Winner Take All (35 page)

“Thought for a minute there I was sixteen again.” The pastor huffed his way onto the rear fender and fanned himself with his shirt-tail. “Hateful thing to see a body age.”

“Hop on in.” Amos pointed Marcus into the passenger seat. When they were seated he cut on the siren, whoomed over to the passing lane, and cast Marcus an adrenaline grin. “Didn’t wake up this morning expecting a high-velocity touch-and-go, did you?”

“What’s going on?”

Amos shouted over the alarm and roaring engine, “This is strictly a good old boy kinda deal, you understand what I’m saying?”

“I shouldn’t mention this to anybody,” Marcus interpreted.

“Not unless you want me to lose my job.” He shot a quick thumb back to where Deacon was gradually recovering. “That gentleman there must’ve heard about it from goodness only knows where. He told you. Then you called me and officially requested my help, which is why I’m involved at all.”

“Right.”

Amos shot by a truck going seventy as though the rig was hauled over and parked. “Good buddy of mine down on the Wilmington force called me with a strictly unofficial heads-up. Seems an NYPD boyo called him from the airport, asking could he supply Dale Steadman’s home address. Your client must like his privacy, since he registered his home under a corporate name.”

Having a professional behind the wheel was offset by the fact that their speed now topped a hundred and fifteen miles an hour. Marcus winced as they almost played bumper cars with an SUV whose rear window was completely blocked with children’s toys. “A New York policeman?”

“Manhattan detective. An Italian-sounding name, you know the kind, enough vowels for a whole family.” Amos released his double grip on the wheel long enough to fish in his pocket. “Hang on, I wrote the name down here.”

Marcus read, “Lieutenant Aureolietti.”

“My buddy knew about Dale Steadman running the company up here and all the legal goings-on. Told me the detective’s got himself an arrest warrant.”

“What’s the charge?”

Amos granted him a lightning glance. “Murder one.”

Near the Greenville airport’s turnoff, Amos used the radio for a series of barked messages. As the engine was still bellowing and the tires screeching and siren screaming and the world was whipping by at something near ninety, Amos might as well have spoken in Martian. Which was why, when they pulled through the airport’s emergency-access entrance and wheeled over to where a helicopter was already spinning up, Marcus was caught completely by surprise.

Amos cut off the engine and siren. “I sure hope you got a whole pile of the ready with you. Either that or a heat-resistant credit card.”

Marcus was glad to find he had the strength to stand unaided. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Always a pleasure to do the local community a service.” Amos offered his hand. “Go out there and save the world, Marcus. It’s what you’re good at.”

As they approached the revving chopper, Deacon grinned so broadly he revealed the gold embedded in his back teeth. “Always did want to have me a ride in one of them things!”

Amos hustled them over to the rear door, helped Deacon climb inside, then gave the pilot a thumbs-up.

Deacon’s eyes grew steadily rounder as the blades began thundering overhead. When the pilot reared back on the stick, Marcus felt as though he had left his stomach back on the landing pad.

Deacon whooped as the ground shot away. “Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” He plastered his face to the side window. “Now this here is flying!”

Once he was fairly certain the pilot was not going to plow a furrow down someone’s tobacco field, Marcus forced his brain into gear. Only one idea came to mind, and that one held no satisfaction whatsoever. But try as he might, he could come up with nothing better. With the miles sweeping by in great swatches of cloud and pine and summer-green fields, Marcus touched the pilot’s shoulder and motioned that he needed to say something.

The pilot pulled a plasticine map with a red circle drawn over a point along the coastline off the copilot’s seat and gestured Marcus to come forward. The pilot handed him a headset with built-in mike and plugged it into the console. When Marcus had fitted on the padded earpieces, the pilot asked, “What’s up?”

“I need to make a call and my cell phone is back at the house.”

“Number?”

“No idea. Can you connect me to information?”

The pilot switched over the radio controls and said, “HR 438 to Wilmington airfield.”

“Tower here. Go, HR 438.”

“Emergency request for phone patch.”

“Number?”

“Request help with number. Can search?”

“Affirmative. Name?”

Marcus was ready. “Judge Garland Perry, in Wilmington.”

“Office or residence?”

“Private residence. On Fourth Street.”

“Hold one.”

The pilot used the interim to point ahead. Through the sun-drenched
bubble Marcus made out the first glint of sea-blue. Not long now.

There were a series of clicks, then, “Call ready. Go ahead, HR 438. Tower out.”

The judge’s irate voice shouted, “What in blazes is going on here?”

“Judge Perry, this is Marcus Glenwood.”

“Who?”

“Marcus Glenwood, your honor. I met you on your doorstep last weekend in regard to the Dale Steadman case.”

The judge’s ire heightened. “Is it your habit, sir, to disturb officers of the court during the little free time they have?”

“No sir. But this—”

“I was on the phone to my daughter. In
Geneva
. All of a sudden I’ve got sixteen dozen different operators climbing into our private conversation! And because you, sir, have the gall to declare another national emergency!”

“Not national, sir. But an emergency just the same.”

“What in tarnation is all that racket?”

“I’m inside a helicopter, sir.”

“What?”

Marcus swiveled in his seat so he didn’t have to observe the pilot’s grin. “Your honor, I’ve just learned that a New York detective has appeared at the Wilmington airport with the intent of arresting a local citizen.”

