The Associate (30 page)

“I have to do something.”

“No, you don’t,” Kyle said, raising his voice for the first time. He was surprised at the stubbornness across the table. “You don’t have the right to ruin our lives.”

“I’m not ruining your life, Kyle. You did nothing wrong.”

Is she awake?
Joey asks. The words rattle around the courtroom. The jurors scowl at the four defendants. Maybe they feel compassion for Kyle and Alan because there is no evidence that they violated the girl, and find them not guilty. Maybe they’re sick of the whole bunch and send them all to prison.

“I’ll take all the blame,” Baxter said.

“Why are you so determined to get yourself into more trouble than you can imagine? You’re toying with prison here, Baxter. Wake up, man!”

“I’ll take the blame,” he repeated, very much the martyr now. “You guys will walk.”

“You’re not listening to me, Baxter. This is far more complicated than you realize.”

A shrug. “Maybe so.”

“Listen to me, dammit!”

“I’m listening to you, Kyle, but I’m also listening to the Lord.”

“Well, I can’t compete—”

“And he’s leading me to Elaine. To forgiveness. And I believe she will listen, and she will forgive, and she will forget.” He was firm, and pious, and Kyle realized he had little else to throw at Baxter.

“Let it sit for a month,” Kyle said. “Don’t do anything hasty. Joey, Alan, and I should have a say in the matter.”

“Let’s go. I’m tired of sitting here.”

They roamed the Village for half an hour before Kyle, exhausted, finally said good night.

He was dead to the world when his cell phone rang three hours later. It was Baxter. “I talked to Elaine,” he announced proudly. “Tracked her down, called her, woke her up, and we talked for a few minutes.”

“You idiot,” Kyle blurted before he could stop himself.

“It went pretty well, actually.”

“What did you say?” Kyle was in the bathroom, splashing water on his face with one hand and holding his phone with the other.

“Told her I’ve never felt right about what happened. I didn’t admit to anything other than some misgivings.”

Thank God for that. “What did she say?”

“She thanked me for calling, then she cried and said no one has ever believed her. She still feels like she was raped. She’s always known it was Joey and me, with you and Alan somewhere close by watching the action.”

“That’s not true.”

“We’re gonna meet in a couple of days, have lunch, just the two of us, in Scranton.”

“Don’t do it, Baxter, please don’t do it. You will regret it forever.”

“I know what I’m doing, Kyle. I’ve prayed about this for hours, and I’m trusting God to get me through it. She promised not to tell her lawyer. You gotta have faith.”

“She works for her lawyer, part-time, did she tell you that, Baxter? No, she did not. You’ll walk into a trap and your life will be over.”

“My life is just beginning, old pal. Faith, Kyle, faith. Good night.” The phone snapped shut; the connection was dead.

_________

Baxter flew back to Pittsburgh the following morning, retrieved his car—a Porsche he planned to sell—from the long-term parking area, and checked into a motel by the airport. Credit card records revealed that he spent two nights in the motel and never checked out. His cell phone records showed numerous incoming calls and text messages from both Joey Bernardo and Kyle McAvoy, with no outgoing calls in return. He had two long conversations with Brother Manny in Reno, and some short ones with his parents and his brother in Pittsburgh. There were two calls to Elaine Keenan.

On the last day of his life, he left Pittsburgh before sunrise, headed for Scranton, a drive that would cover three hundred miles in about five hours. According to the credit card trail, he stopped for gas at a Shell station near the intersection of I-79 and I-80, about ninety minutes north of Pittsburgh. He then headed due east on I-80 and traveled two hours until his journey came to an end. Near the small town of Snow Shoe, he stopped at a rest area and went to the men’s room. It was approximately 10:40 a.m. on a Friday in mid-November. Traffic was light, and there were only a few other vehicles at the rest area.

Mr. Dwight Nowoski, a retiree from Dayton who was traveling to Vermont with his wife, who was already in the ladies’ room, discovered Baxter not long after he had been shot. He was still alive but dying
quickly from a gunshot to the head. Mr. Nowoski found him on the floor by the urinals, his jeans unzipped, the floor covered with blood and urine. The young man was gasping and whimpering and thrashing about like a deer hit by a car. There was no one else in the men’s room when Mr. Nowoski walked in and stumbled upon the horrible scene.

