Blood and Justice: A Legal Thriller (Brad Madison Legal Thriller Series Book 4) Read online

  BLOOD & JUSTICE

  (Brad Madison Legal Thriller, Book 4)

  J.J. MILLER

  © 2021 Innkeeper Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Books by J.J. Miller

  THE BRAD MADISON SERIES

  Force of Justice (Book 1)

  Divine Justice (Book 2)

  Game of Justice (Book 3)

  Blood and Justice (Book 4)

  THE CADENCE ELLIOTT SERIES

  I Swear To Tell (Book 1)

  Stay in touch with J.J.

  Contact: [email protected]

  Facebook: @jjmillerbooks

  Blog|Website: jjmillerbooks.com

  When a Tinder date turns deadly, Brad must fight to free his client ... and to save his own family. This is the short story that launched the Brad Madison series.

  To get yourself a free copy, sign up for J.J.’s newsletter here.

  Contents

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  PART II

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  NOTE FROM J.J.

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  “Brad Madison!” the voice barked into my ear, making the greeting sound more like a command.

  I’d answered an unknown number, but I recognized the caller immediately. Even after twenty-plus years, the gravelly tone was unmistakable. A deeply ingrained Pavlovian response had me in two minds: should I drop and give him twenty, or snap to attention?

  “It’s Henry Tuck here,” he said, but the reminder wasn’t needed. For thirteen long weeks, I ate, slept, breathed and crossed five realms of hell to the tune of that voice. As my drill instructor, or DI, at Marine Corps boot camp, Sergeant Henry “TNT” Tuck was my ceaseless tormentor. In the perverse way of the military, that made him my mentor.

  What does want with me now?

  And how did he get this number?

  Tuck had not been put through by my secretary, Megan Schaffer. He hadn’t looked me up online. Someone had given him my private number.

  In the brief conversation that followed, Tuck offered no reason for the call. He just said he wanted to come and talk to me face to face. Then, once the arrangements were made, the call was over. Whatever it was that Tuck wanted, I felt I owed him. Big time. I was indebted to that man for life.

  Tuck had taken a shine to me at boot camp. At least, he’d taken a shine to seeing me with my face buried in the ground, shouting, “Yes, sir!” “No, sir!” “Aye, aye, sir!” through a mouthful of Parris Island dirt. No recruit wants special attention from their DI, but that’s what Tuck gave me. In the process, he instilled in me the life-and-death virtue of obeying orders. To civilians, this may sound like little more than power and pedantry. But in the heat of battle, when you have the lives of a dozen or more men riding on your decision, you need to get shit right. Not by doing it your way. Not by weighing up pros and cons while precious half-seconds slide by. Not by wondering whether you want to or not. A Few Good Men’s Colonel Jessop may have lost the plot like Colonel Kurtz, but no one said it clearer or saner: “We follow orders or people die. It’s that simple.”

  When the civilian version of Henry Tuck walked into my office three days after he called, it took a little adjusting to see him without his wide-brimmed smokey. That hat had a rancor all its own. When his eyes drilled into you, it stared you down too, as though you’d also roused its wrath. His hair was thinner and silver all over but still cropped short. He was in his mid-sixties now with all the facial lines to show for it, but he looked fit and sharp. As he stepped toward me and offered his hand, he showed me something I’d rarely witnessed all those year ago: his smile.

  Addressing him as Henry, as he insisted, took some adjusting too.

  He ran his alert blue eyes over my office and the shelves of books I’d surrounded myself with, and nodded his head with satisfaction.

  “Glad to see you’re doing well for yourself, Madison.”

  “You look fighting fit, Henry,” I said as I invited him to sit. “I bet you could still put recruits to shame in the gym.”

  I wasn’t humoring him. He was a lean two-hundred pounds, about my height—six, two—and he moved as lightly as a man half his age.

  “What can I say?” he said as he took his seat. “I watch what I eat, I stretch, and I can still bench two-sixty. How about you?”

  “Two-eighty-five. But I’d be more than happy with two-sixty at your age.”

  “Listen,” Tuck said as he tapped a hand on his chair, “I didn’t mean to be all top secret on our call the other day. I just hate talking on the phone—never liked it—and so I always keep it super brief. But the reason I’m here is that I have two problems I’d like your help with. Kevin Allman recommended you. Said you were a good operator.”

  Allman was a former DI of Tuck’s generation who now worked for a non-profit called Second Life that helped vets with PTSD. He’d sought my input on a fundraiser five years ago and I’ve helped out occasionally ever since. That Allman saw fit to give Tuck my private number was okay with me.

