Chapter 34: View To A Kill - Lucidity

MARCUS WALKED OVER TO CATHLEEN, PULLED HER HEAD TO HIS chest with his free hand, and the two hugged warmly.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I tried to get here sooner. I got in the car as soon as I got the Google alert. I was hoping you wouldn’t see it.”

“I saw it after I got out of the gym,” she said. “I thought it was a mistake. I thought she was improving.”

That solved the mystery of how Marcus had gotten there so fast. Madden realized that he was already en route when she texted him about Madden’s unexpected visit. But Marcus had a gun. Where did the gun come from?

“It’s better that she passed,” Marcus said. “She wasn’t ever going to be the same.”

Madden felt completely out of place. They were experiencing a deeply personal moment and he was standing there watching it. If not for the gun trained on him, he would have gladly disappeared. He saw that it was an ultra-compact Ruger, the LCP .380, prized for its concealability. In Marcus’s hand it looked like a toy.

When they broke their embrace, Madden repeated the speech he gave Cathleen.

“My associate in New York knows exactly where I am,” he warned Marcus. “If I don’t call him by noon—three o’clock his time—he’s going to call the police.”

“Thanks for the heads up, Hank,” Marcus said. “Now just sit tight for a minute.”

He and Cathleen walked toward the kitchen for a quick powwow. Marcus kept an eye on Madden the whole time they chatted. While Madden couldn’t make out everything they were saying, he did hear enough bits and pieces to get that she was rehashing what she thought Madden knew and what she’d told him.

Madden considered an escape. He saw a sliding glass door that led out to the backyard, but the backyard appeared to be fenced in—and that fence was a good five or six feet tall. There had to be some sort of side gate that led to the front of the house, but he didn’t know that for sure. And then there was the dog. Dakota kept coming up to the glass and looking at him, wagging his tail. Would he run after him, thinking he wanted to play, and maybe trip him up?

A younger version of himself might have bolted—or maybe even tried to take Marcus down—but he didn’t feel the current, post redeye version was up to the challenge.

Marcus continued to console Cathleen. Madden sensed an intimacy in their relationship; they were clearly much closer than he’d ever imagined. He heard Marcus assure her that everything would be all right, an opinion Madden didn’t quite share.

“Let’s take a ride, Hank,” Marcus said as he walked back into the living room. “I want to show you something.”

Madden didn’t like the sound of that. “You know, when you say something like that, I hear a certain ominous connotation in it. Especially since the guy who’s saying it has a gun in his hand. No offense, but it seems a little too cute for you.”

“It’s hers,” Marcus said. “But I taught her how to shoot it.”

“I didn’t realize you guys were so close.”

“You didn’t realize a lot of things. Come on, let’s go. You said we’ve got ’til noon, right?”

“You mind if I hit the john first? Coffee’s run its course.”

Marcus considered the request. “Give me your phone,” he said.

Madden handed it to him. Marcus told him to lift his pant legs, gave him a quick pat down to check for a weapon, and then he pointed him toward a door off the kitchen.

“Right there,” he said. “Keep it open.”

Marcus kept an eye on him as he did his business, but didn’t watch too closely. He didn’t normally stand outside bathrooms and watch men pee, especially older men, and Madden could tell he wasn’t enthralled with the task.

Turning on the water to wash his hands, Madden noticed a wad of used tissues at the bottom of the small garbage bin to the left of the sink. That got him thinking. Cathleen had been crying. She must’ve wiped her eyes or blown her nose into one of those tissues.

He put both hands in the sink, but only put one of them under the stream, keeping his right hand dry. He turned off the water, removed the hand towel from its rack and dropped it on the floor. His back turned toward the door, he reached into the bin, gathered the tissues with his dry hand, then picked up the towel with his wet hand. He quickly stuffed the tissues in his jacket pocket, then took his time using the towel to wipe both hands, turning toward Marcus as he did.

He folded the towel and returned it neatly to its rack.

“Come on,” Marcus said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

Outside, Marcus walked right behind him, which made Madden nervous. He didn’t trust Marcus handling that gun. It might be petite, but it was deadly nonetheless.

