Authors: Daphna Edwards Ziman
The final curtain on love! The last time she would let Porter hold her, touch her, let his deep voice reassure her, instill hope in a hopeless fantasy of a world that could never be. The final curtain …
* * *
Three hours later, Kelly was speeding down the center lane of the southbound state highway. Running again. Everything had gone just as she’d planned it. Everything, that is, except her lover’s reaction. Why had Porter fought her so hard? Why couldn’t he just accept the inevitability of her leaving? She had planned their last night together so carefully, yet it had taken such a tragic turn. As the miles passed, she replayed the evening moment by moment, combing the memories for ways it could have gone differently.
Kelly checked the rearview mirror. Deep in the coma of sleep, her children were secured snugly in the backseat. She reached back and rubbed Libby’s knee. The four-year-old smacked her lips and nuzzled her cheek against the car seat. Six-year-old Kevin was frowning in his sleep, but he seemed in no danger of waking up. Kelly adjusted the heat and glanced down at the dashboard. The gas tank was still half full, and the sky was still dark. Soon it would start to lighten and she’d have to stop for gas. Her hands tightened on the
steering wheel as she pushed the Civic down the highway toward Phoenix and beyond. Taking the long route, she had decided, would ensure her successful escape.
The monotonous road ahead reminded Kelly of the many roads, the many places that had been her life. She had always found safety in a world of anonymity. Some people she connected with for a frozen moment. But no one had come so close, so deep, as Porter. In the midst of emptiness they had found each other. Destiny had played the cruelest card of all—the card of love. A love, forbidden, that was dead to her now.
YELLOW TAPE UNFURLED LIKE A PARTY STREAMER—albeit a ghastly one—as a policewoman ran the spool down the hall and cordoned off the elevators.
CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS
, it barked in authoritative black letters. In the congressman’s suite, a dozen cops, detectives, and crime scene investigators were already at work. One man vacuumed next to the bed, lifting the curtains out of the way with a latex-covered finger and thumb. A woman was painting white powder on each of the doorjambs. In the bathroom, another woman pressed tape around the sink handles. In the bedroom, a man lifted a disk of putty away from the headboard, then reached for a digital camera.
Sprawled on a sofa in the sitting room was Congressman Porter Garrett, his head thrown back at an odd angle in a smear of black blood, his throat cut open.
The lead detective murmured into a cell phone. “Mmm-hmm. See you then.” Detective Cooper snapped the phone shut and addressed a man next to him.
“They’ll be here after noon. They’re flying in a team from DC.”
The on-duty manager at the Venetian, a fortyish man in a polo shirt and khakis, nodded. “We can arrange a few rooms on this floor at government rates.”
The detective ignored the remark and chose, instead, to listen to a familiar squawk from his mobile, detailing new information. He pointed toward the hallway with his free hand.
“You might want to get down to the lobby. Fucking vultures are here already. My guys are trying to keep the satellite truck out of your valet lane, but they may need some help from hotel security before our backup gets here. Might want to check the service entrances, too.”
The hotel manager hurried away, eager for something to do—anything that would get him as far away as possible from the gruesome body and the gruff detective. “Fucking media,” he grumbled to himself as he shuffled down the hallway. “Fucking way to start the morning. Not even seven o’clock.” He couldn’t get the picture out of his head: the room, the bloody body, the disheveled bed. Fucking shame about Garrett, though. That guy was going all the way to the White House someday, and he had stayed at this hotel. That could have been worth something—might still be. Would this be good for business or bad? The manager knew never to underestimate the buying power of notoriety or the macabre. He realized that by tomorrow, there could be people calling to reserve that suite, the murder suite. This could work in his favor after all.
He smiled to himself as he strode out of the elevator—just in time to see his chief of security tackle a TV cameraman and shove him through the glass entrance doors.
“Whoa!” cried the manager, running forward alongside two bouncers moving in from the left. They pulled the men apart as two police vans roared up to the curb, sirens blaring, lights flashing. A
dozen cops in helmets poured out and barricaded the doors, standing shoulder to shoulder. Against such odds, yet another camera crew ran up to the hotel—the shooter in the lead, trailed by a sound guy holding a mike on a boom and a producer in a baseball cap and sneakers. They tried to shove past the policemen but were bounced back.
