The Fifth Justice (Michael Gresham Legal Thrillers Book 10) Read online

“We can do that. Whatever you want, my love.”

  “I want breakfast, outside, at a restaurant.”

  Chloe wanted to get to a restaurant to see if she could get alone and pass a message. Pass a message to someone—anyone—who might help her.

  “We’ll go to Armand’s Grille just as soon as you’re finished in here. Take a shower when you’re done with cleanup, and we’ll go.”

  “All right.”

  But he didn’t take her out that morning or any of the following mornings. He’d guessed her motive; she wouldn’t be taken into public places again.

  Besides, he’d made his decision.

  He was finished with her.

  Chapter 32: Chloe Constance

  Chloe could hear them arguing.

  “She’s outlived her usefulness,” Reno asserted. His voice was angry but measured. She got the feeling he didn’t attack Niles as fiercely as the weaker ones like her.

  “She’s useful to us,” Niles said. “We can use her for other parts in the films.”

  “Not worth the risk,” said her husband. “She’s found out who she is. She’ll risk everything to escape. Now I have to watch her every minute. I’m no hawk, but she’s making me into one.”

  A war was raging for her soul. She felt lonely and sorrowful one minute, but then angry as hell the next. How dare they?

  “The MILF outlets want a new face,” said Reno. “And a new body. What is she now, thirty-seven? The arms are sagging anyway if you’ve been watching her last two movies. Total turnoff, even to the guys who like the MILFS.”

  “I don’t know,” says Niles. “I think a little loose skin is part of the attraction for the freaks. They’re looking for the real thing, and she’s all of that.”

  Real thing was she? If they only knew how real she was. She saw things up close and in focus anymore. Integration of the people in our lives, Dr. Gorski always said. Integrate the people within us. We must integrate, or we’re forever shattered, reflecting the world like so many points of broken glass instead of presenting a whole integrated picture of ourselves. That, ladies and gentlemen, she would tell the little group of patients, is the definition of chaos. And nobody wants to live in chaos. So integrate, people! Integrate!

  “I’m ready to kill the bitch,” Reno said.

  She felt like something had kicked her in the gut. Kill her? Did he say that? At that moment, any feelings she’d had of breaking free and leaving and not looking back faded. Minute-by-minute a new strength was welling up inside her, a strength that wanted to face down Reno instead of running away.

  She could feel Justin. He was coming, and he was angry.

  She decided Justin could have his way.

  Chapter 33: Marcel and Michael

  Two nights after the bathroom throwing up, Marcel came awake during the night after a fitful sleep that kept me awake. He was moaning and Marcel never moaned, so I knew. This was serious.

  Essine climbed out of bed and came into the living room. She took the one comfortable chair, facing the foot of our bed in the cramped room.

  “All right, what is it?” she asked.

  Marcel shook his head. “I ate something bad.”

  “Nonsense,” said Essine. “We ate McDonald’s. Their burgers are never bad.”

  I turned on the table lamp and turned to my friend. His skin was ashen and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked as if someone had poisoned him, sick as he was. He flew out of the bed and dashed for the bathroom. Again, he was throwing up, but this time it wasn’t stopping. After several minutes, I got up and went to rap on the door.

  “Marcel,” I called, “how are you doing?”

  No answer. So I knocked again. “You need to answer me or else I‘m coming in.”

  “Stay out,” he said in his hoarse voice. “I’m just weak. I’ll be out.”

  “Is there anyone we can call? A doctor who’ll come to the apartment?” I asked Essine.

  “My father’s sister is a doctor. But she’s a baby doctor. That wouldn’t help, would it?”

  “Would she come?”

  “I can call and find out.”

  “Please do. I don’t know what else to do. I’m afraid to see him go into a hospital.”

  “Because he was in Interpol?”

  “Yes. Please call, Essine.”

