The Price of Innocence (32 page)

His cousin sank to the ground.

Frank vaulted the next table set and arrived just as the two cops pulled Madison back by the shoulders and Theresa looked up at Frank, one upturned palm sticky with a red liquid.

She said, ‘I think somebody shot him.’

‘W
hat are you doing back here?’ Leo asked her, sounding sincerely irritated at the idea. ‘I would have thought you’d had enough for one day.’

‘I’ve had enough for one lifetime.’ She settled back in the task chair and rubbed her eyes. ‘But I’ve got a whole bunch of facts and I can’t make them add up, so I came back to the evidence. I finally took a closer look at that tuft of foam I found next to Marty Davis’ body. Why are you here?’

‘Forgot my book.’ Her boss hung his trench coat on the rack inside his office, then began to make coffee. Theresa shook her head. As much as he complained about the job, Leo never seemed able to tear himself away from it. He needed a life outside the lab.

But then, so did she.

Leo returned and leaned against the infrared spectrometer. ‘The radio said they got him, or rather that he’d been taken to Metro with a gunshot wound. How’d it go? Did he try to kill you again?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘Did your cousin shoot him?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you again. Nobody shot him – exactly. It looked that way until they found his car on the next block, run into one of those concrete garbage can holders. His dashboard exploded, forcing enough debris and shrapnel into his chest to kill him.’

‘But it didn’t?’ That seemed to surprise him. It surprised her, too.

‘Not yet,’ she sighed as the coffee finished perking and they both filled their respective mugs. ‘He’s still in surgery.’

‘Nitrogen triiodide?’

‘None. The mechanics are pouring over it now. It could still be some really bizarre design flaw, but I doubt that.’

‘Ya think? Maybe it’s the wife. Did she teach physics?’

‘Social Studies.’

Leo snickered. Theresa didn’t have the energy to glare, but she tried.

‘And she was in jail until this morning. So now I’m back to square one. Or maybe circle one.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think David is innocent.’

Leo gazed at her with great skepticism. ‘You know, the guy’s wife left him for a thirteen-year-old. You think something like that comes out of the blue?’

‘I think I didn’t drive my husband into the arms of a twenty-two-year-old stripper. He did it himself, and with my gas card. If David wanted to poison my water bottle, he could have broken into my house and done so. Why stay there, letting me and any observant neighbor know it? Why not just strangle me in my bed and quickly leave, narrowing the time frame to nothing?’

‘Because he doesn’t have the guts to look his victim in the face while he’s killing them?’

The idea made her stomach roil, but she went on. ‘The only motive he’d have to kill me is to keep me from telling anyone else about his part in the meth lab explosion twenty-five years ago. He couldn’t be sure I hadn’t already told Frank, when I went to the hospital to see him.’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe he’s a better judge of people than you are.’

She scowled.

‘I’m serious. He’s got you thinking with the wrong part of your anatomy. Forget him.’ Leo finished off this advice with a slug of coffee, as if it that took care of it. As if it were that easy.

‘Then who rigged his car?’ she asked.

‘An exploding dashboard has none of the subtlety of tailored meth.’

‘Neither did shooting Marty Davis in the head.’

Leo opened his mouth, apparently could not find an appropriate response, and shut it again.

‘I keep coming back from the circle from twenty-five years ago, our meth cooking entrepreneurs. McClurg – or Doc –, Lily, Marty and Ken are all dead. If David dies, that only leaves one living witness to the operation. DaVinci.’

Leo blinked, frowned, the storm clouds gathering. Before he could remind her that he’d taken her off all these cases, she rushed on: ‘He’s the only one left outstanding. And since David’s lying on an operating table as we speak, I’m willing to bet DaVinci’s been responsible for this all along. I think that’s what David came to tell me. He’d been hiding from his old schoolmate, not the media. But when I nearly died he realized that DaVinci would not stop until he’d obliterated every connection to the past. David couldn’t run forever.’

Leo sighed heavily. ‘And you know who this DaVinci guy is?’

She sighed, warming her hands on the coffee cup. ‘That’s where it gets really interesting.’

