by Lisa Jackson
He’d never known Navarrone to be wrong, but there was always a first time. “What the hell’s wrong with traffic?” Sirens screamed through the night. Cars pulled over as two police cars and an ambulance, lights strobing, sped past.
The phone clicked in his ear. “WSLJ.” A woman’s voice he didn’t recognize. Probably the cop assigned to the station.
“This is Ty Wheeler. I need to speak to Samantha Leeds.”
“Sorry. The show’s over,” a woman said.
“She’s a personal friend.”
“The show’s over.”
“Hell, just tell her I’m on my way.”
The line went dead.
Something was wrong.
Sam stripped off her headset and pushed the button to play “Midnight Confession” signifying that the show was over. As the first notes were audible, she shoved back her chair and flew out of the booth.
Dorothy Hodges was already in the hallway.
“We’ve got him!” the officer told her. “I just got a call from Detective Bentz. The phone booth we have listed on caller ID is only a few blocks from here, on Chartres. That’s where John called from. There’s already a unit on the scene. Others are on their way. Including Detective Bentz.” Her eyes were bright with victory. “That bastard’s ass is grass.”
“About time.” Tiny was standing in the doorway to the booth, a portable headset around his neck.
“Let’s go,” Sam said, starting for the door.
“No way.” The policewoman turned instantly sober. Into cop mode. No more easy smiles. “Both of you stay here. This is police work.”
“But—”
“I’m serious,” Officer Hodges insisted.
Sam couldn’t believe it. “But I’m the reason he’s being apprehended.”
“And you’re the reason he started this in the first place.” The cop leveled a finger at Sam’s chest. “Bentz thinks you were the ultimate victim, so you just sit tight until all this goes down. He’s not apprehended yet.” Dorothy wasn’t budging an inch and acting like she suddenly saw Sam as the enemy. “And, just so you understand me, I’m telling Wes to make sure no one comes in or out. Got it?”
“No way.”
Officer Hodges’s eyes narrowed. “Listen, Ms. Leeds, your life has been threatened by the very guy we’re trying to run to the ground, so you sure as hell will stay here, or I’ll cuff you and take you down to the station.”
“But I’d be with you.”
“What you would be is in the way. Now stuff it,” the woman said, and she took off, leaving Sam and Tiny standing by Melba’s reception desk.
“She’s right,” Tiny offered. “Besides, I can’t go anywhere, I’ve got to stick around for Lights Out.”
“I don’t.”
“So you’re going to be crazy instead? Come on, Dorothy’s right. You’d better stay here, Sam. At least until that boyfriend of yours shows up. He just called, talked to her—” he said, hitching a thumb at the cop’s retreating backside. “He’s on his way.”
Sam gritted her teeth and checked her watch. It irritated her to sit around and wait. John had contacted her…this was about her, and not only did she want to witness him being unmasked and apprehended, but she was still keyed up. This didn’t seem right. It was almost too easy. He was smarter than this, or at least he had been. Why would he risk everything by staying on the line tonight, toying with the police when he had to have known that the lines were tapped and the call was being traced. No, something was wrong about this, definitely wrong.
And Ty was late.
She glanced at her watch.
This wasn’t like him.
“So you’re telling me that Ryan Zimmerman was adopted,” Ty said to Navarrone as he nosed his Volvo into a parking space half a block from the radio station. “And that his biological mother is Estelle.”
“That’s about the size of it. She got pregnant before she married Wally. The family hushed it up, said she was going to some fancy boarding school, when she was really giving up the baby through a Catholic hospital. It turns out he was adopted by a couple from Houston who end up living in the same school district where Estelle raised her own kids. She wasn’t aware that Ryan was her son, of course, not until Annie started dating him and bringing him around, and somehow Annie let it slip that Ryan was adopted.
“He looked enough like the father of the baby she’d given up that Estelle started doing some checking. Hired a PI. That’s who I got the info from.” He glanced at the building housing WSLJ. The PI also found out something else.”
“The name of the other guy Annie was involved with,” Ty guessed.
“Yep.”
“Worse news.”
