The Third Victim Read online

  “No.”

  “Did Mrs. Mason have a talk with you about how to conduct S and M sex with a client before you met with Mr. Prescott?”

  “We talked about it on the way to the hotel.”

  “Did she tell you that S and M could get rough and that she would give the client a safety word that he could say if he wanted to stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the safety word Mrs. Mason told her clients to use?”

  “Pumpkin.”

  “During your sexual encounter with Mr. Prescott, did the sex get too rough at one point?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Mr. Prescott do?”

  “He yelled ‘Pumpkin’ and I stopped what I was doing.”

  “Did you ever go on another job with Mrs. Mason?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Meredith blushed and she looked charming. The innocence this monster radiated fascinated Robin.

  “After we finished, Mr. Prescott went into the bathroom to take a shower and I stole his wallet. Allison didn’t know. We went back to her apartment and had sex. I took the cash and left the wallet. She called the next day, really pissed. She said the cops had come to her apartment. They’d found the wallet and arrested her. She got lucky because Mr. Prescott didn’t press charges, but she said she’d never take me on a job again.”

  “What happened to your relationship after that?”

  “I made up with her and it was on again. We went on some vacations and hung out. Then Allison moved to New York. She asked me to go with her, but I was in school and I wanted to get my degree. We agreed to keep in touch.”

  “When was the next time you heard from her?”

  “She called and said she had something big but couldn’t discuss it over the phone. She paid for my ticket and I flew up.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said that she was working at a law firm and sleeping with one of the partners. He’d let it slip that they were defending a case that was a sure loser and would cost their client millions. The client was being sued by an Oregon law firm and the firm was sending Alex Mason to depose several witnesses. Her firm had done a background check on Mason and she learned about his divorce and other stuff about him.

  “Allison told me she’d seduced Mason in New York and had a plan to fly to Portland so she could trick him into marrying her. She knew he was wealthy and he’d be worth a fortune when the lawsuit was settled and he got his attorney fees. She’d learned that her firm was going to drag out the settlement but would settle eventually. That gave her time to put her plan into action.”

  “Why did she call you?”

  “She’d checked on Oregon divorce law and knew she wouldn’t get all of Mason’s money if she divorced him, so she had a plan to get it all.”

  “What part were you going to play in this plan?”

  “We were going to kidnap and kill some prostitutes. Then I would pretend to be the third victim of the serial killer. Then we’d frame Mr. Mason and I’d sue for millions.”

  “You recently moved to Atlanta, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you deposed as part of your suit against Mr. Mason?”

  “Yes.”

  “After the deposition, did Mr. Prescott confront you and call you ‘Candi,’ the name you used when you and Mrs. Mason had sex with him in Miami?”

  “Yes.”

  “Later that day, did you go to Mr. Prescott’s hotel and attempt to kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought he could prove Allison and I knew each other before we moved to Portland, and that would have ruined our plan.”

  “When you were on the run, did you come to Portland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you meet Mrs. Mason in Forest Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened in Forest Park?”

  “Allison tried to kill me.” Meredith laughed softly. “That’s when I figured out that the romance was over.”

  * * *

  “Your Honor,” Les Krueger said when all the evidence was in, “the attorney general, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, and Mr. Mason join in asking you to set aside Mr. Mason’s conviction and sentence of death. We believe we have established beyond any doubt that he is the victim of an evil plot cooked up by his wife and abetted by Meredith Fenner.

  “Mrs. Mason denies any involvement in this plot, but she also denied ever knowing Miss Fenner before Mr. Mason was arrested. That is a lie. Mr. Prescott and Miss Fenner put them together in Miami. Furthermore, her own testimony condemns her.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Mason played S and M games and she admitted that pumpkin was their safety word. Mr. Prescott testified that Mrs. Mason and he agreed in the Miami hotel that pumpkin would be the safety word. The only records of the safety word are in notes Miss Barrister took when she interviewed Mr. Mason and in the reports of Miss Barrister’s associate Robin Lockwood, which Miss Fenner did not see, and in testimony today that Miss Fenner could not hear, but Miss Fenner knew that pumpkin was the safety word Allison Mason used in Miami and Portland.

