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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

September 18, 1996

Wednesday early afternoon

L unch was delicious. The food came quickly and prevented me from asking more questions. Not that I had many more. When it was time for dessert I declined, but Claudia ordered the tiramisu. She was part way through when I asked, “You said Mr. Cray left right after Joanne on Monday afternoon. What do you mean by ‘right after’?”

She pushed her dessert away as though my question had just soured it. “Right after is right after.”

“They didn’t walk out together?”

“No, I would have said that.”

“So, did he leave a minute later or five minutes later?”

“I’m not a clock. I don’t know.” She did seem to be considering it though. “When Joanne left I was on a call with some deadbeat in Ohio. He was squealing like a stuck pig. Then, when Mr. Cray left, I was giving the guy our address so he could send a check.”

“Okay. How does that help me?”

“The calls are scripted. We have two pages of questions and if they haven’t offered to send money we threaten to take them to court. When Joanne left, I was already on the second page. Then when Mr. Cray left, I was at the bottom of the page. I’d threatened him with court and he was going to pay.”

“Is that about two minutes?”

“Or three, maybe,” she said, taking another bite of tiramisu.

“Does Mr. Cray have a gun in his office?”

She looked at me uncomfortably and then swallowed. “Yeah. He does.”

“Do you know if it’s still there?”

“Now how would I know that? I don’t go in his office much. I’m not the maid.”

“Could you check?”

Putting down her spoon, she said, “Are you crazy? You think I can’t figure out what you’re thinking? You think he killed Joanne because she had something on him and she was going to use it? And you want me to go and see if he’s still got a gun? No way. You’re crazy. I’m not getting myself killed for you or anybody else.”

She drained the last of the bottle of wine she’d ordered.

“I’m not even going back there. I’m feeling a bad case of food poisoning coming on and it won’t go away until I know my boss isn’t killing people.”

“If you go back and wait until he?—”

“Uh-uh, no way. I’m not stupid. I’ll pretend to be stupid if I need to, but that’s smart. Looking around for some old gun… That’s stupid, that’s real stupid. Why don’t you go in there yourself and be stupid? I’m fine with that.”

I left it alone. I couldn’t think of even one thing I might have to offer her that would tempt her to go into that office and look for a gun.

Without finishing her dessert, she stood up and said, “Thank you for a lovely lunch. I’m going home now and pretend to be sick.”

She walked out of the restaurant with more elegance than a woman who’d just had a Cosmo and a bottle of wine should be able to. After Charles Henderson paid the bill and left a generous tip, I went back to the men’s room and relieved myself of the three lemon sodas I had with lunch. There was a pay phone right outside. When I came out, I called Cass’s house.

“Are the police gone?”

“Yeah. They left a few minutes ago.”

“They didn’t find anything, did they?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“They tried to take some of my mom’s paperwork from the junk room, but Aunt Suzie wouldn’t let them.”

That had to mean Joanne’s financials weren’t on the warrant and weren’t in plain sight. The fact that they were there looking for evidence in her murder would likely put evidence of crimes she was committing out of bounds.

“You still have my mother’s cash?” Cash asked.

“Yeah.”

“I want it. And the credit cards.”

There was no way I was giving him the cards. He’d end up in prison. And believe it or not, I’d like to end this little adventure with everyone remaining alive and free.

“And the gun. I want the gun back.”

“Later. Do you still have a key to Top Dog?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m coming up with a plan.”

“Yeah. I have a key. Come and get me.”

“I don’t want you along for this.”

“Then I’m not giving you the key.”

Extortion. Blackmail. Kidnapping. The kid had real talent. I hesitated but really I had no choice. “I’ll pick you up in a while. I hung up. I had a lot to do.

I drove back to Top Dog. Circling the parking lot, I saw that Mr. Cray’s Porsche was there and Claudia’s Prelude was not. Then I drove two office buildings down. The building was nearly identical to the one that housed Top Dog. I parked in the back in roughly the spot where Mr. Cray’s BMW would have been. I turned the car off then stared at the clock. It was digital. As soon as it turned 1:34 I jumped out of the car and quickly walked into the building I bolted up the stairs to the second floor. Part way down the hallway I decided which office matched Top Dog. It had taken me roughly thirty-seconds to get there.

