The Price of Innocence

by Lisa Black

  Oliver licked his fingers. ‘Kablooey.’

  ‘Just so. DaVinci figures this out. Maybe the red phosphorus coordinates with the NI3 molecule, maybe displaces the ammonia molecule. And the phosphorus stabilizes the NI3.’

  Oliver stopped licking, his eyes focused on another plane where protons and electrons combined and recombined. ‘But it still blew up. Rather forcefully, one might add.’

  ‘I didn’t say stabilized completely. It would still be a dangerous explosive, but a little easier to transport and store – or walk around with in a coat pocket without maiming oneself. It’s how he amassed enough of it in the Bingham basement to take it down before he finally screwed something up and triggered the reaction.’

  ‘So our chemist learned from his college days—’

  She couldn’t resist an Oliver-like digression: ‘Which, after all, is the purpose of education.’

  ‘—to become a terrorist, or at least a supplier, today.’

  It did not surprise her to hear him tie past and present cases to each other. She doubted anything could surprise her at this point.

  Famous last words.

  Her Nextel trilled, and she answered it. Leo, of course, who would rather call than walk thirty feet across the hall to get her.

  ‘Come back here right away. We have a call on hold for you, and you’re going to want to take it.’

  ‘Why all the drama? Who is it?’

  ‘I think,’ Leo breathed into the phone, ‘it’s your new boyfriend. The one who tried to kill you.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  She took the phone from the wide-eyed secretary.

  ‘Theresa? I caught a bit on the news and it said someone attacked you? Are you all right?’

  She tried to speak, choked, tamped down her anger and tried again. ‘Yes, someone did. We all think it was you.’

  A pause – of shock, or to regroup? ‘Me? How could it have been me? Didn’t you see him?’

  ‘Of course not, but—’ The police had indeed tried to keep the name of their oft-testifying expert witness and mention of drug intoxication from turning up in the same statement. To the media they had characterized last night’s event as an assault only. David was either innocent, or he was fishing. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’ve just been driving around, mostly. I don’t know where to go – the media is still camped in my driveway. Are you sure you’re all right?’

  Then why hasn’t someone picked you up on the BOLO? she had the sense not to ask. And there are no TV vans, no spectators in your driveway because your wife is news but not big news, and I know that because Frank has two officers parked around the corner from your house.

  No, she’d have a better chance of convincing him to come in if she kept things cordial. ‘Yes. Look—’

  ‘Why would you think I attacked you?’

  ‘Well … when I went back home, you were gone. That seemed kind of suspicious.’

  ‘I heard you leave for work, so I got up. I’d already imposed on you enough and I didn’t want your mother to see my car in the drive.’

  How thoughtful of him. ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘I’d like to see you, too,’ he said, with the correct amount of wistfulness in his voice, just enough to make her hope, with an intensity that brought tears to her eyes, that they were wrong about him. ‘I have to tell you something.’

  ‘About Marty Davis?’

  ‘Yes. I think I know who killed him.’

  Yeah, you, she thought, the hope choking on its own naivety. ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘I need to explain this in person. Can I meet you at your house?’

  Not a chance, she thought. Someplace public, but with a little privacy. She thought fast. ‘Are you downtown?’

  ‘Huh? Yeah, I’m on the Shoreway.’

  ‘Perfect. You know the Eastman Reading Garden at the public library?’

  ‘Yeah. But—’

  ‘Half an hour.’ She hung up, clamping the receiver on to its body and holding it there. To Leo she said, ‘If he calls back, tell him I left and you don’t know my cell number. I can’t give him an opportunity to change the meeting place.’

  ‘You aren’t going there alone, are you?’ Her boss actually seemed concerned for her safety, and she smiled in response.

  David had been lying to her from the first moment. About why he had attended Marty’s funeral, about knowing Lily Simpson or Ken Bilecki, about why he needed to stay at her house yesterday.

  ‘I may have been born at night,’ she said to Leo, ‘but it wasn’t last night.’

