Mirror Image (13 page)
The night was dark and the skies were finally exhausted of rain. The city stood drenched, dripping from every rooftop and cornice, brooding in the gloom.
“Rain stopped,” Casey had said when we first stepped outside. “Maybe it’s a good omen.”
We were walking toward her car in the lot. The rain-slicked street was deserted, and our footsteps echoed hollowly from the pavement.
“Thanks for coming to my rescue.”
Casey frowned. “Biegler’s such a shit. He waited till Sinclair had left the building before ordering your arrest. Luckily I caught Lee between meetings at his office. He’s probably still tearing Biegler a new one.”
“I didn’t know Sinclair was such a fan of mine.”
“He isn’t. He’s just not stupid. Biegler’s so anxious to make this all go away, he jumped the gun.”
“Well, in his defense, Riley’s murder
is
pretty damn strange. I mean, there’s no reason to assume his death and Kevin’s are connected, but if not, it’s a helluva coincidence.”
She didn’t answer. I looked over to see her head tilted down, eyes scanning the pavement.
I waited.
“Look,” she said at last, “I’m not going to apologize for my behavior earlier. I’m not proud of it, but I won’t apologize, so if that’s what you need from me—”
“Let it go, okay?”
She glanced up finally, the doubt in her eyes as stinging as a reproach.
“You shrinks call it ‘acting out,’ don’t you? Or just ‘inappropriate.’
There’s
one of my favorite bullshit words.”
We’d reached the precinct parking lot, ablaze with light from the overhead lamps. Casey showed her ID to the middle-aged cop half-dozing in the entrance kiosk, who waved us in.
We walked in silence to her parked car.
“Do me a favor, will ya?” she said. “Get in.”
She slid behind the wheel, then waited as I came around and got in on the passenger side.
Her face was beautiful in the pale light, but somber and still, like a cameo. Her look at me was intense, yet guarded.
I took a guess. “You’re wondering if you can tell me something. Whether you can trust me.”
“Yes.” Her voice was flat.
“Look, I understand. You don’t really know me.”
“I know enough. We have a lot in common. Loners, I think. Survivors.”
She tilted up her chin so that her gaze seemed to soften. A cotton-thick warmth grew inside the car.
“I guess I hope…” Her voice trailed off.
I leaned across the car seat. My hand found hers.
“What?” I said quietly. “You hope…?”
She gently pulled her hand out from under mine. A brief, sad smile lit her face, and then was gone.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long day. Longer than most. The garbage I see, the way people live their lives. Like Paula Stark. Remember that case I was arguing with Polk about? We had to cut her loose. Not enough evidence. But, Christ…she’s got no job, an alcohol problem, a four-year-old whose father could be anywhere. She’s probably in some shit-hole right now, blowing some stranger for rent money, while her kid waits in the next room. I mean it, sometimes I hate this goddam job.”
She looked out through her smudged side window. “And I
am
sorry about this afternoon. I felt judged by you and it pissed me off. I guess I wanted to shock you, or—hell, I don’t know. Just…don’t think anything about it, okay?”
Sure, no problem.
I hesitated. Wanting to challenge her, to probe.
Instead, I merely said, “Okay.”
We said good-bye with a brief, collegial hug that brought her face near mine. I breathed in the scent that rose from the hollow of her throat where the skin disappeared beneath the sharp V of her blouse. Then I got out of the car and watched her drive off.
She’d said she would offer me a ride home except for the mountain of paperwork that still lay ahead tonight. Plus a promised follow-up call with Sinclair.
I turned and headed back across the lot under a sky black and thick as wet ink.
I earned every break I got,
she’d told me that first night. Driven, self-assured. Yet there was something else beneath the surface. Not just the vulnerability routinely disavowed by high-achievers. More shaded, elusive.
I walked back out to the street. The night air was sharp with cold and the damp from recent rains.
The brisk honk of a car horn made me look up. Though the street was empty, I saw what looked like a cab parked at the far intersection. I hailed it.
No more detours tonight
, I thought.
