False Justice Page 17

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Briscoe said. “Good.”

  Jessie tried to talk, but her mouth refused to cooperate. She couldn’t move. The Taser had paralyzed her. She watched helplessly as Briscoe pulled her car into an alleyway and shifted into park. Reaching into the back seat, Briscoe came back with a roll of duct tape and started to bind Jessie’s legs and wrists. When Jessie was fully restrained, Briscoe pulled Jessie’s phone from her pocket. “I’ll take this.” Jessie watched her roll down the window and toss out the device.

  Then Briscoe shifted the car into reverse, backed out of the alleyway, and resumed their drive.

  “You talk about justice,” Briscoe said, “but you can’t understand justice if you don’t understand pain. I’m going to teach you.”

  The rural landscape was almost pitch black when Briscoe pulled her car onto the winding gravel road of her father’s headquarters. Jessie tried not to panic as the car bounced over the uneven surface. The compound of buildings appeared ghostly in the cloud-covered moonlight. She was still bound, duct tape wrapped tightly around her ankles and wrists.

  Briscoe had not seen fit to slap tape over her mouth, and the effects of the Taser had worn off, but Jessie remained silent anyway. She wasn’t going to beg for her freedom or her life.

  Briscoe parked the car next to the largest building—the one Jessie, Leary, and Graham had entered during their first visit to this creepy place, where she’d seen Briscoe operating on one of the gang members. Now, Briscoe pulled a wicked-looking knife from her glove compartment and brandished it in front of Jessie. Jessie did not want to give her the pleasure of seeing her fear, but she could not stop herself from flinching away from the gleaming blade. Briscoe bent down and used the blade to slice apart the duct tape around Jessie’s ankles. She left her wrists bound.

  “Now you can walk.”

  Jessie glared at her but did not respond. Briscoe got out of the car, then came around, opened the passenger-side door, and hauled Jessie out by one restrained arm. She gave her a shove and sent her staggering toward the building. “Let’s go.”

  Somewhere close by, a dog growled. Maybe the Rottweiler she’d seen on her first visit?

  Thoughts raced through Jessie’s mind as Briscoe shoved her inside the building. They were in the middle of nowhere. Amish country. No one knew she was here.

  Leary will find me.

  Would he though? She’d said the code word, but it hadn’t really been a code word. It had been a joke. Would he remember it and realize what it meant? And even if he did, would he figure out where she was?

  She had to hope so.

  37

  Leary stared at the screen of his phone, which seemed overly bright in the dim lighting of the bar, then put away the device. Across the table from him, Emily Graham arched an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”

  “I think so.” Leary leaned back against the padded booth seat. On the table in front of him, his and Graham’s notes were spread across the old, battered wooden surface. They’d come to this bar so they could discuss the case out of earshot of the DA’s Office and the PPD, and although the odor of beer floated temptingly in the air, neither of them was drinking—although they had indulged in a plate of buffalo wings, at Graham’s suggestion.

  “You look like something’s bothering you,” Graham said. “That was Jessie who called?”

  Leary nodded. The truth was, although her call had been utterly mundane—pick up tomatoes?—something was bothering him. He couldn’t put his finger on it. “I’ve been looking into Lee’s malpractice suit against Vicki Briscoe. Jessie asked for an update, but I think the question was mostly for Briscoe’s benefit. They’re together right now, retracing Lee’s steps.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That and she wants me to pick up some groceries.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “I don’t know.” Leary shrugged. “We are living together now, so I guess it makes sense.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Living together?” Leary thought of some of their recent disagreements. Then he remembered their recent kiss, and he smiled. “It’s good.”

  “Glad to hear that.” Graham picked up a buffalo wing and managed to eat it without making a total mess of her face and hands—a skill Leary had never developed. He ate, too, with liberal use of his napkin.

