Abandon (19 page)

“I figured I’d call you first,” she said.

“You didn’t call me first, Stewart. You called me last. You’ve already talked to Benton, Rook, Kowalski and the damn doorman.”

“I haven’t talked to Detective Mooney in New Hampshire yet.”

“Don’t let me hold you up,” he said.

She ignored his sarcasm. “Someone should show the sketch to other people in Cal’s building, just in case the doorman did recognize him but isn’t sure. Another worker or resident might be more certain, one way or another. I’d do it, but I’m personally involved.”

“You think?” He sighed. “I’m on it.”

“For the record, Cal Benton’s flings might not have anything at all to do with the attack on me.”

“Deputy, don’t second-guess yourself. The more pieces we have, the better. They won’t all have a place in the puzzle. That’s nothing new. Are you on your way back here?”

“Give me an hour,” she said, fastening her seat belt.

“It’s a ten-minute drive.”

“Traffic.”

One beat, two beats.

Mackenzie pulled her car door shut. “I need to make a stop. It’s personal.”

“It was personal when you went to see Benton, too.” But Delvechhio relented. “All right. An hour.”

She didn’t know if his modest acquiescence was a sign of trust or if he was just giving her enough rope to hang herself. Either way, she was committed now. She started her car, cranked up the air-conditioning and headed toward Massachusetts Avenue just as a fat raindrop hit her windshield.

M
ackenzie had her own key to Bernadette’s house off Embassy Row. She’d had it since college, when Bernadette had given it to her before setting off on a six-week trip to Asia.
“Come when you want. Just no wild parties.”
As if bookish Mackenzie were known for wild parties.

When no one answered the door, she let herself in, announcing her presence. “Hello—anyone home? It’s Mackenzie.”

Thunder rumbled, and with the darkened sky, the light in the house was more like dusk than late morning. Before she’d left for the lake, Bernadette had obviously turned down the air-conditioning. Never mind Cal, Mackenzie thought. Of course, he could always turn it up, but he’d notice the gesture—the reminder that it wasn’t his house and he was no longer welcome there.

As generous as Bernadette was, she was not a pushover.

Mackenzie made her way to the guest suite on the first floor. The door was unlocked and the drapes were still shut. “Cal?” she called, just in case.

The covers were pulled back and half on the floor, as if he’d passed a bad night. She checked the bathroom. Towels on the floor, shaving materials scattered around the sink. The mirror was splattered with dried soap. Would he clean up before he moved out? Or just leave the place a mess as a final thumb-in-the-eye for Bernadette?

The two of them, Mackenzie thought. Bernadette was a role model in so many ways, but not so much when it came to relationships. She volleyed between being too forgiving and too unforgiving, confusing herself and the men in her life. She’d never found anyone who really understood her—her keen intelligence, her drive, her generosity, her contradictory nature. But she never expected to, either.

Mackenzie saw nothing in Cal’s room that suggested he was the victim or perpetrator of blackmail, or knew where Harris Mayer or her attacker were. Nothing that suggested he was in any trouble at all. From his living quarters, Mackenzie could see a man in a hurry, perhaps. And agitated. He was a busy attorney in the midst of moving, and he had her on his case about his brunette at the lake.

She ventured into Bernadette’s study. Forbidden territory. Bernadette hated anyone trespassing in her space, but not so much that she kept the door locked. Files, yes. Her computer was password protected, but Mackenzie checked just to be sure. No sensitive files related to Bernadette’s work as a U.S. district court judge were out in the open.

Was
she
a victim of blackmail?

Not a perpetrator, Mackenzie thought. That was beyond the realm of possibility. Bernadette was in the position to know other people’s secrets, but she didn’t have the temperament—or the skill—to act on them for her own profit.

And what would she have to hide?

Her friendship with Harris was out in the open. She’d had little to do with him in the five years since his public disgrace, but she hadn’t abandoned him entirely. Since he’d gone to the FBI, the blackmail, extortion, fraud and whatever else he’d been whispering about to Rook had a federal interest. Harris was a former judge. He would know. He wouldn’t need Bernadette’s advice. But he would want it anyway.

“Breaking and entering, Mac?”

She spun around at Rook’s voice. He was leaning in the study door, as if he’d been there awhile, his dark eyes leveled on her. She shrugged. “I’m here to feed the cat.”

“There is no cat.”

“I could have sworn Bernadette said she’d gotten a cat. I have a key.” She held it up for him to see. “We seem to be on the same wavelength this morning.”

“I stopped to see if Cal was here.”

“He’s not. Did you check his office?”

“He didn’t go in. He told his assistant he had a client emergency. He doesn’t answer his cell phone.”

“Is T.J. with you?”

“No.”

