Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth (10 page)

"When did the call come in?"

"Saturday morning before Gina was killed."

"So maybe she was dealing drugs or at least supplying her husband. Maybe that had something to do with her death."

"Maybe. But not likely. Look, no case happens in a vacuum. People lead messy lives that crisscross in strange ways. That doesn't make them murderers. It just makes them screwed up. Your client confessed because she's guilty. That's not why I was parked outside the Cable Depot watching you make nice with David Evans."

"The elevator," Mason said.

Samantha nodded. "Our expert tells us that there was nothing wrong with the elevator. Somebody hit the switches that disconnected the power and released the emergency brake. What have you done that would make someone want to kill you?"

"Today?" he asked. Samantha didn't laugh. "Okay," he said. "Other than today, I don't know. I've been in this case for forty-eight hours. That's a little soon for people to start hating me enough to want to kill me."

"Keep joking," she told him, "and you'll shorten the time it takes."

"If I was the intended victim, the killer would have had to know that I was on the elevator, have access to the controls, and know how to cause the accident. That should narrow the field."

"There was a security camera on the elevator. Anyone watching the monitor would have known you were there," Samantha said.

"And the videotape is missing," Mason said.

"Gone," Samantha said, spooning the last of her pasta.

"Have you talked with Trent Hackett? He gave me the passkey. He's the building manager and he's a freak. We didn't get off on the right foot."

"He had access, but he says he was at the movies and he has a ticket stub to prove it."

Mason asked, "Anybody vouch for him?"

"He was alone."

"If that's supposed to make me feel better, it doesn't."

"It's not. It's supposed to keep you out of the dark water."

"So which case are you investigating? Gina Davenport's murder or the attempt to kill me?"

Samantha twirled the last strands of pasta around her spoon. "The Davenport case is the prosecuting attorney's problem now. I'm working the elevator."

Mason watched as she finished her pasta. Her appetite was fine. His was gone. Harry always talked about the importance of keeping his personal life separate from his cases. He wasn't always able to do it. Samantha had been trained the same way. Saying that she was working the elevator rather than trying to find out who wanted to kill him was her way of drawing the line. She wiped a fleck of sauce that had splattered onto the butt of her gun. Mason was glad it was a big gun.

Mason popped a Modern Jazz Quartet CD into his office stereo and opened the cabinet doors covering his dry-erase board. Listening to Milt Jackson work the xylophone keys helped clear his mind. He was a classic jazz fan uninterested in digitized, techno-driven sound. Basie, Peterson, Coltrane, and Monk were better company.

He wrote Arthur Hackett's name beneath the
Winners and Losers
column, putting
$5 million
next to Arthur's name, and drew a line connecting the money to the winners' side of the ledger. Next, he added David Evans's name to the losers' column.

Trent Hackett belonged in the losers' column on general principles, but that column was for people who lost something valuable as a result of Dr. Gina's death. It wasn't for people who were just losers. Instead he added a column titled
Connections?
and put Trent's name at the top. He drew lines from Trent's name to Jordan's and Arthur's, adding one to Gina's labeled
broken window.

Robert Davenport's name was next. He wrote
drugs
across the line connecting the widower to his mate, adding another line with a question mark at the end leading to Centurion Johnson, the only past or present drug dealer on the board. Mason didn't know where Robert Davenport got his drugs. He doubted it was from his wife. Which meant that someone other than Gina had put the drugs in her office. The best reason to do that was to discredit Gina. The only person on the board who would benefit from that was Arthur Hackett. Arthur could have blackmailed Gina into staying, trumping her play of the Jordan card.

Mason drew a line between Arthur Hackett's and Robert Davenport's names, wondering if Robert provided the drugs to Arthur. Even if Mason was right about that, it didn't explain where the drugs came from. Mason drew a line connecting Arthur Hackett and Centurion Johnson, trying that conspiracy theory on for size.

