The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set

by Danielle Girard

  Now, though, the anger came from her.

  A second car arrived some twenty minutes later.

  Detectives, both men. They were older—late forties, early fifties—it was hard to tell. They could have been younger. Police officers didn’t age gracefully.

  The one on the passenger side was heavy in the middle and wore a dark suit, the pants belted across the widest part of his girth. With a bald head and round dark eyes set deep in a doughy face, the big guy looked like Humpty Dumpty. It looked weird to see a man with a huge gut hanging over the top of his pants, but it looked stranger to see pants belted across the gut.

  The other detective was Latino and lean—maybe five feet ten, though his curved shoulders made him seem shorter. He had a head of dark, thick hair, but around thin lips and a narrow, flat nose, the beard and mustache were gray.

  The two men gave Hal and Hailey a passing glance before approaching their officers. The four huddled while the patrol officers made motions at the house.

  Hailey sighed.

  After a few minutes, the thin detective reached into his pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper.

  The search warrant.

  “Finally,” Hailey said.

  The two detectives approached, the big guy arriving first—his belly eight or ten inches before the rest of him. Both men looked directly at Hal, so he introduced his partner, then himself.

  Hailey ignored the slight, reached out to shake hands. “You’ve got the warrant,” she said, skipping the small talk. “Can we go in, then?”

  “Soon as we clear it.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” she said.

  The front door opened under the pressure of a boot and the officers entered, the older two right behind. Hailey and Hal held their weapons drawn at the base of the stairs. A few minutes later, the big guy called them in. “All clear.”

  Hal remembered the sense he’d had that Blake was in there. He’d been wrong. What had made him think Blake would be there?

  Just before entering the house, he glanced over his shoulder and scanned the street. Caught the eye of the detective doing the same. No Blake.

  The detective with the big gut put one of the patrol officers on the door in case Blake showed up.

  Inside the front door was a long hallway. It was empty, the wood floor worn and stained in a dark path maybe fourteen inches wide, right down its center. Hal knelt and stared at the dark path without touching it, wondering if it was wet. He drew a glove from his back pocket, pulled it on and scratched the surface of the wood.

  “It’s just old,” the big guy said. “Foot oil over lots of years does that. There was probably carpet here once.”

  Hal opened his mouth to respond when he heard Hailey. Not a word. A choking sound.

  Hal sprinted down the hall, weapon drawn.

  Hailey stared at the living room wall.

  Gun dropped to her side, she wrapped her left arm across her middle. In front of her, a strand of red yarn ran across the length of the room. Taped along it were printed black and white photographs.

  Hal holstered his gun and scanned the first photograph. A man and woman stood beside a dark convertible Mercedes. The man, pictured in profile, reached for the door. The woman faced the camera.

  It was Abby Dennig.

  “It’s him.”

  “Yeah,” Hal agreed, glancing around the room. “But where is he now?”

  Chapter 29

  The pictures in Donald Blake’s house were as eerie as the worst crime scene photos Hailey had seen. They captured mundane tasks—images in which the subject never looked at the camera.

  Abby loaded her car in front of the marina Safeway.

  Hank Dennig talked on his cell phone in front of his office.

  The camera was their stalker. The images might have been weeks or days—or maybe hours—before their deaths.

  Did the victims see the photographer?

  In one, Abby pushed her young daughter on the swing. Her brow creased, Abby had turned her head in the direction of the camera, though it hadn’t caught her eye.

  Had she sensed that she was being watched?

  Donald Blake had taken pictures of the Dennigs and another man she didn’t recognize—both times outside a house. In the first image, the man she didn’t recognize stooped to pick up a newspaper off the curb, wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and a robe, open to display his bare chest, the belt hanging loosely around his waist. In the second, he wore dress clothes. A briefcase sat on the stair beside him, a stack of mail in his hands.

  Then, there was a close-up of a car with no plates, parked in a garage that looked like it was part of the same house. Hailey squinted at the fine print around the plate.

  “What does that say? Around the license plate?”

