He sent an accusing finger around the room, punctuating the air as he aimed it at every single person present. Even Megan and I got stabbed.
“You are all guilty of sending my wife to the grave, if that’s where this ends up. So are those eleven ninnies you saw fit to put into the jury box with her. I’m telling you this: you lawyers-you want some work? It’s coming. I’m coming. Are you ready? I’m coming strong. I’ll get you a whole big pile of work to do.” He counted off on his fingers. “I am suing the city. I am suing the state. I am suing the ninnies. And you can damn well be certain I am suing KBS Television and the company that owns it and Mr. Marshall Fox and that prostitute wife of his!”
I looked over at Megan and mouthed, “Prostitute?”
Megan answered in a low voice, “You might want to tell that reporter friend of yours. I think that’s a scoop.”
Spicer looked out over his small crowd. “Where are the reporters? I’m sick of talking to you people. I need to speak to the God-fearing Christians out there. Some people with common sense. They need to hear what I’m saying. Those women who were killed last year were whores! Marshall Fox is an indiscriminate fornicator. Let the swine go down with the swine. Why should taxpayer dollars be spent on any of this? Why should my wife be sent to her death on account of a pack of godless sinners? Where’s the press? We need to get the word out. Have you got them locked out? I guess they’re in on the conspiracy with the rest of you heathens. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it all. Ye shall know my strength and ye shall fear my wrath, you sniveling pack of whores!”
Lewis Gottlieb stepped forward. His demeanor was impeccably calm and civil. “Mr. Spicer, I hear all that you’re saying. I honestly do. This is a terribly delicate situation. I feel horrible about what has happened to your wife. Matters should not have been allowed to reach such a point, and on behalf of the court and the state of New York, I want to apologize personally to you and your family. But please, we need to contain the damage here, we don’t-”
Spicer interrupted. “Gottlieb, is that right?”
The attorney inclined his head. “That’s correct.”
“I’ll be suing you, too! Personally!”
The attorney demurred. “What you need right now is to be alone with your wife. This is not the time to be raising a holy fuss. Your wife’s health should be your only concern right now. If there is-”
“My wife’s health had better be your concern. All of yours. Is anybody listening to me? I want to talk to the press, and I want to do it right now! What’s going on here? Am I under some sort of house arrest?”
Peter spoke up. “Mr. Spicer, we really do not want this trial to fall apart. The wise thing is to wait until we’ve heard from Judge Deveraux-”
“Him?” You’d have thought Spicer had just stepped on a land mine. “Sweet Jesus and Mary, the man in the black robes. I wouldn’t cross the street to spit on him.”
Lewis Gottlieb had had enough. “You are a contentious low-life little shit is what you are.”
As the attorney started forward, Spicer leaped to his feet. “I don’t think any killer of the Lord Our Christ is going to judge me one iota.” He grabbed the chair he’d just been sitting in. Before he could lift it, Peter Elliott lunged forward and grabbed hold of it. Spicer tried to yank it free, but Peter had a good grip. With his free hand, he tried to move Gottlieb back, but the elderly gentleman tripped on his own feet and went tumbling to the floor. Spicer cried out.
“Baby killer! Heathen pig!”
Peter sunk his fist hard into Spicer’s stomach. The man doubled over and the police leaped into action, two of them taking hold of Spicer while another one pulled Peter away from him. Spicer continued bellowing, “Heathens! Blasphemers!”
Peter snarled at him, “Just shut the hell up, would you?” as the policeman guided him over to the far wall. Lewis Gottlieb was helped to his feet. He slid into a chair. Spicer was still thrashing to free himself of the police grip, and he attempted to kick the elder attorney, but the police jerked him out of range. Gottlieb waved a freckled hand in the air, like a wizard concluding a spell.
“Please take that man away from here. I’d like to consider assault charges. Please detain him somewhere until this has been sorted out.”
Spit was flying from Spicer’s mouth. “I demand to see my lawyer!”
