Last to die

Forty-eight

It was happy hour at Sparky’s, but Jack wasn’t feeling very happy. He’d been brooding on a bar stool since leaving the courthouse, pouring his heart out to Theo, who was sort of tending bar but mostly keeping an eye on the cash register, making sure that his new bartender wasn’t ripping him off. Sparky’s attracted a rough crowd, a hangout for working men and women, not the typical “suit ’n secretary” pickup joint that the professional crowd flocked to near Brickell Avenue or Alhambra Circle. There was no Ketel One vodka, no Chivas Regal scotch, and the only imported beer was El Presidente, a Dominican cerveza that Theo sold below cost to the tomato pickers from Homestead every Tuesday night because there sure as hell wasn’t anyone else gonna cut ’em a break. But on the most basic, human level, happy hour at Sparky’s was just the same old story. Bad lighting, loud music, drinks aplenty. Ribbed condoms and tongue-scorching breath mints for sale in the bathrooms. Clusters of men eyeing women, women eyeing men, people talking too loud and laughing too hard, the same scene every weekend, inhibitions dissolved and judgments impaired with each lonely misstep in the shot-and-a-beer mating dance.

“Call her,” said Theo, talking over the clatter of bottles and meaningless conversations along the bar.

“Call who?” said Jack.

Theo sent a barmaid off with another tray of two-for-one cocktails. Two other orders were waiting, but he put the tabs aside and reached under the bar, which could only mean trouble-his personal stash. It was just then that Jack noticed his friend was wearing his infamous “I’m not as Think as You Drunk” T-shirt.

“Please, not that,” said Jack.

Theo flashed an evil grin as he pulled up two glasses and his special bottle of Herradura Tequila Añejo. “You pick up that phone and dial Rene’s number. Or we’re doing shots.”

“Would that be with or without training wheels?”

Theo pushed the salt shaker and little bowl of lemon wedges aside. “Without.”

“You’re brutal, man.”

“We don’t stop till one of us hits the floor. And let’s face it, Jacko: We both know it won’t be me starin’ at the ceiling.”

“What makes you think I want to call her?”

“Because you been talking about her for half an hour. So you call her now, or you spend all day tomorrow with an ice bag on your head.”

“Herradura never gives me a hangover.”

“Forget the tequila. I’m talking about slapping you so hard upside the head that you’ll have to walk into the next room to hear your own ears ringing. So don’t ask me one more fucking time if I think you should call her. Call her.”

Theo slid the phone across the bar top, but Jack was still debating. Strictly from the standpoint of case strategy, he should have been all over her without delay. Last thing he and his client needed was for Rene to get an earful about Tatum from Gerry Colletti or Homicide Detective Larsen before Jack could speak to her. But something was troubling him, holding him back. He looked at Theo and said, “I’m not gonna say she was flirting, but it was damn close.”

“You trying to make me jealous?” he said, then puckered up and shot a squeaky, exaggerated air kiss in Jack’s direction.

Jack ignored it. “Why would she even be nice to me, let alone flirt? If you believe yesterday’s newspaper, Sally Fenning-Rene’s sister-hired my client to pump a bullet into her brain.”

“You just said the magic words, Jacko: If you believe yesterday’s paper. Obviously, Rene don’t believe it. Which is all the more reason for you to get on the phone and get into her-”

“Theo,” he said, groaning.

“Camp. I was gonna say camp.”

“Yeah right.”

Theo handed him the phone. “Call.”

Jack took it and got the hotel number from directory assistance. Theo stood over him, watching in silence, as if to make sure that he actually dialed it. The hotel operator connected him to Rene’s room, and she answered on the third ring.

“Rene, hey, it’s Jack.” Then he added, “Swyteck,” like an idiot, which had Theo rolling his eyes.

“Hi,” she said. “I was just on my way out the door.”

“I won’t hold you up. I just wanted to follow up on what we talked about earlier. You know, about setting up an appointment.”

Theo screwed up his face and said, “An appointment?”

Jack waved him off, waiting for her reply. The delay felt longer than it actually was, but Jack got the definite impression that she was mulling something over.

Finally, she said, “Can you pick me up in half an hour?”

“Tonight?”

“Well, if tonight’s not good-”

“No, tonight’s fine.”

“You sure? I was just going to catch a cab. But now that you’ve called, and the more I think about it, I’d really rather not go alone.”

“Forget the cab. I can take you. Where you going?”

She answered in a flat, serious tone. “Sally’s old house.”

“The mansion over on Venetian Isles?”

“No.” Again she paused, then said, “Her real old house. The one Katherine was murdered in.”

Jack gripped the phone, but he didn’t speak.

Rene said, “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

The music, the laughter, the endless bar chatter all around him-it all suddenly merged into an annoying buzz in the back of his brain. “I want to,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

Forty-nine

They caught the tail end of rush hour out of downtown Miami and didn’t reach the Ninety-fifth Street exit until almost seven, well after dark.

The business district for Miami Shores was built around a little hitch in the road that connected I-95 to U.S. 1, and most of the community had the same small-town feel-quiet residential streets, drugstore on the corner next to the local diner, white church steeples protruding through the broad green canopy of palm trees and sprawling live oaks. It was a neighborhood in transition, much of it updated with the influx of younger families, especially in areas away from the interstate. But Sally’s old place wasn’t just built in the sixties; it was trapped there, just two blocks away from I- 95, a two-bedroom, ranch-style house, still sporting the original jalousie windows, aluminum awnings, and terrazzo front porch that screamed “rental property.” Jack almost expected a pink plastic flamingo on the front lawn.

Jack parked his Mustang in the driveway. A potbellied man wearing blue jeans and a V-neck undershirt was waiting on the front steps, visible in the yellow glow from the porch light.

“Who’s that?” asked Jack, peering through the windshield.

“Property manager,” said Rene. “Just follow my lead, okay?”

“Your lead?”

“I didn’t tell him that my sister used to live here and that I just wanted to look around. I said I needed a place in a hurry and that I’d give him ten percent more than the going rate if I like it. That’s why he agreed to meet me on a Friday night.”

“Anybody live here now?”

“An old guy, lives alone. Ever since the murder, I’m told it rents month to month, if it rents at all.”

“With that kind of history, I guess you have to be pretty down on your luck to live here.”

“Yeah,” she said, and then her voice trailed off as she added, “Even more down than Sally was.”

They headed up the walkway, and the property manager greeted them at the steps. Rene said, “You must be Jimmy.”

“That’s right.” A toothpick wagged from his lips as he spoke, his thumbs hooked on his belt loops.

“I’m Rene, this is Jack,” she said, handshakes all around. “We’re here to see the house.”

He closed one eye, a nervous habit, and said, “Y’all know ’bout the li’l girl got kilt here, right?”

“Yes, we know.”

“Good. I want that out in the open. Cuz people comes here all the time, ya know. They look around, likes the place, then find out ’bout dat girl, and it changes their minds right quick. Jis wastes my time.”

“We’re okay with it.”

“No children, huh?”

“No,” she said. “No children.”

He pulled a big ring of keys from his pocket, found the right one, and turned the lock. He pushed the door open, then immediately took a step back. The pungent odor of old kitty litter hit Jack in the face like an ammonia-soaked rag.

“Cats,” said Jimmy. “Screwball who lives here now gots eleven of them.”

“Eleven?” said Jack.

“Yeah. Can’t stand them smelly bastards. Y’all go ahead. Look around. I’ll wait right here.”

Rene went first and switched on the light. Jack followed, and Jimmy stayed behind. The door closed just as soon as they were inside. Jimmy was apparently determined to contain the cat odor.

The living room was small and cluttered, with threadbare green carpet stretching wall to wall. A dingy white sheet was draped over the camelback sofa, and Jack counted five cats sleeping on it. Two armchairs, an ottoman, and even the coffee table were likewise covered with old sheets, and Jack accounted for three more cats.

“Man, it stinks in here.”

Rene simply shot him a look that said, Try living in Africa for three years, bucko.

Jack took a step forward, then jumped at the sound of a cat toy squeaking beneath his shoe. He let out a nervous chuckle, but Rene didn’t even flinch. She suddenly seemed oblivious to the sounds, the smells, the sights-to anything but the past she’d come here to uncover. Jack, too, could feel the mood shifting. No more little jokes, no more playful smiles, no more contrived distractions to keep them from breathing in and absorbing the tragedy that had occurred right here in this house, the horrible crime that had ended a child’s life and changed a young mother forever.

“She was twenty-four when it happened,” said Rene, her voice quaking.

Jack just stood there, as if he could feel his own blood coursing through his veins. Twenty-four. Could he remember what it was like to be twenty-four? Could he even fathom what it felt like to be a twenty-four-year-old woman with a four-year-old child, flat broke, working nights at Hooters, her husband working two jobs just to keep them out of bankruptcy? Was that the life of the princess Sally had dreamed about as a little girl, coming home at midnight six nights a week smelling of cigarettes and spilled beer, too much makeup on her pretty face, her nipples protruding from her too-tight tank top and her nylon shorts riding up her ass like a thong bikini, because looking like a slut would fetch her a few more bucks in tips? He wondered if there was a time in her entire adult life when Sally was ever truly happy. He wondered, too, if Sally could possibly have realized that her shitty little life wasn’t all that bad, that it could have been so much worse, that the real nightmare was only about to begin.

“I don’t think I can go back there by myself,” said Rene.

Instinctively, Jack went to her, took her arm, and together they started down the dark hallway. They walked slowly, their heels clicking on the cracked terrazzo floor, click-clock, click-clock, click-clock, as if to mark the reversal of time, their descent into an unspeakably dark past. Jack didn’t make her go any faster than she wanted, but they were barely moving, and finally she brought them to a stop at the open bathroom door.

Jack was right with her, so he switched on the hall light, which gave them enough illumination to see inside. A cat was perched on the lid of the toilet seat, as if waiting for a drink, then scurried away. The sink was stained with a broad streak of rust, and mildew had darkened the white ceramic tile. A deep crack arced across the medicine chest mirror. Directly opposite them was a cabana door that presumably led to the patio.

“That’s where he got in,” said Rene.

“The jalousie windows?”

She nodded once and said, “He slid his arm through, reached inside, and unlocked the deadbolt.”

Jack stared at the lock, imagined the knob turning, wondered what Sally and little Katherine were doing when the stranger had joined them, wondered what was going through that monster’s mind when he closed the door behind him, stepped inside, and started toward the bedroom. Was he all tingly and excited, sexually aroused, fearful of nothing? Or maybe he did have fear, a sociopath’s only fear, the sick fear that reality couldn’t possibly measure up to his endless hours of twisted fantasies, fear that all the planning and anticipation would be for naught because it simply wouldn’t be enough that the girl was all his, the hot mom too, and that he could do with them as he wished.

Rene stepped inside, past the sink, then stopped and gasped. Jack immediately understood why. The bathtub. It was gone. It had been ripped out and replaced with a stand-alone shower, but its footprint remained like a giant scar, a crude confirmation of what had happened there. Jack had seen many crime scenes and crime scene photos, but he never got used to it. Looking at it made you realize that it really had happened, that it could never be undone, that the awful bitterness would rise up in your throat until you could taste the pain, the screams, the utter horror of the victims. Right there, that very spot, was where he’d knelt on the tile floor, filled the tub with water, and rinsed Sally’s blood from his knife. Right there, that same spot, he’d wrung the blood from Sally’s blouse, dipping and squeezing until the water turned bright red. Then he carried Sally’s daughter-still alive, her feet and hands bound-and placed her in the tub, undoubtedly drawing one last moment of pleasure from the horror in her eyes. And then he slowly rolled her over, facedown in the water, and he watched, watched with delight. Jack knew he watched, because he’d spent four years of his life defending monsters like this on death row, he’d seen the gleam in their eyes as they recounted their conquests, killers who didn’t see the point in killing unless they could watch every fucking last minute of it. That son of a bitch just watched her body writhing, her head bobbing, her bound legs flopping like some vulgar abomination of the Little Mermaid, his own curiosity unsatisfied until he saw with his own two eyes how much of the bloody mixture her tiny lungs could hold.

“We should go,” said Jack.

“No. I want to see the bedroom.”

They retreated from the bathroom and continued down the hall. The door was open about a foot, just enough for a cat to come and go. Rene pushed it all the way open, and flipped the light switch. The fixture on the ceiling had four bulbs, but only one was burning, which left the room dim and full of shadows-cat shadows, dozens of them. Cats on the bed, on the dresser, on the floor, in clothes baskets scattered about the room. Cats everywhere, and Jack felt his eyes starting to water.

“Looks like his eleven cats have had a few kittens,” he said.

“I want to check the closet.”

From what he’d read about the crime, Jack knew that the attacker had been hiding in the closet. Rene stepped around a sleeping ball of orange fur, and Jack followed her across the room. She stopped before the closet door.

“You want me to open it?” asked Jack.

She stared a moment longer, then simply nodded.

He’d offered to open it without a moment’s hesitation, but as he reached for the handle, he felt something pulling inside him. It had been five years since the crime, dozens of different people had lived in this house since then, and he knew in his mind that there was nothing to fear on the other side of that door. But in his gut, where it mattered, he felt a slight reservation.

“Please,” said Rene. “Open it.”

The metal door handle felt cold in his hand, cold as the ice water that must have run through that killer’s veins. He turned it. The latch clicked. He pulled the door open and saw a sudden black flash, which sent his heart into his throat.

A cat raced across his shoe tops.

He and Rene exchanged glances, as if to calm each other’s nerves. Jack opened the door all the way and looked inside.

“You say he got in through the bathroom door, huh?”

“That’s what Sally told me. The police report said there were signs of break-in at the bathroom door.”

“So, he comes in the bathroom, walks down the hall to Katherine’s bedroom, and hides inside the closet.”

“That’s the theory.”

Jack pointed to the access door in the ceiling inside the closet and said, “Where do you suppose that leads to?”

Rene looked up and said, “The attic?”

A wall of built-in shelves inside the closet led upward like a ladder. Jack climbed up to the third shelf, pushed on the plywood, and opened the ceiling door. “It’s an attic, all right. Wonder if he could have come in this way?”

“I suppose it’s possible. I don’t even think Sally knew every theory the police considered or rejected. The prosecutor was extremely tight-lipped about his investigation.”

“Tell me about it. I had a little run-in myself a few weeks ago. So long as they consider the investigation active, they aren’t going to tell you much.”

“You mind taking a look?”

“In the attic?”

“The police have had five years to solve this crime. Why not have a look for ourselves?”

Jack shrugged and said, “Okay, sure. Why not?”

Jack climbed up the shelves, pushed the ceiling door aside, and poked his head into the attic. The air was stuffy, and he was sweating almost instantly, as the temperature in the attic was at least ten degrees hotter than the main house. Jack let his eyes adjust and found a naked bulb hanging from a wire. He pulled the cord, and the attic brightened.

“Got light,” he said.

“Good,” she replied, her muted voice wafting upward through the ceiling.

Jack climbed the rest of the way and pulled himself up. The attic had no floor, just exposed joists and insulation, so he distributed his weight across three joists-feet, seat, hands. The lighting wasn’t great, but it was good enough to see that the attic ran the length of the house, from one end of the gabled roof to the other. He was at the highest point, dead center, and even there the head clearance was only about three feet. He saw no windows.

