Allison (A Kane Novel)

by Steve Gannon

  “Brent lied to Mike to get that tip. Then he followed up on information I had received off the record, information I had promised to keep quiet about.”

  “So if you promised to keep quiet, why did you tell Mike?” asked Lauren.

  “I didn’t mean to. Actually, he sort of figured things out himself.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  I hesitated, more irritated with myself than anyone else for what had happened. “The problem goes deeper than Mike and Brent,” I said. “It goes back to the day you hired me. The only reason you gave me an intern position here was because of my dad, right? You figured I could provide an inside track on the Jordan French story, and I wanted the job so bad I didn’t see the obvious. From the very beginning, you’ve been using me to get to my father. That’s the sole justification for my being here at CBS. Tell me I’m wrong, Lauren.”

  Lauren shook her head. “No, you’re not wrong,” she said. “Of course I hired you because of your father. Anyone in my position would have done the same.”

  “I knew it,” I said numbly. “I just didn’t want to admit it, even to myself.”

  “But that’s not the only reason I hired you,” Lauren went on. “I meant it when I said you reminded me of myself at your age. You’re smart, poised, determined, and you know what you want and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Don’t let this thing with Brent throw you. I may have initially hired you because of your father, but you’ve more than proved yourself since. You’re good, Ali. Actually, you’re better than good—you’re a natural. Plus you look great on-camera, and the public loves you. More important, they trust you. Hell, you’re the hero who pulled a drowning kid from the ocean.”

  “Oh, I’m a real hero, all right,” I said bitterly, thinking of the questionable things I had done over the past months. If Brent had been consumed with furthering his own career, what about me?

  “Don’t be so tough on yourself, Ali. Let me do that,” Lauren continued lightly. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but after the French case winds down, Brent is getting bumped up to the Washington bureau. I’ve heard hints from New York that they’re considering grooming you to take over his spot here.”

  “Let me guess what they’ll have me doing: Tagging after my father and covering his next juicy murder investigation?”

  “Ali, I understand your disappointment at the way things have turned out,” Lauren sighed. “And unless I miss my guess, you’re also in hot water with your dad,” she added sympathetically. “Believe me, I know that’s no picnic. But you’ll have to get past this. There’s too much at stake not to. Are you going to be all right?”

  I thought carefully, deciding that Lauren deserved an honest reply. Despite all that had happened over the past months, I had grown to respect the bureau chief. Even more surprising, I had grown to like her. True, Lauren had used me, but never once had she lied.

  At last I answered. “I don’t know,” I said. “As you told me earlier, I have some thinking to do.”

  *

  Upon returning to the interview room, Kane found Mr. Artz rocked back in his chair—legs crossed, left foot twitching like a cat’s tail. Mrs. French was impatiently tapping a cigarette into the ashtray. Kane waited until the detective he had left with Mrs. French and her attorney exited the room, then sat directly across from Mrs. French. Leaning forward, he folded his hands on the table.

  “Listen, Mrs. French, I’m still trying to understand what happened,” Kane said without preamble, easing into the next phase of his interrogation. “To do that, I want to talk more about your daughter. Not how she died, but what she was like when she was alive. Help me get to know her. How did she get along with other kids, what were her hobbies, did she listen to music, things like that. For instance, do you remember the day she was born?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. French answered.

  “That was probably one of the happiest moments of your life, wasn’t it?”

  Mrs. French nodded, seeming surprised by the question. “Do you have children?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Three,” said Kane. “We had four. My oldest son died several years ago,” he added. “I know what it means to lose a child, Beth. I know how it feels to have your hopes and dreams snuffed out in a single stroke. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. No matter how it went down with Jordan, I sympathize with you. I truly do.”

  Mrs. French visibly relaxed, seeming to view Kane in a new light. And for the next thirty minutes, under his questioning, she spoke of Jordan’s early years—telling of her second birthday party, her decision to be a movie star after seeing herself in a home video, her first television commercial when she was three, the German shepherd puppy they had bought for her when she turned five.

  “Did you see any of yourself in her?” Kane asked.

