Stranglehold (19 page)

I have to say that the press received all this respectfully. Yes, they gave her a respectful three or four seconds between the time she finished reading her statement and the time they started trying to rip apart what she said. They wanted to study the entrails for portents. But from the smiles Ben and Kristin were directing my way, I knew Susan had done very, very well.

Came the questions, came the answers: No, there was no point in naming the father. No, Bobby had not decided if he'd be staying in Aldyne. Yes, the friends of hers who mattered were happy for her. No, she didn't think this revelation would hurt her, and if it did she felt she
had done the right thing, anyway—she was proud to acknowledge her son, she wasn't trying to hide it. No, there was no reason for Bobby to be interviewed right now—maybe later—but for now they were just getting to know each other. No, she didn't want to say anything more about Bobby at this time; if he wanted to come forward and talk to them, that would be his decision, not theirs. No, as she thought she'd made clear, she hadn't changed her mind on pro-choice—the decision she'd made twenty years ago was a personal one, not meant to make any kind of political statement.

All this took forty-three minutes. I kept shooting my cuff to keep track of the time. According to my watch, we had two minutes to go. That was the time we'd given the press. It was like sitting on a two-point lead in a basketball game. We needed to rush to the clock before any reporter lobbed a hand grenade.

Said hand grenade exploded with one minute to go. A pert young woman with horn-rimmed glasses and a stylish brunette bob had come in about ten minutes ago. I didn't know who she was or what station she was with. All I knew was that she had a camerawoman with her and that she was skillful at angling her way through the clutch of reporters. She hadn't asked a question until now, so Susan said, “Yes, Donna.”

I had no idea who Donna was, but I was about to find out.

“The police are looking for a young man named Bobby Flaherty. They believe he has information about the murder of a man named Craig Donovan. Congresswoman Cooper, is Bobby Flaherty the son you've been talking about?”

This would be one for Donna's reel. TV reporters keep a tape of their best moments. They like to show a mix of the sentimental (kitten stories) and the bombastic (standing in front of a crooked businessman's door and demanding that he come out and answer some questions). This was a big moment for Donna's reel.

Susan's eyes went wide and wild—panic. She bumped into the podium. Ben started to lunge forward, then pulled himself back. He had
to leave her alone. If he rescued her in some way, he'd only make things worse.

The expected rumble worked through the crowd. Donna's competitors would be pissed that she'd gotten the story before they did. A few of them were on their cells, calling their newsrooms for updates on the murder.

Susan took a deep breath, picked up her water glass, took a prim sip, set the glass down again, and said, “Yes, Bobby Flaherty is my son. I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to, Donna. But I hope you and the others here will forgive me for leaving now. As Bobby's mother, I want to find out what's going on.”

“Is there any possibility that he might be involved in this murder?” another reporter yelled.

Susan's gaze was hard now. “No chance whatsoever.” And then she was turning away from the podium and they were shouting questions at her retreating form.

A handful of reporters tried to follow her back to the staff office, but Ben and Kristin and I moved fast enough to form a line that blocked them.

“Fun's over,” Ben said. His voice was thin, as if he had trouble speaking.

Kristin glanced at me, shook her head. A camera caught her troubled expression and immortalized it. A telling image on the six o'clock news—Congresswoman Cooper staffer shocked at the breaking news about Bobby Flaherty.

“C'mon now,” Ben said to the remaining reporters. We started herding them over to the door.

“You're Dev Conrad, right?”

“Yep.”

The man asking the question aimed his microphone at me. “Did you get any warning about this?”

“We'll be issuing a statement very soon.”

“Maybe the congresswoman doesn't know as much about her son as she thinks.”

“We'll be issuing a statement very soon.”

“Any chance she might withdraw?”

“Any chance I could get you to leave?”

“You getting tough?”

“No. You asked me a question. Then I asked you one.”

“So you won't say anything on the record.”

