Slow Heat (34 page)

Micah didn’t mind focusing on someone else’s problems for a while. “Why wouldn’t you stay with KFA?”

“A bounty hunter has to be licensed in the state of California. I can’t get licensed with this felony on my record and it’s taking longer to get expunged than I thought it would. I don’t know how much longer the Kings are willing to wait. They don’t need me manning the radios in the trucks or making sure no one sneaks up behind any of you when you’re tracking people.”

“But you’re so good at it,” Micah teased and tried grinning when Ben moaned. “I’m sure you’ll get that felony wiped off your record soon enough. King is investing time in training you how to do the job. He isn’t going to write off that time just because the courts are dragging their heels.”

“My lawyer has the paperwork drawn up.” Ben didn’t say anything when they pulled into the circular drive in front of the Kings’ home. “Man, don’t say anything but it hasn’t been filed yet. It’s going to cost me two grand and I haven’t saved up that much money yet.”

“I won’t say anything.” Micah parked the truck and got out on his side.

Ben hurried into the KFA office but Micah dragged his feet, pulling his cell phone out to check messages. He had a text from Maggie.

How about a candlelit dinner tonight? My treat, your house, and I have a new outfit I think you’ll love.
A little devil emoticon followed the end of her text.

His father had also texted him.
We’re in town. Time to talk.

Micah shoved his phone into his back pocket. His father and uncle were going to confront him about why he was procrastinating. More than likely they wouldn’t do that much. They would lecture him about allowing a woman to get in the way of his work.

“Greg wants to see you,” Patty said when Micah entered the KFA office. She nodded toward the door leading into the Kings’ home.

Ben sat on the couch against the wall and Patty looked at him as Micah headed to the door. She slid her finger across her throat and grinned at Ben, thinking Micah didn’t see her do it. He ignored her and entered the Kings’ living room, closing the office door behind him.

“In here,” King called out when their security system beeped, letting them know someone had entered their home.

Micah entered their kitchen where Greg and Haley sat at the kitchen table.

“Have a seat,” King offered.

Micah pulled out a chair and sat, facing the two of them. King had a laptop opened in front of him and moved his finger over the mouse then looked up at Micah.

“Hell of a shot today,” he began, his expression grave.

“Thanks.” Micah knew King didn’t hand out compliments easily, especially when he hadn’t appeared too pleased with Micah lately.

“You’re welcome. I was on the force twenty years before opening KFA. Not many men could have pulled off a shot like that.”

“I got lucky.”

King scowled. Haley spoke before he could.

“Luck had little to do with it, wouldn’t you say, Micah?” She was using that gentle tone of hers again and put her hand over her husband’s as she spoke.

Micah nodded, leaned back in his chair, and relaxed. It didn’t surprise him that they would probe for information about him. This was one argument he would give his father. It was time to leave KFA. King wasn’t an idiot, and they were becoming more and more suspicious about him.

“I knew the guy wouldn’t shoot,” he conceded.

“He could have,” King snapped. “And if that was your logic then you’re an idiot.”

Micah didn’t say anything. Neither of them seemed surprised when he remained quiet. He watched them look at the laptop screen then glance at each other. They wouldn’t have found anything on him, but something had them bugged.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Judge Stabler being found shot to death at Club Paradise,” King grumbled, not sounding pleased.

Micah had heard the news. He’d also reassured Maggie that they wouldn’t investigate the case. Although yesterday’s paper had announced the death of the four men and had mentioned that it appeared to be a drug deal gone bad, they hadn’t speculated on why Stabler might have been there. This morning’s paper hadn’t said a word about it.

“Maggie O’Malley was pretty upset about it,” he added, diverting the conversation in her direction. “I haven’t been able to gather any details about what happened,” he lied. “But she did call to tell me her bank accounts are no longer frozen.”

“That’s great,” Haley said, smiling.

“None of the details are going to be revealed about the shooting,” King stated and pushed the laptop to the side. He folded his large hands on the table and leaned forward, facing Micah. “There are a few reasons why they won’t be. Care to guess what any of them are?”

Micah imagined King had been a decent interrogator during his days as a cop. Micah didn’t change positions or break eye contact. “Judge Stabler was quite a celebrity. Dying in the heat of a drug deal isn’t exactly how people would want to see him go.”

“If the man was a criminal, he’ll be painted that way. The press will show no mercy. In fact, they’ll eat it up. I spoke with the officers who first responded to the scene. Apparently a vagrant happened to notice the back door wasn’t locked and thought he’d found a good place to crash for the night. Hard to say how long those men would have lain there otherwise.”

