Damage Control

by Robert Dugoni

  “There you are.”

  Elizabeth’s head snapped as if on a string. Robert Meyers had appeared at his wife’s side.

  51

  THE TAXI DROPPED her at the front entrance to the Columbia Center, the black monolith that pierced Seattle’s skyline like the Washington Monument did three thousand miles across the country. Dana walked across a vast marbled atrium of multiple elevator banks and escalators that serviced the building’s seventy-six floors and rode an elevator to the top. She stepped off into a private club where her father had been one of the charter members.

  The black marble floor and walls were bathed in a soft blue light. It took a moment for Dana’s eyes to adjust. Three black men sat illuminated in a jaundiced glow, cradling instruments. A saxophone wailed a soulful tune. Two well-dressed couples leaned in to each other, swaying on a tiny dance floor. Candles burned on tables along perimeter windows that afforded a 360-degree overlook of Seattle and Puget Sound, stretching north from the West Point Lighthouse and south to the Duwamish Waterway.

  He stood at the bar, a glass in hand. The look on his face when he saw her—profound relief—told her he had been watching the door, worried. Michael Logan’s chest heaved. He smiled softly, an almost sheepish grin, then he greeted her halfway across the floor. They stood like a couple deciding whether or not to dance. Logan led her to an open table along the west wall, pulled out her chair, and sat across from her, ignoring the view. A waitress appeared at the table. Logan looked to Dana.

  “Scotch and water. Heavy on the Scotch,” she said.

  Logan nodded. “Make it two.”

  For a moment they did not speak, choosing to stare at the flickering flame on the table. Then Logan asked, “Are you okay?”

  Dana smiled. Of all the things Detective Michael Logan could have asked her—whether she had spoken to Elizabeth, and whether Elizabeth would identify the earring, being foremost among them—he had chosen to ask her the one question that mattered most to her.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” Dana said. Logan sat back, considering her like a portrait on the wall of a museum. “What?” she asked, embarrassed, though she knew what his eyes were doing.

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Actually… you look very beautiful, if it’s okay for me to say so.”

  “It is.” She smiled. “And thank you… again.”

  “So, how did it go?”

  She exhaled a deep breath. “Just like Cinderella at the ball.”

  “You spoke to her?”

  “Briefly.”

  “And?”

  “She remembered me. Once she got past the foreign surroundings and the makeup and the dress, she knew who I was. I don’t think it was from one Thanksgiving dinner nearly twenty years ago.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t have to say anything; I could see it in her eyes. I sought her out later in the evening.”

  “Did you ask her about the earring?”

  Dana nodded. “She recognized it, and she recognized William Welles’s name. I think it caused her heart to skip a beat or two.”

  “How so?”

  “She was wearing two earrings.”

  Logan considered this. “Meyers must have had one made.”

  “I think so. Based on her reaction when she saw it, I don’t think she knew one was missing. But how could he know when she didn’t?”

  Logan shook his head. “I don’t know. But I doubt there’s much he doesn’t know. If he suspected her infidelity, he likely was having her watched. Boutaire could have noticed she wasn’t wearing the earrings when she left your brother’s home, and confirmed it later. That could have been the impetus to get into his home.”

  “Why wouldn’t Boutaire do it himself?”

  “Too risky. If anything went wrong, it would have been a direct link to Meyers. He needed King and Cole as a buffer.”

  The waitress set their drinks on coasters on the black slate table. For the next thirty minutes, Dana recounted the details of her evening. She told Logan how, in the middle of their conversation, Robert Meyers had appeared as if out of nowhere, and Dana had managed to step back into the crowd, disappearing just as quickly.

  “It took a lot of courage to do what you did tonight,” Logan said.

  She shrugged off the compliment. “We didn’t have a lot of options. We took the one we thought was best.”

  “That’s why it took guts. I’m serious, Dana. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation, and you just react. Instinct takes over. If you’re fortunate enough not to get yourself killed, they call you a hero. What you did tonight took a lot more courage, because you had time to consider and understand the danger, but you did it anyway.”

