“What time’s it?”
“It’s late. It’s too late to have called but—”
“Took a pill. Took a pill to sleep.”
“I’m sorry. That’s good. You need sleep. But I wanted to let you know that I’m going home tomorrow. Back to New York. But I had to tell you . . . Seeing you . . . Jesus, you look so much like her . . . It was like talking to her again . . .”
“You’re drunk.” She sounded more alert now.
“No. I’m not.”
“Been drinking.”
“Yeah. I’ve been drinking, but I’m not drunk. I just want you to know . . . I know what this means to you. I know what you’re feeling. I’m not going to let you down. I’m not going to let
her
down again. It’s important to me.
You’re
important to me. I just want you to know that.”
He waited for a response. There was none. It took him a few seconds to realize that she’d hung up. He had no idea what she’d heard or hadn’t heard. And he realized it didn’t really matter.
Justin went to bed a little after three-thirty. Woke up at six, showered, and headed for the airport, where he’d arranged for a small private plane to take him directly back to the East Hampton Airport, just a ten-minute drive from his home in East End Harbor.
At nine-fifteen on Sunday morning, he walked into his East End house.
At nine-twenty, he called Leona Krill, told her he was no longer on suspension because he was resigning from the East End Harbor PD. She actually tried to argue him out of it, but he told her that he already had another job. He didn’t tell her what it was, just told her that she and Silverbush would be seeing him around.
He went into the kitchen, made a pot of strong coffee, helped himself to a three-quarter full mug, and poured the rest into a white thermos he kept by the stove. He took the mug and sat in his living room. Justin wrote the words “Ali” and “Hades” on a yellow pad. He sat and stared at those two words. His only movement was to go back to the kitchen from time to time to refill his mug.
At noon he still didn’t have the faintest clue what the words meant. But he did have the beginning of a plan.
Wanda had come to him because she had wanted something. And even as she was dying, Wanda was trying to get what she wanted. She had mutilated herself and spent the last minutes of her life in what had to be an excruciating exercise in order to give him a clue as a way of telling him how to get to the bottom of all this. She knew what he wanted as payback. What he always wanted. The truth. Of that much he was certain.
He knew what he was going to do.
He was going to get his payback.
He was going to find the truth.
He was going to solve this goddamn puzzle and he was going to help the woman he’d been sleeping with who was accused of murder; the woman who blamed him and hated him for the death of her sister; and the woman who’d just been murdered, whose last moments on earth were spent trying to communicate with him.
That’s what he was going to do.
Justin wanted a drink.
He decided instead to stay sober.
He went to the kitchen, found an open can of Coke in the fridge. He took a sip—it wasn’t much on fizz, but it was cold and sweet, so he took a long swig. Without thinking he rested against the stove and then instantly jumped back. He’d left the damn burner on again and had burned his palm. Swearing, he went upstairs to his medicine cabinet and put a Band-Aid on the already forming small blister.
Justin went back to the kitchen, finished the flat Coke in one more gulp.
Then he decided it was time to go to work.
It was early Sunday evening by the time Justin was organized.
The pace frustrated him because the process was so slow, but he knew the value of being thoroughly prepared before moving on to the next step: action. So he spent his day reading and rereading everything he had, as well as new material he took off the Net. He made lists of people and places and tried to get an overall sense of the chronology of the events. It was the most effective way to reveal the patterns he was seeking. It’s the way he worked. First, find the patterns. Next, find the motive. Finally, find the passion. At some point, all three elements would intersect. They always did. And when that happened, he’d have his murderer. He’d have the truth he was seeking.
He had now read, in much closer detail, the pages he’d already printed out giving the history of the Harmon family. He’d gone through the information that Ellen Loache had provided for him. As he read he’d taken notes, kept track of any potential links and connections between all the disparate parts that were making up this complicated whole. When he was done, he entered it all into his computer—the simple act of repetition and transferring information helped to clarify and focus things in his mind.
Wanda had been keeping tabs on Evan Harmon before he’d been killed. She’d told him that while they were sitting in her car. Justin had a good memory for dialogue—he’d trained himself to remember specific words in conversations rather than simply the general tone or information, knowing that nuance and accuracy could make all the difference when going back to interpret something. She had said that “I” had been tracking Evan. She had not said “we.” That probably meant that the investigation into Evan’s activities was not official and that the Bureau knew relatively little about this. That jibed with what Fletcher had said—that she was holding information back. It meant there was something politically sensitive involved, possibly some kind of internal corruption or compromise. Justin needed to know why Evan had come into conflict with the Feds. That was essential info. He was expecting an agent to contact him soon. He’d get that info, he hoped, from his new “partner.” Justin didn’t have any illusions as to what the working relationship would be. Special Agent Zach Fletcher might be better than most, but that didn’t mean Fletcher was dealing without keeping an ace, or even two, up his sleeve. The Feds might indeed be wanting to use him to do some of their dirty work, Justin knew. But by bringing him inside and assigning someone to work with him, it meant they could also keep an eye on him. Keep him under control. Maybe even find out if he was involved in this weird triangle of death in a deeper way than he was admitting.
