Mistaken Identity (65 page)
Authors: Lisa Scottoline
“I take care of my girls. I step in when I’m needed.”
His girls? Bennie didn’t reply. “Alice and I are twins, right?”
“Yes, quite right.” Winslow peered at the shelf and slid out a book, then put it back. “No, not Robert Penn Warren. I can’t take the Warren. Oh, well.”
“My mother left you.”
“A long time ago.” Winslow picked a book off the shelf, rubbed nonexistent dust from the cloth cover with his fingertips, then brought the volume back to the box. “Only room for one more.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Seemed to think I wouldn’t make a good father. Always told me that.” He snorted softly, his head bent as he wedged the book into the box. He had a growing bald spot and his hair, once blond, had thinned to gray and was slicked down, curling over his tight collar. “She had lots of ideas like that. Her own ideas.”
“Was she right?”
“Ask her.”
The statement, coldly delivered, struck bone. “You know I can’t do that,” Bennie said, dry-mouthed.
“No, and so you’ll never know. It’s a lot more complicated than you think, not that it matters now.” Winslow straightened up, went back to the bookshelf, and removed one more book. He seemed to know which one he wanted, and he placed it in the box with an attention Bennie found infuriating.
“I think it matters. I want to know. How could my mother give up a child? How did she do it, even, and how could you let her? Why didn’t you fight for us, or at least take Alice?”
“You’ve made a success of yourself, and Alice is out of jail. All’s well that ends well. Help me with these books, would you? Pick the box up from your side and put it on the couch.” As if he hadn’t heard her, Winslow bent over and lifted the box, but Bennie snatched it from his hands and stood back in anger.
“Stop and answer me,” she said. The heavy box pulled at her shoulders, but she was strengthened by a bitterness she didn’t know she harbored. “Why didn’t you take Alice? Why didn’t you try to see us?”
“Give me my books.” Winslow stretched out his arms, callused palms up.
“Answer me first.”
“Give me my books.” His voice went stern and hard.
“My books!”
“Here.” Bennie shoved the box at him, and he stooped slightly as he absorbed its impact. He struggled to set the box down on the couch, a fact Bennie noted with only a smidgen of guilt. “You have your books, now answer me.”
When Winslow straightened, his face was red with effort. “You’re angry.”
“An understatement.”
“You expect me to justify myself,” he said, though his tone remained harsh. “You think I don’t care for you, or Alice.”
“Right. It’s a matter of fact, as the lawyers say. You weren’t there for us and you didn’t try to be.”
“You didn’t need me. You were doing fine. You never gave anyone any trouble. But Alice I had to watch more closely. She would fall in with the wrong men. I had to step in. When I was needed, I was there.”
“What do you mean?”
“When she was sixteen, there was a young man … well, I stepped in. I took care of her. She never knew it was me, I wasn’t looking for credit. I saw the situation that arose, and I dealt with it.”
“How?” Bennie didn’t understand, but she didn’t like the sound of it. “What are you talking about?”
“The details aren’t your concern. I dealt with the situations that arose. When her most recent situation arose, I dealt with that, too.”
“
What
recent situation?” Bennie asked, too edgy to be exasperated.
“With that detective, that Della Porta. He was bad for Alice. A hypocrite, a thief. The worst of a bad lot.” Winslow shook his head righteously, but Bennie felt stunned.
“What are you saying?”
“I saw that Alice was falling in with Mr. Della Porta and those others. You were right about them. You figured it out. They were selling cocaine and they involved Alice in their dirty business. They
corrupted
her.”
Bennie listened, astounded.
“I went to try to convince Mr. Della Porta to let Alice alone. He wouldn’t listen. He refused to let her go. He called me names. He called Alice filthy names, too.
Filthy.
He said she did horrible things, things I knew no daughter of mine could ever do.”
Bennie thought back to the trial. The fighting that Mrs. Lambertsen had heard. It hadn’t been Della Porta and the cops. It had been Della Porta and her father.
“So I shot him. I didn’t plan to. There was no other way. He would have ruined her. He’d choke the life from her if I let him. Like a weed.”
Bennie felt a wrenching deep within her chest. She wasn’t sure if she could speak. She didn’t try.
“Don’t let it upset you, child. He was destroying Alice. I had to take care of her. I’m her father.”
Bennie shook her head, uncomprehending. “You killed a human being.”
