Kill and Tell

by Linda Howard

  He loved this house, had from the moment he was old enough to appreciate the beauty of it and everything it represented. He remembered, as a child, watching his father stoop and trail his fingers across the glossy, newly inlaid marble in the foyer, relishing the stone for both its own beauty and its testimony to his wealth and, more subtly, his power. Stephen's chest had felt full and tight with emotion as he'd absorbed his father's emotions and known he felt exactly the same way. He still did. He appreciated the lead crystal chandeliers, the exquisite furniture handmade by Europe's finest, the exotic woods from Africa and South America, the paintings in their gold-leaf frames, the ankle-thick carpeting that kept the chill of the Minnesota winters from his feet.

  He had grown up playing on the beautifully manicured lawn, he and his older brother, William, taking turns being cowboys and Indians, pretending long sticks were rifles, and yelling "Bang bang!" at each other until they were hoarse. Those had been great days. The cook had always had fresh, cold lemonade to refresh them after a day of hard play in the hot summer, or hot chocolate to warm them after romping in the snow. Inside, there had been the rich smell of their father's cigars, a smell the senator still associated with power; the sweet fragrance of his mother's perfume as she hugged him and William and kissed their cheeks, and he had wriggled with delight. "My little princes," she had called them.

  Their mother had loved them unconditionally. Their father had been more stern, harder to please. A frown from him could ruin the boys' day. William had found it easier to please their father than Stephen had. William was older, of course, but he was naturally more careful, more responsible. Stephen had been a little shy, more intelligent than his confident brother but less able to show that intelligence. William had often stepped between Stephen and punishment, deflecting the scoldings and loss of privileges that would have come his brother's way, because their father had often been impatient with Stephen's shyness.

  Stephen had grown up wanting nothing more than to please his father, to be the kind of man of whom he could be proud. He wanted to be his father, a man people both feared and respected, whose smallest frown brought instant obedience but whose word could be trusted implicitly. William, however, had always been the crown prince, the heir, and so William had garnered most of their father's coveted attention. Stephen couldn't say their father's trust was misplaced, because William had been… wonderful. That was the only word for him. There hadn't been a mean, nasty bone in his body, and he worked doggedly to overcome his perceived failings. Even with all the responsibility on his shoulders, he had always been cheerful, smiling, ready to enjoy a joke or to play one.

  William's death at the age of twenty-seven had devastated the family. Stephen's mother had never recovered from the shock, and her health began to deteriorate steadily; she died four years later. As for his father, he was shattered. Pushing aside his own grief, Stephen had tried even harder to make his father proud of him. He drove himself all through law school, studying longer and harder than his classmates, and graduated first in his class. He married a sweet, lovely young woman from an extremely wealthy New Hampshire family and devoted himself to being a faithful, considerate, loving husband. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and Stephen watched his stern father totally melt over his grandchildren.

  Stephen began his political career by running for local office, as his father advised; that was how to build a base of loyal constituents. After serving a term as district attorney, he ran for the state legislature as a representative, then for the state senate. With twelve years of state and local politics under his belt, he seized the opportunity when a U.S. representative from the state retired, and he ran for his office. He discharged his duties as conscientiously as possible, and bided his time, watching the senators from his state for signs of weakness. When one became involved in a sex scandal, Stephen made his move and ran against him in the next election. He became a United States Senator at the age of forty-one and steadily built his power base and his reputation.

  Shaking himself from his reverie, Senator Lake climbed the remaining stairs and walked down the wide upper hall to the suite of rooms at the back of the house. He knocked lightly, then opened the door. "How is he today?"

  "He ate well," said the nurse with a soft smile. Cinda Blockett was a sweet creature, as tender with his father as she would be with a newborn. Her husband, James, also a registered nurse, worked the first shift with her and provided the muscle necessary for caring for a total invalid.

