Gates of Power
Page 15
After the incident at the Packman home, Casey had agreed to come and pick me up. My car was barely drivable, but I managed to clunk it down the road before the bumper fell off completely. I worked the phone as I waited for her and was able to get a win.
We drove into the grounds of an exclusive country club on the outskirts of Chicago, a big palatial establishment that was all order and civility. The sort of place that reeked of old money and privilege.
Casey pulled up and parked under one of the lights. The day was turning into evening, and I had a feeling that there was going to be a long night ahead.
“Try not to wreck this one,” she said as she handed me the keys to her precious car, a brand-new Mini Cooper.
“I’ll do my best, partner,” I replied.
It wasn’t really my style, of course, I was a Chevy man through and through, but under the circumstances, it would have to do.
As Casey left and hailed a cab to make her way back downtown, I strode on inside, making my way through an elegant arched entrance porch that was proudly lined with multiple coats of arms.
The interior of the club was the height of old-world opulence, with dark, highly polished, cherry wood cabinetry lining much of the walls, and crystal chandeliers sparkling overhead. In the dining rooms, tables were dressed in fine white linen, garnished with vases of freshly cut flowers, and laid in silverware with geometric precision, ready for the sports jacket brigade’s luncheon, after a vexing hour on the tennis court, at the pool, golf course, or gym. It was unlike any sport club I’d ever used, but then I didn’t make the sort of money Hugh Guthrie did, and Lizzie got to live well. It was a deal that suited them well: Hugh got the trophy bride; Lizzie got the easy life that came with the trappings of Hugh’s television cash cow.
I made my way to an outdoor bar area overlooking the lawn tennis courts, where I spotted my target: Lizzie Guthrie, taking her weekly tennis lesson from the resident pro. He was young, in his late twenties, I’d say, olive skinned and of Mediterranean appearance, with a super toned athletic form, and the sort of good looks that made you sick.
By the looks of it, not much tennis was going down under the lights, but this was more than made up for by a large dose of flirting from both parties.
Lizzie was in her element, asking for little tips on her forehand technique, with the pro happy to oblige, correcting her posture with one hand on her arm and another fluctuating between her hip and the small of her back.
I ordered a drink at the bar and waited for her arrival.
We’d agreed to meet after I’d given her a call under the pretense of romantic interest on my part. She said she could meet at 8pm, but only after her tennis lesson. It was all a ruse on my part, of course, but I needed an “in” and Lizzie had been more than receptive to the overture.
My plan was simple, lead her on and then when her defenses were down, hit her with what I knew: that she’d lied to me and that I could prove it. I was in no mood for her shenanigans, no mood to be messed around with today, but I’d play it cool, at least initially, to see what I could get out of her before I dropped the truth bomb and detonated it squarely in her face.
“Oh, Jack!” she exclaimed, on finally spotting me when the ‘lesson’ had finished. “You must meet Fernando.”
Over they came together, her arm looped through his like he was a fancy handbag to show off at the bar.
“Jack, this is Fernando.”
We shook hands.
“He’s breathed new life into my ball control.”
“Yes, Miss Lizzie has very good control of the balls,” said Fernando, in a thick Italian accent.
“I bet she does,” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Her game has come so far in such a short period,” continued Fernando. “Miss Lizzie is my favorite partner to play with. She is dominant, has very good stamina, and a nice firm grip.”
It was eyebrow time again.
“Tennis is all in the movement of your hips, your core, and Lizzie has very good core muscle control, too... a very tight core.”
He looked her up and down with something other than tennis on his mind.
“Oh, thank you Fernando,” said Lizzie, plumping up her hair.
“Same time next week, Miss Lizzie?”
“You betcha, Fernando.”
He kissed her on both checks.
“Ciao, Miss Lizzie.”
Her eyes followed him as he strutted away in his little tight shorts, back towards the court where another middle-aged female client was waiting patiently for his services. It was going to be a long night for Fernando, I imagined.
Lizzie turned to me.
“Are you going to get a girl a drink, Jack?”
“Sure. What’s your poison?”
“Martini on the rocks.”
I made my way to the bar, while Lizzie settled in at a table nearby.
Drink in hand—and a ridiculous dent in my credit card for the privilege—I went and joined her.
“Good to hear you’re making progress with your tennis, Lizzie.”
“Fernando is a very competent teacher. I recommend him to all my girlfriends.”
She took a long sip of her martini and looked me in the eye.
“Are you a sports man, Jack? You’ve certainly got the physique for it.”
“I boxed and wrestled a lot in high school.”
“Oh, I can see the appeal of wrestling: the close physical contact, the power play, the fight for control over another, and of course, pinning someone down. Maybe you’ll teach me, show me the ropes, so to speak…”
“It’s been a while.”
“Sure, but I bet you never really lose it, like riding a bike. Do you like to ride, Jack?”
I didn’t answer but gave a little laugh to encourage her.