  Five minutes later, we had our answer. Essine’s aunt was on her way. She had warned that she didn’t treat adults, but Essine explained our situation in such a way that the doctor saw she was our only choice. I was very grateful to this woman I’d never met. Very grateful.

  We moved Marcel out of the bathroom and back into bed. He resisted, saying he needed to step outside for some air, but we ganged up on him so he consented to bed.

  It felt like the doctor was taking forever to get to us. Essine went into the tiny kitchen and made coffee. I had a cup of black while Marcel turned down anything but water. It occurred to me: was the water in Russia making my friend sick? Then why wasn’t I right there with him?

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Irina Maelovich came climbing up the stairs. We could hear her coming and I ran out to greet her and carry her bag. She was a young woman, maybe forty-five or fifty, wearing a sweatshirt without lettering and black denim pants. Her coat was zipped and her hood still over her head. “I hate this weather,” she said in good English. “Please take me to Florida when you leave here.”

  I liked her immediately after that.

  She came inside, pulled a bottle of hand cleaner from her bag, and rubbed it into her hands.

  “Now,” she said, all business, “let’s have a look and a listen, shall we?”

  She applied her stethoscope to Marcel’s chest and listened. Then she had him sit up and moved the instrument around on his back while he took several deep breaths. “Fair enough. Your lungs are clear and that’s a good sign. Let’s see what the BP tells us.”

  She wrapped his upper arm with a blood pressure cuff and hand-pumped it. Ever so slowly, the device released pressure then suddenly released everything. The gauge gave its readout. “Not bad, well within limits.”

  She then looked in his nose and ears and asked ten questions. Marcel had remained sitting up. Now he could interact with the doc as she did her objective review.

  “I would need lab work to go much farther,” Dr. Maelovich said. “But maybe you don’t want that, being American and all. I would advise against it as the medical profession is watched by the government.”

  “No tests, please,” Marcel agreed. “Do you have anything for my stomach?”

  “I’ve brought an acid blocker and a solution that should settle things down. Take the pink stuff every four hours until it’s gone. Take the acid blocker twice a day, morning and bedtime. These should get your through until you can get back to the U.S.”

  “I’m not going back, not yet,” Marcel said, throwing me a sharp look. “We have work to do here yet.”

  “You’re here on holiday?”

  “We’re here looking for someone the FSB is hiding. Michael’s wife.”

  “Oh, my. That can be very scary. My nurse lost a cousin to them. He disappeared and the family still knows nothing. It’s been several years now.”

  “I’m sorry for their loss,” I said. “My wife has done nothing wrong except marry an American. I’m scared to death for her.”

  The doctor was putting her things back into her bag. Then she stood up.

  “Well, I’d hound the psychiatric hospital for answers. That was our mistake. They’d held Vasili there for over a year, we learned, before taking him to Siberia.”

  “What’s the psychiatric hospital?”

  “Saint Petersburg Psychiatric Hospital. We docs know they use it all the time to hide what the FSB calls undesirables. I’d start right there if I were you.”

  Marcel looked at me and, for the first time in days, grinned. He unscrewed the cap from the pink medicine and took a swallow. He nodded. “Takes like Pepto. This will do the trick, doc.”

  “Yes, it
will,” she said, settling her hood over her head. She kissed her niece on the cheek as she was making her way out the door.

  “How can we ever repay you?” I asked.

  “Bring me to Florida for a month in January. That would do it.”

  “I’ll make that happen,” Marcel said. “Don’t be surprised when you get an airplane ticket in the mail.”

  “I’ll be watching for it,” she said as she disappeared down the stairs.

  We were on our way to the psychiatric hospital first thing in the morning.

  Chapter 34: Chloe Constance

  Reno announced there would be an insurance company nurse coming by. She would examine Chloe because she needed to be insured.

  He scheduled the insurance physical exam at their house.

  Later that afternoon, the examination went without a hitch. Vitals were taken, height and weight recorded, and the standard insurance policy questions were asked: no smoking, no airplane piloting, no drinking and driving, no using illegal drugs, and so forth. Emily, the nurse, smiled at her and Reno when it was over.

