footage.”
Hannibal left the highway for King Street, amazed that no police car had spotted him. A handful of seconds later, he slowed to well below the speed limit and pulled to the right hand lane.
“What happened to our hurry?” Kate asked. “Don’t we need to head off the murderer?”
“Actually, we almost overtook him,” Hannibal said. “Three cars up.” He pointed ahead at the low slung midnight blue Lexus they had almost passed. Its license plate read KITYCAR1.
Hannibal hung back as the Lexus turned into the parking lot. He parked on the opposite side of the lot, four cars away from the little red Corvette with the KITTYCAR license plates. He slouched low as the driver of the Lexus got out of his car and headed for the building.
“This is the killer?” Kate asked, skepticism dripping from her voice. Hannibal understood her disbelief. Despite the energy in his step, the gray headed man in Dockers and a corduroy blazer still had to be in his sixties. As he entered the door, Hannibal slid out of his driver’s seat.
“We follow at a discreet distance,” Hannibal said. “Meanwhile, call the police and tell them you’ve witnessed an assault at this address in number 604.”
In the elevator, Kate asked, “Isn’t this dangerous? What if he kills his victim before we get there?”
“Not much chance of that,” Hannibal said. “Not with her standing there. In fact, I think he’ll be stuck for just what to do.”
Standing outside Mark Norton’s door, Hannibal felt no such hesitation or confusion. He had determined that enough people had been hurt in the last fifteen years and that it would stop here. Driven more by his own desire for closure than a need for justice, he tried the door. The knob turned in his hand and he stepped inside.
The tableau that greeted him was not quite what he expected. Mark Norton sat on the sofa, beside two suitcases. Langford Kitteridge sat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Joan Kitteridge stood in front of the glass doors leading to the balcony. Her eyes widened as Hannibal walked in, her jaw dropped open and she even stuttered out her first few words.
“Mr. Jones, what are you doing here?”
“Surprised to see me alive, Joan?” Hannibal asked, waving Kate to the couch. She sat and pulled a reporter’s notebook out of her bag.
“You’re becoming a nuisance,” Langford said over his shoulder. “I think you should go.”
Hannibal closed the door and stood between it and the rest of the room’s occupants. “I don’t think so. Not until I’m sure Mark here knows what he’s getting into being involved with Joan. After that he can make a bad choice with his eyes open if he likes.”
Mark’s face took on an arrogant smirk. “We’ve just told Mr. Kitteridge about our marriage, Jones, and she’s explained about her earlier matrimonial mistake. Now what do you think you can tell me about her I don’t know?”
Hannibal looked not at Mark but rather into Langford’s deeply cleft face when he answered. “Well I wonder if she told you she was an eyewitness to the first murder Langford here committed. And I don’t think she told you that he came over today intending to kill you. He would have too, if Joan hadn’t gotten here first. Guess you two were packing to escape, eh Joan?”
In all that, Mark had only captured one word. “Murder?” he repeated.
“Yep. He’d do anything to keep Joan for himself.”
“Wait a minute,” Kate said, scribbling like a madwoman. “Isn’t this her uncle?”
“God, I hope not,” Hannibal said. “Because they’ve been sleeping together since before Joan was of legal age. And when she did reach legal age, they were married. Mark, meet Joan’s first husband. You aren’t blood relatives, are you?” This last question Hannibal addressed to Langford.
“You’re treading on dangerous territory,” Langford said, slipping to his feet. “We’re not blood and, even if we maintained our privacy, there was nothing illegal or even illicit about our marriage.”
“Well, you’ve always seen the morality thing in shades of gray, haven’t you, Langford?” Hannibal asked. “Before you met Joan, you were sleeping with the wife of your good friend Gil Donner.”
Langford reddened. “I never sneaked behind his back. Gil and Carla had an open relationship.”
“That appears to be true,” Hannibal said. “They even had a little love nest apartment where they met their outside interests. Funny, you’d have expected Carla to be a better sport. About sharing, I mean.”
