The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller)) (29 page)

“Would you like a drink?  Coffee or something?” she asked.

“No thanks.”

“It’s my day off—Monday and Tuesday.  Damn neighbor’s dog barks like no tomorrow when the trash guys come on Monday.  They come at the crack of dawn.  I’ve been up for quite a while.  So I fixed me a little bloody Mary.”

O’Brien smiled, “Enjoy.”

“As I recall, I told you all I knew about Alex’s murder when it happened.”

“Judy, there have been some things happening recently that have convinced me that Charlie Williams did not kill Alexandria.”

“What things?”

“The murders of a priest and two others who knew that Williams did not kill her.”

“Then who did?”

“I was hoping you might tell me.”

“I’ve told you what I think.”

“Maybe you could refresh my memory of Alex’s relationship with Russo.”

She grinned, stirred her drink with a stick of celery and said, “He was an asshole.  I didn’t like him when he managed Alex’s career.  He’s the reason she got so heavy into coke.  But I never thought he stabbed her like that.  Charlie was having awful fights with Alex, trying to take her back to North Carolina, trying to get her away from Russo.  I think Charlie got so damn drunk he just went crazy and killed her.”  She made a sniffling sound with her nose.  “

 “I went back and re-read the old statements you gave me eleven years ago.  In one of them, you said that Alex started getting phone calls at different times and she had

 to drop everything and go.  You said she hated going…said the ‘guy was creeping her out.’  You said she’d come back from meeting him in a motel and took long showers.  You told me you heard her crying, sobbing loudly in the shower one day and you sat her down to talk with her.  Friend-to-friend.  Alex mentioned she’d been thinking about suicide and then she was killed three days later.”

Judy stared at a spot somewhere on the coffee table.  O’Brien could see her eyes moisten.  She looked at a photograph on the mantle.  She was standing with Alexandria at a zoo.  “I remember what I said.  Thought about it some since her death.”

“Is there anything you didn’t tell me…anything at all?”

“Alex said she felt so lonely or ‘alone’ was the word she used.  So damn violated.  I remember she wrapped herself in a big fluffy white towel, sat on the side of the tub, and we talked.  I mostly listened and she broke down and told me that her stepfather sexually abused her when she was eleven.  And now, this new bastard, the guy calling her, was bringing back the nightmares.  She said she felt helpless, like when she was a little girl.  Nowhere to run and nobody to run to.  I remember just holding her there on the tub, like I was holding a child and she just cried and cried.”

Judy’s fingers gripped the glass in her hand, her knuckles turning white.  O’Brien said, “When you originally told me about the calls, I’d believed that it was Russo soliciting her.  Part of his narcissist DNA.  In the last few days, I’ve come to realize that Russo is on the same scum level as Alexandria’s stepfather.”

Judy walked to the wet bar and said, “How about some tea or something?”

“No thanks.”

She fixed another drink and returned to her seat.  “This, in a way, makes what you’re telling me a little easier to stomach.” 

“Did Russo, at that time, have someone working for him that might have had a lot of access to Alexandria?” O’Brien asked.

Judy crossed her legs and took a sip.  “Not really.  Russo was a hands-on kind of manager.  I remember Alex telling me in the bathroom that night, if she didn’t cooperate, he’d destroy her career.  Now why would Russo want to destroy a career that was making him a shit load of money?  Before Alex died, she told me she was using heroin.”

“Heroin?”

“She’d pointed to places between her toes and said that’s where he gave her the drug.  Maybe somehow Charlie knew about it and that’s why he went crazy…trying to get her out of that nasty scene.  But that’s still no excuse for what he did.”

“I don’t remember you mentioning heroin during my original questioning.”

“Between the coke, pills and crap that came through her life, heroin was just another one to chalk up to being naïve, too trusting, and too dumb to care.  Alex had told me she was not gonna use it any more, and begged me not to say anything to anybody.  You had arrested Charlie for the killing, so it didn’t seem to make any difference because Charlie wasn’t a user and he sure wasn’t giving heroin to Alex.”

“Then who was?”

“I don’t know.  She wouldn’t say, but I don’t think it was Russo.”

“Judy, having a girlfriend-to-girlfriend talk with Alexandria, at the moment you describe, would lead me to believe she might have opened up a little more.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were her best friend.  It seems like she would have confided in you and told you who she was meeting—who had her hooked on heroin.”

