Cal’s eyes widened.
I continued. “The thing is that it wasn’t really about you. Your wife felt that she married too young and missed out on a lot from her youth. She wanted to be free not necessarily from you but from the shackles her life with you, her husband, created. You two never should have gotten married, and both of you had doubts prior to the wedding. Am I right?”
Cal’s large eyes blinked. “Yes.”
“She’s getting ready to move. Did you know that?”
“I gave her the house in the divorce,” Cal said. “She’d be stupid to sell it.”
“Well, she’s selling it. And she’s moving west. I think to California because I feel it’s still a warm climate and I can see the coast.”
Cal’s jaw fell open. “We spent some time in Santa Monica a few years ago. She loved that place and tried to talk me into moving out there when the kids were little.”
“Once she moves, she won’t be back,” I told him. “I think you’ll be okay, but it’s going to be a long time before you start dating again. And even then there won’t be anyone serious in your life for quite a while. You’re going to focus on work, and that’s probably a good thing because you still need time to figure out who you are. Still, I can see a vacation in the works. You’re trying to decide between Paris and Spain. Go to Spain. You’ll love Barcelona.”
Cal made a noise that was sort of a choking laughing sound. Little did he know I was just getting warmed up. “On the work front,” I continued, “there’ll be a high-profile case in your near future that’ll be quite difficult, but well worth getting involved in. It’ll get national attention and the cause is worthy. There’s a woman at the center. . . .” My voice trailed off as I stared hard into the ether. “It’s not me, and it’s not Candice, but it’s weird; I feel like there could be a link back to one of us for some reason. I’m not sure why.”
I shook my head because that thread felt a little too opaque to draw out any more information. “I also sense that you have both a son and a daughter in their late teens. They feel extremely close, but not in a bonding sort of way. . . . Hold on—are they twins?”
Cal appeared stunned. “They are.”
“Yeah, I thought so. They live with you too, right?”
“They wanted to be with me after the divorce,” Cal said.
“That was actually a good decision on their part. You’re the more stable parent right now and your ex needs room to figure out what she wants in life. Anyway, your son is Mr. High Achiever. He’s a great kid, studious, smart, applies himself, and he’s a good athlete. Your daughter is the exact opposite, and what you don’t understand is that she is incredibly talented in her own way. She has amazing artistic skills—she’s a genius in that regard. You want her to go to school to become something analytical, like an accountant. She’d rather die. You need to let her be her, Cal. I know you’re worried about her ability to support herself through the arts, but she’ll do fine. Encourage her interests in the arts. She’ll figure out how to earn a living and she’ll thrive as a result.”
There was a knock on the door then and Oppenheimer pushed his bullet face through the door again. “Can we get this show on the road?”
Cal cleared his throat and tugged at his tie. “We can,” he said, and wrote something on his legal pad before turning it so I could read his words. He’d written, “You’re amazing!” And I smiled.
Meanwhile Oppenheimer took his seat and behind him came another guy, tall and very skinny, with a face like a horse—he reminded me of Stan Laurel from Laurel and Hardy. He carried a briefcase that was beat-up and worn. “Mrs. Rivers,” he said as he sat down. “I’m Agent Gould.”
“Did you say Ghoul?” I asked (just to be snarky).
He eyed me snidely. “Gould.”
“Ah, my bad.” I was now all smiles and solicitude.
Next to me Cal ducked his chin to hide a smile. I wanted to whisper, “This ain’t my first rodeo,” to him, but thought that might be pushing it.
Gould cleared his throat and began asking me all about Candice. How many years had I known her? How long had we worked together? Did we spend time together outside of work? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And then he pulled a file from his briefcase and opened it. “Have you ever been to Las Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A few years ago.”
“What took you there?”
“My husband’s cousin went missing. We flew there to look for him.”
Gould didn’t look at me once while he asked the questions. Instead he stared at the file as if skimming it for details. I knew what it contained—a detailed account of my rather harrowing adventures in Sin City.
