“Stay back,” he says. “Let me make another call.”
He dials Powell and tells her to move the crew to East Iris once they get to PetroGo. He’s on Sixteenth heading south, now, almost at Thomas. Mills reminds the congressman’s wife that he’s only moments away.
“He’s getting out of his car,” she tells him. “I’m so pissed I want to run him over.”
“Not a good idea, ma’am. Please, just park your car. Wait.”
“Where’s he going?” she mutters, perhaps to Mills, perhaps to herself. “He’s crossing the street and walking over to . . . what’s that place? A school? A daycare center? Why—”
That rings a very specific bell. “Did you say daycare center?” Mills asks.
“Yes,” the woman replies. “Why the fuck, if you’ll excuse my language, would he be dropping by a daycare—Oh, my God!”
“What?”
“If he has a child with another woman somewhere, I swear you’ll be arresting me tonight.”
He crosses Thomas. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Mrs. Torento. We don’t know what’s going on. He could be in danger,” he reminds her. “In which case he’s going to need you to be as calm and rational as possible.”
She’s bawling now. Sobs are flooding Mills’s ears. “He’s going into the house,” she says.
“Do not get out of your car.”
“What should I do?”
“Just wait for me. I’m seconds away. I promise.”
“I need to know what’s going on in there,” she barks.
“I’m telling you, do not approach that house.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, no. He’s in. The door’s closed,” she narrates in panic. And then a pivot, as if her voice is suddenly a slamming door, and she says, “What the hell’s been going on behind my back?”
Mills thinks this would be a lot easier, actually, if it were just a mistress and a baby. He can’t rule anything out. “Calm and rational. That’s all I ask,” he tells her. “And please don’t budge from your car.”
He’s almost at Iris. It pops into view on his GPS.
38
It’s early yet for sunset. The sky morphs from blue to gold but will stave off twilight for a while; it’s a protracted dusk that Mills has always found in his favor—more light to expose the truth, that sort of thing. He sees Powell’s car parked half a block down from the daycare center. In front of her is a white Volvo SUV. He pulls beside it, looks in, and recognizes the congressman’s wife. “Mrs. Torento, I’m parking ahead of you now,” he tells her after they’ve mutually lowered their windows. “Thank you for staying put.”
“We’re never going to make it to the fucking ball,” she says, as if that’s the easiest consequence she can contemplate. The swing from fear to anger to panic has apparently left the woman dazed.
“My team will go to the house and investigate,” he says. “I’ll need you to remain in your car.”
Mills parks, checks his file, and pulls out his notes about this neighborhood. He and Powell had interviewed a woman named Lee Leighton at this address but found nothing significant.
Preston rounds the corner, and Mills waves him forward, farther down the street. Mills follows on foot, gathering his squad along the way. “It’s reasonable to assume Torento is the fourth of four men to be lured to this area for the same reason,” Mills says as they convene. “It’s reasonable to assume he’s in danger. But if true to pattern, his killer needs to get him out of here first. They’d have to make a trip to a cemetery. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Myers appears last, his tires squealing as they hit the curb.
“Is that the right address?” he asks, pointing to the daycare center down the street.
“Yes,” Mills replies.
“Is it a real daycare center?”
“I don’t know. But if anyone spots a child, guns down. You hear me?”
Nods all around.
Mills instructs Preston and Myers to knock on the front door. “Just tell her you’re looking for the congressman. Judge her temperament. Get inside. But remember, if this woman’s done something wrong, she might have accomplices in there with her.”
“The first thing we ask is if she’s alone in the house,” Morty says. “Whether or not she tells the truth is another story.”
“Whatever you say, you have to get in that house. Powell and I will take the back,” Mills instructs. “If no one answers the front door, then we have a situation.”
