Lost Lake

by Phillip Margolin

  “And now it looks like we’ll both go to prison. I never meant for it to be this way.”

  “Why did you come for me, Carl? You could have been well away from here, on your way to freedom.”

  “I betrayed you once, Van, and I wasn’t going to do that again. I let the General seduce me. That decision has haunted me my whole life.”

  “You think we would have stayed together if you went to college? I was pretty screwed up back then.” She laughed. “I still am.”

  “I have no idea what would have happened. I just know that I let you down.”

  “So you were trying to set things right by storming the General’s castle?”

  “I was keeping my word. You saved me and I told you I’d come for you. That’s what I did. Sorry it didn’t work out like it does in the movies.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. In the movies, the cavalry always comes to the rescue.”

  Vanessa pointed to the outer wall. Rice heard the faint sound of sirens.

  “We’ll be out of here soon and we’ll be alive,” Vanessa said.

  “But we’ll both be in jail.”

  Vanessa reached over and held Carl’s forearm. “Don’t give up. We’ll beat him. I know it. I just haven’t figured out how, yet. But we’ll beat my father.”

  Vanessa swore this with conviction, but Carl knew he was doomed to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Vanessa’s father could probably keep her out of jail, though she would spend years-if not a lifetime-in a mental hospital.

  Carl put his good arm around her shoulder and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Sure we will, Van. Sure we will.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Ami’s wake-up call shocked her out of a deep sleep shortly after six in the morning, but Ryan slept through the jangling noise. Ami hung up the phone, flopped back in bed, and watched her son sleep. Last night, he had been so excited about staying in a hotel, eating in the fancy dining room, and watching a Disney movie in their room. Now, he looked so peaceful that she had to smile. Death and destruction were all around, but they barely touched her boy.

  Ami wished that she could let Ryan sleep, but she had to get him to school. Then she would go to her office. The Morelli case had consumed most of her time since the General’s daughter had barged into her life, but Ami had other clients with pressing problems and she could not afford to laze around her hotel room all day. She had explained this to Brendan Kirkpatrick after they had finished breakfast yesterday morning. The prosecutor had arranged for the policeman who was guarding her to drive her to her office after she woke up around noon. The officer had stayed in the reception area until it was time to pick up Ryan at school.

  “Hey, Tiger,” Ami said as she gently shook Ryan’s shoulder. “It’s time to get up.”

  Ryan grunted and rolled away from her. She leaned over and planted several disgustingly wet kisses on his cheek.

  “Yuck, Mom, don’t,” he begged.

  “Then get your butt out of bed. It’s a school day.”

  “Do I have to? Can’t I stay here with you?”

  “Nope. I’m not even staying here. I’m going to work, and you’re going to school. Now, if you move fast enough, we can have breakfast in the dining room.”

  Suddenly Ryan was wide awake. “Can I have pancakes?”

  “If you don’t dillydally. Now scoot.”

  As Ryan grabbed the clothes that Ami had laid out for him and ran for the bathroom, there was a knock at the door. Ami knew that the guard would not let anyone hurt her if he could help it, but she remembered what had happened to the policemen who had guarded her at her house.

  Ami slipped on the terry-cloth robe that the hotel provided and peered through the peephole. Brendan Kirkpatrick was standing on the other side of the door looking as if he’d just stepped out of a men’s fashion magazine. She, on the other hand, looked like a woman with no makeup who had just gotten out of bed and had not even brushed her teeth. For a moment she debated pretending that she wasn’t in, but that wasn’t practical. The guard knew she hadn’t left the room. It wasn’t a particularly adult way of handling the situation, either, so she opened the door and let the prosecutor in.

  “To what do I owe this honor?” Ami said, clutching the edges of the robe together at her neck.

  Brendan didn’t seem to notice how awful she looked. He flashed a wide grin. “You’re safe. They got them.”

  “Where?” Ami asked, afraid that the arrest had been made at her cabin.

