Grave Designs Page 29

  A few of the younger lawyers from A & W joined Benny and me near the entry to Gallery One. There are six galleries of fish tanks at the aquarium, radiating from the rotunda like wide spokes on a wheel. Each is about ninety feet long and thirty feet wide, with high-arched ceilings overhead. The lighting in the galleries is low, and the gallery walls are lined with illuminated fish tanks set into the walls like portholes.

  After about twenty minutes of idle chat I excused myself from the group, claiming I needed a refill on my drink.

  “Get me another bourbon and Coke, Rachel,” Benny said.

  I nodded and walked back toward the bar. It was getting crowded now. Bill Williams was still standing near the Coral Reef Exhibit, surrounded by lawyers and glowing from the attention. I spotted Harlan Dodson, drink in hand, talking with another lawyer near the entrance to Gallery Six. I wandered around the rim of the Coral Reef Exhibit and found Cal Pemberton, sipping from a bottle of Beck’s and staring at a large sea turtle that was resting on a coral ledge. Cal and the turtle were at eye level, staring at each other motionless.

  I decided to find Joe Oliver. I wanted to get a better fix on what he planned to do now that my plan had failed.

  He wasn’t near the bar or in the rotunda. I walked slowly around the outer edge of the rotunda, pausing at the entrance to each of the galleries. There were lawyers in each gallery—some chatting and others looking at the exhibits. No Joe Oliver. For that matter, no Paul Mason. I came around full circle and looked in the main lobby. I didn’t see Joe or Paul. I walked to the front entrance of the aquarium. Neither one of them was outside.

  I walked back inside the aquarium and made another quick circle around the rotunda, looking into each gallery. Dodson was standing in line at the bar. Cal was still communing with the turtle. Benny was still talking with his group.

  “Have you seen Paul?” I asked Benny.

  “Yeah. I saw him go into one of these authorized-persons-only doors about five minutes ago. I think it leads upstairs. Hey, where’s my drink?”

  I walked slowly down one of the galleries, trying to imagine why Paul would go upstairs. It was just like him—always poking his nose where it wasn’t supposed to be. All that was upstairs, as far as I knew, was the entrance to the fish tanks. I paused in front of a tank occupied by four large, flat, zebra-striped tropical fish. They moved stiffly through the water like inverted Mikasa serving platters.

  There was a huge shark tank at the end of the gallery. It took up the entire back wall. Three gray sharks, their gill slits quivering, swam slowly in and around a splintered ship’s hull on the tank floor. No Joe Oliver. Just as I started to turn, one of the sharks glided down to the bottom and nudged a small black object with his snout. The black object slid two feet along the floor of the tank as the shark moved on.

  I looked closer. I bent down to make sure. It was a videocassette. A videocassette on the floor of the shark tank. I squinted up to the top of the tank and caught my breath. At the far upper left-hand corner of the tank a hand hung limp in the water.

  Chapter Forty-three

  I didn’t even think of going for help. I just knew I had to find out if that hand was Paul’s. I ran back down the length of the gallery and found a metal door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. It was locked. So was the door in the next gallery. I hurried past that gallery and spotted another door. It was slightly ajar. I pulled it open and ran up the narrow concrete staircase, two steps at a time.

  I stopped at the top of the stairs, my heart pounding, and tried to get my bearings. I was above the fish tanks, somewhere over the galleries. The floor vibrated from the metallic drone of pumps. I stepped forward, ducking under a bundle of large orange pipes overhead. I remembered reading somewhere that there were seventy-five miles of pipes in the Shedd Aquarium.

  I was standing at the head of what looked like a long narrow laboratory. Along the floor against both sides of the room were the open tops of the large fish tanks I had been studying from the gallery below. Most of the tanks had low guardrails around them. Down the middle of the room, interspersed among various pieces of equipment, were smaller fish tanks on steel platforms—two tanks, then a lab table, three more tanks, then a deep metal sink, two more tanks, and then an upright white freezer. Two large sacks of Purina Trout Chow were leaning against the wall to my right.

  I walked over to the first open tank on the left and peered hurriedly down into it. Only yellow and red fish, darting back and forth in the water.

