Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark (24 page)

“Have to lie down. Please.”

“Of course, darling, of course.” Sarah Jane helped him into the bed
room, a look of deep concern and worry on her face.
Why is she still keeping up the charade?
thought David.
It makes no sense.
Falling back on the bed, he clutched at his tie. He had to loosen it! He couldn't breathe! He waved frantically to Sarah to help him, but she had turned her back and was heading toward the phone.

“I'm calling 1298. Hold on, David. Help is on the way.”

 

B
ACK IN THE SURVEILLANCE VAN
, D
ANNY
McGuire checked his seat belt and clutched the handrail above the door for support. Jassal was on clear, straight road now, his siren blaring. They must be doing ninety at least.

Danny looked at his watch: nine
P.M.
He felt like a royal idiot.

Matt Daley, of course, was still in the Ishag house. He'd known Danny was there all along and lured him away with a classic bait and switch.

Had they done it yet? Had he and Sarah Jane—Azrael—killed David Ishag?

In the seat next to Danny the sound engineer was struggling with the van's complex radio equipment. They had to get in touch with the other members of the team, get inside the house before it was too late.

Danny shouted at him, fighting to be heard above the screeching sirens.

“Anything?”

The man shook his head. “We're in range, but I can't get a signal.”

The lights of Marathi twinkled in the distance. Soon the Ishag mansion itself would be in view.

“Keep trying.”

 

S
ARAH
J
ANE HUNG UP THE TELEPHONE.
“They're on their way.”

David drifted in and out of consciousness.
What was I supposed to do again? Something about chest pains?
It was so hard to tell what was real and what wasn't. Was Sarah really holding his hand? Mopping his brow? Or was that a dream? She seemed so loving…but wasn't she planning to kill him?

He closed his eyes again.

When he opened them, a man was standing over the bed. He was masked and dressed from head to toe in black like the grim reaper. In his hand, glinting silver against the dark fabric of his pants, was a knife.

David contemplated screaming, but his larynx seemed to have swollen shut, and in any case he wasn't as afraid as he'd thought he'd be. He was just very, very tired.
I'm probably dreaming. He'll disappear in a minute.

He closed his eyes and drifted away.

 

“I'
VE GOT THEM, SIR
! V
OICES
. I
N
the master bedroom.”

Danny McGuire punched the air with relief. “And the others?”

“Yes, sir, we have contact.”

“Demartin, Kapiri, do you copy?”

The Indian policeman's furious voice was the first on the line. “McGuire? Where the fuck have you been?”

“Never mind that. Get into the house, now! They're in the master. Get Ishag out of there.” Hanging up, Danny turned back to the sound engineer. “Can you hear Ishag? Is he alive?”

The sound engineer clasped his headphones, closing his eyes in concentration. “I'm not sure. I can hear the woman. She—”

Suddenly the man ripped the headphones from his ears. Danny McGuire didn't need to ask why.

Everybody in the van heard Sarah Jane Ishag's scream.

 

I
N
D
AVID
I
SHAG'S BEDROOM, THE MAN
in black pulled his mask off and smiled.

“What's the matter, angel?” he asked. “Were you expecting someone else?”

F
ROM HIS HIDING PLACE, HE COULD
see them perfectly. The man in black and the woman now calling herself Sarah Jane Ishag.

She could call herself whatever she liked.
He
knew who she was. And
whose
she was. She was his. His love. His woman.

The urge to jump out at that very moment and grab her was overpowering. But he'd waited too long for this, invested too much time and effort. He had to see how the scene played out.

The man in black pointed to David Ishag. “Is he dead?”

David lay on his back on the bed, as still as stone. Sarah Jane leaned over him.

“No. He's still breathing.”

“I didn't expect him to go down so fast. You must have put too much in.”

“Don't blame me!” She was angry. “I followed your instructions to the letter. I told you we shouldn't have drugged him first. What if he has heart failure? What if the police find the stuff in his system?”

“Be quiet!” The man in black punched her hard in the face.

