The Reunion

By David Goulet

A murder has taken place in Phoenix. Detective Rick Hartzer is determined to find the killer. This happens while a city councilman sells privileged information to an unscrupulous attorney. Hartzer starts to follow the attorney because he believes he is getting the information. He has Dan Horning, a private investigator, help. Horning receives an invitation to his thirtieth college reunion and decides to go after seeing that his former college sweetheart is one of the organizers. Her husband is responsible for several crimes in Washington, DC, and moves to Phoenix to avoid prosecution. An attempt is made on her life with her husbands approval because of what she found out. Unbeknownst to Horning, he has been investigating the husband of his former sweetheart. Will what he uncovers prevent a reunion both are seeking? Will Hartzer find out who was responsible for the murder?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532040320

David Goulet

David Goulet was a small business owner, city councilman, and college professor. A professional photographer and owner of a lab and studio. He has worked professionally in radio, TV, and motion pictures. A graduate of the University of Miami, A.B. (honors), and Northern Arizona University, M.A. (distinction). He lives in Sun City West, AZ.

Book preview

1

T HERE WAS A murder in a parking garage today and most people could care less about who got shot or why. One of the seemingly endless shootings that might get ten seconds on the evening news. It’s not that people didn’t care, it’s just that shootings have become … well common place. The dead man wasn’t anyone important. In fact, when the police found his body they knew he had been muscle for a developer. But what the police didn’t know, at least not yet, was he had also been working for an amoral attorney, Alec Turner, who was pushy, greedy, and self-centered, who would do whatever he needed when he wanted something. And he was after something really big. Turner was a murderer, thief, and fraud. He liked to buy things he wasn’t entitled to have. But who has the time anymore to worry about such things after another headline about a murder?

There were others, who worked in the building when the shooting happened, self-absorbed individuals wanting to beat the system any way possible. They could be anyone, like the dead man, who was laid out on the garage floor like a piece of meat. Metro Detective Rick Hartzer, was nearby when the shooting happened and wanted some answers. But to do that he’d need help from places he hadn’t used before and could jeopardize his career.

Hartzer had been with Metro PD for almost twenty years. Divorced, he used to think Colombo made a fashion statement for investigators. He spent the last eight years as a detective happy he was done with daily beat patrols. He was a tough cop to deal with but age was catching up with him. He liked to drink, maybe too much at times, and he couldn’t quite straighten out his left arm from a gunshot wound he got as a rookie. His usual three-day beard wasn’t a fashion statement, he just didn’t shave when he should have, despite being warned by his Chief. So, Hartzer asked himself, when he saw the body, why it had to be him to deal with it? He wanted to know who did it and if it was tied to anything else?

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You never know how your day will start or what may come in the mail. Some days we should have stayed in bed. But we get up and plow ahead optimistic the day will be a good one. We’re such lemmings. But sometimes things surprise us, because we hadn’t planned on doing anything more exciting that day than trying a new coffee at Starbucks. That’s what happened the morning of the murder and would cause a chain of events that would take Dan Horning, an independent private investigator from Phoenix, to Washington D.C., and Miami. Horning, an ex-athlete, was an early fifty something who had worked the last two decades for law firms, until he opened his own investigation office. Hartzer would seek Horning’s help about a possible fraud case and maybe the garage murder.

Horning picked up the mail as he shouldered open his office door to see what the day had in store for him. All he wanted was a cup of coffee to get his day off to a jump start. What he did as an investigator wasn’t fancy or heroic, not like what you saw on TV each week. No car chases, people jumping off buildings, or beautiful women wanting to bed him just for taking their case. Horning often worked for an angry spouse in a low-end divorce proceeding. It paid his bills but not much else.

