Hades w-4

by Russell Andrews

  Sitting in the backseat, he opened a crystal decanter and sniffed. Scotch. Nice touch. He poured himself a small glassful, leaned back in the plush leather upholstery, and called Reggie.

  "It's right here in front of me," he said. "All I have to do is make sense of one or two things. But I just can't do it. I can't see it."

  So she had him go over the whole thing again. Step by step. The murders. The connections. The path of the money. The corporate cheating. Lenny Rube's role. Bruno's role. Hades. The still unsolved meaning of the word "Ali" that Wanda had written. The limo was almost to the East End Harbor town limits and they were still on the phone when he said to Reggie, "I'm going to pick you up. Come over. We're too close to let this go." She hesitated and he said, "It's business, Reggie. You said we had to finish this before we could move on to anything else, so let's finish it. Now."

  She agreed and the limo showed up at her motel a few minutes later. When they got back to his house on Division Street, Justin checked to make sure his car was back, saw that it was, then he told Martin he could head back to the city but to make sure that Mr. Harmon was billed for the extra time. They walked into the house, and Justin expected to find Bruno there, but the big man was not around. He and Reggie didn't waste any time. They started in all over again. From the beginning.

  Justin sat down on the couch, absentmindedly picked up one of the yearbooks that Vince Ellerbe had given him, and began leafing through it.

  "It doesn't make sense," he said. "I don't see the domino effect. If Evan Harmon was murdered, why does that mean Ron LaSalle had to be next? And why Wanda? And why weren't they just killed? Why were they tortured? What information did they have that someone wanted? That Lincoln Berdon wanted?"

  "You're sure it's Berdon?" Reggie asked.

  "It's the only thing that makes sense. He's the link to Togo and the Chinese woman…"

  "Who we're searching for, by the way. We've got a bureau-wide alert out for her."

  "… and he's the only one who's connected to everyone else: LaSalle, St. John, H. R., now even Silverbush. But why? Why would he want Evan Harmon dead? He doesn't benefit by Harmon's death. He only benefits if Harmon lives and he gets to buy what Harmon's selling. He needs what Evan Harmon has-so why would he want him dead? Why would-" He stopped talking. He bit off the rest of his sentence and stared at the yearbook page in front of him.

  "What is it?" Reggie asked.

  "Oh my god," Justin said. "Oh-my-god."

  She knew enough not to say anything. She didn't ask a question, she just waited.

  He didn't say anything either, not immediately. He couldn't say anything, too many images were flashing through his mind. Too many pictures, too many bits and pieces of conversations. It was as if the pieces of the puzzle were raining down upon him.

  And suddenly those pieces were forming themselves into a whole:

  Vince Ellerbe talking about Evan Harmon: "His friends were mostly sycophants. He usually found one or two brainiacs who were frightened of him and that's who he spent time with… He liked the cheating better. He was just basically dishonest… He could always get people in authority to look the other way, to break the rules just for him… At heart, Evan Harmon was a crook. He liked to steal and he liked to lie. He just liked it."

  The talk he had with Reggie after they saw Dave Kelley.

  "… The tip wasn't just that Kelley was having an affair with Abby Harmon. It said he owned a stun gun."

  "So somebody had to know how Evan was killed."

  "It does seem kind of strange, doesn't it? Kind of…"

  "Orchestrated."

  "Yes. Orchestrated."

  Ellis St. John's calendar.

  EH/EEH (see directions/adbk)

  Reggie saying, "This guy Ellis was spending the weekend with Evan Harmon?"

  Him saying back to her: "Seems like. But I'm telling you, it doesn't make sense."

  The phone conversation with Abby Harmon.

  "How'd you know I was working with the FBI?"

  "I don't know, Jay. Someone told me… I'm sorry, Jay."

  Him thinking: What the hell had she done? What was she apologizing for?

  Lenny Rube, in his den in Providence. "We used to deal with unions. With business, small businesses. Now we deal with Wall Street, with investors, lobbyists."

  Dave Kelley, talking in the Riverhead jail about the Harmon security system.

  Him asking Kelley: "Who had laptop access?"