  “A bit,” Mrs. French admitted. “I suppose all parents see a little of themselves in their children.”

  “Sometimes more than they want,” Kane replied, thinking of his ornery, self-reliant daughter. “Did you consider yourself a good mother?”

  “I did the best I could.”

  Deciding to change tactics once more, Kane remained silent for a long moment, letting the tension build. Finally he sat back in his chair and sighed. “I’ll tell you something, Beth,” he said, deliberately using her first name. “I have a gift. At least sometimes it’s a gift. At other times it can be a curse, but there’s nothing I can do about it. My gift, or whatever you want to call it, is this: I can spend a few minutes with anyone, and I mean anyone, and tell what sort of person he or she is. I can also tell when someone is lying, or at least holding something back. After spending the morning with you, I know you’re not a bad person. The problem is, I’m having trouble believing the story you’re telling me.”

  Mrs. French’s eyes lost their warmth. “Oh?”

  “It’s little things—things that don’t add up,” Kane said, deciding the time had come to lay his cards on the table. At that point he had nothing to lose. If he were ever going to get Mrs. French to talk, that time was now. “For instance, if Jordan were forcibly abducted from her bedroom, why didn’t you or your husband hear anything?” he asked. “I know your husband said she had taken cold medicine that made her drowsy, explaining why she didn’t struggle and make a lot of noise. At autopsy, no indication of any such medication showed up in the toxicology screening. Plus, according to the detectives who were first on the scene, Jordan’s room didn’t look right. Everything was neat as a pin—no mud on the windowsill from where the intruder supposedly entered, no signs of a struggle. And when we examined the sheets on Jordan’s bed, do you know what we found? Nothing. Not even one hair. The only way that could have happened is if the sheets were washed after your daughter vanished. According to your maid, you canceled her regular cleaning day on Friday, and she didn’t return until the following Wednesday. So who washed the sheets? Can you help me with that, Beth?”

  Mrs. French said nothing.

  “Another thing,” Kane pushed on. “We still haven’t come up with anyone who spoke with Jordan on the day before you reported her missing. We examined her telephone record. Zip. Oh, she had messages from friends … all of them unanswered. We went through her address book and asked everyone whether they’d talked to her on Friday. Again, nothing. So here’s a kid who normally yaks on the phone for hours, and suddenly she’s not even returning calls. We also checked to see who contacted the studio on the morning she didn’t go to work. You made that call, Beth.”

  “I told you, she was sick.”

  “Yes, that’s what you told me,” said Kane. “Unfortunately, the coroner doesn’t concur with that either. He found no evidence that Jordan was suffering from the flu or anything else. Which brings me to my next question. It seems Jordan wasn’t too sick to eat, because an analysis of her gastric contents showed that she had consumed a meal no more than four hours before she died. Here’s the puzzling part: Her last meal was the same one sh
e ordered at her birthday party on Thursday night. Seafood capellini. That was thirty-six hours before you reported her missing. Do you have an explanation for that?”

  Mrs. French paled. “She … she must have eaten leftovers,” she answered, lighting another cigarette.

  “I thought of that, so I talked with the waiter who served you at The Ivy,” said Kane. “He’ll swear in court that no one in your family took home leftovers that night,” he added, lying.

  “He’s wrong.”

  “I don’t think so. Another thing. We know that the words on the ransom note were cut from a back issue of Elle Décor, a magazine that you subscribe to, Beth.”

  “So do a lot of people.”

  “But the rest of them haven’t had a daughter who was murdered,” Kane pointed out. “And I’ll tell you something else. I’ll bet if I were to visit your house right now, I wouldn’t find that back issue of Elle Décor, the one used to compose the note. The rest would be there, but not that one.”

  A frown darkened Mr. Artz’s face. “As you don’t have a search warrant, Detective,” he said, “that’s mere speculation.”

