Legally Dead

by Edna Buchanan

  “Sorry,” Bill said. “We got some good prints.” He frowned. “None from the punk. A few still unidentified. Two hits.”

  “Who?”

  “One,” Bill said, his face screwing into a puzzled expression, “came back to an ex-convict from Massachusetts. Sex offender who did time for abusing children. The man and his wife both died here in South Florida recently, an apparent suicide pact.”

  Venturi feigned surprise. “Where’d you find that?”

  “In that room you use for a gym.”

  “This place used to be a fishing camp,” Venturi said. “I guess that explains it. What about the other?”

  “A Russian punk last arrested in New York for attempted murder. Jumped bond last October, has outstanding arrest warrants. Ivan Kazakov, white male, age thirty-nine.” He pushed the Russian’s mug shot across the table.

  Venturi stared. A blue-eyed, pockmarked, and bloated stranger with straggly, too-long dirty blond hair stared back arrogantly. He looked ten to fifteen years older than his stated age. “Never saw him before. I wouldn’t forget that face.”

  “Seems to know you.”

  “Where were his prints?”

  “The bottom of the toilet seat in the master bath, on the floor safe in this room, and on the hallway wall about a foot and half from the bullet hole, where he was tussling with your dog.”

  “Bingo!” Venturi said. “So he’s the guy with Scout’s teeth marks in his arm and ankle.”

  Bill nodded. “Dog did a good job—spilled the guy’s blood and gave us his ID. Neither the dead ex-con nor the Russian has or had a blue Ford pickup registered. But the one he used mighta been rented, borrowed, or stolen.” He got to his feet. “One other thing…”

  Venturi tore his eyes off the Russian’s picture and looked up expectantly.

  “Do you mind if I take that lovely lady out there to dinner?”

  “Now?”

  Bill nodded.

  That’s why the man arrived better dressed and driving a flashy car instead of his work truck, Venturi thought. He had a dual purpose.

  He felt protective, as though he were Vicki’s father, but decided against trying to set a curfew.

  “No, not at all,” he said.

  “Good,” Bill said, “because I already asked and she said yes.”

  “Have a nice evening,” Venturi said. “You do know she’s the closest family I have.”

  “She’ll be treated like royalty.”

  “Nothing less,” Venturi said.

  They joined Vicki in the living room.

  “You were right,” Venturi told her. “It wasn’t Sidney.”

  “I’m elated,” she said heartily. “But realistic enough to know that given the chance, he’d do as much, or worse.” She smiled ruefully.

  He showed her the Russian’s picture.

  “Ever see him here, or in New York? Drives a blue Ford pickup.”

  She studied the face and shook her head. “Can’t say that I have. He doesn’t look familiar.”

  Watching them leave in Bill’s Audi ten minutes later, he picked up the phone.

  “It wasn’t Sidney,” he said, his voice brittle.

  “Crap,” Danny said. “He was so right for it.”

  “DNA rules him out. Fingerprints rule in a Russian mobster out of New York, along with a certain late, lamented fire victim, whose prints are still on the chin-up bar in the gym.”

  “Whoops. What does that say about your housekeeping? What else?”

  “Vicki just took off in a sports car—with Bill.”

  “Saw them hit it off the other night.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Venturi snapped. “Didn’t see it at the time. You sure Bill can be trusted?”

  “With your mother-in-law or our little secrets?”

  “Both.”

  “I vouch for him, positutely.”

  “Good enough. I don’t know where the Russian fits in, but our clients are compromised. The only thing he took out of this house is the laptop with their information. What if it’s not about WITSEC but one of them that the killers want?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “What if somebody was trying to flush me out to find one of them?”

  “And whacked three federal witnesses to do it?” Danny said skeptically.

  “I don’t know what to think.” Venturi stared out a window into the twilight. “Why would anybody be hunting one of our people? Think one of them lied to us and was really on the run from something or somebody that ruthless?”

