Better Off Dead (A Cal Murphy Thriller Book 3) Read online

  “Sure. Just know I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Ted aimed the gun at Cal as he walked over to the desk and grabbed a pen and pad sitting on the chair behind the receptionist’s desk. He threw them at Cal.

  “Here. Take notes with this.”

  Cal stared at Ted, confused.

  What is this guy doing?

  Ted paced around the room for several moments before he spoke, constantly cutting his eyes toward Cal. Unsure if this was some sort of test, Cal decided to proceed with caution, jotting down a few questions as he waited for Ted to begin speaking.

  “Why am I here, Ted? You’re the one who invited me. I don’t want any trouble,” Cal said.

  I do want a story though.

  After another period of silence and pacing, Ted finally spoke.

  “I’ve chosen you to be the scribe. My scribe. The one who records the truth about what is really happening with Charles Robinson, PacLabs and performance enhancing drugs.”

  “So that’s what all this is about?”

  “That’s just the collateral damage. I’ll get to ground zero in a minute.”

  Cal didn’t like the sound of that. Ground zero? Is there another figurative bomb that Ted is about to drop?

  “Tell me what I need to know to write this story.”

  This time, Ted didn’t measure his words.

  “What you need to know is that Charles Robinson is a ruthless man who will do anything to protect his evil empire!”

  Cal remained calm despite Ted’s voice rising 10 decibel points with each new response.

  “What’s so evil about it?”

  “I think you know the answer to all this, but I’ll give it to you straight and unfiltered.”

  Cal flipped the page and waited for Ted to begin.

  “Before I begin wading into all the gory details, I want to know if you found my thumb drive at the bowling alley?”

  “I did.”

  “And did you get a chance to look at it?”

  “Sure did. It generated quite a few questions I wanted to ask you about today.”

  “Good. We’ll get to all that in a moment. For now, let’s go back to the beginning, the moment when my life began spinning on its axis.”

  CHAPTER 35

  KELLY GAVE UP TRYING to reach Cal. Despite her repeated efforts to get him on the phone, her calls kept going to voicemail.

  “What is wrong with him? Why won’t he answer my calls?”

  She pulled into Cal’s apartment complex and parked in one of his two allotted spaces. Cal’s guilty pleasure purchase when he moved to San Francisco was a convertible Fiat 500. He said he needed a car that helped him drink in San Francisco when he was putting around town. It wasn’t long before he realized all he was drinking in were fumes as most of the times traffic slowed to a crawl. He decided to use it only for weekend getaways to Yosemite or a sea coast drive along the 101. That all meant Kelly had a car whenever she needed one while visiting Cal.

  She activated the mechanism that closed the top before turning the engine off.

  Bounding up the stairs to Cal’s second floor apartment overlooking the San Francisco Bay, she stopped for a moment to bask in the sunlight. It was breezier than usual, but at least there wasn’t any smog strangling her lungs like a typical day in L.A. She needed to relax, even if for just a moment. The stress of the past week had worn her down.

  She stared at a barge creeping through the bay before she snapped out of her daze.

  It all makes sense now!

  Then she gasped in horror.

  This meeting with Ted IS a trap!

  She opened the door to Cal’s apartment and began furiously dialing his number. Nothing but voicemail.

  Then she remembered she could find where Cal was if his phone was still on. It was a long shot, but she thought she’d give it a try anyway. Nothing else was working.

  She opened Cal’s laptop and began rooting around in his applications folder for the Find iPhone app. Cal’s creativity achieved new heights when it came to leaving his phone in random places. He once left it inside a pot while cleaning up the kitchen. Another time he put it in the freezer on top of an ice cream carton before finding it with ice crystals forming on the screen two hours later. Kelly often lost her phone too but didn’t have to stress about it anymore after Cal showed her how to use the app. If the phone was on, it would locate where your phone was, providing as detailed of a location as possible using the GPS mechanism in the phone.

  “Come on! Come on!” she yelled at the laptop as the compass spinning on the screen told her it was searching for Cal’s phone.

  After a few seconds, a map popped up with his location. He was at a warehouse on the corner of Third Street and Marin.

  She began dialing the San Francisco Police Department.

  CHAPTER 36

  CAL SHIFTED IN HIS SEAT, situating himself for a long note-taking session. Despite Ted waving a gun recklessly in his direction, he felt surprisingly at ease. This was Cal’s element. A man wanted to tell a story and he would listen. Cal would’ve listened with or without the gun. As Ted began to talk, Cal almost forgot about it. Almost.

  “None of this was an accident,” Ted said.

  “None of what?” Cal asked.

  “Everything. Everything you see. Everything I’ve done. It’s not a coincidence.”

  “Then tell me what it is?”

  “It is the mastermind of Charles Robinson. Every last detail of my life over the past few years was something he dreamed up, something he controlled.”

  “So you work for Charles Robinson?” Cal asked.

  “Who doesn’t work for him? All of L.A. and half of California works for the man in some way or another. You even worked for him.”

  “But you work for him more closely?”

  “You could call it that. He recruited me for this job.”

