Intent to Kill (14 page)

BRANDON LOMAX WAS NOWHERE NEAR A RADIO ON MONDAY
morning. He had a very private meeting in his home with Dr. Calvin Overstreet. Dr. Overstreet didn’t normally make house calls, but a candidate for the U.S. Senate couldn’t be caught visiting the office of a psychiatrist. Their relationship went back almost twenty years, and during that time Overstreet had never breathed a word to anyone about Lomax’s battle with alcohol.

“Have you slipped again?” said Overstreet. He was a slight man with a soft voice and a salt-and-pepper beard that was neatly groomed.

Lomax checked his watch. “It’s ten-forty in the morning, and I’ve had four scotches. Is that a slip?”

“Sounds like we need to get with the program.”

“Screw the program. That’s not why I called you.”

“Okay. Then how can I help you?”

Lomax paused. He hated to sound desperate, but he was exactly that. This morning’s attempt to bribe the anonymous tipster had been poorly conceived. He’d hired Sal the thug, who seemed street smart in the ways of bribery and extortion. But there were too many logistical problems in meeting up with a target who could be identified only after revealing himself to Emma. The plan was doomed the minute Sal had entered the restaurant with a briefcase full of cash and waited at the counter, in Emma’s plain view. Fortunately, the dope had the good sense to get up and leave before she became too suspicious. It was the kind of half-baked plan that flowed from a position of weakness—worse than his decision to hire a private investigator to interrogate Chelsea’s parents. Knowledge was strength. If Lomax was going to be strong, he needed to know the truth about the night of Chelsea’s crash.

“I want to talk to you about the recovery of lost memories,” said Lomax.

“Intriguing. From your childhood?”

“No. There’s a night—” he said, then stopped himself. As much as he trusted Dr. Overstreet, he still didn’t feel ready to pinpoint his possible involvement in Chelsea’s accident. “There’s a night in my fairly recent past when I drank too much and simply can’t recall anything about it.”

“Well, let’s dissect that a little. When you say you can’t remember
anything
, do you remember whom you were with?”

“I know I started the night alone. Drinking.”

“Do you remember what triggered it? The drinking, I mean.”

Lomax phrased his answer carefully. “I had an important business meeting with some men in Boston. It went very badly.”

“Then what?”

“I left in my car and was driving home to Providence. Didn’t get far. I stopped in the first bar I saw in South Boston.”

“Do you remember the name of it?”

“No. It was just a place to get drunk, and the name wasn’t important. I started drinking scotch, and from that point on, my memory is gone.”

“What’s the next thing you can recall?”

“Waking up the next morning in my house.”

“Was your car in the driveway?”

“Yes.”

“So you left the bar in Boston and somehow drove to Providence, and you have no memory of it.”

The doctor had zeroed in on the heart of the problem. Lomax said, “I know that must sound unbelievable.”

“No, it’s more common than you can imagine,” the doctor said. “Harvard did a recent study on college students nationwide and found that fifty-one percent of those who drink have experienced blackouts.”

“But I was conscious until I got home.”

“A blackout and passing out are two different things. In fact, they’re mutually exclusive. A blackout is a period of amnesia during which a person is actively engaged in behaviors—walking, talking—but the brain is unable to transfer new information from short-term to long-term storage. You can experience a blackout and appear only moderately intoxicated to the outside world.”

“So I’m no different from the average college student?” Lomax said with a sardonic smile.

“Not exactly. One of the most famous studies in this area focused on alcoholics in a laboratory setting. Their blackouts ranged from nine hours to three days.”

“You can’t get into much trouble in a laboratory setting.”

“No, but the literature is replete with wild accounts of things alcoholics do during blackouts. Driving a car, traveling long distances for several days, selling real estate, having intercourse with multiple partners, body piercing, tattooing, self-mutilating. Even committing murder.”

The last item on the doctor’s list struck an ominous chord. “Do these memories ever come back?”

