Maggie and the Whiskered Witness

by Barbara Cool Lee

  "But someone must have seen the two of you leave," she said desperately, watching Ibarra to see if he moved.

  He didn't.

  "I told him I would come along, as the one in charge of the case." He smirked down at Ibarra's body. "He's been removed from the case for bias, remember?"

  "But how will you explain our deaths? You can't think you'll get away with this."

  "Of course I will. I've already convinced everyone that Ibarra had a motive. So when you discovered some proof of his guilt, he snapped and killed you and knocked me out, and then killed himself." He smiled and she wanted to slap him. "Such a tragedy, really."

  "No one's going to believe that ridiculous story."

  "I'm their boss. They'll believe what I tell them. So stop stalling so we can get this over with."

  "Why should I if you're just going to kill me anyway?"

  "Ibarra is going to kill you. Not me."

  Maggie looked at the still form of her friend on the floor. "It doesn't look like it."

  "It will. When it's over it will be clear what happened. Ibarra killed Lauren in a lover's quarrel."

  "You've been carefully setting it up all along. The way you staged the scene at Lauren's cabin. And all those little hints you gave me, trying to make me suspect Ibarra. Taking him off the case to avoid any sign of impropriety. All that concern for doing it right. You were setting Ibarra up, in case you needed a fall guy."

  He shook his head. "Not in case. He was always going to be the fall guy. As soon as I killed her, I knew I'd need to close the case at some point."

  "Just like you did last time."

  "Last time?"

  "With Gabriel Franklin, a college student who supposedly killed his roommate in a drug deal gone wrong. Have there been others?

  "No," he said softly, finally losing the smirk and getting serious. "It was just that one time."

  "Just that one time you framed an innocent man for murder to cover your own crime."

  Again the shrug. "I needed someone to take the blame. Just like this time."

  "So the dead drug dealer's roommate made the perfect fall guy."

  "I had a career. I was climbing the promotion ladder. I wasn't going to lose it all for some young punk dealer who thought he could take advantage of me."

  She kept talking, trying to figure out how to escape with the dog on the bed, the man unconscious on the floor, and the killer pointing a gun at her. "The dead kid worked for you, dealing drugs."

  "No. He didn't work for me. I paid him to snitch for me so I could close a lot of cases."

  "Police use paid informants," Maggie pointed out. "There must have been something more for you to kill him."

  "Maybe I paid him in drugs I seized from other dealers," Randall said. "And maybe he got smart and thought he could cross me."

  She nodded. "Blackmail," she said. "By the way, you're a scumbag."

  "Do you think I care about your opinion, Ms. McJasper?"

  She shook her head. "No. I'm sure you don't."

  "That's right. I win. You lose. I have been waiting all this time for Ibarra to slip up. Him and you. You roll your eyes at me, and think you're so much better. You sanctimonious little do-gooders keep messing up my closure rates and stepping on my press conferences with your snooping."

  "You don't care whether you solve the crimes or not. Just whether it looks like you do."

  "Grow up, lady. No one cares whether I put the right person in prison. Just that someone pays. They want to know the cases are solved so they don't have to think about bad guys running around their pretty little town. They don't actually care who did it. They just want it solved so they can forget about it and get on with their lives."

  Maggie felt her spirit wavering. Maybe nothing mattered. Maybe right and justice and the dignity of individuals didn't matter. Maybe everyone else really felt the way Randall did. Maybe all her fussing over right and wrong was just naïveté.

  "No," she said. "That's not true. That's what you tell yourself. But it's not true."

  Randall adjusted his grip on the gun as if his arm was getting tired. "I've had a long day," he said. "Stop stalling and let's get this done."

  "Oh, was today long?" she asked sarcastically. "I mean, yesterday you were so busy with planting evidence out under the tree at Lauren's place, and with pretending to be sympathetic to her sister, and with coming up with an explanation for Gabriel Franklin's image being in Lauren's locket. That must have worn you out. You needed an explanation that would prevent them from looking at the original police reports that would show that Sergeant Kent Randall of the New York police was the sole witness to testify against Gabriel Franklin in his murder trial six years ago."

