Suspicion of Vengeance (42 page)

Dodson's lips trembled, then moved again. Gail leaned closer to hear him. He could have been reading from the pages of a book.

"Two days after I spoke to Mr. Mendoza, the deed was dropped off at my office with a note from Whit McGrath. 'Have this recorded.' It wasn't right. I had to find out what was going on, and I drove to their property. No one was there. I looked through the windows and saw furniture still in the house. Dishes in the sink. The dirt around the house had been raked. There were no footprints. No tire tracks. I couldn't move. I felt sick. Terrified. As if... they were there. Watching me."

From his pocket Dodson produced a folded handkerchief, and he pressed it to one eye, then the other.

Gail released a breath. "What did you do then?"

"Drove to Whit McGrath's office. I told him what I'd seen. I was outraged. Four people. I thought he
couldn't
know. But he did." Dodson cleared his throat. "He said they'd cashed the check and gone back to Guatemala. It was a lie, of course it was a lie, but he couldn't admit it, could he? I
knew,
and he
knew
that I knew."

"You never told anyone."

"No." Dodson unfolded his handkerchief and wept into it. "I did nothing. They were dead ... murdered ... and I did nothing. Mr. Hadley asked me ... where they were. I lied. I said ... Guatemala."

"Why?" The enormity of this he, the staggering weight of it, forced the question to her lips. "Why did you lie for him? Four people dead, and you said nothing?"

He sobbed. "I had already recorded the deed! I couldn't embarrass the firm. I had a job, a family. Amber wanted so
much.
Always making
demands
on me. Buy me this, buy me that. What could I do? I couldn't bring them back. It was too late. Go ahead, say it. You're disgusting ... weak. You pitiful example ... of a man."

After a fast shower, Jackie changed into shorts and an old police academy T-shirt. She usually ran five miles after work, but today it would have to wait. Gail would be back soon. Jackie unbraided her hair and shook it out.

"It's
cold
in here." She saw that she had flipped the AC temp control down all the way. She turned it off and opened the windows. A strong breeze came through, and the photographs she had left on the kitchen counter started sliding to the floor. These were exterior color shots of the Dodson house. She'd been looking for something the crime scene techs might have missed. A patch of flattened grass, a button, a shoe print, anything.

Gathering them up, she noticed the photo of the west side of the house. The windows in the master bedroom were open. The four-paneled aluminum frames were tilted outward. But the other windows were closed. Three sets of windows, a hedge underneath. Living room, baby's room, master bedroom. Closed, closed, open. She hadn't really noticed that before. Jackie went through the photos to find the back of the house. The master bedroom windows there were open also. The third bedroom and the kitchen were closed. A big AC unit hung through the wall in the master bedroom. Jackie brought the photo closer. There was a vertical white line underneath.

She went to her desk for her magnifying glass, then to the window, where the light was brightest. She focused. It was nothing. A PVC pipe for condensation. The flash glistened on the concrete drip pad underneath. Water. The AC had been running. That was funny, she thought. The temperature had only reached the low seventies that day.

Jackie picked up the photographs again and shuffled through them. She found a close-up of the ground under the rear bedroom window, which also showed half of the concrete pad. She looked through her magnifying glass. The concrete was wet. Not just wet, flooded. The dampness extended to the outline of mildew and algae that always built up in the summer, when ACs were let run all day. This one had been running for a long time. Who had turned it off? And when? According to Dodson, the windows had been open when he had arrived home.

The crime scene reports were in a folder on her desk. Jackie flipped through pages until she found what she was looking for. Exterior photographs. Taken between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. But still the puddle was there. It hadn't had time to evaporate.

Raising her head, Jackie looked at the open window of her apartment. She felt the warm air coming in.

Last Monday at the' courthouse she had sat on one heel talking to Gary Dodson through the open door of his car. She remembered how cold it had been inside. The AC had been turned up high, and condensation had run out from underneath. The bottom of her purse had been soaked.

"Oh, my God."

Jackie threw down the photographs and ran to the counter for her keys. They were gone. She grabbed her cell phone and her pistol and pounded down the stairs yelling for her grandfather. "I need to borrow your truck! Diddy!"

