Legally Dead (22 page)

Venturi was furious that anyone could turn such savagery on their own child or sibling. He hated himself for what he said next.

“Has she filed a police report? Did she apply for a restraining order?”

Keri blinked in disbelief, tears welling. “Yes, to both.” She sat taller in her chair. “But as you are aware, they are paper. Nothing more.”

She gave him a baleful look. They all knew that women with restraining orders die violent deaths every day.

“Too bad Danny isn't here,” Keri whispered wistfully.

Is she implying that Danny has a bigger heart?
Venturi wondered.
That he's man enough to right a wrong without hesitating?

Even Victoria watched him with troubled eyes, her brow furrowed.

“I'll give this some thought and call you later,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Thank you for listening,” Keri said coldly.

For the first time Maheen looked up and made eye contact with Venturi and then Victoria.

“I am an American,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I love America. All I ask is to live and work like an American. To live…” She chewed her puckered lip and averted her eyes again.

Before leaving, Keri turned and stared at Venturi in bewilderment. Then the two women disappeared into the dark. He let them go, watching the car's taillights vanish into the night.

“Do you think they're safe?” Victoria asked in alarm. “How can we let that girl go back to her apartment?”

He knew she believed the girl would be safe there with them.

“So scarred, so young, with no one,” she said. She cocked her head, trying to read his expression. “What's wrong, Mikey?”

“I've got a lot on my mind.”

She waited for him to explain. He didn't.

He spent a long and sleepless night, trying to block the image of the girl's scars, imagining what the acid had done to her breasts. He didn't call Keri later, though he wanted to. He wondered how much Dr. Gordon Howard could help Maheen and whether he'd accept the challenge. He knew this was no time to even entertain such thoughts. How could he? If he went down, his troubles could take them all down with him. He had to distance himself from the people he cared for the most.

He thought about former colleagues in the Marshals Service who hated him for wanting to do the right thing. About Gino Salvi behind bars, where he belonged. And the angry, anguished faces of parents whose little girls lay in grass-covered graves, where they did not belong.

How did the program fail? Again? If old enemies hunted down the newly murdered witnesses, how? Did the victims or their family members break the rules by contacting friends or relatives? Was the fatal factor the dead mens' reversion to criminal behavior? And what were the odds that both would screw up and pay for it so swiftly?

In the process of making amends he had endangered those he loved along with the people they'd helped. He cursed his life. He cursed his luck.

He checked the clock again and again. Time dragged by in excruciating slow motion. By 5:45 a.m. he could wait no longer. He heated the coffee from the night before, drank a cup of the bitter brew so hot that it burned his throat, walked barefoot to the war room, and picked up the phone. He sat alone in the dark listening to the dial tone, wondering if he was doing the right thing, then closed his eyes and punched in the numbers.

She answered on the third ring.

“Hey, Ruthie. You awake?”

“I was up. Is it really you?” she whispered, shocked to hear his voice. “Where are you?”

“Still out of town. You alone?”

“What do you think? My life hasn't changed that much, unfortunately. I almost didn't pick up the phone. Caller ID said ‘No Info.' I figured it was a wrong number.”

“Glad you answered. It's good to hear your voice.”

“Likewise. I've missed you a lot. You've obviously heard the news,” she said. “What a mess. The office is in complete turmoil.”

She sounded like the old Ruth Ann, the only real friend he had back in the office.

“Has my name come up?”

Her laugh was sardonic. “I'm surprised your ears haven't burst into flames.”

“Do they have any idea what the hell happened? How could DelVecchio and Conte be hit so close together?”

There was a long pause.

“Omigod. Then you
haven't
heard.”

He froze, dreading what was to come, praying to be wrong.

But he was right.

“You don't know what happened last night?”

“No.” His voice sounded thin, like that of a newly orphaned child about to receive more bad news.

“Another witness was murdered.”

“Not one of mine?” His prayer went unanswered.

“Carmine Cuccinelli. In Mobile, Alabama.”

“I know where he was,” Venturi snapped in frustration. “I put him there three years ago. What the hell happened?”

“It was savage, Michael. Unspeakable.”

“Good God! Who's killing them?”

