You Only Die Twice (24 page)

“So she risked her family and her new life to save her long-lost child, only to find out he didn't need saving. But now you and Rothman know her identity, she's been sold out, and somebody wants her dead.” I imagined Kaithlin as she watched the life she had so carefully constructed start to collapse around her. She had to know the end was only a matter of time.

“Why didn't you mention the boy to me before?” I said.

“You never know,” he said, eyes shrewd, “when this kind of information might come in handy, have some value in the future.”

Still playing every angle, I thought, still hoping to make a buck off somebody else's misery.

“She was mad as hell that he sucked her in,” Kagan was saying. “That she bought his story in the first place.”

“When did you see her last?”

“She got real paranoid after the second meeting with me and Rothman. Said somebody had seen her and she couldn't leave her hotel room. So I went there that night, for dinner. I was trying to salvage the situation, so to speak. You know, talk her outa doing anything crazy.”

“She was okay when you left?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” he said.

“She was killed the next morning,” I said.

He shrugged and looked innocent.

“Did she say who saw her?”

“No, but it freaked her out, big time.”

“What craziness did you try to talk her out of? Going public? Exposing you?”

“Hey, a helluva lot more than that. She was furious, hysterical, first time I saw her. The second time, she was ice cold, which in her case was a helluva lot more scary. Tell you the truth, I liked her better hysterical.”

“Scary in what way?”

He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “She figured that since we made her, the kid could do it. She was afraid he was gonna be trouble, like his old man. Woman actually asked whether we knew somebody who could get rid of the kid, for good, if he gave her any problems. She was afraid he'd show up on her doorstep in Seattle and give her a little 'splaining to do. Me and Rothman, we couldn't believe what we were hearing. We just looked at each other.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Hell, even I've got scruples.”

“Could have fooled me,” I said bitterly, wondering whether to believe him.

“Hey!” His lips curled defensively. “Everybody hates criminal defense lawyers until they need one. This ain't the first time one of my own clients scared the shit outa me.” He pushed up from his chair so hard it bounced off the wall. “That broad,” he said, pointing his finger at me and pacing the room, “had a history, a track record of making bad things happen, and she had a helluva lot to lose.” He paused, arms folded. “If she could consider putting out a hit on her own kid, who's to say what else she coulda done? Coulda decided to whack us too. She'd be home free.”

I almost laughed. The man's cash cow had turned on him, baring its teeth. Was he claiming self-defense? “How was she,” I said pointedly, “when you left her that night?”

“Not bad.” He sat on the edge of his desk. “Good, in fact. She'd quit talking about the kid being a threat, seemed better than I'd seen her. Relaxed. Maybe it was Prozac, or she got her PMS under control, or something. Seemed like she'd adjusted. She was feeling better, even smiling. So was I. She was upbeat when I left.”

“You knew Rothman sold her out to R. J., told him where she was?”

“He did that?” Kagan's eyes narrowed in what appeared to be genuine surprise. “How much did the son-of-a-bitch get?”

“Ask him,” I said, shrugging. His indignation was probably only because Rothman beat him to it.

“You try to be a nice guy,” he said bitterly, “throw a little business somebody's way, and he gets greedy and blows things for you.”

“Yeah, life's a bitch,” I said, “and then you die. Who killed her, Kagan?”

He contemplated his expensive Italian leather shoes. “I'd say R. J. had a helluva motive; maybe Rothman wanted to shut her face. Who knows?”

 

How much of what he said was true? I wondered, as I drove back to the paper. Faced with the prospect of endless blackmail, Kaithlin may have threatened to expose him. The statute of limitations had lapsed long ago on any crime she might have committed. All she wanted was to protect her marriage, her family.

 

Repairmen in the lobby were working on the stalled elevator. The other worked fine, though my stomach flipflopped as I stepped inside.

Fred waited in the newsroom. “Just what exactly happened in the elevator last night?” He studied me quizzically.

“You don't want all the details, trust me,” I said.

“The fire department did thousands of dollars' worth of damage to the doors of the damn thing.”

“Put it on my expense account,” I said.

