Fool Me Once (24 page)

M
iss Kitty managed to keep
the bright smile plastered on, even though she had recognized the unmarked police car from Maya’s first visit. Before Maya could say anything, Miss Kitty raised her hand in a stop gesture.

“No need to explain.”

“Thank you.”

As had quickly become customary, Lily went to Miss Kitty with no reservations. Miss Kitty opened the door to that sun-bright yellow room. The happy laughter seemed to swallow her daughter whole. Lily disappeared without so much as a backward glance at her mother.

“She’s a wonderful girl,” Miss Kitty said.

“Thank you.”

Maya left her car in the Growin’ Up lot and got into Kierce’s. He tried to start a conversation during the ride, but Maya was having none of it. They drove to Newark in silence. Half an hour later, Maya was ensconced in a classic interrogation room in the county police station. There was a video camera set up on a small tripod on the table. Curly made sure that it was facing her and then switched it on. He asked her if she was willing to answer questions. She said yes. He asked her to sign a sheet indicating that. She did.

Kierce had big hands with hairy knuckles. He placed them on the table and tried to give her a “relax, it’s all good” smile. Maya did not return it.

“Do you mind if we start at the beginning?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Pardon?”

“You said you have some new information,” Maya said.

“That’s correct.”

“So why don’t you start there?”

“Bear with me a second first, okay?”

Maya said nothing.

“When your husband was shot, you identified two men who you claimed tried to rob you and your husband?”

“Claimed?”

“It’s just terminology, Mrs. Burkett. Do you mind if I call you Mrs. Burkett?”

“Nope. What’s your question?”

“We found two men who fit those descriptions. Emilio Rodrigo and Fred Katen. We asked you to identify them, which you did to the best of your ability, but according to your testimony, they
wore ski masks. As you know, we couldn’t hold them, though we are prosecuting Rodrigo on a weapons charge.”

“Okay.”

“Before your husband’s murder, did you know either Emilio Rodrigo or Fred Katen?”

Whoa. Where was he going with that? “No.”

“You’ve never met either one of them before?”

She looked at Curly. He was a stone. Then she turned back toward Kierce. “Never.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because one theory is that it wasn’t a robbery, Mrs. Burkett. One possible theory is that you hired them to kill your husband.”

Maya again looked at Curly, then again back at Kierce.

“You know that’s not true, Detective Kierce.”

“Oh? How do I know that?”

“Two ways. One, if I had hired Emilio Rodrigo and Fred Katen, I wouldn’t have identified them to the police, would I have?”

“Maybe you wanted to double-cross them.”

“Sounds risky on my part, don’t you think? From what I understand, the only tie you had to these two men was my testimony. If I don’t say anything, you never go after them. So why would I identify them? Wouldn’t it be in my best interest to keep mum?”

He had no answer to that.

“And if for some odd reason,” she continued, “you do think I, what, hired them and then set them up, why would I say they wore ski masks? Wouldn’t I just positively ID them so you could make the arrest?”

Kierce opened his mouth, but Maya, taking a page from Miss Kitty, stopped him with a hand gesture.

“And before you give some bullshit excuse, we both know that’s not why I’m here. And before you ask how I know that, we are in Newark, not New York City. We are in the jurisdiction of Curly here—sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

“Essex County detective Demetrius Mavrogenous.”

“Great, do you mind if I stick with Curly? But let’s stop wasting all of our time, shall we? If this was about Joe’s murder, we would be in your Central Park Precinct, Detective Kierce. Instead, we find ourselves in Newark, which is Essex County, the jurisdiction for Livingston, New Jersey, which was where the body of Tom Douglass was located last night.”

“Not located,” Kierce said, trying to regain any kind of momentum, “but found. By you.”

“Yes, well, that’s not new information, is it?”

She stopped and waited.

“No,” Kierce finally said. “It isn’t.”

“Great. And I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“No, you’re not.”

“So stop with the games, Detective. Tell me what you found that led to my being here this morning.”