“Nobody knows, but they really want to talk to you. Since DelVecchio was killed, thrown off that bridge in Minneapolis, Salvi's been writing and calling from jail in New Hampshire. He insists he was framed by the same person who hit DelVecchio. Somehow he heard about the murder right away. Apparently they grew up in the same neighborhood. He called with another awful tirade yesterday. Unfortunately, I picked up the phone. Nobody else in the office will talk to him. Salvi hates you, Michael. He blames you for his nephew's death and his own arrest. His defense lawyer has put you on the witness list for his trial. He's pleading not guilty.”

“Sure, he'll probably claim I killed the little girls and planted their bodies to frame him.”

“It's all so crazy,” she said. “You think he still might still have enough clout to orchestrate these hits from jail?”

“No way,” he said. “Given his reputation as a rat and now as a child predator, he probably doesn't know anybody who wouldn't like to kill him. And how would he know their new names and locations? One, maybe. But all three? Does anybody up there have a credible theory, or even a clue?”

“No, but they sure want to talk to you. Their world is about to implode. I'll be surprised if any of us have jobs by the time it's over. Brian Ross, that investigative TV news reporter, found out that DelVecchio was in WITSEC and is about to air a story. To make matters worse, Conte's widow is mad as hell. She's agreed to a television interview condemning WITSEC for failing to keep its promises and protect her husband.”

“Damn. Anybody try to talk her out of it?”

“Are you kidding? An entire team, agents and prosecutors, including Archbold, were practically on their knees, promised her a new location, a new identity, the goddamn moon. But she wants none of it. She's totally pissed off. Right after her husband's murder she gave the local homicide detectives his real name and the contact number of his control person in the Marshals Service. They were told that no one in the U.S. Marshals Service had ever heard of her or her husband. They went round and round. She asked for you first, by the way. Said you were the only federal agent her husband trusted.”

“What did they tell her?”

“That you were no longer with the service. By the way, her interview is with
Sixty Minutes
.”

“Holy shit.”

“The boss urgently wants his people to have face time with you, Michael. If I were you, I'd make the first move. If you reach out to them, you can keep a little control over the situation. If you don't, it's just a matter of time before they come a'knocking. They know you went to Florida.”

He sighed. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“I know you tried to do the right thing, Michael. I've always thought a lot of you. Still do. You were the best they had. If I need to, is there a way to reach you?”

“I'll call you,” he said.

“Take care. This is more serious than I can tell you. Be careful what you say. And watch your back.”

The echo of those words resonated as he watched the news at seven a.m.

By ten a.m., he'd booked a flight to Atlanta and reserved a room at a hotel on Peachtree Drive. Then he called the U.S. Marshals office in New York City and asked for the chief.

“Michael Venturi here,” he said crisply.

His response was a brief silence. The chief was obviously signaling someone else that he was on the line.

“Venturi! Good to hear from you,” he boomed too heartily. “Bet I know what prompted this call.”

“Right, I've been out of the loop. Fishing, boating, taking it easy. Just heard the news.”

“I'm surprised it escaped you, the way you study newspapers so carefully.”

Venturi ignored the comment. “It's all hard to believe. Any idea who's responsible?”

“We thought we might ask you.”

“Haven't heard a thing since you took my badge. Last I knew, when I was still on the job, those guys showed no signs of problems. Obviously a lot has gone down since. Because I knew them and their families, I thought I'd offer to help if you think there's anything I can do.”

“Your name did come up because, as you say, you knew them so well. Nice of you to call, Venturi. Frankly, I'm surprised you did. You seemed so disillusioned with the job, even bitter, the last time we spoke.”

Venturi wondered who else was listening, how many had gathered around the chief's desk.

“Nothing that a good vacation and some R and R couldn't cure,” he said evenly.

“We can send some people down to meet with you tomorrow. If you can just give me your—”

“Sure,” Venturi said affably. “But I'm about to leave town on business. Maybe,” he added brightly, almost as an afterthought, “I can meet your guys halfway, in Atlanta.”

It had to be on neutral turf, far from home, his personal life, and those close to him.

The chief was hot for it. “Let's say tomorrow, late morning, at the U.S. Attorney's office in Atlanta.”

