Gone, But Not Forgotten

by Phillip Margolin

  Rita reached across the space between them and took her daughter’s hand.

  “I’m so proud of what you’ve done with your life. When I was a girl I never thought about being a lawyer. That’s an important job. You’re important. You do important things. Things other people don’t have the courage to do. But there’s a price. Do you think the President sleeps well? And judges? Generals? So, you’re finding out about the bad side of responsibility. With those battered women, it was easy. You were on God’s side. Now, God is against you. But you have to do your job even if you suffer. You have to stick with it and not take the easy way out.”

  Suddenly Betsy was crying. Rita moved over and threw her arms around her daughter.

  “I’m a mess, Mom. I loved Rick so much. I gave him everything and he walked out on me. If he was here to help me … I can’t do it alone.”

  “Yes, you can. You’re strong. No one could do what you’ve done without being strong.”

  “Why don’t I see it that way? I feel empty, used up.”

  “It’s hard to see yourself the way others see you. You know you’re not perfect, so you emphasize your weaknesses. But you’ve got plenty of strengths, believe me.”

  Rita paused. She looked distant for a moment, then she looked at Betsy.

  “I’m going to tell you something no other living soul knows. The night your father passed away, I almost took my own life.”

  “Mom!”

  “I sat in our bedroom, after you were asleep, and I took out pills from our bathroom cabinet. I must have looked at those pills for an hour, but I couldn’t do it. You wouldn’t let me. The thought of you. How I would miss seeing you grow up. How I would never know what you did with your life. Not taking those pills was the smartest thing I ever did, because I got to see you the way you are now. And I am so proud of you.”

  “What if I’m not proud of myself? What if I’m only in this for the money or the reputation? What if I’m helping a man who is truly evil to escape punishment, so he can be free to cause unbearable pain and suffering to other innocent people?”

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Rita answered. “I don’t know all the facts, so I can’t put myself in your place. But I trust you and I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  Betsy wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry I laid this on you, but you’re the only one I can let my hair down with now that Rick’s walked out.”

  “I’m glad to know I’m good for something.” Rita smiled back. Betsy hugged her. It had been good to cry, it had been good to talk out what she had been holding inside, but Betsy didn’t feel she was any closer to an answer.

  CHAPTER 17

  On Sunday afternoon Raymond Colby stood in front of the fireplace in his den waiting for the lawyer from Portland to arrive. A servant had built a fire. Colby held his hands out to catch the heat and dispel a chill that had very little to do with the icy rain that was keeping his neighbors off the streets of Georgetown.

  The front door opened and closed. That would be Wayne Turner with Betsy Tannenbaum. Colby straightened his suit coat. What did Tannenbaum want? That was really the question. Was she someone with whom he could reason? Did she have a price? Turner didn’t think Lake’s attorney knew everything, but she knew enough to ruin his chance of being confirmed. Perhaps she would come over to their side once she knew the facts. After all, going public would not only destroy Raymond Colby, it would destroy her client.

  The door to the den opened and Wayne Turner stood aside. Colby sized up his visitor. Betsy Tannenbaum was attractive, but Colby could see she was not a woman who traded on her looks. She was dressed in a severe black suit with a cream-colored blouse. All business, a little nervous, he guessed, feeling somewhat out of her league, yet willing to confront a powerful man on his own turf. Colby smiled and held out his hand. Her handshake was firm. She was not afraid to look Colby in the eye or to look him over much the way he had scrutinized her.

  “How was your flight?” Colby asked.

  “Fine.” Betsy looked around the cozy room. There were three high-backed armchairs drawn up in front of the fireplace. Colby motioned toward them.

  “Can I get you something to take off the chill?”

  “A cup of coffee, please.”

  “Nothing stronger?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Betsy took the chair closest to the window. Colby sat in the center chair. Wayne Turner poured coffee from a silver urn a servant had set up on an antique, walnut side table. Betsy stared into the fire. She had barely noticed the weather on the ride from the airport. Now that she was inside, she shivered in a delayed reaction to the tension of the preceding hours. Wayne Turner handed Betsy a delicate china cup and saucer covered with finely-drawn roses. The flowers were a pale pink and the stems a tracery of gold.

