Kill and Run (A Thorny Rose Mystery Book 1) (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Makes me sick,” Cameron muttered while trying to follow the directions on her GPS at the same time that she was watching the steadily increasing traffic. During late afternoon rush hour traffic, failure to make it into the correct merging lane on the Capital Beltway can easily suck a vehicle into traffic heading in the wrong direction—trapping it in a fast-moving vehicular river with no escape for miles.

“We have a general who’s possibly a rapist, a rape victim who doesn’t report it, and a husband who takes advantage of the sexual assault to advance his career,” Jessica said.

“But can we prove it?” Cameron asked. “Even if the DNA from Tommy’s snot comes back proving that General Graham is his biological father, we’ll still have no proof that it was rape. He’ll claim it was consensual and without a report of rape, who’s to say he’s lying.”

“My mom was raped,” Izzy said from the back seat.

Startled, Jessica turned around to look over her shoulder at Izzy. “I didn’t know that.”

“I told Murphy,” Izzy said.

Aware that Izzy did not know that Donna Crenshaw was not her birth mother, Jessica and Cameron exchanged glances, before Jessica asked, “Did she report it … to the police I mean?”

“I think she did,” Izzy said. “She said the guy got off for it. I kind of thought that meant she called the police.”

“Maybe it’s the same guy, and that’s who these women were ganging together to stop,” Cameron said.

“Ninety-eight percent of rapists don’t spend a day in jail,” Jessica said. “Sixty-eight percent of rape victims don’t report it. But there’s strength in numbers. Suppose these women found out about each other. Here, the news is making a big deal of General Graham being on the brink of becoming the army’s chief of staff and they decide to band together and go public to expose him for the sexual perpetrator that he is.”

“That would mean General Graham is my father,” Izzy said from the back seat. “Damn!”

“And you and Tommy are brother and sister,” Jessica said. “If we’re talking about the same perpetrator.”

A smile came to Izzy’s lips. “I like Tommy.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Cameron waved her hand at Jessica. “I’m just a dumb detective.”

“You’re not dumb, Cameron,” Jessica said.

“You mentioned back there that these big powerful successful men, who are surrounded by yes-men, start to think that they are entitled to any woman they want,” Cameron said. “But don’t tell me that they don’t know that it is wrong to pin a woman down by the shoulders and bite her lip to make her stop screaming while they rip her clothes off.”

“I never met General Graham,” Jessica said. “But some cases that I researched in school point to the sense of control in dominating the woman, intimidating her, humiliating her, that makes them do it. People look at these men who are huge achievers in sports, military, politics, business, and they don’t realize that along with the money and power, they are also under a lot of stress. A lot of people depend on them.” She laughed. “That’s why Murphy is obsessive compulsive about his exercise and diet routine.”

“Is there no such thing as being a simple run of a mill health nut anymore?” Cameron asked. “Why do you have to slap criminals with tags labeling them as sick? General Graham isn’t
sick
. He doesn’t deserve the sympathy of someone with an illness. Give sympathy to the ones who deserve it—his victims. He’s a sexual predator and a rapist. Plain and simple. His butt belongs in jail.”

Jessica held up her hand to silence her. “I am not making excuses for what he did. I am only explaining the psychology behind it. I’m not condoning serial rapists who earn in the top one percent any more than I would a serial killer lurking in dark alleys.”

In her rearview mirror, Cameron noticed a black van that had been following directly behind her on Route 190 leading to Interstate 495. Granted, it was approaching rush hour and the flow of traffic was increasing, and everyone seemed to be heading toward the beltway, but Cameron had noticed the van pull out of the shopping center directly behind them and it had a few opportunities to pass them. Instead, it was riding right on the cruiser’s tail.

“What drives them is this need to feel like they’re in control,” Jessica continued with her dissertation. “How better to do that than to target a woman in a subordinate position and harass, force himself, or even rape her. Makes him feel like a man.”

“There’s nothing that a man loves more than feeling like he’s in control,” Cameron said while eying the van that now made its move up along the driver’s side of her cruiser.

“It’s not just a man thing.”

Cameron’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. Her eyes flicked around to every mirror and window within the cruiser. As soon as the van had moved over, a truck had pulled up behind her.

“Cameron, what’s wrong?” Jessica craned her neck to observe the van moving up alongside them.

There was a long line of vehicles racing onto the beltway’s onramp in hopes of getting safely home before the height of rush hour.

The side door to the van slid open as it moved alongside them.

Cameron saw the flash of an assault rifle’s muzzle. “Everybody down!” She swung the steering wheel. The only place she had to go was off to the side of the road.

“Izzy, hit the floor!” Jessica reached back to grab Izzy by the top of the head and they both dropped down in their seats.

In the same instant, the spray of bullets shattered the side and windows of the cruiser.

