The Master Plan (2009) (29 page)

He went inside the building and sat down on the stairs as
he dialed Globe Investigations. Marianne answered.

"Hi Marianne, it's Bruno. Is Dana there?"

"No. She took the day off to be with your mother."

"I know that, but I'm at Dana's apartment and they're
not here"

"Is her car there?" Marianne asked.

Bruno looked outside the glass door at Dana's usual parking space. It was empty. "No. It's not here," he told Marianne.
"And I tried her cell and got an out of service message"

"That's odd," Marianne said. "Maybe they got stuck in
the snow someplace."

Dana and Angie were not stuck in the snow. They were
stuck in Dana's car with George Hollingsworth. Dana was
driving and Angie was buckled into the passenger's seat.
George was in the backseat, holding a gun to the back of
Angie's head.

Angie had been asking George a lot of questions that he
refused to answer. He finally told her to shut up or he'd blow
her head off.

"Where are you taking us?" she asked without so much
as a quiver in her voice.

"Out of town," he replied. "Now shut up. You always did
talk too much."

"Don't you want to tell us how you killed the Hunter
brothers?" Dana said evenly.

"The Hunter brothers," Angie said before George could
answer. "Those were the young men who held up your bank
and killed your Sarah."

"That's right, Angie. I've been waiting all these years to
get justice. I was hoping they'd die in prison. Sarah's father
told me he was going to hire someone on the inside to kill
them. He had connections to the Mob, but I guess his connections weren't good enough because it never happened"

I can't believe it. You were always such a nice boy."

George laughed. "Not as nice as you think."

"That's right," Dana said. "George and Sarah planned the
robbery. They used the Hunter boys to pull it off and then
they were going to get the money from them and take off
with it."

"Who told you that?" George asked.

"Mary Lou Bandini."

"Mary Lou told you," Angie said incredulously. "She's in
jail for embezzling money from the nursing home where she
worked. Everyone in the neighborhood was shocked. How
did you talk to her?"

I went to the correctional facility where she's being
held and visited her last week."

"Some things never change," George said cynically.
"Mary Lou always had a big mouth. Did she tell you that
she was the one who turned in John and Tony?"

"Yes. She said she did it because they killed her friend,
Sarah."

"She probably did it hoping to get her greedy little hands
on the bank money, but the Hunter boys turned out to be
smarter than anyone gave them credit for. They killed
Sarah when she tried to take off with the cash and then they
hid it so well no one ever found it."

"Is that why you didn't kill Tony as soon as he turned up
in Crescent Hills?" Dana asked. "Were you hoping he'd
lead you to the money?"

"No. I didn't kill him right away because I knew that if
he got out of jail, his brother would soon follow and I wanted
to take care of them both at the same time."

"Then you found out that Tony married Casey and you
acted immediately."

I went to his place hoping she'd be there. The plan was to
kill her first in front of Tony. I wanted him to know how it
feels to lose someone you love. Only when I got there she
was gone. Tony said they had some kind of an argument and
he threw her out. That's when I shot him."

Dana took a deep breath, stunned at how close her friend
had come to being murdered. "Casey was innocent. She
didn't know anything about Tony's past "

"Okay," Angie said in a firm voice. "So, you killed some
bad people, but why are you doing this to us? We are good
people."

"Your friend here is an investigator, a very smart investigator. I knew when I saw you together this afternoon, you'd
tell her all about me and how I was a bank manager and how
my fiancee was murdered by the Hunter brothers. She's been
investigating the case here and she was in Chicago when I killed Johnny boy. I'm sure my name must have popped up
somewhere judging from the look on her face when you
blurted it out earlier. Then of course you threw in that little
tidbit about your son being a homicide detective and her
boyfriend to boot "

"You came from a nice family, George. They would be
so ashamed," Angie told him.

"The roads are getting very slippery," Dana said. "I'm
going to have to slow down."

"And give your boyfriend a chance to catch up with us. I
don't think so. Pull over to the side of the road. This is where
you two get out "

"Get out?" Angie said. "We're in the middle of nowhere"

"That's the idea," George told her.

Dana pulled the car off to the side. The road they were on
was deserted. There was no one to see them. George had
taken her cell phone and crushed it under his foot before they
got into the car. Dana could only hope that the weapon she
had managed to slip into her coat pocket would be enough to
save them.

Bruno was beside himself with worry. He had put out an
APB on Dana's car, but so far nothing had been reported.
He had decided to try and retrace their steps.

The last time he talked to Dana she had said they were going grocery shopping. With the snow, he was hoping she had
decided to shop at the Sunflower Market as that was on the
way to her apartment and he knew she liked the store.

Marianne and Greg were at Dana's apartment. Fortunately, Dana kept an extra set of keys at the office. Bruno and Dana used to have keys to each other's apartments, but
the last time they had a big argument, Dana had changed
her locks and refused to give him a key to it.

"Where's the manager?" Bruno asked the woman at the
nearest cash register.

"Who wants to know?" she asked.

Bruno flashed his badge and she said she'd page him.
Ron Morgan answered the page within a few minutes and
Bruno suggested that they go back to his office to talk.

"I need to know if my mother and Dana Sloan were in
here shopping earlier," Bruno said as soon as they got inside Morgan's office.

"Yes, they were. I spoke to them. Is something wrong?"

"They've disappeared."

"This must be the day for that "

"Pardon me?"

"One of my employees is also missing. One minute he
was in the produce department replenishing the vegetables
and the next minute he was gone. No one seems to know
where he went "

"What's his name?"

