Three To Get Deadly (67 page)

Blues didn't say a word when Sandra walked out with them. Mason was glad that Camaya would survive. He preferred the threat of Camaya to more blood on his hands.

A weak storm front had coasted through the city while they were inside. The air smelled wet, and tepid steam rose from the pavement beneath the streetlights. Ghost clouds draped the moon as they walked to the cars.

"Mine's this way," Sandra said to Mason, motioning to a parking lot across the street. "We've had a rough ride, Lou. We both could use some company."

Mason needed some company, but not Sandra's. "I can't. But thanks."

She forced a bright smile. "That's okay. Say hi to the sheriff for me."

Blues dropped Mason at home, where he found his TR6 in the driveway. "Did you arrange that?" Mason asked.

"I been too busy to worry about your damn car. There's a note on the windshield."

Mason got out of Blues's car and pulled the note from beneath the windshield wiper.

"It's from Harry Ryman. It says,
We traced this car to your neighbor, who says she sold it to you. Claire made me get it back for you. Be glad she don't ask for too many favors.
"

Blues shook his head. "You should have been dead at least three times in the last two weeks, man. Somebody is looking out for you."

Mason watched him drive away before going inside. His empty, forlorn house couldn't slow the spring in his step as he bounded inside, buoyed by the return of his TR6. The message light was blinking on his answering machine. He realized he hadn't been home in days. The first ten messages were from reporters promising a flattering exclusive. Mason was in the fast lane of his fifteen minutes of fame. The last was a message from Kelly. She left a number for him to call and ended by saying she missed him.

He called the number, tapping his fingers against the kitchen counter until she answered.

"Hi, it's Lou."

"I know who it is, you dope," she said softly. "I recognized your number."

Mason warmed at the sound of her voice. "What's the latest?"

"You made CNN. Are you all right?"

He filled her in on the details of the shoot-out, answering her pointed and professional questions.

"Now it's your turn," he told her.

"I've still got some friends in the bureau's Chicago office. They let me have a look at Vic Jr.'s file. He was busted in 1996, just like the computer records said."

"Could you tie him to D'lessandro?"

"He was represented by Caravello and Landusky. That's the same firm that represents D'lessandro and that signed off on the fixtures deals."

"Seems like too much of a coincidence."

"The FBI got involved because he was transporting across state lines."

"Drugs or girls?"

"Both. And you don't do that in Chicago without D'lessandro's permission."

"So, that's it? There's nothing else to tie Vic Jr. to the mob?"

"Maybe—not exactly—I don't know for certain."

"What aren't you telling me?"

The line was lifeless for a moment, and then she answered, raising more questions.

"My partner, Nick, busted Vic Jr. I was off that weekend and he was working alone. He claimed that he got a tip, thought it might be a link to D'lessandro, and ended up with Junior."

Her voice was heavy with sadness and uncertainty. Her partner—and dead lover—had arrested the son of Sullivan & Christenson's biggest client. Then he ends up gut shot on a sidewalk in Kansas City, Junior disappears, and Mason becomes a moving target. No matter how he arranged these pieces, he couldn't make them fit.

"Did D'lessandro make Nick dump the case against Vic Jr.?"

"I don't know. But a week after the bust, McNamara took him off the case and reassigned it to himself."

"Gene McNamara? St. John's lapdog?"

"The same. I told you, we were all in Chicago at the same time."

Sandra's chaos theory was in full bloom, bumper cars in a major pileup.

"What about the bank accounts and passwords?"

"I'm still working on it. I'm on the Southwest flight that gets in at five fifty-five Sunday night. Will you pick me up?"

"No problem."

"Lou, be careful. This isn't over yet," she said.

Mason got up before dawn, too wired to sleep. After a run and a shower, he decided it was a great top-down day and took the TR6 for a drive. He headed south, through the suburbs and into the country, following the same route he'd taken six days earlier to Harlan Christenson's farm, shutting out everything except the sun and the breeze until he pulled into Harlan's gravel drive.

