The Guilty: (P.I. Jack Marconi No. 3) Page 22

  I shook my head.

  “They shot each other,” I said. “At exactly the same time. Imagine that.”

  “That’s why it sound like one big gunshot.”

  “Must be their forty million dollar wet dream was going south fast.”

  “Thanks to your fine detective work.”

  “And your fine assistance.”

  A uniformed EMT came in. A young, well-built man. He placed a blanket around my shoulders. He tried to place one around Blood’s shoulders, but Blood refused.

  “I ain’t never been no baby,” he said. “Ain’t about to start now.”

  “My hero,” I said pulling the blanket off, handing it back to the medical tech.

  “Follow me outside please,” the EMT said. “Both of you.”

  We did. Even in the summer heat, the fresh air felt like a gift from God.

  There were two EMT vans backed up to the overhead door which were parked directly beside a fire truck. Plus there was an assortment of blue and white cop cruisers, their lights flashing but their sirens turned off. All around us was a zoo of firemen, cops, and medical technicians all busy doing something.

  Lying on a gurney just outside the open doors to the first EMT van was Sarah Levy. There was a translucent breathing apparatus strapped to her face. Without thinking about it, I found myself going to her. When I got there, I stared down at her and was amazed to see how little and fragile she appeared. She was conscious now and she looked up at me with her big brown eyes. It was difficult to see her mouth through the plastic mask, but I saw enough to know she was smiling. I took her hand in mine, squeezing it gently. She squeezed back with all the strength of a wilting rose petal. That smile was all that needed to be said between us.

  The team of EMTs pushed her body into the back of the van, then swiftly closed the doors. They jumped into the front of the vehicle, turned on the lights and sirens, and pulled away. Standing there watching Sarah take her leave, I wondered if she would one day remember everything again. Remember everything about her life.

  Maybe it would be better if she didn’t.

  I felt a hand on my good shoulder. I turned. It was Detective Miller.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Believe it or not,” I said, “I’m going to live.”

  He pursed his lips, nodding.

  “I should have been here sooner,” he said. “When I got a match on both Sarah’s and Junior’s prints on that little bracelet bead, I knew I had at least some tangible proof that a violent and criminal act more than likely went down on Marion Avenue on February 18th. It’s all the fuel I needed to start rounding up the unusual suspects. Just wish I could have helped you with saving Sarah.”

  “You needed to go after the Davids while you had the chance,” I said. “While they were confirmed in the same place at the same time. And wherever the Davids were, Harold Sanders was sure to be close by.”

  “We missed Junior and Sanders by just a minute or two. I knew we’d run them down in a matter of minutes. Not like this though. Not dead.”

  He nodded sadly, stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. I tried to get a real sense what he was thinking, and I think I succeeded. If I had to make a guess, I’d say he was thinking that if the Davids didn’t have so much money and power . . . that if they didn’t have their hands in the mayor’s pockets . . . that if they didn’t bankroll half the cop’s union pension . . . he might have made an arrest on Robert David Jr. long ago. That the life of Daphne Williams might have been saved and Sarah’s head wouldn’t be injured.

  But in the end, money sings a sad, hard song. And having viewed the home surveillance video of February 18th, I’m not sure Junior was directly liable for Sarah’s injuries in the first place. He certainly didn’t appear as though he was trying to hurt her. More like he was trying to calm her down. But then, they’d just spent hours inside the basement playroom playing a satanic game of rape the fiancée. Maybe Sarah had finally had enough. Maybe she’d finally lost her love for a creep like Junior. One thing was for sure: she most definitely wanted to go back to her ex-husband. Start all over again with him and their child.

  “Junior and Harold Sanders,” I said. “Theories?”

  Miller cocked his head.

  “Harold was greasing Junior for the design on the Nanotech center. One hundred fifty million bucks. Biggest construction project to hit Albany since Rockefeller tore down the entire east side to build the Empire State Plaza. And it just so happens the land on which the Nanotech Center is to be constructed belongs to Albany’s biggest developer and philanthropist, David Enterprises. Robert David Sr. was not only providing the land, but he was the dominant investor in the project. He alone owns fifty-one percent of that facility. He alone gets to make the design consultation decisions.”

  “Junior was seeing Harold’s daughter. They were engaged. In love. Why would Junior expect to be greased by Sanders when they were practically family?”

  “Because Robert Sr. wanted to use a design outfit out of London. Harold Sanders is good, but not that good. He can put up an office building, but a state-of-the-art high-tech laboratory, forget it. Plus, a London firm would be big news and it would make David Enterprises a global player.”

  “So Junior started begging the future father-in-law for bribes,” I deduced, “in exchange for the promise that Sanders architectural services would oversee the development of the Nanotech facility.”

  Miller pursed his lips and nodded in the affirmative.

  “Turns out the old man kept Junior on a pretty tight financial reign. He made sure the kid had everything he wanted in terms of housing and employment, but at the same time, he made sure to curb his spending habits.”

  “That’s one way to control Junior’s cocaine and Molly habit.”

