The Hundredth Man (26 page)

“You had nothing to do with his death, did you?” I asked.

His eyes went wide, horrified. “My God, no. Even though “

“Even though he and Terri Losidor started blackmailing you. You were his big payoff, the one he bragged about.”

I figured that when Terri filed charges against Nelson, he offered to share the proceeds from blackmailing Peltier. By this time Terri would have discovered Nelson’s greed was stronger than his talent for larceny and she wriggled deep into planning the scam.

“Peltier’s wife’s going away for a few days? Jerrold, you get him to take you to some fancy-ass place we can hide one of those little cameras … “

Zane said, “He wanted a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Probably not all that much to you.”

“I knew Jerrold well enough to know he they, would keep coming back. I confessed my situation to an officer who coordinates security at various events I hold stockholders meetings, charity benefits … a Sergeant Burlew.”

“One of the perks of being Squill’s spear carrier,” I said to Harry. “You get to cherry-pick the cushy overtime gigs.”

Zane said, “I told the sergeant if he found and destroyed the materials in question, I’d pay him twenty thousand dollars.”

I saw where this road was headed. “But Burlew turned on you, didn’t he?”

“When Jer Mr. Nelson, was killed, the sergeant said I was now linked to a murdered homosexual with a record of drugs and prostitution, an incredible scandal; I’d be the butt of ridicule.”

“Burlew picked up where Nelson left off, started blackmailing you, right?” The lines were no longer invisible; they were a black picket fence in a field of snow. I figured when Terri was working with Nelson, she’d kept the photos. That she’d retained possession meant Burlew and Terri had forged a new partnership. She was proving a very resilient lady.

Zane nodded. “Sergeant Burlew demanded two hundred thousand dollars. And a job in one of my companies.”

“Director of security?” I ventured.

Zane looked me straight in the eyes for the first time. “He wanted to be a horticulturalist.”

I stared at Zane as if he’d spoken in Swahili.

“Horticulturist? You mean like … “

“Plants, Detective Ryder. Trees. Flowers. I have part ownership in a large landscaping-supply business. The sergeant wanted to be a horticulturalist, the position guaranteed until he wished to retire. He was adamant.” Zane looked at me and shrugged.

“Did he ever mention Captain Squill?” I was still trying to figure out horticulturalist.

Zane’s eyes dropped. “I can’t recall.”

“What about the fire at the NewsBeat?”

“The sergeant was concerned they’d have a record of me responding to Mr. Nelson. Something the investigation might uncover. I have no idea if he set the fire.”

“If it went public Burlew’s hold turned to vapor,” I said. “But you checked the paper out yourself.”

“I drove by a couple times, just to look, think.”

Driving up I’d seen the back of the Jag in the five-bay garage. Zane started weeping. Clair sat beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. But her eyes remained on the dark clouds out the window.

“Somehow I figured this was where the action was,” said a voice from the doorway. Burlew strode into the room. Clair stood angrily. Harry stared from the piano bench. I spun to Burlew, fists clenched.

“Oh, come on, Ryder,” Burlew said. “Grow up.”

“Sergeant, I want you out of my house this minute,” Clair said.

Burlew blinked his infant eyes and turned to Zane. “There’s no problem here, Mr. Peltier. None.”

Zane said, “No problem? I’m about to become a laughingstock, and you’re about to go to jail.”

“I don’t remember a thing,” Burlew said slowly.

“You were blackmailing me with “

“I don’t remember a thing,” Burlew said. “Good words to know, Mr. Peltier.”

I saw it coming. Zane’s nostrils started twitching as though smelling fresh air from an unexpected source. “What are you talking about, Sergeant?”

“Unless you press charges against… whoever, there’s no trial. No trial, no negative publicity. No pictures entered into evidence for the world to see.” Burlew smiled, a tiny red bow. “You know my favorite? The one I call Duckwalk, where you’re “

“Out of my house, Sergeant,” Clair demanded. “This instant.”

Harry leaned back and rested his elbows on the instrument’s keyboard. A low bass note sounded. Harry smiled softly as he watched Burlew, then turned to me. “I ever tell you about a partner I had once, Cars? Back, oh, a dozen years or so?”

Burlew reddened. “Fuck you, Nautilus.”