  James had carried Walter William Lake to the huge, overstuffed recliner positioned in front of the windows, with a perfect view of the sweeping grounds and the glittering blue lake beyond, patrolled by majestic peacocks. Stephen pulled up a chair beside his father and took a gnarled, wasted hand in his. "Good morning, Father," he said gently, waited a second to see if there would be any signal of recognition such as a blink of the eye, then began to talk about the latest news, both on television and in the newspaper. He didn't restrict himself to politics but talked business, too, and science. Every time a space shuttle went up, Stephen kept his father informed. He didn't know if any of what he was saying was actually received and processed in the working portions of his father's brain, but he never gave up.

  He sat with his father for more than an hour, spelling Cinda and James so they could have a leisurely meal. His father was never left alone. Three shifts of nurses cared for him, kept him fed, exercised his wasted muscles, turned and moved him so his fragile skin didn't rot with bedsores. They made his existence as comfortable as possible, playing his favorite music, turning on the television to the programs he had liked, reading aloud to him or playing books on tape. If there were any cognitive parts of his father's brain still functioning after the massive stroke that had felled him eleven years before, Stephen hoped he was doing enough to keep those parts stimulated, to make his father as happy as possible under the circumstances.

  He was now one of the most powerful, most respected people in Washington, and he would never know if his father was proud of him.

  When Cinda and James returned, and Stephen left his father's suite, Raymond was waiting for him just as the senator had known he would be. Raymond Hilley, sixty-nine years old, had worked for the Lake family for fifty years. Stephen couldn't remember a time when Raymond hadn't been there, his father's right-hand man, almost an uncle to him and William when they were growing up. When William died, Raymond had sat down on the floor and cried, huge tears running down his battered face.

  Eleven years ago, when the stroke incapacitated Walter William Lake and Stephen became the head of the family, Raymond's skills and unswerving loyalty had transferred to him.

  "Let's go down to my office," the senator said, clapping his hand on Raymond's shoulder as his father had always done, a sign of friendship and acceptance.

  Coffee was waiting for them, brought in when Cinda and James finished their lunch and returned to the suite. With Hayes, the senator had sat behind his desk while Hayes took one of the chairs opposite, but with Raymond, he went over to the sitting area, and they took chairs as friends, as family. He poured Raymond's coffee first, putting in three teaspoons of sugar and diluting it with milk until the coffee barely had a tan color. He took his own coffee with a little cream, just a drop really; his father had drank it black, but even after all this time, Stephen couldn't give up that tiny drop of rich cream to mellow the bite of the coffee. Sometimes he was embarrassed by his weakness for cream in his coffee; it seemed to say he was a watered-down version of his father, a milquetoast—yes, that was a better comparison, both in sound and in image. He knew better, of course. He had made some hard decisions in his life, not the least of which concerned Dexter Whitlaw and Rick Medina. He didn't feel good about what he had done, but neither did he doubt the necessity.

  Raymond sipped the excessively sweet brew in his cup, sighing in pleasure. "I followed him to the airport," he reported in his gravelly voice, which sounded as if he had once eaten glass—and liked it. "He did
n't stop, didn't use his cell phone, just went straight to the check-in counter and then to the gate."

  "He could have called someone from the gate."

  "He wouldn't do that. Too much chance of being overheard."

  That made sense, and Stephen accepted the statement from Raymond as he would not have from anyone else.

  "If you don't trust him…" Raymond said slowly, letting his words trail off, inviting the senator to pick up the thought just as he had done forty years ago when he was teaching the boys how to hunt and they had to anticipate what a big elk would do.

  "Then don't use him," the senator said, and sighed. "I wouldn't, but I need his contacts. He's a good buffer, and I don't believe he would talk. After all, his livelihood depends on his reputation. If he couldn't keep a confidence, no one would use him."

  "He has the situation handled?"

  "The blackmailer has been taken care of; there are still, however, certain loose ends."

  "Loose ends are like loose shoestrings; they'll trip you up every time." Raymond sipped his coffee again, his big hands handling the transparent china cup with a certain delicacy.

