Murder Deja Vu (26 page)

He remembered speaking to Kraus on the phone. He hadn’t changed his story from the transcripts of the trial. Clarence wished he had more time to do a thorough check, get a feel for the guy. He hated working on a hunch alone. Reece didn’t have time for him to be wrong.

He got in the car, set his GPS to Kraus’s address, slipped a Miles Davis CD into the player, and headed for Rockport. He wanted to see Jordan Kraus’s face when he accused him of double murder.

Rockport, a picturesque town on the Massachusetts coast, boasted beautiful beaches, tourist shops, and even a couple of old lighthouses. He arrived at Kraus’s home, fully expecting him to be out.

The house was a typical shingled New England cape, but the view set it apart—a panorama of ocean over the rocky coastline, shared by all the houses on that side of the street. Clarence never wanted the responsibility of a house, but he could be swayed if he woke every day to the visual magnificence before him. He had opened his windows and heard the seagulls squawking overhead, smelled the fresh saltwater air, and tried not to forget the reason he’d come.

He pulled into the driveway in front of a two-car garage. A dog barked inside, and he saw a woman peek out a large picture window. The door opened and she stood waiting, a black lab at her side. The dog didn’t seem threatening, but its presence stopped Clarence in his tracks.

“May I help you?” she said.

“My name is Clarence Wright. I’m an investigator for Reece Daughtry’s attorney. I spoke to your husband a couple of months ago.”

“Yes, of course. He told me. Come in. Jordan’s outside on the deck, working on the computer.”

She must have noticed his reticence. “Dally won’t attack. She doesn’t know the word, nor does she have the nature.”

Clarence moved cautiously toward the door.

“Why don’t you wait in the living room? I’ll tell Jordan you’re here.” She gestured toward the sofa, and he settled into the end seat.

The house had a lived-in quality, with a chintz-covered sofa and overstuffed club chairs. Nothing fancy, but comfortable and inviting. A grand piano sat off to one side, framed pictures cluttered the mantel. He got up and scanned them. A man, woman, and two children at different ages. Was this a killer’s life? Then he zeroed in on one particular picture and knew it wasn’t. His instincts had failed him.

“Mr. Wright, Jordan asked if you’d join him outside.”

Clarence followed her to a large deck. The view took his breath away—ocean and more ocean, as far as the eye could see. A good-looking, tanned man sat at a table in front of a laptop. Definitely not the description of the man who left Rudy’s bar. But he already knew that.

“Mr. Wright, pleased to meet you.”

He offered his hand to Clarence’s left, his sightline also missing its mark. Jordan Kraus couldn’t see an inch in front of him. He was blind. “I’m sorry to come unannounced. I thought if I called, you might not see me.” He realized what he said and started to stutter an apology, but Kraus intervened.

“Please, don’t get politically correct. I’m not touchy or sensitive. I just can’t see.” He felt for the cover of his laptop and closed it. “Have a seat.”

Clarence settled into a comfortable chair around a glass-top table.

“I remember your call. I guess your investigation has gained steam now that Reece Daughtry is wanted for double murder. Am I the last on your list? The one you were sure would end your search for the killer?”

Clarence smiled. Of course, Kraus would have considered that. “I suppose you’ve been getting calls.”

“Both Steve and Mark. I haven’t talked to either of them in years. This time, my wife wouldn’t let me put them off. I’m glad because I told them I’d lost my sight. I never could before. I didn’t deal with it well in the beginning. Then time passed, and we lost touch. It’s not like I didn’t know I was going blind. It had been coming on for years—retinitis pigmentosa—but I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me.”

“I understand.”

“Beautiful view, isn’t it? I know what it looks like. I could still see when we bought the house. I like to hear the sounds of the ocean, feel the air. It relaxes me.

“Very beautiful. I’d be out here all the time.”

“Hmm, not in winter. It’s damn cold. You live in Boston, I remember.”

“Yes, but I could handle the cold better with this view.”

Kraus looked out over the ocean as if he could see, and Clarence felt a wave of sympathy for the man’s loss. Such a sad irony to have this vista before him and be unable to see it.

“Obviously, I couldn’t have committed the murder in North Carolina, and I didn’t kill Karen
Sitton
either. I slept with her only once. She wasn’t anyone I wished to spend time with, especially after I found out she wasn’t particularly discerning about who she slept with. I wished I had known Reece better before her murder. I could have warned him about her.”

“I wish someone had. But that’s moot now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What can you tell me about that night, about the others who were with you?”

“Probably not much more than Steve told you, or Mark told Reece. Why did you think it was me? I was with Betsy Ferrar until three a.m., and she swore to that in an affidavit. The others discovered the body at the apartment before then.”

“Two reasons. When I talked to her, I got the feeling that she might have fallen asleep.”

“She did. I didn’t have the heart to wake her. She drank more than she was used to. Everyone did that night. Did you think I drugged her and went off to kill Karen?”

Clarence hesitated. “The thought entered my mind. Reece had been drugged. The fact he couldn’t remember anything made me suspicious. I thought of date rape drugs, then I thought of Ketamine.”

Jordan’s eyes remained blank, but he nodded understanding. “Of course. Ketamine. A veterinary drug. Special K I’ve heard it called. Even then we’d read the reports of side effects on humans. Possible memory loss after anesthesia.”

“Unfortunately date rape drugs have improved, but once the connection formed in my mind, I couldn’t let it go.”

“I—” Kraus’s face twisted with some memory.

“What? You thought of something.”

“Only a fleeting thought, and I can’t remember exactly what. But something about your mention of Ketamine struck a chord. It’ll come to me.”

Kraus’s wife came outside with a tray containing two glasses with handles, like the old glass root beer mugs Clarence remembered.