“It depends. Memory impairment of the fragmentary type can often be recovered with cueing or the simple passage of time. But alcoholics are more likely to have the en bloc form, meaning the complete impairment of memory formation.”

“So my memories are gone for good?”

“Not necessarily. But we may have to try some unconventional methods.”

“How unconventional?”

Dr. Overstreet paused, as if expecting some resistance. “How would you feel about hypnosis?”

Lomax laughed, but the doctor’s expression stopped him. “You’re serious?”

“Completely.”

“And if it doesn’t work, what do we do next? Voodoo? A séance?”

“Hypnosis actually has quite a solid backing in the scientific community.”

“All right, Doctor. I’ll bite. Tell me how it would work.”

“The first step is for you to believe that it will work. So if you’ll indulge me a little further, let me give you some background.”

Lomax checked his watch. He had lunch with a Rotary Club on his campaign schedule. “You have three minutes.”

Dr. Overstreet nodded, then stroked his chin like the professor he was, and Lomax sensed another one of his infamous monologues coming.

“One of the earliest applications of hypnosis was in the reduction of pain during medical procedures…”

As the doctor waxed on about Charcot, Freud, and “hysterical” women, Lomax retreated into his thoughts, aching for another scotch and wondering how he had ever gotten himself into this tragic mess. Alcoholism was part of his family, and he was sure he’d inherited it from his father. Four years earlier, he’d thought he had it beat, but he ended up replacing one addiction with another: gambling. Before he knew it, he had a mountain of debt he could never repay on an elected official’s salary. A year later, when the “bill collectors” showed up, he came within hours of personal and financial disaster. He finally found a solution—but not before he’d started drinking again.

“Hypnosis today has many practical applications…”

None of this drinking was Lomax’s fault, of course. Those bastards who’d backed him into a corner on the gambling debts were the ones who’d knocked him off the proverbial wagon. If it weren’t for them, he would never have gotten drunk on the night Chelsea James was run off the road. He never would have been on the road that night…if he was indeed on the road. He still didn’t know. Couldn’t remember. But as the doctor had just pointed out, Lomax had somehow driven his car from that bar in Boston back to his house in Providence.

It
must
have been me.

“So tell me,” said Dr. Overstreet, “what specific day are you trying to recall?”

Lomax hesitated. “What are the chances of success?”

“There is a danger of false memory. Many recalled childhood sexual-abuse cases have been criticized on that ground. But I feel that I have been able to attain reliable results.”

There was a knock at the door. Lomax had given his housekeeper a strict order for no intrusions, and she was not one to disregard his instructions lightly. He excused himself and went to the door. His campaign manager was there, his eyes wide with excitement.

“I need to talk to you immediately,” said Josef.

“I’m in the middle of something important. That’s why I didn’t answer my cell.”

Josef leaned closer and spoke softly, so as not to be overheard by anyone inside the study. “Chelsea’s brother just phoned in to Ryan James’s radio show. He confessed that he was the hit-and-run driver who killed his sister.”

“Praise God!” he said, unable to contain himself. He locked Josef in a back-slapping embrace.

Josef broke away, his happy expression evaporating. “You’ve been drinking,” he whispered, but his tone was harsh. “I can smell it.”

Dr. Overstreet said, “Do we need to do this another time, Brandon?”

Lomax was smiling so widely that it almost hurt. “No, Doctor,” he said, chuckling at the look of concern on his campaign manager’s face. “On second thought, it looks like I won’t be needing your services at all.”

EMMA DROVE STRAIGHT TO HER OFFICE. SHE WANTED TO BELIEVE
that Babes’s confession cleared Brandon Lomax’s name, but she was having a hard time imagining how it could have been true. To sort it out, Emma went right to the top: Criminal Division chief Glenda Garrisen.

“Did Babes even have a driver’s license?” asked the chief.

“He got one at seventeen, but he’s never had his own car, and his parents never let him drive alone.”

