VC04 - Jury Double (46 page)

“At the Plaza. Room 1717.”

“I’ll be by in a half hour to pick you up.”

“Lieutenant—I know I’ve been a nuisance—thanks for putting up with me.”

Mark Wells brought the car around to the 59th Street entrance of the Plaza. A storm front was blowing in from the Atlantic, and the windshield wipers were fighting back the drizzle.

“Thanks for the lift.” Cardozo stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“My pleasure, Lieutenant. Regards to Catch.”

A street musician was playing “Tenderly” on an out-of-tune sax. Cardozo bounded up the steps into the hotel lobby.

Tourists flowed around him, speaking a babble of German and Spanish and languages he couldn’t even guess at. There was a logjam of baggage and Japanese at the desk and he decided to skip the formality of ringing ahead. He took the elevator up to the seventeenth floor and knocked on the door of 1717.

He heard the sound of a TV laugh track and footsteps and a chain sliding back. The door swung open. “You can put it—” Green eyes registered expectation quickly replaced by perplexity. “You’re not room service.”

“Sorry. I’m looking for Catch Talbot.”

“Who?” He was a short, balding man in his mid-forties with big ears, and a bath towel around his middle. “You’ve got the wrong room.”

“My mistake.” Cardozo went to the house phone.

“Help you?” a voice offered.

“Could you tell me which room Catch Talbot is in?” He spelled the name.

“I’m sorry, sir, we have no Catch Talbot registered.”

“You’re sure?”

“Our last Talbot checked out this afternoon. Veronica.”

Cardozo consulted his notebook. There was no mistaking his own handwriting:
C.T. Plaza Hotel 1717.
He took the elevator back to the lobby, dropped a quarter into one of the pay phones and dialed Talbot’s cell phone.

Three rings. “Hello?”

“Catch—Vince. You did say Plaza Hotel, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. Seventeen-seventeen.”

“Okay. There’s been a slight delay. See you in a bit.”

He hung up. He quickly flipped to the page in the notebook where he’d written another phone number: the room in Gibbs’s clinic where the fake Catch Talbot had left his wig. And his answering machine rigged to forward calls.

Cardozo dropped another quarter into the slot and dialed. The call shunted through call-forwarding. There were three rings and then: “Hello?”

The voice was Catch Talbot’s.

“Catch? Vince Cardozo again.” And now, finally, he understood: the man pretending to be Catch Talbot
was
Catch Talbot. Not Mickey. Catch with his brown lenses in and his brown wig off to show his skin-cut. When he wanted to be his real self, he put the wig on, took the lenses out, and let himself be tailed to all the hospitals and precincts where a frantic father would be expected to go. “Sorry—my memory’s Swiss cheese tonight. What did you say your room number is?”

“Seventeen-seventeen, Plaza Hotel. Where are you? Sounds noisy.”

“Pay phone at Sixty-second. See you in a bit.” Cardozo broke the connection.

Damn
—
I told him where Toby is!

He dialed Fairfield County directory assistance. They had a listing for Leon Brandsetter, but only the main house.

A man answered groggily on the seventh ring. “Hello?”

“Mr. Brandsetter? It’s Vince Cardozo again. Are your daughter and grandson alone in that cabin?”

“Lieutenant, you’re very hard to understand. Catch your breath and please speak clearly.”

“
Are your daughter and grandson alone in that cabin
?”

“I should hope so.”

“Get them out. They’re in danger.”

“Come now, there’s no danger now that Corey’s dead.”

“It has nothing to do with Corey. It never did. It’s Toby he wants.
Get them out of that cabin
.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Catch Talbot is on his way. He’s already killed two people—he’ll kill more if he has to.”

“Catch
Talbot
? You’ve been drinking.”

“There isn’t time to explain. He—”

The phone slammed down.

Cardozo redialed. Brandsetter didn’t pick up. He tried Connecticut directory assistance, but they refused to give him the number of the cabin phone. “We can only honor state or federal authorization.”

Cardozo saw that he had no choice. A woman in a gold evening dress jumped out of the way as he dashed toward the street.

FORTY-SIX

2:40 A.M
.

D
EEP WITHIN THE WELL
of sleep, a synapse fired, triggering a chemical shudder along a nerve. Anne shot to the surface, bolt upright in a strange bed. Her senses groped for bearings in the unfamiliar silence.

