Smoke Screen (36 page)

He paused to offer Raley a drink.

“No thank you.”

“You sure? Kentucky’s finest.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself. Where was I?”

“Heaven.”

George belched. “Right. We hadn’t dated a month before Miranda started talking marriage. Course I was all over that idea. She’s hot and her old man’s loaded. What’s not to like, right?”

“Right.”

“So down the aisle we went. Honeymooned in Tahiti. Swam naked in the surf. In fact, Miranda stayed naked most of the time. Practically wore blisters on my dick. I thought,
George, you lucky bastard, you have hit the jackpot for sure.
She had beauty, money, and a button that stayed excited twenty-four/seven on account of that little gold stud.”

His eyes went vacant for several moments, then he squinted Raley back into focus. “She killed my kid, you know.” Seeing Raley’s shock, he said, “Yeah, you heard right. She came back from the honeymoon pregnant. I was thrilled, and for weeks strutted around here like a goddamn peacock. But I noticed she wasn’t getting a tummy on her, and when I remarked on it, she started laughing and said, ‘And I never will, darlin’.’ She’d got rid of the baby and hadn’t even bothered to tell me.”

Raley felt a twinge of pity for the man, and had to remind himself of the lives George was responsible for taking.

“But my consolation prize was all the sex,” George continued. “She’s all about fun and games. Knows every trick in the book. Guess how she knows.”

“I don’t want to guess, George.”

“She’s been doing them for a long time, that’s how. Technically, she was a virgin until she was twelve, but long before that, she and Les—”

Involuntarily Raley recoiled.

“Surprise!”
George exclaimed. Then it seemed his entire face collapsed and was held on to his skull only by the loose skin. “I was sorta surprised myself, finding out that Miranda was daddy’s girl in every sense of the word. That little gold charm I liked so well? He’s the one who suggested it.”

Raley swallowed his revulsion. “She was a child, a victim. Why didn’t she tell someone?”

“Victim?” George said, scoffing. “No, Gannon, no. She liked it. She
loved
it.”

“What about Mrs. Conway?”

“Probably suspected,” George said with a negligent shrug. “How could she not? But one day when Miranda was about fourteen, her mother caught them in flagrante delicto. And
not
the missionary position. That night Mrs. Conway washed down a bottle of pills with a bottle of vodka and half of another. It was ruled an accidental overdose.”

He finished the whiskey in his glass and poured more. “I’ll bet you’re wondering why I haven’t left Miranda.” Raley had been wondering that. He’d also been wondering if Britt had played the video for Candy yet and if police officers were being dispatched to arrest George. As disgusting as the conversation was, if he could keep him talking long enough…

“I’ve threatened to pack up and leave dozens of times, but she knew I never would. For one thing, I liked the money and the sex and the whole package that came with marrying Miranda Conway. But the big, major, number one reason I couldn’t leave her was that she knew I was no hero. She knew about Cleveland Jones and how he died and how the fire started.”

Raley’s heart gave a little bump. “How did she know?”

“This…” George started laughing again. “You’re going to like this, Gannon. I told her. I admitted it in what you might call a moment of weakness. Well, my brain was weak. My dick was a Louisville Slugger. See, we were playing a sex game. Leather restraints. Massage oil. Blindfold. It became kind of a truth-or-dare thing. We’d swap our deepest, darkest secrets, she said.”

He leaned forward and whispered. “You ever had a candle pushed up your ass while your dick is being sucked?” He sat back and grinned drunkenly. “She wouldn’t let me come until she had the whole story. Kept teasing and teasing, and, well, the truth spilled out along with my seed. To borrow an Old Testament phrase.

“Anyway, after, when she removed my blindfold, I reminded her that it was her turn, truth or dare. Then she smiled this gloating smile I’ll never forget and told me who’d taught her this naughty little trick with the candle. She said, ‘It’s one of Daddy’s favorite things we do.’”

Suddenly tears filled his eyes and ran down his bloated cheeks. “I wish she would have just castrated me then and there. Because she and Les have been sawing away at my balls every day since, stripping me of my manhood a little bit at a time. They know their secret is safe with me so long as mine is safe with them.”

