“Excuse me?”
“It failed. I stopped it.”
“Now see here, what exactly are you—?”
“The plan to poison Judge Victor Galassi on stage and frame Blair Hollister for the murder.”
“Oh, that plan.”
“This amuses you?”
“It flabbergasts me. I find you and your accusations ludicrous and insulting and very possibly actionable in a court of law.”
“Stagehands smelled your perfume in the prop room before the play. You changed out the fake poison for the real thing. The other time they smelled it you’d just planted the keyboard cleaner in Hollister’s office.”
Her look was a small masterpiece of incredulous bewilderment. “Keyboard cleaner? Chief Kennis, you sound deranged. Have you been drinking?”
“It’s over, Judy. I feel comfortable with using your first name now, I’ve spent so much time in your head.”
“—because I will happily report this to the selectmen and the State Attorney General. Chief Kennis came to my house in a state of advanced intoxication, harassed me, accused me of capital crimes, and generally slandered my good name in order to attempt some—”
“I have you for the Refn murder, too. The frame on Hollister is history. All your shills are flipping on you. I have proof that one of them was lying. Chris Felleman isn’t going to jail for you. And neither is his pal—the one who helped him with the ATM machine masquerade. Nice idea, by the way. It almost worked.”
“Wait one moment—”
“Here’s what really happened. Felleman drove Hollister here on the afternoon of Refn’s murder. There should have been no sign of Hollister’s presence in the house. But unfortunately for you, he left his glasses here. And Carmen put them back in your closet, without even thinking about it, assuming they were yours. They’re easy to spot in Hamburger’s video. And Carmen will testify to the fact that Hollister was here, and that she lied about it for you. She can’t afford to play games with the law anymore. Her legal status in the country depends on it. ICE tends to frown on green card holders who get charged with accessory to murder and obstruction of justice.”
Now I had gotten a rise out of her. Her face flushed red under the heavy makeup. “I refuse to listen to this! I will not hear—”
“You will not hear anything but this for the next two years! This is a big story. Judy. David Trezize is going to write a true-crime book about it. He has my blessing. It’s a story that deserves to be told. I’ll give him all the research and evidence. All the depositions and interrogation transcripts. I may even put him in touch with my dad’s old agent. Rich people doing bad things? That’s right up his alley.”
Her voice was a quiet rasp. “Evidence?”
“Nice. You picked the one important word out of everything I just said.”
“What evidence?”
“You made mistakes, Judy. Don’t feel bad, it was inevitable. You built a big machine with too many moving parts. For instance, you gave yourself no alibi for Refn’s killing. Well, of course not, since you couldn’t be in two places at once. You called the dog officer but that only placed you in range of one of the island’s two cell towers. You could have been anywhere this side of ’Sconset. Then there’s the fact that you stole Joe Little’s phone and cloned the sim card.”
“You can’t prove that! It’s—this is all conjecture! It’s circumstantial. It’s beyond circumstantial! It’s crazy. No one could possibly—”
“Stop. We have Felleman’s testimony. That’s right. He told us everything.” Well, of course he hadn’t yet, but I knew he would. “He returned Joe’s phone for you. And I think we’ll see how you pulled off the switch if we dig a little. For instance…I’ll bet my pension Hollister was at Ventuno that day at your request. And whatever got into Joe’s food, you paid or bribed or threatened someone on the kitchen staff to put it there. You see, Judy? You pull one string and the whole fabric unravels. Everyone talks. Everyone wants to get as far away from you as possible.”
“But—”
“Ships deserting a sinking rat. That’s what my son used to say when he was little. It was so funny the way he mixed things up. Not this time, though. Then there’s your blog on the Dark Web.”
“You can’t trace that back to me!”
I had to smile. “I think I just did.”
“You can’t prove I said anything! You’re not wearing a wire! This conversation isn’t admissible, you never read me my Miranda rights!”
“It doesn’t matter. The NSA has new algorithms that can identify Internet posters by the way they write. The rhythms in their language. It’s a high-tech version of the Unabomber’s brother recognizing his writing in the New York Times letter. David knew Ted’s prose style instantly, Judy. And I recognized yours. How hard will it be for an NSA supercomputer?”
“You couldn’t—”
“Indeed, I could. Indeed.”
“That’s one word!”
“Right. One of many, all fit together in a unique way, just like one of your puzzles. But you made other mistakes, too—like dropping those counterfeit bills. No one has them but you and Hollister. The cops never recovered the main stash. The most amazing thing is you never even bothered to cover your tracks. Going back to your maiden name? Did you really think that was enough? Yeah, we have your stationery, and I have a feeling it will show your prints when we test it. Galassi let Refn go. They were up to their necks in half a dozen criminal conspiracies, but he was too smart and no one could ever prove anything. Still, the fact remains. He let Refn walk and he walked right into your life and blew it apart. You needed to get both of them.”
“So why didn’t I just kill Galassi first?”
I released the bomb casually, dropping the hand grenade like a scrap of litter. “He knew all this. He’d assembled his own dossier on you. For insurance. If he died, his lawyer had instructions to release it and connect the dots for the half-wit local police. That would be me.”
