“Listen,” he said. “If anyone asks you anything at all, just tell them you know not a goddamned thing other than the fact that Scarlet’s death is a tragedy that could have been avoided.”
Chewing thoughtfully on her sandwich, Lynn tossed what remained into the sink.
“In other words, you want me to lie for you.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” he said, pulling out a fresh smoke from the new pack, popping it into his mouth. “Now, is there anything else you’d like to discuss before I go back to work?”
“I think that pretty much covers it, honey dearest.”
Taking a step forward, Cain planted a smile on his face. He set one hand on his wife’s ass, the other on her hip.
“Maybe I’ll cut out early,” he said. “Take a little time for an afternoon delight.”
Resisting, Lynn pulled away.
“Remember what I just said about Dick Divine?” she posed.
“What about him?”
“That we were over long before the divorce made it official?”
“Yeah, so what are you getting at?”
“Just take a moment to put yourself in my shoes and think real hard.”
50
I GOT OUT THE phone book, looked up the Orange County Tax Assessor in the blue pages. When I got the woman who ran the department, I asked her what I needed to do in order to come up with a copy of the Deed to my property on Hope Lane. She told me I needed to come into the county courthouse where the County Clerk would make a copy of the original which should be on file.
She asked me for my address. She could look it up for me on the computer, verify my information, then send word down to the Clerk to begin processing the paperwork. Save me some time.
I asked her if she would be so kind.
“Is the property registered in your name?”
“It was transferred in my name after my father’s death.”
A moment or two passed. Long enough for me to have a quick swallow of whiskey.
Suddenly I heard a deep sigh—the kind of sigh that comes from deep inside a mournful soul.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Mr. Divine, is it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Richard Divine.”
She said, “I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but a lien has been placed on your property.” My head, the invisible vice was squeezing it
“No one’s notified me of a lien.”
She checked the date of the lien, told me it went into activation only this morning.
“By whom?”
“By the Property Tax Department, claiming a fifteen-thousand dollar back-tax deficit, Mr. Divine.”
I sat back in my chair, tried to breathe even and steady. Had I paid my tax bills? I recalled that I had, even recalled writing the checks at the kitchen table, stuffing the envelopes, licking the stamps. Maybe it was possible I was behind by a payment or two, but not fifteen Gs.
“With whom do I speak to straighten this out?”
“Well, that would be me,” she said. And then she said, “Oh, pardon me, I’ll have to put you on hold.”
She did.
I drank.
The phone disconnected.
I called back.
The same woman answered, “Tax Assessor.” I told her who it was, that I had been disconnected.
She hung up.
I called back again.
She hung up without saying anything.
I called back again.
Nothing but a busy signal.
Then Lola walked in through the back door off the kitchen.
She was still wearing her lab coat, the name Dr. Lola Ross embossed against a laminated credit-card sized photograph I.D. that was clipped to her right breast pocket. Standing in the frame of the still-open door, her dark hair was wet with rainwater. The dull white light that shined down from the small ceiling-mounted light fixture made her damp face glow with a strange but attractive radiance.
“Dr. Ross,” I said lifting my drinking glass high, “how’s about a drink?”
She leaned against the door frame, shot me one of those tight-lipped slanty-eyed looks that spoke far louder than words. Without a word she crossed over the kitchen floor, grabbed a glass out of the cabinet above the sink. She rinsed the glass out with cold water, dried it with the cloth dishtowel that was draped over the faucet. Approaching the kitchen table, she kissed me atop my head, then set the glass down, poured herself a full shot. She beamed at me with a tan face draped by long brown hair and matching brown eyes, and downed the shot in one quick swallow. Placing the glass back down onto the table, she poured another drink and sat herself down.
“You’re about to become a prime suspect in a Murder One case,” she whispered. “And you’re celebrating?”
“Not celebrating,” I said to her. “Commiserating.”
“With yourself,” she said. “How very pathetic of you, Divine.”
I proceeded to tell her everything starting from the top, even retreading the stuff she already knew, and the hot-off-the-press stuff like the sudden lien on my property when in fact, I’d paid my tax bills. Or most of them anyway. So I thought. When I was through, Lola sat back in her chair, stared into her drinking glass.
“On one hand I think you might be overreacting.” Her voice was soft, low, almost inaudible. “Mitchell Cain has always been a good partner to you and a good stepfather to your son. But he also has a talent for manipulation.”
“Like you said, my boy lives with him. In there lies his advantage.”
“Yes, but after your forced leave of absence, when you needed money the most, you were ready and willing to do what he wanted you to do, no questions asked. You were going through a divorce. You had alimony and child support to contend with. You needed the cash. And he gave you the full authority to act in the name of the law so long as you took his or Jake’s lead. And don’t give me any nonsense about the S.P.D. making your life miserable if you didn’t go along. Because they never told you that or else you would have told me. You made that up just to make things sound more dramatic for Stanley.”
“I’m raising the stakes,” I said biting my lip.
