Thorne’s photo was one Gwyn had taken years ago as he’d played his bass on stage. He’d looked at peace in that moment, she remembered. And she’d wanted him then too.
It had been a long time since she’d heard him play, and she’d wondered why. But now she knew. It had been four and a half years. He’d been grieving too, because she’d gotten so lost in her own mind.
‘I’m glad to see I’m a good guy.’ Thorne put his plate aside to lean forward, forearms on his knees, scanning the display. There were dozens of photos and notes, with string connecting them.
‘So,’ Clay said. ‘We got tired of being targets. We’re taking charge. All of us, Thorne, and that includes you.’
‘I can live with that,’ Thorne said.
‘We thought so.’ Clay pointed to four Post-it notes, which someone had numbered one through four. Two simply had ‘male’ written on them, the third ‘male/killer’, and the fourth said ‘female’. All four were attached to Tavilla. ‘We know he has at least four people helping him. The two men who drugged you and carried you into your house, the woman who called you posing as your client, Bernice Brown, and the mask-wearing guy who took the two guys away from your house, then returned, sticking around for a few more hours. We figure he was the one who probably killed Patricia.’
A photo of Patricia was positioned in the middle of the board, with string connecting her to both the ‘male/killer’ and a photo of Richard Linden, which connected to Thorne.
Thorne frowned. ‘Probably?’
Alec nodded. ‘I took a closer look at the video Sam retrieved from your house. The masked man was there, but there was another person there too.’
Beside Gwyn, Thorne shifted uncomfortably. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. There’s just a shadow in the hallway as the person goes from your bedroom to the garage. He – or she – never comes into camera view, but there are clearly two different shadows at one point. One from the masked man and the other from the second person.’
Thorne rubbed the back of his neck. ‘That is . . . I don’t know. It was bad enough knowing I had one creepy guy in my house while I was unconscious, but two? I’m wondering if it was Tavilla himself. That freaks me out.’
Me too, Gwyn thought. That Thorne had been that vulnerable . . . They could have done anything to him. She found herself being grateful that they’d ‘only’ drugged him. She swallowed hard. It could have been so much worse.
Alec shot him a sympathetic look. ‘Sorry, man. I tried to get more definition, but I couldn’t. I can send the file to the cops and see if they can.’
Thorne nodded slowly. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Send it to Joseph,’ JD said. ‘The FBI has better equipment than Hyatt’s team at BPD.’
Alec nodded. ‘You want to send it, JD?’
‘That would be best. Let’s email it to my Gmail account. Open me a browser window.’ Alec did as he was asked, then handed his laptop to JD, who tapped a few keys and handed the laptop back. ‘This way nobody can subpoena you later.’
Gwyn leaned back, able to better see Lucy with Thorne leaning forward as he was. ‘JD’s becoming one of us.’
Lucy grinned and blew JD a kiss. ‘And it’s sexy as hell, isn’t it?’
Gwyn shuddered. ‘Ew. No.’ JD was like a brother to her, just as Thorne was to Lucy.
Thorne shook his head at them. ‘Ladies, focus.’ He squinted at the photos. ‘I see Patricia, the two Circus Freaks guys who tried to deal out of Sheidalin, Ramirez and his wife, and Darian Hinman. All victims. But who are the two people beneath Hinman?’
A woman and a man. Both were connected to a woman in nurse’s scrubs who connected to Bernice Brown, the woman who’d been impersonated by whoever had lured Thorne out on Saturday night. Bernice Brown was also connected to Thorne and back to the mysterious female working for Tavilla.
Gwyn had a bad feeling about those two people, underscored when Frederick started to speak, then hesitated. ‘Not your fault, Thorne,’ he said. ‘Remember that.’
Thorne slumped back into the loveseat. ‘They’re dead too,’ he said flatly. ‘Who were they?’
‘A professor on sabbatical with her husband. Their trailer was parked in the space that Sally Brewster’ – he pointed to the nurse – ‘described to the man who called her asking her for Bernice Brown’s location. Sally thought the space was unoccupied.’
‘Oh no,’ Gwyn breathed.
Frederick nodded. ‘Sally’s son is a cop. He had a bad feeling about the man pumping his mother for information, then someone using that same number to get information from Julie.’
