Phantom Limb Page 21

  Gloria gave me a puzzled look.

  “By the way, did you ever figure out what Sykes was talking about when he asked you about the Four Horsemen?”

  “No, I didn’t.” The second time I’d lied to her. But I had no choice, if I was to preserve Lisa Campbell’s confidentiality. “That’s why I’m glad he was called away. Before things got—”

  “Tell me about it.” With a slight shiver, she downed the rest of her coffee. Peered at the empty cup. “About that night. I assume you know that whether or not Sykes heard what he wanted to hear, you and I were dead meat. There’s no doubt that was his intention all along.”

  “It did occur to me, yes. By killing us, his identity as Lisa’s kidnapper would have remained unknown. But after we escaped, all bets were off. Now law enforcement knew who he was. That’s why the scorched earth policy. Why Griffin shot Arthur Drake. And why, if they’d caught and questioned me again, he’d have killed me. No reason not to. What’s another murder?”

  I paused. “Though I’m sure the plan from the beginning involved killing Lisa. Right after they got the ransom money. Remember, she’d seen their faces. Both Sykes and Griffin. There was no way they would’ve let her live.”

  Gloria shifted in her seat.

  “Time to go?” I asked.

  “Yeah, back to work. On the Sykes case, as well as a few other ongoing investigations. See, a lot of air’s gone out of the balloon now that Lisa’s back safely. Or should I say, now that Charles Harland’s wife is back safely. Politically, that’s been the most important thing from the start. Now it’s just a question of mopping up. Getting the bad guys who snatched her: a much lower-priority situation.”

  This somewhat surprised me. I frowned at her.

  “Come on. You’re making it sound like the case is over.”

  She shrugged. “For all practical purposes, it is.”

  ***

  After Gloria left, I sat in silence, nursing my now-cooling coffee. To my mind, there were still too many things we didn’t know. Too many questions that needed answers.

  For starters, how was Donna Swanson, Harland’s longtime personal nurse, involved? Had she been covertly working with or for Ray Sykes? Helping him arrange the kidnapping by keeping an eye on Lisa? Her movements, her scheduled appointments? If so, then Arthur Drake’s suspicions about Mike Payton were unfounded. It was possible that she, not Payton, told Sykes about where and when Lisa was planning to come to my office.

  Which could also be a possible explanation for her murder. Perhaps her death wasn’t—as Sykes suggested on that tape he left behind—merely a callous warning to the cops against trying another trick like the one they’d attempted at the observatory. Perhaps, as far as Sykes was concerned, Donna Swanson had served her purpose. That she’d become just another loose end to be cut.

  Something else bothered me. What was the extent of the relationship between James Harland and Sykes? Was it merely a business arrangement? Money changing hands so that James and his high-roller friends could use Sykes’ place in the Hill District for clandestine sex-and-drugs parties?

  In other words, did Sykes come up with the idea to kidnap Lisa Campbell, his best client’s stepmother, on his own? Or had James suggested it? Even helped plan it?

  I was still puzzling over these and other things as I walked out of the coffee shop. For a second time, I headed across the lobby toward the front entrance. I hoped to find a cab outside at the curb. If not, I’d have to call for one.

  However, before leaving, I decided to go up to Lisa’s room again, to see how she was doing. As I approached her door, her doctor was coming out. We exchanged polite smiles.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “Sleeping. Best thing for her now. But she’ll be fine.”

  He made a point of looking at his watch. I made a point of ignoring it.

  “How about Charles Harland? Can I speak to his doctor?”

  “I just conferred with Dr. Horowitz. It looks like Mr. Harland will recover, though with impaired motor functions and speech. He’ll certainly require physical therapy.”

  “But what’s his prognosis?”

  He scowled, impatient. Apparently a very busy young man.

  “Let’s put it this way. Neither Horowitz nor I think he can survive another stroke. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  ***

  There were no cabs outside the hospital entrance, so I went back inside the lobby and called for one. I’d no sooner hung up than my cell rang.

