The Governor's Wife (10 page)

I
woke to a buzzing in my ear. Maggie jumped out of bed and growled low in her throat.

“It’s just my phone.” I pulled the mobile off my nightstand. The message symbol was flashing. I clicked on it.

Why haven’t you accessed your money?

Mags jumped back up on the bed beside me. I scratched her behind the ears and read the words again. Then I typed in a reply.

You mean the 100k?

The response was immediate.

Are you making progress?

I typed.

Hard to say.

My fingers paused over the touch screen. Then I typed some more.

Who is this?

I waited but got no response so I typed a final line.

I think Ray’s dead.

Five minutes slipped by, but my client, if that’s who it had been, was gone. Maggie jumped off the bed and stretched into a perfect downward dog. It was then that I remembered we had an overnight guest.

“Is she still out there, pup?”

Mags took that as a cue for breakfast and bolted out of the room. I threw on some jeans and followed. Sunlight poured through my living room windows. The couch was empty, pillow and blankets neatly folded and stacked on the floor. I could smell coffee and found a fresh pot brewing in the kitchen. There was a note beside it.

Michael,

Thanks for the bed. Not to mention the pizza and beer.

Had fun last night. Love to do it again.

Your new sounding board,

K.

I fed Mags, poured myself a cup of coffee, and took the note into the living room. I liked looking at her cursive and wondered what the hell that meant. And why she hadn’t stayed
for breakfast. I was rereading the texts I’d received when my front doorbell rang.

“She came back for breakfast.”

Mags wagged her tail. I walked to the front door and hit the buzzer. Thirty seconds later, there was a footfall on the stairs. I swung the door open. Andrew Wallace stood there with two cups in his hands. “I brought coffee.”

“You don’t seem too happy to see me,” Wallace said.

“It’s fine. How did you know where I lived?”

“It was on your business card.”

“Oh, yeah.”

We were in my kitchen. Wallace was sitting on a stool, his backpack on the counter beside him. “I e-mailed you last night. Told you I might stop by.”

“Must have missed it. What time is it?”

“Almost eight. You want me to come back?”

“I just need to wake up. What’s going on?”

“I pulled together some photos from the courthouse.” Wallace zipped open his pack and slid out an iPad.

“From the day Ray disappeared?”

“Yes. There are only a handful of shots worth looking at. The first few are Ray and his wife together, waiting for the elevator to take them to the basement. Then I took three of Ms. Perry alone, waiting in the parking garage.”

Wallace powered up the tablet. I yawned and took a sip from one of the coffees he’d brought. Awful. I found my own brew and watched over the grad student’s shoulder as he began to open applications. “Did either of them say anything to you while you were taking the photos?”

“Ray knew I was there but ignored me. Which was fine. I don’t think Ms. Perry ever registered me.”

“Even in the basement?”

Wallace shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not until the
end anyway. She just had this glazed look on her face. Here we go.”

Wallace pulled up the first shot. It showed Marie and Ray standing in an empty hallway. Ray was looking away from the camera. Marie was staring at Ray. Wallace was right. She was locked into a thousand-yard death stare. Wallace clicked through a selection of similar shots from the twenty-fifth floor. Then we switched to the garage.

“The lighting wasn’t very good here, so the pictures are grainy. This is Marie waiting for Ray’s elevator.”

The photo was clouded and taken from almost directly behind Marie. She had her hands jammed into her pockets and her head tilted up, watching a row of floor numbers strung out in pinpoints of light above her.

“These next two are from when the elevator door actually opened.”

Wallace had angled to one side so he was just off Marie’s shoulder. She was leaning forward slightly and peering directly into an empty elevator car. The light from inside the car was yellow and warmed one side of her face.

“This is when the door first opened?” I said.

“Yes. Here’s the other shot I got. Maybe ten seconds later. She turned and looked straight at me.”

The picture wasn’t much help. The light from the elevator car was almost directly behind Marie, casting her in silhouette.

“Did she say anything?” I said.

“No. She just looked at me like I wasn’t there. Then she pulled out her cell phone and walked away.”

“Did you go over to the elevator?”

“I didn’t even think about the elevator.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Why would I?”

“So what did you do?”

