of the creaking floorboard she wheeled into view, teeth bared in a grimace of surprise. Her black revolver—as black as her hair—rose in the direction of the noise.

  Martin fired at the same instant a flash of light burst from the muzzle of the pale woman’s gun.

  Chapter 18

  DAVID HAD JUST reached the judge’s back door when he heard the shots.

  Three minutes earlier, he’d approached the house in his Lincoln at nearly sixty miles per hour, but he’d slowed as his eyes searched for his father’s gray Chevy. When he didn’t seen Martin’s car, he’d scanned the yard and the front of the house for signs of activity. Nothing.

  Driving along the perimeter of the property, David had made his way down to the private lane at the bottom of the wooded hill behind the judge’s house. He’d felt relief when he spotted the back of his father’s vehicle. But then he saw the dark SUV parked just in front of it, and his heart began to slam in his chest.

  He’d leapt from his car and, after quickly inspecting the two empty vehicles, had drawn his weapon—a Sig Sauer P226. He nearly sprinted up the hill behind the judge’s house. He paused very briefly at the rear of the property to look for signs of movement, but he continued on when he saw the back door was partially ajar.

  That’s when he’d heard the shots.

  Now he was moving quickly, incautiously, through the dark ground floor of the house. He could hear a flurry of movement above him, and, as he approached the front-hall staircase, the sounds of heavy footfalls thundered overhead and began to descend the stairs, rushed and heavy as bricks.

  “Pop, is that you?” he said, raising his gun toward the staircase. It felt slick and heavy in his hands.

  Whoever was coming down stopped abruptly. “Who’s that?” a man’s frightened voice asked.

  “FBI. Don’t move,” David said. He took a few steps toward the foot of the staircase and turned to peer up them. “Judge Perry?” he asked.

  “Jesus, yes!” the man said breathlessly. He clambered down the few remaining steps and nearly bowled David over as he reached the ground floor and lunged for the front door.

  David could hardly see the man in the darkness, and he grabbed the figure by his sweatshirt collar and slammed him into a wall, pinning him with one forearm as he kept his firearm pointed at the empty staircase. The judge groaned, startled, and David took half a second to lean in and make sure the man was who he said he was.

  “What’s happening up there?” he asked Perry. His eyes followed his pistol sights toward the vacant second-floor landing. He could see nothing but the faintly illuminated wall of the hallway at the top of the stairs.

  “They shot at each other and I ran,” the judge whimpered. “Let me go!” He shoved at David, but it did no good.

  “Where are they now?”

  Perry was wheezing and nearly hysterical. “I don’t know. I just ran
. Jesus Christ, let me go.”

  David released him, and the judge stumbled against the front door. He got it open and lunged out into the night.

  The house was suddenly quiet.

  “Martin?” David called up as he put a foot on the first step. “Pop?”

  There was no answer. His weapon raised, David moved up the stairs. He was halfway to the top when a figure stepped slowly into view on the landing above.

  It was his father.

  David felt a rush of relief to see him alive and apparently unharmed. But the relief was short lived.

  Martin wasn’t looking down the stairs at his son. His eyes and the barrel of his old Smith & Wesson were pointed back down the hallway toward an area out of David’s view.

  “Pop?” David whispered.

  Still not looking at him, Martin released one hand from his weapon and tapped his left shoulder. He mouthed, “One shot, shoulder.” He pointed down the hallway and added in a whisper, “She’s in the bedroom.” Then he waved his hand back and forth in front of his face and shook his head to let David know he couldn’t see the injured woman.

  Martin stood still for a moment, considering, and then he made a circular motion near his waist, indicating he wanted David to keep an eye out back—in case there was another way for the pale woman to escape the bedroom.

  David nodded and began to move slowly back down the staircase. As he did, he heard his father call out in his hard, loud voice, “This is the FBI. I know you’re injured. Step slowly into the doorway with your hands open at your sides.”

  David froze when he heard the scream. It was followed by a gunshot.

  Chapter 19

  SO QUICKLY, EDITH thought. It had all slipped away so quickly.

  She’d heard the floorboard creak, and had turned away from the judge just in time to see the figure crouch down against the wall of the corridor outside of the bedroom. As she raised her gun and fired at the shadow in the hallway, she felt the heavy thud of a bullet smash into the top of her chest.

  She couldn’t recall any sounds of gunfire. It all seemed to happen in a vacuum of silence.

  Now she found herself sitting on the cold floor of the judge’s bathroom, not really sure how she’d ended up there. Her gun was still in her hand, and blood was spilling out of the hole above her breast. It looked black in the muted orange light of the bathroom.

  She knew she hadn’t hit the person in the hallway. Her own shot had splintered the wood of the half-open bedroom door just as the hole had opened in her shoulder.

  With effort, she sat forward and peered out of the bathroom’s lone window. She could just make out the trees and garden, and the stone patio thirty feet below. There was no possibility of her climbing out to freedom. Even if she could, what was the point? The judge was out of reach.

  She rubbed the fingers of her left hand together and could already detect the numbness. Numbness, and wetness. She looked and saw that her hand was soaked with blood. It dripped down onto the floor tiles.

  She cringed when she heard the figure’s voice identify itself as FBI and demand that she come out.

  I’m sorry my love, she thought as she absentmindedly ran her fingers along the bathroom floor, smearing her blood.

  And then the tears came, warm and wet as the liquid pumping out of her shoulder. She wasn’t hysterical or frightened—the emotions she’d seen and despised in each of her victims. She felt only sadness.

