Annapolis, Maryland,
Monday 13 June, 10.45 A.M.
He stepped out of the shower in his discipline room to see Patton waiting by the door, revulsion clear on his face as he stared at what remained of the drug dealers he’d picked up the night before.
‘Is something amiss, Mr Patton?’
Patton turned slowly to face him, swallowing hard. ‘No. Sir,’ he added belatedly. ‘It’s . . . fine. It’s fine.’
He almost smiled. Big strong men reduced to green-faced little girls at the sight of a bit of blood and gore. Making sure he stepped around the affected areas, he went to his wardrobe and began dressing.
‘I have a list of tasks for you to complete this morning.’ He pulled on silk boxers and then his trousers, finding the folded paper in his pocket. He held it up, waiting for Patton to come to him to get it. ‘Mr Patton?’
With an effort, Patton tore his eyes from the carnage on the floor and walked toward him, gingerly avoiding a puddle of something nasty. The head clerk’s gulp was audible.
He was amused. ‘One cannot eviscerate a man without a little mess, Mr Patton.’
‘I know. I remember.’
‘I should hope so. It was less than forty-eight hours ago.’
Patton hadn’t seemed as shaken at the sight of Patricia’s body, though. Mostly because she hadn’t been as thoroughly worked over as the two dealers from the night before. On those two, he’d spent hours cutting and carving. Patricia had been dealt with quickly.
Because I was so angry. Too angry. Seeing Thomas Thorne lying there unconscious had been more difficult than he’d anticipated. He’d wanted to plunge his knife into the man’s body so badly . . . but he had not. Because death was too good for him. He wanted him to live. And mourn.
Just like I am. So he’d been quick about it, slicing the woman’s throat before carving her open and pushing the weathered key ring into the wound. He’d dropped the knife on the floor at Thorne’s side after pressing the man’s fingerprints into the blood.
And then he’d left the room, going to the garage to lie on the tarp they’d laid in the backseat of Thorne’s very luxurious SUV. It had been the hardest thing, walking away from Thorne’s breathing body. But he’d done it, because the payoff would be far more satisfying.
He’d taken the tarp with him when he’d exited to his own vehicle, ensuring that there would be no trace of him in Thorne’s Audi. And then he’d left Patton to return the Audi to Thorne’s garage and to finish setting the scene. He now wondered if Patton had looked the same way after beating Patricia until she was unrecognizable.
‘What the hell?’ Patton’s voice jerked him out of the memory. He looked up from the paper he’d been reading, his eyes flashing with fury. ‘You could have texted this to me. Or called me.’
‘Of course I could have.’ Calmly he continued to dress, watching Patton from the corner of his eye as he shrugged into his shirt and buttoned it.
‘But you made me come all the way down here.’
‘I did.’ He tucked his shirttail into his trousers and began tying his tie.
Patton’s face hardened to stone. ‘You just wanted me to see this.’ He gestured behind him, to where the bodies lay.
He smiled. ‘Just a little reminder of how failure is punished.’
‘But these guys didn’t fail you.’
‘Well, when you consider that they pledged allegiance to my rival, I’d have to disagree.’ He snugged his tie and pulled on his coat. There. He always felt more put together when he wore a suit. He nodded toward the paper in Patton’s hand. ‘Complete those tasks and call me after each one. Then return here. You’ll need to transport these two back to their masters.’
Patton’s eyes widened. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me. I want these bodies dropped at the Circus Freaks’ warehouse at seven sharp.’
‘Why seven?’
Because that was when Sheidalin opened their doors. He wanted shock and awe and media coverage when the police stormed the place. ‘My reasons are not for you to question, Mr Patton. Should I search for another replacement?’
Patton’s gulp was, once again, audible. ‘No. Sir.’
‘Good. Then please get to it. You don’t want to be late.’
Baltimore, Maryland,
Monday 13 June, 10.55 A.M.
