The Last Witness

Chapter Twenty-eight

Mason had been so wired when he got home the night before that he had rowed three sprints of two thousand meters each just to wind down. By the time he'd taken a shower, he was barely able to crawl into bed. The last thing he saw was his clock telling him it was four in the morning.

He was sleeping the sleep of the nearly comatose when his phone rang on Saturday morning. He let it ring until the answering machine came on.

"Pick up, Lou. The sun is up and you'd better be," Rachel said.

Mason fumbled for the phone, trying to clear his throat while squinting at the clock. It was eight o'clock. "I'm here," he groaned.

"Good. Paybacks are hell," she told him. "Why do you want to know about a body in Swope Park?"

"Can't tell you," he said, pulling himself up in his bed before collapsing back against his pillows.

"Why not?"

"I may be wrong about something. If I am, no one needs to know. If I'm right, you'll get the story," he told her.

"It had better be a good story," she said. "I talked to one of the dispatchers who's a friend of mine."

"You mean an anonymous source who gets a turkey at Thanksgiving?"

"I don't bribe people. The paper is too cheap. She's a kindred spirit."

"A member of the lesbian underground?"

"We're everywhere. She said there were no reports of a body being reported or found in Swope Park on Thursday night or any night for the last six months. What does that tell you?"

"That you may get a hell of a story if I don't get killed," he told her.

"Then don't get killed," she said. "I need all the good stories I can get"

"That's it? No Thanksgiving turkey?"

"I'd miss you. How's that?"

"Nice," he told her, and hung up.

Mason rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. He tossed and turned with the uneasy confirmation of his suspicions. He gave up when Tuffy stuck her nose in his face, reminding him that she wasn't operating on his schedule. Her whimper said she was overdue for breakfast and her morning ablutions in the backyard.

While Tuffy was in the backyard, Mason took another shower, hoping that the pulsating hot water would trick his body into feeling fresh and renewed instead of tired and abused. After pulling on faded jeans, a washed-out green sweatshirt, and sneakers, he let the dog inside and poured himself into a chair at his kitchen table. He'd have to make his own breakfast.

Cooking was not one of Mason's skills. He wasn't the kind of man who could scour his pantry for a few disparate leftovers and whip up a tantalizing omelet while whistling classical music and puzzling over what wine works best with bagel and cream cheese. He relied too heavily on fast food, once prompting his aunt Claire to warn him that one day he would be able to drive through any McDonald's in the city and the cashier would greet him by asking, "The usual, Mr. Mason?"

Tuffy was pacing nervously around the kitchen, poking her head into nooks and crannies she'd explored countless times, before stopping in front of Mason and pawing his thigh. He gazed down at her, raising an eyebrow as if to ask, what now? She yelped once and trotted to the back door, repeating the ritual she observed whenever she wanted to go on a walk.

"Why not?" Mason muttered. "Maybe we'll find some roadkill for breakfast."

He put on his coat, grabbed a ball cap that he yanked low on his brow, and hooked Tuffy's collar to the leash he kept on a hook by the door. The leash had a twenty-five-foot retractable cord that allowed Tuffy to run relatively free while dragging Mason behind her.

The morning amazed Mason. He hadn't paid attention to the day until Tuffy took him outside. The sun had blasted away the grim bedrock of slate-colored clouds that had covered the city like a fossil layer for weeks. The temperature had climbed into the forties, but felt even warmer in comparison to recent days. The air was crisp and clear and hit him like a shot of adrenaline. The next thing he knew, he was jogging alongside Tuffy, his jacket unzipped and a thin sheen of sweat lining his forehead. He grinned at his dog, who grinned back before sprinting after a squirrel.

Tuffy led Mason to Loose Park, the city's second-largest park, which was only a couple of blocks from his house. They stopped at the large pond along Wornall Road. Long enough for Tuffy to say hello to the other dogs that were walking their owners. Tuffy sniffed enough dog butts to last a lifetime. Mason was about to introduce himself to a good-looking woman with a white fur-ball of a dog that resembled a dust mop with legs when Tuffy sniffed the dog once and peed all over it. Horrified, the woman scooped up her dog, gave Mason the finger, and marched off in a huff.

A few minutes later, Mason and Tuffy power-walked past Beth Harrell's apartment building. He craned his neck skyward, shielding his eyes from the sun, wondering which windows were hers and what she was doing behind her drawn shades. Tuffy wasn't interested in the answer, and tugged him along the last few blocks to the Plaza.

