Reckless Disregard (42 page)

I arrive at The Barrista at 11:05 p.m. It took longer than anticipated to evade the paparazzi and the press. I had to borrow a different neighbor’s car, a Land Rover. Before last week, he probably wouldn’t have loaned me a cup of sugar. Being a celebrity does have its benefits.

Though I’m twenty minutes late, Lovely hasn’t arrived yet. Has she changed her mind about coming?

The shop is empty. Romulo and the rest of the staff are polishing the chrome espresso makers and wiping down the tables, getting ready to close. When he sees me, he gives me a big smile. The other baristas glance at me shyly.

“You’re an actor, huh, buddy?” he says “That little kid. I remember that little devil. My sisters loved him.” He pats me on the back. “All right.”

“Has Brenda come in today?” I say.

“Not today or yesterday.” His smile broadens. I’m sure he’ll be very glad to get his storeroom back.

One of the baristas brings me a shot of espresso. I smell it as if it were a fine Bordeaux. I take a sip, and it’s even better than wine. I’ve been living on courthouse swill, and I’ve missed this.

Lovely still hasn’t arrived by the shop’s 11:30 p.m. closing time. She sends a text saying she’s on her way. I tell the staff to leave, that I’ll close up.

She finally arrives at 11:40, wearing a blue hoodie, plaid shirt, blue jeans, and a floppy green felt hat. She sits down across from me.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “The kid’s . . .” Her gray irises darken, a storm warning to herself not to pursue this line further. “William Bishop’s not a criminal.”

I heft the package containing the
Satan’s Boatman
tape. “I have proof that he’s a murderer and abducted McGrath to cover it up.”

“Billy . . . William wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Are you sleeping with him? Is that what this is about?”

She looks like someone who’s been stung so many times by this question that she’s immune to its venom. “Did you sleep with your roly-poly little assistant?”

“Is the blonde slut jealous?”

The voice from the storeroom sounds like Brenda’s, but the woman who walks out isn’t Brenda, it’s Courtney the cosplayer, dressed like video game Felicity McGrath, red hair in dreadlocks, tight jumpsuit. My first reaction is that the gun in her left hand and the knife in her right are props. But when I look into her eyes, I know better.

“I’d say, ‘Don’t scream and nobody will get hurt,’ but it would be a lie,” she says, and then moves across from me and directly behind Lovely.

“Courtney, what’s this about?”

She points the gun at me. “My name’s
Felicity
!”

“OK, Felicity.” I raise my palms in conciliation and keep them there. “I’m on your side. I’m trying to find out what happened to you.” I’m stretching my acting ability in an effort to sound calm but also to avoid a patronizing tone that could set her off.

She shakes her head. “People who disturb lost souls have to pay for their sins. You’re disturbing my . . .” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head violently. “You’re disturbing Felicity’s soul with all your probing and digging and asking questions, all those people looking at old, dead history that should stay . . .” Her jaw clenches, and she looks as if she’s about to pull the trigger.

And then it all becomes clear. I’ve made a grave miscalculation. I struggle to keep my eyes from blinking and, against all reason, slowly lower my raised hands.

“Philip Paulsen,” I say. “It was you.”

She smirks proudly. “The priest was bothering Alicia Courtney. Bothering, badgering her, invading her privacy.”

“And the Kreisses?”

“He was going to help you win your case, trouble Felicity’s soul so she couldn’t rest. You have to die, Parker.” She shakes her head again, but this time as if dazed. I have to keep her talking.

I tilt my head toward Lovely. “Let her go. She’s my adversary, which means she’s been trying to keep Felicity’s soul at rest.”

Courtney’s icy chuckle makes my legs quiver. “She’s not going anywhere. You think I’m stupid or something? Anyway, that blonde bitch saved the black-assed judge.”

“What did Judge Triggs have to do with—?”

“That judge was going to help you win.” Courtney uses the barrel of the gun to motion toward Lovely. “He ruled against
her
in court. I haven’t figured out if this girl is a level boss or collateral damage like the cop’s wife. It matters, you know. You get points off for collateral damage but a bonus for killing a boss. Which are you, Ms. Diamond? I think a boss, because evil hides behind beauty.”