“For Alice, I did it for Alice. To save her.”
“Save her? You put her on the hook.”
Winslow’s upper lip twitched slightly. “I didn’t know she’d be charged with the murder.”
Bennie could barely imagine it. “But you let
your child
be charged with a murder
you
committed.”
“That’s why I showed myself. Told her to call you. I knew you’d prove her innocent.”
“But what if I hadn’t?” Bennie exploded, bewildered. “I almost didn’t, don’t you realize that? It took everything I had—
everything—
and I almost got killed! You killed a man. You almost killed both of your children!”
Winslow looked at her without batting an eye. “If you hadn’t won, I would have come forward. They wouldn’t have sent Alice to jail then.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? They wouldn’t have believed you.
I
barely believe you!”
“Oh, they would have believed me. I kept the gun. The murder weapon.”
The statement shocked Bennie into silence. The only sound in the still cottage was the shallow huff of her own breathing.
Winslow closed the box and looked to the window. “Too bad it’s dark outside, I’d show you my garden. The foxglove is in and the rudbeckia just blooming. It took decades to make that garden. It needed to be weeded, tended. Gardens, they need tending.”
Bennie’s mind reeled. She felt almost dizzy, sick to her stomach. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. She had wondered about her father her whole life but couldn’t bear to be in his presence a moment longer. He made her skin crawl. He was crazy, insane; he had to be. She swallowed her rising gorge, turned on her heel, and hurried to the door of the cottage. She banged open the screen door, heard it sham behind her, and didn’t look back. She ran to the Saab, twisted on the ignition, and drove off in a cold, scared sweat.
It took Bennie all the way to the Pennsylvania border to calm her stomach and begin to understand her reaction. It only became clear because the farther she drove from Winslow’s cottage, the easier she breathed. Her heart rate returned to normal. Her viscera stilled. Her tongue tasted vaguely of bile, but she gritted her teeth, stiff-armed the Saab, and steered into the night, racing to lay down as much mileage as possible between her and Winslow.
A lifetime of distance.
Bennie’s hair whipped from her face and she hit the gas. The Saab responded as soon as its winded turbos allowed. The car was almost ten years old and Grady had bought it used, but he took care of his car. She thought about Grady then. He took care of things he loved, like his ancient Saab, and her. He made Bennie coffee, held her when she needed it, even backed off when she didn’t. Grady was a caretaker of things that caused trouble, talked back, and fell into foul and selfish moods. Of things that could hurt and wound. Of things imperfect.
Of human beings.
Bennie floored the gas pedal when she spotted the orange lights of the airport that marked Philadelphia’s southern perimeter. Oil refineries encircled the airport and spewed billows of pollution into the summer night. The air hung a hazy orange and smelled like dry-cleaning chemicals. Still, Bennie felt the urge to go faster, to get to Philly. To a city that smelled like a catalytic converter. To a house that had boxes for furniture and exposed lath for wallpaper. To a man who loved her and took care of her when she needed it. To a dog that would never,
ever
come when he was called.
Bennie wanted to go home. So she drove as far as she could from her father, as fast as she could go, and sped home, there to meet her family.
For the first time.
I
t wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I found out about my sister. Technically she’s a half-sister, but when we first met she struck me instantly as a twin—close in age and very much alike in looks, temperament, and manner. I am only now starting to know her and come to admire the journey she took to make her way to me. She is obviously not the twin depicted in
Mistaken Identity
—that much must be crystal clear—but it should come as no surprise that authors often cannibalize their own lives for the truth that makes fiction. My meeting her suggested the gravamen of this novel. For her bravery and heart, as well as her openness and honesty,
Mistaken Identity
is dedicated to her, J.
Special thanks, as always, to my agent Molly Friedrich for her on-the-mark improvements to this manuscript, as well as her expertise, support, and kindness. Thanks to Carolyn Marino, my editor at HarperCollins, who has steered me through six books with this one, yet her support and grace never flags. Thanks also to A. Paul Cirone, for his help, Robin Stamm, for hers, and a bear hug to Laura Leonard at HarperCollins, friend and publicist, who is always cheering for me.
