Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery (19 page)

“Is that what she told you?”

“No, that’s what Erik told me.” The words came out without my thinking. I would like to say I did it to protect Vera. That, at least,
would be noble. Misguided, but noble. But I did it because Makina was a jerk who thought he’d outsmarted me. How lying to the police was going to prove him wrong, I hadn’t figured out yet. “He asked me if I would leave that portion of his interview out of the show,” I said. “He told me Vera made him realize how he might be misunderstood. I told him I’d think about it.”

Makina stepped a few inches closer to me, and looked carefully. I stared back. It was high noon without the gunfights and mood music. Finally, he blinked. “Well, I guess that backs up Ms. Bingham’s story.”

I didn’t say anything else. I just stayed in the kitchen as Detective Makina walked down my hall, into my living room, and out my front door. I was afraid if I moved, I would drop.

I
n television, even in reality TV—no, make that especially in reality TV—the truth is massaged, it’s pushed, it’s kneaded and manipulated, and in some cases, it’s invented. Producers tell the guests on all of those shock-TV talk shows that when the secret is revealed, they should get up and yell, throw a chair, look ready to punch someone. We tell cops on true crime shows to pretend they didn’t know who the killer was right away, even though they did, just to stretch out the story. We rehearse surprises, we start arguments, and we create dramatic situations—all so people will stick around through the commercial break.

I’ve never been proud of my role in that, but I’ve never been ashamed either. The truth, I’ve often said, is subjective. But today, away from cameras and the comforting thought that it was just a television show, the truth wasn’t subjective. Erik had never said anything about his argument with Vera. In fact, after he drove away that day I never saw him alive again. But it wasn’t really a lie, I told myself. Vera had told me that was what the argument was about. And I believed Vera.

Didn’t I?

I wanted to call and scream at her for not dialing 911 the minute she’d found Erik, but after my encounter with Makina, I was half certain that our phones were bugged. I’d never worked on a single true crime show in which the cops had bugged a suspect’s phone, but it happened in the fictional TV versions of crime shows all the time, and I didn’t want to take the chance.

Not knowing what else to do, I called Andres.

“I need to meet you for a drink somewhere,” I said. “Now.”

“There’s a quiet place about halfway between my house and yours,” he said, without asking for another bit of information. “I think it’s called Cavan’s.”

Thirty minutes later, I was taking a sip out of a pint of Guinness in the back corner booth of a small Irish pub. Andres’s face was white, his drink untouched; he was still in shock from everything I’d told him.

“Shit, Kate. It’s bad enough that Vera’s
mixed up in it, but she kind brought it on herself. Victor…well, we have to get Victor out of this mess.”

“I agree.”

“You don’t think for one second there’s any truth to it, do you?” he asked.

“I don’t think Vera killed Erik, and I certainly don’t think she and Victor cooked up some plan for her to receive fake threats.”

“It would have gotten the boyfriend’s attention.”

“Andres, this is Vera we’re talking about. I’m as aware as anyone the lengths she’ll go to when she thinks she’s in love, but this isn’t her style,” I said. “She’s a little ditzy, a little too trusting, maybe too much of a romantic, but she’s not a sociopath.”

Andres drank half his beer in one gulp, set it down, and picked it up again as if he might need the other half. “You’re right,” he said. “No, of course you’re right. So what do we do?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.”

He stared into his glass a long time, and I sat watching him. I was afraid he was just as out of ideas as I was, until he looked up at me. “Remember that show we did with the family who had that big house with seven kids? Then the dad got transferred and they were moving, and the mom was completely overwhelmed by where to start?”

“Yeah, we brought in a professional organizer,” I said. “Mandy something. What does that have to do with this?”

“That Mandy lady said sometimes it’s a bad thing to look at the big picture. It’s too much to take in; you get all psycho and give up. She said you have to break it down. Look at things one at a time.”