Mason had missed Harlan's funeral, so he'd come to the farm to pay his respects. Harlan was the one partner who had reached out to him, whose friendship seemed genuine. When he came to Mason for help, he still had a chance to find a way out, but Mason didn't pay enough attention. Mason knew he'd carry that burden for a long time.

He left the car in the drive and went for a walk through the pasture that surrounded the farmhouse. The pond he and Harlan had fished in was a quarter of a mile away, surrounded by cottonwoods. There was a break in the trees at one end of the pond and a small dock that hung over the water. Mason found Harlan's fishing rod lying on the dock. It wasn't baited, but he cast the line into the water anyway.

At least three of the people connected to Harlan's murder had been accounted for. Julio was dead, Jimmie Camaya was in the hospital, and Scott Daniels was somewhere over the rainbow. None of that meant that Harlan's murder was solved. Whoever had given the order, whoever had set Vic Jr., Scott, and Harlan up in a money-laundering scam, whoever had ordered Mason's death—was still in business.

Camaya was the best bet to nail Harlan's real killer. He'd use the identity of his boss to make a deal with the U.S. attorney, a fact that wouldn't escape his boss and would, for the moment, make Camaya a bigger target than Mason, unless his nurses were good with a gun.

But none of that explained Sullivan's murder or Angela's suicide. Angela's confession to Sandra fit with his theory that the two murders were only indirectly related. Whoever killed Sullivan had set in motion everything else.

Angela bugged the offices to get something on Sullivan. After his death, she hit pay dirt with the CDs and decided to set Mason up as the fall guy and watch what happened. Only she never got the chance to cash in. Suicide made no sense for her. She'd already taken all the big risks. She may have been scared when Sandra told her about the shoot-out at the lake, but Mason couldn't believe Angela was frightened enough to kill herself.

If she was murdered, her killer was more likely to have also murdered Richard Sullivan than Harlan Christenson. Death by lethal injection was not part of Camaya's repertoire. In any case, he was digesting a .45-caliber slug when Angela died. Sullivan died by lethal injection. Mason caught himself humming "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" as he walked back to his car.

A short time later, he stopped in front of Pamela Sullivan's house. He was going back over ground he'd already covered, but he didn't know what else to do. A
For Sale
sign had been recently planted in the front yard.

Pamela greeted him dressed in a purple and yellow tennis warm-up suit. Judging from the boozy fragrance that hung over her, Mason doubted she would be hitting the courts anytime soon. Her face was puffy, her hair barely brushed. She wasn't wearing makeup. Her eyes were slightly glassy. She was racing her demons to the bottom.

"What can I do for you, Lou? Did you come back for something else?"

"I just wanted to talk; that's all."

"Well, come on in, then. I'm long on conversation."

She took him through the front hall, past Sullivan's study, and into the kitchen. There was a bottle of wine on the kitchen table next to the morning paper. She fumbled in a cabinet for two glasses.

"Nothing for me, Pamela. It's a little early."

"Well, in my case, it's a little late." She poured herself a full glass. "My husband left one hell of a mess," she said, pointing to the morning paper.

The headline read
Shoot-out Widens Law Firm Scandal
. A picture of the shattered locker-room mirror with Camaya sprawled on the floor promised more gory details on the inside pages.

Mason scanned the article, taking small comfort in the correct spelling of his name. There was a sidebar about Angela's death. The coroner hedged his preliminary conclusion of suicide pending an autopsy.

"I've been in the middle of the whole thing, Pamela, and I still don't believe what's happened. I hope it's about over."

"So do I," she said, the wine feeding her melancholy. "I'm heartbroken about Scott. Mostly for Gloria and their kids."

"He probably didn't intend for it to go this far—it just got out of control. Actually, I think your husband was on to Scott and Harlan and was going to confront them."

"And probably demand his cut! Oh, don't look at me that way, Lou," she said as he picked up his jaw. "The man was a shit. I don't think he would have cleaned house."

