You Only Die Twice (18 page)

I was tempted to display for him copies of Kaithlin's
photos from the
News
library, in a thick manila folder tucked between the front seats. I didn't. He would live with the tragedy forever. Let him live with hope, I thought, for one more night.

“I called the detective again, from the plane,” Broussard said, as I popped the trunk for his bag. “I have to meet him at nine
A.M
., at police headquarters. He said we'd go to the…to the morgue. We'll know then.” His voice faded from hopeful to bleak.

We dropped Lottie off at the
News
building and drove across the causeway to the Deauville Hotel.

He checked in, asking me to wait while he went to his room. “I just need to call the kids,” he said, “and say good night.”

I sat in the bustling lobby wondering what it was like to learn the person you loved for years is a total stranger and gradually became aware that a disproportionate number of guests seemed to be statuesque African-American women in stiletto heels, short bright-red wigs, strapless tops, and neon micromini skirts. I remembered the hip-hop music convention in town as they strutted by, music blaring, to their various events, as a band in a nearby ballroom played a rousing version of “Hava Nagila” for bar mitzvah celebrants exuberantly dancing the hora. Only in Miami Beach, I thought.

Preston Broussard reappeared in twenty minutes. He wore the same rumpled shirt and jacket, minus the tie.

“Sorry I took so long,” he said. “I hate leaving the kids again. I haven't even been to the office since Shannon disappeared. I wanted to be with Devon and Caitlin every minute. Shannon always talks about how impor
tant these formative years are. I don't want them to feel frightened or insecure, even if
I
do. Thank God my folks came up from San Diego to stay with them.”

He had no appetite and wasn't thirsty, so we wandered out beyond the lighted pool area to the ocean beach. We sat on a wooden bench facing the starlit sea and a stretch of wet sand that smelled of salt and seaweed. Strolling couples laughed, and distant strains of music accompanied the tide's retreat beneath a full moon.

“I'm sorry to be the one who brought—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I appreciate what you've done. I could have waited and come tomorrow, but I can't take doing nothing. I feel more alive when I'm looking for her. New York was horrible. The police—” He grimaced. “They were polite but disinterested. They seemed to think she'd never arrived there, so it wasn't their problem. And the Seattle police say she boarded a plane and left their jurisdiction, so it's not their case. They all took reports, but nobody really was doing anything.”

Shannon Broussard's Seattle–New York flight had a brief stopover in Chicago, he said. “But she had no reason to disembark there.”

If she did, I thought, she could have made a Miami connection without leaving the airport.

Shannon's trip to NewYork was not unusual, he said, a routine formed early in their marriage when she took buying trips for a small boutique she owned and operated until the birth of their first daughter. When business permitted, Broussard accompanied her, he said, to take in the Broadway shows. Women friends occasionally
joined her, but she made the last trip alone. He hadn't been worried. “She's a sophisticated traveler,” he said.

They met traveling, on a cross-country train ten years earlier. “I'll always be grateful to Amtrak.” He smiled wistfully. “Heading home from Chicago on business, I like to take the scenic route, to see the big sky, reflect and recharge my batteries.”

Both were aboard the Empire Builder, which traverses Montana, winding its way into Washington along the Canadian border. She appeared troubled, alone and withdrawn, when he first saw her in the dining car. That attracted him. “I guess I always want to be the rescuer,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Even as a kid I brought home every sick stray animal, every sad-sack misfit from school. Of course, Shannon was no misfit. She's an absolute knockout.”

She was reluctant but he persisted and they were soon in the club car, where picture windows curved up into the ceilings surrounded by Montana's dramatic big sky, and he was pointing out the prairie dogs and silos, and then the stars. That's how it began.

“I assumed she'd been through a bad experience and I was right,” he said. “It was obvious. She could scarcely speak about it. She was traumatized, shell-shocked by tragedy. She'd lost her entire family.”

Her name was Shannon Sullivan, he said, from Stanley, Oklahoma, a small community devastated by a catastrophic class-four tornado. Twenty-seven had perished. “I remembered reading about it in the news at the time,” he said. “A monster storm, a mile and a half wide, it left farm machinery twisted like pretzels.