  I told myself the shark tank should be at the far end of one of the galleries to my right. I made my way as quickly as I could down the long room past other fish tanks and paused at the end, peering in both directions down the narrow passageway toward the adjacent galleries. I didn’t see anyone. Please, God, don’t let Paul be dead. I took a deep breath as I started down the passageway.

  I had never seen a dead man before. Except in the movies. They look a lot deader in person. At least Joe Oliver did. I felt a flood of relief—it wasn’t Paul—followed by a wave of nausea. Oliver was flat on his back in a puddle of blood near the shark tank, his legs splayed apart. His left arm hung over the rim of the tank and into the water up to the wrist. His shirt and suit jacket were stained dark red. His sunglasses hung from one ear sideways across his face, exposing an open eye. The odor of human feces filled the air.

  I staggered back against the wall, fighting the urge to vomit. I took several deep breaths and then, still queasy, moved back to where Joe Oliver’s body lay. There was a videocassette on the floor near his left knee. He had a pistol in his outstretched right hand. There was a note pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket. I bent down and read the typed message:

  To my friends and family:

  I cannot go on

  living a lie. I

  apologize to all

  for my weakness.

  Joe Oliver

  I stared at the note, and then at the bullet wound, and then at the gun. A gray dorsal fin glided slowly past Joe Oliver’s arm and slipped below the surface of the water. There were six bloody footprints on the concrete floor leading away from Oliver’s body toward a narrow corridor. The first two prints were dark red and blurred, the next two were lighter, only partial prints, and the last two were barely visible, just heel splotches.

  Above the drone of the water pumps I heard water splattering into a deep sink. The noise seemed to come from an area beyond the gallery. He must be cleaning up, I thought. I stared at the videocassette. The splattering noise stopped. Turning, I scanned the room for cover. I was standing behind the shark tank now, at the far end of the room. Water bubbled to the surface of the open tanks in the floor. No place to hide there. But down the middle of this room there were steel tables and deep sinks and small upright tanks. Maybe I could hide under one of the tables.

  Footsteps approached from down the corridor. I dashed around the perimeter of the shark tank and into the middle of the room.

  That’s when I saw Paul Mason. He was crouched under a steel table about two-thirds of the way down the long room. He was staring at me wild-eyed, with no sign of recognition. The look on his face stopped me in mid-stride: It was pure huddled fright.

  Before I could move farther, from behind me the footsteps entered the room near the shark tank and stopped. I gripped a table, my legs unsteady. I waited, my shoulders hunched.

  “Hello, Kent,” I said finally. I turned around slowly.

  I was all too right. Kent Charles was standing by Joe Oliver’s body. He had a wad of wet paper towels in one hand and a dark leather briefcase in the other. His eyes narrowed, and then he smiled. It was a subzero smile.

  “Hello, Rachel,” he said, his voice calm, almost matter of fact.

  “It’s over,” I said, struggling to control my voice.

  “Over?” He frowned. His suit jacket was off and his shirt-sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. “What’s over?”


  “You and Canaan,” I said.

  “Ah. Canaan.” He came around the shark tank. “Marshall’s little pet.” He dropped the paper towels on the floor and rested his briefcase on the corner of a deep sink located halfway between the shark tank and where I stood. We were about thirty feet apart, separated by the middle row of tanks, sinks, and steel tables.

  “We know about you and Canaan, Kent.”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Joe Oliver was a setup,” I said. “There’s no videotape of Richardson and Cindi Reynolds.” The corner of his mouth twitched, but his face remained impassive. “Cindi’s alive,” I continued, “and the police arrested one of your Canaan thugs. He confessed. We know about the faked gas explosion in her apartment. We know all about your Canaan schemes.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice calm. “The cops are waiting downstairs.” Why hadn’t I called the police? I grasped the table to keep my hands from shaking.

  Kent stared at me, his eyes narrowed.

  “Why did you kill Joe?” I asked.

