Daniel searched every face. “What? What’s going on here?”
Ciccotelli frowned. “Claire Reynolds is an issue.”
Susannah stiffened. “Why? She was blackmailing our parents and now they’re dead. What’s stopping you from finding her and bringing her in?”
“Finding her isn’t the issue. It’s arresting Claire Reynolds for your parents’ murder that’s problematic,” Ciccotelli said. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for more than a year.”
Stunned, Daniel looked at Susannah, then shook his head. “That’s impossible. She’s been blackmailing our father for the last year. The kid at the mailbox store said she’d paid her account on time just last month. In cash.”
Ciccotelli sighed. “Well, whoever paid her bill wasn’t Claire Reynolds. You don’t know who else could have been blackmailing your father?”
Susannah shook her head. “No. I don’t know.”
“Do you know how or why?” Lawrence asked softly.
Daniel shook his head mutely. But it wasn’t true. He knew. It was bad enough that it haunted him. So he held his counsel. Besides, he knew Ciccotelli wasn’t telling him everything and until he did, and maybe even if he did, Daniel would not reveal what should have been his father’s greatest shame.
And through him, mine.
Ciccotelli took a sketch from his folder and slid it across the table. “Do you recognize this man?”
Daniel stared hard at the picture. The man had a hard face, rigid jaw, prominent cheekbones. His nose was razor sharp, his chin blunt. But his eyes made Daniel shiver. They were cold, and the sketch artist had imparted to them a cruelty that Daniel knew too well from years in law enforcement. Still, there was a familiarity about the man’s eyes that gave him pause. The mailbox had dredged up all the old ghosts. But they were ghosts. This man was real and had murdered his parents and left them to rot in an unmarked grave. “No,” he finally said. “I don’t. I’m sorry. Suze?”
“No,” she echoed. “I was hoping I would, but I don’t.”
“They should listen to the tape,” Nick said. “Maybe they’ll recognize the voice.”
“All right, but just the first part, Jen,” Ciccotelli said.
McFain opened her laptop. “This part isn’t very loud, so you’ll need to listen.”
“Scream all you want.”
Daniel’s blood ran cold. His heart froze and he stared at the sketch again. At the man’s eyes. And he knew. But it was impossible.
Susannah’s hand went lax, but he could hear her panting and knew she knew, too.
“No one can hear you. No one will save you. I’ve killed them all.”
He closed his eyes, clawing at denial. “Not possible,” he murmured. Because he was dead. They’d buried him, for God’s sake.
“They all thought they suffered, but their suffering was nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you.”
But it was him. Dear God. Bile rose in his throat.
“Stop it,” Susannah snapped. “Stop the tape.”
Jennifer McFain did so instantly and Daniel felt every eye watching them. The room was suddenly too warm, his tie too tight. “We didn’t lie,” Daniel said hoarsely. “It is just the two of us now. But we had a brother. He died. We buried him in the family plot in the church cemetery.”
“His name was Simon,” Susannah whispered, horror making her voice shake.
“He’s been dead for twelve years. But that was his voice. And those are his eyes.” Daniel met Ciccotelli’s dark eyes and choked out the words past the dread that closed his throat. “If that’s truly Simon on that tape, you have a monster on your hands. He’s capable of just about anything.”
“We know,” Ciccotelli said. “We know.”
Thursday, January 18, 8:05
P.M.
Vito dragged his palms down his face, his stubble scratching his skin. Daniel Vartanian told them about his brother’s death in a fiery car crash and the subsequent burial. That their brother had been a cruel person who’d taken pleasure in tormenting animals, but who’d also been a gifted student with a broad base of talent. Everything from art, literature, and history to science, math, and computers.
Simon Vartanian was a twenty-first-century Renaissance man of sorts. But knowing all that brought them no closer to putting the monster in custody.
“I think we’ve got more new questions than answers,” Vito muttered.
“But now we have his real name,” Nick said. “And his face.”
“It’s not the way he looked before,” Daniel said.
“But his eyes are the same,” his sister said, still staring at Tino’s sketch, her expression a mixture of pain and horror and grief.
Vito put the sketch back in his folder. “We’ll need to exhume the casket that’s buried in your family’s plot.”
Daniel nodded. “I know. Part of me doesn’t want to know what’s inside. My father took care of everything when Simon ‘died.’ He identified the body, bought the casket, had Simon prepared, and brought him home to be buried.”
“It was a closed-casket funeral,” Susannah Vartanian added. She was dangerously pale but sat straight in her chair, her chin lifted as if she expected the next blow to be personal, and Vito wondered what these two knew that they weren’t telling him.
“That’s normal when the body is badly disfigured,” Katherine said. “This body was in a car accident and burned badly. If you had seen the body, there’s nothing to say you wouldn’t have thought he was your brother, too.”
Daniel’s mouth lifted, just barely. “Thank you. But I’m not worried about the body we’ll find inside, per se.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “You’re worried the casket will be empty, that your father knew your brother wasn’t really dead.”
Daniel just lifted his brows. Beside him, his sister stiffened a little more. This was the blow she’d been expecting, Vito thought.
“Why would your father fake an entire funeral and burial?” Jen said.
Daniel smiled bitterly. “My father was in the habit of fixing Simon’s messes.”
Vito had opened his mouth to probe when Thomas Scarborough cleared his throat.
“You said your family was estranged,” Thomas said. “Why?”
Daniel looked at his sister, for support, for guidance. For permission even, Vito thought.
Susannah’s small nod was almost indiscernible. “Tell them,” she murmured. “For God’s sake, tell them all of it. We’ve lived in Simon’s shadow long enough.”
Thursday, January 18, 8:15
P.M.
Van Zandt thought he was smooth, instructing his hired gun to follow him from the restaurant. Of course that would never do, allowing VZ to know his true address. It would just give the Dutchman one more thing to hold over his head.
Taking pictures of me… Van Zandt had one hell of a lot of nerve. Although it was, in its own way, damn ironic, he supposed.
Van Zandt’s security man had parked in an alley, his eyes fixed on the door of the Chinese restaurant across the street through which he’d had entered, waiting for him to return to his vehicle the same way. Instead, he approached from behind and tapped on the driver’s side window. Startled, VZ’s man swung around to look at him, then relaxed. He rolled down the window. “What do you want, buddy?”
The man’s tone was belligerent, but he only smiled. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but my organization is selling calendars to-”
“No. Not interested.” He started to roll up his window, but the man was a second too late. His knife had found its target, and now Jager’s head of security was bleeding like a stuck pig. The man’s eyes widened, flickered, then went dead, treating him to yet another moment of death.
“That’s okay,” he murmured. “It was last year’s calendar anyway.” Leaving his knife behind, he exited the alley and headed for his vehicle, parked conveniently right outside the Chinese restaurant’s front door. He navigated the street with ease, passing all the poor motorists who’d been forced to find parking blocks away. Just another side benefit to his current mode of… personal transportation.