The last witness lm-2

by Joel Goldman

  "Yes, sir, Detective. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

  Harry turned to Mason. "Are you satisfied with that story?"

  "It'll do for now."

  "Good, 'cause it's bullshit and we both know it, but if you don't care, I don't care. At least we don't need anything else from Mr. Shanahan. Let's you and me go have a talk before your aunt makes us take turns walking into the door and knocking ourselves out."

  "Don't think for one second that I'm going to clean up that mess for you," Claire said as Mason closed the door behind him.

  Mason raised both hands in surrender, knowing better than to get in her way while she still had a head of steam going. Harry picked up the computer tower and peered inside.

  "The hard drive is gone. You back up your stuff?"

  "Not in the last six months."

  "How long you had this computer?"

  "Six months."

  "You're screwed."

  "Is that a professional opinion?"

  "Worth every cent of the tax dollars you paid for it. Who did it?"

  "Ed Fiora."

  "Why?"

  "He objected to me checking out his personal affairs."

  "Hacking? You couldn't hack yourself. That kid, Shanahan-he do the hacking for you?"

  "Yup."

  "Fiora probably has somebody who runs security for his computer systems, picked up the hacking, traced it back to your computer. Fiora values his privacy. So why does Shanahan give me that crap about running into his door?"

  "He's like all law-abiding citizens. He doesn't trust the cops and he thinks he's doing me a favor."

  "Why are you investigating Fiora?"

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Mason took two bottles of Budweiser out of his refrigerator and handed one to Harry. Claire gave him a long, threatening look, and he handed her the other bottle, then grabbed another one for himself. He threw his parka over his desk chair, sat down on the sofa, and put his feet up on the low table in front of it. Harry and Claire dumped their coats on top of his, and each took a chair at either end of the table. They raised their beers, Claire drinking the deepest.

  "Cullan's murder, Shirley Parker's murder, and the fire at the barbershop were all about one thing-Jack Cullan's secret files," Mason said. "I was looking for a link, something that would tie Fiora to the files and the murders, or at least the other suspects."

  "And who might the other suspects be? Assuming, of course, that we don't count your client." Harry asked.

  Mason tipped his bottle at Harry. "You assume correctly. His Honor the mayor is on the take. He made at least one sweetheart deal with Fiora that lined the pockets of his old wide receiver Donovan Jenkins. Jenkins paid the mayor back by refinancing his house. That deal may have actually been legal, but I think there's more. That's what Mickey was looking for."

  "Who else?"

  Mason hesitated, swirling the beer, concluding that he had only one client, not two. "Beth Harrell. She gets the Head Case of the Year award. On the outside, she's a superachiever public servant. On the inside, she's a bad girl who owned a. 38-caliber pistol she threw away after Cullan was killed because she thought it would look bad. Especially since Cullan was blackmailing her with dirty pictures."

  "Where'd Cullan get the pictures?"

  "She took them and gave them to her ex-husband before he was her ex. He sold them to Cullan."

  "What kind of a woman would do that?" Claire asked.

  "A severely messed-up one," Mason answered. "Beth claims she voted to give the license to the Dream Casino because it was the right thing to do. Then she got suspicious that Fiora had bribed the mayor. She was about to start an investigation when Cullan threatened her with the pictures."

  "What makes you think she's telling the truth?" Claire asked.

  Mason retrieved the envelope of pictures from an inside pocket in his parka. He dropped them on the table in front of Harry and Claire. "I've seen the pictures. Fiora gave them to me tonight. He was trying to convince me that he wasn't blackmailing Beth and that he had nothing to do with Cullan's or Shirley Parker's deaths."

  Harry reached for the envelope, but Claire snatched it and opened it first. "I am never surprised what we will do to get even with ourselves," she said before passing the photographs to Harry.

  Harry looked at the photographs without betraying any reaction. "Shirley Parker was killed with a. 38-caliber bullet, but it was fired from a different gun than the one that was used to kill Jack Cullan. It sure would have been nice to have a look at Beth Harrell's gun. Where does all this leave Ed Fiora?"

