“We’re fine. Thank you for meeting us with no prior notice,” Jo told him.
He waved that away. “If I can be of any assistance to the Soledad Police Department, I’m happy to meet you whenever. What can I do for you? Is this about your Masked Man of Mystery again?”
Heat rushed to Jo’s cheeks. “I’m afraid so.”
He burst out laughing. “I’m flattered that you still consider me a contender for the job. What did he do this time? Don’t tell me you’ve started seeing the Bat Signal in the night sky.”
Nate laughed, too. “Nothing like that. The guy has made a couple more appearances since we talked last. One was three nights ago, but that’s not why we’re here. The guy jumped out and saved Jo in broad daylight ten days ago at the Port of Soledad. Gabriel Kingston was about to kill her and the vigilante intervened. It’s thanks to him that she was able to apprehend Kingston when she did.”
Falkner inspected his fingernails. “With little to no reward, unfortunately.”
“Exactly,” Jo muttered.
“All right. Give me the time and date of the Hooded Hero’s appearance.” He took out his phone. “I’ll tell you where I was and what I was doing.”
“We’re calling him the Dark Avenger,” Nate told him. Then he howled in pain when Jo elbowed him hard in the shoulder. “Ow! I’m just saying. It’s a lot easier than giving a lengthy explanation of a disguised vigilante with exceptional athletic abilities.”
Falkner studied him over his phone. “I’m waiting.”
“Right. It was three-fifteen in the afternoon on the seventeenth of June.”
Falkner tapped his screen. “Oh, yeah. I was in a Zoom meeting with four of my Directors. It started at two-thirty and ended at five. You can check with each of them. They’ll tell you I couldn’t have been out of their sight long enough to get to the docks even for a few minutes. In fact, the meeting was recorded with electronic time stamps. That should be enough.”
Jo pulled her head between her shoulders. “Thank you. That’s all we need to know.”
He scowled at his screen and his thumb did a little dance over the device. “I’m emailing the Directors’ contact details to the email addresses listed for you two on the Department website. You can confirm my story with them.”
“Thank you,” Jo croaked. She heard the last nail driving into the coffin.
“Sorry I can’t be of much help.” Falkner put his phone away. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”
“Do you know anyone by the name of Mordechai Moishe Berg?” Nate asked.
Falkner cocked his head to one side. “That sounds like a Jewish name.”
“Israeli,” Nate told him. “He’s a businessman and he was also at the docks on the seventeenth when this Dark Avenger character showed up. I just wondered if you knew him.”
“Berg or the Dark Avenger?”
Nate bit back laughter. “Either.”
Falkner spread his palms. “Sorry. I don’t know either of them, but I only deal domestically. I don’t deal with parties out of the country. It complicates the legal and tax considerations beyond my tolerance for minutia and I can make just as much here. Anything else?”
Nate shot a questioning glance at Jo, but she shook her head. She already knew Falkner would have an alibi for the incident at the docks, but his manner still suggested he knew more about the Dark Avenger than he let on.
She went through the motions of shaking hands with Falkner and he walked them to the door. “Do me a favor, will you?” he asked before they left. “If you want to question me about anything, just call me and I’ll come down to the station like a real person. Don’t torture me by parking that car in front of my house where I have no choice but to look at it.”
Nate laughed. “It’s a deal. If you want, I could email you a picture of it and then you can look at it as much as you want.”
“No way!” Falkner snapped. “Don’t you dare.”
Both men laughed. Nate and Jo got into the Mustang and drove back to town. “Well?” Nate asked. “What’s next, Sherlock?”
“Drive to the bank.”
He chopped his hand toward his brow. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Jo snickered. “That sounds a little more like it.”
“Does your lowly foot soldier get to know what we’re doing at the bank?”
She pointed down the street. “We’re just in time. Look.”
Nate angled the Mustang into the curb and they both watched breathless as Gabriel and Julian Kingston strolled out of the bank. They laughed and shook hands with the bank manager who walked them to the sidewalk.