The front tire exploded, sending the cruiser into a spin back out into traffic. With Izzy screaming, Cameron fought the wheel of the SUV while it bounced off cars and trucks like a ping pong ball spinning back and forth across both lanes of traffic all the way onto the beltway. The airbags deployed—blocking Cameron’s view in trying to maneuver the cruiser away from the heavy fast moving traffic.

Up ahead, she saw that the frontage road along the freeway ended at a bridge crossing over a two-lane road filled with rush hour traffic. She continued to pump the brake pedal to slow down the vehicle spinning out of control.

“Cameron! Please!” she heard Izzy beg before the rear of the cruiser slammed into the bridge embankment, spun, and then toppled like a toy over the top. Finally, the SUV came to rest—caught by the rear wheel axles with the front half of the vehicle facing downwards at the commuters on the road below.

“Don’t anybody move!” Cameron reached over to Jessica, who was holding her breath for fear that to exhale would shift the weight of the cruiser enough to make it topple straight down to their deaths.

Sobbing, Izzy sat up in her seat and finger combed her thick curls out of her face. Seeing the cement stretched several feet below them, she screamed.

“Izzy, no!” Jessica whirled around in her seat.

The shift of the weight caused the cruiser to rock. Jessica turned back around, which made it shift again.

“Everyone freeze!” Cameron bellowed like they were suspects caught in the midst of committing a crime.

Both Izzy and Jessica froze in fear of the detective’s wrath as much as the death looming several feet below.

“I don’t want to die,” Izzy sobbed from where she clung to her seat in the back.

“We’re not going to die.” As gently as she could, without turning around, Cameron reached her arm back and grasped Izzy’s knobby knee with her hand. “Listen, Izzy. Can you hear them?”

The sirens of emergency vehicles could be heard in the distance.

“They’re going to get us out.” Jessica clung to the dashboard with both hands as if she could hold back the force of the impact if the cruiser were to plummet nose-first down to the pavement below.

“We just need to stay perfectly still and pray,” Cameron said. “Can you do that, Izzy?”

Izzy sobbed. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s okay,” Cameron said. “It’s not hard. Jessica and I will teach you.”

“Really?” Izzy sniffed. “You’ll teach me how to pray to God?”

“Sure, Izzy,” Jessica said with a bated breath. “We’re not doing anything else right now.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Time was running out.

A cunning killer was in the process of covering his tracks. If they weren’t able to gather enough evidence to stop him, he was going to get away with it.

While Joshua Thornton made a conference call to the chair and vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Murphy gathered their team into the conference room to go over their evidence and the files they had found on Francine Baxter’s hard drive. He connected his laptop, as well as the one containing the mirror image of Francine’s laptop, to the smart board so that they could all see it.

“You know what his attorneys are going to claim,” Susan told Murphy after seeing the documentation, “one, this is all a frame up committed by a disgruntled ex-army officer—that being Francine Baxter. Two, that most of these files were illegally obtained—making them inadmissible in court.”

“Does any of that documentation prove a connection between your suspect and the Russian mob?” Boris asked in a doubtful tone.

Not expecting this question, Murphy paused before answering, “No, I didn’t see any type of connection like that.”

The door to the conference room flew open.

“Hello, lady and gentlemen.” Joshua stepped over to the head of the conference table and tossed his notepad down. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff have given us until sunrise tomorrow to solve this case and put together direct evidence connecting our suspect to these murders. Tell me where we are right now.”

“I’ll start,” Boris said. “FBI says those three hitmen taken out last night are tightly connected to the Russian mob. Very professional—very well planned. That license plate number Murphy took off their van—the plate was stolen from a federal vehicle that was parked in a government motor pool.”

“It was a planned hit,” Susan said. “No doubt about that.”

“Do the FBI’s records have these guys connected to any group in particular?” Joshua asked.

Boris nodded his head. “Specifically, these guys have done a lot of work for Ivan Kalashov, or rather his son Adrian. Ivan is virtually retired. The RICO division has been trying to nail Adrian for years but they say he’s like Teflon. Law degree from Yale. He knows the law inside and out—most especially the loop holes.”

“Kalashov?” Joshua asked. “Are you sure about that, Hamilton?”

Boris glanced down at his report. “Positive.”

“Bertinelli, the hitman contracted to kill Cameron’s first husband, committed hits for Kalashov,” Joshua said.

“That’s a twist I didn’t see coming,” Susan said.

“Cameron’s first husband was a Pennsylvania state trooper. Nicholas Gates,” Murphy said. “He was run down thirteen years ago on the Pennsylvania Turnpike—hit and run. Everyone assumed it was a drunk driver. This week, the feds told us that a hit man turned federal witness told them that it was a paid hit for Kalashov—as a favor for a friend.”

“Was Gates connected to the army?” Boris asked.

“No,” Joshua said.