His car was parked on the street. Madden realized right away that he’d seen it before: It was the white Audi he thought had been following him a few months back. The license plate was the same. Dupuy had someone run it for him then. The car was registered to Jorge Rodriguez of Redwood City. No one saw the connection so they let it drop.

“I’ve seen this car before,” he said to Marcus as he got in. “You were the one following me, weren’t you?”

“A little,” Marcus said. “In the beginning. Until I realized you weren’t a threat.”

“Who’s Jorge Rodriguez?”

“He used to work for me. Young kid. Did him a favor and bought his car when he went back east to law school in the fall. I gotta get it re-registered.”

Madden watched the road as they drove out of town.

“We going far?” he asked.

“You’ll see.” Marcus held the gun in his left hand, the steering wheel in his right.

“You do understand how things work these days?” Madden said. “They can track me from my cell phone. They’ll know I went to Cathleen’s house. They’ll see exactly where you drove me. And even if you ditch the phone, they’ll know I was up here.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Marcus said. “Just chill out. We’ll be there soon enough.”

“At least tell me how you killed him. Tell me what happened.”

“Play your cards right and I might,” Marcus said.

Madden didn’t know what that portended—as far as he could tell, he didn’t even have a pair in his hand—but he took at it as a positive.

Marcus got on the 101 and headed north. After about fifteen minutes he turned off at the 481B exit, headed east past Sonoma State University and drove up into the hills, where the landscape became decidedly more rural. They drove down a two-lane paved road for a little bit, then Marcus slowed and turned off onto a dirt road marked by a rustic gated entrance. Above the gate was a crested shield with the bold “NF” logo of Never Found Vineyard at its center.

Madden’s eyes opened wide when he saw the name, but his mouth stayed shut. Marcus turned right at a fork on the dirt road, up a gently sloping path. Soon, they were pulling into a driveway in front of a farmhouse that was either new or had been recently renovated.

“Here we are,” Marcus said as he got out of the car.

“This is yours?” Madden asked, standing beside him.

“And my wife’s. But my little hobby.”

Marcus motioned for him to start walking. “Go that way,” he said, “I want to show you something.”

Trailing closely behind, he guided Madden to the back of the farmhouse, where there was a rectangular pool, a lush expanse of green lawn, and a partially covered patio with different seating areas. It was all very tastefully appointed, though not estate fancy—or estate scale. Whoever had remodeled the property had done it well. It blended perfectly with its surroundings and looked expensively sophisticated without being ostentatious.

Marcus guided Madden up a path that led into the vineyards. There were perhaps forty rows of grapevines, many of them with fruit already showing. Most of the vineyards Madden had visited were on flat ground. But this one—at least this part of it—had been planted on the side of a hill.

When they reached the summit, Marcus stood beside Madden and looked out at the view. They were high enough to see into the valley past the gently rolling hills ahead of them. Madden spotted what he suspected was the town of Santa Rosa. It was a beautiful day, the sky an electric shade of Sonoma blue and practically cloudless. If he had to choose a place for it all to come to an end, this might as well be it.

“Not bad, right?” Marcus said.

“Not bad,” Madden agreed.

A little further down the hill Madden saw a set of three structures linked together, which he realized must be the winery. Parked outside the buildings he could see a car and two pickup trucks. He didn’t see the people the cars belonged to. He assumed they were inside and the building was where the wine was made and stored.

“We’re small,” Marcus said. “I’m still trying to figure things out. It’s been a learning process. This’ll be our third harvest. We’re getting better each year.”

“What are you making?”

“Pinot and Chardonnay. In the hills here we’re dealing with various microclimates. Those grapes grow well here.”

“It’s a long way to go from bartender at a pub to this,” Madden said.

Marcus smiled. “It was my dream. I always wanted this. Since I was a little kid. I’m living the dream, man.”

Madden looked over at him. The problem with people living the dream was they had a hard time giving it up. He got the feeling that one of them wasn’t walking off that hill.

“How did Ross die?” Madden asked. “Did you find him in Vietnam?”

He didn’t think that was what actually happened, but he suspected Marcus would be more likely to react to a more specific question.

“I didn’t,” he said. “But I did bring him there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here’s the deal, Hank. I’m going to tell you everything. And when I’m through, I’m going to make you a proposition. And you will either accept my proposition or you won’t. OK?”

