The Good Guy with a Gun (Jim McGill series Book 6) Read online

  Mrs. Niles took the phone and introduced herself and spoke of her concerns.

  Whatever it was she heard eased her worries, made her smile and then laugh.

  Jarius, who knew all about Hal Walker’s football career in both high school and college, started bouncing up and down in his chair. His manners were too good to interrupt his mother, but he looked at Russell with imploring eyes. He wanted to talk to his idol, too.

  The coach made a gesture, advising patience.

  In a quiet voice, he said, “Jarius, I promise you, come to Winstead or not, I’ll set up a call with Hal just for you.”

  Mrs. Niles caught that just as she was saying goodbye.

  She handed the phone back to Russell.

  “Other than my son, that was the nicest young man I’ve ever spoken to. He was so polite, but he answered me straight on every question I had.”

  “What tickled you, Mama? What made you laugh?” Jarius asked.

  She smiled again, “He said from what Coach Russell has told him you might be even better than he is … but he didn’t think his mama would agree with that.”

  “God bless mothers everywhere,” the coach said.

  “The good ones anyway,” Mrs. Niles said, turning serious. “You’ll make sure Jarius does his best at his schoolwork? I want him to be an important man if he never plays a minute of football again.”

  That idea almost provoked a remark from Jarius.

  But his mother held up a forestalling hand and her son respected it.

  Coach Russell said, “Mrs. Niles, I promise you this. Winstead will provide more to Jarius in the classroom than I’ll ever be able to give him on the football field. He works hard at his academics, and I know you won’t settle for less, he’ll go on to study at a top university. No question in my mind.”

  Elda Niles looked into Coach Russell’s eyes a good long time.

  He didn’t blink once.

  She extended her hand to him and he took it.

  Jarius jumped out of his seat with a cheer and touched his palm to the ten-foot ceiling.

  That Saturday morning on the Winstead football field, coaches Russell, Eccles and Knox looked out on their squad for the coming season. To a man, their players were already in game-shape. You couldn’t compete on the athletic teams at the school without maintaining a B average. All of their athletes had done that and more and they still had the drive and dedication to hit the gym and show up at the first team practice strong, swift and lean.

  The coaches stood on the sideline and watched the offense run ten plays Russell had scripted for them. The defense had to react, just as they would in games.

  Knox said to his colleagues, “Would you look at how fast Niles is out there? I haven’t said anything to you, Coach,” he said to Russell, “but he asked me if he could play special teams.”

  Russell looked at his assistant. “What? Run back kickoffs and return punts?”

  Knox nodded.

  The head coach smiled. “I doubt anyone would lay a hand on him. It might almost be unfair to the other teams. I doubt any player in the whole league is within half-a-second of him in the forty-yard dash.”

  Eccles, the defensive coordinator, said, “I’ll bet Ricky Mitchell is.”

  Mitchell was an unexpected bonus to Jarius Niles’ recruitment. He was Jarius’ best friend since the time they were little kids and another starter on their public high school team. Mitchell and his mother came to Russell and asked, please, could he come to Winstead, too?

  The request was supported not only by Ricky’s mother, Nola Mitchell, but also by Jarius and Elda Niles. It wasn’t a take-my-friend-or-else situation. Russell could see that. But it was a heartfelt plea. Trouble was, Ricky was only a C-student. Russell talked to the headmaster at Winstead about the situation. He came up with a solution.

  Ricky would be allowed to audit a Winstead course — take it without official credit. If he pulled a B or higher grade, on his own merit, he would be admitted. With Jarius and both mothers urging him on, Ricky got his B, was admitted to the school and projected as a starting defensive back on the football team.

  “You may be right about that,” Russell said to Knox. “If anyone’s speed is close to Jarius’, it’s Ricky’s. We’re going to have a great team this year.”

  Eccles was about to agree when he saw a big man walking their way.

  The defensive coordinator had a bad feeling and said, “Oh, shit.”

  Don Russell had a no-profanity rule for his players and his coaches.

  No cussing in the locker room or on the field. You never got penalized for what you didn’t say. So Eccles’ vulgarity took him by surprise. Then he saw the reason for it.

  Abel Mays, the head coach of the public school team that both Jarius and Ricky had played for, was coming their way, and he looked anything but happy.

  Knox said, “I don’t think he stopped by to say, ‘Have a good season.’”

  Eccles added, “Not after we took his top two players.”

  Russell took a step forward, saying, “Let me handle this.”

  Then Mays brushed back the right side of his coat.

  And they all saw how much trouble they were in.

  McGill Investigations, Inc. — Georgetown

  “I’m sure someone is going to try to kill my husband,” Zara Gilford told McGill.

  She’d walked into his office a heartbeat after Roger Michaelson had reminded Deke that he was owed a measure of deference. McGill accorded Michaelson all the courtesy he felt the man was due by offering to let him to cool his heels in the outer office instead of tossing him out onto the street.

  “Mrs. Gilford has an appointment,” he told Patti’s longtime nemesis. “If you want to wait, I’ll see if I can get to you.”

  McGill hoped Michaelson would take a hint, but the SOB took a seat instead.

