Hope to Die Read online

  The pews were packed, and people were still dabbing at their eyes as the casket of Atticus Jones passed by. Standing there with Bree beside me, I dealt with the tremendous sense of loss by dwelling on the number of people who had cared enough about the old detective to attend the service. There were at least eighty of them in the church, maybe more.

  There goes a life chock-full of meaning, I thought, and I felt tears well up in my eyes.

  I watched the casket leave; it was followed by the priest, the deacon, and the altar boys. Jones’s family came next, and I nodded to each of them as they passed. Gloria Jones and Ava exited last, both of them in black dresses.

  We followed the procession out of the church and into a warm, dry June day almost six weeks after we’d flown off the Pandora.

  Atticus Jones’s daughter came over to hug me.

  “You gave my dad peace, Alex,” she said. “He was ready to let go after he knew Mulch was finished and your family was safe and sound.”

  “We never would have found Sunday without your dad.”

  “And you wouldn’t have lived without Nana Mama,” Ava said.

  “Not a chance,” Bree agreed.

  “How is she doing?” Gloria Jones asked.

  I shook my head. “She’s one tough, tough old lady, and the meds they’ve got her on for her heart seem to be working.”

  “I meant with the shooting and all,” Gloria said. “My dad was really worried how it would affect her.”

  “Other than to say it was a terrible thing that had to be done, she doesn’t talk about it,” I replied. “But even though her dream kitchen is done and she loves it, there are times when we catch her staring off and worrying her apron strings or her rosary beads.”

  Bree said, “And I’ve heard her crying more than a few times at night.”

  “Oh, the poor old doll,” Gloria said. “You tell her from me that she should be up for sainthood for wiping that scumbag off the face of the earth.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, and fought a laugh.

  “Well,” Jones’s daughter said, “I have one more service to attend, family only. I’ll see you at the reception?”

  “We actually have to leave,” I said. “My daughter’s running in a big meet and we want to watch her.”

  Gloria hugged Bree, said, “It was so nice of you to come too.”

  “Alex adored your dad,” Bree said. “So of course I came.”

  Then Gloria made me promise once more not to talk to the media until her full report on the case ran on Dateline later in the week. She nodded supportively to Ava and walked off toward the black limo that would carry her to Atticus Jones’s gravesite.

  Ava looked nervous and asked Bree, “How’re you feeling?”

  “I get agitated and irritable,” my wife said. “But it’s all part of the recovery.”

  “Your shoulder?” she asked me.

  “Held together with screws, pins, and Teflon wire,” I replied. “Next week I start physical therapy for it, which I am not looking forward to.”

  She kept toeing the grass.

  “You good?” Bree asked.

  She looked up at my wife and nodded as she pushed back a lock of her hair. “I’m real good, actually.”

  “That’s excellent to hear,” Bree said.

  “It is,” Ava said. “And I don’t want to sound like I’m ungrateful or anything, because I’m more grateful to you two and to Nana Mama than you could ever understand.”

  I got where she was heading and said, “But you want to stay with Gloria, live in Pittsburgh?”

  She smiled and nodded. “A new start. Somewhere different. Finish high school, go to college, and learn more about the news business.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Bree said, though she had tears running down her cheeks. “But I am going to miss you, young lady, and you have to promise to come visit.”

  “Got to see the new showplace, don’t I?” Ava asked as she went into Bree’s arms.

  They held each other for several long moments, and I knew how hard it was going to be for my wife to let her go. Even when Ava was at her lowest, Bree had refused to give up on her. Bree had been the one who kept pushing to find her and get her off the streets again.

  “I love you both,” Ava said when they separated.

  “We love you too,” I said, and I held out my good arm to embrace her. “Without you, we might never have caught Mulch.”

  “You said that about Detective Jones.”

  “I did. It was a team effort.”

  Ava beamed. “I’ll call you to hear how Jannie did in her race.”

  “You better,” Bree said, and we watched Ava run off to catch up with Gloria Jones and her new family.

  “This is hard,” my wife said, wiping away tears.

  “It is,” I said, putting my good arm around her shoulder and then kissing her. “I love you, you know?”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “It’s what keeps me going.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Ditto?”

  “What do you want me to say? You are my sunshine, my only sunshine?”

  “That would be a good start,” she said, and poked me.

  I laughed, said, “We better get going or we’ll miss the race.”

  CHAPTER

  102

  TWO AND A HALF hours later, we hurried from our car into the stadium at the University of Maryland in College Park. The stands were crowded for the special meet, which had brought in the top under-eighteen track stars from Virginia, Maryland, the District, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

  It took us a few moments to locate the official Jannie Cross cheering section. John Sampson and his wife, Billie, were already on hand. So was Damon and his new girlfriend, Sylvia Mathers, the student at the Kraft School who had first told me about Acadia Le Duc. A row in front of them, Ali was standing on a riser next to Nana Mama, who looked annoyed.

  “We didn’t miss it, did we?” I asked when I realized she was annoyed with me.

  “Jannie’s been looking for you,” my grandmother said. “She’s over there, warming up by the long-jump pit. You better make sure she knows you’re here.”

