A Welcome Grave

38

Half a million,” I said once Reed had turned off the phone and pushed back from the desk, wiping at his sweaty forehead with his hand. “You moved half a million for him a week ago?”

Reed’s face immediately crumpled. For a moment I thought he was actually going to try to lie, even though we’d all stood there and heard it, but finally he just nodded and said, “Yeah.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Reed . . .”

“Honestly, I can’t tell you that. The originating account was anonymous to me, just a number.”

“Is that common? For Gaglionci to move that much money?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never seen any amount close to that from him.”

“What day did the money come in?”

He licked his lips and looked at the floor, was silent for maybe thirty seconds, reviewing a mental calendar, then said, “October twentieth.”

October twentieth.

“You get it?” I said to Joe. “That’s the day—”

“Jefferson was murdered.”

“No. Day after Jefferson was murdered. Gaglionci killed him. Gaglionci murdered Alex Jefferson, and someone paid him to do it.”

Joe frowned. “Maybe not. Could be they got more money out of Jefferson than the fifty grand.”

“No way, Joe. Jefferson isn’t so rich that half a million would disappear and nobody notice. Think about how hard the cops have been going over his accounts. If they noticed fifty missing, they’d sure as shit notice five hundred thousand.”

“But Jefferson hired Gaglionci.”

I nodded. “Yeah, and it seems somebody outbid him. Doran thought it was him, promising to get more cash from Jefferson. Maybe that wasn’t the truth of it, though.”

A half million dollars, paid out the day after Jefferson was murdered. And Doran didn’t know about it. Couldn’t know. He’d stood there on the breakwater and spread his hands and said on what money? when I’d told him to run. Five hundred grand was a decent chunk. I couldn’t imagine Doran hanging around, risking capture and a trip back to prison just to bump the dollar figure a little higher.

“He’s using Doran just like he’s using me,” I said. “Hasn’t shown his face yet to anybody, but Doran has. He’s taking the risk, and that’s how Gaglionci wanted it.”

“Donny Ward could identify him,” Joe said. “Connect him to what happened to Doran. Then we sent the cops out there, and you told Doran—”

“That I knew about Ward. Gaglionci must have killed him. When he took him out, he eliminated one thread while tying me to it with the money.”

The more I thought about it, the greater the implication of what Reed had just told us became. I’d been worried about Doran at first, then Doran and his partner, but this revelation made it clear that I’d been unaware of another player. There was someone else involved, and Gaglionci was operating on his orders.

“Who paid him?” I said.

Joe didn’t have an answer, and I didn’t, either. For a while we just stood there, Reed watching us with apprehension and Thor silent as always. Eventually, Joe shook his head.

“We need to get ready. He’s sending somebody. One of us should be down in the garage or out on the street, watch to see who shows and tip the people up here.”

“Will you do that?” Thor said.

“Yeah. I’ll move my car out of that garage, too. They’ll probably recognize it by now. It shouldn’t be close. I’ll park it somewhere else and walk back down.”

“Good.”

Joe took his keys out of his pocket, turned on his heel, and walked for the door. He was reaching for the knob when I stopped him.

“Gaglionci came into the Heaths’ house with Alex Jefferson and Fenton Brooks,” I said. “Jefferson told police he was acting as a liaison between Brooks and the Heath family. Liability reasons.”

“Yeah. And Fenton’s dead now.”

“His son isn’t. How much money do you think that family is worth?”

“Brooks Biomedical has to be worth, what, hundreds of millions? Maybe a billion? It’s a huge figure.”

“Right.”

He stood with his hand on the doorknob and stared back at me across the open apartment.

“Gaglionci taking down half a million the day after Jefferson was killed isn’t a coincidence,” I said. “I don’t see how that’s possible. That payout is connected to what happened with Doran and Jefferson, and the Brooks family is, too. They’re the only ones involved with that sort of money.”

“You’re thinking Fenton helped protect Matt Jefferson?”

“Maybe. Matt was a family friend and the son of his top attorney. Fenton was the first person Alex Jefferson called.”

Joe dropped his hand from the door and turned all the way around, his face thoughtful.

“I could go with that,” he said, “if all we had was the past. That makes some sense. It’s a stretch, but it makes some sense. Until you get to the present. Why would Paul Brooks hire someone to take Jefferson out? If he knew what happened with Doran, he’d own Jefferson. Not the other way around. Jefferson wouldn’t be a threat to him.”

