Ballard’s mouth twitched, moved, turned into a frown of disbelief. “You only say that because of Sarah. Because you want to believe the worst of me.”
“I don’t want. I do believe the worst of you. Tell me what you and Peter did.”
“This wasn’t my plan.”
Nunn shoved the gun harder into Ballard’s cheek. The flesh went red in the dim light. “Whose plan?”
Ballard didn’t answer.
“You think I won’t kill you?”
“You won’t. You love Sarah too much to kill me.”
The awful truth of Ballard’s words, the blunt truth coming from a man he knew to be a liar, burned into Nunn’s brain. He pictured Sarah in Ballard’s arms. He didn’t know if he loved her or hated her. But he kept his voice steady and calm. “I won’t be the one hurting Sarah. You helped frame an innocent woman for murder. I guarantee that is a marriage ender for Sarah.”
Ballard narrowed his stare. “What do you want? Money? I can raise your standard of living.”
“That money is Rosemary’s money. Her kids’ money.”
“Rosemary is dead and that’s your fault, Nunn.”
Nunn’s finger squeezed on the trigger. Ever so slightly. Ballard saw the flexing of the vein on the back of Nunn’s hand and made a sudden, low moan in his throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t—”
“What did Peter mean, they won’t know?”
“Peter’s drunk. He’s just blathering.”
“Is Christopher Thomas alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he touched any of the money since Rosemary died? Is he part of your scheme?”
“I told you, I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. You know as much as I do.”
“You thought he was dead?”
“Until twenty minutes ago.”
“You’re lying. You engineered all of this with Peter.”
“No.”
“If I killed you right now, Stan, the scales would even out.” Nunn wanted to scare Ballard, banish the smirk from his face. “You stole Rosemary’s life. You ruined mine.”
“You’re not going to shoot me.”
“I am. I am going to shoot you, Stan. More than once. First the ears. Then the nose. Then the knees. Then, when the pain is more than you can bear, I’ll shoot you in the brain that cooked up all this misery.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Nunn pushed the gun past Ballard’s ear and fired. The blast boomed down the alleyway. Ballard screamed and dropped, clutching at his uninjured head as though blood fountained from a wound. He screamed like a man trying to determine if he was alive or dead.
Nunn grabbed him, flung him against the brick wall. Did anyone hear the blast? Nunn wondered. He had maybe a few minutes before the police arrived, if anyone reported a gunshot.
“You’re fine, crybaby,” Nunn said.
“The money… it was Peter’s idea… all his idea…”
“But you helped him, right?”
Ballard made a noise in between a sob and a grunt. Nunn took it for agreement. “You know Peter will spill every detail, Stan. You want to talk first, trust me; you want to be the police’s golden boy right now. You tell the police everything about what you know, Stan. Everything.”
Ballard, cringing, didn’t look Nunn in the face.
Nunn reholstered the gun in the small of his back. He made Ballard stand up and hustled him out of the alleyway. In the front of the museum, the same security guard who’d nodded earlier as Nunn left stood watching, listening. Apparently the sound of the shot had brought the man out of the building. The guard was a big guy, six-six, heavy. He looked as if he could handle Ballard.
“I heard a shot,” the guard said.
“Car backfiring, I think,” Nunn said. “This gentleman has information for the police regarding the woman who was honored at the memorial service at the museum last night.”
The guard glanced at Ballard. “Um, I can’t detain him or arrest him.”
“Neither can I. But Mr. Ballard is going to be a good boy. Just call the police and Mr. Ballard will detain himself until they arrive.” Nunn released his grip on Ballard’s arm. “Look at me, Stan.”
Ballard looked up finally, blinking, as though he’d stepped into a new world where legal strategies and filings and easy assurances did not carry their usual weight. It was a different reality for him.
“I’m going to go talk to Peter. So if you want to make a good deal with the police, before Peter does, I suggest you start talking as soon as they arrive.”
“Peter…,” Ballard started, then stopped. Then he didn’t say any more as Nunn hurried into the fog-choked night.
