Chapter 13B

Yuki was sitting on the floor in front of a low Japanese-style table drinking tea. The look on her face showed that she was very annoyed with the problems her sister had caused. Asa sat to her left with a dejected look on her face, her head bowed.

Rudy was sitting in an easy chair, a cup on tea on a table to his left. At our approach, he looked up. "Alex, I..."

I cut him off, "What are you doing here, Rudy? Why did you haul ass to beat us here? What was so important?"

My questions caught him off guard and shocked him back into his professional mode. He reached down next to him, cautiously, and pulled a folder from the second shelf of the stand his tea sat on. He pulled out several pictures and handed them to me.

They were photos, some of them stills, some taken from the video tapes from the divorce. "I need you to identify each person by name as I hand you these to confirm a suspicion I had while talking to Josh."

One by one, he handed me photos. "This one is Lisa... Heather... Jacquie... Joyce Hallstead..." I named several other women. Others I didn't recognize. Then he handed me another set of photos, men this time. "Josh... Fred Phillips... Robert Hoffman... Ron Browning... Ted Carstairs... I don't know these last two, though. What's this all about? What's with the photos?"

Beth had been looking over my shoulder, took one of the last two male photos, and said, "I've seen him before. I don't know him, but I've seen him in the last few days and at least one other time. I don't know this other one, though." Rudy stood to see which picture she had indicated.

Rudy fairly vibrated with excitement now. "While I try to explain this to Alex, I want you to try very hard to remember exactly where you saw him and what he was doing. Okay, Beth?" At her nod he said, "I was going over a list of names Josh had given me when a name from an old case cropped up. Alex, who is this man to you?" he held up the photo that Beth had picked out.

I shook my head, "I've never laid eyes on the man before that I can remember. I don't know who he is. I already told you that, Rudy. Who is he?"

Rudy looked at me and said, "In a moment. I don't want to influence her I.D. We'll need it."

Beth looked up and said with dawning surprise, "He was having dinner in the restaurant, before Lisa showed up. He was seated a little away from the entrance on the left side. But... I've seen him once before that. Last year, I think... Let me think. Yes, last year when Heather had gone to her mother's, before Josh found the tapes. I drove Josh over to try to talk to Heather. Jacquie and he were both there." She looked at me and asked, "Why would he be at Heather's mom's house with Jacquie?"

Rudy pounced, "What was he doing and where was he? Was that the only time you saw him? More importantly did he see you?" The look on his face told us both that these were the important questions in his little rampage.

"I don't think he noticed me. I was only dropping Josh off. His car was at the dealer's for a factory recall service on the headlight assembly; he was going to catch a cab to the airport from there for a client in St. Louis. After letting him out, I'd backed out of the drive and pulled across the street to take a call on my cell when this man came out of the attached garage and walked to a car parked on the street in front of the next house down. Jacquie came out a minute later and got into the same car and they drove off. I figured it was someone Jacquie knew and he wanted to avoid the situation with Josh."

Rudy smirked at me, "I just love it when the client does all of my work for me." He said with a laugh the asked, "Alex do you recognize the name Michael Dunne?"

I looked at him and said slowly, "Yes, I know the name. It's the name of one of the partners at Fred Phillips' law office. I've never met him, though. He's the newest partner and Fred opposed taking him on. The other partners outvoted him and he came onboard about two years ago. Fred doesn't much like him and as I've never met him, I can't say much about him. Why?"

Rudy handed me another photo of Lisa, Jacquie, Heather, and the other man I didn't know. This one had been taken sometime after Lisa's birthday six years ago. She was wearing the diamond bracelet and matching pendant I had given her in the photo. Jacquie had her hand inside Lisa's blouse obviously fondling Lisa's breast, and Dunne wore a very fierce scowling look of disapproval.

Rudy smiled, "Five years ago one Mrs. Phillipa Reeves-Dunne came to us for protection and help in proving that her husband of thirty-two years had been unfaithful. She wanted a divorce after overhearing him talking on the phone to a woman he admitted was his daughter. Mrs. Reeves-Dunne had never had children due to an accident as a child that robbed her of that ability. We managed to protect her and get other evidence of his repeated infidelities. We even found proof of the child, but not enough to introduce in court. We never did discover the identity of the daughter or her name. Until now."