  "So you do know," he said, smiling again in relief. "That's what I was waiting to find out. Now we only have one question left."

  "Why you killed Lauren?"

  "No. Where the proof is."

  "Tell me why you killed Lauren first."

  "I thought you knew everything, you little snoop."

  She shook her head. "Not that. But I can guess. She had an appointment to meet you. She had a plan of some kind, an idea for how to catch you in a criminal act, or somehow get you to admit what you had done to Gabriel Franklin."

  "Clever, aren't you?"

  "But she worried her plan might go wrong. So she left her dog with me, just in case."

  "And she left you some clue, obviously."

  "Not so obviously," Maggie said. "It took me forever to find it."

  "Too bad you did."

  "Yeah," she said. "I guess it is. So you really think anyone's going to fall for this story of yours?"

  "Of course they will," he said, but she wondered if there was just a bit of bluster behind it.

  "Right," she said skeptically. "You've been hinting around that Ibarra has some conflict of interest about Lauren's murder. Acting oh-so sympathetic, trying to pretend you aren't the mercenary slime you actually are."

  He laughed. "You fell for it."

  "No, I never did," she said. "I never once believed Will was a killer. Not for one second. My mistake was thinking that maybe you weren't a monster."

  He smirked.

  "Yeah, my bad," she admitted. "But that's how you do it, isn't it?"

  "What?"

  "The bravado. The swagger. You convince people you know what you're talking about, and some of them fall for it."

  "People believe what I want them to believe," he said.

  "Like when you framed Gabriel Franklin."

  "Yes," he said, no longer even pretending to be anything but what he was. "You going to try to tell me I'm a bad person to appeal to my better nature?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "I wouldn't dream of it," she said. "I just wonder how you controlled your fear after you framed him."

  "Fear?" Randall repeated. "Why would I be afraid? It worked."

  "It did. Who's going to believe some kid who says the police are framing him? You put the gun under his bed, and some money from the drug deal. It connected him with the crime and made it look like an open and shut case. And who would suspect you? What motive could you have for framing him? But you were scared down to your bones the whole time, weren't you?"

  "Of course not," he said with the bluster she now knew was his cover.

  "Sure you were. You knew it was all a house of cards, and one bit of wind could blow it down. So as soon as you could, you grabbed at the chance to move across the country and become a small town chief of police. That's why you came here."

  "Maybe I just like deep sea fishing," he said, amused. "You know none of your soliloquy is going to save your life, right?"

  "Then why are you letting me talk?" she asked, knowing he was right.

  "Because it's interesting watching your little mind try to find a way out."

  She shook her head. "Nope. That's not the reason."

  "No?"

  It was her turn to smile. "You're doubting again, Chief Randall. You're feeling the hairs on
the back of your neck standing up, like someone's looking over your shoulder."

  "I'm not turning around, Ms. McJasper. There's no one behind me, and you've watched too many old detective shows."

  "Oh, there's someone behind you," she said. "There's always someone back there. Just like Lauren. That house of cards is still teetering, still just on the verge of falling over at the slightest misstep."

  "It hasn't fallen yet," he said, but she could see him feel it, feel the goosebumps on the back of his neck, the urge to turn around and see if someone had discovered his secret.

  "If you kill us now, you won't know, will you? You won't know about the password, the secrets, the paper trail Lauren left to make sure the truth came out."

  "There's no paper trail," he said, but he was blustering, and she could see it. She'd scared him, but she wasn't sure if it was making her death farther away… or closer.

  "You moved three thousand miles just to escape that feeling, didn't you? You thought you could outrun it, thought you could escape it."

  She remembered the file name. BLACKMAIL.

