Читать книгу The Lawman Meets His Bride - Meagan McKinney - Страница 7

I’ll let the machine take it, Constance Adams resolved when the telephone chirred at 5:05 p.m.

After all, the business day was over. And she had been on the go, virtually nonstop, showing homes since eleven this morning. Maybe it was the freakish winter weather, unseasonably warm and sunny, that was deceiving the tourists. For some reason, it seemed as if every upwardly mobile family east of the Mississippi was clamoring for a vacation home in Mystery, Montana.

It had been a long day of smiles and small talk, and she was tired. Ginny had already gone home, and Constance was on the verge of locking up the office when the phone rang. Nonetheless, something oddly insistent about the sound, or perhaps it was only her efficient nature, made her pick up before the answering machine could click on.

“Mystery Valley Real Estate,” she answered. “This is Constance Adams speaking.”

“Yes, Miss Adams, I’m sure glad I caught you.”

Her first impression was confusing. The male voice sounded impatient and curiously…strained, she decided. But he went on talking before she could give it any more thought.

“My name is George Henning,” the voice continued, and she recognized a trace of Northeast accent in the vowels. “I wonder if it would be possible to have a quick look at one of your listings?”

“Of course, Mr. Henning. If you’ll just tell me what time is convenient for—”

“No, I mean may I have a look right now? You see, I’m quite pressed for time. I need to catch a plane later, yet this cabin has just caught my eye. I like it.”

“Cabin?” Constance repeated, somewhat surprised. “You must mean the place at the end of Old Mill Road?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

She hesitated, her surprise tinged by annoyance. The Mill Road cabin was her listing, all right. One of Hazel McCallum’s properties. And while it was a quaint, rustic hideaway in the mountains, it hardly represented a fat commission. It was a little too remote, a little too basic, for most of her clients. Still…she hadn’t exactly been swamped with offers.

“Well, Mr. Henning, it is rather late. I mean, it would take me some time to drive up into the mountains from here. May I ask—where are you right now?”

“In front of the cabin, actually. Saw your name on the sign. I called on my cell phone.”

“Oh, I see.”

A cell phone, she thought. Yes, maybe that explained the curious flattened sound to his voice. At any rate, she should have simply said no, not today. But something about his urgency compelled her to hesitate, and he allowed her no time to harden her resolve.

“I know it’s late, Miss Adams, and I do apologize for the inconvenience. But I really am pressed for time. This place looks fine from outside. A quick peek at the interior, and maybe we could reach terms today?”

She frowned slightly, and a skeptical dimple appeared at one corner of her thin, expressive lips. The caller sounded intelligent and well-spoken.

Yet, the urgency in his tone puzzled her—perhaps even worried her a bit.

Inexplicably, however, she found herself giving in.

“All right, Mr. Henning. Since you’re in a hurry. I’ll leave right now. I should be there in about forty minutes.”

The moment she hung up, however, Constance realized what a stupid thing she had just agreed to do: meet a stranger, as night came on, way up on a god-forsaken slope of the Rocky Mountains.

She almost called him back to cancel. But if he was catching a plane later, she reasoned, then maybe she was tossing a sale right down a rat hole. This cabin was no hot-ticket item, she reminded herself. The woman in her was nervous, but the business-woman in her won the brief debate.

She settled on a commonsense compromise. She quickly dialled her parents’ number. At twenty-eight, she was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters, five of whom still lived at home in the summer. So there was usually no problem catching someone.

“’Lo?” answered sixteen-year-old Beth Ann’s voice.

“Hi, it’s just me,” Constance told her kid sister. “How’s the home front?”

“Thanks to Pattie it’s a major suckout, that’s how it is,” Beth retorted, anger spiking her voice. “I’d rather just stay at school until bedtime. Least I’d be with my friends. I swear to God, Connie, if Mom ’n’ Dad don’t give me or her your old room, I am going to move into the basement. I am so sick of her spazoid mouth.”

“Look, don’t drag me into your feud. You two are a circus act. Is Mom home?”

“Uh-huh. She’s upstairs hanging curtains with Aunt Janet. Want me to get her?”

“Don’t bother,” Constance said.

In the background she heard an angry glissando of piano notes from the music room. Thirteen-year-old Pattie practicing—and no doubt in a pettish mood about it, if Constance remembered her own violin lessons accurately.

“Listen,” she told her sister. “I’m on my way to show someone that cabin on Old Mill Road. It’s kind of remote up there, so I’m just playing it safe. If you guys don’t hear from me in, mmm, two hours or so, give me a buzz. If there’s no answer at my place, try my cell phone, okay?”

