Yes, she could do this, she was positive. She could make things right.
She would make things right.
And then, she hoped, if she was lucky, she’d die with the smile still on her face.
18
The OGM on Abigail Harmon’s cell phone was the same as the one on the answering machine in her New York City apartment. Neither was in Abby’s voice. Justin could assume only that a housekeeper had either been recruited for the task or had taken it upon herself to make sure that the message was singular rather than plural, or at least no longer made reference to the deceased Mr. Harmon: “You’ve reached the Harmon residence. Please leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as it’s convenient.”
Justin left the same message on both machines: “I’m in Providence. I’m just making sure you’re okay. Nothing much to report . . . just checking in.”
He hung up, feeling unsatisfied. He had a discomforting feeling that it might not be convenient for his message to be returned for quite a while.
Glancing at his watch, he looked up at the ten- or twelve-story glass building he was now facing. He had a few minutes yet before he had to be at his appointment. He decided to loiter and make believe he was savoring a smoke. That lasted thirty seconds or so before he decided his imagination was not what it should be. Pretending didn’t provide much satisfaction.
He hoped the meeting he was about to have would provide a bit more.
In keeping with the safe and conservative personality that Victoria LaSalle had extolled, her husband’s company was simply named the LaSalle Group. The name held no promises of riches or glory. No sense even of what services the company provided. Unfortunately, it also held no key as to why its founder and president had been murdered.
Justin appeared exactly on time and was ushered into a small conference room by Ronald’s assistant, an attractive but grim-faced woman wearing a conservative gray skirt suit and white shirt and who appeared to be in her late twenties. They were quickly joined by two men, also seemingly in their late twenties or early thirties and also dressed in crisp gray suits with white shirts. Justin was only a few years older than they were, but they all made him feel old and tired and out of shape and somewhat soiled.
Justin thanked them for coming into the office. It was Saturday, and already six-thirty in the evening, but Justin had wanted to meet there, to get a feel for the surroundings. He also was expecting them to provide material and information that might be available only in the office files or on the office computers. He didn’t want to wait to get that information. They all murmured that it was no problem, that they’d like to help in any way possible, that they often worked late and on weekends anyway. They said they’d all spoken to Victoria and she had instructed them to give Justin absolutely anything he needed. He thanked them again, then he did his best to tell them what he needed. He began by explaining what he was looking for and why.
One of the men—his name was Harry Behr and Justin took him to be the highest up of the three—explained how Ronald LaSalle had operated his business.
“He was a good teacher,” Harry said. “He believed in discipline and intellectual . . . I’m not sure of the exact word I’m looking for here . . .”
“Integrity,” the woman said. Her name was Ellen Loache.
“Yes,” Harry said, and looked pleased. “He believed in intellectual integrity. One of the reasons he started his own company was that he said he always felt that when he worked at a large firm he was letting external sources control his time and his thinking. He didn’t think that was the best way to get the right results.”
The other man nodded and spoke up now. His name was Stan Solomon. “Ronald liked the freedom this place gave him. He said he used to spend his mornings taking phone calls, his lunchtimes listening to other people telling him what they thought he should do, and his afternoons meeting with analysts and strategists who did nothing but talk at him.”
“What he used to drum into us,” Harry said, “was that he wanted us to give him facts, not opinions. He didn’t really care if we saw anyone or talked to other people; he wanted us to read newspapers, trade publications, magazines, corporate reports, legitimate financial analyses. He wanted to ignore the junk—and there’s a lot of junk in this business—and try to dig for the reality. Ronald always said you couldn’t really trust people but you could trust ideas and facts.”
“And results,” Stan added. “He believed in the Bill Parcells school of economics. You are what your record says you are.”
“Okay,” Justin said. “I’ve got the theory he lived by. But what did he do during the day?”
“Mostly the same as what we did,” Stan said. “He read, he researched, he focused.”
Justin nodded and scratched at his half day’s growth of beard. He wondered how the two guys in the room managed to stay so perfectly clean shaven. “And you didn’t notice anything different over, say, the last few months?” he asked.
“Different how?” Ellen Loache asked.
“I don’t know. Different behavior on Ronald’s part. Different business practices. Different in any way.”
“Well,” Ellen said, “things definitely changed about six months ago, but that was only natural.”
“Why?” Justin asked.
“The nature of our business changed,” Harry said.
Justin didn’t have to say anything. He just moved his fingers in a “come on” motion. Harry continued talking.
“Originally we were basically just a research company, providing services for other companies. That’s mostly what Ronald did at the Rock.”
“The Rock?”
“R and W. Rockworth and Williams.”
“Wait,” Justin said. “What does Rockworth and Williams have to do with Ronald?”
“That’s where he used to work before starting TLG.”
