Legally Dead (26 page)

“I'm afraid I have bad news,” the man said. “Very bad news.”

“Is she all right?”

“I'm afraid not. There's been a regrettable incident. She's been killed. I'm the local constable. We're waiting for a team from Scotland Yard.”

“I don't believe it,” Venturi said truthfully. “You're sure it's her?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“What happened?”

“Where did you say were calling from?”

“Ottawa, Canada.”

“Well, sir, I'm afraid I can't go into detail until Scotland Yard arrives, but she appears to have died of gunshot wounds, multiple wounds. We've never seen anything of the sort here before. Terrible, just terrible. And your name is?”

“Robert Waterson,” Venturi lied, hand over his eyes.

“And the number where I can ring you back?”

“Of course.” He glanced up at the detailed map on the war room wall, gave the area code for Ottawa, then stopped speaking, as though the phone had gone dead.

“Hullo?” the constable said. “Sir?”

A lump in his throat, Venturi heard the man say hullo a few more times, then hung up.

He thought of Marian Pomeroy, so small in stature, so large in life. She found such joy in giving, had sat in this very room not so long ago. He could still hear her laughter during her transformation in that motel room in Jamaica.

His first impulse was call Keri.
Where is she
? he wondered. With Maheen? Were they safe?

The news would devastate Keri. She'd ask questions, lots of questions. He needed answers first. Out of friendship, gratitude, and her own basic decency she had taken huge risks for Marian Pomeroy. She'd achieved something amazing. Why spread the misery? He massaged his temples and tried to think. Perhaps she should never know.

Were the others safe? Was Marian Pomeroy the sole target? If so, why? If her greedy children had learned she was alive, which seemed unlikely, they could commit her. Why kill her? It made no sense.

Unless someone was hunting, stalking them all.

He worked until daylight; his sense of urgency increased with every hour. He listened to the BBC and read on the Internet English newspaper accounts of the Barrington Fields homicide.

The victim, Claire Waterson, had set up an easel, a palette, and brushes in her flower garden on the morning she died. He smiled with sad irony. She had followed up on her lifelong wish to paint. But she'd been interrupted, her easel knocked over, paints overturned, a flower bed trampled. She had been dragged into the house. A Scotland Yard spokesman called what happened unspeakable.

Claire Waterson was a new resident, from Cardiff, said authorities, who had succeeded in retracing her steps during the last twenty-four hours of her life. It wasn't difficult. There were numerous witnesses. The day before her death she had perched on a stool, in front of a crowded classroom at a village school where she had recently volunteered, and read from Robert Louis Stevenson's
Treasure Island.
She lunched alone later at a department-store tearoom. That evening she and an acquaintance, a female teacher at the school, attended a concert at the local bandshell. Afterward they stopped at a local pub for a drink, at which time she mentioned that if the light and the weather cooperated, she intended to work on a landscape in the morning. She returned home without incident shortly after eleven o'clock.

She appeared fine the next morning, waved to passing children on their way to school, and exchanged pleasantries with a neighbor for whom she cut a bouquet from her garden.

Thirty minutes later a postman on his rounds spotted the overturned easel and scattered paints. Her front door stood ajar. He knocked, called out, then found her on the floor.

Her wounds were all at close range, but only one was fatal.

Venturi knew what that meant. The killer had been exacting information, asking questions. Authorities suspected she had been forced to divulge the whereabouts of money, jewelry, or other valuables. That made little sense since the victim's neat, modest cottage was small enough to be easily searched.

No one heard the shots.

A silencer,
he thought.
All the earmarks of a professional.

There were no immediate suspects. Tensions were running high in the once-peaceful village as shocked residents locked doors and looked over their shoulders for a killer among them.

Scotland Yard was attempting to locate the dead woman's relatives. A constable had spoken briefly to an overseas nephew but had lost the connection. They hoped he would ring them again.

Only a matter of time before they discovered she was unknown at her former address in Cardiff. Murder was not one of the endless projections and possible scenarios they had covered in depth. They had been planning a new life, not sudden death.

He drove to Danny's, where they huddled in his study.

“Christ almighty!” Danny exploded in shock and anger. “What sadistic son of a bitch would hurt that woman?”

