DEAD MAN'S JUSTICE - A Place of Evil (Stone & McLeish Thriller Series of Stories Book 2) (3 page)

Chapter 5

‘You got a lawyer?’ Ramirez threw his question over his shoulder at Stone who was sitting in the back of the police car, squeezed in between the two broad shouldered officers.

Stone was still numb from the shock that Chief Parker-Brown had issued an international warrant for his arrest for the murder of Guy Randall.

Guy, a U.S. citizen from New York and a magazine editor, had just arrived at Stone’s villa in Palmiste, which was a suburb of San Fernando Trinidad. He’d managed to give his real killer, Chad Loman, a.k.a Shadow, the slip after being trailed all the way from the States, intent on finding the woman who’d double-crossed him out of $1m ransom money.  Stone was his last resort. He was on his cell phone walking around Stone’s pool about to report Shadow to the police when a shot ripped through the air zipping past his shoulder. It ricocheted off the garage wall. Guy Randall didn’t realize what the noise was. Stone and Mac did. They saw the flash and the movement of a dark figure behind the white railings by the poolside. The next shot hit its target.

Guy was thrown backwards into the pool. He screamed out in pain and clutched at his chest. His blood was already spreading across the surface of the water when Stone jumped in and dragged Guy to the side and laid him on the tiles. Stone cradled him and tried to make him comfortable but he knew he was going to die. He managed to stay alive for a minute or two. Just long enough to give Stone a message for his wife and the keys he was wearing around his neck. The black 4x4 sped off into the night and Mac just saw the plate as it rounded the bend. They knew exactly who the shooter was.

Stone finally answered the question and made no attempt to disguise how annoyed he was.

‘I don’t
want
a lawyer. I don’t
need
a lawyer. I haven’t murdered anyone and you can’t possibly have any evidence to hold me. I’m saying nothing further. I want my phone call.’

‘We’ll see about that Mr. Big Shot developer.’

Stone ignored the remark and turned his head away to look out the window to avoid seeing Ramirez’s smirk in the rear view mirror. Finch said nothing; it was hard to imagine a more disparate partnership, Stone felt sorry for him living with the smirk ten hours a day.

On the journey to the precinct Stone started to lose the fuzziness and numbness from the shock of the arrest and started to think clearly. He was certain that Chief Parker-Brown had either been used or tricked in some way. With one phone call to Mac, his partner who was still in
Trinidad, and he would sort out all the confusion by going to see the Chief to tell him what had happened. The Chief would then call Ramirez, explain about the falsified warrant, and he would be set free. He had to be. He decided to clam up and tough it out, but first he fired an angry retort back to Ramirez.

‘Tomorrow I’ll be at Guy Randall’s funeral as planned.’

‘Don’t be so sure wise guy.’ Ramirez seemed agitated by Stone’s remark, which to him was insolence and disrespect for his authority. Ramirez had other ideas.

‘Cuff him.’ He ordered to the uniformed officers next to Stone and they duly snapped a set of handcuffs onto his wrists that he’d been told to hold out in front of him.

Stone had been on U.S. soil for less than an hour, he hadn’t even had time to call Karla or his daughter. By now he would have been in a rental car heading towards the hotel he’d booked in Brooklyn in readiness for the funeral. Instead, on this cold December day, he was staring at a characterless two-storey grey concrete and brick precinct building. To the right, high on up a flagpole flew the stars and stripes, a beacon of strength and pride. Two things Stone didn’t feel at that moment handcuffed and wrongly accused of murder, strong nor proud.

The car turned off Baisley Boulevard and into the precinct car park. Ramirez slid into an empty parking space in front of the side doors to the station. He braked sharply. Finch lurched forward. He looked sideways at Ramirez but as usual said nothing. They all got out and started to walk towards the entrance steps. Ramirez stepped out in front of Stone to block his path and looked him straight in the eye.

‘You might just regret not getting that lawyer Stone.’

Stone would not be provoked. He stuck to his plan and said nothing. For at least ten seconds the matchstick was motionless, the smirk was taking a breather. Ramirez eventually stepped aside allowing the officers to escort Stone into the building.

‘Take him in Finch, book him, and then throw him in the box.’