Madden nodded. He had a pretty good idea what Marcus meant by the choice so he didn’t bother asking for clarification. Besides, he was too eager to get answers to worry about that now.

“Ross was always a bully,” Marcus began. “Stacey didn’t see that quality in him. Not right away. Not until after they got married. They had their little spats but, for the most part, he treated her like a queen. At first. He might’ve really loved her, in his way. But then he changed. I don’t know if he was manic or bipolar or what, but something was off. He became very controlling and paranoid. He told her what she could wear, who she could see. He went nuts if he saw her even look at a guy, stuff like that. But Stacey wasn’t one to deal with anyone telling her how she could or couldn’t look at anyone. So she started looking at more guys.”

“Was this before or after they had Cathleen?” Madden asked.

“A little before.”

“So I guess things weren’t so bad that they weren’t having sex.”

“Well, it wasn’t always consensual. At least that’s what she told me. But don’t get me wrong, Stacey had her issues. She was no saint, always sleeping around. Even in high school. I didn’t know her well. She was a year ahead of me. But I heard the stories. She probably shouldn’t have ever gotten married. But she had these periods in her life—I call them her conformist phases—where she wanted a normal life so she’d walk a straighter line, so to speak. She was in one of those phases when she met Ross. And he kind of swept her off her feet. In some ways, I think they were both pretending they were somebody they weren’t. He was the same way.”

“And when did he start abusing Cathleen?”

Marcus dropped his head, like he was about to pray or something. Madden had struck a nerve.

“I don’t want to get into that,” he said after a moment. “But I’ll tell you how it happened. After Cathleen was born, things were OK for a while. They were both focused on the baby. They played family. And he actually was a pretty good father. He was.”

Marcus paused again, briefly, then switched to the present tense to tell the next part:

“A year or two goes by and he tells Stacey he wants another kid. So they try to have one. But it doesn’t happen. She won’t get pregnant. So he has her go in for some tests. And they say nothing’s wrong with her. And then he goes in for tests. Afterwards, he tells Stacey everything’s fine. But actually it isn’t. They tell him he’s got some issues with his sperm that would make it next to impossible for him to get a woman pregnant naturally. They can do IVF. They can make it happen. But suddenly he looks at Cathleen and realizes she’s not actually his kid. He says nothing to Stacey, though. Keeps it to himself. He only tells her he knows later on, toward the end, when Stacey finds out what he’s been doing to Cathleen.” He paused here, wincing at the memory. “That’s when he decides to say something.”

“How’d she find out?”

“I told her.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know Stacey and I were close. Had been for years. I could see that she was struggling in the marriage. She had to go back to work, get some financial independence. I worked nights and weekends, so I had plenty of free time to help out. I spent a lot of time with Cathleen, always have. Something happened to her when she was around eight. She started acting strange. Withdrawn, sullen. Not her usual self. Everything scared her, especially Ross. Whenever she knew she was going to be alone with him I could see the fear in her eyes. It wasn’t normal.”

“That’s quite an assumption.”

“I saw the bruises. On the inside of her thighs. She was wearing these shorts that rode up when she ran or climbed. I asked her what happened and she just clammed up. Disappeared into herself. She refused to say a word about anything. But I knew. I just knew something was up with him. It was textbook behavior, like something from an after school special. I decided to find out for myself.”

“Who’s kid was she?”

“Mine,” Marcus said. “Cathleen is my daughter. And I’ve always known that.”

Madden felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. The whole scene felt surreal. He tried to force himself back to reality, but he didn’t know how. He tried to say something, anything, but no words came out of his mouth.

So that was it, he thought. That was the motive. It wasn’t money. He was protecting a child. His child. His secret.

But what about Ross? What about finding his arm in Vietnam? What did Marcus mean when he said he’d brought him there?

“You said you brought Ross to Vietnam. What’d you mean by that?”

“He never left California,” Marcus explained. “It was me. After I killed him, I took his passport and went to Vietnam because I knew we had no extradition treaty with them. And to be perfectly honest, I’d always wanted to go there. I bought a ticket to Ho Chi Minh City and entered the country as Ross Walker. Exiting the country as me was a little trickier. I ended up going through Thailand, had to bribe a few people. This happened in the nineties, before September 11. International travel was a lot easier before 9/11. Everything was easier. Stacey managed to get herself a social security number and a new identity without much of a problem.”