“’Kay,” replied Beth Ann, who seemed to resent first syllables lately.

“Hey,” she added, her voice suddenly merciless in its teasing. “That’s the Eighth House, ’member?”

At first Constance only wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. Then, catching on, she felt her pulse leap.

“You still remember that silliness?” she asked her sister. “I almost forgot it.”

That was true, but Constance had to wonder why recalling such “silliness” made her pulse quicken. Last summer she had driven Beth Ann to Billings for a statewide cheerleading competition. Beth had talked her into visiting one of the many astrologers who set up stands in Freedom Park.

“Beware the Eighth House,” the psychic had repeated several times, frowning over her chart. Meaning, Constance had assumed then, the Eighth House of the Zodiac—Death.

It was Beth Ann who first suggested that, in her case, the Eighth House also pertained to the real-estate business. She insisted that Constance check the dates of her listings. Sure enough, Hazel’s cabin was indeed number eight on the list.

“Thank you for the cheery reminder,” Constance said drily. “Gotta get now. You remember—if you guys don’t hear from me in a couple hours, somebody call me.”

“Beware,” Beth Ann repeated in a ghoulish voice just before she hung up. “Beware the Eighth House!”

Only hours before he called Constance Adams, lying through his teeth, Assistant U.S. Attorney Quinn Loudon had not yet become a desperate fugitive from the very law he was sworn to uphold.

“Just take a few deep breaths and relax,” Lance Pollard advised his client as the two men ascended the marble steps of the old courthouse in Kalispell, Montana. “You’re a lawyer. You know the drill by now. This is just routine pretrial procedure today, I was promised. You’re still a free man.”

“Routine?” Quinn repeated, his smoke-colored eyes flashing anger. “All that time I was secretly assembling a case against Schrader and Whitaker, those two were laughing up their sleeves at me. They set me up, Lance. And you know damn well they killed Anders. We haven’t been able to find the guy in weeks. Sheriff Cody Anders could clear me. He saw everything like I saw it. But where is he? He’s dead, is what.”

Quinn’s jaw set in a deep knot of anger as he and his attorney moved through the magnificent hallway.

The courthouse building had been declared pompous when built at the twilight of the 19th century, but seemed impressive now at the dawn of the twenty-first. A cathedral-like vaulted ceiling topped a huge central lobby with frescoed floors.

However, the building’s quaint charm eluded Quinn today. Nothing could charm him lately. Without Sheriff Anders being found, he knew he had the same chance against his accusers as an icicle in hell.

“Remember,” Pollard coached him as the two men followed a stair railing of antique brass up to the private judicial chambers on the second floor. “The main focus today is the discovery process. The prosecution has to lay out whatever evidence they supposedly plan to enter against you. I’d bet some big money they haven’t got diddly. You know damn good and well it’s easy to get a grand-jury indictment. Barely one in five ends up in a conviction.”

“Yeah, well pardon me all to hell,” Quinn responded bitterly, “for not taking comfort in those odds. If I had a one in five chance of dying during an operation, would that be comforting?”

“You watch,” Pollard insisted, as confident and relaxed as Quinn was not. “Judge Winston will dismiss the whole mess.”

Quinn’s frown etched itself deeper, emphasizing his handsome Irish upper lip.

“Mess” didn’t even begin to describe what was happening to him. A mess could be cleaned up. But this false charge against him could become a death sentence. At best it would be a permanent stain on his record and reputation. He could also be disbarred, disgraced. Worst of all, an inner demon he had hoped was dead and buried in the past might be rearing its ugly head again.

The two men approached an elderly security guard manning a metal-detection station.

“Afternoon Mr. Pollard, Mr. Loudon,” Hank Ingman greeted them politely.

Pollard stepped through the detector’s beam. Quinn handed Hank his metallic briefcase, then opened his summer-weight topcoat to show him the .38 snubby in its armpit holster.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Billings received enough threats annually to warrant arming its staff. Quinn offered the weapon, but as always the guard merely waved him around the detector.

“If their case is all smoke and mirrors like you claim,” Quinn resumed as they bore toward Judge Winston’s chambers, “then why was my bond set so high? Christ, Lance, don’t you realize Winston has the discretion to decide—today, right now—I’m a risk for flight? If he revokes my bond, the only way I’ll leave this place will be in handcuffs. With Cody Anders missing and me in jail, they’ll have won.”