Evidently, the murderer followed Baxter into the toilet, took a look around to make sure they were alone, then quickly placed a nine-millimeter pistol, a Beretta according to the lab, at the base of Baxter’s skull and fired once. A silencer muffled the gunshot. The rest area was not equipped with surveillance cameras.

The Pennsylvania State Police closed the rest stop and sealed the area around it. Six travelers, including Mr. and Mrs. Nowoski, were questioned at length at the crime scene. One gentleman remembered a yellow Penske rental truck coming and going, but he had no idea how long it was there. The group estimated that another four or five vehicles had left the rest area after the body was discovered but before the police arrived. No one could recall seeing Baxter enter the men’s room, nor did anyone see the murderer follow him in. A lady from Rhode Island recalled noticing a man standing by the door to the men’s room when she entered the ladies’, and upon further reflection she agreed that it was possible he might have been a lookout. He was not going in, nor was he coming out. Regardless, he was long gone, and her description was limited to: male white, somewhere between the ages of thirty and forty-five, at least five feet eight but no more than six feet four, wearing a dark jacket that could have been leather, linen, wool, cotton, anything.

Along with the lab reports and autopsy, her description was the extent of the physical evidence.

Baxter’s wallet, cash fold, and watch were untouched. The police inventoried his pockets and found nothing but a few coins, his car keys, and a tube of lip balm. The lab would later report that there was no trace of alcohol or illegal drugs in his system, on his clothing, or in his car.

The pathologist did note a remarkable degree of liver damage for a twenty-five-year-old.

Robbery was immediately ruled out for the obvious reasons—nothing was taken, unless the victim was carrying something valuable that no one knew about. But why would an armed thief leave behind $513 in cash and eight credit cards? Wouldn’t a thief consider stealing the Porsche while he had the chance? There was no evidence that the crime had anything to do with sex. It could’ve been a drug hit, but that seemed unlikely. Those were usually much messier.

With sex, robbery, and drugs ruled out, the investigators began scratching their heads. They watched the bagged body disappear into the rear of an ambulance for the ride back to Pittsburgh, and they knew they had a problem. The apparent randomness of the act, plus the silent gunshot and the clean getaway, led them to conclude, at least at the scene, that they were dealing with professionals.

_________

The confirmation that a member of such a noted family had met such a strange and brutal end brightened up a dull news day in Pittsburgh. Television crews
scampered to the Tate estate in Shadyside, only to be met by private security personnel. For generations the Tate family had offered “No comment” to every inquiry, and this tragedy was no different. A family lawyer issued a terse response and asked for prayers, consideration, and respect for privacy. Uncle Wally once again took charge and issued orders.

Kyle was at his cube, chatting with Dale about their plans for the evening, when the call came from Joey. It was almost 5:00 p.m. on Friday. He had eaten a pizza with Baxter late on Tuesday night, then chatted with him a few hours later, but had not spoken to him since. As far as he and Joey could tell, Baxter had disappeared, or at least he was ignoring his phone.

“What’s the matter?” Dale asked as she noticed the look of shock. But Kyle did not respond. He kept the phone to his ear and began walking away, down the hall, past the front desk, listening as Joey unloaded all the details now being splashed across the television. He lost him in the elevator, and once outside the building he called Joey back and kept listening. The sidewalks along Broad were packed with the late-afternoon rush. Kyle plodded along, without a coat to layer against the chill, without a clue as to where he might be going.

“They killed him,” he finally said to Joey.

“Who?”

“I think you know.”

A
funeral lasts for two hours,” Doug Peckham was saying as he glared at Kyle. “I don’t understand why you need to take two days off.”

“The funeral is in Pittsburgh. I have to fly there, then fly back. He was a fraternity brother. I’m a pallbearer. I’ll need to see the family. Come on, Doug.”

“I’ve done funerals!”

“For a twenty-five-year-old roommate shot in the head?”

“I get all that, but two days?”

“Yes. Call it vacation. Call it personal time. Don’t we get a few personal days a year?”

“Sure, it’s somewhere in the handbook, but no one takes them.”

“Then I’m taking them. Fire me, I don’t give a damn.”

A deep breath on both sides of the desk, and Doug said calmly, “Okay, okay. When is the funeral?”

“Two o’clock, Wednesday afternoon.”

