Murder in the Clear Zone Read online

  Published by Evernight Publishing at Smashwords

  http://www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2011 Lynde Lakes

  ISBN: 978-1-927368-28-2

  Cover Artist: LF Designs

  Editor: Dana Horbach

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To the three strong women who influenced my life: Mae Thurman, Sara Rice and Winona Prette.

  And to those who worked to bring this intriguing novel to my wonderful and faithful readers: My publisher Stacey Adderley—EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING, my editor, Dana Horbach, My cover artist, Dara England & the acquisitions manager Marie Buttineau. And as always, to my husband for his support and encouragement.

  MURDER IN THE CLEAR ZONE

  Lynde Lakes

  Copyright © 2011

  Prologue

  California 1986

  Charlie’s heart pounded wildly as he ran through the darkness. The sounds of labored breathing and thunder of half a dozen booted feet pursued close behind. The bastards had silencers on their guns. When a bullet tore into his thigh, he bit his lip to keep from crying out. Blood trickled down his leg, draining his strength. The gang of thieving, murderous scum wouldn’t stop until he was dead. Dying, he could handle. But not abandoning Paula to face these killers alone

  Less than half a mile to the north, across the stretch of vacant land, twinkled the scattered dim glow of streetlights in the South Tippecanoe housing tract where she slept. Gravel crunched behind him. Breath burned in his lungs. He stumbled over tumbleweeds and large stones. His left foot felt numb. Instinct, self-preservation, and the need to protect Paula urged him on. As an orphan, he learned to think on his feet. If he couldn’t fight his way out of a tight spot, he’d deal his way out. But he wouldn’t deal with these evil bastards.

  He ran parallel to the dry riverbed and left behind the housing area and the blue blinking lights of the Norton runway. He swallowed cool night air in agonizing gulps.

  A bullet whizzed past his head.

  He leapt into the dry wash, about a six-foot drop, and came down hard. The crunch echoed through the night. His bleeding, torn leg gave way and propelled him forward. His temple smashed against a rock. Pain seared through him. He clamped his jaw tight to avoid crying out. He staggered to his feet. Ignoring the blood streaming down the side of his face, he scrambled on.

  He couldn’t focus his eyes. The silvery moon blurred and eclipsed. He staggered on squinting, blinking.

  Shouted curses and heavy thuds of boots landing on rocks echoed behind him. Damn. They’d followed him into the wash.

  He kept going. The dry riverbed, roughened by more scrub brush and boulders the size of a VW bug, snaked along, cut aimlessly by past floods. Something small scurried across in front of him.

  Ahead, the wash curved and split.

  Blood ran from his temple into his eyes. He lurched forward. Keep going. Keep going. I have to get to Paula…have to warn her. At the divide, he veered left—the “boots” went right.

  I have a chance!

  His head swam. Blood soaked his jeans. His legs buckled. He dropped to his knees onto the rugged stones. With the last of his diminishing strength, he crawled behind a boulder. The rock bed cut into his back. He’d ditched the men who wanted to kill him. But they’d get the last laugh. He could only lie here under the fuzzy glow of moonlight while his blood seeped away like water from a punctured canteen.

  He took in a gulp of air pungent with blood and stinking scrub brush.

  Paula…what have I done?

  He heard a crunch and looked up. The man standing over him blocked out the blurry moon. He heard the pop of the silencer. An instant later the bullet tore into his chest and exploded in his heart.

  Chapter One

  The tall, dark-haired image of the Project Relocation officer, Bard Nichols, flashed in Paula’s mind. Damn him. She screamed and, with rigid fingers, disheveled her hair. “I’ve had enough of Nichols and his cohorts!” She crumpled the notice to vacate into a tight ball and thrust it into the trashcan. How much more backlash did she have to take from him and the Airway Clear Zone Unified Project or, as he called it, The AICUZ Project? Darn him. Until he locates an acceptable replacement to accommodate my special needs, there was no way I’d leave my two-acre sanctuary.

