AC05 - Death Mask (35 page)

‘Our mystery woman may have known something could go wrong in that room.’

This was the first real evidence suggesting that Pete Janson could have been murdered, or died during sex with this woman.

The next tape showed a crowd milling in the corridor on Janson’s floor. The larger figures, including the Bombers’ coach,
stood out. The woman in the black dress was not clearly visible in any of the frames. She could have been in the group, but the images weren’t clear enough to differentiate individual features. Despite the advancements of the digital age, closed circuit television was far from high definition.

Anya finished her nightcap. She had to go back to her room, check her emails and formalise a report for the owners of the Bombers. It would state that she believed there was compelling physical evidence to support Kirsten Byrne’s claims, and that, based on past history of at least some of the players, in her opinion and experience there was a high probabilty they would continue to commit violent acts against women.

‘I’ve got some paperwork to do in my room.’

She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

‘Meant to tell you, you were right.’ Ethan’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. ‘Apparently there was an incident at Janson and Keller’s old high school. They were both involved. One of their former team mates recalled something being hushed up but didn’t know what had happened. Looks like it never made the papers or went to court.’

She turned around. ‘You think their deaths weren’t a coincidence?’

‘We won’t know until I go there and check it out.’

B
ack in her room, Anya checked the emails. Her secretary was coping fine back home and, in her usual motherly fashion, urged her to stay as long as she needed, or wanted. Some more requests for expert opinions followed, all of which could wait until she returned. She replied to the senders and agreed to consult on the cases. No point turning down work; the nature of freelancing meant she didn’t know when it would be offered next.

With her official seminar commitments finished, the report was all she needed to complete.

As for Janson, a legal case on wrongful death would attract opinions from every neurological, psychiatric, genetic and ethics expert in the nation, given the possibility of suicide and CTE. Raising the issue had been enough in her brief by the Bombers’ management.

She could be home in a few short days.

But the footage of the woman with Janson troubled her. Who was she and how could she have killed Janson? If he had been drugged, a woman that size would have had no chance of positioning him in the wardrobe. He had to have been a willing participant in the sexual act. Chances were, she’d hidden her identity because she was someone who could be
recognised. Maybe she was a wife or girlfriend of one of the other players.

It wouldn’t be the first time the team code had been broken with someone else’s partner. That would give her man motive to kill Janson – if he found out.

Then again, Pete had hurt a number of women through his sexual behaviour and seemed to have been adept at making enemies. Terri Janson put on a good act, but Anya suspected there was a calculating callousness about her. Maybe that was just a learnt behaviour from having lived through Janson’s off-field antics for so long.

The court case involving Darla Pinkus had fallen through, but Terri had still endured the public knowledge that her husband had been a regular at a strip club and had had sex with one of the women there and that he’d admitted to having intercourse with Kirsten Byrne in his police statement.

Terri had two girls to protect. Janson dying before charges were laid against him for raping Kirsten Byrne was, in some ways, a better outcome for the family.

She wondered if it was Terri Janson under the sunglasses and scarf. Wives weren’t supposed to be in the hotel rooms and it would be simple for the coach to access surveillance tapes if necessary. Dorafino could have heard her leaving and assumed it was another woman.

The connection between Robert Keller and Janson played on her mind, too. It seemed they had been involved in something at high school but it had been kept quiet. Their deaths were too close in timing, in the same city, and Anya didn’t believe in coincidences.

She decided to write the reports in the morning and then share her suspicions with Ethan after she had finished.

As she undressed for bed, her thoughts turned to the investigator she had spent such an intense amount of time with. Despite his allegiance to Buffet, he had remained professional, following up on leads even if they might discredit Bombers players.

Without ever meeting Kirsten Byrne he had respected her
claims enough to prove Garcia had lied about his statement. And organising a job interview for Darla Pinkus went way beyond Ethan’s job description.

He seemed like an ethical, principled man, even though she sometimes found him difficult to read. And she still didn’t know very much about him. But she did know she liked his company and she was starting to admit that she found him attractive.

She climbed into bed, closed her eyes and wondered how she would feel saying goodbye to him.

* * *

She awoke at 9 am. The room was still in darkness. She checked her phone. No calls or messages. Ethan would normally have called by now. Nothing on the room phone either. She wondered what he was up to.

After breakfast, she went for a walk before sitting down to write the reports that would send her home.

She was absorbed in her work all day and barely had time to think how odd it was that she hadn’t heard from Ethan. She was just stretching her cramped shoulders when she heard her phone beep, letting her know she had a message. She smiled when she read it, then went into the bathroom to shower.

In the evening, Anya met Ethan in the lobby. He was smiling broadly, dimples on full show.

‘Thanks for coming —’

‘Catcher! Yo.’

They turned to see Clark Garcia storming his way towards them. Ethan stepped in front of Anya.

‘You lying bastard. You set us up.’ He clenched a fist and shook it in the investigator’s face. ‘We thought you were on our team, but you and your bitch here just couldn’t mind your own business. You had to stick your noses in.’

‘Clark, I know you’re upset, but you don’t want to get into any more trouble.’ The concierge near them quietly summoned security.

‘Hell, what more can they do to me? I’m out of the team,
can’t afford no lawyer now, and it looks like I’m going to prison. Man, I got nothing to lose.’

Two security men arrived and approached from either side. Garcia saw them and began to back away. ‘You better watch your back, man. You’re gonna pay for what you’ve done.’ He turned and left the hotel.

