Judgment Calls Page 28
“Frank’s the one who killed her, Derrick, not me,” O’Donnell said. “He’s the one who got out of control. Luckiest thing that ever happened to you was me being on call when her body was found. I got you guys out of that jam, and I’ve been getting you out of this one.”
O’Donnell was getting Derrick riled up again. “That’s bullshit, man! You helped yourself out on that first one, but now you’ve been screwing us.”
“Tim, you were involved in this and then told Landry what to say?” I asked, trying to follow the conversation between the two of them. “That’s how she knew everything about Jamie?”
“I don’t know how she knew, Sam, I always assumed it was Forbes. But I ran with it and got the convictions, didn’t I, Derrick? And, even though we were supposed to be even after that, I’ve been trying to help Frank out ever since. When he got popped in Clackamas County, it was me who told him to argue consent instead of that stupid alibi. And it got him a damn good plea deal, didn’t it? I’ve been trying to get him out of this one, too. I used information from confidential police databases to write those Long Hauler letters. Even tonight, I’ve done everything you asked. You wanted me to leave a message for Sam, I did it. I got you the alarm code. I’ve helped you.”
Tim obviously didn’t care anymore about lying to me; he was doing whatever he could to save himself before the Derringers killed me. His pleas hadn’t seemed to work.
“And now I’m under fucking indictment,” Derrick said. “So it’s time to put this thing to rest.”
“What message? I didn’t get any message.” I was frantically stalling for time before they could implement whatever plan they had in mind.
“Yes, you did, and the police will find it with your bodies,” Derrick said.
Frank went into the kitchen and pushed a button on my answering machine with his knuckle. I heard Tim’s voice say, “Sam, it’s Tim O’Donnell. I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for tonight to talk about the case. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be at your house around eight. See ya.”
Frank came back in, looking very proud of himself. “See, Tim tells us that the FBI’s waiting for the Long Hauler to make a big splash. So he’s going to come here tonight to kill you both.”
Derrick laughed. “Yeah, Tim. Thanks for the imaginary friend. It was brilliant. He’ll take care of the two of you, and down the road we’ll take care of Haley and the Martin girl after we’ve turned them out for a few more months. They’ll just be a couple of dead prostitutes.”
“Yeah, maybe the Long Hauler can write a letter about it,” Frank added, laughing with his brother.
They were psychopaths, but I had to give them credit. They were smart psychopaths. My head was reeling. There was no Long Hauler. O’Donnell had access to the Northwest Regional Cold Case Database. He’d written the letters, carefully selecting details only from cases that lacked DNA evidence. He’d probably mailed them when he was out of town at his fishing cabin.
“Frank, Derrick,” I said. “It doesn’t matter that Tim was there when Jamie died. There’s a rule that says a co-conspirator’s testimony alone isn’t enough to convict. Even if Tim testified against you, the State would need other evidence to corroborate the testimony. There isn’t any. Anyway, he’s the last one who’s going to turn you in. It implicates him too.”
O’Donnell finally clued in. “She’s right, Derrick,” he said. “I’d never testify against you, but even if I did, the rule she’s talking about would keep there from being any case.”
The tag team approach seemed to be working. “You’re better off blowing town than killing us,” I said. “You commit a double murder, and you’re looking at the death penalty. They won’t just assume the Long Hauler did it. They’ll check for copycats, scour the files we were working on. They’ll find the pictures I have of you with Haley. They’ll find Travis Culver. Once the police are done fishing around, you’ll wind up on death row. As it is, you can bail.”
Derrick thought about it for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Nice effort, but our previous counsel here already gave us some advice. I tried like hell to get those pictures back to be safe, but O’Donnell here tells me they don’t show much. Hell, my face ain’t even in ’em. As for Culver, he’ll be shot during a robbery gone bad at the Collision Clinic.”
“Derrick,” O’Donnell said, “don’t you think the police are going to put it together? A witness, the DA, and the victim in Frank’s trial all turn up dead? Don’t do this, man.”
They needed to see that their plan was starting to fall apart. “The police will find the transcript of the grand jury testimony against you,” I said. “They’ll draw the same conclusions I did. Right now, there’s not enough proof, but with two dead DAs they’ll put it together. And the grand jury testimony will be admissible in court if any of the witnesses are dead.”
“What grand jury testimony?” Derrick asked. “Tim, you said there was no record of a grand jury testimony. Is there or isn’t there? Don’t you fucking lie to me!” he yelled, backhanding O’Donnell with the gun.
Tim’s head jerked to one side with the blow. When he sat back up, blood was running from a cut beneath his right eye. “We don’t have court reporters for normal grand jury sessions, but you can request one if you want to keep a record.”
Derrick smacked him again in the same place, bursting the cut open even wider. “Now you fucking tell me, man!” He pursed his lips, trying to figure out his next move. “OK, bitch.”
I assumed he was talking to me.
“You think you’re so smart, but now I know you got a transcript, you’re gonna tell me where it is.”
“It’s at the office,” I said.
“That’s bullshit,” Derrick said. “Tim tells me you been holding out on him. He couldn’t find the files in your office and tells me you’ve been hiding them at home. Only way he knew you indicted me was a secretary. Ain’t that right, Tim?”