“I don’t think a murder investigation is quite the same thing as organizing your shoes.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s exactly the same thing. We have to take this one thing at a time. Each step, each suspect. Otherwise we’re not going to get anywhere.” He finished his beer and sat back, looking a lot more relaxed than he had a few minutes before. “The first thing we have to do is decide where to start.”

“By your logic, it’s simple,” I said. “That Mandy woman said when
you organize a house you start with the easy stuff first, like getting rid of the visual clutter. That way you feel a sense of accomplishment when you tackle the hidden clutter—the attic, the old tax files, the garage.”

“I remember her saying that.”

“So let’s start with what’s right in front of us.”

Vera, Victor, Andres, and I sat in my living room and stared at the floor. Victor had taken the news that he was a suspect in a homicide investigation surprisingly well.

“I can handle prison,” he said. “I’ve got tattoos, and guys in prison respect a good tat. We’ve done enough shows in prison that I know how things work, so nobody has to worry that I’ll wig out or anything.”

“It’s not going to come to that, Victor,” I said. “It’s just that we have to go over everything that’s happened step-by-step and maybe we’ll figure something out.”

Victor and Vera exchanged a guilty glance. “There’s a little more to the story,” Victor said.

I could feel a headache coming on. “Of course there is,” I said.

Victor looked down at his shoes, at Vera, then at the wall. Everywhere but at Andres and me. “I know that I haven’t been as, you know, as on top of my game as I usually am, but it’s because of, well, because I was a little short on money—”

“How could you be short of money?” Andres jumped in. “We’ve been working practically every day and you don’t have any expenses. You live on other people’s couches; you drive a twenty-year-old car.” Andres was getting quite worked up.

Victor looked over at him. “The new band. We’re trying to do a tour, trying to get money together for a van and some new equipment. I’ve been moonlighting at a bar on Rush Street.”

“So that’s why you’ve been so off,” I said. “You’ve been tired.”

He nodded. “So, when we started doing this show at Vera’s restaurant…”

I looked over at Vera. “You gave Victor some money?”

“I’m
an investor in the band,” she said. “I gave Victor ten thousand for new equipment, and I bought a van.”

“I didn’t want to take it,” Victor said. “Vera offered that first day we worked together, and I said I had to think about it.”

“He did,” Vera agreed. “I told him if he let me help, he could quit working at the bar and Andres wouldn’t be angry with him anymore. So finally, he let me help.”

“When?” I asked.

“The day I got the call about being slashed,” she said.

Andres shook his head. “It’s going to look bad if Makina finds out. He’ll think she was paying Victor off.”

“He already knows,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Victor asked.

“He seemed very stuck on the idea that you were working with Vera. When I mentioned your name, he had this cat-that-ate-the-canary grin on his face,” I said. “That has to be why.”

“But all this questioning is normal, isn’t it?” Vera looked frightened and tired. “They have to look at everyone involved with Erik before they pick a suspect.”

“The police already have a suspect,” I reminded her. “They have you. And once they have a suspect—”

Victor jumped in. “Like the guy in that DNA show we did, who did, like, twenty-five years for murder and then it turned out that he wasn’t guilty.”

Vera’s face went pale.

“That’s not going to happen here. We’re going to figure this out,” I said, though, to be honest, I didn’t feel all that confident.

“What if the police are watching the house?” Vera asked. “Should we all be meeting like this? It will just drag Andres into it.”

“Let them watch,” Andres said. “We haven’t killed anybody.”

“This has gotten out of hand,” I said. “We’re just getting paranoid, and Victor is already planning his prison break. Vera, maybe you should just get a lawyer.”

“I have one,” she said. “Ascoli and Lowe. It’s a firm my family has on retainer. I talked to one of the senior partners this afternoon.
Basically, he told me to shut up and direct all police questions to him. I told him about calling you after I found the body, and I said I should go to the police and explain everything, but he said at this point altering my story would just make me look like I’d killed Erik.”

“What about Victor?” Andres asked.

