respond. When he didn’t, Paul Kenner, the erstwhile baseball player, got up and slapped Walker on the shoulder.
“Let’s go, my man, the steaks are calling my name.” He moved past Walker, turned around, and headed slowly backward in the direction of a door on the far end of the room.
Walker kept his stare on Landry. “The sheriff will be hearing about your behavior from my attorney.”
Landry laughed. “You’re not on the Island now. This is the real world. You can’t threaten me or buy me off for doing my job. If you’re on the list, you’re on the list, Mr. Walker. You’re a potential suspect, like any other potential suspect. And your attitude isn’t doing anything but moving your name closer to the top of that list.”
Rich Boy didn’t have anything to say to that. Landry just stood here. He would have stood there all night, waiting for Walker to back down and retreat. He didn’t have to, but he would have. Walker went with Kenner and Brody toward the door to what was probably some members-only secret dining room. The rest of the club followed.
“I guess that was a group no,” Weiss said.
Landry was watching Barbaro, who went for the exit. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
They followed the Spaniard out. Barbaro turned a corner and went down the sidewalk toward the men’s room, but he stopped and turned to face them.
“I will take your test, Detective,” he said to Landry. “I have nothing to hide.”
“And your friends?”
“Are spoiled, wealthy men. As I told you earlier today: The wealthy are not like you or me. They have certain expectations in how they should be treated.”
“They’re a pain in the ass,” Landry said bluntly.
Weiss had the plastic bag and sterile swab in his hand.
“You want to do this right here?” he asked. “You don’t want an attorney present? You don’t think we’re going to tamper with the sample? You’re not going to sue us for violating your civil rights?”
“I have nothing to hide, Detective. None of your points apply, because you won’t find my DNA to match whatever other samples you may have.”
It took only a matter of seconds. Swab in the mouth, rub the inside of the cheek, swab in the evidence bag, done.
When it was over, Barbaro turned and went back into the building.
Weiss turned to Landry. “How do you like that?”
“I’d be happier if we had Walker’s sample.”
“You got some kind of hard-on for that guy?” Weiss asked. “What’s that all about?”
“Twenty years ago he went to trial on a rape/assault. The case fell apart and he walked,” Landry said. “It was a William Kennedy Smith kind of a thing. Rich kid from a prominent family, victim without a pot to pee in.”
“He said, she said.”
“In the end, she didn’t say. She suddenly refused to testify against him.”
“He bought her off,” Weiss said.
“That’s my guess.”
“That was twenty years ago.”
“Tigers don’t change their stripes,” Landry said. “Especially not if they got away with something once.”
“And in all these years he just hasn’t gotten caught.”
“Who knows? Maybe he started paying outright for rough sex. Maybe he knocks his wife around, keeps it all in the family. I don’t know,” Landry said. “I know he sure as hell acts like he’s got something to hide. I know that I saw a snapshot of him sitting with Irina Markova the night she went missing.”
“I don’t like any of these guys,” Weiss said. “I think they’d sooner lie than breathe. And they walk around with this big air of entitlement, like their shit don’t stink. They should all have to go to jail just for being jerks. Let them see what they’re entitled to in there.”
Weiss left with the sample to take it to the lab. Landry followed him but went back to Robbery/Homicide. At his desk-one of a collection of ugly 1960-vintage tan metal schoolteacher reject desks in the room-he put his reading glasses on, clicked a couple of keys, and brought his computer screen to life.
He brought up the archived newspaper articles about Bennett Walker’s arrest and trial and scanned them again. When he had first dug up the dirt earlier in the day, his reaction to the fact that Elena hadn’t been the one to tell him had been strong. He wasn’t sure he could put a name to the emotions-anger, hurt maybe. He didn’t like being shut out of her life.
Funny, neither one of them had done much talking about what their lives were like before they became involved. It had never bothered him. He hadn’t really even thought about it. What was the point in talking about twenty or thirty years back?
Now he felt like she had been purposely holding back on him.
React first, think later. She had every right to be pissed off at him. He’d been a jerk.
He read back through the Bennett Walker articles, read between the lines.
He hadn’t been living in Florida then. He had been aware of the case mostly from catching the odd newscast, and he hadn’t retained what little he had known. Digging up the details had been full of surprises, not the least of which being that Elena was engaged to Bennett Walker at the time.
Walker’s defense attorney had been Edward Estes, Elena’s father. a man well-known for confusing juries by twisting facts and misdirecting focus, and getting his clients off, no matter how dead-to-rights guilty they may have been.
In Walker’s case, Estes had gone with the tried-and-true blame-the-victim defense. The girl was promiscuous, liked rough sex, had an abortion when she was seventeen. She seduced Bennett Walker. She asked for it. She only brought charges against him in the attempt to get him to buy her off.
Landry looked at the photograph of the victim taken in the hospital two days after the attack. She looked like she’d been run over by a truck. Nobody asked for a beating like that. The girl was a bona fide victim.
He could only imagine how Elena would have reacted to her father’s battle plan. She was a person who believed in justice. Her father believed in winning.
Elena had testified for the prosecution against her then-fiance, which must have gone over well with dear old Dad. His own daughter sabotaging his high-profile case, shattering his client’s alibi-that he had been with Elena at the time of the attack.
Stories had then been leaked to the press that Elena was nothing more than a woman scorned, out for revenge; that she had a checkered party-girl past; perhaps she wasn’t mentally stable.
Landry didn’t wonder where those stories had come from. They had come from Bennett Walker’s camp, and the general in charge of Bennett Walker’s camp had been Edward Estes.
Her own father had turned against her to win a case.
“Why would I trust you, James?”
Her fiance turned out to be a rapist, and her father sold her down the river to suit his own purposes.
Why would she trust anyone?
She wouldn’t.
She didn’t.
Including him.
Chapter 26
He was waiting for me, as I knew he would be, at the gate into the Palm Beach Point development. Alexi Kulak.
My headlights washed over him as he stood beside his car. He had pulled himself together since I’d seen him. He looked neat, dapper even, in a tailored brown suit. He had shaved and combed his hair. He looked like a businessman waiting for the auto club to show up and change his flat tire. Impatient.
I pulled my car over, parked it, and reached down into the hidden panel of my door. At least I was better prepared this time.
