You Don't Own Me Page 20

  “If you thought Kendra was guilty,” Laurie asked, “why didn’t you come forward with the tapes?”

  “Because I know how trials work. It wouldn’t give the police what they needed to make a case. She couldn’t have been the one who pulled the trigger. She was inside the house when it happened. That means someone did it for her. They would have pointed the finger at me—just like you are—and I’d have had to explain why I got payments from Kendra. I was only trying to help. Plus it would’ve meant exposing Leigh Ann Longfellow’s affair, and that would have killed me with my clients in Albany. I was looking out for myself, but I’m no murderer.”

  “No, but you’re a blackmailer.”

  He looked around nervously. “You’ve got it all backwards, lady.”

  “We just got you on camera, Brenner. I’ll let you know when it’s time for the next payment? What’s that, if not blackmail? And you’ve been following me, too. Once the police start investigating you, they’ll find out where you were on Monday night. You pushed me in front of a taxi and robbed me. That’s at least two other felony charges.”

  When there was a gap in the traffic, he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. I’m done with you.” He turned his back to the production van, jogged across Bowery, and began walking south. When he reached the corner, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and appeared to be making a call.

  “He didn’t confess,” Kendra said.

  “We knew it was a long shot,” Laurie replied. “Trust me: overall, the footage is going to help you. And we have him dead to rights for blackmail.”

  “Now what?”

  Laurie watched Brenner, still on the phone. She wasn’t ready to let him go. She pulled out her own phone and called Jerry, who was parked on 5th Street. “Pull up to Bowery, take a right, and then turn on Sixth. Hang tight.”

  She still had eyes on Brenner. She called Leo. “He’s contacting someone. I want to see where he goes next. We can’t follow him in the van, but he didn’t spot our second car. I’m going to tail him with Jerry.”

  “Not without me,” Leo said.

  They dashed across Bowery and made their way to 6th Street, where Jerry was idling at the curb. A pair of binoculars dangled from a rope around his neck. As she reached to open the back door, she saw that the rear seats were folded forward to make room for all the boxes and bags filling the small hatchback.

  “Sorry, Laurie. I was planning to move some stuff out to Fire Island once we were done.”

  Laurie could feel Brenner slipping away. She had to make a quick decision. Jerry wasn’t going to like this, but if she could choose only one person to go with her, she knew it made more sense to bring an armed former police officer than her assistant producer.

  “So . . . can we borrow your car? And let me have those,” she said, pointing to the binoculars.

  57

  Joe Brenner felt his feet shuffling down Bowery. For five years, his meetings with Kendra had been easy money. In theory, she could have tried to turn the tables on him, but she never had. Not once. She was too afraid. She had the money and would continue paying. Easy.

  But today, Kendra suddenly had surprises up her sleeve. She had played him, and now a television show with millions of viewers had him on tape—probably on camera based on the looks of the roof mount on that van. He replayed the conversation in his head, knowing how bad it was.

  He had denied killing Martin Bell—of course he had—but he had told Kendra to keep her mouth shut, an obvious sign that he was hiding something. And he had said something about the next payment. They’d have him locked and loaded for extortion. He’d lose his license and have to go to prison.

  That was not going to happen.

  He needed someone with power to shut this entire thing down. He knew exactly what to do. He pulled out his burner phone to make the call. The voice that answered was nervous, the usual reaction when he rang.

  “It’s me,” he said. “You’re going to do something for me.”

  “How much this time?”

  “Not money,” he said. “A favor. And then you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “What kind of favor?” More fear in that quivering voice.

  “Not on the phone,” he said, paranoid after that stunt Kendra pulled with the television producer. He needed to clear his head. He needed open space, away from the city. “Meet me at Randall’s Island, in the parking lot by Field 9.” Sometimes Brenner drove there for no reason at all other than to be surrounded by green grass.

  There was a long pause, then the voice on the other end of the line said, “I’ll leave right now.”

  58

  Laurie could see the familiar exit signs along the FDR Drive ticking by. They had spotted Brenner, still walking south on Bowery, and then watched as he got behind the wheel of a black Dodge Charger. Now they were following him from a safe distance behind, unsure of their destination.

  “Still can’t believe this thing’s electric,” Leo said. “Handles like a race car.”

  “Well, handle it carefully. It’s Jerry’s baby. Where is Brenner heading? He better not be going to Albany. Jerry said the car can only go one hundred sixty miles before it needs to be charged.”

  “He’s signaling now. We’re going on the Triborough Bridge. Maybe he’s headed for LaGuardia? He could be making a run for it. Wait, he’s got his blinker on again. I think we’re headed for Randall’s Island.” It was an island in the East River between East Harlem, the South Bronx, and Queens. Most of the island was a city park.

  “Keep your distance, Dad. Parts of the park can be pretty vacant. There won’t be many cars to blend in with.”

  “You know how many stakeouts your old man has done? It’s under control.”

  Laurie fixed the binoculars on the Charger’s license plate. She grabbed a piece of paper and pencil from the glove compartment and wrote it down. “A little insurance in case we lose him.”