“She was afraid.  She said that if I didn’t know much I couldn’t get into trouble.”

“What do you think she meant by trouble?”

“I don’t know.  I remember her saying that sometimes you can put your trust in the wrong people...even those people paid to protect you.  I thought she meant one of Russo’s security—his body guards—the guys who kept the paparazzi out of her face.”

O’Brien said nothing.          

Judy lifted the framed photograph of she and Alexandria off the mantle.  She looked at it a moment, smiled, and sipped her drink.  She handed the picture to O’Brien. “We were at the Miami Zoo when this was taken.  Alex loved going there.  Loved the animals and the peace she found.  She’s never getting older than that picture.  Alex may have been beautiful outside, but she was beautiful on the inside, too.  Before she was stabbed in the heart, she was scarred there a long time ago.  I hope you find this guy.”

SEVENTY-NINE

Anita Johnson slept later than she wanted.  Almost noon.  Had the postman come yet?  She bolted from bed, slipped into her robe, and checked on her toddler.  Ronnie was still sleeping.  Probably tired from the trip back, Anita thought.  Mama was right.  Go on and leave Lyle.  Leave his abuse and crazy get-rich-quick schemes behind

She put on a pot of coffee, peeked through the kitchen curtains, and waited.  What would Lyle send?   She hadn’t been home in two days since she talked with Lyle and had decided to spend the weekend with her mother.  She told her mother everything, even the last weird conversation she had with Lyle.  She could leave him now.  Anita had driven five hours, getting home late last night.  Now it was Monday, almost noon.

 She sipped her coffee, put on touch of lipstick, tied the robe around her waist, and walked outside down the dirt drive to the mailbox.  She listened for the sound of his rattling diesel engine.  Nothing.  Nothing but a mockingbird singing its fool head off.

As she reached for the mailbox, she felt her heart beat faster.  Shouldn’t get nervous, she told herself.  Just something Lyle wasn’t man enough to say in person—to say when he wasn’t crazy drunk.  She pulled out a stack of bills.  Lights.  Mortgage. Home Depot.  Best Buy.  New TV would be paid off when little Ronnie was six.  Four envelopes with four bills.  Nothing from Lyle.  Where was he? 

The sound.  The diesel.  It was coming.  The postman’s truck was at the Madison’s house, just through the pines.  She would wait.

“Come on mister mailman,” she whispered.  Anita thought she heard the baby cry.  She looked back at her house.  Did she leave the door wide open? 
Come on, where are you?
 Government ought to get the mail carriers better trucks.  Keep them from going postal.  She almost smiled at her own joke.

He was coming around the bend.  The postman wore a Panama hat, short-sleeve shirt, and blue shorts.  He had a walrus mustache in need of a trim.  “Mornin,’” he said.

“More like good afternoon,” said Anita.  She smiled but showed no teeth.

“Yeah, I’m runnin’ a little later than usual.”  He sorted though the mail and said, “Got only one for you.  Someone even took the time to hand write your name and address.”  He held the letter.  “I was telling Larry, on the next route, that only about fifteen percent of my mail has handwritten addresses anymore.”

She grabbed the letter, nodded and said, “Thank you.”  Anita turned and went back to her house.

She locked the door behind her and wondered whether she should call her mother to let her hear whatever it was that Lyle had to say.  She took a deep breath and began to tear at one edge of the envelope.  Her fingers trembled so much it was hard to open.  Her heart pounded.

The baby cried.

“Be right there, Ronnie…give mommy a sec.”

A mournful wail came from his room.  “Coming, you probably had a bad dream.”  She began to read aloud her husband’s handwriting as she walked toward the baby’s room: 
Dear Anita, if you’re reading this, chances are I’m dead.  I want you to know that

I always loved you.  If nothing else, you got a real good insurance policy to help take care of yourself and Ronnie.  The first thing you need to do is call the sheriff’s office…

Her hand trembled so much she had to hold the letter with both hands as she entered the baby’s room.  He stood in his crib and cried.  Blanket creases in the side of his red, tear-streaked face.  She bent down to kiss his face.  “Mommy is going to give you a bath and some lunch.  Just a second, sweetheart.”