Micah had been curious how the bodies had been found. Normally after a kill he was long gone out of the state before anyone found the bodies. He seldom bothered to hear the details of his handiwork.

“The narcotics officers found it interesting that the back door was open. There was a hell of a lot of heroin in boxes with the bodies. Their guess is that Whithers and Stabler were going to sell the drugs to the other two men, who were both from Mexico. If they were, it would make sense that they would have locked the back door before conducting their business.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out where King was going with this. Micah continued listening, waiting to hear how King saw it playing out. Haley had grabbed a washcloth and was wiping the island in the middle of their kitchen. It was already spotless. Her hand moved methodically over the countertop, but her attention was on her husband. She looked nervous.

“Did you kill those four men?”

Micah blinked, sincerely surprised. He hadn’t expected King to come out and ask. It would have been more King’s style to build up his argument to where there was no backing out of his conclusion.

“No.” Micah didn’t hesitate. “If I’d known a drug deal was going down there I would have called the cops.”

“There’s something the public doesn’t know,” King continued. He continued staring at Micah.

The man was positive he had Micah figured out. Since all he could do was speculate and there were no facts he could back any of it with, Micah remained leaning back in his chair, relaxed, and listened.

“Aren’t you curious why the police have decided Maggie O’Malley is no longer a suspect in the Club Paradise gig?”

“I had planned on asking her.”

“I doubt she knows,” King said drily. “Frank Whithers was an undercover narcotics cop. He was wired and everything that was said leading up to those four men’s deaths was recorded. I pulled a few strings and went into the station earlier to listen to the tapes.”

Micah was positive his expression didn’t waver. He had never killed a man, or a woman, and not checked them after. But this time he had been so concerned about getting Maggie out of there before she saw all of the dead bodies, he hadn’t done anything more than make sure they were dead. And even at that, Stabler had been badly wounded and would have bled out but was stubborn enough of a prick to hold on and make his accusations.

His accusations. Fuck! Stabler had called him Mulligan. Maggie hadn’t brought it up but she was pretty foggy on everything that had happened that night. King, on the other hand, looked like he had his kill in his mil dots and was ready to pull the trigger.

“Whithers had everything he needed on that recording to bring down Santinos’s partner and nail a dirty judge to the wall,” King stated. “Then someone shoots and kills him, the judge, and the two Mexican drug dealers. Enough was said to clear Maggie and point the finger in the right direction to show who was trying to frame her or—as the case proved—kill her. There was no doubt she was completely innocent. The shooter could have killed everyone after hearing enough to clear her name. That wasn’t how it played out, though. Do you want to know why?”

“Why is that?” Micah asked. He wished King would get to the punch line already. Although he’d never sat through an interrogation before, his father and uncle had both raked him over the coals more than once. Micah had to rely on those experiences and sat and listened. Sweat trickled down the inside of his shirt. He was no longer calm.

“Because the shooter was good, really good. One shot to each man killed him.” King paused and smiled. “Well, almost killed him. As good a shot as the shooter was, he should have been able to kill all four men easily. I’m thinking he might have been a bit distracted. I think the shooter wasn’t alone.”

“There was more than one shooter,” Micah threw out, making it sound like he was into the story enough to throw out a guess. He was growing antsy. Saying something allowed him to shift positions and not appear nervous. Micah leaned forward and hoped he looked like he was anxious to hear the rundown of how it all happened.

King’s smile didn’t fade. “Nope. Just one gun, one shooter. There were four shots, then the shooter walked away. The recording didn’t pick up what the shooter did next but I think he wasn’t alone and he returned to whoever he was with. Fortunately for the two of them, they were far enough away from the wire not to reveal who they were. But, as Stabler spoke his last words, he was lying close enough to Whithers to be picked up clearly.”

King leaned back, crossing his arms over his large chest, and looked away from Micah for the first time. Haley was now watching him, and Micah shifted his attention to her. She’d never been a cop and she’d never run an interrogation. Micah didn’t underestimate her skills. She was watching him a bit too closely.

“So what were his dying words?” Micah asked, knowing that if he didn’t ask it would confirm what they already thought they knew. King had left his story unfinished and Micah had to demand to know the ending.

“He said Mulligan,” King replied. He was looking at his laptop again. “I think he was addressing the shooter. Earlier on tape he mentioned you.”

“Mentioned me?”