“It was horrifying. Shannon's sister had an infant
son. The twister tore the baby out of its mother's arms and killed them both. They didn't find the baby for days. Shannon was left literally alone in the world. Lost her parents, sister, best friend, everybody who ever meant anything to her. That's why family—our family—is so dear to her. That's why she would never willingly do this, never leave us.”

They lived happily, he said, her past a tragic memory. Sometimes moody and melancholy, she always snapped out of it. He understood and supported her through the grief process.

I could see what drew Kaithlin to this sensitive and sympathetic man.

“Did you quarrel recently? Did she seem bored or restless?” I asked.

“Not at all.” His words rang with the certainty forged by years of intimacy. “She loves being a mom, loves our life. I know it.”

“Something must have changed recently.”

He sighed. “I've thought a lot about it,” he said.

“Early last summer, I saw something was bothering her. She seemed tense, less talkative, spent a great deal of time on the Internet. That's not like her. Shannon's a woman of action. Loves sports, taking the kids horseback riding, hiking, and boating. We live on Puget Sound.”

“What was she doing on the Net?”

“I'm not sure exactly. I wish I'd paid more attention.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I keep thinking of all the should-haves. She denied being troubled, said everything was fine, but I could see…I thought the kids were getting on her nerves, or maybe it
was the pressure of all her volunteer work. She initially got on-line to conduct research for a charity campaign that would fund a program to assist young single mothers. That was one of her passions. Next thing I knew she was up there alone in her study for hours, often late at night.”

“That's when she began to appear stressed?”

“That's right,” he said thoughtfully. “At the time I didn't think the two were connected. Now I wonder….”

“You have access to her computer, right?”

“I thought so. After she disappeared, a detective suggested I check her e-mail and computer files. I tried, even brought in a troubleshooter from my company. He had no luck either. The hard drive was wiped out. There must have been a crash, maybe a power failure.”

“Perhaps it was deliberate.”

He shook his head and glanced at me sharply. “That would mean that her disappearance—everything—was premeditated, that she planned to leave us. I'll never believe that.”

Restless, he got to his feet, began to pace, then suddenly turned to me.

“I'm already thinking ahead. What do you think of that?” he demanded, eyes wet. “Thinking ahead to the next lead after this one doesn't pan out. If Shannon was no longer on this planet,” he said, his right hand over his heart, “I'd know it, I'd feel it. That means something, doesn't it?”

I murmured an encouraging sound but remembered all the similar words from people who refused to face reality.

Wide-awake, though exhausted, he wasn't ready to rest, so we walked south to the boardwalk.

“What was her financial situation when you met?” I asked. “Was she broke?”

“No, not at all. She had money of her own.”

“Three million dollars?”

“Whoa.” He smiled. “She was no multimillionaire, but she was comfortable. I think she had somewhere in the neighborhood of nine hundred thousand dollars.”

“Nice neighborhood,” I said. About a third of the missing money, I thought.

“Insurance and inheritance,” he said. “From her family and the property that was destroyed. She invested. Shannon's a shrewd businesswoman. At first I wrote off her little boutique as an indulgence, a hobby, something to keep her busy, but she put it into the black in six months. Highly unusual for a small business.”

“Did she keep her money separate after you married?”

He hesitated, as though debating whether to answer. “She mingled some with mine in our joint portfolio, kept a few accounts, investments of her own.” He paused. “You know, discussing Shannon's personal business like this makes me extremely uncomfortable. If you're asking whether Shannon cleaned out her bank accounts when she left, she didn't. They're still intact. She's no Mata Hari, no schemer or swindler. You'd like her,” he said hopefully. “I hope you two get to meet one day.”

Casa Milagro loomed ahead.

“There's a guy up there,” I said, “on the sixteenth floor. Sees everything down here. He's probably watch
ing from a dark window right now with night-vision binoculars, telescopes, and zoom-lens cameras.”

We stared up. “He witnessed the murder,” I said. “He saw the whole thing.”

Broussard looked startled. “So why didn't the police arrest the killer?” He gazed up at the high floor.

“He didn't call it in until much later, when the woman's body surfaced and began to float in on the tide. He was worried about his credibility. Wanted to be sure the cops wouldn't doubt his word. He's an odd guy.”

“He must be. I thought there were good Samaritan laws,” he said gravely. “When you see someone in danger, you have an obligation to help.”

