Deadly Cross

by Patterson, James

  “Ohhh,” she moaned. “That’s gonna hurt.”

  “Better than dying.” I grabbed her, hoisted her up over my left shoulder, staggered to my feet, and bolted down the path in the dark, bullets clipping the ground behind me.

  CHAPTER 69

  I STEPPED OFF THE BANK. With Althea’s weight across my shoulders, I landed awkwardly on the slippery, rocky shore. My knee twisted, but I stayed on my feet and moved left.

  The night was near pitch-dark with the rain clouds, which did not help. My knee burned as I gingerly took one step after another up the shoreline. I kept my eyes wide open, blinking against the rain, because in low light, we see better peripherally than straight ahead.

  My knowing that fact probably saved both our lives.

  “Not far now,” Althea said in a gurgling voice that made my fears real. I could hear that her lung was filling with blood.

  Out of the corner of my left eye I caught movement between the side of her cabin and the bank. I pivoted and tried to raise my pistol and aim at the movement, but Althea’s weight threw me off balance. I staggered right. The shot just missed me and went into the lake behind us.

  He won’t miss twice, I thought. Not at this range.

  My instinct was to put Althea down and get on her to protect her. But before I could, Mahoney turned on his Maglite from thirty yards up the shore, revealing a pro in black with an AR rifle equipped with a banana clip, a night-vision scope, and a silencer about to shoot me and Althea.

  The light blinded the guy. Mahoney touched off twice. Both rounds punched him in the throat. He fell and the light went off.

  I moved fast toward Mahoney. He was taking cover behind a blown-down tree.

  “She’s hit,” I whispered. “Chest wound. There’s a boat somewhere here.”

  “Boat’s right behind us, pulled up on the rocks. Go to it. Get her in. I’ll cover you.”

  “They’ll shoot at us going out of here.”

  “I’ll get that guy’s gun with the night scope. Even things up.”

  “How you doing, Althea?”

  “Can’t breathe good,” she rasped.

  “One more pull, okay?” I said and didn’t wait for an answer. I brought her toward the lake, trying not to kick any rocks, knowing the sound would carry back into the woods.

  I toed the side of the metal johnboat, then eased her off my shoulders and onto the floor of the skiff. She moaned and shifted.

  There was nothing I could do for her until we were safe, so I felt my way to the outboard engine, found it cocked up out of the water. I heard footsteps coming.

  “Ready?” Mahoney whispered.

  “Can you see with that thing?”

  “Plain as day, pretty amazing.”

  “We slide it into the water, you get up front and cover the shore. This engine is going to draw them.”

  “Let’s do it,” he said and went around to the bow of the skiff.

  Together we slid the metal, flat-bottomed boat, scraping and squealing, into the water. I went up to my knees, felt Mahoney get in, and was about to climb in after him when the shooting started once more. The first rounds hit the bow right in front of Ned, who shot back as I scrambled aboard, found the starter cord, and pulled. It coughed but did not catch.

  “Prime it,” Althea gasped. “The bulb on the gas line. Then choke.”

  Another bullet pinged off the hull of the boat. Others knifed into the water around us and Mahoney unleashed a firestorm on them, ten, twenty, thirty straight rounds.

  During that time, I found the priming bulb, squeezed it three times, then groped for the choke lever and shifted it. I grabbed the starter cord again and yanked.

  The engine coughed, sputtered. I eased the choke until it caught, put it in reverse, and gunned the outboard just as Mahoney ran out of bullets with the pro’s weapon and shifted back to his pistol.

  I spun us broadside to shore, wincing at every shot coming at us, shifted out of reverse and buried the throttle. The outboard engine roared. We blew out of there, away from the point toward the big lake and open water.

  CHAPTER 70

  TWO DAYS LATER, MAHONEY AND I sat in our SUV, looked at each other, nodded, and then, carrying manila files, climbed out of the car and into stultifying heat and humidity. But given what we had to do that morning, I’d have walked through an inferno and been grateful for the experience.