  "Steps are being taken."

  "Good. Mr. Walter… well, I wouldn't want anything to come out that might hurt him. He's a great man. He did some things people might not understand, not knowing the whole story. He doesn't deserve to have people saying bad things about him, especially now when he can't protect himself."

  "No," the senator said, and sighed. "He doesn't."

  "Caucasian male, seventy-one and three-quarter inches tall, weight one hundred eighty-two pounds, age fifty to fifty-five. Gray hair, brown eyes. Distinguishing marks: a 'Semper Fi' tattoo on the left forearm, a surgical scar four inches in length on his lower right abdomen, a two-inch keloid scar diagonally on the right quadriceps—"

  Marc tuned out the assistant medical examiner's detailing, for the record, of the victim's many scars. None of the scars looked like a bullet wound, but several of them did look as if he'd had some close encounters with sharp blades. Most of the scars, though, were the sort people collected just going through life: childhood falls that cut the knees, various nicks and scrapes. The most important detail, for purposes of identification, was the tattoo. Not only had he been in the military, but the tattoo narrowed down the branch of service for them. They would soon have a real name for this John Doe.

  As predicted, the morning television news announcers had waxed eloquent, and in rounded funereal tones so listeners would know how serious the issue was, about the early-morning murder in the Quarter. The New Orleans murder statistics were trotted out again, followed by a noncommittal statement from the police department, followed by a passionate statement from the mayor to the effect that the citizens—and tourists—of New Orleans must and would feel safe in the city. It was a good campaign slogan; he had used it before.

  Marc dispassionately watched the autopsy. He had a strong stomach and had never puked the way some detectives did. Like the medical examiners, he could ignore the smells and concentrate on what the body told them. Working homicides, it was a handy knack to have.

  This body wouldn't have much to say. A bullet in the brain was pretty obvious. The where, when, and how weren't in question, just the who and why.

  The young women who had discovered the body hadn't been any help. None of them could remember seeing anyone else, period, either walking or driving. The shooting had to have happened just minutes before, but no one, not even anyone living close by, had heard a thing.

  The victim's personal effects, such as they were, hadn't yielded anything except a wedding ring, carefully sewn inside the cuff of his pants. Maybe he had stolen it, but it had fit his ring finger, and he had kept it carefully hidden, which told Marc he had valued the ring beyond what money it would bring in a pawn shop. The guy had once been married, maybe still was.

  "You're getting on my nerves, Chastain," the doctor said testily, clicking off the microphone so he could speak off the record. He was a busy man, impatient and harried, and he seldom spoke personally to the detectives who attended the autopsies.

  Marc lifted one eyebrow in silent question.

  "That's what you're doing." A stained scalpel was jabbed in his direction. "You just stand there, quiet as a rock and about as active. You don't interrupt me to ask questions, you don't turn green and gag, you just watch. Damn it, you hardly even blink. What do you do, go into a trance?"

  "If I have any questions, I ask them when you're finished," Marc said mildly.

  The scalpel jabbed once more. "You're still doing it. You didn't even change expressions. Do me a favor; do something human before I start thinking you're a robot." Behind him, his assistant smothered a laugh.

  "If you're in doubt, when you're finished, I'll let you watch me piss." The offer was made totally deadpan, and this time the assistant didn't manage to control the laugh.

  "Thanks, but I'll pass on that wonderful opportunity."

  "I don't make the offer to just anyone. You're the only man who's ever heard it, so you might want to reconsider. Just don't get any wrong ideas about my sexual orientation."

  Behind her mask, the assistant's eyes were sparkling. The doctor shot her a sour look. "Don't even think about volunteering for the job."

  "Too late," she admitted cheerfully.

  Marc winked at her.

  "Forget I said anything," the doctor muttered, and switched the microphone on again, putting an end to the discussion. Pity. Marc had enjoyed needling him, and evidently the assistant had enjoyed the exchange, too. It was the first time Marc had seen the brusque doctor interrupt any autopsy to make a personal remark.