Go home. Get some sleep. Besides, something odd had struck me about Kevin’s murder, and in the morning I—
Belching exhaust, the cab had started up and was heading in my direction. As it approached, wheels sluicing water, I saw the cabbie’s shadowed face, slowly taking form through the smudged windshield. His stare was strangely intense, yet familiar, as though he recognized me.
No, that wasn’t it. Then I felt the truth hum along my spine like an electric shock.
He’d been waiting for me.
The cab rolled to a stop in front of me, the back door swinging open. I backed up a step on the pavement.
Suddenly, I felt a strong pressure on my shoulder, a thick hand pushing me inside, across the seat. I turned, wrenching free of its grip.
He slid in beside me.
I hadn’t heard him come up behind me. A big man. Wide-shouldered, thick-limbed. Military-style buzz-cut. Face smooth and implacable as marble.
“Mind if I share the cab? Since we’re headin’ in the same direction.”
I recognized the gun in his hand. A 9 mm Glock. I’d seen one before.
I had to admit, the guy was good.
As we walked across the crowded lobby of the Burgoyne Plaza, his arm around my shoulder, voice slurred as though laced with booze, nobody could have guessed there was a gun in his other hand, pressed hard against my ribs.
I knew where we were going. The Burgoyne was Pittsburgh’s newest and most prestigious hotel, the final jewel in the crown of the city’s thirty-year Renaissance. Modeled after a French chateau, its classic lines and sparkling cut-glass windows contrasted with the smooth modernity of the “new” Steel City. Inside, salmon-colored marble floors and heavy crystal chandeliers assured its high-profile guests that no expense had been spared.
The Burgoyne was where the President stayed on his last visit, and the Secretary of State. Even Oprah. So it was no surprise that Miles Wingfield would do the same.
I got a sharp poke from the gun barrel as the big man guided us toward a bank of gleaming elevator doors. A nearby placard announced that the top three floors were temporarily closed for remodeling. Regardless, we entered the far elevator and he pressed the button for the top.
On the way up, I thought about my chances with this guy. I’d been thinking of practically nothing else during the cab ride here to the hotel. Except the brief moment spent imagining the look on Polk’s face when he learned that—not five minutes after pissing all over police protection—I’d been grabbed off the street. Right outside the station.
I now eyed the guy who’d done it. Something like 280 pounds of hard-packed muscle. Eyes cool as ice chips.
The mirrored, velvet-carpeted elevator shuddered to a stop, and without a word the big man put his free hand on my elbow. At the same time, the door slid silently open onto an ornate hallway, leading to four suites.
Most of the doors were open, and a dozen men and women in power suits hurried in and out of them. Phones rang constantly, and I could make out laptops and fax machines, their clean, digital lines in stark contrast to the
belle
èpoque
-era chairs, sofas and tables arrayed around them.
At the end of the hallway, another set of doors was guarded on either side by security guys who could have been clones of the one still gripping my elbow. Without a word, one of them opened a door for us to enter.
Inside, the suite opened onto a wide, high-ceilinged room halved by a stand of picture windows overlooking the Point. With a final, bone-crushing squeeze of my arm, I was more or less shoved into the middle of the room.
I turned, feeling the anger burnish my face, to see my captor casually walking away. Mission accomplished, he took up a position in a near corner, arms behind his back.
I let out a breath, standing there amid the reflection of the city lights spilling from the windows. The black of night looked blacker still against the splintered glow, but I could just make out the Monongahela below, mirrored surface wrinkled by the wind.
“I do think it’s the best view in the city,” a female voice said behind me.
I turned to find a pretty, auburn-haired young woman crossing from another door into the room. She walked stiffly toward a long white sofa, before which stood a glass coffee table. Atop it was a silver tray holding two crystal goblets and a bottle of Evian water.
“I always like to be high up,” she continued, sitting carefully on the sofa. “Gives you perspective. Takes you out of yourself, if you know what I mean.”
I guessed her age at twenty or so, though her poise and subdued manner suggested a maturity beyond her years. Even so, her tailored skirt and blouse failed to disguise the supple, youthful curves of her body. She also wore the placid expression of a veteran employee of the wealthy.
In
the inner circle, and yet not
of
it.
Following on her heels was another man, whose smile showed the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. He was young, too, maybe mid-twenties. Designer clothes. A corporate face that belied the smile. And, somehow, vaguely familiar.