“Looks like you got into some trouble while you were there,” Gould said.
“No thanks to you guys.” Cal put a hand on my arm. It was a warning that I needed to chill.
“So I gather,” said Gould. He then folded up the file and leaned over to pull another one out of his briefcase. Opening it, he said, “Do you know this man?”
I sucked in a breath and turned my head away, sickened by the photo. “Oh, sorry,” Gould said. “This is the wrong photo. The guy got shot in the face. Makes him nearly unrecognizable.”
“Agent Gould,” Cal said, his voice hard. “Can we please refrain from these theatrics?”
“No theatrics intended, Counselor. Here, Mrs. Rivers. Try this photo. Ever seen this guy before?”
I took a few deep breaths before risking another glance and when I did, my breath caught again, but I tried to hide it. “I’m not sure,” I said. “He sort of looks familiar, but I can’t say that I know him per se.” The truth was that I did know him and my heart was racing with the implications.
Oppenheimer reached over and pushed the photo a little closer to me. “Take another look, Mrs. Rivers. He should look more than familiar to you.”
I gulped. “I’m sorry,” I said, wishing they’d take the photo away. “I know I’ve seen him before, but I can’t place his face.”
“Maybe you two have met before?” Gould said, like he was trying to be helpful.
“She’s already answered your question, Agent Gould. Move on or ask a different question.”
Gould stared intently at me. “According to the notes in the file on you from a few years ago, Mrs. Rivers, this man reported your whereabouts to the FBI. At that time you were a wanted fugitive of the law.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cal turn in surprise to me, but I kept my focus on Gould. “You know that whole thing was nothing but bullshit, Agent Gould, and I resent the implication that I was somehow on the wrong side of the law.”
“I’m not implying that you were on the wrong side of the law, Mrs. Rivers. I’m implying that this man attempted to assist the FBI with your arrest, and now he’s dead.”
I knew they were holding back an even stronger connection, so I decided to call their bluff. “Oh, come off it! He’s not dead because of me. You’re fishing because of who he was once married to.”
“So you do recognize him,” Gould said.
“Only after you told me he was the guy who ratted me out.”
“Right,” Oppenheimer said with another roll of his eyes.
Cal cleared his throat. “Would anyone like to explain to me who this man is?”
“Lenny Fusco,” Gould told him. “He was Candice Fusco’s ex-husband. And, according to Lenny’s wife, Candice once tried to kill him.”
“She did not!” I yelled. They were twisting things, and it was really pissing me off. “I mean, sure, she was ticked off that he’d turned me in, but she didn’t try to kill him, for God’s sake!”
Cal put a hand on my arm to quiet me. “What does his death have to do with Mrs. Rivers?”
“We’d like to know her reaction to the fact that Le
nny here took a bullet in the face about a month ago, when her BFF was in Vegas getting married for the second time.”
My heart began to pound against my rib cage. “Wait . . . what?”
Oppenheimer leaned in. “That’s right. Lenny was murdered in the exact same fashion as Dr. Robinowitz sometime between ten p.m. March sixth and six a.m. March seventh. According to our investigation, Candice Fusco was still in town on her honeymoon until the eighth. Ballistics show that Lenny and Robinowitz were each shot with the same caliber gun. We’re just waiting on the lab to confirm the bullets were from the same weapon.”
I shook my head slowly at first, then more vigorously. “Why would Candice shoot her ex?” I demanded.
Gould looked at Oppenheimer, who nodded, and Gould reached back into his briefcase to pull out yet another file. Opening it up, he said, “Maybe because Lenny Fusco had a contract out on him.”
I blinked and then I got even angrier. They were accusing Candice of things I knew she hadn’t done. “Listen,” I said levelly, “Candice may have hated her ex because he was a con artist and a first-class douche bag, but she’d never put a contract out on his life. I mean, they’ve been divorced for what? Almost ten years? What did she possibly have to gain?”
