by Matthew Iden
I leaned back in the chair, surprised to find I needed to relax—my hands had balled into fists around a copy of the printed report I’d made for them. I’d had to deal with the families of hundreds of homicide victims before, but never in such an inclusive and comprehensive way. It’s not like I’d been insensitive as a cop, but there’d always been an invisible wall between myself and the victims I’d had to inform, update, or sometimes arrest. This was a tiger of a different stripe and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
Sarah spoke first. “So, this man…”
“Michael Denton,” I said.
“Denton,” she said, rolling the word around. “He blamed Wendy and her superior for the death of his mother.”
“Yes, although he didn’t know their role at first. But then Wendy discovered that he owned the spike and arranged to meet with him to get him to sell.”
“And sometime during the pitch it came out that she’d turned to Jeremy Rheinsfeld for help,” Paul said without looking away from the fire. “And Denton put two and two together and figured Rheinsfeld had had his mother killed.”
I nodded. “I don’t know if he was initially suspicious of her death or not. My guess, from the way he snapped, is that he wasn’t. Not at first. There might’ve been a nagging thought that something didn’t seem right, but until Wendy came out and told him about Rheinsfeld’s involvement, he was going under the assumption that his mother had died a natural death and that Wendy was just another part of the corporate development machine.”
“How did she know to contact him in the first place?” Terry Gerson asked.
“There was tremendous pressure to find out who owned the spike in order to get them to sell,” I said. “In my own search, I came up empty. But Wendy was a real estate expert with all of Tartikoff and Brentwood’s resources at her disposal. Based on what I saw of her notes, I think she figured it out, then called Denton to propose a meeting. Unfortunately, she had no clue he was Tonya Jackson’s son. And, believing that he’d simply been holding out for money, let it slip that they’d been pressuring his mother to sell, something he didn’t know.”
Paul said, “He must’ve been shocked. Wendy saw it, knew something was terribly wrong—”
“—and left,” Sarah Gerson finished. “Why did she take the Metro?”
“She’d gone to the Quarters to make the pitch,” I said, “hoping that the location might give her some kind of edge. When she saw the deal disintegrating in front of her eyes, she turned and headed for the nearest way out of there. But, believe me, there are no taxis cruising that neighborhood. She didn’t have a car. So she headed for the closest Metro station.”
“Denton followed her and killed her,” Terry Gerson said hoarsely, speaking for the first time since he’d shown me through the front door. His face was more deeply creased, it seemed, than when I’d been here last. A stony despair emanated from him.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “A spontaneous, enraged murder. Once he cooled down, he realized she was just one link in the chain that led to his mother’s death. So he started working backwards from what she’d told him and what he himself knew about how corporate real estate works in DC.”
“Montero was her boss, so he was responsible,” Paul said, turning around and looking at me. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “But why not go higher up the ladder at her firm?”
“Denton knew that anyone more senior than Montero probably didn’t have personal knowledge of the deal,” I said. “They’d simply signed off on it, given your sister and Montero an attaboy, then went to lunch. But he knew enough about the way neighborhood development works in DC that there had to be at least two other players involved—the city councilman who’d approved the deal and the developer who’d wanted the deal in the first place.”
“So Waites and Rheinsfeld had to die, too,” Sarah said, then shook her head. “Didn’t he understand that she was just doing her job? She was just the attorney, that’s all.”
I grimaced. “I’m not sure about that. Zimmerman told me he brought it directly to Wendy. I don’t know this without checking her financials, of course, but I think Wendy put her own stake into the redevelopment plan. It’s why she was so close to Rheinsfeld and why she handled so many elements of the deal personally.”
“She wasn’t just counsel, she was an investor, too,” Paul said, musing. “The stake must’ve been worth millions.”
Sarah Gerson dismissed the statement with a wave. “That man was still full of hate.”
“Denton was primed from his work as a community activist in just this kind of thing,” I said in tentative agreement. “That fire was already burning. But when he found out his childhood home had been put on the chopping block by these people, then to discover that his mother had very possibly been murdered by them…with all due respect, Mrs. Gerson, his hate is understandable.”
There was a stiffening in the room, not surprisingly. Sarah Gerson looked at me with a glare that had doubtless sliced other people in half. I sat there and looked back at her equably. With Wendy’s death, the Gersons had suffered a loss, and they should be allowed their grief. But I wasn’t going to gloss over the circumstances that had brought it about. Their daughter’s actions had not only led to the destruction of a neighborhood, they had led to a woman’s death. Had Wendy Gerson been alive, she would’ve been arrested for being an accessory to murder. Her death had been tragic, but they’d get only so much sympathy from me for that.
Sarah Gerson opened her mouth to let me have it, I think, but her husband surprised her—surprised all of us, I think—when he reached out and put a hand on her knee to stop her. “He’s right, Sarah. Wendy wasn’t the only victim, here.”
