The Guilty Dead

by P. J. Tracy

  CHAPTER

  71

  MAGOZZI AND GINO were hurrying down the hall toward the chief’s office when Rosalie’s call came in. They ducked into an interrogation room and Magozzi put the phone on speaker. “Ms. Norwood.”

  “Detective, you said a photo-journalist was injured on my parents’ property—how do you know?”

  They both frowned. She was out of breath, almost panting, and she was also whispering.

  “We found his blood and … well, to be blunt, a piece of his scalp by the pool deck. He was hit hard.”

  “And his body was found in William O’Brien State Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe whoever killed my father killed him?”

  “That’s the working theory. Are you at the hotel, Ms. Norwood? We could stop by and chat with you ‒”

  “No! I’m at the Zeller house and something’s wrong. Horribly wrong.”

  “Take a deep breath and tell us.”

  “Father’s computer is here.” The words tumbled out of her mouth in a breathy rush. “And there’s blood in the trunk of Uncle Robert’s Town Car. It got on my purse and my dress and I have proof his car was at my parents’ house yesterday morning and my house key is on the fob … Oh, God, I don’t what I’m saying, I don’t know what to do, but I think he killed him and that’s crazy.”

  Gino and Magozzi bolted out of the interrogation room and started running toward the parking garage. “Rosalie, did you talk to anybody about this?”

  “No. But Uncle Robert caught me looking in the trunk. I told him I’d lost an earring, but I don’t think he believed me. He keeps coming to check on me.”

  “We’re on our way, Ms. Norwood. Can you do something for us?”

  “Yes.” Her voice came out as a squeak.

  “I want you to tell everybody that Detective Rolseth and I are on our way right now with news. Tell them Gus Riskin is in custody and we think he killed your father. Can you do that?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Is there still blood on your luggage and dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need those two things and your father’s computer, too. Can you keep them safe?”

  “I hid it all in a cupboard.”

  “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  * * *

  “Jesus Christ,” Gino hissed, weaving through traffic and sailing through a yellow light. “This whole thing is blowing up and we don’t dare move on it until we have it so tight the sun will never get through. I hope to hell Rosalie Norwood’s evidence is good.”

  “It could make this case, Gino.”

  He grunted. “So what are we going to do when we get there? Zeller already knows something’s up and he’ll probably have his dogs turn us into fish food and throw us in the lake.”

  “I’m a little more worried about Rosalie right now. If Zeller did kill his best friend, I don’t think he’d have a problem offing the daughter if he thinks she knows something. He’s got a lot to lose.”

  “He’ll buy what you told Rosalie to say. No way somebody as arrogant as Zeller thinks he could be outsmarted by two dimwit cops.”

  * * *

  Rosalie couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop shaking as she watched Uncle Robert walking toward the house. She felt like she was trapped in a bad dream, the kind where you were paralyzed, helpless to do anything but watch the nightmare unfold, except she wasn’t going to wake up from this nightmare. He was coming to get her. And now she had to perform as if her life depended on it because maybe it did.

  “Uncle Robert!” she shouted, through the screen door of the veranda.

  He looked up, startled. “Rosalie, we’re really starting to worry about you. Is everything all right?”

  “I’m on my way down right now. I have some good news.”

  As she made her way to the gazebo, she felt a sudden disconnect between mind and spirit and body, a complete break from reality. Maybe this was how Louise felt all the time, like a hollow shell of flesh putting one foot in front of the other, unaware of anything but the simple act of walking.

  “Rosalie, where have you been?” her mother admonished, when she heard her approach, then faltered: “What’s wrong, dear?”

  “I just talked to the detectives. They’re on their way here. Gus Riskin is in custody and they believe he killed Father.”

  Her mother looked like she was going to faint. Uncle Robert looked relieved. “Finally some closure, some peace for us all. Justice will be served. Conrad, will you go to the gatehouse and meet the detectives?”

  “Yes, sir.” He gave the dogs a silent command with his hand and they followed him obediently, tongues lolling against the heat.

  “Where is Louise?” Robert asked.

  Rosalie couldn’t look at him. “She’s not feeling well. I’ll go check on her.”

  “No, sit and eat something. I’ll look in on her.”

  “I have to send some documents to the office anyhow,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt. “There’s been an ongoing issue with the distribution center in Denver and things are coming to a head.” Another lie on top of so many. She wondered if she’d ever be able to recognize the truth again.

  “Can’t you just sit for a minute and have some lunch with me?” her mother asked peevishly.

  “This really can’t wait. We’re in damage-control mode right now and the Denver office is closing in an hour. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  * * *

  Louise was still asleep ‒ or passed out, she wasn’t sure which ‒ when she crept into her Moroccan guest room and unearthed the two computers from the closet. Even with a racing heart and trembling, sweat-slick hands, it didn’t take more than a few minutes to transfer files from Louise’s and her father’s computers onto a flash drive. For good measure, she uploaded them onto her own computer and sent those to two of her email addresses.

  “Rosalie, you came back,” Louise said groggily. “Come, sit with me.”

  She put the computers back in the closet and sat down next to Louise, brushed her hair off her forehead. “Just for a minute. The detectives investigating Father’s murder are coming and I have to meet them.”