Frederick hurried to open the backstage door. ‘Miss Brewster?’
She’d raised her fist to knock, but lowered it. Her eyes widened, startled, although she didn’t physically flinch. ‘Yes. Mr Dawson, I take it?’
‘Yes, thank you for coming to meet me here. Please come this way.’
She followed him into the main hall, blinking to get accustomed to the darkness. Sally Brewster was the woman who’d warned Bernice Brown that someone claiming to be a detective was poking around. She was fifty-two, widowed with two grown children, and was a nurse in the pediatric ward of a local hospital. She volunteered at the animal shelter and played the cello in her neighborhood orchestra. She rode horses in her ‘spare time’, and had gone to Ocean City on vacation the month before, where she’d looked very, very nice in her extremely modest bathing suit. And she really, really needed to make her Facebook page private.
He pulled out a chair for her. ‘Please sit down.’
She looked around the club curiously. ‘I’ve been here before, for a concert. It looks different in the off hours.’
‘All smoke and magic, I assume. Mr Thorne, your friend Bernice’s attorney, is part owner of this club.’
‘I know. That’s why I came – to observe Mr Thorne. I wanted to get a look at the man who’s helping Bernie. This has been a nightmare for her. If he has to drop her case, I don’t know what she’ll do.’
‘I’ll be taking on her case,’ Frederick assured her. ‘At no charge. I understand you called Mrs Brown last Friday and warned her that someone was asking where she was.’
‘Yes. He said his name was Detective Hooper. I don’t talk to people I don’t know on the phone. You hear of scams every day. He might have been hired by Bernie’s husband, who is a complete piece of garbage.’
‘So you told him nothing?’
‘Not a thing. Not really. I gave him an address where he could find Bernie, but it was just a vacant lot at the trailer park. Plus, he was trying too hard. Gave me the creeps. I called the police department he claimed to be with. They’d never heard of him.’
‘You were very smart to be cautious.’
‘Some people say I’m paranoid.’
‘Some people are careless. You were not.’ He’d drilled that kind of caution into his daughters. He approved of Miss Brewster’s vigilance in this regard, even though she needed to block her Facebook page. ‘Do you have the number he called from?’
‘Yes.’ She found it in her cell phone call log. ‘I think it’s fake. I tried calling it back.’
‘From this phone?’
She gave him a small smile. ‘No. From a payphone outside the grocery store. Like I said, he gave me the creeps.’
‘Good.’ He wrote the number down. ‘Is there anything else you can remember about the call? Any background noises?’
She frowned thoughtfully. ‘Birds.’
‘Birds? Like . . . outside in a tree?’
‘No, more like . . . at the beach. Seagulls.’
Frederick’s pulse took a leap. ‘That’s good to know. What else?’
‘He had a little bit of a Southern accent. Not at first. It came out when he started to get annoyed with me. That’s when I hung up on him. Sorry, I wish I could tell you more.’
‘Do you think you’d recognize his voice if you heard it again?’
She looked uncertain. ‘Maybe. I’ve read that voice recognition is even less reliable than eyewitness testimony.’
And she was well read too. ‘That can b
e true. Sometimes it’s enough to give the police a search warrant, though.’
Her brows rose. ‘I would have thought you’d be against helping the police to get warrants.’
He wasn’t offended. It was a common misconception that defense attorneys lived to thwart the police. ‘Not necessarily. If the warrant is executed legally and there really is due cause for its issuance, then that satisfies the law. That is the expectation that every defendant should be allowed to have.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I see. Do you think Bernie has a chance in court?’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve read her file, I’ve spoken with her, and I’ve consulted with two of the other attorneys in the practice. I’ll do my very best for her.’
She nodded again. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘I knew who you were before I came here,’ she stated baldly. ‘I wanted to check you out, both for my own safety and for Bernie’s. She’s putting her life in your hands.’