Nate gasped low. “What the hell are they doing?”
“Do I have to explain everything?” Jo replied. “If you were sitting on incriminating evidence that could destroy your whole criminal enterprise and you suddenly got arrested, what would you do? He put the memory sticks in a safe deposit box. Now that he and his son are out on bail, they’re coming to collect.”
Nate shook his head in mute astonishment. “You’re on fire today, aren’t you? Remind me to never doubt you again.”
“Does that mean you believe me about Chief Bates?”
He winced. “Let’s just put him on the list of suspects to be confirmed by some more solid evidence.”
She faced front. “All right. They’re on the move. Let’s roll.”
Chapter 9
The Mustang rumbled down the highway at a healthy distance from a black roadster weaving in and out of traffic. “When are you gonna bite the bullet and get a less conspicuous car for jobs like this?” Jo asked.
“Never,” Nate countered. “This car is an extension of my personality.”
Jo groaned. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll start using a different car just as soon as you stop asking me when I’m going to start using a different car.”
“Great,” she grumbled. “Just great.”
“I thought so. Oh, look. They’re exiting. Now do you mind telling me where we’re going?”
“I told you. We’re following Gabriel and Julian and those disks.”
“Yeah, I got that,” he returned. “I want to know where we’re following them to.”
“What do I look like—a Ouija board? If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say they got the disks decrypted while they were in jail the way Kingston told Berg he was going to. Now that they’re out on bail, they’re taking the decrypted files to Berg, but that’s just a guess. You shouldn’t listen to someone whose hold on reality is so notoriously tenuous.”
He chortled under his breath. “You’re right, but then, for a guy who’s been married to a crazy woman as long as I have, my sanity probably isn’t the most unimpeachable, either.”
She slipped her hand across the seat and squeezed his knee. “You are such an incurable romantic.”
He took his eyes off the road to leer at her. “Don’t try to butter me up, honey. When Chief Bates finds out you think he’s the Dark Avenger, you’re gonna be unemployed.”
Jo’s eyes popped. “You won’t tell him. You’d be in the doghouse for the rest of eternity.”
He laughed at her and threaded his fingers into her hand on his leg. “I won’t tell him. If Falkner’s reaction is anything to go by, the Chief would consider your suspicion the highest form of flattery and I would be out of a wife, so no, I don’t think I’ll tell him—not unless you really piss me off.”
They both laughed at that. It felt good to be joking around with him about this. She didn’t mind him taking the mickey out of her about her crazy ideas.
The roadster exited the highway in Chisolm, another port town north of Soledad. Nate dropped back to give Kingston and Co. plenty of room and tailed them to the docks. He parked far enough away to prevent anyone from recognizing his car. “These guys are all class—meeting at the docks all the time. You’d think he’d take Berg out for dinner or.... or something. I mean, show a little class, chump.”
&nb
sp; Jo expanded the picture on her phone and took a photo of Berg, Kingston, and Julian shaking hands. Their cars pointed nose to nose in front of the Port entrance gate. From here, Jo wondered if they even bothered to cut their motors.
Kingston passed Berg something. They exchanged a few words, shook hands again, and got back into their own cars.
“Like I said—classy,” Nate sniffed. “All that money and they can’t even bother to meet indoors. They act like petty thugs.”
“They are petty thugs,” Jo replied. “Let’s get back to Soledad. I got a bad feeling about something.”
“Not the Chief again, I hope.” Nate whipped the car around. He was half a mile down the highway before the two crooks left the docks.
“The Chief doesn’t worry me. He can take care of himself. It’s Molly Christensen I’m worried about.”
Nate cocked his head. “The old lady from the graveyard?”
Jo nodded. “She was released from the hospital the day before yesterday. Now that Kingston is out of jail, he’ll be tying up every loose end dangling from his coattails. Molly is the only person who can identify Julian from the graveyard.”
