“She could be a material witness,” Stenner said sternly.
“What was I supposed to do, make a citizen’s arrest?”
“You said something about Jordan and Holloway,” Turner said.
“We can take you to them,” Vail said. “But I want to make it clear, we got an anonymous tip about them.”
“Have you seen them?”
Vail nodded.
“Talk to them?” Stenner asked.
“No.”
“Is there some kind of a deal in this somewhere?” Stenner asked, his cold eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“Nope. Just doing our civic duty.”
“Aw bullshit,” Turner said.
“Okay, Lou,” Stenner said softly. Then to Vail, “You want nothing out of this, is that the ticket?”
“I just want it understood that we got a tip and checked it out before we called you. I didn’t want to be accused of sending anybody on a wild-goose chase.”
“Okay, understood. Where are they?” Stenner asked.
“Follow us,” Vail said, picking up the check. “It’s not far from here.”
Chief Luther Brash turned out to be a pleasant and cooperative fellow. Four inches taller than his father, he was a bear of a man with a black beard, shaggy hair and kind eyes who wore a thick leather jacket and corduroy pants. The only deference to his official position was his badge, which he wore on the crown of a brown felt hat, and the .45 strapped to his hip. He had no objection to Stenner’s taking over the investigation and calling in the county coroner and forensics experts.
“Hell, the only violence we get up here is when the teeny-boppers knock each other around after football games,” he said, volunteering his two night men to put up yellow crime ribbons around the place and then posting them at the entrance posts to keep people out. The mayor had closed the diner fifteen minutes early and was hanging around as an observer, although he did find the circuit box and turn on the electricity. Harvey Woodside and Bill Danielson got there about eleven. Woodside meticulously snooped around the place, his expert eyes checking every scrap of dirt and dust. Vail and Goodman stayed out of the way, watching Woodside from a comer of the room. By midnight, Danielson had completed a cursory examination of the victims and was ready to send the two bodies back to the county morgue.
“What a mess,” he said, hefting himself to his feet.
“How long you think they’ve been here?” Stenner asked.
Danielson shook his head slowly. “Place is colder’n a deep freeze, that window being open. Retarded decomposition. Wild things have been feasting on them. Hell, could be two weeks or two months. Maybe when we get ’em downtown I can get a little closer to it, but right now I’m not taking any bets on when this event occurred.”
“Think there was more than one perp?” Stenner asked Woodside.
“Well, I’m not sure, but I’d say no. See here…” He pointed to bloodstains and dark marks on the floor. “My guess is that tall one was done in first, probably right where he fell. The shorter one was attacked there and dragged about ten feet and laid out beside him.”
“The tall one’s Jordan, the little guy’s Holloway,” Turner volunteered.
“Whatever. I’ll tell you this, it was done by either the same culprit that did in the bishop or a damn good copycat. Same kind of wounds, privates cut off and stuffed in their mouths, numbers on the backs of their heads. Also I’m pretty damn sure they were both clothed when they were attacked. There’s definitely fibers around the chest wounds on both of them.”
Woodside strolled over to the open window, checking it carefully before rejoining the group.
“They didn’t come in through that window,” he said. “There’s a broken pane in the door around back on the first floor.”
“So why is that window open?” Stenner said.
“I’m not sure,” said Woodside. “But if I were guessing, I’d say to keep this room as cold as possible.”
“So whoever did this wanted the room to stay cold,” Stenner said.
Danielson nodded. “Pretty smart, I’d say. Going to make it that much tougher to pinpoint when it happened.”
Stenner turned to Vail. “And you don’t know who tipped you off about this?” he said.
Vail shrugged. “You know how it is with tips,” he said. “Besides, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, I couldn’t tell you anyway. It might be contrary to my client’s best interest.”
“It might at that,” Stenner answered.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Naomi Chance had cleared off her desk except for the telephone and spread a large fourteen-by-seventeen-inch sheet of graph paper out in front of her. For ten days she had been gathering information—and for the last two days her quest had been so intense she had not been in the office or called, which was uncharacteristic. She had returned with her briefcase bulging with copies of corporate files, tax records, bills, contract figures, political lists and newspaper clippings. As always, she was excited when she was onto something. Usually it was Martin who put things into context, but this time she had figured out exactly how to do it.
She was drawing boxes, entering information into each of them, then connecting them with lines. It had taken her two hours to fill in the matrix and now she sat back and studied her handiwork.
It was all so obvious when you put it into a graphic perspective. Simple. Clever. Almost foolproof. But not quite.
As she was putting the finishing touches on her display, Goodman and Vail came in from breakfast.
“Where the hell have you been for the last two days?” Vail asked. “I was ready to call Missing Persons.” He looked at the large link analysis which lay before her. “And what’s that?”
“I think I’m about to make you a happy man,” she said.
Goodman said, “Before you start, listen to this. It’s Roy’s message to us, courtesy of the late Peter: ‘There never would have been an infidel, if there had not been a priest.’”
“Thomas Jefferson,” Naomi said without losing her cadence.
“That’s very good, Naom,” Goodman said. “How about this one that was on the back of Jordan’s head: ‘There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated.’”