Fifteen minutes later and Stone was sitting alone in a dark and miserable interview room. He was handcuffed to the bracket on top of a scratched and cold metal table that was bolted securely to the floor. On the right side of the table was a black box recorder with a time clock and a red light showing on the face. His chair was also bolted down, as were the two identical chairs opposite his. The windowless room felt dank and the walls were faced with a sort of wood grain veneer that was peeling away at the corners and in some parts was missing altogether. The surfaces were riddled with graffiti messages written by the innocent and wrongly accused like Stone. The guilty ones didn’t seem so keen to write on the wall. Above Stone’s head was a single fluorescent light about four feet long which flickered every once in a while and each time it did he could see his reflection for a split second in the wall to wall mirrored window opposite him. Behind the mirror he was sure there were people, maybe even the smirk, watching his every move and expression. Stone steepled his hands and closed his eyes, he zoned out trying to calm his breathing and shut out his anger and frustration.

The silence was shattered when the door burst open and Ramirez walked in followed by Finch, and behind him, who almost needed to walk sideways through the door, was a uniformed officer who stood guard. The officer folded his arms. He had quite a friendly lived in face atop broad shoulders and a barrel chest. Gun or no gun, it was hard to imagine anyone getting in or out of the room unless he wanted them to.

Ramirez sat down opposite Stone, and Finch slipped quietly into the seat next to him carrying a file, which he placed on the table. Ramirez reached across and hit a button on the recording machine with his right hand and spoke into it before he turned to face Stone.

‘For the record we are in interview room one, it is 2.45pm on 18th December. I am Senior Detective Eduardo Ramirez. With me is my partner Detective Michael Finch. The interviewee is one…’ Ramirez picked up the case file and read the full name across the top. ‘Bradley John Stone. In attendance also is Officer James O’Reilly who will be present at all times. For the record it should also be stated that Mr. Stone has waived his right to have representation.’

Ramirez obviously reveled in his job, probably watched all of Robert De Niro’s movies and had the smirk down pat to prove it. Finch on the other hand looked nervous and uncomfortable; he sat upright and attentive but fidgeted in his chair. It was clear that Finch disagreed with his partner’s style.

The contrast was striking.

Chapter 6

It took less than an hour for Chang Lau, Chad Loman’s Chinese sidekick, to track down Guy Randall’s former office on 43rd Street in Manhattan near Times Square. Loman, known as Shadow, was a career gangster; he served his apprenticeship on the streets of Laventille, the murder capital of Trinidad, majoring in drug dealing and extortion. He did a postgraduate course as an overseas student in the Bronx perfecting his skills in pimping and the occasional kidnap. Now in private practice he had a personal assistant, Chang Lau, who doubled as his driver and bodyguard. He has a degree in the arts (Martial Arts) and carries out a number of other useful functions for Shadow.

Shadow was not someone who you would immediately think of as needing a bodyguard. At six-three tall and almost the same wide, he was bulky but muscular. He was often mistaken for a bodyguard himself. Rarely seen without his trademark knee-length black leather coat and his mirrored wrap around shades, his fearsome physical appearance had been honed in his native
Trinidad.

Chang brought the
Lincoln to a smooth halt at the curbside outside Randall’s old office. Shadow stepped out of the car and told Chang to keep the engine running, he wouldn’t be long, he said. Jennifer Madsen worked on the twenty-fifth floor as personal assistant to the marketing manager. It was a new appointment following the shock news of the murder of her former boss, Guy Randall.

Jennifer Madsen was young and ambitious, tall and quite attractive with a pretty face and shoulder length hair; she turned heads with her fashionable clothes and model’s stature. She had hoped that the p.a. job was just a stepping stone to better things, she had studied journalism and Guy Randall was grooming her for her first reporting assignment but since his death she had been moved sideways into marketing.

Jennifer’s very last phone conversation with Guy was on the morning of the day he was shot. Guy had called her, as he had done every morning since his arrival in
Trinidad. He’d gone there on a desperate mission to find Rachel (a.k.a. Roberta) Parker-Brown.

She had several guises and aliases in her quest to score big, to do that one final high-stakes trick. Rachel snared Guy Randall, a multi-millionaire editor for an international magazine, into an affair, he was in love with her from the moment their eyes introduced themselves. He was memorized by her beauty. She was charismatic, demure, and an exotic
Caribbean woman, who knew exactly how to attract a man. He couldn’t believe how lucky he had been to meet her. She couldn’t believe how easy it had been to hook him. Jennifer Madson couldn’t believe her boss was dating her new friend and just how quickly their relationship had escalated from base camp to the peak of intimacy.