"George Hollingsworth."

The name immediately registered and Bruno felt a
prickle of fear run down his spine. "Is he related to a Stuart
Hollingsworth?"

"I'll check." Morgan opened a file cabinet behind him
and pulled out a personnel file. He looked at it briefly. "His
first name is Stuart, but he goes by his middle name, which
is George"

"Come outside with me and see if his car is in the parking lot. I know Dana's car isn't there because I've already
looked."

Morgan got his jacket and followed Bruno outside. "The
employees park down at the end by that empty store" Bruno
and Morgan hurried down to the end of the walkway. "That's
George's car there, the white Nissan."

As Bruno stepped off the curb to get a closer look at the
white car, he stepped on something and had to grab on to another parked car to keep from sliding off his feet.

He bent down and picked up Dana's phone that had been
smashed and left in the parking lot to be covered with
snow.

"Where does this guy live?" Bruno asked, trying not to
panic.

"I don't know, but I'm sure his address is in his file."

"Let's go get it "

The mild-mannered, jovial man Dana knew as George had
turned into a cold-blooded killer. He ordered Dana to leave
the car running and get out. Then, still holding the gun to
Angie's head, he ordered her out of the car and quickly got
out himself, so he could keep the gun leveled at her.

"Are you going to shoot us with that gun?" Angie asked as
they stumbled across the snow-covered ground toward a
wooded area away from the road.

"Shut up, Angie," George said firmly. "Who wants to die
first?"

"I do," Dana said. "But first I have to know something"

"Your last wish?" he asked coldly.

"I understand why you murdered the Hunter brothers but why did you kill Lucas Porter and then send that anonymous letter to the paper?"

"Lucas Porter was practice."

"Practice," Dana repeated. "I don't get it."

"Lucas was a scumbag. He beat up on that pretty little
wife of his so I decided to practice on him. You see, as Angie
pointed out, I was always a nice guy. I'd never killed anyone before and I wanted to make sure I could do it before I
faced the Hunter brothers. I thought beating him to death
was appropriate after the way he battered his wife. I knew
if I could do that, the Hunter boys would be easy. I sent the
letter because I felt badly that the wife and her little friend
were getting blamed for it."

"You left a fingerprint on the letter and it was matched to
the fingerprints on file with the real estate commission in
Arizona."

"See, Angie. What did I tell you? This gal is real smart"

"Listen, George," Angie said, edging closer to him. "You
don't have to kill us. Just leave us and we'll freeze to death
out here in the snow."

"That's right, George," Dana said picking up Angie's lead.
"No one comes down this road and if that is the same gun
you used to kill Tony and John with, when they find our
bodies they'll know you killed us and Bruno will not rest
until he tracks you down"

"He'll never find me. My escape route is all planned out.
Sending that letter was a mistake, and not leaving town
sooner was another, but I can't go back and change that."

Dana looked around. The snow was getting very deep. If
they tried to run, they wouldn't get very far. George grabbed Angie's arm and pulled her close to him. He placed the gun
at her temple.

"Say good-bye, old girl," he said.

A search of George's apartment didn't yield any clues,
except an Arizona Cardinals hat. Bruno was beginning to
panic. He got back in his car and drove to the Sunflower
parking lot again and then drove past it to the road that led
out of town.

It was obvious that they had left in Dana's Mustang. The
problem was that Bruno didn't know if they had driven out
on the road that led out of town toward the country or had
gotten on the expressway and headed toward Chicago.

The planes at O'Hare and Midway were grounded because of the weather, and Bruno had stationed men at the
Crescent Hills train station and bus depot. However, there
was no way of covering the Chicago stations and bus terminals.

As Bruno drove slowly down the road looking left and
right for a sign of Dana's car, he began to pray. He was a
man who dealt with violence and murder on a regular basis
and he had learned to detach himself from the crime scenes
and the victims. This was different. These were the two people he loved most in the world. If he lost them, he didn't
know how he would survive.

George Hollingsworth had lost the woman he loved and
had waited almost twenty-five years to avenge her death. The
pain Bruno felt now must have been what Hollingsworth had
felt when the Hunter brothers killed his fiancee.

Suddenly Bruno noticed car tracks on the side of the road. A car had pulled off the road there. He stopped his
vehicle and got out his flashlight to take a look.

There were lots of footprints and signs of a struggle there
in the snow. Then, his light shone on a dark patch that stood
out dramatically on the white frost that covered the ground.
It was blood. A trail of it started at the edge of the woods and
led back to the road.

Bruno stared at the bloody trail as a numbness crept over
him. He went back to his car to radio for help to search the
area.

As he reached for the radio, his cell phone rang. "Hello,"
he managed to say when he answered it.

"Bruno, it's Jack. Your girlfriend and your mother just
showed up here"

"What? Are they all right?"

"Yeah, they're fine, but the guy they got stuffed in the
trunk of the car doesn't look so hot"

Despite the icy roads and streets, Bruno made it back to
the station in under thirty minutes. Putting the emergency
flasher and siren on helped him navigate what little traffic
was still on the streets.

He double-parked in front of the station next to Dana's
Mustang. As he passed by it, he saw bags of groceries on
the backseat.

Bruno bounded up the steps and pushed through the door,
letting in a blast of cold air. "Where are they?" he yelled to
the desk sergeant.

"Interview room two," he yelled back. "They're expecting you"

As he ran down the hallway to room two, Bruno heard a
burst of laughter. The room was soundproof, but the door
was standing open and Jack O'Brien was in the doorway
laughing so hard he was crying.