Hades w-4

by Russell Andrews

"Immediately. Well, I don't know how long I stood there. I mean, I couldn't believe what had happened, what I saw, but I don't think it was more than a few seconds. And I didn't call the station, I called 911."

  "Did you ask for an ambulance?"

  Bannister looked startled at the question. "No. The police. I said there'd been a murder."

  "Did you check Evan to see if he was alive?"

  The same flash of confusion-Justin thought that this time it might have been embarrassment-crossed Bannister's face. "No," he said quietly. "I… He was dead. He was clearly dead. My god, it was so horrible. I couldn't bring myself to touch him, to get close. I just couldn't."

  "I understand," Justin said. "What did you do until Officer Jenkins arrived?"

  "Nothing. I came downstairs… I couldn't stay in that room… and I just sat. I felt dizzy-I may have even passed out for a few moments."

  "You didn't move around the house?"

  "No. I just sat on the couch."

  "Were you planning on going back to the city tonight?"

  "No. I was going to stay here."

  "In the house?"

  "Yes." He glared over at the ever more inebriated widow. "I stayed here sometimes when she was… out. I don't know what I'm going to do now."

  "I'd appreciate it if you'd stick around until tomorrow morning, in case we have some other questions."

  "But I can't stay here."

  "No. Officer Jenkins'll find you a hotel in East End Harbor. I don't think it's a good idea for you to drive tonight anyway."

  "Yes. I mean no. I mean, yes, I'll stay and, no, I don't want to drive back."

  "An ambulance should be here soon. So will another officer who works with me. And I'm going to get a crime scene unit over here as quickly as I can get one. As soon as the officer arrives, Officer Jenkins will get you settled. I'd appreciate it if you'd come to the station by nine tomorrow morning so we can see if there's anything else you might be able to help us with. It's possible that the media'll get hold of this story very quickly. They'll probably want to talk to you. I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to them. At least not yet."

  Bannister nodded. He'd used up whatever strength he'd regained and looked ready to slump over again. Justin stepped over to Abby, touched her lightly on the elbow, quietly said, "Let's go. I'll get you settled, too." But before he could steer her to the door, Gary Jenkins cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable.

  "Um," the young officer said, "could I just talk to you for a second, Chief?"

  The two men walked over to the foyer and Justin waited for whatever Gary had to say, but the younger cop just looked more and more on edge. Justin finally had to say, "What is it?" and Gary turned a slight shade of red.

  "I'm trying to learn, you know? Learn what to do, I mean. Although, Christ, I hope I never have to deal with anything like this again."

  "What do you want to know?" Justin asked.

  Gary lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. "Taking Mrs. Harmon upstairs… to see the body… couldn't that have waited? Until he'd been cleaned up, I mean. Did she have to see him like that?"

  Justin scratched under his chin, felt the stubble that had grown back since he'd last shaved. "No," he said. "She didn't have to see him like that. It could have waited."

  Still speaking just a shade above a whisper, Gary said, "Then… Jesus… why'd you make her do it?"

  "Because I needed to see how she'd react."

  "You think she killed him?"

  "No. But she might've. So I wanted to watch her when she saw the body, see if she was calm or surprised or sickened."

  The two men faced each other. Gary nodded his understanding. Justin turned to return to the living room, but Gary reached out and grabbed his arm.

  "It was kind of a cruel thing to do, what you did." It wasn't a statement, more like half a question. The younger cop knew the answer but wanted to hear it said.

  "I thought it was necessary," Justin told him.

  "And you like her, don't you? I mean, you-you know…"

  "Yes, I know. And, yes, I like her. I like her very much."

  Gary didn't say anything else, but Justin knew he wasn't quite through. There was still another question hanging in the air and Justin decided to deal with it before it could even be asked.

  "You want to know what I think my job is?" Justin asked. "And your job? What a cop's job is?"

  Gary didn't even nod this time, but his eyes answered yes.

