Ike pushed his chair back away from his desk, looking up at her. “Whatever it is, consider yourself forgiven. Any harm get done?”
“Well,” Beth took a breath. “Geoff Cooke might have gotten himself murdered. How’s that for harm?”
A muscle worked in Ike’s jaw, and he nodded soberly. “I’ll give it about a ten.”
“Me, too.”
“So, talk to me.”
Beth boosted herself up on the corner of his desk. “You remember a woman named Kate Jameson? You met her at Ash’s funeral.”
“I don’t think I could forget. Movie-star looks?”
“That would be her. She’s a friend, a best friend, of mine since college. She was the one who was with me at the Ferry Building. She got shot, too. Worse than me. She almost died.”
“All right.”
“All right, so she’d been through some shit—a lot of shit—and I wanted to spare her any more of it.” She hesitated, then came out with it. “Even after I found out she had had a thing with Peter Ash.”
Out on the street, four stories down, a car’s horn blared, tires squealed, metal crunched against metal. A car alarm began to squawk.
His face closing down, Ike folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“I should have told you as soon as I found out,” Beth went on, “but you had Heather to worry about, and I somehow convinced myself that just because Kate slept with Peter didn’t mean she had anything to do with killing him. I didn’t think that was even remotely possible. Honestly. And since that was the case, you didn’t have to know about it. I realize now, Ike, that was a huge mistake.”
“You’re saying now you think she did kill him?”
“No, not her. Remember when you said, ‘Somebody sleeps with your wife, you kill him?’ ”
“Sure. Universal truth. So. Her husband?”
“Ron. Yes. Ron who has a set of keys to Geoff Cooke’s boat because they were law partners and good pals since they were in Desert Storm together.”
At this news, Ike straightened up in his chair. “You’re shitting me. Tell me he had a souvenir gun.”
“Two of them, actually.”
“How did you get this?”
“I wanted to find out if Bina and Peter had had a thing together, which would have given Geoff his motive, right? So I called and then went by and talked to Bina Wednesday. I asked her point-blank if she’d slept with Peter Ash, and the question actually made her laugh. She also had some pretty persuasive arguments against Geoff killing himself.”
“Such as?”
“Well, both of his souvenir guns were accounted for, still locked in his safe, for one example. He was left-handed, for another. Nothing conclusive, I know, but still . . . so finally, I asked her if Geoff might have had a third gun she didn’t know about, because who else would have a gun exactly like the one that killed him? It didn’t take her two seconds: Ron Jameson. He also had two of them. The guys used to go out together and shoot ’em. Bina had seen Ron’s guns dozens of times.”
“Son of a bitch,” Ike said.
“Exactly.” Beth shook her head wearily from side to side. “I feel like such a fucking idiot, Ike. If I’d only mentioned this Kate and Peter thing to you earlier. At least we might have started asking some of the right questions. We might have saved Geoff Cooke’s life.”
“You’re saying Ron Jameson killed him, too?”
“With his own Desert Storm gun, yeah.”
Ike brightened. “Well, hey, we’ve got that gun in evidence. We could . . .”
Beth held up a hand. “Already done. I went down yesterday morning and had the lab take the damn thing apart looking for fingerprints on the magazine or casings or anywhere, but guess what? Whoever loaded the gun had wiped it clean. No prints whatever. Not Geoff Cooke’s, not Ron Jameson’s.”
“And why would Geoff have done that?”
“Right. Whereas Ron would have all the reason in the world.” The partners sat in silence for a minute until Beth drew a breath, then let it out. “You want some more?”
“Sure.”
“As soon as I finished up with the lab yesterday, I decided to try to get a warrant to search Ron Jameson’s house and while we’re at it, we luminol his clothes and search for GSR and everything else we can find.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t work.”
Beth shook her head. “Fucking Muller said I’ve used up my warrant quota for this month. Where’s my probable cause this time? We apparently already believe that there won’t be any guns at Ron’s house because, if my theory is correct, one of them is presumably in the bay and the other one is in the evidence lockup downstairs. Which leaves me searching for something that we know is not there, right? Besides which, she asks me, aren’t both of these cases closed? Hasn’t Dr. Patel ruled Mr. Cooke a suicide? Has that case been reopened? What the hell am I wasting her time for?”
“Sweet.”
“Not. I hate that woman.”
“She’s not exactly my favorite, either. But where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know.” Beth let out a deep sigh. “But I do know it’s Ron.”
“And why again did he kill his friend and partner?”
“Because poor clueless Bina called Kate after we’d come by to see her that first time, when we’d asked Geoff’s permission to search his boat. Kate, equally clueless, passed the word along to Ron in casual conversation, and Ron realized that if he could tie Geoff to the boat—and a couple of matching casings would do it—that would get him off the hook and tie things up nicely. What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty goddamn near perfect.” He looked up at her. “So how do we collar this son of a bitch?”
* * *
“You’re not going to like this, and I’m very sorry, but you know that dinner date we had for tonight?”
