The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller (22 page)

     How many perfectly innocent people, Lang wondered, were aware of a plea of nolo contender and the fact it did not amount to an actual conviction?

     "I doubt the government will accept a no contest."

     "Okay, guilty then. I'd like to get it all settled before the indictment comes down."

     Lang thought about it for a moment. Of course he'd like it settled before the embarrassment of a very public arrest. It was mildly surprising the man wasn't already in custody with a monumental bond to prevent him from swindling someone else. Plea bargains were almost always available, but in view of the scope of the hundred million or so this man had skinned the banks for, the government was looking to tie Hall's scalp to its belt.

     "Possible."

     The hint of a smile played around Phillip's lips. "Why don't you see what you can do?"

     "Good idea." Lang leaned back and picked the pen up again. "First, though, you have to decide if you want me to represent you."

     The hint matured into a warm smile, the one he had no doubt used to
cheat widows out of their last mite. "Oh, I have no doubt. I do. You come highly recommended."

     Lang thought about this man's associates and wondered if he had just been insulted. "Fine. I'll need a retainer."

     Lang's newest client shifted in his chair. "I thought you worked on an hourly basis."

     Like most criminal lawyers, Lang knew better. If you didn't get it up front, the type of clientele pretty well guaranteed you wouldn't get it at all. If the client was found innocent, in his mind, he hadn't really needed a lawyer at all. Guilty meant the lawyer hadn't done his job.

     "'Fraid not. I'll need a hundred thousand."

     Without blinking an eye, Phillip asked, "Can I pay that over time?"

     This from a guy who had allegedly bilked millions of dollars without remorse?

     Lang stood. "I'll be happy to refer you to other counsel, perhaps less expensive."

     Phillip reached for a briefcase that had a brass designer logo on the flap. "No, no, I'll write you a check right now."

     Lang sat back down. "Fine."

     Phillip was pulling out a three-ring checkbook. "And you'll talk to the U.S. attorney when?"

     "As soon as the check clears."

     Phillip blanched, "It may take a day or two."

     Lang nodded affably. "Just let me know when I can have it certified."

     As he stood in the doorway of his office watching Phillip Hall's departure, his secretary, Sara, waited until the outer door closed. "Lang, that man is scum."

     Lang nodded again, surprised her Christian, grandmotherly "judge-not" attitude had been suspended. "I know, Sara. What we need is a better class of criminal."

CSX Railway Right-of-Way

Mile Marker Six

Atlanta

The Same Day
1:07
P.M.

H
OMICIDE DETECTIVE FRANKLIN MORSE HAD SEEN
it too many times: a young woman dead, her body dumped in the weeds somewhere and left like refuse. He tried to treat each one individually, keep them separate in his mind, but the similarities made it difficult.

     This Jane Doe, though, was different.

     He squatted beside her.

     First, she was older, probably in her late twenties. Old for the trade of most vics like these. She wore a conservative pant suit rather than the customary miniskirt, and there were no obvious needle tracks. The visibility and openness of the site suggested she had probably been killed before being brought here along the railroad tracks instead of being left in whatever abandoned house or apartment she had used to turn her last trick. Likely, she wasn't a working girl. One shoe, low heel, was still on a foot and her left ring finger bore a simple gold band. Not that he'd never seen a married hooker; they usually had already pawned wedding rings and any other jewelry. Then there was the very fact that she was here, a black woman in a very white neighborhood.

     Morse stood, his hands on his hips and slowly bending backwards to ease muscles getting too old for this kind of shit. The photographer moved in, his camera's winding whine like the sound of insects.

     The medical examiner's office would make the final determination, but
Morse's guess was that Jane had been here less than a day. The rats, opossums, and other fauna hadn't found her yet. Judging from the bulging eyes and swollen tongue hanging from her mouth, she had been strangled, either by some sort of garrote or by hand. He'd let the M.E. look for marks of a ligature. That would likely mean a struggle, an explanation for two broken fingernails, defensive wounds. Not that the kudzu would reflect evidence of a disturbance. Anything smaller than rutting buffalo wouldn't displace the tangle, thick as a bird's nest.