  “How can I help you, Mrs. Tannenbaum?”

  “I know what you did ten years ago in Hunter’s Point, Senator. I want to know why.”

  “And what did I do?”

  “You corrupted the Hunter’s Point task force, you destroyed police files, and you engineered a cover-up to protect a monstrous serial killer who revels in torturing women.”

  Colby nodded sadly. “Part of what you say is true, but not all of it. No one on the task force was corrupt.”

  “I know about the payoffs,” Betsy answered curtly.

  “What do you think you know?”

  Betsy flushed. She had been spurred on by the coincidences, the improbabilities, to the only possible solution, but she did not want to sound like she was bragging. On the other hand, letting Colby know how she figured it out would make him see that she could not be fooled.

  “I know that a senator’s term is six years,” Betsy answered, “and that you are in the middle of your second term. That means you’ve been a United States senator for nine years. Nine years ago, Frank Grimsbo left a low-paying job on an obscure, small city police force to assume a high-paying job at Marlin Steel, your old company. Nine years ago, John O’Malley, the police chief of that police force, retired to Florida. Wayne Turner, another member of the rose killer task force, is your administrative assistant. I asked myself how three members of the same small city police force could suddenly do so well, and why they would all do so well the year you decided to run for the United States Senate. The answer was obvious. They had been paid off to keep a secret and for destroying the files of the rose killer investigation.”

  Colby nodded. “Excellent deductions, but only partly correct. There were rewards, but no bribes. Frank Grimsbo earned his position as head of security after I helped him get a job on the security force. Chief O’Malley had a heart attack and was forced to retire. I’m a very wealthy man. Wayne told me John was having financial problems and I helped him out. And Wayne was working his way through law school when the kidnappings and murders occurred. He graduated two years later and I helped him get a job in Washington, but it was not on my staff. Wayne didn’t come on board until a year before my first term ended. By then he had established an excellent reputation on the Hill. When Larry Merrill, my a.a., went back into law practice in Manhattan, I asked Wayne if he would take his place. So, you see, the explanations for these events are less sinister than you supposed.”

  “But I’m right about the records.”

  “Chief O’Malley took care of that.”

  “And the pardon?”

  Colby looked very old all of a sudden.

  “Everyone has something in their life they wish they could undo. I think about Hunter’s Point all the time, but I can’t see how it could have ended differently.”

  “How could you have done it, Senator? The man’s not human. You had to know he would do this again, somewhere, sometime.”

  Colby turned his face toward her, but he was not seeing Betsy. He looked completely lost, like a man who has just been told that he has an incurable illness.

  “We knew, God forgive us. We knew, but we had no choice.”

  PART FIVE

&n
bsp; HUNTER’S POINT

  CHAPTER 18

  One

  Nancy Gordon heard a tinkle of glass when Peter Lake broke the lower left pane in the back door so he could reach between the jagged shards and open it from the inside. Nancy heard the rusty hinges squeak. She shifted under the covers and trained her eyes on the doorway, straining to see in the dark.

  Two hours earlier, Nancy had been alone in the task force office when Lake appeared to tell her he had heard about the shooting of Henry Waters on the late news. As planned, Nancy told Lake she had suspected him of being the rose killer because of the gap between the time he had been seen driving home and the call to 911 and his stakeout of Waters’s home. Lake had been alarmed, but Nancy assured him that she was satisfied that Waters was the murderer and had kept her suspicions to herself. Then she had yawned and told Lake she was heading home. Since then Nancy had been in bed, waiting.

  Black slacks, a black ski mask and a black turtleneck helped Lake blend into the darkness. There was an ugly snub-nosed revolver in his hand. Nancy did not hear him cross the living room. One second, her bedroom doorway was empty, then Lake filled it. When he snapped on the light, Nancy sat up in bed, feigning surprise. Lake removed the ski mask.

