One Last Scream (Special Agent Ricki James Book 2)

by C. R. Chandler

  Picking up the marker, Ricki went back to making notes on blank cards and then setting each aside. Once she’d filled in what she needed to, she started arranging them outward, starting with the card with Benjamin Graham’s name on it. She was still fiddling with the order when there was a sharp knock on the door and Clay stepped inside.

  “Okay. I’m officially out taking care of a minor noise complaint. Care to tell me why all the sneaking around?”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Ricki said. “Did you happen to see Dan leave?”

  “Yeah. He was headed for the back door as I was going out the front. What’s going on, Ricki?”

  She sat on the closest tall stool and pointed at the cards laid out across the surface of the center island. “I know who killed Maxwell Hardy, and Benjamin Graham. Dan’s bringing the final pieces of the puzzle with him.” She picked up her uncle’s unfinished cup of coffee and took a sip, wrinkling her nose at the lukewarm, overly sweet brew. Setting the cup back down, she watched as Clay studied the index cards.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “I’ll go over it, but first, I need to know something. When Dan showed you that blown-up photograph yesterday, was that the first time you’d seen it?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Do you keep aspirin in your office desk?”

  Clay rolled his eyes. “Again, yeah. A big bottle of it. What cop doesn’t?”

  Ricki had thought so. She wished it had dawned on her a lot sooner, but it hadn’t seemed like any more than passing conversation at the time.

  Clay scowled. “Look. Explain the cards first, and then we’ll get into the picture and aspirin thing.” He pointed at the center card. “I know who Graham is, and Hardy, and Metler. You’ve got the lighthouse down here, but who are Jenny Norris and Jimmy Anders?”

  “If I’m right, Jenny was the woman Graham was coming to see in Brewer, and Jimmy Anders was her longtime boyfriend.” Ricki lifted her gaze to meet his. “But it isn’t who they were then, Clay. It’s who they are now. And I don’t think any of us are going to like that answer much.”

  He looked down at the last two cards. “And you think Ray and his nephew are a part of that answer?” He took a step back and shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Wanting to ease some of the shock, Ricki kept her voice low and matter-of-fact. “Jenny Norris is John’s mother.” At Clay’s puzzled look, she nodded. “Norris was her maiden name.”

  The chief went back to studying the cards. “Then since Ray and John share a name, that would also be John’s father’s name, so Jenny Norris would be Ray’s sister-in-law.”

  “That’s how someone wants it to look.” Ricki glanced out the front window, silently wondering what was keeping Dan.

  “I’m going to let that go for the moment,” Clay said. He used his index finger to stab at the card in the center. “What does Graham have to do with all of this, besides chasing after Jenny Norris before breaking up with her?”

  When Dan’s car finally came into view, Ricki slid off her stool. “Hang on a minute. Dan’s here.” She strode over and opened the door, impatiently tapping one foot as she waited for the ranger to gather up a folder and an oversized book and exit the car.

  He stopped in front of her and jerked his head backwards. “Your boss is right behind me.”

  Ricki looked past him just as Hamilton’s Lexus pulled up behind Dan’s SUV. “Go on inside,” Ricki told her assistant partner. “I’ll be there in a minute.” She waited, her hands stuck in the pockets of her jeans, doing her best not to look irritated at seeing the ASAC striding up her driveway. She’d bet under that expensive coat was a perfectly tailored suit with a contrasting shirt and tie. Not exactly the kind of attire to track someone down in the backcountry, if it came to that.

  “Special Agent James.”

  Hamilton’s greeting was a bit formal, but not frigid, so she figured he wasn’t too annoyed with her. “Sir. I’m surprised to see you here. Is something wrong?”

  “Let’s just say I get worried when I hear one of my agents had her place burned down, and it wasn’t an accident. Not to mention that the guy who’s her self-appointed bodyguard was also taken out and is in critical condition in a hospital.”

  Ricki kept her hands in her pockets and rocked back slightly on her heels. “I think I covered that in my reports.”

