A Killing Gift (20 page)

J
ason returned many of his calls, but he delayed returning the urgent phone call of Sid Barkow, president of the institute. At four p.m. he felt he couldn't in good conscience wait any longer. He dialed the number in a fifteen-minute break between patients, fervently praying that he'd reach Sid's voice mail and be spared talking to Sid himself. Sid must have been screening his calls, because he picked up immediately. "Hello."

"Hi, Sid, it's Jason." Jason tried not to sound disappointed.

"I know who you are. But I'm with someone. When are you free to talk?" Sid let his breath out in a long whoosh, as if he'd been holding it in all day.

"I'm free now, Sid," Jason told him.

"Okay, well, I'm just finishing up. I'll call you back in five minutes." Sid hung up. Five minutes later he called back, and right away his hysteria spewed out. "For God's sake, Jason, did you hear about Mrs. Bassett?"

"Yes. I saw the story on the news. Very sad," Jason murmured. The more he'd thought about it all day the sadder it became.

"Jesus, it's just such bad luck. Did you have a chance to talk to her about the institute?"

"You know, Sid, you're a-" Jason almost let his mouth say
sleazy bastard,
but he stopped himself in time. What was the point in antagonizing an old colleague? "No, I was supposed to meet with her today."

"Oh, God, that's just terrible. Who gets control of Max's foundation now?" he asked.

"You know, Sid, I wouldn't know that." Jason was distressed by the one-track mind. Institute, institute, institute. Couldn't anyone take a break? Poor Mrs. Bassett. She'd sounded like a nice lady.

"I thought you knew Max so well," Sid started whining. Now that the legacy was gone, he must feel very threatened.

"I didn't know him
that
well." In fact, Jason had met with Max dozens of times over the years and they'd talked about many things, but never about his dying someday, or the details of his foundation.

"Well, what were his plans for the institute when his wife died?"

"He didn't tell me, Sid. He didn't think his wife would die. She was only thirty-seven." Max hadn't thought he would die either, for that matter. Jason pondered the two deaths so close together and wondered what he'd missed in that conversation with Birdie.

"Will you find out, Jason?" Sid's voice had that panicked tone that always irritated everyone in board meetings.

"Yes, Sid, I'll find out," Jason promised in his most soothing tone.

"How soon?" Sid demanded.

"Well, I have to check my notes, talk to a few people. It may take a week or so."

"Can you hurry it up, so I can add it to my report for the June meeting?"

"Sure thing, Sid. I'll get back to you soon. Got to go. My patient is here."

As soon as Jason hung up, his doorbell really did ring. And it was Molly, who happened to be a lovely woman, ironically thirty-seven years old. When she'd come to Jason two years ago, she hadn't had a date in ten years and suffered from so many phobias that she couldn't leave her apartment for anything but food. Now she was working and dating like a maniac, even talking about getting married and having children. One of his success stories. But today he couldn't get interested in any of her exciting plans for the future.

He was distracted by remorse for having put Birdie Bassett off for a week. He should have met with her that evening. It really bothered him.

"What's the matter?" Molly gave him a funny look. He came to and smiled benignly.

"You were frowning at me," Molly accused. "You don't think I mean it?"

Jason had no idea whether she meant it or not. He hadn't been listening. "What are your feelings about that?" he asked. A shrink could turn anything back onto the patient. While Molly thought about important people in her life who had frowned at her, he pondered his relationship with Max Bassett.

Max had wanted to understand the failures of his first marriage. At the time, Jason had encouraged him to talk to a good analyst and formalize his query into why he'd been so passionately loyal to a woman who'd caused him and his children so much damage and pain. But Max wouldn't hear of it; he didn't want to pay to tell a stranger the terrible secrets that made him feel squirmy. So Jason had let Max talk to him for free. He'd been an important donor to the institute. If he'd wanted a little free treatment in return for his largesse, Jason complied. It was one of the services he donated to the institute that no one knew about.

