Lost Lake

CHAPTER TWENTY

Vanessa wasn’t in when Ami called her hotel, so she left another message. Her client called her back just before noon and they arranged to have lunch at Brasserie Montmartre, a restaurant that was a few blocks from Vanessa’s hotel and within walking distance of Ami’s office. Ami reserved a booth so that they would have privacy. Vanessa was waiting for her when she arrived.

“We have a lot to discuss,” Ami said as soon as they ordered. “First, I spoke to Ray Armitage. There’s been a new development in his case in Colorado so he won’t be back in Portland for two more days. Second, the district attorney has made a plea offer.”

“What is it?”

Vanessa looked tense as Ami explained what Brendan had told her.

“So Dan will have to go to prison if he takes the offer?” Vanessa said.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What if he turns it down? Will he still be locked up?”

“Yes, unless Armitage persuades the judge to set bail that’s low enough for Dan to meet. Otherwise he’ll be in jail, unless he’s acquitted.”

“How soon will we know about bail?”

“Armitage told me that he’ll set a bail hearing right away, but he’ll need some time to digest the facts, talk to Dan, line up witnesses, etcetera. It might be a week or so.”

Vanessa was pensive while the waitress placed their orders on the table. When the waitress left, Ami looked directly at her.

“Are you Morris Wingate’s daughter?”

Vanessa hesitated.

“Did you go to high school with Carl?”

Vanessa could not hide her surprise. “He told you his real name?”

Ami nodded. “And I know that both of you graduated in 1970. I’ve checked the St. Martin’s yearbook.”

“What else have you been up to?”

“I’ve consulted a psychiatrist. He’s interviewed Carl. We’re concerned about his mental health.”

“I see.”

“Vanessa, Carl has told me a number of things that are very unsettling. If I’m going to help him I have to know if they’re true.”

“What did he tell you?”

“I can’t reveal what he told me, because our conversations are protected by the attorney-client privilege; and I don’t want to tell you, because I want to see if you both tell the same story. It will help me judge Carl’s mental state.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What was your relationship in high school?”

Vanessa looked sad. “It was very intense our senior year,” she answered softly. “It ended when he was drafted.”

“Why?”

Vanessa looked down at the tabletop. “Carl had a full scholarship to Dartmouth. It was his dream to go there. If he’d tried, he could have gotten a deferment so he could go to college and avoid the draft. My father talked him into going into the army. I felt that he had chosen my father over me.”

Vanessa raised her eyes and looked into Ami’s. “I hated Carl for that,” she said.

“When was the next time you saw him?”

“In 1985 in Washington, D.C. It was a coincidence. I was on a date and so was he. We were at the same restaurant. He recognized me and came over. A week later, we had dinner together.”

“So you started dating Carl again?”

“I wouldn’t call it dating. We met for dinner every once in a while. Sometimes he’d wait for me after class and we’d go for coffee. It was strictly platonic.”

“How long did this go on?”

“A few months.”

“Why did you stop?”

“Carl disappeared for a few weeks.” Vanessa ate a forkful of her salad. It was obvious that she was stalling while she debated with herself what she would say next.

“Did you worry when Carl stopped coming around?” Ami prompted.

“Not at first. As I said, we weren’t dating. He was just an old friend. We’d had a teenage love affair, but that was a long time ago in a different life. I’d been married, divorced; a lot had happened since high school. I missed seeing him, because he was a nice guy; but I also thought that he wanted more out of the relationship than I did. I assumed that he had sensed the way I felt and wanted to be the one to break it off rather than face rejection.”

“So you didn’t have any romantic feelings for Carl when you met again in D.C.?”

“If he’d asked me to go to bed with him I would have turned him down.” Vanessa sighed. “Honestly, at that time, I liked being with Carl, but, well, he was a sergeant in the army. If he retired he was going to be a language teacher who might become a professor someday. I was spending my days in Congress with dynamic men and women who were doing big things on a national or worldwide stage and my evenings with brilliant law students who were going to run the world. Carl was fun but I didn’t see a future with him.”

“Did you see Carl again?”

Vanessa got very quiet.

“Did he show up at your apartment in the early morning?” Ami asked.

“Yes.”

Ami smiled. “This is like pulling teeth.”

Vanessa did not return the smile.

“He told me about the Unit,” Ami said.

“Thank God,” Vanessa said. Then she started to talk.

“Carl told me that he was in a secret army group composed of a small number of highly trained men that was run by my father. It was concealed within the Agency for Intelligence Data Coordination, and the men carried out assassinations, among other illegal activities. He said he’d just returned from a mission in which he had followed orders and murdered two people. He wanted to get out of that life. He was desperate.”

“Did you try to help him?”

“Yes. I knew that my father conducted business in our house on the California coast. There’s a safe in his den. One day I was in the den when he opened it. He wasn’t careful, and I memorized the combination. Father was in Washington, so I flew home on a red-eye and searched his den. I found the records of ten men in the safe.”

“Were these the records for the Unit?”

“Nothing in the records connected the men to the Unit Carl had told me about, but I guessed that these were the members because Carl was in the group and they had a very high level of training.”

“What did you do with the records?”

“You know very well what I did with them.”

“I need you to tell me.”

“I took them to Eric Glass.” Vanessa’s voice broke. “He was a very decent man.” She took a sip of water. “Eric was on the House committee with oversight of the intelligence community. I told him what Carl had told me about the Unit. Eric was going to have one of his staffers run a check on the men whose files were in my father’s safe.”

