Chapter Eleven
The office had the same homey feel of the rest of the place. A good desk, scaled to suit a woman of Donahue’s size.
Five-four, a hundred and fifteen.
Visitors’ chairs in a mix of quiet blues and creams, a sofa in the cream, a few pillows in floral patterns.
Street art for the walls, a refreshment station, a pair of windows where the privacy screens were framed by blue curtains.
“Keep the look soft,” Mel said, “and people who come here tend to relax easier. When they’re relaxed, I can get more salient data.”
Mel gestured to one of the two chairs facing the desk, took the other. She said, “Steven Redman.”
“Has he contacted you?”
“No, and up to a few hours ago, I’d have bet heavy he was dead.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Ezra Dent’s murder following close on the heels of Lawrence Chu’s.
A connection like that smacks you in the face, you have to think about it.
I covered the ground, Dallas. I’m good at what I do.
I was pretty damn good at it six years ago when Redman’s family came to me.
It’s another smack in the face I might’ve missed something. ”
“You were on the job in Brooklyn?”
“Nearly seven years. The structure didn’t suit me. It sure as hell suits you.”
“It does.”
“I figure the world needs both, those it suits, those it doesn’t. Redman walked out of the Peridine Health and Wellness Facility at twelve-eighteen A.M. on May 14, 2055.”
“I read the missing persons report. The aide checked on him, according to his statement and the log, between twenty-three-thirty and twenty-three-forty.”
“And he was in bed, as always. He had clothes. An aide bathed and changed him every day, and his family provided clothing. He could and did walk with assistance. He did not speak, showed no awareness of his surroundings. No recognition when his family visited, and they were faithful there. Friends, too. He took the clothes. He had a pair of house skids, and a pair of low-rise kicks for when they walked or wheeled him outside. He took the kicks, left the skids.”
“A staff door on the lower level was unlocked, opened, and closed again at zero-eighteen hours. Forty minutes, more or less, after his bed check.”
“That’s right. I figured then and I figure now, he’d been aware for a while, and he’d observed. The family didn’t want to believe that. If he had been, to their minds, he’d have spoken to them.”
“And you’re sure of that? Sure he didn’t?”
Mel sat back with a shrug. “As sure as I can be of anything. They’re good people, and they came here desperate to find him. His doctors felt he’d come out of it confused, most likely with no awareness of the time that had passed. But—”
“Why wasn’t he seen wandering the halls or looking for help, for answers?”
“Exactly. Instead, the only sighting is of him leaving by that staff door. Just the back of him, with a laundry bag—his clothes. I talked to his friends, multiple times, I went to the site of his apartment building. New building by that time. None of the current tenants had seen or spoken to anyone of his description. Old haunts, went there, Banner-Wyst—spent too much time there. Bus stations, train stations, shuttles. Homeless shelters, sidewalk sleepers, flops. His wife’s family. ”
Mel lifted her hands, gave both wrists a turn, then lowered them again.
“I followed a lead. Long-haul driver gave a lift to a man he thought maybe fit the description. The driver remembered, or thought he remembered, the guy had a duffel. Pulled into a truck stop outside of Indianapolis, and that’s the last he saw of the passenger.
“I worked it six months, then a couple more on my own time because it had a hold of me. In the end, I concluded he’d headed west, put some distance between himself and everything he’d lost. Found someplace quiet, self-terminated.”
“Because?”
“One thing came clear—from everyone I talked to who knew him? That woman, that kid, the kid they were about to have? His world. He shut off the night they died. Just shut down. So, he boots back up, and can’t live with it.
Doesn’t want to make his family have to deal with him and what he’s decided to do.
That was my thinking until now. But I’m stuck on motive. ”
Mel waited a beat, shrugged again, smiled. “Didn’t figure you’d fill me in there.”
“Not at this time,” Eve said simply. “Tell me why you now think Redman’s alive and killing. Plenty of people work at that company, with those people. Plenty who don’t have a beef with the company, and those people.”
Mel leaned back again, crossed her feet at the ankles.
“Well, first because coincidences are crapola. I only spoke with Banner once, briefly, but with Wyst a few times. I didn’t like either one of them. I spoke with your first dead guy. Chu.”
She shook her head now, eyes cop flat. “Something there, Dallas. I couldn’t pull it out of him, but something.
Nervy, and I could and did read some guilt in it.
