She had no quick answer for him. “None of us wants our lives open to public scrutiny. Even you. You lied to me. Small things, but a lie nonetheless.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said. “What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing, so drop it. This is not your concern.” When she heard silence on the other end, she said, “I’m sorry, Rick. That wasn’t me. It was the bitch I turn into sometimes. I should go in.”
“Wait. Let’s see what shakes out tomorrow. If Fuentes says it’s over, you close your case, and we can still be friends. All right?”
“All right.”
“So go in and get some rest. Let me know what the detectives say.”
“I will. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Calamity Jane.”
She was sitting at the desk in her office on her second cup of coffee, idly stroking Lady Bell, who was purring in her lap, and trying to get some work done before she went to bed, not that she had any hope of sleeping, when her cell phone rang in her tote bag. The irrational thought that it might be Kylie caused her quickly to take it out of its pocket and look at the screen. It was not a number she recognized.
After one more ring, she pressed the button to connect. She listened for a moment to muffled music and conversation in the background, then said, “Yes?”
“Ms. Dunn, this is Jason Wright. You gave me your number.”
She sat bolt upright so quickly that Lady Bell leaped off her lap and hid under a chair. “Jason?”
“What time is it?” he asked.
“A quarter after twelve.”
“It is? Oops. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s all right. I wasn’t asleep, I was working. Why are you calling me?”
“I want to ask you something. Are you the one who told the police that I murdered Alana?” He sounded as though he found something wildly funny and any second he could break into laughter.
Slowly she rose from her chair. Was he drunk? She said, “No, I haven’t talked to the police. Why do you think that? I haven’t talked to them at all about you.”
“I’ve been trying to think who it could be. You’re the only one I told about having no alibi. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, but I haven’t talked to anyone about it.” The lie came quickly to her lips, tasting bitter and sharp. “Jason, I never thought you had anything to do with Alana’s death.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know that. I know. Listen to me. Call a lawyer. Do it tomorrow.”
“I don’t know any lawyers. Can you recommend someone?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be ethical. Ask a friend. Or ask your parents.”
“They’re not speaking to me. My mother is in shock. Oh, oh, my boy is gay. Jason, swear to me that you didn’t hurt that girl. It’s really funny.”
“Don’t you have friends you can ask?”
“I’d rather not. They’d want to give an interview about it. Could you please help me? God, I don’t mean to sound so fucking pathetic, but I don’t know who else to call.”
C.J. paced across the cluttered room, looked out the window into the night, then returned to her desk. “All right. I’ll make a list for you. Half a dozen, and you choose whichever you like. Put the list on the wall and throw a dart at it. They will all be excellent attorneys, people I trust and respect. Jason, are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll call you tomorrow. Go to bed now. Get some sleep. And don’t worry, it’s going to be all right.” That was probably another lie, but C.J. couldn’t stand the tears she heard in his voice. “Jason?”
“Thank you.”
He hung up. C.J. stood there with the phone in her hand until it began to beep, then she went to her computer, opened her address file, and started looking for names.
chapter TWENTY-SIX
the next day, after doing what work she could between returning phone calls and refusing requests for interviews, C.J. went into Henri Pierre’s office and asked if he could spare half an hour. She needed a ride to a hearing in the bribery case against a county zoning official. She wanted to avoid the reporters in the lobby, who were more interested in asking her about Richard Slater. Henry cruised by the freight entrance, C.J. got in, and they drove the half mile to the federal courthouse, a soaring modern structure next door to the original Spanish-style building.
When her hearing was over, she had to spend ten minutes chatting with the judge about the Martin case. Coming down the escalator in the atrium, C.J. spotted a fortyish woman with short brown hair catching the up escalator on the other side. Elaine McCoy had recently been appointed deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Before that, she’d been head of the banking and money-laundering division and, before that, Internet fraud.
C.J. ran across the atrium and up the steps of the escalator. “Elaine!”
