Brain Trust

by A W Hartoin

  He blanched and I ran, dashing to the left and up the long stairs to the landing, cornering on a dime to run for the second floor. I went as fast as my short legs could go, but it wasn’t fast enough. Scott got me by the ankle. I fell, whacking my face on a step. The pain stunned me for a second and he yanked me down the stairs.

  “Blackie!” I screamed. There was an ungodly shriek like a woman on fire and Scott yelled, letting me go. I glanced back as I scrambled up the stairs. The black cat was on Scott’s face. He yanked Blackie off, leaving shreds of skin hanging from his cheeks.

  I got to the top of the stairs and hung a right to Dad’s office. I slammed the door and turned the old brass key. Scott rammed the door a second later and I went for my purse. It wasn’t on my shoulder. Must’ve lost it on the stairs. I ran around Dad’s desk to the safe that I left open on the day of Mom’s attack. I grabbed a Beretta 92 off the top shelf and rammed its clip in, turning just in time to see Scott burst through the door, spraying wood fragments across the room.

  “Stop!” I yelled, chambering a round.

  He aimed his weapon at me and screamed. “I want that file!”

  “There’s no file, you moron!” I flipped off the safety. That was kinda important. “I said that to lure you here. You’re dumber than my dad thought and that’s saying something.”

  He stared at me blankly. I could see his trigger finger itching to pull and I got ready to drop behind the desk, but he just looked at me. “You couldn’t have.”

  “Hello, I found the spyware on my phone.”

  “But you’re an idiot.”

  “Apparently, I know people who aren’t,” I said. “Now get out while the getting’s good.”

  He shook his head violently and blood from his cheeks splattered the wallpaper. “No. I’m going to kill you. I’ll never get away now.”

  Agreed, so I’ll be shooting you.

  Blackie slinked in behind Scott, silent as usual, and I smiled.

  “I will kill you,” he said, but something about my smile made him nervous.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said, inclining my head toward the cat.

  “That fucking cat.” He pointed his weapon at Blackie, who did a curly-tongued yawn and sat on his skinny rump, completely unperturbed. “I’ll shoot your cat. How about that?”

  I shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked.

  “He’s not alive, so you can’t kill him.”

  “What the—”

  “But I can kill you.” I fired, pegging Scott in his beefy shoulder. He spun around, firing a shot into the ceiling. I’d hoped to bring him down without killing him, but he ran out the door. I dashed around the desk past Blackie, who was cleaning his toes. I slipped around in Scott’s blood for a second before running down the hall. I caught a glimpse of Scott as he turned to the stairs, bouncing off the newel post before going down.

  I made it five feet before three shots rang out. I skidded to a halt. My first thought was that Scott shot himself, but I knew instantly that wasn’t right. I eased down the hall, Dad’s Beretta ready. The silence was like a presence in the house, pressing on me and pushing the air out of my lungs. I came around the corner and pointed my weapon down the stairs.

  At the bottom on the landing was Valentina, holding a revolver on Scott. He lay on his back, halfway down the stairs with three bullets in the center of his chest.

  “She let me in,” said Valentina, her voice steady and totally calm.

  “Who?” I said after it sank in.

  There was movement to the right and Claire, Dad’s secretary, crept into view. “She said she was a client.”

  I lowered the Beretta, flipped on the safety, and took a deep breath, willing myself not to shake. I failed. Go figure. “Okay. Good. Um…can you call 911?”

  “Me?” asked Claire.

  “Since you’re not holding a gun, let’s go with yes.”

  Claire got out her phone and backed down the stairs. There were sirens in the distance. “I think they’re already coming.”

  “Call anyway,” I said. “Valentina, can you lower your weapon? He’s pretty dead.”

  Valentina looked at the gun in her hands. She seemed surprised at it being there and she dropped it. “My father taught me to shoot.”

  “You’re obviously a good student, but what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Mary Elizabeth told me to stay home. I didn’t.”

  I wanted to come down the stairs, but Scott’s body was so wide I’d have to step on him. Not going to happen. “But why?” I asked. “We had a plan. It didn’t work, but we had a plan.”