  It wasn’t just the judge’s escape that made her weep; it was the familiar sense of failure and the way it punctuated the story of her life. There had been brief periods of sunlight—Levi’s love and companionship the brightest of them all. But from the start, Edith had known that sun would set. They had agreed that it must.

  “We weren’t made to live happily ever after,” Levi had said to her. “We both know it, and we both know death is the only lasting escape from our torments and our tormentors.”

  Edith had felt that what he told her was true and right. And as each of the defilers had fallen, her faith in Levi and in the “higher power” he spoke of had grown stronger. But now it was all ruined.

  It was a trick, she realized—a taste of triumph to ensure her eventual failure would be that much more painful. Letting her kill herself on her own terms was too kind—too generous—for such an unkind world. The “higher power” had offered her hope and purpose only so that it could snatch them away from her again.

  She licked her fingers and tasted her own blood. It was bitter.

  Of course it’s bitter, she thought.

  When she heard the man in the hallway call out to her, she turned the gun in her hands, settling the end of the barrel against her chest and pointed at her heart. She screamed as loudly as she could and pulled the trigger.

  In the millisecond before her death, Edith remembered the letter in her pocket—the letter from her partner she had planned, but neglected, to destroy.

  Chapter 20

  DAVID COULDN’T KEEP his thoughts off the name. In his head, he repeated it over and over like a prayer.

  Edith Vereen.

  The pale woman from the gas station video who had haunted his days and nights for the past week . . . her name was Edith Vereen.

  It always made him reflective to learn the names of the killers he pursued; a name conferred so much humanity—a family and a personal history and a life. It was jarring to associate all that with some of the things he saw. And now the Colony Killer, who had murdered nine people in little more than two weeks, had a name.

  She also had a face. David and his father had stood silently in the doorway of the bathroom, looking down at her.

  “Edith Vereen?” he heard a familiar voice ask now.

  He looked up to find Lauren walking toward him across the wide expanse of Judge Perry’s front lawn. Her footsteps left damp impressions in the dew-studded grass. Behind her, dozens of police cruisers and law enforcement vehicles were spread out along the private avenue and driveway connecting the judge’s home to the rest of Chestnut Hill. The news vans and reporters had congregated another hundred yards out, just beyond the police lines, and David could hear the familiar beat of helicopters hovering far overheard. The sun had only recently begun to rise behind layers of storm clouds. It would be a gray day, and at this early hour the world was varying shades of purple.

  He nodded and beckoned her to join him and Martin where they stood just inside the judge’s front door. Seeing her brought back a lot of the previous night’s conflicting thoughts and emotions. More than anything else, he just felt happy to be near her again.

  As Lauren mounted the front steps, he thought she looked wired in a sleep deprived, second-wind kind of way. Like him, she’d been up all night.

  She offered him a weary smile, and her eyes held his for a moment.

  “There she is,” Martin said too loudly, grinning broadly despite the circumstances. “You missed all the fun, Butch.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot,” she said. “I thought I was part of the team.”

  She stepped past them into the house and took a look around. Almost everywhere, forensic technicians and other support personnel were at work. “Still upstairs?” she asked David.

  He nodded. “They’ll bring her down any minute.”

  “How do we know her name?”

  “Her driver’s license was in her truck.”

  Martin added, “We also found synthetic rope and a leather whip, a cooler containing a hunk of dead snake, a few highlighted maps, syringes, changes of clothing, and some personal items—including a book stuffed with scraps of dried human skin. There was also something that looked like plastic explosives, but it turned out to be a kind of construction putty.”

  “Sounds like a prosecutor’s wet dream,” Lauren said. “What did she plan to do with the judge?”

  “The maps showed she was going to drive from here to Independence Hall,” Martin said. “When you consider the whip, maybe she planned some kind of public spectacle—flaying him for h
is crimes against the Constitution or something like that.”

  “And then what?” Lauren paused. “Today’s only the sixteenth.”

  The three exchanged glances, but no one had an answer. Lauren said, “What information do we have on her?”

  Martin frowned. “She was a research admin at the University of Virginia.”

  “You’re kidding me,” she said. She turned from them and said “damn it” under her breath. She stared out at the lawn for a second before turning back and shaking her head at David. “I knew we should have hit that lead harder. Fucking Omar and all his bullshit about server hacking and IP rerouting . . .”

  David nodded. When he’d learned of Edith Vereen’s UVA connections, he’d felt carved out. The men he’d sent down to ask around with the gas station photo had turned up nothing. Still, he should have done more. They’d had her, and they’d missed her.

  “We don’t know much else,” he said. “SWAT’s headed to her house outside of Charlottesville.” He paused and added, “She was only twenty-six years old.”

  Lauren pursed her lips and thought about that for a few seconds. Finally she said, “What’s your status now? I mean, with Reilly? Has he called to apologize and kiss your ass?”

  “Carl called on his behalf. I’m fully reinstated as lead of the investigation—or what’s left of it. You, Martin, and everyone on our team will receive letters of commendation for your service.”

  “Reilly didn’t have the balls to call himself,” Martin said. “The chickenshit. I wish I could’ve seen the look on his face when he got the news.”

  “So let’s hear it,” she said, squinting at David. “How’d you know she would be here?”

  He told her about the pattern in the media reports and how he’d used the Goodman lead to narrow his search to Philly. “By the way,” he said, “How’d that go?”

  “Well, Goodman’s not a big fan of the FBI,” she said