  “Rinaldi? Lieutenant Biegler. I’ll need you to come down to the precinct house and give a full statement.”

  “What about the Feds? I know Agent Wilson wants a statement from me, too. And I like him better. Not by much, but still…”

  “Cut the shit and get your ass down here. I want your statement first. Remember, you’re a consultant with Pittsburgh PD, not the FBI.”

  “Normally you’re not too happy about that.”

  “I’m still not, Rinaldi. If it was up to me—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Maybe you ought to try learning another tune, Lieutenant.”

  A frigid silence.

  “Just get down here,” he said at last. “Now.”

  I saw the cab pull to the curb and went out to meet it. The sun had dipped in the sky, and a pale pink dusk spread to the mountains. Though the wind was still calm, the temp had started to drop, making me wish I had my jacket, which, at the moment, was in a plastic bag along with the rest of my dirty, blood-stained clothes in a lab downtown, waiting to be examined by Pittsburgh PD’s forensics techs.

  As I opened the cab’s rear passenger door another vehicle rolled past. A sleek town car, whose driver I recognized. Trevor, from the Harland house.

  I also recognized his passenger, slouching in the spacious backseat. Eyes half-lidded, he looked either bored or drunk. And was probably both.

  James Harland. No doubt having been told that his father had awakened. After which, he must have decided—for the sake of appearances, if nothing else—that he ought to come visit the old man. Ask pertinent questions of the doctors.

  As the car passed by, I felt the anger rise in my throat. As well as a gnawing frustration. Because there was no way to prove he’d done the horrific things Lisa had described. And no way to stop him from doing the one final thing he planned to do.

  I stood there, frozen. Adrenaline pumping. Wanting nothing so much as to chase after him. Pull him out of that fancy car and beat him to a pulp.

  But, of course, I didn’t. Couldn’t.

  If I did, I’d get nothing for my pains but an assault charge. And a lawsuit. And a felony conviction, which, among other things, would cost me my clinical license.

  The entire scenario ran through my mind in a millisecond. The righteous anger, the desire to take action, the sober assessment of that action’s likely consequences.

  So I simply got into the cab. Put my head back against the seat cushion. Closed my eyes.

  And gave the cabbie directions to the Harland house.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  When I finally got home, it was close to nine p.m.

  After picking up my Mustang at the Harlands’, I’d driven back into town for my meeting with Biegler. He and Harry Polk took turns grilling me as I gave as complete a statement as I could about the past three days’ events.

  Not that I didn’t leave a good deal out of it. Gloria’s sadistic treatment at the hands of Max Griffin, for one thing. I figured it was up to her to disclose as much about that experience as she chose. It hardly seemed relevant, anyway.

  I also deleted the same things from my statement that Lisa Campbell had deleted from hers. About her affair with Mike Payton, what had happened to her at Sykes’ place, and the video of the assault. While I realized that some—but certainly not all—of these facts might have been helpful to the investigati
on, I had no intention of violating Lisa’s trust.

  Nevertheless, the interview was pretty grueling, made more so by Biegler’s obvious distaste for me. Not that Harry Polk did much to disguise his own jaundiced view of both me and his boss.

  Now, in my kitchen, as I poured myself a beer and looked out at the rolling blackness beyond the rear deck, I was stunned to find I was too wired to sleep. I’d imagined, as I drove up to Mt. Washington through sparse Sunday night traffic, that I’d barely make it home before falling, still clothed, into bed.

  Instead, I felt that familiar jangly energy, that animal restlessness I used to feel after going ten rounds in the ring. A teenager whose only desire was to please a father who couldn’t be pleased, I’d get so pumped for a fight that, long after it ended, I still felt the after-effects of that intensity. Like an electrical current coursing through my veins.

  Until, on the drive home from the local VFW hall or Police Athletic League gym, my father’s bitter disappointment drained the energy from my limbs. Win or lose, he’d point out all the mistakes I’d made, the easy punches I’d missed, the foolish ways I’d left myself unguarded. Yet nothing that had happened that night in the ring left as many marks, as many scars, as those long, painful car rides back to my motherless house.

