Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (37 page)

The smaller man put his gun down and pulled his pipe out of his pants, as well as a small foil wrapper, which he carefully unfolded. He removed a piece of hashish and placed it in the pipe, and then produced a lighter. A few quick puffs later, and the smaller man had it going, holding it up to his companion’s lips.

“Hey, how about giving the condemned man a little of that?” Tran said.

The smaller man looked at the bigger man and shrugged. “Why not? Perhaps the sharks will like their meat better with hash in it.” He stepped over to Tran, careful not to get in the way of his comrade’s line of fire, and placed the pipe in the Vietnamese man’s mouth.

Tran took a couple of puffs, then smiled. “You know, you guys are all right, and if you let me go right now, I’ll ask my friend not to kill you both.”

The big man laughed. “Ha! Next you will tell me that your friend is standing behind me,” he said. “I saw that in an American movie once. Only there really was a man standing behind the bad guy, who was too stupid to turn around and shoot him.”

“Well, close,” Tran said. “Actually, he’s right above you.”

The man laughed again and took aim at Tran’s right leg. But then there was a sound above his head of ropes parting and before he could react, something heavy had landed on his shoulders. Next was a burning pain in his neck, and when he tried to breathe in, he couldn’t get any air. He dropped his rifle as his hands clasped his throat, which for some reason was slippery with warm liquid, and he pitched forward.

About the time that Jojola landed on the big man’s back, the smile left the face of the smaller man. It took a moment for him to realize that his companion’s throat had just been cut from ear to ear; then he screamed and tried to run for his rifle.

However, as the smaller man turned his back on him, Tran reached out with a foot and swept the man’s feet out from under him. The small man went down hard, striking his head on the steel deck, and was knocked unconscious.

Jojola grinned as he wiped the blood off his knife on the big man’s shirt. “Geez, you look like shit,” he said.

“Yeah, I’d say the same, but you always look like shit,” Tran replied with a smile.

“Hey, that’s not a nice thing to say to the man who just saved your miserable hide,” Jojola said.

“Save my—Are you crazy, I had it all worked out,” Tran said, holding out his wrists so that Jojola could cut the rope that bound them. “I lured the one near me and was going to use him as a human shield to reach the big one with the gun. I would have then crushed his larynx with a perfect kick to the throat and then dispatched the smaller one by strangling him.”

“Wow,” Jojola said. “How much of that stuff did you smoke?”

Tran grinned. “Only a couple of puffs. But that’s pretty good shit. Want to try some?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Jojola said. “Drugs are bad for your health. Just ask these two guys.”

Just then the small man moaned. Tran looked at him and then stripped out of his shirt and pants.

“Um, I hate to ask what you’re doing now,” Jojola said.

“Just help me get his clothes off, dummy,” Tran replied.

“Why? You like his style?”

Tran rolled his eyes. “No, but the captain of this ship expects to hear me get executed and then see my body floating in the water for the sharks. So that’s what he’s going to get.”

“Ah, I see the method behind your madness,” Jojola said, and leaned over the semiconscious man and tugged his pants off.

A minute later, they had the other man dressed in Tran’s clothes and standing up, albeit unsteadily, next to the railing. The man suddenly realized what was happening and his eyes filled with terror. “Please, do not kill me,” he said to Tran. “I gave you hashish.”

“You were also going to shoot me in the legs and feed me to the sharks,” Tran said.

“That was Ibrahim’s doing,” the man said, pointing to the dead man on the deck. “I was going to let you jump. And at least have a chance.”

“You’re a liar,” Tran said, and aimed the assault rifle at the man’s
chest. “Now tell me, when is the attack going to take place and what is the target?”

“Tonight,” the man squealed. “I do not know the target, just a glorious blow for Allah against the Great Satan! We will all die together.”

“So if you were so willing to die tonight, why are you afraid now?” Jojola asked.

The smaller man looked troubled. “I don’t want to die alone.”

“Too bad,” Tran replied, and pulled the trigger, letting off a burst. The bullets struck the target in the chest and propelled him over the side of the stern railing of the ship.

“That was harsh,” Jojola said, walking over to the rail and looking down to where the man’s body bobbed to the surface in the ship’s wake.

“Captain’s expecting an execution and a body,” Tran replied. “At least he’s dead. That’s more than he was going to do for me.”

“So what next? Do we make like pirates and take the ship?”

Tran shook his head. “Too many men,” he said. “We might get a bunch of them, but they’d get us, too. Plus Malovo’s on board, and she’s no hash-toking dummy.”

