Reilly 11 - Case of Lies (40 page)

“Right now?” Nina said.

“Right now.” He extended a hand and Nina took it.

“Hold the fort,” she told Sandy, an old joke between them.

“Good luck,” Wish said. Nina and Cheney moved carefully from car to car, until they came to two uniformed police directly across the street from the house, standing in the dirt of a neighbor’s flower bed. One of them held the bullhorn. “Officer Christian. Nina Reilly,” Cheney said.

“You’re the hostage’s lawyer?” Officer Christian said. He was a tired, square-jawed young man who barely looked at her.

“That’s right.”

“You say Flint has attempted to communicate with you?”

Nina explained.

“There has been zero action inside ever since our arrival. We’re about to quit this attempt. My concern is that you might say something that will set off an incident.”

“I know. I understand.”

“Here’s what you’ll say.” They rehearsed for a couple of minutes. Christian warned her about her tone, which he said would be more crucial than her words. The gravity of what she was about to do made her throat feel tight. All around her were silent police officers standing amid flashing red lights.

“Go.” He showed her how to hold the horn. A cord ran from it to the nearby police car. It was heavy and awkward and rusty. She held it up with both hands.

“Mr. Flint? Mr. Flint, are you there?” She waited a moment to allow the fact of her female voice to sink in inside the house, and to recover from the shock of hearing her voice amplified from, it seemed, Sacramento to Reno. “Mr. Flint, I’m Nina Reilly. I’d like to help. If you’d like to talk to me, all you have to do is pick up the phone. I’m calling you right now.” A uniformed woman nodded and dialed the Hanna number.

“Do you need anything? I’m right outside, and I can help.”

“It’s ringing,” the officer said.

“It won’t hurt just to talk for a minute,” Nina said through the horn.

The officer passed her the phone. Just like that. Nina dropped the horn and it made a loud protest. “Hello? Hello?”

“He says, nobody try anything.”

“Dave?” The voice was ragged, gasping, but recognizable. “It’s Hanna!” she mouthed, hand over the phone. They could all hear Dave’s voice on the monitor in the police car. Officer Christian was breathing fast, trying to tell her what to say, but it was hard, they were both so shocked that it was Hanna on the line, not Flint.

“Dave, are you all right?”

“Did you hear? Nobody try anything.”

“Nobody will try anything. Nobody.”

“He says he wants a helicopter and pilot. Two hundred fifty thousand in cash in the passenger seat. One hour.”

We can talk about that,
Officer Christian mouthed. Nina said, “We can talk about that. Are you injured, Dave?”

“He says, shut up. He says listen. One hour.”

“Okay, there is discussion out here, Dave. Arrangements are being made.” Christian had nodded and told her to run with the demand.

“He says he’ll let me go. Please don’t let them try anything for a while, Nina.” This sounded like Dave’s own words, like he was very frightened that the police were about to enter the house forcibly.

“While they talk, Dave, do you or Mr. Flint need anything? Some food or water?”

A pause. “He says, shut up and listen. He says he wants you to know he killed Sarah. Shot her because she was watching.” This bald statement sent shock waves all through the assembled group. Nina thought of Roger.

“Okay,” she said. “I understand. He killed Sarah.”

“He says he killed Chelsi and the others to stop the lawsuit.”

“Okay.”

“He says you started it and made him finish it. He says it’s all your fault.”

Tears started up in Nina’s eyes. Hearing this was like being gouged by sharp beaks. I’m quitting law, she thought. I’m getting out.

“He says, time’s up. Do we have a deal?” Dave said.

She was swallowing, trying to control herself, but she couldn’t. She shook her head. Christian took the phone. Helpful hands supported her.

Sandy and Wish put her in the front passenger seat of the van. She was crying uncontrollably. Roger had disappeared. “It’s all right, all right,” Sandy said, patting her shoulders. Wish made her drink some water. “I think we should take her home now,” he told Sandy.

“He said I caused it.”

Sandy said grimly, “He caused all of it. If I get my hands on him-”

They heard a shot.

For a moment, the whole forest was quiet. Then the police sprang into action, taking up positions, guns drawn, yelling. From several hundred feet away Nina could see Officer Christian holding up his arm, raising it up and down as though to quiet them.

