Fugitive Read online

  “Thanks for waiting until six-thirty to call,” she said as soon as Martha Brice identified herself.

  “I assumed you were an early riser,” Brice answered, oblivious to Amanda’s sarcasm.

  “Mr. Marsh is in town,” Brice continued.

  “Good. I want to meet with him as soon as possible.”

  “The corporate jet will be in Portland tomorrow morning. Jennifer will call your office with the time.”

  “Okay. Please keep him incommunicado until I tell you otherwise. No press conferences, no leaks. I’ll try to talk the district attorney into letting Mr. Marsh surrender at the bail hearing. But I know Karl Burdett pretty well. If he learns Marsh is in New York, he’ll do an end run and have the police arrest him.”

  “Mr. Marsh will be sequestered until you say otherwise.” “Great. See you tomorrow.” AMANDA SHOWERED, ATE breakfast, and dressed in her most serious business suit before driving to Hillsboro. Karl Burdett’s office was in a modern addition to the courthouse that had been built after the Pope case was tried. Amanda had called ahead and Burdett’s secretary ushered her into his office as soon as she arrived. The decorations on the DA’s walls were clichés. There were the obligatory college and law school diplomas, the plaques from the Elks and the county bar, plus photo ops of Burdett with every politician he’d ever met above the rank of state legislator and any celebrity, regardless of rank. Amanda had seen the photographs before, but today her eye was drawn to one that pictured Burdett and Tony Rose in hunting gear, leaning on their rifles on either side of a six-point buck. Normally, she wouldn’t have given a thought to the picture. Tony Rose was a celebrity and a big contributor to Burdett’s party. But Rose was also a key witness against Sally Pope. Amanda certainly wasn’t surprised that Burdett was a hunter. The clues were the mounted animal heads that glared down at her from the office walls. The trophies didn’t bother her. Many Oregonians, including her father, were hunters. Frank had taken her with him when she was old enough to shoot a rifle. Amanda had never enjoyed killing deer, and had used the excuse of swim practice to beg off as soon as her distaste for hunting outweighed the joy she received from spending time with her father in Oregon’s spectacular forests. Karl Burdett was behind his desk, leaning back casually in his chair. He greeted Amanda and she turned from the wall decorations. At Sally Pope’s trial, the DA had been young, cocky, and recently elected to a post he saw as a launching pad to higher office. Had he sent Sally Pope to death row, Senior would have used all of his influence to make Burdett’s dreams come true. But Senior had conveniently ignored his own role in the Pope fiasco and blamed Burdett for Sally’s acquittal. Since the trial, Senior had kept Burdett in place so he could torment him, dangling a run for attorney general or Congress just out of reach. Burdett had not aged well. The thirty-two-year-old Karl Burdett had been trim and athletic, with a healthy complexion and a full head of sandy blond hair. The forty-four-year-old version was loose and sallow, with a thinning mane flecked with gray. If Senior unfairly blamed Burdett for losing Pope, Burdett saw Frank Jaffe as the root of all the setbacks that had followed his defeat. Frank’s daughter was a reminder of his humiliation, and his welcoming smile was as phony as his hearty greeting. “To what do I owe this visit, Amanda? You were very mysterious on the phone.” “I have an early Christmas present for you, Karl.” “Oh?” “Charlie Marsh wants to return to Oregon to face the charges against him.” Amanda could see it was taking all of the DA’s self-control to keep from bolting upright. Instead he eased forward. “How do you know that?” Burdett asked, unable to keep a slight tremor from his voice. “I’m his lawyer.” “Where is he?” Burdett demanded. “I can’t tell you.” “He’s a fugitive. You have to tell me where he is.” “Actually I don’t if I learned his whereabouts in an attorney-client confidence, but we don’t have to get into a pissing contest. Charlie wants to return to Oregon and you want him back. If you promise to let him surrender at a bail hearing, he’ll be in Oregon in no time flat.” Burdett hated letting a Jaffe call the shots but he knew that he could get back in Senior’s good graces and salvage his career if he convicted Charlie Marsh. “What do you have to lose?” Amanda pushed. “If I tell Mr. Marsh you’re going to throw him in jail as soon as he sets foot in Oregon he may change his mind about turning himself in. And he’ll be in custody if the judge denies bail.” “You’re right. I’ll agree to a voluntary surrender. When are we talking about?” “I don’t know yet, but it will be soon. I’ll call you this week to set a date for the hearing.” “Good, good,” Burdett said. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.” I bet you will, Amanda thought as she shook hands and headed out the door.