“But what about his remains? What about the arm?”

“I went to Vietnam twice,” Marcus explained patiently. “The first time as him, the second as me looking for him. For my book. When I went the second time I packed the arm in my suitcase. Well, by that point it wasn’t so much an arm as, well, bones.”

“A suitcase?” Madden asked, incredulous.

“Not just any suitcase. I had one made with a special lead-lined compartment, just in case some security person looked at an X-ray of the suitcase. I doubt they even looked, though.”

“Why? Why only one arm? Why would you do that?”

“Ah, the arm. That’s actually an interesting story. A few years after she’d settled in New York, Candace started talking to me about this guy she’d met who trained people to be lucid dreamers. You know, control what happens in their dreams. She was really into that stuff. And the damn psychics. Anyway, she was really impressed with this guy, not just because he was kind of a Svengali, but also because he was handicapped. He only had one arm. He’d lost the other one to a bacterial infection or something like that. She talked about him a lot. Anyway, that’s how I came up with the idea. I just thought it would be interesting, that it would really add something to the story, if I went to Vietnam and found Ross’s arm. It would make the book. Not a sure thing, I know. I took a huge risk, but it paid off big time. That piece of arm totally made the book. What was the one thing everybody talked about when they talked about my book? The arm.”

“What happened to the rest of him?”

“I was living in Woodside, on the property of this wealthy divorced guy I knew from the bar. He made his money in tech but always wanted to be an artist so he converted one of his barns into an art studio. He had the place all set it up to do some painting but then he never painted. He traveled all the time. I buried Ross up there. And then a few years later, I really got rid of him.”

“Where is he now?”

Marcus bent down and took some soil from the ground and held it in his hand, showing it to Madden. Then he tossed in the air and it blew away with the wind.

“You might find a trace of him in our 2014,” he said.

“You ground him up?”

“His bones,” he said. “When I bought this property nine years ago, I mixed him in with some manure I spread on the fields. Ashes to ashes.”

“Where’d you kill him?”

“At his house. Drugged him first then asphyxiated him. It was clean. No blood. I didn’t want any blood. Then I stuck him in the trunk of his car and drove to Woodside.”

“How’d you end up at his house?”

“He came into the bar that same night. He knew I knew Stacey. Knew she came into the bar and that I’d gone to high school with her. He assumed I’d slept with her, but didn’t know for sure. And he came in and started asking me questions, like ‘I know you know where she is. I know she’s hiding out somewhere, you tell me where and I’ll make it worth your while.’ Stuff like that.”

“Where was she?”

“In Woodside. In the other barn. I was hiding her. She was gone girl years before Gone Girl. Except she left because she really was afraid he would kill her. He choked her, you know? Almost killed her. She had to get away from him. She’d been living in that guest cottage on their property and Cathleen was living in the big house, in her room. Right down the hall from his. It was crazy. Stacey kept saying it’s alright, they’d come to an understanding, they were going to get divorced, and she was going to work out a deal where she’d get Cathleen and would take less in the divorce in exchange for full custody. She wouldn’t press charges, didn’t want to put the kid through it. But then he started to change his tune and didn’t want to give her any money at all so she threatened to tell the police about what he’d done to Cathleen. That was the night he nearly choked her to death. He followed her, let her know it too. Told her if she went anywhere near the police he’d kill her. He’d threatened her before that, lots of times. And more than a few times she had to stop me from going over there and killing him. I wanted to. The guy in Woodside had shotguns, we’d shoot skeet sometimes. And I was ready to go over there and blow him away. But she convinced me not to. And then I came up with the plan to get her out of there and make it look like he killed her. And she agreed.”

“You planned it for a while then?”

“No, not really,” Marcus said. “Planning it happened over a few days, but the actual opportunity, him coming to talk to me in the bar, that was pure serendipity. I knew I wouldn’t get another opportunity, and I was ready. I hated that guy for what he did to Stacey, but I wanted him dead for what he did to Cathleen. I can’t say we fully thought everything out, but we figured it wouldn’t take the police too long to dig into his life and realize that lots of people wanted him dead. Because he was a bad guy.”

