Three To Get Deadly (26 page)

Charlie licked his fingers, sticky with garlic butter. "You may be right, but I get the feeling there's something more to the videotape than that. Regardless, the widow apparently will do anything to get it. Maybe harm anyone who's seen it. Shall we leave?"

We shall, I said. Not really believing Susan was in danger. But making a mental note to watch the videotape again, to look for something. Something Melanie Corrigan didn't want us to see, something other than her swiveling bottom.

We tried calling Susan Corrigan from a gas station on Tamiami Trail. No answer at the cabana. We roared toward town, an evening thunderstorm slanting gray torrents across the two-lane road. For a while we listened to the machine gun rhythm of the rain on our canvas top. Cement trucks lumbered along, tossing filthy spray over our windshield. Charlie was thinking so I kept quiet. Then we argued.

"Your strategy won't work," Charlie Riggs said. "You want the jury to believe that Melanie Corrigan and this martial arts thug killed Philip Corrigan, then framed Roger to cover it up, right?"

"Sure, if you can tell me how they did it, how whatever they did ended up looking like succinylcholine poisoning."

Charlie Riggs stroked his beard. "Who says it looks like succinylcholine?"

"The ME says, choline and succinic acid found in the brain and liver."

"But none around the needle track in the buttocks?"

"Right."

"Hmmm," Charlie Riggs said, tamping tobacco into a corncob pipe.

"Well?"

"Regardless whether the succinylcholine played a role in Philip Corrigan's death, your strategy is flawed. The timing is way off. What motive would they have for framing Stanton now? It would only draw attention to themselves."

"Plenty of motive once we dug up the body. They knew something was going on, needed to plant the drug and get Roger charged."

Charlie concentrated on lighting his pipe. "Foolish. They'd be better off sitting it out."

I laughed. "You're too logical. You're smarter than they are, Charlie, but you're forgetting one thing. The malpractice suit was intended to blame Roger or at least focus attention on the aneurysm. It's what Susan called the old fumblerooski."

"The what?"

"A misdirection play. A plaintiff's verdict would establish the aneurysm as the cause of death and close the case. Even the defense verdict was no problem for them because the evidence still showed an aneurysm killed Corrigan. The jury just didn't blame Roger Stanton for it. But then we grab Corrigan's body, and all of a sudden, they need a fall guy in case the tests are positive for poisoning. They break into Susan's cabana to get the drug, then plant it and get the murder indictment against Roger. Everything's coming up roses until they learn a nurse can place both of them in the hospital room after Roger left. Plus they know we have the videotape."

Charlie's face was shadowed in the lights of oncoming traffic. "No good. The video establishes Roger's motive for the murder, his lust for Melanie."

"But it also shows Sergio was just as bewitched, bothered, and bewildered and therefore would have the same motive to kill Corrigan. The tape furnishes reasonable doubt as to which of Melanie's admirers did him in. It also shoots some sizable holes in Melanie's grieving widow routine."

Charlie shot me a new look, one within an inch or two of respect. "If you're right, Jake, they're panicking. They know you still have the videotape. And that you must have gotten it from Susan." He thought about it a moment. "You might step on it a bit."

I was already doing seventy-five, but we were still half an hour from Susan's place. The rain came in gusts, sweeping out of the Glades, washing across the blacktop. Airboats were tied up in canals along Tamiami Trail, the operators sitting on the bank under thatched roofs, waiting for a break in the weather to head out for nighttime frogging. The Olds 442 roared eastward, the wet pavement hissing under its tires. I took my eyes off the road long enough to turn toward Charlie. "What's their next step? What will they try? Put the data into that computer on top your shoulders and give me a printout."

Riggs shrugged and sucked on his pipe. "I haven't the foggiest."

"Not a clue?"

"Nothing besides mere guesses. What I do is figure out things that already have happened, the hows, whos, wheres, and whens of death. Not even the whys. And you want 'What happens next.' No can do. Look at this sudden storm. Science can't even accurately predict the weather past seventy-two hours. How can we predict what men and women, perhaps psychotic men and women, will do when we have so little information compared to the data we have about pressure systems, winds, moisture, temperatures?"

