Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (6 page)

After establishing who the extras are, Detective Grillo wastes no time asking Laurel to begin.

She reads from a prepared statement and everyone in the room recoils as she describes witnessing David’s death, then fighting off the assailant with garden tools. When she explains the necessity of battering down the garage door, a sob escapes her sister and Colin grimaces and bows his head.

Detective Helowicz adds parenthetically that, upon inspection, the electrical plug for the garage door opener was unseated, just as Laurel theorized.

The questions the two Glen Abbey detectives throw at her relate mainly to the physical characteristics of the assailant, whether he said anything to her, and if so, what.

“The man I saw was medium height, no more than five-seven or eight. Medium build, black collar-length hair, skin color and features consistent with those of a Native American—with those of one Hoople Walking Crow Jakeway, whose photograph he closely resembled—with the difference he now has a nasty gash on his chin, one that will leave a scar. As for what he said . . . he said . . . he shouted nothing intelligible . . . nothing I could understand.”

“And who is this Jakeway guy?” Grillo asks.

“Mr. Isaacs is better prepared to answer that than I.” Laurel responds.

Nate flips open the thick Jakeway file Amanda retrieved from the study. “From the beginning?” he asks Grillo.

“Affirmative,” the detective says. “But before you get started, refresh my mind about who you are and what your relationship is to the deceased.”

“
Which
deceased?” Nate scowls.

“Don’t you remember? This is the Floss guy.” Detective Helowicz coaches his partner in a stage whisper. “This is the guy Lassiter drilled after he found the old lady hanging out the window of the house a few doors down from today’s crime scene.”

“Oh, yeah. Right, I’ve got it now. And when Lassiter followed through it turned out Isaacs had inroads with both the Chandler woman and the rock star, so that ties him to both of today’s deceased—Chandler’s father and the rock star’s lawyer,” Grillo says as though none of those mentioned were in the room.

Nate lets the insult go unremarked because now that the detectives are satisfied with his identity and his right to be involved, the moment is at hand. The long-awaited moment has arrived and damned if his throat doesn’t close and his vision blur when he glances down at handwritten pages outlining events dating back to April of this year.

But that wasn’t the true beginning; the true starting point was in November of ’84 when he first ignored indicators pointing to an outcome like this. That’s where he ought to begin if he could bring himself to do it with Colin present.

“I have an idea,” Amanda says after he’s stalled for at least thirty seconds. “The only events that are not documented in that file are those that occurred today.”

That’s not entirely true, but he doesn’t interrupt when she proposes omitting his narrative and turning the data over to the detectives to study in depth.

“Then all you need to provide is your statement on today’s events,” she says as though that will amount to nothing more than a walk in the park. But, by comparison, maybe it will.

Without waiting for him to agree, Amanda leans into his space, closes the folder and pushes it in the direction of Grillo. The detective uses up another thirty seconds in mute assessment of his colleagues, who eventually nod agreement.

“Subject to your remaining available for further questioning, you understand.” Grillo accepts the folder and resumes the crusty attitude that characterized him at the crime scene. “So? What’re we waiting for? Let’s have it. Let’s hear how your day went, Isaacs,” he says.

At the conclusion of Nate’s testimony, the Wolcott detective takes over the inquiry. By now the gallery has heard as much as it wants to hear—needs to hear—and begins to trickle out of the room, one and two at a time. Amanda excuses herself to transcribe the shorthand version she took of his official statement, and Moffat puts fine points on questions already asked about what was found in Mr. Chandler’s rest home bathroom.

This recapitulation lasts for a half hour—a half hour the Glen Abbey detectives spend poring over the Jakeway file at the far end of the long table.

After Moffat rejoins his colleagues, the three whisper together for a few minutes, then Moffat speaks for the group in announcing that neighboring law enforcement agencies will receive an updated description of the perpetrator, but that description will not be released to the media.

“So don’t expect to hear your guy named unless you spread the word—which I
strongly
advise you and your cohorts not to do. And don’t expect to see his picture on the front of a tabloid or displayed in your local post office. Too soon for that. Way too soon. Don’t wanna drive this guy underground or instigate a witch hunt, if you get my meaning.”

“Your meaning’s clear,” Nate says.

“Good. So once we’ve got an autopsy report on the old gent at the nursing home, we’ll have more to go on. That’s saying the massive stroke he allegedly suffered was brought on by an administered cocaine overdose. But I’ve gotta warn you. Even if the alleged drug residue you discovered in the nursing home john does pass analysis, there’s still a long way to go—a very long way to go toward establishing the drug didn’t originate with a healthcare worker or that it wasn’t intended for that worker’s own use. And there’s the angel of mercy angle. You know, one of them do-gooders that see it as their divine right to end needless suffering.”

“Shit,” Nate mutters.

“On the positive side, angels of mercy seldom use street drugs and who’s to say we won’t come up with an eyewitness. Someone may have seen a Jakeway look-alike on the premises and we may get something from surveillance cameras. But you gotta understand, this all takes time,” Moffat concludes and pockets the small voice recorder he’s used throughout.

The two Glen Abbey detectives have nothing positive to add as they prepare to leave. Despite their earlier eagerness to acquire background on Jakeway, they now strike him as unconvinced of anything other than the means of David Sebastian’s death. They’re vague about when they’ll be in touch with Yates and Newblatt and noncommittal about pursuing the other promising leads provided.

Desultory best describes all three detectives when Amanda returns with his word-processed statement. While he’s signing it, they talk about the best route back to Jersey and what they’ll get to eat on the way.

