The Stranger You Seek (41 page)

I opened the club soda and poured it into my glass, set the bottle down on the table next to my chair, took a sip. I wanted her to see that my hands were steady, that her observations hadn’t rattled me. I was
bluffing; my insides hurt like I’d swallowed a razor blade. But bluffing is something an addict learns early on. I’d gotten good at it over the years.

“How’s Lieutenant Rauser?” she asked, and it felt like acid exploding in my veins. I didn’t want his name on her lips. “Someone really should get guns off the street.” She shook her head in mock regret.

“I’m going to get
you
off the street, Margaret. Whatever it takes to do that.”

This seemed to amuse her. “Really? What are you going to do, Keye? Shoot me? Stab me? I don’t think so. You have the handicap of moral borders. It leaves you ill equipped for real crime fighting, doesn’t it?”

She was so arrogant I longed to reach across the desk and wipe that fucking smirk off her face. She’d exploited brilliantly a bias in law enforcement regarding women and violence, and she knew it. An unidentified perpetrator is always referred to as
he
, never
she
, and women are looked at last in violent and sexual murders. Like everyone else, I had looked right past her because she was a woman.

“You know, this feeling of being infallible, it’s part of your illness, Margaret. It isn’t real. You’re going to pay for what you’ve done. The blog was a mistake. They
will
trace it back to you. Cat’s out of the bag, Margaret. APD’s watching.”

“Do you have any idea how much money our firm puts into local politics? No, of course you wouldn’t. The mayor and the DA, the police chief, they’d all love to keep their jobs. APD isn’t going to watch me, Keye. And if you’re trying to scare me with those two cops you have waiting, well, it’s not going to keep me up tonight.”

I laughed at her. “I was just thinking what it’s going to be like for you to trade in Helmut Lang for a nice little prison jumpsuit. I think they’re blue in Georgia. Be nice with your coloring. I love the idea of watching your life pull apart at the seams.”

“Then we really aren’t so different. You have an inner sadist just like I do.” Her eyes were steady on me.

“Let me ask you something, Margaret. Just to satisfy my own curiosity: Did you know you wanted to keep killing after you butchered your mother? Or did it happen when you met Anne Chambers? I saw this picture on your desk and it ate at me. They looked so much alike, your mother and Anne. And they were both artists. Is that why you needed to kill her?”

Margaret thought for a moment. I might have been speaking to her about afternoon tea. “To be frank,” she answered, “I knew I had something that hadn’t been quenched. I didn’t know until I met Anne what it was or that it was permanent. It was like having an itch without fully understanding what an itch
is
. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve really never had an opportunity to verbalize it. I’m not sure there are words for it.” She held her drink up in a mocking toast, then took a sip. “It is liberating, in a way, to try though,” she mused.

“Then maybe you’d like to make a statement on the record. Think how … liberating that would be.”

A light laugh. “I like you, Keye. I always have. You’re very smart and you’re funny. I’m devastated that you think I might hurt you. It’s no accident that you’re alive, Keye. I
protected
you, if you must know.”

“Protected me? You made sure the media went after me so I’d get kicked off my APD consulting gig. You rigged my car and I was nearly killed. And you shot my best friend.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Keye—it doesn’t suit you. You were not nearly killed. You had a lump on your head. And maybe, just maybe, you can open your mind enough to see that you’d have been safer out of the way. But you wouldn’t back off. And you take the most ridiculous risks. LaBrecque, for example—we both knew he was a thug. He hurt you and threatened you and you went back for more. Don’t you think he would have killed you that day at the lake house? Be grateful, Keye. I didn’t want you hurt.”

That’s why LaBrecque never fit in on the victims’ list. I remembered coming to Margaret that day with my bruised wrist. I remembered her concern. “What was the point of killing Dobbs like that?” I demanded. “And sending that package to me, was that about knowing my history with Dobbs?”

“I thought you’d appreciate the package, Keye. You would have preferred cutting it off yourself? And the lieutenant,” Margaret told me. “Rauser wasn’t about you. Everything isn’t always about
you
. I had a completely separate relationship with him before you started showing up at crime scenes.”