  "Evan. On the laptop he used to travel with."

  "Abby?"

  Kelly nodding, saying: "But I don't think she really knew how to use it. She didn't have much interest in it."

  Wanda. The horrible image of the words she'd managed to scrawl on her naked body, words written in her own blood: The last word tailing off. The final thought she'd ever have. The last two letters barely legible as her life was ending.

  "Ali."

  And now the yearbook in front of him. Evan Harmon's last year at Melman Prep. Photos of his classmates. Photos of one particular classmate. One classmate who'd conveniently not mentioned that he'd been a classmate.

  Quentin Quintel. Now the dean of Melman.

  Lincoln Berdon's town house.

  Justin saying, "What the hell is it that you two crazy old bastards know that I don't know?"

  Lincoln Berdon saying, "The truth."

  And back to the crime scene. Back to the Harmon bedroom. Justin standing over the body.

  The body that was beaten to a pulp, beyond recognition. Blood everywhere. Pools and splashes of red.

  The wedding ring… the favorite sweater… the shoes.

  He remembered looking into Ellis St. John's closet. And the image that refused to materialize. Now he knew what that image was.

  The shoes that were shiny and new looking. The shoes on the battered body that didn't have a drop of blood on them.

  And listening to Bruno when the Mafia hit man was sitting on his couch: "Like I said. I woulda killed the little prick. But somebody beat me to it."

  And then again Wanda's body. The word she'd managed to write. The word Justin now knew she wasn't able to finish writing.

  "Ali."

  Justin looked up at Reggie Bokkenheuser. He still didn't say anything. Went to his phone, dialed the number of the Southampton Hospital, got the morgue attendant. Justin identified himself, told him it was an emergency, said he needed access to the morgue files immediately. The orderly put him on hold for a minute; someone else got on the phone, asked Justin what he needed.

  "Evan Harmon," Justin said. "I want to know his shoe size."

  "That's it?" the guy in the morgue said. "That's the emergency?" And when Justin didn't bother to answer, the guy said, "Nine and a half."

  And Justin still didn't say a word to Reggie. He just dialed another number, this time got the Riverhead police. This one took a bit longer but eventually he got the evidence room and he told the sergeant on duty what he wanted, the information he had to have immediately. It took a few minutes but Justin waited, and then the sergeant came back and said, "I've heard you're kind of screwy and I think this proves it. But your corpse was wearing a ten-and-a-half shoe."

  Justin thanked him and hung up. He turned to Reggie Bokkenheuser and said, "It makes sense now. Everything that didn't make sense before makes perfect sense now."

  He grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. And he wrote down Wanda's last word: "Ali."

  "I still don't get it," Reggie said.

  He said, very softly, "She didn't finish. She didn't finish writing."

  And so he finished for her now. He wrote down the first three letters: A… L… I…

  And then he wrote the last two. V… E.

  Alive.

  Reggie Bokkenheuser's eyes opened wide.

  "Evan did it before, when he was a kid," Justin said. "He staged his own kidnapping. Now he just upped the stakes. He staged his own death."

  36

  Justin didn't know how he knew, but it was suddenly as
clear to him as it could possibly be. Maybe it was the photo he'd seen on the Net, the one of Evan Harmon playing in the celebrity softball game. Wherever the inspiration came from, he knew what the murder weapon was and he also knew where it was. He got Reggie to arrange for someone to dive into the Harmons' man-made pond. Somewhere in there was a baseball bat. A bat that would have traces of blood on it. Ellis St. John's blood. And fingerprints. Evan Harmon's fingerprints. Salt water would have erased the evidence, but the pond was freshwater. Freshwater would not erase the evidence. Justin didn't even bother to wait around. He didn't need to. He knew.

  He asked Reggie to stay in East End Harbor. He wanted her to make sure arrest warrants were prepared for Lincoln Berdon and H. R. Harmon. He also wanted her to figure out if they had enough to arrest Larry Silverbush. Silverbush might have been led down the garden path by Berdon, but there was also a reasonable chance he knew he was preparing the prosecution of the wrong man. He told Reggie that he could handle what was still left to be done by himself. But he needed her to put everything in motion. He said he couldn't trust anyone else. She didn't react to the word "trust," but he knew she had to understand the deeper meaning.

