Natural Suspect (2001) Read online

  Keeping in shape was important for a spy. Whenever she had the chance, Sissy practiced Mo Ped, an exotic martial art developed in the jungles of Togo, pumped iron, and ran. Tonight, Sissy was finishing a ten-mile run by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on the way back to her apartment. She was dressed in black, skintight spandex pants and a black windbreaker, and a rape whistle hung around her neck. Her hood was up, concealing her face. A section of the bridge was in the shadows cast by one of the massive steel supports. Stefan Ghorse stepped into her path.

  "Nice togs," he said.

  Sissy stopped short. She was always amazed that someone Stefan's size, dressed as bizarrely as he usually dressed, could move so quietly and go unnoticed. Then she remembered that they were in New York, the only city on Earth where a cross-dressing giant looks normal.

  "Jesus, Stefan, you scared the shit out of me."

  "That was my intention."

  He was holding a silenced pistol and it was aimed between her ample breasts.

  "I like your outfit," Sissy said sarcastically. The behemoth was dressed in skintight Lycra and a wig, pulled back in a ponytail. He would be a mirror image of Sissy--if Sissy were a professional basketball player.

  Stefan pointed towards Sissys Nike Trainers. "Nice sneakers, gringo. I like your sneakers. Maybe you give me your sneakers?" he said in a bad Mexican accent.

  "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

  "Right, but you only get one point. It was too easy."

  "Whats the gun for?"

  Ghorse smiled sadistically.

  "We're going to do something I've always wanted--have a nice chat in a secluded place. I always thought that you could stand a lot of pain. Now I'm going to find out."

  If I can take this drivel, I can take anything, Sissy thought, but out loud she said seductively, "I'm not big on torture, but we could go someplace quiet and do something else."

  She winked and Stefan shook his head.

  "That wasn't very convincing, Sissy. Sorry, I have my orders from the O. If you'd followed yours, instead of interfering with the Organization's plans for Hightower Oil, I wouldn't have to kill you."

  "Can't we work something out?" she begged. "I couldn't help it if I fell in love with Morgan. You can't punish me for that."

  Stefan laughed. "The only person you've ever been in love with is yourself."

  Sissy grabbed hold of the whistle she wore around her neck.

  "Go ahead and blow," Stefan snickered, flicking the point of his pistol in either direction. "Who's going to hear you?"

  Cars were whizzing by too fast for their drivers to suspect that anything unusual was going on between the two people dressed in jogging gear, and there were no runners or bicyclists anywhere near them.

  Sissy pointed the mouth of the whistle at Stefan and pressed the concealed trigger. The .45 caliber slug smashed into Stefan and sent him tumbling backward over the bridge railing.

  "Hasta la vista, "Sissy yelled to his fast-disappearing form. She started to turn, but stopped when she thought she heard Stefan yelling back in a bad Austrian accent. The phrase he screamed sounded like, "I'll be Bach."

  Sissy was puzzled. Why, at the moment of his death, would Stefan want to be a composer of classical music? Perhaps he believed in reincarnation. Sissy shook her head. Everyone faced death differently.

  Sissy reloaded her whistle and started back to her apartment. If Stefan had been ordered by the O to torture and kill her, another assassin would be hot on her heels as soon as the Organization learned that Stefan had failed. She'd have to evacuate immediately.

  Sissy quickened her pace and started thinking about her next move. She was so preoccupied it never occurred to her that she had never heard the splash she would have heard if Stefan's body had crashed into the river.

  Julia's driver parked her limousine in front of the massive wooden front doors of the Hightower mansion. Julia and Patrick had been preoccupied during the ride from the marina and it took them a moment to realize that something was wrong.

  "Why aren't there any lights?" Patrick asked.

  Julia was sitting on the side farthest from the house and she had to duck her head to see the ground floor through the tinted windows.

  "Gustave," she called to her driver, "please accompany us and bring your gun."

  "Very well, madam," answered the broad-shouldered German who served as the Hightowers chauffeur.

  Gustave opened Julia's door and Patrick followed her into the driving snowstorm. Gustave preceded the couple up the front steps. He tried the door and it creaked when he pushed it open.

