The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery, page 1
The Beholder
A Maddie Richards Mystery
by
David Bishop
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents have been produced by the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, or to any actual events or precise locales is entirely coincidental or within the public domain.
The Beholder, A Maddie Richards Mystery
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Copyright © 2011 by David Bishop. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or any portion hereof, in any form. Any use whatsoever without the express written permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic or printed editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials or other illegal use.
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Cover designed by Telemachus Press, LLC
Cover art Copyright © iStockphoto #12854798 Millann
Published by Telemachus Press, LLC
http://www.telemachuspress.com
ISBN 978-1-937387-15-0 (eBook)
ISBN 978-1-937387-16-7 (Paperback)
Version 2012.08.29
Table of Contents
Novels by David Bishop
Acknowledgments
Dedication
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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Note to Readers
Who Murdered Garson Talmadge
Chapter 1
About the Author
Novels by David Bishop
For current information on new releases visit:
www.davidbishopbooks.com
Current Titles
The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery
Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, a Matt Kile Mystery
The Woman
The Third Coincidence
The Blackmail Club, a Jack McCall Mystery
The Original Alibi, a Matt Kile Mystery
Money & Murder, a Matt Kile Mystery, short story. Fall, 2012
2013-2014
Death of a Bankster, a Maddie Richards Mystery
The Schroeder Protocol
The Red Hat Murders
Murder by Choice
To be notified when each of the above titles are available:
Send your email address to, david@davidbishopbooks.com
For more information on books and characters visit: www.davidbishopbooks.com
Each forthcoming novel will have a new list of titles and dates.
Acknowledgments
As I often do, I got by with a lot of help from my friends and relatives who did yeoman duty as readers, including Jody Madden, Kim Mellen, John Logan, Beth Eggers, Frank Evans, Diane Kilby, Mary Lee, Ellie Brooks, Dick and Toni Jaskowitz, Dick Houser, Joe and Ruth Anne George, and several members of the Augusta Books and Bubbles Club. My thanks also go to Steve Jackson, Claudia Jackson, Terri Himes, Steve Himes, Lorraine Hansen and all the staff at Telemachus Press who helped in so many ways to enhance the presentation of this novel.
The characters who reside within this story were made smarter, tougher, sexier, or more villainous through your unselfish assistance. They join the author in saying thank you.
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to my first grandchild, Brandi Bishop, and Jody Madden, whose love and encouragement continues to inspire me, my other grandchildren, Kristopher and Kaia, my sons Todd and Dirk, all my nieces and nephews, and various other in-laws and out-laws. I wish to also add a group of unrelated young adults I recently met, Kirby, John, Brad, Eric, Carl, Jamie, Matt, and Michael. These wonderful young people collectively reassured me that the future of our great country is in very good hands. Without the faith and encouragement of so many, this book would not exist.
The Beholder
A Maddie Richards Mystery
Chapter 1
From the air, Maddie Richard’s neighborhood would appear as a checkerboard pattern with medium-sized, thirty-to-forty-year-old stucco tract houses with black asphalt driveways that softened in the summer sun. The yards populated with succulents, scattered palms, and a few old elegant jacaranda trees with their fernlike leaves and soft purple flowers.
On the ground, today had been a good Thursday in Phoenix, Arizona. There had been no homicides and the temperature had stayed below one hundred. Maddie liked the heat or more accurately, she hated the cold.
She had picked up her mail and walked halfway up the driveway when her cell phone rang. She considered not answering, but that was not an option. She was a cop working homicides.
“We’ve got another dead woman,” her partner, Jed Smith, told her. “The killer left the same message as with that black chick last week, ‘I’ll Get You, My Pretty,’ printed in the woman’s own blood. Cinch up your britches, Maddie, the media will be dogging us on this one.”
The smell of simmering taco meat enveloped Maddie when she opened her front door. She tossed the mail on the hall table, jotted down the address Jed gave her and hung up.
After putting a smile on her face, she joined her mother and son in the kitchen. His lips tasted minty. He usually had to be reminded to brush his teeth before bed, but on taco nights he always brushed before dinner, saying it gave the tacos more zing.
“Mommy’s gotta go back to work, honey,” she said, trying to keep it casual.
“Ah, Mom. You missed tacos last week, too. You promised.”
“You know I’d rather be here eating tacos with you. I’m really sorry.”
