Red Mist

14

Marino’s van chugs and backfires somewhere from the dark direction of the river many blocks from here, and I emerge from the deep shadows of a live oak tree, where I’ve been waiting because I couldn’t be with Jaime Berger a moment longer.

“I’m going to have to get off the phone.” So far I’ve managed to keep the anger out of my tone and not sound judgmental as I talk with my niece. “I’ll call you back when I’m in my room in about an hour or so. I want to make a stop first.”

“I can call the hotel phone, if you don’t want to use your cell,” Lucy says.

“I’m already using it. I’ve been using it.” I don’t elaborate on what I think of Jaime and her self-serving ideas of pay phones and FBI eavesdropping.

“You shouldn’t have any of this on your mind at all,” Lucy says. “It’s not about you. It’s not your problem. And I don’t view it as my problem anymore.”

“You don’t get over something like this as if it never happened,” I reply, looking in the direction of Marino, of what there can be no doubt is his van, which isn’t fixed.

On the wooded square across the street, the Owens-Thomas House hulks against the night, pale English stucco with tall white columns and a serpentine-shaped portico. The shapes of old trees stir and iron lamps glow, and for an instant I catch something moving, but as I stare in that direction, I find nothing. My imagination. I’m tired and stressed. I’m unnerved.

“I still worry about who knows or might find out. You’re right about that,” Lucy says, as I step closer to the street, looking up and down it and into the square, seeing no one. “When I first found out about the protective order issued to the CFC, that’s what I thought it was about. They were after me for hacking. I’ve been careful. They’d probably like nothing better than to get me into trouble because of old shit with the FBI, with ATF.”

“Nobody’s after you, Lucy. It’s time you put that out of your mind.”

“It depends on what Jaime’s said to certain people and what she continues saying and how she twists the facts. What she told you isn’t what happened, not exactly. She’s made it a whole lot worse than it was,” she says. “It’s like she’s obsessed with turning me into a bad person so she feels justified in what she did. So everyone will understand why she ended it.”

“Yes, I’d say it’s exactly like that.” I watch for the van, which I can hear but not yet see, on Abercorn now and getting closer as I try to contain my complete disrespect for someone I suspect my niece still loves.

“Which is the real reason why I left New York. I knew there was talk about the security breach even if I wasn’t outright accused. No way I could continue doing forensic computer work there.”

“The way she treated you is what hurt you most and why you left New York, left absolutely everything you’d built for yourself,” I disagree calmly, quietly. “I don’t believe for a minute you started all over again in Boston because of rumors.”

I look back at Jaime’s building, at her windows lit up. I can see her silhouette moving past the drawn draperies in what I assume is the master bedroom.

“I just wish you’d told me. I don’t know why you didn’t,” I add.

“I thought you wouldn’t want me at the CFC. You wouldn’t want me as your IT person or want me around.”

“That I would banish you the way she did?” I say before I can stop myself. “Jaime asked you to commit a violation when she knew how vulnerable you were to her…. Well, I don’t mean to sound like this.”

Lucy doesn’t say anything, and I watch Jaime Berger’s silhouette moving back and forth past the lighted window. It occurs to me she might have a security camera monitor in her bedroom and she’s checking it. She might be watching me, or maybe she’s distressed because I spoke my mind and walked out as if I might never come back. I think of the old saying that people don’t change. But Jaime has. She’s reverted back to an earlier vintage of herself that’s gone bad like wine not properly stored. Living a lie again, but now she’s impossible to take. I find her completely unpalatable.

“Anyway, I know about it now,” I tell Lucy. “And it doesn’t change anything with me.”

“But it’s important you believe it’s not the way she’s described.”

“I don’t care.” Right now, I really don’t.

“All I did was verify a few numbers by looking at electronic records of the original complaints and the way they were coded, but I shouldn’t have.”

No, she shouldn’t have, but what Jaime did was worse. It was calculating and cold. It couldn’t have been more unkind. She abused the power she had over Lucy and betrayed her, and as I get off the phone I wonder who Jaime will manipulate and manage to compromise next. Lucy and Marino, and I suppose I should include myself on the list. I’m in Savannah, immersed in a case I knew virtually nothing about until a few hours ago, and I look up at her apartment again. I watch her silhouette move past the lighted window in back. She seems to be pacing.

