Gone, But Not Forgotten Page 19

  Page poured his first scotch as soon as he took off his raincoat. He drank it quickly, refilled his glass and carried it into the bedroom. Why was he screwing up like this? He hadn’t been thinking straight since Tina left him. This was the first time his ragged thought processes had gotten him in trouble, but it had been only a matter of time. He wasn’t sleeping, he wasn’t eating right, he couldn’t concentrate. Now, he was haunted by the ghost of a woman he had known for all of two hours.

  Page settled down in front of his television in an alcoholic haze. The old movie he was watching was one he had seen many times before. He let the black and white images float across the screen without seeing them. Did he order the arrest of Martin Darius to protect Nancy Gordon? Did he think he could keep them apart and rescue her? What sense did that make? What sense did anything in his life make?

  Five

  Martin Darius parked his Ferrari in front of his house. It was cold. The mist pressed against him when he stepped out of the car. After a week in jail, the chill, damp air felt good. Darius crossed over the bridge. The lights were out. He could barely see the placid pool water through the glass roof. The rest of the house was also dark. He opened the front door and punched in the code that turned off the alarm.

  Lisa was probably hiding from him at her father’s house. He didn’t care. After a week crowded in with unwashed, frightened men in the stale air of the county correctional facility, a night alone would be a pleasure. He would relish the quiet and bask in the luxury of soaping off the sour jail smell that had seeped into his pores.

  There was a bar in the living room, and Darius fixed himself a drink. He flipped on the outside lights and watched the rain fall on the lawn through the picture window. He hated jail. He hated taking orders from fools and living with idiots. When he was practicing criminal law in Hunter’s Point, he’d had only contempt for his clients. They were losers who were not equipped to succeed in the world, so they dealt with their problems through stealing or violence. A superior man controlled his environment and bent the will of others to him.

  To Darius’s way of thinking, there was only one reason to tolerate inferior minds. Someone had to do menial labor. Martin wondered what the world would be like if it was ruled by the strong, with the menial work done by a slave class selected from docile, mentally inferior men and women. The men could do the heavy work. The inferior women could be bred for beauty.

  It was cold in the house. Darius shivered. He thought about the women. Docile women, bred for beauty and subservience. They would make excellent pets. He imagined his female slaves instantly submitting to his commands. Of course, there would be disobedient slaves who would not do as they were told. Such women would have to be chastised.

  Darius grew hard thinking about the women. It would have been easy to give in to the fantasy, to open his fly and relieve the delicious feeling of tension. But giving in would be a sign of weakness, so he opened his eyes and breathed deeply. The inferior man lived only in his fantasies, because he lacked willpower and imagination. The superior man made his fantasies a reality.

  Darius took another sip, then placed the cool glass to his forehead. He had given his dilemma a lot of thought while he was locked up in jail. He was certain he knew what was coming next. He was free. The newspapers had printed Judge Norwood’s opinion that the evidence was not strong enough to convict him. That meant someone else would have to die.

  Darius looked at his watch. It was almost ten. Lisa would be up. Getting through to her was the problem. At the jail only collect calls were permitted. Justice Ryder had refused every one he made. Darius dialed the judge’s number.

  “Ryder residence,” a deep voice answered after three rings.

  “Please put my wife on the phone, Judge.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you, Martin.”

  “I want to hear that from her lips.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “I’m out now and I don’t have to put up with your interference. Lisa is my wife. If she says she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll accept that, but I want to hear it from her.”

  “Let me talk to him, Dad,” Lisa said in the background. The judge must have covered the receiver, because Darius could hear only a muffled argument. Then Lisa was on the phone.

  “I don’t want you to call me, Martin.”

  She sounded shaky. Darius imagined her trembling.

  “Judge Norwood let me out because he didn’t believe I was guilty, Lisa.”

  “He … he doesn’t know everything I know.”

  “Lisa …”

  “I don’t want to see you.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Stay afraid. There’s something going on here you know nothing about.” Darius heard an intake of breath and the judge asked Lisa if he was threatening her. “I don’t want you to come home. It’s too dangerous for you. But I don’t want you staying at your father’s house, either. There isn’t anywhere in Portland you’ll be safe.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want you to go away somewhere until I tell you to come back. If you’re afraid of me, don’t tell me where you go. I’ll get in touch with you through your father.”

  “I don’t understand. Why should I be afraid?”

  Darius closed his eyes. “I can’t tell you and you don’t want to know. Believe me when I say you are in great danger.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  Lisa sounded panicky. Justice Ryder snatched the phone from her hand. “That’s it, Darius. Get off this phone or I’ll call Judge Norwood personally and have you thrown back in jail.”

  “I’m trying to save Lisa’s life and you’re endangering it. It’s imperative that …”

  Ryder slammed the phone down. Darius listened to the dial tone. Ryder had always been a pompous ass. Now his bullheadedness could cost Lisa her life. If Darius explained why, the judge would never believe him. Hell, he’d use what Darius said to put him on Death Row. Darius wished he could talk over his problem with Betsy Tannenbaum. She was very bright and she might come up with a solution, but he couldn’t go to her either. She’d honor the attorney-client privilege, but she would drop him as a client and he needed her.