“Don’t see how he could have gotten in here from the outside,” he said. “Don’t see any outside access at all.”

“How about access from another room?”

He was afraid she was going to say that. “I’ll check.”

He crab-walked across the joists, careful not to slip and stick a foot or hand through the ceiling. The farther he traveled from the opening, the hotter it got. He could feel his shirt starting to stick to his back with sweat. His foot dragged across the exposed insulation, and a cloud of musty fibers was suddenly airborne. Jack coughed the thirty-year-old particles out of his lungs. He didn’t see another ceiling access door anywhere.

“I think the closet’s the only way up,” he shouted.

“Why don’t I just check the closet in the other bedroom,” she shouted back.

Jack considered his position, his head banging against the roof, his body spread out across the joists as if he were training for the county fair wheelbarrow race. Now she thinks of it. “Good idea,” he said.

He could hear her footfalls below him as she traversed the hallway that connected the bedrooms. He heard a door open, presumably the master bedroom, then another one, presumably the closet.

“Nothing,” he heard her shout.

The lightbulb flickered, and the attic went dark.

“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered. He stayed in his crab-walk position, hoping the light would flick back on. Some light was shining through the opening to the attic from the closet below, so it wasn’t completely black. He knew the joists were the standard sixteen inches apart, so he could find his way back even with the bad lighting. He waited for his eyes to adjust, and then he noticed something.

Down at the other end of the attic, over the master bedroom, a ray of light was shooting up into the attic. What the hell?

“Rene, where are you?”

“In the master.”

“Do you see a hole in the ceiling?”

He waited for her reply, which was simply, “No.”

The beam of light was still shining up like a laser from the master bedroom. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but that was because the attic light had been burning. In the dark attic, and with the light glowing in the bedroom below, it was plainly visible. Jack crawled toward the beacon until it was within an arm’s length.

He stared at the light for a moment, noticing that insulation had been cut away next to the joist. The hole itself was smaller than a dime, but there was definitely a hole, and with the insulation trimmed back it appeared as though someone had deliberately put it there. He squatted down and peered through the opening.

“Rene? You sure you don’t see a hole?”

There was a brief pause, as if she were searching. “No,” she said.

“Just the ceiling fan.”

Ceiling fan. Jack pulled away a little more insulation. He found an electrical box and a mounting bracket for a ceiling fan. Beside the fan bracket was another bracket. It was attached to the joist but not to the fan, and it didn’t seem to be serving any purpose at all. He took a closer look, and there was just enough light emanating upward through the hole to let him read the manufacturer’s name printed on the side of the bracket: Velbon.

It probably wouldn’t have meant anything to him, had his ex-wife not been a photographer. Velbon was one of the best-known manufacturers of tripods and mounting brackets for video cameras. At that moment, Jack realized exactly what he’d found.

He took one more look down through the hole-a hole that from the bedroom probably looked like nothing more than a vent in the ceiling fan-and he had a perfect view of the bed.

Five years earlier, it would have been Sally’s bed. He could have watched Sally climbing into bed. Sally sleeping in her bed. Sally doing whatever it was she liked to do in bed.

“Rene?” he said in a voice loud enough to carry into the room below.

“Yes?”

“Your sister was definitely being stalked.”

Fifty

At six o’clock Monday morning, Gerry Colletti was in his kitchen, dressed and ready to leave for work. He checked his reflection in the glass display cabinet and, as always, liked what he saw. A lot of lawyers had fallen into the casual dress mode, but not Gerry. The suit was Armani. The shoes, Ferragamo. His silk tie and socks-you could measure a man’s true net worth by the quality of his socks-both by Hermès. The shirt was custom made in Hong Kong, as were all his shirts, because there wasn’t a designer in the world that made shirts to fit a freak of nature with a nineteen-inch neck and a thirty-inch sleeve length. Gerry hadn’t worked out since he quit the wrestling team in college, unless you called banging your female clients a workout, so it was truly the clothes that made the man-clothes and a good tailor.

“Gabby, order more Hawaiian Gold,” he said into his Dictaphone. He kept a running list on audiotape of all the personal things his secretary needed to do for him, but he suddenly realized that with Gabby a general order for “Hawaiian Gold” might fetch him anything from a box of pineapples to a bag of premium pot. “That’s Hawaiian Gold coffee,” he said, then slipped the Dictaphone into his inside pocket.

He poured himself a cup for the road, tucked the Wall Street Journal under his arm, and headed for the door that connected the kitchen to the garage.

It had been a quiet weekend, and Gerry had wanted it that way.He was still smarting from the way Swyteck had embarrassed him at the court hearing on Friday afternoon. It wasn’t like him to make a stupid mistake like that with the photographs and the date on his wristwatch. That kind of slipup told him one thing: He wasn’t being patient enough. Brains and patience were all it took to win this contest, two things Tatum Knight and Miguel Rios didn’t have. That would be their downfall. They alone stood between him and forty-six million dollars. Well, them and Alan Sirap.

Whoever the hell that is.

Gerry entered the garage and hit the button on the wall that switched on the light and opened the garage door. His emerald-black BMW was ready for a ride, washed and polished, glistening beneath the hanging fluorescent tube. He paused to admire it as the garage door noisily lumbered upward. He’d always been a car guy. His father had been a car guy-a greasy coveralls, dirt-under-the-fingernails, minimum-wage auto mechanic who’d never in his life owned a new car. His father never had anything new. They never had anything new. His mother had left them when he was ten, came back for Gerry, filed for divorce, cleaned out the old man, waited for the divorce to become final-and then married her divorce lawyer. A smart divorce lawyer. She married that son of a bitch, and then sent Gerry back to live with the old man, flat broke, not a pot to piss in.

What goes around, comes around.

With the press of a button on his remote, the car alarm chirped and the doors unlocked. Gerry got inside, slid behind the wheel, and closed the door. He got himself situated-coffee cup in the holder, newspaper open on the seat beside him for easy reading in stopped traffic, loose change for the tolls in the dispenser. He checked himself one last time in the rearview mirror, then turned the key.

Nothing.

He turned it again, but there was just a click, and then nothing, a pathetic sound that was even more pathetic when you were used to hearing the glorious rumble of eight perfectly tuned cylinders.

The battery was his first thought, but then he thought again. The electronic keyless entry had responded to his remote, and the dome light had come on when he’d opened the door. The clock was working, too. Something was screwy with the starter.

Or somebody had screwed with it.

Another man might have been frightened, but Gerry only smiled. He prided himself on being fearless. In his line of work, many an ex-husband had threatened him, and a few had even come after him. You couldn’t do this work without balls as big as globes, and his were made of brass.

Somebody messing with his car-how beautiful was that? It was exactly the kind of additional evidence of intimidation he needed to box Tatum Knight into disqualification under the Slayer Statute. That idiot just couldn’t control himself, and Gerry was suddenly cock-sure that Tatum Knight had yanked the wires from his alternator in retaliation for his clever courtroom maneuvering. Swyteck may have scored a few points for style at Friday’s hearing, but Gerry had the long-term winning strategy. And if Knight kept doing stupid things like this, he’d reap the rewards sooner than expected.

He pulled the hood release, got out of the car, and walked around the front to check things out. If this was what he thought it was, he’d definitely file a police report. But he didn’t want to be crying wolf, either. He wanted to see those wires ripped from the starter, maybe even take a few more pictures.

The hood had risen up about four inches before it caught on the safety latch. He reached underneath to find the trip switch that would completely release it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened the hood, and wasn’t exactly sure where the release was. Both hands were under the hood, fiddling for the switch, when a black blur fell from above him, swooping down like Spider-Man from atop the opened garage door that lay directly overhead suspended from the ceiling. It was a huge blur that took the shape of a man who pounced on the hood of the car, his sheer weight slamming it shut on Gerry’s fingers. He felt the back-spray of blood against his belly, heard the sickening crush of bones that just a split second earlier had been his precious hands.

A cord closed tightly around his neck, silencing his screams, as the man reached up and manually pulled the garage door closed. Gerry’s head rolled back, and that’s when he saw it, right above him: The access panel to the attic had been pushed aside-a passageway that had been hidden by the opened garage door in its rolled-back position, an opening that hadn’t been there when he’d entered the garage with the door closed.

Gerry stood face-to-face with his attacker, unable to run away or raise his mangled hands in defense, unable to pry his fingers loose from beneath the crushing car hood that had trapped him like an animal. The pain was so intense that his entire body tightened with spasms. He tried to scream, but the wire noose around his neck drew tighter. He could barely see, his vision blurred by the trauma, but he could see well enough to know that his attacker was looking right at him, his face hidden behind a ski mask.

The tension on the cord eased. Gerry could breathe again, hear again. The man was saying something.

“Poor Gerry Colletti,” he said taunting him. “Tried to hard-nose negotiate his way to the prize.”

“Huh?” he tried to say, but it was only a grunt.

“If only he’d known all the deals had already been cut.”

“What are-” he started to say, but the cord tightened around his neck, and again he was fighting for air. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen to the ground if his attacker hadn’t held the cord high like a rope from a tree limb. He could feel his life slipping away as he heard the man say, “See you in hell, Gerry. I hear it’s one big gold mine.”

Fifty-one

Homicide Detective Rick Larsen arrived at the home of Gerry Colletti just after dinnertime. It had been a comfortably cool autumn day, but temperatures were dropping with the setting sun. White short-sleeve shirts with a loosened necktie were the trademark Larsen attire, but tonight he broke down and pulled on a windbreaker, which was perfectly fine. His old buddies up in Buffalo were already trudging through eighteen inches of Thanksgiving snow.

Two squad cars were parked at the end of the driveway, blocking off traffic. The medical examiner’s van was parked just inside the squad cars, and yellow police tape marked off the entire yard as a crime scene.

Larsen was technically off duty, but he’d left word to be called immediately if anything happened to any of the remaining heirs under Sally Fenning’s will. With Mason Rudsky and Deirdre Meadows already in the morgue, it didn’t take a genius to see a pattern developing. He’d considered putting a tail on Rios, Colletti, and Knight so that the police would be right there if anything happened to one of them. But stakeouts were expensive, and there just wasn’t room in the budget for one of them, let alone three, especially when his instincts told him that the killer would probably lie low for a while until the media hoopla settled down, wait a few weeks or possibly even a few months before striking again.

In one of the few lapses in his long career, his instincts had steered him wrong.

Larsen got out of his car and walked over to the uniformed officer in charge of controlling access to the scene.

“Is it who we think it is?” said Larsen.

“No official ID yet. But it’s his house, his car, and as best I can tell the face matches the mug shot on his driver’s license. If it ain’t Geraldo Colletti, it’s his twin brother.”

“Who found him? Someone driving by?”

“No. Garage door was closed.”

“Doesn’t look closed.” There was reproval in his tone, as if to convey his sincere hope that someone on the team wasn’t in line for a severe ass kicking for having altered the crime scene.

“His secretary opened it. She saw him through the window, thought he might still be alive, so she opened the door.”

“His secretary?”

“He missed eleven scheduled appointments for the day, didn’t answer his beeper or his cell phone. By late afternoon she was getting pretty worried, drove over. Found him there in the garage.”

Larsen looked up the long driveway of Chicago brick. The forensic team was at work in the area around the garage opening, and the assistant medical examiner was tending to the body.

“His secretary still here?”

“In the squad car. I took her statement, but she’s too shook up to drive home.”

“Ask her to stick around, okay? I may want to talk to her.” He gave him a wink and a slap on the shoulder, then started up the driveway toward the garage.

A gust of wind stirred up some fallen mango leaves, sent them swirling past the opening. It was a northeast wind, the kind of wind that ushered in those awful cold fronts that could send late November temperatures plummeting all the way down into the fifties or even forties. Larsen actually liked a little nip in the air, though he sympathized with the poor slobs who were spending two months’ salary to walk around Miami Beach dressed in winter coats. He was a sympathetic guy, or so people told him. Took every homicide personally, showed real compassion to the families and the victims. Even when the victim was an asshole lawyer.

“Gerry Colletti,” he said to no one in particular as he stopped at the entrance to the garage.

The cord was still around the victim’s neck. His bloody hands were still trapped beneath the hood, his limp body draped over the front of the car like a hapless deer that someone had nailed while barreling down the highway at sixty miles per hour. Larsen focused on the hands and said, “Ouch.”

“No kidding,” said the examiner. He was on his knees, taking measurements. “Man, I remember when I was twelve, my sister slammed the piano key cover on my fingers.”

“Has to hurt bad.”

“Shit yeah. Of course, ligature strangulation with a fifty-pound picture-hanging wire has a way of taking your mind off your fingers.”

“That our cause of death?”

“Take a look for yourself. Cord’s still around his neck, and I don’t think it was planted there to throw us off. We got bleeding sites in the mucosa of the lips, inside the mouth and eyelids. Face and neck congested and dark red. All consistent with strangulation.”

“I guess we can rule out suicide.”

“I’d say so. The bruising pattern on the neck is a horizontal straight line,” he said, indicating. “With a suicidal hanging you find the more vertical, inverted V-shaped bruise. Suicide by straight strangulation is pretty rare.”

“Especially with your hands trapped beneath a car hood.”

“Good point, Columbo.”

A guy inside the garage climbed down from a ladder. It was Larsen’s young partner. “Rick, have a look at this.”

The ladder was right beside the car by the passenger door. Larsen climbed up to the fourth step, high enough to get his head between the ceiling and the suspended garage door in its rolled-back position. The access panel had been pushed aside, and Larsen shined his penlight through the opening to the attic. “Point of entry,” he said.

“Looks that way,” his partner said.

Larsen spoke as he climbed down the ladder, the scene unfolding in his mind. “Perp hides in the attic. Hears the garage door opening. Slides the access panel away while the garage door opener is clanging away. Colletti never hears a thing. Can’t see a thing either, because the opened garage door hides the hole. Perp climbs out, waits for Colletti to come around to the front of the car, pounces on him.”

“Why are his hands beneath the hood?”

“Perp took care of that. Car doesn’t start. I’ll bet the keys are still in the ignition.” Larsen peered through the passenger side window and answered his own question. “Yup.”

The medical examiner rose from the garage floor and said, “Hey, Columbo, look at this.”

Larsen grumbled as he walked to the front of the car, wishing he’d stop calling him Columbo. “What?”

The examiner held a magnifying glass over the victim’s left shoulder blade. “Looks like we got a dried stain here.”

“Blood?”

“Nah. Dried blood on a tan suit would be your basic brown. All we have here that’s visible to the naked eye is the outer ring of the stain.”

“What does that tell you?”

“It’s a silk-blend suit. You ever dropped water on silk, like a tie or something?”

Larsen screwed up his face and said, “A silk tie? I don’t think so. But I did accidentally piss on a pair of polyester pants once.”

“Be glad it wasn’t silk. Water will stain silk. Leaves a ring just like this.”

“You’re saying this is water?”

“Something with a high water content that dries relatively clear, but not water.” He raised an eyebrow to give added weight to his words and said, “Semen, maybe.”

