House Rivals Read online

  Marjorie Dawkins was a planner.

  She was better than anyone she knew in terms of figuring out all the details, scheduling the tasks to be performed, and developing contingency plans in case something went wrong. She never said it out loud to anyone, but she thought she would have made a hell of a general.

  At noon, the day she was meeting Bill, she laid out everything she would need: the clothes she’d wear, gloves, a few paper bags. She put the gloves and one of the bags in her car and left the other bags in the garage. Then she drove over to a tavern, and setting the stopwatch feature on her cell phone, she drove from the tavern to the park as fast as she could. She checked the stopwatch: ninety-four seconds. Perfect.

  While Marjorie was fine-tuning the details of her plan, DeMarco met with Westerberg only to hear how little progress she’d made. She’d had no luck getting the IRS to audit D&L Consulting, and had been unable to get a warrant to see if Logan or Dawkins had transferred money to an offshore account after Sarah was killed. Nonetheless, he called Doug Thorpe and told him the FBI was still hot on the trail of Sarah’s killer, making it sound as if progress was actually being made. He called Mahoney next; he thought about lying to him, too, but told the truth, that he was stuck and couldn’t figure out what to do.

  He drove to Bill Logan’s house a couple of times and knocked on the door, but Logan wasn’t home—or was hiding inside his home. DeMarco convinced Westerberg to try to find Logan via his cell phone again, and she appealed to the cooperative judge who’d granted her the previous warrant, but was unsuccessful in locating Logan. It appeared as if he’d disabled or ditched his phone.

  At five, after a day filled with frustration, DeMarco decided to go to dinner. But he wanted to go someplace other than the American Grill. He liked the American Grill; he just didn’t want to run into the teacher again. He called the front desk and they recommended a place called Jack’s Steakhouse.

  He decided to have a drink in the bar before he sat down to dinner, and was halfway through his martini when who should walk into the bar but the long-legged, raven-haired beauty he’d seen in the American Grill. It seemed odd he should run into the same woman two nights in a row, but then thought that Bismarck was a pretty small town and there weren’t all that many places to go. When the woman saw him she made an oh-my-gosh expression, as if she was equally surprised, and DeMarco waved her over.

  He hadn’t been in the mood for companionship earlier, but his mood suddenly changed.

  Marjorie was just leaving the house to drive over to the boys’ school when her phone rang. It was Heckler.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “He’s at Jack’s Steakhouse and your pal, Christie, just walked into the place.”

  “Are you sure DeMarco hasn’t seen you following him?”

  “I don’t think so. My girlfriend’s with me and she’s driving, so if he looks at the cars behind him, he’ll see a couple instead of a single guy. And I switched cars again.”

  Marjorie was flabbergasted that Heckler would have a girlfriend, but all she said was, “Good,” and hung up. By tomorrow, DeMarco—­Bismarck’s newest rapist—should be in jail.

  She drove about a block farther, then something occurred to her: the rape charge would give DeMarco one hell of an alibi—and maybe that wasn’t good. She called Heckler back. “I’ve changed my mind. Call Christie and tell her to get out of that bar right now. Immediately. Tell her I’ll pay her half of what I promised her, but I don’t want her to do anything with DeMarco. You got it?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Heckler said.

  “And you and your girlfriend can stop following DeMarco, too. Take your girlfriend out for dinner, then go home. I’ll pay for the dinner.”

  When DeMarco told Christie that he lived in Washington, D.C., she asked if he knew the president. He was beginning to think that she wasn’t the brightest female on the planet and she was nowhere near as interesting as his little teacher friend—but she was so damn good-looking that he was willing to overlook a few minor flaws.

  She was rambling on about some mean thing her boss at Walmart had said to her, when her phone rang. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I better take this.” She listened to whoever had called for less than a minute and hung up.

  “Problem?” DeMarco asked.

  “Oh, no. Nothing important. Anyway, I’m just standing there at the checkout counter and Horace says to me . . .”

