Split Second

by David Baldacci

  in the sort of neighborhood that people who didn’t have a lot of money retired to. It was about five miles from the funeral home where Bruno had been kidnapped.

  They rang the bell and knocked on the door, but no one answered.

  “I don’t understand. I called ahead,” said Joan.

  “Let’s check around back. You said she’s a drinker. She could be back there getting wasted.”

  In the small backyard they found Mildred Martin sitting at a wicker table on a lumpy, moss-covered brick patio, having a drink, smoking a cigarette and admiring her garden. She was about seventy-five, had the heavily wrinkled face of a lifelong smoker and sun worshiper and wore a lightweight print dress and sandals in the warm, breezy air. Her hair was dyed. Other than the gray roots, the primary color was a sort of orange. The smell of citronella filled the air from a bucket of the substance that sat lighted under the table.

  After introductions were made, Mildred said, “I like sitting back here. Even with the damn mosquitoes. This time of year the garden can really shine.”

  “We appreciate your seeing us,” said King politely. He’d followed Joan’s instructions and removed his head bandage.

  Mildred waved them to seats at the table and held up her glass. “I’m a gin girl and hate to drink alone. What can I get you?” Her voice was deep and gravelly, permanently engraved with decades of liquor and cigarettes.

  “Screwdriver,” said Joan with a quick glance at King. “I just love those.”

  “Scotch and soda,” said King. “Can I help you?”

  She laughed heartily. “Oh, if I were forty years younger, yes you could.” With an impish smile she walked a little unsteadily to the house.

  “She seems to have finished her mourning period,” commented King.

  “They were married forty-six years and by all accounts had a good relationship. Her husband was about eighty, in poor health and suffering great pain. Maybe there’s not much to grieve about.”

  “Bill Martin was Bruno’s mentor. How so?”

  “Bruno worked for Martin when he first started as a criminal prosecutor in Washington. Martin taught Bruno the ropes.”

  “At the U.S. Attorney’s Office?” asked King.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  King looked around. “Well, the Martins don’t seem to be all that well off.”

  “Public service doesn’t pay very well, we all know that. And Bill Martin didn’t marry an heiress. They moved down here after he retired. Mildred grew up here.”

  “Well, nostalgia aside, it’s not the sort of place I’d want to come rushing back to.”

  Mildred returned with their drinks on a tray and sat down. “Now, I guess you want to get down to brass tacks. I’ve already talked to the police. I really know nothing about any of this.”

  “We understand, Mrs. Martin,” said King, “but we wanted to meet and talk with you personally.”

  “Lucky me. And please call me Millie. Mrs. Martin is my mother-in-law, and she’s been dead for thirty years.”

  “Okay, Millie, we know you’ve talked to the police, and we know that they did an autopsy on your husband’s body.”

  “God, that was a complete waste of time.”

  “Why’s that?” Joan said sharply.

  Mildred eyed her keenly. “Because no one poisoned him. He was an old man with terminal cancer who died peacefully in his own bed. If I can’t drop in my garden, I’d prefer to go that way too.”

  “You know about the phone call to Bruno?”

  “Yes, and I’ve already told the police I didn’t place it. They checked my phone records. I guess they didn’t believe me.”

  Joan leaned forward. “Yes, but the point is that Bruno was reportedly very agitated after getting the call. Can you explain why?”

  “If I didn’t make the call, how should I know? Unfortunately mind reading isn’t among my repertoire. If it were, I’d be rich.”

  Joan persisted. “Look at it this way, Millie. Bruno and your husband were once close but no longer really were. Yet he gets a phone call, which he thinks is from you, asking to meet, and he gets agitated. The person calling would have had to say something plausible for that to happen, something that Bruno would logically associate with you or your husband.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s as simple as the person’s having told him Bill was dead. I hope that would have upset him. After all, they were friends.”

  Joan shook her head. “No. Bruno already knew. That’s been confirmed. He wasn’t planning on coming to the funeral home until he got the phone call.”

  Martin rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s not surprising.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked King.

  “I won’t beat around the bush. I wasn’t John Bruno’s biggest fan, although Bill worshiped the ground he walked on. Bill was almost twenty-five years older and acted as a mentor. Now, I’m not saying Bruno wasn’t good at what he did, but let’s put it this way: John Bruno always did what was in the best interests of John Bruno and everybody else be damned. As an example, he’s twenty minutes from the body of his mentor and doesn’t have the decency to stop his campaigning to come and pay his respects. Until, that is, he gets a phone call, allegedly from me? Well, that’s all you need to know about John Bruno.”

  “I take it you wouldn’t have voted for him for president,” said King, smiling.

  Martin laughed a deep, throaty laugh and put her hand on top of his. “Oh, honey, you’re so damn cute I could just put you on my shelf and look at you all day.” She patted his hand.

