Bury the Lead

42



ANOTHER LONG-STANDING tradition goes down the drain. And in this case, the drain is where it belongs.

For as long as I can remember, at the conclusion of every major case I’ve had, I take Tara and head down to Long Beach Island, where I rent a house and spend two weeks decompressing. It seems like I’ve done this for twenty years, but I realize that it’s actually only seven years since I rescued Tara from the animal shelter.

This time Laurie has come with us, and while I haven’t discussed it with Tara, I can’t believe we didn’t bring her along before. It’s really quite remarkable; Laurie is all plus, no minus. By that I mean that she is great company, terrific to talk to, and I love having her around. At the same time, there are no negatives; she doesn’t intrude, doesn’t make me feel like I have to entertain her or be anything other than myself. When I want to be alone, I can be alone, either literally or just with my thoughts.

And since Tara has twice as many hands petting and giving biscuits to her, I suspect she agrees with me.

At the ten-day mark, I’m trying to figure how to add another week onto the trip. And maybe another decade after that. A phone call from Willie puts an end to such fantasies.

“When are you coming home?” he asks.

“Why?” I evade. “Any problems at the foundation?”

“Nope. We’re doing great. I just wanted to know if you’d be home by Saturday.”

“I will if you need me,” I say.

“Good. I need you.”

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Sondra and I are getting married Saturday night. You’re the best man.”

“That’s a real honor, Willie. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Laurie walks into the room at that moment. “And neither would Laurie.”

“Good,” Willie says. “’Cause she’s the best woman.” I hear Sondra’s voice correcting him in the background, so he corrects himself. “Maid of something.”

“Maid of honor,” I say.

“Right.”

Willie goes on to tell us the location of the wedding, an Italian restaurant/pizzeria in Paterson. He’s negotiated a private room in the back. I would venture to say that Willie is the wealthiest person ever to get married in a pizzeria, but I think it has a certain panache.

I hang up the phone and turn to Laurie. “Willie and Sondra are getting married Saturday night. We are the best man and maid of honor, respectively.”

“That’s wonderful,” she says.

For a woman who thinks that every marriage is “wonderful,” Laurie makes surprisingly little effort to have one of her own. “Jealous?” I ask, casting my bait and hook into the water.

“For sure,” she says. “I’ve had my eye on Willie for a long time.”

We stay at the house until Saturday morning, trying to make the vacation last as long as possible. Just before we leave, I take Tara for a walk on the beach, a departure tradition that I want to continue. I throw a tennis ball into the water, and she dives in after it, oblivious to the cold and the oncoming waves. It is an act of absolute joy, and I want to watch her do it for years to come.

Weddings for me are high on the list of things that I dread attending. They’re generally fancy and boring, and the fancier they are, the more boring they are. I particularly hate “black-tie affairs,” which is one of the reasons why Willie and Sondra’s wedding is so much fun. It’s not fancy, not boring, and very much a no-tie affair.

The ceremony is nondenominational and relatively brief. Willie and Sondra take their vows, kiss, and the fifty or so guests raise their beer bottles in salute. We are all led into another room, where huge bowls of pasta are on the tables, and buffet tables are set up with every kind of pizza imaginable.

As best man, I am called upon to make a toast after dinner. I’m not at my best in situations like this, but I do the best I can. I toast Willie and Sondra as two wonderful people who have turned their lives around and who deserve each other, and I speak of Willie as a cherished partner and friend.

I’m not much for dancing, so Laurie must find other partners to satisfy her apparent need for public gyration. Fortunately, Vince loses all inhibitions after his fifth beer, so he is able to more than fill in ably for me.

It is while they are dancing that Willie comes over to me and sits down. “Man, I know you don’t like to hear this, but I owe everything to you. Everything.”

“Who said I don’t like to hear it?”

Willie never likes to talk about his time on death row, and we don’t do so now. But we do talk about the other things that have happened since, the money, the foundation, new friends, and finding Sondra.

“It’s weird,” he says, “all these things happenin’, one after another.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I say. “They’re happening because of who you are and the way you’re living your life.”

“You always say that.”

“What?”

“That you don’t believe in coincidences.”

“That’s because I don’t,” I say.

“Well, I’ve got one for you. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” His tone is uncharacteristically serious, maybe a little worried.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“In just a few months, Sondra almost got murdered twice.”

