Three To Get Deadly (50 page)

Her eyes never left Mason's as she spoke. She'd been caught, but she was tough.

"What happened to the money you borrowed?"

"I paid it back with my bonus at the end of the year."

"Anything else I should know, like why O'Malley would pay us for work we didn't do?"

"Ask O'Malley. He's never given anything away in his life. I'll clean my desk out over the weekend."

"Why?"

"Oh, don't tell me I have to sleep with you too. You're good-looking enough and all that, but I've lost my appetite for lawyers."

"We need some continuity around here, and you're too valuable to lose. Stick around. I'll be straight with you if you'll do the same and let me—"

"—finish your own sentences?"

"Agreed."

Mason's phone rang and Angela excused herself. It was Webb Chapman.

"What am I supposed to do with these hooks? Decorate my Christmas tree?" he asked.

"Something simpler. Figure out which one was on Tommy Douchant's belt."

"Why do you think one of them might have been his?"

"Never underestimate a crazy woman."

Webb listened without interruption as he told him about his meeting with Ellen.

"It's an entertaining story. But it gets you nowhere on identifying Tommy's hook. You'll have to give me a clue where to start."

"Do any of them look like they failed?"

"They all do. That doesn't prove Tommy was using one of them."

"Keep them anyway. I'll see what I can come up with."

Mason hung up as he pictured Tommy rolling his wheelchair back and forth across the threshold of his front door. He wasn't going back there with more bad news. His problems with St. John and O'Malley were screaming at him louder than Tommy. His would have to wait until he got them under control, or until he dreamt of Tommy's trial again. Whichever came first.

Mason and his team worked through the weekend. He told Sandra about the phony bills to O'Malley, but they found nothing in the files to explain the fees.

If she was angry with Mason for breaking their date, she kept it to herself. By Sunday night, they were the only ones left in the conference room. They had finished reviewing the files on O'Malley's loans from his bank.

"St. John has O'Malley cold," Sandra said.

"Ice-cold. He convinced the bank to loan money to dummy businesses that he secretly owned. The businesses couldn't pay the money back and had no assets for the bank to foreclose on when the loans went bad."

"Sullivan set up the companies, drafted the loan documents, sat in on the bank's loan committee meetings, and told everyone the loans were okay."

"So Sullivan was going down too."

"Not necessarily, Lou. Sullivan could claim that he was relying on information provided by O'Malley and that he didn't know the truth."

"Sullivan asked me to destroy documents that would implicate him. There's nothing here that St. John couldn't get from the bank and O'Malley."

Sandra gave him a look sharper than the knife she carried. "These details slip out of your mouth so frequently. Wouldn't it be just as easy to tell me sooner?"

"Yeah, but it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable." He recoiled as she smacked him on the arm. "Fine," he told her, trying not to wince. "We had lunch last Friday. That's when he asked me. I told him no before he could even tell me which documents."

"Why wouldn't he just destroy the documents himself?"

"He may have. But by asking me, he sets me up to take the fall. If I agree, he owns me. If I refuse—which I did—he claims that it was my idea and uses it to get rid of me, which he tried to do."

Mason told her about the note Kelly Holt had found in Sullivan's suite at the lake.

"Sullivan wouldn't have gone to that much trouble unless somebody else knew about the documents," she said. "Otherwise, he'd destroy them and no one would know they ever existed."

"And we still haven't figured out the fixtures deals with Quintex. But we've got enough to talk to O'Malley about tomorrow."

"What if O'Malley doesn't come clean?"

"We quit and get ready to go to war with him and the feds."

"I don't like the odds," Sandra said. "We're outnumbered and surrounded."

"So we'll have to fight dirty," Mason said.

There was a message from Harlan Christenson on Mason's answering machine when he got home just before midnight. Harlan had left the message three hours earlier.

"Lou, it's Harlan. I know it's late, but I was hoping you'd come out to the farm. I need to talk with you about my meeting tomorrow morning with the IRS agent. I've got to make a deal. I just don't know how. Call me when you get home. Please."