     He looked over to where two uniforms were interviewing the man who had found her. Morse had insisted they do so downwind. Bearded, filthy, and smelling of eau d'sewer, he was one of Atlanta's homeless. Somehow he had migrated from downtown, where his brethren were as much a part of the landscape as the skyscrapers. He had, no doubt, hoped to find donors more sympathetic to panhandlers in the shopping center across the tracks. A blindness for beggars was a prerequisite for working or inhabiting the city's center. Sightlessness and olfactory insensitivity. Before political correctness had become the mandatory credo of all city employees, the guy would have been a wino, a bum, a tramp. By whatever name, the rose would smell as sweet. Morse was surprised he hadn't relieved Jane Doe of the ring.

     It would be convenient if the crime could be pinned on the urban outdoorsman, but that wasn't gonna happen. First, if Mr. Fragrant had killed her, he sure as hell wouldn't have run down a cop to tell him about his grisly find. He would be somewhere celebrating the windfall of whatever her purse might have contained by binging on Mad Dog 20/20 or whatever other fine vintage was selling for $2.50 a bottle. Second, the man was visibly shaken, more tremors than the DT's Morse he guessed he suffered from.

     He looked up to where another uniform had been unenthusiastically poking around. The man was waving a purse like a trophy. Careful not to trip over the vines, Morse strode over to him.

     "I found the vic's purse, Detective."

     Morse took it. "Meybbe. Couldda been snatched from somebody else." He checked the color. It more or less matched the pant suit of the dead woman and was an exact fit with the single shoe. "Ennythin' in it?"

     The cop shook his head. "Wallet's gone, no ID."

     Morse watched two emergency medical uniforms shroud the body and load it onto a stretcher. No way a wheeled gurney was gonna make it in there. He ran a hand around the inside of the purse and held up a business card.

     "Paige Charles, Swisher & Peele, Attorneys at Law," he read aloud. "Looks like whoever the vic was, she had high-powered counsel an' I believe I've met that counsel."

     He pulled his notepad out of a pocket and began turning pages.

480 Lafayette Drive

Thirty Minutes Later

W
ITHIN MINUTES OF HIS ARRIVAL, LANG
Reilly had taken charge, turning the den into a command center. Wynton stood by helplessly as his neighbor called what seemed to be a private number in the governor's office. A reply in less than ten minutes established Wynn-Three was not in custody of any state or local agency. The next call, also on the directory of Lang's iPhone, was to the local FBI office. It had taken less than a half hour for a team of three conservatively dressed men and one woman to appear on Wynton's doorstep.

     Two of the men went to work on the house's phones while the woman and other man interviewed and reinterviewed Paige. Wynton had always heard the FBI was competent, but he was astonished at the practiced efficiency with which they operated.

     "If this really turns out to be a kidnapping," Lang explained, "these guys want to both tape and try to trace any ransom demand."

     "If?" Wynton asked. "What else could it be?"

     "Normally, the Fibbies don't get involved in a disappearance case unless there's some indicia the victim was illegally taken against his will."

     No one taught that in law school, Wynton thought. He was feeling like a character in a play without a part. "There's no doubt Wynn-Three didn't go willingly."

     Lang was about to say something when the doorbell rang.

     Everyone in the house suddenly became still and silent.

     One of the FBI men talking to Paige stood and moved toward the front of the house. "I'll get it."

     From where he stood, Lang heard a familiar voice and moved toward the hall. Before he could leave the room, a tall, slender black man in a suit was there.

     "Shoulda knowed you'd somehow be involved, Mr. Reilly."

     Lang smiled. "Well, well, Detective Morse! It's been awhile."

     Morse sighed deeply. "Hoped it might be longer, meybbe eight mo' years. Ever' time I see you, somebody either dead or in deep sh . . . trouble."

     "Looks like we may have a kidnapping."

     "Dunno nothin' 'bout that. I can see you a'ready got the Federal boys here. Leas' they
looks
like 'em."

     This must be the detective Paige had told him about, Wynton was thinking, the one that seemed to know Lang and Gurt.

