A Rush to Violence (A Spellman Thriller)

by Christopher Smith

  “It’s the city,” Grace said.

  “It’s a fine city,” Emma said. “But it’s not Paris. Nothing is Paris. Paris is magic whereas New York can be magical.”

  “So, now she’s a poet?” Scott asked his sister.

  “Apparently.”

  “Yet another aimless Miller.”

  Grace held up her martini as if to make a toast. “Our family is filled with them.” She winked at Emma. “We’re joking, of course. You look like a focused young lady on a mission.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “This has something to do with your mother?” Scott asked.

  Emma nodded.

  “What’s her problem?”

  “She’s being indecisive.”

  Grace blew smoke over her shoulder. “About what?”

  “About all of you.”

  Emma stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched them exchange glances. “It’s infuriating. The proof is right there in front of her and yet she won’t act until she’s certain.”

  “Certain about what?”

  The eyes always tell the truth. Never forget that. It’s always revealed in the eyes. If you’re about to lie, your eyes will flash to the right. Or up and to the right. Those are cues I learned early in life. Eyes never lie. And when I look into theirs when I confront them, that’s the moment I’ll know for sure whether they killed your grandfather.

  “Uncle Scott, how do you keep this mansion of yours going?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do you afford it?”

  “Well, first it’s paid for, so that’s a bonus. But I also have savings. We all do. Your grandmother made sure of it.”

  “But she died two years ago.”

  “And we were told to invest wisely, which we did. Fat dividends each month.” He glanced at Grace. “What a curious line of questioning.”

  Emma faced her aunt, whose martini was competing with her cigarette for a chance to reach her mouth. “And you, Aunt Grace? I don’t believe you’ve ever had a job beyond painting your oils and watercolors. Do you sell well enough to get along?”

  “I don’t have to. Mother took care of all of us. We’ll never have to work.” She decided upon the martini and took a long pull. “And thank God for that. For me, working wouldn’t suit. It wouldn’t suit at all.”

  “I think your money has run out,” Emma said.

  “Run out?” Scott said. “Why would you ever think that?”

  “Because I think you murdered Papa to get to his money. I think you contested the will to get to his money. And I think because of a provision in Papa’s will, you’re planning to kill my mother and me to get to his money. But that’s not going to happen.”

  She stood and removed the gun from the waist of her pants. She spread her legs and pointed it at them just as she remembered from the YouTube videos. Each looked back at her, incredulous.

  “Is that thing real?” Grace asked.

  Emma squeezed the trigger ever so slightly and a red beam cut across the room and danced upon her aunt’s forehead like a bejeweled bindi. “It’s real,” she said.

  “What are you doing with it?”

  “I’m here for the two-for-one special.”

  “The what?”

  “I’m here to kill each of you for killing my grandfather. But don’t worry. I’m not singling you out. I also plan to kill the others.”

  “You think we killed our father?” Scott said.

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  She watched his eyes, but he said nothing. Instead, he tamped out his cigarette and stood.

  “I asked you if you did it?”

  “So, we have another assassin in the family?” he said to Grace. “Unbelievable.”

  Grace also stood. She put down her martini and folded her arms. Neither of them seemed the least bit frightened by her. They stared her down, doubting that she’d do it.

  “I’m going to ask each of you once and I expect an answer. First you, Uncle Scott.” She moved the pinpoint of red light to the tip of his nose, where it wavered. “Did you kill Papa?”

  “I did nothing of the sort. What the hell is this?”

  His eyes didn’t once move from hers, which confused her. He just stared openly at her with a rage that filled the space between them.

  “Did you have a hand in it?”

  “A hand in what? Your grandfather tripped over that idiot dog of his, which I put to death. He fell down the staircase. It was an accident. The medical examiner said so. Where are you getting these ideas?”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Did you have a hand in Papa’s death?”

  And this time, when he shook his head at her, his eyes lifted fleetingly to the right. “Emma, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She shifted the gun to Grace, whose mouth was twisted in a horrible line of hate. “Do you know what I’m talking about, Grace?”

  The silence that beat between them was almost palpable.

  “I’m afraid I don’t, Emma.”

  “You had nothing to do with Papa’s death?”

  “Nothing. Now, stop being so foolish and put down the gun.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “You can think what you want.”

  Her eyes weren’t moving. They just bore into her own. Maybe she was just pissed at having been caught. Maybe eyes didn’t reveal the truth if you were angry. Emma wasn’t sure. She pressed on, determined to catch her aunt in a lie. “You killed my grandfather.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You had a hand in it.”

  “I had a hand in nothing.”

  “You know what his will said. You contested it.”

  “For good reason. While you and your mother have been living it up in Paris, the rest of us took care of your grandmother before her death and the years leading up to it. We visited her, you didn’t. We spent time with her while you kept to yourselves. We held her hand when she died while you two waited for the news so you could board a plane.”

  “That isn’t true. We did visit her.”

  “You visited her once. Once when she was sick. We were there every day. Do you understand the difference?”