“What about you and me and Blake and Kat?” he countered. “We all saw Julian fleeing toward the truck and he was the one who took the memory sticks from Molly.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Molly is the only one who can testify that he was the one who took the disks. You and I and Kat and Blake can only testify that he was there. We can’t testify that he had anything to do with Molly’s kidnapping or the assault or threatening to throw her off the pier. Only she can do that and I’m betting she doesn’t have a team of armed bodyguards posted around her house.”
“Good point.” Nate dropped the Mustang into third gear and stepped down on the gas. The car shot forward and they burned into Soledad.
He steered through the neighborhoods and pulled up on Molly Christensen’s block. He parked the car and they both stared at a black roadster parked right in front of the house. The minute they showed up, they saw Gabriel Kingston as bold as brass. He walked from Molly’s front door toward the car, popped the rear door, got in, and the car drove away.
“What the fuck!” Nate hissed. “How did he get back here so fast?”
She bumped her knuckles against his arm. “Come on. Let’s get in there and make sure she’s all right.”
Nate flung the door shut too hard. “If he did anything to her, I swear to Christ I’ll cut his nuts off.”
Jo didn’t answer. She was too busy trying to calm her fluttering heart hurrying to the door. If anything happened to Molly on her watch, she would never forgive herself. She kicked herself for tailing Kingston around the countryside and questioning Falkner when she should have been protecting Molly.
She should have thought. She should have expected Kingston to go after Molly, but Jo had her brain too wrapped up in the stupid Dark Avenger mystery. She didn’t think of Molly until they were halfway out of town.
She should have raised the matter of Molly’s protection with Chief Bates the instant she found out Molly could identify Julian Kingston from the graveyard. The Department should have put Molly under witness protection then and there. Jo shouldn’t even be standing on Molly’s doorstep right now wondering if she was already too late.
She pressed the doorbell and counted down the seconds until Molly answered. Jo strained her ears for the slightest sound from inside, but she couldn’t hear over Nate’s voice. He held his phone to his ear and barked down it. “Hey, Chief, it’s me Fricks. Yeah, thanks. We’re checking on Molly Christensen—you know, the only lady who got attacked by Kingston Junior. Yeah, do you happen to know....?”
Jo shifted over to the living room window. She cupped her hand to peer inside when, out of nowhere, an all-too-familiar thump caught her attention. She looked up to see a black chopper lift over the neighborhood. She and Nate stared in open-mouthed shock as twin rockets dropped from the runners and corkscrewed toward the house.
Nate dove for her, dropped his phone, and made a grab for her arm. “Down!”
At that second, the rockets slammed into the house and the whole structure exploded in a colossal, deafening boom. Broken glass, splintered wood, and brick pelted Jo’s face and body. The shockwave hurled her and Nate backward and they landed flat on their backs in the middle of the street.
Jo shook the stars out of her head. That sickening pounding vibration coming through the ground sounded all wrong, but her limbs refused to move. Smoke and gas burned her nostrils. She blinked. Her eyes stung.
That thumping crept nearer. It was right on top of her now. She blinked dust and soot out of her eyes and looked up at the sky overhead. A huge black insect hovered right over her head. It rotated. A man wearing a bug-eyed helmet dangled by a tether from the chopper’s side. He wasn’t aiming his weapon at her, though.
She pried her aching skull off the pavement and her heart dropped into her stomach. The gunman was aiming for the house—the destroyed remains of Molly Christensen’s house. The chopper pivoted around the ruin scanning for.... they could only be scanning for survivors.
She gave herself one more command, and this time, she didn’t give herself an option. She peeled her broken body off the asphalt and clawed to her feet. She staggered to the right and pawed at Nate’s arm. “Get up, Nate. Get up now!”
He groaned, but she showed no mercy. She dragged him to his feet and his weight fell against her. She almost staggered and her spine felt like it would crack under the effort. She slung his arm over her shoulders and stumbled toward the Mustang.