Despite only being in the fifth grade, Bradley had already learned that murderers were rarely considerate enough to ply their trade during normal working hours.
Maddie’s widowed mother, Rita, who lived with her and Bradley, stood at the stove stirring the taco meat. Thwack. Thwack. The large kitchen spoon her mother had seemingly been carrying since the Jurassic Period struck the side of the pot. A goober of taco sauce splattered her apron, joining the remains of many meals past. Strands of the old woman’s salt-and-pepper hair hung limp about a face lined by living and her husband’s death. Still, a contented face, Rita lived to help those she loved. Thwack. Thwack. Her spoon never struck in solo. The aroma from the meat reminded Maddie she had not eaten since breakfast. She took the wooden spoon, worn smooth by her mother’s coarse hand, scooped out some of the spiced ground beef and nibbled it over the sink.
Rita, who had let herself go after her husband died, rested her hands on her well-padded hips. “I kinda understood your father being a cop. The man loved it. God, rest his soul. But I don’t get it with you. You’re a woman.”
There was really no reason for her mother to get it when Maddie sometimes wondered why herself. She knew being a woman had helped her climb in the department, but she also knew she had done the job. Hell, more than done the job. She had kicked ass.
Her mother still criticized her some about talking rough. To Maddie’s way of thinking, a woman could elbow her way into police work, but not a lady. Cop work was traditionally a man’s gig, and the women who shoved their noses under the cop boy’s tent were met more with tolerance than welcome. Maddie preferred to think of her sister officers as embattled women striving to prove themselves. Even to the point of sometimes taking on a masculine swagger, a choice Maddie had resisted. She liked walking as a woman, the looks from the men. Even the remarks, well, some of them anyway. She didn’
“You need to find a good man and get married again,” her mother said with bias dripping from each word, “this time for keeps.” Thwack. Thwack. In the kitchen, the spoon punctuated everything Rita considered profound.
Maddie liked the idea of having a steady man in her life. She wanted the sharing, the intimacy, not necessarily the “husband” label. A perfect relationship would include that, but her view of the world didn’t require perfect.
“We’ve already had this conversation, Mom, too many times.” Maddie mussed her son’s hair. “Gotta go. Bye, you two.”
The heat outside pressed through her clothing, moisture immediately leaching from her skin. The sun was gradually surrendering to a darkening sky that would soon shroud the city like a net dropped over a wild animal. She started the engine, twisted the AC dial to full blast, and aimed all the vents at her face.
As Maddie backed out of her driveway she saw Gary Packard, her new neighbor from across the street, walking toward his mailbox. At more than six feet he moved with grace, his height mostly in his vee-shaped upper body.
Gary smiled and waved. Maddie waved back as she drove away. So far, this had been the extent of their exchanged pleasantries. Maddie’s mother had learned through the neighborhood women that Gary was single or at least lived alone. Maddie knew nothing else other than he wore tight Levis, had a dimple in his chin, and drove a pickup truck. Yet, her police instincts told her he was a city boy.
Maddie’s father had started his police career as a New York patrolman in the days when cops walked a beat. When the family moved to Arizona, the Phoenix police department put him in a cruiser. His retirement seven years later lasted only two years. After a lifetime of rich doughnuts and poor cigars, he died. The death certificate read natural causes, which Maddie knew translated to boredom, no hobbies, and no self-identity without a badge pinned to his shirt. He had wanted his daughter to become a doctor.
A doctor would be home eating tacos with her son, Maddie thought, not to mention making a hell of a lot more money. Instead, as a homicide cop she was on her way to the scene of a murder.
As she sped toward the interstate, the light cones from each street lamp passed crawled up the hood of her car, pierced the windshield and streaked across her face.
Maddie’s first thought about the case had been that the sick memo should have read, I got you, my pretty. “I’ll Get You, My Pretty” was the wrong verb tense unless the killer had meant it as an open-ended warning for killings to come.
At this week’s detectives’ meeting, Maddie had learned that Folami Stowe, who now appeared to be the first victim, had been a poor, pretty, single black girl with one arrest for prostitution. Tonight’s victim, Abigail Knight, was a rich, married white woman. Serial killers rarely mixed victim types, but that departure hadn’t changed her partner’s mind. Jed remained convinced that both killings were the work of the same fruitcake, and Jed’s instincts were generally right on.