Larsen’s partner chuckled. “What? You think he strangled this guy and then whacked off over his work?”

Larsen and the examiner were deadpan, as if they’d seen stranger things. Then Larsen took another look at the body, the mangled hands trapped beneath the hood, the bruises around the neck-bruises that reflected the use of far more force than was necessary to choke the life out of the victim. “Got a lot of rage here, contempt for the victim.”

“Which is consistent with a guy who does this to get his rocks off. Literally.”

Larsen shook his head and said, “I don’t think it’s semen.”

“Lab will tell for sure.”

“I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts it’s saliva.”

“Saliva?”

Larsen nodded slowly, absorbing the scene, watching more of the crime unfold in his mind’s eye. “Like I said, we got real contempt here. Something personal. Killing him wasn’t enough. He took one last look at this pathetic heap hanging from the front end of his eighty-thousand-dollar BMW, dredged up every ounce of hatred in the back of his throat, and then let it fly.”

“He spat on him?”

“Yeah,” he said as a dreamy smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Thank our lucky stars. He spat on him.”

Fifty-two

They want you to submit a DNA specimen for testing,” said Jack.

Tatum wiped the beer-foam mustache from his lip, silent, as if his lawyer needed to say more before a response was merited.

A restaurant wasn’t Jack’s first choice of venue, but Tatum lived in north Miami Beach, and he’d groaned like a sick water buffalo about driving “all the way to Coral Gables” for a meeting with his lawyer. So Jack had suggested they meet for lunch at Gusto, a Cuban restaurant near the Lincoln Road area. The service was friendly and the food was good, perfect for a first date or a leisurely dinner with friends. But the colorful stories that came with the meal seemed downright goofy when the basic objective was to get your client to give up bodily fluids.

The waiter placed Jack’s medium-rare palomilla steak before him, then slid the house specialty in front of Tatum and said, “El balsero for you, señor.”

“What the hell’s this?” he asked. “I thought I ordered regular old shrimp.”

Jack said, “The special has shrimp in it. El balsero, they call it. It means ‘the rafter,’ I think.”

“Sí, sí. The rafter.” The waiter smiled proudly, and Jack smiled back, though somewhat bewildered. Jack had clients, friends, and even relatives who had actually come to Miami by raft, so he wasn’t quite sure what the politically correct reaction was to a dish called “the rafter.” But this was a Cuban restaurant, the waiter was more Cuban than he was, and a nostalgic mural of Havana Harbor was painted on the wall, so he just kept smiling.

Tatum was staring at his plate.

El balsero, the waiter explained, was the personal creation of a talented chef with a quirky sense of humor and, arguably, too much time on his hands. The banana-shaped raft was made from the hollowed-out shell of a plantain so lengthy that Freud would have had a psychological feast. The rafters inside were six stuffed shrimp tail-up and held fast by a tomato enchilada sauce. Thin french fries on either side of the raft were, naturally, the paddles.

“Looks more like a gondola than a raft,” said Tatum.

“I was thinking a canoe,” said Jack. “Say, Lewis and Clark paddling down a river of mojo sauce.”

“Ah,” the waiter said with a wide smile of recognition. “Sooper Mahn.”

“No, no, not Superman. That’s Lois and Clark. I’m talking about the nineteenth-century explorers-you know, Lewis, Clark, Sacajawea?”

The waiter just shrugged, lost. Jack considered trying to explain it in his stilted Spanish, then decided against it, figuring that although he wasn’t exactly ahead, he might as well quit while he wasn’t quite so far behind. “Never mind. Gracias por la comida,” he said, thanking him for the food.

“De nada,” he replied. You’re welcome.

Jack sprinkled chopped onions and parsley on his palomilla steak, poured the black beans over his white rice and added a little hot sauce, just the way he liked it. When he looked up, Tatum’s shrimp were gone.

“Pretty damn good,” Tatum said. “Lois was especially tasty.”

“Lewis,” he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.

Tatum sat back, seeming to have had his fill of shrimp passengers and small talk. He looked at Jack and said, “Tell me why I should give Larsen my DNA.”

“To get a swarming pack of homicide detectives off your back.”

“They think I killed Colletti,” he said, more a statement than a question.

“Of course they do.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know. Theo told me you two were out on his boat fishing last night. Didn’t get home till this morning.”

Tatum took another long drink from his tall glass of beer. “Did you tell the cops that?”

“Yes.”

“And they still want my DNA?”

“Larsen doesn’t put much stock in an alibi that can be corroborated only by your brother. Frankly, I don’t blame him.”

Tatum leaned into the table and said, “Is it that you don’t blame him? Or do you think Theo’s lying for me, too?”

Jack looked away, not sure how to answer. “Where are the fish, Tatum?”

“They weren’t biting,” he said flatly.

“Not a single one all night long, huh?”

“Fishermen come home empty-handed all the time. Theo even made a joke on the boat ride home, how it’s like Jack always says, this is why they call it fishin’ and not-”

“Catchin’, I know, I know. Look, the bottom line is, your alibi isn’t going to fly all by its lonesome. I talked face-to-face with Larsen this morning. I’m not saying they’re going to come out and arrest you tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. But the heat is on. I’m fielding calls from the cops, Miguel’s lawyer, lawyers for the dead heirs, the press. I’m starting to feel more like a juggler than a lawyer. Larsen’s offering us a scientific way to exonerate yourself before we drop all the balls and he comes to slap the cuffs on your wrists.”

“Explain this to me.”

“There’s a stain on Colletti’s suit. Turned out to be saliva, and there’s enough of it to allow for DNA testing. Since it was on his back, doesn’t seem likely it was from the victim, himself, so they think that whoever killed him also spat on him.”

“Pretty stupid thing to do.”

“Homicides can get personal, emotions take over. Anyway, the cops want a DNA sample from you. The lab compares the two, and if they don’t get a match-bingo, someone else jumps to the top of the list of suspects.”

“What if I say no?”

“If they have enough other evidence to link you to the crime, they could go for a court order, force you to give a hair sample, a cheek swab, something nonsurgical.”

Tatum picked at the empty shell of the plantain in his plate, saying nothing. Jack gave him a moment, then asked, “So, what do you say?”

Tatum looked up, his expression dead serious. “Let ’em arrest me.”

“What?”

He drained his beer, and said, “Sorry, Jack. I can’t give the cops my DNA.”

Fifty-three

Theo understood, but he knew he could never explain it to Jack. It was Jack who’d told him about the meeting at the restaurant, and Jack was cool in Theo’s book, but a Yale-educated lawyer whose daddy was once a governor couldn’t even begin to understand why Tatum wouldn’t give a DNA sample. Didn’t matter how cool Jack was. Only Theo could understand, but that didn’t mean he agreed with the decision. He’d even called Tatum himself, which got him exactly nowhere.

“This could prove you innocent. Don’t you see that, man?”

“I’m not givin’ no DNA.”

“But this shit works. A DNA test is what got me off death row.”

“You didn’t have no choice, Theo. You was already on death row.”

“And that’s where they wants to put you, too. Take the test.”

“No.”

“Shee-it, Tatum, why the hell not? We was out fishing all night. You’re innocent. I knows you’re innocent.”

“Then stop askin’ me to take the fucking test.”

The conversation could have lasted another thirty years, and Theo would have been no closer to convincing him. When Tatum had made up his mind, there was no changing it. He’d been that way all his life. But maybe this time he was right. If Jack Swyteck couldn’t understand it, well, that’s the way it breaks, buddy. If Theo didn’t want to accept it, hey, that’s your choice, bro’. People didn’t think of Tatum Knight as a man of principle, but nobody knew him the way Theo did. And Theo knew exactly what was going on in his head. Two black guys, brothers-not soul brothers or gang brothers or You-Can-Share-My-Needle-for-a-Taste-of-Crystal-Meth brothers-but real brothers, brothers from the same womb, born of the same crackhead mother who’d gone out one night and gotten her throat slit by some asshole who didn’t think her blow job was worth the ten dollars. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t have the same father (and they probably did, because they looked so much alike), but either way they’d never know who the hell he was. An alibi from these dead-end kids from Liberty City wasn’t good enough for Detective Rick Larsen and his lynch mob. They needed DNA-ironclad, scientific proof-positive of innocence, or his alibi didn’t mean shit. Well, fuck them, was all Tatum was saying. All of them.

Theo could understand that. At least he wanted to understand. It wasn’t easy to stand by and watch his brother pass up a golden opportunity to prove himself innocent, clear his name, get the bloodhounds on somebody else’s trail. Not after losing four years on death row for someone else’s crime. It took balls to stand up to a homicide detective that way, to look the demon in the eye and say, “You want me? Come get me.” Theo admired that in his brother. Actually, they were a lot alike in that respect. The Knight brothers were never the ones to back down from anyone or anything, never afraid to butt heads with their worst nightmares. With one exception. There was one demon Theo had never confronted. He’d never gone back to that all-night convenience store where he’d found that clerk in a puddle of blood.

’Bout damn time you did.

Theo remembered the way. He drove the exact route they’d taken that night, last night it seemed, or was it a million years ago?

It was nine o’clock in the evening, much earlier than his disastrous visit at 4 A.M., just as dark but much more traffic. The street was freshly paved, and there was a new median down the middle. Public works had planted a few palm trees to pretty-up the neighborhood, not the towering and beautiful royal palms or the Canary Island date palms you saw on wide boulevards cutting through tony Coral Gables, just the straggly, brown variety that got planted for no other reason than to shut people up whenever they bitched and moaned about the lack of green space in their neighborhood. So after all these years, they finally got the weed palms, sickly looking trees plucked from somewhere in the Everglades, one or two puny fronds reaching aimlessly for the sky like Alfalfa’s haircut, their trunks propped up by two-by-fours and covered top to bottom with gang graffiti, clearly some bureau crat’s idea of landscaping.

Theo turned at the traffic light. The pool hall was gone, the whole building boarded up and scorched around the edges, the fire probably caused by a careless cigarette or more likely the owner’s dumb-ass refusal to make good on a gambling debt. The gas station was still on the corner, but the new self-serve pumps looked like something out of The Jetsons compared to the old equipment Theo remembered. And Theo did remember. He’d forgotten nothing, having gone over that night many times in his mind while lying alone on a prison bunk. But just the thought of actually retracing his steps had his heart pounding.

He parked the car and switched off the radio. The music had been playing loudly that night, as he recalled, until they parked behind the convenience store, where Lionel, the gang leader, gave him his instructions and started the initiation.

“You want to be a Grove Lord or don’t you?”

“Shit, yeah.”

“You got five minutes to prove it. Then I’m gone, wit or wit’out you.”

Theo got out of the car and shut the door, his head clear of alcohol this time yet clouded with so many memories, so many doubts.

Loose gravel on the pavement crunched beneath his feet as he started down the alley. He was approaching the store from the back, just as he had before. It was a solitary journey, the passageway narrow and dark, brightened only by the streetlight at the front entrance. He’d sprinted up this alley the last time, but tonight he walked, absorbing the details. The dirty bricks on the walls on either side of him, the cracks in the pavement beneath his feet, the sound of the traffic somewhere ahead of him. He reached the sidewalk and turned left, toward the entrance to Shelby’s, except that it wasn’t called Shelby’s anymore. The sign on the door said MORTON’S MARKET. Theo had heard that old man Shelby had sold it. He couldn’t take it anymore, his business off badly from all the talk on the street about that poor nineteen-year-old kid who got beat to death by that black piece of shit from Liberty City and his pocket-size crowbar.

“Got a buck, bro’?” asked the homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk outside the entrance.

“Get you on the way out,” said Theo, and then he stopped at the glass doors. He remembered the butterflies in his stomach the last time he’d come here, how relieved he was to see no one inside the store, the cash register unattended. It was a little different at this hour, two customers inside that he could count, the clerk seated at the counter and watching ESPN on the little television. But everything else looked virtually identical, the aisles configured the same way, the same beige tile floors, the beer and snack foods stacked the same way near the entrance. It may have been called Morton’s Market, but he was going back to Shelby’s.

He pushed the door open and walked inside.

The clerk glanced over his shoulder, checked him out, then turned his attention back to the television. Theo walked around the stack of newspapers and the barrel of iced-down singles. The clerk didn’t give him a second look. Theo Knight, former death row inmate, had just walked into the store, and the kid didn’t seem to care. Did he know what had happened here? Had anyone told him?

Have you been in that stockroom?

Theo stopped and looked down the hall, his gaze carrying him all the way back to that first sight of blood, the bright crimson trail that he’d followed like a fool, followed all the way to Florida State Prison and four years of near misses with the electric chair.

The front door opened. Theo turned, the clerk’s head jerked. Two teenage boys walked in. Both were black. Both wore baggy pants, Miami Hurricane football jerseys, thick gold chains, and black knit caps, which seemed to have replaced the backward baseball caps of Theo’s era, even in the tropical climates. They walked with the typical gang swagger, something that never seemed to change from one generation to the next. This time, the clerk looked nervous. The boys separated. One went down the far aisle, the other took the near aisle. Up and down they walked, as if casing the place, biding their time until the customers had the good sense to leave them alone with the clerk and the cash drawer.

Theo watched them. This time he wasn’t going to run. I’m here for you, pal.

Finally, the nearest one burst into laughter. The other laughed even harder, no apparent reason, some kind of private joke that was at the expense of Theo or the scared clerk. Either way, Theo didn’t like it, and they were starting to piss him off.

Their laughter faded; the joke was over. The one who’d laughed first grabbed a couple of Gatorades from the cooler, walked up to the counter, and laid down his money. The clerk still looked nervous, but it was no longer a fear of the unknown but rather the fear of a danger that was all too familiar. He handed over the change and said, “Thanks, Lenny.”

“I’m Leroy, dumbshit. Lenny’s the ugly one.”

Theo watched as the two boys walked out the front door, laughing and hassling each other. “Who you calling ugly, motha’ fucka’?”

Then they were gone, on to the next joint, no place in particular. Lenny and Leroy, like Theo and Tatum. Teenage brothers. Couple of neighborhood badasses who got their kicks just skulking around and watching people scare. Looked alike. Dressed alike. Acted alike. People always getting them mixed up, confusing one for the other.

Theo suddenly went cold. It was a sickening thought, but he was beginning to understand his brother’s refusal to take the DNA test on a whole different level, one that had nothing to do with courage or principle or standing up to Detective Larsen. It boiled down to just one thing, the very thing the test was about: genetics.

Theo shook his head, not wanting to believe it but believing it nonetheless.

Tatum, you chickenshit son of a bitch.

Fifty-four

Jack had time enough to smell but not taste the coffee before Theo came barging into his office on Wednesday morning. He had Tatum in tow, so Jack knew it was serious.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jack, rising from behind his desk.

His secretary suddenly appeared behind the double-barreled hulk of humanity that was blocking Jack’s doorway, standing on her tiptoes and waving from the hallway to get Jack’s attention. “Knight brothers are here,” she said.

“Thanks, Maria.”

Theo closed the door and said, “Siddown, Tatum.”

Tatum took a seat, and so did Jack. No one told him to sit, but with Theo speaking to his own brother in that tone of voice, it seemed wise to anticipate.