At the top they exchanged a hug and noted how long it had been since they’d gotten together, but their schedules were just impossible, weren’t they? When Elaine confirmed that she’d been watching the news lately, C.J. asked if she had time to answer a couple of questions that might bear on the Martin case.
Elaine glanced at her watch and said, “I’ll make time. How can I help you?”
C.J. told her she was exploring the possibility that Alana Martin had been murdered by someone with a connection to the porn industry, specifically a producer of DVD’s or Internet content using underage girls. She told Elaine about Alana’s audition tapes. Alana herself was over eighteen, but she may have known enough to be a problem for someone. C.J. stated what she knew about Harold Vincent and asked Elaine if she had ever heard of him.
That brought a smile to Elaine McCoy’s usually serious face. “Oh, yes, we know Harold around here. He was one of the targets of a multi-agency investigation into child pornography. This goes back to the early nineties. Harold Vincent wasn’t peddling movies with young children. No, his specialty was teenagers, light-skinned girls primarily from the Netherlands Antilles. Many of them were young prostitutes. Prostitution is legal on Aruba for adults, but younger ones do exist. Back in the eighties, Harold Vincent owned a brothel in Nye County, Nevada. I guess it was in his blood.”
Elaine leaned her elbows on the balcony railing. “I wasn’t part of the investigation, but I clearly recall the howls of disappointment when Harold slid out of the net. He had a very clever lawyer, no offense intended.”
“None taken,” C.J. said.
“The filming was done at various locations in the Caribbean, and the videotapes were sold by mail order from Mexico. Later on, when DVD’s could be bought on the Internet, his business really took off. Harold had a choice: Keep his products out of the U.S. market and thereby avoid the jurisdictional reach of the federal government. Or he could risk it and make a fortune, because we buy more porn than anybody. He decided the reward was worth the risk. He was making millions, getting away with it until one of the people lower down started talking to us.”
“He ratted Harold Vincent out in order to reduce his own sentence,” C.J. said.
“We prefer to describe it as an offer of cooperation. Anyway, the defendant rolled over, but we couldn’t get to Harold. He had created so many foreign shell corporations that the wall around him was virtually impenetrable. It scared him, though. He was looking at twenty to thirty years easily, with the minimum mandatories. He’s gone straight, or as straight as you can get in the business. He does online gaming now, still based in Aruba and highly profitable. He was one of the first to get into it. That Web site is linked to his porn sites, where he charges for downloads and sells DVD’s. He uses girls who look young, like Alana Martin, but it states clearly on his Web site: ‘Barely Legal Girls. All Eighteen and Over.’ The FBI occasionally sends out feelers, but nothing comes back.”
“I think you just shot down my theory,” C.J. said. “I’d hoped to pin this on a pornographer.”
“Sorry.” Turnin
g toward her, Elaine said, “This doesn’t mean that Alana Martin wasn’t trying to get her audition tapes back.”
“Yes, but if Harold Vincent was behind it, and he was legal, he’d have no reason to keep them.”
“And no reason to kill her,” Elaine concluded.
“Maybe. There’s always a maybe,” C.J. said. “I’m going to see what more I can find out.”
“Well, if you hear anything, please share it.”
In her tote bag, C.J. had the signed and notarized statements that Judy Mazzio had obtained. She caught a taxi outside the courthouse and told the driver to take her over to the Miami Beach police headquarters on Washington and Eleventh. As the taxi maneuvered slowly through downtown traffic, she stared out the side window. Her reflection came back to her, large sunglasses, a mane of blond hair, and tightly compressed lips. With a sigh, she leaned her head against the seat back.
