Authors: Alafair Burke
I couldn’t stop to figure out how O’Donnell knew about the indictment or why he would tell the Derringers.
“Derrick, listen to me. The indictment was a bluff. Grand jurors will indict anyone the prosecutor tells them to indict. I just wanted you picked up so the police would talk to you about the case. I don’t have any evidence against you or your brother.” I could tell he was beginning to tune in, so I talked a little faster.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. Tim, as a supervisor at the
District Attorney’s Office, you are on official notice that I am hereby resigning from my position as a deputy district attorney. Derrick, give me some money. A dollar, whatever, and tell me you want to talk about your legal problems. Attorney-client privilege will protect everything you say to me, OK? Let me talk to you about this.”
Derrick was looking at me, not saying anything.
Frank couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Derrick, give it to her,” he said.
“Shut up, Frank,” Derrick said. “She’s full of shit, and she’s gonna die, so I don’t give a shit about privilege.”
“Think about it, Derrick.” Frank was beginning to sound desperate. “Just in case something goes wrong, the judge won’t let her rat on us.”
“Yeah, well, nothing’s going wrong,” Derrick retorted, clicking the safety off his gun and pointing it at me. “You’re the one who leaves people alive who are supposed to be dead, not me.”
“Stop! It’s not supposed to happen till after eight!” Frank yelled.
Hearing they’d apparently penciled in my death for a specific time made me dizzy. Luckily, I seemed to have found an ally in Frank. He fished a dollar out of the front pocket of his jeans and asked if that would work for both of them.
“Derrick, do you accept my representation?” I asked.
“Sure, what the fuck? Three times I went down, I wanted to kill my lawyers. Guess I can fulfill my wish.”
I always wondered what it would be like to go into private practice. This wasn’t what I pictured, but I offered my advice anyway.
“Frank’s got a free ride on anything that happened with Kendra Martin. The trial started, so double jeopardy protects him. And there’s no physical evidence to link you to anything, Derrick. Not that I’m saying you did anything, because I don’t know that you did, of course. And, on Zimmerman, two people have already been convicted, so that pretty much creates reasonable doubt for anyone else the State tries to charge down the line.”
He was thinking about it, I could tell. What I couldn’t tell was whether his brain was big enough to comprehend it all.
“Nice try,” he said, “but you left out my fucking eyewitness over here.”
“Your brother?” I asked. “Frank’s not going to turn you in, are you, Frank?”
This pissed Derrick off for some reason. He said, “I told you she was full of shit, Frank. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what’s going on, bitch. My first mistake was letting Master Crime Fighter here live when it turned out he was a DA and not some salesman from Idaho like he said. Dumb and Dumber here meet each other in a chat room. So one day Frankie tells me he knows a furniture salesman from Idaho who’s willing to pay big for a gang bang on a young’ un We set him up with Jamie, and next thing you know the girl’s dead and, lo and behold, the salesman’s a DA. Should have killed you then, O’Donnell.”
“Frank’s the one who killed her, Derrick, not me,” O’Donnell said. “He’s the one who got out of control. Luckiest thing that ever happened to you was me being on call when her body was found. I got you guys out of that jam, and I’ve been getting you out of this one.”
O’Donnell was getting Derrick riled up again. “That’s bullshit, man! You helped yourself out on that first one, but now you’ve been screwing us.”
“Tim, you were involved in this and then told Landry what to say?” I asked, trying to follow the conversation between the two of them. “That’s how she knew everything about Jamie?”
“I don’t know how she knew, Sam, I always assumed it was Forbes. But I ran with it and got the convictions, didn’t I, Derrick? And, even though we were supposed to be even after that, I’ve been trying to help Frank out ever since. When he got popped in Clackamas County, it was me who told him to argue consent instead of that stupid alibi. And it got him a damn good plea deal, didn’t it? I’ve been trying to get him out of this one, too. I used information from confidential police databases to write those Long Hauler letters. Even tonight, I’ve done everything you asked. You wanted me to leave a message for Sam, I did it. I got you the alarm code. I’ve helped you.”
Tim obviously didn’t care anymore about lying to me; he was doing whatever he could to save himself before the Derringers killed me. His pleas hadn’t seemed to work.