Tatum glared at his younger brother and said, “You think now you could maybe tell me what the hell this-”

“Shut your mouth,” said Theo.

It had been a long time since Jack had seen his friend so worked up. “Theo, calm down, all right?”

“Calm down?” he said with an angry smile. “I been calming myself down all night long, and it just gets me more pissed. So don’t tell me to calm down.”

“What happened last night?” asked Jack.

“I went back to Shelby’s.”

Jack and Tatum exchanged glances, as if neither one knew where to go from there.

Theo kept talking, pacing. “I was trying to understand, why would Tatum refuse to take a DNA test to get found not guilty when his own brother got hisself off death row that way? And then it hits me: That is the reason he won’t take the DNA test.”

Tatum said, “What you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Ain’t got a clue.”

“Four years I wasted on death row. No more lies, Tatum.”

“You’re pissing me off now. Don’t be calling me no liar.”

“Then stop the lying,” said Theo, his voice rising. “Ain’t no more excuse for it. That’s why I dragged your ass all the way over here, held off talking about it till you and me both was sitting down in front of our lawyer. Tell him, Jack. Everything we say here is protected by the attorney-client privilege, right?”

“You’re both clients. But it’s two different cases. I’m a little confused as to what’s going on here.”

“Jack, let’s just agree that nothing leaves this room. Can you fucking do that for me?”

Theo’s eyes were bulging. “Sure,” Jack said in a calming voice. “This is all privileged.”

“Nothing that we say here can ever be repeated in a courtroom. No one can run out of here and tell the cops what the other one said, right?”

“That’s right,” said Jack.

Theo glared at Tatum and said, “Talk to me, brother.”

“Talk what?”

“I want the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“Was you the one who killed that clerk at Shelby’s?” Theo wasn’t shouting, but his voice was firm and harsh, and the question hit like ice water. Jack looked at Theo, then at Tatum, then back at Theo, wondering what in the world had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He expected Tatum to jump any second and grab his brother by the throat for talking such shit.

Tatum simply chuckled and said, “Wha-at?”

It was a nervous chuckle. Jack could hear the little break in his voice, and he knew Theo was on to a horrible truth that was about to change things forever. Jack looked at Tatum and said, “He wants to know if you’re the member of the Grove Lords who let him take the fall.”

Tatum gave his lawyer a look that said, Stay the hell out of this, Swyteck.

Theo was pacing again, speaking in what sounded like pure stream of consciousness. “This is what I realized last night. You refused to take the DNA test for Gerry Colletti’s murder because you was worried about a match.”

“I didn’t kill Colletti.”

“I know you didn’t. But I’m not talking about a match between your DNA and the DNA found in the dried spit they took from the back of Colletti’s suit coat. You were afraid of a match with the human hair and skin the cops scraped from under the fingernails of that convenience store clerk at Shelby’s. That kid fought like a tiger, right, Jack?”

“That’s what the crime scene suggested.”

“The forensic guys who testified at my trial said the kid fought back and put a nice scratch into the top of his attacker’s head. Got some skin and hair under his nails. My first lawyer tried to use that at trial. He asked the jury, Why no scratch on top of my client’s head if the victim had skin and hair under his nails? Too bad for me that I wasn’t arrested and examined by a doctor until seven months after the crime. Scratch could have healed in all that time. At least that’s what the prosecutor made the jury believe. But it all worked out in the end. The scrapings of skin and hair gave us a nice DNA sample. DNA wasn’t used that much at the time of my trial. Four years later, it was. When Jack came in to handle my habeas corpus petitions, he got the test, got me off death row.”

“And the only one happier than you was me,” said Tatum.

“Yeah, now I know why. I don’t understand all the details, but, Jack, help me out here. Once there’s a DNA test, the cops keep that shit around, don’t they?”

“You’re talking about CODIS,” said Jack.

“Tell him, Jack. Tell Tatum what he already knows, and what I just figured out.”

It was strange, the way this was coming off as if Jack and Theo had rehearsed it. But Jack had wondered about the real killer for almost as many years as Theo had, and now that Theo was on a roll, Jack was right with him, step for step. “CODIS is the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System,” said Jack. “If a DNA test is performed on a specimen sample taken from a crime scene, that DNA profile is entered into the forensic files of CODIS. Once I was finally able to get the test done to compare Theo’s DNA to the hair and skin sample taken from the victim, the DNA profile of the unknown killer would, as a matter of course, have been entered into the CODIS forensic database.”

“Which is exactly the reason my brother didn’t want to give his DNA profile. Even though his DNA would have proved that he didn’t kill Gerry Colletti, a simple run through the FBI’s database would have proved that he did kill the store clerk.”

A tense silence filled the room as the two brothers stared each other down.

“That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down,” Tatum said quietly.

“Oh, man,” said Jack, his response involuntary.

Tatum continued, “It was my next step up in the Grove Lords. I had to take someone out, you know, if I ever wanted to have my own turf. So Lionel, he picks out this clerk at Shelby’s. No real reason, just picked him. So, I did him.”

Theo looked ready to explode. Jack knew he had to say something before he had another homicide on his hands. “Why’d you pin it on Theo?”

“Wasn’t supposed to be no one else in the store. But when I came out, I ran past some guy on the sidewalk. I was afraid he could ID me. I had to think fast, man. I was scared, you know? So when I get back to the car, that’s when me and Lionel come up with the plan.”

“What plan?” asked Jack.

“We had to get someone else, you know. Someone else to go in that store.”

Theo’s voice shook with anger. “Someone who looked like you.”

He shook his head, his voice filled with regret. “I didn’t want it to be you, Theo. That’s what I told Lionel. All the Grove Lords dressed alike. Black pants, Miami Heat jerseys, gold chains, backward baseball caps. We could have picked almost anyone. But Lionel picked Theo.”

“And you didn’t fight him?”

“At first, yeah. I said no way. But it made sense for it to be you.”

“Bullshit, Tatum. It was dark, we all dressed alike. There were ten other Grove Lords that could have looked like you.”

“We didn’t pick you just because we looked alike. It was smarter than that.”

“Smart?” he said, almost screeching.

“You was fifteen, man. Lionel said no way you’d be charged as an adult. I was almost eighteen. No question I was looking at adult charges. So that’s how we picked you.”

Jack could hear Theo breathing in and out, the anger scorching his lungs and throat, taking his words away. Jack spoke for him. “So you served up your little brother thinking he’d get off on a juvenile charge, serving time in detention until his record was expunged at age eighteen.”

“That was the plan.”

Jack kept probing. “That guy on the sidewalk who you nearly ran over on your way out of the store-he was the eyewitness who mistakenly picked Theo out of the lineup.”

“That’s right.”

“And with a solid eyewitness, the state attorney started feeling pretty good about the case. They charged Theo as an adult, not a juvenile. And the jury nailed him for murder one.”

“Next thing I know he’s on death row,” said Tatum. “It was like a nightmare for me.”

“For you!” Theo shouted. “Fuck you, Tatum!”

“Don’t you think it was killing me, too?”

“No! You would have let me die.”

“No way was I gonna let that happen.”

“I always knew I was set up by the Grove Lords. How many conversations did you and me have between the prison glass, Tatum? The two of us wracking our brains trying to figure out who the scumbag was. We never was able to narrow it down to less than about fifty. Not once did you even hint it was you who was the killer. The whole time, you was just pretending to stand by me when I was on death row. But you would have just stood silent right to the end, let me die for something you did.”

“You know that ain’t true. What about that night I offered to confess, remember? I said I would confess if that’s what it took to get you off death row.”

“That wasn’t real, man. That was guilt talking.”

“It was real.”

Theo glared at him, then looked to his lawyer. “Tell me something, Jacko. Last time you got me a stay of execution, how close was I to getting fried?”

“Seventeen minutes.”

“You get any last-minute phone call from my brother saying, ‘Hold everything, they got the wrong man, I’m guilty, it’s me, Tatum-I’m the killer!’”

They all knew the answer, but Jack said it anyway. “No.”

Theo stepped closer, his eyes filled with hatred. “Just how fucking close were you going to cut it, brother?”

Tatum wouldn’t look at him, his gaze cast downward to his shoes. “You’re my brother,” he said, “I can make good, man.”

“Too late,” said Theo.

“No, listen to me,” he said, his voice quickening. “I’m gonna get this money, this forty-six million from Sally Fenning.”

“What, you want to buy me back, now?”

“Just give me a chance to do right by you.”

“Give me back my four years.”

“I would if I could, but I can’t.”

“That’s your problem, isn’t it?”

“I’m doing all I can. It’s a lot of money, Theo.”

“Don’t want your money.”

“A shitload of money, even split three ways.”

“Leave me out of this,” said Jack.

“I wasn’t talking about you, fool!” said Tatum.

At that moment, it was as if everything came to a halt. Jack had heard it. Theo had heard it, too. And from the look on Tatum’s face, he clearly wished he hadn’t said it.

“Three ways?” said Jack.

“Did I say three?” said Tatum. “I meant to say two.”

“No,” said Jack. “You said three, and you meant three. If I’m not the third, who is?”

Tatum’s eyes darted from Theo to Jack several times. He looked as if he wanted to say something but knew there was nothing he could say. It was out there, the words had fallen from his own lips, and now it was a known fact: Tatum already had a deal to split the money with someone. He had a partner.

“I’m outta here,” he said as he popped from his chair.

“Tatum!” said Jack, but his client was already out the door and barreling down the hallway. Jack followed. “Tatum, if you expect me to be your lawyer, we need to talk.”

Tatum stopped halfway down the corridor, wheeled on the balls of his feet, and said, “You’re fired, okay? We don’t need to talk about anything.”

“Which ones did you do?” asked Jack.

Tatum’s eyes widened. “Watch yourself, Swyteck.”

“We know you didn’t kill Colletti, because you and Theo were out fishing. So that must have been your partner’s work. Did you do the reporter or the prosecutor?”

He took a step closer, pointing a menacing finger as he spoke, but Jack didn’t back away. “You listen to me,” said Tatum. “It’s like Theo said in there. Everything we talked about is attorney-client privilege. You keep your mouth shut.”

“The privilege has exceptions.”

He gave Jack a sideways glance. “Are you threatening me?”

“I’m just telling it like it is. A lawyer can’t reveal what his client did in the past. But if a lawyer thinks his client is about to commit a future crime, the privilege doesn’t necessarily apply. From what I heard, it would seem that Sally’s ex-husband is next on your list.”

He flashed a thin smile, as if he thought it cute the way his lawyer was standing up to him. “What are you gonna do? Call the cops?”

Jack said nothing.

Tatum’s smile widened. “Didn’t think so,” he said as he turned and walked to the exit.

Jack followed past his secretary, who looked terrified by what she’d obviously overheard. When they reached the empty lobby area, Jack called to Tatum and said, “Maybe I’ll tell Miguel Rios first. Then I’ll tell the cops.”

Tatum stopped at the door. The smile was gone.

Just then, the door opened, and Kelsey walked in, arriving for work. Tatum grabbed her and pulled her into his grasp.

“Stop!” said Jack.

“Don’t move!” said Tatum.

Tatum was holding her in front of his body like a human shield, Kelsey’s eyes as wide as silver dollars. Tatum formed his hand into the shape of a gun, the index finger pointed to her temple, the thumb cocked like the hammer.

“Don’t threaten me, Swyteck.” He pulled the mock trigger, jerked her head forward as if a 9 mm slug had just shattered her skull, and then pushed her to the floor.

Kelsey rolled across the carpet and let out a blip of a scream that sounded like fear and relief combined as she went to Jack.

Tatum shot one last angry look at them. Jack glared right back as he watched his former client slam the door and then disappear behind a pane of translucent glass and the painted block letters that spelled JACK SWYTECK, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

Fifty-five

I could kill him,” said Theo.

Jack and Theo were back in Jack’s office, alone. Jack had taken a minute to calm Kelsey’s nerves and asked her to wait in the conference room while he and Theo sorted things out.

“Killing him isn’t the answer,” said Jack.

“I know that. But I at least gotta get him back in the ring, no gloves this time.”

“I understand you’re pissed,” said Jack. “I am, too. But for the time being, we have to put that aside and think clearly.”

“Think about what?”

Jack took a seat behind his desk, straightening a paper clip as he spoke. “Tatum just threatened Kelsey right before my eyes. If we don’t stop him, Sally’s ex-husband is likely to be next on the hit list. Tatum thinks that either I can’t do anything to stop him, because I was his lawyer, or that I won’t do anything, because I’m afraid. Tatum needs to think again, but that doesn’t mean the answer is to run outside and tackle him.”

“You gonna call the cops?”

“Let’s think this through first, okay?”

“Okay. Shoot.”

Jack pulled a notepad from his desk drawer, feeling as though he should be jotting things down, but he was thinking and talking too fast to write. “Let’s start at the beginning. Vivien Grasso laid it out on the table in the first meeting she had with the beneficiaries as personal representative of Sally’s estate. She flat out told us: ‘If any of the beneficiaries is thinking about bumping off the others in order to be the sole survivor, forget about it. Your motive would be obvious, and you’ll never get away with it.’”

“Tatum figured out a way around that.”

“He thinks he has. My guess is he teamed up with a partner-someone who could do the killing while he was out building alibis.”

“Like, ‘I was out fishing with my brother,’” said Theo.

“Exactly. So long as he has a workable defense, like an alibi or whatever it might be, the fact that he’s the last man standing at the end of the day won’t be enough to send him away on murder charges. He may be right about that. He may be wrong. But a forty-six-million-dollar inheritance can buy one heck of a good criminal defense lawyer.”

“One thing’s for sure,” said Theo. “I know my brother. If he’s come this far, he won’t stop.”

“Which means we need to figure out who his partner is.”

“Any guesses?”

Jack leaned back in his chair, considering it. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. It seems possible that there are two killers at work-or, at the very least, someone has gone to the trouble of trying to make it appear as though there are two killers at work.”

“How do you count two?”

“The first is the guy who called me after the prosecutor was murdered and said that no one can opt out of the game, ‘Everyone must die.’ If this guy is taken at his word, money is not his primary objective.”

“A psycho like that doesn’t sound like Tatum’s partner.”

“No. But the other killer-or, at least, the other personality-is the guy who attacked Kelsey and said he wanted Tatum to withdraw from the game.”

“Wait a sec,” said Theo. “If you’re saying that this guy is Tatum’s partner, why would he want Tatum out of the game? Seems like the opposite would be true.”

“It has to be a ruse,” said Jack. “It makes a nice cover for Tatum and his partner, doesn’t it? It would appear that Tatum is being threatened into withdrawing, but in reality Tatum and his partner are killing off the other beneficiaries so that Tatum can stand firm and inherit the jackpot.”

“You sound pretty convinced that this partner is not himself a beneficiary.”

“It only makes sense if his partner is not already a beneficiary. He wouldn’t need Tatum if he was already in the game.”

Theo rose, pacing as he thought aloud. “So, we’re looking for a friend of Tatum’s who is not a beneficiary and who is not squeamish about blood.”

Jack and Theo looked at one another, as if the name came to them simultaneously. “You thinking who I’m thinking?” asked Jack.

“Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”

“The guy who got Tatum into the game in the first place. The dirt bag who linked up Sally with Tatum.”