Lovely looks at me with her lips clamped together as if she’s trying to stifle a scream. But her hands are also balled up into fists, and I fear that she’ll try to fight. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

“So you’re telling me that if Poniard wins the lawsuit, somehow Felicity’s soul will be damaged? I think it’s the exact opposite. I think if I win the lawsuit, we’ll be closer to getting to the truth, and the truth will set Felicity’s soul free, will bring closure to—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Courtney says.

I stop talking, try not to shrink away, not to break eye contact.

She regards the weapons in her hands with a puzzled expression. “It’s so important for the player to choose the right weapons before starting a level. The battle is often won and lost because of the right weapon.” In a childish, sing-song tone, she says, “A knife for your friend, a gun for the cop, a knife for his wife ’cause a gun would go pop!” She sneers and jabs the knife in the air toward Lovely. “I would’ve had that judge if this porn-slut whore hadn’t warned him.”

I stand slowly, hands up, to divert her attention toward me. If I can somehow get the gun, I’ll deal with the knife just so Lovely can run.

“Sit down!” Courtney shouts. Good. She’s focused on me now.

I don’t sit down. It’s not an immediate risk, because she wants to talk some more, explain her demented actions like the psychopath she is. If she didn’t want to talk, she’d have killed us both already. Lovely tries to stay still; she’s a strong woman, but her lips are trembling.

“Let’s talk about this, Felicity,” I say.

She laughs derisively and shakes her head. “Don’t patronize me, Parker. I’ve told you already. I’m Felicity’s
daughter
. She lives on through me. I am my mother. We’re all our parents. There is something I want to tell you, though, before I kill you both and move on to the next stage. You’ll think this is hysterical.”

The door to the back alley cracks open slowly. Who is it? Romulo or someone else on the staff who left something behind? Brenda? I circle to my left, clockwise around the table, and fortunately Courtney circles in the same direction, which was my intent, because now the rear door is out of her line of sight.

“Stop moving, goddamn it!” she shouts.

I put my hands up. “You wanted to tell me something, Courtney . . . Felicity? Something that would make me laugh?”

She looks at me with demented glee. “Did you know your—?”

A huge mass crashes through the alley door and lunges at Courtney, all the force directed at the hand carrying the gun, which clatters to the floor and slides away. A woman shrieks—I don’t know if it’s Courtney or Lovely. Lovely jumps up, runs to the storeroom, and slams the door shut. I dive for the gun and retrieve it, look for Courtney, but my only target is the indistinguishable ribbon of intertwined bodies. Then it’s no contest because the powerful Banquo Nixon knocks Courtney unconscious.

He stands up, holding the knife. “Oh god, Mr. Stern, I didn’t know, I really didn’t know, I couldn’t believe she . . .” He’s speaking not in his normal British accent but with a slight Russian accent.

His face has been slashed from the corner of his mouth to just below his left ear.

“She cut you pretty bad,” I say. “You’ll need the paramedics to get you to the hospital.” I reach over and smooth away some of the whiskers of his thick beard. He just keeps looking at Courtney and apologizing to me.

The heavy beard covers a birthmark—identical to the one in that fuzzy picture Brenda found so long ago of the person many suspect of being Poniard.

“Vladimir Lazerev?” I say.

Sirens blare in the background. Lovely must have dialed 911.

“I have to leave,” he says.

“Are you—?”

“I’m no one important. Please don’t tell them I was here. Tell them you were the one who knocked her out. And . . . and don’t hurt her. Sorry, Mr. Stern.”

He turns and runs toward the back door, doesn’t stop when I shout, “Poniard, wait!”

Though I beg her not to, Lovely insists that she’ll tell the cops about Banquo, understandable because I won’t reveal why I want to keep his involvement secret. But when the police arrive, she parrots my version of events—Courtney hid in the storeroom, came at us, and I disarmed her.

The cops don’t leave until one-fifteen in the morning. Lovely and I are alone.

“Now will you admit you’re wrong about Bishop?” she says.

I hold up the
Satan’s Boatman
tape. “Let’s watch this. Then we’ll talk.”

