by Dale Mayer
He snapped the card in his hand, making a sharp sound. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know you can lose everything you have on that fool’s errand.”
“I have to do this,” he insisted.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then her shoulders sagged in defeat. “Fine, do it. But it would be awfully damn nice if you came home alive and healthy.”
His tone mocking, he said, “And here I thought you’d be happy to see me leave.” He slyly checked his watch.
She glared at him. “I will be, provided I don’t get into any more trouble with assholes like these two.” She turned to glare at the two kidnappers. “What did you two do that this guy is concerned about?”
Paul shook his head. His face was bland, too bland.
She stared at him suspiciously. “I don’t suppose you’re the one who shot my uncle, are you?”
He stared at her in horror, but a flash of panic crossed his face.
She groaned. “Please, no. … Please tell me that you didn’t actually kill my uncle.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about your uncle.”
She snorted. “So, if it wasn’t my uncle, you shot somebody else, didn’t you?”
In a fatalistic move his shoulders sagged, and he stared at her. After a long moment he slowly nodded his head. “Yes. I did.”
Badger watched the color slide away from Kat’s cheeks. It was one thing to contemplate a murderer, particularly when she’d been on the receiving end of a family member being murdered, but it was another thing to stare them in the face. She looked shocked. And cold.
She wrapped her arms around her chest again and walked away from the man several paces. Then she suddenly turned and looked back at him. “Did you plan to kill this person?”
Paul shook his head. “No, I didn’t. We went in there looking for something easy to lift. Something we could pawn for a few dollars. My friend needed a fix. He’d been trying to get off the drugs, and we were weaning him slowly. Smaller doses each time. But it was expensive even then. We went in looking for TVs, cameras, cell phones, anything we could just grab and run. But the owner had a gun. He shot my partner, and I shot him.”
Badger watched the man’s face and read the truth in his statement. “Unfortunately it happens all too often, doesn’t it?”
Paul nodded. “I wish I’d been anywhere else that day. But I can’t undo what I did.”
“Do you know for sure that you killed him?” Kat asked.
Badger wanted to smile, but it was too serious a moment. Even now Kat was searching for some light in this dark situation.
Paul shrugged. “I didn’t stick around to find out. I picked up my buddy and left. I dropped him off at the hospital, but he was dead within hours. And he never gave a statement. I did call the police and let them know that there’d been a break-in and that I’d heard shooting. But I didn’t do a follow-up. I was too scared. I could get life.”
“Who else would know you were there that day?” Badger asked. “Because whoever is sending the letters knows this, I assume.”
“I don’t know that he does.” Kat’s voice was thoughtful. “He could just be fishing. Why did he choose Paul? Maybe he saw him running from the house. Maybe he saw him at the hospital. Hell, he could have been one of the doctors in the emergency room. There are all kinds of scenarios. But everyone feels guilty over something. The letter writer didn’t give a time frame, and he didn’t mention a specific incident. He left it broad and general. It spikes fear in all of us.”
Paul glared at her. “Even you?”
She stared at him. “I certainly haven’t been a saint. But outside of being mean to kids in school when I was younger, hitting back at a boyfriend who’d hurt me badly, things like that, I can’t think of a single incident that was criminal or even ghosted along the edge of being criminal.”
There was so much honesty on her face and in her voice that Badger believed her.
“But there was one incident …” She lifted a hand to her temple and massaged it gently.
Everyone froze and stared at her.
“I was at a conference a year ago. I have patents for my designs. But I was accused at the conference of stealing somebody else’s design. My patent had been submitted earlier than his, which was about the only thing I had as proof that I hadn’t stolen anything. But it did leave a sour taste in my mouth.”
“Could it be that simple?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. It was one of the ugliest things I’ve ever had to go through. And I have no idea why he would have assumed I had stolen his work. But of course he proclaimed it publicly and loudly. I was one of the speakers, and I think it was done to discredit me.” She made a face. “I’m sure you can imagine how unpleasant that whole four-day conference was after that.”
Erick glared at the group of them. “None of this makes any sense. And I really hate it when things aren’t logical.”
Badger nodded. “I agree. We need to get to the bottom of this.” He checked his watch yet again.
“What are you checking the time for?” Kat asked.
“The kidnappers are here. They have you here. They’re waiting for their next set of instructions. We don’t know what the end game is, but, if we can keep the game in play, we have a better chance of catching whoever’s doing this.”
Paul nodded. “He’s right. And I’m game. I’d like to get this asshole out of my life too.”
“The trouble is, you’re also hoping to get away with murder,” Kat said in a caustic tone of voice. “I’m pretty sure that guy’s family is looking for closure to what you did.”
Paul’s shoulders stiffened. “I get that,” he said quietly. “I certainly didn’t plan on having to shoot somebody that day.”
“So why did you take a gun then?” Erick asked, his tone casual as he stared at the guy.
