Second Life (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 4)

by D. F. Bailey

  “Don’t recognize the name,” he wrote and then continued, “I’ll join you in two days at most. Will buy a new phone in NYC then text you to make a connection. Expect something from an unknown caller. It’ll be me.”

  A long pause followed, then Eve sent a final message. “All right. See you in NYC. I love you.”

  He smiled at that, then sent a closing note to her. “XXXXX.”

  ※

  Finch called the hospital and after three failed attempts to reach the ICU nursing station he was connected to the main receptionist. She was unable to provide any news other than a simple evasion. “I’m sorry, but we cannot provide patient information over the telephone.”

  In Finch’s mind this meant that Edmund Austen was either dead or in such severe condition that no one would comment. On the other hand, following their interview with Donna the Sûreté may have decided to block all communications about Austen. If he had survived, perhaps they believed Edmund might still be at risk from a second attack. Who knew? Only Donna could answer these questions and she was either still at the hospital, or had forgotten to meet with Finch—or worse, she’d already left France in complete despair.

  With so many doubts on his mind, Finch decided to find a cafe and have a light dinner and a double espresso. After that he would head back to the hospital and try to track down Donna in person.

  But as he stepped onto the lobby floor he was greeted by a surprise. Sitting in one of the antique armchairs next to the lobby window was none other than Mrs. Austen. Her face was drawn with anxiety. As he approached her he could see that her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks worn from tears. He assumed that her husband had not survived.

  “Donna.” He spoke in a near whisper, hoping not to startle her.

  Despite his calm demeanor, she jumped when she heard her name. “Mr. Griffin. I didn’t know how to find you. And I couldn’t make the receptionist understand—”

  She held a hand to cover her mouth and let out a brief sob. When she recovered her self control she said, “He’s gone. Just two hours ago.” She lifted both hands in the air and let them drop into her lap.

  He pulled a chair beside her and rested a hand on her forearm. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how awful this makes me feel.”

  Her eyes swept over his face and she took his fingers in her own. For a moment Finch felt as though she needed to comfort him. How strange grief is, he thought, the way it seizes you and the tricks it can play. They sat looking at one another, unsure how to continue.

  “Listen, I need some food and a coffee. Will you come with me? There’s a place not far away.”

  She nodded and released his hand. “Yes.”

  She followed him blindly through a light rain up the block until they reached Aux Trois Mailletz, a cafe with a dozen round tables lined in a row on the sidewalk. They took the only empty table and sat under the awning in the wicker chairs facing the street. Donna said that she couldn’t eat, but she ordered a cup of tea. Despite his hunger Finch didn’t want to appear out of synch with her. He asked for a double espresso and a croissant sandwich with ham and cheese.

  “Can you fill me in?” He smiled to provide some reassurance. He needed her to believe that he could help her. That somehow he could set her on a path to recovery. It would start with this conversation. He told her that he would help her navigate all the procedures and paperwork needed to get her and Edmund home. Then she could begin her life again. This time on her own.

  “Tell me everything that happened since the Sûreté talked to you, Donna. The more you can tell me, the more it will help to get to the bottom of this.” He waved a hand to suggest that “this” was the thing that had sent them to sit together and sift through the events that led to her husband’s tragic death.

  “It happened so fast,” she whispered, “and now he’s gone.”

  Finch studied her face before responding. She seemed coherent, as if she’d already absorbed the fact of her husband’s passing—but not the pain of her loss. Finch had had a similar experience when his seven-year-old son Buddy died. The loss and then the pain. One was cold, the other absolutely searing.

  “For what it’s worth, I once experienced something similar. I know what it’s like to try to pick up the pieces.”

  Donna nodded as if this was something she knew she had to do. To find the fragments of a life that was once hers alone and then gather them together into something that resembled an independent existence.