Mason heard fear in Harlan's voice, the icy kind when a car slams on its brakes and shrieks to a stop at your feet. He dialed Harlan's number and listened to a recorded explanation that the number was no longer in service or had been disconnected. Thinking he may have misdialed, Mason tried again with the same result.

Harlan's farm was in Stanley, Kansas, twenty miles south of Mason's house and ten miles west of the state line. The nearest neighbor was half a mile away. City lights melted into inky blackness as Mason drove into the country, thinking about the hours he had spent tramping through the fields with Harlan, casting a line in his pond, catching nothing but good memories.

The farmhouse was black and silent beneath a distant canopy of stars, the darkness swallowing Mason when he stepped out of his car. The only sound was a distant train whistle riding the night air. As he approached the house, he could make out a faint glow leaking around the edges of a front window.

There was no answer when he knocked on the weather-beaten door. He squeezed the handle, his palm sweaty, cursing under his breath as the door swung open and he stepped into the entry hall.

He was fearless in the courtroom, willing to take risks others wouldn't because he was prepared and because he owned the ground, the battle one he'd chosen. Outside those walls, he'd never considered whether he was brave or what that even meant. Stepping across the threshold, he realized that bravery and stupidity were first cousins.

Mason called out to Harlan. He didn't answer. Afraid of what he might find, he hesitated, light-headed and breaking into a sweat from the sluggish mix of heat and humidity inside the house.

The entry hall led straight back to the kitchen and the light he had seen from the porch, a dozen steps. He took one and then another, stopping as the floorboards creaked beneath his feet, listening for what he didn't know, hearing nothing, starting again.

A man materialized out of the darkness, blotting out the light from the kitchen, and drilled his fist into Mason's gut. Mason folded in half as the man grabbed him by the back of his shirt and threw him headlong down the length of the hall and onto the kitchen floor.

Gasping for air, his eyes clenched, Mason rose on hands and knees, when a boot to his back put him on the floor. He curled into a fetal crouch, waiting for the next blow. When it didn't come and he heard the front door slam, he opened his eyes. Harlan lay next to him, tongue clenched between his teeth, bulging dead eyes staring past him into the fluorescent glow of the open refrigerator.

The silence was split by the cough of a grinding engine and tires spitting gravel. Mason crawled away from Harlan's body and huddled against the front door, shaking, waiting for the nerve to go outside. Moments passed before he stumbled out the door, slumped into his car, and called 911. He passed the time wondering whether to charge the call to the firm. Claire always told him that humor was the last thread of sanity. He clung to it.

The county cops responded. They were polite but suspicious. Why was he there? When did he get there? Who hit him? What did he see? What did he hear? Let's start again from the beginning.

Mason sat in the backseat of a stuffy patrol car, his sweat-stained shirt damp against his skin, answering questions in the dark. Every now and then, someone opened the car door, illuminating the spidery pattern of cracked upholstery on the back of the front seat.

The assistant DA on call for weekend bodies asked the questions. He was young and energetic and kept Mason on task. A deputy sheriff listened from the front seat, motioning to the ADA when paramedics emerged from the house, Harlan's body zipped inside a black body bag, laid out on a stretcher. They watched in silence as the paramedics loaded Harlan into the back of an ambulance and drove away, the headlights blinding them for an instant as the vehicle passed by.

"One more time, Mr. Mason. From the top," the ADA said.

Three hours and two detailed interrogations later, Mason stood under his shower, swearing never to spend another Sunday with his partners. Sleep was impossible. Sunrise wasn't far off, and he went jogging at first light. Another shower and he headed for the refuge of work. He decided to wait to announce Harlan's death to the staff until after he'd talked with Scott.

At eight thirty he looked up to find Kelly Holt smiling at him from his doorway, a soft-leather briefcase in one hand. Mason hadn't seen her since Sullivan's funeral. He wasn't expecting her, but he was glad to see her. Her smile didn't last long when she saw his face.