From his hiding place in the closet, he could hear the sickening crunch of her cheekbone as Sarah Jane slumped to the floor whimpering. He watched as the man in black pulled her up by the hair. “Who are
you
to tell
me
what we should and shouldn't do? You're nobody, that's who. Say it. SAY IT!”

“I'm nobody,” Sarah Jane sobbed.

“You have no life.”

Her voice was barely a whisper now. “I have no life.”

Hearing her recite the words seemed to pacify the man slightly. He let go of her hair. “We had to drug him or he'd have fought back. The others were all too old to defend themselves.” He held his knife up to the light. Nodding contemptuously at David, he said, “We'll do him later. First it's your turn.”

Sarah Jane backed away, scrambling across the bedroom floor on her hands and knees like a frightened crab. “No! Please. You don't have to do this!”

“Of course I have to do it. The others were all punished, weren't they? Angela, Tracey, Irina, Lisa. Why should conniving little Sarah Jane get off scot-free?”

“Please,” Sarah Jane begged. The terror in her voice was unmistakable. “I did everything you asked…You said you wouldn't hurt me.”

But the man in black appeared unmoved by entreaties or tears. He wasn't a man at all. He was an animal. With a feral snarl he pounced on Sarah Jane, pinning her to the ground. One hand tore at her skin while the other pressed the knife hard against her throat. Instinctively she struggled, kicking her legs vainly under the weight of him. He was pulling up the skirt of her dress, jamming her thighs open with his knee.

The man in the closet could wait no longer. Bursting into the room, he hurled himself on the man in black, smashing the butt of his gun repeatedly into the back of the man's skull. Blood gushed everywhere, warm and sticky and vital. In seconds the vile animal hand that had been clawing between Sarah Jane's legs fell limp.

Sarah Jane screwed her eyes shut, not daring to breathe.
Was it really over? Was he really dead?
The next thing she was aware of was the deadweight being dragged off her. Someone, her savior, rolled the man in black's body onto the floorboards with a
thud,
like a sack of earth.

Was it David, poor dear David, awakened from the effects of the narcotic, loyal and protective to the last?

Or had the police finally figured it out, finally come to take them into custody and put an end to all the years of madness. To save her and her sister. To make it stop.

She turned around and found herself gazing into familiar, loving eyes.

“It's all right, Lisa,” Matt Daley whispered. “It's all right, my darling. You're safe now.”

 

M
ATT TOUCHED HER FACE, TRACING HIS
finger lovingly over each feature. Her right cheek had swollen up like an overripe plum where the bastard had hurt her. He would never hurt her again.

“Lisa…” Matt Daley started to cry. “My poor Lisa.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the gunshot was so loud it drowned out her reply. For a second Matt Daley's face registered something. It wasn't pain. More like extreme surprise.

Then his world softly faded to black.

R
AJIT
K
APIRI WAS IN THE HOUSE.
Seconds later Claude Demartin and his three-man team joined him, followed by a breathless Danny McGuire.

“Where are the servants?” Danny demanded..

“In the kitchens,” said Kapiri. “I have six armed officers with them. They've barricaded the doors.”

“Good. You and Demartin take the main staircase. I'll go up by the servants' route.”

“How about two of my guys go with you as cover,” said Kapiri. It was a statement, not a question, but Danny didn't object. They had no time for power struggles, not now.

A gunshot rang out.

The three men looked at one another, then ran for the stairs.

 

“H
OW COULD YOU?”

“How could
I
?” The man in black clutched at the wound on the back of his head. He still felt dizzy, as if he might black out at any moment. “He left me for dead, Sofia, in case you hadn't noticed.”

Sofia Basta's eyes filled with tears.

“He was protecting me! My God, Frankie. You didn't have to kill him.”

Frankie Mancini frowned. It was unfortunate that he'd been forced to shoot Daley. The man was, after all, Andrew Jakes's son. Technically that
made him one of the children. One of the victims Frankie had devoted his life to avenging. It was even more unfortunate that the silencer on his gun had failed. A member of the household staff could come in at any moment. The police might already be on their way. They didn't have much time.