  “There were other complications,” Miller said. “Harold was flat broke and couldn’t begin to make the payouts that Junior kept demanding. But Sanders knew all about the Fifty Shades-inspired sex games Junior was playing with Sarah. About what they were doing to her on that wheel in the basement. He also knew that Robert Sr. was involved with it. That Penny David was involved. He threatened to expose it and in there lay his leverage.

  “But then Sarah gets hurt and the cops, yours truly included, haven’t got a thing on Junior. So Sanders proposes something to Junior in secret. He devises this lawsuit in order to collect forty million which he can then split with the kid.”

  Now I was seeing clearly. Seeing where Miller was going with this.

  “That’s why Sanders hired me,” I said. “To validate his fake lawsuit. He knew that no matter what kind of evidence I came up with, the cops would never touch the case since the Davids own half the APD’s union pensions and half the cops are on their side. But a civil suit would be something else entirely. Being responsible for an icy staircase that resulted in his girlfriend’s injuries doesn’t necessarily make Junior look like a bad guy—just a careless groundskeeper.”

  “Sad when you think about,” Miller added. “Sanders wasn’t really interested in exposing how his daughter got hurt or even seeing her survive Junior’s wrath. He already knew how she got hurt. Maybe he even felt she deserved what she got by playing Junior’s games. What he wanted was money in order to further his stalled career and refill his bank accounts. Instead, all he got is dead. And how’s the old saying go? The dead look really dead when they’re dead.”

  “But Sarah lives,” Blood chimed in. “We win.”

  “But I nearly got us killed in the process.”

  “You didn’t mean for us to get killed, Keep,” Blood said. “Just the way it worked out.”

  I exhaled and felt a soreness in my bad shoulder. Soon, I would have to visit the hospital to have the wound redressed before infection set in. I heard some commotion behind me, and when I turned to look, I saw the black-bagged bodies of both Junior and Harold Sanders being wheeled out of the building on two separate gurneys. In silence, all three of us looked on while the EMTs stuffed the bod
ies into the back bays of the two vans.

  “Guess this means I won’t be collecting my full fee,” I said.

  “Maybe you can go after Senior for it,” Miller said. “He can pay you from Green Haven where he’ll be doing quite the stretch along with his young wife, Penny.”

  “Penny,” I said, picturing the blonde, blue-eyed femme fatal and her impressive physique. “Why Penny?”

  “Daphne Williams,” Miller said. “Someone who’s good with a knife had her way with her immediately after Junior asphyxiated her. She honed her skills by spending many years in some of the best restaurant kitchens of the world. She’s a killer cook.”

  I recalled Penny cutting up the lemons and limes with all the professional skill of a five-star chef.

  “Jesus,” I said. “What kind of human being does something like that?”

  “A cold, heartless, psycho witch who was also present when Sarah Levy was pushed down the steps.”

  I recalled the surveillance video shot outside Junior’s house. Recalled how, just before he pulled Sarah’s hair, he turned and yelled something in the direction of the still open front door. The information Daphne revealed to me inside my apartment on the night I got shot turned out to be true. Junior must have been arguing with Penny while she was insisting he toss Sarah down the steps.

  Miller went on, “Penny’s been arrested and has already admitted to being on site when Sarah went down those steps and connected with each brick along the way.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Penny’s looking for leniency. Who ratted her out?”

  “Her husband, of course,” he said. “She wants a reduction of her two pending charges. The first for conspiring to commit homicide in the second degree, in which she prompted Junior to push Sarah down those steps, and the second for the successful murder in the first of Daphne Williams.”

  “Did Junior really act on her orders?” I said. “If he did, why would she admit to it? The woman’s hanging herself.”

  “Remorse, my warden friend,” he said. “Simple fucking remorse and guilt. Remember what I just said about the dead? Well, the guilty look very guilty when they’re guilty. In any case, she’s been singing like a bird and begging Jesus for forgiveness, and that’s the kind of music that makes me a smile. It also allows me to hang on to my precious job.”

  The second EMT van drove out of the lot, their flashers going but the sirens muted. With the cargo they were carrying, they wouldn’t be in any rush to get to the morgue. Was I supposed to believe that Junior didn’t act on his own when it came to the near killing of one innocent girlfriend and the successful killing of another? I guess maybe it did make sense. He was forty-one years old but hadn’t yet assumed responsibility for anything. He was a child trapped in an adult’s body who could be led around by his nose if need be. Maybe the little devil didn’t even comprehend the enormity of his actions when he went on harming Sarah in the basement of his house, or when he fought with her on those icy steps, or when he wrapped his hands around Daphne’s throat and choked her to death. Maybe even when he pushed his mother off that stepladder ten years ago.

  I looked Miller in the eye.

  “Joan David,” I said. “Tell me the truth, Nick. What’s the official unofficial word on her death underneath the backyard grape arbor?”

  He nodded and bit down on his lower lip.

  “Blood,” he said. “You mind?”

  “Got to make a couple of calls anyway,” Blood said, pulling his cell phone from his pants pocket and stepping away from us, out of earshot.

