Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

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Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1 Page 51

by Larry A Winters


  Leary didn’t bother mentioning that any lack of fresh air in the van was likely Chancey’s fault—a lit cigarette dangled from his left hand even now. He’d already wrecked any chance he had of building a relationship with the man, so what was the point of fouling it up even more? “Where did the tow-trucks go?” he said.

  “What?”

  “The tow-trucks that were here. They pulled the JusticeGuards out of the stairwells and then they left.”

  Chancey nodded. “Those fucking things are evidence now. The trucks took them to storage for processing. We’re hoping to get some fingerprints off of them, help identify Garrett’s accomplices, maybe find a clue to his location. Where are you going?”

  Leary was already striding away. Garrett had at least a ten minute head-start on him. He had no time to lose.

  “Detective!” Chancey called after him.

  Leary kept walking.

  The police storage facility was a nondescript warehouse sometimes used by the Philadelphia Police Department to store evidence. Leary knew the loading docks were behind the building. He drove into the parking lot and followed a narrow road around to the back. Night was falling, but he saw the two tow-trucks right away in the fading light. The JusticeGuard bulletproof judge’s benches had not been moved inside the building yet—each was still secured to its truck.

  Leary parked his unmarked car, but left the engine running. He felt a cold trickle of sweat run down his spine as he approached the trucks. The scene was too still. Deathly still. The police would not have left the judge’s benches alone out here. Doing so would defeat the whole point of managing every link in the chain of evidence so that, if questioned at trial, the prosecutor could show that the evidence had never left police custody and could not have been tampered with.

  The distant sound of traffic from the street buzzed behind him, but the parking area was silent. His car’s headlights cast eerie shadows against the large, rust-specked trucks. He passed the JusticeGuard attached to the first truck and was not surprised to see an opening in its surface. He peered inside at a now-empty compartment.

  Son of a bitch.

  He almost stumbled over a tangle of bodies in the space between the two trucks. Five dead men, three of them cops, the other two probably the tow-truck drivers. Garrett must have taken them by surprise, emerging from the JusticeGuard while they were discussing how best to move the damn things into the building. By the look of things, only one of the cops had even had a chance to grab his gun—the weapons of the other two cops were still in their holsters. Leary turned away and leaned against one of the trucks, feeling sick.

  You need to find them. Time’s running out.

  But where? He pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the truck, trying to think, to concentrate despite the mound of death behind him. By now Garrett must know that Leary had not been bluffing about Pendleton’s death, so if Garrett’s only interest had been a payment from Pendleton, why bother taking both Tuck and Jessie as hostages? Garrett knows about Vitale’s money. Probably knew from the beginning. Leary had been wrong to assume Garrett was a gun for hire. Garrett was a co-conspirator. The only reason to take Tuck was to force the man to lead him to the money, and the only reason to take Jessie was as leverage to coerce Tuck. What would Garrett do if Tuck didn’t cooperate? Hit Jessie? Cut her? Worse?

  That’s not helpful! Think like a cop.

  He shook his head and forced his brain to clear the thought of Jessie in danger. Worrying about her wouldn’t help her. Only finding her would.

  Tuck is leading them. He had to be. He’s the one who knows where the money is.

  Where would Tuck take Garrett? Not to the money. A man like Reggie Tuck would be smart enough to know Garrett would kill him as soon as he had what he wanted. And more than that, a man like Reggie would want to get the upper hand on a scumbag like Garrett, would want to trick him, con him, into a trap. Leary had spent his whole day investigating Tuck, and he knew that much. But what would the trap be, and where?

  A gun, he thought suddenly, hidden under a floorboard.

