Her Last Scream Page 6

  But this version of Bromley didn’t look relaxed.

  “You were insulting Mr Krebbs’s character,” he continued. “Using the death of his wife to mock him. That’s disgusting, Detectives. Mr Krebbs’s wife was the insecure one, given to flights of drunken fantasy. It’s to Mr Krebbs’s credit that he put up with such erratic behavior over a period of years and –”

  “Did you just call Lainie Krebbs a drunken liar?” I said. “Which one of us did you accuse of character assassination, Nate?”

  Bromley pointed to the door. “This farce is over. If you wish to talk rationally to my client about his wife –”

  “Not wife, Bromley,” I said, ignoring Harry’s elbow in my ribs, our signal for me to ease up. I’ve gotten pretty good about heeding the nudge, but Bromley was pushing my buttons. “It’s wives, plural. Your client goes through sad little girls like most people go through toilet paper.”

  “Out now,” Bromley said. “Expect to hear from your chief.”

  We left, Harry removing me by my elbow. “Lawd,” Harry said as we got in the car. “Not only does Krebbs have Nate Bromley as his mouthpiece, you go and piss Bromley off.”

  “He pissed me off first.”

  Harry headed back to the department to regroup. We’d never encountered Bromley in a courtroom; the criminal cases his firm defended never involved anything as coarse as homicide, leaning more toward embezzlement, stock swindles, and mail fraud. I recalled a recent case in which Bromley had defended a computer-hacking whiz, a bespectacled man-child of twenty-seven who’d danced effortlessly past firewalls and security programs to steal credit-card numbers, buying PlayStations and plasma TVs and anything made by Apple.

  Defending credit-card theft was about as deep in the dirt as BC&B got, and I recalled the hacker had skirted prison, Bromley’s deal calling for his client to make financial restitution, do fifty hours of community service, and promise to go forth and never hack again. My cop buddies and I had sneered at the deal, thinking the punishment far too light for the charges, but the public seemed unconcerned, several in the courtroom gallery cheering the decision, like Bromley had dragged an innocent man from the gas chamber seconds before the pellets dropped.

  The day was waning, the tops of the live oaks along Government Street turned amber by the fading sun. I’d opened the conference-room window and could smell the Mobile River a few hundred yards east. There was a jazz concert in Bienville Square and the joyous music of a Dixieland band danced though the streets. A scattering of gulls wheeled in the air and a ship’s horn sounded on the bay.

  I turned from the window. Harry sat at the table, his fingers tented beneath his chin. We’d asked Sally Hargreaves if she wanted to sit in and bump thoughts, but she said she had an important meeting which, given personal experience, I took as a date.

  “Two victims,” I said to Harry, reprising the thoughts I’d been mulling at the window. “Same killer. One vic in –”

  “Same methodology,” Harry corrected. “Not the same killer. Not yet.”

  “I’m making the assumption for brainstorm purposes.”

  “Are you assuming Krebbs is the killer?” Harry asked.

  I nodded. “When forensics tightens the time of death we’re gonna put Krebbs in Colorado. A plane ticket, gas receipt, won’t take much.”

  “How you figure Krebbs knew his wife ran to Colorado?”

  “My money’s on a private investigator,” I said, making the money-whisk with my fingertips. “Larry-boy’s got the money. He finds the missus is hiding around Denver, races up and abducts her, finds a torture site. I’ve been in the region before. One direction is miles of open desert, the other is mountains. Everywhere is a hiding place. Krebbs lets his psycho side bloom, then makes a final statement by dumping the body in the sewage tank.”

  “What about our Jane Doe here in Mobile? butterfly Lady.”

  I smiled and gave it a few seconds to build the drama, wishing I had a drum-roll machine. “I think she’ll turn out to be Krebbs’s first wife, Harry. There are a shitload of details to fill in, but Wife One is the Ur-bitch, where it all started for Larry-boy.”

  “The first wife? You sure?” Harry leaned forward, trying to keep his voice noncommittal, but I was hooking him.

  “I can feel it, bro. Wife One and butterfly Lady are the same. They’re bookend murders. By killing the first wife and the last wife, Krebbs symbolically murders all the women in between.”

