When All The Girls Have Gone (17 page)

Max opened the passenger-side door of the rental car. Charlotte got in and buckled her seat belt. He rounded the front of the vehicle and got behind the wheel.

For a moment they both sat quietly, looking at the modern headquarters of the Loring Police Department.

“I wonder if Louise Flint did drive up that mountain to talk to Briggs,” Max said after a while.

“We know she didn’t die there. She died in her condo in Seattle.”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection.” Max fired up the rental and eased it out of the parking stall. “I’m sure now that whatever happened when Louise made the trip to Loring, it’s what got her killed.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. One thing we need to talk about before we get back to Seattle.”

“What’s that?”

“Given what has happened, I don’t want you to be alone,” Max said. “Not until we figure out what’s going on here.”

“You think I need a bodyguard.”

“Yeah.”

“But I’ve got a job. I can’t just go into hiding.”

“I think you’ll be okay at Rainy Creek Gardens. From what I saw, they’ve got good security. Strangers aren’t allowed to wander in and out. The front desk staff pays attention. There are a lot of cameras.”

“Security is one of the amenities that Rainy Creek Gardens offers,” she said. “Also, everyone knows everyone else, which is an added bonus. But I’ve got decent security at my apartment building, too. Jocelyn insisted on it when I first moved to Seattle. There is someone at the front desk during the day. You can’t get in or out without a key. There are cameras in the garage and elevators. What more do I need?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re going to stick together until this is finished. My house or your apartment. Either one works for me.”

She gave him a quick, searching look. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“The more you get to know me, the more you’ll realize that I’m serious about most things. It’s one of my more boring qualities.”

“I see.” She smiled faintly. “Well, in situations like this, it’s good to have a serious person around. All right, let’s go with my apartment, at least for now. The sofa pulls out into a bed and I’ve got a powder room you can use.”

“A powder room?”

“No shower in it. You’ll have to use mine.”

He thought about the security features her building offered. Then he thought about the warm, sunny colors of her little apartment and how he would have to make do with her shower.

“Your place works for me,” he said.

Trey Greenslade parked the old, battered pickup behind the row of closed-up cabins. He got out, careful to keep the bulk of the truck between himself and the lodge buildings. He kept the driver’s-side door open and positioned himself behind it.

He had bought the pickup at a used car lot shortly after he had discovered the truth about the past. He had known then that the time would probably come when he would need a vehicle that would not draw attention on the mountain roads.

He had a talent for planning ahead; for strategy. It was why he would be the one to take control of Loring-Greenslade.

When he had come across the mysterious cash withdrawals in his father’s financial records—withdrawals that had occurred like clockwork every few months for over a decade—he had assumed that the old man had kept a mistress on the side. It had amused him to think that the domineering, self-righteous bastard had been such a hypocrite.

True, an illicit love affair that had lasted well over a decade didn’t amount to much of a character flaw. But to the people of Loring, who had long since put Gordon Greenslade on a pedestal, it would have come as a shock to know that he had cheated on his wife and lived a secret life for years.

Trey had pondered whether or not to tell his grandmother what he had discovered. It would have been amusing to see the expression on the old
bitch’s face when she learned that her firstborn son had kept a secret lover. But he had concluded it would be more interesting to figure out the identity of the girlfriend first.

It was only when he had taken a closer look at the timing of the withdrawals that he had realized just what he had uncovered. The shock had hit him with the force of a backcountry avalanche.

The payments had started less than a month after the Pruett case had been dropped by the detective in charge. That could not be a coincidence. His father had been paying blackmail for years to keep him from being identified as a suspect.

But the real fright had set in when it dawned on him that he had no idea of the identity of the extortionist. It could have been almost anyone in town—another student or a member of his old fraternity, maybe—someone who had seen something that night. It could have been a janitor or a professor who was able to place him at the scene. Maybe there were
photos
.

He had been very careful that night, but Pruett had been his first. He hadn’t yet gotten the strategy down perfectly. There had been problems. The stupid woman had fought him. She’d scratched his arms. He’d had to wear long sleeves for days afterward. He’d worn a condom, but in his rush to escape the scene afterward, he’d lost it. What if there was a surveillance camera that he hadn’t noticed somewhere on the path or in the parking lot where he had left the car? He’d heard that Pruett had insisted on an examination at the hospital. A rape kit had been prepared.

