Defensive Wounds

by Lisa Black

  “Can you prove that?” Oliver asked.

  “About his wife? Not a word.”

  “How’s that going to work for you, then?”

  “I think I can prove he killed Sonia and the others, though. I’ll need samples from his household pets, his car. I’ve got spandex and leather on the two-by-four that killed Sonia, glove prints on her skin. Spandex is more often found in gloves made for sports, not warmth, and you can bet a man with such fancy cars probably has a pair of fancy driving gloves.”

  “You might want to put off asking for search warrants,” Don said, holding up a sheet of paper. “Because you don’t have two suspects. You have three.”

  CHAPTER 36

  *

  Twenty minutes later she stepped off the Ritz-Carlton’s plush elevator, to the immensely comforting sight of Rachael wearily checking in a family of five dressed from head to toe in designer-initialed clothing. Rachael had decided that she would simply stay at the front desk until Theresa was ready to go home, not willing to deal with a bus, rapid transit, or any other form of transportation save for her mother’s battered Tempo, which fell right in line with Theresa’s way of thinking. Of course, it only illustrated how badly the teen had been shaken in the past week. If this child makes it to adulthood without having to spend her college tuition on therapy sessions, Theresa thought, it will be no thanks to me.

  It had been a long couple of days. She would deliver her news to Neil Kelly and leave him to deal with it. That part of the job was not hers. Then she would take her child and go home.

  Theresa started to cross the floor, but a clawlike grip closed around her arm. “Where is he?”

  She turned to see Coral Simone, in her trusty pink twinset and pressed slacks, looking like a PTA president except for the irritated blood vessels in her eyes and the deep furrow between her brows. She must have come straight from work; an ID key card hung around her neck.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Theresa asked.

  “You said your daughter met him at work. The paper said your daughter worked here, and it said who you were.”

  Don’t look at Rachael. Don’t look at Rachael. “Coral, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”

  “I don’t care about that. None of the staff here will say anything to anyone, of course—they can’t have more bad publicity, and she won’t tell me either. I’ve sat here all morning when I should be at my chemo treatment and haven’t seen him. Get your daughter to tell me where he is.”

  “You talked to Rachael?” This is not good. Not, not, not good.

  The grip on her arm turned into a pat. “It said ‘Rachael’ on her name tag. I asked if he worked here. She said she couldn’t tell me, that’s all. It’s okay. I don’t want to scare her—or let her warn him. But you can find out where he is, right now. I know he’s here—I saw that fat little friend of his. The molly one.”

  Theresa tried to keep up, to figure out how to handle this. “You know Ray?”

  “Yeah. He was in my daughter’s classes, too. Came to her funeral, cried like a baby. If that kid is here, then he’s here also. Ray followed him like a puppy then, and I’m sure nothing’s changed.”

  “William probably went home. The hotel probably sent him home. Rachael’s only still here because she’s waiting for me.”

  “Then can you get his home address for me? That might be even better.” Again the amicable pat, a show of comfort between friends. She gazed at Theresa as if they were alone in the busy lobby, intense and sincere, both to a frightening degree. “I can solve both our problems.”

  Theresa couldn’t help it; she pulled back. The fact that Coral Simone was a grieving suburban housewife did not reassure her in the least. The woman meant everything she said and had the brains to back it up. Theresa could not school the horror out of her expression, and Coral Simone’s eyes narrowed.

  “Isn’t that what you want? To keep your daughter safe?” Coral said, keeping her voice down, her eyes full of madness but also pain, and bewildered grief. Her touch felt electric, as if it might crack open an alternate future, giving Theresa a glimpse of any parent’s worst nightmare become reality. “Haven’t you been through enough this week to get the tiniest, slightest inkling of what I’ve felt? Can’t you guess now what it would feel like to lose her?”

  “Yes,” Theresa confessed. “Yes. Coral, I understand. I really do, because you’re right—I’m a mother, too, and I know exactly what that means. I have some more information for you. There are some things I’ve figured out about your daughter’s murder.” That ought to grab her attention. “But I’m in the middle of the investigation about the lawyers, and there’s something I have to take care of right now.”

  The woman did not seem convinced. Rather the opposite. She stood back herself, appraising Theresa in a new and skeptical light.

  Neil Kelly appeared, leaving the lounge, and Theresa saw an out. “A Homicide detective is heading our way. Let me take care of him, and then we’ll talk, okay? You’re going to want to hear this, especially before you … do anything.” Like attack William Rosedale in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton.

  Coral, obviously dubious but curious as well, nodded, then either promised or threatened, “I won’t be going anywhere.”

  She disappeared into the restaurant, where Theresa hoped William would stay in the kitchen until she had time to tell Neil about the sweet-looking, possibly unbalanced time bomb haunting the place.

  “How are you doing?” Neil asked her.

  “Tired. Come with me.” She led the way, peeking into Marcus Dean’s office. The security chief was not there, however, only an empty chair and a desk scattered with invoices: Wilson Electronics, Wowway cable, Parry Engineering. Theresa did not sit but faced Neil. “We have a major problem. The hair found on Bruce Raffel’s body belongs to Marcus Dean.”