Kierce looked at Curly. Curly nodded.

“Please look at the screen to your right.”

There was a flat-screen television hung on the wall. Curly picked up a remote, turned it on, and a video came to life. It was from a CCTV security camera at a gas station. You could see one gas pump and, in the background, the street and a traffic light. Maya couldn’t say where this gas station was located exactly, but she
had a pretty good idea of where this was going. She sneaked a glance at Kierce. Kierce was watching her for a reaction.

“Hold up,” Curly said, “right here.”

He hit the pause button. He started to zoom in, and Maya could see her car at the red light facing right. The camera focused in toward the back of her car. “We can only make out the first two letters, but they match your license plate. Is that your car, Mrs. Burkett?”

She could argue and say that there were probably other BMWs with license plates that started with those two letters, but what was the point? “It appears to be.”

Kierce nodded at Curly. Curly lifted the remote and pressed the button. The camera moved toward the passenger-door window. All eyes fell to her.

“Who is that man in the passenger seat?” Kierce asked.

There was too much glare on the window to see more than a baseball cap and a smudge that was unmistakably a person.

Maya did not reply.

“Mrs. Burkett.”

She stayed silent.

“You told us last night that you were alone when you found Mr. Douglass’s body, isn’t that correct?”

Maya looked at the screen. “I don’t see anything here that contradicts that.”

“You’re clearly not alone.”

“And I’m clearly not at the body shop where the body was found.”

“Are you telling us that this man—”

“You sure it’s a man?”

“Pardon?”

“I see a smudge and a baseball cap. Women wear baseball caps.”

“Who is this, Mrs. Burkett?”

She was not about to tell them about Corey Rudzinski. She had agreed to come here with them because she wanted to know what they had. Now she knew. So again she asked, “Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

“Then I think it’s time I left.”

Kierce grinned at her. She didn’t like the grin. “Maya?”

No more Mrs. Burkett.

“That’s not why we brought you in.”

Maya stayed where she was.

“We spoke to Mrs. Douglass, the widow. She told us about your visit.”

“No secret there. I told you that last night.”

“And so you did. Mrs. Douglass told us that you came because you believe that your sister, Claire, had questioned her husband. Isn’t that correct?”

Maya saw no reason not to admit this. “As I already told you.”

Kierce gave her the head tilt. “How did you know your sister visited Tom Douglass?”

That she didn’t want to answer. Kierce had clearly expected that.

“Did you get another anonymous tip from a mystery source?”

Maya didn’t answer.

“So, if I have this right, you got a tip from a mysterious source about Claire reaching out to Tom Douglass. And then you got a tip from a mysterious source about Tom Douglass’s storage unit. Tell me, Maya: Did you back up either of those tips on your own?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you have any proof your mystery source was telling the truth?”

She made a face. “Well, I know that Claire did visit Tom Douglass.”

“Did she?”

Maya started to feel a niggling at the back of her neck.

“And while I agree Tom Douglass was indeed at the storage shed—that was certainly a good tip—your mystery source kind of left you holding the bag, wouldn’t you say?”

Kierce rose and walked toward the television screen. “And I assume,” Kierce said, pointing at the baseball cap smudge, “that this is your mystery source?”

Maya said nothing.

“I assume that this man—just for the fun of it, let’s say it’s a man; I think I see facial hair—was the one who led you to the storage shed?”

Maya folded her hands and put them on the table. “And if he did?”

“He was clearly in your car, correct?”

“So?”

“So”—Kierce came back over, placed his fists on the table, and leaned toward her—“we found blood in the trunk of your car, Mrs. Burkett.”

Maya stayed perfectly still.

“Type AB-positive. The same blood type as Tom Douglass. Do you mind telling us how it got there?”

T
hey had a blood type,
but the DNA test confirming that the blood in the trunk of her car belonged to Tom Douglass was still pending. There wasn’t enough to hold her.

But they were getting close. Time was running out.

Kierce volunteered to drive her home. She accepted this time. For the first ten minutes of the ride, they both sat in silence. Kierce finally broke it.