Horning had never been well-known in Phoenix social circles, unlike Detective Hartzer, who was far more recognizable, from past actions. He had the commendations to back it up. What Horning did kept him in the shadows working for his clients. He preferred it that way. Occasionally, he would get a funny look from an angry husband, he hoped would hire him, who looked at his height as a factor in what he was considering. Sometimes clients would ask him if he ever played ball? He was a hair over six-five and still looked lean. Once he told someone he spent three years in the NBA farm system for Indiana, until a shattered knee ended his playing days, the person puffed up a bit and hired him. Horning walked with a slight limp in his left leg ever since he stopped playing ball.

In the morning’s mail that Horning carried was an invitation to the University of Miami’s thirtieth college reunion. His thirtieth reunion. The phone was ringing and he had someone coming in to see him in twenty minutes so he didn’t see the letter right away. Horning’s initial reaction when he went through his mail, after his client left, and he finished his luke-warm over-priced Starbucks coffee, was to throw the letter away. He never considering going back to South Florida to see people he had forgotten years before. After he looked at the invitation one last time he almost couldn’t believe it had been thirty years since he graduated from the university. He said to himself there was only one reason he’d ever consider going back to an event like this but he had never discussed it with anyone. Only himself. He would go back to see Diane Rosen. He knew what he had done thirty years ago was an issue he still regretted. But there were reasons he always told himself trying to be convincing about what he had done. He carried his regret around like an albatross during both his marriages. He wasn’t ready, at age twenty-three, to get married. He told himself that but he didn’t really believe it. He should have told her. But he was too scared back then. Now, the reunion letter brought it all rushing back.

When Horning read the reunion letter he had been divorced from his second wife for a little over ten years. He had two adult children from his first marriage who lived hundreds of miles away from him. His first wife, a shrill woman, died two years after their divorce, from cancer. His children blamed him for her death. They were young when it happened so he hoped they were speaking out of raw emotion. But, once they were old enough, they moved away, and rarely contacted him. He was glad he didn’t have children with his second wife.

Prior to Horning opening his business he worked for a couple of private law firms in the Phoenix area, and then the Attorney General’s office, until he decided he had enough of others telling him what to do. So, he opened his investigation business to work for himself. Most of what he was doing the last two years were low-rent issues like divorces. Spouses who wanted to have their suspicions confirmed about what they thought their good-for-nothing spouse was doing to them. When Horning’s clients looked at pictures he took for them he thought about a scene in Chinatown where Jack Nicholson watches his client self-destruct, then claw his venetian blinds, after looking at some tawdry pictures. But sometimes things got messy because of what he had done for a client. On one occasion Horning recalled an angry wife pulling a gun, after she looked at some photographs of her husband playing touchy feelie with his latest paramour, and shooting the picture twice while it was on his desk. Horning billed her for another desk. When the woman sent Horning her check she said it was money well spent.

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The same morning Horning got the letter about his reunion the Phoenix mayor and city council were meeting to discuss a proposed idea for a massive new project they wanted built in their community. The mayor wanted the idea kept under wraps until it was the right time to announce it. The mayor said she wanted the project to look better than The Arizona Biltmore Fashion Center or any other high-class facility in the city.

The council held their hearings in ornate chambers with garish frames around the room with portraits of dour looking former officials. Once in the room you were walking downhill like you were walking into an amphitheater. The dark oak furniture used throughout the room looked like it was out of an old noir movie and looked oversized dwarfing the council after they sat down. The meeting they were having was to discuss the proposed project, it’s location, and start date.

If the city landed the project, it could become the largest commercial undertaking in the state’s history since the Grand Canyon National Park opened decades before. They were trying to keep the idea under wraps, but word was seeping out through a gas-bag city councilman, Sid Golden, who passed the information to Alex Turner, who wasn’t above cutting corners, and would later tangle with Hartzer. Golden, had been on the council for two years, came with a lousy reputation from his prior career in real estate, and still held on to his old ways. He was rude, pushy, and inconsiderate, as well as balding, had a beer gut, and a hawk-like nose. His use of the comb-over had been a running joke throughout the building that started his first week in office.