King nodded once. “He said you weren’t Jones. Stabler also said that if anyone knew who you were they would die. Right before he died he said Mulligan,” he repeated again, then turned his laptop so Micah could see it. “What is Mulligan’s Stew?”

Micah stared at the laptop. King had an empty e-mail box pulled up. The address box had Mulligan’s Stew in it, but with a Yahoo! account. They had quit using Yahoo! and switched over to Gmail.

“I don’t know, why?”

King sighed, pushed his chair back and stood. Haley dropped her washcloth and watched her husband as he ran his hand over his short hair.

King gestured at the laptop. “You have to know what to look for, but if you type the right words into the search bar there’s a fair number of articles.” King dropped his hand to his side and faced Micah. At six and a half feet, with a barrel chest and a fierce look, the man was definitely intimidating. “MulliganStew appears to be an e-mail address if you put the two words together. It’s how you reach the Mulligans, who are a multigenerational family of assassins. What’s interesting is that the current generation is one man. His name is never mentioned, but there is one article stating that he is over six feet tall and muscular, with dark hair. Another article refers to him as a ladies’ man. It’s not easy to go through the archives of newspapers, especially when you don’t know which paper to focus on,” King added.

He leaned his rear against the counter and pressed both hands against it. Then, glancing from Haley to Micah, he continued explaining what he’d discovered.

“We dug pretty deep, which should tell you how sure we are of our findings.” King looked at Micah for a long moment. He looked resolute when he stared at Micah.

“It appears that this young Mulligan first appeared on the scene before he was twenty. That was in Michigan. A drug lord was pissed that another drug lord was pushing in on his territory. He even narked the guy out, which of course pissed this new drug lord off. It said in that article that they had law enforcement up and down the street when they brought this guy in. Before they got him inside, though, this new drug lord was shot. Bullet straight to the heart. The gunman took out two other gang members brought in as well. Prosecution was ready to go, quite a few man-hours had already been billed to the state. And suddenly they had no one to prosecute.

“There are similar stories as the years go by. From city to city, and state to state. The dead men are con men, money launderers, murderers. There are hardly any reports describing the assassin who took out these people. In the past couple of years there were two mayors shot, one governor, and a senator. All of them were corrupt. Some of the articles speculate that private parties paid good money to bring someone in and have them clean up their town.”

King was pacing now, tapping his finger against his lip. When he stopped he stood next to Micah, forcing him to lean to the side and look up to see King’s face.

“Then finally,” King whispered, looking down at Micah. “There is a report of a CIA agent being shot. This time the gunman was spotted, although the article says the witnesses refused to comment or go on record stating what they saw. Off record, the shooter was tall, well built, dark hair. And,” King said, his voice low as he finally moved and stood behind his wife, “the CIA agent was killed by a single bullet going straight through his heart. Now, this CIA agent was bad news, abusing his power and authority. Quite a lot of people were interviewed and suspected of hiring the Mulligan assassin to do the job. But the Mulligan assassin has disappeared.

“Now, what is odd is that Mulligan was quite busy for a few years, busy enough to garner a reputation.” King turned around and picked up a folder. When he faced Micah, he held it up in the air. “I managed to gain access to reports not released to the public. These are notes from detectives across the country who investigated the deaths probably long after the killer was far away, possibly even plotting his next hit.” King opened the file but then handed it to Haley as he fished through a stack of papers. He held one up and looked at Micah over it, a grin appearing on his face. “This one is my favorite.” He held the page up so Micah could see it, then began reading. “‘The black Irishman is at it again. It’s always straight through the heart. This Irishman doesn’t even take time to play with his target. He doesn’t feed on fear. He’s comfortable enough with himself that he doesn’t need to hang around after his mark is dead. His confidence level must be off the charts. He’s made an appearance more than once in my town but leaves before the blood runs cold in his prey. My guess is he’s young and has had a weapon in his hand most of his life.’” King looked up from his paper, studied Micah for a moment, then flipped to another sheet. “Now this one,” he began, then shook his head before reading. “‘The Mulligan assassin has returned. I’d bet a month’s salary on it. His MO is always the same, straight through the heart, one shot, and never a clue where he stood when he made his shot. As with all the derelict gunmen in our history, he will go down. I would love to be the one to bring him to justice. The Mulligans have been at this for way too long. My father used to say, no one man should have the right or power to play judge, jury, and hangman. In this case, Mulligan believes he’s omnipotent because all of his targets are dirty. That doesn’t mean he won’t pad his bank account with the exorbitant fee he charges to play God. I wonder if even he knows how many lives he’s taken.’”