by Blake Banner
“So why the change of heart?”
He took a deep breath. “This is a murder investigation. I believe that David’s state of mind, and Katie’s, at the time of his death, could be significant factors. I don’t pretend to know who killed him, detective, but I do believe it’s important that, at least from my point of view as a lawyer, he was not at any time a significant threat to Carol Hennessy.” He gave a sudden laugh. “My God! The internet is rife with wild and outrageous allegations against her, and frankly what David was presenting as earth-shattering proof, was no better than what is on the ’net.”
I nodded. “I see.” I paused a moment to think. “Mr. Lee, did David ever mention a source? A particular source that could provide him with conclusive evidence, proof, of the allegations he planned to make in his article?”
He narrowed his eyes and stared at my face, as though he was trying to read what was behind it.
“A source, like who?”
I smiled. “Well, that’s what I am asking you, Mr. Lee. Did he ever mention such a source?”
He shook his head. “Not in so many words, no. Nothing specific. He rambled about having sources, in the plural, but he never mentioned a particular person. I mean, who…?”
I waited for him to finish his question, but he didn’t. Finally, I said, “So if I said to you that David had made contact with the hit man who had carried out Carol Hennessy’s last ten contracts, you could not relate that to anything that David had told you in your last meetings with him?”
He stared at me fixedly. After a bit, he gave his head a few short, quick shakes. “No, no, that doesn’t sound like anything he said to me. I wouldn’t give any credence to that.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No.” He laughed without much humor. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Based on what, Mr. Lee?”
He licked his lips and swallowed. “Based…” He laughed again. “Based on the fact that he never said anything of the sort to me. I mean, God! Don’t get me wrong! Like I said, I am no fan of hers, and there is no question that the people who cross her do tend to drop like flies! But that does not by any stretch of the imagination constitute evidence!”
Dehan sat forward and placed her elbows on the table. Her expression was more curious than challenging. “Let me see if I understand you, Mr. Lee. If what you are saying is right, and Dave posed no threat to Carol Hennessy…” She spread her hands. “No more threat than a thousand cranks on the web, then it follows that she and her team were probably not even aware of him.”
He nodded. His expression was one of relief. “I am pretty convinced of that, detective. I would lay money on it. They didn’t even know he existed.”
“So, if that is correct, this apparent execution-style killing was no such thing.”
“That’s going a little beyond where I am qualified to go, detective, but if I were her defense attorney, I’d be asking, what makes it an execution? The fact that he was shot once in the head? That doesn’t make it an execution, right? That just means the killer was a cold-blooded son—or daughter—of a bitch! In fact, correct me if I’m wrong,” another small laugh, “but isn’t the classic execution in the back of the head? You make the guy kneel down and shoot him at the base of the skull. I’d say a shot in the face, or the forehead, is not an execution. I’d say it was pretty personal. You’re looking right into the victim’s eyes, right?”
“So, really, cutting right to the chase, Mr. Lee, what you are saying is that your money is on Katie. Your personal opinion is that Katie killed Dave.”
He raised both his hands palm out as though he was backing away from her. “Woah! I never said that!”
She pressed him. “But it is what you are implying, isn’t it? If it was not an execution motivated by his proposed article, then who else would have reason to kill him?” He hesitated but she supplied the words. “Samantha or Katie? Who else?”
He shook his head. “Not Samantha.”
“She didn’t even know about Katie or the apartment at that time. She didn’t find out until after he was killed.”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
Dehan glanced at me. “So who does that leave us?”
He ran his fingers through his hair again. “Well, I mean, when you put it like that, I guess… But really, detectives, it is not my place. I just thought I should tell you about the content of my meetings with Dave at that time.”
I nodded and smiled at him. “And I am very glad you did, Mr. Lee. It has been very helpful. Was there anything else?”
He shook his head. “No. That was it.” He glanced at his watch and smiled at us apologetically. “I should really be getting on.”
“Sure.”
We all stood and he shook hands with us. “I hope I haven’t confused things even more than they were already!”
I put my hand on his shoulder and guided him toward the door. “Not all, Mr. Lee. You have been a great help.”
I watched him go down the stairs and turned to look at Dehan, leaning on the doorjamb of the interrogation room. She said, “So he was pretty subtle about it, but he made a real play to shift the suspicion onto Katie.”
I nodded. “He did. He did do that.” I walked back and stood looking down at her. “And I am still trying to decide whether there was a veiled threat in among all that bullshit.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I got that, too. ‘People who go up against her drop like flies. But that’s not evidence.’ Subtle.”
“You know what my gut is telling me, Dehan?”
“It’s too early for lunch, Stone.”
I shook my head. “No, my gut is telling me that Lee is in bed with Hennessy.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Literally or figuratively?”
“Certainly figuratively, possibly literally, too. But be that as it may, two gets you twenty that he is her boy. The question is, to what extent?”