“So you had no plan for Stacey to reappear one day?”

“That was the initial plan, but then the days became weeks and we weren’t sure what to do. Everybody thought he had killed her, but they couldn’t come up with enough evidence to get a conviction, so they held off arresting him. They had the stuff Stacey planted, but they had no body. And by they, I mean the MPPD. Pastorini and that other guy, Burns, were working the case with Dupuy and the DA. You guys never felt you had enough to get a jury to convict him. One day—it was about a month or so after Stacey’s disappearance—I said to myself, ‘Hey, what if this guy disappears, too? Everybody will think he took off because he’s guilty. It’s the perfect murder.’ I just had to make it look like he took off. I didn’t do anything right away, though. I thought it would be tricky because you guys—the police—were watching out for him. Or at least I thought you might be. I was planning the whole thing. I already had the pills and everything when he came into the bar. So I told him, ‘Look I can’t talk about this here, but I might know something.’ I told him I’d meet him at his house after I got off work. I warned him it would be late. After work I left my car parked on a street near the bar and skateboarded over there. I used to do a lot of longboarding. Always kept a rig and some gear in my trunk.”

“So the opportunity presented itself and you acted on it?”

“Exactly. And the amazing thing is everything went pretty much as I’d envisioned it. Some stuff I added along the way. Calling Bronsky, for instance, and pretending to be Ross. It was mean, but I didn’t like the guy. I don’t know why she ever hooked up with him. I’m sorry about the backyard, though. It was kind of fun to watch you guys dig it up.”

That revelation hurt a little. He thought back to Marcus’s whole drone presentation. What a charade.

“They found Ross’s car at LAX,” Madden said. “You drove it there?”

“I did, with some strands of Stacey’s hair and traces of her blood in the trunk. I was concerned that someone might recognize the name if I went to SFO and tried to buy a one-way plane ticket to Hanoi through Tokyo. Someone might tip off the police. That said, there wasn’t anything preventing Ross from leaving the country. But I was just trying to be cautious.”

“How’d you get the time off work?”

“I was actually scheduled to be off for a few days. I worked Wednesday through Saturday. And when I called one of the other bartenders from Vietnam and asked him to take my shifts, I’d screwed up my foot longboarding and couldn’t stand. I came back the next week. I might have stayed a little longer but I was worried Stacey was running out of food.”

Madden thought about Pastorini spending all those Thanksgivings and Christmas Eves staking out Ross’s brother’s house. Poor guy, he thought. What a waste.

“I was lucky,” Marcus said. “But I was also smart.”

He seemed energized by finally being able to tell someone about the great coup he’d pulled off. And it was great, Madden thought. It was spectacular.

“Did Cathleen ever see Stacey again?” Madden asked. “After she moved to New York?”

“Sure,” Ross said. “I couldn’t tell her the truth right away. But then a few years after Stacey’s disappearance, after my book came out, I told Cathleen I had a surprise for her. And that’s when I took her to see her. We drove up to Mt. Lassen. Stacey met us there. We’d often meet in National Parks. Yellowstone one year, Mt. Rushmore another. The Everglades in Florida. Once she was old enough Cathleen would travel alone to meet her.”

“So everybody thought she lost both her parents when in fact she lost neither of them.”

Madden was talking more to himself than to Marcus.

“Well, she lost one today,” Marcus said. “And she may soon lose another.”

Madden looked over at him. A sly smile had formed on Marcus’s lips. Madden didn’t like the look of it.

“Let me give you the rest of the tour,” Marcus said. “Let’s keep going a little bit.”

He motioned for Madden to follow the path, which curved around to the other side of the hill, a little farther. They walked maybe another twenty-five yards and came to an area that looked like the early phases of a construction site. There was a small backhoe sitting there, with its tail and scoop tucked in, scorpion-like. Someone had been tearing up the hill, then grading and leveling it.

Marcus stopped near the machine and took in the vista in front of them. “This is my favorite spot,” he said.

The view was arguably better than the one they had just left. All rolling hills, nature, golden California sun, and more picture-perfect vineyards in the distance. As tense as he was, Madden found himself suddenly at peace.