But we were at the door now. “I don't know about you, but I'm going to go have a very strong cup of coffee. I wish we had enough to go around, but I guess we're all out.” Behind me I heard Ben laugh.

The reporter and his microphone finally left.

The volunteers had collected in a far corner. They resembled the stunned people you see immediately after tornados, intense distress that as yet they couldn't put into words. Hopes and dreams were collapsing, and they knew they were helpless to do anything about it.

Ben and I went back to the staff office. Kristin was alone there. She sat at her desk punching numbers into the phone with violent authority.

Ben and I listened.

Kristin spoke into the receiver: “Nick Rainey, please. This is Kristin Daly. Thank you.” She cupped the phone and said to me: “The news director at Channel 4. He has a son-in-law who's a detective. His daughter is a big supporter of Susan's.” Then: “Hi, Nick. I don't have to tell you why I'm calling. We just heard. I wondered if you could give me some background. All we got is that the police are looking for Bobby Flaherty to question him.”

He spoke for a couple of minutes. All we heard was Kristin saying, “Yes” and “I see” and “Oh.” Finally she said, “Thanks, Nick. I really appreciate this.”

She turned her chair to face us. “Seems this Craig Donovan was sleeping with this local woman. She found him dead in his room. He'd been shot twice. The police think he was killed sometime last night.”

“What the hell is going on?” Ben said. “This is crazy.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Just stay focused on the money. Monica and Donovan were partners in blackmailing Susan. Wyatt delivers the money to Monica. Donovan wants it all for himself. He kills Monica.”

“Then who killed Donovan?”

“Somebody who knew about the money and figured out that Donovan must have it. This person waits until Donovan is alone and then goes in, kills him, and takes the money.”

“A quarter of a million dollars,” Kristin said.

“Tax-free,” Ben said.

“The stranglehold.”

“What stranglehold, Dev?”

“Natalie's money. That's why Wyatt and Manning, and even Susan to a degree, stay with her. They need her money. And she extracts her fee by humiliating and degrading them. But this time it was Donovan who had Natalie in the stranglehold. This time she got to know what it feels like.”

“Don't try and make me feel sorry for Natalie,” Kristin said. “I don't have that much empathy in me.”

“I want to talk to Donovan's girlfriend,” I said as I walked over and took my coat from the coat tree. “I'll stay in touch, but I probably won't be back for a while.”

“I'll get a statement ready, and I'll read it to you over the phone for your changes.”

“Thanks, Ben.”

“I'm still thinking about Natalie being at somebody else's mercy. I'm a terrible person, I know, Dev. But I enjoy imagining how miserable she must be.”

“I'm just as bad as you are, Kristin,” I said, pulling on my coat. “The only good thing in all this is that maybe it'll teach Natalie a little humility.”

When I got to the door, Kristin laughed and said, “Yeah, right.”

.   .   .

The Stay-Rite hadn't changed, still the stucco-cracked, window-cracked hellhole it would always be. I wondered if Heather's black eye had faded any.

I parked my rental in the nearest slot I could find. There were still several official vehicles taking up the other spaces and uniforms and forensic people combing the littered parking lot.

A battered SUV pulled in next to me, one of those despondent metal animals that would soon be laid to rest in a scrap yard. It had been red once, but now it was a pinkish color. And when the side door opened the hinges made a noise not unlike a scream.

Out stepped one of those ragged little women you always see in church basements where free food is given to the indigent. She wore a rumpled white Western hat, a Toby Keith T-shirt, and a pair of jeans that were ripped from age, not fashion. The sallow unhealthy skin and the desperate brown gaze made guessing her age impossible. She was likely a skinny, beaten forty going on seventy.

She had been facing me without looking at me. She went back to the SUV and reached in and withdrew a child of maybe three or four, a chubby but pretty kid. She took the little girl's hand, and they moved to the walk running in front of the motel.

