“Yup. That’s what I see, too,” Fletcher said. “You know what it means?”
Justin was still looking down at the body. He didn’t look back up at Agent Fletcher. “Maybe,” he said. “At least some of it. JW are my initials. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time, so it could just be a shortened version of my name.”
“We agree. That’s why you’re here. How about ‘payback’?”
Now Justin looked up. “It’s part of what we talked about earlier. When I met her in her car. She owed me something. At least I thought so. We talked about what the appropriate form of payback would be.”
“Payback on whose end?”
“On hers.”
“How about on yours?”
Justin shook his head in quiet disbelief. “You think I killed her? As payback? That’s what you think this means?”
“You want to convince me otherwise?”
“Can I?” Justin asked.
“What was the topic of conversation when you met with her today?”
Justin decided there was no point in holding back. There were too many things he didn’t understand about the murders of Evan Harmon and Ronald LaSalle and now of Wanda Chinkle and how they were connected. He wasn’t really worried about FBI suspicion of his involvement. That would take care of itself. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. And the only way to begin to get any answers was to speak on the level.
“I came up here at the request of my father and my sister-in-law, Victoria LaSalle,” Justin said. “I’m sure you know why.”
“Her husband’s murder. What was she expecting you to do?”
“I don’t know. Basically, find out what happened.”
“And what have you found out?”
“So far, not a thing,” Justin said. “I’ve just begun talking to people. Before Billy picked me up, I was at Ronald LaSalle’s office, talking to the people who worked for him.”
“Looking for something in particular?”
“Looking for absolutely anything that I could tie together. Just throwing a lot of shit against the wall and seeing if anything’ll stick.”
“What did Wanda tell you about the murder?”
“Nothing. In fact, she went out of her way to tell me nothing. She wanted to meet with me to tell me to stay away from the investigation.”
“Why?”
Justin sighed. “For my own good.”
Fletcher looked at him curiously.
“Look,” Justin said. “We had a complicated relationship. We were friends, but we also had our differences. Sometimes our goals were not exactly in sync.”
“You blamed her for the time you spend at Guantanamo last year.”
“I didn’t blame her,” Justin said. “I knew she’d allowed it. Possibly even manipulated things so it would happen.”
“And you didn’t like that.”
“No, I didn’t. Would you?”
“So you killed her as payback.”
“I told you. ‘Payback’ refers to our conversation today. She thought she was doing me a favor by warning me off Ronald LaSalle’s murder.” Again, Justin decided there was no point in holding back. Agent Fletcher had the look of someone well aware of what was going on around him. “And not just LaSalle. I’m involved in investigating the murder of Evan Harmon down in Long Island.”
“You’re involved in more than the investigation from what I hear.”
“Whoever you’re hearing that from doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Wanda knew the truth. She was telling me to back off that one as well.”
“Because they’re connected?”
“She wouldn’t say. But it seems like a logical conclusion.”
“And what was your response to her payback?”
“I told her it wasn’t even close.”
“Not good enough?”
“That’s right.”
“So you don’t think she was pointing the finger at you?”
“I know she wasn’t. I think she was trying to finish the job she started this afternoon.” He looked down at her body. “What she did to herself isn’t about me, it’s a message for me.”
“Hades and Ali. That’s her payback to you.”
“I think it might be, yes.”
“Then what do they mean?”
Justin shook his head. “I don’t have any fucking idea,” he said.
He spent nearly two more hours with Agent Fletcher and Billy DiPezio back at Billy’s office at the station house. First they made him go over his movements so they could verify Justin’s whereabouts every second of the day from the moment he left Wanda’s car. They examined every word that Justin could remember about his conversation with Wanda. They hammered away at the meaning of the words “Hades” and “Ali” with absolutely no luck or new insight. They went over every possible thing Justin could add to their understanding of Wanda’s murder, and Justin was as cooperative as he could possibly be. He told them everything, except for one detail. He made no mention of his meeting with Bruno Pecozzi that afternoon. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t just to protect the big man, although he didn’t feel any great desire to simply throw Bruno to the wolves with no cause. The truth is, he thought there might be cause. Wanda had insinuated that Bruno was playing some kind of role in all this. Justin decided he needed to know what that role was before he gave up any more information.
Somewhere around 12:30 a.m. Fletcher finally told him he could go. As he was leaving, Billy told him that they’d speak soon. Fletcher said, “Wanda’s advice was solid.”
“About not getting involved,” Justin said.
“That’s right.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Justin said.
“But you’re not going to follow it, are you?”
“No,” Justin said, “I’m not.”
“Then I need a favor,” Agent Fletcher said.
“You want me to do the FBI a favor?”
“All right,” Fletcher said. “Let’s consider it an offer more than a favor.”
“I’m listening.”
“Work with us.”
Justin tried not to let his surprise show. “I think my hearing must be bad. You want to repeat that?”
“Wanda Chinkle was by the book. She was as straight as it got. But there are things that don’t add up here. That aren’t strictly by the book.”