The St. Francis Yacht Club was at the Marina. The fog lay low over the water, like a cloud come to rest. Nunn had taken Ballard’s Mercedes and told the security guard at the parking lot that he was Stan Ballard, expected by Peter Heusen. The guard spoke to Heusen on the phone, nodded, and waved Nunn through into the lot.
Nunn parked and hurried down the dock. Despite being in a marina named after a saint who embraced poverty, St. Francis’s sailboats and yachts were grand, beautiful ladies. Heusen’s was a seventy-two-footer named Désirée. Beyond the boat Nunn could see the rising majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge, solidity in the drapery of fog. The dock was quiet; most people didn’t live on their boats, but Peter Heusen did. From the Désirée Nunn heard the shattering of a glass.
He stepped onto the deck, walked across, went to the galley.
Peter Heusen knelt on the floor. A broken cocktail glass glittered on the tile, lying in a puddle of whiskey. Peter picked up the biggest fragment of glass and glanced up at Nunn.
Then Peter laughed. “The memorial is over, Detective Nunn.” He snapped the word, dee-teck-tive, into three hard, snotty syllables. “But you’re not a dee-teck-tive anymore, are you?”
“Yeah, actually, I am, Peter. I have every reason to be now.”
“Look, that, um, science dude, from what I hear, saying the body wasn’t Christopher’s, that’s just ridiculous. He’s just some attention-seeking nerd. We’ll find out tomorrow”—here Peter stood up, awkwardly, dropping the glass fragment to the floor—“that he’s been hired by one of those tabloid websites, and he was wrong.” Peter leaned back against the counter and circled an aiming finger at Nunn. “Now. You got onto private property by lying to the guard, and I’m going to call him, and you’re going to jail for trespassing.”
Peter reached for the phone and Nunn walked through the broken glass and shoved him down to the floor.
“Uh, you can’t do that,” Peter blustered. He was well into his drink now, and when he tried to stand up again quickly, Nunn pushed him back down. “Get the hell off my boat. Now.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“I don’t even know where to start with you, Peter. Why have every advantage in the world and drink it away? Why let your sister die? Why steal from your own blood?”
“Why… don’t you get the hell off my boat?” Peter laughed.
“You and I both know that the forensics is telling the truth.” Nunn crossed his arms. “Ballard is talking to the police right now.”
“If Ballard is talking to police, it’s going to be about charges against you, trespassing, and incompetence. If my sister’s dead, that’s your fault, not mine.” Peter shook a finger at Nunn, then dragged a hand across his own mouth.
“Ballard is talking because he’s going to do what it takes to salvage his career. He’s cutting a deal. Now. Who do you think will negotiate the smarter terms, Peter? A seasoned estate lawyer or a drunk trust-fund baby?” Nunn glanced at his watch. “You and Ballard stole Rosemary’s money from her kids. He’ll get disbarred. You’ll get prison. Maybe you can give your fellow inmates sailing tips to pass the years.”
“You’re lying.” Peter’s voice rose. “You can’t touch me. You can’t come in here and threaten me. I take good care of those brats. You’re incompetent.
Do you honestly think anyone will believe you?”
“Honestly, Peter? Yes, because Ballard is talking. He’s with the police now. The only way you’ll get leniency is if you confess to bilking your nieces and nephews. Or the brats, to use your pet name for them.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
“The body isn’t Chris’s. The case will be reopened. A mother was executed. The press, the public, will go nuts.”
“Fat lot of good that will do for my sister.”
“As if you care.”
Peter stood up and stared at Nunn, then he got another cocktail glass and poured an inch of whiskey into it. He looked at the glass and added a second inch. He took a long sip. “You think I hated my own sister? Maybe. But maybe I loved her too.” And for one awful moment Nunn thought Peter would cry into his whiskey. A huge, shuddering breath rocked him.
“Where is Christopher, Peter?”
Peter drank the top inch of whiskey in a long, hard swallow. “He’s dead. Rosemary killed him.”
“It’s not Chris’s body.”
“He’s dead. He’s dead.” Peter backed away along the galley counter. “He’s dead and locked in the maiden.”
