Catherine Coulter: Split Second

Nandi Patil gaped at him. “No, no.”

Savich turned to face Krishna Shama. “You and Mrs. Patil were having an affair, Mr. Shama. We are aware of that. Did you want to end it? Why? Because of the closeness of your uncle and Mr. Patil? Because Jasmine was so much older than you were? Why, Mr. Shama?”

Shama looked from Ben Raven back to Savich. “Yes, Jasmine and I were lovers, for nearly a year. I never wanted to end our affair; I never wanted to leave her. I loved her, but now she is dead. I think Mr. Patil killed her.”

Tears rolled down Mr. Patil’s face. He’d been rocked to his soul in the past ten minutes. His eyes looked blank with shock.

Krishna Shama said, “Listen to me. I did not kill Jasmine. I did not know she had tried to murder Mr. Patil. I did not know.”

Savich turned to Mr. Urbi. “You and Nandi have been friends since you were children. You are older, though, aren’t you, sir?”

“By twelve years. A lifetime of difference in our ages,” the old man said. He was sitting perfectly still, not even blinking.

“You love Nandi like a younger brother, don’t you, sir?”

“Yes, of course. He is very important to me. His near death filled me with grief.”

“And then you discovered your nephew and Jasmine Patil were lovers. They had betrayed both you and Nandi. You were furious, weren’t you, sir?”

“That is right. When Detective Raven questioned us after the robbery, he left me with doubts, merely suspicions—glances, phrases that had passed between Jasmine and Krishna that I realized I had chosen to ignore. And when Nandi was shot a second time, it all became clear to me. To be absolutely sure, I paid a large sum of money to that criminal, Mr. Wenkel, through his lawyer, to confirm to me privately that it was Jasmine who had hired him.

“Nandi isn’t of my flesh and blood, but he is my brother in all ways that are important on this benighted earth. He did not realize, could not see what she had become. Had I told him she had betrayed him, that she continued to betray him with my own flesh and blood, this worthless jackal sitting here all proud beside me, Nandi would not have believed me. As you see, he will never believe she tried to have him killed for his money. She and the jackal would have won.” He waved a veiny hand toward his nephew.

The room was utterly silent now. No one seemed to breathe.

Ben said, “You waited until Mr. Patil came home from the hospital, waited until you were certain he could survive the blow, and then you hired someone to kill her, to end it all, to avenge your friend’s betrayal by his wife.”

Mr. Urbi only nodded. He looked up and gave them both a very sweet smile. “I know what your district attorney will want to do with me, but I am too near to death now to worry about that. I am not worth spending the taxpayers’ money on a trial.”

“Uncle, no!”

“Be quiet, Krishna. You have dishonored me; you have dishonored my closest friend in the world. I will never speak to you again. Do you understand that you are nothing now to me? That you are as worthless as dung?”

Krishna Shama bowed his head.

Again, the room was perfectly quiet.

Mr. Patil said, “You, Krishna, how could you do this? I don’t understand. But, then, I am an old man. It is true that I have only the memory of lust and what it leads men and women to do that dishonors them and is so very hurtful to those they supposedly care about. Jasmine, I knew I’d lost her desire, but I did not mind all that much. Your uncle took vengeance, and I am sorry about that.” Mr. Patil turned to his friend. “Amal, I would not have killed Jasmine for betraying me, even for trying to kill me. What I would have done is divorce her, made certain she did not have a single penny, and I would have kicked her out into the street. Honor, Amal? Killing her has brought me back my honor? Hardly. You have brought only death into my house.

“I would like to be alone now, if it is all right with you, Agent Savich and Detective Raven. I would like not to have to look upon either of these men’s faces again. As it is, I will still see them in my dreams, and that is a great pity.”

Savich took Mr. Patil’s hands in his. “I am so sorry about all of this, Mr. Patil.”

Mr. Patil raised pain-deadened eyes to Savich’s face. “I know that you are. You are that kind of man.”

Nob Hill, San Francisco

Wednesday evening

Inspector Vincent Delion was curious but was content to sit back in an elegant wing chair worth more than his son’s used Honda and stare out the huge glass window of Clifford Childs’s living room at the view of San Francisco Bay. And watch Agents Cooper McKnight and Lucy Carlyle both turn their laser intelligence loose on Sentra Bolger.

Sentra Bolger sat on a lovely blue-patterned brocade sofa, her very nice legs crossed, a cup of green tea in her hand. She was wearing very high heels with open toes, showing off her lovely French pedicure. She looked expensive all over, Delion thought, in a long black gown that left one white shoulder bare, her dark hair pulled back in a polished chignon. She also looked like the queen of her kingdom, her consort guarding her back.

Clifford Childs stood behind her, his hand resting possessively on her bare shoulder. Childs said, impatience making his voice sharp as glass, “We agreed to see you on short notice, but we are expected shortly at Davies Hall. The symphony performs Mendelssohn this evening, and Sentra is very fond of Mendelssohn. I would like to know what this is all about, why you wish to speak to her.”

Coop pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. The movement brought only a slight pull in his side, better every day now, thank the Lord.

Both Sentra Bolger and Clifford Childs looked at the purple cell phone, then at Coop’s face.

Lucy said, “Ms. Bolger, Kirsten called you over a dozen times over the past two months. The last time she called you, Agent McKnight was in the car, as Kirsten’s hostage. I understand you gave her some advice?”

Sentra’s elegant white hands were still, her fingers relaxed. Her expression didn’t change. She sighed. “I didn’t say anything to Clifford, because I didn’t wish to worry him, but the truth is, Agents, I wondered when you would arrive. I had thought about calling you to ask about Kirsten’s real condition, since the media is spouting so much nonsense about her.”

Childs picked it up, disgust thick in his voice. “Including interviews with each celebrity attorney who wants to represent her, probono, the jackals. Is that the truth?”

Coop said, “I will tell you exactly what I know, Ms. Bolger, Mr. Childs, and then we will speak about your conversations with your niece. As a matter of fact, Kirsten’s injuries are responding well to treatment. She may be suffering psychologically, though. She hasn’t said a word for several days. Our psychologists have tried, and can’t get her to speak. Her being depressed would be understandable, what with getting shot and captured, her boyfriend, Bruce Comafield, dead. The last thing she said was to me in Florida when we captured her: ‘I wonder what Daddy would say.’”

Sentra shook her head, and her voice was filled with sorrow. “Poor child. She idolized the man and started thinking she could talk to him at times. Perhaps it was her reaction to Elizabeth—her mother. How she never said a word about Bundy to Kirsten, indeed, not even telling her who her father was until, well, Kirsten already knew and confronted her.”

Lucy sat forward in her chair. “You told her, didn’t you, Ms. Bolger? You’re the one who told her about Ted Bundy.”

Sentra nodded. “She was twenty-five. When she was a child, she asked Elizabeth who her father was, and Elizabeth made up some malarkey about his being a Navy SEAL who was killed in a training accident. In any case, yes, I told her the truth, she deserved to know. All the books talk about how handsome he was, how charming, but that doesn’t begin to capture what Ted really was—a shining star, and so fascinating he could charm the tattoo right off a cell mate.” She shook herself, smiled. “I told her how gaga her mother was over him, how much she wanted to marry him. Now, there’s a dollop of irony.” She paused for a moment, as if considering it, then, “I offered to date him, too, once they broke up, but Ted turned me down, said one woman with my sister’s face was more than enough. I remember telling him he was missing out, big-time, that I was much smarter and more beautiful than Elizabeth, and he laughed, said, ‘No, thanks,’ and then he turned that wicked smile of his on me and said maybe he’d look me up someday.