We go into the back, and after
Satan’s Boatman
has finished, Lovely Diamond asks me for a favor that I should immediately refuse. But, of course, I don’t. I can’t.

I don’t get back to my condo until three in the morning. Rather than going to bed, I launch the computer and send Poniard a message—
Are you all right?
There’s no reply, and there’s still no reply when I wake up with my head on the desk three hours later. I try to get some sleep in my bed, but it’s hopeless. So I shower and drive back to The Barrista, ignoring the pursuing reporters and photographers, who already know about last night’s assault. I wait for Brenda to show up, and when she isn’t in by nine-thirty, I text her. I get a message back that she’s ill and won’t be coming in today, maybe won’t come in tomorrow either.
So sorry, Parker
, the message ends. There’s no mention of last night’s attack. At least I know she’s OK, that Courtney didn’t go after her before coming for me.

Next, I call Detective Tringali, who takes my call immediately. I don’t tell her about
Satan’s Boatman
. Like a fool, I promised Lovely I’d wait. I do ask about Courtney.

“Very preliminary information,” Tringali says. “The forensics people say that the gun this suspect Courtney Doe was carrying—”

“What did you say her last name was?”

“We don’t know. We’re calling her Courtney
Doe
, like
Jane Doe
. Anyway, preliminarily, the bullets from her gun match those that killed Bud Kreiss. The knife is consistent with the blade that killed Isla Kreiss and your friend Mr. Paulsen.” She goes on to say that there’s no apparent connection between Courtney and Bishop, that Courtney is profoundly disturbed—one of the police psychiatrists thinks she’s suffering from schizoaffective disorder, whatever that is. Courtney keeps repeating that she’s Felicity McGrath’s daughter but otherwise won’t identify herself, keeps babbling on about video game wars and evil level bosses and wicked lawyers and porn-star bitches trying to rile up Felicity’s soul. The cops have no leads on her true identity—no fingerprints, no arrest records, no missing persons reports. It’s as if she sprang full-blown out of nowhere.

The last thing Tringali says before we end the call is, “I loved your movies when I was a girl.”

I pour myself the third Brazilian Bob-o-Link of the morning and wait for Lovely Diamond to call. Fifteen minutes later, someone comes over to my table and drops a heavy box on it, startling me. I look up to see Joyce Paulsen, Philip’s wife.

I stand and say, “How are you doing, Joyce?”

“Hanging in there, thank you for asking.” It’s a rote, meaningless answer to a rote, meaningless question.

“Did you talk to the police? They think they’ve . . . they
have
captured the woman who killed Philip.”

“They said she attacked you and Lovely Diamond. Are you all right?”

“We’re fine.”

“It’s so horrible, what happened to my Philip. You know, he used to chat with those people when he came to see you, the ones who dressed up like characters from your client’s video game. He mentioned the one who . . . he said she dressed up like Felicity McGrath, insisted that everyone call her Felicity. Said she was a pretty girl, but so very troubled. I think that’s why she was able to get so close to him the day he . . . The police said it could’ve been someone he knew. Anyway, he felt sorry for her. I do, too.”

“I don’t.”

Joyce frowns, as if I’ve dishonored Philip’s memory.

I ask her to sit, offer to buy her some coffee and a pastry, but she says, “I can’t stay. When the police came by a few months ago looking for evidence, I showed them Philip’s case files, but they said something about attorney and client confidentiality, that you have the right to review them. But I was so . . . it just slipped my mind. When they came back today, they asked again. I still hadn’t passed the files on to you, so I just boxed everything up and here I am.”

“Thanks. It’s good to know that the cops are honoring the attorney-client privilege.”

“Well, you take care, Parker.” She raises an index finger. “There’s something else.” She reaches into her pocketbook and hands me a USB flash drive. “Philip was so good with technology, and I’m . . . what did he call me, a Luddite? I had my young neighbor copy all his e-mails about the case on this . . . gizmo. He didn’t read them, though, I made sure of that, just made copies. The police said once you finish reviewing the documents for the confidential things, call Detective Tringali and they’ll come pick up the nonconfidential documents.”