Frank leaned over and pressed the fast-forward button on the console. Through the glass in front of him he could see the room of dispatchers, six women and one man, each gazing at their own glowing terminal in the darkened room. The supervisor had set him up with the digital recordings of Marty Davis’ radio transmissions from his last week on the job, but it proved to be a slow process.

‘Why don’t you go home already?’ he said to his partner, seated next to him. ‘Theresa is safe, Madison’s in custody, nothing has blown up lately. You haven’t had the easiest couple days, either. Go home and lie down. I’ll be fine.’

‘Have you ever had cracked ribs?’ she asked mildly.

‘No.’

‘There
is
no comfortable way to lie down. There’s no comfortable way to recline, sit or stand. At least here I have something to take my mind off it.’

‘You could read a book.’

‘I tried. Holding something up gets uncomfortable after a while, even something small.’

‘Watch TV.’

‘I don’t have a TV.’

He stared at her, then shook his head. ‘I knew there had to be something wrong with you, Angela Sanchez.’

‘Tell me about it. Besides, you’re not home nursing your burns. What are we listening for, anyway?’

‘It’s a hunch of Theresa’s, something she overheard at the funeral. A dispatcher said Marty had pulled over our local boy wonder in front of the Bingham building but not written a ticket, an unusual turn of events. Apparently Davis really enjoyed writing tickets.’

He paused while they listened to Marty Davis reporting his arrival at a disturbance call, then the fact that the situation had cooled in the meantime, and that the incident could be closed out.

Angela waited until the tape ended. ‘So we still have another player out there – whoever tried to shred David Madison’s chest.’

‘I think Madison contacted DaVinci. Three of his old pals are dead, and he calls to say, don’t kill me, bro; there’s a sworn affidavit in a safety deposit box somewhere that will come to light if I die. Least that’s what I would have done. ‘

His partner said, ‘Or he called to say, I know it’s you, pay up or I talk. He’d need money for the upcoming custody battle.’

‘Except DaVinci is a guy who can concoct designer meth, silent cars and exploding dashboards. He’d have to be some major kind of stupid to mess with that. Maybe he figures that out, calls Theresa, plans to turn himself in. But DaVinci gets to him first.’

They listened through a lost child call, then Angela pondered aloud, ‘Why after twenty-five years? If even a couple of meth addicts managed to keep the secret this long, why does DaVinci think he needs to take everyone out now?’

‘Something changed. And it all started with the Bingham explosion. I think he knew his former partners would recognize his work, and then it wouldn’t just be trying to hide their own youthful indiscretions any more. If large numbers of people started dying here and now, he might not be able to count on their silence. I think he’s got another bomb set somewhere, and needed to keep us off his back until it goes off.’

Angela rocked in agitation, but the pain from her body apparently convinced her to stop. ‘We could ask Madison when he wakes up.’

‘The doctors aren’t completely sure he’s
going
to wake up.’

‘Oh.’

Frank moved the cursor to the next call on the screen. The speakers resting on top of the console spit out another recording. This one bore a label of Sunday the tenth, the day before the Bingham explosion, at 11:32 a.m. Marty Davis’ voice told the dispatcher, with some relish, that he had pulled over a Porsche with a broken passenger side brake light. Two occupants. He read off the license plate number.

After only a short pause, the dispatcher came back on the line and had found the vehicle’s owner of record, Bruce Lambert – hardly surprising as Davis was practically on the doorstep of his factory.

Frank and Angela heard Davis say, ‘No kidding? I know him. Exiting the vehicle.’

A longer pause, until Davis returned to the radio and said he had let the man off with a warning. He made no further comment, merely relayed the proper codes to indicate that the call had ended and he would now continue his patrol.

The screen’s cursor flicked to the next recording.

‘He said he knew him,’ Frank pointed out.

‘Bruce Lambert?
Everyone
knows him.’

‘Yeah.’ Frank drummed his fingers on the counter for a moment, then let them slow to a stop. ‘We need to see the in-car video for this call.’

‘It’s Bruce Lambert,’ Angela reminded him, as if he might have forgotten.

‘Who else in this city could design killer meth and exploding dashboards? This stop occurred in front of a building that blew up the next day. The day after that someone came up to Marty Davis and shot him. We’ve got a boatload of unanswered questions and I’m ready to grasp at anything that might float.’

