Chapter 10

Probably, gun to my head, I’d admit that my three favorite meals would be a cheeseburger, ground beef tacos, and thin crust pizza.

Oh god, how Midwestern-sad is that?

Except, put a hand-crafted spin to those bad boys. No chain versions, thank you very much.

Now I certainly can achieve the female version of a massive boner when faced with sashimi, duck confit, veal osso buco, heirloom tomatoes, Dover sole, real Kobe beef, not the domestic version.

But, gun back to my head, I guess I’m just a product of my heritage. Probably there are worse things to be. I may not be woke like those poor shelter girls think Rebecca is, but I’m pretty okay.

Just ask Walker.

When the Jin case ended, it ended quickly. And quietly. Their capture had been pedestrian in its ordinariness. Ignominious, really. No blazing shootouts like Buster had been hoping for. No standoff, no hostage negotiations, no heroics.

Just two sickos, blinking in surprise into the glare of a flashlight, being led down the steps of a shabby motel. Jin wearing pajama bottoms, his mother a flannel nightgown. Handcuffed.

Other than the battering ram, nothing very dramatic for such horrific crimes.

In a cinematic way it would have been nice to have a more glorious denouement. Even the lethal injection, when all the appeals have run out, will be a quiet finish to a tragic chapter.

We wish for the poetic and live with the prosaic.

If someone had cuffed Jin to that cinderblock building and handed me my shotgun ... no, I wouldn’t have. Not that he and Mildred didn’t deserve it. They did, and more.

It’s just that I’m no more of an executioner than I think the state should be.

However, should our kids be threatened, or Vanessa, I’d blow the motherfuckers away without a thought. A slippery ethical slope? Nope. Just an enraged Mama Bear reaction.

Jesus, Winter, get a grip! Those two fuckers are finished forever. They’ll never hurt anyone else. Celebrate it. Hoist a glass to young Buddy Fagin. Several glasses. Little fucker.

When Vanessa and I returned from Independence, from watching Jin and his mother being arrested at that sad motel, we paused in the lobby of the Wrigley Hotel. Vanessa grinned at me and took Jin’s poster off the easel by the street entrance. Took it upstairs. Souvenir.

Jessie Sullivan, on her own initiative, hacked her way into Cassandra’s bank account. Cassandra Sanders, like Phillip Massimino, was making cash deposits into a recently opened savings account at the Boston branch of Bank of America. Near her office.

The timing of the deposits, all under $1,000, roughly coincided with Massimino’s own bank deposits.

If I were the type who jumped to conclusions, who made unfounded assumptions like those fucking so-called forensic scientists, I’d peg Cassandra as co-conspirator in a tawdry blackmail scheme. She had originally wanted to take Phillip Montgomery up to her room. Where, assuming-assuming, Massimino had already planted the hidden cams.

Cassandra didn’t need the money. She made good bank peddling convention and exhibition wares. And her husband did even better in insurance as a State Farm commercial broker. So it could be merely a lark, an adventure away from the hubby and kids.

Or it could be she was hooked on Massimino.

Or it could be I didn’t have a fucking clue.

Door Number Three.

Still at the Taj, armed with this new banking info, I called Cassandra at home. Which, enraged her. Her husband had answered the landline. Quietly seething, talking through clenched teeth, she hissed, “What the fuck do you mean calling me here?”

“Bank of America savings account. Cash deposits on June 7th and 22nd. Come see me now.”

I hung up, winning that game two to one.

Twenty-five minutes later she called me from the hotel lobby. I said, “Room 1016.” Hung up again, smiling to myself.

Cassandra had changed from her work outfit into white jeans and a white top. Her attitude had changed too. Fake-casual was now angry-scared.

I had changed into a black pants suit with 4” heels. White blouse buttoned at the neck. My corporate uniform. I didn’t sit and didn’t offer her a chair, “Tell me about those deposits.”

She’d had time to think on the way over here, “Office reimbursements from petty cash.”

I slapped her. Hard, but not as hard as I could. Cassandra had been fucking around with the wrong Phillip Montgomery. My friend. The father of my son’s girlfriend.

She gasped, more shocked than physically hurt. Tears formed in the corners of her dark eyes. She was rubbing her cheek unconsciously. She looked around and sat heavily in a guest chair. I remained standing.

“Talk.”

She didn’t. But tears were running down her cheeks.

“I can’t decide who to go to. New York City Police, that’s obvious. You and Massimino taped Phillip Montgomery without his knowledge. Nor permission. That’s illegal in itself.”

Cassandra remained mute, except for snuffling.

“I imagine you two would have eventually tried to blackmail him as you did with Roger Woollcott, Jimmy Harrison, Walt Dunfree.”

Snuffling turned to a pitiful moan.

I felt so fucking powerful. And wise. Lecturing about illegal activity I’d uncovered from ... um, illegal activity. The Sullivan twins had digitally raped Cassandra Sanders. Privacy? These days? A quaint concept from a dimly remembered past.

“Because Woollcott is in Massachusetts, another state, that means the FBI.”

No way would I bring in the Feds. Not with Phillip Montgomery involved. That was certainly what I believed at the time. In my comfy hotel room in my luxury hotel.

Mentally, Cassandra Sanders collapsed. “Please.”

“Talk to me.”

Sometimes some of the assumptions we make turn out to be more or less true. As she had told me earlier this morning, Cassandra had met Massimino in Springfield. At the Sheraton. What she hadn’t told me was that she had willingly let him make a sex tape with her in a starring role. Or co-starring.

He had kept his promise and gave her the only copy of the tape. Which she watched a couple of times at home, then erased.

When Massimino called her cell three weeks later, she readily agreed to meet him in his Boston hotel, a Hampton Inn. Not very upscale, but Cassandra was there just for sex.

After he fucked her, he showed her another Springfield sex tape. Co-starring Cassandra Sanders again. From those hidden cams.