Home Sweet Murder Page 7

  Andrew has been on disability for two years from a back injury he suffered when he was in the army.

  “They can’t do that,” Andrew says. “Who fired you?”

  “My supervisor,” Alecia says. “Leo Fisher.”

  “The guy who put you on probation?”

  She nods.

  “That asshole has always had it in for you,” Andrew says, seething with anger.

  “Don’t I know it,” she says, shaking her head.

  “He said you’re definitely fired?” Andrew asks.

  “You saw the box of crap I carried out with me, didn’t you? Leo practically hovered over my desk while I packed up my things. Did he think I was going to run off with my computer?”

  “It’s not over yet,” Andrew says, and he starts across the parking lot toward the firm’s entrance.

  “Wait,” Alecia says. “Don’t do anything crazy.”

  But she doesn’t follow him, or call him back. Part of her wants him to do something crazy. Part of her wants to do something crazy herself.

  She’s at the end of her rope after supporting both of them—and taking care of Andrew. He’s on enough painkillers to tranquilize a horse, but it’s still not enough. She’s lucky if he’s able to do a few chores around the house while she’s at work. And the disability payments don’t do enough to help their bottom line.

  She’s been at her wit’s end for months now. What is she going to do without a job?

  She’s never felt so desperate in her life.

  When she met Andrew in law school, it had seemed that the whole world was at their feet. After they were married five years ago, she became an immigration lawyer and he worked as a lawyer for the army. Life was good, full of promise. But two years ago Andrew slipped on a patch of ice during physical training and injured his back.

  Their lives have been on a slow downward spiral ever since.

  She waits in the car, sick with nervousness. She doesn’t know what to expect. Andrew might be up there right now, appealing to Leo by explaining how he hasn’t been able to work because of his back injury. A good lawyer knows that when logic and reason don’t work with someone, an appeal to emotions could. Maybe Andrew could convince Leo to reconsider.

  Or maybe Andrew is up there punching Leo in the nose. She half expects to hear police sirens and to see Andrew come running out, telling her to hit the gas.

  A few minutes later, Andrew comes out, sauntering a bit. When he approaches, he has an ornery smirk on his face.

  “What happened?” Alecia says. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Nope,” Andrew says, still grinning. “I just looked in his office window.”

  “What the hell are you smiling about then?”

  “Because I’ve got an idea,” Andrew says.

  “What kind of idea?” Alecia asks, intrigued.

  “Payback.”

  Chapter 43

  “I can’t believe I ever listened to you,” Alecia says, as she pulls the vehicle to a stop at another light.

  “Me?” Andrew says, stuffing the last of his clothes into the garbage bag. “I just wanted to get some information about the company and use it to extort them. You’re the one who wanted to kill him.”

  “Killing Leo was your idea,” Alecia snaps.

  “No it wasn’t,” Andrew roars, opening the cap on a bottle of ammonia and splattering the liquid onto the bloody clothes. “Murder wasn’t on my radar until you brought it up.”

  Alecia opens her mouth to argue, but she notices a car pulling up behind them at the light.

  It’s a police cruiser.

  “Shhhh,” she hisses, looking forward and acting like nothing is wrong. “Cop!”

  Andrew freezes. Seconds tick by and the light doesn’t change. The two cars are the only ones at the intersection. The whole interior of their SUV reeks of ammonia.

  When the light turns green, Alecia eases forward, making sure to obey the speed limit. The police car stays behind them, not turning on its lights but not passing them.

  “They know,” Andrew says. “Leo must have seen you.”

  “You can’t know that. Don’t freak out.” She hesitates, thinking. “You said Leo was dead for sure.”

  “I thought he was. I cut his throat, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Jesus, you’re pathetic,” Alecia mutters. “You can’t get anything right.”

  The streets are practically empty, and there are plenty of opportunities for the police car to pass them or turn off, but it doesn’t.

  “He’s running our plates right now,” Andrew hisses.

  “You’re just being paranoid,” Alecia says, but then she sees another police car approaching from the other direction.