“Bolt the door,” he barked. But Sofia just stood there, watching Matt's blood ooze into the rug. “For God's sake, Sofia,” Frankie said defensively. “I tried to get him to leave Mumbai. I did my best. He shouldn't have been here.”

“He came here for me. Because he loved me,” Sofia sobbed. “He loved me and I loved him!”

“Loved you?” Frankie Mancini scoffed cruelly. “My dear girl. He didn't even know who you were. He loved Lisa Baring. And who was she? Nobody, that's who, a character who
I
invented, a figment of
my
imagination. If Matt Daley loved anyone, it was me, not you. Now bolt the damn door.”

Sofia Basta did as she was asked. She saw the madness blazing in Frankie's eyes.
Poor, poor Matt! Why did he come for me? Why didn't he run, break free while he had the chance?

“He didn't deserve to die, Frankie.”

“Be quiet!” Mancini shrieked, waving his pistol menacingly in the air. “
I
decide who lives and who dies!
I
have the power! You are my wife. You will do as I command you, or on my life, Sofia, your sister will be next. Do you understand?”

Sofia nodded. She understood. Fear and obedience were all she understood. All she had ever known. For a few short, blissful months of her life, as Lisa Baring, in Bali with Matt Daley, she had been shown a glimpse of another way, another life. But it was not to be.

“POLICE!” Danny McGuire's voice rang out like a siren. Pounding footsteps could be heard behind him on the stairs. A second salvation.

Mancini's eyes widened in panic. He handed Sofia the knife. “Do it.”

“Do what? Oh no. Frankie, no.”

Her eyes followed his gaze to the bed. In all the drama with Matt, she'd momentarily forgotten that David Ishag was even in the room, but now she could see him stirring, the effects of the drug she'd fed him earlier beginning to wear off.

“This is the end, angel. Our last kill. The sacrifice that will win your sister's life.”

“POLICE!” Fists pounded on the door.

“It's only right that it should be yours. Do it.”

“Frankie, I can't.”

“Do it!” Mancini was screaming, howling like a mad dog. “Cut his throat or I'll shoot you both. DO IT!”

Images flashed through Sofia's mind one by one.

Reading “The Book” with Frankie back at the orphanage. How beautiful he was then, and how gentle.
“You're a princess, Sofia. The others are just jealous.”

Andrew Jakes, their first kill, with blood spurting from his neck like thick red water from a fountain.

Piers Henley, funny, cerebral Piers, who'd fought back until they shot him in the head, splattering his brilliant brain all over the bedroom walls.

Didier Anjou, pleading for his life as the blade sank into his flesh again and again and again.

Miles Baring, collapsing instantly as the knife pierced his heart.

Matt Daley, the one true innocent of all of them. Matt who had loved her, who had given her hope. Matt who lay dead and cold at her feet.

She thought of the living. Her sister, her flesh and blood, out there somewhere. David Ishag, stirring groggily back to life on the bed.

“SLIT HIS THROAT!” Frankie's voice, excited, aroused as it always was by blood and death and vengeance.

“POLICE!” Sledgehammers pounded against the door, splintering the wood.

“I can't,” Sofia said calmly, closing her mind to the clamor and roar as she let the knife drop at her feet. “Shoot if you want to, Frankie. But I can't do it. Not anymore.”

At long last the door gave way. Armed men swarmed into the room.

“Police! Put your hands in the air!”

David Ishag opened his eyes just in time to see Danny McGuire, gun drawn, panting in the doorway.

“You sure took your bloody time,” he murmured weakly.

Then somebody fired a single shot.

And it was all over.

