The Partner (23 page)

“Do you deny it?” J. Murray asked, completing the setup.

“Absolutely,” she snapped.

“Of course,” added Lance. “The man is a living lie.”

J. Murray reached into a deep drawer and withdrew one of the reports Sandy had given him. “Seems Patrick was suspicious throughout most of the marriage. He hired investigators to snoop around. This is a report from one of them.”

Trudy and Lance looked at each other for a second, then realized they had been caught. Suddenly, it was difficult to deny a relationship that was now more than twenty years old. They both became smug at the same instant. So what? Big deal.

“I’ll just summarize it,” J. Murray said, then clicked off dates, times, and places. They weren’t ashamed of their activities, but it was discomforting to know that things were so well documented.

“Still deny it?” J. Murray asked when he finished.

“Anybody can write that stuff,” Lance said. Trudy was silent.

J. Murray pulled out another report, this one covering
the seven months prior to Patrick’s disappearance. Dates, times, places. Patrick left town, bam, Lance moved in. Every time.

“Can these investigators testify in court?” Lance asked when J. Murray finished.

“We’re not going to court,” J. Murray said.

“Why not?” Trudy asked.

“Because of these.” J. Murray slid the eight-by-ten color glossies across his desk. Trudy grabbed one and gasped at the sight of herself lounging by the pool, naked, her stud next to her. Lance was shocked too, but managed a tiny grin. He sort of liked them.

They swapped the photos back and forth without a word. J. Murray relished the moment, then said, “You guys got too careless.”

“Skip the lecture,” Lance said.

Predictably, Trudy started to cry. Her eyes watered, her lip quivered, her nose sniffled, and then she cried. J. Murray had seen it a thousand times. They always cried, not for what they had done, but for the wages of their sins.

“He’s not getting my daughter,” she said angrily through the tears. She lost it, and they listened to her bawl for a while. Lance, ever vigilant, pawed at her and tried to console.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said, wiping tears.

“Relax,” J. Murray said without the slightest trace of compassion. “He doesn’t want the kid.”

“Why not?” she asked, the tear ducts shutting down instantly.

“He’s not the father.”

They squinted, thought hard, tried to assemble things.

J. Murray reached for yet another report. “He took a blood sample from the child when she was fourteen months old, and had a DNA test run on it. No way he’s the father.”

“Then who …” Lance started to ask, but couldn’t complete the thought.

“Depends on who else was around,” J. Murray said helpfully.

“No one else was around,” she said, mocking him angrily.

“Except me,” Lance volunteered, then slowly closed his eyes. Fatherhood descended heavily upon his shoulders. Lance despised children. He tolerated Ashley Nicole only because she belonged to Trudy.

“Congratulations,” J. Murray said. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a cheap cigar and tossed it to Lance. “It’s a girl,” he said, and laughed loudly.

Trudy fumed and Lance toyed with the cigar. When J. Murray finished humoring himself, she asked, “So where are we?”

“It’s simple. You waive any right to his assets, whatever they may be, and he gives you the divorce, the kid, everything else you want.”

“What are his assets?” she asked.

“His lawyer is not sure right now. We may never know. The man is headed for death row, and the cash might stay buried forever.”

“But I’m about to lose everything,” she said. “Look at what he’s done to me. I got two and a half million when he died, now the insurance company is ready to bankrupt me.”

“She deserves a helluva lot of money,” Lance piped in on cue.

“Can I sue him for mental distress, or fraud, or something like that?” she pleaded.

“No. Look, it’s very simple. You get the divorce and the kid, and Patrick keeps whatever money is out there. And everything is kept quiet. Otherwise, he’ll leak all this to the press.” J. Murray tapped the reports and the photos when he said this. “And you’ll be humiliated. You’ve gone public with your dirty laundry; he’s quite anxious to return the favor.”

“Where do I sign?” she said.

J. Murray fixed them all a vodka, and before too long he was mixing another round. He finally brought up the subject of those silly rumors about Lance looking for a hit man. The denials came fast and furious, and J. Murray confessed that he really didn’t believe the trash anyway.

There were so many rumors racing up and down the Coast.