  “Damn it,” she says, knowing that Andrew is right—they’ve been made.

  The car behind them lights up like a Christmas tree. Alecia turns the corner and stomps on the gas. Both police cars pursue, sirens wailing.

  Alecia races onto a busy thoroughfare, weaving in and out of cars. The police cruisers stay close behind. Tires squeal. Horns honk.

  “I can’t lose them,” Alecia says.

  More police cars appear from side streets. Alecia yanks the wheel and heads toward a shopping mall. It’s closed for the night, and she thinks she might be able to outrun the cops through the empty parking lot. But more police cars race in from other entrances.

  She slams the brakes and skids to a halt, one tire up on a grass median. A cloud of rubber smoke drifts through the headlight beams. The SUV shudders and stalls.

  Police cars converge on their vehicle, officers exiting, shouting, drawing their guns.

  “What do we do?” Andrew says, his voice a frightened whimper.

  Alecia is a lawyer—she knows what happens next.

  “We go to jail.”

  With that, she steps out of the car holding her hands high in the air.

  A minute later, officers surround the SUV and pull Andrew out and handcuff him. As they do so, the officers exchange sideways glances, not sure what to think. This is a first for all of them.

  Andrew Schmuhl is naked except for an adult diaper.

  Chapter 44

  Leo wakes from a nightmare, gasping.

  He looks around the hospital room, tries to orient himself. He can’t seem to get enough air, so he reaches instinctively to his throat. An IV tube dangling from his arm restricts his movement. He tries with the other arm and finds a thick bandage wrapped around his neck.

  The nightmare, he realizes, was not a dream.

  He lived through it.

  But did Sue?

  He tries to sit up and finds he doesn’t have the strength. The door opens, and Leo spots a doctor standing in the hallway, talking to a police officer. The detective is wearing plainclothes, but there is a gun visible on his hip. His attire seems legitimate—not at all like the getup Andrew Schmuhl was wearing when he came to the door.

  “Five minutes,” the doctor says to the officer. “He needs rest.”

  The detective walks into the room and looks compassionately at Leo.

  “Sue?” Leo says, his voice barely more than a raspy whisper.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Sorry.”

  Leo closes his eyes, remembering the way the gunshot made Sue’s hair blow out like it had been hit with a puff of air. He sees Andrew Schmuhl climbing on top of her, driving the knife down again and again. He opens his eyes again, hoping the images won’t follow him into the real world.

  “Leo,” the officer says, grinning like a man who wants to deliver good news. “We got ’em. Alecia and Andrew Schmuhl are in custody as we speak.”

  “Good,” Leo says, nodding. “That’s good.”

  “Thanks to you,” the detective says.

  “Thanks to Sue,” Leo says, swallowing hard. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.”

  Leo turns his head and begins crying.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” the detective says. “We’ll get a full statement from you l
ater. I just wanted to let you know that the Schmuhls can’t hurt you or anyone else anymore.”

  As the detective leaves, the doctor walks into Leo’s room.

  “Mr. Fisher,” the doctor says, “your wife has just come out of surgery.”

  “Is she …?”

  The doctor nods.

  “It’s going to be a long recovery,” he says, “but she’s going to make it.”

  Leo lets out an audible sob.

  “Would you like to see her?”

  The doctor has a nurse bring in a wheelchair, and the two of them help him into it. As they push him down the hall, they wheel his IV stand along with him.

  When they enter Sue’s hospital room, Leo almost breaks down crying again.

  There is an IV in her arm, an oxygen tube in her nose, a wire clipped to her finger that measures her heartbeat, and gauze dressings on her neck and the side of her head. Her skin is ghostly pale, but her chest is rising and falling unmistakably.

  “Oh, Muffy,” he says, his voice hoarse and gravelly.

  He takes her hand. Her skin is cold. Leo is thankful for the steady beep beep beep of the heart rate monitor, reassuring him that she is alive.

  “You were so brave,” he whispers to her. “Come back to me.”