“It seems that Annie was doin’ it with both brothers.” Though he’d almost figured it for himself, Ty felt a moment’s shock. He’d been reaching for his keys. Stopped. “Both?”
“Well, she only thought she was screwing one…and she wasn’t happy about it, but when she went to her mother saying Kent was sexually molesting her, Estelle wouldn’t believe her. Refused.”
Ty felt bile rise in the back of his throat. “Great mom.”
“One of the best,” Navarrone agreed.
“So Kent was Annie’s baby’s father?”
“Looks that way.”
“No wonder Estelle didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Who would?” Navarrone reached for the door handle. “I’ve already talked to Bentz about this. Everyone’s on the same page.”
“Listen to this,” Montoya said, gunning his car around a corner as the police band crackled. “There’s been an accident…”
Bentz was way ahead of him. “On the same block where the phone booth that John called from. What the hell’s going on?” The words had barely gotten out of his mouth when they turned onto Chatres and saw the crowd that had gathered. An ambulance was on the scene, lights flashing red and white, pedestrians clustered on the sidewalks and on the street. Traffic was at a standstill.
Before the cruiser had come to a full stop, Bentz was out of the vehicle, his Glock in one hand, his badge in the other. Uniformed and plainclothes cops were keeping a crowd at bay but the curious couldn’t help but stop and stare. The night was hot. Breathless. Bentz slapped at a mosquito as he eyed the accident scene where a minivan with a shattered windshield and a dented bumper was stopped. Crumpled in front of the damaged vehicle a man was sprawled on the street. Two emergency workers were huddled over him, taking vitals, but, to Bentz’s way of thinking, it didn’t look good.
A few feet away the driver was crying and wringing her hands. A frantic woman with wild eyes was shaking her head, giving an officer her statement. “…he just came out of nowhere,” she was saying, obviously in shock, but otherwise seeming unhurt. “He was stumbling and reeling and I slammed on my brakes but…but…oh, God, I hit him. First the bumper then he rolled over the hood to the windshield. He flew off when I stopped. Oh, Lord, it was awful. Just awful.” Another woman, probably a passenger in the rig as both doors were open, was trying to console the driver, and the cop was listening intently, but the driver was barely in control, ready to fall into a million pieces. “He’s not dead is he, please…don’t tell me…he can’t be dead.”
“I saw the whole thing,” a man standing between two parked cars piped in. Wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt and sloppy shorts, he added, “It’s like what she said. This guy, he just came running into the street all weirded-out, kind of mumbling and half-running, like he didn’t know where he was, and she nailed him.” The driver gasped at his choice of words, and the witness said, “Oh, sorry, but he was really out of it. It was like…like he didn’t even see her. Maybe he was drunk. Or stoned.”
“You got an ID?” Bentz asked one of the attendants.
“Not yet. We’re trying to keep him alive.”
The driver gave a little squeak.
“Let’s try to stabilize him and get him out of here,” the same emergency worker said. “Get the stretc
her.”
“I’ve got the wallet,” his second attendant cut in. “I was lookin’ to see if he had any allergies.” He handed the wallet to Bentz, who flipped it open. A Louisiana driver’s license issued to Kent Seger was the first piece of ID. “Well, hello John Fathers,” Bentz muttered to himself, looking over the rest of the items in the wallet. Nothing out of the ordinary. Seven dollars, a social security card, student ID for All Saints College, a Visa card and a single photograph…one of Annie Seger.
“You find anything else?”
“Yeah, look…” one of the attendants, said, withdrawing a long chain of beads. “Looks like this guy was a priest or somethin’. He’s got himself a rosary.”
“That he does,” Bentz said. “Bag it, would ya?”
“Yep.” In a second he was holding the plastic bag and staring down at the barely breathing body of Kent Seger. To Bentz’s trained eye, it looked like the guy was a goner. Which wasn’t a shame.
Bentz decided the owner of the minivan had done the city a favor. A pair of shattered sunglasses had fallen onto the street, plastic lenses splintered against the curb and the half-dead man lying on the cobblestones, could very well have posed for the artist’s sketch of John Fathers. His face was cut and bruised, his eyes closed, but the resemblance was there.