“Well, tell me one thing,” he demanded. “What were you and this pregnant woman doing in the newsroom after midnight?”

I explained.

“Are the mother and child in good health?”

“Fine.” I dug out my photos. “That damn elevator never should have been the only one in use overnight. Everybody's complained about it.”

He nodded solemnly as I showed off my favorite: Rooney Jr., his face in a pout, tiny fists clenched.

“We should send flowers,” he said, studying the photo.

“That would be nice,” I said. “Diapers would be better.”

 

Angel got flowers. I got a call from Zachary Marsh.

“Guess who I saw out there today?” he greeted me.

“Me?” I said, resigned.

“You've got it,” he chortled. “Is that a new boyfriend, the dead woman's husband, or both?”

“Not funny, Zack. You saw the poor guy.”

“I'm looking at him right now.”

“What?”

“I developed the pictures. The sequence with the roses is very touching. You look a bit tired, though.”

“I was, and I am. Had a rough night.”

“Tell me about it.” He sounded eager.

“I will,” I promised, and relaxed for a moment.

“You'd enjoy the story. It has a happy ending. But right now I have to work. I'll tell you all about it later.”

I rang Eunice and lied to her housekeeper. She put me right through after I identified myself as the paper's fashion editor.

“I thought this was Helen,” Eunice sputtered, annoyed that it was me.

“I'm sorry,” I lied again. “The person who answered must have misunderstood. I have a question about Kaithlin.”

“I—am—so—tired—of—her,” Eunice enunciated succinctly. “Even dead, she never goes away.”

“I can understand your feelings after all you've been through.”

“She's still all R. J. talks about. Now this dreadful scandal, him wanting to claim that woman's body.” Her voice became self-pitying. “It's going to be in the newspaper, isn't it?”

“I'm afraid so,” I said. “It's a matter of public record. I can imagine how embarrassed you are. You did everything a mother could do. You even tried to find her, to save your son, after Mr. Rothman, that detective, gave you the information that Kaithlin was alive in Miami.”

“That awful little man,” she hissed. “I never had to deal with people like him in my entire life.”

“He is sleazy,” I agreed. “What did you do after he told you where she was?”

“Well.” She hesitated. “Before making a fuss and looking the fool, I had to see for myself whether it was really Kaithlin. I didn't know if it was true or some scheme that horrible little man had cooked up with R. J. I thought she'd been dead all these years. So I went to the hotel where he claimed she was staying.”

“The day after you got the information?” I said.

“Correct. I sat in that lobby, all day long, just watching, to see if she was really there. I never even had lunch. Hardly went to the powder room. Just waited and watched.”

“Did you see her?”

She paused. “I caught a glimpse of someone I thought might be her, but only for a split second. Then she was gone. I couldn't be sure.”

“Did that person see you?”

“She might have. I'm not sure.”

She was the reason Kaithlin holed up in her room, I thought. The reason she had met with Kagan there that night.

“I returned in a day or two,” Eunice said, “with an old photo of Kaithlin that I'd managed to find. A hotel employee said she looked familiar but must have checked out.”

She had. By then, Kaithlin lay unclaimed at the morgue.

Eunice's halfhearted detective work suggested that she might have feared the information was accurate. Maybe she really didn't relish the prospect of R. J. coming home. Maybe she wouldn't mind sending him back.

“I know he's your son, and you love him,” I said gently. “But do you think he might have hired someone to kill her? Did he ask you to do something like that?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “The stupid fool is still obsessed by her. And he knows better than to ask me to become involved in anything so unsavory.”

 

A hearing into the legal tug-of-war over Kaithlin's corpse had been set for later in the week. I had nearly finished the story when Fitzgerald called.

“I've got somebody here who wants to talk to you,” he said, over the sound of music. The background noises were too loud and happy to be anywhere but a bar.

“Who?”

“Hey, kid.”

“Emery, what's up?”

“You ain't gonna believe this, kid. We're celebrating,” he said jubilantly. “The Jordan case.
Finito.
It's all wrapped up. You can't write nothing yet, you have to wait till we talk to the M.E. tomorrow. But the case? It's solved.”