‘Ramirez’s throwaway cell number,’ Thorne said grimly.
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t tell him that,’ Frederick said. ‘He was convinced enough of the danger to take a leave of absence to watch out for his mother.’
Thorne leaned back, closing his eyes. ‘At least she’s safe then. Has anyone told Joseph the connection between those poor people and my case?’
‘I did,’ Clay said.
Thorne sat up abruptly. ‘Have we checked on Bernice Brown?’
‘Yes,’ Frederick said calmly. ‘I talked to Bernice and her cousin this afternoon. I told them about the couple who died, though they’d already heard about it. Bernice is pretty rattled. So is Sally. She feels like she condemned them to be murdered.’
‘No,’ Thorne bit out. ‘It was Tavilla, snipping ends. He’s damn good at that.’
Gwyn and Lucy shared another glance. Thorne looked at them. ‘What?’
‘You’re not blaming yourself,’ Gwyn said. ‘That’s an improvement.’
‘It totally is,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll go next. It’s not much, but I got a copy of the preliminary autopsy report for Patricia Segal. Cause of death was the stab wounds. She had excessive levels of GHB in her blood and a blood alcohol of .35.’ She sighed. ‘And there was evidence that she had been sexually assaulted.’
‘Oh no,’ Gwyn murmured. Lucy shot her a stricken I’m sorry look but Gwyn waved it away, hoping no one had noticed Lucy’s reaction, because it was far too telling. ‘Did the rapist leave anything behind?’ she asked, conscious of how still Thorne had become beside her.
‘A hair,’ Lucy said sadly, and Gwyn knew the sadness was for her, not for Patricia Segal. Although it should have been for both of them, because no woman deserved that. Ever. Lucy squared her shoulders. ‘Her body was released today. The funeral will be Friday. There will be a closed-coffin visitation with the family on Thursday evening.’
There was a moment of silence and Gwyn felt like everyone was staring at her. She didn’t like it. ‘We need a plan for Patricia’s visitation and funeral. One of us needs to be there in case her killer shows up. We need to capture the faces of attendees.’
‘I’m keeping a list of action steps,’ Alec said. ‘I’ll add that one.’
‘Thanks, Alec.’ Stevie stood up and walked to the bulletin board. ‘I’ve got to feed Mason soon, so I’m going next. Paige and I interviewed half a dozen of the women on Patricia’s fund-raising committee today. We were trying to get more info on her husband, and on the young man she was sleeping with.’
‘Patricia liked doling out information in small parcels,’ Paige said with a grimace. ‘She told one woman his hair color, another his eye color, another the size of his . . . well, you know.’
Everyone grimaced at that. ‘Did she tell any of them his age?’ Gwyn asked sharply.
‘Just that he was over the age of consent,’ Stevie said. ‘Which in Maryland is sixteen.’
‘The friend she told that to was pretty appalled,’ Paige added. ‘She said she pressed her for assurances that he was over twenty-one, but Patricia just giggled and said he made her feel younger. That she’d enjoy it until he went away to college in the fall.’
‘Did she tell any of them his name?’ Thorne asked, his face s
tony.
Because he’d represented young men who’d committed crimes, only to find that the source of their behavioral issues was being sexually assaulted by someone they should have been able to trust. Both male and female, their abusers had been pastors, priests, rabbis, teachers, scoutmasters, and many times the parent of a friend.
‘No,’ Stevie said. ‘But she did tell one friend that he had muscles from playing lacrosse, and another that he had a scholarship. On a hunch that he went to the same high school as her son, we got a copy of the lacrosse team’s most recent photo and did some cross-checking for seniors who’d received scholarships. We used the hair and eye colors she’d revealed and narrowed it down to these two.’ She held up a high school yearbook and pointed to two of the boys.
Paige picked up the story. ‘Then we found their coach. He’s teaching summer school at the high school. We told him we’d gotten a report of one of his players potentially being the victim of a predator who was an older woman. We thought he’d be all “isn’t that cool, wish I’d been that kid”. Like, you know, that song “Hot for Teacher”.’
‘That attitude pisses me off so much,’ Lucy hissed.
Thorne’s hands had clenched into fists.