  "But someone started blackmailing you," she said, recognizing what Lauren's plan must have been. "Someone anonymously contacted you and said they knew what you had done." She whispered, "I know what you did. Pay me and I won't tell. It was her way of proving your guilt. She hoped you would pay the blackmail and she could use it to show that you had a guilty conscience. So you got the jump on her and killed her. But you knew there was more evidence out there. Somewhere. Because she told you there was. And as long as the proof of your crimes existed, you'd never have any peace. It's still lurking behind you."

  He fought it. She could see him fight it. But the coldness on the back of his neck hit him too strongly, and he had to put his free hand up to rub it away.

  "Did you think she wouldn't have a fail-safe?" Maggie asked, driving her point home. "Did you think she wouldn't have records of what she'd done to catch you?"

  "There was nothing in her cabin," he said firmly, wanting it to be true.

  Maggie remembered the wires hanging down from Lauren's porch. "You ripped down the security camera," she said. "You searched every inch of the cabin. But you found nothing."

  "She left it with you," he said. "I should have known. But you acted so innocent."

  "That's why you questioned me after the murder. That's why you kept acting so nice to me. You needed to figure out what I knew. But you couldn't find anything."

  "That stupid locket. That stupid little picture—"

  "—of the innocent boy you sentenced to hell to cover up your crime," she finished, and then thought maybe she'd said too much.

  But he just laughed. Franklin was nothing to him. And it infuriated her.

  "He was going to be a doctor! He would have saved lives. He would have—"

  "—he was in my way," Randall said. "And now, so are you. Tell me what she left for you, and this will be over in a minute. Don't tell me, and an hour from now, you'll be begging me to finish it."

  Maggie saw Ibarra's eyes open, but he didn't seem fully conscious. "I'll tell," she said quickly. "But it won't help you, because I sent it to the press already. You'd be better off running. You could get across the border. You tried going west. This time try south. See if you can get across the border before they come for you."

  She was a terrible liar. She'd always been bad at it. And Randall was an excellent liar, and so a good judge of honesty.

  So he smiled, relieved. Her bluff had apparently convinced him he was in the clear, as soon as he killed her and Ibarra.

  "There isn't any file at all, is there?" he asked.

  "Of course there is!" she said. "Where do you think I learned that Lauren was trying to blackmail you to get proof?"

  "You have a vivid imagination."

  "But there is an online account," she said quickly. "That's what I told Ibarra on the phone. It's why you came here."

  "But now it doesn't matter, because you haven't had time to send it to anyone, have you? And without it, there's no proof I framed Gabriel Franklin."

  "Yes there is," Maggie whispered. "The biggest proof of all."

  "What's that?"

  "You murdered Lauren. If you were innocent, you wouldn't have done it. The fact that you killed her is proof she was right about you."

  "But no one will ever know that. We're done," Randall said. He took a step closer, making sure the gun was pointed directly at her head. "Time for you to go."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  At that moment Ibarra groaned and tried to throw Jasper's little toy at Randall.

  The soft sheep just bounced off Randall's leg.

  Randall bent down and grabbed the sheeple. Then he hit Ibarra again with the butt of the gun. "You just don't know when to give up, do you?" he muttered.

  "No!" Maggie said, starting to move.

  Randall straightened up just as Maggie took a step toward him.

  "Don't even think it," he said.

  Randall stood there, the gun in one hand, and the little toy in the other, and she froze, waiting for him to shoot them and end it all.

  But Jasper saw his little purple sheep in the man's hand, so he leaped off the daybed and came running, a big grin on his face as he joined into this new game.

  "Jasper, NO!" Maggie shouted, but of course he didn't listen.

  Instead he lunged for the stuffed animal.

  Jasper's playful growl as he got his sharp teeth into his beloved sheeple added to the impression of a beast on the attack, and Randall reacted just like a man who had no experience with dogs would.

  He jumped back and screamed like a little boy, flailing his arms at the big dog who had barreled into him, and was now trying to wrestle the toy away.

