“Because that’s who I am, right? I can’t control myself. I’m a womanizer. You’d end up with a lying, cheating scumbag of a lawyer husband again.”
Yes, that’s exactly right. “No,” she lied. “I just needed time to think things through.”
“A year is an awfully long time. Not one text, not one phone call. Nothing. When I took the girls to dinner on Friday night, Erin asked me straight out why you weren’t talking to me. You know what I had to tell her? That I don’t know.”
When Erin had told Lauren that Mark had texted her and was taking her and Lindsey to a new restaurant at Canalside the day after Thanksgiving, she hadn’t been surprised. Mark had always maintained his relationship with her two girls, even after he married the knocked-up secretary. They called him Dad, and Lauren had no objection to that. Their biological father was dead and had never even seen Erin, much less parented her. Mark had come into their lives when the girls were eight and nine, and he was more of a dad than a lot of biological fathers she knew, never forgetting a birthday or missing a special event. Blood doesn’t make family, Mark used to say, love does. It wasn’t love that Mark lacked; it was the ability to stop spreading it around.
“I just thought it might be better to maintain radio silence while you were going through your divorce with Amanda. I know you were worried about little Mark, and you needed to be there for him.”
At that he seemed to soften a little. “He took it harder than I expected. He started acting out, his grades dropped. We have him in counseling now.” He glanced at a framed picture on the wall of the two of them in a canoe. “I’m in counseling, too, with him.”
Mark agreeing to go to counseling surprised Lauren. He was one of those macho guys who had always claimed that counseling was all bullshit, for weak people who couldn’t handle their own problems. “I know I keep saying it,” Lauren told him, “but I am sorry.”
Letting go of his anger, Mark finally took a good look at Lauren. She knew the circles under her eyes, the limp hair, the pallor of her skin gave away just how injured she really had been. And how she still needed time to recover. “Sit down before you fall down, please.” Rising from his seat, he motioned to the chair in front of him. “What really happened? And not the newspaper version.”
Lauren took the seat. “Someone snuck into my office and stabbed me from behind. Collapsed my lung, kicked me in the head to give me a nice little concussion, then left me for dead.”
“That’s unreal,” he said as Lauren tried to get comfortable in the heavy wooden chair positioned directly in front of his desk. “Was it Joe Wheeler?”
Shaking her head, she saw the image that immediately popped into her brain at the mention of his name: Joe on his back with his nose next to his ear. Brain and hair and bone. Bright red blood and broken teeth. “It definitely wasn’t Joe.”
“Did you have anything to do with it?”
Her eyes went wide at the accusation. “You think I murdered Joe?”
“I read online that they questioned you and your partner the night he was killed. It’s a fair question, after everything that happened.”
Damn that leak. She gripped the sides of the chair until her knuckles went white.
“And now that you and your partner are living together …” Mark said it like it made perfect sense, that she and her partner would conspire together to kill her ex-fiancé right after she got stabbed by some unknown cop. One of her daughters must have told him about the living arrangement at dinner.
Lauren held up a hand, cutting him off. “Stop right there. Reese and I are not in a romantic relationship. He’s staying with me until I’m strong enough to come back to work. That’s all.”
“So Reese didn’t exact revenge for you?” He didn’t sound convinced.
“No,” she countered. “He was actually banging one of my nurses when Joe was murdered. You should be satisfied, after everything that’s happened, that Reese and I don’t have anything between us. And we never will.”
Now Mark laughed out loud. “I really thought when my secretary buzzed me that you were here, you wanted me to help set up your defense.”
“You think I could kill Joe like that? Or have someone do it for me?”
He shrugged. “Anyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances.”
I taught you that, she wanted to tell him but tried to stay on track. “You handle real estate law. Why would I ever ask you to defend me?”
Leaning back in his seat, the boyish smile Lauren loved crept across his face. “Because I know people. I have connections.”
Which brought her full circle back to why she was there. “That’s why I need you to buy me these two tickets. It’s not like they’re a thousand dollars a plate. I’ll give you the money.”
He waved the idea away as if it were ridiculous. “I don’t want your money.”
Mark could buy a hundred tickets, probably with the cash he had on hand in his office. He had enough money to buy or sell almost anything in Buffalo. Just not her.
“I know you don’t.”
He studied her face, looking for something she didn’t want him to see. “Does this have to do with you getting attacked in your office?”
“Yes,” Lauren told him, trying to stay strong under his gaze. “But I can’t tell you more than that.”
Pushing back from his desk, he shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his designer suit pants. He looked down at her, his eyes softening. “I’ll get two tickets under the firm’s name. I’ll text you when you can come pick them up. But I want you to know something else.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to force you to see me again if you don’t want to.”
“Mark, that’s not it.” She lowered her eyes from his gaze, afraid of where it would lead. It was because she wanted to see him, to be with him, that she had to turn away. Every nerve in her body was firing, responding with electricity to him being so close to her. It would be so easy for Mark to lean in, kiss her mouth, run a hand along her cheek. So easy to fall back in bed with him. But then so hard when it all fell apart, again, like it surely would. “That’s not it at all.”