He stopped.

“Wait,” he said, “if he saw it from up there, then this must be where it happened.”

“That's where they brought her out of the water.” I pointed.

“The poor woman, whoever she was.” We both shivered in the cool night air. “What's that?” he asked.

Like a beating heart, the distant repetitive throb of a
bata
drum came from somewhere down on the beach, near the surf.

I strained to see in the darkness. “It's the full moon,” I said. “A salute to Chango, the Afro-Cuban god of thunder and lightning.”

“So they actually practice that stuff here. What does it mean?”

“Chango,” I said, “is a macho ladies' man and an avenger of evil.”

“He must have his work cut out for him in this town,” Broussard said bitterly.

We walked in silence for a time, listening and looking at the moon.

I gave him directions for his early appointment at police headquarters and said good night back at his hotel.

On the way home I checked my messages. Kagan and Rothman had left several each, some urgent. Let them wait until morning, I thought. Let them join the rest of us whose sleep would be troubled tonight.

I drank the liquid fire otherwise known as café Cubano after a restless night disturbed by thoughts of little girls far away and the father who would soon return to them with bad news and worse memories.

My mother finally answered her phone.

“You knew about Kaithlin's baby, didn't you?” I asked.

“Britt, darling, isn't this your day off?”

“No, Mom, I'm still working on the story.”

“The same story? When do you take time for yourself? No wonder you have so little personal life.”

“Thanks, Mom. You knew, right?”

“I'm weary of it, Britt.” Her voice shook. “I don't want to hear any more about it, read about it, or even discuss it again. It's ancient history. Nothing can change the past.”

“Mom, why is it, when all I ever ask is that you be honest and up front with me—?”

“Are there no other stories?” she asked sharply.

“Why does this one obsess you so?”

“Good question.”

“You sound exhausted, dear. Why not go back to bed, get some sleep, and we can talk later.”

 

I went to the morgue instead. The winter day was breezy, the sky a hard bright blue, and the golden air so alight with promise that, as I waited outside the medical examiner's office on Bob Hope Road, I began to experience a heady unwarranted optimism. The coffee must have scalded my brain cells, but I began to wonder. What if? What if we were wrong and the woman inside was not Shannon Broussard? Real life and death are stranger than fiction. A sunny sense of well-being flooded my soul. Then they emerged. Broussard wore the same jacket. He was red-eyed and weeping.

“Hey, kid.” Rychek's face was grim.

“It's her,” Broussard blurted emotionally, his shield of false hope shattered. Tears streaked his face. “I should have known. I thought she'd been abducted or might be lying in a hospital somewhere, injured or ill, unable to speak, but the longer she was gone, the more my heart knew it would end this way.

“What can I tell our girls?” he pleaded, to no one and everyone, as he got into Rychek's unmarked. I heard him sob as it pulled away.

 

The apologetic guard at the Williams Island security gate said that neither R. J. nor Eunice was “available.” I
asked him to call and tell them that I knew where Kaithlin Jordan had been for the past ten years. He did, and the gate swung open.

R. J. lounged in shorts and an open cabana shirt at an umbrella table that held the remnants of a Bloody Mary and a leisurely breakfast. Immaculately groomed, his color was better, his skin aglisten with suntan oil. His table overlooked water that shimmered like shattered blue glass. Overhead, palm fronds shimmied in the breeze. His X-wing prison cell seemed a thousand light-years away. The young woman beside him wore a skimpy bikini and a deep and glorious tan she would probably regret in twenty years.

He turned triumphantly to her as I approached. “See? I told you, who needs to buy a paper? They deliver the news to me personally. So, Miss Reporter.” He leaned back in his chair. “What's the latest?”

“While you were on death row,” I said evenly, “Kaithlin was happily married, with two
more
children.”

The color in his face faded, along with his smile.

“Go home,” he said dully to his companion, without even looking at her.

She did a double take, startled by her summary dismissal.

“Go home,” he repeated.

“But you—”

“Now! I'll call you later.”

She arose reluctantly. The thin gold chain around her slim waist glittered cheerfully in the sun.

“Now!” he barked impatiently.

She quickly snatched up her things, glared daggers
my way, and stalked off, her shapely buns an eye-popping sight from the rear in her high heels and thong bikini. R. J. didn't notice. It was as though he had already forgotten her.