  "It's to find out what happened," Justin said. "That's all. Everything else after that-justice, lack of justice, punishment, revenge, everything else-all depends on us doing our job, finding out what happened, finding out the truth. Without that there's nothing."

  "But-"

  "There's no but. There's only the truth."

  "And once we know the truth?"

  "Then we're on our own. Then it's every man for himself."

  "I understand."

  "Do you?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Then you want to ask the question you really want to ask?"

  "What's that?"

  "If I could do something that cruel to someone I like, what could I do to someone I don't care about? Is that your real question?"

  "Yeah. More or less."

  "You want me to answer it?"

  "No," Gary said. "I don't think so."

  "Good," Justin said. "Make sure that skinny little creep gets put to bed and get him to the station by nine tomorrow."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'll see you in the morning," Justin said.

  And with nothing else to say, he took Abigail Harmon out to his car and drove her back to his house. As he made his way around the circular driveway, he saw her peering out the window at a black Lexus.

  "Evan's car?" he asked. When she nodded he said, "His only one?" And she nodded again.

  He didn't say anything else to her during the ride, let her fall asleep in the silence, her head resting on his shoulder as he drove. The only thing he made sure to do was not look in the rearview mirror. He didn't want to see his own eyes. Not because of the Bobby Short song. Not because there was a party going on inside his head. It was because of something else someone once said: that the eyes were the mirror to the soul.

  If that was true, that was the one place he definitely did not want to peer at.

  5

  One more vodka and an Ambien-no self-respecting wealthy Hamptons woman was without a supply handy at all times-and Abigail was sound asleep in Justin's bed twenty minutes after they got back to his house on Division Street. He helped her get undressed, made sure she was securely between his almost clean sheets, and gently pulled his light wool summer blanket up to cover her. He leaned over and, although she didn't feel a thing, he kissed her gently on the top of her head. As he went downstairs, the sweet smell of her shampoo filled his nostrils. He quickly shook it away. He didn't need any distractions now.

  Downstairs, he went straight to the telephone and dialed the home number of Leona Krill, the mayor of East End Harbor. A woman's voice answered on the fourth ring, and when Justin went, "Leona?" the half-asleep voice said, "No." Justin could hear the rustling of sheets, some mumbled words, and then Leona was speaking into the receiver.

  "Whoever it is," she said, "do you know what time it is?"

  "Maybe if you didn't stay up all night sleeping with strange women, you wouldn't need so much rest."

  "Jay?"

  "Yeah."

  "Melissa is my wife, in case you don't remember. You were invited to the wedding but didn't show up."

  "I've met Melissa. She qualifies as strange."

  "Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?"

  "Because there's been a murder and I thought you'd want to know about it right away."

  "Good Christ. Who is it?"

  "Evan Harmon." There was a long silence from the mayor's end. "Leona? You still with me?"

  "Yes. And I'm wide awake now, thank you. I have so many questions, I don't know where
to begin."

  "That's probably good because I don't have too many answers."

  "Are you sure it was murder?"

  "As compared to what?"

  "Natural causes, suicide-I don't know, how else does someone drop dead in the middle of the night?"

  "He didn't exactly drop dead," Justin said.

  "How was he killed?"

  "Beaten to death. And from the looks of it, tortured, too."

  "Was it his wife?"

  "Who killed him?"

  "Yes."

  "No," Justin said.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Reasonably sure. Why do you ask?"

  "'Cause she's capable of torturing just about anybody. And isn't it almost always the spouse?"

  "Well, this one's got an alibi."

  "A good one?"

  "Pretty good," Justin said.

  "Any other suspects?"

  "Not yet. I'll have more info in the morning, I hope."

  "I hope so, too." Another silence. Then Leona said, "Jay, you understand-"

  "I understand."

  "Christ, the papers. And TV reporters."

  "They'll be sliming all over the place."

  "Who else knows?"

  "From me? Gary Jenkins. He called Mike Haversham. The CSU guys know, assuming they're there by now, the ambulance driver and EM workers…"

  "Have you called Larry Silverbush?"