“I followed Ms. Perry. Tried to hear what she was saying
on the phone. I was thinking maybe her husband had gotten sick. Or decided to take another route out of the building.”

“But?”

“When she got off the phone, I saw her face and knew it was bad. Like maybe Ray was dead.”

“Did you take any more pictures?”

Wallace shook his head. “Didn’t seem right. I mean I’m not really a journalist or anything. Anyway, ten minutes after that the cops arrived and all hell broke loose.”

I pulled up the three parking garage photos and put them side by side on the screen. “You were standing right behind her?”

“For the first shot. I wanted to get Ray coming out of the elevator for the second, so I moved a little.”

I got out my laptop and clicked on the photos I’d taken of the parking garage elevator. We studied the two sets of images.

“See anything?” I said.

“My photos have Marie Perry in them. Yours don’t.”

“Anything else?”

“The elevator door isn’t open in any of your photos, so there’s hardly any light.”

I freshened my coffee and sat down again at the counter.

“What do you think?” Wallace said.

“I think you captured the moment when Marie Perry realizes her husband has gone missing.”

“And?”

“And that’s gotta be worth something.” I enlarged the picture of Marie staring into the empty elevator car until it filled the screen. “Can you sharpen this up at all?”

“I tried to clean it up before I came over. I can zoom in a bit if you want?”

“No, leave it as is.” I studied the profile of Marie’s face. “Should she be more surprised?”

“I told you. She seemed sort of freaked out the whole time I was with her. Even up on twenty-five.”

“Do you think she knew Ray was going to skip?”

“At the time I didn’t.”

“And now?”

“I still don’t.”

I went back to studying the picture.

“What are you looking for?” Wallace said.

“I don’t know. Something we missed. Something that isn’t there that should be.”

“Like what?”

“If I knew that…” I paused, then glanced again at Wallace. “You still have access to the garage in the federal building?”

“Sure.”

“Can you get us in today?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Can you get us in?”

“Maybe. Why?”

I stood up and threw the grad student his coat. “Let’s go.”

It took us three hours to go over everything. First, we studied Wallace’s photographs some more, then we walked through it all in the dim and dust of the federal building’s parking garage. Then we took some pictures. By the time we’d finished, I was convinced. I didn’t know if I could prove it, but I was convinced. And that was good enough. I downloaded Wallace’s photos to my laptop. The grad student knew where Marie Perry lived and wanted to tag along, but I told him that wasn’t going to work. The less other people knew, the better. So I went by myself and parked just down the street from her building—a three-story brownstone on Astor Street in the Gold Coast. She pulled up in a cab at about a quarter after six. It was raining lightly, and she held a newspaper over her head as she ran into the building. I gave her five minutes, then walked to the front door and pressed the buzzer. Her voice sounded tinny over the intercom.

“It’s me,” I said. “Kelly.”

Silence.

“How can I help you, Mr. Kelly?”

“I found Ray.”

More silence. Longer this time. I thumbed the grip on my gun. Then her voice came down again.

“First floor.”

The buzzer went off, and I pushed inside. The lobby was mahogany and marble. A small table with fresh flowers stood by three mailboxes. On the other side was an old, graceful staircase. I started to climb. She met me at the landing and led me into her apartment without a word. I took a chair beside a cold fireplace and looked out at the drizzle. Across the street was a modest little shack known as the cardinal’s mansion.

“You want something?” She held up a rocks glass with some amber-colored liquid in it.

“Whatever you got.”

What she had was scotch. Not the cheap stuff either.

“I’m sorry about the church,” I said. “You’re right. It was none of my business.”

Marie took a seat in the chair across from me. A side table stood sentry between us. “Am I supposed to say something?”

“There’s a girl I met named Elena Ramirez. She tried to come into your clinic the other day.”

Marie raised her eyebrows. “ ‘Tried’?”

“The protesters out front shooed her off, but she’s been in before to check things out. And she’ll be back.”

“I’m not sure what you want from me.”

“Elena’s sixteen years old, eight weeks pregnant, and scared out of her head.” I took out a folded-up sheet of paper and put it on the table. “That’s a copy of a police report that was filed four years ago when Elena’s older sister got pregnant. The old man’s still got his gun, and Elena thinks he’ll use it for real on her.”

