Skull Session

by Daniel Hecht

  It was also Thursday, December 15th: If there was a cyclical pattern to the violence, something could happen at any time. An aspect of the situation he had neglected to mention to Lia and Paul.

  He sat at his desk and opened a series of file folders, went down the checklist he'd assembled for each lead.

  Rizal. It made sense that Rizal might help out his old buddy Royce by smashing up Highwood in the aunt's absence, and by trying to discourage Paul from finishing the job so that she'd stay out and lose possession. But was he the killer? Was there really a killer? Rizal had the means and the opportunity, but what was the motive? Something to do with the Philippine connection? Some kind of psychotic revenge on healthy teenagers because his own kid was crippled? It didn't sit right. Anyway, looking into a State Police trooper was a sensitive task. You could make enemies even feeling it out. If you had a history with the organization like Mo's, you couldn't count on a lot of favors from your fellow cops or your superiors. Maybe go straight to Inspection in Albany. But there again, Mo's own dubious reputation would precede him. And all he had was a case so tenuous it hadn't even gotten local approval for a homicide investigation.

  Falcone. Mo called the gym in Danbury, asked for Salvatore Falcone.

  Just a moment, please, I'll get him. Mo hung up. So Falcone hadn't bolted.

  Then he called Sam Lombardino at his North Salem dry cleaning business.

  "This is Mo Ford. Sorry to bother you again, but I've got one more question about Salli Falcone. He's got two assaults on record. You told me about one, where you picked him up. Know anything about the other?"

  "Ah shit," Lombardino said, as if he wished he didn't have to talk about it. "I know a httle. It's bullshit. He beat up on somebody in a store in Manhattan."

  "Yeah? What was he doing down there?"

  "Bullshit, like I said. The D.A. there tried to make out it was part of something else, not just Salli's temper. Falcone broke this guy's arms, Falcone's Italian, so the D.A. down there wants to say it's organized crime. Says there's evidence Salli's been hired to hurt people by a large Italian family wholesale grocery business. Maybe it's just because I'm a Guinea myself, but I couldn't see it that way. Anyway, the D.A. never got anywhere with that angle—rail Salli got was simple assault, no conspiracy. No weapons involved."

  "Pretend I'm a Guinea too," Mo said flatly. "What do you really think?"

  "Hey, court said it was simple assault, that's what it was." Lombardino paused. "Of course, it could also be Salli was looking for work, tried it once, was too stupid to avoid getting caught. So afterward he's not a good candidate for full-time permanent work. He's been a pretty good boy ever since."

  Mo thanked Lombardino and got off. So maybe Falcone had some connection with organized crime in Manhattan. Terrific. There were a thousand possibilities there. Just what kind of "groceries" did this family business wholesale? Might Royce, with his import/export business, tie in—some Far East commodities needing a distribution network in Manhattan? A Royce-Falcone connection. Why not?

  Mo set the file aside. He'd stew on that one for a while too.

  Which brought him to Royce. Grisbach had called back late Tuesday night while Mo was tossing and turning in bed, reliving his conversation with Lia in excruciating clarity.

  "I've got some shit for you," Grisbach wheezed.

  "Terrific. I need all the shit I can get."

  "The companies look legit and more or less in the black. Nothing jumps out—your guy makes lots of bucks, owns big percentages of his companies, has a big portfolio in other firms, very diverse. He has high-roller spending habits that haven't changed in the last two years. Doesn't mean he doesn't need money, but he doesn't act hke he's hurting."

  "Real estate?"

  Grisbach coughed right into the phone, a wet, rich, bubbling cough.

  "Residential property in Westchester County, apartments in Manhattan and Amsterdam. Nothing overtly suspicious."

  "Debts?"

  "Some. More than he should have, probably. In other words, just another rich guy, not that different from a hundred others I've looked at. Which means he's about eighty-five percent legit, fifteen percent bent. Guy like this is always hungry for more, Ford. Don't waste your time looking for a specific reason he might be hungrier than usual. He wouldn't need one."

  "Okay. What about travel?"

