Murder Is Forever, Volume 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Preface

  Murder, Interrupted PROLOGUE: August 2012

  PART ONE: DECEMBER 2011 Chapter 1: Frank and Nancy

  Chapter 2: Frank

  Chapter 3: The Howards

  Chapter 4: Frank and Suzanne

  Chapter 5: Frank

  Chapter 6: Billie Earl Johnson

  PART TWO: NOVEMBER 2010 Chapter 7: Billie

  Chapter 8: Frank

  Chapter 9: Billie

  Chapter 10: Frank

  Chapter 11: Frank, Suzanne, and Nancy

  PART THREE: JANUARY 2011 Chapter 12: Billie

  Chapter 13: Suzanne

  Chapter 14: Nancy and Frank

  Chapter 15: Billie

  Chapter 16: Frank and Dustin

  PART FOUR: JULY 2012 Chapter 17: Dustin

  Chapter 18: Bethany Wright

  Chapter 19: Dustin

  Chapter 20: Bethany Wright

  Chapter 21: The Howards

  Chapter 22: Frank

  Chapter 23: Frank and Nancy

  Chapter 24: Nancy

  PART FIVE: AUGUST 2012 Chapter 25: The Shooting of Nancy Howard

  Chapter 26: Frank

  Chapter 27: Nancy

  Chapter 28: Frank

  Chapter 29: Nancy

  Chapter 30: Frank and Nancy

  Chapter 31: Detective Wall

  Chapter 32: Frank and Nancy

  Chapter 33: Nancy

  PART SIX: ONE WEEK AFTER THE SHOOTING Chapter 34: Frank

  Chapter 35: Detective Wall

  Chapter 36: Billie

  Chapter 37: Dustin

  Chapter 38: Nancy

  PART SEVEN: AUGUST 2014 Chapter 39: Frank

  Chapter 40: Frank

  Chapter 41: Billie

  Chapter 42: Stacey, Raley, Wall, and Nancy

  Chapter 43: The Court

  Chapter 44: Frank

  Chapter 45: Nancy

  Mother of All Murders Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Newsletters

  Copyright © 2018 by JBP Business, LLC

  Cover design by Art Machine.

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: January 2018

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017956660

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-4472-7 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-6207-3 (hardcover library edition), 978-0-316-51403-3 (ebook)

  E3-20171128-DA-NF

  Dear Reader,

  Above all else I’m a storyteller. I craft stories for insatiable readers. And though my books may seem over-the-top to some, I find that I am most often inspired by real life. After all, truth is stranger than fiction.

  The crimes in this book are 100% real. Certain elements of the stories, some scenes and dialogue, locations, names, and characters have been fictionalized, but these stories are about real people committing real crimes, with real, horrifying consequences.

  And as terrifying and visceral as it is to read about these crimes gone wrong, there’s something to remember: the bad guy always gets caught.

  If you can’t get enough of these true crimes, please watch the pulse-racing new television series on Investigation Discovery, Murder Is Forever, where you’ll see these shocking crimes come to life.

  I hope you’re as haunted by these accounts as I am. They’ll remind you that though humans have the capacity for incredible kindness, we also have the capacity for unspeakable violence and depravity.

  Murder, Interrupted

  James Patterson with Alex Abramovich

  PROLOGUE

  August 2012

  The .380-caliber bullet ripped through her left eye and down through the roof of her mouth on its way to her lung, where it lodged, hard up against her rib cage.

  Spinning, she fell to the floor.

  There was so much blood. So much blackness.

  She slumped and a minute went by. Then, an honest-to-goodness miracle happened: The woman came to her senses and heard God’s own voice, lifting and pulling her through.

  “Get up,” the voice said. “Get up, Nancy. Get up!”

  Even though she was in shock and grievously wounded, she suddenly knew where she was: lying on the concrete floor of a garage. The garage of a house—her own home—on Bluebonnet Way, in a posh Dallas suburb where only the paranoid locked their front doors and all of her neighbors treated each other’s kids as their own.

  The woman knew who she was: Nancy Howard, aged fifty-three.

  A loving wife. A churchgoer. Above all, a doting mother.

  She had to live, for the sake of her kids.

  Nancy knew it was August: The concrete felt heavy and warm. And although the floor was slippery with her blood, she started crawling.

  “How could this happen?” she said to herself. “Sweet Jesus, how is this happening? And why is it happening to me?”

  She needed her phone now to call 911. But her phone was in the purse taken by the man who had shot her.