“Peter. Where. Is. Christopher?”
Peter threw the glass at Nunn’s face. Nunn ducked, the splash of whiskey burning his eyes, the crystal slamming against his forehead. Peter tried to run past Nunn, and Nunn closed his fist around Peter’s collar. Peter might once have been an athlete, but the liquor had bled too much of his muscle and will away.
Nunn, gripping Peter’s collar, blinked away the sharp sting. He yanked Peter down to the floor, dragged him toward the glittering shards of the broken cocktail glass. He seized Peter’s thinning hair, forced his face above the sharp fragments.
“Tell me. Tell me where Christopher is.”
“No, no. No!”
“Peter. Think of it this way. If you stole from the kids, and you can give them their father back, then the judge is going to like you way better than Ballard. Maybe he’ll even let you keep the boat.”
“The boat,” Peter repeated.
“The boat. Tell me. Or I’ll dust up the broken glass using your face as my broom. It will hurt.”
Peter Heusen took three ragged breaths while Nunn counted silently to ten. When Peter stayed quiet, Nunn shoved his face toward the glass.
Peter screamed. Nunn stopped. “The Trompe l’Oeil Hotel! He’s at the Trompe l’Oeil Hotel. I mean, I think he is.”
Nunn knew the hotel, a four-star, not far from Union Square. “Don’t lie to me, Peter.”
“I’m not but—”
“But what?”
“You won’t recognize him. His face—”
“Got himself some plastic surgery, did he?”
Peter nodded. “So he says. He obviously won’t be using his real name there. And I don’t know what he looks like now, I haven’t seen him in a decade. That was our agreement.”
“But you’ve talked to him.”
“Yes. And yesterday he called me. I thought he was gone from San Francisco but he’s been here.” Peter almost sounded afraid.
“How do you know he’s at the Trompe l’Oeil? Did he tell you?”
“No. But when he called me … I could hear background noise. Music. A jazz singer. It sounded like the singer they’ve had at the Trompe’s lounge for years, a very throaty alto. I drink there. So I think that’s where he is….”
Peter, Nunn thought, was a good detective as long as all the clues involved a bar.
“Why would he call you?” Then it sank in. “You helped him hide. You helped him run.” Nunn took a step back from Peter.
“You think I’m so bad?” Peter sobbed.
Then Peter cracked. Guilt or booze finally loosened his grip, and in a low voice he confessed how he had helped Christopher fake his death and vanish.
“Christopher came up with the plan,” he said. “A replacement body. He killed an errand boy, some Chinese guy, who supplied him with hash and coke, a nobody. He stuffed his body inside the maiden.”
“Name?”
Peter thought. “He had a nickname like a James Bond character… Odd Job, or something.”
Odd Body.
“Christopher sliced off his own finger, left it in place of the dead guy’s. Did it here on the boat. I had to cauterize the wound, bandage it up for him.” Peter made a gagging sound. “Then he broke off a piece of his own tooth, put it in the guy’s shirt pocket.”
Nunn felt ill, remembering the nearly unidentifiable body. He remembered the tooth and what the forensics guy, McGee, had said about the one intact finger.
“Then you helped frame your own sister.”
“It was Christopher’s idea—every bit of it!” Peter screamed.
“Go on.”
“He had one of her blouses—he stained it with his blood after he cut off his finger. It was like he was painting it, I remember. Then he took hair from her hairbrush and put it in there with the body. And later, we had someone put hash and coke in her office for the police to find….”
Nunn listened to the murmured, slurred words with an unforgiving silence.
Then Nunn released Peter, who staggered away from him, collapsing by the sink, fingers testing his face for glass. Only a slight scrape, barely bloodied, lay along his cheek, and he almost hummed in relief.
Nunn pulled out handcuffs from the kit in the small of his back and he latched one onto Peter’s wrist, cuffing the other one to the oven handle.
“You’re not a cop anymore, you can’t handcuff me!” Peter screamed.
“Ballard had a reason to stay put. You’re on a boat that could be in international waters in short order. I’m not trusting you.”
