Ties That Bind (24 page)

Amanda wrapped her arms across her breasts. She felt so helpless and she hated that feeling. But she was helpless. These people knew exactly how to control her. They’d made her relive her terror at the hands of the surgeon and they had threatened her father—the person she loved most in the world. But who were they?

This was the first time since she’d been attacked in the parking garage that Amanda had been composed enough to ask that question. Once she did, the answer was obvious. The Vaughn Street Glee Club did exist.

Amanda went into the living room and turned on the television. An old movie distracted her for a while, but she started crying in the middle of it. At noon, she forced herself to fix lunch because it gave her something to do. She was making a sandwich when the phone rang, startling her so much that her knife clattered to the floor. She let the answering machine take the call but picked up when she heard Kate’s voice.

“How are you feeling?” Kate asked.

“Not so good.”

“A cold?”

“Yeah, a bad one.”

“Well, I may be able to cheer you up.”

Kate told Amanda about her visit to the medical examiner and what she’d learned about Michael Israel’s death. A day ago, Kate’s news would have excited Amanda, but today she just felt numb.

“When I left the ME I started looking for similar suicides in Oregon,” Kate said. “I only found one, but it was very interesting. Twelve years ago, Albert Hammond was on the Multnomah County circuit court. Do you remember him?”

“Dad tried a big murder case in his court when I was in junior high. Didn’t he get in trouble with the Bar?”

“Big trouble. Hammond was arrested for DUII and assault on Dennis Pixler, the arresting officer. He was facing possible disbarment. Hammond told the papers that Pixler was crooked and had set him up. About a month later Pixler killed himself. He left a suicide note exonerating Hammond. It said that drug dealers who wanted revenge for a sentence that the judge had handed down had paid him to frame Hammond. The police questioned the dealers but they denied hiring Pixler, which you would expect.

“Anyway, Pixler had life insurance but the insurance company wouldn’t pay off when the medical examiner ruled the death a suicide. Pixler’s widow refused to accept the finding and sued the insurance company. The autopsy report was entered in evidence during the trial. Pixler had six hundred milliliters of temazepam in his blood. That’s the same drug that was found in Michael Israel’s blood, and the same quantity.”

“That’s interesting, Kate, but Robard would never let us introduce this stuff at trial.”

“I agree, but it does make you think. And there’s something else. Do you remember what happened to Albert Hammond?”

“Didn’t he disappear?”

“Without a trace, about a year and a half later,” Kate said. “But not before he got in more trouble with the law. Another drunk-driving arrest, but this time they also found cocaine in the glove compartment and a young woman in the car who wasn’t his wife. Hammond swore that the woman put the drugs in his glove compartment when the cops pulled him over. He said she was a hitchhiker he’d picked up because he was worried about a young woman hitchhiking alone. But the woman had a record for prostitution. She said that Hammond was full of shit about the cocaine and that he’d begged her to say it was hers as soon as they were pulled over.”

“So, what happened?” Amanda asked, feeling that she had to say something to keep up her side of the conversation.

“Hammond posted bail and he was never seen again. The week that he disappeared, his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver and his son and daughter-in-law were murdered in a home-invasion robbery.”

“You’re kidding.”

“The week after Michael Israel died, his wife and child died when their house burned down. Interesting coincidence, huh?”

“I’d like to believe that we’ve found evidence of some big conspiracy here,” Amanda said finally, “but this could just be wishful thinking. These incidents are years apart.”

“If we could find a way to hook them up—find a connection between Israel, Hammond, and Travis . . . .”

Amanda had become so intellectually involved in Kate’s report that she’d forgotten for the moment what would happen to her if her kidnappers learned that she was actively investigating Dupre’s case. When she did remember, fear gripped her again.

“Thanks for calling,” Amanda said, “but I’m really feeling lousy. I want to get some sleep.”

“Sure,” Kate said, her tone showing that she was upset by her boss’s lack of enthusiasm for what she thought was some pretty classy detection. “Sorry I bothered you at home but I thought you’d want to know.”

“I do. We’ll talk more when I get back to the office.”

