ing the seven months prior to Patrick's disappearance. Dates, times, places. Patrick left town, bam, Lance moved in. Every time.
"Can these investigators testify in court?" Lance asked when J. Murray finished.
"We're not going to court," J. Murray said.
"Why not?" Trudy asked.
"Because of these." J. Murray slid the eight-by-ten color glossies across his desk. Trudy grabbed one and gasped at the sight of herself lounging by the pool, naked, her stud next to her. Lance was shocked too, but managed a tiny grin. He sort of liked them.
They swapped the photos back and forth without a word. J. Murray relished the moment, then said, "You guys got too careless."
"Skip the lecture," Lance said.
Predictably, Trudy started to cry. Her eyes watered, her lip quivered, her nose sniffled, and then she cried. J. Murray had seen it a thousand times. They always cried, not for what they had done, but for the wages of their sins.
"He's not getting my daughter," she said angrily through the tears. She lost it, and they listened to her bawl for a while. Lance, ever vigilant, pawed at her and tried to console.
"I'm sorry," she finally said, wiping tears.
"Relax," J. Murray said without the slightest trace of compassion. "He doesn't want the kid."
"Why not?" she asked, the tear ducts shutting down instantly.
"He's not the father."
They squinted, thought hard, tried to assemble things.
J. Murray reached for yet another report. "He took a blood sample from the child when she was fourteen months old, and had a DNA test run on it. No way he's the father."
"Then who ..." Lance started to ask, but couldn't complete the thought.
"Depends on who else was around," J. Murray said helpfully.
"No one else was around," she said, mocking him angrily.
"Except me," Lance volunteered, then slowly closed his eyes. Fatherhood descended heavily upon his shoulders. Lance despised children. He tolerated Ashley Nicole only because she belonged to Trudy.
"Congratulations," J. Murray said. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a cheap cigar and tossed it to Lance. "It's a girl," he said, and laughed loudly.
Trudy fumed and Lance toyed with the cigar. When J. Murray finished humoring himself, she asked, "So where are we?"
"It's simple. You waive any right to his assets, whatever they may be, and he gives you the divorce, the kid, everything else you want."
"What are his assets?" she asked.
"His lawyer is not sure right now. We may never know. The man is headed for death row, and the cash might stay buried forever."
"But I'm about to lose everything," she said. "Look at what he's done to me. I got two and a half million when he died, now the insurance company is ready to bankrupt me."
"She deserves a helluva lot of money," Lance piped in on cue.
"Can I sue him for mental distress, or fraud, or something like that?" she pleaded.
"No. Look, it's very simple. You get the divorce and the kid, and Patrick keeps whatever money is out there. And everything is kept quiet. Otherwise, he'll leak all this to the press." J. Murray tapped the reports and the photos when he said this. "And you'll be humiliated. You've gone public with your dirty laundry; he's quite anxious to return the favor."
"Where do I sign?" she said.
J. MURRAY fixed them all a vodka, and before too long he was mixing another round. He finally brought up the subject of those silly rumors about Lance looking for a hit man. The denials came fast and furious, and J. Murray confessed that he really didn't believe the trash anyway.
There were so many rumors racing up and down the Coast.
Chapter 22
THEY BEGAN TRACKING Sandy McDermott as he left New Orleans at 8 A.M. and worked his way through the traffic on Interstate 10. He was followed until the congestion thinned near Lake Pont-chartrain. They called ahead and reported he was on his way to Biloxi. Following him was easy. Listening would be another matter. Guy had bugs for Sandy's office and home phones, even one for his car, but the decision to install them had not yet been made. The risks were significant. Aricia especially was wary. He argued with Stephano and with Guy that Sandy might well expect his phones to get tapped, and might feed them all sorts of useless or even damaging gossip. His client had so far proved quite proficient at seeing around corners. And so they argued.
Sandy wasn't looking over his shoulder. Nor was he seeing much in front of him. He was simply driving, moving forward while avoiding contact, his mind, as usual, many miles away.
From a strategic point of view, the various Lanigan battles were in good shape. The civil suits filed by Monarch-Sierra, the law firm, and Aricia had been placed on dockets already densely crowded. Formal responses by Sandy were a month away. Discovery wouldn't start for three months and would last for a year. Trials were two years away at the earliest. Likewise for Patrick's suit against the FBI; it would one day be amended to bring in Stephano and his consortium. It would be a delightful case to try, but Sandy doubted he would ever get the chance.
The divorce was under control.
The capital murder charge, clearly the center of attention, was another matter. Obviously the most serious of Patrick's problems, it was also the speediest. By law, the state had to try Patrick within two hundred and seventy days of the indictment, so the clock was ticking.
In Sandy's opinion, a conviction based on the evidence would be a longshot. For the moment, crucial elements of proof were missing-significant facts such as the identity of John Doe, and the manner in which he died, and the certainty that Patrick killed him. It was a tenuous circumstantial case at best. Large assumptions would be called for.
However, a conviction based on public sentiment was foreseeable. By now everyone within a hundred miles of Biloxi knew most of the details, and you couldn't find a literate breathing soul who didn't think Patrick killed someone to fake his death so he could lie in ambush and steal ninety million dollars. Patrick had a few admirers, those who also dreamed of a new life with a new name and plenty of dough. But they would not be on his jury. Most folks, it seemed through the informal polling of coffee shop talk and courthouse gossip, felt he was guilty and should spend time in prison. Very few favored the death penalty. Leave that for rapists and cop killers.
Most pressing, though, at the moment, was keeping Patrick alive. The file on Lance, hand-delivered last night by the lovely Leah in yet another hotel room, portrayed a quiet man with a hair-trigger temper and a penchant for violence. He liked guns, and had once been indicted by a federal grand jury for fencing them through a pawnshop. The charges were later dismissed. In addition to his three-year stint for smuggling pot, he had been sentenced to sixty days for his part in a barroom brawl in Gulfport, though the time was suspended due to an overcrowded jail. There were two other arrests-one for another fight and one for a DUI.
Lance could be cleaned up and made presentable. He was lanky and handsome, and well admired by the ladies. He knew how to dress and carry on amusing chitchat over cocktails. But his forays into society were temporary. His heart was always in the street, just above the gutter, where he hung out with loan sharks and bookies and fences and reputable drug dealers, the smart white-collar boys of local crime. These were his friends, the guys from his neighborhood. Patrick had found them too, and the file contained no fewer than a dozen little biographies of Lance's pals, all with criminal records.