  “Bookend?”

  “I just made that up. Pretty cool, right?”

  Chapter 14

  The next morning Harry and I figured we’d find who Krebbs had selected as his first wife and match her to the body in the morgue. We were waiting for the records department in City Hall to open and give us the case-breaking news. At five to nine the intercom on our desk was buzzed by Lieutenant Tom Mason, our supervisor, amigo, protector, and saint without portfolio. Tom stayed out of our way and let us work, the supreme compliment.

  “You’ve got a visitor downstairs, guys,” Tom said in a country drawl as slow and rich as sorghum molasses. “T. Nathaniel Bromley in the flesh, asking if you were in. I’m bringing him up. You boys working on some kind of corporate acquisition, maybe merging with Goldman-Sachs?”

  “Bromley’s repping a guy in the Krebbs case – the husband.”

  A surprised pause. “Didn’t you say the suspect was an accountant at a factory? How the hell did a guy like Krebbs get Bromley as his lawyer?”

  “I dunno, but it wasn’t charm.”

  We flicked off the phone. Tom hadn’t said anything about the Chief being contacted, so Bromley must have had second thoughts after we’d left. I was surprised, actually; people like Bromley enjoy throwing their weight around.

  Harry looked at me. “What do you suppose has brought such a potent force in lawyerism to our humble digs?”

  I grinned. “I do believe Mister Bromley wants to kick-start a plea bargain for his guilty-as-sin client.”

  Tom walked Bromley up to the department. We led the lawyer to a conference room, drawing glances as we crossed the detectives’ office space with one of Mobile’s legal elite. Bromley wore full attorney regalia: a black suit with pinstripes, pink shirt, rep tie. He was carrying a sleek briefcase made of gray animal hide, seal maybe, or vulture. He studied the gray metal chair before he sat, like he hadn’t seen anything so quaint since his DA’s-office days.

  “We got off on the wrong foot yesterday, Mr Bromley,” I said, making nice since Bromley was about to raise the white flag. “We were just trying to rattle your client. You know how it goes.”

  Bromley nodded. “Back in the day I used to push cops to get anything they could on a suspect. We were both doing our jobs, Detective Ryder. Speaking of which …” He dug in his briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers, setting them in front of Harry and me.

  “A confession?” I asked.

  Bromley’s face was noncommittal. “Mrs Krebbs was murdered sometime between the fifteenth and twentieth of last month, right?”

  “How do you know the time of death, sir?” I asked. Last I’d heard, the date was still being considered by the Denver forensics types.

  A quiet smile. “My former firm keeps a condo in Aspen. I’ve met people in Colorado law enforcement over the years, skiing with the governor now and then. The folks in forensics up there were happy to provide the most recent discoveries in the case.”

  I’d not received that information, but then I didn’t schuss with the governor of Colorado. I picked up the papers Bromley had brought, seeing credit-card receipts, phone records, bills of sale, a grab-bag of numbers and dates.

  “What is all this?” I asked.

  The lawyer’s eyes began to sparkle. “During the entire period encompassing Lainie Krebbs’s estimated time of death Lawrence T. Krebbs was working from a cottage on Cudjoe Key in the Florida Keys. You’re holding receipts from local restaurants and grocery stores, bait shops, a fishing-charter service, barber shop, moped rental … and, of c
ourse, phone records of calls from Mr Krebbs that originated in the Keys.”

  I looked at the big pile of alibi while hearing a low hissing in the back of my head: the sound of a case slipping from my fingertips.

  Bromley said, “Larry may not suit your standards for matrimonial conduct, Detective, but he had nothing to do with the woman’s death. You can now turn your attention – and taxpayer dollars – to a more fruitful avenue of investigation.”

  “Not yet, Nate,” I said, staring him in the eye. “There’s the little matter of his missing first wife. I think your client –”

  Bromley chuckled openly, shaking his head like he was talking to a child. “You’re talking about Angie? She lives in Vermont. I’ll email you her particulars. She won’t have a lot of good to say about my client, but that’s what divorces do to relationships.”