  “You should get to know him first,” said Joan dryly.

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Joan said, “Did your dislike for John Bruno start at any particular time?”

  Martin picked up her empty glass and crunched on an ice cube. “What do you mean by that?”

  Joan looked down at some notes in front of her. “Around the time that your husband headed the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington there were some irregularities resulting in a number of convictions being overturned and other prosecutions derailed. It was a pretty nasty business all around.”

  She lit another cigarette. “It was a long time ago. I don’t really remember.”

  “I’m sure that if you think about it, it’ll come back to you,” suggested Joan firmly. “Perhaps you could refrain from any more drink? This is really very, very important.”

  “Hey,” said King, “lay off. She’s doing us a favor. She doesn’t have to tell us anything.”

  Martin’s hand returned to King’s. “Thank you, honey.”

  Joan rose. “I tell you what: why don’t you finish questioning her while I go have a cigarette and admire the lovely garden.” She picked up Mildred’s pack of cigarettes. “Mind if I poach one?”

  “Go ahead, honey, why should I die alone?”

  “Why indeed, honey?”

  Joan stalked off, and King looked at Martin in an embarrassed fashion. “She can be a little abrupt.”

  “Abrupt? She’s a cobra in heels and lipstick. Do you really work for her?”

  “Yes. I’m actually learning a lot.”

  Mildred glared at Joan, who was tapping cigarette ash on a rose vine. “Just remember to keep your hand on your zipper when she’s around, or you might wake up one morning missing something really important.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, what she was talking about, the things in your husband’s office, I could tell you had some definite thoughts about that, didn’t you? In fact, your husband eventually resigned because of those irregularities, didn’t he?”

  Martin held her chin high, though her voice quivered. “He took the blame, because he was the boss and he was honorable. There aren’t many men like Bill Martin anymore. Like old Harry Truman, the buck stopped with him. Either rightly or wrongly.”

  “Meaning he shouldered the blame though it really wasn’t his fault?”

  “I need another drink before I break another crown with all this damn
ice,” she said, starting to rise.

  “You thought it was Bruno’s fault, didn’t you? He left D.C. before the hammer fell, ruined your husband’s career and went on to head up the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia. And there he garnered a bunch of high-profile convictions and rode that to a lucrative private practice and eventually to a run for the White House.”

  “I see you’ve done your homework.”

  “But your husband remained an admirer, so he didn’t share your belief, did he?”

  She sat back down. “Bill was a good lawyer and an exceptionally bad judge of character. I have to hand it to Bruno; he said and did all the right things. Do you know that he called here to tell Bill he was running for president?”

  King looked at her in surprise. “Really? When was that?”

  “Couple of months ago. I answered the phone. Could have knocked me over with a stick hearing his voice. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I didn’t. I held my tongue. We chatted like two old friends. He told me all the great things he’d done, his wonderful life in Philadelphia society. It made me want to throw up. Then I gave the phone to Bill, and they talked for a while. All Bruno wanted to do was gloat and rub it in. Let Bill know he’d risen so much further than Bill ever had.”

  “I just assumed Bruno hadn’t had any contact with either of you for years.”

  “Well, it was just the one phone call, and a damn irritating one at that.”

  “Did Bill say anything on the phone that might have led to Bruno’s coming to see him at the funeral home?”

  “No. Bill hardly talked at all. He was pretty weak even at that point. And I certainly didn’t say anything to Bruno that would get him all agitated. Although I wanted to, believe me.”

  “About the stuff at the U.S. Attorney’s Office?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Did you ever have any proof?”

  “Bruno was a lawyer, he covered his tracks well. His shit never stunk. He was long gone before it all came out.”

  “Well, I guess you’re not really sorry he disappeared.”

  “John Bruno can go to hell. In fact, I hope he’s already there.”

  King leaned forward, and this time he put his hand on top of hers. “Millie, this is really important. Despite your husband’s autopsy being inconclusive, there is evidence that suggests he might have been poisoned, perhaps with methanol. You see, that method of poisoning would have been disguised in the embalming process. His death and his body’s being at that funeral home started this whole thing rolling. Whoever took Bruno couldn’t have left that to chance. Your husband had to be there at a certain time, meaning he had to die on a certain date.”

  “That’s what the FBI said, but I’m telling you that no one could have been poisoning Bill. I would have known about it. I was with him every day.”

  “Just you? Your husband was very ill before he died. Did you have any help? Anyone who came by? Any medication that he took?”

  “Yes. And the FBI took it all to analyze and found nothing. I ate the same food, drank the same water. And I’m fine.”

  King sat back and sighed. “Someone impersonated you at the funeral home.”