She mumbled encouragement to herself more to him. “Come on. Come on. You can do it. Come on. We gotta get out of here. That’s it. Just a little farther. Just a little.....”
She froze in her tracks staring, not at the Mustang parked at the curb, but beyond it. Nate groaned again. To her amazement, his weight lifted off her neck and he stood straight up. When she looked at him, she saw him gaping down the street, too.
Behind the car, a flock of black-suited men flooded the neighborhood. They charged the pair leveling automatic weapons at Jo and Nate. The first belch of gunfire echoed through the neighborhood.
Jo almost fell over in her rush to stumble back the other way. Nate caught up with her. They groped for each other, but those men kept gaining all the time. After facing off against Kingston’s men so many times, she started to recognize a few of them from the barn, from the graveyard, and from the docks.
She wheeled, flailed for Nate’s hand, and they both bolted for cover. Bullets ricocheted off the pavement around their feet. One glance behind her showed the enemy streaming around the Mustang. In her addled state, she experienced a moment of relief that they didn’t blow up the car, too. Nate wouldn’t be able to survive that.
Chapter 10
Jo and Nate raced through the neighborhood, but she long ago gave up keeping track of where they were. They vaulted fences, skidded through flowerbeds, and ducked behind garages. Even when they evaded the gunmen, the chopper swiveled and rotated overhead. It kept them in sight at all times. They couldn’t get away.
Jo dodged behind a garden shed. She plastered her spine against the boards and willed herself to breathe. Nate propped his hands on his knees. “I just made up my mind. When this is all over, I’m permanently retiring the Mustang as a Police car. This case is way too dangerous. Those assholes nearly scratched my paintwork.”
Jo tried to grin and failed. “I really think you need to get your priorities straight, darling. How about you and I permanently retire from Police work? That way those assholes won’t scratch our paintwork, either.”
“What—you mean your nail polish?”
She had to laugh. Her pulse deafened her and cold sweat made her skin crawl. She laughed more out of desperation than anything else. “Any ideas where we are, or more to the point, where the Christ we can go to get away from them?”
He peeked out and immediately pulled his head back. “Near as I can fig
ure, we’re about four blocks from the railroad tracks. If we get across them, we’ll be about another five blocks from the Station. The pieces of shit wouldn’t dare to follow us there.”
“Nine blocks,” Jo calculated. “So what is there between us and the tracks—besides a fifteen-foot, razor-wire fence?”
“Oh, that!” He smacked his lips. “That’s nothing.”
“It would be nothing for the Dark Avenger,” she pointed out. “He could jump in about three seconds.”
“Okay. I’ve got it.” He held up his hand. “First, I’ll retire the Mustang. Second, I’ll enroll in a martial arts class. Third, I’ll challenge Chief Bates.”
“Fourth,” she added, “you’ll spend the next six months in traction while your broken legs heal.”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “You’re right. Screw it. I won’t do any of that.”
“Not even retire the Mustang?” she asked. “Damn!”
He laughed again, grabbed her, and kissed her. “I love you. Now shut and run.”
He propelled her out from behind the shed and they both ran for their lives. She concentrated everything on keeping hold of his hand. He towed her through a few more yards, past old ladies tending their roses, and across streets.
She didn’t bother to check if the gunmen spotted them. Running demanded all her strength and she already felt her lungs and her legs giving out. She couldn’t keep this up much longer.
They passed through another random yard. On the back lawn, Nate charged to a tall wooden fence. He laced his fingers and boosted Jo over. She swung her legs clear and landed in a strip of gravel. Five feet away stood a tall cyclone fence topped with razor wire. Beyond it ran the railroad tracks. Through another fence, she spotted the back of the Soledad Hospital. The Police Station would be across the street from that.
Nate hopped down next to her. The couple cast sidelong glances left and right, but there was nothing to see but more and more tracks. No one was here. He took one step and the chopper whined over the nearest houses. It levitated over the rail line veering straight for them.
Mystery Ghost Page 6