  "The door should have been locked," Julia said. "Why didn't Harcourt get the door?"

  "I don't know, madam, but I don't like this," Gustave replied. "Perhaps you should stay in the front hall while I see if there is anything wrong."

  Gustave flipped a switch next to the front door and the light from a huge chandelier bathed the front hall. Julia gasped. Harcourt, the Hightower butler, was crumpled at the bottom of a staircase that curved upward toward the second floor. Gustave knelt next to him and felt for a pulse.

  "He's alive," the chauffeur said. "I suggest you call 911 and ask for an ambulance."

  Julia used the phone on the entryway table while Gustave climbed the stairs to the second floor. She was finishing the 911 call when Gustave reappeared. He face was drained of color.

  "What is it?" Julia asked.

  "I think youd better come upstairs and look at this," Gustave replied.

  Chapter 10.

  Julia felt her heart wrench with a violence that shocked her almost as much as the scene itself. Her only son lay on his back on the hardwood floor in his studio, his limbs hideously askew and his head resting in a spreading pool of blood. Though Julia could see no apparent injury, she knew the truth as soon as she saw him: Morgan was dead. The obscenity of his lifeless form contrasted cruelly with the delicacy of the landscapes and portraits propped on easels and leaning against the walls of the studio.

  Morgan was dead. Instinct made Julia cry out and drove her to Morgan's side, where she knelt down and grasped his chilly hand with a love she wished she had summoned before, when her son was still alive. Tears filled her eyes as she gazed down at his profile, which revealed the blond, childish curls behind his ears. She flashed oddly on scenes of Morgan as a small boy, a mental photo album of the days before drink drowned her memories, even the happiest ones: Morgan, learning to pump his legs on the tire swing out back; Morgan, running in short pants to the lake in the summertime; Morgan, playing with the eight-color set of watercolors that became his one and only interest.

  "Morgan," Julia whispered hoarsely, hearing the emotion in her own voice, and the shame. She was ashamed of herself, of her conduct as a mother. She had failed Morgan, failed her family. Her children--her own children--couldn't help but fall away. There was no mother to bind them; no core to hold them fast. The Hightowers were a family without a heart, all because of her. Julias remorse ran deep as a river, and she knew now it would be as eternal. She squeezed Morgans hand again, willing life into it futilely.

  "I am so sorry, Morgan," she whispered, but knew that it didn't make a difference. His hand chilled hers to the bone. His form lay motionless. A vermilion blotch lay at the center of his chest and his blood pooled around him, drying in the cracks of the maple floorboards, soaking the grain of the light wood. Morgan's body was turned slightly away, so the single bullethole over his heart edged discreetly outside Julia's field of vision, and for that small mercy she was grateful. She couldn't bear to focus on the fatal wound or the blood that trailed from it to the floor and reached in a rivulet to an empty canvas stretched over a plywood frame. Yet to be painted, the canvas was now splashed with crimson. Morgan's lifeblood.

  Julia looked away as she held tight to her son's hand. She willed herself to comprehend what she was seeing and how it had happened. A small gray gun lay at Morgan's side, just beyond his fingertips, curled in death. Next to the gun lay a paintbrush with a b
lack handle and beyond that a canvas, which had been scrawled upon with black acrylic paint, evidently from the discarded brush. The letters loomed as large and crude as a homemade sign, though Julia couldn't bring herself to read it.

  Patrick, standing slightly behind Julia, leaned over and squinted at the canvas. " 'I am my own worst painting,' " he read aloud. " 'My taste, and my timing, are simply awful. I fear I have overstayed. Forgive me. Love, M.' "

  Julia heard Patrick's voice as if it were coming from far away. For a minute, the paintings surrounding her seemed to swirl like spin art at a country fair, transformed into pinwheels blazing with rich blues, reds, and golds, making her dizzy and sick at heart.

  "That's a suicide note," Patrick said softly. "I guess Morgan killed himself."

  Suicide? It wasn't possible. "No," Julia said, almost reflexively, and Patrick looked at her with sympathy.

  "Is it Morgans handwriting?" he asked, and Julia forced herself to look at the canvas.