As Dodson had continued to talk about his own failures, the logic of the odd relationship between him and. Whit McGrath had begun to make sense.

Gail said, "After you were fired from Hadley and Morgan, Mr. McGrath's company continued to give you some legal work. It's because he didn't want you to talk about the Mendozas. That was why, wasn't it?"

He wiped his eyes. "You're making it sound like blackmail. It wasn't. I'm a good lawyer. It wasn't my fault they fired me. I lay it all on his doorstep. McGrath owed me, don't you agree?"

"Maybe so, but he wouldn't care about that. He wouldn't be easily intimidated, either, unless ... you had proof. Do you? Do you have proof of what happened to the Mendozas?"

His thin lips trembled into a smile. "No. What proof? I can't show you a photograph. I didn't see them die."

"But you could help us, couldn't you? Because you know the truth."

Again his eyes filled with tears.

Gail reached across the desk, touching his sleeve. "Please. Kenny has two days to live. You can't let him go to his death for someone else's crime. What can I say to convince you? Mr. Dodson, please."

Her cell phone rang in her purse. She let it ring. The noise was muffled.

Dodson didn't appear to have heard. He retreated, leaning his forehead on his hands. The frayed white cuffs hid his face. "I can't. I told you, I can't help you."

"But why? You don't have to be afraid of him."

"I'm sorry. I don't want your client to die, but I can't."

Gail could hear her phone ringing again, but Dodson was paying no attention, either to her or to the tears that had begun to spill down his cheeks.

"Why can't you?" Gail wanted to shout at him, scream, pound on his desk, and the effort of remaining calm was making her dizzy. "Why are you so afraid of him?"

The voice was small and choked. "He— He would tell."

"Tell what? That you recorded the deed for him? It's going to come out eventually. Please don't wait until another innocent person is dead."

"No. No, no, no, I can't." Gary Dodson put his head down on the desk. "I don't deserve to live."

Intending to shut off her phone, Gail took it out of her purse. She noticed the number. Jackie was calling.

She murmured, "Excuse me." She spoke softly into the mouthpiece. "Jackie. I can't talk now."

Gail could hear a car door slam and an engine start, then Jackie asking her if she was with Dodson.

"Yes, in his office."

Dodson raised his head, and his forehead creased into deep lines. He stared at the cell phone.

Jackie said to make some excuse, leave as quickly as possible, don't show a reaction, just say you have to go.

"Why? What's wrong?"

Telling her not to ask any questions, just
go.
The tension in her voice came through clearly.

"All right. I'll leave now. Be home in a couple of minutes."

Jackie said not to hang up. Let me hear you leave.

"Okay. Sure."

Dodson said, "That was your cousin? The police officer?"

"An emergency. I'm so sorry. I need to go." She reached for her purse and stood up. "Thank you for your time."

She heard a drawer slide open, and from it came a revolver. The lamp glinted on the long, shiny barrel. She could see the chambers. The bullets in them. The immense black hole of the gun.

"Sit down."

"What—"

"I said
sit down."

She stumbled into the chair.

Jackie's voice came from far away.
Gail, are you all right? Answer me.
Dodson stood up, reached over the desk, and took the phone out of her hand. He closed it and pushed it aside.

"Move and I'll kill you."

Terrified into immobility, Gail could only stare up at him.

He laughed. "That sounds funny, doesn't it? Move and I'll kill you. I must have heard it on TV. But I do mean it. Please don't get up, Ms. Connor, oh, please don't, because I probably would shoot you. Just sit there and let me think."

Her mouth had gone dry. "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do. She told you, didn't she?" He burst into a laugh. "It's so funny. It really is. Rusty Beck. You want me to help you get him. You want him executed instead. So much death." Suddenly moaning, Dodson ran a hand over his head. The barrel of the gun jerked erratically. "I don't know what to
do.
" His fist came down on a stack of files, and they slid to the floor.

Gail's heart fluttered in the fragile cage of her chest. "Please don't. Please."

