Real Murder (Lovers in Crime Mystery Book 2) (18 page)

Joshua knelt down to peer into Larry Van Patton’s  face. “Who said anything about Rachel?”

Realizing his blunder, Larry Van Patton glanced from Joshua to Henry, and then back again to the prosecutor,  who narrowed his eyes while he studied him. “I want a deal,” Van Patton said.

“What do you have to offer me?” Joshua asked.

“A congresswoman.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“Are you kidding me?” Cameron said by way of  greeting Joshua when she found him in the observation room at the sheriff’s department. “Larry Van Patton is
handing
Congresswoman Rachel Hilliard over to you for hiring him to kill her husband and all of her sisters in prostitution?”

“Good evening to you, too, beautiful,” he replied with a tone heavy in sarcasm.

Her abrupt entrance brought to her attention, she tossed the valise in which she carried her folders and notes, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him fully on the lips while taking time to taste his mouth before letting go. “How’s that for a how do you do?”

“Much better,” he replied before kissing her again. “And yes, he is rolling over on the lethally ambitious congresswoman.”

“I thought he was the one who pointed you and Sawyer in the direction of MacRae and Hilliard in the first place,” she said.

“Haven’t you ever heard of honor among thieves?” he said with a wink. “It’s worse with killers.”

“Why insinuate Hilliard if he was her guy?” Cameron asked him. “Wouldn’t he realize that the trail would lead right back to him?”

“Because Dolly was dead,” Joshua said. “All of her blackmail victims had to know that those tapes are now in the hands of the authorities,” Joshua said. “When we walked into his place, he knew that if we had not already heard that tape, we would.”

“He wasn’t on that tape,” Cameron noted.

“But MacRae was,” he said. “So Van Patton pointed us in the direction of MacRae. Since the idea of him being the killer was already planted in our minds by the recording, it wasn’t hard for us to take his tip and run with it. Then Hilliard sent him to kill MacRae to keep him quiet about all of her other dirty dealings—which includes accepting bribes and all of the other assorted dirty games that she has immersed herself in during her long career in politics.”

“Is MacRae going to help bury her?” she asked.

“MacRae took this attempted hit personally,” Joshua said with a laugh. “It’s going to be hard to shut him up.”

Delighted, she grasped his arm. “Then do you even need Van Patton’s testimony to convict her? If I were you, I’d tell him to forget any deal and throw the book at both of them.”

“Van Patton has killed half a dozen ex-call girls and a  congressman, plus the two assistants who were on that plane with Hilliard,” Joshua said. “He’s never going to see the light of day again.” He patted a stack of case files on the table next to him. “While Van Patton has been conferring with his  lawyer, Sawyer has been busy. He’s doing a full background check on Van Patton and his club. Since we showed Mike Gardner’s notes to him this afternoon, Sawyer has collected reports on every one of those call girls’ murders and is going to compare them to Van Patton’s statement. Van Patton claims he’s recorded every meeting he’s had with Hilliard where they discussed each hit going all the way back to Rod Hilliard, her late husband, and up to tonight’s hit when he was supposed to kill Henry MacRae.”

“They both wanted to pin her husband’s murder on MacRae,” she said.

“According to Van Patton,” Joshua said. “Rachel Hilliard wanted MacRae full time. When he refused to kill Rod Hilliard, she hired her good friend from behind the bar at Dolly’s. It was Hilliard, not Dolly, who gave him the seed money for his own bar as payment for getting her husband out of the way.”

“And the superintendent of the West Virginia State Police knew that the wife of a United States Congressman had her husband killed, and he did nothing to arrest her?” Even though she had seen a lot of outrageous things in her career as a police officer and detective, she was still shocked.

“Suspected, not knew.” Joshua nodded his head. “He didn’t want to know.”

Cameron turned to the two-way mirror to watch Larry Van Patton in the interrogation room where he was meeting with his attorney. “Do these two men know enough to take Hilliard down?”

Joshua nodded his head. “MacRae told us that when he heard Dolly Houseman had been murdered, he confronted Hilliard. They had a huge fight last night at the Mountaineer and she suddenly took off for Washington, which sent up a red flag to him. She’s smart enough to make sure she’s  nowhere in the local area when a hit is going down.” He held up a finger. “However, he did say that she was in town the night Dolly was murdered, and forensics says that they have not completed the profile on the second blood sample left at the scene. However, they have determined that it was left by a woman.”