  “Barely,” Hamilton said. “You were a little shy on details, so I thought I’d come check up on things myself.” He peered through the door Dan had left open and nodded at Clay. “If you’re having a briefing, I’d like to sit in.” He paused. “That wasn’t a request.”

  “Please. Go on in.” Ricki stepped aside but didn’t follow Hamilton into the cabin. Instead she waited on the porch as her uncle’s truck came barreling up the driveway, coming to a quick, skidding halt within half a foot of the Lexus’s back bumper.

  Cy strode up the driveway, a scowl on his face and carrying a pair of boots in one hand. Before she could get a word out, he shook a finger at her. “Eddie’s all settled at Bear’s place, and the two of them are hunkered down playing video games. Whatever you all are up to, I’m in.” When she started to shake her head, his scowl deepened. “Anchorman isn’t here, Ricki. But I can shoot if it comes to that, and I’m pretty fair at tracking too. So, I’m in.” He stomped past her, greeting Hamilton by holding up his hand and saying, “I’ve got your boots,” as he crossed over the threshold.

  Ricki greeted that pronouncement with a disgusted snort. Her uncle had probably taken them out of the stock Bear kept to sell to anyone on a tour who didn’t have the proper attire.

  Feeling like she’d lost control of her own op, Ricki tamped down her exasperation and followed the men inside, closing the door before crossing the short distance to the kitchen. They were all gathered around the island, staring at her line of index cards. She pushed in between Clay and her uncle and picked up the marker.

  “Okay, Dan. Tell us what you found out.”

  The ranger nodded and opened the manila folder he’d brought with him. “You asked me to track down a Jimmy Anders who grew up here in the Bay. I didn’t find much. A James Raymond Anders showed up on the DMV records list with an address here in Brewer.”

  Clay’s hands gripped the edge of the counter as he cleared his throat. “James Raymond? Did you say Jimmy Anders’s middle name is Raymond?”

  Dan nodded. “Is or was. I couldn’t find anything on him after 1973, so he might have moved to another state, or died. I didn’t have a chance to search the state’s death certificates file. They also didn’t scan DMV pictures back that far, so I can’t produce one of those either. But I dug out all those yearbooks we confiscated from our last case and took a look through one of those. According to his birthdate, he should have graduated in 1958, and that’s where I found him.” Dan opened the yearbook lying underneath the folder and flipped to a page with a paper clip on top. He turned the book around so it was facing Clay. “Here he is. If he’s still breathing, he’d be eighty.”

  Ricki leaned over and studied the black-and-white picture. It wasn’t as sharp as the ones any phone could take today, but it was clear enough to show a much younger Ray Dunning smiling into the camera.

  “Shit,” Clay said under his breath. He rubbed a hand down one cheek as he shifted his gaze to meet Ricki’s. “Jimmy Anders. Jenny’s long-term boyfriend. Which would make him the ‘Other Guy,’ if I’m following along here?”

  “You are,” Ricki said quietly. “He’s changed his name, but yeah. He was Jenny’s boyfriend, and according to Wanda’s mama, the one the whole town expected her to marry. He was heartbroken when she ran off with a sailor no one even knew she was seeing, and then returned to town with a baby ten months later, after her new husband was killed.”

  “Convenient,” Hamilton said. He looked over the cards. “Judging by the way you have this lined up, you’re thinking Graham was the father, but how does Ray Dunning fit into all of this?” He glanced over at the ch
ief and frowned. “I’m assuming we’re talking about the older gentleman who sits at the lobby desk in our joint headquarters.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Cy stated flatly. “What are you saying here? That Ray killed Benjamin Graham fifty years ago in a jealous rage, and then his girlfriend ran off and married someone else because of it? I’ve known Ray for almost thirty years. He wouldn’t do something like that, much less kill Hardy to keep it all a secret.”

  Ricki laid a hand on her uncle’s arm. “He did kill Graham, but he didn’t kill Hardy. The PI must have gotten too close to the truth about what had happened to Benjamin Graham, so John killed him in order to protect the man who raised him.” She nodded at Dan. “What else did you find?”