Lizzie’s tired euphemisms were already getting tedious, but I went with the flow and indulged her nonetheless. I wanted to hit her with what I knew when she least expected it, so I played along with her game for a little while longer, putting the inevitable on pause for a moment so I could get a feel for who she really was as a person. I didn’t like what I saw.
It was time again for me to ask myself if the person sitting in front of me was capable of murder. She was definitely capable of deception and extreme self-interest at the expense of another person, but murder is an abominable thing.
Question was: could she do it?
She continued flirting with me, talking a lot but saying little, at least anything useful, so I decided to bring proceedings to their logical conclusion, to lay my cards on the table and see what sort of hand she was holding.
“What I want to know,” said Lizzie, “Is why such a handsome man like yourself is still single?”
“What I want to know, Lizzie…” I leaned in close, letting her know I was about to disclose delicate information, possibly salacious.
She leaned in too, a cheeky flirtatious smile on her face.
“…is why you lied to me?”
The smile faded and silence hung in the air between us as I looked her squarely in the eye.
Finally, she broke the deadlock.
“Lied to you? I’d never lie to you, what do you mean Jack?”
She touched my knee in a sign of fake sincerity.
“The thing is…” I said, pausing briefly, letting the full weight of what I was about to say hang in the air, giving her the full McIntyre treatment, adding impact and gravity to my next play.
“Yes, what is the ‘thing’?” she replied, confused and now concerned.
I spoke slowly.
“…You never saw Pat Packman coming out of Brian Gates’ dressing room.”
I shook my head slowly at her with a look of disappointment.
“It was a lie. And a bold one. And I know why you told it to me too. Packman turned you down. He chose Kelly Holmes over you. It must have been a crushing blow to be turned down for an older woman. And you wanted to bring him down for that slight by setting this attack dog
on him as punishment. Well, it didn’t work. Packman has got an alibi and a good one. He was with Kelly Holmes and there’s video footage to prove it, they were having a romantic meal together.”
She looked like she might cry, but for the moment kept it together.
“They looked good together, too. Nice couple,” I said, twisting the knife.
“I’m sorry Jack,” she said, her voice quivering. “I shouldn’t have done it but he hurt me, hurt me badly. I wanted to hurt him back. And you were the easiest way to do it. Hugh told me that you had been looking into Packman, so I knew you’d go after him, especially since he was at the charity event that night too.”
“Which, of course, brings me to the more pertinent question: what exactly were you doing in Brian Gates’ dressing room after the charity event? Because, from where I’m sitting, it looks mighty likely that it was you who killed him.”
“What? No, that’s not true!”
“Isn’t it? You admit to being there at the right time. You admit to trying to frame another person for the murder. And you admit to having an affair with the deceased. What was it, did Gates break it off with you as well, turn you down for a younger model?”
“No, Jack, it wasn’t like that. Brian and I were close, closer than I’ve ever been with any man. When I left his dressing room, he was alive, I swear it Jack. On my mother’s life.”
“Your mother’s already dead… I know these things, background checks and all.”
“I was talking metaphorically. Brian Gates was alive when I left, and I was out of there in minutes. We had a quick chat—of sorts, as Brian was pretty darn drunk, he just kept babbling really—but we arranged to meet in the next few days and that was it.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I met up with Hugh.”
“Where?”
“Aviary cocktail bar.”
“In West Loop?”
“That’s the one.”
“Good choice,” I said, having tracked a target there once myself. “What time did you get there?”
“About eleven. Hugh met me a bit later.”
“What time?
“Eleven fifteen, eleven thirty, something like that. He’s always late.”
“So basically, you have no alibi at all. That gives you plenty of time to have killed Brian Gates and made your way to drink cocktails at a fancy bar with your beloved Hugh.”
“Hugh is not my beloved. We’re married on paper, but that’s where it ends. Without those little blue pills, Hugh isn’t even a man. Not a real man anyway, not like Brian Gates. Brian was a man of passion, he understood me, I would never have done anything to hurt him. I felt comfortable with Brian, not just sexually, I could tell Brian all my secrets and he would listen, sympathetically, and give me advice, that’s why I went back to him.”
“What secrets?”
“All sorts of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like my marriage to Hugh. It isn’t easy, being his wife, with some of the things he’s done.”
She trailed off, I could see there was more, something she thought I needed to hear, maybe it would be nothing, but my instincts told me a gentle nudge would reveal it.
“The affairs?” I prompted.
Lizzie flashed me with a look I couldn’t interpret, confusion, annoyance, or perhaps fear.
She stared down at the table.
“No, not affairs.” Her voice was subdued but I could see she had resigned herself to telling me. “Secrets about Hugh…”
“What secrets?”
“Secrets about his career.”
Lizzie paused, as she raised her head to meet my gaze, I saw big tears had welled up in her eyes, and then out it came, words that I did not expect and would shake the very foundations of my world.
