by Linda Barnes
I hoped her priest hadn’t advised her to put her trust in a stranger who’d bought her a doughnut when she was distraught.
“What is it?” I asked. “What did you find?”
She groped in a huge satchel, beige cloth covered in embroidery, and withdrew a thick envelope. She stared at it for the count of five, then passed it solemnly across the desk. It was sealed, but it wasn’t stamped. It hadn’t traveled through the mail. Across the front in a bold scrawl, it said “Open in case of my death.”
“Do you know when he left this?”
“Ai, no. I know nothing. I understand nothing, except that he is gone away. He did not come back here for work. No one knows where he has gone. My younger sister, she says he made a fool of me, but I know he would be here unless something terrible happened.”
“You didn’t open this? Read it?”
“Ai, no. How can I read it? When I don’t truly know that he is dead, not really, not for sure.”
Okay, Carlotta, I thought, this is where you leave. This is where you take the envelope and lie to the poor woman. Say you’ll give it back to her if it turns out her fears are overblown. I found myself fumbling for the Spanish, my mouth shaping different words.
“Señorita, you are right in your heart. He is dead. I am sorry to tell you like this, suddenly, but your feelings are true. The man in that picture is dead.”
“Thank you,” she said with enormous dignity. “It is important that I know.”
I reached across the desk and touched her icy hand.
“Now you read,” she said.
I considered taking it to the cops unread, considered it for maybe ten seconds. Then I took a letter opener from a mug, slit the top of the envelope, and spread the pages on the desk.
Handwritten. Five pages long. Three feet away, Fidelia Moros Santos sat as though she were carved out of stone, except for the tears that ran slowly down her round cheeks.
To whom it may concern:
I’m starting like that because I don’t know who’ll be reading this first, but I hope sooner or later it gets to the cops. She thinks she’s so smart. I told her I was going to do this, write it all down so she’ll have to leave me alone, but she thinks she’s so damned smart, she probably thought she could find it at my place, or at work, but she didn’t know jack about Fidelia and me. Thinks she’s so smart. Ha.
Well, if you’re reading this, I guess she was smart enough. I saw it coming but not till it was too damn late, and then this was the only thing I could think to do, so I’ll have my revenge, but I sure wish I’d got away and managed to grab a big chunk of the money. I don’t think she was playing square with me from the start.
She is Denali Brinkman, and don’t believe for a second that she is dead, because she isn’t.
I read the last line twice.
“I have to go, Señorita,” I said, standing, holding out my hand to shake hers. “Thanks you for trusting me with this. You were right to do it. If there is anything in here that compromises your business, I’ll try my best to keep it out of the hands of the police.”
She stood as well, took my hand. “He is dead?”
“Yes. You did the right thing. The absolutely right thing.”
I half-ran, half-walked to the doughnut shop, rousted Leroy from a table, where he sat with half a dozen doughnuts on a platter. The waitress bagged them while I waited impatiently. I gave Leroy Helen Orza’s Somerville address, read the rest of Dowling’s letter in the car, speeding toward what I knew would be an empty house.
It went great, at first. She had that fool Chaney eating out of her hand while we waited for him to finish off his patent stuff. We’re almost ready to grab it, when the shit starts falling. See, first, Denali gets hurt, so she can’t row. I mean, she’d been having trouble with a few classes before, not turning shit in and stuff, but who cared, with her being such a great rower and all? But that stupid Chaney keeps delaying, and now she’s worried about people nosing around, asking questions, kicking her out because she can’t row. So she comes up with this idea about how it would be better if she were dead. I kinda laugh it off at first, but I think she’d been thinking about it for a long time, starting over clean, ever since she got arrested in NH.
She asks me to drive her to some shit town up there. I’m suppose to wait in the car while she hangs around the jail, but not looking like her, in a black wig and fat-girl clothes, and then later she changes to her cleaning overalls and I do, too, and we go to this dentist office place, wait till dark. I never busted a dentist office before. Easy. A favor for Denali is all, and she came out smiling like a cat.