  Cal flipped the page in his notebook, mostly out of habit. He hadn’t even filled a page or written anything of consequence, but he grew restless of Ted’s shrouded babblings.

  “You said you wanted to start at the beginning, so let’s go there.”

  “Fine,” Ted said. “The beginning is the day I killed my parents. Up until that day, I was a pretty normal 14-year-old boy. At least, I thought I was normal. I thought every kid got beat by his dad when he was drunk. Every single night. Then I found out that wasn’t so normal. I mean a few other kids got beat by their dad too. But nobody had the problems I had with my mom.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She molested me. She started with me when I was at such a young age that I never really questioned it. But as I got older, I found out, that certainly wasn’t normal.”

  “So what happened?”

  “One night after my dad beat me real good, I pulled out some chloroform I stole from my high school’s chemistry lab. I waited until they were already asleep and then smothered them with it to make sure they were knocked out. Then I doused them both with gasoline and burned the house to the ground. I heard them screaming when they woke up in time to realize it was too late. I always told people they died in a crash. It was easier that way for me, making up some story instead of saying that they died in a fire and dredging up my past.”

  “And the cops didn’t charge you with murder?”

  “No. I got a sympathetic detective. I even told him what I did and why I did it. He filled out his report that it was an accident.”

  “So nobody ever found out?”

  “He must have told somebody because Charles Robinson knew when he first approached me.”

  “Approached you about what?”

  “About working for him, of course. He wanted to buy our little company, DigiTest. We had an unbeatable test that would catch PED users. We were sitting on a gold mine. We started looking for prospective buyers. That’s when I first met Robinson.”

  “He wanted to buy your company?”

  “Yeah, but not for the reasons you might think. He wanted to con
trol things, including who got caught and who didn’t. He didn’t want to use our program – he wanted to bury it.”

  “So he bought you out?”

  “Yeah, but he approached me first, black mailing me within fifteen minutes of meeting me. He said he would help me save my brother if I’d do him a favor and make sure all the partners agreed to the sale. He knew my brother was dying and that I’d do anything to save him. So, I agreed and coereced the other partners to sell to Robinson. However, that wasn’t all. He then asked me to help kill my other partners, make it look like accidents. And if I didn’t, he said he’d tell them I was a murderer. He told me that if I’d done it before, I could do it again – especially if Tommy’s life depended on it.”

  “So you did it?”

  “I had no choice. I made them all look like accidents, except for Trevor Wyatt. He was always gambling so that it was easy to do a straight hit on him. The official story was that he was in debt, but the reality was I was under the control of Charles Robinson and my brother’s life depended on it. So I did what I had to do.”

  Cal stopped writing just long enough to flip another page in his notebook.

  “And the job at PacLabs?”

  “Oh, I do work there. But the real work I do is for Robinson. Whenever he calls, I have to do his bidding.”

  “What kind of bidding?”

  “I think you know.”

  “I think so too, but for the record?”

  “For the record, I mostly beat people up. Coercion might be a more respectable name. But I just convince people they need to do what Robinson wants them to do.”

  “But it’s more than that sometimes, right?”

  “On a few occassions, I’ve been known to step over the line.”

  “That’s what those big payments were for? Hit jobs?”

  “You could call them that. Robinson likes to call it the last resort. He’d much rather work with willing pawns, though sometimes it’s necessary to ‘trim the loose ends,’ as he likes to call it.”’

  “So what were all those failed drug test forms that you gave me? What was that about?”

  Ted paused, looked down, and then pushed the barrel of his revolver down on the desk in front of him. He then looked up at Cal.

  “I’m getting to that.”

  CHAPTER 37

  THE WOMAN IN DISPATCH who answered Kelly’s call took her time in assessing the situation. A freaked out reporter who thinks her friend is in danger and is walking into the trap set by a hitman for the most powerful businessman in California? Kelly knew she sounded like a fool as she was saying it. But judging from the dispatcher’s ambivalent response, Kelly imagined that the dispatcher pictured her with a tinfoil hat. Just another crazy calling the San Francisco Police Department.

  Kelly jumped into the Fiat and typed the address into her phone. She needed directions now. If the police weren’t going to be there for Cal, she would.

  Her phone estimated it would take twelve minutes to get there.

  Kelly tapped nervously on the steering wheel when she came to a red light.

  Come on! Come on! I don’t have time for this!

  Just like a few other adventures with Cal, this one started innocently enough. A whistleblower leaks information. Cal begins digging. Boom!

  These investigations usually went off without much more than a whimper. People loved to deny everything until you presented them with facts. That was what usually made people talk. When they knew their dirty laundry was going to be aired, they might as well do it their way as opposed to letting some journalist misconstrue the facts. It often softened the brunt of the truth. But not this time. Everyone denied everything, preferring to sweep the truth into the graves of the truth tellers.

  Kelly pulled into the parking lot and noticed Cal’s car was the only one there. She put the car in park and waited for a few moments. She didn’t have a plan as to what she would do once she walked in the building—or if she even could do anything at all.