  Harry clapped his palms to keep me from commenting on Krebbs’s wife-collection abilities. We stood, Harry putting his hand behind my neck so I couldn’t retreat to my desk, making me walk Bromley to the door like we were all buddies.

  “I thought you retired from law, Mr Bromley,” Harry said as we crossed the floor.

  “I retired from working seventy hours a week, Detective Nautilus. Now I pick and choose my clients and work a few hours a week. It’s closer to a hobby than a job.”

  “Couldn’t you have arranged to work a day or two at BC&B? It seems they’d do anything to have your expertise, Mr Bromley, even if only for –”

  “I’m done with them,” Bromley said curtly. “And a helluva lot happier for it.”

  He nodded a brisk farewell and was gone.

  “Looks like we mark Krebbs off our suspect list,” Harry sighed as we shambled back to our cubicle. “A pity. I loved the term ‘bookend killings’.”

  My reply wasn’t polite, conjoining Krebbs and Bromley in a position that would have done the Kama Sutra proud.

  A throat cleared behind us and we turned to Sally Hargreaves. Sal wore a pink blouse, knee-high green skirt and dark stockings. Her shoes were blue running models over anklet athletic socks, a good choice since she rarely sat but paced the perimeter of the second floor like a track, thinking about cases, darting into her cube only when she needed to make a note or check her computer. I figured Sally completed a marathon about every two weeks.

  Sally said, “I was at my meeting last night.”

  “Meeting?” I smiled. “So that’s what you’re calling a date these days?”

  “How about we retreat to the conference room?” she said.

  Once inside, Sal glanced through the windows into the department, jumped up to close the door, like she was worried about eavesdropping. She sat for a three-count, then bounced up to close the blinds.

  “Should I activate the cone of silence?” I said.

  Sal ignored me, re-sitting and leaning across the table so her whisper would reach Harry’s and my ears. “I know how Lainie Krebbs got to Denver, guys. It’ll probably never be verified. At least, I hope not in the press.”

  “Cryptic, Sal,” I said. “How’d she make the escape?”

  “Lainie Krebbs took a train.”

  “We checked trains, Sal,” I said. “There aren’t any routes between Mobile and Denver.”

  “I’m not talking about a railroad you can see, guys. I’m talking about one you can’t.”

  Harry looked at me, I looked at him. Then we both stared at Sal, waiting for her to make sense.

  Chapter 15

  “An underground railroad?” Harry said, after Sal’s brief overview. “You mean like Harriet Tubman created? A secret network of safe houses to help slaves escape their owners?”

  “A updated version, Harry. A system that helps women like Lainie Krebbs escape abusive relationships.”

  I frowned. “This network is reached through the Mobile Women’s Services Center?”

  “Most women’s centers offer safety, temporary shelter, education, counseling, even legal services. A select few go further, becoming nodes in a secret transportation system.”

  “Spiriting women away for ever?”

  “When a woman’s life is in immediate and extreme danger. When there’s no other choice.”

  “Calling the cops?” Harry said. “Is that a choice?”

  “For a woman in this situation, a call to the cops can be like stepping on to her own personal death row, except the executioner will be the man in her life.”

  Sal had hit on a major problem in law enforcement: a woman reports her significant other is threatening or hurting her. He says she’s lying. Even if the cops slap the asshole in jail, he gets out ravenous for revenge. It’s a Catch-22 situation: the only way to protect a woman is to put her abuser away for years. The only way to do that is if he injures or kills her.

  “We can’t help you right now, ma’am … come back when you’re dead.”

  Harry said, “It seems a tough task, Sal, making someone gone for good.”

  “Think of an amateur-run Witness Protection Program, Harry. Secrecy, safe houses, transfers at night … A woman escapes a step at a time, a hundred miles here, two hundred there. Until she’s where she needs to be.”

  “Who determines the destination?” I asked, fascinated.

  “Sometimes the woman will have a friend or relative in an area, someone unknown to the abuser. Often the area is chosen just because it’s far away. When the escaping woman arrives, a support system helps with a legal name change – the first step in identity re-creation. Employment is next. And so forth, until the woman has a new life.”

