Natural Suspect (2001) (15 page)

"You sure it was room three?" Guttman asked.

" "That's what he said."

They checked the other two cold rooms. Nothing. The uniformed cop returned with the manager of McGinty's, a short balding man who stuttered badly. The man stammered that he was never away from the warehouse during business hours, and had seen nothing suspicious over the past two days.

Guttman took the manager's news and the absence of the promised corpus delicti in stride, but John Whitechapel was livid.

"This is the last straw, Roswell," he blustered. "As of this moment, you're suspended from the paper until you present me with a letter from a bona fide psychiatrist certifying that you're sane. And if any shrink does give you one, I'll want a letter from
his
shrink certifying
he's
sane!"

Without waiting for a response, he grabbed his photographer by the arm and dragged him from McGintys.

"Tsk, tsk," Guttman said. "There goes one unhappy camper." He led his entourage out to their cars. "Roswell, I think you've got to come down to the station and answer some questions."

>

I
can t.

"Excuse me, but that's not a response we were taught to accept in the police academy."

"It's my toe. The guy who cut it off told me where the cooler is containing it. I've got to get it and have it sewn back on before it's too late."

"This guy, what did he look like?"

Patrick debated telling the truth or the lie he had been instructed by the clown to tell. He was being systematically destroyed by the man, he acknowledged, but this was hardly the time to be rebellious.

"I don't know his name," he said, "but he was about six feet tall, thin, and dressed all in black. He had a real narrow face and, oh yes, he had a hook instead of a hand."

"What?"

"A hook. His left hand was missing and instead he had one of those steel hooks. Now, can I please go?"

"Hands, toes, hooks," Guttman muttered. "This is really gonna be fun."

"Can I please go?" Patrick begged.

"Roswell, exactly when did this man with the hook cut off your toe?"

"I don't know. The last thing I remember before I was drugged was being in the Sweeney Hotel at seven."

"In the evening?"

"Yes."

"That's like sixteen hours ago."

>

I
suppose.

"I've got some bad news for you, Roswell. There's no way that toe is going back on your foot."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean surgeons rarely if ever replace
any
toes, especially the littl
e p
iggy. And they certainly dont do it after sixteen hours. Six hours would be pushing it."

"How do you know that?" Patrick asked, stunned.

"I don't want to tell you how many body parts we cops get to rush to the hospital. I know all the rules about replantation. And the rules say you better get used to having nine toes. Just be grateful it wasn't the big one. That toe helps keep you balanced. The only thing the one you lost does is go wee wee wee all the way home. Now, how's about hopping into the back like a good little amputee, and we'll go to the station for a chat."

Pat
rick located the
number for Hammer, Crain & Rutledge, and called from a pay phone in the lobby of the precinct house. He had taken more than enough abuse from everybody. Now, damn it, he was going to fight back. On the way from McGinty's to the station, Guttman had driven him into the alley on West Sixtieth. There was a small cooler behind the barrels right where it was supposed to be, but instead of his toe, all that was inside was a red, rubber clown's nose.

All it took to get Robert Rutledge on the phone was the mention of a single name: Joe Kellogg. Two minutes later, Patrick was in a cab headed downtown. Despite the physical and emotional abuse he had suffered at the hands of the mammoth clown, he did not choose to further erode his credibility by recanting the description he had given Guttman of his assailant.

"Sounds like sort of a cross between
Men in Black
and
The Fugitive,"
was all the detective said.

Patrick was not by nature a violent man, but he felt he had been pushed over the edge. No job, no allies, no toe--and no place to go but up. He felt capable of almost anything. He was going to get to the bottom of the Hightower murder and wreak some measure of vengeance on the clown, or he was going to die trying.

The cab dropped him off outside the gleaming World Financial Center. The security guard in the lobby was expecting him and escorted him across the polished marble to the elevators.

"The button's marked," he said. "Turn left when you get out. The office staff has gone for the day, but Mr. Rutledge is expecting you."

Patrick thanked the man. It felt good to be treated with some respect.

