Final Call (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

Bradley grabbed his third can of Diet
Pepsi for the morning and headed down to lock up. He had received about four
hours of sleep and, he admitted to himself, he was tired and cranky. This was
not going to be a good day. They had already received emergency notifications
the storm heading their way through Nebraska and Iowa was going to be intense. He
knew most of the afternoon and evening was going to be spent dealing with
traffic accidents and other weather-related rescues.

“Hey, Chief,” said Cory Jackson, a
tall, powerfully-built African-American officer called out with a laugh. “I
understand you’re going to interrogate the prisoner in solitary. Want me to go
with you? Be your back-up?”

“Hey, Jackson, I was going to ask you,
but I figured the kid would be too much for you and I’m trying to work on your
self-esteem this month.”

Cory laughed. “Appreciate it, Chief,”
he said. “But, if the kid overpowers you, just call out. I’ve got your back.”

“And that scares me more than you’ll
ever know,” he joked.

He unlocked the door and found Rodney
curled up on the cot sound asleep. The blanket was wrapped around his body and
his head was tunneled under the pillow. The loud snoring coming from his pillow
assured Bradley his prisoner was in fine shape. Bradley lifted a foot and
kicked the bottom of the cot. Rodney woke with a start and rolled out of the
cot.

“What? What?” he yelled, trying to get
his
bearings.

“Rodney McMullen,” Bradley said. “Are
you ready to answers my questions?”

Rodney nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, I’ll
tell you whatever you want to know,” he said.

“Fine, pick up your belongings and
we’ll go upstairs to my office and wait for Mr. Middlebury.”

“I don’t need Middlebury,” Rodney
insisted. “I can answer the questions on my own. I don’t need a handler.”

“I’ll need you to sign a release that I
offered to wait for your attorney and you declined,” Bradley replied.

“No problem,” he said. “I know what I’m
doing. I studied law, you know.”

They climbed the stairs up to his
office. “So, you’re a lawyer?” Bradley asked.

“No, I studied law, business,
archeology, accounting, and communications,” Rodney said.

“What did you want to be?” Bradley
asked.

“A policeman,” Rodney confessed, “but
my mom thought it would be too dangerous.”

“Well, she was just looking out for
you,” Bradley said. “Moms do that.”

“My mom does it especially well,”
Rodney said. “So does Mr. Middlebury.”

“I’m sure they just want what’s best
for you,” Bradley offered.

Rodney shrugged. “Why do so many people
who want what’s best for me never ask me first?”

“Yeah, that can be a problem.”

Bradley led them into his office and
handed him the release. Once signed, he offered him a seat.

“So, Rodney, where were you on Saturday
night?”

“I was home,” he said. “I was watching
television.”

“Was anyone home with you?”

Rodney chuckled. “You mean like a girl
or something?”

“I mean anyone who could corroborate
you were actually where you say you were.”

“Oh, well, no,” he said. “It was my
usual Saturday night. I watch T.V. and eat pizza.”

“Do you get delivery pizza?” Bradley
asked.

“Why are you talking about pizza? I
thought you wanted to talk about me.”

“The delivery man could verify you were
home,” he said.

“Oh,” Rodney said, a smile spreading
across his face. “That’s really smart. Yeah, it was delivery. I got it at about
seven o’clock.”

“Did you see anyone else that night?”

He thought about it for a minute. “No,
I just watched the Lethal Weapon marathon. It was great.”

“How did you and your aunt get along?”

“Well, Auntie Faye never got along with
anyone,” he said. “She thought I was stupid, immature,
wimpy
and...”

He searched for a word.

“Oh, yeah, worthless,” he finished with
a smile. “She’d say that all the time.”

“That must have made you feel angry.”

He shook his head. “Nope, because I
would just do what my momma suggested, I’d just remember all of the money she
was going to leave me when she died. So, I would just smile and take it.”

“Did you have any money of your own?”
he asked.