They’re about four houses away. Preston and Myers go first. Mills and Powell watch as the men cross the yard and make their way to the door. They knock, and no one answers. They knock and wait. Again, nothing. As Mills and Powell approach from the side, the men continue to knock. Finally, the door opens, ajar at first. Mills can hear a woman’s voice, a pleasant voice, but he can barely see her profile. She opens the door wider, lets the cops enter, and then the door closes firmly—as if she slammed it. There’s a high fence blocking access to the side yard. Powell scales the fence first. Mills goes over right after her. The landing isn’t perfect, but he’s still on his feet. They stay low and scamper to the backyard. They crouch at the far corner of the house, where the side and the back meet. There’s no sign of life. A light breeze pushes three empty swings as if the ghosts of children are haunting them. No happy shrill of toddlers plummeting down the slide, the whole play set abandoned. They round the corner and peer in through a back window. The room is dark, but a room toward the front of the house has light. A woman shouts. Mills can hear her roar, but he can’t hear what she’s saying.
“That our daycare owner?” Powell asks.
“I think so,” Mills says. “But I don’t think she’s yelling at the children.”
They inspect the back door. It leads from the patio into the kitchen. Powell says it’s an easy lock to disengage. Mills nods. Inside, the woman continues to shriek, her warnings coming in waves, rising and falling, as if there’s danger, and then there’s not. Powell works the door. This feels as if it’s taking half a century, but it’s actually less than two minutes before Powell cracks the lock and they’re in. The first words Mills can hear are, “I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me.” As stealthy as scorpions, they quietly follow the woman’s voice to a wall dividing the kitchen from the front room, Mills indicating with his hand for Powell to stay behind him. He takes a deep breath, listens to himself fully exhale. Then he gingerly puts a foot across the threshold and turns into the room, his gun drawn and aimed at Lee Leighton. Leighton is armed, as well. With a nod, she very simply acknowledges Mills, never pivoting from Al Torento, whom she has at gunpoint. The barrel of the woman’s gun against his head, the congressman sits in a patio chair, slumped like a rag doll. But Leighton is surrounded. Like Mills, Preston and Myers have their Glocks pointing at her, too.
“She opened the door politely and led us in here,” Myers explains. “Then she pulled the gun. So we pulled ours.”
“No need to explain, Morty,” Mills says as he carefully sidesteps the jagged pieces of a broken lamp.
A coffee table lies on its back, its legs up in surrender. A pair of potted plants are victims of a skirmish, as well. “Looks like there’s been a struggle here,” Mills says to the daycare owner. “I hope it wasn’t the children.” He now notices the handcuff latching one of Torento’s wrists to the chair.
“It wasn’t,” the woman says.
“Is she alone in the house?” Mills asks the others.
“As far as we can tell,” Preston says. “There appears to be no accomplices on premises.”
The woman looks at Mills and says, “I’ll tell you what I told your partners here. Put your guns down or I shoot the congressman.”
Mills regards her gently, his eyes softening. “We don’t want him dead,” he tells her. “Whatever your grudge is with him, or the others for that matter, we don’t want him dead.”
“Why?” she asks. “Because he’s such an esteemed statesman who’s done so much for th
is country?”
Mills says, “No, that’s not why. He’s not and he hasn’t.”
“Now just a minute,” Torento protests. He’s red-faced. His hair looks more strawberry than it does in pictures.
Leighton smacks his head, then waves the gun. “I could kill all of you. I should kill everyone in this house.”
She’s wearing a T-shirt that exposes her thick, muscular arms. Mills notices the tattoo on her neck. It’s a butterfly. “You fire that gun, lady, or even point it at us one more time, and you’re the one who will be dead. You understand?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Suicide by police?” Mills asks. “Not going to happen. I had you for braver than that.”
She juts her chin. The muscles in her neck tighten. “You don’t think it’s brave to march these men to their deaths, huh? To lure them here, to make them comply with my demands? You should see how these powerful men become groveling little puppies once a gun is at their backs. It’s almost hilarious. Davis Klink wet his pants. And I made him sit in it until it got dark enough to go to the cemetery.”
