Panther's Prey (20 page)

A few days later I called Lydia Cho from one of the interview rooms at Southern Station. “Please don't hang up,” I told Lydia when I reached her. “It's Leo Maxwell. Something awful's happened. I'm in trouble and I don't know where to turn.”

Detective Chen sat across from me, gazing down at the wire I'd be wearing if this worked.

On her end there was only silence, making me afraid I'd overplayed my part, sounded too desperate. Finally, Lydia said, “What kind of trouble?”

“Videos just appeared on my phone. Out of nowhere. Videos of Jordan's death. But they've been altered. In at least two of them she says my name.”

“The same phone you're using now?”

“No. This is a prepaid.”

“Thank God. Look, there's nothing I can do for you, Leo. All I can say is whatever they want from you, you should give it to them. They'll get it in the end. Make a deal while you can.”

“It may be too late for that. We need to talk in person.”

“I can't. I won't. I told you before. You shouldn't be calling me.”

“I know the deal you made with them,” I said, talking quickly to keep her on the line. “I have proof, and I'll use it if I have to. I'd just prefer not to drag you in. I need a copy of the original video. You still have it, or they wouldn't have settled with you. You'd be dead.”

“I'd be dead if anyone knew we were having this conversation.”

“It's not too late to do the right thing,” I said, making my final pitch. “I want to give you that chance.”

She took a deep breath, audible over the phone. “I'll come to you. Three
PM.”

I gave her the address of the Seward.

I sat on my bed, phone in my hand, trying to resist the urge to sit straighter or scratch the place at the small of my back where the transmitter was taped on. I'd checked from all angles in the scratched mirror of my tiny bathroom to be sure it didn't show. Chen had a crew stationed in the room directly above mine. I'd done a sound check a few minutes ago and received a text on my prepaid that we were good to go.

Now there was nothing to do but wait. My goal, according to Chen, was to get Lydia to say on tape that I'd been telling the truth about the hot tub scene, the phone she'd taken from the dead man, and the shooting of her husband at the cabin. If she confirmed the existence of the videos, even better.

Ever since Chen had suggested his plan, my mind had been running at full throttle. Now, even as my thoughts raced in circles, I felt an odd sensation. A presence, for lack of a better word. For the first time in a long while, I didn't feel alone, and it wasn't because of the cops in the room upstairs. Somehow, it was easy to imagine
Jordan sitting right beside me on the bed where we'd made love a handful of times, listening with a pensive frown as I tried to script a scene that couldn't be scripted. The Rodriguez trial and our nights together seemed another life, and I remembered Tom Benton, who'd kept the pajamas she'd worn.

“Try listening to other people rather than yourself for once,” she'd probably have said. It was an instruction she'd given more than once as we were preparing for trial. It was good advice.

My phone buzzed and I held it to my ear.

“It's Lydia. I'm downstairs. I think this guy's convinced I'm a hooker. He won't let me come up.”

“I'll be down,” I told her.

It was good to exit my too-small room, if only for a moment. It would've been better to meet in the open air, but Lydia hadn't wanted a public place. Finding her in the lobby, I shot a look at the front desk guy leering behind his Plexiglas shield. Her face was a mask of distaste verging on panic. In my room, I closed the door and double-locked it behind us.

“This is a real shithole,” Lydia said, moving to the space between my desk and the bathroom door where the window was, one of the few places to stand without blocking the movement of anyone else who happened to be there. She wore designer jeans and a denim jacket over a ribbed sweater. Her hair was different from when I'd last seen it. Now she had a ponytail with bangs that made her look younger.

After a moment, she turned. “I never thanked you properly for saving my life.”

“You're welcome,” I told her.

“It occurs to me I should have offered you some sort of compensation. A reward, so to speak. I guess it's old-fashioned but that's the word to use. I wasn't in a position to be able to offer you one before. I am now. Is that what I'm really here to talk about or am I jumping the gun?”

“I called because of the videos that showed up on my phone. I don't know what to do. I—”

“Quit bullshitting!” she interrupted. After a pause, she went on: “I know about the lawsuit. You called their bluff. Mauldin knows you don't have any evidence. All he has to do is deny everything. He's not taking any risks.”

I dropped the act. “But
you
have evidence.”

She shrugged. “I stay safe. Isn't that all any of us wants?”

“Mauldin showed me the videos. Altered versions, like I said. The killer's face isn't shown, but there's a glimpse of his hands. It's clearly not Rodriguez. What I'm trying to say is an innocent man's behind bars and you have evidence that would free him.”

“I'm not saying you couldn't cause me a lot of problems. I just can't give you what you want. Money can't make up for losing your friend, but even her father's bound to settle his lawsuit. Everybody settles. It's just a question of how much.”

I shook my head, a terrible taste in my mouth. “You're smarter than your husband.”

“Carl Hastings is already dead. All you know is you came to my house and saw him attacking me, which I'll continue to deny. The man who attacked me is dead, and they'll never find him, so they won't be able to connect him to Kairos. Even if they did, you can't get justice from a corpse.”

“Isn't what you've done called ‘making a deal with the devil'?”

“You've got your mind made up about what a bitch I am, so there's no sense in me trying to change it. Even if I could, what do I care? Why don't you just tell me what I'm doing here?”

“Gary's death isn't the one that keeps me awake at night,” I said. “I want to know why I shouldn't go after your friend Mauldin for Jordan's.”