  When she was done chewing, Graham looked down at the papers on the table. “So we’ve gone over our notes on Shaw, Lee, and Dax. I see plenty of corruption and other shady crap, but not murder. What are we not seeing?”

  Leary shook his head. “A motive, for one thing. I still don’t get why Shaw would have Lee killed, when he already had Dax in his pocket. Murders are hard to get away with, and the risks are huge if you get caught. You met Douglas Shaw. Did he strike you as the kind of guy to take unnecessary risks?”

  “No.”

  “Me either.”

  “What if there’s something else Kelly Lee knew about him—some other piece of evidence—that we don’t know about?” Graham said.

  “Such as?”

  “Didn’t Jessie say that there might be a criminal element to the case?”

  Leary tried to remember his conversations with Jessie. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I think she said that Kelly told her she could show that Shaw knew about the danger, but sold the products to children anyway. Jessie said Shaw could go to prison if that was true.”

  “So maybe that’s the missing motive,” Graham said. “Shaw takes the risk of having her killed in order to escape criminal prosecution.”

  Leary took a moment to turn the idea around in his head. “How would he know for sure that killing Lee would accomplish that? He couldn’t be sure Kelly hadn’t told anyone, or shared the evidence with anyone. I mean, we know she did tell at least one person—Jessie.”

  “Good point.” Graham seemed to consider. “Think back to our meeting with Shaw. Did he seem to be hiding anything?”

  “He seemed pretty direct.”

  “But was there anything hidden behind his words?”

  Something about the comment brought Jessie back to mind, and made Leary feel uneasy again.

  “What’s wrong?” Graham said.

  Tomatoes. She’d asked him to pick up tomatoes.

  “Shit!” Leary bolted out of his seat.

  Minutes later they were in Leary’s car, racing through the rain-slick streets of Philadelphia, heading for Lancaster. Leary couldn’t know for sure that he would find Jessie at Ray Briscoe’s gang’s headquarters in Amish country, but he had a feeling if Jessie had become Briscoe’s prisoner, that’s where the woman would take her.

  “Listen to me! We need backup! This is an emergency—” Graham was on her phone with the local cops in Lancaster County. She was yelling, and not just to be heard over the drumming of rain against the roof of the car. Leary risked a glance at her and saw her frustrated expression and her clenched fist. The local yokels weren’t being cooperative. “Yes! I am a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department. You’re not hearing what I’m saying!”

  Leary’s eyes shifted focus to the buildings whipping past. Realizing how fast he was going, he pulled his gaze back to the road.

  “Just send some people, damn it!” Graham ended the call. “Jackasses.”

  “Let me guess. Local law enforcement lost all interest when you mentioned Briscoe’s name.”

  Graham looked furious. “You’d think they’d want to rout those scumbags, if for no other reason than to protect their tourism industry.”

  “Unless they make more money from their Briscoe industry. A guy like Ray Briscoe knows how to persuade local law enforcement to look the other way.”

  “More graft,” Graham said dully.

  “Seems likely.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Graham’s face creased with frustration. “Wait. I think I know someone who can help.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Leary said, “because I’m running out of friends.
Who do you have in mind?”

  “Lorena Torres. She told Jessie to let her know immediately if she found evidence Vicki Briscoe is involved in criminal activity—”

  Leary felt all his muscles tighten at once and he almost lost control of the car. “Wait. What?” He shook his head. “Did you just say—”

  Graham let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, Leary. I introduced Jessie to Lorena Torres. Jessie wanted background on Briscoe and Lorena’s been a detective in Organized Crime for years—”

  “Hold on. You introduced Jessie to Lorena Torres?”

  “Jessie’s in trouble and this is what you’re focusing on?”

  Leary shook his head. “Of course. Right. That’s silly.” The highway expanded to four lanes as they left the city behind. “Call her.”

  Graham returned her attention to her phone. “Just don’t kill us before we get there,” she said.

