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She dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, ordered room service, and sat down to eat thirty minutes later. She had indulged with some steak and potatoes and a glass of cabernet, when she usually didn’t eat meat or many carbs and she kept her alcoholic intake to a minimum, mostly because of the example of Mommy. And she had never put a cigarette in her mouth orvoluntarilydone drugs for the very same reason. Mommy was a poster child for the consequences of shitty life choices.
After her meal was done she slid out her computer, set her notebook next to that, pulled out her burner phone, and placed it on the other side of the computer. Then Clarisse drew a long breath while complicated thoughts flooded her mind.
Focus! This is no way to play for real and for keeps. We’re not kids, not now.
She flushed her brain, took a sip of the red wine, and hit the number.
“I assume the kids are in bed,” she said when the other person answered.
Gibson said, “They are. For now.”
“What do you have to report?”
“I spoke with Sam Trask.”
“Did you now? Congratulations.”
“You can keep the snark to yourself, Clarisse. I’m not in the mood.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Basically that his soniscapable of all the things I told him were going on with Pottinger/Langhorne.”
“Let’s just call him Harry for simplicity and consistency,” interjected Clarisse.
“All right,” said Gibson. “Nathan Trask is involved in all sorts of illegal things, but the cops can’t prove them. He’s had people killed, including maybe Harry, but again there’s no proof of that. And why would he write ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ on the wall of the room where he was found?”
“Did you ask Trask about that?”
“Did you want me to?”
“I wanted you to go with your gut. So what did your gut tell you to do?”
“My gut told me not to ask him because I don’t think Nathan Trask was involved in Harry’s death.”
“Based solely on your gut?”
“Not solely, no.”
“What then?”
“I did some research on Trask. Even though they couldn’t make anything stick he was clearly old-school when it came to snuffing out people he wanted snuffed out. Two shots to the head. But Langhorne was killed by poisoning, Botulinum type A, which takes a while and is incredibly painful. Things could happen in the interim, all of them bad, for Trask.”
“Maybe he wanted him to feel the pain. Two head shots wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe. But Harry was already terminal with brain cancer, for which he was on morphine.”
“Really?” said a stunned Clarisse.
“Yes. The post on his body revealed that. And the writing on the wall? It was done by two people, so how does that make sense in the context of Nathan Trask? There’s no way he personally offed Harry. He would never have been near the place. So why would he have his execution team write that?”
“How do you know two people wrote the message?”
“Among other things, I used to analyze handwriting for a living when I was a forensics tech. And I do it today working for ProEye.”
“Did you tell the cops that?”
“So what if I did?”