“
Eyewitness News
!” shouted the producer. “Channel Five!”
“Let us in, you fat fucks,” grunted the cameraman, feinting with his gear in an attempt to fake out the shortest cop in the row.
A taxi wheeled up to the police lines, and a man leaped out before it stopped moving. He was tall, with graying dark hair, and dressed in jeans and a black blazer. His face was set in an angry grimace, his carved cheekbones underlying gray, alert eyes. He sprinted toward the doors.
“Sir! No one comes in or out!” shouted a cop.
“They’re expecting me,” mumbled the man, trying to step around the barricade.
“It’s Jake Brooks!” shouted the TV producer. “Over here! Brooks! What have you heard? Jake! Why are you here?”
“Sir, step away, sir!” the cop yelled, trying to keep his balance amid the jostling.
Brooks whipped out a phone, at the same time shaking his head and turning away from the TV camera in his face.
“Forget it,” mumbled the producer, before yelling, “This way!” He took off toward the side of the building and around the corner, his crew following him. The manager raced after them.
“It’s okay, officer. He’s with me,” called a woman’s voice from behind the police barricade. The spikes of her striking copper-colored hair poked above the cop’s shoulder. “He’s part of our team.”
“Ma’am. We’ve got strict orders not to let anyone in or out. Please move back inside.”
“Cassie, get someone down here,” growled Brooks as he looked at her over the helmeted cop’s shoulder.
“Jake, it’s awful, he—”
“Get someone down here,” Brooks repeated firmly. Cassie’s head disappeared from view as she pulled back inside the hotel. Brooks stepped off the curb and walked a few paces down the circular driveway, trying to calm his mind.
He had been asleep when the phone’s shrill ring had awakened him, and he was still processing the news. Cassie’s strained voice had whispered in his ear. “It’s bad news, Jake. Porter’s dead. Murdered. Suzanne wants you to … if you could identify …”
A thousand questions had tumbled through Jake’s brain as his body snapped awake, and he must have voiced some of them to Cassie, but his memory hadn’t recorded anything beyond that ominous first pronouncement: “It’s bad news, Jake. Porter’s dead.” Somehow he had dressed. Somehow he had hailed a taxi.
“It’s alright, Martinez, he can come through.”
Jake snapped out of his reverie as another part of his brain caught the officer’s declaration, and he watched as the cops opened a small gap in their defense to let him through. Behind him, the break sealed as quickly as it had opened.
Cassie stood in the hotel lobby with a man who had a full mane of nearly white, curly hair. His eyes were pale blue, fringed by almost translucent lashes. He wore jeans and a blue nylon Windbreaker.
“Hey, Cooper,” said Jake, taking note of the enmity in the cop’s eyes. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“I shouldn’t even be letting you in here,” barked Cooper. “Especially since this doesn’t involve a mobster or a corrupt CEO.”
Jake held his anger, and calmly said what he knew Cooper already knew. “Suzanne Garrett asked me to come. I’m representing an old family friend.” Jake knew there was nothing Cooper could do
to keep him out. Off the murder scene at least—the investigation was a different matter.
“I didn’t know lawyers like you
had
old friends,” muttered Cooper.
“Lawyers like me would surprise you in many ways,” replied Jake without smiling.
Cooper glared a moment. “It’s this way,” he said finally, turning away. “Brace yourself. As they say, it’s not pretty.”
Jake clenched his teeth on the elevator ride to the twenty-fourth floor, saving his questions until after he’d seen for himself the incomprehensible. Cassie held a tissue to her eyes. Cooper stayed in motion, rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back.
In the suite, the curtains were open and the early morning sun poured in. Clamp lights positioned around the room gave it the appearance of a photo shoot venue. As he scanned the scene, Jake took in the officer vacuuming, the woman dusting for prints, the photographer shooting bed linen draped on the sofa. Men were on their hands and knees, combing the carpet with gloved hands. He didn’t see Porter. The bed was empty, the covers rumpled and thrown over the floor. The chair was covered with papers, and Porter’s laptop was open on the desk. A black silk robe lay in a pool on the floor by the window. Jake looked back toward the sitting room. That’s when he saw that the photographer wasn’t taking pictures of bed linen. It was a body.