  The Eastman Reading Garden, decorated with adorable bronze figures by Tom Otterness, lay enveloped in dusky shadows as the main branch of the public library blotted out the sinking sun. Theresa perched on the edge of the small fountain, shivering in a thin sweater.

  ‘She should have a coat on.’ Frank, at the window, spoke to no one in particular. As if Theresa catching a cold wasn’t the least of his concerns at present.

  ‘He should be here any minute,’ Angela said, with an uncomfortable breath. ‘If he’s going to show at all.’

  Frank glanced sideways at the stiff way she held her damaged torso. ‘You shouldn’t be here at all.’

  ‘Of course I’m here. This is Theresa.’

  His cousin had picked a good spot, more or less. The garden was nestled in the seventy-five foot space between the original library building and the modern Stokes wing. The doors from the garden into the library were already locked for the evening so that Madison would not be able to escape into the library, still full of civilians. The iron gates at each end, opening on to the sidewalks of Superior and Rockwell, remained the only way in or out. The walls of this new wing were made of glass, so that Frank and ten other cops could watch every inch of the Eastman garden. Library staff stood at the ready to open the doors and let them spill out in an instant. They would not loan out the keys. Librarians could be quite firm on certain matters.

  Five other cops were stationed along each of the two streets to the north and south, watching for Madison’s arrival. This represented a lot of manpower for one stake-out, but Frank didn’t fool himself that the men had been assigned out of concern for either Theresa or himself. No, Frank had told his boss he could – tentatively – link David Madison to the Bingham building explosion. That pulled a handful of strings. Theresa would be safe.

  He kept telling himself that.

  Unless Madison pulled out a gun as soon as he stepped inside the garden, or got close enough to use a knife. They could grab him the moment he appeared, as they had more than enough to hold him for questioning … but Frank felt curious to know what he planned to say to her. Catching people in lies played well to a jury. It might put Theresa at risk, but they needed to know if Madison really could be connected to the Bingham explosion.

  Why would Madison show up at all? Theresa had told him they suspected him of the murder attempt and then refused to let him come to her house. He either thought he could get away with her poisoning and planned to brazen it out with a posture of innocence, or he planned to finish the job.

  But why? Theresa didn’t have any evidence to connect him to the Marty Davis murder, and she had already told Frank about Madison’s connection to the meth lab explosion. Madison might not know that for sure, but again, he would have to assume it at this point. So what exactly did he hope to gain by silencing Theresa?

  Unless she knew something she didn’t yet know she knew. Some connection she hadn’t made, but would eventually.

  Either that, or the cuckold really was innocent.

  Two black teenagers ran through the garden, hand in hand, weighed down by heavy backpacks. Theresa’s gaze followed their path, head swinging from north to south.

  Frank watched her shiver again. Madison should have been there fifteen minutes ago.

  A screech of brakes came from Superior. Had one of those kids gotten hit by a car?

  Frank saw Theresa stand, craning her neck to see what had occurred. At th
at moment, David Madison appeared at the north end, the side bordered by Rockwell. He wore dark clothes and an unzipped hoodie. He hung on the open gate until it swung shut behind him. His mouth opened.

  Theresa turned immediately. Don’t go near him, Frank thought. Make him come to you.

  She began walking toward Madison.

  Theresa! What was she doing?

  Frank did at least register the shapes of his two fellow detectives coming up behind Madison, outside the iron gates, but still found himself pounding on the glass exit doors. A slender librarian hastily unlocked the door, her keys flying as Frank burst through it. While he banged his shin on one of the iron tables, he saw his cops pulling the gate open as Madison lurched forward and grabbed Theresa.

  His cousin sank to the ground.

  Frank vaulted the next table set and arrived just as the two cops pulled Madison back by the shoulders and Theresa looked up at Frank, one upturned palm sticky with a red liquid.

  She said, ‘I think somebody shot him.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘What are you doing back here?’ Leo asked her, sounding sincerely irritated at the idea. ‘I would have thought you’d had enough for one day.’