  Darius had not seen the moon all the time he was in jail. He looked for it now, but it was obscured by clouds. He wondered what phase the moon was in. He hoped it was not full. That brought out the crazies. He should know. Martin shivered, but not from the cold. Right now, he was the only one who was not in danger, but that could change at any moment. Darius did not want to admit it, but he was afraid.

  PART FOUR

  THE DEVIL’S BARGAIN

  CHAPTER 14

  One

  Gary Telford had the smile and bright eyes of a young man, but his flabby body and receding hairline made him look middle-aged. He shared a suite of offices with six other lawyers in one of the thirty-story glass boxes that had sprung up in downtown Portland during the past twenty years. Telford’s office had a view of the Willamette River. On clear days he could see several mountains in the Cascade range, including majestic Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, an active volcano that had erupted in the early eighties. Today, low-lying clouds owned the sky and it was hard to see the east side of the river in the fog.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Betsy said as they shook hands.

  “It’s been too long,” Gary said warmly. “Besides, I’m dying to know how I’m connected with this Darius business.”

  “When you represented Peggy Fulton in her divorce, did you use a p.i. named Sam Oberhurst?”

  Telford stopped smiling. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Lisa Darius suspected her husband was having an affair. She asked your client for advice and Peggy gave her Oberhurst’s name. He was tailing Darius. I was hoping Oberhurst was conducting surveillance when one of the women disappeared and can give Darius an alibi.”

  “If Lisa Darius employed Oberhurs
t, why do you need to talk to me?”

  “She doesn’t have his address. Just a phone number. I’ve called it several times, but all I get is an answering machine. He hasn’t returned my calls. I was hoping you’d have his office address.”

  Telford considered this information for a moment. He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think Oberhurst has an office.”

  “What’s he do, work out of his home?”

  “I guess. We always met here.”

  “What about bills? Where did you send his checks?”

  “Cash. He wanted cash. Up front.”

  “Sounds a little unusual.”

  “Yeah. Well, he’s a little unusual.” Telford paused. “Look, I’ll try to help you find Oberhurst, but there’s something you need to know. Some of the stuff he does isn’t on the up-and-up. You follow me?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  Telford leaned forward conspiratorily. “Say you want to find out what someone says when they think the conversation is private, you hire Oberhurst. See what I mean?”

  “Electronics?”

  Telford nodded. “Phones, rooms. He hinted he’s not above a little b. and e. And the guy’s got a record for it. I think he did penitentiary time down south somewhere for burglary.”

  “Sounds pretty unsavory.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t like him. I only used him that one time and I’m sorry I did.”

  “Why?”

  Telford tapped his fingers on his desk. Betsy let him decide what he wanted to say.

  “Can we keep this confidential?”

  Betsy nodded.

  “What Peg wanted … Well, she was a little hysterical. Didn’t take the divorce well. Anyway, I was sort of like a middleman with this. She said she wanted someone to do something, a private investigator who wouldn’t ask too many questions. I hooked them up and paid him his money. I never really used him to work on the case.

  “Anyway, someone beat up Mark Fulton about a week or so after I introduced Oberhurst to Peg. It was pretty bad from what I hear. The police thought it was a robbery.”

  “Why do you think different?”

  “Oberhurst tried to shake me down. He came to my office a week after the beating. Showed me a newspaper article about it. He said he could keep me out of it for two thousand bucks.

  “I told him to take a hike. I didn’t know a goddamn thing about it. For all I knew, he could have been making the whole thing up. I mean, he reads the article, figures he can touch me for two grand and I won’t squawk because the amount’s not worth the risk.”

  “Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Damn straight. He’s a big guy. He even looks like a gangster. He has a broken nose, talks tough. The whole bit. Only, I figured he was testing me. If I’d given in, he would have kept coming back. Besides, I didn’t do anything wrong. Like I said, I only hooked them up.”

  “How do I get to Oberhurst?” Betsy asked.

  “I got his name from Steve Wong at a party. Try him. Say I told you to call.”

  Telford thumbed through a lawyer’s directory and wrote Wong’s number on the back of a business card.

  “Thanks.”

  “Glad I could help. And be careful with Oberhurst, he’s bad news.”

  Two

  Betsy ate lunch at Zen, then shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue for a suit. It was one-fifteen when she returned to her office. There were several phone messages in her slot and two dozen red roses on her desk. Her first thought was that they were from Rick, and the idea made her heart pound. Rick sent her flowers when they were dating and on Valentine’s Day. It was something he would do if he wanted to come home.

  “Who are these from?” she asked Ann.

  “I don’t know. They were just delivered. There’s a card.”

  Betsy put down her phone messages. A small envelope was taped to the vase. Her fingers trembled as she pried open the flap of the envelope and pulled out a small white card that said:

  For man’s best friend, his lawyer.