As usual, I got lots of help on the technical aspects of this book, and any mistakes in that regard are my own. Heartfelt thanks to the detectives of the Two Squad of the Philadelphia Police Department, who remain helpful and supportive and serve my hometown in every way. Thanks again to criminal lawyers Susan Burt and especially Glenn Gilman, for superb legal advice in the clutch. Thanks to Nina Segre and Karen Senser, for their insights into women-owned law firms, and their kindness. Thanks to Bob Eskind of the Philadelphia prison system, whose information and access helped me create the fictional prison herein.
Thanks for her time and help to Dr. Jeanne Paulus-Thomas, Ph.D., and her colleagues at the Center for Medical Genetics, Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation. Thanks to Doug and Cindy Claffey, who are great friends and who helped with the twin research, firsthand.
There are also great and informative books about twins, reared together and apart, which informed my novel, and for those who want to read more, see Torrey, Bowler, Taylor, and Gottesman,
Schizophrenia and Manic-Depressive Disorder,
HarperCollins (1994); Farber,
Identical Twins Reared Apart,
Basic Books (1981); Loehlin and Nichols,
Heredity, Environment and Personality,
University of Texas Press (1976); and Juel-Nielsen,
Individual and Environment: Monozygotic Twins Reared Apart,
International Universities Press (1965); Schwartz,
The Culture of the Copy,
Zone Books (1996).
Thanks to the folks at a certain gym in Philadelphia, who helped so much with the boxing details and gave me boxing lessons, which I’m sure will come in handy in an alley. Thanks to my anonymous boxer, who gave me insight into the men (and women) who box.
Thanks to the leadership and the librarians of the Free Library of Philadelphia, who let me run wild through the stacks and who have been so supportive of my books over the years. And to Dr. Paul Bookman.
Thanks to my readers, who have been so kind and whom I always remember when I write, and to my many “online editors” who participated in a wonderful experiment to improve the first chapter.
Final thanks and all my love to my family, my parents, and my husband and daughter.
Watch for
M
OMENT
OF
T
RUTH
by Lisa Scottoline
Coming Soon
Jack Newlin had no choice but to frame himself for murder. Once he had set his course, his only fear was that he wouldn’t get away with it. That he wasn’t a good enough liar, even for a lawyer.
The detectives led Jack in handcuffs into a small, windowless room at the Roundhouse, Philadelphia’s police administration building. Bolted to the floor at the center of the room was a straight-backed steel chair, which reminded Jack of the electric chair. He looked away.
The walls of the room were a dingy gray and marred by scuff marks as high as wainscoting. A typewriter table topped with a black Smith-Corona stood against the side wall, and in front of the table sat two old wooden chairs. One of the chairs groaned when the heavyset detective, who had introduced himself as Stan Kovich, seated himself and planted his feet wide. “Siddown, Mr. Newlin,” Detective Kovich said, gesturing to a wooden chair across from him.
“Thank you.” Jack took a seat, noting that the detective had bypassed the steel chair, evidently reserved for murderers who weren’t wealthy. Special treatment never suited Jack. A bookkeeper’s son, he had worked his way through school to become an estates lawyer who earned seven figures, but even his large partnership draw remained a pittance in comparison to his wife’s family money. He had always wished the Buxton money away, but now he was glad of it. Money was a good motive for murder.
“You want a soda? A Coke or somethin’?” Kovich asked. The detective wore a short-sleeved white shirt, light for wintertime, and his bullish neck spread his collar open. His shoulders hunched, powerful but gone to fat, and khaki-colored Sansabelts strained to cover his thighs. A bumpy, working-class nose dominated his face and he had cheekbones so fleshy they pressed against the rims of his glasses, large gold-rimmed aviators. Their bifocal windows magnified his eyes, which were earth brown and addressed Jack without apparent judgment.
“No, thanks. Nothing to drink.” He made deliberate eye contact with Detective Kovich, who was closer and seemed friendlier than the other detective. Propped against the wall on a thin Italian loafer, he was black and hadn’t said anything except to introduce himself. Hovering over six feet tall, rangy and slim, he had a face as narrow as his body, a small, thin mouth, and a nose a shade too long in proportion to high cheekbones. Dark, almost-onyx eyes sat high on his face, like judges atop a dais.
“Let’s start by you telling me something about yourself, Mr. Newlin.” Kovich smiled, showing teeth stained by coffee. “By the way, just for the record, this interview is being videotaped.” He waved vaguely behind the smudgy mirror on the wall, but Jack didn’t look, steeling himself to be convincing in his false confession.