  I finished my beer in two long swallows. How many times, I wondered, would I replay those memories of my father? Of those hard years as an amateur boxer? Of my own feeble attempts to wrest real conversations out of those prolonged, alcohol-fueled silences that defined my father’s last years?

  Dutifully putting the empty beer bottle in the recycling bin, I padded into the bathroom and stripped off the borrowed clothes. I’d make sure to have them washed and returned to Victims’ Services in a couple days. Decent clothes for those who needed them were in short supply, though the same couldn’t be said for the crime victims themselves.

  It felt good to shower in my own home, just as it felt good to be wearing my own clothes again. As I went back into the kitchen for another beer, it occurred to me that I wanted something stronger. And that I didn’t want to drink it alone.

  Maybe it was the accumulated stress of the past days’ horrors. Maybe it was fatigue-induced sentimentality. Maybe I just felt sorry for myself.

  Regardless of my motives, I found myself picking up the phone in the front room and dialing Eleanor Lowrey’s number. First home, then her cell. Again, I got her voicemail. This time, however, I had the presence of mind not to leave some foolish, stilted message. Some nakedly obvious and intimate words that begged a response. A warm, reassuring reply.

  This time, I just hung up without saying a thing.

  ***

  I’d gone out on the rear deck for a minute to get a sense of the temperature, then came back inside and pulled on a jacket. In less than an hour, the night had grown much cooler. And the sleepless wind had once more roused itself.

  Before leaving the house, I clicked on the local TV news. As I’d expected, the lead story concerned the murder of Arthur Drake, prominent attorney and personal advisor to Charles Harland. After replaying the video clip of Drake speaking on behalf of the Harland family two days before, expressing its grief over the murder of Donna Swanson, the station cut back to the polished anchorman. His look into the camera was grim.

  “Authorities refuse to comment on the jarring coincidence that billionaire industrialist Charles Harland’s personal nurse, and then his longtime lawyer and family spokesman, were both brutally murdered in the span of three days. When questioned by reporters as to whether these two murders were related, Chief Logan would say only that the investigation of each crime was ongoing. He added that no connection between the two victims, other than their both having been in Charles Harland’s employ, had yet been found. Nor had any motive for either of the murders been discovered. Naturally, we’ll keep you informed as more details become known in this bizarre case…”

  I shut off the TV. Not surprisingly, the fact that Drake’s death was in connection to a ransom delivery on behalf of Lisa Campbell, Harland’s wife, was kept secret. Perhaps the police were unwilling, at this point, to reveal too much information about their investigation of Drake’s death. Or the manhunt for his killer, Max Griffin, and his boss, Raymond Sykes. Maybe they felt that the less their suspects knew about what the Department was doing, the better. Moreover, why risk creating a public panic about the possibility that two killers were at large, perhaps still in the tri-state area?

  Another thought crossed my mind. It was also possible that pressure from James Harland had been brought to bear on the police. Forcing them to keep the details of the investigation from the public as a way to avoid possible scandal, further intrusions into the family’s affairs by the media. With Arthur Drake dead, and Charles Harland incapacitated, I presumed the reins of the Harland empire were in James’ hands. At least ostensibly. His, and, more likely, the company’s board of directors. With investor confidence as fragile as it was nowadays, Harland Industries would be eager to put a firewall of privacy between itself and a curious, fickle public. Not to mention a ravenous, unrelenting press.

  There was no way to know. But between the Department’s own reluctance and the political influence of the Harland empire, it was entirely possible that Lisa Campbell could be kidnapped, held in a dirt-walled cellar for three days, and then returned safely—without the world ever knowing it happened.

  ***

  I was hugging the curve of the Liberty Bridge off-ramp when my cell rang. Rolling up the Mustang’s window against the noise of the wind, I switched on the dashboard’s hands-free app.

