David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

I try to maintain calm, as much as I want to shake her. But I let her go, seeing the animation across her face, and something beyond excitement.

Fear.

“Leo,” she says. “His name was Leo.”

From my jacket pocket, I remove the Xerox of the infamous photograph of Harland Bentley with reporters and the man in the background with the scar beneath his eye. The man who attacked Brandon Mitchum. The man who probably killed Fred Ciancio, Amalia Calderone, and Evelyn Pendry.

“God.” Gwendolyn takes the photograph, then looks at me. “That’s him.”

LEO LOOKS OUT THROUGH the sliding glass door in Shelly Trotter’s apartment, onto the parking pad below. It’s nearing nine o‘clock, work time. He hears footsteps on the floor below him, the shuffling of shoes as the occupant on the second floor leaves through her sliding glass door, bounding down the stairs. A moment later, she drives off, leaving only Shelly Trotter’s car out there.

Leo unlocks the sliding glass door but doesn’t open it. He takes a quick look into the bathroom at Shelly Trotter’s body, then heads out the front door of the apartment, down the internal stairs. He finds his car on the street and drives it through the alley to the parking pad behind the brownstone.

Let’s see whose side you’re on now, Mr. Riley.

HELL, YES, I want an APB. And get his name and photo all over the fucking media. Print, television, radio, Internet” McDermott punches out his cell phone and looks through the passenger window at the addresses of the gargantuan homes. When he finds the one he wants, he pulls up to a steel gate. McDermott shows his shield to the man in a booth. ”Mrs. Bentley is expecting me,” he says.

“Mrs. Lake.” The man picks up the phone and makes a call. “Detective, follow this road around the curve, please.”

The home, like many homes of the megarich, is set back on the grounds. McDermott cruises past a fountain and an elaborate garden until the road curves around to the front door of the mansion.

No one deserves this much money. This place has three front doors.

A woman dressed all in white, her hands clasped behind her, stands under the awning between two ornate pillars. She greets him warmly, and seems unsure what to make of the files he’s carrying in his hands. “I’ll hang on to these, thanks,” he tells her.

The foyer is not surprising, a long, angled staircase, chandelier, antique furniture. His escort takes him into a parlor with more of the antique thing going on. McDermott’s wife was the decorator in the family. All he’d requested was a comfortable couch.

He declines a beverage, and the woman leaves him sitting on something uncomfortable, staring at a baby grand piano. They wanted Grace to be musical. Talked about piano lessons. He’s going to have to follow up on that. He’ll have to find a used upright piano somewhere.

He’ll have to find some money, too, to afford it.

“Detective.”

McDermott gets to his feet. Natalia Lake is tall and fit, dressed in a sleeveless turtleneck. Her gray hair is pulled back slick against her skull. Her skin is tanned and artificially tight. Her eyelids, though, are a darker shade.

“Forgive me if I’m a little out of sorts,” she says. “I do not sleep well on overnight flights and we just landed two hours ago. I’ve barely had time for a bath.”

“Sure,” he says. “How was your flight?”

“Turbulent.”

“What airline?”

She blinks her eyes. “Airline?”

“Oh.” Right. She has her own jet.

“I’m so sorry I’ve been unavailable,” she says. “I did cut my stay short”

McDermott scratches his nose. “Yeah, I appreciate that. Italy, right?”

She takes a seat on the couch opposite McDermott. “I have friends in Tuscany who absolutely insist that I take a few weeks every summer.”

“Oh, absolutely.” McDermott reaches into a file and pulls out the photo of Harland Bentley and the man standing behind him whose name he now knows.

“Mrs. Lake, can you identify that man in the background?”

“Please, it’s Nat. Oh.” She recoils, probably upon seeing her ex-husband. “In the back?” She puts on her eyeglasses and looks again. “Oh. Is that Leo? This is an old photograph.” She looks at McDermott. “Leo-Leo Koslenko,” she says.

“Do you know where he is now, Mrs. Lake?”

“No, I don’t.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t seen Leo for years. I don’t think I’ve seen him since-since Cassie died.”

“You haven’t spoken to him, either?”

She stares at him. “Oh, no,” she whispers. “Leo’s done something?”

McDermott deflates, waves a hand. “Let’s back up,” says McDermott. “Who is Leo Koslenko?”

She sighs, raises her chin. “Leo’s family in the Soviet Union was close with mine. Leo had some trouble, and his family felt he would be better off here, in the States.”

“What kind of trouble?”

She shakes her head dismissively. “Disciplinary, I assume. I don’t know. His family asked if I would take him and I did.”

“And when was this?”

Koslenko’s sheet showed that he immigrated to America in 1986. He wants to hear Mrs. Lake’s answer.

“Mid-eighties,” she answers. “During the Reagan administration.”

He nods. “And he came to live with you?”

“Yes.” She crosses her leg. “He worked for us. His quarters were here, in fact” She gestures with her hand. “This was my sister Mia’s home, originally. I lived on the other side of town.”

“Where Mr. Bentley still lives.”

She smiles weakly. “We’re both too stubborn to move.”

“Leo, you called him-Leo lived here?”

“Yes. There is a coach house.” Her eyes run over him. He imagines she has made many judgments of many people with those eyes, most of them unfavorable. “Am I to assume that Leo is under suspicion? They mentioned a homicide over the phone.”

“More than one homicide.”

“More than-Oh, dear God.” She touches her face, her hand trembling. “Leo was a sweet boy, but-well, he’d been in therapy. I thought he’d come along quite well.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him or saw him?”

“Oh, quite some time ago.” Her eyes cast off. “Well. Cassie died in June of 1989. I left Harland almost immediately afterward. It was-oh, it was-it was rather chaotic, to say the least.” She picks absently at a fingernail, shaking her head slowly.

McDermott watches her but keeps silent. In his experience, the best Q and A’s are long on the A’s.

She clears her throat with some difficulty and continues. “When I left,” she says delicately, “I never went back. I moved in with my niece Gwendolyn, and I no longer wanted our staff to intermingle. I wanted Harland’s staff to be Harland’s and ours to be ours. I wanted the separation to be complete.”

He nods. “And Leo?”

“Leo probably should have stayed with us, with me,” she says. “But he didn’t.”

“Did Leo stay at Harland’s place?”

Natalia closes her eyes. She brings a hand to her forehead, pushing back hair that is already pushed back. “You would think I would know that answer,” she says. “You would think someone who took responsibility for Leo would see to it that he was doing all right.”

“But you didn’t.”

She offers the tepid smile again. “After my daughter’s death, I was hardly functional for a good year. I’ve had some abuse problems of my own, if you didn’t know.”

He shakes his head no.

“Yes, well-my daughter had been the best antidote.” She sighs, and continues in a flat tone. “I was not sober for at least twelve months after they found Cassie. So no, Detective, I did not know what became of Leo.”