Absolute Power (37 page)

She looked at him. “He had priors. He probably didn’t use his real info because he didn’t think he’d get the job otherwise. You say he’s disappeared. Did you ever think he just may have taken a trip? Even ex-cons go on vacation.” Her instincts as a trial lawyer found her defending her father, an unbelievable thought. A sharp pain shot through her head. She rubbed at it distractedly.

“Another interesting discovery is that your father was good friends with Wanda Broome, Christine Sullivan’s personal maid and confidante. I checked. Your father and Wanda Broome had the same parole officer back in Philly. According to certain sources, they’ve apparently kept in touch all these years. My bet is Wanda knew about the safe in the bedroom.”

“So?”

“So I talked with Wanda Broome. It was obvious she knew more about the matter than she was letting on.”

“So why aren’t you talking to her instead of sitting here with me? Maybe she committed the crime herself.”

“She was out of the country at the time, a hundred witnesses to that effect.” Frank took a moment to clear his throat. “And I can’t talk to her anymore because she committed suicide. Left behind a note that said she was sorry.”

Kate stood up and looked blankly out the window. Bands of cold seemed to close around her.

Frank waited for some minutes, staring at her, wondering how she must feel, listening to the growing evidence against the man who had helped create her and then apparently abandoned her. Was there love left there? The detective hoped not. At least his professional side did. As a father of three, he wondered if that feeling could ever really be killed, despite the worst.

“Ms. Whitney, are you all right?”

Kate slowly turned away from the window. “Can we go out somewhere? I haven’t eaten for a while and there’s no food here.”

They ended up at the same place Jack and Luther had met. Frank started to devour his food, but Kate touched nothing.

He looked across at her plate. “You picked the place, I figured you must like the food. You know, nothing personal, but you could stand to put on some weight.”

Kate finally looked at him, a half-smile breaking through. “So you’re a health consultant on the side?”

“I’ve got three daughters. My oldest is sixteen going on forty and she swears she’s obese. I mean she probably goes one-ten and she’s almost as tall as me. If she didn’t have such rosy cheeks, I’d think she was anorexic. And my wife, Jesus, she’s always on some diet or another. I mean, I think she looks great, but there must be some perfect shape out there that every woman strives for.”

“Every woman except me.”

“Eat your food. That’s what I tell my daughters every day.
Eat.
”

Kate picked up her fork and managed to consume half her meal. As she sipped her tea and Frank fingered a big trough of coffee, they both settled themselves in as the discussion wound its way back to Luther Whitney.

“If you think you have enough to pick him up, why don’t you?”

Frank shook his head, put down his coffee. “You were at his house. He’s been gone for a while. Probably blew out right after it happened.”

“
If
he did it. Your party bag is all circumstantial. That doesn’t come close to being beyond a reasonable doubt, Lieutenant.”

“Can I play straight with you, Kate? Can I call you Kate, by the way?”

She nodded.

Frank put his elbows on the table, stared across at her. “All bullshit outside, why do you find it so hard to believe that your old man popped this woman? He’s been convicted of three prior felonies. The guy’s apparently lived on the edge his whole life. He’s been questioned in about a dozen other burglaries, but they couldn’t pin anything on him. He’s a career crim. You know the animal. Human life doesn’t mean shit to them.”

Kate finished sipping her tea before answering. A career criminal? Of course her father was that. She had no doubt he had continued to commit crimes all these years. It was in his damn blood apparently. Like a coke addict. Incurable.

“He doesn’t kill people,” she said quietly. “He may steal from them, but he’s never hurt anyone. It’s not the way he does things.”

What had Jack said specifically? Her father was scared. Terrified so badly he was sick to his stomach. The police had never scared her father. But if he had killed the woman? Perhaps just a reflex, the gun fired and the bullet ended Christine Sullivan’s life. All that would have transpired in a matter of seconds. No time to think. Just to act. To prevent him from going to prison for good. It was all possible. If her father had killed the woman, he would be scared, he would be terrified, he
would
be sick.