Disappointment numbs him to everything except the pain in his shoulder and ribcage. The sense of being right back where he started is enough to send him into denial again. But he did find cocaine residue in the nursing home bathroom. He did see the gaping wound spanning David Sebastian’s throat. He did hear Laurel identify the assailant as one Hoople Jakeway. And Aurora’s head was attached the first time he confronted her dead body.

Amanda jars him from these rationalizations with the announcement that the doctor is waiting for him in the study.

The low angle of the sun says it’s past suppertime when Hoop makes it back to Route 22 and the motor lodge. He pushes the battered bike the last hundred yards and lets show the punishing pain that rode with him like an extra backpack for the full distance—a distance made longer by the need to stay out of sight as much as possible—a distance that took only three-quarters of an hour to cover when he was going in the other direction on a bus outfitted with a bike rack.

But tore up and bloodied the way he was, they wouldn’t let him on the bus for the return trip; they even threatened to call an ambulance when they saw how banged up his bike was and took for granted he was bested by a car instead of a spade-swinging woman and a bad spill on the cross-country escape from Old Quarry Court.

Inside the motel room, he cable-locks the bike to the clothes bar like he always does—like nothing’s changed—and dumps the contents of the backpack on the bed like he always does after he’s been out. But this time he doesn’t pick through the stuff on the bed to make sure everything’s there. He doesn’t have to look at it all to know the knife sheath is empty, just like he doesn’t have to go in the john and look in the mirror to know the lawyer-woman marked him for life.

The less thought about that the better. He’s better off to stay fixed on the part of today’s plan that did work—the part that saw the rock star’s head caved in and throat cut before the woman spoiled things by fighting back.

His own head still pounds from the blow she landed with the flat of the spade. There’s no forgetting about that. There’s no forgetting about anything that happened today, so there’s no need to write any of it down in the copybook. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a look at the copybook—to look again at the page he chicken-scratched after his drunked-up talk with the Chink bartender a couple of weeks ago.

He lowers his aching haunches onto the bed and pulls the black-speckled book from the pile of things just emptied there. He opens it to the writing that gave him the idea to use Laurel Chandler’s father as bait.

Chink guy works 2 night jobs on top of day job. Needs money for papers--airplane tickets?--to bring old father to USA from Orient. Doesn’t hold with nursing homes or people that shun duty to elders. Overproud that way.

The first time he read this through he laughed and mocked himself for ever thinking it important enough to write down. The next time he opened to this particular page he saw it differently and laughed out of the other side of his mouth, like he’d do now if his mouth wasn’t pulled off kilter by the gaping wound to his chin.

He reads down to the bottom of the page, nods approval at written mention of the bus that the Chink got on that night—one with a bike rack attached to the front bumper. Another entry that looked stupid at first, then answered how to go long distances without extra strain.

There’s more to approve of when he finds the drawing he made of the Sawyer Manor Nursing Home and the page of written remarks he made about the lack of good help there. And back toward the front of the copybook, he nods more approval at what he wrote about the drug death of that other British rock star—that Rayce Vaughn guy everybody made such a fuss over—without knowing the information would come in handy later on.

He pores over a few more pages until the blood smell of his clothes starts to get to him. Without a window that opens or a working air conditioner to turn on, the smell has ripened into a strong reminder that he still needs to get cleaned up. And he still needs to do something about the bone-deep wound to his chin. But not yet. Not till he hears them say on the music channel that Colin Elliot’s done for.

The hand controller for the TV doesn’t work at first. Three tries later, he’s ready to call it quits when the screen lights up on one of the local stations. Then the controller won’t change stations or lower the sound, so he’ll either have to roust his aching self from the bed or be satisfied with whatever is tuned in by chance.

While deciding if changing channels is worth the effort, he paws through the jumble of possessions on the bed. Nothing holds his interest very long and nothing they’re saying on the TV grabs his attention till he hears the lawyerwoman’s name said.

This could be it. This could be what he was hoping to hear on the music channel. He swings his feet to the floor and sits up straight to drink in pleasure from news of the rock star’s death, but they’re talking about somebody else. They’re going on and on about somebody called David Sebastian, who was struck down at a suburban New Jersey location by an unknown assailant. And they’re saying Laurel Chandler Elliot was witness to the attack that occurred in the garage of her family home, and that she and Sebastian had a professional relationship over the years and were at the Glen Abbey residence to select burial clothing for her father, who died yesterday after a long illness.

Hoop gets to his feet, closes in on the TV. He can’t have heard right. But they keep blathering about David Sebastian instead of Colin Elliot and showing pictures of a guy that doesn’t look much like the rock star except for having a full head of hair.

They’ve got a lot to say about Sebastian’s global prominence in the field of entertainment law and what a big deal he was in Manhattan, where he was senior partner and backbone of the law firm founded by his father and Laurel Chandler’s grandmother.

They’ve got too much to say about how the Chandler woman just got married to rock star Colin Elliot yesterday, and what a shame her wedding night was ruined by news of her father’s death and her honeymoon was scrapped when she had to go to America instead of some exotic locale. And worst of all, they tell how she barely escaped with her life and that she’s now in seclusion at an undisclosed location with the rock star who’s supposed to be dead.

“
No
,” Hoop says and backs away from the TV that goes right on spewing things he doesn’t want to hear and can’t stop listening to. “Nooooo!” he howls as his knees buckle and drop him to the floor.

Rage runs through him like an electrical current and it might as well be 110 volts because he’s so paralyzed he can’t act on it. He’s got nothing left. No strength, no answers, no excuses, no new tradeoffs for restoring luck. He can’t think. He can hardly breathe. He chooses not to see and tries not to hear.