Twenty-two

They began tracking Sandy McDermott as he left New Orleans at 8 A.M. and worked his way through the traffic on Interstate 10. He was followed until the congestion thinned near Lake Pontchartrain. They called ahead and reported he was on his way to Biloxi. Following him was easy. Listening would be another matter. Guy had bugs for Sandy’s office and home phones, even one for his car, but the decision to install them had not yet been made. The risks were significant. Aricia especially was wary. He argued with Stephano and with Guy that Sandy might well expect his phones to get tapped, and might feed them all sorts of useless or even damaging gossip. His client had so far proved quite proficient at seeing around corners. And so they argued.

Sandy wasn’t looking over his shoulder. Nor was he seeing much in front of him. He was simply driving,
moving forward while avoiding contact, his mind, as usual, many miles away.

From a strategic point of view, the various Lanigan battles were in good shape. The civil suits filed by Monarch-Sierra, the law firm, and Aricia had been placed on dockets already densely crowded. Formal responses by Sandy were a month away. Discovery wouldn’t start for three months and would last for a year. Trials were two years away at the earliest. Likewise for Patrick’s suit against the FBI; it would one day be amended to bring in Stephano and his consortium. It would be a delightful case to try, but Sandy doubted he would ever get the chance.

The divorce was under control.

The capital murder charge, clearly the center of attention, was another matter. Obviously the most serious of Patrick’s problems, it was also the speediest. By law, the state had to try Patrick within two hundred and seventy days of the indictment, so the clock was ticking.

In Sandy’s opinion, a conviction based on the evidence would be a longshot. For the moment, crucial elements of proof were missing—significant facts such as the identity of John Doe, and the manner in which he died, and the certainty that Patrick killed him. It was a tenuous circumstantial case at best. Large assumptions would be called for.

However, a conviction based on public sentiment was foreseeable. By now everyone within a hundred miles of Biloxi knew most of the details, and you couldn’t find a literate breathing soul who didn’t think Patrick killed someone to fake his death so he could lie in ambush and steal ninety million dollars. Patrick had
a few admirers, those who also dreamed of a new life with a new name and plenty of dough. But they would not be on his jury. Most folks, it seemed through the informal polling of coffee shop talk and courthouse gossip, felt he was guilty and should spend time in prison. Very few favored the death penalty. Leave that for rapists and cop killers.

Most pressing, though, at the moment, was keeping Patrick alive. The file on Lance, hand-delivered last night by the lovely Leah in yet another hotel room, portrayed a quiet man with a hair-trigger temper and a penchant for violence. He liked guns, and had once been indicted by a federal grand jury for fencing them through a pawnshop. The charges were later dismissed. In addition to his three-year stint for smuggling pot, he had been sentenced to sixty days for his part in a barroom brawl in Gulfport, though the time was suspended due to an overcrowded jail. There were two other arrests—one for another fight and one for a DUI.

Lance could be cleaned up and made presentable. He was lanky and handsome, and well admired by the ladies. He knew how to dress and carry on amusing chitchat over cocktails. But his forays into society were temporary. His heart was always in the street, just above the gutter, where he hung out with loan sharks and bookies and fences and reputable drug dealers, the smart white-collar boys of local crime. These were his friends, the guys from his neighborhood. Patrick had found them too, and the file contained no fewer than a dozen little biographies of Lance’s pals, all with criminal records.

Sandy at first had been skeptical of Patrick’s paranoia.
Now he believed it. Though he knew little of the underworld, the nature of his profession occasionally brought him into contact with criminals. He had heard many times that for five thousand bucks you could get anyone killed. Maybe even less along the Coast.

Lance certainly had more than five thousand bucks. And he had a wonderful motive to eliminate Patrick. The life insurance policies that made Trudy rich didn’t exclude any particular causes of death, other than suicide. A bullet to the head was treated just like a car wreck, or a heart attack, or anything else. Dead was dead.

The Coast was not Sandy’s turf. He didn’t know the sheriffs and their deputies, the judges and their quirks, the other members of the bar. He suspected this was precisely why Patrick picked him.