“Well, I’m forty-three. I’m a partner at Tribe & Wright, heading the estates and trusts department. I attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Yale, and Girard before that.”
Kovich nodded. “Nice
résumé.
”
“Thank you,” Jack said. He was proudest of Girard, a boarding high school established by the trust of Stephen Girard for fatherless boys. Girard was a Philadelphia institution. He never could have made it to Yale or any other university otherwise.
“Where you from?”
“North Philly. Torresdale.”
“Your people still up there?”
“No. My father died a long time ago and my mother passed away last year, from lung cancer.”
“I know how that goes. I lost my mother two years ago. It’s no picnic.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. No
picnic.
It was such a rich understatement, his mouth felt bitter. His mother, gone. His father, so long ago. Now Honor. He cleared his throat. “Maybe we should move on.”
“Sure, sure.” Kovich nodded quickly. “So, you’re a lawyer at the Tribe law firm. Pretty big outfit, right? I read somethin’ about them in the paper, how much they bring in a year. They’re printin’ money.”
“Don’t believe everything you read. Reporters have to sell newspapers.”
“Tell me about it.” Kovich laughed, a harsh guttural noise that burst from his throat. He turned to the other detective, still standing against the wall. “Right, Mick?” he asked.
The detective, who had introduced himself as Reginald Brinkley, not Mick, only nodded in response, and the pursing of his lips told Jack he didn’t welcome the attention. Brinkley, also middle-aged, wore a well-tailored brown sport coat with a maroon silk tie, still tight despite the late hour and affixed to his white shirt with a gold-toned tie bar. His gaze chilled the room and the uptilt to his chin was distinctly resentful. Jack didn’t know what he had done to provoke the detective and only hoped it worked against him.
“So, Mr. Newlin,” Kovich was saying, “hey, can I call you Jack?”
“Of course.”
“You got any other family, Jack? Kids?”
“One.”
“Oh yeah?” Kovich’s tone brightened. “What flavor?”
“A girl. A daughter.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
“I got a sixteen-year-old!” Kovich grinned, showing his bad teeth. “It’s a trip, ain’t it? Teenagers. You got just the one?”
“Yes.”
“Me, I got a thirteen-year-old, too. Also a girl. Houseful of blow dryers. My wife says when they’re not in the bathroom, they’re in the chat rooms. Yours like that, on the computer?”
Jack cleared his throat again. “I don’t mean to be impolite, but is there a reason for this small talk?” He didn’t want to go there and it seemed like something a murderer would say.
“Well, uh, next-of-kin notification is our job. Standard procedure, Jack.”
He tensed up. He should have thought of that. The police would be the ones to tell Paige. “My daughter lives on her own. I’d hate for her to hear this kind of news from the police. Can’t I tell her myself?”
“Sixteen, she’s on her own already?”
“She’s legally emancipated, with a promising career.”
“Legally emancipated, what’s ’at?”
“My wife and I filed papers, I drafted them myself, essentially saying that she’s legally an adult. She lives on her own and earns her own money. She’s a model, and, in any event, I really would prefer to be the one to tell her about… her mother.” He paused. “I could call her after we talk. I mean, I do want to make a full confession, right now.”
Kovich’s lips parted slightly, and behind him, Brinkley’s eyes narrowed.
Jack’s mouth went dry at their reaction. Maybe he’d gone too fast. “I mean, I feel awful, just awful. A horrible thing happened tonight. I can’t believe what I’ve done. I want to get it off my chest.”
Kovich nodded encouragingly. “You mean you want to make a statement?”
“Yes. A statement, that’s right.” Jack’s voice sounded authentically shaky, even to him.
“Okay. Good. Bear with me.” Kovich turned toward the table, his chair creaking, and picked up a form, thick with old-fashioned carbons. He crammed it behind the typewriter roll, fighting a buckle in the paper. The detective wasn’t overly dexterous, his hands more suited to wrestling fullbacks than forms. “Jack, I have to inform you of your Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent, you—”
“I know my rights.”
“Still, I gotta tell you. It’s the law.” Kovich finished a quick recitation of the Miranda warnings as he smoothed out the uncooperative form, rolled it into the machine, and lined up the title, “Investigation Interview Record, Homicide Division.” “You understand your rights?”
“Yes. I don’t need a lawyer. I wish to make a statement.”
“You mean you’re waiving your right to counsel?” Kovich nodded again.