  We entered the august firm of Carson and Knight and smiled at Reggie the receptionist as if we were old friends. He looked at us as if we were ghosts, then jumped to his feet, waving.

  “Bobby’s not here,” he said. “He’s gone to — ”

  “He’s here,” Mahoney said. “We saw him go in the front door ten minutes ago, so if you don’t want to be charged with obstructing justice, Reggie, I suggest you sit down and shut up. Where is he?”

  The receptionist glumly pointed at the closed door of the conference room.

  Mahoney led the way, and we entered without knocking to find four people around the conference table: Nina Larch, the executor of Kay Willingham’s will; Bobby Carson, Kay’s second cousin; and Dr. Nathan Tolliver and Dr. Jeanne Hicks, Kay’s shrinks from West Briar.

  “Well,” Mahoney said, breaking into a smile. “The gang’s all here, aren’t they?”

  “This is a private meeting,” Carson sputtered. “You can’t just barge in like this. You could have the decency to — ”

  “Save it for your closing argument, Mr. Carson,” Ned said. “We’d like to ask you all some questions.”

  “How long will this take?” Dr. Hicks said, looking at her watch. “I have rounds this morning and — ”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, closing the door and taking a seat. “We called West Briar and told them you and Dr. Tolliver will both be delayed.”

  “What’s this about?” Hicks said nervously. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do,” I said. “I think it’s why you’re all here.”

  “We were discussing taking on West Briar as a client,” Carson began.

  “West Briar has been a client of this firm for twenty-five years,” Mahoney said. “Since the very first day the institution opened.”

  “A client in other ways,” Tolliver said. “We — Dr. Hicks and I — have been discussing an expansion of our facility or a second one, and we need legal work done at the state level to make that happen in a timely and…”

  Mahoney opened the file he was carrying and set two separate piles of documents on the table in front of the doctor. He sat down and stared at Tolliver, who’d gone silent.

  They were all trying not to look at the documents, but four out of four stole glances at them as we waited and watched. It didn’t take long until Carson said, “I thought you were here to ask questions.”

  I waited a beat, then said, “I get that there’s a wink-and-a-nod, good-ol’-boy way of getting things greased and done down here in Alabama. But we’re federal and we don’t take kindly to being shot at or to people trying to kill our witnesses.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Carson said. “What in Sam Hill are you talking about?”

  Mahoney said, “We were attacked by heavily armed gunmen on the north point of the cove at the plantation three evenings ago. Althea Lincoln was badly wounded and would have died if Dr. Cross had not been able to get her to the hospital.”

  “Wait!” Dr. Hicks said. “We haven’t heard a thing about this!”

  “Because we did not want you to hear about it,” Mahoney said. “Althea’s in a hospital in Florida under FBI protection.”

  Carson said, “Well, we had nothing to do with you getting shot at and Althea getting wounded. I think this is her past catching up with her. Her family has been involved in drug dealing and other criminality for generations.”

  “She said you’d say that. She said a lot, actually.”

  Dr. Tolliver started to get up. “I see no connection whatsoever between the affairs of West Briar and this shooting event, so I am leaving.”
/>   Mahoney put on his angry face and said, “Sit down, Doctor, or you will have no chance of seeing life outside prison walls for decades.”

  CHAPTER 71

  THE PSYCHIATRIST ACTED LIKE HE’D been gut-punched. He sat back down, saying, “Prison? I … I believe I want an attorney present.”

  “I am an attorney,” said Nina Larch, who’d been quiet up until now. “I advise you not to say another word, Dr. Tolliver.”

  “Then I will,” I said, gesturing across the table at the two piles in front of Mahoney. “It took five agents from the local office a lot of hours to help us run down what we needed, but there it is. The weight of evidence against you.”

  Dr. Hicks stared at the documents like they could damn her, but Carson had not lost his cool. “I think this is a stunt.”

  Mahoney slid the first pile to me.