“I’ve got a reservation at A16. Really unbelievably good Italian, which I know you love more than anything. Seven thirty sharp, picking you up at seven.”
“Right. But you know that whole thing we had about dating a cop . . .”
“Something’s come up.”
“I’m sorry, Alan, but it truly has.”
“All night?”
“It’s kind of open ended, and it might go pretty late. But the bottom line is that it needs to happen and happen tonight.”
“All right.”
“You sound a little unhappy.”
“I am disappointed and a little unhappy, but it’s not like you didn’t warn me. I’ll get over it. What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Just like that?”
“Gotta fill out that dance card if you want to dance. So, tomorrow?”
“Nothing on the agenda, but that—as we know—could change. I’m not trying to be difficult, Alan, but . . .”
“Hey! Really. I get it, but I’m going to keep asking until you tell me to stop. Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Good. Pencil me in, then. Seven o’clock, your place.”
“Deal.”
* * *
In Ron Jameson’s office, his private line sounded shrilly. He checked his watch and saw that it was seven o’clock. Outside his floor-to-ceiling windows, twenty stories above the city’s streets, it was pitch-black. He should really go home, he thought. Ignore this call and let it go to voicemail, and then he could deal with whatever it was over the weekend. But it was his private line, after all. Someone he knew. Someone who needed him.
Sighing, he reached for the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Ron? Hello. I’m so glad I caught you. This is Bina.”
“It’s so good to hear from you. I’m sorry I haven’t been in much contact these past couple of days, but I’ve just been lying low, trying to cope as best I can. Well, you know about that. And speaking of which, how are you holding up?”
“Not well at all. I’m so alone and so afraid. I don’t think I’ll ever hold up well again.”
&
nbsp; “I know how you feel. It’s like this gaping hole.”
“It is. I don’t know how it will ever get filled up, if it will.”
“I hear what you’re saying. You just keep hoping against hope that the fog will start to lift. I’ve got to believe that it will, though it doesn’t feel like that at the moment. But enough of all that . . . how can I help you?”
“This is . . . I know it’s a little odd, but could we just talk for a few minutes?”
“Of course. As long as you want.”
“It’s just that I know that Geoff didn’t kill himself. And I don’t know what to do about it. I mean, you were his best friend. Does it make any sense to you?”
Ron let a heavy breath escape. “I know,” he said. “It’s so hard to accept. I think somehow that that whole connection with Peter . . .”
“No! It’s not that. I don’t mean to snap, but . . . I mean, this is not about Peter Ash. This is about Geoff—he really didn’t kill himself, Ron. Can you honestly believe that he did?”
Another sigh. “I don’t know what to say, Bean. Didn’t the coroner rule on it already? Painful though it may be to understand, I thought it was completely settled.”
“Not to me. I know he would never have left me like that. And then, you know, why would he have been holding the gun in his right hand? And the gun! Where did that gun come from?”
“I thought it was one of his souvenirs from—”
“No. No. No. Both of those guns are still in our safe, Ron. It wasn’t one of those.”
“Well.” Ron cleared his throat. “Maybe he had another one locked away at the office. That must have been the one he used.”
“That’s not true, Ron. Why are you saying that when you know it’s just not true? He only had two of them, the same as you did. The same exact type of gun. You brought them all home together. You know I’ve seen them a hundred times. There isn’t any third gun that he had. You know that.”
Another silence, Then. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bean.”
“It wasn’t his own gun that shot him, Ron, that’s what I’m saying. And who else owns a gun like that?”
“My God, Bina. What are you saying? You don’t think—”
Her voice broke. Clearly, Bina was crying, close to breaking down entirely. “I don’t know what to think, except it wasn’t Geoff’s gun. And I just wonder—please forgive me, Ron—if somehow it could have been one of yours.”
A beat, then another. “Of course I’ll forgive you. But the simple truth is that I don’t have either of those guns anymore, Bina. I haven’t had them in months. After Kate got shot, I turned them in to the city. I didn’t want any more guns in my life. This was back in June sometime.”
“And how do we know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how do we know you got rid of your guns back in June? Is there any proof of that? Did you also get rid of the keys to our boat? How convenient that you can make things just disappear by saying so. But how do we know that one of those guns isn’t the one you shot Peter with and then threw in the bay, and the other one isn’t the one you used on Geoff?”
Silence.
“I’m thinking about this, Ron. This is all becoming clear to me now.”
“No, Bina, it’s—”
She all but screamed at him. “So what happened? What the hell happened that you decided to kill my darling Geoff? How did this all start? Did Peter have a fling with Kate? Is that it? Is that what this is all about? And you hated him because of that and had to kill him?”
“Bina, please. You’re hysterical.”
“Of course I am! I finally see what has happened here, Ron. I have to tell the police about this. Have they ever even talked to you? Can it be that they don’t see it? Because I can see exactly how you did it, you murderer. You filthy, vile murderer!”
* * *
After Bina hung up, Ron sat in a cold fury at his desk for the better part of five minutes before he realized that even five minutes might be too long. In spite of the success Ron had had so far in helping to misdirect the authorities, he knew that if Bina in fact called the police, things very easily could come unraveled.
