The Same Mistake Twice (12 page)

The outcome should put things off between her and Anne-Marie for, what, five more years? Ten? Diana couldn’t ask, or Tillotson would want to know why.

And she wondered when the issues of Deborah Leavitt and Pamela Krol would come back. She almost wished that she could have taken Rennert’s payday and gone far away.

Chapter Twenty-One

“That’s two,” said a Tyvek-suited crime scene officer. “We’re looking for two, right?”

“Keep digging,” said Tillotson. “We don’t need to look like idiots again. Any more than we already do.”

The young man rolled his eyes a little, but Tillotson let it go. This was a middle-class suburb. Who expected three bodies, let alone one?

But the Salmon house had him spooked. He looked at the near wilderness around him and saw a graveyard. He almost expected to see human bones protruding from the dirt everywhere he looked. It was the kind of thought a detective kept to himself.

Instead he struck a professional pose and looked down at the two skeletons that had mingled as the flesh on them disappeared. The bodies must have been dumped, one on top of the other, ten years earlier. The harsh lighting made the scene look like a black-and-white photograph, which lessened the horror a little.

But he knew there was a price to pay in future nightmares. Murder was murder, but young victims were the worst.

The cadaver dogs from the county were looking bored. There was probably nothing more to find, but he wasn’t going to settle for probably.

“Didn’t we just do this?” said Chief Haldorsen.

At least Tillotson didn’t jump, but only because he was too exhausted.

“We got some new information,” he said.

“From Diana Andrews?”

“Right.”

“And I have to find out this way because?”

“Because I wanted to make sure it panned out.”

“Detective, I don’t mind investigative dead ends. I don’t mind three A.M. phone calls. I do mind being the last to know something.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tillotson knew what would have happened if he had really awakened the Chief.

All he could do to retaliate was keep the search going until Haldorsen called it off. Which was a shitty thing to do to the other cops involved, but he knew they would understand.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A little before midnight the doorbell rang. Diana flipped the front light on and verified through the peephole that it was Tillotson.

“Thanks for making me look bad,” he said.

“How?”

“We should have found the other grave the first time around.”

“It wasn’t dug up then.”

“No excuse. This time, at least, we have an idea who they are.”

She nodded and then focused on him.

“They? How many?”

“One male, probably white, young. One female, also white and young.”

“How did you find Epstein in the first place? It feels like years ago instead of yesterday. Or whenever.”

She listened to herself and wondered what her problem was. She had never motor-mouthed so nervously with him before.

“A local resident brought us a bone,” he said. “His dog disappeared for a while and then came out of the Salmon property carrying it. That’s three buried bodies, and we either don’t know who put them there, or we can’t prove it.”

“Are you willing to trust me on this?”

That was her problem. She wasn’t sure he was willing anymore.

“On what?” he said.

“I don’t know what happened to them, but I think I know who does.”

“How could you know that?”

“Epstein passed Patty off as me. I just met somebody who looked at me like he had seen a ghost.”

“There must be other people around who knew her.”

“But she was special to this guy, and he wanted to be something special to her. And he denied knowing her at all.”

After midnight she waded into the mall against the tide of moviegoers leaving the last showings at the multiplex. Again she found Todd McNally in his office.

“Did you find anything out?” he said. “About Patricia, I mean?”

“Yes, Todd, I did. I found out why the sight of me almost gave you a heart attack.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t try it. Patricia looked like me. Or I look like her, enough to freak you out.”

“But what happened to her?”

“Stop, Todd. You know what happened to her. That’s why you didn’t help me when I asked you.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“No, you didn’t. You claimed you didn’t know James Zakrewsky, but he was here at the theater all the time.”

Todd said nothing.

“Okay, let me tell you what I think happened. Patricia came to you and asked if she could hide out with you for a while. She didn’t tell you why. Maybe if she had, she’d still be alive, because you drew the wrong conclusion. I think I can picture it. It must have been late at night, and here was this girl you had been dreaming about, only she really was there. She only wanted help, but you came on to her.”

Todd listened.

“You blew it that time, Todd. Why don’t you make it right now?”

“Make what right? Yeah, I came on to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. So what? Believe it or not, I had heard ‘No’ before.”

Diana did believe it.

“And I’ve heard it since, and those women are still alive too.”

Diana studied him, and her hooker’s radar stayed silent. If Todd wasn’t a stone psychopath, he was telling the truth.

“For a minute I thought she was finally coming around. But then I saw her junker of a car parked out in front of my house. And her guy was there, sitting in the passenger seat.”

“He didn’t get out?”

“No.”

Diana realized that James had probably been hurting too badly to leave the car.

“What happened then?”

“I told her she was welcome, but it would be too weird with her boyfriend.”

“Smooth, Todd. How did she react to that?”

“She said I was just like every other man she had ever met.”

Diana wondered what Tillotson would have asked. She had talked big, and now it was up to her.

“Back up a little, Todd. Did she say anything about James?”

“Yeah,” he said. “About James and these other two guys. James knew them from school.”

“What about them?”

“She had tried to help James, but they just brushed her aside.”

“What was their issue with James?”

“They thought it was queer to go for an older woman.”

Diana couldn’t think of another thing to ask. She turned and left him the way Patricia had done ten years earlier. As she walked across the parking lot to Tillotson’s car, she wondered what she would say. By the time she reached him, she knew she had no choice but surrender.

She made her confession through his driver’s side window. Tillotson stared straight ahead. When she finished, he made her wait for his reaction.

“Get in,” he said.

He drove out of the parking lot. She watched the landmarks and realized that he was taking her home.

“I’ll make that client list for you,” she said.

“I don’t need it.”