There was a longish pause as the judge switched into official gear. “You mean he’s set to arraign him for an extradition hearing.”

Legal jurisprudence required an arrest warrant from another state be served to a local judge. The judge would then issue a second warrant for extradition, assuming the evidence was sound. But big-city cops were notorious for considering the court system a foe. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you. But my guess is he plans to slap the cuffs on our gentleman and take him back.”

“Without a hearing?”

“Sometimes they do that, judge. They march in, pick the guy up, then claim later that our man consented to the move.”
Our
man. Making it a local issue. “Then it’s my client’s word against the detective’s.”

“Now why would he wish to rile the local court with such an outrageous act?”

“Holding an extradition hearing means I get to see his evidence, as your honor well knows. He may not want to reveal all his cards at this point.”

“I assume,” Judge Perry said, “the man in question is the client we spoke of earlier.”

The pilot pointed to a tiny island attached to the mainland by a wooden bridge. The cream-colored stone and steeply pitched slate roof gleamed with the myth of moneyed perfection. Marcus nodded affirmative and said, “Dale Steadman. Yes sir. I am still acting as his counsel.”

“I do not like this. Not one bit.” He chewed over his options as the pilot started a swooping descent. “But I like the alternative even less. You know where the courthouse is located?”

“I’ll find it.”

“Ninety minutes.”

The detective was a bulldog with a mustache. His leather jacket was emblazoned with the NYPD seal, the zipper open to reveal the gun on his belt beside his badge. Dale was stretched out on his own front lawn, his face in the dirt by the rotunda’s central fountain. The detective was in the process of fitting cuffs onto Dale’s wrists as Marcus leapt from the still descending helicopter. He shouted over the rotor’s din, “Let go of my client!”

The detective played at not hearing him, taking his time with the manacles, then hauling Dale to his feet at the very last moment. “Something on your mind?”

“I am Marcus Glenwood.”

The detective played at unconcern, though his face was pinched from the sudden reversal to his plans. “This is supposed to mean something?”

“Dale Steadman is my client.”

Dale shook his head to clear the grass from his forehead. “I didn’t kill her, Marcus. I was in New York but I didn’t do this thing.”

“Let’s hold that thought for a minute.” Marcus nudged Steadman to one side so as to focus tightly upon the detective. “Aureolietti, do I have that right? Swell job you did, informing us of your intentions.”

The detective gave Marcus the sort of flat-panned inspection he would offer a stain on the road. He glanced at where Deacon stood, the silent sentinel. He shrugged his acceptance of the new situation, attorney and witness and no way to continue with headlong intent. “Your man here consented to being transported north.”

Dale waited until the chopper rose and departed to protest, “How was I supposed to say a word with my face pressed in the dirt?”

Marcus asked, “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“What the warrant says. Murder in the first.” He handed over the folded sheaf of papers, then unwrapped two pieces of gum and stuffed them in his mouth. “Mind if we get a move on here? I got a plane to catch.”

“I’m not bound to anybody’s schedule but my client’s. How did you get my client’s name?”

“What is this, twenty questions? We got his name from the two hundred witnesses who place him at the scene of the crime.” He substituted his finger for a gun. “Which is why I’m down here to pick your boy up and carry him back.”

“I tell you I didn’t do it.”

Marcus stepped between them without lifting his gaze from the warrant. “What puts him at the scene, a gun, a knife? I don’t see anything like that stated here.”

“Then you’re not reading what’s written. Your client and the victim got into it before an audience of hundreds. She left. He followed. He did her.”

“So the murder itself did not actually take place in front of these eyewitnesses of yours?”

“The dispute did. The threatening did.”

“You’re saying my client actually threatened the victim with bodily harm?”

“Absolutely. Your boy here stalked her and threatened her. Left her so scared she ran screaming from the scene, yelling about how he’s not going to abuse her ever again.” The detective gave Dale his mobile grin. “Sound familiar?”

“My client has no criminal record of any kind.”

“You look like a smart guy. You know crimes of passion are almost always a one-off.”

“Are you aware my client is involved in a custody dispute with the
victim? A dispute caused by the victim abducting their baby daughter and carrying her off to Germany?” Marcus weaved slightly, intent upon keeping himself at the center of the detective’s roving gaze. “Why would my client kill the one person who could bring his daughter back?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” He glanced at his watch. “We done here?”

Marcus flipped through the pages, searching for the required ammo to keep Dale Steadman firmly planted on Carolina soil. “I still don’t find anything about the murder weapon.” He flipped through the pages once more. “Do you have the gun?”

“The victim was stabbed eleven times, the kind of frenzy you’d expect from a guy who’d lost his little girl. Ain’t that right, sport?”

When Dale Steadman shifted to one side, Marcus halted him with “He’s looking for a reason to charge you with resisting arrest.”

But the detective found pleasure in what Marcus could not see. “Some of the stab wounds were so deep they went right through the body and punched the limo’s seat.”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t say another word,” Marcus snapped.

The detective lifted his chin, a tight little come-on. He said to Steadman, “My mother’s seen this lady sing maybe a dozen times, sport. Called her the empress of the stage. She’s gonna weep real tears when she hears what you’ve done. Gonna be a pleasure telling her I watched you shake and bake.”