It is almost one a.m., and the van gleams ghostly white in uneven lamplight, loudly heading in my direction like some demon-possessed machine out of a horror film, slowing down and speeding up, lurching and shuttering. Obviously Marino didn’t find a mechanic after he left Jaime’s apartment several hours ago, and by now I’m convinced he deliberately left me alone with her for a reason that has nothing to do with anything I might want or need. Brakes screech when he slows to a stop in front of the apartment building, and the passenger door squeaks as I open it, the interior light out because Marino always disables it in any vehicle he’s in so he’s not an easy target or a fish in a barrel,as he describes it. I notice bags on the backseat.

“Do a little shopping?” I ask, and I hear the tenseness in my tone. “I picked up some water and other stuff so we’d have it in our rooms. What happened?”

“Nothing I feel good about. Why did you leave me alone with her? Was that your instruction?”

“I thought I said I’d call you when I got here,” he reminds me. “How long you been standing outside?”

I fasten my shoulder harness, and the door squeaks again as I pull it shut. “I needed to get some air. This thing sounds terrible. In the agonal stages of a drawn-out tortured death. Good Lord.”

“I thought I told you it’s not a good thing to be wandering around by yourself. Especially this time of night.”

“As you can see, I didn’t wander far.”

“She wanted time alone with you. I thought you’d want it, too.”

“Please don’t think for me,” I reply. “I’d like to take a detour, take a look at the Jordan house, if this thing can make it without breaking down completely. I don’t believe wet spark plugs are the problem.”

“Pretty sure it’s the alternator,” he says. “Maybe loose plug wires, too. The distributor cap might be dirty. I found a mechanic who’s going to help me out.”

I stare up at Jaime’s apartment, and she has returned to her living room, where the shades are up. I can see her clearly as she stands before a window watching us drive off, and she has changed into something maroon, possibly a bathrobe.

“It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?” Marino says, as we head south, the dark shapes of trees and shrubs moving in the hot wind. “I asked Jaime if she picked her apartment because it’s close to where it happened. She says she didn’t, but it’s like two minutes from here.”

“She’s obsessed. The case of a lifetime,” I comment. “Only I’m not really sure what case she’s working. The one in Savannah or her own.”

We roar past grand old houses with windows and gardens lit up, their façades a variety of textures and designs. Italianate, colonial, Federal, and stucco, brick, wood, and ballast stone. Then the right side of the street opens up into what looks like a small park surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, and as we get closer I can make out gravestones and crypts and white crisscrossing paths dimly illuminated by incandescent lamps. On the cemetery’s southern edge is East Perry Lane, where there are large old homes on spacious lots thick with trees, and I recognize the Federal-style mansion from photographs I found earlier today when I read stories online about Lola Daggette while I was parked in front of the gun store.

The hot night air carries the sweet perfume of oleander as I survey three stories of Savannah gray brick with double-hung windows symmetrically placed and a grand central portico flanked by soaring white columns. The roof is red tile, with three imposing chimneys, and off to one side is an attached stone carport with archways that used to be open and now are glassed in. We park directly in front of a property I can’t imagine owning, I don’t care how handsome it is. I wouldn’t live in any place where people were murdered.

“I don’t want to sit here long, because the neighbors have a hair trigger about suspicious strangers and suspicious cars, as you might expect,” Marino says. “But if you look to the right, almost at the back of the house, just behind the carport is the kitchen door where the killer broke in. Well, you can’t see it from here, but that’s where it is. And that big villa to the right belonged to the neighbor who went out with his dog the morning of January sixth and noticed the glass busted out of the Jordans’ kitchen door and a lot of lights on for so early in the morning. Based on what I’ve been able to reconstruct, the neighbor, a guy named Lenny Casper, woke up around four a.m., when his poodle started yapping. Casper says the dog was upset and wouldn’t settle down, so he figured it needed to go out.”

“Have you talked to this neighbor yourself?”

“On the phone. He also was interviewed by the media at the time, and what he says now is pretty much the same thing he said back then.” Marino looks past me, out my open window, at the Italianate house he’s talking about. “Around four-thirty his poodle was doing his business right there where those palm trees and bushes are.”

He points at the up-lit landscaping of palms and oleander, and trellises of yellow jasmine that separate the two properties.

“And he happened to notice the broken glass in the Jordans’ kitchen door,” Marino says. “He told me the kitchen lights and a lot of lights in upstairs rooms were on, and his first concern was someone had tried to break in and maybe that’s what woke up his dog. So he went back inside his house and called the Jordans, who didn’t answer the phone. Next he called the police, and they rolled up around five, found the kitchen door unlocked, the alarm off, and the little girl’s body at the bottom of the stairs, near the entryway.”

I take in the former Jordan property, at what I estimate is an acre of wooded yard illuminated by post-mounted lanterns that cast large, thick shadows. The driveway is granite gravel edged in brick, and slate stepping-stones lead from it past the carport to a kitchen door that I couldn’t possibly see without getting out of the van and trespassing.