“You don’t?”

“No. We know who the John Doe is. He wasn’t your client.”

“Oh. Right.”

She almost wished he would yell at her. She would have taken it as if she deserved it. Worse, he kept up with the gentlemanly behavior, helping her out of the car and watching until she got her front door open.

That was bad. Tillotson was the kind of man whose mother had raised him right. When he was through with someone, he would send the message with all the courtesies. If she couldn’t make it right with him somehow, she might have to find another protector in her business, or try to make it without one.

That was all she needed him for, right?

Finally, he drove away.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The problem was, she was a hooker. It always came back to that.

Tillotson navigated toward the hospital without a conscious decision. It was too late to avoid paying a price to be determined by his wife, but he still had to go. His route might be mapped out for him, but his thoughts were his own.

For cops, prostitutes were an occupational hazard. He knew that. For starters, they were available. Most women in the business would gladly enroll a cop in their frequent-flyer program in exchange for timely warnings about police crackdowns, or to have a name to drop in a tight spot.

But it went beyond that. Cops and hookers started to feel almost like colleagues, like insiders against the civilian world. Hookers were the best sources a cop could have. A local dirt bag suddenly has money to throw around? He’ll spend it on drugs, booze, and hookers. Hookers saw the dirty compromises a cop had to make to function at all, and cops knew that prostitutes were just women doing what they had to do.

Whatever most prostitutes were, Diana Andrews was more so. She was the greatest temptation he had ever faced. He was starting to think that he couldn’t afford their friendship anymore.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The damned kitchen light was on again. As Diana approached the kitchen, she pondered her lack of alarm.

The same mistake twice, she thought. What is it they say about that?

Another light went on, this one in her mind. She knew who was waiting for her in the kitchen. She wondered whether he had put the key back in the fake rock, in case anybody else needed it tonight.

Just kidding, she told herself.

She took a seat at her grandmother’s solid old kitchen table.

“It’s not queer to go for an older woman,” she said.

“I never thought it was,” said Paul Riemenschneider.

“Dexter and Don did. That’s why they beat James Zakrewsky up.”

“You must have figured everything out by now.”

“How did you find where I live?”

“I work for the DMV, remember?”

Diana thought there must be a law against personal use of DMV files, but this wasn’t the time to mention it.

“Believe it or not,” she said, “I didn’t know it was you. Not until I saw you in that chair. Tell me why you killed Patty and James.”

“It was your fault.”

“Mine? How could it be my fault?”

“You wouldn’t even remember.”

“Try me.”

She watched him and waited. He had spent ten years trying to bury this story. It wouldn’t come out without a struggle. She was about to lose patience and prod him, when he began to speak.

“That summer…you know, I’m not really younger than you. I’m a year older than everybody else in my class. I was sick a lot when I was little.”

“Paul,” she said. “That summer?”

“I turned seventeen that summer. My parents had just gotten divorced, and they had this competition thing going on. My dad gave me a car for my birthday. My mother couldn’t match that, not living on the alimony, but she blew a big chunk of it on dinner at Chez Thierry. You know that place in Morristown?”

Diana sympathized. Chez Thierry was the priciest restaurant in the whole region. Its market niche was customers with an expensive point to make. She had been there several times, and she had learned to dread the place. More than one client had used the occasion to proclaim his love and propose marriage. When she was on a man’s clock, it wasn’t enough to sit and listen. She had to smile and be kind and think of something to say that wouldn’t crush him.

She didn’t even like the food.

“Anyway, you were with this older guy. I hadn’t seen you since you graduated. You looked fantastic, and it started up all over again—my crush on you. Your date went to the men’s room once, and I got up and thought I was going to go over and say hello.”

He paused, and she watched him reliving his humiliation.

“I lost my nerve. I just stood there. I must have been so obvious, it was pathetic. Obvious to everybody but you, that is. The maître d’ was getting ready to do something about me, when I finally gave up and went back to my mother.”

He sat back, as if he had just explained everything.

“Paul, how does that lead to killing two people?”

“Patty was a whore.”

Every woman’s favorite word, she thought. Mine too.

“You probably didn’t know,” he said.

“How could I?”

“Not all the time, just when she and James needed to come up with some cash. I knew about it. Everybody did. So I figured, if I couldn’t have you, I could buy some Diana time from her. It would be almost as good.”

His words didn’t shock her, and that might be the most depressing thing of all. She realized that she was used to this kind of reasoning from men who bought sex. Her business had warped her, and this time she couldn’t ignore the sad fact.

“Was it as good?”

He didn’t notice the barb in her tone.

“I never found out. I got in my new car and went looking for them, and I finally found them at the Salmon house. It was one of the places they lived. I knew James would be with her. He always was, making sure nobody got rough. I showed them my money, but they didn’t want it. They told me they were closed for business.”

“How did they seem?”

“They were celebrating. Which was weird, because somebody had beaten the shit out of James.”

She looked at him and realized something.

“I’m guessing Don and Dexter did beat you up.”

“Yeah. Don did. Dexter watched and gave him pointers. And they did it to James, but he took it better than I did. I stayed in my room for a week, but James was celebrating. He said it was all about getting beaten up by the right people, and Dexter and Don were the right people. I have to say, I never thought of it that way.”

“What happened then?”

“Patty wouldn’t stop rubbing it in. She said they had a big payday and didn’t need any nickels and dimes from losers like me. She laughed in my face.”

Diana could see the rest of his story coming. Everyone had a breaking point, when a new humiliation was one too many.

“I picked up a chair or something. I don’t even remember exactly what. And I just started hitting. Any other time James could have handled me without even breathing hard, but he was in pretty bad shape.”