Then I hurried down the hallway to the men’s room at the front of the building. I stepped inside and stood in a booth. I pretended to open a briefcase, take out a hoodie, put it on, pick up a gun and set the briefcase on the back of the toilet. I left the bathroom, hurried down the stairs to the first floor, and walked out of it building.

I went directly to the spot that corresponded with where Joanne’s car had been. I pretended to shoot her and then pick up her purse. I hurried back to the building and climbed the stairs to the first floor. Then I ‘took off’ the hoodie, imagined standing on the toilet and putting the stolen purse in the ceiling, and went back into the booth where I ‘picked up’ the briefcase and put the gun and the hoody into it. I added extra time because the hoodie barely fit.

Then I went back out to the hallway and walked to the back of the building, down the stairs and out to the Thunderbird. I got into the car and looked at the clock. It said 1:37. Three minutes. Roughly.

I tried to remember what I’d seen on the video. Joanne was killed at 4:56 and then Mr. Cray got into this BMW at around 5:02. Six minutes. I’d done it in three. He could have dawdled. He could have taken his time. Most importantly, he could have done it. He could have killed her. There was enough time.

Looking at it another way, he’d walked out of the office about three minutes after Joanne. She’d come out of the building at 4:51. Mr. Cray should have come out the back of the building at 4:54. There were eight unaccounted for minutes.

I got out of the car, walked around and opened the trunk, and took a thousand dollars out of the shoebox. Then I walked around the first building until I found Rocky mopping the upstairs hallway.

“I’m seeing a lot of you,” was the first thing he said.

“This should be it. I don’t think you’ll see me after today. I’ve got a thousand dollars for you.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart?”

“I need you to do something.”

“For a thousand dollars? Is it illegal?”

“Probably not.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Probably not. Oh, that’s a good one.”

“Look, it’s very likely no one will ever know. There’s only a small chance it might become… a thing.”

With a frown he asked, “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to turn off all the cameras covering the Top Dog building from five-forty-five to six-fifteen. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“If things go well, no one will ever ask to see the missing video. Nobody’s going to get hurt. I’m trying to catch a killer, that’s all.”

“That’s all,” he said again.

I felt myself blushing. I didn’t do that much anymore so it was a bit embarrassing. The way I was talking about all this was much more casual than I felt. I was having trouble resisting the temptation to beg.

“What if it doesn’t go well?” he asked.

“That’s up to you. You can make up a plausible story or you can tell the truth. Some guy gave you money to turn the cameras off.”

He thought about it. I thought about it too. I was asking him to take a chance I wasn’t willing to take myself. If everything went to plan it wouldn’t matter if the cameras were on or off. I stood there anxiously hoping he wouldn’t figure that out, promising myself I’d make it up to him if things went wrong.

“Five-forty-five to six-fifteen?”

“Yes.”

“Will I see you later?”

“Hopefully not.”

When I got to Cass’s house he came out and got into the Thunderbird. His aunt’s van was in the driveway.

“What’s your aunt doing?” I asked.

“Cleaning up. The cops left a mess.”

“That’s nice of her. Did you help?”

“I didn’t ask her to do it.”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help.”

He ignored me, and asked, “Where’s the shoebox with the money?”

“In the trunk. I’ve had to use a couple thousand for expenses.”

“What expenses?”

“Bribing people isn’t cheap.”

“Where’s the gun?”

“In my pocket. Where it’s going to stay.”

“And the credit cards?”

“I’m not giving those back to you.”

“What? They’re mine!”

“Technically, they’re not.”

“What am I going to live on?”

“The papers the cops wanted to take, did you look at them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Felt wrong. My mom was kind of private.”

I sighed. “She had a lot of bank accounts. The statements were in the junk room. She might even have more that I didn’t find. I didn’t do what I’d call an extensive search. Between the bank accounts and whatever you make selling the house you should have plenty of money. Enough to go to college even.”