When Molly's session ended, she left with a smile and surreptitiously wiped the doorknob of his office only twice before touching it. Two hours later, his last patient, a lawyer who booked two double sessions a week but rarely came to both-and sometimes didn't show up for either-canceled yet again. Jason was secretly glad to have the free time. He called April to ask if she could see him, and she came right over.

At seven forty-five she gave him a real hug, then took a seat in his patient chair. He was impressed. She looked even prettier than the last time he'd seen her many months ago. Her hair was longer now, and she was wearing a stylish navy suit and red blouse. In fact, she looked better than good. She had metamorphosed from an insecure and prickly female cop who knew pretty much nothing else, into a confident, competent executive who was comfortable in any situation.

"I'm glad to see you," he said, putting a world of meaning into the simple greeting.

"Well, thanks for calling. I'm glad to see you, too." She gave him a rueful smile. "I'd like to see Emma and the baby later if they're around, but business first. I need your help."

Jason smiled. "So what else is new?"

"Look, we've got our own profilers. The FBI, they've got theirs, too. Everybody's got a profiler, and everybody's in this."

"Of course. So how can I help you?" These were the words Jason said to every potential patient who came to him. Just the way the cops said to each other, "What do you need?"

"How much time have you got?" April crossed her legs and relaxed a little in the chair.

"I'm done for the day; take as much time as you want, as long as it takes."

"Okay, did you read that piece about coincidence and terrorism in the
Times
a few months back?"

Jason frowned. "About the confluence of a dozen weird and weirder deaths of people involved in bio-medical research following the anthrax scare?"

"Gee, anybody ever tell you that you speak in full paragraphs, Jason?"

He laughed. "My wife."

"But yes," she said. "The idea was that the world is big enough for lots of very odd things to happen at the same time, but the world is also small enough for people to take note of odd occurrences and study them. And that even though it seemed logical that terrorists were killing off the experts, in fact, their dying the way they did was really just coincidence. Do you believe that?"

"I don't know. It's a very profound concept, but what's your point?"

"Last week my former supervisor-the man who'd promoted me to detective-was murdered in Washington Square on the way home from his retirement party. He'd left without saying good-bye, so I followed him out. I was the one who found his body." She put her hand over her eyes for a second, then went on. "I was supposed to call for help, but I didn't. I ran after the killer and ended up in the hospital. So did another man. He saw me being throttled and risked his own life to save me. New York isn't so bad, right?"

Jason frowned and started to say something, but April held up her hand. "That's not the weird part. Last night Birdie Bassett was on her way home from a York U dinner, and was murdered in a similar way in pretty much the same place. Coincidence?"

Jason opened his mouth, but again April held up her hand.

"They both had come into money very recently. They both had been alums of York, and they both had known their killer."

"Not coincidence. Someone from the university," Jason said. Being a detective wasn't so hard.

"Not necessarily. Berardino's wife died five weeks ago of natural causes. He inherited her lottery money.

Now four million of it is missing. He's murdered exactly thirty days after his wife's death. Circumstantial evidence points to his son, who maybe didn't want to wait for his dad to die of natural causes to get it, and his former partner, who gave two hundred thousand away to a girlfriend."

"Interesting, but you already told me some of this. How much money did Bernardino get?"

"Fifteen million. Now Birdie. When her husband, your friend Max, died, she inherited more than thirty million, his houses, and his foundation. The lawyers won't give the details yet. Anyway, she got hit the same thirty days later. Sounds like the same killer is working a pattern? A natural death, wait a month, then kill the heir?"

"Yes, sounds like a pattern."

"Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. In both cases the children of the deceased had something to gain by the deaths, and only one of the four has an alibi."

"Does one of the children work at York U?"

"No, but that is a good question."

"So what's troubling you, April?"

"The third coincidence. The man who tried to save me and ended up with a broken arm is Jack Devereaux."

Jason drew a blank. "Who's that?"

"Don't you read the newspaper, Jason? He's Creighton Blackstone's son."

"I don't know who that is." Jason's head was beginning to swim with this.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, he was one of the billionaire founders of the Internet. He left a son no one knew he had."

