What Happened to the Bennetts(68)

I mulled it over. I didn’t know if the killer had been Milo, the BMW driver, someone else, or all of the above. The BMW driver couldn’t have been in two places at once—here and waiting for Hart until the fundraiser was over—but I didn’t know what time Contessa had been killed. If she hadn’t gone to the fundraiser, she could have been killed first, then the killer could have gone after Hart. She would have trusted him enough to let him in, or he could have overpowered her.

I could imagine Contessa’s terror when she realized what was about to happen. I had seen it in Allison’s eyes. The terror of knowing what no one wants to know. I felt a deep stab of grief, and the words came to me as if I were reading my daughter’s mind.

This is how I die.

I couldn’t stop thinking of Allison, then realized I was never not thinking of Allison. Maybe that was the way it was going to be from now on. Maybe that was the way I could keep her with me. Maybe there would come a time when it didn’t make me feel broken, but I doubted it. Allison was younger than Contessa, but they were both too young to be gone.

I flashed on the scene in Contessa’s apartment and the open laptop on the coffee table. I was sure that Lattimore & Finch, if not Hart or Contessa, stored files and documents on the cloud under a passcode. Maybe Milo, or whoever was working for him, had gotten her to delete the file before killing her. The Philly police or the FBI would figure out if it was suicide or murder, but that would come later. Now there was just the loss of a young girl, and that alone was awful.

I scrolled to the website for Lattimore & Finch, then searched under Criminal Justice Team. There were two lawyers and one paralegal—Contessa—in the section. It was a small section, since it existed to serve the CEOs who got target letters or when one of their kids got caught drunk driving.

I thought it over. It was a natural conclusion that probably no one other than Hart and Contessa knew about the cooperation agreement.

“Paul Hart,” I heard someone say. I looked at the TV to see a red Breaking News banner, which read REACTION TO HIT-AND-RUN OF PROMINENT LAWYER. A female TV reporter stood in the drizzle outside of a gray stone edifice, and I listened idly to the report.

“I’m at the War College in Carlisle to speak with Senator Mike Ricks about Center City lawyer Paul Hart, who was killed in a hit-and-run last night. Hold on, here he is now. Senator Ricks, Senator Ricks? Would you like to comment?”

“Certainly.” Senator Ricks appeared with the reporter, his expression somber. He had sterling gray hair, steely wire-rimmed glasses, and plain features with a strong jawline. His bearing was erect, which I recognized as former military. “I offer my deepest condolences,” said the senator, “to his lovely wife and family. I valued Paul’s support, as I do every lawyer and law firm working to support my campaign.”

“Have you heard from the police about any leads?”

“No.” Senator Ricks addressed the camera. “If you or someone you know has any information about this tragedy, please come forward and do the right thing.”

“Thank you, Senator, and for another reaction, we’ll switch to Representative Barbara Caldwell, who has finished speaking at Temple University Law School. Over to you, Tom.”

The screen changed and a male TV reporter appeared, standing with a tall, attractive woman with tortoiseshell glasses, her dark hair pulled back. “Representative Caldwell, do you have any comment on the death of Paul Hart last night in Center City?”

“Yes, I extend my deepest sympathies to his family and his wife. I knew Paul, not just as a loyal supporter, but also as a fellow lawyer.”

“Representative Caldwell, Mr. Hart was a supporter of Democratic causes as well as Republican, and public records show that Lattimore and Finch contributed to your campaign and Senator Ricks’s. Do you have any comment on that?”

Representative Caldwell smiled tightly. “If you’re suggesting that bothers me, let me assure you, it doesn’t.”

The TV reporter nodded. “Do you feel the same way if records show that Lattimore contributed five hundred thousand dollars more to candidates from the other party?”

“Of course,” Representative Caldwell shot back. “Now, I must go.”

“Thank you,” the reporter said, and I shifted my attention to the task at hand.

I took the cards from Junior’s flower arrangements out of the box. I had numbered them according to the way I had gathered them from the display, that night on the floor of Remy’s office. I picked them up and started to lay them out in order, left to right: first row, second row, third row. On each card, I had written the name of the GVO member under his alias, which I had found on the indictments.

I scanned the cards, taking mental inventory. Now I knew the GVO members and their proper names, but I didn’t know what else I had, if anything. Then I looked at the cards again, flashing on the display of the floral arrangements at the funeral home. The smallest ones had been on the bottom shelf, the medium-size ones on the second shelf, and the biggest ones on the top shelf. Behind the shelves had been the massive displays on easels.

I scanned the cards again and had another thought. The arrangement of the cards could be a reflection of GVO’s organizational structure. It made sense that members who earned the most bought the biggest arrangements, the middle-types bought the medium arrangements, and those on the bottom shelf were the lowest-level members of the organization.