“He moved to Memphis not long after the murders,” Marino then says. “Neighbors on both sides moved, and based on what I hear, what happened really hurt real estate values. Fact is, hardly anybody within blocks on either side who was living here at the time still lives here now. From what I understand, the Jordan house is one of the most popular stops on ghost tours, especially since it happens to be right across the street from Savannah’s most famous cemetery, where a lot of the tours begin and end, at Abercorn and Oglethorpe, at the entrance we just went past a minute ago.”

Marino reaches in back, and paper rattles as he pulls out two bottles of water.

“Here.” He hands me one. “I feel like all I’ve done all day is sweat. You know, foot tours,” he resumes talking about Savannah’s haunted attractions and the crowds they draw. “Some of them candlelit at night, and you can imagine how old it would get if you live here, either in this house or nearby, and all these tourists are gawking while some guide goes on and on about the family murdered here. Hate to think what it’s like now, with it all over the news that Lola Daggette’s execution has been reset. Everybody around here has the Jordan murders on their minds again.”

“Have you been here during the day?” I ask.

“Not inside.” He takes a noisy swallow of water. “I’m not sure going inside would tell you anything nine years after the fact, and the house has been bought and sold a number of times, lived in by different people and probably changed a lot. Besides, I think it’s pretty obvious what happened. Dawn Kincaid busted the glass out of the door back there, reached in and unlocked it easy as pie. I guess Jaime told you the key was in the deadbolt, which is one of the stupidest things people do. Installing a deadbolt near glass panes or windows and then leaving the key in it. You know, take your choice. Get trapped if there’s a fire or make it easy for someone to break in and kill you in your sleep.”

“Jaime also said you’ve been looking into the question of why the alarm wasn’t set. Who installed it? Did the Jordans routinely use it? She says that they stopped setting it because of false alarms.”

“That’s the story.”

“I can tell you one thing from where we are on the street right now,” I add. “You can’t see the kitchen door. If you were walking or driving by, you wouldn’t know from casual observation that there’s a kitchen door or any door on the right side of the house. It’s out of sight because of the carport.”

“But you can see flagstones leading to something in the back that might be a door,” Marino says.

“Or the flagstones lead to the backyard. You’d have to look to know.” I twist the cap off my bottle of water. “What’s important is the kitchen door isn’t visible from the street, which would suggest to me that whoever broke in nine years ago either knew about the side entrance back there and it had glass panes and a deadbolt that required a key that often was left in the lock, or this person had gathered intelligence on some earlier occasion.”

“Dawn Kincaid sure as hell’s the type to gather intelligence,” Marino says. “She probably knew a rich doctor lived here. She probably cased the place.”

“And it was just her good fortune the key was in the lock and the alarm wasn’t set?”

“Maybe.”

“Do we know anything about where she stayed when she was in Savannah nine years ago, or how long she was in this area?”

“Only that fall classes at Berkeley ended on December seventh and the spring semester began January fifteenth,” Marino says. “She definitely completed her fall semester there and was enrolled in classes for the spring.”

“So she might have spent her holiday break in this area,” I decide. “She may have been here for several weeks before she visited her mother for the first time.”

“During which time she might have met Lola Daggette,” Marino suggests.

“Or become aware of her,” I reply. “I’m not at all convinced they knew each other. Maybe Lola knows who Dawn Kincaid is now, because of the Massachusetts cases and whatever Jaime or perhaps someone else has said to her. Lola may even know that Dawn had something to do with the Jordan murders, because I don’t care what Jaime says. You can’t know what’s been leaked about the new DNA test results. But regardless of what Lola knows right this minute, we can’t assume she connects Dawn Kincaid with anybody from nine years ago when the Jordan murders occurred, at least anybody she knew by name. Do you know what courses Dawn was taking at the time?”

“I just know it had to do with nanotechnology.”

“The department of materials science and engineering, most likely.” I stare at a mansion where four people were murdered in their sleep, as it’s been described, and I continue to be perplexed.

Why wouldn’t they set the alarm? Why would they leave a key in the deadbolt lock, especially during the holiday season, when burglaries and other property crimes typically are on the rise?

“Were the Jordans known for being careless or cavalier?” I ask. “Were they hopelessly idealistic and naïve? If nothing else, people who live in historic homes in historic neighborhoods usually are extremely careful about securing their property and their privacy. They keep their gates locked and their alarm systems armed. If nothing else, they don’t want tourists wandering into their gardens or up onto their verandas.”