Jason brought his lips together. "Oh, yes. Now I remember. This is a little out of my depth. Where are you going with it?"

"Jack Devereaux walks his dog every night in the square. He was there the night Bernardino was killed.

He's an alum of York U, and the same caller at the university called both him and Bernardino."

Jason frowned and finally let his breath out. "Before or after he intervened with you?"

"Another good question. Before."

"Well, who's the caller?" Jason asked.

"We don't know yet. York U is a big place."

"April, I'm a little lost. What's your question for me?"

"Probabilities, Jason. Bernardino and Devereaux happen to be connected by calls from the university, but the perpetrators of the two murders could still be the children. You following me?"

"Right."

It had been a long, nerve-racking day. Jason was hungry and wanted to see his girls. For the first time he thought April was acting like a nut. Her voice was scratchy. Maybe she was sick. He gave her a speculative look. "So you're saying that just as the anthrax cases seemed to be connected to Arab terrorists because they occurred directly after 9/11, one of the murders appears to be linked to York University by a phone call, but in fact both murders might have been committed by the children in the end."

"Yes." April looked pleased.

Jason blinked. "Okaaay. Now what about your Jack Devereaux, who happens to be a billionaire himself now, and was walking his dog on the night of your supervisor's murder-did I hear you say he's a York U alum, too?"

"Yes, Jason, you did."

Jason blew air out. "Then you'd better tell him to stay home at night. What do you need from me?"

"I need everything you have on Max and his children. You said he wasn't a patient, so you have no confidentiality issues here. And I need to know everything about Birdie and her relationship with her stepchildren."

"That's easy. Is that it?" He glanced at his watch.

"No, Jason. I also need a profile. What kind of person in a university would target alums who became millionaires?"

"Somebody with a grievance." Jason lifted his shoulder.

"Maybe. We have the hows. Now we need the whys. Will you help me?"

Now Jason really was puzzled. "Well, sure, I'll help you. But you just said you suspected the children."

"I do, but what are the probabilities of that?"

Jason rolled his eyes.
Cops.

B
y evening, NYPD brass had been informed of the York U connection between the two murder victims, but it was one of only a few facts they had under wraps about the cases. The talking heads were all over the Washington Square chop murders. Connie Chung, Larry King, and the rest of the gang were deep into their ritual prime-time dance with people in the know. Just under twenty-four hours after Birdie Bassett's death, her mother was on TV talking about the tragic loss of her daughter, Martha. The police commissioner appeared live to make some general remarks about beefed-up security in the Washington Square area. When pressed for more information on the two murders, he hedged.

On the TV in the war room, Mike, Chief Avise, and some other important bigwigs watched their boss do business as usual. They thought the PC did pretty well until he was followed by former LA medical examiner Henry Lao. Lao always made everyone in law enforcement from coast to coast foam at the mouth with his pronouncements about high-profile cases he knew nothing about. Tonight, from three thousand miles away, Lao spoke authoritatively about retired lieutenant Bernardino's and Birdie Bassett's cause of death from karate blows. The detail with which he described what happened to the two victims happened to precede the New York City medical examiner's preliminary report on Birdie Bassett, and made both the detectives on the cases and the PC look like idiots. In fact, in the case of Bernardino, he was dead wrong. Birdie had been choked and chopped, but Lao didn't know that.

Compounding the problem, Larry King followed Lao with karate master Ding Ho, who demonstrated the one-punch-one-kill method by breaking a brick and a two-by-four with the side of his hand. This party trick hadn't been a subject of interest on TV for quite some time and further infuriated the detectives. New York City was topping the charts for the freak-of-the-week crime story.

Lightning had struck twice in the same place in the same unusual way. Now everyone in the entire world knew about it, and everyone from the PC on down was embarrassed. Embarrassment on top always passed the gas along to the ranks below. When April met Mike at his car in the garage of headquarters, his face was gray. She'd been with Jason and didn't know about the TV fiascos.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Henry Lao was on
Larry King
right after the PC. Made him look like an asshole."

"Oh."

