Fresh Kills (24 page)

I sat down hard on the mission rocker.

Scott was dead. And had been for several days.

It was another brick in the case I was building against Doc. I had my eye on Scott for one of the burglaries of Doc's office, with Jerry penciled in for the other one, which meant that Scott knew Amber was blackmailing the good doctor. So in order to get free, Doc had to kill both Amber and Scott.

“Could I speak to Artie Bloom, please?” I asked, trying to sound like a lawyer instead of an outraged citizen who wanted the boy reporter's head on a plate.

“Who may I say is—”

“My name is Cassandra Jameson,” I cut in, “and I need to talk to Mr. Bloom about a breaking story.”

She took my number and promised to beep Artie. Less than two minutes later, the phone rang.

“I take it you saw the news last night,” he began. “All the time we were wondering if Scott grabbed the kid and took off, he was decomposing. I hear the body was a real bloated mess, looked like a zeppelin.”

“Charming word picture, Bloom,” I said. “But that's not why I called.” I explained my theory about Doc, gratified to hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. The boy reporter was impressed, no doubt about it.

“Counselor, I can't run any of this,” he said at last. “My paper isn't going to let me libel a guy like Doc Scanlon without a hell of a lot more than speculation. And that's all you've got here, spec—”

“What time did Scott die?” I cut in. “What did the cops say about the car that hit him? Did they examine the motorcycle yet? What's the cause of—”

A long, heartfelt sigh greeted my questions. “Aronson said the cycle was struck from behind by a vehicle with a high bumper, probably a four-wheel drive. One of those yuppie Jeeps.”

I digested this; so much for Betsy's silver car as the murder weapon.

“Does Doc own a four-wheel?”

Another snort. “A minute ago you had him in the silver car picking up Amber. Now you want him in the four-wheel ramming Scott. You can't have it both ways.”

“Why not? The cops don't have an exact time of death for either Amber or Scott. Why couldn't Doc borrow his ex-wife's car, pick up Amber, take her to the swamp and kill her, then use his own car to run Scott off the road?”

“Why? Why change cars? And how does he know where to find Scott? What does he do, look in his crystal ball and sees Scott zooming along Victory on his cycle?”

“Maybe Scott went home to look for Amber,” I improvised. “He races around the house, but she's not there. So he leaves, but by now Doc's killed Amber. Doc's in the wildlife refuge parking lot, which fronts Travis Avenue, remember, when he sees the motorcycle racing by; he jumps in his car—”

“Aha,” Artie said, as he gloated. “Which car? The silver one or the four-wheel?”

“Aha yourself,” I shot back, inspiration fueling me, “he's got both cars there. He brought his own four-wheel to the parking lot, borrowed Betsy's car in case anyone saw him pick Amber up, and now he jumps into his own car, leaving hers in the lot. After he kills Scott, he comes back, moves his wife's car back to the street near her house, and drives home in his own four-wheel, which you haven't admitted he owns yet, but he must or you wouldn't have let me—”

Artie sighed. “It's a Trooper,” he admitted. “But why does Amber get into the car with him in the first place?”

“That one's easy, Bloom. Amber's cashing in all her chips. She's ready to ditch Scott and take Baby Adam on the road, but before she goes, she wants every penny she can get. So she sets up a meeting with Jerry to sell him information about his dead kid, and she decides to take one last whack at Doc Scanlon. Only she never makes the meeting with Jerry because Doc's more desperate than she realizes.”

“The scary thing is this makes sense,” Artie said, his tone glum. “I only wish I could print it.”

He hung up. I stared at the phone for a minute, realizing too late that I hadn't raked Artie over the coals for the way he'd treated me in print.

The irony of it shot a quick jolt of anger through me. He could hint that I was a baby-seller without a qualm, but he didn't dare make an allegation like that against Saint Christopher of the Golden Cradle without proof.

It was up to me to supply that proof.

He smiled that disarming smile, the one that would have had me making a quick mirror check of my makeup if I'd met him in a bar. He gave a shrug and made a deprecating movement with his mouth.