“I know. That part bothers the hell out of me,” Marino says. His dark shape inside the dark van leans closer to me as he looks out at a mansion that wouldn’t appear remotely foreboding if one didn’t know what happened there nine years earlier at around this same time in the morning. After midnight. Possibly between one and four a.m., I’ve read.

“There’s a big difference between 2002 and now in terms of security awareness. Especially here in Savannah,” Marino continues. “I can guarantee you that people who might have been slack about not setting their alarms or leaving keys in locks probably don’t do it anymore. Everybody worries more about crime, and they sure as hell have it on their minds that an entire family was murdered in their own beds inside their million-dollar mansion. I know people do stupid things, we see it all the time, but it strikes me as unusual that Clarence Jordan was known for having family money and was gone a lot because of all the volunteer work he did, especially during the holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s were his busiest times helping out in clinics, ERs, homeless shelters, soup kitchens. You would think he might have been a little bit worried about the safety of his wife and two little kids.”

“We don’t know that he wasn’t.”

“It appears he went to bed that night and the alarm wasn’t set,” Marino repeats the detail that continues to tug at my attention.

“What about the alarm company records?”

“They’ve been out of business since the fall of 2008.”

A light blinks on upstairs in a window of the Jordans’ former house. “I talked to the former owner of Southern Cross Security, Darryl Simons,” Marino says, “and according to him, he doesn’t have the old records anymore. He says they were on computers he donated to charity after he went out of business. In other words, the records were deleted or thrown out three years ago.”

“Any reasonably reputable businessperson holds on to records for at least seven years in case of a tax audit, if for no other reason,” I reply. “And he’s telling you he didn’t have backups?”

“Busted,” Marino says, as the porch lights blink on next.

We drive off loudly and conspicuously as the front door opens and a muscular man in pajama bottoms steps out on the porch, staring after us.

“You can understand why this guy Darryl Simons doesn’t want people calling about the Jordans’ alarm system,” Marino says, as the van bucks and roars. “If it had been armed and working, they wouldn’t be dead.”

“So why wasn’t it armed and working?” I ask. “Did he say if it was installed by Dr. Jordan? Or perhaps by the previous owner of the home?”

“He didn’t remember.”

“Right. Hard to remember something like that in a case where four people were murdered.”

“He doesn’t want to remember it,” Marino says. “Kind of like being the one who built the Titanic.Who wants credit? Have amnesia and ditch the records. He wasn’t happy to get my call.”

“We need to find out what happened to his company computers, where they were donated. Maybe they still exist somewhere or he has disks in a safe,” I suggest. “It would be helpful to see his monthly statements. It would be very helpful to see a log. You would think that investigators might have looked into this at the time. What exactly did Investigator Long tell you? Jaime says you talked to him.”

“Did she mention he’s old as dirt and had a stroke since then?” The van backfires. It sounds like a gun going off as we struggle past movie theaters, cafés, and ice cream and sub and bicycle shops near the College of Art and Design.

“Two thousand two wasn’t all that long ago,” I say to Marino. “These aren’t even cold cases by my definition. Cool, lukewarm, but not cold. We’re not talking about unsolved murders that are fifty years old. There should be plenty of documentation and plenty of people with good recall in a case as big and infamous as this one.”

“Investigator Long said whatever happened is in his reports,” Marino says. “I said, ‘Well, that doesn’t seem to include anything about the Jordans’ burglar alarm.’ He claims they’d had trouble with false alarms and quit setting it.”

“If he knew that, he must have talked to the alarm company,” I answer, as we wind around Reynolds Square, dark and wooded with benches and a statue of John Wesley preaching, near an old building once used as a hospital for malaria patients.

“Yeah, he must have, but he doesn’t remember.”

“People forget. They have strokes. And they have no interest in reopening an investigation that might prove them wrong.”

“I agree. We should see the log,” Marino says.

“There must have been quite a number of people around here who’d had alarm systems installed by Southern Cross Security. What happened to those customers?”

“Obviously some other company took over their accounts.”

“And maybe that company has the original records. Maybe even a hard drive or computer backups,” I suggest.

“That’s a good idea.”

“Lucy might be able to help you. She’s pretty good when it comes to electronic records that supposedly have vanished into thin air.”

“Except Jaime won’t want her help.”

“I wasn’t suggesting she help Jaime. I’m suggesting Lucy help us. And Benton might have some interesting insights to offer. I think we could use any informed opinions we can get, because the evidence seems to be pointing in different directions. It’s a good thing we’re not very far away, because this thing sounds as if it will quit any second or seize up or explode,” I add, as the van stutters and shudders north toward the river.