  ‘I’ve had enough for one lifetime.’ She settled back in the task chair and rubbed her eyes. ‘But I’ve got a whole bunch of facts and I can’t make them add up, so I came back to the evidence. I finally took a closer look at that tuft of foam I found next to Marty Davis’ body. Why are you here?’

  ‘Forgot my book.’ Her boss hung his trench coat on the rack inside his office, then began to make coffee. Theresa shook her head. As much as he complained about the job, Leo never seemed able to tear himself away from it. He needed a life outside the lab.

  But then, so did she.

  Leo returned and leaned against the infrared spectrometer. ‘The radio said they got him, or rather that he’d been taken to Metro with a gunshot wound. How’d it go? Did he try to kill you again?’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘Did your cousin shoot him?’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you again. Nobody shot him – exactly. It looked that way until they found his car on the next block, run into one of those concrete garbage can holders. His dashboard exploded, forcing enough debris and shrapnel into his chest to kill him.’

  ‘But it didn’t?’ That seemed to surprise him. It surprised her, too.

  ‘Not yet,’ she sighed as the coffee finished perking and they both filled their respective mugs. ‘He’s still in surgery.’

  ‘Nitrogen triiodide?’

  ‘None. The mechanics are pouring over it now. It could still be some really bizarre design flaw, but I doubt that.’

  ‘Ya think? Maybe it’s the wife. Did she teach physics?’

  ‘Social Studies.’

  Leo snickered. Theresa didn’t have the energy to glare, but she tried.

  ‘And she was in jail until this morning. So now I’m back to square one. Or maybe circle one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think David is innocent.’

  Leo gazed at her with great skepticism. ‘You know, the guy’s wife left him for a thirteen-year-old. You think something like that comes out of the blue?’

  ‘I think I didn’t drive my husband into the arms of a twenty-two-year-old stripper. He did it himself, and with my gas card. If David wanted to poison my water bottle, he could have broken into my house and done so. Why stay there, letting me and any observant neighbor know it? Why not just strangle me in my bed and quickly leave, narrowing the time frame to nothing?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t have the guts to look his victim in the face while he’s killing them?’

  The idea made her stomach roil, but she went on. ‘The only motive he’d have to kill me is to keep me from telling anyone else about his part in the meth lab explosion twenty-five years ago. He couldn’t be sure I hadn’t already told Frank, when I went to the hospital to see him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a better judge of people than you are.’

  She scowled.

  ‘I’m serious. He’s got you thinking with the wrong part of your anatomy. Forget him.’ Leo finished off this advice with a slug of coffee, as if it that took care of it. As if it were that easy.

  ‘Then who rigged his car?’ she asked.

  ‘An exploding dashboard has none of the subtlety of tailored meth.’

  ‘Neither did shooting Marty Davis in the head.’

  Leo opened his mouth, apparently could not find an appropriate response, and shut it again.

  ‘I keep coming back from the circle from twenty-five years ago, our meth cooking entrepreneurs. McClurg – or Doc –, Lily, Marty and Ken are all dead. If David dies, that only leaves one living witness to the operation. DaVinci.’

  Leo blinked, frowned, the storm clouds gathering. Before he could remind her that he’d taken her off all these cases, she rushed on: ‘He’s the only one left outstanding. And since David’s lying on an operating table as we speak, I’m willing to bet DaVinci’s been responsible for this all along. I think that’s what David came to tell me. He’d been hiding from his old schoolmate, not the media. But when I nearly died he realized that DaVinci would not stop until he’d obliterated every connection to the past. David couldn’t run forever.’

  Leo sighed heavily. ‘And you know who this DaVinci guy is?’

  She sighed, warming her hands on the coffee cup. ‘That’s where it gets really interesting.’

  Frank leaned over and pressed the fast-forward button on the console. Through the glass in front of him he could see the room of dispatchers, six women and one man, each gazing at their own glowing terminal in the darkened room. The supervisor had set him up with the digital recordings of Marty Davis’ radio transmissions from his last week on the job, but it proved to be a slow process.