Beth and I looked at him. "What do you mean until now? How does this have anything to do with Alex?" Beth didn't see where this was going but I thought I did.

"You still can't prove it. You can suspect it, but you can't prove it." I said.

Rudy smiled and said, "Not until I talked to Josh I couldn't. When Heather left Josh, she didn't take all of her medical files or personal documents. In those files, we found a DNA comparison for his wife and an unnamed female that revealed they were sisters, well more accurately, half-sisters. That test is twenty years old. I think Mr. Dunne is Jacquie's father. I think we have the probable cause to get new samples from all of them and get a comparison. I think he is the mastermind behind all of this and I think he is the one responsible for the attempt on Fred Phillips life."

Beth gasped and I nodded. The one piece I needed that tied it all together had dropped into my lap, as it were. As a partner at Fred's firm, Dunne could direct things and oversee the operation while not getting his hands dirty. Heather's discovery of her sterility had made her unstable, a liability, and they had to move more quickly than they had planned. The attempt on Fred was clumsy and not as well thought-out as it should have been. The firebombing of my place was also rash. They did not need my testimony and it made little sense. Until you took into account that we had been seen by Dunne and he recognized Beth, from the time at Josh's mother-in-law's house, and myself as his intended victim. He wasn't trying to kill me at my apartment; Beth had been the target. She had seen him with Jacquie almost a year before any of this became known and she could identify him. It would make him a prime suspect.

The thought that he had tried to harm Beth filled me with a towering rage unlike any I had ever felt before. I took a moment to calm myself. I still felt the rage only now it was cold. The coldness that I felt in Japan. The coldness of the grave. In that moment I was prepared to end a life with no second thoughts, no remorse, no sorrow.

I smiled and said, "Call Granger. Tell her to get her ass on a chopper and get here ASAP! I have it all laid out. Why, what, how... the works."

I spelled it all out for Beth and the others. Rudy nodded as I made each connection. He pulled out his cell phone and made the call. Granger promised to be here within the hour, along with a federal judge and the U.S. Marshals.

We moved the RV and several vehicles out onto the gravel lot in front of the warehouse. Rudy didn't want to blow his secret hideaway and I had no problem with that. The story would be that we had agreed to meet here and had had our discussions in the RV.

Forty minutes later a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter dropped noisily onto the gravel lot, well away from the vehicles; the emblem of the U.S. Marshals was boldly displayed on its doors. Several people stepped from the chopper as its engine wound down. To our great surprise, Josh was among them. We led them into the RV. Granger was ecstatic. We had just handed her a gift-wrapped feather for her career cap. With the mileage she would get out of these convictions she would be the shining star in the District Attorney's office for some time to come, she could even draw the attention of the U.S. Attorney's office.

The judge, one Thomas Harper, was more than happy to sign any number of arrest, evidentiary, and wire tap warrants for Jacquie, Heather, and Dunne including a warrant for DNA sampling. He ordered the freezing of all of their assets. The Marshal's officers were to serve the proper warrants immediately.

Josh moved to speak with Beth for a few moments, as the judge took my arm and pulled me aside. "I'm happy that things seem to be going well for you, son. I'm sorry about what happened to you but you seem to have found a very nice way of comforting yourself." The tone in the judge's voice was snide and leering. Granger gasped at his comments; Josh and Beth turned red in outrage.

I stepped into his face and spoke soft and clearly, "If you ever pay my fiancée that or any other insult again, I'll destroy you in place, old man. That woman and her love for me are the only thing in this whole mess that brings me joy and judge or not, your next insult to her will be your last! Are we clear?"

The Judge smiled at me and said, "Good, good! That is just what I wanted to hear." At my look of puzzlement he said, "You don't remember me, do you son? I surely do remember you. When you were much younger, I sat and talked with you at your grandmother's house. I didn't get to say goodbye to your grandmother. She was a dear friend and I miss her greatly. She asked me to look after you in her last letter and I have, from a distance. You were let's see... maybe eight years old when you told me that you were going to be an... what did you call it... Oh yes, you told me you were going to be an 'archty tective'. You knew even then what you wanted in life. I was overseas when your grandmother passed away and didn't find out she was ill until it was too late."

