Red Mist (15 page)

“I’m not used to being a pariah.”
She is facile with chopsticks.
“In fact, you might say I’ve gotten spoiled.
Nothing more
welcome in an ME’s office or a detective squad than a prosecutor.
It’s jolting to find I’ve suddenly turned into the enemy.”
She takes a bite of pickled ginger and a spicy tuna roll.

“You’ve not turned into the enemy.
You’ve turned into a defense attorney, and I don’t think it’s fair to assume that those
of us committed to seeking truth are only on the side of the prosecution.”

“Colin is offended that I intend to get Lola off death row and out of prison,” she says.
“He has no interest in my contention
that Barrie Lou Rivers is a compelling argument for the GPFW going out of its way to make executions exceedingly cruel.
To
inflict pain and suffering, and that’s what they’ll do to Lola, who was barely of legal age when she was locked up in that
place.
It’s all the more barbaric and outrageous because she’s innocent.
Colin feels I’m questioning him.”

“And you are.
But we’re used to being questioned.”

“He doesn’t like it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like the way you’re doing it.”

“I could use a good coach.”
She smiles, but her eyes don’t.

“I’m grateful you felt morally obligated to tell me that someone might be spreading lies about me, trying to get me in trouble
with the Feds,” I tell her pointedly.
“But this isn’t quid pro quo.”

“I don’t guess you got any Sharp’s hidden anywhere,” Marino says to Jaime, and he’s already devoured his shrimp bisque and
half his french fries, invested in his dinner as if he hasn’t eaten all day.

Jaime dips another roll into wasabi and says to him, “I should have thought to pick up something nonalcoholic, I’m sorry.”
Then to me she says, “I was determined to tell you exactly what’s going on before you find out in a way that’s legally and
professionally not to your advantage, and the safest way to do this was to talk behind the scenes during the course of other
normal things going on.”

“You told an inmate to slip me your cell phone number and instruct me to use a pay phone.
I’m not sure that anything thus
far constitutes normal things going on.”
I try one of the scallops.

“Yes, I did give Kathleen that instruction.”

“And if she tells someone?”

“Who would she tell?”

“One of the guards.
Another inmate.
Her lawyer.
Inmates do nothing but talk, given the chance.”

“I don’t know who would give a shit.”
Marino is working on his barbecue shrimp, his napkin making a scratchy sound as he wipes
his mouth.
“It’s not people at the prison you got to worry about,” he says to me, as he opens another take-out packet of catsup.
“It’s
the FBI you got to worry about.
It wouldn’t be a good thing if they knew Jaime’s informing you of everything they’re doing
so they’ve lost the element of surprise by the time they finally show up to question you.
I got to do something about my van.
Maybe pick up a six-pack of Sharp’s while I’m at it.”

Marino’s right that the FBI wouldn’t like it if it were known that I’ve been forewarned.
But it’s too late.
The element of
surprise is gone for good, even if I’m not clear on exactly what I’m accused of, but the likely scenario is that Dawn Kincaid
and her legal counsel are making some sort of false case against me that is at least remotely credible.
It’s not the first
time, and it won’t be the last, that I’m baselessly accused of misdeeds and violations and any manner of disreputable acts,
whether it is falsifying death records or lab results or mislabeling evidence.
In my business, someone always goes away unhappy.
It is a fifty percent statistical probability that one side or the other is going to be extremely upset.

“Next time remind me,” Jaime says to Marino.
“And I’ll make sure I pick up whatever your favorite is.
Sharp’s, Buckler, Beck’s.
There’s that market on Drayton, not too far from here.
They should have nonalcoholic beer.
I’m sorry I didn’t think of it
earlier.”

“No one drinks the watered-down shit I do, so why would anybody think about it?”
He gets up, the leather crackling again,
as if the big chair is upholstered in parchment.
“If you could give me the valet ticket for my van,” he says to me.
“The more
I think about it, it might be the alternator’s going bad.
Thing is finding a mechanic at this hour.”
He looks at his watch,
then at Jaime.
“I’d better head out.”

