Shadow Tag (The Ray Schiller Series - Book 2) (18 page)

The bartender nodded a greeting.

“How’s it going?” Waverly asked him.

“I’ve got no complaints.”

Ray sat reading the labels on the bottles of Irish liquor lining the display shelves along the back bar: Knappogue Castle, Jameson, Monarch, Brennans, Tullamore. “We just heard about this place,” he said. “Thought we’d check it out.”

“Glad you came in,” the bartender said. “What can I get for you?”

“A Virgin Mary.” Noting the bartender’s thick, dark hair and V-shaped physique, Ray decided more than the food and location kept female ACC staffers coming back.

“And you?” the bartender asked Waverly.

“The same with a twist of lemon.”

“You got it.” He prepared their drinks, grinning. “Cops, right?”

“You have a problem with that?” Ray asked.

“Nope.” He slapped cocktail napkins down in front of them. “There you go,” he said moments later, setting their drinks down. “Good health.”

“Got a few questions for you, Waverly said.

“Go ahead and ask; I’m bored out of my skull.” He wiped his hand off with a bar towel and offered it to each of them. “Name’s Steve, by the way.”

“Detective Schiller. This is my partner Detective Waverly.” Ray took a quick drink. “We’ve heard Michael Johnson’s a regular here. You know him?”

Apparently puzzled, the bartender repeated the name.

Waverly offered some help. “An older guy. A security guard at ACC.”

“Oh, Ace. That’s what I call him, anyway. Yeah, he’s practically a resident.” He ran the towel over the bar. “What about him?”

“We hear that he and a lot of other ACC employees hang out here,” Waverly said. “That right?”

“Sure, that whole crowd started coming in after the owner introduced a menu. Some of them are coming in evenings now, too, but Ace was a regular before any of the others.”

“Is Paul Davis still a topic of conversation around here?”

“That exec who blew his brains out? Hell, yeah. I figure that subject’s good for another couple months yet.”

Ray cut to the chase. “What can you tell us about Michael Johnson?”

“Not a lot except the guy’s got it in for everybody.”

“Did he ever mention Davis—talk about him specifically?”

“A couple times.” He started washing glasses. “It was the usual stuff about how Davis could take his job and shove it, yada yada. Typical griping.”

“Nothing more than that?” Waverly asked.

The bartender dried one glass and grabbed another. “Hey, he can be a real pain in the ass when he’s liquored up, but Ace isn’t really a bad guy. He’s your garden-variety, hard-luck case. I see his type all the time.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Ray said. “Did it ever go beyond the usual bellyaching?”

“Nah.” The bartender stopped and stared at the glass in his hand. “Well, there was this one time. He came in half plowed already. Later, a couple of ACC employees were talking about Davis and Ace went ballistic. I told him he’d either have to tone it down or leave.”

“What was it about?” Ray asked.

The bartender shook his head. “Damned if I know, but Ace was in top form.” He set a glass and the bar towel down. “Ace said, ‘If I had the chance, I’d send that sack of high-grade shit straight to hell where he belongs.’ That’s word for word. I know he was just mouthing off again, but his choice of words was memorable.”

“Has Johnson been in today?” Ray asked.

“Not yet,” he said, checking his watch, “but he’s still got time to show up before he goes to work.”

“Guess we’ll wait awhile,” Waverly said. “How’s your food?”

The bartender glanced at Waverly’s bulky middle and winked. “You’ll like it. Let me call a waitress.”

Waverly smacked his lips as he finished an open-faced beef sandwich. The pool of rich, brown gravy on his plate became a thin smudge as he wiped it up with a dinner roll.

Ray watched, aware that, for Waverly, this truly was comfort food. They were wired differently. Thoughts of Dennis Hoerr turned Ray’s appetite off. His BLT and homemade, seasoned fries sat on the plate nearly untouched. He managed to down several cups of coffee—decaf. If there was any chance of getting a few hours of sleep that night, he wasn’t going to muck it up with caffeine.

Waverly pointed at Ray’s fries. “You gonna finish those?”