  “Speculation?” Kane reached behind him. After pulling down one of the forensic photos taped to the wall, he slid the grisly photograph across the table. Mrs. French’s face froze as she looked at the picture, a shot of her daughter’s nude, water-bloated body. “Well, while I’m speculating, Mr. Artz, I’ll tell your client what I think happened to Jordan,” Kane went on, speaking to the attorney but keeping his eyes on Mrs. French. “The daughter she loved. It’s not a pretty tale, but feel free to tell me if I’m right.”

  “You’re the one doing the talking,” Mr. Artz observed dryly.

  Kane tapped the picture. “This is the child you gave birth to, Beth. This is the baby girl you loved. I know you loved her because I can see it in your eyes. But as she grew up, things changed, didn’t they?”

  Mrs. French looked away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure you do. I’m talking about your husband and your daughter. The autopsy showed what had been going on.”

  “Jordan’s doctor said there could have been any number of reasons for that. He said—”

  “I admit there could be other explanations for what the coroner found,” Kane interrupted. “There could be other explanations besides chronic sexual abuse. But we both know the real reason, don’t we, Beth? It must have been difficult for you. You had to have known, or at least to have suspected. Or maybe you just didn’t want to face it. Is that it? Was it that you didn’t want to know?”

  Mrs. French didn’t respond.

  “How did it feel to have your husband go to her room at night, instead of being with you?” Kane asked softly. “It must have hurt you deeply. Every time he went to her, it reminded you of your own failure, didn’t it? He loved her more than you. It must have broken your heart to be jealous of your own daughter.”

  Still Mrs. French said nothing.

  “Did you listen?” Kane asked. “I know you did. You couldn’t help it, could you? You crept down the stairs and stood outside her door, listening to what they were doing on the other side. Did you let it go on until it felt like something had to give, something had to blow?”

  Mrs. French stared at the picture, tears now starting in her eyes.

  “That night something went wrong,” Kane continued. “Your husband was drunk. There was an argument. Jordan wouldn’t do what he wanted, so he lost his temper and beat her with a belt. Or perhaps it was you. You’d had enough. You confronted them and attacked your daughter in a fit of jealous rage. Jordan fought back. Maybe she threatened to go to the police, causing a scandal and ruining her career, a career you had worked so hard to build. In the scuffle you hit her—”

  “No! I never …”

  Kane shook his head. “I don’t think that’s how it happened, either. It was your husband, wasn’t it? It was Crawford.”

  Silence.

  Kane pressed ahead. “While your husband was beating Jordan, she accidentally hit her head on the stairs, a dresser, whatever. After things cooled down, she went to bed. The next morning you found her dead.”

  Hand quavering, Mrs. French raised her cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “Her injury was worse than you’d thought,” Kane went on. “She’d suffered a concussion. Sometime during the night while she was sleeping, she must have fallen unconscious. Hours later she died. It was an accident, but you couldn’t call the police because of the bruises and strap marks. Worse, she had been sexually abused for years, something you knew the authorities would discover if there were an autopsy. After you got over the shock, you and your husband took the only way out. Jordan was dead and there was nothing you could do to bring her back. You had to make the best of things and go on, so you staged an abduction and got rid of the body. Am I close, Beth?”

  Again, Mrs. French didn’t answer.

  “You had to wait till dark to dispose of the corpse,” Kane reasoned. “You contacted the studio and said she was sick, canceled the maid’s day, and helped your husband wash Jordan’s body and wrap it in plastic garbage bags. Then, when Crawford went to work as if nothing had happened, you spent the rest of the day cleaning Jordan’s room. That night you and your husband staged a breakin, concocted a phony ransom note, and one or both of you drove her to the reservoir. We even know how you were able to get the car down to the water.” Reaching behind him once more, Kane grabbed the extra padlock he had discovered. “All that was left then was to wait till morning and report her missing,” he added, placing the lock on the table. “That must have been the longest night of your life, Beth.”

  A sheen of sweat glistened on Mrs. French’s face. She lifted her head to look at Kane. And in that fleeting instant when their eyes met and Kane saw the depth of her anguish, he knew he had hit upon the truth. Until then he hadn’t been certain. Now he was.

