Natural Suspect (2001)

by Brad Meltzer

  It was very late now, and Rutledge was breathing hard. He was glad that Marilyn had finally come to him. He marveled at her brains. This girl had wasted her talents on flirtation with nobodies. She should be in his organization. She should be a CEO. She should be his wife if she would have him. Her skills in detection were better than his thousand-dollar-a-day detectives. He was in wonderment at her. He wanted to embrace Marilyn and propose to her on the spot, but the phone rang before he had a chance.

  He picked up on the first ring. "Rutledge." Then he listened for a moment and his face paled.

  "Who is this? Oh, my God." When he hung up he said gently, "Morgan's dead. I'm so sorry."

  At last he had the honor of Marilyn completely collapsing in his arms.

  In the hospital, Patrick's teeth were chattering again. He may have sounded like the parody of a wooden puppet manifesting fear, but he was no longer fearful. He was a man now. He had a woman to comfort and a job to do, and he wanted to get on with it. And he was stuck in a treatment room with his clothes off. Chatter, chatter, he couldn't get the words to freedom out of his mouth.

  A few short days ago he'd had ten toes and a nothing occupation that paid him close to zip. He'd longed to be a reporter. He'd had no dates since he couldn't remember when. Thirty-one years old, and the extent of Patrick Roswell's kicks in life had been hamburgers and drinks at Sweeney's. He admitted it. He'd been a wimp and a wuss and only dared to kiss the girl of his dreams in the Taurus because their cover was about to be blown. Then, right after the kiss, she'd sent him off into the night, like the true hero he was, to face certain death with dignity. Love was so fleeting.

  He'd lived, if not exactly triumphed. He still had no job and only nine toes, but he was lucky he wasn't missing any other body parts, considering the fact that Joe Kellogg had lost both his hand and his head, and the rest of him was nothing but fish food in the East River. If there were any fish in the East River. Maybe the eels were eating his bits. Somewhere he'd read that eels were the only thing that could survive in such pollution. He'd have to look it up someday. What a story this was going to make!

  Patrick had thought he'd never get the feeling of Devin's kiss, or the image of Joe Kelloggs head escaping from the ice chest, out of his head. But then he'd suffered a forced visit into the murky deep himself. The river water was so frigid at this time of the year it had almost stopped his heart. Patrick knew the taste of torture and terror. He'd had a near-death experience and the sweet agony of a return to life through the magnificent power of passionate physical love. Julia's and his. Perfect in its nuttiness and brevity. When he persuaded her to return to court and reveal everything she didn't even know she knew, he'd felt he was saving her very soul. Such experiences didn't happen every day.

  He couldn't help composing the story for Devin and the world. He'd reveal it in all its deadly facets. To die and live again. To see a woman of Julia's caliber lose her son. Story upon story he had to tell.

  Julia had given Patrick the clothes of her dead husband, Arthur. Arthur had been a large and beefy man. His togs, all cashmere, linen, and silk, hadn't fit Patrick. But Patrick had been warmed by them, and now they were gone. He was stuck in a treatment room, shivering and shaking while two doctors who looked twelve years old stood around him shaking their heads over his various injuries, including the missing toe, which seemed to baffle them.

  "How'd you lose that toe?" asked the taller of the two.

  "Ba Ba Ba," chatter, chatter, chatter. Patrick had to get out of there and find Devin.

  He was bundled up in electric blankets. It was not as pleasant as being in Julia's berth, but pretty toasty nevertheless. An IV was stuck in a vein in his hand. His eyelids fluttered. Still, with the doctors hanging over him like that, demanding information, it was a lot like being with that clown the toe cutter. It occurred to him that maybe they weren't really doctors. Maybe they were more clowns in doctor suits. He was hallucinating. Where was Julia? Where was Devin? "Dont touch me," he screamed, but only in his head.

  "Gotta go," he managed to get out. "Gimme my clothes." He had to tell Devin about Morgan and Cordelia. About Morgans throwing Joes remains in the river. And also how he almost died before finding himself and writing the book that would win him a Pulizer prize. And of course before telling her she was the one he loved. Before telling about . . . Julias magnificent sacrifice in saving him! Patricks eyes popped open. He'd never tell Devin or anybody else about those brief, perfect moments with Julia! Never tell, never ... his eyes drooped again. He was lost in author's dreamland, busy writing the story that would make his career.

