Read Murder Deja Vu Online

Authors: Polly Iyer

Murder Deja Vu (33 page)

“We’ll see what Reece says when he can talk,” Jeraldine said.

“If anyone listens to him,” Dana said.

“You’re Reece’s lawyer, Jeri,” Clarence said. “Demand to speak to him as soon as he’s able to talk. I’ll be in there with you. I think I know what happened. I want Reece to confirm it.”

“He knows not to say a word to anyone until he speaks to me. God knows, he’s had enough practice.”

“For sure. We might as well get something to eat, get some rest, and be here first thing tomorrow.”

“And I want my drink,” Jeraldine said.

Dana followed them to the hotel in a daze. Reece was alive.
Please, God, don’t let him die
.

Chapter Fifty
Hidden Meaning

 

R
eece blinked his eyes, rolled them left to right. Where was he? His last conscious moment came slowly. Carl’s gun aimed at his chest. The gunshot. Searing pain.

A glance confirmed an IV inserted into the vein of his right hand, the clear liquid drip bag above. A handcuff secured his left wrist to the metal bed frame. He shook it. He wasn’t going anywhere, not that he wanted to. He’d run long enough, and he felt like shit. So much for freedom.

“You’re awake.” The speaker, a pudgy woman in a nurse’s uniform, bustled around the bed, checking the monitors.

Reece nodded. His mouth felt like he’d eaten a bucket of sand. “Water, please.” The words came out in a dry croak.

She moved toward him, poured water into a glass from the bedside pitcher, and stuck in an accordion straw. He sucked as much as he could before she pulled it away.

“Not too much now.”

“Thanks. How long have I been here?”

“Since yesterday.” The nurse checked his IV.

He looked out the window. From the position of the sun, he judged it to be early morning. “How bad is it?”

“You’re one lucky fellow. Could’ve been a lot worse if the bullet hadn’t been deflected.”

Deflected? How?

The nurse waddled to the door to speak to someone outside. A tall, stocky man entered. He had a badge clipped to his belt and looked vaguely familiar.

“Remember me, Reece? Dennis Tobey. We were in school together. You graduated a year after me.”

Reece squinted. He could barely remember yesterday. How did this guy expect him to remember thirty years ago? He dug back in time. Tobey, Tobey. The image took form. Not clearly, but sharp enough to put the name to a face. The man had changed. “You were captain of the basketball team.”

“Yeah, though I carried less weight back then.” Tobey patted his belly. “Quite a bit less. And you—you were a few pounds heavier. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Reece snorted. Pain pricked his chest. He took shallow breaths, spoke slowly. “I’m surprised, considering I’ve been on every newscast recently.”

“Yeah, well, there’s that. First, though, I thought, who in hell is that? Reece Daughtry was this big, quiet mountain of a man. And I see this lean, mean, grizzled-looking guy with grayish hair.”

“Mean and grizzled,” Reece said. “Haven’t heard that one. Never thought of myself as mean
or
grizzled.”

“You know what I mean.”

He stared at Tobey. “No, I don’t.” He forgot, took a deep breath, and burst into a fit of coughing. His chest exploded in pain, and he growled like a wounded animal. “Damn, that hurts.”

Tobey took a step forward. “You need the nurse?”

Reece gasped a few times. “No, but I’ll remember not to cough again.”

“Yup, a bullet in the chest will do that to you.”

“Mind giving me some water?”

Tobey did, and Reece took as much as he could before the nurse charged through the door and yanked it from Tobey’s hand.

“What did I tell you about drinking too much,” she said, checking Reece’s vitals while he talked.

“Nurse Ratched,” Reece said to Tobey.

She sneered. “I’m a lot nicer than that movie witch, but my boss isn’t. She wouldn’t like it if my patient got nauseous from the anesthesia. Not with sutures in his chest.”

“Point taken,” Reece said. “Now, enough small talk, Dennis. Get to it. I’m”—he jiggled his wrist—“cuffed to the bed. Obviously you didn’t listen to the recorder I had in my pocket. It’s all there. My brother confessed he murdered two women—the murders attributed to me.” A frown covered Tobey’s face, and an ominous feeling descended on Reece like a black storm cloud. He bet he wouldn’t like what he heard next.

“Sorry, Reece. The recorder saved your life. Took the impact of the bullet, which damaged it beyond repair. No one’s going to hear anything on it.”

Reece’s stomach sank. He’d been right. Now he understood
deflected
. He buried his head deeper into the pillow. “I want to see my lawyer. Is she here?”

“Figured you’d say that.”

“You going to let me see her or not?”

“Hey, I’m trying to help.”

“Lawyer,” Reece said with as much force as he could manage. Then he stared at Tobey, his lips shut tight.

“She’s not here right now, but she should be soon. There’s a white guy here, though.”

Where was Jeri?
“I want to see him too.”

“I shouldn’t, but since I know you’re not going anywhere, and I want to give you your best shot, I’ll let him in.”

“Best shot? You’re one of the few in over twenty years who has.”

“I followed your case. Thought the result sucked.”

Reece was sick and tired of people saying that. Where were they all when he was railroaded into prison? Why didn’t they come to his defense then? “What about Dana Minette?”

“She’s not here. Fed by the name of Larkins is questioning her. That’s where your lawyer is.”

A flash of anger rippled through Reece. Why did Jeri bring her? Why didn’t she leave her with Frank? She had to know what would happen. He rolled his head to the side. Bad enough he screwed up, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Dana taken into custody.

“Are they charging her?”

“They’re asking her a few questions, from what I understand.”

They can’t railroad Dana with Jeri there. “She didn’t do anything, Dennis. Can’t you do something?”

“Not my call. The truth will come out.”