“What do you mean, suicide? That's impossible.”

“Nope,” he said. “The FBI came through, God bless 'em. Their lab and ESDA, short for Electrostatic Detection Apparatus. Size of a fax machine. Amazing. They re-created what she wrote on that legal pad in the hotel room. Definitely a suicide note.”

“To whom?”

“The husband, Broussard. Who else?”

“But he never—”

“Evidently he ain't picking up his mail these days. Here, listen to this, kid. Hey, Dennis, hand me the file. Okay,” he said. “Get this.”

I took notes as he read.

“Darling Pres,

“When you read this I will be dead. My morning swim, my love, is to where the horizon meets the sky. I
won't be back. I don't know whether I'll be found or not but, rest assured, I am gone and at peace. I love you and the girls too much to burden you with ancient history. I tried to protect our life together, yet follow my conscience to atone in some way for past mistakes. Instead I made a far bigger mistake, one that has trapped me between my ugly past and uglier people. My life has come apart with no way out.

“I could never look in your face again, once you knew my story. I know the value you place on truth, and I couldn't bear to see you turn away. Here is one absolute truth: You were my final reprieve in a life gone wrong. Unfortunately, the past hounds us to our graves and beyond. Believe that I never intended to hurt anyone, especially you and the girls, the lights of my life. That's why this is going to your office, so it won't fall into the wrong little hands at home.

“We were so lucky! How many people ever share such a wondrous ten years? What a blessing that I found you when I did. You saved me. It was you and no other. Please don't hate me.

“Love forever,

“Shannon.”

“Now,” Emery said. “Does that, or does it not, sound like a suicide note?”

“But what about the medical examiner? The injuries he saw? He ruled it a homicide.”

“Some of them mighta been what I thought in the first place,” he said, “inflicted by sea life, from being dragged along the bottom by the tide; maybe some were even self-inflicted or she got banged up in a little
scuffle she mighta had with somebody. They were all minor.”

“She did quarrel with Kagan and maybe even Rothman,” I said doubtfully. “You know, that private detective?”

“See?” he crowed. “The chief M.E. is good, but the guys in that office, they've been wrong before. Ain't the first time, won't be the last. That's what I got to meet with him about. I'm gonna ask him, in light of this, to take another look at her and reclassify it as a suicide. This also explains why she cut the labels out of her clothes and stripped the tags off her luggage. Out-of-town suicides do that all the time to conceal their identities.”

“You're sure she wrote it?” I said doubtfully.

“Gonna have a handwriting expert take a look,” he said, “but the signature looks identical on the copies of her checks and whatnot that we got from Preston Broussard. And there's that line from her wedding ring. You know, that ‘you and no other' crap. That's her talking. She wrote it. I caught a break for a change. Maybe my luck is changing. God love the FBI. The only person happier than I am to get this monkey off my back is the chief. This brings down our murder rate and closes the case without a three-ring circus in court. Perfect.”

“It is pretty damn neat,” I agreed. It explained why Kaithlin didn't run after seeing Eunice lurking in the lobby. She'd given up. She didn't intend to run anymore. “You're sure?”

“Think I'd close it if I wasn't?”

“But Kagan was with her that last night,” I protested.
“He's the one who had dinner with her in her room. He just admitted it. Said she was in good spirits, better than she had been.”

“See, whad I tell ya? Makes sense,” he said. “Would-be suicides always feel better after making their final decision. Once they know what they're gonna do, they feel good about having some control over their lives again. That's why next of kin always has trouble accepting it. They're always saying, ‘But he was in such good spirits, finally got a grip,' then
boom!
Happens all the time.”

“Yeah,” I said uncertainly. “But what about Zachary Marsh? The witness? My God, Emery, he saw her struggling with somebody in the water.”

“That,” he said, “is a problem. But between you and me, we both know Mr. Zachary Marsh ain't no birdwatcher. He's a publicity hound. He lives for attention. If you remember, he never breathed a word about homicide till after the fact. He reads in the newspaper she got whacked; then, all of a sudden, he remembers: Oh, yeah, by the way, I seen somebody kill her. Saw the whole thing go down. Yeah. Sure.