  Julia Hightower sat in a turquoise molded plastic chair in the ER's waiting room at Long Island General Hospital bowed with grief. The sharp mind that had clung to anesthesia as the therapy of choice for too many years was awakening. Patrick Roswell (the momentary aberration who had sobered her up as nothing else ever had) was off somewhere being treated for insanity as well as hypothermia. He thought he was Truman Capote. So sad.

  Lined up across the back wall of the room, flanking the sliding doors and all other exits, a whole regiment of police were blocking her escape. They should be treated for madness as well. They were acting as if she were Bonnie and Clyde rolled into one, had managed to kill her own son as well as her husband and any second would try to make a getaway so she could kill some more. She shivered at the very thought.

  Her phone call to Devin had yielded an answering machine message and no reply as yet. She'd been told that her daughter had been located and was on her way. There was nothing left to do but wait. Julia was hungry but didn't recognize the feeling as the need for food. Her head ached. She would give her whole fortune for a chance to replay the family's last fatal reunion. She glanced up, searching for Marilyn, her last living relative, but saw only detectives. They were odd-looking men. One had a hook instead of an arm. He'd already tried to question her about the death of her son, but she wasn't going to be an active participant in her own destruction any longer. Julia was sober and angry enough now to keep her mouth zipped shut. She needed help this time. She wasn't blabbing to the enemy. Waves of grief and rage lashed at her.

  Harcourt was DOA. He didn't have a thing to tell them. He'd been downstairs in the hall. He must have opened the door to the killer. Or else the killer had been in the house already and had felled him on the way out. Who had a motive to kill Morgan? Who would gain from his death? Only one person. It wasn't a hard one.

  Julia was furious at the bad girls of the world. Look how they'd ruined her life! The women who married for money, like Sissy; the women who slept with other people's husbands. She wasn't paying blackmail to one of her own jury. She wasn't talking to flatfoots who were so dim they refused to see that she was incapable of killing a germ, much less a human being. She was talking to Devin, her counsel.

  In that blue plastic chair, surrounded by cops, Julia had a sudden flash. She'd tell Devin the truth about her own legacy. She'd insist that Devin sort out the legal questions of blackmail, her false arrest. Everything. She'd have Marilyn and Devin work out the will and business issues together. It was time for the good girls to take their place in the world, to stand up for themselves and make themselves useful. To prevail.

  As Julia waited for her girls to arrive, she had other thoughts, too. Being rich wasn't as easy as people thought. Everyone they knew bowed and scraped, of course, but let's face it--no one really liked the rich. She never had liked them much herself. She may have been excited and corrupted by wealth. She'd married the wrong man and allowed herself to be degraded by it, just as Arthur had lost touch with himself in his lust for money and power. Both of them had been disappointed when wealth didn't bring the happiness they'd dreamed of. But neither had been able to do a thing about it. There wasn't a course in every school on how to be a well-adjusted rich person. Money had paralyzed them, and now all the men were gone.

  Julia could see activity outside the ER entrance. There was movement with those cops. She imagined
herself as the football at a college homecoming. The cops were coming to take her away, to punish her for her selfishness, her sins of omission. Her eyes were puffy. Her heart was heavy. She needed a drink but would never have one again. She wanted to tell someone she was a good girl. She was one of the good ones. The tension built up inside her until she felt she would explode. Then the doors slid open and together Marilyn, Devin, and Robert Rutledge rushed into the waiting room. Marilyn saw her first and oblivious to the uniformed cops, the detective with the hook, the nurses and doctors, the gurneys and late-night emergencies, she cried out, "Mummy, hang in there. I love you."

  Julia, pretty shocky to begin with, fell off her chair.

  Chapter 12.

  The food in the hospital commissary was bad, and the coffee was worse, but after all this group of people had been through, they barely noticed. All of them--Devin and Patrick, Julia and Marilyn, Rutledge and Harrison--huddled around a Formica-topped table sharing secrets, slowly unraveling the tangled web that had ensnared them all.