Ray pushed the plate across the table. “Go ahead, knock yourself out.”

In mid-reach, Waverly stopped. “Hey, Ray.” He tipped his head in the direction of the bar. One of the faces reflected in the mirror belonged to Michael Johnson. “Stay put, buddy, I’ll be right back.” He slid out of the booth, walked up and leaned against the bar beside Johnson. “Hey,” he said, “how’s it going?”

Johnson looked up from the drink in his hand. “Fine, ’til now. Why don’t you get off my back?”

“Wish I could. Trouble is, my partner and I have a bone to pick with you.”

“There’s no satisfyin’ some people. ‘Eff off.” He drank deeply, staring into the bottom of his glass.

“I’d like you to join us. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” Waverly latched onto Johnson’s arm, lifting him to his feet. “The three of us need to have a little heart-to-heart.” He arrived back at the booth with Johnson in tow. “Ray, I was just telling our friend here, that we’re a little annoyed with him.”

“You got
that
right.”

Waverly nudged Johnson into the booth and slid in after him. “It’s getting hard for us to keep track of your lies, Michael. According to you, no one came to ACC after hours on the night Davis died.”

“No one did.”

“Wrong. Jillian Wirth was there.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Why would your stepdaughter lie?” Ray watched Johnson’s sallow skin blanch.

“I don’t have no kids, ‘step’ or any other kind.”

“You see,” Waverly said, “there you go again. You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up, took a bite out of your ass and spit the chunk out in your hand.”

“We paid a visit to the Kingsley Security Agency,” Ray said. “You put Jillian Wirth’s name down on your job application as your emergency contact.”

“Oh, Christ.” Johnson buried his face in his hands. “One ‘effin’ piece of paper. I didn’t figure it would do any harm. I got no one else.”

“Yeah, Jillian told us.” The edge in Ray’s voice softened. “She told us a lot of things. She told us she was in love with Paul Davis—that she went there that night and told him how she felt. She even admitted the blood found outside the boardroom was hers. It’s time you stop protecting her.”

Defiant, Johnson sat up straighter. “I’m doin’ no such thing.”

“Then why claim she wasn’t there?”

“Because,” Johnson spat back, “she wasn’t.”

He could see the desperation in the man’s eyes. “You can stop now. I told you, she’s already said she was.”

“Then she’s the one lyin’…maybe to protect
me
.”

“I don’t think so, Michael.” Ray spared him a recital of Jillian Wirth’s hate-filled remarks, knowing he’d only be ‘twisting the knife’.

Fierce determination burned in Johnson’s eyes. “What difference does it make if she was there or not, anyway? Davis killed himself.”

“I wish I believed that, but I don’t—can’t. More and more the evidence is pointing toward your stepdaughter being responsible for Davis’s death.”

“You’re outta your ‘effn’ mind.” The overwhelming silence that followed finally became unbearable. Johnson hammered his fist on the table. “You leave her the ‘eff’ alone. It was me. I killed the lousy bastard.”

21

Ray read Michael Johnson’s rights to him before he could say more. With the bartender looking on, Waverly cuffed him and loaded him into the back of their car.

In an interview room a short while later, Johnson sat looking at them with the glazed eyes of a man teetering between false hope and futility. “I killed Paul Davis,” he said again. “It was me, no one else. The high and mighty Paul Davis brought down by the likes of me. What do you think of that?” His grim laugh faded.

“Mr. Johnson,” Waverly said, “protecting Jillian is—”

“I ain’t protecting nobody. I did it and I’m glad.”

“If you’re not protecting her, why keep insisting she wasn’t there?” Ray asked. “There’s no point. She’s already admitted being at ACC that night.”

“All right,” Johnson said, thumping the side of a fist on the table. “So she was there. That don’t mean she had anything to do with it. I only lied because I knew you two boneheads would jump to the wrong conclusion.” He cast a brief glance at each of them. “By the time the shit hit the fan, she was already gone. It was after she left that his royal highness caught me drinkin’ again. He stood there lookin’ down his damn nose at me like I was nothin’—like I was less
than nothin’.” His rheumy eyes misted over. “I begged him for one more chance. The bastard just turned on his heel and walked away. I wasn’t going to let him get away with treating me like that.