  “What are the odds of two strangers coming up independently with pumpkin as their safety word? No, Your Honor, Mrs. Mason and Meredith Fenner were lovers in Florida and coconspirators in Oregon.”

  * * *

  “How did you figure out the ‘pumpkin’ thing?” Jeff asked Regina as soon as Alex Mason was led back to the jail so his release could be processed.

  Regina laughed. “Robin called Meredith a vampire. That made me think of Halloween, which made me think of…”

  “Pumpkins!” Jeff laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  “Brilliant, boss.”

  “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Regina said breaking into a smile.

  Les Krueger walked over, and Jeff left to talk to Robin.

  “Going back to the office?” Jeff asked.

  “Yeah,” Robin said.

  Jeff noticed that Robin didn’t look happy.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “I’m a little sad.”

  “Why? Alex Mason is free and Allison’s under arrest. What’s sad about that?”

  “I was thinking about Regina.”

  “Regina? She was amazing. Figuring out that deal with the safety word was brilliant.”

  “It was, Jeff. But she might have been brilliant for the last time, and that’s why I’m sad.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  On the evening Alex Mason became a free man, Stanley Cloud picked up Regina from her office and drove her to dinner at their favorite restaurant.

  “Everyone is buzzing about the Mason case,” he said as soon as she was in the car.

  Regina smiled. “It took a while, but it ended well.”

  “I heard that your deduction about that safety word was the nail in Allison Mason’s coffin. I’m really proud of you.”

  Regina beamed.

  Cloud was quiet for a while, staring straight ahead and gathering his courage.

  “Regina, I’ve made some decisions.”

  “Oh?” she asked warily.

  The chief justice smiled. “You don’t have to worry. They’re good decisions. First, I’m divorcing Leslie. It’s something I should have done a long time ago. I just didn’t have the guts. I’m proud of you, Reggie, and I hate having to skulk around whenever we want to be together. It makes our relationship sordid, and it’s not.”

  “You’re not being realistic, Stanley. The medication Dr. Guest gives me isn’t a cure. It’s just part of a holding action. I’m going to be an entirely different person once the disease outworks the drugs. There’ll come a time when I won’t know who you are, and before that I won’t be the Regina Barrister you fell in love with.”

  “I know that. And that leads me to my next decision. I talked to Dr. Guest and he gave me a rough time line. You still have several years where you can travel and enjoy life; when we
can travel together. So I’m going to step down as chief justice—”

  “No, Stanley…”

  “It’s not a sacrifice. It’s something I want to do. All my life I’ve let my ambition rule me. I drove myself in high school so I could go to the best college. Then I worked without stop so I could get into the best law school. Then it was endless hours at my firm so I could make partner. All this time, life has been passing me by. I’ve been to Paris once. I’ve never been to Venice or China. I don’t want to die with regrets.”

  Stanley paused and took a deep breath. “Look, Reggie, you’re the love of my life and you always will be. We have a window where we can be together and see the world. We can go to Santorini and watch the sunsets. We can go to the Taj Mahal and Victoria Falls. I want to see these things with you while you can still enjoy them. I don’t want to sit in an office doing the same thing I’ve been doing my whole life.

  “I know this is a lot to take in. You don’t have to make a decision now. All you need to know is that I’ll stand by you no matter what you decide and no matter how bad it gets.”

  Regina felt her cheeks grow hot. She tried to stop her tears, but she couldn’t.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say.

  “No, thank you, Regina. I was dead before I met you. You brought me back to life.”

  EPILOGUE

  Robin was walking down the hall to talk to Jeff about a case when she heard the receptionist answer the phone with the words “Barrister, Berman, and Lockwood.” She smiled as she always did when she heard the name Regina had put on the office door the day before she left on her around-the-world tour with Stanley Cloud.