She stared out the window a moment, then said, “I can only tell you what I've learned. The night Gary showed up at Jordan's place, Hastings was on surveillance detail, watching Jordan, because she'd
left the firm and no one knew what she intended to do. He must have seen you leave, and he must have seen Gary arrive. He was supposed to alert his superiors and await instructions, but he took matters into his own hands. He forced his way in, stripped her naked, tied her up, and made her repeat everything Gary had told her. After he'd raped and tortured her, and taken a few videos for his own private pleasure, I guess, he left her to die. Jacob only learned what happened after I showed him the videos from the phone and we settled my husband's case.”

I made a noise of disbelief. “That's what he told you.”

“It's true. He never intended anyone to come after me. They were out of control, bent on revenge, acting at Hastings's direction, not Mauldin's. These guys enjoy settling scores.”

“You're telling me Mauldin's men were acting on their own when they murdered Gary? They showed every sign of wanting to kill me. Yet they were happy to let you escape? The only truth here is that these killers need to be brought to justice and you're telling me Mauldin won't allow that. The hell with him.”

“Hastings is just a ghost. You can't send a ghost to jail. You can't kill him. Anyway, it's not Mauldin who won't allow it. It's his connected friends.” She suddenly switched tacks. “For a week, I believed Gary had committed suicide. When he first contacted me to let me know he'd faked his death I felt like I'd been tricked. I'd already been making plans. I didn't want him to come back. Does that make me a monster?”

“Maybe,” I told her. “But at least you know what you are.”

“Oh, I know who and what I am. There's no doubting that.” She turned to the window.

This seemed to confirm what I'd previously guessed. “Someone led those killers to Gary's hiding place that night. It wasn't me, so the only person it could have been was you. You knew we'd be followed. You've gotten everything you wanted. Mauldin bought your
silence, and now you want to buy mine about what really happened to your husband.”

She didn't answer. And I realized I was right. I wondered if I hadn't known it all along. She'd seen the same video the jury had seen. And like the jury, she'd believed it.

“I want to see the video that shows Hastings's face. The one you're holding back.”

“I couldn't retrieve it for you even if I wanted to. It's in something called an electronic lockbox. A company runs this service. You give them your files, and instructions on how to dispose of them if a certain event happens. For me, the lockbox will only be opened if I die. When I'm dead the contents will be distributed to a select e-mail list. You're on it. So is that reporter, Rachel Stone. I've told Jacob this, and he understands it's better to have me with him rather than against him. I hope you see that, too.”

“So as long as you're alive and in control of the company, the real facts about what happened that night and the connection to Kairos stay buried. But if something happens to you, the video gets sent to the right people. Just like Tom Benton's letter.” I was struck with awe at the coup she'd engineered, the victory she'd managed over both her husband and Mauldin.

My bathroom door swung open. The first thing I saw was the barrel of the gun. Lydia's eyes went wide and she stepped back, stumbled, and fell as Hastings came out. He looked down at her.

“Bitch, in about five minutes you're going to wish you'd killed me.” He grabbed Lydia under the arm and half pushed, half tossed her toward the bed, where she dropped onto the mattress beside me. Then he had to rest, leaning his free hand on the windowsill, using it to take some of his weight.

I'd last seen him floating in that hot tub, the water swirling pink with his blood. Lydia had emptied his pockets, then I'd left
him floating there as I painfully followed her into the house. If I'd glanced back, would I have seen him lift his head and gasp?

And what would I have done then? I wondered. Tell Lydia?

By the look of him, he hadn't recovered from being shot pointblank in the chest. He was pale, thinner than I remembered, the bones visible in the forearm above his clenched fist holding the gun. He hadn't been in the bathroom while I was waiting for Lydia to arrive. Somehow, he'd slipped through the cordon of police.

“Strip her,” he said to me. “Rip her clothes off.”

“If you kill her, your face will be all over the evening news. You heard her. Everyone's going to know what happened to Jordan.”

Lydia sat rigidly, staring at Hastings like he was the ghost she'd labeled him a moment before.

He stepped forward, seized her sweater, and yanked the neck downward. She pitched forward, the fabric holding. He grabbed a better handful and pulled again, the sweater ripping at the neck. A scream escaped her and his hand was instantly at her throat, squeezing tight enough to cut off sound.

His eyes flashed. “You know where that bullet went you put in me? I can't even get a hard-on no more.”

The look in her eyes must have expressed mockery, because he twisted her around, pressing her face into the bed, and began tugging at the waistband of her pants. He was breathing hard. “That's all right, honey,” he said close to her ear. “Doesn't mean I can't fuck you the way I fucked the others. And I'm still gonna kill you when it's done.”

“You heard what she said about the electronic lockbox,” I said, my voice rising in panic as what he had in mind became clear. Lydia Cho dead in my room. Me probably dead, too. “You kill her and the video gets sent to the newspaper, gets sent to the police.”

“You really think there's a video showing my face?” he asked contemptuously. “You really believe that?”

He paused, allowing the truth to sink in. Lydia's posture was unreadable. She made no move to rise. If he was wrong, surely she'd speak up now to assure him there was a video and she'd seen it. But she said nothing. If I hadn't believed I was about to die, I'd be applauding her. She'd actually scammed Mauldin. The trouble was, she hadn't counted on the only person who could contradict her story coming back to life.

Our visitor suddenly straightened and half turned, listening. In the next instant, the door crashed in. I saw a flash of movement as whoever had kicked in the door ducked back out, Hastings firing an instant too late, the room filling with gun smoke. I heard someone shout: “Police! Throw down your weapon!”

I drove my shoulder into the center of his torso, my hands going to his wrist above the gun. He grunted in pain and wrenched himself free.

“Get down!” came a shout.

The barrel of Hastings's gun followed me as I threw myself to the floor, but gunshots sounded before he could fire, and three red holes bloomed in his shirt.