Mayor, Ellen Salters, a small bird-like woman wanted the project built so she could use it in her re-election run the following year. Salters had been a public official for years. While a small, weak looking person at first glance, she knew how to deliver a kick-ass punch when needed. She was known to hold a grudge. She had ended careers before, and would again, and currently had a target in her cross-hairs now. It was Alec Turner and she wanted nothing to do with him. Turner liked to think of himself as a playboy who liked expensive toys and women he could buy. He had a year-round tan that made George Hamilton look pale.

When the council’s general business session ended they went into executive session where they were given legal guidelines by the city attorney. That morning the council had the Planning Director join them to discuss various aspects of the project. The big problem for the city was they didn’t have the money needed to buy the land or build it on their own, so the mayor needed partners, partners with deep pockets, to get it done. Everyone knew that person was Turner, the one person the mayor wanted to keep out of the process. If the project were built it would add millions of tax dollars to city coffers and create hundreds of jobs and make Turner even richer. The mayor wanted the project to be bigger than the Mall of America but not with a partnership with Turner. The mayor was demanding answers in the meeting about the financing and incentives the city would have to give to get the project moving. She didn’t want any other cities to get a chance to take it away from them.

It was after executive discussions that Golden fed privileged information about the status of the project to Alec Turner. Golden had been making money under-the-table by providing information to Turner. He had been doing it for the past two years. Golden would tell Turner about comments the mayor said about him during their meetings. Turner knew nothing had been finalized for a site so he had been buying land in the area Golden told him the city hoped the project to go. Once he had ownership of the land he knew there would not be enough undeveloped land anywhere else in the city to use. Then, Turner would be the only game in town and the mayor would have to deal with him. Turner knew the council had to act, and act fast, if they wanted to beat the competition.

In what seemed like too many past city projects the council often ended up awarding them to Alec Turner despite grumblings from the mayor. Turner, liked to refer to himself as the gold standard for the projects he built. It was his private joke thanks to Golden. To the public it looked like he had a sixth sense about where development was wanted because he usually owned the land where the city wanted something built. Somehow his bids were the lowest, just above what the city wanted, thanks to information from Golden, and when that happened Turner made sure he had public support behind him. He made millions by colluding with others and would keep much of the money off his books. He knew the mayor despised him and wanted anyone else but him for the project. But what the mayor thought didn’t matter to him. He intended to get the project regardless of what he might have to do or who might get in his way. If he had to kill again he would. After all, shooting someone was only a start for him, because nothing was going to stop him when he wanted something.

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What Turner realized, after what Golden had been telling him, was he would need someone to help him get the project, someone just as amoral as he was. He decided to call an old colleague he worked with years before to help him find the person he needed. He knew where he wanted to look, the Washington D.C. area, because he thought very few had any morals there. He didn’t care who it might be as long as they helped him get what he wanted and could keep their mouth shut.

2

T HE PARKING GARAGE , where the shooting took place, was a six-story high-rise in the downtown among a cluster of concrete and glass buildings, providing access to power hungry firms on the twelve floors above it. Once inside the building a visitor had to check-in with security before taking an elevator up to law firms, marketing firms, CPA’s, sales offices, and so on. There always seemed to be a lot of people moving around the building and the garage. Somebody must have seen something the afternoon of the shooting Hartzer thought?

Hartzer found out there was a visitor log that had to be signed by anyone who entered the building that said where they were going. The parking garage was always busy until the middle of Friday afternoon. That’s when, those that could, would start slipping away from their offices, to get a jump start on the weekend.