No, he wouldn’t. If Fenton Brooks had knowingly helped Jefferson cover up a murder, that revelation could tarnish his legacy and embarrass the family. Jefferson would never bring it forward, though. To tarnish Fenton’s legacy would be to indict himself for the same crime and to identify his son as a murderer. So what did Jefferson know that scared Paul Brooks?

“We had the wrong damn rich kid,” I said.

“What?”

“Paul Brooks, Joe. What if he killed her?”

“I don’t see how you’re getting there.”

“The night that girl was killed, Matt Jefferson called his father, who called Fenton Brooks.”

“To check on the kid’s story. To see what was happening.”

“Who told us that?”

He made a nod of concession. “Paul Brooks did.”

“Right. And a day after those phone calls, Matt changed his story and implicated Doran. Maybe that wasn’t about clearing himself. Maybe he did see somebody up there, but it wasn’t Doran. It was the son of his dad’s richest client.”

“That’s a big jump.”

“Matt wrote the prosecutor and told him he was refusing to come back and testify. Why do that, why risk attracting that sort of attention, if he’d killed her? His dad would have coached him better than that. If it was just about saving his own ass, he would have waited quietly and with his fingers crossed that the plea bargain bid would work. When he moved back to Indiana, he cut off communication with his dad. Maybe he wasn’t running away, though. Not from what we thought. Maybe he was running away from the guilt and cut off his dad because of what he’d convinced him to do.”

“A big jump,” Joe said again, and then, when I didn’t respond, “but they’d have the money. No doubt about that. Paul Brooks would have that sort of money.”

“And Gaglionci was tied into everything that happened with Doran. He was a key player in that. If anyone could have figured out how to work Brooks against Jefferson and make money off it, he’d be the guy.”

The room went quiet again. Thor was impassive, but Reed watched us with interest, some of the fear replaced with fascination.

“Get out of here,” I told Joe. “Go move the car, and watch for one of them to show. You won’t recognize Gaglionci, but let us know if you see anyone who even looks close. We can deal with the rest of this after we get Amy back.”

He opened the door and went out and then it was just Thor, Reed, and me in the apartment. I walked up to the door and sat on the floor beside it with my back against the wall and my gun in my lap, feeling the way you do after everything you’ve known to be true is shattered.

An hour passed, then two, and nobody showed. Joe called three times with false alarms. I began to wonder if we’d blown it, if Gaglionci had smelled the trap and pulled out. I stayed against the wall, shifting position occasionally, but always close to the door. Reed—now dressed and with the blood washed off his face in case we needed him to show himself—was still down in the living room, where we could see him clearly. Thor was standing on the other side of the door. He didn’t sit, didn’t pace, didn’t even stretch. Just stood there.

The wait was brutal for me. Throughout the day, I’d found temporary solace in moments of confrontation, of action, the tasks at hand allowing me to stop thinking about what could happen if I failed. Amy had always been in my mind, even as I lay on the floor at Cujo’s with a chain whipping down at my head, but in the pressure of those moments she existed as a goal, a reminder of why I had to get back up off the floor. During the waiting, though, she became a fear again. The empty minutes ticked by, and I began to imagine things I did not want to consider, to see all the awful possibilities that disappeared in the immediacy of action.

It had been nearly two and a half hours when Joe called again.

“There’s another one pulling into the garage. Little sports car. A Mazda, I think.”

“All right.”

I disconnected, went back into the apartment, and repeated the information to Thor, who didn’t so much as nod in response. Several minutes passed, and just when I’d begun to think that the Mazda visitor was another false alarm, Thor said, “Elevator.”

I frowned at him and rose to a crouch, listening. I hadn’t heard anything. A few seconds went by, and then there was a chime as the elevator reached the penthouse floor. I don’t know what Thor had heard before that, but he was right.

The intercom buzzed, and I pointed at Reed. He hurried across the floor, his feet slapping off the ceramic tiles, and punched a button on the intercom.

“Yes?”

“Let me in.” The voice was garbled; maybe Gaglionci again, maybe not. Reed looked at me, and I nodded. He hit another button, and I heard the lock slide back in the door in the hall. I’d decided—at Thor’s recommendation—to leave the entryway empty and wait for them inside the apartment.

I was kneeling against the wall, Thor standing opposite me, when the knob turned and the door swung open. Thor stepped around it in a combat stance, and Andy Doran walked into the room, saw the Glock pistol pointed at his heart, and said, “Well, shit, ” just before I rose up behind him and hit him in the back of the head with the butt of my gun.