French Silk

Chapter 27

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Cassidy, muttering curses, reached for his coat. As he was pulling it on, he said, "If Yasmine was in Wilde's room that night, she tracked in the carpet fibers from your car."

"For the hundredth time, I didn't see Yasmine that night. I was using my car." Claire kept her head down, her eyes averted, but her voice was steely. "I didn't see Yasmine until the following morning when I picked her up at the airport. If she was in New Orleans, she kept it a secret from me. In any event, she didn't have access to my car."

"I'll make this meeting with Crowder as brief as possible. Don't leave this room." He went out and pulled the door closed behind him.

On his way to the elevator, he met Howard Glenn. "Hey, Cassidy, I was on my way to see you."

"Anything?"

"Some pretty interesting stuff is coming out of those lists of Wilde's contributors."

"Thanks." Cassidy took the sheets of paper Glenn extended him, folded them twice, and slipped them into his breast pocket. "I'll get to it as soon as I can. Right now I'm due in Crowder's office. In the meantime, stay with it."

He stepped into the elevator. When he emerged, he didn't break stride until he was standing at the edge of Crowder's desk. "For Christ's sake, Tony, what's so damned important that it couldn't wait? I was questioning Claire Laurent. She's protecting Yasmine, but the more I pull out of her, the more apparent it is to me that Yasmine killed Wilde."

"That's what we wanted to talk to you about."

Cassidy, remembering that the intern had mentioned someone with Crowder, followed the direction of his gaze. Alister Petrie was complacently seated across the room in a leather wingback chair.

Cassidy had never liked Petrie, either as an individual or as a statesman. Having impressive political connections was his sole qualification to legislate. Petrie's family roots were sunk deep into delta dirt but weren't as deeply embedded as his wife's. Cassidy considered him a pompous nerd, who, through no achievement of his own, had enough money to buy a congressional seat. Because Cassidy had been weaned on the work ethic, he held Petrie in contempt, which he barely concealed. "Hello, Congressman."

"Mr. Cassidy," he replied coolly.

"Sit down, Cassidy," Crowder said, brusquely signaling him into a chair.

Cassidy's instincts were sizzling like exposed electrical wires. Something was afoot, and if his intuition was to be trusted, it was something he wasn't going to like. Tony Crowder was having a hard time looking him in the eye. That was a bad sign.

"I'll let Congressman Petrie explain why he asked us for this meeting." Tony coughed uncomfortably behind his fist. "When you hear what he has to say, you'll realize its importance and urgency. Congressman?"

Petrie began by saying, "I was stunned by the headlines I read in this morning's newspaper, Mr. Cassidy."

"It's pretty stunning stuff. If a technician hadn't been on his toes, he wouldn't have noticed the similarities between the results of the ballistics test he ran on Yasmine's suicide bullet and the ones he'd recently conducted on the bullets we took out of Jackson Wilde. There was a deep groove running the length of the bullets that was worth remembering, he said. So he compared them. And bingo. Same weapon. He fired it just to make sure. There's no mistake."

"There has to be."

"There isn't."

"Nevertheless, your investigation into a possible connection between Yasmine's suicide and Jackson Wilde's murder must cease and desist. Immediately."

The command was issued so pedantically, and with such bald arrogance, that Cassidy's initial reaction was to laugh. He glanced at Tony Crowder, but there wasn't a trace of a smile on his superior's face. In fact, it looked as stern and indomitable as a totem hewn out of solid oak.

"What the hell is going on?" He faced Petrie again. "Where do you get off telling me to cease and desist my investigation?"

"Yasmine did not kill Jackson Wilde."

"How would you know?"

"Because she was with me that night. Throughout the night."

Silence stretched through the room. Again Cassidy turned to Tony, his hard stare demanding elaboration. The D.A. cleared his throat with obvious discomfort. Cassidy's respect for him slipped several notches. He was old enough to be Petrie's father, but he was kowtowing to the jerk like he was a frigging prince.

"Congressman Petrie came to me this morning and freely admitted that he'd been having an … that is … he and this Yasmine had a relationship."

"No shit," Cassidy said sarcastically. "I know all about his affair with her."

"Miss Laurent told you, I assume," Crowder said.

"That's right."

"Then you can appreciate the embarrassment that a lengthy and thorough investigation could cause Congressman Petrie and his family."

"He should have thought of that before he started screwing around."

Petrie bristled. "All this embarrassment would be for nothing, Mr. Cassidy, because, as I've informed you, I'm Yasmine's alibi. She was with me."