“Quinn, you seem to think Schrader and Whitaker are little tin gods or something. One’s a borderline-senile judge, the other’s a paid dirt-worker for the road-construction lobby. They don’t own the legal system.”

Relax, Quinn thought scornfully as anger made his jaw muscles bunch tighter. Yeah, right. Here he was, a brand-spanking-new Assistant U.S. attorney only recently sent out west from D.C. No friends in high places, no good-old-boy support network, and he had to go into hock just to pay a bail bondsman. Yet here he was, up against men so rich they drilled oil wells as tax write-offs.

Again Quinn recalled that afternoon this past April. He and Sheriff Cody Anders were standing in the quiet hallway outside Schrader’s slanted-open door. Neither of them could miss the scene inside the door: Whitaker handing the thin Swiss briefcase to Schrader. Remember, Jerry, Whitaker’s suave baritone joked, it’s not the money that matters—it’s the amount. And then both men laughing as Schrader started counting the tightly banded bills….

Pollard’s voice rudely jogged Quinn back to the here and now.

“Let me do all the talking,” he ordered as he knocked on the solid oak door of Winston’s chambers.

Quinn took a deep breath to steady himself.

A bailiff he recognized, but didn’t know by name, let both men in. Immediately, Quinn was put on guard by the ominous scene inside the comfortably appointed chambers.

As he had expected, neither Judge Jeremy Schrader nor attorney Brandon Whitaker were present. Only Judge Winston, federal internal affairs prosecutor Dolph Merriday, and two armed U.S. Marshals from the Justice Department.

The armed marshals were not routine and instantly alerted Quinn to danger. The bailiff was already armed—which most likely meant the marshals were here to “escort” Quinn to the federal lockup in Billings.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for being prompt,” Judge Winston greeted the new arrivals. He bent his shaggy white, leonine head to study the notes spread out before him on a wide pecan-veneer desk. “Please have a seat.”

Winston radiated a sober, proper steadiness that usually had a calming effect on Quinn. Not so today as he and Pollard slacked into chrome-and-leather chairs arranged before the desk. Suddenly aware his scalp was sweating, Quinn stood back up to remove his topcoat.

After some preliminary questions to refresh his memory, Winston addressed himself to the prosecutor.

“As you know, Dolph, one reason for this meeting is to determine what evidence you intend to proffer. But I also have to determine if said evidence warrants litigation. Now, I’ve read Judge Schrader’s deposition. I agree it’s quite damning.”

Winston’s stern gaze cut to Quinn, and again, despite his innocence, those old feelings of guilt lanced him deep. The leopard cannot change its spots.

“However,” the judge continued, “at this juncture it’s a classic standoff. One man’s word against another’s. If you have no further evidence besides hearsay, I’m inclined to dismiss right now.”

Pollard sent Quinn a triumphant grin. But Dolph Merriday spoke up quickly.

“There’s more evidence, Judge Winston. Pursuant to a search warrant issued in the District of Columbia, certain items were seized during a search of Mr. Loudon’s residence in Washington. This was discovered hidden behind a cooling vent.”

Quinn felt the blood drain from his face as Merriday unzipped a canvas tote bag and set several stacks of new one-hundred-dollar bills on Winston’s desk.

“In addition to nearly seventy thousand dollars in cash,” Merriday said, “we found this list with it. A handwriting expert has determined that it was written by Loudon. It contains the names of various officials in the Montana Department of Highways. Loudon obviously hoped to bribe others besides Judge Schrader. It’s a classic construction-kickback scheme, and Loudon hoped to be their legal go-between.”

When he first saw the money, Quinn just sat there gawking like a fool. A moment later, however, angry blood hammered at his temples. He came suddenly to his feet.

“That’s a bald-faced lie!” he shouted. “This is a setup! They killed Cody Anders and now they aim to get rid of me. Of course I wrote the list. I intended to investigate those men. But the money was planted. Schrader and Whitaker are the perps here, not me, and Merriday is either their partner or their dupe.”

“Quinn,” Pollard urged him, “calm down and shut up.”

But he was past calming down, Quinn realized desperately. Already one of the U.S. marshals was reaching for the cuffs on his utility belt. A cold panic seized him—if they locked him up, he’d never clear his name. He would be remembered always as the very demon he had fought so hard to defeat. Either he got away now, or his fate was sealed.

In a heartbeat the .38 snubby was in his hand.

“Quinn!” Pollard shouted. “What in bleeding hell are you…?”

But it was too late for oaths, too. As the marshals went for their guns, Quinn aimed deliberately high and sent two quick slugs thwapping into the wall just above their heads, forcing them to take cover.

