The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) by Scott Mariani Page B

inches taller than the detective, and twenty years older, with thinning silver hair and a severe, granite face. His cheeks were flushed red with broken veins and his nose looked as if it had been broken at least twice in his life. He wore no jacket. A large black revolver hung heavily from the tan leather shoulder holster strapped over his shirt. Old-time cop, old-time six-gun. His sleeves were rolled up to expose the thick, gnarled forearms of a lumberjack. He planted himself in front of Erin and scrutinised her coldly.
    ‘I’m Chief O’Rourke,’ he said in a gravelly voice. ‘I want you to repeat to me what you just told Detective Morrell here.’
    Feeling small in her chair, Erin peered up at his intimidating bulk. ‘You want me to start over from the beginning?’
    ‘Just from where your employer said you could use the cabin on Oologah Lake. Why was that?’
    ‘Why did she let me use it?’ Erin shrugged. ‘Because she’s a nice person and we get along, I guess.’
    ‘Heart-warming. Keep going.’
    ‘I’d been complaining about feeling tired, and she said I could use it to get away for a weekend, unwind. She said the place would be empty, her husband was away in Boston on business, their son Sean was canoeing in Canada with friends and their daughter Amy was in Paris studying at this fancy cookery school. When I said my car was having problems, she offered for the family driver, Joe, to take me there in the Cadillac. So off I went, all happy with myself, looking forward to doing some running. I already told all this to Detective Morrell.’
    ‘Running?’ O’Rourke asked, as if this gave him grounds for deep suspicion.
    ‘Came fourth in the Tulsa city marathon last year, and I’m meaning to better that this November, to help raise funds for the Desert Rose Trust. But that’s not what you want to hear, is it?’
    ‘No, I want to hear what happened next, every detail.’
    ‘What happened next was I hung around there all evening, didn’t do a lot, went to bed. I woke up hearing voices. I snuck out of bed, thinking it was intruders. I had my handgun with me and—’
    ‘You have a carry permit for that?’ Chief O’Rourke interrupted.
    Erin frowned. ‘Is this about them or about me?’ she wanted to snap at him. She kept her voice level and asked instead, ‘You want to see it?’
    ‘Later. Go on.’
    ‘But it wasn’t intruders. They’d let themselves in the door with a key, and a few moments later I realised why. Angela’s husband wasn’t in Boston, he was there using the place to entertain a bunch of business associates. Or so I thought. One of them was a man with a beard. Caucasian, dark hair, forties.’
    ‘The victim,’ Morrell explained.
    ‘You didn’t get a name?’ O’Rourke asked Erin without glancing back at his colleague.
    ‘I never heard it mentioned. There wasn’t exactly a lot of conversation going on from the point I joined the party, you know? Then soon afterwards, an argument broke out. They grabbed hold of this bearded man and threw him on the floor and—’
    ‘Hold on,’ O’Rourke cut in. ‘
They?
’
    ‘The two goons. I don’t know what you’d call them. Heavies. Henchmen. They started beating the crap out of the guy with batons, like the ones that cops and security guards use. Then he ordered them to take him outside.’
    ‘
He?
’ O’Rourke cut in again.
    Erin nodded. ‘Yes,
he
. Angela’s husband. He said, “Not here”, like he didn’t want blood on the rug or something. So these two thugs, they got hold of the bearded man and kind of dragged him out the door to the veranda. That’s where they shot him.’
    ‘How many shots were fired?’ O’Rourke asked.
    ‘I can’t say for sure. Three, four. They didn’t kill him at first. It was like they were playing with him. Torturing him, just for the fun of it.
He
was watching the whole time. Then he took out a gun. It was a big old revolver, like that one.’ Erin pointed at the weapon in O’Rourke’s