  “California. I don’t know the whole story, but Howard Walsh tells me that Wingate’s security force rescued the General’s daughter and brought her to his estate near San Diego. Rice broke into the mansion to get her back. He killed and injured several of Wingate’s men, but the General trapped them in the house and they surrendered to the police.”

  Ami felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Kirkpatrick thought it was because Rice was behind bars where he could not hurt her or her son, but Ami was thankful that the police had not figured out that she had abetted the fugitives’ escape.

  “Anyway,” Brendan went on, “you’re safe. And you can go back to your house tonight.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You must be relieved.”

  “I am. Ever since Vanessa walked into my office, this case has been a nightmare. I should never have been involved in the first place. I never intended to represent Rice, anyway. I was just in it until someone competent could take over.”

  Brendan smiled. “For a neophyte Perry Mason, you certainly gave me a hard time.”

  “Good. I’ll consider this outing to be a success if you’ve learned a little humility. Maybe the next time you won’t be so quick to pick on a defenseless woman.”

  Brendan held up his hands. “Hey, I give. I learned my lesson. And you’re anything but defenseless. Anyway, I just wanted to give you the good news personally.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well,” Kirkpatrick said awkwardly, “I have to get to the office. I actually have other cases. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  “I might have to call you as a witness, you know.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “Well, see you.”

  Ami stared after Brendan Kirkpatrick as the door closed. Was she imagining it, or was the stone-cold DA showing the type of nervousness around her that was reminiscent of an adolescent boy with a crush? Did he like her? She sure had not liked him. Not at first, anyway. But he was growing on her. She wondered what she would say if he asked her out. Oh, well, no use speculating. He hadn’t, and she would cross that bridge if she ever came to it. Right now all she wanted to do was take Ryan to school. She’d had enough excitement to last a lifetime, and she was looking forward to living a normal, boring existence again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Patrick Gorman, the owner of Exposed, lumbered into the visiting room at the San Diego jail and dropped into a chair across from a dejected Vanessa Kohler. Vanessa’s initial euphoria at escaping from her father’s mansion had given way to despair as it slowly dawned on her during the numerous police interrogations that everyone believed General Morris Wingate’s version of events and no one gave any credence to her fantastic tale of secret armies and government conspiracies.

  Gorman forced a smile, but he was sad to see one of his reporters in such a sorry state.

  “When I hired you, did I forget to tell you that your job is to report the news, not be the news?” he asked.

  “I probably wasn’t paying attention.”

  “That, I can believe. So, how are you doing?”

  “Okay. I’m isolated from the rest of the prisoners so I don’t have to worry about being gang-raped. My biggest problem is boredom and the shitty food. Of course, with what you pay me, all I can afford is shitty food, so I guess boredom is my main problem.”

  “Hey, I pay top dollar for a scandal sheet. See if they’d pay you any more at The Enquirer.”

  “How’s the
paper doing? I can’t get it in here.”

  “It’s gone downhill since you left. No one writes a giant rat story like you.”

  Vanessa smiled for a moment. Then she sobered. “Have you heard anything about Carl? They won’t tell me a thing.”

  “I know he’s in federal custody. They’re not letting anyone near him. He hasn’t even been arraigned yet.”

  Vanessa leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Did my lawyer bring you my manuscript?”

  “I read it yesterday.”

  “Are you going to publish it?”

  Gorman shook his head slowly. “I can’t, Vanessa.”

  “This will be bigger than Watergate, Pat. You’ll be the next Woodward and Bernstein all by yourself. They’ll be talking about Exposed in the same breath with The New York Times.”

  “Exposed can’t afford to go legit. We’d lose our readers,” Gorman joked in an attempt to lighten things up, but Vanessa wasn’t biting.

  “Do you really want someone like Morris Wingate running this country?”

