Second Life (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 4)

by D. F. Bailey

  Momentarily released from his abiding anxieties, Finch allowed himself to be swept up in these thoughts and diversions. He knew he had found a temporary space free from the trouble that brewed around him and he wondered how he could stretch and expand his sense of freedom. Was there a way to tap the pulse and momentum of his own life again?

  His phone buzzed and he saw an incoming text from Eve. Hotel P. 633. Will wait for you. Hotel Penn, he thought. Good enough.

  After another moment, Simon appeared at the near end of the path and sat beside Finch. Looking every bit the lawyer, he wore a two-piece emerald green suit. The top of his shirt was unbuttoned and held in place with a loosened tie. He had a copy of the New York Times in one hand, a take-out coffee in the other. Tiny dots of perspiration bubbled on his forehead. He put on the demeanor of a tourist and leaned forward as if he might be asking a stranger for directions to the zoo.

  “I want this to be as fast as possible,” he murmured under his breath.

  “No reason it can’t be.” Finch nodded. “But if you really want to break this open we need to work together, Simon.”

  “What do you mean?” He set his newspaper and coffee cup on the bench.

  “Look, I can give you the name of the owner of the Cadillac and you can go your way and do what you want with the information.”

  “Okay, I’ll take that. It’ll be my first choice no matter what other option you have. With you, there’s always a deal you’re trying to make. And I don’t want one.”

  Finch frowned and turned his chin away. There was something in Simon that detested Finch. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve the contempt, but there it was. Irrepressible.

  “Simon, when I give you the name I know you can use the resources in your office to find out everything about Jayne’s killer right down to the color of his socks.” He leaned forward. “And I can take the information you feed me and use it to call out this bastard within an hour. Don’t you see it? Together we can force the Bureau’s hand to wrap this up today.”

  “You’ve got to be joking. You know as well as I do that the FBI works at their own pace. Everything gets triple-checked. Meanwhile they’ll be scrambling to deny any news from protected sources that you publish in the eXpress. That does nothing but clog their pipes, Finch. Meanwhile they start investigating you, and despite your record, I simply don’t believe that you’ll sit in jail reciting the First Amendment just to protect me.”

  Finch’s jaw tightened as he let out a wheeze of exasperation. He came close to calling Simon a gutless bureaucrat, then drew a breath and settled his nerves. He took a business card from his bag and wrote his new cell number on the back.

  “Here. If you change your mind, call me.”

  Simon glanced at the card and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He stood up and peered down at Finch.

  Finch studied him with a look of resignation. “Deacon Salter.”

  “What?”

  “The name of the guy you want. It’s Deacon Salter. Spelled just like it sounds.”

  Simon nodded once. He hesitated as if he couldn’t quite determine what to say next. Finally he leaned forward, his head bobbing slightly. “By the way Finch, that was pretty sick what you did.”

  “What?”

  “Breaking into my sister’s apartment the day she was killed. I did not appreciate that. If you want to know why I can’t trust you, just look to yourself.”

  Finch glanced away with a nod of regret. “I know.” He turned his eyes back to Simon. “I apologize for that. If I’d known you’d be there—”

  “Well that fuckin’ stank.”

  “You know, Simon, if your name appeared on a kill list you’d be surprised at what you might do.”

  “What the fu— I just….” His voice trailed off as if he couldn’t finish his thought.

  Finch raised his eyebrows with a look that said get-it-all-out.

  But Simon lifted both hands in the air and let them drop to his side, a gesture of emptiness. And finality. Then he turned and walked back in the direction of the DA’s office. Finch watched him disappear around a turn in the path and wondered if the effervescent mood he’d enjoyed ten minutes earlier might return. After a few moments he dropped the possibility and pulled himself up from the bench. He tucked Simon’s newspaper under his arm and headed toward Worth Street. From there he decided to grab a taxi and drive to the Hotel Pennsylvania. Back to Eve.

