Austin Camacho - Collateral damage

“It would seem that Joan and Oscar go back even farther than I suspected.”

Within fifteen minutes Hannibal was turning off Route One into the little mini-suburb of hotels and office buildings just north of Alexandria called Crystal City. On the way, he had called Cindy to let her know he had the case all figured out. While pulling into the access road behind the Courtyard Marriott, he mentally walked through the likely scenarios of meeting Gil, Ruth and Joan together. He tried to predict who would say what, how each would react, and how he could best separate Ruth from the other two. He was convinced that Gil and Joan were conspirators involved in the three connected murders. Ruth, he thought, was an innocent and he needed to separate her from the rest.

He grabbed the yearbook, dropped change into the meter at the curb and walked around to the front of the hotel. He spotted Ray parked a few yards away. At least no one would go in or out unobserved.

Hannibal brushed past the uniformed doorman into the chrome and steel lobby, complete with conversation groups reminiscent of the gathering of faux living rooms one finds in large furniture stores. The elevators rose up transparent columns on the other side of the lobby, and he stalked toward them with resolve. He had a plan, but just before he reached the elevators, his plan was short-circuited by a woman calling his name.

He spun to see Ruth Peters on the nearest sofa. Her soft features beamed at him as if he were a long lost family member. The woman was woefully short of family, he thought, and he couldn’t simply walk past her even if he wanted to. Working to raise a smile, he went to her and sat opposite her on the facing couch. For a moment, it was as if he was visiting her in her own living room.

“Mrs. Peters, you’re looking well today. But why are you sitting out here in the lobby?”

She touched her bluish hair and Hannibal thought she might be a little embarrassed. “I was here visiting an old acquaintance, but he has company right now.”

Hannibal thought it time to cut through some of the smoke screen. “You’re here with Gil Donner, ma’am,” he said. “You know him because years ago he was provost marshal in Berlin and your husband’s boss. His visitor is Joan Kitteridge. I now know that she knew your son back in high school.” He laid the yearbook on the glass table that separated them. Ruth eyes flared in instant recognition.

“Where did you find this?” she asked, laying her gnarled hand on the cover as if it were her son’s body. “Did you take it from Oscar’s home?”

“Actually, your husband gave it to me when I went to Germany,” Hannibal said. “I should have given it to you right away, but I thought…”

He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence so she finished it for him. “You thought I’d want to know why Foster would part with it. That was kind of you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you fished it out of our trash. Foster can be a cold man.”

Hannibal reached forward to touch a bookmark sticking out just a bit at the top of the book. Ruth moved her hand and he opened the yearbook to the designated page. The room was dominated by the sounds of people rushing more than they needed to on their way to their next destination. Over that noise he heard Ruth’s small gasp.

“Yes, this is the woman upstairs,” Hannibal whispered. “Joan Kitteridge. She went to school with Oscar. More recently, she was his boss, at her own software company.”

“His boss. Her company.” Ruth spat out the words. “I knew that little tramp when she was young and dirt poor. Oscar even brought her home once or twice for a meal.”

“But then she married young, didn’t she?” Hannibal asked.

Ruth’s face reddened, making a sharp contrast to her blue tinted hair. “In Germany,” she said. “She was with him before she was even out of high school. But I understand he died in a training accident.”

Hannibal reached out to take the old woman’s right hand in both of his own. The hand was cold, but the veins on its back were a road map of the long and twisted trail she had taken through life. There were secrets buried so deep she could barely see them. He thought now was the time to dig them out.

“Mrs. Peters, I need for you to tell me what it is that ties Joan and her ex-husband to your husband and to Gil Donner. What connects them?”

Ruth released one loud sob and a tidal wave of tears spilled out of her eyes. She faced downward, her sorrow splashing onto Joan Kitteridge’s teenage face. “The murder,” she said.

Hannibal looked around but none of the travelers stopped to ask about, or even seemed to notice the old woman sobbing in the lobby. Still, he leaned closer to make it clear he was comforting her, and offered her his handkerchief. He couldn’t see how Gil Donner or Foster Peters figured in the death of Grant Edwards or Oscar’s more recent murder. One possibility remained. “Do you mean Carla Donner?”

Ruth nodded, holding the handkerchief to her nose. “Foster covered it all up to protect them. Oh, God, he covered up the murder and somehow, Oscar always suspected. He knew his father had done something wrong. That suspicion drove them apart.”

“You said protect them? The murderer and…”

“Gil,” she said, forcing words through her crying. “He was afraid if there was a real investigation everyone would know…” Hannibal waited for her to regain her breath. “They’d know she was with another man.”

Hannibal was rubbing her hand now, feeling her shake. “And somehow Joan knew about all this?”

This time when Ruth’s head started nodding it didn’t stop. “She must have known. Her husband was having an affair with Carla.”

Hannibal stopped at the hotel room door to add to his tally of victims. While Foster Peters lived with his own actions, his wife Ruth felt such guilt about his actions that it had eaten her alive from the inside out for perhaps twelve years. Hannibal had called Ray inside to keep an eye on Ruth while he went upstairs to face the conspirators who, he was certain, were working at getting their stories straight in case of trouble. He had just raised his hand to knock when the door opened inward and Joan almost walked into him.

“Where you headed, girl?” Hannibal asked, planting a gloved palm in the center of her chest and shoving her back inside. “This is where it gets interesting.”

As Joan fell against the bed Hannibal took the room in at a glance. Donner had decorated his space to look like home. A five or six inch statuette of an infantryman stood guard on the low chest of drawers. What looked like a class photo of men in uniform stood in the center of the round table by the window. Between that table and Hannibal, Gil Donner stood at the writing desk holding the telephone to his ear. As Hannibal stepped past the bathroom door on his left Donner slowly lowered the phone back into its cradle.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Donner asked.

“Giving you a chance to confess and maybe lighten your sentence.”

“I have done nothing,” Donner said, taking one step forward.

Hannibal pulled his automatic from under his right arm and pointed it at Donner’s right knee. “Nothing except perhaps destroying evidence and certainly falsifying reports. Maybe you’re just guilty of being a bad cop. Or isn’t a provost marshal considered a cop?”

Donner and Joan exchanged a look that seemed more desperate than Hannibal would have expected. Joan sat up on the bed, looking more like a woman than an executive for the first time in Hannibal’s experience.

“You don’t understand,” she said in an unexpected, plaintive tone. “You can’t keep me here.”