  "He gets around. Flies Lufthansa and SwissAir once in a while, or goes on company planes. He's been in and out of the US twice this year that I can track. Came over from Amsterdam, commercial flight, July twentieth, spent the night in New York, then went on to San Diego.

  Spent early August in New York again, left to Amsterdam on August tenth."

  "Great." Mo jotted notes.

  "Left the country, New York to London to Amsterdam, on December fourth. He's still over there. Lufthansa has Royce Hoffmann listed as a passenger, Amsterdam to New York, on December sixteenth, evening arrival. Tomorrow night."

  Royce had told Paul he'd be out of the country for longer. A deliberate lie or just a change of plans? How convenient that he was returning just at the end of Vivien Hoffmann's absence from High wood, just about when the continuous occupancy clause would be triggered if she didn't move back in. Just when another cycle was due. And how interesting that one of Royce's prior visits coincided with the destruction of Richard Mason and the disappearance of Essie Howrigan. Too many coincidences.

  But why would Royce need to be on hand for the fun? Rizal, or another hired man, could go up to the lodge whether Royce was in the US or in Timbuktu. Unless, as Lia had said, there was something in the house that Royce wanted to find—something only he could recognize, or something he didn't want Rizal to know about. With friends like Rizal, you didn't need enemies.

  He was getting close, but not close enough. He'd stew over Royce a little longer too.

  On Friday morning, Mo sat in his car, smoothing the real estate map of Briar Estates on the seat beside him. The winding road of the development began about a mile and a half from Highwood, at the western end of the reservoir. It was one of the neighborhoods recently carved out of the thick woods, with large new houses in a Tudor style, straining at ostentation but showing signs of budget-consciousness. Faux upscale. At the far end of the development he came to several incomplete houses, big balloons of plywood in mud lots, with grading equipment parked here and there. Innumerable smaller roads branched off the main artery and disappeared into the woods, driveways for houses not yet started. At the farthest uphill point, the road made a loop back on itself. Mo parked and looked at the woods. If he guessed correctly, this would be the closest point to the lodge, about a mile.

  Mo found what looked like a path at the bottom ofa dry ravine and began walking up. It had turned cold, with a buffeting, erratic wind that drove down the collar of his coat. The dead leaves on the old oaks shivered, making a noise like rattlesnakes.

  Several times he chose forks that petered out, but after a while he caught a glimpse of shingled siding above him, and soon the lodge materialized among the trees. It was a longer walk than going up the driveway, but not as steep. A good route for anyone who had business up there they'd rather nobody knew about.

  He lifted the knocker, dropped it several times. Paul opened the door.

  "I'm sorry you had to walk up," Paul said. "It just occurred to me that I should go down and open the gate for you."

  "Actually, I came up through the woods," Mo said. "I wanted to see how someone could get up here unnoticed. Anyway, I needed the exercise."

  Paul did look different, Mo decided. Older, leaner. Stripped down, as if he'd been up late a lot recently, looking straight at some tough stuff. And yet he also seemed more alert, sharper. There was an intensity about him now, almost like Lia's.

  "On the phone you sounded like you had something urgent to discuss," Paul said. "I take it you've had good hunting." Without asking, he handed Mo a cup of black coffee.

  Mo sat in one of the wingback chairs, glad for the heat in t
he room, the scalding cup in his hands. "I had good hunting, yeah, although I don't know if I got answers or just came up with more questions. But yes, I think it could be urgent."

  "How so?"

  "I've got a feeling maybe this is coming to a head in the next couple of days."

  Paul nodded thoughtfully. "Why do you think so?"

  "Number one, I was able to track your cousin. He went to Europe, all right, not long after you saw him. But he's not staying over there—he's due back from Amsterdam tonight. He was lying to you. How safe do you think your aunt is? She should be warned."

  Mo got up to pace. "Number two, something I don't know if I've mentioned to you, I think there's a cycle with the missing kids thing. Every forty-four days. Periodicity is a typical feature of serial violence. So I charted the intervals. If I did it right, we're due for another round sometime very soon—as soon as, well, today, tomorrow. I wasn't sure, but just in the last few days there's been some, uh, other corroboration ofa cycle."

  Paul smiled, a sour sort of grin. "What kind of corroboration?"