“Fuck college.”

“Or you can stay in your bedroom playing Donkey Kong until you’re ready for a mid-life crisis.”

“I don’t play Donkey Kong. It’s stupid.”

I shrugged. Honestly, I didn’t even know what Donkey Kong was except I’d heard a while back that kids were playing too much of it.

“So what’s the plan?” Cass asked.

“We’re going to do to Cray what he was going to do to you. We’re going to put the gun and the hoodie in his office and then let the police know they’re there.”

He thought about that for a moment, and said, “Cool.”

“But first we’re going back inside to help your aunt clean up.”

“What? No, she’s okay.”

“We’ve got a couple of hours.”

He rolled his eyes and got out of the Thunderbird. Following him into the house, I could easily figure out how the search had gone. They’d started in the garage with Cass’s car where they’d been told the gun and hoodie would be. When those weren’t there, they’d have worked their way through the garage and into the house. By the time they got to the front of the house, the dining room and living room, they were pretty angry. There was a coat closet next to the front door. Its contents were now strewn on the floor. In the living room, both sofas were flipped over, the liquor cabinet stood open, and the carpet was rolled back. In the dining room, the China closet doors stood open and the shelves empty, confirming my suspicion that they hadn’t held any serving items. Cass and I flipped the sofas upright. Aunt Suzie could not have done that on her own. I glanced at the den, which looked like Aunt Suzie had already straightened up in there.

We went into the kitchen and found her there. She was standing in front of the counter wearing a pink bowling shirt that said PINK LADIES on the back and Suzie Q over her right breast. There was food all over the counter. The refrigerator stood open and was completely empty. When she saw us she said, “Why would they have to search the refrigerator?”

“It’s not a bad place to hide a gun.”

“And why were they looking for a gun? They can’t seriously think Cassidy would…”

“Someone called in a tip. They had to check it out.”

“They took a couple of Cassidy’s hoodies.”

“What colors?”

“Red and blue,” Cass answered for her.

“No Spartan green?”

“My mom didn’t like sports,” he said. And then for a brief moment I saw a light in his eye that suggested he was realizing he could now like sports if he wanted to.

“They’re going to test the hoodies for gunshot residue. They won’t find anything.”

“Cassidy, why don’t you go upstairs and put your room back together,” Aunt Suzie suggested. Honestly, I didn’t remember his room looking ‘together’ before the search.

He looked from me to his aunt and back again. Clearly, he was deciding whether we’d be talking about anything he cared about. He went with not caring, and said, “Fine. Whatever.”

She nodded her head toward the backyard and walked over to the slider. She went out to the patio and I followed her.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“This is none of your business. What I’m going to tell you, it’s not your business. But you should know. I guess.”

Confusing, if it wasn’t my business then I really shouldn’t know. She looked upset though.

“What is it?”

“I just… I’m hoping you can help with Cass.”

“Sure.”

I was beginning to think someone was dying of cancer.

“Hector, the young man who was with Heather. You met him? Yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“He says he’s Cassidy’s father.”

“Okay. Do you believe him?”

“I think so. I never thought Cassidy looked much like my family. But I thought that was the Sicilian in him. Dominant, you know?”

“Do you think your brother knew?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if he did. He loved Cassidy so much.”

“What about you?”

“Me? Well… oh, you’re asking... He’s my nephew. Always will be.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“It doesn’t seem fair not to. I mean, losing his mom, growing up without a dad. It doesn’t seem right not to tell him he still has a father.”

“How do you think he’ll take it?”

“I don’t know. I’m a little worried.”

And that was the point of telling me something that was none of my business. She wanted me to help with this if I could. I told her, “I’m hoping I’ll be able to go back to… home. Tomorrow, possibly.”

“I want to be the one to tell him. I want him to know that Dominick loved him, no matter. I’ll tell him soon.”

She looked bleak for a moment and then went back into the house. I went back in and straightened things up in the living and dining rooms. When I was done with that I went up to Cass’s room to tell him it was time to go. The room looked like Kansas after a tornado.