  She ran to the aviaries housing her seventy-five birds and grabbed a rake. Before she stepped inside, she took a deep breath. She refused to let her anger at the relentless Bard Nichols spill over and alarm her birds.

  She worked steadily and soon the physical labor of her passion relaxed her in a way nothing else could. She hummed the theme, “Impossible Dream” from The Man of La Mancha. Blue Boy flew onto her shoulder. “Morning, love,” she said.

  Charlie had surprised her with the beautiful blue finch when he moved in a few weeks ago. Bless him; he had given her the only sense of family she’d ever known. Her smile widened as she realized how safe he made her feel. He was her rock, and together they would handle Bard Nichols and anyone else who tried to run them out. Of course, she could take care of herself; she’d been doing it for six years. Still, his support warmed her heart. Love you, Charlie, she whispered to the wind.

  ****

  “Another damn murder in the clear zone,” Bard Nichols muttered as he switched off the radio news. He curled his hands into fists. According to the newscaster, the police hadn’t identified the body. It could be someone he knew, if not this time, maybe the next. He had to move the people out faster.

  He paced in front of his metal desk cluttered with real property appraisal reports, files, and a relocation manual thicker than a L.A. phone book. His heartbeat quickened as he glanced at the top file labeled “Lord, Paula Anne.” Since that frizzy redhead with those huge, innocent-looking blue eyes had organized the homeowners and tenants, his relocations had slowed from a dozen a week to a dozen a month.

  The thunderous roar of a low flying C-130 passing overhead rattled the frame of the project wall map. Bard picked up a dislodged pushpin and shoved it back in place. What possessed Ms. Lord and these folks to fight against the relocation? Their houses quivered and quaked until the incoming planes landed, which happened more than twenty times on a busy day like today.

  If he lived under those conditions, he’d be thrilled for The Corps of Engineers to buy him out. Not Paula Lord. She and her blasted birds had nested like a flock of endangered finches, and if he didn’t get her and her flock out, they’d be beyond endangered; they’d be dead.

  It was time to pull out the big guns and use the negotiation technique he reserved for difficult people—learn as much as possible about your adversary and use the information to protect them, in spite of themselves. The police might have a file on Paula Lord. From what he’d seen of her, he’d bet she’d led a protest march or two. Probably even got arrested.

  He sat on the edge of his desk and dialed his roommate, Detective Cory Morrison. He tapped the desktop with his pen as the line rang. Last night he’d been forced to “hole up” in his bedroom reading Tom Clancy’s latest thriller while Cory made moves on a member of the Men-With-Badges Groupie Society. Cory charmed his women with his macho job, hard bodybuild, and Brad Pitt grin.

  Bard tightened his jaw. He had never needed a flock of playmates. Enduring relatio
nships were his style. What irked him was the restricted use of his own house since Cory moved in. Bard chewed on his lower lip. In three more months, he’d have his car and furniture paid off and could handle the house payment without the extra income. Then Cory would be history.

  “Detective Morrison, here.”

  “Glad I caught you before you went off-duty, Cory. I need info on one of the owners in the clear zone.”

  “Sure, Bardy Boy.”

  Bard counted to ten. Cory’s demeaning moniker sounded one Ms. Lord’s might give one of her damn squawking parrots.

  “What’s the name?” Cory asked.

  “Paula Lord.”

  “Widow Orphan Annie? I know her file by heart. Paula Anne Lord, orphan and widow.”

  Bard felt a tug at his heart. He knew she was a widow but not an orphan. “Sounds like she’s had it rough.” Because she’d lost her husband he hadn’t pressed her to move. He just gave her notices—then more time, bending the rules. But that couldn’t go on much longer.

  “Don’t let yourself feel sorry for her. The last two men who did are six feet under.” Cory paused, no doubt to heighten the impact of his words. “Might’ve even killed her murdered husband’s poor ole granny. And there may be a third man.”

  “But she’s just a wisp of a woman—barely more than a girl.”

  “Exactly. The kind of woman men instinctively want to protect. That’s her attraction. And armor.”

