Least Wanted (Sam McRae Mystery 2)

I cursed a blue streak that I hadn’t gotten through to her. Tina didn’t understand that she was hurting herself by avoiding the inevitable.

Suppressing my frustration, I headed for the nearest Starbucks with wi-fi. I fumbled my way through downloading the photos onto my laptop, e-mailed them to the cops, and made a few calls. Dancing Daria, my “bruised knee” client, had decided to accept the settlement offer. No more wasting time and compromising my professional reputation over her. After wrangling with Slippery Steve over the answers to my interrogatories in the divorce case, he promised to send me something “more complete.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘more complete’,” I told him. “Either your answers are complete or they aren’t. I want complete. Nothing less.”

“Ms. McRae,” he said, in a practiced oratorical tone, “your argumentative skills remind me a bit too much of my ex-wife.”

“Really?”

“Yes. That’s why she’s my ex-wife.”

“Lucky her,” I said, before snapping the phone shut.

Next I called Russell. He confirmed the FedEx package had arrived. I needed to take it off his hands soon. The last thing I wanted was to put Russell in harm’s way. And I had to see what Diesel was so worried about.

* * * * *

Russell brought the package to me at Starbucks. I accepted it with relief and trepidation. He bought coffee and joined me. Eyeing my healing bruise, he asked how I was holding up.

“Better now,” I said. “If this package contains what I think it does. I can’t thank you enough for your help, Russell.”

“Well,” he said, looking expectant. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Not here.” Anxious as I was, I didn’t want to do it in public. My paranoia had kicked into high gear. I pictured Diesel marching through the door as I lifted the box top.

Russell looked baffled. “Would you tell me what the hell this is about?”

“I can’t. Confidential case information. Anyway, you’re better off not knowing, believe me.”

He shook his head. “Why aren’t you one of those lawyers who handles simple cases—wills or real estate closings or collections? How do you always manage to find trouble?”

“I don’t. It finds me. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned after years of practicing law, it’s that there’s no such thing as a simple case.”

* * * * *

Much as I liked Russell, I was dying to find out what was in the package. We finished our coffee quickly, and I hurried back to the motel. Once I was safely locked in my room, I tore the package open.

Inside was a CD and several photos of Diesel with a man I didn’t recognize. Scrawled on the back were the words: “Don Diezman with Max Fullbright” dated last April 26. Max Fullbright—never heard of him. On a hunch, I dug through Brad Higgins’s file and found a copy of the Kozmik employee directory. Fullbright was listed as vice president for game development. Ha! I thought. This does go higher than the two computer geeks, Saltzman and LaRue. Another photo showed Diesel at a conference table with Fullbright and the geeks. On the back: their names and the same date. Co-ink-a-dink? Not likely.

I popped the CD into the laptop and turned up the audio. The sound quality was poor, but I could discern conversation about money transferred into an account earmarked for the development

of a new video game. The money would pay for images to be used in a new interactive adult entertainment video. One man—probably Fullbright, I surmised, from his authoritative tone—said it was essential that this video game only be sold as discs and not be available online because of “possible federal complications.”

Among all the euphemisms and cautionary language bandied about, I heard Diesel’s unmistakable voice. “And what’s my cut for providing protection for your little . . . enterprise?”

Fullbright offered ten grand, flat fee. Diesel made a harsh noise—laughing or coughing, perhaps. “You’ll have to do a lot better than that, office boy,” he said. He wanted a percentage of the profits. A back-and-forth ensued. I shut it off. I didn’t care what they’d settled on. I’d heard enough.

Fullbright and his two-man crew must have decided to invest some of the embezzled money into a side project—an interactive child porn game, in which Rochelle and her gang were the stars. Through computer manipulation, the geeks would take those images and play with them, programming them to respond to user inputs. With the attention online child porn was getting at all levels of law enforcement, it was small wonder the game would be kept off the Internet, sold only as discs, and probably distributed in the same manner as illegal drugs—by word-of-mouth and under-the-table transactions.

As for Cooper, he must have found out about the embezzlement after Marzetti alerted him to the strange vendor account. I also assumed Cooper was paid to keep it hush-hush. Since this idea didn’t surface for several months, he’d probably sensed the deal was headed in a direction he didn’t like. He took the photos and recorded the conversation on the sly, in case he needed them as bargaining chips—either to keep his job, stay out of prison, or both.

I called Detective Willard at CID. He’d gone off-duty until the following morning. A clerk refused to give me Willard’s cell number and put me through to voice mail. After a bad night’s sleep and an exhausting day, I was ready to collapse. In my message I said I’d e-mail him more evidence related to the Jones murder in the morning. One more night in the motel, I thought. Tomorrow, it’s off to Staples to copy the CD and the photos. I would then take them straight to the cops, before Diesel ran into—or over—me again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

That night, I crashed like Sleeping Beauty on sedatives. Someone must have been watching over me. The adjoining room remained empty, and I awoke to my alarm instead of a slamming door.

I took a quick shower, cut short by my cell phone ringing. I couldn’t get to it in time and toweled off before retrieving the message from Leonard Hirschbeck. “Please give me a call.”