Through all the pain, the most vivid memories she held of her father was his gentleness. His big hands encircling hers. He was quiet to the point of rudeness with most people. But with her he talked. To her, not above her, or below her as most adults managed to do. He would speak to her about things a little girl was interested in. Flowers and birds and the way the sky changed color all of a sudden. And about dresses and hair ribbons and wobbly teeth that she constantly fiddled with. They were brief but sincere moments, between a father and daughter, smashed between the sudden violence of convictions, of prison. But as she had grown up those talks somehow became gibberish, as the occupation of the man behind the funny faces and the big but gentle fingers came to dominate her life, her perspective of Luther Whitney.

How could she say that this man could not kill?

Frank watched the eyes as they blinked rapidly. There was a crack there. He could feel it.

Frank fingered his spoon as he scooped more sugar into his coffee. “So you’re saying it’s inconceivable that your father killed this woman? I thought you said the two of you hadn’t really kept in touch?”

Kate jolted back from her musings. “I’m not saying it’s inconceivable. I’m just saying . . .” She was really blowing this. She had interviewed hundreds of witnesses and she couldn’t remember one who had performed as badly as she was right now.

She hurriedly rummaged through her purse for her pack of Benson & Hedges. The sight of the cigarette made Frank reach for his pack of Juicy Fruit.

She blew the smoke away from him, eyed the gum. “Trying to quit too?” A flicker of amusement crossed her face.

“Trying and failing. You were saying?”

She slowly exhaled the smoke, willed her nerves to cease their cartwheels. “Like I told you, I haven’t seen my father in years. We aren’t close. It’s possible that he could have killed the woman. Anything’s possible. But that doesn’t work in court. Evidence works in court. Period.”

“And we’re attempting to build a case against him.”

“You have no tangible physical evidence tying him to the actual crime scene? No prints? No witnesses? Nothing like that?”

Frank hesitated, then decided to answer. “No.”

“Have you been able to trace any of the stuff from the burglary to him?”

“Nothing’s turned up.”

“Ballistics?”

“Negative. One unusable slug and no gun.”

Kate sat back in her chair, more comfortable as the conversation centered on a legal analysis of the case.

“That’s all you’ve got?” Her eyes squinted at him.

He hesitated again, then shrugged. “That’s it.”

“Then you got nothing, Detective. Nothing!”

“I’ve got my instincts and my instincts tell me Luther Whitney was in the house that night and he was in that bedroom. Where he is now is what I want to know.”

“I can’t help you there. That’s the same thing I told your buddy the other night.”

“But you did go to his house that night. Why?”

Kate shrugged. She was determined not to mention her conversation with Jack. Was she withholding evidence? Maybe.

“I don’t know.” That, in part, was true.

“You strike me, Kate, as someone who always knows why she does something.”

Jack’s face flashed across her mind. She angrily pushed it out. “You’d be surprised, Lieutenant.”

Frank ceremoniously closed his notebook and hunched forward.

“I really need your help.”

“For what?”

“This is off the record, unofficial, whatever you want to call it. I’m more interested in results than in legal niceties.”

“Funny thing to tell a state prosecutor.”

“I’m not saying I don’t play by the rules.” Frank finally caved in and pulled out his cigarettes. “All I’m saying is I go for the point of least resistance when I can get it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“My information is that while you may not be wild about your father, he is still out there pining for you.”

“Who told you that?”

“Jesus I’m a detective. True or not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Godammit, Kate, don’t play fucking games with me. True or not?”

She angrily stabbed out her cigarette. “True! Satisfied?”

“Not yet, but I’m getting there. I’ve got a plan to flush him out, and I’m looking for you to help me.”

“I don’t see that I’m in any position to help you.” Kate knew what was coming next. She could see it in Frank’s eyes.

It took him ten minutes to lay out his plan. She refused three times. A half hour later they were still sitting at the table.

