Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

“So now we have two mysterious deaths, and interestingly, the same people were involved. Again tangentially, but we thought it was hinky. So we dug a little deeper and started looking at Jay Burgess and George McGowan, along with Judge Mellors.”

“That’s what you were doing that night in The Wheelhouse.”

Miller nodded at Britt. “We knew Burgess was sick and didn’t have long to live, but we were keeping him under surveillance all the same. We followed him to the bar. The two of you met, seemed compatible, left together, went to his house.” Chagrined, he looked at Raley. “Steiner and I figured the guy deserved time with a pretty woman, so we knocked off for the night.”

Raley sensed how deeply the agents regretted that decision.

Britt asked, “After Jay was killed, why didn’t you come forward and let the local police know that you were conducting a covert investigation?”

“Well,” Steiner said, “for all we knew, you’d had a lovers’ quarrel with Burgess and snuffed him, just like the police suspected. It could have had nothing to do with the other matter. It was CPD’s jurisdiction, their homicide, their investigation.”

“Besides,” Miller said, “we didn’t want to tip our hand. If Judge Mellors was involved, we didn’t want her to sense she was being investigated and start covering her tracks. And Burgess was a cop. Men in blue can get funny about protecting their own, even their dead own. If they thought we, the bleeping Feebs, were trying to pin a conspiracy on one of their heroes, how much cooperation do you suppose we’d have got?”

“But then you went missing,” Steiner said. “That threw us.”

“You didn’t assume that I’d run away to avoid arrest?” Britt asked.

“It crossed our minds, but by then we’d done further background on you. Clean as a whistle. You didn’t seem the type to skip out, any more than you seemed like a lady who’d smother a guy.”

“Thanks for that,” she said.

“Frankly, we feared the worst,” Miller said. “We were afraid someone had removed you from the scene permanently.”

“Was I among the someones you suspected?” Raley asked. Neither agent picked up that gauntlet, but he wasn’t going to be deterred. “You came looking for me when Britt disappeared. Why? Why did you search my cabin?” He and Britt had already admitted to seeing them there.

“We wanted to talk to you about your old friends Jay and Candy, get a feel for you, get a read on how you felt about them.”

“My ass,” Raley scoffed. “If you’d only wanted to talk, you would’ve stuck around till I showed up.”

Caught in the fib, Miller blushed. Steiner coughed behind his hand. “Okay, we suspected you might have had something to do with Burgess’s murder.”

“And Britt’s disappearance,” Raley said.

Steiner nodded. “That, too. After everything we’d read and heard, we figured you might want vengeance against all of them, including Ms. Shelley. You had motivation, we wanted to check out your opportunity.”

“Did you have a search warrant that day?”

“No, but we had probable cause to go inside.”

“How’s that?”

“We looked in the windows and I saw the women’s clothing scattered across your bed. New clothing. Some of it still in shopping bags. None of our research into you included a woman currently in your life. So when we saw the clothes, we thought we’d better go inside and check it out.”

Drolly, Steiner said, “Turns out our instincts were right. You’d kidnapped her.”

Raley glanced down at Britt, who smiled up at him, then addressed the agents. “Once Raley explained to me how he’d been set up with Suzi Monroe, much as I’d been set up with Jay, we formed an alliance to get to the bottom of it.”

“We figured maybe you two had joined forces,” Miller said. “We saw no signs of struggle. And if a man is about to kill a woman, he doesn’t usually buy her new clothes first.”

Britt said, “We would have explained everything if you’d stayed and identified yourselves. Why did you leave? Raley’s truck was there, you knew we had to be close by.”

“The funeral. We had to get back in time for it. We wanted to see who turned up, gauge reactions and such.” Miller looked at Raley askance, a bit of egg on his face. “We didn’t know you’d marked us until you left the cemetery and it became obvious that you knew we were following you.” Then he looked at Britt. “Nice trick with the tires, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“When you came charging out of your rooms after her, why didn’t you identify yourselves as FBI?”

“Would you have believed it, raised your hands, and surrendered?” Miller asked.

Remembering him chasing after Britt wearing nothing but his underwear, Raley smiled. “No.”

“I shouted ‘FBI,’” Steiner said, “but you gunned the car. I didn’t have my ID, my weapon, nothing to convince you, and you were aiming that cannon at us.”

“Lucky I didn’t shoot.”

“Yeah, lucky. Today, too.”

Reminded of when he’d faced off against them in George’s study, Raley asked, “What’ll happen to George McGowan?”

“Well, we’ve got the video of your interview with him, but a good defense lawyer will argue it’s not admissible. Except for that cigarette lighter, all the evidence is circumstantial. He’s got big money behind him, so he may be able to buy himself an acquittal.”

“Or maybe he’ll stick to his confession,” Steiner mused aloud.

“Why would he?” Miller asked.

Raley knew why. George might prefer prison to the hell on earth he was living with Miranda and Les. Either way, the man’s situation was pathetic.

“Pat Wickham has said he’ll back up Raley’s statement,” Miller said.

“He no longer has to be afraid of retribution from Candy Mellors,” Britt said. “She had him living in fear for himself and his family.”

In his deposition, Raley had related how he and Britt had ambushed Pat Jr. outside the gay bar and admitted to seeing the agents there. Miller had explained that they were acting on the same hunch that Pat was hiding his sexual orientation and that his secret was somehow linked to the other events.

He and his family had been located at a lake resort in Arkansas. At present, he was in custody, charged with obstruction of justice. Raley felt sorry for him actually, and hoped that, if he was convicted, a merciful judge wouldn’t send him to prison. Raley felt even more compassion for the younger man’s wife and children, perhaps the only real innocents in the whole affair. Their lives would be affected by the scandal; there was no way to avoid it.

“Johnson was apprehended on his way to McGowan’s place,” Miller informed them. “He and Smith are well known to the bureau, by a variety of names. They’ve been flying under the radar for years, protected by people in high places for whom they did dirty work. We’re glad to have them. Neither will ever know another day of freedom.”

“At least Johnson won’t have Cobb Fordyce’s murder on his résumé,” Britt said.

A hospital spokesperson had announced earlier that evening that the attorney general’s condition had improved. Following surgery to remove the bullet, he had regained consciousness. He had recognized his wife and had even spoken her name. Doctors were cautiously optimistic. It remained to be seen how much impairment he would suffer, but at least he was alive and, for the time being, stable.

“As for Cassandra Mellors…” Steiner paused and looked meaningfully at Raley before continuing. “Her superficial wounds have been treated, but the doctors are concerned about her state of mind. She’s being kept at the hospital for observation. She’s under suicide watch. There’s a guard outside her door, a nurse and a police-woman inside the room with her.”