Vera looked toward Victor. “I’ll pay for your lawyer. I got you into this mess.”

Victor shook his head. “That’s not our way out. Our way out is to figure out who killed the guy. Once the police have their killer it’s not going to matter that you waited to call, or that you told a little lie.”

Vera was on the verge of tears. “But who would kill Erik? Everyone liked him.”

“I didn’t,” Victor said.

“Me neither,” Andres added.

“Yeah, I’m with the boys on this one,” I told Vera. “And clearly there’s at least one more person who didn’t like him. We don’t really need to know who the killer is; we just have to find a plausible suspect. Someone with a better reason to kill him than Makina thinks you have.”

“Erik was pretty cozy with Ilena that first day, remember?” Victor said.

I nodded. “So that puts Roman on the list if he’s the jealous type, and Ilena if Erik wanted to end things.”

“And he had that disagreement with Walt about the food,” Andres added. “Erik was getting a little too involved in the menu.”

“Would you kill someone over that?” I asked, then conceded his point. Dugan was populated with men who’d killed for far less.

“We should split them up,” Andres suggested. “Each take a suspect. That way we can each question one of them. It’ll save time.”

“But what excuse would we have to see them again?” I asked. “The show is canceled.”

“Did the Business Channel call you?” Andres asked.

“No,” I admitted. It had just occurred to me that maybe I should call them. “But they’re not going to let us tape with one investor dead, another missing and a third that’s a suspect.”

“
It would be good television, wouldn’t it?” Victor said.

It would be. But I didn’t think the police would consider that reason enough to let us continue with the show.

“Roman is the only one with any possible criminal activity in his background,” Andres said. “I think he’s our guy.”

“Those are only rumors,” Vera said. “I just don’t see any of them killing Erik. It’s a business. If you don’t want to be in business anymore, you leave, you quit, you sue…but you don’t kill someone. None of the investors would kill Erik. They’re not like those people in Dugan.”

“I remember talking to a cop when we were working for Crime TV,” I said. “I asked him how someone goes from never having a traffic ticket to killing a person. The cop said that there are lots of people in the world with a sense of entitlement. They cut you off in traffic, push ahead in line, that sort of thing. They want what they want, and to hell with who it hurts. So, when they want custody of the kids, or the insurance money, or out of a bad business deal, it’s not that they want the other person dead; it’s just that the victim is in their way. Lawsuits take years; divorces are messy. For a certain kind of person, murder is fast and easy. The cop said it’s more about being selfish than being evil.”

“That description pretty much fits that entire crowd,” Victor said.

Vera wasn’t buying it. “They’re all smart people. Any one of them would know if you kill someone, you get caught.”

“I don’t think anyone who commits murder thinks they’re going to get caught,” I said to her. “Especially this killer. Whoever did it has done a damn good job of making you look guilty. The trick is to think like the killer thinks.”

“But you’re not that kind of person, Kate. You don’t push ahead in line or cut people off in traffic. You don’t know how a killer would think,” she said.

I sat back and sighed. Vera was right. I didn’t know how a killer would think. But, I realized, I did know a killer. In fact, I knew two.

I
’m afraid you’ve wasted a trip,” Russell told me after I’d been in Dugan’s waiting room for almost a half hour. “Brick took sick this morning. Stomach pains. He’s in the infirmary.”

After our little meeting broke up, I’d stayed awake thinking of what to do. Then I tried sleeping for a few hours. At six in the morning I got out of bed and called the prison to make sure that it would be okay to meet with Brick in the visitors room. I told Joanie Rheinbeck I had some general questions about prison life I needed for the show. I wouldn’t be bringing my crew, I said, so it wouldn’t be the usual intrusion. Brick was having breakfast when I called; based on what I’d seen of the food that was probably where he got sick. A guard got word to him and asked if my visit would be okay. Inmates don’t get to say yes or no to many things, but they do get to decide if they want to see a visitor. Brick said yes to me.