Frank leaned back in his chair and then abruptly lurched forward. “Look, Kate, if you don’t do it, then we don’t have a chance in hell of laying our hands on him. If it’s like you say and we don’t have a case, he goes free. But if he did do it,
and
we can prove it, then you’ve got to be the last goddamned person in the world that should tell me he should get away with it. Now, if you think I’m wrong about that, I’ll drive you back to your place and forget I ever saw you, and your old man can go right on stealing . . . and maybe killing.” He stared directly at her.

Her mouth opened but no words came out. Her eyes drifted over his shoulder where a misty image from the past beckoned to her, but then suddenly faded away.

At almost thirty years of age Kate Whitney was far removed from the toddler who giggled as her father twirled her through the air, or the little girl who divulged important se crets to her father she would tell no other. She was all grown up, a mature adult, out on her own for a long time now. On top of that she was an officer of the court, a state prosecutor sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was her job to ensure that persons who broke those laws were appropriately punished regardless of who they were and regardless of to whom they were related.

And then another image invaded her mind. Her mother watching the door, waiting for him to come home. Wondering if he were okay. Visiting him in prison, making up lists of things to talk to him about, making Kate dress up for those encounters, getting all excited as his release date came closer. As if he were some goddamned hero out saving the world instead of a thief. Jack’s words came back to her, biting hard. He had called her entire life a lie. He expected her to have sympathy for a man who had abandoned her. As if Luther Whitney had been wronged instead of Kate. Well, Jack could go straight to hell. She thanked God she had decided against marrying him. A man who could say those awful things to her did not deserve her. But Luther Whitney deserved everything coming to him. Maybe he hadn’t killed that woman. But maybe he had. It wasn’t her job to make that decision. It was her job to make sure that decision had an opportunity to be made by men and women in a jury box. Her father belonged in prison anyway. At least there he could hurt no one else. There he could ruin no more lives.

And it was with that last thought that she agreed to help deliver her father into the hands of the police.

Frank felt a twinge of guilt as they got up to leave. He had not been entirely truthful with Kate Whitney. In fact, he had downright lied to her about the most critical piece of the case other than the million-dollar question of where Luther Whitney happened to be. He wasn’t pleased with himself right now. Law enforcement people had to occasionally lie, just like everybody else. It didn’t make it any easier to swallow, especially considering the recipient was someone the detective had instantly respected and now heavily pitied.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

K
ATE HAD PLACED THE CALL THAT NIGHT
; F
RANK HAD
wanted to waste no time. The voice on the machine stunned her; it was the first time in years she had heard those tones. Calm, efficient, measured like the practiced stride of an infantryman. She actually began to tremble as the tone sounded and it took all her will to summon the simple words that were designed to trap him. She kept reminding herself how cunning he could be. She wanted to see him, wanted to talk to him. As soon as possible. She wondered if the wily old mind would smell a trap, and then she recalled their last face-to-face meeting, and she realized that he would never see it coming. He would never attribute deceit to the little girl who confided in him her most precious information. Even she had to give him that.

It was barely an hour later when the phone rang. As she reached out for it, she wished to God she had never agreed to Frank’s request. Sitting in a restaurant hatching a plan to catch a suspected murderer was quite different from actually participating in a charade designed solely to deliver your father to the authorities.

“Katie.” She sensed the slight break in the voice. A tinge of disbelief blended in.

“Hello, Dad.” She was grateful that the words had come out on their own. At that moment she seemed incapable of articulating the simplest thought.

Her apartment was not good. He could understand that. Too close, too personal. His place, she knew, would be unworkable for obvious reasons. They could meet on neutral grounds, he suggested. Of course they could. She wanted to talk, he certainly wanted to listen. Desperately wanted to listen.

A time was reached, tomorrow, four o’clock, at a small café near her office. At that time of day it would be empty, quiet; they could take their time. He would be there. She was sure nothing short of death would keep him away.