You Only Die Twice

by Edna Buchanan

  “See, whad I tell ya? Makes sense,” he said. “Would-be suicides always feel better after making their final decision. Once they know what they’re gonna do, they feel good about having some control over their lives again. That’s why next of kin always has trouble accepting it. They’re always saying, ‘But he was in such good spirits, finally got a grip,’ then boom! Happens all the time.”

  “Yeah,” I said uncertainly. “But what about Zachary Marsh? The witness? My God, Emery, he saw her struggling with somebody in the water.”

  “That,” he said, “is a problem. But between you and me, we both know Mr. Zachary Marsh ain’t no birdwatcher. He’s a publicity hound. He lives for attention. If you remember, he never breathed a word about homicide till after the fact. He reads in the newspaper she got whacked; then, all of a sudden, he remembers: Oh, yeah, by the way, I seen somebody kill her. Saw the whole thing go down. Yeah. Sure.

  “Interesting he didn’t happen to mention none-a that when he called to report the body. He’s like the freaks who crave attention so much they start confessing to every unsolved murder in town. You gotta take Mr. Marsh and his little personal crime watch with a grain-a salt.”

  “What does Broussard say?”

  “Didn’t talk to him yet. Stopped by his hotel, but he was out. Just do me a favor and hold off; don’t write nothing until after I get squared away with the M.E. tomorrow. Meanwhile, me and Fitz are here at the Eighteen Hundred Club, celebrating. Care to join us?”

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  I went back to my story on the legal battle over the body and changed “unsolved murder” to “drowning.” Instead of homicide, I wrote that the death was “still under investigation by homicide detectives.”

  Then I called. “Hey, Zack,” I said. “I need to talk to you about the Jordan case.”

  He sounded pleased. “Didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. What happened last night?”

  “The police say they’ve solved it.”

  “They arrested the killer?”

  “There’s been no arrest,” I said. “Can I drop by? I’m about to leave. I can be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I can fix you a drink. You can tell me all about your rough night and I can show you the shots I took today. You and the husband.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll be ready,” he said. “Looking forward to it.”

  It took me longer than I thought to clear the newsroom. Tubbs questioned my sudden qualifiers in the story. Then I had trouble moving my car out from under the building. Cuban exiles were protesting out front again, blocking traffic and waving signs. Apparently the latest News editorials weren’t anti-Castro enough to suit them.

  I am half Cuban myself. Castro killed my father. But at moments like this I wonder why these people are not in Havana to protest, block traffic, and wave their anti-Castro signs. How does blocking Miami traffic help the cause? My father didn’t thumb his nose from a safe distance. He fought on Cuban soil to free his country.

  The streetlights blurred, as I blinked and rubbed my eyes in the misty winter evening. It had been a long day. I could do this tomorrow, I thought. But some inner compulsion drove me to follow through, to find the answer tonight. I was lucky to find a metered space on a side street. I hate valet parking, giving up my car to strange men eager to put their heavy feet on my gas pedal.

  The mirrored elevator zipped me straight to the sixteenth floor. I stepped off, grinning again about little Rooney’s arrival—about how two of us boarded an elevator and three got off.

  I rang, then rang again. Marsh knew I was coming, I thought, annoyed. Impatient and weary, I rang a third time. A well-dressed middle-aged couple emerged from an apartment down the hall. They stared, without speaking, all the way to the elevator. They probably know Marsh, I thought, and are wondering why anybody in her right mind would visit the man. I pressed the doorbell again.

  Why didn’t I play Twenty Questions when he was on the phone? I’d be home by now. But if he lied to me, I wanted to look him in the eye. Maybe that’s why he didn’t answer. I rang again and was startled by a sudden buzz as the door clicked open.

  My steps echoed on the tile floor.

  “Hello?” I called.

  “In here,” the metallic voice said, as before, “to your right.” The lock on the second door disengaged with a click as I approached.