  He told Paul about the dismemberment of Priscilla Zeichner on the railroad tracks, only a few miles away, which nailed down the third cycle, November 2nd. Again Paul took it in stride, nodding thoughtfully.

  "Most people would get a little nervous hearing something like that," Mo said. "Let me ask you something, Paul. What's your stake in this? Why do you care what happened here? Why do you stick it out?"

  Paul drew a slow breath, a guy with a lot on his mind. "This'll sound old-fashioned, but I guess it's that I need to understand. I'd have preferred not to get involved, but I did, so.. . . Anyway, you can't spend your life running from everything that looks scary." He chuckled unhappily. "Christ, I'm sounding like my father. The other thing here is, this is my family. I'd like to know about who my people are, why they . . . did the things they did. Maybe it'll help me figure out who I am. A long story."

  Mo nodded, letting him go on as needed. After another moment Paul looked at him sharply. "And why are you so involved in this, Mo?"

  "Me? It's my job. I get paid for it."

  "The hell it is. You've been basically told hands off by your supervisor. Not that I disagree with anything you've said, but your whole theory is based on very little hard evidence, some pretty tenuous theories. I get the feeling it's more than a job for you."

  "It shows, huh?" Mo had to laugh. "Maybe so. I'm pissed off. I think whoever did this, whoever offed the kids, should get paid back. I hate the thought of that prick Rizal getting away with anything. But mainly—like you said, this is old-fashioned too—mainly I guess I want to 'do good.' Not that I always know what 'good' is. But at the very least it has something to do with preventing other people from getting hurt."

  "I guess we've got several things in common, then," Paul said. "Besides falling for the same woman. We both want to understand. And to do good." The way he said the two words put quotation marks around them, as if to point out how fickle and subjective such ideas were. Paul looked at Mo with a disarming directness, and Mo felt that they'd each confided something important to each other. Mo liked him a great deal.

  Mo found the skull earring in his hands again, and for the first time looked at it closely. It was dirty with the skin-oil residue of an often-worn piece, but was well sculpted, probably expensive. "Where'd you get this?" he asked.

  "Out in the rubble. The big room. I don't know why I brought it in here. Just a curiosity, I guess."

  "Unusual, don't you think?"

  Paul shrugged. "My aunt is a person of peculiar tastes. Why?"

  It was Mo's turn to shrug. No real reason. He made himself put it back down, focus on business. "So I did some work on the whereabouts of Erik Hoffmann III." He told Paul what he'd learned from Dr. Gunderson. "After he disappeared, the State Police did a missing persons investigation, considering him an adult at risk, but he never showed up. This was five, six years ago."

  Paul just grunted, almost as if he'd been expecting to hear it. "So how do you think he ties in?" Paul asked. It was interesting, Mo thought, that Paul was doing the interviewing here. It was as if he had some overview, were fitting pieces into his own construction.

  "I don't think he does," Mo said. "Not directly."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I went to look up the trust. You were right—the Hoffmann Trust consisted of Royce and Erik III. But it reverted to Royce because Erik was declared legally dead earlier this year. On June twentieth, to be exact."

  "Legally dead?"

  "Happens fairly often. Husband disappears while out sailing, wife wants to collect life insurance, company won't pay unless they see a corpse, wife files for legal declaration of death. There's a time factor. In New York State you have to wait five years before the court will declare a missing person dead."

  "Which means he could be dead, or might not be."

  "I'd say so, except that my guess is that he disappeared because his brother killed him, or had him killed. The way I see it, like you said, that's why your aunt transferred Erik III so many times—to keep Royce from locating him. But Royce succeeds in finding him, offs him, waits five years for the legal declaration of death, this June twentieth. First thing he does when the trust passes exclusively to him is fuck up this house, that's on around June twenty-second or twenty-thir4- His mother knows he's going to try something like that, gets scared, runs away to California." To Mo's frustration, Paul didn't react, just kept staring thoughtfully into the distance. "Personally, that's what I think we're dealing with here. But it looks to me like maybe you're not so sure."