Rook’s mood was difficult to read. Mackenzie glanced around the study, which was dominated by Bernadette’s surprisingly simple desk. She had an ergonomically correct chair and glass-front bookcases that ran along an entire wall. Law texts and art history picture books were shoved in among paperback Regency romances she read for relaxation, and bird books, hiking books.

Several photo albums were scattered on the floor in front of one of the bookcases. Mackenzie squatted down and opened one to pictures of Bernadette and Harris at the lake.

“Those were taken awhile ago,” Rook said, standing over Mackenzie.

She looked up at him. “You FBI types must get more training in being stealthy.”

“It’s not that difficult when someone’s preoccupied.”

“I remember this visit,” she said, pointing to the pictures. “It was the summer between my junior and senior years in college. I had a part-time internship at a local museum and a job cleaning rooms at one of the inns in town. Bernadette had my parents and me over for dinner, and I remember how fascinated I was listening to her and Harris talk. He’s a smart man.”

“Judge Peacham must have been devastated when he let it all get away from him.”

“She was.” Mackenzie shut the album and rose, feeling the stiffness of the healing cut in her side. So many questions would be answered by now if she’d been able to hang on to her attacker. “She worried he’d commit suicide in the beginning. I was here once when he called her. It was right after the scandal broke. I was in graduate school—I was down here for research, Harris was drunk, angry at himself at having been exposed. He couldn’t see that he’d done anything wrong, legally or ethically. Beanie convinced him to tell her where he was.”

“Where?”

“A rooming house. It was some kind of secret hideout for him. He’d go there and indulge his dark side, I guess. I went with Beanie to collect him. She dropped him off at his house in Georgetown and gave him an ultimatum—never again.”

Rook glanced down at the shut album. “Did she keep that promise?”

“As far as I know.” Mackenzie stepped past him, but turned as she reached the door. “Would you like to check out the rooming house? I hadn’t thought of it until now. I don’t know if Harris still uses it.”

“Can you find it?”

“I think so. If I can’t, I can call Beanie. She’ll remember where it is.”

Rook considered a moment. Outside, Bernadette’s tall shade trees swayed in the wind, and rain lashed the windows. Finally, he said, “We’ll take my car.”

Mackenzie nodded. “All right.” As she started out of the study, she smiled back at him. “Try not to let the cat out when we leave.”

She thought he might have cracked a smile, but she wasn’t sure, which, she realized, was part of the fun of being around him. But she couldn’t think in those terms right now. She had to focus on the job at hand.

“He took the place for a month.” The superintendent, a wiry, middle-aged man with sparse tufts of close-cropped hair, had led Rook and Mackenzie to an ell off the rundown building. “That’s the most he ever takes it for. He comes and goes. He don’t call himself Harris Mayer, though. Harry Morrison. Pays in cash.”

Rook stood on the sidewalk behind the super. The rain had stopped, but thunder still rumbled in the distance. “When did you see him last?”

“A week ago. Maybe more.” He stuck the key in the door, shook his head. “Hear that? Air-conditioning. He keeps it going full blast. His choice—he pays the bills.” He unlocked the door, pushed it open, then jumped back. “Oh. My goodness, my goodness.”

Rook drew his weapon and saw that Mackenzie had done the same. He instructed the superintendent to move back onto the sidewalk and gave the door a kick to open it wider.

The worn wood floor of a small entry was splattered with dried blood. It was plainly blood. Careful of where he stepped, Rook entered the studio, immediately recognizing a smell that air-conditioning couldn’t suppress.

He glanced at Mackenzie, right behind him. “Mac, this isn’t going to be good. You’ve never—”

“I’m okay, Rook.”

“You know Harris.”

A tightness around her eyes betrayed her emotion, but she gave a curt nod. “So do you. Let’s just do this.”

They moved into the adjoining room, the furnishings threadbare and cheap but serviceable. Ancient air conditioners in a front window and a window in the kitchenette clunked and groaned.

“There,” Mackenzie said, nodding to the floor in front of a shut door. “More blood.”

She stood to the side, and Rook pushed open the door.

The smell was worse. There was blood everywhere.

Harris Mayer was sprawled in the old bathtub, his body partially covered with a flowered shower curtain that had been ripped from the rod.

“Knife wounds,” Mackenzie said from the doorway.

Rook looked back at her. “They’re not self-inflicted. He’s been here awhile. Days, not hours.” He shook his head and grimaced. “Hell.”

She didn’t respond, just spun around without a word and bolted. Rook didn’t follow her and he couldn’t do anything for Harris. Whatever his flaws he hadn’t deserved this. Rook returned to the main room and checked the rear exit next to the kitchenette, but it was secure. He got out his cell phone and made the calls he needed to. The D.C. police. His superiors. T. J. Kowalski.

