Victim's Advocate: Angie Bartoni Case Flie # 12 (Angie Bartoni Case Files)

by Marshall Huffman

  I went back inside and finally found Dan still hanging on the phone. He looked at me with curiosity but didn’t say anything.

  When he finally hung up he said, “His call was to Mallory Keebler.”

  “Well that’s just peachy. Not only that but after you went out to call he took off like a bat out of hell. He got away before I could get to him. I did manage to warn the prosecutor that she could be a potential target.”

  “I guess that is at least something,” Dan said, “So what next?”

  “Let the captain know and have him send the Sheriff to the Kingman’s place while we head to Keebler’s house.”

  “Neither will be there.”

  “I know but we have to start someplace. We need to call in a BOLO on Kingman’s car as well,” I told Dan.

  “I’m on it,” he said as we headed to our car.

  CHAPTER THRITY-THREE

  “Do you think they are both involved?” the captain asked.

  “I’m not positive but I don’t think so. I think Keebler gave his cousin a heads up,” I said.

  “How did he know to call him? Why didn’t Keebler call him while he was still at home?”

  “Those are good questions and I don’t have an answer.”

  “I have a third one for you. If they aren’t both involved why did they both take off?”

  I shook my head. He was three for three and I didn’t have an answer for any of them.

  “What do you plan to do now?” he asked.

  “Hope we can find one of their cars and that will lead us to them.”

  “Gee how encouraging. I want Linda Evens protected 24/7,” he said.

  “Already taken care of. She has been made aware of the situation. She thinks we are off base and overreacting but at least she knows and we have people on her,” I told him.

  He just raised his eyebrows. What more did he expect me to do? We had APB, BOLO’s, Photo’s and just about everything else out. All we could do was wait at this point.

  The captain is pretty tense,” Dan said after he had left.

  “I don’t know what else he wants us to do. I’m certainly open to suggestions. Eric said they had no other relatives in the state. We can have other jurisdictions be on the lookout but you know that won’t get us much,” I sighed.

  ***

  Even driving my little Austin Healey home wasn’t as much fun as usual. I even managed to grind second gear once which is sooo unlike me. When I got home I noticed the side light next to the garage was out. My little antenna went up. I always leave it turned on. I got out carefully and took my gun from my holster. I unscrewed the light bulb and shook it. I could hear a faint rattling noise. Burned out. I put my gun away and went inside. I would need to replace it first thing in the morning.

  I flipped on the lights in the kitchen and almost peeded my pants. Seated at the table were Keebler and Kingston. Kingston was holding a very large gun pointed in my direction. Probably a .41 magnum I guessed even though it wasn’t particularly relevant at this point in time.

  “Keebler. Kingston,” I said, making sure I didn’t move a muscle.

  “Detective Bartoni. How very nice to meet you at last,” Kingston said.

  “Can’t say I am too happy to meet you, especially with you pointing that thing at me.”

  “Sorry for my bad manners. If you would be so kind. I would like for you to remove your gun…very, very, carefully, and place it on the table,” Kingston instructed.

  I have to be truthful. For a brief moment I thought about trying to take him. Keebler didn’t have a gun that I could see. I was pretty sure if I dropped fast enough I might be able to get a shot off .

  Get real Bartoni. He would put a hole in me big enough to drive a car through before I had my gun out. Instead I did exactly like he told me to do. I did not like this one bit. In a straight shootout I would have never have given up my gun but he had such a large advantage that anything else was suicide.

  “Please, take a seat,” Kingston said.

  I sat down on the edge of my chair.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

  “To explain why what I am doing is such important work.”

  “Explaining it to me won’t do you a bit of good. You need to tell it to a jury. I can’t do a thing for you,” I tried to reason.

  “Nevertheless, I think it is important for you to understand.”

  “Look, I get it, okay? I know what happened to your aunt and I know it was a bum deal. I know you think you need to seek revenge. You think that what you’re doing is a way to make up for what happened to your aunt. Well it won’t bring your aunt back and it won’t give the guy who killed her a longer sentence. That is all said and done so you are doing nothing constructive. All you have done is throw your life away. I don’t know what part Mr. Keebler has in all of this but he is going to go down the tubes as well,” I said.

  “Mallory has done nothing. He hasn’t done anything except to try to talk me out of all of this.”

  “That’s not exactly true. We know about the phone call. He warned you that we were on to you. He is the one that gave you the heads up.”

  “Very minor in the grand scheme of things, don’t you think?”

  “No, not really. If he hadn’t warned you, we would have been able to snag you at the courthouse. As it is…” I said letting the sentence trail off.

  “A good lawyer will get that reduced to jay-walking,” he said smiling.

  I guess he thought it was funny but I was definitely lacking humor at the moment.

  “So you are here. I already know the message. This would be a good time for you to hit the road and hope you aren’t caught before you can get out of the state,” I told him.

  “Leave the state? Heavens no. There is still a lot of work to do,” Kingston said.

  “We have a watch on Linda Evans. She is under our protection.”

  “Goodness, she is not the only fish in the sea. I’ll just move on to a different target.”

  “Kingston, this is stupid. You won’t change a thing in the system. You may think it is broken, and maybe parts are, but overall it is the best system we have. You simply cannot go around killing people.”

  The whole time I was talking I was gesturing with my hands trying to inch ever so close to my gun.

  “Why? They allowed those that killed the person I loved most just practically go free. Did they care what happened to the family? Did they even think of us once during or after the trial? Hell no they didn’t.”

  “What did you want them to do? Send flowers?” said animatedly.

  “No,” he shouted, “I wanted justice. I wanted my aunt’s murderer strung up, not given a slap on the wrist,” he said slamming his hand on the table.

  I grabbed my gun and chambered a round while falling off my chair and under the table. I didn’t have time to really think, I just pulled the trigger shooting up through the bottom of the table. I heard Keebler yell something and then the chair that Kingston was in crashed to the floor.

  “Stay where you are Keebler or I will shoot you as well. I can see your legs.”

  “I’m not moving,” he said.

  I kept my gun on his legs until I could stand up. I looked over at Kingston. The slug had come up through the table and caught him under the chin. It had taken off the top part of his head. I walked around and picked up the gun and laid it on the table. I cuffed Keebler and called in the 911 and the station to let them know what was going on.

  Within fifteen minutes my house was swarming with cops, EMTs and of course the captain and Dan.

  “Hell of a shot,” the captain said.

  “Lucky. I just reacted. I couldn’t really see where he was. I just pointed and pulled the trigger.”

  Dan was hovering around like a school boy making sure I wasn’t injured.

  ***

  As it turned out, the questions that the captain had asked earlier were pretty easy to answer after we had a few minutes with Keebler
in the interview room. His cousin had no home phone and cell phones were spotty out there at best. Kingston had made arrangements to call during the first break in the trial. That is when Keebler told him about us visiting him and finding the post card.

  We also found out that Keebler became suspicious of his cousin’s activities but didn’t do anything about it. He denied taking part in any of the murders. As for charges? We would just give everything we had over to the State Attorney’s Office and let them sort through it.

  All Dan and I cared about was that this case was solved.

  - File Closed -