Redemption

Chapter 77

Both men stirred when her eyes fluttered open.

Decker and Mars were sitting next to Rachel Katz’s bed in a hospital room that had no windows, for obvious reasons. Mitzi Gardiner had been moved to another windowless room, which was also heavily protected by both local police and FBI agents. They were taking no chances now.

Mars stood and took her hand. “Hey, how do you feel?” he asked.

She slowly nodded and managed a weak smile. “Better.” She glanced at Decker and her expression grew solemn. “How much do you know?” she asked cautiously.

“Well, Bill Peyton is really a Russian named Yuri Egorshin, and Brad Gardiner has been placing Egorshin’s spies all over the country for years now from an operation initiated at the American Grill. And we also know about the secret room underneath your restaurant where they create fake identities, backgrounds, and maybe even faces for these folks. Other than that, not much.”

Katz put a hand to her face and groaned. She finally withdrew her hand and looked at the lines and tubes running over her body.

“Am I going to recover?”

“Yes, you are,” said Mars. “We were just waiting for you to fully wake up.”

Her mouth quivered. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll take a shade of the truth,” said Decker. “Unless you want to tell us the whole thing.”

“Can you lift my head a bit?”

Mars hit the bed control to accomplish this.

After she was settled, Katz drew a long breath. “The first thing you have to understand is that when I married David, I knew about none of this. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”

“He’d already opened the Grill before you met,” said Decker.

“Yes. And our life was good. We had the restaurant and I had my business. And he was already working on other projects. Everything was aboveboard, at least as far as I knew.”

“And then the meeting with Don Richards?”

“And he was dead.” Katz started to weep.

Mars handed her a tissue, which she used to dab at her eyes.

“I was devastated. It hit me out of the blue. I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to kill him.”

“But then?” said Decker expectantly.

“But then I was thinking of selling the Grill. I was tired of Burlington and the memory of what had happened to David. I just wanted to start over fresh.”

“And something happened to make you change your mind?”

“It was Bill Peyton or this Yuri person. I had told him I was thinking of selling out. He didn’t tell me a lot, but what he did tell me was stunning. He said that David was a criminal. A member of an organization that had done terrible things. And that his death was a result of that membership. He had apparently done something to anger them. They had found out and made the decision to kill him.”

“Why kill the Richards family?”

“I don’t know. Peyton never told me.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” asked Decker.

“Because Peyton told me that the other members of this organization were still very much around. And that if I wanted to stay alive, I would do exactly as they told me to do. They even threatened to harm my parents in Wisconsin. And my sister in California. They knew where they lived and everything.”

“What did they want you to do?”

“Most importantly, I was never to sell the Grill. They wanted to keep it running for some reason.”

“As I said, they were operating a spy ring in a secret room under the restaurant,” said Decker.

“I didn’t know that,” said Katz, putting her hands over her face. “After David died, I never really went there.”

“What else?”

“They told me that they would fund other business ventures. They allowed me to pick the projects and they provided the money. I assumed they did something similar for David.”

“They were laundering money,” said Decker. “Probably dirty oligarch money.”

Katz slowly nodded. “I thought it might be something like that.”

“Did you meet with anyone other than Bill Peyton on these matters?”

“Yes, there were other men. Very hard-looking men. We never met in Burlington. They flew me to Chicago. We’d meet there.”

Mars said, “I wonder why they just didn’t buy the Grill from you and keep doing what they were doing. They wouldn’t have had to explain anything to you.”

“I wondered about that too,” said Katz. “But from some of the things they said, they liked, well, legitimate people fronting what they were doing. If you buy a business, there are always questions and inspections and there are ways for things to go wrong. They had set up a relationship with my husband and they wanted to keep it going exactly the same. That was clear from my discussions with them. Only now it was me, not David.”

“What about Mitzi Gardiner?”

Katz looked puzzled. “That was the very odd thing. They wanted me to help her. She was a drug addict. But they paid for her rehab, and when she came out of that, they paid for a complete change in her appearance, education, clothes, plastic surgery, everything. They had me become her mentor. Teach her how to conduct herself, work in business, give her contacts. Just help mold her.”

Mars looked at Decker. “Why would they do that?”

“She provided the patsy for the murders, her father.”

“I get that,” said Mars. “But why not just kill her? We talked about this before. And I don’t buy the explanation that they were worried about the police digging deeper. Hell, she was a drug addict. They could have just made her OD and no one would have thought that she was murdered.”

“That’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to. Yet.”

“I didn’t know that Hawkins was innocent,” said Katz. “After Peyton met with me, I thought he’d been hired to kill David and the others.”

“Didn’t you have a problem with helping the daughter of the man who you believed had killed your husband?” asked Decker.

“I did, at first. But she had done nothing wrong. At least that I knew. And she was so, I don’t know, fragile. And lost. I guess I just ended up wanting to help her. Making something good come from something so awful.” She paused and clutched the sheets with her hand. “I guess I should have gone to the police, but I was just so scared. As time went by, I just convinced myself that it was... that it was legitimate somehow. I was just building up my businesses and living a nice life.” She paused again. “But that was just me lying to myself. It’s another reason I never remarried. How could I ever trust someone after what happened with David?”

“Well, considering that a prominent policeman was involved with Egorshin and his gang, you were probably wise not to go to the police,” noted Decker.

“What... what will happen to me?” she said fearfully.

“I don’t know.”

Mars said, “Hey, Decker, like she said, she was terrified. They threatened her. She didn’t know that they were spies.”

“I get that, Melvin. I really do. But that part is out of my hands.” He turned his attention back to Katz. “But your cooperating with the FBI will only act in your favor. You might not spend any time in prison.” He paused. “In fact, I think it far more likely that you end up in witness protection. These people have long memories and assets in the most unlikely places. And they have no problem killing anyone in their way. They tried to kill you again while you were in the hospital.”

“Oh my God!” Katz drew a long breath and squeezed Mars’s hand. “A part of me, a big part of me, is so glad that all this is finally out in the open. It’s actually such a relief. It was tearing me apart.”

Mars nodded. “Speaking for someone who’s seen a lot of deception in his life, I can understand that. The truth is always better. Even if it really hurts.”

She glanced nervously at Decker. “Witness protection?”

“It’s better than prison.”

“Yeah,” agreed Mars. “Just about anything is.”

She looked at him curiously. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

“What better place is there to speak from?” replied Mars.