  ※ — TWENTY — ※

  WILL THOUGHT IT might be a mistake. The fact that Eve had booked a room in the Hotel Penn brought him back full circle. He’d managed to dodge past the FBI’s security detail just a few days ago. Reappearing here now felt like he might be lined up for a return bout with the devil. A hard match to win.

  He checked the number on the door: 633. He tapped once, waited, and when he heard the high-pitched whine of a vacuum cleaner or hair dryer he knocked at the door until the machine noise clicked off. He caught the sound of feet treading toward him, then a silent pause; he knew someone was eyeing him through the peep hole. Then the door swung open and there she stood.

  The sight of Eve actually drew his breath away. She had a white towel wrapped around her chest and pinched together in a knot above her breasts. Her hair was still damp on the left side, as if she was in the middle of drying it with a blower. When she looked at him, he could see her eyes dilate, the green irises encircling a deep, inner darkness.

  “Will.” She breathed his name and pulled him into an embrace, kissed his lips briefly and nestled her face below his throat.

  He pushed the door closed with the heel of his shoe and dropped his bag to the floor. He drew the smell of her into his lungs.

  “I can’t believe I’m holding you again,” he whispered and kissed the top of her head.

  “I know. I just got here an hour ago. Your text came just after I checked in.” She raised her head to kiss him on the mouth.

  “As Alice Shaw?”

  “Yeah.”

  He felt some relief knowing that she’d kept her name off the guest register. Once again he realized how savvy she could be.

  “Good,” he whispered.

  She pulled away and held a forefinger against her lips. “No more talking, okay.”

  She unknotted the towel and let it slip to the floor. She took his hand in hers and led him toward the hotel bed. “I don’t care what happens. I never want you to leave me like that again.”

  She began to unbutton his shirt.

  “I promise.” He felt his body coming back to life, as if he’d been living with the dead for the past week and only now discovered the world of flesh and blood and the joy of life. The faster his pulse quickened, the more he scrambled to unbuckle his belt and tug off his pants. Yes, he was back in the world again. Alive. And still kicking.

  ※

  They sat on the outside deck of the “Spirit of America,” one of nine vessels serving the Staten Island Ferry line. Ahead of them stood the Statue of Liberty cloaked in the late-afternoon mist that had come off the Atlantic. Behind them the towers of Wall Street stood in mute defiance. At one time the twin towers of the World Trade Center rose above them all, a testament to the permanence of man’s ambition. No more.

  As the ferry pushed into the mist neither Eve nor Will could keep their attention on the tourist sites. After they’d left the hotel, their obsession with the events cascading toward them felt unstoppable.

  “When was the last time you checked the list?” Eve asked.

  “I can’t find it. The Twitter page is gone.”

  “Right. But the web page with the list is still live.”

  “I never thought of trying that. I got preoccupied by everything that happened in Paris. Then I guess I got completely exhausted,” he confessed.

  “Well, it’s changed.” She studied his face a moment. “There’re over fifty names on it now. I just got an update from Gabe Finkleman. Sixteen of the original twenty-four are dead.”

  “Sixteen.” He swore under hi
s breath and looked away.

  “Leanne tells me that the FBI has all hands on deck. No one’s saying it aloud, but from all the noise, everyone knows the situation has run out of the fed’s control. They can’t take down the server that’s posting the list updates. Seems like they can’t even locate it.”

  He could barely respond. “Leanne?”

  “Spratz. My old contact in the SFPD.”

  “Right. Of course.” Finch propped his hands on the rail and straightened his spine. He knew he had to focus.

  “A friend of her cousin knew Kali Rood in high school. So I contacted her. Her name is Alicia Vex.”

  Finch listened as Eve summarized what she’d learned. The friend-of-a-friend connection to Kali Rood brought Eve to New York on short notice. Alicia Vex worked at Every Thing Goes Book Cafe and Neighborhood Stage. ETG, as the locals called it, was a coffee house, bookstore, live entertainment stage and record shop combo on Staten Island. Eve checked the city map and traced the route to their destination with her finger. She calculated that they’d arrive within the next ten minutes.