  I left Bree and climbed back down the bleachers. When I reached the fence that surrounded the track, I called, “Hey, you!”

  Jannie smiled, ran over to me. “I was afraid you weren’t going to make it.”

  “Nothing was getting in the way of our being here.”

  She toed the grass. “I’m nervous.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Your coach says you were born to be here. You have to believe that.”

  Her eyes got glassy and she nodded. “I do. Even after everything, I do.”

  “Especially because of everything,” I insisted. “You survived for a reason. This is the reason.”

  Jannie knitted her brow, said, “I’ll see you after?”

  “You will, and I’ll love you truly, madly, and deeply no matter what happens. But before the gun goes off?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to believe in yourself, and I want you to have faith in the gift God gave you.”

  “Okay,” she said, then she smiled and trotted away.

  “She got the jitters?” Bree asked when I’d climbed back up into the bleachers.

  “A little.”

  “This is for, like, five states, right?” Ali asked, fidgeting.

  “It’s big,” Damon said. “There are all sorts of college coaches here to recruit.”

  They called for the finalists in the women’s 400-meter race, and Jannie got off her warm-ups, walked into her starting lane, and then danced toward her mark on the stagger, looking like a strong girl among powerful women. She was the only fifteen-year-old in the field.

  I helped Nana Mama to her feet and glanced at Bree, who was hugging herself.

  “You good?” I asked.

  “I am,” she said. “You?”

  We’d all been asking each other that question multiple times a day since our r
escue. For a brief period, two weeks, I’d been consumed with guilt that Sunday had done all those heinous things—murder, kidnapping, and the persecution of my family—because of me. I mourned the fact that so many innocent people hadn’t survived Marcus Sunday, including Bernice Smith, the Pennsylvania woman who had been murdered and mutilated simply because she looked like Bree, and Raphael Larkin, a Baltimore teen lanky and tall enough to have resembled Damon.

  It had all happened because of me. But beyond knowing that Sunday was an obsessive, homicidal narcissist, I did not fully understand his actions.

  Acadia Le Duc had been interviewed about it, and she said she’d asked Sunday the same thing on repeated occasions. Some of the time he’d replied that he was using me as living proof of his philosophical theories, and other times he’d told her he was doing it to me simply because he could.

  Both reasons upset me. They still do.

  But I’d been talking with Dr. Adele Finaly, an old and dear friend as well as a shrink of the highest caliber. It helped. And Bree had also found someone to talk to. So had the kids. And my grandmother had her priest.

  For the most part, we were good. In ways, we’d never been closer, and as the starter called the athletes to their marks, I chose to embrace the good in my life and push all thoughts of Marcus Sunday aside.

  All our focus went to Jannie when he called, “Set.”

  The gun cracked, and they took off.

  We screamed and cheered, and it was as if all the terrible things that had happened to my family no longer existed, because when the other girls on the track ran like the wind, our Jannie believed and came on like a hurricane.

  WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS … ENDS IN MURDER.

  FOR AN EXCERPT, READ ON.

  SPRINKLERS SHOT BROKEN jets of water over the lush gardens in back of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Night was coming on. I was armed, waiting behind a clump of shrubbery a hundred feet from bungalow six when I heard footsteps come up the path. Captain Luke Warren of the LAPD with a gang of six cops right behind him, came toward me.

  For once, I was glad to see the LAPD.

  I had information that Gozan Remari and Khezir Mazul, two heinous cruds who were suspected of multiple rapes, but hadn’t been charged, were behind door number six. But unless there was evidence of a crime in progress, I had no authority to break in.

  I called out to the captain, presented my badge, and handed him my card, which read Jack Morgan, CEO, Private Investigations.

  Warren looked up at me, said, “I know who you are, Morgan. Friend of the chief. The go-to guy for the one percent.”

  “I get around,” I said.

  Cops don’t like private investigators. PIs don’t play by the same rules as city employees and our clients, in particular, hire Private because of our top-gun expertise and our discretion.

  Captain Warren was saying, “Okay, since you called this in. What’s the story?”

  “A friend of mine in the hotel business called me to say that these two were bounced out of the Constellation for assaulting a chambermaid. They checked in here two hours ago. I’ve got a couple of spider cams on the windows, but the drapes are closed. I’ve made out two male voices and one female over the music and the TV, but no calls for help.”

  “And your interest in this?”

  I said, “I’m a concerned citizen.”

  Warren said, “Okay. Thanks for the tip. Now I’ve got to ask you to step back and let us do our job.”

  I told him of course, no problem.

  And it was no problem.

  I wasn’t on assignment and I didn’t want the credit. I was glad to be there for the takedown.

  Captain Warren sent two men around the bungalow to cover the back and garden exits, then he and I went up the steps and across the veranda to the front door along with two detectives from the Beverly Hills PD. Warren knocked and announced.

  We heard a shout through the front door; sounded like “Go away.”

  I said, “He said, ‘Come in,’ right?”

  The captain smiled to show me that he liked my way of thinking. Then he swiped the lock with a card key, cocked his leg, and kicked in the door.

