The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  Stokley sighed. “Mr. Dunn, you’ve got it wrong. If you think I had anything at all to do with that terrible crash, you’re wrong. My God, man, I don’t kill people. Look at my record, my whole life.” He took a step toward me now and I realized his eyes were mere coals, sunk deep into his skull behind black hollows of fatigue.

  “This Morvant woman was insane. I didn’t realize it at first. She was beautiful and highly intelligent. I won’t lie to you. I enjoy the company of beautiful women. And I had known her sister. But it was nothing serious. My wife and I, as you say, are not close. I wish it were different, but she’s been ill a lot and …” He managed a shrug. “I can’t make excuses, but my God, man, I’m only human. There was nothing sinister in my relationship with this girl, and I certainly didn’t beat her. She was unstable. That’s why I had her placed in one of the finest facilities in the state, a private clinic. I tried to help her, Mr. Dunn, whether you believe it or not. She had delusions, real paranoid delusions, this poor girl. She did violence to herself and claimed I was responsible. Well, what would you have done? Anyway, she got out and told Julia about our”—he bit out the words as if it had a bad taste—“relationship. And Julia decided that it was too good a chance to pass up. She wormed her way into a party I was giving, told me her name was Julia Morvant, but who knows what it really was? Anyway, she was a woman of apparent breeding, or so I thought. She said her father was a Houston oil millionaire. I invited her to go with us to the islands.”

  I waited, conscious of his eyes measuring me.

  “She got me alone, and made the most incredible proposition: If I didn’t give her money, she’d ruin me. It was the most outrageous blackmail I’ve ever heard of. Naturally, I refused, told her to leave, but by then it was too late. She’d put something in my drink and I lost consciousness. I awoke in terrible pain. I realized then what had happened.”

  I had an image of him waking up, blood streaming off his head, onto the white sheets.…

  “Yes, I admit we devised a story about the bombing. And I suppose you can use that to discredit me and destroy my entire career, if you elect to. Before you do, though, I’d appreciate it if you’d consider some of the things I’ve done and some of the things I’d still like to do, and decide if you think it’s worth it. You’re a man who’s given up something for his country.”

  I tried to keep down the anger. “There’s still the matter of an airliner,” I said. “And sixty-seven dead people.”

  He frowned, then nodded. “Oh. The airplane. I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear at first. Yes. Yes, there is that, Mr. Dunn. And I wish there were some way to undo that, but there isn’t. I’m afraid she’s gone now. Probably to Brazil or some country without an extradition treaty.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, but I already knew. Solly had as much as told me: She was still alive!

  “She was never on that plane,” Stokley rasped. “She put the bomb aboard in a suitcase, I’d guess. Maybe she bribed some other poor woman to go in her place. The perfect way to disappear. So you see, Mr. Dunn, my sins are venial compared to hers.”

  It was my turn to shake my head, trying to deny what I’d heard, and I knew they were staring at me.

  “I don’t believe it,” I started and then stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” Stokley said, coming forward. He knew better than to put an arm on my shoulder.

  “It really is in your hands, Mr. Dunn. I know things were mismanaged by Cox. And I’m at fault for letting myself get into this kind of situation. You can destroy me. Just call the Picayune of the Washington Post. It’s your decision to make.”

  I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. Julia. A murderess …

  A moan echoed from the hallway, breaking into my consciousness like a cry from hell. Benedict turned and the congressman frowned, trying to understand what was happening. I walked out to see Elias standing before the window at the end of the hall, looking out.

  I went toward him and he turned to face me, his cheeks stained with tears. His mouth moved to talk, but after a few tries he gave up and he turned back to the window, and I realized he was looking at something outside.

  I gently moved the old man aside and looked down.

  The scene before me was an unrelieved gray of trees in a gray sea. The storm had pushed the bayou behind the house over its banks and now a shallow lake surrounded us, with a few aluminum posts marking where the swimming pool lay. A metal frame cut the surface, all that was left of the pump house, for the wind had carried away the corrugated top. Behind the pool a few stumps jutted up from the swamp, and just below us some clumps of debris floated, five or six agglomerations of swamp grass torn loose by the fury of the tempest.

  The flood had done damage, but it would recede. It was not the mere fact of the flood that had caused Elias’s pain.

  All at once a fragment of the fight with Cox came tumbling back from memory and I fixed on it. No, not the fight, afterward, kneeling by Solly, my eyes on the body across the room, turning slowly in the water like flotsam, turning …

  In sudden horror I looked down at the clumps of floating debris and saw that they weren’t debris at all. What I’d taken for grass was clothing, now sodden from exposure to the flood, and I made out arms and legs, as white as the underbellies of dead fish, and streamers of weeds framing their heads.

  I counted five, six, and then looked away, my stomach churning and bile coming up into my mouth.

  Even from the window I could see what they were: They were the bodies of women.