Gould smirked at me. “We don’t believe she put a contract out on Fusco. We believe she personally fulfilled the contract and collected the money.”
I sat there stunned, and it was a moment before I was able to speak. “Wait . . . ,” I said. “You think . . . you think Candice is some sort of hit man?!”
And then the image of my BFF shooting Dr. Robinowitz flashed in my mind and I physically winced because I knew that’s exactly what they thought. And, no doubt, what a jury would think too. Texas and Nevada were both capital punishment states. If convicted of either crime, Candice would be lucky to avoid the needle.
Gould got my attention again by pulling out a grainy black-and-white photograph. I squinted at it suspiciously and he turned it around so that I could see that it was an aerial view of Candice huddled close to an elderly gentleman of considerable size. The pair appeared to be deep in conversation at a table and under the man’s hand was an envelope. Gould placed another photo in front of me, which was the same scene except that the older gentleman appeared to be passing Candice the envelope. A third photo showed her tucking that envelope into her purse. In the bottom of the frame was a time/date stamp. The photo was taken March 6 at ten twenty-four a.m.
I didn’t say anything; instead I waited for Gould or Oppenheimer to explain. Gould spoke first. “Know who that is?” he asked, pointing to the old man in the photos.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“That’s Salazar Kato.” My mind buzzed. I knew the name, but at that exact moment I couldn’t place it. “He owns Lucky Lou’s Casino. It’s not on the Strip, but it does a hell of a business all the same. Sal’s an old-timer who was around in the days when you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a mobster in Vegas. A lot of that element is gone now, but Sal barely avoided a racketeering and money-laundering conviction in the nineties. We’ve been running surveillance on him for years, waiting for a break.”
“What does any of that have to do with Candice?” I asked, my mind still trying to place the name Salazar Kato.
Gould eyed me intently again. “Rumor is that Sal was the one who put the contract out on Lenny.”
“Do you have proof of that?” Cal asked.
“Not yet,” Oppenheimer said. “But we were hearing rumors that Lenny was caught making the moves on one of Sal’s girls. He may be old, but the guy gets around, and he’s got a jealous streak. He had one of his goons put a guy in the hospital a few years ago for giving one of his girlfriends a ride home from a club. We think Sal caught Lenny in the act, and took care of him. And now we’ve lost track of the girl too.”
My eyes widened. Sal Kato sounded like no one I ever wanted to meet face-to-face. What had Candice been thinking to sit down with him and accept his money?
“Anyway,” Oppenheimer continued, “right before Robinowitz came to Austin, he called our team and said that he had major dirt on a casino owner that’d help put him away for a long time. And we knew from our own long-term surveillance of Kato that he and Robinowitz were friends from way back. Robinowitz gave Kato’s third wife a face-lift and a boob job a few years before Robinowitz retired. We have Kato on tape joking with Robinowitz that he thought the doc did too good of a job, because his wife dumped him a short time later to take up with a younger man. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Robinowitz had dirt on his pal Kato and wanted to loop us in before Kato put a hit on him too.”
“What was Robinowitz’s motivation, though?” Cal asked. “If they’ve been friends for years, why’d the doc turn on his friend?”
Oppenheimer shrugged and said, “Robinowitz was in trouble with the IRS. He owed half a million in back taxes, and he had a drinking problem. He had his house in Palm Springs up for sale to cover the debt, but it’d been on the market for over a year and wasn’t moving. We think he might’ve borrowed money from Kato, and as it wasn’t looking like he’d be able to pay it back, Robinowitz must’ve thought that he could kill two birds with one stone: get rid of the debt he owed to the IRS, and have us take Kato out of the picture before he demanded his money back.”
I looked again at the photo of Candice tucking that envelope into her purse and it felt like my heart was breaking. How could my best friend—someone I thought of as one of the very best people I’d ever known—do such a despicable thing? How could she be a killer for hire? And how had she fooled me for so long?