I was quiet again, and Charlie blew some cherry-flavored smoke at me. "If I had to guess," he said, "it's that you're in some danger. You're the one unraveling the web they've spun. But then again, if you lose the trial, they're home free. Why should they risk it all by going after you?"

"But I know they'll try something. Melanie won't let it rest. I can predict that with virtual certainty."

"Your intuition tells you that, but your data is woefully insufficient. There is no way you can know thousands of incidents in her life that make her what she is so as to predict what she'll do."

"Whatever they are, they've made her evil."

Riggs smiled. "Correct.
Nemo repente fuit turpissimus
. No one becomes wicked suddenly. But knowing the woman is evil adds little to the equation insofar as predicting her behavior. Take my analogy to the weather. You would think that with our satellites and computers and sensitive equipment, we could gather enough data to predict the weather. Well we can't because our instruments don't collect enough information. We'll leave something out, millions of somethings out, and our predictions will be catastrophically wrong even if we leave out only a minuscule bit of data. The scientific name for that is sensitive dependence on initial conditions."

"But theoretically," I mused, "if you had enough wind gauges and satellite pictures and electronic doodads, you'd know all there is to know about the weather, and if you knew it enough times, you could see what it did the last time conditions were just the same, and you could predict weather for all eternity. So if you knew enough background about a person, you could predict his future acts."

Charlie Riggs paused to relight his pipe, an academic's trick of buying time. "For a human being, there are far too many events and no way to record them objectively. Even with the weather, Jake, you would need to know everything, the size and location of every cloud, the measurement of every bird's flight, the beat of every butterfly's wings."

"Butterflies, too?"

"The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas."

"Metaphorically speaking," I said.

"No. Literally. It's part of the basis for the new science called chaos."

"Butterflies and chaos?" I said doubtfully. "An infinitesimal action radically affects mammoth events."

Charlie Riggs smiled, the teacher happy when a slow student catches on. "That's right. Just like the poem:

And so on."

"I remember," I told him. "The battle and then the kingdom. All lost."

"Indeed."

I looked out at the rainswept street. "Then I'd better find the damn nail."

* * *

Except for the spotlights and the gentle roar of the waterfall, the Corrigan house was dark and silent on its hill. The rain had stopped just east of the Turnpike. In Gables Estates, not a drop had fallen. We jogged around the lighted path to the cabana. The screen door was unlocked, lights on inside, but no Susan. I walked into the small bedroom. Pale blue shorts and a faded Northwestern T-shirt had been flung onto an unmade bed, running shoes and socks tossed into a corner. In the galley kitchen, the oven was on four-fifty, a frozen vegetable platter was defrosting on the counter. An open can of Diet Pepsi sat on the counter. Half-empty and still cool to the touch.

We hurried onto the patio. The
Cory
was tied to the dock, lines tight, cabins dark. The pool lights were on, blue water shimmering in the night air.

The pool.

I don't know why I ran. I don't know what I felt. I don't know how I knew, but I knew.

Susan Corrigan was floating near the far end, facedown, wearing a black racing suit. I ran along the side and dived in. The taste of salt water filled my mouth. In three strokes I was beside her. With one hand, I grabbed a shoulder and turned her over. In the eerie light reflected from the water, her face was an unearthly blue, her features plastic. Her eyes were open but lifeless.

I carried her up the steps, her head slumped limply on my shoulder. A thin layer of white foam covered her lips. I gently set her down on the pool deck, Charlie helping with his hands under her back. I tore off the goggles, and my left hand lifted her neck to clear the air passage. My right hand pinched her nostrils to keep the air from escaping. Then I took a deep breath and sealed my mouth over hers. I blew hard, emptying my lungs, filling hers. Several short bursts, then one breath every five seconds. I looked for signs of life and saw none. Her breathing might have been stopped for two minutes or two hours. I couldn't tell.