Gottlieb dusted off the arms of his jacket and addressed the man. “Luckily for you, Mr. Spicer, there are plenty of lawyers who would cross the street to spit on you.”
He waved his hand again at the policemen. “For goodness’ sake, take him away.”
33
LEWIS GOTTLIEB WAS CHIDING his protégé.
“You’ve got to let a man like that put his own fool head in the noose. He’ll do it. He did it. I sacrificed my can, and then you come along and actually assault the damn fool. What in the world were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, Lewis. It was the slur.”
“Oh, the slur. Screw the slur. You think I haven’t lived my entire life on the edge of a slur? I could care less at this point. Especially from a psycho like our Mr. Spicer. The point is that now he can charge you with assault.”
“The list of charges Bruce Spicer wants to bring is so long it’ll take him a year to get around to that one.”
“Let’s hope.”
Megan and I were sitting with the two lawyers in the hospital cafeteria. Gottlieb, it turned out, had smacked his elbow fairly hard on the floor when he’d gone down and had injured it somewhat. The attorney’s jacket was hung carefully on the back of his chair, and the left sleeve of his shirt was rolled up to his biceps so he could hold an ice pack to the injury. Peter was looking glum. He knew he’d screwed up in attacking Spicer. Gottlieb’s demeanor was surprisingly wily.
“The trial’s sunk, that’s obvious,” the elder attorney declared. “Bruce Spicer’s big mouth is not going to be denied. And a forewoman with a husband like that? If Fred Willis doesn’t demand that Sam declare a mistrial, I will. This is the most hackneyed affair I have ever been involved with.”
Peter groaned. “New trial. I think I’ll just shoot myself now. How are we going to pull that off? The entire country’s been handicapping this one up close and personal. What rock are we going to look under to get an untainted jury at this point?”
“I’m afraid that’s going to be your problem, young squirrel,” Gottlieb said. “I’ve got eighteen holes calling my name, and this time they will not be denied. It would have been nice to add Mr. Fox’s pelt to my collection, the self-righteous son of a bitch. But don’t worry, Peter. The groundwork’s been laid. The country knows what kind of sicko Fox really is. You’ll be fine. Detective Lamb here and Joe Gallo did a superb job of boxing that little prick into the corner, and the evidence isn’t going anywhere. We’ll take some public relations hits, no doubt about that. You’ll get your usual clamor that mistrial means the man must be innocent. Just ignore all that. Don’t get caught up in the sideshows. That’s all an idiot like Bruce Spicer is, a sideshow. And there’s your irony. Spicer hates Marshall Fox’s guts, but all he and his wife have succeeded in doing is giving the man a whole new day in court. Spicer’s got his agenda over here and his brains out in West China somewhere.” He turned to me. “Now that you’ve seen him in action, is my idea so crazy?”
Megan asked, “What idea is that?”
Peter explained, “Lewis believes we should be considering whether Spicer had something to do with Zachary’s and Robin Burrell’s killings.”
Gottlieb interjected, “Not ‘something to do with.’ Stop pussyfooting around, Peter. My contention, Ms. Lamb, is that Bruce Spicer’s our killer.”
Megan turned to me. “You were looking into this?”
“Lewis mentioned his theory to me the day I got dunked in the East River. I haven’t really had a chance to pursue it.”
Gottlieb lowered the ice pack. “We’ve got nothing to contain at this point-not after Nancy Spicer’s gesture. I suggest very strongly that
you and your boss look into this. The man’s a fanatical anti-abortionist, and Ms. Burrell admitted on the stand to those two abortions. Not just one but two.”
“What about Riddick?”
“Lifestyle, Ms. Lamb. Our Mr. Spicer is fond of words like ‘heathen’ and ‘fornicator.’ Our dear departed Zachary surely falls into these categories.”
I turned to Megan. “What do you think?”
She steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them. Her gaze bored through the table to the floor below. “Something Spicer said just now. Upstairs…” She let the sentence drift off, unfinished.
“What?”