Venturi shook his head. His attempts to warn the others had failed. All he knew was that the two who'd hung up on him were alive—for the time being.

“We did our jobs too well,” he said ruefully. “They wouldn't listen or acknowledge knowing me.”

“Next time,” Danny said, “we need to arrange a code word.”

“What next time? Are you crazy? No next time's gonna happen.”

Danny's cell rang. He checked the number. “Sorry, I need to take this, bro. You look like hell. Go pour yourself some coffee.”

Venturi wandered numbly into the kitchen.

Luz was feeding baby Michael, a happy cherub smiling in his wooden high chair, food on his face, his bib, and both fists.

“I told you it wasn't Sidney,” Luz said softly. She looked up placidly, put down the spoon, and wiped the tot's mouth with a soft washcloth. “You look terrible, Michael. I warned you.”

“What?” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. He should have shaved.

“Keri was not for you.”

He blinked, confused.

“The first time I saw you look at her, I said, she is not for you. Remember? I introduced you to some wonderful women, my friends.”

“What does that have to with…?”

“Keri is the best doctor, best friend, best godmother, but she has problems, Michael. We're like sisters. She told me everything, her secrets.”

“Such as?” Venturi's head began to ache.

“They wouldn't be secrets if I told you.” She turned back to the toddler in the high chair.

“Does Danny know?”

She shook her head, the tiny spoon in her hand.

“What kind of problems? Keri's fine.” Except for the last time he'd seen her. He pulled a chair up close and sat facing Luz. “Stop dropping hints and playing games. Level with me. It's important.”

She stared at the floor, then raised her eyes. “When Keri was a little girl in Pennsylvania, something happened to her and her baby sister.” Luz sighed and paused. The spoon stopped halfway to little Michael's mouth.

The child waited, mouth open in anticipation.

“Her mother left them with a boyfriend, a heavy drinker and drug user. He was also a pedophile. Keri was eight years old, her sister was four.”

Tears flooded Luz's eyes as the words rushed out. “The mother's boyfriend assaulted Keri, but when he started to touch her little sister, too, she tried to stop him, fought back. He was drunk. Crazy. She was only in the third grade. Her sister died. Keri needed surgery. The mother visited the man in jail and testified in his defense that it was all a mistake.”

“How could she?” Venturi said, his expression pained.

The patient toddler, his empty mouth open like a baby bird's, began to whimper. Luz cooed and steered the spoon into his mouth.

Keri's grandmother raised her, Luz said.

“She has issues. Psychological problems. A college romance ended badly. She trashed his place, burned his clothes, destroyed his stuff.

“She was so ashamed. Said she couldn't help herself and realized then that she was too damaged to ever sustain a successful long-term relationship. That was when she made a major decision—to focus all her energy and creativity on what she can do well, her work. I give her credit. It makes sense.”

He frowned. “So when you said it wasn't Sidney, you thought Keri broke into my house,” he said. “She didn't. I wish I'd known…”

“I didn't want either of you hurt, Michael. I tried.” She gazed at him accusingly. “Now,” she said sadly, “I can't even reach her.”

“I'm sure that's temporary,” he said, then entertained a dark thought. “Does Keri have any Russian friends?”

“She doesn't have many friends. Only her patients.” Luz paused. “There is a Russian girl. She has a heavy accent. I see her in the office sometimes. She's due next month. She's from Russia and works as a waitress at a Cuban-owned Italian pizzeria in Little Haiti.” She smiled. “That's Miami.”

“Is the Russian girl married?”

She shrugged. “I never saw her baby's father. She's young, teens, I think. Keri has a soft spot for young mothers. She helps them all she can.”

He took a bitter swallow of strong Cuban coffee. “How did you hear that Sidney was cleared?” Was Danny talking too much?

“Victoria called, she was so happy.”

“She
is
relieved,” he acknowledged. “When did she call?”

“Yesterday afternoon, after
Oprah
.” She aimed another spoonful at her drooling target.

The baby pounded his high-chair tray with chubby fists. Venturi envied him. He, too, wanted to vent, to pound something with his fists.

Vicki had called Luz while he and Bill were still discussing his report in the war room. Bill had leaked the results to her first, hoping to hit on her.