Robert Rutledge seemed like the logical starting point in Patrick's counterattack. Each of them had information to offer the other. Patrick knew something of the man who had sent Rutledge the hand. And with luck, the financier would know why. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

Patrick stepped off the elevator into an office more opulent than anything he had ever seen. He turned left and headed down a long, broad corridor lined with millions of dollars in French impressionist art. No prints. Rutledge was in his office at the very end of the hallway--a little man, standing with his back to Patrick, gazing out at the city.

"Welcome, Mr. Roswell," he said, turning slowly.

Patrick stood in the doorway staring at the tycoon, absolutely stunned.

"Thank you for seeing me so quickly," he managed.

"Is something the matter?" Rutledge asked. "You're looking at me very queerly."

"Oh no, nothing's the matter. I've never been in a place quite like this. That's all."

Patrick tried to divert his gaze from the man, but with only marginal success. It was astounding. Remarkable. Incredible. Robert Rutledge, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world was an absolute dead ringer for Henry Cloutier, the crossword-challenged night watchman at Miller Tool and Die.

Chapter
7.

J
ulia Hightower leaned
toward her dressing table mirror and stared at the ruin that was her face. Red-veined eyes, pouches like IV bags beneath them, dewlaps that hung from her jaws and flapped in the breeze like a bloodhounds, and overlaying all of it a spiderweb of lines and creases like the embalming muslin wrapped over a desiccated mummy. Only fifty-five years old and she looked eighty. So much for the lifestyle of the rich and shameless. She'd consulted the best plastic surgeons, skin-care specialists, and mind-over-body transcendentalists in the world, and not one of them could save her from this face--er, fate.

She rose from her dressing table and turned to survey the ruin that was her life. No--not ruin, for that implied that something worthwhile once existed here. Wasteland--that was the word for it. Her life was an utter wasteland of idleness and boredom and the misery that came from never having done anything useful on this earth. The only honest work she ever did was at the Buckshot Cafe in Salt Gully, Texas, when she was eighteen years old and worked that many hours every day, slinging hash to a motley assortment of wildcatters who were all trying their luck in the oil fields. Her back ached and her feet swelled and she had the time of her life trading jokes, scraping tips off the counter, and flirting with every man who swung through the door.

She could've married any of them, but Arthur Hightower was the one whose well came in first. She could still remember the day he burst through that door with a grin like a big white crescent moon gleaming out of his oil-blackened face. "I did it!" he'd roared, then grabbed Julia and swung her in a wild twirl through the cafe. Both of them were laughing so breathlessly that it was five minutes before he could propose and she could accept. But accept she did. It didn't matter that she didn't love him. All that mattered was that he'd struck oil, and that she'd struck him.

Julia came from a generation of women who thought it was a perfectly worthy ambition to marry money and then retire. (Oh, who was she kidding? Every generation of women thought that, including today's bright young lovelies who held advanced degrees and still spent every spare moment at the golf/yacht/country club casting about for a likely millionaire.) Now, thirty-eight years too late, Julia knew better. The only money that mattered was the money you earned yourself. Married money, even inherited money, counted for nothing in this world; it was only numbers written in disappearing ink on disintegrating paper. And while anyone could lose their fortune--she had dozens of former friends who were former millionaires gone bust--the difference was that even after their money was gone, they still had the accomplishment of having earned it. They had still done something that counted for something, if only for a moment. Whereas all she'd done was marry Arthur and give birth to two children under heavy sedation. She'd conceived them under sedation, too, now that she thought of it, which might explain why they were the two most dull and indifferent people she'd ever had the displeasure of knowing.

She drifted across the Aubusson rug of her boudoir to stand-- sway--at the window and watch the sun sink into the night. Devin McGee was on her way over to ask her some questions, she had said. But Julia had already answered all the obvious ones:

No. At least
y
I dont think so. And if I did it couldn't have been between November second and November ninth, because I spent that week at a New
Age detox spa and tennis clinic in the Berkshires, and although the "tox" didnt quite "de," I did have a lovely seaweed wrap and the most invigorating high colonic purge.

2. Who else had a key to the freezer?

I dont know, but my key was on the household ring for three years
,
and anyone could have used it or had a copy made.

