by David Archer
“Because she’s just been arrested for murder!” Pete said, his own eyes wide.
Chapter 12
Gabriella had come into the room, dressed in a bathrobe. Chance looked at her, and her eyes were wide. He turned back to Pete.
“Wait a minute, murdering who?” he asked. “What did she tell you? Did she do it?”
Pete was shaking his head. “She says she didn’t,” he said.
Gabriella caught Chance's eye. “I'm going to make us some coffee,” she said, and he nodded at her.
“And Darrell is gone?” Chance asked.
Pete nodded. “Yeah, I checked as soon as I got off the phone with Christina. No trace of him in the house, and it’s already on the news that he was murdered and his wife was arrested for it.”
“Well, this sucks,” Chance said. “Any idea who is handling the case?”
Pete shook his head. “I don't know yet, Christina said they told her it would be a couple hours before she could talk to the detective.”
“Then what can we really do right now? Hell, what time is it?”
“It’s almost five,” Pete said. “Sorry about banging on the door, I tried calling and you didn’t answer your phone.”
“Well, we’re already up now. Gabriella is making coffee, we might as well go to the kitchen and have some.”
“No, I need to get back over there. With Johnson gone, I'm the only security those people have right now. Besides, I don’t like leaving Josie over there in the middle of all this.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a toothpick, shoving it into his mouth and chewing it furiously. “Want to bring some of that coffee and come on over? I could use some, but I want to get back to Josie.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Chance said. “Go on, I’ll bring you a cup.”
He walked out the door and Chance went into the kitchen. The coffee was just about halfway up the pot, so he put his arms around Gabriella and held her while he waited for it to finish.
“Chance?” Gabriella asked. “Are those people over there in danger?”
“I don’t think so, not at the moment. If Darrell Johnson is dead, then it’s not likely anybody was able to find out where they were. This is probably going to cause some problems, but we’ll handle it.”
When the coffee was done, Gabriella found a couple of insulated cups and filled them up, and Chance went to put on a shirt, socks and shoes. When he was done, he tucked his gun back into its holster and carried the coffee next door. Pete was waiting for him in the kitchen, and Chance saw that there was a pot of coffee brewing there, as well.
“She’s in the Henderson detention center,” Pete said. “I was able to find out that the detective in charge of the investigation is a guy named Nathan Mason. I guess he’s still at the crime scene, but one of my buddies on the force here says the only witness to the murder was their kid.”
“The little boy saw his mother shoot his dad?” Chance asked.
“Heard it,” Pete said. “According to what my guy heard, and it fits with what Christina told me, the kid woke up because he could hear them fighting. He said they were yelling at each other, and then he heard a loud bang. Mommy started screaming, so the little guy came out and found his father laying in the laundry room floor in a big pool of blood. There was a gun laying on the floor, and he said his mommy was on her knees beside his daddy. First cops on the scene bagged the gun and CSI found her fingerprints on it. GSR test found gunshot residue on her hand. I guess that was enough for them, because they arrested her for murder.”
“Anybody who ever touched a gun has gunshot residue on their hands. What about physical evidence?” Chance asked. “Do they actually have anything?”
“Who knows? I don’t know about you, Chance, but I don’t think Christina Johnson is a killer. I think somebody was waiting for Darrell to show up at his house, and framing her was just an easy way to handle it all. I just can’t believe he was stupid enough to go over there.” He shook his head, and the toothpick traveled across his mouth.
“I agree completely,” Chance said. “How do you want to handle this?”
“She was our client,” Pete said, “so either of us can get in to see her. I’ll head down there as soon as I drop Josie off at the office. You need to just keep these folks from freaking out. I haven’t told them yet what’s going on, just that Darrell had to go take care of some things.”
“All right,” Chance said. “I’ll hang out here this morning, and you let me know what’s going on.”
Josie came rolling into the kitchen a moment later and they quietly brought her up to speed. The shock on her face, Chance thought, must’ve looked a lot like his own an hour earlier. They drank coffee together for a while and then Pete and Josie got dressed. Chance went out and opened the gate so Pete could drive out a few minutes later, then closed the gate again and went back into the house.
Pete stopped at a fast food drive through to get them both some breakfast, then took Josie to his office. They sat there and ate, but by the time they finished, it was getting close to eight o’clock. He kissed her goodbye and got back into his car, headed back to Henderson to the police department there.
Detective Mason was already in his office and looked like he’d had much better mornings in the past. He shook Pete’s hand and led him back to his own office. “It’s good to meet you, Dixon,” he said. “I know your old reputation and I was glad to hear that you’re back in the game. You doing okay?”
Pete grinned and held up a bronze disc. “Three months sober, now,” he said. “You take it one day at a time, but I have got a lot of reasons to stay off the sauce.”
“That’s good. Especially if you are going to be involved in a case like this one. I gather you already know the basics?”
“Yeah, I heard,” Pete asked. “So what’s the real story? I know this lady, and I would find it pretty hard to believe that she would murder her husband.”