  His eyes glared. “Self-defense. I called that prick this afternoon. Two hours after I sent him the message that the deal was off. Thought I’d catch him off guard. I disguised my voice. Told him to meet me up here at six-fifteen. He came up here on time, but when I asked for the tape, he tossed it into the tank and tried to pull a gun on me. I had to shoot him.”

  “You were going to shoot him anyway,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But not in the chest.”

  “Why did you search my apartment?” I asked. I had to keep him talking. To give Paul a chance to do something.

  “To see what you’d discovered. Paul told me you kept a lot of your work at home.” He smiled. “And to shake you up a little. Maybe scare you off.” He shook his head. “Guess I underestimated you. When did you figure out that I was the one who broke into your apartment?”

  “I guess just now. I had a lot of suspects, and you were one of them. If it makes you feel any better, Paul was another one. But I started to wonder about you when you answered Paul’s phone that night. You said you’d be right over—that I was just five minutes away.” I paused. “Yet you’d never been to my apartment before. How would you know it was just five minutes from his?” I glanced quickly around the room. I couldn’t see Paul from where I stood.

  “Not bad,” Kent said. “Of course, Paul could have just pointed out your street one time when we were driving by.”

  “I know. And that’s what I told myself. I didn’t want the killer to be anyone I liked.” I shivered. “You searched my office too, didn’t you?”

  Kent raised his eyebrows.

  “What did you find in my—”

  “Enough to know I’d have to keep an eye on you,” he snapped.

  “What was in the coffin?”

  Kent shook his head. “It’s a good thing I found out about the codicil in time,” he said. “Ishmael tried to keep it all hush-hush, but that buffoon Dodson was so worried about covering his ass that he told me all about it. He wanted me to know that he had nothing to do with drafting it.”

  “What was in the coffin?” I asked again.

  “Four newspaper clippings, a photocopy of that Canaan book, and a computer printout from 1985. The printout had everything Marshall did back then: times, places, names, the lottery system, the whole thing. My name was in there several times.”

  “What did you do with it?” I asked.

  “What do you think?” Kent smiled. “I fed it all into the firm’s paper shredder.” He had his hands on the briefcase.

  “Where’d you buy the dog skeleton?” I was running out of ways to keep him talking. When was Paul going to make his move? And when was someone downstairs going to look into the shark tank and see Joe Oliver’s hand? It seemed hours since I’d come up here.

  “A small rendering plant on the west side.”

  “What about the second grave robbery? Was that just meant as a red herring?”

  He nodded. “You do good work, Rachel. I’ll give you that much.”

  “How’d you get involved in Marshall’s lottery?”

  Kent laughed. “Marshall’s lottery? He’d be flattered to hear you say that. It’s not his lottery, Rachel. He’s not the only one.” Kent clicked open the locks on his briefcase. Was his gun in there?

  “He recruited me,” Kent said. “It was on a business flight from London to Chicago in late 1985. Both of us had had pretty much to drink. He told me the story of the original Canaan lottery. A couple of weeks later we were out in L.A. together. That’s when he told me what he had done. He had decided that I would be his successor. I was the perfect choice. We did a few together in 1986. He let me try a couple on my own in 1987.” Kent paused. “I took over completely when he died.”

  “Took over?” I said. “You didn’t take over. You completely perverted it. Look at what you’ve done-extortion, murder. That’s not the Canaan lottery.”

  “So what?” he answered, his voice rising. “Graham Marshall set up his elegant little Canaan network, got his rocks off by playing God, and then walked away from it. Walked away!” Kent’s face contorted with anger. “You should have seen Bill Bentley’s face when he walked into court that day to tell the judge that the documents had been destroyed. I sat at defense counsel’s table and told myself I was finally even with that asshole.” He shook his head. “You can’t imagine the kind of crap Joe Oliver’s pulled on me in the Canterbury securities case over the last two years. I was going to let him twist in the wind for a few years. And that’s what I’ll do with the others. Do you realize I even have a videotape of a judge with that hooker? Unbelievable stuff. Do you have any idea what I’ll be able to do to that guy?” He reached into his briefcase. “And you’re not going to ruin it for me.” He was holding the gun. “I’ve wasted enough time on you. Don’t threaten me with cops. There aren’t any down there. You think I’m some kind of moron? Get over by Oliver.”