The look she turned on him should’ve curdled his blood, but he held her stare steadily. Paul shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing, and the moment passed.
Terry glanced at me. “What happens now?”
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Denton is in a coma. The prognosis is not good. If he recovers, he’ll stand trial on four counts if they pin Harmon’s death on him, too. And attempted murder for shooting Waites, since he looks like he’ll recover.”
“With no death penalty in the District,” Sarah said bitterly.
“Murder with aggravating circumstances will net him twenty to sixty years for each count,” I said. “If Michael Denton lives, he’s going to be in prison the rest of his life.”
“What was Rheinsfeld’s plan?” Terry asked.
“I think he actually anticipated Denton doing something crazy, just not that crazy. He assumed that with Harmon and Martinez nearby, he was safe and—frankly—if there was even a hint of violence, they’d gun him down, then fabricate a self-defense story. The result would be one incredibly annoying social gadfly out of the way.”
“And when you showed up, it all went to hell,” Paul said.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “Not the result I would’ve picked.”
“So Atlantic Union keeps on doing what it does best,” Paul said, with more bitterness than I’d expected.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if they find a way to have me charged with something, the way things went to hell at the Trumble. I’m the only real survivor. They may want to extract a pound of flesh on Rheinsfeld’s behalf.”
“If it comes to that, you will call us,” Sarah said, with no room for argument in her voice. She smiled frostily at the surprise on my face. “I don’t appreciate your attitude towards my daughter, Mr. Singer, but I’m not going to have you harassed by that nest of snakes. Criminal defense wasn’t my specialty, but I know plenty of attorneys who are particularly competent in the field. Mr. Rheinsfeld’s successors won’t be bothering you if they value their skin.”
I could live with that. “Thank you.”
We fell silent and the only sound was the subdued snapping of the flames in the fireplace.
I gave them a minute to ask any follow-on questions, then took a deep breath and stood. It seemed to break the spell. The Gersons rose and thanked me. Paul showed me to the door. We paused for a moment in the doorway.
“I can’t believe it happened this way,” he said, groping for words. The swaggering, sometimes mocking tone he’d used in the past was gone. “But nothing else fits the situation. Just a horrible, terrible thing. All for a piece of land smaller than my office.”
I didn’t say anything and Paul told me awkwardly that a check would be mailed out later that day and would I mind emailing him the report? I said no, turned up my collar against the wind and the cold, then walked out.
I took my time going down the drive. Before I got in my car, I pulled out the picture of Wendy that Paul had given me. I stared at it for a moment, glanced up at the mansion, then tucked it deep in an inner pocket and left.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The neighborhood was as deserted as it had been before, though it had changed in one very substantial way—half the townhouses and tenement apartments had been knocked down. The lives and memories of hundreds of people were now so much redbrick dust and twisted metal that rose in mounds six and seven feet high, waiting their turn to be shoved onto a dump truck and hauled away for fill. The few homes that had been left standing were made obscenely isolated by the destruction of their neighbors. They seemed like bystanders at a parade who hadn’t been told yet that the march was over and the band had gone home.
I wrinkled my nose as I walked. The demolition had left a dusty residue in the air that had no smell, but reminded you all the same that you were breathing the last bits of the life of this neighborhood. A large sign, ten feet by eight and supported by two-by-fours pounded into the ground, announced that this was the site of the Quarters Renovation and Rejuvenation Project, LLC, underwritten by Atlantic Union, Incorporated. The tentative date of completion was an optimistic two years from now and promised the finest in urban living and a safe environment for low- and middle-income families. A stylized architect’s sketch dominated the largest portion of the banner, showing kids and families of indistinct race walking with balloons past a green park and into homes and a state-of-the-art community center.
I moved on, tucking the paper bag under one arm like a football and holding the six-pack of Coke by the plastic rings with just a thumb and my middle finger. It was early evening and urban noises floated on the cold late-autumn air. Nothing too clear, just the hum and murmur of a city on the move, plans and ideas and raw energy bumping into and against each other, sorting themselves out, and moving on.
I turned the last corner and headed up the last street but, when I lifted my head to look where I was going, I slowed down, then stopped. The table I’d been expecting to see was gone. The two plastic chairs lay on their sides, legs sticking up into the sky, forlorn. A few scattered soda cans had been left on the steps. The door to the store was boarded over with a sheet of plywood with a bright orange neon X painted on it, sloppily enough that I didn’t know if it was graffiti or a sign for the demolition crew.
It didn’t matter either way. I looked the scene over for a minute, memorizing it, then turned around and walked back the way I’d come.