Not without the recorder and Carl’s confession. “Why do you want to give me my best shot? You must be a friend of Carl’s.”

Tobey fastened a blank stare on Reece, but he say didn’t anything. He went to the door and opened it. Before he left the room, he turned back. “I’ll make sure you see your attorney as soon as she gets here.”

Raising his voice hurt his chest, but Reece persisted. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Tobey turned, hesitated. “I know Carl.”

He left with those three words hanging in the air. What did he mean?
I know Carl.
Reece knew Carl too, and he knew with the destruction of the recorder he’d lost any chance to show the world the real Carl
Daughtry
.

Although Reece grew up in Portland, this was Carl’s town. He lived here, married twice, joined all the city groups men in business belonged to, like their father. Like Reece probably would have had life not taken a detour. Why would anyone here want to help him?

He dozed and woke to Jeraldine’s voice and knew he was in big trouble. She spoke softly and respectfully, without cussing. That clarified how much trouble.

Chapter Fifty-One
A Double Life

 

Harold County, North Carolina

 

J
im Payton wanted to get all his ducks in a row before he went after Robert Minette. First on his agenda: look into what Harris told him about a dark night almost twenty years ago. He actually felt sorry for the newspaperman. He’d been living with the guilt of something Payton wasn’t sure happened the way Harris believed. And he’d been living in a bottle to erase the memories.

Harris told him exactly where and when he supposedly hit the man on the bike. Payton obtained a warrant to requisition the hospital records for the date and for the few weeks after. If nothing panned out, he’d check the black funeral parlors in the area.

The person in charge of records grumbled when she heard the year, but she came through. One hospital entry fit—a man treated for a broken hip a day after Harris said the accident occurred. The man would have been forty-three at the time, not as old as Harris described.

Payton remembered his youth when everyone seemed older. Now that he had broken the half-century mark, older people seemed a lot younger. The rationalization made him smile, the only smile in a long few days.

He drove to the address he’d copied from the hospital record, doubtful he’d find the patient after all this time. But he owed Harris his best shot. The address led to a small, well-kept cottage a mile off the back road Harris had taken. Neatly planted rows of corn bordered the side of the house, flower beds teeming with color edged the front. The face of the man rocking on the front porch was as smooth and unlined as polished onyx, the close-cropped gray hair the only clue to what Payton surmised to be his sixty-odd years. He held a mug of something in his hand. A cane hooked over the back of his chair. Denim overalls over a pristine white T-shirt covered his rangy body.

“Jeremiah Livingston?” Payton asked.

“That’s me. What can I do for you?”

“I want to ask you about an accident you had on your bicycle about twenty years ago.”

Livingston took a drink from his cup. A smile revealing cigarette-stained teeth spanned from ear to ear. “Been wondering when someone would get around to that,” he said.

* * * * *

J
im Payton took Barry Kanter’s call.

“Boy, were you onto something,”

“What’ve you got?”

“My man followed Harry Klugh all over town yesterday. He finally caught him eating dinner at one of those mall food courts. Good thing Klugh’s a litter bug. He left his trash on the table to the delight of Bubba.”

“Bubba?”

“Yup. Bubba looks the opposite of what you’d expect a Bubba to look like, which is why he’s so good at what he does. Anyway, Bubba collected the trash and brought it to me. A police friend owed me a favor and put them through AFIS. My friend is as happy as a pig in shit.”

“Okay, so who is he?”

“Name’s Victor Castell. My cop friend said Castell was a small-time hood from Chicago who decided to go for the big score. He hit one of the mob’s banks and got off with a tidy sum. Sixty grand, it’s rumored. But he killed one of their guys, and almost took a bullet himself, the story goes. He escaped clean, then disappeared off the face of the earth. His former employers were understandably pissed off. So pissed off, there’s a standing contract on Castell, even after all these years. Of course, the theft was never reported, but the murder was. Chicago police want a crack at him. Apparently, they pegged him for a few more unsolved crimes.”

“I suppose when the real Klugh went missing on a fishing trip on Lake Michigan, there’s a reason why no one ever found his body.”

“Castell wouldn’t want him to pop up unexpectedly, excuse the pun. Half a year later, Klugh number two, aka Victor Castell, transplanted from Philadelphia to Atlanta to start a new life in Klugh number one’s old profession as a private detective. Perfect cover for a crook. With a resemblance to the real Klugh and a little finagling, he bought himself a license and a gun permit. No telling how he and Minette zeroed in on each other. Scum attracts scum as if they had radioactive pheromones.”

However they connected, Payton assumed Klugh engineered the disappearance of Minette’s witness in the Charlotte case. The puzzle pieces were beginning to fall into place. “You think I could talk your police friend into working with me on this.”

“I mentioned that. He’d like the collar, but since you’re the one who set him on Castell, and someone else is in danger of losing his life, he’s willing to do whatever you want. ’Course, Chicago has first dibs, don’t they?”

“After I get my man cleared for at least one of the murders, and nail the prick who set Klugh to do it, I really don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to him or who gets the collar. I have a different agenda.”

“I take it you’re coming to Atlanta.”

“First thing Monday morning if you set me up with your friend. I have jurisdiction problems.”

“Wild horses couldn’t keep him away. I have one question. Why should Klugh tell you anything? He’s damned no matter which crimes he confesses to. It’s a lose/lose for him. Not much incentive to come clean.”

“I bet I can give him a good reason,” Payton said, “if your buddy goes along.”

Chapter Fifty-Two
Drifting Off to a Better Place

 

New England

 

R
eece had never seen Jeraldine so subdued. His near death must have given her a scare. He tried to sit up, but with one wrist cuffed and the other immobilized, he couldn’t manage it. Besides, pain kept him in place.

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