Three To Get Deadly

by Lee Goldberg

  The best he could do was a slightly sleep-slurred, "Yeah, I'm Mason."

  Snappy repartee after spending the night on a bed of vinyl was sometimes the beginning and end of his charm.

  "I'm Sheriff Kelly Holt. We need to talk."

  "It's okay, Officer, I paid for the room."

  Drumroll, please, he silently requested, satisfied that he was really hitting his stride.

  "I'm sure you did, Mr. Mason. I'm more interested in whether you know Richard Sullivan."

  Fully awake now, he stood so that he could see her clearly. Khaki uniform, Caribbean blue eyes, Pope County sheriff's badge, natural, no-sweat beauty, pistol on her hip. A shade shorter than his six feet, with honey-colored hair that draped the shoulders of a tanned, athletic body. She was a slap-on-the-cuffs dream come true, but her question flattened the fantasy.

  "He's my law partner. Is there a problem?"

  "I'd appreciate it if you would come with me. I'll meet you in the lobby in fifteen minutes. You may want to change first."

  Mason looked down at his beer-stained T-shirt and gym shorts with a hole where the pocket used to be. He realized he was losing on banter and style points.

  Doctors, lawyers, and cops all use the same technique when they give bad news. They tell you a little at a time. Knowledge is power—give it away all at once and the power is gone. Having done the same thing, Mason knew better than to press.

  He was ten minutes late but smelled better and looked better in tan chinos, a green polo shirt, and deck shoes. The rest of him fit the clean clothes. Dark, closely trimmed hair and steel gray eyes that his aunt Claire always claimed darkened like thunderheads whenever he was angry. An anonymous flying elbow thrown during a muddy rugby scrum had left him with a speed bump on his nose just below eye level. He was clean shaven at seven a.m. but could expect a five-o'clock shadow an hour early. Good orthodontics bred a sincere smile that juries had found persuasive through ten years of practice in his first firm. It had yet to be tested in his new one.

  Mason had had some luck and notable failures—his ex-wife, Kate, being foremost—with women. He knew it wasn't politically correct to immediately appraise Kelly as a social prospect, but it filled the time while he waited for her to tell him what was going on.

  She showed no more interest in him than in any other out-of-towner she'd awakened on the beach, and she wasn't talking. So Mason took the first shot as they pulled away from the resort in her pickup truck.

  "Listen, we can play twenty questions or you can just tell me what this is all about."

  She shifted gears as she kept her eyes on the curving road that snaked away from the lake. A two-way radio crackled with background static. He rested his head against the butt of a shotgun mounted on the rear window.

  Kelly chose questions over answers. "When did you last see Mr. Sullivan?"

  Mason rolled the window down and let the truck fill with the muggy morning air. The smell of summer flowers and long grass was a welcome change from midtown traffic.

  Mason had sat across from Sullivan at last night's poker game, his first with his future former partners. For a ten-dollar buy-in, he spent the evening with a good cigar, a cold beer, and an open window into their psyches. Mason believed that poker made you win with your strengths and fold with your weaknesses. Luck always plays a part, but even the luckiest lousy card player will eventually lose it all if he gives the cards enough time. Sullivan was a good card player, but it sounded like he'd hit a losing streak that would spread to the other partners, who depended on the business he brought in.

  "Last night around eleven. We'd been playing poker."

  "Who else played?"

  "Snow White and the seven dwarfs. All the regulars."

  "You were better company before you woke up. Or is this just a phase of your arrested adolescence?"

  "Tell me what happened to Sullivan. After that and eight hours of sleep on something besides vinyl, I'll charm your socks off."

  She answered without a sideways glance or a hint of humor.

  "One of the locals found a body this morning. It's been in the water overnight. The ID belongs to your partner. I want you to tell me if the body belongs to the ID."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Her voice was pure matter-of-fact, as if she had told him to check the tires and the oil. He caught a quick dip in her shoulders, as if she was dropping her burden of bad news in his lap. Still, she said it with a practiced weariness that convinced Mason she was used to violent death. He wasn't. He was accustomed to family deaths, natural causes, and ritualized grieving. Floating bodies were not part of Mason's life-cycle résumé.