He considered the bourbon in his glass but pushed it away without drinking any more. Instead, he hefted the pistol in his hand as though trying to guess its weight. “I’ve been waiting on you, but you’re earlier than I expected. I figured I would beat you to the punch, save you the trouble.”

“Save me the trouble?” Raley asked.

“You know about Pat Junior, right? Being a homo?”

Raley nodded.

“Now you talk about a sorry excuse for a man,” George said. “Cruel irony that all this started with that sniveling little faggot. And Cleveland Jones?” He made a sound of disgust. “He needed killing if anybody ever did. Lawless, cocky son of a bitch. Thought he was above the law. Had a real contempt for authority. Smart guy. Tough customer. You know the type.

“Pat was mortified about his son being gay and all, but this Jones character had almost killed him. Pat insisted on getting a confession out of Jones and putting him away for years, someplace he’d do hard time, where he’d be raped a coupla times a day. Punishment fitting the crime, see?

“In hindsight, we should’ve just popped him where we found him, let it be blamed on gangbangers. But no, we stayed within the law. To that point anyway. We hauled him to the station, then took him to a room where nobody could see in and started working him over. The four of us told him he wasn’t getting out of there until he’d signed a confession, and we didn’t care how long it took. In fact, we hoped it would take a nice, long time.”

Raley said, “He didn’t have skull fractures when you arrested him, did he?”

George wiped his wet cheeks and gave Raley a look that said the question wasn’t even worth answering, but Raley had asked it mostly for the benefit of the camera.

“Who actually dealt the deathblow, George?”

More tears streamed from his bloodshot eyes. “Hard to say. Pat maybe. Jay got in a few good belts, but he wasn’t that strong. Might have been me. We were taking turns. Jones was on the floor, and I think it was Jay who first noticed that he was no longer moving. Jay called the rest of us off. He felt for a pulse.” George ran his arm under his nose, mopping up the mucus dripping from it with his sleeve. “Jones was dead.”

He lapsed into silence, so Raley prompted him. “Then what happened?”

“What the fuck you think? We freaked, especially Pat, because we’d just killed a man, all on account of his queer son.”

Raley nodded down at the lighter on the desk. “You started the fire with his lighter.”

“I was the one who’d emptied his pockets when we checked him in. I kept the lighter. Don’t know why. Maybe to bring home and show Miranda, thinking she’d get a kick out of it. I don’t remember. Anyway I had it, and it came in handy.”

“You wanted it to look like Jones had just enough life in him to start the fire before he died.”

“That was the basic plan. We were all panicking, yelling at each other, cussing, trying to sort it out. As I said, freaking out. Jay, of course, kept the coolest head. He said we’d tell everybody that we’d noticed his head wounds but thought they were superficial. That it wasn’t until later, after we were pressuring him with questions, that he started acting weird and we realized he was out of his head.

“The rest of us agreed it sounded like a plan. Jay said to light the stuff in the trash can, so it would look like Jones had gone crazy. I set fire to some paper. We left the room, thinking the fire would soon burn itself out. A minute maybe. We counted on the smoke alarm going off, then rushing in and pretending to be shocked to find Jones dead. But the fire…” He dropped his chin on his chest, mumbling, “You know the rest.”

Raley could barely contain himself. The camcorder had just recorded George’s confession, although George seemed unaware of it, or indifferent to it. Keeping his voice low, Raley asked, “Why did you keep the lighter?”

The man shook his large head mournfully. “Like when priests flog themselves? The lighter is like a whip. I take it out every now and then to remind myself of what I did.”

He was quiet for a moment, and Raley counted the seconds. How long before the police would arrive? Britt would have told Candy about the night at Jay’s house, the attempt on her life, the man this morning who obviously had shot Fordyce after they fled.

Fordyce.

Something niggled Raley’s brain, but he didn’t have time to address it before George continued.

