Tell No One (29 page)

“So I did some research,” she went on. “The good thing about being a famous model is that you can call anyone and they’ll talk to you. So I called this illusionist I’d seen on Broadway a couple of years ago. He heard the story and then he laughed. I said what’s so funny. He asked me a question: Did this guru do this
after dinner? I was surprised. What the hell could that have to do with it? But I said yes, how did you know? He asked if we had coffee. Again I said yes. Did he take his black? One more time I said yes.” Shauna was smiling now. “Do you know how he did it, Beck?”

I shook my head. “No clue.”

“When he passed the card to Wendy, it went over his coffee cup. Black coffee, Beck. It reflects like a mirror. That’s how he saw what I’d written. It was just a dumb parlor trick. Simple, right? Pass the card over your cup of black coffee and it’s like passing it over a mirror. And I almost believed him. You understand what I’m saying here?”

“Sure,” I said. “You think I’m as gullible as Flaky Wendy.”

“Yes and no. See, part of Omay’s con is the want, Beck. Wendy falls for it because she wants to believe in all that mumbo-jumbo.”

“And I want to believe Elizabeth is alive?”

“More than any dying man in a desert wants to find an oasis,” she said. “But that’s not really my point either.”

“Then what is?”

“I learned that just because you can’t see any other explanation doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist. It just means you can’t see it.”

I leaned back and crossed my legs. I watched her. She turned away from my gaze, something she never does. “What’s going on here, Shauna?”

She wouldn’t face me.

“You’re not making any sense,” I said.

“I think I was pretty damn clear—”

“You know what I mean. This isn’t like you. On the phone you said you needed to talk to me. Alone. And
for what? To tell me that my dead wife is, after all, still dead?” I shook my head. “I don’t buy it.”

Shauna didn’t react.

“Tell me,” I said.

She turned back. “I’m scared,” she said in a tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“Of what?”

The answer didn’t come right away. I could hear Linda rustling around in the kitchen, the tinkling of plates and glasses, the sucking pop when she opened the refrigerator. “That long warning I just gave you,” Shauna finally continued. “That was as much for me as for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve seen something.” Her voice died out. She took a deep breath and tried again. “I’ve seen something that my rational mind can’t explain away. Just like in my story about Omay. I know there has to be another explanation, but I can’t find it.” Her hands started moving, her fingers fidgeting with buttons, pulling imaginary threads off her suit. Then she said it: “I’m starting to believe you, Beck. I think maybe Elizabeth is still alive.”

My heart leapt into my throat.

She rose quickly. “I’m going to mix a mimosa. Join me?”

I shook my head.

She looked surprised. “You sure you don’t want—”

“Tell me what you saw, Shauna.”

“Her autopsy file.”

I almost fell over. It took me a little time to find my voice. “How?”

“Do you know Nick Carlson from the FBI?”

“He questioned me,” I said.

“He thinks you’re innocent.”

“Didn’t sound that way to me.”

“He does now. When all that evidence started pointing at you, he thought it was all too neat.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you believed him?”

“I know it sounds naïve, but yeah, I believed him.”

I trusted Shauna’s judgment. If she said that Carlson was on the level, he was either a wonderful liar or he’d seen through the frame-up. “I still don’t understand,” I said. “What does that have to do with the autopsy?”

“Carlson came to me. He wanted to know what you were up to. I wouldn’t tell him. But he was tracking your movements. He knew that you asked to see Elizabeth’s autopsy file. He wondered why. So he called the coroner’s office and got the file. He brought it with him. To see if I could help him out on that.”

“He showed it to you?”

She nodded.

My throat was dry. “Did you see the autopsy photos?”

“There weren’t any, Beck.”

“What?”

“Carlson thinks someone stole them.”

“Who?”

She shrugged. “The only other person to sign out the file was Elizabeth’s father.”

Hoyt. It all circled back to him. I looked at her. “Did you see any of the report?”

Her nod was more tentative this time.

“And?”

“It said Elizabeth had a drug problem, Beck. Not just that there were drugs in her system. He said that the reports showed the abuse was long-term.”