I felt dizzy with disbelief, and unable to take a full breath. This was all so overwhelming, and I wished very much that Dutch were here next to me. And then I heard Cal say, “So you have some pretty compelling evidence against Candice Fusco, but I fail to see what her dealings in Las Vegas have to do with Mrs. Rivers, here.”
Gould laced his fingers together and leaned his elbows on the table. Looking directly at me, he said, “We need to find Candice. If we could offer her a deal, say . . . take the death penalty off the table and keep jurisdiction for both murders of Robinowitz and Lenny Fusco in Nevada, maybe she’d be willing to give up Kato.”
“You think I know where she is,” I guessed.
Gould and Oppenheimer nodded.
“I don’t,” I told them. They both looked skeptical. “Listen to me, guys—if I did know where she was, I’d be the first person to talk her into turning herself in. I swear. I don’t want Candice to die. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and I can’t believe any of this is happening. I’ve known her for a long time, and never in my wildest dreams did I think she was capable of doing any of this.” Pointing to the photos, I added, “This isn’t the woman I know. And I just can’t make sense of any of this.”
Gould looked hard at me. “Well, you’d better come to grips with it, Mrs. Rivers. It’s the only way to save your friend.”
* * *
Oppenheimer and Gould kept Cal and me for several more hours. They grilled me over and over again about where I thought Candice might be, and I stuck to the truth—I had no clue.
They asked me more than once if I thought Brice knew of his wife’s dealings with Kato and I stuck to the truth on that one too. “Absolutely, positively not!” Then they asked about what I’d been hiding in the Witts’ house. I told them the same story I’d given to Cal with one key difference: Instead of telling them that I’d received a voice mail from Candice, I merely said that she’d called me in the middle of the night and said that I had to go to her office and retrieve her computer. Next to me, Cal shifted in his seat, but he never corrected me and I hoped they didn’t ask to see my phone. They didn’t, but they were pretty interested in what I believed might be on Candice’s computer—which I also informed them I hadn’t seen when I’d gotten to the office. That part
at least was true. I stuck to that story as they peppered me with questions and details, and after a while they let up on it because I think they probably believed me.
In turn, I learned a few things too. Things like that the Feds had been watching me and Dutch, but they’d started their surveillance the morning the police had been called to the Witts’, so they hadn’t seen anything suspicious other than me entering the garage and coming out with the file full of blank papers. I also learned that the Vegas bureau was very suspicious that Brice might have known about his wife’s unlawful dealings and was perhaps a coconspirator and a dirty Fed.
I held back defending him to them, because I knew there was no point. Still it greatly alarmed me that they could so misjudge him, and I had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t be long before Internal Affairs got involved and investigated Brice right out of his job. No wonder Gaston had been furious.
Finally, when my stomach was grumbling loudly and I was light-headed with hunger and thought I just couldn’t take any more of their repetitive questions, I held up my hand and said, “Guys, if you’re planning on arresting me, go for it. Just somebody feed me before I pass out, okay?”
“It’s well past eight o’clock,” Cal said. He looked just as hungry and annoyed. “My client hasn’t eaten anything since . . .”
“Early this morning,” I said.
Gould sat back and shared a look with Oppenheimer. Something unspoken passed between them, and then Oppenheimer nodded. Gould said, “You may go, Mrs. Rivers. But if you hear from Candice, we will need to be notified.”
I got up and felt a little shaky and queasy. It’d been a very long day and I’d been running on nothing but adrenaline. Grabbing my purse and moving toward the door, I said, “I understand.”
“We mean it,” Oppenheimer said as I was about to exit. “You hear from her, you call us.”
I stopped and looked back at him. My sixth sense buzzed. He had something up his sleeve, and I didn’t like it. Squaring my shoulders, I stared at him without blinking. “I understand, Agent Oppenheimer. If Candice calls me, my next phone call will be to you.”