“Mutually assured destruction.”
“Except you had your Bulgarians steal his safe-deposit box key. You went into his box and messed with the file, maybe just replaced it and resealed it. They put the key back and it worked. He didn’t know it but you’d stripped away his last defense. The only question at that point was how and when to kill him. That was why you had to get Hollister out of jail. So he could take the fall for the killing.”
“You’re diabolical.”
“High praise from my evil twin.” She glared at me. It always disarms writers when you quote their work back to them. “Why Hollister?” I asked.
“Why not? He fit the profile. He had a grudge. And he had written that play! What an idiot. A useful idiot, as Vladimir Lenin might have said.”
“So you’d destroy his life without a second thought?”
“How many thoughts would you suggest? Hollister is simply collateral damage.”
I shook my head. “I should have listened to my daughter. She had your number, just from looking at your groceries. Unsweetened yogurt, Fresca, and chicken livers? Pork spleens? And what did you want that plastic spoon for anyway?”
Her squint tightened. “Let me ask you a question, Chief Kennis. As I watch you strut and brag about your little discoveries, I wonder, has anyone else managed to follow your little trail of breadcrumbs? No? I thought not. My reading of you, from your groceries—the Icelandic Skyr—even Siggi’s yogurt isn’t authentic enough for you…the two-percent milk, the ‘organic’ chicken, the kale, dear God, the wormy apples from the healthy bin, the bags of black beans and chickpeas—no cans for Chief Kennis! It was obvious. You think of yourself as very special, indeed. The most progressive dad, the smartest man in the room.”
“What’s your point?”
“I had a professor in college. Brilliant man, cocky and arrogant and smug, just like you. He wrote dense unreadable sym
bolic novels that won obscure prizes. I detested him and the feeling was mutual. I wasn’t pretty enough to be worth ‘mentoring’—or taking advantage of. Greg said to me, you don’t like it that he’s smarter than you, and I said something that still makes me smile. ‘Smarter than me? He’s smarter than himself!’ I would say the same applies to you, Chief Kennis. Why else come here alone?”
“For the same reason that I waited until the play was finished and the audience was gone before I sealed Bennett Hall as a crime scene. I know this town. They’ll want your arrest handled with as little publicity as possible. You’re a stain on this island. Like a wine stain on a silk couch. The Board of Selectmen wants to flip the pillow and dryclean the slipcover later. After Labor Day, preferably. That’s fine with me. I don’t want to ruin Nantucket’s reputation, and spoil it as a haven for the rich people who pay the taxes and keep the place going. I just want to arrest the bad guys.”
“So you come alone, into the house of a dangerous sociopath who eats raw chicken livers in the Stop & Shop parking lot with a plastic spoon—”
“I knew it wasn’t the yogurt!”
“—without my confession—which can never be used in court now, you have nothing against me but your preposterous speculations and the testimony of some trifling peons who will say anything to save their sweaty little necks.”
“Not quite. We’ll have DNA evidence, also. We have samples from the crime scene—hair and blood that didn’t belong to the victim. All we need to do is swab your cheek and you’re finished.”
She took a step toward me. “But that will never happen! Never!”
“Sorry, but I’m afraid—”
The words caught halfway up my throat as her knee drove up into my crotch. A glassy white-hot wave of pain rolled through me and I dropped to my hands and knees. I heard a pathetic high-pitched keening and realized it was me. I tried to stand and felt the first kick in my ribs. She punted me like a football, tipped me over on my side, and she kept on kicking—my stomach, my legs, my neck. I covered my face as best I could.
Kick, kick, kick, kick. “Never! Never! Never! Never!”
I curled into a ball, still disoriented, half blind, every part of my body shrieking in pain.
“Never! Never! Never! Never!”
My head, my thigh, my butt, my back, my stomach again, right where I clutched myself with my hands. It felt like she broke a finger. Maybe more than one. I was bellowing and squealing in pain, rolling on the floor to get away from her. It was impossible. She was crazed, feral, unstoppable.
“Never! Never! Never!”
I felt a rib crack. She connected with my temple and I blacked out for a second. When I came to, she lurched off me, planted one more kick and flipped me over on my back. I wanted to kick at her, but I couldn’t seem to move my legs. There was blood in my eyes. I saw everything through a red scrim. It occurred to me through twisting jabs of pain that she was right. She hadn’t outsmarted me. I had outsmarted myself.
And I was going to pay for my hubris with my life.
She disappeared into the bathroom and came out with a syringe full of some clear liquid. She stood over me, feet planted on either side of my waist, out of range of my useless legs.
She tilted the needle against the light, savoring the clarity of the toxin as if it were some fine wine.
“Succinylcholine,” she said. “Have you ever heard of it? It remains in many ways the perfect poison. I’ve made quite a study of these things. It’s even better than the aconitine I put into the wine for Galassi. Aconitine works more slowly, but that was the whole point. I wanted him to suffer. The process starts with numbness—paresthesia, the doctors call it. It takes a few hours for the vomiting, the difficulty breathing and the paralysis. By the time the ventricular tachycardia set in, he would have had plenty of time to contemplate the folly of his life choices. For you, I have something different.”
