False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) Read online

  The girl found her perfect spot next to a street vendor and waited. From here she could see straight into the restaurant without too many problems.

  She watched patiently as the judge was brought to a table by one of the waiters. At the table Judge Mathews shook someone’s hand. The girl could not make the person out, as a large pillar obstructed her view, however she figured it was a man because of the size of his hand compared to that of the judge.

  Mathews sat and she laughed as they talked, then her face changed to one that was more serious, scared even. Who was this person who could make a judge nervous, the girl wondered? She tried to look round the pillar from a different spot but found that her view was then blocked by a wall. She growled with displeasure.

  She would have to wait. This mystery person interested her.

  As she watched, the waiter presented meals for the judge and her companion and placed them on the table. The young woman’s stomach let off a jealous rumble.

  The watcher knew that they would be in there for some time, given the way the judge was picking at her salad, so she decided to find a better observation spot.

  Two men came up behind the girl and grabbed both her arms and led her towards a black van that was parked nearby.

  “Make a sound and I will stab you in the kidney,” one of her captors warned her.

  The girl looked shocked at her sudden abduction. She winced in pain as the man gave a quick poke to her side with the knife that was hidden under a jacket he had draped over his right arm.

  She hoped that someone would notice, that one of the thousands of people around would see her dilemma and call the cops. But everyone seemed to either not see what was happening, or they simply chose not to get involved.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “If this is for ransom, oh brother, have you picked the wrong kid.” She felt another pinch to her side.

  “When we get to the van you get in all normal like,” the man warned her. “Mess me around and I leave you bleedin’ here.”

  She nodded quickly, but only used small movements, to prevent another penetration from his blade.

  They walked quickly towards the van in silence, the girl still trying to make eye contact with anyone but failing completely.

  She felt a tear build up in the corner of one eye. She had heard about these kind of incidents: young girls being dragged off the streets only to be brought back later to work there turning tricks. If she was lucky it would still be in America, but she could be taken anywhere in the world.

  “I am frightfully sorry, can I trouble one of you gentlemen for directions?”

  The girl’s heart nearly stopped at the sound of the voice of the British tourist. She wanted to turn around and warn him that he was in danger but she froze: she had second thoughts—if she turned to warn him they might both end up dead.

  “Get lost!” yelled the man to her left.

  “Sorry,” said the ever-polite tourist. “I am already lost, that’s why I am asking directions.” The British tone of his voice was firm but somehow it had a playful ring to it. It was almost as if he was trying to annoy her captors.

  “I just want to know the way to the Empire State Building,” the lost tourist asked.

  Megan, for that was her name, could hear the man to her left start to breathe heavily. He was about to make a move and the poor tourist would not have a chance.

  “Look, limey, why don’t you find a cop or something?” the man to her left growled disapprovingly.

  “You know it is really bad manners to talk to someone and not look them in the eye.”

  The Brit was now seriously irritating the thug on her left and he turned to confront him.

  “Sorry, my mistake.”

  There was a sickening crunch and the man stumbled backwards, blood flowing freely from between the fingers that were now cradling his nose.

  The knifeman turned quickly. All Megan heard was what seemed to be the sound of someone being hit hard, many, many times.

  Suddenly the body of the knifeman skidded past her across the concrete paving.

  Fear froze the girl in place, but something else made her turn slowly around. She was hoping to see the face of the man who had saved her. However, all she saw was a crowd of people and there was no sign of her rescuer.

  There was a screech of tyres from the van as it sped off, causing her to turn around just in time to see it disappear down the street before the cops arrived.

  “You okay, kid?” asked a friendly voice. She looked up to see a beat cop standing over her.

  She looked around, confused, then back at the two men bleeding on the sidewalk.

  “Yes, I am fine—now. Do you know who did this?” she asked, hoping for answers.

  “I was hoping you could tell me, I just got called over to a fight. Say, what’s your name, kid?”

  The girl seemed miles away for a second as though she wasn’t taking it all in. “What? Sorry, did you ask my name? It’s Megan. Megan Armstrong, sir.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tooms and Tony stood at the side of the road looking at the broken safety fence, beyond which was the swell of the Hudson River.

  They had gotten a call from the coastguard about reports of a car that had crashed into the river. A witness had seen the car crash after being driven erratically. When the police had taken the witness’s statement she had described the driver. That description sounded like that of the missing guard from the crash of the prison van.

  Earlier that day Tony had put out a Be On The Look Out or BOLO alert for the guard, which the coastguard and uniformed officers had reacted to.

  As they stood at the roadside embankment they watched the divers go down then moments later come up again, each time moving to a different spot.

  Tooms nudged Tony and pointed to one diver who raised his arm to signal that he had something. They watched as a large crane manoeuvred over the spot and lowered its cable and lashing straps into the water, as the other divers went to assist.

  Tony waited for the car to be brought up so they could ID the body. The two detectives stood and watched as the rear end of a car started to emerge from the deep. The men suddenly looked disappointed as a brand new BMW was pulled out and laid on the side of the road.

