Red Mist (17 page)

“Lola’s afraid.
That I do believe.
She is terrified of this person she continues to refer to as
Payback.
”

“Terrified of a person or a devil or a monster?
Maybe something she’s imagined?”

“I think it’s possible Lola met Dawn on the street and got enticed by an opportunity for money or drugs.
It’s possible Lola
didn’t know
the real name of this person who got her mixed up in something that resulted in her being set up and framed.”

“She would have been in the halfway house at the time Dawn came to Savannah and the murders were committed.”
I remind her
that someone remanded to a halfway house because of drug charges might not be permitted to wander the streets with impunity.

“An uncontrolled halfway house,” Jaime says.
“The residents were allowed to come and go with permission.
Lola was in and out,
supposedly looking for a job, supposedly dropping by a nursing home in Savannah to visit her ailing grandmother.
She had plenty
of opportunities to meet someone like Dawn, who probably used an alias, or perhaps she offered the nickname
Payback,
and that may very well be the only name Lola ever knew.
Disguising her identity would make the most sense when you think
about what Dawn intended to do.
But it’s irrelevant.
DNA doesn’t lie.
DNA doesn’t care about aliases.”

“Have you asked Lola if the name Dawn Kincaid might be familiar?
Might be a name she’s repressed out of fear?”

“She wouldn’t admit it—assuming she remembers.
But I have asked her if the name Dawn Kincaid means anything, and she says
no.
I’ve been very careful.
I haven’t mentioned the DNA results,” Jaime repeats.

“She’s that afraid of whoever
Payback
is.
Even after nine years.”

“She says she hears
Payback
’s voice,” Jaime answers.
“She hears
Payback
describing the terrible things she’ll do if Lola ever crosses her.
Now Lola doesn’t have to talk or tell us who
Payback
is,” Jaime says, and I can’t help entertaining the possibility that
Payback
is made up.

A scary fantasy in the head of an emotionally damaged young woman with an IQ of seventy who is scheduled to be executed on
Halloween.

“The DNA is the only voice we need to hear,” Jaime says.
“And Dawn Kincaid is safely locked up and will stay locked up.”

“She knows Dawn Kincaid is locked up and will stay locked up?
That at some point she’ll be going to trial?”
I want to make
sure.

“She knows that Dawn has been charged with multiple counts of homicide in Massachusetts,” Jaime confirms.
“It’s been in the
news, and I’ve mentioned it.
It’s not a secret at the GPFW that Kathleen Lawler’s daughter is at Butler and facing trial.”

“I’m sure you’ve talked about Dawn with Kathleen.”

“I’ve interviewed Kathleen, as you know.
Of course we’ve talked about her daughter.”

“Dawn’s locked up, and yet Lola is still too afraid to talk.”
It doesn’t make sense to me, no matter what Jaime explains.

If Lola’s been on death row for the better part of a decade for crimes she didn’t commit and the real killer, Dawn Kincaid,
is locked up in Massachusetts, why is Lola still terrified of her, and why is Kathleen Lawler terrified of Lola?
Something
is wrong about all of this.

“Fear is a powerful emotion,” Jaime says confidently, beginning to slur her words, “and Lola’s had a very long time to be
afraid of this person on the outside, of Dawn, who is alive and well and unimaginably cruel.
You’ve seen what she’s capable
of.
She was only twenty-three years old when she slaughtered the Jordans in their own beds.
Because she felt like it.
Because
it was a blood sport.
Because it was
fun.
And then made herself a sandwich and drank a few beers and set up a troubled and intellectually impaired eighteen-year-old
girl to take the blame.”

“You could have just asked me, Jaime,” I say to her.
“The rest of it wasn’t necessary.
You didn’t need to manipulate me or
entice me, and it concerns me that you might think you need to bribe me.
I can fight my battles with the FBI or anyone else,
and I think after all we’ve been through, you should have known I’d help if you asked.”

“You would have come to Savannah and been my forensic expert in the Lola Daggette case?”
She looks at her glass as if considering
a refill.
“You would have intervened with your redneck colleague Colin Dengate, who’s given me a lot of yes-no answers, and
that’s about all?
You would have taken him on?”

“Colin’s not a redneck,” I answer.
“He just very convicted in his opinions and beliefs.”

“I didn’t know how you’d feel about it,” she replies, and she isn’t referring to my questioning Colin Dengate’s findings.

Jaime’s thinking about being
almost family.
She’s wondering if what happened between Lucy and her would obviate my being helpful or even civilized.

“Lucy doesn’t seem to know you’re here,” I answer the question Jaime should have asked.
“She got somewhat upset when I called
her after Kathleen gave me your cell phone number this afternoon.
I asked Lucy if she’d told you I was coming to Savannah,
if that’s how you knew.
She said no.
She indicated she’s not talked to you.”

“We haven’t talked in six months.”
Jaime stares past me, and her voice is tight and edgy.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened.”

“I told her I never wanted to see her again, and not to contact me for any reason,” she says coldly.

“You don’t have to explain,” I repeat.

“Obviously she hasn’t told you why.”

“She moved to Boston and you were no longer around or mentioned.
That seems to be the extent of what she’s explained to anyone,”
I reply.