  I entered his aerie, distracted again by my life-size image in living color on the big screen. My hair was a mess, my blouse wrinkled. I needed a good night’s sleep. The wide windows exposed the dark sky and sea beyond. Inside were all the toys, electronic equipment, the slight smell of antiseptic on the air, and something else, an unpleasant yet familiar odor that I couldn’t quite place.

  His wheelchair faced the windows and the horizon as usual.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I explained. “Cuban protestors are tying up traffic around the paper again.”

  He kept his back to me. Pouting, I presumed, because I’d kept him waiting.

  “I need to talk to you about the day Kaithlin Jordan died.”

  He mumbled something. It sounded odd. I didn’t understand his words.

  “What?” I stepped toward him as his wheelchair spun around with a sudden whine of the motor.

  I gasped. Was I hallucinating?

  “Surprised?” he said softly.

  The man in the wheelchair was Preston Broussard.

  21

  I laughed in amazement. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I came to speak to Mr. Marsh about what he saw,” Broussard said quietly.

  “Where is Zack?” My eyes roved the dimly lit room. Everything appeared in place except for an eight-by-ten photo face down on the glass-topped table, but no sign of Marsh.

  “I hear the case is solved,” Broussard said, ignoring my question.

  “How did you know?”

  “Mr. Marsh happened to mention it, and a desk clerk at the hotel informed me that a detective was looking for me.”

  The apartment was silent.

  “Zack?” I stepped toward another door, presumably the master bedroom and bath. “Where is he?” I persisted. “He’s expecting me.”

  “Indisposed.” Broussard explored the controls, touched a button, and the chair swung abruptly to the left. “What did the police say?”

  “Does Zack know you’re playing with his chair? The man is very finicky about his stuff,” I warned, irritated as he swung back to the right.

  “What did the police say?” he repeated, his voice expressionless.

  I sighed, then perched on the arm of a sculpted chair. “There are some things you should know first.”

  “Quite so.” He stopped toying with the controls to stare at me, eyes expectant.

  If Marsh was in the bathroom, no water was running, no toilet flushing, nothing.

  “Were you aware,” I began, “that Kaithlin had R. J.’s child several years before they married, while she was still an underage schoolgirl?”

  He looked startled. “No.”

  “It was a boy,” I said. “Kaithlin’s mother arranged a private adoption.”

  “Wait.” He waved a finger at me, as though I’d been naughty. “The name is Shannon. My wife’s name was Shannon.”

  “Right,” I said, too exhausted to debate the point.

  “Later, after they were married, R. J. wanted to seek custody. But her mother refused to cooperate. He never succeeded in finding the child and was furious. The issue created major problems in their marriage.”

  Broussard’s fingers tap-danced impatiently on the chair’s metal armrest.

  “Remember, when you said Shannon began to spend a great deal of time on the Internet?”

  Curiosity flared in his eyes.

  “Her son was the reason.” I leaned forward and explained in detail how she found her lost son, his lie, and her reaction. How she had sought out Kagan because of his father’s reputation, her fatal mistake in
hiring him.

  “That’s where the money went, to Kagan. She returned to Miami to save her son.”

  Broussard looked bewildered.

  “To do that, she thought she had to save R. J. But Kagan defrauded and then threatened to expose her. Then Rothman, the private detective who found out who she was, did expose her. He sold her out to R. J. She felt desperate, betrayed, and saw no way out of her situation.”

  His expression remained one of disbelief.

  He said nothing, so I went on. “Kagan had dinner with her the night before she died, in her hotel suite. His plan was to go on taking money from her. She had threatened to go public but was afraid of losing you. Kagan said she appeared to be in better spirits that night, but—”

  “That was him?” Broussard whispered in astonishment. “The man in her room was the lawyer?”

  “Yes. She couldn’t go out by then. R. J.’s mother had been snooping around the hotel looking for her. I’m sure Kaith—Shannon saw her. She knew it was all over. She had nowhere to run.”

  “That was the goddamn lawyer at her hotel?” he repeated, voice rising.

  “That’s right.”