  CHAPTER 24

  Karl Burdett had gotten used to the power and prestige that the office of district attorney bestowed. While he would never admit it, subconsciously he knew that he was not talented enough to succeed in private practice and he dreaded the thought of scrambling to make a living at his age. That was why he needed Senior’s approval and support almost as much as he needed air.

  Minutes after Amanda left his office, Burdett was in his car, headed for the Pope estate to deliver the news of Charlie’s return. He was almost there when Tony Rose sped by in a silver-gray Ferrari F43. Burdett was not surprised that Rose was visiting Senior. The tennis pro had been fired by the Westmont soon after Sally Pope’s trial. Less than a year later, he’d founded Mercury Enterprises, which had started small, manufacturing tennis equipment, and had grown rapidly when American wunderkind Gary Posner won the U.S. Open playing with a Mercury racket. The sports world was shocked when Posner signed an exclusive contract with Mercury instead of Nike or another monster sporting-goods firm. The terms were never made public but the rumors put Posner’s endorsement fee in the neighborhood of Tiger Woods’s. The source of Mercury’s funding was a tightly held secret but speculation ran wild that Arnold Pope Sr. was Rose’s secret backer and the money was Rose’s payoff for perjuring himself at Sally Pope’s trial. If so, the money was well spent, because Mercury’s stock and profits had risen as swiftly as Posner served. The firm now successfully sold hunting, fishing, golf, and basketball equipment and it had a line of clothing and foot gear. The face of Mercury was the handsome Tony Rose, but Burdett was certain that the brains and the money behind the company was Arnold Pope.

  “WHAT’S THIS ABOUT Marsh?” Arnold Pope asked as soon as Burdett walked into his home office.

  “He’s coming back to stand trial. He’ll probably be here within the week.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Senior’s excitement increased as Burdett recounted Amanda Jaffe’s visit.

  “Bring me a copy of the case file,” Senior said as soon as Burdett was through.

  “It’s big. It might…”

  “I know it’s big. Copy it and have it here by tomorrow. And keep me up to date on every single development, no matter how small.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Karl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In life it is rare to get a second chance. Now you have one.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “No, Karl, you will not simply do your best.” Senior locked eyes with Burdett. “Either you or Marsh will be totally destroyed by the end of this case. You decide who will be buried.”

  Before Burdett was out of the room, Senior had swiveled his chair so he was staring through his window at Mount Hood, but it was not the majestic, snow-covered giant he was seeing. In his imagination, he saw Charlie Marsh sweating out his time on death row as each second brought him closer to a lethal injection. Then he thought about Amanda Jaffe. She was very good. Could she achieve what her father had accomplished? Funny things happened to rock-solid cases when a clever lawyer got in front of a jury. Look at the O. J. Simpson case. An idiot should have been able to convict him but he walked.

  Senior had attempted to have Marsh killed shortly after he was granted asylum in Batanga, but the mercenary he’d hired had backed out of the contract. Pr
esident Baptiste made a lot of money portraying Batanga as a safe haven for the most wanted. It only took a little research for the would-be assassin to learn the fate of those who attempted to end the lives of the fugitives whose safety the president guaranteed. The killers who were caught in-country met a fate too grisly to describe. A Dutchman who had murdered one of Baptiste’s guests had been pursued relentlessly by agents of the National Education Bureau. When they caught him, he earned a PhD in torture before his body parts were scattered around the tourist attractions of Amsterdam, guaranteeing that Baptiste’s message would be communicated worldwide. Try as he might, Senior could find no one who would risk Baptiste’s wrath. Now it appeared that his quarry was coming to him.