“Sally’s old bodyguard?” said Theo.

“Yup.”

They locked eyes, mulling it over in the silence between them. It seemed to fit. Theo asked, “Now what? You go to the cops?”

Jack shook his head. “Your brother isn’t one of my favorite people on earth, but the fact remains that everything I learned about his possible wrongdoing arose from the attorney-client relationship.”

“But I heard you say it yourself as he was walking down the hall: The privilege doesn’t apply if the client is about to commit a future crime.”

“I’m a criminal defense lawyer, Theo. I’d better be damn sure about my facts before I breach the attorney-client privilege for any reason.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Not sure enough. I can’t just run to the police and tell them, hey, my client had a slip of the tongue and said let’s split the pot three ways instead of two ways, and based upon that I think he may have conspired with Sally’s old bodyguard to kill off the other beneficiaries.”

“So what do we do?”

“Basically, I do whatever I can to let you even the score with your worthless brother. I help you to help yourself.”

“I’m listening.”

“I think you should pay a visit to Sally’s old bodyguard.”

He smiled wryly, curling his right hand into a fist, massaging it with his left. “It would be my pleasure.”

“No rough stuff,” said Jack.

“Then what is it you want me to do?”

“Just follow my plan.”

“Your plan?” he said with a chuckle. “Last time you had a plan, I ended up kidnapped by some Russian-speaking Latina babe, locked in a seedy hotel room, and chained to a bedpost for three days.”

“And your complaint would be…?”

Theo’s smile widened as he reconsidered. “You the man, Jack. What’s the plan?”

Fifty-six

They settled on a short frame Smith amp; Wesson revolver with a polished nickel barrel.

It had taken only a few minutes for Jack and Theo to formulate their strategy. Kelsey wanted to help, and since she was the one whom Tatum had threatened most directly, Jack figured that she deserved a shot at redemption. She agreed to take a ride with Theo over to a gun shop on Biscayne Boulevard and point out the gun that most closely resembled the one her attacker had shoved into her face outside the law school library.

“That’s the one,” said Kelsey. She was pointing through the locked glass door on the display cabinet.

“You sure?” asked Theo.

“It was dark outside, and the guy was wearing a mask. But that gun was right in my face, and there was enough light from the library to see at least that much. It may not have been that exact model, but it was one just like it.”

“Thanks,” said Theo. “That’s just what I needed. You want me to drive you home?”

“No, my car’s still on the street by Jack’s office. Could you drop me off there?”

“No problem.”

Jack was at the watercooler when Kelsey returned to his office. She said she’d forgotten something in her desk, but Jack walked her to her car, sensing that more important things were on her mind. They were standing at the curb between her parked car and a black olive tree that had sprouted from a square landscaping hole in the sidewalk.

“Would it surprise you to hear that I was coming into the office this morning to clean out my desk?”

“No one asked you to quit.”

“No one asked me to stay.”

Though it hadn’t been a conscious decision on his part, he couldn’t deny the inference she’d drawn.

Kelsey said, “I’m sorry for the way I acted in court the other day, corralling you at the end of the hearing. It wasn’t very professional.”

“I understand.”

“Do you, really? Or are you just saying that?”

“I guess it is getting pretty crazy.”

“Crazy? Jack, I got attacked at gunpoint walking home from the law library by some creep who threatened to drown my son. Today, your client grabbed me and pretended to blow my brains out. I don’t blame you for any of that, but here’s the part that’s really nuts: I still walk around feeling as though I have something I need to make up to you.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel that way.”

Her tone softened, but her expression was pained. “I want us to get past this-this awkwardness that’s come between us ever since that reporter called me about Tatum.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened, but I can’t pretend it didn’t.”

“She tricked me. I slipped up.”

“It was the kind of slipup that could have landed our client in jail.”

“Which is apparently where he belongs.”

“Which is not at all the point.”

“I know. I made a mistake. I said I was sorry.”

Jack lowered his eyes and looked away. Kelsey stepped closer, cocking her head a little to catch his gaze. “Hey,” she said with a weak smile. “If you’re about to say ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry,’ I think I might strangle you.”

The way she was looking at him, he knew that honesty was the only option. “Kelsey, I-”

“Don’t,” she said.

“It’s important. All I’m trying to say is that for five years I was married to a woman who heard my every secret. Personal, professional-it didn’t matter. I trusted her completely, and we still fell apart. What chance does a relationship have when that trust is destroyed before we even get started?”

A woman passed on the sidewalk while walking her cocker spaniel. She nodded hello, tugged her dog away from Jack’s shoe, and kept walking.

Kelsey looked at Jack and said, “You really like her, don’t you?”

“Never saw her before.”

“I didn’t mean her. I meant Sally’s sister. Rene.”

Jack shrugged, not sure what to say.

Kelsey drew a deep breath, then let out what sounded like a sigh of resignation. “You’re a good guy, Jack. Frankly, I think this trust issue you’ve latched on to is an intellectual game you’re playing because you’re afraid to follow anything that doesn’t make intellectual sense. But you deserve to have what you want, even if you aren’t very good at figuring out why you really want it.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“I hope it works out for you.”

“Not sure there’s anything to it yet.”

“There will be.”

He gave her a quizzical look, wondering how it was that women saw things in other women that men couldn’t find with a microscope.

“I’ll still do my part to make your plan work. Whatever you and Theo need.” She reached out as if she were about to brush his cheek, then pulled back. “See you around, Jack.”

“Yeah. See you.”

He watched as she got into her car and started the engine. He offered a little wave as she drove off. Maybe she’d seen it, maybe she hadn’t. But the hole in his gut and the emptiness he felt wasn’t really about her. It wasn’t about Rene, either.

Damn, he said to himself. I’m really sorry, Nate.

Fifty-seven

Theo was in the mood for acting. This was not to be confused with his frequent cravings for action, which usually involved an ample supply of massage oil, edible panties, and glow-in-the-dark, double-extra-large condoms (when it came to Theo getting lucky, luck had nothing to do with it). Rather, he was preparing himself to act in the “I’d like to thank the Academy” sense of the word, as in displaying his skills as an actor.

You talkin’ to me?

Even without the cameras rolling, there was no truer form of art than turning a fraud like Tatum’s friend Javier into an honest glob of Jell-O.

“Can I come in?” asked Theo. He was standing on the front step. Javier was on the other side of the screen door, wearing only exercise shorts, no shirt. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and sleeping past noon was probably pretty normal for a bouncer at a South Beach club. It was obvious that he’d done some serious weight lifting in his teens and early twenties, probably some steroids, too, but he was starting to turn that proverbial corner on the fast track to fatville. A thick gold chain hung around his neck, and Theo noticed that the skin on his pecs was red and irritated, like the guys at the gym who had their chest waxed for the girls who didn’t like hair.

Javier gave him a hard look, as if trying to figure out if he knew him. “You look an awful lot like my buddy Tatum. You must be his pain-in-the-ass little brother.”

“Theo’s the name. It’s time you and me talked.”

“What about?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

“The kind you can’t do standing on the front porch.”

He gave a little smile, then let Theo in and led him back to the kitchen. Theo pulled up a bar stool as Javier cleared the counter of four big plastic jugs filled with powered protein and body-building supplements.

“Beer?” asked Javier.

“No, thanks. Already had breakfast.”

Theo did a quick scan of the apartment as Javier fetched himself a brew from the refrigerator. A new big-screen television dominated the room just off the kitchen. The rest of the furniture looked as though it had come with the dumpy apartment. If Javier was into anything illegal, he was either a small-time player or a high roller who hid success extremely well.

Javier popped open a beer for himself, then took a seat on the opposite side of the counter. “So, what’s up?”

“I’ve reconsidered Tatum’s offer.”

He drank from the can, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What offer?”

“Sally Fenning’s forty-six million.”

“What about it?”

He narrowed his eyes, ready to assess Javier’s reaction to his next line. “I’ve decided that I’m okay with a one-third cut.”

“Yeah,” he said, scoffing. “Who wouldn’t be?”

“So, you’re okay with it?”

He took another drink, then belched. “Okay with what, dude?”

“A three-way split instead of two-way?”

He smiled quizzically. “You know something I don’t know?”

Theo had come here feeling pretty confident about his bluff, but he was beginning to wonder if Javier really was his brother’s partner.

“You playing dumb on me, Javier?”

He chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the aluminum can in his fist. “Do I look like I’m playing dumb?”

No, thought Theo, and that was the problem. He looked just plain dumb, and it was throwing a crimp into Jack’s plan. The whole idea had been for Theo to come here bluffing, trying to find out if Sally’s bodyguard was indeed Tatum’s partner. But if their theory was correct, Theo should have been making more headway with this blockhead.

Unless he’s really playing it cool.

The telephone rang. “Hold your thought,” said Javier. He pitched his empty can into the trash and started across the kitchen.

Theo watched him reach for the phone, and he was suddenly uneasy about the way this plan of Jack’s was unfolding. What if Javier was just playing it cool? What if that was Tatum on the line, calling to tell him that Theo can’t be trusted-that Theo has to go?

He took another quick and dirty look around the room, his pulse quickening as his gaze settled on the assortment of kitchen knives in the butcher block beside the stove.

“Hello,” he heard Javier say into the telephone, and Theo wondered if the caller on the other end of the line was who he hoped it was, or who he feared it was.

Fifty-eight

The big question was what to do about Miguel Rios.

Jack hadn’t been bluffing entirely in that final exchange in his office, when he’d warned Tatum that Sally’s ex-husband would be the first to know about Tatum’s apparent “two-way split” with a partner who was likely as dangerous as he was mysterious. Implicit in the threat, however, was the assumption that Jack would first have to come around to the view that breaching the attorney-client privilege was the ethical and proper thing to do. That, of course, was a huge assumption. The issue wasn’t whether his client (or former client, it didn’t make any difference) had killed in the past. Jack could never reveal that information, not even if he had a sworn confession, not without being disbarred. The question was whether Tatum was going to kill again in the future. Unless Theo hit a home run in his meeting with Javier, Jack wasn’t anywhere near close enough to establishing that his client was about to commit another murder and that the life of an innocent person was in imminent danger. Certainly he didn’t have the level of proof required for a criminal defense lawyer to take the extraordinary step of betraying his own client’s confidences.

Still, morality played a role here. He at least wanted to meet with Miguel, if for no other reason than to make sure that one of Sally’s few remaining heirs had a healthy appreciation of just how much danger he was in.

“You think I’m not shittin’ bricks already?” said Miguel.

Jack was seated on the edge of the couch, watching Miguel pace across the rug. Miguel hadn’t been able to sit down since inviting Jack into his living room. He spoke fast and with an edge to his voice, and Jack could understand the nervousness.

“I guess it doesn’t take a genius to know what’s going on,” said Jack.

“Well, what is your client doing?”

Jack wasn’t sure what to say. There wasn’t much he could say, but he did his best. “I no longer represent Tatum.”

“Why not?”

“That’s all I can tell you.”

Miguel finally stopped pacing. He looked Jack in the eye, seeming to sense that Jack was trying to convey more. And Jack was indeed sending a message. It was like at trial, when a criminal defense lawyer knew that his client was committing perjury. Some lawyers believed that the only ethical response of the lawyer was to stand aside and let the client tell his own story, no involvement by the lawyer. No lawyer could stand up and say, “My client is lying,” but the moment he clammed up and did nothing to elicit any further testimony from his own client, anyone who knew the rules knew exactly what was going on.

Miguel was a cop, and Jack hoped he was savvy enough to pick up the similar drift he was casting across his living room.

“Are you saying…”

“I told you, that’s all I can say.”

Miguel lowered himself against the arm of the couch, then bounced back up and started pacing again. “This is just great. First Rudsky. Then Meadows. Then Colletti. That leaves me in the running with Tatum Knight, who scared me from the first time I saw him. And this Alan Sirap, which is apparently an alias for Sally’s stalker. And need I remind you that I still think Sally’s stalker is the man who killed our daughter?”

“You seem to have a pretty firm grasp of the picture.”

“Better than you think. Have a listen to this.”

He walked across the room to his stereo on the wall unit, then pulled a cassette tape from its plastic case. “I gave this to the police this morning. It’s a recording of a message I received on my answering machine.”

“This morning?”

“Yeah. It came around eight-thirty-eight thirty-two A.M. according to my machine.”

Jack didn’t say anything, but he made a mental note that Tatum had been in the car with Theo en route to his office at that time. He wondered where Javier had been.

Miguel kept talking as he adjusted the controls on the tape recorder. “I was in the shower when the call came, so the machine picked up. Scared the crap out of me when I listened to it. Called the cops right away. That’s why I took the day off. Detective Larsen wants me home to take the call in case he calls again.”

“Was the voice at all familiar?”

“Nah. It’s disguised. Here, have a listen.” He pushed the Play button, then stepped back from the stereo. The speakers hissed with silence, followed by a crackle or two, and then Miguel’s voice on tape.

“Hi, this is Miguel. Leave a message at the tone.”

There was a beep, then nothing. Jack glanced at Miguel, who seemed to signal with his eyes that it was coming. It took several moments, then finally the silence was broken.

“You’re next, Miguel. But you knew that, right?”

It chilled Jack to hear it, and he could only imagine how it had made Miguel feel. That Jack had heard the voice before made it all the more scary. It was the same mechanical, hollow-sounding voice from his own phone call, the lunatic on the line who’d told him that

“Everyone must die.” But there was one big difference. He sounded much more agitated in Miguel’s message.

“Don’t even think about dropping out of the game, asshole. It won’t help. Didn’t help Mason Rudsky, did it? It’s like I told Swyteck-every last one of you will die. And you know why? Because that’s what Sally wanted. She didn’t have the guts to say it, much less do it. But I know what she really wanted. She wanted to punish you. And now it’s up to me to give you bastards the punishment you deserve. Chew on that, Mikey. The surviving heir gets forty-six million dollars. Too fucking bad there won’t be any. None. No survivors.”

The speakers hissed again, marking the end of the recording. Miguel switched off the cassette player. He seemed to be waiting for Jack to say something, but it hardly seemed necessary. It was just as Jack had suspected. The killer saw himself as Sally’s protector and avenger. Money was not his motivation. He wanted justice for Sally, the sick kind of justice that was born only of a sick kind of love. The message was perfectly clear.

Sally’s stalker was back-with a vengeance.

Fifty-nine

Txheo was able to overhear enough of the bodyguard’s telephone conversation in the kitchen to know that it wasn’t Tatum on the line. It was Kelsey, exactly according to plan.

It wasn’t part of Jack’s overall strategy, however. This was something Theo had cooked up for Kelsey’s benefit on the way over to the Biscayne Guns amp; Ammo Shop. If there was one thing Theo hated more than anything, it was a thug who threatened children. Theo promised Kelsey that, with her help, he’d tried to find out if the bodyguard was the bastard who’d stuck the gun in her face and threatened her son. All she had to do was to call Javier while Theo was over there visiting and tell him she’s been thinking about him ever since they met that night at Club Vertigo. She’d have to tie him up for a good ten or fifteen minutes, lay it on pretty thick-how she thought it was really sweet and respectful the way he was trying not to look at her mouth throughout their conversation because of his addiction to porn, how it’s really tough to find a guy that thoughtful in Miami, especially one who’s even cuter than the Rock.