Cassidy looked at him scornfully. "And you get credit for her suicide, don't you, Petrie? She sprayed your walls with her brains because you're a lying cheat. What happened to make you call it quits? Did the new wear off? Or did you get cold feet over the upcoming election? Did you get scared that your white voters weren't going to look kindly upon your black mistress?"

"Cassidy!" Tony banged his fist on his desk.

Cassidy shot from his chair and turned his anger on Crowder. "This is the first piece of real evidence we've uncovered since we began investigating this crime. Do you really expect me to toss it away because it might get out that the woman implicated in the crime was our illustrious congressman's mistress?"

Petrie's previous nonchalance had vanished. Red-faced with indignation, he too came to his feet. "Yasmine was not my mistress. She had formed an unnatural attachment for me that was entirely one-sided. A fatal attraction."

"You're a liar. It was a two-way love affair until you turned gutless."

"She was a terribly disturbed young woman."

"That's bullshit."

"She was addicted to mind-altering drugs—"

"Dr. Dupuis's autopsy report says she didn't have so much as an aspirin in her system."

"Obviously Yasmine didn't agree with my position on—"

"Oh, I'll bet you agreed on most positions. Which one did you like best? On top or on bottom?"

"Cassidy, I won't have this!" Crowder bellowed, surging to his feet. "I won't have Congressman Petrie insulted in my office when he came here of his own accord and at great personal cost."

"I can't fuckin' believe this, Tony!" Cassidy exclaimed. "You're going to sweep this under the rug, pretend those ballistics tests don't exist?"

"You know as well as I do that those tests are inconclusive. Besides, he makes good sense. Hear him out."

"Why, Tony?" Cassidy asked, seething.

"He's convinced me that the young woman had no motive to kill Wilde."

Cassidy swiveled his head and fixed a hard stare on Petrie. "You've got the floor. Make it good."

Petrie tugged on the hem of his suit jacket and composed himself. "Yasmine thought Jackson Wilde was a joke," he said. "Even though he called the French Silk catalog pornographic, she didn't take him seriously. To her he was a comic figure. That's all. She teased me about rolling out the red carpet to him while he was here."

"Oh, you're a specialist at kissing ass."

"Cassidy, shut up!"

He ignored Crowder and advanced on Petrie. "You looked right at home sitting on his podium. You're as full of shit as he was. In my opinion, Wilde was the Alister Petrie of clergymen. Like you he was a self-important, self-serving opportunist who's only talent was duping people."

Petrie's face turned even redder, but he kept his voice calm. "Insult me all you want. The facts remain the same. Yasmine was with me the night Jackson Wilde was shot and killed."

"Where?"

"At the Doubletree."

"You stayed overnight at the Doubletree and that didn't arouse Mrs. Petrie's suspicions?"

"I frequently stay downtown overnight if I'm going to be out late and have an early meeting scheduled for the next day. Sleeping over spares me a short night and a long commute the following morning."

"And gives you an opportunity to cheat on your wife."

"I'm trying to be up front with you," Petrie exclaimed angrily. "I've admitted to being with Yasmine at the Double-tree."

"I'll check on it."

"I'm sure you will."

"How do you explain her gun being used to kill Wilde if she didn't pull the trigger?"

"I may be able to shed some light on that."

"Then please do."

Following that sarcastic crack, Petrie addressed himself to Crowder. "I was with Yasmine when she rediscovered her gun."

"Rediscovered?"

"Yes. She was surprised to find it at the bottom of the handbag she was carrying at the time. She said it had been missing. She thought she'd lost it in transit between here and New York."

Mentally Cassidy cursed. It perfectly matched Claire's story and shot his case all to hell. His expression, however, remained pugnacious.

"I suggest you start questioning anyone who had access to Yasmine's handbag," Petrie said. "And put an end to investigating her activities that night."

"Which will be convenient as hell for you, won't it?"

Unruffled by Cassidy's snide remark, Petrie stooped down to retrieve his briefcase. "I leave the crime solving and prosecuting to you, Mr. Cassidy." He flashed a brittle smile. "Actually I'm sparing you hours of time, effort, and eventual public disgrace. I didn't have to come here and admit that I was with Yasmine that night. I felt it was my civic responsibility to do so. Now the taxpayers" money won't be wasted on another wild goose chase."

"The only one you're protecting is yourself," Cassidy said with a sneer. "You admitted to us that you and Yasmine were lovers only so you wouldn't have to admit it to your constituents."

