by David Archer
Chance looked at her for a couple of seconds. “You said the house was for sale? How much are they asking for it?”
Josie turned back to the computer for a moment, then looked at him again. “It’s for sale for two hundred and eighty thousand.”
“Okay, then,” Chance said. “Transfer enough money over to buy it. You said you are setting up an investment company, right? That could be its first investment.”
Josie’s eyes went wide. “Are you sure you don’t want to ask your wife before we spend that much money?”
“It’s okay, trust me,” Chance said. “It won’t be a problem.”
Josie swallowed hard. “Okay,” she said. She picked up the phone on her desk and dialed a number. When it was answered, she put a big smile on her face.
“Hi there,” she said. “This is Josephine Lambert, and I'm the general manager of Desert Paradise Investments. You have a house in Henderson that we are interested in.” She gave the address, and then smiled again. “Yes, that’s the one. You have it advertised for two eighty. I'm prepared to offer you two hundred and fifty thousand cash, provided I can get possession immediately.”
Chance and Pete looked at each other, both of them with their eyes wide.
“No,” Josie said a moment later, “two seventy five is still too high. I would come up to two sixty, but that’s it. As I said, I'm talking cash that can be transferred today, but that’s my best offer.”
She sat quietly for about a minute, and then looked around at Chance and Pete with a big smile. “That’ll be perfect,” she said. “If you tell me where to send the money, I can have it done within the hour.” She typed a note into her computer, then smiled into the phone once more. “I’ve got it,” she said. “I will arrange the transfer right away, and you can set up the closing for as soon as tomorrow. Just let me know when and where, and I will be there. And, oh, I will need to pick up the keys today. Yes, I will be sending a Mr. Dixon to pick them up. Thank you, and you have a great day.”
She hung up the phone and scribbled a note, which she turned and handed to Pete. “Pete, you run down to this address and they’ll have the keys for you. As soon as you get them, go on down and check the house out. If there are any serious problems, I can cancel this deal, but I’d have to do it today.”
Pete took the note and glanced at the address, then turned to Chance. “You sure about this?”
“Sounds to me like it’s too late to worry about it,” Chance said with a grin. “I’ll go get Johnson and the others and meet you there in an hour or so.”
“And I,” Josie said with a mischievous smile, “will spend a bunch of your money.”
Chance went out the door quickly and headed back toward the house where he had left Johnson and his hidden witnesses. He watched carefully to make sure he wasn’t being followed, even going a few blocks out of the way just to be sure. Finally, he pulled up at the house and walked up to knock on the door.
It took a moment before Johnson opened up, and he was looking around cautiously as he grabbed Chance and yanked him inside.
“Well? Any ideas?”
“Yep,” Chance said. “Gather everybody up. It’s moving day. I’ve arranged another place for you, somewhere no one will look for you. Meanwhile, my boss came up with an idea on how to turn the tables on Garrett. You ready to go?”
Johnson looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t know why I'm trusting you,” he said, “but I do. Where’s the house?”
“It’s in Henderson. Private little estate with a fence around it, so you and your people can even get outside once in a while. Quiet neighborhood, and I happen to be the next door neighbor. The cops have probably been told to watch out for your car, so we will go in mine. We can’t all go at once, so just a couple at a time.”
“All right. We just need to do this as fast as we can. Sooner or later, somebody is going to follow you right back to me.”
“That’s why I jumped at the chance to get the house next door to mine,” Chance said. “There’s a fence in between them, but it won’t be hard to climb over it. Once we get you in there, no one will ever see any sign of me going to the place.”
The move went smoothly, with Chance taking two of the men and Ms. Porter in one trip, then returning for the other men and Johnson. Darrell Johnson and his charges were safely installed into the house next door to Chance’s place an hour later. Pete had picked up the keys as planned and had already gone through the house, checking for any kind of problems that would make it unsuitable for the purpose they had in mind.
What he’d found was a house that was in excellent condition, and fully furnished as advertised. The master bedroom held a king sized bed, while the two other bedrooms each had a pair of twin beds. It had obviously been the home of a family at one time, but Pete suspected that the kids were grown and gone, leaving the parents ready for something smaller and less expensive to keep up.
When Chance arrived with Johnson and the five witnesses, he had to call ahead to get Pete to open the gate in the fence. The fence was nine feet tall and designed to provide privacy, just like the one that surrounded Chance’s house. Once everyone was installed, with Janine Porter getting one of the bedrooms to herself, Chance and Pete went out to buy groceries and other supplies they would need while they were there.
“It’s a pretty nice house,” Pete said. “A little work, and you could probably flip it for a hundred thousand more than Josie bought it for.”
“Well, it’s an investment,” Chance said. “We’ll see what happens once this is all settled.”
The two of them filled up a shopping cart with a large assortment of canned goods, frozen meats, frozen dinners and snack foods, remembering to grab toilet paper and basic cleaning supplies. By the time they got back to the house, it was after five p.m. Pete had gone to pick up Josie, since the two of them would be staying in the house that night as extra security.