“So she wants to have an abortion?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. And she needs someone to help her figure it out.”

Marie skimmed the report, folded it up, and tucked it by her side. “I’ve never met Elena, but I’m sure I can track her down. As for Mr. Ramirez…”

“You worry about the girl. I’ll take care of the old man.”

“Fair enough.” Marie took a sip from her scotch and set the glass down on a wooden coaster. She blinked her frozen eyes once and waited.

“Your father thinks you’re crazy.”

“I told you. My father’s a predator. And you’d be well advised to stay clear of him.”

“I know how to find Ray,” I said.

“You know
how
to find him?”

“I know how he got out of the courthouse. And I know who helped him.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“I thought you’d want to know.”

“I didn’t hire you, Mr. Kelly.”

“You need to know.”

“Fine. I’m listening.”

I pulled up my bag and took out my laptop. “There’s a grad student I met. Getting his master’s in architecture. He’s been hanging around the federal building on and off since college.”

“Doing what?”

“Taking pictures. He was there the day Ray was sentenced. Up on the twenty-fifth floor with both of you. Then again in the parking garage. Maybe you remember him?”

“What does he look like?”

“Thirties. Light brown hair. Pretty fit.”

“I vaguely remember a man who came down after me in the elevator. But I’m quite sure I was alone when Ray’s elevator arrived.”

“You weren’t. The grad student took these photos.” I turned around the laptop and clicked on a picture. “You’re waiting for your husband in this first one.”

She studied the picture, the muscles in her jaw working overtime.

“Here’s the one I want you to focus on,” I said and pulled up the second picture. “This is the moment when the elevator door opens and you realize Ray’s not in the car.”

She gave the image a long look and sniffed. “I remember it. So what?”

“Look at the photo.”

“I did.”

I opened up another file and clicked on another image. “This is a picture I took an hour ago. The same open elevator door, shot at roughly the same angle. I had the grad student stand in for you.”

“You’re lucky you’re not working for me, Mr. Kelly. I have a feeling you wouldn’t last long.”

“You don’t see it?”

“See what?”

“In the picture I took today the back wall inside the elevator car is bathed in light. The entire wall. It comes from a single fixture mounted in the car’s ceiling.”

“Fascinating.”

“Now look at the picture of the empty car you’re staring into.” I pointed. “There’s a shadow across a portion of the back wall. Why do you think that is?”

She glanced again, first at one photo, then the other. “No idea.”

“It couldn’t have been cast by you because you were still standing outside the car.”

“All right, it couldn’t have been cast by me.”

“There was someone in that elevator car, Ms. Perry. Someone tucked away in the corner so only you could see him—but big enough to cast a shadow.”

“One of us
is
insane, Mr. Kelly. Fortunately, it’s not me.”

“The grad student told me you were the only one who actually looked into the elevator. Then the door closed, and you called upstairs to sound the alarm.”

“So?”

“What happened to the elevator car itself?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

I closed up my laptop. “Whoever was in that car took it to an upper floor. I haven’t got the records yet, so I don’t know exactly where. Then he got out and disappeared into the crowd.”

“Ray couldn’t have done that. They had the building locked down almost immediately and weren’t letting anyone leave. Besides, they have cameras on every floor. Someone would have seen him.”

I smiled. “Not if Ray was already gone.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You’re following me, Ms. Perry. Hell, you’re a mile ahead and stepping on the gas. Eddie Ward was the guy in that car when it hit the parking garage level. He was part of the plan from the start. When Eddie got on the elevator that afternoon he was carrying a canvas tool bag. In the bag were work clothes identical to his own. I think Ray stepped onto the elevator at twenty-five and changed into those clothes. He slouched Eddie’s Cubs hat over his head, put his own clothes into the bag and got off on the thirteenth floor dressed as Eddie. Then Ray took the stairs to the ground floor and walked out of the building before the alarm was ever raised. Eddie rode the elevator to the basement and was crouched in the corner when you peeked in. While everyone ran around looking for Ray, Eddie took the car up one or two floors and got out. He hung around the building, showed the cops his ID, and eventually gave a statement to police.”