  Deke sat behind the reception desk and stared at Michaelson.

  McGill said, “Deke, please call Margaret and ask if she might come in.”

  Then he led Zara Gilford into his office and closed the door. Got her seated and wondered how he might best explain his less than genteel treatment of a former senator. It wasn’t necessary. By the time he took his own seat, Mrs. Gilford told him what was foremost in her mind, a mortal threat against her husband.

  “What makes you think so, Mrs. Gilford?” McGill asked.

  “My husband is Jordan Gilford.” When she saw that didn’t provide clarity, she asked, “Don’t you know the name?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Jordan is a whistle-blower.”

  McGill followed with the logical question. “Against whom did he blow the whistle?”

  “The two defense contractors he worked for; he was a senior executive at both companies.” Mrs. Gilford provided two corporate names known to McGill. He only glanced through the business section of the newspapers he read. But he recalled above-the-fold stories of each company getting multibillion dollar contracts from the Pentagon.

  “Jordan is a highly educated man,” his wife told McGill. “He has degrees in engineering, accounting and law. There’s very little any business entity could put past him. He turned in the CEOs of two Fortune 500 companies; they were defrauding the taxpayers.”

  McGill thought about that for a moment.

  “Given all you’ve told me, doesn’t your husband have a well-known and formidable reputation in his field?”

  “He does and he has for many years.”

  “Then why would the second CEO who took the fall hire him? He had to know what he was getting when he hired Mr. Gilford, and he had to know he wasn’t running a straight outfit. Where’s the logic there?” McGill asked.

  “I asked the same thing,” Zara told him. “Jordan explained to me that CEO number two thought he was far more clever than Jordan, that Jordan would never catch on to him and —”

  “By hiring your husband, he’d make himself look good, honest beyond question,” McGill said.

  “Exactly. D
o you know how the federal anti-fraud laws work, Mr. McGill?”

  He shook his head. In all his years as a cop the Pentagon had never come to him and said, “We wuz robbed.”

  “Well, the pertinent part of the law as far as Jordan is concerned,” Zara explained, “is that whistle-blowers can receive large sums of money for turning in corrupt company officials.”

  “What kind of money did Mr. Gilford get?” McGill asked.

  “For the two times he took information to the U.S. attorney’s office: $53 million.”

  Damn, McGill thought. With that kind of incentive, he was surprised there was any corruption left in the federal government. Then again, Jordan Gilford, to hear his wife tell it, had an unusual, if not unique, array of skills. How many people could read a combination of engineering specs, balance sheets and law books?

  “We don’t need the money,” Zara said, seeing the look on McGill’s face. “For the past ten years, Jordan has never made less than a million dollars a year, and for the last five years his compensation has been well above that.”

  “So he’s not driven by money,” McGill said.

  Zara shook her head.

  “All he thinks about is doing the job right. That means, among other things, being honest. And that makes some people see him as prickly. If he’d learned to be one of the boys, he’d probably be running some company by now. He can’t stand it, though, if someone tries to cut even the tiniest corner. Heaven help you if you do something unethical. If you’re foolish enough to do something illegal, well, maybe he should wear a whistle around his neck the way those sports officials do.”

  Winstead School Football Field — Georgetown

  Coach Don Russell blew his whistle as he ran at Abel Mays, the man approaching his football team with some goddamn firearm Russell couldn’t even identify. It was small enough that he’d been able to hide it under his coat, but the damn thing had a magazine that looked a foot long. Russell hunted ducks, deer and wild pigs. He knew long guns. There was nothing sporting about the compact death machine Mays carried.

  It was made to kill people, and with the size of that magazine the body count could be horrific. Russell felt his heart turn to ice as Mays raised the barrel. Even so, he continued his charge and kept blowing his whistle. He had to alert his boys and give them time to run. Save as many of them as he could.

  Just when Russell was sure he was about to be shot and killed, Bill Eccles, on his right and ten years younger, sped ahead of him, bellowing like a madman. Mays pointed his weapon at Bill, but then George Knox, on Russell’s left and even younger than Bill, took the lead, yelling as he went, “Warriors!”

  Mays swung the weapon Knox’s way. Then he remembered what he could do with the firearm he possessed. He pulled the trigger and a burst of automatic fire erupted. Swinging the barrel in an arc, he cut down all three coaches, ended their lives in the blink of an eye.

  The whistle blowing and the heroism of their coaches had given the entire team the opportunity to flee unscathed. But that wasn’t how Jarius Niles and Ricky Mitchell responded. Tears of disbelief filled their eyes and rage consumed their hearts. The men who had given them the kind of opportunities other boys could only dream of had just sacrificed their lives for them.

  Jarius and Ricky followed their coaches’ example and ran straight at Mays. Half-a-dozen of their teammates followed close behind Jarius and Ricky. All of them took up Coach Knox’s battle cry.

  “Warriors!”

  The remaining players couldn’t find the nerve to join in.

  They saved themselves and ran the other way.