“Nunn, please. Let me go. I told you. I’ll pay you.”
“Second bribe I’ve been offered in an hour,” Nunn said. He took the whiskey bottle and stuck it between Peter’s legs. “I’m going to call the police for you, Peter.”
Peter made a noise between a cough and a snuffle.
Nunn jumped off the Désirée and ran down the dock.
Christopher Thomas, alive, and within reach. He could finally solve the case. Maybe he could get real justice for Rosemary. Maybe he would get his job back.
And maybe, Nunn thought, he could get himself back.
31
MARCUS SAKEY
I’m afraid I can’t understand you.” Christopher set the duct tape on the bar beside the Colt. “You really should work on your enunciation. It separates one from the lower classes.” He picked Artie’s glass off the plush carpeted floor, washed and dried it, then poured himself a couple of neat fingers of the same single malt. “That and money, of course.”
Artie whimpered. His face was pale. Sweat dripped off his chin as he tried to crawl. It was impressive, actually. As Christopher watched, the man fought to lift one arm and flop it forward a scant couple of inches. He looked like a man possessed, as if agony were a razor-clawed demon inside his skin.
The blood that pumped from his stomach was dark against the white weave of the carpet. Almost black.
Christopher took another swallow, savored the burn. He felt alive in a way that he usually associated with sex. Not orgasm, which had a vulnerability, a giving of himself. But that perfect instant when the next Taylor—or Haile or Justine—surrendered herself. The flicker of submission in her eyes before the clothes ever came off. The moment she let go.
Only Artie wasn’t letting go, and that just stretched it out more sweetly.
Christopher watched for another moment, then turned, walked to the bedroom. Snapped on the light and looked around. One gunshot, even from a .357, would be written off as street noise, a bottle rocket, or a backfiring truck or even what it was, gunfire. No one would believe that it had come from inside a $4,000-a-night suite.
Still, best to get moving. Besides, he’d had about all the fun San Francisco was likely to afford him. Tailing Ballard, holding a knife to Belle’s pale throat, stalkin
g the cop and Ballard’s gorgeous wife, creeping up on her like that in the dressing room, seeing her quivering in her panties, had been a kick. His only regret was that he hadn’t gotten the chance to see his children, Leila and Ben—even from a distance. Artie had ruined that with his second-rate scheming. Ah, well. Rio called.
Christopher took down a suitcase from the closet, unzipped it. Opened the room safe and began to haul out bundles of money. When he’d filled the first suitcase, he took down a second, packed it as well. From one of the American Touristers he took out a fresh shirt, patterned white cotton and French cuffs, and traded it for the rumpled one he wore. He stood in front of the mirror. A little… staid. He popped the cuff links, then shook his wrists to loosen the fabric. There. At once elegant and rakish.
He picked up his bags—it was amazing how much real money weighed, even in high denominations—and walked back into the living room.
Artie had made it almost six feet. A smear of dark blood marked his progress. His hands were coated with the stuff.
“I have to say, Arthur, you’re smarter than you look.” Christopher dropped the bags, sauntered over. “Going for the phone, very clever. I’d have guessed you would try for the door.” He raised one foot, put the arch of his dress shoe against the man’s shoulder, and pushed.
Artie toppled like a lamp. Even muffled by the gag, his scream was raw and sharp.
“But then, what would you have said if you did reach the phone?” Christopher went to the bar, picked up the heavy revolver. “Plmmmphhmmpphmmeph?” He dropped to one knee beside the onetime security guard, careful not to dip his pants in blood. “Can you hear me?”
Artie’s eyes were huge. His pupils were pinned as if he were staring at something bright and close. He made no response. Christopher leaned in and flicked the man’s stomach just above where the bullet had torn it open.
Artie responded.
“I said, can you hear me?”
The man nodded feverishly.
“You’ve probably already guessed that you’re going to die. Shuffle off this mortal coil, as it were. But how fast you shuffle is up to me. Remember that when I take your gag out. Yes?”
No Rest for the Dead Page 22