  “You knew, didn’t you, Nancy?” She gaped at him, as if the visit was unexpected. “I really do like you, but I can’t take the chance you’ll reopen the case.”

  Nancy looked at the revolver. “You can’t believe you’ll get away with murdering a cop.”

  “I don’t have much choice. You’re far too intelligent. Eventually you would have realized Waters was innocent. Then you would have kept after me. You might even have dug up enough evidence to convince a jury.”

  Lake walked around the side of the bed. “Place your hands on top of the sheet and take it off slowly,” he said, gesturing with the gun. Nancy was sleeping under a single light sheet because of the heat. She pulled away the sheet slowly, careful to gather it up near her right hip so Lake would not see the outline of the gun that was hidden there. Nancy was wearing bikini panties and a T-shirt. The T-shirt had bunched up beneath her breasts, revealing her rigid stomach muscles. Nancy heard a quiet intake of breath.

  “Very nice,” Lake said. “Remove the shirt.”

  Nancy forced herself to look at him wide-eyed.

  “I’m not going to rape you,” Lake assured her. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I’ve fantasized about playing with you quite a lot, Nancy. You’re so different from the others. They’re all so soft, cows really, and so easy to train. But you’re hard. I’m certain you would resist. It would be very enjoyable. But I want the authorities to believe that Henry Waters is the rose killer, so you’ll die during a burglary.”

  Nancy looked at Lake with disgust. “How could you kill your wife and daughter?”

  “You can’t think I planned that. I loved them, Nancy. But Sandy found a note and a rose I was planning to use the next day. I’m not proud of myself. I panicked. I couldn’t think of a single explanation I could make to Sandy once the notes became public knowledge. She would have gone to the police and it would have been over for me.”

  “What’s your excuse for killing Melody? She was a baby.”

  Lake shook his head. He looked genuinely distraught.

  “Do you think that was easy?” Lake’s jaw trembled. There was a tear in the corner of one eye. “Sandy screamed. I got to her before she could do it again, but Melody heard her. She was standing on the stairs, looking through the bars on the banister. I held her and hugged her while I tried to think of some way to spare her, but there wasn’t a way, so I made it painless. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Let me help you, Peter. They’ll never find you guilty. I’ll talk to the district attorney. We’ll work out an insanity plea.”

  Lake smiled sadly. He shook his head with regret. “It would never fly, Nancy. No one would ever let me off that easy. Think about what I did to Pat. Think about the others. Besides, I’m not crazy. If you knew why I did it, you’d understand.”

  “Tell me. I want to understand.”

  “Sorry. No time. Besides, it won’t make any difference to you. You’re going to die.”

  “Please, Peter. I have to know. There has to be a reason for a plan this brilliant.”

  Lake smiled condescendingly. “Don’t do this. It’s not becoming. What’s the purpose in stalling?”

  “You can rape me first. Tie me up. You want to, don’t you? I’d be helpless,” she begged, sliding her right hand under the sheet.

  “Don’t debase yourself, Nancy. I thought you had more class than the others.”

  Lake saw Nancy’s hand move. His face clouded. “What’s that?”

  Nancy went for the gun. Lake brought the revolver down hard on her cheek. Bone cracked. She went blind for a second. Her closet door slammed open. Lake froze as Wayne Turner came out of the closet. Turner fired and hit Lake in the shoulder. Lake’s gun dropped to the floor just as Frank Grimsbo hurtled through the bedroom door, tackling Lake into the wall.

  “Stay down,” Turner yelled at Nancy. He scrambled across the bed, knocking the wind out of her. Lake was pinned to the wall and Grimsbo was smashing him in the face.

  “Stop, Frank!” Turner yelled. He kept his gun trained on Lake with one hand and tried to restrain Grimsbo’s arm with the other. Grimsbo delivered one more clubbing blow that bounced Lake’s head off the wall. Lake’s head lolled sideways. A damp patch spread across the black fabric that covered his right shoulder as blood seeped from his wound.