Amanda hung up and looked at her sandwich. She couldn’t eat it. She shuffled to the couch. The remote was on the coffee table. Amanda channel-surfed but nothing interested her. She was so tired. She wished she could sleep. Ben Dodson could give her something to make her sleep but she would have to leave her apartment to get it. What were the chances that someone was waiting for her? It was the middle of the day. There were people all around. But even while she told herself she was safe, her body shook and tears welled up in her eyes.

Amanda dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. She pulled up the hood and donned dark glasses to hide her bruises. No one was waiting outside her door and there was no one in the elevator. She was afraid to go into the garage, so she rode the trolley across town, comforted by the people who surrounded her but constantly scanning the crowd for danger.

Amanda looked down. “I’m okay,” she mumbled.

“Are you sure?”

“Please, Ben, I don’t want to discuss it.”

Dodson opened his mouth then shut it. Amanda was his patient and he wouldn’t press her.

“Why are you here?” he asked. “This isn’t a scheduled appointment.”

“You said you could give me something to help me sleep. I . . . I really need it.”

Amanda choked back a sob and Dodson guided her into a chair.

“Has something happened to make your situation worse?” Dodson probed.

“Please, Ben. Just give me something to help me sleep. Can you do that without asking questions?”

“Yes. I can prescribe some alprazolam.”

The name of the drug startled Amanda. “What is that?”

“It’s an antianxiety drug. You’ve probably heard the trade name, Xanax. Why?”

“When they did the autopsy on Senator Travis, alprazolam showed up in his tox screen. I didn’t know what it was and I was going to ask someone, but I forgot. Do you think there’s anything odd about his taking the drug?”

“What was the dosage?”

“I don’t remember, but I can call my office and find out.”

“Use my phone.”

Amanda called her secretary and told her to get the information from the Dupre file. Amanda relayed the results of the tox screen to Dodson. He seemed surprised.

“Are you sure your secretary read the report correctly?” Dodson asked.

“Yeah. I remembered the result once she told it to me. Why?”

“The readings are not what I’d expect to find if a person was taking a prescription amount.”

“What’s the problem?”

“That strong a dose would leave him dopey as hell.”

“What do you mean by dopey?”

“He’d be ambulatory but his legs wouldn’t work all that well and he’d have trouble thinking clearly.”

“Why would Travis take so much that he’d get dopey?”

“I have no idea. Maybe he was double-dosing or maybe he just made a mistake.”

While Amanda remembered what Kate had said about the tranquilizers found in the Israel and Pixler autopsies, Dodson studied her battered face again.

“Are you involved in something dangerous, Amanda?”

She looked up. Dodson saw fear in his patient’s eyes.

“Why would you ask that?” Amanda said.

“Your face for one thing and . . . well, something happened . . . .”

“Something involving me?”

She was terrified. Had Ben been threatened? Were the men who attacked her coming after him?

“I may be wrong but I think someone broke into my office and went through your file.”

Dodson explained about finding the paper from Amanda’s file under his desk.

“My secretary didn’t look at your file and I’m certain that the paper was not under my desk the evening before I found it because I remember dropping a pen on the floor. The paper was sticking out. I’d have seen it when I picked up the pen.”

Amanda stopped listening to Dodson. The men who had kidnapped her had read her file and Dodson’s diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. The pockmarked man had used the phrase “experiments in pain.” When she’d been taken hostage by the surgeon, he terrified her with his plans to subject her to experiments that would measure her pain threshold. The surgeon had stripped her, and that is why her captors had forced her to strip. Amanda’s fear was replaced by anger. The bastards had intentionally manipulated her emotions to force her to relive the horror of her capture by the surgeon.

“Amanda?”

Dodson’s voice brought her out of her reverie.

“I don’t want to frighten you, but I felt that I had a duty to let you know.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Amanda said. Dodson was struck by the steel in her voice. “You’ve helped a lot.”

“I was attacked last night. Three men kidnapped me in the parking garage.”

Frank rounded his desk. “Are you okay? Did they . . .”

“They hit me a few times, but they didn’t do anything else. Physically, I’m fine. I’m just scared, and that’s what they wanted. But I’m mad, too.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. I can’t. You’ll understand when I explain what happened. Sit down, Dad, this could take a while.”