No, Devin knew all that. The question that was driving her out here this evening had to be the one she was too insecure to ask before--
Why did you hire me?
--and that was the one question Julia refused to answer.

She turned away from the window and went into her closet and wandered its many aisles in search of an appropriate outfit for the evening. Here were her golfing plaids and her sailing whites, over here her evening gowns, her luncheon suits and her at-home ensembles. She reached a cul-de-sac in the closet and selected a not-at-home ensemble. For that was what she planned to be when Devin arrived--not at home. Julia had suffered enough humiliation of late. She would not be compelled to endure any more tonight by telling Devin the circumstances of how they first met.

It happened one night twenty-five years ago when Julia jolted awake on a city bus without a clue of how she'd gotten there. Also without her purse, her jewelry, and one of her Ferragamo pumps. The bus was empty; the driver was returning to the terminal at the end of his route. In a panic--well, it was her first major bender; she wasn't yet proficient at it--she'd lurched to her feet. Instantly she regretted it. The next thing she knew she was hanging over a pool of vomit and the driver was speaking to her in a soft and soothing voice. He helped her to a phone and dialed the number she mumbled at him, and when no one answered, he took a deep breath and drove her to his own house in Queens. His wife spoke softly, too, as she made a pot of coffee and sponged the stains off Julia's cashmere sweater, and all the while a solemn little girl in a pink nightgown crouched on the stairs and peeked wide-eyed through the balustrades--until at last Julia recalled the actual digits of her telephone number and the chauffeur arrived dutifully if doubtfully to take her home.

She never mentioned the incident to anyone and certainly never ha
d a
ny further contact with the bus driver or his wife. But over the years she'd set aside enough of her pin money to establish an anonymous scholarship fund that paid their little girl's tuition through college and law school. It was meant to be a grand and glamorous gesture, something to smile secretively about when Devin was appointed to the Supreme Court, for example. Certainly Julia never planned to extract any quid pro quo. But when the sky fell in and the police arrived to arrest her for Arthur's murder, all she could think of was her long-ago dependence on the kindness of strangers, and she called Devin McGee.

She finished dressing and hurried down the stairs with her everyday mink draped over her shoulders. She would not be home when Devin arrived; she would not be interrogated about any of this. Devin might withdraw from the case, Julia might be convicted--heavens, she might even be executed--but far better any of those scenarios than the one in which she, Julia Conners Hightower, was reduced to the pathetic admission that the only people who were ever kind to her were a transit worker and his wife.

She left the mansion through the conservatory door and headed for the ten-car garage at the base of the hill. Twilight was falling along with the temperature, and Julia shivered as she plowed through last night's snowfall to the side entrance of the garage. She stepped inside and reached for the light switch as someone reached for her.

A rancid-smelling hand clamped over her mouth, and an arm like a side of beef swung across her chest and squeezed up high against her throat. A voice rasped in her ear: "You make a sound, it'll be your last, you hear me?"

There was a faint involuntary gurgling in her throat, but she nodded. The man behind her felt hard and massive, and he stank of a fermented brew of sweat, Ben-Gay, and--was that?--yes, Dr. Scholl's foot spray.

"You know who I am?" he growled.

She shook her head emphatically.

"Picture the courtroom, and now picture the jury box." He eased his clammy hand from her mouth, but his arm remained soldered to her collarbone. "I'm juror number five."

"The retired home ec teacher?" Julia said doubtfully.

"No! I mean--number six."

"The pregnant cashier?" she exclaimed.

"Number seven then," he snapped. "Jeez."

"Ohh," she breathed as the image came to her. "The paramedic turned sandwich shop owner?"

"Yeah," he said happily. "That's me."

"Why are you here? What do you want?"

"Nothin' you can't spare. Say half a mill."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Haifa million dollars. Cash. Or I get that jury to convict your lily-white ass. Don't you think I can't do it either. I can be a pretty persuasive guy when I wanna." He tightened his arm against her windpipe.

"Oh, but I couldn't possibly--," she squeaked.

"Don't give me that, lady. You got more than that in jewelry layin' around the house."

"Fine. Then take the jewelry."

"And get nailed the first time I try to sell any of it? No way. You sell it if you have to. I want cash."