  25

  My knees tried to buckle but I forced myself to stay upright. Nausea threatened to flood over me and I knew the best antidote to it was anger.

  Benedict was beside me now and when he looked down his eyes bulged out. He turned quickly away and stood bent over at the head of the stairs, retching.

  “What is it? What’s going on?” Stokley demanded.

  I wheeled on him, grabbing his dressing gown and jerking him forward. “Do you really want to see? Then come here. I’ll show you.”

  I dragged him to the window and shoved his head out.

  “Down there,” I said. “Do you want to tell me now that Julia Morvant killed them all? They’re the hookers that have been missing from New Orleans, aren’t they? Somebody buried them on your property and the flood brought them up.”

  He drew his head in and his eyes searched for an escape but there wasn’t any. “I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I don’t know, I—”

  I shoved him against the wall and then let go, disgusted. The truth was clear enough now and it was bittersweet.

  “She was on the plane, all right,” I said, as much to myself as to him. “She’s dead. And sooner or later they’ll identify her. You bastard—you had Rivas blow up a whole plane to hide the reason for killing one person.”

  “No.” His voice was a croak.

  “Yes. To hide the truth about what she’d done to you. Well, there won’t be any more hiding. When they come to get us I want everybody to see!”

  I reached out, catching him by surprise, and jerked the gauze loose. He gave a yelp, but I was against him pinning him to the wall, tearing with my one hand, until the gauze and bandages lay in a bloody heap. His hands flew to the sides of his head but not before the other two had seen what I had: The sides of his head showed two bloody holes, as if someone had driven an auger through the middle of his skull. It was an illusion, of course, because what I was seeing was his ears, or what was left of them. And a plastic surgeon would be able to do a creditable job. But they would never look the way they had before she’d cut them off.

  He cowered in the corner, hands hiding his disfigurement, and I heard my pulse throbbing. Benedict and Elias looked at each other and I wondered if they could hear it, too, and then it came to me that we were hearing something else, something that I’d heard often in the past, on battlefields, and tried to shove out of my memory. It was the sound of beating rotors, hammering toward us in the mist.

 
; Benedict stepped forward then.

  “I can’t let this happen,” he said. “I can’t let him take the blame. I confess. I did it. I killed them all.”

  Stokley watched, frowning, and I wasn’t sure how much he’d understood.

  “Nelson …” He reached out a hand, but his aide brushed it away.

  “No. That’s okay. The congressman didn’t know anything about it. It was all me. I was the one who killed the girls. I picked them up, had my way, and then killed them.”

  “Really?” I said. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I … just something inside. I couldn’t help myself. It was something I kept doing. I knew I had to be stopped but …”

  “And you brought them all here and buried them behind the house,” I said.

  “Yes. I didn’t think they’d ever be found. The rising waters must have …”

  “And Rivas?” I asked.

  “I hired him to help me. He brought me the girls. The congressman didn’t know any of this. I’ll sign a statement, swear in court.” He turned to Stokley. “You can’t be blamed for any of this because you didn’t know. There may be some bad publicity, but it’ll go away. The plans for ninety-two won’t be affected. You weren’t involved at all.”

  Stokley nodded and started to reach out a hand, then drew it back as if it might be a mistake.

  “Nelson …” he said.

  “Nice try,” I told them. “But I don’t believe it. I think the congressman had everything to do with it.”

  “No!” Benedict shouted. Stokley watched, hope fading from his face and his tongue flicked out over his lips.

  “Benedict, I guess you get points for loyalty, but I’ve never understood that kind of devotion, myself. Do you really want this man to be running our country?”

  Before he could answer I stepped around him and stood facing Stokley, himself.

  “And you’d have let him do it, wouldn’t you? You’d have gone on with this cockamamie story about a bomb, used your injuries to drum up support for the crusading politician out to protect the nation’s youth.”

  The rotors were closer now and I went into the bedroom where Solly lay and reassured myself that he was still breathing. It was almost over now, but there was still something that was bothering me, something he’d said, that was stirring inside my mind. He’d been right all along, so why would he have been wrong about this?

  The chopper was over the house now and I wondered if they’d noticed the bodies in the swamp below. I went out into the hallway and to the window. The congressman had returned to his room and Elias and Benedict were staring at each other, as if each were willing the other to make the decision.

  I looked out the end window and saw another chopper, standing off about a hundred yards away and I made out the call letters of one of the local TV stations. Of course: Someone must have told them Stokley was here. The rescue of a congressman was a good story.

  Except, why did he need to be rescued at all? That was what bothered me. Why the hell had he come back in the face of a hurricane, when he should have been at a private hospital getting his beauty restored?

  I flashed back to Sandy’s escape and all at once I understood. I’d been two steps behind the truth all along and it hurt.

  An olive-drab figure was in the window now, dangling from a safety line, and I recognized the State Police insignia.