  As everyone’s eyes turned toward the ranger, he shifted the papers in his folder. “You also asked me to look up the DMV record for John Dunning, and the corporate filing papers for MMG.”

  “What’s MMG?” Hamilton asked.

  “It stands for the Money Management Group,” Ricki supplied. “John Dunning’s company in Seattle.”

  “I didn’t find any DMV record for a John Dunning, but I did find that MMG is listed with the state as a limited partnership, and the principal partner was identified as John B. Graham.”

  Ricki’s gaze scanned the group crowded around her. “B as in Benjamin. Jenny might have come back to Brewer with a made-up husband and a fake name, but she named her son after his father. When she died and Ray decided to raise her child himself, he took on the name of Dunning, and time, along with faded memories, did the rest. People just started accepting Ray’s story that he was John’s uncle, and over time, no one remembered the truth.” Wanda’s voice talking about her mother echoed in Ricki’s mind. “Well, anyone who’s willing to talk about it.”

  “Why all the subterfuge?” Hamilton threw out to the room. “Why didn’t Jenny just keep her own name of Norris, or call herself Graham?”

  “I’d guess that she knew Jimmy pretty well, and what he might do if he ever found out that Graham got her pregnant and then deserted her,” Ricki said. “And she’d need a married name to save face in the community. She was an unwed mother. Not exactly a way to keep your reputation in a small town. Especially back then.”

  Cy snorted and stuck his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “That former ranger was a real prince of a guy.”

  “That means John Dunning knew who his father was all along,” Clay said. A tic ran along his jaw and his eyes were flat. “And that Ray killed him all those years ago.” He turned those cop eyes on Ricki. “Then John killed Hardy and started causing all those accidents whenever you got closer to the truth.”

  Ricki nodded her agreement, keeping a leash on her own growing anger. All this sorrow because of a crime committed half a century ago? Even if Hardy had been checking out the land and stumbled across Graham’s skeleton, so what? That still wouldn’t have told him who killed his client’s brother. And if Ray had been caught, he wouldn’t have been punished for long. He’d managed to live a normal life in spite of what he’d done. There was no reason for Amanda Cannady to be dead, or for Anchorman to be lying in a hospital bed.

  “So where do we find Jimmy Anders and John Graham?” Hamilton asked.

  “I’ve got Jules keeping an eye on Ray down at headquarters,” Clay said. “If he tries to leave, Jules is under orders to stop him.”

  Hamilton nodded his approval, addressing his next question to Ricki. “What about John Graham? Do we pick him up in Seattle?”

  “He’s not there,” Dan put in. “I called his office. He’s out of town.”

  “He’s here.” Ricki was certain of it, and from the corner of her eye she saw Clay add his confirming nod. “He sees himself as Ray’s protector, so he’ll keep close. He’s here in the Bay somewhere.”

  Cy’s mouth pulled down at the corners. “There’s a lot of ground out here. It’s worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Not quite.” She looked at Hamilton. “Can you pull some strings and trace a ping off a cell tower?”

  “I could if I had a number to go with it.”

  Ricki stood up and pulled a business card with a number inked on the back out of her shirt pocket. She held it out to her boss. “It just so happens that John Graham gave me his.”

  As Hamilton stepped outside to make his calls, Ricki went to a small closet tucked next to the even smaller kitchen pantry. It was the only part of the cabin she’d done any modifications to, enlisting the help of her uncle to reinforce the floor beneath it. It had been necessary for the extra weight of the tall, solid steel safe inside. She quickly entered the electronic code, then swung the heavy door open. Reaching inside, she removed her rifle and a box of ammunition before casting a questioning eye at the men watching her. When all three shook their heads, she glanced over at the cabin’s front door.

  “What about Hamilton?”

  “He’s armed,” Cy said. “I already asked when he mentioned he might need some boots.”

  “And something to protect that expensive suit of his,” Ricki said, shutting the safe’s door, waiting for the beep that would indicate the lock had reengaged.

  “He’s a good agent, Ricki,” her uncle insisted. “He’ll hold up.”

