Hades

PART TWO
20

It was early Sunday evening by the time Justin was organized.

The pace frustrated him because the process was so slow, but he knew the value of being thoroughly prepared before moving on to the next step: action. So he spent his day reading and rereading everything he had, as well as new material he took off the Net. He made lists of people and places and tried to get an overall sense of the chronology of the events. It was the most effective way to reveal the patterns he was seeking. It's the way he worked. First, find the patterns. Next, find the motive. Finally, find the passion. At some point, all three elements would intersect. They always did. And when that happened, he'd have his murderer. He'd have the truth he was seeking.

He had now read, in much closer detail, the pages he'd already printed out giving the history of the Harmon family. He'd gone through the information that Ellen Loache had provided for him. As he read he'd taken notes, kept track of any potential links and connections between all the disparate parts that were making up this complicated whole. When he was done, he entered it all into his computer-the simple act of repetition and transferring information helped to clarify and focus things in his mind.

Wanda had been keeping tabs on Evan Harmon before he'd been killed. She'd told him that while they were sitting in her car. Justin had a good memory for dialogue-he'd trained himself to remember specific words in conversations rather than simply the general tone or information, knowing that nuance and accuracy could make all the difference when going back to interpret something. She had said that "I" had been tracking Evan. She had not said "we." That probably meant that the investigation into Evan's activities was not official and that the Bureau knew relatively little about this. That jibed with what Fletcher had said-that she was holding information back. It meant there was something politically sensitive involved, possibly some kind of internal corruption or compromise. Justin needed to know why Evan had come into conflict with the Feds. That was essential info. He was expecting an agent to contact him soon. He'd get that info, he hoped, from his new "partner." Justin didn't have any illusions as to what the working relationship would be. Special Agent Zach Fletcher might be better than most, but that didn't mean Fletcher was dealing without keeping an ace, or even two, up his sleeve. The Feds might indeed be wanting to use him to do some of their dirty work, Justin knew. But by bringing him inside and assigning someone to work with him, it meant they could also keep an eye on him. Keep him under control. Maybe even find out if he was involved in this weird triangle of death in a deeper way than he was admitting.

It was a trade-off he was willing to accept: access for limited freedom. But he had to take advantage of that access for this to work. So first up: Find out what the hell the Feebs wanted with Abby's husband.

But there was more to Evan Harmon than whatever he'd been doing recently to attract attention. People did not operate in vacuums. They were shaped and formed by family and friends and events. Justin needed to know what had shaped Evan so he could understand the way the man thought. It wasn't just action that formed patterns, it was thought processes. Justin understood that he needed to know a lot more about the first victim.

Next on his agenda: Ronald LaSalle.

Ronald was linked to Evan. They communicated regularly and they did business together. Justin had to find out exactly what the business was. In Ellen Loache's folder were names of people and businesses that had to be checked out. Someone on that list would prove to be a critical connection between the two men and the three murders. He also had to find out if Ronald had been involved in Evan's illegal activity. And if so, how deeply. Was he a peripheral player who had stumbled onto something by mistake or could he have been involved at the very core?

Third on his list to explore: Rockworth and Williams. The firm was the single element in this entire mix that appeared repeatedly and had tentacles that reached out to all parties. Justin had learned an important lesson as a homicide investigator: People killed for love or money. It's what everything boiled down to. In this case, Rockworth and Williams seemed to be the source of-or at least the common link to-all the people who were involved. Evan Harmon had worked there. His father had worked there. Evan's company, Ascension, used Rockworth as its primary broker for its hedge fund investments. Forrest Bannister, Ascension's CFO and the man who found Evan's body, had connections to Rockworth. Ellis St. John was R amp;W's link to Ascension, and he had disappeared.

Justin had to get inside Rockworth and Williams. Had to talk to H. R. Harmon and Lincoln Berdon. Most of all, he knew he had to find Ellis St. John. Right now, St. John's disappearance made him the prime suspect in Evan Harmon's murder and possibly the other two as well. But Justin knew the fact that he was gone had other ramifications, too. St. John might have fled because he was afraid. Or he, too, might have suffered the same fate as his two fellow Wall Streeters. Justin understood that if he did find Ellis St. John, he might not find him alive. Right now, though, he had to work as if the R amp;W employee was on the lam. And involved in the murders.