She accelerated down the on-ramp into the concrete funnel known as Interstate Fifty-one. The serried hills to the west were already fading from view as the night tugged its dark blanket under the city’s chin.
Chapter 2
An armada of police cruisers, their sirens muted, and other official vehicles that responded to mayhem were idling in the street, immune to the parking rules of the road.
The tires on Maddie’s five-year-old Taurus rubbed the curb as she came to a stop while leaning sideways to get a full view of the Knights’ home—strike that, estate—on Mummy Mountain in Paradise Valley, Phoenix’s ritzier side of the tracks. Brick-like pavers framed the driveway in an alternating pattern.
After shutting off her engine, Maddie could hear the cries of coyotes, scattered in the bordering hills, voicing their objections to the static sounds coming from the squad-car radios. As she stepped out of her car, she noticed that the lining of her size-ten beige, linen blazer had begun to fray from rubbing over the short-barrel Smith and Wesson .38 she carried on her hip. She had tried a shoulder holster, but rejected it after Jed said it made her look like she had three boobs.
Jed walked toward her, his biceps sagging a bit from age. He took pride in the fact that he still worked out regularly on a heavy bag that hung in his garage, while remaining unconcerned with the leathering of his face. One of the lingering differences between the sexes, the time spent caring for the face.
“Got a score in the D’backs game?” she asked. Jed was a big Arizona Diamondbacks fan.
“My car lost the signal coming up the mountain. We’re playing the Dodgers. The only thing I got to hear was a pre-game interview with one of the spoiled visiting superstars. The jerk was crying about having to play five away games in the next six days. Those guys make a gazillion playing a kid’s game, have women throwing their panties at them while they’re on the road, and only have to work about eight months a year. And they think us regular stiffs ought to feel sorry for them. Those pricks have no clue.”
Maddie ended Jed’s sports editorial by asking, “Who called in tonight’s main event?”
“A couple of young studs in heat, they hike over the back hill on their way home from summer ball practice. Over this way,” Jed said, nodding his head toward the end of the cul-de-sac, “I’ll show you.”
The backdrop of the city’s twinkling lights made the neighborhood a beautiful place to live, but a bad place to die and death was what had brought them here.
“What’s the latest on your ex-husband’s efforts to snatch Bradley?” Jed asked as they walked.
“Curtis’s attorney just filed for a review of the custody agreement. My lawyer’s sending me a copy.”
“What grounds could he possibly have? I’m sorry but your ex is a real butt.”
“Curtis just got hired to do color commentary for the Phoenix Cardinals on radio. He got that by marrying the station owner’s daughter who, rumors say, is barren. So he’s using her to get near football and she’s using him hoping to get a child. Her only problem, Bradley already has a mommy with a gun. My attorney says Curtis’s argument is that he’ll give Bradley a more stable and safer home life than he’ll get being raised by a divorced homicide sergeant. Odd hours. Threats from unsavory characters, blah, blah, blah. Do you ever get the impression that except when they need us, civilians see cops as the enemy?”
“Maddie, my love, you’re way too beautiful to be so cynical. Now, what are you going to do about Curtis?”
“Fight the son of a bitch, what else? Listen. We need to get into tonight’s show.”
“Right over there on that hill,” Jed pointed. “If they were old enough to remember Fats Domino, the boys would likely call it Blueberry Hill, ‘cause that’s where they found their thrill.”
Maddie had long ago learned to just grin at her partner’s hackneyed humor. “Two boys,” she asked, “right?”
Jed held up two fingers. “It’s private over there, a great spot for peeping.”
“What did the boys tell you?” Maddie asked.
“Mrs. Knight regularly left the drapes open while she undressed. The teens carried binoculars in their backpacks.”
“You buy that?”
“Yeah, boys banging up against their hormones. According to them, she’d gyrate her shoulders in front of a big mirror on her bedroom wall. Last night they think she saw them. I guess it freaked them a little. They said she walked right up to the window wearing nylons and heels and crooked her finger beckoning them to come to her. After spending the day challenging each other’s stones, the boys decided if she did that again tonight they’d knock on her door and offer to leave their cherries.”
Maddie smirked. Then Jed added, “The boys say they never saw her with anyone.”
“What time were they up here?” Maddie asked, taking Jed’s arm and turning him back toward the crime scene.
“About seven, summer practice ran a little late. They had stopped for a slushy.”
“And that’s when they saw her?”
