Jesse (20 page)

“You don’t think this thing with Patty
and Joey has anything to do with her grandmother, do you?”

Doyle shook his head at Jesse as he
paced.

“Then why bring her up? I mean, I want
this information, but why here, why now?”

“The grandmother is in town, right?” He
knew she was so didn’t wait for an answer. “If she gets to Joey before the
Jennings woman does she will hurt her enough that Joey will be less likely to
defend herself. Or she’ll sell her granddaughter to the bitch to have something
more to spend on booze.”

Jesse stopped pacing and looked at him.
The two of them seemed to connect then. Doyle knew that Jesse would do whatever
it took to keep Joey safe. Whatever and however he needed to do it.

“So, do you know where Jennings is?”
Levy asked. “We know that she killed a woman last night, but—”

“Killed a woman? When was this?” Jesse
cussed a blue streak that had one of the men flush.

Yeah, Doyle thought, he liked this kid.

“You’d better start giving me
information I can work with or, so help me, I’ll call your boss and have Doyle
put on the case. He seems to have a handle on this better than you three do and
he’s fucking retired.”

“You give me a job with your firm when
this is done and I’ll take the case.” Doyle looked at Jesse only. This was what
he’d come here for. “I’ve got it okay, but I want more. A job with loss
prevention with your company and I’m all yours.”

“Done.” Jesse took his hand and shook
it. And just like that, Doyle worked for the Hunter Corporation. “Now, let’s
get these bitches so I can take my girl and get married.”

Doyle knew about the dead woman. Sally
Ferguson had been killed coming from the ATM minutes after the Jennings woman
had had her card taken. The Feds were waiting on her to use the credit cards
they thought were still in the purse when it had been taken. The pictures on
the cell phone, the one that had been covered in blood, had told the story better
than words. Doyle looked around the room

“She’s staying at the hotel on route
forty. There’s a guy with her and, best I can figure, it’s her brother-in-law.”
He watched one of the other agents get up and walk toward a map that had been
laid out on another table. Doyle followed and pointed to the place. “She’s been
there since the fire. He’s been coming and going for a bit now. I think he or
the woman killed a man by the name of Stanton. His body turned up in the morgue
a few days ago.”

“How do you know they’re related? The
murdered man and Sondra?” Doyle looked at Jesse and shrugged. “A hunch? Okay, I
can live with that. You’ve had more information than these three have. So, who
was he?”

“Guy that sold himself off as a hit man.
Wasn’t much more than a hooker. He’d talk a big game; hell, I heard it myself
when he’d sit in the bar. Anyway, he came in about three days before his body
came up and told me how he’d scammed this man and his sister. He said he didn’t
care to fuck her, but the guy he’d let do whatever he wanted in any part of him
he liked. When he was found…let’s just leave it at he’d gotten his wish
apparently.”

He’d had sex. Before or after his death,
the examiners weren’t sure. Jon Stanton had been sodomized horribly and not
just with a dick, but whatever the other person had been able to reach as well.
Doyle had talked to the coroner and was told that the man had not gone
peacefully.

“So this brother-in-law? Is he still
hanging around or we gonna find him lying in some ditch too?” Goldman, the other
agent, had an attitude that needed adjusting, and Doyle was about ready to do
it for him free of charge. But Jesse beat him to it.

“You find anything more than this man
has and you can speak, otherwise you go sit at the table and shut the fuck up. Had
you been on the case half what this man has been, a woman wouldn’t be dead and
my fiancée wouldn’t be shot.”

Doyle nearly laughed out loud when the
other man sputtered but caught himself. He thought he was going to enjoy
working for this man.

“Let me ask you something,” Jesse said
while the other men organized a hit on the hotel an hour later. “Why didn’t you
come with this information sooner? You had it all right there. Why not go to
the police?”

“Did. Someone from their department…” He
pointed to the man sitting at the table that Jesse has sent there. “He shit in
their oatmeal at the beginning. Told them when they wanted podunks to help out
he’d give them a call. Didn’t set well with the department. When I went to them
I wasn’t aware of this yet. I told them all I had and it wasn’t until I was
called to the Ferguson scene that one of the cops told me. Thought maybe I
could get to the right person on my own.”

Doyle watched Jesse seem to process
this. When he nodded, Doyle knew that whatever the man did, he’d hate to be in
Goldman’s position when he was finished. The younger man was quiet, but Doyle
was reasonably sure that he could get results better that way than screaming. And
he knew that when Jesse was finished, heads were going to roll. Doyle hoped
he’d be around to see it when they did.

Chapter 18

Sondra watched the bar. The stupid girl
worked here, didn’t she? When the hell was she going to show up? Or did she
think money just grew on trees? Probably. Homeless bitch was making her life
difficult at the moment and she wanted her gone.

Sondra looked down at her list. She’d
worked on it most of the night and was quite proud of it. She knew that two
things hinged on making it work, and killing the girl was on the top. Then
number two was to make nice with the elder Hunter woman.

That was going to be a piece of cake,
she figured. Annamarie wouldn’t want to lose her as a friend because of her
connections with the real-estate market, and Sondra thought that alone was
going to be her ticket. People like the Hunters needed more land to suck the
economy up. Then there was the fact that she’d saved her life. Sondra knew that
Annamarie had been out of it most of the time they’d been in the building and
once the homeless bitch was dead and unable to refute her claims Sondra would
simply convince her that she’d been the one to save her and there had been no
one else there.

The third thing on her list made her
frown. She wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to explain the dead woman. Sondra
had read the papers this morning and saw that the stupid bitch had taken her
picture. The police said that they were searching for a woman in the pictures
to ask her some questions. Could she please come to the station so they could “get
a clearer picture of what had happened”? Like that was bloody going to happen.