“Well, it’s not anything she did intentionally to cause what should have been damn predictable if she’d given it a second
thought.”
Jaime gets up, headed back to the kitchen and the bottle.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt me.
But that doesn’t
alter the fact that she managed to destroy everything I’ve built and seemed to have less insight about the damage she caused
than even Greg did.”

Greg is Jaime’s ex-husband.

“At least he understood the demands of my career,” Jaime says from the kitchen as she pours Scotch into her glass.
“As a lawyer
and a mature and reasonable human being, he knows exactly how things work and that there are certain rules and realities one
can’t disregard simply because one assumes they don’t apply.
Through it all, Greg was at least discreet, smart, even professional,
if one can use the word
professional
about behavior in a relationship or during the dissolution of one.”
She returns to the couch and settles back into her corner.
“And he was never so reckless as to do something in the name of helping me that would ensure my ruination.”

“You don’t have to tell me what Lucy did.
Or what you perceive she did,” I say quietly, carefully, so I don’t show what I
really feel.

“Why do you think I know about Farbman’s data cheating?”
Jaime meets my eyes, and hers are dark like open wounds, her pupils
large.
“Just why do you think I might know it as a fact, not simply suspecting it based on statistics that don’t quite ring
true?”

I don’t answer her, because I’m already imagining what she’s about to say.

“Lucy somehow hacked into the Real Time Crime Center, into whatever server or mainframe or data warehouse she had to get into.”
Jaime’s voice catches.
For an instant I see her devastation over a loss she refuses to admit.
“While I can appreciate her
feelings about Farbman, about all of the complaints she heard ad nauseam behind closed doors in the privacy of our intimate
times together, it wasn’t exactly my expectation that she would take it upon herself to hack into the NYPD computer system
so she could help me prove a point.”

“And you know without a doubt that she did such a thing.”

“I suppose I should blame myself.”
She stares past me again.
“The fatal error I made was to succumb to her vigilantism, her
complete lack of boundaries, and let’s face it, her sociopathy.
I of all people know what the hell she’s like.
For God’s sake,
you and I both know.
What I’ve had to extricate her from, which is how I got tangled up with her to begin with …”

“Tangled up?”

“Because you asked me to help.”
She sips her drink.
“Poland, and what she did over there.
Jesus God.
How would you like to
have a relationship with someone you can’t know everything about?
Someone who’s … Well, I’m not going to say it.”

“Killed people?”

“I know more than I wish I did.
I’ve always known more about her than I wish I did.”

I wonder what’s changed Jaime Berger.
She didn’t used to be so self-absorbed, so quick to place blame on everyone but herself.

“How often do you think I’ve told her ‘Not another word’?
I don’t want to hear it.
I’m an officer of the court.
How could
I be so stupid?”
she says awkwardly, as if her tongue’s not working right.
“Maybe because of my loathing of Farbman.
He wanted
to be rid of me for years, but what I didn’t realize is he’s not the only one who felt that way.
When Lucy gave me the information
and I knew exactly what data Farbman had falsified, I went to the commissioner, who, of course, demanded proof.”

“Which you couldn’t exactly give.”

“I didn’t think he’d ask for it.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Emotions.
Being caught up in them and making an irreparable miscalculation.
I became the accused.
I was the one compromised.
Nothing was said directly.
It didn’t need to be.
All certain people had to do was drop Lucy’s name into the discussion at
strategic points.
They knew.
A forensic computer expert considered somewhat of a rogue, fired by the FBI, by ATF, in her earlier
life.
Everybody knows what she’s capable of, and I can’t control what you tell Lucy.
But I don’t advise …” she starts to say.

“It’s best you don’t advise me about anything to do with her,” I reply.

“I didn’t expect you to agree with—”

“It’s not for me to agree or disagree,” I cut her off, as I get up
from the couch and begin collecting dishes.
“You had your relationship with Lucy, and mine is different, has always been different,
will always be different.
If what you’ve told me is what really happened, it was terrible judgment, an outrageously stupid
and self-destructive thing for her to do.”
I carry dishes into the kitchen.
“I should let you get some rest.
You look tired.”

“Interesting you would say it that way.”
She clumsily sets wine-glasses and the empty bottle by the sink.
“
Self-destructive.
And here I was thinking that I was the one who got destroyed.”

I turn on hot water and find an almost empty bottle of dishwashing soap under the sink.
I look for a sponge, and Jaime says
she forgot to buy one as she leans against the stone peninsula, watching me clean up after a meal she did nothing to provide
beyond making a phone call and walking a few blocks to the restaurant to make sure she wasn’t in the apartment when I arrived.
So Marino could set the stage for her.
So she could make a grand entrance.
So she could continue to direct what she has scripted.

“Unfortunately, I’m not good at banishing people,” I remark, as I wash dishes with soap and my bare hands.
“Maybe when they’re
finally dead and I decide it’s a damn good thing because I’ve had enough, and I tell myself it’s damn good they’re gone.
But
it’s probably not true.
I probably don’t mean it.
I’m probably quite flawed that way.
Maybe you could find a dish towel in
this unlived-in rented apartment of yours and help me dry.”

“I need to get those, too.”
She reaches for a roll of paper towels instead.