“Two
more
children?”

“In addition to your son, the boy Kaithlin gave up for adoption.”

“Where did you hear about him?”

“I've been working on the story, talking to people. Does Eunice know about her grandson?”

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “She wouldn't care if she did.”

“Every woman yearns to be a doting grandmother,” I said.

“Not every woman. Not the bitch I had for a mother-in-law. So,” he said, “she won that battle. But the best revenge is living well. Isn't that right? They're dead and gone and look who's living well.
Moi
.”

His gesture embraced the ambience surrounding him, the lush tropical landscaping, expensive yachts, and uniformed employees.

“As for my mother, it might have meant something when my father was alive, when the business was intact, when they wanted to keep it all in the family. But now there
is
no business, no dynasty to preserve, and the time for caring is past. There'd be no point. We all have lives of our own.”

He slipped his sunglasses off to inspect an oily smear on the lens. His words were casual, but the intensity in his eyes betrayed him. “What's the so-called husband like?”

“A nice guy,” I said. “In the software business in Seattle, where they lived. He was clueless, thought she came from the Midwest.”

“He's here?”

I nodded. “He'd been searching for her for weeks.” R. J.'s small laugh was sardonic. “The man had better luck than I did. I never found her, or anybody who believed me, so I wound up screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

“He identified her this morning. He's heartbroken.”

“I'm sure he is.” His voice sounded hollow. “Kaithlin had a way about her, something genuine, even as a teenager. You could see it in the way she carried herself, her mannerisms, the way she looked at you. Whatever it was made her hard to forget. I had any woman I wanted but, to my misfortune, she was always the one on my mind. How old is he?”

“About forty, I'd say, maybe a little younger.”

“You see?” He nodded, as though age explained everything. “They were just four or five years apart. We had totally different backgrounds and a significant age difference; it doesn't sound like much now, but she was a teenager and I was already thirty when we met.” He sighed. “Their children?”

“Two little girls,” I said.

“So,” R. J. mused, “she never had a son.”

“Only yours.”

He seemed pleased at that. “How long were they together?”

“Married nearly nine years.”

“No.” The word rolled like a bitter taste off his
tongue. “She was
married
to me.” He jabbed a thumb to his hairy chest.

He motioned for another Bloody Mary and ordered iced tea for me.

“I see you're readapting nicely to life outside,” I said pleasantly.

“Beats lights on at six
A.M
.” His eyes drifted to the baskets of flaky croissants, fresh fruit, and fluffy muffins. “Better than a metal meal cart rattling down a bare cement hallway and a tray shoved through a slot in the door. Yeahhh.” He gazed across the blue expanse of water. “My existence was gray, bleak, and controlled for too long a time. I plan to make up for it now.”

“I see you're already socializing.” I indicated his companion's empty chair.

“Sure,” he said. “I've been socializing nonstop, so much”—he patted his groin—“that I'm sore.”

Dallas Svenson had sworn the man had a sensitive side. Either she was mistaken or he was doing a mighty fine job of concealing it.

“Eunice must adore having you back,” I said mildly, sipping my iced tea.

“My sainted mother,” he said sardonically, “didn't visit very often. The strip searches must have deterred her.”

“Why do you think Kaithlin came back?” I asked.

“Her husband says—”

“No, not husband.” He waggled a warning finger.

“Okay. Her significant other says she became troubled about eight months ago, in June. She didn't discuss the problem, denied she had one, but it apparently escalated just before she disappeared and turned up here.”

“No idea,” he said sharply. “As I've said before, for publication, her bad luck was my lucky break.”

He looked thoughtful, absently stirring his fresh Bloody Mary with a celery stalk.

“Eight months ago, in June,” he finally repeated, “my social calendar was rather limited. I had an appeal denied that month and a wire service ran a piece about me—actually about half a dozen of us—due to die on death rows around the country. I made the cut, I guess, because I'm white and well off, not your typical death-row inmate. The reporter quoted my lawyer, who was delighted. Sent me a tearsheet. Here I am about to fry, and he's getting his rocks off over seeing his name in the national press.”

“Speaking of lawyers,” I said, “do you know Martin Kagan?”