  “Good idea, but I’m not planning to lose him,” Leo said. Then, pointing, he added, “He’s pulling into the parking lot by the baseball fields.”

  “Well, don’t follow him! He’ll see us.”

  Laurie had taken Timmy here for a few birthday parties and remembered the general layout. The park was home to more than sixty athletic fields. Even on a nice day, not all of them would be in use.

  “Trust me,” Leo said crisply as he approached the parking area where Brenner had turned. Laurie leaned low in her seat as Leo drove past. “There’s a grove of trees beyond this field,” he told her. “We can park behind it. He might be able to see the car, but there’s no way he’ll be able to see us.”

  After a short drive, she felt the car come to a stop.

  “Dad, maybe we should call for backup.”

  “Not yet. My gut tells me that right after the encounter with you, he called somebody to meet him here. I don’t want to scare off whoever that somebody is.”

  Brenner had gotten out of his car and was smoking a cigarette while leaning against the hood. He checked his watch then glanced around, his gaze lingering on the grove of trees.

  “He keeps looking at us, Dad.”

  “Don’t worry. He can’t see you from where he is.”

  Another vehicle, a Volvo wagon, pulled into the lot and parked next to Brenner. As it slowed to a stop, Laurie adjusted the binoculars and was able to see the driver. “It’s a woman,” she said. “She looks familiar.

  “Oh my God, Dad. I can’t believe it. It’s Leigh Ann Longfellow.”

  The senator’s wife got out of her car, looked in all directions, and walked over to where Brenner was standing. Even though the day was overcast, she had on a pair of dark sunglasses.

  Neither Leo nor Laurie took note of a white SUV that entered the park and turned toward an adjacent field.

  59

  Brenner was used to being in control. As a child, he was the kid who ran the playground, choosing which games to play and terrorizing anyone who dared to challenge him.
In college, he knew exactly what he wanted to study—law enforcement. He wanted to enforce rules and have a badge to back up his authority. When the classroom work proved tedious, he took matters into his own hands and joined the army. Military service would make him a shoo-in for the police department.

  Even when he was kicked out of the service for assaulting his sergeant—a beating Brenner still believed was long overdue—he had taken control. He managed to get the discharge bumped to “other than honorable,” when the army had wanted to court-martial him with a dishonorable discharge. And when his military record made it impossible for him to work as a cop, he found another way to put his skills to use: as a private eye. When lawyers stopped hiring him for work, he became the political crowd’s go-to guy for what they called “opposition research.”

  Time and time again, when circumstances threw Brenner a challenge, he found a way to stay in control and look out for number one.

  But now his usual coping skills were eluding him. He couldn’t believe that the brilliant plan he had hatched five years ago was coming apart fast. It had all begun with the most routine request: a jealous husband wanted to know if his wife was stepping out on him. But the husband wasn’t any old Joe Blow. He was political darling Daniel Longfellow. In all his years delivering the bad news to clients, Brenner had never seen a spouse so crushed by the betrayal. He thought Longfellow was going to start bawling right in front of him.

  Any respect he had for the man was destroyed when Longfellow pleaded with him to “make them stop.” Brenner offered him the names of some of the best divorce lawyers in town, but all Longfellow wanted was to get his wife back. The senator told him to take the evidence to Kendra Bell. “They have kids,” he said. “She’ll make him end the affair.”

  In other words, he wanted her to do his dirty work for him. Well, Brenner was never one to miss an opportunity. He actually started blackmailing Leigh Ann first, right when he heard the rumors that the governor was thinking about Longfellow for the vacant Senate seat. It was a no-brainer. He lied and told her that Martin Bell’s wife had hired him to trail her husband but that he was willing to sell her the incriminating photos instead if the price was right. She was the earner in the family, plus it was clear she had big plans about being first lady someday. Future first ladies don’t get caught kissing someone else’s husband. She paid.

  The situation with Kendra had been more complicated. When he first approached her at that bar, he wasn’t sure how to play her. But he knew her husband was loaded, and he had a chance to collect. What were the chances she would spill her guts to him or that the doc would be killed only days later? It was as if the money had fallen into his lap. Like his grandfather used to say, “When a baked duck flies into your mouth, don’t ask questions. Eat it.” Two separate women, two steady paydays—and neither one of them ever figured out it was crybaby Longfellow who had first put the wheels in motion.

  Now he needed to put the screws to Leigh Ann one more time, but not for money.

  She was obviously angry when she stepped from the station wagon, but she looked around cautiously, afraid to be recognized. There were other cars in the lot, but no visible occupants. The afternoon soccer and baseball games were already under way.

  “You can’t just call me on the weekend and demand that I drive out to the middle of nowhere at a second’s notice. Luckily Daniel was at the office or—”

  “Your husband needs to call his friends at the police department or the DA’s Office or something for a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  She looked at him with disdain. “Are you insane? That’s something from a trashy crime novel. That’s not how real life works.”

