“Yes, the state of Illinois pays Mr. Mulliner two hundred thousand dollars a year to look after security at this hospital, but this summer, he bought the house he’s walking into here for five million dollars. He also acquired that beautiful German sports car. And when we looked at his brokerage statements, we saw some amazing activity in them.”
When Murray showed Mulliner’s brokerage statements—obtained in ways that she didn’t want to know—Lotty sat rigid. She didn’t dare look at the men from Global Entertainment behind her, but she heard a sharp whisper—Lawlor to Strangwell? Where did those come from? The statements showed pay-ins of hundreds of thousand dollars’ worth of shares in high-flying companies.
“By one of those coincidences that occasionally happen in life,” Murray continued, “the mentally ill sister—the brilliant lawyer Leydon Ashford—met Tommy Glover’s mother when Netta Glover came on one of her frequent visits to her son. Netta claimed that her boy was innocent, but that he’d never had proper legal representation. Leydon, who was still a member of the bar, agreed to take on his case. Two weeks later, Netta Glover was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Coincidence?
“The day Netta died, Leydon was released from Ruhetal; she was desperately trying to get in touch with her old law school buddy V. I. Warshawski to tell her about Tommy, when someone pushed her from the balcony in Rockefeller Chapel.
“In the last few days, Leydon recovered enough from her injuries to tell me what she learned in the locked wing; I’ll share that with you when we come back.”
The murmur through the audience this time was one of shock but also expectation; Lotty heard Lawlor say, “Sewall told me she’d never recover! Why doesn’t someone pull the plug on this damned farce of a show?” and Strangwell reply, “Calm down, Lawlor. Don’t turn a match into a forest fire. I’ll just make sure Harold is watching upstairs.”
As the show broke for another five minutes of commercials, Lotty saw Strangwell hurry from the studio. She didn’t know if Murray also saw him go—he spent the break going over notes with Zhou. When the cameras started rolling again, Murray continued.
“When Leydon Ashford went to see Tommy Glover, Mulliner moved smoothly into action. He let the grieving brother know a lawyer was calling on his sister’s killer. The brother complained to Leydon Ashford’s family and they said, ‘We’re already working with a private investigator who’s digging up dirt on Chaim Salanter for us; we’ll get him to go out to Ruhetal and put a stop to Leydon. She doesn’t listen to us, but a PI can be ruthless if he has to.’ ”
Lotty heard Faith Ashford’s shocked outcry, quickly suppressed by her husband.
“And lo and behold, when Miles Wuchnik went into that locked wing, he found a picture, a photograph, that had also interested Leydon. Because this photograph suggested that maybe Tommy Glover hadn’t been a killer after all.” Murray made a suitable dramatic pause.
“And now Miles made a huge mistake. He stole the photograph from Tommy and mailed it to his own beloved sister, and then he tried to blackmail the man who he thought might be the real killer. Well, a guy who can strangle a woman and dump her body into a lake, and then let a mentally deficient man go to prison for it—a man like that knows how to deal with blackmailers.
“Our killer knew from Miles Wuchnik that Chaim Salanter’s granddaughter was a big fan of that popular series of fantasy books, Carmilla, Queen of the Night. Wuchnik, eavesdropping on the girls through the bugs he’d planted in their cell phones, knew they were going to an abandoned cemetery for a late-night ritual to act out the lives of their favorite characters.”
Murray paused while footage ran on the screens of the initiation ceremony. One of the girls, possibly Nia Durango, had been persuaded to turn over her cell phone, with its shaky video of the ceremony. The audience was able to laugh at the girls dancing in the rain, and tension in the studio eased a bit.
“Our killer thought he could kill two birds with one stone: murder Miles Wuchnik, and throw dirt onto Chaim Salanter, whom he seemed to hate for no particular reason. Our killer worked with one of the orderlies out at Ruhetal. He gave Xavier Jurgens the price of a new Camaro for going to the cemetery and murdering Miles Wuchnik.
“Our killer was a mile away at a lavish fund-raiser in his honor, but he couldn’t resist slipping away to the cemetery to make sure the foul deed had been done. He called the police himself, hoping that Chaim Salanter’s granddaughter and Sophy Durango’s daughter would be trapped at the cemetery next to Miles Wuchnik’s dead body.”
The screens showed Miles Wuchnik with the rebar sticking out of his chest, police evidence photos that the public had never seen. Again, there were oohs and ahhs of horror and titillation.
“Imagine how annoyed our killer was—cranky, to use one of V.I.’s own favorite understatements—to discover that she had found the girls and was shepherding them to safety.”