Amanda started by telling Frank Billie Brewster’s story about the Michael Israel suicide and the assertion of Pedro Aragon’s man, Sammy Cortez, that Israel had really been murdered on the orders of powerful men who worked with Aragon and called themselves The Vaughn Street Glee Club.

“Cortez was willing to talk about Pedro Aragon and the club until Wendell Hayes visited him at the jail. Billie thinks that Aragon’s men kidnapped Cortez’s daughter to shut him up and used Hayes as the messenger.”

“Any lawyer would tell a client not to talk to the cops.”

“I don’t think that Hayes was just any lawyer. Remember Paul Baylor told me that he thought the wounds on Dupre’s hands and forearm were defense wounds?” Frank nodded. “Dupre says that Hayes smuggled the knife in and attacked him.”

“I don’t know, Amanda. This sounds very far-fetched.”

“Jon Dupre supplied Senator Travis with women, including Lori Andrews, the woman whose body was found in Forest Park. Travis was connected to Aragon. And I discovered a connection between Aragon and Hayes that goes back to the seventies.”

Amanda told Frank about the drug-house massacre and the guns stolen from Wendell Hayes’s home that were linked to it.

“Here’s the kicker, Dad. The house where the massacre took place was on Vaughn Street. I think that The Glee Club exists. I think it started at that drug house when Aragon and Hayes were still in their teens.”

“This is pretty hard to believe, Amanda. I know these men.”

“How well, Dad? You said that you didn’t really socialize with Hayes. You played golf with Senator Travis shortly before he was killed, but how well did you really know him?”

“Not that well,” Frank admitted. He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, he sounded distraught.

“You’ve got to resign from Dupre’s case.”

“I can’t. If I drop off, it could put us in danger and they would just go after the next lawyer who was appointed to represent Dupre. Besides, the more I learn about Dupre’s case, the more convinced I am that he’s innocent of both murders.”

Frank pounded a fist on the arm of his chair. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

“I haven’t come up with a thing. I feel like I’m sealed in a box.”

Frank started pacing. It was comforting to see her father working with her on a case and to know that he was there for her.

“Okay, help me on this,” Frank said. “The case against Dupre for killing Wendell Hayes is almost impossible to win, isn’t it, even with this theory about this conspiracy?”

“Judge Robard won’t even let me argue its existence without hard evidence and I don’t have any.”

“Then why did they come after you? Why let you know that you’re onto them?” he paused. “You did something that scared them enough to force them into the open.”

“I know about the suicide victims with the same drugs in their systems, but they were so far apart, and there’s no evidence connecting the deaths. Besides, how would they know about Kate’s investigation? She only told me about it this morning.”

“There’s got to be something else.”

“Paul Baylor’s opinion that Jon’s wounds are defense wounds will give me a chance to argue that Hayes tried to murder Jon, but I can’t see them trying to kill me over that.”

“What did you say?”

“I can’t think of anything I’ve done that would make them want to kill me.”

Frank snapped his fingers. “They didn’t kill you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If they wanted you dead they would have killed you last night. For some reason you’re more valuable to them alive than dead.”

“They want me to throw Dupre’s case.”

“The case is open and shut. They don’t need you to throw it. No, you did something that can’t be corrected by killing you. You must have left a trail of breadcrumbs that a new lawyer would follow even if you were dead. They think a lawyer who was assigned to replace you would see what they don’t want seen.”

“Which is what? I can’t think of a single thing that would represent a huge threat to these people. Hell, Dad, we can’t even prove they exist.”

“It’s not something you know, it’s something . . . What have you filed with the court?”

“Motions, jury questionnaires, a lot of stuff.”

“Whatever it is that’s scaring them could be in the circuit court files. Otherwise they would have forced you to bring them your paperwork. But the court has your motions; the judge has them, the DA’s office. They can’t get rid of all the copies of everything you filed. And any lawyer appointed to represent Dupre would read what you filed. Go over your pleadings. You’ve stumbled onto something very dangerous to these people. You have to figure out what’s keeping you alive.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know yet,” Frank answered, but he had an idea he didn’t want to discuss with Amanda until he’d worked it all out.