Porter’s
body.
“He’s over here,” grunted Cooper. “You want to take a look?”
Jake nodded, trying to appear matter-of-fact, and was relieved when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his jacket and uttered a simple
hello.
“It’s Suzanne. Are you there yet?”
“Just got into the room.”
“Is it true, Jake?”
“Suzanne. Can you wait five minutes?” Jake heard Suzanne’s voice catch, but then she answered evenly, “I’m here. Call me back.”
Jake silenced his phone and slid it into his pocket.
Cooper stood over the body, looking annoyed. Jake forced himself to take two steps closer. The
click-whirr
of the camera shutter seemed louder than normal as it put in freeze-frame what Jake was already experiencing in slow motion.
Click-whirr
. It was Porter, no question. His body, naked, was splayed awkwardly—his hips on the sofa, his upper thorax mangled.
Click-whirr
. Like a target.
Like a dismantled hangman,
Jake found himself thinking.
Click-whirr
. Porter’s head canted at a right angle to his shoulders, a huge gash from ear to ear severing his neck in a mess of blood.
Click-whirr
.
Click-whirr
. Porter’s handsome face in a hideous grimace, one eye open, one closed. His thick, sandy hair matted black with blood.
Click-whirr
. Blood on his hands, both clenched into fists.
Jake had seen enough. He turned away and forced himself to say something.
“What time do you think this happened?” He noticed Cooper gesture impatiently at the photographer, who lowered her camera and moved away toward the windows.
“Between one thirty and three.”
“What else?”
“There’s no sign of forced entry. It looks like whoever did it was already in the room with him. We’ve got what appears to be semen on the sheets. Also, long blonde hairs in the bed and on the floor. Probably female, though it could be either sex, at this point, but there’s also lipstick on one of the pillowcases. Though that’s not conclusive evidence, either, that the companion was female.”
Jake covered his mouth with his hand and pretended to be clearing his throat. Porter had had a lover? How had he not known that?
This close to the election, and Porter was having an affair? Or was this a one-night encounter? Or a setup?
“It’s definitely female. Porter wasn’t gay or bisexual,” said Jake.
“You know who it was?” said Cooper, showing the first spark of animation Jake had seen so far.
Jake shook his head.
Cooper snorted. “It’s going to be impossible to keep it quiet any longer. Someone’s going to have to go feed the beast soon. The cameras are all over this like flies on meat.” He glanced at Jake’s angry face and, out of respect for the dead, apologized. “Sorry.”
“Detective!” called a voice suddenly. “You need to see this.”
Jake followed Cooper and the photographer into the bedroom in time to watch one of the investigators pull the bedspread off the floor. Underneath was a platinum blonde wig. The photographer fired off one, two, three, four quick shots in a row. She moved behind the investigator and squeezed off four more frames, then nodded at the investigator. He lifted the wig in his gloved hands and peered inside.
“More blonde hairs,” he reported. He put his fist in it and held it up, giving it the distinct shape of a head. The wig was of good quality and appeared to have been cut and styled by a professional.
“Seems like platinum blonde wigs are in style,” muttered Jake.
“What?” said Cooper.
“Marilyn Monroe wigs,” replied Jake. His eyes narrowed. “I had a very sexy encounter with one last night.”
Cooper looked disgusted. “Did it happen here in this suite?”
“Fuck off,” grunted Jake. Cooper moved away for a closer look at the wig. Grateful to have a moment to himself, Jake glanced once more into the other room at Porter’s body. A different photographer was standing over it with her camera. The irony was hard to miss. As a congressman and, until this morning, a candidate for the U.S.
Senate, Porter Garrett had spent most of his waking moments trying to look good in front of the camera. These would be his last pictures.
For nearly two decades Porter Garrett had been Jake’s closest friend. They had met as prosecutors in Las Vegas, fresh out of law school. Young, idealistic, they had been superheroes then, going after the scum of the earth who preyed on the innocent and the good. They had developed a healthy competition with each other, and their friendship was built as much on respect for each other’s legal skills as on their mutual desire to rid the world of bad guys.