So many things hadn’t gone right that first time. The memory of his close call still gave him chills. But when no one had so much as even questioned him, he’d assumed he’d dodged all the bullets. It was only when he’d settled his father’s financial affairs after the funeral and understood what the cash withdrawals meant that he’d realized he hadn’t been so lucky after all.

Once he was no longer in the grip of the initial panic, he had calmed down and started to think more clearly. That was when it had occurred to him that all he had to do was wait. The blackmailer had grown accustomed
to the regular cash payments. He or she would want to keep the money coming in.

And sure enough, the first demand had arrived less than a month after his father’s funeral. There had been nothing high-tech about it. No mysterious text. No anonymous e-mail. No phone call. He had found a note on the front seat of his car.

The instructions had been simple and straightforward. He had followed them precisely and left the briefcase filled with cash in the designated place on a hiking trail. And then he’d used a pair of binoculars to keep watch from a distance.

He’d had no luck the first time. It was late summer and there had been a steady stream of tourists, hikers and vacationers trekking up and down the trail. He hadn’t spotted the person who had retrieved the briefcase.

A month later, however, he’d gotten another demand. It was early fall in the mountains. The day-trippers were gone. He had been instructed to leave the money under a bridge.

Once again he had watched from a distance and that time he had gotten lucky. An SUV—the license plates obscured with mud—had pulled into the lay-by at one end of the bridge. Egan Briggs had climbed out of the front seat to retrieve the cash.

For a time he had been content to let Briggs continue to think that he was safe. There was no reason to believe that a confirmed blackmailer would want to cut off the flow of money. Besides, taking out Briggs wouldn’t be easy. The man was not only an ex-cop, he was, by all accounts, a skilled hunter. He was also said to be dangerously paranoid, maybe flat-out crazy.

Trey had told himself that he needed a foolproof strategy and he’d been working on it when Louise Flint had seen fit to further complicate his already very complicated life.

Now, in the midst of dealing with the members of the investment club and trying to find Jocelyn Pruett, he had received a new demand from Briggs. It had come in well ahead of schedule; and, with it, a promise to make a final trade.

He studied the big SUV parked near cabin number 6. The tinted glass
made it difficult to see into the interior, but as far as he could tell there was no one in the driver’s seat. Something about the shadows in the rear cargo area suggested a pile of boxes and suitcases.

It would take a lot to make Egan Briggs run, he thought.

A curtain twitched in the window of cabin number 6.

“I’m here, Briggs. I’ve got the money. Where is the evidence box?”

The rear door of the cabin opened. Egan Briggs emerged. He had a gun in his hand.

“Figured you knew it was me your old man had been paying off,” Briggs said.

“You were the only one in a position to make the Pruett case go away,” Trey said. “I just hadn’t realized until recently that the old bastard had been making blackmail payments to you.”

“Came as a shock, huh? It wasn’t you he was protecting, you know.”

“I’m well aware of that. It was the Greenslade name and the reputation of the company that he worried about. It was pretty much all he cared about.”

“Yep. If the truth about what you’d done all those years ago had come out, it would have destroyed some kind of acquisition deal that was in the works at the time. Might have taken down the whole company. It sure as hell would have pissed off your grandmother. And everyone knows she controls Loring-Greenslade.”

“That’s what she keeps telling me.”

“You kept at it, didn’t you? Pruett was just the first. I reminded your pa of that from time to time.”

“So you know that, too?”

“I used to be a damn good cop.”

“A damn dirty cop. Where’s the evidence box?”

Briggs jerked his head toward the doorway of the cabin. “In there.”

“I’m sure you can understand that I want to see it before I turn over the cash.”

“You’ll see it when I’m gone. Put the briefcase in the front seat of my vehicle.”

“Here’s the thing, Briggs, I’d like to keep the truck between us.”

Briggs snorted. “You think I’m gonna kill you?”

“Isn’t that the plan? I give you the money and you get rid of me?”

“No need to do that. I’m the one who’s going to disappear. Been planning to do it for a while now. After I found out that the Sawyer woman and that damned PI from Seattle were poking around in the Pruett case, I figured it was time to get into the wind.”