“What did Aunt Suzie want to talk to you about?”

“She wants me to encourage you to go to college.”

He stewed for a moment. “Well go ahead, say whatever you got to say.”

“It’s really not my business. If you want to be a plumber or a janitor, go ahead.”

“I’m not going to do either of those things.”

“I doubt Mr. Cray will keep you on. Not if we get him sent to prison. Speaking of which, we need to go.”

According to the clock on the dashboard of the Thunderbird it was 5:40 when we reached Top Dog. I drove up and down in front of the building until it was 5:46. Then we drove into the parking lot and circled the building. When I was sure Mr. Cray had gone home for the day, we parked. I opened the trunk and grabbed the bag with the hoodie and the gun. Then we entered the building.

We were quickly up the stairs to the second floor. Cass took out his keys and we were in the office. Mr. Cray’s office was a tiny bit larger than Joanne’s, and a bit nicer, mostly in that his fake wood was nicer fake wood than hers. There were a half a dozen photos of his family sitting on the credenza. His wife was pretty but washed-out looking—she didn’t have anything like the fire Joanne had. She was still alive though. Maybe fire wasn’t that desirable. There were four kids in the photos. The oldest boy wore a Spartans T-shirt. He was probably the original owner of the hoodie. He might have left it at the office while visiting. Or maybe he’d left it in his father’s car. I wasn’t sure about that.

Taking my new jacket off and laying it on the chair, I climbed up onto the desk, pushed one of the panels out of the way and reached down for the bag. I had clamped down on my jaw since raising my hands above my head was often painful. I promised myself another Tylenol as soon as I got down.

Before I took the bag, I stopped. “Your fingerprints are on the bag. Wrap the gun in the hoody and then hand them up to me.”

“What about fingerprints on the hoody?”

“It’s pretty impossible to lift prints off fabric. Make sure we take the bag with us.”

He handed me the hoodie-wrapped gun and I slipped it into the space above me. I was reaching for the ceiling tile to pull back into place when the office door opened. I looked down and there was Mr. Cray.

“What exactly is it you’re doing? Never mind, I know what you’re doing.”

Cass seemed to spring awake. He picked up my jacket and reached into the pocket pulling out the Ruger. He clumsily aimed it at Mr. Cray, but the man was already rushing Cass. He slammed the boy up against the credenza behind the desk. Then he snatched the gun out of his hand. I can’t say I was surprised. Mr. Cray stepped back, aiming the gun at us. We all focused on our breathing for a moment.

“Did you forget something?” I asked, curious to know if this was simply bad luck.

“Blue Thunderbird. I saw it as I was leaving. I remembered seeing it yesterday at Joanne’s. I doubled back to see if it was here. And there it was in my parking space. And here you are in my office.”

“You killed my mom,” Cass said, petulant, sulky and powerless.

“Your mom was a deceitful bitch. You need to come to terms with that.”

Before Cass could respond to that, I asked, “If she was so awful why were you with her for so long?”

“We understood each other. Good people are so boring. My wife is a lovely person. Kind, generous, thoughtful, bland, dull, boring. I will miss Joanne. She was a deceitful bitch, and I loved her.”

“You killed my father, didn’t you?”

“Oh for god’s sake, why does that matter so much? You realize none of this would have happened if you hadn’t started nosing around. You barely knew the man.”

That was a lot for Cass to take in, but he pulled himself together and said, “I wanted to know him. And I couldn’t… because of you.”

“Yes, I had your father killed. That’s what Joanne wanted so I paid her cousin to do it. Stupid of me, really. I think Luca would have done it for free if she’d asked. As it was, I think she kept most of the ten thousand dollars I paid for him to do it. You’d have thought getting rid of a husband she didn’t want would have been enough. But that was Joanne for you. Why place one bet when you can place two?”

For a moment, I thought about reaching up and grabbing the other gun, but I couldn’t imagine a way in which he wouldn’t shoot me before I even got my hands on it. And then he was saying, “Well, I’ve told you my secrets. Now it’s time for you to die.”