The body the police found had gone unnoticed until enough cars left their parking slots. When that happened the dead man was seen by a secretary who was leaving for the day. Her screams led to the police arriving a few minutes later to set up a perimeter and assess what happened. The dead guy was quickly identified by Detective Hartzer, shortly after he arrived on scene, as someone known to have been muscle, for a large and very successful contractor. In old Cagney and Bogart movies these guys were known as "enforcers" or "leg breakers". But not anymore, today they were referred to as "associates". So, after the "associate" got there, Detective Hartzer figured somebody had to have seen something. Maybe it was an old score being settled in the way only gangs seemed to do that lead to the shooting? But getting shot in a busy garage on a Friday afternoon, and left alongside a car, wasn’t the norm even for a big city like Phoenix. Despite what people thought Phoenix was no longer the wild west and shootings like this, in a professional buildings garage, just didn’t happen. Until today. So, while Hartzer were trying to figure out whose office the dead guy had gone to he noticed there were no contractors, or offices for any construction firms, in the building. So why was the dead guy there? Who had the dead guy seen?

It was late spring the afternoon the body was found and unusually chilly for Phoenix even if you were standing in the sun. It was downright cold if you were in the shade for any length of time. The wind was blowing from the west and unless you knew a shooting had taken place everything seemed normal inside the garage. It only took Detective Hartzer a glance to recognize Ernie Santiago as the dead guy. Hartzer had been aware of Santiago’s rap sheet and past exploits for years. He knew Santiago had been trying to move up with his boss the past few months. He had been working for Peter Shaw, who owned Shaw Construction, a business that had some questionable activities following it around, like tin cans tied to the rear bumper of a car, after a wedding. Shaw was short, and had a huge beer gut. His cheeks were a perpetual crimson color. His arms were heavily inked and he wore a toupee that looked like road-kill.

Anyone from the building that saw the body and asked about it weren’t told anything. Hartzer knew there were few complaints when Santiago collected a past-due debt. He wasn’t a nice guy. He had never been pinched for anything serious but some damage had been done to his reputation recently because of a drug bust and a girlfriend who blabbed about what he was allegedly doing after they were arrested. The police took her claims as her way of hoping for a reduced charge. Meanwhile Santiago was growing colder by the minute lying face down on the garage floor. He had gotten sloppy, Hartzer theorized, or didn’t bother to look around the garage before he tried to get to his car. As Hartzer walked around Santiago’s body he was waiving his arm to shoo flies away and thought there was something fetid about what happened. Like something rotting and you couldn’t find the cause of the smell. Hartzer thought the crime was too neat even with a part of Santiago’s face blown off, and a large cinnamon red pool of blood forming around his upper body. Santiago first became known to Hartzer, and the Phoenix Police, ten years before when he was a gang member at the ripe old age of thirteen. His ambitious and uncooperative attitude had him dropping out of school when he was fifteen. In just two years, after being jumped in a gang, he boosted enough cars to have gained a credible street reputation until he was sent to a juvenile detention facility. Before he was sentenced Santiago told the judge that he wasn’t about to spend any of his hard-earned drug money on a car when he could have his pick of what he wanted anytime. He said he used his cash to impress his girlfriends. It must have worked because on the day he was shot he left three kids behind, at the ripe old age of twenty-three, with three different women. The judge wasn’t in any mood for a smart aleck remark after Santiago sneered about his exploits. He was sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention facility, the most he could get as a minor, until his eighteenth birthday.

While Santiago was in the detention facility he met the nephew of Peter Shaw, of Shaw Construction, a company tied to numerous projects with Alec Turner. The two of them had been working together for years. Shaw told his nephew, when he was visiting, he was looking for a kid to help him with some errands. After spending a few months around Santiago, he told his uncle he had someone in mind, and he should give him something to do after he got out. Ernie Santiago graduated from the detention facility on his eighteenth birthday and went to work for Pete Shaw the next day. He started driving trucks and running errands but his job was boring. It wasn’t long before he started telling the guys on the construction crews he could handle anything they might need taken care of. Santiago’s activities soon made their way up the food chain and Shaw started having him do a few things for him to see if he could be trusted. After Santiago got his chance he was proving to be useful "muscle for Shaw. Word got around people thought Santiago might be connected", he wasn’t, but his reputation was working for him. So, he never bothered to set the record straight. He was strong-arming people and breaking an occasional finger or thumb to help get his point across when he collected on a debt. He liked to refer to himself as a modern-day Rocky only better looking. Santiago had hung on to the fifties look. Ducktails, chinos, and sleeveless t-shirts and lots of tats.