  Silverbush was the DA for the East End of Long Island. He was based in Riverhead, about forty minutes or so from East End Harbor, and had been involved in several high-profile trials over the past five or six years, winning them all. Three years earlier he'd put a British nanny away for poisoning the baby daughter of a well-known record producer-that's what had made his reputation. It was a tough case to make, but Silverbush had made it brilliantly, slowly reconstructing for the jury a history of the woman's carelessness, thoughtlessness, arrogance, and lack of warmth. There were no witnesses and no real forensic proof, but Silverbush showed the jurors-and the media-that she was capable of murder. That was enough to swing them over to the fact that she'd committed this particular murder. The nanny was still proclaiming her innocence and still trying to build a valid appeal, but she was serving twelve and a half to twenty-five years in prison.

  Silverbush's other attention-getting case was a year ago. A famous-and famously obnoxious-public relations diva had gotten drunk and driven her SUV into a Hamptons club. No one was killed, but several patrons and two doormen were injured. The case had turned into a class war-blue collar versus rich summer interlopers. The PR queen was an interloper-and not a Mid-Island voter-so Silverbush was able to put her away for eighteen months. Justin had met him once, just a handshake really, not enough to get a sense of the man. His reputation was as a no-nonsense, no-bullshit guy. Instinctively, Justin didn't buy it. Word was that Silverbush wanted to run for state attorney general and already had some major financial backers. And AG was not a bad stepping stone to governor. So he was a politician at heart, which Justin thought pretty much eliminated the no-bullshit possibility. "No," he told Leona. "I haven't called him. I thought it might be better coming from you."

  "Thanks," she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. Then: "Hold on a second." There was the slight rustling of bedcovers. Justin was fairly sure that Leona put her hand over the phone because he heard a very muffled, "No, it's all right, sweetie, I'll be off in a minute." The hand was then removed because Justin next heard very clearly, "What about Harmon's father?"

  "No," Justin said. "I haven't notified anyone yet. Other than Mrs. Harmon."

  "Thinking it's her responsibility to tell the old man?"

  "My brain doesn't work on that many levels, Leona. My thinking was that my only responsibility was to tell her. She's the next of kin."

  "Well, sometimes there are things other than legal responsibilities to consider."

  "You're worried about the moral thing to do now?"

  "Don't be an asshole, please. I'm being practical. I don't want him hearing about this from the outside."

  "It's too late to make the morning papers-the deadline's past even if they get the story now. And I don't think the Internet or TV'll get it until the morning."

  "So that's your plan? To keep things quiet and hope no one hears about it until they're having their egg-white omelets for breakfast?"

  "My plan is to keep things quiet until morning. That'll give me enough time to try to figure out what to do. I don't think it'll help anything if we wake people up in the middle of the night to spread the news."

  "Except me, you mean."

  "The only advantage we have right now is that we're the only ones who know about it-except for the killer. I don't know how to use that advantage yet, but I don't see the value in having H. R. Harmon trying to tell me how to run this investigation at three a.m. And if it'll make you feel better, I don't think I'll be getting much sleep either."

  He could practically hear Leona's brain working as she tried to figure out the political and PR ramifications of the crime she'd just been alerted to. He figured she didn't come to any satisfactory conclusions because all she said was, "I have to let Silverbush know. I can't keep him out of the loop for something like this."

  "All right."

  "I know you don't like it, but this isn't something you can run as a one-man show."

  "I understand."

  "I'll sell you to Silverbush, Jay, don't worry about that. You won't be left out of this thing, if that's what you're worried about."

  "That's not what I'm worried about, Leona. I'm worried about solving a murder."

  Again, he could almost hear her thinking, figuring out what she was going to say to the attorney general, deciding how hard she was going to push her own chief of police. "Jay, we're going to have to trust Silverbush now, and I think we can. But I can trust you on this one, right? You know what you're doing?"