  Hal leaned in, careful not to touch it. “Elk Grove Buick-Pontiac-GMC.” Looked up. “Where the hell’s Elk Grove?”

  “Up near Sacramento,” the detective with the gray beard said. “I was up there two weeks ago.”

  “Wesson,” Hal said.

  “So Blake killed Wesson,” Hailey said.

  “And probably the Dennigs,” Hal added. “He’s got a registered .38, which was the caliber used to shoot Jim and Bruce, so it’s likely he was responsible for those shootings too.”

  “He didn’t kill Jim.”

  “Right,” Hal agreed. “But he hit Shakley and killed the gunrunner, Jeremy Hayden.”

  During the sting. Had Blake meant to merely wound Jim and miss Hailey? If he was the one using the Israeli shooting stance, he was a good shot. He wouldn’t have missed. “What about Carson and the driver?”

  “I think Price shot them.”

  “Why? Price worked for Blake as well as Harvey Rendell?” If Blake was avenging the death of his family, why hire it out? And why kill a couple of street kids with guns? It was unlikely that any of these San Francisco kids were related to the Oakland shooting that happened three years ago.

  The kids who shot up Blake’s family would be in their twenties by now. Many of them would be in prison or like Jeremy Hayden—dead. Had Blake killed them too?

  But the kids involved in the guns in San Francisco were not the kids who shot Blake’s family. Not likely. Gangs stayed in their own neighborhoods. They didn’t go shooting up neighborhoods across the bay.

  Hailey and Hal were quiet.

  “Let’s hope something here gives us some answers,” Hal said.

  Hailey moved down the images.

  She wanted to reach the end, to see Jim’s face, if it was there.

  The next images were of Harvey Rendell. He wore a different suit in each—four separate days, at least. In two, the dark façade of the Bank of America Center showed behind him. In another, he stood in the door of a restaurant where she’d eaten a few times—a small, wonderful French place John had liked called Le Central.

  Hailey scanned the background, half expecting to see someone she knew. Lace curtains obscured the other patrons. The specials were handwritten in white chalk on a large blackboard that leaned against the glass beside Rendell, who held a cell phone to his ear, staring at his feet.

  “Check this out,” Hal said, pointing to a large color photograph on the wall behind the red yarn.

  The image had been framed with a thin black plastic frame, like a college kid might use to put up a poster. Almost that large, the photograph was grainy and out of focus, the file not high enough resolution for the enlargement. The backdrop was deep blue with swirls of white—like wispy thin cloud cover—a photo studio backdrop. In the center of the image, Blake sat with his wife on a small, plush, burgundy bench.

  Hailey recognized the reddish-brown beard. She’s seen this man before, running from the building where they’d found the gunrunner, Jeremy Hayden, dead in the closet.

  Blake looked happy in the photograph. A child stood on either side of him and his wife—a young girl in a blue pinafore beside her father, and a boy in a blue sweater and khaki pants beside his mother. Mrs. Blak
e held a third child in her lap. The infant wore a white one-piece outfit that made guessing its gender impossible.

  Blake held his palms flat on his thighs, as though he was about to stand, or was struggling to hold still. Each of them was smiling. Only Blake wasn’t looking at the camera, his gaze sideways. He wore the crooked smile of someone crazy in love.

  Hailey stepped back, Blake’s expression a reminder of her own loss. The mug with John’s face was the one image of John that Hailey looked at regularly.

  Images of John were everywhere in their home—pictures of him from infancy and youth. School photos—team shots of little league baseball and the high school basketball team—lined the hallways. There were pictures of him with his high school and college friends, at their wedding, and with the girls.

  They dotted the walls, topped the bookshelves, glowed from the desktop.

  In the days after his death, the images had stopped Hailey like painful shocks. Walking from the bedroom to the bathroom was an assault. The girls stood and stared at the pictures in which John held them. Liz had made each girl her own collage, ones that still sat beside their beds, each filled with memories of their father and them.

  There was a time when Hailey considered asking Liz to take some of them down, to store them for a bit while the initial pain eased. But for all the agony the images caused her, they seemed to provide solace to Liz. Hailey had learned to gaze past them, over them, through them—anything to avoid meeting John’s eyes.