O
NE YEAR LATER…

L
OS
A
NGELES
C
OUNTY
S
UPERIOR
C
OURT JUDGE
Federico Muñoz was no stranger to front-page homicide cases. Two years ago in this very courtroom, room 306 on the third floor of the Beverly Hills Courthouse, a jury had found a much-loved movie actress guilty of killing her violent lover after years of abuse. Judge Muñoz sent the actress to death row, to the outrage of her fans, family and many in the national news media. Not long afterward, the judge received the first of the death threats that would be made against him periodically for the rest of his life.

He was delighted.

Death threats were what enabled Judge Federico Muñoz to demand a permanent security detail to escort him to and from work. Arriving every day at the imposing white-pillared courthouse at 9355 Burton Way, surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards, made Judge Muñoz feel inordinately important, as did the ongoing media interest in his life. Publicly, of course, he denounced this interest as prurient and mean-spirited, taking particular umbrage at the
L.A. Times
's dubbing of him as “Judge Dread.” Privately, however, he loved every minute of it. Judge Federico Muñoz was already famous in Los Angeles. Now, thanks to the Azrael trial, he was becoming famous around the world.

The trial that had been going on now for two weeks—it had taken the prosecution that long to present their case, so huge was the mountain of evidence at their disposal—could not have been more sensational. Four wealthy men brutally murdered in identically staged and plotted circumstances around the globe. The accused, a married couple in their forties, both blessed with movie-star good looks, caught in the act of attempting to murder a fifth. All the elderly victims had been lured into marriage by the female defendant, known to the media as “the Angel of Death.” And yet this woman had herself submitted to violent, sexually sadistic assaults during each murder, administered by the male defendant. Willingly, if the prosecution was to be believed.

Neither party denied the murders, but each claimed coercion, identifying the other as the ringleader. Throw in the soap-opera-perfect twist of a “Robin Hood” motive—all the victims' millions had been donated to children's charities—and the tabloids could not have asked for more.

But they got more. They got a female defendant who had successfully assumed a new identity each time she tempted a fresh victim into her marriage bed, and had apparently undergone multiple surgeries to alter her appearance over the course of the past decade or so, but who remained drop-dead gorgeous. Sitting passively through the prosecution's evidence, only occasionally tearing up when photographs of her husbands' tortured bodies or her own injuries were shown to the jury, the woman seated at one end of the table in courtroom 306 looked as pristine and unsullied as a newborn baby, and as radiant as any angel. The press couldn't get enough of her.

On the opposite side of the dock sat her codefendant, Frances Mancini. The pair had met when both were orphaned at a New York City children's home during their teens. Mancini lacked his wife's radiance, the aura of serenity and goodness that seemed to emanate from her person like light, despite the terrible crimes she'd confessed to committing. Nonetheless he was a compellingly attractive man, with his dark hair, strong jaw and regal, smolderingly arrogant features. Mancini had been shot while resisting arrest in India, and still had difficulty standing up and sitting down, wincing with discomfort each time he moved. When he was at rest, however, Mancini's thin lips were curled into a permanent knowing smile, as if the whole spectacle of the U.S. justice system
had been contrived solely for his amusement. Neither he nor his wife had fought their extradition to the United States despite the fact that in France or England, where they could equally well have been tried, there was no death penalty. Here in California, both defendants were on trial for their lives, in front of a hostile jury and the toughest judge in the L.A. County Superior Court system. Yet Frankie Mancini seemed to view today's proceedings as little more than a piece of theater, a melodrama if not a boulevard farce, to which the fates had generously decided to allocate him a front-row seat.

This might have had something to do with the lawyer for the prosecution, William Boyce. A tall, angularly built man in his early fifties with close-cropped gray hair and a fondness for cheap charcoal-gray suits, Boyce, who was known for his even, measured delivery, was the antithesis of the hotshot attorney one expected to find in such a high-profile case. He was the proverbial “safe pair of hands,” competent, professional and painfully ordinary to such a degree that it was often said that the only remarkable thing about William Boyce was how very unremarkable he was. Why the state had chosen Boyce to prosecute such a case was almost as much of a mystery as the homicides themselves. Perhaps the powers that be had decided, in the face of such overwhelming evidence, that a monkey could have succeeded in condemning both the Azrael killers to death row…and William Boyce was the closest thing they could find to a monkey.