The chief looked around her office, thinking. Her gaze settled on a museum-quality oil painting on the wall directly behind Emma, as if searching the Impressionistic seascape for wisdom and inspiration.

“Here’s my take,” said the chief. “On the night of the accident, only Chelsea and Ainsley had a ticket to the big game, right?”

“That’s right. Ryan left Babes out because he was afraid that the crowd and the noise might be too much for him to handle.”

“From what I know about the case, Babes probably hadn’t missed a home game all year.”

“That’s true. No offense to your husband or his team, but most games aren’t sellouts or anywhere near that level of excitement.”

“That’s my point. He was probably boiling mad when he found out that he wasn’t going to the biggest and final game of the regular season, in which his beloved PawSox, the best team in the International League, battled against the Toledo Mud Hens, the league’s second best.”

Her awareness of the standings was impressive, even if she was married to a team owner. “I would imagine that’s true,” said Emma.

The chief continued, “Babes was so angry, in fact, that when Chelsea was driving to the game, Babes ran out of the house, took his father’s car, and chased her down the road. Plausible?”

“I’d say yes. Ryan, Chelsea, and Ainsley lived in the flat above Chelsea’s parents at one time.”

“Okay, good,” said the chief. “Now, the forensic evidence showed tire tracks on and off the shoulder of the road, suggesting a swerving car. We inferred that those tracks were made by a drunk driver. In light of this confession, however, I suggest that those erratic tire tracks indicate that the man behind the wheel was Babes, a driver of limited skills who was in the throes of an Asperger’s meltdown. Babes ran her off the road.”

“Accidentally?” said Emma.

“Maybe it was an accident. Or in his rage, maybe it was on purpose. He did say he killed her.”

“True. But in this context I think ‘killed’ means that he caused her death. Not necessarily murder. I’m no expert on Asperger’s syndrome, but we do need to take his condition into consideration when evaluating this confession.”

“That’s why, at the very least, he needs to be brought in for questioning. Coordinate with the sheriff’s office on that.”

“Unfortunately, no one knows where he is.”

The chief mulled this over in silence. “Give his parents twenty-four hours to bring him downtown. Be sure to tell them he can have a lawyer present if they wish.”

“And if they can’t find him, then what?”

“What else can we do?” said the chief. “Get an arrest warrant.”

Ryan walked straight into a media storm.

They were camped outside the main entrance to the radio station. Photographers, cameramen, television reporters, print journalists, the local sports bloggers—everybody, it seemed, had either heard or heard about Babes’s on-air confession. Coming out of a windowless radio station was always a bit like crawling out of a cocoon, no telling what might be waiting outside—wind, rain, snow. Ryan would have preferred nuclear winter to this frenzy. Chaos was literally on his doorstep, and it had caught him so off guard that, instinctively, he turned around and went back inside the lobby to plan another exit strategy.

His cell rang. It was Ivan calling from his hotel room in California.

“Dude, I haven’t even had breakfast, and I’m getting bombarded by reporters. Is this stuff about Babes true?”

Ryan confirmed everything Ivan had heard.

“What are you going to do?” asked Ivan.

“I’m headed to Pawtucket now to see Chelsea’s parents,” he said. “I’ll figure it out from there.”

“This on-air confession is so bizarre. You might want some advice from a criminal attorney.”

“The only lawyer I know does wills,” said Ryan.

“Call mine. His specialty is sports and entertainment, but in the legal food chain, that’s just one shark tank away from criminal.”

“I appreciate that,” Ryan said. “I think.”

Ivan gave him the phone number. “One other thing. The way they’re hounding me, this is definitely going to be page one in sports, if not A-one news. Be careful with the photographers. They will trick you, taunt you, hound you—anything to get the photo they want.”

“I hear you.”

“I’ll be in L.A. till the end of the Angels series. But if there’s anything else you need, you call me, you hear?”

“Thanks, man. I’ll do that.”