She continued reading. 
“Call them and tell them your husband has been killed.  No, tell them he’s been murdered.  I will spell out the killer’s name in print so there is no mistake as to his identity.  He is the same man who killed Sam Spelling and...” 

The baby screamed.  Anita saw that he was looking to her right.  Looking toward the door.  She turned just as the man in a dark ski mask grabbed her in a strong headlock. 

“Please don’t!” she pleaded.  “Please don’t hurt me!  I’ll give you anything you want.”

“Shhh,” he whispered.  “You’re going for a long sleep now.  Don’t resist and you will feel no pain.” 

She fought with all her strength, clawing and pulling at the ski mask.  He snapped her neck.  Eyes tearing, disbelieving.  Her body quivered as her heart pumped its final frantic beats.  He let her body slump to the carpeted floor.  Anita’s dying eyes locked on her crying child.

Reaching down, he removed the letter from her clinched fist and whispered, “You are the last link…the chain letter dies with you.”        

EIGHTY

O’Brien pulled out of the Willows in the Wind subdivision and didn’t want to look back.  He thought about Judy Neilson—now an alcoholic, drowning pain when it pooled in her spirit and left stains on the fabric of who she had become.

Was there something she wasn’t admitting?  ‘
You can put your trust into the wrong people…even those people paid to protect you.’
  He thought about the heroin connection—Judy finding Alexandria dead with seven stab wounds.  Who had been that angry with Alexandria Cole?

O’Brien drove north, toward Daytona, and called Tucker Houston. “What’s the status with Judge Davidson?”

“Still in Seattle.  I’ve got a call in to him.  But he needs to sign the order in person and right now he’s about three thousand miles away.  In the interim, I’ve spoken with Charlie William’s attorney, Robert Callaway.  He’s a pleasant, if not somewhat defeated fellow.  He emailed some of the information to me that I needed about the case.  I’m writing the petition for a stay as we speak.”

“What are you throwing at them?”

“I call it collateral attack—a habeas corpus petition.  I start in state court, where I know I’ll lose.  Then the Fifth Circuit, where I know I’ll lose.  Then the Florida Supreme Court…where I might get the ear of Governor Owen or the Florida Attorney General via the media.   It could wind up on the docket of the Supreme Court in the very last hour.  Call it a legal grandstand.  Enough sawdust flying to start cutting through the system. 

It’ll be up to you to add the real teeth to the saw, Sean.  Until you do, I’m petitioning the court to halt the execution on the grounds that Charlie Williams wasn’t adequately represented the first time.  He simply did not get a fair trail in view of the transcript I’ve read.  He contends the sex between him and Alexandria was consensual.  She was not raped, as the state alleges.  There were many people in and out of the condo the day she was killed.  Who’s to say there wasn’t a previous fight?  Along comes bumbling Charlie, a love sick puppy trying to wrestle the only girl he’s loved out of the grip of vice.  The cocaine, pills, booze, the—”

“Heroin.”

“Heroin?

“I just spoke with Alexandria’s former roommate, Judy Neilson.  She told me two days before Alexandria was murdered they’d had a heart-to-heart.  Came after Judy found Alexandria in the shower trying to scrub her skin to the bone because she felt dirty after having forced sex?”

“With whom?

“Says she doesn’t know.  Probably the same guy who got her into heroin.  Toxicology report after the autopsy didn’t reveal in heroin in her blood, but then if she hadn’t used in a while, it might not show up.  When do you think you’ll hear something from the courts?”

“I’m hoping by end of the day.  If national media jump on this, there could be time to have the courts consider the petition, and Charlie Williams could get a stay.  But, Sean, right now neither you nor Williams can afford to assume this will get heard, and

we’d all be greater fools to think that even if it is heard, the federal courts will do anything to stop it.”

“Call me as soon as you hear something.  Thanks, Tucker.”

O’Brien hung up and called Lauren Miles.  “Hear anything from Quantico?”

“Yes and no.”

“Lauren, I have enough riddles to solve.  Just give it to me straight.”

“The straight talk is that Simon Thomas, the guy who is the world’s best at forensic 3D spectra-scope analysis, is probably landing at Reagan about now.  He was the keynote speaker at a police forensics seminar in Las Vegas.  I spoke with him before he boarded the flight.  He’ll give it his best when he gets to the lab this afternoon.”