He crossed the room in two brisk strides, and, to my surprise, extended his hand. I looked at it.
“Peter Clarkson,” he said, oblivious.
It was then, with his hand outstretched, that I finally placed him.
Because the last time I’d seen him, Clarkson was also shaking hands with someone. Albert Garman. In the photo I’d noticed in Garman’s office at Ten Oaks the day before.
Before I could even digest this information, Clarkson was making introductions. Observing the niceties. Like everything was normal. Like I hadn’t just been brought here at gun-point.
“I see you’ve met Sheila.” He nodded at the girl sitting with hands folded on the sofa. Her eyes looked right through me, opaque.
Then Clarkson jerked a thumb in the direction of the big man in the corner. “And, of course, Carl Trask. Our Head of Security.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I hadn’t caught his name.”
“That’s ’cause I hadn’t thrown it,” Trask said. Hands still behind his back as though welded there.
Clarkson ignored his words and turned back to me. “I’m afraid we can only spare you twenty minutes or so. As you can imagine, there are many painful, personal details to attend to. Then we’re off to Singapore. Our merger with Cochran International, as I’m sure you’ve read about. And then that Senate sub-committee thing.”
I heard what I was supposed to. “So Wingfield’s gone public. About Kevin, I mean?”
“Not yet. Mr. Wingfield informed his executive staff only this afternoon that the murdered man in the news was in fact his own son. Our people will release a statement to that effect tomorrow morning.” A reflective pause. “This is a tragic time for all of us in Mr. Wingfield’s employ.”
Sheila spoke to the air as though the rest of us weren’t here. “It was such a shock. His having a son at all. Then…what happened. So horrible.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “Yes, it is.”
Now I understood the flurry of activity on the floor.
And it had nothing to do with any mergers. Wingfield’s spin doctors were gearing up for the media assault that would inevitably follow this bombshell development in Kevin’s murder, which would elevate the story to national status.
I could just picture it. The ratings-grabbing “personal interest” aspect involving a poor, perhaps mentally ill college student whose famous father was worth billions. Made-to-order for the tabloids, cable channels, talk radio, the internet. Kevin’s case could end up being another Crime of the Century, right up there with O.J. and Jon-Benet Ramsey. God help us.
Clarkson was eyeing me warily, as though reading my thoughts. “Why don’t you sit down, Doctor?”
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Fuck him.
Suddenly, I felt an iron grip on my shoulders, and a chair being kicked against the back of my knees. Then the barrel of Trask’s gun against the base of my skull.
“Unacceptable,” Trask said evenly.
I sat. The gun stayed where it was.
I looked up at Clarkson. “I changed my mind.”
Clarkson’s smile hardened. Then he strode toward a wet-bar that stood near the far window. When he finally turned again, drink in hand, his gaze had grown sour.
“I don’t think you understand, Doctor. You just fell down the goddam rabbit hole.” He sipped his drink.
“Give me a break,” I said. “This John-the-Baptist act closed out of town a long time ago. Just bring in Christ Almighty and let’s get this over with.”
A hoarse laugh drew my eyes, though I knew what Miles Wingfield looked like. Hell, everybody knew.
“Dr. Rinaldi.” He moved with an easy stride into the room and beamed down at me. “You put on a pretty good act yourself, considering your position.”
I stirred, rolling my shoulders. Trask pressed the gun harder against my neck.
Wingfield waved a hand. “Please. Don’t get up.”
He laughed again, forcing it a little this time for effect. The man was in his late-sixties, but looked years younger. Thick, wavy gray hair. Face untroubled as a monk’s. Clad in one of his signature, personally-tailored Armani suits, reminding me of the infamous
Forbes
cover shot of him in front of a huge mirrored closet, with literally hundreds of designer suits arrayed behind him.
I’d been thinking a lot about Wingfield, and what I’d remembered seeing or reading about him since first learning he was Kevin’s father. His story was movie-perfect. Coming from a small Pennsylvania town, he’d not only built an empire and become a national figure, he’d crafted a new self.