“This meeting was at Lost Lake on the night the congressman was murdered?”

“Carl did that,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. A tear trickled down her cheek. “He tortured Eric for the records, then he cut his throat.”

“You saw him?”

Vanessa nodded slowly.

“There was so much blood. And the look on Eric’s face…”

“What happened to you after the police came?” Ami asked.

“That night is a blur. I’ve blocked out most of it. All I can remember are flashes, little snapshots. But I remember very clearly what my father did to me.” Vanessa’s sorrow was rapidly replaced by bitterness. “He put me in a mental hospital, and I spent a year in hell. He made certain that no one would ever believe a word I said about the Unit.” Vanessa pointed to her forehead. “I have a big red stamp right here. It says ‘Ex-Mental Patient, Nutcase.’ When I came out of that place I was addicted to the drugs they gave me, unemployable.” Vanessa gritted her teeth. Ami could see the rage building. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“Vanessa, I know you don’t want to believe it, but there is another possible explanation for the Unit that doesn’t involve your father. The psychiatrist who interviewed Carl thinks that he may be suffering from a rare form of mental illness called a paranoid state. According to my expert, it’s a possible explanation for his story. Carl may be so disturbed that he actually believes he was in a secret Unit run by your father. That’s why his story sounds so plausible.”

“You see what I’m up against?” Vanessa said. “No one believes me! But I know that my father did run the Unit. He is evil. And now I’ve got a chance to set things right. I’ve got a witness who can tell the world what my father is really like. But I’ve got to get him out of jail before they kill him. Any minute now my father will learn that Carl Rice is alive and send his men after him.”

“Carl is perfectly safe, Vanessa. He’s locked in the secure ward of the hospital. There’s a policeman guarding him. No one can get to him.”

For a moment, Ami thought that her client was going to argue with her, but suddenly Vanessa calmed down.

“I guess you’re right,” Vanessa said. “Carl is probably safe in a guarded, locked ward.”

“He is. Try to keep calm. Ray Armitage is the best. He’ll be on the case very soon. Then we’ll get some results. Okay?”

Vanessa nodded. “I’m sorry I got so upset. You’re doing a great job.”

Ami smiled, but she was certain that Vanessa had not meant a word she said since her rapid mood change.

After lunch Ami walked back to her office and went over everything she knew about Rice’s case. She had no new insights until she reread Captain Howard Stienbock’s psychiatric report. The doctor had concluded that Carl had a mental problem in 1985. Dr. Stienbock’s testimony would establish that her client had a long-standing psychiatric problem if Ray Armitage decided to go with an insanity defense.

Ami dialed Walter Reed Hospital on the chance that Stienbock was still working there. The hospital operator had no listing for a Dr. Stienbock, so she transferred Ami to the personnel department. After being kept on hold for fifteen minutes, Ami was informed that Dr. Stienbock was deceased.

“When did this happen?” Ami asked.

“December of 1985.”

That was only months after he’d written the report on Rice.

“How did he die?” Ami asked.

“That’s not in his file.”

“Was he married? I could call his wife.”

“He was single.”

“Do you have the name of a next of kin?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give out that information.”

Ami thanked the woman and hung up. Then she turned to her computer and did an Internet search for Dr. Howard Stienbock and Walter Reed Hospital. There were only a few hits, but one was a newspaper story in the Washington Post about a hit-and-run accident that had claimed the life of a psychiatrist employed by Walter Reed Hospital. According to the story and Stienbock’s obituary, the doctor had been in the Special Forces during Vietnam and had seen combat of an unspecified nature during the war.

Ami turned away from the computer and stared at her wall. Stienbock’s death proved nothing. It just meant that he was unavailable as a witness. But the connection to the Special Forces did give her pause. So did the fact that the driver of the car that killed the doctor had never been apprehended.

Still, Ami had no more proof now that Carl Rice was part of a secret army unit than she had before she’d tried to find Dr. Stienbock. Vanessa based her belief in the existence of the Unit on the statements of Carl Rice, who might be delusional. Vanessa’s only supporting evidence was a collection of army records she could not produce, which may have been in the General’s safe for a purely innocent purpose. But what if Carl wasn’t lying? How could you prove that the Unit existed when all trace of it had been erased?

A thought occurred to Ami. According to Vanessa and Carl, after Carl confessed his activities in the Unit, they had seen each other only one time, for a few seconds, in Congressman Glass’s house. Carl said that Vanessa spoke his name, then ran away. So how did Carl know about the army records Vanessa had stolen from her father’s safe? If the records existed, and Vanessa hadn’t told him about them, there was only one other person who could have-General Morris Wingate.

Ami tried to think of another possibility. Maybe Carl saw the records while he was torturing Glass in Glass’s office. But why would he take Glass to the office? Why not torture Glass in bed where he found him?

Ami wondered whether there was any mention of the army records in the official reports of the murder. If they were still in Glass’s office when the police arrived, it would prove that Carl’s story was a lie; but it would be some evidence in Carl’s favor if the army records were not inventoried in the police reports.

Ami made a snap decision. Mary O’Dell’s son, Bobby, was Ryan’s best friend. She would ask if Ryan could stay with Mary for a night or two. If she could get a flight to San Francisco this evening, she could be at the Lost Lake police department first thing in the morning.