  He thinks about how he’s taken life with Sue for granted. He’s never been an absent husband. He’s always enjoyed spending time with her rather than going out with friends. But he hasn’t appreciated how precious their time together is—how easily their life together could be snatched away from them at any moment.

  Sue’s eyelids flicker for a moment, and then they open. Leo isn’t sure she’s awake until her eyes focus on his and recognition comes over her face.

  “Oh, Muffy,” he says, pressing his forehead against hers.

  Chapter 45

  Six months later

  Sue presses the preheat button on the oven. Then she checks the two chicken breasts in a casserole dish on the counter, soaking in marinade. There’s nothing more for her to do at the moment, so she sits down at the kitchen table with Leo. Her husband has brought a book, but it sits unopened on the table. Both Leo and Sue are staring blankly, their minds elsewhere.

  Even though they’re following the same routine they used to, nothing is the same for them these days. Sue still cooks dinner, and Leo still sits at the table to keep her company. But there’s no joy in the experience anymore. They don’t banter like they once did. Leo rarely opens a book, and when he does try to read, he finds his eyes drifting over the words, not absorbing anything. And when Sue makes dinner, she simply goes through the motions. They don’t eat much anyway. Leo has trouble chewing because of a severed nerve in his neck. Sue never has much of an appetite.

  Physically, they both suffer from permanent damage. Leo has a nasty scar on his neck and has trouble controlling his tongue. His injuries are hard on an attorney valued by his clients for his communication skills.

  As for Sue, most of her scars are hidden beneath her clothes or—in the case of the groove carved into the side of her skull—her hair. But she suffers from chronic headaches and a ringing in her ears.

  It’s the wounds on the inside that hurt the most.

  Every night, they lie awake, unable to sleep. And when they do finally fall asleep, they have nightmares.

  Tonight, they’re expecting a guest, but when the doorbell rings, both of them jump in their seats, remembering the chain of events on November ninth that began with the ringing of the doorbell.

  Both Leo and Sue walk to the foyer and look through the spyhole before opening the door. Their guest, Casey Lingan, the chief deputy commonwealth’s attorney prosecuting their case, greets them with handshakes and a smile.

  Back in the kitchen, sitting at the table, the three of them discuss the upcoming trials of Andrew and Alecia Schmuhl.

  “Everything looks good,” Casey says. “We’re charging them with abduction, burglary, use of a firearm, and aggravated malicious wounding. I feel confident that any jury will find these two guilty on most, if not all, charges.”

  The commonwealth’s attorney explains that there will be two separate trials for Andrew and Alecia because the Schmuhls are blaming each other. Alecia says she’s a battered wife and that the whole thing was Andrew’s idea. Andrew says he was out of his mind on pain medication and claims Alecia was the mastermind behind the crime.

  “I don’t think either of their excuses are going to hold up,” the attorney says. “We’ve got plenty of evidence to poke holes in their stories.”

  Casey explains that there’s video footage of Alecia purchasing the Taser and of Andrew buying the burner cell phones, showing both conspired to commit the crime. And while it’s true that Andrew Schmuhl collected disability for a back injury and had prescriptions for enough painkillers to make a heroin addict as high as a kite, the commonwealth’s attorney’s office doesn’t think the excuse will hold up.

  “This guy has a dozen different prescriptions for back pain, high blood pressure, insomnia, incontinence,” Casey says. “But we have eyewitnesses who saw him playing kickball last summer and repairing the roof of his mom’s house two weeks before the attack.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all covered,” Leo says, concentrating on his words because of the difficulty using his tongue now.

  Leo knows an open-and-shut case when he sees one, but that doesn’t make this experience any less stressful. He’ll be worried until he hears a jury foreman say the word “guilty.”

  Sue has been quiet while they’ve talked, but now she clears her voice and asks, “What I still don’t understand is what they were trying to accomplish? Why take us hostage? Why ask all those questions?” She swallows hard. “Why didn’t he just come in and kill us?”

  The lawyer is ready for this question—he expects jurors will want to know the same thing.