Frederick sat back in the chair, wondering where she was going with this. Why she seemed so defensive. ‘Checking me out was prudent. You should know that I checked you out too. You really need to change your Facebook privacy settings.’
She sucked in a surprised breath. ‘Oh. I had no . . .’ Her cheeks bloomed pink. ‘I will. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He started to rise, but she held up her hand.
‘I’m not finished.’ She waited until he’d resettled himself. ‘I checked on you a little more deeply than you checked on me.’ She lifted her brows. ‘You don’t have a Facebook page.’
And he was the tiniest bit smug about that. ‘True.’
‘But you do have an Internet presence. Or your daughters do, at least.’
He drew a very deep breath. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked ominously.
She didn’t blink. ‘I mean that your daughter Taylor was in the papers last year for helping to take down that man who murdered his wife and threatened his little girl. Jazzie. I tried to call her, by the way. Taylor, I mean. I posed as a reporter. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions. However, your other daughter did.’
‘That’s impossible,’ he said flatly. Because Daisy only accepted calls from numbers she knew. Otherwise she’d have blown her travel budget on cellular fees and not easels and paint in Paris. Besides, he monitored her bills. Closely. He’d never tell her, but he watched her credit card receipts for trips to the liquor store or the wine shop. He’d allowed her alcoholism to run unchecked for too long the first time. He was not making the same mistake twice.
Her drinking had been his fault, after all. He’d been trying to give her ‘space’ then, which was ludicrous considering he’d all but sentenced her to a life of seclusion on the ranch in California for her entire adolescence. And all that after he’d already lost one daughter to addiction. Thinking about Carrie hurt too much, so he focused on the children he could still save.
Yes, he continued to watch over Daisy as best he could, and from the accounts he’d received from those around her, she was clean and sober and happy. Just as she should be. And due to this vigilance, he was quite certain that she’d taken no calls from strange phone numbers. At least not from the US to Europe.
He stared Miss Brewster down coolly. ‘You must be mistaken.’
‘No, I’m not. Julie was quite frank with me on the phone.’
Frederick drew a shocked breath. ‘What?’ Hearing someone say his daughter’s name was like taking a high-voltage jolt. Julie was the youngest of his four daughters and . . . special. Born with cerebral palsy, she also had an intellectual disability. At twenty-one, she read at a fourth grade level, although she thought she might be making progress at the new therapy center she attended. Regardless, he kept her safe from the world. From anyone who’d hurt her. Fury began to blaze within him at the very thought that someone, that this woman, had breached that protective wall. ‘That is impossible,’ he said, his voice shaking with anger.
She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘You may not have a Facebook page, Mr Dawson, but Julie does.’
‘Julie’s never touched a computer,’ he declared, confident of that fact.
Her brows lifted. ‘Because she has CP? Think again, Mr Dawson. Look, I harbor no plans to hurt you or your children. I’m a mother. I’m a nurse. But I also like to continue breathing, and this thing with Bernie is damn terrifying. Her husband stalks her, she fights back and wounds him, so he stalks her more. And then she gets arrested, for God’s sake.’ Her voice rose a little more at the end of every sentence. ‘And then her lawyer gets accused of murder? And then her replacement lawyer asks me to meet him alone?’ Her eyes flashed in a mixture of fear and anger. ‘Damn straight I was going to check you out before I met you. Damn straight I told someone exactly where I am and who I’m with so that they know where to start looking if I fail to check in later.’
She looked away, visibly gathering her composure. When she spoke, her voice was quiet again. ‘I wanted to know what kind of man you are. Your daughter Julie adores you, by the way. That’s all I really wanted you to know. For her sake. But I think she’s picked up more at the new therapy center than you might have realized. You might see her as a child, but just because she might read at a lower level, she is not a child. She doesn’t speak like a child, she doesn’t think like a child, and she has the needs and wants of an adult.’