Evergreen faintly scented the air. A breeze hissed silkily through pine branches. Somewhere nearby, a night creature rustled dead leaves. A twig snapped.

Closer, she heard Toby, asleep on his cot, breathing deeply and regularly. And closest of all, the thudding drum of her own heart, warning her:
do … not … relax …

Something had signaled the sentinel in her. She reached back with her memory, trying to trap the echo of that warning. It had already become immeasurably faint.

Her eyes adjusted. She could make out the faint outline of windows with ringed curtains hanging from not-quite-level rods. The door with its pane of glass and its own tilting curtain.

She went to a window door and peered out. The sky had a dark, swirling look, like coffee that needed a stir. An owl hooted. A twig snapped, startling as the break of a bone.

Something flashed. She squinted. Sarabands of fireflies flickered in the trees.

She heard a sound that could have been a deer’s footstep on dry brush. She opened the door a crack. Silence and pine-scented coolness flowed in. And then a branch twanged like a bowstring. Her heart jumped into her throat.

No more than fifteen feet away, under the branch of a yew tree beside the path, a sharp-edged light glinted.

Taking a carving knife from the sink drawer, she pushed open the door and the screen, slowly so they wouldn’t squeak. She stepped into the woods and tiptoed down the slope.

A breeze stirred. A rush of tiny movements slapped the air. Something metallic clanked above her head. She peered up into the tangled branches and made out the silhouette of a bird feeder. A gleaming metal witch’s hat of a roof capped the swaying cylinder.

A bird
, she thought.
Only a night bird feeding.

Smiling with relief at her own nervousness, she turned back toward the cabin.

A low, almost smoky male voice pronounced her name. “Anne.”

She froze.

“Where’s Toby?” A man stepped out of the shadow of the yew. His eyes were dark and his hair was shaved to the skull.

Instinctively, she blocked the path. “Who are you? What do you want with Toby?”

“Hasn’t a man got a right to see his own son?”

“Catch?” She squinted. “Is that really you?”

“In person.”

She recognized the voice. Gradually she recognized the planes and angles of her brother-in-law’s face. But something had changed. More than the shaved head and the weight he’d put on. A vibration rippled off him, cold and alien and untrustworthy.

“Where’s my son?”

“He’s not here, Catch!” She raised her voice, calling now, warning Toby.

A forearm swung out and smashed her across the chest. The blow toppled her back into crackling rhododendron. His foot came down on her left hand.

With a slashing right-handed movement, she drove the knife at his leg.

He kicked the blade away, contemptuously. “Don’t lie, or you’ll get what Kyra got.”

He jerked her up to her feet and pushed her forward. He yanked the screen door open. “Hey, Toby—Dad’s here.” Floorboards groaned under his weight. His eyes made a sweep of the cabin—the empty bed, the desk, the empty cot, the two chairs. “Come on, Tobester—hide-and-seek’s over—allie-allie-in-free!”

Silence.

Catch peered into the shadow behind the refrigerator. Squinting, he had a face like a squeezed football. His hand flew out, big as a rat-trap, and caught the knob of the bathroom door. The door dissolved in a blizzard of splinters.

“What have you done with him?” He shattered a glass shelf in the shower stall. “
What have you done with my son
?”

He turned, eyes narrowed to slits. He was holding a blue canister in his left hand, a handkerchief in his right. The two hands came together and a chemical stench ripped the air.

Anne wrenched to the side, but the damp rag caught her like a slap on the side of her face. A burning seared her eyes and sinuses. Her stomach contracted and she crumpled to one knee. Her good hand clawed at the edge of the desk for support.

“Leave her alone!” Toby shot out from the curtain beneath the stove. He was holding a narrow, three-foot shelf in both hands, baseball-bat style. Jars and cans avalanched to the floor. The cat flew across the room. “Don’t touch her!”

“Easy there, kiddo.” Catch backed off, but his hands were busy working the bottle into the cloth.

Toby swung. The shelf connected with the blue bottle, hurling it against the wall. A chemical wave pitched back and rocked the cabin.

Catch balled the handkerchief in his right fist. “Come on, Tobester—we’re outta here.”

“I’m not going with you! Not ever again!” Toby darted to the other side of the desk. “You’re not my father anymore! You’ve turned into someone else!”