The husband appeared then and he was a perfect match for his wife. The same unhealthy grayness of skin, the same forlorn look in the eyes. His T-shirt was from NASCAR. His Western hat was flat and black. And when he started to walk it was shocking and grotesque to see. He limped with such violence that most of his body was jerked about when he moved. The woman, still holding the little girl's hand, went over and slid her arm through her husband's. And it was the sort of thing that could break your goddamned heart because it was so simple and loving and said so much about their years together. They were playing a shitty
hand, one the dark Lovecraftian gods were probably still laughing about, but they were bound up and redeemed by their loyalty.

The little girl smiled at me as they crossed in front of my windshield. I waved back. Then her mother saw me and smiled, too.

I didn't have any problem finding Detective Kapoor. She appeared to be the only Indian woman in sight. She stood just inside the yellow crime-scene tape talking to a uniform. When she saw me she nodded in my direction. I doubted that she'd tell me much, but I waited her out.

The crowd was sparse. From what I'd been able to gather on the radio reports coming over here, the body had been discovered three hours ago. People had most likely drifted back to work. The crowd seemed to be residents here. A number of them stood in front of open motel doors. A baby bawled. A wind carried the scent of forensic chemicals from inside the murder room.

When Kapoor walked to the edge of the tape, she had her sleek head attached to a cell phone. She was laughing, but as soon as she clicked off the laugh died and she frowned at me.

I stood on my side of the tape.

“Unless you've come to answer my questions, I don't know why you're here, Mr. Conrad. You've been no help in the death of Monica Davies, and I'm sure you'll be no help with this one.”

“You've already decided that Bobby Flaherty is guilty of this one, too.”

She wore a dusky gray silk jacket and black skirt. The white blouse revealed small upscale breasts. “There is a connection between these two. As a citizen, I'd think you'd want to help us find out what that connection is.”

“As I said, you've convicted him already.”

“He's wanted for questioning.” The dark eyes seemed amused now. “Just because he was seen at Monica Davies's room on the night of her murder and now we learn that he had several physical altercations with his father—why do you think I've convicted him already?”

I tried not to look surprised. I probably didn't pull it off.

A woman in a white lab coat appeared in the doorway of Donovan's room. “Detective Kapoor, would you come in here for a minute?”

“If you decide to be honest with me, Mr. Conrad, you can get hold of me day or night.”

With that she was gone. In another situation I would have stayed to admire the elegant way she walked back to the room. For now, curiosity triumphed over idle lust. I needed to find Heather, the beautician who'd been staying with Donovan.

Hair Fare was located in a strip mall between a video shop and a pawn shop. One step inside I knew that this wasn't a place for men. Four women under hair dryers and four women in barber chairs gaped at me as if I were something rarely seen in this shop. The odors of the sprays and oils and lotions suffused my nostrils. I counted three Chicago Bears calendars and four Bears pennants.

The place was filled with posters and counter displays for hair products. At a line of sinks against the back wall a woman was getting her hair washed. The beauticians wore their own clothes, no kind of uniforms at all. The last of them to look up from cutting hair was Heather. When she saw me her body jerked, as if she was going to bolt. “Sorry,” said the older woman who was clearly Heather's sister. “We just cut for women here. Cost Cutters is just two blocks down.”

“I'd like to see Heather when she's free. My name's Dev Conrad.”

“Oh, yeah?” She was chewing gum. At the mention of Heather, she cracked it. She was heavier than Heather and not as pretty. She wore something that resembled a bouffant hairstyle and was dyed an orangish red. In her Bears sweatshirt and jeans she looked ready for a tailgater. She angled her head back to Heather and said, “You hear, this guy wants to see you.”

“Well, I don't want to see him.”

Sister smiled at me. The customers were intrigued by the potential for some nasty fun. “My sister's got a bad disposition.”

“Really? I hardly noticed that.”

A number of the customers laughed.

“I don't have to talk to you if I don't want to,” Heather said.

Sister said, “She drop you, did she? You're better dressed than most of the bums she hangs out with. She should've hung on to you. She's always trying to find a rich one. You look like you might get lucky someday.”