Tell No One (26 page)

“Special Agent Nick Carlson.”

“Nighty-night, Mr. Agent.”

“We know he called you.”

Shauna patted her mouth in a fake yawn. “You must be proud.”

“Ever hear the terms aiding and abetting and accessory after the fact?”

“Stop scaring me,” she said in an exaggerated monotone, “or I might just make wee-wee right here on the cheap carpeting.”

“You think I’m bluffing?”

She put out her hands, wrists together. “Arrest me, handsome.” She glanced behind him. “Don’t you guys usually travel in pairs?”

“I’m here alone.”

“So I gather. Can I go up now?”

Carlson carefully adjusted his glasses. “I don’t think Dr. Beck killed anyone.”

That stopped her.

“Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of evidence he did it. My colleagues are all convinced he’s guilty. There is still a massive manhunt going on.”

“Uh-huh,” Shauna said with more than a hint of
suspicion in her voice. “But somehow you see through all that?”

“I just think something else is going on here.”

“Like what?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“And if I suspect that this is a trick?”

Carlson shrugged. “Not much I can do about that.”

She mulled it over. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t know anything.”

“You know where he’s hiding.”

“I don’t.”

“And if you did?”

“I wouldn’t tell you. But you already know that.”

“I do,” Carlson said. “So I guess you won’t tell me what all that talk about walking his dog was about.”

She shook her head. “But you’ll find out soon enough.”

“He’ll get hurt out there, you know. Your friend assaulted a cop. That makes it open season on him.”

Shauna kept her gaze steady. “Not much I can do about that.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” Carlson said.

“Why don’t you think he’s guilty?”

“I’m not sure. Lots of little things, I guess.” Carlson tilted his head. “Did you know that Beck was booked on a flight to London?”

Shauna let her eyes take in the lobby, trying to buy a second or two. A man entered and smiled appreciatively at Shauna. She ignored him. “Bull,” she said at last.

“I just came from the airport,” Carlson continued. “The flight was booked three days ago. He was a no-show,
of course. But what was really odd was that the credit card used to purchase the ticket was in the name of Laura Mills. That name mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

“Probably not. We’re still working on it, but apparently it’s a pseudonym.”

“For whom?”

Carlson shrugged. “Do you know a Lisa Sherman?”

“No. How does she fit in?”

“She was booked on the same flight to London. In fact, she was supposed to sit next to our boy.”

“Another no-show?”

“Not exactly. She checked in. But when they called the flight, she never boarded. Weird, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Shauna said.

“Unfortunately, nobody could give us an ID on Lisa Sherman. She didn’t check any luggage and she used an e-ticket machine. So we started running a background check. Any guess what we found?”

Shauna shook her head.

“Nothing,” Carlson replied. “It looks like another pseudonym. Do you know the name Brandon Scope?”

Shauna stiffened. “What the hell is this?”

“Dr. Beck, accompanied by a black man, visited an attorney named Peter Flannery today. Flannery defended a suspect in the murder of Brandon Scope. Dr. Beck asked him about that and about Elizabeth’s role in his release. Any clue why?”

Shauna started fumbling in her purse.

“Looking for something?”

“A cigarette,” she said. “You have one?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Damn.” She stopped, met his eye. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“I have four dead bodies. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Four?”

“Rebecca Schayes, Melvin Bartola, Robert Wolf—those are the two men we found at the lake. And Elizabeth Beck.”

“KillRoy killed Elizabeth.”

Carlson shook his head.

“What makes you so sure?”

He held up the manila folder. “This, for one.”

“What is it?”

“Her autopsy file.”

Shauna swallowed. Fear coursed through her, tingling her fingers. The final proof, one way or the other. She tried very hard to keep her voice steady. “Can I take a look?”

“Why?”

She didn’t reply.

“And more important, why was Beck so eager to see it?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but the words rang hollow in her own ears and, she was sure, his.

“Was Elizabeth Beck a drug user?” Carlson asked.

The question was a total surprise. “Elizabeth? Never.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. She worked with drug addicts. That was part of her training.”

