The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  “Yes.” Damon’s answer was neither rushed by guilt nor delayed by uncertainty. Not that it mattered if the realtor’s curiosity got the better of her. The leather folio didn’t hold anything that could cause problems for him later—just a prepaid cell phone, virtually untraceable, and five thousand dollars in cash for Selena McCaffrey, the newest resident of Princeton Court.

  That wasn’t the name she’d been born with—merely the one she was using these days. For all he cared, she could call herself Sheena, Queen of the Jungle . . . as long as she did what he asked.

  Damon opened his mouth to speak, apparently thought better of it, and closed it again.

  William gestured casually. “Go ahead. If you have something to say, say it.”

  “You’re taking a big risk bringing her in. The stakes are too high. She could screw up everything.”

  William studied him. The hostility underlying his words was faint, but not surprising. Damon liked being the number two man in William’s global business venture. He liked handling William’s problems and being the only one William turned to for assistance or advice. He liked having Selena tucked away in Key West, painting pretty pictures and staying out of their business.

  But what Damon liked didn’t particularly matter.

  “She knows what she’s doing.” William waved his hand again, signaling the end of the conversation.

  “You knew what you were doing last week, but you still screwed up.” Realizing what he’d said, Damon clamped his mouth shut, as twin spots of color reddened his face.

  William didn’t tolerate criticism from anyone, especially the hired help. He fixed a frigid stare on Damon. “And what was I doing, Damon?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, almost gentle. “I was cleaning up after you. I was correcting your mistakes. Thanks to me, we’re safe. And Selena will make sure of that.”

  The young man’s reaction was tedious in its predictability—relief that William hadn’t flayed him, accompanied by eagerness to make amends. “We don’t need her. I can take care of it.”

  “If I wanted you to take care of it, I would have asked you. And while you might not need Selena, I do. She’s family.”

  And you’re not. William didn’t say the words aloud, but the clenching of Damon’s jaw proved he’d heard them just the same. He knew the young man thought of him as a father figure, knew he wanted William to think of him as a son.

  He didn’t. Damon had been loyal, trustworthy, and committed from the beginning, true, but he’d also been easy. Selena was a challenge. Breathtakingly beautiful, elegant, and graceful, and yet there was something terribly flawed about her. She was, at the same time, the strongest and the most fragile woman he’d ever known. She loved him and hated him and owed him.

  That was the bottom line—she owed him. Had owed him for fourteen years and counting. The time had arrived for repayment of her debt . . . with interest.

  2

  Tony’s first Stop Tuesday morning was the forensics lab located on the ground floor of the police station, where he found Marla bent over a microscope. When he was still several feet away, she remarked without raising her head, “I wondered when you’d show up. Usually you pester us to work faster.”

  “I’ve had plenty to keep me busy—and I don’t pester.”

  She straightened and gave him a level look. “Right. What do you want first?”

  “Whatever you’ve got handy.”

  “Okay. The shoeprint was a man’s dress shoe, maker unknown. It’s a size eleven, and it shows uneven wear on the outside of the sole, so your shooter supinates, or rolls to the outside of his foot when he walks. So does about half the population. There’s a nick here”—she reached for a black-and-white photo, then pointed to a spot on the leading edge of the heel—“and there’s heavy wear near the toes. Either he scuffs when he walks, or he likes to pivot sharply. The stitching’s worn down here, but there’s no significance to that, other than if you find this particular shoe, it’ll help us identify it.”

  “Jeez, that’s a lot of help. You have any better luck on the fingerprints?”

  “The place was used as a hangout by the neighborhood kids. We got more prints than Simmons has freckles. It’s gonna take some time. Same with the trash you picked up. Oodles of prints, probably not any that are gonna help. On the other hand, there is some positive news. Ballistics matched the bullets taken from these three to those taken from the first three victims, so it’s definitely the same gun and presumably the same shooter.”

  “Of course, we don’t have a clue where that gun is or who that shooter is.” He leaned against the counter, hands resting on the cool surface. “What about the GSR?”

  “There was plenty of powder stippling on Mykle Moore—that shot in the forehead was from a distance of less than eighteen inches—but no gunshot residue on any of the victims’ hands. It was a .45, which means that the shooter policed his brass . . . though anyone smart enough to pick up the shell casings is probably smart enough to wear gloves while handling the bullets and magazine.” She returned to the microscope. “Jog my memory. Weren’t these three considered suspects in the first three murders?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you have three fewer suspects in those cases.”

  “Yeah, that must bring the list down to somewhere around a hundred thousand.”

  She smiled. “Be grateful for what you can get. What’s on your agenda today?”

  “Talking to a lot of people who don’t like cops and keep suggesting that the vigilante is a cop.”

  “Have you considered that possibility?”

  “I consider all the possibilities,” he replied dryly. He didn’t like the idea that a cop could be committing the murders, but he hadn’t ruled it out. Cops were people, and like all people, some were good and some weren’t. Putting on a badge and a gun didn’t automatically place a man above suspicion. That said, just as there was nothing to rule out a cop as their killer, there was nothing to suggest it, either.