“We were trying to act normal, waiting for the smoke alarm. But all of a sudden the fucking wall of that room was on fire, burning from the inside out. Then we really panicked. We didn’t bother with Jones. We knew he was already dead. We started trying to get all the other people into the stairwell and out of the building. In all the confusion, with the smoke, nobody could see anything. No one could locate the keys to the holding cell.” His chin began to tremble, and a sob shook his large body. “I can still hear those men trapped in the cell screaming.”

He wiped his nose again. “It came as a shock to us that we were made out heroes,” he said with a laugh that was negated by the tears rolling down his face. “We thought that, as soon as the fire was out, we’d be arrested. So you can imagine how we felt when…Well, you know how it was. That photo,” he said, looking at the picture on the wall.

“We told ourselves there must be a reason for it turning out the way it had. A higher purpose, Jay called it. Some such bullshit,” he said scornfully. “Anyhow, we made a pact. No one would have to know. No one could tell. Ever.

“We thought we’d be okay. We thought we’d get away with it. Brunner seemed satisfied with our explanation about Jones.” He sighed and looked across at Raley. “But you were stubborn as hell and too fucking good. Jay tried stalling you, but on the issue of Cleveland Jones, you just wouldn’t give up and let it go. You had us scared shitless.”

Slowly Raley nodded. “So you devised a way to discredit me.”

Britt wanted to know what the latest news from Columbia was, but the judge insisted on hearing what she had to say first.

So for the past ten minutes, Candy Mellors had listened as Britt gave her a rushed, almost breathless account of the last few days, beginning with her meeting with Jay and ending with her and Raley fleeing the attorney general’s house. Knowing the constraints on the judge’s time today, she had economized on words, divulging as many details as she could as concisely as possible.

She finished by saying, “Raley and I got the hell out of there.”

Candy sat back and took a deep breath, as though she’d been the one doing all the talking. “Sweet Jesus. I understand now why you’d be hesitant to surrender to the police.”

Britt nodded.

“Where is Raley?”

“He hopes to bluff George McGowan into thinking that Fordyce ratted him out. He took the camcorder, thinking he may get McGowan on tape admitting his role in all this, and incriminating Fordyce at the same time.”

“Any such recording wouldn’t be admissible in court.”

“I realize that, and so does Raley. But having it is better than not.”

“You have the tape of your interview with Fordyce?”

Britt pulled the small cartridge from the pocket of her jeans and handed it over. “Fordyce doesn’t actually own up to his participation. But if Raley can get George McGowan’s admission, then the AG’s role will be exposed, and we’ll have him on video lying about it, which would at least strengthen any prosecutor’s case against him.”

“It’s a high body count,” the judge said, shaking her head. “I’m dumbfounded by the extent of their perfidy.”

“Even more astonishing is that they’ve got away with it for these five years.”

“The man who responded to Cobb Fordyce’s summons this morning, the fake security guard, you’re certain he was in Jay’s town house that night?”

“Positive. My memory came back the instant Fordyce opened his front door and I saw him there on the threshold. Some of my recollections are still hazy. Segments of time are missing, but I remember him with perfect clarity because he laughed while his partner was molesting me.”

“Molesting you? You didn’t mention that before.”

“It’s not easy to talk about.” Speaking woman to woman, Britt described the experience.

The judge frowned with distaste. “That must have been awful for you. You’re certain that if you saw this man again you could identify him?”

“Without question.”

“Would he look anything like that?”

Britt, puzzled by the question that was seemingly nonsensical, turned her head, following the direction of the judge’s nod.

He had entered the room unheard and was standing with his back to the closed door, leering at her, just as he had when he violated her.

“Britt,” the judge said, “I believe you’re intimately acquainted with Mr. Smith.”

G
EORGE SEEMED TO HAVE LAPSED INTO A STUPOR
. W
ITHOUT
his noticing, Raley set the camcorder on the edge of the desk, left it recording, and gave George a verbal nudge. “You had to stop my investigation, so you set me up with Suzi Monroe.”