Charlie knelt alongside me, letting me know with his silence that I was doing the right thing. My movements were automatic. Acting without thinking, doing what could be done. A volcanic mixture of anger and desperation fueled me. "Don't die!" I shouted at her. "Don't you die on me."

I covered her cold lips again with my mouth. I blew into her mouth again and again, trying to infuse her with oxygen, to give her some of my life. I leaned my ear to her lips.

Nothing.

I tried to find a pulse.

Nothing.

I sat on my haunches, placed one hand on her chest, just above the sternum, and pushed down hard with the other hand, trying to kick-start the heart. I kept pushing, up-down, up-down.

Nothing.

My heart was hammering. Hers was still. I paused long enough to choke back the helplessness that rose inside me. Charlie had run inside the cabana to call Fire-Rescue. I prayed for any sign of life, for a spark I could light. Still nothing. I went back to the mouth-to-mouth but it didn't work, so again I worked on the chest. I pushed harder and two ribs cracked under my hands. It didn't matter. Dead women feel no pain.

When we both knew it was over, Charlie Riggs put an arm around me and guided me to a chaise lounge. He brought two blankets from the cabana, covered Susan with one and me with the other. A numbness hit me, nailing me to the spot.

My body unable to move, the mind took over, rocketing past a hundred scenes, a thousand regrets. I had never told her what she meant to me. Why hadn't I just said that I'd never met anyone like her, a woman who was smart and sassy and strong and who thought she loved me. And died thinking I was a macho jerk. Thinking right. Dying because of me.

The numbness turned to pain.

She had been right about everything and died without knowing it. She had fretted for me, big dumb lucky stiff me who goes into the swamp and comes out wet but whole. I could have told her how much I cared, could have looked into those dark eyes and said, "Susan Corrigan, I love you and cherish you and want to be with you, now and always." But I'd held it back. And now she would never know. A step too slow, Jake Lassiter, then and now.

Charlie Riggs found a switch and turned on a set of mercury vapor lamps. The patio was doused with a ghastly green light. He called Fire-Rescue again, this time canceling the ambulance, and asking for the police. While we waited, Charlie scoured the pool deck. He found her thick-lensed glasses on a table, neatly folded, waiting for her return. Those silly glasses. I turned them over in my hands, fondled them. Charlie started to say something about fingerprints, then backed away.

"I'll look around for evidence," he said. "You stay put."

Charlie examined a pink beach towel draped over a chair. He looked in the shrubs; he crawled on hands and knees around a fifty-yard perimeter; he reached into the skimmer of the pool and came up with a handful of dead leaves; and he sniffed and tasted the water from the pool.

I watched him, letting the sorrow build inside me. When two uniformed Coral Gables policemen arrived, Charlie Riggs gave them a step-by-step description, the time we arrived, our efforts to revive her, his inspection of the scene. I sat, still wet, still holding the glasses. Beginning to shiver.

"Is the ME sending someone?" Charlie asked.

The sergeant shook his head. "No sign of foul play. We try not to drag 'em out to the scene unless it's an apparent homicide."

"She didn't drown!" I heard myself shout across the patio. "She could swim the English Channel. I want an autopsy done, but only by Doc Riggs."

The sergeant looked at me, then asked his partner to check out the house. The younger cop shrugged and walked slowly toward the darkened fortress. No hurry, just a routine job, a drowning in a pool.

The sergeant sat down on the end of my chaise lounge. It creaked under his weight. He had a sunken chest, a beer belly, and was close to retirement. Coral Gables cops aren't the hard guys you find downtown. In the Gables, cops fish too many cats out of trees to get that cold-eyed look. Expensive cats and expensive trees.

The sergeant patted my leg through the blanket. "We take the body to the morgue. We gotta do that under section four-oh-six-point-one-one."

Charlie Riggs nodded. "Subsection one-ay-one. Then the ME determines whether to do the autopsy."