  “Donna, I’d like to talk to you about how this happened. While it’s still fresh in your mind. I know the Sûreté went over this with you. Can you do it one more time for me?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Finch sipped his espresso and ate some of the croissant. He knew he had to wait. There could be no rushing her.

  “How’s the tea?” he asked.

  She glanced at the teacup and shook her head. She had yet to try it. She lifted the cup to her lips and blew over the surface before sampling it on her tongue. “All right, I suppose. Thank you for your kindness.”

  He smiled with a look of sympathy.

  “Donna, did the French police ask you about the list? The one with Edmund’s name on it.”

  She glanced away as if she was studying the passing crowds on Rue Galande. “Yes,” she said without looking at him.

  “Just so you know, my name is on the list, too.”

  With a start, she turned her head back to him. “Joel Griffin? I don’t remember seeing that.”

  He took a moment to consider this. She was no fool.

  “My real name is Will Finch.” He tipped his head slightly to acknowledge the deception. He drew his passport from his courier bag and passed it to her. As she examined it he added, “I’m traveling under an alias to prevent anyone from finding me.”

  “All right.” Her voice carried a note of suspicion. Nonetheless, she seemed able to accept the deception. “I can understand that.”

  “There are now seven victims on the list who’ve been killed. I’m trying to find out anything I can about them. So far you’re the only person who’s talked to a survivor—brief as it was. I think you can help me.”

  “How?” She turned to face him directly now and from her posture he could tell she had shifted away from her own loss, at least for the moment.

  “I know you weren’t with Edmund when he was attacked, but what did he tell you before his second surgery?”

  She shook her head to suggest that Edmund had been mostly incoherent. “You have to understand that he’d gone through two hours of surgery to repair the damage to his liver and right kidney. That was before they’d let me see him. Then I had maybe thirty minutes on my own with him before they found the aneurism. Then they took him in for the second surgery and he….”

  Finch realized that she was about to slip back into the bottomless well of her grief. He had to focus her attention on that thirty-minute interval.

  “And in that time, in that thirty minutes you had with him, could he speak?”

  “Barely.” She sniffed and pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her eyes.

  “What did he say?”

  “He was incoherent.” She shrugged. “It sounded like ‘row bare.’ ”

  “Row bare?” He studied her face. “Did that have some special meaning to him?”

  “No. It made no sense to me either. But he spoke the language fluently. Does it mean something in French?”

  Finch struggled to find an answer but nothing came to mind. He decided to change course. “Did he recognize his attacker?”

  “Maybe.” She shuddered to think of it. “ No. No, I don’t think so.”

  As Finch took another sip of espresso he wondered how to continue. This single clue—row bare—only created more confusion. Maybe he should back up, take the conversation to another level. “Donna, I’d heard that there’s some controversy about Edmund and his church.”

  She rolled her head with a look of exasperation, a look th
at said, you bet there is.

  “The Anglican Church, am I right?”

  “Yes, it’s a church in Canada. They’re called Episcopalians in the US.”

  “I know. I lived in Canada during my high school years.”

  “Really?” Her face brightened and she took another drink from her tea. “In Toronto?”

  “Montreal. That’s where I picked up my French.” He smiled again. “Can you tell me about the conflict in the church?”

  “Well,” she said and drew a long breath of air as if she needed to prepare herself. “Edmund was beloved by his congregation. While church attendance was falling off everywhere else, it only continued to grow in our church. Why? Because Edmund continued to question the perceived wisdom. Over the past two years he even began to question the existence of a Biblical God—and all the moral and cultural values that go with it. Every Sunday he’d confess his doubts from the pulpit. But he also preached to the congregation that we could replace the emptiness we might feel with a love for one another. We are all sentient beings, he liked to say, living on a beautiful planet that offered everything we required to live for the foreseeable future. But if we wanted to enjoy that future, we would have to change.”

  “Change? Change what?”

  “Everything. The way we live. Consumerism. Perpetual war. Fear of one another.”