In any event, it was quite an achievement to be able to bore a jury with a case as sensational as this one, but over the past two weeks William Boyce had managed to do just that, reciting the facts pertaining to the four murders in a monotone that had effectively blunted their emotional impact. He'd spent an entire day getting bogged down in the complex international legal agreement whereby the British, French, and Hong Kong Chinese authorities had consented to the evidence being heard jointly in California. His witnesses had livened things up a bit. Andrew Jakes's Spanish housekeeper, in particular, gasped and sobbed her way through hideously graphic testimony that had made the front pages of all the tabloids the next morning. But all in all, Judge Muñoz could see how the prosecution had earned Frankie Mancini's contempt. Like everyone else in courtroom 306, and those following the trial around the world,
he was looking forward to hearing the defense's case. Today, at last, that time had come.

Because each defendant claimed to have been coerced by the other, they had chosen separate representation. Frankie's attorney, Alvin Dubray, was a short, fat man with a permanently untucked shirt and mad-scientist hair. Dubray arrived at courtroom 306 dropping papers from the pile under his arm, looking for all the world like a muddled old grandfather who'd gotten lost on his way to the library. In reality, as Judge Muñoz knew well, Dubray's mind was so sharp and his memory so prodigious that he had no need of notes of any kind. But the bumbling-old-buffoon act had been endearing him to juries for over twenty years and he wasn't about to abandon his shtick now. With a client as cold and unsympathetic as Frankie Mancini, Alvin Dubray would need to endear the hell out of today's crowd.

In that regard, the “Angel of Death's” attorney had the easier job. Ellen Watts was young and relatively inexperienced. This was only her second murder trial. But she had already made a name for herself on the Superior Court circuit as an insightful and talented trial lawyer, manipulating evidence with the artistry and ease of a potter molding clay on the wheel. With her bobbed blond hair and elfin features, Ellen Watts was usually considered a beauty. Next to her client, however, she faded away like a camera flash aimed at the sun.

“All rise.”

For the last two weeks, Judge Federico Muñoz had banished the media from his courtroom. (It wouldn't do to be seen as too camera-hungry, and William Boyce was so deathly dull he'd be a turnoff for viewers anyway.) Today, however, he had relented, allowing a select group of news organizations some spots in the gallery. Their cameras, like the eyes of the rest of the room, flitted between the defendants and the three men sitting side by side in the front row. By now, they were all household names in America.

Danny McGuire, the LAPD detective turned Interpol hero who'd spent two-thirds of his career pursuing the Azrael killers and who had helped orchestrate the Indian sting that finally caught them.

David Ishag, the swoon-worthy Indian tycoon who'd been slated as Azrael's next victim till McGuire and his men plucked him from the jaws of certain death.

And at the end of the row, in a wheelchair, the tragic figure of Matthew Daley.

Daley was a writer, the son of Azrael's first victim, Andrew Jakes, and at one time a key Interpol informant. He too had been present the night of the defendants' arrest and was lucky to have survived the bullet from Mancini's gun, which had lodged in the base of his spine. Despite this, Matt Daley had refused to testify against the female defendant, a woman he still referred to as “Lisa.” The rumor was that the poor man had been driven to the point of madness with love for her. Watching him gazing at her now, a hollow-eyed, sunken version of his former vivacious self, it was easy to believe.

“Ms. Watts.” Judge Federico Muñoz paused just long enough to make sure that all eyes—and cameras—were trained on him. “I understand you are to open the case for the defense.”

“That's correct, Your Honor.”

Ellen Watts and Alvin Dubray had agreed between them that Ellen would go first. The plan was to get the character assassination of each other's client out of the way early so that they could close in on areas of common ground: weaknesses and inconsistencies in the prosecution's case, and the abuse suffered by both the accused as children. If they could sow enough reasonable doubt in the jury's mind as to who had corrupted whom, and paint both defendants as mentally disturbed, they stood a chance of keeping them both from death by lethal injection. Realistically it was the best they could hope for.

