At Risk

13

Lamont taps an ash, blowing out smoke, her eyes not leaving his, her robe nothing but a red sheen over her naked flesh, tied tightly around her waist, cleavage showing.

“All these high-tech labs you deal with in California?” Win is saying. “There’s a lot of money in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals. A lot of potential for fraud, scams. Funny how stuff like that metastasizes from person to person. Sometimes to people who weren’t bad, then got exposed.”

She is listening, smoking, looking at him, the same unsettling glint in her eyes.

He exclaims, “Are you hearing me?”

“You going to play bad cop now, Win? Won’t work. I know the routine better than you do.”

“You think you can do this to me?” he says. “Agree to have me sent off to Tennessee, then jerk me back up here to work this publicity-stunt case of yours. A threatening letter. Accusations that the shooting wasn’t a good one, how could you do that to me, what kind of person would do something like that…?”

“A suggestion that the shooting had to be investigated. A suggestion made by a DA who plays by the rules.” Her eyes stare at him. “I played it by the books.”

“Oh yeah. You and your rules. You and your ego and machinations. A missing police file, a homicide case file no one’s been able to find. Well, guess what. I found it. And guess where. In your damn apartment over the garage. Are you crazy?”

“What?” She looks confused, startled.

“You heard me.”

“The Finlay case file was in my garage apartment? I didn’t even know it was missing or that my office ever had it…. Where in my apartment?”

“You tell me.” He is getting very angry.

“I would if I knew!”

“How about the oven.”

“Is this supposed to be funny?”

“The Vivian Finlay case file was in your oven.”

The look returns to her eyes, suspicion, contempt. “Somebody stoned and damn stupid,” she mutters. “Someone with the memory of a gnat. To make me look bad.”

“You hide it in there?”

“I’m not stupid,” she says, crushing out her cigarette as if she’s killing it slowly. “Thank you, Win. You’ve just given me extremely important information.”

She leans forward, rests her arms on the table, affording him a view he shouldn’t have, her eyes filled with an invitation she has never offered in the past.

“Stop it, Monique,” he says.

She doesn’t move, waits, watching him look, and his eyes have a will of their own, and it enters his mind more than it ever has before what it would be like with her…

“Don’t do this.” He looks away. “I know what you must feel. I’ve worked with victims of sexual violence….”

“You don’t know anything! I’m not a victim!”

Her outburst seems to shake the kitchen.

“And I’m not going to be one,” he says quietly, coldly. “You’re not going to use me to validate that you’re still desirable. Save it for your therapist.”

“You validate me?” she says, snatching her robe together. “I believe it’s the other way around. I believe I would be the one doing the validating.” She sits up straight in the chair, looking down, blinking back tears.

A long silence follows as she struggles to control herself.

Then, “I’m sorry.” She wipes her eyes. “Unfair and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Talk to me,” Win says.

“If you’d bothered to look into all this a little more thoroughly”—she regains her composure and sharp edge—“you might have found out I don’t use the garage. Haven’t parked my car in there for months. Someone else does. Or did. I haven’t stepped foot inside the place.”

“Who?”

“Toby.”

“Toby?” he says furiously, feeling something else. “You’ve been letting that brain-dead idiot live on your property? Jesus.”

“You sound jealous.” She smiles, smoking.

“And you sound like you think you owe Huber….” His thoughts are tangled. He almost sputters.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter!”

“He asked if Toby could live there while clerking for me. Get him out of the house.”

Win thinks of the hundred-dollar bills in Baptista’s pocket, the gasoline can, the rags. He thinks of the missing keys that forced Lamont to go around to the back of her house, where it was dark and wooded, so she could get the spare key out of the box. He thinks of Toby’s penchant for drugs, thinks of Baptista’s drug charges and recent visit to juvenile court.

“Let me ask you something,” Win says. “You know any reason why Huber might want you dead?”

Lamont lights another cigarette, her voice getting hoarse from smoke. She’s laying off the martinis, is pouring herself a glass of white wine.

She watches him, appraises him, watches him watching her, waiting for his eyes to find her. My God, he is the most beautiful male specimen she has ever seen. Dark, pleated trousers; open-neck white cotton shirt; smooth, tan skin; hair as black as a raven’s; and eyes that change like the weather. She reminds herself that she’s a little drunk, wonders what it would be like… then stops herself from going there.

Win doesn’t say a word. She can’t tell what he is thinking.

“I know you have no respect for me,” she then says, smoking.

“I feel sorry for you,” he says.