A car, a large SUV actually, pulled in
front of the bar. She’d seen that car before and was laughingly aware that it
didn’t belong to the homeless bitch. She watched as a man got out and went to
the door, then back to the car. It drove off a few minutes later. Sondra came
out of her hiding place and went to see what it was.

Nothing that she could see. She
remembered the man bending and wondered if he’d slipped something under the
door. Bending down, she looked and saw that he had. There was something a good
five or so inches from the door. Sondra cursed at the man’s efficiency. He
couldn’t have just slid it under; no, the moron had to shove it under there
like he was trying for the gold. She stomped back to her hiding place.

The list was not going to work if she
couldn’t get the stupid girl. Sondra waited for a little while longer until she
remembered the paper she’d taken. No one was using it, sitting on the front
porch of that house, so she didn’t even feel bad. Opening it, she was
disappointed that there was nothing on the front page about her. She’d take
care of that soon enough. She was going to be top salesperson in the state when
this was done. Annamarie was going to be standing there right next to her too.

Seeing an obit about Patty Melbourne and
turning to the page, Sondra laughed at what it said. No wonder no one was coming
here, they were at the woman’s funeral. She tossed the paper on the ground and
made her way to the city limits. This stupid bar was out a ways and she was
exhausted when she got to a place where she could get a ride.

She still had ten bucks left of the
measly twenty the other woman had given her and she wondered if she should go
to the bank again. Sondra decided that she could go to a convenience store and
buy something and tell the cashier she wanted more cash. The woman…Sally
Ferguson according to the credit card she now had, owed her more than Sondra
had gotten from her anyway.

The place was as run down on the inside
as it had looked on the outside. There was a long counter that had two
registers on it and also a couple of free-standing ones that held coffee and
pop respectively. Sondra went to the coffee one and made herself a cup of
creamy latte with hazelnut flavoring. She was taking a sip when she walked to the
counter. It wasn’t great, but it was the best she’d had since this thing with
Annamarie had started.

“That’ll be four-ten.”

Sondra raised a brow at the price, but
didn’t comment. She handed him the credit card and asked about getting more
cash. He told her to tell it that on the machine.

How much? She wanted to clean out her
account, but the biggest choices she had was fifty bucks. Thinking if she
needed more she’d simple come back, she pressed that key. The machine
immediately asked for a pin. She didn’t have one. Before she could come up with
a plausible reason she didn’t, the sales clerk told her to put it as credit and
not debit and she’d be okay.

He handed her the cash and told her to
have a great day. It wasn’t until she was outside that she remembered the
coffee. She almost turned around to go in and get it when a cop pulled up in
front of the place and got out. Hurrying now, she went to the first restaurant
she could find and went inside to use the phone.

The ride to the cemetery wasn’t all that
long, but it did cost her twelve dollars. The driver glared at her when she
didn’t give him a tip. Like she gave a shit. She was on a mission and it didn’t
mean she was going to spend her little bit of money making some jerk who sat on
his ass all day richer. She was going to the grave of the woman she’d killed. She
pulled out the little gun she’d found at the hotel that day.

Killing Patty hadn’t been what she’d
planned. Her plan had been to hurt the homeless bitch enough to drag her off
somewhere and make her suffer. But the older woman had stepped in front of the
bitch just as Sondra had fired. At first when she’d hit her, she simply thought
that she’d dropped for cover and fired three more times to get her to rise up. But
she’d missed twice and then hit the bitch in the leg, causing her to drop out
of sight too before she heard the shouts. Some big guy had come around the
corner of the building just as Sondra had a bead on bitch’s head. She might
have shot him too, but the little gun was empty. She had since loaded it and
now carried more of the cute little bullets in her pocket everywhere she went. Smiling,
she thought one never knew when someone was going to piss you off, so it was
good to be prepared.

There were three people there at the
gravesite, but Sondra didn’t see the bitch. There were two men, one she
recognized as a minister from the paper and another younger man she didn’t
know. There was the same SUV there, black and huge sitting nearby, but she
couldn’t tell if anyone was in it yet or not. Moving to just within fifty feet
of the men, she stepped behind a large tree just as the door to the SUV opened.
It was the man from the bar.

Sondra watched as he fussed with his
coat. Then he walked around the other side of the thing and opened that door. When
he and a woman started to walk away Sondra had a moment of surprise when she
realized that she was looking at the homeless bitch. What the hell was she
doing in a car like this with a butler, no less?

Anger had always made her stupid, she
knew this. But today she was pegged in the red with anger and she didn’t stop
to think about what she was doing. She moved up beside the man and woman and
fired twice. The man dropped and the woman turned on her. Sondra pointed the
gun at her and everyone there stopped.

“You’ve fucked up my life enough. With
you dead, I can get everything back in order and get to selling houses again.” The
girl looked at her as if she didn’t have a clue. “When I kill you. When I kill
you, everything will be back to normal again.”

“I don’t know who you are. Why don’t you
let me see to Lowell first and you can tell me what this is all about.” Rage
surged through Sondra and she turned the gun on the man lying there. “Don’t.”

The girl was actually going to order her
around? That was not going to happen. Sondra heard something behind her and,
before she could fire at the man again, she was rushed from the side. As she
went over her head then landed hard on her back she heard the police sirens
going off. Putting the gun to the man who laid over her head, she told him to
get off her. He moved, but not before he elbowed her several times. She thought
about shooting him on principle, but didn’t know how many cops were coming or
if they were coming to get her.

When she stood up, the bitch was holding
her hands over the man she’d come with. It looked like she’d gotten him in the
arm, but couldn’t be sure. And the police were getting closer.