Defender

by Diana Palmer

  “We’ll do our best,” the first agent said.

  “Grayling will have to know that I sent killers after his daughters,” he said, his eyes blazing. “He’ll have hundreds of security people guarding them, but maybe it will shake him up a little bit anyway, that I tried. He’ll never get convicted. He’s killed people before and got away with it. He killed his wife. He told Mama. She was scared of him, finally, when he told her that. He said he’d kill her, too, if she ever crossed him. And he did.” He looked up. “Don’t let him get away with it! He threatens jurors’ families! That’s how he got off the first time he killed a man.”

  “Do you know who he killed?” one agent asked.

  “I wrote it all down. Everything Mama told me.” He groaned. “He killed her. Over money! What good is money?”

  “Where did you write it down?” the first agent asked him.

  “On the notes, on my iPhone.” He produced it. One agent took the phone, pulled up the file and emailed it to himself at the local FBI office. He kept the phone. A record of recent calls from it would be invaluable in the investigation.

  “Are you guys at least going to arrest Grayling?” Leeds asked plaintively.

  They hesitated just a minute. Finally, they told him, “Darwin Grayling is dead. He had some sort of attack and died in his own home, night before last. We’ve kept it from the media so far.”

  Timothy Leeds opened his mouth and gaped at them. His round face grew redder by the second. “He’s…dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God! I only wanted to hurt the girls to hurt him! What have I done?” he exclaimed.

  “You have to tell us who you got to kill the girls,” the Feds asked grimly.

  “Who I got… He’s dead! He’s dead!” He was so shocked, he was lost for words.

  “Mr. Leeds, who did you hire to kill the Grayling women?” he was asked again.

  The small tape recorder under one Fed’s arm was whirling happily away.

  “I don’t know,” Timothy said dully.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know!” he repeated. His teeth ground together. “I was so drunk that I don’t remember anything except going to the bar and handing out a bag of money. I paid cash. He wanted a lot of money, so I gave him everything I had. I didn’t care about money. I just wanted Grayling to pay for killing my mother!”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” he said for the third time. “I was drunk. High as a kite on alcohol and drugs.” He bit his lip as he stared at them. “I had a name from somebody in that Spanish guy’s bar. So I went to another bar, somewhere in Brooklyn. The man in the bar told the cabbie where to go. I didn’t hear what he said. When I got there, I didn’t care about what it was, I didn’t look at the name. I went inside, and a man sat down at the table with me. We talked for a little while, I gave him the money, then he left. I can’t even describe him! I was almost passed out by then. Alcohol helps numb the pain. I don’t want to remember that she’s gone!” He started crying. “I woke up in my hotel room. I don’t even know how I got back there.”

  The Feds looked at each other with veiled horror. This man had hired someone to kill two innocent women, and he had no idea who. It was going to take a lot of investigation just to pinpoint somebody who’d seen him with the go-between or the killer. Right now they didn’t even know the name of the second bar he went to. That would involve interviewing patrons of the first bar, cabdrivers, dozens of people. It was going to take time, and time was the one thing they didn’t have.

  * * *

  When Paul got the call from the Brooklyn FBI office, he was livid. Even Jon Blackhawk hesitated to go in the room with him until he calmed down.

  “What is it?” Jon asked after a few minutes.

  Paul was pale. “They found Leeds and took him into custody. He hired men in Brooklyn to kill the girls. But he doesn’t remember who. He was drunk. The go-between at Viejo’s bar sent him to another bar—the man told the cabbie where to go. Leeds didn’t hear the name of the bar, and he was too drunk to notice much by the time he got there. A man sat down beside him, he gave the information out, the man took the bag of money and left. Leeds woke up in his own hotel room the next day with a massive hangover and doesn’t remember anything about the man he hired.”

  “Dear God,” Jon said quietly.

  “We can go through cab companies and find someone who took a fare to another bar from Viejo’s bar, if we’re lucky, but it will take time. Lots of time. Our best starting point is the bar in San Antonio where he talked to a go-between. I can’t walk in there,” he added. “I’m known here. We need an undercover officer to pursue what the CI already told us.”

  “I know a man,” Jon replied.

  “Meanwhile, Betty Leeds had installed security cameras Grayling didn’t know about. Timothy Leeds told the agents in New York where they were. He’s cooperating, at least. After his mother’s funeral, the marshals service will bring him down here and we can question him more.” He drew a hand over his face. He was pale. “The immediate thing is to keep the girls safe while all this is going on. A professional is going to be hard to stop.” He looked at Jon. “You know what I mean.”

  “I know.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Well, the Grayling women are as protected as it’s humanly possible to protect anyone.”

  “At home,” Paul qualified. “We can’t plant bugs and security cameras in every place Isabel might go in Jacobsville, especially when she’s working on a trial.”

  “I’ll talk to Blake Kemp,” Jon said. “We can put men there. Security cameras are already in place. We can situate a couple of bugs in Blake’s office. He won’t mind, under the circumstances.”

  Paul ran his hand through his thick hair. He couldn’t hide his concern.