  “We think they wanted to get some kind of information from Leo that they could use to extort money from the other firm partners,” Casey explains. “Andrew Schmuhl’s questions were vague because they didn’t actually know what they were looking for. They wanted Leo to start blabbing, giving them all the dirt about the company. The only thing they weren’t expecting—”

  “There was no dirt,” Leo says, finishing the sentence for him.

  Sue frowns and shakes her head, still unable to believe what happened to them.

  “One more thing,” the attorney says. “We found notes in the Schmuhl’s apartment with home information of several partners at the firm. It’s possible they were going to do the same thing to other partners. You were just the first.”

  Leo reaches out and puts a hand on Sue’s arm.

  “You might have saved more lives than just ours, Muffy.”

  Sue rises, uncomfortable from the compliment, and puts the chicken in the oven. Leo walks Casey to the door and they shake hands.

  “Keep us posted if there are any new developments,” Leo says.

  “Will do,” the lawyer says. “Rest assured, the Schmuhls are going to be behind bars for a long time.”

  After Leo closes the door, he locks the deadbolt and arms their alarm system. When he returns to the kitchen, he finds Sue sitting at the table. He sits next to her. She offers him her best effort at a smile.

  Both of their spirits are uplifted—a little bit, at least—by the visit. Twist and Shout stroll into the kitchen and purr for Leo and Sue to pet them.

  “Maybe when the trials are over,” Leo says, “our lives can go back to normal.”

  “I’d like that,” Sue says, and now the smile on her face doesn’t seem forced.

  It warms Leo’s heart to see her this way. Maybe they can be happy again.

  The doorbell rings, and Leo and Sue both flinch at the noise. Their minds flash to memories of November ninth: the jolting electricity from the Taser’s barbs, the report of the pistol and the smell of gun smoke, the sensation of the knife slicing into flesh.

  “I’m sure it’s just Casey,” Leo says, his
throat suddenly tight, his voice constricted. “He must have forgotten to tell us something.”

  Sue nods nervously.

  “Probably,” she says.

  The doorbell rings again.

  Leo imagines that every time the doorbell rings, for the rest of their lives, they’ll be haunted by memories of what happened. He remembers Sue’s strength on the night they were attacked.

  Now, he realizes, he must be brave for her.

  “Come on,” he says, trying to sound confident as he reaches out and takes Sue’s hand. “Let’s do it together.”

  They rise and walk to the foyer. Leo peeks through the spyhole in the door and sees the blurry, distorted image of a man with his back to the door.

  It could be Casey. But it might not be.

  “We can’t live in fear forever,” Leo says.

  Leo’s hand is trembling as he wraps his fingers around the knob. Sue gives him a reassuring nod. He takes a deep breath and swings the door open.

  Murder on the Run

  James Patterson with Scott Slaven

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  March 13, 2008

  Omaha, Nebraska

  Cursing under his breath, he tried to correct his shaky aim. He knew he needed to seriously focus or he’d blow this one chance at cleanly eliminating the figure that was literally right in front of him. The shot could not be easier. He went to squeeze the trigger and—

  Vooosh!

  The high-pitched, deafening whine sprang up from out of nowhere, causing the boy to inadvertently shift his joystick.

  “Aw, man!” he cried out in frustration. Of all times for the housekeeper, Shirlee, to fire up the vacuum cleaner! Taking advantage of the boy’s flub, the Nazi on the TV screen leapt out from behind a bombed-out shack and tossed a grenade at a charging American tank. A massive loss of game points.

  All day, eleven-year-old Tom Hunter had been jacked up knowing he would be coming home to his new Xbox and the latest version of Call of Duty. Though he was a top student, he had been distracted in every class by dreams of trudging through the fields of France along with the rest of the Allies. When school had finally let out, the slender, slightly gawky boy with oval-shaped eyeglasses had run right home from the bus. Grabbing one of the basement den’s overstuffed sofa cushions, he’d firmly entrenched himself in front of the family TV.