If a Tree Falls
Page 19
With a reluctant shake of the head and a quick glance at the time, the assassin retreated. One more job to do tonight, and then back home to LA.
He passed a house in the woods, then another. Two miles away, he came upon a small ranch house with vinyl siding and a one-car garage. He pulled a key from his pocket, inserted it into the lock and pulled the door open. He flipped on the light and turned toward the garage.
“Hello, Seamus,” a voice said.
Two hours later, the assassin returned to her small, rented apartment. She had already given notice, having been offered a better position, with a higher salary and more responsibility, in San Francisco. Another week, and she would be gone.
She flipped on the lights and froze. A man stood in front of her, pointing a gun. “Lillian,” Gil Laimbeer said. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
Chapter 28
“Here’s to law and order,” Kurtz said, and raised his beer.
Kurtz and Drew Hastings clinked their glasses.
Kurtz, Drew, Bill Harris, George Rodriguez and Gil Laimbeer were sitting around a large table in a private room at the Stone House, celebrating.
Seamus Sullivan’s dead body, sitting in an easy chair, with his blown out brain decorating one whole wall of the living room and a gun clenched in his fist, had been found in the small ranch house, along with a note confessing his crimes.
The blood hounds had quartered the woods and picked up the trail within a few hours of Seamus’ house burning down. Officially, Seamus Sullivan had committed suicide. Lillian Parker, while not admitting to Seamus Sullivan’s murder, was perfectly ready to spill her guts regarding the goals, methods and make-up of her employing organization.
“Here’s the deal,” she had said. “I want witness protection, a job and a new identity. It’s not much to pay for taking down Premier Projects Development.”
“And Riverside Asset Management?” George Rodriguez said.
Lillian Parker grinned. “Them, too.”
“And who else?” Gil Laimbeer said.
“It’s gonna be a long list,” Lillian Parker said.
Gil Laimbeer glanced at George Rodriguez, who shrugged. “Let’s deal,” George said.
“I have no doubt that Lillian killed Seamus Sullivan,” Gil Laimbeer said. “They were willing to tolerate the guy’s peccadillos so long as they remained secret. Once his activities came out, his days were numbered. It was publicity that they didn’t need.”
“We’re not going to pursue Seamus Sullivan’s death,” George Rodriguez said. “What’s the point? We found his van in his storage unit. There are plenty of stray hairs in the carpet, also, some bloodstains. I figure we’ll get enough DNA to match at least some of the dead girls. If he took any other souvenirs, we haven’t yet located them.” Rodriguez shrugged. “They’ve probably been burned, or maybe he has another storage unit somewhere, one that we haven’t found. Seamus Sullivan got what was coming to him. Officially, it will remain suicide.
“Was he Brian Murphy?” Drew Hastings said.
“No idea,” Gil Laimbeer said, “but Brian Murphy was arrested more than once. His fingerprints will be on file, and we have DNA from the guy who murdered the two girls in Stockton, California and Skokie, Illinois. If any of them were Seamus Sullivan, we’ll soon know.”
“Lillian Parker has been keeping notes for years, just in case,” George Rodriguez said. “She can give us chapter and verse on twenty or more of the guys above her, and every one of them will be eager to roll on the guy above him.”
“So, Lillian Parker will get off scot-free?” Kurtz said.
George Rodriguez shrugged. “Omelet, eggs. She’ll serve seven years in max security. Then she’ll get that new identity she wants.”
“Posing as a member of the cleaning staff was clever,” Kurtz said. “The housekeepers are always around, mopping the floor, throwing out the trash after a case, but the nurses and the docs don’t pay them much attention. It’s like they’re part of the background.”
Gil Laimbeer smiled. “I suspected her from the beginning. She started work right before the most recent patient died. In addition to her local activities, she’s wanted for multiple homicides in California and Las Vegas. It wasn’t hard to get fingerprints. I watched her in the cafeteria and picked up a knife, a glass and a tray that she had used.”
Bill Harris looked at Kurtz. “It was smart of you to hire security for your father’s property. She was intending to burn down his barn, an act of God that might provide a little further inducement for him to sell the place and get out.”
Kurtz grinned. “He grumbled about the cost, but he finally gave in.”
“Officially, Lillian Parker was never here,” Gil Laimbeer said.
“How about the guy in New York? Steven Kyle? Did they murder him or not?”
“Lillian claims ignorance. She did know that Kyle was planning on leaving Riverside and taking his biggest customers with him.” Gil Laimbeer shrugged.
“And now the resort will never get built,” Kurtz said. “In the abstract, it wasn’t a bad idea and it would have helped the local economy. Too bad they were killing people to make it happen.”
George Rodriguez smiled. “About that; according to Lillian Parker, their plans to build a resort were on the level, but sometimes, resorts don’t make money. You’ve heard of The Concord, and Grossinger’s?”