I looked over at O’Donnell. The right side of his face was swollen and bloodied.
“Alice mentioned it to me,” he said by way of explanation. “She recognized the name and thought I should know about it.”
In an office where I could never find anyone to help me, I’d managed to find someone who was too competent. I should’ve known Alice Gernstein wouldn’t miss a beat.
It was clear that O’Donnell was losing his resolve to fight. It was also clear that I wasn’t digesting the new information quickly enough. My first impulse was to be pissed at him for snooping through my office, but then I remembered that this was a man who had helped kill Jamie Zimmerman, sent an innocent man to death row, and led the Derringers to me to save his own ass.
Derrick was behind me now, running the head of his gun along my collarbone, pushing aside my hair to graze the back of my neck. “Tell us where the transcript is, Sam, or I’m gonna have one hell of a time on your buddy Kendra before she dies.”
I resisted the urge to tell him I wasn’t as stupid as O’Donnell. I knew they were going to kill us and do horrible things to Kendra before they killed her, whether I was helpful or not. I also knew that the promise of those transcripts was the only leverage I had at this point.
Luckily, I’d left my case file in the trunk of my car. “I’ve got them locked in a safe,” I said.
“Good girl,” Derrick said. “Now where’s the safe?”
“Upstairs,” I said, “in the master bedroom.”
“Aangh,” he responded, like a buzzer on a game show, “wrong answer. I personally tossed this place looking for your little friend’s peepshow pictures, and there ain’t no safe.”
“It’s an old wall safe. It’s hidden in the baseboard. There’s no way you’d see it.”
I could picture Derrick searching his memory for the ransacking of my bedroom, doubting whether he would have noticed an irregularity in the oversized baseboards. He threw a note pad and pen at me from the dining room table. “The combination,” he said. “Where is it in the baseboards?”
Derrick snatched the paper from my outstretched hand and gave it to his brother, gesturing with his head toward the stairs. “Here, take these,” he said, throwing him a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket. Frank took the stairs two at a time. I heard a few thumps from upstairs, followed by silence and a few more thumps. I tried not to think about Frank Derringer being in my bedroom.
After a few more rounds of thumps, Frank scrambled back down the stairs to the landing. “That bed is fucking heavy, man. I can’t budge it.”
I had sworn at myself many times for buying a solid maple bed that I couldn’t move without the help of a strong friend. But it had just been added to the very short list of things I’d never get rid of. That is, if I lived past eight o’clock.
Derrick was less happy with the news. “Jesus Christ, man. Can’t you do a fucking thing by yourself?” Then he looked around the room, in search of Plan B.
C’mon, pea brain, I thought, watching him ponder the possible combinations. There’s only one right answer here.
His eyes eventually fell on me. He gestured toward the stairs with his head and said, “You, go up and help.” Yes! Good answer, Derrick, good answer! “Try anything, and Kendra will pay the price,” he yelled as I went up the stairs, Frank behind me.
Frank was a lightweight. The bed was approximately four centimeters from where I’d last left it. I walked around to the far side, saying, “If we each take one leg of the headboard and pull back, it’s usually the best way to move it.”
I watched Frank take his position on the other side of the bed, and then I crouched to my knees to reach beneath the bed ruffle and grab the headboard. As Frank pulled against his side of the bed, I pulled on my side with my right hand. With my left, I reached inside the top shelf of my nightstand and pulled my .25-caliber automatic loose from the tape that held it to the bottom of my drawer. I slid it onto the floor next to me and then pulled on the bed hard with all my weight.
The bed jerked a few feet away from the wall. Frank rose from his side of the bed and saw my gun aimed on him before I’d fired off the shot. If he could’ve just stood still, the bullet would have hit him dead center in the chest. Instead, he ran for the door quickly enough that it caught him in the right shoulder.
I fired off a second shot but missed and hit the doorframe. Damn. Too much time on the firing range, not enough chasing down wily targets.
Two quick shots rang from downstairs as I followed Frank to the door. By the time I got there, he was almost to the end of the hallway leading to the stairs. I fired another shot. I must’ve hit him, because I heard a low grunt. I must not have gotten him good, though, because he turned down the stairs, and my next shot ripped through the shameless Warhol knockoff on my wall.
Assuming that Derrick would be waiting for me at the bottom, I took the stairs with my back pressed against the inner wall. I stopped at the last step before the landing, steeling myself to make the turn. The pressure of my heart pounding against my chest was fierce, and I fought to catch my breath.
I poked my head around the corner and then retreated to the safety of the wall again. Keeping my back against the wall, I began moving down the second half of the stairs. Tim O’Donnell was still in my Mission chair, but now blood was oozing from a dark hole in his forehead. From the looks of things, a second bullet had been fired into his groin.
As much as I’d practiced shooting, I’d never made a sweep through a house before, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. Without any other basis of information, I instinctively relied upon that most reliable of sources, television.
From the landing, I could see that the front entrance and living room were clear. I swung off the stairs in a half circle to face the back of the house, my gun outstretched in front of me. Still clear.