“Like he gave that kid the gun,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Jack.”
Chapter 24
“What kid? What gun? What are you talking about?” I asked Lizzie, perplexed.
And then she told me, spelling it out with no ambiguity, words that would haunt me from this day forth.
“Hugh gave Alexander Logan the gun that he used in the school shooting.” She paused and bit her lip. When she continued, it felt like she was hitting me in the head with a hammer. “If it wasn’t for Hugh, the school shooting never would have happened. And your Claire…”
My world shattered.
I sat in a delirious daze, half listening, half somewhere else, unsure of everything.
A strange detachment took over, to the point where I was practically watching myself, removed somehow from the scene as the words being spoken dropped unprocessed into the empty void inside of me.
It was three years since Claire’s death. Three years too long.
Every day without her was an eternity.
And here I sat, finally, being told to my face, how her murder had come to pass. I desperately struggled to take it in.
“It was all about his stupid documentary,” sobbed Lizzie. “Hugh was researching school shootings for his film and discovered that Alex—Alexander, the mentally unstable kid across the street—had been posting things on social media about shooting his classmates, killing them for what he saw as their bullying behavior towards him.”
She wiped tears from her eyes.
“Hugh is a big second amendment rights advocate and has often spoken on air against the demonization of gun owners, and of how, with the right training and education, anyone can become a responsible law-abiding gun owner. And so, he thought he’d prove it. He got to know Alexander: befriended him, gave him odd jobs to do in the yard, mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, that sort of thing, and then finally offered to show him how to shoot. Hugh said that the kid had never been shown trust in his life and that by doing so it would legitimize Alexander in his own mind as a trustworthy person, but you should have seen that kid’s eyes widen when Hugh took him down into the shooting range. He was mesmerized, it was like the firearms were precious jewels or something, like they had a magical charge that wore off on him. It was scary.”
I shook my head in despair.
“I voiced my concerns, Jack, really I did, but Hugh wouldn’t listen to me. He said I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I was turning into a lefty commie or something, and that I was undermining him professionally. He was convinced his film was going to propel him to the next level—to the level of Brian Gates. He was becoming obsessed with Gates’ success and obsessed with his own film project. Over the next month, he taught Alexander how to handle and clean a weapon, and then finally how to shoot: pistols, rifles, semi-automatics, you name it. Hugh said it was empowering Alex, that the act of responsible gunmanship was making him into a model citizen who would now have the confidence to deal with the bullies, to stand up to them in a non-violent manner using his newfound self-esteem alone. He was convinced that you could give a kid a gun, even one with behavioral issues, but that didn’t mean they would shoot anyone. And so he did, he gave that gun to Alexander. But Alexander did shoot. He went on his rampage that very same day, killing all those innocent children, all those teachers, and then finally himself.”
Lizzie took a deep breath and composed herself.
“I told Brian everything. I unburdened myself to him. I always did and he always listened sympathetically, giving me guidance here and there, little suggestions. But this time he was different, it was different, he said he wanted to go after Hugh, to go after him professionally. He wanted to expose him live on air for what he’d done and take him down once and for all. They never liked each other anyway, but this lit a fire under Brian, and he wouldn’t let it drop.”
I sat in silence for a moment trying to process everything, while a unifying fury grew inside me, increasing by the second until I felt ready to explode.
Hugh would pay for this, for his lies, his stupidity, his arrogance, his treachery, his deception, but mainly for the murder, the wholly unavoidable murder, of my beloved Claire.
“Talk to me Jack, say something… you’re scaring me,” said Lizzie.
I took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. I had to show Lizzie that I was calm, that I won’t do anything rash.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I need to see him. Talk to him, get closure.”
Chapter 25
I stood outside Hugh’s office block and tried desperately to put the rage inside me on hold, to momentarily lower it from the boiling point, if for just a minute, so it wouldn’t cloud my judgment and I could formulate a coherent plan.
I’d convinced Lizzie not to call ahead, told her that I needed an honest response from Hugh, not a rehearsed script, that it was the only way I could get closure.
In truth, I wanted to kill Hugh.
I wanted it more than anything.
I needed him to feel my pain, to feel the pain he had caused so many others.
But it wasn’t, and I couldn’t allow myself to let it be, my only objective.
Nothing I could do would bring back Claire, nothing I could do would help her now, but, if I was smart, I could still help Alfie. If not, he’d be dead too.
And Hugh’s fingerprints, it now seemed highly likely, were all over the murder of Brian Gates: the jealousy and obsession with Gates, his wife having an historic and recently rekindled love affair with Gates, and, most importantly of all, the planned takedown of Hugh by Gates himself, that would expose Hugh as the person who supplied the gun used in the school shooting that had taken my beloved Claire from me.
Revenge against Hugh without justice for Alfie—without saving Alfie’s life—would be hollow. Hugh would have killed another, only this time I was in a position to stop it, to stop him before it was too late and bring Alfie back from the brink.