Forgive Me: A Xanadu Marx Thriller Read online

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Well, you tell me, Ross. What should be done? Last spring, we spent a lot of time talking about books. We had such great chats. Did you ever read Dante’s Inferno?”

  Ross didn’t reply.

  “In Dante’s Inferno, the thing that’s always stuck with me is the ninth circle of hell. You know—nine circles of hell and the biggest circle on top and the lower you go, the smaller the circle gets but the worse the sin. What do you think the worst sin was, according to Dante? Rape? Murder?”

  Again, Ross didn’t reply. So Jessabelle went on.

  “It’s betrayal, Ross. Betrayal. That’s the big one. That’s the sin that sends you to the ninth circle of hell. And you know who’s there? Satan. He’s there and he’s buried up to his chest in ice and he’s not alone. Satan’s got company. Judas is there too. Judas is there and the guys who killed Julius Caesar are there and Satan’s munching on their bodies like they’re cuts of filet mignon and they’re screaming and this goes on until the end of time.”

  Ross wordlessly ran his palms, slick with sweat, across his cloth-covered steering wheel.

  “I never actually read it. I didn’t need to. The way my professor described it has stayed with me all these years. Well, that and the fact that it was betrayal that was the big sin. At the time, I didn’t get it. How is betrayal worse than child molesting? It didn’t make sense. And then, one day, I caught my husband cheating on me. I mean, I caught him in the act. And that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew Dante was right. The pain I felt in that moment…my bastard husband could’ve run me over with his car and it wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did seeing him with another woman. This man. Whom I trusted with everything. Whom I gave everything. Who was the father of my children. You see, Ross, betrayal is more than just selfishness. It’s taking the person you’re betraying and saying to them that their love is worthless.”

  Love. There was that fucking word. Ross’s lips curled into a snarl. How dare she. How dare she use that word with him.

  “Where are we going?” he demanded.

  “Don’t you like surprises? No. That’s right. You don’t. I don’t either, actually. I like to know that the world works a certain way. People say that change is good? Change is bad. That’s why I always choose the same drink at Starbucks. It’s not because I’m boring. It’s because I like to know what I’m going to get. And yes, Ross, I’m still talking about your betrayal.”

  “He was my best friend!”

  “Eyes on the road. Thank you.”

  They crossed I-20. Sure enough, the traffic thinned out. The next major destination was the airport.

  Were they going to the airport?

  “I have a best friend,” remarked Jessabelle. “Her name is Mary. We haven’t been friends as long as you and Phillip, but we’re close. We met in Lamaze. I’d do anything for Mary. And if the group told me to bring her here so she could have a confrontation, I’d tell them to fuck off. But you didn’t tell the group to fuck off, did you, Ross? You brought Phillip down here and then warned him what was going to happen. What is that? Is that cowardice? At the very least, it’s betrayal, but we’ve already gone over that.”

  At which point Ross muttered, “Like you betrayed me.”

  Stunned, Jessabelle shut up. Ross was stunned too. He’d meant the words, all right, but he never thought he’d have the courage to speak them out loud to her. And she had betrayed him. That was the irony of it all. In leading him along, in convincing him to seek vengeance against Walker Berno, she had victimized him as readily and heartlessly as Walker ever had. And he didn’t need the Serendipity Group to set up a “confrontation” where he could deal with his victimizer. Here she was, in his car. At his mercy.

  He could take her anywhere.

  Two wrongs didn’t make a right, but what was right? Every day he bore witness to abuses of society on those less fortunate. Phillip and his million-dollar cohort believed in the gospel of taking.

  Ross could take his revenge on Jessabelle. He could abandon her in the middle of nowhere. Atlanta bordered a thousand square miles of nowhere. He could abandon her without her phone and leave her to fend for herself and that wouldn’t erase the pain she’d inflicted on his heart, the betrayal she’d committed against him, but it was a start. It was something.

  They passed a sign. Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, next exit.

  “Take the next exit,” she instructed.

  He took the next exit.

  But their destination was not the airport. Jessabelle directed him to leave the highway via an access road that fed into a strip of long-term lots and cheap motels. A shuttle bus passed them on the left and nearly took off the station wagon’s side-view mirror.

  “It’s the next block,” she said.

  He idled at a red light.

  “I didn’t intend to hurt you,” she said. “It was determined that this was the best way of recruiting you into the mission and so we did it. And you have to admit—after you gave Walker Berno the beat-down he so richly deserved, you felt great. I saw it on your face. You felt liberated. Maybe the first time in your life. Empowered.”

  “And then I went to kiss you and you flinched away.”

  “Yes, well, involuntary reflexes are funny like that.”

  Ross chewed on the inside of his cheek.

  “What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I’m sorry. I’m not sorry that I did what I did. I’d do it again. I have done it again to others. With others. But I didn’t intend to hurt you. I was playing a role. We all play roles.”

  “You could have told me the truth. From the start. You could have tried that.”

  “We considered that option,” Jessabelle confessed. “It was determined that you would be…less responsive to the direct approach.”