Most of the restaurants and breweries we pass are closed, the sidewalks deserted, and then the Hyatt is just ahead on our right, huge and lit up, illuminating an entire city block.

“It’s feeling like we’re being stonewalled,” Marino says. “People forgetting or records that are gone.”

“What Jaime is doing in Savannah is recent, and the alarm company went out of business and supposedly got rid of its records at least three years ago,” I reply. “So it doesn’t sound like you’re getting stonewalled, at least not on that front, because of what’s happening with the case now.”

“Well, it sure seems like there might be something else certain parties don’t want anybody snooping into.”

“You don’t know that for sure, either,” I reply. “It’s typical that once people have been through the ordeal of a homicide investigation and a trial and all the publicity that goes with it, a lot of them want to be left alone. Especially in cases as gruesome as these.”

“I guess it’s easier if Lola Daggette gets the needle and then it’s all over with,” Marino says.

“For some people, that would be easier and emotionally satisfying.” Then I ask, “Who is Anna Copper?”

“I sure as hell don’t know why Jaime would mention that to you,” Marino replies, as we loudly creep to a halt in front of the hotel.

“I’m wondering who or what Anna Copper or Anna Copper LLC is,” I ask again.

“A limited liability company she’s been using of late when she doesn’t want her name on something.”

“Such as the apartment she’s rented here in Savannah.”

“I’m really surprised she would mention it to you. I would figure she’d assume you’re the last person who’d appreciate hearing about that LLC,” Marino says.

A valet cautiously approaches the driver’s window, as if he’s not sure what to make of the chugging, backfiring van or if he wants to park it.

“It’s better I drive this thing into the garage myself,” Marino tells him.

“I’m sorry, sir, but no one is allowed to drive anything in there. Only authorized personnel can access underground parking.”

“Well, you don’t want to be driving this. How about I park it right over there by that big palm tree and I’ll get it first thing in the morning so I can take it in for repairs.”

“Are you a guest here?”

“A regular VIP. I left the Bugatti at home. Too much luggage.”

“We’re not really supposed to—”

“It’s about to die. You don’t want it dying with you in it.”

The van chugs and moves in fits and starts as Marino parks off to one side of the brick drive. “Anna Copper is an LLC that Lucy created about a year ago, I guess,” he says. “It was her idea, and she didn’t exactly do it for a nice reason. It happened after she and Jaime had a disagreement. Well, by then they’d probably been having a lot of them.”

“Is it Lucy’s LLC or Jaime’s?” I ask, as he turns off the engine and we sit in the silent dark. The air blowing through our open windows is still very warm for almost two a.m.

“Jaime’s. Lucy basically created a smoke screen for Jaime to hide behind. It was supposed to be funny in a mean sort of way. Lucy went on one of these Internet legal sites, and next thing you know, Anna Copper LLC was filed, and when she got the paperwork in the mail, she wrapped it up in a big fancy box with a bow and gave it to Jaime.”

“This is according to Jaime? Or did Lucy tell you?”

“Lucy did. It was a while back when she told me, around the time she moved to Boston. So I was surprised when I realized Jaime is actually using that LLC.”

“And the reason you found out?”

“Paperwork, a billing address. When I was helping set up her security system I had to know certain information,” Marino says, as we get out of his van. “That’s the name she’s using on everything down here, and I admit it’s a little unusual — at least, I think it is. She’s a damn lawyer. It wouldn’t take her five minutes to create a new LLC. Why would she use one that has certain memories associated with it? Why not forget the past and move on?”

“Because she can’t.”

Jaime can’t give up Lucy, or at least the idea of Lucy, and I wonder if Benton is thinking the same thing. When he text-messaged me that Anna Copper’s “rep is tarnished,” I wonder if he was referring to Jaime. If so, he must have run a check on her apartment building and come across a resident named Anna Copper LLC, and then run another check and realized who it was. He likely wouldn’t accept it as an accident of fate that Jaime has resurfaced in our lives, and he might know something about the trouble she got into that caused her to abandon her life in New York.

We walk through the bright lobby, where at this hour there is a solitary clerk at the desk, only a few people in the bar. When we reach the glass elevator, Marino taps the button several times, as if it will make the doors open faster.

“Shit,” he says. “I left the damn groceries in the van.”

“Did Lucy ever tell you what Anna Copper means? Where she got the name?”

“All I remember is it had something to do with Groucho Marx,” he says. “You want me to drop off some water for you?”

“No, thanks.” I’m getting into the tub. I’m making phone calls. I don’t want Marino stopping by my room.

I board the elevator and tell him I’ll see him in the morning.