“Relationship? With Rauser? Margaret, get real. A bunch of crazy-ass letters to a cop doesn’t put you in a
relationship
. That’s your illness talking again. It tricks you, doesn’t it? It’s getting worse. Just so you know,
Rauser didn’t take you that seriously. He considered you another irritating thug.”

A smile. “Sticks and stones, Keye.”

“If you ever get close to him again, I swear to God I will not wait for the police to take you down. If you can’t control that itch, Margaret, I’ll do it for you.”

“He’s no challenge anyway. Unless you’re into drool.” She checked her platinum watch, stood, and walked to the door, held it open for me. “Thanks for stopping in. If you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for a client.”

L
a la, la la
.

A child’s song, without words. It went first high and then low. High-low, high-low.
La la, la la
. Over and over. Haunting and melodic. The tune never varied and little Margaret never tired of it.

She sat in front of her dollhouse humming softly. It was one of those big dollhouses and she had begged Santa to bring it for Christmas. A three-story dollhouse with a front that opened out like a suitcase so Maggie could look inside, rearrange the tiny furniture, the little family.

La la, la la
.

 … Uh-oh. Little Maggie frowned, her brow furrowed. Something wasn’t right inside her house.

She reached inside and carefully plucked the tiny daddy doll from the master bedroom.
That’s it
. She wanted Daddy in her room. Away from Mommy. She used her forefinger to thump Mommy off the little bed. The doll clattered to the floor.
All better
.

La la, la la
.

She remembered the dollhouse so well, remembered that moment just as clearly as she remembered the way her father smelled when he came to her in the night. Sleep and Old Spice. She looked at the photograph on her desk, her in her father’s arms. She was five years old when the picture was taken. He’d been so busy all the time. No time for the family, for Maggie, except in the night when he touched her softly and kissed her. He told her it was about love and her body had responded to him, opened up to him. She couldn’t help it.

Maggie had learned about love this way, in a small damp bedroom
with a palm tree outside her open window and the wide Florida sky watching what they did together.

Even now she craved her father’s touch. But she couldn’t have that anymore. Sometimes she touched herself and fantasized that his hands were on her. She loved and hated him for this. But she hated them more, the ones who had taken him away from her.

La la, la la …

T
he sign on my dashboard identified me as a delivery person. No hassles that way from garage security and I could park in a courier slot directly across from SunTrust Plaza. I was in the Neon and practically invisible—
shields up
.

We’d been watching her for three days, switching shifts, dealing with day jobs and balancing personal lives, and all of us spending whatever time we could at the hospital. Thinking about Christmas being around the corner felt like jerking my guts out in my hand. Finding time with Rauser at the hospital and giving White Trash some sense of normalcy had been challenging. Rauser’s children had called almost daily, but there was nothing for them to do here, so they had not returned, nor had his ex-wife. Neil had decided to end his office work boycott and really pitch in. He was doing his best to put the fires out until I could come back full-time. Diane was helping him and, he had reported, doing a great job organizing us.

Three days earlier, sickened and angry, I’d called Diane after leaving Margaret’s towering office. I’d described the confrontation to her. Diane was stunned. I’d heard the bewilderment and fear in Diane’s voice. She knew she could never return to Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze after that, at least not while Haze was free. Apart from the obvious shock of knowing your boss and someone you’d admired had a dangerous secret career in murder, Diane now had the added burden of unemployment. I
made her an offer that was nowhere near what Haze had paid her, but the benefits were in knowing there was almost no chance she’d be knifed to death by her new employer. Diane was worried about me. She and I talked every night. On days she hadn’t been able to get to the hospital, she asked about Rauser’s condition. She wanted to know what intelligence our surveillance operations had gathered about Margaret. She wanted to know about my emotional state and if I’d eaten anything besides doughnuts while I sat in front of 303 Peachtree these last couple of days. And on more than one occasion she’d gone to my place to hang out with White Trash and spoil her with half-and-half.

