Lethal Legacy: A Novel (Guardians of Justice) (21 page)

She shrank away, but all he did was sling her over his shoulder. When she squirmed in his arms, he tightened his grip.

“Hold still. I’m just putting you downstairs so you don’t cause any problems while I’m gone.”

He was leaving?

Relief coursed through her, and she quieted at once. That was an opportunity she hadn’t expected. Left alone, she might be able to figure out a way to escape.

Once at the bottom of the basement stairs, he headed toward a heavy-duty shelving unit her father had had installed years ago. After lowering her to a sitting position on the floor beside it, he used a sturdy piece of metal wire from her father’s workbench to secure the rope binding her hands behind her to an upright post. He jerked it tight, immobilizing her against the post. She braced, expecting the rope to cut into her wrists. But it didn’t.

Confused, she checked out her ankles. Odd. He’d wrapped a thick layer of hand towels around them before tying her up.

He stood, following the direction of her gaze. “I don’t want any telltale marks. When I’m finished, no one will ever know you were tied up. I’m very good at details—and planning.”

The man was bragging about the meticulous arrangements he was making to kill her.

How sick was that?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a strip of cloth. It looked like a piece of one of the rags her father had always kept in the garage.

Before she understood his intent, he knelt and whipped it taut around her head, covering her mouth.

She clamped her lips together as tightly as she could, and he gave a sharp tug. “Open up—or we’ll do this the hard way.”

When she didn’t respond, he kneed her in the rib cage.

Hard.

She gasped.

He pulled the strip of cloth between her teeth, so tight it stretched the corners of her mouth back. The cotton clung to her tongue, sucking out all the moisture.

She gagged.

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “You brought this all on yourself, you know. You should have let the dead rest in peace.” He rose, crossed to the stairs, and started up. A few seconds later, she heard the basement door shut, then the creak of floorboards overhead. The security system began to beep. A faint shudder in the house told her the back door had been closed.

She was alone.

Her body sagged, and she began to shake. Violently.

When at last the trembling subsided, she tugged on her wrists. They didn’t give. Nor was the heavy-duty shelving going to budge. It had taken two burly men to set it up. She wasn’t going to be able to free herself, and there was no chance she’d be able to overpower Carlson. He was big and he was strong.

That left her just one weapon.

Her brain.

She’d have to outwit him.

And she’d have to do it as soon as he returned. He’d made it clear he didn’t intend to take her life here. But once they left, all bets were off.

Kelly took a deep, shuddering breath and forced herself to shift into analytical mode. Psyched herself up for a battle of wits. Carlson had bragged about his attention to detail. To planning.

Well, he was about to meet his match.

“Nice place.” Mitch surveyed Rossi’s house as Cole pulled behind a late-model BMW parked at the curb.

“Not by his previous standards.” Cole scanned the tidy brick two-story colonial as he shifted into park. “Before he went to prison, he lived in a sixty-five hundred square foot mansion that sold not long ago for close to two mil. I checked.” He set the brake and scoped out the quiet neighborhood of upper middle class homes. “This is quite a comedown.”

“Maybe prison changed his priorities.”

“Or maybe he just wants to keep a low profile.”

“If he does, he can’t be looking forward to our visit.”

“He isn’t. When I called, he passed me off to his attorney faster than Alison can throw a zinger.”

Mitch grinned. “That fast, huh?”

“Yeah.” Cole turned off the engine. “So are we clear on the plan?”

“You’re taking the lead, I’m jumping in as needed—or if I see an opportunity to press an issue. Like we tag-teamed that felony assault case a few months back.”

“Let’s hope the technique works as well today.”

Mitch gestured to the BMW. “Wanna bet that’s the lawyer’s car?”

“I don’t bet on the obvious.” Cole opened his door, circled around the back of the midsize rental, and met Mitch at the end of the brick walk that curved toward the front door. “Ever dealt with a former big-league crime boss?”

“Nope.” Mitch matched him pace for pace as they walked toward the door. “But a bad guy is a bad guy. And most of them don’t change.”

Cole stepped up onto the small, white-columned porch and pressed the bell. “That’s why we’re here.”

At the discreet knock on the door of his study, a nerve in Vincentio’s hand spasmed, and he linked his fingers on his desk to disguise the tremble. “Yes?”

Teresa cracked the door. “The gentlemen have arrived, Mr. Rossi.”

He glanced at Lake, who sat in a wingback chair across from him, placed a bit behind the two less-comfortable visitor chairs facing the desk. The attorney’s location allowed him to be part of the conversation if he wanted to step in, but it was far enough back to facilitate discreet nonverbal communication with his client. The detectives would see through that strategy at once—but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. This was his house. His furniture. His world. That’s why he’d had them come here.