“You lured two of the men to this house, and the others to elsewhere in the neighborhood,” Mills observes. “Why?”
“Didn’t want to establish a pattern,” Leighton replies. “Plus, a Maserati on my street? No way. I told Barry to meet me at the PetroGo. That was our usual spot.”
Without taking his gaze off the woman, Mills tells Preston to call in to the commander to request backup and a negotiator. Preston withdraws a few feet, his gun still fixed on Leighton. Mills can hear him murmuring into the phone, calm but firm, not changing the tenor of the room. And then Mills says, “I’d sure like to resolve this peacefully before we have a SWAT team out here. Could you answer some questions?”
“What questions?” Leighton asks.
“Is this all about money, Lee?” he asks plainly, casually, as if this is an interview, not an interrogation. “Some kind of blackmail?”
She brandishes her gun. “No!” she thunders. “Why don’t you understand that? All the boys seemed to understand that.” With her free hand she knocks the congressman in the head. “Right, Alan? Tell him, Alan.”
Torento shakes his head, says nothing. She knocks his head again. “The congressman’s a baby boy. A baby boy who needs a diaper,” she teases. And then, waving the gun again to punctuate her thoughts, she says, “This is not about revenge. This is about justice. And they all knew it. They all knew it when I forced them to their graves. They all knew it when they dug the holes. And now finally everyone will know it. I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”
He looks at her dark hair and says, “So, I guess you’re not a blond.”
“I wear a wig when it suits me.”
“Not that we’d get a DNA match anyway,” Mills says, looking back at the squad. That’s when he hears a door open and a quick rush of traffic from outside. Then footsteps.
“What the fuck is going on here?” It’s the congressman’s wife. She steps into the room.
“Who’s she?” Leighton asks.
“I’m his wife. Who are you?”
“I’m his killer,” Leighton says with a puff of her chest. She’s a proud murderer. Valiant. She bends down and speaks in her hostage’s ear. “Do you want to tell them, Al, or do you want me to do the honors?”
The room is getting warm. The shades are drawn. They’re standing in a feebly lit airless box. The smell in here suggests the congressman freaked out and either shat his pants or came very close.
“Your esteemed congressman killed my best friend twenty-five years ago today,” Leighton announces.
Torento’s wife shrieks. “What?”
Mills warns her to stay back behind Myers and Preston.
“And the esteemed doctor and the esteemed CEO and that slimy travel agent helped bury her body,” Leighton continues, her eyes pooling. “They’ve kept me quiet all these years. They threatened me. They controlled me. They’ve kept track of my every move. But no more. They took Kimberly’s life. And they ruined mine. After twenty-five years, I’m done being tormented. They can’t hurt me anymore if they’re dead. And I don’t care what happens to me. If I sit on death row, it’ll be freedom.”
“No!” the congressman’s wife cries. “No, no, no. This . . . can’t be.”
“Ma’am, I need you to put the gun down,” Mills warns Leighton.
“You’ll have to shoot me first,” she tells him.
He shakes his head. “No way. If what you’re saying is true, then I need you alive. I need you alive if we want to put the congressman away for life.”
Of course Mills has no idea if this woman has any deed to the truth or even a tether to reality, for that matter, but there’s a discovery in Mills’s gut, and it’s tingling and rising, not unlike a Gus Parker epiphany, and in fact, Gus’s visions are beginning to coalesce into a case with far greater implications than anyone would have guessed. His gun still aimed at Leighton, Mills takes a few steps closer to the congressman.
“Mr. Torento?” he asks with a mocking wide-eyed stare. “What can you tell us about this?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Is this perhaps the reason you never returned my calls?” Mills persists.
“No comment,” the man says. “Get me out of here.” He looks plastic but defeated. Perfect hair, smooth skin, perfect teeth. A good, strong chin that could probably still support a spring break smile. But he’s not smiling. His head is down.
“You’re in no position to give orders,” Mills tells him.