“Like what?”
“You met Agent Korkes. Well . . . you did more than just meet him, but let’s save that. Wanda was his superior and she told him to contact you off the record. She didn’t want the Bureau to know she was talking to you. Why was that?”
“She told me I came with a lot of baggage. That the Bureau wouldn’t be happy that she was talking to me.”
“That’s bullshit,” Fletcher said.
“It’s what she told me.”
“Yeah, yeah, I believe it’s what she said. But it’s total bullshit. You’ve had some run-ins with us, yeah, and maybe you’ve stuck it to us once or twice. But you think we actually go around thinking ‘ooohhh, big, tough, scary cop from little tiny town on Long Island, we better stay away from him’? You don’t have to answer, I’ll tell you right now: No, we don’t. You’re not on our radar.”
“So why would she say it?”
“You said she knew you well, knew how to manipulate things. I think she was jerking you around again. She tells you to stay away from something, what’s that do to you? I mean as the big, tough, scary cop that you are.”
“All right. I get your point,” Justin said. “She tells me to stay away, she knows that’s not going to work.”
“No. It means you’re going to do the opposite: jump right into the center of the action.”
“But if she wanted help, wanted me to do something, why wouldn’t she just ask? Why the secrecy and the manipulation? It’s an investigation I was already involved in.”
“I’m not sure. But if I had to guess, it’s ’cause there was something she didn’t want us to know. Her reports on thi
s investigation were not detailed. She had sources we weren’t aware of. She was working on her own, which wasn’t what Wanda did. So I’d say there was something she was worried about internally.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know. Maybe leaks. Maybe political bullshit. We have a lot of ways we fuck up.”
Justin was starting to like Agent Fletcher. Well, no, he thought, that was an exaggeration. But he was beginning to trust him a little bit. “So what is it you want me to do?”
“Wanda was a great agent. And she thought there was something you could do that we couldn’t. I don’t have a clue what that is, but whatever it is, why don’t we work together and try to find out?”
“Work directly with you?”
“Partly. But I’m going back to D.C. We’ll assign an agent to partner with you.” When Justin hesitated, Agent Fletcher barreled on. “You asked Billy here to give you some kind of bullshit title so you could link yourself to the murder investigations. Well, I’m offering you more than that. I’ll give you FBI backing. And we’ll make it clear to anyone who gets in your way that you are working with us and have our support.”
“That does have a certain amount of appeal.”
“Yeah,” Fletcher said. “I once met Larry Silverbush. I thought it might.”
“Do I get some kind of cool badge?”
“I guess this conversation’s over,” Fletcher said. “We’ll have an agent contact you over the next couple of days. And I know it goes against your nature, but this time try to play well with others, okay?”
Agent Fletcher stuck out his hand and Justin shook it. Even Billy looked impressed by the result of the conversation.
Justin went home, found his parents waiting up. He told them what had happened to Wanda. He saw his mother go pale, saw his father’s hand go to her back to pat her, to comfort her, to support her. He saw his mother regroup quickly. Both of his parents told him to go on, so without giving them many details, he told them that he thought Wanda’s death might be connected to what had happened to Ronald. Possibly even to what had happened to Evan Harmon. He told them to say nothing to Vicky, told them, in fact, to say nothing whatsoever to anyone. He told them he was exhausted and needed to get some sleep, said they should do the same. And he told them he’d be gone by the time they woke up the next morning, that he’d be on his way back to East End Harbor.
His mother kissed him on the top of the head. His father shook his hand. They both went off to bed.
As tired as he was, Justin didn’t go right to sleep. He sat in his parents’ living room for another hour or so, drinking two large snifters of brandy and piecing together the day’s events, replaying them over and over again in his mind.
At three in the morning, he called Vicky LaSalle. As soon as she answered the phone, he knew that he’d awakened her. The thick sound of sleep was in her throat.
“Vicky, it’s Jay. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“What time’s it?”
“It’s late. It’s too late to have called but—”
“Took a pill. Took a pill to sleep.”
“I’m sorry. That’s good. You need sleep. But I wanted to let you know that I’m going home tomorrow. Back to New York. But I had to tell you . . . Seeing you . . . Jesus, you look so much like her . . . It was like talking to her again . . .”
“You’re drunk.” She sounded more alert now.
“No. I’m not.”
“Been drinking.”
“Yeah. I’ve been drinking, but I’m not drunk. I just want you to know . . . I know what this means to you. I know what you’re feeling. I’m not going to let you down. I’m not going to let her down again. It’s important to me. You’re important to me. I just want you to know that.”
He waited for a response. There was none. It took him a few seconds to realize that she’d hung up. He had no idea what she’d heard or hadn’t heard. And he realized it didn’t really matter.
Justin went to bed a little after three-thirty. Woke up at six, showered, and headed for the airport, where he’d arranged for a small private plane to take him directly back to the East Hampton Airport, just a ten-minute drive from his home in East End Harbor.
At nine-fifteen on Sunday morning, he walked into his East End house.
