'Mickey calls it diving into the dark water,' Mason said.
'Yeah? Well, do me a favor. Don't end up dead in the water. Let's get some pasta for lunch.'
She drove east to Walnut, then north to the City Market, where they parked. Balzano's was an Italian diner where they were both regulars. The same family had owned it for three generations. Josephine, the matriarch, had taken it personally when Mason had told her that he and Samantha weren't getting married. She hugged both of them when they walked in, telling them that lunch was on the house if they were back together.
'Separate checks,' Samantha told her, sending Josephine away, shaking her head in disappointment.
Mason asked Samantha, 'What's up? Or were you just in the neighborhood?'
'Would you prefer that I was in the neighborhood or that I was checking up on you like I do all my old boyfriends?'
Josephine returned with plates of moscattioli and meat sauce, setting them down without a word.
'She's mad at us,' Mason said. 'My preference doesn't matter. You showed up right after David Evans left. Were you staking us out?' he asked with a grin.
'David Evans is a treat,' she said. 'He was in my office the morning after Gina Davenport was killed. It's nice that everyone has been so cooperative in this investigation. The killer confesses. The victim's lawyer rats out the killer's father. Very nice.'
'Why didn't you look at Arthur Hackett for the murder?'
'We did. Evans's story is as good as any other, but it doesn't beat a confession that matches the physical evidence. We took elimination prints from Hackett, even though we expected to find his prints in Davenport's office. And we did.'
'He's got motive and opportunity,' Mason said.
Samantha said, 'And a daughter whose fingerprints were found on the window frame, and whose hair and clothing fibers were found on the body and who conveniently confessed.'
Mason hadn't seen the police reports and forensic analysis yet. Normally, he wouldn't get copies until just before the preliminary hearing. Samantha was cutting him some slack, and not just for old times' sake. She was doing it so he would know what a strong case the prosecutor had.
'But the confession isn't reliable. She's been under treatment-' Mason said.
'Lou,' Samantha interrupted. 'Save it. I'm not your audience. Besides, we've got a witness that places her at the scene.'
Mason stopped sprinkling Parmesan cheese on his pasta. 'Who?'
'Remember the homeless guy in the Channel 6 videotape? Earl Luke Fisher. The bench you were sitting on is his master bedroom. He ID'd Jordan. Says that he saw her park a Mercedes a couple of blocks away and let herself in the front door.'
'That contradicts Jordan's confession. She says that Gina let her in.'
'It's not a perfect world, Lou.'
'What about Evans? Gina Davenport supposedly loaned him six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Plus he was managing twenty million dollars in the foundation Gina set up in memory of her daughter.'
'He signed a promissory note with a market rate of interest. The foundation's books are clean and so is Evans. He and Gina had been friends since they lived in St. Louis twenty years ago. He may have even been in love with her for all I know.'
'Maybe they were in love,' Mason said. 'Maybe they were having an affair and Gina's husband found out. I hear he has a drug problem. Don't you think he could have gotten high and killed her?' Mason regretted the desperate tone of his questions, but he was running out of options.
'Robert Davenport is a recovering drug addict, I'll give you that. Someone called in an anonymous tip that Dr. Gina was dealing drugs out of her office. I talked to the narcotics detectives. They thought it was bullshit except for the husband, who's been busted a couple of times, but nothing stuck. They didn't have time to check it out before she was killed. We did find a stash of cocaine in her office.'
'When did the call come in?'
'Saturday morning before Gina was killed.'
'So maybe she was dealing drugs or at least supplying her husband. Maybe that had something to do with her death.'
'Maybe. But not likely. Look, no case happens in a vacuum. People lead messy lives that crisscross in strange ways. That doesn't make them murderers. It just makes them screwed up. Your client confessed because she's guilty. That's not why I was parked outside the Cable Depot watching you make nice with David Evans.'
'The elevator,' Mason said.
Samantha nodded. 'Our expert tells us that there was nothing wrong with the elevator. Somebody hit the switches that disconnected the power and released the emergency brake. What have you done that would make someone want to kill you?'
'Today?' he asked. Samantha didn't laugh. 'Okay,' he said. 'Other than today, I don't know. I've been in this case for forty-eight hours. That's a little soon for people to start hating me enough to want to kill me.'
'Keep joking,' she told him, 'and you'll shorten the time it takes.'
'If I was the intended victim, the killer would have had to know that I was on the elevator, have access to the controls, and know how to cause the accident. That should narrow the field.'
'There was a security camera on the elevator. Anyone watching the monitor would have known you were there,' Samantha said.
'And the videotape is missing,' Mason said.
'Gone,' Samantha said, spooning the last of her pasta.
'Have you talked with Trent Hackett? He gave me the passkey. He's the building manager and he's a freak. We didn't get off on the right foot.'
'He had access, but he says he was at the movies and he has a ticket stub to prove it.'
Mason asked, 'Anybody vouch for him?'
'He was alone.'
'If that's supposed to make me feel better, it doesn't.'
'It's not. It's supposed to keep you out of the dark water.'
'So which case are you investigating? Gina Davenport's murder or the attempt to kill me?'
Samantha twirled the last strands of pasta around her spoon. 'The Davenport case is the prosecuting attorney's problem now. I'm working the elevator.'
Mason watched as she finished her pasta. Her appetite was fine. His was gone. Harry always talked about the importance of keeping his personal life separate from his cases. He wasn't always able to do it. Samantha had been trained the same way. Saying that she was working the elevator rather than trying to find out who wanted to kill him was her way of drawing the line. She wiped a fleck of sauce that had splattered onto the butt of her gun. Mason was glad it was a big gun.
Chapter 10
Mason popped a Modern Jazz Quartet CD into his office stereo and opened the cabinet doors covering his dry-erase board. Listening to Milt Jackson work the xylophone keys helped clear his mind. He was a classic jazz fan uninterested in digitized, techno-driven sound. Basie, Peterson, Coltrane, and Monk were better company.
He wrote Arthur Hackett's name beneath the Winners and Losers column, putting $5 million next to Arthur's name, and drew a line connecting the money to the winners' side of the ledger. Next, he added David Evans's name to the losers' column.
Trent Hackett belonged in the losers' column on general principles, but that column was for people who lost something valuable as a result of Dr. Gina's death. It wasn't for people who were just losers. Instead he added a column titled Connections? and put Trent's name at the top. He drew lines from Trent's name to Jordan's and Arthur's, adding one to Gina's labeled broken window.
Robert Davenport's name was next. He wrote drugs across the line connecting the widower to his mate, adding another line with a question mark at the end leading to Centurion Johnson, the only past or present drug