  Justin couldn't help himself, his eyes shifted to glance toward the stairs. The whiff of Abby's shampoo still lingered. He shrugged, said, "Sure, I know what I'm doing," and hung up the phone.

  For the next four hours, he did his best to prove that he did indeed know what he was doing. He programmed his iTunes library on his computer to play two Tom Petty albums, Wildflowers and Greatest Hits, Patti Smith's version of "When Doves Cry" four times in a row, and then Mingus Plays Piano. He turned the volume on low so he wouldn't disturb Abigail, but he needed music right now. He worked better with the right music, thought better with the right music. Music helped him focus at the same time it could keep his mood constant. Right now he wanted to keep his mood unwaveringly somber, and he had to stay as focused as he'd ever been. Definitely Petty, Smith, and Mingus.

  Sitting at the computer set up in his living room, he signed onto PublicInfoSearch.com, a pay site he'd authorized all EEHPD cops to use. There were nine categories of available searches: Background, People, Criminal, Bankruptcies amp; Liens, Sex Offenders, Property, Marriage, Death, and Divorce. He went to "People," typed in "Evan Harmon," and printed up anything he thought might be relevant about the man's background and activities over the past few years, professional as well as social. There was material quoted from a biography of Evan's father that talked briefly about Evan's school years. He'd grown up in New Hampshire and gone to two New England prep schools. The first was one of the elite academies in the country, Melman Prep. Evan had transferred out of Melman when he was a junior in high school. Curious. Justin was not unfamiliar with that world and he knew that "transfer" was another word for expulsion. Or failure. People like Evan Harmon did not transfer from a top school to a lesser one unless they were forced to. The writer of the book also had the same suspicion-but Evan's records were sealed and the biographer could not get them. There was speculation about getting some girl pregnant, something about a violent episode with another student, but neither could be validated. Justin dismissed both things as rumors, stuck in to sell a not very commercial book, but he made note of the school change. And he made a
note to check it out. Patterns. Even those from twenty years ago counted.

  Evan's college years were uneventful. He didn't get into an Ivy League school, went instead to a small private college in Connecticut, Connecticut University, which Justin knew was mostly populated by rich kids who couldn't study their way or buy their way onto better campuses. Justin remembered that in his day the college was known as FUU-Fuck-Up University. But Evan hadn't seemed to fuck up too badly. He graduated with a decent average and no more possible scandals.

  Going chronologically, there was some simple information on Evan's early career at Merrill Lynch, some bare-bones material about four years he spent working at Rockworth and Williams, the same money management firm that Ellis St. John worked at. Justin began jotting down a few names, nothing in depth, nothing that gave him a great feel for what was going on, but connections were being formed and he was a big believer in patterns and connections. If there was one thing he'd learned since he'd become a cop, it's that the world might function in random and unpredictable ways, but within that disorder people managed to impose their own repetitive behavior. The world made no sense, Justin had long ago determined, but people did. Or at least their patterns were remarkably consistent. In a crazy world, everyone-the good guys and the bad-attempted to bring some sanity, usually in the form of regulation, to their actions. And it was that attempt that got the bad guys caught every time. So Justin looked for patterns. Even before he searched for motives.

  Justin was beginning to get a vague feel for Evan Harmon. Again, nothing substantial, and of course he knew a bit about the man from Abby. He instinctively didn't like Harmon. He didn't seem connected to something that Justin cared very much about-productivity. A picture was slowly forming of someone distant and cold, someone removed from the give-and-take of everyday human relationships. He thought about Abby's relationship with her husband, about her constant attempts to avoid and escape from that relationship. He wondered how much she knew about Evan's past. For that matter, he wondered what she could possibly know about Evan's present. Well, he didn't actually have a present any longer. As of last night, Evan Harmon existed only in the past.

  There was a decent amount of information on Ascension, Harmon's hedge fund company. Justin scanned the company's history, jotted down a few key names, and printed the whole thing, knowing he'd eventually have to pay closer attention to the details. In these details, he was certain, were the answers to many of his questions.