  She nodded in resignation. “I heard you speaking with them.”

  Rosalie’s throat closed, trying to remember what her end of the conversation sounded like. Not good and half hysterical, that much she knew.

  “Just bits and pieces, though. I was drifting in and out. Did you think about what I should do?”

  “I think you should rest some more.”

  “No, I mean about Robert.”

  “Louise, I don’t think he’s having an affair.” It might be so much worse than that.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about anymore.”

  She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  Her eyes wandered the room and finally settled on some faraway point. “This is all my fault. I understand that now. I could have saved her. I could have saved us all. And if I had, none of this would be happening now.”

  “Saved who?”

  “I used to love taking walks in the woods when we visited you in Aspen. It was so beautiful, so peaceful, especially in the evenings and at night. The smell of pine, the sound of the river. I always thought it sounded like it was chuckling, but not on that night.”

  Rosalie realized that Louise wasn’t in the present anymore. She was just a time traveler now, entering her strange world of delusions rooted somewhere in the past, and Rosalie wondered if she would ever come back this time.

  “It was awful. All I could hear were moans and I found her, that poor pretty thing, beaten so badly. It was horrible.” Louise covered her mouth. A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek. “But she was still alive when I left her.”

  Rosalie grabbed her hands. “Louise, what are you talking about?”

  “I was terrified. I ran away, back to your house, and I told Robert and Gregory to call an ambulan
ce, call the police. But they never did, they just disappeared. For hours.”

  Rosalie felt something inside her drain away, something she understood, on a very elemental level, would never be recovered. “Are you talking about Clara Riskin?”

  She nodded. “She was pregnant, you know. You could have had a niece or nephew. But I guess nobody wanted that, except Trey and Clara.”

  CHAPTER

  72

  GINO PULLED UP to the Zellers’ open gate where Conrad was waiting with his panting dogs. “What did I tell you, Leo? Fish food.” He rolled down his window. “Hi, Conrad. Your dogs look like they could use a refreshment. I know I sure could.”

  Conrad kept his composure but he was terse. “Park in the motorcourt. Everyone is down at the gazebo.”

  “Motorcourt,” Gino scoffed, as he sped up the driveway. “I can’t wait to see that prick fry.”

  “Actually, he’s been pretty tolerant of your abuse.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s still a killer in my book and so is his boss.” Gino slammed the car into park beside the ridiculous fountain and behind the Town Car. “The warrant to impound that thing better come in soon before Zeller decides to get rid of it. So what’s our plan in the meantime?”

  “We’re going to lie our asses off and keep Zeller cool, convince him that Riskin is our man. Then we get Rosalie the hell out of here along with her evidence.”

  As they got out of the car, the front door of the house swung open and Rosalie Norwood stepped out, or at least what was left of her. Right now nothing about her resembled the vibrant young woman he and Gino had met yesterday. There was nobody home behind those devastated eyes, as if her soul had simply taken flight from the ugliness that had descended on her life. Her posture was slumped and her voice a dead monotone when she spoke.

  “I did what you said, Detectives. They’re waiting for you down at the gazebo.”

  Magozzi approached her and offered his hand. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Norwood.”

  She took his hand and walked unsteadily down the front steps, then reached into the pocket of her dress and withdrew a flash drive. “There are two files on this you need to see. I made extra copies just in case. One is a letter my father wrote to Uncle … to Robert.” She dropped the familial designation. “I haven’t had a chance to read it and I don’t know if I want to, but I think it might explain some things.”

  “And the other file?”

  “Data from a GPS tracker Louise Zeller put on the Town Car that places it at my parents’ house yesterday morning. And at William O’Brien after that. My bag and dress are upstairs and so are both computers.” She let out an anguished sigh. “Louise told me something else, too.”

  “When we’re finished, we’ll take you home and we can talk. You can’t stay here.”

  “I can’t wait to leave.” She looked down and tangled her fingers together. “What’s going to happen now? Will you arrest him?”

  “First we have to put together our case and we have to be very careful. When we pull the evidence you give us together with ours, we’ll bring him in for questioning, and things will probably move pretty quickly after that. But, for now, it’s just like we told you. Gus Riskin is in custody and he’s our only suspect. Will you come down to the gazebo with us?”

  “It would seem suspicious if I didn’t, but it’s going to be the longest walk of my life.”

  “You can do this.”

  She nodded, straightened her shoulders, and Magozzi saw a little of the old Rosalie return, which said a lot about her endurance and resilience.

  The terraced stone walk down to the gazebo on Lake Minnetonka was very different from the rugged, moss-covered path down to the dock on Magozzi’s little lake, and he wouldn’t have traded places for anything. Robert Zeller and Betty Norwood watched their progress anxiously from a large, gray-shingled gazebo. As they closed in, Zeller stood and shook their hands. “Thank you for coming, Detectives. I understand there’s been a break in Gregory’s case and August Riskin is in custody.” He passed them each a bottle of water from a sweating silver bucket filled with ice.

  “Yes, sir.” Magozzi let that hang, hoping to annoy him right off the bat, but it didn’t have the desired effect. Good lawyers and successful politicians were better actors.

