Chapter 18 #2
Julia tried to ignore the brief stab of jealousy in her gut that came from hearing that Daniel had been spending time in the company of strippers.
Jealousy that was both pointless and insensitive, given that the stripper in question was dead.
She rested her forehead in her hands and said, “And I suppose you’re gonna try to make me believe he killed her, too? ” she snapped.
“Nope,” Oates said calmly, sitting back in his chair. “That was almost certainly the Russians.”
Weck inhaled and folded her hands on top of the folder. Silence stretched to fill the room.
Julia kept her head in her hands. Her skin felt feverish. She simply couldn’t reconcile the picture of Daniel they were painting with the man she knew. The man who adored his brother and loved her deeply. It just didn’t compute.
Before I met you, I was someone else. Someone worse.
She wanted to fling the photos off the table and into Weck’s face.
“I know what you’re trying to do.” Her voice had taken on a wobble.
“You’re trying to make him out as some kind of monster.
But he’s not. So you can show me all the pictures you want.
” She swallowed and looked Weck right in the eye.
“But you won’t ever turn me against him. ”
* * *
Belinda sighed and surveyed Julia over the top of her reading glasses. The girl was still crying. Actually, it had progressed to sniveling. But she was showing an admirable amount of steel in defense of her man.
Okay. So the vinegar hadn’t worked. Time to try some honey.
Belinda turned to Oates and nodded at him. He got the message and stood, smoothing his tie. Then he left without a word, the door slipping shut behind him.
Belinda looked back at Julia and smiled. Just us girls, she communicated silently. Then she scooped up the photos and shoved them back in the binder, with enough irritation to imply that the only reason they were on the table was at Oates’s’s insistence.
She returned her hands to the table, adopting a passive expression.
Bad cop wasn’t her strong suit, but what she excelled at was good cop.
She’d once had a high-ranking Vice Lord sobbing on her shoulder about how much it still hurt that his momma had abandoned him as a boy.
Right before she slapped handcuffs on him for murdering someone else’s momma.
“Look, I get it,” she said. “The attraction. Guys like Castano, they’re magnetic.
Charismatic. They can be charming and sweet and make you feel like nothing else in the world matters to them but you.
They’re like a drug, and when you’re with them, it’s the best high in the world.
” She adjusted her glasses. “But they’re also volatile. Possessive. And very dangerous.”
Julia wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “None of that sounds like Daniel. None of it.”
Belinda rifled through her bag and pulled out a pocket pack of tissues and pushed them across the table at her. She ignored the gesture.
“Being wifey to one of these guys is no fairytale, Julia. I’m just trying to save you the heartache of finding that out for yourself.”
“You don’t know him,” she insisted. She nodded at the binder. “You think you do from all your bits of paper. But you don’t. And you sure as hell know nothing about me.”
Belinda gave her a sad smile. “Honey, I’ve seen every kind of version of you.
I’ve seen the ones who are young and in love and think they’re the only ones in history who’ve ever felt like that.
I’ve seen the ones who try to settle down with these guys and marry them, have kids with them, only to find out too late they ain’t exactly the settling down type.
I’ve seen the ones who find themselves out on the street because their boos have gotten their asses shot or thrown in jail.
I’ve seen the ones who end up in the ER because their one true love got high on amphetamines and rearranged their faces.
And I’ve also seen the ones who wind up under a white sheet in the morgue.
” She sat back from the table and shook her head.
“Now I’m just sitting here wondering which one you are. ”
Julia shook her head. “I know he would never hurt me.”
Belinda sighed. “Julia, a woman can never know a thing like that. That’s the problem.”
Julia raked her hair back from her face and stared at the table.
“Do you feel safe in the relationship?”
She glanced up, her expression defiant. “I’ve never felt safer with anyone in my life.”
“He’s a big guy. Tall. Clearly works out.”
She shrugged moodily. “Yeah. So?”
“Ever felt physically threatened by him?”
“No.”
“Has he ever hit you?”
She looked horrified at the mere suggestion. “No!”
“Is the sex always consensual?” she asked.
She glanced up, eyes furious. “Yes.”
Belinda let the silence settle, then changed tack. “What about his personality?”
“What about it?” she snapped.
“Does he ever have mood swings? Fly off the handle over small things?”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “He’s a perfectly chill guy.”
Belinda pictured Sasha Sokolov’s head. “Hmm.”
Julia seemed to have had enough with this line of questioning. Her face had gone very red, tears still rolling down her cheeks. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. ‘You asked me how I could know that he wouldn’t hurt me?’ she finally blurted.
Belinda hadn’t asked her that, but she waited, sensing she was on the brink of a breakthrough here.
“On the night we met, some guy tried to…to…” She swallowed hard.
“He put pills in my drink, and he tried to assault me.” She closed her eyes and gave a quick shake of her head.
“Daniel saved me that night. He dressed me. He took care of me. That’s the kind of guy he is, not the psycho you’re trying to make him out to be. ”
Belinda kept her face impassive, masking her feeling of triumph. She reopened the binder.
Time to bring out the trump card.
“Ah, yes,” she said, tapping her pen on her notepad. “Your little meet-cute. At a house party in Chicago Lawn, right?”
Julia blinked at her. Belinda could practically hear the cogs whirring in her brain, trying to work out how she could know that.
“And the other guy you mentioned?” She flipped pages, found another photo. “Floyd Monaghan, correct? Twenty-seven. A DJ from Utah.”
She watched as Julia flinched away from the photo of the smiling young man that she’d printed off one of his social media accounts. All of which had turned into shrines for him now that his body had finally been identified and his death confirmed.
“It took them a while to, uh, piece it all together,” she said. She produced her last photographs, placing each in front of her like a tarot reader, laying out her future in the cards. “Literally.”
If she’d recoiled from the photo of Floyd Monaghan in one piece, the sight of him in five bloody lumps made her jerk back from the table, her chair hitting the wall behind her. “Oh my God.”
Belinda sat forward on her forearms. “In the end, they had to use DNA because his hands and teeth were missing. The detectives investigating Monaghan’s disappearance traced his last known whereabouts to a trap house on the West Side.
The same trap house behind which Daniel Castano’s trailer is parked.
It took CPD weeks of canvassing the neighborhood, but they finally got someone who’d attended the party to admit they saw Monaghan there.
And not alone, either. With a pretty blond girl.
Heavily intoxicated. Both were last seen heading for Castano’s trailer.
People heard multiple gunshots shortly after.
It’s not drawing a long bow to conclude that Castano didn’t take kindly to trespassers in his trailer.
” She adjusted her glasses again. “But you were there, of course. You already know all of this.”
As she was speaking, Julia had stood up and wheeled around to face the wall. She bent double and vomited onto the carpet.
Belinda waited patiently until she was done. Until she’d turned back around, scraping her hair back from her tear-soaked face. She indicated the chunks of bone, blood, and sinewy that had once been Floyd Monaghan. “There’s no way he did that. He couldn’t have.”
“Oh, he did,” Belinda said, putting as much conviction into the words as she could. “Like I said. He’s volatile. Possessive. And very, very dangerous.”
Julia gave a couple more sobs that sounded more like dry heaves, then said in a small, miserable voice, “I don’t know what you want from me.”
Belinda softened her expression. “All I want is to help you, Julia. Out of this great big mess that you’ve found yourself in.”
She came back to the table, eyes averted from the horrors of her boyfriend’s handiwork. Finally, she reached forward for the pack of tissues.
Belinda allowed herself a small smile of triumph. Then smoothed her features into a solemn expression. “But first, you have to help us.”