  As she mulled over a plan, she never saw the black towncar park along the side of the road. Nor did she realize it had been following her the entire way there.

  CHAPTER 38

  CAL REALIZED HALF THE PAD in his hand was already covered in notes. If Ted took much longer to get to the crux of the story, he might not be able to capture it on paper.

  Ted ran his free hand through his hair, refusing to set the gun down for even a moment. By this time, Cal had grown accustomed to the constant threat of the gun being waved about that he hardly noticed it any more. Except when it was pointed at him.

  Cal flipped another page and looked up to see the barrel of Ted’s revolver aimed right at him.

  “I know you don’t really care about me,” Ted said, shaking the gun at Cal. “What you really want to know about are those drug tests – or should I say, failed drug tests? That’s more accurate anyway.”

  Cal began to relax just a bit.

  “So, is that what you did at PacLabs? Conduct PED tests from samples?”

  “Yeah. Not real glamorous, I know. But that was my paycheck—my very small paycheck in comparison.”

  “So what was going on?”

  “Robinson had rigged the system.”

  “In what way?”

  “He suppressed the tests that failed each week. That is, he suppressed them if they paid.”

  “Who paid?”

  “The other owners. We sent a list to him each week. After a day or two, he would instruct us to bury all of the failed drug tests and replace them with fake passing results.”

  “So, if a team paid to keep it quiet, nobody knew about it?”

  “Exactly. The few players who were busted over the past few years happened only when a team told Robinson to let the player get busted. If you review the short list of players suspended for using banned substances, almost every one of them was a troublemaker in the locker room—or someone who wasn’t performing. I even had a couple of requests to create a failed drug test to get rid of players that teams didn’t want around any longer.”

  “So, why bring that information to me?”

  “Because I wanted out. I thought I could escape this mess. Then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was never going to end. I was always going to be haunted by this. Eventually you would write a story and I would be connected to PacLabs. My name would’ve been smeared, even if I would’ve figured out a way to avoid legal charges.”

  “Maybe. Most of the time, the guys on the bottom rung make plea deals and escape serious time. I know a guy who could help you with that.”

  Ted began pacing furiously, back and forth, taking two or three steps in each direction before reverting back the other way. He tapped his forehead with the gun, thinking as he ranted out loud.

  “Don’t you get it, Cal? This is never going to go away for me. Especially not after you write this story.”

  “I don’t have to write everything,” Cal answered, hoping to loosen Ted’s lips even more.

  “It doesn’t matter!” Ted screamed. “I’m as good as dead—and you might be too!”

  The stress of Ted’s confession—as well as the guilt–weighed more heavily on Ted as he revealed more and more. And Cal grew more nervous with each passing moment. He wasn’t ready to die. Not today or any time soon. Especially with Charles Robinson walking around as a free man.

  “Well, if I’m going to die, Ted, you at least ought to tell me what happened to Aaron Banks? Did you kill him?”

  “No, that was Bobby Franklin’s doing.”

  Slackjawed, Cal stared at Ted. “Bobby Franklin? Aaron’s agent? He’s the one who killed Aaron?”

  “Not him personally, but he took care of it. He knew where Aaron met his PED supplier. Hired a hit man. Simple as that.”

  “But why kill him?”

  “Charles Robinson threatened him, even told him they were releasing Aaron,” Ted said. “They were through with him and wanted a more productive player at a lower cost. The Stars
barely fit all their superstars under the salaray cap anyway so they were looking for a way to reduce some extra baggage. Robinson offered Franklin the equivalent of his cut had Aaron signed a big five-year deal. Apparently, Franklin took Robinson up on it, heeding Robinson's warning that if he didn’t go along with it, Robinson would leak Aaron’s failed drug tests—along with the failed drug tests of half the players on Franklin’s client roster.”

  “And how do you know all this?”

  “Franklin tried to hire me, but Robinson told me not to since it could be linked back to him at some point. But I wouldn’t have done it anyway. I loved watching Aaron Banks play. He was one of my favorite players when he was in his prime.”

  Cal had more than enough for a national front page news story. This transcended sports. A murder-for-hire plot that included an owner, an agent and one of his players. But there was still something that nagged Cal, leaving a few questions that he needed answers to fit into a bigger theory he proposed.

  “But why make it look like a suicide? Less of a mess? Why not stage it as a robbery or something more random that might happen to a guy cruising around in a McLaren F1 in L.A.?”

  “I’m not sure why, but Robinson always had his reasons. Nothing he did was random. It’s always calculated and precise with him. He’s just—”

  Ted stopped talking. He quit pacing, too. He looked down at the ground as if he was searching for the word – or the courage to say something.

  “Like when he told me to lure you here today so I could kill you,” Ted said, glaring at Cal.

  Cal looked up from his paper and didn’t have a chance to move.

  Bam!

  CHAPTER 39

  KELLY HEARD THE SHOT ring out from the warehouse. Why aren’t the cops here? Running into the building went against her better instincts—but she did it anyway. There was no way she would sit a hundred feet away while he bled to death from a gun shot wound. She prepared herself for the worst.