  Marjorie arrived at the PTA meeting promptly at seven thirty and shot the breeze with some of the other moms until the meeting started. The topic that night was alerting parents if there was a lockdown. A couple weeks ago, over in Fargo, some schizo nut had been walking around with a shotgun, firing at stop signs and garbage cans and mailboxes. The Fargo cops called the nearest school and told the principal to lock it down until they located the whacko, who had somehow managed to disappear. The cops eventually found the crazy guy talking to a tree but the school never notified the parents that their kids were in danger. The parents learned about the lockdown only if they happened to be listening to the radio or if their kids had cell phones and called home; some moms didn’t hear about it until their kids got home that afternoon.

  Marjorie had decided that that kind of shit wasn’t going to happen at her boys’ school, and she wanted the school to develop a system where parents and nannies and whoever else would be notified on their cell phones as soon as a lockdown commenced. Then everybody spent an hour yelling, the moms saying they didn’t want to be the last to know that their kids were in danger and the principal and his lackeys saying they didn’t have the time, the budget, or the expertise to develop and maintain a system that would send a text message to every mom in the district.

  Marjorie finally took charge and said she knew a guy—meaning Gordy—and he would develop the system for the school and set it up so it would be easy for some secretary to add and delete phone numbers from it. And her guy wouldn’t charge the school a thing—­meaning Marjorie didn’t intend to pay Gordy for doing a public service. Everybody needed to pay back once in a while, including a pot-smoking hacker like Gordy. The meeting ended with the principal saying he’d take Marjorie’s suggestion under advisement, and Marjorie said fine, but her tone of voice made it clear that if he didn’t do what she wanted she was going to make his life a living hell.

  Bill Logan arrived at the park half an hour early. He wanted to scope the place out. What he particularly wanted to do was make sure that Murdock wasn’t lurking about. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot and there weren’t a bunch of places to hide, so it looked okay but it still made him nervous meeting Marjorie here after dark. He thought about what she’d said about why she’d picked the meeting place—because it was the first place she could think of where she wouldn’t have to say the name on the phone—and that made sense. Still, he would have felt more comfortable if they’d met in a bar. It wasn’t like they were trying to hide that they were partners.

  On the other hand, maybe this was a good place to meet her because after he gave her the copy of the document he’d prepared, she was going to go crazy and start screaming at him. But that was all right. After tonight, he might not ever see Marjorie again and she’d have to find somebody else to scream at.

  He walked over to a picnic table and took a seat. He started to place the document in the center of the table so it would be the first thing Marjorie would see, then noticed the table was a bit damp and grimy. So he rolled up the document and placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket; he’d hand it to her after he explained what he’d done and why Curtis had better leave him alone.

  As he sat there waiting for Marjorie, he thought about all the things he’d have to do before he moved to Fargo. He’d have to put his house on the market, of course, but the market was booming right now so he ought to turn a decent profit. Then he’d have to find a place in Fargo to buy, but he was thinking that maybe for a while he’d ju
st rent. He’d probably have to put some of his furniture in storage and would have to get someone to drive one of his cars to Fargo. Yeah, relocating was going to be a hassle but he was actually starting to look forward to moving out of Bismarck and working for Concordia. He was anxious to see how the big boys played the game.

  After the PTA meeting was over, about ten of the moms went to a tavern, which they always did after the PTA meetings. The mothers pushed tables together, ordered glasses of Merlot and Chardonnay, and started gossiping. At one point, Marjorie tossed into the ring that she’d heard that Amelia Moore, the fifth-grade math teacher, spent damn near every night at the American Grill and would screw anything with a dick between its legs.

  At ten after nine, Marjorie said to the woman sitting next to her, “Jean, would you mind watching my purse? I need to go outside for just a second.”

  “Aw, geez, Marge, are you smoking again?”

  Marjorie tried to look sheepish.