Epilogue
Jutting up between the sidewalk and the asphalt of the street were baseball-sized cobblestones, polished by the wear of more than three centuries of foot, horse, wagon, and tire traffic. Old Town Alexandria sported two or three avenues that had kept the original cobblestones along their entire length as a throwback to Colonial days, but every thoroughfare in town had the things buried underneath the layers of tar and macadam, too. Once in a while, like here, they managed to avoid getting smothered by the latest roadwork or found a way to poke their way up in the spaces in between. Like any Metro resident with any sense, I avoided driving down the full-cobblestoned streets—the bouncing was enough to knock your teeth out if you weren’t careful, and your car’s transmission even if you were—but now I couldn’t help wondering about a time when they were the norm and, in fact, were preferable to the mud that had been there before.
I sighed and raised my head, looking across the street at a row of handsome antique brownstones that were a mix of residences, lawyers’ offices, and doctors’ practices. Leaning against my car with my hands shoved in my coat pockets, I noodled on the state of the Colonial cobblestone street for a few more minutes, then spent a few more brain cells asking myself other questions relevant to Old Town, like why did it stink once every ten days and who in their right mind would believe George Washington had thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac once they saw how wide it was? Or how could Virginia be so damn hot in September but cold enough to freeze the ass off an Eskimo in late October? And why the hell couldn’t I cross the street and walk into my oncologist’s office?
The wind, coming from the river just a few blocks away, blew straight through the street, swirling the leaves around me. I had the sudden craving for a cigarette, an urge I hadn’t felt in years, maybe decades. The day of my cancer checkup probably wasn’t the best time to pick up that particular habit. I burrowed my head deeper into the folds of my pea coat. Warmth was leaving me at an alarming rate as I leaned against the car’s metal door and my feet were aching from standing in place for so long, but I simply couldn’t push myself away from the car and head for Demitri’s door. I felt welded to the spot. Excerpts from my anxiety diary appeared in my head and I tried to rationalize my fears away like Leah’s guide had advised, but each time I tensed my muscles to stand and head for the far side of the street, a lump formed in my stomach that melted away only when I gave myself permission to wait ten more minutes.
I closed my eyes, feeling lousy. I cleared my mind, inviting the sounds of the town around me to fill my head. An occasional honk from Washington Street to my right as it carried traffic north to the city and south to Mount Vernon. The revving of engines as cars geared up, then down, passing through the endless sets of stop signs along Old Town’s back streets. A smart clip-clop as someone in heels negotiated the brick sidewalks and loose cobblestones. Colleagues and office mates chatting as they came back from a long lunch or a coffee break at one of the overpriced eateries on King Street.
The clip-clop came closer and I waited for the woman to pass behind me or cross the street to my right, but instead the sound stopped close by and a familiar voice said, “You didn’t fall asleep, did you?”
My eyes snapped open. Julie was standing a few feet away, dressed in a camel’s-hair coat and a knit cream beret that set off her hair. She looked at me with an unreadable expression. Amused? Critical? Worried? Scared? The knot that had formed in my stomach for one reason did a half twist with a somersault for an entirely different one. I straightened without actually standing. “Julie.”
“Marty,” she said, and looked at me for a moment. “Are you going to stand out here all day?”
I took a deep breath. “I was thinking about it, actually.”
She came over and leaned against the car next to me. Our arms touched. “Amanda called and told me about the checkup. She was going to surprise you and come herself. She knew you’d tell her to stay home.”
Julie paused and I said, “But?”
She looked down, crossed her feet. “But I wanted to come instead.”
A tumult of emotions spilled out of my head and collided with the ones coming up from my heart. A bruised ego won out. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
She sighed. “I’m not offering it, you nitwit. I’m offering you my support. If you’d stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself, you’d get that.”
No one would accuse Julie of having a cozy bedside manner, but she spoke the truth when she saw it. I huffed and thought about it for a second, then cleared my throat. “I guess my pride gets in the way sometimes.”
She turned her head. “Sometimes?”
I glanced at her, then away. “Okay. Most of the time.”
“Most of the
time?” she pressed. I growled and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her smile quickly and then it was gone, like a wink.
We were quiet for a second, then she said, “So, are we going in? Or are we going to stand here until they break out the Christmas lights?”
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“I know.”
I was still for a moment, listening again to the sounds around me, then said, “Thank you.”
She put her hand on my arm and squeezed. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and stood. Then we walked across the street, our shoulders still close enough to touch, and went inside.
Please continue reading to sample next Marty Singer mystery, The Wicked Flee.
Chapter One
Last night
Trooper First Class Sarah Haynesworth pulled her cruiser over to the side of the road and peered through the darkness and falling snow at the dented mailbox in front of her. The second number of the address was missing, but even through the flakes she could make out the stark white outline of where it had been, like a tan line from a bathing suit. On the cruiser’s roof, her lights spun silently, lighting the yard in splashes of red and blue.
She pulled out the small white notebook she carried everywhere and traced her finger down the page, confirming the address from the information the girl had given her. This is it. But Sarah slipped the pad of paper back into a breast pocket and continued to sit, making no motion to get out of the car. Not yet. She swallowed and looked at the house, reluctant—despite her authority, her training, and the gun at her side—to leave the warmth and security of the car.