“You got me,” he said. His blue eyes twinkled at me from under slightly lowered lids. Bedroom eyes. Eyes that seduced and promised, eyes that wanted my understanding.

Eyes I didn't trust for a minute.

“You ask me if I deliberately went into Mount Loretto looking for pregnant girls,” he repeated. “You wonder if I asked my patients at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility about pregnant girlfriends. The answer is—absolutely.” He nodded firmly. He opened his mouth to continue, then stopped as if working on the most effective way to phrase his next words.

“I believe in life,” he said simply. “Call me a right-to-lifer, I don't mind. I have never stopped a woman from getting an abortion if that's what she wants,” he explained, locking his blue eyes onto my face. “But if I can offer her an alternative, if I can help her find a home for her baby, I will. I plead guilty, Ms. Jameson. I go where the babies are.”

I had come prepared for bluster. I had come expecting to hear a long defense of Doc Scanlon's pro bono work and a heated denial that he used it to round up pregnant teenagers. Instead, he'd copped a plea right off the bat. It left me with at least thirty questions I didn't have to ask.

I hastily shuffled through my mental index cards and decided to up the ante. He was a charmer; how would he deal with outright rudeness?

“You go where the white babies are.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I've never denied my services to any woman on account of race,” he began. “I have programs for—”

“I'm sure you do,” I said, waving away his disclaimer, “but all the girls at the group home were white. Whatever services you give the others, it's the white babies who get placed in the best homes.”

He sighed and looked over at the wall where his diplomas hung, framed in shiny dark wood. The other three walls were covered with collages of babies and smiling mothers. There was no way to tell whether the mothers holding infants were birth mothers or adoptive parents. Which might have been the point.

“I can't change the world, Ms. Jameson,” he said at last. “I wish, I truly wish, that every child regardless of race or age or physical condition could find a loving home. But should I deny a couple a child because they prefer to adopt within their own race? Should I refuse to help a birth mother make the most difficult decision of her life because she's white?”

This was getting me nowhere. I'd come to Doc's Victory Boulevard office in hopes of confronting him with enough evidence that he'd break down and admit something, anything I could take to the police. So far, the advantage was all on his side; he now knew I was suspicious, but he also knew I didn't have any concrete proof.

“You told Lisa to lie about the father of her child,” I said. “You helped her bury the real father in a bunch of names so the adoptive parents wouldn't realize Lisa's boyfriend was doing time. Do you do that kind of thing often?”

His smile was full of Irish charm and his blue eyes twinkled as he replied, “Counselor, I don't draft court papers. The lawyers do.”

I gave him a steady look, but a sour taste formed in my mouth as I realized where he was going with this. “Which means that if any of this comes to light, you'll blame it all on Marla Hennessey,” I translated.

Good cross-examination requires keeping the witness off-balance. “What about Amber's first child? The one who may or may not have died?”

Doc Scanlon's jolly Saint Nick face assumed a mask of solemnity. “A tragic loss,” he said. “The child's father has never accepted his baby's death. At first, he blamed me, threatened to sue for malpractice.”

“I know,” I said, nodding agreement. “But now he's convinced the baby never died, that you and Amber put it up for adoption.”

“Bereaved parents can convince themselves of many things,” Doc said. The tiny smile that played around his rosebud mouth, half-hidden by his beard, told me I was getting nowhere fast. He could play this game all afternoon.

“Where were you the night Amber died?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but I cut him off. “And don't tell me you were home watching television. You were seen at the mall.” I stared straight into the guileless blue eyes, hoping he wouldn't see the bluff.

“I doubt that, Ms. Jameson,” he replied genially. “Since I wasn't there. And neither was my Trooper,” he added, his eyes glinting with pleasure at the shock on my face.

“You'll be interested to know that once I heard how Amber's husband died, I insisted the police examine my car. They found no trace of damage, no evidence whatsoever that it was involved in an accident. So it couldn't have been the vehicle that struck the young man's motorcycle and forced him off the road.”