  “How did I do?” Chloe asked the nurse.

  “Passed with flying colors,” Emily said as she packed up her stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. “You should get written notice of the policy increase in about ten days.”

  It dawned on her what that meant. Reno was increasing the amount of insurance money he would receive if she died! She grew dizzy; her pulse pounded and her heart raced. But she maintained a calm exterior. It was important she not let on that she understood what he was doing.

  Reno showed Emily to the front door and let her out. Chloe stayed close behind, but Reno made sure—as always—to position himself in such a way something blocked her from doing an end-run around him and escaping out into the street. She had dreamed of doing that but hadn’t, because he scared the hell out of her with his violence and his willingness to do anything to her. So she nodded and smiled and told Emily goodbye.

  Reno turned to her. “You did so well. Just like I asked.”

  “So treat me to dinner,” she said. Her pulse rate was coming back down as she made her plans. She would rescue the girls and Trang. She remembered the knife she had hidden in her room. She considered the one million dollars she would receive if he died.

  And she would have her freedom.

  Along with many others.

  Chapter 35: Chloe Constance

  Chloe and Reno almost crashed into the cops in their driveway when they came home that night. They were returning from an hour at a local restaurant where Reno had watched her like a hawk. No furtive message to anyone, not even on a napkin. She was almost asleep in the passenger’s seat when they drove past the house, not stopping, not slowing down. Fortunately for Reno, no cops had been posted to control traffic in the roadway, so passage was possible with no questions.

  Rivera wheeled the Escalade around the cul-de-sac and then back down to the corner and floored it.

  Chloe first thought of the knife hidden inside the Chagall cloth. She knew Reno wouldn’t be returning here. Which meant the knife was lost to her. As was the diary. Her heart sunk at the loss of the first Chloe. It felt as if a piece of her heart had been hacked away and tossed aside. She was now missing a long history of her life, a history she’d never get back. Tears welled up in her eyes. She looked away from Reno.

  But then Justin twitched, and she grew angry.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she studied her captor’s throat. How sweet it would be to draw a sharp blade across that pale skin. Just to watch the line of blood erupt and course down his neck.

  She dreamt of blood that night in the Holiday Inn Express where they crashed. She hated the motel, but Reno ignored her feelings. “Just read something,” he told her. She wished she had the diary. It just wouldn’t leave her alone that an old friend had been lost.

  She got in bed and switched on the TV with the sound off and the captions on. Couldn’t disturb Reno, who was at the desk, all hunched over the laptop he’d had in the car, the laptop that went everywhere with him.

  He climbed into bed beside her after two a.m. and raped her. Rape wasn’t just about penetration with Reno anymore. It meant punches thrown at her private parts or pinching her nipples until they hurt. It was grinding his body into hers until she felt like a piece of meat. It was dominance and power. And anger.

  The man meant to get rid of her. She was sure.

  She fell back asleep. It troubled her dreams, and she cried out twice in the dark. Both times he shushed her and then raped her again. Reno was out of control. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Every time she turned around—in the room, in the bathroom—he was there, studying her, his eyes moist with lust and violence. She withdrew further inside each time. She prayed for Justin to come around. Justin would know what to do.

  After the third rape, if she’d had her knife, he wouldn’t be breathing.

  Morning couldn’t come fast enough.

  Justin showed up just before dawn. He asked her if he should just kill Reno. He said it disgusted him and that Reno was too vile to live. Chloe asked him how he would do it. He said he knew where Reno hid his gun at night. He could slip it out from under Reno’s pillow the next time he was raping her.

  But she told him, “No, don’t do that.” A shooting in a Holiday Inn would only get her arrested. There was no way she would go to jail, not after being locked up in the nuthouse as she’d been.

