“Nobody’s bulletproof, Allie. Regret is the ultimate punishment for our mistakes. It’s the bottomless pit that persists after the damage that can be repaired is repaired. And you’re so right about the magnitude of his new attack. It’s over the top. Clever, ingenious. But, at the same time, risky. Uncontrollable. From what you say, the shooter could have killed Tom that first night. Torn up your Tito’s entire blueprint right on the spot.”
I recoiled. She put a steadying hand on my arm.
“But that didn’t happen, Allie. I’m merely saying that Tito has shown us two different kinds of killer. Ruthless and focused. Raging and—
“Off the rails,” I finished for her. Sadly.
“That’s one way to put it. Descriptive. You’ve already worked most of this out for yourselves.”
“I suppose. But—”
“I’m going to give you some advice. Possibly against my better judgment, but it’s not really a professional opinion. Because you would be figuring it out in about fifteen more minutes.”
My “figure-it-out” meter was all the way over on “E.” And about to cry. “Go ahead and tell me. Please, Ruth.”
She got very still, her eyes tracking the guard and the dog, making the rounds. The snow swirling around them, making ghosts of them both. Her voice, which had been upbeat and gently persuasive, turned troubled. Deep breath.
“No matter what, Allie, don’t pay him. Don’t give him all your money. Or any of it, as far as that goes. No matter the threat. No matter how personal. The money will not satisfy him. Nobody knows that better than you. Whatever he may say, don’t cave to his demands. If he gets it, he will first kill Tom to hurt you. Or you to hurt Tom. But, in the end, he will almost for sure kill you both.
“He now comprehends how killing wounds the living, Allie. That could be a huge part of what’s driving him now. Never let your guard down. Keep track of people you’re known to care about. Be safe.”
“He doesn’t know about you, Ruth.”
“Never assume there’s anything he doesn’t know. But don’t worry about me. Otis covers his tracks like a bandit. Stay safe, Allie. Circle the wagons. Don’t forget to breathe.”
A short walk back through the woods. A hug.
Goodbye, Ruth.
Chapter Twenty-One
10:30 a.m.
The past couple of years were a free-for-all of new life experiences for me. Before the Night of the Mondo, for example, I’d never even heard of Thomas Bennington III. I’d never spent an arguably ill-advised spontaneous night of passion with a blind man. The same blind man who had, inside of the previous four or five hours, accidentally won five hundred fifty million before-tax dollars. Back then, I’d never stayed in the Presidential Suite of the Ritz-Carlton, Cleveland. I’d never been shot. Not so much as once.
Hard to believe I’d crossed all that off my bucket list in the space of, oh, the first couple of weeks. It’s amazing what hundreds of millions of dollars can do if word gets around.
Since that night, I’d also seen dead people. I’d met people who were about to be dead. I’d even seen people die, but until Saturday, the third of March, I’d never been called downtown to identify a body.
Saturday morning, after Otis came back from delivering Ruth to her office, we were enjoying as upbeat a breakfast of leftover donuts as you can have in a nook under glass with a sniper in town, when Otis got another call. Everything he said after, “Hello” we didn’t hear because he jumped up and left the nook. When he came back, all the upbeat was wiped off him.
“Okay.” He dropped into a faux wicker chair. “I ain’t gonna lie. This is bad.”
“Otis. Just say whatever it is.” Tom looked like I felt. Trashed by nonstop danger and heinous news. Here was more.
Incoming.
Based on recent events and concerns, my knee-jerk “this is bad” response took me straight to Stacey. We still hadn’t located her. “Otis? Stacey? Did he—is she—?”
“No, Allie. This is not about Stacey.”
That was good, right? So now. Why was Otis so upset? Tom was right here—
Panic set in. “Not Margo, Otis? Not Tony?
“No. No. Not her. Not them, Allie, but this may be even more personal. I’m afraid this is a message for you.”
The suspense is killing you?
“For me? Otis. What? Stop it. Go ahead and tell me. Come on. You’re making it worse.”
“Okay. Allie, I know you’ve got mixed feelings but that can be—”
“Otis.”