  “Are you sure?” Bard gripped the receiver tighter. This didn’t add up.

  “Her history goes back to her teens. The evidence against her in the first murder was solid, but she never spent a day in jail.” Cory’s voice hardened. “At the trial, the jury took one look at the wide-eyed, sixteen-year-old orphan and let their bleeding hearts dictate an acquittal.”

  “Who’d she kill?” They couldn’t be talking about the same woman.

  “Her foster dad. Eight years ago. And probably her husband’s grandmother two years ago and her husband last year.”

  Bard snorted. “All those people? I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. And she may have murdered again; the guy we found in the wash this morning.”

  Bard shook his head. Paula Lord wasn’t an angel, although she had the face of innocence. She was a troublemaker and an all-around pain in the neck. But a killer? Never! He sketched wings and halos on the message pad with his black, felt-tipped pen. “I heard the news report. Who was the guy?”

  “Probably a drifter. He was last seen cleaning out Paula Lord’s aviaries. A neighbor said he’d been staying there and doing work around the place for a couple of weeks. Seems everyone who tries to help the lady ends up dead.”

  “How was the guy killed?”

  “Shot through the heart. He also took a bullet to the back of the right thigh. The loss of blood must’ve weakened him and made it easy for the killer to finish him off.”

  “Rifle?” Bard assumed since the police found the man in a dry riverbed that the killer had fired from a distance.

  “Blasted at close range with a handgun. Possibly a thirty-eight special. Probably by the little widow he knew and trusted.”

  The bullet hole in the back of the victim’s leg told Bard the guy was trying to escape. “If the victim trusted her, why did he run from her? What were they doing in the wash? And what motive could she have?”

  “If I had all the answers, she’d be in jail.”

  Bard sketched a smoking gun on the corner of his note pad next to the angel wings. “What about footprints near the body?”

  “Looking to change professions, Bardy-Boy? We could use another gung-ho investigator.” Cory paused as if waiting for a comeback. Not getting it he said, “Lots of footprints. But so what? Hunters roam the wash all the time.” He laughed. “But strangely there were no prints within four hundred feet of the body. Looked brush swept.” Cory went silent again for a moment then cleared his throat. “Seriously, I have a hunch it’s connected to the looting going on in your AICUZ Project.”

  “I don’t see a connection between the widow and the looting.”

  Cory chuckled. “It’s early in the investigation.”

  Bard figured Cory was toying with him about the widow, just to get his goat. He knew if he pushed him into a corner, he’d clam up completely. “What can you tell me about the dead guy?”

  “Late-twenties or early thirties. Good-looking. Well-built. Maybe he made a play for the bird lady, and she didn’t want to play.”

  “Maybe this and maybe that,” Bard said, “but nothing conclusive. And she’s an aviculturist, not a bird lady.”

  “Call her what you like, Bardy Boy. Based upon her past and the trouble going on in the project, you can bet she’s involved.”

  Bard restrained an urge to slam the phone down. “Thanks, Cory.” He hung up quietly, his mind churning. Paula Lord, a killer? No way. Her application for relocation benefits confirmed she was twenty-four, but with the sprinkle of freckles across her nose and her red hair swept up in a stubby, frizzy, ponytail, she looked barely eighteen. How could a woman who looked like that—and who loved birds so much that she had a dozen aviaries full of them—have a dark side? Were his instincts about her wrong?

  Chapter Two

  Paula had finished cleaning her aviaries when she heard a truck roar into her driveway. The blast of the hopped up muffler was unmistakable. Oh, no. Not Les Cardel, one of Bard’s cohorts and the other thorn in her side. First the notice from Bard Nichols and now a visit from the boss of the house-moving crew. “I’m not willing to have a bad day,” she said twice in a mantra. She frowned as the contractor tromped toward her, crushing the grass with his heavy boots. His massive chest muscles strained against the fabric of the blood-red T-shirt. His dirty-blond hair batted wildly about his shoulders. With the white jagged scar slashed across his cheek and those glacier gray eyes, he looked more like a bodyguard for a crime boss than a house-moving contractor. Like a bull, he charged up to the aviary wire fence that separated them. The birds let loose with a deafening cacophony of protest.