  “Is the congressman here?” he asked, dropping through the opening.

  “The congressman’s fine,” I said. “But there’s a man in the room here with a gunshot wound. He needs immediate attention. You’ll want oxygen and blood plasma.”

  The trooper gave me a strange look, but nodded and spoke into his belt radio. Stokley’s door opened then and the congressman emerged, his head rewrapped and his face pale.

  “We’ll have you out in a minute, Congressman,” the policeman promised and I understood he hadn’t seen the bodies. Stokley’s eyes darted to me and then back to the policeman and I knew he was struggling to come up with a story.

  “We’ll need a litter,” I said. The cop relayed my request and a few seconds later another officer appeared, and then another, and behind them an emergency medical team with a backboard.

  “What happened?” one of the later policemen asked and I saw that he had lieutenant’s bars.

  “I’ll tell you when we get onto dry land,” I said. “And I think you ought to get a statement from the congressman.”

  The radios crackled then and the lieutenant frowned. He went over to the window and looked down and I saw Stokley begin to slump.

  “Oh, holy Jesus,” the trooper ejaculated. “What the…?”

  “I’m sure the congressman will have a statement,” I said. “Won’t you, Congressman?”

  The trooper looked at the politician for an answer but Stokley only stared back.

  The emergency team had Solly on the backboard now and were rigging a cable that had been lowered from the chopper.

  I watched them steer him through the window and then he swung for a moment in the air as the winch started him upward.

  “Congressman …” The lieutenant started, but Stokley’s back was turned and I could see he was having trouble controlling himself.

  Next Elias and Benedict went out, each attached in turn to a safety belt that was clipped to a lifeline.

  “You next,” the policeman told me.

  I looked over at Stokley. “I think the congressman ought to go.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Congressman …”

  Stokley stared up at us through lifeless eyes and didn’t move.

  “Sir, you have to come,” the officer told him. “We can’t leave you here.”

  The politician started forward, as if to obey, and then halted and made a half turn toward the other end of the hallway.

  “I …”

  “We’ll come back and get your things,” the trooper promised.

  “Come on, Congressman,” I shouted above the helicopter’s noise, wondering if he was even listening. “There’s nothing here you can’t leave, is there?”

  The policeman urged him forward by the elbow and Stokley took a step, then halted. Suddenly he wheeled around and started back down the hall for his room.

  “What the hell?” muttered the lieutenant.

  “His better nature won out,” I said. “He realized there was something he really couldn’t leave after all.”

  We followed, inured by now to the deafening beat of blades above the house. The policeman went through the doorway first, into the bedroom, and I followed. The room was empty.

  Then I caught movement to the right and pointed to the open door of the bathroom.

  Stokley was seated on a stool, reaching out toward the tub. I went over to the door and looked through. Even through the beating of the rotors I heard a muttered curse behind me.

  She was lying in the tub, her naked body alabaster white, her dead eyes staring at something beyond space and time.

  The last time I had seen her in this room she had been on the bed, her eyes bandaged, her husband beside her. Now, at the end, he was beside her once more.

  It was clean, as befit a lady, I thought, with the blood having neatly drained into the bottom of the tub and with very little along the sides. She’d kept her cut wrists inside the tub, of course, so as to not make a mess for someone else to take care of.

  Stokley was holding her hand and rigor hadn’t yet set in, but I guessed she’d been dead for a couple of hours.

  “Aline,” he said to nobody in particular. “She locked herself in. I didn’t know until an hour ago, when she didn’t come out. Oh, God …”

  “Maybe,” I said, “it was for the best.”

  The trooper started to say something but I shook my head.

  “I’ll explain when we get back,” I told the policeman and turned and walked out of the room to the window.

  Five minutes later I saw the city, its buildings floating in a sea of mist. A hand came up from nowhere and caught my
wrist.

  “Saigon or stateside?” Solly asked.

  I looked down at him and smiled. “Stateside, Solly. This time we’re going stateside.”

  EPILOGUE

  When the minister finished we all shook hands with him and then with Will Folsom. Besides Folsom, his sister, and a few locals, there was only myself, Sandy, Mancuso, O’Rourke, and Katherine. So I was glad we’d come, because funerals are bad enough without there being no one there.

  They’d identified Julia the day I got back, through a canvass of the dentists in the city. One had matched the dental work of a patient named Julia Griffith with the teeth in one of the bodies. A few days before and I would have demanded more proof. But it was too late for that. I just listened and nodded, because I’d already accepted the fact that she was gone.

  We came down the grassy hill, still wet from the storm, and stood looking back at the awning with the now-empty folding chairs, and I knew everyone was thinking the same thing, that there ought to be more.

  Mancuso glanced at his watch. “Funny, the two funerals being the same time,” he said.

  I thought of the other interment, across the lake in one of the city’s most exclusive cemeteries. Unlike this one, there would be reporters and videocams and police to perform traffic control.