  Inside Marjorie’s purse was her cell phone. She knew cell phones could be used to locate people and trace their movements, and by leaving her cell phone next to Jean no one would be able to use it to prove she’d left the tavern. Marjorie had thought of everything.

  She walked to the rear of the tavern, pushed through the back exit, then she really started moving. She hopped into her car, put on the gloves lying on the passenger seat, and drove like a maniac to the park where Logan was waiting—which took exactly ninety seconds, four seconds faster than when she’d timed the trip earlier in the day. And there was Bill, sitting at the picnic table, and no one else was anywhere in sight. It was actually dark enough outside that she couldn’t really tell that it was Bill sitting there, but who else could it be?

  She fast-walked toward him like she was in a race, and when she was about six feet away, she pulled the Derringer out of her jacket pocket and pointed it at his face.

  Bill said, “Whoa, Marjorie. What—”

  Marjorie shot him right in the center of his forehead and Bill fell off the bench and onto the grass near the picnic table. “Whoa, Marjorie, my ass,” she muttered. She walked around the table, bent over, placed the muzzle of the derringer directly against his left temple, and shot him once more in the head. The .32 caliber bullets didn’t make any more noise than a popcorn fart.

  She ran back to her car, tossed the Derringer into the glove box, stripped off the gloves and placed them on the passenger seat, and started the engine. Two minutes later she was a little out of breath, but sipping a glass of wine and seated next to her friend, Jean, who’d been watching her purse. It was 9:17 p.m. She’d been gone from the bar exactly seven minutes—about the time it takes to finish a smoke then maybe go to the bathroom.

  Marjorie finished her glass of wine, ordered another, gossiped some more, and again excused herself. She went out to her car, put on her gloves, took the Derringer out of the glove box, and placed it in the paper bag she’d staged for that purpose. She then walked up the street a little ways and shoved the bag deep into a trash can. If the Derringer was found—which seemed highly unlikely—Marjorie wasn’t worried, as the gun wasn’t registered to her. As for fingerprints, she’d wiped hers off the gun and the bullets the day she decided to use the Derringer and had always worn gloves when she touched the gun after that. But most likely the murder weapon wouldn’t be found because tomorrow was garbage pickup day, and by tomorrow night her cute little Derringer would be under ten tons of trash in a landfill.

  She dropped the gloves she’d been wearing into another trash can, then went back into the tavern and sat down with her friends again. At ten o’clock she told all the moms good-bye, that it was time to head on home to Dick and the boys, and they all praised her again for taking the initiative on the lockdown-notification project.

  When she returned home the boys were in bed and Dick was watching TV. “How’d the meeting go?” he asked, like he could give a shit.

  “I’ll tell you about it in a minute,” she said. She walked into her home office and sent out three emails sitting in the draft folder. The times she sent the emails would be recorded in her machine and on the Comcast server. Next she grabbed a robe, went into the bathroom, took off her clothes, and took a quick shower. She shampooed her hair and she really scrubbed her hands and arms even though she’d been wearing a long-sleeved blouse and gloves when she shot Bill. She went back into the bedroom and put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt and slipped into some tennis shoes. She picked up the clothes she’d been wearing when she shot Bill, including her shoes, and placed the clothes and shoes into the paper bags she’d staged for this purpose.

  She went back into her office, sent out three more emails, then told Dick she’d forgotten something in her car. He’d figure she was probably sneaking out to the garage for a smoke. She went out the back door with the paper bags that contained her clothes and walked down the alley, placing the bags in her neighbors’ trash cans—which would all be picked up first thing in the morning. As she walked back to the house she was humming but didn’t realize it. If there had been blood or gunshot residue or little chunks of Bill’s DNA on her clothes or skin, she’d just taken care of those problems.

  Back in the house she used the landline to call a mom she’d seen at the PTA meeting, made an excuse for calling so late, then jabbered with the woman for a few minutes. Although Dick could testify that she came home right after she left the tavern, the emails and phone call would further establish the fact.