George took a heavy breath and released it slowly. “Jay’s idea. Two birds with one stone, stop you from finding out what we did to Cleveland Jones, and give ol’ Jay a free shot at your fiancée.” He winked a bloodshot eye. “His plan worked, too, didn’t it? That was our Jay. Everything always went his way.”

Raley recalled the morning he’d awakened to find the girl dead beside him, how Jay had been calmly drinking coffee and reading the Sunday newspaper. Remarkable, that he could be that blasé after having sacrificed a young woman’s life.

“Did Jay kill her?”

“She killed herself.”

“He just supplied the dope.”

“Pat and me, actually.” George’s reply was matter-of-fact. “Jay was to get the girl, we were to get the coke. That was our deal. Jay wooed her into slipping you the Mickey. Told her it would make you last all night, and it damn near did. Finally you passed out. Then we gave her the coke. Urged on by Jay, she…” He sobbed again. It took a moment for him to collect himself enough to go on.

“Next morning she was dead, and it worked out just like Jay had promised us it would. Your life went from sugar to shit. We were off the hook.” George had begun to slur his words, but he was fully aware of what he was saying. He focused his bleary eyes on Raley. “How long before you figured it out?”

“A while. At first I denied it was possible. I didn’t want to believe my best friend could do that to me. Not then, not now.”

“But once you caught on, you didn’t get over it.”

“No, I didn’t get over it.”

George sighed. “Well, I can’t say as I blame you. In your place, I probably would have done the same. Truth be known, I wish you had started with me.”

Maybe George wasn’t as lucid as Raley had thought. Perplexed, he said, “Started what with you, George?”

“Your vendetta.”

“My—”

“I’m relieved, you know. Ever since Pat Senior got popped in that alley, I’ve been waiting for my turn, wondering how you were going to take me out, and when. Gotta hand it to you, the way you dispensed with Jay. That was poetic, man. Using that newswoman and giving her the drug like we gave you. Very clever. Sent us all a message that caused some puckered sphincters, let me tell you.

“After Jay, the rest of us knew we were screwed, that it was only a matter of time. Even Miranda and Les have been nervous, and those two are never rattled. But I can sense it. They’re on edge, wondering if their relationship will be revealed once I’m exposed as a fraud. See, having a big, strapping hero for her husband is the perfect cover for them. And Pat Junior has been about to have a stroke. Of course, he’s as frightened of everybody learning he’s gay as he is of your revenge.”

“George, what the hell are you talking about?”

But by now the man had become lost in the boozy maze of his mind. Raley’s interruption didn’t draw him out of it. “One thing I can’t figure, though. Why’d you cap Cobb Fordyce this morning? He wasn’t even there when we did Jones. He was the real hero of the fire, the
only
hero. He had nothing to do with Suzi Monroe, either. He even gave you a pass on that. So why’d you do him? No, no, don’t bother answering. Screw it. I don’t really care.”

Suddenly, he raised the pistol and poked the barrel under his chin. Reacting instantly, Raley vaulted over the desk and caught George’s wrist just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet went wide and bored a hole through the paneling.

The desk chair with both of them in it went over backward, crashing into a trophy case. Shattered glass rained down on them. Trophies attesting to George’s athletic ability tumbled from their display shelves. A heavy silver cup hit Raley hard on the head, but he barely felt it. He was intent on his struggle over possession of the pistol.

George was much heavier than Raley, but Raley’s coordination wasn’t affected by bourbon. He wrested the pistol from George’s hand, but George got in a punch, his meaty fist connecting solidly with Raley’s eye. Inside Raley’s skull, new suns were born in blasts of light, but he held on to the pistol.

“Let me do it! Goddamn you!” the man sobbed. “Let me do it.”

“You said the
four
of you worked Jones over. But then you said Fordyce wasn’t there.”

“Give me the pistol.” George was blubbering, stretching and flexing his fingers toward the gun that Raley held well beyond his reach.

“Who else was in that room, George?”

“Please,” he whimpered. “I’m tired of it all. I just want to die.”

With his free hand, Raley grabbed him by his collar and jerked him up until their faces were no more than an inch apart. “Who was the fourth person, George?” He shook him hard, causing his burly head to wobble.
“Who?”