  "Yes."

  "Is it what he would say, how he speaks? 'I fear I have--' "

  "Yes, but that's beside the point."

  "I don't think so. He shot himself in the chest, Julia. Everything here indicates it. I'm really sorry," Patrick said, his hand touching her shoulder.

  But none of it made sense, not to Julia, who was thinking like a mother for the first time in her life. She knew her son, and this wasn't the act of her son. How could she have ever suspected him of killing Arthur? Morgan wasn't a killer. Or a suicide. "But what about Harcourt, downstairs? If this is a suicide, what happened to him?"

  "The medics just took him to the hospital."

  "Wasn't he shot as well? It seemed like someone broke into the house and shot Harcourt, then came up and shot Morgan."

  "No. Harcourt wasn't shot, Julia." Patrick touched her shoulder tenderly. "You ran upstairs too soon, to see what was the matter with Morgan. There wasn't a mark on Harcourt. It wasn't foul play. The medics think he had a heart attack."

  "A heart attack?" Julia frowned.

  "Yes. He must have come upstairs--maybe after he heard the gunshot coming from the studio--and the surprise of Morgan's suicide gave him a heart attack."

  Julia shook her head. "Then how did he get downstairs?"

  "He may have staggered down, trying to reach the telephone to call 911. There's a phone at the end of the stairway on a table. You used it yourself."

  "But what about the front door?" Questions about the scenario flooded Julia's brain. "It was left open, as if someone had broken in."

  "I didn't see any signs of a break-in, so maybe somebody left it open by accident. Half the time, I leave my keys in my front door, like an idiot. Plus, with the snowstorm, the wind could have blown it ajar if it wasn't fastened properly."

  "But still." Julia couldn't stop shaking her head, her tears clearing.

  She knelt at Morgans side and couldn't let go of his hand. "Why would Morgan kill himself?"

  "If he was mixed up in this conspiracy to set you up, maybe he felt bad about it." Patrick thought about it. "Maybe he changed his mind. Nobody could enjoy framing his mother."

  Julia winced inwardly. As bad a mother as she had been, she may have deserved life in prison, but Morgan didn't have the heart to send her there, not even as a decision he would later regret. "No, that's not it."

  "Why not?"

  "For one thing, then the note doesn't make sense." She pointed to the scrawled canvas, her free hand trembling, and Patrick took it gently and tried to lift her to her feet, a comforting gesture that Julia pressed away in abrupt refusal.

  "What's the matter? I'm just trying to help," Patrick said, the pain in his eyes as evident as a child's, touching Julia's heart. Patrick was a child in a sense, probably half her age. Patrick was Morgans age. Julia shuddered, realizing that she didn't belong with someone so young. She fumbled to recover her dignity, long hidden in a golden haze of whiskey and denial.

  "Patrick," she said firmly, "if you want to help me, stop being my lover. Be my friend."

  "What? How?"

  Patrick's bewilderment was palpable, and Julia chose her words carefully: "I'm certain this isn't a suicide. This is murder."

  "Julia, why?"

  "If there's a conspiracy, perhaps Morgan uncovered it and was going to bring it to light. If someone is framing me for murder, maybe he found out who it was. I don't know the particulars, but I'm going to find out." Julia gave Morgan's hand one final squeeze of good-bye, then rose quickly despite her still-weak knees. "Let's go."

  "Where?"

  "To the hospital. Poor Harcourt was alive when I left him." Julia's tone was urgent, though over Patrick's shoulder she spotted Morgan's half-finished portrait of Sissy resting on an easel. In the portrait her daughter-in-laws strand of pearls stared Julia in the face. Sissy. Sissy could have murdered Morgan to get the inheritance, and it would serve her to make it look like a suicide. It had to be Sissy who killed Morgan, her own husband. "I bet Sissy killed Morgan. Harcourt can tell us if I'm right and exactly how Morgan died. And where is Sissy anyway? She's supposed to live here."

  "Julia, Harcourt may not be able to tell us anything. The man had a cardiac arrest." Patrick looked dubious. "He was barely breathing when they took him away. They even had to revive him when they got him on the stretcher. He'd be in no shape to identify Sissy or anyone else."