Ryan closed his flip phone and checked the security monitor by the door. A black-and-white video camera, mainly for the graveyard DJs who left late at night, provided a fish-eye view of the outside entrance. The mob outside had actually grown larger. He would simply have to forge through it before it got any worse. Ryan started toward the exit, but his producer entered the lobby and stopped him.

Beatrice was out of breath and was holding a high-heeled shoe in each hand, having raced barefoot down two flights of stairs to catch him. “You aren’t going to talk to the press, are you?”

“Not a chance,” said Ryan.

“Good,” she said, her tone conveying a curious sense of relief. She put her shoes back on and then laid a hand gently on Ryan’s forearm, as if to emphasize her concern. Beatrice wasn’t one of those touchy-feely folks, however, so it didn’t come across as genuine. “I just wanted to say that I know how difficult this must be for you. As far as the radio show goes, whatever you need to do, you have the freedom to do it.”

“Thanks. I may need some time off.”

“No!” she said, and then she caught her own overreaction. “I mean…
no problem
. On the other hand, don’t put the show on hold out of any concern that this is sports talk radio. If Babes calls in again, feel free to talk to him. On the air. If you think that’s best, of course.”

Best for Babes or best for ratings?

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

“Great. Now just head for your car, and don’t say a word to those reporters.”

It was clear that Beatrice smelled a serious and ongoing news exclusive for her station, and Ryan wanted to tell her to shove it. But it suddenly occurred to him that as long as Babes remained on the run, the radio was the only proven way of communicating with him. He kept his feelings to himself, opened the door, and faced the music.

Cameras clicked, microphones were immediately thrust into his face, and questions came from everywhere.

“Have you spoken to the police?”

“Where is your brother-in-law?”

“How did he kill her?”

Those were the ones that Ryan could hear, but mostly it sounded like one person shouting over the next one, a cacophony of interrogation. Ryan simply put one foot in front of another, moving himself and the mob of reporters toward the parking lot next to the building.

“I’m sorry,” said Ryan, “but I can’t talk about any of this.”

The questions kept coming, and it was getting harder to make forward progress. This was a hundred times worse than anything he had ever faced as a ballplayer. On the journalistic scale of newsworthiness, being MVP of the College World Series in Omaha was nothing compared to an on-air scandal in Boston.

His car was ten feet away. Ryan unlocked it with his key remote and forged ahead, but the photographers pushed back. Ivan had told him stories about the paparazzi, but this was the first time Ryan had seen them in action. Each was trying to outmaneuver the other for the front-page shot of the onetime rising baseball star who had fallen with the tragic death of his wife, and who was falling all over again with a shocking confession.

“Hey, asshole! Was Babes fucking her, too?”

Ryan turned and glared with contempt, which was immediately met by a camera flash. It was a tried-and-true paparazzi tactic to get celebrities to look toward the lens and cast the angry, out-of-control expression that ended up on the front page of the tabloids. Ivan had warned him, and Ryan had fallen for it.

Ryan jumped in the car and burned rubber out of the parking lot.

He called Emma on his cell. Of course she had heard everything. Ryan hardly knew where to begin.

“We need to sort one thing out right away,” he said. “The phone call.”

“What phone call?”

“I asked Babes why he went to the diner, expecting him to say that he got the information from the attorney general’s Web site. But he said that someone called him yesterday and said to meet at the diner if he wanted to avoid trouble with the police. That means he wasn’t the person who accessed the Web site and entered the password—he didn’t send the e-mail tip to you.”

“Two thoughts on that,” said Emma.

“I’m listening.”

“One, Babes is lying. He’s afraid of getting into trouble for giving false tips to the police, so he made up a story about some stranger calling him out of the blue.”

“Let me hear number two,” said Ryan.

“Well, there was a guy at the diner who caught my attention. He left right before I spotted Babes across the street. Nothing concrete. I just had a hunch about him.”

“I need to read that e-mail,” said Ryan.

“I had it delivered to your house.”

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s right on my way to Pawtucket.”