  I didn’t budge. My dress clung to me, damp from perspiration. “You can’t get away with this, Kent,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “They might believe one suicide, but if you shoot me, it’s murder. Let’s go downstairs. You can tell the cops that Joe Oliver tried to shoot you. With a good criminal lawyer you might get off.”

  “C’mon, Rachel,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Don’t try that bullshit on me. No one even knows I’m here. Remember? I left an hour ago. I made sure plenty of witnesses saw me leave too. Including your boyfriend. And I did leave. I went down to the harbor, got my boat, and came back. I anchored it out back and came in the back way. I have my own set of keys. One of the perks of volunteering for the aquarium’s annual capital drive. I’ll leave the same way. My car’s up at Belmont Harbor. I’ll be at Ravinia by the intermission. Now, quit stalling and get over here.” He gestured with the gun.

  I moved slowly toward the shark tank, wondering where Paul was. He was nowhere in sight.

  “It’s a shame, Rachel,” Kent said as I approached him, dragging my heels as much as I dared. “I thought I threw you off the track. The firm would have been proud of you. Too bad about us, eh? I was looking forward to our boat ride this weekend. What a shame I’ll have to ruin your pretty dress,” he added sarcastically. “You should never have come up here. Never.” He raised the gun.

  “You know who really set you up to be discovered?” I said. “Graham Marshall.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “He obviously realized he’d made a horrendous mistake getting you involved. That you didn’t care about the Canaan lottery. You just wanted to use the system for your own little schemes.”

  Kent smiled. “You underestimate me, Rachel. Graham never suspected a thing. He thought I was totally committed to the lottery.”

  I shook my head. “You’re blind to the obvious, Kent. Marshall was two steps ah
ead of you, even from the grave. He set up that codicil to make sure someone dug up the coffin. He couldn’t blow the whistle on you while he was alive, since he’d incriminate himself too. So he made sure he could nail you after he was dead.”

  Kent was frowning. “Then he failed. I outfoxed him by digging it up myself.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “You destroyed the documents but you didn’t destroy the coffin. And what you didn’t know was that Graham left a clue in the coffin. I followed that clue right back to you.” I paused. “It looks to me that Graham had the last laugh.”

  Kent scowled, his jaws clenched. “That son of a bitch,” he hissed. He quickly regained his composure. “But I’m one step ahead of him now.” He gestured with the gun. “Stand over by Oliver. Now, goddammit.”

  I looked down at the gun in Joe Oliver’s limp hand as I moved toward Kent.

  Suddenly there was the sound of water crashing.

  “Duck, Rachel!” It was Benny, down at the other end of the room. He had taken the coiled fire hose off the wall and turned it on. He was holding the nozzle with both hands and spraying a thick arc of water toward us. “Get away from her, you scumbag!” Benny shouted.

  Kent Charles spun toward Benny and fired his gun. The shot was high and to the right, ricocheting off a pipe.

  “Holy shit!” Benny shouted, and dropped the hose.

  Kent Charles started down the narrow aisle between the fish tanks toward Benny. The hose was whipping back and forth on the floor, spraying loops of water across the room. I dropped to my knees and tried to pull the gun out of Joe Oliver’s cold hand. I couldn’t get his thick finger out of the trigger slot. I looked up at Kent, who was now twenty feet away, his back to me, moving in a slow crouch down the aisle after Benny. I raised the gun in Joe’s hand, aimed at Kent’s back with both hands, and pulled hard on Joe’s trigger finger.

  The recoil from the gun knocked me backward to the ground. Joe Oliver’s handgun slid along the concrete. I scrambled after the gun. When I looked up, Kent was hobbling away from me to where his gun lay on the floor near a large fish tank. He was bleeding from the middle of his right thigh, his hand over the wound. From a sitting position I aimed again—my hands shaking—as Kent slipped on the wet floor just a few feet away from his gun. He reached for the low guardrail in front of a fish tank as I finally forced myself to pull the trigger again. Click. The gun was empty.