Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(16)
I looked at her, stunned. “What’s in it for you?”
“More than you know,” she said as she stood up from the table and hooked her arm around mine. We crossed the bridge as my mind raced. District attorney general? Me? I was a murderer.
“The irony is blowing your mind right now, isn’t it?” Granny said.
I chuckled. “I don’t know if the irony of me becoming the district attorney general is blowing my mind as much as the fact that you just used the phrase ‘blowing your mind.’”
“We’re going to make a lot of money together, Darren,” she said as we made our way back toward the house, “and we might even have some fun while we’re at it.”
CHAPTER 9
Granny had a car and my uniform in three days. They’d also gathered IDs, the hat, the badge, and the blue light. I went to a magic shop in the Old City, a place I’d visited more than a year earlier, and bought a fake mustache, a beard, and a small bottle of adhesive. I’d used them before, and along with a baseball cap and some sunglasses, the fake beard altered my appearance considerably.
During the three days it took Granny to make the uniform, I walked around the Portal’s parking lot each evening at dusk, mapping out security cameras and looking to see whether Dr. Fraturra’s silver Porsche was in the lot. It was always there, even on Sunday. I followed him home each of those evenings. My plan was to eventually follow him and then blue-light him right before he got to his house. I figured he’d pull into his driveway, thinking I was a cop, and I’d drug him and grab him up.
But something kept eating at me. It just wouldn’t work. Fraturra lived on a fairly busy street in a wealthy area that overlooked the Tennessee River. His house was gated. The reason he drank so often at the Portal in Turkey Creek was that it was pretty much a straight shot from the bar to his house. The street was all four lane or five lane, and it was well lit. On the weekends, there was a lot of traffic until after midnight. I started thinking that if I blue-lighted him, the first thing he would do would be to call 9-1-1 and have them on the phone when I walked up to the car because Morris had warned him I might be coming after him. The dispatcher would know immediately that no real police officer in the area had called in a suspected DUI, and they’d be on me in a heartbeat. I was also afraid, because of the lights in the street, that the car I was driving might be noticed by someone. I might be noticed, even though whoever saw me might not be able to identify me. It was just too risky.
Besides all those things, there were other problems. From the limited time I’d observed Fraturra, he left the bar anytime between nine and midnight, depending on how the hunting was going, I supposed. He wasn’t much of a hunter, though, because I’d only seen him leave with one woman. He took the same route home each evening, went through the gate, and then into the garage. Both the gate and the garage closed within thirty seconds of him pulling in. I needed to rethink the entire plan. I’d have to go back to Granny for more help. I needed a boat and three throwaway cell phones, and I needed Eugene and Ronnie.
In the meantime, I continued to watch and gather information. Fraturra’s massive brick-and-stone home wasn’t far from the Cherokee Country Club. If you were anybody in Knoxville, if you wanted to show you had status, you bought an overpriced house on the river. Fraturra’s backyard led to the water, which was roughly two hundred yards wide at the spot where he lived. It was about fifty yards from his garage to his boat dock on the river. He’d ensured his privacy by lining each side of his yard with Leyland cypress trees that had grown to about thirty feet.
On the night we decided to make our move, which was ten days after my initial meeting with Granny, Ronnie and I pulled into Sequoyah Hills Park and backed up to the boat ramp. At sundown we unloaded a twelve-foot jon boat with a three-horsepower motor into the river. Eugene was outside the Portal, waiting for Fraturra to come out. Ronnie and I acted like we were fishing and floated on the current, making our way slowly downriver toward Fraturra’s, which was just over a mile away from the park. When we got to Fraturra’s house, it was dark, and Ronnie eased the jon boat up next to Fraturra’s dock. I got out of the boat, sprinted for the cypress trees, and made my way along the trees in the darkness up to the house, about fifteen feet from the garage. I pulled a ski mask out of my pocket, Ronnie let the jon boat drift back out to the middle of the river, and we waited.
About ten thirty, my throwaway cell buzzed.
“He’s coming,” Eugene said when I answered, and I moved a little deeper into the tree branches.
Nearly fifteen minutes later, I heard the gate buzz, and it began to open. The garage door opened at the same time, and within thirty seconds, Fraturra’s Porsche came rolling in. I sprinted through the opening in the garage door and slid beneath the back bumper like I was stealing second in a baseball game. I was wearing loose, black workout clothes, a pair of gloves, and the mask. The garage door closed immediately.
The engine cut off, and the car rocked as he opened the door and climbed out. I had the syringe in my hand. The cap to the needle was in my pocket. As soon as Fraturra closed the car door and started walking toward the door that entered the house, I came out from behind the car, took three quick steps, and jammed the syringe into his right hip before he knew what happened. He squealed like one of the pigs he would soon be meeting, turned, and tried to take a swing at me. I ducked it and backed away. I couldn’t take a chance on him scratching me or punching me or pulling my hair. I simply couldn’t leave any trace evidence behind. I knew the cops would most likely find footprints near the shrubbery outside, but they’d never find the shoes to match them. Even if they manufactured something and tried to claim they found the shoes, they were a size and a half too big for me.