Mason was guessing at most of these conclusions and stretching for others. It was like that at the beginning of a case. He had to consider every possibility because he didn't know enough to exclude any of them.

When he finished, he stepped back to gain a better perspective. Without realizing it, he had connected every name on the board to at least two other names and connected all of them to Gina Davenport. If that was progress, he was in trouble.

Claire Mason opened the door to his office, interrupting his graffiti analysis of the case. She was wearing one of the severe, dark suits she wore year-round, regardless of weather. It wasn't that she was severe or dark. She was the opposite. She was large, and larger than life, but oblivious to fashion, preferring clothes that were functional and durable.

"Except for that shiner, you don't look too bad to me," she said, taking a seat on Mason's sofa and motioning him to join her.

"Don't ask me to take my clothes off. I look like the Kansas City Chiefs used me for a tackling dummy."

"From what I hear, you've got the dummy part down right."

"You can join the chorus singing that tune," Mason told her.

Claire studied the dry-erase board. "I'm glad Abby Lieberman's name isn't on there. I was afraid she was somehow involved when she told me about calling Gina Davenport."

"Abby told me about the call," Mason said. "The phone number was for Jordan Hackett's cell phone."

"Why did Gina Davenport answer the phone?" Claire asked.

"Either she had Jordan's phone or the phone had been programmed to forward calls to Gina's number. I'll ask Jordan."

"That sounds like a lot of trouble. Why not just give Gina's phone number to Abby?"

"Because that wouldn't have linked Gina, Abby, and Jordan together."

Claire said, "It still doesn't make sense. Neither Abby nor Gina knew that Abby was calling Jordan's cell-phone number. How do any of them make the connection?"

Mason shook his head. "Got me." He returned to the board, adding Abby's name with lines drawn to Gina Davenport and Jordan Hackett. "Jordan was adopted.

Someone wants Abby to believe that Jordan is her daughter and that Gina Davenport knew that. Don't ask me why." Mason added lines connecting Abby to Arthur Hackett.

"What a mess," Claire said. "When is Jordan's arraignment?"

"Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock."

"You want my advice, Lou? Take the rest of the day off," his aunt said. "You're too tired to see clearly."

Mason shuddered with weariness. He hadn't slept much in two days. That was no way to prepare for an arraignment. "Okay," he said. "I'm going home. Speaking of seeing clearly—what's wrong with Harry's eyes?"

Claire stood, brushing her suit and pursing her lips. "Have you asked him?"

"Yeah. He said it was allergies and the man doesn't know how to sneeze. The other night at the restaurant, you were wiping his eyes. He was wiping them when he drove me home from the hospital. Plus, he was squinting like Mr. Magoo at the traffic lights and road signs."

Mason knew his aunt wasn't capable of deception. She would rely on privilege and confidences to withhold information, but she wasn't afraid to give bad news. She gave it and took it straight on, like everything else in life.

"Come on, Claire," Mason said. "It's you, me, and Harry. No secrets."

Claire nodded. "You're right. Harry has macular degeneration. It's an irreversible disease with no cure that destroys the central vision. He won't go blind, but his visible world will shrink in bits and pieces until he can't drive, read, or see my face across the kitchen table. So far, he's having trouble with small print and distances."

Mason exhaled like a punctured tire. "Jesus Christ," he said.

"Not available. Harry already asked," Claire said. "The doctors use lasers to slow things down and they've got some other new procedures that might help. The disease kind of limps along, then eventually speeds up. Harry doesn't like to talk about it, so don't go overboard the next time you see him. Good luck tomorrow."

Mason was turning off the light in his office when the phone rang.

"Can you come see me?" Jordan Hackett asked.

"Sure," Mason said. "It's four o'clock. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

The drive to the county jail was quick, but like a power nap, the top-down ride gave Mason a boost. He finger-tapped a light beat on the steering wheel, dividing his thoughts between Jordan and Harry. He hoped she would tell him something he could use, while hoping that he would be able to do the same for Harry.