“Interesting he didn't happen to mention none-a that when he called to report the body. He's like the freaks who crave attention so much they start confessing to every unsolved murder in town. You gotta take Mr. Marsh and his little personal crime watch with a grain-a salt.”

“What does Broussard say?”

“Didn't talk to him yet. Stopped by his hotel, but he was out. Just do me a favor and hold off; don't write
nothing until after I get squared away with the M.E. tomorrow. Meanwhile, me and Fitz are here at the Eighteen Hundred Club, celebrating. Care to join us?”

“Maybe later,” I said.

I went back to my story on the legal battle over the body and changed “unsolved murder” to “drowning.” Instead of homicide, I wrote that the death was “still under investigation by homicide detectives.”

Then I called. “Hey, Zack,” I said. “I need to talk to you about the Jordan case.”

He sounded pleased. “Didn't expect to hear from you again so soon. What happened last night?”

“The police say they've solved it.”

“They arrested the killer?”

“There's been no arrest,” I said. “Can I drop by? I'm about to leave. I can be there in thirty minutes.”

“Fine,” he said. “I can fix you a drink. You can tell me all about your rough night and I can show you the shots I took today. You and the husband.”

“Right.”

“I'll be ready,” he said. “Looking forward to it.”

It took me longer than I thought to clear the newsroom. Tubbs questioned my sudden qualifiers in the story. Then I had trouble moving my car out from under the building. Cuban exiles were protesting out front again, blocking traffic and waving signs. Apparently the latest
News
editorials weren't anti-Castro enough to suit them.

I am half Cuban myself. Castro killed my father. But at moments like this I wonder why these people are not in Havana to protest, block traffic, and wave their anti-
Castro signs. How does blocking Miami traffic help the cause? My father didn't thumb his nose from a safe distance. He fought on Cuban soil to free his country.

The streetlights blurred, as I blinked and rubbed my eyes in the misty winter evening. It had been a long day. I could do this tomorrow, I thought. But some inner compulsion drove me to follow through, to find the answer tonight. I was lucky to find a metered space on a side street. I hate valet parking, giving up my car to strange men eager to put their heavy feet on my gas pedal.

The mirrored elevator zipped me straight to the sixteenth floor. I stepped off, grinning again about little Rooney's arrival—about how two of us boarded an elevator and three got off.

I rang, then rang again. Marsh knew I was coming, I thought, annoyed. Impatient and weary, I rang a third time. A well-dressed middle-aged couple emerged from an apartment down the hall. They stared, without speaking, all the way to the elevator. They probably know Marsh, I thought, and are wondering why anybody in her right mind would visit the man. I pressed the doorbell again.

Why didn't I play Twenty Questions when he was on the phone? I'd be home by now. But if he lied to me, I wanted to look him in the eye. Maybe that's why he didn't answer. I rang again and was startled by a sudden buzz as the door clicked open.

My steps echoed on the tile floor.

“Hello?” I called.

“In here,” the metallic voice said, as before, “to your
right.” The lock on the second door disengaged with a click as I approached.

I entered his aerie, distracted again by my life-size image in living color on the big screen. My hair was a mess, my blouse wrinkled. I needed a good night's sleep. The wide windows exposed the dark sky and sea beyond. Inside were all the toys, electronic equipment, the slight smell of antiseptic on the air, and something else, an unpleasant yet familiar odor that I couldn't quite place.

His wheelchair faced the windows and the horizon as usual.

“Sorry I'm late,” I explained. “Cuban protestors are tying up traffic around the paper again.”

He kept his back to me. Pouting, I presumed, because I'd kept him waiting.

“I need to talk to you about the day Kaithlin Jordan died.”

He mumbled something. It sounded odd. I didn't understand his words.

“What?” I stepped toward him as his wheelchair spun around with a sudden whine of the motor.

I gasped. Was I hallucinating?

“Surprised?” he said softly.

The man in the wheelchair was Preston Broussard.