The living room and Tim’s dead body were to my left now as I faced my dining room and kitchen. I reached down slowly, keeping my gun pointed in front of me, and grabbed my purse. If I could just make it out the front door and to the safety of my car, I’d be home free.
As I reached to unbolt the front door, I saw Derrick spring around the corner of the dining room with his gun in front of him. He must’ve watched TV as a kid, too. What he should’ve been doing was practicing at the firing range, because he was a piss-poor shot. I heard the mirror behind me crash as a bullet ripped into it.
I fired off two shots as I jumped across the hallway, over the top of my sofa, and into the coffee table. I muffled a cry as pain shot through my left side where I landed against the oak edge. I scurried backward to get myself out of the pool of blood that was quickly forming beneath O’Donnell and my Mission chair. The noise was blocked out by the sound of the back door sliding open, followed by tires squealing down the street.
I don’t know how long I lay there, listening to myself breathe, trying to convince myself that I couldn’t hear anything else. Even Vinnie was quiet now.
I finally mustered up the courage to crawl around the back of the sofa and sneak a quick peek into the dining room. I’d done right by the firing range. Derrick Derringer was on his back, two bullet holes squarely in the middle of his chest. Apparently, it was OK for me to move while I was firing, as long as my target stood still.
Based on the trail of blood through the dining room, into the kitchen, and out the back door, I guessed that Frank had fled when he saw his brother go down. More blood outside suggested that Frank was long gone.
I freed Vinnie from the pantry as I dialed 911. Then I sat in a ball on the kitchen floor holding him and my gun close to my chest until I heard sirens pulling up to the house and fists pounding on the front door.
16
When I finally woke up the next morning, my whole body was on fire. I was also sleepy and had a sore throat. By the time the police finally left—around two in the morning—I’d related my entire story three different times. First, I had to tell the patrol officers who responded to the 911 call, so they wouldn’t shoot me when I answered the front door with a gun in my hand, two dead bodies behind me, and bullet holes all over the place.
Then I had to give it to Walker and Johnson, who drew the MCT call-out. They offered to page Chuck for me. I guess once your sex life’s on the front page of the newspaper, it’s considered public knowledge. They apparently didn’t know the whole story, because they seemed caught off guard when I asked them to call my dad instead.
Then I had to explain it all a third time to Griffith, who showed up just as the medical examiner was zipping the body bag closed around Tim O’Donnell’s corpse.
“The Chief called me,” he said. “He thought I should know that two of my deputies were involved in a shoot-out.”
By then, my narrative skills had gotten pretty proficient. The Derringers’ involvement in street-level prostitution. O’Donnell’s extracurricular interests, which led him from what he thought was a staged fantasy with an underage prostitute to the murder of Jamie Zimmerman. How Kendra’s assault arose from the same scenario, but this time with Travis Culver as the not-so-innocent dupe. Culver’s lies about Frank’s car. O’Donnell’s fabrication of the Long Hauler letters. My night of shoot-’em-up action. I dumped it all on him. Except the part where I’d given O’Donnell my resignation.
“You should’ve come to me with this, Samantha,” he said. He looked tired, and, in the light of my kitchen, the wrinkles that usually seemed distinguished just looked old.
“I thought I did the right thing at the time. I knew O’Donnell was set on killing the case, and I assumed you’d listen to him unless I had some leverage.”
He stood to leave. “You should give me more credit, Sam. I’m an independent thinker, and now I’m going to go home to think.” As he headed out the door, he gave me a wave over his shoulder. “Nice house you got here. See you
in the morning.”
I had assumed from his comment that I was supposed to go to the office this morning, regardless of my sleep deprivation, sore throat, and aches. It definitely beat being dead, though.
And at least I was safe from the Derringers. At my insistence, Walker had dispatched patrol officers to watch Haley and Kendra while police began their search for Frank Derringer. I thought about doing the same for Travis Culver, but as far as I was concerned, he could fend for himself. The warning call I placed to Henry Lee Babbitt seemed courtesy enough.
Around the time Griffith left, Johnson snapped his cell phone shut and announced they’d found Frank.
“Was he dumb enough to go home?” I asked.
“Wherever he was headed, he never got there. Traffic responded to a major one-car accident on I-Eighty-four. The car burst through the railing at an overpass and flipped head first onto the concrete below. Driver was dead by the time they cut the car open. They were searching the car for holes, trying like hell to figure out where the bullets in the driver’s shoulder and ass came from, when they heard the APB for Derringer on the radio.”
“His butt?” Walker said.
“Yeah. Looks like that second bullet of yours went straight into the man’s left cheek, Kincaid. Must have hurt like a mother fucker when he was driving on the freeway. He was probably squirming around trying to take the weight off his bony ass when he lost control.”
I hadn’t been able to laugh with them about it then, but in the morning shower, as I rubbed a bar of Dove on my own left bum, I could see the humor, and I laughed until I started crying again.
A strange bubble of silence followed me through the courthouse as I walked to my office. I guess no one knew what to say to me. This morning’s news had featured vague reports of a fatal shoot-out at my house involving the Derringer brothers and O’Donnell. The reports didn’t explain that they were all trying to kill me, only that “police were investigating.”