I dig the valet ticket out of my shoulder bag and give it to him.
Marino goes to the door and opens it, and the alarm chime
makes
a loud chirp, like a smoke alarm with a low-battery warning.
I think of the Jordans’ house again, wondering if it’s true they
didn’t have the burglar alarm armed that night, and if so, why not?
Were they simply cavalier and trusting?
I wonder if it’s
possible the killer knew the alarm wasn’t going to be an issue or was simply lucky.

“If you tell me when you’re ready to leave, I’ll come get you,” Marino says to me.
“Either in the van if it’s running okay
or I’ll grab a cab.
I’m staying at the Hyatt tonight, too.
We’re on the same floor.”

There’s no point in asking how he knows what floor I’m on.

“I’ve got a go-bag for you,” he adds.
“Some field clothes and other
stuff put together since I know you weren’t planning on staying another day or two.
Is it okay if I put it in your room?”

“Why not,” I reply.

“If you have an extra key, it would be easier.”

I get up again and give him that, too.
Then he’s gone, leaving Jaime and me alone, and I suspect that’s the point rather than
the urgency of needing a six-pack of nonalcoholic beer or getting his van fixed after hours, when automotive-repair services
likely are closed.
Jaime probably instructed him to be on his way after he ate, or maybe she gave him some other signal I
missed, and I can only assume that whenever it was Marino left the Boston area for his alleged vacation, he carried a go-bag
for me.
There can’t be any doubt that my sitting in Jaime’s apartment this moment was carefully planned.

Pushing off her blue leather slip-ons, she gets up from the couch, her stocking feet quiet on old pine flooring as she heads
to the kitchen for the bottle of wine.
She lets me know she has a very nice Scotch if I’d like something stronger.

“Not for me,” I reply, anticipating what tomorrow will bring.

“I think stronger might be better.”

“No, thank you.
But help yourself.”

I watch her open a cabinet and find the Johnnie Walker Blue.

“What could the FBI or anyone possibly think they have on me?”
I ask her.

“I believe in dealing proactively,” she replies, as if I asked a different question.
“I never take anything for granted.”

She unscrews the metal cap from a blended Scotch so fine that it’s hard for me to imagine she bought it to drink alone.
Possibly
she thought she’d sit up half the night with me and get me to lower my defenses and agree to whatever she wants.

“Perception can be a lethal weapon,” she adds.
“Which may be their point.”

“Whose point?”
I ask, because I’m not sure that the person making a point isn’t Jaime.

A
generous pour, neat with no ice, and she returns from the kitchen, the bottle of wine in one hand, her glass of Scotch in
the other.

“Dawn Kincaid’s point.
Her lawyers’ point,” Jaime says.
“According to them, what happened to Dawn was self-defense.
But not
your self-defense.
Hers.”

“It’s not hard to predict what she’s going to claim,” I reply.
“That it was Jack who hacked to death Wally Jamison last Halloween
and next hammered nails into six-year-old Mark Bishop’s head before going on to kill MIT grad student Eli Saltz, and finally
committing suicide with his own gun.
My deranged deputy chief who’s no longer around to defend himself did it all.”

“And then you, his deranged boss, attacked Dawn Kincaid.”
Jaime sits back down, and I smell peat and burnt fruit as she sets her drink on the table.

“I’m not surprised she might conjure up a fabrication like that.
I’d like to hear the part about her being on my property
and ambushing me inside my garage at night after disabling the motion-sensor light in the driveway.”

“She showed up at your Cambridge home to get her dog,” Jaime answers.
“You had her rescued greyhound, Sock, and she wanted
him back.”

“Please.”
I feel a rush of irritation.

“You’d removed the injection knife from Jack’s cellar earlier that day while working the crime scene….”

“The knife was gone long before I got there,” I interrupt, with increasing impatience.
“Police will tell you they found its
empty hard case and canisters of CO
₂
and that was all.”

“Police want her successfully prosecuted, don’t they?”
She refills my wineglass.
“They’re prejudiced against Dawn Kincaid,
aren’t they?
And the case against her is complicated by your FBI husband being involved.
That’s not exactly impartial and
objective, is it?”

“Are you implying Benton may have removed the injection knife from the scene or knows I did and would lie about such a thing?
That either one of us would tamper with evidence or obstruct justice in any way?”
I confront her, and it’s difficult knowing
which side she’s on, but it doesn’t feel like mine.

“We’re not talking about me or what I might imply,” Jaime says.
“We’re talking about what Dawn will say.”