He could’ve been playing it straight. Upset because his friend and colleague was missing.
Upset because of the accident, Redman’s breakdown and situation.
To me, it came off nearly straight because some of that was in there.
But so was something else. Surveilled him awhile, but no sign of Redman. And why hide him from his family?
“He visited Redman every few weeks in the first year, every few months in year two and a little less in year three. Then he stopped, but that’s not unreasonable.”
“He replaced Redman at Banner-Wyst.”
“Yeah, there was that, got a nice bonus, too, so that could be motive for Redman. But hell, somebody had to step in.”
“Do you know what they were working on when the apartment building blew up?”
“Couldn’t dig that out with an airjack. Nothing more than ‘several ongoing projects.’ I covered the ground up to the line of the law.”
Eve angled her head. “And you never slide across that line?”
Mel’s smile was easy, friendly.
“Not so you’d notice. I respect what you do. I respect how you do it. Sometimes people come here because the official investigation just ran its course, and we can pick and choose where you can’t. We’ve got less work and more time.
“I put the Redman case away about five years ago, but I planned—still do—to schedule reviewing my files on it as my evening entertainment. You can do the same.”
She rose, went back to her desk, then brought Eve a disc.
“I’m juggling some cases, but when I got back to the office not long before you came to the door, I made a copy of those files. I figured you’d either show up here or I’d tag you, see if you wanted them.”
“It’s appreciated.”
“We may not play on the same team, but we’re on the same side.”
Mel looked at the disc, then at Eve. “I didn’t like Wyst or Banner.
The first too fucking smooth, the second too fucking cold.
I didn’t like the place, and I can’t say just why.
Given all of that, I never considered the gas leak as anything other than that.
I only looked at all of it as background on Redman, his state of mind.
If everyone missed that as something else, if I missed looking deeper, I’m going to regret it. ”
Eve got to her feet. “I’ll let you know. Thanks for the files, and the information.”
“Dallas,” she said, so Eve paused at the door. “You’ve looked at him, looked into him. That was a good man.”
“Yeah. He was.”
What mattered at this point, Eve thought as she left, was: What was he now?
She drove home with plenty on her mind.
The first, the most vital? Who would Redman kill next? How would she stop him? How could she stop him?
Find him first.
And weaving through it, she asked herself: What would she do if someone took everything that mattered to her? If someone took the lives of those she loved?
Would she follow the law? Would she lose her mind? Would it be justice or vengeance that drove her?
Could it be both?
When she drove through the gates, her next was the hope he’d be home. She needed to see him, hear his voice, and know that her world, the one she’d made with him, through him, because of him, held steady.
At the end of the drive, she sat for a moment to push back the personal, to shut off the nagging sympathy for a man who’d brutally murdered two people.
The job demanded her skill, her focus, and her objectivity.
She walked into the house, and found the sight of Summerset and the cat waiting in the foyer just meant today her world held steady.
“Late, as usual,” Summerset said as the cat strolled over to greet her. “With a bit of blood on the hem of those trousers. Also quite usual.”
Damn it!
“It’s not mine, so lucky day. Then again, the next beat-to-shit body I stand over could be yours.”
She headed upstairs with the cat chugging along beside her. Out of sight, she checked her pants.
“Son of a bitch must have super vision to spot that tiny bit of blood. Maybe he can smell it with that snooty nose of his.”
Either way, by the time she wore them again, he’d have made sure no tiny bit of blood remained.
She had to give him that one.
She walked to her office, where the cat sprinted through the doorway to her sleep chair as if in a race, leaped up, claimed it.
Eve stopped, looked at her board.
Another victim to add, she thought, and the face of his killer. A man who’d lost everything but his life.
Roarke stepped out of his office into hers.
He knew that look, he thought, that weary look. Not physical fatigue, but emotional.
He walked to her, wrapped his arms around her from behind. And she turned, locked around him.
“What is it?”
She shook her head. “Everyone’s fine, everyone’s good. I just . . . I need to update my board, my book, write my report.”
“All right. Then a meal.” He drew back, looked into her tired eyes. “And you’ll tell me.”
“Yes. I’ll tell you.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “I brought you a present.”
“Did you now?”
“John Dearling, age fifty-eight, works for Banner-Wyst. Financials.”
“And a fine gift it is.” He kissed her now, softly. “I’ll go open it.”
“Thanks. I won’t be long. Under an hour.”