Johnson had not been thrilled about Pete’s idea of contacting the handlers at first, but the more they talked about it, the more he began to like it. By getting them involved, it would take some of the danger away from the witnesses while putting pressure on Garrett. If his handlers wouldn’t trust him, then it was going to be a lot easier to get the FBI to look into his recent activities. With what Johnson had found regarding the financial trail, there was a reasonable hope that more proof of his treasonous activities could be uncovered.
“How soon can we make this happen?” Johnson asked.
“Well, to be honest,” Pete said, “it’s already done. All of those handlers got a text message today from a number that can’t be traced. It told them to contact the handlers you’ve already dealt with on these folks, and to hide their own witnesses as quickly as possible. With any luck, at least the majority of them will act first and then question later.”
“I think they will,” Johnson said. “Most of them are good people. And they know that keeping their witnesses safe is their duty.”
Everyone got settled in, and then Chance left Pete and Josie in charge while he went home. He played a video game with the boys for a while, then privately told Gabriella about the house next door when Grandma and the boys were off to bed. As he had expected, she simply told him it was his decision, and then she showed him once again how much she loved him.
* * * * *
It was the sound of breaking glass that woke her. Christina Johnson sat up in bed, trying to figure out whether she had actually heard the noise or not, but then another sound from down the hall confirmed it. She got up from the bed and took the stun gun from her nightstand drawer, slipped on a robe and pushed her feet into her slippers, then carefully opened the bedroom door to look into the hall.
A grunt came from the utility room. She slipped out quietly and moved slowly and carefully down the hall, the stun gun held at the ready. When she got to the door of the utility room, which was standing open, she paused for just a second and then quickly stepped inside.
“Freeze!” she said, an
d then her eyes went wide as she saw her husband halfway through the broken window. He looked up at her in surprise and then put a finger to his lips.
“Shhh,” he said. “Be quiet, I’m trying not to let anybody know I’m here.”
She set the stun gun on top of the washer and hurried over to him. “Darrell? Darrell, what in the world are you doing? Did you lose your keys or something?”
“No, I didn’t lose my keys, I just didn’t want anybody to see me coming in.” He pulled himself onto the window and managed not to fall on his face, then stood up and put his arms around his wife. “I was just being careful. There’s too much light on the front door and the back door, so I couldn’t come in that way. This window was the only one I can get to without any of the neighbors being able to see me.”
“But why are you sneaking around? You live here, for crying out loud.”
Darrell let out a sigh. “I’m being sneaky because I have to be careful,” he said. “Honey, I’m afraid—I’m afraid I’m in a little bit of trouble, and I’m going to have to be gone for a while. I just wanted to see you again before I go, that’s all.”
“Before you go? Darrell, what in the world is going on?” She looked up at him imploringly.
“Honey, I can’t tell you,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid I’m dealing with something pretty dangerous, and the more you know about it, the more dangerous it could be for you. I’m just trying to keep you and little Darrell safe, but that means I have to go away for a while.”
She stepped back and looked up at him. “Do you have the slightest idea how crazy you sound?” she asked. “Did you know that the marshals were here looking for you?”
Darrell’s eyes flared. “The marshals? Bastards! They give you any problems?”
“No, they just said you were in trouble and I was supposed to call them if I hear from you. Darrell, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing, but you’ve been acting so strange lately that I—Darrell, you’ve got to tell me what this is all about.”
“Now, honey,” he said, “I’ve already explained to you that I can’t…”
Christina’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Don’t you ‘now, honey,’ me, Darrell Johnson,” she said. “There’s been too many things that just aren’t making sense, and I want to know what in the world is really going on! You’ve been acting so secretive, you’ve been so irritable, you haven’t been going to work…”
“And all of that,” Darrell said loudly, “has been because I need to keep you out of it, keep you and little Darrell safe! Christina, you are simply going to have to…”
“Don’t tell me to just trust you,” Christina said, raising her own voice. “How can I trust you when I don’t know what it is you’re doing? How can I trust you when you come home with someone else’s blood on your shirt, and you lied to me about how it got there? Darrell, U.S. Marshals came here and said you were in trouble, and that they need to find you. I think it’s time you open up and tell me the truth, don’t you?”
“Christina, I…”
It sounded like an explosion, like a bomb or grenade going off in the little room, the sound of the gunshot so loud that it left her ears ringing and her head reeling. Darrell suddenly went over backward, falling behind the dryer, as the shock of the sudden loud noise left her dizzy. She shook her head to clear it, and then suddenly her arm was grabbed and somebody was pushing something into her hand, but she fought back and struggled to get to her husband. Consciously, she was trying to figure out what had happened, but on some deeper, subconscious level, she knew what she was going to find.
She dropped whatever was being forced on her and a single glance let her see that it was a gun, some kind of revolver that fell to the floor. She grunted, “No, no,” as she leaned against the washer and dryer and stumbled forward. Darrell was down on the floor and she dropped to her knees beside him, but when she reached out to touch him, her hands felt something wet and warm. She raised her hand and looked at it in the moonlight coming through the window, and saw that it was covered in blood.