A dentist’s office. Someone else had mentioned a dentist’s office. Yes, the only time Denali had ever started a conversation with her roommate, Jeannie St. Cyr, she’d inquired about a local dentist.
Then later, she asks me to call this number in NH and tell this girl Helen that she can find “Donna” easy in Boston, give her a hint or two where. This Helen, she even stayed at my place for a while. I bet sweet little Denali, “Donna,” whatever, saw her when she was posting bond, not the same looks, not drop-dead pretty like her, but same height, same shape, kinda gave her the idea.
Helen Orza, Wiseman’s unlucky employee, must have been working at the bondsman’s office that day. Maybe she was the one who’d snapped the Polaroid of Donna Barnette, posing against the grid that showed her height. Wiseman himself might have commented on the similar size of the two women. Possibly Donna/Denali alone had noticed, filed it away for future use.
Orza’s address in Somerville was a corner convenience store with a phone, nothing more, nothing less. Denali would have paid some clerk to say that Helen was out whenever Wiseman phoned. She’d have left a few letters for the clerk to post at certain intervals. What had Donna Barnette been charged with in New Hampshire, after all? Forgery. I didn’t bother to go into the store, confront the clerk, listen to his outraged denials.
Well, the place Denali went wrong was, she didn’t reckon with me. Thinks she’s the only one with half a brain. This patent shit’s taking too damn long. I don’t see why Chaney shouldn’t pay my expenses while I wait, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t make a chunk of change off Harvard while I’m at it. I mean, think of it, deep pockets, right? She says no, wait for the big score, forget about it, but she’s wrong. Chaney paid up like a baby, and Harvard will, too.
Wrong, I thought. You paid, Benjy. Hell, that’s why I’d sensed two patterns in the case, because there were two crooks, each trying to outsmart the other. Two patterns, one slow and crafty, the other hasty, eager to get rich quick. Two crooks, two plans. Denali wanted something big from Chaney. She was willing to wait. Dowling, the con who always went too far, who gilded the lily, was the blackmailer. He was the one behind the lawsuit. I wondered whether Denali would have killed him if he hadn’t branched off on his own, if that had always been her plan.
“Carlotta? You okay just sitting here?”
“Hang on a minute, Leroy.”
Anyway, I’m sorry it went down the way it did. I had nothing against that Helen, seemed like an okay kid. I’m not saying I didn’t know Denali would kill her—I mean, she stole her dental chart, right?—but I wasn’t really in on it, more what you call an accessory. I was real good. I shoulda been an actor, probably won an Academy Award. The cops took Helen’s hairbrush from my place when I told them I had it, case they decided to do that new DNA thing. Well, I’m smarter than Denali thinks I am. There’s hairs here in this envelope. Don’t throw them away. They’re Helen Orza’s hairs, from her hairbrush, I swear to God, and they’re just like the ones I told the cops were Denali’s. This is the truth, so help me God.
“Start heading to Cambridge, Leroy.”
I phoned Burkett, left a message telling him I’d messenger Dowling’s confession. I called Geary, Chaney’s lawyer. Still the recorded message. I called Spengler, head of security at Improvisational. He put me on hold while he checked, then told me Chaney wasn’t in the lab, that he�
�d been there but had left. “Alone?” I asked. “Did he leave alone?” Did I want him to pull up the video? Spengler asked. I did. We were still tracing the curving path of Alewife Brook when he reported that Chaney had left with a small blond woman, a real looker.
I called Chaney’s house, got Mark, the secretary, then Margo, the wife. The connection was bad. My cell battery was running down.
“What?” I said. “What did you say?”
Her voice sounded muffled. “Can you come over right away?” she asked. “Now?”
“Is your husband there?”
Static almost muffled her reply. “No.”
I told Leroy to drop me at the Chaneys’, then take the envelope to Burkett at the Cambridge Police Department, give it into his hands and his hands only. I tried for a dial tone on my cell, got nothing, picked up the cab’s two-way and got Gloria.
