The Price of Malice (33 page)

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he told her.

Miller acted as if Cathy’s small exchange had never occurred. “When did you last see Mr. Beale?”

Brandhorst faced her. “I don’t know. When was the last time you saw your dentist?”

“Would you say it was a week ago, a month, or a year?”

He licked his lips. “It might’ve been a few weeks.”

She made a pointed effort to write a note to herself on a pad beside the open file.

“How ’bout when you last saw Abílo Silva and his son José. Was that in the company of Mr. Beale?”

No hesitation this time. The response was almost too fast. “Never heard of them.”

Dede Miller sat back to study him. “You know, for a man who’s trying to be careful, you sure have some sloppy habits. Do you really think if we got your office phone records, we didn’t get everything else—including a long talk with Lyn Silva?”

“What’s the difference if I met some lobsterman and his kid?” Brandhorst challenged her.

“The difference is they died in your company.” She leaned toward him again before concluding, “Because you killed them.”

Joe felt Lyn stiffen. “I thought he was just the moneyman,” she whispered.

Brandhorst’s face reddened. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“Interesting answer,” Cathy said from behind him, making him whirl around.

“It’s the truth,” he insisted.

She smiled. “No, it’s not,” she said quietly.

Joe took hold of Lyn’s hand. “You okay?” he asked her.

She nodded once, not taking her eyes off the scene before them.

“There were three of you that night,” Miller intoned next door. “You, Beale, and Beale’s sternman, Dougie O’Hearn. We already have Beale in custody.”

“You need to be straight with us, Dick,” Cathy said, almost into his ear. “This is not the time to screw up.”

“Beale’s lying to save his own ass,” Brandhorst said, all pretense abandoned. “He had an ax to grind with Silva I knew nothing about. One minute we’re talking—the next, he opens up.
He’s
the one who killed them.”

“The evidence could support that,” Cathy commented.

Brandhorst half rose in his chair, until Cathy laid a hand on his shoulder. “You know I didn’t shoot those two.”

“Then tell us what happened, Dick,” Cathy urged him. “ ’Cause right now, you’re an accessory.”

He hunched forward to stare directly at Dede. “It was a simple dope deal. No big shakes. A few pills for a few bucks. I was along for the ride. I barely knew Silva. His kid owed me for gambling debts and the old man figured he’d square the books. I was the bank, Beale was the dealer, and Silva was the mule. I introduced them a while back, after Silva asked me how to raise extra cash. Turns out they’d met a few years ago in Jonesport, on vacation or something. Anyhow, that’s all I knew till Beale invited me out for a boat ride—that’s what he called it. And then, there we were, meeting up with Silva. I was bummed—I try to keep a low profile, you know? I was angry at Beale, but what could I do? So, I hung back, trying to be inconspicuous, but then, all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose—they start yellin’ at each other, and before I can move, Beale shoots them both. I have no clue what triggered it.”

“Where did this happen?” Dede asked.

This time, Brandhorst was direct. “At sea. Like I said—boat-to-boat, off Grand Manan. We were standing on Silva’s stern. O’Hearn was on Beale’s boat, manning the wheel.”

Dede cupped her cheek in her hand and looked at him pityingly. “Yeah—O’Hearn. He is the fly in the ointment, isn’t he? The guy who really messes up a nice and tidy story.” Her face became serious when she added, “Because we got him, too, and he says things went down a lot differently.”

Brandhorst scowled. “Well,
duh
. O’Hearn
works
for Beale. What the fuck do you expect him to say?”

“We
got
Beale, Dick,” Miller countered. “We got the gun, we got the bullets—one of them even has Silva’s DNA on it. And O’Hearn fingered Beale as pulling the trigger.”

Brandhorst straightened, spreading his hands wide. “Well, there you have it.”

“Not quite. You said you didn’t know why it happened—that it was just a dope deal gone south.”

“So?”

This time, Cathy produced the evidence, dangling a small plastic envelope before his eyes. Even from the observation room, they could see the same small computer component that Lyn and Steve had discovered in the old barometer.