  Senior pushed himself to his feet. At seventy, his joints were stiffening and his back had tightened up. Walking was a chore but he didn’t let anyone see his discomfort, because he never showed weakness. After completing the laborious climb to the second floor, he worked his way slowly and painfully to the room at the far end of the corridor, where Junior had spent his boyhood. Now it was a shrine. The shades were always down in this room and the ceiling fixture was coated with dust. When he flipped the switch, muted light cast a yellowish glow over the pictures on the walls and the trophies, medals, and mementos that filled the shelves. Across the room was a bed whose sheets never needed to be changed.

  Senior sat on the bed and stared at a picture of Junior with the first President Bush. Senior was a good friend of the ex-president, who had spoken on Junior’s behalf at a fund-raiser during his son’s first congressional campaign. Other notable politicians had helped his boy get to Congress. They knew he was the future and they flocked to embrace him. Senior, who almost never cried, felt tears well up as he thought about what might have been had Junior not been cut down in the prime of his life by that…He took deep breaths until he was back in control of his emotions.

  Pope shifted his attention to another photograph, Junior in his dress uniform shortly before his discharge from the Marines. If ever there was a man who looked like he should be president of this great country, it was Arnold Pope Jr.

  Next to the picture of his son in his dress uniform was a picture of Junior holding a child in his hand as he would a football. It had been taken when Arnold Pope III was two weeks old. That bitch had named Junior’s boy Kevin out of spite, but his grandson would always be Arnold III to Senior. Just thinking of his only grandchild made Senior’s fists clench. Junior’s whore had kept Senior away from his grandson with restraining orders and by putting the Atlantic Ocean between them, but he had photographs and videos taken surreptitiously through telescopic lenses. What he did not have was his grandson, the future of the Pope clan and the last of his bloodline.

  Junior was dead. Senior faced that fact every day. His boy had been a candle whose light would have guided America to a radiant new day of decency and honor. Charlie Marsh and the whore had snuffed out that candle and they would pay. Senior knew that he could never get his son back, but he could get revenge.

  CHAPTER 25

  Herb Cross’s wife was a CPA in the Portland branch of a national accounting firm. When she was promoted to a position in the firm’s national headquarters in Atlanta, Herb regretfully resigned. The regret went both ways. After Herb left, Frank used several investigators but none of them had been satisfactory. Then Amanda told Frank about Kate Ross.

  Kate had a degree in computer science from Caltech and had been recruited by the Portland Police Bureau to investigate computer crime. After a few years of pounding a keyboard for a living, Kate had asked for a transfer. While working in Vice and Narcotics, she was involved in a shoot-out at a shopping mall that had left civilians and an informant dead. The Bureau had made Kate the department’s scapegoat and she’d been driven off the force.

  Kate’s computer skills and police background helped her secure a job as an investigator at Oregon’s largest law firm. When Daniel Ames, a first-year associate at the firm, was charged with murder, Kate asked Amanda to represent him. After the two women cleared Daniel’s name, Jaffe, Katz hired Kate as the firm’s investigator and Daniel as an associate, and Kate and Daniel started living together.

  Kate was five seven, with a dark complexion, large brown eyes, and long, curly black hair that made her look faintly Middle Eastern. She usually dressed in jeans and man-tailored shirts that showed off her athletic figure. When Amanda returned from her meeting with Karl Burdett, she poked her head into Kate’s office. The investigator had her feet up on her desk and was immersed in a police report.

  “How would you like to work on the case of the century?” Amanda asked casually.

  Kate looked up, her expression blank. “I’ve gotta pass, Amanda.” She held up her police report. “I’ve pledged my life to helping a dipsomaniac insurance executive avoid conviction for his fourth DUI and I won’t rest until he’s back on the highway endangering the lives of all of Oregon’s citizens.”

  “Gee, I hate to interfere with your mission, but I’m going to pull rank and insist you give my case priority.”

  “Okay, if you insist. But you’ve got to square it with Ernie. This guy is repeat business and he refers a lot of his alcoholic buddies to the firm.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  Kate put her feet on the floor and swiveled her chair in Amanda’s direction. “So, what’s this big case you want me to work on?”