“Urgent,” I told her. “Call Leon at the JFK Building.” I didn’t have to give her a number; Gloria knows numbers. “Tell him his buddy Wilson Chaney is probably on the way to Logan Airport with a killer. Tell him I’ll be heading there in a few minutes, the international terminal, with a gun. Tell him if he can clear the path for me with the staties, I’d be obliged. If he can meet me, so much the better. Tell him the BPD will have paper. Chaney’s not supposed to leave the state, much less the country.”
“Got it.”
Leroy said, “Maybe I better stick with you.”
I said, “Come back here as soon as you’ve given the envelope to Burkett. If I’m already gone, meet up with me at Terminal E, Logan. Gloria, you still there?”
“Here.”
“Make the call. And send me another cab.” I gave her the Chaneys’ address.
CHAPTER 36
The high gate was open, not hanging ajar, but unfastened. That should have rung a bell, but the warning was muted because my mind was focused on the fact that Denali was Donna was Dorothy. That the golden girl was alive, not dead, a killer, not a victim. I pushed past the gate and took the flagstone path to the front door.
When no one answered my knock, I turned the knob. The door swung in, stopped abruptly, stuck. I put my shoulder to the wood and shoved until I could slide sideways through the narrow gap.
Mark, Mrs. Chaney’s secretary, was dumped on the foyer floor like a sack of trash, the cause of the blocked door, the object I’d moved. I put a quick hand to his throat. His carotid artery pulsed weakly. He gave a faint snorting sound when I touched him. I slid out of my shoes, found my gun in my hand, eased down the hall toward the withdrawing room.
Silence hung over the house like a coiled and waiting snake. I kept my gun in both hands, used it to point around corners and into empty doorways. I found Margo in the withdrawing room, stretched on the chaise. She seemed to be asleep, but she was bound with the cord from the fancy telephone, the white lines almost invisible against her pale frilled nightgown. The instrument dangled near the floor, dead and useless, but Margo was alive, breathing, gagged with a scarf. Her eyes fluttered and she struggled weakly against her bonds.
I grabbed my cell, punched 911, got nothing, not the feeblest dial tone. The red light gleamed. recharge battery appeared in the small window. I was debating my next move, whether or not to untie Margo, whether she’d prove an asset or a helpless disaster, screaming in terror, when her imagined scream seem to materialize, echoing through the house, a wail of anger and rage, followed by a sharp report, the unmistakable sound of a gun. Not a backfire, gunfire.
I left Margo and raced back to the front door. Mark hadn’t moved, but I could hear groans and low murmurs, coming from the right of the foyer, down another hall. I pressed my body against the wall, making myself a smaller target, and inched forward. My thigh started to ache; the old gunshot wound seemed to tingle at the harsh smell of cordite.
Freeze frame: An office, small, disordered, lined with bookshelves. A desk, a sprawled chair. A painting leaning against a wall, a flash of color. A wall safe, door yawning. Wilson Chaney prone, a trickle of blood seeping from his temple; wearing a white shirt at first glance, a lab coat at second; his face twisted in pain, his eyelids flickering. A leather briefcase, open, papers scattered across a wooden floor. A woman bent over Chaney, kneeling near his waist, a spill of blond hair.
“It was his fault.” She seemed to know someone was in the doorway, but she didn’t look up. “Tried to trick me—bastard had a gun in the safe. Would you believe it, Wilson, with a gun?” She lifted her head and the silky hair framed her face like folded wings.
What had I expected? A devil in a dress? A femme fatale, cheap, gaudy, and obvious? She was beautiful the way angels in church are beautiful. Her chin was pointed, her cheek smudged. The left knee of her jeans was torn, and her breasts were bare under a tank top. Her nose was smaller than a true classic, but she was a stunner all the same, her lower lip full, her wide eyes cornflower blue. Calm, but with depth. They said, How could a girl like me do anything wrong? They said, I didn’t mean it. They said, Please take care of me.
“Back away from him,” I said. “Let me see your hands.”
She didn’t move anything but her sullen lips. “It’s his fault. He pulled a fucking gun. He—I don’t know—you can never tell with men, can you? So happy to see me, that’s what he said. He used to be happy to see me.”