“I’m not sure I understand why you might know what she will say.”

“She’ll claim that while you awaited her expected arrival
on your
property that night, you made sure you put body armor on,” Jaime replies.
“You made sure the Maglite you carried with you
didn’t work and loosened the bulb in the motion-sensor light by the garage so you could later claim you couldn’t see what
happened.
You claimed you swung the heavy metal flashlight blindly in the dark, a reflex when you supposedly were attacked,
when in fact it was you who ambushed Dawn.”

“It was an old flashlight, and I didn’t test it before walking out of the house.
I should have.
And it certainly wasn’t me
who loosened the bulb in the motion-sensor light.”
I’m having a hard time disguising my annoyance.

“You were ready and waiting for her when she appeared to pick up Sock.”
Jaime resettles herself more comfortably on the couch,
placing a pillow in her lap and resting her arms on top of it.

“And it makes sense she would contact me and ask if she can drop by to get her dog when the police, the Feds, everybody, is
looking for her?”
I remark.
“Who’s going to believe anything so illogical?”

“She’ll say she wasn’t aware the police were looking for her.
She’ll say she wouldn’t have imagined anyone was looking for
her, since she didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jaime reaches for her drink.
The expensive Scotch is burnished gold in a cheap glass, and she’s beginning to sound a little
drunk.

“She’ll say her beloved rescued greyhound, trained by her mother and entrusted to her care, was at her father’s house in Salem,”
Jaime continues.
“Dawn will say you took the dog home with you, stole him, and she wanted him back.
She’ll say you attacked
her and she managed to get the knife away from you, but in the process badly cut her hand, losing part of a finger and suffering
nerve and
tendon damage, and then you struck her in the head with the heavy metal flashlight.
She’ll say that if Benton hadn’t appeared
in the garage when he did, you would have finished the job.
She’d be dead.”

“She’ll say all this, or has she already said it?”
I put down my plate and look at her, and my appetite has tucked itself
into a tight place, out of reach and done for the night.
I couldn’t swallow another bite if I tried.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Jaime Berger is Dawn Kincaid’s counsel and has lured me to Savannah to tell me that.
But I know it isn’t true.

“She’ll say it, and she has said it,” Jaime replies, grasping seaweed salad in the tips of her chopsticks.
“She’s said it
to her lawyers, and she’s said it in letters to Kathleen Lawler.
Inmates can write to other inmates when they’re family.
Dawn
is clever enough to have begun addressing Kathleen as Mom.
Dear Mom,
she writes, signing them
your loving daughter,
” she says, as if she’s seen these letters, and maybe she has.

“Has Kathleen written to her, as well?”
I inquire.

“She says she hasn’t, but she’s not telling the truth,” Jaime says.
“I’m sure you don’t want to hear it, Kay, but Dawn Kincaid
is playing quite the role.
A brilliant scientist who has lost the use of a hand and is suffering mental and emotional problems
due to trauma and a concussion, which is being described as a significant head injury with lasting ill effects.”

“Malingering.”

“Pretty, charming, and now suffering dissociative states.
Delusions and impaired cognition, which is why she was transferred
to Butler.”

“Deliberate pretense.”

“Her lawyers attribute all of it to you, and you might expect a civil suit filed next,” Jaime says.
“And your contact with
her mother today and any communications in the past, in my opinion, have been unwise.
It only serves to make your behavior
more questionable.”

“Contact that you’ve orchestrated.”
I remind her that I’m no fool.
“I’m here because of you.”
She wanted me in a weakened
position.

“No one twisted your arm to come here.”

“No one needed to,” I reply.
“You knew I would, so you set me up for it.”

“Well, I certainly thought you might come, and I recommend you have no further contact with Kathleen.
Not any type at all,”
Jaime instructs me, as if she’s now my lawyer.
“While I think a criminal case against you is a stretch, I worry about litigation,”
she goes on painting inflammatory scenarios.

“If a burglar injures himself while ransacking your house, he sues,” I reply.
“Everybody sues.
Litigation is the new national
industry and has become the inevitable aftermath of virtually any criminal act.
First someone tries to rob, rape, or kill
you.
Or maybe they succeed.
Then they sue you or your estate for good measure.”