“You really think so?” Javier said into the phone with a boyish grin.

Theo had to get out of the room, not simply to keep himself from laughing out loud, but because it was part of the plan. He tapped Javier on the shoulder and said, “Bathroom?”

Javier just waved, as if afraid that even a curt “Thatta-way” might break his rapport with Kelsey.

Theo started down the hall, confident that Kelsey could keep this loser tied up forever in the futile hope of voice sex.

Theo walked right past the bathroom and into lover boy’s bedroom. Kelsey had promised to beep him on his vibrating pager before she hung up with the bodyguard, which would give Theo time to get back to the kitchen before Javier could catch him snooping.

He was looking for the gun. Kelsey wasn’t able to get a look at her attacker’s face, nor could she ID his voice, since he spoke with what sounded like a wad of cotton in his mouth. But that gun was right before her eyes-the gun that looked like the one she’d selected at the gun shop with Theo that morning, a short frame Smith amp; Wesson revolver with a polished nickel barrel.

There was no way to know for certain where a gun owner might keep his weapon, but with a thug like Javier, a single guy with no kids in the house, it seemed reasonable to guess that he’d keep it someplace like a nightstand, well within reach if he were surprised in the middle of the night. It was a longshot, to be sure, but if Theo found any kind of weapon that remotely resembled a short frame Smith amp; Wesson, there would be hell to pay.

The bedroom door was open, and Theo entered quietly. There were no draperies on the lone window, only mini-blinds, and the bands of morning sunlight streaming through the slats created a zebra-stripe effect across the floor, the dresser, and the unmade bed. It was a disorienting pattern, but Theo forced his eyes to adjust rather than switch on the lamp. With the door open, he could still hear Javier talking on the phone to Kelsey, which gave him extra comfort. He crossed the room, his footfalls muffled by the thick wall-to-wall carpet. He stepped around the empty pizza delivery box on the floor beside the bed, moved quickly to the nightstand, and opened the top drawer.

He started at the sight of a cockroach staring back at him, but it scurried away in an instant. Inside the drawer was just a half-empty bag of potato chips, some loose coins, and the crumbled remnants of countless other snack foods that Javier didn’t seem to mind sharing with his six-legged friends. Theo closed the top drawer and opened the bottom one. It was cluttered with junk-a disposable camera and film, old magazines, videocassettes. But no gun.

Theo went to the dresser. The top drawer was underwear and socks, as good a place as any to store a gun. But it wasn’t there. Not in the middle or bottom drawers, either.

What the hell kind of a bodyguard has no gun?

He turned and looked at the bed. It was unmade, so he could see the slightest separation between the mattress and the box spring. It would make sense, he realized-easily accessible to a man caught unawares while sleeping. He shoved his hand into the void, then stopped as his fingers touched the cold metal. Pay dirt.

He grasped the handle and pulled out the gun, his heart thumping at the expected sight of a Smith amp; Wesson revolver with a polished nickel barrel. But it wasn’t the gun Kelsey had described. It was totally black, not even a revolver. Theo had seen enough guns to recognize it as a Glock 9mm pistol. Even Kelsey, someone completely unfamiliar with handguns, could easily distinguish between a nickel-plated revolver and a black pistol.

Of course, no one said that this was the only gun in the house.

Theo could still hear Javier talking in the kitchen. Kelsey was doing a nice job of keeping him occupied. He swept the room with his gaze and then decided to check the closet. He slid the mirrored door open, then stopped cold. He’d expected to see clothes hanging inside, but the entire closet was lined with shelves, floor to ceiling, and on each shelf was a row of videocassette cases arranged with the spine facing out. They looked identical, black plastic cases with a white label on the spine. Each label had only one word on it, and they were arranged in alphabetical order. Alicia. Amanda. Brittany. Two tapes for Caitlin. Four for Pauline. Hundreds of tapes, each with a woman’s name on it.

Theo wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but it soon dawned on him. Jack had told him about the camera bracket that he’d found in the attic at Sally’s old apartment. He scanned the rows of videocassettes, searching for a case with the name Sally on it. But the bottom shelf ended at “P.” The second half of the alphabet must have been stored somewhere else.

The silent pager on his belt vibrated. It was the previously agreed-upon signal from Kelsey that she was running out of things to say to Javier and that their conversation would soon come to an end. He stuffed Javier’s pistol into his waistline, thinking he might need it. Then he grabbed one of the tapes at random and shoved it inside his jacket, just so that he could later test his theory. He quickly but quietly left the bedroom, hurried down the hall to the bathroom, and shut the door. He dialed Jack’s cell phone, eager to test his thinking.

“It’s me,” said Theo.

“What’s up?”

He hesitated, as if giving himself a moment to absorb his own discovery. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure of it, but why else would a guy like Javier have a closet full of videocassette tapes with the name of a different woman on each one?

“You want to give me odds?” asked Theo.

“Odds on what?” said Jack.

“I’ll take your five to my one that Sally Fenning’s stalker was able to get himself hired as her bodyguard.”

Sixty

Jack kept the telephone conversation short. Theo had laid out his findings quickly, and Jack was eager to put the question to Sally’s ex-husband: Could Javier-the man who became her bodyguard-have been her stalker, the man who murdered their daughter?

Miguel sat on the edge of the couch, staring pensively into the steeple he’d formed at the bridge of his nose with his index fingers. Jack watched his expression tighten, his face grow redder.

“Are you okay?” asked Jack.

“I can’t believe it,” he said in a low, angry voice.

“It’s still just a theory for now. But we know Sally was being stalked. We know that someone was probably videotaping her from the attic over her bedroom. And now we find a stash of videotapes in her bodyguard’s closet.”

Miguel didn’t answer. He seemed to be taking it all in.

Jack continued, “It fits with the message you got on your answering machine this morning, too.”

“How do you mean?”

“He was her bodyguard. Her protector in life. The guy who left that message seems to be playing the same role. Protecting her, avenging her death.”

“Should we call the cops?”

“Not yet. Theo wants to probe a little more, see if he can get Javier to cough up the tape with Sally’s name on it. We haven’t found it yet, but-”

“And you never will,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“What idiot would be stupid enough to keep that tape around this long, after all that’s happened?”

“You’d be surprised. It’s like collecting trophies for some of these guys. They keep jewelry from their victims, snippets of hair, clothing, all sorts of things that a rational person would burn at the first opportunity. But that’s why I say we should let Theo press him a little more. You call the cops, I guarantee that tape will disappear.”

He shook his head slowly and said, “How could she hire that creep as her bodyguard?”

“She was fooled. She never saw her stalker. So when he came applying for a job as her bodyguard years later, she didn’t have any reason to make the connection.”

He looked down, gnawing his lower lip. “I don’t believe that for a minute. No way Sally was fooled.”

“Well, if she wasn’t fooled, then that would mean she knowingly hired the man who…”

Miguel’s eyes were smoldering. “Now you get it, don’t you? Can you imagine being so cock crazy that you cover up for the guy who murdered your own daughter?”

Jack took a half-step back. “That’s a pretty big leap you’re making. You’re saying she had a thing for her stalker?”

“I didn’t say he started out as her stalker. He became her stalker. It’s like I thought all along. The guy started stalking her after she dumped him or cooled off the relationship or something like that. I knew that bitch was seeing someone. I always knew it.”

Jack paused, perplexed by his response. “Wait a minute. The first time you and I talked, you told me the same thing you told the police in their investigation into your daughter’s murder. You said that Sally never told you or anyone else that she was being stalked until after the murder.”

“Yeah, so?”

“That seems inconsistent with what you just said-that you knew Sally was seeing someone. That you always knew it.”

Miguel narrowed his eyes, seeming to resent the way Jack was picking apart his words. “You fucking lawyers, always trying to twist things.”

“I’m just trying to reconcile your own statements, that’s all.”

“All I meant was, you know-when I said that I knew she was having an affair, I didn’t realize she was a cheater until after our daughter was murdered, after Sally claimed that she was being stalked.”

“No, that’s what you said the last time we talked. What you just said was different. You said you always knew it.”

“What do you want from me, Swyteck? You like playing these little word games? Yeah, I said always. Ever since our daughter was found dead and Sally came up with this stalker story, I always had my doubts. That’s always. I didn’t mean from the beginning of the fucking world.”

Jack thought for a second, figured maybe he had pressed too hard. “Okay, gotcha.”

“I had my doubts, all right? I always had my doubts as to whether she was speaking the truth when she said she didn’t know who her stalker was. The prosecutor had the same doubts after she failed the polygraph.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“Maybe I should remind you that I was the one who passed the polygraph when the cops asked me three different ways if I murdered my daughter, stabbed my daughter, or hurt my daughter in any way.”

Jack let his gaze linger. Miguel was starting to sound like the many clients he’d visited in prison, the ones who proclaimed their innocence a little too forcefully.

Miguel said, “I’d love to sit and talk all day, but I got some things I gotta do.”

“Sure,” said Jack. “Thanks for your time.”

“You bet.”

Miguel walked him through the living room, through the enclosed front porch that Miguel had converted into an office area. Jack didn’t stare, but he quietly took it all in as they headed for the door. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but his gut was suddenly telling him to learn as much about Miguel as he possibly could, right down to the paint color on the walls and the type of computer he owned.

Miguel opened the door, and Jack stepped out. “Call me if there’s anything I can do for you.”

“I will,” said Miguel.

The door closed, and as Jack started down the sidewalk, he had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t be hearing from Miguel. Not anytime soon.

Sixty-one

Javier was sitting in the TV room when Theo returned to the kitchen. Theo walked around the bar stools, pulled up a chair, and straddled it, his arms resting atop the backrest. Javier was no small man, but Theo still dwarfed him, not with size but attitude.

“So, how’s our friend Kelsey?” asked Theo.

The goofy grin slid off Javier’s face. “You know her?”

“Know her? I’m the one who told her to give you a call.”

“You? Well, hey-thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, moron. You didn’t think that was real, did you?”

“Were you listening to us?”

“Hell no. I scripted it. It was Kelsey’s job to drag you off to fantasy land, so I’d have time to look around your bedroom.”

His mouth fell open, but the words were a few seconds behind. “You went in my room?”

Theo shot him a look that would have sent most men running. “If there’s one thing I hate more than a guy who threatens a single mother, it’s a guy who threatens her kid. So, where is it, lover boy? Where’d you hide the revolver with the polished nickel finish? The one you shoved in Kelsey’s face.”

Javier looked as if he were about to explode. He started to rise, then stopped.

“Sit the fuck down,” said Theo as he took aim with the borrowed pistol.

“Hey, that’s mine.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? Guns make really shitty pets. Turn on you in a minute.”

“Be careful, all right? That thing’s loaded.”

“I know. I can tell from the weight.” It was a nice way to let Javier know he was no stranger to guns with a magazine full of ammunition.

Javier settled back into the couch, his eyes darting nervously from the stern expression on Theo’s face to the black hole at the end of the barrel.

Theo said, “I think I will have that drink you offered earlier. Not beer, though.”

Javier pointed with a nod toward the liquor cabinet. “Help yourself.”

Theo rose and walked to the cabinet, keeping one eye and the gun trained on Javier at all times. “Let’s see what you got here,” he said as he sorted through the variety of bottles. “Scotch. Rum. Bourbon-if you can call this bourbon. My grandma used better liquor than this to make bourbon balls at Christmas.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

He nodded, smiling on one side of his mouth only. “Sit tight, friend. I’ll teach you a thing or two about begging.”

Javier sank a few inches into the couch.

Theo checked the labels on a few more bottles, then selected one. “Here we go. One-fifty-proof vodka. Now that’s what I call a drink. One for you, lover boy?”

“No, thanks.”

Theo walked toward him, unscrewed the cap, and shoved the gun into Javier’s cheek. “I’d really like you to have a drink.”

“Whatever you say.”

Theo poured the vodka onto Javier’s head, emptying almost the entire two-liter bottle until Javier and the couch were soaked.

“Say when,” said Theo.

Javier was silent. Theo stopped the shower with about an ounce remaining in the bottle. Then he went back to his chair and poured the remaining vodka into a little puddle on the cocktail table in front of him. He pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and said, “You can always tell the good stuff. True one-fifty vodka should burn with a nice blue flame.”

Javier went rigid. Theo put the lighter to the spilled vodka, then gave it a flick. It burst into a blue flame that danced atop the cocktail table. Javier jerked back against the sofa, getting as far away as he could. Theo let it burn for about a minute, watching Javier sweat through his vodka-soaked pores. Then he slapped the table with the palm of his hand and extinguished the flame with a loud crack that nearly made Javier jump from his seat.

He aimed the gun at Javier’s left eye and asked, “You a smart guy, Javier?”

“What?”

“You got a brain in your head? I just want to know.”

“People say I’m pretty smart, yeah.”

“Good. Because there’s something I want you to figure out for me. You think you can do that?”

He shrugged, saying nothing.

“I asked you a question,” said Theo, his voice gaining force. “Can you do that for me?”

“Sure,” said Javier, his voice quaking. “Whatever you want.”

“Let’s say I start your house on fire.”

“Man, please-”

“Shut up!” his voice boomed. “You let me finish, and don’t interrupt. Got it?”

Javier nodded.

Theo softened his tone, but it only seemed to put Javier even more on edge. “Let’s say I start your house on fire. And let’s also say you’re in it.”

Javier was struggling to show no reaction, his left eye twitching. Theo said, “This is just hypothetical, okay, lover boy? Now, once the fire’s out, people are gonna say things like, ‘Hey, you hear Javier’s house burned down?’ And then some guy will say back, ‘Yeah, I hear he burned up with it.’” Theo scratched his head and said, “I just don’t get that, do you?”

Javier looked confused. “Get what?”

“Listen to what I’m saying, numb nuts. Your house burns down, but you burn up. What the hell’s with that? Do the fires burn in different directions? Do the flames somehow magically meet in the middle? And if they do, at what point do you start burning down and the house start burning up?”

Theo flicked his lighter, let the flame spike into the air. The look of fear on Javier’s face was instantaneous, as if he was suddenly aware of how flammable he was, soaked with one-hundred-fifty-proof vodka.

“Watch that lighter, okay?” said Javier. “Please, don’t burn me.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let you burn long. Maybe thirty seconds, tops, before I have to put a bullet in your head. Neighbors and what not. Can’t have you running around the living room screaming like a wild banshee. Flaming, no less.” His lips curled into a sinister smile. “Flaming wild banshee. I like that. Great name for a drink. One-fifty vodka and maybe a sliced jalapeño pepper. I’m a fucking genius, don’t you think?”

“Sure, man. Whatever you say. Just put the lighter away, okay?”

Theo sat back, his smile fading. Theo had a disarming smile, and it came naturally. But he could look as bad as Tatum if he put his mind to it, and at that moment he was doing his very best to be exactly like his older brother. “Tell me how you picked the name Alan Sirap, jerk-off.”

“Who?”

“The phony name you passed along to Sally Fenning over the Internet.”

“I swear to God, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Then why’d you videotape her?”

“What videotape?”