“Impossible,” I said.

“Maybe, maybe not. That alone wouldn’t be enough to convince me. People can hide drug abuse. It’s not likely, but neither is her being alive. Maybe the tests were wrong or inconclusive. Something. There are explanations, right? It can somehow be explained away.”

I licked my lips. “So what couldn’t be?” I asked.

“Her height and weight,” Shauna said. “Elizabeth was listed as five seven and under a hundred pounds.”

Another sock in the gut. My wife was five four and closer to a hundred fifteen pounds. “Not even close,” I said.

“Not even.”

“She’s alive, Shauna.”

“Maybe,” she allowed, and her gaze flicked toward the kitchen. “But there’s something more.”

Shauna turned and called out Linda’s name. Linda stepped into the doorway and stayed there. She looked suddenly small in her apron. She wrung her hands and wiped them on the apron front. I watched my sister, puzzled.

“What’s going on?” I said.

Linda started speaking. She told me about the photographs, how Elizabeth had come to her to take them, how she’d been only too happy to keep her secret about Brandon Scope. She didn’t sugarcoat or offer explanations, but then again, maybe she didn’t have to. She stood there and poured it all out and waited for the inevitable blow. I listened with my head down. I couldn’t face her, but I easily forgave. We all have our blind spots. All of us.

I wanted to hug her and tell her that I understood, but I couldn’t quite pull it off. When she’d finished, I merely nodded and said, “Thanks for telling me.”

My words were meant to be a dismissal. Linda understood. Shauna and I sat there in silence for almost a full minute.

“Beck?”

“Elizabeth’s father has been lying to me,” I said.

She nodded.

“I’ve got to talk to him.”

“He didn’t tell you anything before.”

True enough, I thought.

“Do you think it’ll be different this time?”

I absentmindedly patted the Glock in my waistband. “Maybe,” I said.

Carlson greeted me in the corridor. “Dr. Beck?” he said.

Across town at the same time, the district attorney’s office held a press conference. The reporters were naturally skeptical of Fein’s convoluted explanation (vis-à-vis me), and there was a lot of backpedaling and finger-pointing and that sort of thing. But all that seemed to do was confuse the issue. Confusion helps. Confusion leads to lengthy reconstruction and clarification and exposition and several other “tions.” The press and their public prefer a simpler narrative.

It probably would have been a rougher ride for Mr. Fein, but by coincidence, the D.A.’s office used this very same press conference to release indictments against several high-ranking members of the mayor’s administration along with a hint that the “tentacles of corruption”—their phrase—may even reach the big man’s office. The media, an entity with the collective attention span of a Twinkie-filled two-year-old, immediately focused on this shiny new toy, kicking the old one under the bed.

Carlson stepped toward me. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Not now,” I said.

“Your father owned a gun,” he said.

His words rooted me to the floor. “What?”

“Stephen Beck, your father, purchased a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. The registration showed that he bought it several months before he died.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I assume you inherited the weapon. Am I correct?”

“I’m not talking to you.” I pressed the elevator button.

“We have it,” he said. I turned, stunned. “It was in Sarah Goodhart’s safety-deposit box. With the pictures.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Carlson gave me a crooked smile.

“Oh right, I was the bad guy back then,” I said. Then, making a point of turning away, I added, “I don’t see the relevance.”

“Sure you do.”

I pressed the elevator button again.

“You went to see Peter Flannery,” Carlson continued. “You asked him about the murder of Brandon Scope. I’d like to know why.”

I pressed the call button and held it down. “Did you do something to the elevators?”

“Yes. Why did you see Peter Flannery?”

My mind made a few quick deductions. An idea—a dangerous thing under the best of circumstances—came to me. Shauna trusted this man. Maybe I could too. A little anyway. Enough. “Because you and I have the same suspicions,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“We’re both wondering if KillRoy murdered my wife.”

Carlson folded his arms. “And what does Peter Flannery have to do with that?”

“You were tracking down my movements, right?”

“Yes.”

“I decided to do the same with Elizabeth’s. From eight years ago. Flannery’s initials and phone number were in her day planner.”