  “What kind of problems are we talking about, Henry?”

  “Two divorces, you might say.”

  Henry then paused, disinclined by nature to be expansive. I didn’t want to have to prod him to go into more detail, so I waited for him to fill the silence.

  Henry breathed in deeply then exhaled.

  “I’ve been married to Laura for twenty-seven years,” he said. “And, for longer than I can remember, if it hasn’t been me threatening to leave, it’s been her. But we stuck at it. Recently, though, I decided I couldn’t do it any more. So I moved out, and now I want to proceed with a divorce.”

  I felt deflated all of a sudden. That’s what family law does to me. I hate it. Give me criminal law any day with its cast of lowlifes and liars and its smattering of innocent souls
. It’s not every day that I fight to save a client from a travesty of justice, but when I do there’s no better job in the world. Family law is a downright ugly, sordid mess that I was happy to steer well clear of.

  Problem was I’d just recently defied my own conventional wisdom and take on a divorce case. A bitter one—surprise, surprise. But I only did so as a favor for a friend of a friend. Well, a friend of my ex-wife Claire, who practically begged me to help.

  Henry must have guessed I was considering looking for an out.

  “I know divorce is not your bag, Madison. If you want me to go somewhere else I will.”

  I waved my hand. That was never going to happen. Like I said, I owed Henry.

  “Don’t be silly, Henry. Of course, I’ll help you. But tell me this: who is she?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  The skin on Henry’s face was still taught and, as I guess he had done every day since his late teens, he’d shaved that morning, so there was no hiding the fact that he was clenching his jaw.

  “Her name’s Fernanda. Fern for short.”

  His manner was ever so slightly defiant.

  “And she’s how old?” I persisted.

  “Thirty-four,” he said. He tilted his head to adjust the aim that his eyes kept on me, alert for the slightest hint of ridicule, I suspect. “And don’t try that all-your-Christmases-coming-at-once line on me. We had the DI reunion last weekend in San Diego and the boys never let up. But they’re nothing but jealous. They even admitted it. And as it happens, it was talking about Fernanda that led me to you. Kevin practically insisted I come to you.”

  I could just imagine those DIs standing around, ribbing Henry for all it was worth before getting back to hanging crap on their former recruits.

  “So, your relationship with Fernanda is out in the open?”

  Henry shrugged. “There’s nothing to hide. We’re in love.”

  I was leaning back in my chair now, relaxed and impartial.

  “How’d Laura take it?” I asked.

  Henry’s lips pressed into a flat frown. “As well as can be expected. She thinks I’m a fool.”

  I paused for a moment to consider what I was going to tell Henry. Yes, my instinct was to think that Laura was right but he didn’t come to me to be judged. “You want my best advice, Henry? Get your settlement with Laura agreed on with little or no input from lawyers.”

  “Too late for that,” he said, shaking his head. “When I told her that I was coming to see you she said the next call she was making was to her own lawyer.”

  “Any idea who that might be?”

  “Don’t know for sure but I could take a pretty good guess. A couple of years ago, her sister Martha took her husband to the cleaners after he cheated on her. And I’ll never forget the name of those lawyers after Laura told me. Paxton and Punch. Man, did they give that fella the old one-two.”

  I had heard of Paxton and Punch. My reservations about dealing in family law only deepened.

  “Henry, that firm may as well be called Paxton, Punch and Pitbull, because that’s what they are. They’re ferocious. And if Laura has engaged them, you’re in for the fight of your life.”

  “Come on, Madison. There’s plenty of money to go round. I’m not looking to screw Laura over. I just want to get on with my life.”

  “You say there’s plenty of money, Henry. But sometimes plenty ain’t enough. Just how financially sound are you?”

  “Well, that’s the other thing I wanted your help on.”

  “The second problem?”

  “Yeah, the second problem. You could say it’s another divorce.”

  “God Almighty, Henry. You better not be telling me you’ve got two wives you want to leave.”

  “No. It’s a business. Something that I poured a lot of money into.”

  “And?”

  “Well, when I told my business partner that I want to get my money out, he wasn’t real happy. He said it wasn’t a good time. He wants me to wait a year, at least.”

  “How much money are we talking?”

  “About two million. It’s a security company that’s gone from strength to strength. It’s been growing fast for five years.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Some business smarts must be nestled in that love-addled brain of his.

  “And you don’t want to wait, obviously?”

  “Madison, I don’t want anyone telling me to put my life on hold. I want to cash in my chips, and I want to cash them in now.”