  “Because I’m a coward.”

  “Some people need to be forced into a corner.”

  The light turned green. Ross accelerated slowly. Jessabelle pointed to the right at an upcoming motel. Its parking lot reminded Ross of the ugly slab of tar that had functioned, more or less, as the parking lot in Walker Berno’s neighborhood.

  “So who’s here? The kid who stole my lunch money in third grade?”

  “Not quite.”

  Back in April, some of Walker Berno’s neighbors must have seen him and Jessabelle get out of and return to her VW Bug. They must have seen them enter Walker Berno’s house. At the time, Jessabelle had assured him there would be no consequences for what had happened that day, and there hadn’t been. At least no legal consequences. The Serendipity Group would protect him, she had said.

  Was that why they were here now? Were they about to protect some other poor chap caught up in their demented machinations?

  He reached for his door, but Jessabelle suddenly grabbed him by the arm to stop him. She was staring ahead at the open door to Room 104, as three people who were not their targets left the room with looks of confusion on their faces matched only by the look of confusion on her own.

  Chapter 15

  “Let’s start with the obvious,” said Xana. “Who knew they were here?”

  Detective Chau paced the cement walkway in front of the motel room. “It wasn’t a secret. There was no evidence of a threat.”

  Unimpressed, Xana turned to Detective Konquist and posed to him the very same question.

  “Oh, well, let’s see,” he replied. “There’s the guys who brought them here, of course. There’s our lieutenant, who authorized the move. There’s whoever signs out the keys to this place. There’s the McCormicks. And there’s whoever the McCormicks called, I guess.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Chau had already called it in. Soon they would be joined by some of their colleagues in blue, and the second room in two days belonging to Scott and Crystal McCormick would be taped off as a crime scene. During the call, Chau reluctantly asked if the McCormicks had, maybe, been moved to another location. Perhaps their lieutenant had even agreed to let the
m fly off to Paris? No such luck.

  “It wasn’t a cop,” he said.

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I can.”

  Xana let loose a teapot sigh. “Detective, someone tampered with evidence at your first crime scene. Someone took the list. And now someone has taken your witnesses. The Venn diagram of people who had access to both includes nothing but cops.”

  “We’re missing something.”

  “Yes, we are. We’re missing the list of names and we’re missing Scott and Crystal McCormick!”

  A station wagon peeled out of the parking lot and drove away. All three of them watched it go.

  “You think they were in the backseat of that station wagon?” Xana added.

  They all agreed that was unlikely. Not impossible. But unlikely.

  “I am beginning to hate this case,” muttered Konquist.

  The boy behind the counter in the Airport Motel’s main office still had a pierced eyebrow and still had his hair bleached white. Some people never learn. He gazed up at them with dilated pupils and asked if they needed a room.

  Yeah, he wasn’t going to be any help.

  “Are your maids still here?” asked Xana.

  “My maids?”

  “The people who clean the rooms. Change the sheets. You do clean the rooms and change the sheets here, don’t you?”

  “Me? Heck no.”

  “Does anybody?”

  “You’d have to ask them.”

  Fortunately, at that moment, an Iberian woman in a maid’s outfit bustled in. She wore a simple silver cross and carried a simple yellow bucket.

  “Sinto muito,” she murmured as she brushed past them and made her way to the back room.

  Xana called after her, “Com licença, por favor!”

  And for the next six minutes, Xana and the maid exchanged words in a language that neither Chau nor Konquist understood. The boy behind the counter, meanwhile, was listening to Bach turned up to 11 on his Bluetooth headphones. In the end, Xana and the maid embraced and the maid continued on to the back room and Xana indicated to the two detectives that they take the upcoming discussion outside. This was why they were seen leaving the front office as the first of the squad cars showed up. Konquist took control of them, while Xana relayed to Detective Chau, by request, every detail of her confab with the maid.

  “Lucia first came to clean Room 104 after ten A.M. That’s when she began her rounds. She used to begin earlier, but the guests complained that it was too early. Lucia knocked on their door and a lady answered the door. Lucia thinks a man was in the bathroom. The lady was pretty although she had short purple hair. She asked Lucia to come back later.”

  “That’s Crystal McCormick. OK. What else?”

  “Lucia came back about a half hour ago. She remembers that it was almost time for lunch. She still hasn’t had her lunch. She knocked on the door again and this time it was answered by a man. The pretty lady—Crystal McCormick—was by the bed, packing a suitcase. Next to her was another man about her age. The man at the door, who was older, maybe late thirties, asked Lucia to come back in a few minutes. So she went to clean the pool. Now she’s going to have her lunch. Tuna fish and avocado on whole wheat. She packs the same two lunches every morning—one for herself and one for her son Miguel, who is seven.”

  “Is that important?”

  “You said every detail,” replied Xana with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Did she happen to get the name of the man at the door?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Does she at least remember what he looks like?”

  “In fact, she does. Average height for a man. Shorter than me. Losing his hair, but he’s got it parted so it looks like no one can tell, but everyone can tell. And he’s got a mark on his cheek. ‘Like a scar?’ I asked. ‘No. Like a wart.’ ”

  Detective Chau took a step back.