“Yeah, even though Mom didn’t get that
much money when she divorced my dad, we were comfortable,” he said. “And then,
when I turned twenty-one, I got my inheritance.”

“When your aunt finally died, what did
you plan to do?” Bradley asked.

“I was going to show them all that I
could run the business,” he said. “I was going to make millions.”

“So, were you anxious to start your new
position?”

He moved forward in his seat and put
his hands on the desk.

“No, Auntie Faye put me in as a junior
executive,” he explained. “She told me I needed to learn the ropes.”

“And how was that going?” Bradley
asked.

“Great,” he said, his voice lifting
with excitement. “I’m doing really well. I’m ready to be in charge now.”

“Tell me about Carl White.”

Rodney froze and his face lost its
animation. “I don’t really know Carl,” he said.

Bradley leaned forward. “That’s funny,”
he said. “It seemed that you knew him last night when you first entered the
room.”

Rodney sat back in his chair and
crossed his arms. “We’re not really friends,” he said. “He’s not what everyone
thinks he is.”

“He’s not?”

Shaking his head, Rodney lowered his
voice. “He thinks people don’t know, but word’s getting out that he has some
big secrets.”

“And what are those secrets?”

“I heard him arguing with Auntie Faye,”
he said. “She was telling him that as long as he did what she wanted, she would
keep his secret safe.”

“What secret?”

“I don’t know, but it must have been
pretty bad.”

“Why would you say that?” Bradley
asked.

“Because Auntie Faye said that he was a
bastard.”

Chapter Thirteen

“Listen, Sean,” Mary growled into her
cell phone. “Just because you’re the head of the
Special Victims Unit, does not mean you can tell me what to
do. You’re my brother, not my father.”

She turned the volume down on her
Bluetooth ear piece as she listened to her brother’s tirade. “What the hell do
you think you’re doing?” he yelled. “Now that you know definitively this was
not just a break-in, but a murder, you need to turn the information over to the
police.”

She changed lanes, passing a
particularly slow moving vehicle on I-39, going south towards DeKalb and then
moved back into the right lane. “I’m not trying to solve a murder,” she
insisted. “And the information I just shared with you is privileged and I
expect you to treat it as such. Even Bradley doesn’t know that Jeannine is
dead.”

There was momentary silence on the
other end of the line. “You mean you haven’t told him his wife is dead?”

She could hear the astonishment and the
judgment in his voice. “Do you think I didn’t want to?” she snapped. “Do you
think I didn’t argue with Jeannine, telling her that he had a right to know?”

“He does have a right to know, Mary,”
Sean said. “Dammit, Mary, she’s his wife.”

She sighed. “I know that,” she said.
“But she’s also my client and she asked me...no, she told me not to tell him. And
then she disappeared. So, I’m not waiting any more, I’m looking for her. Then I
can tell her that I can’t wait any longer.”

“So, you’re not trying to solve this
one on your own?”

“Bradley would never forgive me for
working on this case without him,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that to him.”

Another moment of silence on the line,
but this time Mary could hear him shuffling through paperwork. “Okay, I’ll text
you the address,” he said. “But be careful.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Sean, this case
is over eight years old. Do you think the murderer is hanging around the house
waiting for someone to solve it?”

Mary exited on Hwy 64 and traveled east
to Sycamore. She found it sadly ironic that the subdivision entrance for
Bradley’s former home was off Peace Road. She drove along the quiet residential
streets and gauged the demographics. This was an upper middle-class
neighborhood. This was a place couples settled to raise a family. She wondered
how many people had been home during the day Bradley’s house had been invaded. As
she pulled into the cul-de-sac, she wondered why no one had noticed a strange
vehicle. Why no one noticed someone taking Jeannine away from her home. Why no
one had come forward with any information to help find her killer.