Not just another “self-made” man, but a media-cultivated, PR-enhanced, self-
created
man. Knowing, sophisticated. Eschewing the “aw-shucks” demeanor of other financial giants like Ted Turner and T. Boone Pickens, Wingfield was the embodiment of a deep cultural belief—that sudden wealth confers on someone his true worth. That success controls destiny, and not the other way around.
No wonder the media loved him. Coming late to his fortune, he was a testament to transformation, to molding his own, new reality out of one he’d discarded. Miles Wingfield was a public relations wet-dream. A Gatsby without the angst.
Until you were within five feet of him. Then you saw it. Felt it.
Knew
.
He bent and gripped my shoulders with a surprising, wiry strength. His eyes, locked on mine, held a filmy gaze. His smile was small and ruthless and devoid of humor.
“I’m afraid I’ve made my attorneys very unhappy,” he said. “But I had to meet you in person. See the man whose professional lapses brought about the death of my son.”
His hands lingered on my shoulders, fingers relaxed now, their touch light as down.
“You should’ve listened to your lawyers.”
For a moment, he merely watched my face with detached curiosity. Then, silent still, he let his hands drop from my shoulders. As he turned away from me, I thought I saw his tight smile go slack. As though melting.
“Look,” I went on, “it’s not that I don’t understand what you’re after. I’d probably want the same thing. But—”
He swiveled his head now toward Clarkson and Sheila. “I’d like some private face-time with Dr. Rinaldi.”
Peter Clarkson said nothing, just finished his drink with a long swallow and nodded. Sheila got smoothly to her feet and followed Clarkson toward the door.
Watching her leave, Wingfield smiled. “Great girl, Sheila. Best tits in the building.”
Sheila’s shoulders stiffened, almost imperceptibly, but she kept walking. I stared at Wingfield.
His brow furrowed. “You don’t believe me, Doctor?”
Without a word, Clarkson touched the girl’s shoulder. She froze.
“Trust me,” I said quickly. “I believe you.”
Wingfield sighed as though burdened, and crooked his finger at Clarkson. Again, he touched Sheila’s shoulder.
She paled, unmoving. Then, taking a full breath, the girl walked gingerly back into the room.
“Do me a favor, will you, honey?” Wingfield smiled at her. “Show Dr. Rinaldi your tits.”
I bucked in the chair. “Christ, Wingfield—!”
Trask tapped the back of my head with the gun barrel. His fingers dug into my shoulder.
Sheila stood transfixed, as though she hadn’t quite heard correctly.
Wingfield folded his arms, still smiling. A busy man, unaccustomed to waiting. “
Now
, please…”
She took another breath. Then, hands trembling, Sheila slowly began to unbutton her blouse.
Yet she kept her face immobile, looking straight ahead. Her stare unwavering.
That’s when I knew. Sheila was blind.
I glanced around the room. Peter Clarkson was standing off to one side, eyes averted. Looking for something to do with his hands.
By now, Sheila had peeled off her blouse, letting it fall to the floor. Her full, firm breasts somehow more exposed than concealed in the flimsy lace bra. Awkwardly, she reached behind her back to unclasp it. Hesitated.
Wingfield looked over at me, the exasperated host spreading his hands helplessly. Then back to the girl, eyes narrowing to sharp points.
“Sheila, sweetheart, we haven’t got all day,” he said.
Her face pinched fearfully at something she heard in his voice. Steeling herself, she began unfastening her bra.
“Damn it, Wingfield,” I said. “Make this stop.”
Trask rapped the side of my head again with the gun butt. I didn’t even feel it.
Sheila seemed to be having trouble with the clasp.
Clarkson started snapping his fingers. “Come
on
…”
“Aw, Christ,” Wingfield said suddenly, waving his hand at the girl. “Forget about it. Now I’m just bored.”
Sheila stared, unblinking. Her bra was undone, but she clutched the straps over her tremulous breasts.
“Go on, you two,” Wingfield said. “Leave us.”
He pointed to Clarkson, who hurriedly came over and scooped up her blouse from the carpet. Then, brusquely, he took Sheila by the elbow and hustled her out of the room.
Wingfield shrugged. “You’ll just have to take my word for it,” he said to me. And smiled. “Blind since birth. She makes her eyes follow your voice. Amazing, eh?”
