'Let's get out of here before the car explodes,' Kerrigan answered, eyeing the flames anxiously.
Gregaros held out a plastic Ziploc bag. 'The gun.'
Kerrigan pulled it out of his pocket and dropped it in the bag.
'And the tape.'
Kerrigan took it out of his left-side pocket and handed it over.
'You did good,' Gregaros said. 'The judge will be proud of you.'
Kerrigan didn't answer. Even in the dark, the detective could see that the prosecutor was ghost-white. He knew exactly how Kerrigan was feeling. He'd felt sick after his first face-to-face kill. The second hadn't bothered him at all.
Kerrigan ran to his car and Gregaros trotted back through the woods. Kerrigan drove by while Stan was getting into his car. Gregaros headed back toward town. Moments later, an explosion in his rearview mirror lit up the night sky.
Chapter Forty-Six.
At five in the morning Stan Gregaros knocked loudly on the door to Harvey Grant's bedroom and entered without waiting for an invitation.
'What's going on?' Grant asked as he groped for his glasses.
'We have a problem.'
'Is Bennett still alive?'
'No, she's dead. Kerrigan did just fine.' Gregaros put the plastic bag with the murder weapon on Grant's end table. 'He got the tape, too, but I didn't trust Bennett when she promised to turn over all of the tapes Dupre made at the fund-raiser, so I sent two men to Dupre's safe house after Bennett left. They were supposed to get everything out of his safe and bring it to me. They emptied the safe but someone shot them and took the bag with the tapes.'
'What do you mean, someone shot them? Were they waiting for them? Do we have a leak?'
'I don't know, but I don't believe in coincidences. I think Jaffe knows about the tapes.'
'Amanda Jaffe?'
Gregaros nodded. 'Pedro's men made it to one of our doctors, and he called me. They told me that the shooter was a woman. Amanda Jaffe's investigator is very good with a gun. I showed them a snapshot. They identified her right away.'
Grant paced back and forth across his bedroom. This was a very serious situation. No one knew what Dupre had recorded. Jaffe could be in possession of evidence that would destroy everything Grant had taken a lifetime to build.
If she was still investigating Dupre's case aggressively, she would go after the police reports in Delgado's murder and the murders at the drug house. Those reports contained the only clue to the identity of the original members of The Vaughn Street Glee Club--the names of the boys who were with Wendell Hayes on the evening that Wendell took three guns from his father's locked gun cabinet.
'Get Castillo on this right away,' Grant said. 'I want that bag and I want Jaffe dead.'
'I'll call him on the road.'
'Where are you going?'
'McCarthy paged me on the way over here. He wants me at Bennett's crime scene.'
'Why?'
'No idea.'
'You don't think he knows you were there, do you?'
'I don't see how he could. I'll tell you what's going on later.'
The sun was just coming up when Stan Gregaros parked behind one of several police cars at the Bennett crime scene. Two men from the lab were making casts of a tire track, and two uniforms charged with keeping gawkers away were shooting the breeze, because no civilians had made the trek to the murder scene yet. Wisps of smoke hung in the air over the burned-out hulk of Ally Bennett's car, and an acrid smell similar to overcooked barbecue--typical of an arson murder--assailed Gregaros when he drew closer.
Sean McCarthy broke off a conversation with one of the forensic people when he spotted Gregaros.
'Hell of a way to start the day, huh Stan?'
'Hey, you know me. I love the smell of charred flesh first thing in the morning. To what do I owe this honor?'
McCarthy gestured toward the car. 'We ran a trace on the plates. It belongs to Ally Bennett.'
'She's one of Dupre's girls.'
McCarthy nodded. 'The body was badly burned, but it's female and fits Bennett's general description.'
'Lori Andrews. Now Bennett.'
'Don't forget Oscar Baron.'
'You think the three murders are connected?'