  “Thanks, Sarge, but we are looking for a blue Ford,” Tony told the coastguard sergeant.

  The sergeant leaned into the car to look at the body to confirm whether it was or wasn’t their man. “Well,” he told the detectives, “Blue Ford or not, this is your guy.” He waved a picture of the guard they had sent him earlier. The two detectives looked at each other and then moved closer.

  The vehicle held one driver, who was indeed the missing guard from the prison van. All along Tony had had the feeling that the ‘mother being ill’ story was bogus, and that’s why he had put out an all points alert.

  “I thought this guy was a hundred miles away,” Tooms said angrily.

  “Yeah, I wonder why he ain’t?” Tony replied.

  “Okay, so he gets himself a brand new Beemer, only to drive it into the Hudson!” Tooms shook his head, confused at the situation.

  “Well if you’ve got to go, you may as well do it style.” Tony shrugged and smiled.

  Tony and Tooms stood back as the ME—who was a short man in his late fifties, with white scraggy hair and gold rimmed spectacles—did his checks.

  “Any ID, Doc?” asked Tooms, who was hoping it was someone else, who just happened to look like their missing guard.

  The ME turned and tossed over a black wallet. Tooms caught it and went through the pockets. He pulled out a driver’s licence and growled. “Yeah, it’s our guy. Damn it!” Tooms bagged the evidence in a clear evidence bag that Tony held out for him.

  “You got a cause of death, Doc?” Tony asked as he sealed up the bag.

  “Can’t be sure,” the doctor replied. “Could be head trauma from the impact, but one thing is sure: he didn’t drown.”

  The two detectives drew nearer so t
hat they could get a better look.

  “How can you be sure?” Tony asked.

  The ME pointed to the dead man’s lips. “See here? There’s no foam round the mouth, which shows that the water made it to the lungs. But I will know more once I have cut the poor bastard open.”

  The two detectives thanked him and made their way back to their car while CSU did their thing with the car.

  There was nothing they could do there, so after leaving their business cards with the ME and CSU they headed back to the precinct.

  “You smell a cover up, partner?” Tooms asked as he slid onto the driver’s seat of their car.

  “Actually I smell hot dogs, I am starved,” Tony admitted.

  Tooms looked at his partner and shook his head as they sped away. “Unbelievable.” Tooms grunted, and Tony laughed as he took out his cell phone.

  “Agent Lloyd?” he said into the phone. “Yeah, it’s Tony—Detective Marinelli—never mind. We have a problem with the guard.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  McCall had gone through Williams’s file and still couldn’t figure out how a career criminal had become so stupid and got caught. What also made no sense was that the killing of the undercover cop was in Battery Park and Williams at the time lived and worked near Central Park North.

  The case itself was open and shut, the prosecution had all of the evidence—a witness, fibres, ballistics. All roads led to Williams.

  Hell, it couldn’t have been more airtight if they had got filmed footage of it. However something didn’t seem right to her. She had never had a case like that—ever.

  Tooms had phoned to tell her about the guard taking a one-way drive, which made his and Tony’s life more complicated for sure.

  But she had her own problems. McCall threw down her pen and stretched, just as Steel was walking out of the elevator, holding a loaded hot dog and a coffee.

  “Thought you were eating out?” she asked, almost disappointed that he had not brought her anything.

  “Actually these are for you,” he told her. “I figured you wouldn’t have gone out for anything.”

  McCall almost blushed with embarrassment after doubting his manners. “Thanks.” She took the food and went for the coffee first.

  “Any luck?” Steel asked, hoping she had found something that they could work on.

  “No, but talking of luck, Tooms and Tony found the guard.”

  Steel smiled. “Nice. So are they bringing him in?” His smile faded as McCall shook her head.

  “No the coroner’s doing that. They found the poor guy at the bottom of the Hudson in a brand new Beemer.”

  Steel grunted disapprovingly as he picked up his coffee cup and headed for the recreation room to fill it. McCall had finished her meal by the time Steel had returned, but she seemed agitated by her findings.

  “So did you find anything that might shed some light on things?” he asked.

  McCall leant back in her chair and waited for John to sit. “I think our boy here knew it was a set up and now he’s out!” She raised her hands as if she had solved the case.

  “Nice. So can we go home now you’ve solved it?”

  McCall scowled at Steel, who smiled broadly at his insult.

  “So we both agree that his capture and case at the time stank of a set up,” Steel said, looking puzzled, feeling that this whole case made no sense whatsoever. “But why didn’t anyone else pick it up? I mean for any judge or prosecutor this must have stuck out as bizarre, surely?”

  McCall had to agree that it was odd, but sometimes as a cop you welcomed such easy ‘gift-wrapped’ cases.

  “We need to look at the others, see if anything pops there,” he reasoned. “What if someone is setting up killers and drug dealers? Is that a bad thing if it gets them off the streets?”

  McCall could see his reasoning, however one thing made it wrong. “It is if innocent people have to die.”

  Steel smiled and she knew he was baiting her. He picked up the file on Darius Smith.