He sighed, resigned that her answer was the best she was going to give him. “I’m just relieved you’re okay. I needed to see you in person to make sure, and I have.” Stroking her hair back from her face like he used to do every morning before he left for work, he said, “I’ll get you your tickets.”
Lauren breathed out a sigh of relief, and from deep down, sadness.
Mark bent over and kissed the top of her head. “No strings attached.”
36
“How did it go?” Reese revved the engine of the Dodge Charger he’d plucked from the pool at the police garage earlier.
Lauren slid into the passenger side. The computer that should have been mounted to the dash was gone; an empty bracket faced them. The car rattled, making a knocking sound if the wheel was turned too fast. That’s what happens when you get to the garage late. Lauren strapped herself in. All the good ones are taken. “As well as could be expected.”
Reese was parked in front of a fire hydrant directly in front of Mark’s office building. A female office worker, smoking a cigarette off to the side of the main doors, was giving them the stink eye. “Can we take off before she makes a complaint?”
“Let’s go.”
Putting the car in gear, he eased into traffic carefully. “I should make a complaint against her for wearing sneakers with office attire.”
“You’ll be looking for a new job with those same fashion police if you keep blocking fire hydrants.”
Reese changed the subject. “What did Mark say?”
“That he’ll do it. He’ll get the tickets. But he’s not happy with me and I don’t blame him.”
“I don’t blame him, either,” Reese said, matter-of-factly. “You’re
a cold, heartless man-eater.”
Lauren fought back the urge to punch him. She might reinjure herself pummeling him.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Pulling it out, she saw it was Violanti calling her back. She didn’t bother to greet him. “Well?”
“David says he friended her months ago. He tried to friend Lindsey, but she never answered his request, and he would have friended you if he had known you were on Facebook. He says he didn’t mean anything by it and he’s sorry you’re so upset.”
“He’s sorry I’m upset? He’s stalking my daughter and he doesn’t think I should be upset?”
“He doesn’t think of it like that. In fact, he’s unhappy that you’re being so hostile toward him.”
That was rich, coming from Violanti. “I’m hostile to murderers in general. He shouldn’t take it personally.”
“David is not a murderer. Just because you changed your mind about that after the trial doesn’t mean you get to freak out at every move he makes.”
“I changed my mind during the trial, but it was already too late. And I will freak out if I think my daughters’ safety is compromised in any way.”
Violanti sighed into the phone. “He would never hurt you or your daughters. Buffalo is a small place, though. David’s path will cross yours at some point. All I can tell you is that he’s not sitting home obsessing about it the way you are. Everything is not about you, Lauren.”
That pissed her off. “It’s not about me. It’s about my kids.”
“That’s a load of shit,” he shot back at her. “I don’t know if you attract crazy men or you drive them crazy. Maybe you should spend your energy trying to find the guy who broke into your office instead of worrying about what David is doing.”
Sharply sucking in her breath, Lauren held back the flood of obscenities she wanted to hurl at Violanti. She managed to squeeze out a tight-lipped, “Thanks for all your help. I can see that this dialogue we’ve established has been extremely productive.”
“One last thing,” he said before she could hit the end button. “I really don’t know what’s going on in your or David’s head, but I’m telling you, your mutual fascination with each other is weird, and it ends for me now. Don’t call me anymore.”
Violanti hung up on her.
She sat for a second, digesting the conversation. They were stopped in traffic on Elmwood Avenue, in view of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, ironically where she’d married Mark Hathaway.
Giving her a sideways glance, Reese asked, “You okay?”
“You heard that, right?”
He nodded, looking up at the traffic signal. “I did.”
“What do you think?”
“Let it go for now. He’s right about one thing; you have enough going on trying to put away the Schultz brothers to worry about Spencer.”
They were right. She was letting David Spencer sidetrack her when she needed to be focused. “Okay, Reese. What are we going to do about that?”
Reese turned the car southward, almost hitting a city bus as he pulled a U-turn in the middle of traffic. The driver popped the bird at them through the window. Reese didn’t bother to send him one back. Instead he told Lauren, “Let’s go talk to Charlie in the graveyard. We’re going to need him.”
37
“You want me to be the getaway driver?” Charlie was back at his kitchen table, dirty coveralls on, sipping coffee so hot that tendrils of steam rose from the rim. They’d all woken up to a hard frost that morning, covering the grass in shards of white, coating the car windows and mirrors in spiderwebs of ice. Winter was coming. There was no denying it. Here in Charlie’s graveyard, ominous clouds hung overhead, causing noon to look like twilight.
Charlie was one of those guys who refused to turn his heater on until after the first snow. Lauren pulled her black wool peacoat tighter around her. In Buffalo, everyone had a closet full of coats of varying degrees of thickness to combat the daily, sometimes hourly, changes in weather. Last year, when they’d had an unprecedented heat wave, Lauren’s coat closet remained untouched for the longest stretch of time she could remember. This year everything had rolled back to normal, weather-wise, and it was a daily crap shoot to select the right overcoat for the current conditions.