“They’re in the Catskills,” Kurtz said.
“Famous, successful places, until the well-heeled crowd stopped going to the Catskills. The Concord and Grossinger’s have both been abandoned, and the Greenbrier has also had its ups and downs.”
“I did wonder,” Kurtz said.
“Wonder no more.” Gil Laimbeer picked up his beer, drained the stein and wiped his mouth on a napkin. “Remember, these guys are the mob. They had a lot of legitimate plans for the place, and maybe those plans would have made legitimate money, but according to Lillian, they had some other plans as well.
“From a mobster’s point of view, nothing pays off like drugs. Drugs are an absolutely sure thing.”
“So?” Kurtz said cautiously.
“They planned on buying up all the surrounding farms. At least a few of these would then be ‘sold’ to selected farmers, whose official job would be to supply the resort with fresh, organic, local produce. Foodie types are very into local produce.
“A big hotel, with a casino and a bunch of restaurants, some of them running all night long, means that delivery trucks will be coming and going, lots of them, every day, and all those kitchens mean that people will be coming and going and doing things at all hours of the day and night.”
Kurtz stared at him.
“Perfect cover for the biggest meth lab in the eastern half of the country. The lab would have been placed out on one of the farms—a nice, isolated location, in the middle of fifteen thousand acres of private land. Unlikely it would ever be discovered, but if it was discovered, the farmers would take the legal hit, not the resort itself.”
“So,” Drew Hastings said, “it’s just as well the whole scheme fell apart.”
“I guess I’ll drink to that,” Kurtz said.
The End
A Note on the Timeline
The timeline for a long running series is always a problem for an author. Ed McBain, for instance, wrote the 87th Precinct series for over fifty years. In the first book, Steve Carella’s wife is pregnant. In the last book, their twins have just entered the teenage years.
Robert B. Parker wrote the Spenser series for almost forty years. The first, The Godwulf Manuscript, appeared in 1973. The last written by Parker, Sixkill, was published in 2011. Time obviously passed in these novels. Current events at the time of the writing were occasionally discussed, but to the last, Spenser was talking about serving in Korea and fighting Jersey Joe Walcott for the title. He was still depicted as a young man, still attractive to women, still fighting the bad guys, but he must have been pushing eighty.
The firs
t Kurtz and Barent novel, Surgical Risk, was published in 2002. I’ve chosen to let my characters age at a normal pace. Kurtz and Lenore are now married, and Lenore is expecting their first child. The dates are not mentioned in the text, but clues are given. West Virginia legalized hotel casinos in 2008 and The Casino Club at the Greenbrier opened in 2010. The restaurant, Vong, which I ate at many times, closed near the end of 2009. If a Tree Falls is meant to take place in approximately 2006.
An article in the Washington Post dated June 16, 2013, authored by Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima discusses the use of state photo ID databases and facial recognition software to aid police in identifying suspects. The article claims that in 2013, these photos were beginning to constitute a virtual national ID card. The idea of using morphing software and state photo ID databases would not, from my review of online sources, have been in wide use at the time If a Tree Falls took place. It was my own (and Richard Kurtz’) idea.
Information About the Author
I hope you enjoyed If a Tree Falls, the sixth book in the Kurtz and Barent mystery series, which includes Surgical Risk, The Anatomy Lesson, Seizure, The Chairmen and Brighton Beach, and as always, a review on whichever site you choose to place it would be appreciated. Readers are reluctant to purchase a book without some assurance as to the book’s quality, and reviews are the most common way to provide such assurance.
I graduated from Columbia College with a degree in English before attending Northwestern University Medical School. I’ve had a long career as an academic physician, which has resulted in over forty scientific publications. I began writing fiction many years ago, and in addition to the Kurtz and Barent mystery series, I am also the author of seven science fiction novels to date: Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future, The Cannibal’s Feast and The Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind, which includes The Game Players of Meridien, The City of Ashes, The Empire of Dust, The Empire of Ruin and The Well of Time.
For more information, please visit my website, http://www.robertikatz.com or Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Robertikatzofficial/. For continuing updates regarding new releases, author appearances and general information about my books and stories, sign up for my newsletter/email list at http://www.robertikatz.com/join and you will also receive two free short stories. The first is a science fiction story, entitled “Adam,” about a scientist who uses a tailored retrovirus to implant the Fox P2 gene (sometimes called the language gene) into a cage full of rats and a mouse named Adam, and the unexpected consequences that result. The second is a prequel to the Kurtz and Barent mysteries, entitled “Something in the Blood,” featuring Richard Kurtz as a young surgical resident on an elective rotation in the Arkansas mountains, solving a medical mystery that spans two tragic generations.