Did anybody tell the truth? Was everybody thinking with their genitals?

“No bombs, no bullets, no problems,” Danny said tersely. An interesting end to his phone conversation as Venturi rejoined him.

He didn't even ask. Instead he filled Danny in on the Louisiana corruption probe and the fact that Solange's name had surfaced.

Danny was incensed. “Every criminal caught red-handed starts pointing fingers! It's the old SOD defense: Some Other Dude did it.”

“I didn't believe it, either,” Venturi said. “What happened to Marian is my fault, Danny. I only meant to do it once—I thought we could pull it off. A good launch for a frustrated astronaut, a man who deserved a second chance. It felt so good that it got away from me. I played God. I must be crazy.”

“If so, you're not alone, bro.”

“What were we thinking?”

“Don't beat yourself up, Mike. Our intentions were good. What's done is done.”

“The only decent thing I can do now is protect those people out there all alone and unaware.”

Vicki met him at the door, eyes wide.

“Mikey, someone came looking for you about twenty minutes ago. He had an envelope addressed to you and I signed for it. Did I do the wrong thing?”

He tore the envelope open. Legal papers and a copy of a lawsuit.

He was shocked but not surprised.

“What is it, Mikey? Who was he?”

“A process server,” he said wearily. “The parents of the little girls murdered in New Hampshire are suing the Marshals Service, WITSEC, and me, personally, for the wrongful deaths of their daughters.”

His cell phone rang.

“Michael?”

He recognized the voice instantly. Lyle Gates aka Richard Lynch.

“Sorry for breaking the rules.” Lynch sounded confused. “I don't know what's going on, but I've got a bad feeling. When you called, I thought it was a test and I passed. But something's happened.”

“Tell me.” Venturi took out a notebook and picked up a pen.

“A few hours after you called, I took the trash out to the alley beside the apartment house. I heard a car door close, thought nothing of it, until two men tried to push me back into the building. I knocked over a coat tree in the lobby and tried to force them out. One pulled a gun. I threw an umbrella stand at them and took the stairs trying to outrun them. A neighbor opened her door, saw them run across the lobby, saw the gun, and started screaming. Somebody called the police. An officer on foot patrol heard the screams and came running. They got away, but they shot at my neighbor and grazed the officer. I locked myself in my apartment. Nobody knows it was me they were after. But I'm sure it was. Did your call have anything to do with this?”

“I'm afraid it did. I wanted to warn you. Thank God you're okay, Richard. You did everything right. Good job. Any doubt at all that it was you they were after?”

“No. One said, ‘There he is. Get him.'”

“I'm not sure who's behind it. But you
are
in danger. I want you to get out of there. Now. Make sure you're not followed. Did you get a good look at them?”

“Fair-skinned, thirties or forties. One medium height, the other a little taller. Spoke English with an accent, could've been Russian. One had really bad skin and a tattoo on his arm, looked like a cross, some sort of religious symbol.”

Venturi told him about the stolen records.

“But who? Why?” he pleaded. “People hated Lyle Gates, but nobody ever tried to kill him. I landed a great job here with a straight shot at the top. Everybody likes me. I think.”

“Tell your boss you have a family emergency and need a few days off.”

“But—”

“No buts. Take your cell phone. You have my number. We'll stay in touch. Be careful. They will kill you if they can. Hide out. Lie low. Keep moving till I get back to you.”

“What did I do wrong, Michael?”

“Nothing. It's me. It's my fault.”

He heard the front-gate buzzer but ignored it, until Vicki appeared in the doorway signaling frantically. He hung up the phone.

“Mikey?” She looked distressed. “There are people outside.”

“Who?”

“The one who pushed the buzzer said her name is Judy Grimes.”

Why did that sound familiar? Then he remembered: the reporter who called him just before he left New York.

“She says she's from the
Washington Post
. She's not alone.” Vicki was wringing her hands.

“Who else?” he asked, moving toward the front door.

“A woman from the
Miami News
. And a van from Channel 7.”

“Oh, no.” As he peered from behind a curtain, a sound truck bearing the call letters of the local CBS affiliate lumbered off the main road and stopped.

He turned calmly to Victoria. “Will you take care of Scout and the house until I get back?”