Catch vaulted the desk. Anne grabbed for his shoes. He slammed down and rolled to the floor, taking the desk lamp with him in an explosion of sparks. He lay unmoving.

Now there was only the light from the sixty-watt bulb in the bathroom.

Toby stepped back, chest heaving.

Catch pulled himself to his knees and slowly to standing. His eyes seemed dazed, unfocused. He let out a moan and raised the handkerchief high in his open hand and dove full-length at the boy, mashing the cloth into his face.

Toby sank his teeth into his father’s hand.

Catch cried out and rocked backward, his neck corded with rage.

Toby swung. Catch grabbed the bat. His arm hooked the boy. Floorboards whined as weight seesawed across them. A chair went over and down.

Catch shoved the cloth into the boy’s mouth. He booted the screen door open, dragging Toby with him.

Suddenly, as though he had come up against a glass wall, he stopped dead in his tracks.

A second man stood half-shadowed in the doorway. “Give me that kid.”

Shielding Toby, Catch took a lurching step backward. The cat let out an ear-scorching get-off-my-tail screech.

“I want that kid.” The light caught the man’s shaven head. With a start, Anne recognized Mickey Williams. He was holding a narrow steel-bladed knife.

“No way.” Catch pushed Toby behind him.

Mickey thrust the blade into Catch’s throat. The force of the blow spun Catch around. He staggered two steps, sank to his knees, and pitched face-first to the straw mat.

Mickey lunged for Toby and clamped a hand over the boy’s face.

“Leave him alone!” Anne cried.

“Sorry, lady. He knows all about me.”

A stencil of light shot through the shattered screen door.

“What’s all this ruckus?” It was Leon’s voice, bad-tempered. “Tim and I could hear it clear down at the house.”

The flashlight picked out two shapes—the boy twisting to free himself, the man holding him with bloodied hands.

“Mickey,” Leon commanded, “let my grandson go.”

But Mickey didn’t let Toby go. “Damn it, Leon—why did you have to stick your nose in?”

The beam picked out the body on the floor. “What have we got here?” Leon took a step toward Catch.

“Hold it, Leon,” Mickey commanded. “Right there. Nobody move.”

“This man needs help.”

“His own fault for being here. Everyone here has got to die. You too, Leon. This kid
knows
. I have to kill him and I can’t leave witnesses.”

“He
doesn’t
know.”

“You’re wrong, Leon. The kid phoned me. He was asking about those calls. He
knows
!”

“Now, Mickey. Just listen to me.” Leon’s voice eased into crisis-management mode. “You’re in the clear. I’m speaking as your attorney.
No one knows
.”

Anne was baffled. “If
Mickey’s
your client—why did the abstract call him ‘she’?”

“Who called me
what
?” Mickey shouted.

“Don’t get your manhood in an uproar,” Leon said. “It’s a game the p.c. crowd plays with pronouns.”

At that instant Anne understood: “You knew he was a murderer and you represented him
anyway
!”

“It wasn’t murder!” Mickey screamed. “It was self-defense! I never harmed anyone! Those kids needed love—they wanted it! But Johnny saw me with a twelve-year-old girl and he said it was on his conscience. He wanted to confess so he could get to heaven. Fine, Johnny Briar gets to heaven, and Mickey Williams is supposed to go back to jail and get castrated? No way, José.”

“And Amalia?” Anne said. “Was that self-defense too?”

“That old bag died in her sleep. I didn’t touch her.”

“I knew it.” Anne whirled to face her father. “You put together a deal and got him off.”

“The government put the deal together,” Leon said, “not me. They wanted Corey. They never wanted Mickey. Not then and not now.”

“And meanwhile, Mickey was sitting here picking up messages from his answering machine.” Anne saw it all now. “And then he saw those little girls in those photos on the wall and he just couldn’t resist.”

“You hear her, Leon? She knows!” Mickey’s voice rose to a high, childish whine. Anne could see that you might mistake it over the phone for a woman’s. “The kid and her both know!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Leon said. “No one can hurt you. I’ve taken the blame.”

“Why, Leon?” Anne said. “Because Mickey threatened to expose the deal with MacLeod and Bernheim?”

“Don’t you hear her, Leon? She knows
everything
!”