“I see,” Carlson said. “And what did you learn from Mr. Flannery?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “It was a dead end.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Carlson said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Are you familiar with how ballistic tests work?”

“I’ve seen them on TV.”

“Put simply, every gun makes a unique imprint on the bullet it fires. Scratches, grooves—unique to that weapon. Like fingerprints.”

“That much I know.”

“After your visit to Flannery’s office, I had our people run a specific ballistic match on the thirty-eight we found in Sarah Goodhart’s safety-deposit box. Know what I found?”

I shook my head, but I knew.

Carlson took his time before he said, “Your father’s gun, the one you inherited, killed Brandon Scope.”

A door opened and a mother and her teen son stepped into the hall. The teen was in mid-whine, his shoulder slumped in adolescent defiance. His mother’s lips were pursed, her head held high in the don’t-wanna-hear-it position. They came toward the elevator. Carlson said something into a walkie-talkie.
We both stepped away from the elevator bank, our eyes locked in a silent challenge.

“Agent Carlson, do you think I’m a killer?”

“Truth?” he said. “I’m not sure anymore.”

I found his response curious. “You’re aware, of course, that I’m not obligated to speak to you. In fact, I can call Hester Crimstein right now and nix everything you’re trying to do here.”

He bristled, but he didn’t bother denying it. “What’s your point?”

“Give me two hours.”

“To what?”

“Two hours,” I repeated.

He thought about it. “Under one condition.”

“What?”

“Tell me who Lisa Sherman is.”

That genuinely puzzled me. “I don’t know the name.”

“You and she were supposed to fly out of the country last night.”

Elizabeth.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. The elevator dinged. The door slid open. The pursed-lips mom and her slumped adolescent stepped inside. She looked back at us. I signaled for her to hold the door.

“Two hours,” I said.

Carlson nodded grudgingly. I hopped into the elevator.

Y
ou’re late!” the photographer, a tiny man with a fake French accent, shouted at Shauna. “And you look like—
comment dit-on?
—like something flushed through the toilette.”

“Up yours, Frédéric,” Shauna snapped back, not knowing or caring if that was his name. “Where you from anyway, Brooklyn?”

He threw his hands up. “I cannot work like this!”

Aretha Feldman, Shauna’s agent, hurried over. “Don’t worry, François. Our makeup man will work magic on her. She always looks like hell when she arrives. We’ll be right back.” Aretha grabbed Shauna’s elbow hard but never let up the smile. To Shauna, sotto voce, she said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t need this crap.”

“Don’t play prima donna with me.”

“I had a rough night, okay?”

“Not okay. Get in that makeup chair.”

The makeup artist gasped in horror when he saw Shauna. “What are those bags under your eyes?” he cried. “Are we doing a shoot for Samsonite luggage now?”

“Ha-ha.” Shauna moved toward the chair.

“Oh,” Aretha said. “This came for you.” She held an envelope in her hand.

Shauna squinted. “What is it?”

“Beats me. A messenger service dropped it off ten minutes ago. Said it was urgent.”

She handed the envelope to Shauna. Shauna took it in one hand and flipped it over. She looked at the familiar scrawl on the front of the envelope—just the word “Shauna”—and felt her stomach clench.

Still staring at the handwriting, Shauna said, “Give me a second.”

“Now’s not the time—”

“A second.”

The makeup artist and agent stepped away. Shauna slit open the seal. A blank white card with the same familiar handwriting fell out. Shauna picked it up. The note was brief: “Go to the ladies’ room.”

Shauna tried to keep her breath even. She stood.

“What’s wrong?” Aretha said.

“I have to pee,” she said, the calmness in her voice surprising even her. “Where’s the head?”

“Down the hall on the left.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Two minutes later, Shauna pushed the bathroom door. It didn’t budge. She knocked. “It’s me,” she said. And waited.

A few seconds later, she heard the bolt slide back.
More silence. Shauna took a deep breath and pushed again. The door swung open. She stepped onto the tile and stopped cold. There, across the room, standing in front of the near stall, was a ghost.