Sweeney had been less than hospitable on the phone. He was very busy, he said, and besides, meetings with lawyers were usually a waste of time. He could spare a few minutes, starting at nine-thirty and barring an emergency. Sandy arrived early, and poured his own coffee from a pot he found next to the watercooler. Deputies milled about. The sprawling jail was in the rear. Sweeney found him and led him through to his office, a spartan room with government hand-me-down furniture and fading photos of smiling politicians on the wall.

“Have a seat,” Sweeney said, pointing to a ratty chair as he sat behind his desk. Sandy did as he was told.

“Mind if I record?” Sweeney asked, already punching the button on a large tape recorder in the center of his desk. “I tape everything,” he said.

“Sure,” Sandy said, as if he had a choice. “Thanks for working me in.”

“No problem,” Sweeney said. He had yet to smile or offer anything other than the impression of being bothered by this. He lit a cigarette and sipped steaming coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Sandy said, as if idle conversation were an option. “My office has received a tip that Patrick’s life may be in danger.” Sandy hated the lying, but he had little choice under the circumstances. This was what his client wanted.

“Why would someone tip your office that your client was in danger?” Sweeney asked.

“I have investigators working on the case. They know lots of people. Some gossip got passed along, and one of my investigators tracked it down. That’s the way these things happen.”

Sweeney showed neither belief nor disbelief. He smoked his cigarette and thought about it. In the past week, he had heard every conceivable species of rumor about the adventures of Patrick Lanigan. People were talking about nothing else. The hit man stories were of several varieties. Sweeney figured his network was better than the lawyer’s, especially one from New Orleans, so he would let him talk. “Got any suspects?”

“Yes. His name is Lance Maxa; I’m sure you know him.”

“We do.”

“He took Patrick’s place with Trudy not long after the funeral.”

“Some would say Patrick took his place,” Sweeney said, with his first smile. Sandy was indeed on foreign turf. The Sheriff knew more than he.

“Then I guess you know all about Lance and Trudy,” Sandy said, a little rattled.

“We do. We take good notes around here.”

“I’m sure you do. Anyway, Lance, as you know, is a nasty sort, and my men got a rumor that he was looking for a contract killer.”

“How much is he offering?” Sweeney asked skeptically.

“Don’t know. But he has the money, and he has the motive.”

“I’ve already heard this.”

“Good. What do you plan to do?”

“About what?”

“About keeping my client alive.”

Sweeney took a deep breath and decided to hold his tongue. He struggled with his temper. “He’s on a military base, in a hospital room with my deputies guarding his door and FBI agents down the hall. I’m not sure what else you have in mind.”

“Look, Sheriff, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job.”

“Really?”

“No. I promise. Please try and understand that my client is a very frightened man right now. I’m here acting on his behalf. He’s been stalked for over four years. He’s been caught. He hears voices we don’t hear. He sees shadows we don’t see. He’s convinced people will try to kill him, and he expects me to protect him.”

“He’s safe.”

“For now. What if you talked to Lance, and you grilled him pretty good and told him about the rumors. If he knew you were watching, he’d be stupid to try something.”

“Lance is stupid.”

“Maybe, but Trudy is not. If she thinks she might get caught, she’ll yank Lance back where he belongs.”

“Been yanking him all his life.”

“Precisely. She will not run the risk.”

Sweeney lit another cigarette, and glanced at his watch. “Anything else?” he asked, suddenly anxious to get up and leave. He was a Sheriff, not an office manager with a desk and Rolodex.

“Just one thing. And again, I’m not trying to tend to your business. Patrick has enormous respect for you. But, well, he thinks he’s much safer where he is.”

“What a surprise.”

“Jail could be dangerous for him.”

“He shoulda thought about that before he killed Mr. Doe.”

Sandy ignored this and said, “He’ll be easier to protect in the hospital.”

“Have you been to my jail?”

“No.”

“Then don’t lecture me about how unsafe it is. I’ve been doing this for a long time, got it?”

“I’m not lecturing.”

“The hell you’re not. You got five more minutes. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Good.” Sweeney bolted to his feet and left the room.