“I saw your little library, all those tapes in your closet. Didn’t see one for Sally, but I’m sure we’ll find it here some-”

“That’s not-”

“Shut up!” Theo shouted. “What did I say about interrupting me?”

“I’m sorry, okay? But-”

“Don’t give me no lip, asshole. I’ll bet you weren’t even her bodyguard. You probably didn’t even work for her, did you? What were you, her self-appointed bodyguard? Bodyguard is a nice way of saying you were her stalker?”

Javier was turning ash white.

Theo flicked his cigarette lighter, then adjusted the flame upward until it was shooting a six-inch tongue of fire. “Show me your tape of Sally.”

“There is no-”

“I’ll turn you to toast, man.”

“I’m telling you, there is no tape.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not lying! Please, don’t burn me, man. Just don’t burn me!”

Theo extinguished the lighter, then ripped the “Pauline” tape from inside his coat and threw it at him. “Play it. Let’s see your work.”

“This isn’t my work.”

“Play it!” he shouted.

“Okay, okay.” Javier took the tape, rose slowly, and walked to the television. Theo kept his gun trained on his head with every step. He inserted the tape into the VCR and adjusted the television. The screen flickered, then turned blue. Theo waited anxiously, expecting to see a crude surveillance tape of an unsuspecting woman sleeping in her bed or sitting on her toilet-a woman named Pauline whom this pervert had stalked with a hidden camera, just as he’d stalked Sally.

But it was something else entirely. Theo heard a woman moaning, then a man grunting as the image on screen came into focus. A gorgeous blonde was lying on her back, floating naked atop a waterbed, her legs pointing up to the ceiling in the shape of a V with stiletto heels. Some guy with incredibly strong hips was directly underneath her, doing the absolute best he could in one of those painful front-to-back positions that made sense only if sex was intended to be fun strictly for viewers and not participants.

“That’s Pauline Preston,” said Theo.

“You know her?”

“She’s one of my favorites.”

“I got four of hers. Buddy of mine copies the tapes for me over at the video store. I keep them alphabetical by actress. Titles never mean anything to me.”

“Are you telling me that every tape on those shelves in your bedroom closet is bootleg porn?”

“It’s kind of a hobby of mine.”

“A hobby? There must be a hundred tapes in there.”

“Okay, it gets a little out of control sometimes. I admit it. I even told your buddy Jack when we met over at Club Vertigo. I think I’m-”

Theo waited for him to finish, but Javier was suddenly glued to the set. It seemed that Pauline needed a shower, but somehow she’d lost her way and managed to wander straight into the locker room of a men’s rugby team.

“You think you’re what?” asked Theo.

“I’m addicted,” he said in a weak voice, unable to tear his gaze away from the screen. “I’m totally addicted to this shit.”

Theo gave a little shrug and said, “Isn’t everybody?”

Sixty-two

You threatened to burn him alive?” said Jack. He was stopped in his car at a traffic light, one hand on his cellular, the other pressed between his eyes as if to stave off a migraine.

Theo said, “It’s not like I doused him with gasoline or anything. I used vodka. It’s like that game you play as a kid where you squirt lighter fluid on your hand and then start it on fire.”

“I think I missed that game,” said Jack.

“The fuel burns, but your arm doesn’t. Anyway, worst that would have happened to lover boy was like a bad sunburn. But he was too stupid to know that, so he told me everything.”

Jack wasn’t so sure that the stunt was as harmless as Theo thought it was. “Theo, no more tricks like that, okay?”

“No need for it now. Turns out that the videotapes weren’t surveillance tapes after all. They’re all just bootleg porn.”

“What?”

“Lover boy is quite the pervert, but he’s no stalker. At least he wasn’t Sally’s stalker. I’m telling you, there’s nothing like the threat of fire to drag the truth out of someone. He’s definitely not Alan Sirap.”

A misty rain was starting to fall, hard enough for little beads to gather on Jack’s windshield and then zigzag their way down to the wipers. Crazy Miami weather, sunny one minute, raining the next. “He could still be Tatum’s partner,” said Jack.

“No way. Tatum wouldn’t have a partner this stupid.”

“You may be right. To tell you the truth, I’m starting to get a gut feeling about Miguel.”

“How do you mean?”

The light changed, and he was about to pull into the intersection, but an ambulance was cruising toward him from the opposite direction. Jack stayed put, catching sight of the backward painted letters on the front hood of the emergency vehicle as it flew past him.

And that was when it suddenly came clear in his mind.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“What?” asked Theo.

“I’m going back to Miguel’s house.”

“Jack, what’s going on?”

“There’s something I want to check out.”

“You want me to help?”

“That’s okay. If I need a fire, I’ll rub two sticks together.”

“That was harsh.”

“I’ll call you.” Jack ended the call and pulled a U-turn. In less than five minutes he was back on Miguel’s front step. He had to knock three times before Miguel answered.

“Back so soon?” he said as he opened the door.

“I think I left my sunglasses here.”

“I didn’t see them, but I’ll take a look.”

“Mind if I wait inside? It’s starting to rain out here.”

He hesitated, as if more than a little suspicious, then acquiesced.

“Sure. Wait right here.”

Jack stepped inside and closed the door. Like many Florida houses built in the sixties, Miguel’s house had no true foyer. The front door opened to what was originally a screened-in porch, but Miguel had enclosed it and converted it into a small home office space.

Out of the corner of his eye Jack could see Miguel in the living room as he checked for sunglasses behind the couch cushions, on the table, in the general area where Jack was seated. Jack had only a few seconds, which was more than sufficient. The computer was nearby, and all he needed was to get a look at the screen from the right angle. He took two steps forward, stole a quick glance, and froze.

The computer was turned off, and Jack had approached it in the same way Miguel had undoubtedly approached it day after day, before switching it on. The screen was black, but there was a reflection on the glass. Directly behind the computer was a typical work of framed commercial art that was sold at places like Z-Gallery, a huge replica of an Art Nouveau poster for the 1900 World’s Fair-Exposition Universelle. Across the top in big arching letters was the name of the host city, which reflected backward on the screen: S-I-R-A-P. Paris.

In a flash, Jack envisioned Miguel at his computer late one night, posing as the stalker and communicating in an Internet chat room with his ex-wife Sally in Africa. She suddenly asked for his name. Of course he couldn’t give his real name. He conjured up a bogus name, any old name that popped into his head. Without even realizing it, he typed in the name he’d seen in the reflection of his computer screen day after day, week after week, month after month, every time he approached that black screen and switched on the power. The name had been planted in his unconscious mind, just as it had been planted in Jack’s mind a few minutes earlier, the first time Jack had passed through Miguel’s Florida room on his way out the door, though it hadn’t really registered until he spotted that passing emergency vehicle with the backward letters-Y-C-N-E-G-R-E-M-E-painted across the hood.

“Sirap,” he said, the word coming like a reflex.

Jack heard the cocking of a pistol. Before he could move, the barrel of a gun was pressed to the back of his head.

“Don’t move.” It was Miguel’s voice, but it was from the opposite side of the room. Miguel had entered from the stairwell that led to the upstairs bedroom. Jack couldn’t see the gunman behind him, but it was obvious that someone other than Miguel was pressing the gun against the back of his head.

“Turn this way,” said Miguel. “Slowly.”

Jack turned, the gunman still behind him, the gun still at his head.

Jack was staring straight at Miguel. He, too, was pointing a gun at Jack.

“I knew it was you,” said Jack. “Sally cheated on you once, right before you were married. She admitted that much on the videotaped interview with the prosecutor. Was she cheating on you again, Miguel, is that what you were afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything right now, Swyteck.”

He felt the gun press more firmly against the base of his skull. He needed to buy time, so he kept talking. “Interesting thing about that surveillance camera over the bed in your old house. There were no windows in the attic. It had to be installed by someone with access to the house-regular access, someone who could get up and down to change tapes. Got any ideas on who that might be, Miguel?”

“Just like I told the police. I got no idea.”

“I think it was someone who lived there,” Jack said, his glare tightening. “You were stalking your own wife, weren’t you. What was the plan, Miguel? Scare her so badly that she stops cheating on you?”

Miguel met his stare, but his expression tightened with anger. “Is that too much to ask for? A wife who doesn’t cheat on you?”

“That’s no excuse for killing your own daughter.”

“Yeah,” he said, scoffing. “That.”

The cold reaction confirmed Jack’s suspicions. “Call me nosy, but I checked this out when I was here earlier, and this second visit only confirms it. All the framed photographs around your desk, on the coffee table, hanging on the walls. I didn’t see a single one of your daughter.”

Miguel didn’t answer, but he was still aiming his gun at Jack’s chest.

Jack narrowed his eyes, giving him the look that had worked countless times on cross-examination in the courtroom. “She wasn’t yours, was she, Miguel?”

It was almost imperceptible, but the gun was starting to shake. Miguel was furious.

Jack said, “That’s how you passed the polygraph exam. The cops asked you, Did you kill your daughter? You said no. It was the truth. She wasn’t your daughter. How did it happen, Miguel? Was it the lover Sally took right before you got married?”

The look on Miguel’s face only confirmed that it was true. “You think you’re smart, don’t you, Swyteck? The only one to figure it out.”

“No,” said Jack. “I think Sally had it figured out, too. That’s why she flunked the lie detector test when the cops asked if she knew the man who murdered her daughter. She didn’t know in her mind. But somewhere, deep down in her heart, she knew. She knew in her heart that the killer was her husband. She was just too afraid of him to say it.”

Miguel glared at Jack, then lowered his gun. For a brief instant, Jack thought that maybe he’d miraculously gotten through to him. But he seemed to look past Jack, focusing instead on the gunman standing behind him.

“Shoot him, Tatum.”

Jack flinched. It wasn’t really a surprise, but hearing Tatum’s name gave him a jolt anyway.

Tatum said, “Actually, I think it’s your turn, boss.”

“Turns?” said Jack. “You idiots are taking turns?”

“Didn’t start out that way,” said Tatum. “But after I told Miguel that Colletti fucked his wife, literally, in the divorce, he couldn’t wait to smoke that dude. Which was okay by me. So long as we could make them all look like the work of this made-up psycho stalker, Alan Sirap, we were home free.”

“Whose turn was it when it came time to shove a gun in Kelsey’s face?”

“That would have been mine,” said Miguel, and at that moment Jack noticed that he was holding a revolver with a polished nickel finish. “No one ever wanted to hurt her,” said Miguel. “That was all about making people think that the killer wanted Tatum out of the game.”

“Sounds like you were in charge of the threats, eh, Miguel? The phone calls to Deirdre Meadows, the call to me after the prosecutor was murdered, the phony message on your answering machine this morning. Those were all you, weren’t they?”

“Does it matter? Could have been me, could have been Tatum. Go buy yourself a forty-dollar voice-altering gadget from a spy shop and it could be anybody.”

“Do you really think you can get away with this?”

“Maybe,” said Miguel. “Maybe not. But for forty-six million dollars, I say it’s worth the risk.”

“But you’re both named as heirs. One of you has to pull out of the game, and then the two of you split the pot, right? Or one of you has to kill the other and take it all.”

“First things first, Swyteck. Shoot him, Tatum.”

“No. I said it’s your turn.”

“What the hell does it matter whose turn it is? Shoot him.”

“It matters to me,” said Tatum.

“Why?”

“Because I know you can kill when your Latino machismo is on the line, like with Gerry Colletti. And I know you can dish out the threats, like with Kelsey. But I want to see you kill for money. Nothing but money. Like I did with Deirdre and Mason Rudsky.”

“All right, you pain in the ass. I’ll shoot him myself.”

Jack looked straight at him, hoping that direct eye contact might unnerve his would-be shooter. It seemed to work for a moment, as Miguel kept the gun at his side. But then he simply lowered his gaze, as if shifting the target from Jack’s head to his torso. His arm went up, and suddenly Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.

Before Miguel could pull the trigger, the window exploded in a barrage of gunfire. Four quick shots, all slamming into Miguel’s chest. He stammered backward, pelted by each projectile, and then fell to the ground in a pool of blood.

Tatum dived for cover, pulling Jack down with him. He pressed the gun firmly against Jack’s head, keeping him as a hostage, his ticket out.

Jack was nearly crushed beneath Tatum’s weight. He couldn’t move, and he didn’t dare move anyway with the gun nuzzling up to his skull. With his cheek to the floor, Jack could see the bottoms of Miguel’s shoes at the other end of the room. A rivulet of blood drained slowly down the grout line in the ceramic tile.

Finally, there was a voice at the door. “Let him go,” said Theo.

“Get your ass in here,” shouted Tatum. “Or I’ll blow his brains out.”

Jack lay perfectly still. He wanted to scream out at the top of his lungs, tell Theo to get lost, go away, run for it. But he knew it would have been pointless. He knew that Theo wouldn’t leave him.

Jack heard the door open, then the sound of Theo’s heavy footfalls on the tile. “Prize patrol,” said Theo.

It was classic Theo, a line that they might laugh about someday, if they lived to tell the story.

Tatum pulled Jack up from behind the couch, using him as a human shield, his gun to Jack’s head. Jack’s eyes met Theo’s, but only for an instant. Theo was staring down his brother.

Tatum asked, “Did you call the cops?”

“No. This is something I want to settle myself.”

Jack’s eyes widened, as if to say “You better have called the cops.” But he could see the determination in Theo’s expression, see that this was something he wanted to settle himself.

“Pick up Miguel’s gun,” said Tatum.

The gun was lying on the floor beside Miguel’s body. Theo started across the room, and Tatum swiveled Jack’s body-the shield-as Theo passed by them on his way to the corpse. Theo stepped around the puddle of blood, then stooped down to reach for the gun.

Tatum said, “Not with your bare hands, moron. Use your jacket.”

Theo pulled off his windbreaker and wrapped it around his hand like a glove. He picked up the gun, then looked back toward his brother, as if to say, Now what?

Tatum said, “We gotta kill him.”

“We don’t gotta do anything.”

“You’re right. You gotta do it. Do it with Miguel’s gun.”

Theo didn’t respond.

“Do it, Theo. Shoot Jack right now. If you don’t, I will.”

“You think I’m taking orders from you?”

“I’m talking a deal, man. Forty-six million dollars. We split it. Don’t you get it? They’re all dead but me. It’s mine. Mine and yours. All you gotta do is pull the trigger, and we’re partners. It’s clean.”

“Say what?”

“Listen to me. Here’s the story. Jack, you, and me came over to confront Miguel the pussy here. He confessed to the killings and shot Jack. Then you shot Miguel. We’re home free, brother. All we gotta do is get rid of Jack.”

Theo didn’t answer.

“You thinking about it, ain’t you?” Tatum said through his teeth. “Half of forty-six million dollars. Come on, do right by your brother. Shoot Jack with Miguel’s gun.”

Theo was stone silent.

“Do it now, damn it!”

Theo knelt down beside Miguel’s body. He pressed the gun into Miguel’s hand and raised it slowly.

“Even better,” said Tatum, his voice racing. “Let Miguel’s own finger pull the trigger.”

It was as if the gun were in Miguel’s grasp. Theo held Miguel’s lifeless hand between his own huge hands, taking aim at Jack’s head.