  “It had to have been an accident,” Kane continued, offering her the “out”—the point during any well-planned interrogation at which a suspect could confess while rationalizing his or her actions. “And it wasn’t you who caused it. You gave birth to Jordan. What mother would hurt her own child? It was your husband, Jordan’s stepfather, and even then it must have been an accident. It’s the only explanation that fits.”

  Mrs. French’s hand rose to her mouth, stifling a sob.

  “Come on, Beth. Say it. Get it over with.”

  Mrs. French lowered her head, tears now running her mascara. “My baby’s the only one I ever really loved,” she whispered, her words barely audible. “She’s the only one who ever really mattered. She’ll forgive me when I see her again. I believe that with all my heart. She’ll forgive me.”

  “Forgive you for what, Beth? Tell me.”

  “I think this flight of fancy has gone on long enough, Detective,” Mr. Artz interrupted. “Unless you have any further direct questions, this interview is over.”

  Kane ignored him. “Killing a child is a terrible burden, Beth,” he said gently. “You can’t carry it alone. It has to come out. You can’t go through the rest of your life with this secret. It will destroy you. It will destroy you, and your husband, and anything you ever hope to make of the rest of your days. Jordan is gone and things will never be right unless you tell what happened. This is a chance for you to do the right thing. It’ll just take a second, and then it’ll be over and you can start making amends. Tell me what happened.”

  Mrs. French raised her head, indecision written on her face. But as she began to speak, Mr. Artz pushed away from the table. “My client has nothing more to say,” he snapped. “This meeting is over.”

  Mrs. French hesitated … and the moment passed. Struggling to compose herself, she opened her purse and withdrew a mirror, making an attempt to repair her ruined makeup. Then, still clearly shaken, she stood, stubbing out her final cigarette in the ashtray.

  Kane reached into his pocket and withdrew a plastic evidence bag and a pair of latex gloves. “I’m s
orry that’s the way you want it, Mrs. French,” he said, pulling on the gloves. “For the record, though, what brand of cigarette have you been smoking?”

  “Parliament,” Mrs. French answered wearily.

  Kane lifted the ashtray and dumped its contents into the evidence bag. “I intend to submit this for DNA analysis,” he explained, sealing the bag. “I’m establishing that you were the only one in the room smoking, and that all butts in this ashtray are yours.”

  “DNA evidence? To be compared with what?” scoffed Mr. Artz. “As I recall, no trace evidence of any kind was found on Jordan’s body or at the crime scene. This is simply another feeble attempt to intimidate my client. You’re fishing here, Detective. As I said, this interview is over. Good day.”

  “Good day to you, Jason,” Kane replied. “Oh, one thing I neglected to tell your client. You’re right about no trace evidence being found on the body, as it was submerged in water for so long. None showed up in Jordan’s bedroom, either. Nor did we find saliva on the ransom-note envelope or the stamp. We did, however, find cells on the adhesive side of the self-stick stamp, something we didn’t tell the media. Whoever sent the note was careful not to leave fingerprints or saliva, but they touched the sticky side of the stamp and left some cells there. We’ve done DNA testing. Now we’re simply waiting to come up with a match. Unless I miss my guess, we just did.”

  Mrs. French stared. “You can get DNA from someone just touching a stamp … ?”

  Kane nodded. “Just like we can from a cigarette butt.”

  “In the unlikely event that you do come up with a match, we’ll contest it in court,” said Mr. Artz calmly. “My client handled the envelope when she received it in the mail. Her DNA got on it at that time. In any case, juries are notorious for dismissing this type of evidence, what with cross-contamination, false positives, and sloppy handling techniques. As you know, the latter is something for which the LAPD has become famous. Or should I say infamous.”

  Kane scowled, aware that the issues raised by Mr. Artz were a weak link in the chain of evidence, assuming the case ever got to trial. Kane also knew what Mr. Artz was referring to with his snide remark about the department—recalling a high-profile celebrity murder trial years back that had been lost, at least in part, by LAPD investigators’ questionable procurement and handling of DNA samples. It was a debacle that had given the department a lasting black eye, and a situation no one wanted repeated.