  "Fiora says he wasn't worried about Cullan's files because Cullan couldn't take Fiora down without taking himself down. That makes sense. Fiora wants his file before it winds up with someone he can't do business with. That also makes sense. He tried to hire me to find the file for him. That makes sense too. Killing Cullan and Shirley Parker doesn't make sense."

  "What about the mayor?" Claire asked.

  "Yeah," Mason said to Harry. "Did you ask the mayor if he had an alibi for the time of Cullan's murder?"

  "Sure. Right after we asked him for semen samples so we could clear up some open rape cases."

  Mason finished his beer in a final swallow. "All I've done in this case is chase my tail. I'm getting absolutely nowhere."

  "Maybe you're just digging up a lot of dirt but no killers because your client is guilty," Harry said.

  "Maybe. And maybe you and Zimmerman and the prosecuting attorney and the mayor are sweeping a lot of dirt under the rug because you want Blues to be guilty. It's obvious that the mayor was pressuring you to make a quick arrest."

  "Sure he wanted a quick arrest. He also wanted a conviction, not a botched case."

  "When did you first talk to the mayor about Cullan's murder?"

  "Right after we got to the murder scene. I called the chief and the chief called the mayor. The mayor told the chief he wanted to meet with me and Carl, which really frosted the chief."

  "Because that made the chief look like he wasn't running the investigation?" Claire asked.

  "Exactly. There's more politics in the police department than the Catholic Church," Harry said. "The mayor told me and Carl that he wanted daily reports on the case until the son of a bitch who killed his lawyer was found guilty."

  "So you've been on the phone with the mayor every day?" Mason asked.

  "Not me and not the mayor. My partner, Carl, is a better politician than me. The mayor told Carl to report to his chief of staff, Amy White. She told Carl he was on twenty-four hour call and his cell phone better be on all the time." Harry laughed. "She's driving Carl crazy."

  "There's one thing I don't get," Claire said. "Where did Cullan get all his dirt? I doubt that everyone was as stupid as Beth Harrell. Maybe whoever was supplying Cullan with information decided to go into business for himself-or herself-which meant putting Cullan out of business."

  Mason and Harry stared at Claire, slack jawed at her insight. Claire smiled, careful not to smile too much, and set her empty bottle on the table. "I love both of you, but sometimes you are thick as fence posts. Let's go home, Harry, before that beer drowns out what little spark I've got left."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Mickey walked into Mason's office as soon as Harry and Claire hit the street. "Hey, boss," he said before Mason cut him off with a raised hand.

  Claire had come at the case from a completely different angle than Mason or Harry. Both of them had made the mistake of focusing on the explanations that best suited their biases. Harry wanted it to be Blues. Mason wanted it to be someone Cullan was blackmailing. They both wanted it to be easy, and the truth was seldom that easy.

  Mason opened the doors to the dry-erase board, wiped out a week's worth of now meaningless notes, wrote Cullan's source for dirt in large red letters on the board, and sat in his desk chair. He rocked and swiveled, fingers steepled beneath his chin, then rubbed his temples and thumped his desk with the palms of his hands.


  Mickey tried again, "Lou, I've got-"

  "It'll have to wait. Have a seat."

  Mason shuffled through the papers on his desk until he found the initial police report on Cullan's murder. The dispatcher had recorded the call from Cullan's maid, Norma Hawkins, at 8:03 a.m. Mason remembered that the first cop on the scene had been a uniformed patrol officer. Mason scanned the report for his name, finding it at the bottom of the report. Officer James Toland had arrived at the scene at 8:10 a.m. Harry and Carl Zimmerman had arrived at 8:27 a.m.

  Mason was beginning to think that Toland was like the guy who showed up at every major sporting event wearing a rainbow wig and holding a sign that said John 3:16. Toland had been first on the murder scene; he'd been at the bar to arrest Blues; and he'd busted Mason in Pendergast's office just in time to prevent Mason from reading Cullan's files. Nobody had timing that good. Not without help.