  “Who is it?” Xana asked him.

  He held up a one-minute finger and briskly walked toward his partner and the other police officers, who were now marking off Room 104.

  So Xana called Hayley, who picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey, how are you doing?”

  “I’m fine. I need a favor.”

  “Are you sure you’re fine? I was worried.”

  “What?” Xana watched Chau whisper in Konquist’s ear the news about the man with the receding hair and the facial scar. Konquist’s reaction may have been silent, but might as well have shouted panic. “Why were you worried?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I drag you to an execution and then suddenly you need to go to an AA meeting at one A.M.”

  “I’m good. Really. Are you OK?”

  “Sure, sure. No, that’s a lie. I couldn’t sleep. No, that’s a lie too. I know I slept at least a little because I had a nightmare.”

  Xana turned away from the police. “Oh, Hayley.”

  “But I’ll be OK. I mean, I have to be, right? So what’s the favor?”

  “I…” Xana suddenly felt a boulder of guilt on her shoulders. Hayley was going through enough and now to burden her with this? But it was the only way. There was no one else at the FBI she could ask. Burned bridges and all that. “Could you get my file?”

  “Your file?”

  “Everything’s been computerized, but there’s a hard copy in the personnel cabinet by the—”

  “Yeah, that’s under lock and key.”

  “Well, sure. So get the key.”

  “How about if I just print out your electronic—”

  “No, I need the hard copy. There are items in the hard copy that…for the sake of…the relationship between the hard copies and their electronic versions is not one to one. There are…omissions. I need the unexpurgated version.”

  “Why would there be omissions? Who omitted them? Is that legal?”

  Xana shook her head in frustration. These were all valid questions, and if their roles were reversed, she would be asking the very same ones, but the answers were too complicated, at least for now.

  “Can you at least tell me why you need your file?” persisted Hayley. “Are you finally putting your CV together so you can apply for a new job like I’ve been bugging you to do?”

  “Yes,” Xana lied. “That’s exactly it. Can you get it for me?”

  “I can absolutely take classified personnel documents belonging to the federal government and let you borrow them so you can apply for a job.”

  “Well, when you put it like that…”

  “You see my point.”

  “Yes, Hayley.”

  “Maybe if you could tell me what to look for…?”

  Xana reached into her pocket and removed one of two pieces of nicotine gum. She had promised Em that, if she moved in, she wouldn’t smoke, and she hadn’t, but the nicotine gum was a must, especially since the nicotine patches gave her a rash and since hypnotherapy, which she had tried once to appease Em, was king bullshit. The flavor of this gum was pocket lint. Yum.

  “Look,” said Xana, “there should be a letter from human resources dating back to 2012. It’s a long letter. You can’t miss it. If you could at least copy down the letter’s salient details, that would be a big help.”

  “Where are you going to be after work? Home or the bookstore?”

  “Home or the bookstore.”

  “Always a pleasure,” said Hayley, and she hung up.

  Why not just confess the truth? What did she have to hide from Hayley? Hayley knew who she was, what her reputation was. Hayley knew she had never suffered fools gladly. Why not tell her that one of those fools had finally decided upon revenge? There was even a sense of inevitability to it.

  Was this shame?

  Was this guilt?

  Whatever it was, Xana set it aside. Detective Konquist was threading his way back to her. He looked as if his favorite puppy had just pissed on his favorite bed.

  “We’re going to have an officer drive you home,” Detective Konquist told her. “You understand.
”

  “I can still be of help.”

  “Do you know where the McCormicks are?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who abducted them?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  Konquist turned away.

  But that wouldn’t do. She couldn’t let them sideline her, not when things were getting interesting. She had to make herself indispensable. But how?

  Chapter 16

  “You know what’s weird?” said Xana. “I don’t see the FBI.”

  Konquist turned back toward her, crossed his arms, and waited for her to elaborate.

  So she did.

  “Isn’t it weird? You have a murdered foreign national. And not just any old foreign national but a priest! And his murderer crossed state borders to commit his premeditated crime. And now you have two persons from yet another state gone missing. You would think the FBI would be all over this. It’s so weird.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be briefed when the time is right.”

  “No time like the present. That’s what I always say. Good thing I still have a few of my former co-workers on speed dial.”

  To underline her bluff, she took out her phone. And it was a bluff. She had none of her former co-workers on speed dial, and she doubted whether any of them would be receptive to a cold call from her now.

  On the other hand, the fine men and women of the Atlanta Police Department didn’t want the FBI mucking up their show, especially after the feds had received the lion’s share of the credit for saving those hostages in July despite the valiant efforts—and tragic losses—incurred on that day by the APD.

  Some law enforcement agencies maintained a healthy relationship between jurisdictions. Some cities encouraged cooperation among local, state, and federal authorities.

  Such had never been the case in the South.

  And so:

  “What do you want, Miss Marx?”

  “I just want to help.”