name was Lyle Bender. They used your sperm samples from a fertility clinic to make it look like you’d raped her. That’s all I know about it, I swear.” Taggert started coughing and choking. Avery let go of him. It took a few moments for the cop to recover. He sat up a little, wiped the tears from his eyes, then spat a wad of blood and phlegm into the urinal. “Goddamn prick,” he gasped. “You fuckin’ broke my nose.”
With his last drop of adrenalin, Avery reeled back with his fist and punched Taggert in the face. The policeman flopped over on the tiled floor.
Avery snatched up the gun, then braced himself against the wall.
Almost out of nowhere, a set of handcuffs flew past him and hit the unconscious Taggert in his shoulder. Avery glanced up. The Native American cop had dragged himself to the doorway. “Cuff him to that pipe over there, will you?” he said, nodding toward a corner conduit by the urinals.
“Jesus,” Avery murmured, starting toward him.
Officer Pete impatiently pointed to the set of cuffs by Earl Taggert. “Hurry up, okay?”
Avery backed away and grabbed the handcuffs. He managed to drag Taggert over to the corner of the bathroom, then cuffed him to the pipe.
“It was—a—a rewarding experience, watching you—beat the crap out of Earl,” Officer Pete said between gasps for air. Sweat covered his forehead. “I’ve been wanting to do—to do that for three years. Pat him down, take away his keys.”
Avery followed his directions. “This guy’s with a hate group out of Opal. They’re responsible for several celebrity deaths. They tried to set me up for murder and rape. Did you hear any of what he said to me?”
The young cop nodded. “I knew he belonged to some kind of—of good ol’ boys’ club, but I thought it was just about keeping Opal white.”
Pocketing Taggert’s keys, Avery hobbled over to Officer Pete and helped him up. He walked him to the bench in the waiting room. His leg started to go numb, and he tried to ignore the burning pain in his thigh. “You need to lie on your side and not move around,” he said, lowering him on the bench. “Is there someone I can call? Someone you trust?”
Pete nodded. “Just dial 9-1-1. It’ll patch through to my boss, Sheriff Goldschmidt. Tell him Peter Masqua is badly wounded—and so are you. We have someone in custody. We’re in the old train station. Tell him I said to move his ass. We’re expecting some more trouble here within the hour.”
In the last two hours, Dayle hadn’t moved from the kitchen table. Now she pushed aside the script, picked up Fred, and tiptoed down the hallway to the guest room door. She checked for a strip of light at the threshold. It was dark and almost too quiet. She didn’t hear any snoring. Maybe Ted was lying there with the lights off, listening for her.
With the cat cradled in her arms, Dayle retreated to the foyer. Every creaking floorboard seemed like a loud groan. She checked the front door’s peephole. She couldn’t see the guard, but her view was limited. Quietly, she unlocked the door and opened it. To her immediate right, the guard sat in a folding chair with a Coke, a box of Archway cookies, and a walkie-talkie on the floor beside him. A husky kid in his late twenties, he had curly brown hair and a baby face. His tie was loosened. He’d been reading
She smiled and shifted Fred in her arms. “Oh, hi. Yes, everything’s fine.” Down by the elevator, she noticed a second guard muttering something into his walkie-talkie.
“I really don’t think you should be out here,” the husky kid said.
“Oh, I thought I’d go for a walk before bed. I’m kind of keyed up. Maybe it’ll help me sleep. I just need some fresh air. In fact, I figured I’d go up to the roof. It’s perfectly safe up there….”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll have to clear that with Ted first.”
“Oh, now don’t be silly—”
“He’s right, Dayle.”
She spun around.
Ted stood in the foyer with her. He’d thrown on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and his shoulder holster. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand. “We’ve taken all these precautions for your safety,” he said. “If you want to step out of the apartment, you need to see me about it.”
Dayle frowned at him. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“I wouldn’t like it either if I were you, but it is necessary.” He smiled at her, then set the walkie-talkie on the hallway table. “It’s late, Dayle. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
Sighing, Dayle retreated back into the apartment. Ted stepped inside after her. She heard him close and lock the door.
Sean’s tape recorder picked up everything Larry Chadwick had to say. It wasn’t so much a confession as it was an hour’s worth of steady gloating. Despite the stranger with a gun in the backseat of his car, Larry seemed to think he had the upper hand. He was still at the wheel, still in control.
Yes, he knew who she was. His friends were quite aware that Avery Cooper’s lawyer was in town, and they had a full description of her. They also had Avery Cooper in custody: “Last I heard, he was being held just outside Lewiston, two hours from here. He might still be alive. I’m not sure. My friends were trying to determine his exact whereabouts when you lured me away with that phony phone call.”
He explained about his friends, the Soldiers for An American Moral Order, who were going to bring back family values and godliness to the people of this country. He defended the torture and mutilation deaths of Tony Katz and his friend: “Faggots aren’t human beings. And right now, those two deviates are burning in hell.”
Larry freely admitted to having participated in the murder of Leigh Simone. They had made it look like a drug overdose: “Leigh Simone got what she deserved. She advocated homosexuality, abortion, and the restriction of our constitutional right to bear arms.”
They didn’t set out to kill people. They merely wanted to silence those celebrities who posed a threat to moral order and traditional family values. Often, all it took was a little research into their pasts or intimidation. A good scandal could always discredit a loudmouth liberal celebrity’s cause.
“And if you can’t dig up dirt on someone, you manufacture it,” Sean said. “Did SAAMO arrange the murder of Libby Stoddard?”
“Yes.” Larry studied the dark, winding highway.
In the last hour, they’d encountered only six cars on this road. The most recent was a minivan, which had been keeping a steady, respectable distance behind them for several miles now. They were driving through a forest preserve. The unlit two-lane snaked around clusters of trees.
Sean adjusted the volume on her recorder again. “You had a nurse named Laurie Anne Schneider steal Avery Cooper’s sperm samples from the fertility clinic. One of those samples was planted in Libby Stoddard. Is that correct? Yes or no?”
“Yes,” he said, with a hint of a smile. “And we still have some of those samples, Ms. Olson.”
“You framed Avery Cooper for murder, because he’s a threat to your fundamentalist agenda. Is that correct?”
“He’s no threat anymore,” Larry replied.
“Dayle Sutton, she’s the next to die, isn’t she?”
Larry didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes. But I’m not in on that one. The wheels are already in motion. We have people in L.A. handling it. She’ll get hers on the set of her movie. It’s slated to happen in the next day or two.”
“Talk about a cold-blooded bastard,” Nick whispered from the backseat. “Lare, you must piss ice water.”
Unfazed, Larry scratched his chin, then glanced at the tape recorder in Sean’s hand. He seemed so blase. It was almost as if he somehow knew that all the information he was revealing would never make it outside of this car.
Sean looked over her shoulder at the minivan, still trailing several car lengths behind them. Nick caught it too. Frowning, he turned forward and tapped Larry’s shoulder with the gun. “Both hands on the wheel, Lare. This is the fourth and last time I’m telling you. See the little trail up ahead? That’s where we’re going.”
With a sigh, Larry pulled off the highway onto a gravel road that dipped into the woods.
“Are they still following us?” Nick asked Sean.
“I can’t see,” she said, twisting around in the passenger seat to check the rear window. “They might have