  I spun it around in front of me. “Thanks to Ms. Larch’s fine assistant, we have the letters that Kay Willingham sent to Ms. Larch to amend her will the last two times. And we have the documents authorizing Mr. Carson to conduct the timber sale on the plantation. And thanks to Kay’s medical record, we also know the time periods when she was a patient at West Briar on powerful antipsychotic drugs that left her incompetent to make sound legal decisions.”

  Mahoney said, “Isn’t it interesting that they overlap? The letters amending the will five years ago and twenty months ago were all signed and dated when she was at West Briar. So were the timber-sale documents.”

  I said, “The least you could have done is postdate the letters. But you must have thought, Who’s going to try to match up dates on a legal document with time spent in an ultra-secretive, ultra-exclusive psychiatric facility? ”

  The junior attorney, Nina Larch, said forcefully, “I am not a part of any fraud. I had no idea whatsoever that Kay Willingham was at West Briar when she wrote those letters. They all bore a Montgomery postmark on the envelopes and a Montgomery notary’s seal and signature on every letter.”

  “We saw them,” Mahoney said. “We called the notary, who’s retired and living down on the Gulf now. She said Mr. Carson sent her up to West Briar multiple times to get Kay Willingham’s signature on documents. She said you were there once or twice, Dr. Tolliver, and you too, Dr. Hicks.”

  Dr. Tolliver had a tremor in his voice when he said, “Yes, well, I remember documents being signed, but I also recall Kay being exceptionally lucid at those times. She asked sharp questions that showed she understood what she was doing.”

  “Very sharp,” Dr. Hicks said.

  “Questions to who?” Mahoney said. “The notary who had no law degree? Or the shrinks with no law degrees?”

  The psychiatrists said nothing. Carson stared at the table.

  I said, “You, Mr. Carson, took advantage of your cousin’s frequently fragile mental state to alter her will so the plantation would become not a park, but land for sale, and then you altered it again to make yourself the sole beneficiary. But although Kay had mental problems, she was physically fit. It could have been years before she died of natural causes.”

  Carson, already seeing his future land deal slipping through his fingers, looked up at me. “What are you trying to say?”

  Mahoney said, “That you hired professionals to kill Kay Willingham the same way you hired professionals to kill Althea Lincoln. Randall Christopher just happened to be with Kay when the shooting started. And we just happened to be with Althea.”

  “So the counts are mounting, Bobby,” I said. “Two counts murder for hire. Two counts attempted murder of a federal officer. One count conspiracy to commit fraud, and multiple counts of outright fraud.”

  “No, no, no!” Carson shouted. “That’s absolutely not true. I … I admit to getting Kay to sign those letters and the permission to log the timber. I … I was going to get nothing in the original will! Nothing, and we shared great-grandfathers! My father and I slaved for the Sutter family. Kay could give away the cash and the stocks, but I deserved that land. Who do you think cared for it all these years?”

  “You were going to develop it,” Mahoney said.

  “Damn straight I was going to develop it. State park? Are you kidding? It would have been a gold mine.”

  “If it weren’t for Althea Lincoln and Kay Willingham,” I said.

  “No!” Carson said. “I am not a violent person. I did not have Kay killed. I did not hire anyone to shoot at Althea, and why would I hire someone to try to kill federal agents? They’d swarm the state!”

  CHAPTER 72

  JUST AS WE’D PLANNED IF the discussion had Bobby Carson admitting to fraud but denying murder, Mahoney waited a few moments and then said, “So who else would have reason to want Kay Willingham and Althea Lincoln dead?”

  Carson stared at the table and shook his head. “I have no idea. Other than brief visits to her mother when she was alive and her stays at West Briar, Kay rarely came to Montgomery and it was even rarer that we saw each other. Kay was a socialite. It has to be someone in Washington.”

  When he looked up at me, I said, “You have a good idea who it is, Bobby.”

  “I really don’t.”

  Mahoney said wearily, “You know we are going to dismantle your practice, don’t you? Take every file, every computer, search every safe-deposit box affiliated with this firm, and go through all your personal property. We are going to find it.”

  “Find what?” Dr. Tolliver asked.

  I looked at my watch, said, “Oh, you and Dr. Hicks can leave now. There are FBI agents in the lobby waiting for you.”

