Motion to Kill

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

“There’s got to be something hidden on those DVDs that will unravel this whole thing,” Kelly said over the wind whipping around the open windows of her pickup.

She worked the stick shift as if it were a natural extension of her arm, engaging the four-wheel drive when they hit a particularly rutted stretch of road that rose and fell like a poor man’s roller coaster. The road was barely wide enough for one vehicle.

“Something worth killing Sullivan, Harlan, and me for?” Mason asked.

Humid morning air, heated by the rising sun, filled the cab and softened the stiffness in his back and neck. The rough ride loosened the tougher kinks that remained from sleeping on the cabin floor. Kelly was pushing the pickup at a fast clip that would have been suicidal for someone unfamiliar with the road. Blues and Sandra followed at a distance in his Trans-Am.

“Not Sullivan. Camaya doesn’t poison people. He shoots them or breaks their neck or runs them off the road. Sullivan may have been on Camaya’s hit list, but somebody beat him to it.”

“Even if you’re right about that, those DVDs are still pretty pricey.”

“Camaya is the only one who thinks about how much it’s worth. That’s how he makes payroll. Price didn’t matter to whoever hired Camaya. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it. Whatever is on the DVDs could explain why. You and Harlan may have just gotten in the way, known too much.”

“But I don’t know anything.”

“Yeah, but the bad guys think you’re a lot smarter. The rest of us know better. You’ve got the DVDs and that’s enough to make you a target.”

Mason braced his hands against the dash as the pickup splashed through a washed-out patch of road and leaped over a hilltop. Kelly let out a whoop as she put the truck into a hard right onto smooth blacktop, where it fishtailed before leveling out. She slowed until she caught sight of Blues turning onto the road.

“Your cabin isn’t exactly on the AAA scenic route.”

“That’s the idea. I’m the only one who knows where it is. That makes it private for me and safe for you.”

“If there are two killers, maybe Sullivan’s murder set off a chain reaction that’s out of control. Sandra calls it chaos theory-the rule of unintended consequences.”

“We can’t rule out anything yet. We haven’t accounted for Sullivan’s movements during the time he was most likely poisoned.”

“Angela Molina has Scott Daniels on tape talking to someone about Sullivan’s death and St. John’s subpoena the same day Sullivan’s body was found,” Mason said. “Scott left the lake before you woke me on the beach. How did he know that Sullivan was dead?”

“You said that Angela didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of Scott’s call. That rules out anyone in the firm. So who was Scott talking to?”

“I don’t know. All I do know is that Scott has been more worried about O’Malley than anything else. When O’Malley fired the firm, Scott lost more than a client-he lost Vic Jr. and Quintex. I’d sure like to find out where that half million dollars in bogus fees ended up.”

“That may be another link to Harlan’s death,” Kelly said. “If he was getting laundered money, I doubt that he would have reported it on his Form 1040. He may have been willing to give up the whole scheme to stay out of jail. Somebody figured Harlan would deal and killed him to shut him up.”

“That makes Angela a link between both murders. She knew about the fees. She bugged the phones. She witnessed the change to Sullivan’s will.”

Mason wondered whom Angela was covering for on the phony bills. He had assumed it was Sullivan because O’Malley was his client. He thought back to his conversation with her and realized that his questions assumed that it was Sullivan. Angela had never said that. Mason had. He remembered the advice he always gave his clients before the other lawyer questioned them: “If he hasn’t got the facts straight, that’s his problem. We’re not here to help the other side.”

Scott and Harlan were the lawyers on the fixtures deals-not Sullivan. Angela could have been covering for them as easily as for Sullivan. The dirty money that was being washed through Sullivan amp; Christenson’s books may have financed her “loan” from the firm. Her story about Sullivan blackmailing her could have been just that-a story.

Angela had always been one to play every angle. She said the tapes were in a safe place. Mason hoped she had one picked out for her.

Kelly interrupted his thoughts. “The paper trail on the fixtures deals leads to a Chicago law firm that fronts for the mob. Jimmie Camaya works for the mob. Scott and Harlan wouldn’t know how to make those kinds of connections.”

“So they were drawn into the fixtures scam with Vic Jr. He was the O’Malley involved in the fixtures deals, not his father. Camaya used him as bait to grab Sandra, and now he’s missing.”

“Who knew you had the DVDs?”

“Plenty of people. Pamela Sullivan, Sandra Connelly, Diane Farrell, Angela Molina, Maggie Boylan, and Phil Rosa. They’d all seen me with the disks. I’m sure everyone else in the office had heard about them.”

Mason finally understood the reason his house had been trashed-to find the disks. That’s why they left his computer intact. It was a calling card-a message that they knew he had the disks and they wanted them. And they didn’t know whether he had found what was hidden on them. When in doubt, kill first and ask questions later.