Harry stared calmly at Burlew. “You’d best giddy-up, Burl,” Harry said. “Yee-hah, ride ‘em cowboy.”

Burlew eyes widened to almost normal size and he turned apple red. He started to say something, but stopped. He spun, reteating on legs as stiff as fence posts. When we heard Burlew’s engine fire up, Zane stood and shot his cuffs, consternation creeping over his face.

“Who was that fellow?” he said to no one in particular. “What on earth was he talking about?”

Clair looked at her husband as if she was going to vomit, and strode from the room. Harry tapped my arm and craned his head in a follow-me motion. We walked a dozen feet and stopped, heads together. He said, “So does this have to do with our case what I think it does?”

“Right,” I affirmed. “Absolutely nothing. It’s a complete sidetrack.”

Harry shook his head, cursed Burlew under his breath, and left. I retrieved the photos and quietly slipped to the door. Clair intercepted me in the foyer.

“Whatever’s involved in this,” she said, “I want it pursued like any normal case.”

“There is no case, Clair. It hinged on Zane’s testimony against Burlew.  There’s no other evidence against Burlew except Terri Losidor, and she’s riding his bus.”

Clair’s laugh was humorless, metallic. “Zane won’t talk.

He’s in there contriving some pathetic story to make me pity him.” She gently touched my arm. “Following this led you down the wrong path, didn’t it?”

“We were looking for an elusive someone with close ties to Nelson. We thought it might lead us to the killer, not “

“To my husband.”

I shrugged.

She shook her head. “Does it put you back at square one?”

“We’re also investigating the idea that the bodies are messengers, ava tars It’s what we were looking at when we got … sidetracked.”

Clair walked outside and I followed. Mobile was eight miles across the Bay. It was raining there, sky and city connected by a curtain of gray. We walked a flagstone path through waves of azaleas and arbors of roses. “Much of this is my fault, Carson,” she said, stopping beneath a trellis. “My own damn, ridiculous, stupid fault.” The scent of the flowers hung in the air, counterpoint to her bitter-spoken words.

“I can’t see that, Clair.”

She looked out over the cloud-gray water. “I knew Zane was a weak man before I married him. I even suspected his bisexuality, rumors, though it’s probably closer to asexuality.  But he was the ne plus ultra of what girls with my upbringing were supposed to treasure and trap, Ryder: he owned wealth, position, influence … “

“Clair, you don’t have to “

Her blue eyes aimed at me, and I fell silent.

“Zane sold himself as a step into that world, the one of inherited ownership and influence, instant history, and I presented myself as a unique material acquisition. You see, Zane, like most others in his world, did nothing for what he has but open his eyes. I struggled years for technical expertise, professional accomplishment. All I lacked was a stage on which to let others see how far I had come.”

“You’re respected across the country, Clair. Beyond.”

She smiled sadly. “Vanity is a cleft that widens as it’s filled, Ryder. Professionally, I stood on my own, but I didn’t stand apart; I’m one of many talented and regarded people. But not in Zane’s world. There, I was an anomaly: a self-made woman in a world of glittering bubble heads whose accomplishments mirrored Zane’s, inherited, purchased, or married into. But how did I get to where I could stand beside them to tower above them?”

Her eyes told me I had to fill in the blank.

“Married Zane Peltier,” I said.

She laughed without mirth. “A wicked piper, vanity. I walked down thinking I was stepping up.”

Across the Bay the veil of rain over Mobile turned golden on its trailing edge, the sun burning through. Clair pondered it a moment. “My introspection is recent, Ryder, occurring only since you came to me about Dr. Davanelle, Ava. After you left, I realized my first response was not, “How can I help?” but rather, “I can’t allow a potential blot on my record.” It was despicable thinking; I’m a self-centered fool.”

I shook my head. “I think you’ve set a measure mark two inches above your head so you’ll never reach it, Clair. It screws up priorities.”

Clair reached to the trellis and cradled a pink rose. “Zane’s act of weakness, his submission to Burlew, has sickened me past all tolerance. Not at Zane, at me.” She nodded toward the house. “This was never my place, my life, this monstrous overwhelming of things. All I’ve ever truly loved was my work, my ability to ” She paused and clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white.