Jordan had showered but not slept. The dirt was gone, but the circles under her eyes were as dark as his black eye. Her cheeks had flattened, and her body folded inward from the shoulders, like she was trying to disappear into herself.

"I want to get out of here," she said.

They were in the same room as before, the light dull, the paint bleak. A perfect match for Jordan's jailhouse patina.

"We'll see the judge tomorrow morning at your arraignment. I'll ask him to release you on bail."

"Will he let me go?"

"Maybe. It's a high-profile case, so there's always political pressure for the prosecutor to oppose bail. Your history of violence and your confession may make it tough."

"What if," she began in a small voice, "I didn't do it?"

Mason scooted his chair back, the uneven legs scratching the vinyl floor. He walked around the tiny room, stopping at the corner farthest from the door, feeding his latent paranoia that someone was listening. "That would make you a liar but not a murderer. Which are you?"

Jordan watched Mason circle and followed him into the corner, standing close, her hand on his arm. In another setting, the gesture would have been sexual. Here, it was need.

"A liar. I didn't do it."

Mason kept his voice low, more to pull her in than to keep from being overheard. He tested her with the preliminaries. "Were you there that night?"

"Yes."

"Were you there when Gina was killed?"

"Yes."

"The videotape shows a shadow in the window immediately after the murder. Was that you?"

"Yes."

Jordan's answers came easily, without nervous tics in the corners of her eyes and mouth to betray her. Her breathing was calm and steady, her grip on his arm assured, not panic-tight. Mason believed her.

"Did you see it happen?"

She let go of his arm, covering her chest with both of hers, and turned away. "No," she said, her back to him.

Mason spun her around, his hands on her shoulders. "Did you see it happen?" he repeated.

She grabbed his wrists, pinching pressure points that shot bolts of pain the length of his arms. He winced and let go. She cast his arms away like empty husks. "I told you," she said. "I didn't see it happen."

Mason crossed his arms, rubbing both biceps, trying to regain the upper hand with a woman who said she needed him in one instant and dismissed him like he was a nuisance in the next.

"What did you see?"

"Nothing except for the broken window. Then I saw Gina's body on the ground and those TV people pointing the camera at me. I was afraid what would happen if anyone saw me there, so I left the way I came, on the elevator."

"A witness saw you enter the building on the ground floor. The elevator only runs from the basement to Dr. Gina's office. Why did you go up that way?"

"My father gave me a key to the building a long time ago. I didn't have a key to Gina's office, but I wouldn't need one if I used the elevator."

"Weren't you meeting Gina? Wouldn't she have let you in?"

"I didn't know she was going to be there."

"Then what were you doing there?" Jordan sat down again, thumping her balled fist on the metal table. Mason sat across from her and covered her fist with his hands. "I need to know," he said.

Jordan gnawed at her lower lip and pulled her fist away. Mason clamped his hands around hers, yanking her toward him. She was meaner but he was stronger. "I need to know," he said again.

"You're hurting me."

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling small but uncertain of any other way to break through to her. "Tell me."

She glared at him until he released her, leaving her rubbing her wrist, Mason feeling like a bully, his arms still tingling. They were finding a common language that he wasn't anxious to learn.

"Gina didn't take notes during a session. She always said that she didn't want to have anything she might have to turn over to the insurance companies. Sometimes I gave her stuff I wrote and she kept it. After she said she wouldn't treat me any more, I wanted it back. I knew where she kept it and I took it and got out of there."

"What did you write about, Jordan?"

She squirmed in her chair, glancing around, looking for a way out, finding none, dipping her head, letting her hair cover her face, tugging on it like a mask. She hid beneath her hair, her breathing growing ragged, finally throwing her head back, slapping both palms against the table. The metal sang, bringing the guard to the window in the door. Mason waved him off.

"Mr. Mason," she said through clenched teeth. "It took eight years of therapy with Gina Davenport before I could tell her. I don't know you. I didn't even hire you and you want me to tell you."