“Oh, God,” she said. “He shot Dave.”

A new, uneasy quiet descended. The police were close to storming the house, but Christian was making the signal
No, no
to them. He grabbed the bullhorn and said, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The door to the house was opening.

A man came rushing out, looking wildly around and yelling something. He was tackled instantly, made to lie supine on the ground while two officers cuffed him. He struggled for only a minute, then lay on the ground quietly. Other officers rushed into the house.

Nina, Wish, and Sandy moved toward the house. No one stopped them.

A policeman came back to the front door and made a sign. The man inside was dead and it was safe to come in. “Oh, no,” Nina said. “No!” It was impossible, Dave Hanna gunned down in his own home while she watched the whole thing-there was Roger, running up the steps onto the porch. He rushed inside.

Then he came back out, waving his arms. He looked around and saw the cuffed man on the ground.

“Dave?” he said. The police officers pulled the man to his feet.

It was Dave Hanna, disheveled and bloody but alive. “I got him, Rog!” he cried.

32

“I GOT HIM”

PLACERVILLE, Cal. (AP)-

A man held hostage at gunpoint in his own home by a serial killer managed to turn the tables on his attacker yesterday, wresting the gun away and shooting the attacker fatally.

Dave Hanna, a former firefighter from Placerville, California, was resting at home today after the violent face-off with Leland Moss Flint of Palo Alto, California, the man who killed Hanna’s wife and niece. Flint allegedly shot Hanna’s wife, a bystander, during an armed robbery at Lake Tahoe two years ago. When Hanna filed a wrongful-death lawsuit that developed leads to Flint, Flint allegedly killed Hanna’s niece and two witnesses to the robbery.

Yesterday, Flint crawled through a basement window in Hanna’s house. When Hanna came home, he was beaten and tied up. Police arrived after a 911 call by Hanna’s brother-in-law, Roger Freeman, and they surrounded the house.

Five hours into the grueling standoff, Flint demanded a pilot, helicopter, and large sum of money in return for Hanna’s life-but while the killer was talking to the police, Hanna loosened his bonds and jumped Flint. In the ensuing struggle Flint was fatally shot.

“It’s miraculous that he got the gun away from Flint,” said Sergeant Fred Cheney of the South Lake Tahoe Police Department, one of the multidistrict police forces called in.

“He’s a hero,” said Rosetta Williams, a next-door neighbor of Hanna’s who was evacuated during the hostage situation. “We all knew and loved his wife. It’s fitting that Dave caught the killer.”

“No quote from you,” Sandy observed, handing Nina the front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle
when she came in the next morning. “How’d you sleep?”

“Sleep? What sleep?”

“The schools are closed. The prediction is two feet.”

It was snowing, large, dry flakes, the temperature in the thirties. The cabin on Kulow had been warm and silent, and all Nina had wanted that morning was to stay in her bed under the Hudson Bay blanket, watching it fall and covering all the horror of the Hanna case.

In the end, she hadn’t wanted to be alone. And Sandy would need her. So she threw on corduroy pants and a ski sweater and let her hair hang loose. It was the first day of the rest of her life, the one in which she quit, because it was her fault.

“You have a lot of mop-up on the Hanna lawsuit today. Mr. Hanna already called. He’s actually not at home, he’s staying with Roger. I thought you’d be in at nine.”

“Sorry. You and Wish were great yesterday, Sandy. Thanks again.”

“I hope we never have anything like that again. The waiting was bad. I never thought he’d get out alive.” Sandy looked tired, too. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m happy you’re here, Sandy. Where’s Wish?”

“Sergeant Cheney called and Wish said he’d go see him. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be in my office.”

“Don’t you want some coffee?”

“Give me a minute.” Nina went into her office and shut the door. She went behind her desk, kicked her shoes off, put up her feet, and closed her eyes. She had spent the night alternately pacing the floor and sitting on the couch in front of the fire, trying to understand what she had done.

Flint’s words, that it was her fault, damned her. The guilt was overwhelming. Even with Dave’s miraculous survival, she had it from the killer’s mouth that she had set him off on a murder spree.

And for what? What good had come of her legal machinations, her travels, her theories? Three murders and several attempted murders. She was tapped out on the expenses, Dave would get little besides scars and traumatic memories, and Chelsi was dead.