“I know a lot of vice cops who enjoy a few hours with a prostitute.”

“She wasn’t like that. Elizabeth was no Goody Two-shoes, but drugs? Not a chance.”

He held up the manila envelope again. “The tox report showed both cocaine and heroin in her system.”

“Then Kellerton forced them into her.”

“No,” Carlson said.

“What makes you so sure?”

“There are other tests, Shauna. Tissue and hair tests. They show a pattern of use going back several months at the least.”

Shauna felt her legs weaken. She slumped against a wall. “Look, Carlson, stop playing games with me. Let me see the report, okay?”

Carlson seemed to consider it. “How about this?” he said. “I’ll let you see any one sheet in here. Any one piece of information. How about that?”

“What the hell is this, Carlson?”

“Good night, Shauna.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up a sec.” She licked her lips. She thought about the strange emails. She thought about Beck’s running from the cops. She thought about the murder of Rebecca Schayes and the toxicology report that couldn’t be. All of a sudden, her convincing demonstration on digital imaging manipulation didn’t seem so convincing.

“A photograph,” she said. “Let me see a photograph of the victim.”

Carlson smiled. “Now, that’s very interesting.”

“Why’s that?”

“There are none in here.”

“But I thought—”

“I don’t understand it either,” Carlson interrupted. “I’ve called Dr. Harper. He was the M.E. on this one. I’m seeing if he can find out who else has signed out for this file. He’s checking as we speak.”

“Are you saying someone stole the photographs?”

Carlson shrugged. “Come on, Shauna. Tell me what’s going on.”

She almost did. She almost told him about the emails and the street cam link. But Beck had been firm. This man, for all his fancy talk, could still be the enemy. “Can I see the rest of the file?”

He moved it toward her slowly. The hell with blasé, she thought. She stepped forward and grabbed it from his hand. She tore it open and found the first sheet. As her eyes traveled down the page, a block of ice hardened in her stomach. She saw the body’s height and the weight and stifled a scream.

“What?” Carlson asked.

She didn’t reply.

A cell phone rang. Carlson scooped it out of his pants pocket. “Carlson.”

“It’s Tim Harper.”

“Did you find the old logs?”

“Yes.”

“Did someone else sign out Elizabeth Beck’s autopsy?”

“Three years ago,” Harper said. “Right after it was placed into cold storage. One person signed it out.”

“Who?”

“The deceased’s father. He’s also a police officer. His name is Hoyt Parker.”

L
arry Gandle sat across from Griffin Scope. They were outside in the garden portico behind Scope’s mansion. Night had taken serious hold, blanketing the manicured grounds. The crickets hummed an almost pretty melody, as though the super-rich could even manipulate that. Tinkling piano music spilled from the sliding glass doors. Lights from inside the house provided a modicum of illumination, casting shadows of burnt red and yellow.

Both men wore khakis. Larry wore a blue Polo shirt. Griffin had on a silk button-down from his tailor in Hong Kong. Larry waited, a beer cooling his hand. He watched the older man sitting in perfect copper-penny silhouette, facing his vast backyard, his nose tilted up slightly, his legs crossed. His right hand dangled over the arm of the chair, amber liquor swirling in his snifter.

“You have no idea where he is?” Griffin asked.

“None.”

“And these two black men who rescued him?”

“I have no idea how they’re involved. But Wu is working on it.”

Griffin took a sip of his drink. Time trudged by, hot and sticky. “Do you really believe she’s still alive?”

Larry was about to launch into a long narrative, offering evidence for and against, showing all the options and possibilities. But when he opened his mouth, he simply said, “I do.”

Griffin closed his eyes. “Do you remember the day your first child was born?”

“Yes.”

“Did you attend the birth?”

“I did.”

“We didn’t do that in our day,” Griffin said. “We fathers paced in a waiting room with old magazines. I remember the nurse coming out to get me. She brought me down the hall and I still remember turning the corner and seeing Allison holding Brandon. It was the strangest feeling, Larry. Something welled up inside me so that I thought I might burst. The feeling was almost too intense, too overwhelming. You couldn’t sort through or comprehend it. I assume that all fathers experience something similar.”