  Left for dead, she was still breathing, although with each breath it got harder and harder. And so she crawled, and as she crawled she thought, My car is here, in the garage.

  The car has OnStar.

  The OnStar operator can call 911.

  Somehow, she managed to open the door. But without her key, which was in her stolen purse, OnStar would not turn on.

  “Oh, Jesus, help me,” she said. “Jesus, just give me the strength to stand up!”

  PART ONE

  DECEMBER 2011

  Chapter 1

  Frank and Nancy

  Christmastime was approaching in Carrollton, Texas, and Nancy Howard’s husband, Frank, was putting up the Christmas lights.

  The two-story brick house was the sort of house Frank and Nancy had dreamed about since the day they were married, twenty-eight years ago now, in Frank’s dadd
y’s church. The house where their three grown-up children always came back to for the holidays.

  Nancy missed Ashley, Jay, and Brianna so much it was like part of her own body had gone missing. But the truth was that she also looked forward to her years as an empty nester. Frank was a hardworking man. At home he’d been a devoted father, with all the time in the world for their kids. Nancy loved and admired those qualities. But Frank’s work, the kids, and all of the hours that Nancy and Frank had spent with their church—that meant less alone time for them. Hard as it was to see her children leave home, Nancy looked for a silver lining and found one: In all of the months and years to come, she’d have more of Frank to herself.

  At least, that’s what Nancy had thought.

  The Howards had seen each other through some hard times. Ashley, their oldest, had barely survived her first days in the hospital. That had tested Frank and Nancy’s faith. So had Frank’s prostate cancer and Nancy’s fibromyalgia—a chronic condition that disturbed her sleep and her moods and made her muscles ache constantly. But in the end, those trials had only strengthened their bond.

  Then, in 2009, Frank’s two-man accounting firm had taken on a new client.

  At first, it had seemed like a windfall. The client was a defense contractor named Richard Raley—a man with significant interests in the Middle East. What Raley did specifically was ship ice, military hardware, and other equipment to American troops in Iraq. What he’d engaged Frank to do, after the death of his previous accountant, was to help him manage tens of millions of dollars he’d made in Kuwait.

  Officially, Frank was to be paid $10,000 a month to advise Raley’s firm on issues relating to investments and taxes.

  Frank had his questions about the operation, and about Richard Raley, but he kept them to himself, and Raley ended up making Frank his chief financial officer.

  The job came with significant perks: new office space, the use of Raley’s own private jet. Frank bought himself a Lexus and began flying to the West Coast, Europe, and the Middle East on business. Left behind in Carrollton, Nancy felt lonely and abandoned. But what made it worse was that the Frank who came back from these trips seemed less and less like the man she had married.

  Distant. Furtive. Angry.

  For two years now, those were the words Nancy had tried to avoid when she thought of her husband.

  For two years, those same words kept coming to mind.

  Nancy blamed Richard Raley and the long hours that Frank had been putting in, ever since Raley had made him his CFO. Frank himself had told her that the job was wearing him out. But Nancy wondered if there was more to it than that. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. Something that was nagging at Frank and pulling him further and further away from their marriage.

  Now she watched from the kitchen as Frank dug around in a big bin of old holiday decorations.

  After a minute, he pulled out something that looked a lot like a strongbox.

  Furtively, he carried the box out into the yard.

  Outside, Frank darted behind a bush and dropped the strongbox into a small hole he’d dug there. In the time that it took Nancy to follow him into the yard, he’d made it back up the ladder.

  “Frank? Frank?”

  Jesus, Frank thought, what is it now?

  “These are all wrong,” Nancy said, pointing at the Christmas lights he’d already strung up. “You’re going to do this side over.”

  Looking down from the ladder, Frank smiled. But underneath he was seething. As far as he was concerned, Nancy nagged him and nagged him, always over the smallest details. But the big picture was completely beyond her. She simply couldn’t see how hard Frank had worked for their family. She couldn’t understand the sacrifices he’d made, all his traveling, his long hours. And when he got home, there she was—always nagging and egging him on.

  Who cared if the Christmas lights were crooked?

  Frank barely swallowed his fury.

  “Well, if you say so!” he said as he adjusted the lights.

  Chapter 2

  Frank

  Frank Howard had always been proud that he was born and raised a preacher’s kid. He met Nancy in his father’s church in San Marcos—when they got married in that same church, Frank’s father performed the ceremony himself—and here in Carrollton, their Baptist church was the center of their social life. Frank and Nancy took part in the church’s community outreach programs. They prayed for international missionaries and for poor people closer to home. They sang in First Baptist’s choir. And they gave very freely to the church.