  “So I heard. Well, I look good in black; it goes well with my new hair color.” She looked at King’s half-empty glass. “Would you like another?” He shook his head. She said, “Bill was a Scotch man too, right up to the end. It was one of the few pleasures he had left. Kept his own stash of twenty-five-year-old Macallan’s.” She chuckled. “He had some every night. I’d just pour a shot in his feeding tube using a big syringe. Eating he could have cared less about, but he looked forward to his Scotch even through his belly, and the man made it to eighty, not bad.”

  “I bet you keep a good supply on hand.”

  She smiled. “At our age, what’s left?”

  King looked down at his glass. “How about you? Ever drink Scotch?”

  “Never touch the stuff. Like I said, gin is my game. Scotch is too much like paint thinner. If you want to clear your sinuses out, by all means drink the stuff.”

  “Well, thanks again. We’ll be in touch. Enjoy your evening.” King rose and started to turn away. He looked over at Joan, her drink and cigarette in hand, and he froze.

  Paint thinner?

  He whirled back around. “Millie, can you show me Bill’s special stash of Scotch?”

  CHAPTER

  41

  IT WAS THE SCOTCH, or at least Bill Martin’s secret cache, that Mildred Martin had never bothered to tell the police or FBI about. A relatively simple test at the police lab showed the bottle had been doctored with methanol.

  King and Joan sat at the police station while Mildred was thoroughly interrogated.

  Joan looked at King. “You’re lucky she poured yours out from her regular stock.”

  King shook his head. “How’d the poisoned bottle get into the house?”

  A man in a brown suit walked up to them. “I think we found that out.”

  He was one of the FBI agents assigned to the case. Joan knew him well.

  “Hello, Don,” said Joan. “This is Sean King. Don Reynolds.”

  The men shook hands. “We owe you guys on this one,” said Reynolds. “Never would have guessed the Scotch, although she didn’t tell us about her husband’s secret cache. We had the other stuff tested previously.”

  “It was Sean’s catch actually. Though I hate to admit it,” she added, smiling. “You said you know how the doctored Scotch got there?”

  “A couple of months ago the Martins hired a woman to help around the house. To assist with Bill Martin, who was basically an invalid.”

  “Mildred never mentioned that either?” King said incredulously.

  “She said she didn’t think it was important. She said the woman never gave Bill any medication or anything, though she said she was licensed to. Mildred liked to do that herself. And the woman left long before Martin died, so Mildred didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “Where’d the woman come from?”

  “That was the thing. She just showed up one day, said she understood that they might need some help because of Bill’s condition, that she was a professional caregiver and was willing to come cheap because she needed the work. She had papers and stuff to show who she was.”

  “And now where is this very accommodating lady?”

  “She said she’d gotten a permanent job in another town, and that was it. Hasn’t been back.”

  “Obviously she did come back,” said Joan.

  Reynolds nodded. “Our theory is the woman came back to the house the day before Martin died and doctored the bottle, to make sure his next drink would be his last. The bottle of Scotch we found was loaded with methanol. Now, methanol is slow to metabolize into toxic levels. You’re looking at twelve to twenty-four hours. If he’d been young and healthy and been found immediately, maybe Martin could have made it to a hospital and survived. But he wasn’t young or healthy; he was terminal, in fact. And the Martins also didn’t sleep together. After Mildred gave her husband the last pop through his G-tube, the pain probably would have hit him very soon. And he only weighed about ninety pounds. Normally you’d need one hundred to two hundred milliliters of methanol to kill an adult. I doubt they needed anywhere near that to kill Martin.”

  Reynolds shook his head and smiled wearily. “It’s ironic they put it in the Scotch. Scotch contains ethanol, which is an antidote to methanol, because they both seek the same enzyme. However, there was so much methanol in the bottle the ethanol couldn’t have countered it. Martin might have called out in agony, but Mildred never heard him, or so she says. So he might have lain there all night until he finally died. It’s not like he could get out of bed for help. He was a complete invalid by that time.”

  “Mildred was probably passed out on gin. She likes her libations too,” said King.

  Joan added, “And this nurse obviously had learned the routine of the house, that both of them drank and didn’t sleep
together. Once she learned he was a Scotch drinker and had his own stash, and also that Mildred never touched the stuff, she had her method of murder. She’d appear to be long gone before the deed was done.”

  Reynolds nodded. “He could have been killed any number of ways, but it had to be in a manner that wouldn’t require an autopsy, because that would have messed up the timing. Martin had to die in his bed. So he did, and Mildred found him there and assumed he died naturally, although the docs tell me death by methanol is by no means peaceful. And methanol metabolizes into formaldehyde, which is toxic, but then it’s oxidized into formic acid. That’s six times more lethal than methanol.”

  “So Martin was basically pickled before he got to the funeral home,” said King.

  “That’s right. According to Bruno’s staff, their boss was scheduled to be in the area that day and the next at a number of events. The procedure at the funeral home was for a body to lie in the viewing area for a couple of days. Martin died on a Monday, and he went to the funeral