Mistakes may have been made, true; that was not impossible—and once the inspectors began looking in the right places, those mistakes might come to light.
He could not let that happen.
But he knew Bina fairly well and knew that the emotional breakdown he’d just heard on the telephone was very unusual for her. She would probably wait until she had herself in some kind of control again before she made any more telephone calls, such as to the police. And, he reasoned, this time on a Friday night, she wasn’t terribly likely to speak to a living person on her call to the cops either—so he should still have some time.
But not much.
Picking up the phone, he punched the numbers and waited and, thank God, she picked up on the third ring.
“Bina, it’s Ron again. Please, I need you to hear me out.”
“No. I have nothing to say to you.”
But she didn’t hang up.
“I didn’t do this,” he said. “I swear to you on my mother’s honor, I would never have killed Geoff. I loved him. You must know that. He was my brother and my friend. I would never have hurt him. But maybe I know who would.”
“How did they get your gun?”
“It wasn’t my gun, Bina. I don’t know anything about the gun that they might have used.”
“You’re saying . . .”
“Look, I’m saying I don’t know if Geoff kept you in the loop about some of these Tekkei problems we’ve been experiencing at work. It’s been incredibly tense down here, to the point of insanity. But now you have me thinking that you may be right. He may not have killed himself. I don’t know what some of those Tekkei people might have done, what they might be capable of, but I assure you that they have no qualms about doing whatever they need to get what they want. Geoff told me he was getting worried, but . . .”
“About these clients?”
“They’re thugs, Bina. They pay big time, which is why we kept them on, but they are dangerous people. But the point is that I know none of it about Geoff had to do with me. None of it. And so I ask you please to let me explain everything that was going on here, that still is going on if you must know. Maybe we could get the police involved then. Get them to reopen the case. We might at least be able to put this whole tragedy in some kind of perspective.”
“I don’t know, Ron. I just don’t know.”
“I do know, Bina. You have to trust me. We’ve known each other for twenty-five years. I’m not lying to you. I’m beginning to understand that there may be more involved here than anybody knew about. Once we talk, you’ll see what I’m saying. I could be at your house in twenty minutes. You said earlier you were alone. Would this be a good time?”
“I’m scared, Ron. I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m scared, too. We need to understand what’s happening here, Bina. Please, you have to trust me.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Or less. I’ll fly.”
“All right. I’ll see you then.”
Ron had been holding the receiver so tightly that his hand cramped around it. Carefully, he put it back in its place, opened and closed his fist. But the clock was ticking now, and he had no more time. He would refine the plan on the drive out.
He got out his keys and unlocked the lower left drawer of his desk, then reached in and picked up his Beretta 951, essentially the same gun as the two he’d picked up in Iraq. Double-checking the magazine, then racking a round, he placed the gun on his desk. He reached back down and took out the extra box of bullets and the extra magazine. He’d have to throw these away while he drove.
Closing and relocking the drawer, he stood up, put the extra stuff in his pocket, and tucked the gun in his belt. He grabbed his coat from the back of his chair, pulled it on, and headed for the door.
Both Ike and Beth thought that Bina had performed brilliantly. But it had taken its toll emotionally. After both phone calls with Ron, she’d broken down, crying. Now they had left her resting on the red leather lounge chair next to the desk in Geoff’s office while the two of them sat out in the main house in the dimmed light of the living room.
“I just wanted to put the fear of God in him,” Beth said. “Loosen him up at work and then hit him at home, with Kate there. Ask them both about Peter, show him his motive. Get his excuse about where his guns went. Knock down his alibis for both killings. But I never dreamed he’d actually be coming over here.”
“He’s got to take care of Bina,” Ike said. “Neutralize her one way or the other.”
“So now she’s bait? That makes me more than a little nervous.”
Ike shrugged. “Hey, it evolved. Okay, it wasn’t the original plan, but when he gets here, if we don’t let him get near her, we’re good. Bina’s done her part. But my worry is this: will he talk to us if we just ambush him here and start asking questions?”
“Maybe not. Probably not. Maybe he’ll panic. Or lawyer up. But whatever, he’s going to be seriously off balance, if he doesn’t outright slip up. Don’t worry. We’re going to get him. If not tonight . . .”
“All right, but I’m concerned. He’s not coming over here to talk, you know?”
“Yeah, I think I’m aware of that.”
“So . . . ?”
“So we play it as it lays.”
And the doorbell rang, chiming throughout the house.
* * *
“Just a minute!”
Despite the firm instructions that the inspectors had given Bina to stay in the office, and under all circumstances to stay clear of the front door, here was Bina rushing directly to it, seemingly completely oblivious to the situation.
Before Beth and Ike could even stand up, Bina was already down the hallway, across the foyer, two steps from the door.
Beth muttered “Shit” as she drew her gun and, pushing herself up from the couch, ignoring the pain in her legs, charged toward the foyer.
Fatal Page 31