  “My God. Oh, my God!” He clutched at his forehead as though too shocked to comprehend my words. “Shannon came here to save a dying son?”

  I nodded. “That’s right. She thought he had leukemia.”

  He gulped deep breaths as though in pain.

  “She didn’t want you to know; she was afraid it would destroy your relationship. She really—”

  He shot out of the wheelchair, gripped my arms, and jerked me to my feet so abruptly that my pen and notebook fell to the floor.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” he shouted. “Oh, my God!”

  “Stop it!” I firmly shook away his hands. “I know this is painful but control yourself!”

  Where the hell was Zachary Marsh? For once I would have been delighted to see him.

  Broussard stood panting, eyes wild.

  “I gave her everything.” His voice quavered. “Anything she wanted. All I asked was honesty. She knew I didn’t tolerate liars. Three years ago,” he said, “at a cocktail party, I overheard a conversation. Someone asked where she grew up. She said Omaha. That startled me. There’s a big difference between Omaha and Oklahoma. But the hour was late, and she’d had a cocktail. I attributed it to a slip of the tongue but never forgot it. Last year at a business conference in Seattle, I met a man from Stanley, Oklahoma. ‘You must know my wife,’ I said innocently. ‘She lost her family in the twister.’ He knew the Sullivan family. He grew up with the young mother killed with her infant. He said I was mistaken, there was no sister Shannon. She had no sister at all.

  “I checked it myself. He was right. That’s when I knew I couldn’t trust her. Her brooding about the past wasn’t grief, it was some secret part of her that I knew nothing about. I began watching her.”

  He paused, face wet with tears; his mouth worked silently until he could continue.

  “I saw my worst fears come true. The time she spent on-line, her cash withdrawals, her secretive behavior—”

  “You knew before she disappeared that she’d been withdrawing cash?”

  “When loved ones lie, you make it your business to know theirs.”

  “But that’s not what you told the police, or me.”

  “I could see she was planning to leave me, to leave us. I knew her sudden trip alone wasn’t to New York. I heard her inquire about flights to Miami and hotel accommodations. I wasn’t stupid. I knew she and her online lover planned to meet.”

  “You were spying on her.”

  “What other recourse does a man have when he’s deceived?” His voice trembled. “I followed her, booked myself into the hotel next to hers. When I saw a man leave her room that night, I knew it was true.”

  “You thought—”

  “You don’t know my pain and suffering that night.” He shook his head grimly. “I knew she would swim in the morning. She was a creature of habit in so many ways.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I dressed like a tourist, shirt and shorts over a bathing suit. Once she left for the beach, I went to her room. Told a housekeeper I’d forgotten my key. She let me in. I wanted her lover’s name, I wanted to know who the son-of-a-bitch was. What I found was far worse than I imagined.”

  He slumped down in the wheelchair, head in his hands.

  “I found a file in the wastebasket, thrown away. Copies of old news stories, photos of her with a different name, another husband. Stories about her ‘murder,’ missing money, his trial. The whole tawdry scenario. She had abandoned and framed her first husband and apparently planned something similar for me.

  “How do you think I felt?” He raised his head, eyes flooded, lips tight. “I wanted to destroy her, to tear her apart. I was temporarily insane,” he pleaded, “about to explode.”

  He stared past me, voice low. “I surprised her, out beyond the breakers. I wanted to hurt her for all her secrecy, her duplicity, her lies, her adultery.” He gasped, as though in pain. “But I can’t forget her face. It haunts me still, the way she looked when she saw me. Astonished, yet her eyes lit up with something tender, as though she actually did care. She opened her mouth, but I couldn’t stand any more lies. I didn’t give her a chance.”

  In that brief moment before the terror, I thought, suddenly sick to my stomach, she must have believed he was there to save her again.

  “Where is Zachary?” I demanded, fearfully. “Is he all right?”

  Broussard shrugged, a small, noncommittal gesture. “I thought he might have taped or photographed me that morning. You see on TV all the time how police can enhance video, even blurry photos of bank robbers, until the faces are identifiable. I called to sound him out and he admitted he’d seen me down on the beach, even said he had photos that might interest me.”

