Penance (32 page)

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” C. C. insisted.

“No, of course not,” I said.

“I didn’t!”

Marion sighed audibly. “You have the tape, don’t you, Taylor? That’s why you know so much.”

I shrugged.

“So, now what?”

I’d shown them the stick, now it was time to give them a good whiff of the carrot. “No one needs to know about the tape or what C. C. and her friends intended to do with it. You can still pull off the election.”

Marion eyed me suspiciously. Then her gaze fell on the envelope. “How much?” she asked.

“You never listen, do you? I don’t want your damn money.”

“What then?”

“I want C. C.’s testimony …”

“Testimony?” Marion repeated.

“And let me tell you what happens if I don’t get it.”

“What are you talking about?” C. C. asked.

“I’ll see that she’s charged as an accessory to murder,” I told Marion.

“What?” C. C. screamed, panic in her voice.

I turned on her. “You didn’t kill Thoreau. We know that. You were in Mankato at the time he died. But you know who did. And a pretty good case can be made that you sanctioned the killing.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Thoreau was trying to blackmail you, wasn’t he? That’s what you told me. That’s what you told Marion.”

“But he wasn’t…”

“To protect your political career you had someone kill him.”

“No, I didn’t…”

“Sure, that’s what you say now.”

“But you said yourself…”

“Did I?”

C. C.’s eyes grew wide with confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said at last, shaking her head.

“I understand,” Marion said from her seat behind the desk. We both turned to her. “I’m a lawyer, remember?”

“I forget,” I told her.

“Sometimes I do, too.”

“What?” C. C. said again.

“He wants you to roll over on your friend.”

“Roll over?”

“He wants you to testify against your friend. He won’t hurt us if you give up your friend.”

“What friend?”

I did not answer. Neither did Marion. Instead we waited while C. C. worked it over in her brain. It took a long time. Finally, she said, “Meghan did it. Yeah, Meghan Chakolis. She was always jealous of me, even when we were in school, because the boys liked me best. She must have thought I was after her husband. I wasn’t. I didn’t want him. I didn’t care about Dennis. But everybody, they think because I’m beautiful I want all their boyfriends …”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Carol Catherine,” Meghan Chakolis said from the doorway. I glanced at my watch. She was early.

C. C. looked away when Meghan entered the room. “How long were you listening?” she asked.

“Long enough,” Meghan said.

“I didn’t mean to say
you
killed Dennis.”

“Oh, Carol Catherine,” Meghan muttered, not surprised at all.

I moved over to the desk and sat on the corner. “So, what’s your side of the story?” I asked Meghan.

“I’m pretty sure Joseph Sherman did it.”

“Why?”

“He figured out that Dennis was the one who killed Terrance Friedlander with his car.”

“No. Sherman didn’t even know Thoreau existed until I told him. And that was four days after Thoreau was dead.”

Meghan didn’t answer.

“My God, my God, my—Oh my God, you killed Terry,” Marion muttered from behind the desk.

“We didn’t. Dennis did. It wasn’t our idea,” C. C. assured her.

“No, we knew we were going to lose the election,” Meghan added. “We knew we were going to lose when we started.”

“We wanted to lose,” C. C. said.

“Dennis thought he was doing us a favor.”

“That’s why you threw him out,” I said to Meghan.

“I thought it would be best if he disappeared for a while until everything blew over.”

“Until Sherman was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.”

“Sherman was a drunk,” Meghan said contemptuously. “Who cared about Sherman?”

“Oh my God,” Marion muttered again.

“Don’t be so melodramatic, Marion,” Meghan snapped. “Taylor can’t prove anything. So what if the tape thing didn’t work out? Carol Catherine can still be governor. You can still run the state.”

“Maybe they can,” I agreed. “But you? You are going to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

Meghan smiled. “Give it up, Taylor. You have nothing,” she insisted.

“I have motive—your jealousy of your ex-husband and your best friend. A motive your friend will testify to, won’t you C. C?”

C. C. said nothing.

“And I have opportunity. You already told me you were with Thoreau the night he was killed, testified that you had sex with him. Semen, hair samples, fingerprints … forensics will put you in the house right at the time Thoreau was killed.