  “My politics have nothing to do with my decision. You’ve been in the newspaper business long enough to know that you can’t print the stuff you’re writing about without heavy-duty corroboration.”

  “You’ve got resources, Pat. Use them to corroborate my charges.”

  “I don’t have the contacts to verify something like this. You’re talking about decades-old black ops that are buried so deep that no one else has ever heard of them.”

  “Carl Rice knows all about them.”

  “We can’t base our story on the word of an escaped convict who’s murdered a congressman, a general, and…“ Gorman shook his head. “I forgot the body count at your father’s house.”

  “You’ve got to show everyone what my father is really like.”

  “I can’t do that without rock-solid proof. We’d be sued into oblivion.”

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you? Did he get to you?”

  Gorman looked tired. “Neither your father nor anyone connected to him has talked to me, Van. We just can’t print unsubstantiated stories accusing presidential candidates of murder.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Gorman looked uncomfortable. “Like I said when I came in, you’ve gone from writing the news to being the news. You and Carl Rice are the biggest story in the country, and Exposed would like an exclusive.”

  “I can’t believe you, Pat. I never thought you’d take advantage of our friendship.”

  “Your defense is going to be expensive. We’ll foot the bill for the best lawyer.”

  “What’s the headline going to be? ‘Love-Starved Spinster Seduced by Serial Killer,’ or will you go with ‘Maniac Lovers on the Run’?”

  “You’ll get to tell the story anyway you want. You can even talk about your father. Our lawyers tell me that we can’t be sued if you’re the one making the accusations.”

  Vanessa looked sad. “I am so disappointed in you, Pat. I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. I want to help.”

  “You want a story. I’ve become another giant baby-eating rat.”

  “That’s not true,” Gorman protested feebly, but he looked ashamed.

  “Please go.”

  “Will you think it over?”

  Vanessa seemed on the verge of tears. Gorman could not look her in the eye.

  “Just go, Pat.”

  “Van…”

  “Please.”

  Vanessa closed her eyes. She felt more tired and defeated than she had since her arrest. She never believed for a moment that Patrick Gorman would betray her. Now she knew that he was like everyone else. For a brief moment, she gave way completely to despair. But that moment ended when she recalled something that Gorman had said. The guard entered to take her back to her cell, but she didn’t even know that he was in the room. Without realizing it, her boss had given her an idea that might save her and Carl.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Justice Center is a sixteen-story concrete-and-glass building in down-town Portland, separated from the Multnomah County courthouse by a park. In addition to the central precinct of the Portland police bureau, the Justice Center is home to a branch of the Multnomah County district attorney’s office, several courtrooms, the state crime lab, state parole and probation, and the Multnomah County jail. Ami Vergano had already been on the thirteenth floor of the Justice Center when she was interrogated in the detective division of the Portland police bureau, but she had never been inside a jail and she found her first visit to this part of the building unnerving.

  The jail occupies the fourth through tenth floors of the Justice Center, but the reception area is on the second floor. To reach it, Ami walked through the center’s vaulted lobby, past the curving stairs that led to the courtrooms on the third floor, and through a pair of glass doors.

  “I’m Ami Vergano, Vanessa Kohler’s attorney,” she told the sheriff’s deputy who was manning the reception desk. “I’d like to visit her. She may be here under the name Vanessa Wingate.”

  While the deputy checked her ID, Ami looked around the room. A jittery teenage girl with tattoos and a nose ring was casting anxious glances toward the door where released prisoners left the jail. She smelled as if she hadn’t bathed in days, and there were dark circles under her eyes. The only other person waiting in the reception area was a heavyset attorney in mismatched sports jacket and slacks, who was reading over police reports in preparation for a visit to a client.

  The guard returned Ami’s ID and searched her attache case. When the search turned up neither weapons nor contraband, he motioned Ami toward a metal detector that stood between her and the jail elevator. Ami passed through without setting off an alarm and the guard walked her to the elevator and keyed her up to the floor where Vanessa was being held.