‘Well, you wouldn’t have been pissed off,’ Paige said, ‘because the coach was as appalled as we were. And very helpful. He told us that one of the players had a steady girlfriend and he doubted it was him.’
‘But this one,’ Stevie said, pointing at the page, ‘Tristan Armistead, had been acting strangely during the entire second half of the year. Secretive, not showing up to team events. His grades suffered, as did his performance on the lacrosse field. He nearly lost his scholarship.’
‘And,’ Paige added, ‘he’d been friends with Patricia’s son, but then it was like they’d had a falling-out. The coach said that Patricia’s son had come to him for advice because he was bewildered. He had no idea what he’d done wrong.’
‘And then,’ Stevie finished dramatically, ‘the coach went really still and asked if the older woman was Patricia Segal.’
‘Did you tell him that it was?’ JD demanded.
Stevie shook her head. ‘No. But he’d already figured it out. He asked if the boy was in any danger, and we told him honestly that we didn’t know.’
‘But that if he were our son, we’d be worried,’ Paige finished. ‘We asked if he could help us find Tristan, and he did one better. He went with us to the kid’s house, but Tristan wasn’t home. A neighbor told the coach that the family had gone on vacation but Tristan had stayed behind to feed the cat and bring in the mail. They hadn’t seen him for a few days and the mailbox was stuffed.’
‘We gave the coach and the neighbor our cards and asked them to call if they saw him.’ Stevie handed over the yearbook to Paige. ‘I need to go. Bye.’ Leaning heavily on her cane, she made her way to the elevator.
‘I’ll make a copy of that yearbook page,’ Alec offered. ‘I’ll enlarge Tristan’s photo so Clay can put it on the board.’
‘Can I see the yearbook first?’ Thorne asked, and Paige passed it over.
‘Tristan is the blond on the far left,’ she said. ‘He’s standing right next to Patricia’s son, Blake Segal.’
Thorne took the yearbook and Gwyn leaned closer to see. Then she gasped. ‘Oh my God.’ She grabbed the book and pulled it closer. ‘Oh. My. God.’
‘What?’ Lucy demanded.
Gwyn looked up at Thorne. ‘Look at him, Thorne. Blake Segal. Look at him.’
‘I see,’ Thorne said, his voice strangled.
‘See what?’ Lucy all but shouted.
Gwyn looked up to meet the alarmed gazes of their friends. ‘Blake Segal could be Liam’s twin.’
Alec’s mouth fell open. ‘What?’
She turned the yearbook around so they could see, then brought up the photo she’d taken on her phone in Angie’s shop, enlarging it until Liam’s face was visible.
‘Oh my God,’ Jamie echoed quietly. ‘You’re right. Is that possible? That Richard is the father of Patricia’s son? That he raped his own sister?’
Hunt Valley, Maryland,
Tuesday 14 June, 10.15 P.M.
Swallowing back bile at the notion that Richard had sexually assaulted his own sister, Thorne expelled his breath in a harsh whoosh. ‘But it might not mean anything. He was her brother. I mean, they carried the same genes. It makes sense that his nephew might look like him.’
‘No.’ Gwyn shook her head hard. ‘No. Remember I told you I was looking into Patricia’s background? I found out that she left school after Richard was killed and didn’t come back until after the trial. She went to Europe, supposedly. She was gone for over a year.’
‘It still may not mean anything,’ Thorne insisted.
Gwyn was undeterred. ‘Richard and Patricia weren’t blood siblings. Wait. Let me find it . . .’ She was rapidly punching keys on her phone. ‘Richard Linden’s obituary. Here it is. “Richard is survived by his father, Richard Linden Senior, his mother, Elizabeth Hale Linden, his stepmother, Judith Linden, and his stepsister, Patricia.” She looked up at him. ‘Judith was the one who was married to Richard Senior at the time of the murder, and she remains the current Mrs Linden.’
‘I’ve got Patricia’s obituary,’ Alec said. ‘It was printed in this morning’s Washington Post. “Patricia is survived by her mother, Judith Linden, her father, Harold Martelli, and her stepfather, Richard Linden Senior.” You’re right, Gwyn. There was no shared blood between Richard and Patricia. Totally different genes.’
Thorne leaned forward again and buried his face in his hands. ‘God.’ It was almost a moan, but he didn’t care.