“They found a body early this morning. Down by the lagoon. Almost same spot as Kip Wade, but closer to Euclid. He was covered in snow. Nobody noticed until daylight—Big guy, Allie. Well-dressed. Six-four. Muscular build. No ID. And, I’m sorry to have to say this, no hands. So no prints.”
“Big guy?”
A message for me?
“They think it’s D.B.”
My voice sounded odd in my own ears. Calm. Composed, but removed, as if I were deep underwater and couldn’t quite make out what I’d just said. What it meant. It’s. D.B.?
I was fine. Aware of things: The snow. Slacking off. The flakes. Getting smaller. Fixing to change over to rain. Any minute. I had time to see those details because nothing was happening, and I was fine. A peculiar sensation was building up in my throat. Not fine. Tom took my hand in both of his. His hands were warm.
“Take a breath, Allie.”
The lock on my throat released, I could breathe. I could talk.
“I’m—fine, Tom. Otis? They think it’s D.B.?”
“Well, Valerio does, based on the description. And the circumstances. And we did believe the note last night was for you.”
“’The suspense is killing you?’” My voice sounded normal to me. A little puzzled. “But—”
“Yeah. Allie.”
Otis thought I was someone who could hear and talk. I exhaled and I was that person.
“So it’s a message like Kip was. For Tom? Only it’s for me this time.”
What Ruth said. He now comprehends how killing wounds the living.
“Yeah. Maybe. It kinda fits. Who knows what goes through that dude’s head? I’m sorry, Allie. They’ve tried your old—his home number. Phone turned off. Cell not picking up either. They’d prefer someone who would recognize him—Or not. And say for sure. Timing’s important.”
“Okay. I’ll go.”
Honestly? Yes. You bet I’d wished Duane Bradford Harper dead. On several of multiple occasions when he’d been the jerk I married by mistake and stuck with due to inertia, I’d casually entertained myself by dreaming up a few scenarios. I’d even threatened to kill him last summer when he hit me with a double dose of his unique brand of smarmy cruelty. But I’d never meant truly dead. Not irrevocably dead dead.
So now what?
So now I had to maybe identify the dead him. And say goodbye. Once and for all.
In the way terrible things work, this was beginning to feel expected. Inevitable. I could manage. We stood up. Found our coats. Followed Otis out to the garage, said goodbye to the guys, got in the car, and went.
Tom kept me close. Otis was a silent steady consolation in the driver’s seat. A glaze of cold rain, sheeting down the windows, melting the snow away to nothing, soaked the world in gray. I stared out and tried to describe to myself what I was feeling. Was this crushing weight inside of me sadness? Regret? Anger? Yes. On all counts. But Otis already nailed it.
This was bad.
I’d been to the ME’s office once before on a library-sponsored “Behind the Scenes” tour of ‘Cleveland’s Most Interesting Places.’” Back then, I was reading a lot of crime fiction, watching the CSIs, and imagining myself as a sassy amateur sleuth. I believed it would be cool to see it close-up. It was not. I fervently wished I’d picked “clean out monkey cages” or �
��ride a freighter up the Cuyahoga.” I’d planned never to go back there.
A person who didn’t know better from painful past experience might picture a Medical Examiner’s office as a dark, grim edifice. Hovering. Glowering. Whispering mortality. Hopping with ghosts. Not so much. In the cold light of March, the Office of the Medical Examiner could have been an ordinary office building, loaded up with folks in business casual.
I knew better.
The entry was disguised as bureaucratic and unremarkable. It smelled like an Egg McMuffin and a spritz of Pine-Sol. Luckily, we didn’t have to go very far inside. The location we were here for was right around the corner. I considered it a mercy that a person wouldn’t have to journey deep inside to make an identification and let his or her heart break. I didn’t think my heart would break, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I knew for sure.
A short wait and I was standing, an ice sculpture of myself, before a large window with a curtain over it. Tom and Otis had my back. Tom’s hands were on my shoulders. An attendant pulled the curtain open, and, smoothly, gently, but quickly—like ripping a Band-Aid off—uncovered the face and shoulders of the body on the table.