  “I understanding being at her bedside daily so you could get to her checkbook.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “That’s also enough,” Scott said. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  But the moment he moved, Emma instinctively aimed the gun at his temple, flashed the laser until it disappeared into his hairline and fired. His head exploded onto the leather chair, the shade covering the window, the desk and the heavy damask curtains behind him. He went down like a ten pin, landed hard on his side and slid a bit across the floor. Grace covered her mouth with the back of her hand as he started to twitch and bleed out. Whatever smoke was left in his lungs seeped out of his ruined mouth. Grace made an inhuman noise deep in her throat before she turned and glared at Emma.

  “What have you done?” she said. Her voice was barely a rasp. “Why would—? What’s wrong with you?”

  Emma pointed the gun at her. She felt sick. She felt certain she was going to throw up. She needed to keep it together. She needed to be calm and think. “Tell me the truth,” she said.

  “I have told you the truth. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked over at her dead brother, who had just messed his pants, and an overwhelming sense of grief washed over her face. Just moments ago, she looked younger than her mother. Now she looked years older. “Why would you kill him?”

  “You know why,” Emma said. “Now talk.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just a child. Put down the gun. Put it down.”

  But Emma pressed the trigger just enough so the laser shot out and squiggled across her aunt’s face. She tried to steady her hand, but couldn’t. If she shot her right now, she wasn’t sure what part of her aunt she’d hit, if she
hit anything at all. She looked at the woman standing in front of her and tried to find the lie in her eyes, but couldn’t. All she saw was grief and rage.

  All of them are manipulative, her mother told her the day they learned the will was being contested. They always have been. You’ll see that when we see them in court. Some are better at hiding it than others, but I’ve never trusted one of them and this is the reason why.

  She thought back to the day they arrived in court, just a week ago. The hostility in the courtroom was as high as the tension. It was her mother’s six siblings against Camille, the outcast.

  She remembered seeing Grace. So pretty. So pert. So on point and determined to win. She remembered watching her lean toward her aunt Sophia and say something that made her aunt turn to look at Emma. When she did, it wasn’t a pleasant look. She wondered then what Grace said to generate such a look. She wondered now what she said.

  Emma hadn’t been raised near any of her relatives and remembered thinking then how glad she was that this was the case. In spite of the fact that she wished she had a father, for the most part, hers had been a happy life. The friction, greed and unrest she saw in the courtroom that day were not only foreign to her, but she sensed they also were the reason her mother got out of New York when she could and moved to Paris.

  There was only one way she was going to settle this. She nodded at the phone across the room and told her aunt what she expected her to do.

  “But not before you get rid of him,” Emma said.

  “What do you mean ‘get rid of him’?”

  “Drag him out of here.”

  Grace looked over at her brother and shook her head. “I won’t.”

  “You’ve got no choice.”

  “I do have a choice. I don’t have to be part of this.”

  “Do you always speak from a place of privilege, Grace?”

  “You’ve got your mother all through you, don’t you, Emma?”

  “I do—and we both know what that means.”

  “Do you really know what it means? Do you even know what she was?”

  “My mother was an assassin. I know about all it.”

  “I doubt if you know all of it, but you’re right. She was an assassin. I wonder what she told you about her former life. Do you know how many people she killed? And who she was hired to kill?”

  “I do.”

  “So, you know about the children, then.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Emma didn’t respond.

  “I see you don’t.”

  All of them are manipulative.

  “Your mother was responsible for burning over forty children alive so she could get to one man.”

  They always have been.

  “She knew what she was doing, but she went through with it anyway. She killed those children in their sleep when there were other ways to bring her target down. She knew the consequences yet her hunger for power through acts of violence knew no limits. She’s a mass murderer. You may have come out of her womb, but you don’t have to be touched by it. You can stop this, you know? This doesn’t have to be your life.”

  “My mother did none of that. You’re a liar.”

  “Look it up on the Internet. She did it in Rotterdam. Eighteen years ago. She cooked those babies in that orphanage. It was world news. You won’t have any trouble finding it on Google. It’ll be everywhere. I promise you that.”

  Don’t let her in.

  But it was difficult not to. Emma looked over at her uncle and made an effort to keep her features neutral in spite of the sinking sensation she had in her gut. Who was her mother? Until today, she thought she knew everything important there was to know about her, but now she knew there was a significant part of her mother’s life that never had been discussed.

  For most, that was normal. She was old enough to know that at least on some level, people existed behind a smokescreen of their own making. She certainly did. None of her Paris friends knew that she came from money. She was just Emma, the average, everyday girl she wanted them to see, not the Emma who came from one the wealthiest families in the United States.

  The secrets her mother kept from her were radical, but who was Emma to judge her now? If she lived through any of this unscathed, would she tell her own daughter what she’d just done? She already knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t blame her mother for keeping that part of her life secret.

  She’s trying to throw you off. Don’t listen.

  She looked hard at her aunt.