  Just for the pure hell of it, he stuck his hands in his pockets and began jingling the change. After two minutes, the microphone was clicked off again. "Forget I said anything," the doctor snapped again. "And stop jingling your change, damn it! You sound like Santa Claus."

  Marc shrugged and took his hands out of his pockets, but his eyes were glittering with amusement.

  Sometime later, the body of the victim had told them that except for being dead, he was in remarkably good shape. No sign of disease in any of the major organs, no blockage in his veins, good muscle definition, no needle marks on his arms or between his toes to indicate intravenous drug use. The toxicology report wasn't back, and it might indicate some other type of drug use, but overall the victim looked too healthy to have been a user.

  Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, fired at medium range, no exit wound. The penetrating missile was a .22-caliber bullet, which had also sent several bone fragments through the soft brain tissue. The kinetic energy of the tumbling projectiles had destroyed massive amounts of tissue, like a tidal wave rolling through the brain and smashing everything it touched.

  X rays and photographs of the victim's teeth had been sent to the Marine Corps for identification. Depending on how efficient they were, the victim's identity should be forthcoming within a few days. Marc would begin trying to locate any family, and maybe, just maybe, within a week or two the poor guy could have a burial.

  He was surprised when the identification came back the next day. Someone in the vast tangle of military and civilian bureaucracy was on the ball; either that, or by pure chance the victim's teeth had been in the first batch checked for a cross-match. There was a name now: Dexter Alvin Whitlaw, from Keysburg, West Virginia. Next of kin was a wife, Shirley Jeanette Allen Whitlaw, and a daughter, Karen Simone Whitlaw. Marc had their social security numbers and their last known address. He could find them.

  The message light was blinking when Karen got home from work. She was tempted not to listen to the messages, just to take a quick shower and fall into bed. Since she'd sold the house and moved into an apartment four months ago, the nights had seemed even more lonely; after working all day, she hadn't had either the energy or the interest to do much unpacking, and a lot of her things were still in boxes, which made her feel as if she were living in a sparsely furnished motel roo
m—or a warehouse. The rooms seemed to echo, intensifying her sense of being alone, of missing Jeanette.

  She hadn't been sleeping or eating well, either, and was losing weight. In an effort to jar herself out of her depression, she had switched shifts with one of the other nurses and was now working nights. The strategy had worked, to some degree. She was so tired when she dragged home early in the mornings that she literally fell into bed and slept like a log. After the first disastrous day, when she had been awakened eleven times by telemarketers and wrong numbers, she learned to turn off the phone.

  Lately, she had been trying to stay up for several hours after getting home, to mimic the routine of daytime jobs, but not today. This was the morning after the night from hell. She wanted nothing more than to get off her aching feet and just sleep.

  She worked on the surgical floor, where noncritical patients were placed after surgery. They were all in pain, but everyone had a different tolerance for pain. Some were so stoic only their blood pressure would indicate whether or not they were hurting; others screamed bloody murder at the least discomfort. Tonight had been a night for the screamers. They hurt, damn it, and wanted something now: another pill, turn up the morphine drip, anything. Of course, the nurses couldn't exceed the doctors' prescribed dosages without authorization; all they could do was take the heat. Tracking down a doctor in the middle of the night to authorize more pain medication was usually an exercise in futility; the nurses practically needed a team of bloodhounds to track down the doctor on duty, who had a genius for being somewhere else and not hearing his page.

  Then a patient, a thirty-two-year-old mother of two, had gone sour on them. She was in for a ruptured appendix and had been very sick for several days but was recovering. Tonight, just after supper, she had been walking to the bathroom and suddenly slumped to the floor. A blood clot had lodged in her pulmonary artery, and she was gone, despite all their efforts. It happened sometimes, but the shock never really lessened. The only thing that had changed was that Karen had learned how to work through the shock, to keep going, to push it away. All nurses and doctors had to learn that, or they couldn't function.