“And now I’m under fucking indictment,” Derrick said. “So it’s time to put this thing to rest.”
“What message? I didn’t get any message.” I was frantically stalling for time before they could implement whatever plan they had in mind.
“Yes, you did, and the police will find it with your bodies,” Derrick said.
Frank went into the kitchen and pushed a button on my answering machine with his knuckle. I heard Tim’s voice say, “Sam, it’s Tim O’Donnell. I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for tonight to talk about the case. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be at your house around eight. See ya.”
Frank came back in, looking very proud of himself. “See,
Tim tells us that the FBI’s waiting for the Long Hauler to make a big splash. So he’s going to come here tonight to kill you both.”
Derrick laughed. “Yeah, Tim. Thanks for the imaginary friend. It was brilliant. He’ll take care of the two of you, and down the road we’ll take care of Haley and the Martin girl after we’ve turned them out for a few more months. They’ll just be a couple of dead prostitutes.”
“Yeah, maybe the Long Hauler can write a letter about it,” Frank added, laughing with his brother.
They were psychopaths, but I had to give them credit. They were smart psychopaths. My head was reeling. There was no Long Hauler. O’Donnell had access to the Northwest Regional Cold Case Database. He’d written the letters, carefully selecting details only from cases that lacked DNA evidence. He’d probably mailed them when he was out of town at his fishing cabin.
“Frank, Derrick,” I said. “It doesn’t matter that Tim was there when Jamie died. There’s a rule that says a co-conspirator’s testimony alone isn’t enough to convict. Even if Tim testified against you, the State would need other evidence to corroborate the testimony. There isn’t any. Anyway, he’s the last one who’s going to turn you in. It implicates him too.”
O’Donnell finally clued in. “She’s right, Derrick,” he said. “I’d never testify against you, but even if I did, the rule she’s talking about would keep there from being any case.”
The tag team approach seemed to be working. “You’re better off blowing town than killing us,” I said. “You commit a double murder, and you’re looking at the death penalty. They won’t just assume the Long Hauler did it. They’ll check for copycats, scour the files we were working on. They’ll find the pictures I have of you with Haley. They’ll find Travis Culver.
Once the police are done fishing around, you’ll wind up on death row. As it is, you can bail.”
Derrick thought about it for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Nice effort, but our previous counsel here already gave us some advice. I tried like hell to get those pictures back to be safe, but O’Donnell here tells me they don’t show much. Hell, my face ain’t even in ‘em. As for Culver, he’ll be shot during a robbery gone bad at the Collision Clinic.”
“Derrick,” O’Donnell said, “don’t you think the police are going to put it together? A witness, the DA, and the victim in Frank’s trial all turn up dead? Don’t do this, man.”
They needed to see that their plan was starting to fall apart. “The police will find the transcript of the grand jury testimony against you,” I said. “They’ll draw the same conclusions I did. Right now, there’s not enough proof, but with two dead DAs they’ll put it together. And the grand jury testimony will be admissible in court if any of the witnesses are dead.”
“What grand jury testimony?” Derrick asked. “Tim, you said there was no record of a grand jury testimony. Is there or isn’t there? Don’t you fucking lie to me!” he yelled, back-handing O’Donnell with the gun.
Tim’s head jerked to one side with the blow. When he sat back up, blood was running from a cut beneath his right eye. “We don’t have court reporters for normal grand jury sessions, but you can request one if you want to keep a record.”
Derrick smacked him again in the same place, bursting the cut open even wider. “Now you fucking tell me, man!” He pursed his lips, trying to figure out his next move. “OK, bitch.”
I assumed he was talking to me.
“You think you’re so smart, but now I know you got a transcript, you’re gonna tell me where it is.”
“It’s at the office,” I said.
“That’s bullshit,” Derrick said. “Tim tells me you been holding out on him. He couldn’t find the files in your office and tells me you’ve been hiding them at home. Only way he knew you indicted me was a secretary. Ain’t that right, Tim?”
I looked over at O’Donnell. The right side of his face was swollen and bloodied.
“Alice mentioned it to me,” he said by way of explanation. “She recognized the name and thought I should know about it.”
