Hades by Russell Andrews Page B

went straight to the telephone and dialed the home number of Leona Krill, the mayor of East End Harbor. A woman’s voice answered on the fourth ring, and when Justin went, “Leona?” the half-asleep voice said, “No.” Justin could hear the rustling of sheets, some mumbled words, and then Leona was speaking into the receiver.
    “Whoever it is,” she said, “do you know what time it is?”
    “Maybe if you didn’t stay up all night sleeping with strange women, you wouldn’t need so much rest.”
    “Jay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Melissa is my wife, in case you don’t remember. You were invited to the wedding but didn’t show up.”
    “I’ve met Melissa. She qualifies as strange.”
    “Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?”
    “Because there’s been a murder and I thought you’d want to know about it right away.”
    “Good Christ. Who is it?”
    “Evan Harmon.” There was a long silence from the mayor’s end. “Leona? You still with me?”
    “Yes. And I’m wide awake now, thank you. I have so many questions, I don’t know where to begin.”
    “That’s probably good because I don’t have too many answers.”
    “Are you sure it was murder?”
    “As compared to what?”
    “Natural causes, suicide—I don’t know, how else does someone drop dead in the middle of the night?”
    “He didn’t exactly drop dead,” Justin said.
    “How was he killed?”
    “Beaten to death. And from the looks of it, tortured, too.”
    “Was it his wife?”
    “Who killed him?”
    “Yes.”
    “No,” Justin said.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Reasonably sure. Why do you ask?”
    “’Cause she’s capable of torturing just about anybody. And isn’t it almost always the spouse?”
    “Well, this one’s got an alibi.”
    “A good one?”
    “Pretty good,” Justin said.
    “Any other suspects?”
    “Not yet. I’ll have more info in the morning, I hope.”
    “I hope so, too.” Another silence. Then Leona said, “Jay, you
understand—”
    “I understand.”
    “Christ, the papers. And TV reporters.”
    “They’ll be sliming all over the place.”
    “Who else knows?”
    “From me? Gary Jenkins. He called Mike Haversham. The CSU guys know, assuming they’re there by now, the ambulance driver and EM workers . . .”
    “Have you called Larry Silverbush?”
    Silverbush was the DA for the East End of Long Island. He was based in Riverhead, about forty minutes or so from East End Harbor, and had been involved in several high-profile trials over the past five or six years, winning them all. Three years earlier he’d put a British nanny away for poisoning the baby daughter of a well-known record producer—that’s what had made his reputation. It was a tough case to make, but Silverbush had made it brilliantly, slowly reconstructing for the jury a history of the woman’s carelessness, thoughtlessness, arrogance, and lack of warmth. There were no witnesses and no real forensic proof, but Silverbush showed the jurors—and the media—that she was
capable
of murder. That was enough to swing them over to the fact that she’d committed this particular murder. The nanny was still proclaiming her innocence and still trying to build a valid appeal, but she was serving twelve and a half to twenty-five years in prison.
    Silverbush’s other attention-getting case was a year ago. A famous—and famously obnoxious—public relations diva had gotten drunk and driven her SUV into a Hamptons club. No one was killed, but several patrons and two doormen were injured. The case had turned into a class war—blue collar versus rich summer interlopers. The PR queen was an interloper—and not a Mid-Island voter—so Silverbush was able to put her away for eighteen months. Justin had met him once, just a handshake really, not enough to get a sense of the man. His reputation was as a no-nonsense, no-bullshit guy. Instinctively, Justin didn’t buy it. Word was that Silverbush wanted to run for state attorney general and