“Unless you want to put a suit on, yes.” Lauren blew across the top of her mug to cool her coffee down. Charlie had produced a dented flask from the pocket of his overalls and proceeded to pour a nip into each of their mugs. Normally Lauren would have waved him off, but today, especially after that last conversation with Violanti, she thought she could use a little alcoholic warm-up.
“I, personally, am willing to rock the suit in your stead,” Reese offered. “I look really good cleaned up.”
Charlie chuckled into his coffee cup. “This is some serious James Bond spy shit you two are into.”
“I know, Charlie, I know. But we’re trying to protect Rita.” Trying to convince him, Lauren laid her hand on his arm. “It’s crazy, but we just need an abandoned sample from Sam. A drinking glass. A straw. A fork. Anything that might have his DNA on it. We can’t wait around for the valet or park two blocks away in the ramp. We’re only going to have one shot at this. We need to grab it and get out of there as fast as we can. Then we call Carl Church, tell him about Rita, get the sample in the lab immediately, and it’s goodbye Sam Schultz for the murder of Gabriel Mohamed.”
Charlie tipped the flask, adding more whiskey to his coffee, sipped it, and added a little more. “I worked with all three of those guys, even took young Sam along on a couple of raids as a favor to Ricky. Sam was a scared little mouse, that’s why no one questioned when he left for law school. He was soft, you know? The bookish type, not a cop.”
“Even more reason to protect baby brother,” Reese said. “Plus, the fact that daddy was police commissioner at one time. Sam being the county district attorney would restore the Schultz family to political power.”
“Listen to me,” Charlie said, his voice becoming grave. “Vince is the muscle and Ricky is the brains behind this whole coverup, and that means your assault too. He told Sam to keep his mouth shut while he went through the motions of an investigation, and he’s the one who would have known about the files and your Murder Book. I bet Vince’s first call after he talked to Rita went straight to Ricky.”
“I bet you’re right,” Lauren agreed.
“Ricky was a bully on the job.” Charlie hit the table with his fist to make his point, almost upsetting their coffee mugs. “And he’s the one calling the shots now. He told his brother exactly what to do. Vince is too stupid to think of going after the original records himself.”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” Lauren asked.
“I’ve chased down a bank robber, tracked a man through a snowstorm after he killed his entire family, caught a guy by the arm trying to jump from the Peace Bridge, but I ain’t never, ever, been the getaway driver for the larceny of food utensils.” Charlie turned his whole body around, grabbed the coffeepot off the machine, and gave all three of them another steaming pour. “I’m sixty-eight years old. Why not become an outlaw?”
38
Much later that evening, Lauren excused herself to Reese and Watson, slipping down into the basement with the intention of typing up some notes from an old private investigation she had taken on.
She had done it as a favor to a distant cousin on her mom’s side. He had suspected his wife had been cheating on him. And she was. The cousin, Alan, wasn’t ready to divorce her—not just yet—he wanted to have all his finances in order, and the photographs Lauren had given him had proved his suspicions beyond a doubt. Cousin Alan’s net worth consisted chiefly of an ironworker’s pension and a beloved, rundown hunting cabin, but he was determined to keep them both.
Getting attacked had sidetracked Lauren’s follow-up and right then seemed as good a time as any to catch up. The daily ema
ils she had been receiving from Alan needed to stop. She could sit upstairs and stew over her meeting with Mark or over her impending covert mission with Reese, or she could sit at her computer and make a few hundred bucks finishing the PI job.
The problem was the distractions she allowed herself.
Even though it was fairly new, and she had sprung for a ton of memory and upgrades, her computer still took a good minute or two to fully come online. Her daughters were constantly telling her to just leave the machine on, but Lauren was convinced that would be a fire risk. From her chair at her desk she could hear the scratching of Watson’s claws on her hardwood floor upstairs. She imagined all the little grooves being etched into the wood and thought absently, I have to find a groomer to take care of that.
Reese kept saying he was going to get around to having Watson’s hair cut and nails trimmed, but as a mom, Lauren knew that even though Reese fed and walked him, he thought all the little extras of caring for a dog took care of themselves. As if the magic doggie shampoo fairy came in the middle of the night and washed muddy white dogs.
Watson appeared at the top of the stairs, tail wagging, and launched himself toward her. She managed to keep him from climbing on her lap by giving him an old green slipper she now kept within arm’s reach for just such occasions. He accepted it happily, lying down to gnaw on it.
Watson wasn’t the only distraction, though. They were all around her. A picture of her with her daughters ten years ago, the marble ashtray Mark had bought her when she still smoked that now held paper clips, and Frank Violanti’s cell number scribbled on a blue Post-it, stuck to the small white board on the wall behind her computer. All of them fought for her attention.
She eyed the Post-it, plucked it up, and crumpled it in her fist. A direct connection to David Spencer had managed to invade her thoughts again.
The past year had been one of deep self-reflection for Lauren. She had questioned her motives for taking on the Spencer case and for wanting to believe in an eighteen-year-old psychopath, for falling back in bed with her ex-husband, and for allowing Joe Wheeler’s abuse again and waiting until it was almost too late before she had done anything about it. Although she asked the hard questions, she didn’t necessarily like the answers she’d found.
The Murder Book Page 18