  Finch smiled. “Sounds pretty Christian to me.”

  “That’s what Edmund said. And why he refused to step down from his ministry when the deacon ordered him to resign.

  Finch hesitated. “The deacon?”

  “Yes. Part of the church hierarchy, one step below a bishop. Our diocese deacon couldn’t exactly fire Edmund, but….”

  Donna stopped her explanation. Finch realized that she’d seen him stumble over the mention of the church deacon. What could he make of it? Did it somehow link to the name of the Cadillac owner, Deacon Salter? No, it was a simple homonym. Same word, two different meanings. Nonetheless, he felt an intuitive pull to track down Deacon Salter. That’s where the right path lay. On one branch of the road stood Deacon Salter. On the other, Kali Rood. Although so much circumstantial evidence pointed her way, perhaps he’d been wrong about her. Maybe it was all about Deacon Salter.

  In that moment he understood that the trip to Paris had led him down another blind alley. He had to get back to New York and connect with Eve. Still, he needed to be certain that Donna hadn’t omitted a crucial detail.

  “Donna, do you have any reason to believe that someone in the church would kill Edmund?”

  Her head tilted as if she’d been nudged backward. “No. That’s impossible. Despite their differences, no one would want to harm Edmund. He was loved. Even by his enemies.”

  Satisfied with her answer, he finished his croissant and washed it down with the dregs of his coffee.

  “Look, tomorrow let’s get back to the hospital and arrange for you and Edmund to get home, okay?”

  “All right.” She slumped into her chair with a dazed expression then turned her attention to him. “You’re very kind. I guess this starts my new beginning, doesn’t it.”

  He tried to smile again. Yes, he thought, a journey down a road you probably never imagined.

  ※

  The next morning Will met Donna at the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu and he guided her through the process of returning her husband’s body to Toronto. By four-thirty they’d completed the necessary procedures and he walked her back to her hotel. Before they parted they embraced and Donna took his business card and promised to contact him so that one day she “could return his gift of generosity.”

  As he boarded his late-night flight to New York, he wondered what would become of her. She was one of the most kind-hearted women he’d ever met and he hoped those qualities would see her through. But he doubted that the world worked that way, that if you were decent and good some benevolent force would nurture and protect you. Donna Austen was already decent and good—and someone had murdered her husband with a butcher knife.

  After his 747 settled into level flight, he drew his laptop from his bag and began to write the story of Edmund Austen’s death in Paris. Within two hours he’d knocked off fifteen hundred words that laid out the chronicle of Edmund’s attack and his subsequent demise on the surgical table. He tried to unlock the meaning of the victim’s last words, row bare, and finally dismissed them. He read the draft through twice, editing as he went and then closed the computer and slipped it behind the netting in the seat ahead of him. As he drifted to sleep he made a note to email the story to Jeanine Fix at the eXpress. Within an hour she’d have it formatted and published on the internet. The story would add one more brick in the wall that he was building to contain the killers at large.

  Little did he know just how many bricks that would take. Or how high the wall would climb.

  ※ — NINETEEN — ※

  AFTER HE LANDED at JFK, Finch made his way to a cellphone kiosk and purchased a Samsung, using Joel Griffin’s credit card. Then he made his way to a Starbucks outlet, ordered a breakfast sandwich and Americano, and settled in a corner where he could observe anyone approaching him. The masses streaming through the airport concourse and the buzz of the restaurant provided the best cover he could hope for.

  While he ate, Will considered his next series of moves. He decided to call Simon Waterston. Unless the FBI had brought him into their investigation—an unlikely possibility, he figured—Simon would have spent the last few days stewing about his murdered twin sister. He’d be eager to hear the name of the owner of the Cadillac parked in front of the Bohemian National Hall across the street from Jayne’s apartment. But rather than disclose Deacon Salter’s name over the phone, Will knew he could build a stronger partnership if he met Simon in person. Somewhere near his office would be suitable. If Simon felt motivated to dig deeper, he could access an array of national identity databases from the DA’s headquarters.

