The Same Mistake Twice (13 page)

They sat in silence, until Diana decided to ask the next question.

“Are you going to kill me now?”

“No. Once was enough.”

Diana studied Paul. All of his resistance had disappeared.

“So when did the other guy show up?”

“Not long after. I don’t know exactly. Somebody pounded on the door. Cops have a way of doing that so you know it’s them. I opened the door, and there was this cop standing there. I mean, there was nothing else he could be. So I’m expecting to get arrested, and instead he says, ‘Wait right there, kid.’”

“Was he wearing one of those outdoor vests, with all the pockets?”

“Yeah. How did you know? How did you know about him in the first place?”

“We’ll get back to that, Paul. What did you do when he told you to wait?”

“What do you think? I waited. He came back and did the weirdest thing. He took a picture of Patty with a Polaroid camera. Then he told me to help him.”

“Help him do what?”

“Clean the place up and take care of the bodies. We buried them near the back of the property.”

He grimaced.

“It’s hard to bury bodies. It’s amazing how big the hole has to be. It’s also hard to dig them up. I was almost glad when you showed up and interrupted me.”

Diana stifled another caustic comment. She didn’t want to lose him. Instead, she thought about what he had just told her.

Epstein must have had two jobs that night. One was paying James and Patty off and getting them out of town. The other had been a nice bonus if he could manage it—making Rebecca think he had killed Diana.

With James and Patty dead, getting paid for either job depended on keeping the truth hidden. Even Epstein must have realized that committing a real murder for a crazy woman would be a bad idea.

“So you buried them. Then what?”

“I still thought he might take me to jail, but he just left me there. He warned me to forget what happened.”

Paul shook his head.

“Like I could forget. But I wasn’t going to tell anybody, either.”

“Then I showed up.”

“I never should have mentioned James to you. I guess I thought I could get Dexter and Don in some deep shit. Or maybe I just wanted you to know everything. Because you’re you.”

“Paul, you understand it’s time for you to make everything right, don’t you? You need to do it for James and Patty.”

Paul sat motionless, and she feared she was losing him.

“You know it’s the right thing. You’ve known it all along. That’s really why you told me about James in first place.”

“I guess.”

She said nothing. Any words from her would have been fatally lame.

“I’ll tell the police everything, but first I want one thing. I want to make love to you.”

Again Diana didn’t answer. She became aware of an unfamiliar emotion. It wasn’t surprise. No man could surprise her anymore. She groped for the feeling, and then she had it.

Resentment.

She resented her role in this scene, but why? She had rented her body to many repulsive men. She had serviced men just out of prison for crimes as bad as Paul’s. It shouldn’t have been a big deal to use her body to get what she wanted—not when what she wanted was justice for two people she had never met but had come to know.

But she didn’t want to do it, because this time it involved more than her body. This felt like asking a detective to investigate the murder of his own daughter.

What would Tillotson say about that comparison?

“When you called the other day,” said Paul, “I had put you behind me. At least I thought I was cured. But I was really—what do they call it?—in remission. You had to go and bring everything back.”

“Paul, one time with me could never make up for what you have to do. There’s no way I could live up to your dream. You have to do this because you have to do it.”

He seemed to shrink as she watched.

“What the hell,” he said. “Life never gives you what you want. Why should it be different now?”

She knew that nothing she could say would work better than silence.

“Okay. Okay. Get them before I lose my nerve.”

She hoped Tillotson wouldn’t ignore the call when he saw her number on his cell phone. If Paul heard her call nine-one-one, he might realize that he was the emergency, and he might decide to behave like one.

Tillotson made her wait before he answered. She told him to come back. He wanted an explanation, but there wasn’t time.

“Just come.”

And then in the background she heard a woman’s voice. The words were unclear, but the tone was weary and aggrieved, and the inflection that of a question that had been asked many times before.

Oh, she thought.

Wives talked like that. No one else.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Tillotson closed his eyes on the stranger who looked like the woman he had once loved.

“I’m a cop. That’s been the problem all along. Why is it such a surprise now?”

“I need you here.”

“No, you say you want me here because you know I can’t stay. Also an old story.”

“Our son was almost killed.”

“Our son needs a few stitches. I should have known when you called before. Everything is life and death with you.”

He didn’t add that a cop’s wife couldn’t afford to take that approach to life. If explanations worked with this woman, a lot of problems would never have come up in the first place.

“You’re going to that whore again. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I’m going to do my job.”

“I knew you wouldn’t deny it.”

He looked at her and knew he was about to start explaining himself. He always did, even when the job said he shouldn’t.

“James Zakrewsky was murdered. That’s why you didn’t find anything about him. He’s been dead for ten years.”

“There you go, always playing the damned job card.”

“I’m not playing at anything. A sixteen-year-old boy never got to be seventeen. In your line of work that should mean something to you.”

“That’s unfair.”

She was right, but it was also irrelevant.

“Diana Andrews solved the case. I don’t know the details yet, but she did it. Again. That’s all this is about.”