“Then leave late tomorrow afternoon, and meet
me here at five-thirty Thursday morning. I gotta tell you, Kyle, this place is a powder keg. This Toby Roland split is getting nastier, and larger, and those of us who stay behind are about to get dumped on.”

“He was my roommate.”

“And I’m sorry.”

“Oh, thank you.”

Doug waved off the last comment, picked up a thick file, and thrust it across the desk. “Can you read this on the airplane?” While phrased like a question, it was an outright command.

Kyle took the file and locked his jaws to keep from saying, Sure, Doug, I’ll give it a look on the plane and I’ll sneak a peek at the wake and I’ll analyze the damned thing during the service and review my thoughts at the burial when they lower Baxter into his grave, and then, when I’m flying back to LaGuardia, I’ll flip through it again, and for every minute I’m even remotely thinking about this file, I’ll bill, or double bill, or maybe even triple bill the poor client who made the mistake of selecting this full-service sweatshop for its legal needs.

“You okay?” Doug asked.

“No.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Any clue as to who pulled the trigger?” Doug shifted his weight as he attempted a bit of small talk. He feigned, badly, interest in what had happened.

“No.” If you only knew, Kyle thought.

“I’m sorry,” Doug said again, and his effort at showing interest was gone.

Kyle started for the door, but stopped when he
heard, “I asked you to estimate my hours for the Ontario Bank case, didn’t I? Over lunch, remember? I need the hours.”

Estimate your own damned hours, Kyle ached to say, or, better yet, Just keep up with your time like everybody else.

“Almost done,” Kyle said and made it through the door without further abuse.

_________

The interment of Baxter Farnsworth Tate took place on a damp and overcast day at the family burial plot in Homewood Cemetery, in central Pittsburgh. It followed a staid and by-the-book Episcopal service that was closed to the public and especially closed to the media. Baxter left a brother, who attended the service, and a sister, who did not. Over the weekend the brother made a gallant effort to restructure the funeral into a “celebration” of Baxter’s life, an idea that fell flat with the ultimate realization that there was so little to celebrate. The brother yielded to the rector, who led them through the standard rituals of remembering someone whom he, the rector, had never met. Ollie Guice, a Beta from Cleveland who had lived with Baxter for two of their years at Duquesne, struggled through a eulogy that evoked a few smiles. Of the eight surviving members of their pledge class, seven were present. There was also a respectable showing from old Pittsburgh—some childhood friends and those required to attend because they came from the upper crust. There were four long-forgotten pals from the second-tier boarding school the Tates had shipped Baxter to when he was fourteen years old.

Unknown to Kyle and the others, Elaine Keenan had attempted to enter the church but was turned away because her name was not on the list.

No one from Hollywood made it to the funeral. Not a single soul from L.A. Baxter’s C-list agent sent flowers. A former female roommate e-mailed the rector a brief eulogy that she insisted be read by someone in attendance. She was “on the set” and couldn’t get away. Her eulogy made references to the Buddha and Tibet and was not well received in Pittsburgh. The rector tossed it without a word to the family.

Brother Manny managed to talk his way into the church, but only after Joey Bernardo convinced the family that Baxter had spoken highly of his pastor in Reno. The family, along with all the other mourners, eyed Brother Manny with some suspicion. He wore his standard white uniform—baggy bleached dungarees and flowing shirttail—and layered it with a garment that was probably a robe of some variety but looked more like a white bedsheet. His only concession to the solemnity of the occasion was a black leather beret that adorned his tumbling gray locks and gave him an odd resemblance to an aging Che Guevara. He wept throughout the service, shedding more tears than the rest of the hidebound and stoic collection combined.

Kyle shed no tears, though he was deeply saddened by such a wasted life. As he stood next to the grave and stared at the oak casket, he was unable to dwell on the good times they had shared. He was too consumed with the raging internal debate over what he should have done differently. In particular, should he have told Baxter about the video, about Bennie and
the boys, about everything? If he had done so, would Baxter have appreciated the danger and behaved differently? Maybe. Maybe not. In his zeal to clean up his past, Baxter might have gone nuts if he knew he’d actually been filmed doing whatever he did to Elaine. He might have confessed under oath and said to hell with everybody else. It was impossible to predict because Baxter was not thinking rationally. And it was impossible to second-guess now, because Kyle did not foresee the extent of the danger.