  Robin had a lot to smile about. In the eight months since Alex Mason had been cleared of all charges and Allison Mason had been convicted of murder and sent to death row, Robin’s law practice had exploded. Regina had spread the word about Robin’s part in solving Alex Mason’s case. That, coupled with what Stanley Cloud had said about her ability as an appellate attorney, had brought major appeals and several serious felony cases into the office. Robin was still a little nervous about her skill as a courtroom attorney, but Mark and Jeff, and especially Regina, had been terrific mentors.

  Another reason to smile was that she and Jeff were going to see a movie at the Portland Independent Film Festival after work. It wasn’t an official date, but it also wasn’t their first unofficial date since they’d returned from Atlanta.

  Robin was almost at her office when the receptionist hailed her.

  “There’s a gentleman on the line,” Susan said. “He’s calling from the jail and he’s just been arrested for murder. Do you want to take it?”

  That smile on Robin’s face spread out. “Sure. Put him through.”

  “Another day, another murder,” she said as she headed for her office.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I got the idea for this book when I read “Ready or Not, When Colleagues Experience Cognitive Decline,” by Cliff Collins, in the November 2014 issue of the Oregon State Bar Bulletin. Douglas S. Querin and Mike Francis provided me with great insight into how dementia affects attorneys.

  I am incredibly grateful to Dr. Jeffrey Kaye, the director of the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology and the director of the Layton Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Oregon Health & Science University. He took valuable time away from his very important work to read The Third Victim so that my portrayal of Regina Barrister’s battle with dementia would be accurate. Any inaccuracies are my fault entirely.

  Thanks also to Robin Haggard, Daniel Margolin, Sohaye Lee, Andy Rome, and Dr. Karen Gunson, for helping me with my research.

  Special thanks to Keith Kahla, for his terrific edits. The book you are reading is much, much better than the manuscript with which he started. Thanks also to my other coconspirators at St. Martin’s: Alice Pfeifer, Hector DeJean, Carol Edwards, Ken Silver, and David Rotstein.

  My deep appreciation to Jennifer Weltz, for helping me find a new and exciting home at St. Martin’s Press, and to Jean Naggar and everyone else at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, for their decades of support.

  Finally, I want to thank Melanie Nelson, who—as my dedication attests—has brought joy back into my life.

  ALSO BY PHILLIP MARGOLIN

  Heartstone

  The Last Innocent Man

  Gone, But Not Forgotten

  After Dark

  The Burning Man

  The Undertaker’s Widow

  The Associate

  Sleeping Beauty

  Lost Lake

  Worthy Brown’s Daughter

  Woman with a Gun

  Vanishing Acts (with Ami Margolin Rome)

  AMANDA JAFFE NOVELS

  Wild Justice

  Ties That Bind

  Proof Positive

  Fugitive

  Violent Crimes

  DANA CUTLER NOVELS

  Executive Privilege

  Supreme Justice

  Capitol Murder

  Sleight of Hand

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PHILLIP MARGOLIN has written more than twenty novels, most of them New York Times bestsellers, including Gone But Not Forgotten, Lost Lake, and Violent Crimes. In addition to being a novelist, he was a longtime criminal defense attorney with decades of trial experience, including a large number of capital cases. Margolin lives in Portland, Oregon.

  Visit the author’s website, at www.phillipmargolin.com, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PhillipMargolinAuthor, or sign up for email updates here.

  Thank you for buying this

  St. Martin’s Press ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Part One: The Third Victim

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Part Two: The Fourth Victim

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

/>   Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Phillip Margolin

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE THIRD VICTIM. Copyright © 2018 by Phillip Margolin. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photographs: woman © Mary Wethey/Arcangel; paper © Autsawin Uttisin/Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-11750-2 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-18763-5 (international edition)

  ISBN 978-1-250-11751-9 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250117519

  Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First Edition: March 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1