At nine-twenty, he called Leona Krill, told her he was no longer on suspension because he was resigning from the East End Harbor PD. She actually tried to argue him out of it, but he told her that he already had another job. He didn’t tell her what it was, just told her that she and Silverbush would be seeing him around.
He went into the kitchen, made a pot of strong coffee, helped himself to a three-quarter full mug, and poured the rest into a white thermos he kept by the stove. He took the mug and sat in his living room. Justin wrote the words “Ali” and “Hades” on a yellow pad. He sat and stared at those two words. His only movement was to go back to the kitchen from time to time to refill his mug.
At noon he still didn’t have the faintest clue what the words meant. But he did have the beginning of a plan.
Wanda had come to him because she had wanted something. And even as she was dying, Wanda was trying to get what she wanted. She had mutilated herself and spent the last minutes of her life in what had to be an excruciating exercise in order to give him a clue as a way of telling him how to get to the bottom of all this. She knew what he wanted as payback. What he always wanted. The truth. Of that much he was certain.
He knew what he was going to do.
He was going to get his payback.
He was going to find the truth.
He was going to solve this goddamn puzzle and he was going to help the woman he’d been sleeping with who was accused of murder; the woman who blamed him and hated him for the death of her sister; and the woman who’d just been murdered, whose last moments on earth were spent trying to communicate with him.
That’s what he was going to do.
Justin wanted a drink.
He decided instead to stay sober.
He went to the kitchen, found an open can of Coke in the fridge. He took a sip—it wasn’t much on fizz, but it was cold and sweet, so he took a long swig. Without thinking he rested against the stove and then instantly jumped back. He’d left the damn burner on again and had burned his palm. Swearing, he went upstairs to his medicine cabinet and put a Band-Aid on the already forming small blister.
Justin went back to the kitchen, finished the flat Coke in one more gulp.
Then he decided it was time to go to work.
PART TWO
20
It was early Sunday evening by the time Justin was organized.
The pace frustrated him because the process was so slow, but he knew the value of being thoroughly prepared before moving on to the next step: action. So he spent his day reading and rereading everything he had, as well as new material he took off the Net. He made lists of people and places and tried to get an overall sense of the chronology of the events. It was the most effective way to reveal the patterns he was seeking. It’s the way he worked. First, find the patterns. Next, find the motive. Finally, find the passion. At some point, all three elements would intersect. They always did. And when that happened, he’d have his murderer. He’d have the truth he was seeking.
He had now read, in much closer detail, the pages he’d already printed out giving the history of the Harmon family. He’d gone through the information that Ellen Loache had provided for him. As he read he’d taken notes, kept track of any potential links and connections between all the disparate parts that were making up this complicated whole. When he was done, he entered it all into his computer—the simple act of repetition and transferring information helped to clarify and focus things in his mind.
Wanda had been keeping tabs on Evan Harmon before he’d been killed. She’d told him that while they were sitting in her car. Justin had a good memory for dialogue—he’d trained himself to remember specific words in conversations rather than simply the gen
eral tone or information, knowing that nuance and accuracy could make all the difference when going back to interpret something. She had said that “I” had been tracking Evan. She had not said “we.” That probably meant that the investigation into Evan’s activities was not official and that the Bureau knew relatively little about this. That jibed with what Fletcher had said—that she was holding information back. It meant there was something politically sensitive involved, possibly some kind of internal corruption or compromise. Justin needed to know why Evan had come into conflict with the Feds. That was essential info. He was expecting an agent to contact him soon. He’d get that info, he hoped, from his new “partner.” Justin didn’t have any illusions as to what the working relationship would be. Special Agent Zach Fletcher might be better than most, but that didn’t mean Fletcher was dealing without keeping an ace, or even two, up his sleeve. The Feds might indeed be wanting to use him to do some of their dirty work, Justin knew. But by bringing him inside and assigning someone to work with him, it meant they could also keep an eye on him. Keep him under control. Maybe even find out if he was involved in this weird triangle of death in a deeper way than he was admitting.
It was a trade-off he was willing to accept: access for limited freedom. But he had to take advantage of that access for this to work. So first up: Find out what the hell the Feebs wanted with Abby’s husband.
But there was more to Evan Harmon than whatever he’d been doing recently to attract attention. People did not operate in vacuums. They were shaped and formed by family and friends and events. Justin needed to know what had shaped Evan so he could understand the way the man thought. It wasn’t just action that formed patterns, it was thought processes. Justin understood that he needed to know a lot more about the first victim.
Next on his agenda: Ronald LaSalle.
Ronald was linked to Evan. They communicated regularly and they did business together. Justin had to find out exactly what the business was. In Ellen Loache’s folder were names of people and businesses that had to be checked out. Someone on that list would prove to be a critical connection between the two men and the three murders. He also had to find out if Ronald had been involved in Evan’s illegal activity. And if so, how deeply. Was he a peripheral player who had stumbled onto something by mistake or could he have been involved at the very core?
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