  Barring a freakish case of mistaken identity, Mason knew that Sullivan was dead. The odds of his ID being mismatched with a stranger were slim. Mason didn't know him well enough to grieve honestly. Partners are harder to get to know than spouses or friends. Agendas overlap only on narrow ground.

  His emotions were a mixed bag that didn't include grief. He was more relieved than sorry. Sullivan's suggestion that Mason destroy evidence in the O'Malley case would be buried with him. Mason could stay at the firm if he chose. Yet he couldn't muster any enthusiasm for reversing his decision to leave. There was no glory in defending Victor O'Malley. His aunt Claire's warning that he wasn't cut out to fight over other people's money, especially when the money was dirty, echoed in his mind.

  His recurring dream of Tommy Douchant's trial reminded him of unfinished business that he would have to complete on his own. Sullivan's death may have shown him the way out instead of the way back in.

  The sheriff would have told him if Sullivan's death was accidental since there would be no reason to withhold that information. The likelihood that Sullivan's murder was tied to the O'Malley case and perhaps to the documents Sullivan had asked him to lose swept through him like a convulsion.

  He was shaken by the twin possibilities that the killer might want to eliminate O'Malley's other lawyer and that the sheriff might suspect him in the crime if she knew what Sullivan had asked him to do. He felt his color drain and hoped the sheriff would attribute it to the grief he couldn't summon. It occurred to him that he was probably the least likely person to identify Sullivan's body.

  "Why did you choose me?"

  At last she surrendered a small smile.

  "You weren't my first choice. We found a key to a room at Buckhorn. It belonged to Mr. Sullivan. The hotel manager gave us a list of the rest of the guests from your firm. You were third on the list. The first two checked out at dawn."

  "Harlan Christenson and Scott Daniels."

  Harlan Christenson sat next to Mason at the poker table. A shock of white hair hung loosely over his forehead, accenting his coal black caterpillar eyebrows. Shaped like a badly stuffed pillow, he filled his chair to capacity and grunted his bets with a Scotch-scratched voice. Only his head and hands had moved as he'd peeled back the corners of his first three cards, praying for aces.

  He was a grandfatherly patrician of Kansas City society, opening doors that Sullivan never could have knocked on. Where Sullivan was brusque and kept everyone at arm's length, Harlan touched everyone. He shook their hands warmly and guided them to his office with his arm comfortably around their shoulders. Together they had built a powerful practice.

  He was widowed and Mason was divorced, so he invited Mason to his farmhouse for dinner every couple of weeks after he'd joined the firm. They cooked out and tossed fishing lines in his pond, never really trying to catch anything.

  Mason's other best friend and law school classmate, Scott Daniels, had sat on his other side at the card game. Scott and Tommy Douchant had flipped a coin to decide which one would be best man at Mason's wedding. Scott had called heads and won. Tommy claimed he'd used a two-headed coin, a charge Scott never denied.

  Scott had started with the firm when they graduated and was now second in command in the business department, which Sullivan ran. Ten years after graduation, he still carried 175 pounds rationed along a swimmer's
V-shaped frame. His eyes were robin's-egg blue with the shell's dull finish. Fine dark blond hair, slicked back, etched an undulating hairline along an angular, sallow-cheeked face.

  Kelly asked, "Any idea why they left so early?"

  "Scott had to get ready for a closing on Monday. Harlan said he had a noon wedding."

  "And that left you, Mr. Mason. What were you and your partners doing at the lake?"

  "Having our annual retreat. Lawyers, legal assistants, and administrative staff getting away from it all but not each other."

  She pulled in at a marina called Jerry's Port. The water rolled with a slight chop stirred by the steady boat traffic of the lake patrol.

  Mason's chest tightened along with his throat as he wondered if he'd recognize Sullivan's body. He remembered a wrongful death case he'd handled in which the victim had drowned. A body left in water long enough swells up like an inflatable doll, stretching the features into a macabre mask. The pictures of the deceased in that case had led to a rash of tasteless jokes in his office, none of which he could recall.