“I didn’t. My friend did. I didn’t even know he was carrying at the time. Like I said, we were just looking for something we could get quick cash for. And, before you say it, yes, I know we could get jobs and pay for the drugs that way. The thing is, I had a job, only I wasn’t earning enough for his drug habit too. But I was trying to help a friend, and, as my buddy here has just found out, helping a friend is often not in his own best interests.” Paul pointed to his skinny accomplice. “You should let him go. He’s got nothing to do with this.”
The small guy said, “Hey, don’t say that. I’m just as involved as you are.”
“And you shouldn’t be,” Paul said. “Now you’ll have a kidnapping charge on your head. Prison is not for the faint of heart.”
“And you know that from personal experience, do you?” Cade asked, his voice almost startling because he’d been quiet for the last half an hour.
Paul turned to look at him and shook his head. “No, I don’t have a record. No, I’ve never done jail time. But my brother did. When he came out, he was a different man.”
Badger had heard the same thing time and again. It wasn’t an easy life. Being incarcerated with other criminals, some of them a hell of a lot worse who didn’t give a shit whether they lived or died, made day-to-day jailhouse living perilous.
Just then a phone rang. Everybody reached in their pockets. When Badger realized the phone belonged to one of the kidnappers, he nodded at Paul. “Do you need to answer that?”
The guy gave him a hard look. “I have no idea who it is, so how am I supposed to know?”
Cade fished the phone out of Paul’s pocket and held it up. “It’s an unidentified caller.” He hit Talk and held it to Paul’s ear.
Paul said, “Hello?”
“Have you got her?”
The way Cade was holding the phone it was easy for everyone in the room to hear.
Paul said, “Yeah, I do.”
“Good. Now kill her.”
There was one sound and one sound only in that room. And that was Kat’s cry, “No. Please, no.”
Badger knew it was less in
response to the actual thought of being killed than to the thought that somebody could hate her so much, and possibly it was a voice she might have recognized. He gave her hand a shake, willing her to look at him so he didn’t have to speak. When she turned her huge eyes toward him, he mouthed, Do you know that speaker? Slowly she nodded her head, and his eyebrows rose. He bent down so her mouth was against his ear.
She whispered, “It’s my brother.”
Chapter 6
Badger’s arm came around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. Without his support she was sure she’d have crumpled to the ground. Her mind kept reeling, searching for an answer. But her heart already knew.
It was her brother. A brother she hadn’t seen or heard from in a long time. But there was no mistaking the way he spoke. He had a weird slur, something to do with his tooth alignment. He’d always had it.
But it didn’t make any sense that he’d try to kill her. Or try to have her killed.
Badger just held her close. She wanted to hear the rest of the conversation. She twisted to look at Paul. “Did he say anything else?”
Slowly Paul shook his head. “No. He didn’t give me a chance to speak either.”
She glanced at Erick and Cade. But their laptops were open on the kitchen table, and they pounded the keys furiously. “What are they doing?” she asked Badger.
“They’re tracing the call.”
“He wasn’t on long enough, was he?”
Badger slid her a sideways glance. “What do you know about tracing calls?”
“Only what I’ve seen on TV shows. About the caller having to be on the line long enough for somebody to trace it.” She frowned. “It was an unidentified caller number.”
“Sure, but we can get that number. There are ways to get almost anything now.” He turned toward Erick. “You did get a number, didn’t you?”
Erick nodded. “I did. Which is pretty stupid on his part. So he’s either about to toss the phone, or he’s really cocky and doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. I’ll lock in on his location now per his phone.”
“If it’s who I think it is,” Kat said, “then he might know more than we think. My brother has been in and out of jail. I think he went in the last time three years ago.”
“Your brother?” the small wiry man asked. “Holy shit, this is getting ugly.”
“If it’s him, it’s always been ugly. I come from a split family—two mothers, one father, one child from each mother.”
“And I gather the two of you never got along.”
“He was older than me. He was smarter than me. He was my father’s favorite because he was a male and had the same attitude toward women that my father did,” Kat said in a cool tone. “Which meant there were two locations for a woman, and that was the bedroom or the kitchen, preferably with a chain attached.”
The two men working at the table raised their heads.
“In this day and age?” Cade shook his head. “Hell, I’d like to give him a good beating myself.”
She stepped out of Badger’s arms and started to pace. “What I don’t know is why he would want me killed.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” Paul said. “He’s after those precious coins.”
“How would he have known about them?”
“Was he not mentioned in the will?”
She shook her head. “No, we’ve had very little to do with him. He got out of jail a couple months ago. I honestly don’t know where he’s living or what he’s doing.”
“Blackmailing people,” said the smaller man. “I know you guys want to keep us tied up so we can’t attack you or something, and I understand all that, but I really got to take a leak bad.”
She glanced at him in surprise, then at Badger, who was already untying him.
When the skinny kidnapper stood, he rubbed his wrists and said in a quiet voice, “I know you don’t believe me, but I’m sorry for all the trouble.”
Kat nodded. “Thanks. I just wish you hadn’t kidnapped me in the first place. I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life now.”