  Amanda told the investigator about her meeting at the airport with Martha Brice and the editor’s recent phone call. Kate knew about Charlie Marsh because of his book, but she only had vague memories of Sally Pope’s trial, so Amanda brought her up to speed on the old case.

  “I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning to meet with Marsh,” Amanda said. “While I’m gone I’d like you to go through the file and start organizing it for trial. Burdett indicted Sally Pope on a conspiracy theory, so, to get a conviction, he had to prove that Marsh murdered Congressman Pope. That means he’ll be presenting many of the same witnesses he used in Pope’s trial. See if you can have a trial book ready by the time I get back.”

  AS SOON AS Kate finished her work in the drunk-driving case, she carried a mug of coffee and her laptop into the conference room. She sighed when she saw the mass of materials piled high on the long table. Then she booted up her laptop and went to work.

  Kate spent the first few hours typing a synopsis of the police, lab, and autopsy reports, witness statements, and trial testimony into her computer. Then she organized the digested materials into categories. When she was through, she went back to the reports and made a list of those that dealt with different time periods or subjects.

  One category had to do with testimony concerning the murder weapon. The initial mention of the ivory-handled.357 Magnum was in a statement by Mickey Keys, who said he’d first seen the gun in Texas when Charlie was given the weapon as a gift. He told the police that Charlie played with the gun in his hotel room but never took it out, because he was on parole. The literary agent said that Delmar Epps, Charlie’s bodyguard, got a kick out of toting the weapon in public when he was guarding Charlie. Keys remembered seeing Epps with the gun in the limo on the way to the Westmont.

  In Tony Rose’s report of his run-in with Charlie at the Dunthorpe seminar, Rose told the police that Epps had flashed the gun when the bodyguard was manhandling him. He remembered it because of the fancy grip.

  When Kate put Rose’s report on top of a stack of items that were pertinent to the Dunthorpe seminar, a photograph caught her attention. She pulled it out of the center of the pile and studied it. The photo showed Charlie and his entourage as they were about to enter the mansion in Dunthorpe. Kate was glad she’d found it, because it put a face to the people about whom she’d been reading.

  Charlie sported a great tan and looked like a poor man’s John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever in his white jacket, white slacks, and black silk shirt. Gold chains graced his neck and a gold Rolex encircled his wrist. His smile was warm and he appeare
d to be relaxed and in control. Standing to Charlie’s right was a grinning Mickey Keys. Keys wore a navy blue blazer, tan slacks, and an open-necked, emerald green sports shirt that went perfectly with his styled red hair.

  Slightly behind Charlie was a massive black man with a shaved head, who Kate assumed was Delmar Epps. On Charlie’s left was a young woman who was looking up at Charlie with adoring eyes. Several things about her were odd. Her head was as devoid of hair as the guru’s bodyguard’s, and while everyone else in Charlie’s entourage was dressed in expensive, stylish togs, the girl was wearing a peasant dress and blouse. To Kate’s eye, the woman seemed out of place, like a gypsy who had wandered into a night club full of partying movie stars.

  A thought occurred to Kate. Epps had testified that he’d left the.357 Magnum in the limo when he’d gotten out at the entrance to the Westmont on the night of the shooting, but no one had corroborated that assertion. What if Epps did have the gun when he left the limo but lied so no one would think he fired the fatal shot? If Epps was carrying the revolver when he left the limo, how could Marsh have gotten it?

  Kate studied a photograph of the weapon. Then she went on the Internet and discovered that the Ruger weighed over two pounds. The gun also had a six-inch barrel, so it would be a bit unwieldy. Epps had been fighting with the security guards shortly before the fatal shot was fired. Kate remembered a witness testifying that Epps had knocked down a guard with a karate kick to the head. All that jumping around could have dislodged the gun if the heavy, cumbersome weapon was stuck in Epps’s waistband, and anyone in the crowd around the combatants could have picked it up.

  Kate found a few photographs that showed both the area on the side of the turnaround where Epps had been fighting and the area between the turnaround and the pro shop where their client had been standing. There wasn’t that much space between the two positions. If the gun had dropped out and had been kicked back toward Marsh, he could have rushed forward and gotten it.