  Leary looked at the speedometer. The needle edged past 80 miles per hour. Probably not a great idea in these conditions, when even with his headlights on and his wipers on full speed, he had to lean over his steering wheel and squint. Rain lashed at the windshield, and the night was so dark that he could barely keep the contours of the highway in sight.

  Conditions got even worse when Leary’s GPS app led them off the highway and onto a back road. With the rain coming down faster than his wipers could slash away the blur, Leary drove as quickly as he dared. The surrounding area was difficult to make out in the darkness, but Leary sensed they were passing farmland, grain silos, barns. Amish country.

  “Look out!” Graham yelled.

  A horse and buggy materialized out of the darkness. Leary slammed his foot on the brake and wrenched the wheel sideways. The front of his car narrowly missed the back of the buggy. They went over the side of the road and into muddy grass. The impact bumped his head against the ceiling of his car and rattled his whole body. Pain shot up and down his spine. His heart pounded in his chest.

  He looked over at Graham. Her hair was in disarray and her eyes were wide. “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Leary twisted the wheel and gunned the engine, trying to shoot the car back onto the road. The wheels spun uselessly in the mud. “Damn it.”

  “We’re stuck?”

  “I hope not.”

  The car was facing away from the road. Through the rain, the headlights illuminated what looked like acres of fields. There was a barn-like building not far from where the car had skidded to a stop. Its doors were open and Leary could see hay and tools in the shadowy interior. He felt like he’d traveled back in time. He was out of his element.

  Gazing back at the road, he saw no sign of the horse and buggy. He tried the accelerator again. The engine revved and the wheels spun, but the car didn’t move.

  “We need traction,” Graham said. “I have an idea.” She opened the passenger-side door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Follow me!” she called over the pounding noise of the rain.

  Leary got out of the car and ran after Graham. She was heading for the barn. By the time they reached it, they were both soaked, their shoes covered in mud. At least the barn was dry.

  The place was bigger than it had looked from a distance. About the size of a two-car garage. Leary looked around, trying to understand why Graham had led him here.

  “If your idea was to make the rest of the trip on horseback, we’re out of luck,” he said. There were no horses or any other animals in the building.

  She squinted at him. “Why would that be my idea?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t.”

  Graham pointed at the hay, stacked in neat cubes against one wall of the barn. “That’s my idea.”

  “The hay?”

  “Growing up, my family used to visit an uncle who lived in Vermont. He had a cabin set back pretty far from the road. In the winter, I used to help him put down straw in a path from the house to the road. He liked to use straw because it provided traction, wouldn’t ruin his lawn, and could be raked up in the spring.”

  “Okay,” Leary said, looking at the hay—or straw, or whatever it was—with renewed interest. “That is a good idea.”

  They wrestled one of the bales off the pile and got to work. After what seemed like an eternity of working in the rain, they’d created a path from Leary’s car to the road.

  After a moment’s consideration, he grabbed a notebook from his glove compartment, jotted a quick note, and ran to the barn to leave it near what remained of the straw. It had his name and phone number and an offer to pay the owner for what they’d taken.

  “Okay,” he said when he was back in the car with Graham. “Let’s see if this works.”

  After some initial wheel-spinning, it did work. The tires bit into the straw-covered ground and the car lurched forward. Leary swerved up the slope, maneuvering over the path they had created, and back onto the asphalt, barely keeping control of the steering wheel as it jumped in his hands. The car skidded onto the road and Leary felt the satisfying stability of pavement under his wheels.

  “How much time have we lost?” Graham said.

  Leary felt the momentary sense of victory deflate. “Too much.”

  He pressed his foot hard against the accelerator and the car jumped forward. He knew how dangerous this was, knew they’d been lucky the first time, and that the rainy and dark conditions on this isolated rural road could still spell disaster for him. But he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was finding Jessie. He picked up speed, caught up with the horse and buggy, swerved around it, and kept going.