Santiago’s work over the next few months continued to be muscle and intimidation. He had become someone Shaw could count on to get what he wanted done … and done quickly. At the time of the murder Santiago had been transporting a briefcase of cash for Shaw. On these assignments he had always been told to see Alec Turner and give him the briefcase. No questions. No deviation. Just get it done. Santiago’s task from Shaw that Friday was to deliver the briefcase to Turner on the top floor of his high-rise building at a specific time. He had been given a key to the freight elevator, and told to avoid checking in with the security desk, when he made his delivery. Santiago didn’t know who, or what, he was helping facilitate that day and he didn’t care. Up until that afternoon he had been moving up the criminal food-chain until someone decided to blow half his head off. On the afternoon Santiago was shot he was delivering almost a million dollars in cash. He wasn’t worried about what he carried. Santiago was mean and had a quick temper. He carried a gun and wasn’t afraid to use it. After he made his delivery, and was on the way back to his car, a bullet hit him in the back of his head exploding it like a ripe melon. From the way his body was laying it looked like he never turned around. Santiago was face down and growing as cold as the concrete floor with each passing minute. This was what Detective Hartzer was thinking as he walked around the body wondering who was behind the shooting … and why?

3

A FEW MINUTES AFTER Detective Hartzer arrived at the garage a member of the Phoenix Gang Task Force showed up. The two spent the next several minutes trying to figure out what happened and who might be responsible for blowing half of Santiago’s head off. They moved around the crime scene, like two old cagey fighters, while they looked in the surrounding area for any possible clues. As soon as it was obvious that Santiago didn’t have any drugs on him the Task Force Member left Hartzer alone at the scene. Almost immediately after that Hartzer asked the buildings maintenance department for a copy of the garage surveillance tape for the afternoon. When they gave him the DVD he slipped it in his jacket pocket until he could get back to the station to look at it. As people were exiting the building Hartzer showed them a mug shot of Santiago that had been sent to his phone. Whomever he stopped must have said they never saw Santiago before because no one stayed long. Thirty minutes later Hartzer noted the people leaving the building had slowed to a trickle. As the buildings workers walked through the garage a few slowed to look at the draped body for an extra second before rushing away. Hartzer had Santiago loaded on a gurney and sent to the coroner in a city meat wagon. After that he spent some time looking at the names of the businesses in the buildings directory but couldn’t put Santiago together with anyone he might have seen. Hartzer checked with the security desk to see what Santiago had written when he signed in, but the security desk told him Santiago never signed in, so no one knew where he went or how long he had been in the building. They said they didn’t hear a gun-shot either. Hartzer hoped the DVD might show Santiago driving into the tower, parking, and walking back to his car when he was killed. And show the shooter. When Hartzer walked back into the garage a few minutes later he glanced at the maroon stain left on the garage floor and got in his car. He wondered what Santiago could have been doing in the building?

On the top floor of the office tower Alec Turner was watching Hartzer’s sixth floor activities on a closed-circuit screen. He was in the confines of his spacious corner office with a great view of the Superstition Mountains to the West. Turner looked at a new security feed that had gone back up after Hartzer left. He watched Detective Hartzer stopping people on their way to their car long enough to look at his phone and answer a quick question or two. Turner saw they were all shaking their heads as they walked away. He was pleased with what he saw. He got what he needed done. Thirty minutes later Turner noticed almost all the cars on the sixth floor of the garage were gone. He stopped looking at the CCTV monitor after he saw Detective Hartzer get in his police issued Chevy Impala and walked across his office to look at the street below. A few minutes later Turner saw Hartzer’s car pulling out of the garage and into the late afternoon Phoenix sunshine.