Mason tied her leash to a traffic sign outside Starbucks while he went inside for a blueberry muffin and a bottle of water. He shared both with Tuffy, pouring the water into a plastic bowl he'd borrowed from the cashier.

On the way back, they stopped at the waterfall in front of the Windcrest Hotel. The waterfall plunged two stories from the pool deck to street level at the intersection of Ward Parkway and Wornall Road. The fountain had been turned off for the winter, but a heavy layer of ice had built up during the storms of the previous weeks. The sun bore down on the irregular slags of ice, reflecting and refracting across their faults, forecasting the coming meltdown.

From his vantage point, Mason could see west to the entrance to the hotel's parking garage on Ward Parkway. He could also see south, up Wornall Road, to Beth's building, which towered over the roof of the hotel. The juxtaposition of both views crystallized something that had lurked in the jumble of details that this case had become.

He remembered Beth telling him that Cullan had taken her home after the incident at Blues on Broadway the night Cullan was killed. She had said that Cullan had dropped her at the door and that she had stayed inside the rest of the night. Later, she had told Mason that she had begun using the hotel's parking garage to avoid the press, taking advantage of the walkway between the hotel and her apartment building so that she wouldn't be seen coming or going.

Mason guessed that the security system in her apartment building included video monitoring of the apartment garage. Had Beth gone out again that night, or any night, her departure and return would have been recorded. If she'd used the hotel exit strategy, she could have left undetected.

That scenario, Mason realized, would have left her on foot. He doubted that she would have called a cab to take her to Cullan's house and told the driver to wait outside while she murdered Cullan. Cullan lived in Sunset Hills, an exclusive area just south and west of the Plaza. The hills were real hills by Kansas City standards, making the round-trip walk from the hotel to Cullan's house a punishing one of several miles. He realized that Beth could have hiked to Cullan's house, killed him, and walked back.

Mason shook his head at the possibility. The night Cullan was murdered had been brutal, with a lacerating windchill and hard-driven snow. Even a cold-blooded killer wouldn't have made that hike. Unless, he conceded, the killer was convinced that no one else would think she might have done exactly that.

By the time Mason and Tuffy returned home, the prospect that Beth Harrell had covered the murder of Jack Cullan under a blanket of snow had robbed him of his enthusiasm for the beautiful morning. It also didn't jibe with his growing suspicion that James Toland and Carl Zimmerman had been dirt gofers for Cullan, and might have killed Cullan to go into business on their own, as his aunt Claire had theorized.

When Mason had called Zimmerman to ask for his help to preserve Cullan's files, Zimmerman had put him off with a lie about working a case involving a dead body in Swope Park. The lie had only one purpose-to keep Mason away from the files until Zimmerman and Toland could steal the ones they wanted and rig the bomb that would destroy the rest.

It was possible that Zimmerman and Toland hadn't known where the files were kept until Mason tipped Zimmerman. Although Shirley Parker had not hesitated to let Toland into Pendergast's office so he could kick Mason out of it. Maybe Mason's phone call tipped Zimmerman, or maybe they had known all along, and Mason's call forced them to move the files. Maybe Shirley Parker made one last visit to check on the files, and they killed her when she tried to stop them. There were too many maybes, but none of them made Toland and Zimmerman look clean to Mason.

Neither did Mason's suspicions prove anything. Mason knew it would be difficult and dangerous to try to make a case against two cops, particularly when one of the cops was Harry's partner. Over the years, Mason had gathered from Harry and Claire that it was a good partnership, though neither man had embraced the other as a blood brother. Still, they were cops and they were partners, and that was a stronger bond than most marriages.

Mason didn't even know where to begin. He couldn't talk to Harry, who would dismiss his theory as a malicious red herring Mason had fantasized to cast doubt on Blues's guilt. Even worse, Harry would consider it an unholy attempt to drive a wedge between Harry and Zimmerman and an unethical pitch to discredit their investigation. Mason couldn't go after Zimmerman without painting Harry with the same brush.

Mason's best and only idea was to keep an eye on Zimmer- man. Mason had been to Zimmerman's house once before to pick up Harry. Zimmerman lived in Red Bridge, a suburban subdivision in south Kansas City. Mason wouldn't stake out Zimmerman's house. That's what cops and PIs did, not lawyers. Besides, Mason didn't want to pee into a bottle on a cold day, even if the sun was shining.

All the same, a drive-by couldn't hurt. Mason looked at Tuffy. "Want to go for a ride?" he asked her.

Tuffy practically ran him over racing to the garage. Mason opened the door to his TR-6, and Tuffy vaulted the stick shift, landing in the passenger seat. It wasn't a top-down day, but it was close enough.