  A few days before Christmas, the Howards’ minister pulled them aside after choir rehearsal to thank them for the truly remarkable donation they had just made.

  “Well,” Frank told the minister, “the Lord’s blessed me with so many incredible opportunities.”

  “It wouldn’t be right not to share our good fortune with others,” Nancy added.

  Moments like these made Nancy thankful for Frank’s job. Giving to others reminded of her of how much she herself had been given. Blushing slightly, she thought of the good things that the past few years had brought their family. Nancy knew that for Frank, gaining Raley as a client had been the start of a whole new life.

  In point of fact, it had been the beginning of two new lives. A richer, more rewarding life here in Texas. And a life on the West Coast that Nancy knew nothing about and would have been shocked to discover.

  But what Nancy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her—at least not today, as she smiled at the minister and all of the nice things the minister said.

  “You know, I’m still just a preacher’s kid from downstate,” Frank said as the minister wrapped up his song of praise and gratitude. Turning to the minster’s wife, he added, “Who knows, if things hadn’t turned out differently in my life, I could have ended up with a church of my own. But Nancy and I love it here at First Baptist. We’re so happy to give back. And, truly, it’s no big thing. Just the way my daddy raised me.”

  The four of them stood there silently. Maybe even a bit awkwardly. Then the minister’s wife turned to Nancy.

  “Won’t it be nice,” the wife said, “to have all your chicks coming back to their nest?”

  “Heaven!” said Nancy. “You know, it’ll be like paradise, right here on Earth.”

  She was beaming now as Frank took her hand and stood, smiling, beside her.

  Chapter 3

  The Howards

  On Christmas Eve the whole Howard family—Frank and Nancy, Ashley, Jay, and their youngest, Brianna—gathered in front of the fire. It was a family tradition, and this was a special year. Their family was about to get bigger. Brianna had brought her fiancé, Jed, along, and Nancy couldn’t stop oohing and aahing over the engagement ring that Jed had bought for her daughter.

  “How did you and Frank meet?” Jed asked.

  Nancy loved to tell this story: Frank’s daddy’s church in San Marcos. Falling in love with the minister’s kid. It had made perfect sense at the time—Nancy herself was the daughter of a church pianist in Driftwood—and Nancy still remembered how handsome Frank looked, with that crooked smile of his and his thick shock of black hair. She loved to talk about how they fell in love across the pews and tied the knot in that very same church.

  She’d just gotten to the part about the pews when Frank’s phone started to ring.

  “Work,” he whispered.

  “On Christmas Eve?” Nancy whispered back.

  “I have to take it,” Frank said, loudly enough to catch Ashley’s attention.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “Daddy, what is it?”

  “Nothing, sweetie. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  With Frank gone, Nancy tried to pick the thread of her story back up: Frank’s father’s church. Falling in love across the pews. But all the emotions that she’d felt rising up in her just a moment ago fell as flat as a collapsed soufflé. She stumbled on her own words. And when Frank returned, he broke the bad news to the
whole room at once: The call was from his boss, who needed a new account set up and needed it done before New Year’s.

  It was important work. Work that would not wait.

  “No!” Nancy said. “Flying out on Christmas? Just say no, Frank! Who works on Christmas Day, anyway? Don’t you have any backbone at all?”

  Frank made the usual appeals. First, he played the part of the patriot: “Those boys in Iraq that we work for—they don’t take Christmas off. They’re laying down their lives for us every day, making the hard sacrifices.”

  Then Frank played the part of the victim. Brought up the sacrifices he’d made—sacrifices that he continued to make—for the troops, for Nancy, for the kids: “You think I want to be traveling on Christmas? My whole life is here, in front of this fireplace. Who else would I even be doing this for?”

  Frank teared up a bit, thinking about all he’d done for his family. His voice broke, twice, as he talked, and Nancy’s heart broke to hear him. Duly chastised, she dried her own tears, apologized, and felt bad for feeling so selfish—for wanting Frank all to herself—when all he wanted to do was take care of them. Looking at him now, she really did understand how hard Frank had been working. How tiring all of this traveling must be. How much he’d given up for his family. All those late nights at the office. All of those trips out of town.

  By the time Frank was done talking, she’d fallen in love with him all over again.

  Chapter 4

  Frank and Suzanne

  It was Christmas Day in Santa Cruz, California, and Suzanne Leontieff had been waiting—forever, it seemed—for her lover to walk to her door, take her in his arms, and…and what?