"How did you make out?" He gave her a distracted kiss.

"Good," she said, and hugged him back hard. "What did he say?"

"Lao? He talked karate chops. Then someone came on to break bricks with his pinkie. After the PC had refused to talk cause of death, it was humiliating," Mike told her.

"You okay?"

"Oh, yeah. A lot of asses on the line, but not mine. Or yours. You got some points for the York U connection." He gave her a quick smile, then drove up and out of the garage, waved at the uniforms on guard around the barricades that kept civilian cars and vans far from the building, and took his first easy breath in sixteen hours.

April took a breath herself and settled down. It was a clear, clear night. A beautiful spring night with the kind of low humidity that gave a piercing clarity to the air and made the lights on the Brooklyn Bridge look like sparklers. Some New Yorkers had long since finished dinner and were easing toward sleep. Others were just on their way out on the town or heading to work.

"Jason and April and Emma are fine," she said slowly. "He knew Max Bassett well, Birdie not at all. Birdie was Max's secretary before she became his wife. She didn't get along with the stepchildren. They're older than she. Seems they clung to Daddy. The son never married. His father thought he was a poof. Those two are quite the pair. They were busy looting the place when Woody and I got there and probably continued after we left. Woody checked out the son's alibi. Burton was drinking at Player's Club last night. A lot of people remember him. Nothing on the daughter. She's very thin."

"How does that pertain?" Mike asked.

"Doesn't. I just like to count the anorexics. It seems the richer they are the thinner they get. Makes me glad to be poor."

"You're not poor,
querida;
you're rich in love. And her name is Martha," Mike added.

"Birdie's?"

"Uh-huh. Martha Mandelbaum. I saw her mother on TV."

"No kidding. Martha Mandelbaum." The name was no poem, but Birdie Bassett wasn't much better. The whole family was full of Bs. It was a B case. Everywhere Bs-what was the probability of that?

"What's the mother like?" she asked.

"A mother." Mike was noncommittal about mothers. "What else?" he asked.

"Martha's late husband was a big giver at Jason's institute. When he called her last week to set up a meeting, she told him she thought her husband had been murdered."

"What did Jason have to say about that?"

"Nothing at the time. Late this afternoon he checked with Max's doctor, Paul Perry. Dr. Perry said there was nothing to his suspicion. Max was eighty-one. He had a massive stroke."

Mike stopped at a red light. The car was making a lot of noise. He tried to ignore it. "What about the apartment?"

"It's a museum. So much stuff there you wouldn't believe it. The vic had gorgeous clothes, beautiful jewelry, but she couldn't sleep at night. I'll check with her doctor tomorrow. There was Xanax, Valium, a whole pharmacy in there. She also liked enemas. There were dozens of them in the vanity under her sink. Some people do that to diet," she said softly.

Unlike Woody, Mike chose not to make any smart remarks.

"I listened to her messages, but who knows if any were erased by the stepchildren before I got there. I have her calendar and address book," she finished.

"What was on her schedule?"

"I haven't had time to study it… What do you think are the odds of two offspring killing a parent the same way in the same place a week apart?" she asked.

"Oh, about two hundred and fifty million to one."

"About the same odds as winning the lottery, probably. But think about it. In the lottery, someone's number always comes up."

Mike groaned. "Oh, don't start with the numerology."

"I'm not kidding. What about the odds of Jack Devereaux's being in that square at the moment I ran in chasing Bernardino's killer?"

"Oh, that's an easy one. Jack was in the square every night. There was a hundred-to-one chance that he would be there."

"His father died three weeks ago."

"So?"

"Mike, we have a killer who's murdered two heirs on the thirty-day anniversary of the wealth holder's death. Is that a coincidence, or what?"

"Oh, give me a break." Mike came off the Brooklyn Bridge and hung a left on the ramp for the BQE.

"You picked it up, though, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I did, and Harry got his money the day after Lorna's funeral. Numerologist, how does that add up?"

Mike put some speed on the Camaro, and the tires squealed as he understeered around a turn. He didn't say anything the rest of the way home.