“Oh my God!” She looked up sharply. “Did you hear it? When he was going on about suing everyone? ‘I’m coming.’ I knew there was something that’s been nagging me.”
Peter’s mouth dropped slowly open. “My God. You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It’s what he said. ‘I’m coming.’ The same voice. ‘Can you taste the blood?’” Megan’s eyes traveled from face to face as the meaning sank in.
Four chairs screeched abruptly away from the table.
HE WAS GONE.
After his rant, Spicer had been escorted from the visiting area to the room that was being readied for his wife. Nancy Spicer had emerged from her coma nearly simultaneously to her husband’s histrionic display in the visiting area, and according to the aides who wheeled her up from the ICU, Bruce Spicer had whispered something in her ear, given her a squeeze on the shoulder and exited the room. A quick search of the floor told us that he was no longer on it.
“I’m going downstairs,” Megan said. “I’ll put in a call from one of the cruisers. He can’t have gotten far.”
Peter wasn’t so confident. “He could be on a subway. He could be headed anywhere.”
“We’ll flood the Port Authority,” I said. “We’ll alert the airports. Airport security will pluck him out in a heartbeat. Don’t worry. He’s stuck in the boroughs. Plus, you saw him. The man’s like a mad chicken. He won’t be able to hide.”
I joined Megan. We took the stairs two at a time. As we approached the hospital’s front door, I had a thought, and I pulled up short. “Allison Jennings.”
“What about her?”
“Spicer called her. He threatened her. We still don’t know why.” I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m going to see if I can get ahold of her. See if the name means anything to her.”
“I’ll be outside.”
I had to track around in the lobby before I could get a decent signal. I leaned up against a wall engraved with the names of financial Samaritans and pulled Allison Jenning’s card from my wallet. Something felt peculiar as I punched in the numbers. Just before the final one-a four-I realized why it felt peculiar. I shifted my thumb over one number and hit the five instead. It picked up on the second ring.
“Kelly Cole.”
Son of a bitch. That was it.
“Kelly, It’s Fritz. Where are you?”
“I’m still outside the hospital, why?”
“I want you to put your hand lovingly on your pretty throat.”
“My…what are you talking about?”
“And then I want you to say a prayer to whatever God you believe in.”
“I don’t believe in any of them.”
I switched ears, huddling in to the wall to fix the reception. “You might want to reconsider that stance, sweetheart. Just a heads-up.”
34
THE DIN WAS LIKE the amplified chewing of an army of ants, but it was only Brasserie on a Saturday night. Above the long sleek bar ran a bank of brushed chrome video monitors, ten in all, displaying in black-and-white stop-action the comings and goings of patrons, captured by a small video camera mounted just inside the glass entrance. The trip from the first monitor to the tenth and final one took about twenty seconds. It was a novelty that never failed to crane necks. Caught on hidden camera. (“There you are! That’s you!”) From Patty “Tania” Hearst to Princess Di at the Paris Ritz, no one can get enough of it.
Sometime shortly after eight-thirty, the image of Rosemary Fox pushing through the glass door began its stuttering trip along the monitors. She was accompanied by Alan and Gloria Ross. No one at the bar seemed to recognize Marshall Fox’s wife on the screen. However, diners seated at their tables turned their heads and watched as Rosemary and the Rosses were ushered to a table in the far corner of the large loud room. The Rosses took a seat on either side of Rosemary, who looked pale and angry, even behind her blue-tinted sunglasses. She also looked lovely in her $10,000 Versace “smock,” her thick hair falling nearly to her elbows. The hostess had given the invisible signal, and by the time the three were settling in, a basket of cracked poppy-seed bread was being slid onto the table, a deep blue bottle of sparkling water was landing on the linen, and a frog-faced man in a deliberately oversize silk blouse was folding his hands together and silently kissing the air in front of him as he crooned, “How might I please you with cocktails this evening?”
Rosemary answered that one. “Double vodka martini. Three olives. Tell your man he’s never built one so dry. Tell him also to wait approximately seven minutes and then build another one. No olives in that one.”