She became serious. “Shit, that works. Dave tells Lee about his investigation. Lee tells Hennessy they have a problem. Hennessy tell him to solve the problem, and Lee goes ’round to Dave’s apartment, pops a cap in him with his own gun, and disposes of the article and the laptop. He certainly had enough knowledge of Dave’s habits to know where the gun would be. Plus Dave knew him well enough to let him in without having to force the lock.”
I nodded. “I think we need to look a little closer at Lee and Hennessy. Let’s dig a little deeper into their pasts, business activities, boards they sit on, directorships, clubs, favorite restaurants… the works. I want to find what connections there are between these two, going back ten or eleven years. They won’t be obvious, but there is something here, Dehan. I can smell it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to start with him. I’ll write his biography since 2007, what he’s done, where he’s been, who he’s screwed; see if any red flags pop up. Then I’ll do hers, and see how they cross reference.”
“Good. I’ll make a start on her. I’ll look at the activity of the Hennessy Foundation, too, look at their major projects and investments. We can compare notes and see if they overlap anywhere.”
She punched me gently on the shoulder and we made our way downstairs. There was a spring to her step. We paused in the lobby to look out at the day. They sky was clearing and a brisk, cold breeze was scattering the clouds. She grinned at me. “We done good, Sensei. You want a coffee and a donut?”
“You know I do.”
FOURTEEN
We worked in silence for the next couple of hours, drinking lots of quasi-coffee and eating too many donuts. Research of this sort is the slowest and most tedious form of investigation, because all you can do is read, make notes, and try to assimilate and remember what you have read, and where you have read it.
Dehan worked with close focus and an air of determination. I stopped often to stretch, to stand and walk around, to get more coffee and more donuts. But every time I looked at her, with her dark, intense eyes and her black hair knotted behind her head, the expr
ession on her face was one of total concentration. I am certain that in the hours that she spent there, she hardly moved a muscle. Yet her body seemed perfectly relaxed and at ease.
At one thirty I looked into my empty coffee cup, checked my watch, and said, “I’m going to get some lunch. You want to take a break?”
She stared at me for a moment, as though only her eyes were seeing me, but her brain was still looking at her computer screen.
“What?”
“Lunch. One thirty. Rest. You. Take.”
She frowned, then her face cleared. “Oh, right. No. Get me two beef and salad, will you?”
“Drink?”
“Water.”
I stepped into the bright, icy afternoon, thrust my hands into my pockets and made my way toward the deli on the corner. Everything I had read over the last two and a half hours tended to consolidate the reputation the Hennessys had acquired for being corrupt and believing themselves above the law. But it also consolidated my personal view that they were as clever and skilled as they were corrupt. It’s a thing you get used to when you’re a cop. There are certain people you just know are guilty. You know it, they know you know it—everybody knows it. But there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it because they consistently cover their tracks just enough so that there is no actual proof.
From the Clearwater real estate scandal back in the early ’80s to the establishment of the Hennessy Foundation and its links to Islamic fundamentalist groups and the arms trade, every step along the way where their associates had been indicted, tried, and even jailed, the Hennessys had managed to walk away unscathed. One journalist dubbed them the Teflon Two, because nothing would stick to them.
I had made a pretty comprehensive chart of the major deals they had done since 1979 to the present. Now it seemed all their business interests were concentrated under the umbrella of the Hennessy Foundation, shielded behind their status as an NGO, which enabled them to receive very handsome donations tax free from very questionable international figures.
I had then focused on the last eleven years and started to list all the enterprises, initiatives and companies that were owned or partially owned by the Hennessy Foundation, or in which the Foundation had invested substantial sums of money. It had proved to be a massive undertaking. There were more than two thousand enterprises and initiatives that had received some kind of investment from them over the last eleven years. By the same token, the Hennessys themselves had not personally invested a dime in anything over that same period.
And to complicate matters more, there was the associated Hennessy Investment Fund, whose job it was to take all the capital held by the Foundation and invest it so as to maximize the Foundation’s resources in order to fund their work ‘helping others to live the best life they can’.
Along the way they had also provided a number of Islamic terrorist groups with the best arsenals they could, and placed themselves among the one hundred richest and most powerful people in the country. Carol Hennessy came in around number sixty in the Forbes 100.
I climbed the steps and made my way back into the detectives’ room. There I stopped for a moment and observed Dehan. She had not moved. She was still sitting, reading from the screen of her laptop. Suddenly I knew, beyond any possibility of a doubt, that this unrelenting, unflinching, totally focused hunter would find her prey. She would not move until she had found that link between Lee and Hennessy. I also knew beyond a doubt that the link existed. It was there. It was skillfully hidden. But Dehan would find it.
And I knew one more thing: somehow I had to look Hennessy in the eye and let her know that we were after her, and we were going to get her. When I did that, when she saw that in my eyes, she would falter and she would make her mistake. And then we would get her and her trigger-man.
I put Dehan’s sandwich down in front of her along with her bottle of water. Then I dropped into my chair and picked up my phone.