Tapped out. Yes, that was it. In a way, she had tried to play God with a devil. And this was the result.

She didn’t think she could go on. She would quit practicing law, teach or something. She didn’t have the hide for it anymore. Representing a client meant being personally responsible, and she was responsible.

Flint himself had said she had set him off.

She picked up the receiver and called Roger’s house.

“How are you both this morning?” she asked when Roger picked up.

“Dave is holding court. He looks pretty banged up with the bandages on his face, but he’s in a great mood. The docs say he’ll be fine in a couple of weeks. He slept last night and this morning the reporters found us, so he’s been doing interviews. I threw out all the booze in the house.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Sure. Hang on.”

Hanna’s voice sounded weak. “Hi.”

“Hi. I called to see how you were.”

“Fine. My rib hurts but I have some pills. There are people here. I can’t talk long.”

“I’m glad you made it,” Nina said. “I wanted to apologize. For getting you into it. I guess I really did get Flint going.”

“Yeah, he blamed you for everything. Not that he wasn’t about to kill me, when the cops came.”

“I’m sorry. For what you went through.”

“That’s what I get, for letting Roger and Chelsi talk me into hiring you. It was them, too, pushing, pushing. Flint went crazy.”

“Did he say anything to you-anything strange?”

“Like what?”

“That he didn’t kill Sarah?”

“The opposite. He was real clear about it. He did it.” She heard someone talking in the background. “There’s a guy here who wants to buy the rights to my story. Do you know a lawyer who handles stuff like that?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Listen, I’m gonna go. Nina, start dismantling whatever you’ve been up to, okay? Roger and I have talked about it and we feel we’ve suffered enough. Just throw the case out or whatever you do.”

“How about if we talk tomorrow about it?” Nina said.

“If you want. Bye.”

Nina hung up. She felt sick. It was the whole Hanna case making her sick. At least Dave made it through, she thought.

Wish burst through the door, Sandy right behind him. “Have to talk to you right now,” he said breathlessly.

Nina held her hand to her chest. “Not another murder!”

He dropped into a chair. Sandy had locked up outside. She took the other client chair. “Stop scaring us, Willis,” she said. “What is it?”

“I talked to Cheney. He says the coroner gave him a preliminary report this morning. The coroner told him that Lee Flint had bruising on his arms and legs and cheeks.”

“So? Dave struggled with him.”

“It’s not like that, Nina,” Wish said slowly.

“Well, out with it,” Sandy told him.

“These are specific marks of being tied up. You know, in the chair at the Hanna house.”

“The chair Dave was tied in?”

“Sergeant Cheney had just talked to the hospital. Mr. Hanna didn’t have any marks like that.”

“Flint was tied up? Not Dave?” Nina said. “You’re confusing me, Wish.”

“No, you have it exactly right. Flint was tied up, not Mr. Hanna. We’re sitting in the sergeant’s office and he’s telling me this. He wants to have you brought in for a discussion. Then he gets a phone call from the police forensics lab in Sacramento. I was right there, Nina. He almost fell off his chair.”

“Why?”

“It’s about our client, Nina. Are you ready?”

“Go ahead,” Nina said.

“The fingerprint report came in on the gun Meredith gave you. The one used in the robbery.”

“And?”

“There was a surprise.”

“Which was?”

“Mr. Hanna’s fingerprint was on the barrel. Along with Flint’s and Meredith’s.”

Nina said, puzzled, “Dave handled the gun? When could he have done that?”

“Yes, when?” Wish said. “You see?”

“Slow down,” Sandy said. “I’m still thinking about bruises.”

Nina swung her legs down. She put her hands on the desk. “Dave touched the gun.”

“Yes.”

“He came running down after his wife was shot and touched the gun.”

Sandy objected, “But Meredith saw him coming down. That’s when she picked up the gun, when she saw him on the staircase, yelling.”

“If she’s telling the truth, he couldn’t have touched it-”

Wish said, “You see? Unless he had already been down there-”

“And he was going back up the stairs?”

“Not coming down to get help?” Sandy said.

“Going back up, after he touched the gun,” Nina said. “I don’t like what I’m thinking.” The shock made it hard to think clearly. “No possible mistake about the fingerprint?” she said.