  “My brother is dead. Robert Meyers had him killed. I can’t accept that. I won’t accept that.”

  “I know. I’m just telling you that you should be proud. Most women—” He caught himself. “Hell, most men would have folded their tent a long time ago, given what you’ve been through. Your brother would be proud.”

  “That sounds like a concession speech.”

  He sat back and looked out the window.

  “Mike?”

  He turned back to her. “I don’t want to throw cold water on this, but I’m not sure this puts us any closer to getting Meyers. It’s sort of like O. J. Simpson and the shoes—you remember? He denied owning a pair like the kind that left an imprint in his wife’s blood on the sidewalk. Then they found photographs of him wearing the same shoes, and everyone thought that was it. Still, it wasn’t enough—far from it.”

  Dana folded her hands on the table. “She knows now, Mike. She knows what happened to James. She knows what her husband is. We’ve never had any control over whether she would be willing to do anything about it. But we had to give her the opportunity. The next step is hers. If she doesn’t take it … well … We have an earring, a dead member of Meyers’s security staff, and a lot of circumstantial evidence. No prosecutor would touch this with a ten-foot pole.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s give her some time,” Dana said. If my brother loved her, there has to be some innate good in her. We have to assume she loved him. Now she knows.”

  They sat in silence. Dana watched the young couples dancing on the parquet floor. The glow of the alcohol replaced the edginess of the adrenaline, and she felt a desire she hadn’t felt in some time. She wanted to hold someone. She wanted to be held. She wanted to love and to feel loved. As Logan reached for his drink, she let the wrap drop from her shoulders, leaned forward, and touched his hand. Logan kept his head down, his eyes on the candle. She pulled back her hand and sat back, wrapping the shawl around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Logan shook his head and looked up at her. “Your husband called.”

  “Grant?” she asked, puzzled.

  “He called your mother. I got worried and called her to see if she’d heard from you. Grant’s home; he’s waiting for you at your house. Your mother didn’t want you to be surprised.”

  52

  HER HANDS SHOOK. She dropped the screw-on clasp. It bounced from the walnut dressing table, lost in the carpet. Elizabeth Meyers set the earring down next to its match and turned to the curtained windows of her private dressing room. On clear days, sunlight bathed the wedge-shaped room, and she would sit for hours watching the sailboats on Puget Sound’s slate-gray waters, dreaming of the freedom. Tonight the drapes had been pulled closed. The room felt smaller because of it.

  She turned from the windows, absently massaging her earlobes as she considered her reflection in the antique oval freestanding mirror. She hardly recognized the woman she saw. Her hair was darker than natural, nearly black. Though she preferred to wear it down, it rarely fell free from the clip that pulled it off of her face. Her blue eyes, once radiant, had dulled. Her nose and cheekbones were the product of a plastic surgeon’s knife, though she had considered them fine the way God ha
d made them. When she wasn’t in public, her broad shoulders—muscled from years of swimming in the ocean off La Jolla, California—slumped, and her chest became concave from the weight. A tear seeped from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek, dropping onto the table next to the earrings.

  She lowered her eyes. The blue stones no longer sparkled without the glitter of light. She recalled William Welles telling her when they met that diamonds reflected light in a prism of colors, but that it was a false light, an illusion caused by refraction. True light, Welles had said, came from within. “Without it, even earrings as beautiful as these will look like ordinary pieces of glass.” She thought she had understood him. She hadn’t. Now she did.

  She raised her head and started at the reflection in the mirror.

  “You appeared deep in thought,” Robert Meyers said. “I didn’t want to disturb you. Is everything all right?”

  “Just tired,” she whispered.

  He walked past her through the ten-foot-high double doors to the master bedroom. There was a separate entrance, but he often came through her dressing room. He turned on the gas. Flames erupted in the fireplace. He considered a collection of CDs neatly arranged in an ornate armoire once owned by John F. Kennedy. Meyers had purchased it at a Sotheby’s auction.