“Ready to hear my proposition?” Marcus asked, breaking the silence.

“Not really, but go ahead.”

“How much is Shelby going to pay you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“For finding Stacey, how much was the bonus, a million, two million?”

Madden hesitated a moment, then told him. “A million for Stacey, a million for Ross, and an extra million if I found both of them.”

“I’ll match that,” Marcus said. “And I’ll even throw in another million for good measure.”

“Excuse me?”

“By my count that’s about three million more than what you’d get from Shelby. The fact is you never found Ross and you never will. You can prove exactly nothing.”

“Once they learn that that was Stacey living in Manhattan, that she was actually alive all that time, they’re gonna figure it out.”

“They can conjecture. But that’s very different from actual proof.”

“They’ll prove it,” Madden said. “And they’d certainly be able to figure out that you killed me. I assume that’s what happens if I don’t accept your proposition.”

“Oh, no,” Marcus said. “I’m not going to do that.” Then he pointed the gun at his own head. “I’m going to kill myself. And Cathleen will, too. We have a pact.”

Madden looked at him, alarmed.

“I’m sorry if you thought the backhoe was for you,” Marcus went on. “We’re carving out a spot for events. Company parties, wedding ceremonies, stuff like that. We’re going to put a lawn in. I was hoping to have it ready for the upcoming wedding season, but we’re a little behind.”

“You’re out of your mind. Put the gun down.”

“I’m not a killer, Hank. I’m a broker. I don’t have to tell you about the pain of sexual abuse. You know about it firsthand. And you have a daughter. If someone had done that to her, what would you have done? You’d have wanted to do exactly what I did. You gotta let this go, man. We can all go on living happily ever after. Or you can destroy more lives. The choice is yours, Hank. What’s it going to be? The pile of money behind door number one or the dead bodies and carnage behind door number two? I’ll give you five seconds to decide. Then I’m pulling the trigger.”

Madden stood there paralyzed, his heart racing. Thoughts, memories and ideas darted through his mind, bashing into one another. Marcus started to count.

“One … two …”

“Wait,” Madden said. “Wait a minute. You have to let me think. I’m not the only one here. It’s not solely my decision.”

He still had to clear the chaos and didn’t quite know what he was saying. He just blurted out the loudest thought in his head.

“You’re gonna have to give me my phone,” he said. “I need to call someone.”

“Who?” Marcus asked.

“My guy in New York. My associate. I have a deal with him. He’s the one that found Stacey. He gets half of whatever I get from Shelby. He knows everything. I need to speak to him.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a guy. Just a guy who knew Candace.”

“He the one from the hospital Cathleen told me about?” Marcus asked.

“Yes. Now give me the fucking phone.”

Marcus thought about it a moment, then reached into his pocket and handed Madden his phone. There wasn’t much of a signal—it was fluctuating between one dot and two—and Madden paced back and forth as he waited for the call to go through. Fremmer picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hey, Hank,” he said somberly. “I’ve been trying to reach you. You get my message? I’m drained, man. I wasn’t prepared for this. I thought she was out of the woods. The media’s been emailing, calling. I don’t have it in me to respond.”

“Listen, Max,” Madden said. “And listen very carefully. I’m standing here on top of a hill near Sonoma with a guy pointing a gun at his head. He says he’s going to kill himself if I don’t take his offer and let this whole thing go.”

The line went silent.

“You messing with me?” Fremmer said. “If you’re messing with me, it’s not funny.”

“I’m not messing with you, Max. I found out what happened to Ross, but I’m not sure I can prove to Shelby that he’s dead. I’m with the guy who killed him. And he’s going to kill himself if I don’t accept his deal and let him walk away.”

“That’s an interesting negotiating tactic,” Fremmer said. “I haven’t heard that one before. He’s really got a gun?”

“Pointed at his head.” Madden said. “Right now. Three feet away from me. Listen, Ross isn’t Braden.”

“You’ve confirmed that?”

“Ross never left the country. He was buried in Woodside, then ground up later and sprinkled around this vineyard. I can’t prove any of that, though. So I don’t think Shelby will pay me the extra money. But this guy will. And then some. He’s talking about four million dollars to walk away from this and not say anything.”

“Ever,” Marcus said.