  After dealing with Simon, Finch knew that he had to get in touch with Eve. With any luck she’d already be in the city and by late afternoon or early evening he could hook up with her. When he considered Eve he realized that his earlier fears about her becoming collateral damage in his own death had dissipated. Slightly.

  He sensed that both of them were closing in on some kind of break in the case. Who it involved, Deacon Salter or Kali Rood, he couldn’t say with certainty. And if his hunch was correct, that every victim corresponded to a different killer, then what lay ahead wouldn’t be resolved at once. No, he knew he was playing the long game. But he could feel it, feel the gut-pull that told him he was getting close to the point where things could crack open.

  He sipped on his Americano and sent Eve a three-word text: Where are you?

  Then he called Simon Waterston. Expecting his call to shunt into a voice mailbox, he was surprised when Simon picked up on the second ring.

  “Simon, it’s Will Finch from the eXpress. Do you have a few minutes?”

  He heard Simon release a sharp sigh.

  “Give me a second.”

  Finch heard a chair scrape across the floor, a door close.

  “All right. Why are you calling?”

  Finch recognized his apprehensive tone and recalled where they’d left off. Simon had distrusted any off-the-book approach to Jayne’s murder. But he also remembered Simon’s exasperation at the FBI’s unwillingness to share any progress about the case. Finch decided to try to reel Simon back into his confidence by sharing what he knew.

  “I’ve got the name of the Cadillac owner,” he announced.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. It’s a bronze 2015 Cadillac SRX.”

  Another pause. “All right. I know that. But who does it belong to?”

  “Not on the phone. And not where I am right now. Let’s meet somewhere near your office. Is there a place we can talk, out in the open. A park or something like that?”

  “No, no. Look … I’ve decided not to do it this way,” he said with a gasp of exasperation,
as if he were torn between two equally bad options. Cooperate to unearth his sister’s killer—and risk his career—or turn away from the only man willing to help him find a solution.

  “Look, Simon. I know this is hard for you. Hell, it’s hard enough for me. But you have to trust me. As a reporter I can protect you as a news source. And as a lawyer you know the First Amendment shields me from having to reveal my sources. I promise I will never expose you.”

  A long silence filled the line and Finch could feel the ambivalence tearing Simon in both directions at once. Nonetheless he knew it was better to wait out the anxiety and let Simon speak first.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last, “if you’re challenged you’ll be in jail for a very long time. Or until you give me up.”

  Finch shook his head in dismay. “Simon, I’m willing to bet that you’ve checked my file. Am I right?”

  Finch had to wait through yet another brooding interlude.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And were you able to get into my military records.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you saw that I sat out four months in the brig. Four months in military detention until my sources on the Abu Ghraib debacle came forward and I was absolved. And you know something?”

  “What?”

  “If it had gone the other way, and if those three sources stayed in the dark—then I’d still be locked up. And by the way, just by revealing that information to you—you can bet someone would try to put me back on the inside for that.”

  Finch could tell that Simon was considering all this. Will had given up enough information to make himself vulnerable. It was all about trust now. Going forward, they both had to have faith in one another.

  “All right,” Simon said at last. “Meet me at Columbus Park, just off the Worth Street entrance. Two o’clock.”

  ※

  In the early 1800s Columbus Park was part of a vast inner-city slum known as Five Points, the site of a grisly a hand-to-hand street battle that killed over a hundred men during the New York City draft riots of 1863. But as Finch settled onto a park bench along one of the many sculpted pathways, he was struck by the civility of the space. In the middle distance, a group of about fifteen men stepped through a series of t'ai chi moves—a slow ballet performed in the dry heat of the afternoon. Funny how things changed, he thought, the public memory of American violence and civil war had been replaced by a traditional practice of peace and contemplation from a culture half a world away.