  You did a bang-up job,

  A VERY GRATEFUL CLIENT

  Martin

  Betsy put down the card. Her excitement turned sour.

  “They’re from Darius,” she told Ann, hoping her disappointment didn’t show.

  “How thoughtful.”

  Betsy said nothing. She had wished so hard that the flowers were from Rick. Betsy debated with herself for a moment, then dialed his number.

  “Mr. Tannenbaum’s office,” Rick’s secretary said.

  “Julie, this is Betsy. Is Rick in?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Tannenbaum, he’s out of the office all day. Should I tell him you called?”

  “No, thanks. That’s okay.”

  The line went dead. Betsy held the receiver for a moment, then hung up. What would she have said if Rick had taken the call? Would she have risked humiliation and told him she wanted to get together? What would Rick have said? Betsy closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm her heart. To distract herself, she looked through her phone messages. Most could be put off, but one was from Dr. Keene. When Betsy was back in control, she dialed his number.

  “Sue did a good job, Betsy,” the pathologist said, when they finally got down to business, “but I’ve got something for you.”

  “Let me get a pad. Okay, shoot.”

  “A medical examiner always collects urine samples from the body to screen for drugs. Most labs only do a d.a.u., which screens for five drugs of abuse to see if the victim used morphine, cocaine, amphetamines and so on. That’s what Sue did. I had my lab do a urine screen for other substances. We came up with strong positive barbiturate readings for the women. I retested the blood. Every one of these ladies showed pentobarbital levels that were off scale.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Pentobarbital is not a common drug of abuse, which is why the lab didn’t find it. It’s an anesthetic.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s used in hospitals to anesthetize patients. This is not a drug these women would take themselves. Someone gave it to them. Now, this is where it gets strange, Betsy. These women all had three to four milligrams percent of pentobarbital in their blood. That’s a very high level. In fact, it’s a fatal level.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you that the three women died from an overdose of pentobarbital, not from their wounds.”

  “But they were tortured.”

  “They were mutilated, all right. I saw burn marks that were probably from cigarettes and electrical wires, there were cuts made with razor blades, the breasts were mutilated and there’s evidence that objects had been inserted into their anus. But there’s a chance the women were unconscious when these injuries were inflicted. Microscopic sections from around the wounds showed an early repair process. This tells me death occurred about twelve to twenty-four hours after the wounds were inflicted.”

  Betsy was quiet for a moment. When she spoke she sounded confused. “That doesn’t make sense, Ray. What possible benefit is there in torturing someone who’s unconscious?”

  “Beats me. That’s your problem. I’m just a sawbones.”

  “What about the man?”

  “Here we have a different story. First, there’s no pentobarbital. None. Second, there is evidence of repair around several wounds, indicating that he was tortured over a period of time. Death was sometime later from a gunshot wound, just like Sue said.”

  “How could Dr. Gregg have been fooled about the cause of death of the women?”

  “Easy. You see a person cut from crotch to chest, the heart torn out, the intestines hanging out, you assume that’s what killed ’em. I would have thought the same, if I hadn’t found pentobarbital.”

  “You’ve given me a king-size headache, Ray.”

  “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m glad I could bring some joy into your life.”

  They hung up
, but Betsy kept staring at her notes. She doodled on the pad. The drawings made as much sense as what Dr. Keene had just told her.

  Three

  Reggie Stewart’s cross-country flight arrived late at JFK, so he had to sprint through the terminal to catch the connecting, upstate flight. He felt ragged by the time the plane landed at Albany County Airport. After checking into a motel near the airport, Stewart ate a hot meal, took a shower, and exchanged his cowboy boots, jeans and a flannel shirt for a navy blue suit, a white shirt and a tie with narrow red and yellow stripes. He was feeling human again by the time he parked his rental car in the lot of Marlin Steel’s corporate headquarters, fifteen minutes before his scheduled appointment with Frank Grimsbo.

  “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” Stewart said, as soon as the secretary left him alone with the chief of security.

  “Curiosity got the better of me,” Grimsbo answered with an easy smile. “I couldn’t figure out what a private investigator from Portland, Oregon would want with me.” Grimsbo gestured toward his wet bar. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Bourbon, neat,” Stewart said, as he looked out the window at a breathtaking view of the Hudson River.

  Grimsbo’s office was furnished with an eight-foot rosewood desk and rosewood credenza. Old English hunting scenes hung from the walls. The couch and chairs were black leather. It was a far cry from the stuffy, converted storage area he had shared with the task force members in Hunter’s Point. Like his surroundings, Grimsbo had also changed. He drove a Mercedes instead of a beat-up Chevy and he’d long since lost his taste for polyester. His conservative, gray pinstripe suits were custom-tailored to conceal what was left of a beer belly that had been dramatically reduced by dieting and exercise. He had also lost most of his hair, but he had gained in every other way. If old acquaintances thought he missed his days as a homicide detective, they were mistaken.