  Harrison snapped his cell phone closed, punctuating their conversation with a decided click. "Got her!"

  "Sissy?" Marilyn asked.

  "Right. State patrolman nabbed her just before she crossed the New Jersey border."

  "Send the poor man backup," Rutledge muttered. "She's dangerous."

  "You don't have to tell me. I've known her a long time." Harrison grinned. "I understand she practically crippled the first guy who found her. Took three of them to get the cuffs on her. But they managed."

  "So I was right," Marilyn said. "Sissy's a cop."

  Harrison craned his neck. "She's . . . something like a cop. Or was, anyway."

  "She's in the O, isn't she?" Rutledge said. "And unless I miss my guess, you are, too. Admit it."

  Harrison arched an eyebrow, apparently surprised that Rutledge knew the O existed. "I'm afraid I can neither confirm nor deny that."

  "Tell us more about Sissy," Julia implored. "Are you saying she was . . . undercover? That she only married my son to get information?"

  "She was never supposed to marry him," Harrison explained. "I dont know how that happened. At first, I thought maybe she really liked him. Now it seems clear she saw an opportunity to make a big score--bigger than she had dreamed possible."

  "By killing my husband," Julia said.

  Harrison nodded solemnly. "And arranging it so that you would be convicted. Leaving Marilyn and her brother to inherit."

  Marilyn covered her face with her hand. "I knew that Morgan was scheming to gain control of the corporation. But I never imagined that his wife had killed Daddy." She paused, gathering her strength. "Morgan and I talked about some sort of takeover scheme to convert our interest in Hightower Oil into cash. I knew he had his mistress, Cordelia, lure Daddy to the Sweeney Hotel. She plied Daddy with liquor, then arranged to have a lookalike of Mr. Rutledge persuade him to sign some papers. He told Daddy the papers were just pro forma corporate documents, but actually they transferred control of Hightower Oil to Morgan. Daddy was too smart for them, though--even liquored up."

  "So Sissy knocked him over the head?"

  "I guess so. She had access to the freezer key, of course. And it was a cinch for her to snag all the matching pearl necklaces and to smear blood on one of Mummy's dresses."

  "And I'll bet she put the bomb in my car, too. She didn't want Julia getting exonerated. She wanted her locked away for as long as possible."

  Marilyn nodded. "I knew Morgan wanted the money--but I didn't realize what he was willing to do to get it. I'm so sorry, Mummy."

  "Don't torture yourself, dear," Julia said. "You didn't know."

  "But that isn't the worst of it," Marilyn continued. "When the Sweeney Hotel scam didn't play, Morgan and I allowed Mummy to be charged, even though we knew she wasn't guilty, so that we would gain control of the corporation, if only temporarily."

  "How could you know it would be temporary?"

  "I had . . . inside information. I knew Mummy had been at the spa at the time of death. And I had . . . talked to Trent Ballard, the assistant D. A. handling the case. He assured me the charges were brought only to flush out the true killer. So I thought as long as he's using this charge for his own benefit, why shouldn't we?" She looked up, her eyes wide and watery. "I'm so sorry, Mummy."

  Julia reached out and squeezed her daughter's hand. "We've all made mistakes, dear. Let's just put them behind us."

  "So what happened to Kellogg?" Devin asked. "Why did that psycho kill him? How did Morgan end up with the body?"

  "The psycho?" Julia asked. "Who's this?"

  "The clown," Devin explained. "Fran, the Foot Locker employee." She turned toward Harrison. "He works for your mysterious little organization, doesn't he?"

  Harrison nodded slowly. "Or did, anyway, until he got on the wrong side of Sissy." He glanced down at his hook. "Not that the world is going to miss him much. He didn't kill Kellogg, though. He may have tortured and maimed him--to send Mr. Rutledge here a message-- but he didn't kill him."

  "Then who did?"

  "Morgan," Patrick said firmly. "With Sissy's help, probably. I saw him dispose of the body."

  "But why?"