“At whose expense?”
“My own.”
“Wrong,” the clinical neurologist said. “Maybe you’ve sufficiently challenged Cain. But in the end, he believes that you will back down. You will do what he tells you to do, because that has always been the specific nature of your relationship. Your symbiosis. Cain is as much a control freak as you’re all over the place. He believes that sooner or later you will cave. Because in a very real and very strange way he believes you need him. Not because he lives with your son, but because he actually sees through all the skull and gray matter, sees that bullet inside your head as clear as day. He believes it makes you vulnerable, naive almost. Certainly, easily manipulated.”
“But he’s mistaken,” I said. “I’m not backing down on this one.”
“You’re breaking the pattern,” she said. “Divorcing yourself from him in more ways than one for a good cause. And I applaud you for it. But for a man in your condition, it will not be easy.”
I said, “He will try and put the finger on me. His threats are serious.”
“Take a minute to think about it, Divine. If he tries to implicate you in his body part operation—if there is a body parts operation—he risks implicating himself. Inevitably, he would also be tied in with Scarlet’s murder and now Jake’s.”
“Maybe he’s willing to take that chance. He’s the top cop. I’m the part-time head case.”
“But you are not invisible,” she insisted. “Even if yours is the only traceable name on the two-year paper trail, it will lead to Cain, no matter what. He’s the one who hired you in the first place, even after Jake forced you into medical leave. That very connection will raise the red flag.”
“Unless, that is, he’s got all his excuses, smoke screens and alibis in order.”
She got up from the table, went into the
freezer, grabbed a couple of ice cubes, dropped them into her drink, sat back down.
“Cain is more afraid than you know,” she went on. “I think his world came crashing down when Scarlet suddenly showed up with her neck cut open from ear to ear.”
“Assuming Jake was alone in killing her,” I said.
“Then they invite you to come along for the ride, the one constant they think they can control and manipulate into supporting their conclusion of suicide. And yet, you suddenly turn on them.”
I listened to the rhythm of the rain, looked into Lola’s face, at her dark teardrop eyes. I asked her what else she had spinning around inside that clinical brain of hers.
“What if Jake and Scarlet were in on this organ thing more than you know?” she said.
“Whaddaya mean more?” I asked. “My gut instinct is that Scarlet didn’t know about it at all.”
“Suma already attested to witnessing Scarlet doing illicit drugs—snorting heroin for God’s sake. She’d been involved with some Albino man who’s been harassing you for twenty-four hours.”
“Not exactly harassing,” I said. “But I am about to insist on a little face time with the Q-Tip in the next day or so, clear things up a little.”
“Listen,” she went on, “what if, for whatever reason, both Jake and Scarlet wanted out? Or, even better, what if Captain Montana wanted out now that he could see how wrong he’d been; how his involvement with this thing was just eating away at Scarlet? Perhaps he had become overwrought with guilt or maybe he found Jesus. Maybe he wanted to try and clean Scarlet up, get his marriage back before it was too late. Anyway, maybe when he confronted Cain with this all hell broke loose. Cain felt he had no choice but to get rid of them both just to shut them up.”
I said, “If that were the case, he’d have no choice but to place the blame on me and hope that Johnny Q. Public would buy into it. I’m the logical chump because it’s not only my name plastered all over the case synopses, I also had a track record of taking off-the-books cash from them.”
Lola went tight-faced, again.
“And don’t forget,” she said, “you were sleeping with Scarlet.”
I felt a lump in my chest. A loser’s lump.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “there was that too.”
“What about the lien?”
“Have you balanced your checkbook lately, Divine?”
I smiled the smile of the guilty. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if I could find my checkbook.
We didn’t say anything for a minute.
Then Lola took one more sip of her whiskey, got back up from the table, set her glass into the sink.
“You said that the firemen found some old cans of embalming solution in the basement of Jake’s house. Are you absolutely sure?”
“That’s what Cain told me.”
“It’s your nature to take him at his word. But did you actually see the cans?”
I shook my head.
“They’re probably hidden inside the same closet along with Scarlet’s murder weapon and suicide note,” I jested.
But Lola didn’t laugh.
“Your dad left a few cans of the stuff lying around downstairs,” she pointed out. “Did it ever occur to you while you were having your little pity party to maybe check and see if any of the cans were missing?”
“Kind of slipped my mind.”
She shook her head, smiled. The first smile since arriving earlier.
Not a cheery smile. Sardonic, frustrated.
“Shall we?” she said, heading for the stairs.
“Lola,” I said.
She stopped, her back to me, inside the vestibule off the kitchen.
“I’m sorry about getting you involved in this thing.”
“Sometimes I’m sorry we ever met,” she said. “But only sometimes.”
Then she walked downstairs.
51
WHILE DRIVING BACK INTO the city, past the four- and five-story brick and stucco storefronts that lined Central Avenue, Mitchell Cain picked up the cell phone from off the car seat, flipped it open, dialed 411.