“Whoops, that interferes with my business meetings,” Venturi lied, as though consulting his calendar. “How about my hotel? I can call your guys when I see a break in my schedule.”

Had to be neutral turf.

“The U.S. Attorney's office is more convenient,” the chief replied brusquely.

He'd be crazy to walk into that lion's den alone.

“Well, maybe it's better to wait until next week.” Venturi sounded disappointed. “Hey, by then it may not be necessary. They must be working around the clock, running down leads, checking out suspects. They might wrap it up by then.”

“What hotel? Where are you staying in Atlanta?” the chief demanded. Obviously there was little chance that the murders would be swiftly solved.

Venturi gave the chief his hotel information. “Have you tightened security and reached out to other witnesses?” he asked.

He heard the smile in his former boss's words.

“Sorry, Michael. You, of all people, know we don't divulge sensitive information to the public.”

So now I'm the public,
he thought after hanging up. He quickly punched in another number.

“Clay? I know it's short notice, but I need a polygraph done ASAP. Strictly confidential. An emergency. You available?”

“I'll make the time.”

“I'm on the way.”

“Is Danny coming?”

“No.”

“So it's just you and the subject?”

“No. Just me.”

After the lie detector test in Clay's office, Venturi went home to pack. He plugged a TravelDrive into his computer and backed everything up. He locked the laptop into the war room's floor safe, secured the hurricane shutters, checked the alarm system, and left a note for Victoria. He said he'd be away for a few days.

He carried his bag out to the car and cursed softly under his breath. A car had pulled up to his gate.

Keri stopped her car halfway up the driveway, stepped out, and stood watching him. Hugging her elbows, face solemn, she looked small and forlorn in sneakers and green scrubs, a breeze lifting her hair. He bit his lip, stowed his bag, slammed the trunk lid too vigorously, and turned to face her.

She hadn't moved. He sighed and tried to smile as he walked toward her, regretting bitterly that he had not moved faster. Had he made his getaway five minutes ago, he'd be gone with no questions, awkward explanations, or recriminations.

He couldn't tell her the truth. Her life focused on her job. He didn't want her distracted by fears that her career, or he, might be in jeopardy. He hated lying.

He hated the look in her eyes even more.

They held a gaze for several beats. He looked busted. She looked hurt.

“You're leaving town?” she said, speaking first. “Without saying good-bye. How long? Is it for good?” Her lower lip quivered.

“No, it's not for good.”

“Going to the airport? Taking a tour? Embarking on a cruise?” she asked lightly. “What about Maheen?”

“I have something to take care of first.”

“What?”

“It's personal, and complicated.”

“Whatever happened to no secrets? Or is it that I am not smart enough to understand something complicated? Or that I'm not a big girl who can handle it?”

He sighed. “You are the smartest, coolest, and most beautiful woman I know. I wanted to call you last night,” he said earnestly. “I needed to…but couldn't. I can't expose you, or anyone else, to problems you shouldn't be involved in.”

“I'm already involved.” She raised her stubborn chin. “I volunteered.”

He worried about the time but avoided checking his watch. Doing so wouldn't score him any points. In his head, he could hear the relentless
tick, tick, tick
of the
60 Minutes
clock. Traffic would be a bitch. Detours and major construction stood between him and the airport.

“Let's sit down,” he said, and stroked her hair lightly. They sat on a decorative stone bench Victoria had installed between the flower and the vegetable gardens she had planted. He tried to behave with Keri as though he had all the time in a world that revolved around her.

“I've got baggage. Some of it involves the reason I left the Marshals Service.”

She frowned, her eyes curious. “What sort of baggage?”

He sighed, as though the story was too long, too complex, and too painful to tell.

“I'm the reason two little girls were murdered by a sexual predator. They were eight and nine years old.”

She recoiled, then stared as he told her about Salvi.

“How could you?” she muttered eventually. “When you knew who and what he was?”

His explanations sounded lame even to him.

Though they sat beside each other, it was as though they were a thousand miles apart.

“I'm afraid for you,” he concluded, head down, elbows on his knees. “And for Vicki, for Danny, for everybody who helped us, and for the people we took to the airport. This mess is mine. I own it. It's all my fault. Now I have to figure out what broke and how to fix it.”

