I saw Neagley eyeing me, unsure whether to let me struggle or risk offending me with an offer of help. She settled for pretending a sudden interest in the pictures in front of her, sorting them as though into order, and I was glad that was the path she’d chosen.
Once she’d handed them over, I leafed through the prints. Some were formal police mug shots, but others were more candid, taken in a hurry with a long lens and very fast film if the grain was anything to go by. I didn’t ask where they’d come from.
Near the bottom of the pile was one of a couple of men talking to each other. They were on a street and the photographer had been on higher ground. One man had his back to the camera and was wearing a hat. The other was caught in midsentence, or possibly laughter. His mouth was open, slightly amused, and his hands were spread as though he was shrugging. Difficult to identify anyone from that. The hair looked similar, but he was taller than I was and I’d only seen him standing, so the view of his crown was unfamiliar. I looked again, and something about the pure self-confidence of him struck a cord. That and the coat. He was wearing what looked very like the same tweed coat that Aquarium man had on when he’d approached us on Boston Common. I hesitated a moment longer, then set the shot aside, separate from the others. None of the remainder were even vague possibilities, and I came back to that one shot again.
“This one might be him,” I said. “ ‘Might’ being the operative word.”
She sighed. “I always hated relying on eyewitnesses when I was a cop,” she said, pulling a face. “Give me good solid forensic evidence any day.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Who is this guy, by the way?”
She took the shot back and studied it, though I was sure she knew the details without needing the memory jog.
“A fine upstanding individual called Oliver Reynolds,” she said. “Ex-military. Fancies himself as a bit of a ladies’ man. Works freelance as a debt collector, hired muscle. According to my sources, his specialty is putting the squeeze on women-particularly if they’ve got kids. He’s very good at worming his way in, then turning nasty, but he’s never been arrested for it. Mostly people are too frightened to stand against him.”
“Nice,” I said.
“Yeah, well, by all accounts he’s a man who enjoys his work.”
Vividly, I remembered tackling the masked intruder on the landing of the Lucases’ house, of having my forearms clamped around the man’s neck and tightening my grip. That infinitesimal moment in time when we were balanced rocking on the blade edge of fate. If I was right and Aquarium man was this Reynolds character, and if I’d known his history then, would I have done it? Would I have finished him? Something shuddered down my spine.
Probably better that I hadn’t known.
“Are you OK?” Neagley asked, and I realized that she’d stopped talking and was watching me again.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry, my concentration is all shot to hell-if you’ll excuse the pun.”
She pulled a face again. “Anyway, if you think this might be our guy, I can dig a little deeper, see what I can find out about who he might be working for.”
“That would be useful,” I said. “He picked us up in Boston, before Lucas made contact, and I don’t think it was chance. He knew who Simone was and that must mean he also knew about-” I broke off abruptly
“It’s OK, Charlie,” she said, her voice wry “Mr. Meyer filled me in on the details. I know about Simone’s fortune. To be honest, the amount of money she was spending on the search, we kind of had an idea she must have been pretty rich.”
“Yes, but there’s rich and then there’s rich” I said. “Whenhe and his oppo broke into the house the other night, I think he was after Ella.”
She paused in the middle of sliding the gray file back into her bag. “A kidnap, you mean?”
I nodded. “And if that’s the case, he’s not going to let a little thing like Simone being dead stop him, is he?”
“You think he might make another try for the kid?”
“I don’t know. I’d certainly be happier if she was somewhere safer than with Lucas, that’s for sure. I don’t trust him an inch-or the kind of people he chooses to do business with. And we still don’t know what made Simone go after him the night-” I broke off again, couldn’t even say it, improvised instead. “The night Jakes was killed.”
Restless, I shifted my position again, rolling a little towards her. Mistake. When I kept still, the pain had been little more than a background ache and I’d grown hardened enough to it to forget the damage that lurked under the surface.
The pain the careless movement caused was a vicious spike in my chest, which was nasty in itself, but followed by a terrible feeling of something tearing inside. I pictured that bloody bullet again, rending its way through my internal organs with a dreadful inevitability about it. I thought of the careful repair work to the damaged tissue that the surgeon with the beautiful teeth had put into saving me. For a moment I could only lie there, motionless, breathing fast and shallow, horribly afraid that in one thoughtless moment I’d just undone everything he’d tried to achieve.
The pain washed up over me and then, at last, began to recede. I re-focused out into the room again and found Neagley was out of her chair and bending over me, frowning with concern. “Charlie, are you OK?” she demanded. “My God, I’ve never seen anybody lose color like that. You want I should go fetch a doctor?”
I gave the slightest shake of my head, as small a gesture as I could get away with. “No,” I said when I could speak again. I could feel the sweat in my hair between the back of my head and the pillow, the fire in my chest. “I’m fine. Sorry-catches up with me occasionally.”
“No shit,” she muttered, shaking her head slowly as she sat down. “You shouldn’t be talking about this,” she said with a flash of anger. “You shouldn’t even be thinking about this. You should be sleeping and watching mindless TV and recovering.”
“Yes, but try telling her that,” said Sean’s voice from the doorway.
Neagley’s head snapped up and I saw her expression close in as she regarded him with a cool flat gaze. Maybe she was always wary when she was first introduced to people, or maybe the part of her-the instinct- that was still a cop recognized the inherently lawless element in Sean’s makeup.
“You must be Mr. Meyer,” she said at last, and waited for Sean to cross the room before she offered a handshake. “Frances Neagley-we’ve spoken on the phone.”
“Ms. Neagley,” Sean said, matching his tone to hers. After a moment she gave a flicker of a smile, as though acknowledging she’d been subjected to the same careful scrutiny.
He came round and sat in one of the chairs by the bed and I saw his eyes narrow as they swept over me.
“Any news?” I asked quickly, heading off any queries about my state of health.
“We’ve been digging around some more on Greg Lucas,” he said. “Lucas had a nasty reputation in the army, as we already know. He had a temper on him-used to go out and pick fights with the locals wherever he was posted. He was also one hell of a jealous husband. Made his wife’s life hell and after Simone was born he got a whole lot worse.”
“Worse?” I said, frowning. “No wonder Simone’s mother didn’t want her to contact him.”
“That’s not the whole story,” Sean said. “It seems that not only did he not trust his wife to behave herself while he was overseas, more often than not he took his anger out on the child.”