Chapter 93
He’d shot Pete. Right in front of her.
She didn’t know if Pete was alive or not. She didn’t know if that monster had caught Miriam. She didn’t know about…Lila. She had seen Lila Dodson in a pool of blood by the back garage entrance.
Madison was trying not to panic. To not focus on the blood.
And to do what she had to do to survive.
Madison stayed right where she was. There wasn’t really much room for her to move. He’d secured her hands with zip ties. Just like Kimball had tried with Steve Wilson.
This was just like that night. Eerily so. Only…she was alone with him now. “Why did you take me?”
“Because you were the most expedient. With what Bo has done and Pete—Pete was becoming a problem. I need out of here. I am…I always have contingency plans...I was not going to get caught in the lab for those fools in Major Crimes to find.”
She wasn’t under any illusions here. She was dead as soon as she did whatever he wanted. “What? I’m not feeling too cooperative, at the moment. Considering what you did to Miriam and Lila. Where is that guy taking Miriam, anyway? Why did he want her so much?”
Newcomb just sort of hummed to himself for a moment. “Bo and that girl have met before. When he realized she was spending so much time in Finley Creek lately, it rekindled…a passion he had for her. He is merely acting on that.”
“Is he the one who has been calling her at all hours?”
“I’m sure he is. He was…told…multiple times when he was on active duty to leave her alone.
Melvin told the boy to act with decorum.
That the girl had told Bo no. Repeatedly.
She was just not interested, but that only intrigued that boy more.
Melvin likes words like decorum. He has always acted so put out by the harsher side of life. ”
“That man was a cop?” Of course he was. Cops from Wichita Falls were probably responsible for ninety percent of what was happening lately. “I don’t think I have ever met him.”
“He was injured recently. Deemed not fit for duty. He has always followed orders well, so I had him come work for me. My granddaughter was becoming a bit unruly. Going all over the city by herself. Bo keeps an eye on her for me when I can’t be with her.
She’s fourteen; you know how fourteen-year-olds can be. ”
“What do you intend to do with me?” He’d taken her phone, her watch, and the tracking bracelet that Houghton and Mel had given her. And used her work keys to start the ERT van.
Before he’d tossed her watch and bracelet out the window.
Didn’t he realize phones could be tracked, too?
Then, away they went.
But the van had a tracker. All of the evidence vans did. It was something new that Elliot had gotten approved. Did Newcomb know that? They could track her. All they had to do was realize she was missing, and then they could track her.
But how long would that take—and would it be in time to get help for Miriam? Or…Madison?
Madison was fighting panic. There was blood all over her. Again. There was always blood all over her. She could never forget. She just…didn’t know what to do now.
The cabinet doors in the rear of the van near where she sat were locked.
They kept supplies locked so that they didn’t rattle around while driving.
The supervisors on scene would unlock the drawers when they arrived on scene.
It was part of the new policy. Since what had happened with Steve Wilson.
He hadn’t popped the zip ties off his wrist that night.
He’d used the edge of an open drawer to saw through them.
She didn’t know if she’d be able to do the same. Madison felt around with her finger tips, looking for something, anything, sharp enough to cut through. “What are you really after? You probably should just…go. Drive to the border or something.”
“I can’t do that. I needed a way out…of the post. Considering…
I know what is happening inside now—Pete is probably confessing everything he knows.
If he survives, anyway. He always has concerned me.
Which means...I have things I need to do.
Things…I need to make right. I cannot get to the woman I really want.
I’m coming to terms with that. There will be time for that later, I hope.
If…prison…I will not go to prison, doctor.
I will not. I have contingency plans in place.
But…my granddaughter…she has thrown a kink in those plans.
I am going to take her to a foreign country. Build a life, a future for her there.”
“Do you honestly think you are just going to be able to get right out of the country? Considering everything you have done?” Well, with what kind of crime syndicate they thought was operating around here, he just might have a way to be smuggled out of the country, even with a child along.
Handley Barratt, the criminal love of Madison’s life who had rescued her and Hope out there that night, had taken off to Mexico—they thought.
He had apparently multiple ways in and out of the country.