Jennifer knew nothing of Shadow’s sting operation at Grand Central Station to relieve Guy of $1 million in exchange for very compromising photographs of Guy and Rachel taken covertly by Chang Lau. Rachel deplored being used by Shadow and instead, tricked Guy into thinking she’d been kidnapped.

Guy Randall wanted Rachel back but he didn’t want to handover the money. In a high-risk maneuver, and with the help of a male colleague, he created a diversion and they switched attaché cases. His colleague walked out of the concourse with the $1m ransom money. Rachel, in her blond wig and shades, ignoring Guy’s pleas and his shock and hurt, walked away from him with an identical case containing nothing but old telephone directories.

Rachel hurried away up the MetLife escalator towards 45th Street believing she had the money, and in a change to the original plan, gave Shadow the slip and left the attaché case in a hotel room. She had already decided to return to
Trinidad to escape his menacing control over her. She texted him the details of where he could find the case when she was on the way to the airport. His voice could be heard all over Manhattan when he discovered the case’s real contents.

Shadow thought that Rachel had double crossed him and had left with the money. Guy Randall still believed that Rachel loved him and that she had really been kidnapped and left to escape Shadow’s clutches. Shadow and Randall both decided to follow Rachel to
Trinidad, for two very different reasons.

Only Shadow returned alive.

Shadow hit the call button for the elevator and ascended to the twenty-fifth floor. Most workers had already tidied their desks and were either in the elevator or halfway to the subway by the time Shadow walked past the empty lobby and reception desk. Jennifer was busy typing up some notes for the weekly marketing meeting the following morning. Her eyes were focused on her computer screen mouthing the words silently as she typed away when, from nowhere, a large gloved hand sprang into view and switched off her monitor.

She’d heard nothing.

The screen went black and she recoiled in shock and put her hand to her mouth. Shadow sat down on the side of her desk, it groaned and creaked but it somehow withstood the two hundred and fifty pound weight.

‘Jennifer. This can go one of two ways. You see I need some information. You can give it to me painlessly and effortlessly and I’ll be gone in less than a minute, or …’

‘What, what information?’ Jennifer screwed her eyes closed at the sound of Shadow’s deep terrifying voice. She didn’t want to hear the ‘other way’ as Shadow put it.

‘Sensible girl. Especially as your phone line is already dead and the security guards are checking out a small fire at the back of the building.’

That was a bluff.

‘Who are you? And how do you know my name?’ Jennifer asked.

‘That’s not important. I want the address for Rachel’s
Central Park apartment.’

‘You mean Guy Randall’s apartment.’

‘Whatever.’

‘I can't possibly divulge private details such as…’

‘The second way involves pain and a lot of…’

‘All right. All right. Give me a moment. I’ll need the screen back on to get into the file.’

Shadow turned and pointed a thick, leather-clad finger and pushed the on button. The desktop re-appeared and Jennifer looked down at the keyboard, tapped a few keys and Guy Randall’s personal file opened up. She grabbed the mouse and scrolled down to click a sub file called ‘Accommodation’. She worked the mouse around and highlighted the address.

‘The address is…’ she began.

‘Print it out,’ ordered Shadow.

Jennifer started to open her mouth but decided against it and closed it again. She clicked the print button. A copy printer on the next table vibrated into life and Shadow watched the page jerk out into the tray. When it was fully out he picked up the paper, read the details silently, folded it twice and put it into an inside pocket of his coat.

Jennifer said, ‘He’s dead.’

‘Who's dead?’ asked Shadow, knowing full well who Jennifer was talking about.

‘Guy Randall, my ex-boss. He doesn’t live there anymore.’

‘I know.’

‘So why do you need his address?’

Shadow didn’t answer her question. He started to walk away and spoke without looking back at Jennifer. She was so scared she kept looking at her monitor.

‘Thanks for the information. Don’t let your curiosity get you into trouble. Let this be our secret. No police. Or I’ll be back.’ Jennifer had no doubt in her mind that he meant what he said. ‘You don’t want that.’ He added.

After a few moments Jennifer dared to steal a look over her shoulder. The office was empty.

Shadow was gone.