  “Two point two million dollars.” He slid a CD from its slot, opened the plastic case, and fed it into the machine. The beat of drums and cymbals mixed with the hum of violins, flutes, and horns. She did not recognize the arrangement, a mix of opera and raw street music. Tribal. “That’s the initial estimate. Not bad for a night’s work.” He turned up the volume and closed the hand-carved cabinet doors. “It’s a good start. It will get the campaign headed in the right direction. A few more nights like this, and there will be nothing I can’t do.”

  He stood, the back of his head juxtaposed with a framed portrait of her hanging on the blue-and-gray-striped wallpaper. But for her portrait, a full-body painting, the dark colors and heavy pieces of Victorian furniture were distinctly masculine. Meyers slid off his tuxedo jacket and carefully placed it on the arms of a standing clothes rack. Staff would take it to be dry-cleaned and pressed. He pulled the bow tie free and undid the top button of his shirt, the collar spreading open.

  She stood from the dressing table and walked into the room, keeping the canopied bed between them. She felt the pain deep within, but now it mixed with another emotion. Anger built, giving her a strength she had not felt in years. “Did you do it?” she asked.

  Meyers paused before removing the black onyx cuff links and the buttons of his tuxedo shirt. He returned each to its slot in a mahogany box. “You seemed distant tonight, out of sorts. We can’t have that.”

  She hated herself. She hated what she had become. “Did you do it?” she asked again.

  He slipped out of his shirt. The muscles of his shoulders, well-defined striations, quivered beneath his skin. “If we are going to do this, we need to give it our all from here forward. The difficult states will be out east. Richardson will be painted as a sharp contrast to my Northwest background. They’ll make him out to be an eastern gentleman and me a cowboy. That’s all right, though. It worked for Ronnie, didn’t it?”

  She returned to her dressing room and looked down at the earrings.

  “Of course, Richardson is not a great speaker; he’s stiff as a board. I’ll seek every opportunity to debate him.”

  She rolled over the first earring. The interconnected “W”s were etched on the gold clasp. Her heart pounded in rhythm to the beat of the drums from the stereo speakers. She closed her eyes, rolled over the second earring.

  “The contrast between the two of us, our significant difference in age and hair coloring, will be symbolic of the differences in our political and economic philosophy and appeal.”

  She opened her eyes. The gold clasp was unmarked. Her stomach gave way, dropping like a free-falling elevator. Her knees buckled. She reached for the edge of the dresser, holding herself upright.

  “I’ll continue to promote youth, vitality, and change. It will make him appear to be an old man, stuck in the mud of special interest, partisan—”

  His voice became a hollow echo. She struggled to swallow. The room spun around her, and she thought she might get sick. Then her stomach returned, the elevator catching on the cable and jerking to a stop. An intense pain spread across her chest and down her limbs. The veins in her forearms, still well defined from hitting countless tennis balls in her youth, bulged beneath her skin, and her knuckles on the dresser turned white. Intense hatred boiled in the pit of her stomach, inching upward until it burned the back of her throat. The fear she had felt for so long dissipated. In its place, rage.

  “You bastard.” She slammed her fist on the table.

  He stood in the doorway, suspenders dangling at his sides. “It is important that you participate in this campaign, Elizabeth.” He spoke without emotion. “I’d win without you, but the American public has taken a particular fancy to you. The polls indicate you could become the most recognizable first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy, but we both knew that comparison would be inevitable, didn’t we?”

  “You killed him.”

  His mouth pinched. His eyes hardened. He returned to the bedroom, sitting on the canopied bed to slide off his shoes and black socks.

  She followed him. The words came from between clenched teeth. “I want to hear you say it.”

  He stood slowly. “Do not question me.”