“I have proof of their crimes,” Leighton says. “Proof of what they did. I had a camera. The pictures aren’t great, but I remember everything. They made me watch them bury her. It was by the ocean but far from Cancun. I’m sure of it. I’ve been studying the maps for years.”
Jennifer Torento makes a choking noise and whispers, “Oh, my God.” She then pushes past the detectives and into the room, standing there, a lone warrior in the line of fire. “So, this is why you insist on going to Mexico every year, Alan?” she asks him frantically. “To confront your guilt? Wash it out to sea? Or, what, to make sure no one’s dug up that girl?”
“Or, more likely, to make sure erosion hasn’t exposed parts of her body,” Leighton says.
Jennifer, indifferent to Leighton’s weapon, lunges at her husband, grabbing him by the collar. “You’re responsible for the disappearance of Kimberly Harrington?” she asks. “It was you?” Then she slaps him, and the sound reverberates.
“Ma’am, I need you to step back from your husband,” Mills warns her. “You need to wait outside.”
“Yes, it was him and his spring break buddies,” Leighton answers.
“If you had proof of their crimes,” Mills asks her, “why didn’t you go to the police?”
She lets out an acidic laugh. “If only it were that easy. They’ve been watching over me like a hawk. My every move. My every step. I get reminders almost every week of what will come to me if I ever go to the police. For twenty-five years!”
“Jesus Christ, Al!” Jennifer cries. “What did you do to this woman?”
Again, no comment from Your Pal Al.
“So, this isn’t extortion?” Mills asks his suspect. “You didn’t do this for the money?”
She looks at him astonished. “Money?”
“We know Davis Klink brought you a large sum of cash,” Mills tells the suspect.
She laughs again. “Yeah. It’s in a bag in another room,” she says. “I just used the money to lure him here. Said I was finally going to go to the cops if he didn’t bring me half a million dollars. I don’t care about the money. I wanted to punish Davis and the others. He just happened to be the money guy.”
“So how did you lure the others here?” Mills asks.
“Barry supplied me with good drugs whenever I wanted. All I had to do was call,” she explains. “But he argued with me that night, and I told him if he didn’t meet me with a full vial of Vicod
in, I was ready to fess up everything and report them all to the police. And that dumb Joey had a stupid crush on one of the single moms who leaves her kid with me. So, I arranged for them to meet at the Taqueria over on Sixteenth for a ‘blind date,’ but when he got there I showed up instead. I told him she chickened out. Then I got in his Mercedes, and the next thing he knew he was trapped. I thought that was clever. Don’t you?”
“What about the congressman?”
“Told him to double my allowance,” she replies. “Told him to deliver it immediately or I’d not only go to the police; I’d go to the press, as well. Tonight! And look, to my surprise, we’re all here! No need to call the police. No need to call the press ’cause I think this will all make headlines by morning.”
Mills looks at the congressman and says, “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Al. Did you not pay attention to the murders of your old friends? Certainly you must have known you were on Ms. Leighton’s list of targets.”
Torento says nothing.
Leighton scoffs and says, “He knew.”
“Did you?” Mills asks the congressman.
Again, nothing from Your Pal Al.
“He knew,” Leighton insists. “He came tonight to stop me, to put an end to it, once and for all.”
“How so?” Mills asks.
“He brought a gun,” she replies. “I disarmed him. I’ve been practicing. I put it in the other room. I suppose it’s evidence.”
Mills inches closer. “So, Lee, what will it take to get you to put your weapon down?”
She twists the gun against Torento’s skull. “Arrest the esteemed congressman for murder.”
“I can’t do that,” he tells her. “I may want to, but I can’t. It’s not my jurisdiction. But I can call the FBI and have them stop by to hear your story. How about if I do that now?”
The woman looks around the room, considering her options, then tilts her head from one option to another. “Do it,” the woman orders. “Call whomever you need to.”
Mills turns to Preston. “Get on the phone with the field office. Let ’em know what’s going on. Invite them to swing by if they’re interested.”
Dig Your Grave Page 39