Gwyn rubbed his back soothingly. ‘What’s wrong, Thorne?’ she murmured.
‘How could he do that?’ And how could none of us have seen it? First Angie, now Patricia. How could we have just gone on every day with a rapist in our midst and not known? But those words wouldn’t come, so he repeated the ones he’d already used. ‘How could he do that?’
‘You know the answer to that,’ Jamie said softly. ‘Richard was simply bad. And this could have been why Linden Senior was so keen to have you take the fall for Richard’s murder. He knew that someone else had a motive to kill Richard. Hell, Richard could have raped more girls than just Angie and Patricia. If his crimes had become public, it would bring scandal on their precious family name.’
‘And on Patricia too,’ Gwyn murmured. ‘My God. She raised a child of rape.’
Thorne shuddered out a sigh, wondering what Gwyn was seeing in her mind. Wondering what Evan had done to her. ‘I keep wanting to believe it was consensual,’ he said hoarsely, mostly because he wanted to believe that the physical relationship Gwyn had had with Evan had also been consensual. ‘But I know that’s not true.’ He knew that neither was true. And he thought he was going to be sick.
Hold it together. For her. Her hand was rubbing slow circles on his back and Lucy was stroking his hair, both comforting, but both utterly different touches.
‘The key ring,’ he said finally, needing something else to latch onto. ‘If Richard was murdered because of someone he’d raped – either Angie or Patricia or, God forbid, somebody else . . . The key ring means something. It always comes back to that damn key ring.’
‘Or maybe just the key,’ Gwyn said thoughtfully. ‘It’s possible that the soccer medal had nothing to do with it. I wonder what the key fit. I wonder what Linden Senior knew about it, because somebody made it disappear.’
‘And that usually means a money trail,’ Lucy said.
Alec nodded, typing. ‘We need to get more information about the widow of that ME tech,’ he said. ‘We need to find out where her money is coming from. Adding it to the to-do list.’
Thorne focused on Alec so that he didn’t have to keep thinking about what had happened to Gwyn. Or to Patricia. ‘How did you get
to Angie’s finances so quickly?’
Alec glanced up at JD as if to ask if he was going to turn him in.
JD rolled his eyes. ‘Tell him. I’m kind of curious too.’
Alec shrugged. ‘I basically did a Hail Mary and sent a Trojan in an email to the salon’s email account. One of those “invoice attached” emails that you’re supposed to delete. Whoever was manning the computer clicked right on it, and bingo, I was in their system. They’ve kept meticulous records. Every bank statement had been downloaded in a PDF and stored, labeled just as meticulously. It was just a matter of sifting through documents until I found what I needed.’
‘I’m glad you’re on our side,’ JD muttered.
Alec grinned at him. ‘I use my skills for good, not evil.’ He sobered then. ‘If the ME tech’s widow is as careless, I could get lucky. If I am, I’ll set the Trojan to self-destruct so that when Joseph’s guys finally get there, they won’t know I’ve been there already. If I’m not lucky, it could take a little longer to get into her system.’
‘Do what you need to,’ Clay directed. ‘Just, you know, the usual.’
Alec looked amused. ‘Don’t get caught. Got it. But poor JD looks like he’s got a stomach ache.’
JD grimaced. ‘Yeah, but not because of you. I’m wondering now just how they lured Patricia to wherever she was abducted from. I mean, she was carefully chosen for her link to Thorne, but how? And why? Why now? How does Tavilla connect to her? He either lured her out or had her followed and snatched. Was it through this kid? The lacrosse player? Or did her husband find out about her . . . God, I don’t even want to call it an affair. Did Judge Segal find out? I mean, he might not have cared about an ordinary affair, but his wife pursuing a barely legal kid who was her son’s friend? That won’t look good for him.’
Paige was biting her lip thoughtfully. ‘Most of the ladies Stevie and I spoke to today said the marriage had issues. That it had been rocky ever since they’d known Patricia. She’d had affairs in the past, so they were used to that. It was the age of this young man that had them alarmed – and Patricia too, when she was sober. When she was sober – or less drunk, anyway – she feared her husband would find out and kill her. Her words, they said. They also said she wasn’t sober very often. She drank a lot, apparently. Maybe we can understand a little bit of the why behind that now.’