"They're probably on their way. We have to leave." He began to open drawers. "What can I take? Nothing.
Nothing."
He slammed the center drawer, then swung the gun toward her. "I said don't move!" He bared his teeth, and his eyes glittered.

"Oh, my God. It was you."

He picked up the portrait of his wife and child. "This is the only thing I want to take with me. It's all that matters. Amber. Sweet angel." He pressed his lips to the glass.

There were sirens in the distance, coming closer.

Gail moved slowly forward in her chair, ready to slide off and run.

Arm extended, Dodson swung the pistol, aiming it directly at her. "We're leaving now." His face was splotched red with emotion and shiny with tears. "You have to come with me. I can't do this alone."

The piercing wail of sirens surrounded them, and finally, he heard.

"They're coming. It's too late." He hugged the portrait to his chest. "God forgive me."

Jackie bailed out of the pickup truck in the middle of the street. She had reached the scene first, but a patrol car hit the brakes behind her, and another squealed around the corner at the end of the block, emergency lights flashing.

She took the steps in one leap.

"Bryce!" One of the officers shouted across the yard. "Hold on. Wait for backup!"

The door was locked. No one was inside the office. She slammed the butt of her Glock 19 through the glass and reached around for the dead bolt. "Dammit, dammit, come on."

Just as she turned the bolt, she heard a gunshot. She pushed the door open. Holding the pistol extended in both hands, she ran for the entry to the hallway and pressed herself against the living room wall. Three officers came in after her, guns drawn. More sirens were closing in.

She shouted, "Police! Drop your weapon and come out, hands on your head. Now!"

Gail's voice screamed back at her. "Jackie!"

She looked quickly into the hall. Gail stumbled through a door at the end and dropped to her knees. The front of her dress was flecked with blood.

"He's dead." She leaned against the wall, weeping.

CHAPTER 26

Monday evening, April 9

It was past nine o'clock when Anthony was finally able to free Gail from the detectives at the City of Stuart Police Department. They had questioned her like a potential suspect—customary in such cases. They had swabbed her hands for traces of gunpowder and listened with professional skepticism to her disjointed explanations of why Gary Dodson had put a bullet in his brain.

Returning to the hotel on Hutchinson Island, Anthony turned on the light and locked the door. He told Gail to go take a hot shower and change her clothes. No reply. She paced across the living room to the glass patio doors and back again, twisting her hands at her waist. Her dress was spattered with blood: rust-colored spots on pale blue linen.

"If only I had lied to them. I could have said he confessed. It might have made a difference." Her hair was wild and uncombed. She had rinsed out the blood in the law office bathroom before calling Anthony on her cell phone. She told him what Jackie had found: The air conditioner in the Dodson house had been running all day, chilling Amber's dead body.
Anthony, please hurry.

Breaking speed limits to get there, Anthony created the murder scene in his mind. Dodson and his wife had argued that morning, another in a series of arguments between a frustrated, unhappy young woman and a man staggering under the weight of his financial, sexual, and moral failures. It started in the kitchen. He grabbed a knife and stabbed her. She ran for the bedroom. In the hall he nearly caught up, ripping out a handful of her hair. She tried to close the door, but he pushed it open, and the impact sent her staggering backward. He knocked her onto the bed, raised the knife, plunged it into her, again and again, blood flying from the point of the knife across the headboard, up the wall, to the ceiling. She was dead, this young woman in her red silk panties and top, and he kept stabbing until he was exhausted.

What then? Sanity returned.

He ripped the clock cord from the wall and wound it tightly around her throat. He reset the clock. Then a shower. A shave. Dressing for the office as if this were any other morning. A call to Amber's work— the call overheard by Whit McGrath and Rusty Beck. A call to the baby's day care center. Two bottles in the crib. And before leaving, Gary closed the bedroom windows, pulled the curtains, and turned the air conditioner to its lowest setting. He made sure during the day to remain in sight. At 10:00 a.m. he faked a phone call to his wife. Returning home at the normal time, he turned off the AC, opened the windows, and went to check on his son. The anguish in the call to 911 had been real. Grief and shock disguised his guilt, and a mistaken eyewitness turned the police in another direction.