‘Won’t say another word,’ his partner assured him.

L
eo did not receive Theresa’s theory with nearly the same equanimity. ‘Bruce
Lambert
?’

‘I know it’s a leap.’

‘It’s not a leap. It’s jumping the Snake River Canyon!’

‘The man fits a lot of facts. He attended Cleveland State at the same time as the others. Ken Bilicki said DaVinci left after their sophomore year, which Lambert did. He switched to MIT. He studied chemistry.’

‘Bruce
Lambert
.’

‘Bilicki kept referring to DaVinci as a genius, first, simply for recognizing the potential of an abandoned commercial-grade kitchen, then for making chemically perfect meth
and
running the business side of it as well. Lambert’s more than proven himself in both fields. Assuming DaVinci is behind the Bingham explosion—’

‘That’s one big damn assumption, isn’t it?’

‘Not really. We have the same explosive, quite uncommon in large quantities, turning up at both sites. He may have learned how to stabilize the nitrogen triiodide, something no one’s ever been able to do, from the meth lab explosion twenty-five years ago.’ She didn’t mention Oliver’s input to this theory, as the two men did not care for each other and she would have a hard enough time selling this story to her boss. She had a hard time selling it to herself. ‘Then he found a way to approach Marty Davis silently and, almost silently, shoot him twice. Then he tinkered with methamphetamines to turn them into poison. Then he got a bomb into Terry Beltran’s apartment to make him a perfect and conveniently dead fall guy. He got into my house silently and left yet another perfectly designed form of meth to take care of me. The killer
is
a freakin’ genius, and as far as I know there’s only one in town.’

‘Putting an unsubstantiated accusation in flattering terms will not help. He’ll still sue us down to our toenails. But do go on. Why do you think someone other than the budding boyfriend poisoned your drink?’

‘Because the budding boyfriend is on an operating table right now, fighting for his life.’ The words hesitated in her throat, but for once did not stick. ‘David had proven more difficult to approach than the others. David probably didn’t make any connection to the Bingham explosion, but Marty’s murder put his antennae up. David and Marty were liabilities to Lambert. With his IPO coming up, what would it do to his potential millions if America’s heroic genius had been the head of a meth ring in college, one that ended with a boy burning to death? He couldn’t afford that. Lily and Ken, chronic drug users, would be ignored even if they did talk, but Marty and David were professional men. Not perfect – Marty’s career was not particularly distinguished and David has that embarrassing wife – but potentially convincing in the hands of some gung-ho prosecutor out to see his name in the papers. They had to be removed or at least neutralized. But David and Marty also had reasons to keep quiet – Marty had his job and David, his custody case. When I ran into him at the Lambert factory, he stayed tucked in the back and then left early. At the time I thought he wanted to be alone with me, but I think he wanted a way to show Lambert that he would not approach him, not call attention to him. That he could be trusted to keep the secret. But Lambert doesn’t trust anyone.’

Leo pulled on his lab coat. The lab air had chilled in the late evening hours. ‘This freakin’ genius, as you put it, seems to have left a lot to chance. What if your new squeeze drank your water instead of you?’

‘That would have worked, too. Whether David is shown to be a killer or a drug user, Lambert still achieves his purpose. No one’s going to listen to any tale he spins about Cleveland’s resident Renaissance man and a meth ring from their college days. Neutralized.’

‘This still sounds like a lot of hot air.’

‘Not air. Chemistry. This entire case has revolved around chemistry, truly brilliant chemistry, carefully formed to serve the purposes of one particular individual. The meth had been altered for no productive reason such as stretching the product or making it more addictive, only to kill Lily Simpson. He changed it up again to kill Ken Bilecki, dispatching them both in ways that would seem consistent with the rest of their lives, ways that no one would question.
Because he knew them.
’

‘Knew them twenty-five years ago, according to your theory. Lambert’s got a better class of friends these days.’

‘But he keeps in touch with his roots. That’s why everyone likes him, because he’s a former poor guy from the hood who surrounds himself with his childhood friends, giving them jobs, giving their families jobs. He has people who will protect him and who might possess the necessary roughness to do any task he assigns, including selling poisonous meth to his former partners.’