David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

Mitchum shakes his head slowly, causing himself some pain in the process. He touches the bandage on his face. “She would have told me,” he says confidently. “She would’ve had to tell me. I made her promise.”

“You made her promise?”

“Yeah.” Mitchum’s tongue runs over his dry lips. “I was afraid of what she might do. I wanted to be close to her, so she wouldn‘t- so she-” His eyes narrow, frozen in a sixteen-year-old memory.

McDermott says, “So she wouldn’t take her own life?”

“It-yeah, it had crossed my mind. Who knew what she might’ve done? ”

Mitchum’s head falls back against the pillow. McDermott looks over at Stoletti, wondering if she’s thinking about what, exactly, Cassie Bentley might have done.

Like confront her father, maybe.

A LONG SILENCE HANGS between Harland and me. I finally repeat the words, to be sure I actually heard them.

“You and Ellie were having an affair?”

“Oh, an ‘affair,’ I don’t know. But, from time to time, yes. She was so-so…”

He doesn’t move from the comfort of the darkness on his side of the room. His head angles up. He sighs whimsically. Jesus, this guy really couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. He couldn’t keep his paws off Cassie’s best friend?

“She was so what, Harland? Young? Sexy? Forbidden?”

“Vibrant.”

“Oh, she was vibrant. Oh, that explains it, then.”

“If there is one thing I don’t come to my attorney for,” he says evenly, “it’s the passing of judgment. I come to my attorney for protection. I don’t want this to come out, Paul. It’s nobody’s business.”

He’s right, to a point, but that doesn’t stop my stomach from churning. I don’t like being left out of the loop, not when I’m prosecuting a case. He could have told me back then. We would have seen it for what it was-a nonstarter, an irrelevant detour. We caught Burgos red-handed, and it took only hours before he was admitting to killing all of the women. Ellie Danzinger’s extracurricular activities would have had nothing to do with Burgos’s guilt.

“Who knew about this?”

He clears his throat. “Ellie,” he says, “and me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Discretion is one thing we both understood.”

“I can’t believe this,” I mumble.

“I’m not concerned with what you can believe.” Harland emerges from the darkness of the corner. “You’ve defended murderers. You’ve defended executives who steal from their shareholders. You defended us, with that pollution problem in Florida. I’m guilty here of far less. So defend me, Paul. Keep all of this quiet.” He stands face-to-face with me now. “Or I’ll find someone who will.”

I stare at him. Again, he’s holding his money over me. He knows there are dozens of lawyers at my firm who would be on the street without his business.

“Find someone who will,” I say.

I see that I’ve surprised him, as much as Harland ever shows surprise. His eyes search my face for a break in my reaction.

“You’re afraid.” He nods his head once, slowly. “I’ve never seen that from you.”

He’s not talking about our relationship. He’s not talking about the millions of dollars of business he sends my way every year.

And he’s right.

“Who killed my daughter?” he asks me.

I say it quickly, “Terry Burgos,” but the answer surprises both of us, the speed of my response, the fact that the question is even remotely credible. Three days ago, it wasn’t.

His expression lightens a bit, amusement, he wants me to think. Like he’s not afraid of anyone.

“I’m going to find out what’s going on,” I tell him.

“Even if it proves you wrong.”

“Even if.”

I turn for the door. I navigate the hallway, my legs shaky. The British guard eyes me suspiciously as I push open the front door and head to the elevator.

“IT DIDN’T MATTER,” Brandon says. “What’s the point of ripping apart these people’s lives when it served no purpose?”

“I’m not asking why you didn’t tell the police back then,” McDermott says. “I want to know why you didn’t want to tell us tonight. And why we ‘didn’t hear this from you.’ You afraid of someone, Brandon?”

Brandon waves off the notion, trying to give the impression that McDermott’s off base. But he’s not. He can read it all over Mitchum.

“Harland Bentley,” he guesses.

Brandon’s eyes shoot to McDermott, then retreat. He might as well have said yes.

“Tell me about you and Harland Bentley, Brandon.”

“Look, it’s not just me.” He says it like it’s wrong, whatever it is. “Mr. Bentley is one of the biggest benefactors to the arts in this city. He gives money to a lot of artists.”

Oh. Right. Mitchum is an artist.

“He endowed a grant through the City Arts Foundation for me,” he concedes. “Okay?”

McDermott drops his head and peeks over at Stoletti.

“When did this happen?” Stoletti asks.

“When I graduated Mansbury. That was ‘ninety-two.”

“He gave you a grant in 1992?”

“Yeah. Well-it’s a continuing grant. He refreshes it every year.”

“How much does he ‘refresh’ it?” McDermott asks.

“Oh.” Brandon waves a hand. “Started out at twenty-five thousand. Now it’s seventy-five thousand a year.”

“Seventy-five thousand?” McDermott makes a face. “And what do you do for this refresher, Brandon? Why you?”

The coloring on the face of the young artist has changed to a light crimson. This is not a topic he enjoys. “He told me that Cassie would have wanted him to help. He said he appreciated that I was there for Cassie.”

A doctor comes into the room and wants to know if they’re done. McDermott says he needs five more minutes. Mitchum, it seems, was hoping for a reprieve. The doctor stands next to McDermott to let him know the clock is ticking.

“There’s nothing wrong with accepting a grant,” Mitchum says.

McDermott nods at him. “You and Mr. Bentley ever discuss what we’ve just discussed?”

He shakes his head. “Never.”

Stoletti asks, “You think he knew that you knew about Ellie and him?”

“No,” he insists. “I don’t know if there’s even anything to know. It was just a thought that Cassie had. See, I knew you’d try to make this look bad. He gives millions a year to the arts. I’m one of many. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

The doctor moves between the detective and the patient. “That’s enough for tonight, guys. Really.”

“We’ll have a guard at your door,” McDermott tells Brandon. “You think of anything, I want you to call me.”

They step out into the hallway. Stoletti digests the conversation while McDermott checks for messages on his cell phone. None.

So Cassie is pregnant and having unpleasant conversations with whoever the father is, who seems to want to deny it. Then Cassie is murdered. Then someone gets Fred Ciancio to help break into the building where Cassie’s medical records are located. None of this, save Cassie’s murder, is confirmed. But it makes sense.

Nor can it be confirmed that Cassie’s father was playing around with Ellie’s best friend. But if he was, then Cassie was having a pretty rough time right before she was murdered.

“You think Cassie confronted her daddy?” Stoletti asks. “He marries into a billion dollars, and he’s afraid of his wife finding out that he was screwing their daughter’s best friend?”

“And,” McDermott adds, “we have another someone who doesn’t want Cassie’s pregnancy to come out. Professor Albany sure looks good for the ‘fucking father.”’

“And just about this time,” she replies, “Ellie and Cassie conveniently turn up dead.”