  “Jesus,” Danny said. “Which one?”

  “No clue. I’ll recheck their backgrounds. We’re running out of time. Your vibes were right on, the news story is building. The press is bound to show up here. When they do it’ll be impossible to accomplish anything. I might have to break the rules.”

  “And do what?”

  “Call them. Reach out, warn them that their information is in the hands of a stranger with a violent past.”

  “We swore no contact.”

  “Who knew their new identities would be stolen?”

  “I can reach out to Micheline.”

  “No so fast, Danny. Let me see what I can find out first.”

  He gave Danny the Russian’s date of birth, a former address in the Bronx, and his lengthy rap sheet. “He’s five foot eleven, weighs one ninety, dirty blond, blue eyes. Been around the block. Looks old for his age, with a face like mashed potatoes, you know, all bumpy, bloated, and scarred.”

  “Sounds charming. Can’t wait to meet ’im. Hope it’s soon.”

  Venturi went to work. Fast. The killers’ trails were growing colder as the story grew hotter.

  He used his new laptop to search the Internet for posthumous fallout in the lives of the legally dead. He had checked them thoroughly at the start. Had something new surfaced since their deaths?

  Since Errol Flagg’s fatal plane crash, three women—a leggy New York model, a buxom Atlanta cocktail waitress, and a blond aspiring LA actress—had filed paternity suits against his estate. All three sold their stories to the tabloids, claiming the rock star had fathered their illegitimate children, who ranged in age from an infant girl to a boy of four.

  Flagg’s publicist had issued a statement dismissing their actions as “opportunistic attempts to cash in on his tragic death by women who probably never even met the man.”

  Venturi wasn’t so sure when he read that two of the plaintiffs were redheads.

  Their lawyers all demanded DNA tests to determine paternity, but since no body had been recovered, there was nothing to match. Flagg had no siblings, his mother was dead, and his father had abandoned the family when Flagg was a toddler.

  The three women had already agreed to appear together on Larry King’s show.

  Venturi wondered if samples of the children’s DNA would be compared to each other to determine whether they shared the same father. If none matched, that would prove that at least two of three claims were false, but which two?

  No wonder Flagg wanted to disappear and go fishing. Venturi remembered reading that after singer James Brown’s death, more than a dozen people stepped forward claiming to be his illegitimate children.

  A number of those who had worked with and for Flagg, his agent, manager, and musicians, had made claims against his estate for money owed. Nothing sinister there.

  Lots of hits on Lyle Gates, nothing new.

  Solange Dupree came up in troubling stories out of Louisiana. The name of the judge who lost her family and nearly her own life because she refused to be compromised had, since her demise, surfaced in a corruption scandal.

  Two judges, a prosecutor, and several defense attorneys had been indicted. Others were being investigated. Several were trying to negotiate deals by ratting out others. One of the names dropped was Judge Dupree’s.

  But the probe had been under way for some time. Her name never came up before her fatal sailing accident. Now accusations were suddenly being made against someone
unable to defend herself.

  A familiar scenario. Criminals love having a convenient dead guy to blame.

  If Solange was dirty, why didn’t she take a bribe and acquit instead of convicting the drug kingpin who sent hit men in revenge?

  He was still at the computer when Victoria came home. He heard laughter and conversation in the kitchen, the refrigerator door closing, and smelled fresh coffee brewing. He ignored it, shushed the dog, and gave them their privacy. He wondered when Bill would leave, or if he would.

  After thirty minutes or so he heard the front door close, the deadbolt click, and Bill’s car leave. He heard Victoria’s bedroom door gently close. Soon the house fell quiet. He was alone in the glow of the computer screen, except for the dog who watched him soberly instead of sleeping. Did he sense the tension?

  It would be two p.m. tomorrow in Australia.

