David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

McDermott makes a face but doesn’t answer. He wants me to answer.

“I have no idea,” I say.

“Cassie Bentley’s doctors were at the Sherwood Executive Center,” he tells me. “Sherwood Heights is right by Highland Woods, where she lived.”

“Okay?” I don’t know what conclusion I’m supposed to draw from that.

“Think it’s a coincidence?” he asks me.

I don’t answer. I wouldn’t know how.

“Reason Fred Ciancio gave for the transfer,” he continues. “He said that his mother was undergoing chemotherapy at the building. He wanted to be close to her. He asked for a three-week reassignment to that building, to cover the course of her treatment.”

I think about that. Fred Ciancio got himself transferred by Bristol Security to one of their other buildings-a building that housed Cassie Bentley’s doctors. I’m not a big fan of coincidences, but life can be strange, and, when it comes to coincidences, this is not exactly earth-shattering.

“The problem,” McDermott adds, “is that Ciancio’s mother had been dead for ten years. So I don’t see where chemo was going to help her much.” Now, that’s a little closer to shaking the earth. I feel a flutter in my stomach.

“Ciancio used an excuse to work at that building, where Cassie’s doctors were, right around when the murders occurred.” This time it’s Stoletti. A one-two punch. She would be the bad cop, but neither of them is showing me much collegiality. “And then, Ciancio calls Carolyn Pendry and says he wants to talk about the Burgos case. But he gets cold feet.”

Why would a security guard make up a reason to be assigned to a building? I can only think of one reason.

“He helped someone break in,” I assume. “Someone paid him off to get into one of the offices in that building.”

McDermott’s eyebrows rise. The notion, of course, has already occurred to him.

“And you think this is related to Cassie being pregnant,” I add. “And/or having an abortion.”

“What do you think?” she asks me.

I shrug. I find myself lacking a lot of answers right now. But it makes sense.

“You’d never heard about Cassie being pregnant, or having an abortion, back then?”

She already knows my answer. I gave it to her right after we talked to Professor Albany.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Now she’s provoking me, enjoying it.

“Do I need a lawyer?” I ask.

Stoletti looks at her partner. “He doesn’t want to answer, Detective. That’s his right.”

“I had never heard anything about Cassie having an abortion or even being pregnant,” I say, not hiding the anger. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

McDermott speaks again. “Usually, when you’re on a case, you work up the victim’s background. How is it you didn’t know Cassie was pregnant right before she was murdered?”

An icy smile creeps across my face. “First of all,” I say, “we don’t know she was pregnant or had an abortion. We just have a suspicion. You may have learned in cop school about the difference between facts and hunches. And second of all, the reason we didn’t delve deeply into Cassie’s background is-”

I freeze on that. From the faces of the cops across from me, this is the next topic.

“Because you dropped the charges on Cassie’s murder,” Stoletti says. “At the request of Harland Bentley, I assume?” She slides the photograph across from me, the one of Harland and the reporters, with the ghoulish guy with the scar in the background. “The same Harland Bentley in this photo, which we found in Fred Ciancio’s closet, hidden in a shoe box?”

“The same Harland Bentley,” McDermott joins in, “who hired you and gave you all of his legal business, less than a year later?”

“You, a guy who’d practiced criminal law his whole life,” Stoletti punches, “suddenly given responsibility for millions of dollars of civil litigation for BentleyCo.”

I sit back in my chair and take a moment. My insides are on fire. I feel the sweat on my forehead, my heart pounding against my shirt.

In my law practice, I will often counsel people who are targets of a criminal investigation. I give them all the same advice. Don’t talk about the case with anyone. You never know who’s wearing a wire. And if the government calls, don’t say a damn thing to them without me-or some lawyer-present.

The human impulse is to talk, to explain away something that appears to be incriminating. The instinct is also to lie, or if not lie, to massage the truth. Cops and prosecutors count on the vast majority of people succumbing to these basic principles. Federal prosecutors make a living on it. Even if they can’t prove an underlying charge against you, if you abused the truth a little they will get you on that, and use that to flip you, or put you behind bars, for that reason alone.

Resist the impulse, I tell them. Let the government remain suspicious of you. It’s better than being caught in a lie. You can always talk later.

Thing is, I have nothing to hide.

Stoletti is enjoying this. McDermott is trying to read me.

“This,” I tell them, “is bullshit.”

“Another name that’s come up in the investigation,” McDermott says, “Amalia Calderone. That name ring familiar to you?”

I shake my head no.

“You never made her acquaintance?” Stoletti asks.

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” I answer.

“Two nights ago,” McDermott joins, “she was bludgeoned to death. Does that ring a bell?”

Bludgeoned. Bludgeoned. It doesn’t fit with the second verse’s lyrics. Next up is a straight razor, then a chain saw, then a machete.

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” I repeat. “Should it?”

Stoletti takes the folder from McDermott and produces three eight-by-ten glossies, in color, that she slides across the table.

I take one of the photos and a groan escapes my throat. It’s a close-up of her face, turned to the right. A wound to the right temple, and then massive contusions on the top of the skull. A violent death. She was beaten severely. Whoever did this enjoyed doing it.

“Molly,” I say. The woman who lured me outside of Sax‘s, when I got jumped and robbed. I look up at the cops. “You don’t honestly think I killed her?”

“You tell me, Counselor,” McDermott says. “Explain to me why your fingerprints were found on the murder weapon.”

THE SIGN OVER the front of the store says VARTEN’S TOOLS AND CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT, a run-down shack attached to a large lumberyard. A bell rings as Leo walks in. The store is empty, save for the clerk, an old guy behind the counter on the phone. Leo walks up to the counter as he looks over the chain saws attached to the wall.

Leo looks at the clerk, who holds up an index finger to him while he finishes his phone call. Leo drums his fingers as he looks around the store, looking casually, just strolling through the neighborhood, thought you might have a chain saw, yeah. Then his eyes move back to the clerk, and then to the counter behind which the clerk is sitting.

He sees a scrap of paper taped down on the counter, a single word on it: TRIM-METER.

He sucks in his breath. Trim-Meter. Pretend to cough, buy some time.

“Help you, sir?”

Leo nods to the wall. He says the words again: Chain saw. He isn’t looking at the clerk when he says it, but he notes the pause, a couple beats too long, long pause-

“Any, uh, any brand in particular?”

Shrug the shoulders, act casual. Like you don’t care.

Look at the man, elderly guy, spotted forehead, tiny neck, seems relieved, he likes the answer-