Читать книгу Chasing Shadows - Карен Харпер - Страница 8

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Naples, Florida

Collier County Courthouse

2014

Surely nothing else could go wrong now. As Claire Britten and her client left the courtroom in triumph, she was convinced she was on a roll. She felt like making a fist pump in the air but she kept her cool.

As a thirtysomething single mother struggling with building a career and coping with a dreadful disease, this high-profile victory had to help. Her interviews and testimony had made all the difference in the trial. A guilty man was going to prison instead of hiding out so he and his family could enjoy a three-million-dollar death settlement. Her current client, Lifeboat Insurance, small as it was, had beaten out the vaunted law firm of Markwood, Benton and Chase. She’d helped to best the best in the business.

Claire was swept outside with her boss and their lawyer, past the big pillars holding up the shaded, covered walkway. They hit a wave of humidity and reporters, washing toward them in the mid-September afternoon. She fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses amid shouted questions, the thrust of arms with recorders...padded microphones on poles...jostling, shouting...

Over the crowd noise, her client Fred Myron shouted in her ear. “That fancy defense lawyer’s the one who needs a lifeboat now. I’m going with this for all it’s worth. I see cameras from Ft. Myers, even Orlando! Look at that—CNN!”

A long pole with a padded microphone brushed Claire’s shoulder and someone shouted, “Ms. Britten, tell us how you first knew the wife and son were lying! Hadn’t Sol Sorento covered his tracks to make everyone think he drowned in Key West? What were the clues he wasn’t dead?”

“As I testified on the stand,” Claire answered, “Mrs. Sorento and Mario sometimes slipped into the present tense when talking about him. I theorized they knew he was alive and were in contact with him. Then a call they made was traced to the Bahamas where the insurance firm detective took over to locate him.”

Another voice, a woman’s: “Ms. Britten, can you explain for our viewers what you mean by a forensic autopsy you did on the accused? You’re not a doctor, but that sounds really medical, and you didn’t even have a body to work with.”

“I am not a medical doctor or a psychiatrist, but a forensic psychologist. A forensic autopsy, which some call a psychological autopsy, means taking apart and studying a person’s life—often their motives and alibi. I do interviews, not interrogations, of those close to the deceased to learn who might be responsible for foul play. Please take a look at my website and...”

Someone bumped into her from behind, pressing closer. The crowd noise and a small jet going over made her shout to be heard. Oh, it wasn’t a jet but a drone. Could the media be filming from it, or could it belong to security here? Its whine was like a screaming mosquito, and it wasn’t even directly overhead. It seemed to hover above the Sorento defense team. A few others looked up at it, too.

She asked the reporter, “Can we just step over there a minute in the grass in the shade of the palms?”

Surely this publicity would lead to more future clients than her business Facebook page and website had brought in. This would be a starred item in her meager resume. She’d already been covered in The Naples Daily News so she was banking on that to promote her struggling one-woman Certified Fraud Examiner and Forensic Psychologist business she’d named Clear Path. Despite Jace’s monthly child support, she wanted to stand on her own for herself and little Lexi. Besides, she believed in her work and maybe now could start believing in herself again.

But had she remembered to take her meds on time? Spending so much time in court had played havoc with her schedule. She’d like to pop a piece of chocolate for some quick caffeine, but not with everyone watching. She’d had to miss her short afternoon nap. All week she’d had to cut back on her regular jolts of caffeine so she didn’t have to run to the bathroom during testimony and so she could be there for the reading of the verdict. All she needed was to doze off or have a horrible hallucination triggered by all this emotion.

Fred kept a firm hold on her arm. No doubt he wanted in on this interview. She wondered if any of these reporters would turn up that having to pay the huge death insurance benefits for Sol Sorento would have sunk little local Lifeboat Insurance into the depths of bankruptcy. Her theory was that, desperate to prove the Sorento family’s claim was bogus, Fred had borrowed money to investigate and fight the claim. She’d like to deal with larger, more reputable firms, but she needed to build her bank account.

Trailing reporters, they moved down the walk toward a patch of grass near the four-story parking garage. Claire noted the lead lawyer for Sorento, Nick Markwood, walked away from his group and made straight for her, his suit jacket slung over one arm, his shirt blinding white in the sun.

