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  Billie’s Bounce

  A Seth and Ava Mystery

  Claudia Hall Christian

  Cook Street Publishing

  Denver, CO

  by

  Claudia Hall Christian

  StoriesbyClaudia.com

  Abee Normal, Paranormal Investigations

  The Case Book of Abee Normal, Paranormal Investigations, Volume 01

  The Case Book of Abee Normal, Paranormal Investigations, Volume 02

  Alex the Fey Thrillers

  The Fey

  Learning to Stand

  Who I Am

  Lean on Me

  In the Grey

  Finding North

  About Face

  In Deep

  The Denver Cereal

  The Denver Cereal Fort Lupton

  Celia’s Puppies Fort Morgan

  Cascade Fort Collins

  Cimarron Olney Springs

  Black Forest Manitou Springs

  Fairplay Idaho Springs

  Gold Hill Poncha Springs

  Silt Hot Sulfur Springs

  Larkspur Glenwood Springs

  Firestone Pagosa Springs (2020)

  Grand Junction (Denver Cereal V1-10)

  Fort Garland (Denver Cereal V11-13)

  The Queen of Cool

  The Queen of Cool

  Seth and Ava Mysteries

  Tax Assassin

  Carving Knife

  Friendly Fire

  Cigarette Killer

  Little Girl Blue

  Billie’s Bounce

  Footprints (2020)

  Suffer a Witch

  Suffer a Witch

  Copyright © Claudia Hall Christian

  ISNI: 0000 0003 6726 170X

  Licensed under the Creative Commons License:

  Attribution – NonCommercial – Share Alike 3.0

  ISBN-13 : 978-1-938057-74-8 (print)

  978-1-938057-75-5 (digital)

  Library of Congress: 2020933684

  Cover credit: Amanda Walker, PA

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First edition © March 2020

  Cook Street Publishing

  ISNI: 0000 0004 1443 6403

  PO Box 7247

  Denver, CO 80207

  For Amber

  Thank you for years of support and kindness.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  TheTax Assassin – Chapter One

  One

  “She’s not here, yet,” Fran DeKay said as she walked into their lab office. “She must be . . .”

  “Sitting in the dark,” Dr. Nelson Weeks said, coming in behind Fran. He pointed to the light switch. “Should I. . .?”

  Ava O’Malley nodded to Nelson, and he flicked on the light. She blinked and covered her eyes. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was nearly eight. Her forensic team always met at eight in the morning to plan the day. She set the thin gold band that she’d been playing with into a glass cup sitting on her desk.

  “Coffee?” Dr. Leslie McClintock asked.

  Ava nodded to Leslie. Nelson followed Leslie out of Ava’s office. Ava watched through the glass as Leslie and Nelson left the lab in search of coffee. As a forensic lab, they weren’t allowed to make food or drinks in their lab. They were able to have them only in offices, like Ava’s.

  Ava looked up when Fran closed the door to her office. The self-identified “mother” of the lab, Fran DeKay wanted to check on Ava.

  “You okay?” Fran asked.

  “I’m okay,” Ava said.

  “And, you’re sitting in the dark because. . .” Fran asked.

  “Seth’s in the hospital,” Ava said. “We took him last night. Late. I didn’t really know where to go so I. . .”

  Ava shrugged.

  “You’ve been there since then?” Fran asked.

  Ava nodded.

  “What’s going on with Seth?” Fran asked.

  “Infection — they think,” Ava said. “He’s resting comfortably, so say the nurses. Out to the world. He needs rest. That’s what the doctors say. Rest.”

  Ava gave a sad shake of her head.

  “Seems like all he does is rest,” Ava said. “I just. . .”

  “Feel helpless?” Fran asked.

  “Sure,” Ava said. “I want him to be better. My mother keeps telling me that he’s an old man and ‘What did I expect? You gave away your youth to be with some old geezer.’”

  “And what does Maresol say?” Fran asked.

  Maresol had been Seth O’Malley’s housekeeper and friend since Seth was ten years old. They were family.

  “She says that my mother is a vaca estúpida,” Ava said.

  “Your mother is a stupid cow,” Fran said.

  Ava gave an acquiescing nod and continued, “Maresol says that, ‘If Seth was dumb enough to be up for three days working on a new piece, he deserves to spend some time in a hospital.’”

  “And was he?” Fran asked.

  “He was actually up for four days,” Ava said, with a grin.

  “Ah,” Fran said. “How many days since he was shot?”

  “Eleven thousand?” Ava asked.

  “Eighty-two,” Fran said. “It’s been eighty-two days since he nearly died.”

  “I’m afraid he’s never going to get better,” Ava said.

  “Of course you are,” Fran said.

  Leslie knocked on the door and held up two paper cups. Fran shook her head and held up one finger to indicate that she needed another minute.

  “Do you think it’s likely that he won’t get better?” Fran asked.

  Ava didn’t respond.

  “Isn’t it likely that he just overdid it?” Fran asked.

  “Yes, but. . .” Ava sighed.