It was a trade-off he was willing to accept: access for limited freedom. But he had to take advantage of that access for this to work. So first up: Find out what the hell the Feebs wanted with Abby’s husband.
But there was more to Evan Harmon than whatever he’d been doing recently to attract attention. People did not operate in vacuums. They were shaped and formed by family and friends and events. Justin needed to know what had shaped Evan so he could understand the way the man thought. It wasn’t just action that formed patterns, it was thought processes. Justin understood that he needed to know a lot more about the first victim.
Next on his agenda: Ronald LaSalle.
Ronald was linked to Evan. They communicated regularly and they did business together. Justin had to find out exactly what the business was. In Ellen Loache’s folder were names of people and businesses that had to be checked out. Someone on that list would prove to be a critical connection between the two men and the three murders. He also had to find out if Ronald had been involved in Evan’s illegal activity. And if so, how deeply. Was he a peripheral player who had stumbled onto something by mistake or could he have been involved at the very core?
Third on his list to explore: Rockworth and Williams. The firm was the single element in this entire mix that appeared repeatedly and had tentacles that reached out to all parties. Justin had learned an important lesson as a homicide investigator: People killed for love or money. It’s what everything boiled down to. In this case, Rockworth and Williams seemed to be the source of—or at least the common link to—all the people who were involved. Evan Harmon had worked there. His father had worked there. Evan’s company, Ascension, used Rockworth as its primary broker for its hedge fund investments. Forrest Bannister, Ascension’s CFO and the man who found Evan’s body, had connections to Rockworth. Ellis St. John was R&W’s link to Ascension, and he had disappeared.
Justin had to get inside Rockworth and Williams. Had to talk to H. R. Harmon and Lincoln Berdon. Most of all, he knew he had to find Ellis St. John. Right now, St. John’s disappearance made him the prime suspect in Evan Harmon’s murder and possibly the other two as well. But Justin knew the fact that he was gone had other ramifications, too. St. John might have fled because he was afraid. Or he, too, might have suffered the same fate as his two fellow Wall Streeters. Justin understood that if he did find Ellis St. John, he might not find him alive. Right now, though, he had to work as if the R&W employee was on the lam. And involved in the murders.
Then there were the two official suspects. Justin knew he couldn’t overlook them. He did not believe in Larry Silverbush’s solution to the crime: that Abby and Dave Kelley had committed a crime of passion. Or even one of convenience. Right after Evan’s body had been discovered, it had been a plausible theory. But now it was too myopic a view. The case had expanded, gotten more complicated. There were too many other angles that had overtaken the DA’s quick fix. And too many other deaths. Right now, Justin had one big advantage over Silverbush and his investigative crew: It was unlikely that they had any suspicion that the two murders in Rhode Island were connected to Evan Harmon’s slaying. That probability made all the difference in the world. Nonetheless, Justin knew that he couldn’t dismiss Abby’s and Kelley’s involvement. Just because things had gotten more complicated didn’t mean that they weren’t involved at some level. He didn’t believe that they were, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility. He couldn’t afford to ignore anything right now.
Justin also knew he had to talk to Bruno. He was still waiting for Billy DiPezio to send him the results of the fingerprint search he’d asked for—a search that would, Justin hoped, identify the man who’d tried to shoot Bruno. The big man was another piece to this strange puzzle, and Justin had to find out where that piece fit. Bruno had said he’d appear once Justin was back in East End Harbor, and Justin knew that Bruno was, in his own way, a man of his word. So he could wait for Bruno to keep his word. At least for a little while.
And finally, he had to find the meaning of Wanda’s message to him.
Just for the hell of it, he had googled the words that Wanda had managed to scrawl on her body: “Hades” and “Ali.”
Hades had 9,850,000 mentions on the main page. There were 176,000 different references to the use of the word “Hades” in song lyrics; there was a Hades computer software program; paintings of the god Hades in museums all over the world; poems and books about Hades dating back hundreds of years; food products named Hades and a Hades Bloody Mary mix. It was impossible even to begin to sift through the various choices. The only thing he knew about Hades was the mythological aspect: it was the name, in Greek mythology, for both the underworld and the god of the underworld. So what Justin did was to pick the very first and easiest Google reference and enter it into his computer. He didn’t really know why he bothered, except he liked the sound of it, and including it in his file—seeing it whenever he went back in to refer to his notes—would work to keep his anger about Wanda fresh and present and alive. He decided to title the entire casebook document
Hades,
and he typed in the following from something called the “Hades homework page”: “HADES: Zeus’s brother and ruler of the underworld and the dead. Also called Pluto—God of Wealth.”
Justin thought it was fitting. The god of wealth and the ruler of the dead. Sounded like a god whose path he might cross one of these days.