“What do we do?” Jojola asked.

“They’re planning on sailing this ship up the East River and blowing it up,” Tran replied. “Malovo explained it all to me when she was kicking my ass around. Apparently, there’s a small specialized bomb attached down in the room that has the supposed milk tanks. It’s designed to rupture the hull and the tanks at the same time without igniting the gas when it pours out.”

“Why?”

“They want a cloud of the gas to form around the ship. Then they’ll ignite it. Otherwise it just burns as it escapes like a big Roman candle.”

“Doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

“It won’t be. If they get this next to buildings and bridges, hundreds or even thousands could die in an instant.”

“How do we stop them?”

Tran thought about it. “I think we have to try to disarm the special bomb, or keep them from setting it off.”

“How do you propose to do that if they have so many guys with guns?”

Tran pointed to the other assault rifle. “As we taught you Americans in my native land, two well-armed, dedicated men can hold off the biggest army in the world if they outsmart their big, oafish enemy.”

“Don’t look at me when you say that,” Jojola said. “I counted plenty coup against you people.”

“Plenty coup? Since when did you start talking like Jack Palance in
Arrowhead
? But can we fight about this later? We have a bomb to disarm.”

“Okay, but don’t think I’m going to let that slight to my heritage go when this is over,” Jojola replied. “You know there are things I could say about your funny little black pajamas and those goofy-looking cone-head hats.”

“You’re still an idiot,” Tran said, shaking his head as he led the way into the ship.

“And you’re still high.”

“D
R.
B
RAUNSCHWEIGER, IS THERE A PARTICULAR FIELD OF
psychological study that you specialize in?” Guy Leonard rocked back on his cowboy boots with his thumbs hooked into his pants pockets and gazed up at the gray-haired, severe-looking woman in black horn-rimmed glasses.

It was the fourth day of the defense case.
And unfortunately
, he thought,
it will be the last.
He’d planned to parade another six to eight witnesses in front of the jury, use two or three more days. But it had suddenly dawned on him that Karp was baiting him with his “minimalist” approach. What he had mistaken for going through the motions, as he’d seen in other DAs he’d faced across the country, was a strategic plan.

When he told Maplethorpe that morning that he planned to wrap it up today with two witnesses, the producer had pitched a fit.
“But our witnesses did a fantastic job last time,”
he’d whined.
“Even if it’s another hung jury, Karp would never go after me again. The press would have a field day with wasting taxpayer dollars about some washed-up actress nobody really cares about.”

But Leonard had stuck to his guns.
“You’re in the theater,”
he explained.
“Surely you’ve heard the quote from
Hamlet,
‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ He’s trying to make it look like
we’re putting all these people on the stand because we don’t have any real evidence.”

“Well, that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
Maplethorpe said.

“Yes, but we don’t want it to look that way,”
Leonard replied.
“Or the jurors might start wondering what we’re trying to hide. In the first trial, that ADA Reed put on almost as many witnesses as we did, so it wasn’t so noticeable. But Karp is clearing some of the trees out of the forest, and we can’t let it look like once he’s done with ours, his are the only ones left standing.”

Maplethorpe had sniffed a little longer about “getting what I paid for,” but he’d eventually gone along with it. However, Leonard reminded himself not to let his guard down around his client…
or who knows what the little freak will try to hit me with
.

Once he recognized Karp’s plan and saw the DA’s cross-examinations cut to the chase with his expert witnesses—“
Can you name a single fact?
”—Leonard would have closed the defense case immediately. But he felt he needed the last two witnesses, so he’d started by calling Marta Braunschweiger, PhD, to the witness stand.

“I specialize in suicidology, the study of suicide,” Braunschweiger replied.

“Is there any one aspect of this field that you are particularly esteemed in academic circles for?” Leonard asked.

“Well, I am probably best known for my book,
A City to Die For: Suicide Tourism in New York,
which was actually a bestseller on the
New York Times
list for several weeks,” Braunschweiger said tersely, a little perturbed that the lawyer had tried to slip right on past giving her book a plug as agreed. “It was a compilation of case studies involving people who travel to Manhattan for the express purpose of killing themselves here—usually by jumping from tall buildings, like the Empire State, or hanging themselves in famous hotels, often where famous people also died. It’s really a fascinating—”

“Ah, yes, Doctor, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think I was referring to your most recent work,” Leonard said. “I understand that is fascinating as well, and more on point, I think, with our purpose here today.”