“But he was investigating the death of a Jane Doe he had found on the Pennsylvania turnpike,” Murphy said. “That Jane Doe turned out to be Army Specialist Cecilia Crenshaw, Donna Crenshaw’s sister. That gives him an indirect connection to the army.”

“That means this relationship between the army and organized crime stretches back at least thirteen years,” Boris said. “That must have been what Dolan’s news breaking story was about. Our United States Army is in bed with the Russian mob.”

“Did we uncover anything concrete from the anti-military blogger’s laptop?” Joshua asked. “What’s her relationship to the murders at Baxter’s place?”

“Emily Dolan took three business administration courses with Francine Baxter,” Susan said. “While there’s no emails to Dolan from Baxter’s email account, we did find emails sent to her from Baxter’s IP address through a Hotmail account that she had set up on the same day that the first email was sent. We only found a few emails—all referencing that Baxter had information for Dolan’s blog that would make for a huge news breaking story about a conspiracy and cover up in the army.”

“But she didn’t say what it was,” Murphy said.

“Had to be about the army’s connection to the Russian mob,” Boris said.

“Baxter was too smart to put it in an email,” Susan said. “She told Emily Dolan to call her. The cell phone number she gave was not her regular number.”

“Probably a burner phone,” Murphy said. “Was one found at the Baxter home?”

“No,” Susan said. “However, we found Emily Dolan’s cell phone in her purse and the log shows texts back and forth between Dolan and Baxter up until a half hour before Dolan’s murder.”

Joshua said, “The killer found Baxter’s burner phone and continued communicating with Dolan after the murders in Reston.”

“But we have a witness who saw Emily Dolan go into Baxter’s home hours after the murders,” Murphy said. “There’s no way she couldn’t know Baxter was already dead.”

Susan explained, “According to the texts going back and forth between them, the killer identified her or himself to Dolan as being a witness who had managed to escape the murders in Reston. She said that the military killed Baxter and the others and was using the police to cover it up.”

Susan pointed at Murphy. “Dolan texted about seeing a navy officer coming out of the Baxter home. The killer, we assume it is the killer, texted back not to trust him because they all work together and that if she went to him, she would end up dead.”

Joshua sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And since she already didn’t trust us, she played right into the killer’s hands.”

With a pound of his fist on the table top, Boris shook his head. “Why didn’t she go to the police? They could have used that communication to track down the killer and Dolan would still be alive.”

“Because Dolan considered the police and military the enemy,” Murphy said.

“What were the texts saying?” Joshua asked Susan.

Susan handed each of them a report transcribing the texts. “Basically, the killer took advantage of Dolan being in the dark. We found evidence on her laptop that indicates she knew no specific details about this conspiracy.”

Boris said, “Dolan’s fingerprints are a match for prints found on Baxter’s laptop and all around her study. From what it looks like, Baxter and all of Dolan’s sources were murdered before they could give her the story.”

“The witness said Dolan was inside the Baxter home for at least ten minutes,” Murphy said. “She must have been searching for clues to the cover-up and conspiracy that got those women murdered.”

Susan agreed. “It appears to us that Francine Baxter either wanted to protect her—the less she knew the safer she would be—or that she wanted the shock value of springing the whole story on her at the meeting.

“The last texts were arranging for Dolan and this witness to get together so that the witness could give her the story,” Susan said. “That night. Dolan told the killer when she was working. How to recognize her. Everything. That’s how the hitmen knew who to hit.”

“I assume the phone sending the texts to Dolan is now off,” Joshua said.

“Ever since Dolan’s murder.”

“Since the hit squad was wearing military fatigues. . . ” Boris said. “As soon as the media finds out that Dolan was an anti-military blogger who was creating a buzz about having inside info about a military conspiracy. . .”

“Wait a minute,” Murphy interrupted him.

“What’d I say?” Boris asked.

“The media doesn’t know about Dolan being an anti-military blogger?”

“We haven’t released her name or about her being a blogger,” Boris said. “We’ve been keeping everything tight to our vest, but it’s only a matter of time before—”

His mouth hanging open, Murphy turned to Joshua.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Joshua prompted him. “Out with it.”

With effort, Murphy tried to recall who he had overheard and what she had said. “This morning at breakfast, I overheard General Graham’s assistant telling him about the hit on Starbucks last night. She knew that the target was an anti-military blogger. If none of that was released to the media, how did she know about Dolan being a blogger who was biased against the military? How did she know the hit on Starbucks was even connected to our case?”

“Good questions,” Joshua said. “And this was General Graham’s assistant?”

“Dolly Scanlon.”

“I think we need to have a talk with Dolly Scanlon,” Joshua said.

“As well as General Graham,” Murphy said.