“I made some iced tea.” She put Jordan’s glass to his right without saying anything, and he knew exactly where to reach for it. He smiled in her direction and thanked her.

“This is unsweetened, Mr. Wright. If you prefer sugar, I’ll bring some out.”

“This is fine, thanks.”

“Call me if you need anything,” she said, and left the deck.

“My wife is a special woman. She was my mobility instructor, getting me ready for a world without sight. I don’t know if I would have made it without her.”

“I hate to be so single-minded, Mr. Kraus—”

“Call me Jordan.”

“Jordan. I don’t have much time. Reece is being stalked by federal agents and the police from border to border. They’ll get him sooner or later. They always do.”

“And you want me to remember about the Ketamine.”

“Yes. Maybe it will prick your memory if you tell me what happened that day or the day before.”

“Let me think.” Kraus sipped his tea, his blank eyes staring over the rim of the glass. “Steve and I volunteered the day before the murder at a clinic for rescue dogs in Cambridge. Everything went fine, so—wait.” He nodded. “I remember now. When we got back to Grafton after the weekend—that’s where Tuft’s vet school is—we were called into the dean’s office. The vet at the clinic called the school to tell them that a vial of Ketamine was missing. Neither Steve nor I knew anything about it. There were other people helping out, so we assumed either one of them took it or an employee used the cover of the rescue clinic to take the vial. We never heard any more about it. I never would have remembered that if you hadn’t mentioned Ketamine.” He put his glass on the table.

Clarence couldn’t tell if Kraus was thinking or visualizing, but his brow furrowed. “You’re sure Steve didn’t take it?”

“Positive. Steve wouldn’t kill Karen. He didn’t care enough about women to feel betrayed by one.”

Clarence blew out a breath. “You knew?”

“I suspected. I also didn’t care. Steve was and is, I’m sure, a terrific vet. I only wish we could have gone into practice together.”

“He thinks you didn’t want to partner with him because you found out he was gay.”

“I know. He told me. He knows better now. By the end of our last year I suffered night blindness and knew I could never go into practice. Once I started losing my peripheral vision, it would keep getting worse, until I had either little or no sight left. I couldn’t stand the thought, but I felt I owed it to myself to finish school. Not everyone with RP goes completely blind. I’m one of the unlucky ones.” He smiled. “Anyway, I backed out of everything for a while. Now I run a non-profit to help people with RP. I understand the disease, and I can speak to experience about going through the transition. The veterinary experience came in handy because I also train seeing-eye dogs. I inherited a good deal of money, so that was never a problem. I feel like I’m doing some good.”

“I’m impressed.”

“So now that you know I’m not a murderer, what’s your next move?”

“I honestly don’t know. Between Reece and me, we’ve cleared the three people at the table when Reece found out about Karen.”

“You missed someone.”

Clarence thought a moment. “Yes, of course I did. How could I have been so—Jesus, I hate to say the word—blind?”

“Sometimes those of us without sight see more than a sighted person,” Jordan said. “Oh, and now that I think of it, Carl helped us out at the rescue clinic that day.”

Harold County, North Carolina

H
arry
Klugh
was an uncommon name. Sheriff Jim Payton tracked one private investigator by that name from his birth in Philadelphia to his death in a boating accident on Lake Michigan in 1984. No one ever found his body.

The birth date for the Harry Klugh that surfaced in Atlanta in 1985 when he applied for a license under Harry Klugh Investigations was miraculously the same birth date as the dead Harry Klugh. The fuzzy headshot on the license could have been anyone and signaled another red flag. The anomalies put Payton on alert.

He thought of contacting the feds about his discovery, but if he was right, he didn’t want to warn Klugh—or whatever the hell his real name was—before he gathered more facts. Klugh might go underground and emerge somewhere else with still another name, and Payton’s bargaining chip would be lost.

Except for a hitch in the Marines during the first Gulf War, Payton had lived in North Carolina his whole life. War cements bonds between men as solid as childhood friendships, and Payton had remained close with a few of his Gulf buddies. One was Barry Kanter from Atlanta.

After the military, Barry studied law at Georgia State and became a public defender in his hometown. The two men took off every October to go fishing. Payton kept his phone number on speed dial.

“Is it October?” Barry asked.

“What happened? You were supposed to be here last week.”

“You’re getting to be as big a smart-ass as me. What’s up, buddy?”

“I need a favor.”

“You want me to break the law?”

“Possibly.”

Kanter hesitated. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah, I am, but not if it’s done right. Ever hear of an Atlanta PI named Harry
Klugh
?”

“Klugh, Klugh. Why does the name sound familiar?”

“He’s done some work for the DA up here, Robert Minette, going back twenty years when Minette worked for a criminal defense firm in Charlotte.”

“Minette’s name doesn’t ring any chimes, but Klugh’s does. What do you need?”

“His fingerprints.” Payton heard Barry whistle through his teeth.

“May I ask why?”

Payton filled Barry in on Klugh’s non-existent past. “I think Harry Klugh is someone else, and finding out who might give me leverage to solve a murder in my county, maybe two. It also might clear the man I believe is wrongly accused.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with the Daughtry guy from up your way that the whole country’s looking for, would it?”

“Yup.”

“Been following that one. Daughtry seems too smart to murder someone using the same M.O. as the murder he went to prison for.”

“Yeah. The DA insists that’s Daughtry’s brilliance at work. Kind of reverse psychology. Who’d think a guy that smart would do something so stupid? Minette is hoping this trial will give him name recognition to run for state office. That’s what I think anyway.”

“Sounds like an asshole.”

Payton smiled. “You could say that. Others have.”