  “Danny? Sam Weiss. You awake?”

  “I better be. I’m driving down to Noah Frye’s place.”

  “Cool. Tell the crazy bastard I said hello.”

  Sam Weiss was a feature writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but was known mostly for his best-selling book about Troy David Dowd, the Handyman. We’d met years ago, when he was doing research on the serial killer, and had become friends. That connection grew deeper when, not long after that, I treated his younger sister, the victim of a vicious sexual assault. The last I’d heard, she was a grad student at Columbia, and doing quite well. Thankfully, it does go like that sometimes.

  With the proceeds from the book, as well as money he got from Hollywood for the rights to the as-yet-unmade film, Sam was able to buy a home in Squirrel Hill. Although he’s the same age as I, and married with two kids, his boundless energy and shaggy-haired appearance always made him seem much younger.

  “Look, Danny,” he said, “there’s something I want to run by you. I have a contact at Pittsburgh Memorial, keeping an eye on what’s happening with Charles Harland. Whether he’s getting better or worse. Anything you know that I ought to know?”

  “Why ask me, Sam?”

  “Because my guy also says he saw you there today. At the hospital.”

  “He recognized me?”

  Sam chuckled. “Price o’ fame, Danny boy. I warned you that all that ‘expert commentary’ stuff you did on CNN would come back to bite you in the ass. On the plus side, it must be fun having all those groupies…”

  “Yeah, that’s a real perk, all right.”

  “Seriously, man, what’s the story with old man Harland? My guy says the family’s keeping a lid on his prognosis.”

  “If they are, isn’t it their business?”

  “What were we just talking about, Danny? The Harlands are public figures. Just like you—only, brand-wise, you’re sorta minor league. Limited demographic reach. But they’re at the top of the celebrity food chain. Which makes them fair game. Especially since the old man married an ex-movie star.”

  “Remind me again why we’re friends…?”

  “Bite me. But I gotta ask, man. What were you doing at the hospital? Is Harland your patient? Or his wife, Lisa Campbell?”

  “Jesus, Sam. You know I can’t c
omment.”

  “Yeah, I know. But like I said, I had to ask.”

  I’d just turned onto Second Avenue, and slowed my speed as I drove along the riverside. The Monongahela’s black waters shone like obsidian under the moon’s unblinking gaze.

  “Tell me, Sam, are you going to keep digging into the story about Harland’s stroke?”

  “Damn right. If my guy can get something concrete from one of the docs in ICU. They’re tough nuts to crack.”

  I pulled into a curbside spot about half a block from Noah’s Ark and killed the engine.

  “Can I ask you one more question, Danny?”

  “No way I can stop you, I guess.”

  “Is it true that Lisa Campbell has taken a room there at the hospital? Just to be near her ailing husband? That’s another thing my guy picked up on. As an expert on human relationships, what do you think this says about the state of their marriage?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Sam. And wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  “Yeah, I figured that, too. Can’t blame a guy for trying, though. Keeps things interesting.”

  “Why do you care about the Harlands, anyway? This kind of stuff isn’t your beat. Don’t you have any major crimes or political scandals you should be investigating?”

  “If I did, I would. But it’s been a slow news week in the Steel City, Danny. I’m stuck with table scraps.”

  I smiled to myself. Though Sam didn’t know it, he was actually nosing around the edges of a huge story. Kidnapping, murder, family secrets. A story big enough to fill the pages of another true-crime book.

  “Well, I hope things pick up, Sam.”

  “Me, too. The royalties from the Dowd book have dwindled down to nothing. And every three months, there’s another rumor about cutbacks and layoffs here at the paper. If something juicy doesn’t happen soon…”

  Sam sighed heavily into the phone. “Aw, what the hell, life goes on, right? Speaking of which, why don’t we grab a lunch? I haven’t seen you in a while, and I could sure go for some ‘old school’ grub. How about Primanti Brothers on the Strip? One o’clock tomorrow?”