The man had been amazing in court, forceful, clever. She knew he wasn’t used to losing. Was he going to shove his way in here to make his point in the interview? His law firm was a force around here, powerfully promoted on billboards and through TV spots, but with his looks and voice, she supposed he could usually sell anyone on anything. He was a commanding figure, tall and tanned with a sculpted face and physique, maybe forty, going silver at the temples, which matched his steely eyes. She’d had plenty of time to study him and she had to admit she’d enjoyed watching him work and psyching him out when he spoke in that deep, commanding voice.

“So,” the first reporter, a blonde woman with a Live at Five cameraman, was saying, “what other hints besides verb tense that his family was lying? A lot of our readers might not get that.”

“As I testified, besides verbal cues, I rely on body language, the closed, defensive look liars often use with legs and arms crossed,” Claire explained. “If you mention my website—here’s my card—you’ll find my list of other signs that can suggest a witness, acquaintance or family member is lying. I also—”

A loud crack slammed through the noise. People stopped and looked around and up. Fred let go of her arm and stepped away. Someone screamed, “Gun! Gun!”

People scattered, ducked, shouted. A voice screamed, “Oh. He’s been hit!”

A second shot, a breaking of the sky. Pain, searing pain in her arm, her body, somewhere. Had she fallen into a fire? Was this a narcoleptic nightmare?

She fell back onto the green sea with royal palms swaying overhead, and she was with Jace and Lexi. At the beach by the pier. But the sun burned her skin, her arm.

“Call 9-1-1!” someone shouted.

A man’s deep voice, maybe Jace. But he was flying from LA to Singapore now. No, not Jace bending over her, wrapping his necktie around her upper arm, then pressing his hand hard against her. It was that lawyer, that man who had studied and glared at her when she testified, the one who had cross-examined her. The one who had almost made her doubt her own words. Nick Markwood, still watching her, what she said, her mouth. That mouth—she screamed.

“Don’t move,” he said. “You’ve been shot. I know I’m hurting you, but I have to stop the bleeding. Lie still. Help is coming. Is there a doctor here?” he yelled.

More screaming. Not hers, maybe sirens coming closer. Strobe lights, or was that the sun?

Someone shouted, “Is anyone else down?”

Down? They couldn’t keep her down. Never. But red-sunset blood shone from the man’s shirtsleeves, his hands. Hands on her.

Someone cried, “I think the insurance guy is dead. Did anyone see who shot them?”

“From the parking garage. Didn’t see him. One cop car went after him when he fled...only two shots...”

Searing red burning pain made worse by the man staring down at her, bending over, pressing into her hurt arm. Did he know she could easily fall asleep? Did he know the high school bullies had taunted, “Claire Fowler, Claire Foul-up! Foul-up!” when she’d fallen asleep reading, eating, sitting on the volleyball bench, even standing up? Her disease had ruined her marriage—her fault but Jace’s, too. Would her sister keep Lexi if she died, or would Jace try to take her away, far away?

She heard someone sobbing from fear and pain. It was so close. She guessed it was her.

* * *

Nick Markwood fought to keep Claire Britten conscious, tried to stop the bleeding from her upper left arm. Maybe all the blood made her wound look bigger than it was. He’d seen gunshot wounds before, in his worst nightmares of finding his father, even worse than this.

Now, both of them and the grass were spattered with her blood. She was slender, maybe didn’t have much to lose. Too slender. And that bounty of stunning red hair and alabaster skin stood out in this sunny South Florida of bottled blondes and bronzed skin. With her green eyes, he’d thought she looked like some Irish colleen off a St. Patrick’s Day card, here among the snowbirds and native Floridians. But she had those eyes tight shut now in pain.

In court, he’d had to fight to keep his mind off her looks and on her testimony so he could tear it apart, but she’d torn their case apart. He didn’t need the loss, hated losses. Too many from too far back. But maybe it had all worked out for the best—if she’d trust him and if she didn’t die like her boss who’d been standing close to her. The shooter had been really good. But had he meant to kill them both and just wounded her? He’d evidently blown away Fred Myron with one hit. A shooter out for revenge from Sol Sorento’s big family?