Later that night, I wondered if Scott could have gone off the road into the reeds by accident. Sheer coincidence. Nothing whatever to do with the fact that his wife lay underwater not two miles away, in another part of the same wetland preserve. Just another careless motorcyclist riding without a helmet.

“Christ, it was hit-and-run at least, Counselor,” Artie Bloom said in a tone of disgust. I'd reached Artie at his home number; his paper went to bed at eight-thirty, so he'd already filed whatever story he'd written on the case. “Aronson said there was a hell of a dent on the back fender of that cycle. Somebody in a four-wheel or a pickup truck clipped him pretty—”

“Pickup? You didn't say pickup before,” I said accusingly. “You said four-wheel drive.”

“Something with a high bumper,” Artie clarified. “Could have been a Jeep or a van or a light pickup truck. And, in case you were wondering, Josh Greenspan agreed to let the cops examine his Bronco. No chipped paint, no damage.”

“Does Califana's pizza parlor deliver?” I mused aloud. “What kind of—”

“Yeah, like he's gonna deliver pizzas in a big red pickup truck. This is Staten Island, not fucking Texas.”

“Which means?”

“Which means he's got a bicycle with a thermal pizza box on the handlebars. I can't see that running Scott Wylie off the ass end of Victory Boulevard, can you?”

I could not. I hung up the phone and looked at the clock. Eleven
P.M.
Not too late to call an old law school friend, I decided.

I took a leaf from Marla's book of bluntness and began, “Doc Scanlon says he's not responsible for what lawyers put in affidavits. Which means if push comes to shove, he'll roll over on you so fast—”

“I suppose this colorful language is part of being a criminal lawyer?” Marla interrupted, her tone a meld of sweetness and suspicion. “One problem with being a criminal lawyer is that you tend to see crime everywhere. There's nothing in my affidavits for me to worry about.”

“Isn't there?” I countered. “How many of your birth fathers are in jail? How many birth mothers are wards of the State? How many—”

“Cass, you're blowing smoke,” Marla cut in. By the way she exhaled, I figured, so was she. I could almost see a blue stream coming out of her disdainful mouth.

The hell of it was, she was right. I was trying to get her to roll over on Doc, to tell me something that would incriminate him, would put him square in the middle of something really illegal, not just borderline sleazy. I was certain there was a lot more iceberg below the tip I'd uncovered.

I switched tactics, pulling out a weapon I probably should have used earlier.

“They're your clients, Marla,” I reminded her. “How can you let him get away with it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Josh and Ellie. If Doc killed Amber, then he knows where Adam is.”

Silence on the other end of the line. A pregnant silence, punctuated by the long, drawn-in breath of a smoker pulling the last puff out of a cigarette.

“Go on.”

“He's got the connections to place Adam anywhere in the country,” I said. “While the cops were grid-searching the swamp, he probably had Baby Adam on a plane to Tennessee, in the arms of a grateful—”

“Cass,” Marla interrupted, “I know for a fact Doc hasn't made any placements since Amber's death. None. No local, no interstate. Nada, zip, none. So if that's your big insight into Amber's death, you can forget it.”

She clicked the receiver down on her end of the line, leaving me holding a dead telephone.

It was spring; the night was cool and fresh and laden with tomorrow's rain. As I went to bed, a line from e.e. cummings floated into my half-asleep brain:

all ignorance toboggans into know

and trudges up to ignorance again:

I hoped to hell my ignorance started tobogganing into know sometime soon.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

“That lunch special will kill you dead,” Dorinda remarked. She refilled my iced coffee glass and gave my boneless spareribs over pork fried rice a disapproving stare. Normally she didn't allow customers to bring in food from other restaurants, but since I held the mortgage on the brownstone that housed the Morning Glory, she made the occasional exception.

“Look,” I said, wiping grease from my lips with a blue napkin, “every once in a while a girl needs cholesterol. It's a fact of biology.”

“If you're trying to blame this on menopause,” she said with a toss of her head, “I have some wonderful herbal remedies you ought to look into. Black cohosh is—”