  Mason followed Kelly to a sheriff's department patrol boat. She drove, while he hoped the spray off the lake would help him keep his cool. Soon she turned toward shore, aiming at a sign that read Crabtree Cove. The sides of the cove were lined with private docks. Modest lake homes sat above the docks, away from the water, which fed a shallow marsh at the heel of the inlet. Two other patrol boats were anchored across the back of the cove, forming a floating barricade. Kelly cut the motor to idle, and they coasted past the sentries until the bottom of the boat slid into the soft mud.

  Knee-high grass had been tramped down into a rough carpet leading from the water's edge to a short, squat, rumpled man wearing dirty brown coveralls. He could have been half man, half stump, sitting on a log next to a tarp-covered shape that was roughly the size of a body.

  "Mr. Mason, say hello to Doc Eddy, Pope County coroner," Kelly said.

  "Damn shame, Mason, too bad."

  He wiped his hands on his pants before pulling back a corner of the tarp. Sullivan's lifeless eyes stared unblinking into the still rising sun. Heat, water, and death had stolen his attraction and intimidation. Oily engine exhaust mixed with the swampy smell of brackish water and the sickly sweet odor of decomposing flesh. Mason's stomach pitched and yawed as he lost last night's dinner.

  He stumbled a few yards away while the aftershocks rocked his belly, and his head slowly stopped spinning. Kelly appeared at his side and pushed a towel into his clammy hand. He was surprised at the softness of her skin when their hands brushed against each other.

  "Listen, I'm sorry. There just isn't an easy way to do this. Is it Sullivan?"

  The metamorphosis from "him" to "it" suddenly seemed natural. "Yeah, probably—don't know. You better ask his wife."

  He was fresh out of smart-ass. Dead bodies, Mason realized, are hell on humor.

  "We tried to reach her in Kansas City. No one answered."

  "That's because she's here—at the lake. They have a place in Kinchelow Hollow near Shangri-La. We're having brunch over there at eleven this morning."

  Kelly turned back toward the coroner. "Doc, we'll meet you at Listrom's Mortuary in an hour. Tell Malcolm to hold the body for identification. Counselor, you come with me to see Mrs. Sullivan."

  Kelly aimed him toward the boat with a slight shove. He didn't need the help, but he got the point.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The path from Sullivan's private dock to the deck on the back of his house followed a switchback route up a slope landscaped with descending terraces set off by railroad ties and planted with a multihued variety of annuals and perennials. If Matisse had been from the Ozarks instead of France, he'd have painted Sullivan's backyard instead of all those gardens.

  Kelly and Mason climbed the path while Pamela Sullivan watched them ascend toward her from the protective shade of a moss green canopy suspended over the deck. Mason had met her only once in the last three months. She was cordial but disinterested, a well-cared-for woman accustomed to the role of professional wife.

  Mason wanted to protect her from the news that Kelly carried, even though there was no avoiding it. Protecting people when they were in trouble. That's what the law is for, his aunt Claire had taught him. She was his father's sister and the first lawyer, liberal, and hell-raiser in his family.

  She wielded the law like a club for her clients, who were usually poor, disadvantaged, or just outnumbered. "There, that one," she would tell him when he was a child and she read the paper to him about the day's injustices. Then she'd be off on another mission.

  She raised him after his parents were killed in a car wreck when Mason was only three. She tried talking him out of going to law school, telling him that he wasn't cut out for the only kind of law worth practicing. Her kind. He'd gone anyway, suspecting that she was right. He enjoyed the battle but didn't care enough about the war she never stopped fighting. When he graduated, he joined a small firm that specialized in representing injured people.

  "It's the kind of practice where I can do good and do well at the same time," he told her.

  "Go sell your slogans to someone else," she said.

  Mason thought of Claire as the sun rose at their backs. She called Kelly the intrusive arm of the law—investigating, accusing, and punishing. She taught him that it's the lawyer's duty to shield the individual from that power. That duty drew her to the law. He understood the duty, but it had never held the allure for him that it had for Claire. Still, as they reached Pamela, he could hear Claire's voice telling him, "There, that one."