  35

  Jessie sat beside Reggie in the backseat of a police car. They were separated from Garrett by a steel-mesh divider. She leaned her head back against the vinyl seat as the car cruised calmly through the city, headlights cutting through the darkness. It felt good to finally be outside of the Criminal Justice Center, a feeling which made her feel both guilty and ridiculous at the same time. Guilty because the fresh air had come at a high cost—after the horrific ride in the lightless, airless container in which Garrett had smuggled them from the courthouse, she had been forced to watch him murder five men in a police storage facility loading dock. Ridiculous because she knew the sociopathic bastard planned to do the same to her and Reggie the moment their usefulness to him passed. But for now, trapped between car doors that could only be unlocked from the outside, she thought, to hell with guilt and common sense. She let herself savor the sight of her city again, and the sky above it, for what might be the last time.

  “By now you’ve hopefully realized that I am not a man who is easily outsmarted,” Garrett said, eying them in the rearview mirror. “So don’t try anything foolishly heroic.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Reggie said. “I’m done playing hero. I’m taking you to the cash, like you want.”

  Garrett nodded. “I believe you.” The side of his face, dimly lit by the dashboard, looked satisfied. Jessie wasn’t sure if she believed Reggie, but she doubted it mattered. Whether he led Garrett to the money or not, she was sure that Garrett intended to end the night with two final murders. The only question was whether Reggie would jerk him around first. On the one hand, that would buy the police some extra time to find them. On the other hand, it would probably make Garrett resort to torture to get the information he sought, and she didn’t think either she or Reggie would hold up well under torture. She needed to figure out an escape plan, whether that made her foolishly heroic in Garrett’s estimation or not.

  “Make a right,” Reggie said. “It’s the fourth house, next to the vacant lot.”

  The car lurched right at a dark intersection and decelerated as it passed through a part of the city Jessie had heard about but never visited. The Mantua neighborhood of Philly. Blighted, impoverished, crime-ridden. The streets seemed empty of people, but she knew that didn’t mean they were not being watched. A police cruiser in this neighborhood was sure to draw attention. The thought of those unseen eyes tracking her made a shiver run down her spine. She hoped Reggie knew what he was doing.

  “This one?” Garrett pulled the police car to the curb in front of a run-down house. “What is this, a crack house?”

  “It’s the house I grew up in,” Reggie said. “Me and my dad.”

  Garrett fell silent for a moment, his gaze fixed on the building. Jessie couldn’t help staring at it herself, a part of her unwilling to believe what Reggie had said. The boarded-up windows, the rotting wood steps of the stoop, the patch of weeds and trash that tried to pass for a lawn.... It seemed horribly unfair that Reggie—or any child—had grown up in such a sad and ugly place.

  “You don’t look impressed,” Reggie said.

  “I don’t want to be impressed. I just want the money.” Garrett opened his door and climbed out of the car. Jessie thought he might be weary after such a long day of murder and mayhem, but he seemed as energetic as ever as he bounded around the car to open her door for her. She figured he must be running on adrenaline at this point. She felt wired, too, even though she should be bone-tired. He held the door for her, but his terse, “Out,” nullified anything gentlemanly in the act.

  Jessie stepped out of the car. After her time wedged inside the JusticeGuard, followed by the tight backseat of the police car, her knees popped and her legs sent up waves of relief. Again, enjoying the sensation made her feel guilty and ridiculous, but now a third emotion joined those two. She looked again at the dark, broken-down house, and fear closed a cold fist around her stomach
. Reggie slid across the backseat and climbed out of the car behind her. She caught his gaze, saw nervousness, and hoped he wasn’t about to get them both killed.

  “Where’s the cash?” Garrett said.

  “Inside,” Reggie said. “Under a floorboard in the family room.”

  Hearing the term family room in connection with this ghost house sent another chill up her spine. It was hard to believe a family had ever lived here. She tried to imagine the place in better days, with fresh paint and a solid roof and a smiling young Reggie playing on a green lawn. But she knew she was kidding herself. If anything, the Mantua neighborhood had been worse then, not better.

  “Give us a tour,” Garrett said. He stepped over a shattered bottle and led them toward the entrance.