“Yes, I’m waiving my right to counsel.”
“Are you under the influence of drugs or alcohol at this time?”
“No. I mean, I had some Scotch earlier. Before.”
Kovich frowned behind his big aviators. “You’re not intoxicated at the present time, are you?”
“No. I only had two and that was a while ago. I’m perfectly sober.”
Kovich picked up another form, two pages. “Fine. You gotta sign this, for your waiver. Sign the first page and then you have to write on the second, too.” He slid the sheets across the table, and Jack signed the top page, wrote “yes” after each question on the second page, and slid both back. “We’ll start with your Q and A, question and answer.” Kovich turned and started to type numbers in the box on the right, “CASE NUMBER.” “It’s procedure. Bear with me, okay?”
“Sure.” Jack watched Kovich typing and had the sense that confessing to murder, even falsely, could be as mundane as opening a checking account. A bureaucratic occasion; they typed out a form in triplicate and processed you into prison for life.
“State your name and address, please.”
“My name is Jack Newlin and my address is 382 Galwith’s Alley.” Saying it relaxed him. It was going so well, then the black detective cleared his throat.
“Forget the Q and A for a minute, Mr. Newlin,” Detective Brinkley said, raising a light palm with long, thin fingers. He straightened and buttoned his jacket at the middle, the simple gesture announcing he was taking charge. “Tell us what happened, in your own words.”
Jack swallowed. This would be harder to do. He tried to forget about the hidden video camera and the detective’s critical eyes. “I guess I should tell you, my marriage hadn’t been going very well lately. For a year, actually. Honor wasn’t very happy with me.”
“Were you seeing another woman?” Detective Brinkley’s question came rapid-fire, rattling Jack.
“Of course not. No. Never.”
Kovich, taken suddenly out of the picture, started typing with surprising speed. Capital letters appeared on the black-ruled line. “NO. NEVER.”
“Was she seeing another man?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. We just had problems, normal problems. Honor drank, for one thing, and it was getting worse.”
“Was she alcoholic?”
“Yes, alcoholic.” For the past year Jack had been telling himself Honor wasn’t an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, as if the difference mattered. “We fought more and more often, then tonight she told me she wanted to divorce me.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her no. I was shocked. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t imagine it. I love—I
loved
—her.”
“Why did she ask you for a divorce?”
“Our problem always came down to the same thing, that she thought I wasn’t good enough for her. That she had married down, in me.” That much was true. The sore spots in their marriage were as familiar as potholes in a city street and they had been getting harder and harder to steer around.
Brinkley nodded. “What started the fight tonight?”
“Tonight, we were supposed to have a dinner together, just the two of us. But I was late.” Guilt choked Jack’s voice and it wasn’t fraudulent. If he had gotten home on time, none of this would have happened, and that was the least of his mistakes. “She was angry at me for that, furious, and already drunk when I got home. She started screaming at me as soon as I came in the door.”
“Screaming what?”
“That I was late, that I didn’t care about anybody but myself, that she hated me. That I’d let her down. I ruined her life.” He summoned the words from the myths in their marriage and remembered the details of the crime scene he’d staged. He’d found his wife dead when he came home, but as soon as he realized who had killed her and why, he understood that he’d have to make it look as if he did it. He’d suppressed his horror and arranged every detail to point to him as the killer, including downing two full tumblers of Glenfiddich in case the police tested his blood. “I poured myself a drink, then another. I was getting so sick of it. I tried for years to make her happy. No matter what I did I couldn’t please her. What happened next was awful. Maybe it was the Scotch. I don’t often drink. I became enraged.”
“Enraged?” Brinkley cocked his head, his hair cut short and thinning, so that his dark scalp peeked through. “Fancy word, enraged.”
“Enraged, yes.” Jack willed himself to go with it. “I mean, it set me off, made me angry. Her screaming at me, her insults. Something snapped inside. I lost control.” He recalled the other details of the faked crime scene; he had hurled a crystal tumbler to the parquet floor, as if he had been in a murderous rage. “I threw my glass at her but she just laughed. I couldn’t stand it, her laughing at me like that. She said she hated me. That she’d see a divorce lawyer first thing in the morning.” Jack wracked his brain for more details but came up empty, so he raised his voice. “All I could think was, I can’t take this anymore. I hate her threats. I hate
her.
I
hate
her and want her to
shut up.
So I picked up the knife.”