Or—and this scared and angered him too—since he’d been moving close to the two victims, Nick’s next thought had been that the bullets could have been meant for him. Clayton Ames had his ways of ruining things. He must know Nick would never give up his crusade to nail the bastard. Ames and his lackeys managed to wreak havoc and then disappear just that fast. Talk about Sol Sorento vanishing for two years to try to pull off this fraud. The master murderer Clay Ames had reeked of deceit and danger for years but stayed too slippery to prosecute or even locate lately.

Shrill sirens came close, drowning out other voices, even the ones in his head. The court staff and reporters shouted and pointed to bring the rescue squad to Claire. Running steps; the joggling sound of the equipment in their bags. Reporters’ cameras still rolling.

Though they were heading right for them, like some damn idiot, Nick shouted, “Here! Here! She’s shot in the upper left arm and bleeding bad!”

They knelt, bent over her. “Should I let go?” he asked them. “I don’t want to let go.”

“Good job, sir. We’ll take over now,” a medic said. Nick watched as they put a better tourniquet on her and some sort of a plastic patch over the wound. Tears streamed down her cheeks so she was conscious.

Nick sat back on his haunches. His muscles ached. He was a mess. He stood, moved away, ignoring questions shouted at him by the press. He usually kept his comments—especially after losses—to a minimum. They’d done him and his mother no favors when his dad died. Talk about blood on someone’s hands...

Sean, one of his associates, pulled him away, but he didn’t want to go. Nick wanted to know she’d be all right. If he hadn’t wanted to talk to her, he wouldn’t have been near her when she was hit. But he needed to make her an offer she could not refuse.

Police pushed everyone back, wound some police tape between a courthouse pillar and two royal palms. He watched the second rescue squad bend over the dead man, feel for a pulse, then stand, whispering, shaking their heads. One guy got on his cell, probably to the ME. A police officer of the growing number of them covered Fred Myron with a body bag, but they didn’t move him yet.

They were getting ready to move her already, Claire Fowler Britten, the sharp little expert who had done his case in with her clever questioning of Sorento’s family and her steady testimony he couldn’t shake. He wanted her for that.

He let Sean carry his briefcase and started dazedly toward the parking garage before he saw that was being cordoned off, too. He got only a few steps before one of the officers hurried up and asked, “Did you see the shooter, counselor? Anything that would help?”

“Nothing. I was going to talk to her—the forensic psychologist. Tell her she’d done a good job. I—I was looking at her. I saw her go down from the shot, tried to help her.”

“You did. They’re taking her to the hospital downtown.”

“Did they say she’ll be okay?”

“We’ll know soon. We’ve got to notify Mr. Myron’s next of kin, then notify hers. It’s bad when NOK learn things from the media, and they’re all over here.”

“You know I’m available if you have more questions,” Nick said.

He had already checked out where Claire lived, an attached villa in the Lakewood area, evidently so she could be near her younger sister, Darcy, who did her daughter’s child care. He’d researched Claire’s family, education, marital status. Divorced for a year with a four-year-old daughter. Her ex, Jason “Jace” Britten, was an international airline co-pilot living in Los Angeles and sometimes Singapore, though he kept an apartment here in Naples. Nick had wanted to move on his plan—on her, but this was sure screwing up his schedule. Claire Fowler Britten might have gotten the best of him in the courtroom, but he had to get the best out of her and soon.

* * *

Jace Britten yawned and stretched out in the backseat of the taxi as it pulled away from Changi Airport where he’d just left the Airbus after an eighteen-and-one-half-hour flight from LAX. A great airport here, a great destination where he spent his time when he wasn’t in LA or making a quick trip home to see Lexi. Smooth flight as usual with a pilot he liked, but, as first officer, he was always itching to get into the captain’s seat.

He glanced down at the three stripes circling the sleeves of his uniform jacket on the seat beside him, and thought about Claire. When he’d gotten this promotion, the two of them had celebrated at Stoney’s Restaurant, and the next day at McDonald’s with Lexi. Slender, like her mother, that little kid could put food away but never seemed to gain weight. He hoped like hell that was all his girl had inherited from Claire.