  If Brenner had been his usual self—a man always in control—he might have noticed that her voice wasn’t tentative and nervous, as it always was when he spoke with her. Maybe he would have realized there was a reason for her newfound confidence today.

  “That’s exactly how it works. It happens all the time. Senator So and So’s kid gets a DUI, and, oops, the paperwork goes missing. Congressman Whatshisname gets caught with drugs in his car, and the Baggie walks out of the property room. Strings get pulled, and now you and your big-shot husband need to pull them for me.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “Daniel doesn’t even know about Martin. He still thinks he was just a man I knew through our parents. How in the world am I supposed to explain my connection to you?”

  He almost started to laugh. She was so smart and yet so stupid. “Trust me, Leigh Ann, he knows who I am. He’s the one who hired me, not Kendra. He knows about you and Martin. He’s known all along.”

  He could tell she was thrown off by the information. “Well, he would never do what you’re asking—even if it were possible. He’s too principled.”

  “Exactly, which is why I need you to ask him to do it. He’ll do it for you because he loves you and would do anything to keep you out of trouble. I know him. He’d take a bullet for you.”

  She looked down, and he could see her mulling over her options. She glanced around at the players on the nearby soccer and softball fields. She stared at the car partially obscured by the grove of trees.

  “I’m worried about someone recognizing me. Let’s talk in your car.”

  He double-clicked his key fob to unlock the doors and hopped into the driver’s seat. When she was settled into the passenger’s seat next to him, she said, “You were right about what you said. Danny does love me. And that’s why I can’t let you ruin everything for us.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a gun.

  60

  Laurie watched through the binoculars as Leigh Ann opened the door and slid into the passenger’s seat while Brenner got behind the wheel. Their car faced her. A foot-high barrier of railroad ties separated the parking area from the ball field.

  Her thoughts were racing with pieces of the investigation. For the last twenty-four hours—since Alex first recognized Joe Brenner’s photograph—she had been convinced that Brenner had killed Martin Bell in order to blackmail Kendra. But now she was replaying the words he had spoken earlier that day.

  After all these years, I’d love to know the truth. You mean to tell me you didn’t have anything to do with taking out your husband?

  Laurie should have realized it then. Brenner wasn’t hired to kill Martin, and he didn’t do it on his own.

  Continuing to peer through the binoculars, she said, “Dad, we need to do something. Brenner’s not our killer. It’s Leigh Ann.”

  She had typecast Brenner as the bad guy with the shaved head and the mean eyes. He was no angel, but that didn’t make him a killer.

  Leigh Ann Longfellow, on the other hand, had played the role of the innocent bystander, maligned as “the other woman” by a paranoid wife. And Laurie, along with everyone else, had fallen for it.

  She was thinking so quickly, she could barely get the words out. “Dad, when the police verified Leigh Ann’s alibi, it was all based on Daniel. He was the one who was meeting with senators. He was the one with the hotel reservation. He was the one with his picture in the papers. And he was the one who confirmed his wife had made the trip with him.”

  She saw it as clearly as if the events were playing out in front of her in real time. An affair between two unhappy spouses: Martin because of his wife’s depression, Leigh Ann because her husband’s career had come to a halt in Albany. She pictured Leigh Ann’s reaction to her husband’s name on the lips of the governor. They could leave the state capital in the rearview mirror. He would hold federal office. They’d spend time in D.C. He’d be a strong contender for the White House.

  But Martin Bell didn’t want any of that. He wanted a stay-at-home wife and a future stepmother to his children.

  Leigh Ann . . . Bell? No. It would never happen. Leigh Ann’s children were her dogs. For her, Martin was a distraction when her picture-perfect marriage temporarily stalled.

  And Martin wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. He was the man
who steered his wife away from a medical career. Who told others that she was insane. Who drugged her up rather than get her the care she needed when she had a mental health problem.

  Just as Laurie had initially said about the idea of Martin and Leigh Ann as a couple: They were oil and water.

  It was all so clear.

  “Dad, we need to do something. I think Leigh Ann’s going to kill Joe Brenner.”

  61

  Brenner knew the truth the second he saw the gun in Leigh Ann Longfellow’s hand.

  “Of course it was you,” he said coldly. “All this time, I thought it was Kendra.”

  “Just drive.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’ll tell you as we go.”

  He started the engine, put the car in reverse, and started backing up slowly. He tried to think of a way to signal for help. But where would help come from? He suspected the car behind the trees might have been tailing him, but that wouldn’t do him any good if Leigh Ann shot him. If he needed to stand trial for extortion, so be it. Right now, all he wanted was to survive. He had to find a way to distract her.

  “I saw you together,” he said. “You and Martin. The two of you seemed . . . had the hots for each other. And he was no threat. Why would you kill him?”

  Leigh Ann seemed less tense. She was still confident—the way he usually was—and seemed to regain control over the panic he had seen in her when she first pulled out the gun. He had no idea whether that was to his benefit or not. All he knew was that he needed to keep her talking. He was buying time. She didn’t seem to notice he had stopped backing up.