After asking if they were all right, the staff moved away.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Ethan said. ‘We have something to do on the way.’

The taxi stopped at the Rockefeller Center.

‘Told you we’d come back.’ He acted as if nothing had happened in the hotel. ‘You’ll be going home soon and I didn’t want you to miss this.’

They rode the elevator to the top and headed out to the viewing decks. The breeze was like a catharsis, blowing away the week’s events.

The view of the city as the sun began to set could only be described as spectacular. For the first time since arriving, Anya was orientated to the layout of the city. To the north, upper Manhattan surrounded the vast area of Central Park. To the west and northwest, the Hudson River twinkled against the orange horizon. They moved to view the south and southeast as the gust picked up.

Ethan looked over her shoulder to point to the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. From there she located Grand Central Station and their hotel, and to the west she could see the lights of Times Square. He showed her Ellis Island, and told her that this was where the von Trapp family, on whom the
The Sound of Music
was based, arrived in 1938; how at last count there were 1,848,570 cars registered in NYC, give or take the 15 or so that had crashed in the last few minutes.

He put a coin into viewing binoculars and peered in. ‘Are you looking forward to going home?’

‘I can’t wait to see Ben, but I have enjoyed working here, meeting Linda Gatby and catching up with Gail Lee. It’s been a whole new experience learning about football too.’

He stepped aside so she could get a better view, and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. She began to shiver. She turned her head and her cheek brushed against his. He didn’t pull away.

‘What if Terri Janson was the woman with Pete?’ she asked quietly.

‘You keep pulling things way out of left field.’ He considered it for a moment. ‘It’s a possibility.’

The breath again.

‘I finished the reports. So I guess my work is done.’

‘What if you have more to do?’

She looked up and his lips met hers. She closed her eyes and kissed him back, her body in a sensory cacophony.

He turned and held her face in his hands. Her heart pumped faster and every fibre tingled with his touch. Suddenly her thoughts raced. What were they doing? She was heading back home and he had made it clear he didn’t want any attachments, with the possibility of Huntington’s disease in his future.

Carefully, she eased away.

‘If I offended you,’ he managed, ‘or acted inappropriately —’

‘I’m not sorry.’ She shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

Half of her said she was crazy, the other half wanted more of Ethan.

‘What happens now?’ He moved forward and stroked her hair, awakening feelings she hadn’t let surface for years. Her veins heated up again.

She honestly had no idea. Ben had been her priority for so long.

The ringtone disturbed them. Ethan waited before answering.

‘Thanks. We’ll be right there.’ He took her hand in both of his and kissed it.

‘Sorry, but we have to go. Lance just started dinner with some of the team and if he disappears again I really need to find out what he’s doing. I know he’s hiding something; a gambling problem, a hooker fetish, I’m not sure what because he leaves no
money trail. I have to catch him in the act, so to speak. It’s the only other way I can think of to help Kirsten’s case.’

‘Well, let’s go.’ Anya assumed she was included.

‘You should head back to the hotel.’

‘I’m coming for the ride.’

* * *

The taxi ride to the restaurant where Alldridge was dining passed in silence. Outside, they met a middle-aged man wearing a dark sweater, jeans and a frayed cap. Ethan introduced him merely as one of his support team who had been tailing Lance since he left the hotel. The man handed over the keys to a blue Toyota Corolla and headed off on foot.

‘This time we won’t miss the cab,’ Ethan quipped.

They sat in the front seats and watched the restaurant for any sign of Alldridge. It was as if the last hour had never happened.

Other members of the Bombers ventured out in a pack but Lance apparently remained inside. A few minutes later, he came out and hailed a taxi.

Ethan started the engine and pulled into the traffic. By now, it was dark and the city had begun its other life.

They followed him to West 52nd Street where he exited the taxi, crossed the road and walked to the next block. ‘Stay in the car, get in the driver’s seat just in case of trouble.’

‘What are you expecting?’ Anya was suddenly afraid for Ethan. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m just saying lock the doors. If anyone approaches the car, drive around the block. You can drive, can’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said indignantly. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I already told you. To find out Lance’s secret.’

Anya hated being treated like a child. How did kissing her give him the right to push her around and treat her like a helpless infant? She wasn’t sure what made her madder: the fact that they had kissed or the fact they had stopped.

Anya watched Ethan keep in the shadows as he followed Alldridge. She peered ahead to see where Alldridge might be going and saw him approaching a club. Suddenly, certain anomalies seemed to fall into place. The club was called Vlada, and judging by the number of men and lack of women entering, she could tell it was a gay bar. Something that had been nagging at her finally made sense.

It was possible that only four of the five men in the room had sex with Kirsten Byrne, yet all five had admitted to it. Dorafino and Clark said Alldridge wanted Kirsten to himself and stopped others coming into the room. He could have been protecting her and, to keep face with the others, claimed he had sex with her too.

Being gay could explain why he didn’t rape her, but he obviously didn’t want anyone to know. What didn’t make sense was why he would admit to having sex with Kirsten at the risk of being charged with something he did not do. Something that could get him a jail sentence and destroy his career.

She turned her attention to Ethan once Alldridge had entered the bar. A large man parked a car, got out and headed straight for the investigator. Without warning, he slammed Ethan into the front of the next building. They disappeared into the shadows, then Ethan spun back into view and was hit in the side of the head. He buckled over and another hit sent him to the ground. The large man landed a kick in his kidney and he arched, just as another blow smashed into the side of his head.