  Les lowered his bushy eyebrows and darted a narrow-eyed look at the squawking birds. “Got a firm moving date?” he shouted over the noise.

  Her grip on the rake tightened. Two weeks of badgering was enough. “No Les. And my answer won’t change any time soon. So back off.”

  “Not smart to make enemies here, Paula.”

  She met his glare head on. “Don’t threaten me, Les.” Expecting him to pull something, she planted her feet firmly.

  Les sneered and lunged at the fence, scattering the birds and setting feathers flying. “Just a friendly warning.” The lethal tone of his words echoed in her ears as he turned and stomped away.

  She leaned the rake against the fence. Thank God, she had Charlie in her corner. It would be hell to fight the AICUZ bunch alone.

  ****

  Bard Nichols flinched when his office door burst open. His boss, Gordon, rushed in; his pointy, rodent-shaped face flushed. “Look at this.” Gordon thrust a flyer at him.

  Bard scanned the bold-typed page. It announced a meeting at Paula Lord’s place at 2:00 P.M. that afternoon and was signed Paula Lord, President of the Clear Zone Owner and Tenant Grievance Committee.

  “I told you she was trouble,” Gordon said, raking his hand through his brown, salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Don’t get in a sweat. She’s a widow. I gave her a little extra time.”

  “Ever hear of the black widow spider? She’s poisoning the minds of the others in the neighborhood. Time’s run out. Get rid of her.”

  Bard held his boss’s gaze. “Relax. I’m working on it. But I’ll do it my way. What’s happening on my request for security?” Bard fought the twitch in his jaw. He didn’t want to blow his cool. But dammit, it was taking far too long to get a guard in place. And the project needed police patrolling.

  Gordon toyed with Bard’s paperweight. “What request?”

  Bard gripped the edge of his desk. “The on
e I put in your in-basket two weeks ago.”

  “Must’ve gotten lost. But back to important issues. Don’t let that woman stall anymore.”

  “I told you. I’ll handle it.”

  “You and your damn welfare attitude. I needed those homes boarded up yesterday.”

  “I know.” The sooner they were vacated, the better Gordon would look. Looking good was the way he got referrals for new jobs. Gordon was the boss of an independent relocation firm. But instead of streamlining the process as his contract required, he further complicated an already complex and volatile situation. “But we have bigger problems. People are getting killed over there.”

  “Then they should be eager to move. Use that.”

  “That’s cold, Gordon, even for you.”

  “Let me make this crystal clear,” Gordon said, pointing a finger at him. “I don’t want to hear about problems. Just your successes.”

  Gordon pivoted on the two-inch heels of his black cowboy boots and stomped out of the office.

  Bard stared at the retreating political puppet. Successes, results, bottom line. The man would do anything to stay in the good graces of the big wigs of the project. Even murder? Gordon was too much of a coward to bloody his hands; but he might hire a gun if the stakes were high enough.

  It wasn’t just the killings and Gordon getting to him. This corp-county venture with the county handling the relocation under the direction of Gordon’s relocation firm was a real pain in the tail. That was three agencies all wanting their say. Other times none seemed to want the responsibility.

  Bard looked down at Paula Lord’s open file on his desk. His heartbeat quickened. The cute as a kitten widow had brought things to a boil. He’d made exceptions to all the rules for her. But he had to put an end to that. Gordon’s tirade wasn’t the reason. It was partly because of the problematic things he’d learned from Cory about Widow Lord. He should’ve taken action months ago—her sixty-day, ninety-day, and six-month notices had long expired. She’d blatantly ignored his mailed notices and phone calls. It was time for a hard line personal visit. Bard tossed the file into his briefcase, slammed it shut, grabbed his slightly wrinkled gray suit jacket off the steel coat tree, and banged out of his office. He dismissed the questioning stares of coworkers.