“All of our victims had some connection to General Sebastian Graham,” Boris said. “He was the commandant at Foggy Bottom where Cecilia Crenshaw worked when she reported being raped. The military police did a cursory investigation—claimed they found nothing conclusive. She dropped the charges.”

“Why did she drop the charges?” Murphy asked.

“Most likely she was threatened,” Susan said. “I cast the net wider and talked to friends of all the victims. Back when she was nineteen years old, Colleen Davis, the kindergarten teacher, took a bottle of sleeping pills. I got in touch with her old college roommate and she told me that a few months before that suicide attempt Colleen had gone to a popular lounge in Florida with some friends. This club was frequented by the military and Sebastian Graham was there. He was a friend of Colleen’s father—”

“Lieutenant General George Davis,” Joshua confirmed.

“Exactly,” Susan said. “Well, Graham bought Colleen a drink—a soda—since she was only eighteen years old at that time. Not long after that, she started feeling ill. The evening was still young and her friends didn’t want to go, so they all thought Graham was being a nice guy when he offered to drive her home and let them continue with the party. Colleen told her roommate that she passed out and then came to in a hotel room to find Graham getting dressed. She threatened to tell her father and he said that would not be a good idea.”

“Keep in mind that Lieutenant General George Davis outranked Graham,” Boris said.

“And Colleen was his daughter.” Joshua’s teeth were clenched.

“Colleen also had a boyfriend who had just graduated from West Point and was stationed overseas,” Boris said.

Susan picked up the story. “Graham told her that if she breathed a word about the rape to anyone that he would see to it that her boyfriend would end up in a hot zone and have a horrible accident.”

Boris said, “Cecilia’s sister Donna was in the army. Graham probably used the same threat against her.”

“Well, his threats worked on Colleen,” Susan said. “She told no one, but all of her friends and her father noticed that something was wrong. A few months later, she tried to kill herself. That was when her roommate dragged it out of her, but only after she swore her to secrecy.”

“Maybe if she hadn’t, Colleen would still be alive today,” Joshua said.

“That’s what she said. She’s willing to testify to what Colleen told her.”

“Unfortunately, her testimony will be considered hearsay,” Joshua said. “Odds of getting it admitted into court would be slim to none, especially against the lawyers Graham will have defending him.”

“Colleen’s roommate said that General Davis kept asking questions and digging,” Susan said. “He did find out about General Graham being at the bar that night and kept pressing him with questions about if he had seen anything that would explain Colleen’s depression. Not long after that, the helicopter crashed, General Davis was dead, and Graham’s problem went away. Oh, by the way, you wouldn’t believe who drove General Davis to the base the morning of the helicopter crash?”

“General Sebastian Graham?” Joshua asked.

Susan said, “He was still on the base when the helicopter exploded and crashed minutes after take-off.”

“CID did find bomb parts in the wreckage,” Murphy said. “The agent conducting the investigation believed he was on the right path to identifying the killer. He called the army’s chief of staff to tell him that he had something. That night, the investigator and his family died in an arson fire in their home. Days after that, two airmen who had worked on the base the morning of the helicopter accident were killed in a horrible vehicle accident.”

“Our killer is very good at covering his tracks,” Joshua said.

“Francine Baxter’s husband was killed in a car accident,” Murphy said, “one month after Cecilia disappeared. According to the copy of the police statement we found on her computer, the investigators found paint transfer on the car. Her husband’s car was in the shop. He was driving her car on the day of the crash.”

Narrowing his eyes, Joshua sat up in his seat.

“General Sebastian Graham is a sexual predator, Dad.”

Joshua cleared his throat.

Murphy corrected himself. “I mean, Captain.” He hit a button on his laptop. “He’s had women filing sexual assault charges against him going all the way back to West Point. While he was an army cadet, two different women filed charges against him for rape. Both charges were reduced down to misdemeanors. Graham paid a fine and didn’t spend a day in jail. He’s
never
spent a day in jail.”

In silence, Joshua rubbed his face with both hands.

“During the Gulf War, a female fellow officer charged him with rape,” Murphy said. “Then, Graham saved his team in that firefight and the rape charge got buried under all the hoopla of him being a hero.” He grumbled. “The list goes on and on but never once was General Graham ever been held accountable. He’s not a war hero, he’s a common run of the mill serial rapist.”

“He’s not run of the mill,” Joshua said, “He’s a distinguished war hero who has a lot of people protecting—and enabling—his behavior.”

“Which gave him a license to move up from serial rapist to serial killer.” Murphy advanced the screen on his laptop to display a long list, complete with pictures, on the smart board for them all to see.

“General Sebastian Graham is the same age you are, Captain,” Murphy announced. “Not counting deaths in combat, how many supervisors, colleagues, and acquaintances who are associated with you professionally suffered sudden or violent deaths due to accidents, suicide, or murder?”

Counting in his head, Joshua finally answered, “Maybe five at the most.”