He looked up and was startled. He saw no sympathy in her eyes.

“How can you live with yourself?” she demanded. She didn't wait for an answer. He heard her ragged sob as she sprang to her feet and nearly ran to her car. He realized she'd heard nothing beyond two little girls murdered. Nothing else he said mattered.

He did not go after her.

She threw her convertible into reverse and backed out at a high rate of speed. He wondered where Maheen was, if she was safe, as Keri's car fishtailed in the dust. She veered onto the main road and burned rubber.

He watched her speed away and wondered if it was for good.

He called Victoria from the airport to say he'd left a note, without indicating its brevity. He dodged her questions with a lie, saying his plane was boarding.

It wasn't.

He took a taxi from Atlanta's airport to his hotel. The young desk clerk scrutinized him surreptitiously as he registered. Moments later, when he glanced back from the lobby elevator, the clerk was on the telephone.

From his room Venturi ordered dinner. While waiting for the meal, he swept the room for a camera or a listening device. He found it in a fire alarm sprinkler head in the ceiling. He didn't tamper with it or ask to change rooms.

He knew the three phones, on the bedside table and the desk, and in the bathroom, would be monitored from the hotel's telephone room.

He turned to the business pages of the Atlanta newspapers he'd picked up at the airport and began to make local calls on his prepaid cell phone using the names and titles of people whose names appeared in articles. He spoke to them about various business deals and haggled over investments, franchises, options, and real estate. He confirmed meetings, dropped first names, last names, full names, and various interchangeable combinations. He wheeled and dealed, energized and animated, doing business, making money, having fun.

The conversations were all one-sided. There was never a voice at the other end. His cell phone was turned off. But he improvised enough fascinating dialogue to keep investigators busy for days checking it out.

“I'd like my participation kept strictly confidential,” he'd say during each call. “As you know, I prefer to stay low-profile when it comes to business.”

He didn't care whom the FBI annoyed, interviewed, called, or questioned as long as they didn't approach anyone near and dear to him.

After tipping the server well, he ate prime rib and a caesar salad, and drank half a carafe of excellent wine.

Later he stretched out on the soft bed, sipped scotch from the minibar, and “called” an imaginary lady friend in Atlanta. He announced his arrival and arranged a romantic rendezvous for the following evening. He chatted with her about mutual acquaintances, dropped more names, a few fictional, others straight out of the newspaper, and mentioned a number of events he'd recently attended. None of it was true. But it gave the FBI lots of people, places, and facts to sift through. Enough, he hoped, to keep them too busy to focus on the real people in his life.

His “conversation” with the lady evolved into playful sex talk. He grinned, imagining the investigators, who could only hear his side of their intimate discussion, creatively filling in the gaps as he reacted to the woman's propositions and racy remarks.

He ended the marathon phone session at one a.m., leaving hours of conversations to transcribe, dozens of people to interview.

He double-locked the door and retired. He hadn't slept the night before and needed to be alert for what was to come. Still, he stared sleepless at the ceiling, acutely aware of what failure would bring. The FBI would probe his bank records, personal life, close associates, and recent activities. That scrutiny would prompt questions he dared not answer. Images from the lonely graveyard of his past filled the night around him. The little girls. Dead. Salvi's nephew in camouflage. Dead. Every man he killed in the military, faces he thought he'd forgotten. They all materialized like an angry mob.

He replaced their faces with the people he had to protect. Danny asleep beside his wife, their baby in her belly, their young children dreaming nearby. At least he imagined Danny asleep beside his wife. No one was ever sure where Danny really was or what he was doing. The only certainty was that Danny would always cover his back.

He thought of Keri curled up in her bed, beeper nearby, or masked in a sterile environment as she delivered a small and helpless new life into a dangerous and unpredictable world. And Victoria, safe and asleep in her room at his home, her metal and plastic prosthesis resting against the headboard. And Scout, on his dog bed, legs jerking as he ran free through some canine field of dreams.

Alone in his strange bed, in a strange room, Venturi endured the night terrors that slither into guilty minds like snakes in the dark. He knew, to his infinite regret, that they would all be safer had he never intruded into their lives.