  Reggie glanced at the grime-caked bricks, the missing roof shingles, and the boarded-up windows of the house he still thought of as home. He took a breath, a smell like old garbage seeping into his nostrils. He would only have one shot at this, one chance to save Jessie and himself, and give Deputy Dickhead some payback for all of the pain and death he’d caused today. Garrett had warned him against any foolish heroics, but Reggie had been playing the fool all of his life, while also trying to be a kind of hero—even if it wasn’t the kind decent people would approve of. He found the large rock near the door, kicked it over, and stooped to pick up the key hidden beneath it. Seconds later, he realized the key was unnecessary. Someone had busted the door open while he’d been in prison, probably some homeless squatter looking for a break from the weather. He pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped across the threshold.

  “What a shithole,” Garrett said.

  Reggie felt a flare of anger. The house was a shithole, but it was his shithole, a shithole that held the weight of countless childhood memories. It had been a shithole for as long as he could remember, and some part of him loved it that way—the part that yearned for those long-ago days, sometimes so strongly he thought his heart would break apart inside his chest. Like the house, his adoptive father had been broken and ugly, but also warm and sheltering, the most kind person he had ever known. His father had been taken from him, the victim of a pointless murder. The house remained his, in all of its dilapidated glory.

  “I don’t suppose this dump has electricity,” Garrett said, looking around with a frown.

  “I been in prison, remember? Kind of hard to keep up with the electric bill when you’re focused on avoiding shanks and shower rapes. Don’t worry. I don’t need light.” Or want it, he thought.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’d like as much darkness as possible,” Garrett said in that smug, know-it-all tone that had been grating on Reggie for hours now. “Me, not so much. That’s why I brought this along from the cop car’s glove box.” He raised his left hand to show Reggie a slim flashlight. He thumbed the switch and a beam of light brightened the house’s entryway. “Let’s get this over with. Your house is giving me the creeps.”

  Reggie looked at Jessie and, for the hundredth time since he’d come up with his plan, wished there were some way he could share it with her. But even a whisper would be within Garrett’s hearing. If he could only ask her to provide a distraction, even that much would help him immeasurably. But he was on his own. He’d have to create his own distraction, long enough for him to retrieve what was really hidden under the floorboard—a .38 caliber revolver, loaded with six hollow-point rounds, each one of which had Kurt Garrett’s name written all over its sweet cylindrical body—aim it, and end that fucker. But Garrett was watching his every move, holding that damn flashlight on him like a stage light.

  “Family room’s through here,” he said. He led them from the entryway to a square room no bigger than five feet by five feet. He knelt on the floor’s rough boards. He knew exactly which floorboard was loose, but made a show of looking for it anyway, waiting for a moment when Garrett’s attention shifted away from him, even for a second.

  “You really grew up here?” Jessie said.

  “Sure did. Me and my pops.”

  “Were you a happy kid?”

  For a moment, Reggie was the one who was distracted. Something in Jessie’s voice—he couldn’t tell if it was sadness, empathy, or plain pity, but it ripped at his own heart. He had been a happy kid. In many ways, he still was a happy kid. Being an actual grown man had never really clicked for him. “Back then I used to hide candy and toys under the floor, instead of cash,” he said. Or guns. “My dad knew, I’m sure, but he let me have my secrets.”

  “How about if we reminisce about your days of wide-eyed innocence after you hand over the stolen mob money?” Garrett said. He shined the flashlight into Reggie’s eyes, and grinned as Reggie blinked away from the sudden pain, then he let the beam trail to the floor. The gun in Garrett’s other hand remained aimed at Reggie’s head.

  “What’s your rush?” Jessie said. “Plane to catch?”

  “Something like that.” Garrett looked at her, his eyes narrowing. Reggie had seen him look that way before, whenever either Reggie or Jessie said something that implied they were trying to outsmart him. Reggie didn’t know the man, but you didn’t have to be his buddy to see he had an inferiority complex the size of a fucking mountain and a constant need to be the smartest person in the room. “Do you really think I would tell you?”

  “I don’t need you to tell me,” she said. “It’s obvious. Hanging around Philly after killing cops and stealing from the mafia isn’t exactly a good longterm strategy, so unless you’ve miscalculated the risk, you have some form of transportation lined up.”

