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Cooke’s conviction had been overturned, and handsome, arrogant Dr. Hamilton Cooke became a free man even if the question of “did he or did he not brutally murder his wife?” hung like a cloud over him. Only after his release did he and Reggie confirm their relationship, and within three months of Cooke walking out of the prison, the couple tied the knot in a private ceremony on a Florida beach, both tanned and barefoot, she in a gauzy white dress, he in a tuxedo, his shirt open-throated, his tie dangling. They married surrounded by tall palm trees, glittering white sand, and clear, aquamarine ocean.
The media had not been invited, but the paparazzi had hovered, and a bold photographer had managed to take some intimate shots before being gruffly forced to leave. Too late. Pictures of the “private” wedding had been splashed across the tabloids and shown in quick spots on entertainment news segments.
Cooke, with his attorney/wife at his side, threw his attention into regaining his medical license and starting a charity for those who had been wrongly imprisoned. With Reggie’s help, he’d finally collected the benefits from the hefty life insurance policy he’d carried on his first wife, reportedly two million dollars—enough money to give an unhappy husband pause, plus, of course a motive, especially when that husband was facing divorce, possible financial ruin. Add to that the fact that in the months leading up to Beth’s death, Hamilton Cooke had increased the coverage on his wife. It all smelled very, very rotten.
Reggie, fiercely protective of her client/husband, and senior partner in a small law firm, was quick to threaten lawsuits against anyone who smeared her new husband’s name or stood in Hamilton’s—or her—way.
And that included her ex-husband, who was livid that she’d paraded her affair in front of the press, damaging his reputation. Aldo Lucerno had been vocal at the time of the divorce and fought dissolution of the marriage citing personal, religious, and business reasons, claiming he would be financially ruined as well as publicly embarrassed. In truth, Aldo had come out of it well, his brand of canned oysters catching national attention and distribution. Now, according to Kristi’s research, he was worth over ten times what he had been at the time of the messy divorce.
Nonetheless he, like his ex-wife and her new husband, had been livid at the thought of a book being written putting his family in a bad light, and the scandal of his wife’s infidelity had been brutal enough without Kristi writing a book about it. A lifelong resident whose ancestors had immigrated to New Orleans centuries earlier, Aldo was adamant that no one, including Kristi Bentz, besmirch the Lucerno name. “Don’t even think about it,” he’d warned when she’d tried to interview him at his home, a huge, sprawling, plantation-style house on manicured grounds hidden behind a wall of a fence and a gate that only opened by electronic command. She’d been forced to stay in her car at the gate, but Aldo, at five foot ten or eleven with clipped dark hair, had emerged from the home, walked stiff-backed down the brick drive, and stared at her through the elaborate wrought iron gate. “If you print anything about my family,” he’d said, “I’ll have my attorneys ensure that not one word of your book ever gets published.”
Kristi had refused to be intimidated. “We’ll see about that.” After a short exchange, she’d driven off and written what she’d seen as the truth driven by the facts of the case. All the threatened lawsuits never materialized. The book had been published and became a best seller.
Of course Reggie had remarried quickly. Now she and Hamilton made their residence in a historic three-story home built by a famous architect in the 1880s. Completely renovated, but keeping all of its original charm, it claimed a private courtyard, pool, five bedrooms and five baths, and had been featured in several architectural and cultural magazines, the spreads including shots of the loving couple who owned the prestigious home.
And it was only a few blocks from Kristi’s cottage, in a more prestigious part of the Garden District. She hadn’t realized he lived so close to her and the thought was disconcerting, but she shoved it aside. For now.
So, what about his daughter? Lindsay? She’d been a child, preteen when she’d discovered her mother’s body.
Kristi searched the Internet. After the second trial, Lindsay Cooke was barely mentioned in the press and seemed to be in college at a small school in the Midwest and avoiding the limelight that her father so adored.
Kristi spent the next couple of hours reading articles about both Hamilton and Reggie Cooke, scrolling through one after another on her computer screen. She also checked out Hamilton Cooke’s social media accounts and Reggie Lucerno Cooke’s law firm’s Web site. Clicking through all the information on the couple, she saw photographs and watched short videos, all of which seemed slick and polished, as if professionally created and edited to show Reggie or Hamilton in perfect light. Older shots were included and displayed an earnest Dr. Hamilton Cooke in medical scrubs, often with a young patient. In the more recent images he was always dressed casually, his hair longer and peppered with gray, an easy smile and a noticeable twinkle in his blue eyes.
Kristi leaned back in her chair. She twiddled a pen as she thought about Cooke. She believed to this day that beneath Cooke’s suave and debonaire veneer lay a cold-blooded killer, a man who thought he was smarter than everyone else in the room and had the credentials to prove it. Cooke was a sociopath with a dark and murderous side.
During the time when she’d researchedThe God Complex and MurderKristi had discovered that Cooke’s first wife had planned to divorce him. Beth Cooke had confided as much to her sister, only two weeks before her tragic, fatal accident. She had even set up an appointment with a prominent New Orleans divorce lawyer, but had died three days before the meeting.
Not, in Kristi’s estimation, a coincidence. She looked again to her computer screen where the most recent image of Cooke was still displayed. It was another professionally crafted shot of him seated at his desk, leaning back in his chair, a tiny almost condescending smile playing upon his lips, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his sleeves rolled up. Behind him, warm pine walls were decorated in framed diplomas and awards.
As she stared at the picture, Kristi felt that same cold sweep of wariness she’d experienced when interviewing him behind the prison walls, that she was staring at a facade, that beneath the warm, friendly exterior was the soul of a cold-blooded killer.
Hamilton Cooke hated her. He’d made no attempt to hide his fury that he thought she’d betrayed him in her portrayal of him in her manuscript.
Reggie, of course, had threatened to sue after the book had been published and became a best seller.
He apparently had thought that only his interviews with Kristi would be included in the final draft and he’d objected vociferously to Kristi talking to his daughter and once-upon-a-time friends, along with his first wife’s most trusted confidants and especially Beth’s sister.
Upon receiving and reading an advance reading copy of Kristi’s book, Cooke had gone ballistic, insisting that Kristi had twisted the truth, and made him appear in a bad light, by warping the facts and creating an aura of malice around him that was far from the truth. He charged her with irreparably staining his reputation and distorting who he was as a physician and a member of the community. In his estimation, her portrayal of him was light-years away from the image he tried so valiantly to portray.
But would he go so far as to attempt to murder her?
She wondered, still fiddling with the pen.
Hamilton Cooke was capable of homicide. No doubt about it. Despite the second trial jury’s findings, Kristi believed Cooke to be an egomaniac, a psychopath, and a murderer who was cold enough to kill his own wife.
But was Jay’s murder his style?
An attack on a street on a rainy New Orleans night?
It was one thing to off your wife in the privacy of your own swanky gated residence, another to hide in the rain-drenched shadows and slice with a knife in a very public spot.
That point bothered her. Though she believed the attempt on her life had been conceived and executed with thought—only the weather and Jay’s arrival at the alley not part of the plan—the entire attack still seemed a little random, not as precisely executed as she would have expected from the uptight perfectionist that was Dr. Hamilton Cooke.
“Keep an open mind. You don’t know what he’s capable of,”Jay’s voice reminded her.
“Oh, what do you know?” she demanded. “You’re dead. Right? A damned figment of my imagination.”
She could almost hear Jay laughing at her consternation.