“If the killer’s blood didn’t come from a man—”

“If it didn’t come from a man, it had to have come from a woman,” Joshua interrupted Cameron to whisper into her ear. “What else is there?”

“A mutant.” She narrowed her eyes before giving him a playful jab in his ribs. “You know what I’m saying. That clears Anthony Tanner. Maybe he’s telling the truth—as outrageous as it sounds. He was hired to kill Dolly—”

“By a woman,” Joshua said, “but not Rachel Hilliard, because Larry Van Patton claims he was her go-to guy.”

“Maybe Rachel Hilliard went to Dolly’s to coerce her into turning over the tapes, things got out of hand, and she ended up killing her. Tad says it was a crime of passion.”

Joshua shook his head. “That would be stupid.”

“Most killers are stupid.”

“Not all of them,” Joshua said. “Rachel Hilliard is very smart. Larry Van Patton is copping to more than ten kills on her command—ten kills that she has never even been on the radar for being behind. After all these years, she’s too smart to hire an unknown quantity like Anthony Tanner to kill Dolly Houseman, especially before she got out of town. She would have made very sure that she was in Washington or Charleston, and with witnesses to alibi her for the time of the murder.”

He made sense. Cameron lowered her eyes. She thoughtfully gritted her teeth. “Josh, think about it. Why kill Dolly now? Even if Rachel was planning a bid for the governor’s mansion, killing Dolly, who had that recording, would be stupid because she had to know that Dolly had insurance. If anything happened to her, it would get into the hands of the authorities, which is exactly what happened.
No way
would she want anything to happen to Dolly before making sure she had that tape in her own hot little hands.”

Joshua agreed. “Rachel had every reason to want Dolly to stay alive.”

“But she’s our only female suspect,” Cameron said.

“I know.” He shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out for sure. Ask Hilliard for a sample of her DNA to compare to the blood left at the scene.”

“She’ll refuse to give it up.”

“We’ll get a court order,” Joshua said. “We have probable cause now. MacRae confirms that Dolly was blackmailing her. Not only do we have her for ten counts of murder conspiracy, counting the attempted murder of Henry MacRae, but we have a burn phone with her fingerprints that was found at the scene.”

“Ten?” Cameron did a quick mental count.
Seven call girls, Virgil Null, Mike Gardner, Congressman Rod Hilliard and the two assistants on his plane, and Dolly makes thirteen.

“Van Patton’s lawyer says he’s copping to ten counts of conspiracy to commit murder,” Joshua said.

Sheriff Curt Sawyer came into the observation room. “Josh, we’re ready.”

“But—”

Joshua interrupted her objection with a kiss on the cheek. “Watch and you’ll get the answer to all of your questions.”  He went out into the hallway with the sheriff directly behind him.

Clutching her valise against her chest, Cameron turned to watch Joshua and Sheriff Sawyer go into the room next door.
Is Van Patton saying Rachel Hilliard was not behind all those murders? Maybe she is, but he didn’t commit them all. Maybe she did some on her own.

Larry Van Patton’s defense attorney didn’t offer to shake Joshua’s or Sheriff Sawyer’s hands. Instead, he started off the meeting by stating that Larry Van Patton was making his  confession completely against his advice. “Before he tells you anything else about what he knows, we want to know what   type of deal you’re offering him in exchange for the evidence that he has to offer.”

“I’m not offering your client any deals until I see exactly what he has,” Joshua said. “He has already made statements confirming that he killed six women who Congresswoman Hilliard had worked with, plus her husband and his two assistants. The fact that her late husband was a congressman makes this a federal offense.”

“We’ve already contacted the FBI,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “They’re on their way.”

“We’re prepared to turn that case over to the feds,” Joshua said. “So your client can talk to them about any deal he’s  looking to make. As for the call girls, we’re in the process of contacting each of those jurisdictions. We’re going to have a full house here pretty soon with detectives and prosecutors fighting to get their hands on your client.”

“Over a bunch of dead hookers?” Larry Van Patton laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t worry,” Joshua said, “I’m not turning you over to anyone until I get the facts about the cases in my jurisdiction. Let’s start at the beginning.” He flipped open his notepad. “Ava Tucker and Virgil Null.”

Larry Van Patton shook his head.

“You told me you were going to cooperate.” Joshua turned to Sheriff Sawyer. “We’re through here. We’ll turn him over to the feds and let them put a needle in his arm.” They both stood up.