  Audra answered the phone. Despite his concern, he couldn’t help savoring the cheerful lilt in her clear voice. It is working, he thought. She’s happy. They’re happy. He hated to spoil the illusion with doubts and dark warnings.

  “You never expected to hear from me again. This is Michael Venturi.”

  “Wrong number,” she said, and hung up.

  Exactly what she’d been instructed to do.

  He hit redial. “This is important,” he said tersely.

  “What’s your problem, mate? You’ve got the wrong exchange.”

  She hung up again.

  She didn’t answer the third call.

  The fourth time the number rang busy, as though the phone had been deliberately left off the hook.

  He sighed. He could find no newly established telephone number, or any trace of Andrew McCallum, the former Errol Flagg. He wondered why the man did not have a telephone number? Was he in Scotland pursuing his lifelong dream, or was that story a lie?

  He called Richard Lynch in Ireland.

  “Richard, this is Michael Venturi. I need to…”

  “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong party.”

  “I’m calling Richard Lynch.”

  “No one here by that name.” His voice sounded odd.

  “Something’s come up. I need to talk to you.”

  “Wrong number.” He hung up.

  He found no number for Micheline Lacroix. A French-speaking operator informed him it was on la liste rouge, the red list. Unlisted.

  He called Claire Waterson, the former Marian Pomeroy, in a village near Bath in the south of England. Startled when a man answered, he checked to see if he had dialed correctly. He had.

  He asked for her.

  “Are you a relative?” the man asked officiously.

  A leak sprang in Venturi’s heart and it slowly sank.

  “Yes,” he lied. “I’m Claire’s nephew, calling from Canada. Can I speak to her?”

  “Your name, please.”

  “What’s going on?” he demanded irritably. “Is she there?”

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” the man said. “Very bad news.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I’m afraid not. There’s been a regrettable incident. She’s been killed. I’m the local constable. We’re waiting for a team from Scotland Yard.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Venturi said truthfully. “You’re sure it’s her?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What happened?”

  “Where did you say were calling from?”

  “Ottawa, Canada.”

  “Well, sir, I’m afraid I can’t go into detail until Scotland Yard arrives, but she appears to have died of gunshot wounds, multiple wounds. We’ve never seen anything of the sort here before. Terrible, just terrible. And your name is?”

  “Robert Waterson,” Venturi lied, hand over his eyes.

  “And the number where I can ring you back?”

  “Of course.” He glanced up at the detailed map on the war room wall, gave the area code for Ottawa, then stopped speaking, as though the phone had gone dead.

  “Hullo?” the constable said. “Sir?”

  A lump in his throat, Venturi heard the man say hullo a few more times, then hung up.

  He thought of Marian Pomeroy, so small in stature, so large in life. She found such joy in giving, had sat in this very room not so long ago. He could still hear her laughter during her transformation in that motel room in Jamaica.

  His first impulse was call Keri. Where is she? he wondered. With Maheen? Were they safe?

  The news would devastate Keri. She’d ask questions, lots of questions. He needed answers first. Out of friendship, gratitude, and her own basic decency she had taken huge risks for Marian Pomeroy. She’d achieved something amazing. Why spread the misery? He massaged his temples and tried to think. Perhaps she should never know.

  Were the others safe? Was Marian Pomeroy the sole target? If so, why? If her greedy children had learned she was alive, which seemed unlikely, they could commit her. Why kill her? It made no sense.

  Unless someone was hunting, stalking them all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  He worked until daylight; his sense of urgency increased with every hour. He listened to the BBC and read on the Internet English newspaper accounts of the Barrington Fields homicide.

  The victim, Claire Waterson, had set up an easel, a palette, and brushes in her flower garden on the morning she died. He smiled with sad irony. She had followed up on her lifelong wish to paint. But she’d been interrupted, her easel knocked over, paints overturned, a flower bed trampled. She had been dragged into the house. A Scotland Yard spokesman called what happened unspeakable.