  Oh, Zachary, I thought, what did you do?

  “I knew,” Broussard was saying, “he’d blackmail me for the rest of my life, torture me until he finally turned them over to the police.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “He’s harmless, a sick, lonely man who wants attention. He’s handicapped. Where is he?” I pleaded.

  He shrugged sadly. “I can’t leave my children orphans. You can understand that. I came here to destroy the photos and the negatives to save myself. Marsh said you had just called, that the police had solved the case. He wouldn’t give up the pictures, denied having them. He kept lying. I didn’t believe anything he said. But later, when I used his phone to check my messages at the hotel, they said the police had been there.”

  “You hurt him, didn’t you?” Don’t let him be dead, I prayed.

  Eyes cold, he nodded.

  “Is he still alive?” I said quickly. “We can call nine-one-one.”

  He smiled, eyes shiny, like a mourner at a funeral.

  “You didn’t have to do it,” I croaked, my mouth dry, vocal cords suddenly gritty. “He only took photos after they pulled her from the water.”

  “Don’t you lie to me too,” he warned, voice menacing. “I do not tolerate liars. What about this?” He went to the table, snatched up the photo, and thrust it at me. It was him, hunkered down at the water’s edge, casting the last white rose into the foaming surf. I saw myself, in the frame’s lower left-hand corner, watching.

  “You see?” He snatched it back. “He’s hidden the others, but I know they’re here somewhere.” He regarded me soulfully for a moment. “I wish you hadn’t come here tonight. I liked you.”

  “I like you too.” I tried to sound calm. “You’ve been through a great deal. Anyone would understand—”

  “Too late.” He shook his head, conviction in his posture. “The police want me. I’m still looking for the pictures, but I’ll find them.”

  “The police are only looking for you to say that she committed suicide. That she left you a note.”

  “What note?”

  “A suicide note. They’re closing the case,�
� I said desperately. “The FBI lab enhanced the handwriting indentations left on a legal pad in her room.”

  “I saw it,” he said, disdainfully, “beside the bed. It was blank.”

  “She mailed the letter to your office,” I explained. “It must be waiting there now. The cops didn’t believe Zachary. They were happy to write her off as a suicide. She never intended to come back from that swim.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I can prove it right now! I can read you exactly what she wrote. I took it down as the detective read it to me. It’s there,” I said, catching my breath, “in my notebook.”

  “Get it,” he demanded.

  I scrambled to retrieve it, then riffled frantically through the pages.

  “Darling Pres,” I began, voice cracking.

  He sat stiffly in the chair, wary eyes riveted on me. He groaned as I went on, a sound that sent icy ripples across my skin.

  “How could she think I’d turn away?” he cried as I finished. “If I had known, if I only knew she really…” His voice wavered, hopeless.

  “That morning…it was like a dream. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. My whole body shook. I didn’t know if I would still be able to walk when I left the water. But instinct took over; it does, you know, in emergencies. The need for self-preservation. For my daughters. They need me. I wouldn’t let my parents raise them.” He rambled on, bitterly. “They’re incapable. When I was a child they left me with paid strangers, some abusive and disgusting, while they traveled, enjoying themselves, doing as they pleased. We were estranged for years, until Shannon brought us together. I have to protect the girls. Everybody knows a victim’s spouse is always the number-one suspect. It was dangerous, but I had to take the risk. I went back to her room. I had picked her key up off the dresser the first time. I thought she’d forgotten it….” His voice trailed off.

  “She didn’t forget it,” I said. “She knew she wasn’t coming back. She didn’t need it.”

  “I went to cover my tracks, to erase every link to Seattle. I took the files as well. I knew she was registered under a phony name. If she was never identified as Shannon Broussard, she couldn’t be connected to me. But it was the oddest thing,” he said, looking up at me. “The labels had already been cut from her clothes, the initials removed from her luggage.”