Again Petrie gave him a fleeting smile. "You'd do well to take the advice of your mentor Mr. Crowder. Your ambition has been noted and duly recorded. Mr. Cassidy. But if you want to fill that chair," he said, nodding toward Crowder's desk, "you'd better learn to play the game."

"I don't shovel political bullshit, if that's what you mean."

"Everything is political; Mr. Cassidy. Most everything is also bullshit. If you're going to be in public office, get used to shoveling it."

Cassidy cocked his head to one side. "That's quite a speech, Petrie, but it sounds rehearsed. Did your wife write it for you?"

Petrie's arrogance collapsed like a dud parachute. He sputtered, "In this evening's Times Picayune I expect to read that the technician conducting the ballistics tests made a gross error, that Assistant District Attorney Cassidy's allegations regarding Yasmine were incorrect, that this office is retracting previous statements suggesting her possible involvement with the Wilde murder, and that you're redirecting your investigation. Let her suicide stand as the inexplicable action of an unbalanced woman, who, for reasons known only to her, chose to end her life on my doorstep, possibly in an attempt to make a radical political statement."

"Have you washed all the brain tissue off your wallpaper yet?"

"Cassidy."

"Or have you replaced the wallpaper altogether?"

"Cassidy!"

Once again, Crowder's reprimands were ignored. "Can you clean up that quickly, Petrie? A pail of water and some Spic 'n' Span, and whoosh she's expunged? Is that all her life meant to you?"

Using his words like a battering ram, Cassidy had hoped to smash the protective facade that was inherent to the public office Petrie held. He wanted to confront Petrie man to man, where he would have equal footing, if not the advantage. He wanted Petrie angry, scared, and upset. He finally got what he wanted.

"Yasmine wasn't worth the hell she put me through," Petrie smirked. "She was nothing but a whore with the hottest snatch I'd ever had. Too bad for you that you homed in on her cool friend, Claire Laurent, and not Yasmine."

Cassidy lunged at him, knocked him backward into the leather chair, and wound up with his forearm across Petrie's throat and his knee gouging his crotch.

"If Yasmine was a whore, what does that make you, you son of a bitch?" He increased the pressure against Petrie's windpipe and ground his knee into his vulnerable testicles. Petrie uttered a high-pitched squeal. Cassidy delighted in the terror he saw in his eyes.

But Cassidy's pleasure was short-lived. Crowder was almost thirty years older, but he was forty pounds heavier and as strong as a bull. His hands landed like sacks of wet concrete on Cassidy's shoulders, almost causing the leg supporting him to buckle. He pulled him off Petrie, who was clutching his throat and wheezing. He cowered from Cassidy and blubbered, "H-he's crazy."

"I apologize for my deputy's short temper," Crowder said.

He had one hand splayed against Cassidy's chest. Cassidy strained against it. Crowder shot him a warning look.

Petrie scooped up what was left of his dignity, straightened his suit jacket, smoothed a hand over his hair. "I intend to file assault charges. You'll be hearing from my attorney."

"No we won't," Crowder said curtly. "Not unless you want to expose the topic of our discussion here this morning. Right now, it's confidential. You litigate and it'll be a matter of public record."

Petrie was puffed up like an adder. Nevertheless, he took Crowder's subtle threat for what it was. Without another word, he stalked from the office.

For several moments after he left, neither of them moved. Finally, Cassidy reached up and angrily shoved Crowder's hand off his chest.

"I know what you're thinking," Crowder said.

"You couldn't begin to know." Cassidy's temper was momentarily corralled, but it was going to be a while before his anger subsided. He was still furious with the man he had respected and admired. Like a disillusioned child who spots weakness in a hero, he was as hurt as he was angry. "Why'd you do it, Tony?"

Crowder returned to his desk and sat down heavily. "I owed Petrie the favor. He endorsed me during the last election. He's a slimy, snot-nosed, cocky little bastard. But unfortunately he's got lots of political muscle and money behind him. He'll get reelected. I retire next year. I don't want Petrie's foot on my throat my last year in office. I want to go out peaceably, not embroiled in a political gumbo."

He looked up at Cassidy, silently asking for his understanding. Cassidy, saying nothing, moved to the windows. From there he could see Petrie on the street, surrounded by media, making a statement into microphones and cameras. He couldn't hear what the congressman was saying, but every lying, dulcet word was sure to be reported on News at Five. The sad thing was that he'd be believed by a gullible public that was always inclined to trust a handsome face and sincere smile.

"Maybe at one time, when I was young and full of piss and vinegar like you, I'd have nailed his balls to the floor," Crowder was saying. "I'd have told him that criminal investigations were exempt from the bargaining table. That deals couldn't be struck when they conflicted with due process. That mutual back-scratching ended at that door." He pointed to his office door.