"Did he ever talk with you about what was going on?"

"No. He made it clear early in our marriage that business was off-limits. I never made an issue of it."

"I don't mean to pry, but there are some questions I need to ask you."

"You won't offend me. I'm past that."

"Why didn't you and Richard have children?"

She sighed and looked over his shoulder, through the window, and back to another time.

"We tried. I got pregnant twice and lost both babies with miscarriages. The doctors said I shouldn't try again. Richard said it wasn't my fault, but he never forgave me. That's when he started cheating and I started pretending not to notice."

"Had Richard been married previously?"

"No. What are you getting at?"

"Richard fathered a child back in the late sixties by a woman named Meredith Phillips. I've seen the results of the paternity test."

The last of the color drained from her cheeks. Mason saw the ache for her own babies in her moist eyes.

"I didn't know," she said softly.

Mason believed her. If she'd been a client, he would have stopped and come back another day. But he didn't know if there would be another day, so he pressed on.

"You knew that Richard was HIV positive?"

"Yes."

"Did you discuss that with him?"

"He told me and said he'd take care of it, like it was a problem for a client."

"Weren't you concerned about being exposed?"

"We quit having sex years ago." She hesitated and then added, "Richard didn't want me, but I needed to be wanted. You don't always find that where you think you will."

"Did Richard tell anybody else that he was HIV positive?"

"I don't know. We never spoke of it again."

"Did you tell anyone?"

"Diane dropped some papers off a few days after he told me. I must have looked like a wreck because she asked me if something was wrong and I just started bawling like a baby—about everything. I made her promise not to repeat anything."

"Was Richard treating himself for the virus, maybe injecting medications?"

She nodded her head with a dry, humorless laugh. "He said he didn't trust the doctors and that he'd found a source for a drug the FDA hadn't approved but was supposed to be a miracle cure. I told him he could live a normal life for years and begged him not to try black-market drugs."

"But he did anyway?"

"At least he thought so, but he was being taken. It was nothing but saline solution. The police found a vial of it when they searched the house."

"Do you know who he was getting it from?"

"I have no idea."

Mason thanked her for her time and she walked him to the door. This time, as they passed Sullivan's study, he noticed the computer on his desk.

"By the way, did Richard do much work on his computer?"

This time, her laugh held genuine amusement. "Are you kidding? He had to have that damn PC and every other new gadget that came out, but he never learned to use it. The man couldn't type if his life depended on it."

The doorbell rang just as Mason turned the knob. It was Diane Farrell. A new Diane, she had makeup on, her hair was washed and styled, and she was wearing a lively blue-and-yellow floral-print dress.

"Diane, darling! You look marvelous." Pamela said. "Diane just turned thirty-something. We don't keep an exact count. I gave her a day of beauty and a new dress. Doesn't she look fantastic? Happy birthday, dear."

"And many more," Mason added as he walked out.

Mason sat in his car in Pamela's driveway, studying the names on the page he had ripped from the Rogersville, Kansas, phone book. There were ten ending in Phillips: Anson, C.J., Donald, Harry, Keenan, Martin, Missey, Opal, Vernon, and Wyatt. It was ten o'clock. He could make Rogersville by eleven.

The addresses were a crisscross of numbered streets and dead presidents. Anson lived at 227 Jefferson and Wyatt at 1634 Roosevelt. The others were evenly distributed between Republicans and Democrats. Once he figured out where the party lines were, he figured he could find them easily enough.

On his way, he called Blues. "I'm headed to Rogersville to find Meredith Phillips. I need you to track down Angela's autopsy results."

"You think I'm running a bar and you've got a tab?"

"We'll settle up when this is over. I'll call you if I find Meredith."

Most small towns are laid out with Main and First as the north-south and east-west dividers. If you can count and tell your right from your left, you can't get lost. Rogersville was no different except that the presidents weren't in chronological order. Fillmore and Hoover were back-to-back. Maybe the city fathers just had a wry sense of humor.