  “Should you be there?” Fran asked. “At the hospital?”

  “They kicked me out,” Ava said.

  “What did you do?” Fran asked.

  “Well, I. . .” Ava said, looking embarrassed.

  “What did you do?” Fran asked.

  “I went through his file,” Ava said.

  “So?” Fran asked.

  “On the computer,” Ava said. She winced. “Ordered a few tests.”

  Fran laughed and waved Nelson and Leslie into Ava’s office. Leslie set down the paper cups filled with vending machine coffee on the round meeting table and sat in a chair.

  “So what is it?” Nelson asked as he set two paper cups down on the table.

  “She got kicked out of the hospital for ordering tests for Seth,” Fran said.

  Leslie and Nelson laughed out loud. Grinning, Ava came around her desk in time for Nelson to pat her on her back. They sat down around the table. They had received a grant to use their modern forensic skills on ten cold cases in rural counties throughout Colorado. Their first case turned out to center around Ava’s family. It was messy for Ava and her family, but the team was able to solve it. The DA received a conviction, which made everyone happy.

  “Our next case was chosen by the Director at the CBI,” Ava said, mildly.

  Nelson and Leslie groaned.

  “How bad can it be?” Fran asked.

  Ava shot
her a glance.

  “That bad?” Fran asked.

  “He said, and I quote, ‘Let’s see how good you really are,’” Ava said. “When I told Seth, he called him. The Director told him that after ‘the last debacle,’ we needed to prove ourselves. This was a good case to do that on.’”

  “To prove ourselves?” Nelson asked. “We haven’t proven ourselves yet?”

  “He’s annoyed by the last case,” Ava said. “You know, my father and all of that?”

  Ava sighed.

  “If you want to change teams, I would totally. . .” Ava started.

  “Shut up,” Nelson said. “Just tell us about the case.”

  Ava looked from face to face before nodding to herself.

  “Where’s Dr. Quincy?” Leslie asked.

  “She doesn’t think we’ll need her for this,” Ava said. “She’s going home to help pack. Her husband has taken a job to head the FBI here.”

  “Isn’t that a step down?” Fran asked.

  “It’s a big step down,” Ava said. “But it also has less responsibility. It will allow him to help with her colon cancer treatments as well as, in his words, ‘start living a life.’ They’ve bought a place near Seth’s. It’s being remodeled right now.”

  Ava looked around the table to see if anyone else had any questions.

  “Bob’s at. . .?” Leslie asked.

  “Grandparents day,” Fran said. “He should be here tomorrow.”

  “Anything else?” Ava asked.

  No one said anything. Ava nodded.

  “Most of you know this case,” Ava said. “It’s on the list of unsolvable cases.”

  “No,” Fran said. “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t what?” Nelson asked.

  “Aspen? Pitkin County?” Fran asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Ava said with a smile. “This case did happen outside of Aspen in Pitkin County.”

  Fran groaned.

  “Just lay it out for us,” Leslie said.

  “Just because someone hasn’t solved it doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to,” Nelson said.

  “I love your confidence,” Fran said. “This case is. . .”

  Fran shook her head.

  “Just lay it out,” Leslie demanded.

  “Okay,” Ava said. “Here’s the basics: A very unpopular senator from Maine named William Michaud was in the back of a limousine driving from Aspen to the NRA retreat center in Raton, New Mexico, when someone stepped out of the forest in front of the limo somewhere in Pitkin County. He or she or it shot a rocket-propelled grenade, also known as an ‘RPG,’ at the vehicle. The grenade landed under the engine compartment of the limousine, bounced, and exploded. Needless to say, everyone inside the vehicle was incinerated.”

  “The perp stepped back into the forest,” Fran said. “Vanished.”

  “The fire burned for more than an hour before anyone noticed it,” Ava said. “By the time firefighters got there, the fire had spread to the nearby forest.”

  “Destroying any and all forensic evidence,” Fran said.

  Ava nodded.

  “They had to get the fire contained before anyone could actually look at the vehicle,” Ava said. “When the fire was finally out, the forensic evidence was either contaminated or completely obscured.”

  “Did Seth and Mitch work on this one?” Leslie asked.

  “No,” Ava said. “Mitch was just starting to get sick, and Seth was in the middle of a messy divorce from his first wife. They were asked to look at it later, but. . .”

  Ava shook her head.

  “They were smart,” Nelson said.

  “What do we have?” Leslie asked.

  “Since I was here a little early,” Ava raised her eyebrows and cleared her throat, “I made the packets.”

  She passed out copies of the paperwork from the file she’d received from the CBI.

  “This is all we have?” Leslie asked. “Five double-sided pages?”

  “It’s not much,” Ava said with a shrug.

  “This is a big fat FU from the CBI,” Fran said.

  “Not our first,” Nelson said. “Not our last.”

  The team nodded. Ava sighed.

  “The truth is that there’s not much,” Ava said. “The investigative team didn’t have much to go on. The senator had a lot of enemies, but there was no indication that any of them were in Colorado at the time. The FBI spoke to every single one of these enemies.”