Big, tall, good-looking, and dead.
Tito Ricci.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Okay. Sure. Good.
Of course, I wanted D.B. to be alive. “Jerk” is not a capital offense. He and I had a small amount of history that wasn’t totally dismal. I’d remembered, on the interminable ride to the morgue, how much I’d liked his mom and dad. I hadn’t forgotten, either, the shock of believing he was dead.
D.B. Harper was no Tito Ricci. Between the two of them? No question I’d pick Tito to be the one on the slab. I’d longed for Tito to be out of our hair forever. ‘Shot center mass and gone” worked gangbusters for that. Tito, dead, was “Tito: Problem solved.”
The world was a far better place this morning with Tito Ricci not in it. Any one of the three of us, walking dazed back through the Pine-Sol of the M.E.’s entry, out into the now-driving rain, would have happily pulled the trigger on him. In a heartbeat. Even me, although I knew, from a past experience, Tom was a better shot, and Otis was for sure more accurate than Tom. We were all delighted he was gone.
However.
Maybe it was ungrateful of me, but I didn’t feel relieved.
In our new state of free-fall, we were finding no answers. No solutions. No peace of mind. No relief. Tito was brutal, merciless, and consumed by a mad desire to destroy Tom and me.
But he was the devil we knew.
Now what? Now who? I was pretty sure the Lone Ranger hadn’t shot Tito as a favor to Greater Cleveland. I already had a shooter in mind.
The scariest thing we weren’t talking about yet? A brand new devil was here. A killer by definition. My neck crawled with that certainty. Where was he at this moment, while we sat in the M.E.’s parking lot, listening to rain hammering the Escalade, sorting our options? What did he want? The rules had changed, but what was the new game? Even Margo would be disoriented by this abrupt conclusion to the T&A’s big new “Catch Fucking Tito” case. Tito was as caught as anyone ever could be, but nothing was solved.
Otis fired up the Escalade. I called D.B.
Somebody should have tried his stupid phone at least twice before dropping me into my forty-story elevator shaft of shock and disbelief. He picked right up.
D.B. sounded slightly disoriented himself. A little tipsy perhaps. In the background I could hear the murmur of upscale congeniality. Talk, laughter, and the chime of fine crystal. An undercurrent of cocktail jazz. All of which ticked me off. I’d been planning to tell him I was semi-glad to discover he wasn’t dead. The sentiment was fast reaching its use-by date.
“Where are you? Restaurant? Sounds like a party.”
My tone reeked disapproval. His response oozed arrogant self-satisfaction. Ms. Reeking. Mr. Oozing, Esquire. We were always such a great couple.
“Delighted you called, Allie,” he smirked. “I’m throwing a little brunch to christen my new digs. With all my friends and associates.”
New digs? Ex-spouse curiosity generates a powerful undertow, but I refused to be sucked under. “You’ve moved.”
“Yeah, the Shaker house—you know how it was. Too suburban-housewife for my current lifestyle. I need to be where the action is. More amenities and less home maintenance.”
As if you could pick a lawn mower out of a lineup.
Amazing. He’d run through my entire lifetime supply of grudging good will in a couple of sentences. Well aware of my silent wrath, he kept going. “Listen, Allie. I need to get back. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call? Maybe we can talk lat—”
I cut him off. “No, Duane. No need. No biggie. I was checking to make sure you’re alive. Since I got called to the M.E.’s office this morning to identify your body.”
Out-loud italics, mine.
“Wasn’t you.”
More’s the pity.
At least I didn’t say that one out loud. The man was my lowest common denominator.
His voice betrayed the jolt. “Allie. You’re joking. Right?”
“No, D.B. It was a case of mistaken identity. The guy looked sort of like you.”
Dead ringer. I crushed that thought like a bug. And sighed, I hoped regretfully.
“Unfortunately, somebody had chopped off his hands. So no prints.”
Lowest. Common. Denominator. The impulse to do damage was strong in me. If I’d stayed married to D.B. for another fifteen minutes, I’d have been unfit to live with a cat. And cats don’t need all that much.