  Pamela had the look of a handsome woman who did not miss the untarnished beauty of her youth. She carried herself with the confident assurance of someone who understood that age brings its own luster.

  This morning, a lavender sweatband held back her chin-length chestnut hair. Her face was lightly made up, but not enough to cover the glow from a just-finished morning run. A trace of sweat darkened the scoop neckline of the yellow T-shirt that hung over her matching shorts. She stood with her hands on her hips, her full chest rising and falling with still settling breath, giving them a quizzical look as they topped the stairs.

  "Oh my, excuse me. It's Lou, isn't it?" she asked him with sudden recognition.

  "Yes, Pamela. I'm one of your husband's partners. We met a couple of months ago."

  "Of course. Please excuse me. I wasn't expecting you or the police," she added, turning toward Kelly and extending her hand. "I'm Pamela Sullivan. But I expect you know that or you wouldn't be here. What can I do for you, Officer?"

  Kelly shook her hand quickly and firmly. "Mrs. Sullivan, I'm Sheriff Kelly Holt. Would you mind if we spoke inside?"

  "My, this is starting to sound quite official." Kelly didn't reply and Pamela's refined control showed the first sign of fraying as she held her arms folded across her chest. "Yes, it is a bit cool this morning, isn't it?"

  It wasn't close to being cool, but Mason understood Pamela's sudden chill. There was no possible explanation for their visit that could include good news. As if she sensed their purpose, Pamela led them through a sliding door, taking her time to delay the inevitable a few seconds longer.

  They followed Pamela through a sliding glass door and into the den. She eased herself onto a sofa, her careful movement underscoring the fragility of the moment. Uncertain of his status, Mason stood near the sliding door. Kelly sat on the edge of a chair next to Pamela.

  "I'm sorry to intrude on you, Mrs. Sullivan," Kelly began in a soothing voice that quickly gave way to a crisp matter-of-factness. "A man's body was found this morning in a cove not far from here. A wallet was also found with your husband's driver's license and credit cards. The man generally matches your husband's physical description. Mr. Mason thinks it may be your husband."

  Pamela held fast as her jaw tightened and her eyes widened at the implications. She shook her head in response to the inevitable question of whether she knew where her husband was. Kelly's requ
est that she identify the body left Pamela mute and renewed Mason's protective instincts.

  "Sheriff, I'll bring Mrs. Sullivan, but I would think my identification is sufficient."

  Kelly acknowledged his offer without taking her eyes from Pamela. "You're welcome to come along, Counselor, but identification has to be made by next of kin if possible." Her soothing tone was reserved for the newly widowed. He was entitled only to her official voice. "You can bring Mrs. Sullivan in her car."

  "I'm not a native, Sheriff. I'll need directions."

  "I'm certain of that," she replied. "Take County Road F to Lake Road 5-47 and pick up Highway 5 south. Go across Hurricane Deck Bridge and take the highway all the way to Starlight. Listrom's Mortuary is on the square. I've got to return the boat, and I'll meet you there."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Doc Eddy greeted Mason and Pamela at the mortuary. He introduced Malcolm Listrom as the finest mortician in Pope County, able to restore the departed to grandeur they had never achieved while among the living. He was so effusive in his praise of Malcolm's gift that Mason decided the coroner was in for a cut.

  Malcolm basked in Eddy's praise while emitting appropriate solicitous sounds of sympathy for the bereaved. When Mason told him that the deceased was just passing through and would be buried in Kansas City, he became a waiter trying to turn his table. Kelly arrived a few minutes later and Malcolm led them to the room where he prepared bodies for burial.

  Malcolm plied his magic in a ceramic-tiled, circular operating room dominated by two large surgical tables in the center. Glass-covered cabinets filled with unfamiliar solutions and tools lined the walls. The air was heavy with disinfectant that made their eyes water. Sullivan lay on one of the tables covered in an off-white sheath and adorned with a vanilla toe tag marked John Doe.

  "I'm afraid I haven't repaired the damage, Mrs. Sullivan," Listrom apologized. "We're not allowed to prepare the body until the authorities approve."