  Hailey couldn’t imagine how painful it would be to look at her entire family after she’d lost them.

  It would have made her crazy.

  Maybe that was what it had done to Blake.

  Hailey glanced back down the row of images—the Dennigs, Wesson, Rendell. How were they involved in the deaths of Blake’s family? There were no pictures of Officer Shakley or Jeremy Hayden. Were they just accidental victims?

  Missing, too, were Carson and the driver, as well as Kenny Fiston and James Robbins. Perhaps Gordon Price shot them, not Blake?

  “What the hell is this?” Hal squinted at a yellowed newspaper article framed beside the family portrait.

  Hailey read along with him.

  Frank Littick is charged in the murder of six-year-old Dorothy Williams, known as Dottie. The shooting occurred Thursday sometime after dark in the Rodger Young Village. Littick was found passed out in his Quonset hut, heavily intoxicated. The murder weapon, a German Luger that Littick claimed he took off of a dead Nazi, was found in his possession. Littick, back from duty only nine weeks, will be formally charged next week. His two children, a boy, aged 7, and a girl, aged 5, have been taken from his custody and sent to live with family in Pennsylvania.

  “Quonset hut?” Hal said.

  Dottie. Blake knew about Dottie.

  Was that why he’d shot at Jim?

  Hailey focused in on the name Frank Littick, the smudged edge of the newsprint around the last letters of the name.

  Jim and Dee had taken their aunt and uncle’s last name when they were adopted. That name was Wyatt. They were originally Jim and Dee Littick. John’s last name would have been Littick. Her name would have been Littick too.

  She felt cold shivers at the thought.

  “Oh, shit.” The voice belonged to the heavyset detective. “You guys had better get in here.”

  Around the corner, the series of photographs continued. A gasp stuck in the back of her mouth.

  An image of Jim, standing on their street.

  At the base of the stairs to the house—the place where Bruce had been shot just yesterday.

  Hailey covered her mouth. “Hal.”

  Hal didn’t answer, his attention on something else.

  She couldn’t draw her gaze off her father-in-law. A worried look on his face, Jim gripped the banister in one hand, his case in another.

  Coming home.

  Two stairs above him, looking back, was Tom Rittenberg. Not the jovial Tom she knew. The grief she’d seen was gone too. In the photograph, anger tightened his face until she barely recognized him.

  Hailey studied the small check print on his tie, tried to remember if she’d seen it before. His suits were almost all dark, and for the most part, they looked the same to her. She hadn’t paid attention.

  “Hal,” Hailey said again, tearing her gaze from the image. Why was Rittenberg so angry? Was it a coincidence that Blake had captured this image, or was he pointing a finger at Tom Rittenberg as well?

  Hal watched her. The detective and one of the patrol officers did too.

  “What?”

  She started toward the next images. Hal grabbed her arm, held her at a distance. Alarmed, she pulled away from him and pushed past to see the other photos. She had to know.

  She cried out, falling back from the images.

  Hal caught her, moving her against the solid wall.

  Her legs shook. Her knees wouldn’t hold her. Her pulse trumpeted in her temples. The other officers talked, their words overlapping Hal’s until all the voices swarmed around her like hornets. “No. No!” she screamed.

  “You have to sit,” Hal said. “Come sit.” The words didn’t make sense, though she understood them.

  “Should I call an ambulance?”

  “She needs air.”

  Hands gripped her shoulders, her arms. A palm pressed to the small of her back. She couldn’t walk past. She had to see.

  She pulled herself free. Studied the three images.

  The first was of her standing in front of the Hall at the press conference, her chin cocked up. A sliver of Marshall was visible on the other side of her—his shoulder and part of an arm, fingers on the microphone.

  In the second, Hailey was in the lobby of the Bank of America Center, talking with Roger.

  When she looked at the third, an animal noise burst from her throat.

  Hailey, standing on the street outside of Jim and Liz’s. She was turned sideways, holding a bag of groceries in one arm and two small backpacks in the other.

