Dante's Poison

by Lynne Raimondo

  I nodded. “And did you—cooperate?”

  “I was fortunate to get the attention of a brilliant psychiatrist, a pioneer in the field, who recognized at once how intelligent I was. He put the issue to me very simply. I couldn’t be cured in any real sense of the term, but I could learn self-control. If I did, my life could be as productive and happy—though that’s not an emotion I ever really feel—as any normal person’s. If I didn’t, I would probably end up in prison. Being trapped like that was the worst fate I could imagine, so I went along with his behavior-modification program. Over time, I learned to take my pleasure, such as it is, from success. And from manipulating people into doing what I want.”

  “Like you manipulated me,” I said.

  “Perhaps. Why don’t we play that version of blind man’s bluff we played before? The one where I nod when you’re on the right track but don’t otherwise confirm it.”

  “All right,” I said, drawing something else out of my backpack. “For starters I thought I’d ask if you recognized this. If I’m not mistaken, you left it for me right after Hallie and I were attacked.” I tossed it onto her coffee table.

  “I don’t think I’ll pick it up,” Jane said. “Someone—I won’t say who—must have gone to a great deal of trouble not to leave any fingerprints.”

  “And arranged it so that it couldn’t be traced back to the sender in other ways. You, for instance.”

  She laughed again. “Now why would I do that?”

  “You were trying to hit me over the head with it.”

  “That’s a droll way of saying it. Surely you’re not accusing me of being the one who attacked you?”

  “I did wonder for a while. But after thinking it over I decided you wouldn’t have stooped to anything so crude. And Hallie is very definite about it being Tesma’s son. What I don’t understand is how you knew he was our attacker.”

  “That isn’t damaging to my interests, so I’ll answer. You remember the investigation I undertook for Atria? One of the first things I did was commandeer a room at company headquarters so I could conduct private interviews of all its salesmen. I recognized him as soon as he walked through the door. He recognized me too, though we each pretended to be complete strangers.”

  “But you didn’t do anything about it—like tell the authorities he’d taken on an alias?”

  “Come, doctor. You’re too intelligent for that. What would revealing his background have accomplished? The name change was perfectly legal and aboveboard. I would have done the same thing in his place. And nothing came out of our interview to suggest he was anything other than a successful, law-abiding citizen. I would have been laughed out of a job if I’d gone to Atria’s management and told them they were harboring a murderous psychopath on their sales force.”

  “Fair enough. But what about later on? Why didn’t you expose him after you’d been arrested?”

  “Again, no one would have believed me. Accusing him of Rory’s murder would only have made me appear desperate—not to mention guilty as charged.”

  “So you had to get someone else to pin it on him.”

  “Exactly. Originally, I had planned on it being Hallie. As good as she is in the courtroom, I didn’t hire her solely for her skills as an advocate. Sooner or later she would have gone looking for old enemies and remembered the trial we worked on together. But after Donald Junior scuttled that plan, I had to settle for a different helper.”

  “So you played me.” Like a piece on a chessboard, I thought.

  “Yes, you were my white knight.”

  And she could read minds, too.

  “I suppose he contacted you right afterward.”

  “Also correct. He copied me on the note he sent to Rory’s nephew. That was also part of his plan—to make sure I knew who was behind it all. I expect you now understand why the two notes looked the same.”

  Of course she would have planned it that way.

  “I don’t suppose you’d ever admit to killing Gallagher yourself?”

  “You may once more assume that I’m nodding my head. And you should know by now that it will be impossible to prove. I can only guess at what Donald Junior told you when he was slipping that noose around your neck, but they’ll never let you on the stand to testify about it. And I almost forgot about this.”

  She handed me a stapled sheaf of paper.

  “What is it?”

  “An insurance policy, of sorts. I found it among Rory’s papers when I went to his home to retrieve my report. It’s a holographic will, canceling the bequests to his nephew and leaving all of his property to a fund fighting public corruption. I thought it might come in handy someday. If I have to, I’ll make it public, and they’ll try Urquhart and his mistress for Rory’s murder. It’s always been the likeliest scenario anyway.”

  I could only shake my head.

  “Don’t look so downcast,” she said sympathetically. “After all, thanks to me you’re still alive.”

  I got up to go.

  “Two more things,” I said. “The Tarot card—The Hanged Man. You weren’t lying when you said I picked it out myself?”

  “It leaped out of the deck like it was waiting for you.”

  “And that last time I was here. Did we . . . I mean, did you—”

  She didn’t let me finish. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But if things don’t work out between you and Hallie . . . well, let’s just say you’ll know where to find me.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with her,” Tony Di Marco said, after I’d told him the whole story.

  “Go over this with me again,” I said. “I’m a little slow.”

  “It goes back to the function of the jury in our system. Only the fact finder is allowed to decide who is telling the truth. And to do that, in most cases, they have to be able to physically observe the speaker. Except in a few narrowly defined situations, the rules don’t allow a witness to swear to something he heard from somebody else.”

  It was exactly as Jane had explained the hearsay rules to me. “Which would include Young telling me that Jane was Gallagher’s killer.”

  “That’s right. In a homicide case it’s the classic hearsay example—someone whose reliability the jury can’t assess claiming to know who the murderer is. It’s only when the surrounding circumstances strongly suggest that the declarant—that’s the legal term—is trustworthy on the point that the statement comes in. Admissions against interest are one exception. Another are dying declarations, based on the idea that most people are inclined to tell the truth when they’re about to meet their Maker. But that won’t work here, either.”

  “Because Young didn’t know he was about to die.”

  “That’s right. And as you’ve described the situation to me I can’t think of any other hearsay exception that would get your story in front of a jury. It’s too bad. I did try to aid the cause, you know.”

  I’d figured as much. “You were the ASA who went to court with the exhumation request.”