  “Well . . .” She reached past him for a clipboard. “If you’re free around twelve-thirty, give me a call. We can have lunch.”

  “Sure.” Like hell, he thought as he left. Maybe his ego was reading something more into what were merely friendly gestures, but until she spelled it out for him, he would do well to keep his distance. The guy she was going to marry was a lieutenant in Uniform Division Southwest, and the last thing Tony wanted was to get on the wrong side of a supervisor who carried a gun.

  Simmons was waiting for him in the garage, leaning against Tony’s Impala. He held a cup of coffee in one hand, a bag of cookies and a fast-food bag in the other. “You ready to go visit Mama Washington again?”

  After leaving the crime scene the morning before, they had made death notification calls to the families. Tony hadn’t gotten out more than “I’m sorry” and Grover’s name before Mae Washington had collapsed in tears, unable to answer any questions. They’d left her with a neighbor and the promise that they would come back today.

  “I can think of a few hundred things I’d rather do.” Like playing chicken with a speeding bullet, or facing up to Marla’s lieutenant. “You planning on eating that in my car?”

  “Get over it, Chee. It’s nothing a little vacuuming can’t clean up.”

  “Like you would know. You’ve never touched a vacuum in your life.”

  “That’s women’s work.”

  “Yeah, right. I’d pay money to see you tell your wife that. She’d kick your ass into next week.” He unlocked the car, tossed his notebook into the backseat, then slid behind the wheel and buckled up. Juggling his breakfast, Simmons settled in the passenger seat and, right off the bat, sloshed coffee between the seats. With a scowl, Tony handed him a stack of napkins from the door pocket, then backed out of the parking space.

  Simmons mopped up the coffee and tossed the napkins onto the back floorboard. “Where are we going?”

  “North,” Tony replied as he turned in that direction.

  “Jeez,
why do I have to work with all the smart-asses?”

  “Before we start interviewing the other families, we may as well check out Grover Washington’s place. They’re all in the same area.” And searching an unoccupied house was a far more pleasant prospect than asking difficult questions of grieving relatives.

  “Great. I like comparing lifestyles of the corrupt and lawless with my own.”

  Grover’s house was located a few blocks off North Peoria. As Tony cut the engine in the driveway, Simmons muttered, “Home, sweet fucking home. Christ, can you believe this?”

  No one would have given the house a second glance if it had been located on Tulsa’s south side, but here, in a neighborhood of shabby houses that could be improved only by leveling them, the place stood out. It was large, probably four thousand square feet, and was built of a combination of brick and native stone. Fat white columns stretched up two stories, and tall arched windows lined the front.

  There were no vehicles parked in front of the four-car garage, and the in-ground pool out back was as smooth as glass. The grass was damp, courtesy of an automatic sprinkler system, and its rich green provided a sharp contrast to the yellowing yards that neighbored the lot.

  Returning to the front of the house, Tony pulled on a pair of latex gloves, then took out the keys he’d picked up from the medical examiner’s office once he’d secured a warrant to search the house. While he undid the multiple locks on the front door, Simmons looked on disgustedly. “You know how much I make? Of course you do—same as you. And you’ve seen my house. This bozo, who never worked a day in his life, has a place like this, and he don’t even have the sense to build it where it matters.”

  “It matters here,” Tony said as he opened the final lock, then the door. “He grew up less than a mile from here. These people knew him when he was just one more poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks. They’re the ones he wanted to impress.”

  The entry opened into a foyer tiled in black and red. The windows were bracketed with heavy red drapes, and an elaborate staircase curved around a niche that held a grossly disproportional marble statue of a nude. Water trickled from the urn she held to fill the pool below, where fat koi swam lethargically.

  “Jesus,” Simmons said. “Wonder where he keeps the velvet paintings.”

  “In here.” Tony gestured to the living room on the left. To be fair, there was only one velvet painting, but it was enough.

  The living room looked as if it was rarely used, so after a cursory examination, he followed Simmons across the hall to the formal dining room. Heavily gilded furniture, a chandelier with rose-colored prisms, and more bordellored fabric at the windows made it look like something out of a French provincial whorehouse.

  Simmons snorted. “Okay, this proves it. Money can buy a lot, but it can’t buy you class. Even I know this shit’s tacky, and Suz says all my taste is in my mouth.”

  Tony grunted in agreement as he quickly searched the drawers in the buffet and china cabinet, finding nothing but layers of dust.

  Off the kitchen, they found the first room that looked lived in. Glass doors exited to the patio and the pool. Inside was every toy a man could want—a well-stocked bar, a pool table, a plasma TV, a stereo system, and a selection of CDs, DVDs, and video games that would compete with any electronics store.

  And, sitting in the middle of a table, a notebook computer.

  “Leopard-skin sofas and tiger-skin rugs.” Simmons sounded torn between amusement and disgust as he headed back toward the hall. “I can’t wait to see what he did with his bedroom. If you find anything, give a holler.”

  Tony nodded absently as he waited for the computer to boot up. What were the odds of finding anything useful on it? A traceable E-mail from the killer would be nice, but he would be happy with details of some of Grover’s own crimes. Clearing old cases always counted for something. But he’d never yet met the crook who kept incriminating records where they were easily accessible, and Grover wasn’t likely to be the first.