Googling the name “Ali” produced 216,000,000 mentions. He managed to scroll through about forty of them—one-line descriptions of sites for info on Muhammad Ali, Ali G, NASA’s advanced land imager (acronym ALI), Ali Baba, and an actor named Ali Suliman who was in the film
Paradise Now
(which, oddly enough, Justin had gone to see with Abby Harmon at the old-fashioned, arty East End Harbor movie theater that always smelled of grape drink and disinfectant). Justin gave up fairly quickly on this second search, deciding it was a reasonably safe bet that neither Muhammad Ali nor Ali G had anything to do with his murder investigations. He found absolutely nothing there he deemed worth adding to his lists.
Restless, he reached for his cell phone and dialed Abby’s number in the city. She had not returned his calls from yesterday. He got her answering machine again, left a briefer message than his last one. “It’s Jay. I’m in East End and I’d like to talk to you.” She knew his number, so he didn’t bother leaving it. The fact that he even considered leaving it made him realize that the relationship had shifted and was already different. So after a very brief pause, all he said was, “So call me. Bye.” He then called her cell, which also immediately went to voice mail. He repeated, almost word for word, what he’d left on her home machine. Then he hung up, dissatisfied.
He paced around the room, not exactly sure what was fueling his impatience. At 7:30 p.m. Justin forced himself to sit back down at the computer. He made a short To Do list: an abbreviated version of everything he’d already entered, now turning them into specific tasks, in order of priority. This final list read:
1. Evan Harmon—background; Fed investigation
2. Ronald LaSalle—business connections to Harmon
3. Hades
4. Ali
5. Rockworth and Williams—Ellis St. John, H. R. Harmon, Lincoln Berdon
6. Billy DiPezio—print results
7. Dave Kelley
8. Abby
9. Bruno
There was nothing more he could realistically get done tonight except perhaps for some more reading, so he began to think about dinner. He had nothing in his fridge or freezer—and the lack of anything even remotely domestic in his house made him think about the differences in the life he led from the one led by his parents. Right about now Louise would be setting a delicious meal and an excellent wine on the table before Jonathan and Lizbeth. No one was going to serve Justin the bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale and the shitty Chinese food he was about to go out and get and eat straight out of the cardboard carton.
Choices, he thought. Everything was about choices.
He’d made his. Maybe he should have made some different ones along the way.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to make different choices for the future.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t about choices. Maybe it was about fate. Or randomness. Maybe it was just about doing the best you could to control the uncontrollable.
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his front door. Three knocks. Two were rather soft and tentative. The last one was harder, more forceful, as if whoever it was wasn’t really sure about wanting to come in, then gathered up some courage and decided it was okay after all. Justin didn’t know who could be showing up unexpectedly. He was not exactly Mr. Sociable. He supposed there were several people who wouldn’t mind talking to him at the moment. Larry Silverbush. Leona Krill. Maybe even Bruno. So he rose from his chair—not without some effort; another reminder that he’d better get to the gym sooner rather than later—and went to open the door.
If there was one person he was not expecting to see—now or ever again—it was the woman standing in his doorway.
“Are you going to invite me in?” the woman said.
Justin didn’t answer. He just stared. At first it was a stare of surprise. But the longer it went on the harder his eyes turned.
“You’re going to have to let me in sooner or later,” she said. “After all, we’re partners.”
Justin’s first words to her in over a year were: “What the hell are you talking about?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
And from the look on his face, the stunned silence, she saw that he hadn’t been told, that they’d left all this up to her, so she met his hard stare with a softer one of her own and broke the news to him herself.
“The FBI,” Reggie Bokkenheuser said. “I’m the agent assigned to work with you.”
Her hair was blonder now; it had been darker when he’d seen her last. It was more natural this way; seemed to fit her better. She’d let it grow some; it had gotten a little wilder looking. And she’d lost some weight; she looked stronger than she used to look, leaner and more muscular. Her blue eyes were the same, though—clear and lovely, if a bit sad, and her skin was smooth and tan, her neck short and not thin but somehow elegant. Her mouth had the same touch of sadness that her eyes had, but it also had the faint trace of a protective smirk. Her mouth and that smirk gave away the fact that she had a sense of humor. But they also kept the world at a distance. Yes, it was definitely the same woman who’d been planted on Justin in the East End Harbor police department a little over a year ago and whom he’d taken into his confidence and to whom he’d made love and who’d led him into a trap that saw him wind up in Guantanamo’s prison. The same woman who’d shot and killed Ray Lockhardt, the manager of the local airport, under orders from her superior at the FBI. The same woman he’d arrested for that murder.
And the same woman he realized—looking at her standing on his doorstep, her lips parted slightly, her thin smile hopeful and nervous and, as always, lopsided—could still make his stomach flutter and make his knees buckle ever so slightly.
Damn her.
Damn them.
Damn, damn, damn them all.
He didn’t let her in. At least not immediately. Justin went into town to get Chinese food and insisted she come with him. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t want Regina Bokkenheuser to stay alone in his house. Even for the twenty minutes it took him to get some fried rice and sesame chicken and cold noodles with sesame sauce. Even if it had taken one minute. He didn’t know what she would do. What she might look for, what she might plant.