“Well. Okay. We should probably talk.”
“No. D.B. We just talked. This was it.”
“Okay. Whatever.” He was rebounding. I could hear it. You need at least half a soul to make a human being.
“But hey. You should come up. And bring your blind person. And your—body guard person. The M.E.’s office is right around the corner from here. Where are you?”
Time to hang up. Quick but civil. “Uh. MLK. Almost to Euclid. Goodbye, D.B.”
Let’s try for ‘as long as we both shall live.’ Again. And make it stick this time.
“Well, tell you what, Allie. If you can’t stop by, just look up. We’re in the penthouse. At Atelier 24. ‘Where Life Meets Art!’ And hey, your friend Lisa Cole is here. She’s moving into a one-bedroom a couple of floors down. It’s a happening neighborhood.”
Oh, yeah right, D.B. Hopping with ghosts. Probably a sniper around here somewhere now too.
I glanced out the window. At ground level, construction, corralled by a chain-link fence, was a work in progress. But up higher, through raindrops congealing on our so-called sunroof, I could see a tall, blurry, gray tower. Lights scattered here and there. From the top it would offer a spectacular view of the lagoon, the museum, the entire circle. And beyond. Probably all the way to the lake. I bet D.B. could almost pick out my house from there.
Time for my parting shot.
“Enjoy your party, D.B. I’ll keep working on being glad it wasn’t you at the morgue.”
* * *
Tom and Otis knew from experience how to give me room for simmering down post-D.B. We traveled a couple of blocks in silence, while I wrestled with my bona fide horror and my petty fit of pique. It didn’t help my state of mind that our route home bordered on the park, the lagoon, the benches, and the crime scene tape—
A drumroll of gunfire. We all recoiled. My phone. Theme from Hawaii Five-O. Anthony Valerio. I hoped he hadn’t heard about his ringtone. In the driver’s seat Otis was shaking his head.
“What’s up, Officer Valerio?”
“What’s up is you got a call this morning, Allie. I got a call before the call you got. And one for what it’s turned out to be. So now I’m calling you—”
“Tito, not D.B. Shocker,
huh?”
“Yes. In a bad/good/tiny-bit-sorry way.” Tony would get that. He’d met D.B.
“Are you with Tom and Otis?”
“On the way home. Why? I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Hey, Tom. Otis. I—we need you guys. At the scene. Detective Wood is here. She called me. I’m calling you. Can you guys come?”
Otis hung a quick right.
“We’re already there.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Otis parked on East Boulevard. A cop was standing there to stop folks from doing that, but Officer Anthony Valerio was coming up the steps to meet us. It was colder than Wednesday night and raining lightly. As we walked down, I glanced through spindly, trembling branches to the path by the water. Another day, another tent.
The benches at the edge of the lagoon were stone—spaced well apart from each other along the arc of the shore. On Wednesday night, Kip was killed where the curve of the arc began, closer to the museum. This morning, Tito’s body had been found behind the bench at the other end of the curve. I couldn’t shake the symmetry. It felt arranged. Planned. A new message?
Not from Tito this time. That was for sure.
My vantage point extended across the water to the United Methodist Church, known affectionately to Clevelanders for nearly a hundred years as the “Holy Oil Can.” Its steeple was the shape of the beat up old can my dad kept on a shelf in our garage. The church’s bronze steeple, worn to a lovely verdigris, was modeled after Mont Saint Michel. In France. Dad’s oil can was a can.
The beauty was weighed down for me by a dispiriting watery mist spreading over the surface of the lagoon. Plus my agitated frame of mind. Kip Wade, who’d walked to meet his killer at the other end of the arc Wednesday night, would have seen none of this. Early this morning, when Tito Ricci sat on his stone bench waiting for whatever he’d been waiting for—the church would have been an Impressionist painting in falling snow.
I was 99.5 percent certain Tito’s murder was the work of Kip’s sniper. But why Tito? Why here? Again? Why would the sniper have lured Tito to the scene of the first attack to take him out? Why had Tito come? What had he been expecting? Besides not this.
The Devil's Own Game Page 11