  Abel Mays saw the players sprinting his way. Jarius and Ricky, the two boys he’d trained last year, the players he had counted on to bring his team a championship this year, the little shits who let themselves be taken from him, were out front, running side by side and coming fast. He’d come to fancy-ass Winstead that morning with them first in mind. Then he intended to get their coaches, the thieving bastards. Doing things the other way around was fine by him, too.

  Those other young fools running behind, shit, they’d just made the wrong choice.

  Mays dropped the empty magazine and slammed home a full clip.

  They were close now, Jarius, Ricky and the others.

  Close enough to hope they might reach him before —

  He pulled the trigger and the players all went down like bowling pins.

  Banging and crashing into each other, falling to the ground.

  The soft morning breeze cleared the gun-smoke quickly. Mays could see Jarius and Ricky were dead. So were some of the others. A few were still alive, moaning, one of them crying. He didn’t care about them. They lived or died, it was all the same to him.

  He started to walk back to his car.

  Put a new clip into his weapon.

  In case someone else wanted to take a run at him.

  McGill Investigations, Inc. — Georgetown

  “Do you think one of your husband’s former employers might be looking to hurt him?” McGill asked Zara Gilford.

  “Possibly, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, the timing isn’t right, I think. The first time Jordan went to the U.S. attorney’s office was four years ago; the second time was two years ago. I think if someone at either of those companies had wanted vengeance they would have tried something sooner. Isn’t vengeance usually an act of passion?”

  “Can be,” McGill said. “But some people don’t want to get caught. They can be patient and calculating.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

  McGill knew that some monsters thought the perfect time for getting even was right when the poor sap finally thought he was in the clear. He didn’t share that with Zara. He wanted to know who she thought might be a threat.

  “Why someone else?” he asked.

  “Because Jordan made such a good impression on the U.S. attorney here in Washington, he asked Jordan if he’d like to talk to a friend of his at the Department of Defense. The U.S. attorney joked that he’d find all sorts of opportunity to straighten people out there. So Jordan went for an interview, was offered the job and asked for a couple of weeks to think about it.”

  “He hasn’t even accepted the job?” McGill asked.

  “No, he did accept it. He’s been at the DOD for six months now. Then last week he got the phone call that scared both of us silly.”

  “I’m sorry, but you lost me,” McGill said.

  “Last Wednesday, we were at home getting ready to sit down to dinner and the phone rang. Jordan was closer and he answered the call. He wasn’t on the line a minute when he went white as new snow. Then he started to shake, and he’s not the kind of man to frighten easily. Just the opposite. But whoever was talking to him got past his guard.”

  “How did you respond?” McGill asked.

  “I asked what was wrong. He hung up the phone without even saying goodbye.”

  “And?”

  “Then I demanded to know what was wrong. Jordan told me an old friend from college had died. I asked who, but he said it was someone I’d never met. With all the schooling Jordan has — all of it before we met — that was plausible.”

  McGill said, “But you didn’t believe him or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “No, I didn’t. I have only a B.A. in American History, but I can tell the difference between grief and fear. What I could see clearly, someone had frightened my husband. He hadn’t heard a threat that someone was going to take him to court or anything like that.”

  McGill didn’t want Zara Gilford to frighten herself to the point where her answers were the product of emotion rather than reason. He needed to distract her, but to keep things relevant. He asked, “Does your husband know you came to see me?”

  “No, he thinks I went shopping.”

  “Will that cause a problem?”

  “Between us. It might, for a little while. I’ll pay that price to make sure he’s safe.”

&
nbsp; McGill nodded. He’d do the same, had done the same, in her position.

  “So tell me, who do you think threatened your husband?”

  “I don’t know. The only thing I can think is somebody at the Department of Defense knew of Jordan’s reputation and felt he was getting too close to finding out something that person wanted to keep hidden. Something so big he had to scare Jordan off with some awful threat.”

  “A death threat,” McGill said.

  “Yes, the next day, Thursday afternoon, Jordan told me we were moving. Not that he wanted to talk about moving; he’d already bought a condo in a high rise. Well, as high as you can find in Washington. It’s a new building with all sorts of security features. We have the only space on the top floor. A combination of penthouse and bunker, if you can imagine such a thing.”

  “What did you say?” McGill said.

  “I asked if he’d be attending his friend’s funeral.”

  “Letting him know you weren’t buying his story.”

  “Exactly, but he came up with a new excuse.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said he needed a secure site for the confidential information he needed to start bringing home. I asked if he’d been given any tips on how you furnish a secure site to make it cozy. I also told him we weren’t going to sell our home, the place where we’ve lived quite safely for years, because if I didn’t like the new place I wouldn’t be staying.”

  “Have you seen your new digs yet?” McGill asked.

  Disappointment clear in her voice, Zara said, “It’s actually quite nice, tasteful if not warm and fuzzy. You barely notice the gun turrets.”

  McGill grinned. The woman was facing a trying situation at the least, but she was doing her best to cope. “Have you moved in?”

  “I’ve spent two nights under that roof. I still think of it as more of a hotel stay, though.”

  McGill felt it imperative to bring up a delicate subject.

  “Mrs. Gilford, has anyone threatened you?”

  The question drew a blank look from the woman. “Me? Why would anyone do that? I haven’t done anything.”