“That’s right, Theo. One little squeeze.”

Jack’s heart skipped a beat. Theo was a friend. He’d never shoot his buddy, the lawyer who’d saved his ass on death row. Not in a million years. Not for anything.

Except maybe twenty-three million dollars.

“Theo,” said Jack. “This is crazy, pal. Tatum screwed you before, he’ll screw you again.”

“Do it!” shouted Tatum.

In a flash, the gun jerked, a shot whistled across the room. Tatum’s gun was airborne, and his head snapped back violently. Jack dived forward to the floor. Theo rushed to his wounded brother.

Tatum was flat on his back, gasping and holding his throat. The bullet had passed through his neck. Blood was pouring from the severed carotid artery, pumping in surges with each beat of his fading heart until he was surrounded by a growing circle of red. His eyes glazed over with a helpless expression, a look that Jack hadn’t seen since his days of defending death row inmates, that unmistakable, almost incongruous look of fear and bewilderment in the eyes of a murderer who was suddenly forced to come to grips with his own mortality.

Tatum looked up at Theo. He could barely speak, his throat filled with blood, but the bullet had passed through his neck off-center and had spared his voice. “You piece of shit,” he said in a thick, distant tone, choking on his own blood. “You shot your own brother.”

Theo looked at Jack, then back at Tatum, his expression deadpan. “Wrong again, Tatum. I saved him.”

Tatum’s head hit the floor, and his body was suddenly still.

Sixty-three

Jack watched from the helm as Theo walked alone to the bow of the fishing boat and scattered the ashes. It was early Sunday morning. The horizon was still orange from the rising sun, and a warm wind carried the ocean’s whispers from the east-from Nassau maybe, which seemed fitting, since Tatum used to love to go there and gamble. Seagulls trailed their boat across the deep blue swells, ready to steal a fisherman’s bait. One of them splashed into the waves, snatched up a floating fragment of bone in its beak, and then dropped it from mid-air.

“Not even the scavengers want him,” said Theo, his voice falling off in the breeze.

The burial at sea had been Theo’s idea. Fishing out on the boat was the one place he’d felt connected to his brother, miles of blue water between them and a world that hadn’t exactly welcomed the Knight brothers with open arms, a world that seemed to have known all along that it would be better off without Tatum. He was a badass, to be sure, but his death was no cause for celebration. Theo needed time, not so much to grieve but simply to come to terms with his brother’s betrayal. Jack was determined to give Theo the space he needed.

The two of them had told all to the police at the crime scene. Jack took the media calls in the ensuing frenzy, not because he enjoyed the publicity but because Theo hated it even more. Within hours, it was all over the evening news that Tatum Knight had shot Sally Fenning to death in a strange murder for hire in which the victim was her own target, and that Miguel Rios had murdered Sally’s daughter in a crime of jealous rage that had gone unsolved for five years. The details played out differently depending on which newscast you watched, but the newspaper got it mostly right, thanks largely to the background work of the late Deirdre Meadows. The Tribune’s final, lengthy feature ran in the Sunday edition. It relied heavily on excerpts from Deirdre’s unpublished manuscript, which was preceded by a glowing tribute to Deirdre from her editor, and included dubious assertions that the editors were behind her pursuit of Sally Fenning’s story “one hundred percent from the very beginning”-all of which seemed just a wee bit calculated to set her up posthumously for the Pulitzer nomination she’d so desperately wanted in life.

“I’m ready,” said Theo, wiping the salty sea spray from his brow.

“Let’s go in.”

“This is a good thing you’re doing,” said Jack.

“Yeah. At least this way I won’t be tempted to come piss on his grave.”

Jack started the engine and steered for home. The ride back took almost an hour, completely in silence. Jack thought it would do Theo some good to get out of the house, and Theo was always up for eating, so they went for a leisurely breakfast at Greenstreet, a sidewalk café in Coconut Grove. Before the Sally Fenning matter, Greenstreet had been a favorite Saturday lunch spot for him and his Little Brother, Nate, after rollerblading along the bicycle paths on Main Highway, a shady and windy way that emptied into the little shops and restaurants in a part of the Grove that still bore some resemblance to the tree-lined hippie village it had once been. Thoughts of Nate still saddened him, though he was optimistic. Kelsey no longer worked for Jack, and the budding romance between them was dead, but after the way Kelsey had helped out Theo in the end, everyone seemed cool with each other. Jack and Nate might be as good as new once Nate got used to the idea that Jack and his mother apparently weren’t meant for each other.

All that was complicated, too complicated for a simple Sunday breakfast. Winter was just a couple of weeks away. The sun was shining warmly, joggers and cyclists everywhere; people wearing shorts and T-shirts were out window shopping and walking their dogs-all the telltale signs that life went on and that December in south Florida definitely didn’t suck. Jack was too wrapped up in the newspaper to notice that Theo had already finished his pancakes and was halfway through Jack’s. He skimmed through the rehashed material on page one A, then picked up the second half of the feature story on Sally Fenning with a mix of emotions, but mostly a sense of relief that it was all finally over:

“Sally was dying of AIDS,” says her sister Rene Fenning, a pediatrician working for a charitable organization in Africa, who also served as the final personal representative of the estate. “She never really wanted to go on living after her daughter was murdered, and although I personally never found out for certain that she had the disease until I saw her autopsy report, I would imagine that she became even more despondent after her second husband infected her with the deadly HIV virus.” Rene denies claims that her sister’s second marriage was strictly “for money,” but the Tribune has confirmed that her ex-husband was one of the twenty-five richest men in France at the time of his death. A large portion of that money, eighteen million dollars that grew into stock worth some forty-six million, went to Sally upon their divorce after less than two years of marriage. “The money never made her happy,” says Rene.

Eventually, that unhappiness led her to a murder-for-hire that was effectively a suicide. According to sources close to the investigation, Sally could apparently think of no better way to check out of this world than to let the people who had ruined her life fight for her millions-a deadly game of survival of the greediest in which a hired killer and a stalker known only as “Alan Sirap” were sure to make things interesting.

Jack skipped the lengthy description of Sally’s will, the game, the murders-things he already knew. He went straight to the end, picking up with a quote from Homicide Detective Rick Larsen.

“She [Sally] probably hadn’t scripted it this way, but she had to have known that alliances would form, that some players might even go to the extreme measures that Tatum Knight and Miguel Rios had gone to-effectively a tag team approach to eliminating the other heirs, all done in a way to make it look like the work of a psychopathic stalker, the missing Alan Sirap.” Larsen shrugs, almost philosophical in tone as he unscrews the cigar plug from his mouth and adds, “The consensus view among Monday-morning quarterbacks is that Sally probably figured it would come down to a final battle between Tatum Knight and Alan Sirap, never knowing for certain that Sirap was actually her husband.”

In the end, that gap in Sally’s knowledge had tragic consequences for Miami attorney Gerry Colletti, Assistant State Attorney Mason Rudsky, and Tribune reporter Deirdre Meadows. “Clearly this got out of hand,” says Rene Fenning. “I’m sure Sally expected some bickering and maybe even some lawsuits among the heirs. But I think she also expected people to drop out of the game before it came to physical violence. Never would my sister have put this thing in motion if she thought people were actually going to die over their own greed.”

Editor’s Note: Tribune reporter Deirdre Meadows contributed to this report through articles previously published in the Tribune and materials from a book she was writing before her death.

Jack pitched the newspaper aside. Theo was seated across from him at the little round table, chewing roundly, as if he were trying to swallow an entire pancake in the fewest number of bites ever recorded.

“Something wrong?” he said in a muffled voice, his mouth completely full.

“Pretty lame article.”

Theo’s whole body jerked as he swallowed too much food. Jack half-expected to see the bulge in his neck, like a python having a bunny for lunch.

“Lame in what way?”

“It doesn’t even come close to answering the really big question.”

“Which is?”

Jack reached for his wallet to pay the bill, knowing without even asking that Theo had “forgotten” his again. He looked at Theo and said, “The question five people just died trying to answer: Who gets the money?”

Sixty-four

I’m going back to Africa,” said Rene.

She was standing on Jack’s front step, dressed in a sleeveless shell and a pair of jeans that fit loosely but still couldn’t deny her figure. Jack stood in the open doorway to his house, not sure what to say. “So soon?”

“I’m afraid so. I was on my way to the airport. Just thought I’d stop by, say thanks.”

“I’m glad you did. Come on in, please. If you’ve got a minute.”

“Thanks.”

Jack stepped aside and let her pass. Theo came from the kitchen to greet them. He’d been out fishing in the boat he kept behind Jack’s house, and he smelled of it.

“Sorry for the odor,” he said.

“No problem. My tolerance is quite high.”

He had to think a moment, then Jack said, “Rene’s on her way back to Africa.”

“Ah,” said Theo. “Back to fight the slave traders, are you?”

“My work isn’t finished there.”

“Good for you. You’re one amazing babe, you know that?”

“Thank you. Sort of.”

“Hey, I was wondering about something,” said Theo. “A while ago on TV I saw something about how the same rush you get from eating chocolate also comes from having sex.”

“Theo, come on,” said Jack.

“It has to do with the part of the brain that’s stimulated,” said Rene.

“Exactly. Which means that people who don’t have enough sex are the ones who crave chocolate, right?”

“I suppose that follows.”

He raised an eyebrow and asked, “Does that mean that people who don’t have chocolate crave sex?”

She just smiled.

“Theo,” said Jack, groaning.

“Well, shit, Swyteck. She’s gonna be three thousand miles away sleeping by herself in some hovel by the time you ever get around to asking her.”

“Theo, would you mind getting us something to drink?”

He considered it, then said, “Got just the thing. Be right back.”

Jack waited until his friend disappeared into the kitchen, then he offered Rene a seat in the living room. They sat in armchairs on opposite sides of the cocktail table, facing each other.

“He’s nonstop entertainment, isn’t he?” said Rene.

“He’s nonstop. I’ll give him that much.”

They shared a smile, then Jack said, “You mind if I ask you something a little personal?”

“I might not. Depends on what it is.”

“It’s about Sally.”

“That seems like fair territory, after all you’ve been through.”

“It puzzles me that she put the whole forty-six million dollars into this game she created for six-or as it turned out, five-people she considered enemies. Seems to me that she could have accomplished the same objective with forty-six million or twenty-six million or even six million.”

“She went with everything she had.”

“That’s exactly what confuses me. A guy like Tatum would have fought just as hard for a lot less money. I guess what I’m saying is this: She didn’t have to completely disinherit her sister. She could have left you twenty million dollars and let the others fight over the remaining twenty-six.”

“She could have. But she didn’t.”

Jack waited for her to say more, then simply asked, “Why not?”

She lowered her eyes, as if searching for the fortitude to say what she was about to say. “That’s one of the things I came here to tell you.”

Jack didn’t even realize it, but he had scooted forward to the edge of his seat. “Yes?”

“Turns out she didn’t disinherit me.”

Jack blinked, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Say that again?”

“One of my jobs as personal representative of Sally’s estate is to find all wills and codicils. Well, turns out there was another will.”

“Another will?”

“Yes. It was in French. She kept it in a safe deposit box in Paris. It postdates the one she made in Florida.”

“Which means that it supersedes the one she made in Florida.”

“That’s my understanding.”

“And it leaves her fortune to…?”

Her expression turned very serious. “To me.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. Everything.”

Jack couldn’t help but smile. “That’s beautiful. So that means these jokers here in Florida were fighting, clawing, and literally killing each other over a will that was…”

“Not worth the paper it was written on,” she said flatly.

“What do you know?” said Jack.

“Yeah. What do you know?”

“Or maybe the more important question is, What did you know?”

“Meaning what?”

“Were you surprised when you found that will? Or did you know that Sally had AIDS? Know that she was planning some kind of scheme to destroy her enemies, to get even with the people who hadruined her life? Know that she’d guaranteed herself the last postmortem laugh with a second will that left everything to her sister?”

“I was hoping that you and I could agree that I was totally surprised.”

“Do I have reason to think otherwise?”

“Not unless you want to believe that I stood by and watched this bloodbath play out, knowing full well that I alone had the power to reveal the existence of this second will and put a stop to it.”

“I hate to think you’d do that.”

“I would never do that. Mind you, I’m not overwhelmed with grief over the passing of any of them. The divorce lawyer, the prosecutor, the reporter who wanted to get rich and famous writing that damn book. Every last one of them made life unlivable for Sally. But I’m a healer, not a killer.”

Jack considered it. She was looking him straight in the eye, and he could feel it all the way to his bones. He wanted to believe her, and he felt convinced. He’d been fooled before, big time, by his ex, and he was pretty sure he knew the difference.

Theo emerged from the kitchen with six glasses on a tray, three of them cocktail glasses and the others filled with water. “Drinks?” he said.

Rene said, “I’d like to, but with all this added security at the airport, I really have to be going. I’m sorry. Rain check?”

“Sure.” Jack rose to see her out. She said good-bye to Theo, who obviously couldn’t help himself and had to give her a hug, fish stench and all. Jack walked her to the door.

“So, what are you going to do with all that money?”

“Hmmm…I know this really good charity in Africa.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Of course, I’m not an idiot. I was thinking I might squirrel away one or two million for my early retirement.”

“I was hoping you’d say that, too.”

“Anyway, you might be surprised to see how much forty-something million can do for my little operation. Come visit sometime.” She took a half-step forward and kissed him at the corner of the mouth. “Anytime, actually.”

He watched from the front porch as she walked to her rental car. Theo joined him and offered a drink.

“Gonna let her go, huh?”

“She’ll be back.”

“No, she won’t.”

He took a breath, then let it out. “You are right again, my friend.”

Theo forced the glass into Jack’s hand. “Have one of these. You’ll feel better.”

Jack downed the drink, then cringed and immediately chased it with one of the tall glasses of water. “Whoa! I think my mouth’s on fire.”

“That’s because the vodka’s so cold it almost burns going down. Or it could be I overshot on the jalapeño juice.”

“Jalapeño? What the hell is this thing?”

“Flaming Wild Banshee.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Lover boy and me just invented it a few days ago.”

Jack did a double take, recalling how Theo had threatened Javier into spilling his guts. “I don’t think it’s going to catch on.”

“Damn. I was hoping it would make us rich.”

Rene’s car door slammed, and as he heard the engine start, he couldn’t help but imagine Rene stepping off the airplane in Abidjan, taking that long and dusty road outside Korhogo, and finally trading in that fly-infested shack with dirt walls and a rotting roof for a decent place to live and treat her patients. He thought also of Gerry Colletti and the others, the ones who’d literally died trying to snag Sally’s fortune. And then he caught Rene’s eye as she was backing out of the driveway, and he saw the contentment all over her face, the same kind of contentment that made Theo so much fun to be around.

He gave Theo a little smile and said, “Now, why would anybody want to be rich?”

“You want me to list the reasons alphabetically by subject matter, or numerically from one to forty-six million?”

Jack chuckled, his eyes clouding over as Rene beeped the horn and drove away. “Theo?”

“Yeah?”

“I could really use a vacation. You think I’d be crazy if I took it in Africa?”

Theo belted back a Flaming Wild Banshee without so much as a grimace. “I think you’d be crazy if you didn’t.”