He aimed the gun at Cass, I braced myself to watch the kid die. And then wait for my turn. Mr. Cray pulled the trigger and the gun clicked. And nothing happened. He pointed the gun down and looked at the safety. Then he began pulling at the slide.

Meanwhile, I was reaching for the gun above my head, so I wasn’t looking when the Ruger went off. I turned to see that Mr. Cray had shot himself, somewhere in the thigh region. Cass jumped forward and grabbed the gun out of his hand. Good boy. I got the gun down from the ceiling but didn’t take it out of the hoodie.

“I’m bleeding. Call an ambulance,” Mr. Cray said.

To Cass, I said, “Don’t try to fire that again. It’ll probably misfire.”

Mr. Cray had both hands around his thigh, squeezing hard as blood seeped through his fingers. There was already blood on the floor around his feet.

“Call an ambulance,” he said again.

“It won’t get here in time,” I said.

I took the gun from Cass and rubbed my fingers all over the spots where his had been. Hopefully, I made such a smudgy enough mess that neither of us would be identified. I tossed it into the pool of blood surrounding Mr. Cray. He stared at it a moment, then his knees folded and he slumped onto the floor.

I’d been right. There was no way he’d live until an ambulance arrived. I didn’t think he’d even live long enough to get to the telephone. To Cass I said, “I think it’s time for us to leave. Don’t step in the blood.”

The two of us carefully picked our way out of the office. As we did, Mr. Cray said his last words. “Wait… please… fuck.”

In the reception area I checked Cass over. There was a fine spray of blood on his clothes, but he wasn’t tracking any blood on the floor. And neither was I.

We left and went down the stairs to the first floor. Cass started to get into the rental but I stopped him. “Hold on.” I walked back to the trunk. I had a few T-shirts from a pack and some underwear.

“Ditch those clothes and put these on. Make sure you don’t leave anything in the pockets.”

“You want me to go around in my underwear?”

“You’re covered in little specs of blood. And we’re going right to your place as soon as I do one more thing.”

I could see he wanted to argue, but then he collapsed under the weight of the situation. “Yeah. Whatever.”

I took the shoebox out of the trunk and closed it. Then I walked over to the storage facility next door and found the control room again. Rocky was sitting inside. Several of the screens in front of him were blank. He’d done as I asked.

Seeing me he said, “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. Things went sideways.”

“What does that mean?”

I held out the shoebox. “There’s ten or twelve thousand dollars in here. I haven’t counted it. There’s a dead guy in the Top Dog office. He accidentally shot himself. In about a half an hour, discover his body. Say you heard a shot. Eventually the police will want to look at the missing video. Tell them a guy in a blue Corvette with a white stripe paid you to turn it off. In a few days, leave town. San Diego. Anywhere you want to go.”

“There’s no other way to play this?”

“You could tell the truth, I suppose. You don’t know my real name. But the guy with the Corvette deserves to be in jail. You could help send him there.”

“But it’s scary enough that I have to leave town.”

“That’s true.”

“I won’t come back to testify.”

“I don’t think you’ll need to. By that time they’ll have enough real evidence to put the guy away for good.”

He reached out and took the shoebox from me. We wished each other luck and then I left.

Cass was sitting in the car in his underwear—well, my underwear. Despite being dry, he managed to look like an unhappy wet dog.

“Did we just kill a man?” he asked.

I wondered what answer he wanted to hear. Would he be happier if I said, ‘Yes, we killed a man?’ I decided on the truth. “We didn’t know the gun would malfunction. We didn’t know he’d get it away from you. You could have easily been the one bleeding to death on that floor.”

Before I’d even got us out of the parking lot, he said, “We have to kill Luca.”

“No. We don’t need to do that. The security guard is going to tell the police that Luca was the one who paid him to have the cameras turned off. The gun that Mr. Cray shot himself with was owned by Luca’s former girlfriend. You told me that. And it may have been used to kill a judge. There’s a lot of holes, but I trust the police to fill them in. Luca’s going to prison. Probably for the rest of his life.”

“He deserves to die.”

“He deserves to suffer. Death ends suffering.”