  After a short ride, Ami found herself in a narrow hall with concrete walls. The moment the elevator doors closed, she started to feel claustrophobic. The guard in the reception area had told Ami to summon the guard on this floor by using the intercom that was affixed to the wall next to a thick metal door at one end of the corridor. Ami punched the button anxiously several times before the box crackled and a disembodied voice asked her about her business.

  Moments later, a jail guard peered at Ami through a plate of glass in the upper half of the door, then spoke into a walkie-talkie. Electronic locks snapped, and the guard ushered Ami into another narrow corridor that ran in front of the three contact visiting rooms in which prisoners met face to face with their attorneys. Ami could see into the rooms through large windows outfitted with thick, shatterproof glass.

  Vanessa was already waiting for her in the room farthest from the elevators. She was dressed in a shapeless orange jumpsuit and sitting in one of two molded plastic chairs that stood on either side of a round, Formica-topped table that was bolted to the floor. The guard opened another metal door and stepped aside. Ami walked into the room, and the guard pointed to a black button that stuck out of an intercom affixed to the pastel-yellow concrete wall.

  “Press that when you’re through, and I’ll come and get you,” he told her before closing the door.

  Vanessa’s hair was uncombed, and she looked even thinner than Ami remembered. Endless days in jail in San Diego, while Oregon and California fought over which state had the right to prosecute her first, had turned her complexion ashy-gray and beaten down her spirit.

  “Are you okay?” Ami asked.

  “No. I’m really down,” Vanessa answered honestly. She seemed exhausted.

  “I’m so sorry, Vanessa.”

  “Don’t be. None of this is your fault. I have only myself to blame.” Suddenly a flash of Vanessa’s determination and self-confidence showed on her face. “But I don’t regret what I did. Carl would be dead if I hadn’t rescued him.” Then her shoulders slumped and she looked lost. “I just hope he survives in prison, but I don’t think he has much of a chance. He’s too much of a threat to th
e General.”

  Ami did not argue with Vanessa. She was finally convinced that the secret army was a fantasy and her client a seriously deluded woman, but what good would it do to challenge Vanessa’s delusions now? Instead, she opened her attache case and took out several legal documents.

  “I have a substitution of counsel for you to sign,” Ami said, sliding the papers and a pen across the table.

  “You’re not going to represent me?”

  “I can’t. Remember, we talked about this the first time we met. First off, I have no experience as a criminal defense attorney. Second, it’s unethical for a lawyer to represent two people in the same case. It’s a clear conflict of interest. One of the ways a lawyer helps a client is by negotiating a deal for her with the district attorney. If there are two defendants, it’s normal for the lawyer for one of the defendants to tell the DA that her client will testify against the other defendant in exchange for a lighter sentence. I can’t do that for you or Carl if I represent both of you.

  “And there’s another problem. I helped you hide out. Do you know how much trouble I’d be in if that came out? I aided and abetted your escape. If I become a codefendant, it’s obvious that I’d have to drop off the case.

  “Not to mention that I’m a witness to Carl’s attack on Barney Lutz and the police officer at Ryan’s game.”

  Ami smiled ruefully. “I’ve got so many conflicts of interest that I feel like a human law school exam question. But don’t worry. Ray Armitage is still willing to represent Carl and I’ve lined up Janet Massengill to represent you. She’s excellent. She thinks there’s a good chance that she can get you released at a bail hearing.”

  “No, no,” Vanessa said as she shook her head back and forth. “I wouldn’t be safe out of jail. I’m in solitary here. Unless he bribes a guard, my father won’t be able to get to me.”

  Ami held her tongue. It was sad to see such a strong woman reduced to this state of terror.

  “That’s something you can talk over with your new lawyer. You don’t have to ask for bail if you don’t want it. As soon as you sign this substitution, Janet will take over. She’s tied up today, but she can visit you tomorrow.”