On his turf, he was in control.

“Show them in, Teresa.”

The housekeeper exited. Half a minute later, when he heard her open the front door, Vincentio’s pulse accelerated. So different from the glory days. Nothing had fazed him then. But he was still a Rossi, with roots planted deep in the Sicilian soil. Part of a powerful family that had been feared, envied, admired, and respected. He might have lost that legacy of power thirty-one years ago because he’d trusted the wrong man. Because he’d been soft, as his father had always said. But there would be no mistakes today.

He took a deep breath. Straightened his shoulders. Lifted his chin.

This was a game he did not intend to lose.

When the two detectives came in, Lake rose. Vincentio didn’t. If they noticed his lack of hospitality, however, they gave no indication.

One of the men stepped forward. “Mr. Rossi?”

“Yes.” He recognized the voice from their phone conversation.

“Detective Cole Taylor, St. Louis County PD.” He withdrew a business card and laid it on the desk. As if he suspected his host wouldn’t take it if he held it out.

The man had sound intuitive skills. The kind Vincentio had once found valuable and still respected.

Taylor gestured to his companion. “Detective Mitch Morgan.”

The man’s sidekick gave a perfunctory nod.

“Thomas Lake, my attorney.” Vincentio indicated the fourth man in the room.

Once greetings were exchanged and Lake shook hands with the two visitors—displaying the courtesy his client had neglected—Vincentio gestured toward the chairs across from the desk. “Let’s get started, gentlemen. I’m sure you both have better places to be the day before Thanksgiving.”

Morgan took a seat, leaned back, and crossed an ankle over a knee. Taylor opened a notebook, settled it on his lap, and pulled out a pen.

“Mr. Rossi, as I told Mr. Lake on the phone, we have reason to believe a John Warren who died in St. Louis in May was, in fact, the James Walsh who once worked for you—and whose testimony helped secure your conviction for racketeering and money laundering. Mr. Warren’s death was originally ruled a suicide, but we’ve reopened the case. Could you tell me where you were on the evening of Thursday, May 20?”

An odd question. This detective was smart enough to know he wouldn’t have carried out a hit himself. But he played along.

“Here in Buffalo. I haven’t left the city since I was released from prison.”

“Have you seen James Walsh since your release?”

“No.”

“Even when he came back to New York in April to visit his dying brother and attend his funeral?”

“Like I said . . . I don’t leave the city. And the last I heard, his brother lived in Rochester.”

“But you knew his brother had died.”

He shrugged. “It came to my attention.”

“Doesn’t it seem an odd coincidence that a month after James Walsh surfaced for the first time in thirty-one years, he wound up dead?”

“
Supposedly
surfaced. I don’t believe you have a definitive link between John Warren and James Walsh.” Vincentio lifted one shoulder. “Even if you did, stranger things have happened.”

“Did you know he had lung cancer?”

He stared at the detective, trying to mask his shock. James Walsh had been afflicted with the same disease that had taken his beloved Isabella?

How ironic.

And given the poor survival rate for that iteration of the disease, the man might have died on his own in a few months. Suffered a lot in the interim too, as had Isabella. If he’d known, he could have waited for nature to carry out the death sentence.

But then he wouldn’t have had the satisfaction of exacting revenge.

“A difficult way to die.” He kept his inflection noncommittal. “At least he was spared that ordeal.”

“Have you ever done any business in St. Louis, Mr. Rossi?”

The sudden shift in topic didn’t surprise him. He knew how cops operated. They liked to keep people off balance.

He lifted the corners of his mouth in a smile that held no humor. “My business days are ancient history, and a seventy-four-year-old memory isn’t reliable. Details of things that happened three decades ago aren’t always clear.”

“I was thinking of more recent business.”

“Such as?” A chill crept into his voice.

“You tell me. It’s difficult to believe a man who once led a mob dynasty would give up his old life completely.”

Vincentio considered the comment, keeping an eye on Lake in his peripheral vision. The detective was getting more direct now. But they’d agreed the attorney wouldn’t intervene unless the questioning took on an accusatory tone.

A point he suspected they were fast approaching.

“I went to prison for almost three decades, Detective. Things change. Power shifts. Life goes on. The world I came back to was very different than the world I left. In many ways.”

His gaze strayed to the family picture on the credenza, taken a year before his incarceration. Isabella, with her long black hair, had looked beautiful that day. And grinning five-year-old Marco had been so proud of his first suit. Those had been the happiest days of his life, though he’d only recognized that in hindsight.

“Your family?”

At the query from Taylor, he turned his attention back to the detective. “Yes.”

“I understand your wife is deceased.”

“Yes.”