He stopped. Larry looked over. Tears ran down the old man’s cheeks, sparkling off the low light. Larry remained still.

“Perhaps the most obvious feelings on that day are joy and apprehension—apprehension in the sense that you are now responsible for this little person. But there was something else there too. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly. Not then anyway. Not until Brandon’s first day of school.”

Something caught in the old man’s throat. He coughed a bit and now Larry could see more tears. The piano music seemed softer now. The crickets hushed as though they were listening too.

“We waited together for the school bus. I held his hand. Brandon was five years old. He looked up at me in that way children do at that age. He wore brown pants that already had a grass stain on the knee. I remember the yellow bus pulling up and the sound the door made when it opened. Then Brandon let go of my hand and started climbing up the steps. I wanted to reach out and snatch him back and take him home, but I stood there, frozen. He moved inside the bus and I heard that noise again and the door slid closed. Brandon sat by a window. I could see his face. He waved to me. I waved back and as the bus pulled away, I said to myself, ‘There goes my whole world.’ That yellow bus with its flimsy metal sides and its driver I didn’t know from Adam chariotted away what was in effect everything to me. And at that moment, I realized what I had felt the day of his birth. Terror. Not just apprehension. Cold, stark terror. You can fear illness or old age or death. But there’s nothing like that small stone of terror that sat in my belly as I watched that bus pull away. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Larry nodded. “I think I do.”

“I knew then, at that moment, that despite my best efforts, something bad could happen to him. I wouldn’t always be there to take the blow. I thought about it constantly. We all do, I guess. But when it happened, when—” He stopped and finally faced Larry Gandle. “I still try to bring him back,” he said. “I try to bargain with God, offering him anything and
everything if he’ll somehow make Brandon alive. That won’t happen, of course. I understand that. But now you come here and tell me that while my son, my whole world, rots in the ground … she lives.” He started shaking his head. “I can’t have that, Larry. Do you understand?”

“I do,” he said.

“I failed to protect him once. I won’t fail again.”

Griffin Scope turned back to his garden. He took another sip of his drink. Larry Gandle understood. He rose and walked back into the night.

At ten o’clock, Carlson approached the front door of 28 Goodhart Road. He didn’t worry much about the late hour. He had seen downstairs lights on and the flicker of a television, but even without that, Carlson had more important worries than someone’s beauty sleep.

He was about to reach for the bell when the door opened. Hoyt Parker was there. For a moment they both stood, two boxers meeting at center ring, staring each other down as the referee reiterated meaningless instructions about low blows and not punching on the break.

Carlson didn’t wait for the bell. “Did your daughter take drugs?”

Hoyt Parker took it with little more than a twitch. “Why do you want to know?”

“May I come in?”

“My wife is sleeping,” Hoyt said, slipping outside and closing the door behind him. “You mind if we talk out here?”

“Suit yourself.”

Hoyt crossed his arms and bounced on his toes a
bit. He was a burly guy in blue jeans and a T-shirt that fit less snugly ten pounds ago. Carlson knew that Hoyt Parker was a veteran cop. Cute traps and subtlety would not work here.

“Are you going to answer my question?” Carlson asked.

“Are you going to tell me why you want to know?” Hoyt replied.

Carlson decided to change tactics. “Why did you take the autopsy pictures from your daughter’s file?”

“What makes you think I took them?” There was no outrage, no loud, phony denials.

“I looked at the autopsy report today,” Carlson said.

“Why?”

“Pardon me?”

“My daughter has been dead for eight years. Her killer is in jail. Yet you decide to look at her autopsy report today. I’d like to know why.”

This was going nowhere and going there fast. Carlson decided to give a little, put down his guard, let him wade in, see what happened. “Your son-in-law visited the county M.E. yesterday. He demanded to see his wife’s file. I was hoping to find out why.”

“Did he see the autopsy report?”

“No,” Carlson said. “Do you know why he’d be so eager to see it?”

“No idea.”

“But you seemed concerned.”