"Tell me about it," she said and closed the door.

It wasn't a question or a command. It was an invitation, and Mason gladly took it. She listened and asked questions that he answered with dull rote, having committed them to memory hours ago.

"Don't try to forget it. You can't. Don't try to understand it. You won't. Learn not to be afraid of it, and you'll learn to live with it."

"It's that simple?"

"Nope. The tough stuff never is. The good news is that you owe me for a year's worth of therapy. If it makes you feel any better, I've got more good news."

"I'll take it."

"I know how Sullivan was murdered," she said.

"I don't get cops. I'm in the middle of an epidemic of murdered partners and you're grinning like you just won the lottery."

"Professional pride. I like being smarter than the killer."

"How was he murdered?"

"An overdose of insulin."

"I didn't know he was diabetic."

"He wasn't. I doubt if he would have taken a fatal dose of insulin on purpose. Somebody injected him or duped him into injecting himself. That fits with the needle marks found on his left arm and thighs."

"How do you know it was insulin?"

"Lab tests. And it makes sense with the rest of the evidence."

"I thought he drowned."

"He did. The insulin overdose made him sick enough that he couldn't save himself when he hit the water."

"What did it do to him?"

"Probably made him sweaty and nauseated at first. At the end, his heart rate was in overdrive. That's what caused the heart attack. If he hadn't fallen in the lake, that's what would have killed him."

"When do you think it happened?"

"Could have been before or after the card game. The reaction can be fast or take up to a few days."

"What now?"

"I'm going to have a chat with Cara Trent. She was the last person seen with Sullivan."

"Why haven't you talked with her already?"

"I wanted to wait for the lab tests so I'd know what to ask her and so I'd know when she was lying."

"What makes you think she'll lie?"

"Everyone does at first. Or they leave things out, like you did."

Mason didn't argue since she was right about him.

"Mind if I sit in?"

He couldn't let one of the firm's employees be questioned about her involvement in a murder without a lawyer present.

"I'd have been disappointed if you didn't insist."

"Do you think she did it?"

"I don't know. Depends on what their relationship was really like. Murder is a strange business. It attracts the most unlikely people—friends, lovers, spouses—all kinds of partners."

They walked down the hall to Cara's office. She sat behind a wooden desk in her windowless office, twirling a pen between her fingers. She jumped when they knocked, as if they'd awakened her. Her face was slack, her eyes puffy. Mason guessed she wasn't sleeping and probably hadn't for the last couple of days.

Case files were stacked on both sides of her chair. The walls were bare. Her small office got smaller when Kelly showed Cara her badge and wasted no time with small talk.

"Were you with Richard Sullivan when he died?"

Cara pulled her chair up hard against her desk, a slight tremor passing along her jawline. "No."

"Mr. Sullivan was murdered, Cara. You were seen leaving the poker game with him on Saturday night, which makes you the last person seen with him. I'm certain you want to help us find out who killed him."

Cara looked at Mason for confirmation. She was struggling to keep her control as she wadded the edge of her legal pad.

"It's true," Mason said. "But you don't have to answer any questions. I'm sure you know that."

"No, Cara, you don't have to answer my questions. But I'd have to wonder why you'd refuse to assist in a murder investigation," Kelly said, holding Cara with her stare.

"You haven't given me a Miranda warning."

"You don't get a Miranda warning until you become a suspect. Are you a suspect?"

Cara crossed her arms over her chest. "I know my rights. You're not even in your jurisdiction."

"I'll make it easy on you, Cara. A neighbor puts you at the condo that night twice; the first time with Sullivan and the second time by yourself. And your fingerprints are all over Sullivan's ski boat. Now, be a good girl and tell me the truth."

"If you've got my fingerprints, you got them illegally. What's the matter, haven't they heard of the Fourth Amendment in the Ozarks?"