“Easy,” she said. “It’s from Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil.”
“You’re red-hot, lady. Batting a thousand.”
“He killed Billy and Peter before he killed Rushman,” Vail said. “These quotations all refer to the bishop, not to the altar boys. Hell, he was leaving clues before he killed Rushman.”
“And that,” said Tom in a voice of doom, “is called premeditation.”
“Or madness?” Vail answered.
“Maybe Stenner and Venable won’t figure out they’re quotes,” Naomi said.
“I wouldn’t assume that,” Goodman answered.
“We assume they know everything we know,” said Vail. “That way we don’t make any mistakes.”
“Maybe they know more than we do. Maybe we’ve overlooked something.”
“Yeah,” said Vail. “We sure overlooked Roy for a long time. It’s all academic anyway. She can’t use it unless she proves Aaron killed Jordan and Peter and that she won’t do.”
“Why not?” Naomi asked.
“She’s too smart,” Vail answered. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to prove one murder case than it is to prove three. She’s not going to blow one open-and-shut case to take a chance on proving the other two.”
“Besides,” said Goodman, “from what we hear, Danielson can’t pinpoint when they were killed. The range is four weeks, starting a week before Rushman was murdered.”
“Yeah, she’s too smart to bite on that,” said Vail. “We’d wait until they establish the connection between the murder of Rushman and the killing of the two boys, then nail Danielson. According to his investigation, the chances are three to one that Jordan and Holloway were killed after Bisho
p Rushman, while Aaron Stampler was in custody.”
“And farewell Madam Prosecutor,” said Vail. “The jury would look crosswise at all three cases. But it’s moot, she won’t walk into that trap.”
“Is that why you told Stenner about the murders?” Goodman asked.
Vail did not answer immediately then he shrugged his shoulders. “It was worth a shot,” he said. “Besides, did we have a choice? What’ve you got for us, Naom?”
“The Gudheim Foundation,” she said.
“What the hell’s the Gudheim Foundation?” Vail asked.
“It’s one of twenty-two different charities, steering committees and holding companies in the Rushman Foundation,” she said. “I’ve laid it all out so you can follow the paper trail.”
She traced the boxes on the matrix with her finger as she described them, Goodman and Vail following the trail avidly.
“It’s like a pyramid. On the the top is the Gudheim Foundation. It is the paymaster for all the charities. Whatever these charities spend goes to Gudheim and it pays off. Three construction companies do all the maintenance work, from putting up new buildings to paint maintenance. Two automotive companies do all the maintenance on their vehicles. These two CPA firms handle bookkeeping for everybody. The Berenstein Clinic is their official ‘hospital’ … twelve companies in all, and they submit their bills directly to Gudheim, nobody in the charity even approves them. Why? Look here. The directors of the charities are all trustees of Gudheim. It gets a bill for twenty thousand dollars for repair work at Savior House, it sends them a check. Now look at this. Each of these companies has made the maximum contribution allowable under the law to certain political candidates.”
“Legal so far,” said Vail. “The limit is twenty-five thousand per candidate.”
“Except that by using these twelve companies,” Naomi said, “they make twelve times the legal contribution to each of these eight candidates. That’s almost ten percent of their annual take—over five million bucks in illegal campaign contributions.”
“That’s several felonies’ worth,” said Tom.
“And in every case,” she went on, “in the three or four months preceding the contribution, these companies have submitted large invoices to Gudheim. Look, Berenstein goes along for five months averaging three, four thousand a month. Then suddenly it jumps to twenty-two thousand, eighteen thousand—here’s one for thirty thousand.”
“So they report the income and write the contribution off their income tax,” said Vail.
“There’s more,” Naomi said. “Four of the recipients are also the members of the board of trustees who specifically approve the payments… including Mr. D.A., Jack Yancey, and guess who?” She pointed to the name. “Your friend and mine, Judge Harry Shoat.”
Vail whistled softly through his teeth. “If this breaks, bye-bye Supreme Court for Harry.”
“Slick, too,” said Tom. “A giant, illegal slush fund and nobody can talk because they’re all guilty.”
“And most of the heavy hitters in town are trustees.”
“That’s a lot of people to keep silent,” said Goodman.
“Probably only these four on the payola committee know about it,” said Vail. “The politicians think the contributions are coming from corporations.”
“But the heads of the corporations have to know about the contributions,” said Naomi.
“What do they care?” Vail said. “It’s a break-even proposition for them and they get on the foundation payroll. If you asked them, they’d brush it off, tell you it’s the way business is done these days.”
“Besides,” Naomi sneered, “if the bishop was behind it, how could it be wrong?”
“How do they pick their candidates?” Goodman asked.
“Check it out,” said Naomi. “These are clippings from their campaigns. All of them are anti-abortion, pro-censorship, pro–capital punishment, anti-welfare … hard-line right-wingers.”
“All the bishop’s favorite things,” said Goodman.
“They toe the mark, they get the money,” said Vail. “The bishop was a very busy bee.” He checked through the clippings. “So this is what Shaughnessey is afraid of, what he was referring to at lunch the other day.”
Goodman laughed. “Jesus, if he thinks this is a problem, what would he do if he knew about the altar boys?”