Badger led him away to the bathroom, keeping a steady hand on him.
She focused on Paul. “Do you know anybody name Teddy?”
He frowned, his thick bushy eyebrows almost meeting in the center as they furrowed. Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“That’s my brother. His real name is Theodore, but he went by Teddy when he was a teen.”
Erick spoke up. “We need to consider the fact that, if Teddy’s an ex-con, and our guy here, his brother is an ex-con, it’s quite possible the two met in prison.” Erick got up from the table and walked over to Paul. “What’s your friend’s name?” He nodded with his head toward the bathroom.
“Bud. He goes by Bud.”
“Okay, Paul, what’s the relationship between you and your brother?”
Paul stared at him, a hint of anger rippling across his face as he understood where the questioning was going. “Well, I would have called the authorities if I thought he’d set me up like this.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Eight years maybe. He’s been in jail since.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jonesy. Same last name. He went away for aggravated assault. I’m not expecting him out any time soon, but I haven’t been keeping track.”
Kat shook her head. “You said he changed when he came out the first time.”
“He went in for armed robbery, and, when he got out, he wasn’t the same man. He was uglier inside. The next time he committed a crime, he killed a man. He figured it was better to kill than to leave anyone alive to tell tales. But he got caught, and now he’s in for murder.”
“Wow, nice guy.”
Just then Badger returned with Bud and sat him back down on the chair, tying his legs again. When Bud put his arms back to be tied up, Badger shook his head. “You can leave them free for the moment.”
Bud’s face lit up with a small murmur of “Thanks.”
Badger stood in front of Paul. “Do you need a turn?”
Paul shook his head. “No, not yet.”
“Found your brother,” Erick said. “He’s back East. I’m trying to get a history of any of the prison systems he may have been in, so we can match it with Kat’s brother’s prison history. If we can place them in the same penitentiary, I’ll say we have a connection.”
“I never would’ve thought my brother would do something like this.” Kat shook her head. “I still can’t believe it.”
“How sure are you it was his voice on the phone?”
She winced. “Pretty damn sure. It’s recognizable.”
“Well, I hope you’re also wrong about my brother,” Paul said. “It’s hard enough to deal with the things I’ve done, but, if my brother is gunning for me, that’s a whole different story.”
“Can you call him?” Badger asked.
“That’s a good idea,” Kat said in surprise. “Would he tell you what you want to know, or would he just laugh in your face?”
Paul stared at them and frowned. “I have no idea. I’ve never tried.”
“He’s allowed visitors, but he’s a good three hours away, and that’s flying time,” Erick said, looking up from his laptop. “But you might be able to have a long-distance phone conversation.”
Paul seemed to consider for a long moment and then shrugged. “What the hell. Why not? I need to get to the bottom of this somehow.”
“Thank you,” Kat said sincerely.
Badger looked at her and wondered at this switch—from being kidnapped to thanking her kidnappers. “Don’t thank him yet. It doesn’t mean we’re getting anywhere.”
“I’d say we’ve made progress very quickly,” she said sharply. “Sure, it may not pan out to anything, but it could also end up getting us a whole lot further very quickly. We also now know Teddy’s involved.”
“What’s his last name?”
“Same as mine,” she said. �
�Greenwald. G-R-E-E-N-W-A-L-D.”
“Theodore Greenwald was released on probation, living in a halfway house here in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
Beside her, Badger said, “Bingo.”
She pulled out a chair and sat down, her legs suddenly too weak to hold her up. “That’s just shitty.”
“Yeah, I’d say so. Sorry. Your family apparently sucks.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Isn’t that the truth?” She glanced around. “I need coffee and food.”
Cade put up a hand. “Count me in for coffee. A whole pot just for myself, please.”
That startled a laugh out of her. She hopped to her feet again, happy to have something to do. She put on a pot of coffee and looked in her fridge. There wasn’t a hell of a lot to work with. Especially if she were to feed this many people.
Cade glanced at her. “Unless you’ve got something against pizza, it’s about the only way to feed us.”
She peered around the fridge door at him. “Not exactly the healthiest food.”
“Your stomach must be dying right now,” he said in a droll tone. “Do you really want to go out with a spinach salad in your stomach?”
At that she really laughed. “Okay, you win.”
“But what to put on the pizza? That’s likely to cause an all-out fight,” Cade said with a big grin.
She glanced at him. “Why?”
“Because Badger is a connoisseur of every take-out pizza around. He’s got a very peculiar palate.”
She grinned. “Badger, what do you want on your pizza?”
His eyes lit up. “I want a large just for myself, and I want it covered in bacon and olives.”
She stared at him. “Anything else on it?”
His face went blank. “You mean other stuff goes on a pizza?”
She rolled her eyes and said to the guys, “You have the laptops. I don’t know who to call.”
Badger called out, “Pizza Palace. And you better get at least five large.”
She stared at him. “What the hell? Who’ll eat that much?”
He just stared back at her.