“Still, I’d rather not take any chances,” Trey said. He raised his right hand, showing Briggs the pistol he had brought with him. “Just so you know you’re not the only one with a weapon. I didn’t much like my old man, but I gotta tell you, I learned a couple of things from him. One of those things was how to run Loring-Greenslade. The other was how to shoot.”

Briggs spit on the ground. “So we got us a standoff. No reason we can’t do a little more business. Tell you what. I’ll bring out the box and put it right here on the step. Then you toss the briefcase to me. I’ll get into the van and leave. That suit you?”

“All right. You go first. I want to see that box.”

Briggs backed into the cabin, never lowering the gun. A moment later he reappeared with a cardboard file box bearing the faded logo of the Loring Police Department. A series of numbers and the word
Evidence
had been scrawled by hand on the front.

Trey’s heart pounded. He would soon be able to breathe freely again.

“Here’s your box,” Briggs said. “Wait until you see what’s inside it. Had you dead to rights, you fool. You made a couple of serious mistakes that night. I knew what I had straight off. Called your pa the next day. He didn’t hesitate for a second. Offered me half a year’s salary right then and there. And that was only the beginning.”

“Shut up and put down the box.”

Briggs crouched to set the box on the front step. He kept the gun leveled. “Put the case on the hood of your truck,” he said.

“You’re making me nervous, Briggs.”

“Put the goddamned case on the hood.”

Trey set the briefcase on the front end of the pickup and gave it a shove. It slid a short distance across the hood.

Briggs moved out of the doorway of the cabin. He edged toward the pickup, keeping the gun aimed at Trey.

When he reached the truck, he seized the handle of the briefcase and backed swiftly to the SUV. He made his way around the front to the driver’s side.

The bulk of the SUV now formed a barricade. Briggs opened the driver’s-side door and put the briefcase on the front seat. Trey waited while he opened it and verified that the cash was inside.

“Satisfied?” Trey asked.

“Yep, looks good. Been nice doin’ business with the Greenslade family.”

Briggs got into the van, cranked up the engine and put it in gear. He drove off down the old logging road, mud and gravel spitting from under the wheels.

Trey counted to three and decided the van was far enough away. He took the remote out of the pocket of his jacket and pressed the button.

The small device hidden under the cash in the briefcase exploded. The big vehicle swerved violently; it slammed into a tree and bounced back onto the dirt road. The vehicle burst into flames.

Given the rain-drenched landscape and the fact that the van was in the center of the muddy road, there wasn’t much danger of a forest fire that would attract attention, Trey thought.

Dazed with the intoxicating adrenaline rush of what he had just done, he walked slowly toward the burning SUV.

The explosion had ripped off the driver’s-side door. Egan Briggs had been thrown from the vehicle. He was a bloodied mess, but he was still alive—barely.

His eyelids flickered. He squinted up at Trey.

“Told your dad there wasn’t much point giving you a second chance,” Egan whispered. His voice was almost gone. “You’re broken. But he said he didn’t have a choice.”

Briggs closed his eyes. He was dying.

Trey shot him in the head, just to make certain. Then he tossed several
plastic packets of drugs into and around the SUV. When the police finally got around to investigating, they would conclude crazy Egan Briggs had been dealing and had been taken out by his competitors.

One of the useful things about having grown up in a family that had made its fortune in pharmaceuticals was that you had access to a lot of interesting chemicals and meds, Trey thought. He’d been twelve years old when he created his first exotic street drugs and sold them to some out-of-town kids whose families were vacationing in the mountains outside of Loring.

Satisfied with the scene, he hurried back to cabin 6. With the blackmailer out of the way he could return to the hunt for Pruett. For years he had told himself that she would never be a problem. He had liked knowing she was out there. He was sure she thought about him every single day. But he hadn’t realized that she was actively searching for him until recently. That news had come as a shock. She had gotten too close. The time had come to get rid of her.

But the evidence box was the more immediate threat. Once the contents had been destroyed, he could relax and take his time with Pruett.

He reached the step and bent down to examine the evidence box. The contents chained him to the past. He would not be free until everything inside had been destroyed.

He tore off the tape and raised the lid of the box.

For a few seconds he did not comprehend what he was looking at. Then it hit him. There was nothing inside the evidence box except some yellowed paperbacks and a handful of old magazines.

Egan Briggs had cheated him.