Alec Turner had gained an impressive reputation in Phoenix over the past three decades. He was behind building several strip centers and professional building around the city. He sometimes had to overcome objections from city staff while working on a project but the public always seemed to support him. There were many times when the mayor swallowed hard after another project had been awarded him because the city needed the tax dollars and the project done quickly. Besides, Turner’s bids always seemed irresistibly low. It had been a boom time in Phoenix when Turner started and development never seemed to slow for him on projects. His timing seemed to be perfect, right time, right place, almost every time the city wanted to complete something. His expertise was in land development and zoning matters. Over the years he helped his clients push projects past Planning Commissions and City Council objections all over the valley and state. Some of the projects Turner had been involved in caused some public outcry because of the expenses involved with change orders Shaw would submit, at Turner’s suggestion, but by that point the city had no other option than to accept it. This was becoming a constant burr under the mayor’s saddle. But it was making Turner rich. It seemed like he had the magic touch to always know what project the city wanted and when it was going to be brought forward. What seemed too coincidental to the mayor, and those that watched Turner’s activities, caused him to be looked at by Detective Hartzer after a phone call from the mayor.

As Hartzer’s car was receding from view Turner thought about how he first got involved with projects around the valley by building subdivisions for small tract homes in the West Valley of Phoenix. He had hundreds of homes built during those early boom years. It was how he made his first fortune. He started after the first wave of new residents moved into the Valley of the Sun in the late sixties so his timing was perfect. The success of that venture paid off and he was able to move to bigger projects around the valley. Despite the skepticism Turner got from some other attorneys about trying to blend development with his legal duties his risk taking, thanks to Golden, made him so much money he had no intention of quitting. No one knew about the information he was getting from Councilman Golden. It seemed like Turner had some kind of golden touch as far as commercial development with the city was concerned. You know, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, he would tell Shaw. And he did have a golden touch thanks to Sid Golden feeding him information at the right time.

Turner paid Golden off for the information he got from him. Information that was supposed to be kept from the public until the appropriate time. Sid Golden was committing crimes when he passed information on to Turner because it gave him a huge jump on his competitors. With the inside help Turner was getting he was making more cash that helped him get other projects around the valley. As a result, he drew wealthy clients like a moth to a porch light.

Turner’s law office was making money in several areas so his successes didn’t seem out of line to the casual observer. After helping push several subdivisions through Turner turned to building exclusive multimillion dollar homes in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. But despite Turner’s successes Hartzer thought there was still a kind of fetid smell associated with what he was doing after talking with the mayor. By now Turner seemed to have had his fingers in just about any important development project in Maricopa County or around the state. This was why the mayor wanted Hartzer to keep an eye on him. After hearing the mayor’s concerns he had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right the more he watched him.

Turner next turned to building strip shopping centers, and small office complexes, wherever possible. When the time was right he started going after larger developments, like shopping malls, because of the valley’s population spurt. As that happened his law office earned the reputation that it was the only law firm in town with the skill and expertise to get a complicated project off the ground.

For the past several months, Turner, after getting information from Golden, had his eye on a new project he was told was being discussed privately by the mayor and city council. Golden let Turner know the mayor told everyone in the executive session, when the topic first came up, that it had to stay quiet. The council was fearful that if the area they were looking at became known the land would get too expensive for them to buy and could stop the project before it got started. This was what Turner wanted to know. The project was a massive Regional Shopping Center, more than five times larger than the typical shopping centers built in the valley, and the first one of its type ever slated to be designed for the Southwest United States. The mayor wanted it to have a majestic quality, like the Arizona Biltmore Center, only grander. She wanted a bit of Palm Springs and Las Vegas in it. Not only would the project have shopping opportunities, but there would be business and residential space, hotels, multiple restaurants, and a sports complex. It would eventually become a mesmerizing project envied by many. Over time, the project would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to whomever controlled the development and tenant mix. It was something Turner wanted in the worst way the more he found out about it. But just how he could get the project was something he hadn’t completely worked out. He knew the mayor didn’t want him picked but knew the project called for someone with resources, imagination, creativity and most of all someone who could get it done in the time expected. Turner knew the mayor and most of the city council were growing skeptical of his always being the first in line, on so many critical projects that were done, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Too much was at stake.