  Mason called Rachel Firestone, tapping a pencil on his knee while the phone rang five times.

  "What?" Rachel said, her voice thick with sleep.

  "It's me, Lou."

  "Whoopee."

  "I need you to do something for me. It's important."

  "I hope it's important enough to die for because I'm going to kill you if it isn't."

  "I want you to check for any reports of a body found in Swope Park on Thursday evening any time in the three hours before the fire at the barbershop."

  "Of course. Then I'll run a check for Jimmy Hoffa when I'm done."

  "This is serious, Rachel."

  "This is the middle of the night. Call me tomorrow," she said, and hung up.

  Mason was jazzed. He had a hunch that felt so right it had to be wrong, and if he was right, it could still go down very wrong. He smacked his hands together.

  "Okay, Mickey. What have you got?"

  "This," Mickey said, holding up a thumb drive.

  "And that is?"

  "It's a thumb drive with a copy of the bank records of Ed Fiora and the mayor, plus a few dozen money-laundering stops in between that show a steady stream of cash from Fiora to the mayor. The total is around a hundred and fifty thousand bucks. It began a month before Fiora got his casino license and goes right up to last week. I backed the records up just before Fiora and his trolls did a tap dance on my face. I stuffed it down my pants when they busted in here."

  Mason jumped out of his chair, pulled Mickey up, and embraced him. "I love you, man!"

  "Don't go there, dude!" Mickey pushed Mason away and dusted himself off. "Now what?"

  "First of all, you're hired. Second of all, we work weekends. Tomorrow night, we're going to the Dream Casino."

  "We gamble on the job?"

  "Only for high stakes," Mason said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Mason was so wired when he got home that he had rowed a two-thousand-meter sprint just to wind down, adding a second sprint for good measure. By the time he took a shower, he was barely able to crawl into bed. The last thing he saw was his clock telling him it was four in the morning.

  He was sleeping the sleep of the comatose when his phone rang Saturday morning. He let it ring until the answering machine came on.

  "Pick up, Lou. The sun is up and you'd better be," Rachel said.

  Mason fumbled for the phone, trying to clear his throat while squinting at the clock. It was eight o'clock. "I'm here," he groaned.

  "Good. Paybacks are hell. Why do you want to know about a body in Swope Park?"

  "Can't tell you," he said, pulling himself up in bed before collapsing back against his pillows.

  "Why not?"

  "I may be wrong about something. If I am, no one needs to know. If I'm right, you'll get the story."

  "It had better be a good story. I talked to one of the dispatchers who's a friend of mine."

  "You mean an anonymous source who gets a turkey at Thanksgiving?"

  "I don't bribe people. The paper is too cheap. She's a kindred spirit."

  "A member of the lesbian underground?"

  "We're everywhere. She said there were no reports of a body being reported or found in Swope Park on Thursday night or any night for the last six months. What does that tell you?"

  "That you may get a hell of a story if I don't get killed."

  "Then, don't get killed. I need all the good stories I can get."

  "That's it? No Thanksgiving turkey?"

  "I'd miss you. How's that?"

  "Nice," he told her, and hung up.

  Mason rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. He tossed and turned with the uneasy confirmation of his suspicions. He gave up when Tuffy stuck her nose in his face, reminding him that she wasn't operating on his schedule. Her whimper said she was overdue for breakfast and her morning ablutions in the backyard.

  While Tuffy was outside, Mason took another shower, hoping that the pulsating hot water would trick his body into feeling fresh and renewed instead of tired and abused. After pulling on faded jeans, a washed-out green sweatshirt, and sneakers, he let the dog inside and poured himself into a chair at his kitchen table, wishing someone would appear and make his breakfast.

  Cooking was not one of Mason's skills. He wasn't the kind of man who could scour his pantry for a few disparate leftovers and whip up a tantalizing omelet while whistling classical music and puzzling over what wine works best with a bagel and cream cheese. He relied too heavily on fast food, once prompting Claire to warn him that one day he would drive through McDonald's and the cashier would greet him by asking, "The usual, Mr. Mason?"