  "I think I can answer that," Rutledge said. "Joe had been in on Morgan's scheme from the first, since Cordelia lured him to the Sweeney to help out with the attempted scam on Arthur. And he stayed a part of it. Who knows what Morgan offered him--a big chunk of the company, probably. But the guilt was eating him up. He was threatening to talk. He called me and said he had something important to tell me. But he never made it to my office. After the clown cut off his hand, Sissy and Morgan must've finished him off. That's why he couldn't tell you where Kelloggs body was, Patrick. He didn't know. He hadn't killed him."

  "Why did he torture me? Why did he cut off my toe?"

  "He saw you talking with Joe in a bar. He assumed you were involved in the illegal scheme that Joe was perpetrating with Arthur Hightower"--he glanced at Rutledge--"among others. When he found out otherwise, he cut you loose--although not until after conning you into trying to frame me."

  "Why would he do that?"

  Harrison shrugged. "Old business. Goes way back. It doesn't matter. One reason or the other, Joe Kellogg is still dead."

  "Poor Joe," Julia murmured. "He didn't deserve that."

  "Same fate for Morgan, I'm guessing," Harrison said. "Maybe he was threatening to talk. Maybe Sissy just thought he was too dangerous to live. Whatever the reason--she knocked him off. And fled."

  "And Harcourt?"

  "I can't say for sure. But judging from the evidence at the crime scene, I suspect Harcourt was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He saw too much--so Sissy had to kill him."

  "I still don't understand what this secret organization was doing. Sissy, the clown, you." Patrick leaned toward Harrison. "Why are you people involved?"

  "I'm afraid I can't answer that," Harrison replied.

  "Come on. At least give me a clue. I'm good with clues."

  Harrison took a deep breath, then released it. "Let's just say that Arthur Hightower--with the assistance of the late Joe Kellogg and Mr. Rutledge here--was engaged in some extremely illegal activities. Activities that could not be permitted to proceed any further. Activities that threatened the global economy--the safety of the world itself."

  "Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Rutledge said.

  "I'm not. Do you have any idea what you've been playing with? You may think you're just a couple of good ol' boys trying to make a buck with a little old-fashioned price-fixing, but what you're doing could destabilize nations. Not only large ones, but Third World nations. Middle Eastern nations. Nations that are dangerous. Nations with more weapons than they know what to do with. Your activities could put millions of lives at risk."

  Rutledge drew himself up. "You have no proof that I was involved in any of this."

  "You mean because you had your thugs steal the microchip?" Harrison smiled thinly. "Yes, I know abou
t that. Did you honestly think we wouldn't make copies? Trent is a good operative, in an eccentric sort of way, but no one is infallible."

  "If you had any proof, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You have nothing."

  "You're wrong. Maybe we don't have enough to go to court, but we have more than enough to know that you're guilty as sin. And to try to stop it. You're a dangerous man, Mr. Rutledge." He leaned in closer. "And mark my words, you will be stopped."

  "Don't you dare threaten me, you hook-handed punk. I'll eat you for breakfast." He rose quickly to his feet. "If you try to smear me or accuse me or . . . or . . . inconvenience me in any way, I'll make you wish you'd never been born. I've got friends, see? Lots of friends, in high places. I'm untouchable. So you might as well find someone else to intimidate. Because you don't scare me." He drew his greatcoat tighter around himself "Marilyn, I'll call you tomorrow."

  Marilyn looked away. "Robert. . . please don't."

  For a moment, he seemed genuinely saddened. "Very well. As you wish." He pushed away from the table and made his way out of the commissary.

  "Devin," Julia announced, "as soon as the charges against me are dropped and the jury is dismissed, I want you to take something to a man named Jack Powell for me."

  "Okay. What is it?"

  "A check."

  Devin's eyes widened. "You're not going to pay blackmail money to that juror, are you?"

  "Blackmail, no. After the charges are dropped, he will have no claim on me. This money is for his half brother--Arthur's son. I've known of his existence for some time, but I was too cowardly to do anything about it. No longer. From now on, the Hightowers start taking responsibility for their actions."

  "It's hard to believe," Patrick murmured, "but I think I finally understand what went on here."