In an office where I could never find anyone to help me, I’d managed to find someone who was too competent. I should’ve known Alice Gernstein wouldn’t miss a beat.
It was clear that O’Donnell was losing his resolve to fight. It was also clear that I wasn’t digesting the new information quickly enough. My first impulse was to be pissed at him for snooping through my office, but then I remembered that this was a man who had helped kill Jamie Zimmerman, sent an innocent man to death row, and led the Derringers to me to save his own ass.
Derrick was behind me now, running the head of his gun along my collarbone, pushing aside my hair to graze the back of my neck. “Tell us where the transcript is, Sam, or I’m gonna have one hell of a time on your buddy Kendra before she dies.”
I resisted the urge to tell him I wasn’t as stupid as O’Donnell. I knew they were going to kill us and do horrible things to Kendra before they killed her, whether I was helpful or not. I also knew that the promise of those transcripts was the only leverage I had at this point.
Luckily, I’d left my case file in the trunk of my car. “I’ve got them locked in a safe,” I said.
“Good girl,” Derrick said. “Now where’s the safe?”
“Upstairs,” I said, “in the master bedroom.”
“Aangh,” he responded, like a buzzer on a game show, “wrong answer. I personally tossed this place looking for your little friend’s peepshow pictures, and there ain’t no safe.”
“It’s an old wall safe. It’s hidden in the baseboard. There’s no way you’d see it.”
I could picture Derrick searching his memory for the ransacking of my bedroom, doubting whether he would have noticed an irregularity in the oversized baseboards. He threw a note pad and pen at me from the dining room table. “The combination,” he said. “Where is it in the baseboards?”
“Directly behind the bed,” I said, as I scrawled down three numbers that were all slightly off. If my guess about what was going to happen was wrong, I could always tell them that the safe stuck sometimes.
Derrick snatched the paper from my outstretched hand and gave it to his brother, gesturing with his head toward the stairs. “Here, take these,” he said, throwing him a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket. Frank took the stairs two at a time. I heard a few thumps from upstairs, followed by silence and a few more thumps. I tried not to think about Frank Derringer being in my bedroom.
After a few more rounds of thumps, Frank scrambled back down the stairs to the landing. “That bed is fucking heavy, man. I can’t budge it.”
I had sworn at myself many times for buying a solid maple bed that I couldn’t move without the help of a strong friend. But it had just been added to the very short list of things I’d never get rid of. That is, if I lived past eight o’clock.
Derrick was less happy with the news. “Jesus Christ, man.
Can’t you do a fucking thing by yourself?” Then he looked around the room, in search of Plan B. C’mon, pea brain, I thought, watching him ponder the possible combinations. There’s only one right answer here.
His eyes eventually fell on me. He gestured toward the stairs with his head and said, “You, go up and help.” Yes! Good answer, Derrick, good answer! “Try anything, and Ken-dra will pay the price,” he yelled as I went up the stairs, Frank behind me.
Frank was a lightweight. The bed was approximately four centimeters from where I’d last left it. I walked around to the far side, saying, “If we each take one leg of the. headboard and pull back, it’s usually the best way to move it.”
I watched Frank take his position on the other side of the bed, and then I crouched to my knees to reach beneath the bed ruffle and grab the headboard. As Frank pulled against his side of the bed, I pulled on my side with my right hand. With my left, I reached inside the top shelf of my nightstand and pulled my .25-caliber automatic loose from the tape that held it to the bottom of my drawer. I slid it onto the floor next to me and then pulled on the bed hard with all my weight.
The bed jerked a few feet away from the wall. Frank rose from his side of the bed and saw my gun aimed on him before I’d fired off the shot. If he could’ve just stood still, the bullet would have hit him dead center in the chest. Instead, he ran for the door quickly enough that it caught him in the right shoulder.
I fired off a second shot but missed and hit the doorframe. Damn. Too much time on the firing range, not enough chasing down wily targets.
Two quick shots rang from downstairs as I followed Frank to the door. By the time I got there, he was almost to the end of the hallway leading to the stairs. I fired another shot. I must’ve hit him, because I heard a low grunt. I must not have gotten him good, though, because he turned down the stairs, and my next shot ripped through the shameless Warhol knockoff on my wall.