  Tuffy was pacing around the kitchen, poking her head into nooks and crannies she'd explored countless times, before stopping in front of Mason and pawing his thigh. He gazed down at her, raising an eyebrow as if to ask, what now? She yelped once and trotted to the back door, repeating the ritual she observed whenever she wanted to go on a walk.

  "Why not?" Mason muttered. "Maybe we'll find some roadkill for breakfast."

  He put on his coat, grabbed a ball cap that he yanked low on his brow, and hooked Tuffy's collar to the leash he kept on a hook by the door.

  Mason hadn't paid attention to the day until Tuffy took him outside. The sun had blasted away the grim bedrock of slate-colored clouds that had covered the city like a fossil layer for weeks. The temperature had climbed into the forties but felt even warmer in comparison to recent days. The air was crisp and clear and hit him like a shot of adrenaline. The next thing he knew, he was jogging alongside Tuffy, his jacket unzipped and a thin sheen of sweat lining his forehead. He grinned at his dog, who grinned back before sprinting after a squirrel.

  Tuffy led Mason to Loose Park, the city's second-largest park, which was only a couple of blocks from his house. They stopped at the large pond along Wornall Road long enough for Tuffy to say hello to the other dogs that were walking their owners, Tuffy sniffing enough dog butts to last a lifetime. Mason was about to introduce himself to a good-looking woman with a white fur ball of a dog when Tuffy sniffed the dog once and knocked it on its butt. Horrified, the woman scooped up her dog, gave Mason the finger, and marched off in a huff.

  A few minutes later, Mason and Tuffy power walked past Beth Harrell's building. He craned his neck skyward, shielding his eyes from the sun, wondering which windows were hers and what she was doing behind her drawn shades. Tuffy wasn't interested in the answer and tugged him along the last few blocks to the Plaza.

  Mason tied her leash to a traffic sign outside Starbucks while he went inside for a blueberry muffin and a bottle of water. He shared both with Tuffy, pouring the water into a plastic bowl he borrowed from the cashier.

  On the way back, they stopped at the waterfall in front of the Intercontinental Hotel. The waterfall plunged two stories from the pool deck to street level. The fountain had been turned off for the winter, but a heavy layer of ice had built up during the storms of the previous weeks. The sun bore down on the irregular slags of ice, reflecting and refracting across their faults, forecasting the coming meltdown.

  From his va
ntage point, Mason could see west to the entrance to the hotel's parking garage on Ward Parkway. He could also see south, up Wornall Road, to Beth's building, which towered over the roof of the hotel. The juxtaposition of both views crystallized something that had lurked in the jumble of details that this case had become.

  He remembered Beth telling him that Cullan had taken her home after the incident at Blues on Broadway the night he was killed. She had said that Cullan had dropped her at the door and that she had stayed inside the rest of the night. Later, she had told Mason that she began using the hotel's parking garage to avoid the press, taking advantage of the walkway between the hotel and her apartment building so that she wouldn't be seen coming or going.

  Mason guessed that the security system in her apartment building included video monitoring of the apartment garage. Had Beth gone out again that night, or any night, her departure and return would have been recorded. If she'd used the hotel exit strategy, she could have left undetected.

  That scenario, Mason realized, would have left her on foot. He doubted that she would have called a cab to take her to Cullan's house and told the driver to wait outside while she murdered Cullan.

  Cullan lived in Sunset Hills, an exclusive area just south and west of the Plaza. The hills were real hills by Kansas City standards, making the round-trip walk from the hotel to Cullan's house a punishing one of several miles, though Beth could have hiked to Cullan's house, killed him, and walked back.

  Mason shook his head at the possibility. The night Cullan was murdered had been brutal, with a lacerating wind chill and hard-driven snow. Even a cold-blooded killer wouldn't have made that hike. Unless the killer was convinced that no one else would think she might have done exactly that.