     "The Atlanta Police Department is now interested in a potential abduction?" Lang asked.

     Morse shook his head. "No, I came to see Paige Charles." He held up a business card. "Victim in a homicide I'm workin' had it in her purse. I a'ready had the address 'cause of what happened in the park the other day."

     "We're interviewing Ms. Charles now," the FBI man said. "We'll be through in a minute or two."

     Morse was about to reply, no doubt to comment on the FBI impinging on his investigation. From experience, Lang was aware of the less-than-friendly relationship between state and federal authorities. The FBI treated locals as incompetent; the state people maintained the Bureau did little of the actual work but claimed most of the credit. There was some truth on both sides.

     "Detective?" Paige was standing in the hall just outside the door. "I'm glad you're here. I called the police this morning and they weren't interested."

     Morse gave a slight head shake. "Miz Charles, we found a woman's body down by the railroad near Ansley Mall. She had this card in her pocket."

     Paige stepped closer and examined it. "I think that's the one I gave the woman from DEFACS, woman named Byron-Smith."

     Morse reached into a pocket and produced a photograph. "This her?"

     Wynton watched the color drain from his wife's face as though someone had pulled a plug. She stepped, more of a stagger, backwards, a hand
feeling for a chair into which she collapsed. "I, I think so, yes."

     Morse returned the picture to his pocket. "It was taken where we found her. What was your relationship to this Byron-Smith woman?"

     Wynton noticed the detective's lazy drawl had disappeared.

     "Relationship?" Paige ran both hands down her face. "We didn't have a relationship exactly. She came by here Monday, a couple of days ago. She was with the DEFACS people. I'd taken Wynn-Three, my son . . ."

     "The one somebody tried to snatch in the park?" Morse asked.

     "Yes. I'd taken him for help. He had been emotionally disturbed by . . . by something. The psychologist suspected possible child abuse. Of course, that was ridiculous . . ."

     "Look, detective," Wynton interrupted. "You can see my wife is pretty upset right now . . ."

     Paige held up a hand, palm outward, "It's okay. You found her dead? Who . . . ?"

     Morse shook his head. "Too early to tell yet."

     "I'd try whoever took the little boy."

     Everyone's eyes were on Lang.

     "You only identified her by Paige's card, right?"

     Morse nodded, beginning to understand. "Her wallet was missing. That ain't unusual."

     Lang turned to Paige. "And I think you told me the woman who came here with the two men had something that looked like DEFACS ID, right?"

     "Oh my God!" Paige said. "They killed that poor woman . . ."

     "To get the necessary credentials to take Wynn-Three," Lang finished. He turned to Morse. "You have the guy who tried to take the kid in the park. What have you found out about him so far?"

     Morse shrugged. "A real hard ass. S'cuse me, ma'am. He's a foreigner, tell that by his accent. Like we ain' got 'nough homegrown perps. Got no ID, wouldn't say a word, 'ceptin' he wanted a lawyer. Too many TV crime shows rerun overseas. We sent his prints off to Interpol, take 'em day or two t' run 'em."

     "He is German, possibly Bavarian."

     Everyone turned look at Gurt, who had arrived unannounced. From the color in her cheeks and those of the child whose hand she held, they had been out for a walk in the day's crisp winter air.

     "German?" Morse repeated. "How you know?"

     Gurt let go of Manfred's hand and began peeling off his coat. "I am German. I know."

     "Trust me," Lang said. "She knows."

     "The two men come with the supposed DEFACS worker," Morse asked Paige. "They have accents?"

     She shook her head. "I don't remember them saying anything."

     Lang went over to where she was sitting. "The reincarnation, the person Wynn-Three remembered being . . ."

     "He remembered no such thing!" she snapped. "It was all something suggested by that crazy hypnotist!"

     Lang was not prepared to split hairs whether of a theological, psychological, or fanciful nature. "The person. Didn't you tell us he was German?"

     "Polish," Wynton volunteered. "A polish Jew in one of the Nazi camps. Why?"

     "Do you still have the recording what's-her-name made?"

     "Marcie," Paige said with obvious distaste. "What does that have to do with kidnapping Wynn-Three?"