"There's no doubt I would have told him all that and sent him packing this morning if I had a strong case to back up my position. But at the bottom line, he's right, Cassidy. If he's willing to come in here and acknowledge having a mistress, we've got to believe him when he says she was with him that night."

Cassidy was still staring out the window, watching the pantomime being acted out below. Wilde's followers cheered Petrie as he left the area. His entourage packed him into a van and whisked him away. Motorcycle police provided escort.

"Fuck it," Cassidy muttered, turning back into the room. "Sometimes I think I dreamed Wilde's corpse, those three bullet wounds, the blood. He was murdered, wasn't he?"

"He was."

"Then, goddammit, somebody killed him."

"But it wasn't Yasmine. I already sent a policewoman over to the Doubletree to check out Petrie's story. Before you got here, she called in. Petrie was registered there that night. So far she's talked to four people who remember seeing him there. The doorman, a bellman—"

"Okay, okay. What about Yasmine?"

"No one claims to have seen her. But if they were having a tryst, she would naturally keep a low profile. And if you enter the hotel by the side door, you can get to the elevators without having to go through the lobby."

Cassidy shoved his hands into his pants pockets. "So it's back to square one."

"Not really," Crowder said quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"It's so damn simple, Cassidy. It has been from the beginning. As we speak, your killer is sitting in your office."

"Claire didn't do it."

Crowder stabbed the surface of his desk with his index finger. "She had the same motive as Yasmine, only stronger. She had opportunity because she can't account for all of her time that night. We've got her voice on tape asking her friend at the Fairmont to lie for her. The fibers found at the crime scene match the carpet in her car. She had access to Yasmine's gun and opportunity to replace it once she'd used it. My God, man, what more do you need?"

"She didn't do it," Cassidy said tightly.

"You're that sure of her innocence?"

"Yes."

"Sure enough to stake your career on it?"

Crowder's secretary stuck her head around the door. "I'm sorry, Mr. Crowder, but she insisted on—"

The secretary was pushed aside by Ariel Wilde. As she sailed in, her pale hair rippled over her shoulders. She was dressed in a white suit, reminiscent of the robe she wore on her television show.

"Well, Mrs. Wilde, how nice of you to stop by," Cassidy said caustically. "Have you met District Attorney Anthony Crowder? Mr. Crowder, Mrs. Ariel Wilde."

She turned her frigid blue glare on Cassidy. "God is going to rain judgment on you. You've made a mockery of my husband's murder."

Cassidy's eyebrows shot up. "Mockery? You want to talk mockery? What about the mockery you made of your marriage by having an affair with your stepson?"

"I no longer have a stepson. Influenced by you, he turned out to be a Judas. God will punish him, too."

"How does God punish liars, Mrs. Wilde? Because you lied to me, didn't you? The night your husband was killed, you left Josh's room for a trip to your hotel suite around midnight."

"Cassidy, what are you getting at?" Crowder asked.

"I found out a few days ago that Josh leased a Chrysler LeBaron convertible while he was in New Orleans. Coincidentally, it is similar to Claire Laurent's and has the same type of carpet."

"I came here to tell you—"

Cassidy didn't give Ariel an opportunity to speak. "You rode in Josh's rental car. You could have tracked the carpet fibers into your husband's bedroom when you went in there to shoot him."

"I could have tracked it in there anytime," she cried. "Rather than finding my husband's killer, you persist in torturing me and my unborn child."

As though on cue, two reporters and one video photographer rushed past the flustered secretary and through the open door. Ariel cupped her abdomen with her hands. "If I lose my child, the guilt will rest on your head, Mr. Cassidy. From what I read in the newspapers, it appears as though my husband's death is connected to that filthy catalog and the whore who posed in it!"

"Yasmine wasn't a whore."

That calm statement came from Claire, who unexpectedly appeared in the doorway.

Cassidy's temper snapped again. "I told you to stay put."

"Harlot!" Ariel shouted, pointing a finger at Claire.

"Everyone, vacate this office at once!" Crowder yelled. "Who let the media in here?" The video camera swung around to get a shot of the D.A.'s flushed, angry face.

Ariel bore down on Claire. Her eyes narrowed to malicious slits. "Finally we meet face to face."

"I avoided it as long as possible."

"'The wages of sin are death,'" Ariel hissed.

"Exactly," Claire replied. "That's why your husband had to die." She turned and looked directly into Cassidy's eyes. "That's why I had to kill him."

* * *