“Candy, of course.”

Raley’s breath came out in a gust. He stared at George’s ruddy, contorted face, but didn’t see any deceit in his sagging expression, only abject misery. He let go of him as though the fabric of George’s shirt had stung his hands. When George’s head hit the floor, there was a crunch of glass, but he seemed impervious to the shards that pierced his scalp. He rolled onto his side, assumed the fetal position, and continued to cry like a baby.

Candy. Of course.

Tightly gripping George’s pistol, Raley surged to his feet and turned, ready to dash for the door. Instead he drew up short and froze.

Standing just inside the room, cradling pistols in their hands and in firing stances, were the two men he’d last seen partially dressed, racing back into their hotel rooms. Butch and Sundance. Both had their pants on now, and their expressions were taut with angry resolve.

“Drop the pistol, Gannon! Drop it
now
!”

Raley thought of Britt, whom he’d sent to the enemy, to Candy, his supposed friend, the one person in the world he’d trusted with his life. With Britt’s life. He’d sent Britt to Candy for protection, not knowing until now that it was from Candy that Britt needed protection. It was too late to save her. Too late to save himself. Too late for every damn thing. He had absolutely nothing to lose by trying to shoot his way out of this.

These thoughts whizzed through Raley’s mind with the speed of a comet as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Butch shouted, “Drop it! Don’t do it! FBI!”

The man Candy had introduced as Mr. Smith had entered the room with the same silence and aura of hauteur and menace with which he’d walked into Jay’s town house. Making a choking noise, Britt shot to her feet.

Candy laughed softly. “I see you
do
recognize him. He was ordered not to touch you that night, yet you say he did some fiddling down there. Which of you am I to believe, hmm?” Her cell phone rang. “Would you two please excuse me while I take this call?” The judge removed the cell phone from the pocket of her suit jacket and flipped it open.

As she did, Britt screamed bloody murder, hoping that whoever was on the other end of the call would hear her and come to her rescue, or that someone in a neighboring building might, miraculously, pick up the sound.

Smith responded immediately. He rushed forward and clapped his hand over her mouth and nose, pinning her arms against her body, making them useless.

The judge, frowning at her, calmly returned to her call. “Yes, that was Ms. Shelley, trying to make her presence known. She’s taken care of. Your job is to get Gannon.”

Britt listened with dismay and rising fear as Candy assigned the caller to find Raley and George McGowan and eliminate them both. “Don’t leave any witnesses. Do whatever you have to, but make it look like Raley was responsible. And don’t disappoint me. You’ve fucked up once already this morning.”

She closed her phone with a decisive snap and returned it to her pocket. Britt’s lungs were burning for air. At a small nod from the judge, Smith relaxed his hand, allowing her to breathe but holding her chin. She knew he could break her neck in an instant if he wished. She rasped, “I don’t understand.”

“No? What don’t you get?” Candy asked.

“You were in on it all along?”

“From ‘all along,’ do you mean from the day of the fire?”

Britt nodded.

“Yes. From that day, when Jay called and asked me to come to the police station. He, McGowan, and Wickham were interrogating a skinhead, and they needed someone from the DA’s office to help scare a confession out of him. Fordyce wasn’t available, so I grabbed my briefcase and trotted over.”

“You were there when Cleveland Jones…”

“Had his skull bashed in, yes. We never were clear on who struck the deathblow.”

The scene that this respected judge calmly described left Britt temporarily speechless.

“We managed to keep the secret,” Candy continued, “but for the past five years I’ve kept close tabs on the men. Women are stronger, you know. Much stronger. Anyway, I paid careful attention to my—”

“Coconspirators,” Britt supplied.

Candy smiled. “For lack of a better word. I monitored their lives, looking for any signs of change or weakness. When Jay was given his grim prognosis, that was a serious heads-up. I put a tap on his phone. Good thing, too, because I knew immediately when he called you for a date. Red alert. He was dying and got afraid of going to Hell. I knew what he wanted to confess.