“Of course.” She feels hate rising, squeezing her heart. “You and your kind take it from us and then cast us aside. Turn us into garbage, then treat us like garbage. Save your pity for one of your loser bimbo girlfriends.”

“I feel sorry for you because you’re empty.”

She laughs and her laugh sounds hollow.

Empty. She feels like crying again, doesn’t understand what is wrong with her, in control one minute, falling apart the next.

“Looking for something to fill up your vast emptiness, Monique. The best of everything. Power. Fame. More power. Beauty. Any man you want. All of it so fragile, like all of your glass. The slightest trauma or disappointment and everything breaks.”

She turns away from him, won’t give him her eyes.

“I’m going to ask you again, did you have anything to do with the Finlay case file ending up in your apartment, where Toby was staying?”

“Why!” She blurts out in a trembling voice, looking at him again. “To keep it from you? No. I told you. I’ve never even seen that file. I assumed it was in Tennessee.”

“Then you didn’t see it when it arrived at your office? Toby claims he put it on your desk.”

“He’s a goddamn liar. I didn’t even know it was being sent to my office. Obviously he intercepted it.”

“So I’m to assume he took it to your garage apartment and hid it. Or misplaced it. Or whatever the hell he did.”

“I don’t go in there, not since he’s been there. It’s just a guest room, rarely used.”

“Doesn’t appear he used it much, either. You never saw him coming or going?”

“I didn’t pay any attention.”

“Never saw his car?”

“Sometimes heard it, usually very late at night. I stayed out of his business. Frankly, didn’t care. Assumed he was out all the time, partying with his druggie friends.”

“Maybe a druggie friend named Roger Baptista. By the looks of it, Toby was never planning on coming back to your office or your apartment after his vacation in the Vineyard.”

She is thinking, her face tight, angry. Scared.

“Why would Toby remove that file from your office?” Win presses her.

“Forgetful, brain rotted by drugs, no memory left…”

“Monique?”

“Because someone asked him to, what do you think! To make me look incompetent, corrupt. You don’t have what you need to work the case. Without the file, it’s rather impossible, isn’t it? If that file was found there, it’s terrible for me.”

Win just listens.

“Someone told Toby to take it and the brain-rotted fool did.” She is silent for a minute, then, “Stupid, incompetent. Dead or alive. Either way, Crawley gets reelected.”

“You think he had something to do with this?”

“How convenient Toby was out of town that night. When you showed up, when it happened, Toby wasn’t there. Had just left for the Vineyard. No witnesses. The purpose of that ridiculous letter left at the Diesel Café was probably to make sure you didn’t decide to show up at my house and prevent the very thing you did.”

“So you know about that, too,” Win says. “Let me guess. Huber and his silk cravats. A scarlet one that night.”

“I found out after the fact. Now maybe I see a different reason why he did it. A taunting letter to keep you occupied. In case you might have decided to drop by, come see me…”

“Why would he think that?”

“Pathological jealousy. He thinks everybody wants me. He thinks everybody wants you. Toby probably hand-picked him, you’re probably right.” She’s back to something else, back to Baptista. “Probably one of his drug sources. Probably met him hanging around the courthouse. Do you think he paid him?”

“Who’s he?”

She looks at him, looks at him a long time, then, “You know damn well.”

“Huber,” Win says, and it’s not going to be easy interrogating him when that time comes.

“Jessie’s probably the one who broke into my apartment….”

“Why? To find the file?”

“Yes.” Then, “I don’t know. I don’t know. All I know is he wanted me to look bad. Destroy my reputation. After death. Or now. In life…”

Her voice is shaking, her eyes filled with enraged tears. Win watches her, waits.

“So tell me.” She can barely talk. “He pay him to rape me, too?” She raises her voice, tears falling.

Win doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to say.

“Or paid him just to kill me and burn up the house and the worthless nothing piece of shit threw in the rape free. Oh yes. The proverbial crime of opportunity.”

“Why?” Win quietly asks. “Why the—”

“Why the overkill?” Lamont interrupts with a harsh laugh. “Why? Come on, Win. You see it every day. Hate. Envy. Being scorned, dissed, threatened. Pay-back. Kill somebody as many times and in as many different horrific ways as you can, right? Degrade them, cause them as much pain and suffering as possible.”

Images of that night, of her. Win tries to push them back.

“Well, he tried,” she says. Then, “How much?”

He knows what she’s asking. He doesn’t answer her.

“How much!”

He hesitates, says, “A thousand dollars.”

“So that’s all I’m worth.”

“It has nothing to do with that and you know—”

“Don’t bother,” she says.