Good riddance, Bentz thought.
“Hey, over here!” Montoya waved Bentz toward a phone booth, where the receiver had been left dangling, the blazing lights of the ambulance casting the glass walls of the booth in eerie light. “Take a look at this.”
Bentz felt the tightening in his gut—that same premonition that he wasn’t going to like whatever it was Montoya had found.
“This is it, you know,” Reuben said as Bentz walked past a few gawkers and smelled the sweet, pungent odor of marijuana. “This is where John made his last call to the radio station.”
“The guy’s ID says he’s Kent Seger.”
Montoya’s eyes narrowed. He glanced at the accident scene. “You thought Kent Seger was John, didn’t you?”
“He was one of the suspects. Just one. Kent Seger’s blood type is the same as John’s, and I got a call from a guy named Andre Navarrone less than an hour ago. He has an interesting theory that he says he can back up. He thinks Kent Seger was sexually abusing his sister, Annie, ten years ago in Houston. Navarrone thinks that Annie was pregnant with Kent’s kid. It’s his contention that Kent killed Annie, but transferred the blame to Sam. He also figures that something triggered this rampage—maybe the fact that his mother finally cut him off financially, or maybe just hearing Dr. Sam’s voice on the radio again. That squares with what Norm Stowell said.” Bentz took another look at the accident scene. “Looks like we may never know for certain what pushed him over the edge.”
“He left something,” Montoya said.
“What?”
“I don’t know…looks like a recorder, one of those handheld jobs.” Carefully Montoya used his handkerchief and picked it up. Beneath the recorder were a set of keys.
“What the hell are these?” Bentz’s sense that something was wrong heightened. Using the same handkerchief he’d used for the recorder, Montoya picked up the keys.
“You think they’re Kent’s?”
Bentz glanced from the phone booth to the ambulance as it began to roll through the crowd, lights flashing, siren wailing, then back to the keys.
“I doubt it…Look at this.” Under the streetlamp he spread the keys with one of his own. The key ring was shaped in the form of an oversize heart. “Unless I miss my guess, these keys belong to a woman.”
“Who?”
Bentz flipped through the keys carefully until he found a miniature Louisiana license plate with the raised letters spelling Melanie.
“Shit,” Montoya whispered. “Dr. Sam’s assistant.”
A rock settled in the pit of Bentz’s stomach. “According to Dorothy Hodges, Melanie Davis got pissed and quit the show today. Didn’t show up for work.”
Montoya’s jaw tightened. “Maybe because she couldn’t.”
“Maybe.” Bentz whipped out his cell phone, called the dispatcher and ordered a unit sent to Melanie Davis’s home. “I want the officers to call me back as soon as they locate her,” he said. “Page me.” He clicked off, then gazed at the recorder still sitting on the tiny shelf in the phone booth. “Let’s see if John left us a message.”
Careful not to wipe any prints off the recorder, Bentz pressed the play button with one of his keys. The tape started instantly and over the commotion outside the booth a woman’s breathy voice was audible from the single speaker on the tiny machine.
“This is Annie and I’d like to speak to Dr. Sam about my ex-mother-in-law. I was hoping she could help.” Then a long pause and finally, in a higher-pitched voice, “Annie,” and a pause. “Don’t you remember me?”
“He did tape her,” Montoya said, as another pause ensued.
“I called you before…. “Thursday’s my birthday. I would be twenty-five.”
“Son of a bitch,” Montoya muttered as they listened to all of the tape, hoping that at the end of the short one-sided conversation they would hear more and clear up the woman’s identity, but the rest of the tape was blank. “Do you think that Melanie was involved, that she’s the person on the tape, that she screened her own damned call?” Montoya asked, pulling at his goatee.
“It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? Someone was working on the inside, unlocked the door for the cake to be delivered, gave out the private number.” Bentz ached for a smoke. “Why aren’t they calling me back?”
“You think she’s dead.”
Bentz nodded curtly. “There’s a damned good chance.”
“Shit.” Montoya glared through the smudged glass of the phone booth to the street and the dented minivan. “So you think John left all this stuff here and when he was running away he got hit?” Montoya asked.