  “If you refuse to get him out of here, I will kill you. That’s your option. Drag him out of here now, clean up the mess, use the phone and then we’ll see what happens next. If you don’t do it, that’s your choice, but at this point, I think we both know that I’ll do it.”

  “In spite of what just happened, I still think there’s good in you, Emma.”

  “So do I. It’s why I’m here. To fix the record. To do some good.”

  Grace overlooked the comment. “Enough good that you’ll put down the gun and we’ll figure this out together?”

  But Emma raised the gun. She pointed it at her aunt and flashed the laser so it struck her just beneath her right eye.

  And Grace’s shoulders went slack. “Where do you expect me to put him?” she said.

  “You seem pretty comfortable in this museum. Figure it out. And please don’t try anything stupid, because I’m going to be right behind you and I’ll kill you if you do.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  They were seated in the Chens’ living room, still poring over the information they’d found on the Miller siblings, when Jennifer’s cell rang. It was the doorman. Someone from Channel One was in the lobby with the package she requested.

  “Are they alone?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mrs. Spellman.”

  “Send them up.”

  She clicked off the phone and looked at her husband, who was leaning forward in his chair and tapping a pencil against his chin. “The tapes are here,” she said. “I had one of the video technicians put every piece of footage we had on Miller’s death on a thumb drive. We were onsite filming for a while. It could take us hours to go through it all.”

  “It’s worth it,” Marty said. “Carr might have been there. Maybe in the crowd, maybe coming out of the house. If he was there, I want to see who he was with.”

  “If anyone.”

  “If he comes out of the house, he’ll likely be with someone. Or followed by someone. In the crowd, I agree. He might be alone. What about the will?”

  “I called in a favor with Miller’s lawyer, Eliot Baker. His next big case gets covered by me in exchange for a copy of the will. It’s unethical as hell and I could lose my job over it, but in this case, whatever I can do to help those girls, Gloria and everyone else, goes beyond ethics. It should be here soon. When it arrives, we’ll know exactly what Miller had to say to his children.”

  A knock came at the door. She crossed the room, passed the kitchen and it was a straight shot through the hallway to the door. She peered through the peephole and saw Gretta, her longtime assistant, standing beyond it. She was about to open the door when Marty came behind her. She turned and saw that he had a gun in his hand.

  “You’re not serious,” she said. “I’ve known her for years.”

  “Gloria knew our doorman for years. What would you say to her now?”

  Jennifer nodded and backed off. Better safe than dead. She unlocked the series of locks and opened the door, now expecting anything. But it was just Gretta. As she opened the door, she waved for Marty to put away his gun.

  “Thanks so much for doing this,” she said to the young woman. “I appreciate the effort it took.”

  “Jennifer, what happened to your face?”

  She’d forgotten about it. The dull ache left a while ago. She touched it with the back of her hand and felt herself flush. “Let’s just say that my lunchtime elliptical workout was a massive fail.”

  “You fell off?”

 
“Worse. And it’s so embarrassing, I’m not saying anything more. Let’s just agree I can’t go on camera looking like this and that we’ll keep this between us, OK? I’ve come to appreciate your discretion and I need to count on it now.” She winked at her. “I’ll be a laughingstock if this gets out. You should have seen me, Gretta. I went down hard.”

  The young woman wasn’t stupid. If she did her job well, she knew that Jennifer Spellman could be her ticket to the big time. “Of course. I won’t say a word. I’m just sorry it happened.”

  “So, am I. I’ve never been so embarrassed. But let’s leave it in the past, where it belongs.”

  Gretta nodded at the thumb drives. “What are you working on?”

  “Just some ideas,” Jennifer said, taking the two thumb drives she offered. “I need to view the footage to see if something is there or not. I’m not sure what I’ll find. It’s just a hunch and it’s probably nothing, but in this job, you always pay attention to your gut. Remember that. This is what I want to teach you. If you have a hunch, you need to look into it. There might be nothing there, but when there is, you could have a significant story you never knew you had. That’s what investigative journalism is about.” In this particular case, that was a load of bullshit, but it’s all she had to offer to quell any questions and to get the attention off her face.

  “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “I will. I appreciate it, Gretta.”

  She closed the door and joined Marty in his office. He moved his mouse to wake his computer and took one of the drives when she handed it to him. She put the other down next to him and asked if he’d like a bottle of water. “This is going to take a while,” she said.

  He nodded and settled into his new distraction from his family’s situation as the first clip started to play. She left him knowing he needed the distraction. It was rare for him to withdraw like this. She knew his focus was on his daughters, on Gloria and Jack and on the Moores, and that his concern for them was deep, but not to the point of inaction. If anything, it was driving him headlong into action. It was only a matter of time before he sprang into action, and that concerned her.

  When she grabbed a bottle of water for him from the fridge, she already could hear the digitized clips playing on his computer. She stood in the kitchen, listening to them and remembering how surreal it was when Kenneth Miller was found impaled on his newel post thanks to Neptune’s iron trident. It created a sensation the likes of which she’d never experienced before.