  As Justin drove to Connecticut, he ran over the facts and the chronology. There were no doubts in his mind now. He didn't know what could be proved, but it didn't really matter to him. This wasn't about perception. This was about one truth. One absolute, undeniable truth.

  Evan Harmon was cheating the mob and, at the same time, cheating Lincoln Berdon and his own father. He could have kept the game going, at least for a little while longer, except an accident ruined his plans. When the truck crashed on the way to Texas with Evan's shipment of platinum, he was screwed. As soon as the contents of the truck made the news, Lenny Rube and Bruno were going to know what Evan was doing. And Evan knew who he was dealing with. He knew what their reaction would be. He knew they would come and get him. So he found someone who not only looked like himself-same color hair, same basic build, same type-but was in love with him. Someone who would do whatever he wanted. So Evan arranged for Ellis St. John to come to the house. Ellis must have come willingly and joyfully, thinking he was finally going to spend the weekend with his fantasy lover. The joy would have been short-lived, though, because Evan killed him. Battered him so his face was little more than pulp. Physically unrecognizable. But wearing Evan's clothes-down to the shoes, which were put on after the murder-and equipped with Evan's wallet and credit cards and Evan's wedding ring.

  And Evan was ready to disappear.

  Evan knew that Abby would be out that night. Probably even knew she'd be spending Justin's birthday with him. It was perfect-the housekeeper and her husband were given the night off, and Evan's wife would be well taken care of, guaranteeing an empty house. And if the fact that she was spending the night with her lover happened to cast some suspicion on either of them, the better it was. And if suspicion fell on the missing Ellis St. John, that would be fine, too. Especially once Ellis's body had been identified as Evan and disposed of.

  But Evan already had someone on whom he could cast full suspicion. He knew about his wife's affair with the contractor. And he'd seen David Kelley's stun gun-the perfect thing to point the finger at Kelley. Justin didn't know how Evan managed to get the gun out of or back into Kelley's house, but it wouldn't have been too difficult. He probably could have planted it there himself right after the murder. All he needed was to set the finger-pointing in motion. Justin didn't know for sure who Larry Silverbush's source was, but he'd bet big-time that it was Evan's father. There were calls to H. R. Harmon's phone from Ellis St. John's cell phone-after St. John was dead-and they already had gotten back the report that a call was made from Martin the chauffeur's phone to a cell phone that Justin knew would soon link directly to Evan-Quentin Quintel's cell. It would not be hard to pay someone to say that Kelley had talked about killing Evan. It would not be hard for Harmon or Berdon to pay anyone to say or do anything.

  The problems came fast and furiously for Evan once he'd disappeared. Silverbush called Lincoln Berdon and reported the murder. Berdon must have suspected something, because he immediately sent his two Chinese killers up to interrogate Ronald LaSalle. He knew that LaSalle was doing a tremendous amount of business with Evan-Berdon had to have access to the Ascension records. He'd become suspicious of Evan's illegal activities and was already looking for ways to solve the problem.

  Justin wasn't positive what Berdon was looking for from Ron LaSalle, but he had a decent idea. He wanted one of two things: he wanted to know if Evan was alive or he wanted to know how to get his hands on the platinum that Evan had hoarded. Berdon had to keep supplying China with platinum, or he might lose his most valuable client. China was probably worth billions of dollars to Berdon over the long haul. Justin knew that billions of dollars were usually a perfectly good justification for murder.

  If Justin had to guess, he decided that LaSalle knew that Evan was still alive. That he'd faked his murder. He remembered what Vince Ellerbe had said: that Evan had to tell someone when he cheated, otherwise the cheating didn't count. LaSalle was one of the few people Evan could tell. He'd need to tell LaSalle because LaSalle could continue a lot of Evan's business dealings while he was in hiding.