The frog-faced man practically snapped his heels. “The lady knows what she wants.”
“Yes.” Rosemary sighed. “The lady does, at that.”
Samuel Deveraux was going to declare a mistrial. This wasn’t officially official, but it was what Fred Willis had all but guaranteed when he’d phoned Rosemary earlier in the day. Something about the jury foreperson wigging out. A suicide attempt? Rosemary hadn’t paid much attention to the details. Apparently, the husband was a nut. That much was abundantly clear. There was even a rumor making the rounds that he was wanted for questioning in the murders of Zachary and the Quaker girl. As of early evening, the man was not yet in custody. Rosemary had also received a phone call from that woman detective, the one who had put Marshall under arrest in May. Real balls on that little gal, Rosemary thought, making that call herself. The detective had wanted to tell Rosemary about the juror’s husband, equivocating on whether she thought the man was really the murderer everyone was looking for, but she did feel confident that he was the one who had left the crude message on Rosemary’s phone machine. “A friendly warning, Mrs. Fox. You might want to be extra-cautious until we bring him in.”
Alan and Gloria Ross sat silently, waiting for their cue from Rosemary. Rosemary was only slightly difficult to read behind the blue sunglasses. Her left index finger was tapping rapidly on her folded napkin, and her perfect chin was dipped slightly. Ross couldn’t help but steal a glance at her breasts, pale and full, nudging the silver fabric of the dress. Familiarity with Rosemary Fox had bred no lack of astonishment on Ross’s part at how beautiful and sensual the woman was, even wound tight as a clock, as she clearly was this evening.
Gloria was giving her husband a signal: a head bob in Rosemary’s direction. Ross reached over and placed his hand over Rosemary’s fingers, snuffing out her nervous tapping.
“I know a new trial seems like just about the worst thing on earth, honey,” he said in as soothing a tone as he could muster in the noisy restaurant. “It pushes the time line way back for getting your life back to normal, I know that. But that jury was getting more and more freaked by the minute, Rose. They could have easily come in with a guilty verdict, you have to remember that. Marshall could be in the stew this very minute, but he’s not. We all live to fight another day.”
He glanced at his wife, who nodded nearly imperceptibly. Ross continued, “That’s how you have to look at it, Rose. And there’ll be no surprises the next time. We’ve all seen what they’ve got. Fred can work with that.” He patted her hand again. “You’ll see. Fred says there’s a decent argument for getting Marshall out on bail now. It ain’t gonna be cheap, honey. But think of it. Marshall free. That would be huge.”
Rosemary’s martini arrived, along with a pair of gin and tonics for the Rosses.
The frog-faced man started to make nice with his customers, but Gloria caught his eye and waved him off with barely a movement.
Rosemary took up her drink. The Rosses followed suit.
“To Marshall,” Gloria said.
As they toasted-somewhat lacklusterly-Rosemary spotted two men sitting several tables away, staring at her. Good-looking men. Rosemary lowered her glass and picked out one of the olives, making just a bit more out of sucking it into her mouth than was called for.
God, she thought. I am such a cunt.
Gloria was talking now. Rosemary wasn’t tuning in fully. More about Marshall this, Marshall that, future this, future that. Rosemary trained her eyes in the direction of Gloria’s face, just to look as if she were listening. Who was this woman kidding? Future? Future? Okay, Rosemary had a future. She had a lot of future, for that matter, as well as a lot of ideas about how she would like to spend it. She had no intention of bungling any more of her time than she already had. Rosemary was kind of surprised to hear Gloria talking that way. Gloria was in the business, she knew how a future could be cut short like that. She had to know full well that there would be no Marshall Fox after all this, whatever the outcome and whenever this endless tedious soap opera of a trial finally ran its course. Rosemary didn’t mean to be cold about it, only realistic. Marshall Fox was dead.
Rosemary finished off her drink. The frog-faced man appeared as if by magic, bringing her second martini on a tray.
“You tell your man he is making me happy,” Rosemary said.
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