Frederick could only stare at her. Oh my God. Julie. She had a caregiver who attended to her personal needs and who stayed with her when Frederick was working, which wasn’t that often. He thought he’d been paying adequate attention. I guess I thought wrong. Yet again. A feeling of despair crept into his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. He’d failed another one of his daughters.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ he managed, his voice rough and unsteady.
Sally Brewster’s mouth curved sadly. ‘Say thank you. And then make sure your daughter is safe. She could attract the wrong kind of attention so very easily. I couldn’t have lived with myself if something happened to her and I hadn’t told you.’ She stood up, her hand outstretched. ‘Thank you for supporting Bernie. I know she appreciates it. And please call me should you have any questions about her situation. She’s my best friend.’
Frederick rose too, locking his knees to keep them from buckling, and shook her hand. ‘Thank you. I’ll walk you to your car.’
‘That would be nice. Thank you. This isn’t a bad neighborhood, especially during the day, but it’s prudent to be careful.’
On autopilot, he guided her to the backstage door, but stopped before opening it as a thread of reason wound into his brain. ‘Wait. How did you get my home phone number?’
‘Julie gave it to me after I messaged her on Facebook.’
His jaw tightened. ‘You had no right. She’s a child. My child.’
Her eyes flashed again, and this close, he noticed they were blue. Like the sky. She opened her mouth to speak, then her anger was abruptly gone, her shoulders sagging as she met his gaze directly. ‘You’re right. I didn’t. I apologize. She’s not a child, but still, I didn’t have the right. At the same time, aren’t you glad it was me, and not someone . . . else? Someone who actually might want to hurt her? Now at least you know about the problem.’
He shook his head, unable to find words of absolution. Because there was nothing about this that was okay. Julie was off limits. ‘Let’s just go.’
But her hand had reached out to cover his as he clutched the doorknob. ‘I was afraid. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have contacted her.’
He jerked a nod, too damn aware of her hand on his. It was gentle and . . . He swallowed hard, trying to remember how long it had been since he’d had such a simple touch from a woman. Years, he realized. Long before his wife had died. She’d been sick for a long time. But it was more than that. When he found out how she had lied to him for years, telling him they had to hide because Clay was a thr
eat to Taylor . . . When he realized how much she’d stolen from all of them . . . He could no longer remember any of her touches with anything but contempt.
So it had been a long time. Maybe not since his first wife – Carrie, Daisy and Julie’s mother – had died. Twenty-one years. Too damn long. Way too damn long if such a simple touch had him as tongue-tied as a schoolboy.
He stared at Miss Brewster’s small hand with its neat, unpolished nails. Her hands cared for people every day. This was not a woman with an evil agenda. Although he had believed every word Taylor’s mother had said, so he would never trust his own judgment again, at least not when it came to women.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to put himself in her place. Yes, she’d been right to be cautious. ‘I suppose I understand your being afraid.’
‘Well, that’s kind of you,’ she murmured. He thought she’d remove her hand then, but she didn’t. Her gaze had dropped to their hands as well. ‘But you are wrong about a few things, I think, Mr Dawson.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, for starters, Julie is not a child. I’ve said that several times, but I don’t think you’re completely hearing me. She’s a twenty-one-year-old woman. She might read at a lower level, but her interests and desires are most definitely adult. As are her hormones.’
He sucked in another startled breath. ‘What do you mean?’
She glanced up at him, a small smile on her lips. ‘She has a boyfriend.’
He blinked at her, shocked once again. ‘What? Who?’
‘His name is Stan and she met him at their therapy center. I’m sure they are adequately chaperoned while there, but you might want to talk to her about it. You know, about birth control.’
Frederick winced. He couldn’t help it. ‘Oh my God.’
Miss Brewster’s smile grew rueful. ‘Be gentle when you talk to her. She’s afraid you’ll “have a cow, man”.’
He pounced on the phrase, because the thought of Julie having a boyfriend – and needing birth control, for God’s sake – was messing with his brain. ‘So she’s watching The Simpsons too? I must really be falling down on the job.’