His words hit me right between the eyes. Sondra was shot and then almost strangled. I never connected the two; they seemed like isolated events. Coincidences.

“Maybe you should move out of this neighborhood,” I say, but the words have a hollow, foolish ring to them. It may even be a sign of a bias I didn’t know I had: This is a poor, mostly black neighborhood, so attempted murders are not such earthshaking events. If it happened in wealthy suburbia, they would be forming commissions to investigate it.

“Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t sound any more convinced than I am.

“And with all the expensive jewelry you’re buying her, it makes her more of a target,” I say, grasping at more straws.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Add everything up, I ain’t spent a thousand bucks. Sondra thinks I’m cheap.”

“Come on, Willie, it’s none of my business, but that locket alone is worth ten thousand. It didn’t fall off a truck, did it?”

His look is one of pure amazement. “Ten thousand? Are you kiddin’ me? For that thing around her neck?”

“What did you pay?”

“I didn’t. It was her friend’s . . . Rosalie. It was in her stuff. Sondra wears it all the time . . . it’s kind of a good-luck charm.”

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “Rosalie, the . . . girl that was working with Sondra, she had an alexandrite locket?”

Willie calls out to Sondra, sitting across the room, and asks her to come over, which she does. She’s wearing the locket, and Willie points to it. “That was Rosalie’s, right?”

Sondra reacts defensively, her hand covering the locket. “Yes . . . it was hers . . . I didn’t know anyone to give it to.” Some defiance creeps into her voice. “I think she would have wanted me to have it.”

“Can I see it?” I ask.

She takes it off and hands it to me. I’m not an expert, but I have no doubt that it’s real. “Rosalie had this in her apartment?” The apartment was ransacked after the murder; it would take a stupid criminal to leave this behind.

“No, we shared a safe-deposit box. All the girls had them. The guys that would come around . . . let’s just say we didn’t trust them that much.”

I nod, and hold up the locket. “Did she have anything else like this?” I ask.

“No, not really. Just some old clothes . . .” She points to the locket. “Is it worth anything?”

“Ten grand,” says Willie, and Sondra makes a sound somewhere between a gasp and a shriek.

“Oh, my God . . . ten thousand dollars,” she says, then points to the locket. “It opens. There’s a picture inside.”

She shows me how to open it, and there is in fact a picture of a quite attractive woman, maybe fifty years old. The woman is well dressed and seems to be wearing the same locket, or one just like it. In the background is a stately Victorian house; it does not take a genius to figure out that this is a wealthy woman. “Do you know who this is?” I ask.

Sondra shrugs. “She sort of looks like Rosalie, so I just figured it was her mother or grandmother.”

“Can I borrow this for a few days?” I ask.

“Sure. No problem.”

On the way home I relate the story to Laurie, who doesn’t see it as so remarkable. “Most of these kids don’t start out on the street, Andy. Some of them come from upscale families, and if they run away, they could take a piece of those families with them.”

“But Randy Clemens said it was all about ‘the rich one’ and that the others were ‘window dressing.’ We all just assumed it was Linda Padilla. What if it was Rosalie? What if she was the real target, and Linda Padilla and the others were killed to cover up that fact?”

“So we need to find out who Rosalie was,” she says. “Without prints, that’s going to be tough. Dental records don’t help unless you know who it might be, so you can get them and compare. They—”

I interrupt her, slapping the steering wheel in my excitement. “Maybe that’s why he cut off her hands! Laurie, this guy was out there committing these psycho murders, but he didn’t fit the profile of a psycho. There was no passion, no sexual molestation. He was cold and calculating, but cutting off the hands didn’t fit in with that. Now it does! Maybe he was cutting off the hands so we wouldn’t be able to identify Rosalie.”

Laurie asks me if I have any idea at all who Rosalie might be, and though I do, I’m still so unsure that I don’t want to voice it yet. Instead, I pick up the phone and call Kevin, Vince, and Sam Willis and give them each an assignment. I ask them to come to my house at four P.M. tomorrow with whatever they find out.

In the morning, I’m going to call Cindy Spodek and ask her a key question. Other than that, I’m going to just wait until four P.M. and try to relax. Because if I’m right, that’s when the shit is going to start hitting the fan.