Madison hadn’t even known Ernie Newcomb had children, let alone grandchildren.
“How many grandchildren do you have? Do you really think they want to know you did this? What kind of legacy will you give them?”
Ernie Newcomb had always struck her as…so wimpy and unattractive.
Unassuming and kind of bland. He had been annoying mostly because she hadn’t thought he took forensic evidence seriously, and there had always been weird delays whenever that evidence had been provided to him.
But apparently there was a reason. Like him walking in and stealing evidence kind of reason.
With Pete’s help. That traitor.
He had known what these people were doing. And he’d helped them anyway.
“Who is in charge? I mean…of your…well, we both know you are probably involved in all the crimes that are going on around here—but are you really the one in charge? I really don’t believe that.
The dirty cops and stuff. Did you know more than one hundred cops have disappeared over the last forty-five years? ”
“I wasn’t keeping count, honestly. And…I am in charge.
For the most part. There are some…operating fees…
I pay for some privileges. I have for forty years, costs do keep going up, but…
every business has sunk costs, right? I consider myself an entrepreneur.
I saw a need and I started a business to fill it.
It’s a small business, but highly profitable.
Cops don’t make much, you know. Especially cops thirty years ago. ”
“So you are the one who killed all of those cops?” Forty-five years.
He looked like he was in his late sixties.
Well past mandatory retirement age for active duty, but some people went on to be in admin.
Especially if they’d been appointed by the previous chief.
Like…Newcomb had been. That was one reason she’d heard it was so hard for Chief Marshall to get him out. Politics.
Blankenbaker had been old school, she’d heard before. Melody had said she thought the man was clean, but Blankenbaker had definitely believed in helping out his pals.
If she could get free, she could fight him.
Physically, she could fight him. He was only five-eight or so.
And he looked…so old. Frail, more than old, really.
He just…when she had pictured who was in charge of this murder ring—he was the last kind of man she would have imagined.
Then again, it had started forty something years ago.
He would have been young then. Maybe it had grown, like he’d said?
She shuddered, just imagining how anyone could do what he had done.
“Why? I mean…I really don’t understand here. ”
He just kept driving. Away from the city. Away from…Dom.
She really wanted her caveman to come rushing to her rescue here. More than anything else.
“Business, doctor. It has always been strictly business. My wife, she was a good woman, who came from a little bit of money. We got used to living the lifestyle, but her father made several bad choices in managing her inheritance. And well…it fell to a quarter of what it was. There is big business in making certain people disappear. And then it evolved into a way to make the kind of money I needed most. Murder-for-hire is very, very lucrative. And eventually, probably before you were even born, I began branching out. Until…my boy was supposed to inherit my business from me, but thanks to you and Major Crimes…and Heather Coleson…that will not happen now. Not considering what happened to my boy because of her.”
“Okay, Ernie, I am so seriously lost here. What did Heather ever do to your son?”
“She’s the reason he’ll be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life.
Heather, and that bastard Acardi and his friends.
Major Crimes has done nothing but ruin everything lately.
Did you know Marshall Senior tried to start a major crimes division twenty-five years ago?
Strangely enough, he faced severe opposition to it.
Yet his son waltzes in and there it is. It depends on who you know, Dr. McAlister.
I think we both understand this. Even Pete had much to say about that kind of thing—he was always going on about how you shouldn’t be running the lab.
He says favoritism at play, since you are such good friends with Haldyn Harris—and the governor’s sister-in-law.
Politics. But Pete—we both know how he is. ”
“He complains about everything. Lately it has been missing coffee.” And if she survived this—Madison was going to kick his scraggly old ass. Over and over again. For everyone he had helped this monster hurt.
“Yes, I particularly enjoyed helping myself to his coffee when I would stop by. A little joke I enjoyed. My calling card, so to speak. Do you know just how much evidence I have taken from right under your nose, doctor?”
She was seriously starting to suspect. “Who is your son?”
Why beat around the bush? She needed to come up with some sort of plan. She had no idea where he was taking her, either. They had left town, probably going south. Toward Value. What that meant for her, she didn’t have a clue yet.
Madison really needed a plan here.