  After they disembarked from the ferry they made their way to Bay Street and walked into ETG. The store reminded Finch of an early-seventies Haight-Ashbury hippie catchall that clung to life through the turn of the century then reinvented itself when America rediscovered espresso coffee after nine-eleven. Wake up and smell the coffee. In one day that tired old expression took on new meaning.

  Eve asked the cashier for directions, and they soon found Alicia Vex on a break at the back of the store. She sat alone on a wood-slat chair beside a brick wall covered with washed-out graffiti and surrounded by discarded bottles and beer cans. Her arms were decorated with whorls of tattoos that didn’t quite match the background graffiti. She smoked a cigarette and as Will and Eve peered at her through the screen door, she seemed lost in the maze of her own thoughts.

  “Alicia?” Eve pushed the door open with a tentative smile. “I’m Eve Noon.”

  Alicia looked toward them as if she’d been roused from a dream. “Right. From Frisco.” She tapped her bare wrist as if she were checking the time. “Wow. That was fast.”

  “Yeah, we both just flew in today.” Eve stepped into the tiny courtyard that apparently served as an al fresco staff lounge. “This is Will Finch. Can we talk to you?”

  Alicia took a moment to ponder the question. She repeatedly flicked the ash from the tip of her cigarette. The look on her face said that she might cancel the agreement she’d made to meet with Eve. After a final drag, she dropped the fag next to her running shoe, crushed the butt under her heel and let out a long stream of smoke from her lips.

  “All right. Let’s go across to the park,” she said and led Will and Eve back through the store.

  As they traversed the narrow aisles, Finch marveled at the bookshelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling. It provided a feeling of intimate claustrophobia, an intellectual reassurance that reminded Finch of City Lights Books in San Francisco and Shakespeare and Company in Paris. He could imagine spending two or three hours here, thumbing through a hundred books he might not find anywhere else. ETG was one of those places where you could park your worries at the door, enter their private realm and for a brief span disappear into a literary phantasmagoria.

  As she approached the front counter, Alicia leaned toward the cash register and called to the cashier who was stacking books at the far end of the counter.

  “Malc, I’m taking a break. I’ll be across the street in the park. Okay?”

  When he failed to acknowledge her, she tapped her knuckles on the counter and raised her voice: “Malcolm. I’m on a break. Across the street, okay?”

  “Right,” he replied without looking up.

  The three of them left the store, crossed Bay Street and entered Tompkinsville Park, a dusty public space on a triangular block across from ETG. Alicia led them to two uncomfortable looking wood-slat benches that were set at slight angle next to a pentagonal fountain. She sat down and lit another cigarette.

  “So,” she announced, “You want the goods on Kali Rood. The bitch.”

  Will glanced at Eve and shrugged with a look that said, okay, let’s dive right in.

  “Alicia, do you mind if I tape our conversation?” He held his cellphone up in one hand.

  “Not a chance.” She waved away Finch’s phone. “You two are with some paper, right?”

  “The eXpress,” Eve said.

  “And I don’t want you to use my name either.” She took a contemplative drag on her Marlboro. “We do it my way, or not at all. Capiche?”

  Capiche. Will smiled to himself and said, “Fine.” He tucked his phone back into his pocket and tried another approach. “What if I take some notes?”

  “No. Nothing on record. Not my name, where you heard it, nothing. And I mean, like never. I don’t want her to ever know where this came from.” She waved her hand between the three of them to emphasize that the decision was final. “Take it or leave it.”

  “All right.” Finch set his bag on the ground and tried to relax his shoulders against the wood strapping that formed the backrest on the bench. Years ago he’d trained himself to interview people without notes or a recorder. The trick was to recognize the critical quotes when they came up and immediately commit them to memory. After a few tries, he’d been able to recall long passages verbatim and reconstruct complete conversations.

  “So … Alicia,” he said in a tentative voice, “tell us when and where you knew Kali Rood.”