“Damn. Here I am doing it again, Ryder, the world of me. My life. My things. My job.” She turned away to dab at her eyes with a wrist. “How’s Ava? Is she going to make it? Tell me she’s fine, even if she’s not.”

“Clair, I think she’s “

Clair put her finger to my lips before I could finish. Her perfume spun my head. Or maybe it was the roses.

“Just for today, tell me she’s fine. Tell me she’s going to make it.”

She lifted her finger. I said, “She’ll make it, Clair.”

Clair smiled brightly, an extraordinary act of will. “Without a doubt. She’s young, she’s strong. She’ll be wonderful. Everything’s going to be fine. The world is diamonds and roses, Ryder. No, screw the diamonds, they’re just dirt with an attitude. The world is roses.”

Her smile broke like white glass and she fell toward me. I held her and she wept softly, more breath than tears. I felt the warmth of her lips brush my cheek. Then she stood back, wiped damp eyes on her sleeve, and pushed me toward my car.

“Things to do, dear,” was all she said.

I watched her straighten her back, set her mouth, and stride into that cavernous house. I knew it signaled the trip I’d been avoiding. Our case had just rocketed into a wall and now it was my turn to straighten, set, and stride. Though I’d called the number perhaps six times in my life, I pulled the phone from my pocket and dialed Vangie like the number was branded across my soul.

CHAPTER 26

T
he night, muted breezes and a pearl-white crescent of moon, would be beautiful if I were anywhere but here. But above these grounds the glowing moon, like the stars, was incongruous. This was a place beyond beauty, a land where even the shadows were shadowed and light was irony. Driving the mile from the road to the gate, my hands gripped the steering wheel so hard they cramped. Shaking them out I remembered I had been here four times and each time I lied and told myself it would be the last.

The gate guard took my name and checked his clipboard against my ID while his flashlight stayed on my face. I wasn’t offended; it’s the way things are done here, no room for error. I parked in the lot and went to the door, where another guard treated me as if the guard at the perimeter was only a warm-up. I entered amid a burring of locks and clanging of doors.

Though it was late, Vangie was there. She knew my mood and we didn’t converse beyond pleasantries. A guard arrived to escort me to Jeremy’s room. I told him unless I specifically called for him, he was not to open the door or the slat window. I’d requested the camera monitoring his room be turned off and Vangie had reluctantly agreed. The guard looked at her with skeptical eyes.

“He knows what he’s doing,” she said.

“He better,” the guard replied.

We walked a long white hall with several solid steel doors, slatted, the slats closed. A siren started down the hall, rising in pitch. I thought it a fire alarm until I realized it was a human scream, though I couldn’t fathom what hellish vision could inspire such a sound. The scream lingered in the air as if trapped between molecules, then disappeared into another dimension. I saw the guard studying me with a strange, exultant smile and I realized he was energized by working where anguish and horror were the norm. I wanted to punch his grinning mouth, to see his head snap backward as spit and blood trailed a comet pattern down the wall.

It’s this place, I told myself. Stay calm.

We stopped at a door. “I’ll be right outside,” the guard said. He slid the slat aside and peered inside before sliding a plastic key into the electronic lock. The door hissed open.

I entered.

If anything, it resembled a dorm room: built-in drawers, an open closet, a long table that served as a desk, chair beneath it, another chair in a corner, and a futon-style bed. The furniture was made of soft plastic. There was a bookcase, full and neat. A sink and toilet and shower stall recessed into a wall. The full-length mirror was Mylar. Its reflections were skewed, like viewing yourself in mercury.

Jeremy sat on the bed with a green book in his hands. Slight and fair, with yellow-blue eyes and cornsilk hair, he lacked my father’s powerful build, but had his coloration. Jeremy wore gray sweats and white socks under institutional slippers. He glanced up as if this was our nightly routine.  I leaned against the wall with my arms crossed.

He tapped the book. “Ever read Lucretius, Carson?” “Not since my sophomore year, I’d guess.” “Oh? Which sophomore year? Just kidding. Here’s one of my very favorites: “For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold as terror and imagine will come true.””

He wrinkled his brow, perplexed. “But my question is, who should fear when the trembling children are correct, Carson?”

I looked at my watch. “I’d like to start back by ” His voice dropped an octave. “Who should fear, Carson, when the trembling children are correct?” “It’s been a long day, Jeremy.”