  The first icon he clicked on was a day-planner program. He couldn’t imagine going to the trouble of keeping his schedule on the computer—his reminders were penciled in the margins of a legal pad or tacked to the bulletin board at home—and Grover hadn’t seemed the type, either. But he had liked gadgets. The novelty of computerizing his life had probably appealed to him, at least for a while.

  Tony called up the preceding weekend and found Mom scheduled for Saturday evening, along with dinner and, in the early morning hours of Sunday, the address of the house where he’d died. No mention of who he was meeting or why. No phone number in case it became necessary to reschedule.

  Other appointments were listed, as well, all in abbreviated form—D.B. at ten A.M. Wednesday, T. with a question mark on Friday. Series of numbers appeared by some dates—deals, transactions, shipping info . . . Tony didn’t know, but someone in Narcotics might.

  He’d closed the day planner and was about to check Grover’s E-mail when an angry voice from the doorway stopped him. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing?”

  Slowly he turned to face a woman somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, maybe five feet six, and twenty pounds past pleasingly plump. She was clutching a canister of pepper spray in one hand.

  “I wouldn’t recommend using that,” he said with a nod to the spray. “You’ve got the nozzle pointing the wrong way.” As she checked, then adjusted her aim, he withdrew his badge from his pocket and held it up. “Detective Ceola, Tulsa P.D. Who are you?”

  She came close enough to study the badge, then returned the spray to her purse. “LaShandra Banks.”

  “You must be Walter Banks’s . . .?”

  “Cousin. Grover’s fiancée . . . more or less.”

  Tony leaned against the table and watched as she walked to the bar, poured herself a drink, then circled around to sit on one of the stools that fronted it. “ ‘More or less’?”

  She shrugged. “Some days we were getting married. Some days we weren’t.”

  “How long had you been seeing him?”

  “A couple years, off and on.”

  If she’d cried any tears, it hadn’t been recently. It made Tony wonder about the true nature of their relationship . . . though he would wonder about any woman who voluntarily got intimate with scum like Grover. Had she found something in him to care about or—his gaze flickered across the expensive dress, the flashy gold and diamond jewelry—had theirs been more of a business arrangement?

  “When was the last time you saw Grover?”

  “Saturday night. After he went over to his mama’s, we had dinner at this Thai place he liked on Memorial, then stopped by a club on Admiral. We got back here around one, and he went out again a few hours later. He never came back.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “He had a meeting.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “His business”—she said the word delicately—“required odd hours.”

  “Who was the meeting with?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he knew.” Before Tony could say anything, she raised one hand. “I know. You’re thinking only an idiot would meet someone he didn’t know at four in the morning in an empty house. Grover wasn’t an idiot. The guy was referred to him by a . . . an associate.”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Marcell. I don’t know his last name.” She shrugged. “He was before my time.”

  “What was the meeting about?”

  “The guy said he had a business proposition, one too good to turn down. Grover was curious. He liked money— liked spending it on his house, his mama, his woman.” The look that entered her dark eyes made it clear that she knew what Tony had been thinking.

  “Where can we find Marcell?”

  She shrugged. “Like I said, he was before my time.”

  If Marcell was a business associate of Grover’s—one he trusted enough to meet with a stranger on his referral—it shouldn�
�t be too hard to track him down.

  Tony shifted the direction of his questions. “Do you live here?”

  “Sometimes. I have keys.” She proved it by dangling them from one manicured finger before dropping them on the bar.

  “Is your name on the deed?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if Grover had a will?” It led to the most important question in a homicide: Who would benefit from the victim’s death? They always took a good look at spouses and business partners, though in this case it was more likely a competitor. After all, Grover’s partners had died with him.

  “Are you thinking maybe I killed him?” A smile spread across her face. “If he had a will, I’m sure it leaves everything to his mama. I got mine while he was alive, Detective—a regular allowance, a car, clothes, jewelry. That all stops now.”

  So he was worth more to her alive than dead. She might be the only person who could truthfully make such a claim. Now all Tony had to do was weed through the multitudes who had wanted Grover dead.

  Two years after swearing she would never return, Selena found herself back in the heart of Tulsa. After exiting I-44, she stopped at a convenience store, where she picked up a city map. At the Braum’s next door, she studied it over a late lunch of a hamburger and fries.

  Considering how brief her previous visit had been, she remembered quite a bit about the city. A short distance west, then north of where she sat, was William’s Riverside Drive home, and she was sure she could still find her way to the museums—Philbrook just a mile or two away, Gilcrease in west Tulsa, and the Fenster Museum of Jewish Art. Admiring their collections remained one of her few pleasant memories from that trip.

  After folding the map, she threw away the wrappers from her lunch and walked outside to her car. The bright afternoon was uncomfortably warm. Having spent much of her life in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Florida, she was accustomed to heat and humidity, but it was the ocean with its cooling breezes and fresh scent that made it bearable. The only water here was the Arkansas River a few blocks away. It lacked any breeze at all, and its strongest scents came from the oil refinery on the west bank.