  It blew open, and we all got a good view of what utter depravity looks like.

  THE LIVING ROOM was done up in silk and satin in the colors peaches and cream. Logs flickered in the marble fireplace and atonal music oozed from the CD player. Empty glasses, liquor bottles, and many articles of clothing littered the floor. A room-service cart had been tipped over, spilling food and broken china across the Persian carpet.

  I served for years as a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. I’ve been trained to spot a glint of metal or a puff of smoke on the ground from ten thousand feet up. In the dark.

  But I didn’t need pilot’s training to recognize the filth right in front of me.

  The man called Gozan Remari sat in an armchair with the hauteur of a prince. He looked to be about fifty, white-haired with gold-colored, catlike eyes. Remari wore an expensive handmade jacket, an open pin-striped shirt, a heavy gold watch, and nothing else—not even an expression of surprise or anger that cops were coming through the door.

  A nude woman lay at his feet, bound with silk ties. Her arms and legs were spread and she was anchored hand and foot to a chair, an ottoman, a table, as if she were a luna moth pinned to a board. I saw bluish handprints on her skin, and food had been smeared on her body.

  There was an arched entrance to my right that led to a bedroom. And there, in plain sight, was Khezir Mazul. He was naked, sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar. A young woman, also naked, was stretched on her back across his lap, her head over the side of the bed. A thin line of blood arced across her throat, and I saw a steak knife on the cream-colored satin blanket.

  From where I stood in the doorway, I couldn’t tell if the women were unconscious or dead.

  Captain Warren yanked Gozan Remari to his feet and cuffed his hands behind his back. He said, “You’re under arrest for assault. You have the right to remain silent, you piece of crap.”

  The younger dirtbag stood up, let the woman on his lap roll away from him, off the bed and onto the floor. Khezir Mazul was powerfully built, tattooed on most of his body with symbols I didn’t recognize.

  He entered the living room and said to Captain Warren in the most bored tones imaginable, “We’ve done nothing. Do you know the word con-shen-sul? This is not any kind of assault. These women came here willingly with us. Ask them. They came here to party. As you say here, ‘We aim to please.’”

  Then he laughed. Laughed.

  I stepped over the room-service cart and went directly to the woman lying near me on the floor. Her breathing was shallow, and her skin was cool. She was going into shock.

  My hands shook as I untied her wrists and ankles.

  I said, “Everything is going to be okay. What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?”

  Cops came through the back door, and one of them called for medical backup. Next, hotel management and two guests came in the front. Bungalow six was becoming a circus.

  I ripped a cashmere throw from the sofa and covered the woman’s body. I helped her into a chair, put my jacket around her shoulders.

  She opened her eyes and tears spilled down her cheeks. “My daughter,” the woman said to me. “Where is she? Is she—”

  I heard the cop behind me say into the phone, “Two females; one in her forties, the other is late teens, maybe early twenties. She’s bleeding from a knife wound to her neck. Both of them are breathing.”

  I said to the woman whose name I didn’t know, “Your daughter is just over there, in the bedroom. She’s going to be all right. Help is coming.”

  Clasping the blanket to her body, the woman turned to see her daughter being assisted to her feet.

  A siren wailed. The woman reached up and pressed her damp cheek to mine. She hugged me tight with her free arm.

  “It’s my fault. I screwed up,” she said. “Thank you for helping us.”

/>   THE HOT SPRAY beat on me from six showerheads. Justine lightly placed her palms on my chest, tipped her hips against mine.

  She said, “Someone needs a massage. I think that could be you.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay to whatever she wanted to do. It wasn’t just my car that could go from zero to ninety in ten seconds. Justine had that effect on me.

  As she rubbed shower gel between her hands, sending up the scent of pine and ginseng, she looked me up and down. “I don’t know whether to go from top to bottom or the other way around,” she said.

  “Dealer’s choice,” I said.

  She was laughing, enjoying her power over me when my cell phone rang. My fault for bringing it into the bathroom, but I was expecting a call from the head of our Budapest office, who’d said he’d try to call me between flights.

  Justine said, “Here’s a joke. Don’t take the call.”

  I looked through the shower doors to where my phone sat at the edge of the sink. The caller ID read Capt. L. Warren. It could only be about the rapists the cops had just arrested at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  “The joke’s on me,” I said to Justine. “But I’ll make it quick.”

  I caught the call on the third ring.

  “Morgan. We’ve got problems with those pukes from Sumar,” the captain said. “They have diplomatic immunity.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He gave me the bad news in detail, that Gozan Remari and Khezir Mazul were both senior diplomats in Sumar’s mission to the UN.

  “They’re on holiday in Hollywood,” Warren told me. “I think we could ruin their good time, maybe get them recalled to the wasteland they came from, but the ladies won’t cooperate. I’m at the hospital with them now. They wouldn’t let the docs test for sexual assault.”

  “That’s not good,” I said. I put up a finger to let Justine know I would be just a minute.

  “Mrs. Grove is very grateful to you, Morgan,” the Captain was telling me. “I, uh, need a favor. I need you to talk to her.”