Ellen Watts approached the jury, looking each of the group of twelve men and women in the eye.

“Over the past two weeks,” she began, “the prosecution has presented you with some pretty horrific evidence. Mr. Boyce has eloquently familiarized you with the facts surrounding four brutal murders. And I use that word advisedly—
facts
—because there
are
facts in this case, terrible facts, facts that neither I nor my client seek to deny. Andrew Jakes, Sir Piers Henley, Didier Anjou and Miles Baring all lost their lives in violent, bloody, terrifying circumstances. Some of those men have family and friends here today, in this courtroom. They too have had to sit through Mr. Boyce's evidence, and I know there isn't one of us whose heart does not go out to them.”

Ellen Watts turned for effect and bestowed her best, most sympathetic nod of respect toward the two of Didier's ex-wives who'd flown over for the trial, as well as to the stooped but dignified figure of Sir Piers Henley's eighty-year-old half brother, Maximilian. Behind him, two women in their late fifties, old girlfriends of Miles Baring's who'd kept in touch after his marriage, glared at Ellen Watts with loathing, but the attorney's concerned expression never faltered.

“I am not here to debate the facts, ladies and gentlemen. To do so would be foolish, not to mention an act of grave disrespect to the victims and their families.”

“Hear, hear!” shouted one of Miles Baring's girlfriends from the gallery, earning herself a sharp look from Judge Federico Muñoz and a murmured ripple of approval from everyone else.

“My job is to
stick
to the facts. To put an end to the wild speculation and rumor surrounding my client, and to present to you the truth. The truth about what she did and what she did not do. The truth about her relationship with her codefendant, Frankie Mancini. And the truth about who she really is.” Ellen Watts approached the defendants' table, inviting the jury to follow her with their eyes, to look at the woman whose life they held in their hands. “She's been called the Angel of Death. A princess. A witch. A monster. None of these epithets is the truth. Her name is Sofia Basta. She's a human being, a flesh-and-blood woman whose life has been one long catalog of abuse and suffering.” Ellen Watts inhaled deeply. “I intend to show that Ms. Basta was as much a victim in these crimes as the men who lost their lives.”

Most of the jury frowned in disapproval. Cries of “shame” rose up from around the courtroom, prompting Judge Muñoz to call for silence.

Ellen Watts continued. “The truth may not be palatable, ladies and gentlemen. It may not be pleasant and it may not be what we want to hear. But revealing the truth is my business in this courtroom, and in the coming days I will show it to you in all its ugliness.” Roused and passionate, she turned and pointed accusingly at Frankie Mancini. “It is
this man,
not my client, who orchestrated, planned and, indeed, carried out these murders. Knowing that Sofia was vulnerable, that she was mentally unstable, that she was lonely, Frankie Mancini cynically manipulated her, turning her into a weapon that he could use to further his own hate
ful ends. Convicting Sofia Basta of murder makes no more sense than convicting the knife or the gun or the rope.

“That's all I'm asking of you today: to hear the truth. To let the truth in. Nothing will bring back Andrew Jakes, Piers Henley, Didier Anjou and Miles Baring. But the truth may finally allow them to rest in peace.”

Ellen Watts sat down to a silence so heavy you could almost hear it. Some of the jury members clearly disapproved of what she'd said. Others looked puzzled by it. But unlike William Boyce, Ellen Watts took her seat knowing that she at least had their full attention.

Judge Federico Muñoz turned to the other defense attorney. “Mr. Dubray. If you'd care to address the court…”

Alvin Dubray stood up, wheezing and waddling his way to the same spot in front of the jury that Ellen Watts had just vacated. He looked more than usually disheveled this morning, with his wiry gray hair sticking up wildly on one side of his head and his half-moon reading glasses comically askew. After a mumbled “very good, Your Honor,” he turned to the jury.