“I followed him up to his office. I told him how it was with me—an old man, sick and hurtin’ every day—how hard it was for me to come by work at my age and condition—that I had no one to help me out—no family, no friends. You want to know what that stinkin’ bastard said?” Johnson bowed his head, concealing the emotion brimming in his eyes. “He said, ‘Understandable’, then he slammed the door in my face.”

“What happened next?” Ray asked.

“Uh…um...I left the… Wait,” he said. “I got my gun. Yeah, that’s when I got my gun.”

“Tell us about that,” Waverly said.

“Not much to tell. I took the elevator back downstairs, got the revolver and went back. By that time, Davis was in the boardroom.” Johnson’s eyes darted left and right. “I wanted to shoot the bastard with him lookin’ straight at me, knowin’ it was comin’. I wanted to see him squirm—wanted him to know how it felt bein’ the one beggin’ for mercy.”

“But that’s not how it went down,” Waverly said. “What happened?”

“When I looked in the door, he was sittin’ in there with his back to me. I got to thinkin’ there was a chance I could walk away free and clear if I could get it to look like a suicide.”

“Give us the details,” Ray said.

“Okay, that’s easy.” His eyes shifted to the table in front of him. “I snuck up behind him, aimed the gun, pulled the trigger, put the gun in his hand and left.”

“Then what?”

“What d’ya mean?”

“You came back.” Ray watched surprise register on Johnson’s face. “The ashtray stand,” he said, prompting him to continue.

“Oh, yeah, that. The damn thing practically gave me a hernia. How’d you figure it out?”

“There were two empty casings in the cylinder,” Ray said, “but only one bullet was recovered from the scene. Firing the second bullet into the ash stand left sand next to Davis’s foot. It was a matter of making the connection.” Ray took no pleasure in explaining; he realized Michael Johnson, for all his bravado, was just a frail, scared, old man.

“Didn’t figure you two for being that smart,” Johnson said. “Anyway, after that is when I left that phony suicide note on the table and hauled the damn canister back to the lobby.”

Aggravation crowded out Ray’s sympathy. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned a suicide note. There was no note. What are you trying to pull?”

“That’s bullshit. If anyone’s tryin’ to pull somethin’ it’s you. I left it there myself. Don’t go tellin’ me you didn’t find it.”

“Look,” Ray said, “we’re not playing games. No one saw the note you allegedly left at the scene.”

“Allegedly, my ass. If you didn’t find it, the whole bunch of ya should be walkin’ around with white canes.”

“All right,” Ray said, “tell us about it. Was it something you wrote yourself? Did you forge Davis’s signature? What?”

Wearing a self-satisfied smile, Johnson eased against the back of his chair. “Didn’t need to. That was the beauty of it; the note was already written for me.”

“What are you talking about?” Waverly asked.

Johnson sat up a little taller, apparently pleased to discuss his ingenuity. “When Davis let me off the hook for drinkin’ on the job—that other time, I mean—his lordship wrote me a goddamn letter. Had to make a big stinkin’ deal about how effin’ generous he was bein’. Went on about it for more than a page. After I shot the bastard, I got to thinkin’ about how the last part could come off as a pretty convincing suicide note. And right there at the bottom was Davis’s own goddamn signature. Couldn’t have been more perfect. I cut the part I needed off the rest, folded it in half and left it right there on the table.”

“Uh-huh. Interesting,” Waverly said. “Where’d it come from?”

“From Davis. Are ya deaf?”

“No. That night. Where’d you get it from?”

Johnson’s eyes widened for a second. “Uh…I…uh…” He took his time resituating himself in his chair. “Had it with me,” he said finally. “The day I got it, I stuck it in my uniform jacket. Forgot about it ’til then.”

“This letter you were supposedly carrying around… Do you remember what it said?”