Then there were the two official suspects. Justin knew he couldn't overlook them. He did not believe in Larry Silverbush's solution to the crime: that Abby and Dave Kelley had committed a crime of passion. Or even one of convenience. Right after Evan's body had been discovered, it had been a plausible theory. But now it was too myopic a view. The case had expanded, gotten more complicated. There were too many other angles that had overtaken the DA's quick fix. And too many other deaths. Right now, Justin had one big advantage over Silverbush and his investigative crew: It was unlikely that they had any suspicion that the two murders in Rhode Island were connected to Evan Harmon's slaying. That probability made all the difference in the world. Nonetheless, Justin knew that he couldn't dismiss Abby's and Kelley's involvement. Just because things had gotten more complicated didn't mean that they weren't involved at some level. He didn't believe that they were, but he couldn't ignore the possibility. He couldn't afford to ignore anything right now.

Justin also knew he had to talk to Bruno. He was still waiting for Billy DiPezio to send him the results of the fingerprint search he'd asked for-a search that would, Justin hoped, identify the man who'd tried to shoot Bruno. The big man was another piece to this strange puzzle, and Justin had to find out where that piece fit. Bruno had said he'd appear once Justin was back in East End Harbor, and Justin knew that Bruno was, in his own way, a man of his word. So he could wait for Bruno to keep his word. At least for a little while.

And finally, he had to find the meaning of Wanda's message to him.

Just for the hell of it, he had googled the words that Wanda had managed to scrawl on her body: "Hades" and "Ali."

Hades had 9,850,000 mentions on the main page. There were 176,000 different references to the use of the word "Hades" in song lyrics; there was a Hades computer software program; paintings of the god Hades in museums all over the world; poems and books about Hades dating back hundreds of years; food products named Hades and a Hades Bloody Mary mix. It was impossible even to begin to sift through the various choices. The only thing he knew about Hades was the mythological aspect: it was the name, in Greek mythology, for both the underworld and the god of the underworld. So what Justin did was to pick the very first and easiest Google reference and enter it into his computer. He didn't really know why he bothered, except he liked the sound of it, and including it in his file-seeing it whenever he went back in to refer to his notes-would work to keep his anger about Wanda fresh and present and alive. He decided to title the entire casebook document Hades, and he typed in the following from something called the "Hades homework page": "HADES: Zeus's brother and ruler of the underworld and the dead. Also called Pluto-God of Wealth."

Justin thought it was fitting. The god of wealth and the ruler of the dead. Sounded like a god whose path he might cross one of these days.

Googling the name "Ali" produced 216,000,000 mentions. He managed to scroll through about forty of them-one-line descriptions of sites for info on Muhammad Ali, Ali G, NASA's advanced land imager (acronym ALI), Ali Baba, and an actor named Ali Suliman who was in the film Paradise Now (which, oddly enough, Justin had gone to see with Abby Harmon at the old-fashioned, arty East End Harbor movie theater that always smelled of grape drink and disinfectant). Justin gave up fairly quickly on this second search, deciding it was a reasonably safe bet that neither Muhammad Ali nor Ali G had anything to do with his murder investigations. He found absolutely nothing there he deemed worth adding to his lists.

Restless, he reached for his cell phone and dialed Abby's number in the city. She had not returned his calls from yesterday. He got her answering machine again, left a briefer message than his last one. "It's Jay. I'm in East End and I'd like to talk to you." She knew his number, so he didn't bother leaving it. The fact that he even considered leaving it made him realize that the relationship had shifted and was already different. So after a very brief pause, all he said was, "So call me. Bye." He then called her cell, which also immediately went to voice mail. He repeated, almost word for word, what he'd left on her home machine. Then he hung up, dissatisfied.

He paced around the room, not exactly sure what was fueling his impatience. At 7:30 p.m. Justin forced himself to sit back down at the computer. He made a short To Do list: an abbreviated version of everything he'd already entered, now turning them into specific tasks, in order of priority. This final list read: 1. Evan Harmon-background; Fed investigation 2. Ronald LaSalle-business connections to Harmon