After a beat, a computer-activated voice posed, “What city and address, please?”
“Stormville,” he spoke into the handset, gray eyes peeled on the road before him. “Times Union newspaper.”
When the computer voice informed him that they were connecting his call to the requested number, Cain waited. Finally the phone rang until an operator picked up.
“Stormville Times Union,” she said. “We’re your source.”
“Sure,” said Cain. “Brendan Lyons, please.”
“One moment,” said the operator, placing him on hold.
After another beat, the line picked up again.
“Lyons,” said the strong, low voice.
“Mr. Lyons,” said the Lieutenant. “You know who this is?”
“Cain. What can I do for you now?”
“Have I got a story for you, pal.”
From over the phone, Cain could hear the crime desk reporter pulling out a notebook, maybe a pencil or pen to go with it.
“Shoot,” Lyons said.
“Okay,” Cain began. “For your ears only …”
52
WE WERE STANDING INSIDE the old embalming room, now turned T.V. room, just off the space reserved for laundry on the bottom floor of the split-level. In a far corner, inside a closet that ran the length of the narrow space, was located a stack of old formaldehyde cans my father left behind some years back when he moved his business downtown.
At Lola’s insistence, I groggily went ahead and counted the purple and white cans, but it was really a wasted effort since I had never bothered to count them before. Whether it was ten or twenty for that matter, I had no idea. It was simply a stack of toxic chemicals I had no way of getting rid of without having to find a dump that wouldn’t charge me both arms and a leg for disposal.
We checked the room top to bottom for evidence of a break-in.
We checked and rechecked the long row of eight latch-style, push-out windows. Then we checked the back door that led out onto a concrete patio. We found no indication that suggested Cain or maybe Joy had somehow broken in and stolen a couple of cans of embalming solution. But if one of them had, the only way it would have been possible was by using a key to get in.
The only people with keys were Lola and me.
We went back up into the kitchen, sat back down at the table.
“I guess it doesn’t matter if a can from your personal embalming fluid cache was used to start the blaze or not,” Lola pointed out. “How difficult can it be to get a hold of the stuff? You can probably locate it on-line just like anything else.”
“E-bay,” I nodded.
“So what do we do now, doc?” I said as I got up from the table, returned the Jack bottle to the cupboard above the sink. “In your professional opinion.”
She crossed her arms and legs.
“Just keep on doing what you’re doing,” she said.
I turned to her, leaned back against the counter.
“And what have I been doing?”
“The right thing,” she said. “The purpose behind your being hired by the S.P.D. in the first place. As a detective attempting to find the true cause behind Scarlet Montana’s murder. Find out how she died, you’ve done your job. In the meantime, you discover the wheres and whats behind it all, you win the grand prize.”
“The ‘why,’” I said. “You also have to establish the ‘why’ in order to derive a total understanding of a case.”
“Precisely,” Lola agreed.
I walked over to where she was sitting.
“What’s the grand prize?”
“Justice,” she said. “Redemption.”
“For me?”
“For Scarlet. If your going by the book has Cain so frightened to the point of arson and homicide,” she continued, “then there’s no telling what kind of grave he could be digging for himself.”
“Nice choice
of words,” I said. “But then, I don’t want to be his next homicide. I’m already a short-timer … speaking of graves.”
As soon as I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have.
Lola sat back in her chair, ran open fingers through long brown hair.
“Maybe you think your life and death is a big joke. But I am a part of you and I don’t think it’s a big joke at all.”
She was right. Maybe joking about my condition was my emotional shield, my rigid defense mechanism. But then, what a guy like me had trouble understanding was this: my situation was not about me at all. It was more about the people who loved me, unselfishly and without condition. Like Lola. Maybe the bullet was inside me, resting, waiting. But it was Lola who felt the pain.
Outside the kitchen, the rumble of thunder not far in the distance. Perfectly, ominously timed.
I said, “For a lab rat, you know a lot about crime.”
“I was F.B.I. Or have you forgotten?”
“The master profiler,” I said.
“Five full years as a field op,” she said. “Twenty-three confirmed indictments.”
“Yes, but how many acquittals?” I asked, knowing it was a sore spot, but not able to resist.
“Just as many acquittals,” she admitted sourly, “which is why I’ve become an academic once more.”
“Out of protest,” I said.
“No,” she said, “out of frustration for a system that affords the criminal more rights than the cop.”
God, she was good, I thought. Talk about beauty and brains. Lola was the perfect combo. In a way it was too bad we were just friends. In another, more complicated way, it wasn’t.
And then the lights went out.
“Now what?” I said, looking around a now powerless kitchen.
“Power outage,” Lola correctly surmised.
She got up, looked out the window above the kitchen sink, I guess to see if any of the neighbors were also out of power. She said she couldn’t really tell from where she was standing.
It wasn’t the first time the power went out inside the old Divine homestead. Which meant I wasn’t going to worry about it. Not with more pressing matters at hand.
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