“But your son lives here.”

“Yes.” His chest tightened with familiar regret.

“From what I’ve been able to gather, you two aren’t close.”

He leveled a cold stare at the dark-haired detective. “My family situation has no bearing on the case you’re investigating.”

“We often find links in the oddest places.”

“My son knows nothing about your case. Or my business.”

“So you do still carry out some business.”

“Gentlemen . . .” Lake glanced at Vincentio. “As I’m sure you realize, that’s a common figure of speech. Let’s focus on the case you came to discuss. Beyond a possible connection that’s thirty-one years old, perhaps you could tell us why you think my client might have any knowledge about Mr. Warren’s death.”

Lake was forcing their hand. A smart strategy. Vincentio picked up the cappuccino Teresa had delivered to him just before the detectives arrived, balanced the cup and saucer in his hand as he sat back in his chair, and took a sip.

“I’ll be happy to.” Taylor responded to Lake but kept his focus on Vincentio. “Kelly Warren, John Warren’s daughter, received a gift of tulip bulbs from her father a month ago. The gift had been ordered the day before he died, and the enclosure note talked about planting them together in the fall. Ms. Warren believes this proves her father had no plans to commit suicide, and she asked us to take another look at the case. Not long after she began to go through her father’s things, searching for other clues, she suffered a near-fatal episode of anaphylactic shock. She’s allergic to peanuts, and we have reason to believe that incident was not an accident. That someone wanted her dead too.”

The liquid sloshed in Vincentio’s cup, and he tightened his grip. Carlson had tried to kill Walsh’s daughter?

That hadn’t been part of the game plan.

“If the intent was to keep her from digging deeper, it had the opposite effect.” Taylor eyed the spilled cappuccino in the saucer. “In her search, Ms. Warren discovered a letter we believe was written to Mr. Warren by his brother, as well as a photo of her parents on their wedding day—with their original names on the back. She also found the phone number of a U.S. marshal in her father’s old wallet. All of that led us to make the connection to you, Mr. Rossi. After there was an attempt on his life before your trial, Walsh and his family disappeared. We assume they went into the U.S. Marshals Witness Security program.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions, gentlemen.” Lake sat back, forcing the detectives to turn away from the desk to keep him in sight. A ploy that gave Vincentio a chance to regroup. He scooted his saucer back onto the desk and wiped both his lips and his damp palms on the napkin Teresa had left. “But should any of them turn out to have credence, why would you think my client was involved in this death after all these years?”

“The other three members of his organization who testified at the trial all died within a year of their release from prison.”

Vincentio was impressed. The detective had done his homework. “Those were accidents.”

Taylor shifted back toward him. “You knew they’d died?”

His neck grew warm. “I have friends who kept me informed of significant events while I was in prison.”

“Three accidents . . . a suicide . . . then someone tries to kill Warren’s daughter when she starts making waves. And the only common denominator is you. A little too coincidental, don’t you think?” Taylor’s expression hardened.

“Since you’ve obviously done some research on me, you should know I never held family members accountable for mistakes made by my associates. I hold no grudge against Walsh’s daughter.”

“But you did against Walsh.”

“There was no love lost between us. That was common knowledge.”

“So what happened to Kelly Warren?”

“I have no idea.”

“That must mean your hired gun slipped up.”

Lake rose abruptly. “Gentlemen, this interview is over. If and when you have something more substantial to offer than innuendo, speculation, and circumstantial evidence, let us know. I’ll show you out.”

Without waiting for a response, Lake crossed the room, stopped at the door, and waited.

Taylor looked at Morgan, and the two men rose.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Rossi.” Taylor didn’t offer his hand.

Vincentio gave a stiff nod.

He watched them exit. Listened for the sound of the front door opening, closing. Leaned back in his chair as Lake reentered. The man’s expression was inscrutable as he retook his seat.

“Well?” Vincentio prodded.

“They don’t have a thing that will stand up in court. Or even enough to get it that far. Yet. The circumstantial evidence, however, is formidable.” He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers. “
Did
you know about the attempt on the daughter’s life?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. But whoever did that made a mistake.” He rose and picked up his briefcase. “I won’t ask any further questions at this point. Let’s wait and see if our friends come up with anything more concrete. If they don’t, I doubt we’ll hear from them again. If they do, we’ll talk.”

“They won’t find a thing that will link any of this to me.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. I’ll let myself out.”

Lake exited, and once again Vincentio heard the front door open and close. A few moments later, Teresa appeared on the threshold. “May I get you anything, sir? A refill on your cappuccino?”

He looked at the cup on his desk. The liquid that had sloshed out had stained the side of the cup and pooled in the saucer. What remained in the cup had grown cold.