Because of what Turner heard coming out of city hall he knew he needed a front man to run interference on the new project after his last project raised some ethical and financial issues the mayor and council questioned him about. Despite those concerns when the project was being talked about Turner’s name was brought up as one of only a handful of developer/attorneys around the country who could pull off such a massive project. The Phoenix mayor, and most of the council, agreed they wanted someone in Arizona to take control of the project and weren’t excited that Turner seemed to be the best choice. The mayor said she wanted to avoid someone coming in from out-of-state and dictating to area residents what they would get because an outside developer went back home after the project was done. Despite her desire to get the project built the mayor still argued Turner wasn’t who she wanted the city to work with. She said she heard too many horror stories about how he operated. But action was never taken against him for anything he did. If anyone faced penalties on one of his projects it would be Shaw, but he never complained, because Turner made it worthwhile for him to accept any penalty imposed by the city or state. By the time the project was moving forward Turner was building projects worth tens of millions of dollars but knew he needed someone to front for him, if he had any real chance of getting the project. He needed to find a lawyer with zoning and construction experience and little in the way of morals, or ethics, to become a kind of beard for him. He started looking around the country and focused on the Virginia and D.C. area after talking to an old colleague of his, Porter Bagley, who had been in the area for decades and knew what he was looking for. He told Turner there was an attorney in the area who might work for him. He said the attorney he was thinking of had been doing some commercial development the past few years but had some baggage. After doing some checking it wasn’t long before Turner wanted to meet with the attorney. He knew he had to act quickly if he hoped to stay in the running to get the Phoenix project. After some more checking, Turner believed he found the person he was looking for in Jack Goldstein, an ambitious Washington D.C. attorney, who had been building projects in the D.C. and Virginia areas.

Goldstein’s office was located just outside Washington D.C. in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Now that Turner found someone he thought would work for him he had to figure how to get him interested in what he was doing in Phoenix and then want to move across the country for him. As Turner walked away from his office window he was irritated he had to arrange the shooting of Santiago. He told Peter Shaw he wanted Santiago shot on his way out of the building that Friday after he made his drop. The time had been set by Turner because heard Santiago started having diarrhea of the mouth about what he was doing, and who he was doing it for, and Turner didn’t want any loose ends. The boasting’s gonna end Turner told Shaw a few days before the shooting. Turner hoped, as he walked back to his desk, that it would look to the police like a drug deal gone bad, or maybe somebody had a beef with Santiago and took care of it. Turner smiled as he put the stacks of bundled bills in a wall safe a few minutes later. He was leaving his office, headed for his favorite bar, because he needed a drink and wanted to find a woman he could buy for the rest of the evening.

4

D AN HORNING HAD gotten back to his Glendale home after an all-day conference put on by an Investigation Association in Phoenix. He had to log so many hours a year to keep his license active. A couple of years ago, when he had enough of working for others, he opened his own investigation office. It wasn’t much compared to where he had been but it’s what he wanted. Horning worked doing divorces, helping draft Wills and Trusts, and some land and zoning matters. The people who came to him usually did so after they found out they couldn’t afford an attorney. The divorce work was usually messy and prompted by an angry spouse who wanted pictures to prove their point in court. Even though Horning told his clients Arizona was a no-fault state, and any pictures he took wouldn’t be needed in court, he did what they asked, so they’d pay him. Horning was always amazed that people, regardless of their age, acted so similar when they were allegedly in love, or more likely lust, and then acted so badly when they were ending things.

His involvement in zoning issues began a few years before, almost by accident, when a spouse of his client tried to present a forged property deed to the Court. Horning found the original deed and the case was quickly settled much to the disappointment of the spouse who thought she would get away with it. This led to other land matters Horning worked on for competing businesses that were frustrated Alec Turner always seemed to own the property where the city wanted something built. He never met Turner or saw him anywhere other than a newspaper story. What he had seen regarding Turner didn’t give him a good feeling. The problem was nothing was ever proven after Turner got what he was after.