“I am being straight with you,” Larry said. “Rachel had nothing to do with those murders. She had no reason to want them dead. Neither did I.”

Joshua regarded him for a long moment before slowly lowering himself back down into his seat.

“She seemingly had reason to kill the rest of her fellow call girls.”

“After
I killed Rod Hilliard for her,” Larry said. “Ava and that john were killed way before I killed Rod. It was after I killed Rod Hilliard that the problems with the girls started. Turns out this green-eyed little redhead, and I don’t mean her eyes were green in color, but she was filled with envy for Rachel—her name was Bianca—she had been listening at the door when Rachel and Henry were talking about  offing Rod. Bianca didn’t know that MacRae didn’t have  the stomach for killing. As soon as Rod was dead, Bianca went running to Charleston and started threatening to ruin everything. She even set herself up in a penthouse suite at some fancy hotel and told them to bill Rachel for it. She had grand plans to bleed Rachel dry. So I went over there to party with her. She never saw it coming. In no time, I had drugged her, put her in the bathtub, and then slashed her wrists and made it look like a suicide. Rachel called in favors from her friends to close the case fast, and—” He snapped his fingers. “The case was closed faster than you could say cover up.” He shook his head. “After that, Rachel thought it would be best to simply take care of all of them, just in case any of the others got any bright ideas. It was actually pretty easy. After Dolly’s had closed, none of them wanted to stay in touch with each other. Dolly had given each girl fifty thousand dollars cash to start all over, and they scattered into the four winds. Not one of them had any idea what was coming when I came a-knocking on their doors and suggested that we get together to catch up on old times.”

His grin reminded Joshua of the type of smile the  serpent may have flashed at Eve in the Garden of Eden when convincing her to try the forbidden fruit. He felt ill to his stomach when he thought of each of those young women embarking on a new life only to have it snuffed by the  self-serving, power-hungry Rachel Hilliard, who had once  been one of them. “If Rachel wasn’t behind Tucker’s and Null’s murders, then who was?”

Larry said, “I have no idea who killed them. Dolly was convinced it was Rachel even though I told her that it wasn’t. I think it had to be someone connected with the guy Ava  was with. I had seen him arguing with two other guys before he went upstairs with Ava that very night. I told the sheriff, too. But nothing came of it.” He flashed a telling glance in Sheriff Sawyer’s direction.

Curt Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. Neither he nor Joshua had seen any reference in the case file to Larry telling the sheriff any such thing.

Joshua wondered if Russell’s father, Brandon Null, a man of influence in the county, had anything to do with deleting all record of his son being on the scene and arguing with Virgil shortly before the murders.

Of course, Brandon would have had no power over Dolly Houseman and her recording of Philip Lipton and Russell Null threatening Virgil. While she must have been convinced  that Rachel had killed Ava, she probably held onto the  recording because of their reference to the mistake ten years before. Maybe—recalling the bouncer’s statement, Joshua asked, “Didn’t you run into a woman in the kitchen?”

The nod of Larry’s head turned into a shake. “But she had nothing to do with those murders.”

“What makes you so certain?” Joshua asked.

“She was the wife of one of the members.”

“Which one?” Joshua asked.

“I don’t know,” Larry replied, “but that used to happen all the time. We would get jealous or suspicious wives sneaking in to get a peek at their husbands fooling around with the girls. Some would even take pictures to use in divorce court.”

“Had you ever seen this woman there before?” Joshua asked.

“No, and considering that the club was closed six weeks later, not since either.”

“Could you give us a description?” Sheriff Sawyer asked him.

Larry shrugged. “Maybe.”

Curt said, “We’ll get a composite artist in here to do a drawing.”

Joshua moved on. “Tell me about Mike Gardner.”

“Never heard of him,” Larry replied.

Joshua slammed both of his hands down on the tabletop. “Now is not the time to play dumb, Van Patton! What’s the matter? Confessing to killing a bunch of hookers is one thing, but a cop—”

“Cop?” Larry held up his cuffed hands. “Whoa! Are you talking about the deputy that was found in the lake?”

“Yes, that cop,” Sheriff Sawyer said.

“I didn’t kill him,” Larry said.

“Come on,” Joshua said. “We know he was investigating Ava Tucker’s and Virgil Null’s murders. So he must have contacted you because you were a bartender at the club.  We found his notes. He had uncovered the sudden deaths of each of Dolly’s girls—”