  Ava shook her head.

  “Nothing,” Ava said. “The senator had a stable relationship. Stable home. No change in income. It was thirty years ago, so no digital footprint. Lots of forensic material. No real forensic information.”

  “It says here that they bagged up everything in hopes that someday, someone would be able to solve this,” Nelson said. “Do we have any of this evidence? Does it still exist?”

  “Yes,” Ava said. “It’s being shipped to us from Pitkin County sheriff. We should get their evidence as well as the CBI’s and the FBI’s.”

  “All of it?” Nelson asked.

  “All of it,” Ava said. “It’s actually a lot. According to the Pitkin County sheriff: ‘It’s a mess of smelly, nasty boxes. You want it? You’re going to have to go through it.’”

  “I’ll make space,” Fran said.

  Two

  “What about the FBI?” Leslie asked. “The U.S. Capitol Police must have lost at least one agent.”

  “Three. The FBI investigated for them. They are sending us their physical evidence,” Ava said. “They have also tracked this case and all of those suspects for the last thirty years. I had them send their digital records to Nelson.”

  Nelson nodded. He leaned down to take his laptop out of his backpack.

  “I figured that Nelson could run point for the Feds,” Ava said.

  “Happy to,” Nelson said.

  “Because the senator was so unpopular,” Ava looked around the table, “and he was extremely unpopular, there was a Capitol Police officer in the front seat and one with him in the back. There was also a U.S. Capitol Police driver. The officers and the driver were male.”

  “Four people,” Fran said.

  The team fell silent. For a moment, they just looked at each other. Ava nodded.

  “Four people lost their lives, and no one knows how that came about or why,” Ava said.

  “Which means that four families have not had answers for all of this time,” Leslie said, softly.

  “Fat chance of getting them with this crap,” Nelson said, tossing the packet onto the table.

  No one said anything for a long moment.

  “We can decline it,” Ava said. “I mean, we’re already on the CBI shit list.”

  “Again,” Nelson said.

  “Again,” Ava said, in agreement.

  “Oh, fuck it,” Leslie said, throwing her packet down. “We can do this. We will go through every tiny bit of the evidence.”

  “We have the technology,” Nelson said.

  They laughed at Nelson’s reference to the Six Million Dollar Man television show.

  “So we continue forward?” Ava asked.

  “I’m in,” Nelson said.

  “Me, too,” Fran said.

  “Four families,” Leslie said. “They deserve our very best efforts.”

  “Then we go ahead,” Ava said.

  “Let’s find this murderer,” Nelson said.

  “And send him to prison,” Leslie said.

  The team fell silent for a long moment.

  “Where do we start?” Fran asked the obvious.

  “At least one of us is going to have to go to Aspen,” Ava said. “It’s possible that we’ll need to travel to Maine.”

  Ava looked up. Every eye was on her. She gave them a soft smile.

  “Let’s start with the evidence,” Ava said. “We’ll go through everything they have before heading out into the field.”

  “Is there anything left at the site?” Leslie asked.

&n
bsp; “Where was it?” Nelson said.

  “Not sure, exactly,” Ava said. “We’ll need to go there.”

  “And figure out where it is?” Nelson asked.

  “Exactly,” Ava said with a nod.

  The team groaned.

  “And Seth?” Leslie asked. “Is he still our lead detective?”

  “He’s in the hospital right now,” Ava said. “Knowing Seth, he’ll wake up and want something to do. Let’s see if we can get through the evidence before he wakes up.”

  “They saved the car!” Nelson exclaimed.

  “What?” Ava asked.

  “The FBI saved the vehicle,” Nelson said, gesturing to his computer. “They asked if they should bring it over. I guess it’s stored at the FBI facility here.”

  “Yes,” Ava said with a nod.

  “I’ll call the vehicle team,” Leslie said. “You mind if I work with them?”

  “Not at all,” Ava said. “Go over that vehicle with a fine-tooth comb. Nelson?”

  “Boss?” Nelson asked, jokingly.

  Ava grinned.

  “Find out why the FBI saved the car,” Ava said.

  “Will do,” Nelson said.

  “We’ll need someone to talk to the families,” Ava said.

  “Seth usually does that,” Leslie said.

  “It’s not our first priority,” Ava said. “Our first priority is to get through all of the evidence, organize it, test it, get any information we can from it, and see what we learn. Because. . . this?”

  Ava held up the packet she’d put together.

  “This is nothing,” Ava said.

  “Should we look into why this senator was so unpopular?” Leslie asked.

  Ava nodded.

  “I can do that,” Nelson said.

  “Great,” Ava said. “When Leslie is done with the vehicle, she can help you figure out why this senator was so disliked. Also, who had it out for this guy.”

  “Got it,” Leslie said.

  “So, we wait for the evidence to arrive,” Fran said.

  Ava nodded her head. They all took a drink of their coffee-like substance. Ava looked up. Through the glass, she could see a man standing outside their door.