He tried to put his past life—and past wife—out of his thoughts. She’d betrayed him, though not by being unfaithful. A woman with a career exposing liars had lied to him, hid things, and he couldn’t take that. Absolutely unacceptable. He’d have tried to take Lexi if the child hadn’t been so close to her mother and her aunt Darcy, if he hadn’t always had wanderlust for exotic places and Claire had argued that Singapore or even LA wasn’t the place to rear a child. Hell, Singapore was just a foreign version of Naples: heat and humidity, tourism, traffic, beaches, great restaurants, crocs instead of gators—that’s all, if you ignored the mosques and Buddhist temples.

“Very nice day,” his taxi driver said. “No monsoons yet in ‘Garden City.’”

“I like the nickname ‘fine city’ for this place,” Jace told him, partly to head off the next punch line he figured was coming. “A six-hundred-dollar fine for littering, a twelve-hundred-dollar fine for speeding.”

“I not speeding. No, sir.”

So much for that conversation. English might be the main language here, but the place was a real scramble of people, just like the mix of skyscrapers and sampans they drove past right now.

At his favorite, familiar hotel on busy Orchard Road, he paid his fare, hefted his small bag and walked past the gorgeous garden with flowers and a fountain. Under the spray of water was a statue of the so-called merlion, the mythical beast that was the symbol of the tourism industry here. Its top half was a lion and the bottom half a fish. A couple of years ago, when he’d taken a stuffed merlion home to Lexi, she’d insisted on calling it Lion King Little Mermaid from her two favorite Disney movies at that time.

Ginger at the desk saw him coming, smiled and winked, then handed him a key card and a note. Call Darcy, it read.

His stomach flip-flopped, especially when he remembered he hadn’t even taken his phone out of airplane mode after the flight. What if something was wrong—really wrong?

He hurried to his usual room and linked into the hotel Wi-Fi. He looked at his list of numbers, Claire’s at the top. Once a week, he Skyped with Lexi and Claire just to keep in touch with Lexi. He hit the line with his former sister-in-law’s cell number. Darcy answered right away.

“Darcy, it’s Jace in Singapore. What’s up? Everyone okay?”

“I thought you should know Claire had an accident so they won’t be Skyping with you tonight.”

His voice rose with his pulse rate. “An accident with Lexi in the car?”

“No, not exactly an accident. Someone shot her in the arm, coming out of the courthouse after that trial which she—they—won. I still have Lexi, so don’t worry. It’s just that it got a lot of publicity here, and I thought you might stumble on it in the news somehow.”

Claire hurt. That hit him so hard it scared him.

“In the arm. Is she okay? How bad is it?”

“I don’t really know yet, but not life-threatening. Just a day or two in Naples Hospital. They want to be sure infection doesn’t set in. And they haven’t found the shooter, who killed her boss—you know, from that insurance company—and they aren’t yet sure who was the intended victim.”

Jace swore under his breath. Just like Darcy to hold back the worst news. Claire’s boss was shot to death? Why did Claire insist on being in this type of business? Why didn’t she just stick to online consulting? She was just looking for trouble, hanging around shady characters like frauds and liars. Damn, it took one to know one, so no wonder she was good at that.

“Jace, are you there?”

“Yeah. So they didn’t get the shooter?”

“Escaped. The theory is it was a member of that Italian Sorento family that won’t be getting the millions in death benefits. They’re thick as thieves.”

“Did Claire ask you to call me?”

“Yes. Yes, she did. And I told Lexi a version of events. Steve took her and our two to get ice cream so she’s not here right now.”

“I’m not scheduled to fly back to LA for two days this time. I’ll check in, though, try to change off. Maybe I can get a jump seat back sooner.”

“I’ll take good care of Lexi. It’s not a crisis. Claire’s done with that case. Nothing dangerous on the horizon, and this was just that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level. “Tell the little mermaid I love her, okay?”

“Sure. She misses you, Jace, wants you back.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” he said and ended the call. Though he fought it hard, as hurt and angry as he still was, he wished she’d said that about Claire.