  “Okay,” I said, tapping away at my computer keyboard to bring up my calendar. “We’re going to have to make another appointment. Thursday or Friday next week looks free if that suits you. Meantime, I’d like you send me the partnership agreement.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is there a dissolution strategy in the contract?”

  “A what?”

  “A dissolution strategy. It’s kind of a prenup for partnership agreements.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Okay, I’ll check that out. Have you got all the financial statements?”

  “Yes.”

  “Send me those too, will you?”

  “Will do,” said Henry. He was looking relaxed now. Having someone to help was clearly a weight off his mind. “I think I came to the right place. Thank you, Madison.”

  I stood up and put my hand out. “I want that paperwork ASAP, okay? I wouldn’t mind betting Paxton and Punch have already gotten a head start on us.”

  I walked Henry to the door. As I returned to my desk, I heard Megan book him in for the following Thursday at three o’clock.

  A couple of days later, I got an email with a rudimentary list of Henry’s assets. The email was sent from his girlfriend’s account.

  But he never showed for his three o’clock.

  A few days after leaving my office, Henry Tuck took hold of his Beretta M9 service pistol and fired a bullet into his right temple.

  Chapter 2

  I fell in with a line of men entering the small chapel and took a seat in a pew midway up the aisle. The place was three-quarters full and more mourners were still coming in. Men, mostly. Some wore suits while others looked like they’d had to rummage deep through their drawers to find a suitable tie—heck, any tie. And then there were the bikers. They may never have met Henry, but when word gets around that a soldier has fallen, a lot of vets make a point of attending the funeral. They’ll be damned if they’ll let someone who’d had the balls to serve leave this world alone.

  Like me, they’d always carry survivor’s guilt. Funerals bring death near again, to coldly graze the soul. They give rise to sobriety—there by the grace of God go I, and all that—and gratitude for having the fortune to be alive.

  “Always go to the funeral.” I don’t know who came up with that as a guiding principle to death, but I agree with it wholeheartedly. Do it if not for yourself but the deceased’s family. They’ll take heart from those who show at the service, the strangers in particular. It’s something I will instill in my daughter, Bella.

  But I wasn’t here for the family, I was here for the dead. For the life of me, I could not work out why Henry would choose to kill himself so soon after our meeting. He’d displayed the verve of a man who relished the future. I did want to pay my respects, but I also wanted answers.

  Henry and I had unfinished business. He walked out of my office with a spring in his step and a glint in his eye. He did not look like a man fixing to kill himself.

  Not long after I’d taken my seat, a man crossed in front of two people to claim the place beside me.

  “Madison,” he said, still on his feet. He held his smile and an outstretched hand while I took a couple of seconds to recognize him.

  “Pete Chang,” I said, standing up and taking his hand enthusiastically. “Good to see you. My God, you haven’t aged a day.”

  “What can I say? It’s the Asian genes. My grandfather could pass
as my older brother.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Same as you, I guess. When I heard old TNT had kicked it, I got down and gave him fifty.”

  When I got the news of Henry’s death, the first thing I did was call Doug Ward, an LAPD detective whose nephew I’d helped beat a first-time DUI. Ward told me Henry’s death was a boilerplate suicide. Besides the fact that there was no note, Henry had done a meticulous job of it. He had gotten dressed in his good clothes, laid himself down on his bed, and fired. Ward said no one reported hearing a shot. What they did report was a godawful smell coming from his apartment. Forensics estimated Henry was dead for three days before they found him.

  It may have made sense to the cops, but to me it just didn’t add up. I came to the service hoping either Henry’s wife or his girlfriend could help me make sense of it all.

  Sitting across the aisle from me in the front pew was a woman I assumed to be Laura Tuck. In a yellow floral dress, she sat staring ahead, waiting for the minister to begin speaking. Now and then she dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

  I then scanned the crowd and, to my surprise, there was no one who could be Fernanda.

  “You know she left him,” Peter said in a hushed tone, leaning sideways into me.

  “He told me he left her. After twenty-seven years of not quite marital bliss.”

  “No, not his wife. The girl he ran off with.”

  “Fernanda?”

  “You know her?”

  “No. He told me a little bit about her. Well, a little bit about his situation. He came to see me about handling his divorce.”

  “Well, it looks like he jumped the gun.” Pete shook his head. “Shit, I didn’t mean that pun.”

  “Who told you she dumped him?”

  “One of Henry’s DI buddies. You remember Sergeant Longley? I was speaking to him before I came in.”

  As the service got under way, we fell silent, but I ruminated on what Pete had told me all the way through. I may not have known Henry too well, but from our brief contact I knew that if Fern had dumped him it would have been a crushing blow.