Chapter 41
Ajay turned the half-empty cup around and around in his hand. “I think Rajesh uncle punished Bobby in other ways, too. But I don’t know the specifics.”
“Look, Ajay, I don’t know if I should say this…”
The other man looked up, his eyes shiny behind his spectacles. “It’s okay. I know Bobby hurt Shumi.”
My heart kicked.
Lifting a hand, Ajay dashed away the tear that had begun to fall.
“I tried to talk to her when I noticed bruises on her the last time she visited us without him, but she said it was fine, that I had nothing to worry about. She was always so conscious of not damaging the Prasad family’s reputation.
They were so important in the Indian community. Everyone looked up to them.”
…a good family…No reason to ruin their name.
“At least you tried.” Quite unlike Kamal and everyone else involved in covering up Ani’s murder.
“One time,” Ajay added, “we all went camping together when Bobby was maybe sixteen? Shumi fell down a gravel embankment. Scraped up her legs, bruises everywhere. She said she wasn’t paying attention and slipped, but I know she was out walking with him.
I saw them leave together—I might’ve been a little kid, but I know what I saw. ”
“She still didn’t tell on him? Even though she could’ve been badly injured?”
Ajay shook his head. “I don’t know the hold he had on her, but she really didn’t see any other men or boys. Always just him. Even after he got in trouble when he was sixteen, and my parents weren’t sure about him despite his family, she stuck to him.”
The hairs on my arms rose. “What kind of trouble?”
“No one ever told me anything. Too young.” Frustration under his apparently careless shrug. “Just heard my parents telling Shumi that maybe he wasn’t such a good boy after all, and she should distance herself. She said she didn’t care, that she wanted to be his wife. They weren’t even dating then.”
A woman like that wouldn’t flip on her husband even if he was dead. She’d lie to protect the only thing she had left of him: his memory as a good man. It would be her word against Diya’s. Diya, who’d married her husband on a whim, a man who was linked to the deaths of three women.
I clenched my abdomen.
I’d never forgive myself if the mess of my past affected the woman I loved with everything I was. If Susanne had taught me about love that was generous and kind and loyal, then Diya had brought the lesson home.
She loved with all of her, no holds barred.
“You think it was Bobby, don’t you?” Ajay met my eyes with that stark question. “That cop, Ackerson, she was here asking about you while you were in Fiji.”
“I’m an easy target. Not a pillar of the community, just some stranger from overseas.
” Better to stick to that line as long as I could; I wasn’t going to be the one to spill open the can of worms that was my link to Jocelyn and Virna.
Those two at least I could understand, but I hated that Detective Baxter had added Susanne to the list.
I had loved Susanne.
“I wanted to tell Ackerson about Bobby hurting Shumi”—Ajay’s voice was a whisper now—“but…she loves him so much.”
Every ounce of my attention coalesced onto him, onto this moment.
“You should.” Ajay’s independent corroboration of my insinuation that Bobby had been violent could dig me out of this hole.
“Not for me, but for Diya. If they come after me, then Diya’s the one who’s going to get hurt. And she’s been hurt so much already.”
“I know. She was always the opposite of Bobby, you know—so sweet and gentle. One time at camp, she used her spending money to buy me ice cream after I dropped mine on the ground right after I’d gotten it. I know it’s a silly thing to remember, but it mattered.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I thought it had to be Bobby the instant Dad told us what had happened. He was so angry inside, even though he did a good job of hiding it.”
“You got over the hero worship.”
“I wish I had.” Taking off his glasses again, he put them on the table and rubbed both hands over his face.
When he dropped them, his expression was raw.
“But I wanted so much to believe Shumi when she said that he hadn’t touched her, wanted him to stay my hero.
” His shoulders shook, tears streaming down his face.
I didn’t know what to do, finally got up to sit next to him, my arm around his shoulders. He leaned a little into me and I thought, Fuck, he’s so young.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever been that young.
I’d certainly never had anyone attempt to comfort me when I cried. I didn’t blame my brother—Raja was who he’d been molded to be. As for my mother, she’d always been that person. My father had known who she was when he married her; yet not only had he married her, he’d had two children with her.
“Why did you want a second child?” I’d demanded of him at thirteen, right after I’d swept a glass full of whiskey off his desk.
The smell of expensive alcohol a sickening mist in the air, my dad had pressed his hands onto the desk and sighed. “I didn’t want Raja to be lonely. I thought you two would be best friends.”
That was when I’d understood: I’d been created as a distraction to entertain Raja so that my father could have his wife’s full attention. Deep down, Anand Advani was the one I blamed for what had been done to me—and what I’d become as a result.
Ajay sniffed back the last of his tears. “I’m glad Diya has you.” Breaking contact, he used a paper napkin to wipe his face, then put his glasses back on. “Do you think Ackerson will answer if I call now? It’s after work hours.”
“I don’t think she’s the kind of cop who turns off her phone.” She struck me as a woman with little to no understanding of work/life balance. That was probably what made her the caliber of cop Ngata had warned me against underestimating.
Ajay got to his feet. “I’ll call her before I head upstairs.” His hand was tight around the back of the chair. “My parents…they won’t like it. They want to pretend everything was perfect, that their daughter married into a good family.”
“You’re doing the right thing.”