From shout to shots was a matter of mere moments. Caught completely off-guard, the bailiff had not even drawn his pistol. But he still stood, solid as a meeting house, before the room’s only door. Quinn lowered one shoulder and literally knocked him aside as he bolted into the hallway.

At the end of the hall, old Hank had his gun out, his face a mask of confusion.

“Quick, Hank!” Quinn shouted as he sprinted toward him. “Judge Winston needs you!”

The guard was too rattled to question the order. Quinn barrelled past him as the two marshals and the bailiff took off after Quinn. For a moment, Hank got in their line of fire, and Quinn gained a precious lead.

Just as he hit the stairs, however, there came a hammering racket of gunfire behind him.

Quinn felt a bruising blow between his shoulder blades. But the Kevlar vest he routinely wore these days absorbed the bullet’s lethal impact. He had started down the steps when a second bullet punched into the back of his left thigh.

He almost lost his footing as fiery pain erupted between his hip and his knee. But sheer determination not to let himself be sacrificed by crime barons kept him on his feet.

The wound hurt like hell, but luckily it wasn’t slowing him down yet. Quinn got his second break of the day a few moments later—he heard his pursuers burst out the front of the courthouse and automatically run toward the parking structure across the street.

Earlier, however, Quinn had avoided the parking structure because of the annoying queue out front. Instead, he had parked around the side on Willow Street. That chance decision gave him a precious few minutes’ head start.

It took very little time to get beyond the Kalispell city limits. Although relatively large, as Montana towns went, the population was barely 12,000. Thus he cleared town with no cops on his tail. But he knew his luck couldn’t hold forever. He had to get off the roads as quickly as possible, find some place to take a better look at his wound.

With town well behind him, he unleashed the powerful V-8 engine, pushing speeds of eighty-five and ninety on the winding secondary road. Traffic remained scant as he sped toward the rugged, granite-tipped mountains. His leg felt numb and hot, but didn’t seem to be bleeding much.

As the confused churning of his thoughts settled somewhat, Quinn couldn’t prevent an unwelcome question from the depths of his heart. The ease with which he turned criminal back there in Kalispell, when the situation demanded: he wondered if that was just intense will to survive, or part of an inherited “skill.”

His smoke-tinted eyes kept flicking to the rearview mirror. So far, still all clear. But he reminded himself he had to find a suitable place to hide, and soon. Unfortunately, he could think of absolutely no one, out West anyway, he could trust. Schrader and Whitaker knew everyone who mattered, including his own boss at the Department of Justice.

By now the engine was lugging, making the climb into the mountains. The last road sign he remembered seeing had said Old Mill Road. He knew it by name only. The car shuddered when pavement abruptly gave way to a sandy, rocky lane. There were washed-out places where the chassis scraped bottom.

Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, Old Mill Road simply made a sharp turn and ended at a wall of trees. Just as suddenly, an old cabin loomed up on his right. Quinn had to lock the brakes and skid into the overgrown grass out front to avoid crashing into the trees.

He put the transmission in park, turned the car off, then gave the cabin a brief inspection from the car. Clearly uninhabited, judging from the overgrown yard, the split-log structure had a solid cedar-shake roof and several sash windows secured with strong batten shutters. A bright new white-and-green sign in the yard advertised MYSTERY VALLEY REAL ESTATE and listed the Realtor as Constance Adams.

Quinn, still seated in the car, saw that only a couple hours of sunlight remained. This place was well hidden. With luck, maybe he could hide here until he figured out some kind of operating plan to clear himself. Right now it was hard to even get his thoughts straight.

Breaking into the cabin, however, did not seem like an option. That was a top-of-the-line padlock on the door, and those heavy shutters would not be easy to jimmy.

He wondered if he should just give up his wild plan—in fact, just give up, period. He was a fool to think he could elude a manhunt. For one thing, it was colder up here at this altitude—he could feel it even sitting in the car. It would be even worse after dark.

But again the harsh realization struck him with almost physical force: it wasn’t just sure prison time he faced, and for a crime he never committed. It was also fatal surrender to a dark destiny, the affirmation of evil handed down in the bloodstream. At least, that’s how others would see it. Quinn was no hermit who thumbed his nose at society; he cared very deeply what others thought about him.

That last thought steeled his will.

He took another look at the sign. He’d have to come up with some cock-and-bull story for the Realtor, assuming one would even come out this late. He had no clear idea how far away Mystery was. But he knew he had to try.

He took his cell phone out of his briefcase and tapped in the number on the sign.