  “20/20,” she said.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “There was a profile of your father and you on 20/20. Remember?”

  Oh, I remembered all right. I kinda hated 20/20 for that show. “So?”

  “They made you seem like an idiot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “They said your plans never work, but you’re lucky.”

  Insulting, but sadly accurate.

  “So you thought my plan wouldn’t work,” I said.

  “I looked at your mind map, all those arrows, and I thought of my Bobby.” She pointed at Scott. “He killed my boy and those other people. I wasn’t going to let him kill you.”

  “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Valentina said with a wan smile. “Will they arrest me?”

  “Not a chance, but you’ll probably be on 20/20,” I said.

  “I hope they don’t make me look like an idiot, too.”

  “You have a better chance than me.”

  Claire came up again. “That’s the cops. Mr. Knox called them, I guess.”

  “Who’s Mr. Knox?” asked Valentina.

  “The guard who let us on the street,” said Claire. “Should I let the cops in? You don’t want to hide the body or anything?”

  “Since when do I hide bodies?” I asked.

  Claire shrugged. “With your family, I never know. I’m coming back from vacation to a shootout on the stairs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Let them in.”

  Claire opened the door. The first one through was Fats, weapon drawn and sweating so hard she looked like she’d been through a car wash. She’d run four miles to try to get there before Scott.

  Right behind her was Chuck and Sydney. Chuck took one look at me, got something in his eyes and started pacing, muttering about the house being dusty and dust was a terrible thing by all accounts. Sydney was so relieved I wasn’t dead that he sat on the floor and had to do yoga breathing.

  I still couldn’t make myself climb over Scott, so I turned around and came down the servant stairs by the kitchen. Instead of going out to face the muttering, moist-eyed boyfriend, I made a latte and sat down, staring at Mom’s shoes, right where she left them on Saturday.

  Saturday seemed like a million years ago instead of just three days. As I sat there, I smelled a smell. A smell Mom wouldn’t like. Rotting food. I kicked off my bloodied Vans and put on Mom’s Tom’s. They were a bit tight but felt good, like my mother, not quite comfortable. I got up and started cleaning. There were vegetables in the sink that Mom must’ve been washing. They’d gone way bad. The trash was gross, too. I took it all out before I started scrubbing. Valentina came in with Claire and they automatically started helping. We scrubbed every surface, washing all the bad down the drain.

  Cops were swarming over the house with the crime scene techs, but we ignored the activity and made sugar cookies. There’s nothing a good sugar cookie can’t fix.

  While we were baking, a marginally calmer Chuck came in with Nazir, the new detective on the case. He took our statements at the kitchen table. At some point, Grandad came with Avery Sampson and John Jameson. The latter was so filled with grief over his son that he couldn’t speak. He and Valentina sat at the table and cried until I thought it wasn’t possible to cry anymore and the
n they cried some more. There was no anger in that room, only cookies and sorrow.

  Grandad and Avery went over Bob’s case in minute detail. I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to know. I just cleaned. Claire and I decided we should go to a spa, get weird seaweed wraps, and sneak in food because spa food sucks. We didn’t talk about Scott Frame other than our theories of how to get blood out of carpet and off wallpaper. Claire was all for calling a service, but I wanted to do it myself. I think there might be something wrong about that, but Aunt Miriam came with Millicent and Myrtle. They agreed. If you pay someone to clean up your mess and make it like it never happened, the mess is still there, just in your head. We’d do it together.

  Fats said little. She sat in the corner, fuming over the breakdown. I think she was really mad that she didn’t get to kill Scott. That’s what she’d been planning. I wouldn’t have killed him if I could avoid it, but with Fats, there was no way he’d have made it out alive. As it was, it didn’t matter. He was dead and it would take a good while to scrub him off all the people in that room.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A WEEK AND a half later, Mom was in a swanky rehab, doing three hours of therapy a day and sleeping fourteen. Valentina was on 20/20 and I was once again deemed not-quite-bright and extraordinarily lucky. My lip had healed well, but every picture the press decided to use was taken right after Blankenship bit me. I looked like Marilyn Monroe crossed with a mutant. Mickey Stix freaked and flew in a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to fix my lip, but oily bastard hit on me and I decided I’d heal fine on my own. To apologize for picking Dr. Dirtbag, Mickey decided to hold a charity concert for the American Stroke Association. The press Double Black Diamond got for the Sturgis event was huge and he was one to spot an opportunity from a thousand miles away. Since my lip had healed so well, Mickey wanted me on stage. I wanted to get out of town and was plotting my escape as I stood at the drop-off entrance at the rehab center. Tiny was arriving in a few minutes. He was still in rough shape and his stay was sure to be longer than Mom’s.