I wrenched myself sideways into her leg, hoping to knock her off balance. It was my only move and it did nothing. She booted me over onto my back again and placed a foot between my legs. A small nudge sent another vibrating bulge of agony chunking through me. The pain was bigger than my body, it was going to split me open. I was panting and whimpering. She put a vertical manicured finger to her lips. She wanted silence. Finally, she got it, except for the rough sawing of my breath. “The best thing about succinylcholine is they don’t test for it in toxicology screens. It paralyzes the entire breathing apparatus. You’ll suffocate to death and it will look like a heart attack. I’ll explain that you injured yourself in the course of a preliminary seizure. A tragic early death, followed in short order by the conviction and sentencing of Blair Hollister.”
“But Galassi is still alive,” I wheezed.
Another grim little smile. “Not for long.”
“You’ll have to frame someone else for it, with Hollister gone.”
“Why don’t you leave that to me, Chief Kennis? We both know I’m quite adept at these games. And in any case, you’ll be well out of it and long gone.” She pushed the plunger, releasing a single clear drop of the poison. She knelt down beside me. “Any last words?”
“Fuck you.”
“Spoken like a true poet.”
She was about to jab me with the needle when Karen Gifford’s voice rang out. “Stop! Drop the needle and step back.”
There was a serene madness in Barsch’s face when she responded, simply, “No.”
She thrust at me with the needle and Karen’s gun went off, deafening in the enclosed space. The round caught Barsch in the shoulder and knocked her back against the bed, bright arterial blood spurting from the wound. Splashing on my neck and chest. Barsch gaped at Karen in furious disbelief. She’d be going into shock soon. But she still held the syringe.
Karen advanced slowly, gun forward in the weaver position. “Judith Barsch, I am placing you under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. If you waive that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Another step forward.
“You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for you by the court.”
She stepped gingerly over my body, gun steady, and reached down for the needle.
“Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”
I saw it coming, a split second too late. “Karen—no!”
Barsch let out a guttural roar of rage and pitched herself over me into Karen’s knees. Karen reeled backward, dropping her gun, and Barsch was after her like a terrier on a rat, lifting her syringe for the strike. She landed with her knees on Karen’s chest, blowing the breath out of her body. I twisted over, scrabbled across the carpet for the gun.
“I have enough of this for both of you!” Barsch crowed. She pushed Karen’s sleeve up, looking for the perfect injection spot. I grabbed the gun and wrenched myself over, peering through bloody double vision, triple vision, trying to pick a Barsch to shoot. The needle touched flesh and I pulled the trigger.
The first shot missed and so did the second. But the battering noise and the stink of cordite stopped her for a critical heartbeat. My last round blew her head into a pink mist and tossed her through the door like a sack of trash into a dumpster.
The syringe rested on the carpet, lethal as a snake. I stared at Karen. She stared back.
“Get Monica Terwilliger. We need an ambulance and a hearse,” I said. “Call Dave Carmichael at home, the number’s in my wallet. He’ll get the Medical Examiner out here by morning. While we’re waiting, find me an Advil or six. Nice shooting, by the way. And excellent police work.”
I gave her my best encouraging smile.
Then I fainted.
Epilogue
The Fake and the Real
I spent two days in the hospital while the State Attorney General’s force review committee c
onducted its officer-involved shooting investigation. Apparently, Karen Gifford was eloquent in my defense, and the syringe of poison, covered with Barsch’s fingerprints, supported Karen’s reconstruction of the incident. It turned out that Carmen Delgado had been cowering in one of the second-floor guest bedrooms when the shooting happened, and part of her deal with the DoJ and the immigration enforcement people included sworn testimony that exonerated both me and Karen.
I heard about it all secondhand, from Dave Carmichael. From the way he talked to me on the phone I could tell he had never taken the administrative inquiry seriously. “The officials reviewed the play, and the ruling on the field stands! Both feet in bounds and no offensive pass interference. The only question is—kick the extra point or go for the two-point conversion.”
“Jesus, Dave.”
“There must be someone else over there you want to nail with a righteous shoot.”
“Not really.”
“I can think of a couple. I’ll text you a list. Meanwhile, heal up and start thinking about a cushy job in Boston. It’s a hell of a lot safer. No one’s ever tried to poison me—except my wife. And she used her mother’s cheesecake recipe.”
I spent another couple hours giving David Trezize the story, from the day Refn died to the shootout in Cisco. Once again, he’d be scooping the big papers and his plans to write a book about the case were coming together nicely. My father’s old agent, Sheldon Meisel, was thrilled. “I love this kid!” Anyone under seventy was a kid to Sheldon. “He’s gonna be the new Dominick Dunne!”
“I’ll settle for being the new Joe McGinnis,” David said, sitting by my bedside the next day, fussing over me like my long-dead Jewish grandmother. His opening salvo would have made Bessie proud: “What are they feeding you in here?”
I must have looked flimsy. I couldn’t eat much with my jaw wired shut, and that combined with the thirty stitches in my scalp, the three broken fingers, four cracked ribs, and a broken nose flanked by two black eyes gave me the look of a mournful raccoon, starving to death with my paw in a trap.
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