“Something else,” I added. “You’re about to become part of the bureaucracy. When the civil servants who work in Homicide come in in the morning, you’re going to be on their list of things to do; they’re going to be thinking of catching you. It’s nothing personal. It’s a job. It’s what they do for a living, like assembly-line workers who put nut A on bolt B. They may get bored, they may get frustrated, but they’re not going to quit. They are not going to shrug and say, ‘Aww, I think I’ll do something else today’ because what they do every day is catch killers. That’s why, of all the crimes committed, murder has the highest clearance rate. You think you’ve gotten away with something, but you haven’t. Your time is coming.”

“You’re not trying to bluff me, are you, Taylor?” Meghan asked, a smug grin on her face.

“Bluff you? Do you know what the cops are doing right now?”

“What?”

“They’re showing your photograph to Thoreau’s neighbors, asking them if they saw you there Friday night,” I lied.

“But I didn’t do it,” Meghan insisted.

“You look awful good for it.”

“But I didn’t!”

“I don’t give a damn,” I told her. “You’re going down for it just the same.”

“You’re trying to frame me.”

“Am I?”

“I’ll show them the videotape …”

“What videotape?”

Fear began to creep over Meghan’s face at the realization of what I was doing to her.

“You can’t do this.”

“Sure I can.”

“But why? What was Dennis to you? You didn’t even know him.”

“I don’t give a shit about Dennis. For what he did to Terry Friedlander, he got what he deserved.”

“Then why?”

I leaned in close, giving her a good whiff of my breath. “Amy Lamb.”

She hesitated. “I didn’t kill Amy Lamb …”

“John Brown.”

“John … I don’t know any John Brown.”

“Joseph Sherman.”

“Joseph Sherman killed Joseph Sherman.”

“No, he didn’t. He was murdered—murdered with the same gun that killed Amy and Brown.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“He changed his shirt,” I told her. “He went back to his old apartment building—your apartment building—to get his old clothes. I’m betting that’s when he figured it all out. I’m betting he went to your apartment—the one across the hall from his—and pounded on the door. Yeah, he was just dumb enough for that. And when you opened the door, he recognized that you were the woman he saw in the parking lot the night Brown was killed. Only you were too quick on the draw for him.”

“You can’t prove any of this,” Meghan claimed and she was right.

“I know,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. Not to me. When you go down for Thoreau, you’ll go down for the others, too.”

“No, no, no!” she repeated. “I didn’t do these things. Why would I kill Amy? Why would I kill this Brown person? Why would I … Oh, Jeezus …”

The man had knocked softly on the door frame. “Ms. Senske,” he said, “do you still want me to wait with the car?”

Meghan went silent and we all turned to face the newcomer.

It was Conan. He took us all in, uncomfortable with our stares, until his eyes fell upon Meghan. “Oh hi,” he said.

He was wearing the dress uniform of the State Capitol Security Force. The name tag above his pocket read G
ALEN
P
IVEC.

I froze on the name. “Meghan,” I whispered, more to myself than to her, “your mother’s maiden name is Pivec.”

I sprang at him. “Galen!” Meghan screamed, but it was too late. I hit him. I hit him harder than I’ve ever hit anyone in my life. I executed a hook kick to his head, catching him above his eyebrows. Without setting the kicking leg down, I followed with a roundhouse to his face, smashing his cheekbone with the blade of my foot, then, just because I was pissed off, I hit him in the temple with a ridge hand. He went down like he’d been shot by a howitzer. For a brief moment I contemplated stomping him to death. But the words came back to me:
When hand go out, withdraw anger; when anger go out, withdraw hand.

I reached under his coat. He was carrying. I pulled the gun, de-activated it, unloaded it and tossed it on Marion’s desk. “Don’t touch that,” I warned her. It was Joseph Sherman’s Taurus.

I turned on Meghan. “Galen Pivec is your cousin, isn’t he? I ran a computer check on you. Your mother’s maiden name was Pivec. How many Pivecs can there be?”

Meghan’s eyes were ablaze with anger; C. C.’s were glazed over with confusion. Only Marion seemed to be seeing clearly but all she had were unanswered questions. “What does Galen have to do with this?” she asked.

I ignored her. I turned my back on the room and went to the window, turning everything over in my head, seeing how the pieces fit so neatly, wondering why I hadn’t seen it before.