  When Reno got up and went to the bathroom, Chloe pretended she was asleep. She wrapped the blankets around her like a tortilla and settled her face into the pillow. She could still hear through the thin bathroom wall Reno getting ready for the day. He took longer than usual, and when he stepped out the door, he had shaven his goatee off. He looked like someone else from her past with his still-wet hair slicked away from his face. She had known this man before, hadn’t she?

  But it was when he winked at her and said, “So did you enjoy it last night?” Chloe knew. She gasped but muffled it in her pillow. They had a history, a history yet vague to her. But his presence in Chloe’s life had started long ago. He had used her for his pleasure forever. And he’d said those same words, “So, did you enjoy it last night?” In fact, he’d said those words to her many, many times.

  Justin rustled deep inside.

  She wouldn’t be able to keep the lid on her protector much longer. She only hoped when it happened it would be well-planned so she could walk away from it a free woman.

  She shut her eyes and forced herself to think how that might happen.

  Justin said to let him get creative.

  So she did.

  Chapter 36: Chloe Constance

  It was no secret from her that it was coming. But Chloe still wasn’t ready.

  The day following their first night in the Holiday Inn Express, Reno said he wanted to take her to dinner. “It’s time to make some friends and find some favorite places where we like to eat and maybe return with another couple or two.”

  Which sounded phony and put her on the highest alert.

  So she sat at the poorly lighted dressing table in their hotel room and thought about what she might do to cover the bruises on her face. Tears washed over her eyes—they had all day long—when she studied herself in the mirror. What was she to do? If she went out with no makeup, people would turn away. Maybe she would upset them and ruin their dinner, and she certainly didn’t want that for anyone. She decided to send Reno out for some foundation makeup. He was surprisingly willing to help and left the room immediately when she explained what she needed.

  “There’s a CVS two blocks back. I’ll go there.”

  He had been patient with her all day. She knew that was a hoax. Then he‘d let loose with phony guilt for what he had done while he raped her. He couldn’t apologize enough. That bounced off her thick skin like raindrops. But even though she was tough, he still wasn’t letting her out of his sight. While he was away at the CVS, she didn’t doubt Niles would be lurking. She knew Reno way
too well to believe even for a second that he would leave her alone unwatched. Wasn’t going to happen.

  No, she wasn’t buying any of his remorse. She knew it was all an act. Reno had no feelings for anyone ever; he was what she had learned was sociopathic. Even the word was scary.

  While he was gone to the drug store, she was feeling lonely and afraid. It occurred to her she should call the hospital and ask for help. So she found the number, got an outside line, and placed her call. She asked for Dr. Gorski, but it was Friday night, and she was told there was no Dr. Gorski in the hospital that day. “There’s not even a Dr. Gorski on our list of physicians with privileges here. Are you certain your doctor’s name is Gorski?” No, she wasn’t sure. Chloe wasn’t sure about anything. On the other hand, how could there be no Dr. Gorski with privileges at the hospital? Had Chloe just made her up?

  She asked for Reggie Ewald, her social worker. Reggie was gone for the day, too. It didn’t matter because she finally reached the nurse she knew only as Carrie on the head injury floor. Carrie came on the line and couldn’t believe Chloe was calling her.

  “I’m so impressed, Chloe,” she said. “I thought you had forgotten all about us.”

  “I could never forget about you. Please don’t think that.”

  “How are you, Chloe?” Carrie wanted to know. “Is everything all right with you?”

  She broke down and cried and dabbed a runny nose. She described the living conditions, talked about the diary, and confided in Carrie about the latest rapes. Carrie was angry and told her she was calling the police to report what was going on. She told Chloe not to move. The line went dead.

  Reno returned, immediately went to the room phone, called the front desk, and got a list of outgoing calls. He redialed the hospital and understood what call she had made. Furiously shaking, he turned away from the phone and laid her out on the floor with a backhand across her face. He fell onto her, placing his knee on her chest to stop her wriggling. Chloe’s cuts were laid wide open, and blood covered her face.