“So I quickly put together a plan to make sure he didn’t tell our secret, or if he did, you wouldn’t remember it. I should have had you killed, too. I realize that now. But at the time, I thought you’d be of better use to me alive. You would appear to be one of Jay’s many jilted lovers who’d finally had enough of his shenanigans and smothered him in his sleep. The plan was to make you the prime suspect, so the police wouldn’t be investigating anyone else. Everything went according to plan.” Her insidious smile faded. “Then you pulled your disappearing act.”

“Raley kidnapped me from my house.”

Taken aback by that, Candy stared at her, then laughed. “You’re kidding. By-the-book Raley Gannon? He kidnapped you?”

Britt nodded.

“What do you know? Those years spent in the woods must have brought out some dormant primitive instincts,” the judge said with amusement. Winking at Britt, she asked, “Do those animalistic urges take over in bed, too? We know about Jay’s sexual talents, because he boasted of them. But I always wondered about Raley’s. He doesn’t kiss and tell the way Jay did. He’s the strong, silent type.”

Shaking her index finger teasingly, she said, “I’ve long suspected there were some strong undercurrents beneath the surface. Am I right?” Britt just stared at her, trying to keep her face expressionless while her mind was scrambling to devise a way out, a means to survive.

“Not gonna share?” the judge said. “Oh, well. Doesn’t matter.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I’ve got to hurry this along. Where was I?”

“Raley’s primitive instincts,” Britt said. “Which served him well when he dived into the river and saved me from drowning.”

“Ah. The rescuer. Now
that
sounds like the Raley I know. How did he know you went into the river?”

“I—”

“Never mind. I don’t have time for a long story.”

“I apologize for putting a crimp in your busy schedule.”

“Don’t resort to sarcasm, Britt. It doesn’t flatter you.” The judge paused a moment, then said, “I wasn’t surprised to hear that Raley came out of hiding to attend Jay’s funeral. Considering their lifelong friendship. I wasn’t too bothered to learn that he was there, except that he had singled out George, and some of what he insinuated made George very nervous. Then your resurrection came as a shock. I thought I was finished with you.”

“You intercepted the telephone conversation with my lawyer?”

“We’d tapped his phone, yes. When I heard you tell him that Jay’s death and the police station fire were connected, I had to act swiftly. Mr. Smith here was responsible for your dip into the Combahee.”

“Which, if I were ever found, would look like a suicide.”

“That was the plan, but I see now that too much was left to chance. I assumed we had succeeded and didn’t know you were still alive until you and Raley paid a visit to Pat Junior’s house.”

“He reported that to you?”

“Immediately after you’d left. He’s scared of me, you see. Because even when he was still in the hospital with his jaw wired shut, I warned him that if he ever told anyone I was in that interrogation room with Cleveland Jones, I would expose his homosexuality, which his father had looked upon as a disgrace, and had killed a man in order to keep it secret.

“And periodically, I would remind Pat Junior of that warning, just in case he was under the misconception that I’d forgotten it and he was safe from me. On his wedding day, I told him that, if he ever betrayed me, I would ruin his phony marriage. When his babies were born, I took teddy bears to the hospital and threatened to hurt the children if anyone ever found out that I’d been there when Jones died and the fire was set.”

“You made yourself believed,” Britt said. “He didn’t tell.”

“Bully for him.”

The longer Britt could keep the judge talking, the better her chances were of escape. But how? Smith felt as unmovable as a wall behind her. Even if she could break his hold on her, she couldn’t possibly make it to the door.

Could she go forward? The room had only one window, and it was directly behind Candy. It was a fixed, single-glass pane, without any metal or wood framework. But they were on the top floor of a six-story building. If she could, by some miracle, escape Smith long enough to ram past Candy and throw herself through the window, could she survive a fall from that height? Probably not. But she wasn’t going to survive anyway, so perhaps it was worth taking the chance.

Not yet, though. Not until she had the complete story. Getting the story. That was her job, wasn’t it?

Raley had said she didn’t give herself enough credit, that she could be a star anywhere. She would do this last interview for him.