And he knew it was true. That was all it could ever be about. She had chosen her path in life ten years earlier. He had made his choice before she was born. It wouldn’t matter if he was no longer married to this woman he had once loved. Cops and hookers could only go so far.

“My lawyer will do the talking,” said his wife.

“That will be an improvement.”

Those words would only hurt his case, but they felt so good. Tillotson turned away from his wife and went back through the double doors to the ER. He found his son still seated on the examining table where he had been when Tillotson arrived.

“Hey, buddy. Had to talk to Mom for a minute.”

The ten-year-old boy said nothing. He knew what “talk” meant lately. Tillotson studied the boy for indications of how much growing up he had already missed with his long hours. He was almost fifty, and he might not see his son finish his boyhood. Tillotson had lost his father before he finished high school. He had always sworn he would be around, but adulthood meant learning that promises like that could be hard to keep.

He pointed at the bulky bandage on his son’s thigh. He knew the bandage concealed ten stitches.

“How’d you do that? Didn’t get a chance to ask.”

His wife had dragged him to the lobby to vent her fury.

“Skateboarding.”

“At midnight?”

“Mom doesn’t care what I do.”

“Yeah, she does. She’s got a lot on her mind. That’s partly my fault.”

The boy gave one of those shrugs that kids seem to know will provoke their parents to rage. Tillotson told himself to breathe.

“I have to go to work for a while. Some bad guys need catching.”

His son shrugged again. He had heard those words before, too.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tillotson came, and she left him alone in the kitchen with Paul. Their low voices brought back memories even older than her hooking career, of priest and penitent in the confessional. It wasn’t far from the truth.

Tillotson lingered after the uniforms had handcuffed Paul and led him away.

“No hard feelings?”

“There shouldn’t be, since I did your job for you again.”

His smile seemed real.

“I guess I earned that.”

The smile vanished.

“We’re not going to get Rebecca Grogan for Epstein, though.”

“Or anything else. I just remembered. I did invite her to come over for a palaver.”

“You just remembered.”

“That’s right.”

Tillotson showed her the palm of his hand.

“Don’t tell me. And whatever happens, if it has your fingerprints on it, I’ll have to come after you. Understand?”

As soon as he left, weariness felled her like a club from behind. She stumbled to her bed and stretched out. She told herself it was only for a moment, but the next thing she saw was gray light coming through her bedroom window. She struggled to a sitting position on the edge of the mattress and felt for the floor with her feet. She had to get out of the house before Rennert’s man came for her.

She didn’t even take time to brush her teeth. If her morning breath offended anyone, it wasn’t her problem.

Gary Rennert himself answered the door. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, but he had already dressed in a white shirt, the trousers to a dark gray suit, and a solid blue tie. He stepped aside to let her come in.

“Your son didn’t kill anyone,” she told him. “He’s a coward and a bully, but he’s not a killer.”

“Thank you.”

He didn’t invite her past the foyer. She could have used a little more enthusiasm from him, but she needed him for something else.

“Rebecca is, though.”

She explained about Phil Epstein.

“That explains a lot,” said Rennert. “I wondered what happened to him. But I told myself there were a lot of reasons for a man like Epstein to disappear.”

“You told me you know how to get rough. This might be the time to do it.”

He considered her words.

“You know, ’Justice for Phil Epstein’ is not the most stirring slogan I ever heard. Not after the money he cost me.”

Diana started to say, “What about justice for me?” But the words fled her mind.

The check, she thought.

She might still be able to do this the right way.

Someone must have cashed Rennert’s check, or he would have known ten years earlier that something had gone wrong. James hadn’t lived long enough to go to the bank. Neither had Epstein, probably. Rebecca had taken Epstein’s wallet off his body. She must have found the check and forged James Zakrewsky’s signature. Maybe she had enlisted her son to pose as the dead boy.

Diana’s excitement lasted only a moment. The check sounded like proof to her, but she knew Rebecca and had heard the woman’s confession, which Rebecca would never repeat. Would a skeptical prosecutor base a murder case on a forged signature and not much else? Did the check still exist? Would Gary Rennert testify that he had written it and given it to Epstein to pass on to James?

She looked at Rennert and realized that he knew what she was thinking. And she understood that he would not take the witness stand and admit what he had done to hide his son’s crime. Rebecca’s punishment would depend on what Gary Rennert felt she deserved.

“She’s a loose cannon,” he said. “I should have realized that years ago.”

He shook his head.

“First I was wrong about my son, then about Rebecca. I just didn’t want to see it. It’s not like me to make the same mistake twice.”

“How will you handle it?”

“The only thing I can do. Make life hell for her. I hope you can live with that.”

“Look at me.”

Her sharp tone surprised them both. It gave her a perverse pleasure when he obeyed.

“What do you see?”

She challenged him with her eyes.

Call me a whore. I dare you.

“I see a realist,” he said.

“Then you don’t need to ask.”

END