  “Get his gun,” Turner said. “It’s next to the bed. And check on Nancy.”

  Grimsbo stood up. He was shaking.

  “I’m okay,” Nancy said. Her cheek was numb and she could barely see out of her left eye.

  Grimsbo picked up Lake’s gun. He stood over Lake and his breathing increased.

  “Cuff him,” Turner ordered. Grimsbo stood there, the gun rising like something with a life of its own.

  “Don’t fuck around, Frank,” Turner said. “Just put the cuffs on.”

  “Why?” Grimsbo asked. “He could have been shot twice when he attacked Nancy. You hit him in the shoulder when you came out of the closet and I fired the fatal shot when this piece of shit spun toward me, and, as fate would have it, caught him between the eyes.”

  “It didn’t happen that way, because I know it didn’t,” Turner said evenly.

  “And what? You’d turn me in and testify at my murder trial? You’d send me to Attica for the rest of my life because I exterminated this scumbag?”

  “No one would know, Wayne,” Nancy said quietly. “I’d back Frank.”

  Turner looked at Nancy. She was watching Lake with a look of pure hatred.

  “I don’t believe this. You’re cops. What you want to do is murder.”

  “Not in this case, Wayne,” Nancy said. “You have to take the life of a human being to commit murder. Lake isn’t human. I don’t know what he is, but he’s not human. A human being doesn’t murder his own child. He doesn’t strip a woman naked, then slice her open from groin to chest, pull out her intestines and let her die a slow death. I can’t even imagine what he’s done to the missing women.” Nancy shuddered. “I don’t want to guess.”

  Lake was listening to the argument. He did not move his head, but his eyes focused on each speaker as his fate was debated. He saw Turner waiver. Nancy got off the bed and stood next to Grimsbo.

  “He’ll get out someday, Wayne,” she said. “He’ll convince the Parole Board to release him or he’ll convince a jury he was insane and the hospital will let him out when he is miraculously cured. Do you want to wake up some morning and read about a woman who was kidnapped in Salt Lake City or Minneapolis and the note that was left on her pillow telling her husband she was ‘Gone, But Not Forgotten’?”

  Turner’s arm fell to his side. His lips were dry. His gut was in a knot.

  “It’ll be me, Wayne,” Grimsbo said, pulling out his service revolve
r and handing Nancy Lake’s weapon. “You can leave the room if you want. You can even remember it like it happened the way I said, because that’s the way it will really have happened, if we all agree.”

  “Jesus,” Turner said to himself. One hand was knotted into a fist, and the one holding the gun was squeezed so tight the metal cut into his palm.

  “You can’t kill me,” Lake gasped, the pain from his wound making it hard for him to speak.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Grimsbo said, “or I’ll do you now.”

  “They’re not dead,” Lake managed, squeezing his eyes shut as a wave of nausea swept over him. “The other women are still alive. Kill me and they’ll die. Kill me and you kill them all.”

  Two

  Governor Raymond Colby ducked under the rotating helicopter blades and ran toward the waiting police car. Larry Merrill, the governor’s administrative assistant, leaped out after the governor and followed him across the runway. A stocky, red-haired man and a slender black man were standing next to the police car. The redhead opened the back door for Colby.

  “John O’Malley, Governor. I’m the Hunter’s Point police chief. This is Detective Wayne Turner. He’s going to brief you. We have a very bad situation here.”

  Governor Colby sat in the rear seat of the police car and Turner slid in beside him. When Merrill was in the front, O’Malley started toward Nancy Gordon’s house.

  “I don’t know how much you’ve been told, Governor.”

  “Start from the beginning, Detective Turner. I want to make certain I don’t miss anything.”

  “Women have been disappearing in Hunter’s Point. All married to professionals, childless. No sign of a struggle. With the first woman, we assumed we were dealing with a missing persons case. The only oddity was a note on the woman’s pillow that said ‘Gone, But Not Forgotten,’ pinned down by a rose that had been dyed black. We figured the wife left it. Then the second woman disappeared and we found an identical rose and note.