  The blood drained from Neil Kelly’s face. For a moment she thought he would burst into tears, so much so that she forgot all her prior irritation and put her arms around him.

  “It can’t be. That can’t be,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, honey. It’s still very, very preliminary—Don cut all sorts of corners to get it done so fast, but it’s probably correct. He’ll do the full workup over the next day or two.”

  “I don’t believe he did it.”

  She let go of him, stepped back. “I don’t either.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Dean has worked here for years. There’s a possibility—slim, but definite—that his hair could be found in several rooms in this hotel. It’s a hotel—that’s what I’ve been complaining of from the start. It suffers from an incredible amount of traffic. Dean is up and down the hallways of this building every day. The maids are up and down, in and out of the rooms every day, using the same vacuums all over. It’s just possible that the hair was on that carpeting before Bruce Raffel’s body fell on it. At least that’s what a defense attorney will say. It’s not a slam dunk.”

  “Besides, why would he even kill Raffel? Marie maybe, but Raffel? Or—”

  “Sonia. Even if he were somehow jealous enough over a one-night stand to murder, where on earth would Sonia come in? Why would he kill her?”

  It seemed as if Neil could breathe again. “Yeah. Why?”

  “The hair is damning, but I still don’t think he did it.”

  “Then who else is there?” Neil slumped into a chair. “We haven’t found any other connection between the three attorneys. And we’ve looked, believe me we’ve looked.”

  “Not hard enough,” Theresa said gently. “I think our more likely suspect is waiting in the lobby for me.” She told him what Ray had said, that Bruce had assisted Marie at William’s trial. “Sonia said as much to me, and the PD director told Frank that Bruce and Marie continued to work as unofficial partners even when they worked for different law firms. Plus, Coral’s been here, I saw her here the day Marie’s body was found. She’s here now.”

  “That frail-looking lady you were just talking to in
the lobby? You think she bludgeoned three attorneys to death?”

  “She’s skinny, but she’s wiry. And that trophy over her kitchen sink had her name on it, not Jenna’s. If she can swing a softball bat, I’m willing to bet she can swing a chair or a two-by-four just as effectively. The things that put me on to Dennis Britton—the fiberglass, the sports gloves—can apply to her as well.”

  “Britton?”

  She explained the few clues that could possibly implicate Dennis Britton. “But the fiberglass could be from a bat instead of a car and the spandex and leather from a batting glove instead of a driving glove. I have to have samples from their homes to get any further—and the wax. Coral waxes the furniture in Jenna’s room obsessively. The cat hair I can’t explain—it could just be another hotel artifact. And then there’s this.” She held up one of the invoices from Marcus’s desk.

  “What is that?”

  “Parry Engineering is billing Marcus for … let’s see, four thousand blank key cards and a program update. Coral works for them. I just remembered when I saw the lanyard around her neck,” Theresa explained, jangling the keys around her own neck for emphasis. “Coral programs things for them. How much do you want to bet that their program would have a master code, so that they could always write a card to open any door in the hotel? They’d have to, in case the hotel’s computer crashed. How did Marie and/or the killer get into the Presidential Suite? There’s only one way: You have to have a key.”

  “That’s a leap. That’s a jump wider than the Snake River Canyon.”

  “But, unlike practically everything else about this case, easily verified.”

  Neil hesitated, then said, “Dean has a key, too,” as if he had to physically drag the words from his throat.

  “I know.”

  Theresa’s phone rang.

  For the second time that day, her daughter’s panicked voice came out of the tiny device. “Why are you doing this?”

  She ran from the room.

  CHAPTER 37

  *

  Barely controlled chaos ruled the lobby. Dinnertime on Friday. Weekend guests were checking in, with travel fatigue, hunger pangs, and too much net worth to be willing to wait in line. So lots of generalized snarkiness but no scenes of bloody murder. Also no William, no Rachael, no Coral Simone.

  Theresa kept the phone pressed to one ear, holding the other ear closed with her left hand. She had said Rachael’s name a few times, but the girl did not respond. Someone with Rachael spoke, but too softly for Theresa to identify the speaker or even the gender. Another murmur—the same person or maybe someone else. Theresa scanned the rest of the lobby, the lounge area, the elevator banks.

  Rachael said, “Why are we going to the observation deck?”

  Not again, Theresa pleaded silently, pushing the “up” button before she’d even completed the thought.

  Murmuring again. Rachael must have her phone on, open, maybe hidden in a pocket or held behind her back. Theresa covered the tiny mike in her own phone so her breath or the lobby noise would not give this away.

  Then she heard William say, “Let her go.”

  Definitely his voice, but who was “her”? Rachael? Or someone else?

  “No! Leave her alone!”

  No more sounds. Theresa moved the phone from her ear, glanced at the screen. CALL DISCONNECTED.

  This couldn’t be happening to her. Not again.

  An elevator finally arrived. She pushed past the exiting guests, jabbed a button. Neil Kelly slid in just as the doors closed. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Theresa explained about the phone call. “Someone is taking my daughter to the top of the tower, and I think it’s Coral Simone. Call somebody. Call Dean—he’s got to be on the premises.”