“I’m not trying to aggravate or scare you or put you in a compromising situation.”
She places her chopsticks and napkin on
her empty plate.

“Of course you are.”

“You think I’m bluffing.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“When the FBI came by my apartment, Kay, they wanted to know if I’d ever observed instability, violence, any traits in you
that
might have given me concern.
Are you truthful?
Do you abuse alcohol or drugs?
Isn’t it true you’ve been known to brag that
you could get away with the perfect murder?”

“Of course I’ve never bragged about such a thing.
And what happened in my garage was far from perfect.”

“Then you’re admitting you intended to murder Dawn Kincaid.”

“I’m admitting that if I thought I was going to be attacked,
I would have armed myself with more than a flashlight I found in a kitchen drawer.
I’m admitting that the entire event wouldn’t
have happened had I been paying attention, if I’d not been so distracted and sleep-deprived.”

“The FBI wanted to know if I was aware of your relationship with Jack Fielding,” Jaime tells me.
“Had the two of you ever
been lovers, and might you have been possessive or unnaturally attached to him or felt spurned by him and given to jealous
rages?”

She takes another sip of Scotch, and I’m tempted to get up and help myself.
But it wouldn’t be smart.
I can’t afford to make
myself more vulnerable to her than I already am or to be foggy tomorrow.

“And they brought up this fanciful story about self-defense?”
I ask.

“No.
They wouldn’t do anything as generous as that.
The FBI is extremely skilled at getting information and not inclined to
return the favor.
They wouldn’t tell me why they were asking about you.”

“This isn’t quid pro quo,” I again say.

“I should think you’d want to help someone who is about to be executed for a crime she didn’t commit,” Jaime replies.
“Maybe,
in light of the situation you find yourself in, you can relate more than
ever to being falsely accused of killing someone or attempting to,” she adds with emphasis.

“I don’t need to be falsely accused of a crime in order to have a sense of right and wrong,” I answer.

“Lola will die in a horrific way,” she says.
“They won’t make it painless or merciful.
Dr.
Clarence Jordan was from old Savannah
money, a good Christian, a moral man, generous to a fault.
Known for giving free medical care to people in need or volunteering
in the ER, the soup kitchen, the food bank on Thanksgiving, on Christmas Eve.
A saint, according to some.”

I suppose it’s possible a man of great faith, a saint, might not bother setting his burglar alarm.
I wonder if he installed
the alarm system himself, or did a previous owner of his historic home?

“Do you know details of the alarm system in the Jordan house?”
I ask.

“It doesn’t appear to have been set the early morning of the murders.”

“Does that bother you?”

“The question continues to interest me.
Why wasn’t it set?”

“Lola’s offered no explanation?”

“She wasn’t the one who broke in,” Jaime reminds me.
“I have no credible explanation.”

“Has anybody tried to determine if it was habit of the Jordans not to set the alarm?”

“There’s no one alive to state as fact what their habits might have been,” Jaime says.
“But I’ve had Marino looking into it,
among other things.”

“If the alarm was active and connected by a telephone line to an alarm company, there should be records of whether it was
routinely armed and disarmed,” I reply.
“There should be a record of false alarms, trouble on the line, anything that might
indicate the Jordan family was using it and paying a monthly bill.”

“A very good point, and one that isn’t satisfactorily addressed in the records I’ve reviewed,” Jaime answers.
“Or through
interviews.”

“Have you talked to the investigator?”

“GBI Special Agent Billy Long retired five years ago and says his reports and records speak for themselves.”

“You talked to him yourself?”

“Marino did.
According to Investigator Long, the alarm wasn’t set that night and the assumption was that the Jordans were
trusting and not particularly security-conscious,” Jaime says.
“And that they were tired of false alarms.”

“So they stopped setting it entirely, even at night?
That seems a bit extreme.”

“Careless but maybe understandable,” she replies.
“Two five-year-olds, and you can imagine what happens.
They open doors and
the alarm goes off.
After the police show up a few times, you get tired of it and get complacent about setting it.
You have
a deadbolt that requires a key and are more worried about small children being locked in if there’s a fire.
So you give in
to the very bad habit of leaving the key in the deadbolt lock, making it possible for an intruder to break out the glass and
reach in and open the door from the inside.”