  Maggie heard the clatter of the gun as it slid across the floor.

  Randall also heard it, and dropped down to scramble after the weapon.

  But he made a mistake. He didn't let go of the sheeple, and Jasper let out another playful growl and sank his teeth farther into his beloved toy, taking a firm grip and pulling against Randall's arm with all his weight.

  Randall was off-balance, and fell to his side.

  That gave Maggie a head start, and she used it to lunge for the gun, which had skittered to a stop under the daybed.

  She came up with it just as Randall slugged Jasper in the face, trying to get the dog off of him.

  "Drop the sheeple!" Maggie shouted, a sentence that would have been comical if she didn't have Randall's gun pointed right at his midsection.

  He raised his hands, in the process finally letting go of the toy.

  Jasper whined happily as he scampered away with it in his mouth. He leaped up onto the daybed and began to enthusiastically kiss his wounded sheep to make it all better.

  So she faced Chief Randall and focused on keeping the gun barrel pointed directly at him.

  And Randall grinned. "You're not going to shoot me, Maggie," he said. "You're no killer."

  "You hit my dog," she said. She had both hands wrapped around the gun and was keeping it as steady as she could.

  But her hands were shaking, and she wasn't quite sure how to fire the thing, and she wasn't positive that she could actually bring herself to pull the trigger, no matter what Randall had done.

  And Randall could see that. His smiled widened into the supercilious smirk that always made her despise him.

  Ibarra had come to on the floor, and she saw him groggily reach for Randall's ankle.

  But Randall saw it, too.

  He viciously kicked Ibarra in the stomach. Ibarra went out again, and Maggie knew there was no one coming to save her.

  Then, when Maggie stood there, frozen in fear and disgust, Randall aimed his next blow to kick Ibarra in the head.

  "Stop," she whispered. "You're going to kill him. Stop."

  Randall looked at her, still grinning. And she knew he wouldn't stop. He recognized the same thing in her that Jasper did when he refused to listen to her commands
. She was too nice. Too sweet. Too lacking in authority. Randall wouldn't stop until someone stopped him. And he knew she wasn't the kind of person who could do that.

  He raised his foot to finish off Ibarra….

  She wasn't sure afterword if she had meant to pull the trigger or not.

  But her clenched hands convulsed on the gun, and there was a roar louder than even Jasper's biggest bark, and then Randall stopped. Finally stopped. He would never hurt anyone else again.

  And then she was on the floor by Ibarra, and cradling his head in her lap, and grabbing the phone to call 911 for help, while Jasper licked the man's face and offered him the sheeple to make him feel better.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  She and Ibarra took the next flight to New York. Reese was heading west as she headed east, on his way to his final appearances in LA. She texted him, letting him know that she was okay, and not to worry about the screaming headlines coming out of Carita Cove. And then she turned her phone off, having other things on her mind.

  Gabriel Franklin seemed smaller than Maggie had pictured him. He wasn't a tall man, and so many years of bending to the will of others had diminished him until he appeared to be even shorter than he actually was. The nerdy boy in glasses who had once planned to become a doctor had instead spent most of his twenties in a prison uniform, hearing the clang of cell doors shutting him inside every night. The world had made him small. Composed. All the wild, imaginative thoughts of a young boy had become quieted, internal. His dreams dashed and his life reduced to one hour in an exercise yard and three institutional meals each day. His nights comforted only by the books he could check out from the prison library, and the abused dogs he rehabilitated through his kindhearted training.

  Ibarra eased gingerly into a seat in the back of the courtroom, holding his side to protect his bandaged broken ribs. Maggie sat next to him and patted him encouragingly on the hand as he settled himself in place with a grimace.

  There was hardly anyone else there. Only Gabriel's brother and his mother, and the bailiff at the door, and a court reporter. And the judge, an old man with a harsh, lined face and restless hands that fiddled with the gavel while people spoke.