  “What about children? Seems like a lot of room for legal problems. A woman leaving with a babe in arms … the product of her and hubby?”

  Sal shook her head. “The folks at the centers work hard to mediate such situations. To keep the union together without violence. Sometimes it works, sometimes it goes horribly awry.”

  We didn’t have to look far for an example. Last fall a Mobile’s man’s wife had filed for divorce. Distraught and angry, he barricaded himself in his house with wife and four kids, murdering them before committing suicide. Then there was the man living with his girlfriend and baby in Dothan, Alabama. When she decided to get her GED, he set fire to the house with girlfriend and baby inside.

  Some people don’t take to mediation.

  Harry pushed his chair away from the table. “Let’s have a tête-à-tête with the folks at the center. You explained we’d be around, right, Sal?”

  Sal cleared her throat. “No one wants to talk to the cops, Harry. They’re afraid of what might happen.”

  “There’s a possibility someone in the system was killed,” I said. “They have to open up.”

  “Lemme give you a look inside before you jump,” Sally interrupted. “The folks at the center gave me the name of someone who went through the system, coming here from Boise, Idaho, two months back. Let’s call her Gail for our purposes. Gail’s agreed to tell her story if we commit to total silence. It’ll be as close to seeing inside as there is.”

  “Who would we tell?” Harry asked.

  “Not the point,” Sal said. “Everyone in and around the system is conditioned to secrecy.”

  “Harry and I won’t put anything in the reports,” I promised. “We’ll classify ‘Gail’ as a Confidential Informant. That cool?”

  Sal nodded. “That should work. I’ll let everyone concerned know.”

  Harry and I traded glances. We’d still have to speak with people at the center. But listening to Gail would give us better questions to ask.

  Sal said, “I set the interview up for tonight at Doc Kavanaugh’s place, the Doc talking to Gail, the rest of us watching on monitor. I spoke to Gail and promised she’d be safe.”

  “Safe?” Harry said, looking puzzled. “Then why not meet here, in a cop shop?”

  Sal gave Harry a sad smile. “Cop shops enforce the restraining orders against angry boyfriends and husbands, right? How’s that been working out?”

  At five p.m. we drove to
gether to Kavanaugh’s home in Daphne, on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. Her office was attached to the architectural anomaly of her single-story house, a modernist brick and wood creation à la Wright. Tucked back in the pines and oaks, it looked like part of the natural plan, “organic” being the term du jour. Our petite Merlin had conjured curried chicken salad on fresh-baked baguettes, a tomato-basil-linguine salad and, of course, beer and wine choices.

  “Gail” arrived at six and Kavanaugh went to escort her to the office. No one else would meet Gail. Kavanaugh had traded her usual contact lenses for glasses, freed her white hair to fall to the middle of her back, and wore a black tee over faded blue jeans and battered sandals. She looked like someone you could trust with your story.

  The camera in the office was piped to Kavanaugh’s living-room television, a flat-screen the size of my dining-room table. Sal, Harry and I turned our chairs to the screen, ready to watch the show. We found ourselves speaking in whispers, though Gail was fifty feet and two walls away.

  On the television Gail cautiously entered the room and took a padded, comfortable chair. She was dark-haired, medium height and weight, pretty in a vague, non-sophisticated way. She wore a white ruffled blouse tucked into black Levis cinched with a wide Concho belt with a silver and turquoise buckle. Black middies heels. She was a smoker and Kavanaugh had provided a crystal ashtray and lighter. Gail lit up as soon as she sat. The image on the monitor was so realistic I could smell the smoke.

  Kavanaugh went to a small bar in the corner. “I’m gonna have a glass of white wine, Gail. Want one?”

  “I’d love it.”

  Kavanaugh held high a bottle from one of those new California wineries expressing hipness via wine names like Blind Toad Hill, Red Chicken, Velvet Moon and so forth. Kavanaugh’s selection was named Crazy Ladies. When Gail saw the label she broke out laughing. You go, girl, my mind whispered to Kavanaugh. Her little gag had broken the ice with Gail in five seconds. I figured the Doc had checked every label in the wine shop to find the perfect one.