T.J. was to the point. “Mackenzie led you to him?”

“Just get here.”

“On my way.”

When Rook returned to the street, Mackenzie was talking to the superintendent. Her skin was grayish, but she was rallying after the shock of finding Harris. Already, he could hear a siren. Cruisers would arrive first, with D.C. detectives not far behind. Harris’s murder fell under their jurisdiction.

Rook stood close to Mackenzie. “Anyone you need to call?”

She nodded. He still had his phone out and handed it to her. Her hands shook slightly. “I got sick to my stomach,” she said as she dialed. “Bet I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been on antibiotics.” She cleared her throat. “Chief? Yeah, it’s me. It’s not a good scene here.” She’d called him on the way to the rooming house and now gave him the facts of what she and Rook had found. She spoke crisply, without emotion. But when she disconnected, she tilted her head back and exhaled at the sky. “I should have thought of this place sooner.”

A fresh breeze stirred, the storm quickly blowing out the heat and humidity—the stink of exhaust fumes, garbage and dog excrement. That no one had smelled the body in the studio wasn’t a huge surprise. And if someone had and not reported it? Again, no big surprise.

“I didn’t know,” the superintendent said, repeating his mantra about minding his own business.

“Did you see anyone with Mr. Mayer?” Rook asked.

“No, sir. I mind my own business.”

The first cruiser stopped in front of the building, with T.J. right behind it, his grim expression underlining the stark reality of the scene in the seedy studio. Rook had quickly adjusted his thinking. J. Harris Mayer, his would-be informant, wasn’t hiding at the beach. He was dead.

B
ernadette wasn’t surprised to find Gus’s truck in her driveway when she arrived at the lake. The weather had delayed her, and it would be like him to make sure she got home alive. As she got out of her car, she could feel the stiffness from the long drive in her lower back, her right hip.

Getting old,
she thought, welcoming the feel of the cool early evening air, freshened by the passing front. A stiff breeze blew through the trees. She could smell the sharpness of wet pine needles and hear birds all around the lake, twittering and fluttering now that the storm was over.

She found Gus down on the dock, the wood soft and wet under her driving shoes. The lake was choppy, churned up by the wind. “My cell phone died or I’d have called,” she said. “I pulled over during the worst of the storm and had coffee and pie.” She smiled and added, “Peach pie.”

Gus eyed her in that frank, uncompromising way he had. “I almost called the marshals on you.”

Bernadette’s heart jumped at his seriousness. She knew him so well. She remembered the tears and anger and hope she and her friends had felt when he’d left for Vietnam. They’d thought they understood the world, but they’d understood nothing. He didn’t write during the months he was gone. But she didn’t write, either, and only years later did she recognize her fault in that omission. She’d simply tried not to think about Gus Winter and what he was doing, where he was. And when he came back and kept to himself, hiking, working, she’d pushed ahead with her own life and left him to his. Then came his brother and sister-in-law’s deaths, a tragedy so impossible to imagine that it paralyzed everyone—everyone except Gus.

“Gus,” she whispered. “What’s happened?”

“Harris Mayer is dead. Mackenzie and Andrew Rook found him earlier today.”

“Harris? How?” Bernadette tried to grasp what Gus had just said, and pictured Harris, with his bow ties and wingtips, his patrician manner, his compulsions. “I can’t believe it. Did he have a heart attack? It wasn’t—” She paused to catch her breath. “Gus, was Harris murdered?”

Gus wasn’t one to dance around a point. “He was knifed to death.”

Bernadette heard herself gasp, but she couldn’t speak. She stared out at the water, spotting two loons near the opposite shore. They were territorial birds, the only pair on the relatively small lake. They’d had babies in June, and she’d taken delight, as always, watching them ride along on their parents’ backs.

I just want to watch the loons.

“Beanie?”

Years in the courtroom had accustomed her to suppressing her emotions, but she could feel her throat tighten. “Harris got such a kick out of the loons. He and his wife would sit out here for the longest time. I never had the patience.” She blinked back tears and turned to Gus, who didn’t seem to have moved at all since she’d arrived. She tried to pull herself together. “Things change. Harris was flawed, troubled, brilliant, selfish…”

“I’m sorry, Beanie.”

Gus’s simple statement ripped right through the shield she was trying to put up around her emotions. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away quickly, turning from him. “Who told you?”

“Nate called. Mackenzie and Rook found Harris at a rooming house in a rough section of Washington.”

Bernadette nodded. “I know which one. Mackenzie and I—she was with me when I went to rescue him one day. She must have remembered. Is that what Nate told you?”

“Yes.”