  “He’s got no authority once off hotel property.” Neil’s hand went to the butt of his gun as they circled the empty thirty-third floor to the tower elevator. “That Rosedale kid. He probably figures we’re so busy with the dead lawyers that he can make his move now—”

  “This may sound crazy, but I think William’s the one in real danger.”

  “Listen to me,” Neil said as if he hadn’t heard her. He turned to face her, grasped both arms just below the shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “We’ll get Rachael. Nothing will happen to her, okay? I promise.”

  They both knew he couldn’t guarantee anything of the kind, but that didn’t matter. Theresa was exhausted, bewildered, and terrified, and it was what she needed to hear at the moment. She allowed herself to slump into his arms and wrap herself against his sturdy frame. Let him be able to deliver on that pledge, she prayed, clutching him so tight that the keys on her lanyard pressed into her sternum.

  “It will be all right,” he breathed into her ear, grasping her hair with one hand. “We’ll stop him.”

  “Not him,” Theresa corrected. “Her.”

  They reached the fifty-second floor.

  He insisted on leading the way, right hand on his gun, his left splayed outward to keep her behind him. But he moved quickly enough to keep her from going insane, advancing into the smaller, south-facing observation room, through the narrow hallway, into the larger, north-facing room with its wide windows and bare floors. They were empty and silent.

  Neil continued into the very dim stairwell, moving up the two flights. Theresa followed him closely enough to feel the heat from his body as they climbed the creaking metal steps. Coral was someone to be empathized with, not arrested, right? They could hope. But Coral had not sought out William to have a cathartic chat, and Rachael would never have left the lobby at a simple verbal request. Coral, Theresa felt sure, would be armed. A gun or a knife. By this point Theresa wouldn’t be surprised if the slender woman had dynamite strapped to her chest.

  The top of the tower hadn’t been designed for either efficiency or convenience, and certainly not for ease of apprehending a murderously grieving mom. There were no lights and no windows. Dark corners abounded. The door to the outside could be located only by the rim of fading light around its edge. Neil Kelly pulled it open, gently, and it moved inward as quietly as eighty-three-year-old, well-painted-over metal could—with a deafening metallic squeak.

  Now Theresa heard voices.

  They stepped over the high threshold into the curving bowl of the outer observation deck. The sun had begun to set, streaking the air over the lake with pink and purple, and the wind whipped up the water as the temperature faded. It would have been beautiful had she time to look at it.

  Neil Kelly moved toward the north, Theresa immediately behind him, grateful that he did not waste even a split second trying to convince her to hang back, perhaps figuring they had little to fear from a single distraught mother. But she noticed he kept his hand on the butt of his gun and had unsnapped his holster. They moved quickly around to the point where Sonia’s body had lain, the paint still streaked with her blood.

  Coral stood on the workers’ scaffold, a gun in her right hand and Rachael’s elbow in the other, herself against the wall, Rachael at the edge of the platform. Theresa stopped. It was bad enough to see the barrel of a Glock pointed at her only child. Even worse was that nothing but a railing of thin cables that barely reached Rachael’s thigh separated her from seven hundred feet of empty air.

  William Rosedale stood in the niche between the steps and the outer wall, his back to Theresa, as Coral was saying to him, “… what you did in five minutes of drunken stupor destroyed every iota of the beautiful family I had, blasted it into dust.”

  Rachael’s voice pierced the breeze. “What are you going to do, kill him? Everyone will know you did it, even if—”

  Even if you kill me, too.

  “I don’t want to kill him! I want him to confess. To me, to you, to the entire city! I just want to hear him admit it!”

  Calm. It was really important to stay calm here.

  “Coral!” Neil raised his voice to be heard above the growing wind, but not shouting. “Drop the gun.”

 
William’s head swiveled toward them, and Rachael jerked as if she wanted to run to her mother—turned into a little girl all over again—but Coral pulled her back. William looked about as terrified as a buff nineteen-year-old could look.

  Coral did not seem the least dissuaded by the presence of two witnesses. She barely spared them a glance.

  Theresa forced herself to breathe. “I told you I had some new information you’d want to hear.”

  “You let her stay here,” Coral said, the depth of her voice belying her slight frame. “You know what he is, and you let her see him. Are you nuts?”

  Theresa refrained from saying, I’m not the one on top of the Terminal Tower waving a gun at two kids, and instead said, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I didn’t kill Jenna,” William said to Theresa. The stoicism she’d seen this week had been decimated, wiped out by this relentless pursuit. His voice hovered on the edge of tears. “I would never have hurt Jenna. And I would never—”

  “Shut up!” Coral screamed. “Stop saying that!”

  Theresa said, “He’s right. He didn’t kill Jenna.”

  They both stared at her.

  “His friend Ray did.”

  CHAPTER 38

  *

  “What?”

  “What?”

  Theresa squeezed past Neil Kelly, gently, slowly, never taking her eyes off the woman on the platform. He didn’t stop her, probably waiting to see if she could talk Coral Simone into putting down the gun.