A Matter of Life and Death by Phillip Margolin (ereader with dictionary TXT) 📕

“We’re pretty sure Macklin is lying about a lot of things,” Roger said. “We haven’t been able to find any article he’s written. And Macklin isn’t really Macklin.”

“What do you mean?”

“When he talked to us in the courthouse, he gave me his card, and I kept it,” Roger said. “It dawned on me that his prints might be on the card, so I had the lab check it out. The prints don’t belong to anyone named Brent Macklin, but we did find a match.

“Carlos Ortega had a son named Luis Ortega. Luis has been masquerading as Brent Macklin. He’s been trying to find out who was responsible for killing his father and sponsoring those fights, which makes Macklin a prime suspect.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Bellingham is a coastal city in Washington State near the Canadian border, where a tourist can catch a ferry to Alaska or drive east to ski on Mount Baker, a huge, snowcapped volcano. The motel where Stacey Hayes was staying was not mentioned as a tourist attraction. It was situated near a dive bar, a tattoo parlor, and a body shop, and its chief attraction was that it was cheap.

As Dillon and Anders approached Hayes’s door, they could hear the drone of a television coming from the room. Hayes opened her door moments after Carrie knocked. She was dressed in a faded Alcatraz T-shirt, dirty jeans, and sweat socks. Her hair was uncombed, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Roger thought that Hayes would be a knockout under other circumstances, but her rumpled clothes and the absence of makeup had erased any traces of glamour.

“How are you doing, Stacey?” Carrie asked as she held up her badge.

“What is this?” Stacey asked. She sounded frightened.

“Nothing scary. We just want to talk.”

“About what?”

“You and Judge Anthony Carasco.”

“The drive up from Portland is pretty long, and we’re starving,” Roger said. “And you look like you could use a cup of coffee and a good meal. There’s a Denny’s across the street. We could talk there or in your room. Your choice.”

“Do I have to talk to you?”

“You can refuse,” Carrie said. “Then we’d ask Washington to hold you in jail as a material witness until we could extradite you. That will take quite a while.”

“A material witness to what?”

“Haven’t you heard? Anthony Carasco was murdered in apartment number 5 at the Grandview.”

“Do I need a lawyer?” Hayes asked as soon as the server left with their order.

“Have you committed a crime?” Carrie asked.

“I didn’t kill Tony,” she answered. “You said he was found in my apartment. I haven’t been there for days.”

“Why did you leave?” Carrie asked, knowing what Rostov had told them.

“To save my life. Tony sent three men to my apartment. They beat the hell out of Karl and told me to get out of Oregon or they’d do the same to me.”

“Who’s Karl?”

“Karl Tepper. He’s … an acquaintance.”

Carrie let that pass. “What did you do when the men left?”

“I dropped Karl at the emergency room at a hospital in Vancouver. Then I just drove.”

“Why did the judge send men to beat up Karl?”

“I’ll tell you if you promise you won’t charge me.”

“With what?”

“Look, what I did, it was bad, but Tony made me do it. I’ll tell you everything if you let me go.”

“I can’t promise anything until I know what you did. Talk to me and I will promise that I won’t use what you tell us now against you.”

Anders let Hayes think. After a few minutes, she looked across the table.

“I’m a professional escort. Karl was my manager. I started in Portland and was busted twice, so I left the state and moved to San Francisco. Tony was in San Francisco for the bar convention. We met in a hotel bar, and he paid me to come to his room. After we slept together, he asked me to move to Portland. He said he’d put me up in the Grandview and give me money every month and get rid of the warrants for failure to appear.

“Before I accepted Tony’s offer to move to Portland, I asked Karl what I should do. He said we’d caught a cash cow, and we should milk him for everything we could get. Karl set up this hidden camera in a bookcase across from the bed in my apartment at the Grandview, and I filmed Tony every time he came over.

“One day, Tony told me to come to the courthouse and wait until the case he was hearing ended. He said this redheaded DA was going to go into his chambers, and I should wait a few minutes after the DA went in. Then I should walk in. He told me he would set it up for me and the DA to go to dinner. Then I was supposed to seduce him.”

Hayes looked down. “It was a rotten thing to do, making Ian fall for me. He’s a decent guy, and I didn’t like doing it. I asked Tony what the deal was, but he said that I didn’t have to know and promised me extra money to do it.

“When I told Tony I thought Ian was hooked, he told me to disappear for a few days, then lure Ian to the apartment on this particular weekday. That’s when I was supposed to ask him to get rid of my warrants or I’d tell his boss he was paying me for sex.”

“What happened when Ian came over?” Carrie asked.

“As soon as he came inside, I took him to the bedroom, and we screwed. Then I told him I had outstanding warrants and asked him to get rid of them.”

“Did Ian say he’d do it?”

“No. He refused. He said it would be a crime.”

“What did you do?”

Stacey hung her head. “I threatened him. I said I had a sex tape and I’d show it to his boss if he didn’t do what I said.”

“Was there a tape?”

Stacey nodded.

“What happened next?” Carrie asked.

“Ian was really mad.