  She pressed her lips together in a tight frown while she considered where to begin. “First off, her name wasn’t Kali Rood when I knew her. It was Isobel Oehmke. We were seniors at Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Just outside Philly. It was 1988 and our lockers were across the hall from each other. We had a few classes together and for a while we went to the same parties.”

  “Isobel Oehmke. You two used to party together?” Eve’s voice sounded a skeptical note.

  “For a while. Until she met my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Damian.” She nodded and swept a strand of hair from her eyes. “I never should have introduced them.” She glanced away with a distant look. “She just turned him into … something else. Something I could never figure out.”

  She looked way again, clearly uncomfortable with what she had to say next. “You know about her parents, right?”

  “That they died suddenly.” Finch shrugged, caught off guard that he hadn’t fully researched her parents. “Some kind of accident.”

  “Accident?” Alicia pouted as if Finch were trivializing the true version of events. “They died in a fucking house fire. It was arson. Isobel’s place burnt to the ground before anyone called it in.”

  “What about Isobel?” Eve asked.

  “Yeah, what about her?” Alicia said, as if Isobel remained an impenetrable enigma. “She was on a sleepover with her church girlfriends that night.”

  “So she was involved with the church even back then?” Finch had wondered when she’d found religion. He suspected that people with her fervor were either recent converts, or they’d been nursed on the faith since childhood.

  “I don’t know if her church was actually real. Sanctified or whatever. But back in the day she was famous for knowing every last detail about the People’s Temple. She had this total obsession with Jim Jones. It was like she knew the guy personally or something.”

  Finch glanced at Eve. “You mean Jim Jones from the Jonestown massacre?”

  “Oh yeah. Radical, true-believer shit. She used to hold lunch-hour prayer sessions with the five or six other kids in her flock. That’s where Damian got hooked.”

  Will took a moment to consider the story. “You said it was arson. Was that proven in court?”

  “Yup.”

  “Who was the fire bug?”

  “That—that’s—where the story gets surreal.” She wagged an unlit cigarette in the air, then lit it from the ember of
her first smoke and released a long stream of vapor from her mouth. “He told me everything. Three days after the fire and exactly three days before Isobel and Damian went hiking in Evansburg State Park. Three and three. Right in the middle, that’s when Damian confessed to me that he’d done it.”

  “Your brother set the fire?” Eve said this in such a low tone that Finch could barely hear her.

  “He said Isobel told him her parents had gone into Philly. To see a baseball or basketball game. I don’t know which. That they needed the insurance money and that if he’d do it, then she’d ‘do him.’ You don’t need to guess what that meant. Maybe that’s just how the Virgin Queen operates.” She let out yet another cynical laugh. “Hell, don’t we all. Eventually.”

  Sensing there was more to come, Finch waited a moment and then asked, “So what happened in Evansburg Park, Alicia?”

  “He fell from the cliff above Skippack Creek. ‘A hiking accident.’ That was the official story. But who knows? I mean who really knows except Isobel?” She nodded and wiped a tear from her eye. “The search and rescue team found Damian wedged in a crevice near the creek. It took them all day to haul him out of there. And you know what?”

  Alicia’s head dropped, her chin rested a few inches above her breast bone. No one said a word.

  “He was clutching a flower in his hand. A white daisy.” She raised her head and let out a slight gasp. “He was probably just about to give it to her. A fucking daisy.”

  Eve glanced at Will with a look of disbelief. “Alicia, did you tell this to the police? About your brother’s confession, I mean.”

  She nodded. “Oh yeah. And they took it to court. But Isobel found herself a golden boy lawyer. Somehow he found all the notes I’d passed to my so-called friends before the trial. The ones where I wrote that I was going to screw Isobel for killing my brother.” She took another drag on her cigarette and rolled an arm over the back of the bench. “I wanted to see her fry, and wrote those very words to at least a dozen people. And I admitted it. I was just a kid. How could I know that what I’d written to half the school would damage my testimony?”