“Maya?”

She stared out the window. She had been thinking about Corey Rudzinski, the man who, in a sense, started this all. Corey had been the one who released the copter combat video that started her tailspin. Again she could go back even further in time, to her
actions on that very mission, to her decision to join the military, all of that. But really, what started her world unraveling, what had directly led to the deaths of Claire and Joe, was releasing that cursed tape.

Had Corey the Whistle played her?

Maya had been so anxious to get him to trust her that she had forgotten that maybe it wouldn’t be wise to trust a man who had done so much to destroy her. She replayed his words in her head. Corey had said Claire had come to him, that she had reached out via his website. Maya had accepted that. But was it true? Think about it for a second. It did in some ways make sense that Claire would contact Corey and try to stop him from releasing that audio. But it also made sense, just as much sense, maybe even
more
sense, that Corey would reach out to Claire, that he could use the audio to either manipulate or straight-out blackmail her into gathering information on the Burketts and EAC Pharmaceuticals.

Had Corey manipulated Maya too?

Had he gone so far as to manipulate her into taking the fall for Tom Douglass’s murder?

“Maya?” Kierce said again.

“What?”

“You’ve been lying to me from day one.”

Enough, Maya thought. It was time to turn the tables on him. “Caroline Burkett tells me that you’ve been taking bribes from the Burkett family.”

Kierce might have smiled. “That’s a lie.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I just don’t know if Caroline Burkett lied to you”—he
gave her a quick glance and then had his eyes on the road again—“or if you’re lying now to distract me.”

“Not a lot of trust in this car, is there?”

“No,” Kierce agreed. “But you’re running out of time, Maya. Lies never die. You can try to smother them, but lies will always find a way to show themselves again.”

Maya nodded. “That’s deep, Kierce.”

He chuckled at that. “Yeah, that was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

They pulled into her driveway. Maya reached for the door handle, but the door was locked. She looked at Kierce.

“I’m going to find the answer,” he said. “I just hope that it doesn’t lead back to you. But if it does . . .”

She waited for the click of the door unlocking. When the sound came, she opened the door and left without bothering with a good-bye or thanks. When she got inside, Maya made sure that the doors were locked before she headed down the dark stairwell.

The basement had started life as a rather upscale “man cave”—three flat screens, an oak bar, a wine cooler, a pool table, two pinball machines—but Joe had been slowly converting it over into a playroom for Lily. The dark wood paneling had been stripped off, and the walls painted bright white. Joe had found life-sized decals of various characters from Winnie the Pooh and Madeline and plastered them everywhere. His oak bar was still there, though he’d promised to remove that too. Maya hadn’t cared if it stayed. In the far corner of the basement was one of those Step 2 indoor playhouses Joe had bought at Toys “R” Us on Route 17. It was fort-themed (“manly,” Joe had claimed) with a kitchenette (“womanly,” he almost claimed, but his survival instinct took over), a working doorbell, and a window with shutters.

Maya headed for the gun safe. She bent down, checked the basement steps even though she knew she was alone, and then placed her fingertip on the glass. The safe came with the ability to store thirty-two separate fingerprints, but only she and Joe had ever worked it. She had debated adding Shane’s fingerprints in case he ever needed to get one of her weapons or if she needed him to get one out for whatever reason, but she just hadn’t had the chance.

Two clicks signaled that her fingerprint was recognized and the safe unlocked. Maya turned the knob and opened the metal door.

She took out the Glock 26, and then, because it was better to put her mind completely at ease, she made sure all the other guns were still in place—that no one had come here, opened the safe, and taken one.

No, she didn’t believe Joe was alive, but at this stage, she would have to be stubbornly crazy to completely dismiss the notion.

She took the guns out one by one, and even though she had done it recently, she once again opened them up and gave them a thorough cleaning. She always did that. Every single time she touched a gun, she rechecked it and cleaned it. Doing so, being so anal about her weaponry, had probably saved her life.