  Jon put a hand on his shoulder. “Go take a couple of hours off,” he said. “You have to pull yourself together. I should never have assigned you to this case. I didn’t realize how closely connected you were to Isabel and Merrie.”

  Paul looked up, his dark eyes solemn. “I thought I was doing the right thing, when I left. If I’d had any idea of the tragedy I was about to provoke…” He ground his teeth together. Jon didn’t know about the aftermath of his resignation and he couldn’t bear to tell him. “I’m not sorry Grayling is gone. The girls will be free for the first time in their lives. But their lives are in danger and it’s his fault. Damn him, it’s his fault!”

  “Go see Garon Grier. He’s SAC in the Jacobsville office. He’ll help any way he can.”

  “I know. He’s a good guy.” Paul smiled sheepishly. “Sorry for all the drama. This is all such a shock.”

  “The capacity of people for irrational actions constantly amazes me. Who hires a hit man to go after a murderer’s daughters? It isn’t even sane.”

  “Neither is Timothy Leeds, from what we hear,” Paul confided. “He’s always been ten degrees off normal, apparently from a congenital condition. It’s a shame, and I’m sorry for him. But he’s threatened the lives of women I care about. He’ll have to pay a price for it in court.”

  “Yes. In court.” Jon shook a finger at him. “You remember that. No vigilante justice.”

  “Not me, boss.” Paul sighed. He indicated the badge on his belt. “I’ve been in law enforcement too long to go rogue. But I’ll be sitting in court when they try him, I swear I will.”

  “Let me know what you find out.”

  “Count on it.”

  * * *

  Paul stopped by Garon Grier’s small office in Jacobsville, but he was out.

  “When will he be back, do you know?” Paul asked the receptionist.

  “Not sure, sir. There was an attempted shooting at the Grayling mansion…”

  She only got half the statement out before Paul ran out t
he door.

  He had to get past Eb Scott’s men and Hayes Carson’s deputies to even get to the house. He managed to talk his way in, then he rushed inside.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Garon.

  The older man glanced at him. “Someone took another shot at Isabel,” he said.

  “Where is she? Is she all right?” Paul asked quickly.

  “She’s fine. The guy is no professional,” he added roughly. “He hit the porch column beside her. We’ve tracked the trajectory and there was a tire impression and two bullet casings where a car was parked.”

  Paul relaxed a little. “Gold. Pure gold,” he said with a smile. “From that, you can tell his name, his football allegiance and the color of his shorts,” he added facetiously.

  “Maybe not the football thing,” Garon said with a rare smile. “Isabel’s in the kitchen.”

  “Thanks.”

  Paul went to find her, his concern far more visible than he realized.

  She looked up and seemed to relax a little when she saw him.

  “You okay?” he asked softly.

  She nodded. “Just a little shaken.”

  “Listen, the guy missed you by half a foot. Some hit man!” he scoffed. “My old man’s cleaner never needed a second shot.”

  Sari stared at him curiously. “Your father was in the mob?”

  He nodded. “My whole family,” he replied. “Everybody except me. They said I had bad blood,” he added with twinkling dark eyes.

  She smiled back. “Did you find Mr. Leeds?” she added.

  “How do you know I was looking for him?”

  She gave him a droll look.

  “We had a couple of guys at our Brooklyn office go hunting him. He confessed. He was horrified that your father was dead. He only sent a man after you and Merrie to hurt your dad, to make him pay for killing his mother.”

  “What a joke on him,” Sari replied. “Our father never cared about us. We weren’t boys,” she added bitterly. “He said we were worthless. Mama couldn’t have any more children after Merrie. He hated her for that. He said if they could have had other children, he’d have had his son. But he couldn’t divorce her, you see. She had most of the money.”

  Paul sat down in a chair facing hers. “Leeds didn’t know any of that. He didn’t know about your dad, either. The agents said he was sorry.”

  “They can put that on my tombstone.”

  “Stop that,” he chided. “You’re not going anywhere. You have case files halfway to the ceiling waiting for triage.”

  She burst out laughing. “What a way to put it!”

  “I work with ADAs all the time,” he replied. “Most of them are great at what they do. We have them out at crime scenes, too.” He cocked his head. “You had the initiation yet?”

  “You mean did they lure me to a bloody murder scene and wait for me to throw up?” she asked.

  He nodded, smiling.

  “The only recent murder we’ve had is Mrs. Leeds, and it wasn’t my case.” She lowered her eyes. “My father was…”

  “He was not murdered,” Paul said firmly, grasping her hands tight in his. “And you weren’t responsible,” he added. “Wait until the medical examiner has time to write up his report. I guarantee you’ll see some medical reason for his death. Some underlying and probably long-standing medical reason.”

  “You always could make me feel better when the world was crumbling around me,” Sari told him. She searched his eyes, then quickly dropped hers before he could read the hunger in them. “It was hard for me and Merrie, after you left three years ago.”

  His hands tightened. “I thought I was sparing us both more heartache,” he said bluntly. “I didn’t want to get involved again, Isabel,” he added. “I’ve been down that road before. I lost my family…”

  She looked up, shocked.

  He bit his lower lip. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  She didn’t say a word. She just waited silently for him to continue.