It rang twice and Shelly answered.
“Hey, tough guy. Realized the error of your ways? Can’t stay away?”
“Something like that. I need you to introduce me to Carol Hennessy.”
“No can do. I don’t have that kind of access.”
“I don’t believe you, but let’s pretend. What can you do?”
“The next best thing. There is a fundraiser tonight at the Rockford Center, Schools for Tropical Guinea, something like that. You want to come as my plus one?”
“Yes. When?”
“Tonight. Seven thirty. I’ll pick you up.”
“Is it black tie?” I saw Dehan look up, stare at me for a moment, and then continue reading.
“Yup.”
I sighed. “Okay, but you’ll have to pick me up from my house.”
“You have a deal. I hope this gets me brownie points.”
“It will. See you at seven.”
“My pleasure!”
“Yeah, and thanks.”
I hung up.
Dehan swiveled her eyes at me as though she would want to slap me if she didn’t feel such an overpowering sense of contempt. She said, “Shelly Pearce?”
“Mm-hm. Don’t be jealous, darling. I have to see Hennessy, and I mean to see her tonight.”
She raised an eyebrow and turned back to the screen.
I threw her my keys across the desk. “Pick me up tomorrow morning.”
She eyed the keys, then my face, and I swear green venom dropped from her lips when she said, “Are you sure you’ll be there?”
“Yes, Dehan, I am sure I will be there. Don’t be an ass.”
She swiveled her eyes back to the screen, and after a couple of minutes she picked up the keys and put them in her pocket.
* * *
The Rockford Center was a permanent exhibition located in a large dome, set in its own garden and surrounded by fountains. Opposite was the Rockford Building on the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The exhibition it hosted was described as ‘an ongoing tribute to those philanthropists committed to elevating humanity to its highest potential’. It consisted of an ever changing display of photographs, films, and installations that illustrated variously how wonderful these philanthropists were, how limited the potential of those they helped was in comparison to the potential of the philanthropists, and how starkly impoverished were the lives of those who were poor—truly poor—in the poorest countries of the world. Put more briefly, it seemed to say, “Look at us, aren’t we wonderful!”
Shelly had picked me up in a limo. She looked aggressively attractive in a crimson dress with a gash up to her right hip, and a diamond necklace that looked real and did nice things for her cleavage.
The chauffeur deposited us at the end of a red carpet that led to the glistening, plate-glass entrance of the exhibition center. There was a handful of photographers and a small crowd of celebrity spotters, but they ignored us because Mark Zuckerberg and his wife were just ahead of us. Shelly took my arm and leaned in to me.
“Have you read the guest list?”
I tried not to sigh. “No.”
“It reads like the Forbes 400. Bill Gates is here, George Soros… All of them.”
I wondered for a moment how it felt for Carol Hennessy to know that there were almost sixty people in America whom were richer and more powerful than she was. I put the question to Shelly as we stepped through the door and she handed over her invitation. I took two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and gave one to her. She took it and studied my face as she sipped.
“You’re gunning for her, but have you any actual, concrete evidence?”
“You know I can’t answer that question.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “You know, John, we are both investigators and we both know that evidence is a very subjective thing.”
I shook my head. “No it isn’t. Evidence should be objective.”
“Okay, if you are talking about DNA or fingerprints. But you know as well as I do, that if one person states firmly enough on TV that they sa
w smoke beyond the trees, by the end of the day there will be a hundred people who believe they saw smoke beyond the trees, even though there was no smoke to be seen. And within a week there will have been a raging forest fire, where there was none.”
I sighed. “Shelly, I am not in the business of framing innocent people. I am not here to take somebody down just because they look guilty. I’m with William Blackstone when he says that it’s better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent one should suffer…”
She smiled. “It’s a hundred guilty men and it was Benjamin Franklin.”
I smiled back. “In a letter to Benjamin Vaughn in 1785, paraphrasing William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England in 1765. You see, you are not the only one, Shelly, who likes to be sure of her facts.”
“Touché. But be careful, John Stone, nobody likes a know-it-all.”
“That would explain a few things.”
She laid her hand on my chest. “Come on, let’s mix.”
For the next hour, we sipped and mixed and chatted, mainly with other members of the press and very few billionaires. Eventually, I found Hennessy. She was talking to a small crowd of people who had the look of foreign dignitaries from developing countries. D’Angelo was there, in the background. He caught sight of me and Shelly and looked away. But after a moment, he muttered something in his mistress’ ear. She seemed to ignore him, but after a while she looked over to us. I glanced at Shelly and saw that their eyes met. But Shelly looked away, and so did Hennessy.
I raised an eyebrow. “I guess you’re not going to introduce me, then.”
She shook her head. “No. I believe she is a good person, John. I don’t believe any of the stories about her, and I don’t believe she is capable of murder.” She shrugged. “She has devoted her life to helping the dispossessed and the underprivileged. I admire her.”