Or ruined it.

She closed her eyes for a second. So many crazy what-ifs in all this, so many sliding-door moments. Had it all started on the campus of Franklin Biddle Academy or on that yacht? Could it have simply ended there, in the past, or did her combat mission over Al Qa’im somehow bring it back to life? Was Corey to blame for awakening those ghosts? Was Claire? Was having that leaked tape released to the world the cause? Was it going to Tom Douglass?

Or was it opening this damn safe?

Maya didn’t know anymore. She wasn’t sure she cared either.

The guns in plain sight, the guns she had shown to Roger Kierce, were the ones that had all been legally registered in New Jersey. They were present and accounted for. Maya reached her hand toward the back, found the spot, pressed against it.

A secret compartment.

She couldn’t help but think of Nana’s trunk in Claire’s house, how the idea of the fake wall and secret compartment started generations ago in Kiev, and now here she was, carrying on the family tradition.

Maya still kept two guns back here, both bought out of state and thus untraceable to her. Nothing illegal about that. They were both there, but what had she expected? That Ghost Joe had come and stolen one of them? Heck, ghosts don’t have fingerprints, do they? Ghost Joe couldn’t open the safe, even if he wanted to.

Oh boy, she was feeling punchy.

The buzz of her mobile phone startled her. She checked the number but didn’t recognize it. She hit the answer button and said, “Hello?”

“Is this Maya Burkett?”

It was a man’s voice, smooth like one of those guys on NPR radio, but there was an unmistakable quiver in it.

“Yes, it is. Who is this?”

“My name is Christopher Swain. You sent me an email.”

Joe’s high school soccer co-captain. “Yes, thank you for calling me back.”

Silence. For a moment she thought that perhaps he had hung up.

“I wanted to ask you some questions,” she said.

“About?”

“About my husband. About his brother Andrew.”

Silence.

“Mr. Swain?”

“Joe is dead now. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Who else knows you’ve contacted me?”

“No one.”

“Is that the truth?”

Maya felt her grip on the phone tighten. “Yes.”

“I’ll talk to you, then. But not on the phone.”

“Tell me where to go.”

He gave her an address in Connecticut.

“I can be there within two hours,” she said.

“Don’t tell anyone you’re coming. If you’re with someone, they won’t let you in.”

Swain hung up.

They?

She made sure the Glock was loaded and closed the safe. She strapped on a leather IWB (inside waistband) holster, which would keep the Glock concealed, especially when she wore certain flex-fabric jeans and a dark blazer. She liked the feel of carrying. On some alternate planet, you weren’t supposed to like it—it was wrong, it showed you were violent, whatever—but there was something both primitive and comforting in the weight of the weapon. That could, of course, be a danger too. You get overconfident. You tend to let yourself get into situations that you shouldn’t because, hey, you could always shoot your way out of them. You start to
feel a little indestructible, a little full of yourself, a little too brave, a little too macho.

Carrying guns gave you options. That was not always a good thing.

*   *   *

Maya stuck the nanny cam frame
in the back of the car. She didn’t want it in the house anymore.

She put the address Christopher Swain had given her into her map app, which informed her the ride with current traffic conditions would take one hour, thirty-six minutes. She blasted Joe’s playlist on the ride. Again she couldn’t say why. The first song was Rhye’s “Open,” which starts hot and heavy with the line “I’m a fool for that shake in your thighs,” but a few lines later, in the afterglow of the moment, you can feel a gap growing between the lovers: “I know you’re faded, mmm, but stay, don’t close your eyes.”

In the next song, Lapsley gorgeously sang a warning: “It’s been a long time coming, but I’m falling short.” Boy, did that feel apropos.

Maya got lost in the music, singing out loud, drumming on the steering wheel. In real life, in the helicopter, in the Middle East, at her home, everywhere, she cut it all off and kept it down. But not here. Not alone in a goddamn car. Alone in goddamn cars, Maya blared the music and shouted every lyric.

Damn right.