I stared at him in wonder. I remembered him now. My grandmother had given me a large Erector set, my first, and I was building the first of many buildings with it in her study when this man came in and sat himself down and began talking to me. I remember that he spoke to me like I was an adult and not like I was a child. He asked what I was building and drew me into a long conversation. We talked for more than two hours about my ambition to be an 'archty tective' and how I wanted to build things that would be around for ages and ages like the 'Tower of Pizza' and the Eiffel tower.

He smiled widely, "I see you remember me now. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing and assure myself you were not rushing into anything. I hope you two will be very happy together." He turned to Beth, "I truly meant no offense to you, Ms. Taylor. I just wanted to see for myself that he loves you. I hope you'll invite me to the wedding." With that, he turned and headed back towards the waiting helicopter followed by the Marshals and Granger.

I looked at Josh and said, "Now what do we do? I'll be needed here for the depositions and arraignments, won't I?"

Josh thought for a minute and said, "Go ahead and take off. Granger can get a hold of me anytime and I can get in touch with you. As long as you can catch a flight back here and be here in a day, you can go ahead with your trip. You may need to come back a couple of times to give testimony and as for depositions I will be acting as your attorney and I won't let Granger do overnight appointments. You'll have at least three days warning before she gets a crack at you. The defendants won't get a crack at you until trial. The evidence we have along with Lisa's testimony should have them screaming for plea bargains rather than face a trial."

I had a decidedly sick hunch. "Josh, take a copy of that DNA profile you found in Heathers things and have an expert compare it to the results on the twins. I'm betting you'll find it's a match and that they are half-sisters with the anonymous donor. When the results from the warrants come in, compare the donor to Jacquie and Dunne. I'm betting he's their father."

The look of horror on Josh's face and sorrow on Beth's told their feelings. Asa chimed in, "Oh that's just disgusting! Do you really think he fathered the twins?"

"I would be willing to bet a lot on it. In fact, if I'm right it will be the final nail in his coffin. What will the jury's reaction be, Josh? When they find out he fathered them and then tried to leave them penniless with their divorced mother, after destroying the only home they had ever had? I'm sure we can convince Granger that this is in fact a very salient point that needs to be heard."

The look on Josh's face said it before he did. "If we can prove he was their father, no jury would fail to convict. We have too much other evidence of his crimes and Granger is looking for even more. Making that point to the jury will most likely get him a life sentence without the possibility of parole. That is a very twisted thought, Alex. What prompted it?"

"Lisa was too sure the twins weren't mine. She had to have known and had them tested beforehand. I'm betting she was planning to sue for a severing of parental rights on the biological father after the divorce but things backfired. It's not a far leap from that to the only other male involved in this little scheme. If he is Jacquie's father, it may have been his plan all along to bilk me of the funds and assure the continued monies from the Stephie and Lauren's trust funds as well. Those trust accounts were arranged but the monies were not yet separated from my trust before Fred's heart attack.

"His plan was probably to sue for custody later and thereby to gain control of the trusts. I would be out of their lives and Lisa would be out the door. With the funds in question, he could have gone anywhere and done anything and I'd have little or nothing to say about it. This man has taken a very 'long view' approach to this whole thing with time to plan for contingencies. He's good at it.

"Heather forced them to move too quickly to have sufficient plans in place. No one knows that the accomplice, Ben Johnson, has been caught, or that we've put it all together. If Dunne hasn't fled, he is going to be squeezed six ways from Sunday trying to talk his way clear so that he can run."

Yuki looked at me and nodded. Bill asked, "Why would he run? Why not take his chances?"

Yuki answered for me, "This man has kept himself at arm's length throughout this whole affair. While the plan is bold, he is not. He is, at heart, a coward and cowards always run away." I nodded at her.

Beth came to my side and started to touch me. I flinched away. Seeing my face, she stopped and dropped her hand. I couldn't look at her. I turned and walked quietly to the dojo area.

Yuki came over to Beth and I heard her say, "It is not your fault. He is filled with a killing rage and he fears to touch anyone right now. He has barely held himself in check since the judge was here. Give him a little time to master himself and he will apologize to you. Forgive him for the unintentional hurt he has given you..." What more she said I don't know; as I moved away their voices faded.