Margaret Haze stepped out of the revolving doors that empty onto Peachtree Center Avenue, and my pulse shot up like mercury. She crossed the street, headed for the parking garage where I waited in the dinged-up Neon and where she kept her silver Mercedes. I sank down low in my seat, ducking my head so that my face was in the shadow of my hat brim. I was wearing a blue Braves cap. I saw Margaret stride past in the rearview mirror, slim and erect, briefcase at her side. A pair of seven-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choos clicked against the concrete and reverberated throughout the enclosed garage.

The silver Mercedes took Peachtree from downtown past the Georgian Terrace all the way through Midtown into Buckhead. I kept my distance; let her get a good lead. She turned onto Piedmont and we drove past the executive hotel where David Brooks had been murdered. I thought about that hot summer night—the fireplace, the wine, the single wineglass—and what we now knew about David’s final hours. They’d had dinner a few blocks from here in a Buckhead restaurant. And while Brooks was naked and sexually aroused, Margaret Haze had shoved her knife deep into the cavity above his sternum. I imagined her lips brushing against his ear as she reached around from behind to murder him.

Haze pulled into a Mercedes dealer and I waited for twenty minutes. Finally, she emerged and climbed into a cab. I ran inside to the service department, where Margaret had left her car. There were several counters. Parts, service, rentals, leases. It took too many minutes to work out what had happened. I called Brit Williams when I knew. “Haze just dropped off her car at Buckhead Mercedes. It was leased.” Outside, I looked right, then left, and spotted a cab turning onto Peachtree from Piedmont Avenue. I thought it was the one Haze had taken. Buckhead isn’t like downtown.
It’s not wall-to-wall taxis. Chances were pretty good I could catch up to it. “Why would she give up her car? Brit—she’s leaving town.”

“It’s the holidays, Keye. Everybody’s leaving town except us. And she doesn’t have any travel restrictions on her.”

I jumped in my car and pulled out onto Piedmont. “She’s trying to hide something. If there’s evidence in that Mercedes, you’ll need it for the court case once this breaks. Can you seal the car before it’s contaminated?”

“
Shit
. Chief finds out, I’m gonna get my ass handed to me.”

The taxi returned Haze to her office building and she disappeared inside. By seven that evening, there were five of us on duty to keep an eye on Margaret: Lieutenant Williams, me, Detectives Balaki, Velazquez, and Bevins. I parked in one of the courier slots on the Peachtree Center Avenue side of the building and put up my fake dashboard sign.

She came out at 7:32. Her auburn hair was pulled back tightly off her forehead and temples. She wore a high-collared black coat that clung to her and opened in an upside-down V, exposing soft black boots that rose up over her knees. If she had any concerns about being watched, it didn’t show. Not in that outfit.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk, walked twenty feet, and turned left into the restaurant there, a two-hundred-dollar-a-meal steakhouse.

I left my car, crossing the street and dodging traffic, and went into the restaurant. Low lights, warm, the hushed murmurs of a well-dressed clientele. I asked to sit at the bar. I needed to keep my eye on her.

Chief Connor still didn’t consider Margaret Haze a viable suspect. That Margaret had openly discussed her savage double life with me in an unrecorded conversation was not credible evidence, he reminded me, pissed that I wouldn’t go away. Neither were the Buckhead restaurant employees who recognized Margaret’s photograph. Balaki had made some excuse to Brooks’s wife for showing her a picture of Haze. Yes, Haze had attended the backyard barbeque she and her husband had hosted around the swimming pool last year—another connection to David Brooks and now a connection to the BladeDriver blog.
I met his wife and fucked him twenty minutes later behind his own pool house
. I hoped the stack of circumstantial evidence would soon grow too tall to ignore. But as Williams had pointed out over paella at La Fonda and Margaret had so arrogantly confirmed in her office, Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze was a giant shark in Atlanta’s political ocean. And the
chief was fully convinced the right person was in custody for the killings. We had no proof against Margaret. The murders had stopped. And Margaret, having a pipeline to the mayor and therefore knowing everything that was happening inside the police department, was cleverly biding her time. But I was certain she would not be able to resist the itch for long.