  The file was just as thick as Tyrell’s and with just as many non-convictions. Steel looked through it, using his finger as a marker, not relying on his eyes to do the checking alone.

  “Well our boy here, Darius Smith, was no saint either,” he mused. “The usual shopping list for a career criminal but again he was never convicted. Well not until eleven years ago, when he gets busted for killing some kid in a hit-and-run.”

  McCall looked at Steel as if he had told a bad joke. “Really? A hit-and-run!” She almost fell off her chair because it sounded so absurd.

  “Yes, eye witness, forensics—the lot.”

  McCall picked up her coffee and drank to try and get rid of the bad taste in her mouth, as Steel went through the rap sheet. “Okay. I can get frustration in a case and planting evidence. But actually killing someone to do it? Na you’ve lost me on that one.” McCall started to get the feeling that number three was also likely to be a set-up.

  She looked at the file that lay next to a stack of other files and picked it out.

  “This one’s different,” she said, reading. “Schoolteacher kills his wife in an alley after a heated argument in a restaurant. Again they found enough evidence to convict. It reads much the same but this was a normal guy, not some scumbag from the streets. This doesn’t fit at all.”

  Steel put down Darius’s file and leaned forwards with interest. “Okay, so we’ve got one set-up, nice but definitely wrong. Two set-ups is going a bit adventurous, but three? No, something is going on. We just have to find what ties these three men together and which one is the killer before he strikes again.”

  *

  Brian Armstrong sat in an armchair, staring at a photograph of his family. It was old, and white creases made it look untidy, but he didn’t mind as long as he could still make out the faces.

  He had changed out of his orange jumpsuit and now sported a black sweatsuit with a hooded top. They had all been moved to an old abandoned tower block that Tyrell used to hide out at if things got a little hot on the street. The electric lighting in the rooms was powered by generators, and the windows were blacked out so that no light could escape.

  Armstrong looked up at the door as Tyrell walked into the room, wearing a grey pinstripe with a sky-blue shirt.

  “Very nice, who’s your date?” Brian joked.

  Tyrell swaggered as if he was on the red carpet. “Hey, man, you had the chance for some nice threads but you picked that shit, God knows why.”

  Brian stood up and followed Tyrell into the other room, where Darius was watching the news.

  “Well, looks like we made front page news,” Darius commented. “You know it will be a while before we can make it outta here?”

  Tyrell nodded and patted his colleague on the shoulder. “Patience, man, everything is gonna be fine, just real fine.” Tyrell walked over to a couch that was against the side wall and sat heavily. “Might as well relax, Teacher. My brother will bring some food later. In the meantime there are plenty of books in that room you were in.”

  Brian Armstrong turned and walked back into the room to search for these so-called books. He had a feeling they were all going to be mystery novels or chick books, but he smiled as he found something of interest, picked it out of the pile and sat down to read.

  In the other room Darius leant over towards Tyrell and beckoned him forwards. “Where did Teacher get to after the crash? I mean, sure, we all split but I followed you.”

  Tyrell shrugged and looked over at the doorway that led to the next room. “Maybe the brother had business? Maybe he went to get a fuckin’ hot dog. Point is we are all safe now and hopefully we’ll soon be out of the country.”

  Darius smiled at the thought of spending his days sitting on a beach somewhere. “So the police are trying to say them killings were done by us, what’s with that, man?”

  Tyrell leant forwards and poured himself a large glass of the Bacardi rum that sat in the centre of the table. “Who can say, man? You know the cops.
They’ll try and pin anything on us now. But we have to be smart and keep low.”

  The two men knocked glasses and downed their contents in one swift motion.

  “Oh, man, I missed that shit.” Darius laughed and winced as the alcohol hit home.

  “Don’t worry, man. No one is looking for us here.” Tyrell’s words were confident, and Darius was hoping he was right.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Several hours had flown past since Tooms and Tony had returned from the site of the accident. The four of them—the pair of detectives plus Sam McCall and John Steel—were sitting around the conference table and were comparing notes, just in case something slotted into place.

  They knew, even though they were dealing with two different cases, that they must be related somehow.

  McCall stood up to get another coffee after peering into the empty vessel. She took the cell phone from her pocket after it had buzzed violently to alert her of a new text message. Samantha smiled and ran her fingers through her hair as she read the words.

  “Message from your boyfriend?” Steel asked, a large grin on his face.

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Do you, Mr Steel?” Tooms said, turning to McCall and hoping she’d got some new information.

  McCall ignored the school kids at the table and sent a reply.

  “If you must know that was the editor of the Herald,” she told them. “He said that the disc of the CCTV footage was ready and we can pick it up.”

  Steel raised an eyebrow and cracked a smile from the corner of his mouth. “Okay then, so we’ll see you when you get back.”

  Sam looked puzzled for a brief moment. “You’re not coming?” Her voice was trying not to betray the relief of not having to put up with him tagging along.

  “Oh, sorry, no, too much paperwork to do, plus have you seen the time?” John Steel answered. “Hey, no, look you go and have fun, if you know what I mean.” He picked up a file and held it up to hide his face.