  Marjorie figured that when the cops found Bill Logan’s body—most likely tomorrow morning when it was light out—they’d think that the person who killed him was the same guy who’d tried to kill him before. This time the guy just succeeded. And although she didn’t know anything about forensic science other than what she’d seen on those CSI shows, she guessed that the cops would most likely establish the time of death at sometime the night before. She didn’t know if taking liver temperatures and all that stuff could pin the time down to around nine p.m., but she almost hoped so. Marjorie had a solid alibi from seven thirty until almost midnight between the PTA meeting, the gossip session at the tavern, and all the emails and phone calls after she got home.

  She was going to miss Bill Logan—she really was—but Bill just had to go.

  30

  “Where are you, DeMarco?” Westerberg asked.

  “In my motel room. Why? What’s going on?”

  “You need to get down to the Bismarck police station. Right now.”

  DeMarco drove to the station and asked the cop at the main desk where he could find FBI Agent Westerberg. The cop told him to wait. Five minutes later Westerberg arrived in the station lobby to meet him. “Come with me,” she said.

  “And good morning to you, too.”

  Westerberg ignored him. She led him to what looked like an interrogation room: a table, a chair on one side, two chairs on the other, a camera up on the wall. Sitting in one of the chairs was the big detective with the kind eyes who’d interviewed him after Sarah was killed.

  “Sit down, DeMarco,” Westerberg said—directing DeMarco to what he thought of as the suspect’s seat.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked

  “Mr. DeMarco,” the Bismarck detective said, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”

  “Hold on. What’s going on here?”

  The detective—whose name was Fredericks—ignored him and continued with the Miranda warning, concluding with, “Do you understand your rights as I’ve explained them to you?”

  “Yeah, I understand them. Now what’s going on?”

  “Bill Logan was shot last night. He’s dead. Would you mind telling me where you were last night?”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me,” DeMarco said to Westerberg.

  “Answer the question, DeMarco,” Westerberg said. “Where were you last night?”

  “Well, from about five thirty unti
l eight, I was at a restaurant called Jack’s Steakhouse. I had dinner with a woman.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Uh, Christie something. A tall brunette. I don’t know that I ever got her last name. But I know she works at Walmart and should be at work today.”

  “And where did you go after dinner?” Detective Fredericks asked.

  DeMarco looked away, feeling sheepish, particularly with Westerberg there. “I went back to Christie’s apartment and spent the night there. I left about seven this morning.”

  “Jesus, DeMarco,” Westerberg said, like he’d done something wrong.

  “What?” DeMarco said.

  “Would you object to a gunshot residue test on your hands and arms?” the detective said.

  “No. Swab away. Or whatever it is you do.”

  After the gunshot residue test was complete—the results were ­negative—the detective said he was going to Walmart to talk to Christie and see if she’d confirm DeMarco’s alibi.

  “Let’s go back into the interrogation room,” Westerberg said. “I want to show you something.”

  Inside the room, DeMarco again back in the suspect’s chair, Westerberg placed a multipage, handwritten document on the table in front of him. “Take a look at that. That’s was in the inside pocket of the jacket Logan was wearing when he was shot. It’s already been dusted for prints, and the only prints on it are Logan’s. If that document is authentic, which I think it is, there’s enough there to get Marjorie Dawkins, three state legislators, and two judges. I’m not sure we can get Leonard Curtis, however. Logan said Curtis ordered him and Dawkins to bribe the judges and legislators, and he provides enough details that maybe what Logan wrote will convince a jury, but I’m not sure.”

  DeMarco was scanning the document as Westerberg talked. While still reading, he said, “It doesn’t matter. If we can get Dawkins, she’ll give us Curtis.”

  “This will work,” DeMarco said, tapping Logan’s statement. “What you don’t do is give Dawkins immunity for testifying against these politicians. Tell her she only gets immunity if she gives up Curtis and tells us who killed Sarah. Let’s go talk to her.”