It was during this time that the neighborhood Horning lived in was starting to be bought up by Turner, through an LLC, and proposing to raze the older homes there, so he could build more expensive homes on larger lots, after the plats were amended. His plan included a five-acre commercial business project on a busy corner of the neighborhood. The City of Phoenix liked the proposal because of the additional taxes they would collect on more expensive homes, and the new taxes the business project would generate. The mayor said she liked the idea because Turner’s name never came up and the look of the area would be improved after it was completed. The mayor had no idea Turner was actually behind the project and when she found out she wasn’t happy. But by then it was too late. Her goal after that became keeping Turner’s hands out of anything the city wanted especially the project she wanted. The council agreed with the applicant’s request to begin razing the neighborhood pleasing Turner no end. Neither Horning, nor his neighbors who opposed the project, had enough resources to fight the proposal despite filing a number of pro per lawsuits against the LLC. Besides, Horning would learn, several of the neighborhood residents had been incented to sell their homes after receiving cash under the table from the developer’s representative along with the full asking price for their homes. Horning never received any of the cash payments because he had been one of the final holdouts, and one of the litigants against the applicant, so he ended up receiving less for his house because of what he did. So much for fighting windmills he thought afterwards. Shortly after that Horning, and a few other holdouts, were forced out of their neighborhood by an overly ambitious applicant on behalf of a ruthless attorney. Horning moved into an apartment because he couldn’t afford a home in Turner’s new subdivision. As this was happening, Horning liked to think of himself as a modern-day Jim Rockford type, but that wasn’t really working for him with many of his clients.

The night Dan got back from his conference he was sitting at the kitchen table eating a Hungry Jack meal after he had taken his dog Hunter, a yellow lab, for a short walk. The dog was actually too big for the apartment but he wasn’t about to get rid of him. While he was eating dinner he eyed the pile of mail on his kitchen table that had gone untouched the last few days. After finishing his dinner he reached for the pile and started separating what he wanted to keep from junk mail. While he was flipping through the stack he noticed an envelope from the Alumni Association for the University of Miami where he graduated almost thirty years before. Now what in the world could they be wanting he wondered as he turned the envelope over in his hand? He hadn’t had any association with the university since his mid-twenties after his short almost-NBA career ended.

Horning pushed aside the cardboard container that held his Hungry Jack meal and started in on what he wanted to read. He cut out the alumni envelope from the rest of the pile for a closer look in a few minutes. After going through the mail he picked up the alumni envelope and held it for a couple of seconds then carefully slit it open with a butter knife. There were the two pages in the envelope. It was a notice for his thirty-year class reunion. Is that even possible he thought? Christ, where had the years gone? What did he have to show for it? Horning thought back to when he had been a media major at the university hoping for a career in movies. Funny how things don’t turn out like a person thinks they will when they’re young. He remembered being selected, along with the girl he was dating, Diane Rosen, to intern on a Hollywood motion picture during their last semester in school. Everything was going to be perfect he thought. But he was wrong. It didn’t turn out the way he hoped it would. After his sports injury he took a job at a small radio station, outside Orlando, as a disc-jockey, which ended without warning when the station was sold. A few months after that, and three years after his playing days ended, Horning was panicked. By then, he and Diane, were supposed to get married. So, as a result of losing his job, and not finding another, the tension created needless stress with Diane. It soon became too much for him to continue or so he mistakenly thought. What happened after that was his fault and he knew it as soon as he had done it. He was the one who had been causing the tension. He called off the wedding. He decided to walk away from everything at twenty-four. The worst thing he did then, or since then. Diane had believed in him and wanted a future with him but he was too insecure to realize it. At that time Dan thought he had nothing to offer Diane. What he did was all he thought he could do back then. Huge mistake. Diane was so mad at him when he tried to call her