  “I’m telling you, she’s not ready to go home.” Grandad looked at me and I shrugged. He’d been arguing with the insurance company on and off for three days, trying to do what my dad wanted. My father had stopped crying long ago and had devoted himself to my mom. He tried to check into the rehab, but they said no. So he stuck to Mom, making sure she ate, slept, and did her myriad of exercises. He was exactly the way I hoped, except there was a problem. Dad was driving Mom crazy.

  He wouldn’t leave her alone and he’d taken to apologizing for everything all the time. He apologized for missing anniversaries, birthdays, and graduations. He apologized for leaving toenail clippings on the bathroom floor and coming home smelling like a corpse. He researched every aspect of strokes known to mankind and tried to make her read studies. Dad wanted to fly her to Sweden for some oxygen chamber treatment. Mom suggested he go and check it out in advance, but he didn’t fall for it.

  Since Mom was cleared to walk on her own now, she’d taken to dodging him. Once, when he went to get coffee, she hid in the library for a bit of peace. He called 911. Not the nurses. 911. To be honest, I missed the crying. It was less annoying. The whole family tried to step in and distract Dad, but like when he was on a case, he was undistractable.

  That morning when Dad went to the bathroom—he didn’t try to take Mom with him, but I think he considered it—she sat up in bed and said, “I know you went through hell to get him here and I love him, but you’ve got to get him out of here or I’m going to stab him with a fork.”

  Unfortunately, Pete’s parents had come back from vacation and reclaimed Wallace the Wonder Dog. Wallace was the only thing keeping Mom sane, so I did what I swore I wouldn’t do. I called Chuck. My boyfriend had had his own dad-like crisis after the case was over. He’d gotten himself all worked up about me getting out of his handcuffs and luring Scott to the house. He ran around and yelled. Not at me. It was unfocused yelling. I could tell he was terrified. He never thought I’d do something like that, but honestly, all the signs were there. You are who you are and I’m a Watts. Asking me not to do what I do is like asking Chuck to not flirt with every woman within a fifty-foot radius. Not going to work. He can’t help it and neither could I.

  I pointed that out and it was a big mistake. He felt guilty and what does Chuck Watts do when he feels guilty? He buys me stuff. So far, I’d gotten an automatic self-scooping litter box for Skanky and furniture from IKEA—it was still in the flat packs in middle of my living room. I had to climb over it to get to my bedroom. He bought me multiple new razors. I guess my legs are hairy. Next came a bunch of hats, presumably to cover my Fats haircut. All this and I’d barely seen him. He’d been cleared of any wrongdoing in the Alfonso Cruz shooting and was back in action. The Unsub case was kinda huge and getting bigger. When Nazir was at Hunt gathering evidence on the threat to Blankenship’s life, a man named Vince Spotnitz left work in the middle of his shift and never returned. Vince Spotnitz was an alias that was so well-orchestrated that he passed his background check with no problems. The FBI and local PD had formed a new task force to investigate the Unsubs. My guys were on it and I didn’t even have to eat crab to make it happen. Chuck, Sydney, and Nazir were invited. No blackmail or bribery necessary.

  This time, the task force name, Collective Inquiry, stuck. Mostly since The Brain Trust was now considered bad luck. Collective Inquiry was trying to find Vince Spotnitz but had little hope. Somehow, he faked his prints and, on closer examination, his ID picture looked like he might’ve been wearing facial prosthetics. The FBI had turned up forty-two bodies in Kansas and a 1972 Beetle. That’s right. Somebody buried an entire car in that field and nobody noticed. I was starting to understand why eyewitness accounts are so unreliable.