  “I commend you both on making such fast work of this. Rosalie said you believe he killed Gregory.”

  “We do.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “Not yet, but we’re confident he will. Our evidence is pretty damning.”

  “So this will all be over soon?” Betty asked. “We’ll be able to lay Gregory and Trey to rest?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Zeller touched her shoulder. “Gregory will finally have justice. Do you have any idea why Riskin would do such a thing?”

  “He’s a pretty unbalanced individual, Mr. Zeller,” Gino said. “Delusional, actually. He blames Trey Norwood for his sister’s death and, by extension, Mr. Norwood.”

  Magozzi caught a barely perceptible shift in Zeller’s expression. Just a tiny tic, nothing more. He hadn’t liked hearing that. “My God, he is unbalanced. So it was some warped form of revenge.”

  “Something like that.”

  A gunshot suddenly shattered the breathless summer air and Gino and Magozzi started running toward the terrible sound while Rosalie screamed, “LOUISE!”

  CHAPTER

  73

  GINO AND MAGOZZI stood in the shade of a big maple tree, watching the coroner’s hearse pull away with Louise Zeller’s body. Another stately home despoiled by violent death, cops and squad cars, another family destroyed, all against the backdrop of a city in shock. Her suicide wasn’t their case, and the locals had taken over, but it had probably been an indirect result of it.

  “This is so goddamn sad, Leo. This whole mess started with a suspected suicide and ended with a real one, and it’s going to get way worse once the lid blows off this thing. The Norwoods are never going to get over it.” He kicked at a landscaping stone that had migrated to the lawn.

  Magozzi thought about that. He wasn’t sure Betty would, but he knew Rosalie would find a way to survive. She already was. Right now she was waiting for them at her house with a police escort, ready to answer their questions and probably ask a lot of her own.

  After Zeller, Betty Norwood and Conrad had spoken with the police, a squad took them to the Chatham Hotel to mourn another life. He’d seen nothing but shock and devastation in their faces, scarcely an acknowledgment that they were being displaced by another crime scene and the accompanying horror. But Gino was right: it was going to get worse. They just didn’t know it yet.

  A wrecker pulled into the motorcourt. The warrant had finally gone through on the Town Car and it was here to collect it. Magozzi directed the driver, Gino signed the paperwork, and they watched as another nail in Zeller’s coffin was lifted onto the flatbed trailer and disappeared down the idyllic, tree-lined drive. Getting to the end of a homicide was usually an uplifting moment, and this should have been one, but the case had too many dark, ugly, tragic shadows that would never be dispelled, not even by justice.

  “Come on, Gino, let’s go pull the final pieces together.”

  While Gino drove to Rosalie’s house, Magozzi uploaded the files from the flashdrive Rosalie had given them, then opened GOODBYE OLD FRIEND, Gregory Norwood’s final epistle to his killer.

  Robert,

  You have been my dearest and most loyal friend for over four decades, my rock and stalwart companion, and no words can express my gratitude for everything you’ve done and been for me.

  I’m writing to you not just as a friend but as a man who has very little time left on this earth. A death sentence engenders deep introspection and reflection on the life you have lived. What have I accomplished? What is my legacy? How will I be remembered?

  Imminent death also forces us to recognize our subjugation under a power beyond our control, whether that be mortality itself or a higher being. It also und
erscores the arrogance of man for disregarding it. In my case, I dismissed the existence of Heaven and Hell and worshipped position and money and appearances above morality, above life itself.

  I have never spoken of this or written it down until now, but you and I committed a most heinous, unforgivable act on that night in Aspen. What made us think that it was remotely justifiable? What made us believe we had the right? We became abominations that night, and I have endured some punishment, through crippling guilt, the loss of Trey, and perhaps even through cancer, but it is not nearly enough to make up for that grievous sin. She was just a young girl carrying a precious life, and it was our moral duty to save her and save her baby, Trey’s baby, yet we did not.

  And we destroyed and ultimately ended another life that night by transferring our sin, as if our own lives were worth so much more than Richard Kuehn’s; worth so much more than Clara’s and her unborn child’s. You and I and Conrad deserve Hell, and if there is one (of which I’m still not entirely certain), we will all meet again. But justice should not have to wait for afterlife.

  After much careful deliberation, I realize I can no longer shoulder this vile burden. I have considered taking my own life many times over the years, and especially now, but I realize that such an act would only bring more suffering and pain to my family than they have already endured. And the situation with August Riskin has made me realize our wicked secret is no longer safe. And why are we looking for him but to silence him? I cannot be party to the taking of another human life.

  Robert, the truth will eventually prevail no matter what actions we take, and I believe the only way for me to preserve even a shred of honor is to atone for what I’ve done and beg for forgiveness and mercy before I die. That is the only act by which my family might actually find some solace amid their horror and disgrace, as infinitesimal as that solace might be. Please consider what I’ve said and ask yourself if it is worse to live with shame or die with it. As a man of religious conviction, I’m certain you have your own perspective. We will discuss this further. And if something happens to me before we do, goodbye, old friend.

  Yours always,