  ‘Why don’t you go home already?’ he said to his partner, seated next to him. ‘Theresa is safe, Madison’s in custody, nothing has blown up lately. You haven’t had the easiest couple days, either. Go home and lie down. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Have you ever had cracked ribs?’ she asked mildly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘There is no comfortable way to lie down. There’s no comfortable way to recline, sit or stand. At least here I have something to take my mind off it.’

  ‘You could read a book.’

  ‘I tried. Holding something up gets uncomfortable after a while, even something small.’

  ‘Watch TV.’

  ‘I don’t have a TV.’

  He stared at her, then shook his head. ‘I knew there had to be something wrong with you, Angela Sanchez.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Besides, you’re not home nursing your burns. What are we listening for, anyway?’

  ‘It’s a hunch of Theresa’s, something she overheard at the funeral. A dispatcher said Marty had pulled over our local boy wonder in front of the Bingham building but not written a ticket, an unusual turn of events. Apparently Davis really enjoyed writing tickets.’

  He paused while they listened to Marty Davis reporting his arrival at a disturbance call, then the fact that the situation had cooled in the meantime, and that the incident could be closed out.

  Angela waited until the tape ended. ‘So we still have another player out there – whoever tried to shred David Madison’s chest.’

  ‘I think Madison contacted DaVinci. Three of his old pals are dead, and he calls to say, don’t kill me, bro; there’s a sworn affidavit in a safety deposit box somewhere that will come to light if I die. Least that’s what I would have done. ‘

  His partner said, ‘Or he called to say, I know it’s you, pay up or I talk. He’d need money for the upcoming custody battle.’

  ‘Except DaVinci is a guy who can concoct designer meth, silent cars and exploding dashboards. He’d have to be some major kind of stupid to mess with that. Maybe he figures that out, calls Theresa, plans to turn him
self in. But DaVinci gets to him first.’

  They listened through a lost child call, then Angela pondered aloud, ‘Why after twenty-five years? If even a couple of meth addicts managed to keep the secret this long, why does DaVinci think he needs to take everyone out now?’

  ‘Something changed. And it all started with the Bingham explosion. I think he knew his former partners would recognize his work, and then it wouldn’t just be trying to hide their own youthful indiscretions any more. If large numbers of people started dying here and now, he might not be able to count on their silence. I think he’s got another bomb set somewhere, and needed to keep us off his back until it goes off.’

  Angela rocked in agitation, but the pain from her body apparently convinced her to stop. ‘We could ask Madison when he wakes up.’

  ‘The doctors aren’t completely sure he’s going to wake up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Frank moved the cursor to the next call on the screen. The speakers resting on top of the console spit out another recording. This one bore a label of Sunday the tenth, the day before the Bingham explosion, at 11:32 a.m. Marty Davis’ voice told the dispatcher, with some relish, that he had pulled over a Porsche with a broken passenger side brake light. Two occupants. He read off the license plate number.

  After only a short pause, the dispatcher came back on the line and had found the vehicle’s owner of record, Bruce Lambert – hardly surprising as Davis was practically on the doorstep of his factory.

  Frank and Angela heard Davis say, ‘No kidding? I know him. Exiting the vehicle.’

  A longer pause, until Davis returned to the radio and said he had let the man off with a warning. He made no further comment, merely relayed the proper codes to indicate that the call had ended and he would now continue his patrol.

  The screen’s cursor flicked to the next recording.

  ‘He said he knew him,’ Frank pointed out.

  ‘Bruce Lambert? Everyone knows him.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Frank drummed his fingers on the counter for a moment, then let them slow to a stop. ‘We need to see the in-car video for this call.’

  ‘It’s Bruce Lambert,’ Angela reminded him, as if he might have forgotten.

  ‘Who else in this city could design killer meth and exploding dashboards? This stop occurred in front of a building that blew up the next day. The day after that someone came up to Marty Davis and shot him. We’ve got a boatload of unanswered questions and I’m ready to grasp at anything that might float.’