  "I've got a few problems with the scenario, yes. One, you talk about cycles of violence. But that's emotional violence, resulting from rhythms in the psychological or neurological states of the perpetrator. At the same time, you're trying to pin this whole thing on a deliberate, thought-out, long-term plot by Royce—instrumental violence." The inconsistency was so obvious that Mo felt stupid. Completely inconsistent psychological profiles. Some of the air went out of his theory. Suddenly depressed, he poured himself another cup of coffee, swished it through his teeth as if he could suck some immediate stimulus out of it.

  "Okay," he said. "I don't have all the answers. But let me tell you one other little piece of research I did. I wanted to know when your aunt left here, exactly when, right? So I called the Roy ale Hotel in San Francisco, said I was your aunt's accountant. Told the clerk I needed her date of arrival at the hotel so I could put some numbers together for tax purposes. She checked in on June twenty-fourth, Paul, which not only ties in with the declaration of death but which also means she's got exactly one week to resume residence here. And don't think Royce doesn't know it—if I could get the date that easily, so could he. And the hotel records provide all the paperwork he'd need to prove she was gone."

  No reaction. It was hard to tell if Paul was even listening.

  "So let me tell you where I went with it," Mo went on, beginning to feel desperate. "I came here wanting to ask your help. See, I've got several problems here. Not only figuring out who did what, but how you catch and convict a guy like Royce. He's rich, I've got little or no concrete evidence against him, he's no doubt got a lot of pull. Or Rizal—how do I go about accusing a police officer? Plus, my investigation is pretty unofficial. How do I apprehend these guys?"

  "I can see that would be tricky, yes."

  "But the plan I have might help us there. Assume for a moment I'm right and Royce wants this place, or the money he could get for it. And he's not sleeping nights because his plan is maybe not going to happen because his cousin Paul has come out of nowhere to be a monkey wrench in the works. He's invested a lot in keeping his mother out of here. The deadline's coming up. What's he got to do?"

  "He's got to mess the place up again. And he doesn't have much time. So what are you proposing?"

  It was time for the hard sell. Mo laid it all out: how Paul and he would joindy approach Vivien, soonest, Saturday, tell her they knew what was going
on, make clear the extent of the risk to her if she tried to return. Tell her that opening the place up for a forensic investigation would be a way to protect her. If she still refuses, Paul and Mo go to Barrett, insist there's evidence that crimes have been committed at the lodge. Paul as a relative, as a person intimate with the current condition of the house. And Paul goes with Mo to Inspection in Albany, about Rizal. Barrett agrees to throw it open for investigation, Inspection goes after Rizal, Rizal and Royce are frozen out of it, maybe the investigation turns up something to pin them with.

  But the distant look had come over Paul again.

  "I'm not sure, Mo," Paul said at last. "My situation is complicated too. This is my family. My aunt insisted I preserve her privacy, and I agreed. Plus, I've got some problems with my ex-wife, some child-custody shit coming up—I have to finish this job so I can get the rest of the money my aunt owes me. If you're wrong, it'll cost me."

  "Cost you? Hey, if what I'm saying is right, and these guys are willing to kill people if they need to, why shouldn't they just take you out too? In fact, that's an important part of what we need to tell my supervisor—that a major crime is likely to be committed unless some action is taken."

  Paul then shook his head minutely. "I can't decide right this minute, Mo."

  "You can't wait forever, either. Royce and Pdzal've only got a few days. You can bet they're not going to wait."

  "Give me until tomorrow morning. I'll make up my mind by then." Mo was frustrated, but it was better than nothing. They agreed that Mo would meet Paul at the lodge at ten in the morning, and they'd take it from there. Mo inspected the skull earring again, then put it down, wondering why it bothered him. He swigged the last of his coffee. Paul offered to drive him back to his car, but Mo declined, wanting one more look at the path to Briar Estates.

  He walked down the hill, learning the path backward. The wind was still picking up and some heavier clouds were coming in. Mo moved in and out of the shadow of boulders, the tangle of fallen trees and tented vines. He slid on some loose rock and wished again he'd thought to wear the appropriate shoes. Something strange was working inside Paul, for sure. But he was a good guy—hopefully as often tomorrow they'd start breaking this thing open.