Braunschweiger stopped and stared for a moment at Leonard like a frog eyeing a bug. “Yesssssss, of coursssssse,” she replied,
stretching out the
s
sounds so that she sounded vaguely like a snake hissing.

“Could you tell the jury what that is, please?”

“My current work focuses on RSS.”

“RSS?” Leonard replied, as if it was the first time he’d heard the acronym.

“Revenge suicide syndrome,” Braunschweiger said.

“Revenge suicide syndrome,” Leonard replied, furrowing his brow. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

Except for when you had me testify at the last trial, you boob
, Braunschweiger thought as she smiled and replied. “That’s because although we’ve all heard the anecdotes, there was no terminology for it until I was able to identify and define this as a syndrome, that is to say: ‘a group of symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease, psychological disorder, or other abnormal condition.’ In the case of RSS, we’re talking about suicide as a means of exacting revenge on one or more persons, or even a community or something as anomalous as ‘society as a whole.’”

“And are you considered a leading expert in this field?” Leonard asked.

Braunschweiger smiled again. “I would say that I am
the
leading expert in this field. I’m the one who identified the characteristics that make it a syndrome; I’m the one who coined the term revenge suicide syndrome, RSS; and I’m the one who spent years collecting the data, collating it, postulating a theory, and then publishing the findings.”

“So are there some characteristics that piled all together make up this syndrome?” Leonard asked.

“Yes, quite a number, but we can discuss the main ones,” the psychologist said. “One characteristic is revenge as a motive for killing oneself. This can range from committing suicide to make someone else feel guilty that you were driven to such extremes, to actually staging your suicide to make it look like a murder in order to frame the object of your revenge.”

“But why would someone do this? Killing oneself seems a rather drastic way to carry out revenge.”

Braunschweiger arched her eyebrows. “It is rather drastic,” she
acknowledged. “It’s probably the most drastic statement a person can make. We’ve all read stories about someone killing themselves for love, but were they really doing it because they didn’t want to live anymore…or because they wanted to injure the person who didn’t return their love?”

“But why end your own life for revenge. If you’re angry, why not just shoot the person?”

“There are several reasons. Usually people who commit revenge suicide are also suffering from depression, or bipolar disorder, both of which often involve suicidal ideation. So they’re already inclined that way. But they may have cultural or moral obstacles to taking someone else’s life. Or they may love this other person and couldn’t cause them physical harm, just mental anguish. Or the idea of putting the alleged offending soul in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he
knows
he didn’t commit is the best revenge they can imagine.”

“What about murder-suicide?”

“We do see that, of course. ‘If I can’t have you, no one can…but I’m also not going to live without you…or I’m afraid of going to prison, so first you and then me.’ But that’s not the same as revenge suicide. A very important characteristic of RSS is that the ‘victim’ of the revenge suicider continues to live, whether it’s live with the guilt or live in prison.”

“And this is RSS?” Leonard asked.

Braunschweiger nodded and sniffed. “Well, it’s a very simple explanation meant for laypeople.”

“Doctor, when we first began this conversation, you noted that we’ve all heard about RSS, we just didn’t know to call it that, or that it was a syndrome. What did you mean by that?”

“What I meant was that taken individually, it is sometimes very difficult to identify a suicide as RSS,” Braunschweiger said. “I’ve documented hundreds of cases and have barely touched the tip of the iceberg, but no one stopped to think that they had a common motive—revenge. Yet, we’ve all read a story about a teenager who kills himself and leaves behind a note blaming his parents. They may have been the most loving parents in the world, and yet they will have to live with the hell of that note for the rest of their lives.
Or we’ve heard about the jilted lover who shoots himself at his former girlfriend’s wedding to another man. That woman will never forget what he did to her wedding day. And of course there’s the wife of the wealthy philanderer. She could just kill herself, but that makes it too easy on him. He gets the younger trophy wife without having to sneak around anymore, and gets to keep his money and freedom. But what if she makes it look like he killed her? She doesn’t have to live with the shame anymore, and he rots in prison with plenty of time to think about how he did her wrong. It really is the perfect revenge in some ways.”

Leonard slowly walked toward the jury with his head down. “Dr. Braunschweiger, have you had the opportunity to examine the relevant transcripts?”

Braunschweiger removed her glasses and appeared to clean the lenses. She replaced them and answered. “Yes, I have.”

“And what, if any, conclusion have you reached?”