  She stood and faced Cy. “I know he will. I just hadn’t expected an army to chase down an eighty-year-old man and his fifty-year-old nephew.”

  “A gun is a gun,” Clay said. “No matter whose finger is on the trigger.”

  The front door swung open and Hamilton strode in, holding up his phone. “Last ping was an hour ago off a cell tower north of here. The closest town is Massey.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ricki turned Clay’s SUV onto the narrow street that served as the main thoroughfare for Massey. The small village was busy with late-morning anglers ducking into bait shops or scurrying along the sidewalk toward the dock. She maneuvered the big car through the narrow gap between the imaginary center line and the curb with cars parked all down its length, with Dan’s vehicle, carrying everyone else, following close behind. Once they’d cleared the last shop, Ricki gently pressed down on the gas, gradually taking the speed up as she held out her right arm.

  Clay finished unwinding the bandage and gently removed the splint before wrapping her wrist up again. He paused when Ricki made a face and drew in a sharp breath.

  “It’s going to have to be tight if you want it to hold up.” When she nodded, he continued winding the cloth around her wrist.

  “TK said it was a hairline fracture,” Ricki said, her eyes glued to the winding road, slowing down as she came up to the turnoff for the dirt road leading up to the lighthouse. “It will hold.”

  Clay finished up by attaching the two small copper clasps to hold the end in place. “You’re going to have some pain when you move those fingers.”

  Ricki wiggled two of them, the immediate pang moving up her arm, confirming Clay’s warning. “I’ll manage. I need my right hand.”

  “Copy that, James,” Clay said. “You shouldn’t be going out at all. I could leave you one of the radios, and you could monitor us from the car.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Didn’t think so,” Clay muttered, a heavy dose of resignation in his voice. When his phone rang, Clay glanced at the screen. “It’s Jules.”

  He put the phone to his ear. After a few seconds he was visibly gritting his teeth, telling Ricki without words that something was wrong.

  “No. Take a drive by his house but don’t stop or go in. Just check to see if his car is there, and send me a text letting me know one way or the other. A text, Jules. Have you got that?” He didn’t say anything else but hung up on a heavy sigh. “Ray said he was going to the bathroom, then slipped out the back. Jules saw him drive off.”

  “Let him go. We’ll deal with him later.”

  They rode along the last half mile in silence, wordlessly exiting the car when Ricki stopped just below the last curve before the small clearing tha
t served as a parking area for the lighthouse. They waited as Dan pulled up behind them and the three men quietly joined them. Cy gave his niece’s newly bandaged wrist a long look, but didn’t say anything as she turned and headed up the road with Clay right behind her.

  Once they reached the base of the switchback trail that climbed up to the top of the hill, Ricki stopped and held out the radio she was carrying to Dan. “You find a spot to hide here, where you can keep an eye on that.” She pointed to the lone vehicle in the clearing. “Dunning grew up here, but he’s been a city boy for thirty years. If he gets past us, he’ll head for his car. Make sure he doesn’t get away.”

  “I could let the air out of his tires,” Dan said. “That would make it pretty tough to get down the hill.”

  Hamilton clapped a restraining hand on the ranger’s shoulder. “Don’t go near it. That’s a new car he’s driving, and it will have an alarm on it.”

  Looking chagrined, Dan nodded as Ricki continued. “Go back and move your car so it blocks the road and then take up a position near there.” She gave Dan a hard look. “And not inside your vehicle. He’ll spot you for sure.” She turned her attention to the other three men. “We’ll take the trail up. Single file. Keep low. Keep alert. He might have been warned we’re coming.”

  Hamilton’s head snapped around. “What? How?”

  Ricki didn’t look over at Clay as she said smoothly, “I was just informed myself. Small town, Hamilton, and we weren’t exactly invisible driving through Massey. Like I said, he grew up here, and might still have some friends around to give him a warning. It was always a risk.”

  As Dan peeled away from the group, Ricki set off up the trail, keeping to a slight crouch as she quickly ate up the distance to the last turn. She hesitated, then signaled for the last two men to fan out to the sides as she and Clay kept going, dropping to one knee in tandem when they crested the top.