“So,” Cathy said. “We were wondering why this doesn’t look like dope.”

Brandhorst froze at the sight of it, inches from his face. Then his shoulders slumped, his eyes dropped to the tabletop, and he muttered, “Shit.”

“Talk to me, Dick.”

He shook his head. “If that greedy bastard hadn’t held that back for more money, we would’ve been fine. But he wanted the whole debt wiped clean—his kid off the hook.”

“So you ordered them killed,” Cathy stated, “like O’Hearn and Beale claim you did.”

Brandhorst almost sounded sad. “It was the principle of the thing. The deal was for the dope. That”—he indicated the contents of the envelope—“was a favor—something Silva was supposed to bring over for free. But we couldn’t find it afterward, when we went through their pockets. I didn’t make a big deal about it then, ’cause I’d kept Beale outside the loop. I figured I’d search the boat later. But the stupid jerk told me it sank in a storm. He sacrificed a fortune
for the value of a goddamn boat. Whole thing was a fucking disaster.”

“Until Silva’s daughter walked into your office.”

“Yeah,” he mourned. “I couldn’t believe it—looked like the break of a lifetime.”

Lyn broke away from the line at the window and walked unsteadily toward the door. “I feel sick,” she whispered.

Joe grabbed her by the waist, dance-stepped her into the hallway, and down two doors into a unisex bathroom they’d passed earlier. There, she hovered before the sink, her hands resting on its edge, her breathing coming fast and deep.

Joe rubbed her back with one hand and held her hair back with the other. “Feel free if you need to,” he urged her.

“It’s not like I didn’t know,” she gasped. “It was just listening to that son of a bitch. I’m just a little dizzy. I’ll be okay.”

She reached out and ran the cold water, cupped some in her hand and splashed it on her face. She looked up and caught his eye in the mirror. “He will go away for this, won’t he?”

Joe nodded, handing her some paper towels from the nearby dispenser. “ ’Cause of the border involvement, it’s a federal rap; O’Hearn says Brandhorst ordered Beale to shoot; and both Beale’s and O’Hearn’s stories are perfect matches. Pinning the computer piece to Brandhorst was the final nail. Whatever it is, it’s clearly worth a lot, and once they analyze it and find out where it came from, that should guarantee his going away for a long, long time—he and Beale, both.”

She straightened and vaguely mopped her face dry.

“Would you like to leave?” he asked. “It’s a beautiful day.”

She looked surprised. “That’s okay?”

“Of course,” he told her, and led the way.

Outside, he steered a course across the parking lot toward the
nearby Kenduskeag Stream, which in this section of town was mostly a concrete canal. The sun felt good on their shoulders after the air-conditioning behind them, and the water’s noisy rush to meet the broader embrace of the nearby Penobscot River added to Lyn’s recovery.

She stood by the bank, lost in the gentle tumult before them, as Joe slipped his arm around her waist.

“I read something once,” she commented at last, “probably an article in a doctor’s office—I don’t remember. It was about distant fathers. How they become larger than life because we never get to know them. They grow to be godlike, guaranteeing that, sooner or later, their kids will pay the price.”

Joe thought of the remnants of the tattered Putnam family, and considered Lyn’s words in the light of his never having seen or met a single one of the many fathers responsible for Karen Putnam’s various children.

“Godlike to some kids,” he said, “maybe just absent to others.”

He turned to her then and asked, “Are you angry at your dad?”

She pursed her lips, not looking at him. “I was. It looked like he chose José over Steve and me, and threw us all away as a result.” She sighed. “But now . . .”

The image of two driven, desperate kids in a trailer, armed with a knife but otherwise clueless, floated up in Joe’s mind.

“Maybe we do the best we can with what we’ve got available—fitting it into the big picture later is what drives us crazy.”

She finally took her eyes off the water and looked at him. “It’s that shallow? That random?”

He kissed her cheek. “Damned if I know. I just do what I can to pick up the pieces.”