  71

  “DOESN’T MATTER MUCH TO ME anymore why or how intentionally Junior hurt Sarah,” Miller went on. “Doesn’t matter if Penny David ordered him to do it or the devil made him do it. Doesn’t matter at this point. Because he’s so dead and he’s the devil’s problem now. All I know now is that he did, in fact, hurt Sarah Levy bad, and he hurt Daphne Williams worse, but they were not the first victims of that motherfucker’s wrath. That first victim was his mother.”

  I pictured a much young Junior coming up on his mother from behind where she stood precariously balanced atop a rickety stepladder. I saw him thrusting out both his hands against the ladder, saw Joan dropping onto her side, her head bouncing off the stone pavers like a pumpkin.

  “But I thought he had an alibi? He was in the South of France. In cooking school.”

  “We know now that he flew back to New York the same weekend his mother was killed. Within six hours of her death, daddy put him on another flight back to France. ‘Mums’ the word, of course. Or so were my orders from my APD command via our illustrious and handsome mayor.”

  I shook my head, pictured the tan, chubby face of Mayor Jennings. I knew that sooner or later I would have a run in with him.

  “But why kill your own mother?”

  He pursed his lips, cocked his head.

  “Who knows? There were any number of reasons why he could have done it. Money, or the lack of it. Frustration. Boredom. Maybe Joan was harping on him to become his own man. To grow up, so to speak. Maybe she wouldn’t let him watch back-to-back episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. In the end, it doesn’t take much to make an inherently evil man angry enough to commit homicide. Men like Junior are born angry and angry they will die.”

  As if on cue, we both stole a glance at the back of the second EMT van, knowing full well that an angry dead body was stored inside it. I also couldn’t get Daphne Williams out of my mind. I recalled the panic-stricken woman who visited me the night I was shot. I wondered if I could have saved her life by carting her and her story to the police. But then, I wondered if she would have agreed to accompany me in the first place. Probably not. She would have been too afraid of Junior and what he would do to her should he find out. And from the looks of things, the police might not have been able to do a goddamned thing for her.

  “You need me for anything else?” I said to Miller. “My shoulder hurts and I need a shower.” But really, I just wanted to get the hell away from that place.

  “I’ll need you and Blood to come in for a statement later or early tomorrow.”

  “I can do that,” Blood said, making his way back over to us.

  “Swell,” Miller said. “My night’s only just begun with interviewing Robert Sr. and Penny David and playing their stories against one another.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said. “Glad to know you still have a job.”

  He smiled sadly, brushed his cropped gray hair with his right hand, about-faced, and headed back in the direction of the nearest APD cruiser. His face and the silence that draped it spoke volumes.

  I patted the pockets on my blazer.

  “Crap, Blood,” I said. “I forgot all about the 4Runner.”

  He laughed.

  “She been impounded by now.”

  For a brief second, I thought about having Miller help me get it out of hock. But then, knowing that he would be going without sleep for a while, I guessed it could wait until morning. Besides, Blood and I were in walking distance of Sherman Street.

  “Beer?” I said to Blood.

  “You know I don’t drink much,” he said. “But there is a quaint wine bar just a couple hundred feet from here. Play some nice jazz too.”

  “How sophisticated, Blood,” I said. “Tonight is a special occasion, however.”

  “You buying?” he said.

  I shoved both hands in my pockets.

  “No cash,” I said. “Just add it to my tab.”

  “Tab gettin’ awfully big,” he said. “But I guess you good for it.”

  I reached out with my good arm, slapped him on the back.

  “Blood,” I said, “I believe this is just the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  “Casablanca,” he said. “I don’t put much stock in sentimentality.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t fall in love so easy.”

  He laughed.

  I laughed.

  It seemed strange. Laughing in the face
of all that death. But then, it was far too late for tears. And who exactly would we cry for anyway? The good news was that Sarah was alive and that she would continue to recover. Maybe even remarry her ex-husband and raise that little boy of hers.

  Together, Blood and I walked through the open chain link gates in search of a quaint wine bar down on Lark Street. Directly behind us, the EMT van carted off the bodies of Robert David Jr. and my former employer, Harold Sanders. I knew that if a hell did indeed exist, it now housed two new residents.

  As Blood and I walked, the hot summer sun set on the city. There didn’t seem to be any relief from the unrelenting heat. Summer wasn’t even half over yet. I wondered how much longer the extreme heat would last. But then, that was up to God or the devil to decide.

  THE END

  If you enjoyed this Jack Marconi thriller, than you need to check out The Innocent (A Jack Marconi Mystery No. 1) and Godchild (A Jack Marconi Mystery No. 2).

  Vincent Zandri is the New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of more than sixteen novels, including Everything Burns, The Innocent, The Remains, Moonlight Falls, and the Suspense Magazine “Best of” award-winning, The Shroud Key. A freelance photojournalist and traveler, he is also the author of the blog The Vincent Zandri Vox. He lives in New York and Florence, Italy. For more information and to join Vincent’s “For Your Eyes Only” Mailing List, go to http://www.vincentzandri.com/.

  The Guilty (A Jack Marconi Mystery No. 3)

  Second Edition: February 2015

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.