She had hoped to present George Fuentes with more than two pieces of paper that he might or might not accept: she’d wanted to show him a real motive for murder. Harold Vincent had been a long shot, and the odds had just dropped to near zero. She had hoped to be able to call certain friends in the media and tell them about Vincent, which would certainly get their attention off Slater. The easiest thing now would be to push them toward Jason. It could be done. She had done it in other cases, spinning the story in the direction she wanted it to go. But she wouldn’t do it with a man she believed to be innocent. Having stupidly told Paul Shelby about Jason, and knowing that Noreen had probably leaked it to the media, made C.J. feel obligated, guilty for her lapse, unwilling to participate in the bloodfest.
Last night Jason had begged for the name of a lawyer he could go to. C.J. had the list with her, and she intended to meet him and hand it over. If he had any information about Alana’s audition tapes, great, but if he didn’t want to talk, that was fine too. C.J. took out her BlackBerry and scrolled through the call log for his number, pressed it, and listened to the rings on the other end. Finally someone picked up.
“Club Deuce.”
After a moment of confusion, C.J. said she must have dialed the wrong number. She disconnected and looked at the screen, realizing that it was impossible to have dialed the wrong number, as she had simply redialed the telephone that Jason had used. She pressed it again.
“Club Deuce.”
“Excuse me, but last night around midnight someone called me from this number. His name is Jason Wright. Do you happen to know how I could reach him?”
“Sorry, I don’t. This is a pay phone, and if it rings, we answer it.” She thanked him and hung up. Last night she hadn’t bothered to confirm how to reach Jason, and he hadn’t been sober enough to think of it either. Now what?
The first time they had talked, Jason had told her he lived near Collins Avenue and . . . and where? C.J. called Judy Mazzio and left a message to get her Jason Wright’s address, ASAP. She would leave the list in his mailbox or slide it under his door.
As the taxi came off the causeway and went up the single-lane overpass that would drop them onto Alton Road, C.J. checked in with her secretary. “Shirley, it’s me. I’m on the Beach. I should be back in the office before five o’clock. Are there any emergencies I need to know about?”
Shirley replied that things were pretty quiet, but Sarah Finch had called and left a number in Atlanta.
“Let me have it.”
A woman on the other end put her on hold for a minute, and then Sarah was on the line. C.J. recognized her warm voice immediately. “C.J., hello, how are you?”
“Having so much fun I can’t stand it. It’s good to talk to you again, Sarah. What’s up?”
“Well, I have been allowed the pleasure of making this call because I know you, and we had such a nice talk the other day. I have good news. Jerry Hazelton, the producer of Rich, Famous, and Deadly, would like you to come to Atlanta for a final interview. It’s really more of a formality. They’re set to offer you the job.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, Sarah. This is wonderful. I can’t tell you how wonderful.”
“There are a lot of details still to be worked out. If you have an agent, they’ll want him or her in on the negotiations.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I think it’s all right if I tell you this now,” Sarah said. “They were also considering a reporter from Miami, Libertad Rodriguez, the host of Miami Justice Files, but I was pulling for you.”
No, this could not be better, C.J. thought. “When should I come? Next week?”
“A morning flight on Wednesday if you can. Someone will pick you up at the airport, and Jerry and his assistant will take you to lunch before you meet the big guns. I’d love to get together with you, but I’m flying to New York on Monday. Give Jerry a call.”
As C.J. wrote down the number, the taxi pulled up to the drop-off zone at police headquarters. C.J. leaned forward and held up a hand for him to wait. “Got it. I’ll call Jerry in the morning, and thank you so very much.”
“There’s one other thing,” Sarah said. “It probably doesn’t matter, but some on the staff are concerned about things they’ve heard. I’ll be frank. They mentioned rumors about your juvenile record, a father who died in prison, and the fact you were in an alcohol rehab center.”
“Oh, it’s all true,” C.J. said. “If that’s a problem for them—”
“Not at all, but they’ll want to talk to you and find out if there’s anything else they should know. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”
“Thanks.” C.J. sighed. “This is such crap. Where is it coming from?”
“No idea. I’m sure it’s going to be all right,” Sarah said. “Frankly, this makes you all the more interesting. The publicity department will love it. I’m sorry I’ll be out of town, but we’ll see each other soon.”