  Claire Waterson was a new resident, from Cardiff, said authorities, who had succeeded in retracing her steps during the last twenty-four hours of her life. It wasn’t difficult. There were numerous witnesses. The day before her death she had perched on a stool, in front of a crowded classroom at a village school where she had recently volunteered, and read from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. She lunched alone later at a department-store tearoom. That evening she and an acquaintance, a female teacher at the school, attended a concert at the local bandshell. Afterward they stopped at a local pub for a drink, at which time she mentioned that if the light and the weather cooperated, she intended to work on a landscape in the morning. She returned home without incident shortly after eleven o’clock.

  She appeared fine the next morning, waved to passing children on their way to school, and exchanged pleasantries with a neighbor for whom she cut a bouquet from her garden.

  Thirty minutes later a postman on his rounds spotted the overturned easel and scattered paints. Her front door stood ajar. He knocked, called out, then found her on the floor.

  Her wounds were all at close range, but only one was fatal.

  Venturi knew what that meant. The killer had been exacting information, asking questions. Authorities suspected she had been forced to divulge the whereabouts of money, jewelry, or other valuables. That made little sense since the victim’s neat, modest cottage was small enough to be easily searched.

  No one heard the shots.

  A silencer, he thought. All the earmarks of a professional.

  There were no immediate suspects. Tensions were running high in the once-peaceful village as shocked residents locked doors and looked over their shoulders for a killer among them.

  Scotland Yard was attempting to locate the dead woman’s relatives. A constable had spoken briefly to an overseas nephew but had lost the connection. They hoped he would ring them again.

  Only a matter of time before they discovered she was unknown at her former address in Cardiff. Murder was not one of the endless projections and possible scenarios they had covered in depth. They had been planning a new life, not sudden death.

  He drove to Danny’s, where they huddled in his study.

  “Christ almighty!” Danny exploded in shock and anger. “What sadistic son of a bitch would hurt that woman?”

  Venturi shook his head. His attempts to warn th
e others had failed. All he knew was that the two who’d hung up on him were alive—for the time being.

  “We did our jobs too well,” he said ruefully. “They wouldn’t listen or acknowledge knowing me.”

  “Next time,” Danny said, “we need to arrange a code word.”

  “What next time? Are you crazy? No next time’s gonna happen.”

  Danny’s cell rang. He checked the number. “Sorry, I need to take this, bro. You look like hell. Go pour yourself some coffee.”

  Venturi wandered numbly into the kitchen.

  Luz was feeding baby Michael, a happy cherub smiling in his wooden high chair, food on his face, his bib, and both fists.

  “I told you it wasn’t Sidney,” Luz said softly. She looked up placidly, put down the spoon, and wiped the tot’s mouth with a soft washcloth. “You look terrible, Michael. I warned you.”

  “What?” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. He should have shaved.

  “Keri was not for you.”

  He blinked, confused.

  “The first time I saw you look at her, I said, she is not for you. Remember? I introduced you to some wonderful women, my friends.”

  “What does that have to with…?”

  “Keri is the best doctor, best friend, best godmother, but she has problems, Michael. We’re like sisters. She told me everything, her secrets.”

  “Such as?” Venturi’s head began to ache.

  “They wouldn’t be secrets if I told you.” She turned back to the toddler in the high chair.

  “Does Danny know?”

  She shook her head, the tiny spoon in her hand.

  “What kind of problems? Keri’s fine.” Except for the last time he’d seen her. He pulled a chair up close and sat facing Luz. “Stop dropping hints and playing games. Level with me. It’s important.”

  She stared at the floor, then raised her eyes. “When Keri was a little girl in Pennsylvania, something happened to her and her baby sister.” Luz sighed and paused. The spoon stopped halfway to little Michael’s mouth.

  The child waited, mouth open in anticipation.

  “Her mother left them with a boyfriend, a heavy drinker and drug user. He was also a pedophile. Keri was eight years old, her sister was four.”