“Mommy?” She heard little Darrell behind her, and instantly, she turned and told him to get back to bed. She didn’t watch to see if he obeyed, but turned back to Darrell, shaking him and begging him to speak.
There was no response. She didn’t know how long she knelt there beside him, tears streaming down her face as she realized that he must be dead, but then there were sounds intruding on her consciousness. Sirens, someone banging on the front door, and then hands took hold of her arms and pulled her back from Darrell. She looked up in her confusion to see police officers, and one of them was holding the gun in rubber-gloved hands.
Paramedics rushed into the room and someone pulled Christina back so they could get Darrell. They started checking him over, but then one of them looked up at the officers and shook his head.
“Ma’am, what happened here?” asked one of the officers, a woman.
“That’s my husband,” Christina said. “We were talking, and somebody shot him. They tried to make me take the gun, but I dropped it. I don’t know who it was, it all happened so fast.”
The officer looked around for a moment, then turned back to Christina. “Ma’am? Ma’am, there’s nobody else here but you and your little boy. Did you kill your husband?”
“What? No, no,” Christina said.
The next thirty minutes were a blur as more and more people showed up at the house. Somebody grabbed her hands and put some kind of sticky material on them, then pulled it back off, and someone else insisted on taking her robe and putting it into a large plastic bag. Two female officers accompanied her to her bedroom and allowed her to get dressed, while another one explained that she was taking little Darrell somewhere until they could contact Darrell’s parents to take care of him.
“Why do they need to take care of him?” Christina asked, confused.
The officers looked at each other, and one of them then turned back to her. “Mrs. Johnson, I’m afraid you are under arrest for the murder of your husband.”
She was handcuffed and walked out to a squad car, and she saw several of her neighbors standing in the street as she was put into the back seat. She sat there in shock for a couple of minutes, and then an officer got behind the wheel and the car started moving. They drove to the jail, and she was taken out of the car and brought inside, where she was fingerprinted and photographed, and had to give a statement once more about what happened.
When all that was finished, she was taken to a shower and ordered to strip, shower and get dressed into an orange jumpsuit. Her own clothing was put into a bag that was sealed and carried off by a jailer as she was led to a cell block.
The jailer pointed to a pay phone on the wall of the common room. “If you need to make a phone call, you can do it now.” Christina looked at her for a moment, then nodded and went to the phone. She dialed the number, and then had to give her name since the phone only allowed collect calls.
“Mr. Dixon?” she said when the phone was answered. “I’m so sorry to bother you at this time of the morning.”
“No, Christina, it’s okay,” Pete said groggily. “What’s going on? Why are you calling from the jail?”
“Mr. Dixon, I’ve just been arrested for murdering my husband.”
Pete suddenly sounded wide awake. “What? You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I am. I caught Darrell sneaking into the house, and then somebody shot him and the police think I did it.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pete said. “Back up and tell me what happened.”
She sniffled. “I was awakened a couple of hours ago by the sound of glass breaking, and I got up to find Darrell sneaking in through a window in the utility room. He said he was in trouble and would have to be gone for a few days, and just wanted to come and see me and little Darrell before he had to disappear. I asked him to tell me what was going on but he wouldn’t, said it was for my own safety, and I guess I got pissed off and we got into an argument.
He kept telling me that it was dangerous for me to know what he was doing, but then all of a sudden, I heard a gunshot and he fell down behind the dryer. Somebody rushed into the room and grabbed me, shoved a gun into my hand and then took off running. I didn’t even know what it was at that moment, but I dropped the gun and ran over to Darrell. There was blood everywhere, and then all of a sudden little Darrell was right behind me and I yelled at him to go back to bed, but a couple minutes later, the cops showed up and the next thing I know, I’ve been arrested for killing my husband. I didn’t know who else to call, so I called you...”
And then she began to cry in earnest.
* * * * *
Chance was dreaming. He was back in the Kentucky farmhouse, sleeping in his own bedroom, the one he had grown up in. Somebody was banging on the door to his bedroom and shouting for him to get up. He pulled the pillow over his head, but it wouldn't stop, and suddenly Chance realized that it wasn't part of the dream. Someone was actually pounding on his front door, and he could hear his name being called.
He sat up and realized that he was in his new home, rather than his old bedroom in Kentucky. Gabriella had also awakened, and was just sitting up beside him as he slid out of bed and pulled his pants on.
“Chance?” Gabriella asked, but he motioned for her to be quiet as he walked out of the bedroom, one of the Maxims in his hand. As he got to the living room, it dawned on him that the voice calling his name was coming from Pete, so he put the gun away and opened the door. Pete pushed past him into the living room and dropped onto Chance's couch.
“Isn’t it a little early?” Chance asked ironically, but Pete shook his head.
“Chance, old buddy,” Pete said. “I think we got a problem. It's Christina Johnson, she just called me.”
Chance shook his head to try to clear it. “Christina Johnson? Why would she call you in the middle of the night?”