“He used to work at Rockworth?”
“Sure. He pretty much was Rockworth up here. He ran the Providence office. Ellen and I worked for him there.”
“He brought me over from Citibank,” Stan said, “in Boston.”
Justin held his hand up, motioning for them to be quiet. He didn’t know what the Rockworth connection could possibly mean, but it was too strong to ignore. The one thing that had popped up at every turn so far was the financial institution of Rockworth and Williams. Justin decided that he sure as hell was going to find out what that connection meant.
“Okay,” he said after a few moments. “Go on. How did the business change?”
“We began doing a lot more of our own investing, dealing directly with clients rather than only working through Rockworth.”
“And this changed things how?”
“A lot more personal service for one thing. When you’re dealing directly with clients, you’re at their beck and call.” That was from Harry. He clearly didn’t like being at other people’s beck and call.
“A lot more travel for another,” Ellen said. “Particularly for Ronald. He was spending a lot more time out of the office dealing with clients.”
“Do you have a list of the clients and the places he traveled to?” Justin asked.
Ellen nodded and handed over a folder. “Mrs. LaSalle told me you’d be wanting that, so I already prepared it.”
“This is everyone?”
“Certainly everyone I knew about.”
Justin picked up on her hesitation. “Is it possible there were clients you didn’t know about?”
Another hesitation. “I don’t think so,” Ellen Loache said, “but . . .”
“But Ron seemed like he was becoming more secretive about things,” Stan said.
Harry shot Stan a sharp glance, but Justin turned to face Stan and asked him to be more specific.
“It’s hard to really be specific,” Stan said. “I just got the feeling he was doing something he didn’t want to discuss with us. Or with me, anyway. To be honest, I thought maybe it was because he didn’t think I was doing a great job.”<
br />
“That’s ridiculous,” Ellen said quickly.
“Well, I mean, I know that,” Stan said. “I had a great year. But still, he just didn’t seem to want to include me sometimes.”
Justin turned to Harry Behr. “Did you think the same thing? About you, I mean, not about Stan.”
Harry also hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It was weird. But not so weird that I felt like I could say anything.”
“That’s exactly the way I felt,” Stan said. “It was subtle.”
Justin had a few more questions but before he could ask anything else, Ellen said, “It’s crazy, isn’t it? Ronald and Evan Harmon . . . having this happen so close together. It creeps me out.”
Justin managed to keep his voice calm and quiet. “Ronald knew Evan Harmon?”
“Sure,” Harry said, “from Rockworth.”
“Did they do business together?”
“Some.”
“Recently?”
“Pretty regularly,” Ellen said. “Particularly since we expanded the business.”
“Was Ascension one of your clients?”
“One of our biggest,” Stan said. “Maybe the biggest.”
“Do you know the specifics of what they were doing together?”
“We did a lot of research for Ascension. Evan and Ronald talked a lot,” Harry said.
Ellen indicated the folder. “Whatever I have is on that list. I tried to make it as thorough as I could.”
The conversation went on for another twenty minutes or so. But Justin had run out of questions. He was staying because it was easier to sit there and talk with the three younger people than it was to get up and move. But he could tell that they were becoming fidgety and impatient, and it was Saturday night after all. He thought about taking them to dinner, having a few drinks with them. It would be nice. But he realized it would be nice only for him. They didn’t want to spend their big night of the week drinking with a melancholy cop immersed in a murder case. They wanted to go home to their spouses or lovers or even their pets and TV sets. Dining with him would be way down on their list of desirable things to do. Maybe number 101 out of a hundred. So he thanked them one last time, and told them to go and try to enjoy themselves. They said that they’d do their best.
His parents had waited to have dinner and Justin appreciated the gesture. He was starving and bone tired and it was nice to relinquish control, even if for only a couple of hours. He made himself a perfect vodka martini with three olives, exactly the way his father liked his drink fixed, and his father joined him. Then Jonathan opened a superb bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape and they sat at the table and Justin did his best to fill them in on his day. He left out details he knew they wouldn’t want to know—what had happened at Dolce, his encounter with the FBI agent on the steps of the police station—but he gave an in-depth accounting of the time he spent at Victoria’s house. As he spoke, he could hear his words tinged with disappointment, even anger.
“Her grief is very raw right now. And even if weren’t, people deal with grief in different ways,” Jonathan said. “Some people are afraid of it.”
“And some people wallow in it,” Lizbeth added. “It took you a long time to get over yours.”
Justin looked up from his wineglass. “Do you think I’m over it, Mother?”