“Get your hands in the air.” There was a gun in the room, but I couldn’t see it. Her hands were spread, one on each side of Chaney’s motionless body—one near his shoulder, one disappearing under his waist.
She smiled at me, showing small white teeth, staring unflinchingly into the gun barrel. “I thought you were still in the hospital.”
“I thought you were dead, Denali.”
“Your mistake.”
Wilson had yanked a gun from the safe, whirled, shot? No. He’d pulled the gun, aimed it at beautiful, beautiful Denali, stopped and spoken, tried to reason with her. She’d dazzled him, grabbed the weapon, fought him, shot him. He’d fallen.
Where was the gun?
“Move away from him,” I said.
She kept her hands where they were, her knees on the ground. I watched her feet. Beige sandals. Scarlet toes like drops of blood. If she was going to charge me, she’d need to shift her feet, get some leverage.
She smiled. “You work for him, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Was the gun under Chaney? Was she scrabbling for it? Had she reached it?
“You work for him. Right. So now I’m going to tell you why you’re going to back off and let me walk out of here. Listen, or you’ll regret it. He’ll regret it, and so will you.”
She had a low voice, gruff and throaty, almost like a teenage boy’s when it starts to change. I kept the pistol pointed at her chest.
“You give me to the cops, I’ll nail your boss for rape, first off. You know, we had a thing going, but I’ll say it was rape, and who’s to say it wasn’t? That’ll fix the bastard. He’ll never get another job like the one he’ll lose.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Once the cops pull her record, no one will believe a thing she says, I thought.
“He wouldn’t want you to keep me here. The shooting was a mistake. Just let me go and you can rush him to a hospital. He’s still bleeding, see? He’ll be okay.”
I didn’t move. Neither did she.
“Hey, he’s no saint, believe me. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t been trying to cheat Harvard in the first place. Oh, I’ll talk about that, don’t think I won’t. He’s no angel in this. Does that surprise you? It does, doesn’t it? You fell for him, didn’t you? Such an important man, such a brilliant man.”
My eyes flicked over the floorboards, the rug, her splayed hands. Had her right hand, the hand near Chaney’s waist, disappeared farther under his body? His lab coat blocked my view.
“You know what an unintended consequence is?” she asked.
Oh yes, I thought. “Yes,” I said aloud.
“There’s more going on here than you could possibly k
now. And it’s worth millions, hundreds of millions.”
I watched her watch me, looking for the gleam of interest when she mentioned money. I tried my best to supply it.
“Sure he’s been talking about an ADHD drug, help all the poor kids. Sure that’s where he started. But when you mess with the brain, you don’t really know what’s gonna happen. These guys, they think they’re so damn smart, but they don’t know.”
“What do you think he found?” I asked.
“What did he find.” she said, correcting me. “I’m no fool.”
I’ve seen politicians claim they were bankrupt and mobsters swear their innocence on their mothers’ graves, but I have never seen a more calculating face. I watched her clear blue eyes decide what to tell me, and I knew that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.
“He’s in late stage clinicals now. You know what those are, right? You’re not dumb, either; you read the papers. A woman in your business, you must be sharp.”
She was working me, trying to get me on her side, flattering me. I watched her bait her hook. It was like taking a master class in con artistry.
“One of Impro’s clinical trial groups, at a certain dosage, had an unexpected outcome. Totally unexpected. Chaney couldn’t have been more surprised if they’d sprouted wings and flown away. They all, every single man, woman, and child, lost weight. Brilliant Chaney didn’t expect that. That hadn’t happened before, not in the animal control groups, not ever. He was so excited, he had to tell someone.”
Poor Chaney, blabbing to his sweet little lover.
“And nothing else bad happened to those people,” she went on. “No adverse effects. They all lost pounds and kept on losing. He had to stop the trial. Imagine. You know how many fat people there are in this world? How many who aren’t fat but think they’re fat?” Her right hand moved just a little. She licked her lips and tossed her hair to cover the movement. If I’d been male, the tricks might have kept me looking at the wrong things.