“That this was a textbook example of RSS,” Braunschweiger said. “Let’s examine the facts. We have a—how shall I say this—a ‘second-tier’ actress who is getting older, the roles—which were never great—that she does get are getting fewer and smaller. And she knows that it’s just going to get worse. She sees younger women get roles she feels she deserves, and it festers inside of her, though she tries to hide it behind an overly sunny personality, which is also a symptom of her bipolar disorder. She’s been used by men for her body, and she’s allowed it in order to move forward in her career. But she can see the writing on the wall; even on the casting couch, these powerful men want younger bodies.”

“How does this affect someone like Gail Perez?”

“Well, you get to the point where it’s hard to get up in the morning,” Braunschweiger said. “It’s just not worth it. At the low lows, you wonder if suicide is the best answer. You’re done with the stress. Friends and family can stop worrying about you. Perhaps she knows someone close to her who has attempted suicide, and it plants that seed.”

Braunschweiger, who had obviously been coached by the defense, mimed a two-handed grip on a gun. “She puts it in her mouth. She hears Mr. Maplethorpe shout ‘No’ and thinks, ‘Good,
he’s watching; he’ll have to live with the memory when he’s rotting in jail for my murder.’ And she pulls the trigger.”

The psychologist looked over at Maplethorpe and shook her head sadly, as if he was the victim. Maplethorpe, who’d been nodding as she spoke, wiped at his eyes with a large red handkerchief he’d pulled from his forest green suit, and then blew his nose loudly. Several of the spectators behind him were also weeping, and one of them muttered loud enough for everyone in the court to hear: “That vindictive bitch!”

Leonard looked back at where the statement had come from and sadly nodded his head, as though someone had finally had the courage to say the truth. “No further questions,” he said softly, and sat down.

Karp sat for a moment at the prosecution table, tapping his pencil on the legal pad in front of him. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts, but he was actually channeling the disgust and anger that seethed in him after listening to Braunschweiger’s testimony.

The continued bastardization of the legal system, as exemplified by Leonard’s Big Lie defense, rankled him today more than ever. His daughter was in the hands of a killer. New York City was once again a big bull’s-eye for terrorists. And now he and every person in that courtroom had to listen to a clever defense attorney not so much advocate on behalf of his client, but create an illusion of truth from a pack of lies that if successful trivialized all the sacrifices other people had made and were making in defense of that legal system. People like his daughter, and Jojola and Tran, and Captain Meghan Reed, were willing to lay down their lives to preserve travesties like F. Lloyd Maplethorpe getting away with murder.

Karp took in a deep breath and let it out slowly as he stood. He wasn’t trying to rid himself of his anger—this jury needed to see his righteous indignation—but he needed to wield it like a rapier, not a cudgel. Carefully laying his pencil down, he rose from his chair but remained standing where he was as he addressed the witness.

“Do you have a single shred of real evidence that Gail Perez was suicidal?” he asked, his voice firm but under control.

“There are a number of factors that added together point—”

“I wasn’t asking for you to take a bunch of ‘factors’ you stirred in a pot to come up with some theory of what might have happened,” Karp said. “I asked if you have a single shred of real evidence that Gail Perez killed herself. A suicide note? Something she said to someone? In fact, did she say something to Mr. Maplethorpe that might indicate she was thinking about sticking a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger?”

“I have no idea what she may have said to Mr. Maplethorpe,” Braunschweiger answered.

“Well, don’t you think that if she said ‘I’m going to kill myself,’ he might have reported that to the police?” Karp responded.

“That makes sense, I guess.”

“You guess,” Karp repeated. “So I return to my original question, which you have yet to answer. Do you have a single shred of evidence that Miss Perez killed herself?”

“No, one single item, no.”

“A note?”

“No.”

“Something she said?”

“No.”

“A videotape she left behind? Or maybe one from Mr. Maplethorpe’s apartment?”

“No. It’s just that in my professional opinion—”

“I did not ask for your opinion!”
Karp thundered suddenly, then dropped his voice again. “I asked for a single verifiable fact. And now what I want to know is: without a single verifiable fact, where do you get off calling Gail Perez a vindictive whore?”

“That’s not what I said,” Braunschweiger said, a shocked look on her face.

“Let’s look at what you said,” Karp shot back. “You said this was a ‘textbook’ example of this so-called revenge suicide syndrome. You said she went to a man’s apartment to have sex with him, that man over there”—Karp pointed across the aisle at Maplethorpe so that every juror in the box looked at the pale-faced defendant as he nervously licked his thin lips—“a man thirty years her senior, hoping that he would give her a job. Tell me, Dr. Braunschweiger, when
a woman has sex in exchange for money or something else, is that a definition of a whore?”