“Do you?”
“It looks that way.” He frowned. “So what’s going down, Bentz?”
“Nothin’ good, Reuben. Nothin’ good.” Bentz’s pager went off. “Have this booth gone over with a fine-toothed comb,” he said, “and have crews sweep the street—look for anything out of the ordinary.” He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket, dialed the number on his pager’s display and took the message.
It was short and simple. Bentz’s jaw grew tight. His gut twisted. He hung up and swore, then met the questions in his partner’s eyes. “Melanie Davis is dead. Strangled. Odd ligature around her neck. Probably a rosary.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Sam stroked Charon’s black coat as she sat in the deck chair and twilight darkened the sky. So it was over. Finally. But the effects would last forever. So many people she knew were dead, the last being Melanie Davis…the woman the police decided had posed as Annie. The story was still fragmented, but it seemed that Melanie had been dating Kent Seger—he’d been the new boyfriend, “the one” she’d told Sam about.
“It makes you wonder,” she said to the cat. Kent was still barely alive, under police guard at the hospital, and the press was everywhere, trying to get a story. Sam had taken her own phone off the hook and refused to answer her door. She needed time to pull herself together, to sort things out, to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
If Kent survived, maybe they’d learn the answers and he’d go to prison forever; if he died, the world was probably better off. Sam had never really believed in the death penalty but when she thought of the women he’d killed, starting with his own sister and unborn baby, she decided he deserved whatever fate God or the courts meted out. It was lucky that he’d been caught, but the drugs in his system, a combination of angel dust and crack, had made him hallucinate and reel into the path of an oncoming car after getting off the phone with Sam.
Which was odd. He didn’t sound out of control when he’d called. But then he hadn’t said much.
She stretched the muscles in the back of her neck
and watched a butterfly flit over the grass near the water.
So what about you, Sam? What’re you going to do?
Maybe she should take the job in LA. “How about that,” she said to Charon, who arched his back under her fingers. “You could be a Hollywood cat.”
She would be closer to her father—away from all the pain here. Through it all, she hadn’t heard from Peter. She’d half expected to get a call from him when the news had broken, but there had been no messages either here or with her dad. Some things just didn’t change.
Could you possibly leave Ty?
Her heart filled at the thought of him. Shading her eyes with her hand, she stared out at the lake and saw his boat, the Bright Angel, skimming across the water. She should have gone with him, she supposed, but she needed a little time alone, to think, and he’d just decided to pick up Sasquatch from his house and bring him back by boat. They planned to cook dinner together, right after she took a shower. She smiled a little as she saw Ty’s dog sitting nose to the wind on the deck.
It had only been eighteen hours since she’d signed off the air last night, and in that time her life had changed.
Melanie was dead.
Like Leanne.
Like Annie.
Like all the others who had the misfortune to run into Kent Seger.
Her heart ached for the ambitious girl who had, the police suspected, gone along with Kent in the hopes of somehow snagging Sam’s job. Melanie had always been too ambitious, and in the end it had cost her. She stood and waved and Ty, from the helm, waved back. Had it only been a few weeks since she’d thought she’d spied the Bright Angel bobbing on the night-darkened waves, a dark stranger at her helm?
Several publishers had shown some interest in Ty’s story, and his agent was shopping the idea around. There was talk of an auction.
A lot had happened in the span of eighteen hours.
Carrying Charon, Sam walked into the house, locked the door from habit, and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, leaving the door ajar so that the cat could go in and out rather than cry and paw at the door. A pair of Ty’s slacks were slung over the end of the bed. He hadn’t moved out yet, and Sam wasn’t sure she wanted him to. They were good together, she told herself as she stripped out of her sundress and underwear, made her way to the bathroom and turned on the shower’s spray. Through a window she’d cracked to let out steam, she heard the familiar sound of Hannibal barking—ever ready to start a ruckus—ever vigilant for squirrels or all manner of other critters. She flipped on the radio to WSLJ and heard the rough sound of Ramblin’ Rob’s voice as he told the audience that he was going to check the library and come back with a Patsy Cline hit. The first caller to name the year the song was popular would receive a WSLJ mug.