With Sarah’s congratulations still echoing in her ears, C.J. disconnected and laughed aloud.
The driver looked over his shoulder. “Happy news?”
“God, yes. It’s everything I’ve been dreaming of. I’m going to host a show on CNN.”
“You are? I should get your autograph. What’s your name?”
“C.J. Dunn. I’m a lawyer.” The meter said $15.40, and she dug her wallet out of her bag. “For now, the show is called Rich, Famous, and Deadly, but that could change.”
“Yeah. I heard of you,” said the driver. “It was on the news. That girl who was killed over here. They found her body up in Lauderdale without the head. Right?”
“She had a name, Alana Martin.”
“That’s right. And you’re the lawyer for this Special Forces guy they think did it.”
“He had nothing to do with it. Nobody ever said he did.” C.J. thrust the money over the seat, got out of the taxi, and slammed the door.
“Hey! Take it easy!”
Sergeant Fuentes came down to the lobby and escorted her to the personal crimes bureau on the third floor. A series of glass-fronted offices formed a perimeter around a large center section of desks and file cabinets. There were two holding cells with steel-mesh doors, and in one of them a man sat on the edge of a metal bench with his head in his hands.
Fuentes’s office was on the east side, overlooking the apartments on Collins and the Art Deco hotels on Ocean Drive two blocks away. In his knit shirt of eye-scorching green, Fuentes gestured toward a chair, then went behind his desk as C.J. handed him the statements. He rocked slowly back and forth in his chair, reading.
His partner, Raymond Watts, stood by the door, arms resting on his belly, chewing a piece of gum.
C.J. had made the decision to name the girl the witnesses had seen: Kylie Willis. She had not included Kylie’s address because she didn’t know it. She was correct in assuming that Fuentes would ask her.
“I’m sorry, George. She moved and left no forwarding address. I believe I can find her if it’s absolutely necessary.”
Watts said, “That’s convenient, the girl moving.”
“No, detective, it i
s not,” said C.J. “She has made it more difficult for me.”
The café-con-leche skin on Fuentes’s forehead furrowed into lines. “Any chance you can get her to come in and ID your client? If Slater has a solid alibi, we’re not going to keep him on our list, obviously.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” C.J. said, “but really, these statements should be enough. The men are now saying it wasn’t Alana Martin they saw with Mr. Slater, and that’s basically all you had.”
Watts grinned around his chewing gum. “We have more than that.”
C.J. looked back at Fuentes, who said, “We’ve been going around to marinas in the area with photographs of several men who were at the party at Mr. Medina’s house that night, including your client. A witness at the Redfish Point marina says he saw Mr. Slater getting into a motorboat about nine o’clock on Sunday morning, the day after the party. He had a large cooler with him. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you he saw your client loading a body into the boat. If he had, we’d be asking a judge for an arrest warrant. Maybe Slater was fishing. Maybe he was gonna take a scenic cruise. I don’t know. I’m telling you this in hopes you can clear it up for us. We could run over to his place and ask him, but you and I both know he’d call you, and we’d be right back here, like we are now. So how about it?”
During this, C.J. had gazed coolly at Fuentes with her brows slightly raised. She said, “Whose boat was it? My client doesn’t own a boat.”
“Well, we don’t know, and the dockmaster couldn’t tell us. Mr. Slater didn’t sign in or out. They’re supposed to, but sometimes people forget.”
“Then how can you be certain it was Mr. Slater?”
“It was him. The man who ID’d Slater has seen him around before. Didn’t know his name, but he’s seen him. We’re aware that he doesn’t own a boat, because we checked the records; so he must have borrowed it. If you can clear this up for us, it would be helpful.”
“Have you divined a motive? Some plausible reason why it would remotely cross Mr. Slater’s mind to do away with Alana Martin?”
The Dark of Day Page 25