  He looked up into her eyes. They were a soft, compassionate blue, full of feeling.

  “I had a wife, Lucy, and a little girl, Marie,” he said heavily. “I was new at the Bureau and I felt I had something to prove, like even if every other member of my family was involved in criminal activity, I wasn’t. So I went after our biggest local crime boss with everything I had. I never considered that there might be personal consequences. But the night they indicted him, after I celebrated with my colleagues, I went home. The house was surrounded by ambulances, police, crime scene technicians.” He swallowed, hard. His hands were bruising, but Sari hardly felt them. “Blood,” he said huskily. “So much blood. It was everywhere, even on the damned ceiling. I managed to get past the police who were guarding the crime scene. I saw…”

  His eyes closed. The memory was almost physically painful. “They dragged me back outside. I remember fighting them trying to get back in. They tackled me and stuffed me into a patrol car. I was taken into the emergency room and a doctor injected me with some sort of tranquillizer. It was so bad that I woke up in the hospital the next morning.” He forced himself back to the present and looked into Sari’s soft eyes. “The crime boss had flowers delivered. They came with a card. One word. ‘Congratulations.’” He smiled sadly. “I won. But I lost.” He smoothed his hands over hers. “Afterward, I couldn’t bear to even be in the same city where it happened. I heard about the job Grayling was offering, and I left the Bureau to take it. I thought the change of scenery, the change of jobs, would help me forget.”

  “You should have told me,” she said quietly.

  “I guess so. It might have helped you understand why I was so reluctant to get involved with you. That was one reason I left. The other…” He held her eyes. “You’re worth how much, honey, two hundred million? I work for wages. I wear suits that come from department stores. I buy shoes off the rack.”

  “I’m not worth two hundred million,” she pointed out. “I own half the house and half its contents. Well, Merrie and I have half of that. It won’t amount to even half a million in today’s dollars.”

  He managed a smile. “It seemed like an obstacle I couldn’t overcome three years ago,” he concluded. “I thought if I just left, it would solve the problem.” His eyes closed and his face contorted. “I had no idea that Grayling was that crazy. I never realized he was hurting you!”

  She relaxed a little. At least he felt something for her. “He was always unpredictable,” she said. “He’d laugh at something you said one day, and rip his belt off and hit you the next. Mama tried to protect us while she was alive. After she died, I protected Merrie as much as I could and tried to just stay out of his way. He traveled a lot, so that helped. He was very careful not to let his temper show around people who worked for him,” she added. “He wore a mask in public.”

  “It was a good mask. I used to be a good judge of people, but I never saw through it.”

  “You were dealing with your own tragedy. I’m so sorry, Paul.”

  He drew in a breath. “I’ve been living with ghosts. I couldn’t let go.” He laughed shortly. “I spent the last three years trying not to regret walking out on you. It was a good thing, in one way. I was so job oriented that I got back with the Bureau and made a name for myself in violent-crime investigation.” He toyed with one of her soft hands, teasing the palm with his forefinger. “But I missed you and Merrie and Mandy. So much. It was like giving up the only family I had left.”

  She was silent. She didn’t want to make it worse than it was.

  He realized that. He looked up into her eyes. “Yes, I know. You didn’t miss me. You and Merrie had every reason in the world to hate me, after what your father did to you. I wish I’d been here. I wish I’d known. I’d have broken his neck…!”

  “Don’t even think it,” she i
nterrupted. “You’re an officer of the law and I’m an officer of the court. We aren’t vigilantes.”

  “If I could find the guy who shot at you, I might be tempted to become one,” he confessed.

  “We’ll find him,” she assured him. “We have all sorts of evidence.”

  “There was one other thing Timothy Leeds told our agents.”

  “What’s that?”

  He let go of her hand. “He said that your father defrauded you and Merrie out of an inheritance your mother meant for the two of you. If that money still exists, it belongs to you.”

  Her heart sank. Money again. He was going to let it stand between them, if it was true that she and Merrie had inherited their mother’s fortune.

  She managed a wan smile. “I could give it all to Merrie,” she suggested, only half joking.

  “You are who you are, Isabel,” he replied. “I’m not cut out to be a toy boy.”

  For the first time, she realized just what she’d been up against three years ago. Someone had said something to Paul. Her feelings for him were so intense that she couldn’t really hide them. Toy boy. Paul’s pride would never let him assume that position. Money didn’t mean anything to him. Unlike her father, he wouldn’t do anything to acquire it. He was happy with his life as it was.

  She leaned back in her chair and managed a smile for him. “I understand.”

  “If you were working for wages, however, Miss Grayling,” he added with a sad smile, “I’d be on your doorstep nightly with flowers and candy and invitations to the movies.”

  She smiled back. “Life is an obstacle course.”

  “Indeed it is. And I’ve got another obstacle to attack,” he added. “I’m going to see what our investigators have turned up. You be careful where you go and what you do. Make sure your bodyguards are with you at all times.”

  “Because that worked so well an hour ago,” she returned with faint sarcasm.

  “Nobody can see a bullet coming,” he told her. “We can assume we know who might be shooting at you, but we can’t be everywhere.” He didn’t add what President Kennedy had once said about assassins.