“Ever,” Madden repeated.

“Hush money,” Fremmer said.

“Yes.”

“Is he good for it?” Fremmer asked.

Madden looked directly at Marcus. “My associate wants to know if you’re good for the money.”

Marcus nodded.

“He’s a real-estate guy,” Madden explained to Fremmer. “He made a fortune in the boom out here.”

“I invested my money well, too,” Marcus said. “I got in a couple of early home runs, thanks to my connections.”

He went into further detail, listing the IPOs he got “friends and family” shares in.

“He got a chunk of Facebook shares that are worth twelve million,” Madden told Fremmer.

Fremmer wasn’t totally satisfied. “Is he the type of guy who can put four million in cash into a duffel bag and not have anybody notice?” he asked. “Because I don’t know too many of those guys. He’s not a drug dealer on the side, is he?”

“He wants to know if you can put four million in a suitcase,” Madden said.

Marcus thought about it a moment, then said, “I can’t. But I have another solution. Hear me out on this. I’ve given it some thought.”

As Marcus explained his plan, Madden wasn’t exactly optimistic. Not at first. But by the time Marcus finished his pitch, Madden had to admit it did sound kind of enticing.

“He says he can put us on his payroll,” Madden reported to Fremmer. “He’ll pay us out over a few years. It’ll be legit. If Shelby paid us we’d have to pay taxes on it anyway.”

Marcus had offered Madden a job as head of security for the vineyard. The job didn’t entail much, and, if he wanted it Marcus would give him a role in the business. Madden could come and go as he pleased. Additional perks included an open invitation to stay in the guest cottage on the property; he and his wife could even retire there when their kids went off to college.

Fremmer would be the Director of Marketing for Marcus Industries East. They’d actually been looking to expand their real estate holdings into Manhattan. Fremmer would be grossly overpaid for his dream job, making deals in New York City.

There was one big downside.

“This isn’t technically legal,” Madden warned Fremmer. “If we get caught we could get prosecuted. And you’d lose your kid. I’d be an ex-cop in prison. It’d be rough, man. Real rough. I have a key to the city. There’s a plaque on a wall in my old office back at the station house. Whether or not I deserve it, I’m kind of a big deal in the community.”

“I’m not there, Hank. I can’t tell you what to do. But tell me you want to do this and I’m in. I’ll get something on paper for him to sign. I’ve got an hour or so before I see Zander. I might be able to draft something quickly.”

Madden didn’t answer. He was lost in thought.

“You hear me, Hank?” Fremmer said.

Madden still didn’t answer. He stood there, pretending to listen, nodding his head. Then he turned to Marcus and said:

“He wants to talk to you.”

He went to hand him the phone, but just as it touched Marcus’s fingertips, Madden let it slide out of his own hand. Marcus juggled it for a second, instinctively knocking it into the air, but he couldn’t quite catch it on the way down. As it touched off his hand and fell to the ground, Madden went for the gun. In one motion he embraced Marcus and pushed the weapon up and to the side, away from both of them, and drove his knee into Marcus’s groin. Madden felt him go almost limp in his arms, took a step back and knocked the gun out of his hand. Soon it was in his own hand.

He pointed it at Marcus, who was doubled over, his face twisted in pain.

“Hank, you there?”

Fremmer’s voice on the phone. He was shouting but Madden could barely hear him.

“You OK?” Fremmer shouted. “You there, man?”

Madden kneeled down to pick up the phone, keeping the gun trained on Marcus. His heart was pounding.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Madden said into the phone a little breathlessly.

“What happened?”

“I got the gun. I got the gun away from him.”

“Nice work, Detective.”

I’ve still got it, Madden thought, smiling. But then he watched Marcus straighten up, look at him and wince. He was still in pain, but no longer debilitating pain. And now he was coming at him.

Madden waited ’til the last second. ’Til Marcus was almost upon him. Then he squeezed the trigger.

A click, but nothing. He squeezed again. Another click. And again nothing.

Marcus put his hand over the top of the gun, gently taking it from Madden’s hand, which didn’t resist.

“Was never loaded,” Marcus said, forcing a smile through another grimace. “I told you I’m not a killer. I’m a broker. So, what can I tell the seller? Do we have a deal?”