  She took two steps forward, each word spoken deliberately. “I… want… you… to…”

  “Do not question me!” He spun, lunging at her like a snake striking, suddenly and without warning. His hand gripped her face, pinching her mouth. He spoke in a sadistic hiss. “Don’t you ever question me.” He shoved her across the carpet, nearly lifting her from the floor. The back of her head hit hard against the wall. An aurora of lights danced before her eyes. His hand dug into the flesh of her cheek and forced her head sideways. He leaned closer. She felt his breath on her neck. Spittle sprayed from between his teeth. “What I do is my business. You don’t question it. You don’t ask for answers. You don’t get them. You don’t offer advice. You don’t give opinions. What you do is exactly what I tell you to do.”

  He turned her face toward him, his eyes wide, like those of a spooked horse. His lips pulled back in a demonic snarl. “You want to know? You want me to tell you?”

  She struggled to swallow. His hand raised her chin, stretching the muscles of her neck. She thought her jaw would snap. She had seen him like this before, when his pores seeped with anger and brought a feral, inhuman smell. His voice deepened and became a rough, low growl. So many times she had feared it would be the occasion when his anger peaked and he could not control the force of his blows. Living with a full staff of servants had not tempered his anger or lessened the ferocity of his fists. He had only learned to lower his voice, increase the volume of the stereo, wrap his hands before striking her. Only the level of his deception had changed.

  “Your boyfriend? You want to know what happened to your boyfriend?” Meyers started to laugh. “He died. There was a robbery. He walked in on them and they beat him to death, just like the newspapers said.”

  His hand caressed her jawline. She pushed from the wall. He thrust a knee between her legs and pressed against her. “They said his head split open like a piece of fruit. They said he felt every blow.” His fingers traced the lines of her throat and neck and along the rim of her cleavage. “Thirteen blows,” he whispered. His hand found its way beneath her dress, his fingers digging into her skin. His knee forced her to her toes. Her neck craned. She let out a feeble whimper and hated herself for it.

  “Did you think I was going to give you up so easily, Elizabeth? Did you think I would allow you to humiliate me after all I’ve done for you? Is this the thanks I get?” He kissed her throat and chest, openmouthed, warm wet kisses. He lingered over her flesh like an animal licking the salt from the skin of someth
ing it had killed. She felt his erection.

  “I will be the most powerful man in the world. There won’t be anything I cannot do or have done. Did you think I would allow you to keep that from me? Did you think I would allow my wife to be a whore? Was it the sex? Do you not get enough here in your own bedroom?” He ripped the white evening gown from her body and struck her across the mouth. The force of the blow knocked her sideways, upsetting a lamp on the nightstand. He grabbed her by the shoulders and backhanded her, her body spinning onto the bed. Before she could cry out, his free hand returned quickly to her throat. He wedged a knee between her legs, spreading them as he struggled with the clasp of his pants.

  “Is that what this deceit and deception is about? Sex? Because I can surely remedy that.” She closed her eyes. “Open them,” he growled. His grip on her throat tightened, cutting off her flow of air. “I want you to see exactly how easily I can do it.” He lunged on top of her, smothering her. She felt his hands tearing at her panties, ripping at them, then his skin against hers. His tongue and lips smothered her breasts. His teeth clenched her nipple. Pain shot through her, but the hand gripping her throat prevented her from screaming. He bit her about the shoulders and neck and forced his way inside her, raw and dry. He pulled her to the edge of the bed, standing, back arched, each thrust more violent. His head tilted upward, and she saw the image of an animal baying at the moon. Then he lowered his gaze, staring at her in odd, contorted angles—the head of a cobra flexing and writhing above her, his eyes pools of darkness. She struggled for a breath. Her lungs burned. Her vision blurred, the aurora of black spots and unfocused images returning.

  His rhythm increased with the primal beating of drums. Strange sounds came from his throat, like water gurgling in a pipe drain and the gasps of a man stricken with emphysema. The flames in the fireplace reflected in his eyes, dancing blades of red, orange, and yellow. His tongue darted, hissing. The aurora spread, the dark spots melting together in one dark mass. Then the image faded, leaving darkness and the hollow echo of his moaning as the drums beat to a furtive and violent climax.