“Harris was a friend, and he called me for help. I picked him up and took him home, and I never did it again. He never asked, so it was easy to just…to just walk away.” She turned to Gus. “Do the police have a suspect?”

He shook his head. “Nate asked if I’d seen Cal.”

“Cal? What? Is he a suspect?”

“I just said—”

“I know what you just said.” She immediately regretted her sharp tone. A strong breeze brought out goose bumps on her bare arms, and she shivered. “You’ve never liked Cal.”

Gus shrugged. “I don’t have to like him. I’m not the one who married him.”

“You didn’t approve—”

“Was I supposed to?” He didn’t raise his voice. “He’s out of your life now. Maybe it’s time you stopped looking after him.”

Bernadette grabbed Gus’s arm just above the elbow and squeezed hard. “Gus, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Beanie…”

“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” she said. “I was here when you went off to Vietnam. I was here when Harry and Jill were killed. I’m not a stranger. I know you.” She dropped her hand from his arm. “If there’s something you need to tell me, just do it.”

He squinted out at the lake, the loons gone now, as if they’d sensed the tension across the water on the dock and had taken cover. Without preamble, Gus said, “Cal brought women to the house.”

“Here?”

“Yeah, Beanie.” He shifted his gaze back to her. “Here.”

More to grasp. Harris was dead, and Cal—her husband, she thought, had betrayed her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Gus. “When? For how long?”

“I don’t know. I first noticed about eight months ago. It was obvious you two weren’t going to make it.”

She felt heat rise into her face, embarrassment and anger boiling up in her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to stick myself between the two of you.”

“Why tell me now?”

“Because I don’t like what’s going on around here, and I figured it’s time to get everything out on the table. Doesn’t matter if it has anything to do with Harris’s death or the attack on Mackenzie and that other hiker last week.”

“They were both knifed,” Bernadette said, almost to herself. “Like Harris.”

“I’m not saying Cal had anything to do with the attacks.”

She nodded, more in control of herself now. Of course Cal had women, especially in the past year. And of
course
he would have them here, at the lake.

She faced Gus. “Did Mackenzie know about Cal’s women?”

Gus scratched the side of his mouth, as close as he would get to displaying any discomfort. “She caught him just before she headed to Washington. It’s eaten at her. She was in the same pickle I was. She didn’t know what to do.”

Bernadette stiffened. “I’ve been played for a fool.”

Gus sighed. “No one wanted to see you hurt.”

“How was your silence supposed to change the facts? Cal took women here, to the one place he knows it would hurt me most for him—” She didn’t finish, just crossed her arms tightly across her chest and faced the water. “Well. You can see why we didn’t make it. And don’t stand there and tell me you told me so.”

“I didn’t say a thing.”

“You didn’t have to. I know you, Gus.” The wind blew her hair into her eyes, and she pushed it back. “I’ve arrived safe and sound, and you’ve delivered your news. You can leave now.”

He started off the dock. “I’ll get my gear and sleep on the couch tonight.”

“You will not.”

He ignored her. “I’ll be back here in an hour.”

Bernadette couldn’t focus her thoughts enough to come up with an argument against his plan, and by the time she started to say something, he’d walked back up to his truck. She ran to the yard and looked for something to hurl into the lake. An Adirondack chair was too big. She picked up a rock the size of a golf ball and threw it as far as she could, watched it plop into the water, then found another and heaved it.

She hadn’t loved Cal in a long time, but she couldn’t believe he’d want his affairs to get out into the open. Even if he wouldn’t mind humiliating her, he’d resist because of the likely backlash against him. He’d been extra difficult, tense and preoccupied for weeks. She’d blamed their divorce, the stress over his move.

“Wasn’t
that
stupid,” she said aloud, flopping into one of her Adirondack chairs. She could smell old ashes in the stone fireplace. Had Cal and his women sat out here, toasting marshmallows?

How the hell could she have been so naive? So damn blind?

Harris’s death—his
murder—
would put both her and Cal under greater scrutiny by the police, the media, their colleagues, the public. There’d be an investigation; with any luck, an arrest; then a trial, a conviction. The whole sordid, horrible ordeal would go on and on.

The wind was uncomfortably strong, and she needed a sweater, but Bernadette stayed where she was, running through the litany of choices she’d made in her fifty-seven years that had led her to this point.

A car sounded in her driveway, and when she looked up and recognized the two men walking toward her as local FBI agents, she knew they were there to talk to her about Harris. About the rooming house.

About Cal?

But she had done nothing to wrong and she had nothing to hide, never mind that a similar attitude had landed more than one defendant in her courtroom.

Bernadette rose, smiling as she walked up to greet the two men. “I assume you’re here because of Judge Mayer’s murder. I just heard. Please, come inside.”

She led them onto her screened porch and began to answer all their questions.