“You better be careful, uncle,” she said as they approached the building.
“Careful about what?” asked Chase, continuing being mystified.
“Odelia thinks Dickerson’s killers may be holed up in there,” said Uncle Alec.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Chase muttered, and reached for his gun. Unfortunately he wasn’t wearing his gun belt. Or any of the other police paraphernalia, and neither was Uncle Alec. Both men were in civvies.
“I’ll call for backup,” grunted Alec, and took out his phone.
Soon the scene would be crawling with cops as well as cats.
She just hoped Max was right—not that she doubted his astuteness.
They approached the front of the building, and Odelia gestured to the window where the cat presence was still most pronounced.“They’re in there,” she said, drawing a curious look from Chase. She shrugged. “Just a wild guess.”
“Don’t tell me. Another one of your mysterious sources, huh?” said Chase.
He and Alec moved over to the ground-floor window and positioned themselves on either side of it, then took a quick peek inside. Odelia waited from a safe distance. She wasn’t a cop, and these were two professional killers, presumably working for a well-known mobster. She wasn’t about to get in their line of fire. And she’d just ambled up to the factory entrance, the door hanging off its hinges, when suddenly two men came bursting through.
As a reflex action, she stuck out her leg, and the shortest one crashed to the ground. The tall one dawdled for a moment, then moved off at a respectable rate of speed. Chase had spotted him, though, and broke into a run to intercept the guy. Like a freight train gaining momentum, he barreled into the guy and tackled him to the ground. Ouch.
Uncle Alec came walking up to the short guy, who was rubbing his head and directing a nasty look at Odelia, and yanked him up to his feet, then proceeded to place him under arrest. From a distance, Odelia could see that Chase was extending the same courtesy to his tall friend. Cop cars were driving up, sirens wailing and lights flashing, and within minutes both men were safely tucked away inside two squad cars, and outfitted with nice shiny handcuffs.
“Now let’s take a look inside, shall we?” Uncle Alec suggested.
A small team of cops entered the building, Alec, Chase and Odelia in the lead, and made their way to the room where Harlos and Knar had been holed up all this time.
A small table covered with the remnants of several fast-food meals attested to their presence here, and so did the bed, the couch and the chairs. And as they carefully searched around, suddenly Odelia’s attention was drawn to a calendar attached to a clammy concrete support post.
On the 16th an entry was written in a childish scrawclass="underline" ‘Shake down Craske—Yasir.’ And for the 17th the same person had written ‘Shake down Fido—Yasir.’ What interested her the most, though, was the entry for the 20th: ‘Take out Dickerson—Brettin.’ In small print a series of digits had been added. The combination to Dick Dickerson’s safe.
Next to her, Chase had materialized, and was studying the calendar with similar interest. Then he let out a deep sigh.“And here I thought the schmuck was innocent.”
Chapter 48
Alec and Odelia were seated in Uncle Alec’s office. They were both silent. It’s not every day that a police chief returning home from his vacation manages to take down a mobster and unravel a plot to murder one of his town’s most prominent citizens in one fell swoop.
Chase had picked up Olaf Brettin, and this time it wasn’t a social call. In fact it was probably safe to say Brettin wouldn’t be wearing his white Stetson for a long while. Jean Harlos and Markus Knar had confessed to the murder of Dick Dickerson and the occasional work they did for Yasir Bellinowski, who’d lawyered up but would also go away for a long time, no matter how good his lawyer was.
“Sad story,” said Alec finally. “I like Olaf. Liked his wife, too.”
“You knew Abbey Brettin?”
“Sure. She was a sweet lady. Great kid, too.”
“Lavinia.”
He nodded.“Real shame. Dickerson did a terrible thing there. Monstrous.”
“Do you think the jury will feel the same way?”
“I’m sure they will. Extenuating circumstances and all that. Still, people just can’t go around killing other people. That way lies anarchy.”
“But you can understand why he did it.”
“Of course I can. Any human with a heart can. I just have to imagine this was you and maybe—just maybe—I’d have done the exact same thing.”
“I still don’t understand how Harlos and Knar could be so dumb to write down their assignments.”
Alec smiled.“You know what they told me? That they’d seen a documentary on Edward Snowden so they knew smartphones could be hacked and decided to play it smart and write everything down the old-fashioned way so nobody could catch them.”
“They probably shouldn’t have written anything down.”
“Those two boys are not the brightest bulbs.”
“That’s the understatement of the year.”
“What did Chase say?”
“About what?”
“About your sudden ‘hunch?’”
She grimaced.“I probably didn’t handle that as well as I should have.”
“No, you did not. You want to be more careful, honey. Unless you want to let him in on your little secret?”
“I think it’s too soon for that. He might not understand.”
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to tell him.”
Yes, she did. Though later sounded a lot better than sooner.
“I hear your grandmother and Tex made peace?”
“They have. She still refuses to move out, though.”
Alec suddenly looked grim.“We’ll see about that.”
[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]
“You lied to us, Mr. Brettin,” Chase said.
“Of course I lied. What did you expect?”
The tabloid editor looked a lot less rosy than the last time they met, Odelia thought. She was looking through the one-way mirror into the interview room, her uncle next to her.
“You can see why I did what I did, can’t you?” asked Brettin. “He killed my daughter!”
“There are other avenues you could have pursued,” said Chase.
“What? The man was smart. There was no way to prove he did what he did.”
“Look, whatever he did, that still doesn’t excuse murder.”
“Do you have children, Detective?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I hope one day you’re blessed with a family the way I was blessed. Lavinia was my heart. My life. The moment she was gone it was as if the light went out of my world. The only thing I could think of was how to punish the man who’d taken her from me. Dick Dickerson was not human, Detective. He was a monster. And monsters don’t deserve to live.”
Odelia turned away and left the small room. She’d heard enough. Now it was time to go home and be with her family again. She felt for Olaf Brettin, she really did, but Uncle Alec was right. If everyone started to take the law into their own hands, the world would not be a fun place for very long.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]
“Mom. You can’t do this,” Marge was saying.
“And you can’t force me to change my mind,” Vesta insisted stubbornly.
Marge and Alec had called this emergency family meeting to try and talk some sense into their mother. Tex was still at the office, Odelia was home, and now it was just the Lips, gathered in Marge’s kitchen, having this thing out once and for all.
Vesta wasn’t budging, though. She’d folded her arms across her bony chest, and had jutted out her chin, a clear sign she’d made up her mind and that was all there was to it.
“Can’t you see Odelia has a real shot at happiness here?”
“She has a better shot with me there to guide her along.”
“Chase won’t even come near the house since you moved in!”
“Which just goes to show: sometimes you think you know a man until you discover that you don’t. I mean, what kind of man is afraid of a little old lady?”