  “Are we under arrest?” Dr. Hicks said in a whiny voice.

  “You will be leaving in handcuffs,” Mahoney said. “Yes.”

  Hicks started to cry, then got up and slapped Tolliver across the face. “You said no one would know. You said we’d just pick up some extra cash to make our lives easier in the middle of East Jesus, Alabama. Now we’re probably going to jail and we’re definitely losing our medical licenses. You stupid ass.”

  “You want to see an equally stupid ass?” Tolliver said. “Look in a mirror, Jeanne.”

  “Leave,” Mahoney said. “Now.”

  Dr. Hicks turned and left, sobbing. Dr. Tolliver followed her, head up as if he were about to go onstage to deliver a research paper. He slammed the door behind him.

  Mahoney turned to Carson. “As I said, we will find it, so you might as well give it to us.”

  Carson held up his hands. “I don’t know what more I can — ”

  “We know about Althea’s half brother Napoleon Howard,” I said. “We know Kay was down here digging into what happened to him, how he was railroaded onto death row. And we know Kay believed the proof was in the old files of this law firm, your father’s old files. Didn’t she?”

  Carson shifted in his chair. “Yes. She did. But I told Kay what I’m telling you. I had no clue what she was talking about. When Napoleon Howard stabbed his friend to death, I was in the U.S. Army, working as a JAG in South Korea. During Howard’s trial? I was stationed in Berlin. But you know, second cousin and all, I went through all my father’s files for her. Evidence to free an innocent man? I would have seen something like that, and I did not.”

  Mahoney sighed and picked up his phone. “Suit yourself, Bobby.”

  Nina Larch cleared her throat and I noticed her fingers trembling. “He’s not lying to you, Special Agent Mahoney. There is nothing to do with Napoleon Howard in his father’s files. I know because I also went through Robert Carson Sr.’s personal and legal files for Kay earlier this year. At Bobby’s request, I might add.”

  “See?” Carson said.

  Larch ignored him and focused on Mahoney and me. “But it wasn’t until after Kay died and you came here asking questions that it dawned on me to go through the files of Robert Sr.’s late partner, Claude Knight.”

  Mahoney put his phone down.

  “Claude?” Carson said. “He’s been dead thirty years. Where were they?”

  “In a storage unit ov
er on the east side that the firm has rented since the fifties. Boxes of Knight’s old files and old files from the Napoleon Howard trial. Vice President Willingham’s old files, as a matter of fact. I’ve spent the past three days there.”

  Carson stared at her. “Did Claude — ”

  I cut him off. “Did you find proof of Napoleon Howard’s innocence in the files?”

  “I am not a criminal lawyer, Dr. Cross,” she said. “But I saw evidence that should have come out at Howard’s trial and didn’t. I think it might have gotten Kay killed. And I am requesting witness protection.”

  CHAPTER 73

  FOUR DAYS LATER, ON THE second to last Saturday in August, I got out of an Uber car with my luggage and trudged up my porch stairs, feeling as exhausted and disillusioned as I have ever felt. Knowing what I now knew, having seen the hard evidence, I could not help feeling sick for the late Napoleon Howard and sicker still for the late Kay Willingham.

  The door was flung open. Bree was standing there, grinning, her arms wide.

  “My conquering hero returns,” she said and kissed me and hugged me.

  “I don’t feel like much of a hero today,” I said. “I actually feel kind of dirty.”

  My son Ali said, “What happened? You don’t look dirty, Dad.”

  I looked around Bree and saw him standing there barefoot.

  “You walk quietly,” I said.

  He grinned and wiggled the toes of one foot. “I’m getting my feet strong. Going barefoot a lot is supposed to help with rock climbing. Mr. Mury said that.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “Come inside out of the heat and humidity and close that door,” Bree said. “We’re burning electricity.”

  “This isn’t heat and humidity, by the way,” I said as we went inside.

  “What happened in Alabama, Dad?” Ali asked.

  “A lot of heat and things I can’t talk about right now, bud.”