  This also solved one other thing that had been puzzling Justin: Where was Ron LaSalle going that early morning when he'd slipped out of his house and gotten himself killed? Justin thought he had the answer. He had told Reggie that Wanda liked to work with an inside plant. He was pretty certain that LaSalle was Wanda's source. He was an honest guy who had tried to do the right thing. When he began to be pressured by Lenny Rube and Bruno, the right thing would have been to go to the FBI. Wanda had to have realized that LaSalle would be a brilliantly effective source. And LaSalle was just honest enough to go along with that. It's how Wanda knew to bug Bruno. It's how she knew so much about Lenny Rube's dealings. It's how she would have put various bits of information together to figure out what Bruno had done to the ship Hades. And what Evan Harmon was doing with his illegal trading. What she wouldn't have known-and what LaSalle wouldn't have known-was just how involved Berdon and H. R. Harmon were in Evan's scheme. If they had been involved, Wanda knew she'd need a lot of absolutely secure information to bring them down. She'd also have known not to play her hand too soon with her superiors. Berdon and Harmon could go high up in the administration; they could pull a lot of favors. Wanda had to keep this to herself at the beginning or her investigation would have gotten squashed flat. So she would have kept playing her best card-her inside source. Ron LaSalle had gotten murdered because he was slipping away to meet Wanda. Justin was positive about that. He'd gotten killed while he was trying to do the right thing.

  The odds were that Ron LaSalle talked before he died, told his torturers that Evan Harmon was still alive. That meant that Berdon knew almost from the beginning. And once he knew that, he also knew he had two chances to get his hands on Evan's platinum dealings and car-related companies. He could find Evan and make a deal or he could find Evan and kill Evan-and make a deal with his widow, who would inherit all Evan's property.

  Money and power.

  And thus Abby's conversion to the dark side.

  The rest was just a footrace: Berdon trying to find Evan, Bruno trying to find whoever had what the mob considered to be rightfully theirs, Justin trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

  He wondered what H. R.'s role in all this had been. The old man knew that Evan was alive. The phone records proved there were several conversations. Was the father trying to protect his son? Or was he working with Lincoln Berdon to gain control of the son's assets? Or both? Justin had a feeling he'd never know the answer to that one. But he knew which way he'd bet. He did not think that H. R. Harmon had much paternal love in him. The old man seemed fed up with his son as far back as prep school. He'd go for the money. He'd feel bad about it-maybe have to skip a few rounds of golf he'd feel so bad-but he'd go for the money. He'd have the veneer
of respectability but underneath was the dirt he'd never been able to completely hide.

  Justin was almost to his destination now.

  He parked about a block away from the small house in the country. There was a long driveway, a fairly steep climb that led to what was basically a charming cabin in the woods. Sitting in front of the house were two cars. One was the rental car that Ellis St. John had used to drive to East End Harbor and to his death.

  By the time Justin walked past the car and got to the house, he was out of breath.

  Definitely back to the gym, he decided.

  He decided to try the door without knocking. It was open, so he stepped inside. As he did, he pulled his gun.

  Quentin Quintel was cooking in the open kitchen. His back was to the front door, but he must have sensed Justin's presence because he put his mixing bowl down and turned slowly. He looked shocked to see Justin, then the surprise seemed to fade quickly, replaced by a look of resignation and, Justin felt, the tiniest bit of relief. Justin waved his gun, just to make sure that Quintel saw it, and he put his fingers to his lips. The dean's eyes shifted ever so slightly toward the stairway. Justin nodded and headed up the stairs.

  Evan Harmon was in one of the two upstairs bedrooms.

  He was lying on a single bed, not sleeping, just staring up at the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head. Justin stepped into the room, his gun in his hand. Evan did not look shocked to see Justin. He did not look resigned or relieved, either. He just smiled and shrugged, as if a long game of chess had come to an end.

  "I was wondering who'd figure it out," Evan said. "I have to admit, I didn't think it'd be you."

  "I guess you were wrong about a few things," Justin said.

  Evan stood up from the bed and he let Justin handcuff him without a struggle. Justin led him down the stairs and out the front door. As they walked down the driveway, Evan leading the way, Justin saw that there was an almost buoyant spring to the man's step.