“Okay, I’m lost,” Mark said, standing up. “What has all this to do with a murder?”
Hannibal looked at Joan, giving her a chance to speak. She shook her head and remained silent, so Hannibal continued. “As it turns out, Langford here reached the rank of Brigadier General in the Army over there in Berlin. Having an underage girlfriend would have derailed that career for sure, but he had a safe place to take her. Gil Donner’s little love nest. The way I see it, Carla must have caught you two up there, doing the nasty. I don’t understand how she could justify being jealous, but I don’t think she reacted well. Otherwise, Langford wouldn’t have killed her.”
All eyes turned to Langford. His eyes cast toward the carpet. “It was an accident.”
“Maybe,” Hannibal said. “But if she was planning to leave Gil for you, she’d have been a terrible security risk after she found out you liked them younger. In any case, she ended up dead, and again a connection to you would have ended your precious career. So you set her up to look like a suicide. Then you convinced your subordinate, Gil Donner, the provost marshal, to limit the investigation.”
“She was already dead,” Langford said, taking a step toward Hannibal. “There was nothing to be gained by exposing my mistake.”
“Yes, and Donner was in no hurry to expose his lifestyle. The two of you decided nothing you did would hurt her anymore, but you didn’t seem to notice or care about ruining the life of a good MP named Foster Peters. No biggie, right? One thing you learned in your early career in Vietnam was, every enemy action creates a certain amount of acceptable collateral damage.”
Mark stepped closer to Joan, hands held wide. “Is this true, baby? You saw him kill a woman? And then you, you married him?” Joan nodded slowly, but could not produce any words.
“Well they wanted to stay together, but now they had no place to go,” Hannibal said. “And I think maybe old Langford here was really in love with her. So he took her in, and made up the dead brother story to make it acceptable for her to be in his home. Then, to tie her to him better, he married her. I don’t think he knew at the time that Foster Peters’ son, Oscar, was one of her young admirers. Did you let it slip that Carla Donner’s death was suspicious, Joan?”
“I thought he knew,” Joan said, shaking her head. “After all, his father was the investigating officer. I guess I did say too much before I realized he was ignorant.”
Hannibal continued, watching Langford’s eyes, seeing trouble in them. “Pretty soon after that you moved back to the States, right? I’m guessing now, but I figure the general here got posted to the Pentagon for his last assignment. Were you already looking for a younger man then, Joan?”
Langford stepped forward, moving on his feet more lightly than one would expect for a man his age. “Joan would never consider leaving me,” He said in a low, deep voice.
Hannibal chuckled. “Please. The age difference and your overwhelming control of her were tearing her apart. You put her in therapy with Dr. Roberts. But it didn’t do what you wanted it to, did it? He encouraged her to find someone nearer her own age. Then she met Grant Edwards and got the hots for him.”
“He tried to steal my Joan!” Langford bellowed. The women gasped loudly as he pulled a large knife from under his jacket. He flipped into a reverse grip, the point toward his elbow, edge out. Hannibal recognized it as a Ka-bar, the fighting blade favored by Marines since World War II.
“And you killed him with a knife very much like this one,” Hannibal said, holding his hands wide and backing away slowly. “When you found out about him and Joan, you started following her. You heard them arguing. As soon as she left, you went to the door. He let you in but he didn’t know why you were there. Did he turn his back to you or did you slip around behind him to drive the knife into his throat?”
“He didn’t deserve her,” Langford said. “He couldn’t fight for her.”
“Yeah well we don’t need to either,” Hannibal said, reaching for his holster before he remembered that the police took his pistol back at Donner’s hotel room.
“No gun?” Langford asked. “Well, I guess you can’t stop me. And anyway, Edwards was an adulterer who deserved to die.”
Hannibal stepped back in front of the door. “Maybe. But I think he was waiting for his wife to try to work it