She parked a few houses away from
Bradley’s and looked around. The lots were not overly large, driveways seemed
to delineate property lines and there was not much more than ten yards between
one house and the next. From where she sat, she couldn’t tell if the backyards
were fenced or not. A perpetrator could have parked in one of the driveways
behind the house and come through the back. She shook her head. That still
wouldn’t explain why no one saw anything.

Getting out of the car, Mary slipped on
her gloves and pulled her purse out of the car. Then she pulled a brightly
wrapped package from her purse and started for the house. The sidewalks were
clear, but the snow on either side rose up about three feet.

“Jeannine,” she whispered. “Jeannine,
I’m looking for you now. You can’t hide away forever. I need to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry,” a male voice called out.
“Did you say something?”

Mary turned quickly; she hadn’t seen
the man bent over his snow blower in the driveway next door to Bradley’s former
home. “Oh, you frightened me,” Mary exclaimed with a quick smile. “I was... I
was talking on my phone.”

He looked puzzled, mostly, Mary
decided, because she wasn’t carrying her phone in her hand. “Um, Bluetooth,”
she said, pointing to the ear piece. “I always think people are talking to
themselves too.”

He stood up and nodded. “Yeah, it gets
tricky these days,” he said. “You never know who the nuts are.”

Grinning, she extended her hand. “Hi,
I’m Mary O’Reilly, and I’m fairly sure I don’t qualify for one of the nut
cases. But some people might disagree with me.”

He took her hand and shook it firmly. “Brian,”
he said. “Brian Keller.”

“Hi, Brian.
Maybe you can help me. I’ve been out of the area for years and at the last
minute decided to take some time and come home for the holidays,” she said,
lifting the package in her hand. “I thought I’d try to catch up with some
long-lost friends. I’ve been trying to find a phone number, but it seems like everyone
is unlisted these days. Do you know if Bradley and Jeannine still live next
door?”

He shook his head. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he
said. “They’ve been gone for at least eight years.”

“Oh, darn,” she exclaimed. “You don’t
happen to have a forwarding address, do you?”

He turned, looked over at the house and
then back at Mary. “They didn’t leave under the best circumstances,” he
admitted. “The house was broken into while Bradley was at work; he was a cop
you know. They had just about the whole police force here, searching for clues.
Searching for Jeannine.”

“What happened to Jeannine?”

He shrugged. “No one ever knew,” he
said. “Bradley went nuts looking for her. Last I heard he was crossing the
country checking out every hospital, morgue or mental institution. Poor guy
probably ended up in some kind of institution himself.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

He glanced around. “Confidentially, I
think she left him,” he said. “There were rumors that she had a special friend
who would visit when Bradley was at work. No one was really surprised when he
couldn’t find her.”
 

“What did he say when you told him
about the rumors?” she asked.

“Yeah, right, tell a guy who wears a
gun for a living that you think his wife was cheating on him and ran off,” he
said shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, I can see what you mean,” she
said, inwardly wondering if this piece of evidence could have helped Bradley
solve the crime years ago. “So, did anyone know who the guy was?”

He shook his head. “No, every so often,
we’d catch a glimpse of him through the window,” he said.
“Nothing
real clear.
But we knew it wasn’t Bradley. Besides, when a woman looks
like Jeannine, you know she would never be satisfied with just one man.”

Okay,
well, now we can see where the rumors started
, Mary
thought.

“That’s a real surprise,” she said. “I
always thought they were pretty devoted to each other.”

“Devotion only last as long as
pre-nuptial agreement requires,” he snickered at his own joke. “That’s how I
got the house. My ex didn’t read the fine print on our contract. She messed
around before our third anniversary and I got it all. Course, I never told her
I set her up. Bye-bye, baby.”

“Well, wow, good for you, I guess. Thanks
for your help,” Mary said, slowly backing away from him.
“Happy
New Year.”

“Yeah, to you too,” he said, going back
to his snow blower.

She walked back to her car and sat in
it, looking at the house for a few minutes. “What an ass.”

“That’s what I always thought too.”