  Garrett’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “Why don’t you worry about your own longterm strategy?” He turned his gun on her.

  It wasn’t the best distraction, but it was probably the best chance Reggie was going to get. He held his breath, flipped up the loose floorboard, and reached for the revolver.

  His fingers closed around air. What the fuck?

  He swung his hand from one side of the hole to the other. His heart jumped into his throat. He craned his neck and stared into the dark space. Saw only emptiness. No gun. Not even dust. Someone must have found his hiding place. A squatter or a burglar. Someone had robbed him—not only of his father’s revolver, but of his last hope at surviving the night.

  There was a cry behind him. He whipped around. Garrett held his gun against Jessie’s temple. “Where’s the money, Tuck?”

  Shit. Shit shit shit shit.

  “I thought I made myself clear earlier, when I told you there would be consequences if you tried to out-maneuver me.”

  Out-maneuver him? Had Garrett been the one who’d taken the gun? Had he somehow known it was there, known that Reggie would try to use it against him, and taken it before he could? No, that was ridiculous. Garrett wasn’t half as smart as he thought he was, and nowhere near smart enough to have checked this house before capturing him. Stay cool.

  “I just remembered,” Reggie said, “I left the money in my other stash. I moved it before I was arrested.”

  “That sounds like bullshit.”

  “No, it’s true. It slipped my mind. I was too scared to think straight. I got confused. We can go to the right place now. It’s not far.”

  Garrett’s teeth shined in the halo of the flashlight. “You lied to me, you little fuck. That was a bad idea. Now I need to teach you a lesson, to make sure you don’t lie to me again. Because I don’t have all night to chase you from one shithole to the next.”

  “Only one more shithole,” Reggie said, although he wasn’t sure where to go next. “Cross my heart.”

  “I already shot you in the leg,” Garrett said, seeming to think over his options. “God only knows how much blood you lost from that. I can’t risk putting another bullet in you. So I’ll have to put one in her.” His gaze ticked to Jessie.

  “No, don’t do that!” His heartbeat was racing now. He was still on his knees on the floor, his right hand hovering over an empty hole where a gun was supposed to be, his left raised, palm-out
, in supplication to Garrett. The only tool he had was his voice, and though it had served him well in the past, he had serious doubts that it would work on Garrett. “You don’t want to hurt her. I’m gonna become very uncooperative if you hurt her.”

  “Seems to me you’re being uncooperative now.”

  “Think about what you’re doing,” Jessie said to Garrett. “If you shoot me, you’ll just make me less mobile. How are we going to get to the money if I’m rolling on the floor with a gunshot wound?”

  “Maybe I’ll leave you here to die,” Garrett said.

  “I made a mistake.” Reggie choked down his rising panic and spoke slowly, enunciating the words and maintaining eye contact with Garrett. “But I didn’t lie. Listen, I kept the money here first, right after I stole it. But I moved it later, when I got a sense the cops were closing in. What with all that’s happened today, I got mixed up. I didn’t lie to you. I’m playing you straight.” He pumped every bit of sincerity he could muster into his voice, his expression, his submissive body language.

  “Fuck you, Reggie. You never played anything straight in your life.” Garrett pressed the barrel of the gun to Jessie’s right knee. Reggie heard her sharp intake of breath. “Now she’s going to pay the price. She’ll walk with a limp for the rest of her life, assuming she doesn’t bleed out right here.”

  “Put down the gun,” said a voice, “or you’ll be the one bleeding.” In the darkness behind Garrett and Jessie, Reggie saw a figure emerge from the shadows. “Now, Garrett.” Garrett swung around, pulling Jessie with him so that both of them faced the newcomer. Their backs were to Reggie. Reggie considered rushing Garrett, but Garrett shifted his gun from Jessie’s leg to the side of her face, and the motion froze Reggie in place. What if he rushed Garrett, and the gun went off?

  The newcomer stepped into the cone of light cast by Garrett’s flashlight. He moved carefully, leading with a semi-automatic, his face all cold determination as he eyed Garrett along the gun-sight.

 

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