  They hurtled along the road for five, ten minutes without incident. Most people had been smart enough not to go driving in this weather, so the roads were mostly empty. The rain continued to pound down, but the rhythm of the windshield wipers and the drumming of the rain almost lulled Leary into a sense of complacency. He almost missed it when his GPS app told him to turn the car off of the road. Leary tapped his brakes and drifted to the spot where the private road, made of soaking wet gravel, led to Ray Briscoe’s property. In the rain and dark, he almost didn’t recognize it.

  There were buildings set back from the road. A Mercedes sedan was parked in front of one of them. Vicki Briscoe’s car? Leary drove close to it, parked, and checked his gun. Graham did the same.

  “Ready?” Leary said.

  She nodded.

  He opened the door and climbed out. Rain washed over his face. He made a visor with his left hand and tried to see, holding his gun in his right hand. There was no one inside the Mercedes, but Leary noticed the raindrops drumming against it turned to steam. The vehicle was warm. It had been used recently.

  Then Leary saw a woman walking toward them. In the darkness, it was hard to make out details. Tall, good figure, long hair. Was it Jessie? Or someone else? The woman raised a hand, as if in greeting. He couldn’t tell.

  “Don’t move!” Graham trained her gun on the advancing figure. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  “Emily, no!” Leary pushed her arms down, forcing her gun away from the approaching woman. “We don’t know if that’s—”

  He never finished his sentence. Something struck him hard from behind—a blow to the back of his head that drove him down to his knees in the dirt. At the same time, he heard Graham cry out. He tried to see what or who had hit him, but all he saw was the butt of a gun coming down hard into his face. The rest was blackness.

  38

  Pain brought Leary back to consciousness. Two men were holding him. He was being half-carried, half-dragged down a hallway. He moved his head, trying to locate Graham. The movement brought another burst of pain.

  “I’m here, Mark.”

  He turned the other way and saw her, flanked by two of her own escorts. Bikers, by the look of them.

  Leary recognized the building as the same one they’d entered during their previous visit. They passed closed doors, one of which Leary was pretty sure was the room in which Jessie had seen Br
iscoe operating. No moans came from it now. The only sounds were the grunts of the men manhandling Graham and him down the hallway.

  Leary let his feet drag against the floor. He had no desire to make the job any easier for these thugs. But the men were big and the extra resistance barely slowed them down. They dragged Leary and Graham ten more feet. There, the hallway ended at a sturdy-looking door.

  “Let me unlock it.” A woman’s voice. Leary twisted around and saw Vicki Briscoe striding behind them. She walked past Leary’s escorts, unlocked the door, and opened it. The men gripping Leary thrust him into the darkness. His knees hit the floor hard, sending his head into a spasm of agony in the parts of his skull Briscoe’s thugs had hit earlier. He gritted his teeth and willed himself not to pass out again. Graham came tumbling in after him.

  A voice in the darkness said, “Who’s there?” The voice was angry, charged with nervousness, and unmistakably familiar. Jessie.

  “Enjoy the reunion,” Briscoe said. “I’ll be back.” A kick sent Leary staggering forward. He fell on his face in the darkness. The door closed behind him and he heard the clunking sounds of the locks engaging.

  Graham helped him up to a kneeling position. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness and he saw a figure rush toward them. Jessie’s familiar and comforting smell enveloped him. “Jessie, thank God!” He hugged her close to him and kissed her.

  “Let me breathe, Leary.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Briscoe used a Taser on me. Other than that, I think I’m okay.”

  “Your wrists are bound.”

  “Duct tape. I’ve been trying to loosen it, but Vicki wrapped it pretty tight. Emily, is that you?”

  “Of course,” Graham’s voice said from the darkness next to Leary. “You think I’d miss this?”

  “Hell of a party,” Jessie agreed.

  Leary was glad they could make light of the situation, but he couldn’t. His hands moved over Jessie’s body, searching for wounds. Only when he was satisfied that she was in one piece, did he reluctantly let her go.