  It was a few days old. Three or four maybe.

  Trailing behind her were Camilla and Ali. Camilla was climbing the stairs with her back turned. But Ali had stopped.

  She looked directly into the lens of Blake’s camera.

  Chapter 30

  No one answered at the house.

  Liz didn’t pick up her cell phone. Jim’s office said he and Dee had already left for the day. Dee didn’t answer her cell. Neither did Jim.

  The image of Ali’s face filled Hailey’s head with every blink.

  Her girl’s face on a killer’s wall. Would he kill her child? Or was it a reminder that she was a target?

  If Blake had arrived before Bruce had pulled into the driveway … She would be dead.

  Her children would be orphans. Like the Dennigs’ children.

  Now the Dennigs’ tragedy circled her like a vulture on the scent of rotting flesh. How easily it could be her …

  She felt sick. With trembling hands, she punched redial again and again, praying for a real voice.

  Liz didn’t always carry her phone. It often sat overnight in her car, ran out of battery. This wasn’t unusual.

  They didn’t always answer the home phone. Jim and Liz didn’t grow up in the generation where everyone was expected to be accessible at any time. Plus, it was three o’clock. Liz would be on her way to pick up the girls. This was normal.

  Please, let it be normal.

  Hal gripped the steering wheel in both hands and drove faster than she’d ever seen him. Lights streaked across the underside of the tunnel as they passed over Treasure Island. Sirens howled in their ears, making conversation impossible. She couldn’t talk.

  She dialed the phone, and in the seconds that lapsed between calls, she watched the road.

  Hal didn’t have to honk. Somehow, cars just cleared the way.

  His phone rang. “Harris.”

  She heard someone talking.

  “Is it about Blake?” she asked.

/>   He shook his head. “Hang on, Ryaan. Putting you on speaker.” Hal set the phone on the seat between them. “Hey, Ryaan, can you repeat that first part—and maybe talk a little slower?”

  “Yes. Okay,” Ryaan started, breathless. “The forensic accounting group has been digging into Regal Insurance. We hit pay dirt.”

  “We’re listening.”

  Hailey stared at her phone. The blank screen. They were still in school. For the next ten minutes, they were safe. She tried to focus on what Ryaan was saying.

  “Hank Dennig and Colby Wesson were both beneficiaries of large claims on policies. Both had insured weapons stolen from their facilities. And get this, they were covered for multiple losses. Dennig had two different claims for stolen weapons. Colby Wesson had three—all paid out in full, all in the eighteen months before they were killed.”

  Dwayne Carson had told Hal that Regal did this to him. Like it was a name.

  “Carson said ‘Regal,’ but who did he mean?” Hal asked, clearly thinking along the same lines. “I assume Regal’s a big company.”

  “It is big, but guess who is a 51 percent stakeholder in Regal Insurance Group?” Ryaan continued. “Tom Rittenberg.”

  How often had Tom been at the house lately? At her house, near her daughters? “Dee is seeing Tom. They’ve been going out,” she whispered to Hal.

  “There’s more,” Ryaan said, not hearing her. “Rendell had a lease on a secured storage area down by the airport. Guess what’s in there.”

  “Guns,” Hal said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Guns Rendell bought, or the ones that had been stolen from the Dennigs and Wesson?”

  “We’ve got a team on the way down there now, but we’re guessing we’ll find some of those stolen guns in storage. Which explains why none of them hit the street until now. After the Dennigs and Wesson were killed, Rendell sat on them until he thought it was safe to start moving them again.”

  “Dennigs and Wesson stole their own guns, collected the insurance on the loss, and then resold them on the streets for profit?”

  “That’s the theory,” Ryaan said. “Blake finds out about the insurance fraud and the resale of the guns—probably to the same kind of street kids who killed his family. In his mind, these guys—and anyone who invested in Rendell’s hedge fund—are responsible for the death of his wife and kids, so he’s targeting them.” Ryaan was quiet a beat before asking, “Hailey, you there? You’re quiet.”