He frowned, then seemed to place the name. “No, but I saw his name on a lot of old death-penalty pleadings, popular reading matter at my former place of residence.”

“This one is his son. He had a private detective working for him, Dan Rothman, the Digger.”

R. J. averted his gaze and slipped his shades back on, hiding his eyes behind the smoky lenses.

“You know him?”

He shook his head and checked the sailboats on the horizon. “You'd be surprised at the people popping out of the woodwork. I've had calls from
60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline
. Even the medical examiner's office. Some clueless clerk actually asked when I planned to claim my wife's body. Tried to talk me into it. For a decent burial, he said. As if she would have planned
one for
me
. And some dickhead from the Volusia County prosecutor's office even had the gall to show up here.”

“Dennis Fitzgerald?”

“I think that's right. Know him?”

“We've met.”

“He never got past the gate. Never will. I'm not putting up with any harassment from those bastards now.”

“They're doing a postmortem on the case,” I said, “trying to figure out where they went wrong.”

R. J. did not appear impressed.

“Is there anything else you'd like to say for publication about the latest development, Kaithlin's…significant other showing up?”

“What do you want to hear, Miss Reporter? That I'm sorry for his loss?” His smile was ironic, his eyes hard.

“I'd like to see Eunice,” I said. “Is she home?”

“She's having her hair done,” he said.

“Too bad, I hoped to catch her.”

“You can,” he said nonchalantly. “My mother has her own personal beauty salon.”

That she did. The maid at their penthouse apartment ushered me into a spacious room equipped with professional upscale salon fixtures, a hair dryer, black marble sinks with gold faucets, and full-size makeup, massage, and manicure tables. I found her relaxing under the dryer, feet soaking in a foamy bath, hands resting on velvet cushions as her platinum-color nail polish dried. She turned off the dryer and excused the uniformed manicurist so we could speak in private.

I admired the room, with its soft lighting and softer music. Her hair stylist and manicurist visited as
needed, she said, several times a week. “I'm so busy. It's so much more convenient than having to make appointments and go out to a salon.”

I agreed, as though every girl should have one, then mentioned that Catherine Montero, my mother, had been a Jordan's employee for years.

“Oh, yes,” Eunice said coldly. “I think I remember her. Conrad, my husband, knew her far better.”

So much for breaking the ice.

“What's it like,” I asked, smiling enthusiastically, “to have your son home again? It must be wonderful.”

“It's what it was always like,” she said, voice brittle.

“People don't change. You said you had news about my daughter-in-law.”

I briefly described Kaithlin's West Coast life, then wondered aloud who might have killed her.

“Someone like her”—she shrugged scornfully—“it could be virtually anyone. She used sex, seduced my son, and ruined all our lives.”

“She was very young,” I said, startled, “and your son was a grown—”

“She was a little nobody from nowhere,” Eunice snapped. “I knew from the start she was a schemer, a social climber, a conniving gold digger.”

“The business stories indicated that she was dedicated, talented, and successful and that she made a lot of money for your stores. I thought you were fond of her.”

“Conrad liked her,” she said dismissively, “but he never was a good judge of women.” She paused to give me a meaningful once-over. “You are very much like your mother.”

Not what I needed to hear.

Eunice scrutinized her flawless manicure, then summoned the woman to begin her pedicure, making it clear our interview was over. “Kaithlin's talent,” she said in closing, “was for getting what she wanted. She nearly killed us all.”

I passed sparkling fountains, sculptured hedges, and riotous flower beds in rainbow colors as I left, thinking,
No wonder you ran, Kaithlin. Good for you. Your only mistake was coming back
.

 

The killer tornado that savaged Stanley, Oklahoma, ten years earlier was all too real, the story true. Onnie and I tracked it down. Twenty-seven victims, including an entire family, the Sullivans, had perished. National news stories recounted the horror of one member killed by winds that tore her infant son from her arms. But the obits, published in the victims' hometown newspaper, listed no surviving sister Shannon.

“How convenient,” Onnie said. “She just plucked a tragedy from the headlines and claimed it for herself. Wonder what she would have used had there been no twister?”

“She would have found something,” I said. “There's always a fresh disaster somewhere.” Was she drawn to it? I wondered. Did she relate to the symbolism inherent in an infant son torn from his mother's arms and in images of lives spinning out of control?