“CSI is working on it now,” Mason said. “We did find her fingerprints on the gun, and she tested positive for GSR. There are other prints on the gun besides hers, but they’re too blurred to tell if they might be her husband’s prints or not. They look to be about the right size, though. I think she did it, but I can’t be sure based on what I’ve got so far. My only witness is too young to testify, and didn’t actually see the murder, anyway. On top of that, the small amount of GSR we found on her hands could make her story that somebody forced the gun on her at least a little bit believable. If I don’t find something more, I don’t believe the prosecutor will ever get a conviction.”
Pete nodded. “Yeah, it could be hard. Listen, how much do you know about the husband? Are you aware that the U.S. Marshals were hunting him?”
“Yeah, that’s what she said. We have a call in to them, but nobody has gotten back to us yet. You know anything about that?”
He shrugged. “Just a couple of them came by my office, wanting to know why she hired me.”
“And why did she hire you?” Mason asked.
“Well, at first it was because he was just acting funny,” Pete said, keeping his cards close to his vest. “You know how it goes, guy travels a lot, the wife gets to worrying about why he’s acting weird. Yesterday, though, she came by to tell me he had disappeared. She found out he hadn’t been going to work the last few days, and wanted to know if we had figured anything out. Unfortunately, we had not.”
Mason nodded and let out a sigh. “Well, I'm assuming you’re going to keep working on this? If you get anything, please let me know. If you find anything that proves she didn’t do it, or that she did, I want to know about it.”
Pete nodded. “Yeah, I know how it works,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted. Am I going to have to jump through any hoops to go see her?”
“No, I will clear it. You headed out there now?”
“Might as well get it over with,” Pete said. “She’s at the detention center, right?”
“Yeah, she’s there. Her kid went to stay
with his grandparents for now. I understand she’s got some money, so she might make bail later today.”
Chapter 13
Pete thanked him and got up, then went back to his car and drove to the detention center. Mason had called ahead and Pete was ushered right into a visiting room, where Christina Johnson was waiting. She was wearing the orange jumpsuit that indicated a felony arrest.
“Thanks for coming, Mr. Dixon,” Christina said as he sat across from her. It was obvious that she'd been crying, and Pete patted her hand as they faced each other across the table.
“Christina, this is a mess,” Pete said. “I talked to the homicide detective on the case a little bit ago, and he seems to think you did it, but he’s not sure he’s got a case. According to him, your own son thinks you killed his daddy. What can you tell me that might help me prove your innocence?”
“I already told you, Mr. Dixon,” she began, but Pete held up a hand.
“Lose the Mr. Dixon stuff,” he said with a grin. “It’s just Pete, okay? And just tell me all of it again, maybe you’ll remember something new that might help.”
She tried to grin back, but it didn’t work. “Okay, Pete. I really don’t know what else to say. I was sound asleep last night when I heard a noise that woke me up, and I picked up my stun gun and went to see what was going on. I have one of those little electric stun guns, you know what I mean? Darrell got it for me…” She let out a sob, then forced herself back under control. “Darrell got it for me, for when he was out of town. Anyway, I found Darrell climbing through the window in the utility room. After I managed to unswallow my heart, I helped him get in the rest of the way, and asked him what in the world he was doing.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he was in trouble,” Christina said. “He said he couldn’t tell me what it was all about, because that would put me in danger, as well, but that he was going to have to be gone for a while. He wouldn’t even let me turn on the lights, because he was afraid somebody might be watching. He said he—he said he just wanted to see us before he had to disappear, but that he had to sneak away in order to do it. He said people were looking for him, and I told him about the Marshals coming by. That seemed to make him mad, but he still wouldn’t tell me what was going on. I'm afraid I—I'm afraid I got mad, I lost my temper and started yelling at him. That must’ve been when little Darrell heard it.” She managed a sad grin, then. “That’s my little boy. We named him Darrell, after his father.”
“Okay, so he heard you fighting. What happened then?”
“Well, we’d been arguing back and forth for a few minutes, and then all of a sudden, I heard this loud bang, like a gunshot, and Darrell fell over backwards behind the dryer. I mean, I knew it was a gunshot, but that was such a shock that it didn’t really register at that moment. I screamed, but then some man grabbed me and pushed this gun into my hands, and I screamed again. He ran away, and I didn’t even see where he went because I was trying to get to Darrell. I remember getting down on my knees beside him, and there was—there was blood everywhere. I tried to lift his head up, but—but his face was gone.”
Pete nodded. “Okay. Did you call the police?”
Christina looked up at him, and confusion crossed her face. “No,” she said. “I don’t know who did. Maybe one of my neighbors heard the gunshot?”
“Yeah, maybe. How long before the police got there?”
“I'm really not sure, Mr. Dix—Pete. They showed up a few minutes later, that’s all I know.”
“Was the detective with them when they got there?” Pete asked.
Christina shook her head. “No, I didn’t see him until after I was already here for a while. He came in and basically just told me I was guilty, and acted like he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say.”