She smiled softly. “What I think is that when we suffer loss and pain, it makes us a different person. It’s like a physical wound. When you break your leg, you’re not the same afterward—you’re left with a scar or a limp or an ache whenever it rains. At some point it heals—the scar is barely seen, the limp is hardly noticeable—but your body is still different. Altered. Not necessarily worse, I suppose, but still different. And at some point you accept the fact that this is your new body; you realize you can still run, just maybe not as fast or as long; and you move on. It’s the same when we grieve, except no one can see the scar, not when it’s raw and not when it heals. But it changes you just as much, and the change is permanent. And at some point you accept the change and realize this is the new you. Emotionally battered and bruised and maybe even forever heartsick, but you move on.”
“I’m not as sure as you are that I’ve moved on.”
“It doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten. And it doesn’t mean you’re not still sad. Of course you are. The scar is permanent. But I’ve seen enough of you now . . . you’ve become a different person. And I think you’ve accepted this new you. I’m very glad about that.”
It was the longest speech he’d ever heard his mother utter, and he loved her for it. He started to thank her, to tell her he hoped she was right, to say he thought she just might be right, but his downtime had ended. He hadn’t gotten two hours; he’d barely gotten a full sixty minutes. He hadn’t even finished the salad that Louise had made. Didn’t matter. His cell phone was ringing, and when he pulled the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID, he knew he had to answer the call.
“Can I call you back?” Justin said. “I’m in the middle of dinner.”
He got the answer he was expecting.
“I think your dinner’s over,” Billy DiPezio said. “Wrap the rest of it up to go.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“On the way where?” Justin asked.
“Drogin’s lot,” Billy said.
19
Billy DiPezio pulled his new Mercedes inside the wire mesh fence that surrounded the several acres of overgrown property known as Drogin’s lot. As they stepped out of the car, Justin noticed that the night sky was particularly dark. There were few stars and the moon was hidden by fast-moving clouds. He was surprised to find that it was nearly nine-thirty. The slivers of moonlight that reached the ground gave the property an ominous feel. Not just the property, Justin thought. The world.
They were met by an FBI agent who didn’t bother to introduce himself but led them toward two other agents. One of those agents was Norman Korkes, the agent whose jaw Justin had dislocated earlier that day. Agent Korkes nodded curtly at Justin but didn’t speak. It was the other agent who spoke, after Billy introduced him as having just flown in from Washington, D.C.
“It’s not a nice sight,” Special Agent Zach Fletcher said.
Justin nodded but said nothing. Then he was led over to where Wanda Chinkle’s body lay. She was unclothed and her skin was covered with severe bruises. Her chest and stomach were covered in swirls of blood, as were her right hand and her left shoulder. Justin inhaled quickly and deeply. His exhale was slow and uneven.
“You saw her earlier today,” Agent Fletcher said.
Justin nodded again. He still wasn’t quite ready or able to talk.
“What were you meeting about?”
“Do we have to have this conversation right here?” Justin finally said, looking down at Wanda’s still form.
“Unfortunately we do,” Agent Fletcher said. “At least for the moment. Look at the markings on her body.”
The unnamed agent flicked on a flashlight and fixed the beam on Wanda. Justin let his eyes focus on her now. He had never seen Wanda naked when she was alive, and it seemed particularly obscene to have her exposed this way in death. He forced himself to survey her entire body until it began to seem less a real person than an inanimate object—the same mental exercise he used every time he covered a homicide. He was able to study her with a slightly clinical eye now, and Justin saw that what, at first glance, he’d taken to be smears of blood on her breasts, stomach, and one arm were, in fact, words. The writing was difficult to make out—the letters were not very clear, the blood had dripped and coagulated and mixed with dirt, and the writing was anything but smooth—but he could finally make out what it said. And when he had, he looked up at Agent Fletcher in disbelief.
“How do you read that?” Fletcher asked.
“Who wrote this?” Justin asked.
“We think she did. Look by her hand.”
The flashlight beam moved several inches over and Justin saw a jagged piece of broken glass in the ground by Wanda’s right hand.
“There’re plenty of broken bottles and cans scattered throughout the whole lot. It looks as if, right before she died, she used that piece of glass to cut herself and do the best she could to write this message on the only canvas she had available.”
“Her own body. Using her own blood.”
Fletcher nodded. “Must have been pretty important to her.” Then he said again, “Tell me what you read.”
“It looks like ‘JW,’” Justin said. “Then it looks like the word ‘payback.’” “Payback” had been written in a combination of capital and small letters. Wanda had left out the c. “The next word looks like ‘Hades.’ Then ‘Ali.’” “Hades” was also spelled using a combination of capital and small letters. “Ali” was straightforward. The A was capitalized. The l was just a straight line. The i was also a straight line, but smaller. It tailed off from the first two letters. It looked as if it was the last thing Wanda had managed to write. Justin repeated the whole thing aloud: “JW, Payback, Hades, Ali.”
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