  "You don't know that for sure. Let's hurry. There's no time to lose." Julia crossed to the door where Gustave stood and didn't look back at Patrick, the portrait of Sissy, or the slain body of her son. She didn't want to remember Morgan that way, and the only help she could give him now was to find his killer. She owed him at least that much, and it was a debt she intended to pay in full.

  "Julia! Wait!" Patrick shouted after her, but Julia was confronting a startled Gustave, the chauffeur.

  "Give me your gun," she demanded.

  "But, madam, why?"

  "I may need it." Julia felt stronger, thinking clearly now, empowered by her venom for Sissy. Julia wasn't sure what she'd do with the gun, but she was certain it would come in handy. "I can't take the gun on the floor, it's evidence left by the killer."

  Gustave backed away. "But, ma'am, my gun is fully loaded."

  "Splendid. It works better that way."

  "But, madam--"

  "Give it to me, Gustave!" Julia ordered, her old haughtiness returning, but this time she welcomed it. For Morgan. She opened her palm and Gustave slid his gun from his shoulder holster and reluctantly placed it in her palm. For the first time in her life, Julia thanked a servant.

  The she sprinted for the stairway, her pumps clattering down the marble hallway, with Patrick right behind her.

  Her heart pounding with fear and exertion, Devin squinted as she ran, frantic to see who was blocking her and Trent's escape to the street. It was too dark to see a damn thing. "Trent!" she shouted, panicky. "Who is that? What is that?"

  "Just keep running! They're gaining on us!" Trent shouted to her, then glanced over his shoulder. The two men in ski masks clambered down the fire escape and were closing the gap between them. Suddenly one raised a gun as he ran. Adrenaline surged through Trent's body. "Go! Go! Go!" he called out, and Devin heard the fear in his voice and put on the afterburners in the snow.

  Devin and Trent ran stride for stride at the dark figure, tacitly choosing the lesser of two evils. One death, at the hands of the ski-masked men, was certain; and the other was less so. It turned out to be the safe bet.

  Devin would have laughed with relief if she weren't so terrified. The figure was a homeless man dancing a little jig on the sidewalk, surrounded by a small crowd and inspired by a tune only he heard. Still, Devin didn't want to run him over, even though he seemed unaware that two lawyers were running full-speed toward him. It was a sight that would have sent any sane person running for cover, but the homeless man was clearly not any sane person. Bedraggled clothes hung on his small form, his wild eyes and other features all but obscured by the dark alley a
nd the dirt on the man's face. In a minute, the lawyers and the homeless would collide, and Trent was thinking the same way as Devin.

  "Get out of the way!" Trent called to the man. "They've got a gun! Call the cops!"

  "Help us! Help!" Devin shouted, with her last breath. The crowd scattered, sensing danger, but the homeless man kept dancing.

  They ran faster. The ski masks were almost upon them, taking aim. But the street was crowded. Would they shoot anyway? Devin sped up, making peace with mowing down the homeless, but at the last minute the raggedy man did a Macarena to the right, so that Devin and Trent barreled past him, leaving him behind as he pirouetted into a surprisingly accomplished mambo.

  " 'A little bit of Monica in my life ... ,' " the homeless man sang tunelessly, but the lawyers left him far behind as they tore down the street and reached Devin's car.

  "Here!" Devin shouted, and she flung open the driver's side at the same moment that Trent sprinted for the passenger door and they both leapt inside.

  Devin shoved a key into the ignition and slammed the pedal to the metal. The car lurched forward despite the snow and careered down the street until the bad guys in ski masks became tiny dots in the dark and objects in the mirror were, ironically, smaller than they appeared. Devin twisted the car through dark city streets until they had left midtown and the traffic and people in the distance.

  They drove for half an hour, and in time the fancy eateries and apartment buildings gave way to fast food joints and run-down homes covered with graffiti. Devin had driven each block with one eye on the rearview mirror, and Trent had kept turning behind until he was sure they weren't being followed. They were both finally calming down, their breathing returned to normal, when they pulled up by the curb to figure what the hell was going on. "That was exciting," Devin said, meaning it.