“Instant coronary,” Naomi said.
“But how can we use this in the trial?” Goodman asked.
“Oh,” said Vail, still checking the clippings, “something’ll come up. Naomi, darlin’, you’re an absolute jewel.”
She beamed. “Praise from Caesar,” she said.
Jane Venable’s split-level penthouse overlooking the lake had once been featured in Architectural Digest. An only child, she had sold the family mansion on Lakeshore Drive when her mother died, her father having passed away the year after she completed law school, and had had her architect structure the sprawling apartment around the family antiques and paintings. It was unique, a late-nineteenth-century home high in the clouds atop the most modern structure in the Midwest.
The only incongruity was her study, a bright, starkly modern room which was in harsh contrast to the dark hues of the rest of the suite. It was to that room that she had invited the key members of her team—Danielson, Stenner, Charlie Shackleford and Woodside—for a catered lunch. Sliced steak, roast beef, ham, hard rolls and strawberry cheesecake for the men; a salad for her. She wore a black double-breasted suit with a high-collared lace blouse, all business but feminine—to remind them that she was both a woman and the boss.
As the big day approached she became more paranoid about the people in the office. With only eleven days left before the trial, she had decided to narrow the inside circle, hold the meetings away from the office, and limit discussions to facts, not strategy. She had moved the stacks of reports and books off a large, smoked-glass table and stacked them in a closet, but she had left three stacks of thick trial transcripts on one end of the table. The food was laid out on the other end. As usual, she cut to business after a minimum of small talk.
“What’s the final word on Jordan and Holloway?” she asked Woodside.
“Same pattern as the Rushman kill,” the heavy man said. “Same kinds of wounds, done with the same professional touch. Numbers on the backs of the skulls, emasculation, the whole bit. He killed Jordan first. My guess is, the perp took down Holloway when he saw Jordan’s body. Slit his throat from behind, then dragged him over beside Jordan.
“We can establish that from the marks made by the heels of Holloway’s shoes,” Woodside said. “They were dragged through the blood. There was bark and wood splinters around the spot where he attacked Holloway. So I think what happened, they sent Holloway out to get firewood. When Holloway left, the perp hit Jordan—three or four fatal stab wounds. Then when Holloway came in with his arms full of firewood, the perp hit him from behind. He burned the logs in the fireplace while he undressed the two bodies and finished the work. Then he burned their clothes in the fireplace, too.”
“When, Bill?” she demanded.
Danielson shook his head. “These two bodies were chewed up by predators and that basement was like a deep freeze. I really can’t give you anything definite.”
“Can you say for certain they were killed before Rushman?”
“No. My guess is anywhere from a week before Rushman’s murder to three weeks after it. I’m sorry. I know you’d like to add these two to the Rushman—”
“Absolutely not!” she said, cutting him off. “We’ve got Stampler cold on the bishop’s murder. If we tie these to the indictment and we blow either one of them, we lose it all. But it would be nice to have it in our back pocket, just in case.”
“This is the most substantial physical evidence I have ever seen in a felony homicide,” Woodside said. “We got everything but an eyewitness.”
“And a motive,” Shackleford said.
“Don’t be too sure,” Venable answered. Sten
ner’s eyes flicked over at her but she ignored him. “We have three psychiatrists who will testify that Stampler is sane. The bishop had forced him to move because he was shacked up with this girl Linda. Our contention is that Stampler and Rushman had a falling out. He had to move to the Hollows. His girl left him. He probably was going to have to quit taking college extension courses. We can make a very strong case that he felt betrayed by the good bishop, and so he premeditated and committed his murder.” She turned to Shackleford. “I know you have a problem with that, Charlie.”
“I think Vail will eat us up on the motive thing, mainly because it’s all supposition and hearsay.”
“We have to provide a motive,” she said. “If we don’t he’ll come down harder on us.”
“I’m just saying it’s skim milk,” said Shackleford.
“Then come up with some cream.”
“That I can’t do.”
“Remember,” she said, “we have three shrinks—and one of ours is a woman, which should balance off his female psychologist—and all three will testify that under that kind of stress he could have been motivated to this kind of response. Right now that’s the best we can do.”
“How about this fugue thing?” Stenner asked.
“All three shrinks say he has never gone into fugue while they were talking to him—even under the worst kind of stress.”
“Which means?”
“Which means they don’t believe him. Anything else, Woody?”
Woodside said, “We can match fibers found on the knife tray to the gloves in his jacket pocket.”
“Beautiful,” she said excitedly. “So we can prove he came in through the kitchen.”
“Or went out there and got the knife,” Woodside said.
“Either way it blows his ‘mystery killer’ theory,” said Stenner.
“Certainly puts a dent in it,” Venable agreed.
“As far as Jordan and Holloway go …” Woodside started to say.
“Forget them,” she said firmly, waving off the suggestion. “Keep working on it but it doesn’t relate to this case. Unless we can prove they were killed before Rushman and we can put Stampler on the scene when they died, I’m not touching it. Like I’ve told you, the best way to screw up a good murder case is to double up. Whoever succeeds me can worry about those two.”
Primal Fear Page 34