As Ajay walked out toward an exit and the night air, his phone already in hand, I considered the most important piece of information I’d learned during the conversation: Bobby had gotten into trouble bad enough in his youth that Shumi’s parents had tried to talk their daughter out of an infatuation they’d previously indulged, or at least not opposed.
I had to unearth the details of that trouble. And I had to figure out some way to discover if Bobby was alive. If Ackerson was as good as my lawyer had indicated, she had to have all his monetary resources under surveillance. But the man had been a successful businessman for a long time.
Chances were he had a cash reserve.
But he’d also have to hide himself. The media had put the faces of the three likely victims online, and he was a good-looking man, the kind of man people noticed.
He might’ve done something drastic like shave off his hair, I supposed, but even then, he’d have to be careful.
If I was him, I’d hide until the heat eased up and the news cycle moved on.
Where?
His businesses had moved real goods. Goods needed warehouses. Not just offices. Warehouses.
—
Three hours later, the night dead silent around me, I walked up to a large warehouse in an industrial area on the edge of the city. The company did have other warehouses in other cities, but I had no way to get to those without arousing suspicion.
I had to start here.
The entire area was dark but for the anemic street lighting, the forklifts and trucks of the various businesses parked for the night, and the lights off behind security fencing.
All the fencing bore the signs of various security firms, but I didn’t see any actual guards as I walked over from where I’d parked the car some way down the street.
Live guards probably weren’t worth it for most of the businesses.
But they were for Bobby’s.
I ducked back, barely avoiding the scythe of light that was the security guard’s flashlight as he patrolled the Elektrik Ninja warehouse.
“Come on, boy!”
A huff of sound, then four feet scrambling behind him.
A dog? The security guard had a fucking dog?
Anxiety was a twisting snake in my gut. I could talk my way in and out of most situations, but I was no expert at breaking and entering. And I certainly wasn’t good enough to avoid both a live guard and his canine companion.
On the flip side, would Bobby hide out in a place as secure as this?
He’d have as hard a time slipping in and out without being spotted.
Or maybe he wasn’t slipping out at all, had prepared everything he needed before the massacre of his family, and was just hunkered down in a space to which no one else had the key?
Could be he’d kept an office in there that none of his warehouse managers could enter.
I stood paralyzed in the shadows, trying to figure out my next step. If only Ackerson could see me now.
Paranoia had me spinning around, searching for any hint of a tail.
Would Ackerson do that? Just tail a random suspect as Baxter had tailed me so many times, an obsessive presence hovering on the edges of my life?
If she was doing it, she was a ghost. Nothing moved nearby, and I’d glimpsed not even a hint of another vehicle on the road behind me when I’d parked.
Maybe your car is bugged, said the part of me that had learned to watch my back.
If it was, they might know I was lurking around the business, but what would that get them? Nothing.
Metal clanged, a gate was scraped back. A minute later and powerful headlights speared the night. I sank deeper into the shadows as a van trundled out. It emerged right under a streetlight, so I saw the doggy face hanging out one side, tongue lolling.
The dog saw me, too. Or scented me. It barked.
The security guard grumbled something at the dog that quieted it before jumping out and going to close and lock up the gate. He was back in his car a minute later, the red of his rear lights soon vanishing into the distance.
Not a full-time guard, just one who did the rounds at various properties.
It was possible he’d be back again sometime tonight, so I had to be fast if I was going to do this. And at some point in the last quarter of an hour of standing here, I’d apparently decided I was—because I was moving before I’d consciously processed the decision.
The gate was heavily padlocked, but I’d figured on that.
It wasn’t as if the fence had barbed wire on top—it was basic chain link.
Climbable. Even if I was caught on security cameras, all they’d see was a figure in jeans, their face shadowed by a black hoodie with no branding or markings to make it stand out, and covered by a disposable face mask I’d grabbed from the hospital.
Now I grunted through that mask as I landed on the concrete on the other side of the fence.
The entire area was motionless, not even a rat skittering across the neat frontage.
Running quickly to the warehouse building itself, I began to look for an entrance. It was sealed up tight. Not only that, it had warning stickers on every door and window that bore the logo of a security company—same logo as on the guard’s van. The place was wired to sound an alert on break-in.
Of course it was.
I wanted to slap myself. I really wasn’t good at this breaking and entering thing. My expertise was in financial sleight of hand, and only when it came to Audrey. I’d been scrupulous with the money that belonged to my clients, focusing all my skill on making them more money.
But I was here now, and I wasn’t about to give up.
And…how fast would the security company respond to an alert anyway?
This wasn’t a central location, and they weren’t cops, with the ability to run red lights.
Even if they got that same guard to turn back around, it had been at least five minutes since he’d left.
If I waited a few more minutes to hopefully let him drive further away, I might get ten solid minutes.
Good enough.
In the meantime, I found a suitable projectile in the dumpster—a cracked mug someone had thrown out. At least I’d been smart enough to grab a set of disposable gloves from the box on the wall of the ICU.
I wouldn’t be leaving any fingerprints.
The mug had World’s Best Boss written on it in big black letters.
Be ironic if that had been Bobby’s mug. Or maybe the better term was “poetic justice,” I thought as I decided I’d waited long enough, and threw it toward a window that looked into a little public-facing office.
Likely a pickup zone for people who lived locally and didn’t want to pay shipping costs.
No alarm shrieked, but the alarm pad inside the door was flashing red when I crawled through the window. It had alerted the security company.
I ran into the bowels of the warehouse.