Madison appeared as always, along with those recent brief acquaintances, the legally dead, still alive and breathing out there in the world.

He wished Keri was beside him, his thoughts strictly carnal. Time in her arms would bring him the peace he needed for sleep.

Exhausted at dawn, he made an effort to sound cheerful when he called room service. He ordered a hearty breakfast despite his lack of appetite. He projected the image of an innocent and successful, happy man with a healthy lust for food, drink, and sex, not necessarily in that order, a man at the top of his game in both life and business. He put on a good act.

The bright eyes of the young woman who delivered breakfast roved his room as she arranged the meal on his desk. Hotel employee? he wondered. Or rookie agent on her first undercover mission? Hoping she was FBI, he tipped her lavishly in cash, asked her first name, then called her sweetheart instead. He did everything but pinch her backside, hoping she'd walk out of his room with serious questions about her career choice.

Later, whenever the food service cart rumbled down the hall, he'd peer through the peephole. Someone else was always pushing it. He didn't see her again.

He picked at the food: three eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, hash browns, a side of grits, a tall orange juice, a pot of fresh coffee, and a small wicker basket piled high with fragrant sweet rolls and miniature Danish. He wished Scout, whose appetite never flagged, was there to enjoy it.

Without activating his cell phone he continued to make fake business calls. He even used a second cell, brought for that purpose, to call the first so that his phone rang constantly.

“No way!” he informed one caller. “I want no part of that. Not on your life.”

He paused, as though listening.

“Screw profits!” he boomed indignantly. “It's a goddamn federal offense. Run it by your lawyer. He'll tell you. Way too risky. Count me out.”

He canceled their fictional meeting, then used the hotel room phone to call the number the chief had given him. He was not surprised to hear Archbold, the prosecutor, answer. The lawyer tried without success to persuade him to meet them at the U.S. Attorney's office.

When Archbold reluctantly agreed to come to the hotel, Venturi said his room was much too uncomfortable, too small, and hadn't been made up yet. He offered to meet instead in the hotel's main dining room in an hour.

The more public the better.

Not sure what the FBI could set up in an hour, he hung the Do Not Disturb sign on his door and went downstairs to explore.

He found a conversation pit with potted palms, hanging plants, and big comfortable armchairs around a coffee table in a secluded atrium off the lobby.

He rearranged the chairs, then returned to his room. Aware that the FBI would examine whatever he'd left there, he selected random numbers from the Atlanta phone book and scribbled them on a pad next to the bedside phone. He took his mostly uneaten breakfast and left the tray outside a suite down the hall around the corner and past the ice machine. They didn't need to know that their imminent arrival had killed his appetite. He left a laptop he'd brought with him, snatched up his briefcase, and took the elevator down to the dining room, stopping only once, to dispose of his newspapers in a receptacle two floors below.

The dining room staff was busy setting up long banquet tables, a microphone, and a podium during the lull before lunch. When Venturi said he expected some colleagues shortly, the maître d' quickly pointed out “a quiet table” near a bay window visible from the street. Asked about the banquet tables, he said they were for today's Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Perfect.

Venturi ordered coffee, took a few sips, then saw Archbold arrive with two strangers. He went to greet them, pumped Archbold's hand, and was introduced to Snow, a boyish-looking FBI agent in his thirties, and Harrington, a veteran in his fifties.

“Sorry.” Venturi frowned as though annoyed. “We can't stay here. The Chamber of Commerce is about to descend. But I have a place where we can talk in private.”

Archbold and the agents exchanged glances, then all three trailed him across the lobby, past the elevator bank, to the secluded nook near the atrium. Venturi slid into the only chair shaded by greenery from the sun streaming through a skylight.

“We can have coffee brought out,” he said, taking secret pleasure in the way they sank into the soft cushy armchairs that made it impossible to maintain their posture and authoritative demeanor. They declined coffee. They wanted answers.

Archbold kicked it off, mildly asking how and what Venturi was doing these days. The older agent fumbled for his shades. The other squinted into the blazing sun.

The money made Venturi's answers easier. His former colleagues were aware of Madison's death along with their unborn child and the cash settlement that eventually followed. They were also aware of his spartan lifestyle. He never lived above the income his paycheck provided.