Pete nodded sympathetically. “That’s about normal,” he said. “Go on.”
She wiped at her eyes again. “I don’t know what else to add. That’s about all I know.”
Pete sat and looked at her for a moment, then said, “Christina, your son apparently said that he heard you and his dad fighting, and then he heard the gunshot, a loud bang. He said he came out of his room and found his father just laying on the floor, and you were kneeling over him. He never saw the other man who grabbed hold of you and tried to make you take the gun, so that’s a problem. Was there anything about that man that seemed familiar to you?”
Christina shook her head again. “Not that I can remember. To be honest, I was so in shock I didn’t even really try to look at him. I was trying to look past him, at Darrell.”
Pete nodded, chewing on his toothpick as he thought about what he was hearing. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted Darrell dead?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Darrell was a wonderful man. Even when I was worried about him acting strangely, there was a part of me that knew that, somewhere down underneath it all, he was still that same wonderful man I married.”
“But you told me you were getting a little bit frightened of him. Did that change somewhere along the line?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that I was really frightened,” she said. “I think it’s more like I was just confused. Darrell hadn’t ever really yelled at me, before, until I asked him about the blood on his shirt. That was so out of character for him, I guess it just—it just shook me up. It was far enough out of character that I wanted to know what was going on with him, which is why I came to you.”
Pete nodded. “Tell me about Little Darrell. How was he handling it with his dad gone?”
Christina leaned forward again, propping her arms on the table and crossing them. “It was rough on him,” she said. “He’s a tough little guy, but all of this was so confusing that I know it was affecting him, too. I don’t know how he’s going to handle it, now that his daddy is dead. Oh, God, it’s so hard to say that out loud.”
“Christina,” Pete said. “I really want to help you, but I'm just not sure what to do at this point. Do you have a lawyer yet?”
Christina nodded her head. “Yeah, my dad got me one. His name is Rosenstein, and he's supposed to be pretty good. He's coming to see me in just a little while, so we can start figuring out how this is going to go. Should I have him call you?”
Pete smiled at her. “Yes, please do. Listen, Christina, we’re going to do everything we possibly can to help you. You just gotta hang in there, okay?”
They stood and Pete gave her a hug before he left. The jailer came in to take Christina back to her cell as Pete made his way out of the detention center. He went outside, climbed into his car and headed toward his office. As he drove, he took out his phone to call Josie.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “I got done with Christina, and I'm on the way back. Anything happening over there?”
“Yeah, I've actually found a couple things,” she said. “Right after you dropped me off, I started looking for anything that might be able to help with this case. Remember yesterday, when you asked me if I could hack into the Marshals? Well, we got distracted from that when Chance came back, but I went ahead and dug into it a bit. It turns out that we do not, I repeat, we do not have a complete list of everybody in the program. We’ve got about forty files, but there are almost a hundred people actually in that program. What we’ve got is only the list of people handled by the marshals in the western half of the country. I was very careful not to leave any tracks, by the way.”
“That’s interesting,” Pete said. “Johnson seemed to think it was everyone.”
“I know, right? But get this. I checked the people handled by the eastern section and found out that four other people who were scheduled to testify against Martinelli have been killed in the last couple months. None of that unrecognizable stuff, either, there is no doubt these were the actual witnesses who were murdered.”
“Holy crap,” Pete said. “That means this thing is bigger than just Garrett, for sure. They got some way of getting to witnesses all over the country, so that m
eans they got somebody like Garrett over there in the eastern half.”
“No kidding. Well, then I started looking into Mr. Garrett, and that’s when things got really interesting. He’s been getting a lot of money coming in for more than a year, now, and he’s been stashing it in accounts that belong to a dummy company. I only found it because he used a credit card of his own to pay for the incorporation, but that got me its employer identification number, and that let me track down the bank accounts it uses. From its bank records, it looks like most of it was transferred into his accounts electronically, and always from the same source account in the Bahamas.”
“Bahamas? A lot of organized crime money goes through there, so that isn’t a big surprise. Any idea who’s running that dummy corp?”
“The registered agent is a lawyer in Pahrump, Jack Linsky. Got his law degree by mail, but he’s got a thriving business in just being the registered agent for thousands of corporations. The company is called Liquidity Holdings, and it’s the parent company for a dozen others that don’t do anything but seem to have lots of money flowing through their accounts.”
Pete’s toothpick made its journey across his mouth. “All right, let me think about this. I’ll be back at the office in about twenty minutes, see you then.”
Pete cut off the call, then dialed Chance. “How’s it going back there?”
“Kinda spooky, if you want to know the truth,” Chance said.
Pete’s eyes narrowed. “Spooky? What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I'm sitting here looking at Darrell Johnson, right across the table from me.”
* * * * *
Pete had been gone for nearly an hour and a half and Chance was sitting at the table having yet another cup of coffee when he heard a tap on the back door. He laid his hand on the grip of the Maxim under his jacket, then stepped over to the door and glanced through the window. His eyes went wide when he saw Darrell Johnson standing there, apparently alive and intact.