  The Scott Frame case was going better. Nazir had found a storage unit that Frame rented in one of his daughters’ names and it was crammed full of evidence he’d nicked from the Brain Trust cases and plenty of other ones, including Rafael Cruz. He was blackmailing the gangbanger with evidence from a murder he’d done when he was a teen. Cruz’s father ended up getting blackmailed, too. Since they hadn’t caught Cruz yet, they didn’t know why.

  I’d been right about Banging Bob. Scott had heard about him from Laurie Gavrieli and he had a perfect mark. He planted evidence in Bob’s apartment and car and then arrested the hapless young man. The evidence was that Bob was a rapist of women and young children. In Bob’s mind, that was the worst thing you could be. He’d rather kill than have Valentina think he’d committed rape, so he agreed to murder someone for Scott. Once. He killed a vagrant, thinking he could get Scott off him. But then Scott had real evidence of murder. He blackmailed Bob into killing for the next six years. Scott ran the entire operation. He knew exactly what The Brain Trust was thinking, so it was easy to lead them astray.

  Scott left rambling letters to my dad, saying how smart he was for fooling him. Scott had planned to let Bob off the hook at a certain point, but then Dad had caught him—with math, of all things. He went to the Wash U engineering department and had the super-nerds program him some sort of probability algorithm. Because even random things aren’t really random, especially when you’re trying to make them look like they are. Dad said when he saw all the dots on the screen plotted and predicted so accurately, he knew where to go. To be fair, it took a couple of murders to nail it. But Dad ended up in an elderly man’s apartment in Ferguson. He sat on the sofa for two nights, having put the old guy in a Motel 6. Bob jimmied the bathroom window on the second night and Dad had him. The secret to Dad’s success was that he didn’t tell anyone his idea. No one in The Brain Trust knew, so Scott couldn’t change course.

  Dad didn’t know why Scott stole his Brain Trust file. He’d had a feeling that something wasn’t right with Bob’s case and that’s why he kept his algorithm secret, but he never had anything on Scott. Maybe Scott wanted to see what Dad said about him. If he did, he wouldn’t have been happy. Dad thought he was me
diocre and riding the coattails of his gifted uncle. Dad never planned on doing anything about that. He told me that it was hard to reach for excellence when you have no hope of attaining it. He felt sorry for Scott Frame and Scott hated him for it. In his letters, Scott said he’d planned on letting it all go after retirement. He thought my father would fade into obscurity like Leo had done, taking up woodworking and fly fishing. But that’s not what happened. Dad went on to national fame, making serious money. The other members of the Brain Trust basked in the reflected glow. They got interviewed about Dad and were sometimes asked to give their insights on new cases. Keely was interviewed via satellite more than anyone else. She was living the dream in beach towns with plenty of money. She was asked to do profiles in her spare time. Nobody interviewed Scott and his resentment built until they all had to pay.

  All those intersecting cases were kind of overwhelming and that gave me an idea. Chuck was the lead of Collective Inquiry and I asked him—no, begged him—to call on Dad for help. Chuck agreed to get him out of the rehab hospital for at least four hours and I agreed that I needed new lamps. I don’t know what was wrong with my lamps, but Chuck was getting me new ones, by God.

  “I can’t do it,” said Grandad, pocketing his phone. “They won’t let Carolina stay past tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “She really is ready to go home.”

  “Tommy says no.”

  I hugged Grandad’s bony arm. “He’s just afraid to bring her home. He still won’t sleep there.”

  He grinned. “How do you like having a slumber party with your father?”

  “Swell and there’s very little slumber. He paces all night and just catnaps on the sofa.”

  “Well, Carolina might be ready, but Tommy isn’t. Maybe she can go to The Girls? They’d spoil her rotten and there’s no bad memories.”

  “That could work. I was thinking I could take her to Cairngorms Castle for a spa week, no men allowed.”

  “Tommy won’t agree to that. I think he might need medication.” He looked over. “There they are. Finally.”