  “Who else? I was on to Jane as the killer from the day Gallagher dropped dead, so I was all too happy to give Polanski a helping hand when he came to me with that trumped-up affidavit. The only trouble was my bosses wouldn’t let me near the case, and it ended up with that preschooler from Lake County. If I’d been in charge Jane would still be in pretrial detention, and you would have been spared all the detective work. Thanks to you, we caught one monster, but at the cost of letting another one go free.”

  I frowned, knowing he was right. “There’s really no way your colleagues would reopen the case?”

  “It’s a nonstarter. They already have egg all over their faces for going after Jane in the first place. And now that she’s a hero for saving you no one will have the slightest appetite for it. No, take it from me, it’ll never happen.”

  “Will you still follow up on the other thing—the Atria investigation?”

  “The subpoenas to its sales personnel are being prepared as we speak.”

&
nbsp; “And you’ll let the guys at the Sun-Times in on whatever you turn up? I promised them.”

  “Consider it another on the long list of favors you owe me. And now, if you’ll take my good advice you’ll go home and forget you ever met the lady. It’s like I told you in the beginning. That donna is poison.”

  After I left him, there was one more stop I needed to make before heading back to my office. The weather had turned sharply colder, and I put up my collar against the wind at my back. I went east, more or less retracing the route I had taken some days earlier, deriving a fresh sense of pleasure from the sounds and smells of my adopted home. The cars stuck in traffic and blaring their horns, the sweet aroma of a pretzel stand on State, the ‘L’ trains chiming their synchronized stops overhead. I walked steadily but without hurry, through the Loop and across the park, barely conscious of the hard-earned technique that kept me moving on a straight path. I thought about how far I’d come and what the future might look like and all the important things I would tell Louis when he was older.

  When I reached the harbor’s edge, I stopped and shut my eyes, recalling the place as I’d last seen it, now almost two years ago. The crystalline water of the Lake with its flotilla of gently rocking boats, the fall leaves swinging cheerfully in the breeze, the soft palette of the distant horizon blending into the sky. I stood there quietly for a long time, awash in memory. When I opened my eyes again, it was time. I took the bottle with the last of the pills from my pocket and tested its weight with my good hand. Then I reached back and hurled it into the air as far as it would go.

  Tomorrow I would call Melissa and explain.

  Though I expected she already knew.

  Coming up on my office building a little while later, I thought I was hallucinating again.

  Two figures were chatting by the guard station.

  Richard and . . . could it really be?

  I started running, sending off pops like a firecracker. “Mike! I shouted, as I reached their voices. I tossed my cane aside and gathered him up in an embrace, nearly weeping in relief. “Mike, you ugly bastard! Where the hell have you been?”

  He peeled himself away embarrassedly. “I’m sorry, Mistuh Mark. Richard here was just sayin’ how worried you were about me. I didn’t mean to cause no alarm.”

  “Well, you scared the shit out of me. I was looking all over for you.”

  “I’m sorry again,” Mike said. “My old cell mate called me from Rockford. Said he was sick from the drugs and about to die from the shakes.”

  “You didn’t buy for him, I hope?”

  “Naw. But I helped him get into a treatment program. Stayed on some days after to make sure he come through the bad part alright.”

  “Tell him your other news, Mike,” Richard said, nudging me in the arm.

  “Well, the folks in that program, they say I done a good thing by my friend, and seein’ as how they knew some other folks down here in Chicago maybe they could get me a room in one of them gov’ment hotels. I been on the waitin’ list close to two year, but they got me jumped ahead.”

  “I could have done that for you, too,” I said. “If you’d given me the chance.”

  “Aw, you know how I don’t like to be botherin’ folks. Anyway, you got enough troubles on your own. I see you is all busted up again.”

  “Yeah,” Richard said. “What on God’s earth happened to you this time?”

  I laughed and said, “Would you believe me if I told you I fell out of a tree?”

  A great deal of research went into the writing of this book, but I am particularly indebted to Daniel J. Carlat, MD, for his book Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis, which opened my eyes, to abuse a pun, to the uneasy relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry, and started me down the road of thinking “What if?”

  While the majority of events described herein are made up, some of them, such as the practice of providing free samples and the clandestine marketing of drugs for “off-label” use, are not. In a welcome development, the drug company GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that it will no longer tie its sales personnel’s compensation to prescription volume, or pay doctors to speak about its products. Hopefully, other major pharmaceutical companies will soon follow suit. That said, any and all factual mistakes are solely mine.

  I am deeply appreciative of Dan Mayer, my editor, for bringing my work to light and for his continued support of the Mark Angelotti series. A special thanks also to Laura Carter, Mary Coasby, and Jim Ziskin for reading and commenting on earlier drafts, and to my friends Caryn Jacobs, Karen Behles, Paula Shapiro, and sisters Blair and Reid Wellensieck for cheering the book on. I am also indebted to my agent, Brooks Sherman, for his wise and continuing counsel. And last, but not least, a huge thank you goes out to my copyeditor, Julia DeGraf, my proofreader, Jade Zora Scibilia, and my cover designer, Jackie Cooke.

  Of course, none of this would be possible without the support and encouragement of my husband, Stanley Parzen, who has acted as a one-man kickstarter campaign for my writing career and never fails to lift my spirits with a well-timed joke. Kendra, Jacob, and Tamsin, thank you for being who you are.

  LYNNE RAIMONDO is the author of Dante’s Wood, a Library Journal Mystery Debut of the Month. Currently a full-time writer, she was formerly a partner in the Chicago law firm Mayer, Brown & Platt, the general counsel of Arthur Andersen LLP, and the general counsel of the Illinois Department of Revenue. To learn more about Lynne Raimondo, visit her website at http://www.lynneraimondo.com.