“Amy told Conan everything,” I said to the window, using my nickname for Marion’s chauffeur and security guard. “They’re sitting together with nothing to do and she told him everything, told him about Thoreau and Sherman’s calls. No doubt Conan took his job as campaign sheriff seriously. He killed Thoreau … No, that’s not right. He was in Mankato. But there’s no doubt he set up Sherman and killed Brown by mistake. The gun proves that. Amy must have figured it out. Read about the killings in the paper, figured it out. She came here, to the capitol that morning, confronted him. So, Conan killed her. The gun again. Later, Sherman went back to his old apartment building, where his belongings were stored …”

I turned back to the room. No one had moved. All three women were watching Conan, his breathing irregular. I didn’t know if he was conscious or not. I didn’t care.

“Was I right? Did Sherman confront you? Meghan!” I shouted when there was no reply.

“Yes,” she said. “I tried to talk to him, gave him a drink, some vodka. While he was drinking I went into the bedroom and called Galen. He came over and took Sherman away. Put his handcuffs on him and took him away. Sherman was alive when I last saw him. I didn’t know. I didn’t know …”

We all watched Conan some more. Only Marion wasn’t thinking about the boy. She was sizing up the situation in a way only a trained politician could.

“Carol Catherine was not involved in the killings,” she said, more than asked. “She had nothing to do with Terry’s death or any of the others.”

She smiled. Honest to God, she smiled.

“It’s over, Marion,” I told her. “Get used to it.”

Conan pushed himself to a sitting position. His face was bloody and swollen; his breathing was heavy and labored. He moaned pitifully, trying to speak. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered at last—to whom, I do not know.

Conan was choking back tears along with the blood. “I couldn’t let them hurt you.” He was speaking to C. C. now.

C. C. smiled. “How sweet,” she said.

“For God’s sake, Carol Catherine,” Marion said.

“Is that why you killed them, to protect C. C.?” I asked.

He nodded. “I had to. Don’t you see?”

“And Amy Lamb?”

“She was going to tell.”

I turned away. If I hadn’t, I would have killed him.
Perspective, perspective
, I kept telling myself. Except I couldn’t find any. Then I heard the collective gasp of the three women. I wheeled about. Conan’s pant leg was hiked up, a small holster was strapped to his ankle and a .25 caliber Iver Johnson was in his hand.

I can’t explain it, but I was not frightened when I saw the gun. I was merely annoyed with myself. I remember thinking,
Taylor, how can you be so careless?
and then making plans to move closer to the gun so I could do something about it. I inched toward Conan. His hand was trembling from fear or pain, I couldn’t tell which.

“That’s far enough, Taylor,” he warned. He learned fast. I stopped. “Put up your hands.”

I put them up. “Is that the gun you used on Dennis Thoreau?”

“I don’t know no Dennis Thoreau.”

“He was trying to hurt Miss Monroe, too,” I told him.

“Is that right? Someone else was trying to hurt you?”

C. C. rolled her eyes.

“Kill him,” Meghan told Conan, recovering her voice at last.

“No, wait,” Conan protested, confused.

“Kill him!” Meghan insisted.

“Don’t be stupid,” Marion said.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” Meghan told her cousin. “Look.” She stepped over to C. C. and ripped the woman’s bodice, exposing soft, full breasts supported by white lace; tore the buttons on her skirt, tore the white lace slip underneath, used her fingernails to scratch C. C.’s legs and run her stockings.

“Don’t do that!” Conan yelled. “Leave her alone!”

“Now shoot him,” Meghan repeated again.

“Meghan!” Marion shouted.

“We’ll tell the police that you heard screaming. You came to investigate. When you arrived you saw Taylor raping Carol Catherine. The two of you fought, the gun went off and you killed Taylor.”

“Oh, pleeeze,” I said.

“It’s perfect,” Meghan insisted.

“Wait, wait, let me think,” Conan said. From the look on Marion’s face, she was thinking, too.

“Hey, Meg? I don’t think this is such a good idea,” C. C. said.

“How the hell would you know?” Meghan screamed, turning on her. “You’re so stupid …”

“Meghan, don’t!” C. C. cried.

Meghan slapped her once, twice, three times, all the while shouting, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

“Leave her alone!” Conan cried. I moved closer to him. “Quit it, Meghan! Quit it…”

“Shoot, you dumb sonuvabitch!” Meghan shouted at Conan. And he did.