The final song, as she hit the Darien town line, was a haunting beauty from Cocoon called, weirdly enough, “Sushi,” and once again the opening line smacked her like a two-by-four: “In the morning, I’ll go down the graveyard, to make sure you’re gone for good . . .”

That sobered her up.

Some days, every song seems to be talking directly to you, don’t they?

And some days, a lyric may hit too close to home.

She drove down a narrow, quiet street. Thick woods lined both sides of it. The phone map showed that the address was at the end of a dead end. If that was the case, and she had no reason to doubt it, the residence was in a secluded spot. There was a guard booth at the top of the driveway. The gate was lowered. Maya pulled up to it as the guard approached her.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Christopher Swain.”

The guard vanished back into his hut and picked up the phone. A moment later, he hung up and came back over to her. “Drive up to the guest lot. It’ll be on the right. Someone will meet you there.”

Guest lot?

As she drove up the driveway, she realized that this was not a residence. So what was it? There were security cameras on trees. Buildings of rain-gray stone started popping up. The overall feel, what with the seclusion and stone and layout, was very similar to Franklin Biddle Academy.

There were probably ten cars in the guest lot. When Maya parked, another security guard drove toward her in a golf cart. She quickly took out her gun—no doubt in her mind there would be some kind of wanding or metal detector here—and jammed it into her glove compartment.

The security driver took a cursory look at the car and invited her to get into the passenger seat of the golf cart. Maya did.

“May I see your ID, please?”

She handed him her driver’s license. He snapped a photograph of it with his camera phone and gave it back to her. “Mr. Swain is in Brocklehurst Hall. I’ll take you there.”

As they began to drive, Maya spotted various people—mostly in their twenties, men and women, all white—huddled oddly in groups or walking fast in pairs. Many, too many of them, were smoking. Most wore jeans, sneakers, and an assortment of sweatshirts or heavy sweaters. There was what looked like a college quad, except there was a fountain statue of what might have been the Virgin Mary dead center.

Maya asked out loud what she’d been asking herself. “What is this place?”

The security guard pointed at the Virgin Mary. “Until the late seventies, it was a convent, believe it or not.”

She believed it.

“Full of nuns back then.”

“No kidding,” Maya said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. Like what else would a convent be full of? “And what is it now?”

He frowned. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Who are you visiting?”

“Christopher Swain.”

“It isn’t my place to say anything.”

“Please.” She said it in a voice that made him suck in his gut. “I just need to know where I am.”

He sighed, just to give the impression of thinking it over, and said, “This is the Solemani Recovery Center.”

“Recovery.” A euphemism for a rehab center. That explained it. The irony—the rich taking over a beautiful secluded spot that
used to house nuns who probably vowed to live a life of poverty. Then again, look at this place. Some vow of poverty. Maybe it wasn’t irony exactly, but it was something.

The golf cart pulled up to what looked like a dormitory.

“Here we are. Just go through the doors there.”

She was buzzed in by yet another security guard, and sure enough, she had to walk through a metal detector. A woman met her on the other side with a smile and a handshake.

“Hello, my name is Melissa Lee. I’m a facilitator here at the Solemani.”

“Facilitator.” Another all-purpose euphemism.

“Christopher asked me to take you to the solarium. I’ll show you the way.”

Melissa Lee’s heels clacked and echoed in the empty corridor. The place was convent silent except for those heels. If you knew that—and you had to if you worked here every day—why would you choose to disrupt the solace with your shoes? Was it part of a uniform? Was it intentional? Why not just wear sneakers or something?

And why was she thinking of something so banal anyway?

Christopher Swain stood to greet her like a nervous date. He wore a well-tailored black suit, white shirt, thin black tie. He had the kind of facial growth that took some planning to look unplanned. His hair was skater boy with blond highlights. He was good-looking, albeit trying too hard. Whatever had brought him to this place had etched lines on his face. He probably didn’t like that. He’d probably add Botox or fillers, but Maya thought it gave the otherwise privileged look some character.